12/25/05
This was fwd to me by a contemporary who disappeared long ago into the murk of IT.
This column is going to sound political, but it isn't. It's going to strike many readers as partisan, but it isn't that either. Maybe it's defensive. And it's much longer than I usually allow for a KJR, for which I apologize. Stay with me -- it's about the rise of intellectual relativism, a subject that's highly relevant to you as an IT leader.
The starting point is last week's column, in which I mentioned recent climatological research reporting that hurricanes have doubled in total destructive power over the past 30 years, and that global warming is the likely cause. In response, many of you suggested, with varying degrees of emphasis, that I should keep politics out of this column.
I do. I don't, however, keep scientific research out of this column. That most of my correspondents equated the reporting of scientific consensus with inclusion of political bias reflects the growth of intellectual relativism -- an epistemological position that says all explanations are equally valid -- and the attendant fog of persuasive disinformation it depends on. Intellectual relativism isn't restricted to discussions of public policy. It's alive and well, residing in the halls and boardrooms of many corporations in America, which is why it matters to you.
Global warming got this discussion started in KJR, though, and it makes an excellent case study for the problem of intellectual relativism. So with some misgivings for spending most of a column on a scientific, as opposed to IT-related topic, here goes:
George F. Will, on ABC's 9/25 edition of This Week, made some points on the subject, as covered in a story posted on NewsMax:
Environmentalists who claim global warming has caused an increase in U.S. hurricane activity obviously haven't checked with the National Hurricane Center, which has kept statistics on major storms over the last 150 years.
That's probably because those statistics yield one inescapable conclusion: If global warming has had any impact at all on hurricane activity, it's lessened - not increased - the frequency of major hurricanes. From 1901 until 1950 - when the U.S. economy was a fraction of its current size and fossil fuel consumption was next to nil - there were 34 hurricanes rated at Catagory 3, 4 or 5 in size on the Saffir Simpson scale.
In the latter half of the twentieth century - when U.S. manufacturing exploded, automobile use skyrocketed and rampant consumerism was the order of the day, hurricane activity actually decreased by nearly 20 percent, declining to 28 Catagory 3-5 hurricanes from 1951 to 2000.
That's almost as low as the last five decades of the 19th century - when the overwhelming majority of Americans lived on farms, manual power was generated by watermills and cars had yet to be invented. From 1851 to 1900 there were 27 major hurricanes in the U.S.
The scientific source of the above is The Deadliest, Costliest, And Most Intense United States Hurricanes From 1900 To 2000. As is clear from the title, it tabulated only hurricanes that hit the United States -- a fact Will glossed over and NewsMax failed to mention.
A different NHC article, Tropical Cyclone Climatology, provided a graph with complete counts of Category 3 and higher hurricanes. You don't have to be a scientist to understand that if you're interested in a link between global warming and hurricane activity you should look at the world, not U.S. landfalls. That's why it's called "global" warming, not "United States" warming. These numbers tell quite a different tale:
1850 -- 1899: 61, or 1.22 per year
1900 -- 1949: 79, or 1.58 per year
1950 -- 1999: 125, or 2.50 per year
2000 -- 2004: 18, or 3.60 per year
(For the 2000 -- 2004 data, straight-line extrapolation from just four years has a big error bar, but I decided to save you the time. Also to save statisticians some effort, simple linear regression of the underlying annual data yields a slope of 1.3% and a correlation coefficient of 0.12 with p = 0.93. Eyeballing the data strongly suggests a straight-line trend pushing up on an underlying cyclical phenomenon -- a bit like the path your yo-yo might take as you climb a ramp -- but I'm not enough of a statistician to perform the necessary analysis.)
Again: The questions surrounding global warming -- whether it's real or a measurement artifact; its magnitude; its causes; and its likely consequences -- are matters of scientific research, not political debate. They're resolvable through careful observation, measurement, experimentation, and mathematical modeling. At this juncture, here's the state of consensus in the research community, as best I can assess:
* CO2's status as a "greenhouse gas" is basic physics, not up for debate.
* Atmospheric concentrations of CO2 have increased 25% since the industrial revolution began -- a conclusion reached through analysis of "fossilized" atmosphere recovered from polar ice cores, which no reputable researcher disputes.
* Global temperature and atmospheric CO2 concentrations are strongly correlated in the paleontological record -- a generally accepted conclusion.
* Global average temperatures, while difficult to measure accurately, appear to have risen (by roughly one degree Fahrenheit, distributed unevenly across the earth's surface). The scientific debate over the amount of warming and how best to measure it is active and ongoing.
That's the state of scientific consensus. The political consensus has no more value than that of the legendary kindergarten class that decided the gender of a stray cat by voting (the result: "Ben" gave birth to a litter of kittens a few weeks later).
Which, at last, brings us back to the issue behind the issue: Intellectual relativism. It's on the increase. In corporations it's primary manifestation is decision-making driven by politics -- by weighing the biases and relative influence of decision-makers, tailoring and shading the evidence to fit. Its impact on you as a working IT manager is immense, if for no other reason than that businesses that allow it to fester won't last. Rooting it out is a huge challenge.
And this column is already way too long, so techniques for applying the lessons drawn from the global warming controversy to dealing with intellectual relativism in the workplace will have to wait until next week.
Bob Lewis is president of IT Catalysts, Inc. ( www.itcatalysts.com ) an independent consultancy specializing in IT effectiveness and strategic alignment. Contact him at rdlewis@issurvivor.com.
This column is going to sound political, but it isn't. It's going to strike many readers as partisan, but it isn't that either. Maybe it's defensive. And it's much longer than I usually allow for a KJR, for which I apologize. Stay with me -- it's about the rise of intellectual relativism, a subject that's highly relevant to you as an IT leader.
The starting point is last week's column, in which I mentioned recent climatological research reporting that hurricanes have doubled in total destructive power over the past 30 years, and that global warming is the likely cause. In response, many of you suggested, with varying degrees of emphasis, that I should keep politics out of this column.
I do. I don't, however, keep scientific research out of this column. That most of my correspondents equated the reporting of scientific consensus with inclusion of political bias reflects the growth of intellectual relativism -- an epistemological position that says all explanations are equally valid -- and the attendant fog of persuasive disinformation it depends on. Intellectual relativism isn't restricted to discussions of public policy. It's alive and well, residing in the halls and boardrooms of many corporations in America, which is why it matters to you.
Global warming got this discussion started in KJR, though, and it makes an excellent case study for the problem of intellectual relativism. So with some misgivings for spending most of a column on a scientific, as opposed to IT-related topic, here goes:
George F. Will, on ABC's 9/25 edition of This Week, made some points on the subject, as covered in a story posted on NewsMax:
Environmentalists who claim global warming has caused an increase in U.S. hurricane activity obviously haven't checked with the National Hurricane Center, which has kept statistics on major storms over the last 150 years.
That's probably because those statistics yield one inescapable conclusion: If global warming has had any impact at all on hurricane activity, it's lessened - not increased - the frequency of major hurricanes. From 1901 until 1950 - when the U.S. economy was a fraction of its current size and fossil fuel consumption was next to nil - there were 34 hurricanes rated at Catagory 3, 4 or 5 in size on the Saffir Simpson scale.
In the latter half of the twentieth century - when U.S. manufacturing exploded, automobile use skyrocketed and rampant consumerism was the order of the day, hurricane activity actually decreased by nearly 20 percent, declining to 28 Catagory 3-5 hurricanes from 1951 to 2000.
That's almost as low as the last five decades of the 19th century - when the overwhelming majority of Americans lived on farms, manual power was generated by watermills and cars had yet to be invented. From 1851 to 1900 there were 27 major hurricanes in the U.S.
The scientific source of the above is The Deadliest, Costliest, And Most Intense United States Hurricanes From 1900 To 2000. As is clear from the title, it tabulated only hurricanes that hit the United States -- a fact Will glossed over and NewsMax failed to mention.
A different NHC article, Tropical Cyclone Climatology, provided a graph with complete counts of Category 3 and higher hurricanes. You don't have to be a scientist to understand that if you're interested in a link between global warming and hurricane activity you should look at the world, not U.S. landfalls. That's why it's called "global" warming, not "United States" warming. These numbers tell quite a different tale:
1850 -- 1899: 61, or 1.22 per year
1900 -- 1949: 79, or 1.58 per year
1950 -- 1999: 125, or 2.50 per year
2000 -- 2004: 18, or 3.60 per year
(For the 2000 -- 2004 data, straight-line extrapolation from just four years has a big error bar, but I decided to save you the time. Also to save statisticians some effort, simple linear regression of the underlying annual data yields a slope of 1.3% and a correlation coefficient of 0.12 with p = 0.93. Eyeballing the data strongly suggests a straight-line trend pushing up on an underlying cyclical phenomenon -- a bit like the path your yo-yo might take as you climb a ramp -- but I'm not enough of a statistician to perform the necessary analysis.)
Again: The questions surrounding global warming -- whether it's real or a measurement artifact; its magnitude; its causes; and its likely consequences -- are matters of scientific research, not political debate. They're resolvable through careful observation, measurement, experimentation, and mathematical modeling. At this juncture, here's the state of consensus in the research community, as best I can assess:
* CO2's status as a "greenhouse gas" is basic physics, not up for debate.
* Atmospheric concentrations of CO2 have increased 25% since the industrial revolution began -- a conclusion reached through analysis of "fossilized" atmosphere recovered from polar ice cores, which no reputable researcher disputes.
* Global temperature and atmospheric CO2 concentrations are strongly correlated in the paleontological record -- a generally accepted conclusion.
* Global average temperatures, while difficult to measure accurately, appear to have risen (by roughly one degree Fahrenheit, distributed unevenly across the earth's surface). The scientific debate over the amount of warming and how best to measure it is active and ongoing.
That's the state of scientific consensus. The political consensus has no more value than that of the legendary kindergarten class that decided the gender of a stray cat by voting (the result: "Ben" gave birth to a litter of kittens a few weeks later).
Which, at last, brings us back to the issue behind the issue: Intellectual relativism. It's on the increase. In corporations it's primary manifestation is decision-making driven by politics -- by weighing the biases and relative influence of decision-makers, tailoring and shading the evidence to fit. Its impact on you as a working IT manager is immense, if for no other reason than that businesses that allow it to fester won't last. Rooting it out is a huge challenge.
And this column is already way too long, so techniques for applying the lessons drawn from the global warming controversy to dealing with intellectual relativism in the workplace will have to wait until next week.
Bob Lewis is president of IT Catalysts, Inc. ( www.itcatalysts.com ) an independent consultancy specializing in IT effectiveness and strategic alignment. Contact him at rdlewis@issurvivor.com.
"Grubbs, 63, is in Christchurch, New Zealand for a month lecturing. He told the Associated Press he was celebrating with a good bottle of port. "It's tasting pretty good right now," he said".
- Try the thought experiment in which NZ media learn from the AP story (below) that a new Nobel Prize winner happens to be in NZ - and happens to be a woman.
Do you think she would have been ignored as Grubb has been??
R
========
Caltech Professor, 2 Others Share Nobel Chemistry Prize
By Thomas H. Maugh II, Times Staff Writer
Robert H. Grubbs of Caltech will receive one-third of the 2005 Nobel Prize in chemistry, sharing it with an MIT professor who spent his undergraduate years at UC Riverside and a French theoretical chemist, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said today.
Grubbs, Richard R. Shrock of MIT and Yves Chauvin of the Institut Francais du Petrole in Rueil-Malmaison, France, received the award for the development of a synthetic technique that not only greatly increases the repertoire of molecules that can be produced industrially, but also sharply decreases the amount of waste materials that must be disposed during production.
The technique, called metathesis, "represents a great step forward for 'green chemistry,' reducing potentially hazardous waste through smarter production," the Nobel committee said in making the announcement.
"Metathesis reactions are an important tool in the creation of new drugs to fight many of the world's major diseases, including cancer, Alzheimer's and AIDS," William F. Carroll Jr., president of the American Chemical Society, said. "They also are used to develop herbicides, new polymers and fuels."
Grubbs, 63, is in Christchurch, New Zealand for a month lecturing. He told the Associated Press he was celebrating with a good bottle of port. "It's tasting pretty good right now," he said.
Chauvin, 74, who is retired in Tours, told reporters that he felt "embarrassment, not joy I had a quiet life. Now I see that that is no longer the case."
He added: "Today I live alone, and my first thoughts go to my wife, who passed away barely a year ago."
Schrock, 60, said he was "very excited, very nervous," when he was awakened at 5:35 this morning by the telephone call from Stockholm. At a midmorning press conference, he added that "I have almost stopped shaking."
Metathesis, which literally means "change places," involves chemical reactions in which two molecules exchange fragments under the influence of a catalyst, a third molecule that promotes the reaction without itself being consumed. In normal use, the technique can add a large fragment containing many atoms to another, growing molecule, in one fell swoop.
Previously, those atoms would have been added one or two at a time, complicating the process and requiring a much greater use of solvents and other materials.
The technique was first observed spontaneously in polymerization reactions in the petrochemical industry, but it was a hit-and-miss process because researchers did not know what was going on.
Chauvin developed the first theoretical explanation for the process, concluding in 1970 that metathesis is catalyzed by a family of chemicals called metal carbenes, in which a metal atom is bonded to a carbon atom through a double bond.
Sparked by this report, Schrock began searching for catalysts that could carry out the reaction in a predictable manner. He tried a variety of metals before concluding that molybdenum and tungsten were probably the best.
In 1990, he reported the discovery of a group of molybdenum carbenes that proved effective. The problem was that the catalysts were not particularly stable in air and were incompatible with many commonly used solvents.
Grubbs solved those problems by developing a family of ruthenium carbenes that were much more stable and that could be used in alcohols and water. One of the compounds, commonly called Grubbs' catalyst, is the standard to which all new catalysts are compared.
- Try the thought experiment in which NZ media learn from the AP story (below) that a new Nobel Prize winner happens to be in NZ - and happens to be a woman.
Do you think she would have been ignored as Grubb has been??
R
========
Caltech Professor, 2 Others Share Nobel Chemistry Prize
By Thomas H. Maugh II, Times Staff Writer
Robert H. Grubbs of Caltech will receive one-third of the 2005 Nobel Prize in chemistry, sharing it with an MIT professor who spent his undergraduate years at UC Riverside and a French theoretical chemist, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said today.
Grubbs, Richard R. Shrock of MIT and Yves Chauvin of the Institut Francais du Petrole in Rueil-Malmaison, France, received the award for the development of a synthetic technique that not only greatly increases the repertoire of molecules that can be produced industrially, but also sharply decreases the amount of waste materials that must be disposed during production.
The technique, called metathesis, "represents a great step forward for 'green chemistry,' reducing potentially hazardous waste through smarter production," the Nobel committee said in making the announcement.
"Metathesis reactions are an important tool in the creation of new drugs to fight many of the world's major diseases, including cancer, Alzheimer's and AIDS," William F. Carroll Jr., president of the American Chemical Society, said. "They also are used to develop herbicides, new polymers and fuels."
Grubbs, 63, is in Christchurch, New Zealand for a month lecturing. He told the Associated Press he was celebrating with a good bottle of port. "It's tasting pretty good right now," he said.
Chauvin, 74, who is retired in Tours, told reporters that he felt "embarrassment, not joy I had a quiet life. Now I see that that is no longer the case."
He added: "Today I live alone, and my first thoughts go to my wife, who passed away barely a year ago."
Schrock, 60, said he was "very excited, very nervous," when he was awakened at 5:35 this morning by the telephone call from Stockholm. At a midmorning press conference, he added that "I have almost stopped shaking."
Metathesis, which literally means "change places," involves chemical reactions in which two molecules exchange fragments under the influence of a catalyst, a third molecule that promotes the reaction without itself being consumed. In normal use, the technique can add a large fragment containing many atoms to another, growing molecule, in one fell swoop.
Previously, those atoms would have been added one or two at a time, complicating the process and requiring a much greater use of solvents and other materials.
The technique was first observed spontaneously in polymerization reactions in the petrochemical industry, but it was a hit-and-miss process because researchers did not know what was going on.
Chauvin developed the first theoretical explanation for the process, concluding in 1970 that metathesis is catalyzed by a family of chemicals called metal carbenes, in which a metal atom is bonded to a carbon atom through a double bond.
Sparked by this report, Schrock began searching for catalysts that could carry out the reaction in a predictable manner. He tried a variety of metals before concluding that molybdenum and tungsten were probably the best.
In 1990, he reported the discovery of a group of molybdenum carbenes that proved effective. The problem was that the catalysts were not particularly stable in air and were incompatible with many commonly used solvents.
Grubbs solved those problems by developing a family of ruthenium carbenes that were much more stable and that could be used in alcohols and water. One of the compounds, commonly called Grubbs' catalyst, is the standard to which all new catalysts are compared.
11/26/05
RSNZ: Nobel science prizes remain a male preserve [Catch-all] -
GEA - gormfach@gmail.com @ 10:51:13 PM
**Latest news at http://www.rsnz.org/news/index.php
The full text of news items is only available to Members. For membership details check http://www.rsnz.org/members/join.php
Please send news releases, etc to:
Didymo to have devastating effects
Can smother the habitat for aquatic invertebrate
Invasive algae may wreck more southern rivers, threaten Waikato
Biosecurity officials today widened their alert over the incursion of an
invasive foreign algae - for which there is no biological control - to
all rivers in the South Island
US company to work on jabless avian flu vaccine
MedImmune will try to make an inhaled vaccine by splicing selected genes
from avian flu viruses into a weakened human flu virus
China GMO rice unlikely this year - scientists
Close to approving a genetically modified version
We want human cloning here: Victorian government
Calls for a ban on therapeutic cloning to be lifted
Nobel science prizes remain a male preserve
If history is a guide, a couple of greying men are likely to win the
2005 Nobel physics and chemistry prizes
[of course the harpie who runs this RSNZ teaser system is allowed to imply these awards are not on merit; if they were fair , young women would be given the prizes]
The full text of news items is only available to Members. For membership details check http://www.rsnz.org/members/join.php
Please send news releases, etc to:
Didymo to have devastating effects
Can smother the habitat for aquatic invertebrate
Invasive algae may wreck more southern rivers, threaten Waikato
Biosecurity officials today widened their alert over the incursion of an
invasive foreign algae - for which there is no biological control - to
all rivers in the South Island
US company to work on jabless avian flu vaccine
MedImmune will try to make an inhaled vaccine by splicing selected genes
from avian flu viruses into a weakened human flu virus
China GMO rice unlikely this year - scientists
Close to approving a genetically modified version
We want human cloning here: Victorian government
Calls for a ban on therapeutic cloning to be lifted
Nobel science prizes remain a male preserve
If history is a guide, a couple of greying men are likely to win the
2005 Nobel physics and chemistry prizes
[of course the harpie who runs this RSNZ teaser system is allowed to imply these awards are not on merit; if they were fair , young women would be given the prizes]
Of any interest?
If not to petrol-heads, then to techno-nerds....
quote "One of the entrants is a robotic motorcycle ..."
The Belmont Club URL needs a tweak from time to time but it could be at
http://www.wretchard.com/ to follow the links
The Grand Challenge
28 Sept 05
Computers, start your engines. The DARPA Grand Challenge is about to begin. Starting September 29 and continuing through October 6, unmanned vehicles will attempt to drive 150 miles across a desert in 10 hours. The vehicles will not be remotely driven. They must navigate solely on the strength of their onboard computers and sensors across the course and to the finish line. The sponsor, DARPA, is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. But the contestants come from all over the United States and from several foreign countries. You can follow the progress of the race at www.grandchallenge.org. It contains links to individual teams and their team blogs.
The Seattle Times says this:
The military sponsors the race to speed the development of unmanned vehicles for combat. The project had an inauspicious start: Last year's inaugural contest ended soon after it began when the robots careened off course or abruptly stalled. One even got tangled in barbed wire. ... This year's race shows signs of being extremely competitive. Some vehicles have logged hundreds of self-guided miles in the Southwestern desert during summer practice runs. Several even tested on last year's course ... Vehicles will have to drive on dirt and gravel, maneuver mountain switchbacks, squeeze through choke points and avoid man-made and natural obstacles.
Carnegie Mellon's Red Team (brought to you by Caterpiller) has video links here and they are heavy downloads. One of the entrants is a robotic motorcycle. Check out the Blue Team at www.ghostriderrobot.com, which has video of their robotic contestant swimming underwater (Sort of. Mutley needed here.), doing ramp jumps and other cool stuff here. Any ideas on who'll finish first?
posted by wretchard.
If not to petrol-heads, then to techno-nerds....
quote "One of the entrants is a robotic motorcycle ..."
The Belmont Club URL needs a tweak from time to time but it could be at
http://www.wretchard.com/ to follow the links
The Grand Challenge
28 Sept 05
Computers, start your engines. The DARPA Grand Challenge is about to begin. Starting September 29 and continuing through October 6, unmanned vehicles will attempt to drive 150 miles across a desert in 10 hours. The vehicles will not be remotely driven. They must navigate solely on the strength of their onboard computers and sensors across the course and to the finish line. The sponsor, DARPA, is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. But the contestants come from all over the United States and from several foreign countries. You can follow the progress of the race at www.grandchallenge.org. It contains links to individual teams and their team blogs.
The Seattle Times says this:
The military sponsors the race to speed the development of unmanned vehicles for combat. The project had an inauspicious start: Last year's inaugural contest ended soon after it began when the robots careened off course or abruptly stalled. One even got tangled in barbed wire. ... This year's race shows signs of being extremely competitive. Some vehicles have logged hundreds of self-guided miles in the Southwestern desert during summer practice runs. Several even tested on last year's course ... Vehicles will have to drive on dirt and gravel, maneuver mountain switchbacks, squeeze through choke points and avoid man-made and natural obstacles.
Carnegie Mellon's Red Team (brought to you by Caterpiller) has video links here and they are heavy downloads. One of the entrants is a robotic motorcycle. Check out the Blue Team at www.ghostriderrobot.com, which has video of their robotic contestant swimming underwater (Sort of. Mutley needed here.), doing ramp jumps and other cool stuff here. Any ideas on who'll finish first?
posted by wretchard.
(Ed. Note - Political propaganda)
from the September 27, 2005 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0927/p11s02-bogn.html
Science and politics: a dangerous mix
'Twisted science' may endanger America's future, one journalist warns.
By Gregory M. Lamb
The Republican War on Science lives up to its incendiary title. The book will undoubtedly raise hackles among conservatives and spawn sharp-tongued counterattacks. But the real test of its efficacy may be whether or not it persuades independents and moderate Republicans that without a new approach toward science America is headed for what the author calls "economic, ecological, and social calamity."
As a good polemicist, Chris Mooney, a journalist who specializes in writing about science and politics, knows to protect his argument by first making two concessions.
First, not all Republicans have been antiscience. Teddy Roosevelt was a great early conservationist. Dwight Eisenhower was the first president to recognize that the White House needed a science adviser. Ronald Reagan's surgeon general, C. Everett Koop, weighed scientific evidence "dispassionately" on subjects like AIDS and the health effects of abortion and declared, "I am the nation's surgeon general, not the nation's chaplain."
Even the first President Bush was largely regarded by scientists as "a friend," Mr. Mooney says. And today, a few GOP mavericks like Sen. John McCain speak the truth on issues like global warming.
Secondly, Mooney wisely - albeit briefly - acknowledges that liberals have also sometimes twisted science for their own political ends. Some of the alarm over genetically modified foods has exceeded what science shows; animal rights activists have argued that animal testing isn't necessary when most scientists disagree; and some Democratic politicians have overstated the likelihood that stemcell research will produce quick cures.
But these transgressions, Mooney says, pale in comparison with the breathtaking audacity of Mr. Bush's "New Right" in its cynical manipulation of science. In a kind of Orwellian newspeak, they label conventional science as "junk science" and seek to replace it with what they call "sound science" - in other words, questionable, fringe science that conveniently props up the interests of big industry and conservative Christians.
All sides might agree that science should inform policy, not make it. Other considerations may trump it. But what irks Mooney is when, in his eyes, science is distorted to defend a policy.
In this regard, Mooney contrasts the Clinton and Bush administrations in their approaches to needle-exchange programs for drug addicts. Numerous reputable scientific studies show that needle-exchange programs reduce the transmission of AIDS without encouraging drug abuse. The Clinton administration acknowledged these findings, but simply decided to ignore them, apparently unwilling to take an unpopular political stance.
The Bush administration also opposed needle-exchange programs but "twisted the science," Mooney says, by insisting that some scientists doubted the findings. Yet when the press followed up, the scientists cited by the White House said they had no such doubts.
A key GOP tactic, Mooney says, has been "magnifying uncertainty" - finding a few dissenting voices on the scientific fringe and calling for "more research" to forestall action - a tactic the tobacco industry used for decades, he says.
Chapter by chapter, Mooney picks through the hot-button issues - global warming, creationism, intelligent design, stem cells - and finds conservatives politicizing and distorting the science involved.
He rejects the idea of even "teaching the controversy" over these issues in schools, arguing that the far right has invented the controversy itself by ginning up a kind of faux science alternative that has no solid basis. He isn't even willing to move the controversy out of science classes into social studies or current events.
Mooney does offer a brief list of solutions. Congress should revive the Office of Technology Assessment "or a close equivalent," which once offered nonpartisan scientific advice to lawmakers. The White House should restore its science adviser from his peripheral position now to the president's inner circle, where the office resided under President Kennedy. Journalists should resist slick PR campaigns and "spin" on science-related stories.
(According to Mooney, although a "powerful consensus" exists among scientists that global climate change is under way, that has not been reflected in the mainstream press, which feels compelled for reasons of "balance" to report as though the issue were still in doubt.)
"Our future relies on our intelligence ... nourishing disturbing anti-intellectual tendencies - cannot deliver us there successfully or safely," Mooney warns.
For those who have felt even vaguely disturbed by their government's attitude toward science, this book is likely to bring those concerns into sharp focus.
* Gregory M. Lamb is on the Monitor staff.
The Republican War on Science
By Chris Mooney
Basic Books336 pp., $24.95
from the September 27, 2005 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0927/p11s02-bogn.html
Science and politics: a dangerous mix
'Twisted science' may endanger America's future, one journalist warns.
By Gregory M. Lamb
The Republican War on Science lives up to its incendiary title. The book will undoubtedly raise hackles among conservatives and spawn sharp-tongued counterattacks. But the real test of its efficacy may be whether or not it persuades independents and moderate Republicans that without a new approach toward science America is headed for what the author calls "economic, ecological, and social calamity."
As a good polemicist, Chris Mooney, a journalist who specializes in writing about science and politics, knows to protect his argument by first making two concessions.
First, not all Republicans have been antiscience. Teddy Roosevelt was a great early conservationist. Dwight Eisenhower was the first president to recognize that the White House needed a science adviser. Ronald Reagan's surgeon general, C. Everett Koop, weighed scientific evidence "dispassionately" on subjects like AIDS and the health effects of abortion and declared, "I am the nation's surgeon general, not the nation's chaplain."
Even the first President Bush was largely regarded by scientists as "a friend," Mr. Mooney says. And today, a few GOP mavericks like Sen. John McCain speak the truth on issues like global warming.
Secondly, Mooney wisely - albeit briefly - acknowledges that liberals have also sometimes twisted science for their own political ends. Some of the alarm over genetically modified foods has exceeded what science shows; animal rights activists have argued that animal testing isn't necessary when most scientists disagree; and some Democratic politicians have overstated the likelihood that stemcell research will produce quick cures.
But these transgressions, Mooney says, pale in comparison with the breathtaking audacity of Mr. Bush's "New Right" in its cynical manipulation of science. In a kind of Orwellian newspeak, they label conventional science as "junk science" and seek to replace it with what they call "sound science" - in other words, questionable, fringe science that conveniently props up the interests of big industry and conservative Christians.
All sides might agree that science should inform policy, not make it. Other considerations may trump it. But what irks Mooney is when, in his eyes, science is distorted to defend a policy.
In this regard, Mooney contrasts the Clinton and Bush administrations in their approaches to needle-exchange programs for drug addicts. Numerous reputable scientific studies show that needle-exchange programs reduce the transmission of AIDS without encouraging drug abuse. The Clinton administration acknowledged these findings, but simply decided to ignore them, apparently unwilling to take an unpopular political stance.
The Bush administration also opposed needle-exchange programs but "twisted the science," Mooney says, by insisting that some scientists doubted the findings. Yet when the press followed up, the scientists cited by the White House said they had no such doubts.
A key GOP tactic, Mooney says, has been "magnifying uncertainty" - finding a few dissenting voices on the scientific fringe and calling for "more research" to forestall action - a tactic the tobacco industry used for decades, he says.
Chapter by chapter, Mooney picks through the hot-button issues - global warming, creationism, intelligent design, stem cells - and finds conservatives politicizing and distorting the science involved.
He rejects the idea of even "teaching the controversy" over these issues in schools, arguing that the far right has invented the controversy itself by ginning up a kind of faux science alternative that has no solid basis. He isn't even willing to move the controversy out of science classes into social studies or current events.
Mooney does offer a brief list of solutions. Congress should revive the Office of Technology Assessment "or a close equivalent," which once offered nonpartisan scientific advice to lawmakers. The White House should restore its science adviser from his peripheral position now to the president's inner circle, where the office resided under President Kennedy. Journalists should resist slick PR campaigns and "spin" on science-related stories.
(According to Mooney, although a "powerful consensus" exists among scientists that global climate change is under way, that has not been reflected in the mainstream press, which feels compelled for reasons of "balance" to report as though the issue were still in doubt.)
"Our future relies on our intelligence ... nourishing disturbing anti-intellectual tendencies - cannot deliver us there successfully or safely," Mooney warns.
For those who have felt even vaguely disturbed by their government's attitude toward science, this book is likely to bring those concerns into sharp focus.
* Gregory M. Lamb is on the Monitor staff.
The Republican War on Science
By Chris Mooney
Basic Books336 pp., $24.95
Getting Apollo off the Ground--San Francisco Community Power [Catch-all] -
GEA - gormfach@gmail.com @ 10:26:08 PM
http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=8878
Getting Apollo off the Ground -- A Guest Commentary
September 23, 2005 - By Steven J. Moss, San Francisco Community Power
Energy and labor are intimately related. After all, energy is by and
large a replacement for labor - most energy-using devices save time.
Washing machines replaced stone-slapping methods of clothes cleaning;
cars substitute for slower modes of manual transport. This
historical relationship has recently formed the basis for a
counter-movement lead by labor unions and environmental groups - the
Apollo Alliance. Apollo seeks to change the energy-labor
relationship into one in which cleaner energy sources create jobs,
rather than eliminates them.
So far Apollo has been closer to a delayed space shuttle launch than
a successful trip to the moon. While energy efficiency, solar power,
and "demand-response" have made steady gains in state and federal
energy policies, the linkage between energy and economic development
hasn't. Still, despite the lack of policy reform, there's ample
evidence that well-crafted community-based energy management programs
can provide multiple benefits, including reduced polluting air
emissions, job creation, and economic development.
San Francisco Community Power is one example of how energy and
employment can be successfully linked, as well as the challenges of
doing so. SF Power was originally funded by power plant mitigation
monies. The organization trained unemployed residents of San
Francisco neighborhoods where aging power plants are located to
install energy saving equipment at low income households and small
businesses. The work itself was not particularly complicated -
literally screwing in compact fluorescent light bulbs or installing
motion sensors - but it required patience, care, and "handyman" level
competence.
Virtually every worker hired by SF Power had "issues," before and
after their training. The training itself was the first time some of
them had been in an adult classroom setting, and many did not have
study skills, or even know how to behave respectfully towards the
teachers or one another. Most of them, including the women, had
their wages garnished for back child care liabilities, reducing their
incentive to work. And throughout their employment work-disrupting
situations emerged for all of them. Girlfriends or family members got
sick, and had to be taken care of; cars broke down or were stolen
entirely; addictions re-emerged, with individuals simply disappearing
for days, weeks, or forever.
Still, and without the full-range of social support resources typical
of many back-to-work programs, the job got done. Thousands of
households or businesses were provided with devices that tangibly
reduced their energy bills, as well as lessened reliance on the
locally polluting power plants. Less money for utility bills meant
more dollars in consumers and businesses pockets, with concomitant
benefits to the local economy, including, undoubtedly, more job
creation. And every person employed in the program expressed pride in
their work to help improve their community's environment. The outcome
was precisely what the Apollo Alliance wants to achieve.
When the mitigation monies, which were administrated by the City and
County of San Francisco, ran out, SF Power successfully turned to the
local utility, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, for funding support.
A version of the program continued, including relying on community
residents to do the work. But PG&E, as governed by the California
Public Utility Commission, did not have the same interest in bundling
energy saving efforts with job creation and economic development.
The utility's direction from its regulators was to obtain
cost-effective energy savings as soon as possible. As a result, it
had less patience for the slower work pace caused by newly
refurbished workers, and no funding for the extra staff time required
to make community residents workforce-ready. It was difficult to get
the resources necessary, or even obtain access, to support training
opportunities.
Still again, the PG&E-funded program has proved successful, employing
two-dozen community members and cumulatively serving close to fifteen
thousand homes and businesses cost-effectively. But the need to wage
a "permanent war" to attract, train, manage, and replace low income
workers has taken its toil on SF Power. It's not clear, four years
after its launch that this type of effort can effectively compete
against private sector companies whose only motivation is the bottom
line, and who are willing to hire fewer individuals from outside the
community being served to do more work at lower pay.
And that's why Apollo needs to get off the ground. While utility
ratepayers may not have an interest in job creation, environmental
justice, or even economic development, society does. And it just so
happens that society members and ratepayers are one and the same.
Energy regulators -- as well as other one-issue government agencies,
for that matter - should abandon their single-minded focus on
achieving a solitary goal. Instead we should use our scarce resources
to get as many "two-fers" as possible. A dollar spent buying someone
a light bulb will get some energy savings. Spending a dollar and a
"bit" having that same bulb screwed in by a rehabilitated worker who
lives in the neighborhood will not only save energy, it will create
it as well: previously under-utilized human energy.
Steven Moss is the publisher of the Neighborhood Environmental
Newswire. He serves as Executive Director of San Francisco Community
Power, www.sfpower.org.
Getting Apollo off the Ground -- A Guest Commentary
September 23, 2005 - By Steven J. Moss, San Francisco Community Power
Energy and labor are intimately related. After all, energy is by and
large a replacement for labor - most energy-using devices save time.
Washing machines replaced stone-slapping methods of clothes cleaning;
cars substitute for slower modes of manual transport. This
historical relationship has recently formed the basis for a
counter-movement lead by labor unions and environmental groups - the
Apollo Alliance. Apollo seeks to change the energy-labor
relationship into one in which cleaner energy sources create jobs,
rather than eliminates them.
So far Apollo has been closer to a delayed space shuttle launch than
a successful trip to the moon. While energy efficiency, solar power,
and "demand-response" have made steady gains in state and federal
energy policies, the linkage between energy and economic development
hasn't. Still, despite the lack of policy reform, there's ample
evidence that well-crafted community-based energy management programs
can provide multiple benefits, including reduced polluting air
emissions, job creation, and economic development.
San Francisco Community Power is one example of how energy and
employment can be successfully linked, as well as the challenges of
doing so. SF Power was originally funded by power plant mitigation
monies. The organization trained unemployed residents of San
Francisco neighborhoods where aging power plants are located to
install energy saving equipment at low income households and small
businesses. The work itself was not particularly complicated -
literally screwing in compact fluorescent light bulbs or installing
motion sensors - but it required patience, care, and "handyman" level
competence.
Virtually every worker hired by SF Power had "issues," before and
after their training. The training itself was the first time some of
them had been in an adult classroom setting, and many did not have
study skills, or even know how to behave respectfully towards the
teachers or one another. Most of them, including the women, had
their wages garnished for back child care liabilities, reducing their
incentive to work. And throughout their employment work-disrupting
situations emerged for all of them. Girlfriends or family members got
sick, and had to be taken care of; cars broke down or were stolen
entirely; addictions re-emerged, with individuals simply disappearing
for days, weeks, or forever.
Still, and without the full-range of social support resources typical
of many back-to-work programs, the job got done. Thousands of
households or businesses were provided with devices that tangibly
reduced their energy bills, as well as lessened reliance on the
locally polluting power plants. Less money for utility bills meant
more dollars in consumers and businesses pockets, with concomitant
benefits to the local economy, including, undoubtedly, more job
creation. And every person employed in the program expressed pride in
their work to help improve their community's environment. The outcome
was precisely what the Apollo Alliance wants to achieve.
When the mitigation monies, which were administrated by the City and
County of San Francisco, ran out, SF Power successfully turned to the
local utility, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, for funding support.
A version of the program continued, including relying on community
residents to do the work. But PG&E, as governed by the California
Public Utility Commission, did not have the same interest in bundling
energy saving efforts with job creation and economic development.
The utility's direction from its regulators was to obtain
cost-effective energy savings as soon as possible. As a result, it
had less patience for the slower work pace caused by newly
refurbished workers, and no funding for the extra staff time required
to make community residents workforce-ready. It was difficult to get
the resources necessary, or even obtain access, to support training
opportunities.
Still again, the PG&E-funded program has proved successful, employing
two-dozen community members and cumulatively serving close to fifteen
thousand homes and businesses cost-effectively. But the need to wage
a "permanent war" to attract, train, manage, and replace low income
workers has taken its toil on SF Power. It's not clear, four years
after its launch that this type of effort can effectively compete
against private sector companies whose only motivation is the bottom
line, and who are willing to hire fewer individuals from outside the
community being served to do more work at lower pay.
And that's why Apollo needs to get off the ground. While utility
ratepayers may not have an interest in job creation, environmental
justice, or even economic development, society does. And it just so
happens that society members and ratepayers are one and the same.
Energy regulators -- as well as other one-issue government agencies,
for that matter - should abandon their single-minded focus on
achieving a solitary goal. Instead we should use our scarce resources
to get as many "two-fers" as possible. A dollar spent buying someone
a light bulb will get some energy savings. Spending a dollar and a
"bit" having that same bulb screwed in by a rehabilitated worker who
lives in the neighborhood will not only save energy, it will create
it as well: previously under-utilized human energy.
Steven Moss is the publisher of the Neighborhood Environmental
Newswire. He serves as Executive Director of San Francisco Community
Power, www.sfpower.org.
11/25/05
Something to think about as we move towards the election?
Champion R-wing summary of how tax cuts work and what wealth is
David R. Kamerschen,
Professor of Economics, University of NSW.
Suppose that every night, ten men go out for dinner at La Porchetta's. The bill for all ten comes to $100. They decide to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes, and it goes like this:
* The first four men (the poorest) paid nothing
* The fifth paid $1
* The sixth $3
* The seventh $7
* The eighth $12
* The ninth $18
* The tenth man (the richest) paid $59
All 10 are quite happy with the arrangement, until one
day, the owner says: "Since you are all such good customers, I'm going
to reduce the cost of your daily meal by $20."
So now their dinner for ten only costs $80. The group still decides to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes. The first four men are unaffected. They will still eat for free.
But how should the other six, the paying customers, divvy up the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his "fair share"?
They realise that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtract that from everybody's share, then the fifth and sixth men would each end up being paid to eat. The restaurateur suggests reducing each man's bill by roughly the same percentage, thus:
* The fifth man pays nothing (like the first four) instead of $1 (100%saving)
* The sixth pays $2 instead of $3 (33% saving)
* The seventh pays $5 instead of $7 (28% saving)
* The eighth pays $9 instead of $12 (25% saving)
* The ninth pays $14 instead of $18 (22% saving)
* The tenth pays $49 instead of $59 (16% saving)
Each of the six are better off, and the first four continue to eat for free, as now does the fifth - but outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.
"I only got a dollar out of the $20," declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man "but he got $10!"
"That's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a dollar too. It's unfair that he got ten times more than me!"
"That's true!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $10 back when I got only $2? The wealthy get all the breaks!"
"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison.
"We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!"
The nine men then surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn't show up for dinner. The nine sat down and ate without him, but when they came to pay the bill, they discovered that they didn't have enough money between all of them to meet even half of the bill!
That, boys and girls, journalists and college professors [not a term that would be used by a NSW native], is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up at the table anymore. There are lots of good restaurants in Monaco and the Caribbean.
Champion R-wing summary of how tax cuts work and what wealth is
David R. Kamerschen,
Professor of Economics, University of NSW.
Suppose that every night, ten men go out for dinner at La Porchetta's. The bill for all ten comes to $100. They decide to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes, and it goes like this:
* The first four men (the poorest) paid nothing
* The fifth paid $1
* The sixth $3
* The seventh $7
* The eighth $12
* The ninth $18
* The tenth man (the richest) paid $59
All 10 are quite happy with the arrangement, until one
day, the owner says: "Since you are all such good customers, I'm going
to reduce the cost of your daily meal by $20."
So now their dinner for ten only costs $80. The group still decides to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes. The first four men are unaffected. They will still eat for free.
But how should the other six, the paying customers, divvy up the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his "fair share"?
They realise that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtract that from everybody's share, then the fifth and sixth men would each end up being paid to eat. The restaurateur suggests reducing each man's bill by roughly the same percentage, thus:
* The fifth man pays nothing (like the first four) instead of $1 (100%saving)
* The sixth pays $2 instead of $3 (33% saving)
* The seventh pays $5 instead of $7 (28% saving)
* The eighth pays $9 instead of $12 (25% saving)
* The ninth pays $14 instead of $18 (22% saving)
* The tenth pays $49 instead of $59 (16% saving)
Each of the six are better off, and the first four continue to eat for free, as now does the fifth - but outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.
"I only got a dollar out of the $20," declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man "but he got $10!"
"That's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a dollar too. It's unfair that he got ten times more than me!"
"That's true!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $10 back when I got only $2? The wealthy get all the breaks!"
"Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison.
"We didn't get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!"
The nine men then surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn't show up for dinner. The nine sat down and ate without him, but when they came to pay the bill, they discovered that they didn't have enough money between all of them to meet even half of the bill!
That, boys and girls, journalists and college professors [not a term that would be used by a NSW native], is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up at the table anymore. There are lots of good restaurants in Monaco and the Caribbean.
11/24/05
The article below by sometimes controversial high school {the
hall arson case} principal Martin Elliott makes some good points -
if in an annoyingly trendy style.
I believe that if the media would give fair coverage to the
arguments, s59 would cease to be challenged.
But we live in a period of decreasing reason. The nation is
dominated by an inchoate, shifting set of power-plays by a murky,
changing set of lesbians & bisexuals. Poutasi's special statute to
block Professor Elliott's world-leading biotech, aided crucially in
Parliament by Fiddler Bunkum, Mrs Yates, and Ms Fitzsimons, and
further afield Mae-Wan Ho, may hold the record for irrationality.
In such a context, the feminazi cause of sooling the police
onto domestic "violence" does make sense as a main project of the
warped, vengeance-bent ideology of WimminsLib. I realise many have
difficulty imagining such wickedness. Please don't blame the
messenger. I am merely trying to point out what is happening, and to
suggest a reasonable interpretation; the loathsome nature of the
picture I sketch is no excuse to evade the facts, nor to blame me.
Face the facts.
Cartwright intruded (as reported below) on an election
campaign to endorse a policy just announced by a political party.
Next day she made a similar political speech to a more respectable
gathering (Save The Children, patron the Princess Royal). Such
political intrusion is to my mind clearly beyond her constitutional
bounds.
R
******
"Smack now and save trouble later"
Waikato Times, 18 June 2002
If parents could correct and control their children in younger years there
would be fewer problems later, says Martin Elliott.
I READ with interest an article in the Sunday Star-Times by Dame Silvia
Cartwright
[ I believe this is a significant error. That rag featured
her on p.1, but only in a report, which I also copy below - and
which omitted her ludicrous "180 NZ children killed by abuse" ]
on the issue of the right of a parent to smack their child, and
furthermore she makes the claim that smacking your child is assault.
This is an issue which creates considerable debate and has gained much
impetus in these politically correct times and there are still moves to make
smacking your child a criminal offence.
From the outset can I declare my stance?
1 am in favour of parents having the right to use such physical force as to
reasonably restrain or modify the behaviour of their children. This will not
surprise many, as I know that I am considered a conservative, somewhere to
the Right of Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun. Thankfully there are still a
few of us around.
There are two key issues that I see as important.
Firstly I do not have a moral or ethical problem with a parent smacking or
restraining their child in a reasonable manner. In fact if I was to be
honest, I wish more parents would in fact restrain and control their
children within reasonable parameters and if necessary whack some bums.
So often these days we read stories in the media about kids failing to act
reasonably and responsibly; young people totally out of the control of their
parents, schools and the police.
The truth is many young people have been brought up without guidelines or
parameters and these days can do what they like. They have never been made
accountable for their behaviour. The Children and Young Persons Act has made
a mockery of disciplining and controlling young people.
The right of a parent to chastise their child must be balanced by the
parent's responsibility to care for their children. So often in life it is a
question of balance and degree.
Before the politically correct go into a feeding frenzy I need to say that
there is a huge difference between a slap on the bum and outright brutality
or brutality of any sort. It is this distinction that causes the division
between the camps in this debate.
However Dame Silvia is of the opinion that even a slight smack is an
assault, which I believe is nonsense.
The truth is the "thug parent" will always beat the crap out of their
children regardless of the law or any philosophical argument that you and I
can discuss.
When children are young a slap on the hand and a sharp verbal admonishment
not to draw on the TV screen with their pudding will normally change a
child's behaviour very quickly. Wrecking the lounge furniture, pulling down
the ornamental plants, or refusing to obey an instruction from the parent
will equally be brought to a halt with a smack and verbal admonishment.
Kids do not have adult brains and to launch into a 10-minute spiel on the
dangers of electricity and three-point plugs is lunacy when a smack and
sharp words will suffice until the child grows older and understands in a
more mature way that 10,000 volts up the bum will do more than curl your
hair.
The PC crowd would have us believe that we should modify our behaviour in
order to control our kid's behaviour.
That is, we move the lounge around, put ornaments out of harm's way, let him
dictate the TV channel, so that little Jimmy can go on the rampage and won't
get into trouble.
All little Jimmy learns from that is he can do whatever he likes and everyone
else will accommodate his wants and needs.
If he screams, stamps his foot and turns red as he also holds his breath he
knows Mum and Dad will give in even faster. When little Jimmy turns from a
little cherub with a precocious self-centred view of the world into a
gangly, physically imposing, surly 16-year-old, he becomes our worst
nightmare.
Let's get real about one thing.
Children do not have the same rights and responsibilities as an adult, nor
are they accountable to the same degree for their behaviour, so it is
nonsense for us to expect the same rules to apply to adults as it does to
children.
The second point I want to make is more pragmatic.
Society shouldn't make laws it cannot enforce. How would this country
enforce an anti-smacking law? If little 8-year-old Jimmy tells his
schoolteacher "Mummy smacked me last night" what happens next? Who polices
the law? Who are the watchdogs to follow up any incidents?
What happens when little Jimmy says to his mother "If you don't let me stay
up to 9.30 to watch TV I'm going to tell the teacher you hit me!"
Don't smirk. I have seen this scenario happen many times. Teenagers are
already blackmailing their parents with the big Social Welfare baddie if
they don't get their own way.
Parents are already incredibly disempowered by the law. I do not blame
parents for being unable to control their kids. Kids know their rights big
time, but we have failed to impress upon them their responsibilities.
In New Zealand most people comply with the law willingly. There will always
be those people, regardless of whichever law, who flout it.
I am firmly of the belief that if we as a nation took a bit more
responsibility in correcting and controlling our children in their younger
years we would have far fewer problems with teenagers in their latter years.
Change the law, Dame Silvia? No way!
-------------------------------------
Radio NZ reported 15-6-02 that our G-G had delivered a speech
advocating something along the lines of Jane Ritchie's proposal: a
new crime - corporal punishment on one's own child in one's own home.
She was quoted as saying that since Sweden created that crime only 4
children have been killed in Sweden by domestic violence whereas in
smaller NZ 180. No such numbers are cited in the 'Sunday Star-Times'
front-page story (below).
A few y ago the 'NZ Herald' printed a piece of mine (attached
now) against this proposal; more recently an assoc prof of law at
Otago, James Allan, has expounded similarly in that same organ. I
outline now why I believe the banning of smacking is nothing less
than an attack on civilisation, and in particular an unacceptable
political advocacy by any G-G.
The basis of civil order is domestic order, and a main basis
of that is the rare but crucial recourse of the head of the household
to corporal punishment. Minimising (as distinct from the stupid
unrealistic aim of abolishing) violence is based on corporal
punishment of children.
Anthropology & sociology have reported that the division of
roles between the sexes in all societies is characterised by
patriarchy. In the public realm, the men deliver the decisions and
die defending them on behalf of the women & children. Within the
household, generally, the man delivers the decisions, after informal,
but usually important, consultations in private with the woman.
These are the main features of patriarchy, which has been universal
in human societies (except the v recent USA subsidised black slum
household led by a woman and devoid of men except sometimes for
transient wallets - now emulated by the subsidised NZ version).
Cartwright of course is the spearhead of the radical
wimminsLib attempt to overthrow patriarchy. I have studied many
aspects of her notorious 'inquiry' and the NZ Herald has allowed me
to call it a travesty. To those who knew about that rort, it was
always on that she would cause bad trouble by misusing her position
as G-G.
Indeed, the first thing she did was to raise gratuitously the
subject of republicanism. Since then, H Clark esq has openly
advocated republicanism. Cartwright has repeated that chant again
recently, and said she has strong opinions on what sort of republic
we should have - but then gone all coy & pseudo-proper by
withholding those particular opinions. It would be reckless to
assume these two are not in league in their advocacy of republicanism.
During the 1996 election campaign Cartwright delivered a
speech on poverty, to a wimminsLib gathering (Prostitutes Collective,
Rape Crisis, Positive Action Self Defence Network, Women's Electoral
Lobby, Federation of Women's Health Councils {i.e. S Coney), etc). A
friend of mine wrote complaining to the chief justice (then Eichers)
and was rudely brushed off; indeed he had issued a Media Release the
day after her speech saying she'd done nothing wrong. Doug Graham,
who until then had a pretty good grasp and only more recently went
PC, condemned her political utterance, saying that if she wanted to
go into politics she should quit the bench.
It will be argued that on both occasions she was only giving
some leadership on an important moral issue. But if she can't do
that without explicitly arguing for a recently-announced, highly
contentious policy of a political party, which is exactly what she's
done this time, she should not do it.
Opinions may differ on how grave is this latest offence. I
take it that the Monarchist League would do what it could to get her
purged if she very gravely offended against our well-established
politically neutral G-G office. It was worrying enough when Holyoake
was slapped into the job; today things are sliding fast, and I
suggest we must carefully review what it would take for a G-G to
deserve removal. I would be grateful to hear considered opinions on
that question. If this latest offence is not over the line, where
would you draw the line?
R
SMACKING KIDS IS ASSAULT, SAYS CARTWRIGHT
Sunday Star-Times 16-6-02
p. 1
by Oskar Alley
Governor-General Dame Silvia Cartwright has criticised a
quirk in the law that allows parents to smack their children.
In a break with the governor-general's normally independent
stance, the former high court judge said parents who smack their
children could be committing a technical assault.
Cartwright stopped short of calling for a law change to make
smacking illegal but questioned the lack of legal protection for
children when slapping an adult or beating an animal was a crime.
Cartwright's comments put her at odds with the government,
which has been unprepared to repeal section 59 of the Crimes Act,
which allows parents to use reasonable force to punish their children.
Cartwright told a Save the Children national conference in
Wellington yesterday that levels of child abuse in New Zealand were
"shocking".
"Yet the legal definition of 'assault' says that any force,
no matter how slight[,] constitutes an assault. So there is a
contradiction in the way we look at the assault of another person and
the way we look at the physical discipline of children," she said.
"It is unlawful to slap another person's face but not
unlawful to slap a child.
"A parent has a right, indeed a responsibility, to discipline
or chastise a child. But that same person has no such right to touch
another person, if that touching falls within the legal definition of
'assault'."
Cartwright said that legally assault was any force applied
with intent and the line between physical punishment and serious
assault was so blurred it did not really exist.
She said the laws allowed parents to use "reasonable force",
later adding: "If you are 18 months old and can't speak yet, no one
really knows whether your misbehaviour was so calculated, so deviant
as to warrant the bruising and internal injuries visited on you as
punishment. "[sic] If you were an adult, no matter how deviant your
behaviour, you cannot be punished by another in such a way without
the intervention of the law.
"But we can guess - no 18-month-old child could possibly
deserve such a brutal physical assault."
Cartwright said "violence begets violence", adding judges did
not have faith in prison terms to stop violent offending.
As a high court judge, she said, it had been "truly
depressing" sentencing violent offenders who knew no other way of
life. She said "judges know that a sentence of imprisonment is not a
solution to violent offending - it may keep the community safe, but
it will not modify the violent behaviour".
Carwright, patron of Save the Children, said she did not want
to become involved in the political debate but the way forward was to
support preventive strategies.
Justice Minister Phil Goff has said there was not time to
change the existing laws before the election. Meanwhile two private
member's bills restraining smacking continue to languish in the
parliamentary ballot.
-----
You will note the blatantly illogical tricks she is pulling.
She implies children should have exactly the same
legal status as adults - a truly preposterous notion.
She implies that smacking entails bruising & internal
injuries. She fails to discriminate between violence and stinging
but non-injurious smacking - the heart of the matter.
She suggests the behaviour for which she advocates
criminal penalties is not modified by even a gaol term; but she fails
to say whether she believes a fine will deter. It remains unclear
what good she envisages from prosecuting parents for smacking their
children. (At least she refrains from the standard routine within
this campaign of advocating repeal of s59 while also claiming
prosecutions are not intended.)
Most constitutionally objectionable is her coy "I
don't want to become involved in the political debate". This is of
course standard for ideologues, who evade any debate - their ideas
are held dogmatically, not open to reason. But she is deliberately
impinging on a political debate, and in a unilateral declaration.
This is, in form if not in degree, a breach of her constitutional
status.
Even if what she had uttered had been reasonable & honest,
the form of political intrusion would still be a constitutional
breach. It is surely not to be humoured without protest.
That leaves the question of what modes of protest would be best.
hall arson case} principal Martin Elliott makes some good points -
if in an annoyingly trendy style.
I believe that if the media would give fair coverage to the
arguments, s59 would cease to be challenged.
But we live in a period of decreasing reason. The nation is
dominated by an inchoate, shifting set of power-plays by a murky,
changing set of lesbians & bisexuals. Poutasi's special statute to
block Professor Elliott's world-leading biotech, aided crucially in
Parliament by Fiddler Bunkum, Mrs Yates, and Ms Fitzsimons, and
further afield Mae-Wan Ho, may hold the record for irrationality.
In such a context, the feminazi cause of sooling the police
onto domestic "violence" does make sense as a main project of the
warped, vengeance-bent ideology of WimminsLib. I realise many have
difficulty imagining such wickedness. Please don't blame the
messenger. I am merely trying to point out what is happening, and to
suggest a reasonable interpretation; the loathsome nature of the
picture I sketch is no excuse to evade the facts, nor to blame me.
Face the facts.
Cartwright intruded (as reported below) on an election
campaign to endorse a policy just announced by a political party.
Next day she made a similar political speech to a more respectable
gathering (Save The Children, patron the Princess Royal). Such
political intrusion is to my mind clearly beyond her constitutional
bounds.
R
******
"Smack now and save trouble later"
Waikato Times, 18 June 2002
If parents could correct and control their children in younger years there
would be fewer problems later, says Martin Elliott.
I READ with interest an article in the Sunday Star-Times by Dame Silvia
Cartwright
[ I believe this is a significant error. That rag featured
her on p.1, but only in a report, which I also copy below - and
which omitted her ludicrous "180 NZ children killed by abuse" ]
on the issue of the right of a parent to smack their child, and
furthermore she makes the claim that smacking your child is assault.
This is an issue which creates considerable debate and has gained much
impetus in these politically correct times and there are still moves to make
smacking your child a criminal offence.
From the outset can I declare my stance?
1 am in favour of parents having the right to use such physical force as to
reasonably restrain or modify the behaviour of their children. This will not
surprise many, as I know that I am considered a conservative, somewhere to
the Right of Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun. Thankfully there are still a
few of us around.
There are two key issues that I see as important.
Firstly I do not have a moral or ethical problem with a parent smacking or
restraining their child in a reasonable manner. In fact if I was to be
honest, I wish more parents would in fact restrain and control their
children within reasonable parameters and if necessary whack some bums.
So often these days we read stories in the media about kids failing to act
reasonably and responsibly; young people totally out of the control of their
parents, schools and the police.
The truth is many young people have been brought up without guidelines or
parameters and these days can do what they like. They have never been made
accountable for their behaviour. The Children and Young Persons Act has made
a mockery of disciplining and controlling young people.
The right of a parent to chastise their child must be balanced by the
parent's responsibility to care for their children. So often in life it is a
question of balance and degree.
Before the politically correct go into a feeding frenzy I need to say that
there is a huge difference between a slap on the bum and outright brutality
or brutality of any sort. It is this distinction that causes the division
between the camps in this debate.
However Dame Silvia is of the opinion that even a slight smack is an
assault, which I believe is nonsense.
The truth is the "thug parent" will always beat the crap out of their
children regardless of the law or any philosophical argument that you and I
can discuss.
When children are young a slap on the hand and a sharp verbal admonishment
not to draw on the TV screen with their pudding will normally change a
child's behaviour very quickly. Wrecking the lounge furniture, pulling down
the ornamental plants, or refusing to obey an instruction from the parent
will equally be brought to a halt with a smack and verbal admonishment.
Kids do not have adult brains and to launch into a 10-minute spiel on the
dangers of electricity and three-point plugs is lunacy when a smack and
sharp words will suffice until the child grows older and understands in a
more mature way that 10,000 volts up the bum will do more than curl your
hair.
The PC crowd would have us believe that we should modify our behaviour in
order to control our kid's behaviour.
That is, we move the lounge around, put ornaments out of harm's way, let him
dictate the TV channel, so that little Jimmy can go on the rampage and won't
get into trouble.
All little Jimmy learns from that is he can do whatever he likes and everyone
else will accommodate his wants and needs.
If he screams, stamps his foot and turns red as he also holds his breath he
knows Mum and Dad will give in even faster. When little Jimmy turns from a
little cherub with a precocious self-centred view of the world into a
gangly, physically imposing, surly 16-year-old, he becomes our worst
nightmare.
Let's get real about one thing.
Children do not have the same rights and responsibilities as an adult, nor
are they accountable to the same degree for their behaviour, so it is
nonsense for us to expect the same rules to apply to adults as it does to
children.
The second point I want to make is more pragmatic.
Society shouldn't make laws it cannot enforce. How would this country
enforce an anti-smacking law? If little 8-year-old Jimmy tells his
schoolteacher "Mummy smacked me last night" what happens next? Who polices
the law? Who are the watchdogs to follow up any incidents?
What happens when little Jimmy says to his mother "If you don't let me stay
up to 9.30 to watch TV I'm going to tell the teacher you hit me!"
Don't smirk. I have seen this scenario happen many times. Teenagers are
already blackmailing their parents with the big Social Welfare baddie if
they don't get their own way.
Parents are already incredibly disempowered by the law. I do not blame
parents for being unable to control their kids. Kids know their rights big
time, but we have failed to impress upon them their responsibilities.
In New Zealand most people comply with the law willingly. There will always
be those people, regardless of whichever law, who flout it.
I am firmly of the belief that if we as a nation took a bit more
responsibility in correcting and controlling our children in their younger
years we would have far fewer problems with teenagers in their latter years.
Change the law, Dame Silvia? No way!
-------------------------------------
Radio NZ reported 15-6-02 that our G-G had delivered a speech
advocating something along the lines of Jane Ritchie's proposal: a
new crime - corporal punishment on one's own child in one's own home.
She was quoted as saying that since Sweden created that crime only 4
children have been killed in Sweden by domestic violence whereas in
smaller NZ 180. No such numbers are cited in the 'Sunday Star-Times'
front-page story (below).
A few y ago the 'NZ Herald' printed a piece of mine (attached
now) against this proposal; more recently an assoc prof of law at
Otago, James Allan, has expounded similarly in that same organ. I
outline now why I believe the banning of smacking is nothing less
than an attack on civilisation, and in particular an unacceptable
political advocacy by any G-G.
The basis of civil order is domestic order, and a main basis
of that is the rare but crucial recourse of the head of the household
to corporal punishment. Minimising (as distinct from the stupid
unrealistic aim of abolishing) violence is based on corporal
punishment of children.
Anthropology & sociology have reported that the division of
roles between the sexes in all societies is characterised by
patriarchy. In the public realm, the men deliver the decisions and
die defending them on behalf of the women & children. Within the
household, generally, the man delivers the decisions, after informal,
but usually important, consultations in private with the woman.
These are the main features of patriarchy, which has been universal
in human societies (except the v recent USA subsidised black slum
household led by a woman and devoid of men except sometimes for
transient wallets - now emulated by the subsidised NZ version).
Cartwright of course is the spearhead of the radical
wimminsLib attempt to overthrow patriarchy. I have studied many
aspects of her notorious 'inquiry' and the NZ Herald has allowed me
to call it a travesty. To those who knew about that rort, it was
always on that she would cause bad trouble by misusing her position
as G-G.
Indeed, the first thing she did was to raise gratuitously the
subject of republicanism. Since then, H Clark esq has openly
advocated republicanism. Cartwright has repeated that chant again
recently, and said she has strong opinions on what sort of republic
we should have - but then gone all coy & pseudo-proper by
withholding those particular opinions. It would be reckless to
assume these two are not in league in their advocacy of republicanism.
During the 1996 election campaign Cartwright delivered a
speech on poverty, to a wimminsLib gathering (Prostitutes Collective,
Rape Crisis, Positive Action Self Defence Network, Women's Electoral
Lobby, Federation of Women's Health Councils {i.e. S Coney), etc). A
friend of mine wrote complaining to the chief justice (then Eichers)
and was rudely brushed off; indeed he had issued a Media Release the
day after her speech saying she'd done nothing wrong. Doug Graham,
who until then had a pretty good grasp and only more recently went
PC, condemned her political utterance, saying that if she wanted to
go into politics she should quit the bench.
It will be argued that on both occasions she was only giving
some leadership on an important moral issue. But if she can't do
that without explicitly arguing for a recently-announced, highly
contentious policy of a political party, which is exactly what she's
done this time, she should not do it.
Opinions may differ on how grave is this latest offence. I
take it that the Monarchist League would do what it could to get her
purged if she very gravely offended against our well-established
politically neutral G-G office. It was worrying enough when Holyoake
was slapped into the job; today things are sliding fast, and I
suggest we must carefully review what it would take for a G-G to
deserve removal. I would be grateful to hear considered opinions on
that question. If this latest offence is not over the line, where
would you draw the line?
R
SMACKING KIDS IS ASSAULT, SAYS CARTWRIGHT
Sunday Star-Times 16-6-02
p. 1
by Oskar Alley
Governor-General Dame Silvia Cartwright has criticised a
quirk in the law that allows parents to smack their children.
In a break with the governor-general's normally independent
stance, the former high court judge said parents who smack their
children could be committing a technical assault.
Cartwright stopped short of calling for a law change to make
smacking illegal but questioned the lack of legal protection for
children when slapping an adult or beating an animal was a crime.
Cartwright's comments put her at odds with the government,
which has been unprepared to repeal section 59 of the Crimes Act,
which allows parents to use reasonable force to punish their children.
Cartwright told a Save the Children national conference in
Wellington yesterday that levels of child abuse in New Zealand were
"shocking".
"Yet the legal definition of 'assault' says that any force,
no matter how slight[,] constitutes an assault. So there is a
contradiction in the way we look at the assault of another person and
the way we look at the physical discipline of children," she said.
"It is unlawful to slap another person's face but not
unlawful to slap a child.
"A parent has a right, indeed a responsibility, to discipline
or chastise a child. But that same person has no such right to touch
another person, if that touching falls within the legal definition of
'assault'."
Cartwright said that legally assault was any force applied
with intent and the line between physical punishment and serious
assault was so blurred it did not really exist.
She said the laws allowed parents to use "reasonable force",
later adding: "If you are 18 months old and can't speak yet, no one
really knows whether your misbehaviour was so calculated, so deviant
as to warrant the bruising and internal injuries visited on you as
punishment. "[sic] If you were an adult, no matter how deviant your
behaviour, you cannot be punished by another in such a way without
the intervention of the law.
"But we can guess - no 18-month-old child could possibly
deserve such a brutal physical assault."
Cartwright said "violence begets violence", adding judges did
not have faith in prison terms to stop violent offending.
As a high court judge, she said, it had been "truly
depressing" sentencing violent offenders who knew no other way of
life. She said "judges know that a sentence of imprisonment is not a
solution to violent offending - it may keep the community safe, but
it will not modify the violent behaviour".
Carwright, patron of Save the Children, said she did not want
to become involved in the political debate but the way forward was to
support preventive strategies.
Justice Minister Phil Goff has said there was not time to
change the existing laws before the election. Meanwhile two private
member's bills restraining smacking continue to languish in the
parliamentary ballot.
-----
You will note the blatantly illogical tricks she is pulling.
She implies children should have exactly the same
legal status as adults - a truly preposterous notion.
She implies that smacking entails bruising & internal
injuries. She fails to discriminate between violence and stinging
but non-injurious smacking - the heart of the matter.
She suggests the behaviour for which she advocates
criminal penalties is not modified by even a gaol term; but she fails
to say whether she believes a fine will deter. It remains unclear
what good she envisages from prosecuting parents for smacking their
children. (At least she refrains from the standard routine within
this campaign of advocating repeal of s59 while also claiming
prosecutions are not intended.)
Most constitutionally objectionable is her coy "I
don't want to become involved in the political debate". This is of
course standard for ideologues, who evade any debate - their ideas
are held dogmatically, not open to reason. But she is deliberately
impinging on a political debate, and in a unilateral declaration.
This is, in form if not in degree, a breach of her constitutional
status.
Even if what she had uttered had been reasonable & honest,
the form of political intrusion would still be a constitutional
breach. It is surely not to be humoured without protest.
That leaves the question of what modes of protest would be best.
10/15/05
(Photo cannot be shown)
Attached closeup is courtesy Tim Vallings of Maungakaramea who has made the latest solar hot water heater of the type I reported on a decade ago.
Tim praises the simplicity of design, ease of construction and low investment involved. This would be correct
The whole plurry thang is built in situ on the rafters, and is the roof for its area. I wouldn't bother in general with an area less than 6 sq m, having made a few that size, and intend to try even bigger. The marginal costs are far smaller than in e.g covering a whole roof at Camp Adair with dozens of factory-made SWH panels at a few grand each (latest EECA mag).
This pic shows new 20mm quasi-soft copper pipe stuck on the copper collector sheet by the glue I've tested (hi-T Araldite® 1 vol : washed ironsand 6 vol). As usual for a first SWH, some scraps of the black glue have found their way onto small areas of pipe; I doubt these matter much at all. Note the loops of copper wire, tightened with pliers - cheaper than copper saddles to clamp the pipe onto the sheet.
Normal retail for new copper sheet is liable to cost you ca.$700 for 6 sq m, cf. scrap copper HW cyls opened out ¾ $170 total. And of course you can sometimes get them free - but will usually have then to dispose of junk galvanised cladding & insulation.
Furthermore the new sheet has to be painted black (using e.g Wattyl epoxy matt black as Tim has chosen) whereas a mature HW cyl has a free matt black coating on the inside surface. This is not only free but also extremely tightly bonded to the copper - chemically bonded, as it is copper sulfide formed by slow corrosion over decades; good stuff ! Furthermore, there's a suspicion it may be a somewhat selective surface i.e of a thickness to impede emission of IR radiation when the metal has become hot from the trapped solar energy.
Selective matt black paint has been available, for spraying with a compressed-air gun, as reported in my Ag Eng'g Aus 1994 paper. This is not generally difficult to do in the course of constructing the SWH, but when you've got only the pipe to paint on account you've used pre-blacked sheet which certainly needs no painting, it's easier & economic to use an aerosol spray of motorcycle exhaust-pipe matt black paint. A spray-tin ca.$16 will do several big collectors. Spray so thin that you can just see a 'distant' copper gleam thru it; this will then be a more or less selective surface.
The bends in the single pipe, forming a 'zig-zag' from one bottom corner of the collector, can be made in situ using Ballingers' superb aluminium bender. A suitable hole in a hardwood 4 x 2 can also do it, with practice. The tighter the bends the more pipe will there be on the collector - a good thing - but manual bending can't readily make a much lower-radius bend than the mighty Ballinger bender. Two or more parallel pipes could conceivably be slapped onto the one collector sheet, but this hasn't been tried let alone assessed by measurements.
I intend to sell my IP in this SWH to an experienced installer of factory-made SWH. But of course no-one will get any exclusive rights to it. It's the cheapest SWH I know of except lo-efficiency 'plastic piping lying on roof' , and AFAIK no less efficient than SWH costing several times as much.
R
Attached closeup is courtesy Tim Vallings of Maungakaramea who has made the latest solar hot water heater of the type I reported on a decade ago.
Tim praises the simplicity of design, ease of construction and low investment involved. This would be correct
The whole plurry thang is built in situ on the rafters, and is the roof for its area. I wouldn't bother in general with an area less than 6 sq m, having made a few that size, and intend to try even bigger. The marginal costs are far smaller than in e.g covering a whole roof at Camp Adair with dozens of factory-made SWH panels at a few grand each (latest EECA mag). This pic shows new 20mm quasi-soft copper pipe stuck on the copper collector sheet by the glue I've tested (hi-T Araldite® 1 vol : washed ironsand 6 vol). As usual for a first SWH, some scraps of the black glue have found their way onto small areas of pipe; I doubt these matter much at all. Note the loops of copper wire, tightened with pliers - cheaper than copper saddles to clamp the pipe onto the sheet.
Normal retail for new copper sheet is liable to cost you ca.$700 for 6 sq m, cf. scrap copper HW cyls opened out ¾ $170 total. And of course you can sometimes get them free - but will usually have then to dispose of junk galvanised cladding & insulation.
Furthermore the new sheet has to be painted black (using e.g Wattyl epoxy matt black as Tim has chosen) whereas a mature HW cyl has a free matt black coating on the inside surface. This is not only free but also extremely tightly bonded to the copper - chemically bonded, as it is copper sulfide formed by slow corrosion over decades; good stuff ! Furthermore, there's a suspicion it may be a somewhat selective surface i.e of a thickness to impede emission of IR radiation when the metal has become hot from the trapped solar energy.
Selective matt black paint has been available, for spraying with a compressed-air gun, as reported in my Ag Eng'g Aus 1994 paper. This is not generally difficult to do in the course of constructing the SWH, but when you've got only the pipe to paint on account you've used pre-blacked sheet which certainly needs no painting, it's easier & economic to use an aerosol spray of motorcycle exhaust-pipe matt black paint. A spray-tin ca.$16 will do several big collectors. Spray so thin that you can just see a 'distant' copper gleam thru it; this will then be a more or less selective surface.
The bends in the single pipe, forming a 'zig-zag' from one bottom corner of the collector, can be made in situ using Ballingers' superb aluminium bender. A suitable hole in a hardwood 4 x 2 can also do it, with practice. The tighter the bends the more pipe will there be on the collector - a good thing - but manual bending can't readily make a much lower-radius bend than the mighty Ballinger bender. Two or more parallel pipes could conceivably be slapped onto the one collector sheet, but this hasn't been tried let alone assessed by measurements.
I intend to sell my IP in this SWH to an experienced installer of factory-made SWH. But of course no-one will get any exclusive rights to it. It's the cheapest SWH I know of except lo-efficiency 'plastic piping lying on roof' , and AFAIK no less efficient than SWH costing several times as much.
R
10/14/05
A Proposal For An Experiment
Let's look bluntly (I'm not sure how you look bluntly, but I'm
going to have at it) at whether women should be permitted in
ground combat. And then I will make a splendid and fair-minded
proposal, which will be applauded by radical feminists
everywhere. My guess is that I'll be awarded life membership
in the National Organization for Women.
Should women be in ground combat? Good lord no. Females have
no place in the infantry, artillery, or armor. They are too
weak, too delicate, and too small. They fade after about a day
of heavy marching and lifting. They just get in the way. They
will get men killed. The idea is bad, everyone who has been in
the military understands it, but no one has the moxie to tell
feminists "No."
Maybe you haven't been afoot in a war zone. I have. In the
mid-Sixties I was in armor in Viet Nam with the Marine Corps,
spent a fair amount of time carrying a rifle, went through
infantry training in Camp Geiger, which you don't want to try
unless you are one healthy young buck. Let me tell you some
things about ground life in war zones.
It's brutally physical. Try unloading a truck carrying mortar
rounds. Hump sixty pounds uphill in Asian heat for an hour.
When I was a Marine a flame-thrower weighed, if memory serves,
seventy-five pounds. Try humping that sucker up hills of
greasy North Carolina clay when you slide back almost as much
as you go forward and your lungs are burning till you can
hardly breathe. Try breaking track on armor when a platoon in
trouble needs fire support right now. Don't talk about it.
Don't theorize. Try it. In Lejeune we force-marched day after
day, on three and a half hours sleep. No, that's not
exaggeration. Try it.
OK. Go to your local gym. If you aren't a member, pay the ten
bucks for a day pass, and watch. Stand around for a couple of
hours, and watch what men lift. Watch what women lift. See
whether you can detect a pattern.
Women don't lift slightly less than men, and aren't slightly
weaker. They lift enormously less. They are catastrophically
weaker.
Don't take my word. Go. Look.
I'm 53, five-feet-ten, 180, in better shape than average for
my size and age, but nothing spectacular. I never amounted to
much as an athlete. I go to the gym to stay strong enough to
carry my scuba tanks. If I walked into a Marine gym and said I
was the strongest guy there, the Corps would have to be
disbanded, because you can't fight while uncontrollably
laughing.
But I'm far and away the strongest woman I've seen at Gold's
in ten years of membership.
For example, I do fifteen sloppy reps on the bench machine
with 250, and fifteen reps with 200 on the lat pull-down
machine (the chin-up machine, if you will). It's respectable.
That's all it is. There are guys there who could lift that
much with me sitting on top of it.
I've never seen a woman bench more than eighty (which is real
rare, but not even warm-up weight for a man). I don't think
I've ever seen a woman pull eighty on the lat machine. Twenty
to forty is normal for them.
Don't call me sexist. Don't tell me I'm trying to be "macho."
(Or do: I don't care.) Go look.
Want documentation? There is a branch of research called
exercise physiology, which has studied the physical capacities
of men and women in near-infinite detail (largely to help in
training athletes.) Check relative cardiac capacity,
erythrocyte counts, muscle-mass-to-body-mass. I'm not making
wild assertions. You can find all of this in any university
library.
Now, what do these physical differences mean for society
outside of the military? Almost nothing. A woman doesn't need
strength to be a surgeon, professor, senator, journalist, or
CEO. But weak women will get men killed in war. I've seen
wars. I've been on casualty wards. So have a lot of men. For
us, war isn't abstract, and getting men killed to appease
feminists isn't cute.
I promised to make a splendid proposal. Here it is. Let's take
100 males just out of basic training, and 100 females, chosen
at random. Let's take them all to Camp Lejeune, North
Carolina, in a rainy October. We'll put sixty-pound packs on
them, give them rifles and a full load-out of ammo.
Then we'll force-march them, at a fast pace set by an infantry
sergeant, until they drop. I mean literally drop: can't stand
up any longer. No stress time-outs, no little green cards to
wave, no trucks to carry their gear, no slowing down. Hump
till they fall. This is what happens in combat: grim,
unremitting physical effort with no sleep. Maybe it's humping
with rifles and seven-eighty-two gear, maybe it's breaking
track on a P-5, maybe it's unloading those miserable six-bys.
It's physical.
If the women keep up, I'll shut up. If they keep up, all
critics of putting women in the infantry will have to shut up.
Here is a wonderful opportunity for radical feminists
everywhere. But know what? I'll get a lot of screeching and
howling because of this column, accusing me of sexism and
patriarchy. What I won't get is a call by feminists to make
the test. They know what would happen.
©Fred Reed. All rights reserved.
Let's look bluntly (I'm not sure how you look bluntly, but I'm
going to have at it) at whether women should be permitted in
ground combat. And then I will make a splendid and fair-minded
proposal, which will be applauded by radical feminists
everywhere. My guess is that I'll be awarded life membership
in the National Organization for Women.
Should women be in ground combat? Good lord no. Females have
no place in the infantry, artillery, or armor. They are too
weak, too delicate, and too small. They fade after about a day
of heavy marching and lifting. They just get in the way. They
will get men killed. The idea is bad, everyone who has been in
the military understands it, but no one has the moxie to tell
feminists "No."
Maybe you haven't been afoot in a war zone. I have. In the
mid-Sixties I was in armor in Viet Nam with the Marine Corps,
spent a fair amount of time carrying a rifle, went through
infantry training in Camp Geiger, which you don't want to try
unless you are one healthy young buck. Let me tell you some
things about ground life in war zones.
It's brutally physical. Try unloading a truck carrying mortar
rounds. Hump sixty pounds uphill in Asian heat for an hour.
When I was a Marine a flame-thrower weighed, if memory serves,
seventy-five pounds. Try humping that sucker up hills of
greasy North Carolina clay when you slide back almost as much
as you go forward and your lungs are burning till you can
hardly breathe. Try breaking track on armor when a platoon in
trouble needs fire support right now. Don't talk about it.
Don't theorize. Try it. In Lejeune we force-marched day after
day, on three and a half hours sleep. No, that's not
exaggeration. Try it.
OK. Go to your local gym. If you aren't a member, pay the ten
bucks for a day pass, and watch. Stand around for a couple of
hours, and watch what men lift. Watch what women lift. See
whether you can detect a pattern.
Women don't lift slightly less than men, and aren't slightly
weaker. They lift enormously less. They are catastrophically
weaker.
Don't take my word. Go. Look.
I'm 53, five-feet-ten, 180, in better shape than average for
my size and age, but nothing spectacular. I never amounted to
much as an athlete. I go to the gym to stay strong enough to
carry my scuba tanks. If I walked into a Marine gym and said I
was the strongest guy there, the Corps would have to be
disbanded, because you can't fight while uncontrollably
laughing.
But I'm far and away the strongest woman I've seen at Gold's
in ten years of membership.
For example, I do fifteen sloppy reps on the bench machine
with 250, and fifteen reps with 200 on the lat pull-down
machine (the chin-up machine, if you will). It's respectable.
That's all it is. There are guys there who could lift that
much with me sitting on top of it.
I've never seen a woman bench more than eighty (which is real
rare, but not even warm-up weight for a man). I don't think
I've ever seen a woman pull eighty on the lat machine. Twenty
to forty is normal for them.
Don't call me sexist. Don't tell me I'm trying to be "macho."
(Or do: I don't care.) Go look.
Want documentation? There is a branch of research called
exercise physiology, which has studied the physical capacities
of men and women in near-infinite detail (largely to help in
training athletes.) Check relative cardiac capacity,
erythrocyte counts, muscle-mass-to-body-mass. I'm not making
wild assertions. You can find all of this in any university
library.
Now, what do these physical differences mean for society
outside of the military? Almost nothing. A woman doesn't need
strength to be a surgeon, professor, senator, journalist, or
CEO. But weak women will get men killed in war. I've seen
wars. I've been on casualty wards. So have a lot of men. For
us, war isn't abstract, and getting men killed to appease
feminists isn't cute.
I promised to make a splendid proposal. Here it is. Let's take
100 males just out of basic training, and 100 females, chosen
at random. Let's take them all to Camp Lejeune, North
Carolina, in a rainy October. We'll put sixty-pound packs on
them, give them rifles and a full load-out of ammo.
Then we'll force-march them, at a fast pace set by an infantry
sergeant, until they drop. I mean literally drop: can't stand
up any longer. No stress time-outs, no little green cards to
wave, no trucks to carry their gear, no slowing down. Hump
till they fall. This is what happens in combat: grim,
unremitting physical effort with no sleep. Maybe it's humping
with rifles and seven-eighty-two gear, maybe it's breaking
track on a P-5, maybe it's unloading those miserable six-bys.
It's physical.
If the women keep up, I'll shut up. If they keep up, all
critics of putting women in the infantry will have to shut up.
Here is a wonderful opportunity for radical feminists
everywhere. But know what? I'll get a lot of screeching and
howling because of this column, accusing me of sexism and
patriarchy. What I won't get is a call by feminists to make
the test. They know what would happen.
©Fred Reed. All rights reserved.
-- and rightly so too
Cooking with the Heat of the Sun
For some people, the concept called solar cooking is a hobby. For others, it's a lifestyle change. Solar cooking uses sunlight-generated heat to prepare food.
Many solar cookers are made from household materials, such as cardboard and aluminum foil. Most are fairly inexpensive and can be made at home.
Cooking with the Heat of the Sun
For some people, the concept called solar cooking is a hobby. For others, it's a lifestyle change. Solar cooking uses sunlight-generated heat to prepare food.
Many solar cookers are made from household materials, such as cardboard and aluminum foil. Most are fairly inexpensive and can be made at home.
Greetings
I'm sending this request for info to members, past & present, of the hairem which contributes to supporting Dr Edric Baker CNZM, and a few others who may be interested in parts of this msg.
For those who've not seen my jottings from Edric's recent furlough, I copy them below and invite contributions. The Anglican board of missions paid for his fares, but gives no routine support and just now tells me they hang on to 4% of anything they receive for Ed. (Any who can influence that board to help more, please do.) Donations are best sent direct c/ J V T Baker, 6 Washer Ave., Whakatane. And I continue to expand my fund-raising for this hero.
I'd be grateful for any insights on the otherwise good Ms Stuart in the last para of the excerpt below. The widespread furphy that short hair on women signals lesbianism has never been true, and I think it's important not to cede the territory. It has always seemed to me that some hetX women, at some times of their lives, look best with short hairstyles, and it's unfair for ideological lesbians to take over this dimension of appearance as a political signal both unreliable & illegitimate. For instance, the excellent constable who (with her male partner) arrested me a couple month ago complained that many people assume she's a lesbian just because she has (very pretty) short hair amounting to out-Audreying Audrey.
Some ideological signals are far less objectionable. Those who intone 'Maadi' are not robbing anybody much - the famous camp near Cairo can stand the stupidity - they simply signal to each other, and to the rest of us if we pay attention, that they are ideologues of the new racism.
But to hijack a whole category of appearance - wouldn't that in fact inflate the percentage to an extent Kinsey would have admired? And it's cleverer than Kinsey in that it involves no argumentation, no grammar, no figures, nothing much that could be refuted. Goebbels would have conceded at least grudging admiration for such a furphy.
I realise some who've been kind enough to read this far will think the topic is far less important than I do. This is no surprise, and I respect of course any who make no reply. But I'd be grateful for any considered opinions.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/thepress/0,2106,3127301a4621,00.html
Bitter feminist hissy fit
15 June 2005
Alexis Stuart
God does not think like MP John Tamihere and feminism hasn't gone far enough. Men don't wake up in the morning to give power away.
One can only assume that these claims from the Wellington Town Hall explain why Telecom and Westpac chose to sponsor the 2005 Women's Convention, from June 3 to 7, their banners dwarfed by ``Lesbian Nation''.
The sponsorship from five government departments was predictable: the Ministry of Women's Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Ministry for the Environment, Statistics New Zealand and the Ministry of Health.
The Ministry of Women's Affairs armed everyone with a copy of the Action Plan for New Zealand Women, and I heard ``two ticks for Labour'' more than I care to remem ber. The conference was to have an influence on government policy, but the decisions were already made. The ideologues could then talk to themselves via the authority of a public convention.
You probably didn't know it was on. The average suburban mum wouldn't have had a clue and men weren't invited. The convention's advertising was non-advertising. It was to be an exclusive crowd.
Looking Back Moving Forward was an anniversary meeting 30 years since the 1975 United Women's Convention. Of the 550 women who attended, barely 50 were under 30. It was grey hair, expanded waistlines and short haircuts. Many of the most powerful women in the country addressed the conference: Dame Silvia Cart wright, Margaret Wilson, Dame Catherine Tizard, Margaret Shields, Marilyn Waring, Marian Hobbs and Kerry Prendergast.
...
=====
Professor Bob Elliott & I have recently been privileged to host briefly Dr Edric Baker CNZM on furlough from Bangla Desh. The said Ed is a radical pioneer of Third World rural medicine for the past 4 decade, in Viet Nam, Africa and now Bangla Desh.
Ed has declared autonomous - no longer reliant on him after 2 decades - his pioneering 'project' the Thanarbaid medical centre and is now applying all the lessons learned in his newer rural hospital & outpatients service at Kailakuri in the same district.
A seminar at N. Shore hospital impressed some medicos. Here are key figures that contribute to that effect.
BANGLA DESH 2004
150M 1/5 NZ land area 30M hard-core poor
(< U$60/mo)
Projected diabetics in 2025 500,000
In the capital Dakha is a top diabetics' hospital of the whole Muslim world - overwhelmed by the epidemic but able to supply cheap insulin to Kailakuri which is extremely helpful.
KAILAKURI 2004
Ann spend $72,000 = 24 NZ public hospital inpatients @ 3 d ea.
Staff ca50 - none paid as much as poverty defn U$60/mo
Inpatients 530
Outpatient consultations 12,000
Antenatal consultations 700
Babies delivered 110
Postnatal consultations incl nutr 1000
TB cases 100 cure rate ca90%
diabetic patients 700
There is only the one medico. Nearly all the work is done by the poor - primary school graduates, no high-school graduates - for the poor.
Edric is grappling with an epidemic of diabetes. Many cases are of a different kind than we see in NZ - not obese but emaciated adults. One diabetic of 18 could get in the Guinness Book of Records with a BMI of 9; Ed can close his thumb & finger around his biceps. We are hoping to get prominent diabetes researcher Prof Elliott over there to cooperate with the diabetics experts in that special hospital. Zinc deficiency is a possible cause, which would not be v difficult to counter.
You will have the thrill of involvement, if only marginal, in illegality: the said Ed has given up on applying for permits from the exceedingly corrupt Bangla Desh govt, so his hospitals have been illegal for some y. They don't directly harass him, but e.g when he applies for an *exit* visa to come home on furlough they delay for months hoping for bribes that are never forthcoming.
I rate the said Ed as a top Kiwi, and indeed I strongly suspect he is one of the most advanced Third World medicos of all history. Surrounded overwhelmingly by Muslims, whom he mainly serves, this saintly bachelor organises formidable medical services on precious little money. He sings the praises of dung-mud floors as against concrete. Electricity is absent. Roofs have been thatch till recently, but now thatch-growing land has been converted to cassava and pineapple to such an extent that tin is no more expensive. This is good news in the sense that a tin roof is the biggest component of my solar airconditioning & cosmic cooling system which I hope to slap on at least the main hospital bldg, to give inpatients cooled, insect-free air at night. The requisite 0.1kW of electricity should be affordable from photovoltaic panels & storage-batteries; we may as well add a few electric lights while we're about it. My solar water-heater, which is particularly cheap, would also be a boon as all hot water at Kailakuri is now heated on pots over open fires.
If you have any possible influence with the Anglican Board of Missions, please exert it. They should be supporting Ed more.
A govt subsidy via Christian World Service was for a fixed half-decade term, and of course a senior admired male medico will - in the Cartwright era - be severely handicapped for further NZ govt help. It is appalling that this world-leading medical missionary gets no routine money from our govt.
The hand-to-mouth existence Edric has led for 2 decades should be relieved by a medium-term grant from some suitable NZ govt agency. But in the short run money should be sent in care of his father the former govt dept head J V T Baker, 6 Washer Ave., Whakatane.
Edric is taking the spirit of Samuel Marsden back to the world - into a mission field which is in some ways harder than what Sam found in 1814. Please do all you can to help.
--
Robt Mann
Mulgoon Professor emeritus of Environmental Studies, U of Auckland
consultant stirrer & motorcyclist
P O Box 28878, Remuera, Auckland 1005, New Zealand (9) 524 2949 Robt Mann
http://www.kuratrading.com/HTMLArticles/writings.htm
I'm sending this request for info to members, past & present, of the hairem which contributes to supporting Dr Edric Baker CNZM, and a few others who may be interested in parts of this msg.
For those who've not seen my jottings from Edric's recent furlough, I copy them below and invite contributions. The Anglican board of missions paid for his fares, but gives no routine support and just now tells me they hang on to 4% of anything they receive for Ed. (Any who can influence that board to help more, please do.) Donations are best sent direct c/ J V T Baker, 6 Washer Ave., Whakatane. And I continue to expand my fund-raising for this hero.
I'd be grateful for any insights on the otherwise good Ms Stuart in the last para of the excerpt below. The widespread furphy that short hair on women signals lesbianism has never been true, and I think it's important not to cede the territory. It has always seemed to me that some hetX women, at some times of their lives, look best with short hairstyles, and it's unfair for ideological lesbians to take over this dimension of appearance as a political signal both unreliable & illegitimate. For instance, the excellent constable who (with her male partner) arrested me a couple month ago complained that many people assume she's a lesbian just because she has (very pretty) short hair amounting to out-Audreying Audrey.
Some ideological signals are far less objectionable. Those who intone 'Maadi' are not robbing anybody much - the famous camp near Cairo can stand the stupidity - they simply signal to each other, and to the rest of us if we pay attention, that they are ideologues of the new racism.
But to hijack a whole category of appearance - wouldn't that in fact inflate the percentage to an extent Kinsey would have admired? And it's cleverer than Kinsey in that it involves no argumentation, no grammar, no figures, nothing much that could be refuted. Goebbels would have conceded at least grudging admiration for such a furphy.
I realise some who've been kind enough to read this far will think the topic is far less important than I do. This is no surprise, and I respect of course any who make no reply. But I'd be grateful for any considered opinions.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/thepress/0,2106,3127301a4621,00.html
Bitter feminist hissy fit
15 June 2005
Alexis Stuart
God does not think like MP John Tamihere and feminism hasn't gone far enough. Men don't wake up in the morning to give power away.
One can only assume that these claims from the Wellington Town Hall explain why Telecom and Westpac chose to sponsor the 2005 Women's Convention, from June 3 to 7, their banners dwarfed by ``Lesbian Nation''.
The sponsorship from five government departments was predictable: the Ministry of Women's Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Ministry for the Environment, Statistics New Zealand and the Ministry of Health.
The Ministry of Women's Affairs armed everyone with a copy of the Action Plan for New Zealand Women, and I heard ``two ticks for Labour'' more than I care to remem ber. The conference was to have an influence on government policy, but the decisions were already made. The ideologues could then talk to themselves via the authority of a public convention.
You probably didn't know it was on. The average suburban mum wouldn't have had a clue and men weren't invited. The convention's advertising was non-advertising. It was to be an exclusive crowd.
Looking Back Moving Forward was an anniversary meeting 30 years since the 1975 United Women's Convention. Of the 550 women who attended, barely 50 were under 30. It was grey hair, expanded waistlines and short haircuts. Many of the most powerful women in the country addressed the conference: Dame Silvia Cart wright, Margaret Wilson, Dame Catherine Tizard, Margaret Shields, Marilyn Waring, Marian Hobbs and Kerry Prendergast.
...
=====
Professor Bob Elliott & I have recently been privileged to host briefly Dr Edric Baker CNZM on furlough from Bangla Desh. The said Ed is a radical pioneer of Third World rural medicine for the past 4 decade, in Viet Nam, Africa and now Bangla Desh.
Ed has declared autonomous - no longer reliant on him after 2 decades - his pioneering 'project' the Thanarbaid medical centre and is now applying all the lessons learned in his newer rural hospital & outpatients service at Kailakuri in the same district.
A seminar at N. Shore hospital impressed some medicos. Here are key figures that contribute to that effect.
BANGLA DESH 2004
150M 1/5 NZ land area 30M hard-core poor
(< U$60/mo)
Projected diabetics in 2025 500,000
In the capital Dakha is a top diabetics' hospital of the whole Muslim world - overwhelmed by the epidemic but able to supply cheap insulin to Kailakuri which is extremely helpful.
KAILAKURI 2004
Ann spend $72,000 = 24 NZ public hospital inpatients @ 3 d ea.
Staff ca50 - none paid as much as poverty defn U$60/mo
Inpatients 530
Outpatient consultations 12,000
Antenatal consultations 700
Babies delivered 110
Postnatal consultations incl nutr 1000
TB cases 100 cure rate ca90%
diabetic patients 700
There is only the one medico. Nearly all the work is done by the poor - primary school graduates, no high-school graduates - for the poor.
Edric is grappling with an epidemic of diabetes. Many cases are of a different kind than we see in NZ - not obese but emaciated adults. One diabetic of 18 could get in the Guinness Book of Records with a BMI of 9; Ed can close his thumb & finger around his biceps. We are hoping to get prominent diabetes researcher Prof Elliott over there to cooperate with the diabetics experts in that special hospital. Zinc deficiency is a possible cause, which would not be v difficult to counter.
You will have the thrill of involvement, if only marginal, in illegality: the said Ed has given up on applying for permits from the exceedingly corrupt Bangla Desh govt, so his hospitals have been illegal for some y. They don't directly harass him, but e.g when he applies for an *exit* visa to come home on furlough they delay for months hoping for bribes that are never forthcoming.
I rate the said Ed as a top Kiwi, and indeed I strongly suspect he is one of the most advanced Third World medicos of all history. Surrounded overwhelmingly by Muslims, whom he mainly serves, this saintly bachelor organises formidable medical services on precious little money. He sings the praises of dung-mud floors as against concrete. Electricity is absent. Roofs have been thatch till recently, but now thatch-growing land has been converted to cassava and pineapple to such an extent that tin is no more expensive. This is good news in the sense that a tin roof is the biggest component of my solar airconditioning & cosmic cooling system which I hope to slap on at least the main hospital bldg, to give inpatients cooled, insect-free air at night. The requisite 0.1kW of electricity should be affordable from photovoltaic panels & storage-batteries; we may as well add a few electric lights while we're about it. My solar water-heater, which is particularly cheap, would also be a boon as all hot water at Kailakuri is now heated on pots over open fires.
If you have any possible influence with the Anglican Board of Missions, please exert it. They should be supporting Ed more.
A govt subsidy via Christian World Service was for a fixed half-decade term, and of course a senior admired male medico will - in the Cartwright era - be severely handicapped for further NZ govt help. It is appalling that this world-leading medical missionary gets no routine money from our govt.
The hand-to-mouth existence Edric has led for 2 decades should be relieved by a medium-term grant from some suitable NZ govt agency. But in the short run money should be sent in care of his father the former govt dept head J V T Baker, 6 Washer Ave., Whakatane.
Edric is taking the spirit of Samuel Marsden back to the world - into a mission field which is in some ways harder than what Sam found in 1814. Please do all you can to help.
--
Robt Mann
Mulgoon Professor emeritus of Environmental Studies, U of Auckland
consultant stirrer & motorcyclist
P O Box 28878, Remuera, Auckland 1005, New Zealand (9) 524 2949 Robt Mann
http://www.kuratrading.com/HTMLArticles/writings.htm
On the matter of "conspiracy theories", the latest Anti-Empire Report
of William Blum has a piece which I reproduce here.
LAUGHING OFF CONSPIRACY THEORIES
During the cold war when Washington was confronted with a charge of
covert American misbehavior abroad, it was common to imply that the Russkis
or some other nefarious commies were behind the spread of such tales; this
was usually enough to discredit the story in the mind of any right-thinking
American. Since that period, the standard defense against uncomfortable
accusations and questions has been a variation of: “Oh, that sounds like a
conspiracy theory." (Chuckle, chuckle) Every White House press secretary
learns that before his first day on the job.
I'm reminded of this because of the latest development in the
long-running case of the bombing of PanAm 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in
1988, which took the lives of 270 people. For well over a year afterward,
the US and the UK insisted that Iran, Syria, and a Palestinian organization
had been behind the bombing. Washington and London officials insisted they
were “confident", “totally satisfied", they had "hard evidence" ... until
the buildup to the Gulf War came along in 1990 and the support of Iran and
Syria was needed. Suddenly, in October 1990, the US declared that it was
Libya -- the Arab state least supportive of the US build-up to the Gulf War
and the sanctions imposed against Iraq -- that was behind the bombing after
all. Since then, those who have questioned this new official version have
been branded (choke, gasp) “conspiracy theorists".
Eventually, two Libyans were formally indicted in the US and Scotland,
tried in the Hague, with one, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, being found
guilty in 2001 and sentenced to life in prison. The trial was a genuine
farce, which I’ve discussed in detail. (“I am absolutely astounded,
astonished," said the Scottish law professor who was the architect of the
trial. “I was extremely reluctant to believe that any Scottish judge would
convict anyone, even a Libyan, on the basis of such evidence."){6}
The key piece of evidence linking Libya to the crime was a tiny
fragment of circuit board, allegedly from a timing device or detonator,
which investigators just happened to find in a wooded area many miles from
Lockerbie some time after the atrocity. Now, a former Scottish police chief
has come forth and admitted that this evidence was fabricated. The CIA
planted it, he said. Morever, a key prosecution expert witness has been
called into question after it was reported that three other cases had been
quashed because his evidence had been discredited.{7} But anyone who’s
been following the Lockerbie case closely for years doesn’t need these new
revelations to make him seriously doubt the official version.
So the next time you hear an administration spokesperson chuckling
over someone questioning the government’s explanation for some complex
happening, keep in mind that the trivialization of conspiracy theories may
itself be a conspiracy.
Based on a careful search of the Lexis-Nexis database, it appears that
not one word of these new revelations has appeared in any American
newspaper. That’s not a conspiracy. But it does say something about the
way the American media works. Examples of widespread suppression in the
United States of important news stories originating abroad are numerous and
almost always involve matters which reflect negatively on American foreign
policy; the recent flap about the Downing Street
Memos is another case in point.
Postscript: It’s most ironic that for 15 years the United States has
in effect been shielding Iran as the mastermind behind the PanAm bombing.
It’s difficult to see how Washington can ever admit to this particular lie
that it’s been living, but I imagine that at the appropriate moment
something will be “discovered", like the fragment of circuit board.
And by the way, Libya has never confessed to having carried out the
act. They’ve only taken “responsibility", in the hope of getting various
sanctions against them ended.
-------------------------------------------
William Blum is the author of:
Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire
Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website.
To add yourself to this mailing list simply send an email to
with "add" in the subject line. I'd like your name and city
in the message, but that's optional. I ask for your city only in case I'll
be speaking in your area.
Or put "remove" in the subject line to do the opposite.
Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission. I'd
appreciate it if the website were mentioned.
-------------------------------------------
of William Blum has a piece which I reproduce here.
LAUGHING OFF CONSPIRACY THEORIES
During the cold war when Washington was confronted with a charge of
covert American misbehavior abroad, it was common to imply that the Russkis
or some other nefarious commies were behind the spread of such tales; this
was usually enough to discredit the story in the mind of any right-thinking
American. Since that period, the standard defense against uncomfortable
accusations and questions has been a variation of: “Oh, that sounds like a
conspiracy theory." (Chuckle, chuckle) Every White House press secretary
learns that before his first day on the job.
I'm reminded of this because of the latest development in the
long-running case of the bombing of PanAm 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in
1988, which took the lives of 270 people. For well over a year afterward,
the US and the UK insisted that Iran, Syria, and a Palestinian organization
had been behind the bombing. Washington and London officials insisted they
were “confident", “totally satisfied", they had "hard evidence" ... until
the buildup to the Gulf War came along in 1990 and the support of Iran and
Syria was needed. Suddenly, in October 1990, the US declared that it was
Libya -- the Arab state least supportive of the US build-up to the Gulf War
and the sanctions imposed against Iraq -- that was behind the bombing after
all. Since then, those who have questioned this new official version have
been branded (choke, gasp) “conspiracy theorists".
Eventually, two Libyans were formally indicted in the US and Scotland,
tried in the Hague, with one, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, being found
guilty in 2001 and sentenced to life in prison. The trial was a genuine
farce, which I’ve discussed in detail. (“I am absolutely astounded,
astonished," said the Scottish law professor who was the architect of the
trial. “I was extremely reluctant to believe that any Scottish judge would
convict anyone, even a Libyan, on the basis of such evidence."){6}
The key piece of evidence linking Libya to the crime was a tiny
fragment of circuit board, allegedly from a timing device or detonator,
which investigators just happened to find in a wooded area many miles from
Lockerbie some time after the atrocity. Now, a former Scottish police chief
has come forth and admitted that this evidence was fabricated. The CIA
planted it, he said. Morever, a key prosecution expert witness has been
called into question after it was reported that three other cases had been
quashed because his evidence had been discredited.{7} But anyone who’s
been following the Lockerbie case closely for years doesn’t need these new
revelations to make him seriously doubt the official version.
So the next time you hear an administration spokesperson chuckling
over someone questioning the government’s explanation for some complex
happening, keep in mind that the trivialization of conspiracy theories may
itself be a conspiracy.
Based on a careful search of the Lexis-Nexis database, it appears that
not one word of these new revelations has appeared in any American
newspaper. That’s not a conspiracy. But it does say something about the
way the American media works. Examples of widespread suppression in the
United States of important news stories originating abroad are numerous and
almost always involve matters which reflect negatively on American foreign
policy; the recent flap about the Downing Street
Memos is another case in point.
Postscript: It’s most ironic that for 15 years the United States has
in effect been shielding Iran as the mastermind behind the PanAm bombing.
It’s difficult to see how Washington can ever admit to this particular lie
that it’s been living, but I imagine that at the appropriate moment
something will be “discovered", like the fragment of circuit board.
And by the way, Libya has never confessed to having carried out the
act. They’ve only taken “responsibility", in the hope of getting various
sanctions against them ended.
-------------------------------------------
William Blum is the author of:
Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire
Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website.
To add yourself to this mailing list simply send an email to
in the message, but that's optional. I ask for your city only in case I'll
be speaking in your area.
Or put "remove" in the subject line to do the opposite.
Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission. I'd
appreciate it if the website were mentioned.
-------------------------------------------
Some comments on the fad for chanting dismissively "conspiracy theory" [Catch-all] -
GEA - gormfach@gmail.com @ 10:44:19 PM
A couple useful comments from the (generally weak) Science For the People list:
Geo wrote:
>dismissing "conspiracy theorists" as crackpots is precisely
>what the corporate media and the government "spokespersons" -- the hired
>professional liars -- do in their efforts to legitimize the totally
>illegitimate dominant power structures.
Right on Geo.
It's an odd fad of the last few decades to sneer at any hint of
conspiracy, as tho' all conspiracies are known to be now extinct and
therefore any suggestion of a conspiracy operating these days must
automatically be false. This fad is very widespread & influential.
The generally dubious Sagan rose above himself in the section on
this topic in his The Dragons of Eden (1978 I think). He said that in
times of political ferment conspiracies are observed to occur - more of
the right than of the left, to judge by recent USA experience, he bravely
added.
An example he then cited was the first USA Secretary of Defense,
James Forrestal, who was committed as insane on account of his persistent
belief that he was being followed everywhere by agents. He went to his
death out a 9th-floor window of Walter Reed Army Hospital, in somewhat
mysterious circumstances. It was soon afterwards found that he had indeed
been followed everywhere by Israeli agents (who feared he might attempt
secret agreements with Arab agents). Sagan coyly adds that Forrestal had
'other problems' but his mental health was not aided by the
characterisation of his valid perceptions as insane.
Then Sagan's amusing punchline: a psychiatrist friend of his was
wont to quip at dinner parties "in America today, if you're not a little
paranoid you're out of your mind".
It is ridiculous to insinuate that no conspiracies now occur.
Anybody who pulls this stunt is at least grossly ignorant - or worse.
R
=====
May I rehearse a few truisms on conspiracy theories?
In the sense of believing that powerful groups do some very sinister
things secretly, we must all be conpiracy theorists. Some of the
sinister things are nutty and screwball --like the President of the
US conspiring with the CIA, drug lords, government agencies of Iran
& Israel, and Iranian arms smugglers to arm counter-revolutionaries
-- what could be nuttier? -- so we must all be believers in nutty,
screwball conspiracies. Not being nutty ourselves, we must keep in
mind that most of the time we DON'T KNOW WHICH sinister things the
conspirators are doing. Not being hostile to logic and science, we
must disbelieve those conspiracy theories that are SELF-CONTRADICTORY
or physically impossible, but we can't tell which nutty theories to
discount by the degree of NUTTINESS. This is the Oliver North Law.
Only, please -- the evil forces are not doing ALL the sinister things
that they are evil enough to do; only some of them; we have to try
to watch them and figure out which ones. A little bit of Occam's
Razor may help.
Chandler Davis
Geo wrote:
>dismissing "conspiracy theorists" as crackpots is precisely
>what the corporate media and the government "spokespersons" -- the hired
>professional liars -- do in their efforts to legitimize the totally
>illegitimate dominant power structures.
Right on Geo.
It's an odd fad of the last few decades to sneer at any hint of
conspiracy, as tho' all conspiracies are known to be now extinct and
therefore any suggestion of a conspiracy operating these days must
automatically be false. This fad is very widespread & influential.
The generally dubious Sagan rose above himself in the section on
this topic in his The Dragons of Eden (1978 I think). He said that in
times of political ferment conspiracies are observed to occur - more of
the right than of the left, to judge by recent USA experience, he bravely
added.
An example he then cited was the first USA Secretary of Defense,
James Forrestal, who was committed as insane on account of his persistent
belief that he was being followed everywhere by agents. He went to his
death out a 9th-floor window of Walter Reed Army Hospital, in somewhat
mysterious circumstances. It was soon afterwards found that he had indeed
been followed everywhere by Israeli agents (who feared he might attempt
secret agreements with Arab agents). Sagan coyly adds that Forrestal had
'other problems' but his mental health was not aided by the
characterisation of his valid perceptions as insane.
Then Sagan's amusing punchline: a psychiatrist friend of his was
wont to quip at dinner parties "in America today, if you're not a little
paranoid you're out of your mind".
It is ridiculous to insinuate that no conspiracies now occur.
Anybody who pulls this stunt is at least grossly ignorant - or worse.
R
=====
May I rehearse a few truisms on conspiracy theories?
In the sense of believing that powerful groups do some very sinister
things secretly, we must all be conpiracy theorists. Some of the
sinister things are nutty and screwball --like the President of the
US conspiring with the CIA, drug lords, government agencies of Iran
& Israel, and Iranian arms smugglers to arm counter-revolutionaries
-- what could be nuttier? -- so we must all be believers in nutty,
screwball conspiracies. Not being nutty ourselves, we must keep in
mind that most of the time we DON'T KNOW WHICH sinister things the
conspirators are doing. Not being hostile to logic and science, we
must disbelieve those conspiracy theories that are SELF-CONTRADICTORY
or physically impossible, but we can't tell which nutty theories to
discount by the degree of NUTTINESS. This is the Oliver North Law.
Only, please -- the evil forces are not doing ALL the sinister things
that they are evil enough to do; only some of them; we have to try
to watch them and figure out which ones. A little bit of Occam's
Razor may help.
Chandler Davis
This might be of interest. If you want to sign up for the newsletter or see back issues, go to the website.
http://www.tyndale.cam.ac.uk/Tyndale/TTech.htm
______________
Read Tyndale library books online
The Tyndale Library catalogue lists almost every Biblical Studies book worth reading.
Now you can read a large proportion of them online, thanks to Amazon and Google.
Just look up the book at www.TynCat.com and click on the link to read it online.
Passing on this news will transform you into an 'internet guru' in your community.
It is still easier and quicker to browse the books at Tyndale House Library, but until you can
come for a visit, we'll make sure you can read as many of our books as possible on your computer.
1) Reading books online at TynCat
2) How to use Amazon and Google online books
3) Google plans to scan 50,000,000 books!
4) Other sites with significant online books
1) Reading books online at TynCat
How many commentaries on Corinthians do you have in your office?
OK, too many. But often you don't have the one you need. So do the following:
- go to www.TynCat.com
- in "Title Keywords" type: Commentary Corinthians
- click on "Search TynCat"
- almost all of the commentaries listed on this page can be read online
Try the first, by Murray Harris (a former Warden of Tyndale House)
- the note on the left says it isn't at Amazon, so click on "Google"
- this finds it at Print.Google, along with several similar books
- click to read it! (we will see how to get the most out of Print.Google below)
Try the next, by Alan Johnson (a Tyndale Fellowship member)
- it is at Amazon, so click on the word "Amazon" (not on the picture)
- and there is the full text (we'll see how to get the most out of it below)
Try the next, by David Garland, and you find the problem
- when you click on Amazon you get an apology that they haven't added it yet
- this usually means the publisher has given permission, so it is worth trying later
The next one, by Frank Matera is there. And many more...
2) How to use Amazon and Google online books
You probably don't need these instructions, but they include some useful tips.
To see the pages at Amazon you need to sign up with them, with a credit card
- this doesn't mean that you will be charged anything, but they want to know that you could buy the book if you wanted to.
Try Frank Matera's commentary on Amazon
- when the cover displays, click on the right of it to 'turn the page over'
- turn over three pages till you get to the Contents page.
- let's look at the start of 2 Cor.4, which he titles "Paul's Apostolic Integrity" (p.97-)
- so type "Apostolic Integrity" into the search box right at the top of the page and click Go.
- this does a concordance search for every page using these words.
- look for p.97 (it is on the third page of results) and click on it.
- now that you are there, you can read forwards or backwards three pages
- if you want to go beyond this, look for a significant word on that page and search for it
Now try Murray Harris' book on Print.Google
- click on the cover at the top of the Google list, and you go to the Contents
- pick out the section you want and type significant words into the search box on the left
- you will have to sign on with a Google account to use this - but it is free
- like Amazon, you can turn over two leaves before you have to search again.
With both, you cannot print the pages, or save them, or read long stretches without interruption
- but you wouldn't want to read too much of the book on a computer screen anyway.
- if you find the book so useful that you get frustrated, you'll buy a copy.
- please use the price comparisons on the Tyndale site to search 1000+ outlets
3) Google plans to scan 50,000,000 books!
Google books come in three styles
1) Out of Copyright: 100% of the pages are scanned and readable
2) Copyrighted with Publisher's Donation: 90% of the pages are scanned and readable
- the other 10% are visible on Amazon, if they have scanned it, so always try them first
3) Copyrighted, with no permission from the publisher: only a few paragraphs are visible
- this is Google's interpretation of the legal term 'fair use', which has got the lawyers excited
Amazon wants to sell books, and Google wants to add material to their search engine.
But why would publishers and authors want to allow free copies of their books on the web?
They get free publicity and shelf-space in the largest bookshop on the planet - the web.
I always take a lot of trouble to put my books on the web, but for 6 months one publisher
forced me to remove a book, and the sales went down - till I put the book back on the web.
Many Christian publishers, such as Crossway now routinely give all their books to Google
(see Google's interesting page at https://print.google.com/publisher/crossway).
Google has plans to scan complete libraries and substantial collections from others
These include high-profile academic libraries and libraries in a number of countries, including
the whole of the University of Michigan Library, plus substantial collections from the
University libraries of Harvard, Stanford, Oxford (Bodleian) and the New York Public Library.
Students already do a lot of their research online. Now their legs could atrophy completely.
4) Other sites with significant online books
Google accepts books in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, and Portuguese
but they make up a small proportion of the total. In response to this:
France is imitating Google with their own scanning programme: see http://gallica.bnf.fr/.
German publishers are planning their own Volltextsuche Online (I haven't found it yet)
Google Scholar - http://scholar.google.com/ - finds results from scholarly sources only
- not another book collection, but a very useful service which filters out most rubbish
Project Guttenberg - most copyright-free books on the web: http://textual.net/access.gutenberg#E
For Biblical Studies, there are a few significant collections of free books. Links collected at
http://www.tyndale.cam.ac.uk/Tyndale/links_books.htm#OnlineBooks
Some commercial sources (pay per book or subscription)
Powells Books - general Christian eBooks http://www.powells.com/subsection/ChristianityeBooks.html
Questia - general college books with a good Religion section http://www.questia.com/library/religion/
EEBO - Virtually every English book from 1473-1700. http://eebo.chadwyck.com/home
Ebrary - a lot of CUP books and other publishers: http://shop.ebrary.com/
http://www.tyndale.cam.ac.uk/Tyndale/TTech.htm
______________
Read Tyndale library books online
The Tyndale Library catalogue lists almost every Biblical Studies book worth reading.
Now you can read a large proportion of them online, thanks to Amazon and Google.
Just look up the book at www.TynCat.com and click on the link to read it online.
Passing on this news will transform you into an 'internet guru' in your community.
It is still easier and quicker to browse the books at Tyndale House Library, but until you can
come for a visit, we'll make sure you can read as many of our books as possible on your computer.
1) Reading books online at TynCat
2) How to use Amazon and Google online books
3) Google plans to scan 50,000,000 books!
4) Other sites with significant online books
1) Reading books online at TynCat
How many commentaries on Corinthians do you have in your office?
OK, too many. But often you don't have the one you need. So do the following:
- go to www.TynCat.com
- in "Title Keywords" type: Commentary Corinthians
- click on "Search TynCat"
- almost all of the commentaries listed on this page can be read online
Try the first, by Murray Harris (a former Warden of Tyndale House)
- the note on the left says it isn't at Amazon, so click on "Google"
- this finds it at Print.Google, along with several similar books
- click to read it! (we will see how to get the most out of Print.Google below)
Try the next, by Alan Johnson (a Tyndale Fellowship member)
- it is at Amazon, so click on the word "Amazon" (not on the picture)
- and there is the full text (we'll see how to get the most out of it below)
Try the next, by David Garland, and you find the problem
- when you click on Amazon you get an apology that they haven't added it yet
- this usually means the publisher has given permission, so it is worth trying later
The next one, by Frank Matera is there. And many more...
2) How to use Amazon and Google online books
You probably don't need these instructions, but they include some useful tips.
To see the pages at Amazon you need to sign up with them, with a credit card
- this doesn't mean that you will be charged anything, but they want to know that you could buy the book if you wanted to.
Try Frank Matera's commentary on Amazon
- when the cover displays, click on the right of it to 'turn the page over'
- turn over three pages till you get to the Contents page.
- let's look at the start of 2 Cor.4, which he titles "Paul's Apostolic Integrity" (p.97-)
- so type "Apostolic Integrity" into the search box right at the top of the page and click Go.
- this does a concordance search for every page using these words.
- look for p.97 (it is on the third page of results) and click on it.
- now that you are there, you can read forwards or backwards three pages
- if you want to go beyond this, look for a significant word on that page and search for it
Now try Murray Harris' book on Print.Google
- click on the cover at the top of the Google list, and you go to the Contents
- pick out the section you want and type significant words into the search box on the left
- you will have to sign on with a Google account to use this - but it is free
- like Amazon, you can turn over two leaves before you have to search again.
With both, you cannot print the pages, or save them, or read long stretches without interruption
- but you wouldn't want to read too much of the book on a computer screen anyway.
- if you find the book so useful that you get frustrated, you'll buy a copy.
- please use the price comparisons on the Tyndale site to search 1000+ outlets
3) Google plans to scan 50,000,000 books!
Google books come in three styles
1) Out of Copyright: 100% of the pages are scanned and readable
2) Copyrighted with Publisher's Donation: 90% of the pages are scanned and readable
- the other 10% are visible on Amazon, if they have scanned it, so always try them first
3) Copyrighted, with no permission from the publisher: only a few paragraphs are visible
- this is Google's interpretation of the legal term 'fair use', which has got the lawyers excited
Amazon wants to sell books, and Google wants to add material to their search engine.
But why would publishers and authors want to allow free copies of their books on the web?
They get free publicity and shelf-space in the largest bookshop on the planet - the web.
I always take a lot of trouble to put my books on the web, but for 6 months one publisher
forced me to remove a book, and the sales went down - till I put the book back on the web.
Many Christian publishers, such as Crossway now routinely give all their books to Google
(see Google's interesting page at https://print.google.com/publisher/crossway).
Google has plans to scan complete libraries and substantial collections from others
These include high-profile academic libraries and libraries in a number of countries, including
the whole of the University of Michigan Library, plus substantial collections from the
University libraries of Harvard, Stanford, Oxford (Bodleian) and the New York Public Library.
Students already do a lot of their research online. Now their legs could atrophy completely.
4) Other sites with significant online books
Google accepts books in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, and Portuguese
but they make up a small proportion of the total. In response to this:
France is imitating Google with their own scanning programme: see http://gallica.bnf.fr/.
German publishers are planning their own Volltextsuche Online (I haven't found it yet)
Google Scholar - http://scholar.google.com/ - finds results from scholarly sources only
- not another book collection, but a very useful service which filters out most rubbish
Project Guttenberg - most copyright-free books on the web: http://textual.net/access.gutenberg#E
For Biblical Studies, there are a few significant collections of free books. Links collected at
http://www.tyndale.cam.ac.uk/Tyndale/links_books.htm#OnlineBooks
Some commercial sources (pay per book or subscription)
Powells Books - general Christian eBooks http://www.powells.com/subsection/ChristianityeBooks.html
Questia - general college books with a good Religion section http://www.questia.com/library/religion/
EEBO - Virtually every English book from 1473-1700. http://eebo.chadwyck.com/home
Ebrary - a lot of CUP books and other publishers: http://shop.ebrary.com/
10/01/05
Hello folks
Bring back the Cttee to Review Power Requirements®! Power Planning Cttee, come back - all is forgiven ...
Incompetent - considerably; furtive - to an extent obnoxious to Drs Court, O'Sullivan, Mann, etc; out of touch with independent experts, sure (esp if mere unambitious biochemists, physical chemists, etc); but at least they pubd annual graphs with specific figures in tables.
Today 'demand' growth 150 MW/y or 200 MW/y is 'forecast' with no author let alone disclosed model; Keith Turner continues NZED-type gigantism to get windpower a bad name; and many other aspects of grid management are lost from democratic contro. Actual load growth is not recently summarized in a way similar to my summary in Forest & Bird (attached) a decade ago;.
For several years I've been urging those best placed in Wellington to revise that 1,000-MW surplus capacity. In order to assess any claimed need for power stations, time-series graphs of facts and of projections must be interpreted. There is far more secrecy about these figures than the NZED's, compounded by a peculiar reluctance among conservationists to get a true picture.
I can't help wondering why those best placed to organise up-to-date figures have not done so. An obvious opportunity was to append recent figures to the report of Jeanette's parltry cttee relating to Project Aqua. And she could still get the figures fetched by parltry research staff. Perhaps one or two other MPs would join her in ordering the little project. Dr Williams the servant of Parlt might even get around to compiling such figures.
I've even rec'd a quip, from one of those refusing to compile the figures, that my F&B article is wrong about embodied energy in appliances that can be left in 'sleep' modes (TV sets, computers, etc). But when I ask where this 'correction' comes from, no ref is forthcoming.
Bring back the NZED! ... Reclaim Rutherford House! ... As a main critic of the 'Blakers sr.' era of the NZED, I of all people say
* the grid should be coherently managed,
* there should again be a man with a dirty big ammeter in a hi-security room and multimode links to order the power stations to prepare to come on line,
* there should again be readily pubd tables & graphs of electricity consumption & generation,
* additional generators on the grid should be planned, not left to market furphies,
* actual & surplus capacities should be widely known,
* grid instabilities should be a major R&D topic, with synchronous alternators in windmills playing a helpful role,
* any new generation should be windpower - for at least the next GW.
It has often fallen to me to point out a distressing or distasteful mess, and suggest ways to improve things. This role can be seen - with pioneer John Morton in mind - as a prophetic role. Our country has bungled, even sabotaged power planning. Blakers jr & I are in wide agreement. But the media carry little or nothing from proven independent experts on energy policy. In my case it's pretty clear that the blacklisting is mainly as punishment for my reasoned criticisms of WimminsLib; but also Molly, Mike O'Sullivan, Robin Court, and many other well-tested experts have been sidelined while Leyland plugs nuclear for Holmes® infotainment, and bad-mouths windpower atrociously.
This is not an easy undergrad project - awareness of net v. gross generation, and other EE issues such as power factor and frequency variation should be built soon into the rebuilt planning process. A Yank has been brought in to do it; how can us Kiwis help?
The incoherent set of new power stations that would result from the commercial ambitions of Leyland, Keith Turner, etc is much more likely to provoke cascading grid crashes than the NZED approach. While I'm about it, let me grieve in all seriousness that NZ is one of the very few developed countries now lacking a Ministry of Works. If Churchill could bring back Fisher, why couldn't Clark or Brash bring back Bob Norman?
I leave with all of youse who've been mullingit over this requirement for up-to-date figures on grid performance. I'm sure Forest & Bird would be glad to print the new picture.
Declaration: an ACT MP tried to work up an 'exposé' in a weekend newspaper by pointing out Jeanette is a major stockholder in Windflow Ltd. I'm not on the top twenty list like her and Goldsmith, but I am a founding stockholder. The world-leading windmill was never going to be an NZED project; Bradford's madhouse at least opens the opportunity to put my money where my mouth is, and I've been keen to sock both to Windflow Ltd. Yes, I have an interest in windpower. That fact does not affect my policy, which I held long before Windflow existed.
cheers
--
Robt Mann
consultant ecologist
P O Box 28878 Remuera, Auckland 1005, New Zealand
(9) 524 2949
So you've discovered a power station proposed for your district. Your branch of Forest & Bird, along with any suitable partners in a coalition, should present to the relevant planning authorities, and to the public, your clear & vigorous assessment of the proposal.
Or, even if no power station threatens your locality, you've realised that stabilising the electricity industry is required for the nation's and even the planet's health.
Either way, this article will be useful to you. Your primary argument will be lack of need - no new power stations are justified in N.Z. We give here the main facts which prove that conclusion.
NO MORE POWER STATIONS !
Robert Mann
Forest & Bird Nov. 1994
The nation was presented on May 19 with a concerted PR thrust for new power stations. The corporatised NZ Electricity Dept, now called Electricorp or ECNZ, asserted we may need extra power equivalent to 7 or even possibly 15 Clyde dams within a few decades. Another report the same day similarly suggested we must pay billions of dollars to meet accelerating "demand" for new power stations.
This is the latest flurry in a peculiar game which goes back at least a quarter-century. It was a power station scheme, Manapouri, which provoked the modern era of conservation awareness and action in this country. By the late 1970s, as a result of public participation especially around the Royal Commission on Nuclear Power, scientists became able to advise constructively what to do instead of new power stations:
• economically harness now-wasted electricity;
• deploy small-scale energy systems to capture renewable (solar) energy. These preferable options still languish almost ignored. They are today even more potent because since the 1970s they have made considerable technical advances while big power stations have remained much the same dinosaurs. The above two principles were brought into focus in the late '70s, enunciated well in Amory Lovins' 'Soft Energy Paths' (1977), and remain correct but are still largely thwarted by those with vested interests in expanding mains electricity supply & consumption under the banner of economic growth. Any notion of saturation, or sufficiency, or limits to growth, seems beyond their ken.
Neglected too are tariff structures to discourage extravagant electricity consumption while allowing a reasonable amount at cheap rates.
In order to understand how we know that new power stations are the inferior path, we must be clear about a few words & numbers (see box).
================================================
{ BOX }
Energy is not Power
Power, an important technical term, is not the same as energy. Scientists & engineers use the word 'power' to mean instantaneous rate of flow of energy e.g. rate of doing work. The basic unit of power is the watt, but for many purposes the horsepower (746 W) or the kilowatt (kW) - 1,000 W - is a more convenient unit. A typical one-bar heater's rate of conversion of electrical energy to heat, that is its power, is 1 kW. One megawatt (MW) is one thousand kilowatts.
The most powerful station on the N.Z. grid, Huntly, can send into the grid almost 1,000 MW of electrical power.
The familiar metered unit of electrical energy is the kilowatt-hour (kWh); a one-bar heater through which flows a power of 1 kW thus uses 1 kWh of energy each hour it runs. That same amount of electricity could run a 100W light-bulb for 10 hours. This amount of energy is the "unit" of our electricity bills.
Electricity supplies are subject also to measures of quality. Reliable supply - rather than blackout or brownout (voltage drop) - is more important to most householders and industries than small differences in energy price. More subtle aspects of quality include requirements, for certain types of electronic device, that the frequency of the mains must not vary more than a few percent from the standard 50 cycles per second.
================================================
The N.Z. Electricity System
The central government's NZ Electricity Dept built up (mainly through the Ministry of Works) a co-ordinated system of 40 power stations feeding into a national grid of high-power transmission lines.
Some electricity distributor/retailers run their own grid-connected mini-stations, mostly to save paying Electricorp's peak prices. These amount to about 5% of the grid's installed capacity.
A few industries, notably the geothermally-powered Tasman pulp mill (Kawerau), not only generate much or all of the electricity they use, and run industrial processes with leftover heat, but also are connected to the grid with sales in either direction. Such 'co-generation' or 'total energy' systems, if prudently encouraged, could be installed in various parts of the country, substituting at least 100 MW now drawn from the grid, and decreasing transmission losses.
The two latest Electricorp annual reports, and the 12-months report to 31-3-94, contain figures which have not been drawn to public attention, and which the NZ Herald has refused to publish, giving the lie to claims that new power stations are needed.
The installed generating capacity - the maximum power that could be fed into the grid if the corresponding demand ever occurred and if all stations were flat-out - is measured in megawatts. With the Clyde dam it reached, in round figures, 7700 MW. The maximum power that has ever been generated into the grid is far less: 5500 MW.
The actual surplus capacity is however not as much as that 40% margin. Electricorp has expressed the desire that 'spinning reserve', normal maintenance shutdowns, and other operating requirements should total 23% (1200 MW) beyond their peak generated power. Allowing that reserve capacity, we still have 1000MW surplus generating capacity. The Centre for Advanced Engineering, University of Canterbury, published recently a big report on reliability of electricity supply which states "there is ample installed capacity in New Zealand to meet power system peaks".
The peak power demanded of Electricorp was essentially constant (5150 MW) for 4 winters 1989-92. For 1993 it was 5240 MW. Thus, over the past half-decade, annual increases in Electricorp's peak power have averaged 0.54%.
A grid, even if it has ample installed generating capacity (MW), can run short of energy to convert into electrical energy (MWh) on a time-scale of a year. This can happen through e.g. shortage of water, especially in a grid which is largely hydro-power like ours; or mismanagement such as selling fuel from stockpiles just before a dry winter; or breakdown of a large station for years (one of the many reasons to be glad we rejected nukes); or mothballing stations as if they were not needed (while also claiming that new ones are). We need therefore to arrange the capacity to supply not only peak power but also sufficient annual electrical energy.
The annual electrical energy fed into our grid reached a total of 30 million MWh for the first time in 1991. The following year of the "shortage", the total was 2.6% lower. For the year ended 31-3-94, with unrestricted supply, generation was 31.2 M MWh, resulting for the half-decade in an average annual energy increase of 1.9%. During the "shortage" winter of 1992, the 580MW gas-fired New Plymouth station was run far below capacity, illustrating Electricorp's "economic limit": the fuel-fired stations are insinuated to be too expensive to run at design capacity, even when people and hot-water cylinders are freezing, and in spite of the allegedly dominant lust to get rid of the Maui gas by 2010. But Electricorp admits that the existing public supply system of N.Z. can generate 38M MWh even in a "1-in-60" dry year.
On both measures, then - peak power and annual energy - the country has a large surplus capacity, built at public expense of more than a billion dollars and causing serious ecological damage, e.g. confiscation of much of the Wanganui headwaters (still only partially restored). This overgrowth was perpetrated by a growthmaniac electricity-supply industry using phony projections ("forecasts") of what they were pleased to call "demand". Those projections were produced by methods kept obdurately secret in committees dominated by the electricity-supply industry. They typically asserted that power demand would double in only a decade (approx. 7% compound annual increase). On this basis the NZED annually gave Parliament a 15-year Power Plan envisaging many billions of dollars' worth of new stations, mostly thermal which would have wasted most of the energy from oil, gas, coal, and geothermal brines. The NZED launched a deluded nuclear programme, stopped by a half-decade of public outcry. Even after pruning of such grandiosities, the long-standing pattern remained that one-third of government capital expenditure, year after year, went into expanding the nation's capacity to generate & transmit electricity. The Clyde dam, not only unnecessary but even illegal (until a special Mulgoon-Beetham act of parliament overrode normal procedures), has become a nightmare of waste & danger. Electricorp say the cost of generating a kWh at Clyde is 12¢ whereas their average cost of generation is 1.17¢/kWh.
But today's system is even worse. No official power planning exists. Parliament no longer gets an annual Power Plan & "forecasts" open to democratic scrutiny. The modest-sounding 2 - 3% compound annual increases projected by the electricity industry (still by secret methods) correspond to roughly the same amount of extra generating capacity annually as the bigger percentages of two decades ago which procured today's overcapacity. Mr Barrie Leay's Electrical Supply Authorities Association solemnly projects 'demand' of 40M MWh in 2005, rising to 54M MWh in 2010. This means adding, in that half-decade, almost one-half of today's total electricity sales! We really have run out of reasonable dam sites; nevertheless, dozens of agencies are speculating money on possible power stations, mostly hydro, from which they feel they might make money. The fact that some very bad planning was done in the 1970s is supposed to justify the abolition of planning. Ideological hatred of public enterprise and of planning has turned the public electricity system, national and local, over to "the market" which is known to be even less capable of serving the public interest than was the old NZED/power boards system.
In order to generate electrical power at 1 MW (denoted 1 MWe), fuel-burning power stations have to produce thermal power at 2 - 5MWt , i.e. various types' efficiencies are in the range 50% - 20% ; most of the energy in the fuel is wasted. These thermal stations produce the corresponding notoriously large tonnages of carbon dioxide. Geothermal stations have yet worse efficiencies, and some also produce major carbon dioxide byproduct, for which no use or disposal is in sight. The growth fantasies glimpsed in the May 19th PR-flush are in the region of 75 - 300 MW extra capacity added each year. The financial and environmental costs of such expansion would be very severe. The image "15 Clyde dams" is proferred to 'monster' the nation into permitting and paying for the 2 or 3 which is probably about all that Electricorp think they could organise at once. It is essentially the same old game. The vague tacit threat "we will black you out if you don't indulge our growthmania" persists. Thus do beneficiaries pose as benefactors.
A regrettable variant is "we will get rid of the Maui gas by 2010, so we may as well have a new power station to burn it in". That line of course puts commercial arrangements ahead of planetary health, not to mention sustainability. Whether it will survive judicial examination of the proposed Stratford 400MWe gas-burner remains to be seen.
Compared with other forms of energy, electricity is inherently expensive; even the best (Huntly) of the NZED gas-fired stations is only 32% efficient. The combined-cycle station proposed for Stratford is claimed to be 50% efficient. Transpower's losses are stated to average about 6%; local low-voltage distribution entails losses which I would rank as the under-rated weakness of central electricity systems. Modern gas appliances produce as useful heat at least 80% of the energy in the gas. It is obviously better to promote direct gas use for low-temperature heat instead of the inherently wasteful & polluting indirect use through power stations.
Let us insist, in any case, on logic: only if a clear need had been proven should any new power station be permitted. A mere claim that some parties expect to profit can not justify the environmental damage entailed in such wasteful projects. One of the May 19th main advocates, PR'd as an expert on projecting "supply & demand" [ Bryan Leyland], has been for years himself centrally involved in the Auckland Electric Power Board's consultant-driven project to build a gas-fired power station at Southdown. The public will be better advised by independent experts who have no such conflict of interest.
But isn't some growth inevitable? No. Industrial activity is already excessive, if we hold the health of the biosphere as our prime criterion. We should plan to provide a steadily-decreasing supply of increasingly-reliable electricity, and get serious about sustainable energy systems. The Faust act has gone quite far enough. We have passed NZ's all-time peak of electricity consumption; now let's settle down and organise some stability.
Casinofication
Keeping the national grid available and meeting high standards of quality is a difficult operational task. This public service may be severely compromised by expensive attempts over the past several years, led by Mr Jim McLay and his longtime political colleague Mr Barrie Leay, to sketch a "wholesale [actually futures] electricity market". In the McLay/Leay notion, Electricorp would be split into several "competitive" corporations, and would split off the grid proper (i.e. the long-distance transmission system) as "independent" Transpower.
The vision then entails trading of electricity futures contracts between many companies daily. Submissions are specifically invited on whether the trading could be in half-hour blocks! Under cover of false or meaningless chants ('efficiency', 'competitivity', etc.), our grid is thus threatened with alienation to casino status, its major public resources degraded to mere gambling chips. If this were permitted, our electricity would become both less reliable and more expensive. Just the attempt to meter all the transfers involved would entail ridiculous costs, and opportunities for white-collar theft.
In the 1970s I was instrumental in pointing out why the NZED deserved the title "No. 1 Environmental Vandal" - confirmed publicly by the then Commissioner of Works, Mr R G Norman, who also claimed second place for his department; but it is a pleasure for me to record now that I would far rather deal with those agencies than with the robber barons to whom the traitor Douglas has given our main public assets. Public enterprise planned & created a system which now generates the very cheapest electricity in the world; how can we keep it that way?
Better Ideas
The fact that our electricity is generated very cheaply does not mean it should be sold cheaply. Tariffs should reflect the need for conservation {see box}. But lately, a major new barrier to conservation has been erected by Barry Brill & other power company executives who have imposed huge fixed charges. The effect is that the more electricity you save the more you pay per unit. It is right that there should be a small standing charge, because the energy retailer has sunk capital in the cables, meter etc, and has some running costs in reading the meter etc. What is not right is that huge fixed charges be levied for the purpose of guaranteeing profit, and with the perverse indirect effect of penalising conservation.
================================================
{ BOX }
INCREASING BLOCK TARIFFS Conservationists have been advocating for two decades, to little or no effect so far amongst the money-maniacs, that electricity should be retailed with pricing structures of this general form:
¢/kWh (at margin)
| | ---------------
| |
| |---------------|
| |
|-----|
|_________ kWh/month
The numerical details for a particular power board will take some working out. This process is not merely technical; it also inevitably entails value judgements. But it is certainly simpler, and actually worthwhile, compared with the protracted McLay/Leay casinofication attempt. If this type of tariff were instituted, direct gas and solar energy would be allowed to compete fairly. (Advanced Kiwi Conservation Club exercise: draw your household's electricity tariff as a graph on the above diagram.)
================================================
We are foisted with a new era of growthmania, not only at the national level (Electricorp) but especially among some of the distributing and retailing companies which were until recently municipal departments or consumers' co-operatives (power boards). We shall not shake free from this new mania until the nation at least creates an energy policy and a working mechanism for planning & stabilising - certainly not casinofying - the system. Under the Resource Management Act, a national energy policy could be stated; it should be. Meanwhile, as no additional power stations are to be planned, what should the Electricorp design staff do? They must be encouraged to meet the neglected challenges of providing higher reliability, and given resources to get serious about wind, especially to replace hydro (dams silt up within a half-century) and generating more electricity from the same water e.g. by cleaning out the existing Manapouri tailrace. Growthmania and monumentalism have already brought engineering into enough disrepute; let's see some eco-engineering!
================================================
{ BOX }
The Global Picture
Only this century, and only in some societies, have people become accustomed to abundant availability & use of energy. This is an anomaly, both historically and geographically. New Zealand's per capita annual consumption of traded energy is about 30,000 kWh, not very far short of the USA (74,000). Contrast these with Brazil & China (5,800), or India & the Philippines (2,200). We consume vastly more than our share. NZ's population is not increasing much, but global population growth is still as high as 1.7% p.a., adding thirty NZs each year. Diminishing resources of fuels and of ecologically acceptable hydro-power sites, and burgeoning pollution (notably atmospheric carbon dioxide), mean we have only one reasonable option: both using less and wasting less energy. The binge is over.
================================================
Electricity, no matter how generated, is always a relatively expensive form of energy, in money and in natural resources. A first principle of household energy planning is therefore to use electricity for only those functions which are inherently electrical (amplifiers & other electronics, certain tools and motors). Nevertheless, lighting & refrigeration are usually powered by electricity though gas-powered versions should be considered for remote locations.
The typical residence's energy consumption (averaging approx. 1 kW) is mostly for low-temperature heat. Direct solar-thermal conversions using your roof can be the principal supply for this: solar water-heating, and solar room-heating. These should be incorporated in new buildings and can usually be fitted into existing buildings. Compared with common heating systems which use entirely combustion (wood, coal or gas) or electrical heating, these buildings will use far less fuel, or fewer kWh; but some topping-up will generally be needed in cold weather.
Diverting energy which is now going to waste is your principal opportunity to save electricity promptly. Electricity is converted to low-temperature heat at 100% efficiency, e.g. in water- or room-heaters, but large losses of that heat then leak to waste through gaps and poor insulation. Ask your electricity retailer to help you assess your options and instal draught-proofing strips, foil or blanket insulation above ceilings, better insulation on hot water tanks, etc.
Conversion of electricity to light is generally inefficient. Ordinary light bulbs give out as heat, not light, about 9/10 of the electricity they consume! Modern fluorescent lights are several times more efficient. They are still so expensive that the savings take many years to pay off; but the main payoff is in rivers saved, less contaminated air & land, etc. And they do last 8 times longer than the disgraceful planned failure of modern ordinary bulbs. Major savings can also be achieved by up-to-date electric motors and controls.
Economical methods abound for diverting to use energy now wasted. These 'negawatts' are cheaper, sooner available, more reliably sustained, and far less damaging to nature, than any new power station. They can economically substitute for at least one quarter of the electricity used these days, according to several expert estimates. Electricorp, and energy retailers, should help to deploy these wiser solutions, rather than compounding our problems by threatening to build power stations.
================================================
{ BOX }
On balance, conservation is served (not to mention the eyesight of the workers assembling TV sets) by switching TV sets to 'warm standby' rather than off. The small electricity consumption on standby is not entirely waste, giving a trickle of warmth within a house. Much more importantly, the energy embodied in a TV set far exceeds its 'lifetime' operating consumption. (Even such a device as a car, made for the purpose of converting energy on a scale of scores of kW, embodies as much energy in its metals, tyres etc. as all the fuel it so powerfully consumes in its working lifetime.) A TV set's working life is shortened by cold starts. Most TV-set failures are in the power supply, a section of parts which last much longer if kept warm. Failure rates in picture tubes are also lowered. Junked TV tubes, like fluorescent tubes, are often smashed making sharp edges which are especially hazardous because the phosphors on the inside surface of the glass are poisonous, severely inhibiting healing of such wounds. As with any equipment relying on vacuum tubes (valves), leave it on 'warm standby' unless you foresee no use within a week. This example illustrates the fact that running costs are never the whole story in energy conservation; making equipment last longer is often more important.
================================================
Generally, of course, technical fixes for increased efficiency in consumption offer less value than the intelligent restraints of prudent lifestyles - turning off lights when not needed, putting on jerseys instead of heaters, turning hot-water thermostats down to 55°, etc. This second meaning of the term 'energy conservation' is routinely mocked as 'candles & caves'; but in truth, many modern end-uses of energy are careless, frivolous, or downright dangerous, and society will be happier when they are curbed. On this issue, ecology aligns with economy, justice, security, and even pleasure!
New Zealand's global role is to show the overdeveloped world an example of consuming less and enjoying it more. A main reason why F&B is so large & successful is that our advocacy is based in active nature-study. I would be happier about our nation's future if teachers were still being properly trained in Nature Study, and if the "Technology curriculum" were worthy of the name and competently organised. The skills needed to compile the main facts in this article are, evidently, lacking in mass media and in the staff of conservation groups today.
The quarter-century of energy/environment awareness has, unfortunately, stimulated considerable growth of perverted, sometimes pseudo-green, propagandists. Surely we conservationists can overtake and outmatch their analytical & communication abilities.
And how can we help to accelerate the deployment of technology & education for the transition to sustainable renewable-energy systems? Having answered the relatively easy question "are more power stations needed?", let us discuss these genuine problems.
Dr Mann, former Senior Lecturer in Environmental Studies, conducted (mainly with other University of Auckland staff) the Energy Project of the now-defunct Environmental Defence Society, 1973-83. He continues his work on energy/environment issues mainly with 'Forest & Bird', most recently for the Far North branch against the proposed Ngawha 8MWe geothermal power station.
Bring back the Cttee to Review Power Requirements®! Power Planning Cttee, come back - all is forgiven ...
Incompetent - considerably; furtive - to an extent obnoxious to Drs Court, O'Sullivan, Mann, etc; out of touch with independent experts, sure (esp if mere unambitious biochemists, physical chemists, etc); but at least they pubd annual graphs with specific figures in tables.
Today 'demand' growth 150 MW/y or 200 MW/y is 'forecast' with no author let alone disclosed model; Keith Turner continues NZED-type gigantism to get windpower a bad name; and many other aspects of grid management are lost from democratic contro. Actual load growth is not recently summarized in a way similar to my summary in Forest & Bird (attached) a decade ago;.
For several years I've been urging those best placed in Wellington to revise that 1,000-MW surplus capacity. In order to assess any claimed need for power stations, time-series graphs of facts and of projections must be interpreted. There is far more secrecy about these figures than the NZED's, compounded by a peculiar reluctance among conservationists to get a true picture.
I can't help wondering why those best placed to organise up-to-date figures have not done so. An obvious opportunity was to append recent figures to the report of Jeanette's parltry cttee relating to Project Aqua. And she could still get the figures fetched by parltry research staff. Perhaps one or two other MPs would join her in ordering the little project. Dr Williams the servant of Parlt might even get around to compiling such figures.
I've even rec'd a quip, from one of those refusing to compile the figures, that my F&B article is wrong about embodied energy in appliances that can be left in 'sleep' modes (TV sets, computers, etc). But when I ask where this 'correction' comes from, no ref is forthcoming.
Bring back the NZED! ... Reclaim Rutherford House! ... As a main critic of the 'Blakers sr.' era of the NZED, I of all people say
* the grid should be coherently managed,
* there should again be a man with a dirty big ammeter in a hi-security room and multimode links to order the power stations to prepare to come on line,
* there should again be readily pubd tables & graphs of electricity consumption & generation,
* additional generators on the grid should be planned, not left to market furphies,
* actual & surplus capacities should be widely known,
* grid instabilities should be a major R&D topic, with synchronous alternators in windmills playing a helpful role,
* any new generation should be windpower - for at least the next GW.
It has often fallen to me to point out a distressing or distasteful mess, and suggest ways to improve things. This role can be seen - with pioneer John Morton in mind - as a prophetic role. Our country has bungled, even sabotaged power planning. Blakers jr & I are in wide agreement. But the media carry little or nothing from proven independent experts on energy policy. In my case it's pretty clear that the blacklisting is mainly as punishment for my reasoned criticisms of WimminsLib; but also Molly, Mike O'Sullivan, Robin Court, and many other well-tested experts have been sidelined while Leyland plugs nuclear for Holmes® infotainment, and bad-mouths windpower atrociously.
This is not an easy undergrad project - awareness of net v. gross generation, and other EE issues such as power factor and frequency variation should be built soon into the rebuilt planning process. A Yank has been brought in to do it; how can us Kiwis help?
The incoherent set of new power stations that would result from the commercial ambitions of Leyland, Keith Turner, etc is much more likely to provoke cascading grid crashes than the NZED approach. While I'm about it, let me grieve in all seriousness that NZ is one of the very few developed countries now lacking a Ministry of Works. If Churchill could bring back Fisher, why couldn't Clark or Brash bring back Bob Norman?
I leave with all of youse who've been mullingit over this requirement for up-to-date figures on grid performance. I'm sure Forest & Bird would be glad to print the new picture.
Declaration: an ACT MP tried to work up an 'exposé' in a weekend newspaper by pointing out Jeanette is a major stockholder in Windflow Ltd. I'm not on the top twenty list like her and Goldsmith, but I am a founding stockholder. The world-leading windmill was never going to be an NZED project; Bradford's madhouse at least opens the opportunity to put my money where my mouth is, and I've been keen to sock both to Windflow Ltd. Yes, I have an interest in windpower. That fact does not affect my policy, which I held long before Windflow existed.
cheers
--
Robt Mann
consultant ecologist
P O Box 28878 Remuera, Auckland 1005, New Zealand
(9) 524 2949
So you've discovered a power station proposed for your district. Your branch of Forest & Bird, along with any suitable partners in a coalition, should present to the relevant planning authorities, and to the public, your clear & vigorous assessment of the proposal.
Or, even if no power station threatens your locality, you've realised that stabilising the electricity industry is required for the nation's and even the planet's health.
Either way, this article will be useful to you. Your primary argument will be lack of need - no new power stations are justified in N.Z. We give here the main facts which prove that conclusion.
NO MORE POWER STATIONS !
Robert Mann
Forest & Bird Nov. 1994
The nation was presented on May 19 with a concerted PR thrust for new power stations. The corporatised NZ Electricity Dept, now called Electricorp or ECNZ, asserted we may need extra power equivalent to 7 or even possibly 15 Clyde dams within a few decades. Another report the same day similarly suggested we must pay billions of dollars to meet accelerating "demand" for new power stations.
This is the latest flurry in a peculiar game which goes back at least a quarter-century. It was a power station scheme, Manapouri, which provoked the modern era of conservation awareness and action in this country. By the late 1970s, as a result of public participation especially around the Royal Commission on Nuclear Power, scientists became able to advise constructively what to do instead of new power stations:
• economically harness now-wasted electricity;
• deploy small-scale energy systems to capture renewable (solar) energy. These preferable options still languish almost ignored. They are today even more potent because since the 1970s they have made considerable technical advances while big power stations have remained much the same dinosaurs. The above two principles were brought into focus in the late '70s, enunciated well in Amory Lovins' 'Soft Energy Paths' (1977), and remain correct but are still largely thwarted by those with vested interests in expanding mains electricity supply & consumption under the banner of economic growth. Any notion of saturation, or sufficiency, or limits to growth, seems beyond their ken.
Neglected too are tariff structures to discourage extravagant electricity consumption while allowing a reasonable amount at cheap rates.
In order to understand how we know that new power stations are the inferior path, we must be clear about a few words & numbers (see box).
================================================
{ BOX }
Energy is not Power
Power, an important technical term, is not the same as energy. Scientists & engineers use the word 'power' to mean instantaneous rate of flow of energy e.g. rate of doing work. The basic unit of power is the watt, but for many purposes the horsepower (746 W) or the kilowatt (kW) - 1,000 W - is a more convenient unit. A typical one-bar heater's rate of conversion of electrical energy to heat, that is its power, is 1 kW. One megawatt (MW) is one thousand kilowatts.
The most powerful station on the N.Z. grid, Huntly, can send into the grid almost 1,000 MW of electrical power.
The familiar metered unit of electrical energy is the kilowatt-hour (kWh); a one-bar heater through which flows a power of 1 kW thus uses 1 kWh of energy each hour it runs. That same amount of electricity could run a 100W light-bulb for 10 hours. This amount of energy is the "unit" of our electricity bills.
Electricity supplies are subject also to measures of quality. Reliable supply - rather than blackout or brownout (voltage drop) - is more important to most householders and industries than small differences in energy price. More subtle aspects of quality include requirements, for certain types of electronic device, that the frequency of the mains must not vary more than a few percent from the standard 50 cycles per second.
================================================
The N.Z. Electricity System
The central government's NZ Electricity Dept built up (mainly through the Ministry of Works) a co-ordinated system of 40 power stations feeding into a national grid of high-power transmission lines.
Some electricity distributor/retailers run their own grid-connected mini-stations, mostly to save paying Electricorp's peak prices. These amount to about 5% of the grid's installed capacity.
A few industries, notably the geothermally-powered Tasman pulp mill (Kawerau), not only generate much or all of the electricity they use, and run industrial processes with leftover heat, but also are connected to the grid with sales in either direction. Such 'co-generation' or 'total energy' systems, if prudently encouraged, could be installed in various parts of the country, substituting at least 100 MW now drawn from the grid, and decreasing transmission losses.
The two latest Electricorp annual reports, and the 12-months report to 31-3-94, contain figures which have not been drawn to public attention, and which the NZ Herald has refused to publish, giving the lie to claims that new power stations are needed.
The installed generating capacity - the maximum power that could be fed into the grid if the corresponding demand ever occurred and if all stations were flat-out - is measured in megawatts. With the Clyde dam it reached, in round figures, 7700 MW. The maximum power that has ever been generated into the grid is far less: 5500 MW.
The actual surplus capacity is however not as much as that 40% margin. Electricorp has expressed the desire that 'spinning reserve', normal maintenance shutdowns, and other operating requirements should total 23% (1200 MW) beyond their peak generated power. Allowing that reserve capacity, we still have 1000MW surplus generating capacity. The Centre for Advanced Engineering, University of Canterbury, published recently a big report on reliability of electricity supply which states "there is ample installed capacity in New Zealand to meet power system peaks".
The peak power demanded of Electricorp was essentially constant (5150 MW) for 4 winters 1989-92. For 1993 it was 5240 MW. Thus, over the past half-decade, annual increases in Electricorp's peak power have averaged 0.54%.
A grid, even if it has ample installed generating capacity (MW), can run short of energy to convert into electrical energy (MWh) on a time-scale of a year. This can happen through e.g. shortage of water, especially in a grid which is largely hydro-power like ours; or mismanagement such as selling fuel from stockpiles just before a dry winter; or breakdown of a large station for years (one of the many reasons to be glad we rejected nukes); or mothballing stations as if they were not needed (while also claiming that new ones are). We need therefore to arrange the capacity to supply not only peak power but also sufficient annual electrical energy.
The annual electrical energy fed into our grid reached a total of 30 million MWh for the first time in 1991. The following year of the "shortage", the total was 2.6% lower. For the year ended 31-3-94, with unrestricted supply, generation was 31.2 M MWh, resulting for the half-decade in an average annual energy increase of 1.9%. During the "shortage" winter of 1992, the 580MW gas-fired New Plymouth station was run far below capacity, illustrating Electricorp's "economic limit": the fuel-fired stations are insinuated to be too expensive to run at design capacity, even when people and hot-water cylinders are freezing, and in spite of the allegedly dominant lust to get rid of the Maui gas by 2010. But Electricorp admits that the existing public supply system of N.Z. can generate 38M MWh even in a "1-in-60" dry year.
On both measures, then - peak power and annual energy - the country has a large surplus capacity, built at public expense of more than a billion dollars and causing serious ecological damage, e.g. confiscation of much of the Wanganui headwaters (still only partially restored). This overgrowth was perpetrated by a growthmaniac electricity-supply industry using phony projections ("forecasts") of what they were pleased to call "demand". Those projections were produced by methods kept obdurately secret in committees dominated by the electricity-supply industry. They typically asserted that power demand would double in only a decade (approx. 7% compound annual increase). On this basis the NZED annually gave Parliament a 15-year Power Plan envisaging many billions of dollars' worth of new stations, mostly thermal which would have wasted most of the energy from oil, gas, coal, and geothermal brines. The NZED launched a deluded nuclear programme, stopped by a half-decade of public outcry. Even after pruning of such grandiosities, the long-standing pattern remained that one-third of government capital expenditure, year after year, went into expanding the nation's capacity to generate & transmit electricity. The Clyde dam, not only unnecessary but even illegal (until a special Mulgoon-Beetham act of parliament overrode normal procedures), has become a nightmare of waste & danger. Electricorp say the cost of generating a kWh at Clyde is 12¢ whereas their average cost of generation is 1.17¢/kWh.
But today's system is even worse. No official power planning exists. Parliament no longer gets an annual Power Plan & "forecasts" open to democratic scrutiny. The modest-sounding 2 - 3% compound annual increases projected by the electricity industry (still by secret methods) correspond to roughly the same amount of extra generating capacity annually as the bigger percentages of two decades ago which procured today's overcapacity. Mr Barrie Leay's Electrical Supply Authorities Association solemnly projects 'demand' of 40M MWh in 2005, rising to 54M MWh in 2010. This means adding, in that half-decade, almost one-half of today's total electricity sales! We really have run out of reasonable dam sites; nevertheless, dozens of agencies are speculating money on possible power stations, mostly hydro, from which they feel they might make money. The fact that some very bad planning was done in the 1970s is supposed to justify the abolition of planning. Ideological hatred of public enterprise and of planning has turned the public electricity system, national and local, over to "the market" which is known to be even less capable of serving the public interest than was the old NZED/power boards system.
In order to generate electrical power at 1 MW (denoted 1 MWe), fuel-burning power stations have to produce thermal power at 2 - 5MWt , i.e. various types' efficiencies are in the range 50% - 20% ; most of the energy in the fuel is wasted. These thermal stations produce the corresponding notoriously large tonnages of carbon dioxide. Geothermal stations have yet worse efficiencies, and some also produce major carbon dioxide byproduct, for which no use or disposal is in sight. The growth fantasies glimpsed in the May 19th PR-flush are in the region of 75 - 300 MW extra capacity added each year. The financial and environmental costs of such expansion would be very severe. The image "15 Clyde dams" is proferred to 'monster' the nation into permitting and paying for the 2 or 3 which is probably about all that Electricorp think they could organise at once. It is essentially the same old game. The vague tacit threat "we will black you out if you don't indulge our growthmania" persists. Thus do beneficiaries pose as benefactors.
A regrettable variant is "we will get rid of the Maui gas by 2010, so we may as well have a new power station to burn it in". That line of course puts commercial arrangements ahead of planetary health, not to mention sustainability. Whether it will survive judicial examination of the proposed Stratford 400MWe gas-burner remains to be seen.
Compared with other forms of energy, electricity is inherently expensive; even the best (Huntly) of the NZED gas-fired stations is only 32% efficient. The combined-cycle station proposed for Stratford is claimed to be 50% efficient. Transpower's losses are stated to average about 6%; local low-voltage distribution entails losses which I would rank as the under-rated weakness of central electricity systems. Modern gas appliances produce as useful heat at least 80% of the energy in the gas. It is obviously better to promote direct gas use for low-temperature heat instead of the inherently wasteful & polluting indirect use through power stations.
Let us insist, in any case, on logic: only if a clear need had been proven should any new power station be permitted. A mere claim that some parties expect to profit can not justify the environmental damage entailed in such wasteful projects. One of the May 19th main advocates, PR'd as an expert on projecting "supply & demand" [ Bryan Leyland], has been for years himself centrally involved in the Auckland Electric Power Board's consultant-driven project to build a gas-fired power station at Southdown. The public will be better advised by independent experts who have no such conflict of interest.
But isn't some growth inevitable? No. Industrial activity is already excessive, if we hold the health of the biosphere as our prime criterion. We should plan to provide a steadily-decreasing supply of increasingly-reliable electricity, and get serious about sustainable energy systems. The Faust act has gone quite far enough. We have passed NZ's all-time peak of electricity consumption; now let's settle down and organise some stability.
Casinofication
Keeping the national grid available and meeting high standards of quality is a difficult operational task. This public service may be severely compromised by expensive attempts over the past several years, led by Mr Jim McLay and his longtime political colleague Mr Barrie Leay, to sketch a "wholesale [actually futures] electricity market". In the McLay/Leay notion, Electricorp would be split into several "competitive" corporations, and would split off the grid proper (i.e. the long-distance transmission system) as "independent" Transpower.
The vision then entails trading of electricity futures contracts between many companies daily. Submissions are specifically invited on whether the trading could be in half-hour blocks! Under cover of false or meaningless chants ('efficiency', 'competitivity', etc.), our grid is thus threatened with alienation to casino status, its major public resources degraded to mere gambling chips. If this were permitted, our electricity would become both less reliable and more expensive. Just the attempt to meter all the transfers involved would entail ridiculous costs, and opportunities for white-collar theft.
In the 1970s I was instrumental in pointing out why the NZED deserved the title "No. 1 Environmental Vandal" - confirmed publicly by the then Commissioner of Works, Mr R G Norman, who also claimed second place for his department; but it is a pleasure for me to record now that I would far rather deal with those agencies than with the robber barons to whom the traitor Douglas has given our main public assets. Public enterprise planned & created a system which now generates the very cheapest electricity in the world; how can we keep it that way?
Better Ideas
The fact that our electricity is generated very cheaply does not mean it should be sold cheaply. Tariffs should reflect the need for conservation {see box}. But lately, a major new barrier to conservation has been erected by Barry Brill & other power company executives who have imposed huge fixed charges. The effect is that the more electricity you save the more you pay per unit. It is right that there should be a small standing charge, because the energy retailer has sunk capital in the cables, meter etc, and has some running costs in reading the meter etc. What is not right is that huge fixed charges be levied for the purpose of guaranteeing profit, and with the perverse indirect effect of penalising conservation.
================================================
{ BOX }
INCREASING BLOCK TARIFFS Conservationists have been advocating for two decades, to little or no effect so far amongst the money-maniacs, that electricity should be retailed with pricing structures of this general form:
¢/kWh (at margin)
| | ---------------
| |
| |---------------|
| |
|-----|
|_________ kWh/month
The numerical details for a particular power board will take some working out. This process is not merely technical; it also inevitably entails value judgements. But it is certainly simpler, and actually worthwhile, compared with the protracted McLay/Leay casinofication attempt. If this type of tariff were instituted, direct gas and solar energy would be allowed to compete fairly. (Advanced Kiwi Conservation Club exercise: draw your household's electricity tariff as a graph on the above diagram.)
================================================
We are foisted with a new era of growthmania, not only at the national level (Electricorp) but especially among some of the distributing and retailing companies which were until recently municipal departments or consumers' co-operatives (power boards). We shall not shake free from this new mania until the nation at least creates an energy policy and a working mechanism for planning & stabilising - certainly not casinofying - the system. Under the Resource Management Act, a national energy policy could be stated; it should be. Meanwhile, as no additional power stations are to be planned, what should the Electricorp design staff do? They must be encouraged to meet the neglected challenges of providing higher reliability, and given resources to get serious about wind, especially to replace hydro (dams silt up within a half-century) and generating more electricity from the same water e.g. by cleaning out the existing Manapouri tailrace. Growthmania and monumentalism have already brought engineering into enough disrepute; let's see some eco-engineering!
================================================
{ BOX }
The Global Picture
Only this century, and only in some societies, have people become accustomed to abundant availability & use of energy. This is an anomaly, both historically and geographically. New Zealand's per capita annual consumption of traded energy is about 30,000 kWh, not very far short of the USA (74,000). Contrast these with Brazil & China (5,800), or India & the Philippines (2,200). We consume vastly more than our share. NZ's population is not increasing much, but global population growth is still as high as 1.7% p.a., adding thirty NZs each year. Diminishing resources of fuels and of ecologically acceptable hydro-power sites, and burgeoning pollution (notably atmospheric carbon dioxide), mean we have only one reasonable option: both using less and wasting less energy. The binge is over.
================================================
Electricity, no matter how generated, is always a relatively expensive form of energy, in money and in natural resources. A first principle of household energy planning is therefore to use electricity for only those functions which are inherently electrical (amplifiers & other electronics, certain tools and motors). Nevertheless, lighting & refrigeration are usually powered by electricity though gas-powered versions should be considered for remote locations.
The typical residence's energy consumption (averaging approx. 1 kW) is mostly for low-temperature heat. Direct solar-thermal conversions using your roof can be the principal supply for this: solar water-heating, and solar room-heating. These should be incorporated in new buildings and can usually be fitted into existing buildings. Compared with common heating systems which use entirely combustion (wood, coal or gas) or electrical heating, these buildings will use far less fuel, or fewer kWh; but some topping-up will generally be needed in cold weather.
Diverting energy which is now going to waste is your principal opportunity to save electricity promptly. Electricity is converted to low-temperature heat at 100% efficiency, e.g. in water- or room-heaters, but large losses of that heat then leak to waste through gaps and poor insulation. Ask your electricity retailer to help you assess your options and instal draught-proofing strips, foil or blanket insulation above ceilings, better insulation on hot water tanks, etc.
Conversion of electricity to light is generally inefficient. Ordinary light bulbs give out as heat, not light, about 9/10 of the electricity they consume! Modern fluorescent lights are several times more efficient. They are still so expensive that the savings take many years to pay off; but the main payoff is in rivers saved, less contaminated air & land, etc. And they do last 8 times longer than the disgraceful planned failure of modern ordinary bulbs. Major savings can also be achieved by up-to-date electric motors and controls.
Economical methods abound for diverting to use energy now wasted. These 'negawatts' are cheaper, sooner available, more reliably sustained, and far less damaging to nature, than any new power station. They can economically substitute for at least one quarter of the electricity used these days, according to several expert estimates. Electricorp, and energy retailers, should help to deploy these wiser solutions, rather than compounding our problems by threatening to build power stations.
================================================
{ BOX }
On balance, conservation is served (not to mention the eyesight of the workers assembling TV sets) by switching TV sets to 'warm standby' rather than off. The small electricity consumption on standby is not entirely waste, giving a trickle of warmth within a house. Much more importantly, the energy embodied in a TV set far exceeds its 'lifetime' operating consumption. (Even such a device as a car, made for the purpose of converting energy on a scale of scores of kW, embodies as much energy in its metals, tyres etc. as all the fuel it so powerfully consumes in its working lifetime.) A TV set's working life is shortened by cold starts. Most TV-set failures are in the power supply, a section of parts which last much longer if kept warm. Failure rates in picture tubes are also lowered. Junked TV tubes, like fluorescent tubes, are often smashed making sharp edges which are especially hazardous because the phosphors on the inside surface of the glass are poisonous, severely inhibiting healing of such wounds. As with any equipment relying on vacuum tubes (valves), leave it on 'warm standby' unless you foresee no use within a week. This example illustrates the fact that running costs are never the whole story in energy conservation; making equipment last longer is often more important.
================================================
Generally, of course, technical fixes for increased efficiency in consumption offer less value than the intelligent restraints of prudent lifestyles - turning off lights when not needed, putting on jerseys instead of heaters, turning hot-water thermostats down to 55°, etc. This second meaning of the term 'energy conservation' is routinely mocked as 'candles & caves'; but in truth, many modern end-uses of energy are careless, frivolous, or downright dangerous, and society will be happier when they are curbed. On this issue, ecology aligns with economy, justice, security, and even pleasure!
New Zealand's global role is to show the overdeveloped world an example of consuming less and enjoying it more. A main reason why F&B is so large & successful is that our advocacy is based in active nature-study. I would be happier about our nation's future if teachers were still being properly trained in Nature Study, and if the "Technology curriculum" were worthy of the name and competently organised. The skills needed to compile the main facts in this article are, evidently, lacking in mass media and in the staff of conservation groups today.
The quarter-century of energy/environment awareness has, unfortunately, stimulated considerable growth of perverted, sometimes pseudo-green, propagandists. Surely we conservationists can overtake and outmatch their analytical & communication abilities.
And how can we help to accelerate the deployment of technology & education for the transition to sustainable renewable-energy systems? Having answered the relatively easy question "are more power stations needed?", let us discuss these genuine problems.
Dr Mann, former Senior Lecturer in Environmental Studies, conducted (mainly with other University of Auckland staff) the Energy Project of the now-defunct Environmental Defence Society, 1973-83. He continues his work on energy/environment issues mainly with 'Forest & Bird', most recently for the Far North branch against the proposed Ngawha 8MWe geothermal power station.
>The Associated Press
>
>Today is Thursday, June 2, the 153rd day of 2005. There are 212 days left in the year.
>
>Thought for Today: "Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; truth isn't." - Mark Twain (1835-1910).
This 'gram is largely mere Wittgenstein-type word-analysis, which is never very useful; but this may be about as useful as it gets.
Entailed in 'truth' is that it contains no impossibilities; it's all possible, else it couldn't exist.
One of the most worrying persistent fads handicapping British society for at least a couple century is lust for witty falsehood. G B Shaw exemplified this decadent trend with the quip that anyone who knows how to do anything goes & does it, but those who don't teach. As a lifelong teacher in several modes, I resent that lie. The superficial strand of truth in it nowhere near justifies the insult to a major avocation.
O Wilde ripped off a few hot ones; B Russell scored a couple; I think Whistler may have been in the same mode.
But this Twain rave lacks even a superficial strand of truth. Only possibilities comprise truth. Truth is all and nothing but things that are possible (and, in addition, have been realised in fact). That which is, must be possible.
Possibilities also exist for things not yet realised. Fiction always contains some truth, at some level; but fiction depicts an extent of IMpossibilities, and the difference matters.
A distinguishing feature of fiction is that it contains impossibilities to an extent more or less difficult to discern.
I diskard this Twain quip.
R
>
>Today is Thursday, June 2, the 153rd day of 2005. There are 212 days left in the year.
>
>Thought for Today: "Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; truth isn't." - Mark Twain (1835-1910).
This 'gram is largely mere Wittgenstein-type word-analysis, which is never very useful; but this may be about as useful as it gets.
Entailed in 'truth' is that it contains no impossibilities; it's all possible, else it couldn't exist.
One of the most worrying persistent fads handicapping British society for at least a couple century is lust for witty falsehood. G B Shaw exemplified this decadent trend with the quip that anyone who knows how to do anything goes & does it, but those who don't teach. As a lifelong teacher in several modes, I resent that lie. The superficial strand of truth in it nowhere near justifies the insult to a major avocation.
O Wilde ripped off a few hot ones; B Russell scored a couple; I think Whistler may have been in the same mode.
But this Twain rave lacks even a superficial strand of truth. Only possibilities comprise truth. Truth is all and nothing but things that are possible (and, in addition, have been realised in fact). That which is, must be possible.
Possibilities also exist for things not yet realised. Fiction always contains some truth, at some level; but fiction depicts an extent of IMpossibilities, and the difference matters.
A distinguishing feature of fiction is that it contains impossibilities to an extent more or less difficult to discern.
I diskard this Twain quip.
R
“Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might [he means 'may'] be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense - an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection - is not."
right on Schonie bwah - tell it LAHK EET EEEUZ
R
Darwinian Evolution Incompatible with Catholic Faith says Cardinal and Author of Catholic Catechism
NEW YORK, July 11, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) -- On July 7, after years of media-generated confusion, Christoph Cardinal Schonborn, a theologian who helped author the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church, wrote in the New York Times clarifying the Church’s understanding of human origins.
Since 1996, the world’s secular media have claimed that Pope John Paul II endorsed Darwinian evolution as being “more than a hypothesis.” The remark, taken out of context, established in some minds that the Catholic Church was ready to abandon its adherence to the notion of a personal God who created life, the universe and everything.
In his article, Schonborn said, that the “defenders of neo-Darwinian dogma have often invked the supposed acceptance - or at least acquiescence - of the Roman Catholic Church when they defend their theory as somehow compatible with Christian faith.”
“This,” the Cardinal says bluntly, “is not true.”
Schonborn unequivocally establishes that the Catholic Church does not endorse Darwinism. “Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense - an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection - is not."
Cardinal Schonborn, a close associate of both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, continued, saying, “Any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science."
The New York Times, never missing an opportunity to bash prominent Catholic prelates, has suggested that Schonborn has changed his tune regarding the legitimacy of Darwinian evolution. But Darwinism, the idea that life sprang and developed into its myriad forms by means of “an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection" has never been supported by Catholic teaching.
As early as 1950, Pope Pius XII wrote that it is Catholics teaching that all human beings in some way are biologically descended from a first man, Adam. “The faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all," Pius wrote in his encyclical Humani Generis.
Two days after the Cardinal’s article appeared, the New York Times followed up with an interview with Schonborn in which he reiterated that he had been encouraged by Pope Benedict XVI to continue to refine Catholic teaching on evolution.
Read Cardinal Schonborn’s essay:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/07/opinion/07schonborn.html
Read New York Times coverage of scientific reaction (free registration may be required):
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/09/science/09cardinal.html?pagewanted=2&adxnnl=1&incamp=article_popular_1&adxnnlx=1121101755-MdtG6nbBTT0N0JNQ0t8vjw
right on Schonie bwah - tell it LAHK EET EEEUZ
R
Darwinian Evolution Incompatible with Catholic Faith says Cardinal and Author of Catholic Catechism
NEW YORK, July 11, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) -- On July 7, after years of media-generated confusion, Christoph Cardinal Schonborn, a theologian who helped author the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church, wrote in the New York Times clarifying the Church’s understanding of human origins.
Since 1996, the world’s secular media have claimed that Pope John Paul II endorsed Darwinian evolution as being “more than a hypothesis.” The remark, taken out of context, established in some minds that the Catholic Church was ready to abandon its adherence to the notion of a personal God who created life, the universe and everything.
In his article, Schonborn said, that the “defenders of neo-Darwinian dogma have often invked the supposed acceptance - or at least acquiescence - of the Roman Catholic Church when they defend their theory as somehow compatible with Christian faith.”
“This,” the Cardinal says bluntly, “is not true.”
Schonborn unequivocally establishes that the Catholic Church does not endorse Darwinism. “Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense - an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection - is not."
Cardinal Schonborn, a close associate of both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, continued, saying, “Any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science."
The New York Times, never missing an opportunity to bash prominent Catholic prelates, has suggested that Schonborn has changed his tune regarding the legitimacy of Darwinian evolution. But Darwinism, the idea that life sprang and developed into its myriad forms by means of “an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection" has never been supported by Catholic teaching.
As early as 1950, Pope Pius XII wrote that it is Catholics teaching that all human beings in some way are biologically descended from a first man, Adam. “The faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all," Pius wrote in his encyclical Humani Generis.
Two days after the Cardinal’s article appeared, the New York Times followed up with an interview with Schonborn in which he reiterated that he had been encouraged by Pope Benedict XVI to continue to refine Catholic teaching on evolution.
Read Cardinal Schonborn’s essay:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/07/opinion/07schonborn.html
Read New York Times coverage of scientific reaction (free registration may be required):
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/09/science/09cardinal.html?pagewanted=2&adxnnl=1&incamp=article_popular_1&adxnnlx=1121101755-MdtG6nbBTT0N0JNQ0t8vjw
09/26/05
LifeSiteNews.com - Monday July 11, 2005
* < #1>Abortion Pill RU-486 on Essential Drug List of World Health Organization
* < #2>Cardinal Archbishop Ouellet Primate of Canada to Defend Marriage Before Senate Committee
* < #3>Partial Birth Abortion Ban Ruling Upheld in Nebraska
* < #4>Darwinian Evolution Incompatible with Catholic Faith says Cardinal and Author of Catholic Catechism
* < #5>Vatican Document Forbidding Homosexuals to Priesthood Ready for Release says Vaticanologist
* < #6>B.C. Gay Couple Seeks Mandatory Homosexual School Curriculum Without Parental Op-Out
* < #7>Supporters of Anti-Family MP Comartin Walk Out Of Church
* < #8>LifeSiteNews.com NewsBytes
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Abortion Pill RU-486 on Essential Drug List of World Health Organization
LONDON, July 11, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The British Medical Journal reported Saturday that the World Health Organization (WHO) has approved the RU-486 chemical abortifacient as an “essential” medicine for inclusion in a list of medicines required to be available to physicians working in developing countries.
Arguing that the combination of mifepristone followed later by misoprostol is a safe alternative to surgical abortion in countries where abortion is often illegal, the WHO authorized inclusion of the drug as essential to combat what it terms back-alley “unsafe abortions.”
WHO director of medicines policy and standards and secretary of its essential medicines committee Hans Hogerzeil criticized the US, opposition to the inclusion of RU-486 as an “essential” medicine. The US did achieve one goal – the inclusion of a phrase in the essential drug list that reads, “Where permitted under national law and where culturally acceptable.”
The UK’s Society for the Protection of Unborn Children said it “hoped enough cultures rejected the drugs … as they would bring innocent life to an end,” as reported by the BMJ.
After news of the RU-486 inclusion by WHO, Planned Parenthood wrote to congratulate its members, saying, “More than 5,000 FreeChoiceSavesLives.org activists like you took action to protect these women by emailing Dr. Lee Jong-Wook at the World Health Organization (WHO).” Planned Parenthood congratulated its members for putting pressure on Jong-Wook to include RU-486. “Your emails urging him not to cave in to the inappropriate, ideologically-driven pressure it was receiving from the Bush administration's Department of Health and Human Services seem to have given the WHO the encouragement it needed to stop dragging its feet.”
Concerned Women for America (CWA) posted on its Web site in January public documents revealing approximately 600 serious complications suffered by women who used the abortion drug RU-486 in the US.
See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Public Documents Reveal Numerous RU-486 Complications
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/jan/05012403.html
Media Silent On Ru-486's Nazi Death Camp Pedigree
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2000/oct/001004a.html
Cardinal Archbishop Ouellet Primate of Canada to Defend Marriage Before Senate Committee
OTTAWA, July 11, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A July 10 Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops release states that Canadian Catholic Prelate, Cardinal Marc Ouellet of Quebec City, will defend the traditional definition of marriage before a Senate committee deliberating over same-sex “marriage”Bill C-38.
The Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, chaired by Liberal Senator Ms. Lise Bacon, will hear the Cardinal along with Ms. Hélène Aubé, a lawyer and mother from Gatineau, Wednesday July 13.
On February 17, the day Canada’s parliament began debating Bill C-38, Cardinal Ouellet warned that Canada was toying with basic religious freedom and was falling into ‘juridical chaos’ in the determination to impose same sex ‘marriage.’ He said that the civil foundation of Canadian society was being undermined by ‘subjectivism,’ the idea that rights are not based on objective, external reality, but upon personal desires.
The basic fact of marriage, said Ouellet, is “that a man is a man and a woman is a woman, and their union is marriage.” He said, “If you take (conjugality) out, you don’t have marriage. You have something else. You have a generic sort of union, but you don't have marriage.”
Ouellet added a warning for religious freedom for Canadians. “It will divide the country deeply and for a long time, and it will put religious freedom under attack in the very near future,” he said. The law also makes no provision for lay religious citizens or groups that might fall afoul of the gay hate crime law as well. The Quebec Cardinal added, “There is a sort of abusive interpretation of discrimination and the fundamental right to marriage.”
“If they bring me to the court because I am teaching against homosexuality as part of the doctrine of the Catholic Church, I will be accused of homophobia,” the Cardinal said in comments made to the US bishops’ Catholic News Service. “Those things are very serious, and it's on the way. We are very concerned, very concerned with the future,” he said.
In an open letter to all Canadians in January, Cardinal Ouellet said that the proposed legislation to redefine marriage to include gay couples “is offensive to the moral and religious sensibility of a great number of citizens, both Catholic and non-Catholic.” The letter states that not only marriage, but also “the union of persons of the same sex”, is “morally unacceptable” to “many Christians and adherents of other religious traditions.”
See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Quebec City Cardinal - Primate of Canada – Warns Gay ‘Marriage’ Will Lead to “Bitter” “Cultural Upheaval”
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/jan/05012101.html
Cardinal of Quebec City Warns Same Sex Legislation’s Religious Protection a
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/feb/05022303.html
ShamSee also LifeSiteNews.com's Defense of Marriage page
http://www.lifesite.net/features/marriage_defence/
Partial Birth Abortion Ban Ruling Upheld in Nebraska
LINCOLN, July 11, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A federal Court of Appeals has upheld a lower court ruling that the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act is unconstitutional.
Lincoln Nebraska U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf ruled in September that the law banning partial birth abortion is unconstitutional because it does not include an exception for the so-called health of the mother. The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis agreed with Kopf Friday that the grisly procedure should be allowed to continue.
“We believe when a lack of consensus exists in the medical community, the Constitution requires legislatures to err on the side of protecting women's health by including a health exception,” claimed 8th Circuit Judge Kermit Bye, as he wrote in his opinion, reported by the Seattle Post Intelligencer.
The Department of Justice appealed Kopf’s ruling, vowing to continue the fight to re-establish the law signed into existence by US President George W. Bush in 2003. The implementation of the President’s ban never happened, as three district courts immediately sided with a coalition of pro-abortion forces – including late-term abortionists and Planned Parenthood – introducing an injunction that prevented the ban from taking effect. The same courts – in New York, Lincoln, Nebraska, and San Francisco – later ruled the law “unconstitutional,” striking it down permanently. A Supreme Court appeal is expected.
The Department of Justice, in its defense of the bill, argued that the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act prohibited “one particular method of abortion that Congress, after nine years of hearings, found to be gruesome, inhumane, never necessary to preserve the health of women, and less safe than other readily available abortion methods.”
See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Third Ruling Handed Down >from Nebraska Federal Court: Partial Birth Ban Unconstitutional
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2004/sep/04090805.html
Vatican Document Forbidding Homosexuals to Priesthood Ready for Release says Vaticanologist
ROME, July 11, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - One of the best known English-speaking Vatican reporters, John Allen, reports that the long-expected Vatican document calling attention to the fact that homosexual persons are not to be admitted to the priesthood is "now in the hands of Pope Benedict XVI". The document will come as no surprise to Vatican watchers since Rome has previously released two official documents barring homosexuals from the priesthood. As Allen puts it, with the new document, the teaching won't "change, but the level of authority and clarity" will, since the new document will be directly authorized by the Pope.
The former Church documents make it clear that not only men who have been sexually active as homosexuals but also those inclined to homosexual sex would be barred from the priesthood. A 1961 document produced by the Sacred Congregation for Religious states: "Those affected by the perverse inclination to homosexuality or pederasty should be excluded from religious vows and ordination," because priestly ministry would place such persons in "grave danger". (See coverage here: http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2002/mar/02032701.html )
In a 2002 statement, Cardinal Estevez of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments stated in answer to a question by a bishop: "Ordination to the deaconate and the priesthood of homosexual men or men with homosexual tendencies is absolutely inadvisable and imprudent and, from the pastoral point of view, very risky. A homosexual person, or one with a homosexual tendency is not, therefore, fit to receive the sacrament of Holy Orders." (see that full letter here: http://www.adoremus.org/Notitiae-Ordination.html )
However, Allen suggests that some American bishops are hoping the Vatican shelves the document since they contend it will "generate controversy and negative press".
Last month, as the US Conference of Catholic Bishops was meeting, Chicago Cardinal Francis George spoke on the subject. The Chicago Tribune quoted the Cardinal as saying, "Also, anyone who has been part of a gay subculture or who has lived promiscuously as a heterosexual would not be admitted ... no matter how many years in his background that might have occurred."
See John Allen's 'Word from Rome' column: http://www.nationalcatholicreporter.org/word/
jhw
B.C. Gay Couple Seeks Mandatory Homosexual School Curriculum Without Parental Op-Out
VANCOUVER, B.C. July 11, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal is preparing to hear what pro-family and religious groups are calling a truly frightening case. Murray and Peter Corren, a B.C. gay couple, filed a complaint against the B.C. Ministry of education in 1999 alleging that the Ministry’s curriculum didn’t adequately “address issues of sexual orientation.” That case is slated to be heard beginning today.
“Basically, there is systemic discrimination through omission and suppression of queer issues in the whole of the curriculum,” alleges Murray Corren, who is an elementary school teacher in Port Coquitlam.
What many are finding deeply disturbing, however, is that the Corren’s are not only seeking inclusion of explicitly homosexual material in the curriculum, promoting homosexuality as a normative and safe lifestyle option, but also that they wish to ensure that the material is mandatory.
If successful, the case will ensure that parents do not retain the right to choose to pull their children from the offensive portion of the curriculum and provide yet another extraordinary exception from normal rules because it has been insisted upon by gay activists. Homosexual activists have won exceptions >from laws regarding public nudity, sexual solicitation, public sex acts, group sex in their so-called "bath houses", normal medical safeguards to contain the transmission of dangerous communicable diseases, the posting of sexually explicit billboards and much more.
The gay couple’s legal council, Tim Timberg, said, “The second issue is there’s an opting-out provision in the curriculum that where a subject is deemed to be sensitive, the school teachers are under an obligation to in advance advise parents that they’ll be raising a sensitive issue in the classroom.” The Human Rights Complaint seeks to remove sexual orientation from the list of ‘sensitive’ issues.
“If we are going to be providing and promoting curriculum that treats homosexuality as just a normal thing that’s really no different than heterosexuality, we will be trampling on the religious freedoms of thousands of British Columbia families,” said Derek Rogusky, vice-president of family policy at Focus on the Family.
“Already what the schools are teaching and what’s going on in the schools are often in opposition to what parents are teaching at home and what they hold up as the ideal,” he said, “and this will just further that.”
Although the complaint was filed in 1999, the recent passing of Bill C-38 in the Canadian Parliament greatly increases the likelihood that the disturbing case will receive the ear of the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal.
JJ
Supporters of Anti-Family MP Comartin Walk Out Of Church
Comartin free to leave Church says prominent Canadian journalist and Catholic convert
WINDSOR, ON, July 11, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – According to today’s Windsor Star, at one of this past Sunday’s Masses approximate thirty parishioners and supporters of NDP Windsor-Tecumseh MP Joe Comartin stood up and walked out of Holy Rosary Catholic Church in the London Diocese. Comartin himself was not in attendance at Mass said the report.
The cause of the unusual protest was the recent disciplining of Comartin by diocesan Bishop Fabbro for the Catholic MP’s public support of same-sex marriage in complete defiance of Catholic moral teaching. Last week Bishop Fabbro issued a letter to all the priests in his diocese informing them of his decision to forbid Comartin from acting as a Catholic marriage counselor in his diocese, as well as from acting in any other public Church capacity.
“I have decided that Mr. Comartin is not to give marriage preparation sessions within this diocese, and that he is not to engage in any liturgical ministries, for example, minister of the Eucharist or reader,” read Fabbro’s letter.
The bishop also instructed his priests to make public the contents of his letter to their parishioners at Sunday Masses. The protestors walked out during a public reading of that letter.
Since being informed of Fabbro’s decision Comartin has expressed disappointment saying that "the actions of Bishop Fabbro have deeply hurt and saddened myself and my family." He has not expressed any intention of honoring Catholic teaching by withdrawing his support for same-sex marriage in response to his bishop’s action.
“I hope Bishop Fabbro will reconsider his actions,” said Comartin.
However, David Warren, a prominent Canadian journalist and columnist, who recently became Roman Catholic, corresponded with LifeSiteNews.com, explaining the Church’s teaching on the matter, and pointing out that Comartin’s hope that Fabbro will “reconsider” is ill-informed.
“This is really simple stuff,” Warren explained. “[Comartin] was in open defiance of Church teaching, and he refused to be corrected, which left Bishop Fabbro with one, and only one choice, for what to do. Sack him as a Catholic Counsellor…The one thing [Comartin] can’t do is pretend to be speaking for the Catholic Church.”
The Catholic Catechism, which is the authoritative compilation of all of the fundamental teachings of the Catholic Church, states that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered. They are contrary to the natural law…Under no circumstances can they be approved.” (CCC. 2357)
“That he wants it both ways does not surprise me,” continued Warren. “That he can’t have it both ways, is something he just had to be taught. If he gets all upset, and threatens to leave the Church entirely, he’s free to go. Should he later grow up, he’ll be welcomed back. This is all up to him, not up to Bishop Fabbro.”
JJ
LifeSiteNews.com NewsBytes
Working women more likely to divorce
http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/07/11/ndiv11.xml
Santorum Takes On 'the Bigs'
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/7/10/175442.shtml
Citing Kids, N.J. Court Says No to Same-Sex ‘Marriage’
http://www.ncregister.com/current/0710lead1.htm
Hockey mom wants daughter allowed in boys' change room
http://www.canada.com/ottawa/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=2aa28604-33b0-4d73-951f-1e5d56eb62f4
One out of every three South African children having sex at age 10
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=15&art_id=vn20050710123619850C495299
Bush finds no friends at U.S. TV networks
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20050710-110047-2712r.htm
Will International Law Reign Supreme? Another concern about Supreme Court Appointment.
http://pop.org/main.cfm?id=243&r1=2.00&r2=1.50&r3=.04&r4=.00&level=3&eid=831
Canadian Media, led by Globe and Mail, two prominent gay MPs and women lawyers led drive for gay 'marriage' says Toronto Sun columnist
http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Fisher_Douglas/2005/07/10/1124672.html
Cardinal Distances Church from Evolution
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/7/10/112555.shtml
It’s the Birthrate, Stupid! Dangerous growing shortage of young people
http://pop.org/main.cfm?id=272&r1=1.00&r2=3.00&r3=93.00&r4=2.00&level=4&eid=832
Independent MP Cadman dies
http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2005/07/09/cadman-050709.html
Pakistan Govt will train 13,000 clerics on population issues
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/print.asp?page=story_9-7-2005_pg7_33&ndate=7/9/2005%206:00:01%20AM
Study Cites Drug Abuse 'Epidemic' Among Teens
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/07/AR2005070701180_pf.html
It would be worse than senseless for the president to appoint Gonzales to Supreme Court
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/whelan200507080800.asp
Liberal government considering proroguing parliament
http://www.canada.com/national/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=631b8ded-51ca-42aa-8d53-4c7d43d25d8a
The Bad Decision that Started It All
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/george_tubbs200507080813.asp
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* < #1>Abortion Pill RU-486 on Essential Drug List of World Health Organization
* < #2>Cardinal Archbishop Ouellet Primate of Canada to Defend Marriage Before Senate Committee
* < #3>Partial Birth Abortion Ban Ruling Upheld in Nebraska
* < #4>Darwinian Evolution Incompatible with Catholic Faith says Cardinal and Author of Catholic Catechism
* < #5>Vatican Document Forbidding Homosexuals to Priesthood Ready for Release says Vaticanologist
* < #6>B.C. Gay Couple Seeks Mandatory Homosexual School Curriculum Without Parental Op-Out
* < #7>Supporters of Anti-Family MP Comartin Walk Out Of Church
* < #8>LifeSiteNews.com NewsBytes
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Abortion Pill RU-486 on Essential Drug List of World Health Organization
LONDON, July 11, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The British Medical Journal reported Saturday that the World Health Organization (WHO) has approved the RU-486 chemical abortifacient as an “essential” medicine for inclusion in a list of medicines required to be available to physicians working in developing countries.
Arguing that the combination of mifepristone followed later by misoprostol is a safe alternative to surgical abortion in countries where abortion is often illegal, the WHO authorized inclusion of the drug as essential to combat what it terms back-alley “unsafe abortions.”
WHO director of medicines policy and standards and secretary of its essential medicines committee Hans Hogerzeil criticized the US, opposition to the inclusion of RU-486 as an “essential” medicine. The US did achieve one goal – the inclusion of a phrase in the essential drug list that reads, “Where permitted under national law and where culturally acceptable.”
The UK’s Society for the Protection of Unborn Children said it “hoped enough cultures rejected the drugs … as they would bring innocent life to an end,” as reported by the BMJ.
After news of the RU-486 inclusion by WHO, Planned Parenthood wrote to congratulate its members, saying, “More than 5,000 FreeChoiceSavesLives.org activists like you took action to protect these women by emailing Dr. Lee Jong-Wook at the World Health Organization (WHO).” Planned Parenthood congratulated its members for putting pressure on Jong-Wook to include RU-486. “Your emails urging him not to cave in to the inappropriate, ideologically-driven pressure it was receiving from the Bush administration's Department of Health and Human Services seem to have given the WHO the encouragement it needed to stop dragging its feet.”
Concerned Women for America (CWA) posted on its Web site in January public documents revealing approximately 600 serious complications suffered by women who used the abortion drug RU-486 in the US.
See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Public Documents Reveal Numerous RU-486 Complications
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/jan/05012403.html
Media Silent On Ru-486's Nazi Death Camp Pedigree
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2000/oct/001004a.html
Cardinal Archbishop Ouellet Primate of Canada to Defend Marriage Before Senate Committee
OTTAWA, July 11, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A July 10 Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops release states that Canadian Catholic Prelate, Cardinal Marc Ouellet of Quebec City, will defend the traditional definition of marriage before a Senate committee deliberating over same-sex “marriage”Bill C-38.
The Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, chaired by Liberal Senator Ms. Lise Bacon, will hear the Cardinal along with Ms. Hélène Aubé, a lawyer and mother from Gatineau, Wednesday July 13.
On February 17, the day Canada’s parliament began debating Bill C-38, Cardinal Ouellet warned that Canada was toying with basic religious freedom and was falling into ‘juridical chaos’ in the determination to impose same sex ‘marriage.’ He said that the civil foundation of Canadian society was being undermined by ‘subjectivism,’ the idea that rights are not based on objective, external reality, but upon personal desires.
The basic fact of marriage, said Ouellet, is “that a man is a man and a woman is a woman, and their union is marriage.” He said, “If you take (conjugality) out, you don’t have marriage. You have something else. You have a generic sort of union, but you don't have marriage.”
Ouellet added a warning for religious freedom for Canadians. “It will divide the country deeply and for a long time, and it will put religious freedom under attack in the very near future,” he said. The law also makes no provision for lay religious citizens or groups that might fall afoul of the gay hate crime law as well. The Quebec Cardinal added, “There is a sort of abusive interpretation of discrimination and the fundamental right to marriage.”
“If they bring me to the court because I am teaching against homosexuality as part of the doctrine of the Catholic Church, I will be accused of homophobia,” the Cardinal said in comments made to the US bishops’ Catholic News Service. “Those things are very serious, and it's on the way. We are very concerned, very concerned with the future,” he said.
In an open letter to all Canadians in January, Cardinal Ouellet said that the proposed legislation to redefine marriage to include gay couples “is offensive to the moral and religious sensibility of a great number of citizens, both Catholic and non-Catholic.” The letter states that not only marriage, but also “the union of persons of the same sex”, is “morally unacceptable” to “many Christians and adherents of other religious traditions.”
See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Quebec City Cardinal - Primate of Canada – Warns Gay ‘Marriage’ Will Lead to “Bitter” “Cultural Upheaval”
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/jan/05012101.html
Cardinal of Quebec City Warns Same Sex Legislation’s Religious Protection a
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/feb/05022303.html
ShamSee also LifeSiteNews.com's Defense of Marriage page
http://www.lifesite.net/features/marriage_defence/
Partial Birth Abortion Ban Ruling Upheld in Nebraska
LINCOLN, July 11, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A federal Court of Appeals has upheld a lower court ruling that the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act is unconstitutional.
Lincoln Nebraska U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf ruled in September that the law banning partial birth abortion is unconstitutional because it does not include an exception for the so-called health of the mother. The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis agreed with Kopf Friday that the grisly procedure should be allowed to continue.
“We believe when a lack of consensus exists in the medical community, the Constitution requires legislatures to err on the side of protecting women's health by including a health exception,” claimed 8th Circuit Judge Kermit Bye, as he wrote in his opinion, reported by the Seattle Post Intelligencer.
The Department of Justice appealed Kopf’s ruling, vowing to continue the fight to re-establish the law signed into existence by US President George W. Bush in 2003. The implementation of the President’s ban never happened, as three district courts immediately sided with a coalition of pro-abortion forces – including late-term abortionists and Planned Parenthood – introducing an injunction that prevented the ban from taking effect. The same courts – in New York, Lincoln, Nebraska, and San Francisco – later ruled the law “unconstitutional,” striking it down permanently. A Supreme Court appeal is expected.
The Department of Justice, in its defense of the bill, argued that the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act prohibited “one particular method of abortion that Congress, after nine years of hearings, found to be gruesome, inhumane, never necessary to preserve the health of women, and less safe than other readily available abortion methods.”
See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Third Ruling Handed Down >from Nebraska Federal Court: Partial Birth Ban Unconstitutional
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2004/sep/04090805.html
Vatican Document Forbidding Homosexuals to Priesthood Ready for Release says Vaticanologist
ROME, July 11, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - One of the best known English-speaking Vatican reporters, John Allen, reports that the long-expected Vatican document calling attention to the fact that homosexual persons are not to be admitted to the priesthood is "now in the hands of Pope Benedict XVI". The document will come as no surprise to Vatican watchers since Rome has previously released two official documents barring homosexuals from the priesthood. As Allen puts it, with the new document, the teaching won't "change, but the level of authority and clarity" will, since the new document will be directly authorized by the Pope.
The former Church documents make it clear that not only men who have been sexually active as homosexuals but also those inclined to homosexual sex would be barred from the priesthood. A 1961 document produced by the Sacred Congregation for Religious states: "Those affected by the perverse inclination to homosexuality or pederasty should be excluded from religious vows and ordination," because priestly ministry would place such persons in "grave danger". (See coverage here: http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2002/mar/02032701.html )
In a 2002 statement, Cardinal Estevez of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments stated in answer to a question by a bishop: "Ordination to the deaconate and the priesthood of homosexual men or men with homosexual tendencies is absolutely inadvisable and imprudent and, from the pastoral point of view, very risky. A homosexual person, or one with a homosexual tendency is not, therefore, fit to receive the sacrament of Holy Orders." (see that full letter here: http://www.adoremus.org/Notitiae-Ordination.html )
However, Allen suggests that some American bishops are hoping the Vatican shelves the document since they contend it will "generate controversy and negative press".
Last month, as the US Conference of Catholic Bishops was meeting, Chicago Cardinal Francis George spoke on the subject. The Chicago Tribune quoted the Cardinal as saying, "Also, anyone who has been part of a gay subculture or who has lived promiscuously as a heterosexual would not be admitted ... no matter how many years in his background that might have occurred."
See John Allen's 'Word from Rome' column: http://www.nationalcatholicreporter.org/word/
jhw
B.C. Gay Couple Seeks Mandatory Homosexual School Curriculum Without Parental Op-Out
VANCOUVER, B.C. July 11, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal is preparing to hear what pro-family and religious groups are calling a truly frightening case. Murray and Peter Corren, a B.C. gay couple, filed a complaint against the B.C. Ministry of education in 1999 alleging that the Ministry’s curriculum didn’t adequately “address issues of sexual orientation.” That case is slated to be heard beginning today.
“Basically, there is systemic discrimination through omission and suppression of queer issues in the whole of the curriculum,” alleges Murray Corren, who is an elementary school teacher in Port Coquitlam.
What many are finding deeply disturbing, however, is that the Corren’s are not only seeking inclusion of explicitly homosexual material in the curriculum, promoting homosexuality as a normative and safe lifestyle option, but also that they wish to ensure that the material is mandatory.
If successful, the case will ensure that parents do not retain the right to choose to pull their children from the offensive portion of the curriculum and provide yet another extraordinary exception from normal rules because it has been insisted upon by gay activists. Homosexual activists have won exceptions >from laws regarding public nudity, sexual solicitation, public sex acts, group sex in their so-called "bath houses", normal medical safeguards to contain the transmission of dangerous communicable diseases, the posting of sexually explicit billboards and much more.
The gay couple’s legal council, Tim Timberg, said, “The second issue is there’s an opting-out provision in the curriculum that where a subject is deemed to be sensitive, the school teachers are under an obligation to in advance advise parents that they’ll be raising a sensitive issue in the classroom.” The Human Rights Complaint seeks to remove sexual orientation from the list of ‘sensitive’ issues.
“If we are going to be providing and promoting curriculum that treats homosexuality as just a normal thing that’s really no different than heterosexuality, we will be trampling on the religious freedoms of thousands of British Columbia families,” said Derek Rogusky, vice-president of family policy at Focus on the Family.
“Already what the schools are teaching and what’s going on in the schools are often in opposition to what parents are teaching at home and what they hold up as the ideal,” he said, “and this will just further that.”
Although the complaint was filed in 1999, the recent passing of Bill C-38 in the Canadian Parliament greatly increases the likelihood that the disturbing case will receive the ear of the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal.
JJ
Supporters of Anti-Family MP Comartin Walk Out Of Church
Comartin free to leave Church says prominent Canadian journalist and Catholic convert
WINDSOR, ON, July 11, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – According to today’s Windsor Star, at one of this past Sunday’s Masses approximate thirty parishioners and supporters of NDP Windsor-Tecumseh MP Joe Comartin stood up and walked out of Holy Rosary Catholic Church in the London Diocese. Comartin himself was not in attendance at Mass said the report.
The cause of the unusual protest was the recent disciplining of Comartin by diocesan Bishop Fabbro for the Catholic MP’s public support of same-sex marriage in complete defiance of Catholic moral teaching. Last week Bishop Fabbro issued a letter to all the priests in his diocese informing them of his decision to forbid Comartin from acting as a Catholic marriage counselor in his diocese, as well as from acting in any other public Church capacity.
“I have decided that Mr. Comartin is not to give marriage preparation sessions within this diocese, and that he is not to engage in any liturgical ministries, for example, minister of the Eucharist or reader,” read Fabbro’s letter.
The bishop also instructed his priests to make public the contents of his letter to their parishioners at Sunday Masses. The protestors walked out during a public reading of that letter.
Since being informed of Fabbro’s decision Comartin has expressed disappointment saying that "the actions of Bishop Fabbro have deeply hurt and saddened myself and my family." He has not expressed any intention of honoring Catholic teaching by withdrawing his support for same-sex marriage in response to his bishop’s action.
“I hope Bishop Fabbro will reconsider his actions,” said Comartin.
However, David Warren, a prominent Canadian journalist and columnist, who recently became Roman Catholic, corresponded with LifeSiteNews.com, explaining the Church’s teaching on the matter, and pointing out that Comartin’s hope that Fabbro will “reconsider” is ill-informed.
“This is really simple stuff,” Warren explained. “[Comartin] was in open defiance of Church teaching, and he refused to be corrected, which left Bishop Fabbro with one, and only one choice, for what to do. Sack him as a Catholic Counsellor…The one thing [Comartin] can’t do is pretend to be speaking for the Catholic Church.”
The Catholic Catechism, which is the authoritative compilation of all of the fundamental teachings of the Catholic Church, states that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered. They are contrary to the natural law…Under no circumstances can they be approved.” (CCC. 2357)
“That he wants it both ways does not surprise me,” continued Warren. “That he can’t have it both ways, is something he just had to be taught. If he gets all upset, and threatens to leave the Church entirely, he’s free to go. Should he later grow up, he’ll be welcomed back. This is all up to him, not up to Bishop Fabbro.”
JJ
LifeSiteNews.com NewsBytes
Working women more likely to divorce
http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/07/11/ndiv11.xml
Santorum Takes On 'the Bigs'
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/7/10/175442.shtml
Citing Kids, N.J. Court Says No to Same-Sex ‘Marriage’
http://www.ncregister.com/current/0710lead1.htm
Hockey mom wants daughter allowed in boys' change room
http://www.canada.com/ottawa/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=2aa28604-33b0-4d73-951f-1e5d56eb62f4
One out of every three South African children having sex at age 10
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=15&art_id=vn20050710123619850C495299
Bush finds no friends at U.S. TV networks
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20050710-110047-2712r.htm
Will International Law Reign Supreme? Another concern about Supreme Court Appointment.
http://pop.org/main.cfm?id=243&r1=2.00&r2=1.50&r3=.04&r4=.00&level=3&eid=831
Canadian Media, led by Globe and Mail, two prominent gay MPs and women lawyers led drive for gay 'marriage' says Toronto Sun columnist
http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Fisher_Douglas/2005/07/10/1124672.html
Cardinal Distances Church from Evolution
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/7/10/112555.shtml
It’s the Birthrate, Stupid! Dangerous growing shortage of young people
http://pop.org/main.cfm?id=272&r1=1.00&r2=3.00&r3=93.00&r4=2.00&level=4&eid=832
Independent MP Cadman dies
http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2005/07/09/cadman-050709.html
Pakistan Govt will train 13,000 clerics on population issues
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/print.asp?page=story_9-7-2005_pg7_33&ndate=7/9/2005%206:00:01%20AM
Study Cites Drug Abuse 'Epidemic' Among Teens
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/07/AR2005070701180_pf.html
It would be worse than senseless for the president to appoint Gonzales to Supreme Court
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/whelan200507080800.asp
Liberal government considering proroguing parliament
http://www.canada.com/national/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=631b8ded-51ca-42aa-8d53-4c7d43d25d8a
The Bad Decision that Started It All
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/george_tubbs200507080813.asp
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08/26/05
BBC NEWS
The struggle over science
A POINT OF VIEW
By Harold Evans
In his weekly opinion column, Harold Evans considers rising concern in the
US over the Bush administration's hostility to science.
I used to get mad at the way it was left to America to bring to full
fruition fine achievements by Britain's scientists, inventors and
engineers. Take Alexander Fleming's penicillin, Frank Whittle's jet engine,
Alan Turing's computer and Robert Watson Watt's radar.
All these breakthroughs found their fullest exploitation in the United
States. Indeed, they all contributed to America's pre-eminence in
science-based manufacturing and services.
Think of the personal computer and wonder drugs, of the jumbo jetliner,
video games and the pacemaker, the laser that counts your groceries and the
laser, or the global positioning satellite, that tells you to turn left at
the roundabout.
That is why there is furious bewilderment here in the universities and the
higher levels of business at the chilly indifference - not to say hostility
- of the Bush White House to science. Actually, I've seen a movie like this
once before and I know how it ends.
When I was a science reporter in Britain in the 50s, it was a thrill to
visit the centre of government research, the National Physical Laboratory
at Teddington, Middlesex. It was hallowed ground.
I was in the lab where Watson Watt did his breakthrough work on radar in
time for the Royal Air Force to find the Luftwaffe in the invisible skies
and win the Battle of Britain.
I stood in awe before that much-photographed early computer - the
wall-length monster called ACE - designed in 1945 by the wartime
code-breaker, Alan Turing. It was then the fastest in the world, spewing
out instant answers to reams of calculations I was allowed to feed into its
innards.
Inertia
You would have thought that the National Physical Laboratory would be the
darling of every British Government. Not so. I was invited to visit at that
time because they were concerned the government did not fully appreciate
that science in peace was as vital as science in war.
The researchers were doing what they could on a tiny budget and even that
was about to be cut. Not just in the government, but in business and
society, there was a general indifference to science and scientific
education that seems odd today.
The consequence of that inertia in government and lethargy in business was
that the US came to dominate the computer industry, despite all the
brilliant work of Turing at Manchester University and others at Ferranti.
Young Americans are opting for better paid law and medicine over science
and engineering and visa restrictions on bright foreign students further
dilute the talent pool
The question now tormenting Americans - who don't have a natural aptitude
for worry - is whether the same writing is on the wall for them. Vinton
Cerf is one who thinks it is, and he is no ordinary hand-wringer.
He's the mathematician who is often referred to as the "father of the
internet". From 1972 to 1986, he was one of the key people in the US
Defense Department who made it possible for distant and different computers
to exchange packets of information - and that's the foundation of the
internet on top of which rides the world wide web today.
Nothing daunted, he is now working on the protocols for planet to planet
communication. In short, he knows whereof he speaks. And Cerf has just
emitted a cry of pain.
The Bush administration does not take kindly to anyone who has drawn a
federal dollar being critical - and being critical moreover in the
businessman's' bible, the Wall street Journal.
Talent pool
So it is brave of Cerf to risk future disfavour and inveigh against "the
stewards of our national destiny" for cutting money from key areas of
research in its 2006 budget. That's a recipe, says Cerf, for "irrelevance
and decline."
The president's science adviser, John Marburger, concedes that the budget
is "pretty close to flat" but stoutly maintains "we are not going
backwards", pointing to an extra $733 million for research and development
(R&D) funding.
In fact, this is the first time in a decade that federal funding has failed
to keep pace with inflation. And in the entrails of the complex budget - no
one should go there alone - you find there is indeed less money in real
terms for what's called basic research and less for Cerf's area of
particular concern, computer science.
BBC NEWS: AUDIO
Hear A Point of View in the BBC Radio Player
Funding university research for that has been falling through the first
Bush term and is now about half what it was in 2001.
All told, anyway, America now ranks sixth in the world in the percentage of
its wealth it spends on R&D. Yet the downward trend isn't solely the result
of the parsimony of "the hick in the White House", as one motor mouth put
it.
It is largely a reflection of rising educational standards around the
world, so it's a comparative decline. In real terms, no single country can
even come close to matching the US in the total scientific investment by
government, corporations and foundations.
So what is there to worry about? Well, there are some facts Americans find
hard to swallow after decades of striding the frontiers of science. Fewer
of the Nobel prizes go to American scientists, down to about half from a
peak in the 90s. Papers from Americans occupied 61% of published research
in 1983, now the total is just under 29%.
'Freedom of inquiry'
It may not get better soon since a higher proportion of young Americans are
opting for better paid law and medicine over science and engineering and
visa restrictions on bright foreign students further dilute the talent
pool. "The rest of the world is catching up," says John E. Jankowski, a
senior analyst at the National Science Foundation.
Since some of these trends have been developing on the watch of presidents
from Reagan onwards, I sought a science policy health check from luminaries
in the field.
Professor Neal Lane at Rice University was the science adviser reporting
directly to President Clinton, but as a former director of the National
Science Foundation he cannot be dismissed as partisan.
Like others I spoke with, he is less concerned with the international
league tables and the familiar salami processes of the budget, than the
well-documented readiness of the Bush administration to manipulate and
suppress scientific findings - manifestly to appease industrial interests
and religious constituencies.
This is not just on global warming and stem cells, currently in the news,
but on a whole range of issues - lead and mercury poisoning in children,
women's health, birth control, safety standards for drinking water, forest
management, air pollution and on and on.
"It's disturbing," Professor Lane told me. "This is the first time to the
best of my knowledge through successive Republican and Democratic
administrations, that the issue of scientific integrity has reared its
head."
Of similar mind is Russell Train, an administrator of the Environmental
Protection Agency under Republican Presidents Nixon and Ford. He says: "How
radically we have moved away from regulation based on professional analysis
of scientific data ...to regulation controlled by the White House and
driven by political considerations."
The White House denies such accusations and says it makes decisions based
on the best available science.
But these two speak for what is now a considerable body of alarmed and
angry scientists. For more than a year, the nationally well-regarded Union
of Concerned Scientists - a non-partisan body - has been receiving hundreds
of signatures backing the Union's call for regulatory and legislative
action to restore scientific integrity to policy making. To date no fewer
than 7,600 scientists have signed, including 49 Nobel Laureates.
Perhaps another voice should be added to the clamour. "Science relies on
freedom of inquiry, and one of the hallmarks of that freedom is objectivity
- government relies on the impartial perspective of science for
guidance..." Those are the words of President Bush in 1990 - George Herbert
Walker, the father - not the son.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/magazine/4172504.stm
Published: 2005/08/23 08:46:34 GMT
© BBC MMV
Ivan Handler
Networking for Democracy
ihandler@igc.org
The struggle over science
A POINT OF VIEW
By Harold Evans
In his weekly opinion column, Harold Evans considers rising concern in the
US over the Bush administration's hostility to science.
I used to get mad at the way it was left to America to bring to full
fruition fine achievements by Britain's scientists, inventors and
engineers. Take Alexander Fleming's penicillin, Frank Whittle's jet engine,
Alan Turing's computer and Robert Watson Watt's radar.
All these breakthroughs found their fullest exploitation in the United
States. Indeed, they all contributed to America's pre-eminence in
science-based manufacturing and services.
Think of the personal computer and wonder drugs, of the jumbo jetliner,
video games and the pacemaker, the laser that counts your groceries and the
laser, or the global positioning satellite, that tells you to turn left at
the roundabout.
That is why there is furious bewilderment here in the universities and the
higher levels of business at the chilly indifference - not to say hostility
- of the Bush White House to science. Actually, I've seen a movie like this
once before and I know how it ends.
When I was a science reporter in Britain in the 50s, it was a thrill to
visit the centre of government research, the National Physical Laboratory
at Teddington, Middlesex. It was hallowed ground.
I was in the lab where Watson Watt did his breakthrough work on radar in
time for the Royal Air Force to find the Luftwaffe in the invisible skies
and win the Battle of Britain.
I stood in awe before that much-photographed early computer - the
wall-length monster called ACE - designed in 1945 by the wartime
code-breaker, Alan Turing. It was then the fastest in the world, spewing
out instant answers to reams of calculations I was allowed to feed into its
innards.
Inertia
You would have thought that the National Physical Laboratory would be the
darling of every British Government. Not so. I was invited to visit at that
time because they were concerned the government did not fully appreciate
that science in peace was as vital as science in war.
The researchers were doing what they could on a tiny budget and even that
was about to be cut. Not just in the government, but in business and
society, there was a general indifference to science and scientific
education that seems odd today.
The consequence of that inertia in government and lethargy in business was
that the US came to dominate the computer industry, despite all the
brilliant work of Turing at Manchester University and others at Ferranti.
Young Americans are opting for better paid law and medicine over science
and engineering and visa restrictions on bright foreign students further
dilute the talent pool
The question now tormenting Americans - who don't have a natural aptitude
for worry - is whether the same writing is on the wall for them. Vinton
Cerf is one who thinks it is, and he is no ordinary hand-wringer.
He's the mathematician who is often referred to as the "father of the
internet". From 1972 to 1986, he was one of the key people in the US
Defense Department who made it possible for distant and different computers
to exchange packets of information - and that's the foundation of the
internet on top of which rides the world wide web today.
Nothing daunted, he is now working on the protocols for planet to planet
communication. In short, he knows whereof he speaks. And Cerf has just
emitted a cry of pain.
The Bush administration does not take kindly to anyone who has drawn a
federal dollar being critical - and being critical moreover in the
businessman's' bible, the Wall street Journal.
Talent pool
So it is brave of Cerf to risk future disfavour and inveigh against "the
stewards of our national destiny" for cutting money from key areas of
research in its 2006 budget. That's a recipe, says Cerf, for "irrelevance
and decline."
The president's science adviser, John Marburger, concedes that the budget
is "pretty close to flat" but stoutly maintains "we are not going
backwards", pointing to an extra $733 million for research and development
(R&D) funding.
In fact, this is the first time in a decade that federal funding has failed
to keep pace with inflation. And in the entrails of the complex budget - no
one should go there alone - you find there is indeed less money in real
terms for what's called basic research and less for Cerf's area of
particular concern, computer science.
BBC NEWS: AUDIO
Hear A Point of View in the BBC Radio Player
Funding university research for that has been falling through the first
Bush term and is now about half what it was in 2001.
All told, anyway, America now ranks sixth in the world in the percentage of
its wealth it spends on R&D. Yet the downward trend isn't solely the result
of the parsimony of "the hick in the White House", as one motor mouth put
it.
It is largely a reflection of rising educational standards around the
world, so it's a comparative decline. In real terms, no single country can
even come close to matching the US in the total scientific investment by
government, corporations and foundations.
So what is there to worry about? Well, there are some facts Americans find
hard to swallow after decades of striding the frontiers of science. Fewer
of the Nobel prizes go to American scientists, down to about half from a
peak in the 90s. Papers from Americans occupied 61% of published research
in 1983, now the total is just under 29%.
'Freedom of inquiry'
It may not get better soon since a higher proportion of young Americans are
opting for better paid law and medicine over science and engineering and
visa restrictions on bright foreign students further dilute the talent
pool. "The rest of the world is catching up," says John E. Jankowski, a
senior analyst at the National Science Foundation.
Since some of these trends have been developing on the watch of presidents
from Reagan onwards, I sought a science policy health check from luminaries
in the field.
Professor Neal Lane at Rice University was the science adviser reporting
directly to President Clinton, but as a former director of the National
Science Foundation he cannot be dismissed as partisan.
Like others I spoke with, he is less concerned with the international
league tables and the familiar salami processes of the budget, than the
well-documented readiness of the Bush administration to manipulate and
suppress scientific findings - manifestly to appease industrial interests
and religious constituencies.
This is not just on global warming and stem cells, currently in the news,
but on a whole range of issues - lead and mercury poisoning in children,
women's health, birth control, safety standards for drinking water, forest
management, air pollution and on and on.
"It's disturbing," Professor Lane told me. "This is the first time to the
best of my knowledge through successive Republican and Democratic
administrations, that the issue of scientific integrity has reared its
head."
Of similar mind is Russell Train, an administrator of the Environmental
Protection Agency under Republican Presidents Nixon and Ford. He says: "How
radically we have moved away from regulation based on professional analysis
of scientific data ...to regulation controlled by the White House and
driven by political considerations."
The White House denies such accusations and says it makes decisions based
on the best available science.
But these two speak for what is now a considerable body of alarmed and
angry scientists. For more than a year, the nationally well-regarded Union
of Concerned Scientists - a non-partisan body - has been receiving hundreds
of signatures backing the Union's call for regulatory and legislative
action to restore scientific integrity to policy making. To date no fewer
than 7,600 scientists have signed, including 49 Nobel Laureates.
Perhaps another voice should be added to the clamour. "Science relies on
freedom of inquiry, and one of the hallmarks of that freedom is objectivity
- government relies on the impartial perspective of science for
guidance..." Those are the words of President Bush in 1990 - George Herbert
Walker, the father - not the son.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/magazine/4172504.stm
Published: 2005/08/23 08:46:34 GMT
© BBC MMV
Ivan Handler
Networking for Democracy
ihandler@igc.org
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/york220805.html
Hydrogen Hoopla
by Richard York
In a time of rising concentrations of carbon dioxide in the earth's
atmosphere and ever more prominent signs of global warming, General Motors
and other apologists for global capitalism are seeking to assure us of
their concern for the environment and their commitment to move beyond
fossil fuels. Unsurprisingly, they do not propose putting a stop to the
capitalist dream of ever expanding accumulation among the corporate elite
that, to a large extent, drives environmental degradation. Nor do they
advocate the more modest goal of moving away from the unsustainable
automobile-centric transportation system now dominant in the United States
and a growing number of other nations, and toward a more rational system
based on mass public transit and pedestrian-centric development. The
auto-industry's solution is simple: hydrogen. In a recent ad in the May
2nd issue of The New Yorker, GM informs us that they are "eliminating
emissions and doubters" through their development of hydrogen fuel cell
technology. Their implicit assumption is clear: no change to the
prevailing political economy and social relations is necessary. All that
society is faced with is a challenge that can be overcome with technology.
And, of course, as at least those of us who grew up in the United States
have been told since elementary school, nothing spurs technological
innovation quite like the free market. Yankee ingenuity will save us all,
as long as the radicals and malcontents can be prevented from meddling in
the business of business.
Perhaps I will be forgiven if I do not have the fullest of confidence that
GM, the company that has a history of undermining public transportation
and fighting fuel economy standards and safety regulations -- and that
brought you that gas-guzzling danger of the road, the Hummer -- is as
concerned about the fate of the global environment as you and I are. GM
is apparently undertaking some quite interesting projects. Their website
reports that on April 1, 2005:
Senator H. Rodham Clinton joined GM and the U.S. military for the
unveiling and ceremonial delivery of a GM fuel cell-powered pickup
truck built for the U.S. military. Developing partnerships with
customers like the U.S. military, whose goals match GM's, will advance
a hydrogen economy, help gain real-world experience with hydrogen and
fuel cells and create the potential for additional future joint
transportation ventures with the military.
Although it is comforting to know that GM is teaming up with Hillary
Rodham Clinton and the U.S. military -- that institution known for its
concern for preserving a livable world and "whose goals match GM's," after
all -- one is left to wonder whether the hydrogen economy will in fact
emerge, and, if it does, whether it will be environmentally sustainable.
Although I have no doubt that the U.S. military wants to be assured that
they can continue waging war long into the future, even after fossil fuel
resources are depleted, I suspect that perhaps something other than a
sincere effort to reduce environmental degradation is going on here.
Hydrogen is no miracle solution to our energy problems. First and
foremost, it is important to recognize that no reserves of hydrogen are
just lying around waiting to be exploited. On the contrary, to generate
hydrogen takes energy -- energy that typically is supplied by the
combustion of fossil fuels -- to liberate hydrogen atoms from their bonds
with other atoms in molecules such as the common hydrogen-oxygen molecule
H2O (water). Due to the law of conservation of energy, it takes at least
as much energy to break such a bond as one receives back when a fuel cell
recombines the hydrogen and oxygen to form water. So, although it is true
that a hydrogen-powered car can in principle operate while only emitting
water, the ultimate impact of a hydrogen transportation system depends on
how the hydrogen is produced. In effect, hydrogen is only an energy
storage device (like a battery), not a primary source of energy. Hydrogen
fuel cell technology, then, does nothing to address the reasons for our
extraordinary energy demands or to spur development of renewable sources
of energy.
Might it just be possible that GM's talk about hydrogen cars is merely a
ploy to avoid taking serious actions to address our energy problems?
Although I don't wish to disillusion some of the more naïve readers out
there, I feel impelled to suggest that GM only sees the myriad of
environmental problems they are generating as a public relations problem,
and that their efforts are all about PR, not about environmental
sustainability. Perhaps we should not sit back and wait for GM, the U.S.
military, and Hillary Rodham Clinton to deliver a clean, green hydrogen
economy.
Richard York teaches sociology at the University of Oregon. His research,
which focuses primarily on human interaction with the natural environment,
has been published in Ambio, American Sociological Review, Ecological
Economics, Gender & Society, Human Ecology Review, Organization and
Environment, and other scholarly journals.
Hydrogen Hoopla
by Richard York
In a time of rising concentrations of carbon dioxide in the earth's
atmosphere and ever more prominent signs of global warming, General Motors
and other apologists for global capitalism are seeking to assure us of
their concern for the environment and their commitment to move beyond
fossil fuels. Unsurprisingly, they do not propose putting a stop to the
capitalist dream of ever expanding accumulation among the corporate elite
that, to a large extent, drives environmental degradation. Nor do they
advocate the more modest goal of moving away from the unsustainable
automobile-centric transportation system now dominant in the United States
and a growing number of other nations, and toward a more rational system
based on mass public transit and pedestrian-centric development. The
auto-industry's solution is simple: hydrogen. In a recent ad in the May
2nd issue of The New Yorker, GM informs us that they are "eliminating
emissions and doubters" through their development of hydrogen fuel cell
technology. Their implicit assumption is clear: no change to the
prevailing political economy and social relations is necessary. All that
society is faced with is a challenge that can be overcome with technology.
And, of course, as at least those of us who grew up in the United States
have been told since elementary school, nothing spurs technological
innovation quite like the free market. Yankee ingenuity will save us all,
as long as the radicals and malcontents can be prevented from meddling in
the business of business.
Perhaps I will be forgiven if I do not have the fullest of confidence that
GM, the company that has a history of undermining public transportation
and fighting fuel economy standards and safety regulations -- and that
brought you that gas-guzzling danger of the road, the Hummer -- is as
concerned about the fate of the global environment as you and I are. GM
is apparently undertaking some quite interesting projects. Their website
reports that on April 1, 2005:
Senator H. Rodham Clinton joined GM and the U.S. military for the
unveiling and ceremonial delivery of a GM fuel cell-powered pickup
truck built for the U.S. military. Developing partnerships with
customers like the U.S. military, whose goals match GM's, will advance
a hydrogen economy, help gain real-world experience with hydrogen and
fuel cells and create the potential for additional future joint
transportation ventures with the military.
Although it is comforting to know that GM is teaming up with Hillary
Rodham Clinton and the U.S. military -- that institution known for its
concern for preserving a livable world and "whose goals match GM's," after
all -- one is left to wonder whether the hydrogen economy will in fact
emerge, and, if it does, whether it will be environmentally sustainable.
Although I have no doubt that the U.S. military wants to be assured that
they can continue waging war long into the future, even after fossil fuel
resources are depleted, I suspect that perhaps something other than a
sincere effort to reduce environmental degradation is going on here.
Hydrogen is no miracle solution to our energy problems. First and
foremost, it is important to recognize that no reserves of hydrogen are
just lying around waiting to be exploited. On the contrary, to generate
hydrogen takes energy -- energy that typically is supplied by the
combustion of fossil fuels -- to liberate hydrogen atoms from their bonds
with other atoms in molecules such as the common hydrogen-oxygen molecule
H2O (water). Due to the law of conservation of energy, it takes at least
as much energy to break such a bond as one receives back when a fuel cell
recombines the hydrogen and oxygen to form water. So, although it is true
that a hydrogen-powered car can in principle operate while only emitting
water, the ultimate impact of a hydrogen transportation system depends on
how the hydrogen is produced. In effect, hydrogen is only an energy
storage device (like a battery), not a primary source of energy. Hydrogen
fuel cell technology, then, does nothing to address the reasons for our
extraordinary energy demands or to spur development of renewable sources
of energy.
Might it just be possible that GM's talk about hydrogen cars is merely a
ploy to avoid taking serious actions to address our energy problems?
Although I don't wish to disillusion some of the more naïve readers out
there, I feel impelled to suggest that GM only sees the myriad of
environmental problems they are generating as a public relations problem,
and that their efforts are all about PR, not about environmental
sustainability. Perhaps we should not sit back and wait for GM, the U.S.
military, and Hillary Rodham Clinton to deliver a clean, green hydrogen
economy.
Richard York teaches sociology at the University of Oregon. His research,
which focuses primarily on human interaction with the natural environment,
has been published in Ambio, American Sociological Review, Ecological
Economics, Gender & Society, Human Ecology Review, Organization and
Environment, and other scholarly journals.
The Legislative Council ... roughly corresponded to the
British House of Lords ...
In 1950 ... the new National Government appointed sufficient
of its supporters to give it a majority on the Legislative Council.
This group became known as the "Suicide Squad", for its members were
appointed for the express purpose of voing themselves out of office
and the Legislative Council out of existence!
- p. 84
anon
Our Country - post primary history course
a brief survey of New Zealand history and civics
13th printing extensively revised 1960 pp.227
This is a much better book than almost all recently-written NZ
history. I have suggested to some in Pol St that its author(s)
should be discovered & credited. It would need rather little
revision to re-enter school as a main textbook.
R
British House of Lords ...
In 1950 ... the new National Government appointed sufficient
of its supporters to give it a majority on the Legislative Council.
This group became known as the "Suicide Squad", for its members were
appointed for the express purpose of voing themselves out of office
and the Legislative Council out of existence!
- p. 84
anon
Our Country - post primary history course
a brief survey of New Zealand history and civics
13th printing extensively revised 1960 pp.227
This is a much better book than almost all recently-written NZ
history. I have suggested to some in Pol St that its author(s)
should be discovered & credited. It would need rather little
revision to re-enter school as a main textbook.
R
Press Release
Hon Pete Hodgson, Convenor, Ministerial Group on Climate Change
23 August 2005
Kyoto turns Paeroa gas to cash
Paeroa landfill gas energy project awarded emissions units.
---------------------------------
This government's ratification of the Kyoto Protocol is set to result in more clean, green power flowing. HG Leach and Company Limited's Tirohia landfill gas project has been awarded 28,000 internationally tradable emissions units under the government's Projects to Reduce Emissions programme.
"This government is taking a responsible approach to climate change and managing our economy. The key to this is the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. Under it we are transforming our economy for growth in a world where greenhouse gas emissions are priced," says Convenor of the Ministerial Group on Climate Change Pete Hodgson.
"The Programme would not exist if we were not in Kyoto. It alone is forecast to help us save over 11 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions and has helped bring forward hundreds of megawatts of power projects."
HG Leach' proposed project would install and operate four modular electricity sets to produce power from landfill gas that would otherwise be flared at the Tirohia landfill near Paeroa. The electricity generated would be primarily fed into the local power supply network with some power being used on-site. The project is forecast to offset the emission of around 30,288 tonnes of carbon dioxide between 2008 and 2012; the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol.
"By tackling climate change in this way, this scheme is helping to protect the environment and the unique Kiwi lifestyle for future generations. At the same time, it will help meet the power needs of a growing regional economy in a sustainable way."
Under the Programme, units are awarded to projects that lead to a net reduction in emission against business as usual that would otherwise not go ahead and that are successful in a tender round. To date, 10 million units, which are internationally tradable, have been put out for tender.
The proposal is subject to normal planning processes.
ENDS
For those who haven't spotted a number with markedly exaggerated precision,
SCROLL DOWN
The estimated yield of fuel gas from the tip is uncertain in its 2nd figure. So, presumably is '28,000 internationally tradable emissions units', on which the calculation is based. Therefore 'around 30,288 tonnes of carbon dioxide' is a furphy, and the 'around' doesn't quite excuse the assertion of meaningless figures. For this PR, the number would be better stated as3 x 10^4 . However, our education system has never taught this extremely useful notation, so one would probably have to say 'around 30,000 tonne'.
All of this is of course before any shelf hapu gets activated to slap a claim on the revenue from the gas ...
I leave youse to apply the principle of aligning precision with the accuracy of what is being forecast to predictions of tax revenue ...
R
Hon Pete Hodgson, Convenor, Ministerial Group on Climate Change
23 August 2005
Kyoto turns Paeroa gas to cash
Paeroa landfill gas energy project awarded emissions units.
---------------------------------
This government's ratification of the Kyoto Protocol is set to result in more clean, green power flowing. HG Leach and Company Limited's Tirohia landfill gas project has been awarded 28,000 internationally tradable emissions units under the government's Projects to Reduce Emissions programme.
"This government is taking a responsible approach to climate change and managing our economy. The key to this is the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. Under it we are transforming our economy for growth in a world where greenhouse gas emissions are priced," says Convenor of the Ministerial Group on Climate Change Pete Hodgson.
"The Programme would not exist if we were not in Kyoto. It alone is forecast to help us save over 11 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions and has helped bring forward hundreds of megawatts of power projects."
HG Leach' proposed project would install and operate four modular electricity sets to produce power from landfill gas that would otherwise be flared at the Tirohia landfill near Paeroa. The electricity generated would be primarily fed into the local power supply network with some power being used on-site. The project is forecast to offset the emission of around 30,288 tonnes of carbon dioxide between 2008 and 2012; the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol.
"By tackling climate change in this way, this scheme is helping to protect the environment and the unique Kiwi lifestyle for future generations. At the same time, it will help meet the power needs of a growing regional economy in a sustainable way."
Under the Programme, units are awarded to projects that lead to a net reduction in emission against business as usual that would otherwise not go ahead and that are successful in a tender round. To date, 10 million units, which are internationally tradable, have been put out for tender.
The proposal is subject to normal planning processes.
ENDS
For those who haven't spotted a number with markedly exaggerated precision,
SCROLL DOWN
The estimated yield of fuel gas from the tip is uncertain in its 2nd figure. So, presumably is '28,000 internationally tradable emissions units', on which the calculation is based. Therefore 'around 30,288 tonnes of carbon dioxide' is a furphy, and the 'around' doesn't quite excuse the assertion of meaningless figures. For this PR, the number would be better stated as3 x 10^4 . However, our education system has never taught this extremely useful notation, so one would probably have to say 'around 30,000 tonne'.
All of this is of course before any shelf hapu gets activated to slap a claim on the revenue from the gas ...
I leave youse to apply the principle of aligning precision with the accuracy of what is being forecast to predictions of tax revenue ...
R
Instead of any discussion on important policies, the media have been largely wasting time on speculations about tax policies yet to be announced. I hope this item below will remind us that there are important policies, and the moral decay promoted by the Klark regime is vastly more important than any of the plausible tax changes.
R
Sent: Sunday, 21 August 2005
To: [a priest of the Ak cathedral parish]
Subject: Why Abortion is Always Evil
Dear Fr. [deleted]
As you will be aware, I attended the presentation yesterday morning on the Cathedral Restoration project.
Prior to the commencement of the meeting, I had a conversation with other attendees and the subject turned to the forthcoming general election.
One young lady (I do not know her name but she is a Reader), mentioned that she would never vote for the Destiny party because of their extremist policies.
I said that I had not heard any details of the Destiny policies and asked for an example of such "extremist" polices.
Her response was that Destiny wanted to outlaw abortion.
My response was that this was entirely in accordance with Catholic teaching - abortion was baby murder and has been condemned by the Church since day one. Her response was that if abortion was illegal, there would be back-street abortions "using coathangers".
This appears to imply "if it will happen anyway, there is no point in banning it".
To have a supposedly-devout baptised catholic spouting such nonsense was of concern to me. There are many things that devout catholics can, in good conscience, have divergent opinions on - abortion is not one of them.
You may wish to include this topic in one of your pre-election homilies. Any catholic who knowingly votes for a pro-abortion candidate is an accessory to murder and puts his/her [the catholic voter] eternal salvation at risk.
As our beloved late, great Holy Father Pope John Paul II said:
"Human life is sacred and inviolable at every moment of existence, including the initial phase which preceded birth. All human beings, from their mother's womb, belong to God who searches them and knows them, who forms them and knits them together with His own hands, who gazes on them when they are helpless embryos and already sees in them the adults of tomorrow whose days are numbered and whose vocation is even now written in the 'book of life'".
[As quoted in 'John Paul II Centre for Life Special Report' Spring 2005].
[name deleted]
Parishioner Cathedral Parish
Phone: xxx xxxx (Home)
R
Sent: Sunday, 21 August 2005
To: [a priest of the Ak cathedral parish]
Subject: Why Abortion is Always Evil
Dear Fr. [deleted]
As you will be aware, I attended the presentation yesterday morning on the Cathedral Restoration project.
Prior to the commencement of the meeting, I had a conversation with other attendees and the subject turned to the forthcoming general election.
One young lady (I do not know her name but she is a Reader), mentioned that she would never vote for the Destiny party because of their extremist policies.
I said that I had not heard any details of the Destiny policies and asked for an example of such "extremist" polices.
Her response was that Destiny wanted to outlaw abortion.
My response was that this was entirely in accordance with Catholic teaching - abortion was baby murder and has been condemned by the Church since day one. Her response was that if abortion was illegal, there would be back-street abortions "using coathangers".
This appears to imply "if it will happen anyway, there is no point in banning it".
To have a supposedly-devout baptised catholic spouting such nonsense was of concern to me. There are many things that devout catholics can, in good conscience, have divergent opinions on - abortion is not one of them.
You may wish to include this topic in one of your pre-election homilies. Any catholic who knowingly votes for a pro-abortion candidate is an accessory to murder and puts his/her [the catholic voter] eternal salvation at risk.
As our beloved late, great Holy Father Pope John Paul II said:
"Human life is sacred and inviolable at every moment of existence, including the initial phase which preceded birth. All human beings, from their mother's womb, belong to God who searches them and knows them, who forms them and knits them together with His own hands, who gazes on them when they are helpless embryos and already sees in them the adults of tomorrow whose days are numbered and whose vocation is even now written in the 'book of life'".
[As quoted in 'John Paul II Centre for Life Special Report' Spring 2005].
[name deleted]
Parishioner Cathedral Parish
Phone: xxx xxxx (Home)
08/25/05
Commercial Diesel Motorcycle Extras.
SUPERCHARGER by Rynhart R&D - One that didn't make it into production.
The facts
Any owner of a Hatz powered diesel motorcycle would have been
overjoyed at the prospect of being able to supercharge their
machine. This looked very much as if it would be possible what
with the progress made by Irelands Rynhart R&D in this field. An
article detailing this companies development work up until 2002 is
available from the Bullet-in magazine(see links page under
literature), available on the internet (.pdf format).
Unfortunately things have taken a turn for the worse over the last
year or so. Derek Rynhart told this site that he had been forced to
call it a day and wind his company up due to the fact that his
superchargers were too good. Combustion pressures of the Hatz 1B30
are 55bar but Rynharts supercharger put these up to 100bar which
resulted in four broken crankshafts. The superchargers were O.K.
on the bigger 1B40 engines but still there were problems. The
engines fuel pumps could not generate enough pressure to get the
diesel into the chambers.
It was with these problems in mind that Hatz told Rynhart they
were not prepared to upgrade all of their engines to take account
of the super chargers capabilities. Given that Rynhart managed to
more than double the BHP of the 1B30, this is a shame for riders
who ride 1B30 Hatz engined bikes. No doubt there are more details
that may come out in time but those above give the main reasons why
we will see no supercharged hatz motorcycles in the near future.
A Rynhart R&D Supercharger fitted to a Hatz-1B30-powered Royal Enfield.
This Hatz sure looks mean with that supercharger on.
http://www.peace65.freeserve.co.uk/Pictures/diesel.htm
SUPERCHARGER by Rynhart R&D - One that didn't make it into production.
The facts
Any owner of a Hatz powered diesel motorcycle would have been
overjoyed at the prospect of being able to supercharge their
machine. This looked very much as if it would be possible what
with the progress made by Irelands Rynhart R&D in this field. An
article detailing this companies development work up until 2002 is
available from the Bullet-in magazine(see links page under
literature), available on the internet (.pdf format).
Unfortunately things have taken a turn for the worse over the last
year or so. Derek Rynhart told this site that he had been forced to
call it a day and wind his company up due to the fact that his
superchargers were too good. Combustion pressures of the Hatz 1B30
are 55bar but Rynharts supercharger put these up to 100bar which
resulted in four broken crankshafts. The superchargers were O.K.
on the bigger 1B40 engines but still there were problems. The
engines fuel pumps could not generate enough pressure to get the
diesel into the chambers.
It was with these problems in mind that Hatz told Rynhart they
were not prepared to upgrade all of their engines to take account
of the super chargers capabilities. Given that Rynhart managed to
more than double the BHP of the 1B30, this is a shame for riders
who ride 1B30 Hatz engined bikes. No doubt there are more details
that may come out in time but those above give the main reasons why
we will see no supercharged hatz motorcycles in the near future.
A Rynhart R&D Supercharger fitted to a Hatz-1B30-powered Royal Enfield.
This Hatz sure looks mean with that supercharger on.
http://www.peace65.freeserve.co.uk/Pictures/diesel.htm
The trailer to the movie 'The World's Fastest Indian'. [Catch-all] -
GEA - gormfach@gmail.com @ 11:24:58 PM
The world's fastest Indian
The trailer to the movie 'The World's Fastest Indian'. Starring Sir Anthony Hopkins, it recounts the true story of Kiwi Burt Munro, who in 1967 went to the salt flats of Utah and set a new motorcycle speed record. more>>
--
Robt Mann
Mulgoon Professor emeritus of Environmental Studies, U of Auckland
consultant stirrer & motorcyclist
P O Box 28878, Remuera, Auckland 1005, New Zealand (9) 524 2949 Robt Mann
http://www.kuratrading.com/HTMLArticles/writings.htm
The trailer to the movie 'The World's Fastest Indian'. Starring Sir Anthony Hopkins, it recounts the true story of Kiwi Burt Munro, who in 1967 went to the salt flats of Utah and set a new motorcycle speed record. more>>
--
Robt Mann
Mulgoon Professor emeritus of Environmental Studies, U of Auckland
consultant stirrer & motorcyclist
P O Box 28878, Remuera, Auckland 1005, New Zealand (9) 524 2949 Robt Mann
http://www.kuratrading.com/HTMLArticles/writings.htm
Restricted only to the corporate world? I doubt it. And don't just think of govt bureaucracies either - what about churches??
R
Working to live? Seems you are not alone
http://theage.com.au/text/articles/2005/08/20/1124435150863.html
August 20 2005
By Nick O'malley
BORED by meaningless work, management jargon, memos and meetings, a new type of slacker has emerged from the professional classes - the actively disengaged.
Rather than quitting and moving to the coast, this species hides in the ghettos of the corporate world, avoiding work where possible and putting up with the drudgery so they can bank their pay cheque.
These time servers have a new hero in Corinne Maier, the French author of Hello Laziness, an angry manifesto against modern working life.
The book, published in France as Bonjour Paresse, was outsold there only by The Da Vinci Code last year.
"In the biggest companies seek out the most useless positions: those in consultancy, appraisal, research and study. The more useless your position, the less possible it will be to assess your 'contribution to the firms assets'," instructs Maier, who also works as an economist for the state-owned Electricit *aace de France.
Once safely out of sight, she advises, "avoid all change". "Only the most visible managers are let go."
Hello Laziness: Why Hard Work Doesn't Pay will be released in Australia next month. Maier argues the modern corporation is a stultifying beast that demands everything and returns little. You owe it nothing but your time, she says.
The malaise she identifies is as much Australian as French, says Carol Royal, a senior lecturer at the University of New South Wales' School of Organisation and Management. Consultant Tim Orton says all large organisations must have departments that contribute nothing to the core of the business — they neither make nor sell things — but are vital nonetheless.
Ironically, the book might have sunk without a trace had Maier's employer not taken legal action against her for "spreading gangrene through the system".
Le Monde picked up the story and the book's success was sealed. The legal action was quietly dropped. So why, asked one journalist, has she not quit her job? "I stay only because it makes my boss very angry."
R
Working to live? Seems you are not alone
http://theage.com.au/text/articles/2005/08/20/1124435150863.html
August 20 2005
By Nick O'malley
BORED by meaningless work, management jargon, memos and meetings, a new type of slacker has emerged from the professional classes - the actively disengaged.
Rather than quitting and moving to the coast, this species hides in the ghettos of the corporate world, avoiding work where possible and putting up with the drudgery so they can bank their pay cheque.
These time servers have a new hero in Corinne Maier, the French author of Hello Laziness, an angry manifesto against modern working life.
The book, published in France as Bonjour Paresse, was outsold there only by The Da Vinci Code last year.
"In the biggest companies seek out the most useless positions: those in consultancy, appraisal, research and study. The more useless your position, the less possible it will be to assess your 'contribution to the firms assets'," instructs Maier, who also works as an economist for the state-owned Electricit *aace de France.
Once safely out of sight, she advises, "avoid all change". "Only the most visible managers are let go."
Hello Laziness: Why Hard Work Doesn't Pay will be released in Australia next month. Maier argues the modern corporation is a stultifying beast that demands everything and returns little. You owe it nothing but your time, she says.
The malaise she identifies is as much Australian as French, says Carol Royal, a senior lecturer at the University of New South Wales' School of Organisation and Management. Consultant Tim Orton says all large organisations must have departments that contribute nothing to the core of the business — they neither make nor sell things — but are vital nonetheless.
Ironically, the book might have sunk without a trace had Maier's employer not taken legal action against her for "spreading gangrene through the system".
Le Monde picked up the story and the book's success was sealed. The legal action was quietly dropped. So why, asked one journalist, has she not quit her job? "I stay only because it makes my boss very angry."
08/20/05
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20050813.WATER13/BNPrint/th
eglobeandmail/Email
AND ANOTHER THING. . .
Some things about this city, we've discovered, really bug people.
By DIANNE RINEHART
Saturday, August 13, 2005
Updated at 3:38 PM EDT
Water torture
Waiters in Toronto have water on the brain these days. Selling bottles of
chichi water produces a higher sale per table, which the boss likes, and a
bigger tip when their 15 per cent is calculated.
So there are incentives for them to tow the water line -- that is, bottled
water is cleaner, classier and tastier. Not that they are alone in this
belief. Starting four years ago, after Walkerton, the city began running a
water education campaign touting the safety of water flowing out of the tap
to counteract the perception that tap water is fit only for goldfish. The
latest print and TTC shelter ads are running this month.
"A certain segment of the population, younger people, are distrustful of
drinking water, or they are on the go all the time and they want the
convenience of bottled water," said Paulette den Elzen, senior
communications co-ordinator for the city's water department.
Little do bottled-water fans know that about 40 per cent of all bottled
water is simply retreated tap water. Or that some sparkling spring waters
get their fizz from a carbonator, and bottled waters often lose out in taste
and contaminant tests to mere municipal water.
But why let facts dampen the dream of the "Big Four" bottled water companies
-- Nestle, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola and Danone -- which magically market water as,
well, water and guzzle back their share of this estimated $35-billion-a-year
business?
Take a water bug of a waiter at Little Italy's Giancarlo Trattoria, for
example. When we ask for tap water, he insistently preaches about their
lovely bottled waters. We persist. Attitude emerges -- a suggestion,
perhaps, that we are not sufficiently refined and need to be educated.
Does it matter that we prefer municipal water? Is he worried other diners
will be offended by the sight of a jug? Or is he so crass and shortsighted
that he would alienate repeat customers over a bottle of water? Contrast
that to the Miller Tavern, where waiters bring pre-chilled flasks of tap
water with lime, on arrival.
Perhaps the measure of a fine restaurant, other than its cuisine, is its
wine -- not water -- list along with its courteous servers.
Some more facts for the waiter's water table: A World Wildlife Fund 2001
study found: "Bottled water may be no safer or healthier than tap water in
many countries, while it sells for up to 1,000 times the price."
(A U.S. Natural Resources Defence Council study cited by the Polaris
Institute found bottled water was priced from 240 to 10,000 times more than
tap water.)
In blind taste tests, Hamilton and New York City waters, among others, beat
out best-selling bottled waters.
Bottled water is not necessarily purer. Laboratory tests commissioned by The
Globe and Mail in 2000 found that five of 11 brands exhibited higher levels
of bacteria than a sample of Toronto tap water (though they still fell
within federal drinking-water guidelines).
Tap water is tested every day and the results are posted in an annual report
on the Web (http://www.city.toronto.on.ca/water), though the city hopes to
post results more often in the future. Bottled water has to meet the same
federal requirements, but Polaris found Canadian bottling plants are
inspected by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, on average, only once
every three years.
And where do the 1.5 million tons of plastic used in water bottling end up?
In Toronto, you'll see those pesky plastics nestling on street curbs and
lawns and overflowing from trash cans on city streets and at sporting
events.
From there, they may be sent to sorter plants to ensure they are recycled or
they may slip through (along with bottles in home trash) to be trucked to
Michigan dumps, all at taxpayers' expense.
Do we really want to set the precedent that we must pay big corporations in
order to get clean water?
Sure, put bottled waters on the menu for those who prefer them. But in the
future I'll be eating only at restaurants that also happily offer water on
tap.
© Copyright 2005 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.
eglobeandmail/Email
AND ANOTHER THING. . .
Some things about this city, we've discovered, really bug people.
By DIANNE RINEHART
Saturday, August 13, 2005
Updated at 3:38 PM EDT
Water torture
Waiters in Toronto have water on the brain these days. Selling bottles of
chichi water produces a higher sale per table, which the boss likes, and a
bigger tip when their 15 per cent is calculated.
So there are incentives for them to tow the water line -- that is, bottled
water is cleaner, classier and tastier. Not that they are alone in this
belief. Starting four years ago, after Walkerton, the city began running a
water education campaign touting the safety of water flowing out of the tap
to counteract the perception that tap water is fit only for goldfish. The
latest print and TTC shelter ads are running this month.
"A certain segment of the population, younger people, are distrustful of
drinking water, or they are on the go all the time and they want the
convenience of bottled water," said Paulette den Elzen, senior
communications co-ordinator for the city's water department.
Little do bottled-water fans know that about 40 per cent of all bottled
water is simply retreated tap water. Or that some sparkling spring waters
get their fizz from a carbonator, and bottled waters often lose out in taste
and contaminant tests to mere municipal water.
But why let facts dampen the dream of the "Big Four" bottled water companies
-- Nestle, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola and Danone -- which magically market water as,
well, water and guzzle back their share of this estimated $35-billion-a-year
business?
Take a water bug of a waiter at Little Italy's Giancarlo Trattoria, for
example. When we ask for tap water, he insistently preaches about their
lovely bottled waters. We persist. Attitude emerges -- a suggestion,
perhaps, that we are not sufficiently refined and need to be educated.
Does it matter that we prefer municipal water? Is he worried other diners
will be offended by the sight of a jug? Or is he so crass and shortsighted
that he would alienate repeat customers over a bottle of water? Contrast
that to the Miller Tavern, where waiters bring pre-chilled flasks of tap
water with lime, on arrival.
Perhaps the measure of a fine restaurant, other than its cuisine, is its
wine -- not water -- list along with its courteous servers.
Some more facts for the waiter's water table: A World Wildlife Fund 2001
study found: "Bottled water may be no safer or healthier than tap water in
many countries, while it sells for up to 1,000 times the price."
(A U.S. Natural Resources Defence Council study cited by the Polaris
Institute found bottled water was priced from 240 to 10,000 times more than
tap water.)
In blind taste tests, Hamilton and New York City waters, among others, beat
out best-selling bottled waters.
Bottled water is not necessarily purer. Laboratory tests commissioned by The
Globe and Mail in 2000 found that five of 11 brands exhibited higher levels
of bacteria than a sample of Toronto tap water (though they still fell
within federal drinking-water guidelines).
Tap water is tested every day and the results are posted in an annual report
on the Web (http://www.city.toronto.on.ca/water), though the city hopes to
post results more often in the future. Bottled water has to meet the same
federal requirements, but Polaris found Canadian bottling plants are
inspected by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, on average, only once
every three years.
And where do the 1.5 million tons of plastic used in water bottling end up?
In Toronto, you'll see those pesky plastics nestling on street curbs and
lawns and overflowing from trash cans on city streets and at sporting
events.
From there, they may be sent to sorter plants to ensure they are recycled or
they may slip through (along with bottles in home trash) to be trucked to
Michigan dumps, all at taxpayers' expense.
Do we really want to set the precedent that we must pay big corporations in
order to get clean water?
Sure, put bottled waters on the menu for those who prefer them. But in the
future I'll be eating only at restaurants that also happily offer water on
tap.
© Copyright 2005 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Yo, Ho, Ho And Rum Based Beverages
BY DAVE BARRY
(This classic Dave Barry column was originally published on Jan. 30,
2000.)
I am a hearty seafaring type of individual, so recently I spent a
week faring around the sea aboard the largest cruise ship in the
world that has not yet hit an iceberg. It is called the Voyager, and
it weighs 140,000 tons, which is approximately the amount I ate in
desserts alone.
The Voyager sails out of Miami every week carrying 3,200 passengers
determined to relax or die trying. The ship has (I am not making any
of this up) an ice-skating rink, a large theater, a shopping mall, a
rock-climbing wall and a nine-hole miniature golf course. We have
come a long way indeed from the days when the Pilgrims crossed the
Atlantic aboard the Mayflower, which - hard as it is to imagine today
- had no skating rink and only four golf holes.
While aboard the ship, we passengers engaged in a wide range of
traditional cruise-ship activities, including eating breakfast,
snacking, eating lunch, drinking complex rum-based beverages while
lying on deck absorbing solar radiation until we glowed like exit
signs, snacking some more, eating dinner, eating more snacks and
passing out face-down in the pate section of the midnight buffet.
Needless to say I did not attempt to climb the rock wall, which is
good because the resulting disaster would have made for a chilling
newspaper headline:
CRUISE SHIP EVACUATED AS MAN FALLS, EXPLODES;
HUNDREDS SPATTERED BY SEMIDIGESTED SHRIMP
The only stressful part of our shipboard routine was looking at
photographs of ourselves. When you're on a cruise, photographers
constantly pop up and take pictures of you; they put these on display
in hopes that you'll buy them as souvenirs. At night, my wife and I
would join the throng of passengers looking through the photos,
hoping to find a nice flattering shot of ourselves, and then suddenly
- YIKES - we'd be confronted with this terrifying image of two
bloated, bright-red sluglike bodies with our faces. Jabba and Mrs.
Hutt go to sea!
When every passenger had attained roughly the same body weight as a
Buick Riviera, the ship would stop at a Caribbean island, and the
passengers would waddle ashore to experience the traditional local
culture, by which I mean shop for European jewelry and watches. I
frankly don't know why it makes economic sense for a tourist from
Montana to fly to Miami, get on a ship and sail to Jamaica for the
purpose of purchasing a watch made in Switzerland, but apparently it
does, because shopping is very important to cruise passengers. If
these people ever get to Mars, they WILL expect to find jewelry
stores.
The other thing you do when your ship is in port is take guided tours
to Local Points of Interest. Under international law, every tour
group must include one tourist who has the IQ of sod. In Jamaica, we
toured a plantation, and our group included a woman whose brain
operated on some kind of tape delay, as we see from this typical
exchange between her and our guide:
GUIDE: These are banana plants, which produce bananas. You can see
the bananas growing on these banana plants.
WOMAN: (in a loud voice): What kind of plants are these?
GUIDE: Banana.
WOMAN: Huh! (To her husband
Frank, these are banana plants!
The woman repeated virtually everything the guide said to Frank. One
day he will kill her with a kitchen appliance.
But I am proud to say that winner of the award for Biggest Tourist
Doofus was: me. What happened was, during the tour, a man
demonstrated how he could climb a coconut tree using only a small
rope made from twisted banana fibers. When he came down, he showed me
the rope, and I, out of politeness, pretended to be interested in it,
although in fact it was, basically, a rope. The man handed it to me
and suggested I might want to ''take it home to the kids.'' I frankly
doubted that any modern Nintendo-raised American child would be
thrilled by such a gift (''Look, Timmy! A rope!''). But I pretended
to be grateful. Then the man told me that such ropes USUALLY sell for
$15 (he did not say where), but he would let it go for $10. And so,
unable to figure out how to escape, I gave him $10. I imagine the
other plantation workers laughed far into the night when he told
them. (''He gave you $10 for the ROPE?'' ''Yes! He must be even
stupider than the tape-delay woman!'')
But don't get me wrong: I truly enjoyed the cruise. It was fun and
relaxing, and it gave me a rare chance, amid all the hustle and
bustle of my busy life, to pick up a substantial amount of body mass.
Cruising is also romantic, so let me just say this to you couples out
there: If you're looking for a way to rekindle the flame in your
relationship, I'll sell you my rope.
BY DAVE BARRY
(This classic Dave Barry column was originally published on Jan. 30,
2000.)
I am a hearty seafaring type of individual, so recently I spent a
week faring around the sea aboard the largest cruise ship in the
world that has not yet hit an iceberg. It is called the Voyager, and
it weighs 140,000 tons, which is approximately the amount I ate in
desserts alone.
The Voyager sails out of Miami every week carrying 3,200 passengers
determined to relax or die trying. The ship has (I am not making any
of this up) an ice-skating rink, a large theater, a shopping mall, a
rock-climbing wall and a nine-hole miniature golf course. We have
come a long way indeed from the days when the Pilgrims crossed the
Atlantic aboard the Mayflower, which - hard as it is to imagine today
- had no skating rink and only four golf holes.
While aboard the ship, we passengers engaged in a wide range of
traditional cruise-ship activities, including eating breakfast,
snacking, eating lunch, drinking complex rum-based beverages while
lying on deck absorbing solar radiation until we glowed like exit
signs, snacking some more, eating dinner, eating more snacks and
passing out face-down in the pate section of the midnight buffet.
Needless to say I did not attempt to climb the rock wall, which is
good because the resulting disaster would have made for a chilling
newspaper headline:
CRUISE SHIP EVACUATED AS MAN FALLS, EXPLODES;
HUNDREDS SPATTERED BY SEMIDIGESTED SHRIMP
The only stressful part of our shipboard routine was looking at
photographs of ourselves. When you're on a cruise, photographers
constantly pop up and take pictures of you; they put these on display
in hopes that you'll buy them as souvenirs. At night, my wife and I
would join the throng of passengers looking through the photos,
hoping to find a nice flattering shot of ourselves, and then suddenly
- YIKES - we'd be confronted with this terrifying image of two
bloated, bright-red sluglike bodies with our faces. Jabba and Mrs.
Hutt go to sea!
When every passenger had attained roughly the same body weight as a
Buick Riviera, the ship would stop at a Caribbean island, and the
passengers would waddle ashore to experience the traditional local
culture, by which I mean shop for European jewelry and watches. I
frankly don't know why it makes economic sense for a tourist from
Montana to fly to Miami, get on a ship and sail to Jamaica for the
purpose of purchasing a watch made in Switzerland, but apparently it
does, because shopping is very important to cruise passengers. If
these people ever get to Mars, they WILL expect to find jewelry
stores.
The other thing you do when your ship is in port is take guided tours
to Local Points of Interest. Under international law, every tour
group must include one tourist who has the IQ of sod. In Jamaica, we
toured a plantation, and our group included a woman whose brain
operated on some kind of tape delay, as we see from this typical
exchange between her and our guide:
GUIDE: These are banana plants, which produce bananas. You can see
the bananas growing on these banana plants.
WOMAN: (in a loud voice): What kind of plants are these?
GUIDE: Banana.
WOMAN: Huh! (To her husband
Frank, these are banana plants!The woman repeated virtually everything the guide said to Frank. One
day he will kill her with a kitchen appliance.
But I am proud to say that winner of the award for Biggest Tourist
Doofus was: me. What happened was, during the tour, a man
demonstrated how he could climb a coconut tree using only a small
rope made from twisted banana fibers. When he came down, he showed me
the rope, and I, out of politeness, pretended to be interested in it,
although in fact it was, basically, a rope. The man handed it to me
and suggested I might want to ''take it home to the kids.'' I frankly
doubted that any modern Nintendo-raised American child would be
thrilled by such a gift (''Look, Timmy! A rope!''). But I pretended
to be grateful. Then the man told me that such ropes USUALLY sell for
$15 (he did not say where), but he would let it go for $10. And so,
unable to figure out how to escape, I gave him $10. I imagine the
other plantation workers laughed far into the night when he told
them. (''He gave you $10 for the ROPE?'' ''Yes! He must be even
stupider than the tape-delay woman!'')
But don't get me wrong: I truly enjoyed the cruise. It was fun and
relaxing, and it gave me a rare chance, amid all the hustle and
bustle of my busy life, to pick up a substantial amount of body mass.
Cruising is also romantic, so let me just say this to you couples out
there: If you're looking for a way to rekindle the flame in your
relationship, I'll sell you my rope.
08/15/05
We are looking at schmaltz here - fw from Hadders [Catch-all] -
GEA - gormfach@gmail.com @ 10:24:50 PM
My question to all of you is: Would you have made the same choice?
At a fundraising dinner for a school that serves learning disabled children,
the father of one of the students delivered a speech that would never be
forgotten by all who attended.
After extolling the school and its dedicated staff, he offered question.
"When not interfered with by outside influences, everything nature does is
done with perfection. Yet my son, Shay, cannot learn things as other
children do. He cannot understand things as other children do.
Where is the natural order of things in my son?"
The audience was stilled by the query.
The father continued. "I believe, that when a child like Shay comes into
the world, an oportunity to realize true human nature presents itself, and
it comes, in the way other people treat that child."
Then he told the following story: Shay and his father had walked past a
park where some boys Shay knew were playing baseball.
Shay asked, "Do you think they'll let me play?"
Shay's father knew that most of the boys would not want someone like Shay
on their team, but the father also understood that if his son were allowed
to play, it would give him a much-needed sense of belonging.
Shay's father approached one of the boys on the field and asked if Shay
could play.
The boy looked around for guidance and, getting none, he took matters into
his own hands and said, "We're losing by six runs and the game is in the
eighth inning. I guess he can be on our team and we'll try to put him in to
bat in the ninth inning."
In the bottom of the eighth inning, Shay's team scored a few runs but was
still behind by three. In the top of the ninth inning, Shay put on glove
and played in the outfield.
Even though no hits came his way, he was obviously ecstatic just to be in
the game and on the field, grinning from ear to ear as his father waved to
him from the stands.
In the bottom of the ninth inning, Shay's team scored again. Now, with two
outs and the bases loaded, the potential winning run was on base and Shay
was scheduled to be next at bat.
Should they, at this juncture, let Shay bat and give away their chance to
win the game?
Surprisingly, Shay was given the bat. Everyone knew that a hit was all but
impossible 'cause Shay didn't even know how to hold the bat properly, much
less connect with the ball.
However, as Shay stepped up to the plate, the pitcher moved in a few steps
to lob the ball in softly so Shay could at least be able to make contact.
The first pitch came and Shay swung clumsily and missed.
The pitcher again took a few steps forward to toss the ball softly towards
Shay.
As the pitch came in, Shay swung at the ball and hit a slow ground ball
right back to the pitcher.
The pitcher picked up the soft grounder and could have easily thrown the
ball to the first baseman. Shay would have been out and that would have
been the end of the game.
Instead, the pitcher took the ball and turned and threw the ball on a high
arc to right field, far beyond the reach of the first baseman.
Everyone started yelling, "Shay, run to first! Run to first!"
Never in his life had Shay ever made it to first base. He scampered down
the baseline, wide-eyed and startled.
Everyone yelled, "Run to second, run to second!"
By the time Shay rounded first base, the right fielder had the ball.
He could have thrown the ball to the second-baseman for the tag, but he
understood the pitcher's intentions and intentionally threw the ball high
and far over the third-baseman's head.
Shay ran toward second base as the runners ahead of him deliriously circled
the bases toward home.
Shay reached second base, the opposing shortstop ran to him, turned him in
the direction of third base, and shouted, "Run to third!"
As Shay rounded third, the boys from both teams were screaming, "Shay, run
home!"
Shay ran to home, stepped on the plate, and was cheered as the hero who
hit the "grand slam" and won the game for his team.
"That day," said the father softly with tears now rolling down his face,
"the boys from both teams helped bring a piece of true love and humanity
to this world."
AND, NOW A LITTLE FOOTNOTE TO THIS STORY:
We all send thousands of jokes through the e-mail without a second thought,
but when it comes to sending messages about life choices, people think
twice about sharing.
The crude, vulgar, and often obscene pass freely through cyberspace, but
public discussion about decency is too often suppressed in our schools and
workplaces.
If you're thinking about forwarding this message, chances are that you're
probably sorting out the people on your address list that aren't the
"appropriate" ones to receive this type of message.
Well, the person who sent you this believes that we all can make a
difference.
We all have thousands of opportunities every single day to help realize
the "natural order of things."
So many seemingly trivial interactions between two people present us with a
choice:
Do we pass along a little spark of love and humanity or do we pass up that
opportunity, and leave the world a little bit colder in the process?
You now have two choices:
1. Delete
2. Forward
At a fundraising dinner for a school that serves learning disabled children,
the father of one of the students delivered a speech that would never be
forgotten by all who attended.
After extolling the school and its dedicated staff, he offered question.
"When not interfered with by outside influences, everything nature does is
done with perfection. Yet my son, Shay, cannot learn things as other
children do. He cannot understand things as other children do.
Where is the natural order of things in my son?"
The audience was stilled by the query.
The father continued. "I believe, that when a child like Shay comes into
the world, an oportunity to realize true human nature presents itself, and
it comes, in the way other people treat that child."
Then he told the following story: Shay and his father had walked past a
park where some boys Shay knew were playing baseball.
Shay asked, "Do you think they'll let me play?"
Shay's father knew that most of the boys would not want someone like Shay
on their team, but the father also understood that if his son were allowed
to play, it would give him a much-needed sense of belonging.
Shay's father approached one of the boys on the field and asked if Shay
could play.
The boy looked around for guidance and, getting none, he took matters into
his own hands and said, "We're losing by six runs and the game is in the
eighth inning. I guess he can be on our team and we'll try to put him in to
bat in the ninth inning."
In the bottom of the eighth inning, Shay's team scored a few runs but was
still behind by three. In the top of the ninth inning, Shay put on glove
and played in the outfield.
Even though no hits came his way, he was obviously ecstatic just to be in
the game and on the field, grinning from ear to ear as his father waved to
him from the stands.
In the bottom of the ninth inning, Shay's team scored again. Now, with two
outs and the bases loaded, the potential winning run was on base and Shay
was scheduled to be next at bat.
Should they, at this juncture, let Shay bat and give away their chance to
win the game?
Surprisingly, Shay was given the bat. Everyone knew that a hit was all but
impossible 'cause Shay didn't even know how to hold the bat properly, much
less connect with the ball.
However, as Shay stepped up to the plate, the pitcher moved in a few steps
to lob the ball in softly so Shay could at least be able to make contact.
The first pitch came and Shay swung clumsily and missed.
The pitcher again took a few steps forward to toss the ball softly towards
Shay.
As the pitch came in, Shay swung at the ball and hit a slow ground ball
right back to the pitcher.
The pitcher picked up the soft grounder and could have easily thrown the
ball to the first baseman. Shay would have been out and that would have
been the end of the game.
Instead, the pitcher took the ball and turned and threw the ball on a high
arc to right field, far beyond the reach of the first baseman.
Everyone started yelling, "Shay, run to first! Run to first!"
Never in his life had Shay ever made it to first base. He scampered down
the baseline, wide-eyed and startled.
Everyone yelled, "Run to second, run to second!"
By the time Shay rounded first base, the right fielder had the ball.
He could have thrown the ball to the second-baseman for the tag, but he
understood the pitcher's intentions and intentionally threw the ball high
and far over the third-baseman's head.
Shay ran toward second base as the runners ahead of him deliriously circled
the bases toward home.
Shay reached second base, the opposing shortstop ran to him, turned him in
the direction of third base, and shouted, "Run to third!"
As Shay rounded third, the boys from both teams were screaming, "Shay, run
home!"
Shay ran to home, stepped on the plate, and was cheered as the hero who
hit the "grand slam" and won the game for his team.
"That day," said the father softly with tears now rolling down his face,
"the boys from both teams helped bring a piece of true love and humanity
to this world."
AND, NOW A LITTLE FOOTNOTE TO THIS STORY:
We all send thousands of jokes through the e-mail without a second thought,
but when it comes to sending messages about life choices, people think
twice about sharing.
The crude, vulgar, and often obscene pass freely through cyberspace, but
public discussion about decency is too often suppressed in our schools and
workplaces.
If you're thinking about forwarding this message, chances are that you're
probably sorting out the people on your address list that aren't the
"appropriate" ones to receive this type of message.
Well, the person who sent you this believes that we all can make a
difference.
We all have thousands of opportunities every single day to help realize
the "natural order of things."
So many seemingly trivial interactions between two people present us with a
choice:
Do we pass along a little spark of love and humanity or do we pass up that
opportunity, and leave the world a little bit colder in the process?
You now have two choices:
1. Delete
2. Forward
08/13/05
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a complicated term, or set of ideas, one that has only emerged as an area of academic study since the mid-1980s. Postmodernism is hard to define, because it is a concept that appears in a wide variety of disciplines or areas of study, including art, architecture, music, film, literature, sociology, communications, fashion, and technology. It's hard to locate it temporally or historically, because it's not clear exactly when postmodernism begins.
Perhaps the easiest way to start thinking about post-modernism is by thinking about modernism, the movement from which postmodernism seems to grow or emerge. Modernism has two facets, or two modes of definition, both of which are relevant to understanding postmodernism.
The first facet or definition of modernism comes from the aesthetic movement broadly labeled "modernism." This movement is roughly coterminous with twentieth century Western ideas about art (though traces of it in emergent forms can be found in the nineteenth century as well). Modernism, as you probably know, is the movement in visual arts, music, literature, and drama which rejected the old Victorian standards of how art should be made, consumed, and what it should mean. In the period of "high modernism," from around 1910 to 1930, the major figures of modernism literature helped radically to redefine what poetry and fiction could be and do: figures like Woolf, Joyce, Eliot, Pound, Stevens, Proust, Mallarme, Kafka, and Rilke are considered the founders of twentieth-century modernism.
From a literary perspective, the main characteristics of modernism include:
1. an emphasis on impressionism and subjectivity in writing (and in visual arts as well); an emphasis on HOW seeing (or reading or perception itself) takes place, rather than on WHAT is perceived. An example of this would be stream-of-consciousness writing.
2. a movement away from the apparent objectivity provided by omniscient third-person narrators, fixed narrative points of view, and clear-cut moral positions. Faulkner's multiply-narrated stories are an example of this aspect of modernism.
3. a blurring of distinctions between genres, so that poetry seems more documentary (as in T.S. Eliot or ee cummings) and prose seems more poetic (as in Woolf or Joyce).
4. an emphasis on fragmented forms, discontinuous narratives, and random-seeming collages of different materials.
5. a tendency toward reflexivity, or self-consciousness, about the production of the work of art, so that each piece calls attention to its own status as a production, as something constructed and consumed in particular ways.
6. a rejection of elaborate formal aesthetics in favor of minimalist designs (as in the poetry of William Carlos Williams) and a rejection, in large part, of formal aesthetic theories, in favor of spontaneity and discovery in creation.
7. A rejection of the distinction between "high" and "low" or popular culture, both in choice of materials used to produce art and in methods of displaying, distributing, and consuming art.
Postmodernism, like modernism, follows most of these same ideas, rejecting boundaries between high and low forms of art, rejecting rigid genre distinctions, emphasiz-ing pastiche, parody, bricolage, irony, and playfulness. Postmodern art (and thought) favors reflexivity and self-consciousness, fragmentation and discontinuity (especially in narrative structures), ambiguity, simultaneity, and an emphasis on the destructured, decentered, dehumanized subject.
But--while postmodernism seems very much like modernism in these ways, it differs from modernism in its attitude toward a lot of these trends. Modernism, for example, tends to present a fragmented view of human subjectivity and history (think of The Wasteland, for instance, or of Woolf's To the Lighthouse), but presents that fragmentation as something tragic, something to be lamented and mourned as a loss. Many modernist works try to uphold the idea that works of art can provide the unity, coherence, and meaning which has been lost in most of modern life; art will do what other human institutions fail to do. Postmodernism, in contrast, doesn't lament the idea of fragmentation, provisionality, or incoherence, but rather celebrates that. The world is meaningless? Let's not pretend that art can make meaning then, let's just play with nonsense.
Another way of looking at the relation between modernism and postmodernism helps to clarify some of these distinctions. According to Frederic Jameson, modernism and postmodernism are cultural formations which accompany particular stages of capitalism. Jameson outlines three primary phases of capitalism which dictate particular cultural practices (including what kind of art and literature is produced). The first is market capitalism, which occurred in the eighteenth through the late nineteenth centuries in Western Europe, England, and the United States (and all their spheres of influence). This first phase is associated with particular technological developments, namely, the steam-driven motor, and with a particular kind of aesthetics, namely, realism. The second phase occurred from the late nineteenth century until the mid-twentieth century (about WWII); this phase, monopoly capitalism, is associated with electric and internal combustion motors, and with modernism. The third, the phase we're in now, is multinational or consumer capitalism (with the emphasis placed on marketing, selling, and consuming commodities, not on producing them), associated with nuclear and electronic technologies, and correlated with postmodernism.
Like Jameson's characterization of postmodernism in terms of modes of production and technologies, the second facet, or definition, of postmodernism comes more from history and sociology than from literature or art history. This approach defines postmodernism as the name of an entire social formation, or set of social/historical attitudes; more precisely,this approach contrasts "postmodernity" with "modernity," rather than "postmodernism" with "modernism."
What's the difference? "Modernism" generally refers to the broad aesthetic movements of the twentieth century; "modernity" refers to a set of philosophical, political, and ethical ideas which provide the basis for the aesthetic aspect of modernism. "Modernity" is older than "modernism;" the label "modern," first articulated in nineteenth-century sociology, was meant to distinguish the present era from the previous one, which was labeled "antiquity." Scholars are always debating when exactly the "modern" period began, and how to distinguish between what is modern and what is not modern; it seems like the modern period starts earlier and earlier every time historians look at it. But generally, the "modern" era is associated with the European Enlightenment, which begins roughly in the middle of the eighteenth century. (Other historians trace elements of enlightenment thought back to the Renaissance or earlier, and one could argue that Enlightenment thinking begins with the eighteenth century. I usually date "modern" from 1750, if only because I got my Ph.D. from a program at Stanford called "Modern Thought and Literature," and that program focused on works written after 1750).
The basic ideas of the Enlightenment are roughly the same as the basic ideas of humanism. Jane Flax's article gives a good summary of these ideas or premises (on p. 41). I'll add a few things to her list.
1. There is a stable, coherent, knowable self. This self is conscious, rational, autonomous, and universal--no physical conditions or differences substantially affect how this self operates.
2. This self knows itself and the world through reason, or rationality, posited as the highest form of mental functioning, and the only objective form.
3. The mode of knowing produced by the objective rational self is "science," which can provide universal truths about the world, regardless of the individual status of the knower.
4. The knowledge produced by science is "truth," and is eternal.
5. The knowledge/truth produced by science (by the rational objective knowing self) will always lead toward progress and perfection. All human institutions and practices can be analyzed by science (reason/objectivity) and improved.
6. Reason is the ultimate judge of what is true, and therefore of what is right, and what is good (what is legal and what is ethical). Freedom consists of obedience to the laws that conform to the knowledge discovered by reason.
7. In a world governed by reason, the true will always be the same as the good and the right (and the beautiful); there can be no conflict between what is true and what is right (etc.).
8. Science thus stands as the paradigm for any and all socially useful forms of knowledge. Science is neutral and objective; scientists, those who produce scientific knowledge through their unbiased rational capacities, must be free to follow the laws of reason, and not be motivated by other concerns (such as money or power).
9. Language, or the mode of expression used in producing and disseminating knowledge, must be rational also. To be rational, language must be transparent; it must function only to represent the real/perceivable world which the rational mind observes. There must be a firm and objective connection between the objects of perception and the words used to name them (between signifier and signified).
These are some of the fundamental premises of humanism, or of modernism. They serve--as you can probably tell--to justify and explain virtually all of our social structures and institutions, including democracy, law, science, ethics, and aesthetics.
Modernity is fundamentally about order: about rationality and rationalization, creating order out of chaos. The assumption is that creating more rationality is conducive to creating more order, and that the more ordered a society is, the better it will function (the more rationally it will function). Because modernity is about the pursuit of ever-increasing levels of order, modern societies constantly are on guard against anything and everything labeled as "disorder," which might disrupt order. Thus modern societies rely on continually establishing a binary opposition between "order" and "disorder," so that they can assert the superiority of "order." But to do this, they have to have things that represent "disorder"--modern societies thus continually have to create/construct "disorder." In western culture, this disorder becomes "the other"--defined in relation to other binary oppositions. Thus anything non-white, non-male, non-heterosexual, non-hygienic, non-rational, (etc.) becomes part of "disorder," and has to be eliminated from the ordered, rational modern society.
The ways that modern societies go about creating categories labeled as "order" or "disorder" have to do with the effort to achieve stability. Francois Lyotard (the theorist whose works Sarup describes in his article on postmodernism) equates that stability with the idea of "totality," or a totalized system (think here of Derrida's idea of "totality" as the wholeness or completeness of a system). Totality, and stability, and order, Lyotard argues, are maintained in modern societies through the means of "grand narratives" or "master narratives," which are stories a culture tells itself about its practices and beliefs. A "grand narrative" in American culture might be the story that democracy is the most enlightened (rational) form of government, and that democracy can and will lead to universal human happiness. Every belief system or ideology has its grand narratives, according to Lyotard; for Marxism, for instance, the "grand narrative" is the idea that capitalism will collapse in on itself and a utopian socialist world will evolve. You might think of grand narratives as a kind of meta-theory, or meta-ideology, that is, an ideology that explains an ideology (as with Marxism); a story that is told to explain the belief systems that exist.
Lyotard argues that all aspects of modern societies, including science as the primary form of knowledge, depend on these grand narratives. Postmodernism then is the critique of grand narratives, the awareness that such narratives serve to mask the contradictions and instabilities that are inherent in any social organization or practice. In other words, every attempt to create "order" always demands the creation of an equal amount of "disorder," but a "grand narrative" masks the constructedness of these categories by explaining that "disorder" REALLY IS chaotic and bad, and that "order" REALLY IS rational and good.
Postmodernism, in rejecting grand narratives, favors "mini-narratives," stories that explain small practices, local events, rather than large-scale universal or global concepts. Postmodern "mini-narratives" are always situational, provisional, contingent, and temporary, making no claim to universality, truth, reason, or stability.
Another aspect of Enlightenment thought--the final of my 9 points--is the idea that language is transparent, that words serve only as representations of thoughts or things, and don't have any function beyond that. Modern societies depend on the idea that signifiers always point to signifieds, and that reality resides in signifieds. In postmodernism, however, there are only signifiers. The idea of any stable or permanent reality disappears, and with it the idea of signifieds that signifiers point to. Rather, for postmodern societies, there are only surfaces, without depth; only signifiers, with no signifieds.
Another way of saying this, according to Jean Baudrillard, is that in postmodern society there are no originals, only copies--or what he calls "simulacra." You might think, for example, about painting or sculpture, where there is an original work (by Van Gogh, for instance), and there might also be thousands of copies, but the original is the one with the highest value (particularly monetary value). Contrast that with cds or music recordings, where there is no "original," as in painting--no recording that is hung on a wall, or kept in a vault; rather, there are only copies, by the millions, that are all the same, and all sold for (approximately) the same amount of money. Another version of Baudrillard's "simulacrum" would be the concept of virtual reality, a reality created by simulation, for which there is no original. This is particularly evident in computer games/simulations--think of Sim City, Sim Ant, etc.
Finally, postmodernism is concerned with questions of the organization of knowledge. In modern societies, knowledge was equated with science, and was contrasted to narrative; science was good knowledge, and narrative was bad, primitive, irrational (and thus associated with women, children, primitives, and insane people). Knowledge, however, was good for its own sake; one gained knowledge, via education, in order to be knowledgeable in general, to become an educated person. This is the ideal of the liberal arts education. In a postmodern society, however, knowledge becomes functional--you learn things, not to know them, but to use that knowledge. As Sarup points out (p. 13
, educational policy today puts emphasis on skills and training, rather than on a vague humanist ideal of education in general. This is particularly acute for English majors. "What will you DO with your degree?"
Not only is knowledge in postmodern societies charac-terized by its utility, but knowledge is also distributed, stored, and arranged differently in postmodern societies than in modern ones. Specifically, the advent of electronic computer technologies has revolutionized the modes of knowledge production, distribution, and consumption in our society (indeed, some might argue that postmodern-ism is best described by, and correlated with, the emergence of computer technology, starting in the 1960s, as the dominant force in all aspects of social life). In post-modern societies, anything which is not able to be translated into a form recognizable and storable by a computer--i.e. anything that's not digitizable--will cease to be knowledge. In this paradigm, the opposite of "knowledge" is not "ignorance," as it is the modern/ humanist paradigm, but rather "noise." Anything that doesn't qualify as a kind of knowledge is "noise," is something that is not recognizable as anything within this system.
Lyotard says (and this is what Sarup spends a lot of time explaining) that the important question for postmodern societies is who decides what knowledge is (and what "noise" is), and who knows what needs to be decided. Such decisions about knowledge don't involve the old modern/humanist qualifications: for example, to assess knowledge as truth (its technical quality), or as goodness or justice (its ethical quality) or as beauty (its aesthetic quality). Rather, Lyotard argues, knowledge follows the paradigm of a language game, as laid out by Wittgenstein. I won't go into the details of Wittgenstein's ideas of language games; Sarup gives a pretty good explanation of this concept in his article, for those who are interested.
There are lots of questions to be asked about postmodernism, and one of the most important is about the politics involved--or, more simply, is this movement toward fragmentation, provisionality, performance, and instability something good or something bad? There are various answers to that; in our contemporary society, however, the desire to return to the pre-postmodern era (modern/humanist/Enlightenment thinking) tends to get associated with conservative political, religious, and philosophical groups. In fact, one of the consequences of postmodernism seems to be the rise of religious fundamentalism, as a form of resistance to the questioning of the "grand narratives" of religious truth. This is perhaps most obvious (to us in the US, anyway) in muslim fundamentalism in the Middle East, which ban postmodern books--like Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses --because they deconstruct such grand narratives.
This association between the rejection of postmodern-ism and conservatism or fundamentalism may explain in part why the postmodern avowal of fragmentation and multiplicity tends to attract liberals and radicals. This is why, in part, feminist theorists have found postmodernism so attractive, as Sarup, Flax, and Butler all point out.
On another level, however, postmodernism seems to offer some alternatives to joining the global culture of consumption, where commodities and forms of knowledge are offered by forces far beyond any individual's control. These alternatives focus on thinking of any and all action (or social struggle) as necessarily local, limited, and partial--but nonetheless effective. By discarding "grand narratives" (like the liberation of the entire working class) and focusing on specific local goals (such as improved day care centers for working mothers in your own community), postmodernist politics offers a way to theorize local situations as fluid and unpredictable, though influenced by global trends. Hence the motto for postmodern politics might well be "think globally, act locally"--and don't worry about any grand scheme or master plan.
All materials on this site are written by, and remain the property of, Dr. Mary Klages, Associate Professor, English Department, University of Colorado, Boulder. You are welcome to quote from this essay, or to link this page to your own site, with proper attribution. For information about citing electronic sources, see English 2010 Home Page
Last revision: December 3, 1997
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The Gospel and Postmodernism
©2000 by Ross P. Rohde.
Published in www.postmission.com by kind permission
For more papers on Postmodernity and Christian Mission, go to http://www.postmission.com/
A comment that is often heard in missiological circles is that Europe and even the United States is becoming post-Christian. Some go so far as to state that Europe is already post-Christian. I think this statement carries a lot of truth. However, I think this statement tends to mask the real issue. I would suggest that the real issue in not post-Christendom but postmodernism. The western world is undergoing a rapid cultural shift away from a previously held worldview. This shift is affecting the way religion and Christianity are perceived by those who have undergone this shift of worldview or hold some aspects of the new worldview. It is this shift in worldview and the Church’s failure to understand and adjust to this new way of perceiving reality that is to a large measure, causing the rejection of organized religion and more specifically Evangelical Christianity in Europe and to a lesser extent in the United States.
One of the difficulties of this shift in world view is that it is has caused significant cultural change that does not have the usual earmarks of a different culture. Western postmodernists look, dress, and speak just like western modernists. They eat in the same restaurants, work in the same offices, and their children go to the same schools. In other words they seem to be just like us yet at the level of values and how they perceive their world they are very different.
Because of this difficulty to easily discern this subtle yet profound cultural shift, we may very well be missing a tremendous opportunity. While this shift in worldview may tend to leave those of us with the old worldview bewildered and even angry, it has some elements to it that bode well for the Christian faith if we deal with these elements strategically and wisely. One of the great strengths of Christianity has been its ability to adjust to different cultures and worldviews without losing its essence. I would suggest that we need to look at the new worldview of postmodernism from a strategic point of view and ask ourselves, how can Christianity be expressed in this new culture without losing its fundamental essence? We also need to ask ourselves, where are positive points of contact within the postmodern worldview that God can use to make contact with these people for Christ?
A Discussion with Paco
On Saturday February 26, 2000 I had a conversation with Paco Lledo, a non–Christian friend of mine in Madrid which started me thinking about postmodernism and its strategic ramifications in the preaching of the Gospel. Paco was telling me about a book he had just finished about Mani the founder of the ancient religious movement that later became the Assassins. Paco related how Mani did not use his political privileges, given to him by the Persian King, to teach his “truth”. He mentioned that Mani did not teach his doctrine as exclusive but as inclusive. He never belittled other religions, but rather portrayed himself as one who could give further truth. He talked about how Mani tried to get people to “find the light within”. I asked Paco how he felt personally about these things.
In general Paco related that he was favorably disposed towards Mani because he was not argumentative, but was humble, inclusive and tried to put people in touch with the “light that was within”. I asked Paco how he responded to modern day religion. He said he was a non-practicing Catholic. He did not like the history of the Catholic Church in Spain, particularly their abuse of power and the use of coercion to make people conform to their belief system. He did not believe they had an exclusive spiritual truth that was unavailable to others apart from the Catholic Church. He related that he believed that his own experience told him that there was “something more” and that whatever it was, he wanted it. This something more should impact his life in practical ways. I asked him how he would find it? He said that when he saw someone who was displaying something spiritual in his or her life “that person can be a spiritual guide for me.” At that point I summarized what I had heard to make sure I was getting the fine points. I expressed his views as being postmodern. He was familiar with this term and agreed with me that his point of view was postmodern. He also agreed with my summary of his views. Following is my summary of Paco’s views:
- He does not appreciate the abuse of power or influence in the name of religion.
- He is sensitive to the hypocrisy of those who claim religious truth.
- He does not believe in exclusive truth.
- He does not believe that one religion has all the answers.
- Argument against another religion, no matter what it is, offends him.
- He defines himself as a non-practicing Catholic. However “Catholic” is still part of his cultural heritage and his religious definition for himself.
- He believes that there is something beyond what we normally experience.
- He believes this “something more” is spiritual.
- He believes that he can find this something more by looking for the light within.
- Spirituality must have practical application in life.
- He would be open to someone being his spiritual guide.
- One gains the right to be his spiritual guide by invitation.
- One also gains this right to be his spiritual guide by demonstrating an undefined spirituality in their own life.
Bad News and Good News
For me as an Evangelical there are some disturbing concepts in Paco’s understanding of truth. His understanding of reality does not fit my Biblical or cultural worldview. Among some of the elements I find disturbing are:
- He does not believe in exclusive truth.
- He does not believe that one religion has all the answers.
- Argument against another religion, no matter what it is, offends him.
- He defines himself as a non-practicing Catholic. However “Catholic” is still part of his cultural heritage and his religious definition for himself.
- He believes that he can find spirituality by looking for the light within.
As an Evangelical I believe in both objective and exclusive truth. I believe the Bible is God’s revelation to mankind; it is true and furthermore Jesus is the ultimate expression of truth. He said I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. I believe this truth to be exclusive, because as Jesus said, no one comes to the Father but by Me. Since no one comes to the Father but by Jesus I believe we have exclusive answers to ultimate questions. If this is true, then other religions are by logical deduction not true. Like most Evangelicals I have concerns about some of the Catholic Church’s doctrines which are part of Paco’s cultural and religious self-definition. To look for the light within sounds very much like New Age thought which I find dangerous and uncomfortable.
What this tells me is that given Paco’s worldview, if I were to preach to him that my Bible, my faith and my understandings were true and even more, exclusively true, I would lose my hearing with him. He would probably not “hear” the core of my message because my exclusivity and rejection of others would render me as an unfit messenger of light.
However there is some good news. Many of Paco’s affirmations have positive strategic implication for the preaching of the gospel.
- He believes that there is something beyond what we normally experience.
- He believes this “something more” is spiritual.
- Spirituality must have practical application in life.
- He would be open to someone being his spiritual guide.
- One gains the right to be his spiritual guide by invitation.
- One also gains this right to be his spiritual guide by demonstrating an undefined spirituality in their life.
Paco is not an atheist. He believes that there is something more and that his very nature testifies to this. He might as well have quoted Romans 1:19-20. He is seeking spirituality. He wants a spirituality that has practical application in his life. He is willing to listen to someone who he perceives as having demonstrated spirituality in his or her own life. Jesus Christ has exactly what Paco is looking for. If one has a good testimony with him they can gain the right to become his spiritual guide. But this will probably not come by quoting the Bible or by sharing doctrinal truths. It comes by showing Christ alive in one’s life.
Postmodernism
In many ways Paco is quite typical as a postmodernist. I found it interesting that Paco was familiar with the term and willing to include himself in this group. Paco is a well-educated man. He is an engineer working for an aeronautical firm designing helicopters. Yet he openly discusses spirituality and his desire to find it. I did a web search on the concept postmodernism and found an article by Dr. Mary Klages, who is an Associate Professor of the English Department at University of Colorado, Boulder entitled Postmodernism, which I have found helpful (http://www.colorado.edu/English/ENGL2012Klages/pomo.html). In this brief article Klages defines Postmodernism both from a literary perspective and from a historical/sociological perspective. While these points of view are interrelated, it is the sociological implications of postmodernism that have strategic implication for the preaching of the Gospel in modern western society.
“… the second facet, or definition, of postmodernism comes more from history and sociology than from literature or art history. This approach defines postmodernism as the name of an entire social formation, or set of social/historical attitudes; more precisely, this approach contrast “postmodernity” with modernity,” rather than “postmodernism” with “modernism.” (Klages p. 2).
I have tried to extract some of the tendencies of postmodernity. However it should be noted that we do not live in a completely postmodern society, but rather in a society that is moving rapidly from a traditional society to postmodernity. Social change on this scale takes generations. Francisco Andrés Orizo, a Spanish sociologist, in his book Sistemas de valores en la España de los 90 writes:
Y no es una casualidad que muchas de estas manifestaciones que rompen los esquemas de la modernidad se lideren dentro del escenario español, cuando aún no habíamos completado las prescritas etapas de un proceso de modernización. Nos hemos hecho posmodernos sin haber ejercido antes de modernos.1
(And it is not a coincidence that many of these expressions that shatter the preconceptions of modernity may have come upon the Spanish scene, when we haven’t even completed the prescribed stages of the process of modernization. We have become postmodern without having previously practiced modernism.)
According to Orizo the prevailing worldview in Spain before postmodernism was the traditional worldview. So Spain has jumped from a traditional (or premodern) worldview to a postmodern worldview without having gone through modernity. While we may encounter people in Europe or the United States who are thoroughly modern in outlook; most Spaniards are either traditional in their worldview or postmodern. It is probably much more common to find people who have many postmodern values, some having more than others. However this is the direction in which Western society is moving, and each succeeding generation will have a higher percentage of postmodernists and be more thoroughly immersed in postmodern thought. It should also be noted that in reality Europe is much more postmodern than modern. Also in this age of rapid and powerful communication, social change occurs more rapidly that it did in past generations. So it would be reasonable to expect a more rapid shift from modern or traditional to post modern than from ancient to modern or even from one modern expression to another, for example from Renaissance to Enlightenment.
While this monumental change takes time Orizo’s research seems to indicate that in general, Spaniards who were born before 1945 tend to be traditional in outlook, those who were born after this date have a stronger tendency for a postmodern outlook. The younger a Spaniard is the more likely their value system will reflect postmodernism and their postmodernism will be tend to be more ideologically pure.
Tendencies of Postmodernity
Taken from the Klages article:
- Subjectivity
- Rejection of rigid distinctions
- Local, personal and specific truth
- Rejection of absolute truths
- Rejection of “grand narratives” which explain reality such as capitalism or communism. These grand narratives are seen as old and simplistic and don’t adequately explain the world’s complexity.
- Practicality
- Inclusiveness or tolerance
- Diversity of morals and lifestyle
- Tendency to perceive information that does not fit their worldview as “noise”.
- Tendency to see conservative religion or politics as the enemy.
- Language is fluid and subjective (the hearer brings as much to the conversation as the listener).
Other tendencies not specifically mentioned by Klages:
- Desire for spirituality
- Desire for community
- Rejection of negativity
1 Francisco Andrés Orizo, sistemas de valores en la España de los 90, (Madrid, Centro de Investigaciones Sociolóicas. 1996). Page LV-LVI.
Tendencies of Modernity
- Rationality
- Autonomy
- Objectivity
- Science as the objective arbiter of truth
- Knowledge produced by science is “truth” and is eternal
- Value of progress and perfection
- Order
- Language is rational and transparent (it means exactly what it says)
- Rejection of that which does not represent order
- Rejection of that which is considered “other” i.e. lack of tolerance
Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism as Expressions of Modernism
What struck me as Klages described modernity was that Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism are modern expressions of Christianity. I do not in any way mean to disparage either of these expressions of our faith. I merely mean that they are an expression of their historical/cultural context, a context that is rapidly changing. Protestantism itself started with the Renaissance, which was the first cultural expression of modernity. The various expressions of Protestantism developed as modernity developed. Evangelicalism and Christian Fundamentalism as we now know them are the fullest expressions of the modern worldview brought into the Christian faith. These expressions have a distinctly American flavor, although each country will have its own variations.
Orizo’s observation that Spain has passed from a traditional society to a postmodern society without having fully passed through modernism goes a long way in explaining why the Evangelical Church expressing itself in modernist forms has never been able to make strong inroads into the Spanish culture. This paper will focus on the contrast of modernism and postmodernism because the modernism of the Evangelical Church and the postmodernism of the Spanish society has become a critical strategic issue.
Following are some ways in which we express our modern cultural underpinnings. I do not in any way want to imply that these are wrong, merely that we have expressed our faith from a specific worldview.
A scientific view of the Bible. The Bible is our book of theological facts. We investigate this book to extract these facts. Our hermeneutic could be metaphorically described as putting the Bible under a microscope. The evangelical hermeneutic is highly objective. We want to know exactly what the text means by what it says. In other words the language of the Bible is transparent.
Emphasis on doctrine. Doctrines are our theological facts. We have a tendency to disagree and even argue over these facts because to get the facts right is of very high value to modernists. We have a low tolerance for ambiguity in doctrine because the modern mind wants everything clearly explained.
High value on rightness. The modern mind wants everything analyzed and put in order. Whatever does not fit our order must be rejected. What fits the order or scheme is right; what does not must be rejected. Thus modern Evangelical scholarship places high value of systematic theology and on schools of systematic theology, for example Calvinism.
Low tolerance for mystery. I am not using the word mystery in the Pauline sense of the word as “a previously unknown truth which is now revealed” but in its more generic sense of something that can not be easily explained or understood or perhaps isn’t completely explainable or understandable.
High value on Truth. We often state our faith as a series of “truths”. This is as old as Christianity itself. It goes back to the first Christian creed which is Jesus is Lord and continues through the various other creeds such as the Nicene and the Apostles Creed. However, these creeds are relatively simple and brief compared to the systemization and expression of doctrine common in modern Christianity (think of Chafer’s Systematic Theology in eight volumes). We have systematically tried to extract every truth from the Bible and have tried to express each truth doctrinally.
Low tolerance for aberration. Modern Christianity has a fairly low tolerance for aberration in doctrine and lifestyle. We highly value lifestyles that reflect our doctrines and feel we need to confront those lifestyles that do not fit Biblical/Doctrinal norms. This is one of the differences between Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism. Evangelicalism is more tolerant in doctrinal aberration than is Fundamentalism. Two moral issues which are currently important to most expressions of the Christian faith are homosexuality and abortion. Doctrinally, most Christians would affirm their love of those who practice these lifestyles, while expressing abhorrence for the practice itself. Often though, we are perceived by outsiders as hating both of these lifestyles and those who practice these lifestyles.
Proclamation of the Gospel as Doctrine. One of the great strengths of modern Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism is our ability to proclaim the truths of the Gospel in clear concise ways. We do this in a number of ways: The Four Spiritual Laws, Steps to Peace with God, The Bridge Illustration and The Roman Road, among others. Our very ability to be concise and clear reflects our modern worldview. The Gospel itself is viewed as a doctrinal truth to be accepted and believed as fact. More ancient forms of Christianity such as Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy struggle with this. This is because their worldview tends more toward an ancient mindset. Thus, the Christian faith is viewed as a series of mysteries, symbols, creeds and paradoxes to be meditated on. In contemplation of the symbols, mysteries and creeds one might come into communion with God.
High value in teaching and preaching. Because we tend to view our faith doctrinally and we so highly value truth, we feel a high expression of Christian maturity is to be doctrinally and Biblically knowledgeable. Therefore there is a high value put on teaching. This is particularly expressed in the large proportion of time devoted to preaching and teaching in the typical Evangelical or Fundamentalist service. Among many, there is a very high value put on expository Bible teaching. In other words, what exactly does the text say and therefore how does this doctrine apply to our lives. It is quite common for churches to systematically go through a book of the Bible or even the entire Bible itself. This is a fairly recent phenomenon in the Church. Thirty or forty years ago in Evangelical or Fundamentalist circles most sermons were topical sermons. Three or four centuries ago they were homilies.
Low value in personal discipleship. Because there tends to be such a high value on teaching in the church service, there is a correspondingly lower value placed on strong personal discipleship. When personal discipleship is expressed it is often focused on teaching Biblical and doctrinal knowledge or Bible memorization. Often there is even a failure to distinguish between personal discipleship and teaching such as in Sunday School (another modern expression). This is not to say that discipleship is non-existent but that it is fairly uncommon and when expressed it is often highly doctrinal in nature. Compare modern forms of discipleship with more ancient forms which were much more personal, intimate and intense such as spiritual formation.
Autonomy in church practice. There is a strong sense of the autonomy of believers and of individual churches. The priesthood of all believers was one of the foundational principals of Protestantism. This high value on autonomy is a tendency of modernism. Because there is a high value also placed on truth and because we can not agree on the fine points of doctrinal truth, there is also a tendency for the fragmentation of the Church into denominations and even individual church bodies holding firmly to their specific doctrines.
These practices are not necessarily right or wrong, they are expressions that have grown out of a specific cultural/historical context. Some very good things have come out of these modern expressions of Christianity, for example the ability to clearly and simply express the gospel and a deep and exhaustive understanding of Biblical truth. However, like all cultural expressions of Christianity, if exposed to another worldview or culture without contextualization there will be a tendency to reject the message because of the way it is communicated. We have to also realize that, as in all cultural expressions of Christianity, there will be weaknesses which others can clearly see but to which we are insensitive or even blind.
Barriers and Bridges
As modern Christianity moves into this new worldview or culture of postmodernism, it will encounter barriers of understanding. These barriers of understanding become one of our two chief strategic stumbling blocks. At the same time there may very well be bridges of natural affinity to our message that we will not recognize because they are so foreign to us or are expressed in ways that make us uncomfortable. This becomes our other chief stumbling block.
Barriers
Some of the potential barriers we will face:
Truth and Subjectivity. Modernism puts a high value on exclusive truth. Postmodernism places a high value on subjectivity. To a postmodernist it is truth if it is true for me. This could be expressed as this is my truth; you can have your own. It is true for me. This resonates with me. You believe what you want to, I will believe what I want to.
Rejection of rigid distinctions. Postmodernists tend to not like rigid distinctions made about themselves or others. Even more so, they will bristle at negative judgements made about different opinions or lifestyles. They may not agree with these opinions or lifestyles themselves but they would uphold the right of others to hold different views or practice different lifestyles. This may be expressed in the following ways: How dare you judge someone else. I believe in tolerance. The only thing I am intolerant of is intolerance. I believe in diversity of lifestyles.
Local, personal and specific truth. As stated above, postmodernism places a high value on subjectivity. This is true to the point that there is a tendency to view truth as personal and specific. Everyone can have his or her own truth. Postmodernists also tend to take on as truth what their peer group or community believes. If a group to which they identify has strong value structures they will also tend to hold these values.
Rejection of absolute truths. Klages in her work titled Postmodernism refers to Francois Lyotard’s concept of the “grand narrative”,
Totality, and stability, and order, Lyotard argues, are maintained in modern societies through the means of “grand narratives” or “master narratives,” which are stories a culture tells itself about its practices and beliefs. A “grand narrative” in American culture might be the story that democracy is the most enlightened (rational) form of government, and that democracy can and will lead to universal human happiness. Every belief system or ideology has its grand narratives, according to Lyotard; for Marxism, for instance, the “grand narrative” is the idea that capitalism will collapse in on itself and a utopian socialist world will evolve. You might think of grand narratives as a kind of meta-theory, or meta-ideology, that is, an ideology that explains an ideology (as in Marxism); a story that is told to explain the belief systems that exist.” (p.4)
Klages goes on to explain:
Postmodernism then is the critique of grand narratives, the awareness that such narratives serve to mask the contradictions and instabilities that are inherent in any social organization or practice… Post modernism, in rejecting grand narratives, favors “mini-narratives,” stories that explain small practices, local events, rather than large-scale universal or global concepts. Post modern “mini-narratives” are always situational, provisional, contingent, and temporary, making no claim to universality, truth, reason, or stability. (p.4)
Christianity by its very nature is a grand-narrative which claims to be absolute truth. Most postmodernists would reject out of hand ideas and concepts presented in this way.
Inclusiveness or tolerance. As stated above postmodernists have a low tolerance for intolerance. This may seem a logical contradiction to a modernist, but like it or not this is their tendency. This becomes a strategic barrier when we express low tolerance or lack of tolerance for other religious expressions, lifestyles or morals.
Diversity of morals and lifestyles. Postmodernists desire the freedom to express and live their own personal morals and lifestyles. Initial hostility to these lifestyles, opinions or morals will create an almost insurmountable strategic barrier.
Tendency to perceive information that does not fit their worldview as “noise”. In the modern conception the opposite of knowledge is ignorance, but in the postmodern worldview it is noise (Klages p. 5). Postmodernists have just as much trouble understanding ideas which are not formulated in their paradigms as do other worldviews. By communicating with postmodernists in modern paradigms we risk our ideas being classified as having no value (noise). At this point, this is the chief barrier we are encountering in the preaching of the gospel to postmodernists. We tend to start at the wrong points, and present our truth in the wrong ways and we immediately get turned off as noise, just like someone switching the channel to static.
Rejection of negativity. Postmodernists do not appreciate statements that are perceived as negative or lacking in appreciation of personal freedom. To express hostility to another religious expression would tend to create a barrier of communication. To express hostility to a given lifestyle or value would be perceived as negative and would also create a barrier of communication. It would not only be noise, but it would be viewed as intolerant. This does not mean that the postmodernist personally holds these views, but rather he or she upholds the rights of other to have different views, values or lifestyles.
Tendency to see conservative religion or politics as the enemy.
…the desire to return to the pre-postmodern era (modern/humanist/Enlightenment thinking) tends to get associated with conservative political, religious, and philosophical groups. In fact, one of the consequences of postmodernism seems to be the rise of religious fundamentalism, as a form of resistance to the questioning of the “grand narratives” of religious truth. (Klages p.5)
There are natural and inherent conflicts in the encounter between the modern worldview and the postmodern worldview. There are also inherent conflicts in the encounter of modern expressions of Christianity as it encounters postmodern culture. Postmodernists feel this keenly and tend to view us as the enemy.
Bridges
However, there are several bridges into the postmodernist’s life which have encouraging strategic potential.
Tendency for spiritual sensitivity. One clear characteristic of postmodernists is that they have a tendency to be spiritual seekers. Newsweek magazine reports that people are buying more books on meditation, prayer, and spirituality than on sex or self-help.2 Of course not all postmodernists are spiritual seekers, but many are. This bodes well for those who wish to preach the gospel to them. However, this spiritual search is a search for something experiential, personal and practical in nature. They are looking for their own personal spirituality. Thus we see the rise of Eastern religions in Western societies. New Age thinking, for example, is becoming more and more popular. We should think of New Age as an expression of postmodern spirituality because it is experiential, personal and from the practitioners point of view practical.
Experiential Spirituality. One of the major advantages we have as Christians in dealing with postmodernists is that we have a God who is real and who is active in our lives. Unfortunately, this personal interaction has been somewhat downplayed in our modern expressions of Christianity. Many postmodernists are looking for a real spiritual encounter. They want to make actual contact with spiritual forces. They can make contact with Jesus who is real and very powerful.
Personal Spirituality. While at first this looks like a disadvantage it can be turned to an advantage. Those postmodernists who are spiritually minded want to have personal interaction with spiritual forces. Christians have a personal love relationship with Jesus Christ. We encounter Him through abiding, Christian meditation, Bible study and prayer. He is interested in every detail of our lives and is willing to become involved in the most intimate and minute details of our lives. He answers our prayers supernaturally. This is a very positive message for a postmodernist if we can communicate it to them in their cultural language.
Practicality. Postmodernists want answers to the real problems they are facing in their daily lives. They don’t want grand narratives, they don’t want doctrinal answers, they want results. We have a God who can meet their needs. We have a God who has spoken to mankind in practical ways about their significant needs. He continues to interact with mankind through meditation of the Scriptures, the body life of the Church, and the Church’s interaction with society. We have a God who has given us practical guidelines on marriage, child rearing, family, lifestyle, relationships, and dealing with problem areas of our lives, among others.
Social needs. Postmodernists, while rejecting the grand narratives, do want answers to local problems. If we were to talk to most postmodernists about the large sociopolitical problems that cause world hunger they would turn off the noise. However, if we were to send food and clothing to flood victims they would respect us for having a social conscience. They want to see action that is doing something about real problems. This will be perceived as showing spiritual light, we call it having a good testimony.
Shalom. Postmodernists are looking for a better life. But the improvements they are looking for are not merely material. They have the benefits of modern technology and they appreciate them, but they want something more. They want emotional comfort, happiness, peace, joy, and love. They may not know how to express it in our terms but they are looking for shalom. This is good news because Jesus wants to give them shalom.
2 Dr. Bruce Demarest, Satisfy Your Soul: Restoring the Heart of Christian Spirituality (Colorado Springs: Navpress, 1999), p.44.
They are willing to break out of former norms. Postmodernists are willing and even anxious to break out of modern forms including and even especially religious forms. However, religion expressed in modernism is something they are adamantly against. They would be willing to try new religious forms if they were practical, spiritual and spoke their language. In Spain we need to keep in mind that Catholicism is viewed as part of the social fabric of life; it is part of being Spanish. They may not like Catholicism as it now exists as a religious practice but they don’t want to lose their Spanishness. Any expression of spirituality that looks, tastes and feels Spanish will be greatly appreciated.
They are looking for spiritual guides. My first reaction to Paco’s statement that someone could be a spiritual guide for him made me think of New Age spirituality, which concerned me. However, once I could get past the language I realized that this is exactly what a witness is, someone who points a non-believer to Jesus. Witness needs to come from relationship not from proclamation. Their idea of a spiritual guide is not someone who points them to the right trail but rather someone who says, “I have experienced the trail. I love the trail. I am on the trail. Come with me.” Furthermore, they need to sense that indeed we are on a spiritual trail and that that trail could be good and practical for them. Proclamation of the doctrinal truth of the gospel as a theological fact to be believed will be turned off as noise. In fact, that is what most of us are experiencing as we preach the gospel to postmodernists. We need to find ways of making relationship and then inviting them join us on the trail.
Moving In the Direction of Solutions
How do we get past the cultural and communication barriers between modernists and postmodernists and cross the bridges that exist so they can meet Jesus? Following are some ideas to ponder. I don’t claim that I have concrete failsafe solutions but as we work together and experiment together perhaps the Holy Spirit will guide us to ways to make contact and allow us to be spiritual guides to our postmodern friends.
Lead with Jesus. Those postmodernists who are spiritually minded want encounters with a personal spiritual force. This of course can be a very dangerous desire if it is focused in the wrong direction. However, if focused on Jesus it can lead to an encounter with the loving, gracious God of the universe. We might consider talking with our friends about what Jesus is doing in our lives. We need to talk about Him just as He is, personal and spiritual.
We also need to be careful. Going too fast or too aggressively will be perceived as noise and we will be turned off.
Be practical. Postmodernists want to hear practical solutions. How is Jesus affecting our marriage? How is Jesus helping me overcome bitterness? How is Jesus helping me raise my kids? What is Jesus leading me to do for my neighbors who have needs?
Be spiritual. Our modern tendency is to avoid being too spiritual. To the point that we often view mysticism with skepticism. Christian mysticism is as old as the Church. Postmodernists who are looking for spirituality are probably much more open to personal spiritual encounter than a non-Christian modernist would be.
Think of introducing them personally to Jesus. Our modern tendency is to preach the gospel as a doctrine to be accepted and believed as truth. It might be wise to consider introducing our postmodern friends to a spiritual Jesus who offers practical solutions; one of the most important of which is that Jesus wants to cleanse us spiritually. He wants to offer grace, love and peace to those who formerly didn’t know Him. Then we can go to the cross as a highly personal act that showed the extent to which He would go to meet us and spiritually cleanse us.
George G. Hunter III in his book How to Reach Secular People suggest that instead of trying to convince someone of the rightness of our point of view and then ask for a decision or conversion as we do with modernists we should look for a series of mini-conversions. He suggests that we should do this from relationship looking for changes of perspective in these following six points in the following order:
- awareness
- relevance
- interest
- trial
- adoption
- reinforcement In other words first we help our friend become aware of our relationship to Jesus (mini¬conversion #1). Next we show how Jesus can be relevant in their personal life (mini¬conversion #2). We then try to cultivate interest in their investigating a relationship with Jesus (mini-conversion #3). We challenge our friend to see if Jesus won’t respond to their felt need such as in helping them heal a broken marriage or dealing with children (a trial). We can do this through introducing them to what God has said in his Word and through their own prayer to Jesus (mini-conversion #4). When they have an experience with Jesus we tell them of other things that Jesus offers especially forgiveness of sin, or spiritual cleansing (mini-conversion #5). We then need to encourage our friend that he or she has made the right choice. One way to do this is through introducing them to other Christians so they have a sense of community and they can begin to adopt the values of that community (mini-conversion #6). All of this comes from relationship and must be done over time. It is not something that can be done in one conversation, one week or probably even in one month.
Think about spiritual formation as a model. As discussed before, most postmodernists have an aversion to doctrine, but this does not mean they would be disinterested in spirituality and spiritual growth. One ancient model that would probably appeal to new postmodern Christians would be spiritual formation. In this model the spiritual director works through practical and spiritual problems with the disciple by directing the disciple to pray through and meditate on certain scriptures. He may give the disciple a specific spiritual task to accomplish or a question to answer; he may even strongly confront the disciple. This is intense biblical discipleship but it is not based on doctrinal knowledge but rather focused, deep, practical spiritual growth.
Look for an invitation to be a spiritual guide. Postmodernists reserve the right to invite us into their spiritual world. They don’t want us to invite ourselves. However that doesn’t mean that we have to sit around and do nothing. I like the analogy of fishing. We need to put out the concept of what Jesus is doing in our lives as “bait”. If they respond, we give them a little more. If they don’t, we build relationship and give them some more bait later. We can even tease them with the bait. But we should be very careful of coming on too hard. The second we are perceived as coercive we become noise to be switched off.
Look for discipleship relationships. We tend to think the gospel comes first, then introduction of the new Christian to a church, then discipleship through teaching. When the new Christian enters the church he will meet new Christian friends. We might consider changing the order of this model. Friendship comes first. In the process of friendship comes opportunity to become a spiritual guide. It is at this point that discipleship really starts. In the process of discipleship (or spiritual formation) we introduce the person to Jesus. We continue to guide this person in their relationship with Jesus. In the process as we begin to see spiritual growth we introduce the new disciple to others who know Jesus and who enjoy worshiping Jesus together. When the disciple is ready we introduce them to corporate worship in some sort of group or even church setting.
Look to the Creeds. Postmodernists tend to be allergic to systematic doctrine, but that does not mean that they do not need doctrine or shouldn’t be introduced to the foundational truths of Christianity. One way to do this would be to have them meditate of the basic creeds of the Church such as the Nicene and Apostles Creeds. This is also an opportunity to show wholeness of the body of Christ. We can say that different churches have different customs that comes from different periods of our rich history, but we all agree on these foundational truths.
Focus on the disciplines. The cardinal Christian disciplines of prayer, meditative Bible study, Christian meditation, fasting and scripture memorization would be something a new postmodern Christian might be drawn to as long as they were presented as spiritual exercises to draw closer to Christ and to gain practical solutions in ones spiritual life.
Focus on abiding. One of the key Christian disciplines that has tended to be de-emphasized in modern Christianity is abiding in Christ. Perhaps it is because abiding can be so mystical. Postmodern Christians will probably warm up immediately to the concept of Christ’s spiritual control and guidance in our life as we abide in Him and He abides in us.
Focus on prayer. Prayer is something that many non-Christian and new Christian postmodernists can relate to, after all, it is highly spiritual behavior. It would probably be wise to emphasize fully orbed Christian prayer. By this I mean that in modern Christianity we have tended to focus on supplication, thanksgiving and confession; down played worship and almost completely ignored meditative prayerful Bible study, Christian meditation, ecstatic prayer and prayers of silence. Some of our Pentecostal brothers have tended to focus on one specific style of ecstatic prayer (tongues) at the expense of other forms of prayer. We all have tended to do much more talking than listening in prayer. Postmodernists would be just as drawn to these other forms of prayer as they would supplication or tongues.
Find ways to express Spanishness. To be Spanish is to be Catholic. It will be hard to convince most Spaniards of anything else. The older a Spaniard is the more likely they are to hold to their Catholicness. Until we give them reason to believe otherwise they will view Protestantism as noise to be turned off. But if we can invite them to Church sponsored events that are very Spanish they will feel more at home. These need to be celebrations or social activities not teaching services. It becomes our burden to show one can be an Evangelical Christian and still be very Spanish. One way might be to avoid the words Protestant and Evangelical. We have the right to use the word Christian just as much as Catholics do. Use of this term, if done well becomes inclusive rather than exclusive. This may avoid an unnecessary barrier. We need to remember that any negative statements about the Catholic Church will not only be seen as intolerance but as anti-Spanish. We need to look for ways to build bridges of friendship to the Catholic Church without losing our own spiritual heritage; particularly to those in the Catholic Church who are truly born again. This does not mean we are in agreement with all the doctrines of the Catholic Church, but that we are trying to avoid a serious strategic barrier to the preaching of the gospel.
Find ways to express culture. Spaniards are very interested in their own cultural/historical/literary heritage. This is probably true of other expressions of European postmodernism. We might explore different ways of expressing and celebrating Spanish cultural and artistic events in the name of Jesus.
Offer shalom. Postmodernists are looking for wholeness, particularly emotional and spiritual wholeness. The biblical word for this is shalom. This is what Jesus is offering his people. This would be a concept that postmodernists could warm up to.
Meet real needs in the community and the world. Postmodernists want mini solutions to real problems. They are much more likely to warm up to giving blood at the blood mobile than to a march against world
Postmodernism is a complicated term, or set of ideas, one that has only emerged as an area of academic study since the mid-1980s. Postmodernism is hard to define, because it is a concept that appears in a wide variety of disciplines or areas of study, including art, architecture, music, film, literature, sociology, communications, fashion, and technology. It's hard to locate it temporally or historically, because it's not clear exactly when postmodernism begins.
Perhaps the easiest way to start thinking about post-modernism is by thinking about modernism, the movement from which postmodernism seems to grow or emerge. Modernism has two facets, or two modes of definition, both of which are relevant to understanding postmodernism.
The first facet or definition of modernism comes from the aesthetic movement broadly labeled "modernism." This movement is roughly coterminous with twentieth century Western ideas about art (though traces of it in emergent forms can be found in the nineteenth century as well). Modernism, as you probably know, is the movement in visual arts, music, literature, and drama which rejected the old Victorian standards of how art should be made, consumed, and what it should mean. In the period of "high modernism," from around 1910 to 1930, the major figures of modernism literature helped radically to redefine what poetry and fiction could be and do: figures like Woolf, Joyce, Eliot, Pound, Stevens, Proust, Mallarme, Kafka, and Rilke are considered the founders of twentieth-century modernism.
From a literary perspective, the main characteristics of modernism include:
1. an emphasis on impressionism and subjectivity in writing (and in visual arts as well); an emphasis on HOW seeing (or reading or perception itself) takes place, rather than on WHAT is perceived. An example of this would be stream-of-consciousness writing.
2. a movement away from the apparent objectivity provided by omniscient third-person narrators, fixed narrative points of view, and clear-cut moral positions. Faulkner's multiply-narrated stories are an example of this aspect of modernism.
3. a blurring of distinctions between genres, so that poetry seems more documentary (as in T.S. Eliot or ee cummings) and prose seems more poetic (as in Woolf or Joyce).
4. an emphasis on fragmented forms, discontinuous narratives, and random-seeming collages of different materials.
5. a tendency toward reflexivity, or self-consciousness, about the production of the work of art, so that each piece calls attention to its own status as a production, as something constructed and consumed in particular ways.
6. a rejection of elaborate formal aesthetics in favor of minimalist designs (as in the poetry of William Carlos Williams) and a rejection, in large part, of formal aesthetic theories, in favor of spontaneity and discovery in creation.
7. A rejection of the distinction between "high" and "low" or popular culture, both in choice of materials used to produce art and in methods of displaying, distributing, and consuming art.
Postmodernism, like modernism, follows most of these same ideas, rejecting boundaries between high and low forms of art, rejecting rigid genre distinctions, emphasiz-ing pastiche, parody, bricolage, irony, and playfulness. Postmodern art (and thought) favors reflexivity and self-consciousness, fragmentation and discontinuity (especially in narrative structures), ambiguity, simultaneity, and an emphasis on the destructured, decentered, dehumanized subject.
But--while postmodernism seems very much like modernism in these ways, it differs from modernism in its attitude toward a lot of these trends. Modernism, for example, tends to present a fragmented view of human subjectivity and history (think of The Wasteland, for instance, or of Woolf's To the Lighthouse), but presents that fragmentation as something tragic, something to be lamented and mourned as a loss. Many modernist works try to uphold the idea that works of art can provide the unity, coherence, and meaning which has been lost in most of modern life; art will do what other human institutions fail to do. Postmodernism, in contrast, doesn't lament the idea of fragmentation, provisionality, or incoherence, but rather celebrates that. The world is meaningless? Let's not pretend that art can make meaning then, let's just play with nonsense.
Another way of looking at the relation between modernism and postmodernism helps to clarify some of these distinctions. According to Frederic Jameson, modernism and postmodernism are cultural formations which accompany particular stages of capitalism. Jameson outlines three primary phases of capitalism which dictate particular cultural practices (including what kind of art and literature is produced). The first is market capitalism, which occurred in the eighteenth through the late nineteenth centuries in Western Europe, England, and the United States (and all their spheres of influence). This first phase is associated with particular technological developments, namely, the steam-driven motor, and with a particular kind of aesthetics, namely, realism. The second phase occurred from the late nineteenth century until the mid-twentieth century (about WWII); this phase, monopoly capitalism, is associated with electric and internal combustion motors, and with modernism. The third, the phase we're in now, is multinational or consumer capitalism (with the emphasis placed on marketing, selling, and consuming commodities, not on producing them), associated with nuclear and electronic technologies, and correlated with postmodernism.
Like Jameson's characterization of postmodernism in terms of modes of production and technologies, the second facet, or definition, of postmodernism comes more from history and sociology than from literature or art history. This approach defines postmodernism as the name of an entire social formation, or set of social/historical attitudes; more precisely,this approach contrasts "postmodernity" with "modernity," rather than "postmodernism" with "modernism."
What's the difference? "Modernism" generally refers to the broad aesthetic movements of the twentieth century; "modernity" refers to a set of philosophical, political, and ethical ideas which provide the basis for the aesthetic aspect of modernism. "Modernity" is older than "modernism;" the label "modern," first articulated in nineteenth-century sociology, was meant to distinguish the present era from the previous one, which was labeled "antiquity." Scholars are always debating when exactly the "modern" period began, and how to distinguish between what is modern and what is not modern; it seems like the modern period starts earlier and earlier every time historians look at it. But generally, the "modern" era is associated with the European Enlightenment, which begins roughly in the middle of the eighteenth century. (Other historians trace elements of enlightenment thought back to the Renaissance or earlier, and one could argue that Enlightenment thinking begins with the eighteenth century. I usually date "modern" from 1750, if only because I got my Ph.D. from a program at Stanford called "Modern Thought and Literature," and that program focused on works written after 1750).
The basic ideas of the Enlightenment are roughly the same as the basic ideas of humanism. Jane Flax's article gives a good summary of these ideas or premises (on p. 41). I'll add a few things to her list.
1. There is a stable, coherent, knowable self. This self is conscious, rational, autonomous, and universal--no physical conditions or differences substantially affect how this self operates.
2. This self knows itself and the world through reason, or rationality, posited as the highest form of mental functioning, and the only objective form.
3. The mode of knowing produced by the objective rational self is "science," which can provide universal truths about the world, regardless of the individual status of the knower.
4. The knowledge produced by science is "truth," and is eternal.
5. The knowledge/truth produced by science (by the rational objective knowing self) will always lead toward progress and perfection. All human institutions and practices can be analyzed by science (reason/objectivity) and improved.
6. Reason is the ultimate judge of what is true, and therefore of what is right, and what is good (what is legal and what is ethical). Freedom consists of obedience to the laws that conform to the knowledge discovered by reason.
7. In a world governed by reason, the true will always be the same as the good and the right (and the beautiful); there can be no conflict between what is true and what is right (etc.).
8. Science thus stands as the paradigm for any and all socially useful forms of knowledge. Science is neutral and objective; scientists, those who produce scientific knowledge through their unbiased rational capacities, must be free to follow the laws of reason, and not be motivated by other concerns (such as money or power).
9. Language, or the mode of expression used in producing and disseminating knowledge, must be rational also. To be rational, language must be transparent; it must function only to represent the real/perceivable world which the rational mind observes. There must be a firm and objective connection between the objects of perception and the words used to name them (between signifier and signified).
These are some of the fundamental premises of humanism, or of modernism. They serve--as you can probably tell--to justify and explain virtually all of our social structures and institutions, including democracy, law, science, ethics, and aesthetics.
Modernity is fundamentally about order: about rationality and rationalization, creating order out of chaos. The assumption is that creating more rationality is conducive to creating more order, and that the more ordered a society is, the better it will function (the more rationally it will function). Because modernity is about the pursuit of ever-increasing levels of order, modern societies constantly are on guard against anything and everything labeled as "disorder," which might disrupt order. Thus modern societies rely on continually establishing a binary opposition between "order" and "disorder," so that they can assert the superiority of "order." But to do this, they have to have things that represent "disorder"--modern societies thus continually have to create/construct "disorder." In western culture, this disorder becomes "the other"--defined in relation to other binary oppositions. Thus anything non-white, non-male, non-heterosexual, non-hygienic, non-rational, (etc.) becomes part of "disorder," and has to be eliminated from the ordered, rational modern society.
The ways that modern societies go about creating categories labeled as "order" or "disorder" have to do with the effort to achieve stability. Francois Lyotard (the theorist whose works Sarup describes in his article on postmodernism) equates that stability with the idea of "totality," or a totalized system (think here of Derrida's idea of "totality" as the wholeness or completeness of a system). Totality, and stability, and order, Lyotard argues, are maintained in modern societies through the means of "grand narratives" or "master narratives," which are stories a culture tells itself about its practices and beliefs. A "grand narrative" in American culture might be the story that democracy is the most enlightened (rational) form of government, and that democracy can and will lead to universal human happiness. Every belief system or ideology has its grand narratives, according to Lyotard; for Marxism, for instance, the "grand narrative" is the idea that capitalism will collapse in on itself and a utopian socialist world will evolve. You might think of grand narratives as a kind of meta-theory, or meta-ideology, that is, an ideology that explains an ideology (as with Marxism); a story that is told to explain the belief systems that exist.
Lyotard argues that all aspects of modern societies, including science as the primary form of knowledge, depend on these grand narratives. Postmodernism then is the critique of grand narratives, the awareness that such narratives serve to mask the contradictions and instabilities that are inherent in any social organization or practice. In other words, every attempt to create "order" always demands the creation of an equal amount of "disorder," but a "grand narrative" masks the constructedness of these categories by explaining that "disorder" REALLY IS chaotic and bad, and that "order" REALLY IS rational and good.
Postmodernism, in rejecting grand narratives, favors "mini-narratives," stories that explain small practices, local events, rather than large-scale universal or global concepts. Postmodern "mini-narratives" are always situational, provisional, contingent, and temporary, making no claim to universality, truth, reason, or stability.
Another aspect of Enlightenment thought--the final of my 9 points--is the idea that language is transparent, that words serve only as representations of thoughts or things, and don't have any function beyond that. Modern societies depend on the idea that signifiers always point to signifieds, and that reality resides in signifieds. In postmodernism, however, there are only signifiers. The idea of any stable or permanent reality disappears, and with it the idea of signifieds that signifiers point to. Rather, for postmodern societies, there are only surfaces, without depth; only signifiers, with no signifieds.
Another way of saying this, according to Jean Baudrillard, is that in postmodern society there are no originals, only copies--or what he calls "simulacra." You might think, for example, about painting or sculpture, where there is an original work (by Van Gogh, for instance), and there might also be thousands of copies, but the original is the one with the highest value (particularly monetary value). Contrast that with cds or music recordings, where there is no "original," as in painting--no recording that is hung on a wall, or kept in a vault; rather, there are only copies, by the millions, that are all the same, and all sold for (approximately) the same amount of money. Another version of Baudrillard's "simulacrum" would be the concept of virtual reality, a reality created by simulation, for which there is no original. This is particularly evident in computer games/simulations--think of Sim City, Sim Ant, etc.
Finally, postmodernism is concerned with questions of the organization of knowledge. In modern societies, knowledge was equated with science, and was contrasted to narrative; science was good knowledge, and narrative was bad, primitive, irrational (and thus associated with women, children, primitives, and insane people). Knowledge, however, was good for its own sake; one gained knowledge, via education, in order to be knowledgeable in general, to become an educated person. This is the ideal of the liberal arts education. In a postmodern society, however, knowledge becomes functional--you learn things, not to know them, but to use that knowledge. As Sarup points out (p. 13
, educational policy today puts emphasis on skills and training, rather than on a vague humanist ideal of education in general. This is particularly acute for English majors. "What will you DO with your degree?" Not only is knowledge in postmodern societies charac-terized by its utility, but knowledge is also distributed, stored, and arranged differently in postmodern societies than in modern ones. Specifically, the advent of electronic computer technologies has revolutionized the modes of knowledge production, distribution, and consumption in our society (indeed, some might argue that postmodern-ism is best described by, and correlated with, the emergence of computer technology, starting in the 1960s, as the dominant force in all aspects of social life). In post-modern societies, anything which is not able to be translated into a form recognizable and storable by a computer--i.e. anything that's not digitizable--will cease to be knowledge. In this paradigm, the opposite of "knowledge" is not "ignorance," as it is the modern/ humanist paradigm, but rather "noise." Anything that doesn't qualify as a kind of knowledge is "noise," is something that is not recognizable as anything within this system.
Lyotard says (and this is what Sarup spends a lot of time explaining) that the important question for postmodern societies is who decides what knowledge is (and what "noise" is), and who knows what needs to be decided. Such decisions about knowledge don't involve the old modern/humanist qualifications: for example, to assess knowledge as truth (its technical quality), or as goodness or justice (its ethical quality) or as beauty (its aesthetic quality). Rather, Lyotard argues, knowledge follows the paradigm of a language game, as laid out by Wittgenstein. I won't go into the details of Wittgenstein's ideas of language games; Sarup gives a pretty good explanation of this concept in his article, for those who are interested.
There are lots of questions to be asked about postmodernism, and one of the most important is about the politics involved--or, more simply, is this movement toward fragmentation, provisionality, performance, and instability something good or something bad? There are various answers to that; in our contemporary society, however, the desire to return to the pre-postmodern era (modern/humanist/Enlightenment thinking) tends to get associated with conservative political, religious, and philosophical groups. In fact, one of the consequences of postmodernism seems to be the rise of religious fundamentalism, as a form of resistance to the questioning of the "grand narratives" of religious truth. This is perhaps most obvious (to us in the US, anyway) in muslim fundamentalism in the Middle East, which ban postmodern books--like Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses --because they deconstruct such grand narratives.
This association between the rejection of postmodern-ism and conservatism or fundamentalism may explain in part why the postmodern avowal of fragmentation and multiplicity tends to attract liberals and radicals. This is why, in part, feminist theorists have found postmodernism so attractive, as Sarup, Flax, and Butler all point out.
On another level, however, postmodernism seems to offer some alternatives to joining the global culture of consumption, where commodities and forms of knowledge are offered by forces far beyond any individual's control. These alternatives focus on thinking of any and all action (or social struggle) as necessarily local, limited, and partial--but nonetheless effective. By discarding "grand narratives" (like the liberation of the entire working class) and focusing on specific local goals (such as improved day care centers for working mothers in your own community), postmodernist politics offers a way to theorize local situations as fluid and unpredictable, though influenced by global trends. Hence the motto for postmodern politics might well be "think globally, act locally"--and don't worry about any grand scheme or master plan.
All materials on this site are written by, and remain the property of, Dr. Mary Klages, Associate Professor, English Department, University of Colorado, Boulder. You are welcome to quote from this essay, or to link this page to your own site, with proper attribution. For information about citing electronic sources, see English 2010 Home Page
Last revision: December 3, 1997
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The Gospel and Postmodernism
©2000 by Ross P. Rohde.
Published in www.postmission.com by kind permission
For more papers on Postmodernity and Christian Mission, go to http://www.postmission.com/
A comment that is often heard in missiological circles is that Europe and even the United States is becoming post-Christian. Some go so far as to state that Europe is already post-Christian. I think this statement carries a lot of truth. However, I think this statement tends to mask the real issue. I would suggest that the real issue in not post-Christendom but postmodernism. The western world is undergoing a rapid cultural shift away from a previously held worldview. This shift is affecting the way religion and Christianity are perceived by those who have undergone this shift of worldview or hold some aspects of the new worldview. It is this shift in worldview and the Church’s failure to understand and adjust to this new way of perceiving reality that is to a large measure, causing the rejection of organized religion and more specifically Evangelical Christianity in Europe and to a lesser extent in the United States.
One of the difficulties of this shift in world view is that it is has caused significant cultural change that does not have the usual earmarks of a different culture. Western postmodernists look, dress, and speak just like western modernists. They eat in the same restaurants, work in the same offices, and their children go to the same schools. In other words they seem to be just like us yet at the level of values and how they perceive their world they are very different.
Because of this difficulty to easily discern this subtle yet profound cultural shift, we may very well be missing a tremendous opportunity. While this shift in worldview may tend to leave those of us with the old worldview bewildered and even angry, it has some elements to it that bode well for the Christian faith if we deal with these elements strategically and wisely. One of the great strengths of Christianity has been its ability to adjust to different cultures and worldviews without losing its essence. I would suggest that we need to look at the new worldview of postmodernism from a strategic point of view and ask ourselves, how can Christianity be expressed in this new culture without losing its fundamental essence? We also need to ask ourselves, where are positive points of contact within the postmodern worldview that God can use to make contact with these people for Christ?
A Discussion with Paco
On Saturday February 26, 2000 I had a conversation with Paco Lledo, a non–Christian friend of mine in Madrid which started me thinking about postmodernism and its strategic ramifications in the preaching of the Gospel. Paco was telling me about a book he had just finished about Mani the founder of the ancient religious movement that later became the Assassins. Paco related how Mani did not use his political privileges, given to him by the Persian King, to teach his “truth”. He mentioned that Mani did not teach his doctrine as exclusive but as inclusive. He never belittled other religions, but rather portrayed himself as one who could give further truth. He talked about how Mani tried to get people to “find the light within”. I asked Paco how he felt personally about these things.
In general Paco related that he was favorably disposed towards Mani because he was not argumentative, but was humble, inclusive and tried to put people in touch with the “light that was within”. I asked Paco how he responded to modern day religion. He said he was a non-practicing Catholic. He did not like the history of the Catholic Church in Spain, particularly their abuse of power and the use of coercion to make people conform to their belief system. He did not believe they had an exclusive spiritual truth that was unavailable to others apart from the Catholic Church. He related that he believed that his own experience told him that there was “something more” and that whatever it was, he wanted it. This something more should impact his life in practical ways. I asked him how he would find it? He said that when he saw someone who was displaying something spiritual in his or her life “that person can be a spiritual guide for me.” At that point I summarized what I had heard to make sure I was getting the fine points. I expressed his views as being postmodern. He was familiar with this term and agreed with me that his point of view was postmodern. He also agreed with my summary of his views. Following is my summary of Paco’s views:
- He does not appreciate the abuse of power or influence in the name of religion.
- He is sensitive to the hypocrisy of those who claim religious truth.
- He does not believe in exclusive truth.
- He does not believe that one religion has all the answers.
- Argument against another religion, no matter what it is, offends him.
- He defines himself as a non-practicing Catholic. However “Catholic” is still part of his cultural heritage and his religious definition for himself.
- He believes that there is something beyond what we normally experience.
- He believes this “something more” is spiritual.
- He believes that he can find this something more by looking for the light within.
- Spirituality must have practical application in life.
- He would be open to someone being his spiritual guide.
- One gains the right to be his spiritual guide by invitation.
- One also gains this right to be his spiritual guide by demonstrating an undefined spirituality in their own life.
Bad News and Good News
For me as an Evangelical there are some disturbing concepts in Paco’s understanding of truth. His understanding of reality does not fit my Biblical or cultural worldview. Among some of the elements I find disturbing are:
- He does not believe in exclusive truth.
- He does not believe that one religion has all the answers.
- Argument against another religion, no matter what it is, offends him.
- He defines himself as a non-practicing Catholic. However “Catholic” is still part of his cultural heritage and his religious definition for himself.
- He believes that he can find spirituality by looking for the light within.
As an Evangelical I believe in both objective and exclusive truth. I believe the Bible is God’s revelation to mankind; it is true and furthermore Jesus is the ultimate expression of truth. He said I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. I believe this truth to be exclusive, because as Jesus said, no one comes to the Father but by Me. Since no one comes to the Father but by Jesus I believe we have exclusive answers to ultimate questions. If this is true, then other religions are by logical deduction not true. Like most Evangelicals I have concerns about some of the Catholic Church’s doctrines which are part of Paco’s cultural and religious self-definition. To look for the light within sounds very much like New Age thought which I find dangerous and uncomfortable.
What this tells me is that given Paco’s worldview, if I were to preach to him that my Bible, my faith and my understandings were true and even more, exclusively true, I would lose my hearing with him. He would probably not “hear” the core of my message because my exclusivity and rejection of others would render me as an unfit messenger of light.
However there is some good news. Many of Paco’s affirmations have positive strategic implication for the preaching of the gospel.
- He believes that there is something beyond what we normally experience.
- He believes this “something more” is spiritual.
- Spirituality must have practical application in life.
- He would be open to someone being his spiritual guide.
- One gains the right to be his spiritual guide by invitation.
- One also gains this right to be his spiritual guide by demonstrating an undefined spirituality in their life.
Paco is not an atheist. He believes that there is something more and that his very nature testifies to this. He might as well have quoted Romans 1:19-20. He is seeking spirituality. He wants a spirituality that has practical application in his life. He is willing to listen to someone who he perceives as having demonstrated spirituality in his or her own life. Jesus Christ has exactly what Paco is looking for. If one has a good testimony with him they can gain the right to become his spiritual guide. But this will probably not come by quoting the Bible or by sharing doctrinal truths. It comes by showing Christ alive in one’s life.
Postmodernism
In many ways Paco is quite typical as a postmodernist. I found it interesting that Paco was familiar with the term and willing to include himself in this group. Paco is a well-educated man. He is an engineer working for an aeronautical firm designing helicopters. Yet he openly discusses spirituality and his desire to find it. I did a web search on the concept postmodernism and found an article by Dr. Mary Klages, who is an Associate Professor of the English Department at University of Colorado, Boulder entitled Postmodernism, which I have found helpful (http://www.colorado.edu/English/ENGL2012Klages/pomo.html). In this brief article Klages defines Postmodernism both from a literary perspective and from a historical/sociological perspective. While these points of view are interrelated, it is the sociological implications of postmodernism that have strategic implication for the preaching of the Gospel in modern western society.
“… the second facet, or definition, of postmodernism comes more from history and sociology than from literature or art history. This approach defines postmodernism as the name of an entire social formation, or set of social/historical attitudes; more precisely, this approach contrast “postmodernity” with modernity,” rather than “postmodernism” with “modernism.” (Klages p. 2).
I have tried to extract some of the tendencies of postmodernity. However it should be noted that we do not live in a completely postmodern society, but rather in a society that is moving rapidly from a traditional society to postmodernity. Social change on this scale takes generations. Francisco Andrés Orizo, a Spanish sociologist, in his book Sistemas de valores en la España de los 90 writes:
Y no es una casualidad que muchas de estas manifestaciones que rompen los esquemas de la modernidad se lideren dentro del escenario español, cuando aún no habíamos completado las prescritas etapas de un proceso de modernización. Nos hemos hecho posmodernos sin haber ejercido antes de modernos.1
(And it is not a coincidence that many of these expressions that shatter the preconceptions of modernity may have come upon the Spanish scene, when we haven’t even completed the prescribed stages of the process of modernization. We have become postmodern without having previously practiced modernism.)
According to Orizo the prevailing worldview in Spain before postmodernism was the traditional worldview. So Spain has jumped from a traditional (or premodern) worldview to a postmodern worldview without having gone through modernity. While we may encounter people in Europe or the United States who are thoroughly modern in outlook; most Spaniards are either traditional in their worldview or postmodern. It is probably much more common to find people who have many postmodern values, some having more than others. However this is the direction in which Western society is moving, and each succeeding generation will have a higher percentage of postmodernists and be more thoroughly immersed in postmodern thought. It should also be noted that in reality Europe is much more postmodern than modern. Also in this age of rapid and powerful communication, social change occurs more rapidly that it did in past generations. So it would be reasonable to expect a more rapid shift from modern or traditional to post modern than from ancient to modern or even from one modern expression to another, for example from Renaissance to Enlightenment.
While this monumental change takes time Orizo’s research seems to indicate that in general, Spaniards who were born before 1945 tend to be traditional in outlook, those who were born after this date have a stronger tendency for a postmodern outlook. The younger a Spaniard is the more likely their value system will reflect postmodernism and their postmodernism will be tend to be more ideologically pure.
Tendencies of Postmodernity
Taken from the Klages article:
- Subjectivity
- Rejection of rigid distinctions
- Local, personal and specific truth
- Rejection of absolute truths
- Rejection of “grand narratives” which explain reality such as capitalism or communism. These grand narratives are seen as old and simplistic and don’t adequately explain the world’s complexity.
- Practicality
- Inclusiveness or tolerance
- Diversity of morals and lifestyle
- Tendency to perceive information that does not fit their worldview as “noise”.
- Tendency to see conservative religion or politics as the enemy.
- Language is fluid and subjective (the hearer brings as much to the conversation as the listener).
Other tendencies not specifically mentioned by Klages:
- Desire for spirituality
- Desire for community
- Rejection of negativity
1 Francisco Andrés Orizo, sistemas de valores en la España de los 90, (Madrid, Centro de Investigaciones Sociolóicas. 1996). Page LV-LVI.
Tendencies of Modernity
- Rationality
- Autonomy
- Objectivity
- Science as the objective arbiter of truth
- Knowledge produced by science is “truth” and is eternal
- Value of progress and perfection
- Order
- Language is rational and transparent (it means exactly what it says)
- Rejection of that which does not represent order
- Rejection of that which is considered “other” i.e. lack of tolerance
Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism as Expressions of Modernism
What struck me as Klages described modernity was that Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism are modern expressions of Christianity. I do not in any way mean to disparage either of these expressions of our faith. I merely mean that they are an expression of their historical/cultural context, a context that is rapidly changing. Protestantism itself started with the Renaissance, which was the first cultural expression of modernity. The various expressions of Protestantism developed as modernity developed. Evangelicalism and Christian Fundamentalism as we now know them are the fullest expressions of the modern worldview brought into the Christian faith. These expressions have a distinctly American flavor, although each country will have its own variations.
Orizo’s observation that Spain has passed from a traditional society to a postmodern society without having fully passed through modernism goes a long way in explaining why the Evangelical Church expressing itself in modernist forms has never been able to make strong inroads into the Spanish culture. This paper will focus on the contrast of modernism and postmodernism because the modernism of the Evangelical Church and the postmodernism of the Spanish society has become a critical strategic issue.
Following are some ways in which we express our modern cultural underpinnings. I do not in any way want to imply that these are wrong, merely that we have expressed our faith from a specific worldview.
A scientific view of the Bible. The Bible is our book of theological facts. We investigate this book to extract these facts. Our hermeneutic could be metaphorically described as putting the Bible under a microscope. The evangelical hermeneutic is highly objective. We want to know exactly what the text means by what it says. In other words the language of the Bible is transparent.
Emphasis on doctrine. Doctrines are our theological facts. We have a tendency to disagree and even argue over these facts because to get the facts right is of very high value to modernists. We have a low tolerance for ambiguity in doctrine because the modern mind wants everything clearly explained.
High value on rightness. The modern mind wants everything analyzed and put in order. Whatever does not fit our order must be rejected. What fits the order or scheme is right; what does not must be rejected. Thus modern Evangelical scholarship places high value of systematic theology and on schools of systematic theology, for example Calvinism.
Low tolerance for mystery. I am not using the word mystery in the Pauline sense of the word as “a previously unknown truth which is now revealed” but in its more generic sense of something that can not be easily explained or understood or perhaps isn’t completely explainable or understandable.
High value on Truth. We often state our faith as a series of “truths”. This is as old as Christianity itself. It goes back to the first Christian creed which is Jesus is Lord and continues through the various other creeds such as the Nicene and the Apostles Creed. However, these creeds are relatively simple and brief compared to the systemization and expression of doctrine common in modern Christianity (think of Chafer’s Systematic Theology in eight volumes). We have systematically tried to extract every truth from the Bible and have tried to express each truth doctrinally.
Low tolerance for aberration. Modern Christianity has a fairly low tolerance for aberration in doctrine and lifestyle. We highly value lifestyles that reflect our doctrines and feel we need to confront those lifestyles that do not fit Biblical/Doctrinal norms. This is one of the differences between Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism. Evangelicalism is more tolerant in doctrinal aberration than is Fundamentalism. Two moral issues which are currently important to most expressions of the Christian faith are homosexuality and abortion. Doctrinally, most Christians would affirm their love of those who practice these lifestyles, while expressing abhorrence for the practice itself. Often though, we are perceived by outsiders as hating both of these lifestyles and those who practice these lifestyles.
Proclamation of the Gospel as Doctrine. One of the great strengths of modern Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism is our ability to proclaim the truths of the Gospel in clear concise ways. We do this in a number of ways: The Four Spiritual Laws, Steps to Peace with God, The Bridge Illustration and The Roman Road, among others. Our very ability to be concise and clear reflects our modern worldview. The Gospel itself is viewed as a doctrinal truth to be accepted and believed as fact. More ancient forms of Christianity such as Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy struggle with this. This is because their worldview tends more toward an ancient mindset. Thus, the Christian faith is viewed as a series of mysteries, symbols, creeds and paradoxes to be meditated on. In contemplation of the symbols, mysteries and creeds one might come into communion with God.
High value in teaching and preaching. Because we tend to view our faith doctrinally and we so highly value truth, we feel a high expression of Christian maturity is to be doctrinally and Biblically knowledgeable. Therefore there is a high value put on teaching. This is particularly expressed in the large proportion of time devoted to preaching and teaching in the typical Evangelical or Fundamentalist service. Among many, there is a very high value put on expository Bible teaching. In other words, what exactly does the text say and therefore how does this doctrine apply to our lives. It is quite common for churches to systematically go through a book of the Bible or even the entire Bible itself. This is a fairly recent phenomenon in the Church. Thirty or forty years ago in Evangelical or Fundamentalist circles most sermons were topical sermons. Three or four centuries ago they were homilies.
Low value in personal discipleship. Because there tends to be such a high value on teaching in the church service, there is a correspondingly lower value placed on strong personal discipleship. When personal discipleship is expressed it is often focused on teaching Biblical and doctrinal knowledge or Bible memorization. Often there is even a failure to distinguish between personal discipleship and teaching such as in Sunday School (another modern expression). This is not to say that discipleship is non-existent but that it is fairly uncommon and when expressed it is often highly doctrinal in nature. Compare modern forms of discipleship with more ancient forms which were much more personal, intimate and intense such as spiritual formation.
Autonomy in church practice. There is a strong sense of the autonomy of believers and of individual churches. The priesthood of all believers was one of the foundational principals of Protestantism. This high value on autonomy is a tendency of modernism. Because there is a high value also placed on truth and because we can not agree on the fine points of doctrinal truth, there is also a tendency for the fragmentation of the Church into denominations and even individual church bodies holding firmly to their specific doctrines.
These practices are not necessarily right or wrong, they are expressions that have grown out of a specific cultural/historical context. Some very good things have come out of these modern expressions of Christianity, for example the ability to clearly and simply express the gospel and a deep and exhaustive understanding of Biblical truth. However, like all cultural expressions of Christianity, if exposed to another worldview or culture without contextualization there will be a tendency to reject the message because of the way it is communicated. We have to also realize that, as in all cultural expressions of Christianity, there will be weaknesses which others can clearly see but to which we are insensitive or even blind.
Barriers and Bridges
As modern Christianity moves into this new worldview or culture of postmodernism, it will encounter barriers of understanding. These barriers of understanding become one of our two chief strategic stumbling blocks. At the same time there may very well be bridges of natural affinity to our message that we will not recognize because they are so foreign to us or are expressed in ways that make us uncomfortable. This becomes our other chief stumbling block.
Barriers
Some of the potential barriers we will face:
Truth and Subjectivity. Modernism puts a high value on exclusive truth. Postmodernism places a high value on subjectivity. To a postmodernist it is truth if it is true for me. This could be expressed as this is my truth; you can have your own. It is true for me. This resonates with me. You believe what you want to, I will believe what I want to.
Rejection of rigid distinctions. Postmodernists tend to not like rigid distinctions made about themselves or others. Even more so, they will bristle at negative judgements made about different opinions or lifestyles. They may not agree with these opinions or lifestyles themselves but they would uphold the right of others to hold different views or practice different lifestyles. This may be expressed in the following ways: How dare you judge someone else. I believe in tolerance. The only thing I am intolerant of is intolerance. I believe in diversity of lifestyles.
Local, personal and specific truth. As stated above, postmodernism places a high value on subjectivity. This is true to the point that there is a tendency to view truth as personal and specific. Everyone can have his or her own truth. Postmodernists also tend to take on as truth what their peer group or community believes. If a group to which they identify has strong value structures they will also tend to hold these values.
Rejection of absolute truths. Klages in her work titled Postmodernism refers to Francois Lyotard’s concept of the “grand narrative”,
Totality, and stability, and order, Lyotard argues, are maintained in modern societies through the means of “grand narratives” or “master narratives,” which are stories a culture tells itself about its practices and beliefs. A “grand narrative” in American culture might be the story that democracy is the most enlightened (rational) form of government, and that democracy can and will lead to universal human happiness. Every belief system or ideology has its grand narratives, according to Lyotard; for Marxism, for instance, the “grand narrative” is the idea that capitalism will collapse in on itself and a utopian socialist world will evolve. You might think of grand narratives as a kind of meta-theory, or meta-ideology, that is, an ideology that explains an ideology (as in Marxism); a story that is told to explain the belief systems that exist.” (p.4)
Klages goes on to explain:
Postmodernism then is the critique of grand narratives, the awareness that such narratives serve to mask the contradictions and instabilities that are inherent in any social organization or practice… Post modernism, in rejecting grand narratives, favors “mini-narratives,” stories that explain small practices, local events, rather than large-scale universal or global concepts. Post modern “mini-narratives” are always situational, provisional, contingent, and temporary, making no claim to universality, truth, reason, or stability. (p.4)
Christianity by its very nature is a grand-narrative which claims to be absolute truth. Most postmodernists would reject out of hand ideas and concepts presented in this way.
Inclusiveness or tolerance. As stated above postmodernists have a low tolerance for intolerance. This may seem a logical contradiction to a modernist, but like it or not this is their tendency. This becomes a strategic barrier when we express low tolerance or lack of tolerance for other religious expressions, lifestyles or morals.
Diversity of morals and lifestyles. Postmodernists desire the freedom to express and live their own personal morals and lifestyles. Initial hostility to these lifestyles, opinions or morals will create an almost insurmountable strategic barrier.
Tendency to perceive information that does not fit their worldview as “noise”. In the modern conception the opposite of knowledge is ignorance, but in the postmodern worldview it is noise (Klages p. 5). Postmodernists have just as much trouble understanding ideas which are not formulated in their paradigms as do other worldviews. By communicating with postmodernists in modern paradigms we risk our ideas being classified as having no value (noise). At this point, this is the chief barrier we are encountering in the preaching of the gospel to postmodernists. We tend to start at the wrong points, and present our truth in the wrong ways and we immediately get turned off as noise, just like someone switching the channel to static.
Rejection of negativity. Postmodernists do not appreciate statements that are perceived as negative or lacking in appreciation of personal freedom. To express hostility to another religious expression would tend to create a barrier of communication. To express hostility to a given lifestyle or value would be perceived as negative and would also create a barrier of communication. It would not only be noise, but it would be viewed as intolerant. This does not mean that the postmodernist personally holds these views, but rather he or she upholds the rights of other to have different views, values or lifestyles.
Tendency to see conservative religion or politics as the enemy.
…the desire to return to the pre-postmodern era (modern/humanist/Enlightenment thinking) tends to get associated with conservative political, religious, and philosophical groups. In fact, one of the consequences of postmodernism seems to be the rise of religious fundamentalism, as a form of resistance to the questioning of the “grand narratives” of religious truth. (Klages p.5)
There are natural and inherent conflicts in the encounter between the modern worldview and the postmodern worldview. There are also inherent conflicts in the encounter of modern expressions of Christianity as it encounters postmodern culture. Postmodernists feel this keenly and tend to view us as the enemy.
Bridges
However, there are several bridges into the postmodernist’s life which have encouraging strategic potential.
Tendency for spiritual sensitivity. One clear characteristic of postmodernists is that they have a tendency to be spiritual seekers. Newsweek magazine reports that people are buying more books on meditation, prayer, and spirituality than on sex or self-help.2 Of course not all postmodernists are spiritual seekers, but many are. This bodes well for those who wish to preach the gospel to them. However, this spiritual search is a search for something experiential, personal and practical in nature. They are looking for their own personal spirituality. Thus we see the rise of Eastern religions in Western societies. New Age thinking, for example, is becoming more and more popular. We should think of New Age as an expression of postmodern spirituality because it is experiential, personal and from the practitioners point of view practical.
Experiential Spirituality. One of the major advantages we have as Christians in dealing with postmodernists is that we have a God who is real and who is active in our lives. Unfortunately, this personal interaction has been somewhat downplayed in our modern expressions of Christianity. Many postmodernists are looking for a real spiritual encounter. They want to make actual contact with spiritual forces. They can make contact with Jesus who is real and very powerful.
Personal Spirituality. While at first this looks like a disadvantage it can be turned to an advantage. Those postmodernists who are spiritually minded want to have personal interaction with spiritual forces. Christians have a personal love relationship with Jesus Christ. We encounter Him through abiding, Christian meditation, Bible study and prayer. He is interested in every detail of our lives and is willing to become involved in the most intimate and minute details of our lives. He answers our prayers supernaturally. This is a very positive message for a postmodernist if we can communicate it to them in their cultural language.
Practicality. Postmodernists want answers to the real problems they are facing in their daily lives. They don’t want grand narratives, they don’t want doctrinal answers, they want results. We have a God who can meet their needs. We have a God who has spoken to mankind in practical ways about their significant needs. He continues to interact with mankind through meditation of the Scriptures, the body life of the Church, and the Church’s interaction with society. We have a God who has given us practical guidelines on marriage, child rearing, family, lifestyle, relationships, and dealing with problem areas of our lives, among others.
Social needs. Postmodernists, while rejecting the grand narratives, do want answers to local problems. If we were to talk to most postmodernists about the large sociopolitical problems that cause world hunger they would turn off the noise. However, if we were to send food and clothing to flood victims they would respect us for having a social conscience. They want to see action that is doing something about real problems. This will be perceived as showing spiritual light, we call it having a good testimony.
Shalom. Postmodernists are looking for a better life. But the improvements they are looking for are not merely material. They have the benefits of modern technology and they appreciate them, but they want something more. They want emotional comfort, happiness, peace, joy, and love. They may not know how to express it in our terms but they are looking for shalom. This is good news because Jesus wants to give them shalom.
2 Dr. Bruce Demarest, Satisfy Your Soul: Restoring the Heart of Christian Spirituality (Colorado Springs: Navpress, 1999), p.44.
They are willing to break out of former norms. Postmodernists are willing and even anxious to break out of modern forms including and even especially religious forms. However, religion expressed in modernism is something they are adamantly against. They would be willing to try new religious forms if they were practical, spiritual and spoke their language. In Spain we need to keep in mind that Catholicism is viewed as part of the social fabric of life; it is part of being Spanish. They may not like Catholicism as it now exists as a religious practice but they don’t want to lose their Spanishness. Any expression of spirituality that looks, tastes and feels Spanish will be greatly appreciated.
They are looking for spiritual guides. My first reaction to Paco’s statement that someone could be a spiritual guide for him made me think of New Age spirituality, which concerned me. However, once I could get past the language I realized that this is exactly what a witness is, someone who points a non-believer to Jesus. Witness needs to come from relationship not from proclamation. Their idea of a spiritual guide is not someone who points them to the right trail but rather someone who says, “I have experienced the trail. I love the trail. I am on the trail. Come with me.” Furthermore, they need to sense that indeed we are on a spiritual trail and that that trail could be good and practical for them. Proclamation of the doctrinal truth of the gospel as a theological fact to be believed will be turned off as noise. In fact, that is what most of us are experiencing as we preach the gospel to postmodernists. We need to find ways of making relationship and then inviting them join us on the trail.
Moving In the Direction of Solutions
How do we get past the cultural and communication barriers between modernists and postmodernists and cross the bridges that exist so they can meet Jesus? Following are some ideas to ponder. I don’t claim that I have concrete failsafe solutions but as we work together and experiment together perhaps the Holy Spirit will guide us to ways to make contact and allow us to be spiritual guides to our postmodern friends.
Lead with Jesus. Those postmodernists who are spiritually minded want encounters with a personal spiritual force. This of course can be a very dangerous desire if it is focused in the wrong direction. However, if focused on Jesus it can lead to an encounter with the loving, gracious God of the universe. We might consider talking with our friends about what Jesus is doing in our lives. We need to talk about Him just as He is, personal and spiritual.
We also need to be careful. Going too fast or too aggressively will be perceived as noise and we will be turned off.
Be practical. Postmodernists want to hear practical solutions. How is Jesus affecting our marriage? How is Jesus helping me overcome bitterness? How is Jesus helping me raise my kids? What is Jesus leading me to do for my neighbors who have needs?
Be spiritual. Our modern tendency is to avoid being too spiritual. To the point that we often view mysticism with skepticism. Christian mysticism is as old as the Church. Postmodernists who are looking for spirituality are probably much more open to personal spiritual encounter than a non-Christian modernist would be.
Think of introducing them personally to Jesus. Our modern tendency is to preach the gospel as a doctrine to be accepted and believed as truth. It might be wise to consider introducing our postmodern friends to a spiritual Jesus who offers practical solutions; one of the most important of which is that Jesus wants to cleanse us spiritually. He wants to offer grace, love and peace to those who formerly didn’t know Him. Then we can go to the cross as a highly personal act that showed the extent to which He would go to meet us and spiritually cleanse us.
George G. Hunter III in his book How to Reach Secular People suggest that instead of trying to convince someone of the rightness of our point of view and then ask for a decision or conversion as we do with modernists we should look for a series of mini-conversions. He suggests that we should do this from relationship looking for changes of perspective in these following six points in the following order:
- awareness
- relevance
- interest
- trial
- adoption
- reinforcement In other words first we help our friend become aware of our relationship to Jesus (mini¬conversion #1). Next we show how Jesus can be relevant in their personal life (mini¬conversion #2). We then try to cultivate interest in their investigating a relationship with Jesus (mini-conversion #3). We challenge our friend to see if Jesus won’t respond to their felt need such as in helping them heal a broken marriage or dealing with children (a trial). We can do this through introducing them to what God has said in his Word and through their own prayer to Jesus (mini-conversion #4). When they have an experience with Jesus we tell them of other things that Jesus offers especially forgiveness of sin, or spiritual cleansing (mini-conversion #5). We then need to encourage our friend that he or she has made the right choice. One way to do this is through introducing them to other Christians so they have a sense of community and they can begin to adopt the values of that community (mini-conversion #6). All of this comes from relationship and must be done over time. It is not something that can be done in one conversation, one week or probably even in one month.
Think about spiritual formation as a model. As discussed before, most postmodernists have an aversion to doctrine, but this does not mean they would be disinterested in spirituality and spiritual growth. One ancient model that would probably appeal to new postmodern Christians would be spiritual formation. In this model the spiritual director works through practical and spiritual problems with the disciple by directing the disciple to pray through and meditate on certain scriptures. He may give the disciple a specific spiritual task to accomplish or a question to answer; he may even strongly confront the disciple. This is intense biblical discipleship but it is not based on doctrinal knowledge but rather focused, deep, practical spiritual growth.
Look for an invitation to be a spiritual guide. Postmodernists reserve the right to invite us into their spiritual world. They don’t want us to invite ourselves. However that doesn’t mean that we have to sit around and do nothing. I like the analogy of fishing. We need to put out the concept of what Jesus is doing in our lives as “bait”. If they respond, we give them a little more. If they don’t, we build relationship and give them some more bait later. We can even tease them with the bait. But we should be very careful of coming on too hard. The second we are perceived as coercive we become noise to be switched off.
Look for discipleship relationships. We tend to think the gospel comes first, then introduction of the new Christian to a church, then discipleship through teaching. When the new Christian enters the church he will meet new Christian friends. We might consider changing the order of this model. Friendship comes first. In the process of friendship comes opportunity to become a spiritual guide. It is at this point that discipleship really starts. In the process of discipleship (or spiritual formation) we introduce the person to Jesus. We continue to guide this person in their relationship with Jesus. In the process as we begin to see spiritual growth we introduce the new disciple to others who know Jesus and who enjoy worshiping Jesus together. When the disciple is ready we introduce them to corporate worship in some sort of group or even church setting.
Look to the Creeds. Postmodernists tend to be allergic to systematic doctrine, but that does not mean that they do not need doctrine or shouldn’t be introduced to the foundational truths of Christianity. One way to do this would be to have them meditate of the basic creeds of the Church such as the Nicene and Apostles Creeds. This is also an opportunity to show wholeness of the body of Christ. We can say that different churches have different customs that comes from different periods of our rich history, but we all agree on these foundational truths.
Focus on the disciplines. The cardinal Christian disciplines of prayer, meditative Bible study, Christian meditation, fasting and scripture memorization would be something a new postmodern Christian might be drawn to as long as they were presented as spiritual exercises to draw closer to Christ and to gain practical solutions in ones spiritual life.
Focus on abiding. One of the key Christian disciplines that has tended to be de-emphasized in modern Christianity is abiding in Christ. Perhaps it is because abiding can be so mystical. Postmodern Christians will probably warm up immediately to the concept of Christ’s spiritual control and guidance in our life as we abide in Him and He abides in us.
Focus on prayer. Prayer is something that many non-Christian and new Christian postmodernists can relate to, after all, it is highly spiritual behavior. It would probably be wise to emphasize fully orbed Christian prayer. By this I mean that in modern Christianity we have tended to focus on supplication, thanksgiving and confession; down played worship and almost completely ignored meditative prayerful Bible study, Christian meditation, ecstatic prayer and prayers of silence. Some of our Pentecostal brothers have tended to focus on one specific style of ecstatic prayer (tongues) at the expense of other forms of prayer. We all have tended to do much more talking than listening in prayer. Postmodernists would be just as drawn to these other forms of prayer as they would supplication or tongues.
Find ways to express Spanishness. To be Spanish is to be Catholic. It will be hard to convince most Spaniards of anything else. The older a Spaniard is the more likely they are to hold to their Catholicness. Until we give them reason to believe otherwise they will view Protestantism as noise to be turned off. But if we can invite them to Church sponsored events that are very Spanish they will feel more at home. These need to be celebrations or social activities not teaching services. It becomes our burden to show one can be an Evangelical Christian and still be very Spanish. One way might be to avoid the words Protestant and Evangelical. We have the right to use the word Christian just as much as Catholics do. Use of this term, if done well becomes inclusive rather than exclusive. This may avoid an unnecessary barrier. We need to remember that any negative statements about the Catholic Church will not only be seen as intolerance but as anti-Spanish. We need to look for ways to build bridges of friendship to the Catholic Church without losing our own spiritual heritage; particularly to those in the Catholic Church who are truly born again. This does not mean we are in agreement with all the doctrines of the Catholic Church, but that we are trying to avoid a serious strategic barrier to the preaching of the gospel.
Find ways to express culture. Spaniards are very interested in their own cultural/historical/literary heritage. This is probably true of other expressions of European postmodernism. We might explore different ways of expressing and celebrating Spanish cultural and artistic events in the name of Jesus.
Offer shalom. Postmodernists are looking for wholeness, particularly emotional and spiritual wholeness. The biblical word for this is shalom. This is what Jesus is offering his people. This would be a concept that postmodernists could warm up to.
Meet real needs in the community and the world. Postmodernists want mini solutions to real problems. They are much more likely to warm up to giving blood at the blood mobile than to a march against world
Professor Bob Elliott & I have recently been privileged to
host briefly Dr Edric Baker CNZM on furlough from Bangla Desh. The
said Ed is a radical pioneer of Third World rural medicine.
Ed has declared autonomous - no longer reliant on him after
2 decades - his pioneering 'project' the Thanarbaid medical centre
and is now applying all the lessons learned in his newer rural
hospital & outpatients service at Kailakuri in the same district.
A seminar at N. Shore hospital excited some medicos. Here
are key figures that contribute to that effect.
BANGLA DESH
150M 1/5 NZ land area 30M hard-core poor
(< U$60/mo)
Projected diabetics in 2025 500,000
In the capital Dakha is a top diabetics' hospital of the
whole Muslim world - overwhelmed by the epidemic but able to supply
cheap insulin to Kailakuri which is extremely helpful.
KAILAKURI 2004
Ann spend $72,000 = 24 NZ public hospital 3-d inpatients
Staff ca50 - none paid as much as poverty defn U$60/mo
Inpatients 530
Outpatient consultations 12,000
Antenatal consultations 700
Babies delivered 110
Postnatal consultations incl nutr 1000
TB cases 100 cure rate ca90%
diabetic patients 700
There is only the one medico. Nearly all the work is done by
the poor - primary school graduates, no high-school graduates - for
the poor.
Edric is grappling with an epidemic of diabetes. Many cases
are of a different kind than we see in NZ - not obese but emaciated
adults. One diabetic of 18 could get in the Guinness Book of Records
with a BMI of 9; Ed can close his thumb & finger around his biceps.
We are hoping to get prominent diabetes researcher Prof Elliott over
there to cooperate with the diabetics experts in that special
hospital. Zinc deficiency is a possible cause, which would not be v
difficult to counter.
You will have the thrill of involvement, if only marginal, in
illegality: the said Ed has given up on applying for permits from the
exceedingly corrupt Bangla Desh govt, so his hospitals have been
illegal for some y. They don't directly harass him, but e.g when he
applies for an *exit* visa to come home on furlough they delay for
months hoping for bribes that are never forthcoming.
I rate the said Ed as a top Kiwi, and indeed I strongly
suspect he is one of the most advanced Third World medicos of all
history. Surrounded overwhelmingly by Muslims, whom he mainly
serves, this saintly bachelor attains formidable medical service on
precious little money. He sings the praises of dung-mud floors as
against concrete. Electricity is absent. Roofs have been thatch
till recently, but now thatch-growing land has been converted to
cassava and pineapple to such an extent that tin is no more
expensive. This is good news in the sense that a tin roof is the
biggest component of my solar airconditioning & cosmic cooling system
which I hope to slap on at least the main hospital bldg, to give
inpatients cooled, insect-free air at night. The requisite 0.1kW of
electricity should be affordable from photovoltaic panels &
storage-batteries; may as well add a few electric lights while we're
about it. My solar water-heater, which is particularly cheap, would
also be a boon as all hot water at Kailakuri is now heated on pots
over open fires.
I am sorry to say the Anglican Board of Missions, while
helpfully paying his furlough fares, gives Edric no routine money.
Indeed they hang on (as they have never notified me) to 4% of
anything they receive for him. If you have any possible influence
with that board, please exert it. They should be supporting Ed more.
A govt subsidy via Christian World Service was for a fixed
half-decade term, and of course a senior admired male medico will -
in the Cartwright era - be severely handicapped for further NZ govt
help. It is appalling that this world-leading medical missionary
gets no routine money from our govt.
The hand-to-mouth existence Edric has led for 2 decades
should be relieved by a medium-term grant from some suitable NZ govt
agency. But in the short run money should be sent in care of his
father the former govt dept head J V T Baker, 6 Washer Ave.,
Whakatane.
Edric is taking the spirit of Samuel Marsden back to the
world - into a mission field which is in some ways harder than what
Sam found in 1814. Please do all you can to help.
host briefly Dr Edric Baker CNZM on furlough from Bangla Desh. The
said Ed is a radical pioneer of Third World rural medicine.
Ed has declared autonomous - no longer reliant on him after
2 decades - his pioneering 'project' the Thanarbaid medical centre
and is now applying all the lessons learned in his newer rural
hospital & outpatients service at Kailakuri in the same district.
A seminar at N. Shore hospital excited some medicos. Here
are key figures that contribute to that effect.
BANGLA DESH
150M 1/5 NZ land area 30M hard-core poor
(< U$60/mo)
Projected diabetics in 2025 500,000
In the capital Dakha is a top diabetics' hospital of the
whole Muslim world - overwhelmed by the epidemic but able to supply
cheap insulin to Kailakuri which is extremely helpful.
KAILAKURI 2004
Ann spend $72,000 = 24 NZ public hospital 3-d inpatients
Staff ca50 - none paid as much as poverty defn U$60/mo
Inpatients 530
Outpatient consultations 12,000
Antenatal consultations 700
Babies delivered 110
Postnatal consultations incl nutr 1000
TB cases 100 cure rate ca90%
diabetic patients 700
There is only the one medico. Nearly all the work is done by
the poor - primary school graduates, no high-school graduates - for
the poor.
Edric is grappling with an epidemic of diabetes. Many cases
are of a different kind than we see in NZ - not obese but emaciated
adults. One diabetic of 18 could get in the Guinness Book of Records
with a BMI of 9; Ed can close his thumb & finger around his biceps.
We are hoping to get prominent diabetes researcher Prof Elliott over
there to cooperate with the diabetics experts in that special
hospital. Zinc deficiency is a possible cause, which would not be v
difficult to counter.
You will have the thrill of involvement, if only marginal, in
illegality: the said Ed has given up on applying for permits from the
exceedingly corrupt Bangla Desh govt, so his hospitals have been
illegal for some y. They don't directly harass him, but e.g when he
applies for an *exit* visa to come home on furlough they delay for
months hoping for bribes that are never forthcoming.
I rate the said Ed as a top Kiwi, and indeed I strongly
suspect he is one of the most advanced Third World medicos of all
history. Surrounded overwhelmingly by Muslims, whom he mainly
serves, this saintly bachelor attains formidable medical service on
precious little money. He sings the praises of dung-mud floors as
against concrete. Electricity is absent. Roofs have been thatch
till recently, but now thatch-growing land has been converted to
cassava and pineapple to such an extent that tin is no more
expensive. This is good news in the sense that a tin roof is the
biggest component of my solar airconditioning & cosmic cooling system
which I hope to slap on at least the main hospital bldg, to give
inpatients cooled, insect-free air at night. The requisite 0.1kW of
electricity should be affordable from photovoltaic panels &
storage-batteries; may as well add a few electric lights while we're
about it. My solar water-heater, which is particularly cheap, would
also be a boon as all hot water at Kailakuri is now heated on pots
over open fires.
I am sorry to say the Anglican Board of Missions, while
helpfully paying his furlough fares, gives Edric no routine money.
Indeed they hang on (as they have never notified me) to 4% of
anything they receive for him. If you have any possible influence
with that board, please exert it. They should be supporting Ed more.
A govt subsidy via Christian World Service was for a fixed
half-decade term, and of course a senior admired male medico will -
in the Cartwright era - be severely handicapped for further NZ govt
help. It is appalling that this world-leading medical missionary
gets no routine money from our govt.
The hand-to-mouth existence Edric has led for 2 decades
should be relieved by a medium-term grant from some suitable NZ govt
agency. But in the short run money should be sent in care of his
father the former govt dept head J V T Baker, 6 Washer Ave.,
Whakatane.
Edric is taking the spirit of Samuel Marsden back to the
world - into a mission field which is in some ways harder than what
Sam found in 1814. Please do all you can to help.
07/31/05
Curse billed as Blessing: The $100 Laptop for the Rest of the World [Catch-all] -
GEA - gormfach@gmail.com @ 12:34:08 AM
Techreview.com
From the Editor
By Jason Pontin August 2005
In May, at the Wall Street Journal's D3 conference outside San
Diego (an event attended by technology princes like Bill Gates
and Steve Jobs), I saw the elements of a computer that, if it
were built, would wonderfully improve the fortunes of poor children.
Nicholas Negroponte, founder and chairman of MIT's Media Lab,
showed attendees the screen of the Hundred-Dollar Laptop, or
HDL. Beginning in 2006, he said, he would build 100 million to
200 million HDLs every year--and distribute them to the children
of the poor world. Many attendees had read about Negroponte's
idea and dismissed it as quixotic. Hearing how an HDL might be
built, seeing a part of it, and realizing the scale of the project
produced a rustle of delighted interest.
Negroponte recently wrote to me about what he hoped the HDL would
do: "Education: one laptop per child. Whatever big problem you
can imagine, from world peace to the environment to hunger to
poverty, the solution always includes education. We need to depend
more on peer-to-peer and self-driven learning. The laptop is
one important means of doing that."
Can a $100 computer be built? Maybe. Negroponte does not plan
to use three expensive components of conventional laptops: Microsoft
Windows, a traditional flat-panel screen, and a hard drive. Instead,
the HDL will be loaded with Linux and other open-source software;
its display will use either a rear-projection screen or a type
of electronic ink invented at the MIT Media Lab; and it will
store one gigabyte's worth of files in flash memory.
The HDL has a number of other, intriguing features. Since many
villages in the poor world do not have electricity, the machines
may be powered by either a crank or "parasitic power"--that is,
typing. Once turned on, HDLs will automatically connect to one
another using a "mesh network" initially developed at MIT and
the Media Lab. In the mesh network each laptop serves as an
information-relaying
node. Households that have HDLs will be able to communicate with
each other by e-mail or voice calls.
Most importantly, Negroponte wants every mesh network to have
access to the Internet. The laptops will be loaded with Skype,
a communications application that provides free telephone calls.
Consider: the most forlorn parts of the globe might become part
of the wider world.
The most vital part of the plan is also, perhaps, the most challenging.
Internet access is not cheap in the poor world; infrastructure
is fragile and expensive to maintain. When I challenged Neprogonte
about this "hidden cost," he conceded, "[This is] a very real
issue. We are looking at ways to spend less than $1 per month
per child."
At first glance, Negroponte's economics seem rational enough.
The HDL will not be sold commercially; instead, education ministries
and other government agencies will purchase it. Profits will
be very limited: merely $10 per machine for equipment manufacturers.
Of course, building a laptop for $100 demands what economists
call "economies of scale." Negroponte's pilot project requires
commitments for at least six million orders. So far, China has
expressed an interest in buying two million machines, and Brazil
one million. At least at first, the machines would be built in
China, where Negroponte has been talking to manufacturers.
Not everyone is convinced. On the record, few are willing to
cast doubt on such a worthy project, but some informed people
to whom I spoke wondered whether the Chinese were accurately
estimating the costs of manufacturing the HDL.
But most people, like D3's attendees, are excited by the prospect
of the HDL. Why? Because it represents something of a second
chance. Nothing much came of attempts in the late 1990s to address
inequities in the distribution of information technologies; bridging
the "digital divide" is no longer a fashionable cause. But the
divide is real enough for all that. According to the World Bank,
the number of Internet users per capita in the poor world is
40 percent that of the rest of the world. The rich world has
three times as many computers than the poor. For more than five
billion people, the Internet is only a rumor. Inevitably, poor
children are the biggest losers: their lives are pathetically
circumscribed. While they need clean water, food, and health
care, they also need education and more-expansive horizons.
Attempts to bridge the digital divide failed because there was
no bridge. Nicholas Negroponte's Hundred-Dollar Laptop could
be that bridge. Do you think the HDL can be built?
[note evasion of the question whether it *should* be]
------------------------
Write and tell me at
=========================================
The MIT Media Lab is launching a new research initiative to develop
a $100 laptopóa technology that could revolutionize how we educate
the world's children. The $100 Laptop Project (HDLP) was announced
by Nicholas Negroponte, Lab chairman and co-founder, at the World
Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland in January 2005.
Here Negroponte answers questions on the initiative.
What is the $100 Laptop, really?
The $100 Laptop will be a Linux-based, full-color, full-screen
laptop, which initially is achieved either by rear projecting
the image on a flat screen or by using electronic ink (developed
at the MIT Media Lab). In addition, it will be rugged, use innovative
power (including wind-up), be WiFi- and cell phone-enabled, and
have USB ports galore. Its current specifications are: 500MHz,
1GB, 1 Megapixel. The cost of materials for each laptop is estimated
to be approximately $90, which includes the display, as well
as the processor and memory, and allows for $10 for contingency
or profit.
Why not a desktop?
Desktops are cheaper, but mobility is important, especially with
regard to taking the computer home at night. Recent work with
schools in Maine has shown the huge value of using a laptop across
all of one's studies, as well as for play. Bringing the laptop
home engages the family. In one Cambodian village where we have
been working, there is no electricity, thus the laptop is, among
other things, the brightest light source in the home.
How is it possible to get the cost so low?
* First, by driving the display cost below $25. We are exploring
five different options for this, looking at possibilities such
as projected image or roll-to-roll printed display. Projection
is the primary candidate at this time, and will bring the cost
of an approximately 12" diagonal display to below $20. Electronic
ink, invented at the Media Lab, is another option.
* Second, we will get the fat out of the systems. Today's
laptops have become obese. Two-thirds of their software is used
to manage the other third, which mostly does the same functions
nine different ways.
* Third, we will market the laptops in very large numbers
(millions), directly to ministries of education, which can distribute
them like textbooks.
Why is it important for each child to have a computer? What's
wrong with community-access centers?
One does not think of community pencilsókids have their own.
They are tools to think with, sufficiently inexpensive to be
used for work and play, drawing, writing, and mathematics. A
computer can be the same, but far more powerful. Furthermore,
there are many reasons it is important for a child to "own" somethingólike
a football, doll, or bookónot the least of which being that these
belongings will be well-maintained through love and care.
What about connectivity? Aren't telecommunications services expensive
in the developing world?
When these machines pop out of the box, they will make a mesh
network of their own, peer-to-peer. This is something initially
developed at MIT and the Media Lab. We are also exploring ways
to connect them to the backbone of the Internet at very low cost.
What can a $1000 laptop do that the $100 version can't?
Not much. The plan is for the $100 Laptop to do almost everything.
What it will not do is store a massive amount of data.
How will these be marketed?
The idea is to distribute the machines through those ministries
of education willing to adopt a policy of "one laptop per child."
Initial discussions have been held with China, where there are
approximately 220 million students (for which an order would
drive prices way down). In addition, smaller countries will be
selected for beta testing. Initial orders will be limited to
a minimum of one million units (with appropriate financing).
When do you anticipate these laptops reaching the market? What
do you see as the biggest hurdles?
Our preliminary schedule is to have units ready for shipment
by the end of 2006 or early 2007.
The biggest hurdle will be manufacturing 100 million of anything.
This is not just a supply-chain problem, but also a design problem.
The scale is daunting, but I find myself amazed at what some
companies are proposing to us. It feels as though at least half
the problems are being solved by mere resolve.
How will this initiative be structured?
The three principals at MIT are faculty members at the Media
Lab: Nicholas Negroponte (a founder of the Lab), Joe Jacobson
(serial entrepreneur, co-founder and director of E Ink), and
Seymour Papert (one of the world's leading theorists on child
learning).
Four other Media Lab researchers are also involved: Mitchel Resnick,
Tod Machover, Ted Selker, and Mike Bove.
Organizationally, MIT will work with a small number of companies
of complementary skills to develop a fully working and manufactured
laptop (50,000 to 100,000 units) in fewer than 12 months, with
an eye on building about 100 million to 200 million units by
the following year. Four initial companies who have committed
to this project are AMD, Brightstar, Google, News Corp, and Red
Hat. MIT will also work with the not-for-profit company One Laptop
Per Child (OLPC), as well as with the 2B1 Foundation.
-----------------------------
Please note: these laptops are not in production. They are not - and
will not - be [sic] available for purchase by individuals.
PRESS INQUIRIES:
Alexandra Kahn
Media Lab Press Liaison
617.253.0365
email via our contact us page
OTHER INQUIRIES:
Nia Lewis
niav@media.mit.edu
------------------------------
June 13, 2005
From the Editor
By Jason Pontin August 2005
In May, at the Wall Street Journal's D3 conference outside San
Diego (an event attended by technology princes like Bill Gates
and Steve Jobs), I saw the elements of a computer that, if it
were built, would wonderfully improve the fortunes of poor children.
Nicholas Negroponte, founder and chairman of MIT's Media Lab,
showed attendees the screen of the Hundred-Dollar Laptop, or
HDL. Beginning in 2006, he said, he would build 100 million to
200 million HDLs every year--and distribute them to the children
of the poor world. Many attendees had read about Negroponte's
idea and dismissed it as quixotic. Hearing how an HDL might be
built, seeing a part of it, and realizing the scale of the project
produced a rustle of delighted interest.
Negroponte recently wrote to me about what he hoped the HDL would
do: "Education: one laptop per child. Whatever big problem you
can imagine, from world peace to the environment to hunger to
poverty, the solution always includes education. We need to depend
more on peer-to-peer and self-driven learning. The laptop is
one important means of doing that."
Can a $100 computer be built? Maybe. Negroponte does not plan
to use three expensive components of conventional laptops: Microsoft
Windows, a traditional flat-panel screen, and a hard drive. Instead,
the HDL will be loaded with Linux and other open-source software;
its display will use either a rear-projection screen or a type
of electronic ink invented at the MIT Media Lab; and it will
store one gigabyte's worth of files in flash memory.
The HDL has a number of other, intriguing features. Since many
villages in the poor world do not have electricity, the machines
may be powered by either a crank or "parasitic power"--that is,
typing. Once turned on, HDLs will automatically connect to one
another using a "mesh network" initially developed at MIT and
the Media Lab. In the mesh network each laptop serves as an
information-relaying
node. Households that have HDLs will be able to communicate with
each other by e-mail or voice calls.
Most importantly, Negroponte wants every mesh network to have
access to the Internet. The laptops will be loaded with Skype,
a communications application that provides free telephone calls.
Consider: the most forlorn parts of the globe might become part
of the wider world.
The most vital part of the plan is also, perhaps, the most challenging.
Internet access is not cheap in the poor world; infrastructure
is fragile and expensive to maintain. When I challenged Neprogonte
about this "hidden cost," he conceded, "[This is] a very real
issue. We are looking at ways to spend less than $1 per month
per child."
At first glance, Negroponte's economics seem rational enough.
The HDL will not be sold commercially; instead, education ministries
and other government agencies will purchase it. Profits will
be very limited: merely $10 per machine for equipment manufacturers.
Of course, building a laptop for $100 demands what economists
call "economies of scale." Negroponte's pilot project requires
commitments for at least six million orders. So far, China has
expressed an interest in buying two million machines, and Brazil
one million. At least at first, the machines would be built in
China, where Negroponte has been talking to manufacturers.
Not everyone is convinced. On the record, few are willing to
cast doubt on such a worthy project, but some informed people
to whom I spoke wondered whether the Chinese were accurately
estimating the costs of manufacturing the HDL.
But most people, like D3's attendees, are excited by the prospect
of the HDL. Why? Because it represents something of a second
chance. Nothing much came of attempts in the late 1990s to address
inequities in the distribution of information technologies; bridging
the "digital divide" is no longer a fashionable cause. But the
divide is real enough for all that. According to the World Bank,
the number of Internet users per capita in the poor world is
40 percent that of the rest of the world. The rich world has
three times as many computers than the poor. For more than five
billion people, the Internet is only a rumor. Inevitably, poor
children are the biggest losers: their lives are pathetically
circumscribed. While they need clean water, food, and health
care, they also need education and more-expansive horizons.
Attempts to bridge the digital divide failed because there was
no bridge. Nicholas Negroponte's Hundred-Dollar Laptop could
be that bridge. Do you think the HDL can be built?
[note evasion of the question whether it *should* be]
------------------------
Write and tell me at
=========================================
The MIT Media Lab is launching a new research initiative to develop
a $100 laptopóa technology that could revolutionize how we educate
the world's children. The $100 Laptop Project (HDLP) was announced
by Nicholas Negroponte, Lab chairman and co-founder, at the World
Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland in January 2005.
Here Negroponte answers questions on the initiative.
What is the $100 Laptop, really?
The $100 Laptop will be a Linux-based, full-color, full-screen
laptop, which initially is achieved either by rear projecting
the image on a flat screen or by using electronic ink (developed
at the MIT Media Lab). In addition, it will be rugged, use innovative
power (including wind-up), be WiFi- and cell phone-enabled, and
have USB ports galore. Its current specifications are: 500MHz,
1GB, 1 Megapixel. The cost of materials for each laptop is estimated
to be approximately $90, which includes the display, as well
as the processor and memory, and allows for $10 for contingency
or profit.
Why not a desktop?
Desktops are cheaper, but mobility is important, especially with
regard to taking the computer home at night. Recent work with
schools in Maine has shown the huge value of using a laptop across
all of one's studies, as well as for play. Bringing the laptop
home engages the family. In one Cambodian village where we have
been working, there is no electricity, thus the laptop is, among
other things, the brightest light source in the home.
How is it possible to get the cost so low?
* First, by driving the display cost below $25. We are exploring
five different options for this, looking at possibilities such
as projected image or roll-to-roll printed display. Projection
is the primary candidate at this time, and will bring the cost
of an approximately 12" diagonal display to below $20. Electronic
ink, invented at the Media Lab, is another option.
* Second, we will get the fat out of the systems. Today's
laptops have become obese. Two-thirds of their software is used
to manage the other third, which mostly does the same functions
nine different ways.
* Third, we will market the laptops in very large numbers
(millions), directly to ministries of education, which can distribute
them like textbooks.
Why is it important for each child to have a computer? What's
wrong with community-access centers?
One does not think of community pencilsókids have their own.
They are tools to think with, sufficiently inexpensive to be
used for work and play, drawing, writing, and mathematics. A
computer can be the same, but far more powerful. Furthermore,
there are many reasons it is important for a child to "own" somethingólike
a football, doll, or bookónot the least of which being that these
belongings will be well-maintained through love and care.
What about connectivity? Aren't telecommunications services expensive
in the developing world?
When these machines pop out of the box, they will make a mesh
network of their own, peer-to-peer. This is something initially
developed at MIT and the Media Lab. We are also exploring ways
to connect them to the backbone of the Internet at very low cost.
What can a $1000 laptop do that the $100 version can't?
Not much. The plan is for the $100 Laptop to do almost everything.
What it will not do is store a massive amount of data.
How will these be marketed?
The idea is to distribute the machines through those ministries
of education willing to adopt a policy of "one laptop per child."
Initial discussions have been held with China, where there are
approximately 220 million students (for which an order would
drive prices way down). In addition, smaller countries will be
selected for beta testing. Initial orders will be limited to
a minimum of one million units (with appropriate financing).
When do you anticipate these laptops reaching the market? What
do you see as the biggest hurdles?
Our preliminary schedule is to have units ready for shipment
by the end of 2006 or early 2007.
The biggest hurdle will be manufacturing 100 million of anything.
This is not just a supply-chain problem, but also a design problem.
The scale is daunting, but I find myself amazed at what some
companies are proposing to us. It feels as though at least half
the problems are being solved by mere resolve.
How will this initiative be structured?
The three principals at MIT are faculty members at the Media
Lab: Nicholas Negroponte (a founder of the Lab), Joe Jacobson
(serial entrepreneur, co-founder and director of E Ink), and
Seymour Papert (one of the world's leading theorists on child
learning).
Four other Media Lab researchers are also involved: Mitchel Resnick,
Tod Machover, Ted Selker, and Mike Bove.
Organizationally, MIT will work with a small number of companies
of complementary skills to develop a fully working and manufactured
laptop (50,000 to 100,000 units) in fewer than 12 months, with
an eye on building about 100 million to 200 million units by
the following year. Four initial companies who have committed
to this project are AMD, Brightstar, Google, News Corp, and Red
Hat. MIT will also work with the not-for-profit company One Laptop
Per Child (OLPC), as well as with the 2B1 Foundation.
-----------------------------
Please note: these laptops are not in production. They are not - and
will not - be [sic] available for purchase by individuals.
PRESS INQUIRIES:
Alexandra Kahn
Media Lab Press Liaison
617.253.0365
email via our contact us page
OTHER INQUIRIES:
Nia Lewis
niav@media.mit.edu
------------------------------
June 13, 2005
D Hilbert they ain't ... but may be of interest ... [Catch-all] -
GEA - gormfach@gmail.com @ 12:31:22 AM
Essays by _Science_ news staff on 25 big questions facing science over the
next quarter-century:
http://www.sciencemag.org/sciext/125th/?GXHC_GX_jst=8258c07850ea6164
- and plus you get a further 100 if those 25 aren't enough
R
next quarter-century:
http://www.sciencemag.org/sciext/125th/?GXHC_GX_jst=8258c07850ea6164
- and plus you get a further 100 if those 25 aren't enough
R
In the circumstances one hesitates to mention the key fact which is
apparently not known to the unreasonable complainants, but it is
interesting enough that I'll take the risk.
After W2 the US veterans admin had hospitals full of mentally
disturbed men (yes, in those days it was still regarded as wrong to put
women in front-line positions) on whom all known medicine had failed. It
therefore became ethical to try psychosurgery if there was some reason to
believe it would help. Lobotomy was an obvious candidate (based on the
famous case of Phineas Gage).
But the USVA docs, to their everlasting credit, arranged a 'blind'
sham-operated control group who woke up with the operation scars on their
temples but had not had their brains touched.
The lobotomised patients, as a group, achieved detectable progress.
But, to a comparable extent, so did the control group. The immediate
conclusion is that if you pay plenty attention to a mentally deranged
person, and if the patient thinks he's getting the very best of treatment,
you have a good chance he'll tend to improve.
I once had the frightening experience of chatting informally with a
(rtd) prominent Australasian FRACS brain surgeon (now deceased), alluding
to the above facts, and suddenly realising, like a driver braking to a stop
at the edge of a cliff, that I had barely avoided disclosing to him that he
had been doing unwarranted psychosurgery. He was - I suddenly realised
- unaware of the USVA controlled expts.
I'm not learned in medical ethics, but my personal opinion is that
complainant Christine Johnson & allies have very little right on their
side. To apply the hindsight from the USVA expts retroactively to Moniz is
not rational.
BTW it's widely suspected that the Nobel cttee was in some
difficulty at the time in finding non-Germans for this prize. One could
hardly say Moniz stands out among Nobel winners. But he got it at the
time, and it's unreasonable to advocate the notion of cancelling that. Ms
Johnson should deal with her own feelings, not try to punish a deceased
Portugese who was, at the time, doing OK.
R
>http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050713/ap_on_he_me/lobotomy_debate
>Lobotomy Back in Spotlight After 30 Years
>
>By LINDA A. JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer
>
>The lobotomy, once a widely used method for treating mental illness,
>epilepsy and even chronic headaches, is generating fresh controversy 30
>years after doctors stopped performing the procedure now viewed as
>barbaric.
>
>A new book and a medical historian contend the crude brain surgery
>actually helped roughly 10 percent of the estimated 50,000 Americans who
>underwent the procedure between the mid-1930s and the 1970s. But relatives
>of lobotomy patients want the Nobel Prize given to its inventor revoked.
>
>The lobotomy debate was discussed in an editorial in Thursday's New
>England Journal of Medicine.
>
>Lobotomy was pioneered in 1936 by Portuguese neurologist Egas Moniz, who
>operated on people with severe psychiatric illnesses, particularly
>agitation and depression. Through holes drilled in the skull, Moniz cut
>through nerve fibers connecting the brain's frontal lobe, which controls
>thinking, with other brain regions - believing that as new nerve
>connections formed the patient's abnormal behavior would end.
>
>Moniz, already widely respected for inventing an early brain-imaging
>method, gave sketchy reports that many patients benefited and was awarded
>the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1949.
>
>The procedure was so in vogue that Rosemary Kennedy, former President
>Kennedy's mildly retarded sister, had a lobotomy in the 1940s at age 23.
>She remained in an institution until she died in January.
>
>Other doctors used a more primitive version than Moniz, punching an ice
>pick into the brain above the eye socket and blindly manipulating it to
>sever nerve fibers.
>
>By the late 1930s doctors were reporting many lobotomy patients were left
>childlike, apathetic and withdrawn - not unlike the depiction in the novel
>and movie "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Use eventually waned with the
>advent of effective psychiatric drugs in the mid-1950s and the growing use
>of electroshock therapy.
>
>Modern views of lobotomy have led to a call to pull Moniz's Nobel prize.
>
>"How can anyone trust the Nobel Committee when they won't admit to such a
>terrible mistake?" asks Christine Johnson, a Levittown, N.Y., medical
>librarian who started a campaign to have the prize revoked.
>
>Her grandmother, Beulah Jones, became delusional in 1949, was lobotomized
>in 1954 after unsuccessful psychiatric and electroshock treatments, and
>spent the rest of her life in institutions.
>
>One member of Johnson's campaign, retired nurse Carol Noell Duncanson of
>Marietta, Ga., said her mother, Anna Ruth Channels, was lobotomized while
>pregnant to end chronic headaches in 1949. Channels, described as a
>brilliant and vivacious woman, was sent home incapacitated, Duncanson said.
>
>"The woman could not feed herself, she could not toilet, she could not
>speak and she was combative," Duncanson said.
>
>Channels eventually re-learned those things but remained childlike and
>unable to care for her daughters, who spent years in foster care. Her
>husband abandoned her and she lived the rest of her life in a small West
>Virginia town with her mother, who was resentful and ashamed of her, and
>an abusive brother, Duncanson said.
>
>"She never had a life after her lobotomy. She had nothing," the daughter
>said.
>
>Johnson, whose grandmother died in 1989, several years ago started the
>Web site psychosurgery.org to build a support network among families of
>lobotomy patients. Then she and group members began urging removal of an
>article on the Nobel Web site praising Moniz and saying he deserved the
>prize because there were no alternative psychiatric treatments at the time.
>
>The Nobel Foundation refused to remove or change the article. Now Johnson
>is asking Nobel laureates to support her campaign to strip Moniz's Nobel.
>
>"There's no possibility to revoke it," said foundation executive director
>Michael Sohlman, who could not recall a Medicine Prize ever being
>challenged. "It's a nonstarter."
>The Nobel charter has no provision for appeal of a prize awarded, he
>said, and the foundation ignores such criticisms, as it did when
>Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Peace Prize was challenged.
>
>Meanwhile, journalist Jack El-Hai recently published "The Lobotomist,"
>about the chief U.S. proponent, neurosurgeon Walter Freeman, who did
>roughly 3,400 operations. He developed the icepick technique.
>
>In the New England Journal editorial, Dr. Barron H. Lerner, a medical
>historian and associate professor at Columbia University College of
>Physicians and Surgeons, wrote that the procedure was a desperate effort
>to help many of the 400,000 patients confined to U.S. mental hospitals at
>mid-century.
>
>He said a small number of patients became calmer and more manageable.
>
>"I think the numbers that were harmed were quite substantial," Lerner
>said in an interview. "It was way overused, and it was used in
>inappropriate circumstances - retardation, anxiety, headaches."
>
>El-Hai began his research eight years ago after meeting a relative of a
>man committed to a mental hospital for epilepsy around 1930 and later
>lobotomized. As he got into his research about Freeman, El-Hai wondered,
>"What led this undeniably gifted and compassionate doctor to champion a
>brain-mutilating procedure and why he stayed with it so long, past the
>point of reason?"
>
>El-Hai said patients no longer felt strong emotions and their behavior
>changed immediately, which was Freeman's goal. But he concluded Freeman
>was driven to be a showman.
>
>___
>
>On the Net:
>
>NEJM: http://www.nejm.org
>
>Christine Johnson's site: http://www.psychosurgery.org
>Nobel site on Moniz: http://nobelprize.org/medicine/articles/moniz
apparently not known to the unreasonable complainants, but it is
interesting enough that I'll take the risk.
After W2 the US veterans admin had hospitals full of mentally
disturbed men (yes, in those days it was still regarded as wrong to put
women in front-line positions) on whom all known medicine had failed. It
therefore became ethical to try psychosurgery if there was some reason to
believe it would help. Lobotomy was an obvious candidate (based on the
famous case of Phineas Gage).
But the USVA docs, to their everlasting credit, arranged a 'blind'
sham-operated control group who woke up with the operation scars on their
temples but had not had their brains touched.
The lobotomised patients, as a group, achieved detectable progress.
But, to a comparable extent, so did the control group. The immediate
conclusion is that if you pay plenty attention to a mentally deranged
person, and if the patient thinks he's getting the very best of treatment,
you have a good chance he'll tend to improve.
I once had the frightening experience of chatting informally with a
(rtd) prominent Australasian FRACS brain surgeon (now deceased), alluding
to the above facts, and suddenly realising, like a driver braking to a stop
at the edge of a cliff, that I had barely avoided disclosing to him that he
had been doing unwarranted psychosurgery. He was - I suddenly realised
- unaware of the USVA controlled expts.
I'm not learned in medical ethics, but my personal opinion is that
complainant Christine Johnson & allies have very little right on their
side. To apply the hindsight from the USVA expts retroactively to Moniz is
not rational.
BTW it's widely suspected that the Nobel cttee was in some
difficulty at the time in finding non-Germans for this prize. One could
hardly say Moniz stands out among Nobel winners. But he got it at the
time, and it's unreasonable to advocate the notion of cancelling that. Ms
Johnson should deal with her own feelings, not try to punish a deceased
Portugese who was, at the time, doing OK.
R
>http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050713/ap_on_he_me/lobotomy_debate
>Lobotomy Back in Spotlight After 30 Years
>
>By LINDA A. JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer
>
>The lobotomy, once a widely used method for treating mental illness,
>epilepsy and even chronic headaches, is generating fresh controversy 30
>years after doctors stopped performing the procedure now viewed as
>barbaric.
>
>A new book and a medical historian contend the crude brain surgery
>actually helped roughly 10 percent of the estimated 50,000 Americans who
>underwent the procedure between the mid-1930s and the 1970s. But relatives
>of lobotomy patients want the Nobel Prize given to its inventor revoked.
>
>The lobotomy debate was discussed in an editorial in Thursday's New
>England Journal of Medicine.
>
>Lobotomy was pioneered in 1936 by Portuguese neurologist Egas Moniz, who
>operated on people with severe psychiatric illnesses, particularly
>agitation and depression. Through holes drilled in the skull, Moniz cut
>through nerve fibers connecting the brain's frontal lobe, which controls
>thinking, with other brain regions - believing that as new nerve
>connections formed the patient's abnormal behavior would end.
>
>Moniz, already widely respected for inventing an early brain-imaging
>method, gave sketchy reports that many patients benefited and was awarded
>the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1949.
>
>The procedure was so in vogue that Rosemary Kennedy, former President
>Kennedy's mildly retarded sister, had a lobotomy in the 1940s at age 23.
>She remained in an institution until she died in January.
>
>Other doctors used a more primitive version than Moniz, punching an ice
>pick into the brain above the eye socket and blindly manipulating it to
>sever nerve fibers.
>
>By the late 1930s doctors were reporting many lobotomy patients were left
>childlike, apathetic and withdrawn - not unlike the depiction in the novel
>and movie "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Use eventually waned with the
>advent of effective psychiatric drugs in the mid-1950s and the growing use
>of electroshock therapy.
>
>Modern views of lobotomy have led to a call to pull Moniz's Nobel prize.
>
>"How can anyone trust the Nobel Committee when they won't admit to such a
>terrible mistake?" asks Christine Johnson, a Levittown, N.Y., medical
>librarian who started a campaign to have the prize revoked.
>
>Her grandmother, Beulah Jones, became delusional in 1949, was lobotomized
>in 1954 after unsuccessful psychiatric and electroshock treatments, and
>spent the rest of her life in institutions.
>
>One member of Johnson's campaign, retired nurse Carol Noell Duncanson of
>Marietta, Ga., said her mother, Anna Ruth Channels, was lobotomized while
>pregnant to end chronic headaches in 1949. Channels, described as a
>brilliant and vivacious woman, was sent home incapacitated, Duncanson said.
>
>"The woman could not feed herself, she could not toilet, she could not
>speak and she was combative," Duncanson said.
>
>Channels eventually re-learned those things but remained childlike and
>unable to care for her daughters, who spent years in foster care. Her
>husband abandoned her and she lived the rest of her life in a small West
>Virginia town with her mother, who was resentful and ashamed of her, and
>an abusive brother, Duncanson said.
>
>"She never had a life after her lobotomy. She had nothing," the daughter
>said.
>
>Johnson, whose grandmother died in 1989, several years ago started the
>Web site psychosurgery.org to build a support network among families of
>lobotomy patients. Then she and group members began urging removal of an
>article on the Nobel Web site praising Moniz and saying he deserved the
>prize because there were no alternative psychiatric treatments at the time.
>
>The Nobel Foundation refused to remove or change the article. Now Johnson
>is asking Nobel laureates to support her campaign to strip Moniz's Nobel.
>
>"There's no possibility to revoke it," said foundation executive director
>Michael Sohlman, who could not recall a Medicine Prize ever being
>challenged. "It's a nonstarter."
>The Nobel charter has no provision for appeal of a prize awarded, he
>said, and the foundation ignores such criticisms, as it did when
>Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Peace Prize was challenged.
>
>Meanwhile, journalist Jack El-Hai recently published "The Lobotomist,"
>about the chief U.S. proponent, neurosurgeon Walter Freeman, who did
>roughly 3,400 operations. He developed the icepick technique.
>
>In the New England Journal editorial, Dr. Barron H. Lerner, a medical
>historian and associate professor at Columbia University College of
>Physicians and Surgeons, wrote that the procedure was a desperate effort
>to help many of the 400,000 patients confined to U.S. mental hospitals at
>mid-century.
>
>He said a small number of patients became calmer and more manageable.
>
>"I think the numbers that were harmed were quite substantial," Lerner
>said in an interview. "It was way overused, and it was used in
>inappropriate circumstances - retardation, anxiety, headaches."
>
>El-Hai began his research eight years ago after meeting a relative of a
>man committed to a mental hospital for epilepsy around 1930 and later
>lobotomized. As he got into his research about Freeman, El-Hai wondered,
>"What led this undeniably gifted and compassionate doctor to champion a
>brain-mutilating procedure and why he stayed with it so long, past the
>point of reason?"
>
>El-Hai said patients no longer felt strong emotions and their behavior
>changed immediately, which was Freeman's goal. But he concluded Freeman
>was driven to be a showman.
>
>___
>
>On the Net:
>
>NEJM: http://www.nejm.org
>
>Christine Johnson's site: http://www.psychosurgery.org
>Nobel site on Moniz: http://nobelprize.org/medicine/articles/moniz
07/27/05
Address To Barnardos Forum, Wellington, 15 October 200 [Catch-all] -
GEA - gormfach@gmail.com @ 11:30:03 PM
That 'bedfellows' paradox of politics is illustrated by this man -
so wise & reasonable on this and many other matters, but a follower of the
traitors Douglas & Prebble.
R
Address To Barnardos Forum, Wellington, 15 October 2001
Stephen Franks list-MP
I respect Barnardos for inviting me to speak at this forum. Clearly from
their Proposal Statement I am to serve as the opponent, the point of view
Barnardos management want to rebut. As Barnardos wants me to fail I think
I deserve a favour.
That is to allow me the time to put into perspective this process of
presenting an unwanted viewpoint.
Want to look at the social context of this discussion - that is the levels
of suffering from violence in New Zealand (a society nominally at peace)
and internationally.
Then I will look at some of the specific arguments for and against
prohibiting physical punishment of children.
Finally I will come back to look at section 59, our legal approach to
assault, and the resulting difficulty in repealing section 59 of the Crimes
Act.
First, I ask that you listen to what I say rather than what you expect me
to say. I want to have some meeting of minds. I do not see discussion as
an empty ritual. The Barnardos paper is still a proposal. I believe it
will damage Barnardos' purposes. Too many great organisations have been
discredited by getting caught up in passing political passions. CORSO is a
sad example.
That said that [sic] I honour Barnardos for taking these issues seriously.
You see an awful evil, you feel the helplessness of children beaten or
abused. You want to do something about the worst kind of bullies, those
who betray the trust their little children should be able to have in them.
And no doubt you share the impotent rage that older children may feel at
their helplessness. You want to see an end to the brutalising effects of
this kind of physical abuse.
I respect your motives. Care for those who cannot defend themselves is one
of the finest things about our civilisation. I don't think it is any
response to say about anything just, "we have always done it". Simply
because something is traditional is not a reason to condone it if it is
wrong. I respect the SPCA too, for worrying about things as traditional as
fishing, even if I don't agree with all their positions.
I believe that the correction and guidance of children is better when
alternatives to physical punishment are used. They should be taught,
promoted, and used as best practice.
But I know I am going to leave some of you concerned, nevertheless, that I
must be insensitive, even a bad person, because I can not share your
conclusions. I believe you will make things worse for many of the children
we most worry about. Because best practice is not the choice we are
making. Laws don't create best practice. They can penalise worst
practice, if we are willing to put the effort into enforcement. I hope
that most of you will accept that the difference is about practical
outcomes, and not a difference in objectives.
I know too that accepting this invitation is risky. Most politicians avoid
morality issues. They decline to comment on cannabis, prostitution or even
of de facto relationship property. They weasel out because there is no
reward - only downside, for taking a position against an enthusiasm that is
fashionable with the media.
It is like rolling in barley grass. The barbs go in only one direction,
working into clothes and skin. Even when you pull them out one by one they
leave bits behind.
This political barley grass effect is because people who disagree strongly
on a moral issue will remember it forever. To them it shows whether the
other person is good or kind.
On the other hand those who agree with a moral statement soon forget who
said it. After all to them it is self evident. It is what they expect any
reasonable person to think, so it gives no credit.
I'm well aware of how few are persuaded by argument. We know from research
that people are persuaded by looking at extreme cases, not most cases, by
the herd effect, wanting to think like people we admire, by superstitions,
not evidence, about cause and effect, and by faith or wanting to believe.
The paradox of being human is that we can reason objectively, but we rarely
want to.
And so many decent New Zealanders judge from what we want to happen instead
of from what is likely to happen.
There is a law that over-rides almost every other law. As a lawyer I get
depressed by how few lawyers remember it. It makes the law a dangerous
tool. This over-riding law is one of the main reasons why free societies
tend over time to be better places to live than societies that use rules to
try to make people do what the elite want. They ignore the most sweeping
law of all. It is the law of unintended consequences.
The noblest intentions can bring the most savage and evil results. The
ideals of sharing, co-operating, democracy and eliminating individual greed
became the 20th century's greatest engine of human suffering. Literally
hundreds of millions of ghastly deaths over 5 decades came from the sincere
best intentions of communism.
Today bin Laden's suicide murderers are driven by sublime altruism, to rid
the world of what they are convinced is a monster, a West full of women
exhibiting a level of freedom that is sinful on its own.
So I have been determined in my time in Parliament not to judge law by its
proclaimed intentions or even the virtue or sincerity of its promoters.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. For me, a movement like
the movement to repeal section 59 inspires caution simply because of the
passion behind it. Too many in history have been duped into supporting
those who like telling lesser souls what to do, and enforcing their
theories with the coercive power of the state.
I know I risk being offensive with these comparisons, though that is the
last thing I intend. I fear that at least some of the advocacy of the
repeal of section 59 is just as poorly thought through, in terms of the
incentives it creates, the moral arrogance of some of its promoters, and
the lack of rigour in some of the arguments.
Violent Crime is the Issue
We agree there is an issue. And violence is the issue. New Zealand is a
very violent society. Just how violent few New Zealanders are aware. On
statistical comparisons we are now among the worst countries in the Western
world outside the former Soviet Bloc and South Africa. We are far worse
than the United States.
Hang on a minute some of you will be muttering. "The USA must be much
worse, guns everywhere, muggings and such a divide between rich and poor."
Let me shock you as I was shocked when I started looking for hard evidence.
The clean safe New Zealand in your mind is a myth. Perhaps those concerned
about violence enough to challenge section 59 may already be aware of how
serious our position is. But for those who are not here are some facts.
Using 1999 comparison figures:
the risk of sexual violence in New Zealand was nearly 3 times the risk for
an average United States citizen;
the risk of robbery or mugging was over 2 1/2 times;
the risk of burglary 2.2 times, and
the risk of car theft 1.6 times.
Only for murder are US citizens more at risk than New Zealanders and most
US murders are highly concentrated in urban lack drug dealing areas.
Indeed I am told that nearly 80% occur in 7 police districts. Many of our
rural areas are worse than the big cities. So even for murder the average
New Zealander is likely to be more at risk than the average US citizen.
So those who have written to me, sent me pamphlets about section 59 and
raised it with me in conversation don't have to persuade me it is essential
to reduce our criminal violence. And I follow the reasoning, violence
begets violence. It is a nice neat aphorism. It seems to reflect the
world as we understand it. Perhaps it explains the chaos that has always
been Afghanistan. And we have to consider seriously whether violence in New
Zealand is a product of the violence of parents toward their children.
Is it safe to draw that conclusion? Well I can't see it. First, New
Zealand itself was far safer 3 decades ago when the very notion of this
current debate to repeal section 59 was unthinkable. To ban smacking was
something conceivable only for the bizarre Swedes. Our schools were rife
with corporal punishment - but more on that later.
Can we draw conclusions from comparing countries which have significantly
different child rearing practices? We have already mentioned Afghanistan
as a place that has always been violent. But what about Japan? It is one
of the safest places in the world for women and children. They can go
virtually anywhere in the street at any time of the day or night. They
don't have no go areas. Child mortality figures are among the best in the
world. Nevertheless discipline is harsh and often physical.
So what conclusions do we draw? What should we do about our violence problem?
People can cite conflicting research. But there are some reasonably sound
research conclusions not driven by ideology or desire to prove a matter of
faith. Some things emerge as near certainties.
Psychology and psychiatry tell us that consistency and predictability and
the intent in discipline is much more important than the kind of
discipline. Cold deprivation of affection may be more cruel than
exasperation expressed physically.
We all know we should mean what we say to children and only say what we
mean. The violent child or adult, without self control and without
feelings for others may be more likely to have come from a home where
discipline was an inconsistent indulgence of foul temper. Vicious
selfishness is just that however it is expressed. And discipline springing
from loving concern will usually work almost regardless of how it is
expressed.
We have that disturbing data about children thriving better in their bad
natural families, than in apparently better foster arrangements.
But some who want to get rid of section 59 seem beguiled by the argument
that because child abusers may cloak their actions as discipline, we must
eliminate the discipline excuse for physical punishment. This creates the
classic baby and bath water problem.
It is the "if some is good, more is better" argument in reverse. We know
that salt is essential but too much is a poison. Children drown trying to
swim but we do not ban parents from taking them into the water. Cruel
beating of children is bad, but it is not a necessary logical consequence
that normal smacking is also bad. Many loving parents would argue that at
least a preparedness to use their strength is essential in their dealing
with their children. Assault would include dragging an unwilling child
away for "time out".
Where is the evidence of the effectiveness of a ban on the true targets? I
acknowledge the symbolic significance of a ban on physical punishment. It
would be a very strong signal of antipathy toward the physical abuse of
children. But that is not the real issue.
The real issue is whether such a statement and such a law will work. Our
existing law is very strong against child abuse. But enforcement is the
key. Enforcement involves doing three things properly, reporting or
detection, then conviction against the obstacles of technical defences and
evidence testing, and finally sentencing. Will and resources are needed.
If any one of those elements fails criminal abusers can gamble on getting
off or not being punished. When criminals know that, our law will not work.
There is no reason to think that repeal of section 59 will improve
enforcement. Critics talk of inconsistent application of the current law.
They may be uninformed or just dishonest. No one can know whether it is
inconsistent without knowing all the circumstances before the Court,
because the Court is asked to judge reasonableness.
None of the alternatives are more simple, or reduce the need for
discretionary judgement of the circumstances. It will move from the Courts
to the Police, if EPOCH's line is followed. And a simple repeal will vastly
complicate our law of assault. Assault is easily proved. So the judges
will have to wrestle with new distinctions, trying to avoid being forced to
convict people they see as morally innocent.
If those against child abuse want a strong symbolic statement of our
revulsion against brutality, what about considering the rhetoric that has
proved so successful in cutting US crime figures back to levels last seen
in the middle of the 20th century. What about something like "Three bashes
and you're gone". Unpalatable as it may be to us, crime has reduced every
year in the United States since 1991. Making the law more certain,
rejecting excuses does work. Violent crime in the US is now back below
levels at which many of their statistics first started in the 60s.
To the chagrin of many, on most measures of child welfare US children's
lives have been improving significantly for the last five years.
But instead our energies may be used up in a campaign that is ostensibly
against thuggish parents. It will be recognised as just an attempt to
impose loopy theories about child rearing by self nominated experts and
busy bodies. It will be fought at every level. The agencies and
institutions, like Barnardos and the Commissioner for Children, which
should be supported as champions of the victims will instead be seen by
thousands who would like to respect them, as stooges for the nanny state.
You can't attack child rearing practices, some of the deepest and most
important cultural practices we have, using only earnest intentions and
flimsy argument, without generating serious antipathy.
A law change that criminalises thousands of loving and well meaning parents
will be expensive. Stupid law is incredibly expensive. A significant
criminal case can involve costs of at least $100,000 between the
prosecution and the defence.
I am haunted by the thought of the innocent father convicted in Napier in
August, driven to distraction by a stepson.
"The man came home to find that his 14 year old stepson had beaten his
younger siblings and trashed the family home causing $2,500 worth of
damage. When the father found his son on the street near their home, high
on cannabis, he asked for an explanation. When the boy laughed at him, the
man snapped. Witnesses described seeing him crying before he hit the boy.
The man had shown his new family a different kind of life to the one they
had left behind. He had worked in the same place for 19 years and had
bought a home for the family he had taken responsibility for when he became
involved with his stepchildren's mother.
The Man's lawyer acknowledged that provocation was not a legitimate
defence, but if it was, the man would have a good case.
Judge Adeane said the man was a hard worker and provider for the family."
Repealing section 59 will empower the zealots. They will threaten and
force prosecutions.
I am sorry to have to say it, but Barnardos could in its publications, and
its support of EPOCH become party to public deception about the law. They
certainly wouldn't pass the Fair Trading Act test. Talk of the "Children
Young Persons and their Families Act 1989 proceedings", use of the "youth
offending" system, a "written police charging policy", dealing with
notifications "outside the criminal judicial system" is simply
disingenuous. If section 59 goes the Crimes Act law of assault applies.
I am against any law that does not mean what it says. Without section 59
the law will be an intolerable ass to thousands of responsible people who
should uphold it. When the law abiding middle class become contemptuous of
the law it loses vital force for everyone. There is more indecision for
those who must enforce it. More doubt about its value. More reluctance to
provide resources, more argument and more pressure on the courts to find
cunning or discreditable arguments to avoid enforcing the clear words of
the law.
Then those on the bottom of society pay the worst price, especially the
kids. The Lillybings are a consequence of our indulgence in sickly
cultural sensitivity, in losing confidence in our own core values. Law
that does not mean what it says deprives our agencies of moral authority to
intervene when they should. A lack of resolve or resources is unavoidable
when the law is being used to tackle more than it can do. It must ensure
the vicious abusers are brought to justice. Bogging the law down in
chasing parents who are not vicious child beaters is worse than useless.
If Barnardos wants a political cause there is one crying out for a leader.
New Zealand has no left wing equivalent here of Blair or Clinton, prepared
to call a welfare spade a spade. The state has funded the creation of
generations of bad families. When it began the welfare state demanded
family responsibility and contribution in return for charitable assistance.
Now assistance is deliberately amoral. I see that having produced far more
of the tragic cases we are all concerned about, than any amount of well
intentioned smacking.
As a lawyer I am also concerned about the absence of any evidence in the
case for repeal of section 59, that it will actually penetrate the
consciousness of the target groups. I simply don't believe the claims that
child abuse is spread evenly through society. That is not what experienced
police, judges and social workers say. It is not the case for other forms
of crime. While clearly there will be violence and harsh discipline in all
corners, the worst forms are disproportionately concentrated. In a few
thousand so-called families. And that is where the law should be directed.
Where the greatest good can be done.
It is disproportionately concentrated among people who are contemptuous of
the law anyway. Whatever the excuses, alcohol, religious mania, a warrior
inheritance or absence of self esteem, most of the people who commit most
of the serious crimes, including violent damage to children, don't choose
to obey many of our laws. Nearly 9% of people in our prisons are traffic
offenders. They are not there for jay walking or speeding or even careless
driving. No it is because they drive while disqualified up to 6 or 8 times
in a row. And many are also thieves and burglars. Burglars are also often
rapists.
The courts mean nothing to such people. A repeal of section 59 intended is
promoted to influence indirectly the behaviour of a small group in our
society. It could be at the cost of respect from a very large number. We
should know that the small group will notice or even give a damn that a law
change of that kind has been made before pushing on this.
I sound these cautions because I start with presumption that most cultural
customs have developed for a reason. I do not want to uphold traditional
customs slavishly but I certainly react against the sort of cultural
imperialism that would have parliamentarians and the law telling what may
be a majority of New Zealanders that their practices must be changed to
conform to the views of a minority.
Our basic Crimes Act standard may be foolish. It makes even the lightest
uninvited and unwanted but deliberate touch punishable. Continental law
may be more realistic, requiring an element of material aggression before
the action becomes culpable.
Simple repeal of section 59 is problematic because our underlying law is
so strict. It is a very bad standard for assessing the actions of caring
parents.
In relation to children or adults not all violence is equal. For humans,
like most animals, violence is endemic. It is at least as celebrated in
prose and poetry as dance or music, or eating. Rugby, our most popular
sport ritualises combat. Little boys play fighting despite the best
efforts of pacifist parents to soothe them out of it. We can try to deny
the reality of pride in courage, of joy in practising struggle, and
satisfaction in being staunch. But we run the risk of being as silly as we
think the Victorians were about a fundamental part of being human. We
think they tried to deny the natural reality of sex. Are we trying to do
the same with fighting and struggle?
There must be at least the possibility that we lose all authority and
influence over violence when we treat all fighting as beyond the pale, as
equally reprehensible, whatever the motive, and whatever the circumstances.
Humans develop customs to channel dangerous human conduct safely. If we
fail to respect and nurture such customs we may be responsible when such
conduct becomes utterly out of control.
Our ancestors worked up tests for just war. War is terrible. But war
between parties with no respect for the rules is much more terrible. The
Marquis of Queensbury developed the rules that channelled brutal
bare-knuckle fighting into the Queensbury Rules for boxing. Fair fighters
didnít hit below the belt. Gentlemen didnít use knives or broken bottles.
In throwing away the notion of the fair fight, in saying it doesn't matter
who started it, or how it is contested, we may all be to blame for the
viciousness that is now the daily challenge for our Police. We may be
responsible for the lack of help they get from ordinary law abiding people.
And so I get to the civil liberties argument. I could have started with it.
There must be grave and well established reasons before we interfere with
the decisions and customs of competent adults. Frankly I do not think we
have advanced life liberty or respect for others with the moves we have
already made in relation to physical punishment. I look, for example, at
the effects of the abolition of corporate punishment in schools. I am told
there were 23,000 school suspensions.
Our schools and our teachers were more secure before we abolished corporal
punishment in schools in 1990. Suspension figures were not kept prior to
1991. In that year there were 4,297 suspensions and 175 expulsions. In
2000 there were 22,029 suspensions and stand downs and 157 expulsions.
Many of them were for violence or threats of violence to other students,
and even teachers.
That doesn't necessarily mean cause and effect but it should at least cause
us to be hesitant before accepting the proposition that all violence
towards children begets violence from children. Cause and effect in human
affairs is very complex. This is not an argument that there is no cause
and effect. Just a warning that it may be very hard to use simple slogans
with any intellectual integrity.
In my old school suspension was reserved for truly heinous behaviour. I
remember it happening very rarely, perhaps one or two cases a year.
Perhaps it is still reserved for heinous cases and there were 23,000
examples of such behaviour last year.
I know that good dedicated teachers are now driven from teaching by
insolence, lack of respect for learning and the rights of others in class
to learn, bullying and even physical fear in their classrooms. Possibly
corporal punishment would have left with teachers a tool for controlling
boys so that they had not sunk in performance and aspiration in relation to
girls schools as they have. We may never know. But we do know the nirvana
of mutual respect supposed to come when teachers were prevented from
physically punishing children, seems much further away than it ever was.
I suspect that teachers have embraced theories and practices that are in
effect the suicide of satisfying professional careers. When a critical
minority of children in class cease to believe there are sanctions that
could really affect them, the school becomes a more menacing place for
every child, including themselves. And all children learn something that
should not be, that the authorities can be mocked, that rules donít
necessarily mean what they say, that cheats can prosper, and bullies do get
away with it.
I am not urging the restoration of corporal punishment. If the teaching
profession opposes it there would be little point. But what I am saying is
that many of the arguments for repeal of section 59 sound remarkably like
the arguments we heard years ago when corporal punishment in schools was
abolished. We should all be sobered by the fact that none of the promised
or even hoped-for outcomes have materialised. Indeed schools today look
much more like the predictions of people who opposed the reforms. We
thought they were alarmist fuddy-duddies.
I want to close with some words used in 1650 by Oliver Cromwell. They now
seem very strange to us. He was trying to persuade the self righteous
elders of the Scottish Kirk to let their followers listen to his appeal to
avoid battle. "I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, think it possible
you may be mistaken."
As Cromwell might have done I beg of you not to commit the mana of
Barnardos to this campaign over the legitimate doubts of many of your loyal
supporters. Many of them will harbour worries. You may be wrong.
And even if you will not change your minds at least respect the reasoning
and motives of those who will disagree with you.
so wise & reasonable on this and many other matters, but a follower of the
traitors Douglas & Prebble.
R
Address To Barnardos Forum, Wellington, 15 October 2001
Stephen Franks list-MP
I respect Barnardos for inviting me to speak at this forum. Clearly from
their Proposal Statement I am to serve as the opponent, the point of view
Barnardos management want to rebut. As Barnardos wants me to fail I think
I deserve a favour.
That is to allow me the time to put into perspective this process of
presenting an unwanted viewpoint.
Want to look at the social context of this discussion - that is the levels
of suffering from violence in New Zealand (a society nominally at peace)
and internationally.
Then I will look at some of the specific arguments for and against
prohibiting physical punishment of children.
Finally I will come back to look at section 59, our legal approach to
assault, and the resulting difficulty in repealing section 59 of the Crimes
Act.
First, I ask that you listen to what I say rather than what you expect me
to say. I want to have some meeting of minds. I do not see discussion as
an empty ritual. The Barnardos paper is still a proposal. I believe it
will damage Barnardos' purposes. Too many great organisations have been
discredited by getting caught up in passing political passions. CORSO is a
sad example.
That said that [sic] I honour Barnardos for taking these issues seriously.
You see an awful evil, you feel the helplessness of children beaten or
abused. You want to do something about the worst kind of bullies, those
who betray the trust their little children should be able to have in them.
And no doubt you share the impotent rage that older children may feel at
their helplessness. You want to see an end to the brutalising effects of
this kind of physical abuse.
I respect your motives. Care for those who cannot defend themselves is one
of the finest things about our civilisation. I don't think it is any
response to say about anything just, "we have always done it". Simply
because something is traditional is not a reason to condone it if it is
wrong. I respect the SPCA too, for worrying about things as traditional as
fishing, even if I don't agree with all their positions.
I believe that the correction and guidance of children is better when
alternatives to physical punishment are used. They should be taught,
promoted, and used as best practice.
But I know I am going to leave some of you concerned, nevertheless, that I
must be insensitive, even a bad person, because I can not share your
conclusions. I believe you will make things worse for many of the children
we most worry about. Because best practice is not the choice we are
making. Laws don't create best practice. They can penalise worst
practice, if we are willing to put the effort into enforcement. I hope
that most of you will accept that the difference is about practical
outcomes, and not a difference in objectives.
I know too that accepting this invitation is risky. Most politicians avoid
morality issues. They decline to comment on cannabis, prostitution or even
of de facto relationship property. They weasel out because there is no
reward - only downside, for taking a position against an enthusiasm that is
fashionable with the media.
It is like rolling in barley grass. The barbs go in only one direction,
working into clothes and skin. Even when you pull them out one by one they
leave bits behind.
This political barley grass effect is because people who disagree strongly
on a moral issue will remember it forever. To them it shows whether the
other person is good or kind.
On the other hand those who agree with a moral statement soon forget who
said it. After all to them it is self evident. It is what they expect any
reasonable person to think, so it gives no credit.
I'm well aware of how few are persuaded by argument. We know from research
that people are persuaded by looking at extreme cases, not most cases, by
the herd effect, wanting to think like people we admire, by superstitions,
not evidence, about cause and effect, and by faith or wanting to believe.
The paradox of being human is that we can reason objectively, but we rarely
want to.
And so many decent New Zealanders judge from what we want to happen instead
of from what is likely to happen.
There is a law that over-rides almost every other law. As a lawyer I get
depressed by how few lawyers remember it. It makes the law a dangerous
tool. This over-riding law is one of the main reasons why free societies
tend over time to be better places to live than societies that use rules to
try to make people do what the elite want. They ignore the most sweeping
law of all. It is the law of unintended consequences.
The noblest intentions can bring the most savage and evil results. The
ideals of sharing, co-operating, democracy and eliminating individual greed
became the 20th century's greatest engine of human suffering. Literally
hundreds of millions of ghastly deaths over 5 decades came from the sincere
best intentions of communism.
Today bin Laden's suicide murderers are driven by sublime altruism, to rid
the world of what they are convinced is a monster, a West full of women
exhibiting a level of freedom that is sinful on its own.
So I have been determined in my time in Parliament not to judge law by its
proclaimed intentions or even the virtue or sincerity of its promoters.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. For me, a movement like
the movement to repeal section 59 inspires caution simply because of the
passion behind it. Too many in history have been duped into supporting
those who like telling lesser souls what to do, and enforcing their
theories with the coercive power of the state.
I know I risk being offensive with these comparisons, though that is the
last thing I intend. I fear that at least some of the advocacy of the
repeal of section 59 is just as poorly thought through, in terms of the
incentives it creates, the moral arrogance of some of its promoters, and
the lack of rigour in some of the arguments.
Violent Crime is the Issue
We agree there is an issue. And violence is the issue. New Zealand is a
very violent society. Just how violent few New Zealanders are aware. On
statistical comparisons we are now among the worst countries in the Western
world outside the former Soviet Bloc and South Africa. We are far worse
than the United States.
Hang on a minute some of you will be muttering. "The USA must be much
worse, guns everywhere, muggings and such a divide between rich and poor."
Let me shock you as I was shocked when I started looking for hard evidence.
The clean safe New Zealand in your mind is a myth. Perhaps those concerned
about violence enough to challenge section 59 may already be aware of how
serious our position is. But for those who are not here are some facts.
Using 1999 comparison figures:
the risk of sexual violence in New Zealand was nearly 3 times the risk for
an average United States citizen;
the risk of robbery or mugging was over 2 1/2 times;
the risk of burglary 2.2 times, and
the risk of car theft 1.6 times.
Only for murder are US citizens more at risk than New Zealanders and most
US murders are highly concentrated in urban lack drug dealing areas.
Indeed I am told that nearly 80% occur in 7 police districts. Many of our
rural areas are worse than the big cities. So even for murder the average
New Zealander is likely to be more at risk than the average US citizen.
So those who have written to me, sent me pamphlets about section 59 and
raised it with me in conversation don't have to persuade me it is essential
to reduce our criminal violence. And I follow the reasoning, violence
begets violence. It is a nice neat aphorism. It seems to reflect the
world as we understand it. Perhaps it explains the chaos that has always
been Afghanistan. And we have to consider seriously whether violence in New
Zealand is a product of the violence of parents toward their children.
Is it safe to draw that conclusion? Well I can't see it. First, New
Zealand itself was far safer 3 decades ago when the very notion of this
current debate to repeal section 59 was unthinkable. To ban smacking was
something conceivable only for the bizarre Swedes. Our schools were rife
with corporal punishment - but more on that later.
Can we draw conclusions from comparing countries which have significantly
different child rearing practices? We have already mentioned Afghanistan
as a place that has always been violent. But what about Japan? It is one
of the safest places in the world for women and children. They can go
virtually anywhere in the street at any time of the day or night. They
don't have no go areas. Child mortality figures are among the best in the
world. Nevertheless discipline is harsh and often physical.
So what conclusions do we draw? What should we do about our violence problem?
People can cite conflicting research. But there are some reasonably sound
research conclusions not driven by ideology or desire to prove a matter of
faith. Some things emerge as near certainties.
Psychology and psychiatry tell us that consistency and predictability and
the intent in discipline is much more important than the kind of
discipline. Cold deprivation of affection may be more cruel than
exasperation expressed physically.
We all know we should mean what we say to children and only say what we
mean. The violent child or adult, without self control and without
feelings for others may be more likely to have come from a home where
discipline was an inconsistent indulgence of foul temper. Vicious
selfishness is just that however it is expressed. And discipline springing
from loving concern will usually work almost regardless of how it is
expressed.
We have that disturbing data about children thriving better in their bad
natural families, than in apparently better foster arrangements.
But some who want to get rid of section 59 seem beguiled by the argument
that because child abusers may cloak their actions as discipline, we must
eliminate the discipline excuse for physical punishment. This creates the
classic baby and bath water problem.
It is the "if some is good, more is better" argument in reverse. We know
that salt is essential but too much is a poison. Children drown trying to
swim but we do not ban parents from taking them into the water. Cruel
beating of children is bad, but it is not a necessary logical consequence
that normal smacking is also bad. Many loving parents would argue that at
least a preparedness to use their strength is essential in their dealing
with their children. Assault would include dragging an unwilling child
away for "time out".
Where is the evidence of the effectiveness of a ban on the true targets? I
acknowledge the symbolic significance of a ban on physical punishment. It
would be a very strong signal of antipathy toward the physical abuse of
children. But that is not the real issue.
The real issue is whether such a statement and such a law will work. Our
existing law is very strong against child abuse. But enforcement is the
key. Enforcement involves doing three things properly, reporting or
detection, then conviction against the obstacles of technical defences and
evidence testing, and finally sentencing. Will and resources are needed.
If any one of those elements fails criminal abusers can gamble on getting
off or not being punished. When criminals know that, our law will not work.
There is no reason to think that repeal of section 59 will improve
enforcement. Critics talk of inconsistent application of the current law.
They may be uninformed or just dishonest. No one can know whether it is
inconsistent without knowing all the circumstances before the Court,
because the Court is asked to judge reasonableness.
None of the alternatives are more simple, or reduce the need for
discretionary judgement of the circumstances. It will move from the Courts
to the Police, if EPOCH's line is followed. And a simple repeal will vastly
complicate our law of assault. Assault is easily proved. So the judges
will have to wrestle with new distinctions, trying to avoid being forced to
convict people they see as morally innocent.
If those against child abuse want a strong symbolic statement of our
revulsion against brutality, what about considering the rhetoric that has
proved so successful in cutting US crime figures back to levels last seen
in the middle of the 20th century. What about something like "Three bashes
and you're gone". Unpalatable as it may be to us, crime has reduced every
year in the United States since 1991. Making the law more certain,
rejecting excuses does work. Violent crime in the US is now back below
levels at which many of their statistics first started in the 60s.
To the chagrin of many, on most measures of child welfare US children's
lives have been improving significantly for the last five years.
But instead our energies may be used up in a campaign that is ostensibly
against thuggish parents. It will be recognised as just an attempt to
impose loopy theories about child rearing by self nominated experts and
busy bodies. It will be fought at every level. The agencies and
institutions, like Barnardos and the Commissioner for Children, which
should be supported as champions of the victims will instead be seen by
thousands who would like to respect them, as stooges for the nanny state.
You can't attack child rearing practices, some of the deepest and most
important cultural practices we have, using only earnest intentions and
flimsy argument, without generating serious antipathy.
A law change that criminalises thousands of loving and well meaning parents
will be expensive. Stupid law is incredibly expensive. A significant
criminal case can involve costs of at least $100,000 between the
prosecution and the defence.
I am haunted by the thought of the innocent father convicted in Napier in
August, driven to distraction by a stepson.
"The man came home to find that his 14 year old stepson had beaten his
younger siblings and trashed the family home causing $2,500 worth of
damage. When the father found his son on the street near their home, high
on cannabis, he asked for an explanation. When the boy laughed at him, the
man snapped. Witnesses described seeing him crying before he hit the boy.
The man had shown his new family a different kind of life to the one they
had left behind. He had worked in the same place for 19 years and had
bought a home for the family he had taken responsibility for when he became
involved with his stepchildren's mother.
The Man's lawyer acknowledged that provocation was not a legitimate
defence, but if it was, the man would have a good case.
Judge Adeane said the man was a hard worker and provider for the family."
Repealing section 59 will empower the zealots. They will threaten and
force prosecutions.
I am sorry to have to say it, but Barnardos could in its publications, and
its support of EPOCH become party to public deception about the law. They
certainly wouldn't pass the Fair Trading Act test. Talk of the "Children
Young Persons and their Families Act 1989 proceedings", use of the "youth
offending" system, a "written police charging policy", dealing with
notifications "outside the criminal judicial system" is simply
disingenuous. If section 59 goes the Crimes Act law of assault applies.
I am against any law that does not mean what it says. Without section 59
the law will be an intolerable ass to thousands of responsible people who
should uphold it. When the law abiding middle class become contemptuous of
the law it loses vital force for everyone. There is more indecision for
those who must enforce it. More doubt about its value. More reluctance to
provide resources, more argument and more pressure on the courts to find
cunning or discreditable arguments to avoid enforcing the clear words of
the law.
Then those on the bottom of society pay the worst price, especially the
kids. The Lillybings are a consequence of our indulgence in sickly
cultural sensitivity, in losing confidence in our own core values. Law
that does not mean what it says deprives our agencies of moral authority to
intervene when they should. A lack of resolve or resources is unavoidable
when the law is being used to tackle more than it can do. It must ensure
the vicious abusers are brought to justice. Bogging the law down in
chasing parents who are not vicious child beaters is worse than useless.
If Barnardos wants a political cause there is one crying out for a leader.
New Zealand has no left wing equivalent here of Blair or Clinton, prepared
to call a welfare spade a spade. The state has funded the creation of
generations of bad families. When it began the welfare state demanded
family responsibility and contribution in return for charitable assistance.
Now assistance is deliberately amoral. I see that having produced far more
of the tragic cases we are all concerned about, than any amount of well
intentioned smacking.
As a lawyer I am also concerned about the absence of any evidence in the
case for repeal of section 59, that it will actually penetrate the
consciousness of the target groups. I simply don't believe the claims that
child abuse is spread evenly through society. That is not what experienced
police, judges and social workers say. It is not the case for other forms
of crime. While clearly there will be violence and harsh discipline in all
corners, the worst forms are disproportionately concentrated. In a few
thousand so-called families. And that is where the law should be directed.
Where the greatest good can be done.
It is disproportionately concentrated among people who are contemptuous of
the law anyway. Whatever the excuses, alcohol, religious mania, a warrior
inheritance or absence of self esteem, most of the people who commit most
of the serious crimes, including violent damage to children, don't choose
to obey many of our laws. Nearly 9% of people in our prisons are traffic
offenders. They are not there for jay walking or speeding or even careless
driving. No it is because they drive while disqualified up to 6 or 8 times
in a row. And many are also thieves and burglars. Burglars are also often
rapists.
The courts mean nothing to such people. A repeal of section 59 intended is
promoted to influence indirectly the behaviour of a small group in our
society. It could be at the cost of respect from a very large number. We
should know that the small group will notice or even give a damn that a law
change of that kind has been made before pushing on this.
I sound these cautions because I start with presumption that most cultural
customs have developed for a reason. I do not want to uphold traditional
customs slavishly but I certainly react against the sort of cultural
imperialism that would have parliamentarians and the law telling what may
be a majority of New Zealanders that their practices must be changed to
conform to the views of a minority.
Our basic Crimes Act standard may be foolish. It makes even the lightest
uninvited and unwanted but deliberate touch punishable. Continental law
may be more realistic, requiring an element of material aggression before
the action becomes culpable.
Simple repeal of section 59 is problematic because our underlying law is
so strict. It is a very bad standard for assessing the actions of caring
parents.
In relation to children or adults not all violence is equal. For humans,
like most animals, violence is endemic. It is at least as celebrated in
prose and poetry as dance or music, or eating. Rugby, our most popular
sport ritualises combat. Little boys play fighting despite the best
efforts of pacifist parents to soothe them out of it. We can try to deny
the reality of pride in courage, of joy in practising struggle, and
satisfaction in being staunch. But we run the risk of being as silly as we
think the Victorians were about a fundamental part of being human. We
think they tried to deny the natural reality of sex. Are we trying to do
the same with fighting and struggle?
There must be at least the possibility that we lose all authority and
influence over violence when we treat all fighting as beyond the pale, as
equally reprehensible, whatever the motive, and whatever the circumstances.
Humans develop customs to channel dangerous human conduct safely. If we
fail to respect and nurture such customs we may be responsible when such
conduct becomes utterly out of control.
Our ancestors worked up tests for just war. War is terrible. But war
between parties with no respect for the rules is much more terrible. The
Marquis of Queensbury developed the rules that channelled brutal
bare-knuckle fighting into the Queensbury Rules for boxing. Fair fighters
didnít hit below the belt. Gentlemen didnít use knives or broken bottles.
In throwing away the notion of the fair fight, in saying it doesn't matter
who started it, or how it is contested, we may all be to blame for the
viciousness that is now the daily challenge for our Police. We may be
responsible for the lack of help they get from ordinary law abiding people.
And so I get to the civil liberties argument. I could have started with it.
There must be grave and well established reasons before we interfere with
the decisions and customs of competent adults. Frankly I do not think we
have advanced life liberty or respect for others with the moves we have
already made in relation to physical punishment. I look, for example, at
the effects of the abolition of corporate punishment in schools. I am told
there were 23,000 school suspensions.
Our schools and our teachers were more secure before we abolished corporal
punishment in schools in 1990. Suspension figures were not kept prior to
1991. In that year there were 4,297 suspensions and 175 expulsions. In
2000 there were 22,029 suspensions and stand downs and 157 expulsions.
Many of them were for violence or threats of violence to other students,
and even teachers.
That doesn't necessarily mean cause and effect but it should at least cause
us to be hesitant before accepting the proposition that all violence
towards children begets violence from children. Cause and effect in human
affairs is very complex. This is not an argument that there is no cause
and effect. Just a warning that it may be very hard to use simple slogans
with any intellectual integrity.
In my old school suspension was reserved for truly heinous behaviour. I
remember it happening very rarely, perhaps one or two cases a year.
Perhaps it is still reserved for heinous cases and there were 23,000
examples of such behaviour last year.
I know that good dedicated teachers are now driven from teaching by
insolence, lack of respect for learning and the rights of others in class
to learn, bullying and even physical fear in their classrooms. Possibly
corporal punishment would have left with teachers a tool for controlling
boys so that they had not sunk in performance and aspiration in relation to
girls schools as they have. We may never know. But we do know the nirvana
of mutual respect supposed to come when teachers were prevented from
physically punishing children, seems much further away than it ever was.
I suspect that teachers have embraced theories and practices that are in
effect the suicide of satisfying professional careers. When a critical
minority of children in class cease to believe there are sanctions that
could really affect them, the school becomes a more menacing place for
every child, including themselves. And all children learn something that
should not be, that the authorities can be mocked, that rules donít
necessarily mean what they say, that cheats can prosper, and bullies do get
away with it.
I am not urging the restoration of corporal punishment. If the teaching
profession opposes it there would be little point. But what I am saying is
that many of the arguments for repeal of section 59 sound remarkably like
the arguments we heard years ago when corporal punishment in schools was
abolished. We should all be sobered by the fact that none of the promised
or even hoped-for outcomes have materialised. Indeed schools today look
much more like the predictions of people who opposed the reforms. We
thought they were alarmist fuddy-duddies.
I want to close with some words used in 1650 by Oliver Cromwell. They now
seem very strange to us. He was trying to persuade the self righteous
elders of the Scottish Kirk to let their followers listen to his appeal to
avoid battle. "I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, think it possible
you may be mistaken."
As Cromwell might have done I beg of you not to commit the mana of
Barnardos to this campaign over the legitimate doubts of many of your loyal
supporters. Many of them will harbour worries. You may be wrong.
And even if you will not change your minds at least respect the reasoning
and motives of those who will disagree with you.
This is a really good idea............serious one at that [Catch-all] -
GEA - gormfach@gmail.com @ 11:09:55 PM
Following the disaster in London . . .
East Anglian Ambulance Service have launched a national "In case of
Emergency ( ICE ) " campaign with the support of Falklands war hero Simon
Weston.
The idea is that you store the word " I C E " in your mobile phone address
book, and against it enter the number of the person you would want to be
contacted "In Case of Emergency".
In an emergency situation ambulance and hospital staff will then be able to
quickly find out who your next of kin are and be able to contact them. It's
so simple that everyone can do it. Please do.
Please will you also email this to everybody in your address book, it won't
take too many 'forwards' before everybody will know about this. It really
could save your life, or put a loved one's mind at rest.
For more than one contact name ICE1, ICE2, ICE3 etc.
Even though this is a British idea it would work for anyone with a mobile
(IMHO).
East Anglian Ambulance Service have launched a national "In case of
Emergency ( ICE ) " campaign with the support of Falklands war hero Simon
Weston.
The idea is that you store the word " I C E " in your mobile phone address
book, and against it enter the number of the person you would want to be
contacted "In Case of Emergency".
In an emergency situation ambulance and hospital staff will then be able to
quickly find out who your next of kin are and be able to contact them. It's
so simple that everyone can do it. Please do.
Please will you also email this to everybody in your address book, it won't
take too many 'forwards' before everybody will know about this. It really
could save your life, or put a loved one's mind at rest.
For more than one contact name ICE1, ICE2, ICE3 etc.
Even though this is a British idea it would work for anyone with a mobile
(IMHO).
07/26/05
G Scott my man
>The Daily Telegraph quotes two sources, both official. One is the Ministry
>of Defence (UK), the other the Equal Opportunities Commission. The survey
>covered all three of the Armed Forces. The British Army said 12 per cent of
>its gals had complained of sexual harassment while the RAF gave a figure of
>nine per cent.
These complaint rates are, while dismaying wrt prospects of
effective ops, only half of those alleged for the R.N.
The reasons for the differences should be investigated.
>From this you may draw one of two conclusions:
>(a) The Navy girls are either far more physically attractive than their
>sisters in the Army and RAF;
>(b) The lassies in bell bottom trousers are all raving nymphomaniacs!
>
>On the other side of the coin it may be that hairy-chested sailors are
>sexual predators.
I can imagine the procurement of the complaint figures may have
been more enthusiastic in the RN. I fancy the RNZN has a more
hypertrophied procurement network ...
R
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Robt Mann"
>To: "g-howard"
>Sent: Thursday, 7 July 2005 07:06
>Subject: Re: Sheilas RN
>
>
>>>The Daily Telegraph, London, tells me 22 per cent of all women
>>>currently serving in the Royal Navy have complained of sexual
>harassment.
>The Daily Telegraph quotes two sources, both official. One is the Ministry
>of Defence (UK), the other the Equal Opportunities Commission. The survey
>covered all three of the Armed Forces. The British Army said 12 per cent of
>its gals had complained of sexual harassment while the RAF gave a figure of
>nine per cent.
These complaint rates are, while dismaying wrt prospects of
effective ops, only half of those alleged for the R.N.
The reasons for the differences should be investigated.
>From this you may draw one of two conclusions:
>(a) The Navy girls are either far more physically attractive than their
>sisters in the Army and RAF;
>(b) The lassies in bell bottom trousers are all raving nymphomaniacs!
>
>On the other side of the coin it may be that hairy-chested sailors are
>sexual predators.
I can imagine the procurement of the complaint figures may have
been more enthusiastic in the RN. I fancy the RNZN has a more
hypertrophied procurement network ...
R
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Robt Mann"
>To: "g-howard"
>Sent: Thursday, 7 July 2005 07:06
>Subject: Re: Sheilas RN
>
>
>>>The Daily Telegraph, London, tells me 22 per cent of all women
>>>currently serving in the Royal Navy have complained of sexual
>harassment.
(author unknown)
(cited in Stoker Greenwood's Navy, E Greenwood, Midas Press 1983)
Drinking for the Empire, boozing for the Raj,
Sozzling for the honour of the Flag,
After quarts of Planters Punch,
And a very special lunch,
No wonder that our knees begin to sag.
But we stagger back at Sunset to put on our Mess Undress,
And bloody but unbowed go racing back,
To have a little snorter,
With the Governor's lovely daughter,
For the honour of the dear old Union Jack.
Drinking for the Empire, boozing for the Crown,
Sozzling for the good old Union Jack,
We never make a fuss,
'Cause they're all alike to us,
Whether white, or nearly white, or merely black,
They come aboard in thousands every time we enter port,
No wonder that our wine bills are so large,
From shoving tots of Coatses,
Down a thousand thirsty throatses,
For the prestige of the glorious British Raj.
Drinking for the Empire, sozzling for the Flag,
Boozing for Brittania Rules the Waves,
We display the well known verve,
Of the Fleet in Which we Serve,
And show them how an Englishman behaves.
Though the party may be bloody, we keep stiff the upper lip,
And never let the locals get us down,
Crying Dulce et Decorum,
We must drain another jorum,
To tbe never dying credit of the Crown.
Drinking for the Empire, boozing for the Queen,
Sozzling for the country of the free,
When the Social Sec. compels,
We all land at seven bells,
For cocktails, bridge and dancing with H.E.,
Though the body's feeling jaded, and the tongue is somewhat furred,
And a peaceful night aboard would be just grand,
Our weary limbs we gird on,
Assume the white man's burden,
For the honour of the dear old Motherland.
Drinking for the Empire, boozing for the Flag,
Soaking for the balance of World Power,
They are many we are few,
But we know wttat each must do,
And men shall say "This was their finest hour" ,
We will sozzle in the ballroom, and sozzle on the beach,
We will sozzle on the hillside, we will sozzle on the street,
But we never will surrender,
Being guardians of the splendour,
Of a Nation that has never known defeat.
(cited in Stoker Greenwood's Navy, E Greenwood, Midas Press 1983)
Drinking for the Empire, boozing for the Raj,
Sozzling for the honour of the Flag,
After quarts of Planters Punch,
And a very special lunch,
No wonder that our knees begin to sag.
But we stagger back at Sunset to put on our Mess Undress,
And bloody but unbowed go racing back,
To have a little snorter,
With the Governor's lovely daughter,
For the honour of the dear old Union Jack.
Drinking for the Empire, boozing for the Crown,
Sozzling for the good old Union Jack,
We never make a fuss,
'Cause they're all alike to us,
Whether white, or nearly white, or merely black,
They come aboard in thousands every time we enter port,
No wonder that our wine bills are so large,
From shoving tots of Coatses,
Down a thousand thirsty throatses,
For the prestige of the glorious British Raj.
Drinking for the Empire, sozzling for the Flag,
Boozing for Brittania Rules the Waves,
We display the well known verve,
Of the Fleet in Which we Serve,
And show them how an Englishman behaves.
Though the party may be bloody, we keep stiff the upper lip,
And never let the locals get us down,
Crying Dulce et Decorum,
We must drain another jorum,
To tbe never dying credit of the Crown.
Drinking for the Empire, boozing for the Queen,
Sozzling for the country of the free,
When the Social Sec. compels,
We all land at seven bells,
For cocktails, bridge and dancing with H.E.,
Though the body's feeling jaded, and the tongue is somewhat furred,
And a peaceful night aboard would be just grand,
Our weary limbs we gird on,
Assume the white man's burden,
For the honour of the dear old Motherland.
Drinking for the Empire, boozing for the Flag,
Soaking for the balance of World Power,
They are many we are few,
But we know wttat each must do,
And men shall say "This was their finest hour" ,
We will sozzle in the ballroom, and sozzle on the beach,
We will sozzle on the hillside, we will sozzle on the street,
But we never will surrender,
Being guardians of the splendour,
Of a Nation that has never known defeat.
Solar thermal, cosmic cooling, and photovoltaic, roofs [Catch-all] -
GEA - gormfach@gmail.com @ 12:07:38 AM
memo for: Rotary (3 levels) {Rod please pass to them}
Habitat for Humanity {ditto}
Keith Hay Homes Ltd (ditto}
Kestle International Unltd
Dr Edric Baker, Kaulakuri diabetic clinic,
Bangla Desh
Prof R B Elliott
TECHNICAL BACKGROUND
L R B Mann _Agric Eng'g Aus 24_ (1) 39-42 1995
(attached sans diagrams)
A. SOLAR THERMAL & COSMIC COOLING & PV ROOFS
Three categories within the roof are required on a bldg if it is to
be autonomous for low-power lighting, solar aircond, and some other
electrical demands e.g a small efficient frig, and hot water for hygiene.
The 3 types of roof should overlap, forming a single surface
membrane minimally prone to storm damage. If the PV panel is low down on a
suitable flank of roof, the water from further up cleans it. The junction
corrugated-metal/planar PV requires a compressible seal e.g Compriband.
The junction corrugated-metal/ SWH glazing consists simply of a normal
overlap, as the glazing is Suntuf clear polycarbonate of the same
'wavelength' as Lysaght corrugated 'tin'.
SWH can readily be 8 - 10 sq m of the roof, ca. 1/10 of total roof
area. Most of the rest will be dark metal (with no paper under it -
obviated by prevention of condensation). The smallest category of roof
will be PV - say, 3 sq m (giving several hundred W peak, for charging
batteries).
A dark metal roof is the energy converter - free - for solar
airconditioning. The extremes of temperature are curbed, and airborne
insects thoroughly excluded. The air in the building is changed several
times each hour and very thoroughly filtered of not only mosquitoes etc but
also pollen and other nuisances.
0.1 kW of electricity consumed by the solar aircond gives a few kW
of solar heating (if wanted in cool seasons), a few kW of cooling on clear
summer nights, and daytime ventilation (with some cooling especially if a
basement is used for the air intake). In tropical hospitals, cosmic
cooling on summer nights is probably the most valuable benefit, and coupled
with abolition normal needs for opening windows will keep both patients &
staff healthier.
B. PV ROOF SECTIONS - and required storage batteries etc.
I have no experience in sizing or installing PV or ancillaries
(batteries, inverters). I can however put designers in touch with
experienced firms who have done this type of work. Much expertise, and
some impressive manufacture, are concentrated in the N. NSW rural
resettlement scene around Nimbin, but big firms e.g Siemens are doubtless
OK. I would like to be involved in these aspects of design, as I hope the
Rotary-funded hospitals in Vanuatu & Solomons will serve to refine design
and to decrease costs for the Bangla Desh hospital retrofits.
The solar aircond requires 80 W (max) for the fan, and < 20 W for
the automatic controller & losses, adding to 100 W in round figures. At
the slower ('idle') speed this demand decreases to ca. 30 W. Average
demand of the solar aircond depends on climate but should therefore be <70
W - equivalent to a smallish light bulb.
DC fans exist but it will probably be easiest to stick to the well
proven AC 80 W fan with its AC controller. No great losses are entailed.
C. EQUIPMENT SUPPLY
For the solar aircond, the two key requirements are:-
1 Crompton-Greaves 'Hi-Breeze' 80 W fans
These are the best quality available, and essential for the solar
aircond (because they do not burn out on sudden reversal at full power).
There being no NZ agent for C-G, it would seem best to import a 20'
container (1600 fans) - roughly NZ$50,000 FOB Bombay. For my own
continuing developments I would want to buy only a small minority of these.
I hope therefore that a plan can be made to use most of them in new NZ
houses within a suitable time.
BTW since these are the best ceiling fans, a small rate of sale of
them for use as ceiling fans could in principle be organised; but this is
essentially a sideline which for simplicity would be avoided. They would
retail to a discerning buyers willing to pay ca.$90 for top quality instead
of ca.$70 for an inferior Chinese fan.
2 Automatic Controller
The Probine prototype works fine; next, the printed-circuit
production model has to be manufactured. I have friends experienced in
this line of work. Trevor Probine expects to produce the specs for that
mfr shortly.
In the event of simple domestic installations of solar aircond in
the near future, before the automatic controller is available in numbers,
the ordinary Crompton-Greaves manual controller can be installed
temporarily. But it is hoped to bypass this phase, installing the auto
controller from the start.
Estimates for the cost of the controller are expected within a few
weeks.
The first few hundred, or more, would be made in NZ under close
control of my friends. I am about to explore with a USA 'king of The China
Price' what would be involved in mfg in China when thousands are wanted.
Many hundreds of thousands of bldgs in NZ can economically be retrofitted
with solar aircond, but the highest priority is tropical hospitals. In
principle the latter can be cross-subsidised from the former (ca.$3500
installed - v profitable if well managed). Within NZ my idea is to
install on Habitat + K Hay new homes. The actual extra capital cost of the
solar aircond is, in new construction, approximately cancelled by the lack
of need for bldg paper under the roof and for most of the opening windows.
Running costs for these new homes are considerably lower than normal, and
the protection from airborne allergens will prevent some asthma attacks.
The homes are thus cheaper & healthier than typical NZ homes, from a highly
economic investment. I do not propose withholding these benefits from the
wealthy, but envisage first deployment for the good of fairly poor people.
For the SWH, main requirements are:-
Suntuf
Expanded polystyrene or equivalent
Foil
Scrap copper HW cyls for collector
New or good refurb attic HW cyl „240 litre
New 15m rolls of semi-soft 20mm copper pipe
* * *
-
Robt Mann
consultant ecologist
P O Box 28878 Remuera, Auckland 1005, New Zealand
(9) 524 2949
SIMPLE RETROFITTED FLAT-PLATE SOLAR WATER- and AIR-HEATERS
L R B Mann
Agric Eng'g in NZ confab, Lincoln, Aug 1994;
pub'd in Agric Eng’g Aus 24 (1) 39-42 1995
Introduction This paper could be subtitled "The Goldmine in Your Attic". Since the peak flux of energy from the sun is 1 kW/m2 (approx. half visible and half IR), the typical Australasian house roof of area ca.120 m2 receives about 100kW solar radiation, peak (about 20kW mean). Only a few percent of this need be harnessed to make the house considerably more pleasant and healthy. Much or all of that roof can serve as flat-plate solar-thermal devices: 3 - 4 m2 of glazed black copper harvests a kW or so into hot water, and the rest of the roof a similar thermal power in room-warming air pumped from under a ridge down into one or more rooms.
The bulk of typical Australasian household energy end-uses being low-temperature heat (water- & room-heating), if these solar-thermal retrofits can supply only a large minority of those consumptions they have the potential, if widely deployed, to supplant several power stations.
Both of the solar-thermal roof modifications reported here have been designed & implemented as retrofits, but are readily incorporated (and more efficient) in new construction. The two technologies are sketched in order.
(a) SWH can be made cheaper by building them in situ into the roof. Much packaging & freight, and the collector factory, are obviated. Thermal losses are decreased. The majority of domestic water-heating energy (in summer, 100 - 200 L/d at 60 °C) has been supplied from this type of collector comprising a small part (3 - 4 m2) of the roof for each building.
Recent improvements in materials and design make this a relatively economical investment. Because the glazing of the SWH is the roof for that area, this approach starts with a credit of $100 or more from roofing saved. Glazing satisfactory so far has been polycarbonate ('Suntuf') or modified acrylate ('Durolite'), both UV-protected by a film on the upper side. The copper collector sheet transfers heat by a heat-conductive glue into 10 - 15m of 20mm copper pipe thermosyphoning to an attic tank. The back of the collector sheet is unusually well insulated - typically, foil then 10cm of styrofoam. The back of that insulation is in a warm, sheltered attic rather than in the wind; and any heat that does get through goes into system (b).
Selective surfaces can net more energy owing to low IR emissivity. So far I have used Solkote Hi/Sorb-II paint (Solar Energy Corp., Princeton N.J., USA) which is claimed, if sprayed very thin, to have emissivity only 28% that of ordinary matt-black paint. [addendum 2002: the CuS layer lining an old copper HW cylinder is a free, and suspectedly selective, matt black surface. No paint is needed.]
If it is desired to increase the area of collector (say, to 6m2 or even more), the marginal costs & losses are low. The returns from increasing area require detailed R&D, because both performance and economics are different from those of adding conventional factory-made modular boxes.
Conventional thermostatted electrical 'topping-up' is readily provided, either in the thermosyphon tank or in an existing 'hot water cupboard' tank. The latter tandem-tanks system is arguably preferable, despite larger thermal losses. The topping-up required by the 2m2 single-tank prototype has averaged 3 kWh/d (i.e. 0.13 kWe) in its 2.5y operation. [updated at 8.5y: 3.0 kWh/d]
This device was designed on criteria for DIY appropriate technology, suitable for handymen. No welding or soldering is needed. It is readily adaptable for tradesman-based installation. The labour in situ is about 2 man-d.
Design of flat-plate SWH often gives some emphasis to optimising the tilt (to e.g. the latitude + 10°), in some examples even arranging to vary that tilt seasonally. This assumes that the radiation to be captured originates from an arc of the ecliptic, and that the collector efficiency drops substantially when the flat plate is not normal to the rays. That is not the best model for regions like Auckland where the 'average sky' is so cloudy that it is more like a hemispherical diffuser dome. Being constrained to the pre-existing roof tilt (often as low as 25°) is therefore less disadvantageous than some textbooks are often taken to imply. Similarly, the most experienced local flat-plate SWH installers tell me that, even when geometry is further handicapped by absence of any suitable north-facing roof flank, installation on an east or west flank requires in Auckland only some 30-40% extra area to achieve similar performance. It is easy for a focussing animal like us to forget how little orientation matters for flat-plate collectors.
Plumbing for optimal performance needs some R&D and then codification, but some principles have emerged already (within the constraint that mains-pressure hot water systems in my opinion exemplify inherently wasteful vulgar brutalism):-
(1) The attic tank is best bought and installed as bare copper. It is thus cheaper and lighter (but also more fragile). Only after slinging, propping, and plumbing is it insulated - and then far more thoroughly than even the recent standard. The first step, omitted in a conventional clad cylinder, is to polish and lacquer the copper, decreasing its IR emissivity. Temperature sensors may be stuck on at several altitudes; the lowest might operate through a relay the electrical top-up heating (if that is in this cylinder). Glass-wool blanketing is then wrapped on, and finally foil. The resulting insulation can readily improve on even the recent blown-foam standard. The galvanised cladding of normal cylinders would be, in this application, a waste and unnecessary weight.
(2) If there is no attic, the thermosyphon tank will have to be installed on the roof, with suitable weatherproof cladding. The alternative of abandoning the thermosyphon I leave to those who are willing to grapple periodically with replacing pump seals etc. I point out the irony of being unable to use your SWH when the mains are off for an extended period. But of course it is true that pumped systems give far greater freedom of tank positioning. The claim that they also give 25% more stored heat I would like to see tested.
(3) Copper plumbing is not very much more expensive than polybutylene, but is harder for the untrained like me to instal. Those who choose polybutylene should prefer brass to plastic fitting inserts, and should be aware that pinhole leaks are expected in 15y, especially if the water is high in chloride. Trays and ducts (e.g. scrap roofing & spouting) should be installed to drain to eaves.
(4) Insulation of vents is oddly neglected. A straight open pipe may well pour a few score watts into the sky; a 'shepherd's crook' with push-on weatherproof foam is the least that is needed. Pressure-relief valves on vents allow shorter vent pipes and may thus pay for themselves (about $50) ultimately; but they become preferable in my opinion only for single-tank systems which otherwise require very tall vents to give sufficient dynamic head. In that connection, supply through header tanks, rather than pressure-reducing valves, should certainly be considered. Among their advantages is obviation of roof-penetrations for venting.
It is hoped to set up a test-bed for SWH at a university. A realistic drawoff geometry and schedule is important; MJ delivered into a tank is not a sufficient criterion of performance. The rather exact requirement for a milking shed may deserve priority.
(b) Solar-assisted Air Conditioning The rest of a house roof acts as a flat-plate air warmer. The efficiency (power gained per unit area) of that collector is low, but the large area compensates, and the price is right. Much of a 1908 Auckland wooden bungalow is warmed by several degrees, obviating other heaters, over much of a typical day. Time-temperature graphs have been logged on a Hewlett-Packard 7132A strip-chart recorder using two LM335 (10 mV/°K) cf. Hutton's earlier success using the AD590 (1µA/°K), to compare the in-house temperatures with those achieved by known electric heater powers. The yield of warm air brought down into the living space by thermostatically-controlled fans can readily average 5 kWh/d for a couple of hundred days each year (Auckland winter, spring and autumn), roughly equivalent to the thermal power of an electric radiator (500 - 2500 W), from investing the electrical power of a smallish light-bulb (90W max, far less idling). The effect can be likened to that of a heat-pump with a C.O.P. in the range 10 - 50; but of course the hours of working are much more limited.
This general concept has been implemented by Hutton, the CSIRO special house hear Melbourne, and at least two other research versions in Australasia, and several 'box in the attic' commercial versions using centrifugal blowers. My versions have all used axial fans.
The simplest fan is a 30W bathroom-exhaust type mounted just below the ridge and pushing air down by a duct. More versatile & powerful is a reversible 80W 'ceiling' fan, dia. 90 or 120 cm, mounted above the ceiling in a duct 50 - 200cm high.
Fan control uses two LM335: when the temperature excess at the ridge drops below one degree, fan(s) speed is automatically lowered. Shutters are generally not needed, as the lower of the two fan speeds is sufficient to prevent warm air floating back up into the attic.
This class of fan-air system is indicated by the next 6 paragraphs to be a good example of a solution-multiplier (the Clivus composting toilet being a classic example). Stratification within the living-space is considerably rectified; on the lower ('idling') of the two speeds between which the fan is automatically switched, this benefit is still significant. The 10-1 kWt from lights and other electrical devices is thereby made more effective towards room-heating. Fan-duct systems for recirc only were sold by e.g. Warmaire in the late 1970s and calculated by G Leach to be more cost-effective than adding insulation to moderately-insulated ceilings.
Standard polyester filters from air-conditioners are incorporated at ceiling level, giving unusually clean air. Protection from airborne allergens may be, for some occupants, the most valuable benefit of this technology.
It is not strictly correct to say that such fan systems decrease the humidity of the warmed air, but they do dry the house very considerably. They are far better value for that purpose than $500 refrigerator-type dehumidifiers.
The whole living-space is slightly pressurised. In districts where significant radon percolates up from underfloor, its levels in the living-space are therefore presumably decreased. Dust exclusion is also assisted.
There are extremely cost-effective incidental benefits for window security. The turnover of air in the living-space is normally such that no window need be opened for months, so barrel locks with keys, too cumbersome for frequent operation, become convenient.
Roof longevity is enhanced by evaporation of condensation from the underside of the metal. Not only the galvanising but also the purlins will last longer because they are wet less.
The air warmed normally enters the building under the eaves. Large-scale internal recirculation has also been tested, using an internal stairway; this appears to give, as expected, faster warmup but less total energy gained. The ratio of fresh to recirc air needs research.
A "leaky thermal diode" may be a useful image to keep in mind when designing this type of active flat-plate collector.
The typical attic is, in summer, like a warm-air 'balloon' at 55 - 60 °C. Given ridge-level vents, this can entrain air lofted from the living-space by reversing the fans, giving solar-assisted whole-house ventilation. The replacement air sucked into the living-space comes preferably from a cool basement. Airborne animals can be filtered at one or more stages.
[addendum 2002 The Fourth Mode: on clear summer nights the fast-down mode gives a few kW of cosmic cooling.]
Ordinary dark-red or dark-green roof paint is said to absorb solar energy about 70% as well as matt black. After I painted my dark-red roof with dark brown I was surprised to find for some months decreased efficiency. I think the gloss of the new paint was the (temporary) difficulty, and I continue to suppose that dark brown (acrylic) is the best readily available paint for the purpose.
Hutton's 5 houses had tile roofs; in the Melbourne climate even this inferior membrane proved a collector of worthwhile efficiency. Anodised matt black aluminium might well be thermally much better roofing.
An improved sub-class of roof would have (UV-protected) glazing outside the roof. Tile roofs might well benefit most, proportionally; for metal roofs, special paint would presumably be needed for the higher metal-surface temperatures, and might as well be a selective coating. This glazing would extend the peak power, but especially the net annual energy, from the class of solar air-heater we are considering.
Like SWH this technology needs, and readily incorporates, topping-up (e.g. by electrical fan-heaters at outlets from ducts).
A main potential improvement is aerofoil fan-blades rather than (or fitted over) standard crude stamped-steel blades. More heat per unit noise is the goal, noise being the only evident drawback of this technology.
Some useful heat-storage can be incorporated in each building; salt (e.g. CaCl2) hydrates appear most suitable but have yet to be acquired.
(c) Barriers to Deployment Reviewing the literature of the late 1970s, especially Lovins' Soft Energy Paths and ensuing controversy, one is struck by the inertia of technology in the face of valid argument, and the resulting lack of progress in R&D, let alone deployment, of the technologies required for transition to sustainable energy systems. In that period, Lovins identified solar room-heating as a main, and solar water-heating as a lesser, opportunity for saving electricity and/or other forms of energy. More recently he identified electric motors and controls as a major arena for increased efficiency of electricity usage. Last time I heard him here, he was identifying expensive fluorescent lights as a major saving which electricity retailers might well give away and which you think it might pay you to buy (at least briefly while you listen to him, until he intones "it's pure arbitrage"). Scientists & engineers involved in appropriate technology should think hard about why almost two decades of Lovins-type proof that soft energy technologies are 'economic' has not resulted in much deployment of such technologies. My own tentative explanations are:-
(i) the renewable-energy systems which Lovins so plausibly advocated in the late '70s did not all exist in readily available forms;
(ii) distortions of finance & propaganda continued to favour electric grids;
(iii) schools of engineering and artytechture continued, indefensibly, to neglect soft-energy concepts in teaching and research.
Can these disciplines be rescued from the burgeoning fog of digital confusion? If so, it will entail serious design and, especially, practical work which I hope my inventions will stimulate. I have throughout hinted at questions for R&D, and would be glad to co-operate with researchers pursuing any. I am advised that concept (b) is not susceptible of patenting. I warn against hijacking by digital-control fanatics.
Acknowledgements The prototype SWH was constructed with help from members of Solar Action. The electronic control and monitoring systems were designed and made by Clifford Wright, U. of Auckland Architecture dept.
Refs.
Guthrie K 1994 'A review of Australia's solar water heater standards' Solar Progress 15 (2) 12-13.
Hutton D R, Lecis I 1985 'A simple multichannel temperature recording system' J. Phys. E: Sci. Instrum.18 822-3.
Hutton D R, Francey J L A 1985 'How to Use Your Home Roof & Attic as a Sun Space ...' Solar Progress 6 (2) 8-9
Lovins A et al. (ed. H Nash) 1979 'The Energy Controversy' San Francisco: Friends of the Earth.
Habitat for Humanity {ditto}
Keith Hay Homes Ltd (ditto}
Kestle International Unltd
Dr Edric Baker, Kaulakuri diabetic clinic,
Bangla Desh
Prof R B Elliott
TECHNICAL BACKGROUND
L R B Mann _Agric Eng'g Aus 24_ (1) 39-42 1995
(attached sans diagrams)
A. SOLAR THERMAL & COSMIC COOLING & PV ROOFS
Three categories within the roof are required on a bldg if it is to
be autonomous for low-power lighting, solar aircond, and some other
electrical demands e.g a small efficient frig, and hot water for hygiene.
The 3 types of roof should overlap, forming a single surface
membrane minimally prone to storm damage. If the PV panel is low down on a
suitable flank of roof, the water from further up cleans it. The junction
corrugated-metal/planar PV requires a compressible seal e.g Compriband.
The junction corrugated-metal/ SWH glazing consists simply of a normal
overlap, as the glazing is Suntuf clear polycarbonate of the same
'wavelength' as Lysaght corrugated 'tin'.
SWH can readily be 8 - 10 sq m of the roof, ca. 1/10 of total roof
area. Most of the rest will be dark metal (with no paper under it -
obviated by prevention of condensation). The smallest category of roof
will be PV - say, 3 sq m (giving several hundred W peak, for charging
batteries).
A dark metal roof is the energy converter - free - for solar
airconditioning. The extremes of temperature are curbed, and airborne
insects thoroughly excluded. The air in the building is changed several
times each hour and very thoroughly filtered of not only mosquitoes etc but
also pollen and other nuisances.
0.1 kW of electricity consumed by the solar aircond gives a few kW
of solar heating (if wanted in cool seasons), a few kW of cooling on clear
summer nights, and daytime ventilation (with some cooling especially if a
basement is used for the air intake). In tropical hospitals, cosmic
cooling on summer nights is probably the most valuable benefit, and coupled
with abolition normal needs for opening windows will keep both patients &
staff healthier.
B. PV ROOF SECTIONS - and required storage batteries etc.
I have no experience in sizing or installing PV or ancillaries
(batteries, inverters). I can however put designers in touch with
experienced firms who have done this type of work. Much expertise, and
some impressive manufacture, are concentrated in the N. NSW rural
resettlement scene around Nimbin, but big firms e.g Siemens are doubtless
OK. I would like to be involved in these aspects of design, as I hope the
Rotary-funded hospitals in Vanuatu & Solomons will serve to refine design
and to decrease costs for the Bangla Desh hospital retrofits.
The solar aircond requires 80 W (max) for the fan, and < 20 W for
the automatic controller & losses, adding to 100 W in round figures. At
the slower ('idle') speed this demand decreases to ca. 30 W. Average
demand of the solar aircond depends on climate but should therefore be <70
W - equivalent to a smallish light bulb.
DC fans exist but it will probably be easiest to stick to the well
proven AC 80 W fan with its AC controller. No great losses are entailed.
C. EQUIPMENT SUPPLY
For the solar aircond, the two key requirements are:-
1 Crompton-Greaves 'Hi-Breeze' 80 W fans
These are the best quality available, and essential for the solar
aircond (because they do not burn out on sudden reversal at full power).
There being no NZ agent for C-G, it would seem best to import a 20'
container (1600 fans) - roughly NZ$50,000 FOB Bombay. For my own
continuing developments I would want to buy only a small minority of these.
I hope therefore that a plan can be made to use most of them in new NZ
houses within a suitable time.
BTW since these are the best ceiling fans, a small rate of sale of
them for use as ceiling fans could in principle be organised; but this is
essentially a sideline which for simplicity would be avoided. They would
retail to a discerning buyers willing to pay ca.$90 for top quality instead
of ca.$70 for an inferior Chinese fan.
2 Automatic Controller
The Probine prototype works fine; next, the printed-circuit
production model has to be manufactured. I have friends experienced in
this line of work. Trevor Probine expects to produce the specs for that
mfr shortly.
In the event of simple domestic installations of solar aircond in
the near future, before the automatic controller is available in numbers,
the ordinary Crompton-Greaves manual controller can be installed
temporarily. But it is hoped to bypass this phase, installing the auto
controller from the start.
Estimates for the cost of the controller are expected within a few
weeks.
The first few hundred, or more, would be made in NZ under close
control of my friends. I am about to explore with a USA 'king of The China
Price' what would be involved in mfg in China when thousands are wanted.
Many hundreds of thousands of bldgs in NZ can economically be retrofitted
with solar aircond, but the highest priority is tropical hospitals. In
principle the latter can be cross-subsidised from the former (ca.$3500
installed - v profitable if well managed). Within NZ my idea is to
install on Habitat + K Hay new homes. The actual extra capital cost of the
solar aircond is, in new construction, approximately cancelled by the lack
of need for bldg paper under the roof and for most of the opening windows.
Running costs for these new homes are considerably lower than normal, and
the protection from airborne allergens will prevent some asthma attacks.
The homes are thus cheaper & healthier than typical NZ homes, from a highly
economic investment. I do not propose withholding these benefits from the
wealthy, but envisage first deployment for the good of fairly poor people.
For the SWH, main requirements are:-
Suntuf
Expanded polystyrene or equivalent
Foil
Scrap copper HW cyls for collector
New or good refurb attic HW cyl „240 litre
New 15m rolls of semi-soft 20mm copper pipe
* * *
-
Robt Mann
consultant ecologist
P O Box 28878 Remuera, Auckland 1005, New Zealand
(9) 524 2949
SIMPLE RETROFITTED FLAT-PLATE SOLAR WATER- and AIR-HEATERS
L R B Mann
Agric Eng'g in NZ confab, Lincoln, Aug 1994;
pub'd in Agric Eng’g Aus 24 (1) 39-42 1995
Introduction This paper could be subtitled "The Goldmine in Your Attic". Since the peak flux of energy from the sun is 1 kW/m2 (approx. half visible and half IR), the typical Australasian house roof of area ca.120 m2 receives about 100kW solar radiation, peak (about 20kW mean). Only a few percent of this need be harnessed to make the house considerably more pleasant and healthy. Much or all of that roof can serve as flat-plate solar-thermal devices: 3 - 4 m2 of glazed black copper harvests a kW or so into hot water, and the rest of the roof a similar thermal power in room-warming air pumped from under a ridge down into one or more rooms.
The bulk of typical Australasian household energy end-uses being low-temperature heat (water- & room-heating), if these solar-thermal retrofits can supply only a large minority of those consumptions they have the potential, if widely deployed, to supplant several power stations.
Both of the solar-thermal roof modifications reported here have been designed & implemented as retrofits, but are readily incorporated (and more efficient) in new construction. The two technologies are sketched in order.
(a) SWH can be made cheaper by building them in situ into the roof. Much packaging & freight, and the collector factory, are obviated. Thermal losses are decreased. The majority of domestic water-heating energy (in summer, 100 - 200 L/d at 60 °C) has been supplied from this type of collector comprising a small part (3 - 4 m2) of the roof for each building.
Recent improvements in materials and design make this a relatively economical investment. Because the glazing of the SWH is the roof for that area, this approach starts with a credit of $100 or more from roofing saved. Glazing satisfactory so far has been polycarbonate ('Suntuf') or modified acrylate ('Durolite'), both UV-protected by a film on the upper side. The copper collector sheet transfers heat by a heat-conductive glue into 10 - 15m of 20mm copper pipe thermosyphoning to an attic tank. The back of the collector sheet is unusually well insulated - typically, foil then 10cm of styrofoam. The back of that insulation is in a warm, sheltered attic rather than in the wind; and any heat that does get through goes into system (b).
Selective surfaces can net more energy owing to low IR emissivity. So far I have used Solkote Hi/Sorb-II paint (Solar Energy Corp., Princeton N.J., USA) which is claimed, if sprayed very thin, to have emissivity only 28% that of ordinary matt-black paint. [addendum 2002: the CuS layer lining an old copper HW cylinder is a free, and suspectedly selective, matt black surface. No paint is needed.]
If it is desired to increase the area of collector (say, to 6m2 or even more), the marginal costs & losses are low. The returns from increasing area require detailed R&D, because both performance and economics are different from those of adding conventional factory-made modular boxes.
Conventional thermostatted electrical 'topping-up' is readily provided, either in the thermosyphon tank or in an existing 'hot water cupboard' tank. The latter tandem-tanks system is arguably preferable, despite larger thermal losses. The topping-up required by the 2m2 single-tank prototype has averaged 3 kWh/d (i.e. 0.13 kWe) in its 2.5y operation. [updated at 8.5y: 3.0 kWh/d]
This device was designed on criteria for DIY appropriate technology, suitable for handymen. No welding or soldering is needed. It is readily adaptable for tradesman-based installation. The labour in situ is about 2 man-d.
Design of flat-plate SWH often gives some emphasis to optimising the tilt (to e.g. the latitude + 10°), in some examples even arranging to vary that tilt seasonally. This assumes that the radiation to be captured originates from an arc of the ecliptic, and that the collector efficiency drops substantially when the flat plate is not normal to the rays. That is not the best model for regions like Auckland where the 'average sky' is so cloudy that it is more like a hemispherical diffuser dome. Being constrained to the pre-existing roof tilt (often as low as 25°) is therefore less disadvantageous than some textbooks are often taken to imply. Similarly, the most experienced local flat-plate SWH installers tell me that, even when geometry is further handicapped by absence of any suitable north-facing roof flank, installation on an east or west flank requires in Auckland only some 30-40% extra area to achieve similar performance. It is easy for a focussing animal like us to forget how little orientation matters for flat-plate collectors.
Plumbing for optimal performance needs some R&D and then codification, but some principles have emerged already (within the constraint that mains-pressure hot water systems in my opinion exemplify inherently wasteful vulgar brutalism):-
(1) The attic tank is best bought and installed as bare copper. It is thus cheaper and lighter (but also more fragile). Only after slinging, propping, and plumbing is it insulated - and then far more thoroughly than even the recent standard. The first step, omitted in a conventional clad cylinder, is to polish and lacquer the copper, decreasing its IR emissivity. Temperature sensors may be stuck on at several altitudes; the lowest might operate through a relay the electrical top-up heating (if that is in this cylinder). Glass-wool blanketing is then wrapped on, and finally foil. The resulting insulation can readily improve on even the recent blown-foam standard. The galvanised cladding of normal cylinders would be, in this application, a waste and unnecessary weight.
(2) If there is no attic, the thermosyphon tank will have to be installed on the roof, with suitable weatherproof cladding. The alternative of abandoning the thermosyphon I leave to those who are willing to grapple periodically with replacing pump seals etc. I point out the irony of being unable to use your SWH when the mains are off for an extended period. But of course it is true that pumped systems give far greater freedom of tank positioning. The claim that they also give 25% more stored heat I would like to see tested.
(3) Copper plumbing is not very much more expensive than polybutylene, but is harder for the untrained like me to instal. Those who choose polybutylene should prefer brass to plastic fitting inserts, and should be aware that pinhole leaks are expected in 15y, especially if the water is high in chloride. Trays and ducts (e.g. scrap roofing & spouting) should be installed to drain to eaves.
(4) Insulation of vents is oddly neglected. A straight open pipe may well pour a few score watts into the sky; a 'shepherd's crook' with push-on weatherproof foam is the least that is needed. Pressure-relief valves on vents allow shorter vent pipes and may thus pay for themselves (about $50) ultimately; but they become preferable in my opinion only for single-tank systems which otherwise require very tall vents to give sufficient dynamic head. In that connection, supply through header tanks, rather than pressure-reducing valves, should certainly be considered. Among their advantages is obviation of roof-penetrations for venting.
It is hoped to set up a test-bed for SWH at a university. A realistic drawoff geometry and schedule is important; MJ delivered into a tank is not a sufficient criterion of performance. The rather exact requirement for a milking shed may deserve priority.
(b) Solar-assisted Air Conditioning The rest of a house roof acts as a flat-plate air warmer. The efficiency (power gained per unit area) of that collector is low, but the large area compensates, and the price is right. Much of a 1908 Auckland wooden bungalow is warmed by several degrees, obviating other heaters, over much of a typical day. Time-temperature graphs have been logged on a Hewlett-Packard 7132A strip-chart recorder using two LM335 (10 mV/°K) cf. Hutton's earlier success using the AD590 (1µA/°K), to compare the in-house temperatures with those achieved by known electric heater powers. The yield of warm air brought down into the living space by thermostatically-controlled fans can readily average 5 kWh/d for a couple of hundred days each year (Auckland winter, spring and autumn), roughly equivalent to the thermal power of an electric radiator (500 - 2500 W), from investing the electrical power of a smallish light-bulb (90W max, far less idling). The effect can be likened to that of a heat-pump with a C.O.P. in the range 10 - 50; but of course the hours of working are much more limited.
This general concept has been implemented by Hutton, the CSIRO special house hear Melbourne, and at least two other research versions in Australasia, and several 'box in the attic' commercial versions using centrifugal blowers. My versions have all used axial fans.
The simplest fan is a 30W bathroom-exhaust type mounted just below the ridge and pushing air down by a duct. More versatile & powerful is a reversible 80W 'ceiling' fan, dia. 90 or 120 cm, mounted above the ceiling in a duct 50 - 200cm high.
Fan control uses two LM335: when the temperature excess at the ridge drops below one degree, fan(s) speed is automatically lowered. Shutters are generally not needed, as the lower of the two fan speeds is sufficient to prevent warm air floating back up into the attic.
This class of fan-air system is indicated by the next 6 paragraphs to be a good example of a solution-multiplier (the Clivus composting toilet being a classic example). Stratification within the living-space is considerably rectified; on the lower ('idling') of the two speeds between which the fan is automatically switched, this benefit is still significant. The 10-1 kWt from lights and other electrical devices is thereby made more effective towards room-heating. Fan-duct systems for recirc only were sold by e.g. Warmaire in the late 1970s and calculated by G Leach to be more cost-effective than adding insulation to moderately-insulated ceilings.
Standard polyester filters from air-conditioners are incorporated at ceiling level, giving unusually clean air. Protection from airborne allergens may be, for some occupants, the most valuable benefit of this technology.
It is not strictly correct to say that such fan systems decrease the humidity of the warmed air, but they do dry the house very considerably. They are far better value for that purpose than $500 refrigerator-type dehumidifiers.
The whole living-space is slightly pressurised. In districts where significant radon percolates up from underfloor, its levels in the living-space are therefore presumably decreased. Dust exclusion is also assisted.
There are extremely cost-effective incidental benefits for window security. The turnover of air in the living-space is normally such that no window need be opened for months, so barrel locks with keys, too cumbersome for frequent operation, become convenient.
Roof longevity is enhanced by evaporation of condensation from the underside of the metal. Not only the galvanising but also the purlins will last longer because they are wet less.
The air warmed normally enters the building under the eaves. Large-scale internal recirculation has also been tested, using an internal stairway; this appears to give, as expected, faster warmup but less total energy gained. The ratio of fresh to recirc air needs research.
A "leaky thermal diode" may be a useful image to keep in mind when designing this type of active flat-plate collector.
The typical attic is, in summer, like a warm-air 'balloon' at 55 - 60 °C. Given ridge-level vents, this can entrain air lofted from the living-space by reversing the fans, giving solar-assisted whole-house ventilation. The replacement air sucked into the living-space comes preferably from a cool basement. Airborne animals can be filtered at one or more stages.
[addendum 2002 The Fourth Mode: on clear summer nights the fast-down mode gives a few kW of cosmic cooling.]
Ordinary dark-red or dark-green roof paint is said to absorb solar energy about 70% as well as matt black. After I painted my dark-red roof with dark brown I was surprised to find for some months decreased efficiency. I think the gloss of the new paint was the (temporary) difficulty, and I continue to suppose that dark brown (acrylic) is the best readily available paint for the purpose.
Hutton's 5 houses had tile roofs; in the Melbourne climate even this inferior membrane proved a collector of worthwhile efficiency. Anodised matt black aluminium might well be thermally much better roofing.
An improved sub-class of roof would have (UV-protected) glazing outside the roof. Tile roofs might well benefit most, proportionally; for metal roofs, special paint would presumably be needed for the higher metal-surface temperatures, and might as well be a selective coating. This glazing would extend the peak power, but especially the net annual energy, from the class of solar air-heater we are considering.
Like SWH this technology needs, and readily incorporates, topping-up (e.g. by electrical fan-heaters at outlets from ducts).
A main potential improvement is aerofoil fan-blades rather than (or fitted over) standard crude stamped-steel blades. More heat per unit noise is the goal, noise being the only evident drawback of this technology.
Some useful heat-storage can be incorporated in each building; salt (e.g. CaCl2) hydrates appear most suitable but have yet to be acquired.
(c) Barriers to Deployment Reviewing the literature of the late 1970s, especially Lovins' Soft Energy Paths and ensuing controversy, one is struck by the inertia of technology in the face of valid argument, and the resulting lack of progress in R&D, let alone deployment, of the technologies required for transition to sustainable energy systems. In that period, Lovins identified solar room-heating as a main, and solar water-heating as a lesser, opportunity for saving electricity and/or other forms of energy. More recently he identified electric motors and controls as a major arena for increased efficiency of electricity usage. Last time I heard him here, he was identifying expensive fluorescent lights as a major saving which electricity retailers might well give away and which you think it might pay you to buy (at least briefly while you listen to him, until he intones "it's pure arbitrage"). Scientists & engineers involved in appropriate technology should think hard about why almost two decades of Lovins-type proof that soft energy technologies are 'economic' has not resulted in much deployment of such technologies. My own tentative explanations are:-
(i) the renewable-energy systems which Lovins so plausibly advocated in the late '70s did not all exist in readily available forms;
(ii) distortions of finance & propaganda continued to favour electric grids;
(iii) schools of engineering and artytechture continued, indefensibly, to neglect soft-energy concepts in teaching and research.
Can these disciplines be rescued from the burgeoning fog of digital confusion? If so, it will entail serious design and, especially, practical work which I hope my inventions will stimulate. I have throughout hinted at questions for R&D, and would be glad to co-operate with researchers pursuing any. I am advised that concept (b) is not susceptible of patenting. I warn against hijacking by digital-control fanatics.
Acknowledgements The prototype SWH was constructed with help from members of Solar Action. The electronic control and monitoring systems were designed and made by Clifford Wright, U. of Auckland Architecture dept.
Refs.
Guthrie K 1994 'A review of Australia's solar water heater standards' Solar Progress 15 (2) 12-13.
Hutton D R, Lecis I 1985 'A simple multichannel temperature recording system' J. Phys. E: Sci. Instrum.18 822-3.
Hutton D R, Francey J L A 1985 'How to Use Your Home Roof & Attic as a Sun Space ...' Solar Progress 6 (2) 8-9
Lovins A et al. (ed. H Nash) 1979 'The Energy Controversy' San Francisco: Friends of the Earth.
06/25/05
.. and you thought those emails were scams? THE MONEY WAS THERE ALL THE TIME! [Catch-all] -
GEA - gormfach@gmail.com @ 07:47:58 PM
- may not be news to your sometime colleague ...
£220bn stolen by Nigeria's corrupt rulers
By David Blair in Abuja
25/06/2005
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/06/25/wnig25.xml
The scale of the task facing Tony Blair in his drive to help Africa was
laid bare yesterday when it emerged that Nigeria's past rulers stole or
misused £220 billion.
That is as much as all the western aid given to Africa in almost four
decades. The looting of Africa's most populous country amounted to a sum
equivalent to 300 years of British aid for the continent.
Former leader Gen Sani Abacha stole between £1bn and £3bn
The figures, compiled by Nigeria's anti-corruption commission, provide
dramatic evidence of the problems facing next month's summit in Gleneagles
of the G8 group of wealthy countries which are under pressure to approve a
programme of debt relief for Africa.
Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, has spoken of a new Marshall Plan for
Africa. But Nigeria's rulers have already pocketed the equivalent of six
Marshall Plans. After that mass theft, two thirds of the country's 130
million people - one in seven of the total African population - live in
abject poverty, a third is illiterate and 40 per cent have no safe water
supply.
With more people and more natural resources than any other African
country, Nigeria is the key to the continent's success.
Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, the chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission, set up three years ago, said that £220 billion was
"squandered" between independence from Britain in 1960 and the return of
civilian rule in 1999.
"We cannot be accurate down to the last figure but that is our
projection," Osita Nwajah, a commission spokesman, said in the capital,
Abuja.
The stolen fortune tallies almost exactly with the £220 billion of western
aid given to Africa between 1960 and 1997. That amounted to six times the
American help given to post-war Europe under the Marshall Plan.
British aid for Africa totalled £720 million last year. If that sum was
spent annually for the next three centuries, it would cover the cost of
Nigeria's looting.
Corruption on such a scale was made possible by the country's possession
of 35 billion barrels of proven oil reserves. That allowed a succession of
military rulers to line their pockets and deposit their gains mainly in
western banks.
Gen Sani Abacha, the late military dictator, stole between £1 billion and
£3 billion during his five-year rule.
"We are only now beginning to come to grips with some of what he did," Mr
Nwajah said.
Nigeria has scoured the world for Abacha's assets but has recovered only
about £500 million.
Olusegun Obasanjo, the current president, founded the commission and
launched a crackdown on corruption to try to end the country's reputation
as Africa's most venal. The figures all apply to the period before he came
to power.
The amount of money involved has prompted the Government to seek ways to
enhance Britain's ability to help developing countries recover stolen
funds. In the autumn the Government will introduce legislation to pave the
way for British ratification of the United Nations convention against
corruption.
A money laundering directive agreed by EU finance ministers this month
will impose new responsibilities on banks, casinos and other
establishments to be more alert to signs of corruption. They will be
expected to help stamp out financial abuse by high-risk customers in a
position to abuse public office for private gain.
Mr Obasanjo will travel to the G8 summit to press the case for debt
relief. Nigeria is Africa's biggest debtor, with loans of almost £20
billion, because previous rulers not only looted the country but also
borrowed heavily against future oil revenues.
The G8 has refused to cancel Nigeria's loans, despite writing off the
debts of 14 other African countries this month.
Prof Pat Utomi, of Lagos Business School, said that was the right
decision. "Who is to say you won't see the same behaviour again if it is
all written off?" he said.
david.blair@telegraph.co.uk
£220bn stolen by Nigeria's corrupt rulers
By David Blair in Abuja
25/06/2005
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/06/25/wnig25.xml
The scale of the task facing Tony Blair in his drive to help Africa was
laid bare yesterday when it emerged that Nigeria's past rulers stole or
misused £220 billion.
That is as much as all the western aid given to Africa in almost four
decades. The looting of Africa's most populous country amounted to a sum
equivalent to 300 years of British aid for the continent.
Former leader Gen Sani Abacha stole between £1bn and £3bn
The figures, compiled by Nigeria's anti-corruption commission, provide
dramatic evidence of the problems facing next month's summit in Gleneagles
of the G8 group of wealthy countries which are under pressure to approve a
programme of debt relief for Africa.
Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, has spoken of a new Marshall Plan for
Africa. But Nigeria's rulers have already pocketed the equivalent of six
Marshall Plans. After that mass theft, two thirds of the country's 130
million people - one in seven of the total African population - live in
abject poverty, a third is illiterate and 40 per cent have no safe water
supply.
With more people and more natural resources than any other African
country, Nigeria is the key to the continent's success.
Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, the chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission, set up three years ago, said that £220 billion was
"squandered" between independence from Britain in 1960 and the return of
civilian rule in 1999.
"We cannot be accurate down to the last figure but that is our
projection," Osita Nwajah, a commission spokesman, said in the capital,
Abuja.
The stolen fortune tallies almost exactly with the £220 billion of western
aid given to Africa between 1960 and 1997. That amounted to six times the
American help given to post-war Europe under the Marshall Plan.
British aid for Africa totalled £720 million last year. If that sum was
spent annually for the next three centuries, it would cover the cost of
Nigeria's looting.
Corruption on such a scale was made possible by the country's possession
of 35 billion barrels of proven oil reserves. That allowed a succession of
military rulers to line their pockets and deposit their gains mainly in
western banks.
Gen Sani Abacha, the late military dictator, stole between £1 billion and
£3 billion during his five-year rule.
"We are only now beginning to come to grips with some of what he did," Mr
Nwajah said.
Nigeria has scoured the world for Abacha's assets but has recovered only
about £500 million.
Olusegun Obasanjo, the current president, founded the commission and
launched a crackdown on corruption to try to end the country's reputation
as Africa's most venal. The figures all apply to the period before he came
to power.
The amount of money involved has prompted the Government to seek ways to
enhance Britain's ability to help developing countries recover stolen
funds. In the autumn the Government will introduce legislation to pave the
way for British ratification of the United Nations convention against
corruption.
A money laundering directive agreed by EU finance ministers this month
will impose new responsibilities on banks, casinos and other
establishments to be more alert to signs of corruption. They will be
expected to help stamp out financial abuse by high-risk customers in a
position to abuse public office for private gain.
Mr Obasanjo will travel to the G8 summit to press the case for debt
relief. Nigeria is Africa's biggest debtor, with loans of almost £20
billion, because previous rulers not only looted the country but also
borrowed heavily against future oil revenues.
The G8 has refused to cancel Nigeria's loans, despite writing off the
debts of 14 other African countries this month.
Prof Pat Utomi, of Lagos Business School, said that was the right
decision. "Who is to say you won't see the same behaviour again if it is
all written off?" he said.
david.blair@telegraph.co.uk
Fw from a buddy - sorry I don't know original URL ...
R
Monday, June 20, 2005
And now, The Economist wonders what happens "after the fall."
"A day of reckoning is close at hand ... Two-fifths of all American jobs
created since 2001 have been in housing-related sectors such as
construction, real estate lending and broking. If house prices
actually fall, this boost will turn into a substantial drag."
The Economist goes on to say the house party was fun while it lasted,
"the whole world economy is at risk ... the biggest increase in wealth
in history was largely an illusion."
In a recent interview on CNBC, on of the greatest "old-timer" funds
manager, Julian Robertson, said he was extremely worried about the
speculative bubble in real estate.
Robertson, or "Never Been Wrong Robertson," as he is often called, has
predicted "every economic cycle, every debacle, every bull market and
every bear market," and is so well respected that the Dow went down 50
points after his segment aired on CNBC.
His prediction for the ultimate burst in the speculative real estate
bubble? "Utter global collapse."......... wonder if we'll ever see him
on CNBC again...
"This is so frightening, and it's not just here...
"The real Estate bubble is a world-wide phenomenon. This is the
tech-bubble of the late 1990s, transferred to real estate. Post
tech-crash, the folks who run the world did not want to take the
well-deserved recession, rebalance the financial books & portfolios,
and get the macro-financial house in order. Bad for politics. Couple
that with the post-9/11 goosing of the money supply to keep people
going to Disneyland and buying big SUVs, and this is the Titanic
hitting the iceberg and backing up and moving forward again a couple
of times, just for good measure. ("Where the hell is all this salt
water coming from?" says the man....)
"From a macroeconomic perspective, it's a worldwide form of real
estate arbitrage, if not just plain old fashioned "kiting" except with
real estate instead of bouncing checks between banks. Buy a house you
cannot pay for, and sell it to someone else who cannot pay for it, but
do it before the mass of people catch on to the con and prices stop
rising. The cover of this week's Economist is picture of a brick
falling from the sky, representing the impending real estate bust,
with extensive editorial and news writing about the falling and/or
coming fall in real estate markets.
"This will, no doubt, be a major topic for discussion at the Agora
Wealth Symposium - and if anyone needs a reason to go the conference,
think of that great scene in the Broadway show 'The Sound of Music.'
Max Dettweiler, the slick promoter, is talking with Captain von Trapp
about the impending Anschluss of Germany towards Austria. Captain von
Trapp says something about how concerned he is about what is about to
happen to his edelweiss-like happy homeland. Max says, 'Georgi,
whatever is going to happen is going to happen. Just make sure it does
not happen to you.'
"Yea, Max is kind of cynical, but he is also a realist. He knows that
he cannot change the trends of history, and whatever is going to
happen is going to happen.
The fight is over money ... and different notions about how Europe
should be put together.
We've heard many opinions on the subject. But we've never actually
heard one worth listening to for anything other than entertainment.
Some people want a "strong, forward-moving" Europe because they think
it is the way to "progress." They are dismayed to see the thing
falling apart. Others want no part of further political integration.
They are afraid the Poles might get a shot at French plumbing ... or
Turks might start driving Paris taxicabs.
Only French farmers seem to know which side of their bread has the
jelly; they support the constitution because they want to continue
receiving generous subsidies.
"They should never put things like this to a popular vote," said a
French woman at this weekend's wedding. "Look at that man standing in
the doorway there [she pointed to a modest dwelling with a pensioner
looking out]. You can't let people like that decide the fate of
Europe. He only cares about protecting his retirement benefits. Louis
14th didn't put it to a vote before he built Versailles. Napoleon
didn't ask for referendum before attacking Russia."
"Maybe he should have
GREENSPAN IN THE HOT SEAT
I tried listening to Alan Greenspan flap his lips in front of the
Joint Economic Committee, but it was just more of the same. I was
actually handling it pretty well. There was some straining against my
restraints a few times, and making some pithy remarks, mostly about
how they are all liars and idiots and I hate all of them. And some
spitting.
"Do you think, in retrospect, that it was a good idea to slash
interest rates after the dotcom bust in 2000?"
The question should be, and if I was on the panel this is what I would
have asked, instead of his idiotic waste of time, "Do you think, in
retrospect, that is was a good idea to produce all that money and
credit, especially since 1997, in a stupefying deluge of egregious
monetary irresponsibility, which produced the stock market bubble,
which then busted in 2000, and caused a lot of misery? Huh? Is that
what you think? A lot of people's lives were destroyed, and then the
economy was on the verge of being destroyed, and then you had to
mercilessly slash interest rates - and the incomes of savers! - ever
since to save our stupid butts from destruction! Do you really,
really, really think we should thank you for impoverishing tens of
millions of small-saver Americans, who save their pitiful little bit
of money in Certificates of Deposit and their little savings accounts,
by slashing their incomes to almost zero? And your ridiculous economic
theories and your preposterous economic models so ruined everything
that you had to do it, month after month, and year after year, for
five long stinking years!
The only good part was when Greenspan allowed that the whole filthy
Federal Reserve exists only at the whim of Congress, and that it can
be eliminated at any time, which is an idea that I heartily endorse. I
further say, since you were so kind to ask, that the gold that we are
supposed to have stored be immediately used to turn the dollar back
into gold, as required by the Constitution. Theoretically, gold will
have to go to $5,000 an ounce, and so we let the gold bugs be the new
millionaires, who will (and I think I speak for all of us) serve as a
ready reference to anybody who thinks that real money CAN be anything
but silver and/or gold.
"Mr. Greenspan, when you came to power in 1987 and took control of
the Federal Reserve, the national debt was at $2.3 trillion, which is
a big, honking, pot load of money. But the interesting thing is that
now, only 18 years later, the national debt is $7.8 trillion. You have
allowed an almost tripling of the national debt! In 18 years! All by
yourself!"
"Now, it is commonplace for all governments to want to spend money,
lots of money. In the old days, when the Congress tried this silly
crap, the amount of money left for everyone else to borrow to conduct
ordinary business would have dried up. So the demand for money would
increase, while the supply of money was decreasing.
Leaning forward so that I can stare into his vacant eyes, I continue,
"But now, you, Alan Greenspan, think that you have found a way around
that, don't you? You think that now that our money is just paper and
electronic digits that you have found a marvelous, magical way to let
the damn government spend and spend and spend! My question to you, Mr.
Alan Greenspan, is the famous Big Freaking Question, which is: if
this is such a hot idea, how come no other country ever thought of it
before?"
Now, if I know Alan Greenspan, he will then turn and fly away, so you
are not going to get an answer from him. So I will tell you the
answer,..... The answer is that they all DID try that , and it ruined
every last one of them! Hahahaha! All governments always resort to
this money-creation thing at the end, after their previous
credit-fueled booms started petering out, and all the friends of the
government starting calling up and wanting the government to "do
something" to keep the stupid, bloated, misshapen, mal-invested and
preposterous economy from collapsing and dying from the cancer that
was eating it alive. And what they did was to create MORE money and
credit!
And since nobody else in history has ever pulled off this trick, and
in fact it destroyed their economies, I must assume that we
half-witted American boobs won't prove any more successful at it than
any of them.
"Faced with an asset bubble," writes Mr. Ip, "a central bank has two
choices: Prick it early or wait for it to burst and try to contain the
damage. The Fed in 1929 and the Bank of Japan in 1989 tried...raising
interest rates in response to rapidly rising asset prices. The result
in the U.S. in the 1930s was depression and deflation. In Japan it was
stagnation and deflation that continues today."
So this time, it is explained to us, they decided NOT to try and stop
the bubble and speculative excesses, but to let it expand until it
burst, and then lower interest rates to try and clean up the big
stinking mess!
"The article and the Fed argued from a false premise to a false
conclusion," states Mr. Fleckenstein, "by blaming the American bust of
the 1930s and the one in Tokyo in the 1990s on monetary tightening.
That is completely untrue. The aftermaths of both were caused by the
preceding asset bubbles, precipitated by reckless monetary policies.
It is asset bubbles that create the damage, not the small amount of
tightening that comes at the end. In fact, I would argue that the
tightening didn't end those bubbles.
R
Monday, June 20, 2005
And now, The Economist wonders what happens "after the fall."
"A day of reckoning is close at hand ... Two-fifths of all American jobs
created since 2001 have been in housing-related sectors such as
construction, real estate lending and broking. If house prices
actually fall, this boost will turn into a substantial drag."
The Economist goes on to say the house party was fun while it lasted,
"the whole world economy is at risk ... the biggest increase in wealth
in history was largely an illusion."
In a recent interview on CNBC, on of the greatest "old-timer" funds
manager, Julian Robertson, said he was extremely worried about the
speculative bubble in real estate.
Robertson, or "Never Been Wrong Robertson," as he is often called, has
predicted "every economic cycle, every debacle, every bull market and
every bear market," and is so well respected that the Dow went down 50
points after his segment aired on CNBC.
His prediction for the ultimate burst in the speculative real estate
bubble? "Utter global collapse."......... wonder if we'll ever see him
on CNBC again...
"This is so frightening, and it's not just here...
"The real Estate bubble is a world-wide phenomenon. This is the
tech-bubble of the late 1990s, transferred to real estate. Post
tech-crash, the folks who run the world did not want to take the
well-deserved recession, rebalance the financial books & portfolios,
and get the macro-financial house in order. Bad for politics. Couple
that with the post-9/11 goosing of the money supply to keep people
going to Disneyland and buying big SUVs, and this is the Titanic
hitting the iceberg and backing up and moving forward again a couple
of times, just for good measure. ("Where the hell is all this salt
water coming from?" says the man....)
"From a macroeconomic perspective, it's a worldwide form of real
estate arbitrage, if not just plain old fashioned "kiting" except with
real estate instead of bouncing checks between banks. Buy a house you
cannot pay for, and sell it to someone else who cannot pay for it, but
do it before the mass of people catch on to the con and prices stop
rising. The cover of this week's Economist is picture of a brick
falling from the sky, representing the impending real estate bust,
with extensive editorial and news writing about the falling and/or
coming fall in real estate markets.
"This will, no doubt, be a major topic for discussion at the Agora
Wealth Symposium - and if anyone needs a reason to go the conference,
think of that great scene in the Broadway show 'The Sound of Music.'
Max Dettweiler, the slick promoter, is talking with Captain von Trapp
about the impending Anschluss of Germany towards Austria. Captain von
Trapp says something about how concerned he is about what is about to
happen to his edelweiss-like happy homeland. Max says, 'Georgi,
whatever is going to happen is going to happen. Just make sure it does
not happen to you.'
"Yea, Max is kind of cynical, but he is also a realist. He knows that
he cannot change the trends of history, and whatever is going to
happen is going to happen.
The fight is over money ... and different notions about how Europe
should be put together.
We've heard many opinions on the subject. But we've never actually
heard one worth listening to for anything other than entertainment.
Some people want a "strong, forward-moving" Europe because they think
it is the way to "progress." They are dismayed to see the thing
falling apart. Others want no part of further political integration.
They are afraid the Poles might get a shot at French plumbing ... or
Turks might start driving Paris taxicabs.
Only French farmers seem to know which side of their bread has the
jelly; they support the constitution because they want to continue
receiving generous subsidies.
"They should never put things like this to a popular vote," said a
French woman at this weekend's wedding. "Look at that man standing in
the doorway there [she pointed to a modest dwelling with a pensioner
looking out]. You can't let people like that decide the fate of
Europe. He only cares about protecting his retirement benefits. Louis
14th didn't put it to a vote before he built Versailles. Napoleon
didn't ask for referendum before attacking Russia."
"Maybe he should have
GREENSPAN IN THE HOT SEAT
I tried listening to Alan Greenspan flap his lips in front of the
Joint Economic Committee, but it was just more of the same. I was
actually handling it pretty well. There was some straining against my
restraints a few times, and making some pithy remarks, mostly about
how they are all liars and idiots and I hate all of them. And some
spitting.
"Do you think, in retrospect, that it was a good idea to slash
interest rates after the dotcom bust in 2000?"
The question should be, and if I was on the panel this is what I would
have asked, instead of his idiotic waste of time, "Do you think, in
retrospect, that is was a good idea to produce all that money and
credit, especially since 1997, in a stupefying deluge of egregious
monetary irresponsibility, which produced the stock market bubble,
which then busted in 2000, and caused a lot of misery? Huh? Is that
what you think? A lot of people's lives were destroyed, and then the
economy was on the verge of being destroyed, and then you had to
mercilessly slash interest rates - and the incomes of savers! - ever
since to save our stupid butts from destruction! Do you really,
really, really think we should thank you for impoverishing tens of
millions of small-saver Americans, who save their pitiful little bit
of money in Certificates of Deposit and their little savings accounts,
by slashing their incomes to almost zero? And your ridiculous economic
theories and your preposterous economic models so ruined everything
that you had to do it, month after month, and year after year, for
five long stinking years!
The only good part was when Greenspan allowed that the whole filthy
Federal Reserve exists only at the whim of Congress, and that it can
be eliminated at any time, which is an idea that I heartily endorse. I
further say, since you were so kind to ask, that the gold that we are
supposed to have stored be immediately used to turn the dollar back
into gold, as required by the Constitution. Theoretically, gold will
have to go to $5,000 an ounce, and so we let the gold bugs be the new
millionaires, who will (and I think I speak for all of us) serve as a
ready reference to anybody who thinks that real money CAN be anything
but silver and/or gold.
"Mr. Greenspan, when you came to power in 1987 and took control of
the Federal Reserve, the national debt was at $2.3 trillion, which is
a big, honking, pot load of money. But the interesting thing is that
now, only 18 years later, the national debt is $7.8 trillion. You have
allowed an almost tripling of the national debt! In 18 years! All by
yourself!"
"Now, it is commonplace for all governments to want to spend money,
lots of money. In the old days, when the Congress tried this silly
crap, the amount of money left for everyone else to borrow to conduct
ordinary business would have dried up. So the demand for money would
increase, while the supply of money was decreasing.
Leaning forward so that I can stare into his vacant eyes, I continue,
"But now, you, Alan Greenspan, think that you have found a way around
that, don't you? You think that now that our money is just paper and
electronic digits that you have found a marvelous, magical way to let
the damn government spend and spend and spend! My question to you, Mr.
Alan Greenspan, is the famous Big Freaking Question, which is: if
this is such a hot idea, how come no other country ever thought of it
before?"
Now, if I know Alan Greenspan, he will then turn and fly away, so you
are not going to get an answer from him. So I will tell you the
answer,..... The answer is that they all DID try that , and it ruined
every last one of them! Hahahaha! All governments always resort to
this money-creation thing at the end, after their previous
credit-fueled booms started petering out, and all the friends of the
government starting calling up and wanting the government to "do
something" to keep the stupid, bloated, misshapen, mal-invested and
preposterous economy from collapsing and dying from the cancer that
was eating it alive. And what they did was to create MORE money and
credit!
And since nobody else in history has ever pulled off this trick, and
in fact it destroyed their economies, I must assume that we
half-witted American boobs won't prove any more successful at it than
any of them.
"Faced with an asset bubble," writes Mr. Ip, "a central bank has two
choices: Prick it early or wait for it to burst and try to contain the
damage. The Fed in 1929 and the Bank of Japan in 1989 tried...raising
interest rates in response to rapidly rising asset prices. The result
in the U.S. in the 1930s was depression and deflation. In Japan it was
stagnation and deflation that continues today."
So this time, it is explained to us, they decided NOT to try and stop
the bubble and speculative excesses, but to let it expand until it
burst, and then lower interest rates to try and clean up the big
stinking mess!
"The article and the Fed argued from a false premise to a false
conclusion," states Mr. Fleckenstein, "by blaming the American bust of
the 1930s and the one in Tokyo in the 1990s on monetary tightening.
That is completely untrue. The aftermaths of both were caused by the
preceding asset bubbles, precipitated by reckless monetary policies.
It is asset bubbles that create the damage, not the small amount of
tightening that comes at the end. In fact, I would argue that the
tightening didn't end those bubbles.
06/19/05
Smacking Ban Doesn't Work: Swede
14/06/2005 11:40 AM
NewstalkZB
A Swedish lobby group says a total ban on smacking does not work.
Sweden has already enacted legislation similar to that planned for New
Zealand, which would prevent parents using physical force to discipline their
children.
Lawyer Ruby Harrold-Claesson, from Sweden's Nordic Community for Human
Rights says as a result, parents live in fear and families are broken up on a
regular basis by the authorities.
She claims parents have been terrorised by officials, and children confiscated
and destroyed by the system.
She says 18,000 children are in care, and the foster home industry has become
a cash cow.
Ruby Harrold-Claesson says she is distressed another country wants to follow
Sweden's example where she claims social workers and the Administrative
courts have total control over parents.
Find this item at:
©2005 Xtra Limited
14/06/2005 11:40 AM
NewstalkZB
A Swedish lobby group says a total ban on smacking does not work.
Sweden has already enacted legislation similar to that planned for New
Zealand, which would prevent parents using physical force to discipline their
children.
Lawyer Ruby Harrold-Claesson, from Sweden's Nordic Community for Human
Rights says as a result, parents live in fear and families are broken up on a
regular basis by the authorities.
She claims parents have been terrorised by officials, and children confiscated
and destroyed by the system.
She says 18,000 children are in care, and the foster home industry has become
a cash cow.
Ruby Harrold-Claesson says she is distressed another country wants to follow
Sweden's example where she claims social workers and the Administrative
courts have total control over parents.
Find this item at:
©2005 Xtra Limited
06/17/05
(Ed. Note - The Old York Times just can't leave it alone.)
RICHEST ARE LEAVING EVEN THE RICH FAR BEHIND
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON
New York Times
June 5, 2005
When F. Scott Fitzgerald pronounced that the very rich "are different from
you and me," Ernest Hemingway's famously dismissive response was: "Yes,
they have more money." Today he might well add: much, much, much more
money.
The people at the top of America's money pyramid have so prospered in
recent years that they have pulled far ahead of the rest of the population,
an analysis of tax records and other government data by The New York Times
shows. They have even left behind people making hundreds of thousands of
dollars a year.
Call them the hyper-rich.
They are not just a few Croesus-like rarities. Draw a line under the top
0.1 percent of income earners --- the top one-thousandth. Above that line
are about 145,000 taxpayers, each with at least $1.6 million in income and
often much more.
The average income for the top 0.1 percent was $3 million in 2002, the
latest year for which averages are available. That number is two and a
half times the $1.2 million, adjusted for inflation, that group reported in
1980. No other income group rose nearly as fast.
The share of the nation's income earned by those in this uppermost category
has more than doubled since 1980, to 7.4 percent in 2002. The share of
income earned by the rest of the top 10 percent rose far less, and the
share earned by the bottom 90% fell.
Next, examine the net worth of American households. The group with homes,
investments and other assets worth more than $10 million comprised 338,400
households in 2001, the last year for which data are available. The number
has grown more than 400% since 1980, after adjusting for inflation, while
the total number of households has grown only 27%.
The Bush administration tax cuts stand to widen the gap between the
hyper-rich and the rest of America. The merely rich, making hundreds of
thousands of dollars a year, will shoulder a disproportionate share of the
tax burden.
President Bush said during the third election debate last October that most
of the tax cuts went to low and middle-income Americans. In fact, most ---
53% --- will go to people with incomes in the top ten percent over the
first 15 years of the cuts, which began in 2001 and would have to be
reauthorized in 2010. And more than 15% will go just to the top 0.1
percent, those 145,000 taxpayers.
The Times set out to create a financial portrait of the very richest
Americans, how their incomes have changed over the decades and how the tax
cuts will affect them. It is no secret that the gap between the rich and
the poor has grown, but the extent to which the richest are leaving
everyone else behind is not widely known.
The Treasury Department uses a computer model to examine the effects of tax
cuts on various income groups but does not look in detail fine enough to
differentiate among those within the top one percent. To determine those
differences, The Times relied on a computer model based on the Treasury's.
Experts at organizations representing a range of views, including the
Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and Citizens for Tax Justice,
reviewed the projections and said they were reasonable, and the Treasury
Department said through a spokesman that the model was reliable.
The analysis also found the following:
* Under the Bush tax cuts, the 400 taxpayers with the highest incomes --- a
minimum of $87 million in 2000, the last year for which the government will
release such data --- now pay income, Medicare and Social Security taxes
amounting to virtually the same percentage of their incomes as people
making $50,000 to $75,000.
* Those earning more than $10 million a year now pay a lesser share of
their income in these taxes than those making $100,000 to $200,000.
* The alternative minimum tax, created 36 years ago to make sure the very
richest paid taxes, takes back a growing share of the tax cuts over time
from the majority of families earning $75,000 to $1 million --- thousands
and even tens of thousands of dollars annually. Far fewer of the very
wealthiest will be affected by this tax.
The analysis examined only income reported on tax returns. The Treasury
Department says that the very wealthiest find ways, legal and illegal, to
shelter a lot of income from taxes. So the gap between the very richest
and everyone else is almost certainly much larger.
The hyper-rich have emerged in the last three decades as the biggest
winners in a remarkable transformation of the American economy
characterized by, among other things, the creation of a more global
marketplace, new technology and investment spurred partly by tax cuts. The
stock market soared; so did pay in the highest ranks of business.
One way to understand the growing gap is to compare earnings increases over
time by the vast majority of taxpayers - say, everyone in the lower 90% ---
with those at the top, say, in the uppermost 0.01 percent (now about 14,000
households, each with $5.5 million or more in income last year).
From 1950 to 1970, for example, for every additional dollar earned by the
bottom 90% those in the top 0.01 percent earned an additional $162,
according to the Times analysis. From 1990 to 2002, for every extra dollar
earned by those in the bottom 90%, each taxpayer at the top brought in an
extra $18,000.
President Ronald Reagan signed tax bills that benefited the wealthiest
Americans and also gave tax breaks to the working poor. President Bill
Clinton raised income taxes for the wealthiest, cut taxes on investment
gains, and expanded breaks for the working poor. Mr. Bush eliminated
income taxes for families making under $40,000, but his tax cuts have also
benefited the wealthiest Americans far more than his predecessors' did.
The Bush administration says that the tax cuts have actually made the
income tax system more progressive, shifting the burden slightly more to
those with higher incomes. Still, an Internal Revenue Service study found
that the only taxpayers whose share of taxes declined in 2001 and 2002 were
those in the top 0.1 percent.
But a Treasury spokesman, Taylor Griffin, said the income tax system is
more progressive if the measurement is the share borne by the top 40% of
Americans rather than the top 0.1 percent.
The Times analysis also shows that over the next decade, the tax cuts Mr.
Bush wants to extend indefinitely would shift the burden further from the
richest Americans. With incomes of more than $1 million or so, they would
get the biggest share of the breaks, in total amounts and in the drop in
their share of federal taxes paid.
One reason the merely rich will fare much less well than the very richest
is the alternative minimum tax. This tax, the successor to one enacted in
1969 to make sure the wealthiest Americans could not use legal loopholes to
live tax-free, has never been adjusted for inflation. As a result, it
stings Americans whose incomes have crept above $75,000.
The Times analysis shows that by 2010 the tax will affect more than
four-fifths of the people making $100,000 to $500,000 and will take away
from them nearly one-half to more than two-thirds of the recent tax cuts.
For example, the group making $200,000 to $500,000 a year will lose 70% of
their tax cut to the alternative minimum tax in 2010, an average of $9,177
for those affected.
But because of the way it is devised, the tax affects far fewer of the very
richest: about a third of the taxpayers reporting more than $1 million in
income. One big reason is that dividends and investment gains, which go
mostly to the richest, are not subject to the tax.
Another reason that the wealthiest will fare much better is that the tax
cuts over the past decade have sharply lowered rates on income from
investments.
While most economists recognize that the richest are pulling away, they
disagree on what this means. Those who contend that the extraordinary
accumulation of wealth is a good thing say that while the rich are indeed
getting richer, so are most people who work hard and save. They say that
the tax cuts encourage the investment and the innovation that will make
everyone better off.
"In this income data I see a snapshot of a very innovative society," said
Tim Kane, an economist at the Heritage Foundation. "Lower taxes and lower
marginal tax rates are leading to more growth. There's an explosion of
wealth. We are so wealthy in a world that is profoundly poor."
But some of the wealthiest Americans, including Warren E. Buffett, George
Soros and Ted Turner, have warned that such a concentration of wealth can
turn a meritocracy into an aristocracy and ultimately stifle economic
growth by putting too much of the nation's capital in the hands of
inheritors rather than strivers and innovators.
Speaking of the increasing concentration of incomes, Alan Greenspan, the
Federal Reserve chairman, warned in Congressional testimony a year ago:
"For the democratic society, that is not a very desirable thing to allow it
to happen."
Others say most Americans have no problem with this trend. The central
question is mobility, said Bruce R. Bartlett, an advocate of lower taxes
who served in the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations. "As long as
people think
they have a chance of getting to the top, they just don't care how rich the
rich are."
But in fact, economic mobility --- moving from one income group to another
over a lifetime --- has actually stopped rising in the United States,
researchers say. Some recent studies suggest it has even declined over the
last generation.
RICHEST ARE LEAVING EVEN THE RICH FAR BEHIND
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON
New York Times
June 5, 2005
When F. Scott Fitzgerald pronounced that the very rich "are different from
you and me," Ernest Hemingway's famously dismissive response was: "Yes,
they have more money." Today he might well add: much, much, much more
money.
The people at the top of America's money pyramid have so prospered in
recent years that they have pulled far ahead of the rest of the population,
an analysis of tax records and other government data by The New York Times
shows. They have even left behind people making hundreds of thousands of
dollars a year.
Call them the hyper-rich.
They are not just a few Croesus-like rarities. Draw a line under the top
0.1 percent of income earners --- the top one-thousandth. Above that line
are about 145,000 taxpayers, each with at least $1.6 million in income and
often much more.
The average income for the top 0.1 percent was $3 million in 2002, the
latest year for which averages are available. That number is two and a
half times the $1.2 million, adjusted for inflation, that group reported in
1980. No other income group rose nearly as fast.
The share of the nation's income earned by those in this uppermost category
has more than doubled since 1980, to 7.4 percent in 2002. The share of
income earned by the rest of the top 10 percent rose far less, and the
share earned by the bottom 90% fell.
Next, examine the net worth of American households. The group with homes,
investments and other assets worth more than $10 million comprised 338,400
households in 2001, the last year for which data are available. The number
has grown more than 400% since 1980, after adjusting for inflation, while
the total number of households has grown only 27%.
The Bush administration tax cuts stand to widen the gap between the
hyper-rich and the rest of America. The merely rich, making hundreds of
thousands of dollars a year, will shoulder a disproportionate share of the
tax burden.
President Bush said during the third election debate last October that most
of the tax cuts went to low and middle-income Americans. In fact, most ---
53% --- will go to people with incomes in the top ten percent over the
first 15 years of the cuts, which began in 2001 and would have to be
reauthorized in 2010. And more than 15% will go just to the top 0.1
percent, those 145,000 taxpayers.
The Times set out to create a financial portrait of the very richest
Americans, how their incomes have changed over the decades and how the tax
cuts will affect them. It is no secret that the gap between the rich and
the poor has grown, but the extent to which the richest are leaving
everyone else behind is not widely known.
The Treasury Department uses a computer model to examine the effects of tax
cuts on various income groups but does not look in detail fine enough to
differentiate among those within the top one percent. To determine those
differences, The Times relied on a computer model based on the Treasury's.
Experts at organizations representing a range of views, including the
Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and Citizens for Tax Justice,
reviewed the projections and said they were reasonable, and the Treasury
Department said through a spokesman that the model was reliable.
The analysis also found the following:
* Under the Bush tax cuts, the 400 taxpayers with the highest incomes --- a
minimum of $87 million in 2000, the last year for which the government will
release such data --- now pay income, Medicare and Social Security taxes
amounting to virtually the same percentage of their incomes as people
making $50,000 to $75,000.
* Those earning more than $10 million a year now pay a lesser share of
their income in these taxes than those making $100,000 to $200,000.
* The alternative minimum tax, created 36 years ago to make sure the very
richest paid taxes, takes back a growing share of the tax cuts over time
from the majority of families earning $75,000 to $1 million --- thousands
and even tens of thousands of dollars annually. Far fewer of the very
wealthiest will be affected by this tax.
The analysis examined only income reported on tax returns. The Treasury
Department says that the very wealthiest find ways, legal and illegal, to
shelter a lot of income from taxes. So the gap between the very richest
and everyone else is almost certainly much larger.
The hyper-rich have emerged in the last three decades as the biggest
winners in a remarkable transformation of the American economy
characterized by, among other things, the creation of a more global
marketplace, new technology and investment spurred partly by tax cuts. The
stock market soared; so did pay in the highest ranks of business.
One way to understand the growing gap is to compare earnings increases over
time by the vast majority of taxpayers - say, everyone in the lower 90% ---
with those at the top, say, in the uppermost 0.01 percent (now about 14,000
households, each with $5.5 million or more in income last year).
From 1950 to 1970, for example, for every additional dollar earned by the
bottom 90% those in the top 0.01 percent earned an additional $162,
according to the Times analysis. From 1990 to 2002, for every extra dollar
earned by those in the bottom 90%, each taxpayer at the top brought in an
extra $18,000.
President Ronald Reagan signed tax bills that benefited the wealthiest
Americans and also gave tax breaks to the working poor. President Bill
Clinton raised income taxes for the wealthiest, cut taxes on investment
gains, and expanded breaks for the working poor. Mr. Bush eliminated
income taxes for families making under $40,000, but his tax cuts have also
benefited the wealthiest Americans far more than his predecessors' did.
The Bush administration says that the tax cuts have actually made the
income tax system more progressive, shifting the burden slightly more to
those with higher incomes. Still, an Internal Revenue Service study found
that the only taxpayers whose share of taxes declined in 2001 and 2002 were
those in the top 0.1 percent.
But a Treasury spokesman, Taylor Griffin, said the income tax system is
more progressive if the measurement is the share borne by the top 40% of
Americans rather than the top 0.1 percent.
The Times analysis also shows that over the next decade, the tax cuts Mr.
Bush wants to extend indefinitely would shift the burden further from the
richest Americans. With incomes of more than $1 million or so, they would
get the biggest share of the breaks, in total amounts and in the drop in
their share of federal taxes paid.
One reason the merely rich will fare much less well than the very richest
is the alternative minimum tax. This tax, the successor to one enacted in
1969 to make sure the wealthiest Americans could not use legal loopholes to
live tax-free, has never been adjusted for inflation. As a result, it
stings Americans whose incomes have crept above $75,000.
The Times analysis shows that by 2010 the tax will affect more than
four-fifths of the people making $100,000 to $500,000 and will take away
from them nearly one-half to more than two-thirds of the recent tax cuts.
For example, the group making $200,000 to $500,000 a year will lose 70% of
their tax cut to the alternative minimum tax in 2010, an average of $9,177
for those affected.
But because of the way it is devised, the tax affects far fewer of the very
richest: about a third of the taxpayers reporting more than $1 million in
income. One big reason is that dividends and investment gains, which go
mostly to the richest, are not subject to the tax.
Another reason that the wealthiest will fare much better is that the tax
cuts over the past decade have sharply lowered rates on income from
investments.
While most economists recognize that the richest are pulling away, they
disagree on what this means. Those who contend that the extraordinary
accumulation of wealth is a good thing say that while the rich are indeed
getting richer, so are most people who work hard and save. They say that
the tax cuts encourage the investment and the innovation that will make
everyone better off.
"In this income data I see a snapshot of a very innovative society," said
Tim Kane, an economist at the Heritage Foundation. "Lower taxes and lower
marginal tax rates are leading to more growth. There's an explosion of
wealth. We are so wealthy in a world that is profoundly poor."
But some of the wealthiest Americans, including Warren E. Buffett, George
Soros and Ted Turner, have warned that such a concentration of wealth can
turn a meritocracy into an aristocracy and ultimately stifle economic
growth by putting too much of the nation's capital in the hands of
inheritors rather than strivers and innovators.
Speaking of the increasing concentration of incomes, Alan Greenspan, the
Federal Reserve chairman, warned in Congressional testimony a year ago:
"For the democratic society, that is not a very desirable thing to allow it
to happen."
Others say most Americans have no problem with this trend. The central
question is mobility, said Bruce R. Bartlett, an advocate of lower taxes
who served in the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations. "As long as
people think
they have a chance of getting to the top, they just don't care how rich the
rich are."
But in fact, economic mobility --- moving from one income group to another
over a lifetime --- has actually stopped rising in the United States,
researchers say. Some recent studies suggest it has even declined over the
last generation.
05/05/05
[Observer]: It's official: Acupuncture really works [Catch-all] -
GEA - gormfach@gmail.com @ 10:11:24 PM
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1474216,00.html
It's official: acupuncture really works
Study reveals health benefits of ancient healing art
Jo Revill, health editor
Observer
Sunday May 1, 2005
Judith Ritchie slowly eases a fine steel needle into the back of her
patient at a point marked out in felt-tip ink. As the needle is gently
tapped, Judith explains: 'This point lies over the organ I want to
strengthen, her liver. I want to improve the quality of her blood and her
yin, which affects the energy balance.'
Acupuncture relies on a different language and different tools from
Western medicine, but however strange it seems at first, this patient,
Louise Shelver, is a convert. For years she has had debilitating migraines
and pre-menstrual tension.
'The doctor told me that I could go on the Pill or have anti-depressants,'
said Shelver, from Reading, Berkshire, who is treated fortnightly. 'I
didn't want that, so I came here and it has totally altered my life.
'The migraines come maybe every three months now, but they are not so bad
and I feel like a different person. My husband has noticed a huge change
because I don't get so low. Some days I feel on top of the world.'
Controversy has raged for years over whether acupuncture has only a
placebo effect that makes people feel psychologically and physically better
but changes nothing physiologically.
However, this weekend a new study reveals for the first time that it
provokes a specific response in the brain, shedding light on how it might
affect the body's pain pathways. This helps to explain why both patients
and health professionals trained in Western medicine are increasingly
turning to this ancient form of Chinese healing.
Ritchie is a qualified children's nurse who has spent the last nine months
learning this complementary therapy.
'I began to realise acupuncture's use goes far beyond pain relief. In the
West you treat a disease. With acupuncture you're treating the whole
person - the root of the problems, not just the symptoms.
'I can spend an hour or more with a patient. In the NHS you never get that
time. Acupuncture can benefit so many adults and children.'
More than two million treatments will be given this year. Most
practitioners work in private clinics, charging around £30 a time.
Increasingly, however, acupuncture is becoming mainstream, and it is being
offered in the NHS because of patient demand. The profession is heading
towards self-regulation on the recommendation of a House of Lords
committee. This will protect patients more by preventing just anyone
calling themselves acupuncturists.
The latest study is from researchers at Southampton University and
University College London, who devised a clever trial to determine whether
acupuncture worked by carrying out brain scans on patients receiving it.
The patients, all with painful osteoarthritis in their thumbs, were
divided into three groups. The first group were touched by blunt needles
which did not pierce the skin and had no therapeutic value.
The second had 'sham acupuncture' they believed was real. Their scans
showed that one area of the brain associated with the production of natural
opiates lit up.
In the third group, who received real acupuncture, the scans showed that,
as well as the opiate centre, another region of the brain, the ipsilateral
insular, was activated. This region appears to be involved in pain
modulation.
Dr George Lewith, a research team member from Southampton, said: 'This
shows us that real acupuncture produces a demonstrable physiological effect
over and above a simple skin prick.
'We still don't fully understand how pain works, but we do know that after
patients receive acupuncture there are changes in the way they manage their
problems that last for up to two years.'
Acupuncturists believe there are 12 energy pathways in the body, each
associated with a different organ, and the treatment re-establishes the
energy balance in organs when it goes awry.
To treat an illness, practitioners take a full view of the patient, asking
how their body functions, about their character and even their childhood.
Treatment is varied accordingly. Fine needles are inserted into different
points, either to stimulate or reduce the flow of energy along pathways.
It is said to work for an increasing number of conditions. Its worth for
depression, migraines, chronic pain, rheumatism, eczema, multiple sclerosis
and high blood pressure has been subjected to clinical studies. Yet a
growing number of patients have it simply because they say that acupuncture
makes them feel happier and more fulfilled.
The patients' profile is also changing. Gwyneth Paltrow and Cherie Blair
are at the celebrity end of the scale, but such patients as retired
firefighter John Thurston show how widespread acceptance of the therapy has
become.
Thurston, at 79, is one of the oldest patients at the College of
Integrated Chinese Medicine in Reading, Berkshire, where he has been
treated fortnightly for several months.
A stroke last year left him with difficulty in walking, numbness in one
hand and unable to lift one of his arms. 'It has made a remarkable
difference,' said a delighted Thurston. 'I can dress myself now, whereas
after the stroke I couldn't do a button up. I used to find it hard to lift
my left leg up and I'm now walking more or less straight. I have got a lot
more movement back.
'When the doctors signed me off at the hospital, they said cheerio and
that was it. I did have a a bit of physiotherapy, but it's coming here that
has really helped. I wish everyone could have it. It's done me a world of
good.'
Pinpoint prowess
Researchers in Sweden have found that acupuncture is effective at
relieving pelvic pain, a common complaint during pregnancy. Another
clinical trial at Stanford University in the US showed it could help
alleviate depression in pregnant women.
A study in the British Medical Journal showed that patients with
osteoarthritis in the knee who received acupuncture a well as an
anti-inflammatory painkiller suffered less pain and stiffness than those
who received the drug plus sham acupuncture, where the needle did not
penetrate the skin.
Children with hay fever and nasal allergies had fewer sneezing bouts and
congestion after acupuncture compared with a placebo group, in research
carried out in Hong Kong.
A study of rats showed that acupuncture lowered their blood pressure by
as much as 50 per cent. Researchers in California are trying to establish
if the technique will have the same effect on humans.
It's official: acupuncture really works
Study reveals health benefits of ancient healing art
Jo Revill, health editor
Observer
Sunday May 1, 2005
Judith Ritchie slowly eases a fine steel needle into the back of her
patient at a point marked out in felt-tip ink. As the needle is gently
tapped, Judith explains: 'This point lies over the organ I want to
strengthen, her liver. I want to improve the quality of her blood and her
yin, which affects the energy balance.'
Acupuncture relies on a different language and different tools from
Western medicine, but however strange it seems at first, this patient,
Louise Shelver, is a convert. For years she has had debilitating migraines
and pre-menstrual tension.
'The doctor told me that I could go on the Pill or have anti-depressants,'
said Shelver, from Reading, Berkshire, who is treated fortnightly. 'I
didn't want that, so I came here and it has totally altered my life.
'The migraines come maybe every three months now, but they are not so bad
and I feel like a different person. My husband has noticed a huge change
because I don't get so low. Some days I feel on top of the world.'
Controversy has raged for years over whether acupuncture has only a
placebo effect that makes people feel psychologically and physically better
but changes nothing physiologically.
However, this weekend a new study reveals for the first time that it
provokes a specific response in the brain, shedding light on how it might
affect the body's pain pathways. This helps to explain why both patients
and health professionals trained in Western medicine are increasingly
turning to this ancient form of Chinese healing.
Ritchie is a qualified children's nurse who has spent the last nine months
learning this complementary therapy.
'I began to realise acupuncture's use goes far beyond pain relief. In the
West you treat a disease. With acupuncture you're treating the whole
person - the root of the problems, not just the symptoms.
'I can spend an hour or more with a patient. In the NHS you never get that
time. Acupuncture can benefit so many adults and children.'
More than two million treatments will be given this year. Most
practitioners work in private clinics, charging around £30 a time.
Increasingly, however, acupuncture is becoming mainstream, and it is being
offered in the NHS because of patient demand. The profession is heading
towards self-regulation on the recommendation of a House of Lords
committee. This will protect patients more by preventing just anyone
calling themselves acupuncturists.
The latest study is from researchers at Southampton University and
University College London, who devised a clever trial to determine whether
acupuncture worked by carrying out brain scans on patients receiving it.
The patients, all with painful osteoarthritis in their thumbs, were
divided into three groups. The first group were touched by blunt needles
which did not pierce the skin and had no therapeutic value.
The second had 'sham acupuncture' they believed was real. Their scans
showed that one area of the brain associated with the production of natural
opiates lit up.
In the third group, who received real acupuncture, the scans showed that,
as well as the opiate centre, another region of the brain, the ipsilateral
insular, was activated. This region appears to be involved in pain
modulation.
Dr George Lewith, a research team member from Southampton, said: 'This
shows us that real acupuncture produces a demonstrable physiological effect
over and above a simple skin prick.
'We still don't fully understand how pain works, but we do know that after
patients receive acupuncture there are changes in the way they manage their
problems that last for up to two years.'
Acupuncturists believe there are 12 energy pathways in the body, each
associated with a different organ, and the treatment re-establishes the
energy balance in organs when it goes awry.
To treat an illness, practitioners take a full view of the patient, asking
how their body functions, about their character and even their childhood.
Treatment is varied accordingly. Fine needles are inserted into different
points, either to stimulate or reduce the flow of energy along pathways.
It is said to work for an increasing number of conditions. Its worth for
depression, migraines, chronic pain, rheumatism, eczema, multiple sclerosis
and high blood pressure has been subjected to clinical studies. Yet a
growing number of patients have it simply because they say that acupuncture
makes them feel happier and more fulfilled.
The patients' profile is also changing. Gwyneth Paltrow and Cherie Blair
are at the celebrity end of the scale, but such patients as retired
firefighter John Thurston show how widespread acceptance of the therapy has
become.
Thurston, at 79, is one of the oldest patients at the College of
Integrated Chinese Medicine in Reading, Berkshire, where he has been
treated fortnightly for several months.
A stroke last year left him with difficulty in walking, numbness in one
hand and unable to lift one of his arms. 'It has made a remarkable
difference,' said a delighted Thurston. 'I can dress myself now, whereas
after the stroke I couldn't do a button up. I used to find it hard to lift
my left leg up and I'm now walking more or less straight. I have got a lot
more movement back.
'When the doctors signed me off at the hospital, they said cheerio and
that was it. I did have a a bit of physiotherapy, but it's coming here that
has really helped. I wish everyone could have it. It's done me a world of
good.'
Pinpoint prowess
Researchers in Sweden have found that acupuncture is effective at
relieving pelvic pain, a common complaint during pregnancy. Another
clinical trial at Stanford University in the US showed it could help
alleviate depression in pregnant women.
A study in the British Medical Journal showed that patients with
osteoarthritis in the knee who received acupuncture a well as an
anti-inflammatory painkiller suffered less pain and stiffness than those
who received the drug plus sham acupuncture, where the needle did not
penetrate the skin.
Children with hay fever and nasal allergies had fewer sneezing bouts and
congestion after acupuncture compared with a placebo group, in research
carried out in Hong Kong.
A study of rats showed that acupuncture lowered their blood pressure by
as much as 50 per cent. Researchers in California are trying to establish
if the technique will have the same effect on humans.
WEEKLY WATCH number 121
NEW POPE CAUTIOUS ON BIOTECH
According to an article in The Times of Malta, the new Pope, Cardinal
Ratzinger, has spelt out what everybody should know: the development of
[bio]technology has far outstripped the development of the ethical
structure required to harness the new knowledge.
http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5146
GM LOBBY "UNBELIEVABLY STUPID OR DELIBERATELY LYING" - GENETICIST
"Anyone that says 'Oh, we know that this is perfectly safe,' I say is
either unbelievably stupid or deliberately lying. The reality is we don't
know. The experiments simply haven't been done and we now have become the
guinea pigs." - geneticist Dr David Suzuki
http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5163
NEW POPE CAUTIOUS ON BIOTECH
According to an article in The Times of Malta, the new Pope, Cardinal
Ratzinger, has spelt out what everybody should know: the development of
[bio]technology has far outstripped the development of the ethical
structure required to harness the new knowledge.
http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5146
GM LOBBY "UNBELIEVABLY STUPID OR DELIBERATELY LYING" - GENETICIST
"Anyone that says 'Oh, we know that this is perfectly safe,' I say is
either unbelievably stupid or deliberately lying. The reality is we don't
know. The experiments simply haven't been done and we now have become the
guinea pigs." - geneticist Dr David Suzuki
http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5163
My Berkeley student (tho' he was an undergrad) contemporary the Eton old
bwah Harry Frere recently rtd from a career with UPI.
He likes Dave Barry and particularly commends this:
>"If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an
>infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even
>considering if there are men on base."
bwah Harry Frere recently rtd from a career with UPI.
He likes Dave Barry and particularly commends this:
>"If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an
>infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even
>considering if there are men on base."
http ://www.washingtonpost.com/
Fla. Gun Law to Expand Leeway for Self-Defense
NRA to Promote Idea in Other States
By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 26, 2005; A01
MIAMI -- It is either a Wild West revival, a return to the days of "shoot
first and ask questions later," or a triumph for the "Castle Doctrine" --
the notion that enemies invade personal space at their peril.
Such dueling rhetoric marked the debate over a measure that Florida Gov.
Jeb Bush (R) could sign as early as Tuesday. The legislation passed so
emphatically that National Rifle Association backers plan to take it to
statehouses across the nation, including Virginia's, over the next year.
The law will let Floridians "meet force with force," erasing the "duty to
retreat" when they fear for their lives outside of their homes, in their
cars or businesses, or on the street.
NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said in an interview that the
Florida measure is the "first step of a multi-state strategy" that he hopes
can capitalize on a political climate dominated by conservative opponents
of gun control at the state and national levels.
"There's a big tailwind we have, moving from state legislature to state
legislature," LaPierre said. "The South, the Midwest, everything they call
'flyover land' -- if John Kerry held a shotgun in that state, we can pass
this law in that state."
The Florida measure says any person "has the right to stand his or her
ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she
reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great
bodily harm."
Florida law already lets residents defend themselves against attackers if
they can prove they could not have escaped. The new law would allow them
to use deadly force even if they could have fled and says that prosecutors
must automatically presume that would-be victims feared for their lives if
attacked.
The overwhelming vote margins and bipartisan support for the Florida gun
bill -- it passed unanimously in the state Senate and was approved 94 to 20
in the state House, with nearly a dozen Democratic co-sponsors -- have
alarmed some national gun-control advocates, who say a measure that made
headlines in Florida slipped beneath their radar.
"I am in absolute shock," Sarah Brady, chair of the Brady Center to Prevent
Gun Violence, said in an interview. "If I had known about it, I would have
been down there."
The lessons of history do not bode well for gun-control groups and their
leaders, such as Brady, who became a crusader after President Ronald Reagan
and her husband, then-White House press secretary James S. Brady, were
seriously wounded in a 1981 assassination attempt.
Florida has a track record as a gun-law trendsetter. In the mid-1980s, the
NRA chose Florida to launch a push for "conceal carry" or "right-to-carry"
laws, which allow states to issue permits for residents to carry firearms.
Democrat Bob Graham, who was then governor, vetoed the measure, but it was
resurrected after he left office and was signed in 1987 by Gov. Bob
Martinez, a Republican.
At the time, fewer than a dozen states had right-to-carry laws. Now there
are 38.
LaPierre thinks the new Florida measure -- nicknamed the "Castle Doctrine"
by its conceiver, Florida lobbyist Marion P. Hammer, a former NRA president
-- can create the same momentum.
Critics argue that the measure is so broad it will encourage fights between
neighbors, parents at soccer games or drinking buddies to escalate into
gunfights.
"It's almost like a duel clause," said state Rep. Dan Gelber, a Miami Beach
Democrat and former federal prosecutor whose wife is a state prosecutor.
"People ought to have to walk away if they can."
Gelber believes that Florida's major prosecutor groups, populated by state
attorneys who must run for reelection, stayed out of the fight and many
lawmakers supported the bill because they fear the NRA.
Law enforcement did not try to block the measure, siding with the NRA
rather than opposing the group, as many sheriffs and police officials had
done during the debate two decades earlier over right-to-carry.
Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist, a leading candidate for the
Republican governor's nomination in 2006, was among those who wrote letters
of support. With that kind of high-level backing, Rep. Dennis Baxley, a
Republican from Ocala who sponsored the House measure, could ridicule
critics as "hysterical."
"Disorder and chaos are always held in check by the law-abiding citizen,"
Baxley said.
As in the mid-1980s fights over the right-to-carry law, the state's big
newspapers have almost unanimously lined up against Baxley's measure,
although their outrage did little to stop its easy glide. South Florida
Sun-Sentinel columnist Howard Goodman said the state was "getting in touch
with its inner Dirty Harry." Martin Dyckman of the St. Petersburg Times
told tourists, indisputably a bedrock of the state's economy, to stay away:
"Lebanon might be safer."
Hammer, a 4-foot-11 dynamo with a national reputation for her persuasive
powers, dismissed the papers as "liberal, anti-gunners" and "Chicken
Littles." The current law unfairly forces Floridians to make split-second
decisions about a criminal's intent, she said, and NRA lobbyists like to
note that was deemed impossible generations ago by legendary Supreme Court
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. "Detached reflection," Holmes said in one
of his most oft-quoted pronouncements, "cannot be demanded in the presence
of an uplifted knife."
Hammer stresses that violent-crime rates in Florida have dropped since the
right-to-carry law was signed. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement
reports that violent crimes dropped from 1,136 per 100,00 residents in 1989
-- two years after the law went into effect -- to 727.7 per 100,000 in 2003.
Her opponents counter that Florida's drop is not tied to the gun law and
note that national violent-crime rates have been trending down. More
important, Gelber and others say, is that Florida still ranked second in
the nation, behind only South Carolina, in violent crime in 2003, according
to U.S. Census Bureau statistics.
Brady's best hope, as a national fight appears inevitable, is that there
will be a backlash -- much like the bounce that gun control got in Florida
in the 1980s when the loss on the right-to-carry law was followed by
victories on waiting periods and background checks.
"This," Brady says of the new Florida measure, "will be the thing that will
awaken the sleeping great number of Middle Americans who will think this is
so absurd."
But, for now, it is the thoughts of another group that really matter, the
ones with guns. In this state of 17 million people, permits to carry guns
have been issued more than 1 million times in the past 18 years.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/25/AR2005042501553.html?referrer=email&referrer=email
Fla. Gun Law to Expand Leeway for Self-Defense
NRA to Promote Idea in Other States
By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 26, 2005; A01
MIAMI -- It is either a Wild West revival, a return to the days of "shoot
first and ask questions later," or a triumph for the "Castle Doctrine" --
the notion that enemies invade personal space at their peril.
Such dueling rhetoric marked the debate over a measure that Florida Gov.
Jeb Bush (R) could sign as early as Tuesday. The legislation passed so
emphatically that National Rifle Association backers plan to take it to
statehouses across the nation, including Virginia's, over the next year.
The law will let Floridians "meet force with force," erasing the "duty to
retreat" when they fear for their lives outside of their homes, in their
cars or businesses, or on the street.
NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said in an interview that the
Florida measure is the "first step of a multi-state strategy" that he hopes
can capitalize on a political climate dominated by conservative opponents
of gun control at the state and national levels.
"There's a big tailwind we have, moving from state legislature to state
legislature," LaPierre said. "The South, the Midwest, everything they call
'flyover land' -- if John Kerry held a shotgun in that state, we can pass
this law in that state."
The Florida measure says any person "has the right to stand his or her
ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she
reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great
bodily harm."
Florida law already lets residents defend themselves against attackers if
they can prove they could not have escaped. The new law would allow them
to use deadly force even if they could have fled and says that prosecutors
must automatically presume that would-be victims feared for their lives if
attacked.
The overwhelming vote margins and bipartisan support for the Florida gun
bill -- it passed unanimously in the state Senate and was approved 94 to 20
in the state House, with nearly a dozen Democratic co-sponsors -- have
alarmed some national gun-control advocates, who say a measure that made
headlines in Florida slipped beneath their radar.
"I am in absolute shock," Sarah Brady, chair of the Brady Center to Prevent
Gun Violence, said in an interview. "If I had known about it, I would have
been down there."
The lessons of history do not bode well for gun-control groups and their
leaders, such as Brady, who became a crusader after President Ronald Reagan
and her husband, then-White House press secretary James S. Brady, were
seriously wounded in a 1981 assassination attempt.
Florida has a track record as a gun-law trendsetter. In the mid-1980s, the
NRA chose Florida to launch a push for "conceal carry" or "right-to-carry"
laws, which allow states to issue permits for residents to carry firearms.
Democrat Bob Graham, who was then governor, vetoed the measure, but it was
resurrected after he left office and was signed in 1987 by Gov. Bob
Martinez, a Republican.
At the time, fewer than a dozen states had right-to-carry laws. Now there
are 38.
LaPierre thinks the new Florida measure -- nicknamed the "Castle Doctrine"
by its conceiver, Florida lobbyist Marion P. Hammer, a former NRA president
-- can create the same momentum.
Critics argue that the measure is so broad it will encourage fights between
neighbors, parents at soccer games or drinking buddies to escalate into
gunfights.
"It's almost like a duel clause," said state Rep. Dan Gelber, a Miami Beach
Democrat and former federal prosecutor whose wife is a state prosecutor.
"People ought to have to walk away if they can."
Gelber believes that Florida's major prosecutor groups, populated by state
attorneys who must run for reelection, stayed out of the fight and many
lawmakers supported the bill because they fear the NRA.
Law enforcement did not try to block the measure, siding with the NRA
rather than opposing the group, as many sheriffs and police officials had
done during the debate two decades earlier over right-to-carry.
Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist, a leading candidate for the
Republican governor's nomination in 2006, was among those who wrote letters
of support. With that kind of high-level backing, Rep. Dennis Baxley, a
Republican from Ocala who sponsored the House measure, could ridicule
critics as "hysterical."
"Disorder and chaos are always held in check by the law-abiding citizen,"
Baxley said.
As in the mid-1980s fights over the right-to-carry law, the state's big
newspapers have almost unanimously lined up against Baxley's measure,
although their outrage did little to stop its easy glide. South Florida
Sun-Sentinel columnist Howard Goodman said the state was "getting in touch
with its inner Dirty Harry." Martin Dyckman of the St. Petersburg Times
told tourists, indisputably a bedrock of the state's economy, to stay away:
"Lebanon might be safer."
Hammer, a 4-foot-11 dynamo with a national reputation for her persuasive
powers, dismissed the papers as "liberal, anti-gunners" and "Chicken
Littles." The current law unfairly forces Floridians to make split-second
decisions about a criminal's intent, she said, and NRA lobbyists like to
note that was deemed impossible generations ago by legendary Supreme Court
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. "Detached reflection," Holmes said in one
of his most oft-quoted pronouncements, "cannot be demanded in the presence
of an uplifted knife."
Hammer stresses that violent-crime rates in Florida have dropped since the
right-to-carry law was signed. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement
reports that violent crimes dropped from 1,136 per 100,00 residents in 1989
-- two years after the law went into effect -- to 727.7 per 100,000 in 2003.
Her opponents counter that Florida's drop is not tied to the gun law and
note that national violent-crime rates have been trending down. More
important, Gelber and others say, is that Florida still ranked second in
the nation, behind only South Carolina, in violent crime in 2003, according
to U.S. Census Bureau statistics.
Brady's best hope, as a national fight appears inevitable, is that there
will be a backlash -- much like the bounce that gun control got in Florida
in the 1980s when the loss on the right-to-carry law was followed by
victories on waiting periods and background checks.
"This," Brady says of the new Florida measure, "will be the thing that will
awaken the sleeping great number of Middle Americans who will think this is
so absurd."
But, for now, it is the thoughts of another group that really matter, the
ones with guns. In this state of 17 million people, permits to carry guns
have been issued more than 1 million times in the past 18 years.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/25/AR2005042501553.html?referrer=email&referrer=email
Thought for Today: "There are two great rules of life, the one general and
the other particular. The first is that everyone can, in the end, get what
he wants if he only tries. This is the general rule.
The particular rule is that every individual is more or less an exception
to the general rule."
- Samuel Butler, English author (1835-1902).
the other particular. The first is that everyone can, in the end, get what
he wants if he only tries. This is the general rule.
The particular rule is that every individual is more or less an exception
to the general rule."
- Samuel Butler, English author (1835-1902).
Unusually, I insert comments on Prof Cummins' comments.
This takes the form of an article recently sent (in no great
hopefulness) to the Churches' Agency on Social Issues which is a mouthpiece
for the 'interchurch bioethics "commission" ' a sandpit for minor
PowerHarpies.
The facts on "endogenous retrovirus" which I outline are
persistently ignored by the generally excellent Unca Joe Cummins. Perhaps
this is partly because of his alliance with Ho (one of the operatives I'm
referring to in the political comments which I add to the scientific facts).
Audrey Jarvis mentions, in her questions (Broadsheet, Ap 2005)
about xenotransplantation, experiments transplanting cultured pig pancreas
cells into diabetics, which are no longer allowed in New Zealand.
Half a decade on from her taking over 'interchurch' activities on
bioethics, Ms Jarvis is still mainly listing questions. By now some
answers are known, and I give below some which should be promulgated.
But I think also that this is a good occasion to look into the
context. In many important controversies today, media are presenting
pseudo-experts who lack the education &/or experience to qualify them as
experts. Individuals incapable of discussing or understanding complex
technologies are thus misinforming the public, while actual experts are
suppressed.
A current example is the victimisation of the much-respected
Professor R B Elliott whose treatment for Type 1 diabetes is being actively
pursued in several countries but is no longer allowed in New Zealand.
The government has persistently declared its belief that
biotechnology is a main aspect of what they call Knowledge Economy, Bright
Future, etc. Elliott's xenotransplants, developed further by his
company Diatranz, would appear to fit the bill - and do not entail any
gene-tampering.
In a decade of careful experimentation, this noted medical
researcher has developed a method of trickling insulin from cells, cultured
from pancreas cells of piglets, contained within a retrievable 'tea-bag'
floating in the diabetic's peritoneal liquid. The cells are coated to
prevent immune reactions, and the patients' immune systems are not
interfered with at all. It is misleading to talk about foreign cells
proliferating throughout the body - they cannot get out of the 'tea bag'
which itself can be removed altogether should any unforeseen trouble emerge.
Of the most recent 18 informed diabetic volunteers, 9 have
reported considerable
benefits from the current version of xenotransplants. Permission was
sought for a further 24 monitored patients to improve the treatment.
The obvious good question whether pig insulin is safe for humans
had been answered by decades of injecting millions of diabetics with pig
insulin (purified from pancreas byproduct of meatworks), which is a
slightly different chemical from human insulin. But there is a possible
hazard from these xenotransplants. I happened to be the scientist who
warned Elliott, a decade ago, of the need to monitor for novel viruses in
his volunteer xenotransplant recipients. Each of these patients is now
closely monitored by Auckland medical-school experts for any signs of such
problems. Both the monitoring and the measured health of the pig-pancreas
cells are widely agreed to be world-leading.
Why then have Diatranz's proposals for a further 24 patients been
blocked for years by Karen Poutasi M.B, director-general of health - most
recently through special legislation to abolish Diatranz's
normal legal rights to have such proposals considered? This victimising
legislative clause, slipped into a Bill on another subject (_viz_
gene-tampering), was approved by a parliamentary committee including Mss
Bunkle, Yates, and Fitzsimons, who were given full details by relevant
experts but persisted in the victimisation Poutasi had instigated.
In order to understand what has gone wrong, we must see an
important trend of the past decade or so: usurpation of expert status. The
persons who have forced Diatranz offshore have mostly been not experts but
political operatives.
Professor Roger Morris of the NZ veterinary school is a world
expert on transfer of animal viruses to humans - a main advisor to the UK
government on foot-&-mouth disease and to the Hong Kong government on duck
& hen infections jumping into humans. " It's riskier going to the zoo than
to have one of these pancreatic cell transplants" declares this expert -
adding "and I don't believe it's risky going to the zoo."
Morris conducted a thorough scientific review of the possibilities
for infections from the Diatranz pig cells, including pig endogenous
retrovirus (PERV). All mammals have many copies in their DNA of so-called
'endogenous retroviruses', which Morris views as probably a key to
mammalian pregnancy, instrumental in formation of the placenta. They are
called "endogenous" because they replicate only within a cell as nucleic
acid (DNA to RNA to DNA) but without ever forming a virus particle, and are
transmitted in the germline.
The name 'endogenous retrovirus' is regrettably misleading in much
the same way as 'carcinoma in situ' the misnomer for microscopic anomalies
of unknown significance in the cervix which are not carcinomas.
DNA sequences in the misnamed category 'endogenous retrovirus' make
up by enormous repetition several percent of typical mammalian genomes
(total equipage of DNA). The broad architecture of these DNA sequences is
similar across most organisms. Many classes of endogenous retrovirus are
known, but currently only two similar blocks of DNA, with other distinctive
genes, cause human disease through infectious retrovirus: HIV and HTLV-I &
its relatives.
There's no reason to believe that even if PERV got established &
multiplying in man it would cause disease. The most plausible fear is that
it might undergo mutation or recombination to generate a novel retrovirus
that might cross species barriers - as presumably HIV did. Retroviruses
are notably prone to recombination, though this has not been shown to occur
between the pig and the human. The patients are closely monitored for any
new viruses.
Infection of immune-intact humans or other mammals by anything
originating from genetically unaltered pig tissues has not been
demonstrated, despite thousands of attempts to do so over a dozen years.
The transplantation of enclosed porcine pancreatic islet cells is an
extremely low-risk procedure. Diabetics facing gangrene, blindness, etc
within a year or so are not concerned that cancer decades later has not
been ruled out - a risk limited to them, as cancer is non-infectious.
Poutasi has posed as ultra-precautionary on this project, while
cheerfully condoning far more dubious experiments in GM. This is a case of
what we in Australasia call the 'tall poppy syndrome'. But it is also
more, and worse, than that. This therapy is being misused as a lightning
rod for vague fears - an irrational over-reaction, making the government
look cautious while vastly more dangerous procedures go unchallenged.
New Zealand has been a leader in this promising treatment for a
nasty disease; we have the healthiest pigs as well as the best monitoring
technology. But now New Zealand diabetics will be going
overseas for these transplants, which are permitted in such advanced
countries as Switzerland, Sweden & the USA.
And all because political power-seekers have usurped expert status.
Their _modus operandi_ is pretty easy to identify, once you've seen
its main features. The "science" promoted by the usurpers consists of
simplistic slogans, easy to memorize but vague. The prototypical example
is "The 'Pap' smear is a good early warning test for cervical cancer" -
misleading but the basis for political careers by Bunkle, Coney, & Dame S
Cartwright who not merely contradicted but vilified leading experts. A
newer example is "Pig viruses might emerge from Diatranz xenotransplants
and become endemic in the human", presented repeatedly on TV by an
ambitious female politician with a degree in French & music. This saying
was, I believe, useful when I stated it a decade ago; but to present it
now, instead of expert comment in the light of all that has been found
meanwhile, is radically biased.
The science involved in such issues is, unfortunately but
incorrigibly, far beyond ordinary citizens' understanding. They cannot
make informed judgements on these arcane matters. They must therefore rely
on the judgements of the few specialists who do understand the meaning of
'retrovirus' etc. But the media have made hardly any effort to convey
expert judgements. Very important issues are thus cynically misused as
vehicles for self-publicity by pseudo-experts.
A culture dependent on dangerous technologies will quickly get in
trouble this way. (Complex technologies are not the only dangerous ones:
look what happens when people feed cows ground-up cow. )
Experts are those who have been stringently tested for knowledge &
judgement, not those who merely wish to hijack topics of public concern for
personal attention-getting.
This is the context within which the churches are almost comprehensively
failing to produce answers for concerned members and the wider public.
=====
Now here is the latest CumminsGram:
The main threat from such experiments as are described below is the
activation of endogenous retrovirus that make up around 1% of the genome
of humans or other mammals. The endogenous retrovirus "sleep" in the
genome. Many are capable of being activated to make new disease-causing
virus that have not been experienced by humans or animals and are thus a
deadly threat. For many years efforts have been made to transplant
humanized pig organs into humans but these experiments are terribly
dangerous because endogenous retroviruses (PERVs) are known to be
activated by mixing pig and human cells. To have farm animal-human
chimeras running around in the open seems a startlingly stupid thing
to do, and criminal if the experiments are not accompanied by looking
for escaping novel retroviruses.
washingtonpost.com
Of Mice, Men and In-Between
Scientists Debate Blending Of Human, Animal Forms
By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 20, 2004; Page A01
In Minnesota, pigs are being born with human blood in their veins.
In Nevada, there are sheep whose livers and hearts are largely human.
In California, mice peer from their cages with human brain cells firing
inside their skulls.
These are not outcasts from "The Island of Dr. Moreau," the 1896 novel
by H.G. Wells in which a rogue doctor develops creatures that are part
animal and part human. They are real creations of real scientists,
stretching the boundaries of stem cell research.
Biologists call these hybrid animals chimeras, after the mythical Greek
creature with a lion's head, a goat's body and a serpent's tail. They
are the products of experiments in which human stem cells were added to
developing animal fetuses.
Chimeras are allowing scientists to watch, for the first time, how
nascent human cells and organs mature and interact -- not in the cold
isolation of laboratory dishes but inside the bodies of living
creatures. Some are already revealing deep secrets of human biology and
pointing the way toward new medical treatments.
But with no federal guidelines in place, an awkward question hovers
above the work: How human must a chimera be before more stringent
research rules should kick in?
The National Academy of Sciences, which advises the federal government,
has been studying the issue and hopes to make recommendations by
February. Yet the range of opinions it has received so far suggests that
reaching consensus may be difficult.
During one recent meeting, scientists disagreed on such basic issues as
whether it would be unethical for a human embryo to begin its
development in an animal's womb, and whether a mouse would be better or
worse off with a brain made of human neurons.
"This is an area where we really need to come to a reasonable
consensus," said James Battey, chairman of the National Institutes of
Health's Stem Cell Task Force. "We need to establish some kind of
guidelines as to what the scientific community ought to do and ought not
to do."
Beyond Twins and Moms
Chimeras (ki-MER-ahs) -- meaning mixtures of two or more individuals in
a single body -- are not inherently unnatural. Most twins carry at least
a few cells from the sibling with whom they shared a womb, and most
mothers carry in their blood at least a few cells from each child they
have born.
Recipients of organ transplants are also chimeras, as are the many
people whose defective heart valves have been replaced with those from
pigs or cows. And scientists for years have added human genes to
bacteria and even to farm animals -- feats of genetic engineering that
allow those critters to make human proteins such as insulin for use as
medicines.
"Chimeras are not as strange and alien as at first blush they seem,"
said Henry Greely, a law professor and ethicist at Stanford University
who has reviewed proposals to create human-mouse chimeras there.
But chimerism becomes a more sensitive topic when it involves growing
entire human organs inside animals. And it becomes especially sensitive
when it deals in brain cells, the building blocks of the organ credited
with making humans human.
In experiments like those, Greely told the academy last month, "there is
a nontrivial risk of conferring some significant aspects of humanity" on
the animal.
Greely and his colleagues did not conclude that such experiments should
never be done. Indeed, he and many other philosophers have been
wrestling with the question of why so many people believe it is wrong to
breach the species barrier.
Does the repugnance reflect an understanding of an important natural
law? Or is it just another cultural bias, like the once widespread
rejection of interracial marriage?
Many turn to the Bible's repeated invocation that animals should
multiply "after their kind" as evidence that such experiments are wrong.
Others, however, have concluded that the core problem is not necessarily
the creation of chimeras but rather the way they are likely to be treated.
Imagine, said Robert Streiffer, a professor of philosophy and bioethics
at the University of Wisconsin, a human-chimpanzee chimera endowed with
speech and an enhanced potential to learn -- what some have called a
"humanzee."
"There's a knee-jerk reaction that enhancing the moral status of an
animal is bad," Streiffer said. "But if you did it, and you gave it the
protections it deserves, how could the animal complain?"
Unfortunately, said Harvard political philosopher Michael J. Sandel,
speaking last fall at a meeting of the President's Council on Bioethics,
such protections are unlikely.
"Chances are we would make them perform menial jobs or dangerous jobs,"
Sandel said. "That would be an objection."
A Research Breakthrough
The potential power of chimeras as research tools became clear about a
decade ago in a series of dramatic experiments by Evan Balaban, now at
McGill University in Montreal. Balaban took small sections of brain from
developing quails and transplanted them into the developing brains of
chickens.
The resulting chickens exhibited vocal trills and head bobs unique to
quails, proving that the transplanted parts of the brain contained the
neural circuitry for quail calls. It also offered astonishing proof that
complex behaviors could be transferred across species.
No one has proposed similar experiments between, say, humans and apes.
But the discovery of human embryonic stem cells in 1998 allowed
researchers to envision related experiments that might reveal a lot
about how embryos grow.
The cells, found in 5-day-old human embryos, multiply prolifically and
-- unlike adult cells -- have the potential to turn into any of the
body's 200 or so cell types.
Scientists hope to cultivate them in laboratory dishes and grow
replacement tissues for patients. But with those applications years
away, the cells are gaining in popularity for basic research.
The most radical experiment, still not conducted, would be to inject
human stem cells into an animal embryo and then transfer that chimeric
embryo into an animal's womb. Scientists suspect the proliferating human
cells would spread throughout the animal embryo as it matured into a
fetus and integrate themselves into every organ.
Such "humanized" animals could have countless uses. They would almost
certainly provide better ways to test a new drug's efficacy and
toxicity, for example, than the ordinary mice typically used today.
But few scientists are eager to do that experiment. The risk, they say,
is that some human cells will find their way to the developing testes or
ovaries, where they might grow into human sperm and eggs. If two such
chimeras -- say, mice -- were to mate, a human embryo might form,
trapped in a mouse.
Not everyone agrees that this would be a terrible result.
"What would be so dreadful?" asked Ann McLaren, a renowned developmental
biologist at the University of Cambridge in England. After all, she
said, no human embryo could develop successfully in a mouse womb. It
would simply die, she told the academy. No harm done.
But others disagree -- if only out of fear of a public backlash.
"Certainly you'd get a negative response from people to have a human
embryo trying to grow in the wrong place," said Cynthia B. Cohen, a
senior research fellow at Georgetown University's Kennedy Institute of
Ethics and a member of Canada's Stem Cell Oversight Committee, which
supported a ban on such experiments there.
How Human?
But what about experiments in which scientists add human stem cells not
to an animal embryo but to an animal fetus, which has already made its
eggs and sperm? Then the only question is how human a creature one dares
to make.
In one ongoing set of experiments, Jeffrey L. Platt at the Mayo Clinic
in Rochester, Minn., has created human-pig chimeras by adding
human-blood-forming stem cells to pig fetuses. The resulting pigs have
both pig and human blood in their vessels. And it's not just pig blood
cells being swept along with human blood cells; some of the cells
themselves have merged, creating hybrids.
It is important to have learned that human and pig cells can fuse, Platt
said, because he and others have been considering transplanting modified
pig organs into people and have been wondering if that might pose a risk
of pig viruses getting into patient's cells. Now scientists know the
risk is real, he said, because the viruses may gain access when the two
cells fuse.
In other experiments led by Esmail Zanjani, chairman of animal
biotechnology at the University of Nevada at Reno, scientists have been
adding human stem cells to sheep fetuses. The team now has sheep whose
livers are up to 80 percent human -- and make all the compounds human
livers make.
Zanjani's goal is to make the humanized livers available to people who
need transplants. The sheep portions will be rejected by the immune
system, he predicted, while the human part will take root.
"I don't see why anyone would raise objections to our work," Zanjani
said in an interview.
Immunity Advantages
Perhaps the most ambitious efforts to make use of chimeras come from
Irving Weissman, director of Stanford University's Institute of
Cancer/Stem Cell Biology and Medicine. Weissman helped make the first
mouse with a nearly complete human immune system -- an animal that has
proved invaluable for tests of new drugs against the AIDS virus, which
does not infect conventional mice.
More recently his team injected human neural stem cells into mouse
fetuses, creating mice whose brains are about 1 percent human. By
dissecting the mice at various stages, the researchers were able to see
how the added brain cells moved about as they multiplied and made
connections with mouse cells.
Already, he said, they have learned things they "never would have
learned had there been a bioethical ban."
Now he wants to add human brain stem cells that have the defects that
cause Parkinson's disease, Lou Gehrig's disease and other brain ailments
-- and study how those cells make connections.
Scientists suspect that these diseases, though they manifest themselves
in adulthood, begin when something goes wrong early in development. If
those errors can be found, researchers would have a much better chance
of designing useful drugs, Weissman said. And those drugs could be
tested in the chimeras in ways not possible in patients.
Now Weissman says he is thinking about making chimeric mice whose brains
are 100 percent human. He proposes keeping tabs on the mice as they
develop. If the brains look as if they are taking on a distinctly human
architecture -- a development that could hint at a glimmer of humanness
-- they could be killed, he said. If they look as if they are organizing
themselves in a mouse brain architecture, they could be used for research.
So far this is just a "thought experiment," Weissman said, but he asked
the university's ethics group for an opinion anyway.
"Everyone said the mice would be useful," he said. "But no one was sure
if it should be done."
This takes the form of an article recently sent (in no great
hopefulness) to the Churches' Agency on Social Issues which is a mouthpiece
for the 'interchurch bioethics "commission" ' a sandpit for minor
PowerHarpies.
The facts on "endogenous retrovirus" which I outline are
persistently ignored by the generally excellent Unca Joe Cummins. Perhaps
this is partly because of his alliance with Ho (one of the operatives I'm
referring to in the political comments which I add to the scientific facts).
Audrey Jarvis mentions, in her questions (Broadsheet, Ap 2005)
about xenotransplantation, experiments transplanting cultured pig pancreas
cells into diabetics, which are no longer allowed in New Zealand.
Half a decade on from her taking over 'interchurch' activities on
bioethics, Ms Jarvis is still mainly listing questions. By now some
answers are known, and I give below some which should be promulgated.
But I think also that this is a good occasion to look into the
context. In many important controversies today, media are presenting
pseudo-experts who lack the education &/or experience to qualify them as
experts. Individuals incapable of discussing or understanding complex
technologies are thus misinforming the public, while actual experts are
suppressed.
A current example is the victimisation of the much-respected
Professor R B Elliott whose treatment for Type 1 diabetes is being actively
pursued in several countries but is no longer allowed in New Zealand.
The government has persistently declared its belief that
biotechnology is a main aspect of what they call Knowledge Economy, Bright
Future, etc. Elliott's xenotransplants, developed further by his
company Diatranz, would appear to fit the bill - and do not entail any
gene-tampering.
In a decade of careful experimentation, this noted medical
researcher has developed a method of trickling insulin from cells, cultured
from pancreas cells of piglets, contained within a retrievable 'tea-bag'
floating in the diabetic's peritoneal liquid. The cells are coated to
prevent immune reactions, and the patients' immune systems are not
interfered with at all. It is misleading to talk about foreign cells
proliferating throughout the body - they cannot get out of the 'tea bag'
which itself can be removed altogether should any unforeseen trouble emerge.
Of the most recent 18 informed diabetic volunteers, 9 have
reported considerable
benefits from the current version of xenotransplants. Permission was
sought for a further 24 monitored patients to improve the treatment.
The obvious good question whether pig insulin is safe for humans
had been answered by decades of injecting millions of diabetics with pig
insulin (purified from pancreas byproduct of meatworks), which is a
slightly different chemical from human insulin. But there is a possible
hazard from these xenotransplants. I happened to be the scientist who
warned Elliott, a decade ago, of the need to monitor for novel viruses in
his volunteer xenotransplant recipients. Each of these patients is now
closely monitored by Auckland medical-school experts for any signs of such
problems. Both the monitoring and the measured health of the pig-pancreas
cells are widely agreed to be world-leading.
Why then have Diatranz's proposals for a further 24 patients been
blocked for years by Karen Poutasi M.B, director-general of health - most
recently through special legislation to abolish Diatranz's
normal legal rights to have such proposals considered? This victimising
legislative clause, slipped into a Bill on another subject (_viz_
gene-tampering), was approved by a parliamentary committee including Mss
Bunkle, Yates, and Fitzsimons, who were given full details by relevant
experts but persisted in the victimisation Poutasi had instigated.
In order to understand what has gone wrong, we must see an
important trend of the past decade or so: usurpation of expert status. The
persons who have forced Diatranz offshore have mostly been not experts but
political operatives.
Professor Roger Morris of the NZ veterinary school is a world
expert on transfer of animal viruses to humans - a main advisor to the UK
government on foot-&-mouth disease and to the Hong Kong government on duck
& hen infections jumping into humans. " It's riskier going to the zoo than
to have one of these pancreatic cell transplants" declares this expert -
adding "and I don't believe it's risky going to the zoo."
Morris conducted a thorough scientific review of the possibilities
for infections from the Diatranz pig cells, including pig endogenous
retrovirus (PERV). All mammals have many copies in their DNA of so-called
'endogenous retroviruses', which Morris views as probably a key to
mammalian pregnancy, instrumental in formation of the placenta. They are
called "endogenous" because they replicate only within a cell as nucleic
acid (DNA to RNA to DNA) but without ever forming a virus particle, and are
transmitted in the germline.
The name 'endogenous retrovirus' is regrettably misleading in much
the same way as 'carcinoma in situ' the misnomer for microscopic anomalies
of unknown significance in the cervix which are not carcinomas.
DNA sequences in the misnamed category 'endogenous retrovirus' make
up by enormous repetition several percent of typical mammalian genomes
(total equipage of DNA). The broad architecture of these DNA sequences is
similar across most organisms. Many classes of endogenous retrovirus are
known, but currently only two similar blocks of DNA, with other distinctive
genes, cause human disease through infectious retrovirus: HIV and HTLV-I &
its relatives.
There's no reason to believe that even if PERV got established &
multiplying in man it would cause disease. The most plausible fear is that
it might undergo mutation or recombination to generate a novel retrovirus
that might cross species barriers - as presumably HIV did. Retroviruses
are notably prone to recombination, though this has not been shown to occur
between the pig and the human. The patients are closely monitored for any
new viruses.
Infection of immune-intact humans or other mammals by anything
originating from genetically unaltered pig tissues has not been
demonstrated, despite thousands of attempts to do so over a dozen years.
The transplantation of enclosed porcine pancreatic islet cells is an
extremely low-risk procedure. Diabetics facing gangrene, blindness, etc
within a year or so are not concerned that cancer decades later has not
been ruled out - a risk limited to them, as cancer is non-infectious.
Poutasi has posed as ultra-precautionary on this project, while
cheerfully condoning far more dubious experiments in GM. This is a case of
what we in Australasia call the 'tall poppy syndrome'. But it is also
more, and worse, than that. This therapy is being misused as a lightning
rod for vague fears - an irrational over-reaction, making the government
look cautious while vastly more dangerous procedures go unchallenged.
New Zealand has been a leader in this promising treatment for a
nasty disease; we have the healthiest pigs as well as the best monitoring
technology. But now New Zealand diabetics will be going
overseas for these transplants, which are permitted in such advanced
countries as Switzerland, Sweden & the USA.
And all because political power-seekers have usurped expert status.
Their _modus operandi_ is pretty easy to identify, once you've seen
its main features. The "science" promoted by the usurpers consists of
simplistic slogans, easy to memorize but vague. The prototypical example
is "The 'Pap' smear is a good early warning test for cervical cancer" -
misleading but the basis for political careers by Bunkle, Coney, & Dame S
Cartwright who not merely contradicted but vilified leading experts. A
newer example is "Pig viruses might emerge from Diatranz xenotransplants
and become endemic in the human", presented repeatedly on TV by an
ambitious female politician with a degree in French & music. This saying
was, I believe, useful when I stated it a decade ago; but to present it
now, instead of expert comment in the light of all that has been found
meanwhile, is radically biased.
The science involved in such issues is, unfortunately but
incorrigibly, far beyond ordinary citizens' understanding. They cannot
make informed judgements on these arcane matters. They must therefore rely
on the judgements of the few specialists who do understand the meaning of
'retrovirus' etc. But the media have made hardly any effort to convey
expert judgements. Very important issues are thus cynically misused as
vehicles for self-publicity by pseudo-experts.
A culture dependent on dangerous technologies will quickly get in
trouble this way. (Complex technologies are not the only dangerous ones:
look what happens when people feed cows ground-up cow. )
Experts are those who have been stringently tested for knowledge &
judgement, not those who merely wish to hijack topics of public concern for
personal attention-getting.
This is the context within which the churches are almost comprehensively
failing to produce answers for concerned members and the wider public.
=====
Now here is the latest CumminsGram:
The main threat from such experiments as are described below is the
activation of endogenous retrovirus that make up around 1% of the genome
of humans or other mammals. The endogenous retrovirus "sleep" in the
genome. Many are capable of being activated to make new disease-causing
virus that have not been experienced by humans or animals and are thus a
deadly threat. For many years efforts have been made to transplant
humanized pig organs into humans but these experiments are terribly
dangerous because endogenous retroviruses (PERVs) are known to be
activated by mixing pig and human cells. To have farm animal-human
chimeras running around in the open seems a startlingly stupid thing
to do, and criminal if the experiments are not accompanied by looking
for escaping novel retroviruses.
washingtonpost.com
Of Mice, Men and In-Between
Scientists Debate Blending Of Human, Animal Forms
By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 20, 2004; Page A01
In Minnesota, pigs are being born with human blood in their veins.
In Nevada, there are sheep whose livers and hearts are largely human.
In California, mice peer from their cages with human brain cells firing
inside their skulls.
These are not outcasts from "The Island of Dr. Moreau," the 1896 novel
by H.G. Wells in which a rogue doctor develops creatures that are part
animal and part human. They are real creations of real scientists,
stretching the boundaries of stem cell research.
Biologists call these hybrid animals chimeras, after the mythical Greek
creature with a lion's head, a goat's body and a serpent's tail. They
are the products of experiments in which human stem cells were added to
developing animal fetuses.
Chimeras are allowing scientists to watch, for the first time, how
nascent human cells and organs mature and interact -- not in the cold
isolation of laboratory dishes but inside the bodies of living
creatures. Some are already revealing deep secrets of human biology and
pointing the way toward new medical treatments.
But with no federal guidelines in place, an awkward question hovers
above the work: How human must a chimera be before more stringent
research rules should kick in?
The National Academy of Sciences, which advises the federal government,
has been studying the issue and hopes to make recommendations by
February. Yet the range of opinions it has received so far suggests that
reaching consensus may be difficult.
During one recent meeting, scientists disagreed on such basic issues as
whether it would be unethical for a human embryo to begin its
development in an animal's womb, and whether a mouse would be better or
worse off with a brain made of human neurons.
"This is an area where we really need to come to a reasonable
consensus," said James Battey, chairman of the National Institutes of
Health's Stem Cell Task Force. "We need to establish some kind of
guidelines as to what the scientific community ought to do and ought not
to do."
Beyond Twins and Moms
Chimeras (ki-MER-ahs) -- meaning mixtures of two or more individuals in
a single body -- are not inherently unnatural. Most twins carry at least
a few cells from the sibling with whom they shared a womb, and most
mothers carry in their blood at least a few cells from each child they
have born.
Recipients of organ transplants are also chimeras, as are the many
people whose defective heart valves have been replaced with those from
pigs or cows. And scientists for years have added human genes to
bacteria and even to farm animals -- feats of genetic engineering that
allow those critters to make human proteins such as insulin for use as
medicines.
"Chimeras are not as strange and alien as at first blush they seem,"
said Henry Greely, a law professor and ethicist at Stanford University
who has reviewed proposals to create human-mouse chimeras there.
But chimerism becomes a more sensitive topic when it involves growing
entire human organs inside animals. And it becomes especially sensitive
when it deals in brain cells, the building blocks of the organ credited
with making humans human.
In experiments like those, Greely told the academy last month, "there is
a nontrivial risk of conferring some significant aspects of humanity" on
the animal.
Greely and his colleagues did not conclude that such experiments should
never be done. Indeed, he and many other philosophers have been
wrestling with the question of why so many people believe it is wrong to
breach the species barrier.
Does the repugnance reflect an understanding of an important natural
law? Or is it just another cultural bias, like the once widespread
rejection of interracial marriage?
Many turn to the Bible's repeated invocation that animals should
multiply "after their kind" as evidence that such experiments are wrong.
Others, however, have concluded that the core problem is not necessarily
the creation of chimeras but rather the way they are likely to be treated.
Imagine, said Robert Streiffer, a professor of philosophy and bioethics
at the University of Wisconsin, a human-chimpanzee chimera endowed with
speech and an enhanced potential to learn -- what some have called a
"humanzee."
"There's a knee-jerk reaction that enhancing the moral status of an
animal is bad," Streiffer said. "But if you did it, and you gave it the
protections it deserves, how could the animal complain?"
Unfortunately, said Harvard political philosopher Michael J. Sandel,
speaking last fall at a meeting of the President's Council on Bioethics,
such protections are unlikely.
"Chances are we would make them perform menial jobs or dangerous jobs,"
Sandel said. "That would be an objection."
A Research Breakthrough
The potential power of chimeras as research tools became clear about a
decade ago in a series of dramatic experiments by Evan Balaban, now at
McGill University in Montreal. Balaban took small sections of brain from
developing quails and transplanted them into the developing brains of
chickens.
The resulting chickens exhibited vocal trills and head bobs unique to
quails, proving that the transplanted parts of the brain contained the
neural circuitry for quail calls. It also offered astonishing proof that
complex behaviors could be transferred across species.
No one has proposed similar experiments between, say, humans and apes.
But the discovery of human embryonic stem cells in 1998 allowed
researchers to envision related experiments that might reveal a lot
about how embryos grow.
The cells, found in 5-day-old human embryos, multiply prolifically and
-- unlike adult cells -- have the potential to turn into any of the
body's 200 or so cell types.
Scientists hope to cultivate them in laboratory dishes and grow
replacement tissues for patients. But with those applications years
away, the cells are gaining in popularity for basic research.
The most radical experiment, still not conducted, would be to inject
human stem cells into an animal embryo and then transfer that chimeric
embryo into an animal's womb. Scientists suspect the proliferating human
cells would spread throughout the animal embryo as it matured into a
fetus and integrate themselves into every organ.
Such "humanized" animals could have countless uses. They would almost
certainly provide better ways to test a new drug's efficacy and
toxicity, for example, than the ordinary mice typically used today.
But few scientists are eager to do that experiment. The risk, they say,
is that some human cells will find their way to the developing testes or
ovaries, where they might grow into human sperm and eggs. If two such
chimeras -- say, mice -- were to mate, a human embryo might form,
trapped in a mouse.
Not everyone agrees that this would be a terrible result.
"What would be so dreadful?" asked Ann McLaren, a renowned developmental
biologist at the University of Cambridge in England. After all, she
said, no human embryo could develop successfully in a mouse womb. It
would simply die, she told the academy. No harm done.
But others disagree -- if only out of fear of a public backlash.
"Certainly you'd get a negative response from people to have a human
embryo trying to grow in the wrong place," said Cynthia B. Cohen, a
senior research fellow at Georgetown University's Kennedy Institute of
Ethics and a member of Canada's Stem Cell Oversight Committee, which
supported a ban on such experiments there.
How Human?
But what about experiments in which scientists add human stem cells not
to an animal embryo but to an animal fetus, which has already made its
eggs and sperm? Then the only question is how human a creature one dares
to make.
In one ongoing set of experiments, Jeffrey L. Platt at the Mayo Clinic
in Rochester, Minn., has created human-pig chimeras by adding
human-blood-forming stem cells to pig fetuses. The resulting pigs have
both pig and human blood in their vessels. And it's not just pig blood
cells being swept along with human blood cells; some of the cells
themselves have merged, creating hybrids.
It is important to have learned that human and pig cells can fuse, Platt
said, because he and others have been considering transplanting modified
pig organs into people and have been wondering if that might pose a risk
of pig viruses getting into patient's cells. Now scientists know the
risk is real, he said, because the viruses may gain access when the two
cells fuse.
In other experiments led by Esmail Zanjani, chairman of animal
biotechnology at the University of Nevada at Reno, scientists have been
adding human stem cells to sheep fetuses. The team now has sheep whose
livers are up to 80 percent human -- and make all the compounds human
livers make.
Zanjani's goal is to make the humanized livers available to people who
need transplants. The sheep portions will be rejected by the immune
system, he predicted, while the human part will take root.
"I don't see why anyone would raise objections to our work," Zanjani
said in an interview.
Immunity Advantages
Perhaps the most ambitious efforts to make use of chimeras come from
Irving Weissman, director of Stanford University's Institute of
Cancer/Stem Cell Biology and Medicine. Weissman helped make the first
mouse with a nearly complete human immune system -- an animal that has
proved invaluable for tests of new drugs against the AIDS virus, which
does not infect conventional mice.
More recently his team injected human neural stem cells into mouse
fetuses, creating mice whose brains are about 1 percent human. By
dissecting the mice at various stages, the researchers were able to see
how the added brain cells moved about as they multiplied and made
connections with mouse cells.
Already, he said, they have learned things they "never would have
learned had there been a bioethical ban."
Now he wants to add human brain stem cells that have the defects that
cause Parkinson's disease, Lou Gehrig's disease and other brain ailments
-- and study how those cells make connections.
Scientists suspect that these diseases, though they manifest themselves
in adulthood, begin when something goes wrong early in development. If
those errors can be found, researchers would have a much better chance
of designing useful drugs, Weissman said. And those drugs could be
tested in the chimeras in ways not possible in patients.
Now Weissman says he is thinking about making chimeric mice whose brains
are 100 percent human. He proposes keeping tabs on the mice as they
develop. If the brains look as if they are taking on a distinctly human
architecture -- a development that could hint at a glimmer of humanness
-- they could be killed, he said. If they look as if they are organizing
themselves in a mouse brain architecture, they could be used for research.
So far this is just a "thought experiment," Weissman said, but he asked
the university's ethics group for an opinion anyway.
"Everyone said the mice would be useful," he said. "But no one was sure
if it should be done."
04/23/05
http://counterpunch.org/nader04162005.html
Weekend Edition
April 16 / 17, 2005
Vaccines Don't Make the Same Profits for Big Pharma that Lifestyle Drugs Do
Scientists or Celebrities?
By RALPH NADER
Washington, DC
Question: have you ever heard of Maurice Hilleman? If your answer is No
or Who?, join about 99 percent of the American people. He passed away
this month in Philadelphia at the age of 85. Here is what the front page
New York Times article said about his medical career:
Dr. Maurice R. Hilleman developed vaccines for mumps, measles,
chickenpox, pneumonia, meningitis and other diseases, saving tens of
millions of lives. Much of modern preventive medicine is based on Dr.
Hilleman's work, though he never received the public recognition of Salk,
Sabin or Pasteur. He is credited with having developed more human and
animal vaccines than any other scientist, helping to extend human life
expectancy and improving the economies of many countries.
The Times quotes Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health
as saying: "The scientific quality and quantity of what he did was
amazing. One can say without hyperbole that Maurice changed the world
with his extraordinary contributions in so many disciplines: virology,
epidemiology, immunology, cancer research and vaccinology."
His associates, whom he regularly credited for their contributions,
marveled at his artistry in safely producing large quantities of weakened
live or dead micro-organisms. Dr. Hilleman credited his skills wryly to
growing up on a farm in Montana where he worked as a boy with chickens.
Chicken eggs are the fertilizing sites for many vaccines.
There are many fascinating stories about this scientist. Yet almost no
one knew about him, saw him on television, or read about him in newspapers
or magazines. His anonymity, in comparison with Madonna, Michael Jackson,
Jose Canseco, or an assortment of grade B actors, tells something about
our society's and media's concepts of celebrity; much less of the heroic.
This is not a frivolous observation.
Bringing the work of individuals who matter to so many people on the
important issues of lives and livelihoods is a prime way of educating the
citizenry about important matters. Media trumpeting of Madonna's latest
escapades alerts and motivates the public quite differently than
highlighting the frequent breakthroughs of a scientist like Dr. Hilleman.
The former sells records and pulp magazines, the latter keeps the American
people more knowledgeable about the critical perils that confront them if
recognition and resources are not dedicated to their prevention.
Today, in America, there are tens of billions of dollars being spent and
misspent on the struggle against stateless terrorists. Despite being
warned repeatedly by the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health
Organization, the Bush Administration is reacting feebly to the avian flu
risks coming from the Far East. Already having taken nearly one hundred
lives, should this avian flu mutate with a human virus, a deadly pandemic
could sweep the world with tens of millions of fatalities.
I have written thrice to President Bush about the need to launch a war
against this kind of microscopic terrorism by diversifying his speeches
and making room for a major national address on this subject. He could
put forth a program of greater support for training more infectious
diseases specialists and working with other countries for an early alert
system so that the requisite quarantines and vaccine development can get
underway in time. There have been no responses from the White House.
Such an initiative would cost a fraction of the annual $9 to $10 billion
dollars that Bush is spending on the boondoggle missile defense business.
(A technology so easily decoyable and dubious that it has been deemed
unworkable by the American Physical Society). But missile defense and
other massive military weapons programs, conceived for a Soviet Union era
of hostility, make big profits for corporations. Vaccines do not make big
profits for drug companies the way lifestyle drugs do.
The daily headlines are sounding grave alarms. Rob Stein and Shankar
Vedantam of The Washington Post report that a strain of the flu virus H2N2
that caused a worldwide pandemic and killed more than one million people
worldwide in 1957 and 1958 was mistakenly sent to thousands of
laboratories in the United States and around the world. Keith Bradsher's
reports from China for the Times have been getting ever more somber. The
latest dispatch headlines "Some Asian Bankers worry about the Economic
Toll from Bird Flu."
Maybe if business profits are jeopardized by what a pandemic can do to
an economy, officialdom will reorder its twisted priorities. The deadly
Marburg virus (nine of ten people afflicted die) now spreading slowly in
Angola is another wake-up call for our country to change its priorities
from continually adding to the largest major weapons arsenal in world
history (nuclear submarines, aircraft carriers, missiles, planes, etc.)
and moving to life-saving and health-preserving investments for prevention
before vaccines are needed.
It is time to know the names of the scientists already working on this
great venture for health and hear them out.
Hear ye, media!
Weekend Edition
April 16 / 17, 2005
Vaccines Don't Make the Same Profits for Big Pharma that Lifestyle Drugs Do
Scientists or Celebrities?
By RALPH NADER
Washington, DC
Question: have you ever heard of Maurice Hilleman? If your answer is No
or Who?, join about 99 percent of the American people. He passed away
this month in Philadelphia at the age of 85. Here is what the front page
New York Times article said about his medical career:
Dr. Maurice R. Hilleman developed vaccines for mumps, measles,
chickenpox, pneumonia, meningitis and other diseases, saving tens of
millions of lives. Much of modern preventive medicine is based on Dr.
Hilleman's work, though he never received the public recognition of Salk,
Sabin or Pasteur. He is credited with having developed more human and
animal vaccines than any other scientist, helping to extend human life
expectancy and improving the economies of many countries.
The Times quotes Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health
as saying: "The scientific quality and quantity of what he did was
amazing. One can say without hyperbole that Maurice changed the world
with his extraordinary contributions in so many disciplines: virology,
epidemiology, immunology, cancer research and vaccinology."
His associates, whom he regularly credited for their contributions,
marveled at his artistry in safely producing large quantities of weakened
live or dead micro-organisms. Dr. Hilleman credited his skills wryly to
growing up on a farm in Montana where he worked as a boy with chickens.
Chicken eggs are the fertilizing sites for many vaccines.
There are many fascinating stories about this scientist. Yet almost no
one knew about him, saw him on television, or read about him in newspapers
or magazines. His anonymity, in comparison with Madonna, Michael Jackson,
Jose Canseco, or an assortment of grade B actors, tells something about
our society's and media's concepts of celebrity; much less of the heroic.
This is not a frivolous observation.
Bringing the work of individuals who matter to so many people on the
important issues of lives and livelihoods is a prime way of educating the
citizenry about important matters. Media trumpeting of Madonna's latest
escapades alerts and motivates the public quite differently than
highlighting the frequent breakthroughs of a scientist like Dr. Hilleman.
The former sells records and pulp magazines, the latter keeps the American
people more knowledgeable about the critical perils that confront them if
recognition and resources are not dedicated to their prevention.
Today, in America, there are tens of billions of dollars being spent and
misspent on the struggle against stateless terrorists. Despite being
warned repeatedly by the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health
Organization, the Bush Administration is reacting feebly to the avian flu
risks coming from the Far East. Already having taken nearly one hundred
lives, should this avian flu mutate with a human virus, a deadly pandemic
could sweep the world with tens of millions of fatalities.
I have written thrice to President Bush about the need to launch a war
against this kind of microscopic terrorism by diversifying his speeches
and making room for a major national address on this subject. He could
put forth a program of greater support for training more infectious
diseases specialists and working with other countries for an early alert
system so that the requisite quarantines and vaccine development can get
underway in time. There have been no responses from the White House.
Such an initiative would cost a fraction of the annual $9 to $10 billion
dollars that Bush is spending on the boondoggle missile defense business.
(A technology so easily decoyable and dubious that it has been deemed
unworkable by the American Physical Society). But missile defense and
other massive military weapons programs, conceived for a Soviet Union era
of hostility, make big profits for corporations. Vaccines do not make big
profits for drug companies the way lifestyle drugs do.
The daily headlines are sounding grave alarms. Rob Stein and Shankar
Vedantam of The Washington Post report that a strain of the flu virus H2N2
that caused a worldwide pandemic and killed more than one million people
worldwide in 1957 and 1958 was mistakenly sent to thousands of
laboratories in the United States and around the world. Keith Bradsher's
reports from China for the Times have been getting ever more somber. The
latest dispatch headlines "Some Asian Bankers worry about the Economic
Toll from Bird Flu."
Maybe if business profits are jeopardized by what a pandemic can do to
an economy, officialdom will reorder its twisted priorities. The deadly
Marburg virus (nine of ten people afflicted die) now spreading slowly in
Angola is another wake-up call for our country to change its priorities
from continually adding to the largest major weapons arsenal in world
history (nuclear submarines, aircraft carriers, missiles, planes, etc.)
and moving to life-saving and health-preserving investments for prevention
before vaccines are needed.
It is time to know the names of the scientists already working on this
great venture for health and hear them out.
Hear ye, media!
The lesson 2 Tim 2: 8-15 which I had the privilege to read 10-10-04 features:
14 ... charge [people] solemnly before God to stop
disputing about mere words; it does no good, and is the ruin of those who
listen.
15 Try hard to show yourself worthy of God's approval, as
a labourer who need not be ashamed; be straightforward in your proclamation
of the truth.
Apply this to the popular PC method of refusing communication: you
have used words, e.g. 'wimp', 'PC', 'homX', which they define as obscene
and a sufficient excuse to refuse debate.
Many of these same PC operatives greatly value 'transgressivity' -
displays of condoms on TV, in art galleries, etc; laungauge designed to
shock, e.g from a recent Rev G Cardy PC sermon:
For some God is a potent energy of ecstasy, or a deep rootedness of
being. These words, ecstasy and rooted, of course have sexual connotations
and I use them purposefully.
So 'rooted' is OK in a sermon - not too rude - whereas 'wimp'
is inherently so rude in conversation outside church that whoever utters it
must be ostracized. Ae we to believe that these people are on the level?
Why do they have such a blatant double standard?
Please keep in mind that what we are dealing with is a political
strategy as outlined by Kirk & Pill in 1989 (attached). The pretence that
PC is only about manners is thoroughly deceitful.
In a slightly related context, the very word 'evolution' is treated
by some fundies as if it were obscene - as if anyone who uses the word is
thereby revealing such disrespect for Christian conventions that s/he is
beneath contempt, beyond the pale, and certainly not entitled to be heard
for ideas.
My strong suspicion is that those who work these dishonest stunts
will continue to go to great lengths to evade discussion of their ideas.
How do we counter their evasiveness, apart from our quoting 2 Tim 2:14 ?
R
14 ... charge [people] solemnly before God to stop
disputing about mere words; it does no good, and is the ruin of those who
listen.
15 Try hard to show yourself worthy of God's approval, as
a labourer who need not be ashamed; be straightforward in your proclamation
of the truth.
Apply this to the popular PC method of refusing communication: you
have used words, e.g. 'wimp', 'PC', 'homX', which they define as obscene
and a sufficient excuse to refuse debate.
Many of these same PC operatives greatly value 'transgressivity' -
displays of condoms on TV, in art galleries, etc; laungauge designed to
shock, e.g from a recent Rev G Cardy PC sermon:
For some God is a potent energy of ecstasy, or a deep rootedness of
being. These words, ecstasy and rooted, of course have sexual connotations
and I use them purposefully.
So 'rooted' is OK in a sermon - not too rude - whereas 'wimp'
is inherently so rude in conversation outside church that whoever utters it
must be ostracized. Ae we to believe that these people are on the level?
Why do they have such a blatant double standard?
Please keep in mind that what we are dealing with is a political
strategy as outlined by Kirk & Pill in 1989 (attached). The pretence that
PC is only about manners is thoroughly deceitful.
In a slightly related context, the very word 'evolution' is treated
by some fundies as if it were obscene - as if anyone who uses the word is
thereby revealing such disrespect for Christian conventions that s/he is
beneath contempt, beyond the pale, and certainly not entitled to be heard
for ideas.
My strong suspicion is that those who work these dishonest stunts
will continue to go to great lengths to evade discussion of their ideas.
How do we counter their evasiveness, apart from our quoting 2 Tim 2:14 ?
R
Sometimes we just need to be reminded!
A well-known speaker started off his seminar by holding up a $20 bill.
In the room of 200, he asked, "Who would like this $20 bill?"
Hands started going up.
He said, "I am going to give this $20 to one of you ; but first, let me do
this.
He proceeded to crumple up the $20 dollar bill.
He then asked, "Who still wants it?"
Still the hands were up in the air.
Well, he replied, "What if I do this?"
And he dropped it on the ground and started to grind it into the
floor with his shoe.
He picked it up, now crumpled and dirty.
"Now, who still wants it?"
Still the hands went into the air.
"My friends, we have all learned a very valuable lesson.
No matter what I did to the money, you still wanted it because it did
not decrease in value.
It was still worth $20.
Many times in our lives, we are dropped, crumpled, and ground into the
dirt by the decisions we make and the circumstances that come our way.
We feel as though we are worthless.
But no matter what has happened or what will happen, you will never
lose your value.
Dirty or clean, crumpled or finely creased, you are still priceless
to those who DO LOVE you. The worth of our lives comes not in what we
do or who we know, but by WHO WE ARE.
You are special - Don't EVER forget it."
If you do not pass this on, you may never know the lives it touches, the
hurting hearts it speaks to, or the hope that it can bring.
Count your blessings, not your problems.
And remember: amateurs built the ark ...
professionals built the Titanic.
If God brings you to it - He will bring you through it.
A well-known speaker started off his seminar by holding up a $20 bill.
In the room of 200, he asked, "Who would like this $20 bill?"
Hands started going up.
He said, "I am going to give this $20 to one of you ; but first, let me do
this.
He proceeded to crumple up the $20 dollar bill.
He then asked, "Who still wants it?"
Still the hands were up in the air.
Well, he replied, "What if I do this?"
And he dropped it on the ground and started to grind it into the
floor with his shoe.
He picked it up, now crumpled and dirty.
"Now, who still wants it?"
Still the hands went into the air.
"My friends, we have all learned a very valuable lesson.
No matter what I did to the money, you still wanted it because it did
not decrease in value.
It was still worth $20.
Many times in our lives, we are dropped, crumpled, and ground into the
dirt by the decisions we make and the circumstances that come our way.
We feel as though we are worthless.
But no matter what has happened or what will happen, you will never
lose your value.
Dirty or clean, crumpled or finely creased, you are still priceless
to those who DO LOVE you. The worth of our lives comes not in what we
do or who we know, but by WHO WE ARE.
You are special - Don't EVER forget it."
If you do not pass this on, you may never know the lives it touches, the
hurting hearts it speaks to, or the hope that it can bring.
Count your blessings, not your problems.
And remember: amateurs built the ark ...
professionals built the Titanic.
If God brings you to it - He will bring you through it.
Bill Would Bar Obesity Lawsuits
As your attorney, I advise you to lay off those french fries.
Bill Would Bar Obesity Lawsuits
April 14, 2005 — By R.A. Dyer, Fort Worth Star-Telegram
AUSTIN — As your attorney, I advise you to lay off those french fries.
That's the message from state Rep. Corbin Van Arsdale, a Houston-area lawmaker who has drafted legislation that will bar lawyers (and their fast-food loving clients) from winning legal judgments because they get fat.
"This basically is supposed to shield folks who sell food, or raise animals that are made into food ... from having to defend themselves against lawsuits ... over obesity claims from over-eating," said Van Arsdale, R-Tomball.
In other words, if you eat too much fast food and get fat -- don't bother suing McDonalds over it. Van Arsdale's legislation will protect fast-food restaurants, farming interests and grocery stores from liability in such cases.
The measure, House Bill 107, is pending in the House Civil Practices Committee. About 15 other states have passed similar bills.
To see more of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.dfw.com. Copyright (c) 2005, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.
Its onboard computers will require 3.5 million lines of code [Catch-all] -
GEA - gormfach@gmail.com @ 06:18:42 PM
LOCKHEED AND THE FUTURE OF WARFARE
TIM WEINER
New York Times
November 28, 2004
Lockheed Martin doesn't run the United States. But it does help run a
breathtakingly big part of it.
Over the last decade, Lockheed, the nation's largest military contractor,
has built a formidable information-technology empire that now stretches
from the Pentagon to the post office. It sorts your mail and totals your
taxes. It cuts Social Security checks and counts the United States census.
It runs space flights and monitors air traffic. To make all that happen,
Lockheed writes more computer code than Microsoft.
Of course, Lockheed, based in Bethesda, Maryland, is best known for its
weapons, which are the heart of America's arsenal. It builds most of the
nation's warplanes. It creates rockets for nuclear missiles, sensors for
spy satellites and scores of other military and intelligence systems. The
Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency might have difficulty
functioning without the contractor's expertise.
But in the post-9/11 world, Lockheed has become more than just the biggest
corporate cog in what Dwight D. Eisenhower called the military-industrial
complex. It is increasingly putting its stamp on the nation's military
policies, too.
Lockheed stands at "the intersection of policy and technology," and that
"is really a very interesting place to me," said its new chief executive,
Robert J. Stevens, a tightly wound former Marine. "We are deployed
entirely in developing daunting technology," he said, and that requires
"thinking through the policy dimensions of national security as well as
technological dimensions."
To critics, however, Lockheed's deep ties with the Pentagon raise some
questions. "It's impossible to tell where the government ends and Lockheed
begins," said Danielle Brian of the Project on Government Oversight, a
nonprofit group in Washington that monitors government contracts. "The fox
isn't guarding the henhouse. He lives there."
No contractor is in a better position than Lockheed to do business in
Washington. Nearly 80% of its revenue comes from the United States
government. Most of the rest comes from foreign military sales, many
financed with tax dollars. And former Lockheed executives, lobbyists and
lawyers hold crucial posts at the White House and the Pentagon, picking
weapons and setting policies.
Obviously, war and crisis have been good for business. The Pentagon's
budget for buying new weapons rose by about a third over the last three
years, to $81 billion in fiscal 2004, up from $60 billion in 2001.
Lockheed's sales also rose by about a third, to nearly $32 billion in the
2003 calendar year, from $24 billion in 2001. It was the No. 1 recipient of
Pentagon primary contracts, with $21.9 billion in fiscal 2003. Boeing had
$17.3 billion, Northrop Grumman had $11.1 billion and General Dynamics had
$8.2 billion.
Lockheed also has many tens of billions of dollars in future orders on its
books. The company's stock has tripled in the last four years, to just
under $60.
"It used to be just an airplane company," said John Pike, a longtime
military analyst and director of GlobalSecurity.org, a research
organization in Alexandria, Virginia. "Now it's a warfare company. It's an
integrated solution provider. It's a one-stop shop. Anything you need to
kill the enemy, they will sell you."
As its influence grows, Lockheed is not just seeking to solve the problems
of national security. It is framing the questions as well:
Are there too few soldiers to secure the farthest reaches of Iraq? Lockheed
is creating robot soldiers and neural software --- "intelligent agents" ---
to do their work. "We've now created policy options where you can elect to
put a human in or you can elect to put an intelligent agent in place," Mr.
Stevens said.
Are thousands of C.I.A. and Pentagon analysts drowning under a flood of
data, incapable of seeing patterns? Lockheed's "intelligence information
factory" will do their thinking for them. Mining and sifting categories of
facts --- for example, linking an adversary's movements and telephone calls
--- would "offload the mental work by making connections," said Stanton D.
Sloane, executive vice president for integrated systems and solutions at
Lockheed.
Are American soldiers hard-pressed to tell friend from foe in the crags of
Afghanistan? Lockheed is transferring spy satellite technology, created for
mapping mountain ridges, to build a mobile lab for reading fingerprints.
Lockheed executives say the mobile lab, the size of a laptop, is just the
tool for special-operations commandos. It can be loaded with the prints of
suspected terrorists, they say, and linked to the F.B.I.'s 470 million
print files. They say they think that American police departments will want
it, too.
Does the Department of Homeland Security have the best tools to protect the
nation? Lockheed has a host of military and intelligence technologies to
offer. "What they do for the military in downtown Falluja, they can do for
the police in downtown Reno," said Jondavid Black of the company's
Horizontal Integration Vision division. Lockheed is also building a huge
high-altitude airship, 25 times bigger than the Goodyear blimp, intended to
help the Pentagon with the unsolved problem of protecting the nation from
ballistic missiles. The airship, with two tons of surveillance sensors,
could be used by the Department of Homeland Security to stare down at the
United States, Lockheed officials said.
In a pilot program for the department, Lockheed has set up spy cameras and
sensors on the U.S.S. New Jersey, anchored in the Delaware River, providing
24-hour surveillance of the ports of Philadelphia and Camden, New Jersey.
The program grew out of the Aegis weapons and surveillance systems for Navy
ships, and it soon may spread throughout the United States.
The melding of military and intelligence programs, information-technology
and domestic security spending began in earnest after the September 11
attacks. Lockheed was perfectly positioned to take advantage of the shift.
When the United States government decided a decade ago to let corporate
America handle federal information technology, Lockheed leapt at the
opportunity. Its information-technology sales have quadrupled since 1995,
and, for all those years, Lockheed has been the No. 1 supplier to the
federal government, which now outsources 83% of its I.T. work.
Lockheed has taken over the job of making data flow throughout the
government, from the F.B.I.'s long-dysfunctional computer networks to the
Department of Health and Human Services system for tracking child support.
The company just won a $525 million contract to fix the Social Security
Administration's information systems. It has an $87 million contract to
make computers communicate and secrets stream throughout the Department of
Homeland Security.
On top of all that, the company is helping to rebuild the United States
Coast Guard --- a $17 billion program --- and to supply, under the Patriot
Act, biometric identity cards for six million Americans who work in
transportation.
Lockheed is also the strongest corporate force driving the Pentagon's plans
for "net-centric warfare": the big idea of fusing military, intelligence
and weapons programs through a new military Internet, called the Global
Information Grid, to give American soldiers throughout the world an instant
picture of the battlefield around them. "We want to know what's going on
anytime, anyplace on the planet," said Lorraine M. Martin, vice president
and deputy of the company's Joint Command, Control and Communications
Systems division.
Lockheed's global reach is also growing. Its "critical mass" of
salesmanship lets it "produce global products for a global marketplace,"
said Robert H. Trice Jr., the senior vice president for corporate business
development. With its dominant position in fighter jets, missiles, rockets
and other weapons, Lockheed's technology will drive the security spending
for many American allies in coming decades. Lockheed now sells aircraft and
weapons to more than 40 countries. The American taxpayer is financing many
of those sales. For example, Israel spends much of the $1.8 billion in
annual military aid from the United States to buy F-16 warplanes from
Lockheed.
Twenty-four nations are flying the F-16, or will be soon. Lockheed's
factory in Fort Worth is building ten for Chile. Oman will receive a dozen
next year. Poland will get 48 in 2006; the United States Treasury will
cover the cost through a $3.8 billion loan.
In the future, Lockheed hopes to build and sell hundreds of billions of
dollars' worth of the next generation of warplanes, the F-35, to the United
States Army, Navy and Air Force, and to dozens of United States allies.
Three years ago, Lockheed won the competition to be the prime contractor
for this aircraft, known as the Joint Strike Fighter.
The program was valued at $200 billion, the biggest Pentagon project in
history, but it may be worth more. The F-35 is in its first stages of
development in Fort Worth; its onboard computers will require 3.5 million
lines of code. Each of the American military services wants a different
version of the jet.
There have been glitches involving the weight of the craft. "We did not get
it right the first time," said Tom Burbage, a Lockheed executive vice
president working on the program. But a day will come, he said, "when
everybody's flying the F-35." Lockheed hopes to sell 4,000 or 5,000 of the
planes, with roughly half the sales to foreign nations, including those
that bought the F-16.
"It's a terrific opportunity for us," said Bob Elrod, a senior Lockheed
manager for the F-35 program. "It could be a tremendous success, at the
level of the F-16 --- 4,000-plus and growing." That would represent "world
domination" for Lockheed, he said.
In the United States, where national security spending now surpasses $500
billion a year, Lockheed's dominance is growing. Its own executives say the
concentration of power among military contractors is more intense than in
any other sector of business outside banking. Three or four major companies
--- Lockheed, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman and arguably Boeing ---
rule the industry. They often work like general contractors building
customized houses, farming out the painting, the floors and the cabinets to
smaller subcontractors and taking their own share of the money.
AND, after 9/11, cost is hardly the most important variable for Pentagon
planners. Lockheed has now won approval to build as many F-22's as
possible. The current price, $258 million apiece, easily makes the F-22 the
most expensive fighter jet in history.
Mr. Stevens, whose compensation last year as Lockheed's chief operating
officer was more than $9.5 million, says cost is essentially irrelevant
when national security is at stake. "Some folks might think, well, here's a
fighter that costs a lot," he said. "This is not a business where in the
purest economical sense there's a broad market of supply and demand and
price and value can be determined in that exchange. It's more challenging
to define its value."
Lockheed says it has transformed its corporate culture. In the 1970's, it
was discovered that the company had paid millions of dollars to foreign
officials around the world in order to sell its planes. In one case, Kakuei
Tanaka, who had been the prime minister of Japan, was convicted of
accepting bribes.
"Without Lockheed, there never would have been a Foreign Corrupt Practices
Act," said Jerome Levinson, who was the staff director of the Senate
subcommittee that uncovered the bribery.
The antibribery provisions of that law, passed in 1977, owed their
existence to the Lockheed investigation, he said. The last bribery case
involving Lockheed came a decade ago, when a Lockheed executive and the
corporation admitted paying $1.2 million in bribes to an Egyptian official
to seal the sales of three Lockheed C-130 cargo planes.
Mr. Trice, Lockheed's senior vice president for business development, says
the company cleaned up its act at home and overseas since the last of the
series of major mergers and acquisitions that gave the corporation its
present shape in March 1995. "You simply have to look people in the eye and
say 'we don't do business that way,' " he said.
There really is no need to do business that way any more --- not in a world
where so much of Lockheed's wealth flows directly from the Treasury, where
competition for foreign markets is both controlled and subsidized by the
White House and Congress, and where Lockheed's influence runs so deep. Men
who have worked, lobbied and lawyered for Lockheed hold the posts of
secretary of the Navy, secretary of transportation, director of the
national nuclear weapons complex and director of the national spy satellite
agency. The list also includes Stephen J. Hadley, who has been named the
next national security adviser to the president, succeeding Condoleezza
Rice.
Former Lockheed executives serve on the Defense Policy Board, the Defense
Science Board and the Homeland Security Advisory Council, which help make
military and intelligence policy and pick weapons for future battles.
Lockheed's board includes E. C. Aldridge Jr., who, as the Pentagon's chief
weapons buyer, gave the go-ahead to build the F-22.
None of those posts and positions violate the Pentagon's rules about the
"revolving door" between industry and government. Lockheed has stayed clear
of the kind of conflict-of-interest cases that have afflicted its
competitor, Boeing, and the Air Force in recent months.
"We need to be politically aware and astute," Mr. Stevens said. "We work
with the Congress. We work with the executive branch." In these dialogues,
he said, Lockheed's end of the conversation is "saying we think this is
feasible, we think this is possible, we think we might have invented a new
approach."
Lockheed makes about $1 million a year in campaign contributions through
political action committees, singling out members of the Congressional
committees controlling the Pentagon's budget, and spends many millions more
on lobbying. Political stalwarts who have lobbied for Lockheed at one point
or another include Haley Barbour, the governor of Mississippi and a former
Republican national chairman; Otto Reich, who persuaded Congress to sell
F-16's to Chile before becoming President Bush's main Latin America policy
aide in 2002; and Norman Y. Mineta, the transportation secretary and former
member of Congress.
Its connections give Lockheed a "tremendous opportunity to influence
contracts flowing to the company," said Ms. Brian of the Project on
Government Oversight. "More subtly valuable is the ability of the company
to benefit from their eyes and ears inside the government, to know what's
on the horizon, what are the best bets for the government's future
technology needs."
SO who serves as the overseer for the biggest military contractors and
their costly weapons? Usually, the customer itself: the Pentagon.
"These programs are huge," said Dov S. Zakheim, the Pentagon's comptroller
and chief financial officer for the last three years, who recently joined
Booz Allen Hamilton, the consulting firm. "There is a historical tendency
to underestimate their test schedules, their technological hurdles, the
likely weight of an airplane and, as a result, to underestimate costs.
"Because you have so few contractors, you don't get the level of attention
that the average citizen would think would be devoted to a program costing
billions of dollars," he said. "With this massive agglomeration into a very
small number of companies, you get far less visibility as to whether the
subcontractors are effectively managed. Problems accumulate."
"Twenty years ago, the complaint was, it takes so long to build things," he
said. Weapons designed in the depths of the cold war were built long after
the Berlin Wall crumbled. That led some people, including George W. Bush
while running for president in 1999, to suggest that the Pentagon skip a
generation of weapons set to roll off the assembly line in this decade and
concentrate instead on lighter, faster, smarter systems for the future.
That didn't happen. It still takes two decades to build a major weapons
system, and the costs are still staggering.
"The complaints haven't changed 20 years later," Mr. Zakheim said. The
difference between then and now is the concentration of expertise,
experience and power in a few hands, he said, "and I don't think the effect
has necessarily been a good one."
Mr. Stevens rejected that criticism. "I can't tell you the number of times
I've heard 'not progressive, not sophisticated, ponderous, slow' " as terms
used to describe Lockheed, he said. "I see none of that."
What he sees is a far grander vision. Lockheed, he said, is promising to
transform the very nature of war. During the cold war, when Lockheed and
its component parts built an empire of nuclear weapons, Mr. Stevens said,
the watchword was: "Be more fearful. 'Deterrence,' isn't that Latin?
'Deterrere.' Induce fear. Terrorize."
Today, Lockheed is building weapons so smart that they can change the world
by virtue of their precision, he said; they aim to wage war without the
death of innocents, without weapons misfiring, without fatal
miscalculation.
"I know the fog of war exists," Mr. Stevens said, adding that it could be
lifted. "We envision a world where you don't have any more fratricide," no
more friendly fire, he said. "With technology we've been able to make
ourselves more secure and more humane.
"And we aren't there yet --- but we sure have pioneered the kind of work
that is taking us well along that trajectory. And there's a lot of evidence
that says we're doing well. And we're setting the bar high and we expect to
be able to do that. Now that's pretty exciting stuff.
"I don't say this lightly," he said. "Our industry has contributed to a
change in humankind."
TIM WEINER
New York Times
November 28, 2004
Lockheed Martin doesn't run the United States. But it does help run a
breathtakingly big part of it.
Over the last decade, Lockheed, the nation's largest military contractor,
has built a formidable information-technology empire that now stretches
from the Pentagon to the post office. It sorts your mail and totals your
taxes. It cuts Social Security checks and counts the United States census.
It runs space flights and monitors air traffic. To make all that happen,
Lockheed writes more computer code than Microsoft.
Of course, Lockheed, based in Bethesda, Maryland, is best known for its
weapons, which are the heart of America's arsenal. It builds most of the
nation's warplanes. It creates rockets for nuclear missiles, sensors for
spy satellites and scores of other military and intelligence systems. The
Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency might have difficulty
functioning without the contractor's expertise.
But in the post-9/11 world, Lockheed has become more than just the biggest
corporate cog in what Dwight D. Eisenhower called the military-industrial
complex. It is increasingly putting its stamp on the nation's military
policies, too.
Lockheed stands at "the intersection of policy and technology," and that
"is really a very interesting place to me," said its new chief executive,
Robert J. Stevens, a tightly wound former Marine. "We are deployed
entirely in developing daunting technology," he said, and that requires
"thinking through the policy dimensions of national security as well as
technological dimensions."
To critics, however, Lockheed's deep ties with the Pentagon raise some
questions. "It's impossible to tell where the government ends and Lockheed
begins," said Danielle Brian of the Project on Government Oversight, a
nonprofit group in Washington that monitors government contracts. "The fox
isn't guarding the henhouse. He lives there."
No contractor is in a better position than Lockheed to do business in
Washington. Nearly 80% of its revenue comes from the United States
government. Most of the rest comes from foreign military sales, many
financed with tax dollars. And former Lockheed executives, lobbyists and
lawyers hold crucial posts at the White House and the Pentagon, picking
weapons and setting policies.
Obviously, war and crisis have been good for business. The Pentagon's
budget for buying new weapons rose by about a third over the last three
years, to $81 billion in fiscal 2004, up from $60 billion in 2001.
Lockheed's sales also rose by about a third, to nearly $32 billion in the
2003 calendar year, from $24 billion in 2001. It was the No. 1 recipient of
Pentagon primary contracts, with $21.9 billion in fiscal 2003. Boeing had
$17.3 billion, Northrop Grumman had $11.1 billion and General Dynamics had
$8.2 billion.
Lockheed also has many tens of billions of dollars in future orders on its
books. The company's stock has tripled in the last four years, to just
under $60.
"It used to be just an airplane company," said John Pike, a longtime
military analyst and director of GlobalSecurity.org, a research
organization in Alexandria, Virginia. "Now it's a warfare company. It's an
integrated solution provider. It's a one-stop shop. Anything you need to
kill the enemy, they will sell you."
As its influence grows, Lockheed is not just seeking to solve the problems
of national security. It is framing the questions as well:
Are there too few soldiers to secure the farthest reaches of Iraq? Lockheed
is creating robot soldiers and neural software --- "intelligent agents" ---
to do their work. "We've now created policy options where you can elect to
put a human in or you can elect to put an intelligent agent in place," Mr.
Stevens said.
Are thousands of C.I.A. and Pentagon analysts drowning under a flood of
data, incapable of seeing patterns? Lockheed's "intelligence information
factory" will do their thinking for them. Mining and sifting categories of
facts --- for example, linking an adversary's movements and telephone calls
--- would "offload the mental work by making connections," said Stanton D.
Sloane, executive vice president for integrated systems and solutions at
Lockheed.
Are American soldiers hard-pressed to tell friend from foe in the crags of
Afghanistan? Lockheed is transferring spy satellite technology, created for
mapping mountain ridges, to build a mobile lab for reading fingerprints.
Lockheed executives say the mobile lab, the size of a laptop, is just the
tool for special-operations commandos. It can be loaded with the prints of
suspected terrorists, they say, and linked to the F.B.I.'s 470 million
print files. They say they think that American police departments will want
it, too.
Does the Department of Homeland Security have the best tools to protect the
nation? Lockheed has a host of military and intelligence technologies to
offer. "What they do for the military in downtown Falluja, they can do for
the police in downtown Reno," said Jondavid Black of the company's
Horizontal Integration Vision division. Lockheed is also building a huge
high-altitude airship, 25 times bigger than the Goodyear blimp, intended to
help the Pentagon with the unsolved problem of protecting the nation from
ballistic missiles. The airship, with two tons of surveillance sensors,
could be used by the Department of Homeland Security to stare down at the
United States, Lockheed officials said.
In a pilot program for the department, Lockheed has set up spy cameras and
sensors on the U.S.S. New Jersey, anchored in the Delaware River, providing
24-hour surveillance of the ports of Philadelphia and Camden, New Jersey.
The program grew out of the Aegis weapons and surveillance systems for Navy
ships, and it soon may spread throughout the United States.
The melding of military and intelligence programs, information-technology
and domestic security spending began in earnest after the September 11
attacks. Lockheed was perfectly positioned to take advantage of the shift.
When the United States government decided a decade ago to let corporate
America handle federal information technology, Lockheed leapt at the
opportunity. Its information-technology sales have quadrupled since 1995,
and, for all those years, Lockheed has been the No. 1 supplier to the
federal government, which now outsources 83% of its I.T. work.
Lockheed has taken over the job of making data flow throughout the
government, from the F.B.I.'s long-dysfunctional computer networks to the
Department of Health and Human Services system for tracking child support.
The company just won a $525 million contract to fix the Social Security
Administration's information systems. It has an $87 million contract to
make computers communicate and secrets stream throughout the Department of
Homeland Security.
On top of all that, the company is helping to rebuild the United States
Coast Guard --- a $17 billion program --- and to supply, under the Patriot
Act, biometric identity cards for six million Americans who work in
transportation.
Lockheed is also the strongest corporate force driving the Pentagon's plans
for "net-centric warfare": the big idea of fusing military, intelligence
and weapons programs through a new military Internet, called the Global
Information Grid, to give American soldiers throughout the world an instant
picture of the battlefield around them. "We want to know what's going on
anytime, anyplace on the planet," said Lorraine M. Martin, vice president
and deputy of the company's Joint Command, Control and Communications
Systems division.
Lockheed's global reach is also growing. Its "critical mass" of
salesmanship lets it "produce global products for a global marketplace,"
said Robert H. Trice Jr., the senior vice president for corporate business
development. With its dominant position in fighter jets, missiles, rockets
and other weapons, Lockheed's technology will drive the security spending
for many American allies in coming decades. Lockheed now sells aircraft and
weapons to more than 40 countries. The American taxpayer is financing many
of those sales. For example, Israel spends much of the $1.8 billion in
annual military aid from the United States to buy F-16 warplanes from
Lockheed.
Twenty-four nations are flying the F-16, or will be soon. Lockheed's
factory in Fort Worth is building ten for Chile. Oman will receive a dozen
next year. Poland will get 48 in 2006; the United States Treasury will
cover the cost through a $3.8 billion loan.
In the future, Lockheed hopes to build and sell hundreds of billions of
dollars' worth of the next generation of warplanes, the F-35, to the United
States Army, Navy and Air Force, and to dozens of United States allies.
Three years ago, Lockheed won the competition to be the prime contractor
for this aircraft, known as the Joint Strike Fighter.
The program was valued at $200 billion, the biggest Pentagon project in
history, but it may be worth more. The F-35 is in its first stages of
development in Fort Worth; its onboard computers will require 3.5 million
lines of code. Each of the American military services wants a different
version of the jet.
There have been glitches involving the weight of the craft. "We did not get
it right the first time," said Tom Burbage, a Lockheed executive vice
president working on the program. But a day will come, he said, "when
everybody's flying the F-35." Lockheed hopes to sell 4,000 or 5,000 of the
planes, with roughly half the sales to foreign nations, including those
that bought the F-16.
"It's a terrific opportunity for us," said Bob Elrod, a senior Lockheed
manager for the F-35 program. "It could be a tremendous success, at the
level of the F-16 --- 4,000-plus and growing." That would represent "world
domination" for Lockheed, he said.
In the United States, where national security spending now surpasses $500
billion a year, Lockheed's dominance is growing. Its own executives say the
concentration of power among military contractors is more intense than in
any other sector of business outside banking. Three or four major companies
--- Lockheed, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman and arguably Boeing ---
rule the industry. They often work like general contractors building
customized houses, farming out the painting, the floors and the cabinets to
smaller subcontractors and taking their own share of the money.
AND, after 9/11, cost is hardly the most important variable for Pentagon
planners. Lockheed has now won approval to build as many F-22's as
possible. The current price, $258 million apiece, easily makes the F-22 the
most expensive fighter jet in history.
Mr. Stevens, whose compensation last year as Lockheed's chief operating
officer was more than $9.5 million, says cost is essentially irrelevant
when national security is at stake. "Some folks might think, well, here's a
fighter that costs a lot," he said. "This is not a business where in the
purest economical sense there's a broad market of supply and demand and
price and value can be determined in that exchange. It's more challenging
to define its value."
Lockheed says it has transformed its corporate culture. In the 1970's, it
was discovered that the company had paid millions of dollars to foreign
officials around the world in order to sell its planes. In one case, Kakuei
Tanaka, who had been the prime minister of Japan, was convicted of
accepting bribes.
"Without Lockheed, there never would have been a Foreign Corrupt Practices
Act," said Jerome Levinson, who was the staff director of the Senate
subcommittee that uncovered the bribery.
The antibribery provisions of that law, passed in 1977, owed their
existence to the Lockheed investigation, he said. The last bribery case
involving Lockheed came a decade ago, when a Lockheed executive and the
corporation admitted paying $1.2 million in bribes to an Egyptian official
to seal the sales of three Lockheed C-130 cargo planes.
Mr. Trice, Lockheed's senior vice president for business development, says
the company cleaned up its act at home and overseas since the last of the
series of major mergers and acquisitions that gave the corporation its
present shape in March 1995. "You simply have to look people in the eye and
say 'we don't do business that way,' " he said.
There really is no need to do business that way any more --- not in a world
where so much of Lockheed's wealth flows directly from the Treasury, where
competition for foreign markets is both controlled and subsidized by the
White House and Congress, and where Lockheed's influence runs so deep. Men
who have worked, lobbied and lawyered for Lockheed hold the posts of
secretary of the Navy, secretary of transportation, director of the
national nuclear weapons complex and director of the national spy satellite
agency. The list also includes Stephen J. Hadley, who has been named the
next national security adviser to the president, succeeding Condoleezza
Rice.
Former Lockheed executives serve on the Defense Policy Board, the Defense
Science Board and the Homeland Security Advisory Council, which help make
military and intelligence policy and pick weapons for future battles.
Lockheed's board includes E. C. Aldridge Jr., who, as the Pentagon's chief
weapons buyer, gave the go-ahead to build the F-22.
None of those posts and positions violate the Pentagon's rules about the
"revolving door" between industry and government. Lockheed has stayed clear
of the kind of conflict-of-interest cases that have afflicted its
competitor, Boeing, and the Air Force in recent months.
"We need to be politically aware and astute," Mr. Stevens said. "We work
with the Congress. We work with the executive branch." In these dialogues,
he said, Lockheed's end of the conversation is "saying we think this is
feasible, we think this is possible, we think we might have invented a new
approach."
Lockheed makes about $1 million a year in campaign contributions through
political action committees, singling out members of the Congressional
committees controlling the Pentagon's budget, and spends many millions more
on lobbying. Political stalwarts who have lobbied for Lockheed at one point
or another include Haley Barbour, the governor of Mississippi and a former
Republican national chairman; Otto Reich, who persuaded Congress to sell
F-16's to Chile before becoming President Bush's main Latin America policy
aide in 2002; and Norman Y. Mineta, the transportation secretary and former
member of Congress.
Its connections give Lockheed a "tremendous opportunity to influence
contracts flowing to the company," said Ms. Brian of the Project on
Government Oversight. "More subtly valuable is the ability of the company
to benefit from their eyes and ears inside the government, to know what's
on the horizon, what are the best bets for the government's future
technology needs."
SO who serves as the overseer for the biggest military contractors and
their costly weapons? Usually, the customer itself: the Pentagon.
"These programs are huge," said Dov S. Zakheim, the Pentagon's comptroller
and chief financial officer for the last three years, who recently joined
Booz Allen Hamilton, the consulting firm. "There is a historical tendency
to underestimate their test schedules, their technological hurdles, the
likely weight of an airplane and, as a result, to underestimate costs.
"Because you have so few contractors, you don't get the level of attention
that the average citizen would think would be devoted to a program costing
billions of dollars," he said. "With this massive agglomeration into a very
small number of companies, you get far less visibility as to whether the
subcontractors are effectively managed. Problems accumulate."
"Twenty years ago, the complaint was, it takes so long to build things," he
said. Weapons designed in the depths of the cold war were built long after
the Berlin Wall crumbled. That led some people, including George W. Bush
while running for president in 1999, to suggest that the Pentagon skip a
generation of weapons set to roll off the assembly line in this decade and
concentrate instead on lighter, faster, smarter systems for the future.
That didn't happen. It still takes two decades to build a major weapons
system, and the costs are still staggering.
"The complaints haven't changed 20 years later," Mr. Zakheim said. The
difference between then and now is the concentration of expertise,
experience and power in a few hands, he said, "and I don't think the effect
has necessarily been a good one."
Mr. Stevens rejected that criticism. "I can't tell you the number of times
I've heard 'not progressive, not sophisticated, ponderous, slow' " as terms
used to describe Lockheed, he said. "I see none of that."
What he sees is a far grander vision. Lockheed, he said, is promising to
transform the very nature of war. During the cold war, when Lockheed and
its component parts built an empire of nuclear weapons, Mr. Stevens said,
the watchword was: "Be more fearful. 'Deterrence,' isn't that Latin?
'Deterrere.' Induce fear. Terrorize."
Today, Lockheed is building weapons so smart that they can change the world
by virtue of their precision, he said; they aim to wage war without the
death of innocents, without weapons misfiring, without fatal
miscalculation.
"I know the fog of war exists," Mr. Stevens said, adding that it could be
lifted. "We envision a world where you don't have any more fratricide," no
more friendly fire, he said. "With technology we've been able to make
ourselves more secure and more humane.
"And we aren't there yet --- but we sure have pioneered the kind of work
that is taking us well along that trajectory. And there's a lot of evidence
that says we're doing well. And we're setting the bar high and we expect to
be able to do that. Now that's pretty exciting stuff.
"I don't say this lightly," he said. "Our industry has contributed to a
change in humankind."
I rec'd this, as one does, of unclear provenance:
>An English professor wrote the words: "WOMAN WITHOUT HER MAN IS NOTHING"
>on the blackboard, and directed the students to punctuate it correctly.
>
>The men wrote: "Woman, WITHOUT HER MAN, is nothing."
>
>The women wrote: "WOMAN!! WITHOUT HER, man is nothing!"
My comment is that there's no conflict (tho' I fear some wish to
see this cameo as implying contradiction).
R
>An English professor wrote the words: "WOMAN WITHOUT HER MAN IS NOTHING"
>on the blackboard, and directed the students to punctuate it correctly.
>
>The men wrote: "Woman, WITHOUT HER MAN, is nothing."
>
>The women wrote: "WOMAN!! WITHOUT HER, man is nothing!"
My comment is that there's no conflict (tho' I fear some wish to
see this cameo as implying contradiction).
R
04/10/05
>>Tough Love vs. Spanking
>>
>>Most of America's populace thinks it very improper to spank
>>children, so my spouse and I have tried other methods to control
>>our kids when they have one of those "junior moments". One which we
>>found very effective is for me to just take the child for a car ride
>>and talk. They usually calm down and stop misbehaving
>>after our little car ride together. I've included the photo below of
>>one of my sessions with our son in case you would like to use the
>>technique.
>>
>>It's very effective!
<>
>That is priceless. I will send it on to others. I recall the story of
>the small boy, who, on entering a toy store climbed onto a rocking horse
>and refused to get off. Despite everything the mother and father could
>do from threats to bribes, the child remained immovable and screamed with
>rage when his father attempted to remove him by force. At that
>moment an assistant came up. "Don't worry sir" he said in calming tones
>"I'll call our store psychiatrist". The psychiatrist came, summed up
>the situation at a glance, walked up to the child and whispered
>something in his ear. Promptly the child dismounted, went up to his
>parents and said "I'm ready to go home now".
>The father was deeply impressed. He asked the psychiatrist what it
>was that he had said. The psychiatrist replied "I didn't spend 6 years
>obtaining a medical degree and gaining my ability to communicate for
>nothing. I am not sharing my secrets with you or anyone else". The
>father pleaded earnestly, saying that life in his home had become
>unbearable and that if only the psychiatrist could take pity on him he
>would be eternally grateful. When the father became tearful and and
>desperate the psychiatrist decided to take pity on him. "Will you
>promise never to reveal this information to a living soul?"" "Of course"
>said the father. "I said to your son
'If you don't get off that horse I 'll beat your head in and spread your
brains around this shop'".
This rings less true, and is I suggest less suitable, than
something more realistic threatening normal smacking such as the father
should have established as the recourse against persistent defiance - and
if the father has defaulted in the past, as the facts imply, he should try
now to establish, better late than never, suitable discipline. Smacking
will evidently be needed. A few bursts of pain in the short run will
prevent real violence later - by &/or on the spoilt brat.
Lurid bikie/criminal/Hollywood ultraviolence images have little
valid role. I query whether they will be as likely to work; a child who
can recognise a non-credible threat as a bluff is less likely to yield.
Threaten what you are ready & willing to deliver. If it has been delivered
in the past, the threat will probably suffice this time; if not (as appears
to be the case in this example), better make a start.
The sporadic feminazi campaign to create a new criminal offence -
corporal punishment on your own child in your own home - is being
cautiously pushed by Phil Goff on behalf of the sisterhood that he denies
controls the "Labour" caucus. We are talking *education* ... for a
while ...
>And the moral of the story is: Don't reveal your best secrets to
>strangers!
well, that's one moral ...
SHOULD SPANKING BE PROHIBITED ?
Robert Mann
slightly revised from NZ Herald 5-11-97
Television news reported early November that a New Zealander had stopped selling videotapes of children being strapped as discipline. The prime objection suggested on TV to have stopped him was from unidentified agencies saying "it tends to legitimise violence", as if any physical discipline must be always wrong.
This is only the latest of attempts to ban spanking. In order to appraise this advocacy, we rely on beliefs about nothing less important than human nature. One young neighbour of mine, a doting first-time parent, gushed to me "a child comes into the world perfect, and our duty is not to interfere with its blossoming". Stan Freberg spoofed this attitude in his song 'That's My Boy' - remember the cooing line "look at him load that gun!"? Whatever else you may think of Freud, I hope you will prefer his more realistic slogan: "the arrival of a baby in a household constitutes a barbarian invasion".
If you see your toddler across the room about to electrocute or scald itself, too far away for you to restrain the child physically, do you or do you not want the child to obey your command at a distance? If that child is to act safely (contrary to its own ignorant inquisitive impulse at the time), it will have to freeze or take evasive action in direct, blind, trusting obedience to your order. A clear example of such a life-saving relationship is recounted by Catherine Caughey in her autobiography 'World Wanderer'. Her sister when 3 was ordered at a distance to freeze, so that a deadly snake glided on past the child rather than attacking as movement would probably have provoked.
I contend that adults owe children such previous conditioning as will cause obedience in such emergencies.
What background must have been established between you and the child in order for that obedience to be forthcoming when required? In general, the previous history of the child will have included many probings of limits, which were of course met in the first instance by verbal prohibitions. Indeed, the selfish (if not barbarian!) will of the child is asserted long before it can understand or utter language; this early period is a window of opportunity for parents to link their verbal tone with physical penalties.
As the child escalated defiance on previous occasions, after one or two stages of to-&-fro a stage arrived when the parent (or guardian) either used physical force on the child to assert due authority or allowed the child’s will to prevail. If the child has always been allowed the last word or action, then the child will likely assume the emergency sketched above to be just another opportunity for assertiveness, just another verbal joust in which s/he can expect to “win”. Unless a few previous experiences have convinced the child that an extreme ‘emergency command’ tone must be obeyed, the child will likely go ahead and maim or kill itself. Mere previous verbal exchanges will not have ensured the needed obedience.
The parent will thus have failed the child by failing to insist that the basis of running the world is the superior knowledge & wisdom which adults do, by & large, accumulate.
The criterion of the child’s personal safety, which I have relied upon in the above example, is of course not the whole story; other criteria also apply. A child's desires cannot be allowed to prevail always over the legitimate needs & desires of adults. I contend that adults owe children guidance on the limits of behaviour which constitute civilisation. Today over-indulged wilful children are hampering education by sabotaging schoolroom work just for ‘fun’, and the teachers no longer have available to them the recourse of corporal punishment to curb serious persistent antisocial behaviour. This is bad for the offenders, sooner or later, as well as everyone else involved.
Worse, Jane Ritchie has for some years been advocating the creation of a new crime: corporal punishment on your own child in your own home. Since starting this campaign, she has stated on national radio that she does not envisage any actual prosecutions if this crime were to get inserted on the statute book. She thus reveals a confused, if sincere, attitude to the law. It is no proper function of Parliament to pass laws which are not intended to be enforced.
Obviously, excessive force - let alone habitual brutality without any pretence at justice, as forced upon the child Kipling - must be deterred and punished where possible. But a reasonably considered smack is not at all like those excesses. It is the minimal violence which will prevent later, much worse, violence - some of it on innocent third parties such as those maimed in road crashes by selfish young drivers.
I emphasize the concept of minimising violence, as opposed to the stupid doomed trend to attempt abolition of violence. It does seem to me that the best we can hope for is to optimise violence. Actually, smacking as I define it is not violence at all - not being intended or likely to injure.
To assist choices between types of punishment, let us augment the proverb "sticks & stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me" with the wisdom of the (originally Samoan) proverb "the thrust of the spear may be parried but the hurtful word cuts to the bone".
Unfortunately these choices are being steadily restricted, even warped, by the gender war. By & large, a woman cannot prevail against a man in a physical fight, especially if in domestic circumstances and without weapons. WimminsLib has therefore pretended that justice will be served by exaggerating men's domestic violence (e.g. the biased 'Hitting Home' propaganda from the Ministry of Justice) and by purporting that verbal punishments can serve as the final enforcement mechanism for domestic order, instead of the sting of a few smacks.
On the traditional approach, the typical child’s upbringing will require a few well-chosen careful smacks which will cause no injury. These must be such that the child will understand (insofar as it is able) the justice involved, and will be treated throughout with evident stern love. Many of my friends agree that this type of upbringing served them very well; and they thank, rather than resent, their parents & teachers for it.
The Swedish blunder of prohibiting corporal punishment even in the home must not be copied here. And I urge that suitable arrangements be restored for teachers to use this method of discipline.
>>
>>Most of America's populace thinks it very improper to spank
>>children, so my spouse and I have tried other methods to control
>>our kids when they have one of those "junior moments". One which we
>>found very effective is for me to just take the child for a car ride
>>and talk. They usually calm down and stop misbehaving
>>after our little car ride together. I've included the photo below of
>>one of my sessions with our son in case you would like to use the
>>technique.
>>
>>It's very effective!
<
>That is priceless. I will send it on to others. I recall the story of
>the small boy, who, on entering a toy store climbed onto a rocking horse
>and refused to get off. Despite everything the mother and father could
>do from threats to bribes, the child remained immovable and screamed with
>rage when his father attempted to remove him by force. At that
>moment an assistant came up. "Don't worry sir" he said in calming tones
>"I'll call our store psychiatrist". The psychiatrist came, summed up
>the situation at a glance, walked up to the child and whispered
>something in his ear. Promptly the child dismounted, went up to his
>parents and said "I'm ready to go home now".
>The father was deeply impressed. He asked the psychiatrist what it
>was that he had said. The psychiatrist replied "I didn't spend 6 years
>obtaining a medical degree and gaining my ability to communicate for
>nothing. I am not sharing my secrets with you or anyone else". The
>father pleaded earnestly, saying that life in his home had become
>unbearable and that if only the psychiatrist could take pity on him he
>would be eternally grateful. When the father became tearful and and
>desperate the psychiatrist decided to take pity on him. "Will you
>promise never to reveal this information to a living soul?"" "Of course"
>said the father. "I said to your son
'If you don't get off that horse I 'll beat your head in and spread your
brains around this shop'".
This rings less true, and is I suggest less suitable, than
something more realistic threatening normal smacking such as the father
should have established as the recourse against persistent defiance - and
if the father has defaulted in the past, as the facts imply, he should try
now to establish, better late than never, suitable discipline. Smacking
will evidently be needed. A few bursts of pain in the short run will
prevent real violence later - by &/or on the spoilt brat.
Lurid bikie/criminal/Hollywood ultraviolence images have little
valid role. I query whether they will be as likely to work; a child who
can recognise a non-credible threat as a bluff is less likely to yield.
Threaten what you are ready & willing to deliver. If it has been delivered
in the past, the threat will probably suffice this time; if not (as appears
to be the case in this example), better make a start.
The sporadic feminazi campaign to create a new criminal offence -
corporal punishment on your own child in your own home - is being
cautiously pushed by Phil Goff on behalf of the sisterhood that he denies
controls the "Labour" caucus. We are talking *education* ... for a
while ...
>And the moral of the story is: Don't reveal your best secrets to
>strangers!
well, that's one moral ...
SHOULD SPANKING BE PROHIBITED ?
Robert Mann
slightly revised from NZ Herald 5-11-97
Television news reported early November that a New Zealander had stopped selling videotapes of children being strapped as discipline. The prime objection suggested on TV to have stopped him was from unidentified agencies saying "it tends to legitimise violence", as if any physical discipline must be always wrong.
This is only the latest of attempts to ban spanking. In order to appraise this advocacy, we rely on beliefs about nothing less important than human nature. One young neighbour of mine, a doting first-time parent, gushed to me "a child comes into the world perfect, and our duty is not to interfere with its blossoming". Stan Freberg spoofed this attitude in his song 'That's My Boy' - remember the cooing line "look at him load that gun!"? Whatever else you may think of Freud, I hope you will prefer his more realistic slogan: "the arrival of a baby in a household constitutes a barbarian invasion".
If you see your toddler across the room about to electrocute or scald itself, too far away for you to restrain the child physically, do you or do you not want the child to obey your command at a distance? If that child is to act safely (contrary to its own ignorant inquisitive impulse at the time), it will have to freeze or take evasive action in direct, blind, trusting obedience to your order. A clear example of such a life-saving relationship is recounted by Catherine Caughey in her autobiography 'World Wanderer'. Her sister when 3 was ordered at a distance to freeze, so that a deadly snake glided on past the child rather than attacking as movement would probably have provoked.
I contend that adults owe children such previous conditioning as will cause obedience in such emergencies.
What background must have been established between you and the child in order for that obedience to be forthcoming when required? In general, the previous history of the child will have included many probings of limits, which were of course met in the first instance by verbal prohibitions. Indeed, the selfish (if not barbarian!) will of the child is asserted long before it can understand or utter language; this early period is a window of opportunity for parents to link their verbal tone with physical penalties.
As the child escalated defiance on previous occasions, after one or two stages of to-&-fro a stage arrived when the parent (or guardian) either used physical force on the child to assert due authority or allowed the child’s will to prevail. If the child has always been allowed the last word or action, then the child will likely assume the emergency sketched above to be just another opportunity for assertiveness, just another verbal joust in which s/he can expect to “win”. Unless a few previous experiences have convinced the child that an extreme ‘emergency command’ tone must be obeyed, the child will likely go ahead and maim or kill itself. Mere previous verbal exchanges will not have ensured the needed obedience.
The parent will thus have failed the child by failing to insist that the basis of running the world is the superior knowledge & wisdom which adults do, by & large, accumulate.
The criterion of the child’s personal safety, which I have relied upon in the above example, is of course not the whole story; other criteria also apply. A child's desires cannot be allowed to prevail always over the legitimate needs & desires of adults. I contend that adults owe children guidance on the limits of behaviour which constitute civilisation. Today over-indulged wilful children are hampering education by sabotaging schoolroom work just for ‘fun’, and the teachers no longer have available to them the recourse of corporal punishment to curb serious persistent antisocial behaviour. This is bad for the offenders, sooner or later, as well as everyone else involved.
Worse, Jane Ritchie has for some years been advocating the creation of a new crime: corporal punishment on your own child in your own home. Since starting this campaign, she has stated on national radio that she does not envisage any actual prosecutions if this crime were to get inserted on the statute book. She thus reveals a confused, if sincere, attitude to the law. It is no proper function of Parliament to pass laws which are not intended to be enforced.
Obviously, excessive force - let alone habitual brutality without any pretence at justice, as forced upon the child Kipling - must be deterred and punished where possible. But a reasonably considered smack is not at all like those excesses. It is the minimal violence which will prevent later, much worse, violence - some of it on innocent third parties such as those maimed in road crashes by selfish young drivers.
I emphasize the concept of minimising violence, as opposed to the stupid doomed trend to attempt abolition of violence. It does seem to me that the best we can hope for is to optimise violence. Actually, smacking as I define it is not violence at all - not being intended or likely to injure.
To assist choices between types of punishment, let us augment the proverb "sticks & stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me" with the wisdom of the (originally Samoan) proverb "the thrust of the spear may be parried but the hurtful word cuts to the bone".
Unfortunately these choices are being steadily restricted, even warped, by the gender war. By & large, a woman cannot prevail against a man in a physical fight, especially if in domestic circumstances and without weapons. WimminsLib has therefore pretended that justice will be served by exaggerating men's domestic violence (e.g. the biased 'Hitting Home' propaganda from the Ministry of Justice) and by purporting that verbal punishments can serve as the final enforcement mechanism for domestic order, instead of the sting of a few smacks.
On the traditional approach, the typical child’s upbringing will require a few well-chosen careful smacks which will cause no injury. These must be such that the child will understand (insofar as it is able) the justice involved, and will be treated throughout with evident stern love. Many of my friends agree that this type of upbringing served them very well; and they thank, rather than resent, their parents & teachers for it.
The Swedish blunder of prohibiting corporal punishment even in the home must not be copied here. And I urge that suitable arrangements be restored for teachers to use this method of discipline.
03/27/05
I was pretty confident you'd know a lot about this case.
> Flight 800 was shot down by, or at least with the full knowledge -- and even
>fuller cooperation of -- the United States "Powers That Be". Call it
>"Government" if you must.
>
>The motive was the same as Oklahoma City, World Trade Center, and all the
>other highly-suspicious "terror" acts of recent history; namely to scare the
>crap out of Americans (and others) so that they would not only accept the
>ever-accelerating pace of destruction of human rights, but would welcome it;
>and not only welcome it, but DEMAND it.
> the attack on the World Trade Center was very
>carefully contrived and planned in such a way as to MINIMIZE casualties.
I agree with that last point. Why has it been so little mentioned?
>If Teri Shiavo is murdered, the Right To Life, the most fundamental of all
>God-given human rights, and the underlying basis of all the others, will
>informally cease.
That case is one of the more wonky recent USA aberrations. I
cannot admire Dubya's role in it.
> The Abortion Holocaust (to borrow a phrase of Randall
>Terry of Operation Rescue) has already technically destroyed the
>right-to-life, and the "assisted suicide" antics of Kevorkian has extended
>that destruction into the realm of mature adults. The Teri Shiavo case, if
>it goes to completion, will prove that the sexual and financial desires of
>any disgruntled spouse (with money, of course) are more important than the
>life of a human being whose continued existence is deemed "inconvenient".
It would appear to be a v bold leap "forward" in several ways. The
fact that the spouse has been living with, and had a couple children with,
another woman ...
>Hey, I've got a great idea: We can vastly reduce the Public Health Expense
>by rounding up all the menal defectives whom no one wants anyway, put them
>in the back of a large truck, pretend to take them for a Sunday Drive, and
>divert the exhaust into the passenger compartment.. Who cares what happens
>to a bunch of cripples anyway? After that we can get to work on the niggers
>and the Jews.......
You've got that out of sequence. The method you describe was used
by the Einsatzgruppen to kill thousands of Jews e.g in the Baltic states.
>As for Flight 800, the missile was seen and reported by numerous
>eyewitnesses. Lies? You decide. I've seen pictures of the exhaust trail
>left by the missile. More lies? Who can say?
There is the v inconvenient problem that, for the past half-decade
at least, forgery of such images has been all too easy. To see such an
image is not to experience what used to be called 'photographic evidence';
the term has lost almost all its formerly powerful meaning.
Even accepting your general inference about USA authorities'
motives, that doesn't prove they actually did the shootdown. They may
welcome the result, but the act may have been done by others.
That latter possibility includes several sub-options e.g FBI knew
some gang was plotting the caper and stood by or even indirectly helped
them.
>The proof that the thing was nothing but a farce was the billion-dollar scam
>of retrieving the entire airplane, piece-by-piece, and painstakingly
>reassembling it in a huge hanger specially designed for this pointless but
>colorful endeavor. What a joke. They did this to demonstrate the great
>depth of their compassion for the slain, and the great magnitude of their
>determination to solve the mystery of Who or What caused that which they
>themselves so carefully contrived.
>
>We are standing on the brink of complete fulfillment of Biblical prophecy.
>It is indeed a privilege to be living in these times. Good luck.
I'm glad you can take it so optimistically.
cheers
R
>> AN INVESTIGATOR'S THOUGHTS ON TWA 800
>>
>> SAM SMITH
>> Undernews
>> March 23, 2005
>>
>> [Hugh Sprunt, intrepid independent investigator of the Clinton years, has
>> some cogent comments concerning TWA 800 on a bulletin board that still goes
>> under the name of Clinton Administration Scandals]
>>
>> HIGH SPRUNT - George Stephanopolous and Kerry have both stated (with no
>> follow-up from the mainstream media, real time or later) that the loss of
>> TWA 800 was not an accident. I recently learned that Dick Morris has
>> stated that the loss of TWA 800 was due to an "attack."
>>
>> Two things, among a great many, that indicate to me that TWA 800 was no
>> accident:
>>
>> 1. If the government claim about an electrical spark in the center wing
>> tank triggering the loss is correct, why has the government given the
>> airlines so many years to fix the problem (with at least one official
>> delay, I think the fix is now not required until 2012 or so). If frayed
>> insulation was an issue, wouldn't one expect more and more problems as
>> 747s aged?
>>
>> Indeed, if the government's finding on the TWA 800 loss was correct, one
>> could make a pretty good argument that 747s should have been grounded by
>> the FAA and the problem fixed immediately. I infer from this that the
>> airlines know the government finding is bogus and are complaisant at least
>> in part because the required fix will probably never take place (earlier
>> model 747s retire before the fix is required).
>>
>> 2. If there is a problem with an electrical spark detonating residual fuel
>> in the 747 [center wing tank] when the temperature at the departure airport
>> is hot, then why aren't 747s leaving from "hot" airports (such as in the
>> Middle East) blowing up?. . .
>>
>> When I did several segments of live commentary on TWA 800 (on FOX TV in
>> Dallas), starting the night of the crash and spanning about three days I
>> mentioned three possibilities for the loss:
>>
>> 1. Bomb
>> 2. Missile
>> 3. Mechanical/Electrical/etc., failure or an accident of some kind.
>>
>> Arguing against bomb was the fact that the aircraft had not been in the air
>> very long when it crashed. The plane was going to Paris and, normally, a
>> bomb would be timed to go off when the plane was well away from the airport
>> (of course, the Lockerbie Pan Am crash took place over Scotland but that
>> plane had been in the air for quite some time; ditto the Air India crash).
>>
>> Arguing against missile was the fact that the size of the plane and its
>> altitude (around 13,800 feet as it turned out) meant that it was unlikely
>> that one hit from a Stinger type missile did the job --- the range was long
>> (but possible) for such a missile if it were fired at exactly the right
>> time from an ideal position on the surface in relation to the plane's
>> flight path, but the warhead is so small that it could not be expected to
>> bring down a 747. (Many two engine corporate jets have been hit by such
>> missiles in Africa; they typically lose an engine but fly on for some
>> distance to the nearest airport).
>>
>> Of course, a "lucky hit" is always possible. A somewhat larger missile
>> (pedestal mounted SAM for example) was a possibility, but there aren't many
>> of those floating around the world in the hands of the bad guys (compared
>> to Stingers and the Soviet equivalent, the Strela, etc.).
>>
>> Arguing against some sort of accident or mechanical failure is the fact
>> that large modern airliners (not taking off and not landing) in good
>> weather (too clear for a mid air collision to be even normally unlikely)
>> just do not blow up on their own, especially airplane types that have been
>> in service for a number of years and have a track record of not
>> spontaneously blowing up in flight, especially in calm weather and not
>> maneuvering.
>>
>> Early on I thought the odds favored bomb, missile, and finally
>> mechanical/electrical/accident of some kind in that order.
>>
>> As the data has come in after the crash, I have come to believe missile and
>> the scenario in Jack Cashill's book [see below] is the best and most
>> complete I have seen in terms of taking into account all the data
>> (including witness data). That said, it is likely not totally correct in
>> every detail, just the best I've seen.
>>
>> Unlike the official findings in the Foster case, it would not surprise me
>> to have "the truth" about TWA 800 be admitted in an on-the-record way in
>> the next 5-10 years. Containment is getting tougher and there are a lot of
>> people pursuing this (FOIA, etc.).
>>
>> With any luck, I'll live long enough to read a reasonably accurate history
>> of the U.S. Government between 1992-2000.
>>
>> FIRST STRIKE:
>> TWA FLIGHT 800 AND THE ATTACK ON AMERICA
>> Jack Cashill, James Sanders
>>
>http://www
>>.amazon.com/exec/obidos/isbn=0785263543/progressivereviea/
>>
>> PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY For conspiracy buffs and skeptics alike, Cashill and
>> Sanders' reconstruction of the investigation into the July 1996 explosion
>> of TWA Flight 800 is a real page-turner. The authors. . . contend that the
>> U.S. government, from the White House to the NTSB, FBI and CIA,
>> systematically tried to obscure the real cause of the explosion with a
>> false theory of mechanical failure. The cover-up, the authors maintain,
>> was motivated by then-incumbent President Clinton, who decided that "only a
>> catastrophe. . . could prevent his reelection in November. He would not
>> let Flight 800 be that catastrophe."
>>
>> Cashill and Sanders make use of evidence from FBI witness summaries,
>> transcripts of agency meetings and reports, conflicting press coverage,
>> scientific data and their own interviews with witnesses and experts to
>> conclude that TWA Flight 800 was brought down by a Navy missile, whose
>> intended target was a terrorist plane on a collision course with the
>> passenger aircraft.
> Flight 800 was shot down by, or at least with the full knowledge -- and even
>fuller cooperation of -- the United States "Powers That Be". Call it
>"Government" if you must.
>
>The motive was the same as Oklahoma City, World Trade Center, and all the
>other highly-suspicious "terror" acts of recent history; namely to scare the
>crap out of Americans (and others) so that they would not only accept the
>ever-accelerating pace of destruction of human rights, but would welcome it;
>and not only welcome it, but DEMAND it.
> the attack on the World Trade Center was very
>carefully contrived and planned in such a way as to MINIMIZE casualties.
I agree with that last point. Why has it been so little mentioned?
>If Teri Shiavo is murdered, the Right To Life, the most fundamental of all
>God-given human rights, and the underlying basis of all the others, will
>informally cease.
That case is one of the more wonky recent USA aberrations. I
cannot admire Dubya's role in it.
> The Abortion Holocaust (to borrow a phrase of Randall
>Terry of Operation Rescue) has already technically destroyed the
>right-to-life, and the "assisted suicide" antics of Kevorkian has extended
>that destruction into the realm of mature adults. The Teri Shiavo case, if
>it goes to completion, will prove that the sexual and financial desires of
>any disgruntled spouse (with money, of course) are more important than the
>life of a human being whose continued existence is deemed "inconvenient".
It would appear to be a v bold leap "forward" in several ways. The
fact that the spouse has been living with, and had a couple children with,
another woman ...
>Hey, I've got a great idea: We can vastly reduce the Public Health Expense
>by rounding up all the menal defectives whom no one wants anyway, put them
>in the back of a large truck, pretend to take them for a Sunday Drive, and
>divert the exhaust into the passenger compartment.. Who cares what happens
>to a bunch of cripples anyway? After that we can get to work on the niggers
>and the Jews.......
You've got that out of sequence. The method you describe was used
by the Einsatzgruppen to kill thousands of Jews e.g in the Baltic states.
>As for Flight 800, the missile was seen and reported by numerous
>eyewitnesses. Lies? You decide. I've seen pictures of the exhaust trail
>left by the missile. More lies? Who can say?
There is the v inconvenient problem that, for the past half-decade
at least, forgery of such images has been all too easy. To see such an
image is not to experience what used to be called 'photographic evidence';
the term has lost almost all its formerly powerful meaning.
Even accepting your general inference about USA authorities'
motives, that doesn't prove they actually did the shootdown. They may
welcome the result, but the act may have been done by others.
That latter possibility includes several sub-options e.g FBI knew
some gang was plotting the caper and stood by or even indirectly helped
them.
>The proof that the thing was nothing but a farce was the billion-dollar scam
>of retrieving the entire airplane, piece-by-piece, and painstakingly
>reassembling it in a huge hanger specially designed for this pointless but
>colorful endeavor. What a joke. They did this to demonstrate the great
>depth of their compassion for the slain, and the great magnitude of their
>determination to solve the mystery of Who or What caused that which they
>themselves so carefully contrived.
>
>We are standing on the brink of complete fulfillment of Biblical prophecy.
>It is indeed a privilege to be living in these times. Good luck.
I'm glad you can take it so optimistically.
cheers
R
>> AN INVESTIGATOR'S THOUGHTS ON TWA 800
>>
>> SAM SMITH
>> Undernews
>> March 23, 2005
>>
>> [Hugh Sprunt, intrepid independent investigator of the Clinton years, has
>> some cogent comments concerning TWA 800 on a bulletin board that still goes
>> under the name of Clinton Administration Scandals]
>>
>> HIGH SPRUNT - George Stephanopolous and Kerry have both stated (with no
>> follow-up from the mainstream media, real time or later) that the loss of
>> TWA 800 was not an accident. I recently learned that Dick Morris has
>> stated that the loss of TWA 800 was due to an "attack."
>>
>> Two things, among a great many, that indicate to me that TWA 800 was no
>> accident:
>>
>> 1. If the government claim about an electrical spark in the center wing
>> tank triggering the loss is correct, why has the government given the
>> airlines so many years to fix the problem (with at least one official
>> delay, I think the fix is now not required until 2012 or so). If frayed
>> insulation was an issue, wouldn't one expect more and more problems as
>> 747s aged?
>>
>> Indeed, if the government's finding on the TWA 800 loss was correct, one
>> could make a pretty good argument that 747s should have been grounded by
>> the FAA and the problem fixed immediately. I infer from this that the
>> airlines know the government finding is bogus and are complaisant at least
>> in part because the required fix will probably never take place (earlier
>> model 747s retire before the fix is required).
>>
>> 2. If there is a problem with an electrical spark detonating residual fuel
>> in the 747 [center wing tank] when the temperature at the departure airport
>> is hot, then why aren't 747s leaving from "hot" airports (such as in the
>> Middle East) blowing up?. . .
>>
>> When I did several segments of live commentary on TWA 800 (on FOX TV in
>> Dallas), starting the night of the crash and spanning about three days I
>> mentioned three possibilities for the loss:
>>
>> 1. Bomb
>> 2. Missile
>> 3. Mechanical/Electrical/etc., failure or an accident of some kind.
>>
>> Arguing against bomb was the fact that the aircraft had not been in the air
>> very long when it crashed. The plane was going to Paris and, normally, a
>> bomb would be timed to go off when the plane was well away from the airport
>> (of course, the Lockerbie Pan Am crash took place over Scotland but that
>> plane had been in the air for quite some time; ditto the Air India crash).
>>
>> Arguing against missile was the fact that the size of the plane and its
>> altitude (around 13,800 feet as it turned out) meant that it was unlikely
>> that one hit from a Stinger type missile did the job --- the range was long
>> (but possible) for such a missile if it were fired at exactly the right
>> time from an ideal position on the surface in relation to the plane's
>> flight path, but the warhead is so small that it could not be expected to
>> bring down a 747. (Many two engine corporate jets have been hit by such
>> missiles in Africa; they typically lose an engine but fly on for some
>> distance to the nearest airport).
>>
>> Of course, a "lucky hit" is always possible. A somewhat larger missile
>> (pedestal mounted SAM for example) was a possibility, but there aren't many
>> of those floating around the world in the hands of the bad guys (compared
>> to Stingers and the Soviet equivalent, the Strela, etc.).
>>
>> Arguing against some sort of accident or mechanical failure is the fact
>> that large modern airliners (not taking off and not landing) in good
>> weather (too clear for a mid air collision to be even normally unlikely)
>> just do not blow up on their own, especially airplane types that have been
>> in service for a number of years and have a track record of not
>> spontaneously blowing up in flight, especially in calm weather and not
>> maneuvering.
>>
>> Early on I thought the odds favored bomb, missile, and finally
>> mechanical/electrical/accident of some kind in that order.
>>
>> As the data has come in after the crash, I have come to believe missile and
>> the scenario in Jack Cashill's book [see below] is the best and most
>> complete I have seen in terms of taking into account all the data
>> (including witness data). That said, it is likely not totally correct in
>> every detail, just the best I've seen.
>>
>> Unlike the official findings in the Foster case, it would not surprise me
>> to have "the truth" about TWA 800 be admitted in an on-the-record way in
>> the next 5-10 years. Containment is getting tougher and there are a lot of
>> people pursuing this (FOIA, etc.).
>>
>> With any luck, I'll live long enough to read a reasonably accurate history
>> of the U.S. Government between 1992-2000.
>>
>> FIRST STRIKE:
>> TWA FLIGHT 800 AND THE ATTACK ON AMERICA
>> Jack Cashill, James Sanders
>>
>
>>.amazon.com/exec/obidos/isbn=0785263543/progressivereviea/
>>
>> PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY For conspiracy buffs and skeptics alike, Cashill and
>> Sanders' reconstruction of the investigation into the July 1996 explosion
>> of TWA Flight 800 is a real page-turner. The authors. . . contend that the
>> U.S. government, from the White House to the NTSB, FBI and CIA,
>> systematically tried to obscure the real cause of the explosion with a
>> false theory of mechanical failure. The cover-up, the authors maintain,
>> was motivated by then-incumbent President Clinton, who decided that "only a
>> catastrophe. . . could prevent his reelection in November. He would not
>> let Flight 800 be that catastrophe."
>>
>> Cashill and Sanders make use of evidence from FBI witness summaries,
>> transcripts of agency meetings and reports, conflicting press coverage,
>> scientific data and their own interviews with witnesses and experts to
>> conclude that TWA Flight 800 was brought down by a Navy missile, whose
>> intended target was a terrorist plane on a collision course with the
>> passenger aircraft.
LITTLE BILL GATES BENEFITED FROM NOT HAVING A PC [Catch-all] -
GEA - gormfach@gmail.com @ 04:27:45 PM
ROBIN HAGEY
Los Angels Times
March 19, 2005
In a speech last month to the National Governors Assn., Bill Gates
proclaimed that our high schools are "obsolete," and he produced a list of
solutions to bring them into the 21st century --- among them, offering kids
a challenging college prep curriculum, ensuring that courses and projects
relate to their lives and making sure adults are around, pushing these kids
to succeed. Not the imaginative thinking one would expect from the man who
built one of the world's largest and most successful companies.
While Gates rightly focuses needed attention on minority and economically
disadvantaged students, he's completely missing the point when he spews
platitudes about improving our educational system. Our children are
failing across the board: minority students, poor students, middle- and
upper-class students. A significant contributor to that failure is the
very thing that has made Gates a rich man: the personal computer.
Now don't get me wrong. I'm not a Luddite, out to ban technology. Writing
this article was infinitely easier with the Internet at my fingertips, and
I can't imagine a world without e-mail. But watch teenagers and chances
are if they're doing homework, they're also sitting in front of a computer,
instant-messaging friends or playing a mind-numbing computer game.
In fact, a study of media habits of eight to 18-year-olds released this
month by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation found that homework has
become "a magnet for multi-tasking, with many young people failing to
devote the kind of single-minded attention for which their teachers might
hope."
According to the study, 61% of the youngsters surveyed said they do
something else, some or most of the time, while doing their homework.
There's nothing wrong with doing research online, but it makes kids lazy.
Do research at the library? Why bother when you can access dozens of
sources without moving from your desk? Copy notes on index cards?
What's wrong with cutting and pasting into a Microsoft Word document -
other than the fact that plagiarism has become a rampant problem on
campuses? And, BTW, LOL, why write in full sentences when the language of
instant-messaging will do?
Then there are those computer games. According to the Entertainment
Software Assn., U.S. computer and video game software sales grew four
percent in 2004 to $7.3 billion, more than doubling industry software sales
since 1996. In 2004, more than 248 million computer and video games were
sold, almost two games for every American household.
We're raising a generation of computer and computer game addicts who are
doomed to fail in school, not because the system is obsolete but simply
because it's a lot more fun, and a lot easier, to hang out on the computer
than it is to read "A Tale of Two Cities."
If Gates had been brought up in this kind of environment, what are the
chances he'd have had the focus and creativity to build a company like
Microsoft?
Of course, as a parent, it is my job to pull the plug on the computer.
It's something I do every day. But no matter what I do, my son and his
friends would sooner play a computer game than pick up a book or study.
So, Mr. Gates, instead of offering patently obvious solutions to our
educational system, how about encouraging our kids to shut off the computer
when they're supposed to be doing their homework? It might cost you ---
but I think you can afford it. I'm afraid our society can't afford the
price our kids are paying for this new lifestyle.
Robin Hagey is a writer in Thousand Oaks, California
Los Angels Times
March 19, 2005
In a speech last month to the National Governors Assn., Bill Gates
proclaimed that our high schools are "obsolete," and he produced a list of
solutions to bring them into the 21st century --- among them, offering kids
a challenging college prep curriculum, ensuring that courses and projects
relate to their lives and making sure adults are around, pushing these kids
to succeed. Not the imaginative thinking one would expect from the man who
built one of the world's largest and most successful companies.
While Gates rightly focuses needed attention on minority and economically
disadvantaged students, he's completely missing the point when he spews
platitudes about improving our educational system. Our children are
failing across the board: minority students, poor students, middle- and
upper-class students. A significant contributor to that failure is the
very thing that has made Gates a rich man: the personal computer.
Now don't get me wrong. I'm not a Luddite, out to ban technology. Writing
this article was infinitely easier with the Internet at my fingertips, and
I can't imagine a world without e-mail. But watch teenagers and chances
are if they're doing homework, they're also sitting in front of a computer,
instant-messaging friends or playing a mind-numbing computer game.
In fact, a study of media habits of eight to 18-year-olds released this
month by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation found that homework has
become "a magnet for multi-tasking, with many young people failing to
devote the kind of single-minded attention for which their teachers might
hope."
According to the study, 61% of the youngsters surveyed said they do
something else, some or most of the time, while doing their homework.
There's nothing wrong with doing research online, but it makes kids lazy.
Do research at the library? Why bother when you can access dozens of
sources without moving from your desk? Copy notes on index cards?
What's wrong with cutting and pasting into a Microsoft Word document -
other than the fact that plagiarism has become a rampant problem on
campuses? And, BTW, LOL, why write in full sentences when the language of
instant-messaging will do?
Then there are those computer games. According to the Entertainment
Software Assn., U.S. computer and video game software sales grew four
percent in 2004 to $7.3 billion, more than doubling industry software sales
since 1996. In 2004, more than 248 million computer and video games were
sold, almost two games for every American household.
We're raising a generation of computer and computer game addicts who are
doomed to fail in school, not because the system is obsolete but simply
because it's a lot more fun, and a lot easier, to hang out on the computer
than it is to read "A Tale of Two Cities."
If Gates had been brought up in this kind of environment, what are the
chances he'd have had the focus and creativity to build a company like
Microsoft?
Of course, as a parent, it is my job to pull the plug on the computer.
It's something I do every day. But no matter what I do, my son and his
friends would sooner play a computer game than pick up a book or study.
So, Mr. Gates, instead of offering patently obvious solutions to our
educational system, how about encouraging our kids to shut off the computer
when they're supposed to be doing their homework? It might cost you ---
but I think you can afford it. I'm afraid our society can't afford the
price our kids are paying for this new lifestyle.
Robin Hagey is a writer in Thousand Oaks, California
AN INVESTIGATOR'S THOUGHTS ON TWA 800
SAM SMITH
Undernews
March 23, 2005
[Hugh Sprunt, intrepid independent investigator of the Clinton years, has
some cogent comments concerning TWA 800 on a bulletin board that still goes
under the name of Clinton Administration Scandals]
HIGH SPRUNT - George Stephanopolous and Kerry have both stated (with no
follow-up from the mainstream media, real time or later) that the loss of
TWA 800 was not an accident. I recently learned that Dick Morris has
stated that the loss of TWA 800 was due to an "attack."
Two things, among a great many, that indicate to me that TWA 800 was no
accident:
1. If the government claim about an electrical spark in the center wing
tank triggering the loss is correct, why has the government given the
airlines so many years to fix the problem (with at least one official
delay, I think the fix is now not required until 2012 or so). If frayed
insulation was an issue, wouldn't one expect more and more problems as 747s
aged?
Indeed, if the government's finding on the TWA 800 loss was correct, one
could make a pretty good argument that 747s should have been grounded by
the FAA and the problem fixed immediately. I infer from this that the
airlines know the government finding is bogus and are complaisant at least
in part because the required fix will probably never take place (earlier
model 747s retire before the fix is required).
2. If there is a problem with an electrical spark detonating residual fuel
in the 747 [center wing tank] when the temperature at the departure airport
is hot, then why aren't 747s leaving from "hot" airports (such as in the
Middle East) blowing up?. . .
When I did several segments of live commentary on TWA 800 (on FOX TV in
Dallas), starting the night of the crash and spanning about three days I
mentioned three possibilities for the loss:
1. Bomb
2. Missile
3. Mechanical/Electrical/etc., failure or an accident of some kind.
Arguing against bomb was the fact that the aircraft had not been in the air
very long when it crashed. The plane was going to Paris and, normally, a
bomb would be timed to go off when the plane was well away from the airport
(of course, the Lockerbie Pan Am crash took place over Scotland but that
plane had been in the air for quite some time; ditto the Air India crash).
Arguing against missile was the fact that the size of the plane and its
altitude (around 13,800 feet as it turned out) meant that it was unlikely
that one hit from a Stinger type missile did the job --- the range was long
(but possible) for such a missile if it were fired at exactly the right
time from an ideal position on the surface in relation to the plane's
flight path, but the warhead is so small that it could not be expected to
bring down a 747. (Many two engine corporate jets have been hit by such
missiles in Africa; they typically lose an engine but fly on for some
distance to the nearest airport).
Of course, a "lucky hit" is always possible. A somewhat larger missile
(pedestal mounted SAM for example) was a possibility, but there aren't many
of those floating around the world in the hands of the bad guys (compared
to Stingers and the Soviet equivalent, the Strela, etc.).
Arguing against some sort of accident or mechanical failure is the fact
that large modern airliners (not taking off and not landing) in good
weather (too clear for a mid air collision to be even normally unlikely)
just do not blow up on their own, especially airplane types that have been
in service for a number of years and have a track record of not
spontaneously blowing up in flight, especially in calm weather and not
maneuvering.
Early on I thought the odds favored bomb, missile, and finally
mechanical/electrical/accident of some kind in that order.
As the data has come in after the crash, I have come to believe missile and
the scenario in Jack Cashill's book [see below] is the best and most
complete I have seen in terms of taking into account all the data
(including witness data). That said, it is likely not totally correct in
every detail, just the best I've seen.
Unlike the official findings in the Foster case, it would not surprise me
to have "the truth" about TWA 800 be admitted in an on-the-record way in
the next 5-10 years. Containment is getting tougher and there are a lot of
people pursuing this (FOIA, etc.).
With any luck, I'll live long enough to read a reasonably accurate history
of the U.S. Government between 1992-2000.
FIRST STRIKE:
TWA FLIGHT 800 AND THE ATTACK ON AMERICA
Jack Cashill, James Sanders
http://www
.amazon.com/exec/obidos/isbn=0785263543/progressivereviea/
PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY For conspiracy buffs and skeptics alike, Cashill and
Sanders' reconstruction of the investigation into the July 1996 explosion
of TWA Flight 800 is a real page-turner. The authors. . . contend that the
U.S. government, from the White House to the NTSB, FBI and CIA,
systematically tried to obscure the real cause of the explosion with a
false theory of mechanical failure. The cover-up, the authors maintain,
was motivated by then-incumbent President Clinton, who decided that "only a
catastrophe. . . could prevent his reelection in November. He would not
let Flight 800 be that catastrophe."
Cashill and Sanders make use of evidence from FBI witness summaries,
transcripts of agency meetings and reports, conflicting press coverage,
scientific data and their own interviews with witnesses and experts to
conclude that TWA Flight 800 was brought down by a Navy missile, whose
intended target was a terrorist plane on a collision course with the
passenger aircraft.
SAM SMITH
Undernews
March 23, 2005
[Hugh Sprunt, intrepid independent investigator of the Clinton years, has
some cogent comments concerning TWA 800 on a bulletin board that still goes
under the name of Clinton Administration Scandals]
HIGH SPRUNT - George Stephanopolous and Kerry have both stated (with no
follow-up from the mainstream media, real time or later) that the loss of
TWA 800 was not an accident. I recently learned that Dick Morris has
stated that the loss of TWA 800 was due to an "attack."
Two things, among a great many, that indicate to me that TWA 800 was no
accident:
1. If the government claim about an electrical spark in the center wing
tank triggering the loss is correct, why has the government given the
airlines so many years to fix the problem (with at least one official
delay, I think the fix is now not required until 2012 or so). If frayed
insulation was an issue, wouldn't one expect more and more problems as 747s
aged?
Indeed, if the government's finding on the TWA 800 loss was correct, one
could make a pretty good argument that 747s should have been grounded by
the FAA and the problem fixed immediately. I infer from this that the
airlines know the government finding is bogus and are complaisant at least
in part because the required fix will probably never take place (earlier
model 747s retire before the fix is required).
2. If there is a problem with an electrical spark detonating residual fuel
in the 747 [center wing tank] when the temperature at the departure airport
is hot, then why aren't 747s leaving from "hot" airports (such as in the
Middle East) blowing up?. . .
When I did several segments of live commentary on TWA 800 (on FOX TV in
Dallas), starting the night of the crash and spanning about three days I
mentioned three possibilities for the loss:
1. Bomb
2. Missile
3. Mechanical/Electrical/etc., failure or an accident of some kind.
Arguing against bomb was the fact that the aircraft had not been in the air
very long when it crashed. The plane was going to Paris and, normally, a
bomb would be timed to go off when the plane was well away from the airport
(of course, the Lockerbie Pan Am crash took place over Scotland but that
plane had been in the air for quite some time; ditto the Air India crash).
Arguing against missile was the fact that the size of the plane and its
altitude (around 13,800 feet as it turned out) meant that it was unlikely
that one hit from a Stinger type missile did the job --- the range was long
(but possible) for such a missile if it were fired at exactly the right
time from an ideal position on the surface in relation to the plane's
flight path, but the warhead is so small that it could not be expected to
bring down a 747. (Many two engine corporate jets have been hit by such
missiles in Africa; they typically lose an engine but fly on for some
distance to the nearest airport).
Of course, a "lucky hit" is always possible. A somewhat larger missile
(pedestal mounted SAM for example) was a possibility, but there aren't many
of those floating around the world in the hands of the bad guys (compared
to Stingers and the Soviet equivalent, the Strela, etc.).
Arguing against some sort of accident or mechanical failure is the fact
that large modern airliners (not taking off and not landing) in good
weather (too clear for a mid air collision to be even normally unlikely)
just do not blow up on their own, especially airplane types that have been
in service for a number of years and have a track record of not
spontaneously blowing up in flight, especially in calm weather and not
maneuvering.
Early on I thought the odds favored bomb, missile, and finally
mechanical/electrical/accident of some kind in that order.
As the data has come in after the crash, I have come to believe missile and
the scenario in Jack Cashill's book [see below] is the best and most
complete I have seen in terms of taking into account all the data
(including witness data). That said, it is likely not totally correct in
every detail, just the best I've seen.
Unlike the official findings in the Foster case, it would not surprise me
to have "the truth" about TWA 800 be admitted in an on-the-record way in
the next 5-10 years. Containment is getting tougher and there are a lot of
people pursuing this (FOIA, etc.).
With any luck, I'll live long enough to read a reasonably accurate history
of the U.S. Government between 1992-2000.
FIRST STRIKE:
TWA FLIGHT 800 AND THE ATTACK ON AMERICA
Jack Cashill, James Sanders
.amazon.com/exec/obidos/isbn=0785263543/progressivereviea/
PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY For conspiracy buffs and skeptics alike, Cashill and
Sanders' reconstruction of the investigation into the July 1996 explosion
of TWA Flight 800 is a real page-turner. The authors. . . contend that the
U.S. government, from the White House to the NTSB, FBI and CIA,
systematically tried to obscure the real cause of the explosion with a
false theory of mechanical failure. The cover-up, the authors maintain,
was motivated by then-incumbent President Clinton, who decided that "only a
catastrophe. . . could prevent his reelection in November. He would not
let Flight 800 be that catastrophe."
Cashill and Sanders make use of evidence from FBI witness summaries,
transcripts of agency meetings and reports, conflicting press coverage,
scientific data and their own interviews with witnesses and experts to
conclude that TWA Flight 800 was brought down by a Navy missile, whose
intended target was a terrorist plane on a collision course with the
passenger aircraft.
Let's hear it for Nicole ... also attached hot item [Catch-all] -
GEA - gormfach@gmail.com @ 04:13:10 PM
On education, terror, W, press rights, CBS, men, etc.
Ross Mackenzie
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/rossmackenzie/rm20050318.shtml
March 18, 2005
Quotations ripe for picking in a garden of topical items
Brookings Institution education researcher Tom Loveless, on why U.S.
students show gains on math performance tests while faring poorly in
international comparisons:
(U.S. standardized tests in math are) far too easy. We have downplayed
arithmetic. By and large, American students don't know how to work with
fractions very well and don't know how to work with decimals. This
handicaps their performance internationally.
John Scieszka, author of "The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid
Tales," on the literacy crisis facing boys:
Part of it is biological and part of it is sociological, but boys are
definitely drifting down. We've been testing kids in America for the
last 25 years and finding out that boys are doing worse than girls. But
we don't do enough to change that.
Today's most influential living economist, Nobel Prize winner Milton
Friedman:
After World War II, opinion was socialist while practice was free
market; currently, opinion is free market while practice is heavily
socialist. We (free-marketers) have largely won the battle of ideas
(though no such battle is ever won permanently); we have succeeded in
stalling the progress of socialism, but we have not succeeded in
reversing its course. We are still far from bringing practice into
conformity with opinion.
Yale professor David Gelernter:
The plain-spoken moralist for whom religion matters greatly, the common
man who seems too small for the presidency but is confronted in office
by a cataclysm that re-creates him; who rises to the challenge and
transcends it; who faces a tough re-election battle and wins it; who
redefines the nation's mission in the world and emerges a hero - that is
a traditional American story. It is Lincoln's story. . . . No president
matches Lincoln's greatness, but in modern times this was Harry Truman's
story; and today it is George W. Bush's also.
Actress Nicole Kidman, on why she isn't changing her affectional
preference:
Oh, I wish I loved women, but I don't. I mean, I love them, but
physically, chemically, they just don't do it for me. I love the way a
man thinks. I love the way a man smells. I love the way men look.
Edward Luttwak, senior fellow at Georgetown's Center for Strategic and
International Studies:
At present (Army soldiers) are so few, it is pointed out, that not
enough troops can be sent to Iraq to contain the insurgency - and even
this insufficient number requires excessively long tours of duty, repeat
deployments to Iraq without a decent interval at home, and the
mobilization of too many National Guard and Reserve personnel for too
long. These contentions are valid and the consequences are serious
indeed.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, on threats to the modern world:
Terrorism is among them, and it is no less dangerous and cunning than
fascism.
Norma McCorvey, the formerly pro-abortion "Jane Roe" of the 1973 Roe v.
Wade case striking down many state laws against abortion - who turned
against abortion after working in abortion clinics:
I don't want any more women to be injured by abortion. . . . I plead
with all that I am for the Supreme Court to take Roe v. Wade and reverse
it.
National taxpayer advocate Nina Olson, in her annual report to Congress,
on waning taxpayer compliance:
Without a doubt, the only meaningful way to reduce the compliance
burdens (on taxpayers) is to simplify the tax code enormously.
Van Gordon Sauter, president of CBS News 25 years ago, on CBS News
today:
For one thing, it has no credibility. And no audience, no morale, no
long-term emblematic anchorman, and no cohesive management structure.
Outside those annoyances, it shouldn't be that hard to fix. . . . I
stopped watching it some time ago. The unremitting liberal orientation
finally became too much for me.
University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey Stone, author of "Perilous
Times: Free Speech in Wartime":
It is a well-settled principle of First Amendment doctrine that a
reporter ordinarily may not violate a law of general application merely
because it has an incidental effect on her ability to report more
effectively. A reporter does not have a First Amendment right to violate
the law against burglary in order to steal a document from someone's
office. She has no First Amendment right to violate the law against
wiretapping in order to overhear a bribe. . . . By similar reasoning the
(Supreme) Court held in 1972 (Branzburg v. Hayes) that a reporter has no
First Amendment right to refuse to answer otherwise lawful questions
from a federal prosecutor engaged in a legitimate law-enforcement
investigation, even though answering such questions might make her job
more difficult. Having said this, I have to say that I agree with The
New York Times that the Supreme Court erred in Branzburg.
29 September 2004
SUBMISSION OF MARK ROWLEY ON INQUIRY INTO HATE SPEECH
The Chairperson,
Government Administration Committee
Parliament Buildings, Wellington
If the Committee were to hold hearings in Auckland, I should like to present these submissions orally, to expand on them and answer any related questions.
1 This submission is made on the basis that the Inquiry is not into Hate Crime, though clearly there can be considerable overlap. I would expect Parliament would need to consult afresh, and indeed probably present a Bill or at least terms of reference that included matters such as sentencing differentials, reference to specific defences and so on.
2 In summary, and this goes to the first term of reference especially, I regard further legislation that prohibited or restrained hate speech as unwarranted, not just because the criminal law and other laws already in force can deal with much of it, but because, given how bodies and individuals have acted in this area in the recent past, the public could have little confidence that any such law change could be drawn up and administered fairly, consistently and without discrimination. As well, and this goes especially to the third term of reference, it is very difficult to get a community consensus on what constitutes harm, and what constitutes hate speech The examples that follow illustrate these points.
3 On 4 December 2003 Race Relations Commissioner Joris de Bres in a speech compared cultural vandalism of the Taleban regime in Afghanistan, with the colonisation of New Zealand, which he said was a "sorry litany of cultural vandalism". MP Murray McCully complained to the Human Rights Review Tribunal about the speech, which he said was racially insulting and likely to offend some non-Maori New Zealanders. Mr de Bres denied it was insulting and initially, on the advice of Crown lawyers, claimed immunity by virtue of his office.
4 Chris Lawrence, then Proceedings Commissioner for the Human Rights Commission, interviewed by Kim Hill the morning after the Living Word judgement, when asked by her: “These videos, would you consider incite people to hate gay people?” replied “I think they probably do…” 1 In this he was doing no more than echoing the original Board of Review that had banned them. Significantly, none of the Appeal judges regarded them as hateful, and Thomas J described them as “essentially political tracts”.2
5 Just prior to the Living Word case, MP Tim Barnett, a prominent advocate for law change in this area in a radio interview called opponents of the Matrimonial Property Bill as “moral right homophobes”.3 I suggest that under any hate speech regime the term homophobe would be subject to complaint
6 The Human Rights Commission Annual Report for 1998, in making several points for women’s rights, contained four cartoons that were sexist, arguably hateful, and stereotypical of men (pages 27, 33, 39, 60) 4 This from the body currently administering much of the related law in this area.
7 Ironically, given the terms of reference to this Inquiry, page 8 of that same publication featured Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (194:
“Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This right includes freedom to change their [sic] religion or belief and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or in private, to manifest their [sic] religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.” This has profound implications for any law change.
8 The lead article of the 22 September 2004 issue of the gay fortnightly, express, was headlined “Known Homophobe Attends Gay Function” in relation to Auckland City Councillor David Hay’s attendance at a mayoral debate organised by the Gay Auckland Business Association (p.3) 5 A law change would jeopardise robust debate in such publications, and as much as David Hay may be able to shrug off such labels they could well be hurtful to other recipients.
9 Adding to the idea that Hate Speech legislation can be a two-edged sword, we have the statements of Amir Butler, outspoken Executive Director of the Australian Muslim Public Affairs Committee, who noted that, following the yet-to-be-decided case between the Islamic Council of Victoria and the Catch the Fire Ministries (brought under the Victorian Racial and Religious Vilification Act 2001): (and touching the fifth term of reference)
“At every major Islamic lecture I have attended since litigation began against Catch the Fire Ministries, there have been small groups of evangelical Christians – armed with notepads and pens – jotting down any comment that might later be used as evidence in the present case or presumably future cases…. The problem is that as long as religions articulate a sense of what is right, they cannot avoid also defining – whether explicitly or implicitly – what is wrong…
“If we love God, then it requires us to hate idolatry. If we believe there is such a thing as goodness, then we must also recognise the presence of evil. If we believe our religion is the only way to Heaven, then we must also affirm that all other paths lead to Hell. If we believe our religion is true, then it requires us to believe others are false.
“Yet this is exactly what this law [and I fear what he says could hold true for New Zealand – MR] serves to outlaw and curtail: the right of believers of one faith to passionately argue against or warn against the beliefs of another…
“The idea that such speech - regardless of how wrong-headed or offensive it might appear - must be banned to protect these religious communities is a furphy: discrimination on the basis of religion was already outlawed; incitement to commit violence was already illegal; and slander was already covered by existing legal instruments.
“All these anti-vilification laws have achieved is to provide a legalistic weapon by which religious groups can silence their ideological opponents, rather than engaging in debate and discussion.
“In doing so, people who otherwise might have been ignored as on the fringes of reality will be made martyrs, and their ideas given an airing far beyond anything they might have hoped for. And at the same time as extremist ideas are strengthened and given legitimacy by attempts to silence them, the position in our society of the religions themselves is weakened and undermined.” 6
This from a man who had initially been a passionate advocate of the Victorian vilification law.
10 Butler is of course touching on a vital issue: whether we go the way of countries such as Canada and Sweden which are applying hate speech laws in ways that are discriminatory to people of faith while ostensibly protecting people vilified because of sexual orientation. The question is sometimes asked, would not such changes in the law be also welcomed by Christians and others subject to religious vilification? Examples spring to mind of the art exhibits “Piss Christ” and “Virgin in a Condom”, and the play “Corpus Christie”. The answer might increasingly be no, not if it limits the adherents of such religions in the teachings and practice of their faiths, which they perhaps naively believed were already sufficiently protected in that regard under Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (cited above in Para. 7).
11 A commonly advanced variation on the slippery slope argument is that existing criminal law is insufficient to deal with incidences of hate speech for a very good reason. Human Rights Proceedings Commissioner Chris Lawrence the day after the Living Word decision made the point
“I would add that violence against vulnerable groups whether they are defined by race or religion or sexual orientation begins with propaganda. It proceeds incrementally. Propaganda operates drip by drip to produce hatred. Hatred in the end results in violence...”
He then compared the risk to gays of ignoring hate speech with the plight of the Jews in 1930s Europe.
“…do you think that ten years of hate propaganda by Hitler and Goebbels contributed to the atmosphere in which the Holocaust subsequently took place?” 7
12 Paradoxically the answer to this rather melodramatic question is provided by law professor Mari Matsuda and philosopher Herbert Marcuse. The latter argued in the 1960s for the idea of a “repressive” and a “liberating” tolerance
“Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left… The Left has no equal voice, no equal access to the mass media and their public facilities - not because a conspiracy excludes it, but because, in good old capitalist fashion, it does not have the re¬quired purchasing power. And the Left does not have the purchasing power because it is the Left. These conditions impose upon the radical minorities a strategy which is in essence a refusal to allow the continuous functioning of allegedly indiscriminate but in fact discriminate tolerance, for example, a strategy of protesting against the alternate matching of a spokesman for the Right (or Center) with one for the Left. Not ‘equal’ but more representation of the Left would be equalization of the prevailing inequality…
“Given this situation, I suggested in ‘Repressive Tolerance’ the practice of discriminating tolerance in an inverse direction, as a means of shifting the balance between Right and Left by restraining the liberty of the Right, thus counteracting the pervasive inequality of freedom (unequal opportunity of access to the means of democratic persuasion) and strength¬ening the oppressed against the oppressed. Tolerance would be restricted with respect to movements of a demonstrably aggressive or destructive character (destructive of the prospects for peace, justice, and freedom for all). Such discrimination would also be applied to movements opposing the extension of social legislation to the poor, weak, disabled. As against the virulent denunciations that such a policy would do away with the sacred liberalistic principle of equality for ‘the other side’, I maintain that there are issues where either there is no ‘other side’ in any more than a formalistic sense, or where ‘the other side’ is demonstrably ‘regressive’ and impedes pos¬sible improvement of the human condition. To toler¬ate propaganda for inhumanity vitiates the goals not only of liberalism but of every progressive political philosophy.” 8
13 Clearly, in 2004, Marcuse is hopelessly wrong - the minorities, especially in relation to sexual orientation, do have power, media access, a range of legal redress and a standing only dreamed of in the 1960s. Matsuda, implicitly supporting Marcuse, would deny, at least on questions of race hate speech, legal remedies to vilified and offended majorities subject to hate speech from minorities precisely because they were so powerful and hegemonic. 9
Hopefully this government will not institute a Marcusian “Repressive Tolerance” regime, however good the misguided intentions. Times have changed, power is much more evenly shared. Hitler is not the Prime Minister of New Zealand, and the cheeky Paul Holmes is not Goebbels.
References:
1 Chris Lawrence, interviewed with Paul Rishworth, by Kim Hill, National Programme, Friday 1st September 2000
2 Living Word Distributors v Human Rights Action Group NZ Court of Appeal 31 August 2000 CA58/00 Thomas J at para 82
3 Tim Barnett, interviewed on the G & T Show, Access Radio Auckland 25 May 2000
4 Report of the Human Rights Commission for the Year Ended 30 June 1998
5 express, issue of 22 September 2004 (Auckland)
6 Amir Butler “Why I've changed my mind on vilification laws” The Age 4 June 2004
7 Chris Lawrence cited supra
8 Herbert Marcuse “Repressive Tolerance” 1965, in A Critique of Pure Tolerance Beacon Press Boston 1969 (includes the Marcuse 1968 “Postscript”)
9 Mari Matsuda Legal storytelling: public response to racist speech: considering the victim's story 87 Michigan Law Review 2320 August, 1989
Mark Rowley
17 Yattendon Rd
St Heliers
Auckland
W. 09 4895 417
M 027 2922 422
Ross Mackenzie
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/rossmackenzie/rm20050318.shtml
March 18, 2005
Quotations ripe for picking in a garden of topical items
Brookings Institution education researcher Tom Loveless, on why U.S.
students show gains on math performance tests while faring poorly in
international comparisons:
(U.S. standardized tests in math are) far too easy. We have downplayed
arithmetic. By and large, American students don't know how to work with
fractions very well and don't know how to work with decimals. This
handicaps their performance internationally.
John Scieszka, author of "The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid
Tales," on the literacy crisis facing boys:
Part of it is biological and part of it is sociological, but boys are
definitely drifting down. We've been testing kids in America for the
last 25 years and finding out that boys are doing worse than girls. But
we don't do enough to change that.
Today's most influential living economist, Nobel Prize winner Milton
Friedman:
After World War II, opinion was socialist while practice was free
market; currently, opinion is free market while practice is heavily
socialist. We (free-marketers) have largely won the battle of ideas
(though no such battle is ever won permanently); we have succeeded in
stalling the progress of socialism, but we have not succeeded in
reversing its course. We are still far from bringing practice into
conformity with opinion.
Yale professor David Gelernter:
The plain-spoken moralist for whom religion matters greatly, the common
man who seems too small for the presidency but is confronted in office
by a cataclysm that re-creates him; who rises to the challenge and
transcends it; who faces a tough re-election battle and wins it; who
redefines the nation's mission in the world and emerges a hero - that is
a traditional American story. It is Lincoln's story. . . . No president
matches Lincoln's greatness, but in modern times this was Harry Truman's
story; and today it is George W. Bush's also.
Actress Nicole Kidman, on why she isn't changing her affectional
preference:
Oh, I wish I loved women, but I don't. I mean, I love them, but
physically, chemically, they just don't do it for me. I love the way a
man thinks. I love the way a man smells. I love the way men look.
Edward Luttwak, senior fellow at Georgetown's Center for Strategic and
International Studies:
At present (Army soldiers) are so few, it is pointed out, that not
enough troops can be sent to Iraq to contain the insurgency - and even
this insufficient number requires excessively long tours of duty, repeat
deployments to Iraq without a decent interval at home, and the
mobilization of too many National Guard and Reserve personnel for too
long. These contentions are valid and the consequences are serious
indeed.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, on threats to the modern world:
Terrorism is among them, and it is no less dangerous and cunning than
fascism.
Norma McCorvey, the formerly pro-abortion "Jane Roe" of the 1973 Roe v.
Wade case striking down many state laws against abortion - who turned
against abortion after working in abortion clinics:
I don't want any more women to be injured by abortion. . . . I plead
with all that I am for the Supreme Court to take Roe v. Wade and reverse
it.
National taxpayer advocate Nina Olson, in her annual report to Congress,
on waning taxpayer compliance:
Without a doubt, the only meaningful way to reduce the compliance
burdens (on taxpayers) is to simplify the tax code enormously.
Van Gordon Sauter, president of CBS News 25 years ago, on CBS News
today:
For one thing, it has no credibility. And no audience, no morale, no
long-term emblematic anchorman, and no cohesive management structure.
Outside those annoyances, it shouldn't be that hard to fix. . . . I
stopped watching it some time ago. The unremitting liberal orientation
finally became too much for me.
University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey Stone, author of "Perilous
Times: Free Speech in Wartime":
It is a well-settled principle of First Amendment doctrine that a
reporter ordinarily may not violate a law of general application merely
because it has an incidental effect on her ability to report more
effectively. A reporter does not have a First Amendment right to violate
the law against burglary in order to steal a document from someone's
office. She has no First Amendment right to violate the law against
wiretapping in order to overhear a bribe. . . . By similar reasoning the
(Supreme) Court held in 1972 (Branzburg v. Hayes) that a reporter has no
First Amendment right to refuse to answer otherwise lawful questions
from a federal prosecutor engaged in a legitimate law-enforcement
investigation, even though answering such questions might make her job
more difficult. Having said this, I have to say that I agree with The
New York Times that the Supreme Court erred in Branzburg.
29 September 2004
SUBMISSION OF MARK ROWLEY ON INQUIRY INTO HATE SPEECH
The Chairperson,
Government Administration Committee
Parliament Buildings, Wellington
If the Committee were to hold hearings in Auckland, I should like to present these submissions orally, to expand on them and answer any related questions.
1 This submission is made on the basis that the Inquiry is not into Hate Crime, though clearly there can be considerable overlap. I would expect Parliament would need to consult afresh, and indeed probably present a Bill or at least terms of reference that included matters such as sentencing differentials, reference to specific defences and so on.
2 In summary, and this goes to the first term of reference especially, I regard further legislation that prohibited or restrained hate speech as unwarranted, not just because the criminal law and other laws already in force can deal with much of it, but because, given how bodies and individuals have acted in this area in the recent past, the public could have little confidence that any such law change could be drawn up and administered fairly, consistently and without discrimination. As well, and this goes especially to the third term of reference, it is very difficult to get a community consensus on what constitutes harm, and what constitutes hate speech The examples that follow illustrate these points.
3 On 4 December 2003 Race Relations Commissioner Joris de Bres in a speech compared cultural vandalism of the Taleban regime in Afghanistan, with the colonisation of New Zealand, which he said was a "sorry litany of cultural vandalism". MP Murray McCully complained to the Human Rights Review Tribunal about the speech, which he said was racially insulting and likely to offend some non-Maori New Zealanders. Mr de Bres denied it was insulting and initially, on the advice of Crown lawyers, claimed immunity by virtue of his office.
4 Chris Lawrence, then Proceedings Commissioner for the Human Rights Commission, interviewed by Kim Hill the morning after the Living Word judgement, when asked by her: “These videos, would you consider incite people to hate gay people?” replied “I think they probably do…” 1 In this he was doing no more than echoing the original Board of Review that had banned them. Significantly, none of the Appeal judges regarded them as hateful, and Thomas J described them as “essentially political tracts”.2
5 Just prior to the Living Word case, MP Tim Barnett, a prominent advocate for law change in this area in a radio interview called opponents of the Matrimonial Property Bill as “moral right homophobes”.3 I suggest that under any hate speech regime the term homophobe would be subject to complaint
6 The Human Rights Commission Annual Report for 1998, in making several points for women’s rights, contained four cartoons that were sexist, arguably hateful, and stereotypical of men (pages 27, 33, 39, 60) 4 This from the body currently administering much of the related law in this area.
7 Ironically, given the terms of reference to this Inquiry, page 8 of that same publication featured Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (194
:“Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This right includes freedom to change their [sic] religion or belief and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or in private, to manifest their [sic] religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.” This has profound implications for any law change.
8 The lead article of the 22 September 2004 issue of the gay fortnightly, express, was headlined “Known Homophobe Attends Gay Function” in relation to Auckland City Councillor David Hay’s attendance at a mayoral debate organised by the Gay Auckland Business Association (p.3) 5 A law change would jeopardise robust debate in such publications, and as much as David Hay may be able to shrug off such labels they could well be hurtful to other recipients.
9 Adding to the idea that Hate Speech legislation can be a two-edged sword, we have the statements of Amir Butler, outspoken Executive Director of the Australian Muslim Public Affairs Committee, who noted that, following the yet-to-be-decided case between the Islamic Council of Victoria and the Catch the Fire Ministries (brought under the Victorian Racial and Religious Vilification Act 2001): (and touching the fifth term of reference)
“At every major Islamic lecture I have attended since litigation began against Catch the Fire Ministries, there have been small groups of evangelical Christians – armed with notepads and pens – jotting down any comment that might later be used as evidence in the present case or presumably future cases…. The problem is that as long as religions articulate a sense of what is right, they cannot avoid also defining – whether explicitly or implicitly – what is wrong…
“If we love God, then it requires us to hate idolatry. If we believe there is such a thing as goodness, then we must also recognise the presence of evil. If we believe our religion is the only way to Heaven, then we must also affirm that all other paths lead to Hell. If we believe our religion is true, then it requires us to believe others are false.
“Yet this is exactly what this law [and I fear what he says could hold true for New Zealand – MR] serves to outlaw and curtail: the right of believers of one faith to passionately argue against or warn against the beliefs of another…
“The idea that such speech - regardless of how wrong-headed or offensive it might appear - must be banned to protect these religious communities is a furphy: discrimination on the basis of religion was already outlawed; incitement to commit violence was already illegal; and slander was already covered by existing legal instruments.
“All these anti-vilification laws have achieved is to provide a legalistic weapon by which religious groups can silence their ideological opponents, rather than engaging in debate and discussion.
“In doing so, people who otherwise might have been ignored as on the fringes of reality will be made martyrs, and their ideas given an airing far beyond anything they might have hoped for. And at the same time as extremist ideas are strengthened and given legitimacy by attempts to silence them, the position in our society of the religions themselves is weakened and undermined.” 6
This from a man who had initially been a passionate advocate of the Victorian vilification law.
10 Butler is of course touching on a vital issue: whether we go the way of countries such as Canada and Sweden which are applying hate speech laws in ways that are discriminatory to people of faith while ostensibly protecting people vilified because of sexual orientation. The question is sometimes asked, would not such changes in the law be also welcomed by Christians and others subject to religious vilification? Examples spring to mind of the art exhibits “Piss Christ” and “Virgin in a Condom”, and the play “Corpus Christie”. The answer might increasingly be no, not if it limits the adherents of such religions in the teachings and practice of their faiths, which they perhaps naively believed were already sufficiently protected in that regard under Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (cited above in Para. 7).
11 A commonly advanced variation on the slippery slope argument is that existing criminal law is insufficient to deal with incidences of hate speech for a very good reason. Human Rights Proceedings Commissioner Chris Lawrence the day after the Living Word decision made the point
“I would add that violence against vulnerable groups whether they are defined by race or religion or sexual orientation begins with propaganda. It proceeds incrementally. Propaganda operates drip by drip to produce hatred. Hatred in the end results in violence...”
He then compared the risk to gays of ignoring hate speech with the plight of the Jews in 1930s Europe.
“…do you think that ten years of hate propaganda by Hitler and Goebbels contributed to the atmosphere in which the Holocaust subsequently took place?” 7
12 Paradoxically the answer to this rather melodramatic question is provided by law professor Mari Matsuda and philosopher Herbert Marcuse. The latter argued in the 1960s for the idea of a “repressive” and a “liberating” tolerance
“Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left… The Left has no equal voice, no equal access to the mass media and their public facilities - not because a conspiracy excludes it, but because, in good old capitalist fashion, it does not have the re¬quired purchasing power. And the Left does not have the purchasing power because it is the Left. These conditions impose upon the radical minorities a strategy which is in essence a refusal to allow the continuous functioning of allegedly indiscriminate but in fact discriminate tolerance, for example, a strategy of protesting against the alternate matching of a spokesman for the Right (or Center) with one for the Left. Not ‘equal’ but more representation of the Left would be equalization of the prevailing inequality…
“Given this situation, I suggested in ‘Repressive Tolerance’ the practice of discriminating tolerance in an inverse direction, as a means of shifting the balance between Right and Left by restraining the liberty of the Right, thus counteracting the pervasive inequality of freedom (unequal opportunity of access to the means of democratic persuasion) and strength¬ening the oppressed against the oppressed. Tolerance would be restricted with respect to movements of a demonstrably aggressive or destructive character (destructive of the prospects for peace, justice, and freedom for all). Such discrimination would also be applied to movements opposing the extension of social legislation to the poor, weak, disabled. As against the virulent denunciations that such a policy would do away with the sacred liberalistic principle of equality for ‘the other side’, I maintain that there are issues where either there is no ‘other side’ in any more than a formalistic sense, or where ‘the other side’ is demonstrably ‘regressive’ and impedes pos¬sible improvement of the human condition. To toler¬ate propaganda for inhumanity vitiates the goals not only of liberalism but of every progressive political philosophy.” 8
13 Clearly, in 2004, Marcuse is hopelessly wrong - the minorities, especially in relation to sexual orientation, do have power, media access, a range of legal redress and a standing only dreamed of in the 1960s. Matsuda, implicitly supporting Marcuse, would deny, at least on questions of race hate speech, legal remedies to vilified and offended majorities subject to hate speech from minorities precisely because they were so powerful and hegemonic. 9
Hopefully this government will not institute a Marcusian “Repressive Tolerance” regime, however good the misguided intentions. Times have changed, power is much more evenly shared. Hitler is not the Prime Minister of New Zealand, and the cheeky Paul Holmes is not Goebbels.
References:
1 Chris Lawrence, interviewed with Paul Rishworth, by Kim Hill, National Programme, Friday 1st September 2000
2 Living Word Distributors v Human Rights Action Group NZ Court of Appeal 31 August 2000 CA58/00 Thomas J at para 82
3 Tim Barnett, interviewed on the G & T Show, Access Radio Auckland 25 May 2000
4 Report of the Human Rights Commission for the Year Ended 30 June 1998
5 express, issue of 22 September 2004 (Auckland)
6 Amir Butler “Why I've changed my mind on vilification laws” The Age 4 June 2004
7 Chris Lawrence cited supra
8 Herbert Marcuse “Repressive Tolerance” 1965, in A Critique of Pure Tolerance Beacon Press Boston 1969 (includes the Marcuse 1968 “Postscript”)
9 Mari Matsuda Legal storytelling: public response to racist speech: considering the victim's story 87 Michigan Law Review 2320 August, 1989
Mark Rowley
17 Yattendon Rd
St Heliers
Auckland
W. 09 4895 417
M 027 2922 422
03/12/05
It would appear that Darwin was not only troubled by the
probability that natural selection would be over-rated but also taken in
himself by the misinterpretations that still confuse Dawkins etc.
R
Robert,
Thank you for your e-mail.
The late Darwin confession was a hoax from around 1890. The person who
wrote the article was likely Elizabeth Reid Hope, whose husband wrote
religious tracts in the late 19th C. She was not a neighbor, and according
to the family who responded at the time and my looking at documents that
are at Cambridge, Darwin did not change his views late in his life. The
family was upset by the claim and pointed out that she did not visit
Darwin, and they did not know her.
I have unpublished Darwin letters written between 1879-1881 just before
his death, that show he did not believe in the Bible, felt it had nothing
to do with science, and did not accept Jesus as the son of god.
The topic was covered, rather poorly, by James Moore in a book titled the
Darwin Legend. He could not bring himself to discount the notion, because
she knew the design of the family wallpaper. However, images of the
drawing room (including the wallpaper) had been published in the London
press a few years earlier.
The hoax has been continued through the years by small tracts distributed
by a number of churches.
Beekeeping history is my current project. Sir Edmund and I have a may
have had a mutual friend. Quentin Keynes, who passed away a couple of
years ago. Keynes was the great grandson of Darwin.
I agree with the program you watched. It had many flaws, but that is what
happens when TV people get hold of things.
Cheers,
Gene Kritsky
Gene Kritsky, PhD
Editor
American Entomologist
and
Professor of Biology
Department of Biology
College of Mount St. Joseph
Cincinnati, OH 45248
513-244-4401
513-244-4961 (fax)
Prof G Kritsky
College of Mt St Joseph
9-3-05
Dear Prof Kritsky
I have just seen the History channel biographical programme on
Darwin featuring yourself. In some ways it is a terrible programme - the
commentary asserting that Darwin's idea of evolution meant the church's
authority was invalid.
However, my wife & I found the biographical aspects interesting.
Could I ask your help regarding one historical aspect?
Of the various informants I suppose you are as likely as any to
know about a peculiar 'loose end': the purported (possibly forged) letter
from his neighbour, a minor aristocrat, describing Darwin's recovery of
faith near his death. Have you come across this document, and more
importantly any appraisal of its authenticity?
Just to let you know what sort of effort you'd be assisting if you
reply, you can glimpse our local science/religion scene at
http://www.spc.org.nz/Science.asp . In case that doesn't work, I attach
my paper from that symposium, and a short newspaper item with my colleague
Neil Broom.
BTW I see where you're interested in beekeeping history, so you'll
know of our most famous Kiwi beekeeper Sir Edmund Hillary who lives a short
walk from me. I am a keen beekeeper and can show you some impressive bees
if you visit here.
With thanx for any help
probability that natural selection would be over-rated but also taken in
himself by the misinterpretations that still confuse Dawkins etc.
R
Robert,
Thank you for your e-mail.
The late Darwin confession was a hoax from around 1890. The person who
wrote the article was likely Elizabeth Reid Hope, whose husband wrote
religious tracts in the late 19th C. She was not a neighbor, and according
to the family who responded at the time and my looking at documents that
are at Cambridge, Darwin did not change his views late in his life. The
family was upset by the claim and pointed out that she did not visit
Darwin, and they did not know her.
I have unpublished Darwin letters written between 1879-1881 just before
his death, that show he did not believe in the Bible, felt it had nothing
to do with science, and did not accept Jesus as the son of god.
The topic was covered, rather poorly, by James Moore in a book titled the
Darwin Legend. He could not bring himself to discount the notion, because
she knew the design of the family wallpaper. However, images of the
drawing room (including the wallpaper) had been published in the London
press a few years earlier.
The hoax has been continued through the years by small tracts distributed
by a number of churches.
Beekeeping history is my current project. Sir Edmund and I have a may
have had a mutual friend. Quentin Keynes, who passed away a couple of
years ago. Keynes was the great grandson of Darwin.
I agree with the program you watched. It had many flaws, but that is what
happens when TV people get hold of things.
Cheers,
Gene Kritsky
Gene Kritsky, PhD
Editor
American Entomologist
and
Professor of Biology
Department of Biology
College of Mount St. Joseph
Cincinnati, OH 45248
513-244-4401
513-244-4961 (fax)
Prof G Kritsky
College of Mt St Joseph
9-3-05
Dear Prof Kritsky
I have just seen the History channel biographical programme on
Darwin featuring yourself. In some ways it is a terrible programme - the
commentary asserting that Darwin's idea of evolution meant the church's
authority was invalid.
However, my wife & I found the biographical aspects interesting.
Could I ask your help regarding one historical aspect?
Of the various informants I suppose you are as likely as any to
know about a peculiar 'loose end': the purported (possibly forged) letter
from his neighbour, a minor aristocrat, describing Darwin's recovery of
faith near his death. Have you come across this document, and more
importantly any appraisal of its authenticity?
Just to let you know what sort of effort you'd be assisting if you
reply, you can glimpse our local science/religion scene at
http://www.spc.org.nz/Science.asp . In case that doesn't work, I attach
my paper from that symposium, and a short newspaper item with my colleague
Neil Broom.
BTW I see where you're interested in beekeeping history, so you'll
know of our most famous Kiwi beekeeper Sir Edmund Hillary who lives a short
walk from me. I am a keen beekeeper and can show you some impressive bees
if you visit here.
With thanx for any help
RSNZ: Hitler had atom bomb first, new book claims [Catch-all] -
GEA - gormfach@gmail.com @ 09:45:26 PM
This is a contender for 'RSNZ gasser of the month'
*Items Web-mounted on Friday, 4 March 2005****
Hitler had atom bomb first, new book claims
Nazi scientists carried out tests of what would now be called a "dirty"
nuclear device in the waning days of World War II
- and Hinkler wouldn't use it in the Ardennes Bulge? What was
holding him up? Lash up a few kamikaze Hinkler Youth ... get the wind
right ...
Anyhow hevi-doodi dirtiness for 'dirty bomb' radioactive weapons
can be produced on a potentially war-winning scale only by fission. A
'fizzer' A-bomb is acually quite difficult to make.
These paranoid attempts to promote minor radiation weapons,
depleted uranium, etc to similar scare status as nuclear weapons are
regrettable.
-
Robt Mann
Mulgoon Professor emeritus of Environmental Studies, U of Auckland
consultant stirrer & motorcyclist
P O Box 28878, Remuera, Auckland 1005, New Zealand (9) 524 2949
*Items Web-mounted on Friday, 4 March 2005****
Hitler had atom bomb first, new book claims
Nazi scientists carried out tests of what would now be called a "dirty"
nuclear device in the waning days of World War II
- and Hinkler wouldn't use it in the Ardennes Bulge? What was
holding him up? Lash up a few kamikaze Hinkler Youth ... get the wind
right ...
Anyhow hevi-doodi dirtiness for 'dirty bomb' radioactive weapons
can be produced on a potentially war-winning scale only by fission. A
'fizzer' A-bomb is acually quite difficult to make.
These paranoid attempts to promote minor radiation weapons,
depleted uranium, etc to similar scare status as nuclear weapons are
regrettable.
-
Robt Mann
Mulgoon Professor emeritus of Environmental Studies, U of Auckland
consultant stirrer & motorcyclist
P O Box 28878, Remuera, Auckland 1005, New Zealand (9) 524 2949
The Wall Street Journal
March 3, 2005
COMMENTARY
Unruly Britannia
By RUSSELL LEWIS
March 3, 2005
Let's start with Britain's most popular game. In the 1930s, British
football crowds were as orderly as church congregations. Today our soccer
fans are a byword for aggressive violence. In the first-class matches in
1946-47 only 10 players were sent off. By the mid-'90s the total number of
red cards issued in a season had reached 451. Hooliganism is not confined
to our footballers and their supporters. In 2002, a survey by the travel
company Expedia of tourist offices in 17 countries found that, for
loutishness, British visitors were top of the league.
At home the yobbism of the football crowds is only magnified in the
incidence of violent crime, which rose from 4,221 in 1898 to 331,843 in
1998-99. Even adjusting for population growth, that amounts to a 47-fold
increase. The situation is actually worse than the numbers suggest, for
the laws and their enforcement were stricter a century ago. Indeed, as one
eminent authority, Professor Jose Harris, put it, "If Edwardian standards
were applied in the '90s, most of the youth of Britain would be in gaol."
But at least we Brits still love our children, don't we? Well, not, it
seems, in all cases. In recent times there has been a virtual epidemic of
child abuse. Prosecutions for cruelty or neglect of children in England
and Wales -- 228 in 1988 -- have since jumped more than threefold.
Drug use, once remarkably well-contained in this country, is now rife among
English teenagers. According to a 1999 European Union survey, 41% of
English youngsters between 15 and 16 years of age had tried cannabis -- the
highest rate in Europe. Alcohol abuse is also expanding merrily, and not
only among the lager louts in and out of the stadiums. When it comes to
tippling, British women are way ahead of their sisters on the European
mainland.
Dickens' Fagin would have found much to applaud in the activities of
present-day English juveniles. According to a speech by then-Education
Secretary Estelle Morris in April 2002, the proportion of all robberies
committed by 10- to 16-year-olds during school hours was as follows: street
robberies 40%; car thefts 33%; burglaries 25%; and criminal damage 20%.
After reading that, it isn't surprising to learn that 9.9% of all
schoolchildren skip class at least once a week.
Of course the ultimate source of these troubles is poor upbringing, fueled
in part by the rise of illegitimacy. Between 1900 and 1960 births outside
marriage averaged 4%-5% in the U.K. Today they are 40% of the total. This
flouting of societal norms appears to have stimulated a corrupt attitude
toward society's institutions: The Benefit Agency reports that over a
quarter of the people it serves were definitely or possibly guilty of false
claims -- not a very inspiring example to the offspring.
The reasons for this moral decline are as clear as the aforementioned
statistics are bleak. As James Bartholomew argues in his recent book "The
Welfare State We're In" (Politico's, 2004), the blame rests squarely on the
growth of the welfare state, which has removed personal responsibility in
large areas of people's lives and substituted dependency on the state and
the rule of the bureaucrat. The state is complicit in the breakdown of the
family; consider Mr. Bartholomew's example of how the state has promoted
single-parent families by taxing married couples -- and abolishing the
marriage allowance -- while giving increasing amounts of money to single
parents.
No wonder, then, that from 1972 to 1992 the proportion of children living
with a lone parent tripled to 21% from 7%. The link with rising crime is
reflected in one shaming statistic: One-third of the people in U.K. prisons
spent time in an orphanage at some time in their childhood. One prison
governor, on being asked how many of the inmates had formerly been taken
into foster care, replied: "Nearly all of them."
Indeed, the collapse of the traditional nuclear family has hit the poorest
classes quite disproportionately, with nearly a quarter of girls whose
fathers were unskilled workers becoming teenage mothers, mostly outside
marriage. Divorces have risen sevenfold since 1960, and these also have
been much more common among the poor.
Of course there are many examples of children being well raised by a single
parent, but these are statistically dwarfed by the evidence that two-parent
families are more successful in teaching discipline and respect for
morality. With one parent -- most often the father -- missing from the
picture, it is not surprising that children are more apt to run wild.
Free state education was intended to civilize the poor and improve their
lot by fostering their intellectual and practical skills while also making
them good citizens. The reality is that, rather than making up for the
failures of a bad home background, schools in poor neighborhoods are
generally the worst -- characterized by lack of discipline, high rates of
bullying and crime, poor teaching, low grades and even unacceptably poor
basic skills such as reading, writing and counting.
Mr. Lewis is a former general director of the Institute of Economic Affairs.
March 3, 2005
COMMENTARY
Unruly Britannia
By RUSSELL LEWIS
March 3, 2005
Let's start with Britain's most popular game. In the 1930s, British
football crowds were as orderly as church congregations. Today our soccer
fans are a byword for aggressive violence. In the first-class matches in
1946-47 only 10 players were sent off. By the mid-'90s the total number of
red cards issued in a season had reached 451. Hooliganism is not confined
to our footballers and their supporters. In 2002, a survey by the travel
company Expedia of tourist offices in 17 countries found that, for
loutishness, British visitors were top of the league.
At home the yobbism of the football crowds is only magnified in the
incidence of violent crime, which rose from 4,221 in 1898 to 331,843 in
1998-99. Even adjusting for population growth, that amounts to a 47-fold
increase. The situation is actually worse than the numbers suggest, for
the laws and their enforcement were stricter a century ago. Indeed, as one
eminent authority, Professor Jose Harris, put it, "If Edwardian standards
were applied in the '90s, most of the youth of Britain would be in gaol."
But at least we Brits still love our children, don't we? Well, not, it
seems, in all cases. In recent times there has been a virtual epidemic of
child abuse. Prosecutions for cruelty or neglect of children in England
and Wales -- 228 in 1988 -- have since jumped more than threefold.
Drug use, once remarkably well-contained in this country, is now rife among
English teenagers. According to a 1999 European Union survey, 41% of
English youngsters between 15 and 16 years of age had tried cannabis -- the
highest rate in Europe. Alcohol abuse is also expanding merrily, and not
only among the lager louts in and out of the stadiums. When it comes to
tippling, British women are way ahead of their sisters on the European
mainland.
Dickens' Fagin would have found much to applaud in the activities of
present-day English juveniles. According to a speech by then-Education
Secretary Estelle Morris in April 2002, the proportion of all robberies
committed by 10- to 16-year-olds during school hours was as follows: street
robberies 40%; car thefts 33%; burglaries 25%; and criminal damage 20%.
After reading that, it isn't surprising to learn that 9.9% of all
schoolchildren skip class at least once a week.
Of course the ultimate source of these troubles is poor upbringing, fueled
in part by the rise of illegitimacy. Between 1900 and 1960 births outside
marriage averaged 4%-5% in the U.K. Today they are 40% of the total. This
flouting of societal norms appears to have stimulated a corrupt attitude
toward society's institutions: The Benefit Agency reports that over a
quarter of the people it serves were definitely or possibly guilty of false
claims -- not a very inspiring example to the offspring.
The reasons for this moral decline are as clear as the aforementioned
statistics are bleak. As James Bartholomew argues in his recent book "The
Welfare State We're In" (Politico's, 2004), the blame rests squarely on the
growth of the welfare state, which has removed personal responsibility in
large areas of people's lives and substituted dependency on the state and
the rule of the bureaucrat. The state is complicit in the breakdown of the
family; consider Mr. Bartholomew's example of how the state has promoted
single-parent families by taxing married couples -- and abolishing the
marriage allowance -- while giving increasing amounts of money to single
parents.
No wonder, then, that from 1972 to 1992 the proportion of children living
with a lone parent tripled to 21% from 7%. The link with rising crime is
reflected in one shaming statistic: One-third of the people in U.K. prisons
spent time in an orphanage at some time in their childhood. One prison
governor, on being asked how many of the inmates had formerly been taken
into foster care, replied: "Nearly all of them."
Indeed, the collapse of the traditional nuclear family has hit the poorest
classes quite disproportionately, with nearly a quarter of girls whose
fathers were unskilled workers becoming teenage mothers, mostly outside
marriage. Divorces have risen sevenfold since 1960, and these also have
been much more common among the poor.
Of course there are many examples of children being well raised by a single
parent, but these are statistically dwarfed by the evidence that two-parent
families are more successful in teaching discipline and respect for
morality. With one parent -- most often the father -- missing from the
picture, it is not surprising that children are more apt to run wild.
Free state education was intended to civilize the poor and improve their
lot by fostering their intellectual and practical skills while also making
them good citizens. The reality is that, rather than making up for the
failures of a bad home background, schools in poor neighborhoods are
generally the worst -- characterized by lack of discipline, high rates of
bullying and crime, poor teaching, low grades and even unacceptably poor
basic skills such as reading, writing and counting.
Mr. Lewis is a former general director of the Institute of Economic Affairs.
This article is rubbish -GEA
Study Blames 20,000 Deaths a Year on Diesel Exhaust
WASHINGTON - Emissions from old diesel engines cause more than 20,000
Americans a year to die sooner than they would have otherwise, an
environmental group estimated Tuesday.
-----
That may be a reasonable estimate for the old ones. But the story
omits the worse aspects of the nooer ones!
The sub-micron particles from modern 'lo-smoke' EFI diesels are
ranked by some experts as _the_ under-rated public health problem in our
cities. Their astronomical surface area adsorbs carcinogens from the
exhaust vapours e.g polycyclic aromatics which are then delivered into the
deep lung, as protective cilia are paralysed.
Thus the aesthetic advance in eliminating visible black smoke has
almost certainly created a worse health risk.
The doyen of MIT engine-emissions control visited NZ ca.8y ago. I
put this picture to him, in a public lecture sponsored by the Inst of Prof
Engrs in NZ. He did not demur.
R
-------
Published Feb. 24, 2005
The Diesel Opportunity
The deadly effects of breathing diesel fumes came into sharp focus
this week when the Clean Air Task Force (CATF) released a report[1]
estimating that diesel fumes kill about 21,000 U.S. citizens each
year.
Furthermore, diesel fumes cause 27,000 nonfatal heart attacks and
410,000 asthma attacks in U.S. adults each year, plus roughly 12,000
cases of chronic bronchitis, 15,000 hospital admissions, 2.4 million
lost-work days, and 14 million restricted activity days.
And that is almost certainly not the worst of it. The Clean Air Task
Force report cites numerous studies revealing that diesel soot
degrades the immune system (the system that protects us all from
bacteria, viruses and cancers);
interferes with our hormones, reducing sperm production,
masculinizing female rats, altering the development of baby rats
(changing their bones, thymus, and nervous systems), modifying their
adrenal and reproductive hormones;
causes serious, permanent impairment of the nervous system in
diesel-exposed railroad workers;
induces allergic reactions, not limited to asthma, causing children
to miss thousands upon thousands of school-days -- a primary cause of
school dropout, consequent low self-esteem, and subsequent life-
failure.
The new report is based on the most recent available data from the
federal EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) combined with EPA risk
models, with calculations carried out by Abt Associates, a consulting
firm that frequently performs contract studies for the EPA.[2]
The key findings of the report should come as no surprise. The dangers
of breathing diesel fumes have been known for at least two decades.
More than 20 years ago, numerous researchers confirmed and reconfirmed
that they could cause lung cancer in laboratory animals breathing air
laced with diesel fumes.
To anyone taking a precautionary approach, this confirmed knowledge of
diesel's ill effects on animals would have jump-started a search for
alternative ways to power on-road and off-road machines, to phase out
diesel in an orderly step-wise fashion.
But the National Academy of Sciences did not take a precautionary
approach. The New York Times reported Dec. 23, 1981, that the Academy
acknowledged that diesel soot is known to contain suspected cancer-
causing substances. But the Academy said, "no convincing
epidemiological evidence exists" that there is "a connection between
diesel fumes and human cancer." In other words, let's not act on the
animal evidence -- let's hunker down and wait until we can line up the
dead humans. This is the risk-based approach to public health. It is
the opposite of a precautionary approach.
Twenty years ago, in the spring of 1985, the Natural Resources Defense
Council (NRDC) issued a scientific report about the dangers of diesel
fumes in New York. The New York Times reported May 18, 1985: "Diesel
emissions are probably the single most important air-quality threat in
New York City today," said Eric A. Goldstein, a lawyer for the
environmental group and an author of the report. "But city, state and
Federal agencies have not yet mounted a broad-based counterattack."
The Times reported then that a spokesperson for the New York State
Environmental Conservation Department acknowledged that diesel fumes
cause lung cancer in humans but, he said, the state was "not yet sure"
how big the problem was. The state had no plan for dealing with diesel
because "we have not identified the extent of the problem," he said.
This is a classic example of the risk-based approach. Ignore the
evidence so long as it is not 100% airtight. Use uncertainty as an
excuse to delay. Wait for the dead bodies to pile up, then slowly
acknowledge the need for action.
By 1985, there was no doubt that dead bodies were piling up. But the
exact number of corpses remained uncertain, so the risk-based approach
allowed "business as usual" to continue.
From a precautionary perspective, knowing that a technology causes
lung cancer, and knowing that hundreds of millions of people are
exposed to it, just naturally kicks off a search for less-harmful
alternatives. But no one in 1985 was taking a precautionary approach.
In 1988 the federal government's Robert A. Taft Laboratory in
Cincinnati published NIOSH report 88-116, officially confirming that
exposure to diesel fumes causes lung cancer in humans.
At this point the precautionary principle would insist that a search
for alternatives begin. Other fuels? Other kinds of engines? Filters
for trapping the fumes and soot? Innovative modes of transportation
for moving goods and people? Other ways of planning city growth, to
reduce reliance on trucks and buses? Electrified steel-rail mass
transit? Maglev trains? Hydrogen? Steam? Compressed air? The
alternatives are many.
A precautionary approach would focus attention on eliminating the
problem rather than arguing over the exact body count. Is a diesel-
free world possible? Working backward from the vision of a diesel-free
world, what steps could we be taking today to achieve the vision? That
is the essence of a precautionary approach.
But the risk-based approach serves the purposes of "business as
usual," and therefore has the backing of powerful special interests.
So long as the exact size of the problem is uncertain, risk assessors
can always call for delay and more study. And, since scientists-for-
hire can always reinterpret old data to cast doubt on the nature of
the problem, action can be stalled for decades. This is in fact what
has happened with diesel.
On May 2, 1995 the New York Times reported that researchers were
casting new doubts on the evidence that diesel fumes cause cancer in
humans. They acknowledged that diesel soot might endanger people by
aggravating conditions like asthma, chronic bronchitis and cystic
fibrosis, but lung cancer? Probably not, they said.
The Times reported then, "Studies in humans found that those with an
occupational exposure to diesel smoke had lung cancer rates 20 to 50
percent higher than other workers, but none of the studies were
precise about the level of exposures...." so the studies could not be
relied upon to tell us the true cancer danger among the general public
in places like New York City and Los Angeles.
Doubt is a powerful helpmate when your goal is to maintain "business
as usual." The risk-based approach waits for the holy grail of
scientific certainty to emerge from the data -- until then, just keep
on truckin'.
So now in 2005 we awake to learn that we have a public health disaster
on our hands, with at estimated 21,000 deaths each year caused by
diesel fumes, and more than 100 times that number made sick.
It is time to engage in an urgent search for a way out of this diesel
disaster. Every college and university that receives any public funds
(including tax exemptions for private institutions) could to commit to
doing something to solve this problem, engaging in a coordinated
effort to figure out how to make the U.S. "diesel-free or darn near"
within 15 years. Given that we have "risk assessed" our way into this
problem, we could refuse to wait for further study to determine the
exact placement of the decimal point. We could take precautionary
action now, aiming to ELIMINATE this problem.
But precaution is not (yet) fashionable. Risk-assessment is. So, for
example, in our home state of New Jersey (which likes to think of
itself as environmentally progressive), the state's Department of
Environmental Protection (DEP) has set a goal of reducing diesel
emissions by 20% over the next eight or nine years -- during which
time an additional 7 or 8 thousand citizens of New Jersey will have
been killed by diesel fumes with many times that number made sick.
But a recent study revealed that truck traffic in New Jersey is likely
to increase 80 percent (!) in the next 15 years,[3] so the DEP's plan
seems unlikely to make any real headway against the diesel deathtrap.
Their goal is too timid.
Something much larger is needed. Something bold, innovative,
aggressive and comprehensive. Something commensurate with the size and
urgency of the diesel menace.
Every state's colleges and universities that receive public subsidies
could focus enormous resources on this problem, to find solutions as
quickly as is humanly possible.
Diesel presents a conundrum for urban designers and planners, and for
those with urban transportation know-how. It is a complex engineering
problem, fraught with fundamental questions in several hard sciences.
It is an environmental problem, a medical/biological problem, a legal
problem, and a management problem. It is an enormous public health
problem. It is a problem of public administration and good government.
It is, above all else, an ethical problem, a problem of fairness and
justice -- those most harmed are those least able to defend
themselves, children of the urban poor. Philosophers, economists,
sociologists, psychologists, historians, writers, and all the
humanistic disciplines (arts, dance, theater, literature, film, and
music) could make important, unique contributions. Knowledge and
skills from business, labor, and decision-making are needed. Every
discipline could contribute because this diesel poses a fundamental
question for a self-governing people. In the original conception of
this country, how was democracy supposed to work? Who is supposed to
decide?
Because the diesel industry involves huge sums, diesel presents us
with a fundamental problem of democratic self-rule. Despite mounting
evidence of widespread harm, diesel has been maintained all these
years by corporations and their trade associations and lobbyists --
from Detroit and Houston to Washington and in every statehouse -- who
have run roughshod over the needs and interests of the American people
for the last half-century, a tiny few who wield life-and-death power
over the many -- harnessing governments to employ their risk-based
approach to deflect and stymie the search for least harmful
alternatives. (To learn more about this appalling story of corporate
crime against the people of the U.S., see Rachel's #439 at
www.rachel.org, and see the video, "Taken for a Ride," which tells the
story of a proven conspiracy between General Motors, Firestone Rubber,
and Standard Oil of California to buy up and destroy the streetcar
systems of 80 U.S. cities and replace them with diesel buses).[4]
At bottom, the diesel problem forces us to ask, What does our
democracy really mean? How can a tiny minority of powerful people keep
the multitudes locked into this deadly dead-end technology decade
after decade? Surely, another world is possible. The publicly-
subsidized institutions of higher learning in every state could help
us all visualize and then realize that better world.
The taxpayers of each state would feel well-served by a university
system that would mount a coordinated effort to solve complex and
pressing public problems, to help us preserve and enhance the common
wealth, like clean air and our right to breathe it.
Suddenly every state's very substantial brain trust within higher
education would take on new relevance to the lives of the taxpaying
public, and it would be appreciated and rewarded for its efforts. As a
result, educational funding would naturally rise -- a win-win for
higher education and for the citizenry.
In the process, the nation's colleges and universities could gain
experience working together to solve other deep problems facing us
all. With close guidance from citizens, they could develop a public-
interest research agenda and a modern capacity for precautionary
problem-solving. With such an effort, the U.S. might actually reverse
40 years of environmental destruction and urban deterioration and
finally turn the corner. That's the diesel opportunity.
==================
A version of this essay first appeared in Garden State EnviroNews
February 23, 2005; http://www.gsenet.org.
[1] http://www.catf.us/publications/view.php?id=83
[2] http://www.catf.us/publications/view.php?id=84
[3] http://www.tstc.org/press/011205_NJtrucktraffic.html
[4] http://www.newday.com/films/Taken_for_a_Ride.html
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH NEWS
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 160
New Brunswick, N.J. 08903
Fax (732) 791-4603;
E-mail: erf@rachel.org
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your own case. --Peter Montague, editor
Study Blames 20,000 Deaths a Year on Diesel Exhaust
WASHINGTON - Emissions from old diesel engines cause more than 20,000
Americans a year to die sooner than they would have otherwise, an
environmental group estimated Tuesday.
-----
That may be a reasonable estimate for the old ones. But the story
omits the worse aspects of the nooer ones!
The sub-micron particles from modern 'lo-smoke' EFI diesels are
ranked by some experts as _the_ under-rated public health problem in our
cities. Their astronomical surface area adsorbs carcinogens from the
exhaust vapours e.g polycyclic aromatics which are then delivered into the
deep lung, as protective cilia are paralysed.
Thus the aesthetic advance in eliminating visible black smoke has
almost certainly created a worse health risk.
The doyen of MIT engine-emissions control visited NZ ca.8y ago. I
put this picture to him, in a public lecture sponsored by the Inst of Prof
Engrs in NZ. He did not demur.
R
-------
Published Feb. 24, 2005
The Diesel Opportunity
The deadly effects of breathing diesel fumes came into sharp focus
this week when the Clean Air Task Force (CATF) released a report[1]
estimating that diesel fumes kill about 21,000 U.S. citizens each
year.
Furthermore, diesel fumes cause 27,000 nonfatal heart attacks and
410,000 asthma attacks in U.S. adults each year, plus roughly 12,000
cases of chronic bronchitis, 15,000 hospital admissions, 2.4 million
lost-work days, and 14 million restricted activity days.
And that is almost certainly not the worst of it. The Clean Air Task
Force report cites numerous studies revealing that diesel soot
degrades the immune system (the system that protects us all from
bacteria, viruses and cancers);
interferes with our hormones, reducing sperm production,
masculinizing female rats, altering the development of baby rats
(changing their bones, thymus, and nervous systems), modifying their
adrenal and reproductive hormones;
causes serious, permanent impairment of the nervous system in
diesel-exposed railroad workers;
induces allergic reactions, not limited to asthma, causing children
to miss thousands upon thousands of school-days -- a primary cause of
school dropout, consequent low self-esteem, and subsequent life-
failure.
The new report is based on the most recent available data from the
federal EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) combined with EPA risk
models, with calculations carried out by Abt Associates, a consulting
firm that frequently performs contract studies for the EPA.[2]
The key findings of the report should come as no surprise. The dangers
of breathing diesel fumes have been known for at least two decades.
More than 20 years ago, numerous researchers confirmed and reconfirmed
that they could cause lung cancer in laboratory animals breathing air
laced with diesel fumes.
To anyone taking a precautionary approach, this confirmed knowledge of
diesel's ill effects on animals would have jump-started a search for
alternative ways to power on-road and off-road machines, to phase out
diesel in an orderly step-wise fashion.
But the National Academy of Sciences did not take a precautionary
approach. The New York Times reported Dec. 23, 1981, that the Academy
acknowledged that diesel soot is known to contain suspected cancer-
causing substances. But the Academy said, "no convincing
epidemiological evidence exists" that there is "a connection between
diesel fumes and human cancer." In other words, let's not act on the
animal evidence -- let's hunker down and wait until we can line up the
dead humans. This is the risk-based approach to public health. It is
the opposite of a precautionary approach.
Twenty years ago, in the spring of 1985, the Natural Resources Defense
Council (NRDC) issued a scientific report about the dangers of diesel
fumes in New York. The New York Times reported May 18, 1985: "Diesel
emissions are probably the single most important air-quality threat in
New York City today," said Eric A. Goldstein, a lawyer for the
environmental group and an author of the report. "But city, state and
Federal agencies have not yet mounted a broad-based counterattack."
The Times reported then that a spokesperson for the New York State
Environmental Conservation Department acknowledged that diesel fumes
cause lung cancer in humans but, he said, the state was "not yet sure"
how big the problem was. The state had no plan for dealing with diesel
because "we have not identified the extent of the problem," he said.
This is a classic example of the risk-based approach. Ignore the
evidence so long as it is not 100% airtight. Use uncertainty as an
excuse to delay. Wait for the dead bodies to pile up, then slowly
acknowledge the need for action.
By 1985, there was no doubt that dead bodies were piling up. But the
exact number of corpses remained uncertain, so the risk-based approach
allowed "business as usual" to continue.
From a precautionary perspective, knowing that a technology causes
lung cancer, and knowing that hundreds of millions of people are
exposed to it, just naturally kicks off a search for less-harmful
alternatives. But no one in 1985 was taking a precautionary approach.
In 1988 the federal government's Robert A. Taft Laboratory in
Cincinnati published NIOSH report 88-116, officially confirming that
exposure to diesel fumes causes lung cancer in humans.
At this point the precautionary principle would insist that a search
for alternatives begin. Other fuels? Other kinds of engines? Filters
for trapping the fumes and soot? Innovative modes of transportation
for moving goods and people? Other ways of planning city growth, to
reduce reliance on trucks and buses? Electrified steel-rail mass
transit? Maglev trains? Hydrogen? Steam? Compressed air? The
alternatives are many.
A precautionary approach would focus attention on eliminating the
problem rather than arguing over the exact body count. Is a diesel-
free world possible? Working backward from the vision of a diesel-free
world, what steps could we be taking today to achieve the vision? That
is the essence of a precautionary approach.
But the risk-based approach serves the purposes of "business as
usual," and therefore has the backing of powerful special interests.
So long as the exact size of the problem is uncertain, risk assessors
can always call for delay and more study. And, since scientists-for-
hire can always reinterpret old data to cast doubt on the nature of
the problem, action can be stalled for decades. This is in fact what
has happened with diesel.
On May 2, 1995 the New York Times reported that researchers were
casting new doubts on the evidence that diesel fumes cause cancer in
humans. They acknowledged that diesel soot might endanger people by
aggravating conditions like asthma, chronic bronchitis and cystic
fibrosis, but lung cancer? Probably not, they said.
The Times reported then, "Studies in humans found that those with an
occupational exposure to diesel smoke had lung cancer rates 20 to 50
percent higher than other workers, but none of the studies were
precise about the level of exposures...." so the studies could not be
relied upon to tell us the true cancer danger among the general public
in places like New York City and Los Angeles.
Doubt is a powerful helpmate when your goal is to maintain "business
as usual." The risk-based approach waits for the holy grail of
scientific certainty to emerge from the data -- until then, just keep
on truckin'.
So now in 2005 we awake to learn that we have a public health disaster
on our hands, with at estimated 21,000 deaths each year caused by
diesel fumes, and more than 100 times that number made sick.
It is time to engage in an urgent search for a way out of this diesel
disaster. Every college and university that receives any public funds
(including tax exemptions for private institutions) could to commit to
doing something to solve this problem, engaging in a coordinated
effort to figure out how to make the U.S. "diesel-free or darn near"
within 15 years. Given that we have "risk assessed" our way into this
problem, we could refuse to wait for further study to determine the
exact placement of the decimal point. We could take precautionary
action now, aiming to ELIMINATE this problem.
But precaution is not (yet) fashionable. Risk-assessment is. So, for
example, in our home state of New Jersey (which likes to think of
itself as environmentally progressive), the state's Department of
Environmental Protection (DEP) has set a goal of reducing diesel
emissions by 20% over the next eight or nine years -- during which
time an additional 7 or 8 thousand citizens of New Jersey will have
been killed by diesel fumes with many times that number made sick.
But a recent study revealed that truck traffic in New Jersey is likely
to increase 80 percent (!) in the next 15 years,[3] so the DEP's plan
seems unlikely to make any real headway against the diesel deathtrap.
Their goal is too timid.
Something much larger is needed. Something bold, innovative,
aggressive and comprehensive. Something commensurate with the size and
urgency of the diesel menace.
Every state's colleges and universities that receive public subsidies
could focus enormous resources on this problem, to find solutions as
quickly as is humanly possible.
Diesel presents a conundrum for urban designers and planners, and for
those with urban transportation know-how. It is a complex engineering
problem, fraught with fundamental questions in several hard sciences.
It is an environmental problem, a medical/biological problem, a legal
problem, and a management problem. It is an enormous public health
problem. It is a problem of public administration and good government.
It is, above all else, an ethical problem, a problem of fairness and
justice -- those most harmed are those least able to defend
themselves, children of the urban poor. Philosophers, economists,
sociologists, psychologists, historians, writers, and all the
humanistic disciplines (arts, dance, theater, literature, film, and
music) could make important, unique contributions. Knowledge and
skills from business, labor, and decision-making are needed. Every
discipline could contribute because this diesel poses a fundamental
question for a self-governing people. In the original conception of
this country, how was democracy supposed to work? Who is supposed to
decide?
Because the diesel industry involves huge sums, diesel presents us
with a fundamental problem of democratic self-rule. Despite mounting
evidence of widespread harm, diesel has been maintained all these
years by corporations and their trade associations and lobbyists --
from Detroit and Houston to Washington and in every statehouse -- who
have run roughshod over the needs and interests of the American people
for the last half-century, a tiny few who wield life-and-death power
over the many -- harnessing governments to employ their risk-based
approach to deflect and stymie the search for least harmful
alternatives. (To learn more about this appalling story of corporate
crime against the people of the U.S., see Rachel's #439 at
www.rachel.org, and see the video, "Taken for a Ride," which tells the
story of a proven conspiracy between General Motors, Firestone Rubber,
and Standard Oil of California to buy up and destroy the streetcar
systems of 80 U.S. cities and replace them with diesel buses).[4]
At bottom, the diesel problem forces us to ask, What does our
democracy really mean? How can a tiny minority of powerful people keep
the multitudes locked into this deadly dead-end technology decade
after decade? Surely, another world is possible. The publicly-
subsidized institutions of higher learning in every state could help
us all visualize and then realize that better world.
The taxpayers of each state would feel well-served by a university
system that would mount a coordinated effort to solve complex and
pressing public problems, to help us preserve and enhance the common
wealth, like clean air and our right to breathe it.
Suddenly every state's very substantial brain trust within higher
education would take on new relevance to the lives of the taxpaying
public, and it would be appreciated and rewarded for its efforts. As a
result, educational funding would naturally rise -- a win-win for
higher education and for the citizenry.
In the process, the nation's colleges and universities could gain
experience working together to solve other deep problems facing us
all. With close guidance from citizens, they could develop a public-
interest research agenda and a modern capacity for precautionary
problem-solving. With such an effort, the U.S. might actually reverse
40 years of environmental destruction and urban deterioration and
finally turn the corner. That's the diesel opportunity.
==================
A version of this essay first appeared in Garden State EnviroNews
February 23, 2005; http://www.gsenet.org.
[1] http://www.catf.us/publications/view.php?id=83
[2] http://www.catf.us/publications/view.php?id=84
[3] http://www.tstc.org/press/011205_NJtrucktraffic.html
[4] http://www.newday.com/films/Taken_for_a_Ride.html
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
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The end of ideology (as we know it)
Jonah Goldberg
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/jonahgoldberg/jg20050225.shtml
February 25, 2005
Maine State Rep. Brian Duprey introduced an unusual piece of legislation
this month. It's a pro-life bill designed to tighten protections for the
unborn. That's not the unusual part. That happens all the time. The
interesting part is that Duprey's bill is designed to protect gay
fetuses.
Rep. Duprey told a local paper, The Magic City Morning Star, that he'd
been listening to Rush Limbaugh's radio show when Limbaugh commented
that if scientists ever located the genetic cause for homosexuality -
the so-called "gay gene" - then homosexuals would become pro-life
"overnight."
"Most people would agree that to kill someone just because that person
might be gay would constitute a hate crime," Duprey said. "I have heard
from women who told me that if they found out that they were carrying a
child with the gay gene, then they would abort. I think this is wrong.
Those unborn children should be protected." That's why he introduced LD
908, "An Act to Protect Homosexuals from Discrimination."
Now, I don't know if Duprey's on the up-and-up with all of this. I don't
even know if he's against abortions for straight babies. I also doubt
that we'll ever find anything like a "gay gene." Still, this little
stunt ought to provoke some much-needed reflection about technology,
ideology and human society.
Just imagine, for the sake of argument, that Rep. Duprey is right - that
sometime in the near future women will be able to abort their
pregnancies solely to avoid giving birth to a gay kid. Would this
increase the number of pro-life gays and put pressure on the political
alliance between gay groups and pro-abortion groups? Probably (although
there are significant numbers of pro-life gays and lesbians already).
Nothing sharpens a man's mind as knowing he'll be hanged in the morning,
as the saying goes. Likewise, one may assume without fear of much
contradiction that homosexuals would greet the prospect of the quiet
annihilation of their culture with a special revulsion they do not (for
the most part) reserve for the consequences of abortion generally. (This
desire to protect an identity group culture is not unique to gays. For
example, some radical members of the deaf community oppose cochlear
implants and other remedies for deafness because they see it as
destructive to their unique culture.)
There is little chance that a law like Duprey's would be nationalized,
much less enforced ruthlessly. But what if it were? How could supporters
deny that gays weren't being granted "special rights" since
non-homosexual children would not have the same right to life? Faced
with this massive contradiction between banning the termination of gay
children but permitting women to abort all other children for any motive
under the sun - gender selection, disease, etc. - would pro-choicers
split apart? Would some on the right commit the horrid heresy of
endorsing abortion only for "undesirables" but not for others?
Heck, I don't know.
But let's leave aside abortion and imagine what I think is the more
possible - though not necessarily probable - scenario. Let's suppose
that homosexuality is derived not solely from genetic dispensation but
also from specific hormonal processes during gestation (as well as
cultural factors). Let's also suppose that a way was found to "remedy"
homosexuality in utero with a pill or an injection. The procedure might
be no more intrusive than taking prenatal vitamins.
Well, then, in the American context is it so outlandish to imagine that
the entire debate about the role of homosexuals in society would
disappear along with substantial numbers of homosexuals in successive
generations? The turbulent period from the Stonewall riots to gay
marriage would be just one fascinating but brief parentheses in the
history of the republic. And the "silent spring" of homosexuality would
open a completely unprecedented chapter in human history, since
homosexuality has always been with us. What would happen to the
ideological feuds that are currently fueled implicitly or explicitly by
homosexuality? What would happen to the culture and the economy? Again:
I dunno.
Now, please keep in mind I'm not advocating, or even remotely
enthusiastic about, these or any other similar prospects. The point is
not to wish for some abracadabra that would make homosexuals disappear.
Rather, it is to point out how profoundly transformative and corrosive
technology can be to our established concepts and institutions.
We have a tendency to assume that existing ideological categories are
permanent. History is the study of the repeated debunking of such
assumptions. The saddle, the stirrup, the moat, the locomotive, the
telephone, the atomic bomb, the car, the computer, the birth control
pill: All of these caused tectonic changes in ideological arrangements,
and all of them, save the last, were primarily innovations in
transportation, communication or war. The new earthquakes to come from
biotechnology - "cures" for homosexuality, unimaginable longevity, real
"happy pills" - could level all of the landmarks of our ideological
landscape, even redefining the first ideology, conservatism.
It's been said that conservatism can be defined as the idea that human
nature has no history. As we look around right now, that idea is on the
brink of oblivion.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online, a
Townhall.com member group.
Jonah Goldberg
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/jonahgoldberg/jg20050225.shtml
February 25, 2005
Maine State Rep. Brian Duprey introduced an unusual piece of legislation
this month. It's a pro-life bill designed to tighten protections for the
unborn. That's not the unusual part. That happens all the time. The
interesting part is that Duprey's bill is designed to protect gay
fetuses.
Rep. Duprey told a local paper, The Magic City Morning Star, that he'd
been listening to Rush Limbaugh's radio show when Limbaugh commented
that if scientists ever located the genetic cause for homosexuality -
the so-called "gay gene" - then homosexuals would become pro-life
"overnight."
"Most people would agree that to kill someone just because that person
might be gay would constitute a hate crime," Duprey said. "I have heard
from women who told me that if they found out that they were carrying a
child with the gay gene, then they would abort. I think this is wrong.
Those unborn children should be protected." That's why he introduced LD
908, "An Act to Protect Homosexuals from Discrimination."
Now, I don't know if Duprey's on the up-and-up with all of this. I don't
even know if he's against abortions for straight babies. I also doubt
that we'll ever find anything like a "gay gene." Still, this little
stunt ought to provoke some much-needed reflection about technology,
ideology and human society.
Just imagine, for the sake of argument, that Rep. Duprey is right - that
sometime in the near future women will be able to abort their
pregnancies solely to avoid giving birth to a gay kid. Would this
increase the number of pro-life gays and put pressure on the political
alliance between gay groups and pro-abortion groups? Probably (although
there are significant numbers of pro-life gays and lesbians already).
Nothing sharpens a man's mind as knowing he'll be hanged in the morning,
as the saying goes. Likewise, one may assume without fear of much
contradiction that homosexuals would greet the prospect of the quiet
annihilation of their culture with a special revulsion they do not (for
the most part) reserve for the consequences of abortion generally. (This
desire to protect an identity group culture is not unique to gays. For
example, some radical members of the deaf community oppose cochlear
implants and other remedies for deafness because they see it as
destructive to their unique culture.)
There is little chance that a law like Duprey's would be nationalized,
much less enforced ruthlessly. But what if it were? How could supporters
deny that gays weren't being granted "special rights" since
non-homosexual children would not have the same right to life? Faced
with this massive contradiction between banning the termination of gay
children but permitting women to abort all other children for any motive
under the sun - gender selection, disease, etc. - would pro-choicers
split apart? Would some on the right commit the horrid heresy of
endorsing abortion only for "undesirables" but not for others?
Heck, I don't know.
But let's leave aside abortion and imagine what I think is the more
possible - though not necessarily probable - scenario. Let's suppose
that homosexuality is derived not solely from genetic dispensation but
also from specific hormonal processes during gestation (as well as
cultural factors). Let's also suppose that a way was found to "remedy"
homosexuality in utero with a pill or an injection. The procedure might
be no more intrusive than taking prenatal vitamins.
Well, then, in the American context is it so outlandish to imagine that
the entire debate about the role of homosexuals in society would
disappear along with substantial numbers of homosexuals in successive
generations? The turbulent period from the Stonewall riots to gay
marriage would be just one fascinating but brief parentheses in the
history of the republic. And the "silent spring" of homosexuality would
open a completely unprecedented chapter in human history, since
homosexuality has always been with us. What would happen to the
ideological feuds that are currently fueled implicitly or explicitly by
homosexuality? What would happen to the culture and the economy? Again:
I dunno.
Now, please keep in mind I'm not advocating, or even remotely
enthusiastic about, these or any other similar prospects. The point is
not to wish for some abracadabra that would make homosexuals disappear.
Rather, it is to point out how profoundly transformative and corrosive
technology can be to our established concepts and institutions.
We have a tendency to assume that existing ideological categories are
permanent. History is the study of the repeated debunking of such
assumptions. The saddle, the stirrup, the moat, the locomotive, the
telephone, the atomic bomb, the car, the computer, the birth control
pill: All of these caused tectonic changes in ideological arrangements,
and all of them, save the last, were primarily innovations in
transportation, communication or war. The new earthquakes to come from
biotechnology - "cures" for homosexuality, unimaginable longevity, real
"happy pills" - could level all of the landmarks of our ideological
landscape, even redefining the first ideology, conservatism.
It's been said that conservatism can be defined as the idea that human
nature has no history. As we look around right now, that idea is on the
brink of oblivion.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online, a
Townhall.com member group.
This author is now on the staff at Berkeley. He wrote the landmark expose
of GM 'Playing God in the Garden' in the New Yorker. Here he is exposing
the feedlot racket. Our then Commissioner for the Environment failed to
expose its generic defects in her "assessment" of the huge lot near
Ashburton.
R
Discover How Your Beef is Really Raised
By Michael Pollan
Garden City, Kansas, missed out on the suburban building boom of the
postwar years. What it got instead were sprawling subdivisions of cattle.
These feedlots -- the nation's first -- began rising on the high plains of
western Kansas in the 50's, and by now developments catering to cows are
far more common here than developments catering to people.
You'll be speeding down one of Finney County's ramrod roads when the empty,
dun-colored prairie suddenly turns black and geometric, an urban grid of
steel-fenced rectangles as far as the eye can see -- which in Kansas is
really far.
I say ''suddenly,'' but in fact a swiftly intensifying odor (an aroma whose
Proustian echoes are more bus-station-men's-room than cow-in-the-country)
heralds the approach of a feedlot for more than a mile.
Then it's upon you: Poky Feeders, population 37,000. Cattle pens stretch
to the horizon, each one home to 150 animals standing dully or lying around
in a grayish mud that it eventually dawns on you isn't mud at all.
The pens line a network of unpaved roads that loop around vast waste
lagoons on their way to the feedlot's beating heart: a chugging, silvery
feed mill that soars like an industrial cathedral over this teeming
metropolis of meat.
I traveled to Poky early in January with the slightly improbable notion of
visiting one particular resident: a young black steer that I'd met in the
fall on a ranch in Vale, S.D. The steer, in fact, belonged to me.
I'd purchased him as an 8-month-old calf from the Blair brothers, Ed and
Rich, for $598. I was paying Poky Feeders $1.60 a day for his room, board
and meds and hoped to sell him at a profit after he was fattened.
My interest in the steer was not strictly financial, however, or even
gustatory, though I plan to retrieve some steaks from the Kansas packing
plant where No. 534, as he is known, has an appointment with the stunner in
June.
No, my primary interest in this animal was educational. I wanted to find
out how a modern, industrial steak is produced in America these days, from
insemination to slaughter.
Eating meat, something I have always enjoyed doing, has become problematic
in recent years. Though beef consumption spiked upward during the flush
90's, the longer-term trend is down, and many people will tell you they no
longer eat the stuff.
Inevitably they'll bring up mad-cow disease (and the accompanying
revelation that industrial agriculture has transformed these ruminants into
carnivores -- indeed, into cannibals).
They might mention their concerns about E. coli contamination or
antibiotics in the feed. Then there are the many environmental problems,
like groundwater pollution, associated with ''Concentrated Animal Feeding
Operations.''
(The word ''farm'' no longer applies.) And of course there are questions of
animal welfare. How are we treating the animals we eat while they're
alive, and then how humanely are we ''dispatching'' them, to borrow an
industry euphemism?
Meat-eating has always been a messy business, shadowed by the shame of
killing and, since Upton Sinclair's writing of ''The Jungle,'' by questions
about what we're really eating when we eat meat.
Forgetting, or willed ignorance, is the preferred strategy of many beef
eaters, a strategy abetted by the industry. (What grocery-store item is
more silent about its origins than a shrink-wrapped steak?)
Yet I recently began to feel that ignorance was no longer tenable. If I was
going to continue to eat red meat, then I owed it to myself, as well as to
the animals, to take more responsibility for the invisible but crucial
transaction between ourselves and the animals we eat. I'd try to own it,
in other words.
So this is the biography of my cow.
The Blair brothers ranch occupies 11,500 acres of short-grass prairie a few
miles outside Sturgis, S.D., directly in the shadow of Bear Butte. In
November, when I visited, the turf forms a luxuriant pelt of grass
oscillating yellow and gold in the constant wind and sprinkled with
perambulating black dots: Angus cows and calves grazing.
Ed and Rich Blair run what's called a ''cow-calf'' operation, the first
stage of beef production, and the stage least changed by the modern
industrialization of meat.
While the pork and chicken industries have consolidated the entire life
cycles of those animals under a single roof, beef cattle are still born on
thousands of independently owned ranches. Although four giant meatpacking
companies (Tyson's subsidiary IBP, Monfort, Excel and National) now
slaughter and market more than 80 percent of the beef cattle born in this
country, that concentration represents the narrow end of a funnel that
starts out as wide as the great plains.
The Blairs have been in the cattle business for four generations. Although
there are new wrinkles to the process -- artificial insemination to improve
genetics, for example -- producing beef calves goes pretty much as it
always has, just faster.
Calving season begins in late winter, a succession of subzero nights spent
yanking breeched babies out of their bellowing mothers. In April comes the
first spring roundup to work the newborn calves (branding, vaccination,
castration); then more roundups in early summer to inseminate the cows ($15
mail-order straws of elite bull semen have pretty much put the resident
stud out of work); and weaning in the fall. If all goes well, your herd of
850 cattle has increased to 1,600 by the end of the year.
My steer spent his first six months in these lush pastures alongside his
mother, No. 9,534. His father was a registered Angus named GAR Precision
1,680, a bull distinguished by the size and marbling of his offspring's
rib-eye steaks.
Born last March 13 in a birthing shed across the road, No. 534 was turned
out on pasture with his mother as soon as the 80-pound calf stood up and
began nursing. After a few weeks, the calf began supplementing his
mother's milk by nibbling on a salad bar of mostly native grasses: western
wheatgrass, little bluestem, green needlegrass.
Apart >from the trauma of the April day when he was branded and castrated,
you could easily imagine No. 534 looking back on those six months grazing
at his mother's side as the good old days -- if, that is, cows do look
back.
(''They do not know what is meant by yesterday or today,'' Friedrich
Nietzsche wrote, with a note of envy, of grazing cattle, ''fettered to the
moment and its pleasure or displeasure, and thus neither melancholy or
bored.'' Nietzsche clearly had never seen a feedlot.)
It may be foolish to presume to know what a cow experiences, yet we can say
that a cow grazing on grass is at least doing what he has been splendidly
molded by evolution to do. Which isn't a bad definition of animal
happiness.
Eating grass, however, is something that, after October, my steer would
never do again.
Although the modern cattle industry all but ignores it, the reciprocal
relationship between cows and grass is one of nature's underappreciated
wonders.
For the grasses, the cow maintains their habitat by preventing trees and
shrubs from gaining a foothold; the animal also spreads grass seed,
planting it with its hoofs and fertilizing it. In exchange for these
services, the grasses offer the ruminants a plentiful, exclusive meal.
For cows, sheep and other grazers have the unique ability to convert grass
-- which single-stomached creatures like us can't digest -- into
high-quality protein. They can do this because they possess a rumen, a
45-gallon fermentation tank in which a resident population of bacteria
turns grass into metabolically useful organic acids and protein.
This is an excellent system for all concerned: for the grasses, for the
animals and for us. What's more, growing meat on grass can make superb
ecological sense: so long as the rancher practices rotational grazing, it
is a sustainable, solar-powered system for producing food on land too arid
or hilly to grow anything else.
So if this system is so ideal, why is it that my cow hasn't tasted a blade
of grass since October?
Speed, in a word.
Cows raised on grass simply take longer to reach slaughter weight than cows
raised on a richer diet, and the modern meat industry has devoted itself to
shortening a beef calf's allotted time on earth. '
'In my grandfather's day, steers were 4 or 5 years old at slaughter,''
explained Rich Blair, who, at 45, is the younger of the brothers by four
years. ''In the 50's, when my father was ranching, it was 2 or 3.
"Now we get there at 14 to 16 months.''
Fast food indeed.
What gets a beef calf from 80 to 1,200 pounds in 14 months are enormous
quantities of corn, protein supplements -- and drugs, including growth
hormones. These ''efficiencies,'' all of which come at a price, have
transformed raising cattle into a high-volume, low-margin business. Not
everybody is convinced that this is progress. ''Hell,'' Ed Blair told me,
''my dad made more money on 250 head than we do on 850.''
Weaning marks the fateful moment when the natural, evolutionary logic
represented by a ruminant grazing on grass bumps up against the industrial
logic that, with stunning speed, turns that animal into a box of beef.
This industrial logic is rational and even irresistible -- after all, it
has succeeded in transforming beef from a luxury item into everyday fare
for millions of people. And yet the further you follow it, the more likely
you are to wonder if that rational logic might not also be completely
insane.
In early October, a few weeks before I met him, No. 534 was weaned from his
mother. Weaning is perhaps the most traumatic time on a ranch for animals
and ranchers alike; cows separated from their calves will mope and bellow
for days, and the calves themselves, stressed by the change in circumstance
and diet, are prone to get sick.
On many ranches, weaned calves go directly from the pasture to the sale
barn, where they're sold at auction, by the pound, to feedlots. The Blairs
prefer to own their steers straight through to slaughter and to keep them
on the ranch for a couple of months of ''backgrounding'' before sending
them on the 500-mile trip to Poky Feeders.
Think of backgrounding as prep school for feedlot life: the animals are
confined in a pen, ''bunk broken'' -- taught to eat from a trough -- and
gradually accustomed to eating a new, unnatural diet of grain. (Grazing
cows encounter only tiny amounts of grain, in the form of grass seeds.)
It was in the backgrounding pen that I first met No. 534 on an unseasonably
warm afternoon in November. I'd told the Blairs I wanted to follow one of
their steers through the life cycle; Ed, 49, suggested I might as well buy
a steer, as a way to really understand the daunting economics of modern
ranching.
Ed and Rich told me what to look for: a broad, straight back and thick
hindquarters. Basically, you want a strong frame on which to hang a lot of
meat. I was also looking for a memorable face in this Black Angus sea, one
that would stand out in the feedlot crowd.
Rich said he would calculate the total amount I owed the next time No. 534
got weighed but that the price would be $98 a hundredweight for an animal
of this quality. He would then bill me for all expenses (feed, shots, et
cetera) and, beginning in January, start passing on the weekly ''hotel
charges'' from Poky Feeders.
In June we'd find out from the packing plant how well my investment had
panned out: I would receive a payment for No. 534 based on his carcass
weight, plus a premium if he earned a U.S.D.A. grade of choice or prime.
''And if you're worried about the cattle market,'' Rich said jokingly,
referring to its post-Sept. 11 slide, ''I can sell you an option too.''
Option insurance has become increasingly popular among cattlemen in the
wake of mad-cow and foot-and-mouth disease.
Hadrick and I squeezed into the heated cab of a huge swivel-hipped tractor
hooked up to a feed mixer: basically, a dump truck with a giant screw
through the middle to blend ingredients.
First stop was a hopper filled with Rumensin, a powerful antibiotic that
No. 534 will consume with his feed every day for the rest of his life.
Calves have no need of regular medication while on grass, but as soon as
they're placed in the backgrounding pen, they're apt to get sick.
Why?
The stress of weaning is a factor, but the main culprit is the feed. The
shift to a ''hot ration'' of grain can so disturb the cow's digestive
process -- its rumen, in particular -- that it can kill the animal if not
managed carefully and accompanied by antibiotics.
After we'd scooped the ingredients into the hopper and turned on the mixer,
Hadrick deftly sidled the tractor alongside the pen and flipped a switch to
release a dusty tan stream of feed in a long, even line. No. 534 was one of
the first animals to belly up to the rail for breakfast. He was heftier
than his pen mates and, I decided, sparkier too. That morning, Hadrick and
I gave each calf six pounds of corn mixed with seven pounds of ground
alfalfa hay and a quarter-pound of Rumensin. Soon after my visit, this
ration would be cranked up to 14 pounds of corn and 6 pounds of hay -- and
added two and a half pounds every day to No. 534.
While I was on the ranch, I didn't talk to No. 534, pet him or otherwise
try to form a connection. I also decided not to give him a name, even
though my son proposed a pretty good one after seeing a snapshot.
(''Night.'') My intention, after all, is to send this animal to slaughter
and then eat some of him. No. 534 is not a pet, and I certainly don't want
to end up with an ox in my backyard because I suddenly got sentimental.
As fall turned into winter, Hadrick sent me regular e-mail messages
apprising me of my steer's progress. On Nov. 13 he weighed 650 pounds; by
Christmas he was up to 798, making him the seventh-heaviest steer in his
pen, an achievement in which I, idiotically, took a measure of pride.
Between Nov. 13 and Jan. 4, the day he boarded the truck for Kansas, No.
534 put away 706 pounds of corn and 336 pounds of alfalfa hay, bringing his
total living expenses for that period to $61.13. I was into this deal now
for $659.
Hadrick's e-mail updates grew chattier as time went on, cracking a window
on the rancher's life and outlook. I was especially struck by his
relationship to the animals, how it manages to be at once intimate and
unsentimental. One day Hadrick is tenderly nursing a newborn at 3 a.m., the
next he's ''having a big prairie oyster feed'' after castrating a pen of
bull calves.
Hadrick wrote empathetically about weaning (''It's like packing up and
leaving the house when you are 18 and knowing you will never see your
parents again'') and with restrained indignation about ''animal activists
and city people'' who don't understand the first thing about a rancher's
relationship to his cattle. Which, as Hadrick put it, is simply this: ''If
we don't take care of these animals, they won't take care of us.''
''Everyone hears about the bad stuff,'' Hadrick wrote, ''but they don't
ever see you give C.P.R. to a newborn calf that was born backward or
bringing them into your house and trying to warm them up on your kitchen
floor because they were born on a minus-20-degree night. Those are the
kinds of things ranchers will do for their livestock. They take precedence
over most everything in your life. Sorry for the sermon.''
To travel from the ranch to the feedlot, as No. 534 and I both did (in
separate vehicles) the first week in January, feels a lot like going from
the country to the big city. Indeed, a cattle feedlot is a kind of city,
populated by as many as 100,000 animals. It is very much a premodern city,
however -- crowded, filthy and stinking, with open sewers, unpaved roads
and choking air.
The urbanization of the world's livestock is a fairly recent historical
development, so it makes a certain sense that cow towns like Poky Feeders
would recall human cities several centuries ago. As in 14th-century London,
the metropolitan digestion remains vividly on display: the foodstuffs
coming in, the waste streaming out. Similarly, there is the crowding
together of recent arrivals from who knows where, combined with a lack of
modern sanitation.
This combination has always been a recipe for disease; the only reason
contemporary animal cities aren't as plague-ridden as their medieval
counterparts is a single historical anomaly: the modern antibiotic.
I spent the better part of a day walking around Poky Feeders, trying to
understand how its various parts fit together. In any city, it's easy to
lose track of nature -- of the connections between various species and the
land on which everything ultimately depends.
The feedlot's ecosystem, I could see, revolves around corn.
But its food chain doesn't end there, because the corn itself grows
somewhere else, where it is implicated in a whole other set of ecological
relationships. Growing the vast quantities of corn used to feed livestock
in this country takes vast quantities of chemical fertilizer, which in turn
takes vast quantities of oil -- 1.2 gallons for every bushel. So the modern
feedlot is really a city floating on a sea of oil.
I started my tour at the feed mill, the yard's thundering hub, where three
meals a day for 37,000 animals are designed and mixed by computer.
A million pounds of feed passes through the mill each day.
Every hour of every day, a tractor-trailer pulls up to disgorge another 25
tons of corn. Around the other side of the mill, tanker trucks back up to
silo-shaped tanks, into which they pump thousands of gallons of liquefied
fat and protein supplement.
In a shed attached to the mill sit vats of liquid vitamins and synthetic
estrogen; next to these are pallets stacked with 50-pound sacks of Rumensin
and tylosin, another antibiotic. Along with alfalfa hay and corn silage for
roughage, all these ingredients are blended and then piped into the dump
trucks that keep Poky's eight and a half miles of trough filled.
The feed mill's great din is made by two giant steel rollers turning
against each other 12 hours a day, crushing steamed corn kernels into
flakes. This was the only feed ingredient I tasted, and it wasn't half bad;
not as crisp as Kellogg's, but with a cornier flavor. I passed, however, on
the protein supplement, a sticky brown goop consisting of molasses and
urea.
Corn is a mainstay of livestock diets because there is no other feed quite
as cheap or plentiful: thanks to federal subsidies and ever-growing
surpluses, the price of corn ($2.25 a bushel) is 50 cents less than the
cost of growing it.
The rise of the modern factory farm is a direct result of these surpluses,
which soared in the years following World War II, when petrochemical
fertilizers came into widespread use. Ever since, the U.S.D.A.'s policy has
been to help farmers dispose of surplus corn by passing as much of it as
possible through the digestive tracts of food animals, converting it into
protein.
Compared with grass or hay, corn is a compact and portable foodstuff,
making it possible to feed tens of thousands of animals on small plots of
land.
Without cheap corn, the modern urbanization of livestock would probably
never have occurred.
We have come to think of ''cornfed'' as some kind of old-fashioned virtue;
we shouldn't. Granted, a cornfed cow develops well-marbled flesh, giving it
a taste and texture American consumers have learned to like. Yet this meat
is demonstrably less healthy to eat, since it contains more saturated fat.
A recent study in The European Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that the
meat of grass-fed livestock not only had substantially less fat than
grain-fed meat but that the type of fats found in grass-fed meat were much
healthier. (Grass-fed meat has more omega 3 fatty acids and fewer omega 6,
which is believed to promote heart disease; it also contains betacarotine
and CLA, another ''good'' fat.)
A growing body of research suggests that many of the health problems
associated with eating beef are really problems with cornfed beef. In the
same way ruminants have not evolved to eat grain, humans may not be well
adapted to eating grain-fed animals. Yet the USDA's grading system
continues to reward marbling -- that is, intermuscular fat -- and thus the
feeding of corn to cows.
The economic logic behind corn is unassailable, and on a factory farm,
there is no other kind. Calories are calories, and corn is the cheapest,
most convenient source of calories. Of course the identical industrial
logic -- protein is protein -- led to the feeding of rendered cow parts
back to cows, a practice the F.D.A. banned in 1997 after scientists
realized it was spreading mad-cow disease.
Make that mostly banned. The F.D.A.'s rules against feeding ruminant
protein to ruminants make exceptions for ''blood products'' (even though
they contain protein) and fat. Indeed, my steer has probably dined on beef
tallow recycled from the very slaughterhouse he's heading to in June. ''Fat
is fat,'' the feedlot manager shrugged when I raised an eyebrow.
FDA rules still permit feedlots to feed nonruminant animal protein to cows.
Feather meal is an accepted cattle feed, as are pig and fish protein and
chicken manure.
Some public-health advocates worry that since the bovine meat and bone meal
that cows used to eat is now being fed to chickens, pigs and fish,
infectious prions could find their way back into cattle when they eat the
protein of the animals that have been eating them. To close this biological
loophole, the FDA is now considering tightening its feed rules.
Until mad-cow disease, remarkably few people in the cattle business, let
alone the general public, comprehended the strange semicircular food chain
that industrial agriculture had devised for cattle (and, in turn, for us).
When I mentioned to Rich Blair that I'd been surprised to learn that cows
were eating cows, he said, ''To tell the truth, it was kind of a shock to
me too.''
Yet even today, ranchers don't ask many questions about feedlot menus. Not
that the answers are so easy to come by. When I asked Poky's feedlot
manager what exactly was in the protein supplement, he couldn't say. ''When
we buy supplement, the supplier says it's 40 percent protein, but they
don't specify beyond that.'' When I called the supplier, it wouldn't
divulge all its ''proprietary ingredients'' but promised that animal parts
weren't among them. Protein is pretty much still protein.
Compared with ground-up cow bones, corn seems positively wholesome. Yet it
wreaks considerable havoc on bovine digestion. During my day at Poky, I
spent an hour or two driving around the yard with Dr. Mel Metzen, the staff
veterinarian. Metzen, a 1997 graduate of Kansas State's vet school,
oversees a team of eight cowboys who spend their days riding the yard,
spotting sick cows and bringing them in for treatment.
A great many of their health problems can be traced to their diet.
''They're made to eat forage,'' Metzen said, ''and we're making them eat
grain.''
Perhaps the most serious thing that can go wrong with a ruminant on corn is
feedlot bloat. The rumen is always producing copious amounts of gas, which
is normally expelled by belching during rumination.
But when the diet contains too much starch and too little roughage,
rumination all but stops, and a layer of foamy slime that can trap gas
forms in the rumen. The rumen inflates like a balloon, pressing against the
animal's lungs. Unless action is promptly taken to relieve the pressure
(usually by forcing a hose down the animal's esophagus), the cow
suffocates.
A corn diet can also give a cow acidosis. Unlike that in our own highly
acidic stomachs, the normal pH of a rumen is neutral. Corn makes it
unnaturally acidic, however, causing a kind of bovine heartburn, which in
some cases can kill the animal but usually just makes it sick.
Acidotic animals go off their feed, pant and salivate excessively, paw at
their bellies and eat dirt. The condition can lead to diarrhea, ulcers,
bloat, liver disease and a general weakening of the immune system that
leaves the animal vulnerable to everything from pneumonia to feedlot polio.
Cows rarely live on feedlot diets for more than six months, which might be
about as much as their digestive systems can tolerate. ''I don't know how
long you could feed this ration before you'd see problems,'' Metzen said;
another vet said that a sustained feedlot diet would eventually ''blow out
their livers'' and kill them. As the acids eat away at the rumen wall,
bacteria enter the bloodstream and collect in the liver. More than 13
percent of feedlot cattle are found at slaughter to have abscessed livers.
What keeps a feedlot animal healthy -- or healthy enough -- are
antibiotics. Rumensin inhibits gas production in the rumen, helping to
prevent bloat; tylosin reduces the incidence of liver infection. Most of
the antibiotics sold in America end up in animal feed -- a practice that,
it is now generally acknowledged, leads directly to the evolution of new
antibiotic-resistant ''superbugs.''
In the debate over the use of antibiotics in agriculture, a distinction is
usually made between clinical and nonclinical uses. Public-health advocates
don't object to treating sick animals with antibiotics; they just don't
want to see the drugs lose their efficacy because factory farms are feeding
them to healthy animals to promote growth.
But the use of antibiotics in feedlot cattle confounds this distinction.
Here the drugs are plainly being used to treat sick animals, yet the
animals probably wouldn't be sick if not for what we feed them.
I asked Metzen what would happen if antibiotics were banned from cattle
feed. ''We just couldn't feed them as hard,'' he said. ''Or we'd have a
higher death loss.'' (Less than 3 percent of cattle die on the feedlot.)
The price of beef would rise, he said, since the whole system would have to
slow down.
''Hell, if you gave them lots of grass and space,'' he concluded dryly, ''I
wouldn't have a job.''
Before heading over to Pen 43 for my reunion with No. 534, I stopped by the
shed where recent arrivals receive their hormone implants. The calves are
funneled into a chute, herded along by a ranch hand wielding an electric
prod, then clutched in a restrainer just long enough for another hand to
inject a slow-release pellet of Revlar, a synthetic estrogen, in the back
of the ear.
The Blairs' pen had not yet been implanted, and I was still struggling with
the decision of whether to forgo what is virtually a universal practice in
the cattle industry in the United States. (It has been banned in the
European Union.)
American regulators permit hormone implants on the grounds that no risk to
human health has been proved, even though measurable hormone residues do
turn up in the meat we eat. These contribute to the buildup of estrogenic
compounds in the environment, which some scientists believe may explain
falling sperm counts and premature maturation in girls.
Recent studies have also found elevated levels of synthetic growth hormones
in feedlot wastes; these persistent chemicals eventually wind up in the
waterways downstream of feedlots, where scientists have found fish
exhibiting abnormal sex characteristics.
The F.D.A. is opening an inquiry into the problem, but for now, implanting
hormones in beef cattle is legal and financially irresistible: an implant
costs $1.50 and adds between 40 and 50 pounds to the weight of a steer at
slaughter, for a return of at least $25.
That could easily make the difference between profit and loss on my
investment in No. 534. Thinking like a parent, I like the idea of feeding
my son hamburgers free of synthetic hormones. But thinking like a
cattleman, there was really no decision to make.
I asked Rich Blair what he thought. ''I'd love to give up hormones,'' he
said. ''If the consumer said, We don't want hormones, we'd stop in a
second. The cattle could get along better without them. But the market
signal's not there, and as long as my competitor's doing it, I've got to do
it, too.''
Around lunch time, Metzen and I finally arrived at No. 534's pen. My first
impression was that my steer had landed himself a decent piece of real
estate. The pen is far enough from the feed mill to be fairly quiet, and it
has a water view -- of what I initially thought was a reservoir, until I
noticed the brown scum.
The pen itself is surprisingly spacious, slightly bigger than a basketball
court, with a concrete feed bunk out front and a freshwater trough in the
back. I climbed over the railing and joined the 90 steers, which, en masse,
retreated a few steps, then paused.
I had on the same carrot-colored sweater I'd worn to the ranch in South
Dakota, hoping to jog my steer's memory. Way off in the back, I spotted him
-- those three white blazes. As I gingerly stepped toward him, the quietly
shuffling mass of black cowhide between us parted, and there No. 534 and I
stood, staring dumbly at each other.
Glint of recognition? None whatsoever. I told myself not to take it
personally. No. 534 had been bred for his marbling, after all, not his
intellect.
I don't know enough about the emotional life of cows to say with any
confidence if No. 534 was miserable, bored or melancholy, but I would not
say he looked happy. I noticed that his eyes looked a little bloodshot.
Some animals are irritated by the fecal dust that floats in the feedlot
air; maybe that explained the sullen gaze with which he fixed me.
Unhappy or not, though, No. 534 had clearly been eating well. My animal had
put on a couple hundred pounds since we'd last met, and he looked it:
thicker across the shoulders and round as a barrel through the middle. He
carried himself more like a steer now than a calf, even though he was still
less than a year old. Metzen complimented me on his size and conformation.
''That's a handsome looking beef you've got there.''
Staring at No. 534, I could picture the white lines of the butcher's chart
dissecting his black hide: rump roast, flank steak, standing rib, brisket.
One way of looking at No. 534 -- the industrial way -- was as an efficient
machine for turning feed corn into beef.
Every day between now and his slaughter date in June, No. 534 will convert
32 pounds of feed (25 of them corn) into another three and a half pounds of
flesh. Poky is indeed a factory, transforming cheap raw materials into a
less-cheap finished product, as fast as bovinely possible.
Yet the factory metaphor obscures as much as it reveals about the creature
that stood before me. For this steer was not a machine in a factory but an
animal in a web of relationships that link him to certain other animals,
plants and microbes, as well as to the earth.
And one of those other animals is us.
The unnaturally rich diet of corn that has compromised No. 534's health is
fattening his flesh in a way that in turn may compromise the health of the
humans who will eat him. The antibiotics he's consuming with his corn were
at that very moment selecting, in his gut and wherever else in the
environment they wind up, for bacteria that could someday infect us and
resist the drugs we depend on. We inhabit the same microbial ecosystem as
the animals we eat, and whatever happens to it also happens to us.
I thought about the deep pile of manure that No. 534 and I were standing
in. We don't know much about the hormones in it -- where they will end up
or what they might do once they get there -- but we do know something about
the bacteria. One particularly lethal bug most probably resided in the
manure beneath my feet.
Escherichia coli 0157 is a relatively new strain of a common intestinal
bacteria (it was first isolated in the 1980's) that is common in feedlot
cattle, more than half of whom carry it in their guts. Ingesting as few as
10 of these microbes can cause a fatal infection.
Most of the microbes that reside in the gut of a cow and find their way
into our food get killed off by the acids in our stomachs, since they
originally adapted to live in a neutral-pH environment. But the digestive
tract of the modern feedlot cow is closer in acidity to our own, and in
this new, manmade environment acid-resistant strains of E. coli have
developed that can survive our stomach acids -- and go on to kill us.
By acidifying a cow's gut with corn, we have broken down one of our food
chain's barriers to infection. Yet this process can be reversed: James
Russell, a U.S.D.A. microbiologist, has discovered that switching a cow's
diet from corn to hay in the final days before slaughter reduces the
population of E. coli 0157 in its manure by as much as 70 percent. Such a
change, however, is considered wildly impractical by the cattle industry.
So much comes back to corn, this cheap feed that turns out in so many ways
to be not cheap at all. While I stood in No. 534's pen, a dump truck
pulled up alongside the feed bunk and released a golden stream of feed.
The animals stepped up to the bunk for their lunch. The $1.60 a day I'm
paying for three giant meals is a bargain only by the narrowest of
calculations. It doesn't take into account, for example, the cost to the
public health of antibiotic resistance or food poisoning by E. coli or all
the environmental costs associated with industrial corn.
For if you follow the corn from this bunk back to the fields where it
grows, you will find an 80-million-acre monoculture that consumes more
chemical herbicide and fertilizer than any other crop.
Keep going and you can trace the nitrogen runoff from that crop all the way
down the Mississippi into the Gulf of Mexico, where it has created (if that
is the right word) a 12,000-square-mile ''dead zone.''
But you can go farther still, and follow the fertilizer needed to grow that
corn all the way to the oil fields of the Persian Gulf. No. 534 started
life as part of a food chain that derived all its energy from the sun; now
that corn constitutes such an important link in his food chain, he is the
product of an industrial system powered by fossil fuel.
(And in turn, defended by the military -- another uncounted cost of
''cheap'' food.) I asked David Pimentel, a Cornell ecologist who
specializes in agriculture and energy, if it might be possible to calculate
precisely how much oil it will take to grow my steer to slaughter weight.
Assuming No. 534 continues to eat 25 pounds of corn a day and reaches a
weight of 1,250 pounds, he will have consumed in his lifetime roughly 284
gallons of oil. We have succeeded in industrializing the beef calf,
transforming what was once a solar-powered ruminant into the very last
thing we need: another fossil-fuel machine.
Sometime in June, No. 534 will be ready for slaughter. Though only 14
months old, my steer will weigh more than 1,200 pounds and will move with
the lumbering deliberateness of the obese. One morning, a cattle trailer
from the National Beef plant in Liberal, Kan., will pull in to Poky
Feeders, drop a ramp and load No. 534 along with 35 of his pen mates.
The 100-mile trip south to Liberal is a straight shot on Route 83, a
two-lane highway on which most of the traffic consists of speeding
tractor-trailers carrying either cattle or corn. The National Beef plant is
a sprawling gray-and-white complex in a neighborhood of trailer homes and
tiny houses a notch up from shanty.
These are, presumably, the homes of the Mexican and Asian immigrants who
make up a large portion of the plant's work force. The meat business has
made southwestern Kansas an unexpectedly diverse corner of the country.
A few hours after their arrival in the holding pens outside the factory, a
plant worker will open a gate and herd No. 534 and his pen mates into an
alley that makes a couple of turns before narrowing down to a single-file
chute. The chute becomes a ramp that leads the animals up to a second-story
platform and then disappears through a blue door.
That door is as close to the kill floor as the plant managers were prepared
to let me go.
I could see whatever I wanted to farther on -- the cold room where
carcasses are graded, the food-safety lab, the fabrication room where the
carcasses are broken down into cuts -- on the condition that I didn't take
pictures or talk to employees. But the stunning, bleeding and evisceration
process was off limits to a journalist, even a cattleman-journalist like
myself.
What I know about what happens on the far side of the blue door comes
mostly from Temple Grandin, who has been on the other side and, in fact,
helped to design it. Grandin, an assistant professor of animal science at
Colorado State, is one of the most influential people in the United States
cattle industry.
She has devoted herself to making cattle slaughter less stressful and
therefore more humane by designing an ingenious series of cattle
restraints, chutes, ramps and stunning systems. Grandin is autistic, a
condition she says has allowed her to see the world from the cow's point of
view.
The industry has embraced Grandin's work because animals under stress are
not only more difficult to handle but also less valuable: panicked cows
produce a surge of adrenaline that turns their meat dark and unappetizing.
''Dark cutters,'' as they're called, sell at a deep discount.
Grandin designed the double-rail conveyor system in use at the National
Beef plant; she has also audited the plant's killing process for
McDonald's.
Stories about cattle ''waking up'' after stunning only to be skinned alive
prompted McDonald's to audit its suppliers in a program that is credited
with substantial improvements since its inception in 1999. Grandin says
that in cattle slaughter ''there is the pre-McDonald's era and the
post-McDonald's era -- it's night and day.''
Grandin recently described to me what will happen to No. 534 after he
passes through the blue door. ''The animal goes into the chute single
file,'' she began. ''The sides are high enough so all he sees is the butt
of the animal in front of him. As he walks through the chute, he passes
over a metal bar, with his feet on either side. While he's straddling the
bar, the ramp begins to decline at a 25-degree angle, and before he knows
it, his feet are off the ground and he's being carried along on a conveyor
belt. We put in a false floor so he can't look down and see he's off the
ground. That would panic him.''
Listening to Grandin's rather clinical account, I couldn't help wondering
what No. 534 would be feeling as he approached his end. Would he have any
inkling -- a scent of blood, a sound of terror from up the line -- that
this was no ordinary day?
Grandin anticipated my question: ''Does the animal know it's going to get
slaughtered? I used to wonder that. So I watched them, going into the
squeeze chute on the feedlot, getting their shots and going up the ramp at
a slaughter plant. No difference. If they knew they were going to die,
you'd see much more agitated behavior.
''Anyway, the conveyor is moving along at roughly the speed of a moving
sidewalk. On a catwalk above stands the stunner. The stunner has a
pneumatic-powered 'gun' that fires a steel bolt about seven inches long and
the diameter of a fat pencil. He leans over and puts it smack in the middle
of the forehead. When it's done correctly, it will kill the animal on the
first shot.''
For a plant to pass a McDonald's audit, the stunner needs to render animals
''insensible'' on the first shot 95 percent of the time. A second shot is
allowed, but should that one fail, the plant flunks.
At the line speeds at which meatpacking plants in the United States operate
-- 390 animals are slaughtered every hour at National, which is not unusual
-- mistakes would seem inevitable, but Grandin insists that only rarely
does the process break down.
''After the animal is shot while he's riding along, a worker wraps a chain
around his foot and hooks it to an overhead trolley. Hanging upside down by
one leg, he's carried by the trolley into the bleeding area, where the
bleeder cuts his throat.
Animal rights people say they're cutting live animals, but that's because
there's a lot of reflex kicking.'' This is one of the reasons a job at a
slaughter plant is the most dangerous in America. ''What I look for is, Is
the head dead? It should be flopping like a rag, with the tongue hanging
out. He'd better not be trying to hold it up -- then you've got a live one
on the rail.'' Just in case, Grandin said, ''they have another hand stunner
in the bleed area.''
Much of what happens next -- the de-hiding of the animal, the tying off of
its rectum before evisceration -- is designed to keep the animal's feces
from coming into contact with its meat. This is by no means easy to do, not
when the animals enter the kill floor smeared with manure and 390 of them
are eviscerated every hour.
(Partly for this reason, European plants operate at much slower line
speeds.) But since that manure is apt to contain lethal pathogens like E.
coli 0157, and since the process of grinding together hamburger from
hundreds of different carcasses can easily spread those pathogens across
millions of burgers, packing plants now spend millions on ''food safety''
-- which is to say, on the problem of manure in meat.
Most of these efforts are reactive: it's accepted that the animals will
enter the kill floor caked with feedlot manure that has been rendered
lethal by the feedlot diet.
Rather than try to alter that diet or keep the animals from living in their
waste or slow the line speed -- all changes regarded as impractical -- the
industry focuses on disinfecting the manure that will inevitably find its
way into the meat. This is the purpose of irradiation (which the industry
prefers to call ''cold pasteurization''). It is also the reason that
carcasses pass through a hot steam cabinet and get sprayed with an
antimicrobial solution before being hung in the cooler at the National Beef
plant.
It wasn't until after the carcasses emerged from the cooler, 36 hours
later, that I was allowed to catch up with them, in the grading room. I
entered a huge arctic space resembling a monstrous dry cleaner's, with a
seemingly endless overhead track conveying thousands of red-and-white
carcasses.
I quickly learned that you had to move smartly through this room or else be
tackled by a 350-pound side of beef. The carcasses felt cool to the touch,
no longer animals but meat.
Two by two, the sides of beef traveled swiftly down the rails, six pairs
every minute, to a station where two workers -- one wielding a small power
saw, the other a long knife -- made a single six-inch cut between the 12th
and 13th ribs, opening a window on the meat inside.
The carcasses continued on to another station, where a U.S.D.A. inspector
holding a round blue stamp glanced at the exposed rib eye and stamped the
carcass's creamy white fat once, twice or -- very rarely -- three times:
select, choice, prime.
For the Blair brothers, and for me, this is the moment of truth, for that
stamp will determine exactly how much the packing plant will pay for each
animal and whether the 14 months of effort and expense will yield a profit.
Unless the cattle market collapses between now and June (always a worry
these days), I stand to make a modest profit on No. 534. In February, the
feedlot took a sonogram of his rib eye and ran the data through a computer
program.
The projections are encouraging: a live slaughter weight of 1,250, a
carcass weight of 787 pounds and a grade at the upper end of choice, making
him eligible to be sold at a premium as Certified Angus Beef. Based on the
June futures price, No. 534 should be worth $944. (Should he grade prime,
that would add another $75.)
I paid $598 for No. 534 in November; his living expenses since then come to
$61 on the ranch and $258 for 160 days at the feedlot (including implant),
for a total investment of $917, leaving a profit of $27. It's a razor-thin
margin, and it could easily vanish should the price of corn rise or No. 534
fail to make the predicted weight or grade -- say, if he gets sick and goes
off his feed.
Without the corn, without the antibiotics, without the hormone implant, my
brief career as a cattleman would end in failure.
The Blairs and I are doing better than most. According to Cattle-Fax, a
market-research firm, the return on an animal coming out of a feedlot has
averaged just $3 per head over the last 20 years.
''Some pens you make money, some pens you lose,'' Rich Blair said when I
called to commiserate. ''You try to average it out over time, limit the
losses and hopefully make a little profit.'' He reminded me that a lot of
ranchers are in the business ''for emotional reasons -- you can't be in it
just for the money.''
Now you tell me.
The manager of the packing plant has offered to pull a box of steaks from
No. 534 before his carcass disappears into the trackless stream of
commodity beef fanning out to America's supermarkets and restaurants this
June.
From what I can see, the Blair brothers, with the help of Poky Feeders, are
producing meat as good as any you can find in an American supermarket. And
yet there's no reason to think this steak will taste any different from the
other high-end industrial meat I've ever eaten.
While waiting for my box of meat to arrive from Kansas, I've explored some
alternatives to the industrial product. Nowadays you can find hormone- and
antibiotic-free beef as well as organic beef, fed only grain grown without
chemicals.
This meat, which is often quite good, is typically produced using more
grass and less grain (and so makes for healthier animals). Yet it doesn't
fundamentally challenge the corn-feedlot system, and I'm not sure that an
''organic feedlot'' isn't, ecologically speaking, an oxymoron. What I
really wanted to taste is the sort of preindustrial beef my grandparents
ate -- from animals that have lived most of their full-length lives on
grass.
Eventually I found a farmer in the Hudson Valley who sold me a quarter of a
grass-fed Angus steer that is now occupying most of my freezer. I also
found ranchers selling grass-fed beef on the Web;
I discovered that grass-fed meat is more expensive than supermarket beef.
Whatever else you can say about industrial beef, it is remarkably cheap,
and any argument for changing the system runs smack into the industry's
populist arguments.
Put the animals back on grass, it is said, and prices will soar; it takes
too long to raise beef on grass, and there's not enough grass to raise them
on, since the Western range lands aren't big enough to sustain America's
100 million head of cattle.
And besides, Americans have learned to love cornfed beef. Feedlot meat is
also more consistent in both taste and supply and can be harvested 12
months a year. (Grass-fed cattle tend to be harvested in the fall, since
they stop gaining weight over the winter, when the grasses go dormant.)
All of this is true. The economic logic behind the feedlot system is hard
to refute. And yet so is the ecological logic behind a ruminant grazing on
grass. Think what would happen if we restored a portion of the Corn Belt to
the tall grass prairie it once was and grazed cattle on it.
No more petrochemical fertilizer, no more herbicide, no more nitrogen
runoff. Yes, beef would probably be more expensive than it is now, but
would that necessarily be a bad thing? Eating beef every day might not be
such a smart idea anyway -- for our health, for the environment.
And how cheap, really, is cheap feedlot beef? Not cheap at all, when you
add in the invisible costs: of antibiotic resistance, environmental
degradation, heart disease, E. coli poisoning, corn subsidies, imported oil
and so on. All these are costs that grass-fed beef does not incur.
So how does grass-fed beef taste?
Uneven, just as you might expect the meat of a nonindustrial animal to
taste. One grass-fed tenderloin from Argentina that I sampled turned out
to be the best steak I've ever eaten. But unless the meat is carefully
aged, grass-fed beef can be tougher than feedlot beef -- not surprisingly,
since a grazing animal, which moves around in search of its food, develops
more muscle and less fat.
Yet even when the meat was tougher, its flavor, to my mind, was much more
interesting. And specific, for the taste of every grass-fed animal is
inflected by the place where it lived. Maybe it's just my imagination, but
nowadays when I eat a feedlot steak, I can taste the corn and the fat, and
I can see the view from No. 534's pen. I can't taste the oil, obviously, or
the drugs, yet now I know they're there.
A considerably different picture comes to mind while chewing (and, O.K.,
chewing) a grass-fed steak: a picture of a cow outside in a pasture eating
the grass that has eaten the sunlight.
Meat-eating may have become an act riddled with moral and ethical
ambiguities, but eating a steak at the end of a short, primordial food
chain comprising nothing more than ruminants and grass and light is
something I'm happy to do and defend. We are what we eat, it is often said,
but of course that's only part of the story. We are what what we eat eats
too.
Dr. Mercola's Comment:
When I first became aware of grass-fed beef, I was only superficially aware
of the importance of omega-3 oils. I have now grown to appreciate that
balancing the optimum amount of omega-3 oils is one of the most important
things you can do to stay healthy.
If you are not yet familiar with the benefits of omega-3 oils, please
review myrecent
article on the cardiovascular actions of omega-3 oils.
Most nutritionist don't yet realize that it not only the amount, but the
ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 oils that controls much of our disease and
health outcomes.
That is why it is so important to consume animals that are primarily eating
grass. These animals will have far lower levels of the potentially
dangerous omega-6 oils that nearly all of us have a surplus of.
The practical way to do this is to consume free-range chickens and turkeys
and pasture or grass-fed beef. Unfortunately, you cannot buy this grass-fed
beef at your local grocery store.
Obtaining free range poultry is relatively straight forward but you must be
careful regarding the beef. Many stores will advertise grass-fed beef but
it really isn't. They do this as ALL cattle are grass fed, but the key is
what they are fed the months prior to being processed.
As this wonderful article explains most all cattle are shipped to giant
feed lots and fed corn to fatten them up. I knew this before reading this
incredible story, but I now have a far better understanding of the process.
You will need to call the person who actually grew the beef, NOT the store
manager, to find out the truth.
The least expensive way to obtain authentic grass fed beef would be to find
a farmer who is growing the beef who you can trust and buy a half a side of
beef from him. This way you save the shipping and also receive a reduced
rate on the meat.
An inexpensive, yet effective way to determine if the meat is really from a
grass fed animal is to purchase the ground beef. Slowly cook the beef till
done and drain and collect all the fat. Grass fed beef is very high in
omega-3 fats and will be relatively thin compared to traditionally prepared
ground beef.
It will also be a liquid at room temperature as it has very few saturated
fats which are mostly solid at room temperature.
However, most of us live in large urban areas and do not have the time for
this process. Just as it would be ideal to have an organic garden and grow
your own vegetables, most of us elect not to do that for time or space
reasons.
I used to have an organic garden, but my schedule just would not allow me
to have that luxury anymore. So, if you are convinced, like I am, that
grass-fed beef is better for you and you would like the convenience of
being able to order it over the Net, you can buy grass-fed beef online,
shipped overnight to your door, at Grassfed Organics.
http://www.mercola.com/2002/apr/17/cattle1.htm
of GM 'Playing God in the Garden' in the New Yorker. Here he is exposing
the feedlot racket. Our then Commissioner for the Environment failed to
expose its generic defects in her "assessment" of the huge lot near
Ashburton.
R
Discover How Your Beef is Really Raised
By Michael Pollan
Garden City, Kansas, missed out on the suburban building boom of the
postwar years. What it got instead were sprawling subdivisions of cattle.
These feedlots -- the nation's first -- began rising on the high plains of
western Kansas in the 50's, and by now developments catering to cows are
far more common here than developments catering to people.
You'll be speeding down one of Finney County's ramrod roads when the empty,
dun-colored prairie suddenly turns black and geometric, an urban grid of
steel-fenced rectangles as far as the eye can see -- which in Kansas is
really far.
I say ''suddenly,'' but in fact a swiftly intensifying odor (an aroma whose
Proustian echoes are more bus-station-men's-room than cow-in-the-country)
heralds the approach of a feedlot for more than a mile.
Then it's upon you: Poky Feeders, population 37,000. Cattle pens stretch
to the horizon, each one home to 150 animals standing dully or lying around
in a grayish mud that it eventually dawns on you isn't mud at all.
The pens line a network of unpaved roads that loop around vast waste
lagoons on their way to the feedlot's beating heart: a chugging, silvery
feed mill that soars like an industrial cathedral over this teeming
metropolis of meat.
I traveled to Poky early in January with the slightly improbable notion of
visiting one particular resident: a young black steer that I'd met in the
fall on a ranch in Vale, S.D. The steer, in fact, belonged to me.
I'd purchased him as an 8-month-old calf from the Blair brothers, Ed and
Rich, for $598. I was paying Poky Feeders $1.60 a day for his room, board
and meds and hoped to sell him at a profit after he was fattened.
My interest in the steer was not strictly financial, however, or even
gustatory, though I plan to retrieve some steaks from the Kansas packing
plant where No. 534, as he is known, has an appointment with the stunner in
June.
No, my primary interest in this animal was educational. I wanted to find
out how a modern, industrial steak is produced in America these days, from
insemination to slaughter.
Eating meat, something I have always enjoyed doing, has become problematic
in recent years. Though beef consumption spiked upward during the flush
90's, the longer-term trend is down, and many people will tell you they no
longer eat the stuff.
Inevitably they'll bring up mad-cow disease (and the accompanying
revelation that industrial agriculture has transformed these ruminants into
carnivores -- indeed, into cannibals).
They might mention their concerns about E. coli contamination or
antibiotics in the feed. Then there are the many environmental problems,
like groundwater pollution, associated with ''Concentrated Animal Feeding
Operations.''
(The word ''farm'' no longer applies.) And of course there are questions of
animal welfare. How are we treating the animals we eat while they're
alive, and then how humanely are we ''dispatching'' them, to borrow an
industry euphemism?
Meat-eating has always been a messy business, shadowed by the shame of
killing and, since Upton Sinclair's writing of ''The Jungle,'' by questions
about what we're really eating when we eat meat.
Forgetting, or willed ignorance, is the preferred strategy of many beef
eaters, a strategy abetted by the industry. (What grocery-store item is
more silent about its origins than a shrink-wrapped steak?)
Yet I recently began to feel that ignorance was no longer tenable. If I was
going to continue to eat red meat, then I owed it to myself, as well as to
the animals, to take more responsibility for the invisible but crucial
transaction between ourselves and the animals we eat. I'd try to own it,
in other words.
So this is the biography of my cow.
The Blair brothers ranch occupies 11,500 acres of short-grass prairie a few
miles outside Sturgis, S.D., directly in the shadow of Bear Butte. In
November, when I visited, the turf forms a luxuriant pelt of grass
oscillating yellow and gold in the constant wind and sprinkled with
perambulating black dots: Angus cows and calves grazing.
Ed and Rich Blair run what's called a ''cow-calf'' operation, the first
stage of beef production, and the stage least changed by the modern
industrialization of meat.
While the pork and chicken industries have consolidated the entire life
cycles of those animals under a single roof, beef cattle are still born on
thousands of independently owned ranches. Although four giant meatpacking
companies (Tyson's subsidiary IBP, Monfort, Excel and National) now
slaughter and market more than 80 percent of the beef cattle born in this
country, that concentration represents the narrow end of a funnel that
starts out as wide as the great plains.
The Blairs have been in the cattle business for four generations. Although
there are new wrinkles to the process -- artificial insemination to improve
genetics, for example -- producing beef calves goes pretty much as it
always has, just faster.
Calving season begins in late winter, a succession of subzero nights spent
yanking breeched babies out of their bellowing mothers. In April comes the
first spring roundup to work the newborn calves (branding, vaccination,
castration); then more roundups in early summer to inseminate the cows ($15
mail-order straws of elite bull semen have pretty much put the resident
stud out of work); and weaning in the fall. If all goes well, your herd of
850 cattle has increased to 1,600 by the end of the year.
My steer spent his first six months in these lush pastures alongside his
mother, No. 9,534. His father was a registered Angus named GAR Precision
1,680, a bull distinguished by the size and marbling of his offspring's
rib-eye steaks.
Born last March 13 in a birthing shed across the road, No. 534 was turned
out on pasture with his mother as soon as the 80-pound calf stood up and
began nursing. After a few weeks, the calf began supplementing his
mother's milk by nibbling on a salad bar of mostly native grasses: western
wheatgrass, little bluestem, green needlegrass.
Apart >from the trauma of the April day when he was branded and castrated,
you could easily imagine No. 534 looking back on those six months grazing
at his mother's side as the good old days -- if, that is, cows do look
back.
(''They do not know what is meant by yesterday or today,'' Friedrich
Nietzsche wrote, with a note of envy, of grazing cattle, ''fettered to the
moment and its pleasure or displeasure, and thus neither melancholy or
bored.'' Nietzsche clearly had never seen a feedlot.)
It may be foolish to presume to know what a cow experiences, yet we can say
that a cow grazing on grass is at least doing what he has been splendidly
molded by evolution to do. Which isn't a bad definition of animal
happiness.
Eating grass, however, is something that, after October, my steer would
never do again.
Although the modern cattle industry all but ignores it, the reciprocal
relationship between cows and grass is one of nature's underappreciated
wonders.
For the grasses, the cow maintains their habitat by preventing trees and
shrubs from gaining a foothold; the animal also spreads grass seed,
planting it with its hoofs and fertilizing it. In exchange for these
services, the grasses offer the ruminants a plentiful, exclusive meal.
For cows, sheep and other grazers have the unique ability to convert grass
-- which single-stomached creatures like us can't digest -- into
high-quality protein. They can do this because they possess a rumen, a
45-gallon fermentation tank in which a resident population of bacteria
turns grass into metabolically useful organic acids and protein.
This is an excellent system for all concerned: for the grasses, for the
animals and for us. What's more, growing meat on grass can make superb
ecological sense: so long as the rancher practices rotational grazing, it
is a sustainable, solar-powered system for producing food on land too arid
or hilly to grow anything else.
So if this system is so ideal, why is it that my cow hasn't tasted a blade
of grass since October?
Speed, in a word.
Cows raised on grass simply take longer to reach slaughter weight than cows
raised on a richer diet, and the modern meat industry has devoted itself to
shortening a beef calf's allotted time on earth. '
'In my grandfather's day, steers were 4 or 5 years old at slaughter,''
explained Rich Blair, who, at 45, is the younger of the brothers by four
years. ''In the 50's, when my father was ranching, it was 2 or 3.
"Now we get there at 14 to 16 months.''
Fast food indeed.
What gets a beef calf from 80 to 1,200 pounds in 14 months are enormous
quantities of corn, protein supplements -- and drugs, including growth
hormones. These ''efficiencies,'' all of which come at a price, have
transformed raising cattle into a high-volume, low-margin business. Not
everybody is convinced that this is progress. ''Hell,'' Ed Blair told me,
''my dad made more money on 250 head than we do on 850.''
Weaning marks the fateful moment when the natural, evolutionary logic
represented by a ruminant grazing on grass bumps up against the industrial
logic that, with stunning speed, turns that animal into a box of beef.
This industrial logic is rational and even irresistible -- after all, it
has succeeded in transforming beef from a luxury item into everyday fare
for millions of people. And yet the further you follow it, the more likely
you are to wonder if that rational logic might not also be completely
insane.
In early October, a few weeks before I met him, No. 534 was weaned from his
mother. Weaning is perhaps the most traumatic time on a ranch for animals
and ranchers alike; cows separated from their calves will mope and bellow
for days, and the calves themselves, stressed by the change in circumstance
and diet, are prone to get sick.
On many ranches, weaned calves go directly from the pasture to the sale
barn, where they're sold at auction, by the pound, to feedlots. The Blairs
prefer to own their steers straight through to slaughter and to keep them
on the ranch for a couple of months of ''backgrounding'' before sending
them on the 500-mile trip to Poky Feeders.
Think of backgrounding as prep school for feedlot life: the animals are
confined in a pen, ''bunk broken'' -- taught to eat from a trough -- and
gradually accustomed to eating a new, unnatural diet of grain. (Grazing
cows encounter only tiny amounts of grain, in the form of grass seeds.)
It was in the backgrounding pen that I first met No. 534 on an unseasonably
warm afternoon in November. I'd told the Blairs I wanted to follow one of
their steers through the life cycle; Ed, 49, suggested I might as well buy
a steer, as a way to really understand the daunting economics of modern
ranching.
Ed and Rich told me what to look for: a broad, straight back and thick
hindquarters. Basically, you want a strong frame on which to hang a lot of
meat. I was also looking for a memorable face in this Black Angus sea, one
that would stand out in the feedlot crowd.
Rich said he would calculate the total amount I owed the next time No. 534
got weighed but that the price would be $98 a hundredweight for an animal
of this quality. He would then bill me for all expenses (feed, shots, et
cetera) and, beginning in January, start passing on the weekly ''hotel
charges'' from Poky Feeders.
In June we'd find out from the packing plant how well my investment had
panned out: I would receive a payment for No. 534 based on his carcass
weight, plus a premium if he earned a U.S.D.A. grade of choice or prime.
''And if you're worried about the cattle market,'' Rich said jokingly,
referring to its post-Sept. 11 slide, ''I can sell you an option too.''
Option insurance has become increasingly popular among cattlemen in the
wake of mad-cow and foot-and-mouth disease.
Hadrick and I squeezed into the heated cab of a huge swivel-hipped tractor
hooked up to a feed mixer: basically, a dump truck with a giant screw
through the middle to blend ingredients.
First stop was a hopper filled with Rumensin, a powerful antibiotic that
No. 534 will consume with his feed every day for the rest of his life.
Calves have no need of regular medication while on grass, but as soon as
they're placed in the backgrounding pen, they're apt to get sick.
Why?
The stress of weaning is a factor, but the main culprit is the feed. The
shift to a ''hot ration'' of grain can so disturb the cow's digestive
process -- its rumen, in particular -- that it can kill the animal if not
managed carefully and accompanied by antibiotics.
After we'd scooped the ingredients into the hopper and turned on the mixer,
Hadrick deftly sidled the tractor alongside the pen and flipped a switch to
release a dusty tan stream of feed in a long, even line. No. 534 was one of
the first animals to belly up to the rail for breakfast. He was heftier
than his pen mates and, I decided, sparkier too. That morning, Hadrick and
I gave each calf six pounds of corn mixed with seven pounds of ground
alfalfa hay and a quarter-pound of Rumensin. Soon after my visit, this
ration would be cranked up to 14 pounds of corn and 6 pounds of hay -- and
added two and a half pounds every day to No. 534.
While I was on the ranch, I didn't talk to No. 534, pet him or otherwise
try to form a connection. I also decided not to give him a name, even
though my son proposed a pretty good one after seeing a snapshot.
(''Night.'') My intention, after all, is to send this animal to slaughter
and then eat some of him. No. 534 is not a pet, and I certainly don't want
to end up with an ox in my backyard because I suddenly got sentimental.
As fall turned into winter, Hadrick sent me regular e-mail messages
apprising me of my steer's progress. On Nov. 13 he weighed 650 pounds; by
Christmas he was up to 798, making him the seventh-heaviest steer in his
pen, an achievement in which I, idiotically, took a measure of pride.
Between Nov. 13 and Jan. 4, the day he boarded the truck for Kansas, No.
534 put away 706 pounds of corn and 336 pounds of alfalfa hay, bringing his
total living expenses for that period to $61.13. I was into this deal now
for $659.
Hadrick's e-mail updates grew chattier as time went on, cracking a window
on the rancher's life and outlook. I was especially struck by his
relationship to the animals, how it manages to be at once intimate and
unsentimental. One day Hadrick is tenderly nursing a newborn at 3 a.m., the
next he's ''having a big prairie oyster feed'' after castrating a pen of
bull calves.
Hadrick wrote empathetically about weaning (''It's like packing up and
leaving the house when you are 18 and knowing you will never see your
parents again'') and with restrained indignation about ''animal activists
and city people'' who don't understand the first thing about a rancher's
relationship to his cattle. Which, as Hadrick put it, is simply this: ''If
we don't take care of these animals, they won't take care of us.''
''Everyone hears about the bad stuff,'' Hadrick wrote, ''but they don't
ever see you give C.P.R. to a newborn calf that was born backward or
bringing them into your house and trying to warm them up on your kitchen
floor because they were born on a minus-20-degree night. Those are the
kinds of things ranchers will do for their livestock. They take precedence
over most everything in your life. Sorry for the sermon.''
To travel from the ranch to the feedlot, as No. 534 and I both did (in
separate vehicles) the first week in January, feels a lot like going from
the country to the big city. Indeed, a cattle feedlot is a kind of city,
populated by as many as 100,000 animals. It is very much a premodern city,
however -- crowded, filthy and stinking, with open sewers, unpaved roads
and choking air.
The urbanization of the world's livestock is a fairly recent historical
development, so it makes a certain sense that cow towns like Poky Feeders
would recall human cities several centuries ago. As in 14th-century London,
the metropolitan digestion remains vividly on display: the foodstuffs
coming in, the waste streaming out. Similarly, there is the crowding
together of recent arrivals from who knows where, combined with a lack of
modern sanitation.
This combination has always been a recipe for disease; the only reason
contemporary animal cities aren't as plague-ridden as their medieval
counterparts is a single historical anomaly: the modern antibiotic.
I spent the better part of a day walking around Poky Feeders, trying to
understand how its various parts fit together. In any city, it's easy to
lose track of nature -- of the connections between various species and the
land on which everything ultimately depends.
The feedlot's ecosystem, I could see, revolves around corn.
But its food chain doesn't end there, because the corn itself grows
somewhere else, where it is implicated in a whole other set of ecological
relationships. Growing the vast quantities of corn used to feed livestock
in this country takes vast quantities of chemical fertilizer, which in turn
takes vast quantities of oil -- 1.2 gallons for every bushel. So the modern
feedlot is really a city floating on a sea of oil.
I started my tour at the feed mill, the yard's thundering hub, where three
meals a day for 37,000 animals are designed and mixed by computer.
A million pounds of feed passes through the mill each day.
Every hour of every day, a tractor-trailer pulls up to disgorge another 25
tons of corn. Around the other side of the mill, tanker trucks back up to
silo-shaped tanks, into which they pump thousands of gallons of liquefied
fat and protein supplement.
In a shed attached to the mill sit vats of liquid vitamins and synthetic
estrogen; next to these are pallets stacked with 50-pound sacks of Rumensin
and tylosin, another antibiotic. Along with alfalfa hay and corn silage for
roughage, all these ingredients are blended and then piped into the dump
trucks that keep Poky's eight and a half miles of trough filled.
The feed mill's great din is made by two giant steel rollers turning
against each other 12 hours a day, crushing steamed corn kernels into
flakes. This was the only feed ingredient I tasted, and it wasn't half bad;
not as crisp as Kellogg's, but with a cornier flavor. I passed, however, on
the protein supplement, a sticky brown goop consisting of molasses and
urea.
Corn is a mainstay of livestock diets because there is no other feed quite
as cheap or plentiful: thanks to federal subsidies and ever-growing
surpluses, the price of corn ($2.25 a bushel) is 50 cents less than the
cost of growing it.
The rise of the modern factory farm is a direct result of these surpluses,
which soared in the years following World War II, when petrochemical
fertilizers came into widespread use. Ever since, the U.S.D.A.'s policy has
been to help farmers dispose of surplus corn by passing as much of it as
possible through the digestive tracts of food animals, converting it into
protein.
Compared with grass or hay, corn is a compact and portable foodstuff,
making it possible to feed tens of thousands of animals on small plots of
land.
Without cheap corn, the modern urbanization of livestock would probably
never have occurred.
We have come to think of ''cornfed'' as some kind of old-fashioned virtue;
we shouldn't. Granted, a cornfed cow develops well-marbled flesh, giving it
a taste and texture American consumers have learned to like. Yet this meat
is demonstrably less healthy to eat, since it contains more saturated fat.
A recent study in The European Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that the
meat of grass-fed livestock not only had substantially less fat than
grain-fed meat but that the type of fats found in grass-fed meat were much
healthier. (Grass-fed meat has more omega 3 fatty acids and fewer omega 6,
which is believed to promote heart disease; it also contains betacarotine
and CLA, another ''good'' fat.)
A growing body of research suggests that many of the health problems
associated with eating beef are really problems with cornfed beef. In the
same way ruminants have not evolved to eat grain, humans may not be well
adapted to eating grain-fed animals. Yet the USDA's grading system
continues to reward marbling -- that is, intermuscular fat -- and thus the
feeding of corn to cows.
The economic logic behind corn is unassailable, and on a factory farm,
there is no other kind. Calories are calories, and corn is the cheapest,
most convenient source of calories. Of course the identical industrial
logic -- protein is protein -- led to the feeding of rendered cow parts
back to cows, a practice the F.D.A. banned in 1997 after scientists
realized it was spreading mad-cow disease.
Make that mostly banned. The F.D.A.'s rules against feeding ruminant
protein to ruminants make exceptions for ''blood products'' (even though
they contain protein) and fat. Indeed, my steer has probably dined on beef
tallow recycled from the very slaughterhouse he's heading to in June. ''Fat
is fat,'' the feedlot manager shrugged when I raised an eyebrow.
FDA rules still permit feedlots to feed nonruminant animal protein to cows.
Feather meal is an accepted cattle feed, as are pig and fish protein and
chicken manure.
Some public-health advocates worry that since the bovine meat and bone meal
that cows used to eat is now being fed to chickens, pigs and fish,
infectious prions could find their way back into cattle when they eat the
protein of the animals that have been eating them. To close this biological
loophole, the FDA is now considering tightening its feed rules.
Until mad-cow disease, remarkably few people in the cattle business, let
alone the general public, comprehended the strange semicircular food chain
that industrial agriculture had devised for cattle (and, in turn, for us).
When I mentioned to Rich Blair that I'd been surprised to learn that cows
were eating cows, he said, ''To tell the truth, it was kind of a shock to
me too.''
Yet even today, ranchers don't ask many questions about feedlot menus. Not
that the answers are so easy to come by. When I asked Poky's feedlot
manager what exactly was in the protein supplement, he couldn't say. ''When
we buy supplement, the supplier says it's 40 percent protein, but they
don't specify beyond that.'' When I called the supplier, it wouldn't
divulge all its ''proprietary ingredients'' but promised that animal parts
weren't among them. Protein is pretty much still protein.
Compared with ground-up cow bones, corn seems positively wholesome. Yet it
wreaks considerable havoc on bovine digestion. During my day at Poky, I
spent an hour or two driving around the yard with Dr. Mel Metzen, the staff
veterinarian. Metzen, a 1997 graduate of Kansas State's vet school,
oversees a team of eight cowboys who spend their days riding the yard,
spotting sick cows and bringing them in for treatment.
A great many of their health problems can be traced to their diet.
''They're made to eat forage,'' Metzen said, ''and we're making them eat
grain.''
Perhaps the most serious thing that can go wrong with a ruminant on corn is
feedlot bloat. The rumen is always producing copious amounts of gas, which
is normally expelled by belching during rumination.
But when the diet contains too much starch and too little roughage,
rumination all but stops, and a layer of foamy slime that can trap gas
forms in the rumen. The rumen inflates like a balloon, pressing against the
animal's lungs. Unless action is promptly taken to relieve the pressure
(usually by forcing a hose down the animal's esophagus), the cow
suffocates.
A corn diet can also give a cow acidosis. Unlike that in our own highly
acidic stomachs, the normal pH of a rumen is neutral. Corn makes it
unnaturally acidic, however, causing a kind of bovine heartburn, which in
some cases can kill the animal but usually just makes it sick.
Acidotic animals go off their feed, pant and salivate excessively, paw at
their bellies and eat dirt. The condition can lead to diarrhea, ulcers,
bloat, liver disease and a general weakening of the immune system that
leaves the animal vulnerable to everything from pneumonia to feedlot polio.
Cows rarely live on feedlot diets for more than six months, which might be
about as much as their digestive systems can tolerate. ''I don't know how
long you could feed this ration before you'd see problems,'' Metzen said;
another vet said that a sustained feedlot diet would eventually ''blow out
their livers'' and kill them. As the acids eat away at the rumen wall,
bacteria enter the bloodstream and collect in the liver. More than 13
percent of feedlot cattle are found at slaughter to have abscessed livers.
What keeps a feedlot animal healthy -- or healthy enough -- are
antibiotics. Rumensin inhibits gas production in the rumen, helping to
prevent bloat; tylosin reduces the incidence of liver infection. Most of
the antibiotics sold in America end up in animal feed -- a practice that,
it is now generally acknowledged, leads directly to the evolution of new
antibiotic-resistant ''superbugs.''
In the debate over the use of antibiotics in agriculture, a distinction is
usually made between clinical and nonclinical uses. Public-health advocates
don't object to treating sick animals with antibiotics; they just don't
want to see the drugs lose their efficacy because factory farms are feeding
them to healthy animals to promote growth.
But the use of antibiotics in feedlot cattle confounds this distinction.
Here the drugs are plainly being used to treat sick animals, yet the
animals probably wouldn't be sick if not for what we feed them.
I asked Metzen what would happen if antibiotics were banned from cattle
feed. ''We just couldn't feed them as hard,'' he said. ''Or we'd have a
higher death loss.'' (Less than 3 percent of cattle die on the feedlot.)
The price of beef would rise, he said, since the whole system would have to
slow down.
''Hell, if you gave them lots of grass and space,'' he concluded dryly, ''I
wouldn't have a job.''
Before heading over to Pen 43 for my reunion with No. 534, I stopped by the
shed where recent arrivals receive their hormone implants. The calves are
funneled into a chute, herded along by a ranch hand wielding an electric
prod, then clutched in a restrainer just long enough for another hand to
inject a slow-release pellet of Revlar, a synthetic estrogen, in the back
of the ear.
The Blairs' pen had not yet been implanted, and I was still struggling with
the decision of whether to forgo what is virtually a universal practice in
the cattle industry in the United States. (It has been banned in the
European Union.)
American regulators permit hormone implants on the grounds that no risk to
human health has been proved, even though measurable hormone residues do
turn up in the meat we eat. These contribute to the buildup of estrogenic
compounds in the environment, which some scientists believe may explain
falling sperm counts and premature maturation in girls.
Recent studies have also found elevated levels of synthetic growth hormones
in feedlot wastes; these persistent chemicals eventually wind up in the
waterways downstream of feedlots, where scientists have found fish
exhibiting abnormal sex characteristics.
The F.D.A. is opening an inquiry into the problem, but for now, implanting
hormones in beef cattle is legal and financially irresistible: an implant
costs $1.50 and adds between 40 and 50 pounds to the weight of a steer at
slaughter, for a return of at least $25.
That could easily make the difference between profit and loss on my
investment in No. 534. Thinking like a parent, I like the idea of feeding
my son hamburgers free of synthetic hormones. But thinking like a
cattleman, there was really no decision to make.
I asked Rich Blair what he thought. ''I'd love to give up hormones,'' he
said. ''If the consumer said, We don't want hormones, we'd stop in a
second. The cattle could get along better without them. But the market
signal's not there, and as long as my competitor's doing it, I've got to do
it, too.''
Around lunch time, Metzen and I finally arrived at No. 534's pen. My first
impression was that my steer had landed himself a decent piece of real
estate. The pen is far enough from the feed mill to be fairly quiet, and it
has a water view -- of what I initially thought was a reservoir, until I
noticed the brown scum.
The pen itself is surprisingly spacious, slightly bigger than a basketball
court, with a concrete feed bunk out front and a freshwater trough in the
back. I climbed over the railing and joined the 90 steers, which, en masse,
retreated a few steps, then paused.
I had on the same carrot-colored sweater I'd worn to the ranch in South
Dakota, hoping to jog my steer's memory. Way off in the back, I spotted him
-- those three white blazes. As I gingerly stepped toward him, the quietly
shuffling mass of black cowhide between us parted, and there No. 534 and I
stood, staring dumbly at each other.
Glint of recognition? None whatsoever. I told myself not to take it
personally. No. 534 had been bred for his marbling, after all, not his
intellect.
I don't know enough about the emotional life of cows to say with any
confidence if No. 534 was miserable, bored or melancholy, but I would not
say he looked happy. I noticed that his eyes looked a little bloodshot.
Some animals are irritated by the fecal dust that floats in the feedlot
air; maybe that explained the sullen gaze with which he fixed me.
Unhappy or not, though, No. 534 had clearly been eating well. My animal had
put on a couple hundred pounds since we'd last met, and he looked it:
thicker across the shoulders and round as a barrel through the middle. He
carried himself more like a steer now than a calf, even though he was still
less than a year old. Metzen complimented me on his size and conformation.
''That's a handsome looking beef you've got there.''
Staring at No. 534, I could picture the white lines of the butcher's chart
dissecting his black hide: rump roast, flank steak, standing rib, brisket.
One way of looking at No. 534 -- the industrial way -- was as an efficient
machine for turning feed corn into beef.
Every day between now and his slaughter date in June, No. 534 will convert
32 pounds of feed (25 of them corn) into another three and a half pounds of
flesh. Poky is indeed a factory, transforming cheap raw materials into a
less-cheap finished product, as fast as bovinely possible.
Yet the factory metaphor obscures as much as it reveals about the creature
that stood before me. For this steer was not a machine in a factory but an
animal in a web of relationships that link him to certain other animals,
plants and microbes, as well as to the earth.
And one of those other animals is us.
The unnaturally rich diet of corn that has compromised No. 534's health is
fattening his flesh in a way that in turn may compromise the health of the
humans who will eat him. The antibiotics he's consuming with his corn were
at that very moment selecting, in his gut and wherever else in the
environment they wind up, for bacteria that could someday infect us and
resist the drugs we depend on. We inhabit the same microbial ecosystem as
the animals we eat, and whatever happens to it also happens to us.
I thought about the deep pile of manure that No. 534 and I were standing
in. We don't know much about the hormones in it -- where they will end up
or what they might do once they get there -- but we do know something about
the bacteria. One particularly lethal bug most probably resided in the
manure beneath my feet.
Escherichia coli 0157 is a relatively new strain of a common intestinal
bacteria (it was first isolated in the 1980's) that is common in feedlot
cattle, more than half of whom carry it in their guts. Ingesting as few as
10 of these microbes can cause a fatal infection.
Most of the microbes that reside in the gut of a cow and find their way
into our food get killed off by the acids in our stomachs, since they
originally adapted to live in a neutral-pH environment. But the digestive
tract of the modern feedlot cow is closer in acidity to our own, and in
this new, manmade environment acid-resistant strains of E. coli have
developed that can survive our stomach acids -- and go on to kill us.
By acidifying a cow's gut with corn, we have broken down one of our food
chain's barriers to infection. Yet this process can be reversed: James
Russell, a U.S.D.A. microbiologist, has discovered that switching a cow's
diet from corn to hay in the final days before slaughter reduces the
population of E. coli 0157 in its manure by as much as 70 percent. Such a
change, however, is considered wildly impractical by the cattle industry.
So much comes back to corn, this cheap feed that turns out in so many ways
to be not cheap at all. While I stood in No. 534's pen, a dump truck
pulled up alongside the feed bunk and released a golden stream of feed.
The animals stepped up to the bunk for their lunch. The $1.60 a day I'm
paying for three giant meals is a bargain only by the narrowest of
calculations. It doesn't take into account, for example, the cost to the
public health of antibiotic resistance or food poisoning by E. coli or all
the environmental costs associated with industrial corn.
For if you follow the corn from this bunk back to the fields where it
grows, you will find an 80-million-acre monoculture that consumes more
chemical herbicide and fertilizer than any other crop.
Keep going and you can trace the nitrogen runoff from that crop all the way
down the Mississippi into the Gulf of Mexico, where it has created (if that
is the right word) a 12,000-square-mile ''dead zone.''
But you can go farther still, and follow the fertilizer needed to grow that
corn all the way to the oil fields of the Persian Gulf. No. 534 started
life as part of a food chain that derived all its energy from the sun; now
that corn constitutes such an important link in his food chain, he is the
product of an industrial system powered by fossil fuel.
(And in turn, defended by the military -- another uncounted cost of
''cheap'' food.) I asked David Pimentel, a Cornell ecologist who
specializes in agriculture and energy, if it might be possible to calculate
precisely how much oil it will take to grow my steer to slaughter weight.
Assuming No. 534 continues to eat 25 pounds of corn a day and reaches a
weight of 1,250 pounds, he will have consumed in his lifetime roughly 284
gallons of oil. We have succeeded in industrializing the beef calf,
transforming what was once a solar-powered ruminant into the very last
thing we need: another fossil-fuel machine.
Sometime in June, No. 534 will be ready for slaughter. Though only 14
months old, my steer will weigh more than 1,200 pounds and will move with
the lumbering deliberateness of the obese. One morning, a cattle trailer
from the National Beef plant in Liberal, Kan., will pull in to Poky
Feeders, drop a ramp and load No. 534 along with 35 of his pen mates.
The 100-mile trip south to Liberal is a straight shot on Route 83, a
two-lane highway on which most of the traffic consists of speeding
tractor-trailers carrying either cattle or corn. The National Beef plant is
a sprawling gray-and-white complex in a neighborhood of trailer homes and
tiny houses a notch up from shanty.
These are, presumably, the homes of the Mexican and Asian immigrants who
make up a large portion of the plant's work force. The meat business has
made southwestern Kansas an unexpectedly diverse corner of the country.
A few hours after their arrival in the holding pens outside the factory, a
plant worker will open a gate and herd No. 534 and his pen mates into an
alley that makes a couple of turns before narrowing down to a single-file
chute. The chute becomes a ramp that leads the animals up to a second-story
platform and then disappears through a blue door.
That door is as close to the kill floor as the plant managers were prepared
to let me go.
I could see whatever I wanted to farther on -- the cold room where
carcasses are graded, the food-safety lab, the fabrication room where the
carcasses are broken down into cuts -- on the condition that I didn't take
pictures or talk to employees. But the stunning, bleeding and evisceration
process was off limits to a journalist, even a cattleman-journalist like
myself.
What I know about what happens on the far side of the blue door comes
mostly from Temple Grandin, who has been on the other side and, in fact,
helped to design it. Grandin, an assistant professor of animal science at
Colorado State, is one of the most influential people in the United States
cattle industry.
She has devoted herself to making cattle slaughter less stressful and
therefore more humane by designing an ingenious series of cattle
restraints, chutes, ramps and stunning systems. Grandin is autistic, a
condition she says has allowed her to see the world from the cow's point of
view.
The industry has embraced Grandin's work because animals under stress are
not only more difficult to handle but also less valuable: panicked cows
produce a surge of adrenaline that turns their meat dark and unappetizing.
''Dark cutters,'' as they're called, sell at a deep discount.
Grandin designed the double-rail conveyor system in use at the National
Beef plant; she has also audited the plant's killing process for
McDonald's.
Stories about cattle ''waking up'' after stunning only to be skinned alive
prompted McDonald's to audit its suppliers in a program that is credited
with substantial improvements since its inception in 1999. Grandin says
that in cattle slaughter ''there is the pre-McDonald's era and the
post-McDonald's era -- it's night and day.''
Grandin recently described to me what will happen to No. 534 after he
passes through the blue door. ''The animal goes into the chute single
file,'' she began. ''The sides are high enough so all he sees is the butt
of the animal in front of him. As he walks through the chute, he passes
over a metal bar, with his feet on either side. While he's straddling the
bar, the ramp begins to decline at a 25-degree angle, and before he knows
it, his feet are off the ground and he's being carried along on a conveyor
belt. We put in a false floor so he can't look down and see he's off the
ground. That would panic him.''
Listening to Grandin's rather clinical account, I couldn't help wondering
what No. 534 would be feeling as he approached his end. Would he have any
inkling -- a scent of blood, a sound of terror from up the line -- that
this was no ordinary day?
Grandin anticipated my question: ''Does the animal know it's going to get
slaughtered? I used to wonder that. So I watched them, going into the
squeeze chute on the feedlot, getting their shots and going up the ramp at
a slaughter plant. No difference. If they knew they were going to die,
you'd see much more agitated behavior.
''Anyway, the conveyor is moving along at roughly the speed of a moving
sidewalk. On a catwalk above stands the stunner. The stunner has a
pneumatic-powered 'gun' that fires a steel bolt about seven inches long and
the diameter of a fat pencil. He leans over and puts it smack in the middle
of the forehead. When it's done correctly, it will kill the animal on the
first shot.''
For a plant to pass a McDonald's audit, the stunner needs to render animals
''insensible'' on the first shot 95 percent of the time. A second shot is
allowed, but should that one fail, the plant flunks.
At the line speeds at which meatpacking plants in the United States operate
-- 390 animals are slaughtered every hour at National, which is not unusual
-- mistakes would seem inevitable, but Grandin insists that only rarely
does the process break down.
''After the animal is shot while he's riding along, a worker wraps a chain
around his foot and hooks it to an overhead trolley. Hanging upside down by
one leg, he's carried by the trolley into the bleeding area, where the
bleeder cuts his throat.
Animal rights people say they're cutting live animals, but that's because
there's a lot of reflex kicking.'' This is one of the reasons a job at a
slaughter plant is the most dangerous in America. ''What I look for is, Is
the head dead? It should be flopping like a rag, with the tongue hanging
out. He'd better not be trying to hold it up -- then you've got a live one
on the rail.'' Just in case, Grandin said, ''they have another hand stunner
in the bleed area.''
Much of what happens next -- the de-hiding of the animal, the tying off of
its rectum before evisceration -- is designed to keep the animal's feces
from coming into contact with its meat. This is by no means easy to do, not
when the animals enter the kill floor smeared with manure and 390 of them
are eviscerated every hour.
(Partly for this reason, European plants operate at much slower line
speeds.) But since that manure is apt to contain lethal pathogens like E.
coli 0157, and since the process of grinding together hamburger from
hundreds of different carcasses can easily spread those pathogens across
millions of burgers, packing plants now spend millions on ''food safety''
-- which is to say, on the problem of manure in meat.
Most of these efforts are reactive: it's accepted that the animals will
enter the kill floor caked with feedlot manure that has been rendered
lethal by the feedlot diet.
Rather than try to alter that diet or keep the animals from living in their
waste or slow the line speed -- all changes regarded as impractical -- the
industry focuses on disinfecting the manure that will inevitably find its
way into the meat. This is the purpose of irradiation (which the industry
prefers to call ''cold pasteurization''). It is also the reason that
carcasses pass through a hot steam cabinet and get sprayed with an
antimicrobial solution before being hung in the cooler at the National Beef
plant.
It wasn't until after the carcasses emerged from the cooler, 36 hours
later, that I was allowed to catch up with them, in the grading room. I
entered a huge arctic space resembling a monstrous dry cleaner's, with a
seemingly endless overhead track conveying thousands of red-and-white
carcasses.
I quickly learned that you had to move smartly through this room or else be
tackled by a 350-pound side of beef. The carcasses felt cool to the touch,
no longer animals but meat.
Two by two, the sides of beef traveled swiftly down the rails, six pairs
every minute, to a station where two workers -- one wielding a small power
saw, the other a long knife -- made a single six-inch cut between the 12th
and 13th ribs, opening a window on the meat inside.
The carcasses continued on to another station, where a U.S.D.A. inspector
holding a round blue stamp glanced at the exposed rib eye and stamped the
carcass's creamy white fat once, twice or -- very rarely -- three times:
select, choice, prime.
For the Blair brothers, and for me, this is the moment of truth, for that
stamp will determine exactly how much the packing plant will pay for each
animal and whether the 14 months of effort and expense will yield a profit.
Unless the cattle market collapses between now and June (always a worry
these days), I stand to make a modest profit on No. 534. In February, the
feedlot took a sonogram of his rib eye and ran the data through a computer
program.
The projections are encouraging: a live slaughter weight of 1,250, a
carcass weight of 787 pounds and a grade at the upper end of choice, making
him eligible to be sold at a premium as Certified Angus Beef. Based on the
June futures price, No. 534 should be worth $944. (Should he grade prime,
that would add another $75.)
I paid $598 for No. 534 in November; his living expenses since then come to
$61 on the ranch and $258 for 160 days at the feedlot (including implant),
for a total investment of $917, leaving a profit of $27. It's a razor-thin
margin, and it could easily vanish should the price of corn rise or No. 534
fail to make the predicted weight or grade -- say, if he gets sick and goes
off his feed.
Without the corn, without the antibiotics, without the hormone implant, my
brief career as a cattleman would end in failure.
The Blairs and I are doing better than most. According to Cattle-Fax, a
market-research firm, the return on an animal coming out of a feedlot has
averaged just $3 per head over the last 20 years.
''Some pens you make money, some pens you lose,'' Rich Blair said when I
called to commiserate. ''You try to average it out over time, limit the
losses and hopefully make a little profit.'' He reminded me that a lot of
ranchers are in the business ''for emotional reasons -- you can't be in it
just for the money.''
Now you tell me.
The manager of the packing plant has offered to pull a box of steaks from
No. 534 before his carcass disappears into the trackless stream of
commodity beef fanning out to America's supermarkets and restaurants this
June.
From what I can see, the Blair brothers, with the help of Poky Feeders, are
producing meat as good as any you can find in an American supermarket. And
yet there's no reason to think this steak will taste any different from the
other high-end industrial meat I've ever eaten.
While waiting for my box of meat to arrive from Kansas, I've explored some
alternatives to the industrial product. Nowadays you can find hormone- and
antibiotic-free beef as well as organic beef, fed only grain grown without
chemicals.
This meat, which is often quite good, is typically produced using more
grass and less grain (and so makes for healthier animals). Yet it doesn't
fundamentally challenge the corn-feedlot system, and I'm not sure that an
''organic feedlot'' isn't, ecologically speaking, an oxymoron. What I
really wanted to taste is the sort of preindustrial beef my grandparents
ate -- from animals that have lived most of their full-length lives on
grass.
Eventually I found a farmer in the Hudson Valley who sold me a quarter of a
grass-fed Angus steer that is now occupying most of my freezer. I also
found ranchers selling grass-fed beef on the Web;
I discovered that grass-fed meat is more expensive than supermarket beef.
Whatever else you can say about industrial beef, it is remarkably cheap,
and any argument for changing the system runs smack into the industry's
populist arguments.
Put the animals back on grass, it is said, and prices will soar; it takes
too long to raise beef on grass, and there's not enough grass to raise them
on, since the Western range lands aren't big enough to sustain America's
100 million head of cattle.
And besides, Americans have learned to love cornfed beef. Feedlot meat is
also more consistent in both taste and supply and can be harvested 12
months a year. (Grass-fed cattle tend to be harvested in the fall, since
they stop gaining weight over the winter, when the grasses go dormant.)
All of this is true. The economic logic behind the feedlot system is hard
to refute. And yet so is the ecological logic behind a ruminant grazing on
grass. Think what would happen if we restored a portion of the Corn Belt to
the tall grass prairie it once was and grazed cattle on it.
No more petrochemical fertilizer, no more herbicide, no more nitrogen
runoff. Yes, beef would probably be more expensive than it is now, but
would that necessarily be a bad thing? Eating beef every day might not be
such a smart idea anyway -- for our health, for the environment.
And how cheap, really, is cheap feedlot beef? Not cheap at all, when you
add in the invisible costs: of antibiotic resistance, environmental
degradation, heart disease, E. coli poisoning, corn subsidies, imported oil
and so on. All these are costs that grass-fed beef does not incur.
So how does grass-fed beef taste?
Uneven, just as you might expect the meat of a nonindustrial animal to
taste. One grass-fed tenderloin from Argentina that I sampled turned out
to be the best steak I've ever eaten. But unless the meat is carefully
aged, grass-fed beef can be tougher than feedlot beef -- not surprisingly,
since a grazing animal, which moves around in search of its food, develops
more muscle and less fat.
Yet even when the meat was tougher, its flavor, to my mind, was much more
interesting. And specific, for the taste of every grass-fed animal is
inflected by the place where it lived. Maybe it's just my imagination, but
nowadays when I eat a feedlot steak, I can taste the corn and the fat, and
I can see the view from No. 534's pen. I can't taste the oil, obviously, or
the drugs, yet now I know they're there.
A considerably different picture comes to mind while chewing (and, O.K.,
chewing) a grass-fed steak: a picture of a cow outside in a pasture eating
the grass that has eaten the sunlight.
Meat-eating may have become an act riddled with moral and ethical
ambiguities, but eating a steak at the end of a short, primordial food
chain comprising nothing more than ruminants and grass and light is
something I'm happy to do and defend. We are what we eat, it is often said,
but of course that's only part of the story. We are what what we eat eats
too.
Dr. Mercola's Comment:
When I first became aware of grass-fed beef, I was only superficially aware
of the importance of omega-3 oils. I have now grown to appreciate that
balancing the optimum amount of omega-3 oils is one of the most important
things you can do to stay healthy.
If you are not yet familiar with the benefits of omega-3 oils, please
review my
article on the cardiovascular actions of omega-3 oils.
Most nutritionist don't yet realize that it not only the amount, but the
ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 oils that controls much of our disease and
health outcomes.
That is why it is so important to consume animals that are primarily eating
grass. These animals will have far lower levels of the potentially
dangerous omega-6 oils that nearly all of us have a surplus of.
The practical way to do this is to consume free-range chickens and turkeys
and pasture or grass-fed beef. Unfortunately, you cannot buy this grass-fed
beef at your local grocery store.
Obtaining free range poultry is relatively straight forward but you must be
careful regarding the beef. Many stores will advertise grass-fed beef but
it really isn't. They do this as ALL cattle are grass fed, but the key is
what they are fed the months prior to being processed.
As this wonderful article explains most all cattle are shipped to giant
feed lots and fed corn to fatten them up. I knew this before reading this
incredible story, but I now have a far better understanding of the process.
You will need to call the person who actually grew the beef, NOT the store
manager, to find out the truth.
The least expensive way to obtain authentic grass fed beef would be to find
a farmer who is growing the beef who you can trust and buy a half a side of
beef from him. This way you save the shipping and also receive a reduced
rate on the meat.
An inexpensive, yet effective way to determine if the meat is really from a
grass fed animal is to purchase the ground beef. Slowly cook the beef till
done and drain and collect all the fat. Grass fed beef is very high in
omega-3 fats and will be relatively thin compared to traditionally prepared
ground beef.
It will also be a liquid at room temperature as it has very few saturated
fats which are mostly solid at room temperature.
However, most of us live in large urban areas and do not have the time for
this process. Just as it would be ideal to have an organic garden and grow
your own vegetables, most of us elect not to do that for time or space
reasons.
I used to have an organic garden, but my schedule just would not allow me
to have that luxury anymore. So, if you are convinced, like I am, that
grass-fed beef is better for you and you would like the convenience of
being able to order it over the Net, you can buy grass-fed beef online,
shipped overnight to your door, at Grassfed Organics.
http://www.mercola.com/2002/apr/17/cattle1.htm
Giant oil companies are making more money than they can comfortably spend [Catch-all] -
GEA - gormfach@gmail.com @ 07:53:47 PM
WORLD'S TOP TEN OIL COS.
SHOWED $100 BILLION
PROFIT IN 2004, MORE MONEY
THAN THEY CAN SPEND
JAD MOUAWAD
New York Times
February 12, 2005
Born from the megamergers of the 1990's, the world's giant oil companies
have delivered on their promise. They have cut costs, increased returns
and raised profits to records. Now, flush with cash, they find themselves
in a paradoxical position --- they are making more money than they can
comfortably spend.
Thanks to crude prices that averaged $41 a barrel in New York last year,
the world's ten biggest oil companies earned more than $100 billion in
2004, a windfall greater than the economic output of Malaysia. Together,
their sales are expected to exceed $1 trillion for 2004, which is more than
Canada's gross domestic product.
But even as fears of shortages grow throughout the world and prices remain
high, the cash-rich oil companies are not pouring a large portion of their
money into their basic business: drilling for oil. Indeed, oil executives,
in their second straight year of rising profits, are finding that too much
money is chasing too few oil fields. Instead, they are giving much of
their cash back to shareholders.
For example, Exxon Mobil, the world's largest publicly traded oil company,
earned more than $25 billion last year and spent $9.95 billion to buy back
its own stock; Royal Dutch/Shell Group, whose revisions to its oil reserves
have left many investors wary, pledged to hand out at least $10 billion as
dividends to shareholders this year.
And BP, which earned $16.2 billion in 2004, will return as much as $23
billion to its investors this year and next, mostly as dividends. At the
same time, it is cutting capital expenditure for the first time in at least
four years, to $14.1 billion in 2005 from $14.4 billion last year.
Other oil companies, like the French giant, Total, plan to report results
next week. Altogether, profits in 2004 for the top 10 companies jumped by
more than 30% from the previous year, when they totaled $80 billion.
Still, oil executives bristle at the suggestion that they are not investing
enough and point to new operations in places like Angola or Kazakhstan.
Exploration in those places underscores the trend of West Africa and the
Caspian Sea taking over from North America and the North Sea as a main
focus of exploration and growth for oil companies.
Executives also remember that only six years ago, crude oil futures were
trading below $15 a barrel --- a third of today's levels. That is a lesson
no one is ready to forget.
"We're a cyclical business," David J. O'Reilly, chief executive of
ChevronTexaco, the second-largest American oil company, said in a telephone
interview, "and at the high end of the cycle it makes sense to get the
company in good shape and strengthen our balance sheet.
"History tells us that what goes up also goes down."
Lord Browne, BP's chief executive, said oil companies were doing their job.
"Investment is going in, a lot of reserves are being developed," he said in
an interview in London. "Looking at the percentage of oil profits
reinvested, rather than the amount of cash invested, gives a skewed
perspective. I think you have to think of the dollar value."
One reason exploration spending is declining is quite simple --- there is
less oil left to drill for in places that are open for exploration, like
North America or the North Sea, while the bulk of the world's known
reserves, mainly in the Middle East, are mostly shut off to foreign
investors.
"If they had attractive things to invest in, they'd be investing their
little heads off," said Gerald Kepes, a managing director at PFC Energy, a
consultancy based in Washington. "Twenty-five years ago, if prices had
risen to $45 a barrel, you would have seen everyone in the United States
drop everything, jump in a pickup truck, and drill in their backyards. The
fact that you don't see this today says a lot. These kinds of easy
opportunities have largely dried up."
Last year, the larger integrated oil companies spent about 24% of their
cash on dividends, 12% on share buybacks, and 12% on paring debt, Mr. Kepes
said. Less than half of their cash, or 46%, went into capital spending.
As a share of exploration and production expenses, spending on exploration
has declined over the last decade, and now accounts for about 20% of the
total, compared with about 30% in 1991, according to PFC.
"The very easy money-making investments are gone," said Fatih Birol, the
chief economist at the Paris-based International Energy Agency. "The
problem isn't that there's not enough oil. It's there's not enough
opportunities to find oil."
Mr. Birol said that two-thirds of the wells drilled worldwide from 1997 to
2003 were in North America, where production is falling, while the Middle
East accounted for two percent of global investments.
Early successes in Alaska and in the British and Norwegian areas of the
North Sea, both regions developed in the late 1970's and 1980's, are giving
way to mature and declining operations in these areas as oil reserves
slowly dry up.
At the same time, the Persian Gulf region, which holds the bulk of the
world's proven reserves of conventional oil, remains mostly off limits to
international investors. In one way or another, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq,
Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates limit access to international
companies.
High oil prices are not a guaranteed boon for oil companies. When oil
prices are low, oil executives are courted by commodity-rich countries to
develop national resources. But when prices rise, governments have a
tendency to rethink their contracts and seek higher royalties.
That is happening in Venezuela, which is reviewing its operating agreements
with foreign oil companies; it is also happening in Russia, where the
government is assuming more control of the country's oil industry.
"The net effect of $50-a-barrel oil is to reduce opportunities," said Paul
Sankey, an analyst with Deutsche Bank in New York. "Large profits make
governments think that they're not taxing sufficiently enough."
For example, the Russian government collects most of the profits when oil
prices rise above $25 a barrel. Some countries --- including Kuwait, Angola
and Iran --- put limits on the gains foreign companies can make if prices
rise above a certain level. In many production-sharing agreements, for
example, oil companies agree to a revenue cap, so that when prices rise,
producers must reduce their volumes.
"The industry would much rather have lower oil prices and more stability
and a more sustainable environment," Mr. Sankey said. "Record prices mean
record revenue, but also too much attention for an industry that basically
likes to remain out of sight."
Heather Timmons contributed reporting from London for this article.
SHOWED $100 BILLION
PROFIT IN 2004, MORE MONEY
THAN THEY CAN SPEND
JAD MOUAWAD
New York Times
February 12, 2005
Born from the megamergers of the 1990's, the world's giant oil companies
have delivered on their promise. They have cut costs, increased returns
and raised profits to records. Now, flush with cash, they find themselves
in a paradoxical position --- they are making more money than they can
comfortably spend.
Thanks to crude prices that averaged $41 a barrel in New York last year,
the world's ten biggest oil companies earned more than $100 billion in
2004, a windfall greater than the economic output of Malaysia. Together,
their sales are expected to exceed $1 trillion for 2004, which is more than
Canada's gross domestic product.
But even as fears of shortages grow throughout the world and prices remain
high, the cash-rich oil companies are not pouring a large portion of their
money into their basic business: drilling for oil. Indeed, oil executives,
in their second straight year of rising profits, are finding that too much
money is chasing too few oil fields. Instead, they are giving much of
their cash back to shareholders.
For example, Exxon Mobil, the world's largest publicly traded oil company,
earned more than $25 billion last year and spent $9.95 billion to buy back
its own stock; Royal Dutch/Shell Group, whose revisions to its oil reserves
have left many investors wary, pledged to hand out at least $10 billion as
dividends to shareholders this year.
And BP, which earned $16.2 billion in 2004, will return as much as $23
billion to its investors this year and next, mostly as dividends. At the
same time, it is cutting capital expenditure for the first time in at least
four years, to $14.1 billion in 2005 from $14.4 billion last year.
Other oil companies, like the French giant, Total, plan to report results
next week. Altogether, profits in 2004 for the top 10 companies jumped by
more than 30% from the previous year, when they totaled $80 billion.
Still, oil executives bristle at the suggestion that they are not investing
enough and point to new operations in places like Angola or Kazakhstan.
Exploration in those places underscores the trend of West Africa and the
Caspian Sea taking over from North America and the North Sea as a main
focus of exploration and growth for oil companies.
Executives also remember that only six years ago, crude oil futures were
trading below $15 a barrel --- a third of today's levels. That is a lesson
no one is ready to forget.
"We're a cyclical business," David J. O'Reilly, chief executive of
ChevronTexaco, the second-largest American oil company, said in a telephone
interview, "and at the high end of the cycle it makes sense to get the
company in good shape and strengthen our balance sheet.
"History tells us that what goes up also goes down."
Lord Browne, BP's chief executive, said oil companies were doing their job.
"Investment is going in, a lot of reserves are being developed," he said in
an interview in London. "Looking at the percentage of oil profits
reinvested, rather than the amount of cash invested, gives a skewed
perspective. I think you have to think of the dollar value."
One reason exploration spending is declining is quite simple --- there is
less oil left to drill for in places that are open for exploration, like
North America or the North Sea, while the bulk of the world's known
reserves, mainly in the Middle East, are mostly shut off to foreign
investors.
"If they had attractive things to invest in, they'd be investing their
little heads off," said Gerald Kepes, a managing director at PFC Energy, a
consultancy based in Washington. "Twenty-five years ago, if prices had
risen to $45 a barrel, you would have seen everyone in the United States
drop everything, jump in a pickup truck, and drill in their backyards. The
fact that you don't see this today says a lot. These kinds of easy
opportunities have largely dried up."
Last year, the larger integrated oil companies spent about 24% of their
cash on dividends, 12% on share buybacks, and 12% on paring debt, Mr. Kepes
said. Less than half of their cash, or 46%, went into capital spending.
As a share of exploration and production expenses, spending on exploration
has declined over the last decade, and now accounts for about 20% of the
total, compared with about 30% in 1991, according to PFC.
"The very easy money-making investments are gone," said Fatih Birol, the
chief economist at the Paris-based International Energy Agency. "The
problem isn't that there's not enough oil. It's there's not enough
opportunities to find oil."
Mr. Birol said that two-thirds of the wells drilled worldwide from 1997 to
2003 were in North America, where production is falling, while the Middle
East accounted for two percent of global investments.
Early successes in Alaska and in the British and Norwegian areas of the
North Sea, both regions developed in the late 1970's and 1980's, are giving
way to mature and declining operations in these areas as oil reserves
slowly dry up.
At the same time, the Persian Gulf region, which holds the bulk of the
world's proven reserves of conventional oil, remains mostly off limits to
international investors. In one way or another, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq,
Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates limit access to international
companies.
High oil prices are not a guaranteed boon for oil companies. When oil
prices are low, oil executives are courted by commodity-rich countries to
develop national resources. But when prices rise, governments have a
tendency to rethink their contracts and seek higher royalties.
That is happening in Venezuela, which is reviewing its operating agreements
with foreign oil companies; it is also happening in Russia, where the
government is assuming more control of the country's oil industry.
"The net effect of $50-a-barrel oil is to reduce opportunities," said Paul
Sankey, an analyst with Deutsche Bank in New York. "Large profits make
governments think that they're not taxing sufficiently enough."
For example, the Russian government collects most of the profits when oil
prices rise above $25 a barrel. Some countries --- including Kuwait, Angola
and Iran --- put limits on the gains foreign companies can make if prices
rise above a certain level. In many production-sharing agreements, for
example, oil companies agree to a revenue cap, so that when prices rise,
producers must reduce their volumes.
"The industry would much rather have lower oil prices and more stability
and a more sustainable environment," Mr. Sankey said. "Record prices mean
record revenue, but also too much attention for an industry that basically
likes to remain out of sight."
Heather Timmons contributed reporting from London for this article.
Subject: Maxim Institute - real issues - No 144
Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2005
Gender identity a legal fiction?
The Human Rights (Gender Identity) Amendment Bill, sponsored by Labour MP
Georgina Beyer, was introduced to parliament this week. The Bill provides
for "gender identity" to be included as one of the prohibited grounds of
discrimination in the Human Rights Act.
According to the Bill, "gender identity" is "the identification by a
person with a gender that is different from the birth gender of that
person..." The Human Rights Commission adds that "gender identity can be
broadly described as the sense of self associated with cultural definitions
of masculinity and femininity". [I]t has become increasingly possible for
both women and men in NZ to be 'feminine' and 'masculine' in ways that are
markedly different from the pattern of preceding generations" (Human Rights
in New Zealand Today, 2004).
Can people really change their sex? Can a male change to a female? Or
are we legislating protection for a legal fiction? Will this be the latest
victory of political correctness over biology? Under this Bill a person's
sex, indeed their identity becomes a matter of personal preference
reinforced by law, instead of being a matter of DNA and history. Parties
have yet to confirm whether they will treat this Bill as a conscience vote.
To read an article related to the issue of gender identity by Paul McHugh,
University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins
University visit:
Following in Sweden's footsteps?
Prime Minister Helen Clark hosted the Swedish Prime Minister this week.
Ms Clark holds Sweden up as a country New Zealand should model itself on.
She has long admired Sweden's support for women and its family-friendly
policies, including universal child care and high rates of women's
participation in the workforce (75 percent).
The Prime Minister neglects to point out that these results come at a
price. Swedish people are amongst the most highly taxed in the world. The
average Swedish wage-earner sees well over 50 percent of their income
vanish in taxes (both national and regional). Nearly a third of GDP goes on
social welfare.
Sweden's marriage rate is remarkably low. Consequently, the proportion of
children born outside of marriage is one of the highest in the world;
during 2001 it rose to 55 percent (UN World Fertility Report 2003) compared
with 44 percent in New Zealand during the same year (Statistics New Zealand
Demographic Trends, 2004).
The Swedish economic miracle of the mid-1900s was admired around the
world. But in 30 years they have dropped from number four on the OECD
rankings of per capita income to number 17 last year, not a great deal
higher than New Zealand at 21. Following the Swedish model for social and
economic policy could indeed bring us a long winter night.
Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2005
Gender identity a legal fiction?
The Human Rights (Gender Identity) Amendment Bill, sponsored by Labour MP
Georgina Beyer, was introduced to parliament this week. The Bill provides
for "gender identity" to be included as one of the prohibited grounds of
discrimination in the Human Rights Act.
According to the Bill, "gender identity" is "the identification by a
person with a gender that is different from the birth gender of that
person..." The Human Rights Commission adds that "gender identity can be
broadly described as the sense of self associated with cultural definitions
of masculinity and femininity". [I]t has become increasingly possible for
both women and men in NZ to be 'feminine' and 'masculine' in ways that are
markedly different from the pattern of preceding generations" (Human Rights
in New Zealand Today, 2004).
Can people really change their sex? Can a male change to a female? Or
are we legislating protection for a legal fiction? Will this be the latest
victory of political correctness over biology? Under this Bill a person's
sex, indeed their identity becomes a matter of personal preference
reinforced by law, instead of being a matter of DNA and history. Parties
have yet to confirm whether they will treat this Bill as a conscience vote.
To read an article related to the issue of gender identity by Paul McHugh,
University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins
University visit:
Following in Sweden's footsteps?
Prime Minister Helen Clark hosted the Swedish Prime Minister this week.
Ms Clark holds Sweden up as a country New Zealand should model itself on.
She has long admired Sweden's support for women and its family-friendly
policies, including universal child care and high rates of women's
participation in the workforce (75 percent).
The Prime Minister neglects to point out that these results come at a
price. Swedish people are amongst the most highly taxed in the world. The
average Swedish wage-earner sees well over 50 percent of their income
vanish in taxes (both national and regional). Nearly a third of GDP goes on
social welfare.
Sweden's marriage rate is remarkably low. Consequently, the proportion of
children born outside of marriage is one of the highest in the world;
during 2001 it rose to 55 percent (UN World Fertility Report 2003) compared
with 44 percent in New Zealand during the same year (Statistics New Zealand
Demographic Trends, 2004).
The Swedish economic miracle of the mid-1900s was admired around the
world. But in 30 years they have dropped from number four on the OECD
rankings of per capita income to number 17 last year, not a great deal
higher than New Zealand at 21. Following the Swedish model for social and
economic policy could indeed bring us a long winter night.
01/15/05
34 Norana Ave.
Remuera, Auckland 5
17-5-93
Bishop Bruce Gilberd
Diocese of Auckland
Dear Bishop Gilberd,
I give below the full text of a letter which I
wrote on 23-3-93 to A.D. News. The published version omitted the final
paragraph of comments.
I dare say the editor (with whom I am, barely, acquainted)
will say that shortage of space necessitated the deletion. I cannot fully
assess any such claim, but I do think that if it were the case then I
should have been asked to provide a briefer version. I confess to the
suspicion that not space but ideology was the reason.
Editor
A.D. News
P O Box 37 242
Auckland
Dear Jill Brewis,
The Feb. 1993 A.D. News reproduced a cartoon, to illustrate
the YWCA-distributed video "designed to give women increased confidence".
The cartoon appears to depict an old woman brushing off a young male
attacker who has approached her from behind. The attacker is flattened by
a blow, with a stick, to the attacker's groin; the woman walks on.
The impression conveyed by the cartoon is that deft, almost casual,
violent retaliation is likely to flatten the attacker and thus protect the
woman from further attack. That depiction is, I believe, a gravely
misleading fantasy. I am left wondering what sort of person would try to
build confidence on such a misleading basis. The chances of crippling the
attacker are poor (especially if the defender has such "increased
confidence" as to refrain from even looking over her shoulder, as in the
cartoon!). As a man who has been in a few fights, I believe that to
attempt such a blow, so far from being likely to incapacitate temporarily,
is more likely to provoke far worse violence.
The video which the cartoon apparently exemplifies is stated in
your story to have been produced "with instructions from" a leader of the
women's self-defence trade which has been reported on TV as teaching women
to prepare for possible attacks by practising throws, holds etc. to the
chant 'hate men'. Related slogans include 'women need men like [sic] fish
need bicycles' and of course the matchlessly hateful 'all men are rapists'.
That such a vicious deluded political trend could have hijacked the Young
Women's Christian Association illustrates how many have strayed, especially
during this last quarter-century, from well-founded traditional
understandings of gender. Much more needs to be written about this
important topic; meanwhile, I object to the printing of this mischievous
cartoon in a church paper.
Remuera, Auckland 5
17-5-93
Bishop Bruce Gilberd
Diocese of Auckland
Dear Bishop Gilberd,
I give below the full text of a letter which I
wrote on 23-3-93 to A.D. News. The published version omitted the final
paragraph of comments.
I dare say the editor (with whom I am, barely, acquainted)
will say that shortage of space necessitated the deletion. I cannot fully
assess any such claim, but I do think that if it were the case then I
should have been asked to provide a briefer version. I confess to the
suspicion that not space but ideology was the reason.
Editor
A.D. News
P O Box 37 242
Auckland
Dear Jill Brewis,
The Feb. 1993 A.D. News reproduced a cartoon, to illustrate
the YWCA-distributed video "designed to give women increased confidence".
The cartoon appears to depict an old woman brushing off a young male
attacker who has approached her from behind. The attacker is flattened by
a blow, with a stick, to the attacker's groin; the woman walks on.
The impression conveyed by the cartoon is that deft, almost casual,
violent retaliation is likely to flatten the attacker and thus protect the
woman from further attack. That depiction is, I believe, a gravely
misleading fantasy. I am left wondering what sort of person would try to
build confidence on such a misleading basis. The chances of crippling the
attacker are poor (especially if the defender has such "increased
confidence" as to refrain from even looking over her shoulder, as in the
cartoon!). As a man who has been in a few fights, I believe that to
attempt such a blow, so far from being likely to incapacitate temporarily,
is more likely to provoke far worse violence.
The video which the cartoon apparently exemplifies is stated in
your story to have been produced "with instructions from" a leader of the
women's self-defence trade which has been reported on TV as teaching women
to prepare for possible attacks by practising throws, holds etc. to the
chant 'hate men'. Related slogans include 'women need men like [sic] fish
need bicycles' and of course the matchlessly hateful 'all men are rapists'.
That such a vicious deluded political trend could have hijacked the Young
Women's Christian Association illustrates how many have strayed, especially
during this last quarter-century, from well-founded traditional
understandings of gender. Much more needs to be written about this
important topic; meanwhile, I object to the printing of this mischievous
cartoon in a church paper.
Even more can be said along these lines, as Stove implies; but this
will do to move the motion that Darwinism is among the greatest
intellectual con-tricks of all time.
Unfortunately, a fanatical sect tries to make out that "the"
alternative to (neo)Darwinism is Creationism®: the totalitarian slogans
"the first 3 chapters of the Bible, plus the Noah story, can be understood
literally", "all spp were created in 6 d", "evolution is incompatible with
creation", etc. This well-funded, grossly irrational sectarian tendency
has been invading NZ, helped by a surprising degree of cowardice from
'evangelicals' who on many other topics show some courage.
One of the suspicious features of IDT is its refusal to refer to mainstream
scholarship (Temple, Sir A Hardy, Morton, etc). It does not really welcome
discussion, and is suspiciously frozen on the one tiny point.
I tentatively plot a spectrum of positions in this 'long argument':-
theistic evoln (Morton, Broom, Sheldrake, me)
- IDT (Dembski)
- Old Earth Creationism (Hugh Ross)
- Young Earth Creationism
R
http://www.royalinstitutephilosophy.org/articles/stove_darwinian.htm
So You Think You Are a Darwinian?
David Stove
Most educated people nowadays, I believe, think of themselves as
Darwinians. If they do, however, it can only be from ignorance: from not
knowing enough about what Darwinism says. For Darwinism says many things,
especially about our species, which are too obviously false to be believed
by any educated person; or at least by an educated person who retains any
capacity at all for critical thought on the subject of Darwinism.
Of course most educated people now are Darwinians, in the sense
that they believe our species to have originated, not in a creative act of
the Divine Will, but by evolution from other animals. But believing that
proposition is not enough to make someone a Darwinian. It had been
believed, as may be learnt from any history of biology, by very many people
long before Darwinism, or Darwin, was born.
What is needed to make someone an adherent of a certain school of
thought is belief in all or most of the propositions which are peculiar to
that school, and are believed either by all of its adherents, or at least
by the more thoroughgoing ones. In any large school of thought, there is
always a minority who adhere more exclusively than most to the
characteristic beliefs of the school: they are the 'purists' or 'ultras' of
that school. What is needed and sufficient, then, to make a person a
Darwinian, is belief in all or most of the propositions which are peculiar
to Darwinians, and believed either by all of them, or at least by
ultra-Darwinians.
I give below ten propositions which are all Darwinian beliefs in
the sense just specified. Each of them is obviously false: either a direct
falsity about our species or, where the proposition is a general one,
obviously false in the case of our species, at least. Some of the ten
propositions are quotations; all the others are paraphrases. The
quotations are all from authors who are so well-known, at least in
Darwinian circles, as spokesmen for Darwinism or ultra-Darwinism, that
their names alone will be sufficient evidence that the proposition is a
Darwinian one. Where the proposition is a paraphrase, I give quotations or
other information which will, I think, suffice to establish its Darwinian
credentials.
My ten propositions are nearly in reverse historical order. Thus,
I start from the present day, and from the inferno-scene - like something
by Hieronymus Bosch - which the 'selfish gene' theory makes of all life.
Then I go back a bit to some of the falsities which, beginning in the
1960s, were contributed to Darwinism by the theory of 'inclusive fitness'.
And finally I get back to some of the falsities, more pedestrian though no
less obvious, of the Darwinism of the 19th or early-20th century.
1. The truth is, 'the total prostitution of all animal life,
including Man and all his airs and graces, to the blind purposiveness of
these minute virus-like substances', genes.
This is a thumbnail-sketch, and an accurate one, of the contents of
The Selfish Gene (1976) by Richard Dawkins. It was not written by
Dawkins, but he quoted it with manifest enthusiasm in a defence of The
Selfish Gene which he wrote in this journal in 1981. Dawkins' status, as a
widely admired spokesman for ultra-Darwinism, is too well-known to need
evidence of it adduced here. His admirers even include some philosophers
who have carried their airs and graces to the length of writing good books
on such rarefied subjects as universals, or induction, or the mind.
Dawkins can scarcely have gratified these admirers by telling them that,
even when engaged in writing those books, they were 'totally prostituted
to the blind purposiveness of their genes. Still, you 'have to hand it' to
genes which can write, even if only through their slaves, a good book on
subjects like universals or induction. Those genes must have brains all
right, as well as purposes. At least, they must, if genes can have brains
and purposes. But in fact, of course, DNA molecules no more have such
things than H20 molecules do.
2 'Šit is, after all, to [a mother's] advantage that her child
should be adopted' by another woman.
This quotation is from Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, p. 110.
Obviously false though this proposition is, from the point of view
of Darwinism it is well-founded, for the reason which Dawkins gives on the
same page: that another woman's adopting her baby 'releases a rival female
from the burden of child-rearing, and frees her to have another child more
quickly.' This, you will say, is a grotesque way of looking at human life;
and so, of course, it is. But it is impossible to deny that it is the
Darwinian way.
3. All communication is 'manipulation of signal-receiver by
signal-sender.'
This profound communication, though it might easily have come from
any used-car salesman reflecting on life, was actually sent by Dawkins, (in
The Extended Phenotype, (1982), p. 57), to the readers whom he was at that
point engaged in manipulating. Much as the devil, in many medieval plays,
advises the audience not to take his advice.
4. Homosexuality in social animals is a form of sibling-altruism:
that is, your homosexuality is a way of helping your brothers and sisters
to raise more children.
This very-believable proposition is maintained by Robert Trivers in
his book Social Evolution, (1985), pp. 198-9. Professor Trivers is a
leading light among ultra-Darwinians, (who are nowadays usually called
'sociobiologists'). Whether he also believes that suicide, for example,
and self-castration, are forms of sibling-altruism, I do not know; but I do
not see what there is to stop him. What is there to stop anyone believing
such propositions? Only common sense: a thing entirely out of the question
among sociobiologists.
5. In all social mammals, the altruism (or apparent altruism) of
siblings towards one another is about as strong and common as the altruism
(or apparent altruism) of parents towards their offspring.
This proposition is an immediate consequence, and an admitted one,
of the theory of inclusive fitness, which says that the degree of altruism
depends on the proportion of genes shared. This theory was first put
forward by W. D. Hamilton in The Journal of Theoretical Biology in 1964.
Since then it has been accepted by Darwinians almost as one man and has
revolutionized evolutionary theory. This acceptance has made Professor
Hamilton the most influential Darwinian author of the last thirty years.
6. 'Š no one is prepared to sacrifice his life for any single
person, but everyone will sacrifice it for more than two brothers [or
offspring], or four half-brothers, or eight first-cousins.'
This is a quotation from the epoch-making article by Professor
Hamilton to which I referred a moment ago. The italics are not in the
text. Nor are the two words which I have put in square brackets; but their
insertion is certainly authorized by the theory of inclusive fitness.
7. Every organism has as many descendants as it can.
Compare Darwin, in The Origin of Species, p. 66: 'every single
organic being around us may be said to be striving to the utmost to
increase in numbers'; and again, pp. 78-9, 'each organic being is striving
to increase at a geometrical ratio'. These page references are to the
first edition of the Origin, (1859), but both of the passages just quoted
are repeated in all of the five later editions of the book which were
published in Darwin's lifetime. He also says the same thing in other
places.
But it would not have mattered if he had not happened to say in
print such things as I have just quoted. For it was always obvious, to
everyone who understood his theory, that a universal
striving-to-the-utmost-to-increase is an essential part of that theory: in
fact it is the very 'motor' of evolution, according to the theory. It is
the thing which, by creating pressure of population on the supply of food,
is supposed to bring about the struggle for life among con-specifics, hence
natural selection, and hence evolution. As is well known, and as Darwin
himself stated, he had got the idea of population permanently pressing on
food, because of the constant tendency to increase, from T. R. Malthus's
Essay on Population (179.
Still, that every organism has as many descendants as it can, while
it is or may be true of most species of organisms, is obviously not true of
ours. Do you know of even one human being who ever had as many descendants
as he or she could have had? And yet Darwinism says that every single one
of us does. For there can clearly be no question of Darwinism making an
exception of man, without openly contradicting itself. 'Every single
organic being', or 'each organic being': this means you.
8. In every species, child-mortality - that is, the proportion of
live births which die before reproductive age - is extremely high.
Compare Darwin in the Origin, p. 61: 'of the many individuals of
any species which are periodically born, but a small number can survive';
or p. 5, 'many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly
survive'. Again, these passages, from the first edition, are both repeated
unchanged in all the later editions of the Origin.
Proposition 8 is not a peripheral or negotiable part of Darwinism.
On the contrary it is, like proposition 7, a central part, and one which
Darwinians are logically locked-into. For in order to explain evolution,
Darwin had adopted (as I have said) Malthus's principle of population: that
population always presses on the supply of food, and tends to increase
beyond it. And this principle does require child-mortality to be extremely
high in all species.
Because of the strength and universality of the sexual impulse,
animals in general have an exuberant tendency to increase in numbers. This
much is obvious, but what Malthus's principle says is something far more
definite. It says that the tendency to increase is so strong that every
population, of any species, is at all times already as large as its
food-supply permits, or else is rapidly approaching that impassable limit.
Which means of course that, (as Malthus once put it), the young are
always born into 'a world already possessed'. In any average year,
(assuming that the food-supply does not increase), there is simply not
enough food to support any greater number of the newborn than is needed to
replace the adults which die. But such is the strength of the tendency to
increase that, in any average year, the number of births will greatly
exceed the number of adult deaths. Which is to say, the great majority of
those born must soon die.
Consider a schematic example. Suppose there is a population, with
a constant food-supply, of 1000 human beings. Suppose - a very realistic
supposition, in fact a conservative one - that 700 of them are of
reproductive age. Suppose that this population is already 'at
equilibrium', (as Darwinians say): that is, is already as large as its food
can support. According to Malthus's principle, people (or flies or fish or
whatever) will reproduce if they can. So, since there are 350 females of
reproductive age, there will be 350 births this year. But there is no food
to support more of these than are needed to replace the adults who die this
year; while the highest adult death-rate which we can suppose with any
approximation to realism is about 10%. So 100 adults will die this year,
but to fill their places, there are 350 applicants. That is, there will
this year be a child-mortality of 250 out of 350, or more than 70%.
It was undoubtedly reasoning of this kind from Malthus's principle
which led Darwin to believe that in every species 'but a small number' of
those born can survive, or that 'many more' are born than can survive.
What did Darwin mean by these phrases, in percentage, or at least
minimum-percentage, terms? Well, we have just seen that Malthus's
principle, in a typical case, delivers a child-mortality of at least 70%.
And no one, either in 1859 or now, would dream of calling 30 or
more, surviving out of 100, 'but a small number' surviving. It would be
already stretching language violently, to call even 23 (say), surviving out
of 100, 'but a small number' surviving. To use this phrase of 30-or-more
surviving, would be absolutely out of the question. So Darwin must have
meant, by the statements I quoted above, that child-mortality in all
species is more than 70%.
Which is obviously false in the case of our species. No doubt
human child-mortality has often enough been as high as 70%, and often
enough higher still. But I do not think that, at any rate within
historical times, this can ever have been usual. For under a
child-mortality of 70%, a woman would have to give birth 10 times, on the
average, to get 3 of her children to puberty, and 30 times to get 9 of them
there. Yet a woman's getting 9 of her children to puberty has never at any
time been anything to write home about; whereas a woman who gives birth 30
times has always been a demographic prodigy. The absolute record is about
32 births. (I neglect multiple births, which make up only 1% of all
births.) As for the last 100 years, in any advanced country, to suppose
child-mortality 70% or anywhere near it, would be nothing but an outlandish
joke.
It is important to remember that no one - not even Darwinians -
knows anything at all about human demography, except what has been learnt
in the last 350 years, principally concerning certain European countries or
their colonies. A Darwinian may be tempted, indeed is sure to be tempted,
to set all of this knowledge aside, as being of no 'biological' validity,
because it concerns only an 'exceptional' time and place. But if we agreed
to set all this knowledge aside, the only result would be that no one knew
anything whatever about human demography. And Darwinians would then be no
more entitled than anyone else to tell us what the 'real', or the
'natural', rate of human child-mortality is.
In any case, as I said earlier, Darwinians cannot without
contradicting themselves make an exception of man, or of any particular
part of human history. Their theory, like Malthus's principle, is one
which generalizes about all species, and all places and times,
indifferently; while man is a species, the last 350 years are times, and
European countries are places. And Darwin's assertion, that child-mortality
is extremely high, is quite explicitly universal. For he said (as we saw)
that 'of the many individuals of any species which are periodically born,
but a small number can survive', and that 'many more individuals of each
species are born than can possibly survive'. Again, this means us.
9. The more privileged people are the more prolific: if one class
in a society is less exposed than another to the misery due to
food-shortage, disease, and war, then the members of the more fortunate
class will have (on the average) more children than the members of the
other class.
That this proposition is false, or rather, is the exact reverse of
the truth, is not just obvious. It is notorious, and even proverbial.
Everyone knows that, as a popular song of the I 930s had it,
The rich get rich, and
The poor get children.
Not that the song is exactly right, because privilege does not
quite always require superior wealth, and superior wealth does not quite
always confer privilege. The rule should be stated, not in terms of
wealth, but in terms of privilege, thus: that the more privileged class is
the less prolific. To this rule, as far as I know, there is not a single
exception.
And yet the exact inverse of it, proposition 9, is an inevitable
consequence of Darwinism all right. Malthus had said that the main
'checks' to human population are misery - principally due to 'famine, war,
and pestilence' - and vice: by which he meant contraception, foeticide,
homosexuality, etc. But he also said that famine - that is, deficiency of
food - usually outweighs all the other checks put together, and that
population-size depends, near enough, only on the supply of food. Darwin
agreed. He wrote (in The Descent of Man, second edition, 1874), that 'the
primary or fundamental check to the continued increase of man is the
difficulty of gaining subsistence', and that if food were doubled in
Britain, for example, population would quickly be doubled. But now, a
more-privileged class always suffers less from deficiency of food than a
less-privileged class does. Therefore, if food-supply is indeed the
fundamental determinant of population-size, a more-privileged class would
always be a more prolific one; just as proposition 9 says.
William Godwin, as early as 1820, pointed out that Malthus had
managed to get the relationship between privilege and fertility exactly
upside-down. In the 1860s and '70s W. R. Greg, Alfred Russel Wallace, and
others, pointed out that Darwin, by depending on Malthus for his
explanation of evolution, had saddled himself with Malthus's mistake about
population and privilege. It is perfectly obvious that all these critics
were right. But Darwin never took any notice of the criticism. Well,
trying to get Darwin to respond to criticism was always exactly like
punching a feather-mattress: 'suddenly absolutely nothing happened'.
The eugenics movement, which was founded a little later by Darwin's
disciple and cousin Francis Galton, was an indirect admission that those
critics were right. For what galvanized the eugenists into action was, of
course, their realisation that the middle and upper classes in Britain were
being out-reproduced by the lowest classes. Such a thing simply could not
happen, obviously, if Darwin and Malthus, and proposition 9, had been
right. But the eugenists never drew the obvious conclusion, that Darwin
and Malthus were wrong, and consequently they never turned their indirect
criticism into a direct one. Well, they were fervent Darwinians to the
last man and woman, and could not bring themselves to say, or even think,
that Darwinism is false.
A later Darwinian and eugenist, R. A. Fisher, discussed the
relation between privilege and fertility at length, in his important book,
The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection, (1930). But he can hardly be
said to have made the falsity of proposition 9 any less of an embarrassment
for Darwinism. Fisher acknowledges the fact that there has always been, in
all civilized countries an inversion (as he calls it)
of fertility-rates: that is, that the more privileged have always and
everywhere been the less fertile. His explanation of this fact is that
civilized countries have always practised what he calls 'the social
promotion of infertility'. That is, people are enabled to succeed better
in civilized life, the fewer children they have.
But this is evidently just a re-phrasing of the problem, rather
than a solution of it. The question, for a Darwinian such as Fisher, is
how there can be, consistently with Darwinism, such a thing as the social
promotion of infertility? In every other species of organisms, after all,
comparative infertility is a sure sign, or even the very criterion, of
comparative failure. So how can there be if Darwinism is true, a species
of organisms in which comparative infertility is a regular and
nearly-necessary aid to success?
Fisher's constant description of the fertility-rates in civilized
countries as 'inverted', deserves a word to itself. It is a perfect
example of an amazingly-arrogant habit of Darwinians, (of which I have
collected many examples in my forthcoming book Darwinian Fairytales). This
is the habit, when some biological fact inconsistent with Darwinism comes
to light, of blaming the fact, instead of blaming their theory. Any such
fact Darwinians call a 'biological error' an 'error of heredity', a
'misfire', or some thing of that kind: as though the organism in question
had gone wrong, when all that has actually happened, of course, is that
Darwinism has gone wrong. When Fisher called the birth-rates in civilized
countries 'inverted', all he meant was that, exactly contrary to Darwinian
theory, the more privileged people are the less fertile. From this fact,
of course, the only rational conclusion to be drawn is, that Darwinism has
got things upside-down. But instead of that Fisher, with typical
Darwinian effrontery, concludes that civilised people have got things
upside-down!
Fisher, who died in 1962, is nowadays the idol of ultra-Darwinians,
and he deserves to be so: he was in fact a sociobiologist 'born out of due
time'. And the old problem for Darwinism, to which he had at least given
some publicity, even if he did nothing to solve it, remains to this day the
central problem for sociobiologists. The problem (to put it vulgarly) of
why 'the rich and famous' are such pitiful reproducers as they are.
Of course this 'problem' is no problem at all, for anyone except
ultra-Darwinians. It is an entirely self-inflicted injury, and as such
deserves no sympathy. Who, except an ultra-Darwinian, would expect the
highly-privileged to be great breeders? No one; just as no one but an
ultra-Darwinian would expect women to adopt-out their babies with maximum
expedition. For ultra-Darwinians, on the other hand, the
infertility of the privileged is a good deal more than a problem. It is a
refutation.
But they react to it in accordance with a well-tried rule of
present-day scientific research. The rule is: 'When your theory meets with
a refutation, call it instead "a problem", and demand additional money in
order to enable you to solve it.' Experience has shown that this rule is
just the thing for keeping a 'research program' afloat, even if it leaks
like a sieve. Indeed, the more of these challenging 'problems' you can
mention, the more money you are plainly entitled to demand.
10. If variations which are useful to their possessors in the
struggle for life 'do occur, can we doubt (remembering that many more
individuals are born than can possibly survive), that individuals having
any advantage, however slight, over others, would have the best chance of
surviving and of procreating their kind? On the other hand, we may feel
sure that any variation in the least degree injurious would be rigidly
destroyed.'
This is from The Origin of Species, pp. 80-81. Exactly the same
words occur in all the editions.
Since this passage expresses the essential idea of natural
selection, no further evidence is needed to show that proposition 10 is a
Darwinian one. But is it true? In particular, may we really feel sure
that every attribute in the least degree injurious to its possessors would
be rigidly destroyed by natural selection?
On the contrary, the proposition is (saving Darwin's reverence)
ridiculous. Any educated person can easily think of a hundred
characteristics, commonly occurring in our species, which are not only 'in
the least degree' injurious to their possessors, but seriously or even
extremely injurious to them, which have not been 'rigidly destroyed', and
concerning which there is not the smallest evidence that they are in the
process of being destroyed. Here are ten such characteristics, without
even going past the first letter of the alphabet. Abortion; adoption;
fondness for alcohol; altruism; anal intercourse; respect for ancestors;
susceptibility to aneurism; the love of animals; the importance attached to
art; asceticism, whether sexual, dietary, or whatever.
Each of these characteristics tends, more or less strongly, to
shorten our lives, or to lessen the number of children we have, or both.
All of them are of extreme antiquity. Some of them are probably older than
our species itself. Adoption, for example is practised by some species of
chimpanzees: another adult female taking over the care of a baby whose
mother has died. Why has not this ancient and gross 'biological error'
been rigidly destroyed?
'There has not been enough time', replies the Darwinian. Well,
that could be so: perhaps there has not been enough time. And then again,
perhaps there has been enough time: perhaps even twenty times over. How
long does it take for natural selection to destroy an injurious attribute,
such as adoption or fondness for alcohol? I have not the faintest idea, of
course. I therefore have no positive ground whatever for believing either
that there has been enough time for adoption to be destroyed, or that there
has not. But then, on this matter, everyone else is in the same state of
total ignorance as I am. So how come the Darwinian is so confident that
there has not been enough time? What evidence can he point to, for
thinking that there has not? Why, nothing but this, that adoption has not
been destroyed, despite its being an injurious attribute!
But this is palpably arguing in a circle, and taking for granted
the very point which is in dispute. The Darwinian has no positive evidence
whatever, that there has not been enough time.
Mercifully, Darwinians nowadays are much more reluctant than they
formerly were, to rely heavily on the 'not-enough-time' defence of their
theory against critics. They have benefited from the strictures of
philosophers, who have pointed out that it is not good scientific method,
to defend Darwinism by a tactic which would always be equally available
whatever the state of the evidence, and which will still be equally
available to Darwinians a million years hence, if adoption (for example) is
still practised then.
The cream of the jest, concerning proposition 10, is that
Darwinians themselves do not really believe it. Ask a Darwinian whether he
actually believes that the fondness for alcoholic drinks is being destroyed
now, or that abortion is, or adoption - and watch his face. Well, of
course he does not believe it! Why would he? There is not a particle of
evidence in its favour, and there is a great mountain of evidence against
it.
Absolutely the only thing it has in its favour is that Darwinism
says it must be so. But (as Descartes said in another connection) 'this
reasoning cannot be presented to infidels, who might consider that it
proceeded in a circle'.
What becomes, then, of the terrifying giant named Natural
Selection, which can never sleep, can never fail to detect an attribute
which is, even in the least degree, injurious to its possessors in the
struggle for life, and can never fail to punish such an attribute with
rigid destruction?
Why, just that, like so much else in Darwinism, it is an obvious
fairytale, at least as far as our species is concerned.
It would not be difficult to compile another list of ten obvious
Darwinian falsities; or another one after that, either. But on that scale,
the thing would be tiresome both to read and to write. Anyway it ought not
to be necessary: ten obvious Darwinian falsities should be enough to make
the point. The point, namely, that if most educated people now think they
are Darwinians, it is only because they have no idea of the multiplied
absurdities which belief in Darwinism requires.
will do to move the motion that Darwinism is among the greatest
intellectual con-tricks of all time.
Unfortunately, a fanatical sect tries to make out that "the"
alternative to (neo)Darwinism is Creationism®: the totalitarian slogans
"the first 3 chapters of the Bible, plus the Noah story, can be understood
literally", "all spp were created in 6 d", "evolution is incompatible with
creation", etc. This well-funded, grossly irrational sectarian tendency
has been invading NZ, helped by a surprising degree of cowardice from
'evangelicals' who on many other topics show some courage.
One of the suspicious features of IDT is its refusal to refer to mainstream
scholarship (Temple, Sir A Hardy, Morton, etc). It does not really welcome
discussion, and is suspiciously frozen on the one tiny point.
I tentatively plot a spectrum of positions in this 'long argument':-
theistic evoln (Morton, Broom, Sheldrake, me)
- IDT (Dembski)
- Old Earth Creationism (Hugh Ross)
- Young Earth Creationism
R
http://www.royalinstitutephilosophy.org/articles/stove_darwinian.htm
So You Think You Are a Darwinian?
David Stove
Most educated people nowadays, I believe, think of themselves as
Darwinians. If they do, however, it can only be from ignorance: from not
knowing enough about what Darwinism says. For Darwinism says many things,
especially about our species, which are too obviously false to be believed
by any educated person; or at least by an educated person who retains any
capacity at all for critical thought on the subject of Darwinism.
Of course most educated people now are Darwinians, in the sense
that they believe our species to have originated, not in a creative act of
the Divine Will, but by evolution from other animals. But believing that
proposition is not enough to make someone a Darwinian. It had been
believed, as may be learnt from any history of biology, by very many people
long before Darwinism, or Darwin, was born.
What is needed to make someone an adherent of a certain school of
thought is belief in all or most of the propositions which are peculiar to
that school, and are believed either by all of its adherents, or at least
by the more thoroughgoing ones. In any large school of thought, there is
always a minority who adhere more exclusively than most to the
characteristic beliefs of the school: they are the 'purists' or 'ultras' of
that school. What is needed and sufficient, then, to make a person a
Darwinian, is belief in all or most of the propositions which are peculiar
to Darwinians, and believed either by all of them, or at least by
ultra-Darwinians.
I give below ten propositions which are all Darwinian beliefs in
the sense just specified. Each of them is obviously false: either a direct
falsity about our species or, where the proposition is a general one,
obviously false in the case of our species, at least. Some of the ten
propositions are quotations; all the others are paraphrases. The
quotations are all from authors who are so well-known, at least in
Darwinian circles, as spokesmen for Darwinism or ultra-Darwinism, that
their names alone will be sufficient evidence that the proposition is a
Darwinian one. Where the proposition is a paraphrase, I give quotations or
other information which will, I think, suffice to establish its Darwinian
credentials.
My ten propositions are nearly in reverse historical order. Thus,
I start from the present day, and from the inferno-scene - like something
by Hieronymus Bosch - which the 'selfish gene' theory makes of all life.
Then I go back a bit to some of the falsities which, beginning in the
1960s, were contributed to Darwinism by the theory of 'inclusive fitness'.
And finally I get back to some of the falsities, more pedestrian though no
less obvious, of the Darwinism of the 19th or early-20th century.
1. The truth is, 'the total prostitution of all animal life,
including Man and all his airs and graces, to the blind purposiveness of
these minute virus-like substances', genes.
This is a thumbnail-sketch, and an accurate one, of the contents of
The Selfish Gene (1976) by Richard Dawkins. It was not written by
Dawkins, but he quoted it with manifest enthusiasm in a defence of The
Selfish Gene which he wrote in this journal in 1981. Dawkins' status, as a
widely admired spokesman for ultra-Darwinism, is too well-known to need
evidence of it adduced here. His admirers even include some philosophers
who have carried their airs and graces to the length of writing good books
on such rarefied subjects as universals, or induction, or the mind.
Dawkins can scarcely have gratified these admirers by telling them that,
even when engaged in writing those books, they were 'totally prostituted
to the blind purposiveness of their genes. Still, you 'have to hand it' to
genes which can write, even if only through their slaves, a good book on
subjects like universals or induction. Those genes must have brains all
right, as well as purposes. At least, they must, if genes can have brains
and purposes. But in fact, of course, DNA molecules no more have such
things than H20 molecules do.
2 'Šit is, after all, to [a mother's] advantage that her child
should be adopted' by another woman.
This quotation is from Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, p. 110.
Obviously false though this proposition is, from the point of view
of Darwinism it is well-founded, for the reason which Dawkins gives on the
same page: that another woman's adopting her baby 'releases a rival female
from the burden of child-rearing, and frees her to have another child more
quickly.' This, you will say, is a grotesque way of looking at human life;
and so, of course, it is. But it is impossible to deny that it is the
Darwinian way.
3. All communication is 'manipulation of signal-receiver by
signal-sender.'
This profound communication, though it might easily have come from
any used-car salesman reflecting on life, was actually sent by Dawkins, (in
The Extended Phenotype, (1982), p. 57), to the readers whom he was at that
point engaged in manipulating. Much as the devil, in many medieval plays,
advises the audience not to take his advice.
4. Homosexuality in social animals is a form of sibling-altruism:
that is, your homosexuality is a way of helping your brothers and sisters
to raise more children.
This very-believable proposition is maintained by Robert Trivers in
his book Social Evolution, (1985), pp. 198-9. Professor Trivers is a
leading light among ultra-Darwinians, (who are nowadays usually called
'sociobiologists'). Whether he also believes that suicide, for example,
and self-castration, are forms of sibling-altruism, I do not know; but I do
not see what there is to stop him. What is there to stop anyone believing
such propositions? Only common sense: a thing entirely out of the question
among sociobiologists.
5. In all social mammals, the altruism (or apparent altruism) of
siblings towards one another is about as strong and common as the altruism
(or apparent altruism) of parents towards their offspring.
This proposition is an immediate consequence, and an admitted one,
of the theory of inclusive fitness, which says that the degree of altruism
depends on the proportion of genes shared. This theory was first put
forward by W. D. Hamilton in The Journal of Theoretical Biology in 1964.
Since then it has been accepted by Darwinians almost as one man and has
revolutionized evolutionary theory. This acceptance has made Professor
Hamilton the most influential Darwinian author of the last thirty years.
6. 'Š no one is prepared to sacrifice his life for any single
person, but everyone will sacrifice it for more than two brothers [or
offspring], or four half-brothers, or eight first-cousins.'
This is a quotation from the epoch-making article by Professor
Hamilton to which I referred a moment ago. The italics are not in the
text. Nor are the two words which I have put in square brackets; but their
insertion is certainly authorized by the theory of inclusive fitness.
7. Every organism has as many descendants as it can.
Compare Darwin, in The Origin of Species, p. 66: 'every single
organic being around us may be said to be striving to the utmost to
increase in numbers'; and again, pp. 78-9, 'each organic being is striving
to increase at a geometrical ratio'. These page references are to the
first edition of the Origin, (1859), but both of the passages just quoted
are repeated in all of the five later editions of the book which were
published in Darwin's lifetime. He also says the same thing in other
places.
But it would not have mattered if he had not happened to say in
print such things as I have just quoted. For it was always obvious, to
everyone who understood his theory, that a universal
striving-to-the-utmost-to-increase is an essential part of that theory: in
fact it is the very 'motor' of evolution, according to the theory. It is
the thing which, by creating pressure of population on the supply of food,
is supposed to bring about the struggle for life among con-specifics, hence
natural selection, and hence evolution. As is well known, and as Darwin
himself stated, he had got the idea of population permanently pressing on
food, because of the constant tendency to increase, from T. R. Malthus's
Essay on Population (179
.Still, that every organism has as many descendants as it can, while
it is or may be true of most species of organisms, is obviously not true of
ours. Do you know of even one human being who ever had as many descendants
as he or she could have had? And yet Darwinism says that every single one
of us does. For there can clearly be no question of Darwinism making an
exception of man, without openly contradicting itself. 'Every single
organic being', or 'each organic being': this means you.
8. In every species, child-mortality - that is, the proportion of
live births which die before reproductive age - is extremely high.
Compare Darwin in the Origin, p. 61: 'of the many individuals of
any species which are periodically born, but a small number can survive';
or p. 5, 'many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly
survive'. Again, these passages, from the first edition, are both repeated
unchanged in all the later editions of the Origin.
Proposition 8 is not a peripheral or negotiable part of Darwinism.
On the contrary it is, like proposition 7, a central part, and one which
Darwinians are logically locked-into. For in order to explain evolution,
Darwin had adopted (as I have said) Malthus's principle of population: that
population always presses on the supply of food, and tends to increase
beyond it. And this principle does require child-mortality to be extremely
high in all species.
Because of the strength and universality of the sexual impulse,
animals in general have an exuberant tendency to increase in numbers. This
much is obvious, but what Malthus's principle says is something far more
definite. It says that the tendency to increase is so strong that every
population, of any species, is at all times already as large as its
food-supply permits, or else is rapidly approaching that impassable limit.
Which means of course that, (as Malthus once put it), the young are
always born into 'a world already possessed'. In any average year,
(assuming that the food-supply does not increase), there is simply not
enough food to support any greater number of the newborn than is needed to
replace the adults which die. But such is the strength of the tendency to
increase that, in any average year, the number of births will greatly
exceed the number of adult deaths. Which is to say, the great majority of
those born must soon die.
Consider a schematic example. Suppose there is a population, with
a constant food-supply, of 1000 human beings. Suppose - a very realistic
supposition, in fact a conservative one - that 700 of them are of
reproductive age. Suppose that this population is already 'at
equilibrium', (as Darwinians say): that is, is already as large as its food
can support. According to Malthus's principle, people (or flies or fish or
whatever) will reproduce if they can. So, since there are 350 females of
reproductive age, there will be 350 births this year. But there is no food
to support more of these than are needed to replace the adults who die this
year; while the highest adult death-rate which we can suppose with any
approximation to realism is about 10%. So 100 adults will die this year,
but to fill their places, there are 350 applicants. That is, there will
this year be a child-mortality of 250 out of 350, or more than 70%.
It was undoubtedly reasoning of this kind from Malthus's principle
which led Darwin to believe that in every species 'but a small number' of
those born can survive, or that 'many more' are born than can survive.
What did Darwin mean by these phrases, in percentage, or at least
minimum-percentage, terms? Well, we have just seen that Malthus's
principle, in a typical case, delivers a child-mortality of at least 70%.
And no one, either in 1859 or now, would dream of calling 30 or
more, surviving out of 100, 'but a small number' surviving. It would be
already stretching language violently, to call even 23 (say), surviving out
of 100, 'but a small number' surviving. To use this phrase of 30-or-more
surviving, would be absolutely out of the question. So Darwin must have
meant, by the statements I quoted above, that child-mortality in all
species is more than 70%.
Which is obviously false in the case of our species. No doubt
human child-mortality has often enough been as high as 70%, and often
enough higher still. But I do not think that, at any rate within
historical times, this can ever have been usual. For under a
child-mortality of 70%, a woman would have to give birth 10 times, on the
average, to get 3 of her children to puberty, and 30 times to get 9 of them
there. Yet a woman's getting 9 of her children to puberty has never at any
time been anything to write home about; whereas a woman who gives birth 30
times has always been a demographic prodigy. The absolute record is about
32 births. (I neglect multiple births, which make up only 1% of all
births.) As for the last 100 years, in any advanced country, to suppose
child-mortality 70% or anywhere near it, would be nothing but an outlandish
joke.
It is important to remember that no one - not even Darwinians -
knows anything at all about human demography, except what has been learnt
in the last 350 years, principally concerning certain European countries or
their colonies. A Darwinian may be tempted, indeed is sure to be tempted,
to set all of this knowledge aside, as being of no 'biological' validity,
because it concerns only an 'exceptional' time and place. But if we agreed
to set all this knowledge aside, the only result would be that no one knew
anything whatever about human demography. And Darwinians would then be no
more entitled than anyone else to tell us what the 'real', or the
'natural', rate of human child-mortality is.
In any case, as I said earlier, Darwinians cannot without
contradicting themselves make an exception of man, or of any particular
part of human history. Their theory, like Malthus's principle, is one
which generalizes about all species, and all places and times,
indifferently; while man is a species, the last 350 years are times, and
European countries are places. And Darwin's assertion, that child-mortality
is extremely high, is quite explicitly universal. For he said (as we saw)
that 'of the many individuals of any species which are periodically born,
but a small number can survive', and that 'many more individuals of each
species are born than can possibly survive'. Again, this means us.
9. The more privileged people are the more prolific: if one class
in a society is less exposed than another to the misery due to
food-shortage, disease, and war, then the members of the more fortunate
class will have (on the average) more children than the members of the
other class.
That this proposition is false, or rather, is the exact reverse of
the truth, is not just obvious. It is notorious, and even proverbial.
Everyone knows that, as a popular song of the I 930s had it,
The rich get rich, and
The poor get children.
Not that the song is exactly right, because privilege does not
quite always require superior wealth, and superior wealth does not quite
always confer privilege. The rule should be stated, not in terms of
wealth, but in terms of privilege, thus: that the more privileged class is
the less prolific. To this rule, as far as I know, there is not a single
exception.
And yet the exact inverse of it, proposition 9, is an inevitable
consequence of Darwinism all right. Malthus had said that the main
'checks' to human population are misery - principally due to 'famine, war,
and pestilence' - and vice: by which he meant contraception, foeticide,
homosexuality, etc. But he also said that famine - that is, deficiency of
food - usually outweighs all the other checks put together, and that
population-size depends, near enough, only on the supply of food. Darwin
agreed. He wrote (in The Descent of Man, second edition, 1874), that 'the
primary or fundamental check to the continued increase of man is the
difficulty of gaining subsistence', and that if food were doubled in
Britain, for example, population would quickly be doubled. But now, a
more-privileged class always suffers less from deficiency of food than a
less-privileged class does. Therefore, if food-supply is indeed the
fundamental determinant of population-size, a more-privileged class would
always be a more prolific one; just as proposition 9 says.
William Godwin, as early as 1820, pointed out that Malthus had
managed to get the relationship between privilege and fertility exactly
upside-down. In the 1860s and '70s W. R. Greg, Alfred Russel Wallace, and
others, pointed out that Darwin, by depending on Malthus for his
explanation of evolution, had saddled himself with Malthus's mistake about
population and privilege. It is perfectly obvious that all these critics
were right. But Darwin never took any notice of the criticism. Well,
trying to get Darwin to respond to criticism was always exactly like
punching a feather-mattress: 'suddenly absolutely nothing happened'.
The eugenics movement, which was founded a little later by Darwin's
disciple and cousin Francis Galton, was an indirect admission that those
critics were right. For what galvanized the eugenists into action was, of
course, their realisation that the middle and upper classes in Britain were
being out-reproduced by the lowest classes. Such a thing simply could not
happen, obviously, if Darwin and Malthus, and proposition 9, had been
right. But the eugenists never drew the obvious conclusion, that Darwin
and Malthus were wrong, and consequently they never turned their indirect
criticism into a direct one. Well, they were fervent Darwinians to the
last man and woman, and could not bring themselves to say, or even think,
that Darwinism is false.
A later Darwinian and eugenist, R. A. Fisher, discussed the
relation between privilege and fertility at length, in his important book,
The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection, (1930). But he can hardly be
said to have made the falsity of proposition 9 any less of an embarrassment
for Darwinism. Fisher acknowledges the fact that there has always been, in
all civilized countries an inversion (as he calls it)
of fertility-rates: that is, that the more privileged have always and
everywhere been the less fertile. His explanation of this fact is that
civilized countries have always practised what he calls 'the social
promotion of infertility'. That is, people are enabled to succeed better
in civilized life, the fewer children they have.
But this is evidently just a re-phrasing of the problem, rather
than a solution of it. The question, for a Darwinian such as Fisher, is
how there can be, consistently with Darwinism, such a thing as the social
promotion of infertility? In every other species of organisms, after all,
comparative infertility is a sure sign, or even the very criterion, of
comparative failure. So how can there be if Darwinism is true, a species
of organisms in which comparative infertility is a regular and
nearly-necessary aid to success?
Fisher's constant description of the fertility-rates in civilized
countries as 'inverted', deserves a word to itself. It is a perfect
example of an amazingly-arrogant habit of Darwinians, (of which I have
collected many examples in my forthcoming book Darwinian Fairytales). This
is the habit, when some biological fact inconsistent with Darwinism comes
to light, of blaming the fact, instead of blaming their theory. Any such
fact Darwinians call a 'biological error' an 'error of heredity', a
'misfire', or some thing of that kind: as though the organism in question
had gone wrong, when all that has actually happened, of course, is that
Darwinism has gone wrong. When Fisher called the birth-rates in civilized
countries 'inverted', all he meant was that, exactly contrary to Darwinian
theory, the more privileged people are the less fertile. From this fact,
of course, the only rational conclusion to be drawn is, that Darwinism has
got things upside-down. But instead of that Fisher, with typical
Darwinian effrontery, concludes that civilised people have got things
upside-down!
Fisher, who died in 1962, is nowadays the idol of ultra-Darwinians,
and he deserves to be so: he was in fact a sociobiologist 'born out of due
time'. And the old problem for Darwinism, to which he had at least given
some publicity, even if he did nothing to solve it, remains to this day the
central problem for sociobiologists. The problem (to put it vulgarly) of
why 'the rich and famous' are such pitiful reproducers as they are.
Of course this 'problem' is no problem at all, for anyone except
ultra-Darwinians. It is an entirely self-inflicted injury, and as such
deserves no sympathy. Who, except an ultra-Darwinian, would expect the
highly-privileged to be great breeders? No one; just as no one but an
ultra-Darwinian would expect women to adopt-out their babies with maximum
expedition. For ultra-Darwinians, on the other hand, the
infertility of the privileged is a good deal more than a problem. It is a
refutation.
But they react to it in accordance with a well-tried rule of
present-day scientific research. The rule is: 'When your theory meets with
a refutation, call it instead "a problem", and demand additional money in
order to enable you to solve it.' Experience has shown that this rule is
just the thing for keeping a 'research program' afloat, even if it leaks
like a sieve. Indeed, the more of these challenging 'problems' you can
mention, the more money you are plainly entitled to demand.
10. If variations which are useful to their possessors in the
struggle for life 'do occur, can we doubt (remembering that many more
individuals are born than can possibly survive), that individuals having
any advantage, however slight, over others, would have the best chance of
surviving and of procreating their kind? On the other hand, we may feel
sure that any variation in the least degree injurious would be rigidly
destroyed.'
This is from The Origin of Species, pp. 80-81. Exactly the same
words occur in all the editions.
Since this passage expresses the essential idea of natural
selection, no further evidence is needed to show that proposition 10 is a
Darwinian one. But is it true? In particular, may we really feel sure
that every attribute in the least degree injurious to its possessors would
be rigidly destroyed by natural selection?
On the contrary, the proposition is (saving Darwin's reverence)
ridiculous. Any educated person can easily think of a hundred
characteristics, commonly occurring in our species, which are not only 'in
the least degree' injurious to their possessors, but seriously or even
extremely injurious to them, which have not been 'rigidly destroyed', and
concerning which there is not the smallest evidence that they are in the
process of being destroyed. Here are ten such characteristics, without
even going past the first letter of the alphabet. Abortion; adoption;
fondness for alcohol; altruism; anal intercourse; respect for ancestors;
susceptibility to aneurism; the love of animals; the importance attached to
art; asceticism, whether sexual, dietary, or whatever.
Each of these characteristics tends, more or less strongly, to
shorten our lives, or to lessen the number of children we have, or both.
All of them are of extreme antiquity. Some of them are probably older than
our species itself. Adoption, for example is practised by some species of
chimpanzees: another adult female taking over the care of a baby whose
mother has died. Why has not this ancient and gross 'biological error'
been rigidly destroyed?
'There has not been enough time', replies the Darwinian. Well,
that could be so: perhaps there has not been enough time. And then again,
perhaps there has been enough time: perhaps even twenty times over. How
long does it take for natural selection to destroy an injurious attribute,
such as adoption or fondness for alcohol? I have not the faintest idea, of
course. I therefore have no positive ground whatever for believing either
that there has been enough time for adoption to be destroyed, or that there
has not. But then, on this matter, everyone else is in the same state of
total ignorance as I am. So how come the Darwinian is so confident that
there has not been enough time? What evidence can he point to, for
thinking that there has not? Why, nothing but this, that adoption has not
been destroyed, despite its being an injurious attribute!
But this is palpably arguing in a circle, and taking for granted
the very point which is in dispute. The Darwinian has no positive evidence
whatever, that there has not been enough time.
Mercifully, Darwinians nowadays are much more reluctant than they
formerly were, to rely heavily on the 'not-enough-time' defence of their
theory against critics. They have benefited from the strictures of
philosophers, who have pointed out that it is not good scientific method,
to defend Darwinism by a tactic which would always be equally available
whatever the state of the evidence, and which will still be equally
available to Darwinians a million years hence, if adoption (for example) is
still practised then.
The cream of the jest, concerning proposition 10, is that
Darwinians themselves do not really believe it. Ask a Darwinian whether he
actually believes that the fondness for alcoholic drinks is being destroyed
now, or that abortion is, or adoption - and watch his face. Well, of
course he does not believe it! Why would he? There is not a particle of
evidence in its favour, and there is a great mountain of evidence against
it.
Absolutely the only thing it has in its favour is that Darwinism
says it must be so. But (as Descartes said in another connection) 'this
reasoning cannot be presented to infidels, who might consider that it
proceeded in a circle'.
What becomes, then, of the terrifying giant named Natural
Selection, which can never sleep, can never fail to detect an attribute
which is, even in the least degree, injurious to its possessors in the
struggle for life, and can never fail to punish such an attribute with
rigid destruction?
Why, just that, like so much else in Darwinism, it is an obvious
fairytale, at least as far as our species is concerned.
It would not be difficult to compile another list of ten obvious
Darwinian falsities; or another one after that, either. But on that scale,
the thing would be tiresome both to read and to write. Anyway it ought not
to be necessary: ten obvious Darwinian falsities should be enough to make
the point. The point, namely, that if most educated people now think they
are Darwinians, it is only because they have no idea of the multiplied
absurdities which belief in Darwinism requires.
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/01/10/evolution/
The new Monkey Trial
By persuading the Dover, Pa., school board to teach creationism,
Christian zealots have provoked a showdown over the status of not just
evolutionary theory, but science itself.
- - - - - - - - - - - - By Michelle Goldberg
Jan. 10, 2005 | DOVER, Pa. -- It was an ordinary springtime school board
meeting in the bedroom community of Dover, Pa. The high school needed new
biology textbooks, and the science department had recommended Kenneth
Miller and Joseph Levine's "Biology." "It was a fantastic text," said Carol
"Casey" Brown, 57, a self-described Goldwater Republican and the board's
senior member. "It just followed our curriculum so beautifully."
But Bill Buckingham, a new board member who'd recently become chair of the
curriculum committee, had an objection. "Biology," he said, was "laced
with Darwinism." He wanted a book that balanced theories of evolution with
Christian creationism, and he was willing to turn his town into a cultural
battlefield to get it.
"This country wasn't founded on Muslim beliefs or evolution," Buckingham,
a stocky, gray-haired man who wears a red, white and blue crucifix pin on
his lapel, said at the meeting. "This country was founded on Christianity,
and our students should be taught as such."
Casey Brown and her husband, fellow board member Jeff Brown, were stunned.
"I was picturing the headlines," Jeff said months later.
"And we got them," Casey added.
Indeed, by the end of 2004, journalists from across the country and from
overseas had come to Dover to report on the latest outbreak of America's
perennial war over evolution. By then, Buckingham had succeeded in making
Dover the first school district in the country to mandate the teaching of
"intelligent design" -- an updated version of creationism couched in modern
biological terms. In doing so, he ushered in a legal challenge from
outraged parents and the ACLU that could turn into a 21st century version
of the infamous "Scopes Monkey Trial."
The Dover case is part of a renewed revolt against evolutionary science
that's been gathering force in America for the past four years, a symptom
of the same renascent fundamentalism that helped propel George Bush to
victory. Since 2001, the National Center for Science Education, a group
formed to defend the teaching of evolution, has tallied battles over
evolution in 43 states, noting they're growing more frequent.
After 1987, when the Supreme Court declared the teaching of creationism in
public school unconstitutional in Edwards vs. Aguillard, the doctrine
seemed to be shut out of public schools once and for all. In the last few
years, though, intelligent design has given evolution's opponents new hope.
Now, emboldened by their growing political power, religious conservatives
are once again storming the barricades of science education.
The same month Bush was reelected, the rural Grantsburg, Wis., school
district revised its curriculum to allow the teaching of creationism and
intelligent design. After a community outcry -- including a letter of
protest from 200 Wisconsin clergy -- the district revised the policy but
continued to mandate that students be taught "the scientific strengths and
weaknesses of evolutionary theory," a common creationist tactic that
fosters the illusion that evolution is a controversial theory among
scientists.
Other anti-evolution initiatives have affected entire states. In the
November election, creationists took over the Kansas Board of Education.
The last time the board had a majority, in 1999, it voted to erase any
mention of evolution from the state curriculum. Kansas became a
laughingstock and the anti-evolutionists were defeated in the next
Republican primary, leading to the policy's reversal. Now, newly
victorious, the anti-evolutionists plan to introduce the teaching of
intelligent design next year.
Similarly, this past December, the New York Times reported that Missouri
legislators plan to introduce a bill that would require state biology
textbooks to include at least one chapter dealing with "alternative
theories to evolution." Speaking to the Times, state Rep. Cynthia Davis
seemed to compare opponents of intelligent design to al-Qaida. "It's like
when the hijackers took over those four planes on Sept. 11 and took people
to a place where they didn't want to go," she said. "I think a lot of
people feel that liberals have taken our country somewhere we don't want to
go. I think a lot more people realize this is our country and we're going
to take it back."
Right-wingers in Congress, on talk radio and on cable TV, are stoking the
anti-evolution rebellion, insisting that academic freedom means the freedom
to teach creationism. Having shown their strength in the election,
cultural conservatives aren't in the mood to compromise. America is a
democracy and they have the numbers. They see no reason why the principles
of science shouldn't be up for popular vote.
On Dec. 14, the ACLU announced that it was representing 11 Dover parents
in a lawsuit against the town. The school board's intelligent-design
policy, their complaint said, had violated the First Amendment's
Establishment Clause, "which prohibits the teaching or presentation of
religious ideas in public school science classes."
That day, a few of the parents joined their attorneys for a press
conference in the rotunda of Pennsylvania's capitol in Harrisburg.
Reporters and cameramen crowded around the microphone as a succession of
lawyers, liberal clergymen and scientists spoke. The Rev. Barry Lynn,
executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State,
came from D.C. for the event. "We've been battling this from Hawaii to
California to New Hampshire to Cobb County," he said, referring to the
suburban Atlanta school district that had recently put warning stickers on
its biology textbooks calling evolution "a theory, not a fact."
As the cameras rolled, a few protesters tried to edge their way into the
frame. A man named Carl Jarboe, in a purple sport coat and a fur hat, stood
near the parents holding a fluorescent green sign saying, "ACLU Censors
Truth." His wife, wearing a kerchief on her head and small round glasses,
held a similar sign saying "Evolution: Unscientific and Untrue. Why Does
the ACLU Oppose Schools Giving All the Evidence?"
The parents ignored them. Most were hesitant in front of all the cameras.
They weren't culture warriors and they didn't speak in ideological terms.
Instead, they talked about what Buckingham and the other creationists were
doing to their school and their community.
"We don't believe that intelligent design is science, and we have faith in
ourselves as parents that we can do a good job teaching our children about
religion," Christy Rehm, a 31-year-old mother of four, said after the
conference. "We have faith in our pastor, we have faith in our community
that our children are going to be raised to be decent people. So we don't
feel that it's the school board's job to make that decision for our
children."
Jarboe, who introduced himself as a former assistant professor of
chemistry at Messiah College, a nearby Christian school, was convinced that
the parents were being used by the ACLU to further its sinister agenda.
Like a great many members of the Christian right, he sees the ACLU as a
subversive, possibly demonic institution. Quoting James Kennedy, an
influential Fort Lauderdale televangelist, he called the ACLU the "American
Communist United League." "I maintain it's a communist front," he said.
He then pressed a flier into my hand from a two-day creation seminar he'd
attended at the Faith Baptist Church in Lebanon, Pa. It was run by Dr. Kent
Hovind, a young-Earth creationist who argues that, as the flier said, "it
has been proven that man lived at the same time as dinosaurs." To
underline this point, Hovind runs Dinosaur Adventure Land, a theme park in
Pensacola, Fla., with rides and exhibits about the not-so-long-ago days
when humans and dinosaurs roamed the planet together.
A few feet from Jarboe stood Robert Eckhardt, a professor of developmental
genetics and evolutionary morphology at Penn State. Eckhardt had spoken at
the press conference about the central role of evolution in biology. "The
idea that intelligent design is a powerful upwelling of controversy within
the scientific community is absolute nonsense," he said. Jarboe was unfazed
by Eckhardt's expertise; he called him a "screaming leftist unbiblical
liberal."
A wry man with a lined face, tweed jacket and owlish glasses, Eckhardt,
like most other experts in his field, has been dealing with creationists
throughout his career and finds it tiresome to try to reason with them. He
divided his opponents into several categories. "There are people who just
feel that the world is changing very rapidly around them. Their children
are coming home from school with ideas that are taught to them in biology
class, the parents find this to be challenging and upsetting, and by God
they're going to do something about it," he said. "They don't understand
the world and they're trying to get the world to slow down and accommodate
their thinking."
The second group, he said, are people "who are formerly associated with
the creationist movement, who purposely misrepresent issues of science when
in fact they are issues of religion." He didn't want to name names but it
seemed he was speaking of the fellows at the Discovery Institute's Center
for Science and Culture, headquarters of the intelligent-design movement.
The third, he said, rolling his eyes a tiny bit toward Jarboe, who was
listening to our conversation, "are people who are mentally unbalanced and
who are so threatened by this that they perceive things going on around
them that never happened."
As Eckhardt spoke, Jim Grove, the pastor of Heritage Baptist Church, a
small congregation near Dover, stepped forward to challenge him to a
debate. Eckhardt refused with a derisive laugh, saying, "I value my time."
Grove interpreted this as a sign of evolution's weakness. "If he has
facts, what about a forum to present them in public?" he asked. "It would
be a perfect opportunity. If he has the facts."
Of Eckhardt's three categories of anti-evolutionists, the second -- the
proponents of intelligent design -- are currently the most influential.
They've created the terms that now dominate the debate from the halls of
Congress to local school boards like Dover. They're the reason that, after
a decade when the consensus on evolution in education seemed secure,
Darwin's enemies are on the move.
Although Buckingham first argued for teaching creationism in Dover biology
classes, he soon started using the phrase "intelligent design" instead. The
change in language was significant because intelligent design was created
in part to circumvent the Supreme Court ruling that made it illegal for
public schools to teach creationism. Masquerading as a science, it aims to
convince the public that evolution is a theory under fire within the
scientific community and doesn't deserve its preeminent place in the
biology curriculum.
At Dover's June 14 school board meeting, Buckingham said he wanted the
board to consider the intelligent-design textbook, "Of Pandas and People:
The Central Question of Biological Origin." According to Nick Matzke, a
spokesman for the National Center for Science Education, the original
version of "Of Pandas and People," published in 1989, contained one of the
first uses of the phrase "intelligent design." Later, in the 1990s, the
intelligent-design cause was taken up by the Center for Science and Culture.
Yet "Of Pandas and People" was never meant to be scientific. It was a
strategic response to the Supreme Court's 1987 ruling in Edwards vs.
Aguillard, which overturned a Louisiana law mandating that "creation
science" be taught alongside evolution. Because the court ruled that
"creation science" is a religious doctrine, savvy opponents of evolution
sought to recast the central tenets of creationism in a way that hid their
religious inspiration. Thus intelligent design was born.
Percival Davis, one of the coauthors of "Of Pandas and People," also
co-wrote the old-school creationist text, "A Case for Creation." An online
ad for "Pandas" on the Web site of the creationist group Answers in Genesis
describes the text as a "superbly written" book for public schools that
"has no Biblical content, yet contains creationists' interpretations and
refutations for evidences [sic] usually found in standard textbooks
supporting evolution!"
The core idea in "Pandas" -- and in the intelligent-design movement
generally -- is that of "irreducible complexity," the theory that the
structure of proteins and amino acids in cells -- the building blocks of
life -- is so complex that only a supernatural force could have
choreographed it. "Because of the high level of improbability that cells
could be generated by the random mixing of chemicals, some scientists
believe that the first cells were created from the design of some outside,
intelligent force," the book says.
Indeed, some "scientists" do believe this -- the ones who work at the
Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture. Outside the precincts
of the religious right, though, the scientific consensus about evolution is
very close to unanimous. For decades, biologists at the world's major
universities, and in esteemed peer-reviewed journals, have proven that
cellular processes have indeed evolved in sync with Darwin's theories. In
November 2004, National Geographic ran a cover story asking, "Was Darwin
Wrong?" Its subhead provided the answer: "No. The Evidence for Evolution Is
Overwhelming."
"Evolution by natural selection, the central concept of the life's work of
Charles Darwin, is a theory," wrote award-winning science author David
Quammen in National Geographic. "It's a theory about the origin of
adaptation, complexity, and diversity among Earth's living creatures. If
you are skeptical by nature, unfamiliar with the terminology of science,
and unaware of the overwhelming evidence, you might even be tempted to say
that it's 'just' a theory. In the same sense, relativity as described by
Albert Einstein is 'just' a theory. The notion that Earth orbits around
the sun rather than vice versa, offered by Copernicus in 1543, is a theory
... Each of these theories is an explanation that has been confirmed to
such a degree, by observation and experiment, that knowledgeable experts
accept it as fact."
A statuesque woman with a strawberry blond bob and crisply proper diction,
Casey Brown isn't a scientist, but she prides herself on being well read,
and after 10 years on the school board, she knows what a good biology
textbook looks like. When she saw "Of Pandas and People," she was appalled.
"It's poor science and worse theology," she said.
Brown said that by the school board's August meeting, Buckingham had given
up on the idea of using "Pandas" as the main text, but he insisted that the
board buy it as a supplement. Otherwise, he said, he wouldn't approve the
purchase of "Biology."
One of Buckingham's supporters on the board was out sick that night, and
without her, the vote deadlocked, 4-4. Finally, worried that the school
would have to start the year without textbooks, one member switched her
vote and "Biology" was approved. The town's little drama seemed to be at an
end.
In fact, it was just beginning.
Shortly after the motion to have the school board buy "Of Pandas and
People" was defeated, the Dover School District received an anonymous
donation of 50 copies of the book, and Buckingham and his allies set about
figuring out how to integrate them into the curriculum.
On Oct. 18, the board voted on a resolution written by Buckingham and his
supporters on the board. It said, "Students will be made aware of
gaps/problems in Darwin's theory and of other theories of evolution
including, but not limited to, intelligent design. Note: Origins of Life is
not taught." The "Pandas" books were to be kept in the science classroom,
and teachers were instructed to read a statement referring students to them.
Casey and Jeff Brown argued against it. "We kept maintaining this is going
to get us into legal trouble," Casey said. "It was a clear violation." As
an alternative, she proposed offering a comparative world religions
elective, which would teach the creation myths of various faiths.
But Buckingham was determined. "Two thousand years ago, someone died on a
cross," he said at the meeting. "Can't someone take a stand for him?"
Jeff Brown spoke up in response, saying it was the wrong time and the
wrong place for a religious debate. Buckingham called him a coward and said
it was a good thing that he wasn't fighting the revolutionary war "because
we would still have a queen."
Finally, they voted. The mandate to teach intelligent design passed 6-3.
Casey and Jeff Brown quit the board in protest. The other dissenter, Noel
Wenrich, turned to Buckingham and said, "We lost two good people because of
you."
"And Mr. Buckingham said, with profanity, 'Good riddance to bad rubbish,'"
Casey recalled. "And he called Mr. Wenrich every name in the book."
Buckingham may have started the Dover crusade himself, but the Center for
Science and Culture laid the groundwork years before. The group provides
the "scientific" and philosophical arguments to bolster the opponents of
evolution in local political struggles.
CSC operates out of the Discovery Institute, a Seattle think tank that's
funded in part by savings and loan heir Howard Ahmanson. As Max Blumenthal
reported in a 2004 Salon article, Ahmanson spent 20 years on the board of
R.J. Rushdoony's Chalcedon Foundation, a theocratic outfit that advocates
the replacement of American civil law with biblical law.
The Center for Science and Culture also aims, in a far more elliptical
way, to put God at the center of civic life. Originally called the Center
for the Renewal of Science and Culture, CSC usually purports to be
motivated by science, not religion. At times, though, it's refreshingly
candid about its true goal -- a grandiose scheme to undermine the secular
legacy of the Enlightenment and rebuild society on religious foundations.
As it said in a 1999 fundraising proposal that was later leaked online,
"Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture seeks
nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies."
The proposal was titled "The Wedge Strategy." It began: "The proposition
that human beings are created in the image of God is one of the bedrock
principles on which Western civilization was built ... Yet a little over a
century ago, this cardinal idea came under wholesale attack by
intellectuals drawing on the discoveries of modern science. Debunking the
traditional conceptions of both God and man, thinkers such as Charles
Darwin, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud portrayed humans not as moral and
spiritual beings, but as animals or machines who inhabited a universe ruled
by purely impersonal forces and whose behavior and very thoughts were
dictated by the unbending forces of biology, chemistry, and environment.
This materialistic conception of reality eventually infected virtually
every area of our culture, from politics and economics to literature and
art."
As "The Wedge Strategy" suggests, many CSC fellows are troubled more by
the philosophical consequences of evolutionary theory than by the fact that
it contradicts a literal reading of the Bible's book of Genesis. Most of
them -- though not all -- are too scientifically sophisticated to hew to a
young-Earth creationist line like Hovind's. In mainstream forums, they
eschew sectarian religious language. As seekers of mainstream credibility,
they don't want to be associated with the medieval persecutors of
Copernicus and Galileo. Instead, they try to present themselves as heirs to
those very visionaries, insisting that dogmatic secularists desperate to
deny God are thwarting their open-minded quest for truth.
Most CSC fellows even accept that evolution occurs within individual
species. What they dispute is the idea that random mutation and natural
selection led to the evolution of higher species from lower ones -- of man
from apelike ancestors. Such a process seems to them incompatible with the
belief that man was created in the image of God and that God takes a
special interest in him.
Several CSC fellows come with impressive credentials from prestigious
universities, and they know how to argue in mainstream forums. Philip
Johnson, one of the fathers of the movement, is a law professor at
UC-Berkeley. Jonathan Wells, author of the influential intelligent-design
book, "Icons of Evolution," has a Ph.D. in molecular and cell biology from
Berkeley and another in religious studies from Yale. A member of the
Unification Church whose education was bankrolled by the Rev. Sun Myung
Moon, he's written that he sought his degrees specifically to fight the
teaching of evolution. As he put it in an article on the Moonie Web site
True Parents, "Father's words, my studies, and my prayers convinced me that
I should devote my life to destroying Darwinism, just as many of my fellow
Unificationists had already devoted their lives to destroying Marxism. When
Father [Sun Myung Moon] chose me (along with about a dozen other seminary
graduates) to enter a Ph.D. program in 1978, I welcomed the opportunity to
prepare myself for battle."
Armed with advanced degrees, CSC fellows have secured invitations to
testify before state boards of education. They've published opinion pieces
in mainstream newspapers and are regularly consulted for "balance" in
stories about evolution controversies.
They've also found important allies within the Republican Party,
especially Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania. Santorum tried to attach an
amendment to the No Child Left Behind Act that would encourage the teaching
of intelligent design. It said, "[W]here topics are taught that may
generate controversy (such as biological evolution), the curriculum should
help students to understand the full range of scientific views that exist,
why such topics may generate controversy, and how scientific discoveries
can profoundly affect society." The statement was eventually adopted as
part of a Conference Report on the law, which means it has advisory power
only.
The language sounds innocuous, but Santorum's intent was clear. In 2002,
Ohio debated adding intelligent design to its statewide science standards.
In a Washington Times Op-Ed supporting the change, Santorum quoted his
amendment and then wrote, "If the Education Board of Ohio does not include
intelligent design in the new teaching standards, many students will be
denied a first-rate science education. Many will be left behind."
Santorum has also come out in favor of Dover's policy. The school board,
in turn, distributed copies of one of Santorum's pro-intelligent design
Op-Eds along with the agenda at its Jan. 3 meeting.
Oddly enough, although Santorum is supporting the Dover school board's
policy, the Center for Science and Culture isn't. On Dec. 14, CSC put out a
statement calling Dover's policy "misguided" and saying it should be
"withdrawn and rewritten." The statement quoted CSC's associate director
John West as saying that discussion of intelligent design shouldn't be
prohibited but it also shouldn't be required. "What should be required is
full disclosure of the scientific evidence for and against Darwin's
theory," said West, "which is the approach supported by the overwhelming
majority of the public."
This, of course, is a departure from the position laid out in "The Wedge
Strategy," which specifically calls for the integration of intelligent
design into school curriculum.
Why the change? Matzke, from the National Center for Science Education, is
convinced that the CSC wanted to wait for a better test case and a friendly
Supreme Court, which they'll get if Bush is able to nominate a few new
justices. The Dover policy, Matzke said, probably won't survive a court
challenge right now, and if it's overturned, the precedent will be a
setback for the missionaries of intelligent design.
"Their current strategy is not to have an intelligent-design policy
passed," Matzke said. "They just want a policy that says students should
analyze the strengths and weakness of evolution." CSC did not return calls
for comment.
It's not hard for creationists to convince the public that the evidence
for evolution is weak. Scientists accept evolution as something very close
to fact, but Americans never have. In a November 2004 CBS News/New York
Times poll, about evolution, 55 percent of the respondents said that God
created humans in their present form. Twenty-seven percent believed in the
evolution of man guided by God, and 13 percent believed in evolution
without God.
So it should come as no surprise that the majority of Americans -- 65
percent, according to the poll cited above -- favor teaching creationism
alongside evolution in public schools. Creationism is the perfect
culture-war issue because it inevitably pits majorities in local
communities against interloping lawyers and scientists. In a country
gripped by right-wing populism, it's not hard to stoke resentment against
scientists who have the gall to think that they know more than everybody
else.
In fact, some historians date the start of our culture wars to 1925, the
year of the "Scopes Monkey Trial" in Dayton, Tenn.
At the time, the battle over evolution had been raging throughout the
country. It came to a head when 24-year-old teacher John Scopes challenged
Tennessee's Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of evolution in the
state's public schools and universities. His persecution set the stage for
a legendary courtroom showdown that pit celebrated Chicago defense attorney
Clarence Darrow against Williams Jennings Bryan, the crusading populist,
fundamentalist and three-time presidential candidate.
Bryan, the nation's leading anti-evolutionist, made his case in populist
terms. In his 1993 book "The Creationists," historian Ronald Numbers wrote,
"Throughout his political career, Bryan had placed his faith in the common
people, and he resented the attempt of a few thousand elitist scientists
'to establish an oligarchy over the forty million American Christians' to
dictate what should be taught in the schools."
Bryan and his fellow Scopes prosecutors won their trial, but the national
mockery that followed it did much to alienate conservative Christians from
secular society, setting the stage for the culture wars of later decades.
In his Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the Scopes trial, "Summer for the
Gods," Edward Larson wrote about the birth of the right-wing religious
counterculture in the wake of the Pyrrhic victory in Tennessee:
"Indeed, fundamentalism became a byword in American culture as a result of
the Scopes trial, and fundamentalists responded by withdrawing. They did
not abandon their faith, however, but set about constructing a separate
subculture with independent religious, educational and social institutions."
Eventually, of course, the religious right emerged from its subculture to
renew its attack on secularism. Today, cultural conservatives are mustering
almost exactly the same arguments that Bryan made in Dayton 80 years ago.
This past December, Republican strategist Jack Burkman appeared on MSNBC's
"Scarborough Country" to back creationism in terms of populist democracy.
"Why should the state and the federal government have a monopoly on
defining what constitutes science?" he asked. "I see no problem with
presenting a creationist view in the schools, given that 70 percent of
Americans want that. The law should reflect democratic desires. It should
reflect public desires."
Of course, public desires don't determine the physical facts of the world.
"The best argument that the creationists have got is that it's only fair to
teach both sides," Matzke said. "The problem with that argument is that
science is not a democracy and a lot of times there aren't two correct
sides. There are people who believe that the sun goes around the earth.
They're called geocentrists. That doesn't mean we should teach that."
In Dover, though, people tend to interpret positions like Matzke's as
elitism. Much of the public seems to desire schools that teach creationism,
although many balk at the cost of a lawsuit. For defenders of Darwin, the
most troubling thing isn't that the Dover school board is dominated by
extremists -- it's that the board is, in a local context, fairly
mainstream. Supporters of evolution are the ones who stand out. Resentment
of the ACLU runs high even among some who opposed the school board's
intelligent-design policy. Most opposition to the policy comes from worry
over the cost of the lawsuit.
Most people in Dover say that the town is split fairly evenly over the
school board's intelligent-design policy. The division isn't one of
principle, though. People know that the ACLU's lawsuit is going to be
expensive and are worried that defending the policy in court will drain the
school budget and force a tax increase.
"I would say that people who are against what the school board is doing in
principle are a minority, a great minority," former school board member
Noel Wenrich told me. "However, when it comes to spending money on it, it's
a whole other issue. When you ask people, Do you support the board's
decision on this? they say yes." Ask them if they're willing to pay more
taxes to finance a court case, though, and they'll give you a resounding
no, he said. "It's a money issue."
The school board doesn't need to worry about most of its legal fees,
however. It's being represented pro bono by the Thomas More Law Center, a
right-wing Catholic firm that describes itself as "the sword and shield for
people of faith." Wenrich told me that Thomas More lawyers had been
advising Buckingham for months.
Despite the law firm's help, though, the lawsuit will likely be
financially devastating to the district, the second poorest in the county.
Dover would have to pay for lost wages of people called to testify, and it
would have to provide outside counsel for some witnesses, like the Browns,
who don't want Thomas More representing them. Jeff Brown guessed that
depositions alone would cost the district $30,000. Then, if Dover loses,
federal civil rights law would make it liable for the ACLU's legal fees.
"It won't be cheap," said Witold Walczak, the ACLU's Pennsylvania legal
director.
"It will kill us," said Casey Brown. In fact, Dover is already broke. The
board had just been forced to cut its library budget almost in half, from
$68,000 to $38,000, and to eliminate all field trips.
Wenrich himself, a 36-year-old Army veteran and father of two, doesn't
believe in evolution. But he felt honor-bound to put his duty to the school
above his personal politics. "If it were my money, I'd have no problem," he
said. "I'd go out and fight it. But to use the public's money that's
supposed to be educating our kids is absolutely irresponsible. They're
already looking at putting off buying textbooks, not buying library books,
not updating computer equipment. When we're looking at those budget cuts,
it's irresponsible to go out and pick a fight with the Supreme Court."
If Wenrich is angry with Buckingham, though, he's even angrier at the
outside forces that are challenging the school district. "It is going full
circle now from the religious community ruling what can be thought --
that's what they tried to do in the Middle Ages," he said. "We've come down
to the scientific community trying to tell us what we can think. Basically
what the scientific community currently is doing is saying, 'You'll have no
god before mine. Mine happens to be Darwin.' Any other thought will not be
tolerated."
Evolution's allies might win the battle for Dover's biology classes, but
they're losing America.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
About the writer Michelle Goldberg is a contributing writer for Salon. She
is working on a book about America's culture wars.
The new Monkey Trial
By persuading the Dover, Pa., school board to teach creationism,
Christian zealots have provoked a showdown over the status of not just
evolutionary theory, but science itself.
- - - - - - - - - - - - By Michelle Goldberg
Jan. 10, 2005 | DOVER, Pa. -- It was an ordinary springtime school board
meeting in the bedroom community of Dover, Pa. The high school needed new
biology textbooks, and the science department had recommended Kenneth
Miller and Joseph Levine's "Biology." "It was a fantastic text," said Carol
"Casey" Brown, 57, a self-described Goldwater Republican and the board's
senior member. "It just followed our curriculum so beautifully."
But Bill Buckingham, a new board member who'd recently become chair of the
curriculum committee, had an objection. "Biology," he said, was "laced
with Darwinism." He wanted a book that balanced theories of evolution with
Christian creationism, and he was willing to turn his town into a cultural
battlefield to get it.
"This country wasn't founded on Muslim beliefs or evolution," Buckingham,
a stocky, gray-haired man who wears a red, white and blue crucifix pin on
his lapel, said at the meeting. "This country was founded on Christianity,
and our students should be taught as such."
Casey Brown and her husband, fellow board member Jeff Brown, were stunned.
"I was picturing the headlines," Jeff said months later.
"And we got them," Casey added.
Indeed, by the end of 2004, journalists from across the country and from
overseas had come to Dover to report on the latest outbreak of America's
perennial war over evolution. By then, Buckingham had succeeded in making
Dover the first school district in the country to mandate the teaching of
"intelligent design" -- an updated version of creationism couched in modern
biological terms. In doing so, he ushered in a legal challenge from
outraged parents and the ACLU that could turn into a 21st century version
of the infamous "Scopes Monkey Trial."
The Dover case is part of a renewed revolt against evolutionary science
that's been gathering force in America for the past four years, a symptom
of the same renascent fundamentalism that helped propel George Bush to
victory. Since 2001, the National Center for Science Education, a group
formed to defend the teaching of evolution, has tallied battles over
evolution in 43 states, noting they're growing more frequent.
After 1987, when the Supreme Court declared the teaching of creationism in
public school unconstitutional in Edwards vs. Aguillard, the doctrine
seemed to be shut out of public schools once and for all. In the last few
years, though, intelligent design has given evolution's opponents new hope.
Now, emboldened by their growing political power, religious conservatives
are once again storming the barricades of science education.
The same month Bush was reelected, the rural Grantsburg, Wis., school
district revised its curriculum to allow the teaching of creationism and
intelligent design. After a community outcry -- including a letter of
protest from 200 Wisconsin clergy -- the district revised the policy but
continued to mandate that students be taught "the scientific strengths and
weaknesses of evolutionary theory," a common creationist tactic that
fosters the illusion that evolution is a controversial theory among
scientists.
Other anti-evolution initiatives have affected entire states. In the
November election, creationists took over the Kansas Board of Education.
The last time the board had a majority, in 1999, it voted to erase any
mention of evolution from the state curriculum. Kansas became a
laughingstock and the anti-evolutionists were defeated in the next
Republican primary, leading to the policy's reversal. Now, newly
victorious, the anti-evolutionists plan to introduce the teaching of
intelligent design next year.
Similarly, this past December, the New York Times reported that Missouri
legislators plan to introduce a bill that would require state biology
textbooks to include at least one chapter dealing with "alternative
theories to evolution." Speaking to the Times, state Rep. Cynthia Davis
seemed to compare opponents of intelligent design to al-Qaida. "It's like
when the hijackers took over those four planes on Sept. 11 and took people
to a place where they didn't want to go," she said. "I think a lot of
people feel that liberals have taken our country somewhere we don't want to
go. I think a lot more people realize this is our country and we're going
to take it back."
Right-wingers in Congress, on talk radio and on cable TV, are stoking the
anti-evolution rebellion, insisting that academic freedom means the freedom
to teach creationism. Having shown their strength in the election,
cultural conservatives aren't in the mood to compromise. America is a
democracy and they have the numbers. They see no reason why the principles
of science shouldn't be up for popular vote.
On Dec. 14, the ACLU announced that it was representing 11 Dover parents
in a lawsuit against the town. The school board's intelligent-design
policy, their complaint said, had violated the First Amendment's
Establishment Clause, "which prohibits the teaching or presentation of
religious ideas in public school science classes."
That day, a few of the parents joined their attorneys for a press
conference in the rotunda of Pennsylvania's capitol in Harrisburg.
Reporters and cameramen crowded around the microphone as a succession of
lawyers, liberal clergymen and scientists spoke. The Rev. Barry Lynn,
executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State,
came from D.C. for the event. "We've been battling this from Hawaii to
California to New Hampshire to Cobb County," he said, referring to the
suburban Atlanta school district that had recently put warning stickers on
its biology textbooks calling evolution "a theory, not a fact."
As the cameras rolled, a few protesters tried to edge their way into the
frame. A man named Carl Jarboe, in a purple sport coat and a fur hat, stood
near the parents holding a fluorescent green sign saying, "ACLU Censors
Truth." His wife, wearing a kerchief on her head and small round glasses,
held a similar sign saying "Evolution: Unscientific and Untrue. Why Does
the ACLU Oppose Schools Giving All the Evidence?"
The parents ignored them. Most were hesitant in front of all the cameras.
They weren't culture warriors and they didn't speak in ideological terms.
Instead, they talked about what Buckingham and the other creationists were
doing to their school and their community.
"We don't believe that intelligent design is science, and we have faith in
ourselves as parents that we can do a good job teaching our children about
religion," Christy Rehm, a 31-year-old mother of four, said after the
conference. "We have faith in our pastor, we have faith in our community
that our children are going to be raised to be decent people. So we don't
feel that it's the school board's job to make that decision for our
children."
Jarboe, who introduced himself as a former assistant professor of
chemistry at Messiah College, a nearby Christian school, was convinced that
the parents were being used by the ACLU to further its sinister agenda.
Like a great many members of the Christian right, he sees the ACLU as a
subversive, possibly demonic institution. Quoting James Kennedy, an
influential Fort Lauderdale televangelist, he called the ACLU the "American
Communist United League." "I maintain it's a communist front," he said.
He then pressed a flier into my hand from a two-day creation seminar he'd
attended at the Faith Baptist Church in Lebanon, Pa. It was run by Dr. Kent
Hovind, a young-Earth creationist who argues that, as the flier said, "it
has been proven that man lived at the same time as dinosaurs." To
underline this point, Hovind runs Dinosaur Adventure Land, a theme park in
Pensacola, Fla., with rides and exhibits about the not-so-long-ago days
when humans and dinosaurs roamed the planet together.
A few feet from Jarboe stood Robert Eckhardt, a professor of developmental
genetics and evolutionary morphology at Penn State. Eckhardt had spoken at
the press conference about the central role of evolution in biology. "The
idea that intelligent design is a powerful upwelling of controversy within
the scientific community is absolute nonsense," he said. Jarboe was unfazed
by Eckhardt's expertise; he called him a "screaming leftist unbiblical
liberal."
A wry man with a lined face, tweed jacket and owlish glasses, Eckhardt,
like most other experts in his field, has been dealing with creationists
throughout his career and finds it tiresome to try to reason with them. He
divided his opponents into several categories. "There are people who just
feel that the world is changing very rapidly around them. Their children
are coming home from school with ideas that are taught to them in biology
class, the parents find this to be challenging and upsetting, and by God
they're going to do something about it," he said. "They don't understand
the world and they're trying to get the world to slow down and accommodate
their thinking."
The second group, he said, are people "who are formerly associated with
the creationist movement, who purposely misrepresent issues of science when
in fact they are issues of religion." He didn't want to name names but it
seemed he was speaking of the fellows at the Discovery Institute's Center
for Science and Culture, headquarters of the intelligent-design movement.
The third, he said, rolling his eyes a tiny bit toward Jarboe, who was
listening to our conversation, "are people who are mentally unbalanced and
who are so threatened by this that they perceive things going on around
them that never happened."
As Eckhardt spoke, Jim Grove, the pastor of Heritage Baptist Church, a
small congregation near Dover, stepped forward to challenge him to a
debate. Eckhardt refused with a derisive laugh, saying, "I value my time."
Grove interpreted this as a sign of evolution's weakness. "If he has
facts, what about a forum to present them in public?" he asked. "It would
be a perfect opportunity. If he has the facts."
Of Eckhardt's three categories of anti-evolutionists, the second -- the
proponents of intelligent design -- are currently the most influential.
They've created the terms that now dominate the debate from the halls of
Congress to local school boards like Dover. They're the reason that, after
a decade when the consensus on evolution in education seemed secure,
Darwin's enemies are on the move.
Although Buckingham first argued for teaching creationism in Dover biology
classes, he soon started using the phrase "intelligent design" instead. The
change in language was significant because intelligent design was created
in part to circumvent the Supreme Court ruling that made it illegal for
public schools to teach creationism. Masquerading as a science, it aims to
convince the public that evolution is a theory under fire within the
scientific community and doesn't deserve its preeminent place in the
biology curriculum.
At Dover's June 14 school board meeting, Buckingham said he wanted the
board to consider the intelligent-design textbook, "Of Pandas and People:
The Central Question of Biological Origin." According to Nick Matzke, a
spokesman for the National Center for Science Education, the original
version of "Of Pandas and People," published in 1989, contained one of the
first uses of the phrase "intelligent design." Later, in the 1990s, the
intelligent-design cause was taken up by the Center for Science and Culture.
Yet "Of Pandas and People" was never meant to be scientific. It was a
strategic response to the Supreme Court's 1987 ruling in Edwards vs.
Aguillard, which overturned a Louisiana law mandating that "creation
science" be taught alongside evolution. Because the court ruled that
"creation science" is a religious doctrine, savvy opponents of evolution
sought to recast the central tenets of creationism in a way that hid their
religious inspiration. Thus intelligent design was born.
Percival Davis, one of the coauthors of "Of Pandas and People," also
co-wrote the old-school creationist text, "A Case for Creation." An online
ad for "Pandas" on the Web site of the creationist group Answers in Genesis
describes the text as a "superbly written" book for public schools that
"has no Biblical content, yet contains creationists' interpretations and
refutations for evidences [sic] usually found in standard textbooks
supporting evolution!"
The core idea in "Pandas" -- and in the intelligent-design movement
generally -- is that of "irreducible complexity," the theory that the
structure of proteins and amino acids in cells -- the building blocks of
life -- is so complex that only a supernatural force could have
choreographed it. "Because of the high level of improbability that cells
could be generated by the random mixing of chemicals, some scientists
believe that the first cells were created from the design of some outside,
intelligent force," the book says.
Indeed, some "scientists" do believe this -- the ones who work at the
Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture. Outside the precincts
of the religious right, though, the scientific consensus about evolution is
very close to unanimous. For decades, biologists at the world's major
universities, and in esteemed peer-reviewed journals, have proven that
cellular processes have indeed evolved in sync with Darwin's theories. In
November 2004, National Geographic ran a cover story asking, "Was Darwin
Wrong?" Its subhead provided the answer: "No. The Evidence for Evolution Is
Overwhelming."
"Evolution by natural selection, the central concept of the life's work of
Charles Darwin, is a theory," wrote award-winning science author David
Quammen in National Geographic. "It's a theory about the origin of
adaptation, complexity, and diversity among Earth's living creatures. If
you are skeptical by nature, unfamiliar with the terminology of science,
and unaware of the overwhelming evidence, you might even be tempted to say
that it's 'just' a theory. In the same sense, relativity as described by
Albert Einstein is 'just' a theory. The notion that Earth orbits around
the sun rather than vice versa, offered by Copernicus in 1543, is a theory
... Each of these theories is an explanation that has been confirmed to
such a degree, by observation and experiment, that knowledgeable experts
accept it as fact."
A statuesque woman with a strawberry blond bob and crisply proper diction,
Casey Brown isn't a scientist, but she prides herself on being well read,
and after 10 years on the school board, she knows what a good biology
textbook looks like. When she saw "Of Pandas and People," she was appalled.
"It's poor science and worse theology," she said.
Brown said that by the school board's August meeting, Buckingham had given
up on the idea of using "Pandas" as the main text, but he insisted that the
board buy it as a supplement. Otherwise, he said, he wouldn't approve the
purchase of "Biology."
One of Buckingham's supporters on the board was out sick that night, and
without her, the vote deadlocked, 4-4. Finally, worried that the school
would have to start the year without textbooks, one member switched her
vote and "Biology" was approved. The town's little drama seemed to be at an
end.
In fact, it was just beginning.
Shortly after the motion to have the school board buy "Of Pandas and
People" was defeated, the Dover School District received an anonymous
donation of 50 copies of the book, and Buckingham and his allies set about
figuring out how to integrate them into the curriculum.
On Oct. 18, the board voted on a resolution written by Buckingham and his
supporters on the board. It said, "Students will be made aware of
gaps/problems in Darwin's theory and of other theories of evolution
including, but not limited to, intelligent design. Note: Origins of Life is
not taught." The "Pandas" books were to be kept in the science classroom,
and teachers were instructed to read a statement referring students to them.
Casey and Jeff Brown argued against it. "We kept maintaining this is going
to get us into legal trouble," Casey said. "It was a clear violation." As
an alternative, she proposed offering a comparative world religions
elective, which would teach the creation myths of various faiths.
But Buckingham was determined. "Two thousand years ago, someone died on a
cross," he said at the meeting. "Can't someone take a stand for him?"
Jeff Brown spoke up in response, saying it was the wrong time and the
wrong place for a religious debate. Buckingham called him a coward and said
it was a good thing that he wasn't fighting the revolutionary war "because
we would still have a queen."
Finally, they voted. The mandate to teach intelligent design passed 6-3.
Casey and Jeff Brown quit the board in protest. The other dissenter, Noel
Wenrich, turned to Buckingham and said, "We lost two good people because of
you."
"And Mr. Buckingham said, with profanity, 'Good riddance to bad rubbish,'"
Casey recalled. "And he called Mr. Wenrich every name in the book."
Buckingham may have started the Dover crusade himself, but the Center for
Science and Culture laid the groundwork years before. The group provides
the "scientific" and philosophical arguments to bolster the opponents of
evolution in local political struggles.
CSC operates out of the Discovery Institute, a Seattle think tank that's
funded in part by savings and loan heir Howard Ahmanson. As Max Blumenthal
reported in a 2004 Salon article, Ahmanson spent 20 years on the board of
R.J. Rushdoony's Chalcedon Foundation, a theocratic outfit that advocates
the replacement of American civil law with biblical law.
The Center for Science and Culture also aims, in a far more elliptical
way, to put God at the center of civic life. Originally called the Center
for the Renewal of Science and Culture, CSC usually purports to be
motivated by science, not religion. At times, though, it's refreshingly
candid about its true goal -- a grandiose scheme to undermine the secular
legacy of the Enlightenment and rebuild society on religious foundations.
As it said in a 1999 fundraising proposal that was later leaked online,
"Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture seeks
nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies."
The proposal was titled "The Wedge Strategy." It began: "The proposition
that human beings are created in the image of God is one of the bedrock
principles on which Western civilization was built ... Yet a little over a
century ago, this cardinal idea came under wholesale attack by
intellectuals drawing on the discoveries of modern science. Debunking the
traditional conceptions of both God and man, thinkers such as Charles
Darwin, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud portrayed humans not as moral and
spiritual beings, but as animals or machines who inhabited a universe ruled
by purely impersonal forces and whose behavior and very thoughts were
dictated by the unbending forces of biology, chemistry, and environment.
This materialistic conception of reality eventually infected virtually
every area of our culture, from politics and economics to literature and
art."
As "The Wedge Strategy" suggests, many CSC fellows are troubled more by
the philosophical consequences of evolutionary theory than by the fact that
it contradicts a literal reading of the Bible's book of Genesis. Most of
them -- though not all -- are too scientifically sophisticated to hew to a
young-Earth creationist line like Hovind's. In mainstream forums, they
eschew sectarian religious language. As seekers of mainstream credibility,
they don't want to be associated with the medieval persecutors of
Copernicus and Galileo. Instead, they try to present themselves as heirs to
those very visionaries, insisting that dogmatic secularists desperate to
deny God are thwarting their open-minded quest for truth.
Most CSC fellows even accept that evolution occurs within individual
species. What they dispute is the idea that random mutation and natural
selection led to the evolution of higher species from lower ones -- of man
from apelike ancestors. Such a process seems to them incompatible with the
belief that man was created in the image of God and that God takes a
special interest in him.
Several CSC fellows come with impressive credentials from prestigious
universities, and they know how to argue in mainstream forums. Philip
Johnson, one of the fathers of the movement, is a law professor at
UC-Berkeley. Jonathan Wells, author of the influential intelligent-design
book, "Icons of Evolution," has a Ph.D. in molecular and cell biology from
Berkeley and another in religious studies from Yale. A member of the
Unification Church whose education was bankrolled by the Rev. Sun Myung
Moon, he's written that he sought his degrees specifically to fight the
teaching of evolution. As he put it in an article on the Moonie Web site
True Parents, "Father's words, my studies, and my prayers convinced me that
I should devote my life to destroying Darwinism, just as many of my fellow
Unificationists had already devoted their lives to destroying Marxism. When
Father [Sun Myung Moon] chose me (along with about a dozen other seminary
graduates) to enter a Ph.D. program in 1978, I welcomed the opportunity to
prepare myself for battle."
Armed with advanced degrees, CSC fellows have secured invitations to
testify before state boards of education. They've published opinion pieces
in mainstream newspapers and are regularly consulted for "balance" in
stories about evolution controversies.
They've also found important allies within the Republican Party,
especially Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania. Santorum tried to attach an
amendment to the No Child Left Behind Act that would encourage the teaching
of intelligent design. It said, "[W]here topics are taught that may
generate controversy (such as biological evolution), the curriculum should
help students to understand the full range of scientific views that exist,
why such topics may generate controversy, and how scientific discoveries
can profoundly affect society." The statement was eventually adopted as
part of a Conference Report on the law, which means it has advisory power
only.
The language sounds innocuous, but Santorum's intent was clear. In 2002,
Ohio debated adding intelligent design to its statewide science standards.
In a Washington Times Op-Ed supporting the change, Santorum quoted his
amendment and then wrote, "If the Education Board of Ohio does not include
intelligent design in the new teaching standards, many students will be
denied a first-rate science education. Many will be left behind."
Santorum has also come out in favor of Dover's policy. The school board,
in turn, distributed copies of one of Santorum's pro-intelligent design
Op-Eds along with the agenda at its Jan. 3 meeting.
Oddly enough, although Santorum is supporting the Dover school board's
policy, the Center for Science and Culture isn't. On Dec. 14, CSC put out a
statement calling Dover's policy "misguided" and saying it should be
"withdrawn and rewritten." The statement quoted CSC's associate director
John West as saying that discussion of intelligent design shouldn't be
prohibited but it also shouldn't be required. "What should be required is
full disclosure of the scientific evidence for and against Darwin's
theory," said West, "which is the approach supported by the overwhelming
majority of the public."
This, of course, is a departure from the position laid out in "The Wedge
Strategy," which specifically calls for the integration of intelligent
design into school curriculum.
Why the change? Matzke, from the National Center for Science Education, is
convinced that the CSC wanted to wait for a better test case and a friendly
Supreme Court, which they'll get if Bush is able to nominate a few new
justices. The Dover policy, Matzke said, probably won't survive a court
challenge right now, and if it's overturned, the precedent will be a
setback for the missionaries of intelligent design.
"Their current strategy is not to have an intelligent-design policy
passed," Matzke said. "They just want a policy that says students should
analyze the strengths and weakness of evolution." CSC did not return calls
for comment.
It's not hard for creationists to convince the public that the evidence
for evolution is weak. Scientists accept evolution as something very close
to fact, but Americans never have. In a November 2004 CBS News/New York
Times poll, about evolution, 55 percent of the respondents said that God
created humans in their present form. Twenty-seven percent believed in the
evolution of man guided by God, and 13 percent believed in evolution
without God.
So it should come as no surprise that the majority of Americans -- 65
percent, according to the poll cited above -- favor teaching creationism
alongside evolution in public schools. Creationism is the perfect
culture-war issue because it inevitably pits majorities in local
communities against interloping lawyers and scientists. In a country
gripped by right-wing populism, it's not hard to stoke resentment against
scientists who have the gall to think that they know more than everybody
else.
In fact, some historians date the start of our culture wars to 1925, the
year of the "Scopes Monkey Trial" in Dayton, Tenn.
At the time, the battle over evolution had been raging throughout the
country. It came to a head when 24-year-old teacher John Scopes challenged
Tennessee's Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of evolution in the
state's public schools and universities. His persecution set the stage for
a legendary courtroom showdown that pit celebrated Chicago defense attorney
Clarence Darrow against Williams Jennings Bryan, the crusading populist,
fundamentalist and three-time presidential candidate.
Bryan, the nation's leading anti-evolutionist, made his case in populist
terms. In his 1993 book "The Creationists," historian Ronald Numbers wrote,
"Throughout his political career, Bryan had placed his faith in the common
people, and he resented the attempt of a few thousand elitist scientists
'to establish an oligarchy over the forty million American Christians' to
dictate what should be taught in the schools."
Bryan and his fellow Scopes prosecutors won their trial, but the national
mockery that followed it did much to alienate conservative Christians from
secular society, setting the stage for the culture wars of later decades.
In his Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the Scopes trial, "Summer for the
Gods," Edward Larson wrote about the birth of the right-wing religious
counterculture in the wake of the Pyrrhic victory in Tennessee:
"Indeed, fundamentalism became a byword in American culture as a result of
the Scopes trial, and fundamentalists responded by withdrawing. They did
not abandon their faith, however, but set about constructing a separate
subculture with independent religious, educational and social institutions."
Eventually, of course, the religious right emerged from its subculture to
renew its attack on secularism. Today, cultural conservatives are mustering
almost exactly the same arguments that Bryan made in Dayton 80 years ago.
This past December, Republican strategist Jack Burkman appeared on MSNBC's
"Scarborough Country" to back creationism in terms of populist democracy.
"Why should the state and the federal government have a monopoly on
defining what constitutes science?" he asked. "I see no problem with
presenting a creationist view in the schools, given that 70 percent of
Americans want that. The law should reflect democratic desires. It should
reflect public desires."
Of course, public desires don't determine the physical facts of the world.
"The best argument that the creationists have got is that it's only fair to
teach both sides," Matzke said. "The problem with that argument is that
science is not a democracy and a lot of times there aren't two correct
sides. There are people who believe that the sun goes around the earth.
They're called geocentrists. That doesn't mean we should teach that."
In Dover, though, people tend to interpret positions like Matzke's as
elitism. Much of the public seems to desire schools that teach creationism,
although many balk at the cost of a lawsuit. For defenders of Darwin, the
most troubling thing isn't that the Dover school board is dominated by
extremists -- it's that the board is, in a local context, fairly
mainstream. Supporters of evolution are the ones who stand out. Resentment
of the ACLU runs high even among some who opposed the school board's
intelligent-design policy. Most opposition to the policy comes from worry
over the cost of the lawsuit.
Most people in Dover say that the town is split fairly evenly over the
school board's intelligent-design policy. The division isn't one of
principle, though. People know that the ACLU's lawsuit is going to be
expensive and are worried that defending the policy in court will drain the
school budget and force a tax increase.
"I would say that people who are against what the school board is doing in
principle are a minority, a great minority," former school board member
Noel Wenrich told me. "However, when it comes to spending money on it, it's
a whole other issue. When you ask people, Do you support the board's
decision on this? they say yes." Ask them if they're willing to pay more
taxes to finance a court case, though, and they'll give you a resounding
no, he said. "It's a money issue."
The school board doesn't need to worry about most of its legal fees,
however. It's being represented pro bono by the Thomas More Law Center, a
right-wing Catholic firm that describes itself as "the sword and shield for
people of faith." Wenrich told me that Thomas More lawyers had been
advising Buckingham for months.
Despite the law firm's help, though, the lawsuit will likely be
financially devastating to the district, the second poorest in the county.
Dover would have to pay for lost wages of people called to testify, and it
would have to provide outside counsel for some witnesses, like the Browns,
who don't want Thomas More representing them. Jeff Brown guessed that
depositions alone would cost the district $30,000. Then, if Dover loses,
federal civil rights law would make it liable for the ACLU's legal fees.
"It won't be cheap," said Witold Walczak, the ACLU's Pennsylvania legal
director.
"It will kill us," said Casey Brown. In fact, Dover is already broke. The
board had just been forced to cut its library budget almost in half, from
$68,000 to $38,000, and to eliminate all field trips.
Wenrich himself, a 36-year-old Army veteran and father of two, doesn't
believe in evolution. But he felt honor-bound to put his duty to the school
above his personal politics. "If it were my money, I'd have no problem," he
said. "I'd go out and fight it. But to use the public's money that's
supposed to be educating our kids is absolutely irresponsible. They're
already looking at putting off buying textbooks, not buying library books,
not updating computer equipment. When we're looking at those budget cuts,
it's irresponsible to go out and pick a fight with the Supreme Court."
If Wenrich is angry with Buckingham, though, he's even angrier at the
outside forces that are challenging the school district. "It is going full
circle now from the religious community ruling what can be thought --
that's what they tried to do in the Middle Ages," he said. "We've come down
to the scientific community trying to tell us what we can think. Basically
what the scientific community currently is doing is saying, 'You'll have no
god before mine. Mine happens to be Darwin.' Any other thought will not be
tolerated."
Evolution's allies might win the battle for Dover's biology classes, but
they're losing America.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
About the writer Michelle Goldberg is a contributing writer for Salon. She
is working on a book about America's culture wars.
+ FRONT GROUP TO HONOUR BORLAUG AT UN WORLD CONFERENCE
A year ago GM WATCH highlighted a conference that its organisers said would
make "eco-imperialism" a household word. The conference claimed to expose
"The global green movement's war on the developing world's poor".
Opposition to GM crops, it claimed, was part of that "war". The conference
featured Patrick Moore, CS Prakash of AgBioWorld, and Paul Driessen of the
Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise. It was primarily organised by
the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).
CORE, which likes to style itself "one of America's premier civil rights
organizations", is now to put on what it calls a "UN World Conference-2005"
on "Biotechnology: Implications & Realities" (New York, January 17-18,
2005). This UN conference will be opened by the Hon. Roy Innis, the
National Chairman of CORE. It will also feature Cyril Boynes, jr of CORE,
plus a video of "CORE's fact-finding trip to Africa". The conference will
"honour Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and father of the 'Green Revolution', Dr
Norman Borlaug".
So who are CORE? Back in the heyday of the civil rights movement, CORE was
indeed one of the "premier civil rights organizations". However, during the
1970s CORE all but collapsed and the remnant was taken over by Roy Innis,
who moved the organisation to the Republican right.
Black American journalists, Glen Ford and Peter Gamble, describe CORE under
Roy Innis as "a tin cup outstretched to every Hard Right political campaign
or cause that finds it convenient - or a sick joke - to hire Black
cheerleaders". They report how James Farmer, a civil rights hero and the
former head of the original Congress of Racial Equality confronted Roy
Innis on TV for turning the organization into what Farmer called a
"shakedown" gang.
http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=174
This is the organisation that is now successfully associating itself with
the UN and lauding Norman Borlaug and GM. An added irony is that at CORE's
event last year, the UN was in the firing line along with
"environmentalists" and "anti-biotech activists" as contributing to hunger
and poverty in the Third World through its misplaced "eco-imperialism".
Find out more including the fake farmer being deployed at the conference.
http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4765
A year ago GM WATCH highlighted a conference that its organisers said would
make "eco-imperialism" a household word. The conference claimed to expose
"The global green movement's war on the developing world's poor".
Opposition to GM crops, it claimed, was part of that "war". The conference
featured Patrick Moore, CS Prakash of AgBioWorld, and Paul Driessen of the
Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise. It was primarily organised by
the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).
CORE, which likes to style itself "one of America's premier civil rights
organizations", is now to put on what it calls a "UN World Conference-2005"
on "Biotechnology: Implications & Realities" (New York, January 17-18,
2005). This UN conference will be opened by the Hon. Roy Innis, the
National Chairman of CORE. It will also feature Cyril Boynes, jr of CORE,
plus a video of "CORE's fact-finding trip to Africa". The conference will
"honour Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and father of the 'Green Revolution', Dr
Norman Borlaug".
So who are CORE? Back in the heyday of the civil rights movement, CORE was
indeed one of the "premier civil rights organizations". However, during the
1970s CORE all but collapsed and the remnant was taken over by Roy Innis,
who moved the organisation to the Republican right.
Black American journalists, Glen Ford and Peter Gamble, describe CORE under
Roy Innis as "a tin cup outstretched to every Hard Right political campaign
or cause that finds it convenient - or a sick joke - to hire Black
cheerleaders". They report how James Farmer, a civil rights hero and the
former head of the original Congress of Racial Equality confronted Roy
Innis on TV for turning the organization into what Farmer called a
"shakedown" gang.
http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=174
This is the organisation that is now successfully associating itself with
the UN and lauding Norman Borlaug and GM. An added irony is that at CORE's
event last year, the UN was in the firing line along with
"environmentalists" and "anti-biotech activists" as contributing to hunger
and poverty in the Third World through its misplaced "eco-imperialism".
Find out more including the fake farmer being deployed at the conference.
http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=4765
The Mire of Death, Lies and Atrocities: Robert Fisk Looks Back at 2004 [Catch-all] -
GEA - gormfach@gmail.com @ 01:00:07 PM
Monday, January 3rd, 2005
The Mire of Death, Lies and Atrocities: Robert Fisk Looks Back at 2004
From Democracy Now: http://www.democracynow.org/
AMY GOODMAN: We now turn to Robert Fisk to look back on 2004, from Iraq to
Israel, to Palestine and beyond. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Robert Fisk.
ROBERT FISK: Thank you, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, you have been doing some reflection, as you also write
a book. You can talk about your observations of where we stand today?
ROBERT FISK: Well, I think that the whole project in Iraq is finished. We
are not being told by Mr. Blair in my case and Bush in yours that this is
the case, and perhaps through their own misjudgment or their own
fantasies, they don't even accept this themselves. But the American
project for democracy or whatever its real purposes were, for oil,
economic expansion, Middle East fit for Israel, whatever it may have been,
that project is finished. It is hopeless. It cannot succeed. The
insurgency in Iraq is so great now that American troops, however enormous
their technology, cannot control it. The Iraqi so-called ministers, and I
include Iyad Allawi, the so-called interim prime minister, who was of
course appointed by the Americans as a former C.I.A. asset, they behave
like statesmen when they tour the world or turn up in Washington, but in
Baghdad they're not even safe inside their little Green Zone. They're not
even the Mayor of Baghdad, they have less power than the town clerk.
So, we have reached a stage now where insurgents control much of the
country. The only safe part of Iraq is Kurdistan in the north, which is
effectively an autonomous region, outside of the control anyway of the
Iraqi government. And the elections, which are coming up, appear doomed
because already we're hearing that if the Sunnis won't take part, the
Americans are trying to persuade the unelected government to appoint Sunni
Muslims to make up for the voters who didn't vote. This is not an
election, this is a charade. And what has happened is that the alienation
of the Iraqis as a people from the West has been brought about by lunatic
policies by the State Department and by the Pentagon, I'm afraid by the
behavior of American troops and a lesser expect, but nonetheless culpable
British troops and by the fantasies, which drove this war in the first
place, the idea that we were going to suddenly create democracy in the
Middle East. One of the things I have been studying for my new book on
the Middle East, which comes out this year, is what happened when the
rebellion first occurred in 1920, the time of which Lawrence of Arabia was
talking, against the British military in Iraq. And exactly the same
pattern took place. The Sunni Muslims became disenfranchised. The British
laid seize to Fallujah, they laid seize to Najaf. The prime minister, in
this case Lloyd George rather than Tony Blair, said if we believe there
will be civil war and British military intelligence in Baghdad claimed that
the terrorists were arriving - in 1920 this is - from Syria. Same old
sorry.
So I am afraid that even if you look at the pattern of history, there is
no hope. If you look at the pattern today there is no hope. We come back
to the equation, which I think I have set out on your program before, that
the Americans must leave, and the Americans will leave, and the Americans
can't leave.
AMY GOODMAN: As we move, Robert Fisk, from Iraq to the situation in the
occupied territories, to Mahmoud Abbas, to the death of Yasser Arafat, your
thoughts at the end of this year, at the beginning of 2005.
ROBERT FISK: You know, I thought it was somehow perverse that the death of
the one Palestinian leader, corrupt, venal, and ruthless though he was,
I'm talking about why Arafat is immoral, the death of the one Palestinian
leader, who could more or less unify the Palestinians, was seen as a
hopeful sign, shows just how far from reality we are. Mahmoud Abbas, for
the second time in three years is being held out as the angel who can save
Palestine, who can bring about peace, who will be our new beloved savior
of the Middle East peace, courtesy Tony Blair. And I'm sure he will be
generous enough to include George Bush in the Middle East. Mahmoud Abbas
is a colorless man who has been never associated with real democratic
principles. He was one of the authors of the utterly doomed and hopeless
Oslo accord, in whose 1,000 pages the single word occupation, which is
what this colonial war is all about, does not occur once. Indeed, even
withdrawal - withdrawing of the Israeli troops - doesn't occur in this
document. It always refers to redeployment.
This is the man, whom [sic] now, we are supposed to believe, is going to
bring the violent men to heal, is going to make a real peace, is going to
be a beloved of the west, which of course is an essential element for any
Middle East peace, and it going to be a problem. It is a further
extension of our self-delusion, our British self-delusion, American
self-delusion, Israeli self-delusion, to think this can be the case. This
is another of our men, like Hamid Karzai and Iyad Allawi, another of the
people, who we effectively are stepping up to a subject people or an
occupied people, and one who inevitably and ultimately, will not be able to
deliver the goods and we'll cast around for more people to appoint or
choose to someone else's political leadership. To see Mahmoud Abbas, who
only a few months ago, when he resigned, was being cursed privately by
Bush as the man he wished he had never met, now blessed the future
Palestinian leader, when he was -- as I say, one of the author of the
whole vain Oslo agreement, which collapsed. It's a tragedy on our part
that we actually believe that this sort of person, as pleasant and
plausible though is he, can actually save the day for peace in the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Robert Fisk, who has been voted the best
foreign correspondent by newspaper editors and reporters in Britain for
many years. He is a long-time correspondent for the Independent, based in
Beirut for over three decades. Where are you speaking from to us now?
ROBERT FISK: From Beirut during a wonderful winder thunderstorm, that
actually looks like Christmas. But I'm going to Iraq in a weeks time
possibly less, to enjoy obviously a much less peaceable environment.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you see happening with this election? On U.S.
television, we repeatedly hear the story that the suicide bombings will
increase, U.S. officials saying this as well that the violence will
increase, because militants want to stop democracy in the elections.
ROBERT FISK: Sure. I mean, you have got to realize that this is now a
constant sort of logo of American and British news-speak in Iraq. They
announce that something wonderful is going to happen, an interim
governments a new constitution, elections. And then they say that
violence is going to increase, that things are going to get worse the
nearer we get to it. In other words the better things to come, the worse
things are. The worse things are, the better things are going to become.
This is part of the self-delusional policy with which we tried to hide our
total failure in Iraq, our total failure even to control the country and
allow the citizens of that country to live in safety and security. We
don't even give the casualty figures. We don't know, we don't care about
them. Even if the elections take place as I say, which I doubt, still
doubt, they will be so hopelessly flawed by the absence of the Sunni
population, so accompanied by terror on the part of the U.S.
administration, that the Shiites might wipe the floor and set up an
Islamic republic, even worse than democracy would be an Islamic republic
in Iraq. I don't think they will solve anything. Ultimately, I think what
we are going to see, as we have seen in all Middle East wars of
occupation, is the opening of some kind of contact between the Americans
and the insurgents. This is what the French did after years of saying they
would never talk to terrorists, they talked to the FLN. After years of
saying they would never talk to terrorists, the British talked to the IRA.
After years of saying they would never talk to terrorists, the British
talked to the militants fighting them in Aden and to EOKA in Cyprus, and
indeed, to both militant sides in Palestine that they tried to escape from
what Churchill called a hell disaster in 1948. The Americans will soon, if
they have not already, establish contact with the insurgents, and that
will mean the beginning of end. It means that the project is over. That
they have accepted, as I think, you know, they have already in terms of
soldiers on the ground. If you are going to talk to the colonels, and they
may -- the majors and the generals in Iraq, they know that the game is up.
But the generals back at the Pentagon and the Centcom and down there in
old Florida and the gentleman in the State Department and at the White
House, they don't accept this because this is a screen of self-delusion
between them and the reality on the ground. But it's over in Iraq. It's
finished. What we're going to see this year is the beginning of the
endgame, which is how do we get Americans out without losing face and
ultimately - I should say faith as well - and ultimately, how do you start
negotiation with the insurgents. I mean, that doesn't mean that some
American colonel is going to sit down with Zarqawi, though I wouldn't put
it past the realm of possibility. It means that we're going to have in
effect an understanding between the insurgents and the United States
forces that the project has failed, that at some point the powers behind
the insurgency or the resistance or the terrorists or whatever you would
like to call them, will move into place to control the country and they
probably will. In the meantime, I fear the Western powers will go on
trying to promote the idea of civil war as an alternative to their
occupation and oppression and I hope very much that that won't work. As I
said to you before, Iraq has never had a civil war. Iraqis don't want a
civil war. The only people who fear or talk about civil war are the
Americans and British.
AMY GOODMAN: Robert Fisk, you write in your latest piece, " Mire of Death,
Lies and Atrocities, the Ghost of Vietnam", of an American soldier, of
Jimmy Massey, a soldier who game back home and said he didn't want to
continue to participate in the killing, in the slaughter. Can you talk
about him, and as you see him from the other side of the ocean?
ROBERT FISK: Well, the odd thing is, I think we're talking about the
soldier who turned up to give evidence in Canada aren't we?
AMY GOODMAN: That’Äôs right Jimmy Massey. R: Yes, you can tell me whether
his evidence gained any publicity in the mainstream American press or not.
It happened by chance that I was in Toronto when that case came up, and of
course, I immediately ’Äì you know I had just had come from Iraq and was
due to come back to the Middle East, and of course my eyes went straight
on and I read through his accounts and I thought, my goodness me, here we
go again. In evidence in a court in a not very powerful country, Canada,
up comes again the reality of Iraq. Had it not been for my reading it, it
wouldn't have appeared in the British press. Did it occur, did you read
anything about Mr. Massey's evidence in the American press, perhaps you
did.
AMY GOODMAN: Well of course we did a long interview with Jimmy Massey when
he came back ’Ķ
ROBERT FISK: I didn't mean on your radio station, I mean the mainstream
media.
AMY GOODMAN: Right, right, right. But I wanted to encourage people to go
to our website, democracynow.org, and also in our year-end review of last
Thursday, we included his descriptions, but in terms of the larger
audience, both in terms of what we have heard about what's happening with
Jeremy Hinsman and other U.S. soldiers who have fled to Canada asking for
political asylum there, and Jimmy Massey going up and testifying on their
behalf there is very little written about it in this country.
ROBERT FISK: Yeah, of course, yeah. This is part of the self-delusion,
not only do our leaders suffer from this mania of deluding themselves, but
the press by their silence or by their complicity, assist in this process
of self-delusion. Indeed, they self-delude themselves. In Britain, we
have, you know, some newspapers, my own, The Independent, The Guardian and
increasingly, I suspect The Daily Telegraph, which is no longer prepared
to do this. They say, hold on a second, we have got to live on Planet
Earth. But when I read The New York Times and the Washington Post, I
frankly wonder, who is on Planet Earth. The real problem is - and this was
the case of course in Vietnam in the beginning - I am not making these
comparisons between Vietnam and Iraq. It's interesting that the Left wants
to make the comparison between Vietnam and Iraq and the Right wants to
make the comparison between World War II and Iraq, where of course we are
playing the role of Churchill, Roosevelt, Tito, you name it, not I noticed
Stalin. But the real problem is that, when you go to - I have said this to
you before, when I'm in Baghdad, and I read the American press or I turn
on the television and watch CNN, what I'm reading and what I am seeing
bears absolutely no physical, moral, political, or military relationship
to the place that I'm living in. When I come out, I'm sane enough to
realize for quite a long time that that remains the case. We are not -
look, let me give you the most basic example of the problem. In Baghdad
now, we have got one or two exceptions and I hope The Independent is one
of them, though even we are very circumscribed, journalists do not move
from their hotel rooms and from their hotels. They're in hotel prisons.
Now, I don't object to my colleagues doing this, if they want to, because
after all, we all want to preserve our lives. Nobody wants to turn up on a
video and have themselves seen around the world having their throats cut
or having their throats cut without being on video tape, but they don't
tell their readers and their viewers that this is the case. They still
appear on television as the courageous war correspondent in war-torn
Baghdad or war-torn Iraq with information, which in fact only comes from
the occupational authorities or from the government, which was apoirnted
by the occupational authorities, but which by not saying that they cannot
witness and see what is actually going on, they give the impression it is
the product of independent reporting. We are as usual in these
circumstances, we journalists, complicit in the self-delusion, which
allows my country's people, Britons, and Americans, to believe that things
are much better, that things are okay, when in fact they're not okay at
all. You know, it's difficult to see how you turn this corner, and I can
see why journalists do not want to admit that they're too frightened to
travel, though they should. I sometimes say in my report, I didn't go to
this place, I thought it was too dangerous to go to. Other times I manage
to travel, 70, 80 miles outside Baghdad. And it's getting worse all the
time. But at least let us tell our readers and our viewers that we cannot
move. But the journalists don't do this, and of course neither does Mr.
Allawi, who cannot even move around Baghdad. Neither does Mr. Rumsfeld, who
for a long time wouldn't venture into Iraq. So, an illusion is created of
calm and progress and well, things may get more violent, but that's
because things are getting better, which is the most ludicrous topsy turvy
I ever heard. So, the weeks tick by and we continuing to be surprised by
the bombings and killings and the executions. We have days now. When 20
Iraqis are lined up because they're accused of collaboration for joining
the Iraqi police or the Iraqi army and executed. Incredible and we just
accept it.
AMY GOODMAN: Robert Fisk, I want to thank you for being with us. Robert
Fisk, in Lebanon now, headed back to Iraq. We will continue to talk to
him there. Robert Fisk, a Middle East correspondent for The Independent
of London.
The Mire of Death, Lies and Atrocities: Robert Fisk Looks Back at 2004
From Democracy Now: http://www.democracynow.org/
AMY GOODMAN: We now turn to Robert Fisk to look back on 2004, from Iraq to
Israel, to Palestine and beyond. Welcome to Democracy Now!, Robert Fisk.
ROBERT FISK: Thank you, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, you have been doing some reflection, as you also write
a book. You can talk about your observations of where we stand today?
ROBERT FISK: Well, I think that the whole project in Iraq is finished. We
are not being told by Mr. Blair in my case and Bush in yours that this is
the case, and perhaps through their own misjudgment or their own
fantasies, they don't even accept this themselves. But the American
project for democracy or whatever its real purposes were, for oil,
economic expansion, Middle East fit for Israel, whatever it may have been,
that project is finished. It is hopeless. It cannot succeed. The
insurgency in Iraq is so great now that American troops, however enormous
their technology, cannot control it. The Iraqi so-called ministers, and I
include Iyad Allawi, the so-called interim prime minister, who was of
course appointed by the Americans as a former C.I.A. asset, they behave
like statesmen when they tour the world or turn up in Washington, but in
Baghdad they're not even safe inside their little Green Zone. They're not
even the Mayor of Baghdad, they have less power than the town clerk.
So, we have reached a stage now where insurgents control much of the
country. The only safe part of Iraq is Kurdistan in the north, which is
effectively an autonomous region, outside of the control anyway of the
Iraqi government. And the elections, which are coming up, appear doomed
because already we're hearing that if the Sunnis won't take part, the
Americans are trying to persuade the unelected government to appoint Sunni
Muslims to make up for the voters who didn't vote. This is not an
election, this is a charade. And what has happened is that the alienation
of the Iraqis as a people from the West has been brought about by lunatic
policies by the State Department and by the Pentagon, I'm afraid by the
behavior of American troops and a lesser expect, but nonetheless culpable
British troops and by the fantasies, which drove this war in the first
place, the idea that we were going to suddenly create democracy in the
Middle East. One of the things I have been studying for my new book on
the Middle East, which comes out this year, is what happened when the
rebellion first occurred in 1920, the time of which Lawrence of Arabia was
talking, against the British military in Iraq. And exactly the same
pattern took place. The Sunni Muslims became disenfranchised. The British
laid seize to Fallujah, they laid seize to Najaf. The prime minister, in
this case Lloyd George rather than Tony Blair, said if we believe there
will be civil war and British military intelligence in Baghdad claimed that
the terrorists were arriving - in 1920 this is - from Syria. Same old
sorry.
So I am afraid that even if you look at the pattern of history, there is
no hope. If you look at the pattern today there is no hope. We come back
to the equation, which I think I have set out on your program before, that
the Americans must leave, and the Americans will leave, and the Americans
can't leave.
AMY GOODMAN: As we move, Robert Fisk, from Iraq to the situation in the
occupied territories, to Mahmoud Abbas, to the death of Yasser Arafat, your
thoughts at the end of this year, at the beginning of 2005.
ROBERT FISK: You know, I thought it was somehow perverse that the death of
the one Palestinian leader, corrupt, venal, and ruthless though he was,
I'm talking about why Arafat is immoral, the death of the one Palestinian
leader, who could more or less unify the Palestinians, was seen as a
hopeful sign, shows just how far from reality we are. Mahmoud Abbas, for
the second time in three years is being held out as the angel who can save
Palestine, who can bring about peace, who will be our new beloved savior
of the Middle East peace, courtesy Tony Blair. And I'm sure he will be
generous enough to include George Bush in the Middle East. Mahmoud Abbas
is a colorless man who has been never associated with real democratic
principles. He was one of the authors of the utterly doomed and hopeless
Oslo accord, in whose 1,000 pages the single word occupation, which is
what this colonial war is all about, does not occur once. Indeed, even
withdrawal - withdrawing of the Israeli troops - doesn't occur in this
document. It always refers to redeployment.
This is the man, whom [sic] now, we are supposed to believe, is going to
bring the violent men to heal, is going to make a real peace, is going to
be a beloved of the west, which of course is an essential element for any
Middle East peace, and it going to be a problem. It is a further
extension of our self-delusion, our British self-delusion, American
self-delusion, Israeli self-delusion, to think this can be the case. This
is another of our men, like Hamid Karzai and Iyad Allawi, another of the
people, who we effectively are stepping up to a subject people or an
occupied people, and one who inevitably and ultimately, will not be able to
deliver the goods and we'll cast around for more people to appoint or
choose to someone else's political leadership. To see Mahmoud Abbas, who
only a few months ago, when he resigned, was being cursed privately by
Bush as the man he wished he had never met, now blessed the future
Palestinian leader, when he was -- as I say, one of the author of the
whole vain Oslo agreement, which collapsed. It's a tragedy on our part
that we actually believe that this sort of person, as pleasant and
plausible though is he, can actually save the day for peace in the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Robert Fisk, who has been voted the best
foreign correspondent by newspaper editors and reporters in Britain for
many years. He is a long-time correspondent for the Independent, based in
Beirut for over three decades. Where are you speaking from to us now?
ROBERT FISK: From Beirut during a wonderful winder thunderstorm, that
actually looks like Christmas. But I'm going to Iraq in a weeks time
possibly less, to enjoy obviously a much less peaceable environment.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you see happening with this election? On U.S.
television, we repeatedly hear the story that the suicide bombings will
increase, U.S. officials saying this as well that the violence will
increase, because militants want to stop democracy in the elections.
ROBERT FISK: Sure. I mean, you have got to realize that this is now a
constant sort of logo of American and British news-speak in Iraq. They
announce that something wonderful is going to happen, an interim
governments a new constitution, elections. And then they say that
violence is going to increase, that things are going to get worse the
nearer we get to it. In other words the better things to come, the worse
things are. The worse things are, the better things are going to become.
This is part of the self-delusional policy with which we tried to hide our
total failure in Iraq, our total failure even to control the country and
allow the citizens of that country to live in safety and security. We
don't even give the casualty figures. We don't know, we don't care about
them. Even if the elections take place as I say, which I doubt, still
doubt, they will be so hopelessly flawed by the absence of the Sunni
population, so accompanied by terror on the part of the U.S.
administration, that the Shiites might wipe the floor and set up an
Islamic republic, even worse than democracy would be an Islamic republic
in Iraq. I don't think they will solve anything. Ultimately, I think what
we are going to see, as we have seen in all Middle East wars of
occupation, is the opening of some kind of contact between the Americans
and the insurgents. This is what the French did after years of saying they
would never talk to terrorists, they talked to the FLN. After years of
saying they would never talk to terrorists, the British talked to the IRA.
After years of saying they would never talk to terrorists, the British
talked to the militants fighting them in Aden and to EOKA in Cyprus, and
indeed, to both militant sides in Palestine that they tried to escape from
what Churchill called a hell disaster in 1948. The Americans will soon, if
they have not already, establish contact with the insurgents, and that
will mean the beginning of end. It means that the project is over. That
they have accepted, as I think, you know, they have already in terms of
soldiers on the ground. If you are going to talk to the colonels, and they
may -- the majors and the generals in Iraq, they know that the game is up.
But the generals back at the Pentagon and the Centcom and down there in
old Florida and the gentleman in the State Department and at the White
House, they don't accept this because this is a screen of self-delusion
between them and the reality on the ground. But it's over in Iraq. It's
finished. What we're going to see this year is the beginning of the
endgame, which is how do we get Americans out without losing face and
ultimately - I should say faith as well - and ultimately, how do you start
negotiation with the insurgents. I mean, that doesn't mean that some
American colonel is going to sit down with Zarqawi, though I wouldn't put
it past the realm of possibility. It means that we're going to have in
effect an understanding between the insurgents and the United States
forces that the project has failed, that at some point the powers behind
the insurgency or the resistance or the terrorists or whatever you would
like to call them, will move into place to control the country and they
probably will. In the meantime, I fear the Western powers will go on
trying to promote the idea of civil war as an alternative to their
occupation and oppression and I hope very much that that won't work. As I
said to you before, Iraq has never had a civil war. Iraqis don't want a
civil war. The only people who fear or talk about civil war are the
Americans and British.
AMY GOODMAN: Robert Fisk, you write in your latest piece, " Mire of Death,
Lies and Atrocities, the Ghost of Vietnam", of an American soldier, of
Jimmy Massey, a soldier who game back home and said he didn't want to
continue to participate in the killing, in the slaughter. Can you talk
about him, and as you see him from the other side of the ocean?
ROBERT FISK: Well, the odd thing is, I think we're talking about the
soldier who turned up to give evidence in Canada aren't we?
AMY GOODMAN: That’Äôs right Jimmy Massey. R: Yes, you can tell me whether
his evidence gained any publicity in the mainstream American press or not.
It happened by chance that I was in Toronto when that case came up, and of
course, I immediately ’Äì you know I had just had come from Iraq and was
due to come back to the Middle East, and of course my eyes went straight
on and I read through his accounts and I thought, my goodness me, here we
go again. In evidence in a court in a not very powerful country, Canada,
up comes again the reality of Iraq. Had it not been for my reading it, it
wouldn't have appeared in the British press. Did it occur, did you read
anything about Mr. Massey's evidence in the American press, perhaps you
did.
AMY GOODMAN: Well of course we did a long interview with Jimmy Massey when
he came back ’Ķ
ROBERT FISK: I didn't mean on your radio station, I mean the mainstream
media.
AMY GOODMAN: Right, right, right. But I wanted to encourage people to go
to our website, democracynow.org, and also in our year-end review of last
Thursday, we included his descriptions, but in terms of the larger
audience, both in terms of what we have heard about what's happening with
Jeremy Hinsman and other U.S. soldiers who have fled to Canada asking for
political asylum there, and Jimmy Massey going up and testifying on their
behalf there is very little written about it in this country.
ROBERT FISK: Yeah, of course, yeah. This is part of the self-delusion,
not only do our leaders suffer from this mania of deluding themselves, but
the press by their silence or by their complicity, assist in this process
of self-delusion. Indeed, they self-delude themselves. In Britain, we
have, you know, some newspapers, my own, The Independent, The Guardian and
increasingly, I suspect The Daily Telegraph, which is no longer prepared
to do this. They say, hold on a second, we have got to live on Planet
Earth. But when I read The New York Times and the Washington Post, I
frankly wonder, who is on Planet Earth. The real problem is - and this was
the case of course in Vietnam in the beginning - I am not making these
comparisons between Vietnam and Iraq. It's interesting that the Left wants
to make the comparison between Vietnam and Iraq and the Right wants to
make the comparison between World War II and Iraq, where of course we are
playing the role of Churchill, Roosevelt, Tito, you name it, not I noticed
Stalin. But the real problem is that, when you go to - I have said this to
you before, when I'm in Baghdad, and I read the American press or I turn
on the television and watch CNN, what I'm reading and what I am seeing
bears absolutely no physical, moral, political, or military relationship
to the place that I'm living in. When I come out, I'm sane enough to
realize for quite a long time that that remains the case. We are not -
look, let me give you the most basic example of the problem. In Baghdad
now, we have got one or two exceptions and I hope The Independent is one
of them, though even we are very circumscribed, journalists do not move
from their hotel rooms and from their hotels. They're in hotel prisons.
Now, I don't object to my colleagues doing this, if they want to, because
after all, we all want to preserve our lives. Nobody wants to turn up on a
video and have themselves seen around the world having their throats cut
or having their throats cut without being on video tape, but they don't
tell their readers and their viewers that this is the case. They still
appear on television as the courageous war correspondent in war-torn
Baghdad or war-torn Iraq with information, which in fact only comes from
the occupational authorities or from the government, which was apoirnted
by the occupational authorities, but which by not saying that they cannot
witness and see what is actually going on, they give the impression it is
the product of independent reporting. We are as usual in these
circumstances, we journalists, complicit in the self-delusion, which
allows my country's people, Britons, and Americans, to believe that things
are much better, that things are okay, when in fact they're not okay at
all. You know, it's difficult to see how you turn this corner, and I can
see why journalists do not want to admit that they're too frightened to
travel, though they should. I sometimes say in my report, I didn't go to
this place, I thought it was too dangerous to go to. Other times I manage
to travel, 70, 80 miles outside Baghdad. And it's getting worse all the
time. But at least let us tell our readers and our viewers that we cannot
move. But the journalists don't do this, and of course neither does Mr.
Allawi, who cannot even move around Baghdad. Neither does Mr. Rumsfeld, who
for a long time wouldn't venture into Iraq. So, an illusion is created of
calm and progress and well, things may get more violent, but that's
because things are getting better, which is the most ludicrous topsy turvy
I ever heard. So, the weeks tick by and we continuing to be surprised by
the bombings and killings and the executions. We have days now. When 20
Iraqis are lined up because they're accused of collaboration for joining
the Iraqi police or the Iraqi army and executed. Incredible and we just
accept it.
AMY GOODMAN: Robert Fisk, I want to thank you for being with us. Robert
Fisk, in Lebanon now, headed back to Iraq. We will continue to talk to
him there. Robert Fisk, a Middle East correspondent for The Independent
of London.
A salute to the USS Abraham Lincoln
Michelle Malkin
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/printmm20050105.shtml
January 5, 2005
Greetings, America-haters. Do you think you could stop raving against
our "war criminals" and "killing machines" -- and you, Teddy Kennedy,
could you stop panting over those Abu Ghraib photos -- for a moment and
join me in praise for our military's compassion and innovation?
At the drop of a hat, the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group sped
from Hong Kong to help survivors of the tsunami disaster in southern
Asia. How are the unmatched speed, range and overall mobility of the
American super carrier possible? Twin nuclear reactors.
Believe it or not, the USS Abraham Lincoln has been banned from docking
at certain politically correct ports because of its reactors. For the
moment, global environuts have stopped attacking the aircraft carrier
over the nuke issue. But you can count on the eco-Luddites returning to
their hysterical protests as soon as all the aid has been delivered.
Too much of the world, and too many here at home, take the amazing
capabilities of ships like the Abraham Lincoln for granted. The
carrier's 1,092-foot flight deck outperforms some of the best commercial
airports, launching and recovering up to 90 aircraft on hundreds of
flights every day, according to the Navy. Eight steam turbine generators
produce enough electrical power to serve a small city. The ship carries
approximately 3 million gallons of fuel, and can stock food and supplies
for 90 days.
Oh, and those much-maligned nuclear reactors help turn seawater into
more than 400,000 gallons of fresh water daily -- clean, safe water
desperately needed by survivors. Sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln
have reportedly even stopped taking showers to make every last drop of
fresh water available to tsunami survivors for drinking.
One of the most touching series of photos available at the Navy's Web
site features Culinary Specialist 3rd Class Joshua Savoy and Culinary
Specialist 3rd Class Davy Nugent preparing loaves of bread in the
aircraft carrier's bakery for tsunami victims. The bakery produces
between 600-800 loaves a day. Here are two fine, young American sailors
-- representative of thousands of Americans in uniform like them --
lending their skills to help the suffering.
Where are the politicians who will wave Spc. Joshua Savoy and Spc. Davy
Nugent's pictures before the TV cameras? Who will make them household
names?
Aboard the carrier, every last crewmember -- from medical personnel to
engineers to bakers -- is pitching in to help with the relief effort.
The crew of about 6,000 has deployed at least 10 of its 17 helicopters
to deliver supplies and aid to tsunami victims on the coast. Surgical
teams from the carrier have set up triage sites on Sultan Iskandar Muda
Air Force Base in Banda Aceh, and are working with teams from Carrier
Air Wing Two and the International Organization for Migration.
I would be remiss in not mentioning the rest of the strike group and
their leaders: the San Diego-based cruiser USS Shiloh (CG 67), commanded
by Capt. Joe Harriss and the destroyer USS Benfold (DDG 65), commanded
by Cmdr. Don Hornbeck; the Everett, Wash.-based destroyer USS Shoup (DDG
86), led by Cmdr. Alexander T. Casimes; the Pearl Harbor-based attack
submarine USS Louisville (SSN 724), under the command of Cmdr. David
Kirk; the Bremerton, Wash.-based fast combat support ship USS Rainier
(AOE 7); Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 2; Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA)
151; Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 137; and Strike Fighter Squadron
(VFA) 82.
You should also know that the members of the USS Abraham Lincoln
Carrier Strike Group are no strangers to humanitarian missions. In
October 1993, Abraham Lincoln took off from the Arabian Gulf (where it
was supporting the U.N.-sanctioned enforcement of the no-fly zone over
southern Iraq) for Somalia. The carrier flew patrols over Mogadishu and
surrounding areas for four months, backing U.N. ground troops during
Operation Continue Hope.
How's that for "stingy"?
I wish I had room to print the name of every sailor, pilot, rescue
swimmer, technician and engineer who serves in this strike group -- and
on every other American ship, plane and helicopter on its way to help
the tsunami victims. You deserve to be seen and known and thanked and
remembered. You make America proud.
At the United Nations, saluting our troops is called jingoism. Where
I'm from, it's called gratitude.
Michelle Malkin is a syndicated columnist and maintains her weblog at
michellemalkin.com
Michelle Malkin
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/printmm20050105.shtml
January 5, 2005
Greetings, America-haters. Do you think you could stop raving against
our "war criminals" and "killing machines" -- and you, Teddy Kennedy,
could you stop panting over those Abu Ghraib photos -- for a moment and
join me in praise for our military's compassion and innovation?
At the drop of a hat, the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group sped
from Hong Kong to help survivors of the tsunami disaster in southern
Asia. How are the unmatched speed, range and overall mobility of the
American super carrier possible? Twin nuclear reactors.
Believe it or not, the USS Abraham Lincoln has been banned from docking
at certain politically correct ports because of its reactors. For the
moment, global environuts have stopped attacking the aircraft carrier
over the nuke issue. But you can count on the eco-Luddites returning to
their hysterical protests as soon as all the aid has been delivered.
Too much of the world, and too many here at home, take the amazing
capabilities of ships like the Abraham Lincoln for granted. The
carrier's 1,092-foot flight deck outperforms some of the best commercial
airports, launching and recovering up to 90 aircraft on hundreds of
flights every day, according to the Navy. Eight steam turbine generators
produce enough electrical power to serve a small city. The ship carries
approximately 3 million gallons of fuel, and can stock food and supplies
for 90 days.
Oh, and those much-maligned nuclear reactors help turn seawater into
more than 400,000 gallons of fresh water daily -- clean, safe water
desperately needed by survivors. Sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln
have reportedly even stopped taking showers to make every last drop of
fresh water available to tsunami survivors for drinking.
One of the most touching series of photos available at the Navy's Web
site features Culinary Specialist 3rd Class Joshua Savoy and Culinary
Specialist 3rd Class Davy Nugent preparing loaves of bread in the
aircraft carrier's bakery for tsunami victims. The bakery produces
between 600-800 loaves a day. Here are two fine, young American sailors
-- representative of thousands of Americans in uniform like them --
lending their skills to help the suffering.
Where are the politicians who will wave Spc. Joshua Savoy and Spc. Davy
Nugent's pictures before the TV cameras? Who will make them household
names?
Aboard the carrier, every last crewmember -- from medical personnel to
engineers to bakers -- is pitching in to help with the relief effort.
The crew of about 6,000 has deployed at least 10 of its 17 helicopters
to deliver supplies and aid to tsunami victims on the coast. Surgical
teams from the carrier have set up triage sites on Sultan Iskandar Muda
Air Force Base in Banda Aceh, and are working with teams from Carrier
Air Wing Two and the International Organization for Migration.
I would be remiss in not mentioning the rest of the strike group and
their leaders: the San Diego-based cruiser USS Shiloh (CG 67), commanded
by Capt. Joe Harriss and the destroyer USS Benfold (DDG 65), commanded
by Cmdr. Don Hornbeck; the Everett, Wash.-based destroyer USS Shoup (DDG
86), led by Cmdr. Alexander T. Casimes; the Pearl Harbor-based attack
submarine USS Louisville (SSN 724), under the command of Cmdr. David
Kirk; the Bremerton, Wash.-based fast combat support ship USS Rainier
(AOE 7); Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 2; Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA)
151; Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 137; and Strike Fighter Squadron
(VFA) 82.
You should also know that the members of the USS Abraham Lincoln
Carrier Strike Group are no strangers to humanitarian missions. In
October 1993, Abraham Lincoln took off from the Arabian Gulf (where it
was supporting the U.N.-sanctioned enforcement of the no-fly zone over
southern Iraq) for Somalia. The carrier flew patrols over Mogadishu and
surrounding areas for four months, backing U.N. ground troops during
Operation Continue Hope.
How's that for "stingy"?
I wish I had room to print the name of every sailor, pilot, rescue
swimmer, technician and engineer who serves in this strike group -- and
on every other American ship, plane and helicopter on its way to help
the tsunami victims. You deserve to be seen and known and thanked and
remembered. You make America proud.
At the United Nations, saluting our troops is called jingoism. Where
I'm from, it's called gratitude.
Michelle Malkin is a syndicated columnist and maintains her weblog at
michellemalkin.com
01/02/05
MannGram®: Some observations on PC in the Anglican Church [Catch-all] -
GEA - gormfach@gmail.com @ 09:06:30 PM
Dec 2004
In the dozen y since my return to active church participation
(nearly all at St Aidan's Remuera), I've been repeatedly dismayed at the
extent of white-anting of the Anglican church in NZ by PC ideologies.
Summarising numerous experiences, the dominant ideology among many
clergy and most of the lay power-brokers is wimminsLib (misleadingly called
"feminism"). Overlapping in personnel, as well as in style & jargon, is
the second partner in the PC Axis: the new racism as exemplified by the
Nairns and most high-ranking Anglican clergy. And the minor, more recent
partner in the PC Axis is militant homosexuals wallowing in the victim role
to emulate the major partners.
By & large, PC activists behave on the assumption - never stated,
let alone discussed - that a new code of ethics has been agreed. A
pretty good glimpse of this new code is attached. I draw particular
attention to #9.
A friendly cyberslickster has slapped some of my articles, and some
friends', 'out there':
http://www.kuratrading.com/HTMLArticles/writings.htm including more
detailed critiques of PC.
My strongest reason for opposing PC ideologies is their functional
antipathy to Christianity. They constitute, at least, a set of
cross-currents impeding the Gospel. A padre who puts wimminsLib ahead of
orthodox Christian ethics will betray his flock and the church. Similarly,
some ministers have adopted Maadi-worship ahead of the non-racist
Christianity that had served this country so very well. Whenever I
encounter anyone who indicates support for the racism exemplified by e.g
the Green Party, I ask: "Was the nation which the 28 Bn, and my parents'
friend & protégé Kingi Tahiwi, volunteered to defend so famously a racist
racket? 'For God, for King, and for country', they sang; dupes, were
they?". I never get any answer. No doubt the Nairns, their cronies the
Harawira gang, the Jackson Five, Te Kenehi Mair, Peter Sharples, Patu®
Hohepa, Prof Wh Winiata, etc do think the Maori Bn were dupes; but we may
take some encouragement from the fact they won't say so.
I could give far more examples, but in the interests of brevity
here I sketch below just a few typical experiences that lead me to these
conclusions.
=====
An early critique of PC was pubd by Time's art critic the
Australian Robt Hughes: 'Culture of Complaint'. Soon afterwards, not only
Fiona Hill on Radio NZ but also Prof Ranginui Walker - a sometime
colleague & friend - took to saying publicly, with an air of wide-eyed
innocence, that they couldn't attach any meaning to the term 'political
correctness'. I therefore lent Rangi my copy of Hughes' book. Months
later I asked to recover it to onlend. We lunched cordially as usual, and
then he took quite a search of his ossif bookshelves to find it.
He offered no discussion; it looked to me very much as if he'd
never read it and didn't want to know what the term 'PC' meant.
=====
One of the clearest examples I've come across of sexist PC activism
distorting the church was committed on a certain Sunday by the then vicar
of St Aidan's, Remuera. His predecessor had issued detailed written
instructions to lectors, requiring brief introductory remarks before
reading lessons (to put the reading in context). My fellow lector the late
Dr Gordon Jenner and I took this instruction seriously. I flatter
ourselves that our 2 or 3 sentences helped the congregation, leading them
into each lesson. Without consultation Get Smart suddenly forbade us to
continue this practice. On the same day when that ban entered into force,
he turned over several 5-min periods within the mid-morning (usually the
largest) service for what he called 'sermons' by unordained wimminsLibbers
of the parish including the babbling postmodern Ms Roo Kempster ('Boddé').
What could be a clearer example of sexist bias? Suppress even
brief introductions by men, while opening up whole "sermons" by prominent
wimminsLibbers. And of course don't discuss it at all with the men. The
calculated insult will be evident; no need to expose yourself to the
searchlight of reason.
This is how you will behave if promoting sexism ranks higher in
your priorities than, say, encouraging the best impact for the gospels.
(You claim, or imply, of course, that you are working *against* sexism -
see The Ten Commandments, attached.)
=====
A difficult example to convey of PC in the Anglican church is the
evening gathering convened in the cathedral by Rev Glynn Cardy to hear from
and to question the NZ members (2 out of the worldwide total 17) from the
Eames commission on their "Windsor" report - Rt Rev Paterson & Dr Jenny
te Paa who has recently added the name 'Plane'. A few dozen attended. I
was taking notes (for a research student who could not be present). An
extremely solemn vague style of speaking was universal. Try as I would, I
could attach little meaning to most of what was uttered. Of the few
orthodox or traditionalist persons present, none spoke.
One nugget however justified my unpleasant evening: Dr te Paa said
that the hundreds of submissions to the Eames commission all failed to
provide any analysis that would justify the position she, Rt Rev Paterson,
and unspecified others, hold. They had therefore canvassed actively for
supplementary submissions, but these too had entirely failed to provide any
support for their position.
That she could recount this without blushing, indeed
without appearing to realise how damaging it is to her policy on sexual
deviance, suggests to my mind that her attitude is of blind ideological
origin rather than anything more logical or respectable.
=====
Care for Creation is a neglected theme within Anglicanism, sounded
persistently by Prof John Morton and a few others such as myself less
persistently and even less influentially. In the Ak diocese this theme was
supposed to be coordinated by Rev Catherine Wood, one of many females
ordained but finding no regular stipendiary position from even the
extremely PC Rt Rev Paterson. I have detected no effect of her
coordination.
To promote practical skills for applied ecology I have proposed to
successive vicars of my parish a youth club to learn gardening, composting
etc and to study nature while doing so. I append a larger sketch of this
concept. That it was ignored and then lightly, indirectly dismissed in
passing is not - I infer - mainly for lack of merit; the far more
likely explanation is that it came from PinC me.
A previous vicar, Rev Harvey Smith, had responded to this
'gardening club' idea with the PC insult "questions would be asked about
why a single man of your age wants to get involved with youth". I could
only respond "and you'd be just the boy to front for them, wouldn't you?".
I'm not aware of anyone else than Harvey who would think this way about me
(no longer feasible as I'm now married! - or perhaps they could just
delete the word 'single' and go on issuing this gratuitous insult).
=====
BTW I don't mean to imply that only Anglicans have been white-anted
by PC. I fear we're the furthest-gone, but I estimate Methodism would be
in 2nd place; Presbys 3rd (remember their years of tortured harrassment
over ordaining known homX); Baptists a long way 'behind'; and of course the
good old Romans solidly unyielding - good on them.
=====
Among those who accept the broad picture of PC as sketched here,
some understanding of its psychology is sometimes sought. The neoFreudian
Howard S (as distinct from Howard K) Schwartz gives the best explanation I
know of (on that level).
http://www.sba.oakland.edu/faculty/schwartz/schwartz.htm
I don't doubt that humour is a main weapon against these
fanaticisms. One of Schwartz's greatest hits is accordingly attached.
=====
In understanding the totalitarian mind, review the quote below from Wm L
Shirer. Millions of Germans intoned 'the Slavs are sub-human', 'the Jews
are the main cause of our troubles', and similar blatant lies; millions of
Kiwis are now intoning 'girls can do anything', 'Aotearaw is Mwodi lahnd',
'homX is healthy, and congenital', etc. I recently saw a new issue of the
'70s bumper-sticker 'women need men like fish need bicycles'. How many
still intone 'all men are rapists' I'd be interested to learn, but the
man-hating wimmin rule whether or not that Waring slogan is still current.
'The Rise & Fall of the Third Reich' (Secker & Warburg 1960) p.248
"No one who has not lived for years in a totalitarian land
can possibly conceive how difficult it is to escape the dread consequences
of a regime's calculated and incessant propaganda. Often in a German home
or office or sometimes in a casual conversation with a stranger in a
restaurant, a beer hall, a café, I would meet with the most outlandish
assertions from seemingly educated and intelligent persons. It was obvious
that they were parroting some piece of nonsense they had heard on the radio
or read in the newspapers. Sometimes one was tempted to say as much, but
on such occasions one was met with such a stare of incredulity, such a
shock of silence, as it one had blasphemed the Almighty, that one realized
how useless it was even to try to make contact with a mind which has become
warped and for whom the facts of life had become what Hitler and Goebbels,
with their cynical disregard for truth, said they were."
I contend that the PC ideologies discussed here are the new, gentle
totalitarianism. Their assiduous evasion of discussion, and their
blatantly false slogans, are reliable marks of totalitarian ideologies.
Must we not condemn them as incompatible with Christianity?
* * * * *
Appendix
Vicar
St Aidan's, Remuera
6 Oct 2004
Dear Jo
During my dozen years of involvement as an active St Aidan's
parishioner I've become steadily more concerned at neglect of church
property. The buildings, but especially the grounds, get only sporadic
care, often after substantial harm has needlessly accumulated owing to
deferral of maintenance. I have tried to liaise with the vestry, through a
long-serving vestryman (architect Bob Hale), but have always encountered
amazing delays - even when neighbouring property is endangered according
to the City Council's tree expert.
The system for care of the church grounds has been at best minimal
for years. I believe one reason for this is that the workers have no
leadership and therefore little team spirit or internal coordination.
There is never any discussion of what is needed. The volunteers were
entertained to morning tea by the Smarts once or twice, but the person who
cherishes control of the volunteer roster has done nothing of the kind. I
believe the workers should be encouraged by more interactive management,
which I would like to provide.
The main functions of the reinvigorated team would be - as I
envisage - not only to take better care of the church grounds but also to
lead young parishioners in:
* learning practical skills for care of trees & plants;
* making compost instead of persisting in paying a firm to take away
compostable asset materials; and
* helping elderly parishioners with their gardens, producing flowers &
food (some for our church and for the City Mission, some for the owners).
Although the primary aim of this club would be care of the parish's
own property, considerable good is also waiting to be done for others.
Many elderly parishioners have larger fertile gardens than they can
maintain. Flowers and food can be produced on a worthwhile scale given
competent supervision in careful liaison with the owners of the gardens.
I believe this 'young gardeners' club would link straightforwardly
to the neglected issue of Care for Creation on which Prof Morton and I have
been harping for decades. It could be nature-study from a Christian
viewpoint - educational as well as useful.
I am offering to lead it. I would expect to find rather readily
other adults willing to help the young of the parish in such a youth club.
I would hope not to be obstructed by those who disagree with me on
ideological issues, and would indeed solicit your help to that end.
I look forward keenly to discussing this concept with you.
Your bro in Christ
[RM]
---------------
To: vicar
Five weeks ago I sent you the msg copied above.
I have had no ackn of it until yesterday when your curate, visiting
us for another purpose, mentioned, as if in passing, on the point of
departure, that you had discussed with her my proposal. She gave me her
superficial general reactions e.g it's hard to get youth to do anything
regularly.
The proposal was not just my own idea; it had the advantage of
scrutiny by several parishioners. That you could ignore it because of your
dominant political ideology is a dismal confirmation of a trend that has
gripped this parish increasingly over recent years. I disbelieve that you
would fail to ackn any communication from Mss Colgan, Priestley, etc. -
let alone one of such obvious merits. That you could be unwilling to
discuss at all such an offer cannot be explained by any proper reason.
I have a general scorn for the 'shopping for a church' approach. I
have clung to the parish church to which I can walk in 10 min. The church
in which my own active faith was revived, and in which I married again a
year ago, means much to me. I have been extremely reluctant to cede the
territory to the ideologies which have, thru several vicars, dominated &
poisoned parish life. However, I am finally not prepared to put up with
the radical oafishness of the dominatrices (and the dismal obeisance of the
wimps who cater to them). My wife & I are therefore turning to another
parish where we expect to find & assist more genuine companions in worship,
as well as avoiding 'sermons' on whether God has feelings, etc.
I can assure you I have thought long & carefully about this. In
particular, my dear little late-morning congregation is precious to me and
I have been honoured to serve them as lector & sidesman. But now they will
have to train up one or more replacements - which is overdue anyhow.
I will of course complete such duties as I'm scheduled for on the
current roster.
In the event that you ever wish to face up to actual discussion of
the ideologies you serve, I'd be only too glad to help.
Deconstructing My Car at the Detroit Airport
by
Howard S. Schwartz
Organization Studies 14 (2), 1993, 279-281 (slightly revised)
Returning to Detroit from an academic conference, my head was still buzzing
with what I had learned from the feminists. All of them were doing work in
feminist deconstruction, and joyfully working out its implications.
Following their lead, I came to see that the organized world is a text that
expresses male domination. Furthermore, I understood that the male principle
is domination. If that text could be deconstructed, domination itself could
be overcome and the female principle -- warm, nurturant, and life-giving --
would be able to emerge.
The shuttle bus took me to long-term parking and I found my little car,
waiting for me where I had left it. Without even thinking, I opened the door
and began to get in. And that was when the thought hit me.
Getting into the car ... why obviously the car was a female and, expressing
a masculinity which I now understood to permeate me to my core, was about to
about to enter her and use her for my own purposes in just the same way that
men have used women for thousands of years.
I stepped back from her, astonished by the power of my insight. For I saw
that there was a larger dimension involved than my simply entering this car
at this time. Indeed, it became clear enough tome in this moment, the whole
pattern of male domination over the female was present here. And this was so
perhaps least of all with regard to my entering the car and forcing her to
do my will. More important, I came to realize, was the fact that the car
itself, while clearly female, had been interpenetrated by male desires; her
beautiful feminine essence warped and degraded by the domination of the
phallus.
At that point I decided that I had to deconstruct the car; not for her sake
alone, nor even for the sake of all the females of which she was a part, but
for myself and all males as well. Crippled and driven by our own phallic
assumptions, we had been deprived of the beauty that could exist if the
female principle were allowed its sway. In a small way, I saw, I could start
here. I could remove the influence of male domination from this beautiful
car and leave her to express her female essence in a way that she, and only
she, would determine.
I began with the item that first struck my attention: the driveshaft.
Driveshaft, get it? This was obviously a penis. In the trunk was a hacksaw.
I took it out and began to cut through. It was hard work, and it was hot,
but as I gave up my doubts and hesitancies, it was as if I had discovered a
new source of energy, for the work appeared to become lighter. And, indeed,
as the hacksaw bit through the last of the metal, and as the driveshaft fell
away from the car, I too felt lightened, relived of a weighty burden that I
had carried all my life. Now, it was plain to me, I had passed the point of
no-return. I was committed by my own actions. I could not turn back.
Next I turned to a more subtle instance of the domination of male values --
the steering system. Think of it. You turn the steering wheel a certain
amount and the car turns by a similar amount. So rational, so logocentric,
so cold, so quintessentially male. This would never do. With my hacksaw I
cut out a length of the steering column and, in its place, I inserted an old
inner tube that I had been carrying around. Fastened to both ends of the gap
in the column, the inner tube would act like a large rubber band. Now, turn
the steering wheel and perhaps something will happen. And perhaps it won't.
So full of freedom! So intuitive! So warm! So feminine! Irigaray herself
could not have done better.
Next my attention fastened upon the wheels. The wheels, with their fullness
and roundness, seemed to me at first to be contrary to my overall judgment.
Could they be a feminine element in the car? But then my thought led me to
recognize the subtle sexism inherent in their use. For each of these wheels
was penetrated and subservient to an axle, whose bidding they were forced to
do. Moreover, it was the wheels that were burdened with the punishment of
the road. The axles needed to do nothing but turn. Master and slave. Here it
was again. Moreover, as I thought about the matter, an even deeper level of
offense made itself known to me. Each axle penetrated and dominated two
wheels. Not only were the poor wheels raped and dominated, they were
devalued as well. This could clearly not be allowed to pass.
I removed the wheels from the axles and placed them in the front seat.
Henceforth, they would ride in the position of honor that they deserved. The
axles, now in contact with the road surface, would have to endure the
suffering which formerly they had imposed on gentler others. Let justice be
done. They deserved no pity.
Finally, I came to the part of the car that seemed most obviously male. It
was the engine. Gas drinker, fume maker, taking from Mother Nature and
giving back junk. This was what it meant to be male expressed in its
essence. And for what were these lovely hydrocarbons consumed? Speed, power,
the lust of going ever faster. Competition, domination ...The male image was
unavoidable. Certainly no woman has ever been interested in stuff like that.
But as I thought about the engine the thought occurred to me that this image
of the engine serving the purpose of domination had, literally, only
scratched the surface. For when I began to think of what was going on within
the engine, my horror and my shame came unbound. For there, within the
engine, where outsiders could not see, the most terrible scenes of male
brutality occurred. The engine, I came to realize, ran on rape. The pistons
penetrated the cylinder heads and they did this each time the crankshaft
turned. This was not only rape, it was gang rape and it happened with
unbelievable speed and under the most appalling circumstances. Two thousand,
three thousand, four thousand ... up to six thousand Rapes Per Minute! And
the heat, the pressure, the sheer unrestrained violence! Tears in my eyes, I
ripped the cylinder head from the engine and placed the poor battered dear
in the rear seat. Never again would this be allowed to happen. Never.
But my new consciousness understood that simply rescuing the cylinder head
would not suffice. Payment would have to be exacted for the crime. Moreover,
punishing the pistons would not be sufficient. The entire infrastructure of
male domination that supported, encouraged, and even demanded this outrage
would have to suffer as well.
The sun was beginning to set as I took my hacksaw to the pistons, and I knew
that my work had just begun. After the pistons, the connecting rods would
have to go, then the bearings, the flywheel, the crankshaft, the engine
casings... they would all have to pay.
It was mid-morning when I cut up the last piece of the engine. My heart
relieved of its guilt, I put a plant where it had been. Mother Nature and
the car could now be one.
But I was tired. The night had been long and hard. I wished I could get into
the beautiful car, now restored to her pristine state, and drive her home.
But I knew that this was not to be. I would impose my male will on her no
longer. She was free to go her own feminine way. I began the long walk home,
wondering where her path would lead her.
The Ten Commandments of Political Correctness
Thou shalt:
1. Regard all racial and sexual minorities as sacrosanct and refrainfrom any criticism of them.
2. Treat women as a minority, though they constitute 51% of thepopulation. [*]
3. Blame all society's ills on the white, heterosexual, male"majority".
4. Deplore all discrimination, unless it is specifically designed todisadvantage the "majority".
5. Insist that the "majority" is by nature racist & sexist, and deviseways to control its behaviour.
6. Ignore any comments by minorities about the majority, or about eachother, which might suggest that they too sometimes have racist & sexisttendencies.
7. Place no importance upon truth, accuracy or consistency of argument,for the next commandment makes these inconveniences unnecessary.
8. Silence all dissenters with a system of legal penalties, socialvilification and ridicule.
9. Pretend that political correctness is simply about politeness.
10. Rejoice in your moral superiority.
---The Ten Commandments of Political Correctness by Don Bruce.
These were published in the letters to the editor of The Sunday Agenewspaper on August 10, 1997.
* Note: The 51% figure relates to *all* females of all ages.
In the dozen y since my return to active church participation
(nearly all at St Aidan's Remuera), I've been repeatedly dismayed at the
extent of white-anting of the Anglican church in NZ by PC ideologies.
Summarising numerous experiences, the dominant ideology among many
clergy and most of the lay power-brokers is wimminsLib (misleadingly called
"feminism"). Overlapping in personnel, as well as in style & jargon, is
the second partner in the PC Axis: the new racism as exemplified by the
Nairns and most high-ranking Anglican clergy. And the minor, more recent
partner in the PC Axis is militant homosexuals wallowing in the victim role
to emulate the major partners.
By & large, PC activists behave on the assumption - never stated,
let alone discussed - that a new code of ethics has been agreed. A
pretty good glimpse of this new code is attached. I draw particular
attention to #9.
A friendly cyberslickster has slapped some of my articles, and some
friends', 'out there':
http://www.kuratrading.com/HTMLArticles/writings.htm including more
detailed critiques of PC.
My strongest reason for opposing PC ideologies is their functional
antipathy to Christianity. They constitute, at least, a set of
cross-currents impeding the Gospel. A padre who puts wimminsLib ahead of
orthodox Christian ethics will betray his flock and the church. Similarly,
some ministers have adopted Maadi-worship ahead of the non-racist
Christianity that had served this country so very well. Whenever I
encounter anyone who indicates support for the racism exemplified by e.g
the Green Party, I ask: "Was the nation which the 28 Bn, and my parents'
friend & protégé Kingi Tahiwi, volunteered to defend so famously a racist
racket? 'For God, for King, and for country', they sang; dupes, were
they?". I never get any answer. No doubt the Nairns, their cronies the
Harawira gang, the Jackson Five, Te Kenehi Mair, Peter Sharples, Patu®
Hohepa, Prof Wh Winiata, etc do think the Maori Bn were dupes; but we may
take some encouragement from the fact they won't say so.
I could give far more examples, but in the interests of brevity
here I sketch below just a few typical experiences that lead me to these
conclusions.
=====
An early critique of PC was pubd by Time's art critic the
Australian Robt Hughes: 'Culture of Complaint'. Soon afterwards, not only
Fiona Hill on Radio NZ but also Prof Ranginui Walker - a sometime
colleague & friend - took to saying publicly, with an air of wide-eyed
innocence, that they couldn't attach any meaning to the term 'political
correctness'. I therefore lent Rangi my copy of Hughes' book. Months
later I asked to recover it to onlend. We lunched cordially as usual, and
then he took quite a search of his ossif bookshelves to find it.
He offered no discussion; it looked to me very much as if he'd
never read it and didn't want to know what the term 'PC' meant.
=====
One of the clearest examples I've come across of sexist PC activism
distorting the church was committed on a certain Sunday by the then vicar
of St Aidan's, Remuera. His predecessor had issued detailed written
instructions to lectors, requiring brief introductory remarks before
reading lessons (to put the reading in context). My fellow lector the late
Dr Gordon Jenner and I took this instruction seriously. I flatter
ourselves that our 2 or 3 sentences helped the congregation, leading them
into each lesson. Without consultation Get Smart suddenly forbade us to
continue this practice. On the same day when that ban entered into force,
he turned over several 5-min periods within the mid-morning (usually the
largest) service for what he called 'sermons' by unordained wimminsLibbers
of the parish including the babbling postmodern Ms Roo Kempster ('Boddé').
What could be a clearer example of sexist bias? Suppress even
brief introductions by men, while opening up whole "sermons" by prominent
wimminsLibbers. And of course don't discuss it at all with the men. The
calculated insult will be evident; no need to expose yourself to the
searchlight of reason.
This is how you will behave if promoting sexism ranks higher in
your priorities than, say, encouraging the best impact for the gospels.
(You claim, or imply, of course, that you are working *against* sexism -
see The Ten Commandments, attached.)
=====
A difficult example to convey of PC in the Anglican church is the
evening gathering convened in the cathedral by Rev Glynn Cardy to hear from
and to question the NZ members (2 out of the worldwide total 17) from the
Eames commission on their "Windsor" report - Rt Rev Paterson & Dr Jenny
te Paa who has recently added the name 'Plane'. A few dozen attended. I
was taking notes (for a research student who could not be present). An
extremely solemn vague style of speaking was universal. Try as I would, I
could attach little meaning to most of what was uttered. Of the few
orthodox or traditionalist persons present, none spoke.
One nugget however justified my unpleasant evening: Dr te Paa said
that the hundreds of submissions to the Eames commission all failed to
provide any analysis that would justify the position she, Rt Rev Paterson,
and unspecified others, hold. They had therefore canvassed actively for
supplementary submissions, but these too had entirely failed to provide any
support for their position.
That she could recount this without blushing, indeed
without appearing to realise how damaging it is to her policy on sexual
deviance, suggests to my mind that her attitude is of blind ideological
origin rather than anything more logical or respectable.
=====
Care for Creation is a neglected theme within Anglicanism, sounded
persistently by Prof John Morton and a few others such as myself less
persistently and even less influentially. In the Ak diocese this theme was
supposed to be coordinated by Rev Catherine Wood, one of many females
ordained but finding no regular stipendiary position from even the
extremely PC Rt Rev Paterson. I have detected no effect of her
coordination.
To promote practical skills for applied ecology I have proposed to
successive vicars of my parish a youth club to learn gardening, composting
etc and to study nature while doing so. I append a larger sketch of this
concept. That it was ignored and then lightly, indirectly dismissed in
passing is not - I infer - mainly for lack of merit; the far more
likely explanation is that it came from PinC me.
A previous vicar, Rev Harvey Smith, had responded to this
'gardening club' idea with the PC insult "questions would be asked about
why a single man of your age wants to get involved with youth". I could
only respond "and you'd be just the boy to front for them, wouldn't you?".
I'm not aware of anyone else than Harvey who would think this way about me
(no longer feasible as I'm now married! - or perhaps they could just
delete the word 'single' and go on issuing this gratuitous insult).
=====
BTW I don't mean to imply that only Anglicans have been white-anted
by PC. I fear we're the furthest-gone, but I estimate Methodism would be
in 2nd place; Presbys 3rd (remember their years of tortured harrassment
over ordaining known homX); Baptists a long way 'behind'; and of course the
good old Romans solidly unyielding - good on them.
=====
Among those who accept the broad picture of PC as sketched here,
some understanding of its psychology is sometimes sought. The neoFreudian
Howard S (as distinct from Howard K) Schwartz gives the best explanation I
know of (on that level).
http://www.sba.oakland.edu/faculty/schwartz/schwartz.htm
I don't doubt that humour is a main weapon against these
fanaticisms. One of Schwartz's greatest hits is accordingly attached.
=====
In understanding the totalitarian mind, review the quote below from Wm L
Shirer. Millions of Germans intoned 'the Slavs are sub-human', 'the Jews
are the main cause of our troubles', and similar blatant lies; millions of
Kiwis are now intoning 'girls can do anything', 'Aotearaw is Mwodi lahnd',
'homX is healthy, and congenital', etc. I recently saw a new issue of the
'70s bumper-sticker 'women need men like fish need bicycles'. How many
still intone 'all men are rapists' I'd be interested to learn, but the
man-hating wimmin rule whether or not that Waring slogan is still current.
'The Rise & Fall of the Third Reich' (Secker & Warburg 1960) p.248
"No one who has not lived for years in a totalitarian land
can possibly conceive how difficult it is to escape the dread consequences
of a regime's calculated and incessant propaganda. Often in a German home
or office or sometimes in a casual conversation with a stranger in a
restaurant, a beer hall, a café, I would meet with the most outlandish
assertions from seemingly educated and intelligent persons. It was obvious
that they were parroting some piece of nonsense they had heard on the radio
or read in the newspapers. Sometimes one was tempted to say as much, but
on such occasions one was met with such a stare of incredulity, such a
shock of silence, as it one had blasphemed the Almighty, that one realized
how useless it was even to try to make contact with a mind which has become
warped and for whom the facts of life had become what Hitler and Goebbels,
with their cynical disregard for truth, said they were."
I contend that the PC ideologies discussed here are the new, gentle
totalitarianism. Their assiduous evasion of discussion, and their
blatantly false slogans, are reliable marks of totalitarian ideologies.
Must we not condemn them as incompatible with Christianity?
* * * * *
Appendix
Vicar
St Aidan's, Remuera
6 Oct 2004
Dear Jo
During my dozen years of involvement as an active St Aidan's
parishioner I've become steadily more concerned at neglect of church
property. The buildings, but especially the grounds, get only sporadic
care, often after substantial harm has needlessly accumulated owing to
deferral of maintenance. I have tried to liaise with the vestry, through a
long-serving vestryman (architect Bob Hale), but have always encountered
amazing delays - even when neighbouring property is endangered according
to the City Council's tree expert.
The system for care of the church grounds has been at best minimal
for years. I believe one reason for this is that the workers have no
leadership and therefore little team spirit or internal coordination.
There is never any discussion of what is needed. The volunteers were
entertained to morning tea by the Smarts once or twice, but the person who
cherishes control of the volunteer roster has done nothing of the kind. I
believe the workers should be encouraged by more interactive management,
which I would like to provide.
The main functions of the reinvigorated team would be - as I
envisage - not only to take better care of the church grounds but also to
lead young parishioners in:
* learning practical skills for care of trees & plants;
* making compost instead of persisting in paying a firm to take away
compostable asset materials; and
* helping elderly parishioners with their gardens, producing flowers &
food (some for our church and for the City Mission, some for the owners).
Although the primary aim of this club would be care of the parish's
own property, considerable good is also waiting to be done for others.
Many elderly parishioners have larger fertile gardens than they can
maintain. Flowers and food can be produced on a worthwhile scale given
competent supervision in careful liaison with the owners of the gardens.
I believe this 'young gardeners' club would link straightforwardly
to the neglected issue of Care for Creation on which Prof Morton and I have
been harping for decades. It could be nature-study from a Christian
viewpoint - educational as well as useful.
I am offering to lead it. I would expect to find rather readily
other adults willing to help the young of the parish in such a youth club.
I would hope not to be obstructed by those who disagree with me on
ideological issues, and would indeed solicit your help to that end.
I look forward keenly to discussing this concept with you.
Your bro in Christ
[RM]
---------------
To: vicar
Five weeks ago I sent you the msg copied above.
I have had no ackn of it until yesterday when your curate, visiting
us for another purpose, mentioned, as if in passing, on the point of
departure, that you had discussed with her my proposal. She gave me her
superficial general reactions e.g it's hard to get youth to do anything
regularly.
The proposal was not just my own idea; it had the advantage of
scrutiny by several parishioners. That you could ignore it because of your
dominant political ideology is a dismal confirmation of a trend that has
gripped this parish increasingly over recent years. I disbelieve that you
would fail to ackn any communication from Mss Colgan, Priestley, etc. -
let alone one of such obvious merits. That you could be unwilling to
discuss at all such an offer cannot be explained by any proper reason.
I have a general scorn for the 'shopping for a church' approach. I
have clung to the parish church to which I can walk in 10 min. The church
in which my own active faith was revived, and in which I married again a
year ago, means much to me. I have been extremely reluctant to cede the
territory to the ideologies which have, thru several vicars, dominated &
poisoned parish life. However, I am finally not prepared to put up with
the radical oafishness of the dominatrices (and the dismal obeisance of the
wimps who cater to them). My wife & I are therefore turning to another
parish where we expect to find & assist more genuine companions in worship,
as well as avoiding 'sermons' on whether God has feelings, etc.
I can assure you I have thought long & carefully about this. In
particular, my dear little late-morning congregation is precious to me and
I have been honoured to serve them as lector & sidesman. But now they will
have to train up one or more replacements - which is overdue anyhow.
I will of course complete such duties as I'm scheduled for on the
current roster.
In the event that you ever wish to face up to actual discussion of
the ideologies you serve, I'd be only too glad to help.
Deconstructing My Car at the Detroit Airport
by
Howard S. Schwartz
Organization Studies 14 (2), 1993, 279-281 (slightly revised)
Returning to Detroit from an academic conference, my head was still buzzing
with what I had learned from the feminists. All of them were doing work in
feminist deconstruction, and joyfully working out its implications.
Following their lead, I came to see that the organized world is a text that
expresses male domination. Furthermore, I understood that the male principle
is domination. If that text could be deconstructed, domination itself could
be overcome and the female principle -- warm, nurturant, and life-giving --
would be able to emerge.
The shuttle bus took me to long-term parking and I found my little car,
waiting for me where I had left it. Without even thinking, I opened the door
and began to get in. And that was when the thought hit me.
Getting into the car ... why obviously the car was a female and, expressing
a masculinity which I now understood to permeate me to my core, was about to
about to enter her and use her for my own purposes in just the same way that
men have used women for thousands of years.
I stepped back from her, astonished by the power of my insight. For I saw
that there was a larger dimension involved than my simply entering this car
at this time. Indeed, it became clear enough tome in this moment, the whole
pattern of male domination over the female was present here. And this was so
perhaps least of all with regard to my entering the car and forcing her to
do my will. More important, I came to realize, was the fact that the car
itself, while clearly female, had been interpenetrated by male desires; her
beautiful feminine essence warped and degraded by the domination of the
phallus.
At that point I decided that I had to deconstruct the car; not for her sake
alone, nor even for the sake of all the females of which she was a part, but
for myself and all males as well. Crippled and driven by our own phallic
assumptions, we had been deprived of the beauty that could exist if the
female principle were allowed its sway. In a small way, I saw, I could start
here. I could remove the influence of male domination from this beautiful
car and leave her to express her female essence in a way that she, and only
she, would determine.
I began with the item that first struck my attention: the driveshaft.
Driveshaft, get it? This was obviously a penis. In the trunk was a hacksaw.
I took it out and began to cut through. It was hard work, and it was hot,
but as I gave up my doubts and hesitancies, it was as if I had discovered a
new source of energy, for the work appeared to become lighter. And, indeed,
as the hacksaw bit through the last of the metal, and as the driveshaft fell
away from the car, I too felt lightened, relived of a weighty burden that I
had carried all my life. Now, it was plain to me, I had passed the point of
no-return. I was committed by my own actions. I could not turn back.
Next I turned to a more subtle instance of the domination of male values --
the steering system. Think of it. You turn the steering wheel a certain
amount and the car turns by a similar amount. So rational, so logocentric,
so cold, so quintessentially male. This would never do. With my hacksaw I
cut out a length of the steering column and, in its place, I inserted an old
inner tube that I had been carrying around. Fastened to both ends of the gap
in the column, the inner tube would act like a large rubber band. Now, turn
the steering wheel and perhaps something will happen. And perhaps it won't.
So full of freedom! So intuitive! So warm! So feminine! Irigaray herself
could not have done better.
Next my attention fastened upon the wheels. The wheels, with their fullness
and roundness, seemed to me at first to be contrary to my overall judgment.
Could they be a feminine element in the car? But then my thought led me to
recognize the subtle sexism inherent in their use. For each of these wheels
was penetrated and subservient to an axle, whose bidding they were forced to
do. Moreover, it was the wheels that were burdened with the punishment of
the road. The axles needed to do nothing but turn. Master and slave. Here it
was again. Moreover, as I thought about the matter, an even deeper level of
offense made itself known to me. Each axle penetrated and dominated two
wheels. Not only were the poor wheels raped and dominated, they were
devalued as well. This could clearly not be allowed to pass.
I removed the wheels from the axles and placed them in the front seat.
Henceforth, they would ride in the position of honor that they deserved. The
axles, now in contact with the road surface, would have to endure the
suffering which formerly they had imposed on gentler others. Let justice be
done. They deserved no pity.
Finally, I came to the part of the car that seemed most obviously male. It
was the engine. Gas drinker, fume maker, taking from Mother Nature and
giving back junk. This was what it meant to be male expressed in its
essence. And for what were these lovely hydrocarbons consumed? Speed, power,
the lust of going ever faster. Competition, domination ...The male image was
unavoidable. Certainly no woman has ever been interested in stuff like that.
But as I thought about the engine the thought occurred to me that this image
of the engine serving the purpose of domination had, literally, only
scratched the surface. For when I began to think of what was going on within
the engine, my horror and my shame came unbound. For there, within the
engine, where outsiders could not see, the most terrible scenes of male
brutality occurred. The engine, I came to realize, ran on rape. The pistons
penetrated the cylinder heads and they did this each time the crankshaft
turned. This was not only rape, it was gang rape and it happened with
unbelievable speed and under the most appalling circumstances. Two thousand,
three thousand, four thousand ... up to six thousand Rapes Per Minute! And
the heat, the pressure, the sheer unrestrained violence! Tears in my eyes, I
ripped the cylinder head from the engine and placed the poor battered dear
in the rear seat. Never again would this be allowed to happen. Never.
But my new consciousness understood that simply rescuing the cylinder head
would not suffice. Payment would have to be exacted for the crime. Moreover,
punishing the pistons would not be sufficient. The entire infrastructure of
male domination that supported, encouraged, and even demanded this outrage
would have to suffer as well.
The sun was beginning to set as I took my hacksaw to the pistons, and I knew
that my work had just begun. After the pistons, the connecting rods would
have to go, then the bearings, the flywheel, the crankshaft, the engine
casings... they would all have to pay.
It was mid-morning when I cut up the last piece of the engine. My heart
relieved of its guilt, I put a plant where it had been. Mother Nature and
the car could now be one.
But I was tired. The night had been long and hard. I wished I could get into
the beautiful car, now restored to her pristine state, and drive her home.
But I knew that this was not to be. I would impose my male will on her no
longer. She was free to go her own feminine way. I began the long walk home,
wondering where her path would lead her.
The Ten Commandments of Political Correctness
Thou shalt:
1. Regard all racial and sexual minorities as sacrosanct and refrainfrom any criticism of them.
2. Treat women as a minority, though they constitute 51% of thepopulation. [*]
3. Blame all society's ills on the white, heterosexual, male"majority".
4. Deplore all discrimination, unless it is specifically designed todisadvantage the "majority".
5. Insist that the "majority" is by nature racist & sexist, and deviseways to control its behaviour.
6. Ignore any comments by minorities about the majority, or about eachother, which might suggest that they too sometimes have racist & sexisttendencies.
7. Place no importance upon truth, accuracy or consistency of argument,for the next commandment makes these inconveniences unnecessary.
8. Silence all dissenters with a system of legal penalties, socialvilification and ridicule.
9. Pretend that political correctness is simply about politeness.
10. Rejoice in your moral superiority.
---The Ten Commandments of Political Correctness by Don Bruce.
These were published in the letters to the editor of The Sunday Agenewspaper on August 10, 1997.
* Note: The 51% figure relates to *all* females of all ages.
12/26/04
In 2001, Prof Gareth Jones (author of several books on bioethics; HOD
anatomy U of Otago) wrote
http://www.spc.org.nz/Science.asp :-
>At present, attempts to clone individuals, whether sheep or mice let alone
>humans, are fraught with uncertainty. This uncertainty alone is
>sufficient to render any attempts at human reproductive cloning profoundly
>unethical. It is likely that this situation will change at some future
>time, but even then clones will differ from their progenitors (if only
>because of extranuclear DNA). They will not be nearly as similar as
>identical twins.
Yet this morning this corporation 'Genetic Savings and Clone' is
given a free advertorial on Radio NZ's non-commercial national programme,
claiming with no hint of challenge that the 'cloned' cats will have
identical genetics to the nucleus-donor cat.
The entrepreneur further asserted, against all the evidence but
again without any sceptical interviewing, that their health will be fine.
R
Cloned Cat Sale Generates Ethics Debate
34 minutes ago
By PAUL ELIAS, AP Biotechnology Writer
SAN FRANCISCO - The first cloned-to-order pet sold in the United States is
named Little Nicky, a 9-week-old kitten delivered to a Texas woman saddened
by the loss of a cat she had owned for 17 years.
The kitten cost its owner $50,000 and was created from DNA from her beloved
cat, named Nicky, who died last year.
"He is identical. His personality is the same," the owner, Julie, told The
Associated Press in a telephone interview. Although she agreed to be
photographed with her cat, she asked that her last name and hometown not be
disclosed because she said she fears being targeted by groups opposed to
cloning.
Yet while Little Nicky, who was delivered two weeks ago, frolics in his new
home, the kitten's creation
and sale has reignited fierce ethical and scientific debate over cloning
technology, which is rapidly
advancing.
The company that created Little Nicky, Sausalito-based Genetic Savings and
Clone, said it hopes by May to have produced the world's first cloned dog -
a much more lucrative market than cats.
While it is based in the San Francisco Bay area, the company's cloning work
will be done at its new lab in Madison, Wis.
Commercial interests already are cloning prized cattle for about $20,000
each, and scientists have cloned mice, rabbits, goats, pigs, horses - and
even the endangered banteng, a wild bull that is found mostly in Indonesia.
Several research teams around the world, meanwhile, are racing to create
the first cloned monkey.
Aside from human cloning, which has been achieved only at the microscopic
embryo stage, no cloning project has fueled more debate than the marketing
plans of Genetic Savings and Clone.
"It's morally problematic and a little reprehensible," said David Magnus,
co-director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics at Stanford University.
"For $50,000, she could have provided homes for a lot of strays."
Animals rights activists complain that new feline production systems aren't
needed because thousands of stray cats are euthanized each year for want of
homes.
Lou Hawthorne, Genetic Savings and Clone's chief executive, said his
company purchases thousands of ovaries from spay clinics across the
country. It extracts the eggs, which are combined with the genetic
material from the animals to be cloned.
Critics also complain that the technology is available only to the wealthy,
that using it to create house pets is frivolous and that customers grieving
over lost pets have unrealistic expectations of what they're buying.
In fact, the first cat cloned in 2001 had a different coat from its genetic
donor, underscoring that environment and other biological variables make it
impossible to exactly duplicate animals.
"The thing that many people do not realize is that the cloned cat is not
the same as the original," said Bonnie Beaver, a Texas A&M animal
behaviorist who heads the American Veterinary Medical Association, which
has no position on the issue. "It has a different personality. It has
different life experiences. They want Fluffy, but it's not Fluffy."
Scientists also warn that cloned animals suffer from more health problems
than their traditionally bred peers and that cloning is still a very
inexact science. It takes many gruesome failures to produce just a single
clone. Genetic Savings and Clone said its new cloning technique, developed
by animal cloning pioneer James Robl has improved survival rates, health
and appearance. The new technique seeks to condense and transfer only the
donor's genetic material to a surrogate's egg instead of an entire cell
nucleus.
Between 15 percent and 45 percent of cloned cats born alive die within the
first 30 days, Hawthorne said. But he said that range is consistent with
natural births, depending on the breed of cat.
Austin, Texas-based ViaGen Inc., which has cloned hundreds of cows, pigs
and goats, also is experimenting with the new cloning technique.
"The jury is still out, but the research shows it to be promising," company
president Sara Davis said. "The technology is improving all the time."
Genetic Savings and Clone has been behind the creation of at least five
cats since 2001, including the first one created.
It hopes to deliver as many as five more clones to customers who have paid
the company's $50,000 fee. By the end of next year, it hopes to have cloned
as many as 50 cats.
The company has yet to turn a profit.
anatomy U of Otago) wrote
http://www.spc.org.nz/Science.asp :-
>At present, attempts to clone individuals, whether sheep or mice let alone
>humans, are fraught with uncertainty. This uncertainty alone is
>sufficient to render any attempts at human reproductive cloning profoundly
>unethical. It is likely that this situation will change at some future
>time, but even then clones will differ from their progenitors (if only
>because of extranuclear DNA). They will not be nearly as similar as
>identical twins.
Yet this morning this corporation 'Genetic Savings and Clone' is
given a free advertorial on Radio NZ's non-commercial national programme,
claiming with no hint of challenge that the 'cloned' cats will have
identical genetics to the nucleus-donor cat.
The entrepreneur further asserted, against all the evidence but
again without any sceptical interviewing, that their health will be fine.
R
Cloned Cat Sale Generates Ethics Debate
34 minutes ago
By PAUL ELIAS, AP Biotechnology Writer
SAN FRANCISCO - The first cloned-to-order pet sold in the United States is
named Little Nicky, a 9-week-old kitten delivered to a Texas woman saddened
by the loss of a cat she had owned for 17 years.
The kitten cost its owner $50,000 and was created from DNA from her beloved
cat, named Nicky, who died last year.
"He is identical. His personality is the same," the owner, Julie, told The
Associated Press in a telephone interview. Although she agreed to be
photographed with her cat, she asked that her last name and hometown not be
disclosed because she said she fears being targeted by groups opposed to
cloning.
Yet while Little Nicky, who was delivered two weeks ago, frolics in his new
home, the kitten's creation
and sale has reignited fierce ethical and scientific debate over cloning
technology, which is rapidly
advancing.
The company that created Little Nicky, Sausalito-based Genetic Savings and
Clone, said it hopes by May to have produced the world's first cloned dog -
a much more lucrative market than cats.
While it is based in the San Francisco Bay area, the company's cloning work
will be done at its new lab in Madison, Wis.
Commercial interests already are cloning prized cattle for about $20,000
each, and scientists have cloned mice, rabbits, goats, pigs, horses - and
even the endangered banteng, a wild bull that is found mostly in Indonesia.
Several research teams around the world, meanwhile, are racing to create
the first cloned monkey.
Aside from human cloning, which has been achieved only at the microscopic
embryo stage, no cloning project has fueled more debate than the marketing
plans of Genetic Savings and Clone.
"It's morally problematic and a little reprehensible," said David Magnus,
co-director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics at Stanford University.
"For $50,000, she could have provided homes for a lot of strays."
Animals rights activists complain that new feline production systems aren't
needed because thousands of stray cats are euthanized each year for want of
homes.
Lou Hawthorne, Genetic Savings and Clone's chief executive, said his
company purchases thousands of ovaries from spay clinics across the
country. It extracts the eggs, which are combined with the genetic
material from the animals to be cloned.
Critics also complain that the technology is available only to the wealthy,
that using it to create house pets is frivolous and that customers grieving
over lost pets have unrealistic expectations of what they're buying.
In fact, the first cat cloned in 2001 had a different coat from its genetic
donor, underscoring that environment and other biological variables make it
impossible to exactly duplicate animals.
"The thing that many people do not realize is that the cloned cat is not
the same as the original," said Bonnie Beaver, a Texas A&M animal
behaviorist who heads the American Veterinary Medical Association, which
has no position on the issue. "It has a different personality. It has
different life experiences. They want Fluffy, but it's not Fluffy."
Scientists also warn that cloned animals suffer from more health problems
than their traditionally bred peers and that cloning is still a very
inexact science. It takes many gruesome failures to produce just a single
clone. Genetic Savings and Clone said its new cloning technique, developed
by animal cloning pioneer James Robl has improved survival rates, health
and appearance. The new technique seeks to condense and transfer only the
donor's genetic material to a surrogate's egg instead of an entire cell
nucleus.
Between 15 percent and 45 percent of cloned cats born alive die within the
first 30 days, Hawthorne said. But he said that range is consistent with
natural births, depending on the breed of cat.
Austin, Texas-based ViaGen Inc., which has cloned hundreds of cows, pigs
and goats, also is experimenting with the new cloning technique.
"The jury is still out, but the research shows it to be promising," company
president Sara Davis said. "The technology is improving all the time."
Genetic Savings and Clone has been behind the creation of at least five
cats since 2001, including the first one created.
It hopes to deliver as many as five more clones to customers who have paid
the company's $50,000 fee. By the end of next year, it hopes to have cloned
as many as 50 cats.
The company has yet to turn a profit.
It's not a scientific theory, but is natural theology. That is an
entirely honourable status; why Dembski denies it I can't discern.
On the other hand, the "unconstitutional" line is utter crap. To
teach IDT or anything of the sort does not tend to *establish* any religion
in the USA, which is what's prohibited by the USA constitution.
R
Why It's Unconstitutional to Teach "Intelligent Design" in the Public
Schools, as an Alternative to Evolution
By MICHAEL C. DORF
Wednesday, Dec. 22, 2004
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dorf/20041222.html
Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union sued the Dover,
Pennsylvania School Board. The ACLU argues that the School Board
violated the Constitution's Establishment Clause by mandating that
students in public school biology classes be taught the theory of
"intelligent design" as an alternative to evolution.
Proponents of intelligent design--which is closely related to what is
sometimes called "creationism"--point to gaps in the fossil record and
other uncertainties to argue that evolution by natural selection cannot
explain the emergence of new species. They contend instead that an
intelligent agent must have been guiding the course of life on Earth.
Evolution opponents have recently scored political victories outside
Dover, Pennsylvania as well. In Cobb County, Georgia, public school
textbooks discussing evolution must now contain a disclaimer warning
that evolution is "a theory, not a fact." That policy, too, is the
subject of pending litigation.
And the November election returns in Kansas have given critics of
evolution a majority on that state's school board. It is only a matter
of time until Kansas mandates the teaching of alternatives to evolution.
Yet Supreme Court precedent holds that state-sponsored attacks on
evolution in the public schools are unconstitutional. Why, then, are
evolution opponents in Dover, Cobb County and Kansas, trying to change
curricula? Aren't these efforts doomed to fail once they are challenged
in court? Are the evolution opponents engaging in mere symbolic protest?
The surprising answer is: Perhaps not. That is because the leading
Supreme Court decision, in the 1987 case of Edwards v. Aguillard,
contains an apparent loophole that evolution's critics may hope to
exploit.
Aguillard appears to rest on the Justices' finding that the proponents
of theories like intelligent design were subjectively motivated by
religion. Accordingly, by keeping their religious motivation secret,
proponents of the policies in Dover, Cobb County, and elsewhere may hope
to evade the Aguillard decision.
However, as I argue below, this evasion should not succeed. Instead, the
First Amendment should be construed to bar the mandatory teaching of
intelligent design regardless of the purposes expressed by those
imposing the mandate.
The Aguillard Decision: Barring Teaching of Creation Science in Public
Schools
In the Dover case, the ACLU contends that the "intelligent agent" in
intelligent design theory is simply God in disguise, and that the Dover
policy therefore amounts to an unconstitutional establishment of
religion. At first blush, the Supreme Court's Aguillard decision would
appear to support the ACLU's position.
In Aguillard, the high court invalidated a Louisiana law that forbade
the teaching of evolution in public school unless "creation science" was
taught alongside it as an alternative. There, as in Dover, the law made
no express reference to God or to any religion. Yet the Justices
nonetheless found that its purpose "was to restructure the science
curriculum to conform with a particular religious viewpoint."
How did the Court know that was the purpose of the Louisiana law?
Justice Brennan's opinion looked at two sorts of evidence. First, and
unproblematically, it examined the law's actual requirements, to show
that the law did not further "academic freedom," as the law itself
stated it was meant to do.
Nothing in Louisiana law had previously barred critical analysis of
evolution, the Court observed, and so the actual impact of the law was
to narrow, rather than broaden, the curriculum.
But the Court went beyond the objective evidence of what the Louisiana
law did, invoking its legislative history as further proof that it was
impermissibly designed to advance religion. In particular, Justice
Brennan's opinion focused attention on the expressed views of the law's
principal sponsor.
The Potential Loophole in Aguillard: The Role of Subjective Motive
Justice Scalia, joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist, dissented from the
Aguillard ruling. These Justices took special exception to the
majority's reliance on evidence of the subjective motives of the
legislators who enacted the Louisiana law. In their view, the "purpose"
of the Louisiana legislature in enacting the challenged law was
necessarily a fiction--a composite of the multiple and mixed motives of
the many people composing the legislature.
Justice Scalia's seemingly categorical criticism of any constitutional
inquiry into subjective purpose was somewhat overstated. There are other
areas of the law in which even Justice Scalia himself accepts that
subjective legislative purpose holds the key to a law's
constitutionality. For example, under the Court's Equal Protection
doctrine, a law that has a disproportionate negative impact on a racial
group will be held invalid if, but only if, the law was adopted for the
subjective purpose of disadvantaging members of the racial group. To my
knowledge, neither Justice Scalia nor Chief Justice Rehnquist has
disavowed or even criticized this principle.
Nonetheless, the broader point of Justice Scalia's Aguillard dissent is
valid. Legislative purpose is something that courts construct, rather
than simply find.
Furthermore, clever legislators can readily evade a constitutional rule
that depends on finding evidence of an illicit purpose. The legislators
merely need to watch what they say in favor of the bill, expressly
relying only on permissible factors.
Whether the members of the Dover School Board were sufficiently
disciplined to survive scrutiny of their motives remains to be seen. But
the broader lesson that foes of evolution should take from Aguillard is
clear: Strictly avoid any reference to religion in your arguments for
the laws you seek to enact, even if you secretly favor these laws on
religious grounds.
How to Close the Aguillard Loophole
Nonetheless, if Aguillard is interpreted sensibly, even such a strategy
of referring only to secular arguments should fail. After all, Justice
Brennan's opinion in Aguillard does not state that the Louisiana law
would have been valid if only its sponsor had not slipped in
acknowledging a religious motive.
Indeed, as Justice Scalia noted, the law's sponsor "repeatedly and
vehemently denied that his purpose was to advance a particular religious
doctrine." The sponsor's statements quoted by Justice Brennan merely
showed that his true aim was not to increase the diversity of biological
viewpoints taught in the Louisiana schools.
Thus, the better reading of the Aguillard opinion makes the
constitutionality of a law challenged on Establishment Clause grounds
depend on its objective purpose--the purpose or purposes that a
reasonable person would attribute to the legislature, in light of what
the law actually requires. Justice Brennan's opinion saw through the
sponsor's stated aim, to his true aim. In the Dover case and other
litigation involving intelligent design, the courts ought to be able to
do the same.
Discerning the Objective Purpose of the Dover Policy: Why it Matters
Whether Intelligent Design is a Scientific Theory
But how should courts go about attributing a purpose to the proponents
of laws mandating the teaching of intelligent design? The obvious answer
is to ask whether intelligent design is a valid scientific theory.
To be clear, there is no general constitutional requirement that public
school students be taught the truth. For example, suppose a school board
mandates that high school American history courses emphasize inspiring
moments from our past--entirely omitting the shameful treatment of
Native Americans, the enslavement of millions of African Americans, and
the internment of Japanese Americans. Certainly, the school board would
thereby do its students and the community a disservice, but it would not
violate any provision of the Constitution with its highly selective
history classes.
Nor is science, or even evolution, different. In the old Soviet Union,
children were taught Lamarck's view that acquired characteristics are
inherited by the next generation--long after that view, as a matter of
science, had been discredited. Why? For a political reason: That
biological theory fit nicely with Communist ideology about the
malleability of man and the natural world. Suppose, for whatever reason,
that a contemporary American school board wished to handicap its
students by teaching them Lamarckian rather than Darwinian evolution.
The Constitution would be no obstacle to such a foolish policy.
But given the social reality, "intelligent design" is different. It is
an allegedly scientific theory that bears a striking resemblance to
religious views. When the government mandates that students be taught
such a theory, courts are rightly suspicious.
At that point, a court should ask whether intelligent design is, in
fact, a scientific theory at all. It should do so, not because of any
general obligation on the part of schools to teach science correctly,
but simply because if intelligent design is not science, then the
inference is almost inescapable that the state is impermissibly acting
for the purpose of fostering a religious viewpoint.
Is Intelligent Design a Scientific Theory?
Thus we come to the crucial question: Is intelligent design a scientific
theory? If by intelligent design, one means the Biblical account of
God's creation of the world in six days, the answer is clearly no.
Science is based on empirical observation rather than acceptance of
divinely revealed truth.
However, most versions of intelligent design offered as alternatives to
Darwinian evolution do not insist on the literal truth of the book of
Genesis. Rather, they contend that gaps in evolutionary theory can only
be plugged by the assumption that an intelligent agent has guided the
development of life on Earth.
Some proponents of intelligent design do raise real objections to
current understandings of Darwinian evolution. Based on my own reading
of the intelligent design literature, it appears that its two strongest
arguments point to the general absence of intermediate forms in the
fossil record, and to unanswered questions about how certain new,
complex patterns of animal bodies could have arisen through random
mutation and natural selection.
Nonetheless, for two reasons, it appears that intelligent design is not
a scientific theory.
The First Reason Intelligent Design Is Not a Scientific Theory:
Conflating Uncertainty with Error
First, insofar as it offers itself as a critique of standard Darwinian
evolution, intelligent design cherry-picks uncertainties at the edge of
our knowledge, and asserts that these undermine our core understandings.
But the fact that some phenomena remain unexplained by natural selection
hardly shows that natural selection--which provides a powerful
organizing principle for vast swaths of biological data--will not
eventually provide the best account of these phenomena.
Consider an analogy. Our best current understanding of gravity remains
mysterious because the most ambitious efforts to unify gravity with
other forces in the universe--comprising so-called superstring theories
or M-theory--have not been empirically tested. Yet that hardly calls
into question the principal analytical tools of modern physics.
If the intelligent designers were to apply the same criticisms to
physics that they apply to evolution, they would have to say that
gravity, too, is "just a theory." However, the fact of Darwinian
evolution is as real as the fact of gravity. To be sure, our
understanding of each phenomenon is incomplete, but the scientific
approach to plugging gaps in our knowledge is not to create a
new-anti-theory that dismisses the underlying phenomenon.
The Second Reason Intelligent Design Is Not a Scientific Theory: It
Isn't an Explanation
The second problem with intelligent design is even more fundamental: It
does not actually explain anything.
Darwinian evolution by natural selection posits a mechanism that
explains how species change over time: As environmental conditions
change, individual members of a species with traits suited to the new
environment survive and reproduce in greater numbers than those lacking
the traits. And so, over time, and aided by randomly occurring
occasionally adaptive mutations, the species evolves to adapt to the new
conditions.
By contrast, what does it mean to say that species arise or change
through "intelligent design?" Certainly the term connotes intervention
by some intelligent agent. But are the intelligent agent's interventions
themselves subject to the laws of the natural world, or are they
supernatural?
Even if one is prepared to accept the possibility that science could,
without sacrificing its essential premises, include accounts of
supernatural phenomena, the concept of "intelligent design," standing
alone, is simply a label, not an account.
To press the physics analogy, in classical mechanics, Newton's law of
gravity--according to which the attraction between two bodies increases
in proportion to the product of their masses and decreases in proportion
to the square of their distance--was for many years viewed as
problematic, because it described action at a distance. Scientists
wondered: How did distant celestial bodies transmit their masses and
positions to one another across space, such that they moved
instantaneously in reaction?
To a substantial extent, Einstein's theory of general relativity solved
the action-at-a-distance puzzle, but suppose that prior to Einstein
someone had proposed that gravity worked through the operation of an
"intelligent agent." It would have been a perfectly valid objection to
this proposal that it isn't an explanation at all, but merely a
restatement of the problem. For now, we must ask how the intelligent
agent accomplishes action at a distance.
In both biology and physics, in other words, supernatural phenomena may
be conceivable. But for an account of such phenomena to qualify as
science, it must do more than simply posit an intervention from outside
the ordinary natural order. It must also explain how the intervening
agent interacts with the natural world. Otherwise, it is simply an
article of faith rather than a scientific explanation.
Will Courts Have the Confidence to Declare That Intelligent Design is
Not Science?
Accordingly, absent either radical changes in nearly everything we know
about biology, or a wholesale reformulation of the tenets of intelligent
design, the latter should not be deemed a legitimate scientific theory.
And if intelligent design is not science, then it follows that the
objective purpose of those who would have it taught alongside evolution
in the public schools is to advance a religious view.
Nonetheless, I worry that courts may lack the confidence to declare the
mandatory teaching of intelligent design in public schools
unconstitutional on the grounds that it is unscientific. As lawyers,
most judges lack any serious training in science, and thus may not be
comfortable saying what is, and what is not, science.
But the alternative suggested by the Aguillard opinion--of relying
simply on the subjective purpose of those who mandate the teaching of
so-called alternatives to evolution--is far worse. For while judges can
learn enough science to distinguish the real from the fake, they can
only ever guess at what legislators are thinking.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael C. Dorf is the Michael I. Sovern Professor of Law at Columbia
University in New York City. His book, Constitutional Law Stories, is
published by Foundation Press, and tells the stories behind fifteen
leading constitutional cases.
entirely honourable status; why Dembski denies it I can't discern.
On the other hand, the "unconstitutional" line is utter crap. To
teach IDT or anything of the sort does not tend to *establish* any religion
in the USA, which is what's prohibited by the USA constitution.
R
Why It's Unconstitutional to Teach "Intelligent Design" in the Public
Schools, as an Alternative to Evolution
By MICHAEL C. DORF
Wednesday, Dec. 22, 2004
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dorf/20041222.html
Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union sued the Dover,
Pennsylvania School Board. The ACLU argues that the School Board
violated the Constitution's Establishment Clause by mandating that
students in public school biology classes be taught the theory of
"intelligent design" as an alternative to evolution.
Proponents of intelligent design--which is closely related to what is
sometimes called "creationism"--point to gaps in the fossil record and
other uncertainties to argue that evolution by natural selection cannot
explain the emergence of new species. They contend instead that an
intelligent agent must have been guiding the course of life on Earth.
Evolution opponents have recently scored political victories outside
Dover, Pennsylvania as well. In Cobb County, Georgia, public school
textbooks discussing evolution must now contain a disclaimer warning
that evolution is "a theory, not a fact." That policy, too, is the
subject of pending litigation.
And the November election returns in Kansas have given critics of
evolution a majority on that state's school board. It is only a matter
of time until Kansas mandates the teaching of alternatives to evolution.
Yet Supreme Court precedent holds that state-sponsored attacks on
evolution in the public schools are unconstitutional. Why, then, are
evolution opponents in Dover, Cobb County and Kansas, trying to change
curricula? Aren't these efforts doomed to fail once they are challenged
in court? Are the evolution opponents engaging in mere symbolic protest?
The surprising answer is: Perhaps not. That is because the leading
Supreme Court decision, in the 1987 case of Edwards v. Aguillard,
contains an apparent loophole that evolution's critics may hope to
exploit.
Aguillard appears to rest on the Justices' finding that the proponents
of theories like intelligent design were subjectively motivated by
religion. Accordingly, by keeping their religious motivation secret,
proponents of the policies in Dover, Cobb County, and elsewhere may hope
to evade the Aguillard decision.
However, as I argue below, this evasion should not succeed. Instead, the
First Amendment should be construed to bar the mandatory teaching of
intelligent design regardless of the purposes expressed by those
imposing the mandate.
The Aguillard Decision: Barring Teaching of Creation Science in Public
Schools
In the Dover case, the ACLU contends that the "intelligent agent" in
intelligent design theory is simply God in disguise, and that the Dover
policy therefore amounts to an unconstitutional establishment of
religion. At first blush, the Supreme Court's Aguillard decision would
appear to support the ACLU's position.
In Aguillard, the high court invalidated a Louisiana law that forbade
the teaching of evolution in public school unless "creation science" was
taught alongside it as an alternative. There, as in Dover, the law made
no express reference to God or to any religion. Yet the Justices
nonetheless found that its purpose "was to restructure the science
curriculum to conform with a particular religious viewpoint."
How did the Court know that was the purpose of the Louisiana law?
Justice Brennan's opinion looked at two sorts of evidence. First, and
unproblematically, it examined the law's actual requirements, to show
that the law did not further "academic freedom," as the law itself
stated it was meant to do.
Nothing in Louisiana law had previously barred critical analysis of
evolution, the Court observed, and so the actual impact of the law was
to narrow, rather than broaden, the curriculum.
But the Court went beyond the objective evidence of what the Louisiana
law did, invoking its legislative history as further proof that it was
impermissibly designed to advance religion. In particular, Justice
Brennan's opinion focused attention on the expressed views of the law's
principal sponsor.
The Potential Loophole in Aguillard: The Role of Subjective Motive
Justice Scalia, joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist, dissented from the
Aguillard ruling. These Justices took special exception to the
majority's reliance on evidence of the subjective motives of the
legislators who enacted the Louisiana law. In their view, the "purpose"
of the Louisiana legislature in enacting the challenged law was
necessarily a fiction--a composite of the multiple and mixed motives of
the many people composing the legislature.
Justice Scalia's seemingly categorical criticism of any constitutional
inquiry into subjective purpose was somewhat overstated. There are other
areas of the law in which even Justice Scalia himself accepts that
subjective legislative purpose holds the key to a law's
constitutionality. For example, under the Court's Equal Protection
doctrine, a law that has a disproportionate negative impact on a racial
group will be held invalid if, but only if, the law was adopted for the
subjective purpose of disadvantaging members of the racial group. To my
knowledge, neither Justice Scalia nor Chief Justice Rehnquist has
disavowed or even criticized this principle.
Nonetheless, the broader point of Justice Scalia's Aguillard dissent is
valid. Legislative purpose is something that courts construct, rather
than simply find.
Furthermore, clever legislators can readily evade a constitutional rule
that depends on finding evidence of an illicit purpose. The legislators
merely need to watch what they say in favor of the bill, expressly
relying only on permissible factors.
Whether the members of the Dover School Board were sufficiently
disciplined to survive scrutiny of their motives remains to be seen. But
the broader lesson that foes of evolution should take from Aguillard is
clear: Strictly avoid any reference to religion in your arguments for
the laws you seek to enact, even if you secretly favor these laws on
religious grounds.
How to Close the Aguillard Loophole
Nonetheless, if Aguillard is interpreted sensibly, even such a strategy
of referring only to secular arguments should fail. After all, Justice
Brennan's opinion in Aguillard does not state that the Louisiana law
would have been valid if only its sponsor had not slipped in
acknowledging a religious motive.
Indeed, as Justice Scalia noted, the law's sponsor "repeatedly and
vehemently denied that his purpose was to advance a particular religious
doctrine." The sponsor's statements quoted by Justice Brennan merely
showed that his true aim was not to increase the diversity of biological
viewpoints taught in the Louisiana schools.
Thus, the better reading of the Aguillard opinion makes the
constitutionality of a law challenged on Establishment Clause grounds
depend on its objective purpose--the purpose or purposes that a
reasonable person would attribute to the legislature, in light of what
the law actually requires. Justice Brennan's opinion saw through the
sponsor's stated aim, to his true aim. In the Dover case and other
litigation involving intelligent design, the courts ought to be able to
do the same.
Discerning the Objective Purpose of the Dover Policy: Why it Matters
Whether Intelligent Design is a Scientific Theory
But how should courts go about attributing a purpose to the proponents
of laws mandating the teaching of intelligent design? The obvious answer
is to ask whether intelligent design is a valid scientific theory.
To be clear, there is no general constitutional requirement that public
school students be taught the truth. For example, suppose a school board
mandates that high school American history courses emphasize inspiring
moments from our past--entirely omitting the shameful treatment of
Native Americans, the enslavement of millions of African Americans, and
the internment of Japanese Americans. Certainly, the school board would
thereby do its students and the community a disservice, but it would not
violate any provision of the Constitution with its highly selective
history classes.
Nor is science, or even evolution, different. In the old Soviet Union,
children were taught Lamarck's view that acquired characteristics are
inherited by the next generation--long after that view, as a matter of
science, had been discredited. Why? For a political reason: That
biological theory fit nicely with Communist ideology about the
malleability of man and the natural world. Suppose, for whatever reason,
that a contemporary American school board wished to handicap its
students by teaching them Lamarckian rather than Darwinian evolution.
The Constitution would be no obstacle to such a foolish policy.
But given the social reality, "intelligent design" is different. It is
an allegedly scientific theory that bears a striking resemblance to
religious views. When the government mandates that students be taught
such a theory, courts are rightly suspicious.
At that point, a court should ask whether intelligent design is, in
fact, a scientific theory at all. It should do so, not because of any
general obligation on the part of schools to teach science correctly,
but simply because if intelligent design is not science, then the
inference is almost inescapable that the state is impermissibly acting
for the purpose of fostering a religious viewpoint.
Is Intelligent Design a Scientific Theory?
Thus we come to the crucial question: Is intelligent design a scientific
theory? If by intelligent design, one means the Biblical account of
God's creation of the world in six days, the answer is clearly no.
Science is based on empirical observation rather than acceptance of
divinely revealed truth.
However, most versions of intelligent design offered as alternatives to
Darwinian evolution do not insist on the literal truth of the book of
Genesis. Rather, they contend that gaps in evolutionary theory can only
be plugged by the assumption that an intelligent agent has guided the
development of life on Earth.
Some proponents of intelligent design do raise real objections to
current understandings of Darwinian evolution. Based on my own reading
of the intelligent design literature, it appears that its two strongest
arguments point to the general absence of intermediate forms in the
fossil record, and to unanswered questions about how certain new,
complex patterns of animal bodies could have arisen through random
mutation and natural selection.
Nonetheless, for two reasons, it appears that intelligent design is not
a scientific theory.
The First Reason Intelligent Design Is Not a Scientific Theory:
Conflating Uncertainty with Error
First, insofar as it offers itself as a critique of standard Darwinian
evolution, intelligent design cherry-picks uncertainties at the edge of
our knowledge, and asserts that these undermine our core understandings.
But the fact that some phenomena remain unexplained by natural selection
hardly shows that natural selection--which provides a powerful
organizing principle for vast swaths of biological data--will not
eventually provide the best account of these phenomena.
Consider an analogy. Our best current understanding of gravity remains
mysterious because the most ambitious efforts to unify gravity with
other forces in the universe--comprising so-called superstring theories
or M-theory--have not been empirically tested. Yet that hardly calls
into question the principal analytical tools of modern physics.
If the intelligent designers were to apply the same criticisms to
physics that they apply to evolution, they would have to say that
gravity, too, is "just a theory." However, the fact of Darwinian
evolution is as real as the fact of gravity. To be sure, our
understanding of each phenomenon is incomplete, but the scientific
approach to plugging gaps in our knowledge is not to create a
new-anti-theory that dismisses the underlying phenomenon.
The Second Reason Intelligent Design Is Not a Scientific Theory: It
Isn't an Explanation
The second problem with intelligent design is even more fundamental: It
does not actually explain anything.
Darwinian evolution by natural selection posits a mechanism that
explains how species change over time: As environmental conditions
change, individual members of a species with traits suited to the new
environment survive and reproduce in greater numbers than those lacking
the traits. And so, over time, and aided by randomly occurring
occasionally adaptive mutations, the species evolves to adapt to the new
conditions.
By contrast, what does it mean to say that species arise or change
through "intelligent design?" Certainly the term connotes intervention
by some intelligent agent. But are the intelligent agent's interventions
themselves subject to the laws of the natural world, or are they
supernatural?
Even if one is prepared to accept the possibility that science could,
without sacrificing its essential premises, include accounts of
supernatural phenomena, the concept of "intelligent design," standing
alone, is simply a label, not an account.
To press the physics analogy, in classical mechanics, Newton's law of
gravity--according to which the attraction between two bodies increases
in proportion to the product of their masses and decreases in proportion
to the square of their distance--was for many years viewed as
problematic, because it described action at a distance. Scientists
wondered: How did distant celestial bodies transmit their masses and
positions to one another across space, such that they moved
instantaneously in reaction?
To a substantial extent, Einstein's theory of general relativity solved
the action-at-a-distance puzzle, but suppose that prior to Einstein
someone had proposed that gravity worked through the operation of an
"intelligent agent." It would have been a perfectly valid objection to
this proposal that it isn't an explanation at all, but merely a
restatement of the problem. For now, we must ask how the intelligent
agent accomplishes action at a distance.
In both biology and physics, in other words, supernatural phenomena may
be conceivable. But for an account of such phenomena to qualify as
science, it must do more than simply posit an intervention from outside
the ordinary natural order. It must also explain how the intervening
agent interacts with the natural world. Otherwise, it is simply an
article of faith rather than a scientific explanation.
Will Courts Have the Confidence to Declare That Intelligent Design is
Not Science?
Accordingly, absent either radical changes in nearly everything we know
about biology, or a wholesale reformulation of the tenets of intelligent
design, the latter should not be deemed a legitimate scientific theory.
And if intelligent design is not science, then it follows that the
objective purpose of those who would have it taught alongside evolution
in the public schools is to advance a religious view.
Nonetheless, I worry that courts may lack the confidence to declare the
mandatory teaching of intelligent design in public schools
unconstitutional on the grounds that it is unscientific. As lawyers,
most judges lack any serious training in science, and thus may not be
comfortable saying what is, and what is not, science.
But the alternative suggested by the Aguillard opinion--of relying
simply on the subjective purpose of those who mandate the teaching of
so-called alternatives to evolution--is far worse. For while judges can
learn enough science to distinguish the real from the fake, they can
only ever guess at what legislators are thinking.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael C. Dorf is the Michael I. Sovern Professor of Law at Columbia
University in New York City. His book, Constitutional Law Stories, is
published by Foundation Press, and tells the stories behind fifteen
leading constitutional cases.
"Stan Freberg Presents The United States of America"cv "Vol 1 - The Early
Years" and "Vol. 2 - The Middle Years" available as a CD from Rhino
Records Inc.
For those of us who can remember such things Freberg was a television
pioneer with a puppet show --- "Time For Beany" --- on Los Angeles' KTLA-TV
in the 1950's which usually drew an audience of both children --- for the
puppet animation --- and adults for the witty, often biting dialogue. Since
that time Freberg's versatility has been widely revered as a cartoon voice,
actor, on-screen film actor, singer, musician, author, and an advertising
genius.
His satirical songs --- "St. George and the Dragonet," "John and Marsha,"
"the Yellow Rose of Texas," "Wun'erful, Wun'erful," and "Green Chri$tmas$"
were all gleeful satirical numbers in an age when satire was suspect, if
not subversive and un-American.
In 1961 he, backed by an all-star cast of character actors and actresses
and the musical arranger and conductor Billy May, released along with
Capitol Records Vol. 1 his "History of the United States of America" which
contained tracts that included "Columbus Discovers America," "The
Thanksgiving Story (Under the Double Turkey)," "The Sale of Manhattan,"
"The Boston Tea Party," "Washington Crosses the Delaware (Command
Decision)," "The Battle of Yorktown" among others and this writer's
personal favorite "A Man Can't Be Too Careful What He Signs These Days."
. . . . Jefferson: Well I've got this petition I've been circulating
around the neighborhood and kinda thought you'd like to sign it. It's
called the Declaration of Independence.
Franklin: Yes, I've heard about that, sounds a little suspect to me, if you
ask me.
Jefferson: What do you mean suspect?
Franklin: Well, you're advocating the overthrow of the British government
by force and violence, aren't yea?
Jefferson: Well yea, yea, but we've had it with that royal jazz.
Franklin: Whose we?
Jefferson: All the guys!
Franklin: Whose all the guys?
Jefferson: George, Jim Madison, Alex Hamilton, Johnny Adams, you know all
the guys.
Franklin: Ha, the lunatic fringe!
Jefferson: Oh, they are not
Franklin: A bunch of wild-eyed radicals, professional liberals, don't kid me!
Jefferson: You call George Washington a wild eyed radical?
Franklin: Washington, I don't see his name on there
Jefferson: No, but he promised to sign it
Franklin: Ooooooh yea !!! that's George for ya, talks up a storm with those
wooden teeth, can't shut him up, but when it comes to putting the name on
the ol' parchmentoroni, try to find him . . . ."
As a former high school civics teacher I can testify to the fact, as many
such teachers also wrote Freberg --- who flunked history in high school due
to the sheer boredom of the class --- students both welcomed and enjoyed
this unique approach to American history.
It was not until 1996 that Vol 2 was released, the 35 year gap due to what
Freberg attributes to "national security issues." Among its tracts, which
takes the listener from the Revolutionary War to the end of World War I,
are: "Madison, Jefferson, Franklin & Osbourne: The First Advertising
Agency," "Abe Lincoln in Analysis," "The Appomattox Courthouse Bar and
Grill," and "Henry Ford Invents Detroit" among others.
Years" and "Vol. 2 - The Middle Years" available as a CD from Rhino
Records Inc.
For those of us who can remember such things Freberg was a television
pioneer with a puppet show --- "Time For Beany" --- on Los Angeles' KTLA-TV
in the 1950's which usually drew an audience of both children --- for the
puppet animation --- and adults for the witty, often biting dialogue. Since
that time Freberg's versatility has been widely revered as a cartoon voice,
actor, on-screen film actor, singer, musician, author, and an advertising
genius.
His satirical songs --- "St. George and the Dragonet," "John and Marsha,"
"the Yellow Rose of Texas," "Wun'erful, Wun'erful," and "Green Chri$tmas$"
were all gleeful satirical numbers in an age when satire was suspect, if
not subversive and un-American.
In 1961 he, backed by an all-star cast of character actors and actresses
and the musical arranger and conductor Billy May, released along with
Capitol Records Vol. 1 his "History of the United States of America" which
contained tracts that included "Columbus Discovers America," "The
Thanksgiving Story (Under the Double Turkey)," "The Sale of Manhattan,"
"The Boston Tea Party," "Washington Crosses the Delaware (Command
Decision)," "The Battle of Yorktown" among others and this writer's
personal favorite "A Man Can't Be Too Careful What He Signs These Days."
. . . . Jefferson: Well I've got this petition I've been circulating
around the neighborhood and kinda thought you'd like to sign it. It's
called the Declaration of Independence.
Franklin: Yes, I've heard about that, sounds a little suspect to me, if you
ask me.
Jefferson: What do you mean suspect?
Franklin: Well, you're advocating the overthrow of the British government
by force and violence, aren't yea?
Jefferson: Well yea, yea, but we've had it with that royal jazz.
Franklin: Whose we?
Jefferson: All the guys!
Franklin: Whose all the guys?
Jefferson: George, Jim Madison, Alex Hamilton, Johnny Adams, you know all
the guys.
Franklin: Ha, the lunatic fringe!
Jefferson: Oh, they are not
Franklin: A bunch of wild-eyed radicals, professional liberals, don't kid me!
Jefferson: You call George Washington a wild eyed radical?
Franklin: Washington, I don't see his name on there
Jefferson: No, but he promised to sign it
Franklin: Ooooooh yea !!! that's George for ya, talks up a storm with those
wooden teeth, can't shut him up, but when it comes to putting the name on
the ol' parchmentoroni, try to find him . . . ."
As a former high school civics teacher I can testify to the fact, as many
such teachers also wrote Freberg --- who flunked history in high school due
to the sheer boredom of the class --- students both welcomed and enjoyed
this unique approach to American history.
It was not until 1996 that Vol 2 was released, the 35 year gap due to what
Freberg attributes to "national security issues." Among its tracts, which
takes the listener from the Revolutionary War to the end of World War I,
are: "Madison, Jefferson, Franklin & Osbourne: The First Advertising
Agency," "Abe Lincoln in Analysis," "The Appomattox Courthouse Bar and
Grill," and "Henry Ford Invents Detroit" among others.
12/25/04
Its length notwithstanding, I make bold to send widely this essay
which I rank v highly.
Young has fallen victim to some confusions about Aristotle's 4
Causes, but at least he acknowledges their importance whereas Dawkins,
Wolpert, S Weinberg etc ignore them. Top Kiwi biologist J E Morton got
them straight 3 decade ago, I reckon (see attached).
Particularly impressive is Young's list (1/5 down) of phoney
dichotomies.
R
SCIENCE AND THE HUMANITIES
IN THE UNDERSTANDING OF HUMAN NATURE
by Robert M. Young
Inaugural Lecture as Professor of Psychotherapy and Psychoanalytic
Studies, Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies, University of Sheffield,
25 May 2000.
It is an odd sensation giving an inaugural lecture four months
before one's retirement. One consequence is that insofar as such
lectures are promissory notes I trust you will agree that it would be
prudent not promise to achieve much in the remainder of my tenure.
Fortunately there are other purposes for such occasions. One is meant
to stand back and take stock of something and locate one's place within
a research tradition. Since I am so near the retiring age, I feel I
have a special license. I can say more or less what I like. Not that
what I have to say is particularly rude or retaliatory, but it does
involve some plain speaking. Here is an example. The relationship
between science and the humanities is in an awful mess, and if we don't
sort it out the role of the universities in husbanding and enhancing
human civility will probably wither away. Something similar is true of
the wider culture.
I have held important positions in three universities and have had major
access to several media, in particular, publishing, television and radio.
Throughout the nearly forty years I have been so placed, things have got
more or less steadily worse, and the people in charge have, on the whole,
accelerated that process.
Our scientists do not learn enough in their education and training about
the humanities, in particular, about the moral, political and
ideological forces and issues from which their work emerges and into
which it feeds. As C. P. Snow rightly observed in his memorable lecture
on 'The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution', our arts people
know even less about science and technology and are by turns sneering
and culpably diffident. The people who try their damndest to mediate
between the sciences and the humanities get sniped at and undermined
from both sides. That is the space within which I have conducted my
academic career. It's a case of something approaching killing the
messenger.
I have had extensive education on both sides of this stupid divide.
That has given me some interesting vantage points, and I have been
present for some serious complacency. When I was in medical school I
recall a professor beginning a lecture on cardiac dynamics with the
remark, 'Before we get serious, let's have some history'. I have seen
the eminent English don, F. R. Leavis, snarl at scientists, and I have
been present when Watson, Crick, Brenner, Dawkins and Wolpert have
haughtily said genuinely philistine things about philosophy, religion,
social science and morality.
Now to my title. All of its key terms are problematic and fiercely
debated. As to the first, the world view and boundaries of science are
much disputed and are idealised and despised in different quarters.
Learned scientific societies and promoters of the discipline calling
itself 'the public understanding of science' assure us that there's
nothing more exemplary of humanity's highest aspirations and
achievements, while people who mount critiques of scientific and
technological rationality claim that for all the achievements of
science, technology and medicine, the world view underlying them is
alienated and alienating and is leading to serious pollution, premature
deployment of new developments, e.g., in pharmaceuticals and GM crops,
and in debasement of the labour process, a subject upon which I have
dwelt in several papers. The extension of the methods and assumptions
of science beyond rather strictly drawn boundaries is called
'scientism', and it underpins reckless avoidance of the political and
moral debates which should be part and parcel of scientific work at
every stage from hunch to formulation and from funding to application.
Scientists fiercely fight against what they consider to be the
intrusion of politics and ideology into their putatively value-neutral
and objective research, but the values are there, albeit often
implicit. They do so with consequences which are often disastrous. I
will return to some of the baleful consequences of the claimed
separation of facts from values. My own position is that science,
technology and medicine -- far from being value-neutral -- are the
embodiment of values in theories, things and therapies, in facts and
artifacts, in procedures and programs. I also believe that all facts
are theory-laden, all theories are value-laden and all values occur
within an ideology or world view.
The humanities, my second key term, are conventionally set over
against science in the prevailing world view and in the choices our
children face at alarmingly young ages. I would welcome some
comparative data on this matter, one which bears fundamentally on
whether we can integrate our debates about values with our scientific
and technical developments. The traditional definition of the
humanities in Renaissance humanism included grammar, rhetoric, history,
literature and moral philosophy. The rebirth which constituted the
renaissance was a rediscovery of ancient Greek and Latin texts, the
study of which was opposed to sterile mediaeval scholasticism. Our list
of subjects in the humanities would be longer, reflecting the growth of
disciplines in the 19 th and 20th centuries. As late as the mid-19th
century one could only study mathematics, classics or divinity at
Oxford and Cambridge. Universities such as this one -- so-called
redbrick universities -- were created to broaden the base of university
education to include the sciences and, above all, technology.
Technological education has, relatively speaking, eschewed the arts
cultivated by the leisured class, while technology has become more
central to our lives in successive waves. Along with these developments
the separation of the consideration of technological development from
moral, aesthetic, political and ideological determinations has become
increasingly problematic. This separation impoverishes those trained in
science, technology and medicine, and ignorance of the scientific and
technical side impoverishes those who study the humanities. It is a
disastrous and growing split.
The essence of the humanities is the exploration, husbanding and
conducting debates about values. That is central to literature, the
theatre, fine art, much of philosophy, cultural studies, history,
classical studies and much else. Our culture is riven. It is
characterised by sharp dichotomies, each and every one of which is a
false dichotomy, but our belief in them precludes unified deliberations
about the scientific and the moral. Here is my list of them:
humanities - science
society - science
culture - nature
qualitative - quantitative
value - fact
purpose - mechanism
subject - object
internal - external
secondary- primary (qualities)
thought - extension
mind - body
character - behaviour
I will not have time on this occasion to explore all of these, but
I will seek to undermine some of them.
To get to the bottom of the issue I will have to do what the
Renaissance humanists did and try to recover some ancient wisdom. The
separation of fact and value which we associate with modern science was
an innovation in the seventeenth century. The framework of explanation
which prevailed in ancient, mediaeval and Renaissance times was the
Aristotelian one in which causes or aitia (literally, the 'comings to
be' of things) always occurred in fours: the material, the efficient,
the formal and the final cause. If you did not come up with all four
causes you did not have an explanation. Most of them are familiar to
our modern scheme, because versions of them were carried over into the
paradigm of explanation of modern science. The material cause told you
out of what raw materials the effect came -- the matter. Our modern
concept of matter, including the periodic table of elements and of
fundamental particles, corresponds to this. The material cause of an
ordinary chair would be wood. The efficient cause is that which imparts
energy to it and would include intrinsic ideas of energy not altogether
unlike our own but also that which imparted change, in this case, the
carpenter. The formal cause was hugely important in the writings of
Plato and Aristotle, but we can only dwell on certain aspects -- what
type it was, where is sits in a classification. The chair partakes of
the form of 'chair-ness', but the formal cause can embrace architect's
plans, formal arrangements, structures, shapes, types, taxonomies.
There was a form for everything -- the good, the true, the beautiful,
for humankind, for dishonourableness, for dirt, for shit. As I say,
there were and still are huge debates about forms or types or concepts
-- where they come from and how we get them into our heads. People like
Locke, Piaget, Chomsky and, in psychoanalysis, Wilfred Bion, have
pondered such things. The fourth and last explanatory factor was the
purpose or use or aim and was called the final cause. The final cause
of a chair is to provide somewhere to sit.
As I said, three of the four Aristotelian causes found their way
into the explanatory paradigm of modern science, but the final cause or
purpose was considered not objective and was split off and relegated to
the mind of God and of people. It is not part of a scientific
explanation, at least not a reductionist or materialist explanation.
That's the official story at least, but it kept sneaking back in, for
example, in functional explanations in anatomy, physiology and
medicine, in evolutionary theory, in the functionalist tradition in the
human sciences which was based on biological analogies, e.g.,
structures, functions, organic analogies. But make no mistake, strictly
speaking, they had no place in the explanatory paradigm of materialist
science which allowed only matter, motion and number.
René Descartes, whose Discourse on Method was published in 1637 and
is often called the founding document of modern science, redefined the
basic furniture of reality. He divided the world into two sorts of
things -- extended substances and thinking substances. Extended
substances had extension, figure and motion and made up the world of
matter, while thinking substances were defined negatively as that which
does not pertain to matter, and their essence was will. We were left
with a world of minds and bodies ó since called Cartesian dualism. This
radical definition of reality was very useful for certain scientific
purposes, but it left a dreadful legacy of unsolved problems, for
example, how minds and bodies interact. Many, many philosophers have
lamented this split. One of my favourites is Alfred North Whitehead,
who wrote Science and the Modern World, in which he had this to say
about the modern world view:
The seventeenth century had finally produced a scheme of
scientific thought framed by mathematicians, for the use of
mathematicians. The enormous success of the scientific abstractions,
yielding on the one hand matter, on the other hand mind, perceiving,
suffering, reasoning, but not interfering, has foisted onto philosophy
the task of accepting them as the most concrete rendering of fact.
Thereby, modern philosophy has been ruined. It has oscillated
in a complex manner between three extremes. There are the dualists, who
accept matter and mind as on equal basis, and the two varieties of
monists, those who put mind inside matter, and those who put matter
inside mind. But this juggling with abstractions can never overcome the
inherent confusion introduced by the scientific scheme of the
seventeenth century (Whitehead, 1925, p. 70).
Edwin Arthur Burtt reflected on the consequences of this world view
for any attempt at understanding human nature.
...it does seem like strange perversity in these Newtonian
scientists to further their own conquests of external nature by loading
on mind everything refractory to exact mathematical handling and thus
rendering the latter still more difficult to study scientifically than
it had been before. Did it never cross their minds that sooner or later
people would appear who craved verifiable knowledge about mind in the
same way they craved it about physical events, and who might reasonably
curse their elder scientific brethren for buying easier success in
their own enter enterprise by throwing extra handicaps in the way of
their successors in social science? Apparently not; mind was to them a
convenient receptacle for the refuse, the chips and whittlings of
science, rather than a possible object of scientific knowledge (Burtt,
1932, pp. 318-19).
I have quoted the profound and searching critiques of Whitehead and
Burtt to indicate where we need to look for the metaphysical
foundations of the science-humanities split and the philosophical
defensiveness of the human sciences. This is particularly pertinent to
the restricted range of approaches to human nature adopted in most
psychology departments, a feature which disappoints and bewilders many
students. In a better world, for example, biography would be a
discipline taught in psychology curricula, not to mention
psychoanalysis.
Now we can begin to see why my research has had the trajectory it
has. I set out to find a scientific basis for the moral and
psychological issues which worried me as a young man. I thought I could
do so by understanding the theoretical basis for the sciences
underlying mental functions, i.e., brain physiology. That's why I
studied the history of cerebral localization. The natural
classification of the aspects of human nature would, I thought, be the
natural classification of the functions of the brain. But the brain
turned out not to speak its own classification. There are many overlays
of mental functioning -- primary sensory modalities, balance,
proprioception, higher mental functions, associations, emotional
functions, etc. The more you think about it, the more you realize that=20
you can ask the brain how it does anything; you can bring any overlay
to it. There are as many psychologies as there are -- what? -- as there
are views of human nature, as there are value systems, as there are
ideologies or world views.
I did not see that far at first. I asked myself where
classifications of mental functions came from. In research on cerebral
function in the early and mid-19th century they came from physiognomy
then phrenology, especially the work of Franz Joseph Gall, whom I
studied for a time. The next generation created an evolutionary
psychology inspired by Herbert Spencer, to whom Darwin deferred in
matters of psychology, then aphasia research, then John Hughlings
Jackson's clinical neurological studies of evolution and dissolution of
functions. Then Freud used them as a basis for his early work on
aphasia and then on hysteria and then the magnificent model of the mind
in Chapter VII of The Interpretation of Dreams, which brings us up to
1900. What I am trying to convey is that the context of brain research
turned out to be associationist psychology, clinical neurology and
evolutionary theory. The context of evolutionary theory was, in turn,
natural theology, uniformitarian geology and Malthusian population
theory. The context for these was debates about science, theology,
positivism and the theory of ideology in the nineteenth century. I
contend that to understand these matters we have to work with little or
no recognition of boundaries between science and the humanities. We
must go wherever the multidisciplinary history of ideas leads us.
I looked into all of these matters and wrote a history of ideas
about the functions of the brain, followed by a series of studies on
the 19th century debate on 'man's place in nature' (as it was then
called), which I published as Darwin's Metaphor: Nature's Place in
Victorian Culture. This research led in another direction in the
context of the ferment of the 1960s -- into the historiographic
traditions in thinking about Darwinism and the relationship between
science and ideology, a topic which had been debated since the school
of IdÈologie of Cabanis and Destutt de Tracy in Napoleonic France.
IdÈologie was a discipline first embraced than reviled by Napoleon. It
began life as the meta-discipline to which science was accountable. The
idÈologues' intellectual programme was 'to subject the ideas of science
to the science of ideas', something rather like metaphysics,
Aristotle's discipline which came after and was 'meta' to physics. But
when he fell out with this group, Napoleon gave the term a pejorative
connotation of polluted knowledge, one which it has largely retained.
It was that sense Marx and Engels invoked in their study of The German
Ideology, where, as in other places, they argued that the ruling ideas
of an age are the ideas of its ruling class, a proposition being
revived in the 1960s during the Vietnam War in the critique of the role
of the academy made by radical scholars. Along with other academic
disciplines, science was not being allowed to claim that it was above
the battle of contending ideologies. Scientific and technological and
medical rationality were seen as much as part of the problem as part of
the solution. This critique was led by the Frankfurt School of Critical
Theory, for example, Herbert Marcuse and J¸rgen Habermas, and it was
during this period that there was a movement for social responsibility
in science which attracted, among others, the Nobel laureate, Maurice
Wilkins. It also evoked a number of radical science periodicals, one of
which I edit. You may think I have strayed from my theme, but I believe
that I have been exemplifying ways in which the strict dichotomies I
listed above are problematic. I am suggesting that science is part of
culture, that how we see nature is, too, which is why the journal I
just mentioned is called Science as Culture and is based on the
assumption that research traditions cannot be reasonably claimed to be
set above the prevailing world view of the epoch. This is a radical
version of the research programme of the sociology of knowledge and is
known as social constructivism in science.
One particular manifestation of this point, an experimentum crucis,
has been a recurrent theme in my research. Darwin tells us in his
notebooks, his pencil sketch of 1842, his longer sketch of 1844, in On
the Origin of Species and other writings, in his letters and in his
autobiography that Malthus' population theory -- that populations
increase geometrically while food supply only grows arithmetically --
provided the key insight that led to his formulation of the theory of
evolution by natural selection. The gap between population growth and
resources created the pressure in the struggle for existence. I traced
this link with some care and gave a paper in Oxford entitled 'Malthus
and the Evolutionists: The Common Context of Biological and Social
Theory' (196. You would not believe the howls which came from
orthodox biologists. What I'd found meant that putatively pure biology,
the holy of holies of Darwin's mechanism for evolutionary change, the
foundation stone of modern biology, was in debt to, in bed with,
tainted social theory of an avowedly conservative kind. There has been
a running battle about this since I first wrote about it over thirty
years ago. I think it is now the consensus that my account has
prevailed. The scientific ideologues continue to hate it, though. I
take great pleasure in the integration of Malthusianism with Darwinism,
because I think history happens in that way. Assumptions about human
nature and society contribute fundamentally to approaches taken to
nature and living nature which are then extrapolated to account for
human nature and society. It was always so. Indeed, a number of studies
influenced by mine have made this point over a wide variety of
scientific disciplines. I think the best of all of them is the
magnificently detailed and meticulously written research of Donna
Haraway, whose magisterial volume Primate Visions: Gender, Race and
Nature in the World of Modern Science (1989) traces the wide range of
determinations which gave us the biological science of primatology, the
study of the animals closest to us in the evolutionary tree.
I cannot sufficiently stress how furious it makes many scientists
when scholars in the history, philosophy and social studies of science,
technology and medicine draw attention to the social forces at work in
the origination, funding and deployment of scientific research, in the
foundations of scientific disciplines and even in the scientific world
view. There have been scholarly writings on these issues for as long as
people have reflected on nature and human nature. Yet the education of
scientists in recent times has left out any study of the history and
philosophical bases of ideas about science and scientific rationality,
with the result that they think people who do think critically about
the philosophical and other dimensions of science are mad, bad,
polluting -- threatening the very fabric of rationality and society.
They hate it. They declare war. I am not exaggerating; the phrase 'the
Science Wars' is current in America and elsewhere. Lobbies for science
have largely succeeded in eliminating governmental funding for history,
philosophy and social studies of science. I have seen this problem at
first hand. Directors of studies in science and medicine in Cambridge
were hostile to and satirical about the History and philosophy of
Science Tripos, never mind that the RAE gave a5* to the department,
more than the university's distinguished philosophy department got. I
find that students who did their undergraduate degrees in science,
engineering or medicine tend to have such reactions. They take it that
studying social determinations means that it is claimed that there is
no rationality, no fabric of reality. They tend to become witch-hunting
and aggressive. I have been unlucky enough to be on the receiving end
of this sort of stuff at every stage of my academic career. Having been
the object of it in my time as a historian and philosopher of science,
I was less than delighted to get it again (sometimes from the same
ideologues) as I debated them in my role as a psychoanalytic
psychotherapist and as a scholar in psychoanalytic studies.
Come to that, a new colleague said in his very first intervention
at our weekly the Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies seminars that he
had been discussing things with the vice-chancellor at his last
university, who had said that humanities research was a luxury
universities could no longer afford and would have to become a private
hobby. At least one member of staff took that intervention to be a
defining moment in the history of the centre. What it conveyed to him
was that a group of accomplished humanities scholars could not find a
congenial home inside a medical faculty, because that faculty would be
so hostile to and uncomprehending of qualitative, scholarly book
research and would insist on experimental or at least quantitative
research, something for which one can get grants. I thought he was
being alarmist, but I think that in the long run he his likely to be
proved prescient
I now want to turn to a strong sense I have of what underlies this
view -- the pecking order of disciplines based on the pre-eminence of
natural science. What characterises science? A method. As I've said,
since the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, many have also argued that science strives to produce
explanations in terms of matter, motion and number, the framework of
ideas associated with Descartes, Copernicus, Galileo, Hobbes, Newton,
Locke, etc. An explanation in these terms is said to be better and more
basic than one couched in other terms. This is the
reductionist/materialist programme of modern science and is explicit in
many of the dismissive remarks natural scientists make about the
humanities. It is also implicit in the ranking of disciplines which
places mathematical and material sciences, e.g., physics and chemistry,
above biological ones. Among the biological ones molecular biology and
biochemistry rank above physiology, morphology, taxonomy, ethology and
evolutionary psychology. Biological scientists, in turn, peck
behavioural and social scientists. The medical sciences are all over
this map, since some are exquisitely experimental and quantitative,
e.g., neurochemistry and endocrinology, while others are far from being
so, e.g., psychiatry. Psychotherapy and especially psychoanalysis, are
hardly on the map, according to some, and hardly funded, even though
psychological difficulties constitute a large part of the reason people
go to doctors. Outside all this -- beyond the pale -- are the
humanities
One discipline which strikes me as helping us to see that natural
science does not shed enough light on human nature for us to rely
solely on science is the burgeoning field of evolutionary psychology
(which I shall mention again later). I recently went to a millennial
celebration of Darwin at his old school in Shrewsbury at which Matt
Ridley defended Darwinian reductionism, though he granted that there
was such a thing as greedy reductionism, which he deplored. By
Darwinian reductionism I mean the appeal to evolutionary selectionism
to explain aspects of human character and personality without allowing
due consideration of more proximal explanations drawn, for example,
from psychodynamic psychology, philosophy and literature. I expect to
learn more from 'Othello' about jealousy than from explanations
appealing to natural selection and competition for mates drawn from
Darwinian psychology. I suppose I mean that I don't want to be placed
in the position of having to choose between them. Why should I, unless
evolutionary explanations are somehow thought to be better than the
insights of Sophocles or Shakespeare or Freud? There is a militancy in
the representations of Darwinian psychologists, for example, the people
who mount the programme called Darwin@LSE, which frightens and affronts
me in the same way the assertive anti-humanities ways of Richard
Dawkins and Louis Wolpert affront me. I would gladly say 'Go in peace'
to them, but their explanatory imperialism strikes me as not allowing
due space for explanations drawn from the humanities. It is as if only
reductionist sciences can provide real explanations.
You could say that Darwinism provides the bridge between human
nature and the sciences. Let's place Darwin in the great scheme of the
history of ideas. There have been a number of blows to human arrogance.
The concept of the solar system dethroned the Earth from being regarded
as the centre of the universe. Darwinism showed that humanity is not
the specially created pinnacle of all living beings. Marxism showed
that economic and ideological forces fundamentally condition what
humans do. Freud showed that we do not even have access to the greater
part of our motivations, which are unconscious. These explanations
mitigate our conception of the human species and our planet as central
in the firmament and our humanity as adequately characterised by
rational intentionality and conscious control over our actions.
If we look at Darwinís theory as one of the great ideas in the
history of science, we can characterise it in two ways. Evolution ranks
with gravity, the central concept in physics, and affinity, the key
idea in chemistry, as one of the most basic concepts in the natural
sciences. Beyond that, however, evolution by natural selection is a
widely-applicable theory in two senses. It is the law which binds all
of life together and defines its relations with the physical
environment ó how the history of living nature relates to the history
of nature. And, of course, it binds humanity by causal laws to the rest
of life and nature. Evolution by natural selection is the process which
accounts for the history of living nature, including human nature. It
is arguably the most important idea in the history of the natural and
the human sciences
All of the above is fairly common knowledge, though the breadth and
depth of the scope of Darwinism is rarely adequately presented.
However, there is a huge problem which is left unresolved -- or perhaps
I should say it is in some hands too easily resolved -- by evolution.
If we take evolution to be an all-embracing explanation of living,
including human, phenomena, then it includes human psychology, society
and culture within the causal nexus of deterministic scientific laws.
If this is so, what is the basis for morality? Put another way, how
should we think of the role of values and morality in human nature? At
its most stark, evolution by natural selection proceeds by competition
for resources and/or mates to achieve viable offspring which live to
reproduce. How can this conception of the interrelations between
creatures be subtle enough to include processes which transcend
competition - altruism, charity, generosity, self-critical reflection.
How can it explain the diversity of customs and mores in different
cultures? Providing such explanations is, I take it, part of the
project of the new Darwinian sciences, in particular Darwinian
(sometimes called Evolutionary) Psychology. As I've said, the answers
they tend to provide often strike me as less useful than the ones we
can gain from more traditional ones employing human purposes,
consciously conceived and/or discerned in unconscious motivations,
which do not rely on selfish genes and competition for resources and/or
mates.
It seems to me to be approaching things the wrong way up to claim
that Darwinian explanations provide the most basic accounts for the
subtleties and complexities of human relations when literature,
philosophy, theology, analytical psychology and other cultural
approaches evoke and explore them so well. Perhaps I should say,
rather, that it seems wrong-headed to me to offer Darwinian
explanations as superior to or as replacements for traditional
explorations of such matters derived from the arts. It may be, of
course, that evolution explains humanity and all its works, but we must
still find a way of paying due respect to established forms of
reflection on human nature and not run headlong into a single
explanatory paradigm -- and a reductionist one, at that. The general
applicability of evolutionary explanation is not the same as its
replacing other explanations or as being seen as more appropriate or
basic than them. Hence we need science and the humanities; neither will
do alone now or, in my opinion, ever.
For example, I expect the discipline of biography to have an
enduring role in understanding human nature. It can weave together the
strands which make up a person's inner and outer lives. It can
illuminate character, the moral dimension of who we are. Writings in
literature and history can also shed light on civility, on generosity,
on compassion, on sectarian and nationalist conflicts and on the rise
and fall of societies and civilizations that I simply do not expect to
get to anything like the same degree from evolutionary explanations.
They are too crude and general, while biography, history and literature
are exquisitely particulate in their piecing together the vicissitudes
of lives of individuals, families, groups, societies and cultures.
You will not be surprised to hear that one reason I mind about this
stuff is that, along with other anti-humanities zealots, its advocates
relentlessly attack psychoanalysis -- as a theory of human nature, as a
method of investigation and as a therapy. It was not always so. Freud
was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society when he emigrated to
England in 1939. Indeed, the British Medical Association undertook a
careful assessment of psychoanalysis in the late 1920s and (not without
making some criticisms) gave it its imprimatur. I think the flak that
has come the way of psychoanalysis is in some ways very obvious and in
some ways very odd, unmerited and even perverse. I'll start with the
unmerited bit. There is an increasing number of writings coming from
inside the psychological and psychoanalytic community which assess it
as a therapy by high standards of clinical assessment and give it good
marks. (Our own Professor Glenys Parry contributed to one of the best
of these.). They demonstrate with great care that psychoanalytic
psychotherapy and psychoanalysis work. Indeed, one shows that people in
therapy benefit as much as people in full analysis, but three years
later the people who had full analysis have gone on improving, while
those who had less sessions per week are no worse than at the end of
treatment but are also no better. Other studies, including a huge one
overseen by the President of the American Psychological Association,
have shown that various sorts of psychotherapy work. More therapy
yields more benefit, and more training means more likelihood of
benefit. There is also a thriving and growing body of research going
on, including an international society and a journal entitled
Psychotherapy Research.
The vehement critiques of Freud and psychoanalysis do not take
account of these careful findings, ones which are growing apace. Those
who mount the critiques, on one side, and those who defend it, on the
other, make up what is known as 'The Freud Wars' and engage is polemics
strikingly reminiscent of the attacks on the history, philosophy and
social studies of science, technology and medicine in 'The Science
Wars' which I mentioned earlier. Another parallel is that their ranks,
along with other forces in medicine and its funding, have succeeded in
all but pushing psychotherapy out of psychiatry. There is a new and
important book deeply lamenting this trend, Of Two Minds: The Growing
Disorder in American Psychiatry by T. M. Luhrmann (2000). She traces
the growing polarization of treatment regimes, almost exclusively at
the expense of talking cures. What they have put in place of
psychotherapy, as is well known, is selective serotonin reuptake
inhibitors,
I think there is a deeper reason for the ideological attacks on
psychoanalysis: dumbing down. It is a widespread movement, widely
commented upon. I am sorry to say that think that the same deeply
superficial forces are at work in attacks on humanities and the
disciplines which reflect on science as are aimed at psychoanalysis --
a mistaken belief that all truths are truths of the surface, that our
inner natures, what Kleinians call our inner world, is not to be taken
account of, looked into, that we should not seek to take responsibility
for our unconsciouses and change. Moral struggle, which is at the heart
of psychoanalytic work, is just too tough for these times.
There is an appropriate movement, to which I have alluded, for
testing the efficacy of psychoanalysis and other psychotherapies. In
this sense it is rightly accountable to science. However, to tell the
truth, I am not personally much in sympathy with those who seek to
prove it is a science, though I am quick to grant the importance of
outcome studies. You could say that I am happy to have a science of
outcomes but believe that what the outcomes are outcomes of is a
humanistic relationship, a disciplined, empathic dialogue. I am
speaking up for a humanities 'take' on psychoanalysis and
psychotherapy. As I have said, I am quite happy to grant -- even
celebrate -- that the understanding if human nature is well-served by
the insights gleaned from the humanities. I am content, nay pleased,
when people write about Freud and Judaism, Freud the moralist, or the
religious and romantic roots of psychoanalysis. I am not a theist,
though I sometimes nostalgically wish I could be. I am, however, a
believer in the collective wisdom contained in religious traditions,
just as I appreciate the insights gleaned from literary traditions. I
appreciate the story of Job as I do the religious philosophical
writings of Kierkegaard, as I do those of Kafka, all much in the same
vein. Come to that, I celebrate Freud's lifelong exploration of the
depths of the meaning of the Oedipus myth for the human family, just as
others find in 'Hamlet' and 'King Lear' keys to intergenerational
dynamics.
Psychoanalysis, in turn, has had an important influence on
literature, and on literary studies, especially biography, the novel
and film, but it has also importantly influenced history and was at
least once (1957) the subject of the Presidential address of the
American Historical Association. The same can be said for social theory
and for the study of groups and institutions, where its influence is
growing. Indeed, psychoanalytic studies has been established as an
academic discipline in the midstof the Freud Wars, and innumerable new
books and journals have also come on stream.
I want also to make a claim for the role of the humanities in
illuminating science. Here we have literary and philosophical methods
employed in studying the writings at the heart of the natural sciences.
The current senior professor of English Literature at Cambridge,
Gillian Beer, founded her reputation on a close study of Darwin's
Plots, and she and others continue to contribute to the study of
science and literature under a single umbrella. Our own Professor Sally
Shuttleworth has made a number of studies of the relationship between
Victorian psychology, on the one hand, and literature and the broader
culture, on the other. I have made detailed historical and
philosophical studies of the basic concept in Darwin's explanation of
evolution, the metaphor of 'natural selection', and have demonstrated
the central role of teleology and anthropomorphism in the theory which
lies at the foundations of biological science. Margot Waddell has
studied both the influence of scientific ideas on George Eliot's novels
and (with Meg Harris Williams) the literary origins of the
psychoanalytic theory of the mind (1991). There are studies of how
Newton influenced poetry, how Darwin influenced literature, how
hermetical and alchemical traditions were at the heart of renaissance
and Elizabethan letters and in Newton's philosophy of nature. Scholars
study the philosophical assumptions and the forces in the society and
values of particular times which led scientists and whole movements in
science to ask the questions they did and to settle for the kinds of
answers they did. I have no time even to list the ways in which fiction
and science fiction explore science, technology and medicine from
Marlowe's 'Dr Faustus' to 'Jurassic Park'. Nor can I do more than
mention how science itself is illuminated by traditional humanities
genres employed by scientists, e.g., James Watson's The Double Helix.
There is, I am glad to say, no end to it.
Yet, for reasons I have tried to begin to illuminate, at the level
of the rhetoric of the press and the literary press, in the halls of
learned scientific societies, in granting agencies and charities,
scientific rationality is waxing at the expense of studies in the
humanities. I call this philistine and seriously dangerous. I think it
is at work in this university, among others. When I proposed the
expansion of the CPS into an institute of human relations on the model
of the ones established in the last century at Yale, at Harvard, at the
Tavistock Centre and at the New Bulgarian University, the proposal got
nowhere with the powers that be in the School for Health and Related
Research SCHARR (of which our centre is a member). The reason, I was
told, that it was a non-starter was that no one could see how it would
generate research funds and quantitative research relevant to our RAE
rating. I disagree profoundly. I put it to you that bringing together
various approaches to human nature from the humanities including
literature and philosophy, the human sciences and the helping
professions could be a distinguished and illuminating project to which
eminent scholars and researchers would, I promise you, flock. In the
immortal worlds of Kevin Cosner in 'Field of Dreams', 'If you build it
they will come'.
You may have noticed that I have not explicitly discoursed much on
the third term in my title, human nature. It is at least as problematic
as science and the humanities. Indeed, some Marxists have claimed that
it is only an ensemble of human relations, while others have written
excellent books rebutting this reading. Althusserians,
deconstructionists, Lacanians and postmodernists have reduced human
nature to a hook onto which inscriptions and on which constitutive
forces act. I defy you to make it go away. It is, of course, a subject
of debate in every newspaper and periodical, and I once collected
titles of a large number of books on my own bookshelves with the phrase
in their title. It is what we wish to fathom in deciding what we are up
against in ourselves and others, what we can hope for, what we may even
achieve: part biology, part socialization, part striving. For me it is
(you may find this limp) a mixture of good and bad, loving and
aggression, but all my studies and clinical work and family life have
taught me that it can to a degree be shifted for the better, as Freud
once put it, from unbearable misery to ordinary human unhappiness. My
own views are close to Freud's tempered pessimism, a sort of stoicism,
but let's keep on trying. In the last of his New Introductory Lectures
he claimed to have no weltangschauung or world view, while vehemently
attacking leftist views on human nature. I -- and I trust you -- do not
suffer under the delusion that I am free of ideology, but discerning
its role and picking and choosing among the philosophies of human
nature available to us is a task which is never-ending.
In my opinion psychoanalysis, seen as a discipline in the
humanities, is centrally complementary to biological approaches. As
Jonathan Lear has put it,
The point of psychoanalysis is to help us develop a clearer,
yet more flexible and creative, sense of what our ends might be. "How
shall we live?" is, for Socrates, the fundamental question of human
existence ó and the attempt to answer that question is, for him, what
makes human life worthwhile. And it is Plato and Shakespeare, Proust,
Nietzsche and, most recently, Freud who complicated the issue by
insisting that there are deep currents of meaning, often crosscurrents,
running through the human soul which can at best be glimpsed through a
glass darkly. This, if anything, is the Western tradition: not a
specific set of values, but a belief that the human soul is too deep
for there to be any easy answer to the question of how to live (Lear,
1998, p. 2.
Among the most Socratic books I have read are two which I have
recently had occasion to re-read and give to my children. Both are
about many things, but the first looks centrally at what's gone wrong
with our conceptions of the relations between the technical and the
world of values -- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974).
The other is not as celebrated. Seventeen years after Robert Pirsig
wrote ZenÖ he wrote Lila: An Enquiry into Morals. The central question
in the book is whether a derelict, feckless, mendacious wreck of a
woman had value. Throughout the book the issue hangs in the balance. I
want to live in an academic world in which it is thought important and
even natural that students in science, technology and medicine should
read and reflect upon those books.
In conclusion, I stand before you a venerable and bloody but
unbowed survivor of the Science Wars and the Freud Wars, both of which
are ongoing. I am suggesting, even pleading, that if we do not make
peace between the sciences and the humanities and seek to reintegrate
the metaphysical foundations of science with values, we will sink into
an ever-deepening pit of philistinism, false consciousness, reification
and moral decay. If we do, as a result of great struggle, manage to
reintegrate them, we can seriously hope to achieve and to bear ordinary
human unhappiness.
Copyright: The Author
Address for correspondence: 26 Freegrove Road, London N7 9RQ
robert@rmy1.demon.co.uk
http://human-nature.com/
The Human Nature Review © Ian Pitchford and Robert M. Young
Life's Biggest Question Still Needs an Answer
NZ Herald 22-3-99
The origins of human existence cannot be explained by discoveries of where and how life developed, but rather by asking why, write NEIL BROOM and ROBERT MANN .
Professor Paul Davies is certainly one of the most successful modern scientists in guiding towards "a rapprochement between science and spirituality". But his latest book, The Fifth Miracle , asserts that, if we find life elsewhere than on our planet, "the ramifications are profound in the extreme."
"They transcend mere science, and impact on such philosophical issues as whether there is a meaning to physical existence or whether life, the universe and everything are ultimately pointless and absurd" he writes.
"That is the momentous import of the search for life on Mars and beyond. The search for life in the universe is thus a search for ourselves - who we are and what our place is in the grand scheme of things".
The notion - called panspermia - that life first arose elsewhere and then came across space on to our planet has exerted only minor, fitful influence on evolutionary theory. The similar notion that our planet may have 'seeded' microbes far afield has an even scantier history. The other logical possibility is that life arose independently in two or more places. Few scientific facts point to such hypotheses, and none in any conclusive way.
But, whatever facts science may yet uncover on Mars or further away, these can not be important for the spiritual understanding which Davies seeks.
Davies says that the existence of life elsewhere, if factually confirmed, "would be the most definite indication of there being a purpose or direction to life . . . the closest we could get to proof of the existence of a 'god'." Similarly, he says that should life be found off the planet this would be "the greatest evidence for a creator".
These statements are, rather obviously, wrong. The spiritual questions grandly outlined by Davies cannot be illuminated by technical facts about where life first arose, or where else it moved to, on or off our planet. 'Where?', and even 'when?', are vastly less important, and infinitely less spiritual, than 'why?' - the question about causes & meaning.
Scholarly consideration of causes in biology is famously illuminated by William Paley’s scenario of finding, during a stroll on a heath, a watch. The evident order of this mechanism - especially if it was working when found - would rightly force the finder who studied it to infer the existence of a design and, therefore, a designer.
Watches can never be said to have arisen from an entirely impersonal, mindless cause. Such mechanical contrivances are always the expression of creativity, of some person who decided to construct a mechanism for the purpose of telling time.
Paley argued that the living mechanisms of nature - the complex machinery so evident in biology - must similarly be inferred to be designed.
However materialistic one’s views might be and however many millions or billions of years of evolution may be granted to us, the machinery of life surely requires an explanation of a personal rather than impersonal kind. We believe this argument has been wrongly neglected - certainly not refuted. Megatime is no substitute for purpose.
To discuss causes of life, one needs traditional understanding of the term 'causes'. The four categories of cause, identified by Aristotle and little challenged for 2.3 millennia, have rarely been taught to science students let alone the general public, but they are crucial for explanation in biology. Two of the four are simply ignored today by most scientist-philosophers.
Before the recent decline in the philosophy of science, the Auckland biologist John E. Morton, using science, as Aristotle of course could not, illustrated the 4 categories of cause by his 1972 'claret cameo' [in 'God, Science & Man', Collins 1972], which we paraphrase below.
**************
Morton's 'claret cameo'
What are the causes of my bottle of claret?
The material cause includes the grape juice and the yeast, materials transformed by the efficient cause into this peculiar substance claret.
The efficient cause is the action of the yeast on the grape sugars and some minor components, resulting in aqueous ethanol and some minor new chemicals characteristic of claret.
But my bottle of claret has also a final cause: a man (named Babich) exerted his will to organise suitable vessels for the substances which are the material cause, and planned a sequence of operations for the purpose of making claret by maximising the likelihood that the efficient cause for claret would operate, i.e. the particular chemical action of the yeast on the grape juice leading to claret.
What Aristotle called the formal cause, on which we here say no more, is the 'claret idea' in Babich's mind.
**************
{photo of a frog - caption Design secrets rest with the humble frog}
If a bottle of claret is required by human reason to have a final cause, how could it be denied that a frog also is designed?
The attempt to explain life is, we believe, severely incomplete until one faces up to final cause in biology. This is little assisted by panspermia, which merely pushes back one stage the scientific question of where & when life first showed up in the universe, and has negligible spiritual significance.
The "enlightment" assumption that science can, and soon will, give an essentially complete description and explanation of the physical (including biological) world constitutes scientism - faith in science as the "only" way of knowledge. The only type of final cause - person acting to bring about the observed change - is, in this modern approach, human will. ‘Who designed this watch?’ is thus an allowed question, but ‘who designed this frog?’ is not.
The attempt to illuminate spiritual questions by studying only nature without recourse to special revelation is called natural theology. One of us has recently tried to bring natural theology up to date in a small book concentrating on design in biology (How Blind is the Watchmaker ? , Ashgate 199. [2nd edn IVP 2001]
The existence of life on Mars or elsewhere seems to us a scientifically interesting but theologically trivial question. Attempts to discern anything about God, or spiritual matters more generally, from this sort of science are, in our opinion, doomed.
There is compelling evidence much ‘closer to home’ for a transcendent cause. Just take a look at any one of the marvellous mechanisms found in the living world. Such living ‘machines’ embody and express a degree of complexity, sophistication, and purposefulness, that far surpasses anything created by human hands. Are we then to conclude that there is no evidence of mindful orchestration in the living world? No Mastermind?
The really important questions about what we are and why we exist are not scientific, and science is a trespasser when it pronounces on such matters. This fundamental limitation of science was admirably summarised by Professor Morton a quarter of a century ago.
The feeling of breathless enchantment can be evoked by natural theology, and can lead the children of atheism & agnosticism to investigate more important parts of theology.
But bugs winging their way to or from Mars, or any other version of panspermia, are incapable of shedding light on the really important questions concerning purpose and meaning in life.
Neil Broom is associate professor of engineering, and Robert Mann was until retirement senior lecturer in environmental studies, at the University of Auckland.
which I rank v highly.
Young has fallen victim to some confusions about Aristotle's 4
Causes, but at least he acknowledges their importance whereas Dawkins,
Wolpert, S Weinberg etc ignore them. Top Kiwi biologist J E Morton got
them straight 3 decade ago, I reckon (see attached).
Particularly impressive is Young's list (1/5 down) of phoney
dichotomies.
R
SCIENCE AND THE HUMANITIES
IN THE UNDERSTANDING OF HUMAN NATURE
by Robert M. Young
Inaugural Lecture as Professor of Psychotherapy and Psychoanalytic
Studies, Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies, University of Sheffield,
25 May 2000.
It is an odd sensation giving an inaugural lecture four months
before one's retirement. One consequence is that insofar as such
lectures are promissory notes I trust you will agree that it would be
prudent not promise to achieve much in the remainder of my tenure.
Fortunately there are other purposes for such occasions. One is meant
to stand back and take stock of something and locate one's place within
a research tradition. Since I am so near the retiring age, I feel I
have a special license. I can say more or less what I like. Not that
what I have to say is particularly rude or retaliatory, but it does
involve some plain speaking. Here is an example. The relationship
between science and the humanities is in an awful mess, and if we don't
sort it out the role of the universities in husbanding and enhancing
human civility will probably wither away. Something similar is true of
the wider culture.
I have held important positions in three universities and have had major
access to several media, in particular, publishing, television and radio.
Throughout the nearly forty years I have been so placed, things have got
more or less steadily worse, and the people in charge have, on the whole,
accelerated that process.
Our scientists do not learn enough in their education and training about
the humanities, in particular, about the moral, political and
ideological forces and issues from which their work emerges and into
which it feeds. As C. P. Snow rightly observed in his memorable lecture
on 'The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution', our arts people
know even less about science and technology and are by turns sneering
and culpably diffident. The people who try their damndest to mediate
between the sciences and the humanities get sniped at and undermined
from both sides. That is the space within which I have conducted my
academic career. It's a case of something approaching killing the
messenger.
I have had extensive education on both sides of this stupid divide.
That has given me some interesting vantage points, and I have been
present for some serious complacency. When I was in medical school I
recall a professor beginning a lecture on cardiac dynamics with the
remark, 'Before we get serious, let's have some history'. I have seen
the eminent English don, F. R. Leavis, snarl at scientists, and I have
been present when Watson, Crick, Brenner, Dawkins and Wolpert have
haughtily said genuinely philistine things about philosophy, religion,
social science and morality.
Now to my title. All of its key terms are problematic and fiercely
debated. As to the first, the world view and boundaries of science are
much disputed and are idealised and despised in different quarters.
Learned scientific societies and promoters of the discipline calling
itself 'the public understanding of science' assure us that there's
nothing more exemplary of humanity's highest aspirations and
achievements, while people who mount critiques of scientific and
technological rationality claim that for all the achievements of
science, technology and medicine, the world view underlying them is
alienated and alienating and is leading to serious pollution, premature
deployment of new developments, e.g., in pharmaceuticals and GM crops,
and in debasement of the labour process, a subject upon which I have
dwelt in several papers. The extension of the methods and assumptions
of science beyond rather strictly drawn boundaries is called
'scientism', and it underpins reckless avoidance of the political and
moral debates which should be part and parcel of scientific work at
every stage from hunch to formulation and from funding to application.
Scientists fiercely fight against what they consider to be the
intrusion of politics and ideology into their putatively value-neutral
and objective research, but the values are there, albeit often
implicit. They do so with consequences which are often disastrous. I
will return to some of the baleful consequences of the claimed
separation of facts from values. My own position is that science,
technology and medicine -- far from being value-neutral -- are the
embodiment of values in theories, things and therapies, in facts and
artifacts, in procedures and programs. I also believe that all facts
are theory-laden, all theories are value-laden and all values occur
within an ideology or world view.
The humanities, my second key term, are conventionally set over
against science in the prevailing world view and in the choices our
children face at alarmingly young ages. I would welcome some
comparative data on this matter, one which bears fundamentally on
whether we can integrate our debates about values with our scientific
and technical developments. The traditional definition of the
humanities in Renaissance humanism included grammar, rhetoric, history,
literature and moral philosophy. The rebirth which constituted the
renaissance was a rediscovery of ancient Greek and Latin texts, the
study of which was opposed to sterile mediaeval scholasticism. Our list
of subjects in the humanities would be longer, reflecting the growth of
disciplines in the 19 th and 20th centuries. As late as the mid-19th
century one could only study mathematics, classics or divinity at
Oxford and Cambridge. Universities such as this one -- so-called
redbrick universities -- were created to broaden the base of university
education to include the sciences and, above all, technology.
Technological education has, relatively speaking, eschewed the arts
cultivated by the leisured class, while technology has become more
central to our lives in successive waves. Along with these developments
the separation of the consideration of technological development from
moral, aesthetic, political and ideological determinations has become
increasingly problematic. This separation impoverishes those trained in
science, technology and medicine, and ignorance of the scientific and
technical side impoverishes those who study the humanities. It is a
disastrous and growing split.
The essence of the humanities is the exploration, husbanding and
conducting debates about values. That is central to literature, the
theatre, fine art, much of philosophy, cultural studies, history,
classical studies and much else. Our culture is riven. It is
characterised by sharp dichotomies, each and every one of which is a
false dichotomy, but our belief in them precludes unified deliberations
about the scientific and the moral. Here is my list of them:
humanities - science
society - science
culture - nature
qualitative - quantitative
value - fact
purpose - mechanism
subject - object
internal - external
secondary- primary (qualities)
thought - extension
mind - body
character - behaviour
I will not have time on this occasion to explore all of these, but
I will seek to undermine some of them.
To get to the bottom of the issue I will have to do what the
Renaissance humanists did and try to recover some ancient wisdom. The
separation of fact and value which we associate with modern science was
an innovation in the seventeenth century. The framework of explanation
which prevailed in ancient, mediaeval and Renaissance times was the
Aristotelian one in which causes or aitia (literally, the 'comings to
be' of things) always occurred in fours: the material, the efficient,
the formal and the final cause. If you did not come up with all four
causes you did not have an explanation. Most of them are familiar to
our modern scheme, because versions of them were carried over into the
paradigm of explanation of modern science. The material cause told you
out of what raw materials the effect came -- the matter. Our modern
concept of matter, including the periodic table of elements and of
fundamental particles, corresponds to this. The material cause of an
ordinary chair would be wood. The efficient cause is that which imparts
energy to it and would include intrinsic ideas of energy not altogether
unlike our own but also that which imparted change, in this case, the
carpenter. The formal cause was hugely important in the writings of
Plato and Aristotle, but we can only dwell on certain aspects -- what
type it was, where is sits in a classification. The chair partakes of
the form of 'chair-ness', but the formal cause can embrace architect's
plans, formal arrangements, structures, shapes, types, taxonomies.
There was a form for everything -- the good, the true, the beautiful,
for humankind, for dishonourableness, for dirt, for shit. As I say,
there were and still are huge debates about forms or types or concepts
-- where they come from and how we get them into our heads. People like
Locke, Piaget, Chomsky and, in psychoanalysis, Wilfred Bion, have
pondered such things. The fourth and last explanatory factor was the
purpose or use or aim and was called the final cause. The final cause
of a chair is to provide somewhere to sit.
As I said, three of the four Aristotelian causes found their way
into the explanatory paradigm of modern science, but the final cause or
purpose was considered not objective and was split off and relegated to
the mind of God and of people. It is not part of a scientific
explanation, at least not a reductionist or materialist explanation.
That's the official story at least, but it kept sneaking back in, for
example, in functional explanations in anatomy, physiology and
medicine, in evolutionary theory, in the functionalist tradition in the
human sciences which was based on biological analogies, e.g.,
structures, functions, organic analogies. But make no mistake, strictly
speaking, they had no place in the explanatory paradigm of materialist
science which allowed only matter, motion and number.
René Descartes, whose Discourse on Method was published in 1637 and
is often called the founding document of modern science, redefined the
basic furniture of reality. He divided the world into two sorts of
things -- extended substances and thinking substances. Extended
substances had extension, figure and motion and made up the world of
matter, while thinking substances were defined negatively as that which
does not pertain to matter, and their essence was will. We were left
with a world of minds and bodies ó since called Cartesian dualism. This
radical definition of reality was very useful for certain scientific
purposes, but it left a dreadful legacy of unsolved problems, for
example, how minds and bodies interact. Many, many philosophers have
lamented this split. One of my favourites is Alfred North Whitehead,
who wrote Science and the Modern World, in which he had this to say
about the modern world view:
The seventeenth century had finally produced a scheme of
scientific thought framed by mathematicians, for the use of
mathematicians. The enormous success of the scientific abstractions,
yielding on the one hand matter, on the other hand mind, perceiving,
suffering, reasoning, but not interfering, has foisted onto philosophy
the task of accepting them as the most concrete rendering of fact.
Thereby, modern philosophy has been ruined. It has oscillated
in a complex manner between three extremes. There are the dualists, who
accept matter and mind as on equal basis, and the two varieties of
monists, those who put mind inside matter, and those who put matter
inside mind. But this juggling with abstractions can never overcome the
inherent confusion introduced by the scientific scheme of the
seventeenth century (Whitehead, 1925, p. 70).
Edwin Arthur Burtt reflected on the consequences of this world view
for any attempt at understanding human nature.
...it does seem like strange perversity in these Newtonian
scientists to further their own conquests of external nature by loading
on mind everything refractory to exact mathematical handling and thus
rendering the latter still more difficult to study scientifically than
it had been before. Did it never cross their minds that sooner or later
people would appear who craved verifiable knowledge about mind in the
same way they craved it about physical events, and who might reasonably
curse their elder scientific brethren for buying easier success in
their own enter enterprise by throwing extra handicaps in the way of
their successors in social science? Apparently not; mind was to them a
convenient receptacle for the refuse, the chips and whittlings of
science, rather than a possible object of scientific knowledge (Burtt,
1932, pp. 318-19).
I have quoted the profound and searching critiques of Whitehead and
Burtt to indicate where we need to look for the metaphysical
foundations of the science-humanities split and the philosophical
defensiveness of the human sciences. This is particularly pertinent to
the restricted range of approaches to human nature adopted in most
psychology departments, a feature which disappoints and bewilders many
students. In a better world, for example, biography would be a
discipline taught in psychology curricula, not to mention
psychoanalysis.
Now we can begin to see why my research has had the trajectory it
has. I set out to find a scientific basis for the moral and
psychological issues which worried me as a young man. I thought I could
do so by understanding the theoretical basis for the sciences
underlying mental functions, i.e., brain physiology. That's why I
studied the history of cerebral localization. The natural
classification of the aspects of human nature would, I thought, be the
natural classification of the functions of the brain. But the brain
turned out not to speak its own classification. There are many overlays
of mental functioning -- primary sensory modalities, balance,
proprioception, higher mental functions, associations, emotional
functions, etc. The more you think about it, the more you realize that=20
you can ask the brain how it does anything; you can bring any overlay
to it. There are as many psychologies as there are -- what? -- as there
are views of human nature, as there are value systems, as there are
ideologies or world views.
I did not see that far at first. I asked myself where
classifications of mental functions came from. In research on cerebral
function in the early and mid-19th century they came from physiognomy
then phrenology, especially the work of Franz Joseph Gall, whom I
studied for a time. The next generation created an evolutionary
psychology inspired by Herbert Spencer, to whom Darwin deferred in
matters of psychology, then aphasia research, then John Hughlings
Jackson's clinical neurological studies of evolution and dissolution of
functions. Then Freud used them as a basis for his early work on
aphasia and then on hysteria and then the magnificent model of the mind
in Chapter VII of The Interpretation of Dreams, which brings us up to
1900. What I am trying to convey is that the context of brain research
turned out to be associationist psychology, clinical neurology and
evolutionary theory. The context of evolutionary theory was, in turn,
natural theology, uniformitarian geology and Malthusian population
theory. The context for these was debates about science, theology,
positivism and the theory of ideology in the nineteenth century. I
contend that to understand these matters we have to work with little or
no recognition of boundaries between science and the humanities. We
must go wherever the multidisciplinary history of ideas leads us.
I looked into all of these matters and wrote a history of ideas
about the functions of the brain, followed by a series of studies on
the 19th century debate on 'man's place in nature' (as it was then
called), which I published as Darwin's Metaphor: Nature's Place in
Victorian Culture. This research led in another direction in the
context of the ferment of the 1960s -- into the historiographic
traditions in thinking about Darwinism and the relationship between
science and ideology, a topic which had been debated since the school
of IdÈologie of Cabanis and Destutt de Tracy in Napoleonic France.
IdÈologie was a discipline first embraced than reviled by Napoleon. It
began life as the meta-discipline to which science was accountable. The
idÈologues' intellectual programme was 'to subject the ideas of science
to the science of ideas', something rather like metaphysics,
Aristotle's discipline which came after and was 'meta' to physics. But
when he fell out with this group, Napoleon gave the term a pejorative
connotation of polluted knowledge, one which it has largely retained.
It was that sense Marx and Engels invoked in their study of The German
Ideology, where, as in other places, they argued that the ruling ideas
of an age are the ideas of its ruling class, a proposition being
revived in the 1960s during the Vietnam War in the critique of the role
of the academy made by radical scholars. Along with other academic
disciplines, science was not being allowed to claim that it was above
the battle of contending ideologies. Scientific and technological and
medical rationality were seen as much as part of the problem as part of
the solution. This critique was led by the Frankfurt School of Critical
Theory, for example, Herbert Marcuse and J¸rgen Habermas, and it was
during this period that there was a movement for social responsibility
in science which attracted, among others, the Nobel laureate, Maurice
Wilkins. It also evoked a number of radical science periodicals, one of
which I edit. You may think I have strayed from my theme, but I believe
that I have been exemplifying ways in which the strict dichotomies I
listed above are problematic. I am suggesting that science is part of
culture, that how we see nature is, too, which is why the journal I
just mentioned is called Science as Culture and is based on the
assumption that research traditions cannot be reasonably claimed to be
set above the prevailing world view of the epoch. This is a radical
version of the research programme of the sociology of knowledge and is
known as social constructivism in science.
One particular manifestation of this point, an experimentum crucis,
has been a recurrent theme in my research. Darwin tells us in his
notebooks, his pencil sketch of 1842, his longer sketch of 1844, in On
the Origin of Species and other writings, in his letters and in his
autobiography that Malthus' population theory -- that populations
increase geometrically while food supply only grows arithmetically --
provided the key insight that led to his formulation of the theory of
evolution by natural selection. The gap between population growth and
resources created the pressure in the struggle for existence. I traced
this link with some care and gave a paper in Oxford entitled 'Malthus
and the Evolutionists: The Common Context of Biological and Social
Theory' (196
. You would not believe the howls which came fromorthodox biologists. What I'd found meant that putatively pure biology,
the holy of holies of Darwin's mechanism for evolutionary change, the
foundation stone of modern biology, was in debt to, in bed with,
tainted social theory of an avowedly conservative kind. There has been
a running battle about this since I first wrote about it over thirty
years ago. I think it is now the consensus that my account has
prevailed. The scientific ideologues continue to hate it, though. I
take great pleasure in the integration of Malthusianism with Darwinism,
because I think history happens in that way. Assumptions about human
nature and society contribute fundamentally to approaches taken to
nature and living nature which are then extrapolated to account for
human nature and society. It was always so. Indeed, a number of studies
influenced by mine have made this point over a wide variety of
scientific disciplines. I think the best of all of them is the
magnificently detailed and meticulously written research of Donna
Haraway, whose magisterial volume Primate Visions: Gender, Race and
Nature in the World of Modern Science (1989) traces the wide range of
determinations which gave us the biological science of primatology, the
study of the animals closest to us in the evolutionary tree.
I cannot sufficiently stress how furious it makes many scientists
when scholars in the history, philosophy and social studies of science,
technology and medicine draw attention to the social forces at work in
the origination, funding and deployment of scientific research, in the
foundations of scientific disciplines and even in the scientific world
view. There have been scholarly writings on these issues for as long as
people have reflected on nature and human nature. Yet the education of
scientists in recent times has left out any study of the history and
philosophical bases of ideas about science and scientific rationality,
with the result that they think people who do think critically about
the philosophical and other dimensions of science are mad, bad,
polluting -- threatening the very fabric of rationality and society.
They hate it. They declare war. I am not exaggerating; the phrase 'the
Science Wars' is current in America and elsewhere. Lobbies for science
have largely succeeded in eliminating governmental funding for history,
philosophy and social studies of science. I have seen this problem at
first hand. Directors of studies in science and medicine in Cambridge
were hostile to and satirical about the History and philosophy of
Science Tripos, never mind that the RAE gave a5* to the department,
more than the university's distinguished philosophy department got. I
find that students who did their undergraduate degrees in science,
engineering or medicine tend to have such reactions. They take it that
studying social determinations means that it is claimed that there is
no rationality, no fabric of reality. They tend to become witch-hunting
and aggressive. I have been unlucky enough to be on the receiving end
of this sort of stuff at every stage of my academic career. Having been
the object of it in my time as a historian and philosopher of science,
I was less than delighted to get it again (sometimes from the same
ideologues) as I debated them in my role as a psychoanalytic
psychotherapist and as a scholar in psychoanalytic studies.
Come to that, a new colleague said in his very first intervention
at our weekly the Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies seminars that he
had been discussing things with the vice-chancellor at his last
university, who had said that humanities research was a luxury
universities could no longer afford and would have to become a private
hobby. At least one member of staff took that intervention to be a
defining moment in the history of the centre. What it conveyed to him
was that a group of accomplished humanities scholars could not find a
congenial home inside a medical faculty, because that faculty would be
so hostile to and uncomprehending of qualitative, scholarly book
research and would insist on experimental or at least quantitative
research, something for which one can get grants. I thought he was
being alarmist, but I think that in the long run he his likely to be
proved prescient
I now want to turn to a strong sense I have of what underlies this
view -- the pecking order of disciplines based on the pre-eminence of
natural science. What characterises science? A method. As I've said,
since the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, many have also argued that science strives to produce
explanations in terms of matter, motion and number, the framework of
ideas associated with Descartes, Copernicus, Galileo, Hobbes, Newton,
Locke, etc. An explanation in these terms is said to be better and more
basic than one couched in other terms. This is the
reductionist/materialist programme of modern science and is explicit in
many of the dismissive remarks natural scientists make about the
humanities. It is also implicit in the ranking of disciplines which
places mathematical and material sciences, e.g., physics and chemistry,
above biological ones. Among the biological ones molecular biology and
biochemistry rank above physiology, morphology, taxonomy, ethology and
evolutionary psychology. Biological scientists, in turn, peck
behavioural and social scientists. The medical sciences are all over
this map, since some are exquisitely experimental and quantitative,
e.g., neurochemistry and endocrinology, while others are far from being
so, e.g., psychiatry. Psychotherapy and especially psychoanalysis, are
hardly on the map, according to some, and hardly funded, even though
psychological difficulties constitute a large part of the reason people
go to doctors. Outside all this -- beyond the pale -- are the
humanities
One discipline which strikes me as helping us to see that natural
science does not shed enough light on human nature for us to rely
solely on science is the burgeoning field of evolutionary psychology
(which I shall mention again later). I recently went to a millennial
celebration of Darwin at his old school in Shrewsbury at which Matt
Ridley defended Darwinian reductionism, though he granted that there
was such a thing as greedy reductionism, which he deplored. By
Darwinian reductionism I mean the appeal to evolutionary selectionism
to explain aspects of human character and personality without allowing
due consideration of more proximal explanations drawn, for example,
from psychodynamic psychology, philosophy and literature. I expect to
learn more from 'Othello' about jealousy than from explanations
appealing to natural selection and competition for mates drawn from
Darwinian psychology. I suppose I mean that I don't want to be placed
in the position of having to choose between them. Why should I, unless
evolutionary explanations are somehow thought to be better than the
insights of Sophocles or Shakespeare or Freud? There is a militancy in
the representations of Darwinian psychologists, for example, the people
who mount the programme called Darwin@LSE, which frightens and affronts
me in the same way the assertive anti-humanities ways of Richard
Dawkins and Louis Wolpert affront me. I would gladly say 'Go in peace'
to them, but their explanatory imperialism strikes me as not allowing
due space for explanations drawn from the humanities. It is as if only
reductionist sciences can provide real explanations.
You could say that Darwinism provides the bridge between human
nature and the sciences. Let's place Darwin in the great scheme of the
history of ideas. There have been a number of blows to human arrogance.
The concept of the solar system dethroned the Earth from being regarded
as the centre of the universe. Darwinism showed that humanity is not
the specially created pinnacle of all living beings. Marxism showed
that economic and ideological forces fundamentally condition what
humans do. Freud showed that we do not even have access to the greater
part of our motivations, which are unconscious. These explanations
mitigate our conception of the human species and our planet as central
in the firmament and our humanity as adequately characterised by
rational intentionality and conscious control over our actions.
If we look at Darwinís theory as one of the great ideas in the
history of science, we can characterise it in two ways. Evolution ranks
with gravity, the central concept in physics, and affinity, the key
idea in chemistry, as one of the most basic concepts in the natural
sciences. Beyond that, however, evolution by natural selection is a
widely-applicable theory in two senses. It is the law which binds all
of life together and defines its relations with the physical
environment ó how the history of living nature relates to the history
of nature. And, of course, it binds humanity by causal laws to the rest
of life and nature. Evolution by natural selection is the process which
accounts for the history of living nature, including human nature. It
is arguably the most important idea in the history of the natural and
the human sciences
All of the above is fairly common knowledge, though the breadth and
depth of the scope of Darwinism is rarely adequately presented.
However, there is a huge problem which is left unresolved -- or perhaps
I should say it is in some hands too easily resolved -- by evolution.
If we take evolution to be an all-embracing explanation of living,
including human, phenomena, then it includes human psychology, society
and culture within the causal nexus of deterministic scientific laws.
If this is so, what is the basis for morality? Put another way, how
should we think of the role of values and morality in human nature? At
its most stark, evolution by natural selection proceeds by competition
for resources and/or mates to achieve viable offspring which live to
reproduce. How can this conception of the interrelations between
creatures be subtle enough to include processes which transcend
competition - altruism, charity, generosity, self-critical reflection.
How can it explain the diversity of customs and mores in different
cultures? Providing such explanations is, I take it, part of the
project of the new Darwinian sciences, in particular Darwinian
(sometimes called Evolutionary) Psychology. As I've said, the answers
they tend to provide often strike me as less useful than the ones we
can gain from more traditional ones employing human purposes,
consciously conceived and/or discerned in unconscious motivations,
which do not rely on selfish genes and competition for resources and/or
mates.
It seems to me to be approaching things the wrong way up to claim
that Darwinian explanations provide the most basic accounts for the
subtleties and complexities of human relations when literature,
philosophy, theology, analytical psychology and other cultural
approaches evoke and explore them so well. Perhaps I should say,
rather, that it seems wrong-headed to me to offer Darwinian
explanations as superior to or as replacements for traditional
explorations of such matters derived from the arts. It may be, of
course, that evolution explains humanity and all its works, but we must
still find a way of paying due respect to established forms of
reflection on human nature and not run headlong into a single
explanatory paradigm -- and a reductionist one, at that. The general
applicability of evolutionary explanation is not the same as its
replacing other explanations or as being seen as more appropriate or
basic than them. Hence we need science and the humanities; neither will
do alone now or, in my opinion, ever.
For example, I expect the discipline of biography to have an
enduring role in understanding human nature. It can weave together the
strands which make up a person's inner and outer lives. It can
illuminate character, the moral dimension of who we are. Writings in
literature and history can also shed light on civility, on generosity,
on compassion, on sectarian and nationalist conflicts and on the rise
and fall of societies and civilizations that I simply do not expect to
get to anything like the same degree from evolutionary explanations.
They are too crude and general, while biography, history and literature
are exquisitely particulate in their piecing together the vicissitudes
of lives of individuals, families, groups, societies and cultures.
You will not be surprised to hear that one reason I mind about this
stuff is that, along with other anti-humanities zealots, its advocates
relentlessly attack psychoanalysis -- as a theory of human nature, as a
method of investigation and as a therapy. It was not always so. Freud
was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society when he emigrated to
England in 1939. Indeed, the British Medical Association undertook a
careful assessment of psychoanalysis in the late 1920s and (not without
making some criticisms) gave it its imprimatur. I think the flak that
has come the way of psychoanalysis is in some ways very obvious and in
some ways very odd, unmerited and even perverse. I'll start with the
unmerited bit. There is an increasing number of writings coming from
inside the psychological and psychoanalytic community which assess it
as a therapy by high standards of clinical assessment and give it good
marks. (Our own Professor Glenys Parry contributed to one of the best
of these.). They demonstrate with great care that psychoanalytic
psychotherapy and psychoanalysis work. Indeed, one shows that people in
therapy benefit as much as people in full analysis, but three years
later the people who had full analysis have gone on improving, while
those who had less sessions per week are no worse than at the end of
treatment but are also no better. Other studies, including a huge one
overseen by the President of the American Psychological Association,
have shown that various sorts of psychotherapy work. More therapy
yields more benefit, and more training means more likelihood of
benefit. There is also a thriving and growing body of research going
on, including an international society and a journal entitled
Psychotherapy Research.
The vehement critiques of Freud and psychoanalysis do not take
account of these careful findings, ones which are growing apace. Those
who mount the critiques, on one side, and those who defend it, on the
other, make up what is known as 'The Freud Wars' and engage is polemics
strikingly reminiscent of the attacks on the history, philosophy and
social studies of science, technology and medicine in 'The Science
Wars' which I mentioned earlier. Another parallel is that their ranks,
along with other forces in medicine and its funding, have succeeded in
all but pushing psychotherapy out of psychiatry. There is a new and
important book deeply lamenting this trend, Of Two Minds: The Growing
Disorder in American Psychiatry by T. M. Luhrmann (2000). She traces
the growing polarization of treatment regimes, almost exclusively at
the expense of talking cures. What they have put in place of
psychotherapy, as is well known, is selective serotonin reuptake
inhibitors,
I think there is a deeper reason for the ideological attacks on
psychoanalysis: dumbing down. It is a widespread movement, widely
commented upon. I am sorry to say that think that the same deeply
superficial forces are at work in attacks on humanities and the
disciplines which reflect on science as are aimed at psychoanalysis --
a mistaken belief that all truths are truths of the surface, that our
inner natures, what Kleinians call our inner world, is not to be taken
account of, looked into, that we should not seek to take responsibility
for our unconsciouses and change. Moral struggle, which is at the heart
of psychoanalytic work, is just too tough for these times.
There is an appropriate movement, to which I have alluded, for
testing the efficacy of psychoanalysis and other psychotherapies. In
this sense it is rightly accountable to science. However, to tell the
truth, I am not personally much in sympathy with those who seek to
prove it is a science, though I am quick to grant the importance of
outcome studies. You could say that I am happy to have a science of
outcomes but believe that what the outcomes are outcomes of is a
humanistic relationship, a disciplined, empathic dialogue. I am
speaking up for a humanities 'take' on psychoanalysis and
psychotherapy. As I have said, I am quite happy to grant -- even
celebrate -- that the understanding if human nature is well-served by
the insights gleaned from the humanities. I am content, nay pleased,
when people write about Freud and Judaism, Freud the moralist, or the
religious and romantic roots of psychoanalysis. I am not a theist,
though I sometimes nostalgically wish I could be. I am, however, a
believer in the collective wisdom contained in religious traditions,
just as I appreciate the insights gleaned from literary traditions. I
appreciate the story of Job as I do the religious philosophical
writings of Kierkegaard, as I do those of Kafka, all much in the same
vein. Come to that, I celebrate Freud's lifelong exploration of the
depths of the meaning of the Oedipus myth for the human family, just as
others find in 'Hamlet' and 'King Lear' keys to intergenerational
dynamics.
Psychoanalysis, in turn, has had an important influence on
literature, and on literary studies, especially biography, the novel
and film, but it has also importantly influenced history and was at
least once (1957) the subject of the Presidential address of the
American Historical Association. The same can be said for social theory
and for the study of groups and institutions, where its influence is
growing. Indeed, psychoanalytic studies has been established as an
academic discipline in the midstof the Freud Wars, and innumerable new
books and journals have also come on stream.
I want also to make a claim for the role of the humanities in
illuminating science. Here we have literary and philosophical methods
employed in studying the writings at the heart of the natural sciences.
The current senior professor of English Literature at Cambridge,
Gillian Beer, founded her reputation on a close study of Darwin's
Plots, and she and others continue to contribute to the study of
science and literature under a single umbrella. Our own Professor Sally
Shuttleworth has made a number of studies of the relationship between
Victorian psychology, on the one hand, and literature and the broader
culture, on the other. I have made detailed historical and
philosophical studies of the basic concept in Darwin's explanation of
evolution, the metaphor of 'natural selection', and have demonstrated
the central role of teleology and anthropomorphism in the theory which
lies at the foundations of biological science. Margot Waddell has
studied both the influence of scientific ideas on George Eliot's novels
and (with Meg Harris Williams) the literary origins of the
psychoanalytic theory of the mind (1991). There are studies of how
Newton influenced poetry, how Darwin influenced literature, how
hermetical and alchemical traditions were at the heart of renaissance
and Elizabethan letters and in Newton's philosophy of nature. Scholars
study the philosophical assumptions and the forces in the society and
values of particular times which led scientists and whole movements in
science to ask the questions they did and to settle for the kinds of
answers they did. I have no time even to list the ways in which fiction
and science fiction explore science, technology and medicine from
Marlowe's 'Dr Faustus' to 'Jurassic Park'. Nor can I do more than
mention how science itself is illuminated by traditional humanities
genres employed by scientists, e.g., James Watson's The Double Helix.
There is, I am glad to say, no end to it.
Yet, for reasons I have tried to begin to illuminate, at the level
of the rhetoric of the press and the literary press, in the halls of
learned scientific societies, in granting agencies and charities,
scientific rationality is waxing at the expense of studies in the
humanities. I call this philistine and seriously dangerous. I think it
is at work in this university, among others. When I proposed the
expansion of the CPS into an institute of human relations on the model
of the ones established in the last century at Yale, at Harvard, at the
Tavistock Centre and at the New Bulgarian University, the proposal got
nowhere with the powers that be in the School for Health and Related
Research SCHARR (of which our centre is a member). The reason, I was
told, that it was a non-starter was that no one could see how it would
generate research funds and quantitative research relevant to our RAE
rating. I disagree profoundly. I put it to you that bringing together
various approaches to human nature from the humanities including
literature and philosophy, the human sciences and the helping
professions could be a distinguished and illuminating project to which
eminent scholars and researchers would, I promise you, flock. In the
immortal worlds of Kevin Cosner in 'Field of Dreams', 'If you build it
they will come'.
You may have noticed that I have not explicitly discoursed much on
the third term in my title, human nature. It is at least as problematic
as science and the humanities. Indeed, some Marxists have claimed that
it is only an ensemble of human relations, while others have written
excellent books rebutting this reading. Althusserians,
deconstructionists, Lacanians and postmodernists have reduced human
nature to a hook onto which inscriptions and on which constitutive
forces act. I defy you to make it go away. It is, of course, a subject
of debate in every newspaper and periodical, and I once collected
titles of a large number of books on my own bookshelves with the phrase
in their title. It is what we wish to fathom in deciding what we are up
against in ourselves and others, what we can hope for, what we may even
achieve: part biology, part socialization, part striving. For me it is
(you may find this limp) a mixture of good and bad, loving and
aggression, but all my studies and clinical work and family life have
taught me that it can to a degree be shifted for the better, as Freud
once put it, from unbearable misery to ordinary human unhappiness. My
own views are close to Freud's tempered pessimism, a sort of stoicism,
but let's keep on trying. In the last of his New Introductory Lectures
he claimed to have no weltangschauung or world view, while vehemently
attacking leftist views on human nature. I -- and I trust you -- do not
suffer under the delusion that I am free of ideology, but discerning
its role and picking and choosing among the philosophies of human
nature available to us is a task which is never-ending.
In my opinion psychoanalysis, seen as a discipline in the
humanities, is centrally complementary to biological approaches. As
Jonathan Lear has put it,
The point of psychoanalysis is to help us develop a clearer,
yet more flexible and creative, sense of what our ends might be. "How
shall we live?" is, for Socrates, the fundamental question of human
existence ó and the attempt to answer that question is, for him, what
makes human life worthwhile. And it is Plato and Shakespeare, Proust,
Nietzsche and, most recently, Freud who complicated the issue by
insisting that there are deep currents of meaning, often crosscurrents,
running through the human soul which can at best be glimpsed through a
glass darkly. This, if anything, is the Western tradition: not a
specific set of values, but a belief that the human soul is too deep
for there to be any easy answer to the question of how to live (Lear,
1998, p. 2
.Among the most Socratic books I have read are two which I have
recently had occasion to re-read and give to my children. Both are
about many things, but the first looks centrally at what's gone wrong
with our conceptions of the relations between the technical and the
world of values -- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974).
The other is not as celebrated. Seventeen years after Robert Pirsig
wrote ZenÖ he wrote Lila: An Enquiry into Morals. The central question
in the book is whether a derelict, feckless, mendacious wreck of a
woman had value. Throughout the book the issue hangs in the balance. I
want to live in an academic world in which it is thought important and
even natural that students in science, technology and medicine should
read and reflect upon those books.
In conclusion, I stand before you a venerable and bloody but
unbowed survivor of the Science Wars and the Freud Wars, both of which
are ongoing. I am suggesting, even pleading, that if we do not make
peace between the sciences and the humanities and seek to reintegrate
the metaphysical foundations of science with values, we will sink into
an ever-deepening pit of philistinism, false consciousness, reification
and moral decay. If we do, as a result of great struggle, manage to
reintegrate them, we can seriously hope to achieve and to bear ordinary
human unhappiness.
Copyright: The Author
Address for correspondence: 26 Freegrove Road, London N7 9RQ
robert@rmy1.demon.co.uk
http://human-nature.com/
The Human Nature Review © Ian Pitchford and Robert M. Young
Life's Biggest Question Still Needs an Answer
NZ Herald 22-3-99
The origins of human existence cannot be explained by discoveries of where and how life developed, but rather by asking why, write NEIL BROOM and ROBERT MANN .
Professor Paul Davies is certainly one of the most successful modern scientists in guiding towards "a rapprochement between science and spirituality". But his latest book, The Fifth Miracle , asserts that, if we find life elsewhere than on our planet, "the ramifications are profound in the extreme."
"They transcend mere science, and impact on such philosophical issues as whether there is a meaning to physical existence or whether life, the universe and everything are ultimately pointless and absurd" he writes.
"That is the momentous import of the search for life on Mars and beyond. The search for life in the universe is thus a search for ourselves - who we are and what our place is in the grand scheme of things".
The notion - called panspermia - that life first arose elsewhere and then came across space on to our planet has exerted only minor, fitful influence on evolutionary theory. The similar notion that our planet may have 'seeded' microbes far afield has an even scantier history. The other logical possibility is that life arose independently in two or more places. Few scientific facts point to such hypotheses, and none in any conclusive way.
But, whatever facts science may yet uncover on Mars or further away, these can not be important for the spiritual understanding which Davies seeks.
Davies says that the existence of life elsewhere, if factually confirmed, "would be the most definite indication of there being a purpose or direction to life . . . the closest we could get to proof of the existence of a 'god'." Similarly, he says that should life be found off the planet this would be "the greatest evidence for a creator".
These statements are, rather obviously, wrong. The spiritual questions grandly outlined by Davies cannot be illuminated by technical facts about where life first arose, or where else it moved to, on or off our planet. 'Where?', and even 'when?', are vastly less important, and infinitely less spiritual, than 'why?' - the question about causes & meaning.
Scholarly consideration of causes in biology is famously illuminated by William Paley’s scenario of finding, during a stroll on a heath, a watch. The evident order of this mechanism - especially if it was working when found - would rightly force the finder who studied it to infer the existence of a design and, therefore, a designer.
Watches can never be said to have arisen from an entirely impersonal, mindless cause. Such mechanical contrivances are always the expression of creativity, of some person who decided to construct a mechanism for the purpose of telling time.
Paley argued that the living mechanisms of nature - the complex machinery so evident in biology - must similarly be inferred to be designed.
However materialistic one’s views might be and however many millions or billions of years of evolution may be granted to us, the machinery of life surely requires an explanation of a personal rather than impersonal kind. We believe this argument has been wrongly neglected - certainly not refuted. Megatime is no substitute for purpose.
To discuss causes of life, one needs traditional understanding of the term 'causes'. The four categories of cause, identified by Aristotle and little challenged for 2.3 millennia, have rarely been taught to science students let alone the general public, but they are crucial for explanation in biology. Two of the four are simply ignored today by most scientist-philosophers.
Before the recent decline in the philosophy of science, the Auckland biologist John E. Morton, using science, as Aristotle of course could not, illustrated the 4 categories of cause by his 1972 'claret cameo' [in 'God, Science & Man', Collins 1972], which we paraphrase below.
**************
Morton's 'claret cameo'
What are the causes of my bottle of claret?
The material cause includes the grape juice and the yeast, materials transformed by the efficient cause into this peculiar substance claret.
The efficient cause is the action of the yeast on the grape sugars and some minor components, resulting in aqueous ethanol and some minor new chemicals characteristic of claret.
But my bottle of claret has also a final cause: a man (named Babich) exerted his will to organise suitable vessels for the substances which are the material cause, and planned a sequence of operations for the purpose of making claret by maximising the likelihood that the efficient cause for claret would operate, i.e. the particular chemical action of the yeast on the grape juice leading to claret.
What Aristotle called the formal cause, on which we here say no more, is the 'claret idea' in Babich's mind.
**************
{photo of a frog - caption Design secrets rest with the humble frog}
If a bottle of claret is required by human reason to have a final cause, how could it be denied that a frog also is designed?
The attempt to explain life is, we believe, severely incomplete until one faces up to final cause in biology. This is little assisted by panspermia, which merely pushes back one stage the scientific question of where & when life first showed up in the universe, and has negligible spiritual significance.
The "enlightment" assumption that science can, and soon will, give an essentially complete description and explanation of the physical (including biological) world constitutes scientism - faith in science as the "only" way of knowledge. The only type of final cause - person acting to bring about the observed change - is, in this modern approach, human will. ‘Who designed this watch?’ is thus an allowed question, but ‘who designed this frog?’ is not.
The attempt to illuminate spiritual questions by studying only nature without recourse to special revelation is called natural theology. One of us has recently tried to bring natural theology up to date in a small book concentrating on design in biology (How Blind is the Watchmaker ? , Ashgate 199
. [2nd edn IVP 2001]The existence of life on Mars or elsewhere seems to us a scientifically interesting but theologically trivial question. Attempts to discern anything about God, or spiritual matters more generally, from this sort of science are, in our opinion, doomed.
There is compelling evidence much ‘closer to home’ for a transcendent cause. Just take a look at any one of the marvellous mechanisms found in the living world. Such living ‘machines’ embody and express a degree of complexity, sophistication, and purposefulness, that far surpasses anything created by human hands. Are we then to conclude that there is no evidence of mindful orchestration in the living world? No Mastermind?
The really important questions about what we are and why we exist are not scientific, and science is a trespasser when it pronounces on such matters. This fundamental limitation of science was admirably summarised by Professor Morton a quarter of a century ago.
The feeling of breathless enchantment can be evoked by natural theology, and can lead the children of atheism & agnosticism to investigate more important parts of theology.
But bugs winging their way to or from Mars, or any other version of panspermia, are incapable of shedding light on the really important questions concerning purpose and meaning in life.
Neil Broom is associate professor of engineering, and Robert Mann was until retirement senior lecturer in environmental studies, at the University of Auckland.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/12/15/MNGSQABVST1.DTL
Scientists debate decline of oil stores: Sooner or later?
...
>Nur said he suspected the diplomatically worded Chinese statement carried
>a veiled implication: that China recognizes the legitimacy of a nation's
>taking military action to ensure oil supplies. Conceivably, Nur said,
>that means that China, too, would be willing to take military action to
>maintain its oil imports.
>"This is a potentially emerging conflict that is huge in magnitude," Nur
>said. "The finiteness of recoverable oil and gas reserves is a fact. ...
>There doesn't have to be a third world war for oil, but there could be."
It's surprising how few today are aware that just before Pearl
Harbor the USA had throttled Japan's oil imports to 30% of what they had
been - in peaceful, non-militaristic effort to force Japan out of its
(particularly vicious) occupation of parts of China. Other resources also
lacked by Japan itself, e.g iron ore, were also being blocked in this
USA-led campaign. (Australian P.M Menzies breached the embargo by selling
scrap iron to Japan, an action widely deplored still today.)
One Japanese response to the blockade was a military attempt to
capture oilfields in N.E. Asia. This was promptly repelled by 'Zhukov's
warmup' - an impressive blitzkrieg implying more trouble for the Axis
before long from that military genius.
Only after that did Japan move S. for Dutch E. Indies oilfields.
So I don't think people should talk of war for oil as hypothetical.
It has happened, and the way those SUVs are gobbling fuel it will happen
again. No doubt the USA will contrive to look the innocent victim again.
R
Scientists debate decline of oil stores: Sooner or later?
...
>Nur said he suspected the diplomatically worded Chinese statement carried
>a veiled implication: that China recognizes the legitimacy of a nation's
>taking military action to ensure oil supplies. Conceivably, Nur said,
>that means that China, too, would be willing to take military action to
>maintain its oil imports.
>"This is a potentially emerging conflict that is huge in magnitude," Nur
>said. "The finiteness of recoverable oil and gas reserves is a fact. ...
>There doesn't have to be a third world war for oil, but there could be."
It's surprising how few today are aware that just before Pearl
Harbor the USA had throttled Japan's oil imports to 30% of what they had
been - in peaceful, non-militaristic effort to force Japan out of its
(particularly vicious) occupation of parts of China. Other resources also
lacked by Japan itself, e.g iron ore, were also being blocked in this
USA-led campaign. (Australian P.M Menzies breached the embargo by selling
scrap iron to Japan, an action widely deplored still today.)
One Japanese response to the blockade was a military attempt to
capture oilfields in N.E. Asia. This was promptly repelled by 'Zhukov's
warmup' - an impressive blitzkrieg implying more trouble for the Axis
before long from that military genius.
Only after that did Japan move S. for Dutch E. Indies oilfields.
So I don't think people should talk of war for oil as hypothetical.
It has happened, and the way those SUVs are gobbling fuel it will happen
again. No doubt the USA will contrive to look the innocent victim again.
R
12/24/04
PR spinning is replacing the traditional dictum "full and truthful
reporting" in science. The PR spin is bad enough but the academic goon
squads who go after those they disagree with are most fearful.
Nature 432, 657 (09 December 2004); doi:10.1038/432657b
Spinning out of control
Researchers should beware of 'public relations' screens that are
anything but helpful to science communication.
Those who report on science should give constant thanks to those
scientists who explain their work with generosity and patience. Cynics
who argue that researchers just crave publicity should recognize that
the enthusiasm with which such information is typically imparted belies
any suspicion of self-serving motives.
Paradoxically, this willingness to engage with journalists is threatened
by the idea in the scientific community of 'public engagement'. Many
companies and research institutes now have slick PR offices in which the
ethos is informed not by the scientific tradition of exchange and
interaction, but by a culture of marketing. It may be natural that
organizations want to trumpet their achievements in triumphant press
releases,and journalists are generally canny enough to decode the hype.
And it is unsurprising that large companies often demand that their
researchers be chaperoned in interviews by press officers.
It is more disturbing when government-funded research agencies, such as
the US National Institutes of Health, erect PR screens between their
scientists and the media, so that all correspondence is mediated via
e-mail by a press officer. One result is that scientists might come to
believe it sufficient to respond to enquiries about publicly funded
research with chunks of management jargon.
A recent set of questions from a journalist was sifted by this mechanism
to elicit the following response, doctored here to spare some blushes:
"Based on past and current progress, the NIH believes that
mouthwashology is a key enabling technology platform with the potential
to transform the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of halitosis. NIH's
recently announced Alliance for Halitosis is designed to facilitate and
accelerate the progress of the twenty-first century research teams
needed to realize the promise of these and future mouthwash technologies
for halitosis sufferers."
A polite follow-up message from the reporter,
tactfully refraining from pointing out that this statement was useless
to any self-respecting journalist but suggesting that it failed to
address any of the questions originally posed, met with stony silence.
It will be a sad day if scientists start to believe that this sort of
bland and meaningless corporate-speak absolves them of the
responsibility to tell people what they are actually doing.
reporting" in science. The PR spin is bad enough but the academic goon
squads who go after those they disagree with are most fearful.
Nature 432, 657 (09 December 2004); doi:10.1038/432657b
Spinning out of control
Researchers should beware of 'public relations' screens that are
anything but helpful to science communication.
Those who report on science should give constant thanks to those
scientists who explain their work with generosity and patience. Cynics
who argue that researchers just crave publicity should recognize that
the enthusiasm with which such information is typically imparted belies
any suspicion of self-serving motives.
Paradoxically, this willingness to engage with journalists is threatened
by the idea in the scientific community of 'public engagement'. Many
companies and research institutes now have slick PR offices in which the
ethos is informed not by the scientific tradition of exchange and
interaction, but by a culture of marketing. It may be natural that
organizations want to trumpet their achievements in triumphant press
releases,and journalists are generally canny enough to decode the hype.
And it is unsurprising that large companies often demand that their
researchers be chaperoned in interviews by press officers.
It is more disturbing when government-funded research agencies, such as
the US National Institutes of Health, erect PR screens between their
scientists and the media, so that all correspondence is mediated via
e-mail by a press officer. One result is that scientists might come to
believe it sufficient to respond to enquiries about publicly funded
research with chunks of management jargon.
A recent set of questions from a journalist was sifted by this mechanism
to elicit the following response, doctored here to spare some blushes:
"Based on past and current progress, the NIH believes that
mouthwashology is a key enabling technology platform with the potential
to transform the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of halitosis. NIH's
recently announced Alliance for Halitosis is designed to facilitate and
accelerate the progress of the twenty-first century research teams
needed to realize the promise of these and future mouthwash technologies
for halitosis sufferers."
A polite follow-up message from the reporter,
tactfully refraining from pointing out that this statement was useless
to any self-respecting journalist but suggesting that it failed to
address any of the questions originally posed, met with stony silence.
It will be a sad day if scientists start to believe that this sort of
bland and meaningless corporate-speak absolves them of the
responsibility to tell people what they are actually doing.
Bush Sets Out Plan to Dismantle 30 Years of Environmental Laws [Catch-all] -
GEA - gormfach@gmail.com @ 05:58:36 PM
Published on Sunday, December 5, 2004 by the lndependent/UK
Bush Sets Out Plan to Dismantle 30 Years of Environmental Laws
by Geoffrey Lean in Washington
George Bush's new administration, and its supporters controlling
Congress, are setting out to dismantle three decades of US
environmental protection.
We will now see an assault on the law which will set the US in the
direction of becoming a Third World country in terms of environmental
protection.
Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust
In little over a month since his re-election, they have announced that
they will comprehensively rewrite three of the country's most
important environmental laws, open up vast new areas for oil and gas
drilling, and reshape the official Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA).
They say that the election gave them a mandate for the measures -
which, ironically, will overturn a legislative system originally
established by the Republican Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford
- even though Mr Bush went out of his way to avoid emphasizing his
environmental plans during his campaign.
"The election was a validation of the philosophy and the agenda," said
Mike Leavitt, the Bush-appointed head of the EPA. He points out that
over a third of the agency's staff will become eligible for retirement
over the President's four-year term, enabling him to fill it with
people lenient to polluters.
The administration's first priority is the controversial plan to open
up the Arctic Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling. Two years ago the
Senate defeated plans to exploit the refuge - home to caribou, polar
bears , musk oxen and millions of migratory birds - by 52 votes to 48.
But with the election of four Republican senators in favor of the
drilling, and the disappearance of one who opposed it, the
administration now has the votes for victory.
It plans to follow with an energy bill - also defeated in the last
Congress - which would investigate vast new tracts for exploitation
for oil and gas. It will also encourage the building of nuclear power
stations, halted since the 1979 Three Mile Island accident.
Far more radical measures are also under way. Joe Barton, the Texas
Republican chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, who is
to help push through the energy bill, has also announced a
comprehensive review of the Clean Air Act, one of the world's most
successful environmental laws.
Environmentalists predict the emasculation of the Act, which has cut
air pollution across the country by more than half over the last 30
years. Not to be outdone, the Republican chairman of the House
Resources Committee, Richard Pombo, has announced a review of the
Endangered Species Act, for the protection of wildlife. The law has
been the main obstacle to the felling of much of the US's remaining
endangered rain forest. And in a third assault, Congressional leaders
have also announced an attack on the National Environmental Policy
Act, which requires details of the environmental effects of major
developments before they proceed.
Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, said last
week that the previous Bush administration had largely contented
itself with weakening environmental legislation, but the new one
intended to go much further. He added: "We will now see an assault on
the law which will set the US in the direction of becoming a Third
World country in terms of environmental protection."
The environmentalists point out that almost every local referendum on
environmental issues carried out on election day achieved a green
majority.
They recall the fate of the assault on environmental law - headed by
the former Congressional Speaker, Newt Gingrich, in the mid 1990s -
which caused such opposition that Congress enacted tough new green
legislation.
Bush Sets Out Plan to Dismantle 30 Years of Environmental Laws
by Geoffrey Lean in Washington
George Bush's new administration, and its supporters controlling
Congress, are setting out to dismantle three decades of US
environmental protection.
We will now see an assault on the law which will set the US in the
direction of becoming a Third World country in terms of environmental
protection.
Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust
In little over a month since his re-election, they have announced that
they will comprehensively rewrite three of the country's most
important environmental laws, open up vast new areas for oil and gas
drilling, and reshape the official Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA).
They say that the election gave them a mandate for the measures -
which, ironically, will overturn a legislative system originally
established by the Republican Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford
- even though Mr Bush went out of his way to avoid emphasizing his
environmental plans during his campaign.
"The election was a validation of the philosophy and the agenda," said
Mike Leavitt, the Bush-appointed head of the EPA. He points out that
over a third of the agency's staff will become eligible for retirement
over the President's four-year term, enabling him to fill it with
people lenient to polluters.
The administration's first priority is the controversial plan to open
up the Arctic Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling. Two years ago the
Senate defeated plans to exploit the refuge - home to caribou, polar
bears , musk oxen and millions of migratory birds - by 52 votes to 48.
But with the election of four Republican senators in favor of the
drilling, and the disappearance of one who opposed it, the
administration now has the votes for victory.
It plans to follow with an energy bill - also defeated in the last
Congress - which would investigate vast new tracts for exploitation
for oil and gas. It will also encourage the building of nuclear power
stations, halted since the 1979 Three Mile Island accident.
Far more radical measures are also under way. Joe Barton, the Texas
Republican chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, who is
to help push through the energy bill, has also announced a
comprehensive review of the Clean Air Act, one of the world's most
successful environmental laws.
Environmentalists predict the emasculation of the Act, which has cut
air pollution across the country by more than half over the last 30
years. Not to be outdone, the Republican chairman of the House
Resources Committee, Richard Pombo, has announced a review of the
Endangered Species Act, for the protection of wildlife. The law has
been the main obstacle to the felling of much of the US's remaining
endangered rain forest. And in a third assault, Congressional leaders
have also announced an attack on the National Environmental Policy
Act, which requires details of the environmental effects of major
developments before they proceed.
Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, said last
week that the previous Bush administration had largely contented
itself with weakening environmental legislation, but the new one
intended to go much further. He added: "We will now see an assault on
the law which will set the US in the direction of becoming a Third
World country in terms of environmental protection."
The environmentalists point out that almost every local referendum on
environmental issues carried out on election day achieved a green
majority.
They recall the fate of the assault on environmental law - headed by
the former Congressional Speaker, Newt Gingrich, in the mid 1990s -
which caused such opposition that Congress enacted tough new green
legislation.
PEGGY NOONAN
The Education of Dan Rather
From the golden age of network TV to the end of its hegemony.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110005969
Thursday, December 2, 2004 12:01 a.m. WSJ
Life is complicated, people are complicated, and most of us are a jumble
of virtues, flaws and contradictions. I like to try to understand the
past, try to put it together in a way that makes sense to me. This can
involve judging not only your own actions and decisions but those of
others, which can be hard. I have a friend who once said in the middle
of a conversation, "Don't understand me too quickly." Don't categorize
me; don't decide you broke the code. Sit back and watch; it's more
interesting than you may know.
Which gets me to Dan Rather, who was once my boss, and who of course has
announced his retirement from the anchor chair at CBS News. Everyone I
know is asking me what I think of it. I think a lot of things.
I'm going to use the past tense in speaking of him because I'm speaking
of his career, and speaking of when I knew him in the past.
My first thought: It is a hard world. We all know this in the abstract,
but it can take you aback in the particular. In public life the entire
body of your work--an entire career of almost 50 years--can now
essentially be summed up and dismissed by the last headline on your
career, which in this case is "Rather Retires Under Cloud After Forged
Documents Story." If Dan had retired of his own volition a year ago,
that would not be the headline. "Long Career Reflected Stunning Rise of
U.S. Media" would be more like it.
I am not saying timing is everything, although it can be rather a lot.
I'm thinking of . . . well, Richard Nixon. Nixon had one of the great
gutsy careers in American political history, and on the greatest issue
of his lifetime--the ugliness and destructiveness of communism here and
abroad--he was right, and put his career on the line. He did much good.
But his headline is Watergate.
I think the bitterness of Nixon's presidential years, the personal
darkness he seemed to display, was in part a product of simple human
pain, and the pain was the result of this: He had been right and brave
and done the right thing in the 1950s, and the American left and its
cousin the American establishment would never forgive him for it. And he
couldn't stop wanting their approval. He put a traitor named Alger Hiss
in jail. The left would make him pay. He paid the price in terms of his
personal peace. He handed his enemies a sword.
One of those who picked it up and used it against him was Dan Rather.
There is an amazing and unseen circularity to life. And wanting approval
can make you do strange things.
Dan was a great boss. He was appreciative of good work and sympathetic
when it wasn't good. He was one of the men--Douglas Edwards and Dallas
Townsend were two others--to whom I am indebted, for they taught me how
to write for the ear, how to write for people who are listening as
opposed to reading. He was generous with praise. Someone who did a good
job on a story got flowers and a note. Someone in the newsroom once
knocked Dan in a magazine profile, saying he was insecure, always
sending too many flowers. Dan thought, Really? Life's tough, you can't
send too many flowers! He was open to ideas, he was democratic and not
hierarchical in his management style, and he tried to be fair in his
dealings with people in spite of a personal emotionalism that was deep,
ever present and not entirely predictable.
For three years, from 1981 through 1984, I wrote his daily radio
commentary, a four-minute essay with a one-minute spot that went out to
all the CBS affiliates and network-owned stations. It was a great job.
We did some good work. Here's how it got done: When I had been doing the
show for a few weeks I could see that my work was not good--uneven,
without voice, without a clear point of view. I thought I knew the
reason. I had become increasingly a political conservative. Dan, it was
obvious to me, was a sort of establishment liberal--not a wild leftist
and not an ideologue, but whatever smart liberals thought was more or
less what he wound up thinking, and saying. I couldn't write his views
well, because I didn't buy them and didn't fully understand them. I
couldn't write my views, because the show had to reflect his thinking.
So I went to him and told him my problem. He was great. He said: On any
given issue that we discuss, give the liberal point of view fairly and
give the conservative point of view fairly, and then we'll end it with
my opinion, because it's my show. I thought that sounded good.
And it worked. "Dan Rather Reporting" actually got something of a
conservative following, not because it was a conservative show--it
wasn't--but because it actually put forward the conservative point of
view in what might be called a fair and balanced way. At CBS News in
those days that was surprising.
CBS then was full of people who liked to argue about who opposed the
Vietnam war first, this producer or that reporter. It was a matter of
pride who was antiwar first. On the night in 1980 when Ronald Reagan
beat Jimmy Carter in a landslide, and brought with him a Republican
Senate, CBS News, a busy hive full of people charged with telling
America the news at a dramatic moment, was like a morgue. I was happy,
and the blue-collar workers--the cameramen who were bringing up families
on Long Island, the secretaries from Queens--were delirious. Finally
someone would lower their taxes--payroll taxes on overtime were killing
them--and stop the humiliation in Iran. But the white-collar workers,
the producers and writers and on-air talent--oh what a sad and depressed
lot they were. The forces of evil had won.
Two things to be said here. One is that CBS News hasn't changed that
much, and the other is that the media world in which it operates has
changed completely. The whole context has changed. No one has to accept
the enforced corporate liberalism of the networks anymore, as they did
from 1950 through 1990. They have options, from cable to Fox to the
Internet to hundreds and thousands of radio shows, newspapers,
magazines. The old network hegemony is over. That's why network news
viewership is down, that's why the evening news isn't appointment TV
anymore. America didn't turn crazily right, Americans just finally got
political options in how they'd get the news, and took advantage of
them.
Dan Rather's career traces all this. He rose as network TV rose, rose in
the age of Cronkite, and when he took Mr. Cronkite's chair it was
front-page news. He was one of the three men in America who'd tell the
entire country the news. It was big stuff.
Along the way, on the way, he had his dramas. He was the young reporter
at Parkland Memorial Hospital who got word from a priest that JFK was
dead. He had it first. He covered the civil rights era down South in the
1960s--an insufficiently appreciated shaper of the views of young
reporters of Dan's generation. They saw white men in uniforms use fire
hoses on young blacks; they saw black people trying to get a cup of
coffee at the counter at Woolworth's punched and dragged away; they
covered the bombing of the Birmingham church, and the funerals of the
little girls who died there. (Nine-year-old Condi Rice, who lived
nearby, could have been one of them.) The civil rights struggle seared
everyone, but few more than the young reporters who covered it, and few,
I think, more than Dan.
So did Vietnam, from which Dan reported, again at personal risk. Another
perhaps insufficiently appreciated fact: Part of the bitterness of
Vietnam was the bitterness of those who were risking their lives in the
fight on the ground only to perceive, day by day, that their government,
and its Clark Cliffords and other shrewd operators, were pulling the
plug on the war and not fighting to win. In Washington they were trying
to escape with their careers and reputations intact. On the ground in
country, as they used to say, they were trying to escape with their
lives. Imagine how you'd feel if you were a grunt losing your friends as
all this became clearer day by day. And imagine what it was like to be
young Dan, listening to those grunts each day.
And then Watergate. More and more I think that scandal will be
remembered as a kind of hysteria, a virus that jumped from reporter to
reporter, newsroom to newsroom, raising temperatures to fever pitch. Dan
was one of the reporters who went after Nixon, et al., with a vengeance.
Looking back one might ask: Why?
For a mix of reasons. Because it was good for business. Because it drove
up "Evening News" numbers. Because there was blood in the air. Because
Watergate seemed to illustrate what reporters knew, just knew, was the
secret truth residing in Richard Nixon's dark heart: a desire for
enemies lists and break-ins and IRS reviews. Because it built up
reporters as white knights, and reporters really didn't mind being seen
as white knights. Because it was exciting, and black and white. The good
guys were Democrats, investigators, special counsels and journalists
looking for The Truth. The bad: Nixon, Republicans, anyone who worked
for Nixon except a good source, Charles Colson, then a wild man, and G.
Gordon Liddy, a wild man to this day.
If you were a young Dan Rather you knew which side was the side to be
on. You knew which side your bosses were on. You knew which side would
lead to your rise. And you knew which side would win.
It wasn't exactly complicated. Every conservative in America in the last
century, especially in the media and in the colleges, knew they would be
dinged and damaged if they held to their beliefs. Every liberal in the
media and the academy knew they could rise if they espoused liberal
views. Dan wanted to rise.
Probably the worst moment in his career, because it was arguably the one
most obvious in showing bias and a political agenda, was the time Dan
tried to beat up George H.W. Bush live, on the "CBS Evening News," over
Iran-contra. Mr. Bush decked him instead, and with a question that
reverberates: How would you like your whole career to be judged by one
mistake? I do not doubt that CBS News that night thought it was going to
take down a vice president, and wanted to. And was embittered by its
failure. Which may have contributed to the years long, Ahab-like quest
of producer Mary Mapes to bring down George W. Bush with documents it
took bloggers less than 24 hours to reveal as fabrications.
And yet. Dan Rather was one of the great breaking-news reporters of our
time. Hurricanes, earthquakes, big sudden stuff--he loved it, and he
knew how to cover it. A friend reminded me of the beauty with which Dan
asked for silence as CBS's cameras lingered on the sun going down on
quake-ravaged San Francisco in 1989. And I think of his delicate
coverage of stories like Princess Diana's funeral.
I don't think Dan Rather ever saw himself as being destructive in his
views and biases when the story of the night was political. He always
seemed to me to love America, was moved, always, by those who fight for
it. He respected the armed forces and their sacrifices. He surprised me
one day by reciting from heart and with tears in his eyes the last
letter of Travis at the Alamo. And there was the time, after 9/11, when
he went on David Letterman's show and, in speaking of the heroism of
what he'd seen at Ground Zero and the tragedy of it, burst into sobs. He
felt it. Anyone who felt 9/11 down to his bones--well, who's to gainsay
that?
Ultimately this is what I think was true about Dan and his career. It's
not very nice but I think it is true. He was a young, modestly educated
Texas boy from nowhere, with no connections and a humble background. He
had great gifts, though: physical strength, attractiveness, ambition,
commitment and drive. He wanted to be a star. He was willing to learn
and willing to pay his dues. He covered hurricanes and demonstrations,
and when they got him to New York they let him know, as only an
establishment can, what was the right way to think, the intelligent
enlightened way, the Eastern way, the Ivy League way, the Murrow School
of Social Justice way. They let him know his simple Texan American
assumptions were not so much wrong as not fully thought through, not
fully nuanced, not fully appreciative of the multilayered nature of
international political realities. He swallowed it whole.
He had a strong Texas accent, but they let him know he wasn't in Texas
anymore. I remember once a nice man, an executive producer, confided in
me that he'd known Dan from the early days, from when he first came up
to New York. He laughed, not completely unkindly, and told me Dan wore
the wrong suits. I wish I could remember exactly what he said but it was
something like, "He had a yellow suit!" There was a sense of: We
educated him. Dan wound up in pinstripe suits made in London. Like Cyrus
Vance. Like Clark Clifford. He got educated. He fit right in. And much
of what he'd learned--from the civil rights movement, from Vietnam and
from Watergate--allowed him to think he was rising in the right way and
with the right crew and the right thinking.
People are complicated, careers are complicated, motives are
complicated. Dan Rather did some great work on stories that demanded
physical courage. He loved the news, and often made it look like the
most noble of enterprises. He had guts and fortitude. Those stories he
covered that touched on politics were unfortunately and consistently
marred by liberal political bias, and in this he was like too many in
his profession. But this is changing. The old hegemony has given way.
The old dominance is over. Good thing. Great thing. Onward.
The Education of Dan Rather
From the golden age of network TV to the end of its hegemony.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110005969
Thursday, December 2, 2004 12:01 a.m. WSJ
Life is complicated, people are complicated, and most of us are a jumble
of virtues, flaws and contradictions. I like to try to understand the
past, try to put it together in a way that makes sense to me. This can
involve judging not only your own actions and decisions but those of
others, which can be hard. I have a friend who once said in the middle
of a conversation, "Don't understand me too quickly." Don't categorize
me; don't decide you broke the code. Sit back and watch; it's more
interesting than you may know.
Which gets me to Dan Rather, who was once my boss, and who of course has
announced his retirement from the anchor chair at CBS News. Everyone I
know is asking me what I think of it. I think a lot of things.
I'm going to use the past tense in speaking of him because I'm speaking
of his career, and speaking of when I knew him in the past.
My first thought: It is a hard world. We all know this in the abstract,
but it can take you aback in the particular. In public life the entire
body of your work--an entire career of almost 50 years--can now
essentially be summed up and dismissed by the last headline on your
career, which in this case is "Rather Retires Under Cloud After Forged
Documents Story." If Dan had retired of his own volition a year ago,
that would not be the headline. "Long Career Reflected Stunning Rise of
U.S. Media" would be more like it.
I am not saying timing is everything, although it can be rather a lot.
I'm thinking of . . . well, Richard Nixon. Nixon had one of the great
gutsy careers in American political history, and on the greatest issue
of his lifetime--the ugliness and destructiveness of communism here and
abroad--he was right, and put his career on the line. He did much good.
But his headline is Watergate.
I think the bitterness of Nixon's presidential years, the personal
darkness he seemed to display, was in part a product of simple human
pain, and the pain was the result of this: He had been right and brave
and done the right thing in the 1950s, and the American left and its
cousin the American establishment would never forgive him for it. And he
couldn't stop wanting their approval. He put a traitor named Alger Hiss
in jail. The left would make him pay. He paid the price in terms of his
personal peace. He handed his enemies a sword.
One of those who picked it up and used it against him was Dan Rather.
There is an amazing and unseen circularity to life. And wanting approval
can make you do strange things.
Dan was a great boss. He was appreciative of good work and sympathetic
when it wasn't good. He was one of the men--Douglas Edwards and Dallas
Townsend were two others--to whom I am indebted, for they taught me how
to write for the ear, how to write for people who are listening as
opposed to reading. He was generous with praise. Someone who did a good
job on a story got flowers and a note. Someone in the newsroom once
knocked Dan in a magazine profile, saying he was insecure, always
sending too many flowers. Dan thought, Really? Life's tough, you can't
send too many flowers! He was open to ideas, he was democratic and not
hierarchical in his management style, and he tried to be fair in his
dealings with people in spite of a personal emotionalism that was deep,
ever present and not entirely predictable.
For three years, from 1981 through 1984, I wrote his daily radio
commentary, a four-minute essay with a one-minute spot that went out to
all the CBS affiliates and network-owned stations. It was a great job.
We did some good work. Here's how it got done: When I had been doing the
show for a few weeks I could see that my work was not good--uneven,
without voice, without a clear point of view. I thought I knew the
reason. I had become increasingly a political conservative. Dan, it was
obvious to me, was a sort of establishment liberal--not a wild leftist
and not an ideologue, but whatever smart liberals thought was more or
less what he wound up thinking, and saying. I couldn't write his views
well, because I didn't buy them and didn't fully understand them. I
couldn't write my views, because the show had to reflect his thinking.
So I went to him and told him my problem. He was great. He said: On any
given issue that we discuss, give the liberal point of view fairly and
give the conservative point of view fairly, and then we'll end it with
my opinion, because it's my show. I thought that sounded good.
And it worked. "Dan Rather Reporting" actually got something of a
conservative following, not because it was a conservative show--it
wasn't--but because it actually put forward the conservative point of
view in what might be called a fair and balanced way. At CBS News in
those days that was surprising.
CBS then was full of people who liked to argue about who opposed the
Vietnam war first, this producer or that reporter. It was a matter of
pride who was antiwar first. On the night in 1980 when Ronald Reagan
beat Jimmy Carter in a landslide, and brought with him a Republican
Senate, CBS News, a busy hive full of people charged with telling
America the news at a dramatic moment, was like a morgue. I was happy,
and the blue-collar workers--the cameramen who were bringing up families
on Long Island, the secretaries from Queens--were delirious. Finally
someone would lower their taxes--payroll taxes on overtime were killing
them--and stop the humiliation in Iran. But the white-collar workers,
the producers and writers and on-air talent--oh what a sad and depressed
lot they were. The forces of evil had won.
Two things to be said here. One is that CBS News hasn't changed that
much, and the other is that the media world in which it operates has
changed completely. The whole context has changed. No one has to accept
the enforced corporate liberalism of the networks anymore, as they did
from 1950 through 1990. They have options, from cable to Fox to the
Internet to hundreds and thousands of radio shows, newspapers,
magazines. The old network hegemony is over. That's why network news
viewership is down, that's why the evening news isn't appointment TV
anymore. America didn't turn crazily right, Americans just finally got
political options in how they'd get the news, and took advantage of
them.
Dan Rather's career traces all this. He rose as network TV rose, rose in
the age of Cronkite, and when he took Mr. Cronkite's chair it was
front-page news. He was one of the three men in America who'd tell the
entire country the news. It was big stuff.
Along the way, on the way, he had his dramas. He was the young reporter
at Parkland Memorial Hospital who got word from a priest that JFK was
dead. He had it first. He covered the civil rights era down South in the
1960s--an insufficiently appreciated shaper of the views of young
reporters of Dan's generation. They saw white men in uniforms use fire
hoses on young blacks; they saw black people trying to get a cup of
coffee at the counter at Woolworth's punched and dragged away; they
covered the bombing of the Birmingham church, and the funerals of the
little girls who died there. (Nine-year-old Condi Rice, who lived
nearby, could have been one of them.) The civil rights struggle seared
everyone, but few more than the young reporters who covered it, and few,
I think, more than Dan.
So did Vietnam, from which Dan reported, again at personal risk. Another
perhaps insufficiently appreciated fact: Part of the bitterness of
Vietnam was the bitterness of those who were risking their lives in the
fight on the ground only to perceive, day by day, that their government,
and its Clark Cliffords and other shrewd operators, were pulling the
plug on the war and not fighting to win. In Washington they were trying
to escape with their careers and reputations intact. On the ground in
country, as they used to say, they were trying to escape with their
lives. Imagine how you'd feel if you were a grunt losing your friends as
all this became clearer day by day. And imagine what it was like to be
young Dan, listening to those grunts each day.
And then Watergate. More and more I think that scandal will be
remembered as a kind of hysteria, a virus that jumped from reporter to
reporter, newsroom to newsroom, raising temperatures to fever pitch. Dan
was one of the reporters who went after Nixon, et al., with a vengeance.
Looking back one might ask: Why?
For a mix of reasons. Because it was good for business. Because it drove
up "Evening News" numbers. Because there was blood in the air. Because
Watergate seemed to illustrate what reporters knew, just knew, was the
secret truth residing in Richard Nixon's dark heart: a desire for
enemies lists and break-ins and IRS reviews. Because it built up
reporters as white knights, and reporters really didn't mind being seen
as white knights. Because it was exciting, and black and white. The good
guys were Democrats, investigators, special counsels and journalists
looking for The Truth. The bad: Nixon, Republicans, anyone who worked
for Nixon except a good source, Charles Colson, then a wild man, and G.
Gordon Liddy, a wild man to this day.
If you were a young Dan Rather you knew which side was the side to be
on. You knew which side your bosses were on. You knew which side would
lead to your rise. And you knew which side would win.
It wasn't exactly complicated. Every conservative in America in the last
century, especially in the media and in the colleges, knew they would be
dinged and damaged if they held to their beliefs. Every liberal in the
media and the academy knew they could rise if they espoused liberal
views. Dan wanted to rise.
Probably the worst moment in his career, because it was arguably the one
most obvious in showing bias and a political agenda, was the time Dan
tried to beat up George H.W. Bush live, on the "CBS Evening News," over
Iran-contra. Mr. Bush decked him instead, and with a question that
reverberates: How would you like your whole career to be judged by one
mistake? I do not doubt that CBS News that night thought it was going to
take down a vice president, and wanted to. And was embittered by its
failure. Which may have contributed to the years long, Ahab-like quest
of producer Mary Mapes to bring down George W. Bush with documents it
took bloggers less than 24 hours to reveal as fabrications.
And yet. Dan Rather was one of the great breaking-news reporters of our
time. Hurricanes, earthquakes, big sudden stuff--he loved it, and he
knew how to cover it. A friend reminded me of the beauty with which Dan
asked for silence as CBS's cameras lingered on the sun going down on
quake-ravaged San Francisco in 1989. And I think of his delicate
coverage of stories like Princess Diana's funeral.
I don't think Dan Rather ever saw himself as being destructive in his
views and biases when the story of the night was political. He always
seemed to me to love America, was moved, always, by those who fight for
it. He respected the armed forces and their sacrifices. He surprised me
one day by reciting from heart and with tears in his eyes the last
letter of Travis at the Alamo. And there was the time, after 9/11, when
he went on David Letterman's show and, in speaking of the heroism of
what he'd seen at Ground Zero and the tragedy of it, burst into sobs. He
felt it. Anyone who felt 9/11 down to his bones--well, who's to gainsay
that?
Ultimately this is what I think was true about Dan and his career. It's
not very nice but I think it is true. He was a young, modestly educated
Texas boy from nowhere, with no connections and a humble background. He
had great gifts, though: physical strength, attractiveness, ambition,
commitment and drive. He wanted to be a star. He was willing to learn
and willing to pay his dues. He covered hurricanes and demonstrations,
and when they got him to New York they let him know, as only an
establishment can, what was the right way to think, the intelligent
enlightened way, the Eastern way, the Ivy League way, the Murrow School
of Social Justice way. They let him know his simple Texan American
assumptions were not so much wrong as not fully thought through, not
fully nuanced, not fully appreciative of the multilayered nature of
international political realities. He swallowed it whole.
He had a strong Texas accent, but they let him know he wasn't in Texas
anymore. I remember once a nice man, an executive producer, confided in
me that he'd known Dan from the early days, from when he first came up
to New York. He laughed, not completely unkindly, and told me Dan wore
the wrong suits. I wish I could remember exactly what he said but it was
something like, "He had a yellow suit!" There was a sense of: We
educated him. Dan wound up in pinstripe suits made in London. Like Cyrus
Vance. Like Clark Clifford. He got educated. He fit right in. And much
of what he'd learned--from the civil rights movement, from Vietnam and
from Watergate--allowed him to think he was rising in the right way and
with the right crew and the right thinking.
People are complicated, careers are complicated, motives are
complicated. Dan Rather did some great work on stories that demanded
physical courage. He loved the news, and often made it look like the
most noble of enterprises. He had guts and fortitude. Those stories he
covered that touched on politics were unfortunately and consistently
marred by liberal political bias, and in this he was like too many in
his profession. But this is changing. The old hegemony has given way.
The old dominance is over. Good thing. Great thing. Onward.
Unfranked 33 - Hate Speech, Anti discrimination Law and Gay Marriage [Catch-all] -
GEA - gormfach@gmail.com @ 05:49:15 PM
3 December 2004
Hate Speech, Anti discrimination Law and Gay Marriage
Deciding how to vote on the Civil Union Bill should have been easy for a
believer that the State has no place in the bedrooms of consenting adults.
So why did I vote no?
For two reasons:
* Because the Civil Union Bill came back without its companion bill.
Without that no MP could know at this stage what they were voting for. *
Because I could get no undertaking to protect freedoms of association and
speech for people who continue to believe that homosexuality is wrong.
Without its companion Relationships (Statutory References) Bill the Civil
Union Bill is hollow. It merely sets out a process for registering that two
people have agreed to civilly unite. The bill contains no rights and no
indication of what that contract is about. Though marketed as state
support for long-term stable committed relationships, none of those words
or concepts appears.
All the legal consequences will be in the companion bill. But the
companionship has broken down. and the bills have separated. The companion
bill was shambolically misconceived and wont be reported back until next
year. It would have changed over 100 provisions to eliminate almost all
remaining legal differences between marriage, civil union, and de facto
status. You could be a de facto after shacking up for a couple of nights
with no specific plan to leave.
Giving de facto partners near identical legal status to marriage, whether
they want it or not made the Civil Union bill (and the Marriage Act)
legally redundant, except as a fashion statement. So instead of
underscoring the moral neutrality of the State, the Bill asks Parliament to
bless a "lifestyle statement".
Few submitters were aware of its legal hollowness. For example we heard
sincere and tearful accounts of insensitive denial of hospital visiting
rights. But we found they were never matters of law. They still are not.
Nothing in either of these bills deals with hospital visiting. Those
submitters were victims of political theatre.
When all of the effect of one bill is set out in another bill, passing the
first without knowing what is in the second is like signing a blank cheque.
I was not prepared to give a family law blank cheque to Ms Clark and Ms
Wilson.
I might still have voted for the hollow Bill, if I'd been confident that
meaningless meant harmless.
The Civil Union Bill is not harmless. The Human Rights Act could be used
to force civil union involvement on to people who think same sex marriage
is deeply wrong. For example a church could be forced to make their church
hall available.
I supported the Homosexual Law Reform Bill. I drafted a speech in support
for an MP who voted for it. I believed the gay lobby’s claim that all they
wanted was equality through decriminalisation. Then they turned around and
agitated for privilege. They gave the Human Rights Commissars powers to
suppress peaceful opponents of homosexuality. Now they urge
anti-vilification laws or the criminalisation of criticism as "hate speech".
I am not willing to give a blank cheque to the "normalisers" of same-sex
relationships while they withhold freedom of association and freedom of
speech, in relation to sexual orientation.
They want a Parliamentary blessing.
I will not pass up a chance to oblige them to reciprocate. I asked for
their promise to restore lost freedom.
Neither side of a contentious moral debate should be able to get their
hands on the levers of state power to enforce their views against the
other. The State should not be allowed to discriminate on such matters.
The State should be secular, ensuring freedom for tolerant coexistence
among people with diverse religious, ethical and cultural preferences.
The State should also protect, not prevent private individuals and
organisations from trying to influence each other. Tolerance means nothing
if it does not include substantial freedom to be offensive, without the
intervention of the police.
Informal private discouragement of undesired conduct, whether it is just
poor manners, or what is seen as a self-destructive lifestyle, is an
essential part of the peaceful self-regulation of any healthy community.
Communities also rely on practical favours to encourage desirable
behaviour. The right word for these mechanisms is discrimination.
Ordinary people exercise their influence in everyday choices. They
discourage what they consider undesirable or encourage "the way we do
things around here" by who they choose to associate with, or to employ, or
to do business with. That right to discriminate must be restored and
protected.
I urged the House to reject the Bill until
* MPs could know what they're voting on before they vote, and. * There were
provisions to ensure it could not be turned into a legal club against
people who don't like homosexuality. We must all protect their freedom
peacefully to express that view.
The State should have no place in the bedrooms of the nation - but nor
should it threaten to punish private citizens who do care what happens in
bedrooms if they refuse to pretend that they don't care.
Stephen Franks MP
ACT New Zealand
P.S. To see the changes I have proposed for the Human Rights Act go to
http://www.act.org.nz/item.jsp?id=26382
Stephen Franks MP
ACT New Zealand
Room 8.04, Level 8, Bowen House,
Parliament Buildings, Wellington
New Zealand
Ph: (04) 470 6636
Fax: (04) 473 3532
Email: daniel.mccaffrey@parliament.govt.nz
For more information, see Stephen Franks' webpage at
http://www.act.org.nz/mps/franks
Hate Speech, Anti discrimination Law and Gay Marriage
Deciding how to vote on the Civil Union Bill should have been easy for a
believer that the State has no place in the bedrooms of consenting adults.
So why did I vote no?
For two reasons:
* Because the Civil Union Bill came back without its companion bill.
Without that no MP could know at this stage what they were voting for. *
Because I could get no undertaking to protect freedoms of association and
speech for people who continue to believe that homosexuality is wrong.
Without its companion Relationships (Statutory References) Bill the Civil
Union Bill is hollow. It merely sets out a process for registering that two
people have agreed to civilly unite. The bill contains no rights and no
indication of what that contract is about. Though marketed as state
support for long-term stable committed relationships, none of those words
or concepts appears.
All the legal consequences will be in the companion bill. But the
companionship has broken down. and the bills have separated. The companion
bill was shambolically misconceived and wont be reported back until next
year. It would have changed over 100 provisions to eliminate almost all
remaining legal differences between marriage, civil union, and de facto
status. You could be a de facto after shacking up for a couple of nights
with no specific plan to leave.
Giving de facto partners near identical legal status to marriage, whether
they want it or not made the Civil Union bill (and the Marriage Act)
legally redundant, except as a fashion statement. So instead of
underscoring the moral neutrality of the State, the Bill asks Parliament to
bless a "lifestyle statement".
Few submitters were aware of its legal hollowness. For example we heard
sincere and tearful accounts of insensitive denial of hospital visiting
rights. But we found they were never matters of law. They still are not.
Nothing in either of these bills deals with hospital visiting. Those
submitters were victims of political theatre.
When all of the effect of one bill is set out in another bill, passing the
first without knowing what is in the second is like signing a blank cheque.
I was not prepared to give a family law blank cheque to Ms Clark and Ms
Wilson.
I might still have voted for the hollow Bill, if I'd been confident that
meaningless meant harmless.
The Civil Union Bill is not harmless. The Human Rights Act could be used
to force civil union involvement on to people who think same sex marriage
is deeply wrong. For example a church could be forced to make their church
hall available.
I supported the Homosexual Law Reform Bill. I drafted a speech in support
for an MP who voted for it. I believed the gay lobby’s claim that all they
wanted was equality through decriminalisation. Then they turned around and
agitated for privilege. They gave the Human Rights Commissars powers to
suppress peaceful opponents of homosexuality. Now they urge
anti-vilification laws or the criminalisation of criticism as "hate speech".
I am not willing to give a blank cheque to the "normalisers" of same-sex
relationships while they withhold freedom of association and freedom of
speech, in relation to sexual orientation.
They want a Parliamentary blessing.
I will not pass up a chance to oblige them to reciprocate. I asked for
their promise to restore lost freedom.
Neither side of a contentious moral debate should be able to get their
hands on the levers of state power to enforce their views against the
other. The State should not be allowed to discriminate on such matters.
The State should be secular, ensuring freedom for tolerant coexistence
among people with diverse religious, ethical and cultural preferences.
The State should also protect, not prevent private individuals and
organisations from trying to influence each other. Tolerance means nothing
if it does not include substantial freedom to be offensive, without the
intervention of the police.
Informal private discouragement of undesired conduct, whether it is just
poor manners, or what is seen as a self-destructive lifestyle, is an
essential part of the peaceful self-regulation of any healthy community.
Communities also rely on practical favours to encourage desirable
behaviour. The right word for these mechanisms is discrimination.
Ordinary people exercise their influence in everyday choices. They
discourage what they consider undesirable or encourage "the way we do
things around here" by who they choose to associate with, or to employ, or
to do business with. That right to discriminate must be restored and
protected.
I urged the House to reject the Bill until
* MPs could know what they're voting on before they vote, and. * There were
provisions to ensure it could not be turned into a legal club against
people who don't like homosexuality. We must all protect their freedom
peacefully to express that view.
The State should have no place in the bedrooms of the nation - but nor
should it threaten to punish private citizens who do care what happens in
bedrooms if they refuse to pretend that they don't care.
Stephen Franks MP
ACT New Zealand
P.S. To see the changes I have proposed for the Human Rights Act go to
Stephen Franks MP
ACT New Zealand
Room 8.04, Level 8, Bowen House,
Parliament Buildings, Wellington
New Zealand
Ph: (04) 470 6636
Fax: (04) 473 3532
Email: daniel.mccaffrey@parliament.govt.nz
For more information, see Stephen Franks' webpage at
http://www.act.org.nz/mps/franks
My good old friend Richard Tong - a leading expert on the field
- especially recommends
http://www.xtremewaste.org.nz/
- especially recommends
http://www.xtremewaste.org.nz/
11/28/04
MannGram: GMOs - a source of energy for transport? [Catch-all] -
GEA - gormfach@gmail.com @ 04:07:06 PM
MannGram®: Energy Farming of GMOs
- a source of Net Energy for transport ?
Nov 2004
One significance of gene-tampering is potential attempts at 'energy
farming' of GM-trees or GM-algae.
In the mid-late 1970s many concepts were discussed for producing
transport fuels from biomass. Many trees and crops were examined with a
view to converting this or that part of the plants into liquid fuels (e.g
ethanol), or gaseous fuels (usually methane). The image generally pushed
was harvesting of solar energy by sustainable agribusiness systems (an
oxymoron).
My summary will tend to reveal a dismal process: loss of
scientific awareness of such energy analysis as that period developed.
This loss is interpretable as a kind of cultural amnesia - within only a
quarter-century.
Not even defns, let alone awareness of previously measured or
estimated values, are known to some of the more visible proponents of
energy farming. Ignorance is hardly novel regarding energy analysis, but
does seem to have got worse lately.
Energy R&D funding in the main modern period of NZ energy farming
discussions & trials was dominated by Colin J Maiden's 'NZ Energy R&D
Cttee', including Garth Harris's Growth Scenarios group, and then Maiden's
'Liquid Fuels Trust Board'. I tried in vain to get Garth to take account
of ecology, or just for a start the First Law of Thermodynamics, in his
massive energy farming scenarios. BTW the traitor Scott was involved in a
small way, paid part-time by Garth to read up on sustainability (it did not
sink in) and a co-author of Garth's Growth Scenarios. Garth summarised
late in the 1970s the NZERDC-funded studies on energy farming. (1)
The simplest issue that awful group would not consider was the
energy required for growing, harvesting & processing biomass for fuel
production. Philip S Corbet, founding prof of environmental sciences U of
Canterbury/Lincoln Coll, kept pointing out the need for careful estimates.
The Maiden cttee went so far as to fund Corbet's assistant R G Pearson who
urged (2):
The technology of interest that could be fruitfully examined is that of
fuel crops.
Proposals to build energy supply systems based on photosynthetic materials
to produce ethanol have been given serious consideration recently.
The degree of important placed on the concept is indicated by the major
(by NZ standards) funding of fuel cropping evaluations.
Net energy calculations are a necessary first step in any such
evaluation, to test the concept's viability and to help steer research
efforts along energy-frugal paths.
Pearson did not, however, go so far as to state definitions
of any energy ratios. Neither did Harris(1) - which did not however stop
him from asserting a column of figures called 'Energy Ratio' of crops -
lowest 17 (maize), fodder beet 24, gorse 90, radiata pine 21-32.
The Harris/Scott Growth Scenarios group asserted biomass can be a
net energy producer.
The only ref they gave turned out to be a CSIRO pubn containing no energy
input estimates, merely using an alleged conversion factor 75MJ/$ to get
from approximate *money* input estimates to even more uncertain energy
inputs.
I hope it may not seem too vindictive if we recall at this point
what the traitor Scott later, as head of the Treasury, did (with the
traitors Douglas, Prebble & Lange) to wreck New Zealand.
In a way more important is what they did not do. Although the
foreign agent Maiden largely misdirected energy policy thru the ERDC &
LFTB, and as chief architect of Think '410,000 jobs' Big should go down in
history as a major wrongdoer, he did allow a trickle of money to compressed
natural gas CNG and alcohol fuels testing. Most CNG eqpt has now been
exported to Bangla Desh, Mexico etc against urban air pollution. But we
can & should revive CNG, and especially compressed biogas CBG.
CBG from wastes is, in general, a goer. Experience on anaerobic
waste lagoons includes a couple decade of successes at pig farms; the
Tirau dairy factory's anaerobic lagoon produces several MW - flared for a
while, then fuelled some milk tanker lorries till some accountant
calculated it wasn't as cheap as dieseline (which I'd query).
But the fabled Market is too stupid to invest in appropriate
technologies; Minister of Energy Pete Hodgson MP intones with the Treasury
ideologues 'govt mustn't back winners'; and the bad planning - backing of
losers - by Maiden (& a few others) has been used as an excuse for
*abolishing* planning.
My final decade in the U of Auckland was in the Planning Dept, and
I took part in planning for bulk LPG, advocating CNG & CBG, as well as
fronting against Maiden's awful Mobil/Bechtel synfuels plant (Motunui).
My head tutor Jeanette Fitzsimons (now MP) toured CBG installations and
made a slide/tape show of some - many were impressively successful.
400,000 cars/vans converted to CNG/CBG would have provided as much
transport as the synfuels plant, but not been mothballed as it now is. I
see no hope for real progress in our country until we restore the Mixed
Economy - democratic ownership & control of the main utilities, and
public planning to ensure people can earn their living, as well as being
protected from unnecessary hazards.
With a billion humans undernourished, biomass arising as a
byproduct of food production is morally different from assigning land to
mere energy production. A good example is conversion of tallow by
transesterification with methanol to make what might be called a
quasi-biodiesel fuel. We have the world's biggest methanol factory, whose
output is no longer used for Maiden's greatest flop (the mothballed
Mobil/Bechtel synfuels rort) nor for making the MTBE now banned in Calif.
Tallow esters would seem a high priority for oil substitution. But the NZ
refinery was expanded in such a way as to maximise dieseline production (of
high sulfur content), and we have imported bulk used Jap diesel vehicles
(I've been driving one). The sub-micron particles from modern 'lo-smoke'
EFI diesels are ranked by some experts as _the_ under-rated public health
problem in our cities. Their astronomical surface area adsorbs carcinogens
from the exhaust vapours e.g polycyclic aromatics which are thus delivered
into the deep lung, as protective cilia are paralysed. Conversion of many
diesel vehicles to CNG (& CBG) should be urgently investigated. Such as
remain on dieseline should be supplied with as much tallow ester admixture
as we can make. Transport fuels from wastes is a realistic theme; what I
am cautioning against is careless dedication of land or water to energy
farming which *may* absorb more fuel than it produces.
Another case is ethanol from sugar cane, notably in Brazil. For
Louisiana sugar cane, the ratio energy out : energy in is in the range 1.8
- 0.9 (3). The authors conclude "Such a smll return on energy investment
is not likely to help solve the national energy problem" and helpfully
add: "For comparison, the net energy benefit of gasoline from Gulf of
Mexico oil is about 6:1".
Does anyone allege reliable figures for the Brasilian sugar cane to
ethanol industry?
It has been on the whole a dismal experience to go thru my files in
compiling this memo. Harris & buddies refused to tackle the issue of net
energy in any scientific way, and what little science was done in that
period has largely been forgotten.
This background of confusion & obfuscation makes it easier to
understand how as late as 2004 an engineer could feel called upon to
propose these definitions of 'energy ratio':-
> 1. Energy ratio equals net liquid fuel out : liquid fuel in.
> 2. Energy ratio equals net liquid fuel out : gross liquid fuel out
A third "definition" was also proferred:
> 3. Efficiency equals what you get out that you want : what you put in
>that you pay for (my old thermo lecturer's favourite).
This last may be OK among the restricted circle of those who
understand proper definitions and can have a spot of fun without causing
misunderstanding. It does at least have the virtue of being a ratio, as
efficiencies must be. But the insertion of vague economics into that
denominator I can only deplore in our context of formal defns being so very
widely unknown or ignored. Let's get reality straight, before we start any
economics-based jokes, please.
Another concept for energy farming is the anon undated (ca.199
'underground, suppressed' USA Dept of Energy PDF 'Biodiesel from Algae'.
This reminds me of the gushing about bullrushes based on their reported
world record for productivity (19t[dry]/ha.y). The late organic gardening
expert Lawrence D Hills wrote scathingly that the naive enthusiasts had not
thought how to harvest the crop. The harvesting of algae is not dealt with
by this DoE review. How would algae be harvested from 'racetrack' ponds?
(The bullrush problem was solved by Art Haughey at the Mangere sewage works
1978-84 - grow the plants as a chain of floating mats. This should be
pursued at other sewage lagoons.)
Art Haughey & I are preparing more detailed comments on that anon
US DoE review which are too bulky for this brief note. Suffice it to say
that net energy is not taken seriously, and "in the 1990s genetic
engineering had become the main focus of the program" - despite which "
best results were obtained using native species of algae that naturally
took over in the ponds". A 'racetrack' pond with GM algae will not only
get taken over by wild types but will probably also emanate GM-algae far
afield.
Here's a note from my friend the ace avocado grower Tim Vallings:
>In NZ avocado yields can be up to 30 tonne/ha.y ; oil yield is 1 litre of
>oil from 10 kg fruit early season, 1 liter per 5 kg later in the season,
>so annual oil yields are up to a potential max of 6000L per ha! (this
>equals the very best oil crop known on
>http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_yield.html#othercrops)
> Oil mfrs pay $1/kg for oil avocados so they get them cheap (food ones are
>$4/kg) but still the raw materials are costing them $5-$10 per litre.
>To substitute 1000 litre of dieseline (current price $680) we would need
>$30,000 worth of biomass harvested!
At this rate it would be imprudent to suppose that, say, doubling
the yield of avocados would turn this into a worthwhile way to make
transport fuel.
I'm particularly glad to see where I warned in 1978 of
> ... possible precipitate, rash efforts in genetic engineering
to fix nitrogen from the air and otherwise to improve plant yields
{ref. R Revelle, Sci Am Sep '76 173}. The hazards of such research
are not well known but do include potential disasters {3 refs}; and the
failure of the DSIR to comply with the environmental impact reporting
procedures before it apparently dangerous attempt to make pine trees
fix nitrogen, coupled with the efforts of NZ's few would-be genetic
engineers to evade open democratic control, do not inspire confidence. (4)
The GM caper mentioned there was an attempt to gene-jigger an
ectomycorrhiza of pine roots to fix nitrogen. All I have for ready
onflashing about this caper is this excerpt from my (suppressed) statement
to the RCGM:
One of the very first GM microbes was New Zealand's own bold
'nitrogen-fixing mycorrhiza'. A dozen pine seedlings in the
preliminary pot-trials died, and the transgenic fungus,
derived from one which had been normally ectomycorrhizal,
was found at autopsy to have invaded pine root cells.
This caper was written up to some extent:
Giles KL, Whitehead HCM (1975). The transfer of nitrogen fixing
ability to a eukaryote cell. _Cytobios 14_ 49-61.
Giles KL, Whitehead HCM (1977). Reassociation of a modified
mycorrhiza with the host plant roots (pinus radiata) and the
transfer of acetylene reduction activity._Plant & Soil_ Preprint.
This expt was criticised by the few early opponents of GM
in New Zealand e.g Dave Straton, Wm R Wilson & myself. The prime offender,
Dr Ken Giles, left the country under a cloud. If he is alive in the USA as
rumoured, I'd like to hear what he's been up to.
This is today cogent in that GM-trees are being touted as an image
for energy farming. Pres RSNZ James D Watson 'jr' has announced that his
Genesis® Corp, whose main 'thing' is gene-tampering, is going to do energy
farming. When I tried to tell him it might fail to net energy he
contradicted me but has not pointed me to any energy analyses in support of
his dismissal of my warning. He has also not made clear whether he expects
to deploy GM-plants for energy farming. The GM hypesters routinely allege
higher yields, whereas in fact GM-plants have almost always yielded less
than appropriate normal varieties.
The wider context within which renewed interest in energy farming
arises is exemplified by this recent warning from the World Wildlife Fund:-
Consumption of Resources Is Outstripping Planet's Ability to Cope, Says WWF
GENEVA -- People are plundering the world's
resources at a pace that outstrips the planet's capacity to sustain life,
the environmental group WWF said Thursday.
We can tend to get discouraged by the fact that govts &
corporations have very largely refused to act on this understanding since
it became reasonably clear 3 decade ago. But this
ignorance/apathy/perversity is all the more reason why we must redouble our
efforts to organise prudent action. The prospects for a 'soft landing'
from 'peak oil' {why must we be dogged by pidgin slogans?} decrease as the
years pass. The case for solar energy in many forms is more urgent than
ever.
Concomitantly urgent is avoidance of phoney solutions e.g 'energy
farming' of varieties that absorb more fuel than they produce, or at best
merely augment the non-renewable fuel inputs with solar to produce a modest
proportional increment that does not justify the land & labour entailed.
PR-images will doubtless be made of 'economic' energy farming
redeemed from hopeless energy ratios by GMOs. As usual, the difference
between hope and fact will be fudged. We are looking at hype,
smoke-&-mirrors, snake oil, and a long list of other pseudo-biomass.
Refs
1 Garth Harris 'Energy Farming in NZ' _NZ J Forestry 24_(1) 67-75 (1979)
2 R G Pearson 'Energy Analysis' NZERDC 1977 p.14
3 C S Hopkinson jr, J W Day jr _Science 207_ 302-03 (1980)
4 L R B Mann 'Some Difficulties with Energy Farming for Portable Fuels'
[Geo Serallach's] First Biotechnology Conference on Biomass & Energy,
Massey U 24-5-78
-
Robt Mann
consultant ecologist
P O Box 28878 Remuera, Auckland 1005, New Zealand
(9) 524 2949
- a source of Net Energy for transport ?
Nov 2004
One significance of gene-tampering is potential attempts at 'energy
farming' of GM-trees or GM-algae.
In the mid-late 1970s many concepts were discussed for producing
transport fuels from biomass. Many trees and crops were examined with a
view to converting this or that part of the plants into liquid fuels (e.g
ethanol), or gaseous fuels (usually methane). The image generally pushed
was harvesting of solar energy by sustainable agribusiness systems (an
oxymoron).
My summary will tend to reveal a dismal process: loss of
scientific awareness of such energy analysis as that period developed.
This loss is interpretable as a kind of cultural amnesia - within only a
quarter-century.
Not even defns, let alone awareness of previously measured or
estimated values, are known to some of the more visible proponents of
energy farming. Ignorance is hardly novel regarding energy analysis, but
does seem to have got worse lately.
Energy R&D funding in the main modern period of NZ energy farming
discussions & trials was dominated by Colin J Maiden's 'NZ Energy R&D
Cttee', including Garth Harris's Growth Scenarios group, and then Maiden's
'Liquid Fuels Trust Board'. I tried in vain to get Garth to take account
of ecology, or just for a start the First Law of Thermodynamics, in his
massive energy farming scenarios. BTW the traitor Scott was involved in a
small way, paid part-time by Garth to read up on sustainability (it did not
sink in) and a co-author of Garth's Growth Scenarios. Garth summarised
late in the 1970s the NZERDC-funded studies on energy farming. (1)
The simplest issue that awful group would not consider was the
energy required for growing, harvesting & processing biomass for fuel
production. Philip S Corbet, founding prof of environmental sciences U of
Canterbury/Lincoln Coll, kept pointing out the need for careful estimates.
The Maiden cttee went so far as to fund Corbet's assistant R G Pearson who
urged (2):
The technology of interest that could be fruitfully examined is that of
fuel crops.
Proposals to build energy supply systems based on photosynthetic materials
to produce ethanol have been given serious consideration recently.
The degree of important placed on the concept is indicated by the major
(by NZ standards) funding of fuel cropping evaluations.
Net energy calculations are a necessary first step in any such
evaluation, to test the concept's viability and to help steer research
efforts along energy-frugal paths.
Pearson did not, however, go so far as to state definitions
of any energy ratios. Neither did Harris(1) - which did not however stop
him from asserting a column of figures called 'Energy Ratio' of crops -
lowest 17 (maize), fodder beet 24, gorse 90, radiata pine 21-32.
The Harris/Scott Growth Scenarios group asserted biomass can be a
net energy producer.
The only ref they gave turned out to be a CSIRO pubn containing no energy
input estimates, merely using an alleged conversion factor 75MJ/$ to get
from approximate *money* input estimates to even more uncertain energy
inputs.
I hope it may not seem too vindictive if we recall at this point
what the traitor Scott later, as head of the Treasury, did (with the
traitors Douglas, Prebble & Lange) to wreck New Zealand.
In a way more important is what they did not do. Although the
foreign agent Maiden largely misdirected energy policy thru the ERDC &
LFTB, and as chief architect of Think '410,000 jobs' Big should go down in
history as a major wrongdoer, he did allow a trickle of money to compressed
natural gas CNG and alcohol fuels testing. Most CNG eqpt has now been
exported to Bangla Desh, Mexico etc against urban air pollution. But we
can & should revive CNG, and especially compressed biogas CBG.
CBG from wastes is, in general, a goer. Experience on anaerobic
waste lagoons includes a couple decade of successes at pig farms; the
Tirau dairy factory's anaerobic lagoon produces several MW - flared for a
while, then fuelled some milk tanker lorries till some accountant
calculated it wasn't as cheap as dieseline (which I'd query).
But the fabled Market is too stupid to invest in appropriate
technologies; Minister of Energy Pete Hodgson MP intones with the Treasury
ideologues 'govt mustn't back winners'; and the bad planning - backing of
losers - by Maiden (& a few others) has been used as an excuse for
*abolishing* planning.
My final decade in the U of Auckland was in the Planning Dept, and
I took part in planning for bulk LPG, advocating CNG & CBG, as well as
fronting against Maiden's awful Mobil/Bechtel synfuels plant (Motunui).
My head tutor Jeanette Fitzsimons (now MP) toured CBG installations and
made a slide/tape show of some - many were impressively successful.
400,000 cars/vans converted to CNG/CBG would have provided as much
transport as the synfuels plant, but not been mothballed as it now is. I
see no hope for real progress in our country until we restore the Mixed
Economy - democratic ownership & control of the main utilities, and
public planning to ensure people can earn their living, as well as being
protected from unnecessary hazards.
With a billion humans undernourished, biomass arising as a
byproduct of food production is morally different from assigning land to
mere energy production. A good example is conversion of tallow by
transesterification with methanol to make what might be called a
quasi-biodiesel fuel. We have the world's biggest methanol factory, whose
output is no longer used for Maiden's greatest flop (the mothballed
Mobil/Bechtel synfuels rort) nor for making the MTBE now banned in Calif.
Tallow esters would seem a high priority for oil substitution. But the NZ
refinery was expanded in such a way as to maximise dieseline production (of
high sulfur content), and we have imported bulk used Jap diesel vehicles
(I've been driving one). The sub-micron particles from modern 'lo-smoke'
EFI diesels are ranked by some experts as _the_ under-rated public health
problem in our cities. Their astronomical surface area adsorbs carcinogens
from the exhaust vapours e.g polycyclic aromatics which are thus delivered
into the deep lung, as protective cilia are paralysed. Conversion of many
diesel vehicles to CNG (& CBG) should be urgently investigated. Such as
remain on dieseline should be supplied with as much tallow ester admixture
as we can make. Transport fuels from wastes is a realistic theme; what I
am cautioning against is careless dedication of land or water to energy
farming which *may* absorb more fuel than it produces.
Another case is ethanol from sugar cane, notably in Brazil. For
Louisiana sugar cane, the ratio energy out : energy in is in the range 1.8
- 0.9 (3). The authors conclude "Such a smll return on energy investment
is not likely to help solve the national energy problem" and helpfully
add: "For comparison, the net energy benefit of gasoline from Gulf of
Mexico oil is about 6:1".
Does anyone allege reliable figures for the Brasilian sugar cane to
ethanol industry?
It has been on the whole a dismal experience to go thru my files in
compiling this memo. Harris & buddies refused to tackle the issue of net
energy in any scientific way, and what little science was done in that
period has largely been forgotten.
This background of confusion & obfuscation makes it easier to
understand how as late as 2004 an engineer could feel called upon to
propose these definitions of 'energy ratio':-
> 1. Energy ratio equals net liquid fuel out : liquid fuel in.
> 2. Energy ratio equals net liquid fuel out : gross liquid fuel out
A third "definition" was also proferred:
> 3. Efficiency equals what you get out that you want : what you put in
>that you pay for (my old thermo lecturer's favourite).
This last may be OK among the restricted circle of those who
understand proper definitions and can have a spot of fun without causing
misunderstanding. It does at least have the virtue of being a ratio, as
efficiencies must be. But the insertion of vague economics into that
denominator I can only deplore in our context of formal defns being so very
widely unknown or ignored. Let's get reality straight, before we start any
economics-based jokes, please.
Another concept for energy farming is the anon undated (ca.199
'underground, suppressed' USA Dept of Energy PDF 'Biodiesel from Algae'.
This reminds me of the gushing about bullrushes based on their reported
world record for productivity (19t[dry]/ha.y). The late organic gardening
expert Lawrence D Hills wrote scathingly that the naive enthusiasts had not
thought how to harvest the crop. The harvesting of algae is not dealt with
by this DoE review. How would algae be harvested from 'racetrack' ponds?
(The bullrush problem was solved by Art Haughey at the Mangere sewage works
1978-84 - grow the plants as a chain of floating mats. This should be
pursued at other sewage lagoons.)
Art Haughey & I are preparing more detailed comments on that anon
US DoE review which are too bulky for this brief note. Suffice it to say
that net energy is not taken seriously, and "in the 1990s genetic
engineering had become the main focus of the program" - despite which "
best results were obtained using native species of algae that naturally
took over in the ponds". A 'racetrack' pond with GM algae will not only
get taken over by wild types but will probably also emanate GM-algae far
afield.
Here's a note from my friend the ace avocado grower Tim Vallings:
>In NZ avocado yields can be up to 30 tonne/ha.y ; oil yield is 1 litre of
>oil from 10 kg fruit early season, 1 liter per 5 kg later in the season,
>so annual oil yields are up to a potential max of 6000L per ha! (this
>equals the very best oil crop known on
>http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_yield.html#othercrops)
> Oil mfrs pay $1/kg for oil avocados so they get them cheap (food ones are
>$4/kg) but still the raw materials are costing them $5-$10 per litre.
>To substitute 1000 litre of dieseline (current price $680) we would need
>$30,000 worth of biomass harvested!
At this rate it would be imprudent to suppose that, say, doubling
the yield of avocados would turn this into a worthwhile way to make
transport fuel.
I'm particularly glad to see where I warned in 1978 of
> ... possible precipitate, rash efforts in genetic engineering
to fix nitrogen from the air and otherwise to improve plant yields
{ref. R Revelle, Sci Am Sep '76 173}. The hazards of such research
are not well known but do include potential disasters {3 refs}; and the
failure of the DSIR to comply with the environmental impact reporting
procedures before it apparently dangerous attempt to make pine trees
fix nitrogen, coupled with the efforts of NZ's few would-be genetic
engineers to evade open democratic control, do not inspire confidence. (4)
The GM caper mentioned there was an attempt to gene-jigger an
ectomycorrhiza of pine roots to fix nitrogen. All I have for ready
onflashing about this caper is this excerpt from my (suppressed) statement
to the RCGM:
One of the very first GM microbes was New Zealand's own bold
'nitrogen-fixing mycorrhiza'. A dozen pine seedlings in the
preliminary pot-trials died, and the transgenic fungus,
derived from one which had been normally ectomycorrhizal,
was found at autopsy to have invaded pine root cells.
This caper was written up to some extent:
Giles KL, Whitehead HCM (1975). The transfer of nitrogen fixing
ability to a eukaryote cell. _Cytobios 14_ 49-61.
Giles KL, Whitehead HCM (1977). Reassociation of a modified
mycorrhiza with the host plant roots (pinus radiata) and the
transfer of acetylene reduction activity._Plant & Soil_ Preprint.
This expt was criticised by the few early opponents of GM
in New Zealand e.g Dave Straton, Wm R Wilson & myself. The prime offender,
Dr Ken Giles, left the country under a cloud. If he is alive in the USA as
rumoured, I'd like to hear what he's been up to.
This is today cogent in that GM-trees are being touted as an image
for energy farming. Pres RSNZ James D Watson 'jr' has announced that his
Genesis® Corp, whose main 'thing' is gene-tampering, is going to do energy
farming. When I tried to tell him it might fail to net energy he
contradicted me but has not pointed me to any energy analyses in support of
his dismissal of my warning. He has also not made clear whether he expects
to deploy GM-plants for energy farming. The GM hypesters routinely allege
higher yields, whereas in fact GM-plants have almost always yielded less
than appropriate normal varieties.
The wider context within which renewed interest in energy farming
arises is exemplified by this recent warning from the World Wildlife Fund:-
Consumption of Resources Is Outstripping Planet's Ability to Cope, Says WWF
GENEVA -- People are plundering the world's
resources at a pace that outstrips the planet's capacity to sustain life,
the environmental group WWF said Thursday.
We can tend to get discouraged by the fact that govts &
corporations have very largely refused to act on this understanding since
it became reasonably clear 3 decade ago. But this
ignorance/apathy/perversity is all the more reason why we must redouble our
efforts to organise prudent action. The prospects for a 'soft landing'
from 'peak oil' {why must we be dogged by pidgin slogans?} decrease as the
years pass. The case for solar energy in many forms is more urgent than
ever.
Concomitantly urgent is avoidance of phoney solutions e.g 'energy
farming' of varieties that absorb more fuel than they produce, or at best
merely augment the non-renewable fuel inputs with solar to produce a modest
proportional increment that does not justify the land & labour entailed.
PR-images will doubtless be made of 'economic' energy farming
redeemed from hopeless energy ratios by GMOs. As usual, the difference
between hope and fact will be fudged. We are looking at hype,
smoke-&-mirrors, snake oil, and a long list of other pseudo-biomass.
Refs
1 Garth Harris 'Energy Farming in NZ' _NZ J Forestry 24_(1) 67-75 (1979)
2 R G Pearson 'Energy Analysis' NZERDC 1977 p.14
3 C S Hopkinson jr, J W Day jr _Science 207_ 302-03 (1980)
4 L R B Mann 'Some Difficulties with Energy Farming for Portable Fuels'
[Geo Serallach's] First Biotechnology Conference on Biomass & Energy,
Massey U 24-5-78
-
Robt Mann
consultant ecologist
P O Box 28878 Remuera, Auckland 1005, New Zealand
(9) 524 2949
[Liquified ] Gas Established As Viable® Option For NZ [Catch-all] -
GEA - gormfach@gmail.com @ 04:01:48 PM
>FYI
The CEOs Kontakt & Genesis® were both on Radio NZ just now, in
unquestioned PR announcements of great vacuity.
The fire hazard range entailed in the unlikely event of one hold
breaking in an LNG tanker is ¾ 100 km (depending on the weather). The
whole nation of Qatar was crippled for several y by a major fire in their
LNG loadout port. The receiving port - Marsden Pt or "Taranaki", in the
Radio NZ PR - would be a lush target for terrorists. Annette Sykes Ll.B
has already threatened on TV to burn down publicly-owned forests.
LNG is a rotten idea.
The proper thing to do is to get on with one or two 8-10 km holes
in Taranaki, which will likely find astronomical lodes of natural gas.
R
>----------
>From: Scoop Outgoing News
>Reply-To: The Scoop Editor
>Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2004 10:47:24 +1300 (NZDT)
>Subject: Gas Established As Viable Option For NZ
>
>Posting to Business Wire of Scoop
>Press Release: Contact Energy
>Date: Tuesday, 16 November 2004
>Liquefied Natural Gas Established As Viable Option For New Zealand:
>Update on Contact Energy and Genesis Energy joint feasibility
>study
>
>A joint study by Contact Energy Ltd and Genesis Energy into the
>feasibility of liquefied natural gas (LNG) has established it
>is a viable backstop fuel option for New Zealand that can provide
>added security of electricity supply.
>
>Contact Chief Executive Steve Barrett and Genesis Energy Chief
>Executive Murray Jackson said it was vital that New Zealand had
>more certainty on fuel replacements after the Maui gas field
>runs down in 2009.
>
>Maui produces around two thirds of the country's natural gas
>and is used to generate around 25 percent of the country's electricity.
>
>'The rundown of Maui and increasing demand for energy threatens
>to put New Zealand into energy deficit at the end of this decade.
>From the study, we now know liquefied natural gas is a feasible
>and practical option for meeting the looming gap in New Zealand's
>energy supply, should new sources of New Zealand natural gas
>not become available at a pace sufficient to meet demand growth.
>
>'Our clear preference is for sufficient new sources of New Zealand
>natural gas to be discovered and brought to market.
>
>'Both companies have initiatives underway to accelerate gas exploration
>in New Zealand.
>
>'However, it would simply not be prudent in the meantime to rely
>on new gas discoveries to meet future demand.
>
>'Contact and Genesis Energy both operate substantial gas-fired
>plant and have plans to add substantial, new, energy-efficient
>gas-fired generation capacity that would help meet New Zealand's
>growing demand for electricity.
>
>'If we are to be certain that we can run our existing plant and
>make timely investments in new plant, we need a backstop option
>to pursue in case insufficient New Zealand gas is found.
>
>'The development of a liquefied natural gas alternative should
>not adversely affect local gas exploration, which at the present
>rate of discovery will not be able to meet the emerging gas gap.'
>
>World-wide, the market for liquefied natural gas is growing.
>Plentiful supplies can be imported to New Zealand at between
>$6.50 and $7.50 per gigajoule - prices which are within striking
>distance of the expected future cost of local New Zealand gas.
>The required infrastructure could be built within three years.
>
>If liquefied natural gas were required early in the next decade,
>construction would need to start in the next three to four years,
>with applications for resource consents required in the near
>future.
>
>'Contact and Genesis Energy are committed to further work to
>ensure liquefied natural gas is available as a future option
>for New Zealand. The consortium is now underway with the next
>phase which is to identify the best sites for a liquefied natural
>gas receiving terminal and gas transmission route and commence
>work on detailed development plans.'
>
>Mr Barrett and Mr Jackson say liquefied natural gas could supplement
>local gas supplies by meeting around half of the country's gas
>needs, or if local supply were severely constrained liquefied
>natural gas could meet all of New Zealand's requirements.
>
>'We expect natural gas to play a key role in New Zealand's future
>energy market, because of its cost, efficiency and reliability.
>It is also an environmentally attractive alternative to other
>fossil fuels such as coal or oil.'
>
>Contact and Genesis Energy announced in October 2003 that they
>were initiating a joint study to investigate the feasibility
>of developing a receiving terminal for liquefied natural gas
>and the economics of importing liquefied natural gas to New Zealand.
>
>The study's analysis of market trends and pricing for liquefied
>natural gas (LNG) found that: The delivered cost to Auckland
>of LNG would be in line with post-Maui gas from indigenous sources,
>in range of NZ$6.50-7.50 per gigajoule The LNG market is expanding
>rapidly. There is plentiful supply of LNG available that can
>more than meet the relatively small volumes, in international
>terms, that New Zealand will likely require. There would be a
>number of suppliers who could provide New Zealand with LNG from
>2010 onwards. Those supplies would come from either Australia
>or other locations in relative close proximity to New Zealand.
>Based on current estimates, an initial project could deliver
>50-60 petajoules of supply per year - or around half the country's
>gas requirements beyond 2010. Indigenous gas would provide the
>remainder. The volumes of LNG imported could be scaled up to
>meet increases in demand or shortfalls in local gas supplies,
>if required. A LNG receiving terminal and associated pipework
>would cost an estimated NZ $550-600 million (at a 60-petajoule
>capacity) and take around three years to construct once resource
>consents and an LNG supply contract had been secured.
>
>Liquefied natural gas is an established and mature technology
>with a proven safety record. It is manufactured from natural
>gas which is super-cooled to minus 161 degrees Celsius to form
>a liquid which occupies only 1/600th of its original volume so
>it can be transported by ship at normal atmospheric pressure.
>
>In New Zealand, a liquefied natural gas tanker would dock at
>port and its cargo would be converted back to natural gas from
>a super-cold liquid for distribution through the existing natural
>gas pipe network, along with domestically sourced natural gas.
>
>Liquefied natural gas is the same fuel as the natural gas New
>Zealand has used for over 40 years. As such, it can be used without
>modification in the country's existing gas infrastructure and
>gas-fired electricity generation plant.
>
>Note: Presentation slides can be found at Contact's website
>www.mycontact.co.nz.
The CEOs Kontakt & Genesis® were both on Radio NZ just now, in
unquestioned PR announcements of great vacuity.
The fire hazard range entailed in the unlikely event of one hold
breaking in an LNG tanker is ¾ 100 km (depending on the weather). The
whole nation of Qatar was crippled for several y by a major fire in their
LNG loadout port. The receiving port - Marsden Pt or "Taranaki", in the
Radio NZ PR - would be a lush target for terrorists. Annette Sykes Ll.B
has already threatened on TV to burn down publicly-owned forests.
LNG is a rotten idea.
The proper thing to do is to get on with one or two 8-10 km holes
in Taranaki, which will likely find astronomical lodes of natural gas.
R
>----------
>From: Scoop Outgoing News
>Reply-To: The Scoop Editor
>Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2004 10:47:24 +1300 (NZDT)
>Subject: Gas Established As Viable Option For NZ
>
>Posting to Business Wire of Scoop
>Press Release: Contact Energy
>Date: Tuesday, 16 November 2004
>Liquefied Natural Gas Established As Viable Option For New Zealand:
>Update on Contact Energy and Genesis Energy joint feasibility
>study
>
>A joint study by Contact Energy Ltd and Genesis Energy into the
>feasibility of liquefied natural gas (LNG) has established it
>is a viable backstop fuel option for New Zealand that can provide
>added security of electricity supply.
>
>Contact Chief Executive Steve Barrett and Genesis Energy Chief
>Executive Murray Jackson said it was vital that New Zealand had
>more certainty on fuel replacements after the Maui gas field
>runs down in 2009.
>
>Maui produces around two thirds of the country's natural gas
>and is used to generate around 25 percent of the country's electricity.
>
>'The rundown of Maui and increasing demand for energy threatens
>to put New Zealand into energy deficit at the end of this decade.
>From the study, we now know liquefied natural gas is a feasible
>and practical option for meeting the looming gap in New Zealand's
>energy supply, should new sources of New Zealand natural gas
>not become available at a pace sufficient to meet demand growth.
>
>'Our clear preference is for sufficient new sources of New Zealand
>natural gas to be discovered and brought to market.
>
>'Both companies have initiatives underway to accelerate gas exploration
>in New Zealand.
>
>'However, it would simply not be prudent in the meantime to rely
>on new gas discoveries to meet future demand.
>
>'Contact and Genesis Energy both operate substantial gas-fired
>plant and have plans to add substantial, new, energy-efficient
>gas-fired generation capacity that would help meet New Zealand's
>growing demand for electricity.
>
>'If we are to be certain that we can run our existing plant and
>make timely investments in new plant, we need a backstop option
>to pursue in case insufficient New Zealand gas is found.
>
>'The development of a liquefied natural gas alternative should
>not adversely affect local gas exploration, which at the present
>rate of discovery will not be able to meet the emerging gas gap.'
>
>World-wide, the market for liquefied natural gas is growing.
>Plentiful supplies can be imported to New Zealand at between
>$6.50 and $7.50 per gigajoule - prices which are within striking
>distance of the expected future cost of local New Zealand gas.
>The required infrastructure could be built within three years.
>
>If liquefied natural gas were required early in the next decade,
>construction would need to start in the next three to four years,
>with applications for resource consents required in the near
>future.
>
>'Contact and Genesis Energy are committed to further work to
>ensure liquefied natural gas is available as a future option
>for New Zealand. The consortium is now underway with the next
>phase which is to identify the best sites for a liquefied natural
>gas receiving terminal and gas transmission route and commence
>work on detailed development plans.'
>
>Mr Barrett and Mr Jackson say liquefied natural gas could supplement
>local gas supplies by meeting around half of the country's gas
>needs, or if local supply were severely constrained liquefied
>natural gas could meet all of New Zealand's requirements.
>
>'We expect natural gas to play a key role in New Zealand's future
>energy market, because of its cost, efficiency and reliability.
>It is also an environmentally attractive alternative to other
>fossil fuels such as coal or oil.'
>
>Contact and Genesis Energy announced in October 2003 that they
>were initiating a joint study to investigate the feasibility
>of developing a receiving terminal for liquefied natural gas
>and the economics of importing liquefied natural gas to New Zealand.
>
>The study's analysis of market trends and pricing for liquefied
>natural gas (LNG) found that: The delivered cost to Auckland
>of LNG would be in line with post-Maui gas from indigenous sources,
>in range of NZ$6.50-7.50 per gigajoule The LNG market is expanding
>rapidly. There is plentiful supply of LNG available that can
>more than meet the relatively small volumes, in international
>terms, that New Zealand will likely require. There would be a
>number of suppliers who could provide New Zealand with LNG from
>2010 onwards. Those supplies would come from either Australia
>or other locations in relative close proximity to New Zealand.
>Based on current estimates, an initial project could deliver
>50-60 petajoules of supply per year - or around half the country's
>gas requirements beyond 2010. Indigenous gas would provide the
>remainder. The volumes of LNG imported could be scaled up to
>meet increases in demand or shortfalls in local gas supplies,
>if required. A LNG receiving terminal and associated pipework
>would cost an estimated NZ $550-600 million (at a 60-petajoule
>capacity) and take around three years to construct once resource
>consents and an LNG supply contract had been secured.
>
>Liquefied natural gas is an established and mature technology
>with a proven safety record. It is manufactured from natural
>gas which is super-cooled to minus 161 degrees Celsius to form
>a liquid which occupies only 1/600th of its original volume so
>it can be transported by ship at normal atmospheric pressure.
>
>In New Zealand, a liquefied natural gas tanker would dock at
>port and its cargo would be converted back to natural gas from
>a super-cold liquid for distribution through the existing natural
>gas pipe network, along with domestically sourced natural gas.
>
>Liquefied natural gas is the same fuel as the natural gas New
>Zealand has used for over 40 years. As such, it can be used without
>modification in the country's existing gas infrastructure and
>gas-fired electricity generation plant.
>
>Note: Presentation slides can be found at Contact's website
>www.mycontact.co.nz.
Many of the nuisance or damaging kompughter pathogens in the past
half-decade have been written for Gates' program M$W, to be conveyed in the
.doc files it generates. Altho' it's a pile of crap compared with e.g
WriteNow, M$W has unjustly achieved _de facto_ quasi-standard status so
most people use it, if with an ill grace. This cyberbull® is intended to
decrease spread of pathogens thru M$W files attached to email.
I am keen to promote use of a little-known but - so far -
effective filter for viri, worms etc in M$W .doc files:
Before attaching, first Save As ... .RTF ( Rich Text Format - also
known as Interchange Format). this operation purges all known viri, worms
etc. (It is possible in principle for files of that type to contain virus,
but has not yet occurred.) The recipient will be more likely to open it if
s/he knows this.
Colour, fonts, sizes etc are all preserved. Superscripts may not
be. Graphics will have to be sent separately.
Opening this .RTF attachment then entails:-
1 drag attachment icon onto desktop
2 Start M$W (if not already done)
3 Open . . . and then specify ALL FILES
4 open the attachment file from the desktop.
A minor benefit is that the .rtf files are smaller than the V8 models.
So my suggestion achieves readability for the maximum of recipients.
I make this suggestion for my own good - hoping to receive for
myself reliably readable files free of pathogens - but also to help others
to curb spread of pathogens around the internet.
R
-
Robt Mann
Mulgoon Professor emeritus of Environmental Studies, U of Auckland
consultant stirrer & motorcyclist
P O Box 28878, Remuera, Auckland 1005, New Zealand (9) 524 2949
half-decade have been written for Gates' program M$W, to be conveyed in the
.doc files it generates. Altho' it's a pile of crap compared with e.g
WriteNow, M$W has unjustly achieved _de facto_ quasi-standard status so
most people use it, if with an ill grace. This cyberbull® is intended to
decrease spread of pathogens thru M$W files attached to email.
I am keen to promote use of a little-known but - so far -
effective filter for viri, worms etc in M$W .doc files:
Before attaching, first Save As ... .RTF ( Rich Text Format - also
known as Interchange Format). this operation purges all known viri, worms
etc. (It is possible in principle for files of that type to contain virus,
but has not yet occurred.) The recipient will be more likely to open it if
s/he knows this.
Colour, fonts, sizes etc are all preserved. Superscripts may not
be. Graphics will have to be sent separately.
Opening this .RTF attachment then entails:-
1 drag attachment icon onto desktop
2 Start M$W (if not already done)
3 Open . . . and then specify ALL FILES
4 open the attachment file from the desktop.
A minor benefit is that the .rtf files are smaller than the V8 models.
So my suggestion achieves readability for the maximum of recipients.
I make this suggestion for my own good - hoping to receive for
myself reliably readable files free of pathogens - but also to help others
to curb spread of pathogens around the internet.
R
-
Robt Mann
Mulgoon Professor emeritus of Environmental Studies, U of Auckland
consultant stirrer & motorcyclist
P O Box 28878, Remuera, Auckland 1005, New Zealand (9) 524 2949
Key advice for Mac users - unaccountably omitted from Apple manuals [Catch-all] -
GEA - gormfach@gmail.com @ 03:57:39 PM
Key advice for Mac users - unaccountably omitted from Apple manuals.
Over a day or so of heavy use the PRAM - Parameter RAM, the equivalent
to the CMOS RAM in a Wintel machine that does the same thing -
accumulates lots of junk and often gets corrupted one way or another,
resulting in e.g jamming during a download. The best way to fix this is to
clear it out completely and reset the configuration, such things as network
ports, time & date etc.
You do this by "zapping the PRAM" i.e holding Command (Apple), Option, P
and R down during startup (or restart). You will hear the startup chime
and the boot restarts. Keep holding the 4 keys down until the chime has
rung 3 or 4 times then let go and the boot will continue normally. Then go
into the various control panels and reset whatever needs to be.
If like me you use the RamDisk this will be removed from the desktop by
this PRAM purge. It should reappear next time you restart in the normal
way, if you've set it in the Memory control panel after your PRAM purge.
R
Over a day or so of heavy use the PRAM - Parameter RAM, the equivalent
to the CMOS RAM in a Wintel machine that does the same thing -
accumulates lots of junk and often gets corrupted one way or another,
resulting in e.g jamming during a download. The best way to fix this is to
clear it out completely and reset the configuration, such things as network
ports, time & date etc.
You do this by "zapping the PRAM" i.e holding Command (Apple), Option, P
and R down during startup (or restart). You will hear the startup chime
and the boot restarts. Keep holding the 4 keys down until the chime has
rung 3 or 4 times then let go and the boot will continue normally. Then go
into the various control panels and reset whatever needs to be.
If like me you use the RamDisk this will be removed from the desktop by
this PRAM purge. It should reappear next time you restart in the normal
way, if you've set it in the Memory control panel after your PRAM purge.
R
11/26/04
Copyright © 2003 AP Online
>Today is Sunday, Oct. 31, the 305th day of 2004. There are 61 days left in
>the year.
>"An old error is always more popular than a new truth." - German proverb.
>This is Halloween.
What a stupid Yank wank. Bulk outsiders with expensive costumes
invade my street ... damn silly.
Today's Highlight in History:
>On Oct. 31, 1517, Martin Luther posted the 95 Theses on the door of the
>Wittenberg Palace church, marking the start of the Protestant Reformation
>in Germany.
On this date:
>In 1941, the U.S. Navy destroyer Reuben James was torpedoed by a German
>U-boat off Iceland with the loss of 115 lives, even though the United
>States had not yet entered World War II.
W Guthrie wrote a fetching song about this sinking, ripping off an
old tune for the purpose in much the same way as certain Ngati Porou
leaders hastily ripped off the embarrassing furphy There's a Gold Mine In
the Sky and gave it life - attached courtesy Ranginui J Walker.
The Guthrie song was popularised by the Kingston Trio, 1963. It
doesn't complain about the Germans' sinking a neutral power's ship.
>In 1956, Rear Adm. G.J. Dufek became the first person to land an airplane
>at the South Pole.
big deal
>In 1968, President Johnson ordered a halt to all U.S. bombing of North
>Vietnam, saying he hoped for fruitful peace negotiations.
big of 'im
by that stage of the Indochina War many liked the immortal graffito
Where is Lee Harvey Oswald - Now that We Need Him?
> In 1980, Reza Pahlavi, eldest son of the late Shah of Iran, proclaimed
>himself the rightful successor to the Peacock Throne.
What a wanker. Sufficient dirt on that fake dynasty is in Sattareh
Farmaian's fascinating autobiography Daughter of Persia
> In 1984, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two Sikh
>security guards.
After what she had insisted on doing to their religious HQ, what
did she expect?
> One year ago: Abdullah Ahmad Badawi was sworn in as Malaysian prime
>minister, ending Mahathir Mohamad's 22-year reign.
What have our media told us of this new regime?
>Today's Birthdays: Movie director Peter Jackson is 43.
Another wanker. And why should Anderton give this creep millions
of public funds? Is a further aviation museum justified (in the delta),
and if so why should it be subsidised?
-
Robt Mann
Mulgoon Professor emeritus of Environmental Studies, U of Auckland
consultant stirrer & motorcyclist
P O Box 28878, Remuera, Auckland 1005, New Zealand (9) 524 2949
TOMO MAI E TAMA MA (upon 1945 return to Ruatoria)
(trans. R J Walker)
Tomo mai e tama ma, ki roto, ki roto welcome home, our dear young men
I nga ringa e tuwhera atu nei to the loving arms & fingers
Kei te kapa kapa mai now that flutters & flaps
Te haki, te haki the flag, the flag
O Ingarani i runga o Tiamana e of England over Germany
Hoki mai, hoki mai, ki te wa kainga welcome home, welcome to your home hearth
Kia tutuke te tumanako in order that wishes be plentifully fulfilled
Kei te kapa (etc.) now that flutters (etc.)
>Today is Sunday, Oct. 31, the 305th day of 2004. There are 61 days left in
>the year.
>"An old error is always more popular than a new truth." - German proverb.
>This is Halloween.
What a stupid Yank wank. Bulk outsiders with expensive costumes
invade my street ... damn silly.
Today's Highlight in History:
>On Oct. 31, 1517, Martin Luther posted the 95 Theses on the door of the
>Wittenberg Palace church, marking the start of the Protestant Reformation
>in Germany.
On this date:
>In 1941, the U.S. Navy destroyer Reuben James was torpedoed by a German
>U-boat off Iceland with the loss of 115 lives, even though the United
>States had not yet entered World War II.
W Guthrie wrote a fetching song about this sinking, ripping off an
old tune for the purpose in much the same way as certain Ngati Porou
leaders hastily ripped off the embarrassing furphy There's a Gold Mine In
the Sky and gave it life - attached courtesy Ranginui J Walker.
The Guthrie song was popularised by the Kingston Trio, 1963. It
doesn't complain about the Germans' sinking a neutral power's ship.
>In 1956, Rear Adm. G.J. Dufek became the first person to land an airplane
>at the South Pole.
big deal
>In 1968, President Johnson ordered a halt to all U.S. bombing of North
>Vietnam, saying he hoped for fruitful peace negotiations.
big of 'im
by that stage of the Indochina War many liked the immortal graffito
Where is Lee Harvey Oswald - Now that We Need Him?
> In 1980, Reza Pahlavi, eldest son of the late Shah of Iran, proclaimed
>himself the rightful successor to the Peacock Throne.
What a wanker. Sufficient dirt on that fake dynasty is in Sattareh
Farmaian's fascinating autobiography Daughter of Persia
> In 1984, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by two Sikh
>security guards.
After what she had insisted on doing to their religious HQ, what
did she expect?
> One year ago: Abdullah Ahmad Badawi was sworn in as Malaysian prime
>minister, ending Mahathir Mohamad's 22-year reign.
What have our media told us of this new regime?
>Today's Birthdays: Movie director Peter Jackson is 43.
Another wanker. And why should Anderton give this creep millions
of public funds? Is a further aviation museum justified (in the delta),
and if so why should it be subsidised?
-
Robt Mann
Mulgoon Professor emeritus of Environmental Studies, U of Auckland
consultant stirrer & motorcyclist
P O Box 28878, Remuera, Auckland 1005, New Zealand (9) 524 2949
TOMO MAI E TAMA MA (upon 1945 return to Ruatoria)
(trans. R J Walker)
Tomo mai e tama ma, ki roto, ki roto welcome home, our dear young men
I nga ringa e tuwhera atu nei to the loving arms & fingers
Kei te kapa kapa mai now that flutters & flaps
Te haki, te haki the flag, the flag
O Ingarani i runga o Tiamana e of England over Germany
Hoki mai, hoki mai, ki te wa kainga welcome home, welcome to your home hearth
Kia tutuke te tumanako in order that wishes be plentifully fulfilled
Kei te kapa (etc.) now that flutters (etc.)
CNN.com - Town to officially pardon executed witches - Oct 29, 2004 [Catch-all] -
GEA - gormfach@gmail.com @ 11:24:54 PM
http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/10/29/britain.witches.ap/index.html
Comments from an academic lawyer:
What the Yank report omits to mention are the following pertinent
facts:
(1) The barons court of Prestoungrange lost its criminal jurisdiction
in 1747 and therefore does not have the power to make any decisions
with respect to crimes past or present
(2) That only the Sovereign has the power to pardon, in any event,
even though the conviction may have been by a franchise court - which
is what a barons court was (i.e it is licensed to exercise the
criminal law in the name of the Sovereign)
(3) That the so-called barons court of Prestongrange, and that of
Dolphinstoun, are of doubtful legality. There is a theoretical right
of feudal barons to hold courts, but this is generally accepted as
completely obsolete
(4) The current baron created the 'court' in 1998 as a tourist
business
(5) The court - if it exists - is not being abolished on the 28
November, merely the jurisdiction of the barony over land title (a
registration process, not judicial at all)
Perhaps not a fact, but rather my opinion -
(6) The witches were almost certainly properly convicted in any event
(the description of spirit witnesses sounds as though the author has
been reading "the Crucible" and is confusing Salem with Scotland)
Typical journalism, all froth and no substance
>http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/10/29/britain.witches.ap/index.html
Comments from an academic lawyer:
What the Yank report omits to mention are the following pertinent
facts:
(1) The barons court of Prestoungrange lost its criminal jurisdiction
in 1747 and therefore does not have the power to make any decisions
with respect to crimes past or present
(2) That only the Sovereign has the power to pardon, in any event,
even though the conviction may have been by a franchise court - which
is what a barons court was (i.e it is licensed to exercise the
criminal law in the name of the Sovereign)
(3) That the so-called barons court of Prestongrange, and that of
Dolphinstoun, are of doubtful legality. There is a theoretical right
of feudal barons to hold courts, but this is generally accepted as
completely obsolete
(4) The current baron created the 'court' in 1998 as a tourist
business
(5) The court - if it exists - is not being abolished on the 28
November, merely the jurisdiction of the barony over land title (a
registration process, not judicial at all)
Perhaps not a fact, but rather my opinion -
(6) The witches were almost certainly properly convicted in any event
(the description of spirit witnesses sounds as though the author has
been reading "the Crucible" and is confusing Salem with Scotland)
Typical journalism, all froth and no substance
>http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/10/29/britain.witches.ap/index.html
Old Memories - it was a peaceful time to grow up! Hmmm - I still have
my old collection on "78's" containing the originals of Gene Krupa, The
Big Bands, Kate Smith, Vera Lynn, John Philip Sousa and many more.
Sousa at Willow Grove Park -
http://apnostalgia.crosswinds.net/willowgr.html !
http://www.thestatenislandboys.com/U_thrill_me/
my old collection on "78's" containing the originals of Gene Krupa, The
Big Bands, Kate Smith, Vera Lynn, John Philip Sousa and many more.
Sousa at Willow Grove Park -
http://apnostalgia.crosswinds.net/willowgr.html !
http://www.thestatenislandboys.com/U_thrill_me/
10/27/04
CIIR: 'God, and not Monsanto, creates life'
'Like slavery in past centuries there is no good patenting regime. It is
totally at variance with the Biblical teaching that life is a gift of God to
be shared by all. Christians believe that God, and not Monsanto, creates
life.'
------
CIIR AGM calls for a precautionary approach to GM
22 Oct 2004
http://www.ciir.org/Templates/Internal.asp?NodeID=91077
CIIR AGM calls for a precautionary approach to GM
Key issues surrounding genetic modification (GM) and its potential impact on
the world's poor were explored at the Annual General Meeting on 15 October
of the Catholic Institute for International Relations.
After the business part of the AGM, chaired by Catholic journalist, ecologist
and author Ellen Teague, two eminent guest speakers - Columban missionary Fr
Sean McDonagh and Nicaraguan GM activist Victor Campos - took to the podium
to make their case for a precautionary approach to the controversial topic
of GM.
Taking inspiration from the central theme, 'GM - Beyond the Myths', Fr Sean
McDonagh told CIIR members about his attendance at the recent conference,
'Feeding the World; The Moral Imperative of Biotechnology,' held on
September 24 at the Gregorian University in Rome and co-sponsored by the
U.S. Embassy to the Vatican and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
Dublin-based Fr McDonagh, who has written numerous books on the GM,
including: 'The Vatican and GE Food?' and 'Patenting Life? Stop!' said that
his main concern was that GM was pitched at the conference as a solution to
world hunger, a concept he disputes.
He said: 'Genetically Engineered (GE) crops will not feed the world. Many
countries where poverty is endemic are actually food exporters. Brazil is
the third largest exporter of food in the world and yet one fifth of its
population - 32 million - go to bed hungry every night.'
He added: ' GE crops are patented so the Catholic Church, which presents
itself as a Pro-Life institution, should recoil in horror at the arrogance
involved in patenting life. Like slavery in past centuries there is no good
patenting regime. It is totally at variance with the Biblical teaching that
life is a gift of God to be shared by all. Christians believe that God, and
not Monsanto, creates life.'
He continued: 'Hunger and malnutrition are caused by poverty that results
from inequitable economic, social and cultural policies. The Holy See should
not allow itself to be hijacked by giant corporations whose only concern is
to make trillions of dollars by selling crops to poor people in the majority
world. The Holy See should listen to the voice of development workers, and
Christian leaders in the Philippines, South Africa and Brazil.'
Victor Campos, a Nicaraguan farmer, renowned lecturer and sub director of
Centro Humboldt, Nicaragua's leading environmental watchdog, talked about
how GM crops had been brought into his country as food aid.
Outraged by this situation, which effectively robbed Nicaraguans of the
chance to object to GM prior to its arrival in their land and in their food,
Mr Campos set up an NGO called The Alliance for a Nicaragua free of GMOs,
which gains more members each year and has pushed the issue higher up the
political agenda. Mr Campos also spoke about the devastating impact of GM on
poor small farmers, who carry out the age-old practice of sharing and
saving seeds.
'Like slavery in past centuries there is no good patenting regime. It is
totally at variance with the Biblical teaching that life is a gift of God to
be shared by all. Christians believe that God, and not Monsanto, creates
life.'
------
CIIR AGM calls for a precautionary approach to GM
22 Oct 2004
http://www.ciir.org/Templates/Internal.asp?NodeID=91077
CIIR AGM calls for a precautionary approach to GM
Key issues surrounding genetic modification (GM) and its potential impact on
the world's poor were explored at the Annual General Meeting on 15 October
of the Catholic Institute for International Relations.
After the business part of the AGM, chaired by Catholic journalist, ecologist
and author Ellen Teague, two eminent guest speakers - Columban missionary Fr
Sean McDonagh and Nicaraguan GM activist Victor Campos - took to the podium
to make their case for a precautionary approach to the controversial topic
of GM.
Taking inspiration from the central theme, 'GM - Beyond the Myths', Fr Sean
McDonagh told CIIR members about his attendance at the recent conference,
'Feeding the World; The Moral Imperative of Biotechnology,' held on
September 24 at the Gregorian University in Rome and co-sponsored by the
U.S. Embassy to the Vatican and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
Dublin-based Fr McDonagh, who has written numerous books on the GM,
including: 'The Vatican and GE Food?' and 'Patenting Life? Stop!' said that
his main concern was that GM was pitched at the conference as a solution to
world hunger, a concept he disputes.
He said: 'Genetically Engineered (GE) crops will not feed the world. Many
countries where poverty is endemic are actually food exporters. Brazil is
the third largest exporter of food in the world and yet one fifth of its
population - 32 million - go to bed hungry every night.'
He added: ' GE crops are patented so the Catholic Church, which presents
itself as a Pro-Life institution, should recoil in horror at the arrogance
involved in patenting life. Like slavery in past centuries there is no good
patenting regime. It is totally at variance with the Biblical teaching that
life is a gift of God to be shared by all. Christians believe that God, and
not Monsanto, creates life.'
He continued: 'Hunger and malnutrition are caused by poverty that results
from inequitable economic, social and cultural policies. The Holy See should
not allow itself to be hijacked by giant corporations whose only concern is
to make trillions of dollars by selling crops to poor people in the majority
world. The Holy See should listen to the voice of development workers, and
Christian leaders in the Philippines, South Africa and Brazil.'
Victor Campos, a Nicaraguan farmer, renowned lecturer and sub director of
Centro Humboldt, Nicaragua's leading environmental watchdog, talked about
how GM crops had been brought into his country as food aid.
Outraged by this situation, which effectively robbed Nicaraguans of the
chance to object to GM prior to its arrival in their land and in their food,
Mr Campos set up an NGO called The Alliance for a Nicaragua free of GMOs,
which gains more members each year and has pushed the issue higher up the
political agenda. Mr Campos also spoke about the devastating impact of GM on
poor small farmers, who carry out the age-old practice of sharing and
saving seeds.
Upton-on-line
Diaspora Edition
21st October 2004
Terminal deconstruction
The Americans bury presidents and idols of the screen, the British bury
princesses (and animals), and the French? Well, they bury philosophers.
You can t get away from them. No corner of a French park is safe from a
stone fire staring ironically, disbelievingly or (very occasionally)
smugly down at the transient world of ordinary people playing, reading,
walking or making love. Needless to say, petri-fication in some forgotten
corner of a park is only the final stage in what is a protracted ritual of
national canonisation. It starts when Le Monde opens the door to
immortality by devoting a whole supplement to a recently deceased savant.
Such has been the happy fate of Jacques Derrida (1930-2004).
Regarded as variously dangerous, deluded or depraved by uncomprehendingly
conservative philosophers (who by definition are not raised in France) but
fêted by those inclined to decode and deconstruct conventional wisdom,
Derrida became a national treasure before whom only genuflection would
suffice. Hence the outpouring of grave lamentations from politicians of
every conceivable colour. Whether they had read him we will never know.
It doesn t matter. In France this is a bit like the death of Christopher
Reeve or Elvis.
That said, one can't help but suspect that more people quoted and lionised
Derrida than understood him. Here s how Derrida explained deconstruction
in a 1992 interview reproduced as part of Le Mondes homage:
Deconstruction isn't simply a philosophy, neither is it a collection
of hypotheses, nor even the question of Being in a Heideggerian sense. In
one sense, it is nothing. It cannot be a discipline or a method because
that would be to transform it into a method with its own rules and
procedures that could then be taught & It isn't a technique entailing
norms or procedures. Of course, there can be regularities in the way in
which certain types of deconstructive questions can be posed. Viewed from
this angle, I can see how the possibility of teaching arises which entails
in turn the effects of a discipline etc. But even in terms of its
principle, deconstruction isn't a method. I have tried to ask myself what
a method might be in a Greek or Cartesian sense, or again in a Hegelian
sense. But deconstruction ism't a methodology in the sense of entailing
the application of rules.
If I was wanting to provide an economical and elliptical description of
deconstruction, I would say that it is a way of thinking about the origin
and limits of the question what is? , the question which dominates the
entire history of philosophy. Each time we try to think about the
possibility of what is? , to ask a question about this sort of
question or to ask ourselves about the necessity of this language in a
certain language or tradition etc., what we re doing at this moment is
only taking part up to a point in the question what is? And therein
lies, the difference of deconstruction. It is, in effect, a questioning of
something that is more than a questioning.
It s all pretty straightforward, really. (And if not, you can always
blame upton-on-line s budget-constrained translation department.)
Radically predictable
With profundity of this order, sorting out the real world was a piece of
cake. Less than two months before his death on October 9th, Le Monde beat
its way to the door of the dying master for a final interview before his
thoughts went cosmic. (For Anglophone readers this is very roughly the
French equivalent of British soldiers rehearsing the Queen Mother's funeral procession in deserted London night time streets on and off over
the last twenty years). After applying finishing touches to a lifetime s
oracular wisdom, Derrida showed he was a man who could switch seamlessly to
the world of political action and fearless realism. He laid out the bones
of a new, altermondialiste Europe which would lead the world to new
understandings. Here it is in all its radical predictability:
A Europe altermondialiste, transforming the concept and practice of
sovereignty and international law. And possessed of a real armed force,
independent of NATO and the USA, a military power which, while being
neither offensive, defensive or preventive, would intervene without delay
in response to the resolutions of a new United Nations which would finally
be respected.
Lest that seem too radical, Derrida took care to propose some more down to
earth and immediately realisable intimations of heaven on earth:
If I was a legislator, I would quite simply propose the removal of the
word and the concept of marriage from the civil code. Marriage, an
incarnation of religious, sacred and heterosexual values with the
accompanying vows of procreation and eternal fidelity, is a concession made
by the secular state to the Christian church and in particular its
monogamous form which derives neither from Jewish nor Muslim
[traditions]. In suppressing the word and the concept of marriage, this
equivocation, this religious hypocrisy which has no place in a secular
state, there would be in its place a civil union, something contractual, a
sort of generalised civil marriage, improved, refined, flexible and able to
be adjusted between partners of whatever sex or number.
Perhaps it was no surprise then that Marie-George Buffet, the National
Secretary of the French Communist Party, paid the most genuine tribute
amidst a sea of fawning commentators most of whom wouldn t be seen dead
near any of these propositions. As she put it:
An indefatigable thinker, a writer who made no concessions, Jacques
Derrida scrutinised the world and philosophy with an eye that was always
new. A committed carrier of particular values, Jacques Derrida was the
last representative of a generation of philosophers who never ceased to
critique the way the world works and prise away its masks.
Upton-on-line suspects that Buffet is right. While France likes to draw
pleasure from the scourges marks inflicted by its radical philosophers, the
distinctly comfortable, bourgeois look of most on the French Left suggests
that this is as conservative and conformist a society as you could hope to
find.
Diaspora Edition
21st October 2004
Terminal deconstruction
The Americans bury presidents and idols of the screen, the British bury
princesses (and animals), and the French? Well, they bury philosophers.
You can t get away from them. No corner of a French park is safe from a
stone fire staring ironically, disbelievingly or (very occasionally)
smugly down at the transient world of ordinary people playing, reading,
walking or making love. Needless to say, petri-fication in some forgotten
corner of a park is only the final stage in what is a protracted ritual of
national canonisation. It starts when Le Monde opens the door to
immortality by devoting a whole supplement to a recently deceased savant.
Such has been the happy fate of Jacques Derrida (1930-2004).
Regarded as variously dangerous, deluded or depraved by uncomprehendingly
conservative philosophers (who by definition are not raised in France) but
fêted by those inclined to decode and deconstruct conventional wisdom,
Derrida became a national treasure before whom only genuflection would
suffice. Hence the outpouring of grave lamentations from politicians of
every conceivable colour. Whether they had read him we will never know.
It doesn t matter. In France this is a bit like the death of Christopher
Reeve or Elvis.
That said, one can't help but suspect that more people quoted and lionised
Derrida than understood him. Here s how Derrida explained deconstruction
in a 1992 interview reproduced as part of Le Mondes homage:
Deconstruction isn't simply a philosophy, neither is it a collection
of hypotheses, nor even the question of Being in a Heideggerian sense. In
one sense, it is nothing. It cannot be a discipline or a method because
that would be to transform it into a method with its own rules and
procedures that could then be taught & It isn't a technique entailing
norms or procedures. Of course, there can be regularities in the way in
which certain types of deconstructive questions can be posed. Viewed from
this angle, I can see how the possibility of teaching arises which entails
in turn the effects of a discipline etc. But even in terms of its
principle, deconstruction isn't a method. I have tried to ask myself what
a method might be in a Greek or Cartesian sense, or again in a Hegelian
sense. But deconstruction ism't a methodology in the sense of entailing
the application of rules.
If I was wanting to provide an economical and elliptical description of
deconstruction, I would say that it is a way of thinking about the origin
and limits of the question what is? , the question which dominates the
entire history of philosophy. Each time we try to think about the
possibility of what is? , to ask a question about this sort of
question or to ask ourselves about the necessity of this language in a
certain language or tradition etc., what we re doing at this moment is
only taking part up to a point in the question what is? And therein
lies, the difference of deconstruction. It is, in effect, a questioning of
something that is more than a questioning.
It s all pretty straightforward, really. (And if not, you can always
blame upton-on-line s budget-constrained translation department.)
Radically predictable
With profundity of this order, sorting out the real world was a piece of
cake. Less than two months before his death on October 9th, Le Monde beat
its way to the door of the dying master for a final interview before his
thoughts went cosmic. (For Anglophone readers this is very roughly the
French equivalent of British soldiers rehearsing the Queen Mother's funeral procession in deserted London night time streets on and off over
the last twenty years). After applying finishing touches to a lifetime s
oracular wisdom, Derrida showed he was a man who could switch seamlessly to
the world of political action and fearless realism. He laid out the bones
of a new, altermondialiste Europe which would lead the world to new
understandings. Here it is in all its radical predictability:
A Europe altermondialiste, transforming the concept and practice of
sovereignty and international law. And possessed of a real armed force,
independent of NATO and the USA, a military power which, while being
neither offensive, defensive or preventive, would intervene without delay
in response to the resolutions of a new United Nations which would finally
be respected.
Lest that seem too radical, Derrida took care to propose some more down to
earth and immediately realisable intimations of heaven on earth:
If I was a legislator, I would quite simply propose the removal of the
word and the concept of marriage from the civil code. Marriage, an
incarnation of religious, sacred and heterosexual values with the
accompanying vows of procreation and eternal fidelity, is a concession made
by the secular state to the Christian church and in particular its
monogamous form which derives neither from Jewish nor Muslim
[traditions]. In suppressing the word and the concept of marriage, this
equivocation, this religious hypocrisy which has no place in a secular
state, there would be in its place a civil union, something contractual, a
sort of generalised civil marriage, improved, refined, flexible and able to
be adjusted between partners of whatever sex or number.
Perhaps it was no surprise then that Marie-George Buffet, the National
Secretary of the French Communist Party, paid the most genuine tribute
amidst a sea of fawning commentators most of whom wouldn t be seen dead
near any of these propositions. As she put it:
An indefatigable thinker, a writer who made no concessions, Jacques
Derrida scrutinised the world and philosophy with an eye that was always
new. A committed carrier of particular values, Jacques Derrida was the
last representative of a generation of philosophers who never ceased to
critique the way the world works and prise away its masks.
Upton-on-line suspects that Buffet is right. While France likes to draw
pleasure from the scourges marks inflicted by its radical philosophers, the
distinctly comfortable, bourgeois look of most on the French Left suggests
that this is as conservative and conformist a society as you could hope to
find.
FYI. My e-mail below was read on Newstalk ZB by Leighton Smith at
11.10am today
You are welcome to distribute it further afield, or to quote from it if
you wish. as long as due acknowledgement is also given.
I would welcome any feedback.
Best wishes,
Barbara
--------------------
From: Barbara Faithfull
To: Leighton Smith
Subject: Women and rape complaints
Memo to Leighton Smith
1 Your remarks this morning were “spot on" about changed male attitudes
towards women because of the risks men now run of being accused of rape,
sexual harassment etc. for even the most inconsequential types of behaviour
towards women. I, for one, for example, have always been flattered on the
odd occasions when a wolf whistle has come my way!
2 You mentioned an interview Paul Holmes did this morning with
criminologist Dr Jan Jordan re her new book The Word of a Woman : The
Police and Rape. While I didn't hear it, I did hear another interview with
her yesterday, and I can only conclude that on the matter of rape at least,
she is more of an ideologue for the feminist political line on rape than
she is a scholar.
An example of such screwy thinking which she held less than three years ago :-
In an interview in the N.Z.Herald of 2nd January 2002 she was
pushing for police to have specially trained sex crime investigators to
interview rape complainants. She was critical of the police's
“disbelieving" view re rape complaints. Jordan : “A victim (sic!) whose
case is dropped should be assured that this is done because of lack of
evidence, NOT because she was not believed."
Now there is a hint that she has modified such twisted thinking, but it is
no less questionable for all that. From my transcript of that interview :
Jordan : “I'm not saying that some women - um - y'know, that women never
lie about rape um because SOME WOMEN DO."
However, her new approach is to offer mountains of excuses as to WHY a
woman might make a false rape complaint - she is a victim of this or that
etc… - and to require specially trained police to play “psychiatrist" to
try and find out why, instead of just charging a woman with wasting police
time, as they would any man making a false complaint.
She then appeared to shift her ground back to her earlier twisted approach
by praising the way in which many British police are acknowledging “that
there is a culture of disbelief around rape allegations and are tackling
that head on."
Might I suggest that N.Z. media folk adopt a healthy sense of scepticism
and even caution when interviewing this woman, who is obviously a social
change agent? Also our police, who are being pressured by the likes of
her into radical feminist self-serving policy changes by such
pseudo-scholarly blatherings.
Barbara Faithfull
11.10am today
You are welcome to distribute it further afield, or to quote from it if
you wish. as long as due acknowledgement is also given.
I would welcome any feedback.
Best wishes,
Barbara
--------------------
From: Barbara Faithfull
To: Leighton Smith
Subject: Women and rape complaints
Memo to Leighton Smith
1 Your remarks this morning were “spot on" about changed male attitudes
towards women because of the risks men now run of being accused of rape,
sexual harassment etc. for even the most inconsequential types of behaviour
towards women. I, for one, for example, have always been flattered on the
odd occasions when a wolf whistle has come my way!
2 You mentioned an interview Paul Holmes did this morning with
criminologist Dr Jan Jordan re her new book The Word of a Woman : The
Police and Rape. While I didn't hear it, I did hear another interview with
her yesterday, and I can only conclude that on the matter of rape at least,
she is more of an ideologue for the feminist political line on rape than
she is a scholar.
An example of such screwy thinking which she held less than three years ago :-
In an interview in the N.Z.Herald of 2nd January 2002 she was
pushing for police to have specially trained sex crime investigators to
interview rape complainants. She was critical of the police's
“disbelieving" view re rape complaints. Jordan : “A victim (sic!) whose
case is dropped should be assured that this is done because of lack of
evidence, NOT because she was not believed."
Now there is a hint that she has modified such twisted thinking, but it is
no less questionable for all that. From my transcript of that interview :
Jordan : “I'm not saying that some women - um - y'know, that women never
lie about rape um because SOME WOMEN DO."
However, her new approach is to offer mountains of excuses as to WHY a
woman might make a false rape complaint - she is a victim of this or that
etc… - and to require specially trained police to play “psychiatrist" to
try and find out why, instead of just charging a woman with wasting police
time, as they would any man making a false complaint.
She then appeared to shift her ground back to her earlier twisted approach
by praising the way in which many British police are acknowledging “that
there is a culture of disbelief around rape allegations and are tackling
that head on."
Might I suggest that N.Z. media folk adopt a healthy sense of scepticism
and even caution when interviewing this woman, who is obviously a social
change agent? Also our police, who are being pressured by the likes of
her into radical feminist self-serving policy changes by such
pseudo-scholarly blatherings.
Barbara Faithfull
A local physicist has deemed 'interesting' this propaganda
>>http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.09/china.html
>Explosive growth has made the People's Republic of China the most
>power-hungry nation on earth. Get ready for the mass-produced,
>meltdown-proof future of nuclear energy.
By Spencer Reiss«
...
>Wu and his backers aim to have a full-scale 200-megawatt version of HTR-10
>by the end of the decade. They've already persuaded Huaneng Power
>International - one of China's five big privatized utilities, listed on
>the NYSE and chaired by the son of former premier Li Peng - to pick up
>half of the estimated $300 million tab. Concrete is scheduled to be
>poured in spring 2007.
Asked to comment by someone in the Physics Dept U of Ak I can
hardly refuse. That group of personages failed rather comprehensively to
advise the public about nuclear power during the main push of 1973-77 -
except of course for the grossly misleading utterances of Alan Poletti.
Similarly, when Poletti was for services rendered given the junket
Polittee, PM Bolger's political cttee to legitimise marine reactors, a few
physicists made bold to query his crass slogans, e.g R E White, but again
most of those whose expertise should be available to interpret this complex
technology were not willing to challenge Poletti's bullshit publicly.
So, here are some comments.
1 "Full scale" has, for the last 3 decade, meant 1000-1200 MWe. If this
reactor is to be only 200 MWe, that would imply some rather radical
reappraisal of economies of scale. I'd like to see the details; meanwhile,
it is not to be believed.
2 This 'Doppler broadening' is by no means novel. A hi-T pebble-bed
reactor was being completed at Fort St Vrain, Colo, in 1975. Asked about
that in Chch, main nookluhluh PR agent Norman Rasmussen said "they're
having a little difficulty getting it on the line". Could someone bring
us up to date on that reactor? It was claimed to be 'fail safe' thru
Doppler broadening; how did it work out? It read well - including
transmuting Th-232 into U-233, hardly a solution to the 'safeguards
problem'. What has changed, except for the coining of the PR term 'walk
away safe'?
3 Nookuloh enthusiasts have never conceded that reactor meltthru is a
significant threat. "One in a million", they have intoned. They cannot
consistently now claim that abolition of the possibility constitutes
significant progress; if there was no significant problem, doing away with
the negligible problem is unimportant.
4 Reactor meltthru is only one of numerous unsolved problems with big
fission reactors. The spent fuel, even if nothing unscheduled has got out
of the primary system, poses hazards to neighbours, to those along
transport routes to reprocessing or disposal - and that latter has still
not been satisfactorily done.
5 U & Th don't amount to huge energy resources if used 'straight thru'.
Reprocessing doesn't extend the energy resource very much, unless breeding
is attained - a receding mirage for U-Pu fuel cycles, and unproven for
the Th-U233 cycle as far as I know. And if breeding were actually
developed, the mature fuel cycle entails thousands of A-bombs of fissile
material. Filching is notoriously hard to detect within a few bombs'
worth.
6 The reliability of this type of reactor is unproven. It might manage
annual capacity factors above 40% - that of a wind generator at a good NZ
site - but it might also break down for a year or more. Who would want
to provide a test-bed for it?
7 It might well also cost a lot more than NZ$2/W capital. The running
costs are vague but far from negligible.
8 The infrastructure required would be far too costly - slap the
research reactor at last into the hole in the Chem bldg basement, activate
at last the training centre in the top story, fly Poletti to Chch
frequently, upgrade the grid protection breakers to cope with the frequent
trips of this novel reactor, enhance secret police surveillance of
potential saboteurs, bring in refugees from the fading, demoralised nuclear
priesthoods of the UK & USA - these are likely to make J F Duncan look
intelligent & upright - the whole plurry scenario is highly dismaying.
And all to pay several dollars per W of peak generating power, whereas wind
with a capacity factor >40% can be installed as required for ca.$1.7/W and
does not require a new govt-funded infrastructure of monitoring, security
etc. Any expansion to the NZ grid that might be justified when the full
figures get disclosed should be wind-powered - genuinely renewable as
even hydro isn't.
I fail to see the claimed interest in the Chow propaganda. It cannot
give NZ a single kWh of electricity within a decade (more likely 15 y); it
entails hazards that have turned out to be intractable. Fission power was
a proven dud 3 decade ago, as the lack of utility orders confirmed; within
a decade, numerous Nobel prizewinners led by Henry Kendall had declared it
a loser. It is disappointing that any physicist could in any way continue
the sordid Poletti tradition. Even if this were a proven better reactor,
it would still be a rotten idea.
-
Robt Mann
consultant ecologist
P O Box 28878 Remuera, Auckland 1005, New Zealand
(9) 524 2949
>>http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.09/china.html
>Explosive growth has made the People's Republic of China the most
>power-hungry nation on earth. Get ready for the mass-produced,
>meltdown-proof future of nuclear energy.
By Spencer Reiss«
...
>Wu and his backers aim to have a full-scale 200-megawatt version of HTR-10
>by the end of the decade. They've already persuaded Huaneng Power
>International - one of China's five big privatized utilities, listed on
>the NYSE and chaired by the son of former premier Li Peng - to pick up
>half of the estimated $300 million tab. Concrete is scheduled to be
>poured in spring 2007.
Asked to comment by someone in the Physics Dept U of Ak I can
hardly refuse. That group of personages failed rather comprehensively to
advise the public about nuclear power during the main push of 1973-77 -
except of course for the grossly misleading utterances of Alan Poletti.
Similarly, when Poletti was for services rendered given the junket
Polittee, PM Bolger's political cttee to legitimise marine reactors, a few
physicists made bold to query his crass slogans, e.g R E White, but again
most of those whose expertise should be available to interpret this complex
technology were not willing to challenge Poletti's bullshit publicly.
So, here are some comments.
1 "Full scale" has, for the last 3 decade, meant 1000-1200 MWe. If this
reactor is to be only 200 MWe, that would imply some rather radical
reappraisal of economies of scale. I'd like to see the details; meanwhile,
it is not to be believed.
2 This 'Doppler broadening' is by no means novel. A hi-T pebble-bed
reactor was being completed at Fort St Vrain, Colo, in 1975. Asked about
that in Chch, main nookluhluh PR agent Norman Rasmussen said "they're
having a little difficulty getting it on the line". Could someone bring
us up to date on that reactor? It was claimed to be 'fail safe' thru
Doppler broadening; how did it work out? It read well - including
transmuting Th-232 into U-233, hardly a solution to the 'safeguards
problem'. What has changed, except for the coining of the PR term 'walk
away safe'?
3 Nookuloh enthusiasts have never conceded that reactor meltthru is a
significant threat. "One in a million", they have intoned. They cannot
consistently now claim that abolition of the possibility constitutes
significant progress; if there was no significant problem, doing away with
the negligible problem is unimportant.
4 Reactor meltthru is only one of numerous unsolved problems with big
fission reactors. The spent fuel, even if nothing unscheduled has got out
of the primary system, poses hazards to neighbours, to those along
transport routes to reprocessing or disposal - and that latter has still
not been satisfactorily done.
5 U & Th don't amount to huge energy resources if used 'straight thru'.
Reprocessing doesn't extend the energy resource very much, unless breeding
is attained - a receding mirage for U-Pu fuel cycles, and unproven for
the Th-U233 cycle as far as I know. And if breeding were actually
developed, the mature fuel cycle entails thousands of A-bombs of fissile
material. Filching is notoriously hard to detect within a few bombs'
worth.
6 The reliability of this type of reactor is unproven. It might manage
annual capacity factors above 40% - that of a wind generator at a good NZ
site - but it might also break down for a year or more. Who would want
to provide a test-bed for it?
7 It might well also cost a lot more than NZ$2/W capital. The running
costs are vague but far from negligible.
8 The infrastructure required would be far too costly - slap the
research reactor at last into the hole in the Chem bldg basement, activate
at last the training centre in the top story, fly Poletti to Chch
frequently, upgrade the grid protection breakers to cope with the frequent
trips of this novel reactor, enhance secret police surveillance of
potential saboteurs, bring in refugees from the fading, demoralised nuclear
priesthoods of the UK & USA - these are likely to make J F Duncan look
intelligent & upright - the whole plurry scenario is highly dismaying.
And all to pay several dollars per W of peak generating power, whereas wind
with a capacity factor >40% can be installed as required for ca.$1.7/W and
does not require a new govt-funded infrastructure of monitoring, security
etc. Any expansion to the NZ grid that might be justified when the full
figures get disclosed should be wind-powered - genuinely renewable as
even hydro isn't.
I fail to see the claimed interest in the Chow propaganda. It cannot
give NZ a single kWh of electricity within a decade (more likely 15 y); it
entails hazards that have turned out to be intractable. Fission power was
a proven dud 3 decade ago, as the lack of utility orders confirmed; within
a decade, numerous Nobel prizewinners led by Henry Kendall had declared it
a loser. It is disappointing that any physicist could in any way continue
the sordid Poletti tradition. Even if this were a proven better reactor,
it would still be a rotten idea.
-
Robt Mann
consultant ecologist
P O Box 28878 Remuera, Auckland 1005, New Zealand
(9) 524 2949
sorry about the spurious characters - I blame Gates
R
http://www.steynonline.com/index2.cfm?edit_id=70
October 16, 2004
EVOLUTIONARY FIGURE
Francis Crick, 1916-2004
Francis Crick is dead and gone. He has certainly not “passed on” - and, if he has, he’ll be extremely annoyed about it. As a 12-year old English schoolboy, he decided he was an atheist, and for much of the rest of his life worked hard to disprove the existence of the soul.
In between, he “discovered the secret of life”, as he crowed to the barmaids and regulars at The Eagle, his Cambridge pub, on a triumphant night in 1953. The opening sentence of his paper, written with his colleague Jim Watson, for Nature on April 25th that year put it more modestly:
We wish to suggest a structure for the salt of deoxyribose nucleic acid.
That’s DNA to you and me. And it’s thanks to Crick and Watson that we know the acronym and that it’s passed into the language as the contemporary shorthand for our core identity. Your career choice? “She says being a part of academia seemed to be hard-wired into her DNA because her father was a professor at the University of Virginia.” (The Chicago Tribune) Socio-economic inequality? “Income distribution appears to be hard-wired into the DNA of a nation.” (The Washington Post) New trends in rock video? “Staying cool is hard-wired into the DNA of MTV.” (The Los Angeles Times)
Francis Crick was the most important biologist of the 20th century. Like Darwin, he changed the way we think of ourselves. First, with Watson, he came up with one of the few scientific blueprints known to the general public – the double-helix structure of DNA (though he left it to Mrs Crick, usually a painter of nudes, to create the model). Later, with Sydney Brenner, he unraveled the universal genetic code. Today, Crick’s legacy includes all the thorniest questions of our time - genetic fingerprinting, stem-cell research, pre-screening for hereditary diseases, the “gay gene” and all the other “genes of the week”. In Britain, they’re arguing about a national DNA database; on the Continent, anti-globalists are protesting genetically modified crops; in America, it was traces of, um, DNA on Monica’s blue dress that obliged Bill Clinton to change his story. If you’re really determined, you can still just about ignore DNA – the OJ jury did – but, increasingly, it’s the currency of the age. Crick called his home in Cambridge the Golden Helix, and it truly was golden – not so much for him personally but for the biotechnology industry, something of a contradiction in terms half-a-century ago but now a 30-billion-a-year bonanza.
“We were lucky with DNA,” he said. “Like America, it was just waiting to be discovered.” But Crick was an unlikely Columbus. The son of a boot factory owner, he grew up in the English Midlands, dabbling in the usual scientific experiments of small boys – blowing up bottles, etc – but never really progressing beyond. Indeed, as a scientist, he wasn’t one for conducting experiments. What he did was think, and even then it took him a while to think out what he ought to be thinking about. His studies were interrupted by the war, which he spent developing mines at the British Admiralty’s research laboratory. Afterwards, already 30 and at a loose end, he mulled over what he wanted to do and decided his main interests were the “big picture” questions, the ones arising from his rejection of God, the ones that seemed beyond the power of science. Crick reckoned that the “mystery of life” could be easily understood if you just cleared away all the mysticism we’ve chosen to surround it with.
That’s the difference between Darwin and Crick. Evolution, whatever offence it gives, by definition emphasizes how far man has come from his tree-swinging forebears. DNA, by contrast, seems reductive. Man and chimp share 98.5% of their genetic code, which would be no surprise to Darwin. But we also share 75% of our genetic make-up with the pumpkin. The pumpkin is just a big ridged orange lump lying on the ground all day, like a fat retiree on the beach in Florida. But other than that he has no discernible human characteristics until your kid carves them into him.
Yet the point of DNA is not just to prove that the pumpkin is our kin but to pump him for useful information. According to Monise Durrani, a BBC science correspondent, the genetic blueprint of the humble earthworm is proving useful in the study of Alzheimer’s. Do worms get Alzheimer’s? And, if they do, what difference does it make? As Ms Durrani says, “Although we like to think we are special, our genes bring us down to Earth... We all evolved from the same soup of chemicals.” It turns out there is a fly in my soup, and a chimp and a worm and a pumpkin.
Having found “the secret of life”, what do you do for an encore? Crick disliked celebrity, and had a standard reply card printed to fend off his fellow man: “Dr. Crick thanks you for your letter but regrets that he is unable to accept your kind invitation to…” There then followed a checklist of options with a tick by the relevant item: send an autograph, provide a photograph, appear on your radio or TV show, cure your disease, etc. This is a view of man as 75% pumpkin but capable of crude, predictable, repetitive patterns of imposition on more advanced forms of life. Dr Crick also turned down automatically honorary degrees and disdained the feudal honours offered by the British state. Presumably the hyper-rationalist in him consigned monarchical mumbo-jumbo to the same trash can of history as religion, though he eventually relented and accepted an invitation by the Queen to join her most elite Order of Merit. Religion he never let up on. The university at which he practiced his science is filled with ancient college chapels, whose presence so irked Crick that, when the new Churchill College invited him to become a Fellow, he agreed to do so only on condition that no chapel was built on the grounds. In 1963, when a benefactor offered to fund a chapel and Crick’s fellow Fellows voted to accept the money, he refused to accept the argument that many at the college would appreciate a place of worship and that those who didn’t were not obliged to enter it. He offered to fund a brothel on the same basis, and, when that was rejected, he resigned.
His militant atheism was good-humoured but fierce, and it drove him away from molecular biology. As the key to the mystery of life, DNA seems a small answer to the big picture, so Crick pushed on, advancing the theory of “Directed Panspermia”, which is not a Clinton DNA joke but his and his colleague Leslie Orgel’s explanation for how life began. Concerned by the narrow time frame – to those of a non-creationist bent - between the cooling of the earth and the rapid emergence of the planet’s first life forms, Crick determined to provide another explanation for the origin of life. As he put it, bouncing along a tenuous chain of probabilities:
The first self-replicating system is believed to have arisen spontaneously in the ‘soup,’ the weak solution of organic chemicals formed in the oceans, seas, and lakes by the action of sunlight and electric storms. Exactly how it started we do not know…
The universe began much earlier. Its exact age is uncertain but a figure of 10 to 15 billion years is not too far out…
Although we do not know for certain, we suspect that there are in the galaxy many stars with planets suitable for life…
Could life have first started much earlier on the planet of some distant star, perhaps eight to 10 billion years ago? If so, a higher civilization, similar to ours, might have developed from it at about the time that the Earth was formed… Would they have had the urge and the technology to spread life through the wastes of space and seed these sterile planets, including our own?..
For such a job, bacteria are ideal. Since they are small, many of them can be sent. They can be stored almost indefinitely at very low temperatures, and the chances are they would multiply easily in the ‘soup’ of the primitive ocean…
“We do not know… uncertain… not too far out… we do not know for certain… we suspect… chances are…” And thus the Nobel prize winner embraces the theory that space aliens sent rocketships to seed the earth. The man of science who confidently dismissed God at Mill Hill School half a century earlier appears not to have noticed that he’d merely substituted for his culturally inherited monotheism a weary variant on Graeco-Roman-Norse pantheism – the gods in the skies who fertilise the earth and then retreat to the heavens beyond our reach. To be sure, he leaves them as anonymous aliens showering seed rather than Zeus adopting the form of a swan, but nevertheless Dr Crick’s hyper-rationalism took 50 years to lead him round to embracing a belief in a celestial creator of human life, indeed a deus ex machina.
He didn’t see it that way, of course. His last major work, The Astonishing Hypothesis, was a full-scale assault on human feeling. “The Astonishing Hypothesis," trumpeted Crick, “is that ‘You,’ your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. As Lewis Carroll’s Alice might have phrased it: ‘You’re nothing but a pack of neurons.’”
It’s not a new idea. Round about the time Dr Crick was working on his double-helix, Cole Porter wrote a song for a surly Soviet lass fending off the attentions of an amorous American:
When the electromagnetic of the he-male
Meets the electromagnetic of the female
If right away she should say this is the male
It’s A Chemical Reaction, That’s All.
Of course, in the film of Silk Stockings, Cyd Charisse eventually succumbs to Fred Astaire and comes to understand her thesis is not the final word. Even if the Astonishing Hypothesis – that there’s no “You”, no thoughts, no feelings, no falling in love, no free will - is true, it’s so all-encompassing as to be useless except to the most sinister eugenicists. And in the end Francis Crick’s own life seems to disprove it: He was never a dry or pompous scientist, he liked jokes and costume parties, he was an undistinguished man pushing 40 with one great obsession. Perhaps the combination of human quirks and sparks that drove him to chase his double-helix are merely a chemical formula no different in principle from that which determines variations in the pumpkin patch. But, even if Francis Crick is 75% the same as a pumpkin, the degree of difference between him and even the savviest Hubbard squash suggests that as a unit of measurement it doesn’t quite capture the scale of difference.
It is too late to retreat now. Francis Crick set us on the path to a biotechnological era that may yet be only an intermediate stage to a post-human future. But, just as a joke that’s explained is no longer funny, so in his final astonishing hypothesis Dr Crick eventually arrived at the logical end: you can only unmask the mystery of humanity by denying our humanity.
The Atlantic Monthly, October 2004
~ Read Mark's "Post Mortem" column every month in the print edition of The Atlantic Monthly. This month Mark writes about William Mitchell, the collossus of Cool-Whip - on sale now.
R
http://www.steynonline.com/index2.cfm?edit_id=70
October 16, 2004
EVOLUTIONARY FIGURE
Francis Crick, 1916-2004
Francis Crick is dead and gone. He has certainly not “passed on” - and, if he has, he’ll be extremely annoyed about it. As a 12-year old English schoolboy, he decided he was an atheist, and for much of the rest of his life worked hard to disprove the existence of the soul.
In between, he “discovered the secret of life”, as he crowed to the barmaids and regulars at The Eagle, his Cambridge pub, on a triumphant night in 1953. The opening sentence of his paper, written with his colleague Jim Watson, for Nature on April 25th that year put it more modestly:
We wish to suggest a structure for the salt of deoxyribose nucleic acid.
That’s DNA to you and me. And it’s thanks to Crick and Watson that we know the acronym and that it’s passed into the language as the contemporary shorthand for our core identity. Your career choice? “She says being a part of academia seemed to be hard-wired into her DNA because her father was a professor at the University of Virginia.” (The Chicago Tribune) Socio-economic inequality? “Income distribution appears to be hard-wired into the DNA of a nation.” (The Washington Post) New trends in rock video? “Staying cool is hard-wired into the DNA of MTV.” (The Los Angeles Times)
Francis Crick was the most important biologist of the 20th century. Like Darwin, he changed the way we think of ourselves. First, with Watson, he came up with one of the few scientific blueprints known to the general public – the double-helix structure of DNA (though he left it to Mrs Crick, usually a painter of nudes, to create the model). Later, with Sydney Brenner, he unraveled the universal genetic code. Today, Crick’s legacy includes all the thorniest questions of our time - genetic fingerprinting, stem-cell research, pre-screening for hereditary diseases, the “gay gene” and all the other “genes of the week”. In Britain, they’re arguing about a national DNA database; on the Continent, anti-globalists are protesting genetically modified crops; in America, it was traces of, um, DNA on Monica’s blue dress that obliged Bill Clinton to change his story. If you’re really determined, you can still just about ignore DNA – the OJ jury did – but, increasingly, it’s the currency of the age. Crick called his home in Cambridge the Golden Helix, and it truly was golden – not so much for him personally but for the biotechnology industry, something of a contradiction in terms half-a-century ago but now a 30-billion-a-year bonanza.
“We were lucky with DNA,” he said. “Like America, it was just waiting to be discovered.” But Crick was an unlikely Columbus. The son of a boot factory owner, he grew up in the English Midlands, dabbling in the usual scientific experiments of small boys – blowing up bottles, etc – but never really progressing beyond. Indeed, as a scientist, he wasn’t one for conducting experiments. What he did was think, and even then it took him a while to think out what he ought to be thinking about. His studies were interrupted by the war, which he spent developing mines at the British Admiralty’s research laboratory. Afterwards, already 30 and at a loose end, he mulled over what he wanted to do and decided his main interests were the “big picture” questions, the ones arising from his rejection of God, the ones that seemed beyond the power of science. Crick reckoned that the “mystery of life” could be easily understood if you just cleared away all the mysticism we’ve chosen to surround it with.
That’s the difference between Darwin and Crick. Evolution, whatever offence it gives, by definition emphasizes how far man has come from his tree-swinging forebears. DNA, by contrast, seems reductive. Man and chimp share 98.5% of their genetic code, which would be no surprise to Darwin. But we also share 75% of our genetic make-up with the pumpkin. The pumpkin is just a big ridged orange lump lying on the ground all day, like a fat retiree on the beach in Florida. But other than that he has no discernible human characteristics until your kid carves them into him.
Yet the point of DNA is not just to prove that the pumpkin is our kin but to pump him for useful information. According to Monise Durrani, a BBC science correspondent, the genetic blueprint of the humble earthworm is proving useful in the study of Alzheimer’s. Do worms get Alzheimer’s? And, if they do, what difference does it make? As Ms Durrani says, “Although we like to think we are special, our genes bring us down to Earth... We all evolved from the same soup of chemicals.” It turns out there is a fly in my soup, and a chimp and a worm and a pumpkin.
Having found “the secret of life”, what do you do for an encore? Crick disliked celebrity, and had a standard reply card printed to fend off his fellow man: “Dr. Crick thanks you for your letter but regrets that he is unable to accept your kind invitation to…” There then followed a checklist of options with a tick by the relevant item: send an autograph, provide a photograph, appear on your radio or TV show, cure your disease, etc. This is a view of man as 75% pumpkin but capable of crude, predictable, repetitive patterns of imposition on more advanced forms of life. Dr Crick also turned down automatically honorary degrees and disdained the feudal honours offered by the British state. Presumably the hyper-rationalist in him consigned monarchical mumbo-jumbo to the same trash can of history as religion, though he eventually relented and accepted an invitation by the Queen to join her most elite Order of Merit. Religion he never let up on. The university at which he practiced his science is filled with ancient college chapels, whose presence so irked Crick that, when the new Churchill College invited him to become a Fellow, he agreed to do so only on condition that no chapel was built on the grounds. In 1963, when a benefactor offered to fund a chapel and Crick’s fellow Fellows voted to accept the money, he refused to accept the argument that many at the college would appreciate a place of worship and that those who didn’t were not obliged to enter it. He offered to fund a brothel on the same basis, and, when that was rejected, he resigned.
His militant atheism was good-humoured but fierce, and it drove him away from molecular biology. As the key to the mystery of life, DNA seems a small answer to the big picture, so Crick pushed on, advancing the theory of “Directed Panspermia”, which is not a Clinton DNA joke but his and his colleague Leslie Orgel’s explanation for how life began. Concerned by the narrow time frame – to those of a non-creationist bent - between the cooling of the earth and the rapid emergence of the planet’s first life forms, Crick determined to provide another explanation for the origin of life. As he put it, bouncing along a tenuous chain of probabilities:
The first self-replicating system is believed to have arisen spontaneously in the ‘soup,’ the weak solution of organic chemicals formed in the oceans, seas, and lakes by the action of sunlight and electric storms. Exactly how it started we do not know…
The universe began much earlier. Its exact age is uncertain but a figure of 10 to 15 billion years is not too far out…
Although we do not know for certain, we suspect that there are in the galaxy many stars with planets suitable for life…
Could life have first started much earlier on the planet of some distant star, perhaps eight to 10 billion years ago? If so, a higher civilization, similar to ours, might have developed from it at about the time that the Earth was formed… Would they have had the urge and the technology to spread life through the wastes of space and seed these sterile planets, including our own?..
For such a job, bacteria are ideal. Since they are small, many of them can be sent. They can be stored almost indefinitely at very low temperatures, and the chances are they would multiply easily in the ‘soup’ of the primitive ocean…
“We do not know… uncertain… not too far out… we do not know for certain… we suspect… chances are…” And thus the Nobel prize winner embraces the theory that space aliens sent rocketships to seed the earth. The man of science who confidently dismissed God at Mill Hill School half a century earlier appears not to have noticed that he’d merely substituted for his culturally inherited monotheism a weary variant on Graeco-Roman-Norse pantheism – the gods in the skies who fertilise the earth and then retreat to the heavens beyond our reach. To be sure, he leaves them as anonymous aliens showering seed rather than Zeus adopting the form of a swan, but nevertheless Dr Crick’s hyper-rationalism took 50 years to lead him round to embracing a belief in a celestial creator of human life, indeed a deus ex machina.
He didn’t see it that way, of course. His last major work, The Astonishing Hypothesis, was a full-scale assault on human feeling. “The Astonishing Hypothesis," trumpeted Crick, “is that ‘You,’ your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. As Lewis Carroll’s Alice might have phrased it: ‘You’re nothing but a pack of neurons.’”
It’s not a new idea. Round about the time Dr Crick was working on his double-helix, Cole Porter wrote a song for a surly Soviet lass fending off the attentions of an amorous American:
When the electromagnetic of the he-male
Meets the electromagnetic of the female
If right away she should say this is the male
It’s A Chemical Reaction, That’s All.
Of course, in the film of Silk Stockings, Cyd Charisse eventually succumbs to Fred Astaire and comes to understand her thesis is not the final word. Even if the Astonishing Hypothesis – that there’s no “You”, no thoughts, no feelings, no falling in love, no free will - is true, it’s so all-encompassing as to be useless except to the most sinister eugenicists. And in the end Francis Crick’s own life seems to disprove it: He was never a dry or pompous scientist, he liked jokes and costume parties, he was an undistinguished man pushing 40 with one great obsession. Perhaps the combination of human quirks and sparks that drove him to chase his double-helix are merely a chemical formula no different in principle from that which determines variations in the pumpkin patch. But, even if Francis Crick is 75% the same as a pumpkin, the degree of difference between him and even the savviest Hubbard squash suggests that as a unit of measurement it doesn’t quite capture the scale of difference.
It is too late to retreat now. Francis Crick set us on the path to a biotechnological era that may yet be only an intermediate stage to a post-human future. But, just as a joke that’s explained is no longer funny, so in his final astonishing hypothesis Dr Crick eventually arrived at the logical end: you can only unmask the mystery of humanity by denying our humanity.
The Atlantic Monthly, October 2004
~ Read Mark's "Post Mortem" column every month in the print edition of The Atlantic Monthly. This month Mark writes about William Mitchell, the collossus of Cool-Whip - on sale now.
10/11/04
MannGram®: totalitarian tendencies in recent science [Catch-all] -
GEA - gormfach@gmail.com @ 08:10:51 PM
>Nature
>Published online: 06 October 2004; | doi:10.1038/news040712-1
>
>Mark Peplow
>DNA pioneer dies aged 87.
>
>Maurice Wilkins, who shared a Nobel Prize for the discovery of DNA's
>structure, died yesterday aged 87.
...
>
>He pioneered a technique called X-ray fibre diffraction, which can reveal
>the molecular structure of biological material such as collagen or DNA.
This may be excusably vague in an obituary, but it continues an
unfortunate misconception regarding what level of structure is accessible
by this fibre diffraction method. The attached excerpt from a 'pop sc'
article accepted and then suppressed by David Penny (subverting NZ Sc Rev)
defines levels of molecular structure in polymers such as DNA. As remarked
in my http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/dec102003/1564.pdf :
>> It is not widely enough understood that X-ray
diffraction was never capable of playing a dominant role in the inference
of DNA conformations because DNA liquid crystals in wet fibres give only a
few dozen diffuse X-ray reflections rather than the thousands of sharp
reflections scattered by highly-ordered crystals.
>>Crick (with Cochran & Vand)32 showed mathematically that a whole-molecule
>>regular helical conformation can diffract X-rays mainly in a
>>characteristic "X" pattern. But other secondary structures too can give
>>that pattern of scattering ...
The point is that the fibre diffraction method gives only a vague
guide to 2° & 3° structure, nothing like the location of each atom in
*crystal* diffraction analysis. This confusion has allowed continuance of
the 'Watson, Crick & Wilkins discovered THE structure of DNA' furphy.
The Nature obit continues:
>Previously, X-ray images could only be derived from crystals, which
>excluded many large biological molecules that prefer to form strands.
Notice that this raver Peplow is unaware what the term 'strand'
means. 'Many large biological molecules' e.g DNA, RNA, collagen, starch,
etc, are strands. Some of them form tertiary structures in which 2 or more
strands associate by weak bonds, but they are all strand-type molecules.
More importantly, that closing phrase is notable for gratuitous
assertion of the Dawkins furphy that such things as molecules can have
properties like preference or purpose. So desperate are these crude
atheists to rule out final causes of non-material kinds e.g God that they
ascribe final cause to such entities as DNA molecules.
They elsewhere deny that there is any purpose in the universe. It
is bad enough to say that molecules can have purpose. But to say also that
there is no purpose in the universe is to contradict oneself.
This begins to take on that notable characteristic of all
totalitarian tendencies - the babbling of slogans which are blatantly
false - not subtly or arguably false, but flagrantly untrue. 'The Slavs
are sub-human' was a prototype 7 decade ago, from a totalitarianism that
provoked a world war. 'All men are rapists' is a prototype slogan of the
ruling ideology today.
Consider in this context the USA journalist Wm L Shirer 'The Rise &
Fall of the Third Reich' (Secker & Warburg 1960) p.248
"No one who has not lived for years in a totalitarian land
can possibly conceive how difficult it is to escape the dread consequences
of a regime's calculated and incessant propaganda. Often in a German home
or office or sometimes in a casual conversation with a stranger in a
restaurant, a beer hall, a café, I would meet with the most outlandish
assertions from seemingly educated and intelligent persons. It was obvious
that they were parroting some piece of nonsense they had heard on the radio
or read in the newspapers. Sometimes one was tempted to say as much, but
on such occasions one was met with such a stare of incredulity, such a
shock of silence, as it one had blasphemed the Almighty, that one realized
how useless it was even to try to make contact with a mind which has become
warped and for whom the facts of life had become what Hitler and Goebbels,
with their cynical disregard for truth, said they were."
It is difficult to face the mass mental aberrations involved in
* the DNA-worship
* the idiotic sub-cult chanting "The Big 4 Rule OK"
* the kustom-genes cDNA fabricators
* the belief that GM-bastards from 'biolistics', kustom plasmid/virus
kassettes, or electroporesis, differ from proper plants only in the one
intended effect e.g RoundupReadiness®
* refusal to admit that novel pathogens may well emanate from these bastards
* {please build on this list; it will help if you murmur from time to time
"it's not me that's crazy - it really is the faddists"}.
It adds up to a kind of mass psychosis. Compounding the
difficulty, in a vicious cycle, is the political context within which these
"technologies" fall to be assessed: ascendancy these past few decades of
totalitarian ideologies which you can to identify by their characteristic
Goebelesque slogans: 'money is god', 'women need men like fish need
bicycles', 'girls can do anything', 'homosexuality & lesbianism are at
least as happy & healthy as normal sex', 'there is nothing wrong in Windows
98', 'there is no God', 'whites should grovel to alleged coloureds to
compensate transgenerationally for past wrongs', etc. - again, please do
get some practice at extending these lists of mottos by which you can
identify totalitarian ideologies. They are not subtly but blatantly false.
Their wickedness is supraliminal, so you had better develop the skill of
identifying them. Confirm by observing refusal of their proponents to
discuss. Expect wimps e.g Marcus Williamson to accuse you of prejudice
against women. Expect wild personal insults instead of reasoning. That
type of reaction is a further identifying characteristic of the
totalitarian ideologies in question.
The gene-fad commercial bubble has been purging biologists from NZ
universities to make room for gene-jockeys who are expected to bring in
venture capital. This is the first objection to the gene-jockey fad: it
has drastically degraded science, far more dishonestly than the nuclear
fanatics ever did. That this crap has now slopped over into evolution
theory, in the form of Dawkins and of kompuwankers like J Celera Venter,
David Penny and too many others, is sad for science and for philosophy.
Their searches in material & efficient causes will never compensate for
their refusal to acknowledge formal & final causes.
The second objection to this DNA fad is of course the dangers
created by gene-jiggering. This racket routinely uses "the" double helix
as if it were some mind-numbing talisman which - mainly by aesthetic
virtue - is brandished to justify the most dangerous technology of all
time. That double helix, and similar 2° structures, have very little
indeed to do with 1°-structure tampering which is what gene-jiggering
consists of.
It is all just too much bullshit. Science must be ransomed from
this appalling degradation. Can that be done short of recovery from the
recent dominant political Axis (wimminsLib, racism, and militant hxism)?
it looks to me as if those who try to live by one big lie are prone to
taking up several others, in an inchoate fashion.
Any hope of Science FOR the People in such an ideological context
is liable to doom.
R
Levels of Structure
It is important to distinguish the primary, secondary and tertiary levels of structure in DNA (or any polymer molecule).
The 1° structure is the sequence, defined by covalent bonds, of monomer residues - in a DNA strand, the sequence of deoxyribonucleotides each (usually) containing one of the bases abbreviated G, C, T & A.
The 2° structure is the short-range folding (conformation) of that covalent strand, defining - essentially by rotations about single bonds - the spatial relationships of residues with their near neighbours in the primary structure. It is of course essentially 3D; any conflation of '2°' with '2D' is erroneous.
Tertiary structure relates in space, by longer-range folding, residues which are distant in the sequence.
Both 2° and 3° structure are generally held together by bonds which are weaker than the covalent backbone - hydrogen bonds, van der Waals bonds e.g. in 'quasi-graphite' stacking of aromatic rings, etc.
Similar weak bonds also constitute, where it occurs, quaternary structure - a term used much more of proteins than of nucleic acids - the non-covalent association of polymer molecules (each generally having its own 1°, 2° & 3° structure) into loose dimers, trimers, etc.
Although weak bonds are instrumental in defining 2°, 3° & 4° structure, it should be kept in mind that all nucleic acids contain numerous permanent electric charges, both positive & negative, and the forces (termed 'coulombic') of attraction & repulsion between them are the longest-range forces in the molecular realm.
The W-C model belongs importantly in the category of 2° structure (and incidentally 4°).
>Published online: 06 October 2004; | doi:10.1038/news040712-1
>
>Mark Peplow
>DNA pioneer dies aged 87.
>
>Maurice Wilkins, who shared a Nobel Prize for the discovery of DNA's
>structure, died yesterday aged 87.
...
>
>He pioneered a technique called X-ray fibre diffraction, which can reveal
>the molecular structure of biological material such as collagen or DNA.
This may be excusably vague in an obituary, but it continues an
unfortunate misconception regarding what level of structure is accessible
by this fibre diffraction method. The attached excerpt from a 'pop sc'
article accepted and then suppressed by David Penny (subverting NZ Sc Rev)
defines levels of molecular structure in polymers such as DNA. As remarked
in my http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/dec102003/1564.pdf :
>> It is not widely enough understood that X-ray
diffraction was never capable of playing a dominant role in the inference
of DNA conformations because DNA liquid crystals in wet fibres give only a
few dozen diffuse X-ray reflections rather than the thousands of sharp
reflections scattered by highly-ordered crystals.
>>Crick (with Cochran & Vand)32 showed mathematically that a whole-molecule
>>regular helical conformation can diffract X-rays mainly in a
>>characteristic "X" pattern. But other secondary structures too can give
>>that pattern of scattering ...
The point is that the fibre diffraction method gives only a vague
guide to 2° & 3° structure, nothing like the location of each atom in
*crystal* diffraction analysis. This confusion has allowed continuance of
the 'Watson, Crick & Wilkins discovered THE structure of DNA' furphy.
The Nature obit continues:
>Previously, X-ray images could only be derived from crystals, which
>excluded many large biological molecules that prefer to form strands.
Notice that this raver Peplow is unaware what the term 'strand'
means. 'Many large biological molecules' e.g DNA, RNA, collagen, starch,
etc, are strands. Some of them form tertiary structures in which 2 or more
strands associate by weak bonds, but they are all strand-type molecules.
More importantly, that closing phrase is notable for gratuitous
assertion of the Dawkins furphy that such things as molecules can have
properties like preference or purpose. So desperate are these crude
atheists to rule out final causes of non-material kinds e.g God that they
ascribe final cause to such entities as DNA molecules.
They elsewhere deny that there is any purpose in the universe. It
is bad enough to say that molecules can have purpose. But to say also that
there is no purpose in the universe is to contradict oneself.
This begins to take on that notable characteristic of all
totalitarian tendencies - the babbling of slogans which are blatantly
false - not subtly or arguably false, but flagrantly untrue. 'The Slavs
are sub-human' was a prototype 7 decade ago, from a totalitarianism that
provoked a world war. 'All men are rapists' is a prototype slogan of the
ruling ideology today.
Consider in this context the USA journalist Wm L Shirer 'The Rise &
Fall of the Third Reich' (Secker & Warburg 1960) p.248
"No one who has not lived for years in a totalitarian land
can possibly conceive how difficult it is to escape the dread consequences
of a regime's calculated and incessant propaganda. Often in a German home
or office or sometimes in a casual conversation with a stranger in a
restaurant, a beer hall, a café, I would meet with the most outlandish
assertions from seemingly educated and intelligent persons. It was obvious
that they were parroting some piece of nonsense they had heard on the radio
or read in the newspapers. Sometimes one was tempted to say as much, but
on such occasions one was met with such a stare of incredulity, such a
shock of silence, as it one had blasphemed the Almighty, that one realized
how useless it was even to try to make contact with a mind which has become
warped and for whom the facts of life had become what Hitler and Goebbels,
with their cynical disregard for truth, said they were."
It is difficult to face the mass mental aberrations involved in
* the DNA-worship
* the idiotic sub-cult chanting "The Big 4 Rule OK"
* the kustom-genes cDNA fabricators
* the belief that GM-bastards from 'biolistics', kustom plasmid/virus
kassettes, or electroporesis, differ from proper plants only in the one
intended effect e.g RoundupReadiness®
* refusal to admit that novel pathogens may well emanate from these bastards
* {please build on this list; it will help if you murmur from time to time
"it's not me that's crazy - it really is the faddists"}.
It adds up to a kind of mass psychosis. Compounding the
difficulty, in a vicious cycle, is the political context within which these
"technologies" fall to be assessed: ascendancy these past few decades of
totalitarian ideologies which you can to identify by their characteristic
Goebelesque slogans: 'money is god', 'women need men like fish need
bicycles', 'girls can do anything', 'homosexuality & lesbianism are at
least as happy & healthy as normal sex', 'there is nothing wrong in Windows
98', 'there is no God', 'whites should grovel to alleged coloureds to
compensate transgenerationally for past wrongs', etc. - again, please do
get some practice at extending these lists of mottos by which you can
identify totalitarian ideologies. They are not subtly but blatantly false.
Their wickedness is supraliminal, so you had better develop the skill of
identifying them. Confirm by observing refusal of their proponents to
discuss. Expect wimps e.g Marcus Williamson to accuse you of prejudice
against women. Expect wild personal insults instead of reasoning. That
type of reaction is a further identifying characteristic of the
totalitarian ideologies in question.
The gene-fad commercial bubble has been purging biologists from NZ
universities to make room for gene-jockeys who are expected to bring in
venture capital. This is the first objection to the gene-jockey fad: it
has drastically degraded science, far more dishonestly than the nuclear
fanatics ever did. That this crap has now slopped over into evolution
theory, in the form of Dawkins and of kompuwankers like J Celera Venter,
David Penny and too many others, is sad for science and for philosophy.
Their searches in material & efficient causes will never compensate for
their refusal to acknowledge formal & final causes.
The second objection to this DNA fad is of course the dangers
created by gene-jiggering. This racket routinely uses "the" double helix
as if it were some mind-numbing talisman which - mainly by aesthetic
virtue - is brandished to justify the most dangerous technology of all
time. That double helix, and similar 2° structures, have very little
indeed to do with 1°-structure tampering which is what gene-jiggering
consists of.
It is all just too much bullshit. Science must be ransomed from
this appalling degradation. Can that be done short of recovery from the
recent dominant political Axis (wimminsLib, racism, and militant hxism)?
it looks to me as if those who try to live by one big lie are prone to
taking up several others, in an inchoate fashion.
Any hope of Science FOR the People in such an ideological context
is liable to doom.
R
Levels of Structure
It is important to distinguish the primary, secondary and tertiary levels of structure in DNA (or any polymer molecule).
The 1° structure is the sequence, defined by covalent bonds, of monomer residues - in a DNA strand, the sequence of deoxyribonucleotides each (usually) containing one of the bases abbreviated G, C, T & A.
The 2° structure is the short-range folding (conformation) of that covalent strand, defining - essentially by rotations about single bonds - the spatial relationships of residues with their near neighbours in the primary structure. It is of course essentially 3D; any conflation of '2°' with '2D' is erroneous.
Tertiary structure relates in space, by longer-range folding, residues which are distant in the sequence.
Both 2° and 3° structure are generally held together by bonds which are weaker than the covalent backbone - hydrogen bonds, van der Waals bonds e.g. in 'quasi-graphite' stacking of aromatic rings, etc.
Similar weak bonds also constitute, where it occurs, quaternary structure - a term used much more of proteins than of nucleic acids - the non-covalent association of polymer molecules (each generally having its own 1°, 2° & 3° structure) into loose dimers, trimers, etc.
Although weak bonds are instrumental in defining 2°, 3° & 4° structure, it should be kept in mind that all nucleic acids contain numerous permanent electric charges, both positive & negative, and the forces (termed 'coulombic') of attraction & repulsion between them are the longest-range forces in the molecular realm.
The W-C model belongs importantly in the category of 2° structure (and incidentally 4°).
10/09/04
I comment on this latest (and, it implies, last) msg from a vicar who,
along with other Waiapu padres, rec'd my accostings discussing whether
known hx should be ordained.
If this is a typical example of at least one main kind of party in
the "debate", its characteristics should be studied.
>Please to not send me any more Emails
This one is different from the extreme example who cut off
communication at first msg, having only lodged her wounded reaction to my
ofensive terms 'PC' and 'wimp'. This one did discuss at first, but has now
gone on strike acting the delicate flower bruised by words.
>I believe I treated your earlier letters with appropriate respect, as they
>contain much valid material. You do not seem to be able to accord those who
>dissent with you with an equal respect.
This may be a fairly typical example of the trendies' tactics.
They infer from just a few words a whole attitude in the person they
disagree with, and assert that this huge inference is sufficient reason to
avoid discussion. It is the behaviour of a person vigorously seeking
excuses to evade discussion. It also entails maximal judgmental attitudes
(which is what the PC claim to be against). We are already immersed in
doubletalk & doublethink.
>You describe John Morton and William Temple as influences on your thinking.
>Neither of those men would have described other Christians as "wimps" ,
>"feminazis", "atheists", or other equally offensive epithets
This is another significant tactic - ascribe to third parties,
who are unable to confirm or deny (some of them dead), support for the
trendy position.
Temple d. 1944 when conventions were somewhat different, and cannot
be asked what he would say today. Mort certainly was already calling
Geering an atheist 20 y ago - but this trendy 'knows' differently.
Anyhow it is dubious to put all 3 of the quoted epithets in one
category. I'd put them in 3 categories, come to think of it.
'Atheist', when applied to one who has boldy declared that
label of himself e.g Brian Edwards, can not be legitimately complained of
as a term.
'Wimp' entials much more value-judgement, a process the
trendies purport to shun (but in their own slapping of labels like
'homophobic', 'ofensive', 'opressive' etc on such as myself, they reveal
their duplicity).
'Feminazi' has been relatively 'underground' if widespread,
so the PC innocents can pretend it is in itself so shocking that they can
evade its content; but it is a useful term for some extreme political
wimminsLibbers.
> that seem to
>flow gratuitously from your pen.
This is important. He is insinuating that the terms he dislikes
are *inherently* unwarranted ('gratuitous'); he claims these terms could
never be the result of assessing someone's characteristics and summarising
them. In other words, he is trying to abolish the categories that the
terms connote.
You can safely assume that this evasive posture is reinforced among
the ranks of the trendies as they confer amongst themselves -- mentioning
from time to time one of the "opressive" terms and rolling their eyes in
mute "understanding".
> Brian Dawson, Howard Pilgrim, Philip
>Culbertson, and THE REV'D Adrienne Bruce are my friends.
I infer this is evidence of the extent to which the trendies have
gained strength among the padres of Waiapu, and the extent to which
Culbertson influences them.
> If you consider
>that they (and I) write waffle
I never hinted at any such judgement of *his* writing; but now he
is trying to slink away in solidarity with those I've "insulted", even tho'
I've shown no sign of relegating him to their ranks.
>, I am sorry, but it is impossible to conduct
>a respectful or Christian debate in such curcumstances.
Who would adjudge this a reasonable reaction? I'd deem it evasive,
even cowardly.
>Thank you for the Christianity Today article 'the Ecstatic Heresy', which
>avoided such insulting
>language.
He implies he is willing to face up to the content of that article,
having deemed its language PC. I doubt it.
I've slipped in these annotations on this conveniently brief
glimpse of PC trendiness because I think the specimen is typical.
What does it tell us about how to go at the "debate" on whether to
ordain hx?
To help us examine that question, consider the similar reaction of
another Waiapu vicar, who upon first hearing from me accused me of
>> referring to all who fail to agree with you as 'wimps'
I responded to him:
>This is a wild mischaracterisation of anything I have done.
My reason was of course that what he'd said is just plain
wrong. Only a fraction of those I disagree with do I refer to as wimps.
One proposal can be considered: never use any term that the
deviants & their front-wimps say annoys them.
This approach has been adopted by some already. I would like to
hear from them how they have got on.
I can see some difficulties. The PC are likely to invent
perpetually excuses for acting 'ofended'. In much the same way as drill
sergeants deal with the ban on swearing by conferring that function on
hitherto lo-emotion words (e.g 'idle'), the PC are likely to continue
endlessly ruling new words or phrases PinC and using them as triggers for
refusal to discuss. How workable is our position if we accede fully to
that game?
Let us keep firmly in mind that major jurisdictions e.g Canada have
enacted laws to create the new crime of 'hate speech', a peculiar tilting
of the playing field by misuse of the criminal law. As a Christian lawyer
friend of mine recently remarked,
>It is revealing that other forms of deviancy and perversion, social or
>sexual, e.g "anti-social behaviour" (variously defined); alcoholism;
>gambling addictions; criminal behaviour; and other types of sexual
>deviancy, including paedophilia, are not really protected by the same
>"hate speech" laws (although there have been attempts in America - where
>else - to justify pornography on the grounds of free speech).
>Why are the laws applied in this way only with respect to homosexuality?
I suggest we have to think thru with some care the scenario in
which we allow PC to ban expressions that we deem useful. I strongly
suspect it will be unwise if we concede to them the entire power to define
what terms may not be used. The objective term 'homosexual' is feared by
the militant hx and their front-wimps because it has accreted unfavourable
overtones (ill health, unhappiness, early death, etc). That is not a
reason for us to cede the lovely English word 'gay' to them - and I have
never used it in their new way.
On the other hand we should of course refrain from creating
needless excuses for evasion. Thus, the term 'perverts' is not to be used
early in any interaction.
Perhaps, then, a draft rule would be: avoid use of terms that have
been labelled 'ofensive' or 'opressive' by PC, when speaking to them;
unless there is some considerable *reason* to use a PinC term.
I must say I am very sceptical that humouring their 'delicate
flower' image regarding language will actually encourage debate; but I'm
willing to give it a go to that extent.
Is it not becoming clear that we need a confab to explore these
issues in person? The PC have numerous confabs e.g the Coles cttee
(several long weekends at Tauhara). Could we tap conservative funding to
facilitate such a gathering?
R
along with other Waiapu padres, rec'd my accostings discussing whether
known hx should be ordained.
If this is a typical example of at least one main kind of party in
the "debate", its characteristics should be studied.
>Please to not send me any more Emails
This one is different from the extreme example who cut off
communication at first msg, having only lodged her wounded reaction to my
ofensive terms 'PC' and 'wimp'. This one did discuss at first, but has now
gone on strike acting the delicate flower bruised by words.
>I believe I treated your earlier letters with appropriate respect, as they
>contain much valid material. You do not seem to be able to accord those who
>dissent with you with an equal respect.
This may be a fairly typical example of the trendies' tactics.
They infer from just a few words a whole attitude in the person they
disagree with, and assert that this huge inference is sufficient reason to
avoid discussion. It is the behaviour of a person vigorously seeking
excuses to evade discussion. It also entails maximal judgmental attitudes
(which is what the PC claim to be against). We are already immersed in
doubletalk & doublethink.
>You describe John Morton and William Temple as influences on your thinking.
>Neither of those men would have described other Christians as "wimps" ,
>"feminazis", "atheists", or other equally offensive epithets
This is another significant tactic - ascribe to third parties,
who are unable to confirm or deny (some of them dead), support for the
trendy position.
Temple d. 1944 when conventions were somewhat different, and cannot
be asked what he would say today. Mort certainly was already calling
Geering an atheist 20 y ago - but this trendy 'knows' differently.
Anyhow it is dubious to put all 3 of the quoted epithets in one
category. I'd put them in 3 categories, come to think of it.
'Atheist', when applied to one who has boldy declared that
label of himself e.g Brian Edwards, can not be legitimately complained of
as a term.
'Wimp' entials much more value-judgement, a process the
trendies purport to shun (but in their own slapping of labels like
'homophobic', 'ofensive', 'opressive' etc on such as myself, they reveal
their duplicity).
'Feminazi' has been relatively 'underground' if widespread,
so the PC innocents can pretend it is in itself so shocking that they can
evade its content; but it is a useful term for some extreme political
wimminsLibbers.
> that seem to
>flow gratuitously from your pen.
This is important. He is insinuating that the terms he dislikes
are *inherently* unwarranted ('gratuitous'); he claims these terms could
never be the result of assessing someone's characteristics and summarising
them. In other words, he is trying to abolish the categories that the
terms connote.
You can safely assume that this evasive posture is reinforced among
the ranks of the trendies as they confer amongst themselves -- mentioning
from time to time one of the "opressive" terms and rolling their eyes in
mute "understanding".
> Brian Dawson, Howard Pilgrim, Philip
>Culbertson, and THE REV'D Adrienne Bruce are my friends.
I infer this is evidence of the extent to which the trendies have
gained strength among the padres of Waiapu, and the extent to which
Culbertson influences them.
> If you consider
>that they (and I) write waffle
I never hinted at any such judgement of *his* writing; but now he
is trying to slink away in solidarity with those I've "insulted", even tho'
I've shown no sign of relegating him to their ranks.
>, I am sorry, but it is impossible to conduct
>a respectful or Christian debate in such curcumstances.
Who would adjudge this a reasonable reaction? I'd deem it evasive,
even cowardly.
>Thank you for the Christianity Today article 'the Ecstatic Heresy', which
>avoided such insulting
>language.
He implies he is willing to face up to the content of that article,
having deemed its language PC. I doubt it.
I've slipped in these annotations on this conveniently brief
glimpse of PC trendiness because I think the specimen is typical.
What does it tell us about how to go at the "debate" on whether to
ordain hx?
To help us examine that question, consider the similar reaction of
another Waiapu vicar, who upon first hearing from me accused me of
>> referring to all who fail to agree with you as 'wimps'
I responded to him:
>This is a wild mischaracterisation of anything I have done.
My reason was of course that what he'd said is just plain
wrong. Only a fraction of those I disagree with do I refer to as wimps.
One proposal can be considered: never use any term that the
deviants & their front-wimps say annoys them.
This approach has been adopted by some already. I would like to
hear from them how they have got on.
I can see some difficulties. The PC are likely to invent
perpetually excuses for acting 'ofended'. In much the same way as drill
sergeants deal with the ban on swearing by conferring that function on
hitherto lo-emotion words (e.g 'idle'), the PC are likely to continue
endlessly ruling new words or phrases PinC and using them as triggers for
refusal to discuss. How workable is our position if we accede fully to
that game?
Let us keep firmly in mind that major jurisdictions e.g Canada have
enacted laws to create the new crime of 'hate speech', a peculiar tilting
of the playing field by misuse of the criminal law. As a Christian lawyer
friend of mine recently remarked,
>It is revealing that other forms of deviancy and perversion, social or
>sexual, e.g "anti-social behaviour" (variously defined); alcoholism;
>gambling addictions; criminal behaviour; and other types of sexual
>deviancy, including paedophilia, are not really protected by the same
>"hate speech" laws (although there have been attempts in America - where
>else - to justify pornography on the grounds of free speech).
>Why are the laws applied in this way only with respect to homosexuality?
I suggest we have to think thru with some care the scenario in
which we allow PC to ban expressions that we deem useful. I strongly
suspect it will be unwise if we concede to them the entire power to define
what terms may not be used. The objective term 'homosexual' is feared by
the militant hx and their front-wimps because it has accreted unfavourable
overtones (ill health, unhappiness, early death, etc). That is not a
reason for us to cede the lovely English word 'gay' to them - and I have
never used it in their new way.
On the other hand we should of course refrain from creating
needless excuses for evasion. Thus, the term 'perverts' is not to be used
early in any interaction.
Perhaps, then, a draft rule would be: avoid use of terms that have
been labelled 'ofensive' or 'opressive' by PC, when speaking to them;
unless there is some considerable *reason* to use a PinC term.
I must say I am very sceptical that humouring their 'delicate
flower' image regarding language will actually encourage debate; but I'm
willing to give it a go to that extent.
Is it not becoming clear that we need a confab to explore these
issues in person? The PC have numerous confabs e.g the Coles cttee
(several long weekends at Tauhara). Could we tap conservative funding to
facilitate such a gathering?
R
Stomping on Free Speech (can M Wilson be far behind? [Catch-all] -
GEA - gormfach@gmail.com @ 08:45:26 PM
>Did this become law Robert???
Yes, and here are some sites to explore. I was interested in the last
(page 5) of Amnesty International's brief on the bill.
As we write Canada's Supreme Court is deliberating, at the Govt's
request, the issue of same sex marriage.
http://www.parl.gc.ca/37/3/parlbus/chambus/house/bills/private/C-250/C-2
50_3/C-250_cover-E.html
http://www.fotf.ca/familyfacts/takeaction/091802_c415.html
http://www.amnesty.ca/resource_centre/Bill_C250.pdf
>From U.S. News & World Report - April 19, 2004
>
>http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/040419/opinion/19john.htm
>
>Nation & World
>By John Leo
>Stomping on free speech
>
>'Canada is a pleasantly authoritarian country," Alan Borovoy, general
>counsel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, said a few years ago.
>An example of what he means is Bill C-250, a repressive, anti-free-speech
>measure that is on the brink of becoming law in Canada. It would add
>"sexual orientation" to the Canadian hate propaganda law, thus making
>public criticism of homosexuality a crime. It is sometimes called the
>"Bible as Hate Literature" bill, or simply "the chill bill." It could ban
>publicly expressed opposition to gay marriage or any other political goal
>of gay groups. The bill has a loophole for religious opposition to
>homosexuality, but few scholars think it will offer protection, given the
>strength of the gay lobby and the trend toward censorship in Canada. Law
>Prof. David Bernstein, in his new book You Can't Say That! wrote that "it
>has apparently become illegal in Canada to advocate traditional Christian
>opposition to homosexual sex." Or traditional Jewish or Muslim opposition,
>too.
>
>Since Canada has no First Amendment, anti-bias laws generally trump free
>speech and freedom of religion. A recent flurry of cases has mostly gone
>against free expression. The Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission ruled
>that a newspaper ad listing biblical passages that oppose homosexuality was
>a human-rights offense. The commission ordered the paper and Hugh Owens,
>the man who placed the ad, to pay $1,500 each to three gay men who objected
>to it. In another case, a British Columbia court upheld the one-month
>suspension, without pay, of a high school teacher who wrote letters to a
>local paper arguing that homosexuality is not a fixed orientation but a
>condition that can and should be treated. The teacher, Chris Kempling, was
>not accused of discrimination, merely of expressing thoughts that the state
>defines as improper.
>
>That anti-free-speech principle, social conservatives argue, will become
>explicit national policy under C-250, with criminal penalties attached.
>Religious groups say it would become risky for them to teach certain
>biblical passages. If a student says something that irritates homosexuals
>in class, the student's parents might be held legally liable. Some
>Canadians worry that, for instance, discussions about gay men giving blood
>will be suppressed. Robert Spitzer of Columbia University, a longtime
>supporter of gay rights and an important figure in the American Psychiatric
>Association, published a study finding that many gays can become
>heterosexual. Would that study be banned under C-250 as hate speech? And
>since C-250 does not mention homosexuality but focuses broadly on "sexual
>orientation," Canada's freewheeling judiciary may explicitly extend
>protection to many "sexual minorities." Pedophilia and sadism are among
>the conditions listed by the American Psychiatric Association under "sexual
>orientation."
>
>Church foes? The churches seem to be the key target of C-250. One of
>Canada's gay senators denounced "ecclesiastical dictators" and wrote to a
>critic, "You people are sick. God should strike you dead." In 1998,
>lesbian lawyer Barbara Finlay of British Columbia said "the legal struggle
>for queer rights will one day be a struggle between freedom of religion
>versus sexual orientation."
>
>It's starting to be defined just that way in other countries. In Sweden,
>sermons are explicitly covered by an anti-hate-speech law passed to protect
>homosexuals. The Swedish chancellor of justice said any reference to the
>Bible's stating that homosexuality is sinful might be a criminal offense,
>and a Pentecostal minister is already facing charges. In Britain, police
>investigated Anglican Bishop Peter Forster of Chester after he told a local
>paper: "Some people who are primarily homosexual can reorientate
>themselves. I would encourage them to consider that as an option." Police
>sent a copy of his remarks to prosecutors, but the case was dropped. In
>Ireland last August, the Irish Council for Civil Liberties warned that
>clergy who circulated a Vatican statement opposing gay marriages could face
>prosecution under incitement-to-hatred legislation.
>
>In the United States, the dominance of anti-bias laws and rules limiting
>free speech and free exercise of religion is clear on campuses, not so
>clear in the real world. Still, First Amendment arguments are losing
>ground to antidiscrimination laws in many areas, and once stalwart
>free-speech groups, like the American Civil Liberties Union, have mostly
>gone over to the other side. An unlikely split has occurred. In the
>interest of fighting bias, liberal groups reliably promote laws that limit
>First Amendment principles. The best defenders of free speech and freedom
>of religion are no longer on the left. They are found on the right.
Yes, and here are some sites to explore. I was interested in the last
(page 5) of Amnesty International's brief on the bill.
As we write Canada's Supreme Court is deliberating, at the Govt's
request, the issue of same sex marriage.
http://www.parl.gc.ca/37/3/parlbus/chambus/house/bills/private/C-250/C-2
50_3/C-250_cover-E.html
http://www.fotf.ca/familyfacts/takeaction/091802_c415.html
http://www.amnesty.ca/resource_centre/Bill_C250.pdf
>From U.S. News & World Report - April 19, 2004
>
>http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/040419/opinion/19john.htm
>
>Nation & World
>By John Leo
>Stomping on free speech
>
>'Canada is a pleasantly authoritarian country," Alan Borovoy, general
>counsel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, said a few years ago.
>An example of what he means is Bill C-250, a repressive, anti-free-speech
>measure that is on the brink of becoming law in Canada. It would add
>"sexual orientation" to the Canadian hate propaganda law, thus making
>public criticism of homosexuality a crime. It is sometimes called the
>"Bible as Hate Literature" bill, or simply "the chill bill." It could ban
>publicly expressed opposition to gay marriage or any other political goal
>of gay groups. The bill has a loophole for religious opposition to
>homosexuality, but few scholars think it will offer protection, given the
>strength of the gay lobby and the trend toward censorship in Canada. Law
>Prof. David Bernstein, in his new book You Can't Say That! wrote that "it
>has apparently become illegal in Canada to advocate traditional Christian
>opposition to homosexual sex." Or traditional Jewish or Muslim opposition,
>too.
>
>Since Canada has no First Amendment, anti-bias laws generally trump free
>speech and freedom of religion. A recent flurry of cases has mostly gone
>against free expression. The Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission ruled
>that a newspaper ad listing biblical passages that oppose homosexuality was
>a human-rights offense. The commission ordered the paper and Hugh Owens,
>the man who placed the ad, to pay $1,500 each to three gay men who objected
>to it. In another case, a British Columbia court upheld the one-month
>suspension, without pay, of a high school teacher who wrote letters to a
>local paper arguing that homosexuality is not a fixed orientation but a
>condition that can and should be treated. The teacher, Chris Kempling, was
>not accused of discrimination, merely of expressing thoughts that the state
>defines as improper.
>
>That anti-free-speech principle, social conservatives argue, will become
>explicit national policy under C-250, with criminal penalties attached.
>Religious groups say it would become risky for them to teach certain
>biblical passages. If a student says something that irritates homosexuals
>in class, the student's parents might be held legally liable. Some
>Canadians worry that, for instance, discussions about gay men giving blood
>will be suppressed. Robert Spitzer of Columbia University, a longtime
>supporter of gay rights and an important figure in the American Psychiatric
>Association, published a study finding that many gays can become
>heterosexual. Would that study be banned under C-250 as hate speech? And
>since C-250 does not mention homosexuality but focuses broadly on "sexual
>orientation," Canada's freewheeling judiciary may explicitly extend
>protection to many "sexual minorities." Pedophilia and sadism are among
>the conditions listed by the American Psychiatric Association under "sexual
>orientation."
>
>Church foes? The churches seem to be the key target of C-250. One of
>Canada's gay senators denounced "ecclesiastical dictators" and wrote to a
>critic, "You people are sick. God should strike you dead." In 1998,
>lesbian lawyer Barbara Finlay of British Columbia said "the legal struggle
>for queer rights will one day be a struggle between freedom of religion
>versus sexual orientation."
>
>It's starting to be defined just that way in other countries. In Sweden,
>sermons are explicitly covered by an anti-hate-speech law passed to protect
>homosexuals. The Swedish chancellor of justice said any reference to the
>Bible's stating that homosexuality is sinful might be a criminal offense,
>and a Pentecostal minister is already facing charges. In Britain, police
>investigated Anglican Bishop Peter Forster of Chester after he told a local
>paper: "Some people who are primarily homosexual can reorientate
>themselves. I would encourage them to consider that as an option." Police
>sent a copy of his remarks to prosecutors, but the case was dropped. In
>Ireland last August, the Irish Council for Civil Liberties warned that
>clergy who circulated a Vatican statement opposing gay marriages could face
>prosecution under incitement-to-hatred legislation.
>
>In the United States, the dominance of anti-bias laws and rules limiting
>free speech and free exercise of religion is clear on campuses, not so
>clear in the real world. Still, First Amendment arguments are losing
>ground to antidiscrimination laws in many areas, and once stalwart
>free-speech groups, like the American Civil Liberties Union, have mostly
>gone over to the other side. An unlikely split has occurred. In the
>interest of fighting bias, liberal groups reliably promote laws that limit
>First Amendment principles. The best defenders of free speech and freedom
>of religion are no longer on the left. They are found on the right.
In the "debate" (hardly worthy of that name) whether to ordain
homosexuals & lesbians, the word 'homophobic' is used as a purported
king-hit insult. I'm glad to see a vicar writing
>Homophobia is defined
>as an irrational fear or hatred of homosexuals, and I do not have an
>irrational fear or hatred of such people.
Please find attached a letter to (atheist & wimp) Brian Edwards
about the term 'homophobia'.
-
Robt Mann
consultant ecologist
P O Box 28878 Remuera, Auckland 1005, New Zealand
(9) 524 2949
524 2949
Dr Brian Edwards
Radio NZ 17-5-97
P O Box 2209
Auckland
Dear Brian Edwards,
You read out this morning a message from one Dominic about the term "homophobia". I had written to you some months previously about this and been somewhat surprised to get no response. In case that letter did not reach you, I reiterate much of it now. I think the discussion this morning hardly got to the point.
My view of this new term is different from the purist philology of Dominic. Realising that you are trained in psychology, I point out that the phobias are a significant category of illness, characterised by debilitating irrational fearfulness. If there exists a particular version of this psychopathology with homosexuals as its fixation, I have yet to learn of it, but in any case the term "homophobia" should be reserved for that condition (be it hypothetical or real).
Warren Lindberg, Kevin Hague, and their whole set of homosexual activists wallowing in the pseudo-victim role, instead use "homophobia" with not only the meaning which you stated - prejudice against homosexuals - but mainly a further, completely illegitimate meaning: they misuse this term "homophobia" to smear, ad hominem, any misgivings about homosexuality as a political cause.
To get down to reality, criticising the politically militant homosexuals such as Lindberg has several good grounds quite aside from any prejudice.
They promote homosexuality amongst adolescents by misrepresentations of human biology. They promulgate falsehoods about "safe" sex which are gravely misleading. They grossly exaggerate the efficacy of condoms against HIV, in attempt to continue the promiscuous homosexual lifestyle which was severely challenged by the onset of the AIDS epidemic. The Men's Centre North Shore, on whose committee I serve, could provide a couple of expert interviewees from whom an interview could elicit the truth on these important issues.
To conclude back on the philology theme:
the word "homophobia" hijacks an important form of word which should be preserved for its valid & important function: Z-phobia means irrational, debilitating fear of Z. Misuse of psychiatric diagnoses for ideological purposes had a sordid history under Stalin and Hitler, and should find no place in New Zealand public health discussions.
You should at least desist from using this lie-in-the-language "homophobia", and preferably become active in explaining how it is wrong. Lies in the language are among the most horribly effective and are central in the Goebbels tradition which, to a most dismaying extent, perverts today's world. Try compiling a list of lies-in-the-language: "reclaimed land" (meaning filled-in water or wetland) etc. . . . [ also: Rightsizing. Reforms (Rogernomics, Ruthanasia). Women's liberation. Repatriation (export of profits for foreign investors). Feminism. ]
Yours sincerely
Robert Mann
7-6-97: Edw read out the Times parts, repeatedly saying this was very interesting, but closing with "I think I'll leave it there [i.e. declining the MC interview idea] and I don't necessarily agree with it".
14-6-97: Edw read out a letter from Lindberg to the effect "we've pulled it off anyway - the word means as we wish - we've won that battle".
A month or two later, Edw roundly condemned the term ‘homophobia’ as an utterly illegitimate word-trick. I felt it was - just - OK for him at that time to refrain from mentioning anything of the history of his attitude to it.
homosexuals & lesbians, the word 'homophobic' is used as a purported
king-hit insult. I'm glad to see a vicar writing
>Homophobia is defined
>as an irrational fear or hatred of homosexuals, and I do not have an
>irrational fear or hatred of such people.
Please find attached a letter to (atheist & wimp) Brian Edwards
about the term 'homophobia'.
-
Robt Mann
consultant ecologist
P O Box 28878 Remuera, Auckland 1005, New Zealand
(9) 524 2949
524 2949
Dr Brian Edwards
Radio NZ 17-5-97
P O Box 2209
Auckland
Dear Brian Edwards,
You read out this morning a message from one Dominic about the term "homophobia". I had written to you some months previously about this and been somewhat surprised to get no response. In case that letter did not reach you, I reiterate much of it now. I think the discussion this morning hardly got to the point.
My view of this new term is different from the purist philology of Dominic. Realising that you are trained in psychology, I point out that the phobias are a significant category of illness, characterised by debilitating irrational fearfulness. If there exists a particular version of this psychopathology with homosexuals as its fixation, I have yet to learn of it, but in any case the term "homophobia" should be reserved for that condition (be it hypothetical or real).
Warren Lindberg, Kevin Hague, and their whole set of homosexual activists wallowing in the pseudo-victim role, instead use "homophobia" with not only the meaning which you stated - prejudice against homosexuals - but mainly a further, completely illegitimate meaning: they misuse this term "homophobia" to smear, ad hominem, any misgivings about homosexuality as a political cause.
To get down to reality, criticising the politically militant homosexuals such as Lindberg has several good grounds quite aside from any prejudice.
They promote homosexuality amongst adolescents by misrepresentations of human biology. They promulgate falsehoods about "safe" sex which are gravely misleading. They grossly exaggerate the efficacy of condoms against HIV, in attempt to continue the promiscuous homosexual lifestyle which was severely challenged by the onset of the AIDS epidemic. The Men's Centre North Shore, on whose committee I serve, could provide a couple of expert interviewees from whom an interview could elicit the truth on these important issues.
To conclude back on the philology theme:
the word "homophobia" hijacks an important form of word which should be preserved for its valid & important function: Z-phobia means irrational, debilitating fear of Z. Misuse of psychiatric diagnoses for ideological purposes had a sordid history under Stalin and Hitler, and should find no place in New Zealand public health discussions.
You should at least desist from using this lie-in-the-language "homophobia", and preferably become active in explaining how it is wrong. Lies in the language are among the most horribly effective and are central in the Goebbels tradition which, to a most dismaying extent, perverts today's world. Try compiling a list of lies-in-the-language: "reclaimed land" (meaning filled-in water or wetland) etc. . . . [ also: Rightsizing. Reforms (Rogernomics, Ruthanasia). Women's liberation. Repatriation (export of profits for foreign investors). Feminism. ]
Yours sincerely
Robert Mann
7-6-97: Edw read out the Times parts, repeatedly saying this was very interesting, but closing with "I think I'll leave it there [i.e. declining the MC interview idea] and I don't necessarily agree with it".
14-6-97: Edw read out a letter from Lindberg to the effect "we've pulled it off anyway - the word means as we wish - we've won that battle".
A month or two later, Edw roundly condemned the term ‘homophobia’ as an utterly illegitimate word-trick. I felt it was - just - OK for him at that time to refrain from mentioning anything of the history of his attitude to it.
Independent
Bush holds his summit amid the toxic waste sites
Georgia beauty spot chosen by President for G8 summit lies along one of
America's most polluted stretches of coast
By Michael Williams in Sea Island, Georgia and Geoffrey Lean
16 May 2004
President George Bush is to bring leaders of the world's richest to Sea
Island next month to showcase his "environmental stewardship".
But the island - the most beautiful of the sub-tropical Golden Isles off
the Georgia coast - is in one of the most polluted areas of the American
South. Glynn County, which contains Sea Island - the site of next
month's G8 summit - is home to 16 hazardous waste plants.
A nearby polluting paper mill is being closed down while the leaders of
the world's richest countries, including Tony Blair, are in the
neighbourhood.
The locals describe the island as "somewhere between Venice and heaven".
The 18th-century colonists from England thought it was the Garden of
Eden, and it certainly must have seemed like paradise to the President's
parents, George Snr and Barbara Bush, when they honey-mooned here 50
years ago.
Bush family sentiment is thought to be one of the reasons President Bush
is bringing the world's leaders here for the summit on 8 June. The salt
marshes and lazy creeks are also host to a proliferation of vegetation
and wildlife, making the area possibly the most environmentally
important on America's East Coast.
There are more than 200 species of birds here, including the
yellow-bellied sapsucker, the boat-tailed grackle and the northern
cardinal. Deer and wild turkeys inhabit interior forests of pine,
magnolia and ancient moss veiled oaks. Egrets, pelicans and herons skim
the surf. On moonlit summer nights, endangered loggerhead turtles creep
on to the beaches to lay thousands of eggs.
The summit's website says that the President wants to "showcase the
complementary benefits of environmental stewardship and a strong economy".
But critics will point out this is another case where the environmental
facts belie the President's words. For there is an unhappy parallel with
Venice, in that ecological danger lurks over the horizon.
Of the 16 hazardous waste sites within 10 miles of the island, four are
so contaminated they have been designated for government treatment
programmes. They include a tidal creek and landfill dump full of a
banned pesticide; a former chemical factory that dumped toxic mercury in
local creeks; and a defunct wood preservatives factory.
Before the clean-up began, shrimpers used to dock their boats in one of
the creeks so the pollution would kill the barnacles on their hulls.
The most visible sign of pollution is the Hercules factory, emblemised
by its two tall stainless steel chimneys gorging large clouds of vapour
over the causeway leading to Sea Island. Its smell - a cocktail of glue
and stewed cabbage - hangs like a pall.
The factory makes a variety of things, including paper and resin
products, but the G8 leaders won't smell it, since it will be closed
down during their stay for "holidays".
The locals are resigned to it. Emerson Gay, a retired policeman, says:
"Some folks say the smell is the smell of money, which is why it's
lasted so long. At least the stuff they're burning in it now is not as
nasty as it was."
But the summit - and George Bush's boasts - are unlikely to make things
much better. Virtually none of the millions spent on the G8 will find
its way into environmental projects. On the road approach to Sea Island
last week they were busy stuffing in mature palm trees and erecting
quaint lighting. But there isn't much else.
Gone are the dreams of a large pot of money to clean up the environment.
"I'd say stuff hasn't gone much faster than the path we were already
on," says the Glynn County Commissioner, Cap Fendig. "No monies have hit
here. Most of our stuff was for the police department."
The only substantial benefit has come from the telephone company Bell
South, which has just completed a $7m (£4m) upgrade for fear of
embarrassing world leaders phoning home with their previous creaking system.
Indeed many are concerned about serious further damage to the coast when
so many security men and personnel are crammed into such an ecologically
sensitive area. So far, the only major concession is that those guarding
the beach in front of where the world leaders will stay have been told
not to trample on turtle nests.
"I have no concept of why in the world we do this event whatsoever,"
said Judy Jennings, a Savannah-based environmental campaigner. "I see no
reason why we invite thousands of people to trample over the beach so
eight men can get together and talk. It's an atrocious use of our
environmental assets."
Bush holds his summit amid the toxic waste sites
Georgia beauty spot chosen by President for G8 summit lies along one of
America's most polluted stretches of coast
By Michael Williams in Sea Island, Georgia and Geoffrey Lean
16 May 2004
President George Bush is to bring leaders of the world's richest to Sea
Island next month to showcase his "environmental stewardship".
But the island - the most beautiful of the sub-tropical Golden Isles off
the Georgia coast - is in one of the most polluted areas of the American
South. Glynn County, which contains Sea Island - the site of next
month's G8 summit - is home to 16 hazardous waste plants.
A nearby polluting paper mill is being closed down while the leaders of
the world's richest countries, including Tony Blair, are in the
neighbourhood.
The locals describe the island as "somewhere between Venice and heaven".
The 18th-century colonists from England thought it was the Garden of
Eden, and it certainly must have seemed like paradise to the President's
parents, George Snr and Barbara Bush, when they honey-mooned here 50
years ago.
Bush family sentiment is thought to be one of the reasons President Bush
is bringing the world's leaders here for the summit on 8 June. The salt
marshes and lazy creeks are also host to a proliferation of vegetation
and wildlife, making the area possibly the most environmentally
important on America's East Coast.
There are more than 200 species of birds here, including the
yellow-bellied sapsucker, the boat-tailed grackle and the northern
cardinal. Deer and wild turkeys inhabit interior forests of pine,
magnolia and ancient moss veiled oaks. Egrets, pelicans and herons skim
the surf. On moonlit summer nights, endangered loggerhead turtles creep
on to the beaches to lay thousands of eggs.
The summit's website says that the President wants to "showcase the
complementary benefits of environmental stewardship and a strong economy".
But critics will point out this is another case where the environmental
facts belie the President's words. For there is an unhappy parallel with
Venice, in that ecological danger lurks over the horizon.
Of the 16 hazardous waste sites within 10 miles of the island, four are
so contaminated they have been designated for government treatment
programmes. They include a tidal creek and landfill dump full of a
banned pesticide; a former chemical factory that dumped toxic mercury in
local creeks; and a defunct wood preservatives factory.
Before the clean-up began, shrimpers used to dock their boats in one of
the creeks so the pollution would kill the barnacles on their hulls.
The most visible sign of pollution is the Hercules factory, emblemised
by its two tall stainless steel chimneys gorging large clouds of vapour
over the causeway leading to Sea Island. Its smell - a cocktail of glue
and stewed cabbage - hangs like a pall.
The factory makes a variety of things, including paper and resin
products, but the G8 leaders won't smell it, since it will be closed
down during their stay for "holidays".
The locals are resigned to it. Emerson Gay, a retired policeman, says:
"Some folks say the smell is the smell of money, which is why it's
lasted so long. At least the stuff they're burning in it now is not as
nasty as it was."
But the summit - and George Bush's boasts - are unlikely to make things
much better. Virtually none of the millions spent on the G8 will find
its way into environmental projects. On the road approach to Sea Island
last week they were busy stuffing in mature palm trees and erecting
quaint lighting. But there isn't much else.
Gone are the dreams of a large pot of money to clean up the environment.
"I'd say stuff hasn't gone much faster than the path we were already
on," says the Glynn County Commissioner, Cap Fendig. "No monies have hit
here. Most of our stuff was for the police department."
The only substantial benefit has come from the telephone company Bell
South, which has just completed a $7m (£4m) upgrade for fear of
embarrassing world leaders phoning home with their previous creaking system.
Indeed many are concerned about serious further damage to the coast when
so many security men and personnel are crammed into such an ecologically
sensitive area. So far, the only major concession is that those guarding
the beach in front of where the world leaders will stay have been told
not to trample on turtle nests.
"I have no concept of why in the world we do this event whatsoever,"
said Judy Jennings, a Savannah-based environmental campaigner. "I see no
reason why we invite thousands of people to trample over the beach so
eight men can get together and talk. It's an atrocious use of our
environmental assets."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4746289-111414,00.html
'Science cannot provide all the answers'
Why do so many scientists believe in God?
Tim Radford
Thursday September 4, 2003
The Guardian
Colin Humphreys is a dyed-in-the-wool materialist. That is, he is professor
of materials science at Cambridge. He believes in the power of science to
explain the nature of matter. He believes that humans - like all other
living things - evolved through the action of natural selection upon random
mutation. He is also a Baptist. He believes in the story of Moses, as
recounted in the biblical book of Exodus. He believes in it enough to have
explored Egypt and the Holy Land in search of natural or scientific
explanations for the story of the burning bush, the 10 plagues of Egypt,
the crossing of the Red Sea and the manna that fell in
the wilderness -and then written a book about it.
"I believe that the scientific world view can explain almost anything," he
says. "But I just think there is another world view as well."
Tom McLeish is professor of polymer physics at Leeds. Supermarket plastic
bags are polymers, but so are spider's silk, sheep's wool, sinew and flesh
and bone. His is the intricate world of what is, and how it works, down to
the molecular level. He delights in the clarity and power of science,
precisely because it is questioning rather than dogmatic. "But the
questions that arise, and the methods we use to ask them, can be traced
back to the religious tradition in which I find myself. Doing science is
part of what it means in that tradition to be human. Because we find
ourselves in this puzzling, extraordinary universe of pain
and beauty, we will also find ourselves able to explore it, by adopting the
very successful methods of science," he says.
Russell Stannard is now emeritus professor of physics at the Open
University. He is one of the atom-smashers, picking apart the properties
of matter, energy, space and time, and the author of a delightful series of
children's books about tough concepts such as relativity theory. He
believes in the power of science. He not only believes in God, he believes
in the Church of England.
He, like Tom McLeish, is a lay reader. He has con tributed Thoughts for
the Day to Radio 4, those morning homilies on the mysteries of existence.
Does it worry him that science - his science - could be about to explain
the whole story of space, time matter and energy without any need for a
Creator? "No, because a starting point you can have is: why is there
something rather than nothing? Why is there a world? Now I cannot see how
science could ever provide an answer," he says.
Stannard will be one of a small group of scientists and theologians, having
a go at the question next week in Birmingham. The Science and Religion
Forum, founded by a group of scientists 25 years ago, meets on Monday to
discuss questions such as the place of humans in the universe. They are
not likely to actually come up with an answer, but they will certainly give
the question a bashing. The forum embraces what one of its begetters,
Arthur Peacocke, pioneer of DNA research in Britain, called "wistful
agnostics" and sceptics, as well as Christians and people from other
faiths. "It's about how we can worship a creator
God who is creating now, and still hold on to the scientific world view as
we understand it," says Phil Edwards, who trained in physics but is now a
chaplain to the Bolton Institute.
The subject - the place of humans in the universe - is a challenge. To the
scientific way of thinking, humans no more have a "place" in the scheme of
things than hamsters or harp seals. The universe itself may be an
incomprehensible event, and life a so far unexplained one, but scientists
see no ladder of creation with humans at the pinnacle. They can see no
"purpose" in being. We are here because we are here, a lucky accident -
lucky for us - but there was nothing inevitable about the evolution of
humanity, or its survival. God is not part of the explanation.
That is how scientists have grown to think, whether they come from a
religious background or not. But modern science did not emerge 400 years
ago to challenge religion, the orthodoxy of the past 2,000 years.
Generations of thinkers and experimenters and observers - often themselves
churchmen - wanted to explain how God worked his wonders. Modern physics
began with a desire to explain the clockwork of God's creation. Modern
geology grew at least partly out of searches for evidence of Noah's flood.
Modern biology owes much to the urge to marvel at the intricacy of Divine
providence.
But the scientists - a word coined only in 1833 - who hoped to find God
somehow painted Him out of the picture. By the late 20th century,
physicists were confident of the history of the universe back to the first
thousandth of a second, and geneticists and biochemists were certain that
all living things could be traced back to some last universal common
ancestor that lived perhaps 3.5bn years ago. A few things - what actually
happened in the Big Bang; how living, replicating things emerged from a
muddle of organic compounds - remain riddles. But few now consider these
riddles to be incapable of solutions. So although the debate did not start
out as science versus religion, that is how many people now see it.
Paradoxically, this is not how many scientists see it. In the US,
according to a survey published in Nature in 1997, four out of 10
scientists believe in God. Just over 45% said they did not believe, and
14.5% described themselves as doubters or agnostics. This ratio of
believers to non-believers had not changed in 80 years. Should anybody be
surprised?
"A lot of people are surprised. I think people have grown up to believe
that science and Christianity are at loggerheads, and that is what the
average man in the street believes," says Colin Humphreys. "I think you can
explain the universe without invoking God at all. And you can explain
humans without invoking God at all, I think. But where I differ from the
people who say, OK, the universe started with a big bang - if it did, it's
not too sure but let's say it did - and everything else was chance event,
then I would say that God is the God of chance and He had His plan and
purpose, which is working out very subtly, but through
these chance events."
He, like most scientists do in this debate, mentions Richard Dawkins, the
Oxford zoologist and professor of the public understanding of science,
whose rationalist stance is well known, and vigorously argued.
The real argument here is not about the importance of science, or its value
to humanity. "You have to recognise that science is enormously powerful in
going for the jugular, reducing complexity to its simple structures," says
Tom McLeish. "But it puts it back together again, and that is important to
stress, because, from Keats onwards, we have been accused of unweaving the
rainbow, and never weaving it back again. That is not true."
Doubt, expressed most potently 3,000 years ago in the biblical book of Job,
is the greatest scientific tool ever invented, he says. To do good
science, you have to doubt everything, including your ideas, your
experiments and your conclusions. "People like Richard Dawkins
characterise religion as doubtless, tub-thumping, blind certainty. But it
isn't like that; he knows it is not like that. There is Job, on his
ash-heap, doubting everything, but wondering where the light comes from,
and how the hail forms."
Russell Stannard says that when he became a reader in the Church of England
40 years ago, he was considered a bit of an oddball. But things have
changed. "You get a few scientists like Richard Dawkins and Peter Atkins
[professor of chemistry at Oxford] who at least talk as though they cannot
understand how a scientist could possibly be religious. But I would say
that, generally speaking, throughout the scientific community there is
considerable acceptance that, OK, although one might not be a religious
person oneself, one's fellow scientist can be."
Colin Humphreys says that quite a number of his colleagues at Cambridge are
also believers. "My impression is - and it is just an impression - that
there are many more scientists on the academic staff who are believers than
arts people."
Tom McLeish says something similar. He cheerfully offers several reasons
why that might be so, one of which might be called the postmodernist
effect. "Our dear friends in the humanities do get themselves awfully
confused about whether the world exists, about whether each other exists,
about whether words mean anything. Until they have sorted out whether cats
and dogs exist or not, or are only figments in the mind of the reader, let
alone the writer, then they are going to have problems talking about God."
Within biology itself, there is an intense argument about evolutionary
origins of qualities such as altruism - the sacrifice of self for others -
and the enduring belief in God or gods, and an afterlife, with the
possibility of some kind of calling to account.
Robert Winston, the fertility pioneer, Labour peer and professor at
Hammersmith Hospital, is Jewish. This represents a huge tradition of
values that are important to him. At the age of 30 he went back to the
synagogue because, he felt, he needed the discipline of Judaism, although
this is not quite the same as believing in God, and he confesses to having
been through various phases of observance. In the last chapter of his book
The Human Instinct he said he felt it was very likely that spirituality -
the feeling of something beyond mortal life - had been important in
survival during the Ice Age, and through periods of great deprivation.
"The great question is whether or not that spirituality is God-given, or
whether it actually evolved because it was needed," he says. "I'm still
sitting on the fence."
Stannard has fewer doubts. "I would say that God does take a personal
interest in us. If you were allowed one word to describe God by, that word
would be love. That does not come from evolution by natural selection, it
seems to come from somewhere else, and the whole idea of morals does not
naturally arise out of evolution. Biologists will talk about altruism, but
they are using it in a very technical sense, which is not the religious
idea of altruism. It is more a case of you scratch my back and I will
scratch yours."
Richard Dawkins, however, remains unmoved. Is there a limit to what
science can explain? Very possibly. But in that case, what on earth makes
anyone think religion can do any better? "I once reached this point when I
asked the then professor of astrophysics at Oxford to explain the origin of
the universe to me," he says. "He did so, and I posed my supplementary:
'Where did the laws of physics come from in the first place?' He smiled:
'Ah, now we move beyond the realm of science. This is where I have to hand
over to our good friend the chaplain.' My immediate thought was, 'But why
the chaplain? Why not the gardener or the chef?' If science itself cannot
say where the laws of physics ultimately come from, there is no reason to
expect that religion will do any better and rather good reasons to think it
will do worse."
The place of humans in the universe - world faith perspectives, at the
University of Birmingham Selly Oak campus, September 8-10. www.srforum.org
Further reading
A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love by Richard
Dawkins (Houghton Mifflin 2003) ISBN
0618335404
The Miracles of Exodus: A Scientist's Discovery of the Extraordinary
Natural Causes of the Biblical Stories by Colin J Humphreys (Continuum
2003) ISBN 0826469523
The God Experiment: Can Science Prove the Existence of God? by Russell
Stannard (Hidden Spring 2000) ISBN 1587680076
'Science cannot provide all the answers'
Why do so many scientists believe in God?
Tim Radford
Thursday September 4, 2003
The Guardian
Colin Humphreys is a dyed-in-the-wool materialist. That is, he is professor
of materials science at Cambridge. He believes in the power of science to
explain the nature of matter. He believes that humans - like all other
living things - evolved through the action of natural selection upon random
mutation. He is also a Baptist. He believes in the story of Moses, as
recounted in the biblical book of Exodus. He believes in it enough to have
explored Egypt and the Holy Land in search of natural or scientific
explanations for the story of the burning bush, the 10 plagues of Egypt,
the crossing of the Red Sea and the manna that fell in
the wilderness -and then written a book about it.
"I believe that the scientific world view can explain almost anything," he
says. "But I just think there is another world view as well."
Tom McLeish is professor of polymer physics at Leeds. Supermarket plastic
bags are polymers, but so are spider's silk, sheep's wool, sinew and flesh
and bone. His is the intricate world of what is, and how it works, down to
the molecular level. He delights in the clarity and power of science,
precisely because it is questioning rather than dogmatic. "But the
questions that arise, and the methods we use to ask them, can be traced
back to the religious tradition in which I find myself. Doing science is
part of what it means in that tradition to be human. Because we find
ourselves in this puzzling, extraordinary universe of pain
and beauty, we will also find ourselves able to explore it, by adopting the
very successful methods of science," he says.
Russell Stannard is now emeritus professor of physics at the Open
University. He is one of the atom-smashers, picking apart the properties
of matter, energy, space and time, and the author of a delightful series of
children's books about tough concepts such as relativity theory. He
believes in the power of science. He not only believes in God, he believes
in the Church of England.
He, like Tom McLeish, is a lay reader. He has con tributed Thoughts for
the Day to Radio 4, those morning homilies on the mysteries of existence.
Does it worry him that science - his science - could be about to explain
the whole story of space, time matter and energy without any need for a
Creator? "No, because a starting point you can have is: why is there
something rather than nothing? Why is there a world? Now I cannot see how
science could ever provide an answer," he says.
Stannard will be one of a small group of scientists and theologians, having
a go at the question next week in Birmingham. The Science and Religion
Forum, founded by a group of scientists 25 years ago, meets on Monday to
discuss questions such as the place of humans in the universe. They are
not likely to actually come up with an answer, but they will certainly give
the question a bashing. The forum embraces what one of its begetters,
Arthur Peacocke, pioneer of DNA research in Britain, called "wistful
agnostics" and sceptics, as well as Christians and people from other
faiths. "It's about how we can worship a creator
God who is creating now, and still hold on to the scientific world view as
we understand it," says Phil Edwards, who trained in physics but is now a
chaplain to the Bolton Institute.
The subject - the place of humans in the universe - is a challenge. To the
scientific way of thinking, humans no more have a "place" in the scheme of
things than hamsters or harp seals. The universe itself may be an
incomprehensible event, and life a so far unexplained one, but scientists
see no ladder of creation with humans at the pinnacle. They can see no
"purpose" in being. We are here because we are here, a lucky accident -
lucky for us - but there was nothing inevitable about the evolution of
humanity, or its survival. God is not part of the explanation.
That is how scientists have grown to think, whether they come from a
religious background or not. But modern science did not emerge 400 years
ago to challenge religion, the orthodoxy of the past 2,000 years.
Generations of thinkers and experimenters and observers - often themselves
churchmen - wanted to explain how God worked his wonders. Modern physics
began with a desire to explain the clockwork of God's creation. Modern
geology grew at least partly out of searches for evidence of Noah's flood.
Modern biology owes much to the urge to marvel at the intricacy of Divine
providence.
But the scientists - a word coined only in 1833 - who hoped to find God
somehow painted Him out of the picture. By the late 20th century,
physicists were confident of the history of the universe back to the first
thousandth of a second, and geneticists and biochemists were certain that
all living things could be traced back to some last universal common
ancestor that lived perhaps 3.5bn years ago. A few things - what actually
happened in the Big Bang; how living, replicating things emerged from a
muddle of organic compounds - remain riddles. But few now consider these
riddles to be incapable of solutions. So although the debate did not start
out as science versus religion, that is how many people now see it.
Paradoxically, this is not how many scientists see it. In the US,
according to a survey published in Nature in 1997, four out of 10
scientists believe in God. Just over 45% said they did not believe, and
14.5% described themselves as doubters or agnostics. This ratio of
believers to non-believers had not changed in 80 years. Should anybody be
surprised?
"A lot of people are surprised. I think people have grown up to believe
that science and Christianity are at loggerheads, and that is what the
average man in the street believes," says Colin Humphreys. "I think you can
explain the universe without invoking God at all. And you can explain
humans without invoking God at all, I think. But where I differ from the
people who say, OK, the universe started with a big bang - if it did, it's
not too sure but let's say it did - and everything else was chance event,
then I would say that God is the God of chance and He had His plan and
purpose, which is working out very subtly, but through
these chance events."
He, like most scientists do in this debate, mentions Richard Dawkins, the
Oxford zoologist and professor of the public understanding of science,
whose rationalist stance is well known, and vigorously argued.
The real argument here is not about the importance of science, or its value
to humanity. "You have to recognise that science is enormously powerful in
going for the jugular, reducing complexity to its simple structures," says
Tom McLeish. "But it puts it back together again, and that is important to
stress, because, from Keats onwards, we have been accused of unweaving the
rainbow, and never weaving it back again. That is not true."
Doubt, expressed most potently 3,000 years ago in the biblical book of Job,
is the greatest scientific tool ever invented, he says. To do good
science, you have to doubt everything, including your ideas, your
experiments and your conclusions. "People like Richard Dawkins
characterise religion as doubtless, tub-thumping, blind certainty. But it
isn't like that; he knows it is not like that. There is Job, on his
ash-heap, doubting everything, but wondering where the light comes from,
and how the hail forms."
Russell Stannard says that when he became a reader in the Church of England
40 years ago, he was considered a bit of an oddball. But things have
changed. "You get a few scientists like Richard Dawkins and Peter Atkins
[professor of chemistry at Oxford] who at least talk as though they cannot
understand how a scientist could possibly be religious. But I would say
that, generally speaking, throughout the scientific community there is
considerable acceptance that, OK, although one might not be a religious
person oneself, one's fellow scientist can be."
Colin Humphreys says that quite a number of his colleagues at Cambridge are
also believers. "My impression is - and it is just an impression - that
there are many more scientists on the academic staff who are believers than
arts people."
Tom McLeish says something similar. He cheerfully offers several reasons
why that might be so, one of which might be called the postmodernist
effect. "Our dear friends in the humanities do get themselves awfully
confused about whether the world exists, about whether each other exists,
about whether words mean anything. Until they have sorted out whether cats
and dogs exist or not, or are only figments in the mind of the reader, let
alone the writer, then they are going to have problems talking about God."
Within biology itself, there is an intense argument about evolutionary
origins of qualities such as altruism - the sacrifice of self for others -
and the enduring belief in God or gods, and an afterlife, with the
possibility of some kind of calling to account.
Robert Winston, the fertility pioneer, Labour peer and professor at
Hammersmith Hospital, is Jewish. This represents a huge tradition of
values that are important to him. At the age of 30 he went back to the
synagogue because, he felt, he needed the discipline of Judaism, although
this is not quite the same as believing in God, and he confesses to having
been through various phases of observance. In the last chapter of his book
The Human Instinct he said he felt it was very likely that spirituality -
the feeling of something beyond mortal life - had been important in
survival during the Ice Age, and through periods of great deprivation.
"The great question is whether or not that spirituality is God-given, or
whether it actually evolved because it was needed," he says. "I'm still
sitting on the fence."
Stannard has fewer doubts. "I would say that God does take a personal
interest in us. If you were allowed one word to describe God by, that word
would be love. That does not come from evolution by natural selection, it
seems to come from somewhere else, and the whole idea of morals does not
naturally arise out of evolution. Biologists will talk about altruism, but
they are using it in a very technical sense, which is not the religious
idea of altruism. It is more a case of you scratch my back and I will
scratch yours."
Richard Dawkins, however, remains unmoved. Is there a limit to what
science can explain? Very possibly. But in that case, what on earth makes
anyone think religion can do any better? "I once reached this point when I
asked the then professor of astrophysics at Oxford to explain the origin of
the universe to me," he says. "He did so, and I posed my supplementary:
'Where did the laws of physics come from in the first place?' He smiled:
'Ah, now we move beyond the realm of science. This is where I have to hand
over to our good friend the chaplain.' My immediate thought was, 'But why
the chaplain? Why not the gardener or the chef?' If science itself cannot
say where the laws of physics ultimately come from, there is no reason to
expect that religion will do any better and rather good reasons to think it
will do worse."
The place of humans in the universe - world faith perspectives, at the
University of Birmingham Selly Oak campus, September 8-10. www.srforum.org
Further reading
A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love by Richard
Dawkins (Houghton Mifflin 2003) ISBN
0618335404
The Miracles of Exodus: A Scientist's Discovery of the Extraordinary
Natural Causes of the Biblical Stories by Colin J Humphreys (Continuum
2003) ISBN 0826469523
The God Experiment: Can Science Prove the Existence of God? by Russell
Stannard (Hidden Spring 2000) ISBN 1587680076
from the Prostate Awareness & Support Society http://www.prostate.org.nz
Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA): the facts
by Peter Gilling, Hon Urologist, PASS
Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) is a protein produced by the cells that
line the glands in the prostate.
PSA is concentrated in prostate tissue and serum PSA levels are normally
very low. Disruption of the normal prostatic architecture, for example
with prostate disease, enables greater amounts of PSA to enter the
circulation.
Many different prostate problems cause elevated serum levels but prostatic
intra-epithelelial neoplasia
(PIN), a pre-cancerous state, does not appear to raise the serum levels of
PSA. PSA testing detects more tumours than does digital rectal examination
(DRE) and it detects them earlier.
However, the most sensitive measure for the detection of prostate cancer
uses both DRE and PSA. Both tests should be employed in a programme of
early prostate cancer detection. Of prostate cancers currently detected
about 75% have an abnormal PSA. Approximately 20% of prostate cancers with
aggressive features are found in men whose PSA is less than 4.0mcg/L. Many
of these can be detected with DRE.
A variety of factors can effect the serum levels of PSA and should be
considered when interpreting the
results. The three most common prostatic diseases - prostatisis, benign
prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) and
prostate cancer - can all be associated with elevations of serum PSA levels.
Other factors that are known to cause secondary elevations in PSA levels
include physical activity,
infection and medications. Medications containing hormones can often lead
to quite dramatic falls in PSA, as will Proscar (Finasteride), an agent
used for the treatment of BPH and male-pattern baldness.
Various herbal medicines may effect PSA levels as well as these often have
an hormonal component.
Ejaculation and rectal examination are not thought to influence the levels
significantly although any
instrumentation of the urethra or biopsies of the prostate can effect the
levels of PSA. Testing should be postponed for at least one month owing to
this effect.
A prostate biopsy is indicated when the PSA is 4.0mcg/L or more, the
digital rectal examination is abnormal or there is a significant rise in
the PSA tests. Serum PSA levels are proportional to the risk and extent of
prostate cancer. The average man older than 50 has about a 20-30%
likelihood of having prostate cancer if his serum PSA is above 4.0mcg/L.
Interestingly, if a similar patient with a PSA between 2.5mcg/L and
4.0mcg/L undergoes a prostate biopsy, the likelihood of detection of
prostate cancer is approximately 27%. For levels above 10.0mcg/L the
likelihood increases to between 42%-64%. Half of all prostate cancers
with pre-operative PSA levels of between 4.0mcg/L and 10.0mcg/L have been
found to have invaded through the wall of the prostate into the surrounding
tissue already. When the PSA level rises above 10.0mcg/L this risk is
substantially greater.
The PSA test can be used to aid in determining appropriate investigations
before treatment of prostate cancer is performed. For example: a bone scan
is generally not necessary in patients who have a PSA
less than 2.0mcg/L unless there is some history suggesting bony pain,
particularly if the grade of the tumour is only moderate, such as having a
Gleason score of 6 or less. Another example of this is the need for
sampling of the lymph nodes in the pelvis, which is also unnecessary in
this same group of patients---those with a PSA of the less than 20.0mcg/L
and a Gleason score of 6 or less. Less than 5% or patients with these
features would turn out to have cancer in the lymph nodes.
After treatment PSA tests should come down to 0.1mc/L or less and should
stay there. This applies to
surgery and radiotherapy equally. The best results with radiotherapy are
achieved if the PSA drops to
very low levels (less than 0.5mcg/L). The rate at which the PSA rises
after treatment can help
determine whether or not treatment is necessary and what sort of treatment
would be appropriate.
When hormone treatment is given it can take between 3 and 6 months to
achieve the lowest levels that are going to be seen with this form of
treatment. The lower the PSA test result goes the better. PSA testing is
one of the most useful blood tests available in cancer treatment. It can
help with early detection, treatment planning and treatment monitoring in
cancer of the prostate.
Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA): the facts
by Peter Gilling, Hon Urologist, PASS
Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) is a protein produced by the cells that
line the glands in the prostate.
PSA is concentrated in prostate tissue and serum PSA levels are normally
very low. Disruption of the normal prostatic architecture, for example
with prostate disease, enables greater amounts of PSA to enter the
circulation.
Many different prostate problems cause elevated serum levels but prostatic
intra-epithelelial neoplasia
(PIN), a pre-cancerous state, does not appear to raise the serum levels of
PSA. PSA testing detects more tumours than does digital rectal examination
(DRE) and it detects them earlier.
However, the most sensitive measure for the detection of prostate cancer
uses both DRE and PSA. Both tests should be employed in a programme of
early prostate cancer detection. Of prostate cancers currently detected
about 75% have an abnormal PSA. Approximately 20% of prostate cancers with
aggressive features are found in men whose PSA is less than 4.0mcg/L. Many
of these can be detected with DRE.
A variety of factors can effect the serum levels of PSA and should be
considered when interpreting the
results. The three most common prostatic diseases - prostatisis, benign
prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) and
prostate cancer - can all be associated with elevations of serum PSA levels.
Other factors that are known to cause secondary elevations in PSA levels
include physical activity,
infection and medications. Medications containing hormones can often lead
to quite dramatic falls in PSA, as will Proscar (Finasteride), an agent
used for the treatment of BPH and male-pattern baldness.
Various herbal medicines may effect PSA levels as well as these often have
an hormonal component.
Ejaculation and rectal examination are not thought to influence the levels
significantly although any
instrumentation of the urethra or biopsies of the prostate can effect the
levels of PSA. Testing should be postponed for at least one month owing to
this effect.
A prostate biopsy is indicated when the PSA is 4.0mcg/L or more, the
digital rectal examination is abnormal or there is a significant rise in
the PSA tests. Serum PSA levels are proportional to the risk and extent of
prostate cancer. The average man older than 50 has about a 20-30%
likelihood of having prostate cancer if his serum PSA is above 4.0mcg/L.
Interestingly, if a similar patient with a PSA between 2.5mcg/L and
4.0mcg/L undergoes a prostate biopsy, the likelihood of detection of
prostate cancer is approximately 27%. For levels above 10.0mcg/L the
likelihood increases to between 42%-64%. Half of all prostate cancers
with pre-operative PSA levels of between 4.0mcg/L and 10.0mcg/L have been
found to have invaded through the wall of the prostate into the surrounding
tissue already. When the PSA level rises above 10.0mcg/L this risk is
substantially greater.
The PSA test can be used to aid in determining appropriate investigations
before treatment of prostate cancer is performed. For example: a bone scan
is generally not necessary in patients who have a PSA
less than 2.0mcg/L unless there is some history suggesting bony pain,
particularly if the grade of the tumour is only moderate, such as having a
Gleason score of 6 or less. Another example of this is the need for
sampling of the lymph nodes in the pelvis, which is also unnecessary in
this same group of patients---those with a PSA of the less than 20.0mcg/L
and a Gleason score of 6 or less. Less than 5% or patients with these
features would turn out to have cancer in the lymph nodes.
After treatment PSA tests should come down to 0.1mc/L or less and should
stay there. This applies to
surgery and radiotherapy equally. The best results with radiotherapy are
achieved if the PSA drops to
very low levels (less than 0.5mcg/L). The rate at which the PSA rises
after treatment can help
determine whether or not treatment is necessary and what sort of treatment
would be appropriate.
When hormone treatment is given it can take between 3 and 6 months to
achieve the lowest levels that are going to be seen with this form of
treatment. The lower the PSA test result goes the better. PSA testing is
one of the most useful blood tests available in cancer treatment. It can
help with early detection, treatment planning and treatment monitoring in
cancer of the prostate.
10/02/04
After homosexual "marriage" : the scary next step [Catch-all] -
GEA - gormfach@gmail.com @ 11:56:21 PM
fw from a devout RC who is also a good friend of mine:
Pope Pius XI wrote on sex education in his 31 December 1929 Encyclical
'Divini Illius Magistri'
See www.vatican.va >the Holy See>The Holy Father>Pius XI>Encyclicals.
This encyclical is just as relevant (if not more so) today.
Casto Conubii ("On Christian Marriage") is also very good.
Pope Pius XI wrote on sex education in his 31 December 1929 Encyclical
'Divini Illius Magistri'
See www.vatican.va >the Holy See>The Holy Father>Pius XI>Encyclicals.
This encyclical is just as relevant (if not more so) today.
Casto Conubii ("On Christian Marriage") is also very good.
Monbiot's article below is so exhilarating in its forthright quest
for truth and contempt for dishonest media hacks that I feel provoked to
issue a new MannGram® in the quasi-samizdat series so studiously denied
overt acknowledgment in those media.
I esteem Monbiot more than almost all journalists commentating on
my field (applied ecology), so I do him the honour of respectful comment.
> http://www.monbiot.com/dsp_article.cfm?article_id=650
> The Fossil Fools
The dismissal of climate change by journalistic nincompoops is a
danger to us all
< right on Geo. In this country the "journalists" include
prominently, repeatedly in the NZ Herald the NZ agent of USA criminal &
nutter Lyndon LaRouche.
> By George Monbiot. Published in
the Guardian 27th April 2004
>Picture a situation in which most of the media, despite the
>overwhelming weight of medical opinion, refused to accept that there was a
>connection between smoking and lung cancer.
< Dictating too fast here, Geo. The issue is not "a connection".
It has moved way beyond that. The issue is whether most lung cancer is
caused by smoking. It is that clear; why are you so vague?
>Imagine that every time new evidence emerged, they asked someone with
>no medical qualifications to write a piece dismissing the evidence and
>claiming that there was no consensus on the issue.
items on O&G since 1987 are generated by 'someone with no medical
qualifications'. Rewards for these usurpations are large: the main
impostor is now Governor-general, another became a list-MP but retreated to
Mongolia accused of filching from the public purse, another is an Auckland
Regional Councillor and has been able to get The Lancet to publish sporadic
columns of her opinions. One of the originators of this crazy racket is
now head of the WHO non-infectious diseases division.
< As a secondary effect, midwives have been treated as more
important authorities on O&G than, for instance, a highly respectable FRCOG
and chairman of the NZ Medical Association. Almost all GPs have abandoned
obstetrics; midwives collecting large subsidies routinely fail to arrange
specialist backup at National Women's Hospital. These trends will have
harmed a certain number of mothers and babies.
< Geo's rhetorical manoevre is neat, but far from conclusive. He
depicts, as if it were impossible or extremely unlikely, usurpation of
authority by non-specialists in medicine or science. The awful truth is
that such usurpations are not rare these past few decades. One main cause
is affirmative action putting ahead of expertise some ideology (usually
either racism, wimminsLib, or militant homosexuality).
> Imagine that the BBC, in the interests of "debate", wheeled out one of
>the tiny number of scientists who says that smoking and cancer aren't
>linked
< That sloppy term again, Geo. The apologists hired by the
tobacco industry in attempt to dissuade successive ministers of health from
imposing legal restrictions on sale & use of tobacco did not deny a link.
Their assertion was that causality had not been stringently enough
demonstrated. It is a matter of degree. As a member throughout of the
statutory board advising those ministers on poisons, I'm proud to say we
weren't persuaded by those deniers: smoking tobacco was agreed to cause
lung cancer (and other serious illnesses). But I am also proud to say that
same Toxic Substances Board concluded the evidence (2 decade ago) on
passive smoking was far less persuasive, and rejected the pressure for
further restrictions from a group of unqualified publicists.
> , or that giving up isn't worth the trouble, every time the issue of
>cancer was raised. Imagine that, as a result, next to nothing was done
>about the problem, to the delight of the tobacco industry and the
>detriment of millions of smokers. We would surely describe the newspapers
>and the BBC as grossly irresponsible.
>Now stop imagining it, and take a look at what's happening. The issue is
>not smoking, but climate change. The scientific consensus is just as
>robust
the main point of the IPCC which is *predictions*. The evidence that
global warning has been caused by human activity, let alone the evidence
that it will in future get much worse, is not so conclusive as the evidence
that smoking has caused lung cancer. It is, however, conclusive enough for
governmental purposes, as expressed (minimally) by the Kyoto treaty.
>, the misreporting just as widespread, the consequences even graver. If
>it is true, as the government's new report suggested last week, that it is
>now too late to prevent hundreds of thousands of British people from being
>flooded out of their homes,1 then the journalists who have consistently
>and deliberately downplayed the threat carry much of the responsibility
>for the problem. It is time we stopped treating them as bystanders. It is
>time we started holding them to account.
> "The scientific community has reached a consensus," the government's
chief scientific adviser, Professor Sir David King, told the House of Lords
last month. "I do not believe that amongst the scientists there is a
discussion as to whether global warming is due to anthropogenic effects.
It is man-made and it is essentially [caused by] fossil fuel burning,
increased methane production ... and so on."2
Sir David chose his words carefully. There is a discussion about whether
global warming is due to anthropogenic (manmade) effects. But it is not -
or is only seldom - taking place among scientists. It is taking place in
the media, and it seems to consist of a competition to establish the outer
reaches of imbecility.
< The extent of error, and the potential harm, are even worse in
what the media so cynically call "the debate" on gene-tampering.
< Thus the most dangerous technology of all diverts hundreds of
billions of dollars and scientific talent that could in principle be
redeployed to appropriate technology & science. The BBC gives Monsanto PR
operatives, lying unchallenged, free unbalanced time as if they were
reliable scientists. The NZ media present propaganda agents with no
medical or scientific qualifications who are furthermore paid to generate
pro-GM 'spin', to give the final word in news items about GM.
>During the heatwave last year, the Spectator magazine made the case
that because there was widespread concern in the 1970s about the
possibility of a new ice age, we can safely dismiss concerns about global
warming today.3 This is rather like saying that because Jean-Baptiste
Lamarck's hypothesis on evolution once commanded scientific support and was
later shown to be incorrect, then Charles Darwin's must also be wrong.
< Your liking for analogy gets you into trouble yet again, Geo.
This time it's an awful tangle. You are wrong that Lamarck's main
hypothesis about evolution has been disproved. The penchant of the dreaded
media to depict every issue as a bipolar 'tis-'tisn't conflict has engulfed
even you, regarding evolution theory. Not only are examples known of
inheritance of acquired characteristics as envisaged by Lamarck, but much
more importantly, to the extent that Darwin was correct his ideas do not
logically exclude Lamarck's. The notion 'Lamarck v. Darwin' is a glaring
fallacy.
>Science differs from the leader writers of the Spectator in that it
>learns from its mistakes. A hypothesis is advanced and tested. If the
>evidence suggests it is wrong, it is discarded.
you so rightly admire will no longer work. The hypothesis that the Pap
smear is a reliable early warning of cancer, and that certain microscopic
anomalies of cells on the cervix indicate the uterus should be removed, is
not discarded, because it has become an ideological banner. The hypothesis
that synthetic genes can be inserted into plants by drastically novel
methods not resembling any process known in nature, to give a GM organism
that has all properties unchanged except for the desired herbicide
resistance, or novel modified insecticide, is based on junk science at many
steps of its illogic. Yet it prevails with governments, many of which have
invested in this new racket. Language of Monbiot-type vigour is fully
warranted in criticism of this crazy fad. GM has led the world far astray
because science has been sidelined.
>If the evidence appears to support it, it is refined and subjected to
>further testing.
scientists that have been funded to begin testing have been vilified &
purged if they report adverse effects (notably Ewen & Pusztai). The truth
on actual maimings & killings of humans by material purified from GMOs
remains largely suppressed.
>That some climatologists predicted an ice age in the 1970s, and that the
>idea was dropped when others found that their predictions were flawed, is
>a cause for confidence in climatology.
>But the Spectator looks like the Journal of Atmospheric Physics by
>comparison to the Mail on Sunday and its Nobel laureate-in-waiting,
>Peter Hitchens. "The greenhouse effect probably doesn't exist", he
>informed his readers in 2001. "There is as yet no evidence for it."4
disgusted by that last statement from that agent, can you imagine how I as
a scientist feel about a *qualified* climate scientist - one of the few
in NZ - saying exactly that about global warming? A suave West Indian
Christopher de Freitas who did his doctorate with the respected K Hare has
consistently propagandized in the media to confuse and misrepresent the
science of climate degradation. Unprincipled hacks - hardly new, tho'
admittedly more rife than ever; but scientists issuing Hitchens-type
slogans - this is a yet more anti-social trend.
declare what rewards, if any, he has received for his propagandizing.
>Perhaps Mr Hitchens would care to explain why our climate differs from
that of Mars. That some of the heat from the sun is trapped in the
earth's atmosphere by gases (the greenhouse effect) has been
established since the mid-19th century. But, like most of these
nincompoops, Hitchens claims to be defending science from its
opponents. "The only reason these facts are so little-known," he tells
us, is (apart from the reason that he has just made them up), "that a
self-righteous love of 'the environment' has now replaced religion as
the new orthodoxy."5
>Hitchens, in turn, is an Einstein beside that famous climate
scientist, Melanie Phillips. Writing in the Daily Mail in January, she
dismissed the entire canon of climatology as "a global fraud" perpetrated
by the "leftwing, anti-American, anti-West ideology which goes hand in hand
with anti-globalisation and the belief that everything done by the
industrialised world is wicked."6 This belief must be shared by the
Pentagon, whose recent report pictures climate change as the foremost
threat to global security.7 In an earlier article, she claimed that "most
independent climate specialists, far from supporting [global warming], are
deeply sceptical."8 She managed to name only one, however, and he
receives his funding from the fossil fuel industry.9
>Having blasted the world's climatologists for "scientific
illiteracy", she then trumpeted her own. The latest report by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (which collates the findings of
climatologists), is, she complained, "studded with weasel words" such as
"very likely" and "best estimate".10 These weasel words are, of course,
what make it a scientific report, rather than a column by Melanie Phillips.
IPCDC are not, in such predictions) - Melanie & her like would have
blasted them for failing to express uncertainties.
>If ever you meet one of these people, I suggest you ask them the
following questions:
1. Does the atmosphere contain carbon dioxide?
2. Does atmospheric carbon dioxide influence global temperatures?
3. Will that influence be enhanced by the addition of more carbon dioxide?
4. Have human activities led to a net emission of carbon dioxide?
It would be interesting to discover at which point they answer no -
at which point, in other words, they choose to part company with basic
physics.
actually get nowhere by reciting them. What the industry stooges say is
that the *extent* of global warming in the past century is so small that it
is not utterly proven by statistics. Lindzen goes further; I have heard
him say in a scientific gathering (while funded to propagandize in NZ by
the Business Roundtable) that even if the IPCC predictions do come true,
retrospective statistical analysis will still not be able to prove
temperatures, sea levels etc have changed *owing to anthropogenic
emissions*. Precautionary, schmecautionary!
>But these dolts are rather less dangerous than the BBC, and its
>insistence on "balancing" its coverage of climate change. It appears to
>be incapable of running an item on the subject without inviting a sceptic
>to comment on it. Usually this is either someone from a corporate-funded
>thinktank (who is, of course, never introduced as such) or the
>professional anti-environmentalist Philip Stott. Professor Stott is a
>retired biogeographer. Like almost all the prominent sceptics he has
>never published a peer-reviewed paper on climate change. But he has made
>himself available to dismiss climatologists' peer-reviewed work as the
>"lies" of eco-fundamentalists.11
...
>What makes all this so dangerous is that it plays into the hands of the
corporate lobbyists. A recently leaked memo written by Frank Luntz, the
US Republican and corporate strategist, warned his party that "The
environment is probably the single issue on which Republicans in
general - and President Bush in particular - are most vulnerable ...
Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are
settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly.
Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific
certainty a primary issue in the debate."12
>We can expect Professors Hitchens and Phillips to do what they're told.
But isn't it time that the BBC stopped behaving like the public
relations arm of the fossil fuel lobby?
>www.monbiot.com
< Right on Geo.
hope you can *relate to* that.
for truth and contempt for dishonest media hacks that I feel provoked to
issue a new MannGram® in the quasi-samizdat series so studiously denied
overt acknowledgment in those media.
I esteem Monbiot more than almost all journalists commentating on
my field (applied ecology), so I do him the honour of respectful comment.
> http://www.monbiot.com/dsp_article.cfm?article_id=650
> The Fossil Fools
The dismissal of climate change by journalistic nincompoops is a
danger to us all
< right on Geo. In this country the "journalists" include
prominently, repeatedly in the NZ Herald the NZ agent of USA criminal &
nutter Lyndon LaRouche.
> By George Monbiot. Published in
the Guardian 27th April 2004
>Picture a situation in which most of the media, despite the
>overwhelming weight of medical opinion, refused to accept that there was a
>connection between smoking and lung cancer.
< Dictating too fast here, Geo. The issue is not "a connection".
It has moved way beyond that. The issue is whether most lung cancer is
caused by smoking. It is that clear; why are you so vague?
>Imagine that every time new evidence emerged, they asked someone with
>no medical qualifications to write a piece dismissing the evidence and
>claiming that there was no consensus on the issue.
items on O&G since 1987 are generated by 'someone with no medical
qualifications'. Rewards for these usurpations are large: the main
impostor is now Governor-general, another became a list-MP but retreated to
Mongolia accused of filching from the public purse, another is an Auckland
Regional Councillor and has been able to get The Lancet to publish sporadic
columns of her opinions. One of the originators of this crazy racket is
now head of the WHO non-infectious diseases division.
< As a secondary effect, midwives have been treated as more
important authorities on O&G than, for instance, a highly respectable FRCOG
and chairman of the NZ Medical Association. Almost all GPs have abandoned
obstetrics; midwives collecting large subsidies routinely fail to arrange
specialist backup at National Women's Hospital. These trends will have
harmed a certain number of mothers and babies.
< Geo's rhetorical manoevre is neat, but far from conclusive. He
depicts, as if it were impossible or extremely unlikely, usurpation of
authority by non-specialists in medicine or science. The awful truth is
that such usurpations are not rare these past few decades. One main cause
is affirmative action putting ahead of expertise some ideology (usually
either racism, wimminsLib, or militant homosexuality).
> Imagine that the BBC, in the interests of "debate", wheeled out one of
>the tiny number of scientists who says that smoking and cancer aren't
>linked
< That sloppy term again, Geo. The apologists hired by the
tobacco industry in attempt to dissuade successive ministers of health from
imposing legal restrictions on sale & use of tobacco did not deny a link.
Their assertion was that causality had not been stringently enough
demonstrated. It is a matter of degree. As a member throughout of the
statutory board advising those ministers on poisons, I'm proud to say we
weren't persuaded by those deniers: smoking tobacco was agreed to cause
lung cancer (and other serious illnesses). But I am also proud to say that
same Toxic Substances Board concluded the evidence (2 decade ago) on
passive smoking was far less persuasive, and rejected the pressure for
further restrictions from a group of unqualified publicists.
> , or that giving up isn't worth the trouble, every time the issue of
>cancer was raised. Imagine that, as a result, next to nothing was done
>about the problem, to the delight of the tobacco industry and the
>detriment of millions of smokers. We would surely describe the newspapers
>and the BBC as grossly irresponsible.
>Now stop imagining it, and take a look at what's happening. The issue is
>not smoking, but climate change. The scientific consensus is just as
>robust
the main point of the IPCC which is *predictions*. The evidence that
global warning has been caused by human activity, let alone the evidence
that it will in future get much worse, is not so conclusive as the evidence
that smoking has caused lung cancer. It is, however, conclusive enough for
governmental purposes, as expressed (minimally) by the Kyoto treaty.
>, the misreporting just as widespread, the consequences even graver. If
>it is true, as the government's new report suggested last week, that it is
>now too late to prevent hundreds of thousands of British people from being
>flooded out of their homes,1 then the journalists who have consistently
>and deliberately downplayed the threat carry much of the responsibility
>for the problem. It is time we stopped treating them as bystanders. It is
>time we started holding them to account.
> "The scientific community has reached a consensus," the government's
chief scientific adviser, Professor Sir David King, told the House of Lords
last month. "I do not believe that amongst the scientists there is a
discussion as to whether global warming is due to anthropogenic effects.
It is man-made and it is essentially [caused by] fossil fuel burning,
increased methane production ... and so on."2
Sir David chose his words carefully. There is a discussion about whether
global warming is due to anthropogenic (manmade) effects. But it is not -
or is only seldom - taking place among scientists. It is taking place in
the media, and it seems to consist of a competition to establish the outer
reaches of imbecility.
< The extent of error, and the potential harm, are even worse in
what the media so cynically call "the debate" on gene-tampering.
< Thus the most dangerous technology of all diverts hundreds of
billions of dollars and scientific talent that could in principle be
redeployed to appropriate technology & science. The BBC gives Monsanto PR
operatives, lying unchallenged, free unbalanced time as if they were
reliable scientists. The NZ media present propaganda agents with no
medical or scientific qualifications who are furthermore paid to generate
pro-GM 'spin', to give the final word in news items about GM.
>During the heatwave last year, the Spectator magazine made the case
that because there was widespread concern in the 1970s about the
possibility of a new ice age, we can safely dismiss concerns about global
warming today.3 This is rather like saying that because Jean-Baptiste
Lamarck's hypothesis on evolution once commanded scientific support and was
later shown to be incorrect, then Charles Darwin's must also be wrong.
< Your liking for analogy gets you into trouble yet again, Geo.
This time it's an awful tangle. You are wrong that Lamarck's main
hypothesis about evolution has been disproved. The penchant of the dreaded
media to depict every issue as a bipolar 'tis-'tisn't conflict has engulfed
even you, regarding evolution theory. Not only are examples known of
inheritance of acquired characteristics as envisaged by Lamarck, but much
more importantly, to the extent that Darwin was correct his ideas do not
logically exclude Lamarck's. The notion 'Lamarck v. Darwin' is a glaring
fallacy.
>Science differs from the leader writers of the Spectator in that it
>learns from its mistakes. A hypothesis is advanced and tested. If the
>evidence suggests it is wrong, it is discarded.
you so rightly admire will no longer work. The hypothesis that the Pap
smear is a reliable early warning of cancer, and that certain microscopic
anomalies of cells on the cervix indicate the uterus should be removed, is
not discarded, because it has become an ideological banner. The hypothesis
that synthetic genes can be inserted into plants by drastically novel
methods not resembling any process known in nature, to give a GM organism
that has all properties unchanged except for the desired herbicide
resistance, or novel modified insecticide, is based on junk science at many
steps of its illogic. Yet it prevails with governments, many of which have
invested in this new racket. Language of Monbiot-type vigour is fully
warranted in criticism of this crazy fad. GM has led the world far astray
because science has been sidelined.
>If the evidence appears to support it, it is refined and subjected to
>further testing.
scientists that have been funded to begin testing have been vilified &
purged if they report adverse effects (notably Ewen & Pusztai). The truth
on actual maimings & killings of humans by material purified from GMOs
remains largely suppressed.
>That some climatologists predicted an ice age in the 1970s, and that the
>idea was dropped when others found that their predictions were flawed, is
>a cause for confidence in climatology.
>But the Spectator looks like the Journal of Atmospheric Physics by
>comparison to the Mail on Sunday and its Nobel laureate-in-waiting,
>Peter Hitchens. "The greenhouse effect probably doesn't exist", he
>informed his readers in 2001. "There is as yet no evidence for it."4
disgusted by that last statement from that agent, can you imagine how I as
a scientist feel about a *qualified* climate scientist - one of the few
in NZ - saying exactly that about global warming? A suave West Indian
Christopher de Freitas who did his doctorate with the respected K Hare has
consistently propagandized in the media to confuse and misrepresent the
science of climate degradation. Unprincipled hacks - hardly new, tho'
admittedly more rife than ever; but scientists issuing Hitchens-type
slogans - this is a yet more anti-social trend.
declare what rewards, if any, he has received for his propagandizing.
>Perhaps Mr Hitchens would care to explain why our climate differs from
that of Mars. That some of the heat from the sun is trapped in the
earth's atmosphere by gases (the greenhouse effect) has been
established since the mid-19th century. But, like most of these
nincompoops, Hitchens claims to be defending science from its
opponents. "The only reason these facts are so little-known," he tells
us, is (apart from the reason that he has just made them up), "that a
self-righteous love of 'the environment' has now replaced religion as
the new orthodoxy."5
>Hitchens, in turn, is an Einstein beside that famous climate
scientist, Melanie Phillips. Writing in the Daily Mail in January, she
dismissed the entire canon of climatology as "a global fraud" perpetrated
by the "leftwing, anti-American, anti-West ideology which goes hand in hand
with anti-globalisation and the belief that everything done by the
industrialised world is wicked."6 This belief must be shared by the
Pentagon, whose recent report pictures climate change as the foremost
threat to global security.7 In an earlier article, she claimed that "most
independent climate specialists, far from supporting [global warming], are
deeply sceptical."8 She managed to name only one, however, and he
receives his funding from the fossil fuel industry.9
>Having blasted the world's climatologists for "scientific
illiteracy", she then trumpeted her own. The latest report by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (which collates the findings of
climatologists), is, she complained, "studded with weasel words" such as
"very likely" and "best estimate".10 These weasel words are, of course,
what make it a scientific report, rather than a column by Melanie Phillips.
IPCDC are not, in such predictions) - Melanie & her like would have
blasted them for failing to express uncertainties.
>If ever you meet one of these people, I suggest you ask them the
following questions:
1. Does the atmosphere contain carbon dioxide?
2. Does atmospheric carbon dioxide influence global temperatures?
3. Will that influence be enhanced by the addition of more carbon dioxide?
4. Have human activities led to a net emission of carbon dioxide?
It would be interesting to discover at which point they answer no -
at which point, in other words, they choose to part company with basic
physics.
actually get nowhere by reciting them. What the industry stooges say is
that the *extent* of global warming in the past century is so small that it
is not utterly proven by statistics. Lindzen goes further; I have heard
him say in a scientific gathering (while funded to propagandize in NZ by
the Business Roundtable) that even if the IPCC predictions do come true,
retrospective statistical analysis will still not be able to prove
temperatures, sea levels etc have changed *owing to anthropogenic
emissions*. Precautionary, schmecautionary!
>But these dolts are rather less dangerous than the BBC, and its
>insistence on "balancing" its coverage of climate change. It appears to
>be incapable of running an item on the subject without inviting a sceptic
>to comment on it. Usually this is either someone from a corporate-funded
>thinktank (who is, of course, never introduced as such) or the
>professional anti-environmentalist Philip Stott. Professor Stott is a
>retired biogeographer. Like almost all the prominent sceptics he has
>never published a peer-reviewed paper on climate change. But he has made
>himself available to dismiss climatologists' peer-reviewed work as the
>"lies" of eco-fundamentalists.11
...
>What makes all this so dangerous is that it plays into the hands of the
corporate lobbyists. A recently leaked memo written by Frank Luntz, the
US Republican and corporate strategist, warned his party that "The
environment is probably the single issue on which Republicans in
general - and President Bush in particular - are most vulnerable ...
Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are
settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly.
Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific
certainty a primary issue in the debate."12
>We can expect Professors Hitchens and Phillips to do what they're told.
But isn't it time that the BBC stopped behaving like the public
relations arm of the fossil fuel lobby?
>www.monbiot.com
< Right on Geo.
hope you can *relate to* that.
09/06/04
My friends the Whiteheads who have been conducting for a dozen years a quiet lay ministry for hx & lez who want to get out of those subcultures believe this is authentic. That will do me.
I realise this is disturbing material. If you are disturbed by it, over to you what to do about it.
But please don't blame the messenger. It will be best if we face up to this strategy, rather than playing ostrich. I commend, especially to those involved in bringing up children, understanding of this militant political ideology.
R
STRATEGIES OF THE HOMOSEXUAL MOVEMENT
(The following article called "The Overhauling of Straight
America'' was written by Marshall K. Kirk and Erastes Pill and
appeared in Guide Magazine, November 1987. As you read the
article, keep in mind it was printed that many years ago. Many of the
strategies have already been put into place and have achieved their
desired results.)
The first order of business is desensitization of the American
public concerning gays and gay rights. To desensitize the public
is to help it view homosexuality with indifference instead of with
keen emotion. Ideally, we would have straights register differences in sexual preference the way they register different tastes for ice cream or sports games: she likes strawberry and I like vanilla; he follows baseball and I follow football. No big deal.
At least in the beginning, we are seeking public desensitization
and nothing more. We do not need and cannot expect a full
"appreciation" or "understanding" of homosexuality from the
average American. You can forget about trying to persuade the
masses that homosexuality is a good thing. But if only you can get them to think that it is just another thing, with a shrug of their shoulders, then your battle for legal and social rights is virtually won. And to get to shoulder-shrug stage, gays as a class must cease to appear mysterious, alien, loathsome and contrary. A large-scale media campaign will be required in order to change the image of gays in America. And any campaign to accomplish this turnaround should do six things.
[1] TALK ABOUT GAYS AND GAYNESS AS LOUDLY AND
AS OFTEN AS POSSIBLE.
The principle behind this advice is simple: almost any behavior
begins to look normal if you are exposed to enough of it at close
quarters and among your acquaintances. The acceptability of the
new behavior will ultimately hinge on the number of one's fellows
doing it or accepting it. One may be offended by its novelty at
first--many, in times past, were momentarily scandalized by
"streaking,'' eating goldfish, and premarital sex. But as long as Joe
Six-pack feels little pressure to perform likewise, and as long as the
behavior in question presents little threat to his physical and financial
security, he soon gets used to it and life goes on. The skeptic may still
shake his head and think "people arc crazy these days," but over time
his objections are likely to become more reflective, more philosophical,
less emotional.
The way to benumb raw sensitivities about homosexuality is to
Have a lot of people talk a great deal about the subject in a neutral
or supportive way. Open and frank talk makes the subject seem
less furtive, alien, and sinful, more above-board. Constant talk
builds the impression that public opinion is at least divided on the
subject, and that a sizable segment accepts or even practices
homosexuality. Even rancorous debates between opponents and
defenders serve the purpose of desensitization so long as "respectable"
gays are front and center to make their own pitch. The main thing is to
talk about gayness until the issue becomes thoroughly tiresome.
And when we say talk about homosexuality, we mean just that. In
the early stages of any campaign to reach straight America, the
masses should not be shocked and repelled by premature exposure
to homosexual behavior itself. Instead, the imagery of sex should be
downplayed and gay rights should be reduced to an abstract social
question as much as possible. First let the camel get his nose
inside the tent -- only later his unsightly derriere!
"... In the early stages of any campaign to reach straight America,
the masses should not be shocked and repelled by premature exposure
to homosexul behavior itself."
Where we talk is important. The visual media, film and
television, are plainly the most powerful image-makers in Western
civilization. The average American household watches over seven hours of TV
daily. Those hours open up a gateway into the private world of
straights, through which a Trojan horse might be passed. As far
as desensitization is concerned, the medium is the message--of
normalcy. So far, gay Hollywood has provided our best covert
weapon in the battle to desensitize the mainstream. Bit by bit
over the past ten years, gay characters and gay themes have been
introduced into TV programs and films (though often this has been done to achieve comedic and ridiculous affects). On the whole the impact has been
encouraging. The prime-time presentation of Consenting Adults on
a major network in 1985 is but one high-water mark in favorable
media exposure of gay issues. But this should be just the
beginning of a major publicity blitz by gay America.
Would a desensitizing campaign of open and sustained talk about
gay issues reach every rabid opponent of homosexuality? Of course
not. While public opinion is one primary source of mainstream
values, religious authority is the other. When conservative
churches condemn gays, there are only two things we can do to
confound the homophobia of true believers. First, we can use talk
to muddy the moral waters. This means publicizing support for gays
by more moderate churches, raising theological objections of our own about
conservative interpretations of biblical teachings, and exposing hatred
and inconsistency. Second, we can undermine the moral authority of
homophobia churches by portraying them as antiquated backwaters,
badly out of step with the times and with the latest findings of
psychology. Against the mighty pull of institutional Religion one
must set the mightier draw of Science and Public Opinion (the
shield and sword of the accursed "secular humanism"'). Such an
unholy alliance has worked well against churches before, on such
topics as divorce and abortion. With enough open talk about the
prevalence and acceptability of homosexuality, that alliance can
work again here.
[2] PORTRAY GAYS AS VICTIMS, NOT AS AGGRESSIVE CHALLENGERS.
In any campaign to win over the public, gays must be cast as
victims in need of protection so that straights will be inclined
by reflex to assume the role of protector. If gays are presented,
instead, as a strong and prideful tribe promoting a rigidly
nonconformist and deviant lifestyle, they are more likely to be
seen as a public menace that justifies resistance and oppression. For
that reason, we must forego the temptation to strut our "gay pride"
publicly when it conflicts with the Gay Victim image. And we must
walk the fine line between impressing straights with our great
numbers, on the one hand, and sparking their hostile
paranoia - "They are all around us!" - on the other. A media
campaign to promote the Gay Victim image should make use of symbols which
reduce the mainstream's sense of threat, which lower its guard,
and which enhance the plausibility of victimization. In practical
terms, this means that jaunty mustachioed musclemen would keep very low
profile in gay commercials and other public presentations, while
sympathetic figures of nice young people, old people, and
attractive women would be featured. (It almost goes without
saying that groups on the farthest margin of acceptability such as
NAMBLA [Ed note -- North American Man-Boy Love Association] must
play no part at all in such a campaign: suspected child-molesters
will never look like victims.)
Now, there are two different messages about the Gay Victim that
arc worth communicating. First, the mainstream should be told
that gays arc victims of fate, in the sense that most never had a
choice to accept or eject their sexual preference. The message
must read: "As far as gays can tell, they were born gay, just as
you were born heterosexual or white or black or bright or
athletic. Nobody ever tricked or seduced them; they never made a choice,
and are not morally blameworthy. What they do isn't wilfully contrary
- it's only natural for them. This twist of fate could as easily have
happened to you!"
Straight viewers must be able to identify with gays as victims.
Mr and Mrs. Public must be given no extra excuses to say "they are
not like us." To this end, the persons featured in the public
campaign should be decent and upright, appealing and admirable by
straight standards, completely unexceptionable in appearance -- in
a word, they should be indistinguishable from the straights we would like
to reach. (To return to the terms we have used in previous articles,
spokemen for our cause must be R-type "straight gays" rather than
Q-type "homosexuals on display." ) Only under such conditions
will the message be read correctly: "These folks are victims of a fate
that could have happened to me."
By the way, we realize that many gays will question an
advertising technique which might threaten to make homosexuality look like
some dreadful disease which strikes fated "victims". But the
plain fact is that the gay community is weak, including the play for
sympathy. In any case, we compensate for the negative aspect of
this gay victim appeal under Principle 4 Below.
The second message would portray gays as victims of society. The
straight majority does not recognize the suffering it brings to
the lives of gays and must be shown: graphic pictures of
brutalized gays; dramatizations of job and housing insecurity,
loss of child custody, and public humiliation: and the dismal
list goes on.
"... In any campaign to win over the public, gays must be cast as victims in need of protection so that straights will be inclined by reflex to assume the role of protector."
[3] GIVE PROTECTORS A JUST CAUSE.
A media campaign that casts gays as society's victims and
encourages straights to be their protectors must make it easier
for those to respond to assert and explain their new
protectiveness. Few straight women, and even fewer straight men, wilt
want to defend homosexuality boldly as such. Most would rather attach
their awakened protective impulse to some principle of justice or law,
to some general desire for consistent and fair treatment in society. Our
campaign should not demand direct support for homosexual practices, but
should instead take anti-discrimination as its theme. The right to free
speech, freedom of beliefs, freedom of association, due process and equal
protection of laws--these should be the concerns brought to mind by our
campaign.
It is especially important for the gay movement to hitch its
cause to accepted standards of law and justice because its straight
supporters must have at hand a cogent reply to the moral
arguments of its enemies. The homophobes clothe their emotional revulsion
in the daunting robes of religious dogma, so defenders of gay rights
must be ready to counter dogma with principle.
[4] MAKE GAYS LOOK GOOD.
In order to make a Gay Victim sympathetic to straights you have
to portray him as Everyman. But an additional theme of the campaign
should be more aggressive and upbeat: to offset the increasingly
bad press that these times have brought to homosexual men and
women, the campaign should paint gays as superior pillars of
society. Yes, yes, we know--this trick is so old it creaks. Other
minorities use it all the time in ads that announce proudly, "Did
you know that this Great Man (or Woman) was _____?" But the message
is vital for all those straights who still picture gays as "queer"
people-- shadowy, lonesome, fail, drunken, suicidal, child-snatching misfits. The
honor roll of prominent gay or bisexual men and women is truly eyepopping.
From Socrates to Shakespeare, from Alexander the Great to Alexander
Hamilton, from Michelangelo to Walt Whitman, from Sappho to
Gertrude Stein, the list is old hat to us but shocking news to
heterosexual America. In no time, a skillful and clever media
campaign could have the gay community looking like the veritable
fairy godmother to Western Civilization.
Along the same lines, we shouldn't overlook the Celebrity Endorsement. The celebrities can be straight (God bless you, Ed Asner, wherever you are) or gay.
[5] MAKE THE VICTIMIZERS LOOK BAD.
At a later stage of the media campaign for gay rights-long after
other gay ads have become commonplace--it will be time to get
tough with remaining opponents. To be blunt, they must be
vilified. (This will be all the more necessary because, by that
time, the entrenched enemy will have quadrupled its output of
vitriol and disinformation.) Our goal here is twofold. First, we seek
to replace the mainstream's self-righteous pride about its homophobia
with shame and guilt. Second, we intend to make the antigays look so nasty
that average Americans will want to dissociate themselves from such types.
The public should be shown images of ranting homophobes whose
secondary traits and beliefs disgust middle America. These images
might include: the Ku Klux Klan demanding that gays be burned
alive or castrated; bigoted southern ministers drooling with hysterical hatred to a degree that looks both comical and deranged; menacing punks, thugs, and convicts speaking coolly about the "fags" they have killed or would like to kill; a tour of Nazi concentration camps where homoscxuals were tortured and gassed.
A campaign to vilify the victimizers is going to enrage our most fervid enemies, of course. But what else can we say? The shoe fits, and we should make them try it on for size, with all of America watching.
[6] SOLICIT FUNDS.
The buck stops here. Any massive campaign of this kind would
require unprecedented expenditures for months or even years--an
unprecedented fundraising drive.
Effective advertising is a costly proposition: several million
dollars would get the ball rolling. There are 10-15 million
primarily homosexual adults in this country: if each one of them
donated just two dollars to the campaign, its war chest would
actually rival that of its most vocal enemies. And because those
gays not supporting families usually have more discretionars income than
average, they could afford to contribute much more.
"... We intend to make the antigays look so nasty that average Americans will
want to dissociate themselves from such types."
But would they? Or is they, [sic] gay community as feckless,
selfish, uncommitted, and short-sighted as its critics claim? We
will never know unless the new campaign simultaneously launches a
concerted nationwide appeal for funding support from both known
and anorymous donors. The appeal should be directed both at gays and at
straights who care about social justice.
In the beginning, for reasons to be explained in a moment, the
appeal for funds may have to be launched exclusively through the
gay press--national magazines, local newspapers, flyers at bars,
notices in glossy skin magazines. Funds could also come through
the outreach of local gay organizations on campuses and in
metropolitan areas. Eventually, donations would be solicited directly
alongside advertisements in the major straight media.
There would be no parallel to such an effort in the history of
the gay community in America. It failed to generate the needed
capital to get started, there would be little hope for the campaign and l
little hope for major progress toward gay rights in the near
future. For the moment let us suppose that gays could see how
donations would greatly serve their long term interest, and that
sufficient funds could be raised. An heroic assumption.
GETTING ON THE AIR, OR, YOU CAN'T GET THERE FROM HERE.
Without access to TV, radio, and the mainstream press, there will
be no campaign. This is a tricky problem, because many impresarios
of the media simply refuse to accept what they call
"issue-advertising" -- persuasive advertising can provoke a storm
of resentment from the public and from sponsors, which is bad for
business. The courts have confirmed the broadcaster's right to
refuse any "issue advertising" he dislikes.
What exactly constitutes "issue advertising"? It evidently does
not include platitudinous appeals to the virtues of family unity
(courtesy of the Mormons) neither does it include tirades against
perfidious Albion courtesy of Lyndon LaRouche; neither does it
include reminders that a Mind-Is-a Terrible Thing to Waste
(courtesy of the United Negro College Fund); neither does it include
religious shows which condemn gay "sinners"; neither does it
include condemnations of nuclear war or race discrimination--at
least not in Massachusetts. Some guys get all the breaks.
What issue-advertising does include these days is almost any
communique presented openly by a homosexual organization. The
words "gay" and "homosexual"' arc considered controversial
whenever they appear.
Because most straightforward appeals are impossible, the National
Gay Task Force has had to cultivate quiet backroom liaisons with
broadcast companies and newsrooms in order to make sure that
issues important to the gay community receive some coverage; but
such an arrangement is hardly ideal, of course, because it means that
the gay community's image is controlled by the latest news event instead
of by careful design--and recently most of the news about gays has been
negative. So what can be done to crash the gates of the major media?
Several things, advanced in several stages.
START WITH THE FINE PRINT
Newspapers and magazines may very well be more hungry for gay
advertising dollars than television and radio arc. And the cost
of ads in print is generally lower. But remember that the press, for
the most part, is only read by better educated Americans, many of
whom arc already more accepting of homosexuality in any case. So
to get more impact for our dollars, we should skip the New Republic
and New Left Review readers and head for Time, People , and the
National Enquirer. (Of course, the gay community may have to
establish itself as a regular advertising presence in more sophisticated
forums first before it is accepted into the mass press. )
While we're storming the battlements with salvos of ink, we
should also warm the mainstream up a bit with a subtle national campaign
on highway billboards. In simple bold print on dark backgrounds,
a series of unobjectionable messages should be introduced:
IN RUSSIA, THEY TELL YOU WHAT TO BE. IN AMERICA WE HAVE THE FREEDOM T0 BE OURSELVES ... AND TO BE THE BEST.
or
PEOPLE HELPING INSTEAD OF HATING -- THAT 'S WHAT
AMERICA IS ALL ABOUT.
And so on. Each sign will tap patriotic sentiment, each message
will drill a seemingly agreeable proposition into mainstream
heads--a "public service message" suited to our purposes. And, if
their owners will permit it, each billboard w ill be signed, in
slightly smaller letters, "Courtesy of the National Gay Task
Force" -- to build positive associations and get the public used to
seeing such sponsorship.
VISUAL STAGE 1: YOU REALLY OUGHTA BE IN PICTURES
As for television and radio, a more elaborate plan may be needed
to break the ice. For openers, naturally, we must continue to
encourage the appearance of favorable gay characters in films and
TV shows. Daytime talk shows also remain a useful avenue for exposure.
But to speed things up we might consider a bold stratagem to gain
media attention. The scheme we have in mind would require careful
preparations, yet it would save expense even while it elevated
the visibility and stature of the gay movement overnight. Well before
the next elections for national office, we might lay careful plans
to run symbolic gay candidates for every high political office in
this country. (Such plans would have to deal somehow with the
tricky problem of inducing gays and straights to sign enough endorsement
petitions to get us on the ballot.) Our 50-250 candidates would participate
in such debates as they could, run gay-themed advertisements coordinated
at our national headquarters, and demand equal time on the air. They could
then graciously pull out of the races before the actual elections, while
formally endorsing more viable straight contenders. (With malicious humor,
perhaps, in some states we could endorse our most rabid opponents.) It
is essential not to ask people actually to vote Yea or Nay on the gay
issue at this early stage: such action would end up committing most to
the Nay position and would only tally huge and visible defeats for our
cause.
Through such a political campaign, the mainstream would get over the initial shock of seeing gay ads, and the acceptability of such ads would be fortified by the most creditable context possible; and all this would be accomplished before non-electoral advertising was attempted by the gay community. During the campaign all hell would break loose, but if we behaved courageously and respectable our drive would gain legitimacy in and case and might even become a cause celebre.
If all went as planned, the somewhat desensitized public and the
major networks themselves would be readied for the next step of
our program.
VISUAL STAGE 2: PEEKABOO ADVERTISING
At this point the gay community has its foot in the door, and it
is time to ask the networks to accept gay sponsorship of certain
ads and shows. Timing is critical: The request must be made
immediately after our national political ads disappear. Failing
that, we should request sponsorship the next time one of the
networks struts its broad- mindedness by televising a film or show
with gay characters or themes. If they wish to look consistent instead
of hypocritical, we'll have them on the spot.
But the networks would still be forced to say No unless we made
their resistance look patently unreasonable, and possibly illegal.
We'd do just that by proposing "gay ads" patterned exactly after
those currently sponsored by the Mormons and others. As usual,
viewers would be treated to squeak-clean skits on the importance
of family harmony and understanding --this time the narrator
would end by saying, "This message was brought to you by --the National
Gay Task Force." All very quiet and subdued. Remember: exposure is
everything, and the medium is the message.
"... Exposure is everything and the medium is the message."
The gay community should join forces with other civil liberties groups of respectable cast to promote bland messages about America the Melting Pot, always ending with an explicit reference to the Task Force of some other gay organization. Making the best of a bad situation, we can also propose sympathetic media appeals for gifts and donations to fund AIDS research--if Jerry Lewis and the March of Dimes can do it, so can we. Our next indirect step will be to advertise locally on behalf of support groups peripheral to the gay community: frowzy straight moms and dads announcing phone numbers and meeting times for "Parents of Gays" or similar gatherings. Can't you just see such ads now, presented between messages from the Disabled Vets and the Postal Workers Union?
VISUAL STAGE 3: ROLL OUT THE BIG GUNS
By this point, our salami tactics will have carved out, slice by
slice, a large portion of access to the mainstream media. So what
then? It would finally be time to bring gay ads out of the closet.
The messages of such ads should directly address lingering public
fears about homosexuals as loathsome and contrary aliens. For
examples, the following are possible formats for TV or radio
commercials designed to chip away at chronic misperceptions.
Format A for Familiarization: The Testimonial.
To make gays seem less mysterious, present a series of short
spots featuring the boy- or girl-next- door. fresh and appealing, or
warm and lovable grandma grandpa types. Seated in homey
surroundings, they respond to an offcamera interviewer with
assurance, good nature, and charm. Their comments bring out three
social facts:
( 1 ) There is someone special in their life, a long-term relationship
(to stress gay stability, monogamy, commitment);
(2) Their families are very important to them, and are supportive
of them (to stress that gays are not "anti-family," and that
families need not be anti-gay.)
(3) As far as they can remember the! have always been gay, and
were probably born gay; they certainly never decided on a preference
one way or the other (stressing that gays are doing what is
natural for them, and are not being wilfully contrary).
The subjects should be interviewed alone, not with their lovers
or children, for to include others in the picture would unwisely
raise disturbing questions about the complexities of gay social
relations, which these commercials could not explain. It is best
instead to take one thing at a time.
Format B for Positive associations: The Celebrity Spot.
While it might be useful to present celebrity endorsement by
currently popular gay figures and straight sympathizers (Johnny
Mathis? Marlo Thomas?), the homophobia climate of America would
make such brash endorsements unlikely in the near future. So early
celebrity spots will instead identify historical gay or bisexual
personalities who are illustrious and dignified...and dead. The
ads could be sardonic and indirect. For example, over regal music
and a portrait or two, a narrator might announce simply:
William Shakespeare--the greatest playwright in the history of
the English language. Yet, if he were alive today, some people
wouldn't let him teach a high school English class. Now isn't
that a shame?
The rhetorical question forces the viewer to answer Yes. And to
explain the Bard's failing, the ad would end simply: "A message
from the National Gay Task Force." Similar commercials could
feature Michelangelo (an art class), Tchaikovsky (a music class),
Tennessee Williams (a drama class), etc.
Format C for Victim Sympathy: Our Campaign to Stop Child Abuse.
As we said earlier, there arc many ways to portray gays as
victims of discrimination: images of brutality, tales of job loss and
family separation, and so on. But we think something like the
following 30-sccond commercials would get to the heart of the
matter best of all.
The camera slowly moves in on a middle-class teenager, sitting
alone in his semi-darkened bedroom. The boy is pleasing and
unexceptional in appearance, except that he has been roughed up
and is starring silently, pensively, with evident distress. As
the camera gradually focuses in on his face, a narrator comments:
It will happen to one in every ten sons. As he grows up. he will realize
that he feels differently about things than most of his friends. If he
lets it show, he'll be an outsider made fun of, humiliated, attacked.
If he confides in his parents, they may throw him out of the house, onto
the streets. Some will say he is "anti-family." Nobody will let him be
himself. So he will have to hide. From his friends, his family. And that's
hard. It's tough enough to be a kid these days, but to be the one in
ten... A message from the National Gay Task Force.
What is nice about such an ad is that it would economically portray gays as innocent and vulnerable, victimized and misunderstood, surprisingly numerous yet not menacing. It also
renders the "anti-family" charge absurd and hypocritical.
Format D for Identification with Victims: The Old Switcheroo.
The mainstream will identify better with the plight of gays if straights can, once in a while, walk a mile in gay shoes. A humorous television or radio ad to help them do this might involve a brief animated or dramatized scenario, as follows.
The camera approaches the mighty oak door of the boss's office, which swings open, and the camera (which represents you the viewer) enters the room. Behind the oversized desk sits a fat and scowling old curmudgeon chomping on a cigar. He looks up at the camera (i.e. at the viewer) and snarls, " So it's you, Smithers. Well You're fired!" The voice of a younger man is heard to reply with astonishment, "But-but--Mr. Thomburg, I've been with your company for ten years. I thought you liked my work." The boss responds, with a tone of disgust, "Yes, yes, Smithers your work is quite adequate. But I've heard rumors that you've been seen around town with some kind of girlfriend. A girlfriend! Frankly I'm shocked. We're not about to start hiring any heterosexuals in this company. Now get out." The younger man speaks once more: "But boss, that's just not fair! What if it were you?" The boss glowers back as the camera pulls quickly out of the room and the big door slams shut. Printed on the door: "A message from the National Gay Task Force."
One can easily imagine similar episodes involving housing or other discrimination.
Format E for Vilification of Victimizers: Damn the Torpedoes.
We have already indicated some of the images which might be
damaging to the homophobic vendetta: ranting and hateful
religious extremists neo-Nazis, and Ku Klux Klansmen made to look
evil and ridiculous (hardly a difficult task).
These images should be combined with those of their gay victims
By a method propagandists call the "bracket technique." For example,
for a few seconds an unctuous beady-eyed Southern preacher is
seen pounding the pulpit in rage about "those sick, abominable
creatures." While his tirade continues over the soundtrack,. the
picture switches to pathetic photos of gays who look decent,
harmless, and likable; and then we cut back to the poisonous face
of the preacher, and so forth. The contrast speaks for itself. The effect
is devastating.
"...it would portray gays as innocent and vulnerable, victimized and
misunderstood, surprisingly numerous, yet not menacing."
Format F for Funds: S.O.S.
Alongside or during these other persuasive advertisements, we
would have to solicit donations so that the campaign might
continue. Direct appeals from celebrities (preferable living
ones, thank you) might be useful here. All appeals must stress that
money can be given anonymously (e.g. via money orders) and that all
donations are confidential. "We can't help unless you help," and all that.
The Time Is Now
We have sketched out here a blueprint for transforming the social
values of straight America At the core of our program is a media
campaign to change the way the average citizens view homosexuality. It is
quite easy to find fault with such a campaign. We have tried to be practical
and specific here, but the proposals may still have a visionary sheen.
There are one hundred reasons why the campaign could not be done
or would be risky. But there are at least 20 million good reasons
why some such program must be tried in the coming years: the
welfare and happiness of every gay man and woman in this country
demand it. As the last large, legally oppressed minority in
American society, it is high time that gays took effective measures
to rejoin the mainstream in pride and strength. We believe that, like
it or not, such a campaign is the only way of doing so anytime soon.
And, let us repeat, time may be running out. The AIDS epidemic is
sparking anger and fear in the heartland of straight America. As
the virus leaks out of homosexual circles and into the rest of
society, we need have no illusions about who is receiving the
blame. The ten years ahead may decide for the next forty whether
gays claim their liberty and equality or are driven back, once
again, as America's caste of detested untouchables. It’s more than
a quip: speak now or forever hold your peace.
****
(Keep in mind this article was published in 1987. Since that time
homosexual activists have made remarkable progress in their media
campaign. Just look at TV programs like Roseanne, Melrose Place,
Picket Fences, and Northern Exposure, where homosexuality is presented
as normal, natural behavior on a regular basis. NBC News did a three-day
series on "Gays in America" in September that had no opposing view, other
than one brief statement by Dr. Paul Cameron. There's a proliferation
of "gay" propaganda being shoved down our throats in movies like "The
Crying Game", "Philadelphia", "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert", "Go Fish",
and many more.
"... Hollywood is coming out of the closet, and
homosexual activists are jumping up and down for joy."
Hollywood is indeed coming, out a of the closet, and homosexual activists are jumping up and down for joy. Why? Because they know Americans flock to the movie theaters in droves, and that gradually the message of accepting homosexuality as a normal variant of human sexuality is getting through to people-minds are being
changed.
For those of you who want to investigate more about the homosexual agenda and various strategies I recommend the book After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear & Hatred of Gays in the 90’s by Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen [Plume 1989]. [] Both authors are Harvard grads -- Kirk is a researcher in neuropsychiatry, while Madsen is "an expert on public persuasion tactics and social marketing." The book is an expansion of the above article complete with sample print ads to use, as well as suggestions for radio, TV spots.)
mailto:comments@sphi.com
Copyright 1998 by SPHI. All Rights Reserved.
I realise this is disturbing material. If you are disturbed by it, over to you what to do about it.
But please don't blame the messenger. It will be best if we face up to this strategy, rather than playing ostrich. I commend, especially to those involved in bringing up children, understanding of this militant political ideology.
R
STRATEGIES OF THE HOMOSEXUAL MOVEMENT
(The following article called "The Overhauling of Straight
America'' was written by Marshall K. Kirk and Erastes Pill and
appeared in Guide Magazine, November 1987. As you read the
article, keep in mind it was printed that many years ago. Many of the
strategies have already been put into place and have achieved their
desired results.)
The first order of business is desensitization of the American
public concerning gays and gay rights. To desensitize the public
is to help it view homosexuality with indifference instead of with
keen emotion. Ideally, we would have straights register differences in sexual preference the way they register different tastes for ice cream or sports games: she likes strawberry and I like vanilla; he follows baseball and I follow football. No big deal.
At least in the beginning, we are seeking public desensitization
and nothing more. We do not need and cannot expect a full
"appreciation" or "understanding" of homosexuality from the
average American. You can forget about trying to persuade the
masses that homosexuality is a good thing. But if only you can get them to think that it is just another thing, with a shrug of their shoulders, then your battle for legal and social rights is virtually won. And to get to shoulder-shrug stage, gays as a class must cease to appear mysterious, alien, loathsome and contrary. A large-scale media campaign will be required in order to change the image of gays in America. And any campaign to accomplish this turnaround should do six things.
[1] TALK ABOUT GAYS AND GAYNESS AS LOUDLY AND
AS OFTEN AS POSSIBLE.
The principle behind this advice is simple: almost any behavior
begins to look normal if you are exposed to enough of it at close
quarters and among your acquaintances. The acceptability of the
new behavior will ultimately hinge on the number of one's fellows
doing it or accepting it. One may be offended by its novelty at
first--many, in times past, were momentarily scandalized by
"streaking,'' eating goldfish, and premarital sex. But as long as Joe
Six-pack feels little pressure to perform likewise, and as long as the
behavior in question presents little threat to his physical and financial
security, he soon gets used to it and life goes on. The skeptic may still
shake his head and think "people arc crazy these days," but over time
his objections are likely to become more reflective, more philosophical,
less emotional.
The way to benumb raw sensitivities about homosexuality is to
Have a lot of people talk a great deal about the subject in a neutral
or supportive way. Open and frank talk makes the subject seem
less furtive, alien, and sinful, more above-board. Constant talk
builds the impression that public opinion is at least divided on the
subject, and that a sizable segment accepts or even practices
homosexuality. Even rancorous debates between opponents and
defenders serve the purpose of desensitization so long as "respectable"
gays are front and center to make their own pitch. The main thing is to
talk about gayness until the issue becomes thoroughly tiresome.
And when we say talk about homosexuality, we mean just that. In
the early stages of any campaign to reach straight America, the
masses should not be shocked and repelled by premature exposure
to homosexual behavior itself. Instead, the imagery of sex should be
downplayed and gay rights should be reduced to an abstract social
question as much as possible. First let the camel get his nose
inside the tent -- only later his unsightly derriere!
"... In the early stages of any campaign to reach straight America,
the masses should not be shocked and repelled by premature exposure
to homosexul behavior itself."
Where we talk is important. The visual media, film and
television, are plainly the most powerful image-makers in Western
civilization. The average American household watches over seven hours of TV
daily. Those hours open up a gateway into the private world of
straights, through which a Trojan horse might be passed. As far
as desensitization is concerned, the medium is the message--of
normalcy. So far, gay Hollywood has provided our best covert
weapon in the battle to desensitize the mainstream. Bit by bit
over the past ten years, gay characters and gay themes have been
introduced into TV programs and films (though often this has been done to achieve comedic and ridiculous affects). On the whole the impact has been
encouraging. The prime-time presentation of Consenting Adults on
a major network in 1985 is but one high-water mark in favorable
media exposure of gay issues. But this should be just the
beginning of a major publicity blitz by gay America.
Would a desensitizing campaign of open and sustained talk about
gay issues reach every rabid opponent of homosexuality? Of course
not. While public opinion is one primary source of mainstream
values, religious authority is the other. When conservative
churches condemn gays, there are only two things we can do to
confound the homophobia of true believers. First, we can use talk
to muddy the moral waters. This means publicizing support for gays
by more moderate churches, raising theological objections of our own about
conservative interpretations of biblical teachings, and exposing hatred
and inconsistency. Second, we can undermine the moral authority of
homophobia churches by portraying them as antiquated backwaters,
badly out of step with the times and with the latest findings of
psychology. Against the mighty pull of institutional Religion one
must set the mightier draw of Science and Public Opinion (the
shield and sword of the accursed "secular humanism"'). Such an
unholy alliance has worked well against churches before, on such
topics as divorce and abortion. With enough open talk about the
prevalence and acceptability of homosexuality, that alliance can
work again here.
[2] PORTRAY GAYS AS VICTIMS, NOT AS AGGRESSIVE CHALLENGERS.
In any campaign to win over the public, gays must be cast as
victims in need of protection so that straights will be inclined
by reflex to assume the role of protector. If gays are presented,
instead, as a strong and prideful tribe promoting a rigidly
nonconformist and deviant lifestyle, they are more likely to be
seen as a public menace that justifies resistance and oppression. For
that reason, we must forego the temptation to strut our "gay pride"
publicly when it conflicts with the Gay Victim image. And we must
walk the fine line between impressing straights with our great
numbers, on the one hand, and sparking their hostile
paranoia - "They are all around us!" - on the other. A media
campaign to promote the Gay Victim image should make use of symbols which
reduce the mainstream's sense of threat, which lower its guard,
and which enhance the plausibility of victimization. In practical
terms, this means that jaunty mustachioed musclemen would keep very low
profile in gay commercials and other public presentations, while
sympathetic figures of nice young people, old people, and
attractive women would be featured. (It almost goes without
saying that groups on the farthest margin of acceptability such as
NAMBLA [Ed note -- North American Man-Boy Love Association] must
play no part at all in such a campaign: suspected child-molesters
will never look like victims.)
Now, there are two different messages about the Gay Victim that
arc worth communicating. First, the mainstream should be told
that gays arc victims of fate, in the sense that most never had a
choice to accept or eject their sexual preference. The message
must read: "As far as gays can tell, they were born gay, just as
you were born heterosexual or white or black or bright or
athletic. Nobody ever tricked or seduced them; they never made a choice,
and are not morally blameworthy. What they do isn't wilfully contrary
- it's only natural for them. This twist of fate could as easily have
happened to you!"
Straight viewers must be able to identify with gays as victims.
Mr and Mrs. Public must be given no extra excuses to say "they are
not like us." To this end, the persons featured in the public
campaign should be decent and upright, appealing and admirable by
straight standards, completely unexceptionable in appearance -- in
a word, they should be indistinguishable from the straights we would like
to reach. (To return to the terms we have used in previous articles,
spokemen for our cause must be R-type "straight gays" rather than
Q-type "homosexuals on display." ) Only under such conditions
will the message be read correctly: "These folks are victims of a fate
that could have happened to me."
By the way, we realize that many gays will question an
advertising technique which might threaten to make homosexuality look like
some dreadful disease which strikes fated "victims". But the
plain fact is that the gay community is weak, including the play for
sympathy. In any case, we compensate for the negative aspect of
this gay victim appeal under Principle 4 Below.
The second message would portray gays as victims of society. The
straight majority does not recognize the suffering it brings to
the lives of gays and must be shown: graphic pictures of
brutalized gays; dramatizations of job and housing insecurity,
loss of child custody, and public humiliation: and the dismal
list goes on.
"... In any campaign to win over the public, gays must be cast as victims in need of protection so that straights will be inclined by reflex to assume the role of protector."
[3] GIVE PROTECTORS A JUST CAUSE.
A media campaign that casts gays as society's victims and
encourages straights to be their protectors must make it easier
for those to respond to assert and explain their new
protectiveness. Few straight women, and even fewer straight men, wilt
want to defend homosexuality boldly as such. Most would rather attach
their awakened protective impulse to some principle of justice or law,
to some general desire for consistent and fair treatment in society. Our
campaign should not demand direct support for homosexual practices, but
should instead take anti-discrimination as its theme. The right to free
speech, freedom of beliefs, freedom of association, due process and equal
protection of laws--these should be the concerns brought to mind by our
campaign.
It is especially important for the gay movement to hitch its
cause to accepted standards of law and justice because its straight
supporters must have at hand a cogent reply to the moral
arguments of its enemies. The homophobes clothe their emotional revulsion
in the daunting robes of religious dogma, so defenders of gay rights
must be ready to counter dogma with principle.
[4] MAKE GAYS LOOK GOOD.
In order to make a Gay Victim sympathetic to straights you have
to portray him as Everyman. But an additional theme of the campaign
should be more aggressive and upbeat: to offset the increasingly
bad press that these times have brought to homosexual men and
women, the campaign should paint gays as superior pillars of
society. Yes, yes, we know--this trick is so old it creaks. Other
minorities use it all the time in ads that announce proudly, "Did
you know that this Great Man (or Woman) was _____?" But the message
is vital for all those straights who still picture gays as "queer"
people-- shadowy, lonesome, fail, drunken, suicidal, child-snatching misfits. The
honor roll of prominent gay or bisexual men and women is truly eyepopping.
From Socrates to Shakespeare, from Alexander the Great to Alexander
Hamilton, from Michelangelo to Walt Whitman, from Sappho to
Gertrude Stein, the list is old hat to us but shocking news to
heterosexual America. In no time, a skillful and clever media
campaign could have the gay community looking like the veritable
fairy godmother to Western Civilization.
Along the same lines, we shouldn't overlook the Celebrity Endorsement. The celebrities can be straight (God bless you, Ed Asner, wherever you are) or gay.
[5] MAKE THE VICTIMIZERS LOOK BAD.
At a later stage of the media campaign for gay rights-long after
other gay ads have become commonplace--it will be time to get
tough with remaining opponents. To be blunt, they must be
vilified. (This will be all the more necessary because, by that
time, the entrenched enemy will have quadrupled its output of
vitriol and disinformation.) Our goal here is twofold. First, we seek
to replace the mainstream's self-righteous pride about its homophobia
with shame and guilt. Second, we intend to make the antigays look so nasty
that average Americans will want to dissociate themselves from such types.
The public should be shown images of ranting homophobes whose
secondary traits and beliefs disgust middle America. These images
might include: the Ku Klux Klan demanding that gays be burned
alive or castrated; bigoted southern ministers drooling with hysterical hatred to a degree that looks both comical and deranged; menacing punks, thugs, and convicts speaking coolly about the "fags" they have killed or would like to kill; a tour of Nazi concentration camps where homoscxuals were tortured and gassed.
A campaign to vilify the victimizers is going to enrage our most fervid enemies, of course. But what else can we say? The shoe fits, and we should make them try it on for size, with all of America watching.
[6] SOLICIT FUNDS.
The buck stops here. Any massive campaign of this kind would
require unprecedented expenditures for months or even years--an
unprecedented fundraising drive.
Effective advertising is a costly proposition: several million
dollars would get the ball rolling. There are 10-15 million
primarily homosexual adults in this country: if each one of them
donated just two dollars to the campaign, its war chest would
actually rival that of its most vocal enemies. And because those
gays not supporting families usually have more discretionars income than
average, they could afford to contribute much more.
"... We intend to make the antigays look so nasty that average Americans will
want to dissociate themselves from such types."
But would they? Or is they, [sic] gay community as feckless,
selfish, uncommitted, and short-sighted as its critics claim? We
will never know unless the new campaign simultaneously launches a
concerted nationwide appeal for funding support from both known
and anorymous donors. The appeal should be directed both at gays and at
straights who care about social justice.
In the beginning, for reasons to be explained in a moment, the
appeal for funds may have to be launched exclusively through the
gay press--national magazines, local newspapers, flyers at bars,
notices in glossy skin magazines. Funds could also come through
the outreach of local gay organizations on campuses and in
metropolitan areas. Eventually, donations would be solicited directly
alongside advertisements in the major straight media.
There would be no parallel to such an effort in the history of
the gay community in America. It failed to generate the needed
capital to get started, there would be little hope for the campaign and l
little hope for major progress toward gay rights in the near
future. For the moment let us suppose that gays could see how
donations would greatly serve their long term interest, and that
sufficient funds could be raised. An heroic assumption.
GETTING ON THE AIR, OR, YOU CAN'T GET THERE FROM HERE.
Without access to TV, radio, and the mainstream press, there will
be no campaign. This is a tricky problem, because many impresarios
of the media simply refuse to accept what they call
"issue-advertising" -- persuasive advertising can provoke a storm
of resentment from the public and from sponsors, which is bad for
business. The courts have confirmed the broadcaster's right to
refuse any "issue advertising" he dislikes.
What exactly constitutes "issue advertising"? It evidently does
not include platitudinous appeals to the virtues of family unity
(courtesy of the Mormons) neither does it include tirades against
perfidious Albion courtesy of Lyndon LaRouche; neither does it
include reminders that a Mind-Is-a Terrible Thing to Waste
(courtesy of the United Negro College Fund); neither does it include
religious shows which condemn gay "sinners"; neither does it
include condemnations of nuclear war or race discrimination--at
least not in Massachusetts. Some guys get all the breaks.
What issue-advertising does include these days is almost any
communique presented openly by a homosexual organization. The
words "gay" and "homosexual"' arc considered controversial
whenever they appear.
Because most straightforward appeals are impossible, the National
Gay Task Force has had to cultivate quiet backroom liaisons with
broadcast companies and newsrooms in order to make sure that
issues important to the gay community receive some coverage; but
such an arrangement is hardly ideal, of course, because it means that
the gay community's image is controlled by the latest news event instead
of by careful design--and recently most of the news about gays has been
negative. So what can be done to crash the gates of the major media?
Several things, advanced in several stages.
START WITH THE FINE PRINT
Newspapers and magazines may very well be more hungry for gay
advertising dollars than television and radio arc. And the cost
of ads in print is generally lower. But remember that the press, for
the most part, is only read by better educated Americans, many of
whom arc already more accepting of homosexuality in any case. So
to get more impact for our dollars, we should skip the New Republic
and New Left Review readers and head for Time, People , and the
National Enquirer. (Of course, the gay community may have to
establish itself as a regular advertising presence in more sophisticated
forums first before it is accepted into the mass press. )
While we're storming the battlements with salvos of ink, we
should also warm the mainstream up a bit with a subtle national campaign
on highway billboards. In simple bold print on dark backgrounds,
a series of unobjectionable messages should be introduced:
IN RUSSIA, THEY TELL YOU WHAT TO BE. IN AMERICA WE HAVE THE FREEDOM T0 BE OURSELVES ... AND TO BE THE BEST.
or
PEOPLE HELPING INSTEAD OF HATING -- THAT 'S WHAT
AMERICA IS ALL ABOUT.
And so on. Each sign will tap patriotic sentiment, each message
will drill a seemingly agreeable proposition into mainstream
heads--a "public service message" suited to our purposes. And, if
their owners will permit it, each billboard w ill be signed, in
slightly smaller letters, "Courtesy of the National Gay Task
Force" -- to build positive associations and get the public used to
seeing such sponsorship.
VISUAL STAGE 1: YOU REALLY OUGHTA BE IN PICTURES
As for television and radio, a more elaborate plan may be needed
to break the ice. For openers, naturally, we must continue to
encourage the appearance of favorable gay characters in films and
TV shows. Daytime talk shows also remain a useful avenue for exposure.
But to speed things up we might consider a bold stratagem to gain
media attention. The scheme we have in mind would require careful
preparations, yet it would save expense even while it elevated
the visibility and stature of the gay movement overnight. Well before
the next elections for national office, we might lay careful plans
to run symbolic gay candidates for every high political office in
this country. (Such plans would have to deal somehow with the
tricky problem of inducing gays and straights to sign enough endorsement
petitions to get us on the ballot.) Our 50-250 candidates would participate
in such debates as they could, run gay-themed advertisements coordinated
at our national headquarters, and demand equal time on the air. They could
then graciously pull out of the races before the actual elections, while
formally endorsing more viable straight contenders. (With malicious humor,
perhaps, in some states we could endorse our most rabid opponents.) It
is essential not to ask people actually to vote Yea or Nay on the gay
issue at this early stage: such action would end up committing most to
the Nay position and would only tally huge and visible defeats for our
cause.
Through such a political campaign, the mainstream would get over the initial shock of seeing gay ads, and the acceptability of such ads would be fortified by the most creditable context possible; and all this would be accomplished before non-electoral advertising was attempted by the gay community. During the campaign all hell would break loose, but if we behaved courageously and respectable our drive would gain legitimacy in and case and might even become a cause celebre.
If all went as planned, the somewhat desensitized public and the
major networks themselves would be readied for the next step of
our program.
VISUAL STAGE 2: PEEKABOO ADVERTISING
At this point the gay community has its foot in the door, and it
is time to ask the networks to accept gay sponsorship of certain
ads and shows. Timing is critical: The request must be made
immediately after our national political ads disappear. Failing
that, we should request sponsorship the next time one of the
networks struts its broad- mindedness by televising a film or show
with gay characters or themes. If they wish to look consistent instead
of hypocritical, we'll have them on the spot.
But the networks would still be forced to say No unless we made
their resistance look patently unreasonable, and possibly illegal.
We'd do just that by proposing "gay ads" patterned exactly after
those currently sponsored by the Mormons and others. As usual,
viewers would be treated to squeak-clean skits on the importance
of family harmony and understanding --this time the narrator
would end by saying, "This message was brought to you by --the National
Gay Task Force." All very quiet and subdued. Remember: exposure is
everything, and the medium is the message.
"... Exposure is everything and the medium is the message."
The gay community should join forces with other civil liberties groups of respectable cast to promote bland messages about America the Melting Pot, always ending with an explicit reference to the Task Force of some other gay organization. Making the best of a bad situation, we can also propose sympathetic media appeals for gifts and donations to fund AIDS research--if Jerry Lewis and the March of Dimes can do it, so can we. Our next indirect step will be to advertise locally on behalf of support groups peripheral to the gay community: frowzy straight moms and dads announcing phone numbers and meeting times for "Parents of Gays" or similar gatherings. Can't you just see such ads now, presented between messages from the Disabled Vets and the Postal Workers Union?
VISUAL STAGE 3: ROLL OUT THE BIG GUNS
By this point, our salami tactics will have carved out, slice by
slice, a large portion of access to the mainstream media. So what
then? It would finally be time to bring gay ads out of the closet.
The messages of such ads should directly address lingering public
fears about homosexuals as loathsome and contrary aliens. For
examples, the following are possible formats for TV or radio
commercials designed to chip away at chronic misperceptions.
Format A for Familiarization: The Testimonial.
To make gays seem less mysterious, present a series of short
spots featuring the boy- or girl-next- door. fresh and appealing, or
warm and lovable grandma grandpa types. Seated in homey
surroundings, they respond to an offcamera interviewer with
assurance, good nature, and charm. Their comments bring out three
social facts:
( 1 ) There is someone special in their life, a long-term relationship
(to stress gay stability, monogamy, commitment);
(2) Their families are very important to them, and are supportive
of them (to stress that gays are not "anti-family," and that
families need not be anti-gay.)
(3) As far as they can remember the! have always been gay, and
were probably born gay; they certainly never decided on a preference
one way or the other (stressing that gays are doing what is
natural for them, and are not being wilfully contrary).
The subjects should be interviewed alone, not with their lovers
or children, for to include others in the picture would unwisely
raise disturbing questions about the complexities of gay social
relations, which these commercials could not explain. It is best
instead to take one thing at a time.
Format B for Positive associations: The Celebrity Spot.
While it might be useful to present celebrity endorsement by
currently popular gay figures and straight sympathizers (Johnny
Mathis? Marlo Thomas?), the homophobia climate of America would
make such brash endorsements unlikely in the near future. So early
celebrity spots will instead identify historical gay or bisexual
personalities who are illustrious and dignified...and dead. The
ads could be sardonic and indirect. For example, over regal music
and a portrait or two, a narrator might announce simply:
William Shakespeare--the greatest playwright in the history of
the English language. Yet, if he were alive today, some people
wouldn't let him teach a high school English class. Now isn't
that a shame?
The rhetorical question forces the viewer to answer Yes. And to
explain the Bard's failing, the ad would end simply: "A message
from the National Gay Task Force." Similar commercials could
feature Michelangelo (an art class), Tchaikovsky (a music class),
Tennessee Williams (a drama class), etc.
Format C for Victim Sympathy: Our Campaign to Stop Child Abuse.
As we said earlier, there arc many ways to portray gays as
victims of discrimination: images of brutality, tales of job loss and
family separation, and so on. But we think something like the
following 30-sccond commercials would get to the heart of the
matter best of all.
The camera slowly moves in on a middle-class teenager, sitting
alone in his semi-darkened bedroom. The boy is pleasing and
unexceptional in appearance, except that he has been roughed up
and is starring silently, pensively, with evident distress. As
the camera gradually focuses in on his face, a narrator comments:
It will happen to one in every ten sons. As he grows up. he will realize
that he feels differently about things than most of his friends. If he
lets it show, he'll be an outsider made fun of, humiliated, attacked.
If he confides in his parents, they may throw him out of the house, onto
the streets. Some will say he is "anti-family." Nobody will let him be
himself. So he will have to hide. From his friends, his family. And that's
hard. It's tough enough to be a kid these days, but to be the one in
ten... A message from the National Gay Task Force.
What is nice about such an ad is that it would economically portray gays as innocent and vulnerable, victimized and misunderstood, surprisingly numerous yet not menacing. It also
renders the "anti-family" charge absurd and hypocritical.
Format D for Identification with Victims: The Old Switcheroo.
The mainstream will identify better with the plight of gays if straights can, once in a while, walk a mile in gay shoes. A humorous television or radio ad to help them do this might involve a brief animated or dramatized scenario, as follows.
The camera approaches the mighty oak door of the boss's office, which swings open, and the camera (which represents you the viewer) enters the room. Behind the oversized desk sits a fat and scowling old curmudgeon chomping on a cigar. He looks up at the camera (i.e. at the viewer) and snarls, " So it's you, Smithers. Well You're fired!" The voice of a younger man is heard to reply with astonishment, "But-but--Mr. Thomburg, I've been with your company for ten years. I thought you liked my work." The boss responds, with a tone of disgust, "Yes, yes, Smithers your work is quite adequate. But I've heard rumors that you've been seen around town with some kind of girlfriend. A girlfriend! Frankly I'm shocked. We're not about to start hiring any heterosexuals in this company. Now get out." The younger man speaks once more: "But boss, that's just not fair! What if it were you?" The boss glowers back as the camera pulls quickly out of the room and the big door slams shut. Printed on the door: "A message from the National Gay Task Force."
One can easily imagine similar episodes involving housing or other discrimination.
Format E for Vilification of Victimizers: Damn the Torpedoes.
We have already indicated some of the images which might be
damaging to the homophobic vendetta: ranting and hateful
religious extremists neo-Nazis, and Ku Klux Klansmen made to look
evil and ridiculous (hardly a difficult task).
These images should be combined with those of their gay victims
By a method propagandists call the "bracket technique." For example,
for a few seconds an unctuous beady-eyed Southern preacher is
seen pounding the pulpit in rage about "those sick, abominable
creatures." While his tirade continues over the soundtrack,. the
picture switches to pathetic photos of gays who look decent,
harmless, and likable; and then we cut back to the poisonous face
of the preacher, and so forth. The contrast speaks for itself. The effect
is devastating.
"...it would portray gays as innocent and vulnerable, victimized and
misunderstood, surprisingly numerous, yet not menacing."
Format F for Funds: S.O.S.
Alongside or during these other persuasive advertisements, we
would have to solicit donations so that the campaign might
continue. Direct appeals from celebrities (preferable living
ones, thank you) might be useful here. All appeals must stress that
money can be given anonymously (e.g. via money orders) and that all
donations are confidential. "We can't help unless you help," and all that.
The Time Is Now
We have sketched out here a blueprint for transforming the social
values of straight America At the core of our program is a media
campaign to change the way the average citizens view homosexuality. It is
quite easy to find fault with such a campaign. We have tried to be practical
and specific here, but the proposals may still have a visionary sheen.
There are one hundred reasons why the campaign could not be done
or would be risky. But there are at least 20 million good reasons
why some such program must be tried in the coming years: the
welfare and happiness of every gay man and woman in this country
demand it. As the last large, legally oppressed minority in
American society, it is high time that gays took effective measures
to rejoin the mainstream in pride and strength. We believe that, like
it or not, such a campaign is the only way of doing so anytime soon.
And, let us repeat, time may be running out. The AIDS epidemic is
sparking anger and fear in the heartland of straight America. As
the virus leaks out of homosexual circles and into the rest of
society, we need have no illusions about who is receiving the
blame. The ten years ahead may decide for the next forty whether
gays claim their liberty and equality or are driven back, once
again, as America's caste of detested untouchables. It’s more than
a quip: speak now or forever hold your peace.
****
(Keep in mind this article was published in 1987. Since that time
homosexual activists have made remarkable progress in their media
campaign. Just look at TV programs like Roseanne, Melrose Place,
Picket Fences, and Northern Exposure, where homosexuality is presented
as normal, natural behavior on a regular basis. NBC News did a three-day
series on "Gays in America" in September that had no opposing view, other
than one brief statement by Dr. Paul Cameron. There's a proliferation
of "gay" propaganda being shoved down our throats in movies like "The
Crying Game", "Philadelphia", "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert", "Go Fish",
and many more.
"... Hollywood is coming out of the closet, and
homosexual activists are jumping up and down for joy."
Hollywood is indeed coming, out a of the closet, and homosexual activists are jumping up and down for joy. Why? Because they know Americans flock to the movie theaters in droves, and that gradually the message of accepting homosexuality as a normal variant of human sexuality is getting through to people-minds are being
changed.
For those of you who want to investigate more about the homosexual agenda and various strategies I recommend the book After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear & Hatred of Gays in the 90’s by Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen [Plume 1989]. [] Both authors are Harvard grads -- Kirk is a researcher in neuropsychiatry, while Madsen is "an expert on public persuasion tactics and social marketing." The book is an expansion of the above article complete with sample print ads to use, as well as suggestions for radio, TV spots.)
mailto:comments@sphi.com
Copyright 1998 by SPHI. All Rights Reserved.
09/04/04
Howard Rheingold's Latest Connection
The tech guru sees a "new economic system" in the
unconscious cooperation embodied by Google links
and Amazon lists
Updated: 8:00 p.m. ET Aug. 11, 2004
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5671750
Howard Rheingold is on the hunt again. With his last
book, Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution, in 2001,
the longtime observer of technology trends made a
persuasive case that pervasive mobile communications,
combined with always-on Internet connections, will
produce new kinds of ad-hoc social groups. Now, he's
starting to take the leap beyond smart mobs, trying to
weave some threads out of such seemingly disparate
developments as Web logs, open-source software
development, and Google.
At the same time, Rheingold is worried that established
companies could quash such nascent innovations as file-
sharing -- and potentially put the U.S. at risk of
falling behind the rest of the world. He recently spoke
with Robert D. Hof, BusinessWeek's Silicon Valley bureau
chief. Here are excerpts from their conversation:
Q: Where do you see the social revolution you've been
talking about going next?
A: It's too early to say. The question is: What does it
point toward? Some kind of collective action...in which
the individuals aren't consciously cooperating. A market
is a great example as a mechanism for determining price
based on demand. People aren't saying, "I'm contributing
to the market," [they say they're] just selling
something. But it adds up.
Q: Can you give me some specific examples of what you
mean, beyond the market?
A: Google is based on the emergent choices of people who
link. Nobody is really thinking, "I'm now contributing
to Google's page rank." What they're thinking is, "This
link is something my readers would really be interested
in." They're making an individual judgment that, in the
aggregate, turns out to be a pretty good indicator of
what's the best source.
Then there's open source [software]. Steve Weber, a
political economist at UC Berkeley, sees open source as
an economic means of production that turns the free-
rider problem to its advantage. All the people who use
the resource but don't contribute to it just build up a
larger user base. And if a very tiny percentage of them
do anything at all -- like report a bug -- then those
free riders suddenly become an asset.
And maybe this isn't just in software production.
There's [the idea of] "open spectrum," coined by [Yale
law professor] Yochai Benkler. The dogma is that the two
major means of organizing for economic production are
the market and the firm. But Benkler uses open source as
an example of peer-to-peer production, which he thinks
may be pointing toward a third means of organizing for
production.
Then you look at Amazon (AMZN) and its recommendation
system, getting users to provide free reviews, users
sharing choices with their friends, users who make lists
of products. They get a lot of free advice that turns
out to be very useful in the aggregate. There's also
Wikipedia [the online encyclopedia written by
volunteers]. It has 500,000 articles in 50 languages at
virtually no cost, vs. Encyclopedia Britannica spending
millions of dollars and they have 50,000 articles.
Q: What will all those trends produce ultimately?
A: All these could dramatically transform not only the
way people do business, but economic production
altogether. We had markets, then we had capitalism, and
socialism was a reaction to industrial-era capitalism.
There's been an assumption that since communism failed,
capitalism is triumphant, therefore humans have stopped
evolving new systems for economic production.
But I think we're seeing hints, with all of these
examples, that the technology of the Internet,
reputation systems, online communities, mobile devices
-- these are all like those technologies...that made
capitalism possible. These may make some new economic
system possible.
Q: If so, it's a good bet not all companies will be
happy with the changes.
A: New digital technologies are creating a crisis in the
business models of the companies that depend on having a
monopoly on distribution. Look at MP3 blogs: We're now
seeing bands that are saying, "Please pirate my
material. Here it is." They make money from that. They
get bookings from that. They build an audience on that.
Q: Are there more such conflicts and opportunities to
come?
A: Assigning frequencies to license holders...is an old-
fashioned scheme...based on technologies of the 1920s.
We now have technologies that make it possible to use
the spectrum the way packets use the Internet. Instead
of having a circuit-switched analog system in which you
have to have an end-to-end connection, you just send
your packets out with their addresses through this
network and they find their way. It's much more
efficient. It makes for millions more broadcasters in
the Internet space. This is all pointing to a kind of
voluntary sharing of your property.
Q: Does the pushback by companies threatened by these
trends, such as the record and movie companies, threaten
innovation?
A: Yes. Never before in history have we been able to see
incumbent businesses protect business models based on
old technology against creative destruction by new
technologies. And they're doing it by manipulating the
political process. The telegraph didn't prevent the
telephone, the railroad didn't prevent the automobile.
But now, because of the immense amounts of money that
they're spending on lobbying and the need for immense
amounts of money for media, the political process is
being manipulated by incumbents.
Q: What might keep these powerful incumbents from
holding back this tide?
A: You've got to have some huge force outside of the
United States, where it's getting locked down. What if
China says, "The FCC doesn't rule us. We're going to
stop assigning frequencies within our borders. We're
going to regulate devices so that they play fair with
each other, and we're going to open up spectrum." That's
going to make the U.S. an economic and technological
backwater.
Then there's always the idea that maybe we're just
beginning to see disruptive technologies. Maybe
something is just going to blow it away. Certainly we've
seen that over and over again in recent decades.
Q: Where will we see that happen?
A: We now have a world out there where billions of
people have in their pockets technologies for innovation
that far surpass what entire industries had just a
couple decades ago. If you're talking about the
communications industry, your innovation is happening
with 15-year-old girls. That was where [Japanese
cellular network provider NTT] DoCoMo (DCM) won big. I
think the total number of text messages sent is
approaching 100 billion a month. Of course, the revenues
on that are only a fraction of a cent each, but multiply
a fraction of a cent by 100 billion, and it begins to
add up to real money.
You're seeing that now with the picturephones. People
are not using them the way it was predicted. They're
using them to share their days: Here's a picture of
somebody's haircut. Here's a picture of somebody's
melon. Look at this shoe in a store. It wasn't
determined by an expensive R&D lab. It was determined in
practice by young people who appropriate these devices
in unexpected ways. There's nothing more inventive than
a 15-year-old.
I don't think that's going away. If I was a Nokia (NOK)
or a Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), I would take a fraction of
what I'm spending on those buildings full of expensive
people and give out a whole bunch of prototypes to a
whole bunch of 15-year-olds and have contracts with them
where you can observe their behavior in an ethical way
and enable them to suggest innovations, and give them
some reasonable small reward for that. And once in a
while, you're going to make a billion dollars off it.
Q: A focus group on steroids.
A: This would be more like ethnography, where you let
them loose and watch what they do. If you want to think
out of the box about innovation, let's not put all of
our bets on 50-year-old PhDs in laboratories. We now
have dispersed the means of individual and collective
innovation throughout the world.
Here's where Wikipedia fits in. It used to be if you
were a kid in a village in India or a village in
northern Canada in the winter, maybe you could get to a
place where they have a few books once in a while. Now,
if you have a telephone, you can get a free
encyclopedia. You have access to the world's knowledge.
Knowing how to use that is a barrier. The divide
increasingly is not so much between those who have and
those who don't, but those who know how to use what they
have and those who don't.
Q: Some folks in the U.S. are worried about the
competition from overseas that comes from that dispersal
of knowledge.
A: We should have thought about it when we sold all
those computers and chips overseas. These aren't just
widgets. These are the building blocks of innovation.
Copyright (c) 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All
rights reserved.
The tech guru sees a "new economic system" in the
unconscious cooperation embodied by Google links
and Amazon lists
Updated: 8:00 p.m. ET Aug. 11, 2004
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5671750
Howard Rheingold is on the hunt again. With his last
book, Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution, in 2001,
the longtime observer of technology trends made a
persuasive case that pervasive mobile communications,
combined with always-on Internet connections, will
produce new kinds of ad-hoc social groups. Now, he's
starting to take the leap beyond smart mobs, trying to
weave some threads out of such seemingly disparate
developments as Web logs, open-source software
development, and Google.
At the same time, Rheingold is worried that established
companies could quash such nascent innovations as file-
sharing -- and potentially put the U.S. at risk of
falling behind the rest of the world. He recently spoke
with Robert D. Hof, BusinessWeek's Silicon Valley bureau
chief. Here are excerpts from their conversation:
Q: Where do you see the social revolution you've been
talking about going next?
A: It's too early to say. The question is: What does it
point toward? Some kind of collective action...in which
the individuals aren't consciously cooperating. A market
is a great example as a mechanism for determining price
based on demand. People aren't saying, "I'm contributing
to the market," [they say they're] just selling
something. But it adds up.
Q: Can you give me some specific examples of what you
mean, beyond the market?
A: Google is based on the emergent choices of people who
link. Nobody is really thinking, "I'm now contributing
to Google's page rank." What they're thinking is, "This
link is something my readers would really be interested
in." They're making an individual judgment that, in the
aggregate, turns out to be a pretty good indicator of
what's the best source.
Then there's open source [software]. Steve Weber, a
political economist at UC Berkeley, sees open source as
an economic means of production that turns the free-
rider problem to its advantage. All the people who use
the resource but don't contribute to it just build up a
larger user base. And if a very tiny percentage of them
do anything at all -- like report a bug -- then those
free riders suddenly become an asset.
And maybe this isn't just in software production.
There's [the idea of] "open spectrum," coined by [Yale
law professor] Yochai Benkler. The dogma is that the two
major means of organizing for economic production are
the market and the firm. But Benkler uses open source as
an example of peer-to-peer production, which he thinks
may be pointing toward a third means of organizing for
production.
Then you look at Amazon (AMZN) and its recommendation
system, getting users to provide free reviews, users
sharing choices with their friends, users who make lists
of products. They get a lot of free advice that turns
out to be very useful in the aggregate. There's also
Wikipedia [the online encyclopedia written by
volunteers]. It has 500,000 articles in 50 languages at
virtually no cost, vs. Encyclopedia Britannica spending
millions of dollars and they have 50,000 articles.
Q: What will all those trends produce ultimately?
A: All these could dramatically transform not only the
way people do business, but economic production
altogether. We had markets, then we had capitalism, and
socialism was a reaction to industrial-era capitalism.
There's been an assumption that since communism failed,
capitalism is triumphant, therefore humans have stopped
evolving new systems for economic production.
But I think we're seeing hints, with all of these
examples, that the technology of the Internet,
reputation systems, online communities, mobile devices
-- these are all like those technologies...that made
capitalism possible. These may make some new economic
system possible.
Q: If so, it's a good bet not all companies will be
happy with the changes.
A: New digital technologies are creating a crisis in the
business models of the companies that depend on having a
monopoly on distribution. Look at MP3 blogs: We're now
seeing bands that are saying, "Please pirate my
material. Here it is." They make money from that. They
get bookings from that. They build an audience on that.
Q: Are there more such conflicts and opportunities to
come?
A: Assigning frequencies to license holders...is an old-
fashioned scheme...based on technologies of the 1920s.
We now have technologies that make it possible to use
the spectrum the way packets use the Internet. Instead
of having a circuit-switched analog system in which you
have to have an end-to-end connection, you just send
your packets out with their addresses through this
network and they find their way. It's much more
efficient. It makes for millions more broadcasters in
the Internet space. This is all pointing to a kind of
voluntary sharing of your property.
Q: Does the pushback by companies threatened by these
trends, such as the record and movie companies, threaten
innovation?
A: Yes. Never before in history have we been able to see
incumbent businesses protect business models based on
old technology against creative destruction by new
technologies. And they're doing it by manipulating the
political process. The telegraph didn't prevent the
telephone, the railroad didn't prevent the automobile.
But now, because of the immense amounts of money that
they're spending on lobbying and the need for immense
amounts of money for media, the political process is
being manipulated by incumbents.
Q: What might keep these powerful incumbents from
holding back this tide?
A: You've got to have some huge force outside of the
United States, where it's getting locked down. What if
China says, "The FCC doesn't rule us. We're going to
stop assigning frequencies within our borders. We're
going to regulate devices so that they play fair with
each other, and we're going to open up spectrum." That's
going to make the U.S. an economic and technological
backwater.
Then there's always the idea that maybe we're just
beginning to see disruptive technologies. Maybe
something is just going to blow it away. Certainly we've
seen that over and over again in recent decades.
Q: Where will we see that happen?
A: We now have a world out there where billions of
people have in their pockets technologies for innovation
that far surpass what entire industries had just a
couple decades ago. If you're talking about the
communications industry, your innovation is happening
with 15-year-old girls. That was where [Japanese
cellular network provider NTT] DoCoMo (DCM) won big. I
think the total number of text messages sent is
approaching 100 billion a month. Of course, the revenues
on that are only a fraction of a cent each, but multiply
a fraction of a cent by 100 billion, and it begins to
add up to real money.
You're seeing that now with the picturephones. People
are not using them the way it was predicted. They're
using them to share their days: Here's a picture of
somebody's haircut. Here's a picture of somebody's
melon. Look at this shoe in a store. It wasn't
determined by an expensive R&D lab. It was determined in
practice by young people who appropriate these devices
in unexpected ways. There's nothing more inventive than
a 15-year-old.
I don't think that's going away. If I was a Nokia (NOK)
or a Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), I would take a fraction of
what I'm spending on those buildings full of expensive
people and give out a whole bunch of prototypes to a
whole bunch of 15-year-olds and have contracts with them
where you can observe their behavior in an ethical way
and enable them to suggest innovations, and give them
some reasonable small reward for that. And once in a
while, you're going to make a billion dollars off it.
Q: A focus group on steroids.
A: This would be more like ethnography, where you let
them loose and watch what they do. If you want to think
out of the box about innovation, let's not put all of
our bets on 50-year-old PhDs in laboratories. We now
have dispersed the means of individual and collective
innovation throughout the world.
Here's where Wikipedia fits in. It used to be if you
were a kid in a village in India or a village in
northern Canada in the winter, maybe you could get to a
place where they have a few books once in a while. Now,
if you have a telephone, you can get a free
encyclopedia. You have access to the world's knowledge.
Knowing how to use that is a barrier. The divide
increasingly is not so much between those who have and
those who don't, but those who know how to use what they
have and those who don't.
Q: Some folks in the U.S. are worried about the
competition from overseas that comes from that dispersal
of knowledge.
A: We should have thought about it when we sold all
those computers and chips overseas. These aren't just
widgets. These are the building blocks of innovation.
Copyright (c) 2004 The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All
rights reserved.
Concerned Women for America (CWA) has just launched a new web page on
Alfred Kinsey.
"For more than 55 years, pioneer sex researcher Alfred C. Kinsey's work has
had a profound effect on American culture. Once a household name, Kinsey
is not known to most people under 40. Yet his studies in the late 1940s
and early 1950s, heralded as the first 'scientific' look at sex, became the
foundation of the sexual revolution that has rocked not only America but
the world.
Kinsey's relative anonymity will change in November, when the film Kinsey,
starring Liam Neeson, is slated for release. According to early reports,
the movie, directed by homosexual activist Bill Condon, glosses over the
stunning fact that much of Kinsey's work has been revealed as fraud, and
that he aided and abetted the molestation of hundreds of children in order
to obtain data on 'child sexuality.'"
FOR MORE, go to:
http://www.cwfa.org/kinsey.asp
Alfred Kinsey.
"For more than 55 years, pioneer sex researcher Alfred C. Kinsey's work has
had a profound effect on American culture. Once a household name, Kinsey
is not known to most people under 40. Yet his studies in the late 1940s
and early 1950s, heralded as the first 'scientific' look at sex, became the
foundation of the sexual revolution that has rocked not only America but
the world.
Kinsey's relative anonymity will change in November, when the film Kinsey,
starring Liam Neeson, is slated for release. According to early reports,
the movie, directed by homosexual activist Bill Condon, glosses over the
stunning fact that much of Kinsey's work has been revealed as fraud, and
that he aided and abetted the molestation of hundreds of children in order
to obtain data on 'child sexuality.'"
FOR MORE, go to:
http://www.cwfa.org/kinsey.asp
When first 'fly-by-wire' (computer-control) airliners were mooted,
the union of flight engineers in NZ investigated thoroughly because their
jobs would evaporate to the extent that these types of airliner would be
deployed.
Perhaps the most amusing item they discovered was the description
of an event soon after the first computer-controlled Airbus entered into
routine service.
It was at an airport where taxiing is done not on the planes'
engines but by a special tow vehicle. The passengers were all loaded, the
doors closed, the motors idling, the checklists moving along calmly between
the two flight-deck crew.
The tow vehicle backed in and hooked onto the nose-wheel strut.
The plane's engines immediately roared up to full forward thrust,
accelerating the plane straight ahead, strewing ground-crew and the tow
aside (without serious injury, by good luck).
As the plane raced faster & faster across the field, the pilots
quickly confirmed that their 'throttle' T-handles were as if disconnected.
Evidently the computer control had over-ridden the pilots' normal control.
Perhaps the immortal sounds "I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that" echoed thru
their fevered minds.
The captain had only seconds to decide whether to try to take off
across the field - which might well have worked in that they might have
got off the ground, but perhaps at the price of damaging some tyres as they
drove across the edges of the runway & taxiways, and with the prospect of
flying around at full power until they consumed all the fuel - speeded
presumably by dumping fuel - and then glide in once the motors had
stopped (if they stopped simultaneously). It must have been an uninviting
prospect.
Fortunately the co-pilot extemporised a way to cut off the fuel
supply soon enough to allow them to brake before the far side of the
airfield.
The explanation turned out to be simple. The computer program had
a subroutine to detect the situation 'in the air and within 20kt of stall
speed' and when this condition arose, automatically slam the engines to full fw
in order to prevent stalling.
The definition of 'we're in the air' for the purpose of
this fail-safe automated safety subroutine was: no pressure on the
nosewheel strut. As the tow vehicle hooked on, it momentarily produced
that condition. And the airspeed was certainly below (stall speed + 20kt);
so the subroutine took over and prevented the "imminent stall" by slamming
the motors onto full power.
You may recall the mid-1988 crash of a similar Airbus at the Paris
air show. A senior test pilot instructed to carry out a simple, safe
manouevre to help sell billions of dollars' worth of airliners does not
crash the plane, but he was killed so it was convenient to blame him. I
have never believed he did anything wrong; I think some other subroutine
kicked in and over-rode the pilot's controls so that he could not gain
power to climb.
You may also recall that, soon after Boeing had gone the same way,
a near-new Lauda Air Boeing twin, climing thru about 30,000ft over Thailand
after takeoff from Bangkok, suddenly was destroyed because one engine was
slammed onto full REVERSE - a manoeuvre the pilots could not do even if
they wished. (I would be interested to know how this mishap was
characterised.)
Blind faith in komputink has worried me. Refusal to admit even
notorious frequent errors is a new kind of lying by those who feel their
future income somehow depends on such collaboration. I find such
corruption sad & worrying.
My further point is that what has so distressingly become
mainstream komputink, largely using Gates' appalling piles of junk, has now
become intimately interwoven with transgenic expts. The reliability of the
DNA & protein sequences read out from such komputink will be less than
supposed, won't it?
the union of flight engineers in NZ investigated thoroughly because their
jobs would evaporate to the extent that these types of airliner would be
deployed.
Perhaps the most amusing item they discovered was the description
of an event soon after the first computer-controlled Airbus entered into
routine service.
It was at an airport where taxiing is done not on the planes'
engines but by a special tow vehicle. The passengers were all loaded, the
doors closed, the motors idling, the checklists moving along calmly between
the two flight-deck crew.
The tow vehicle backed in and hooked onto the nose-wheel strut.
The plane's engines immediately roared up to full forward thrust,
accelerating the plane straight ahead, strewing ground-crew and the tow
aside (without serious injury, by good luck).
As the plane raced faster & faster across the field, the pilots
quickly confirmed that their 'throttle' T-handles were as if disconnected.
Evidently the computer control had over-ridden the pilots' normal control.
Perhaps the immortal sounds "I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that" echoed thru
their fevered minds.
The captain had only seconds to decide whether to try to take off
across the field - which might well have worked in that they might have
got off the ground, but perhaps at the price of damaging some tyres as they
drove across the edges of the runway & taxiways, and with the prospect of
flying around at full power until they consumed all the fuel - speeded
presumably by dumping fuel - and then glide in once the motors had
stopped (if they stopped simultaneously). It must have been an uninviting
prospect.
Fortunately the co-pilot extemporised a way to cut off the fuel
supply soon enough to allow them to brake before the far side of the
airfield.
The explanation turned out to be simple. The computer program had
a subroutine to detect the situation 'in the air and within 20kt of stall
speed' and when this condition arose, automatically slam the engines to full fw
in order to prevent stalling.
The definition of 'we're in the air' for the purpose of
this fail-safe automated safety subroutine was: no pressure on the
nosewheel strut. As the tow vehicle hooked on, it momentarily produced
that condition. And the airspeed was certainly below (stall speed + 20kt);
so the subroutine took over and prevented the "imminent stall" by slamming
the motors onto full power.
You may recall the mid-1988 crash of a similar Airbus at the Paris
air show. A senior test pilot instructed to carry out a simple, safe
manouevre to help sell billions of dollars' worth of airliners does not
crash the plane, but he was killed so it was convenient to blame him. I
have never believed he did anything wrong; I think some other subroutine
kicked in and over-rode the pilot's controls so that he could not gain
power to climb.
You may also recall that, soon after Boeing had gone the same way,
a near-new Lauda Air Boeing twin, climing thru about 30,000ft over Thailand
after takeoff from Bangkok, suddenly was destroyed because one engine was
slammed onto full REVERSE - a manoeuvre the pilots could not do even if
they wished. (I would be interested to know how this mishap was
characterised.)
Blind faith in komputink has worried me. Refusal to admit even
notorious frequent errors is a new kind of lying by those who feel their
future income somehow depends on such collaboration. I find such
corruption sad & worrying.
My further point is that what has so distressingly become
mainstream komputink, largely using Gates' appalling piles of junk, has now
become intimately interwoven with transgenic expts. The reliability of the
DNA & protein sequences read out from such komputink will be less than
supposed, won't it?
08/23/04
Today's Headlines
ENN DAILY NEWS
Public schools improve nutrition
- On this week's radio program Beyond Organic, join host Jerry Kay -
publisher of the Environmental News Network (ENN.com) - to find out how
public schools are improving nutrition by using fresh and organic produce
and connecting farms to schools.
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-08-19/s_26590.asp
When I arr at Khandallah School in Sep 1946 I found extensive
gardens, next to the main bldg and on the SW hillside toward Clark St.
Within a few y these were bitumen'd over - increasing the scope for the
Traveller Top (probably my first invention) which I welcomed at the time,
but I was wrong; in my opinion of the past quarter-century destroying the
gardens was a bad move.
I think not only gardens but also beehives should be widespread in
schools. Fantasies of 'improved' species, some of them dangerous, will not
be competently appraised by a citizenry unfamiliar with the facts of life.
School gardens are an important part of what to do instead of GMOs.
R
ENN DAILY NEWS
Public schools improve nutrition
- On this week's radio program Beyond Organic, join host Jerry Kay -
publisher of the Environmental News Network (ENN.com) - to find out how
public schools are improving nutrition by using fresh and organic produce
and connecting farms to schools.
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-08-19/s_26590.asp
When I arr at Khandallah School in Sep 1946 I found extensive
gardens, next to the main bldg and on the SW hillside toward Clark St.
Within a few y these were bitumen'd over - increasing the scope for the
Traveller Top (probably my first invention) which I welcomed at the time,
but I was wrong; in my opinion of the past quarter-century destroying the
gardens was a bad move.
I think not only gardens but also beehives should be widespread in
schools. Fantasies of 'improved' species, some of them dangerous, will not
be competently appraised by a citizenry unfamiliar with the facts of life.
School gardens are an important part of what to do instead of GMOs.
R
Formerly sensible Yank sez 'double world nuclear power' [Catch-all] -
GEA - gormfach@gmail.com @ 12:09:40 AM
;ad=ss;pos=ad28;sz=160x600;tile=50;abr=!ie;ord=1092630505603?>
SCIENCE
Notebook
Monday, August 16, 2004; Page A05
Plan to Limit Emissions Of Carbon Dioxide Mapped
The United States could keep carbon dioxide emissions from rising
over the next 50 years by using several existing technologies, according to
a paper published by two Princeton University professors in Friday's
edition of Science.
Stephen W. Pacala and Robert H. Socolow identified 15 technologies
that could be used to curb pollution, including wind-powered generation of
electricity, conversion of 1,400 coal-fired plants to natural gas,
capturing and storing emissions from 800 coal-powered plants, and doubling
global nuclear power plant capacity to replace coal-based electricity.
Carbon dioxide, much of it produced from fossil fuels such as coal, is
thought to be a major contributor to global warming.
"There's lots you can do," said Socolow, who teaches in the
department of mechanical and aerospace engineering. "You will not need
magic bullets that you don't have at the present time."
At present, 7 billion tons of carbon are emitted into the atmosphere
annually, which is more than twice the amount that can be absorbed by
oceans and forests. This amount is expected to double over the next
half-century. Under the Princeton scenario, emissions would stay constant,
with a goal of reducing the total to 3 billion tons a year in 100 years.
If governments fail to act, Socolow said, the concentration of carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere will triple in 50 years. "Keeping it below
doubling is a heroic task," he said.
The scientists did not estimate how much it would cost to implement
their proposal, though they said it would produce some economic benefits by
creating new industries and reducing American dependence on foreign oil.
Dan Riedinger, a spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, said the
paper reflected a "pie in the sky" analysis. He said the recommendation
for retrofitting coal-fired plants did not take into account the fact that
the United States is already straining its existing natural gas reserves
and pipeline capacity. Such a switch would force the power sector to
monopolize the nation's domestic natural gas resources at the expense of
manufacturing, agriculture and home heating, he said.
"They're not factoring in the large-scale economic and political
obstacles in doing such a large-scale conversion," Riedinger said. "Our
economy could not absorb this kind of major shift."
-- Juliet Eilperin
08/14/04
something I just browsed across - on alt. cures!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/news/story/0,12976,1275125,00.html
Warning to patients on cancer therapies
Alternative 'cures' on internet put thousands at risk, says scientist
Alok Jha, science correspondent
Tuesday August 3, 2004
The Guardian
Misleading advice on complementary therapy available on the internet is putting thousands of cancer patients at risk, according to a leading scientist.
Professor Edzard Ernst, of the Peninsula Medical School at Exeter University, holds the UK's only chair in complementary medicine. He told a press briefing yesterday that patients need to exercise more caution when looking for information on the web.
"If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is," he said. "Don't believe ridiculous claims."
Prof Ernst said that there had even been cases reported of cancer patients
dying as a result of using complementary therapies promoted on the internet.
His team at Exeter analysed 32 of the most popular websites giving advice and information on a range of complementary therapies to treat cancer. Between them, they receive tens of thousands of hits a day. He concluded that a "significant proportion" of the sites were a risk to cancer patients. The study was published
recently in the Annals of Oncology.
"This was to us quite an eye-opener and pretty scary stuff," he said. "We found that between these 30-odd sites, 118 different cancer "cures" were recommended: complementary treatment which claimed to be able to cure cancer. None of these 118 can be demonstrated to cure cancer."
Three websites fell into the highest risk categories because they overtly discouraged patients from using conventional cancer treatments such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
The sites - heall.com and healthy.net, based in the USA, and worldwidehealthcenter.net, based in the UK and Cyprus, were judged to offer
advice potentially harmful to patients.
Heall.com offers customers a way of "balancing the human electrical system" by taking the nutritional supplements it sells. Yesterday at healthy.net, an article justifying the use of complementary techniques for cancer treatment said: "It is clear that humans are a complex interplay of physical and metaphysical forces.
As humans become more spiritual or metaphysical, we tend to transcend physical laws. Hence, the ultimate cancer cure may come from this relatively untapped area of healing."
Two examples of bogus cancer treatments were shark cartilage and laertrial, a chemical which can be made from almonds or the stones of apricots, cherries or peaches. Demand for ground-up shark fins has been so high as a result of its perceived health benefits that the trade has brought two species of shark close to extinction, said Prof Ernst. There was "not a shred of evidence" that it
helped cure patients.
Prof Ernst also says that the Gerson diet is "not supported by convincing evidence". Research comparing the retrospective survival rates of cancer patients on the diet - which involves eating lots of organic fruit and vegetables and having coffee enemas - apparently found that the Gerson dieters lived longer.
However, Prof Ernst said that the methodology was too flawed to allow any
firm conclusions.
"Not everything that is natural is risk-free," he said. "People should use their common sense and think twice about the motives of these websites."
Prof Ernst said that patients should ask complementary health practitioners for proof of their experience and find out whether they have insurance if should something go wrong.
He added that GPs were often uninformed about the potential risk of complementary treatments, especially with regard to their interaction with conventional medicines.
In a survey he conducted of 2,600 patients prescribed the blood-thinning drug warfarin, he found that 9%were also taking herbal medicines which could interfere with the drug.
GPs and pharmacists needed better training in complementary medicine, he said.
Prof Ernst said that the public needed to be made aware of the lack of scientific evidence to back up the claims of most complementary therapies. "One way forward would be to flag up these websites for patients, because how is a patient going to
know this is reliable and this is not reliable?" he said.
Government agencies or cancer organisations could even vet health sites to help patients.
What did you think of this article? Mail your responses to life@guardian.co.uk
and include your name and address.
Special reports Medicine and health
Useful links
British Medical Association
Department of Health
General Medical Council
Health on the Net Foundation
Institute of Cancer Research
Medical Research Council
NHS Direct
World Health Organisation
http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/news/story/0,12976,1275125,00.html
Warning to patients on cancer therapies
Alternative 'cures' on internet put thousands at risk, says scientist
Alok Jha, science correspondent
Tuesday August 3, 2004
The Guardian
Misleading advice on complementary therapy available on the internet is putting thousands of cancer patients at risk, according to a leading scientist.
Professor Edzard Ernst, of the Peninsula Medical School at Exeter University, holds the UK's only chair in complementary medicine. He told a press briefing yesterday that patients need to exercise more caution when looking for information on the web.
"If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is," he said. "Don't believe ridiculous claims."
Prof Ernst said that there had even been cases reported of cancer patients
dying as a result of using complementary therapies promoted on the internet.
His team at Exeter analysed 32 of the most popular websites giving advice and information on a range of complementary therapies to treat cancer. Between them, they receive tens of thousands of hits a day. He concluded that a "significant proportion" of the sites were a risk to cancer patients. The study was published
recently in the Annals of Oncology.
"This was to us quite an eye-opener and pretty scary stuff," he said. "We found that between these 30-odd sites, 118 different cancer "cures" were recommended: complementary treatment which claimed to be able to cure cancer. None of these 118 can be demonstrated to cure cancer."
Three websites fell into the highest risk categories because they overtly discouraged patients from using conventional cancer treatments such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
The sites - heall.com and healthy.net, based in the USA, and worldwidehealthcenter.net, based in the UK and Cyprus, were judged to offer
advice potentially harmful to patients.
Heall.com offers customers a way of "balancing the human electrical system" by taking the nutritional supplements it sells. Yesterday at healthy.net, an article justifying the use of complementary techniques for cancer treatment said: "It is clear that humans are a complex interplay of physical and metaphysical forces.
As humans become more spiritual or metaphysical, we tend to transcend physical laws. Hence, the ultimate cancer cure may come from this relatively untapped area of healing."
Two examples of bogus cancer treatments were shark cartilage and laertrial, a chemical which can be made from almonds or the stones of apricots, cherries or peaches. Demand for ground-up shark fins has been so high as a result of its perceived health benefits that the trade has brought two species of shark close to extinction, said Prof Ernst. There was "not a shred of evidence" that it
helped cure patients.
Prof Ernst also says that the Gerson diet is "not supported by convincing evidence". Research comparing the retrospective survival rates of cancer patients on the diet - which involves eating lots of organic fruit and vegetables and having coffee enemas - apparently found that the Gerson dieters lived longer.
However, Prof Ernst said that the methodology was too flawed to allow any
firm conclusions.
"Not everything that is natural is risk-free," he said. "People should use their common sense and think twice about the motives of these websites."
Prof Ernst said that patients should ask complementary health practitioners for proof of their experience and find out whether they have insurance if should something go wrong.
He added that GPs were often uninformed about the potential risk of complementary treatments, especially with regard to their interaction with conventional medicines.
In a survey he conducted of 2,600 patients prescribed the blood-thinning drug warfarin, he found that 9%were also taking herbal medicines which could interfere with the drug.
GPs and pharmacists needed better training in complementary medicine, he said.
Prof Ernst said that the public needed to be made aware of the lack of scientific evidence to back up the claims of most complementary therapies. "One way forward would be to flag up these websites for patients, because how is a patient going to
know this is reliable and this is not reliable?" he said.
Government agencies or cancer organisations could even vet health sites to help patients.
What did you think of this article? Mail your responses to life@guardian.co.uk
and include your name and address.
Special reports Medicine and health
Useful links
British Medical Association
Department of Health
General Medical Council
Health on the Net Foundation
Institute of Cancer Research
Medical Research Council
NHS Direct
World Health Organisation
07/31/04
fighting words
Unfairenheit 9/11
The lies of Michael Moore.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, June 21, 2004
One of the many problems with the American left, and indeed of the American
left, has been its image and self-image as something rather too solemn,
mirthless, herbivorous, dull, monochrome, righteous, and boring. How many
times, in my old days at The Nation magazine, did I hear wistful and
semienvious ruminations? Where was the radical Firing Line show? Who will
be our Rush Limbaugh? I used privately to hope that the emphasis, if the
comrades ever got around to it, would be on the first of those and not the
second. But the meetings themselves were so mind-numbing and lugubrious
that I thought the danger of success on either front was infinitely slight.
Nonetheless, it seems that an answer to this long-felt need is finally
beginning to emerge. I exempt Al Franken's unintentionally funny Air
America network, to which I gave a couple of interviews in its early days.
There, one could hear the reassuring noise of collapsing scenery and
tripped-over wires and be reminded once again that correct politics and
smooth media presentation are not even distant cousins. With Michael
Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, however, an entirely new note has been struck.
Here we glimpse a possible fusion between the turgid routines of MoveOn.org
and the filmic standards, if not exactly the filmic skills, of Sergei
Eisenstein or Leni Riefenstahl.
To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote
those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a
piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never
again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile
crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister
exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in
seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking
itself as a demonstration of "dissenting" bravery.
In late 2002, almost a year after the al-Qaida assault on American society,
I had an onstage debate with Michael Moore at the Telluride Film Festival.
In the course of this exchange, he stated his view that Osama Bin Laden
should be considered innocent until proven guilty. This was, he said, the
American way. The intervention in Afghanistan, he maintained, had been at
least to that extent unjustified. Something - I cannot guess what, since
we knew as much then as we do now - has since apparently persuaded Moore
that Osama Bin Laden is as guilty as hell. Indeed, Osama is suddenly so
guilty and so all-powerful that any other discussion of any other topic is
a dangerous "distraction" from the fight against him. I believe that I
understand the convenience of this late conversion.
Fahrenheit 9/11 makes the following points about Bin Laden and about
Afghanistan, and makes them in this order:
1) The Bin Laden family (if not exactly Osama himself) had a close if
convoluted business relationship with the Bush family, through the Carlyle
Group.
2) Saudi capital in general is a very large element of foreign investment
in the United States.
3) The Unocal company in Texas had been willing to discuss a gas pipeline
across Afghanistan with the Taliban, as had other vested interests.
4) The Bush administration sent far too few ground troops to Afghanistan
and thus allowed far too many Taliban and al-Qaida members to escape.
5) The Afghan government, in supporting the coalition in Iraq, was purely
risible in that its non-army was purely American.
6) The American lives lost in Afghanistan have been wasted. (This I divine
from the fact that this supposedly "antiwar" film is dedicated ruefully to
all those killed there, as well as in Iraq.)
It must be evident to anyone, despite the rapid-fire way in which
Moore's direction eases the audience hastily past the contradictions, that
these discrepant scatter shots do not cohere at any point. Either the
Saudis run U.S. policy (through family ties or overwhelming economic
interest), or they do not. As allies and patrons of the Taliban regime,
they either opposed Bush's removal of it, or they did not. (They opposed
the removal, all right: They wouldn't even let Tony Blair land his own
plane on their soil at the time of the operation.) Either we sent too
many troops, or were wrong to send any at all - the latter was Moore's
view as late as 2002 - or we sent too few. If we were going to make sure
no Taliban or al-Qaida forces survived or escaped, we would have had to be
more ruthless than I suspect that Mr. Moore is really recommending. And
these are simply observations on what is "in" the film. If we turn to the
facts that are deliberately left out, we discover that there is an emerging
Afghan army, that the country is now a joint NATO responsibility and thus
under the protection of the broadest military alliance in history, that it
has a new constitution and is preparing against hellish odds to hold a
general election, and that at least a million and a half of its former
refugees have opted to return. I don't think a pipeline is being
constructed yet, not that Afghanistan couldn't do with a pipeline. But a
highway from Kabul to Kandahar - an insurance against warlordism and a
condition of nation-building - is nearing completion with infinite labor
and risk. We also discover that the parties of the Afghan secular left -
like the parties of the Iraqi secular left - are strongly in favor of the
regime change. But this is not the sort of irony in which Moore chooses to
deal.
He prefers leaden sarcasm to irony and, indeed, may not appreciate the
distinction. In a long and paranoid (and tedious) section at the opening of
the film, he makes heavy innuendoes about the flights that took members of
the Bin Laden family out of the country after Sept. 11. I banged on about
this myself at the time and wrote a Nation column drawing attention to the
groveling Larry King interview with the insufferable Prince Bandar, which
Moore excerpts. However, recent developments have not been kind to our
Mike. In the interval between Moore's triumph at Cannes and the release of
the film in the United States, the 9/11 commission has found nothing to
complain of in the timing or arrangement of the flights. And Richard
Clarke, Bush's former chief of counterterrorism, has come forward to say
that he, and he alone, took the responsibility for authorizing those Saudi
departures. This might not matter so much to the ethos of Fahrenheit 9/11,
except that - as you might expect - Clarke is presented throughout as
the brow-furrowed ethical hero of the entire post-9/11 moment. And it does
not seem very likely that, in his open admission about the Bin Laden family
evacuation, Clarke is taking a fall, or a spear in the chest, for the Bush
administration. So, that's another bust for this windy and bloated
cinematic "key to all mythologies."
A film that bases itself on a big lie and a big misrepresentation can only
sustain itself by a dizzying succession of smaller falsehoods, beefed up by
wilder and (if possible) yet more-contradictory claims. President Bush is
accused of taking too many lazy vacations. (What is that about, by the
way? Isn't he supposed to be an unceasing planner for future aggressive
wars?) But the shot of him "relaxing at Camp David" shows him side by side
with Tony Blair. I say "shows," even though this photograph is on-screen
so briefly that if you sneeze or blink, you won't recognize the other
figure. A meeting with the prime minister of the United Kingdom, or at
least with this prime minister, is not a goof-off.
The president is also captured in a well-worn TV news clip, on a golf
course, making a boilerplate response to a question on terrorism and then
asking the reporters to watch his drive. Well, that's what you get if you
catch the president on a golf course. If Eisenhower had done this, as he
often did, it would have been presented as calm statesmanship. If Clinton
had done it, as he often did, it would have shown his charm. More
interesting is the moment where Bush is shown frozen on his chair at the
infant school in Florida, looking stunned and useless for seven whole
minutes after the news of the second plane on 9/11. Many are those who say
that he should have leaped from his stool, adopted a Russell Crowe stance,
and gone to work. I could even wish that myself. But if he had done any
such thing then (as he did with his "Let's roll" and "dead or alive"
remarks a month later), half the Michael Moore community would now be
calling him a man who went to war on a hectic, crazed impulse. The other
half would be saying what they already say - that he knew the attack was
coming, was using it to cement himself in power, and couldn't wait to get
on with his coup. This is the line taken by Gore Vidal and by a scandalous
recent book that also revives the charge of FDR's collusion over Pearl
Harbor. At least Moore's film should put the shameful purveyors of that
last theory back in their paranoid box.
But it won't because it encourages their half-baked fantasies in so many
other ways. We are introduced to Iraq, "a sovereign nation." (In fact,
Iraq's "sovereignty" was heavily qualified by international sanctions,
however questionable, which reflected its noncompliance with important U.N.
resolutions.) In this peaceable kingdom, according to Moore's
flabbergasting choice of film shots, children are flying little kites,
shoppers are smiling in the sunshine, and the gentle rhythms of life are
undisturbed. Then - wham! From the night sky come the terror weapons of
American imperialism. Watching the clips Moore uses, and recalling them
well, I can recognize various Saddam palaces and military and police
centers getting the treatment. But these sites are not identified as such.
In fact, I don't think Al Jazeera would, on a bad day, have transmitted
anything so utterly propagandistic. You would also be led to think that
the term "civilian casualty" had not even been in the Iraqi vocabulary
until March 2003. I remember asking Moore at Telluride if he was or was not
a pacifist. He would not give a straight answer then, and he doesn't now,
either. I'll just say that the "insurgent" side is presented in this film
as justifiably outraged, whereas the 30-year record of Baathist war crimes
and repression and aggression is not mentioned once. (Actually, that's not
quite right. It is briefly mentioned but only, and smarmily, because of
the bad period when Washington preferred Saddam to the likewise unmentioned
Ayatollah Khomeini.)
That this - his pro-American moment - was the worst Moore could
possibly say of Saddam's depravity is further suggested by some astonishing
falsifications. Moore asserts that Iraq under Saddam had never attacked or
killed or even threatened (his words) any American. I never quite know
whether Moore is as ignorant as he looks, or even if that would be humanly
possible. Baghdad was for years the official, undisguised home address of
Abu Nidal, then the most-wanted gangster in the world, who had been
sentenced to death even by the PLO and had blown up airports in Vienna* and
Rome. Baghdad was the safe house for the man whose "operation" murdered
Leon Klinghoffer. Saddam boasted publicly of his financial sponsorship of
suicide bombers in Israel. (Quite a few Americans of all denominations
walk the streets of Jerusalem.) In 1991, a large number of Western
hostages were taken by the hideous Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and held in
terrible conditions for a long time. After that same invasion was repelled
- Saddam having killed quite a few Americans and Egyptians and Syrians and
Brits in the meantime and having threatened to kill many more - the Iraqi
secret police were caught trying to murder former President Bush during his
visit to Kuwait. Never mind whether his son should take that personally.
(Though why should he not?) Should you and I not resent any foreign
dictatorship that attempts to kill one of our retired chief executives?
(President Clinton certainly took it that way: He ordered the destruction
by cruise missiles of the Baathist "security" headquarters.) Iraqi forces
fired, every day, for 10 years, on the aircraft that patrolled the no-fly
zones and staved off further genocide in the north and south of the
country. In 1993, a certain Mr. Yasin helped mix the chemicals for the
bomb at the World Trade Center and then skipped to Iraq, where he remained
a guest of the state until the overthrow of Saddam. In 2001, Saddam's
regime was the only one in the region that openly celebrated the attacks on
New York and Washington and described them as just the beginning of a
larger revenge. Its official media regularly spewed out a stream of
anti-Semitic incitement. I think one might describe that as "threatening,"
even if one was narrow enough to think that anti-Semitism only menaces
Jews. And it was after, and not before, the 9/11 attacks that Abu Mussab
al-Zarqawi moved from Afghanistan to Baghdad and began to plan his now very
open and lethal design for a holy and ethnic civil war. On Dec. 1, 2003,
the New York Times reported’Äîand the David Kay report had
established’Äîthat Saddam had been secretly negotiating with the "Dear
Leader" Kim Jong-il in a series of secret meetings in Syria, as late as the
spring of 2003, to buy a North Korean missile system, and
missile-production system, right off the shelf. (This attempt was not
uncovered until after the fall of Baghdad, the coalition's presence having
meanwhile put an end to the negotiations.)
Thus, in spite of the film's loaded bias against the work of the mind, you
can grasp even while watching it that Michael Moore has just said, in so
many words, the one thing that no reflective or informed person can
possibly believe: that Saddam Hussein was no problem. No problem at all.
Now look again at the facts I have cited above. If these things had been
allowed to happen under any other administration, you can be sure that
Moore and others would now glibly be accusing the president of ignoring, or
of having ignored, some fairly unmistakable "warnings."
The same "let's have it both ways" opportunism infects his treatment of
another very serious subject, namely domestic counterterrorist policy. From
being accused of overlooking too many warnings’Äînot exactly an original
point’Äîthe administration is now lavishly taunted for issuing too many.
(Would there not have been "fear" if the harbingers of 9/11 had been taken
seriously?) We are shown some American civilians who have had absurd
encounters with idiotic "security" staff. (Have you ever met anyone who
can't tell such a story?) Then we are immediately shown underfunded police
departments that don't have the means or the manpower to do any
stop-and-search: a power suddenly demanded by Moore on their behalf that we
know by definition would at least lead to some ridiculous interrogations.
Finally, Moore complains that there isn't enough intrusion and confiscation
at airports and says that it is appalling that every air traveler is not
forcibly relieved of all matches and lighters. (Cue mood music for sinister
influence of Big Tobacco.) So - he wants even more pocket-rummaging by
airport officials? Uh, no, not exactly. But by this stage, who's
counting? Moore is having it three ways and asserting everything and
nothing. Again - simply not serious.
Circling back to where we began, why did Moore's evil Saudis not join "the
Coalition of the Willing"? Why instead did they force the United States to
switch its regional military headquarters to Qatar? If the Bush family and
the al-Saud dynasty live in each other's pockets, as is alleged in a sort
of vulgar sub-Brechtian scene with Arab headdresses replacing top hats,
then how come the most reactionary regime in the region has been powerless
to stop Bush from demolishing its clone in Kabul and its buffer regime in
Baghdad? The Saudis hate, as they did in 1991, the idea that Iraq's
recuperated oil industry might challenge their near-monopoly. They fear
the liberation of the Shiite Muslims they so despise. To make these
elementary points is to collapse the whole pathetic edifice of the film's
"theory." Perhaps Moore prefers the pro-Saudi Kissinger/Scowcroft plan for
the Middle East, where stability trumps every other consideration and where
one dare not upset the local house of cards, or killing-field of Kurds?
This would be a strange position for a purported radical. Then again,
perhaps he does not take this conservative line because his real pitch is
not to any audience member with a serious interest in foreign policy. It is
to the provincial isolationist.
I have already said that Moore's film has the staunch courage to mock Bush
for his verbal infelicity. Yet it's much, much braver than that. From
Fahrenheit 9/11 you can glean even more astounding and hidden disclosures,
such as the capitalist nature of American society, the existence of
Eisenhower's "military-industrial complex," and the use of "spin" in the
presentation of our politicians. It's high time someone had the nerve to
point this out. There's more. Poor people often volunteer to join the
army, and some of them are duskier than others. Betcha didn't know that.
Back in Flint, Mich., Moore feels on safe ground. There are no martyred
rabbits this time. Instead, it's the poor and black who shoulder the packs
and rifles and march away. I won't dwell on the fact that black Americans
have fought for almost a century and a half, from insisting on their right
to join the U.S. Army and fight in the Civil War to the right to have a
desegregated Army that set the pace for post-1945 civil rights. I'll
merely ask this: In the film, Moore says loudly and repeatedly that not
enough troops were sent to garrison Afghanistan and Iraq. (This is now a
favorite cleverness of those who were, in the first place, against sending
any soldiers at all.) Well, where does he think those needful heroes and
heroines would have come from? Does he favor a draft’Äîthe most statist and
oppressive solution? Does he think that only hapless and gullible proles
sign up for the Marines? Does he think’Äîas he seems to suggest’Äîthat
parents can "send" their children, as he stupidly asks elected members of
Congress to do? Would he have abandoned Gettysburg because the Union
allowed civilians to pay proxies to serve in their place? Would he have
supported the antidraft (and very antiblack) riots against Lincoln in New
York? After a point, one realizes that it's a waste of time asking him
questions of this sort. It would be too much like taking him seriously.
He'll just try anything once and see if it floats or flies or gets a cheer.
Indeed, Moore's affected and ostentatious concern for black America is one
of the most suspect ingredients of his pitch package. In a recent
interview, he yelled that if the hijacked civilians of 9/11 had been black,
they would have fought back, unlike the stupid and presumably cowardly
white men and women (and children). Never mind for now how many black
passengers were on those planes’Äîwe happen to know what Moore does not
care to mention: that Todd Beamer and a few of his co-passengers, shouting
"Let's roll," rammed the hijackers with a trolley, fought them tooth and
nail, and helped bring down a United Airlines plane, in Pennsylvania, that
was speeding toward either the White House or the Capitol. There are no
words for real, impromptu bravery like that, which helped save our republic
from worse than actually befell. The Pennsylvania drama also reminds one of
the self-evident fact that this war is not fought only "overseas" or in
uniform, but is being brought to our cities. Yet Moore is a silly and shady
man who does not recognize courage of any sort even when he sees it because
he cannot summon it in himself. To him, easy applause, in front of
credulous audiences, is everything.
Moore has announced that he won't even appear on TV shows where he might
face hostile questioning. I notice from the New York Times of June 20 that
he has pompously established a rapid response team, and a fact-checking
staff, and some tough lawyers, to bulwark himself against attack. He'll
sue, Moore says, if anyone insults him or his pet. Some right-wing hack
groups, I gather, are planning to bring pressure on their local movie
theaters to drop the film. How dumb or thuggish do you have to be in order
to counter one form of stupidity and cowardice with another? By all means
go and see this terrible film, and take your friends, and if the fools in
the audience strike up one cry, in favor of surrender or defeat, feel free
to join in the conversation.
However, I think we can agree that the film is so flat-out phony that
"fact-checking" is beside the point. And as for the scary lawyers - get a
life, or maybe see me in court. But I offer this, to Moore and to his
rapid response rabble. Any time, Michael my boy. Let's redo Telluride.
Any show. Any place. Any platform. Let's see what you're made of.
Some people soothingly say that one should relax about all this. It's only
a movie. No biggie. It's no worse than the tomfoolery of Oliver Stone.
It's kick-ass entertainment. It might even help get out "the youth vote."
Yeah, well, I have myself written and presented about a dozen low-budget
made-for-TV documentaries, on subjects as various as Mother Teresa and Bill
Clinton and the Cyprus crisis, and I also helped produce a slightly more
polished one on Henry Kissinger that was shown in movie theaters. So I
know, thanks, before you tell me, that a documentary must have a "POV" or
point of view and that it must also impose a narrative line. But if you
leave out absolutely everything that might give your "narrative" a problem
and throw in any old rubbish that might support it, and you don't even care
that one bit of that rubbish flatly contradicts the next bit, and you give
no chance to those who might differ, then you have betrayed your craft. If
you flatter and fawn upon your potential audience, I might add, you are
patronizing them and insulting them. By the same token, if I write an
article and I quote somebody and for space reasons put in an ellipsis like
this (’Ķ), I swear on my children that I am not leaving out anything that,
if quoted in full, would alter the original meaning or its significance.
Those who violate this pact with readers or viewers are to be despised. At
no point does Michael Moore make the smallest effort to be objective. At no
moment does he pass up the chance of a cheap sneer or a jeer. He pitilessly
focuses his camera, for minutes after he should have turned it off, on a
distraught and bereaved mother whose grief we have already shared. (But
then, this is the guy who thought it so clever and amusing to catch
Charlton Heston, in Bowling for Columbine, at the onset of his senile
dementia.) Such courage.
Perhaps vaguely aware that his movie so completely lacks gravitas, Moore
concludes with a sonorous reading of some words from George Orwell. The
words are taken from 1984 and consist of a third-person analysis of a
hypothetical, endless, and contrived war between three superpowers. The
clear intention, as clumsily excerpted like this (...) is to suggest that
there is no moral distinction between the United States, the Taliban, and
the Baath Party and that the war against jihad is about nothing. If Moore
had studied a bit more, or at all, he could have read Orwell really saying,
and in his own voice, the following:
The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are
simply humanitarians who object to taking life and prefer not to follow
their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual
pacifists, whose real though unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of
western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda
usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if
one looks closely at the writing of the younger intellectual pacifists, one
finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are
directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States.
And that's just from Orwell's Notes on Nationalism in May 1945. A short
word of advice: In general, it's highly unwise to quote Orwell if you are
already way out of your depth on the question of moral equivalence. It's
also incautious to remind people of Orwell if you are engaged in a
sophomoric celluloid rewriting of recent history.
If Michael Moore had had his way, Slobodan Milosevic would still be the big
man in a starved and tyrannical Serbia. Bosnia and Kosovo would have been
cleansed and annexed. If Michael Moore had been listened to, Afghanistan
would still be under Taliban rule, and Kuwait would have remained part of
Iraq. And Iraq itself would still be the personal property of a
psychopathic crime family, bargaining covertly with the slave state of
North Korea for WMD. You might hope that a retrospective awareness of this
kind would induce a little modesty. To the contrary, it is employed to
pump air into one of the great sagging blimps of our sorry, mediocre,
celeb-rotten culture. Rock the vote, indeed.
Correction, June 22, 2004: This piece originally referred to terrorist
attacks by Abu Nidal's group on the Munich and Rome airports. The 1985
attacks occurred at the Rome and Vienna airports. (Return to the corrected
sentence.)
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair. His latest book,
Blood, Class and Empire: The Enduring Anglo-American Relationship, is out
in paperback.
Article URL:
07/13/04
>Please realise it's important to avoid unattractive cheap, simple solutions.
I do, I do - a depressing reality I saw decades ago. All my
inventions have been cheap & simple, and have been scorned by a
surprisingly wide range of people who appear to suppose they're too good to
be true.
>If you proposed a photo-electric setup covering hundreds of km2 of the
>Sahara and producing H2 by electrolysis, the product then shipped to NZ in
>giant tankers travelling via the North-West Passage - you might get an
>audience.
Good concept - not only GNP but also the even more precious
International Trade would be increased ... Bechtel could be involved,
plus World Bank, in league with Fletchers or successor NZ favourites ...
could get you a CNZM or such ...
R
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Robt Mann"
>To:
>Sent: Wednesday, July 14, 2004 3:42 PM
>Subject: MannGram®: better ideas than nuclear reactors
>
>MannGram®: better ideas than nuclear reactors
>
>July 2004
>
>Since the Royal Commission on Nuclear Power put paid to the NZED's
>nuclear programme at the end of the 1970s, nobody of any significance has
>tried to revive it.
>Nuclear fission reactors, not only power stations but also the
>marine reactors which are 10^2 x smaller, were excluded from New Zealand by
>a policy, originated by me 3 decade ago, enacted into law in the otherwise
>disastrous Lange period, and finally adopted 1 decade ago by even the more
>conservative main party (National).
>Just lately Westinghouse agents working thru the actor Holmes®, and
>ignorant professor Kearsley, have revived the silly Bob Jones idea of
>nuclear power stations for NZ. And the National party has been toying with
>the confused notion that letting nuclear-powered warships into our harbours
>again would buy some favour from the USA.
>Suppose Kearsley's stupid idea were adopted. The trend in nuclear
>power stations before orders almost ceased was to stations as powerful as
>Huntly (1000 MW max power into the grid). But a desperate mfr or
>entreprenurial architect/builder e.g Bechtel might agree to do one as small
>as the original NZED plan: 600 MW. The Westinghouse reactor nearly
>completed a decade ago in the Philippines might even be available cheap.
>Anyhow, let's assume a "standard" Huntly-size nuclear power station were
>ordered to supply Auckland as best it could. It would connect to the grid
>at least as far away as the old NZED favourite sites on the Kaipara
>harbour. The Royal Commission was told by the pro-nuclear experts of DSIR
>that if a nuclear power station that far from Auckland melted itself, under
>certain weather conditions the plume of radioactive debris would render
>unfit for export all the principle meat & dairy exports of Taranaki. What
>the radioactive cloud would do to Auckland early in this journey was not
>discussed.
>Perhaps Transpower's concepts for new 400,000-volt transmission
>facilities would enable transmission losses to be as low as 5% for a 1000MW
>station that near to Auckland. But anyhow the station would cost several
>billions of dollars to build. Mere interest during the decade of
>construction would exceed the total capital costs of the superior
>solar-thermal systems which should be preferred. Fuel would all be
>imported. Who would take care of the dangerous, highly radioactive spent
>fuel? Spanner-faced harpies in white overalls might blockade such
>dangerous exports. One way & another, any nuclear power station +
>infrastructure in NZ would spell trouble.
>Capital for nukes is so many times higher than the alternatives
>that nukes are run as hard as possible - 'base-loaded' - so that a
>'good' nuclear station is expected to achieve a capacity factor of 80% in a
>normal year. The station labelled 1000MW is thus expected to average only
>800MW. Many nukes in the USA and elsewhere have achieved only half that
>capacity factor. Some have suffered complete breakdowns for years (while
>paying off the capital continues). Staff may perform interesting,
>dangerous experiments on reactors in 'shut down' condition, provoking
>surges of energy that melt much of the fuel, kill many people, contaminate
>land hundreds of km away, write off the $4billion capital, and compel large
>expenditure on gestures of decontamination. Even if all staff follow the
>rules, complex control systems can lead to unanticipated belches of
>radioactivity. And the same haters & wreckers who have threatened on
>national TV to burn down public forests could readily threaten crippling
>sabotage. Concentrating dangerous materials so extremely is foolish,
>compared with using all suitable roofs as solar water-heaters and solar
>air-conditioners, whose useful energy yield would be similar, more
>reliable, and unuseful to terrorists.
>
>Let us compare Kearsley's "there is no reason why Auckland's power
>supply should not be derived from nuclear power" with the strategy of
>installing solar aircond on all suitable houses in the Auckland region.
>
>Two Ways to provide 500,000 Houses with a few kW heating
>
>Nuclear Solar direct
>
>power 1000 MW - 5% losses " 2000 MW
>
>capital "$4000 M $1000 M
>
>operation,
>maintenance >$100M/y < $10M/y
>
>other benefits NIL anti-asthma (etc) air filtering
>dehumidifying >2kW equiv.
>summer day cooling
>summer night cosmic cooling
>lower in-house noise (windows all closed)
>
>drawbacks bulk negligible
well that table was well & truly buggered wasn't it?!
>The O&M costs of nuclear are hard to foretell. They include not only
>imported nuclear fuel and fees for foreign handling of spent fuel but
>also numerous subsidies - expanded National Radiation Lab & other
>bureaucracies, many overseas tours & conferences, anti-terrorist
>operations, etc.
>
>The running costs of the solar aircond are around $1/wk (¾ 0.1kW mains
>power). Filter cleaning & changing averages ca.$15/y. Several kW of
>useful energy, and other benefits not available nearly so cheaply by any
>other known technology, are provided safely.
>
>The alternative implied by the Jones/Kearsley/Leyland alliance
>would achieve heating, drying & ventilation by many kW of mains power used
>in refrigeration-cycle dehumidifiers, resistance heaters, hi-capital
>refrigeration-cycle heat pumps for cooling & heating, etc. - consuming
>1-2 orders of magnitude more mains electricity at much higher costs for
>householders in capital and running costs. To produce 1 GW mains power,
>most of the time - that is the most a nuke could aim to do. Fission is a
>rotten way to produce mains electricity. The Royal Commission chaired by
>Sir Thaddeus McCarthy made the defects of nuclear power sufficiently clear
>that the NZED nuclear section was shut down. (Unfortunately, some of them
>were then put onto wind-power, for which they had little enthusiasm. This
>was an unfair way to handicap wind-power R&D. The late P W Blakeley CBE was
>not a good loser; I suspect he was deliberately handicapping non-nuclear
>R&D.)
>Any additions to the NZ grid that might be justified - on figures
>we have yet to see - should be wind, for at least the next GW: a couple
>thousand dispersed windmills, installed progressively as need arises, not
>absorbing money & energy for a decade before delivering any electricity.
>Wind power blends into the existing NZ grid incomparably better than
>nuclear. But Kearsley wouldn't know.
>
>Another mature solar-thermal technology I've been testing for 12 y
>is solar water-heating (SWH). Current commercial SWH e.g Thermocell are
>economic, but mine is more so because it's built in situ, obviating the
>factory and much freight & packaging, but needing little more labour than
>the mere installation of factory-made panels. Also it is particularly
>cheap at the margin of a given installation, allowing 6-8 sw m of panel
>which is the roof for that area, whereas panels made overseas cost more
>before installation than my whole system up & running.
>6-8 sq m of SWH will deliver 2-3kW of water-heating during much of
>the day. Official economic analyses 2 decade ago showed SWH to be a good
>investment. My cheaper type makes it yet more attractive - and the price
>of electricity has gone up in the meantime owing to Max Bradford's crazy
>sabotage.
>Nuclear fan Al Poletti once attacked me in a public mtg for saying
>thorough deployment of SWH would substitute for a GW of power stations.
>The main figure still lacking to resolve that argument is the reticulation
>losses. The question is, how much of the kWh that left the power station
>reaches the HW cylinder (where the element then achieves 100% conversion to
>heat). Transmission (long-range high-voltage) losses in NZ average around
>10%; electricity stepped down to consumer voltages for local reticulation
>is wasted in unintended heating of cables, to an extent that has never been
>properly measured. Capital in reticulation is several times that in
>transmission, but that is not a good guide to operational losses. I have
>asked A. Lovins' nerds but no answer. I assume 10% while suspecting the
>true figure is considerably higher.
>Then a "1000 MW" nuke achieving the hoped-for 800 MW avg into the
>grid will deliver to WH ca.640 MW. Compare 2 kW SWH within each of 500,000
>houses! We are talking higher power from solar! But this will be for only
>ca.1/4 of the time, averaging therefore ca.250MW. This is considerably
>less than the nuke can deliver. On the other hand, some weighting for the
>much higher reliability of SWH should be assigned.
>
>I invented these two solar-thermal systems in the late 1980s and
>was soon denied time (by a cttee including my friend Art Williamson prop.
>Thermocell®) to expound their potentials within a Solar Action confab at
>Auckland. By 1994 my preliminary results were presented at an engineering
>confab and approved by Prof Williamson among the small minority of papers
>published in an engineering journal. I am no longer uninvolved
>commercially as I was for the many years of R&D. These are mature
>technologies, ready for deployment, and vastly better than nuclear power.
>I I challenge Dean Kearsley to a public debate on nuclear power &
>alternatives. If he declines or not, in any case I say he should quit the
>chair on the ground that he has written public disreputable advocacy of
>technology both dangerous & extravagant. Worse, he's engaging in unfair
>competition with my commercial dreams ... ;-}
I do, I do - a depressing reality I saw decades ago. All my
inventions have been cheap & simple, and have been scorned by a
surprisingly wide range of people who appear to suppose they're too good to
be true.
>If you proposed a photo-electric setup covering hundreds of km2 of the
>Sahara and producing H2 by electrolysis, the product then shipped to NZ in
>giant tankers travelling via the North-West Passage - you might get an
>audience.
Good concept - not only GNP but also the even more precious
International Trade would be increased ... Bechtel could be involved,
plus World Bank, in league with Fletchers or successor NZ favourites ...
could get you a CNZM or such ...
R
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Robt Mann"
>To:
>Sent: Wednesday, July 14, 2004 3:42 PM
>Subject: MannGram®: better ideas than nuclear reactors
>
>MannGram®: better ideas than nuclear reactors
>
>July 2004
>
>Since the Royal Commission on Nuclear Power put paid to the NZED's
>nuclear programme at the end of the 1970s, nobody of any significance has
>tried to revive it.
>Nuclear fission reactors, not only power stations but also the
>marine reactors which are 10^2 x smaller, were excluded from New Zealand by
>a policy, originated by me 3 decade ago, enacted into law in the otherwise
>disastrous Lange period, and finally adopted 1 decade ago by even the more
>conservative main party (National).
>Just lately Westinghouse agents working thru the actor Holmes®, and
>ignorant professor Kearsley, have revived the silly Bob Jones idea of
>nuclear power stations for NZ. And the National party has been toying with
>the confused notion that letting nuclear-powered warships into our harbours
>again would buy some favour from the USA.
>Suppose Kearsley's stupid idea were adopted. The trend in nuclear
>power stations before orders almost ceased was to stations as powerful as
>Huntly (1000 MW max power into the grid). But a desperate mfr or
>entreprenurial architect/builder e.g Bechtel might agree to do one as small
>as the original NZED plan: 600 MW. The Westinghouse reactor nearly
>completed a decade ago in the Philippines might even be available cheap.
>Anyhow, let's assume a "standard" Huntly-size nuclear power station were
>ordered to supply Auckland as best it could. It would connect to the grid
>at least as far away as the old NZED favourite sites on the Kaipara
>harbour. The Royal Commission was told by the pro-nuclear experts of DSIR
>that if a nuclear power station that far from Auckland melted itself, under
>certain weather conditions the plume of radioactive debris would render
>unfit for export all the principle meat & dairy exports of Taranaki. What
>the radioactive cloud would do to Auckland early in this journey was not
>discussed.
>Perhaps Transpower's concepts for new 400,000-volt transmission
>facilities would enable transmission losses to be as low as 5% for a 1000MW
>station that near to Auckland. But anyhow the station would cost several
>billions of dollars to build. Mere interest during the decade of
>construction would exceed the total capital costs of the superior
>solar-thermal systems which should be preferred. Fuel would all be
>imported. Who would take care of the dangerous, highly radioactive spent
>fuel? Spanner-faced harpies in white overalls might blockade such
>dangerous exports. One way & another, any nuclear power station +
>infrastructure in NZ would spell trouble.
>Capital for nukes is so many times higher than the alternatives
>that nukes are run as hard as possible - 'base-loaded' - so that a
>'good' nuclear station is expected to achieve a capacity factor of 80% in a
>normal year. The station labelled 1000MW is thus expected to average only
>800MW. Many nukes in the USA and elsewhere have achieved only half that
>capacity factor. Some have suffered complete breakdowns for years (while
>paying off the capital continues). Staff may perform interesting,
>dangerous experiments on reactors in 'shut down' condition, provoking
>surges of energy that melt much of the fuel, kill many people, contaminate
>land hundreds of km away, write off the $4billion capital, and compel large
>expenditure on gestures of decontamination. Even if all staff follow the
>rules, complex control systems can lead to unanticipated belches of
>radioactivity. And the same haters & wreckers who have threatened on
>national TV to burn down public forests could readily threaten crippling
>sabotage. Concentrating dangerous materials so extremely is foolish,
>compared with using all suitable roofs as solar water-heaters and solar
>air-conditioners, whose useful energy yield would be similar, more
>reliable, and unuseful to terrorists.
>
>Let us compare Kearsley's "there is no reason why Auckland's power
>supply should not be derived from nuclear power" with the strategy of
>installing solar aircond on all suitable houses in the Auckland region.
>
>Two Ways to provide 500,000 Houses with a few kW heating
>
>Nuclear Solar direct
>
>power 1000 MW - 5% losses " 2000 MW
>
>capital "$4000 M $1000 M
>
>operation,
>maintenance >$100M/y < $10M/y
>
>other benefits NIL anti-asthma (etc) air filtering
>dehumidifying >2kW equiv.
>summer day cooling
>summer night cosmic cooling
>lower in-house noise (windows all closed)
>
>drawbacks bulk negligible
well that table was well & truly buggered wasn't it?!
>The O&M costs of nuclear are hard to foretell. They include not only
>imported nuclear fuel and fees for foreign handling of spent fuel but
>also numerous subsidies - expanded National Radiation Lab & other
>bureaucracies, many overseas tours & conferences, anti-terrorist
>operations, etc.
>
>The running costs of the solar aircond are around $1/wk (¾ 0.1kW mains
>power). Filter cleaning & changing averages ca.$15/y. Several kW of
>useful energy, and other benefits not available nearly so cheaply by any
>other known technology, are provided safely.
>
>The alternative implied by the Jones/Kearsley/Leyland alliance
>would achieve heating, drying & ventilation by many kW of mains power used
>in refrigeration-cycle dehumidifiers, resistance heaters, hi-capital
>refrigeration-cycle heat pumps for cooling & heating, etc. - consuming
>1-2 orders of magnitude more mains electricity at much higher costs for
>householders in capital and running costs. To produce 1 GW mains power,
>most of the time - that is the most a nuke could aim to do. Fission is a
>rotten way to produce mains electricity. The Royal Commission chaired by
>Sir Thaddeus McCarthy made the defects of nuclear power sufficiently clear
>that the NZED nuclear section was shut down. (Unfortunately, some of them
>were then put onto wind-power, for which they had little enthusiasm. This
>was an unfair way to handicap wind-power R&D. The late P W Blakeley CBE was
>not a good loser; I suspect he was deliberately handicapping non-nuclear
>R&D.)
>Any additions to the NZ grid that might be justified - on figures
>we have yet to see - should be wind, for at least the next GW: a couple
>thousand dispersed windmills, installed progressively as need arises, not
>absorbing money & energy for a decade before delivering any electricity.
>Wind power blends into the existing NZ grid incomparably better than
>nuclear. But Kearsley wouldn't know.
>
>Another mature solar-thermal technology I've been testing for 12 y
>is solar water-heating (SWH). Current commercial SWH e.g Thermocell are
>economic, but mine is more so because it's built in situ, obviating the
>factory and much freight & packaging, but needing little more labour than
>the mere installation of factory-made panels. Also it is particularly
>cheap at the margin of a given installation, allowing 6-8 sw m of panel
>which is the roof for that area, whereas panels made overseas cost more
>before installation than my whole system up & running.
>6-8 sq m of SWH will deliver 2-3kW of water-heating during much of
>the day. Official economic analyses 2 decade ago showed SWH to be a good
>investment. My cheaper type makes it yet more attractive - and the price
>of electricity has gone up in the meantime owing to Max Bradford's crazy
>sabotage.
>Nuclear fan Al Poletti once attacked me in a public mtg for saying
>thorough deployment of SWH would substitute for a GW of power stations.
>The main figure still lacking to resolve that argument is the reticulation
>losses. The question is, how much of the kWh that left the power station
>reaches the HW cylinder (where the element then achieves 100% conversion to
>heat). Transmission (long-range high-voltage) losses in NZ average around
>10%; electricity stepped down to consumer voltages for local reticulation
>is wasted in unintended heating of cables, to an extent that has never been
>properly measured. Capital in reticulation is several times that in
>transmission, but that is not a good guide to operational losses. I have
>asked A. Lovins' nerds but no answer. I assume 10% while suspecting the
>true figure is considerably higher.
>Then a "1000 MW" nuke achieving the hoped-for 800 MW avg into the
>grid will deliver to WH ca.640 MW. Compare 2 kW SWH within each of 500,000
>houses! We are talking higher power from solar! But this will be for only
>ca.1/4 of the time, averaging therefore ca.250MW. This is considerably
>less than the nuke can deliver. On the other hand, some weighting for the
>much higher reliability of SWH should be assigned.
>
>I invented these two solar-thermal systems in the late 1980s and
>was soon denied time (by a cttee including my friend Art Williamson prop.
>Thermocell®) to expound their potentials within a Solar Action confab at
>Auckland. By 1994 my preliminary results were presented at an engineering
>confab and approved by Prof Williamson among the small minority of papers
>published in an engineering journal. I am no longer uninvolved
>commercially as I was for the many years of R&D. These are mature
>technologies, ready for deployment, and vastly better than nuclear power.
>I I challenge Dean Kearsley to a public debate on nuclear power &
>alternatives. If he declines or not, in any case I say he should quit the
>chair on the ground that he has written public disreputable advocacy of
>technology both dangerous & extravagant. Worse, he's engaging in unfair
>competition with my commercial dreams ... ;-}
This man Rees is, relatively, a Johnny-come-lately (in the Thatcher
era) to the science-based conservation which has largely supplanted
Communism as the pet hate of thoughtless right-wingers. When he first got
interested, he set out to examine nuclear power and how it could be
replaced as a source of electricity. He had little difficulty with that,
on paper - wind was his main suggestion (a good one) - but reported (in
Nature) he had been forced to admit windmills would not be favoured because
they fail to produce plutonium.
Never forget that fission reactors were invented for the sole
purpose of creating plutonium for A-bombs. Other uses are mere
rationalisations _post facto_.
It is not so surprising that this astronomer has yet to catch up
with the hazards of GM. The movement for control of GM is now roughly at
the stage where the antinuclear movement was ca.1970. Respectable
scientists could see only Art Tamplin (who ended up managing a strip joint
in DC) and good old John Gofman (a good scientist, & medico), and a few
other scientific critics who could be suppressed from the 'radar screen' on
excuses like lowly rank plus making quite a few errors which, tho' not
material to their conclusions, undermined confidence in them. Ho is a
clear example today of this category of rebel scientist. The intoxicating
feeling of rebellion evidently overwhelms scientific caution.
By the mid-1970s Henry Kendall of MIT, founder of UCS, had raised
the level of debate. Frank von Hippel of Princeton, and an avalanche of
others, by the end of that decade were declaring thru UCS that fission
reactors are an inferior, dangerous way to generate electricity. But the
role of so-called power reactors in creating plutonium continued, crazily,
especially in France & UK & USSR.
The gloomy outlook of Rees, on the assumption that current business
trends continue, is essentially what non-scientists like Goldsmith pointed
out in the 1960s. Scientists such as the Ehrlichs, Holdren, & many others,
have been presenting this approximate picture for 3 decade now. I have
devoted my career all that time to applied ecology. Yet ecology is still
very much marginalised in politics. Us humans sure are stupid!
R
June 21, 2004 scientific american
Doom and Gloom by 2100
Unleashed viruses, environmental disaster, gray goo -- astronomer Sir Martin Rees
calculates that civilization has only a 50-50 chance of making it to the 22nd
century
By Julie Wakefield
Death and destruction are not exactly foreign themes in cosmology. Black holes
can rip apart stars; unseen dark energy hurtles galaxies away from one another.
So maybe it's not surprising that Sir Martin Rees, Britain's Astronomer Royal,
sees mayhem down on Earth. He warns that civilization has only an even chance
of making it to the end of this century. The 62-year-old University of
Cambridge astrophysicist and cosmologist feels so strongly about his grim
prognostication that last year he published a popular book about it called Our
Final Hour.
The book (entitled Our Final Century in the U.K.) represents a distillation of
his 20 years of thinking about cosmology, humankind and the pressures that have
put the future at risk. In addition to considering familiar potential disasters
such as an asteroid impact, environmental degradation, global warming, nuclear
war and unstoppable pandemics, Rees thinks science and technology are creating
not only new opportunities but also new threats. He felt compelled to write Our
Final Hour to raise awareness about both the hazards and the special
responsibilities of scientists.
As one himself, Rees was among the first to posit that giant black holes power
quasars, and his work on quasar distribution helped to refute the theory that
the cosmos exists in a steady state. Rees directed Cambridge's Institute of
Astronomy until 1992; he then served for a decade as a Royal Society Research
Professor before assuming the mastership of Cambridge's Trinity College. Since
1995 Rees has also held the honorary title of U.K. Astronomer Royal, once an
active post based at Greenwich Observatory and first held by John Flamsteed and
then Edmond Halley.
Astronomers are well positioned to ponder the fate of humanity, Rees insists,
because they have a unique vantage point in terms of the vast timescales of the
future. "Astronomers have a special perspective to see ourselves as just a part
of a process that is just beginning rather than having achieved its end," he
says. "And perhaps this gives an extra motive to be concerned about what
happens here on Earth in this century."
Innovation is changing things faster than ever before, and such increasing
unpredictability leaves civilization more vulnerable to misadventure as well as
to disaster by design. Advances in biotechnology, in terms of both increasing
sophistication and decreasing costs, means that weaponized germs pose a huge
risk. In a wager he hopes to lose, Rees has bet $1,000 that a biological
incident will claim one million lives by 2020. "In this increasingly
interconnected world where individuals have more power than ever before at
their fingertips, society should worry more about some kind of massive
calamity, however improbable," Rees states.
In calculating the coin-flip odds for humanity at 2100, Rees adds together those
improbabilities, including those posed by self-replicating, nanometer-size
robots. These nanobots might chew through organic matter and turn the biosphere
into a lifeless "gray goo," a term coined by nanotech pioneer K. Eric Drexler
in the 1980s. Gray goo achieved more prominence last year after Prince Charles
expressed concern about it and Michael Crichton used it as the basis for his
novel Prey.
It's not just out-of-control technology that has Rees worried. Basic science can
present a threat. In July 1999 Scientific American ran a letter by Princeton
University physicist Frank Wilczek, who pointed to "a speculative but quite
respectable possibility" that the Brookhaven National Laboratory's Relativistic
Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) could produce particles called strangelets. These
subatomic oddities could grow by consuming nearby ordinary matter. Soon after,
a British newspaper posited that a "big bang machine"--that is, RHIC--could
destroy the planet.
The ensuing media flurry led then Brookhaven director John H. Marburger to pull
together an outside panel of physicists, who concluded that the strangelet
scenario was remote, about a one-in-50-million chance of killing six billion
people. (Another panel, convened by CERN near Geneva, drew a similar
conclusion.) In Our Final Hour, Rees noted that the chances can be expressed
differently--namely, that 120 people might die from the RHIC experiments. He
thinks experts should debate in public the merits and risks of such work.
Some researchers were not pleased with Rees's position. Subir Sarkar, a
University of Oxford cosmologist who considers Rees a true "guru" for his
wide-ranging perspective and contributions to astrophysics and cosmology,
contends nonetheless that Rees was "irresponsible in making a big deal of the
negligible probability" connected with the particle collisions at RHIC. Rees
acknowledges that other doomsday scenarios rank much higher in terms of a "risk
calculus." Yet he maintains that if the safety criteria used for nuclear
reactors are applied--in terms of maximum acceptable probability of deaths
multiplied by number at risk--the probability of global catastrophe from any
particle acceleration experiment would need to be below about one in a
trillion.
Perhaps more important than his Our Final Hour arguments is Rees's ability to
popularize technical subjects. "He is, by any account, one of the clearest and
most readable expositors of current science to the general public," asserts
friend and colleague Peter Meszaros, a Pennsylvania State University
astrophysicist. Rees has written six books for the lay reader (as well as
several Scientific American articles).
It's possible to tip the balance to civilization's advantage, Rees concludes,
believing that environmental and biomedical issues should be higher on the
political agenda. To raise the debate above the level of rhetoric, however, the
public must be better informed. He looks to the U.S. to take a leadership role.
But so far he finds its handling of the controversies over stem cell research
and global warming to be wanting: the U.S. "has been rather remiss in tackling
issues that are taken more seriously elsewhere in the world, especially
environmental problems."
If humanity loses, would it really matter to the rest of the universe? Life
exists thanks to a happy combination of physical constants. Tweak a few, and
life as we know it becomes impossible. Those who ponder whether we were meant
to be here or whether our universe is part of a multiverse, consisting of
universes with different physical parameters, sometimes invoke the anthropic
principle. It basically states that the universe must be able to spawn
intelligent life because we are here to observe it. "Anthropic reasoning will
be irrelevant if the 'final theory' defines all the constants of physics
uniquely, but unavoidable if it doesn't," Rees states. "The latter option is
favored by an increasing proportion of theorists"--in other words, science may
be able to explain the numbers only with an anthropic argument.
Anthropic reasoning would seem to cast a supernatural pall over science. But
Rees doubts that revelations from cosmology will ever resolve the controversy
between science and religion. For a start, he sees no qualitative change in the
debate since Newton's time: scientific explanations remain perpetually
incomplete. "If we learn anything from the pursuit of science, it is that even
something as basic as an atom is quite difficult to understand," Rees declares.
"This alone should induce skepticism about any dogma or any claim to have
achieved more than a very incomplete and metaphorical insight into any profound
aspect of our existence." Or nonexistence, depending on the coin flip.
era) to the science-based conservation which has largely supplanted
Communism as the pet hate of thoughtless right-wingers. When he first got
interested, he set out to examine nuclear power and how it could be
replaced as a source of electricity. He had little difficulty with that,
on paper - wind was his main suggestion (a good one) - but reported (in
Nature) he had been forced to admit windmills would not be favoured because
they fail to produce plutonium.
Never forget that fission reactors were invented for the sole
purpose of creating plutonium for A-bombs. Other uses are mere
rationalisations _post facto_.
It is not so surprising that this astronomer has yet to catch up
with the hazards of GM. The movement for control of GM is now roughly at
the stage where the antinuclear movement was ca.1970. Respectable
scientists could see only Art Tamplin (who ended up managing a strip joint
in DC) and good old John Gofman (a good scientist, & medico), and a few
other scientific critics who could be suppressed from the 'radar screen' on
excuses like lowly rank plus making quite a few errors which, tho' not
material to their conclusions, undermined confidence in them. Ho is a
clear example today of this category of rebel scientist. The intoxicating
feeling of rebellion evidently overwhelms scientific caution.
By the mid-1970s Henry Kendall of MIT, founder of UCS, had raised
the level of debate. Frank von Hippel of Princeton, and an avalanche of
others, by the end of that decade were declaring thru UCS that fission
reactors are an inferior, dangerous way to generate electricity. But the
role of so-called power reactors in creating plutonium continued, crazily,
especially in France & UK & USSR.
The gloomy outlook of Rees, on the assumption that current business
trends continue, is essentially what non-scientists like Goldsmith pointed
out in the 1960s. Scientists such as the Ehrlichs, Holdren, & many others,
have been presenting this approximate picture for 3 decade now. I have
devoted my career all that time to applied ecology. Yet ecology is still
very much marginalised in politics. Us humans sure are stupid!
R
June 21, 2004 scientific american
Doom and Gloom by 2100
Unleashed viruses, environmental disaster, gray goo -- astronomer Sir Martin Rees
calculates that civilization has only a 50-50 chance of making it to the 22nd
century
By Julie Wakefield
Death and destruction are not exactly foreign themes in cosmology. Black holes
can rip apart stars; unseen dark energy hurtles galaxies away from one another.
So maybe it's not surprising that Sir Martin Rees, Britain's Astronomer Royal,
sees mayhem down on Earth. He warns that civilization has only an even chance
of making it to the end of this century. The 62-year-old University of
Cambridge astrophysicist and cosmologist feels so strongly about his grim
prognostication that last year he published a popular book about it called Our
Final Hour.
The book (entitled Our Final Century in the U.K.) represents a distillation of
his 20 years of thinking about cosmology, humankind and the pressures that have
put the future at risk. In addition to considering familiar potential disasters
such as an asteroid impact, environmental degradation, global warming, nuclear
war and unstoppable pandemics, Rees thinks science and technology are creating
not only new opportunities but also new threats. He felt compelled to write Our
Final Hour to raise awareness about both the hazards and the special
responsibilities of scientists.
As one himself, Rees was among the first to posit that giant black holes power
quasars, and his work on quasar distribution helped to refute the theory that
the cosmos exists in a steady state. Rees directed Cambridge's Institute of
Astronomy until 1992; he then served for a decade as a Royal Society Research
Professor before assuming the mastership of Cambridge's Trinity College. Since
1995 Rees has also held the honorary title of U.K. Astronomer Royal, once an
active post based at Greenwich Observatory and first held by John Flamsteed and
then Edmond Halley.
Astronomers are well positioned to ponder the fate of humanity, Rees insists,
because they have a unique vantage point in terms of the vast timescales of the
future. "Astronomers have a special perspective to see ourselves as just a part
of a process that is just beginning rather than having achieved its end," he
says. "And perhaps this gives an extra motive to be concerned about what
happens here on Earth in this century."
Innovation is changing things faster than ever before, and such increasing
unpredictability leaves civilization more vulnerable to misadventure as well as
to disaster by design. Advances in biotechnology, in terms of both increasing
sophistication and decreasing costs, means that weaponized germs pose a huge
risk. In a wager he hopes to lose, Rees has bet $1,000 that a biological
incident will claim one million lives by 2020. "In this increasingly
interconnected world where individuals have more power than ever before at
their fingertips, society should worry more about some kind of massive
calamity, however improbable," Rees states.
In calculating the coin-flip odds for humanity at 2100, Rees adds together those
improbabilities, including those posed by self-replicating, nanometer-size
robots. These nanobots might chew through organic matter and turn the biosphere
into a lifeless "gray goo," a term coined by nanotech pioneer K. Eric Drexler
in the 1980s. Gray goo achieved more prominence last year after Prince Charles
expressed concern about it and Michael Crichton used it as the basis for his
novel Prey.
It's not just out-of-control technology that has Rees worried. Basic science can
present a threat. In July 1999 Scientific American ran a letter by Princeton
University physicist Frank Wilczek, who pointed to "a speculative but quite
respectable possibility" that the Brookhaven National Laboratory's Relativistic
Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) could produce particles called strangelets. These
subatomic oddities could grow by consuming nearby ordinary matter. Soon after,
a British newspaper posited that a "big bang machine"--that is, RHIC--could
destroy the planet.
The ensuing media flurry led then Brookhaven director John H. Marburger to pull
together an outside panel of physicists, who concluded that the strangelet
scenario was remote, about a one-in-50-million chance of killing six billion
people. (Another panel, convened by CERN near Geneva, drew a similar
conclusion.) In Our Final Hour, Rees noted that the chances can be expressed
differently--namely, that 120 people might die from the RHIC experiments. He
thinks experts should debate in public the merits and risks of such work.
Some researchers were not pleased with Rees's position. Subir Sarkar, a
University of Oxford cosmologist who considers Rees a true "guru" for his
wide-ranging perspective and contributions to astrophysics and cosmology,
contends nonetheless that Rees was "irresponsible in making a big deal of the
negligible probability" connected with the particle collisions at RHIC. Rees
acknowledges that other doomsday scenarios rank much higher in terms of a "risk
calculus." Yet he maintains that if the safety criteria used for nuclear
reactors are applied--in terms of maximum acceptable probability of deaths
multiplied by number at risk--the probability of global catastrophe from any
particle acceleration experiment would need to be below about one in a
trillion.
Perhaps more important than his Our Final Hour arguments is Rees's ability to
popularize technical subjects. "He is, by any account, one of the clearest and
most readable expositors of current science to the general public," asserts
friend and colleague Peter Meszaros, a Pennsylvania State University
astrophysicist. Rees has written six books for the lay reader (as well as
several Scientific American articles).
It's possible to tip the balance to civilization's advantage, Rees concludes,
believing that environmental and biomedical issues should be higher on the
political agenda. To raise the debate above the level of rhetoric, however, the
public must be better informed. He looks to the U.S. to take a leadership role.
But so far he finds its handling of the controversies over stem cell research
and global warming to be wanting: the U.S. "has been rather remiss in tackling
issues that are taken more seriously elsewhere in the world, especially
environmental problems."
If humanity loses, would it really matter to the rest of the universe? Life
exists thanks to a happy combination of physical constants. Tweak a few, and
life as we know it becomes impossible. Those who ponder whether we were meant
to be here or whether our universe is part of a multiverse, consisting of
universes with different physical parameters, sometimes invoke the anthropic
principle. It basically states that the universe must be able to spawn
intelligent life because we are here to observe it. "Anthropic reasoning will
be irrelevant if the 'final theory' defines all the constants of physics
uniquely, but unavoidable if it doesn't," Rees states. "The latter option is
favored by an increasing proportion of theorists"--in other words, science may
be able to explain the numbers only with an anthropic argument.
Anthropic reasoning would seem to cast a supernatural pall over science. But
Rees doubts that revelations from cosmology will ever resolve the controversy
between science and religion. For a start, he sees no qualitative change in the
debate since Newton's time: scientific explanations remain perpetually
incomplete. "If we learn anything from the pursuit of science, it is that even
something as basic as an atom is quite difficult to understand," Rees declares.
"This alone should induce skepticism about any dogma or any claim to have
achieved more than a very incomplete and metaphorical insight into any profound
aspect of our existence." Or nonexistence, depending on the coin flip.
07/05/04
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ
VF&b=67755
Think Again: False Objectivity in Science Reporting
by Chris Mooney May 6, 2004
Last week Sen. James Inhofe, a staunch conservative Republican from
Oklahoma and chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, received
an award for his support of "rational, science-based thinking and
policy-making." This is the same Inhofe who has suggested that
human-caused global warming is a "hoax" - a fringe view that should hardly
form the scientific basis for policy decisions. But no matter: Inhofe's
award came from the Annapolis Center for Science-Based Public Policy, a
group that received 80 percent of its funding from the National Association
of Manufacturers as of 1997, according to a contemporary expose in the Wall
Street Journal, and that today receives funding from ExxonMobil. For
these guys, Inhofe is a regular Einstein.
The astonishing spectacle of Inhofe receiving a science award points to a
disturbing truth of American politics today. Science is a highly partisan
and politicized issue, and both sides in the climate debate claim
scientific support for their positions. In fact, during last year's Senate
debate over the McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act, Inhofe's
arguments against the bill were as much scientific - or rather,
pseudoscientific - as economic. You can hardly blame him: A wide range of
industries, most notoriously tobacco, have realized that sowing doubt about
science is a great way of preventing policy action. Given that scientific
findings are never absolutely definitive and always open to subsequent
revision, this game is almost too easy to play.
Unfortunately, many journalists have been slow in learning how to deal
with the strategic manipulation of science to serve political ends. In
fact, they're still hooked on an outmoded concept of "objectivity" that
science abusers regularly exploit to their own benefit.
In its most simplistic version, journalistic objectivity means that both
sides on an issue should be balanced out against one another. But this
definition collapses when it comes to scientific issues. Science isn't a
democracy, and in practice, one side in a scientific debate is often much
more reputable than another. Findings that have survived peer review, been
published in leading journals, and replicated or confirmed by other
scientists tend to have much stronger weight attached to them. The current
consensus view of the climate science community - that humans are heating
the planet through greenhouse gas emissions, though it's debatable exactly
how much - is a good example of a robust scientific conclusion. It arises
from the highly rigorous global peer review process conducted under the
auspices of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),
and has been confirmed by the United States' own National Academy of
Sciences (NAS).
By contrast, with a few exceptions, the views of conservative contrarians
on the climate issue rarely find anything more than superficial support in
the peer reviewed literature. However, the media allow these contrarians
to get around this problem and keep debate alive through non-scientific
channels. On newspaper op-ed pages and in he-said, she-said exchanges
presented by news reporters, contrarians battle back against the scientific
consensus. They're entirely in their element: Newspaper op-ed pages don't
practice [sic - RM] scientific quality control. And while career science
writers may be well informed about the issues they cover, they may also
feel compelled by journalistic canons to present the "other side" even when
scientists themselves have stopped taking that side seriously.
For example, in the past year both the Los Angeles Times and Washington
Post have published op-eds by James Schlesinger, a former Secretary of
Energy, Defense, and director of the CIA who has now taken to emphasizing
the uncertainties of climate science (as a way of diminishing what
scientists do know). In the Post, Schlesinger discussed limitations to the
IPCC's analysis - a scientific critique launched not in a scientific
journal but on an op-ed page. Indeed, when asked by Inhofe at a hearing to
comment on Schlesinger's writings, University of Virginia climate scientist
Michael Mann responded, "I am not familiar with any peer-reviewed work that
he has submitted to the scientific literature."
In short, his history of public service notwithstanding, it's hard to see
why we should credit Schlesinger's views on climate to the detriment of the
IPCC or our own National Academy of Sciences. In addition, it's worth
bearing in mind that Schlesinger sits on the board of directors of Peabody
Energy, the biggest coal company in the world.
Reporting pieces on the climate issue often suffer from a similar problem.
Consider a recent Associated Press article on the apparent effects of
climate change in the American West. The piece devoted an entire section
to the views of climate contrarians at conservative think tanks partly
funded by industry. George Landrith of Frontiers of Freedom and Jeff Kueter
of the George C. Marshall Institute were both quoted critiquing the notion
that anything unusual is happening to the climate of the western United
States. But readers were presented with far too little information about
who Landrith and Kueter actually are and the role they play in the climate
debate.
The article merely identified Frontiers and the Marshall Institute as
"public policy" groups. In fact, both think tanks tilt conservative and
receive funding from ExxonMobil to work on climate issues; and neither
Landrith or Kueter appears to have advanced degrees in climate science (see
here and here for their online bios). Landrith, for instance, is an
attorney who, improbably, specializes in "constitutional law and
jurisprudence, federalism, global warming, and property rights."
It's questionable whether a responsible reporter should quote non-experts
at all on a topic such as whether climate change is impacting the United
States. But at the very least, if industry-connected contrarians must be
cited, you'd think they would be properly and completely identified. Yet
all too often, that's not the case. For another example of the Marshall
Institute's ExxonMobil ties going unreported in a story on climate change -
this time in the Washington Post - see here.
In short, at a time when the use of rival "experts" has become a primary
political strategy on scientific issues, reporters rarely seem to bother
investigating who these experts actually are or to question their
authority. There are many reasons for our current epidemic of politicized
science, but one is that the media doesn't seem to care.
Chris Mooney is writing a book about conservatives and science. Visit his
Web site at www.chriscmooney.com.
VF&b=67755Think Again: False Objectivity in Science Reporting
by Chris Mooney May 6, 2004
Last week Sen. James Inhofe, a staunch conservative Republican from
Oklahoma and chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, received
an award for his support of "rational, science-based thinking and
policy-making." This is the same Inhofe who has suggested that
human-caused global warming is a "hoax" - a fringe view that should hardly
form the scientific basis for policy decisions. But no matter: Inhofe's
award came from the Annapolis Center for Science-Based Public Policy, a
group that received 80 percent of its funding from the National Association
of Manufacturers as of 1997, according to a contemporary expose in the Wall
Street Journal, and that today receives funding from ExxonMobil. For
these guys, Inhofe is a regular Einstein.
The astonishing spectacle of Inhofe receiving a science award points to a
disturbing truth of American politics today. Science is a highly partisan
and politicized issue, and both sides in the climate debate claim
scientific support for their positions. In fact, during last year's Senate
debate over the McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act, Inhofe's
arguments against the bill were as much scientific - or rather,
pseudoscientific - as economic. You can hardly blame him: A wide range of
industries, most notoriously tobacco, have realized that sowing doubt about
science is a great way of preventing policy action. Given that scientific
findings are never absolutely definitive and always open to subsequent
revision, this game is almost too easy to play.
Unfortunately, many journalists have been slow in learning how to deal
with the strategic manipulation of science to serve political ends. In
fact, they're still hooked on an outmoded concept of "objectivity" that
science abusers regularly exploit to their own benefit.
In its most simplistic version, journalistic objectivity means that both
sides on an issue should be balanced out against one another. But this
definition collapses when it comes to scientific issues. Science isn't a
democracy, and in practice, one side in a scientific debate is often much
more reputable than another. Findings that have survived peer review, been
published in leading journals, and replicated or confirmed by other
scientists tend to have much stronger weight attached to them. The current
consensus view of the climate science community - that humans are heating
the planet through greenhouse gas emissions, though it's debatable exactly
how much - is a good example of a robust scientific conclusion. It arises
from the highly rigorous global peer review process conducted under the
auspices of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),
and has been confirmed by the United States' own National Academy of
Sciences (NAS).
By contrast, with a few exceptions, the views of conservative contrarians
on the climate issue rarely find anything more than superficial support in
the peer reviewed literature. However, the media allow these contrarians
to get around this problem and keep debate alive through non-scientific
channels. On newspaper op-ed pages and in he-said, she-said exchanges
presented by news reporters, contrarians battle back against the scientific
consensus. They're entirely in their element: Newspaper op-ed pages don't
practice [sic - RM] scientific quality control. And while career science
writers may be well informed about the issues they cover, they may also
feel compelled by journalistic canons to present the "other side" even when
scientists themselves have stopped taking that side seriously.
For example, in the past year both the Los Angeles Times and Washington
Post have published op-eds by James Schlesinger, a former Secretary of
Energy, Defense, and director of the CIA who has now taken to emphasizing
the uncertainties of climate science (as a way of diminishing what
scientists do know). In the Post, Schlesinger discussed limitations to the
IPCC's analysis - a scientific critique launched not in a scientific
journal but on an op-ed page. Indeed, when asked by Inhofe at a hearing to
comment on Schlesinger's writings, University of Virginia climate scientist
Michael Mann responded, "I am not familiar with any peer-reviewed work that
he has submitted to the scientific literature."
In short, his history of public service notwithstanding, it's hard to see
why we should credit Schlesinger's views on climate to the detriment of the
IPCC or our own National Academy of Sciences. In addition, it's worth
bearing in mind that Schlesinger sits on the board of directors of Peabody
Energy, the biggest coal company in the world.
Reporting pieces on the climate issue often suffer from a similar problem.
Consider a recent Associated Press article on the apparent effects of
climate change in the American West. The piece devoted an entire section
to the views of climate contrarians at conservative think tanks partly
funded by industry. George Landrith of Frontiers of Freedom and Jeff Kueter
of the George C. Marshall Institute were both quoted critiquing the notion
that anything unusual is happening to the climate of the western United
States. But readers were presented with far too little information about
who Landrith and Kueter actually are and the role they play in the climate
debate.
The article merely identified Frontiers and the Marshall Institute as
"public policy" groups. In fact, both think tanks tilt conservative and
receive funding from ExxonMobil to work on climate issues; and neither
Landrith or Kueter appears to have advanced degrees in climate science (see
here and here for their online bios). Landrith, for instance, is an
attorney who, improbably, specializes in "constitutional law and
jurisprudence, federalism, global warming, and property rights."
It's questionable whether a responsible reporter should quote non-experts
at all on a topic such as whether climate change is impacting the United
States. But at the very least, if industry-connected contrarians must be
cited, you'd think they would be properly and completely identified. Yet
all too often, that's not the case. For another example of the Marshall
Institute's ExxonMobil ties going unreported in a story on climate change -
this time in the Washington Post - see here.
In short, at a time when the use of rival "experts" has become a primary
political strategy on scientific issues, reporters rarely seem to bother
investigating who these experts actually are or to question their
authority. There are many reasons for our current epidemic of politicized
science, but one is that the media doesn't seem to care.
Chris Mooney is writing a book about conservatives and science. Visit his
Web site at www.chriscmooney.com.
07/02/04
A recent bull from a clergyman more cyberadept than most.
< I insert comments on neglected issues in solid-state reliability.
>To my friends who knew I had hassles connecting to the Internet on
>my recent trip to the USA
>I had thought it was because the cord was mismatched to the USA
>system, so I got a wireless card which worked. It is true that the US
>system uses a "straight through" cable while in NZ we use a "cross over"
>cord. Replacement cords are not readily available in the shops owing to
>the wide variation of dongels used.
> However: While the cord problem would have given me trouble, it was not
>the main problem, which was DEAD MODEM CARD. It worked when I left NZ.
>It didn't work once I got to Portland. Why? I've just replaced it
>because when I went to use it here, it did not work even though the cord
>was correct. The card was fried, most likely by the high radiation used
>in the checked baggage scanning that my bags went through a number of
>times. My computer people advised to always hand carry the laptop, or
>remove the modem card as these are not sheilded.
< A technical fact is asserted here. The X-ray fluxes used in
modern luggage-scanning were presumably foreseen by the designers of the
modem card. Would they have neglected to test the card in some simulation?
In view of the many ill-tested items turned loose on an unsuspecting world
of kompughter-dazzled folk, it is quite possible.
Allow me to tell here a little story about solid-state testing. My
Berkeley house-mate Michael J Lawrence, by wide consent the brightest grad
student of his year in O.R, got many job offers from corporations like
Honeywell. Micky had pubd, early in his brief grad-student career, O.R jnl
papers purporting to optimise the burn-in problem.
{.BOX Components such as simple 50-cent silicon diodes
become worth $5 to the Pentagon when selected after a greater time on test
at the end of the production line - actual burn-in failures having been
empirically selected out. Lawrence was a pioneer of the math most widely
expressed as the 'bathtub graph' rule of thumb in solid-state reliability.}
Basking in this unusual early success a year or so before expected
graduation & surging onto the job market, Lawrence nevertheless reflected
to me 'I can't imagine how the data postulated to be used in my theory
could be actually obtained in a real factory'. A mini-Eureka, I felt
honoured to be present at.
This sawLEED Australian was more recently head of the school of
commerce UNSW and is still a big-time Forecasting conferee. I drop his
name with pride.
Today a wider point may be that actual hardware using programs
typical for that architecture has not been tested for a wide variety of
malfunctions, e.g induced by X-rays, or microwaves, or dust, or fungal
spores ...
But my main point is that we have v little chance to find out
whether the modem card did get 'fried' by excessive X-ray fluxes. Even
Apple has abandoned the attempt at hardware quality control of the whole
plurry kompughter, and of course them pesky *programs* can usually be
blamed for what are actually hardware faults; and discriminating amongst
them is generally v difficult. Lahf gits teejus dawn'it ...
I honour the usually greater speed in operation of the late-model
pre-Power-PC Mac (e.g model 190cs), but point out its mechanical
engineering, not least the dreaded dongle, put paid to far too many that
otherwise would still be working (faster in many common operations than the
PowerPC despite its order of magnitude higher clock rate). The phone jack
to internal modem is an improvement of the past half-decade ... I struggle
to think of another ...
I conclude that current systems of digital computing are
inadequately tested (slightly reminiscent of GMOs) - slap it out on the
market as soon as it's good enough to dupe the majority of buyers, cash in,
and by the time moaning sets in about glitches we'll be selling bulk
patches &/or a whole new model ... .
Please next contemplate the intimate links between the computer
trade and the GM trade. The standards of truthfulness are low in both, and
the reasons might be worth researching & comparing.
> One other suggestion. Find out and obtain the needed cord(s) before
>going - you will unlikely get one over there given card and model
>differences and time constraints.
>Oh, by the way, don't count on finding easy access to e-mail in the US
>airports, LA had none, San Jose portland auckland and wellington had good
>access.
< Thanx mate. You'll save some valuable hours. Mind you, Gates
has more glitches in store than you can imagine ... has he yet started
selling advertising time on Megasoft's fabled Blue Screen of Death?
< I insert comments on neglected issues in solid-state reliability.
>To my friends who knew I had hassles connecting to the Internet on
>my recent trip to the USA
>I had thought it was because the cord was mismatched to the USA
>system, so I got a wireless card which worked. It is true that the US
>system uses a "straight through" cable while in NZ we use a "cross over"
>cord. Replacement cords are not readily available in the shops owing to
>the wide variation of dongels used.
> However: While the cord problem would have given me trouble, it was not
>the main problem, which was DEAD MODEM CARD. It worked when I left NZ.
>It didn't work once I got to Portland. Why? I've just replaced it
>because when I went to use it here, it did not work even though the cord
>was correct. The card was fried, most likely by the high radiation used
>in the checked baggage scanning that my bags went through a number of
>times. My computer people advised to always hand carry the laptop, or
>remove the modem card as these are not sheilded.
< A technical fact is asserted here. The X-ray fluxes used in
modern luggage-scanning were presumably foreseen by the designers of the
modem card. Would they have neglected to test the card in some simulation?
In view of the many ill-tested items turned loose on an unsuspecting world
of kompughter-dazzled folk, it is quite possible.
Allow me to tell here a little story about solid-state testing. My
Berkeley house-mate Michael J Lawrence, by wide consent the brightest grad
student of his year in O.R, got many job offers from corporations like
Honeywell. Micky had pubd, early in his brief grad-student career, O.R jnl
papers purporting to optimise the burn-in problem.
{.BOX Components such as simple 50-cent silicon diodes
become worth $5 to the Pentagon when selected after a greater time on test
at the end of the production line - actual burn-in failures having been
empirically selected out. Lawrence was a pioneer of the math most widely
expressed as the 'bathtub graph' rule of thumb in solid-state reliability.}
Basking in this unusual early success a year or so before expected
graduation & surging onto the job market, Lawrence nevertheless reflected
to me 'I can't imagine how the data postulated to be used in my theory
could be actually obtained in a real factory'. A mini-Eureka, I felt
honoured to be present at.
This sawLEED Australian was more recently head of the school of
commerce UNSW and is still a big-time Forecasting conferee. I drop his
name with pride.
Today a wider point may be that actual hardware using programs
typical for that architecture has not been tested for a wide variety of
malfunctions, e.g induced by X-rays, or microwaves, or dust, or fungal
spores ...
But my main point is that we have v little chance to find out
whether the modem card did get 'fried' by excessive X-ray fluxes. Even
Apple has abandoned the attempt at hardware quality control of the whole
plurry kompughter, and of course them pesky *programs* can usually be
blamed for what are actually hardware faults; and discriminating amongst
them is generally v difficult. Lahf gits teejus dawn'it ...
I honour the usually greater speed in operation of the late-model
pre-Power-PC Mac (e.g model 190cs), but point out its mechanical
engineering, not least the dreaded dongle, put paid to far too many that
otherwise would still be working (faster in many common operations than the
PowerPC despite its order of magnitude higher clock rate). The phone jack
to internal modem is an improvement of the past half-decade ... I struggle
to think of another ...
I conclude that current systems of digital computing are
inadequately tested (slightly reminiscent of GMOs) - slap it out on the
market as soon as it's good enough to dupe the majority of buyers, cash in,
and by the time moaning sets in about glitches we'll be selling bulk
patches &/or a whole new model ... .
Please next contemplate the intimate links between the computer
trade and the GM trade. The standards of truthfulness are low in both, and
the reasons might be worth researching & comparing.
> One other suggestion. Find out and obtain the needed cord(s) before
>going - you will unlikely get one over there given card and model
>differences and time constraints.
>Oh, by the way, don't count on finding easy access to e-mail in the US
>airports, LA had none, San Jose portland auckland and wellington had good
>access.
< Thanx mate. You'll save some valuable hours. Mind you, Gates
has more glitches in store than you can imagine ... has he yet started
selling advertising time on Megasoft's fabled Blue Screen of Death?
06/20/04
By Adam Turner
The Age June 8, 2004
Security experts slammed Microsoft's decision to deny a vital security
update to computer users allegedly running pirated copies of Windows XP.
Microsoft rates the upcoming Service Pack 2 update for Windows XP as
"critical" but the software giant will ensure that it cannot be
installed on versions of XP using the 20 most common activation codes
used by pirate copies.
While conceding that the internet will be better off if more users
install the pack, Microsoft's efforts to block the update on bootleg
copies of Windows XP could leave thousands of computers open to
hijacking - posing a threat to all internet users.
The Microsoft decision will harm its licensed users, says chief
technical officer of Counterpane Internet Security, Bruce Schneier.
"This decision, more than anything else Microsoft has said or done in
the past few years, proves to me that security is not the company's
first priority," Schneier says.
Here was a chance for Microsoft to put security ahead of profits and
improve security for all its users worldwide, he says. "Microsoft claims
that improving security is the most important thing, but its actions
prove otherwise."
Service packs are regularly issued by Microsoft for products such as
Windows and Office and contain a collection of fixes in areas such as
security, application compatibility and operating system reliability.
Security is the primary focus of Windows XP Service Pack 2 but its
release has been delayed several times. It is now expected in September,
two years after the release of Service Pack 1.
Microsoft Australia was unable to get comment from its headquarters in
Redmond, Washington, but operations manager of Microsoft's Redmond
security response centre, Iain Mulholland - in Australia for the AusCERT
security conference - conceded "the more people that use Service Pack 2,
the better the health of the internet". He defended the decision to deny
the update to pirate copies of Windows XP.
The decision puts all internet users at greater risk, says AusCERT
security analyst Jamie Gillespie.
"Through the widespread piracy of the Windows operating system,
primarily in the Asian countries but also worldwide, systems that remain
unpatched from Service Pack 2 and beyond would pose a risk to the
greater internet," Gillespie says.
Russ Cooper, editor of the NTBugTraq mailing list and a senior security
specialist with TruSecure, defends Microsoft's actions. Software writers
deserve to make money from the fruits of their labour, he says, and
access to software is not an "inherent human right".
"Anybody that steals that labour, being intellectual property or
otherwise, should deserve no rights and should be expunged as much as
possible, and if one way of doing that is to deny them access to
hotfixes and service packs, then I'm all for it," he says.
This story was found at:
http://theage.com.au/articles/2004/06/07/1086460216671.html
The Age June 8, 2004
Security experts slammed Microsoft's decision to deny a vital security
update to computer users allegedly running pirated copies of Windows XP.
Microsoft rates the upcoming Service Pack 2 update for Windows XP as
"critical" but the software giant will ensure that it cannot be
installed on versions of XP using the 20 most common activation codes
used by pirate copies.
While conceding that the internet will be better off if more users
install the pack, Microsoft's efforts to block the update on bootleg
copies of Windows XP could leave thousands of computers open to
hijacking - posing a threat to all internet users.
The Microsoft decision will harm its licensed users, says chief
technical officer of Counterpane Internet Security, Bruce Schneier.
"This decision, more than anything else Microsoft has said or done in
the past few years, proves to me that security is not the company's
first priority," Schneier says.
Here was a chance for Microsoft to put security ahead of profits and
improve security for all its users worldwide, he says. "Microsoft claims
that improving security is the most important thing, but its actions
prove otherwise."
Service packs are regularly issued by Microsoft for products such as
Windows and Office and contain a collection of fixes in areas such as
security, application compatibility and operating system reliability.
Security is the primary focus of Windows XP Service Pack 2 but its
release has been delayed several times. It is now expected in September,
two years after the release of Service Pack 1.
Microsoft Australia was unable to get comment from its headquarters in
Redmond, Washington, but operations manager of Microsoft's Redmond
security response centre, Iain Mulholland - in Australia for the AusCERT
security conference - conceded "the more people that use Service Pack 2,
the better the health of the internet". He defended the decision to deny
the update to pirate copies of Windows XP.
The decision puts all internet users at greater risk, says AusCERT
security analyst Jamie Gillespie.
"Through the widespread piracy of the Windows operating system,
primarily in the Asian countries but also worldwide, systems that remain
unpatched from Service Pack 2 and beyond would pose a risk to the
greater internet," Gillespie says.
Russ Cooper, editor of the NTBugTraq mailing list and a senior security
specialist with TruSecure, defends Microsoft's actions. Software writers
deserve to make money from the fruits of their labour, he says, and
access to software is not an "inherent human right".
"Anybody that steals that labour, being intellectual property or
otherwise, should deserve no rights and should be expunged as much as
possible, and if one way of doing that is to deny them access to
hotfixes and service packs, then I'm all for it," he says.
This story was found at:
http://theage.com.au/articles/2004/06/07/1086460216671.html
>Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2004
>From: "Maxim Institute"
>
>*< #1>Quiz finds literature knowledge gap
>
>
>*< #2>Next generation need discipline tools
>
>
>*< #3>Manipulating language - education gobbledygook
>
>
>*< #4>Auckland Change Agent workshop - register now
>
>
> Quiz finds literature knowledge gap
>
> A short test of secondary school pupils has revealed that few are
>knowledgeable about New Zealand literature. Creative New Zealand chairman
>Peter Biggs who conducted the quiz, was surprised at the lack of
>awareness, saying the result was "dismally illuminating". One student
>thought Anne Frank had set up a commune at Jerusalem on the Wanganui
>River, while another thought Alice Cooper had written The End of the
>Golden Weather.
[ I doubt they actually believed these fatuities - more likely
they were merely trying to be cheeky]
>An obvious question arises - do our young people suffer from a literature
>knowledge gap? They probably do and the reason is not difficult to find.
>
>In the 1970s the teaching of literature in schools became politicised.
>Books began to be studied thematically. For example, what had Dickens to
>say about the causes of poverty? Or Jane Austin about the role of women?
>The historical context and the voice of the author tended to take second
>place. Consequently, the study of literature went into decline. Now we
>are largely without a measuring rod to assess quality.
>
>Literature has largely lost its ability to connect the generations. A
>teacher or a grandparent can no longer presuppose a rich and intimate
>understanding of things like metaphor and the images of myth, fairy tales
>and other good writing. The enrichment that accompanies the mutual
>enjoyment of stories and the insight that provides also need to be
>revived. It is not that "a terrible beauty is born" rather, we have a
>widening gap between the generations that needs to be bridged.
>
>Discuss this article in our
>on-line discussion forum
>
> Next generation need discipline tools
>
> Following the release of Maxim's Snapshot and the finding that parents
>are concerned about discipline in schools, media attention has turned to
>the discipline of children by parents themselves. While it is positive
>that discipline is being considered within both the family and school
>context, perhaps the real issue is how parents use disciplinary tactics,
>including smacking, rather than whether they smack or not.
>
>Violence, abuse and frequent use of physical punishment are detrimental to
>children and should not be tolerated. However, there is a clear
>distinction between this abuse and the occasional controlled smack and a
>reasonable parent knows the difference. Properly administered it is one
>tool in a repertoire of child management and discipline techniques and it
>has its place.
>
>One parent in the Snapshot report described it like this: "There are
>clear guidelines in our family that the children know. Smacks are
>always administered calmly and without an audience". She goes on to
>describe how her eldest child "has not been smacked for two years because
>there are other punishments more appropriate."
>
>We are all familiar in New Zealand with tragic cases of child abuse
>leading to death. However, these are associated with dysfunctional
>families rather than the proper and occasional use of physical
>discipline. A ban on smacking will not prevent these tragedies in the
>future. We need a generation who can function as responsible and
>committed parents. That is where the focus should lie in the discipline
>debate.
>
>To read a longer article by Maxim's Dr Michael Reid on the smacking
>debate, click here: www.maxim.org.nz/ri/smack_debate.html
>
>Discuss this article in our
>on-line discussion forum
>
> Manipulating Language - education gobbledygook
>
> In the cultural battle, language is crucial. Many government departments
>have so fine-tuned their bureaucratic language that it's virtually
>impossible for ordinary readers to understand what's being said. The root
>problem is found in what is known in academic circles as
>post-structuralism. In simple terms, post-structuralism holds that all
>meaning is socially constructed - there is no objective reality, truth or
>'big picture', but rather, dynamic forces of change and personal and
>group meaning only.
>
>Few government departments can match the style and rhetoric of the
>Ministry of Education and the following is an extract from its recent
>Best Evidence Synthesis series. "Quality Teaching for Diverse Students in
>Schooling" (p. 1):
>
>Quality teaching is defined as 'pedagogical practices that facilitate for
>heterogeneous groups of students their access to information, and ability
>to engage in classroom activities and tasks in ways that facilitate
>learning related to curriculum goals'. The term 'teaching' is used for
>simplicity but the term 'pedagogy' is also used throughout the synthesis.
>The wider focus on pedagogy ensures a broad consideration of the range of
>ways in which quality teaching is accomplished, for example, through
>culturally inclusive and pedagogically effective task design, through
>managing resource access for diverse learners, through equipping students
>with skills for self-regulation, and through training students in
>specific peer teaching strategies... High achievement for diverse groups
>of learners is an outcome of the skilled and cumulative pedagogical
>actions of a teacher in creating and optimising an effective learning
>environment.
>
>Discuss this article in our
>on-line discussion forum
>
> Auckland Change Agent Workshop - last chance to register
>
> There are only a few places left for the Change Agent workshop in
>Auckland this Saturday morning. The workshop will address issues such as
>education, the prostitution referendum and the Civil Union Bills.
>Informative and inspiring, this seminar will equip you to engage
>effectively with your community on the issues that matter. To confirm a
>place, please contact Amanda on 09 627 3261 or
>workshop@maxim.org.nz
>
>WHEN: Saturday June 12 TIME: 10am -1pm COST: $10 (includes action pack
>and refreshments) WHERE: 49 Cape Horn Rd, Hillsborough, Auckland.
>
>THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK - Albert Einstein
>
> Education is that which remains when one has forgotten everything he
>learned in school.
>
> To subscribe send a blank email to:
>realissues@maxim.org.nz
>
>Real Issues is a weekly email newsletter from the Maxim Institute. The
>focus is current New Zealand events with an attempt to provide insight
>into critical issues beyond what is usually presented in the media. This
>service is provided free of charge, although a donation to Maxim is
>appreciated. Items may be used for other purposes, such as teaching,
>research or civic action. If items are published elsewhere, Maxim should
>be acknowledged.
>
>Key prin
>ciples - The Building Blocks of Civil Society
>
>Maxim Institute
> 49 Capehorn Road, Hillsborough, Auckland. Ph (09) 627 3261
> 74 Middleton Road, Riccarton, Christchurch. Ph. (03) 343 1570
>
>Email:maxim@maxim.org.nz
>Web:http://www.maxim.org.nz
>From: "Maxim Institute"
>
>*< #1>Quiz finds literature knowledge gap
>
>
>*< #2>Next generation need discipline tools
>
>
>*< #3>Manipulating language - education gobbledygook
>
>
>*< #4>Auckland Change Agent workshop - register now
>
>
> Quiz finds literature knowledge gap
>
> A short test of secondary school pupils has revealed that few are
>knowledgeable about New Zealand literature. Creative New Zealand chairman
>Peter Biggs who conducted the quiz, was surprised at the lack of
>awareness, saying the result was "dismally illuminating". One student
>thought Anne Frank had set up a commune at Jerusalem on the Wanganui
>River, while another thought Alice Cooper had written The End of the
>Golden Weather.
[ I doubt they actually believed these fatuities - more likely
they were merely trying to be cheeky]
>An obvious question arises - do our young people suffer from a literature
>knowledge gap? They probably do and the reason is not difficult to find.
>
>In the 1970s the teaching of literature in schools became politicised.
>Books began to be studied thematically. For example, what had Dickens to
>say about the causes of poverty? Or Jane Austin about the role of women?
>The historical context and the voice of the author tended to take second
>place. Consequently, the study of literature went into decline. Now we
>are largely without a measuring rod to assess quality.
>
>Literature has largely lost its ability to connect the generations. A
>teacher or a grandparent can no longer presuppose a rich and intimate
>understanding of things like metaphor and the images of myth, fairy tales
>and other good writing. The enrichment that accompanies the mutual
>enjoyment of stories and the insight that provides also need to be
>revived. It is not that "a terrible beauty is born" rather, we have a
>widening gap between the generations that needs to be bridged.
>
>
>on-line discussion forum
>
> Next generation need discipline tools
>
> Following the release of Maxim's Snapshot and the finding that parents
>are concerned about discipline in schools, media attention has turned to
>the discipline of children by parents themselves. While it is positive
>that discipline is being considered within both the family and school
>context, perhaps the real issue is how parents use disciplinary tactics,
>including smacking, rather than whether they smack or not.
>
>Violence, abuse and frequent use of physical punishment are detrimental to
>children and should not be tolerated. However, there is a clear
>distinction between this abuse and the occasional controlled smack and a
>reasonable parent knows the difference. Properly administered it is one
>tool in a repertoire of child management and discipline techniques and it
>has its place.
>
>One parent in the Snapshot report described it like this: "There are
>clear guidelines in our family that the children know. Smacks are
>always administered calmly and without an audience". She goes on to
>describe how her eldest child "has not been smacked for two years because
>there are other punishments more appropriate."
>
>We are all familiar in New Zealand with tragic cases of child abuse
>leading to death. However, these are associated with dysfunctional
>families rather than the proper and occasional use of physical
>discipline. A ban on smacking will not prevent these tragedies in the
>future. We need a generation who can function as responsible and
>committed parents. That is where the focus should lie in the discipline
>debate.
>
>To read a longer article by Maxim's Dr Michael Reid on the smacking
>debate, click here: www.maxim.org.nz/ri/smack_debate.html
>
>
>on-line discussion forum
>
> Manipulating Language - education gobbledygook
>
> In the cultural battle, language is crucial. Many government departments
>have so fine-tuned their bureaucratic language that it's virtually
>impossible for ordinary readers to understand what's being said. The root
>problem is found in what is known in academic circles as
>post-structuralism. In simple terms, post-structuralism holds that all
>meaning is socially constructed - there is no objective reality, truth or
>'big picture', but rather, dynamic forces of change and personal and
>group meaning only.
>
>Few government departments can match the style and rhetoric of the
>Ministry of Education and the following is an extract from its recent
>Best Evidence Synthesis series. "Quality Teaching for Diverse Students in
>Schooling" (p. 1):
>
>Quality teaching is defined as 'pedagogical practices that facilitate for
>heterogeneous groups of students their access to information, and ability
>to engage in classroom activities and tasks in ways that facilitate
>learning related to curriculum goals'. The term 'teaching' is used for
>simplicity but the term 'pedagogy' is also used throughout the synthesis.
>The wider focus on pedagogy ensures a broad consideration of the range of
>ways in which quality teaching is accomplished, for example, through
>culturally inclusive and pedagogically effective task design, through
>managing resource access for diverse learners, through equipping students
>with skills for self-regulation, and through training students in
>specific peer teaching strategies... High achievement for diverse groups
>of learners is an outcome of the skilled and cumulative pedagogical
>actions of a teacher in creating and optimising an effective learning
>environment.
>
>
>on-line discussion forum
>
> Auckland Change Agent Workshop - last chance to register
>
> There are only a few places left for the Change Agent workshop in
>Auckland this Saturday morning. The workshop will address issues such as
>education, the prostitution referendum and the Civil Union Bills.
>Informative and inspiring, this seminar will equip you to engage
>effectively with your community on the issues that matter. To confirm a
>place, please contact Amanda on 09 627 3261 or
>
>
>WHEN: Saturday June 12 TIME: 10am -1pm COST: $10 (includes action pack
>and refreshments) WHERE: 49 Cape Horn Rd, Hillsborough, Auckland.
>
>THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK - Albert Einstein
>
> Education is that which remains when one has forgotten everything he
>learned in school.
>
> To subscribe send a blank email to:
>
>
>Real Issues is a weekly email newsletter from the Maxim Institute. The
>focus is current New Zealand events with an attempt to provide insight
>into critical issues beyond what is usually presented in the media. This
>service is provided free of charge, although a donation to Maxim is
>appreciated. Items may be used for other purposes, such as teaching,
>research or civic action. If items are published elsewhere, Maxim should
>be acknowledged.
>
>
>ciples - The Building Blocks of Civil Society
>
>Maxim Institute
> 49 Capehorn Road, Hillsborough, Auckland. Ph (09) 627 3261
> 74 Middleton Road, Riccarton, Christchurch. Ph. (03) 343 1570
>
>Email:
>Web:
05/16/04
Journal of the New Zealand Medical Association, 23-April-2004, Vol 117 No 1192
Prostate screening
It took about 20 years for the cervical screening of women to be proved
of value to women. Smear campaigns do not diagnose cancer. This will
never happen for men's prostate because it is being proscribed. (Perhaps
saving the Government money could be the main reason - biased research
has always been suspect.)
What has happened to the principle of the early diagnosis of malignancy?
Let the facts of epidemiological science be as they say. The need for men
to have freedom and support for their health needs, should be obvious.
Let the patient find whether there is cancer, and then decide any treatment.
Do we now have an ethic which says "the Government has found that the
diagnosis and the various treatments are so onerous that it will not permit
(pay for) this established clinical condition to be decided by the
patient/doctor - it, the Government, will decide what is best" ?
Perhaps the power and success of political correctness has gone to their
heads so they can use it to control the thinking, experience, and
freedoms of the doctor and patients. They plan to "educate both the
people and the doctors". Will we have a report on how successful the
campaign has been, and what it cost?
Will our medical profession, and our Association lie down, agreeing that
this is yet another place were the Government can save money for more
important things in the health budget?
I not only cringe but feel like crying for those men and their families who
will find they have ongoing cancer (diagnosed only when signs and symptoms
appear), when it could have been found much earlier - but for the actions
of the controlling authorities.
Bruce Conyngham
Retired specialist in obstetrics and gynaecology
Coatesville, Auckland
05/15/04
RSNZ: Don't treat some women with pre-cancer cervical changes - study [Catch-all] -
GEA - gormfach@gmail.com @ 05:02:54 PM
The full text of news items is only available to Members.
For membership details check http://www.rsnz.org/members/join.php
Please send news releases, etc to: news@rsnz.org
Items Web-mounted on Wednesday, 5 May 2004
http ://www.rsnz.org/news/date/2004/5/5
Survey finds consumers duped by deceptive fish labelling
The DNA survey found fish substitution is common in Australia
Genetic variation for heart attack risk found
More common in people who have had a heart attack and linked to the
protein galectin-2
Don't treat some women with pre-cancer cervical changes - study
The National Women's Hospital research, published in the Journal of the
American Medical Association, is the first major study of precancerous
cervical disease since the Cartwright Report
---
RM comments:
That headline summarizes what G H Green - and most other leading
gynaecologists - were saying in the 1960s. It was justified then, and
it's justified now. Cartwright, Fiddler Bunkum, Koney, Bonita Banana etc
were & are wrong - and viciously so.
Contrast with:
Items Web-mounted on Thursday, 1 April 2004
http ://www.rsnz.org/news/date/2004/4/1
Backing for no prostate screening
The Cancer Society and the NZ Medical Association have backed the
National Health Committee's recommendation against a screening programme
for prostate cancer in men
Prostate treatment can be worse than disease - NHC
Says tests aren't reliable enough
---
This Poutasi line is promulgated assiduously by wimps such as Ben
Gray M.B (see Listener May 15 p.7) and Michael Baker M.B who produced a
minor periodical in the public health field which he used to oppose PSA
screening. I sent him - repeatedly, as he never ackn it - a brief
paper making the case for PSA screening.
Baker's refusal to ackn is highly significant. It is a good
example of the refusal to discuss which characterises PC ideology (sexism,
racism, & militant hxism). M Wilson, Ms H Fletcher CJ, etc show this
totalitarian attitude. They feel so ideologically correct that they refuse
to discuss their ideas.
This is rightly analogised to the Nazis. A key test for wimpism is
heated complaint about the term feminazism.
The unquestioned TV authority on the risks & benefits of hormone
replacement therapy turns out to be Ms Coney who had previously campaigned
against HRT but now condemns this over-the-counter cream version as
terribly untested whereas she fully understands, pros & cons, and is now
apparently tolerating, the usual oral HRT.
This "expert" gained power by posing as more expert than a
much-loved specialist in the medical school and the leading women's
teaching hospital. With Bunkle and Cartwright she advocated sampling
women's private parts for a test which was a notoriously poor predictor of
cancer. This Pap smear had been widely adopted already, and played some
part in diagnosis by specialists, but was not much use.
Now this weak test uses $35M/y to reach, sometimes by lay
smear-takers, 90% of the relevant women. The NZ death rate from cancer of
the cervix has been falling gradually for some decades; is now as low as 90
deaths each year; and has not been noticeably affected by the Pap smear
screening.
Nearly all the new media items on O&G since 1987 are generated by
someone with no medical qualifications. Rewards for these usurpations are
large: the main impostor is now Governor-general, another became a list-MP
but retreated to Mongolia accused of filching from the public purse,
another is an Auckland Regional Councillor and has been able to get The
Lancet to publish sporadic columns of her opinions. One of the originators
of this crazy racket is now head of the WHO non-infectious diseases
division.
As a secondary effect, midwives have been treated as more important
authorities on O&G than, for instance, a highly respectable FRCOG and
chairman of the NZ Medical Association. Almost all GPs have abandoned
obstetrics; midwives collecting large subsidies routinely fail to arrange
specialist backup at National Women's Hospital. These trends will have
harmed a certain number of mothers and babies.
In that context, it is less surprising that a far better screening
test, for the only fast-increasing large category of cancer in NZ lately
(killing not 80 but 600/y) is maligned & impeded by the Poutasi machine and
its front-wimps.
An outline I broadcast on The Men's Hour, Access Radio, 8-12-97:
>Cancer of the prostate kills 600 New Zealanders per year, but research on
>causes & treatments is negligible. This is the only fast-growing large
>category of cancer in New Zealand lately, and is already far more
>important than female genital cancers - cancer of the cervix has been
>fairly steady, killing about 90 per year. The cervical screening
>programme of Mss Bunkle, Cartwright & Coney , now reaching over 80% of the
>relevant women with a so-called early warning test which is of little or
>no use, actually causes indirect harm, but continues to spend $6M/y
>nationwide - about $2M/y in the Auckland region. Meanwhile, a genuine
>early-warning test for cancer - of the prostate - gets a subsidy of
>$0.038M/y for the Auckland region, and even this paltry $38,000 has been
>threatened with decrease.
>
That 6M/y has now ballooned out to $35M/y. As mentioned in 1997,
the pathologist in charge of the PSA assays for the Auckland region (in the
Ak Public hospital) had been accosted in an attempt to cut his budget.
PSA is only a screening test, not a diagnostic test. But a reading
below 1 is reassuring evidence that the gland is in good order, whereas say
6 is an alert meaning the gland should be urgently scanned by hi-res
ultrasound to look for tumours. Only then should biopsy needles be
inserted - and guided by ultrasound. If cancer is disgnosed, surgery to
remove the gland is difficult, with fairly high risk of side-effects e.g
impotence; but it can prevent secondaries from killing the man.
PSA readings around 5 can be produced by mere enlargement of the
gland, and are far from conclusive. They should however be followed up by
ultrasound.
Denial of PSA screening really is the crime that National Women's
Hospital was so wrongfully accused of - withholding medical services that
could be reasonably provided.
It is so irrational that many will find it hard to follow, but
cancer of the genitalia has become a battle ground in ideological warfare.
There is a loose wonky distorted mirror-image relationship between the
expensive, low-accuracy Pap smear and the cheap, high-accuracy PSA
screening test.
Just to emphasize the irrationality so typical of totalitarian
trends, the Poutasi machine has lately declared the PSA test to be of low
*accuracy* - a ludicrous notion not previously heard.
For membership details check http://www.rsnz.org/members/join.php
Please send news releases, etc to: news@rsnz.org
Items Web-mounted on Wednesday, 5 May 2004
http ://www.rsnz.org/news/date/2004/5/5
Survey finds consumers duped by deceptive fish labelling
The DNA survey found fish substitution is common in Australia
Genetic variation for heart attack risk found
More common in people who have had a heart attack and linked to the
protein galectin-2
Don't treat some women with pre-cancer cervical changes - study
The National Women's Hospital research, published in the Journal of the
American Medical Association, is the first major study of precancerous
cervical disease since the Cartwright Report
---
RM comments:
That headline summarizes what G H Green - and most other leading
gynaecologists - were saying in the 1960s. It was justified then, and
it's justified now. Cartwright, Fiddler Bunkum, Koney, Bonita Banana etc
were & are wrong - and viciously so.
Contrast with:
Items Web-mounted on Thursday, 1 April 2004
http ://www.rsnz.org/news/date/2004/4/1
Backing for no prostate screening
The Cancer Society and the NZ Medical Association have backed the
National Health Committee's recommendation against a screening programme
for prostate cancer in men
Prostate treatment can be worse than disease - NHC
Says tests aren't reliable enough
---
This Poutasi line is promulgated assiduously by wimps such as Ben
Gray M.B (see Listener May 15 p.7) and Michael Baker M.B who produced a
minor periodical in the public health field which he used to oppose PSA
screening. I sent him - repeatedly, as he never ackn it - a brief
paper making the case for PSA screening.
Baker's refusal to ackn is highly significant. It is a good
example of the refusal to discuss which characterises PC ideology (sexism,
racism, & militant hxism). M Wilson, Ms H Fletcher CJ, etc show this
totalitarian attitude. They feel so ideologically correct that they refuse
to discuss their ideas.
This is rightly analogised to the Nazis. A key test for wimpism is
heated complaint about the term feminazism.
The unquestioned TV authority on the risks & benefits of hormone
replacement therapy turns out to be Ms Coney who had previously campaigned
against HRT but now condemns this over-the-counter cream version as
terribly untested whereas she fully understands, pros & cons, and is now
apparently tolerating, the usual oral HRT.
This "expert" gained power by posing as more expert than a
much-loved specialist in the medical school and the leading women's
teaching hospital. With Bunkle and Cartwright she advocated sampling
women's private parts for a test which was a notoriously poor predictor of
cancer. This Pap smear had been widely adopted already, and played some
part in diagnosis by specialists, but was not much use.
Now this weak test uses $35M/y to reach, sometimes by lay
smear-takers, 90% of the relevant women. The NZ death rate from cancer of
the cervix has been falling gradually for some decades; is now as low as 90
deaths each year; and has not been noticeably affected by the Pap smear
screening.
Nearly all the new media items on O&G since 1987 are generated by
someone with no medical qualifications. Rewards for these usurpations are
large: the main impostor is now Governor-general, another became a list-MP
but retreated to Mongolia accused of filching from the public purse,
another is an Auckland Regional Councillor and has been able to get The
Lancet to publish sporadic columns of her opinions. One of the originators
of this crazy racket is now head of the WHO non-infectious diseases
division.
As a secondary effect, midwives have been treated as more important
authorities on O&G than, for instance, a highly respectable FRCOG and
chairman of the NZ Medical Association. Almost all GPs have abandoned
obstetrics; midwives collecting large subsidies routinely fail to arrange
specialist backup at National Women's Hospital. These trends will have
harmed a certain number of mothers and babies.
In that context, it is less surprising that a far better screening
test, for the only fast-increasing large category of cancer in NZ lately
(killing not 80 but 600/y) is maligned & impeded by the Poutasi machine and
its front-wimps.
An outline I broadcast on The Men's Hour, Access Radio, 8-12-97:
>Cancer of the prostate kills 600 New Zealanders per year, but research on
>causes & treatments is negligible. This is the only fast-growing large
>category of cancer in New Zealand lately, and is already far more
>important than female genital cancers - cancer of the cervix has been
>fairly steady, killing about 90 per year. The cervical screening
>programme of Mss Bunkle, Cartwright & Coney , now reaching over 80% of the
>relevant women with a so-called early warning test which is of little or
>no use, actually causes indirect harm, but continues to spend $6M/y
>nationwide - about $2M/y in the Auckland region. Meanwhile, a genuine
>early-warning test for cancer - of the prostate - gets a subsidy of
>$0.038M/y for the Auckland region, and even this paltry $38,000 has been
>threatened with decrease.
>
That 6M/y has now ballooned out to $35M/y. As mentioned in 1997,
the pathologist in charge of the PSA assays for the Auckland region (in the
Ak Public hospital) had been accosted in an attempt to cut his budget.
PSA is only a screening test, not a diagnostic test. But a reading
below 1 is reassuring evidence that the gland is in good order, whereas say
6 is an alert meaning the gland should be urgently scanned by hi-res
ultrasound to look for tumours. Only then should biopsy needles be
inserted - and guided by ultrasound. If cancer is disgnosed, surgery to
remove the gland is difficult, with fairly high risk of side-effects e.g
impotence; but it can prevent secondaries from killing the man.
PSA readings around 5 can be produced by mere enlargement of the
gland, and are far from conclusive. They should however be followed up by
ultrasound.
Denial of PSA screening really is the crime that National Women's
Hospital was so wrongfully accused of - withholding medical services that
could be reasonably provided.
It is so irrational that many will find it hard to follow, but
cancer of the genitalia has become a battle ground in ideological warfare.
There is a loose wonky distorted mirror-image relationship between the
expensive, low-accuracy Pap smear and the cheap, high-accuracy PSA
screening test.
Just to emphasize the irrationality so typical of totalitarian
trends, the Poutasi machine has lately declared the PSA test to be of low
*accuracy* - a ludicrous notion not previously heard.
05/01/04
"Biotechnology: a Geneticist's Perspective" by Dr. David Suzuki [Catch-all] -
GEA - gormfach@gmail.com @ 08:05:21 PM
This scientist is to Australia what Davide Bellamy used to be to NZ
- frequently brought in by the media as an Overseas Expert on applied
ecology. It is just NZ's bad luck that Bellamy is an ill-spoken stunt-man
who went "over to the other side" as he put it, making advertisements for
agrichemicals.
D T is a v high-class ecologist who has been criticizing
gene-tampering longer than most. When's the last time you saw the media
call him in to give the last word, or any word, on a gene-tampering puff?
Instead, they normally bring in what they fail to label as a paid
propagandist for the gene-jiggering trade.
R
Biotechnology: A Geneticist's Personal Perspective
by Dr D T Suzuki
http://www.davidsuzuki.org/files/General/DTSbiotech.pdf
David Suzuki Foundation
http://www.davidsuzuki.org/
---
- frequently brought in by the media as an Overseas Expert on applied
ecology. It is just NZ's bad luck that Bellamy is an ill-spoken stunt-man
who went "over to the other side" as he put it, making advertisements for
agrichemicals.
D T is a v high-class ecologist who has been criticizing
gene-tampering longer than most. When's the last time you saw the media
call him in to give the last word, or any word, on a gene-tampering puff?
Instead, they normally bring in what they fail to label as a paid
propagandist for the gene-jiggering trade.
R
Biotechnology: A Geneticist's Personal Perspective
by Dr D T Suzuki
http://www.davidsuzuki.org/files/General/DTSbiotech.pdf
David Suzuki Foundation
http://www.davidsuzuki.org/
---
04/28/04
Monbiot's article below is so exhilarating in its forthright quest
for truth, and contempt for dishonest media hacks, that I feel provoked to
issue a new MannGram® in the quasi-samizdat series so studiously denied
overt acknowledgment in those media.
I esteem Monbiot more than almost all journalists commentating on
my field (applied ecology), so I do him the honour of respectful comment.
>http://www.monbiot.com/dsp_article.cfm?article_id=650
>The Fossil Fools
The dismissal of climate change by journalistic nincompoops is a
danger to us all
< right on Geo. In this country the "journalists" include
prominently, repeatedly in the NZ Herald the NZ agent of USA criminal &
nutter Lyndon LaRouche.
> By George Monbiot. Published in
the Guardian 27th April 2004
>Picture a situation in which most of the media, despite the
>overwhelming weight of medical opinion, refused to accept that there was a
>connection between smoking and lung cancer.
< dictating too fast here, Geo. The issue is not "a connection".
It has moved way beyond that. The issue is whether most lung cancer is
caused by smoking. It is that clear; why are you so vague?
>Imagine that every time new evidence emerged, they asked someone with
>no medical qualifications to write a piece dismissing the evidence and
>claiming that there was no consensus on the issue.
< that is actually the normal media procedure in New Zealand every
time new evidence emerges on gynaecology. Indeed, nearly all the new media
items on O&G since 1987 are generated by 'someone with no medical
qualifications'. Rewards for these usurpations are large: the main
impostor is now Governor-general, another became a list-MP but retreated to
Mongolia accused of filching from the public purse, another is an Auckland
Regional Councillor and has been able to get The Lancet to publish sporadic
columns of her opinions. One of the originators of this crazy racket is
now head of the WHO non-infectious diseases division.
< As a secondary effect, midwives have been treated as more
important authorities on O&G than, for instance, a highly respectable FRCOG
& chairman of the NZ Medical Association. Almost all GPs have abandoned
obstetrics; midwives collecting large subsidies routinely fail to arrange
specialist backup at National Women's Hospital. These trends will have
harmed a certain number of mothers and babies.
< Geo's rhetorical manoevre is neat, but far from conclusive. He
depicts, as if it were impossible or extremely unlikely, usurpation of
authority by non-specialists in medicine or science. The awful truth is
that such usurpations are not rare these past few decades. One main cause
is affirmative action putting ahead of expertise some ideology (usually
either racism, wimminsLib, or militant homosexuality).
>Imagine that the BBC, in the interests of "debate", wheeled out one of
>the tiny number of scientists who says that smoking and cancer aren't
>linked
< a sloppy term again, Geo. The apologists hired by the tobacco
industry in attempt to dissuade successive ministers of health from
imposing legal restrictions on sale & use of tobacco did not deny a link.
Their assertion was that causality had not been stringently enough
demonstrated. It is a matter of degree. As a member throughout of the
statutory board advising those ministers on poisons, I'm proud to say we
weren't persuaded by those deniers: smoking tobacco was agreed to cause
lung cancer (and other serious illnesses). But I am also proud to say that
same Toxic Substances Board concluded the evidence (2 decade ago) on
passive smoking was far less persuasive, and rejected the pressure for
further restrictions from a group of unqualified publicists.
>, or that giving up isn't worth the trouble, every time the issue of
>cancer was raised. Imagine that, as a result, next to nothing was done
>about the problem, to the delight of the tobacco industry and the
>detriment of millions of smokers. We would surely describe the newspapers
>and the BBC as grossly irresponsible.
>Now stop imagining it, and take a look at what's happening. The issue is
>not smoking, but climate change. The scientific consensus is just as
>robust
< i 'm sorry I can't exactly support that statement, with respect to
the main point of the IPCC which is *predictions*. The evidence that
global warning has been caused by human activity, let alone the evidence
that it will in future get much worse, is not so conclusive as the evidence
that smoking has caused lung cancer. It is, however, conclusive enough for
governmental purposes, as expressed (minimally) by the Kyoto treaty.
>, the misreporting just as widespread, the consequences even graver. If
>it is true, as the government's new report suggested last week, that it is
>now too late to prevent hundreds of thousands of British people from being
>flooded out of their homes,1 then the journalists who have consistently
>and deliberately downplayed the threat carry much of the responsibility
>for the problem. It is time we stopped treating them as bystanders. It is
>time we started holding them to account.
>"The scientific community has reached a consensus," the government's
chief scientific adviser, Professor Sir David King, told the House of Lords
last month. "I do not believe that amongst the scientists there is a
discussion as to whether global warming is due to anthropogenic effects.
It is man-made and it is essentially [caused by] fossil fuel burning,
increased methane production ... and so on."2
Sir David chose his words carefully. There is a discussion about whether
global warming is due to anthropogenic (manmade) effects. But it is not -
or is only seldom - taking place among scientists. It is taking place in
the media, and it seems to consist of a competition to establish the outer
reaches of imbecility.
< the extent of error, and the potential harm, are even worse in
what the media so cynically call "the debate" on gene-tampering.
< Thus the most dangerous technology of all diverts hundreds of
billions of dollars and scientific talent that could in principle be
redeployed to appropriate technology & science. The BBC gives Monsanto PR
operatives, lying unchallenged, free unbalanced time as if they were
reliable scientists. The NZ media present propaganda agents with no
medical or scientific qualifications who are furthermore paid to generate
pro-GM 'spin', to give the final word in news items about GM.
>During the heatwave last year, the Spectator magazine made the case
that because there was widespread concern in the 1970s about the
possibility of a new ice age, we can safely dismiss concerns about global
warming today.3 This is rather like saying that because Jean-Baptiste
Lamarck's hypothesis on evolution once commanded scientific support and was
later shown to be incorrect, then Charles Darwin's must also be wrong.
< your liking for analogy gets you into trouble yet again, Geo.
This time it's an awful tangle. You are wrong that Lamarck's main
hypothesis about evolution has been disproved. The penchant of the dreaded
media to depict every issue as a bipolar 'tis-'tisn't conflict has engulfed
even you, regarding evolution theory. Not only are examples known of
inheritance of acquired characteristics as envisaged by Lamarck, but much
more importantly, to the extent that Darwin was correct his ideas do not
logically exclude Lamarck's. The notion 'Lamarck v. Darwin' is a glaring
fallacy.
>Science differs from the leader writers of the Spectator in that it
>learns from its mistakes. A hypothesis is advanced and tested. If the
>evidence suggests it is wrong, it is discarded.
< fine - if experts dominate the discussion. But when the media
displace experts with unqualified attention-seekers, the scientific method
you so rightly admire will no longer work. The hypothesis that the Pap
smear is a reliable early warning of cancer, and that certain microscopic
anomalies of cells on the cervix indicate the uterus should be removed, is
not discarded, because it has become an ideological banner. The hypothesis
that synthetic genes can be inserted into plants by drastically novel
methods not resembling any process known in nature, to give a GM organism
that has all properties unchanged except for the desired herbicide
resistance, or novel modified insecticide, is based on junk science at many
steps of its illogic. Yet it prevails with governments, many of which have
invested in this new racket. Language of Monbiot-type vigour is fully
warranted in criticism of this crazy fad. GM has led the world far astray
because science has been sidelined.
>If the evidence appears to support it, it is refined and subjected to
>further testing.
< again , this is not what has happened in the hasty, rash releases
of GMOs. Almost all the relevant testing has been omitted, and those few
scientists that have been funded to begin testing have been vilified &
purged if they report adverse effects (notably Ewen & Pusztai). The truth
on actual maimings & killings of humans by material purified from GMOs
remains largely suppressed.
>That some climatologists predicted an ice age in the 1970s, and that the
>idea was dropped when others found that their predictions were flawed, is
>a cause for confidence in climatology.
< exactly - and this essential logical point is all you need.
Mistaken analogies only muddy the waters.
>But the Spectator looks like the Journal of Atmospheric Physics by
>comparison to the Mail on Sunday and its Nobel laureate-in-waiting,
>Peter Hitchens. "The greenhouse effect probably doesn't exist", he
>informed his readers in 2001. "There is as yet no evidence for it."4
< time to ask you to do some imagining, Geo our man. If you're
disgusted by that last statement from that agent, can you imagine how I as
a scientist feel about a *qualified* climate scientist - one of the few
in NZ - saying exactly that about global warming? A suave West Indian
Christopher de Freitas who did his doctorate with the respected K Hare has
consistently propagandized in the media to confuse and misrepresent the
science of climate degradation. Unprincipled hacks - hardly new, tho'
admittedly more rife than ever; but scientists issuing Hitchens-type
slogans - this is a yet more anti-social trend.
< I take this opportunity of publicly challenging de Freitas to
declare what rewards, if any, he has received for his propagandizing.
> Perhaps Mr Hitchens would care to explain why our climate differs from
that of Mars. That some of the heat from the sun is trapped in the
earth's atmosphere by gases (the greenhouse effect) has been
established since the mid-19th century. But, like most of these
nincompoops, Hitchens claims to be defending science from its
opponents. "The only reason these facts are so little-known," he tells
us, is (apart from the reason that he has just made them up), "that a
self-righteous love of 'the environment' has now replaced religion as
the new orthodoxy."5
>Hitchens, in turn, is an Einstein beside that famous climate
scientist, Melanie Phillips. Writing in the Daily Mail in January, she
dismissed the entire canon of climatology as "a global fraud" perpetrated
by the "leftwing, anti-American, anti-West ideology which goes hand in hand
with anti-globalisation and the belief that everything done by the
industrialised world is wicked."6 This belief must be shared by the
Pentagon, whose recent report pictures climate change as the foremost
threat to global security.7 In an earlier article, she claimed that "most
independent climate specialists, far from supporting [global warming], are
deeply sceptical."8 She managed to name only one, however, and he
receives his funding from the fossil fuel industry.9
>Having blasted the world's climatologists for "scientific
illiteracy", she then trumpeted her own. The latest report by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (which collates the findings of
climatologists), is, she complained, "studded with weasel words" such as
"very likely" and "best estimate".10 These weasel words are, of course,
what make it a scientific report, rather than a column by Melanie Phillips.
< right on Geo - and you could add that if they had been dogmatic
& totally certain (which good scientists like Sir John Houghton of the
IPCDC are not, in such predictions) - Melanie & her like would have
blasted them for failing to express uncertainties.
>If ever you meet one of these people, I suggest you ask them the
following questions:
1. Does the atmosphere contain carbon dioxide?
2. Does atmospheric carbon dioxide influence global temperatures?
3. Will that influence be enhanced by the addition of more carbon dioxide?
4. Have human activities led to a net emission of carbon dioxide?
It would be interesting to discover at which point they answer no -
at which point, in other words, they choose to part company with basic
physics.
< you miss the point. Physics is quantitative, Geo. The
qualitative facts you mention are not disputed by Lindzen et al., so you
actually get nowhere by reciting them. What the industry stooges say is
that the *extent* of global warming in the past century is so small that it
is not utterly proven by statistics. Lindzen goes further; I have heard
him say in a scientific gathering (while funded to propagandize in NZ by
the Business Roundtable) that even if the IPCC predictions do come true,
retrospective statistical analysis will still not be able to prove
temperatures, sea levels etc have changed *owing to anthropogenic
emissions*. Precautionary, schmecautionary!
>But these dolts are rather less dangerous than the BBC, and its
>insistence on "balancing" its coverage of climate change. It appears to
>be incapable of running an item on the subject without inviting a sceptic
>to comment on it. Usually this is either someone from a corporate-funded
>thinktank (who is, of course, never introduced as such) or the
>professional anti-environmentalist Philip Stott. Professor Stott is a
>retired biogeographer. Like almost all the prominent sceptics he has
>never published a peer-reviewed paper on climate change. But he has made
>himself available to dismiss climatologists' peer-reviewed work as the
>"lies" of eco-fundamentalists.11
...
> What makes all this so dangerous is that it plays into the hands of the
corporate lobbyists. A recently leaked memo written by Frank Luntz, the
US Republican and corporate strategist, warned his party that "The
environment is probably the single issue on which Republicans in
general - and President Bush in particular - are most vulnerable ...
Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are
settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly.
Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific
certainty a primary issue in the debate."12
> We can expect Professors Hitchens and Phillips to do what they're told.
But isn't it time that the BBC stopped behaving like the public
relations arm of the fossil fuel lobby?
> www.monbiot.com
< Right on Geo.
< This work of yours is on the one hand the best I've seen for
years, but on the other hand also riddled with unnecessary furphies. I
hope you can *relate to* that.
-
Robt Mann
consultant ecologist
P O Box 28878 Remuera, Auckland 1005, New Zealand
(9) 524 2949>at>
for truth, and contempt for dishonest media hacks, that I feel provoked to
issue a new MannGram® in the quasi-samizdat series so studiously denied
overt acknowledgment in those media.
I esteem Monbiot more than almost all journalists commentating on
my field (applied ecology), so I do him the honour of respectful comment.
>http://www.monbiot.com/dsp_article.cfm?article_id=650
>The Fossil Fools
The dismissal of climate change by journalistic nincompoops is a
danger to us all
< right on Geo. In this country the "journalists" include
prominently, repeatedly in the NZ Herald the NZ agent of USA criminal &
nutter Lyndon LaRouche.
> By George Monbiot. Published in
the Guardian 27th April 2004
>Picture a situation in which most of the media, despite the
>overwhelming weight of medical opinion, refused to accept that there was a
>connection between smoking and lung cancer.
< dictating too fast here, Geo. The issue is not "a connection".
It has moved way beyond that. The issue is whether most lung cancer is
caused by smoking. It is that clear; why are you so vague?
>Imagine that every time new evidence emerged, they asked someone with
>no medical qualifications to write a piece dismissing the evidence and
>claiming that there was no consensus on the issue.
< that is actually the normal media procedure in New Zealand every
time new evidence emerges on gynaecology. Indeed, nearly all the new media
items on O&G since 1987 are generated by 'someone with no medical
qualifications'. Rewards for these usurpations are large: the main
impostor is now Governor-general, another became a list-MP but retreated to
Mongolia accused of filching from the public purse, another is an Auckland
Regional Councillor and has been able to get The Lancet to publish sporadic
columns of her opinions. One of the originators of this crazy racket is
now head of the WHO non-infectious diseases division.
< As a secondary effect, midwives have been treated as more
important authorities on O&G than, for instance, a highly respectable FRCOG
& chairman of the NZ Medical Association. Almost all GPs have abandoned
obstetrics; midwives collecting large subsidies routinely fail to arrange
specialist backup at National Women's Hospital. These trends will have
harmed a certain number of mothers and babies.
< Geo's rhetorical manoevre is neat, but far from conclusive. He
depicts, as if it were impossible or extremely unlikely, usurpation of
authority by non-specialists in medicine or science. The awful truth is
that such usurpations are not rare these past few decades. One main cause
is affirmative action putting ahead of expertise some ideology (usually
either racism, wimminsLib, or militant homosexuality).
>Imagine that the BBC, in the interests of "debate", wheeled out one of
>the tiny number of scientists who says that smoking and cancer aren't
>linked
< a sloppy term again, Geo. The apologists hired by the tobacco
industry in attempt to dissuade successive ministers of health from
imposing legal restrictions on sale & use of tobacco did not deny a link.
Their assertion was that causality had not been stringently enough
demonstrated. It is a matter of degree. As a member throughout of the
statutory board advising those ministers on poisons, I'm proud to say we
weren't persuaded by those deniers: smoking tobacco was agreed to cause
lung cancer (and other serious illnesses). But I am also proud to say that
same Toxic Substances Board concluded the evidence (2 decade ago) on
passive smoking was far less persuasive, and rejected the pressure for
further restrictions from a group of unqualified publicists.
>, or that giving up isn't worth the trouble, every time the issue of
>cancer was raised. Imagine that, as a result, next to nothing was done
>about the problem, to the delight of the tobacco industry and the
>detriment of millions of smokers. We would surely describe the newspapers
>and the BBC as grossly irresponsible.
>Now stop imagining it, and take a look at what's happening. The issue is
>not smoking, but climate change. The scientific consensus is just as
>robust
< i 'm sorry I can't exactly support that statement, with respect to
the main point of the IPCC which is *predictions*. The evidence that
global warning has been caused by human activity, let alone the evidence
that it will in future get much worse, is not so conclusive as the evidence
that smoking has caused lung cancer. It is, however, conclusive enough for
governmental purposes, as expressed (minimally) by the Kyoto treaty.
>, the misreporting just as widespread, the consequences even graver. If
>it is true, as the government's new report suggested last week, that it is
>now too late to prevent hundreds of thousands of British people from being
>flooded out of their homes,1 then the journalists who have consistently
>and deliberately downplayed the threat carry much of the responsibility
>for the problem. It is time we stopped treating them as bystanders. It is
>time we started holding them to account.
>"The scientific community has reached a consensus," the government's
chief scientific adviser, Professor Sir David King, told the House of Lords
last month. "I do not believe that amongst the scientists there is a
discussion as to whether global warming is due to anthropogenic effects.
It is man-made and it is essentially [caused by] fossil fuel burning,
increased methane production ... and so on."2
Sir David chose his words carefully. There is a discussion about whether
global warming is due to anthropogenic (manmade) effects. But it is not -
or is only seldom - taking place among scientists. It is taking place in
the media, and it seems to consist of a competition to establish the outer
reaches of imbecility.
< the extent of error, and the potential harm, are even worse in
what the media so cynically call "the debate" on gene-tampering.
< Thus the most dangerous technology of all diverts hundreds of
billions of dollars and scientific talent that could in principle be
redeployed to appropriate technology & science. The BBC gives Monsanto PR
operatives, lying unchallenged, free unbalanced time as if they were
reliable scientists. The NZ media present propaganda agents with no
medical or scientific qualifications who are furthermore paid to generate
pro-GM 'spin', to give the final word in news items about GM.
>During the heatwave last year, the Spectator magazine made the case
that because there was widespread concern in the 1970s about the
possibility of a new ice age, we can safely dismiss concerns about global
warming today.3 This is rather like saying that because Jean-Baptiste
Lamarck's hypothesis on evolution once commanded scientific support and was
later shown to be incorrect, then Charles Darwin's must also be wrong.
< your liking for analogy gets you into trouble yet again, Geo.
This time it's an awful tangle. You are wrong that Lamarck's main
hypothesis about evolution has been disproved. The penchant of the dreaded
media to depict every issue as a bipolar 'tis-'tisn't conflict has engulfed
even you, regarding evolution theory. Not only are examples known of
inheritance of acquired characteristics as envisaged by Lamarck, but much
more importantly, to the extent that Darwin was correct his ideas do not
logically exclude Lamarck's. The notion 'Lamarck v. Darwin' is a glaring
fallacy.
>Science differs from the leader writers of the Spectator in that it
>learns from its mistakes. A hypothesis is advanced and tested. If the
>evidence suggests it is wrong, it is discarded.
< fine - if experts dominate the discussion. But when the media
displace experts with unqualified attention-seekers, the scientific method
you so rightly admire will no longer work. The hypothesis that the Pap
smear is a reliable early warning of cancer, and that certain microscopic
anomalies of cells on the cervix indicate the uterus should be removed, is
not discarded, because it has become an ideological banner. The hypothesis
that synthetic genes can be inserted into plants by drastically novel
methods not resembling any process known in nature, to give a GM organism
that has all properties unchanged except for the desired herbicide
resistance, or novel modified insecticide, is based on junk science at many
steps of its illogic. Yet it prevails with governments, many of which have
invested in this new racket. Language of Monbiot-type vigour is fully
warranted in criticism of this crazy fad. GM has led the world far astray
because science has been sidelined.
>If the evidence appears to support it, it is refined and subjected to
>further testing.
< again , this is not what has happened in the hasty, rash releases
of GMOs. Almost all the relevant testing has been omitted, and those few
scientists that have been funded to begin testing have been vilified &
purged if they report adverse effects (notably Ewen & Pusztai). The truth
on actual maimings & killings of humans by material purified from GMOs
remains largely suppressed.
>That some climatologists predicted an ice age in the 1970s, and that the
>idea was dropped when others found that their predictions were flawed, is
>a cause for confidence in climatology.
< exactly - and this essential logical point is all you need.
Mistaken analogies only muddy the waters.
>But the Spectator looks like the Journal of Atmospheric Physics by
>comparison to the Mail on Sunday and its Nobel laureate-in-waiting,
>Peter Hitchens. "The greenhouse effect probably doesn't exist", he
>informed his readers in 2001. "There is as yet no evidence for it."4
< time to ask you to do some imagining, Geo our man. If you're
disgusted by that last statement from that agent, can you imagine how I as
a scientist feel about a *qualified* climate scientist - one of the few
in NZ - saying exactly that about global warming? A suave West Indian
Christopher de Freitas who did his doctorate with the respected K Hare has
consistently propagandized in the media to confuse and misrepresent the
science of climate degradation. Unprincipled hacks - hardly new, tho'
admittedly more rife than ever; but scientists issuing Hitchens-type
slogans - this is a yet more anti-social trend.
< I take this opportunity of publicly challenging de Freitas to
declare what rewards, if any, he has received for his propagandizing.
> Perhaps Mr Hitchens would care to explain why our climate differs from
that of Mars. That some of the heat from the sun is trapped in the
earth's atmosphere by gases (the greenhouse effect) has been
established since the mid-19th century. But, like most of these
nincompoops, Hitchens claims to be defending science from its
opponents. "The only reason these facts are so little-known," he tells
us, is (apart from the reason that he has just made them up), "that a
self-righteous love of 'the environment' has now replaced religion as
the new orthodoxy."5
>Hitchens, in turn, is an Einstein beside that famous climate
scientist, Melanie Phillips. Writing in the Daily Mail in January, she
dismissed the entire canon of climatology as "a global fraud" perpetrated
by the "leftwing, anti-American, anti-West ideology which goes hand in hand
with anti-globalisation and the belief that everything done by the
industrialised world is wicked."6 This belief must be shared by the
Pentagon, whose recent report pictures climate change as the foremost
threat to global security.7 In an earlier article, she claimed that "most
independent climate specialists, far from supporting [global warming], are
deeply sceptical."8 She managed to name only one, however, and he
receives his funding from the fossil fuel industry.9
>Having blasted the world's climatologists for "scientific
illiteracy", she then trumpeted her own. The latest report by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (which collates the findings of
climatologists), is, she complained, "studded with weasel words" such as
"very likely" and "best estimate".10 These weasel words are, of course,
what make it a scientific report, rather than a column by Melanie Phillips.
< right on Geo - and you could add that if they had been dogmatic
& totally certain (which good scientists like Sir John Houghton of the
IPCDC are not, in such predictions) - Melanie & her like would have
blasted them for failing to express uncertainties.
>If ever you meet one of these people, I suggest you ask them the
following questions:
1. Does the atmosphere contain carbon dioxide?
2. Does atmospheric carbon dioxide influence global temperatures?
3. Will that influence be enhanced by the addition of more carbon dioxide?
4. Have human activities led to a net emission of carbon dioxide?
It would be interesting to discover at which point they answer no -
at which point, in other words, they choose to part company with basic
physics.
< you miss the point. Physics is quantitative, Geo. The
qualitative facts you mention are not disputed by Lindzen et al., so you
actually get nowhere by reciting them. What the industry stooges say is
that the *extent* of global warming in the past century is so small that it
is not utterly proven by statistics. Lindzen goes further; I have heard
him say in a scientific gathering (while funded to propagandize in NZ by
the Business Roundtable) that even if the IPCC predictions do come true,
retrospective statistical analysis will still not be able to prove
temperatures, sea levels etc have changed *owing to anthropogenic
emissions*. Precautionary, schmecautionary!
>But these dolts are rather less dangerous than the BBC, and its
>insistence on "balancing" its coverage of climate change. It appears to
>be incapable of running an item on the subject without inviting a sceptic
>to comment on it. Usually this is either someone from a corporate-funded
>thinktank (who is, of course, never introduced as such) or the
>professional anti-environmentalist Philip Stott. Professor Stott is a
>retired biogeographer. Like almost all the prominent sceptics he has
>never published a peer-reviewed paper on climate change. But he has made
>himself available to dismiss climatologists' peer-reviewed work as the
>"lies" of eco-fundamentalists.11
...
> What makes all this so dangerous is that it plays into the hands of the
corporate lobbyists. A recently leaked memo written by Frank Luntz, the
US Republican and corporate strategist, warned his party that "The
environment is probably the single issue on which Republicans in
general - and President Bush in particular - are most vulnerable ...
Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are
settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly.
Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific
certainty a primary issue in the debate."12
> We can expect Professors Hitchens and Phillips to do what they're told.
But isn't it time that the BBC stopped behaving like the public
relations arm of the fossil fuel lobby?
> www.monbiot.com
< Right on Geo.
< This work of yours is on the one hand the best I've seen for
years, but on the other hand also riddled with unnecessary furphies. I
hope you can *relate to* that.
-
Robt Mann
consultant ecologist
P O Box 28878 Remuera, Auckland 1005, New Zealand
(9) 524 2949>at>
04/27/04
CumminsGram®: Sci Am editorial 'Bush-League Lysenkoism' [Catch-all] -
GEA - gormfach@gmail.com @ 05:42:22 PM
The analogy of a theory of heredity that crippled agriculture for years
certainly applies to the promotion of GM crops.
However, the article below tends to focus on other mistakes.
Bush-League Lysenkoism
The White House bends science to its will
By The Editors
April 26, 2004 (May issue)
Scientific American
Starting in the 1930s, the Soviets spurned genetics in favor of Lysenkoism, a
fraudulent theory of heredity inspired by Communist ideology. Doing so crippled
agriculture in the U.S.S.R. for decades. You would think that bad precedent
would have taught President George W. Bush something. But perhaps he is no
better at history than at science.
In February his White House received failing marks in a statement signed by 62
leading scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, 19 recipients of the National
Medal of Science, and advisers to the Eisenhower and Nixon administrations.
It begins, "Successful application of science has played a large part in the
policies that have made the United States of America the world's most powerful
nation and its citizens increasingly prosperous and healthy. Although
scientific input to the government is rarely the only factor in public policy
decisions, this input should always be weighed from an objective and impartial
perspective to avoid perilous consequences. ... The administration of George W.
Bush has, however, disregarded this principle."
Doubters of that judgment should read the report from the Union of Concerned
Scientists (UCS) that accompanies the statement, "Restoring Scientific
Integrity in Policy Making" (available at www.ucsusa.org). Among the affronts
that it details: The administration misrepresented the findings of the National
Academy of Sciences and other experts on climate change. It meddled with the
discussion of climate change in an Environmental Protection Agency report until
the EPA eliminated that section. It suppressed another EPA study that showed
that the administration's proposed Clear Skies Act would do less than current
law to reduce air pollution and mercury contamination of fish. It even dropped
independent scientists from advisory committees on lead poisoning and drug
abuse in favor of ones with ties to industry.
Let us offer more examples of our own. The Department of Health and Human
Services deleted information from its Web sites that runs contrary to the
president's preference for "abstinence only" sex education programs. The Office
of Foreign Assets Control made it much more difficult for anyone from "hostile
nations" to be published in the U.S., so some scientific journals will no
longer consider submissions from them. The Office of Management and Budget has
proposed overhauling peer review for funding of science that bears on
environmental and health regulations--in effect, industry scientists would get
to approve what research is conducted by the EPA.
None of those criticisms fazes the president, though. Less than two weeks after
the UCS statement was released, Bush unceremoniously replaced two advocates of
human embryonic stem cell research on his advisory Council on Bioethics with
individuals more likely to give him a hallelujah chorus of opposition to it.
Blind loyalists to the president will dismiss the UCS report because that
organization often tilts left--never mind that some of those signatories are
conservatives. They may brush off this magazine's reproofs the same way, as
well as the regular salvos launched by California Representative Henry A.
Waxman of the House Government Reform Committee [see Insights] and maybe even
Arizona Senator John McCain's scrutiny for the Committee on Commerce, Science
and Transportation. But it is increasingly impossible to ignore that this White
House disdains research that inconveniences it.
certainly applies to the promotion of GM crops.
However, the article below tends to focus on other mistakes.
Bush-League Lysenkoism
The White House bends science to its will
By The Editors
April 26, 2004 (May issue)
Scientific American
Starting in the 1930s, the Soviets spurned genetics in favor of Lysenkoism, a
fraudulent theory of heredity inspired by Communist ideology. Doing so crippled
agriculture in the U.S.S.R. for decades. You would think that bad precedent
would have taught President George W. Bush something. But perhaps he is no
better at history than at science.
In February his White House received failing marks in a statement signed by 62
leading scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, 19 recipients of the National
Medal of Science, and advisers to the Eisenhower and Nixon administrations.
It begins, "Successful application of science has played a large part in the
policies that have made the United States of America the world's most powerful
nation and its citizens increasingly prosperous and healthy. Although
scientific input to the government is rarely the only factor in public policy
decisions, this input should always be weighed from an objective and impartial
perspective to avoid perilous consequences. ... The administration of George W.
Bush has, however, disregarded this principle."
Doubters of that judgment should read the report from the Union of Concerned
Scientists (UCS) that accompanies the statement, "Restoring Scientific
Integrity in Policy Making" (available at www.ucsusa.org). Among the affronts
that it details: The administration misrepresented the findings of the National
Academy of Sciences and other experts on climate change. It meddled with the
discussion of climate change in an Environmental Protection Agency report until
the EPA eliminated that section. It suppressed another EPA study that showed
that the administration's proposed Clear Skies Act would do less than current
law to reduce air pollution and mercury contamination of fish. It even dropped
independent scientists from advisory committees on lead poisoning and drug
abuse in favor of ones with ties to industry.
Let us offer more examples of our own. The Department of Health and Human
Services deleted information from its Web sites that runs contrary to the
president's preference for "abstinence only" sex education programs. The Office
of Foreign Assets Control made it much more difficult for anyone from "hostile
nations" to be published in the U.S., so some scientific journals will no
longer consider submissions from them. The Office of Management and Budget has
proposed overhauling peer review for funding of science that bears on
environmental and health regulations--in effect, industry scientists would get
to approve what research is conducted by the EPA.
None of those criticisms fazes the president, though. Less than two weeks after
the UCS statement was released, Bush unceremoniously replaced two advocates of
human embryonic stem cell research on his advisory Council on Bioethics with
individuals more likely to give him a hallelujah chorus of opposition to it.
Blind loyalists to the president will dismiss the UCS report because that
organization often tilts left--never mind that some of those signatories are
conservatives. They may brush off this magazine's reproofs the same way, as
well as the regular salvos launched by California Representative Henry A.
Waxman of the House Government Reform Committee [see Insights] and maybe even
Arizona Senator John McCain's scrutiny for the Committee on Commerce, Science
and Transportation. But it is increasingly impossible to ignore that this White
House disdains research that inconveniences it.
04/21/04
9/11 Blunders Left Workers, Residents in the Dust [Catch-all] -
GEA - gormfach@gmail.com @ 10:30:41 PM
http://ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=23227
9/11 Blunders Left Workers, Residents Literally in the Dust
Katherine Stapp April 7, 2004
Even as the White House scrambles to defend its handling of the terrorist
attacks of Sep. 11, 2001, the poisonous gas and dust unleashed by the
disaster continue to settle in the lungs of thousands of recovery workers
and New York City residents. They are particularly exasperated with the
federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), because it quickly reassured
people that the air around the World Trade Centre site in New York's
Manhattan was safe to breathe, when in fact EPA scientists lacked
sufficient data to draw this conclusion.
An internal investigation later found that the White House Council on
Environmental Quality "convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and
delete cautionary ones" in its press releases.
In the months following the collapse of the centre, the EPA helped clean
some 4,000 apartments in the area through a voluntary programme. However,
tens of thousands of other sites, including offices and schools, have never
been officially checked for toxins like asbestos, mercury and lead.
"The question remains that thousands of homes could still be
contaminated," said Dr. Paul Lioy, one of the lead authors of a study
released in February by the National Institutes of Health on the
environmental and health impacts of the 9/11 attacks. "It's a very complex,
unprecedented situation."
With pressure building to assuage public fears, an expert panel of
scientists, doctors and one resident of Lower Manhattan is now in the midst
of re-evaluating the agency's actions.
"Nobody knows what people were exposed to," said Joel Shufro, the
executive director of the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and
Health (NYCOSH), a coalition of labour unions and workplace safety experts.
"The testing just hasn't been done. It's our assessment that the EPA and
Health Department never considered dust to be a public health hazard," he
said in an interview.
"The programmes they did create to deal with it were purely for political
cover. From day one, the primary concern was to reopen Wall Street."
According to the latest figures from Mount Sinai Hospital's occupational
health clinic, which has screened more than 9,000 rescue and recovery
workers, about one-half still suffer from respiratory problems and other
injuries. More than 40 percent have post-traumatic stress disorder.
"Those of us who responded to Ground Zero are in crisis," Jimmy Willis, a
member of the Transport Workers Union, recently testified before a
congressional subcommittee on national security.
"Transit workers toiled for weeks at Ground Zero without respirators.
Unfortunately, New York City Transit, the Department of Health and New York
State deferred site air quality and safety to the EPA," he said. "Of the
4,000 transit workers who responded to Ground Zero, as many as half of us
are now seriously ill."
Many also lack health insurance, and must rely on a handful of special
programmes to get treatment. The situation is especially bleak for the
undocumented day labourers who cleared dust from the apartments and office
buildings surrounding the World Trade Centre, without the benefit of
protective equipment.
A mobile clinic set up at Ground Zero in January and February 2002 saw 416
labourers, most of them from Colombia and Ecuador, while by last October
the Latin American Worker's Project had documented more than 600 day
labourers who helped in the clean-up.
Advocacy groups, like NYCOSH and the Puerto Rican Legal Defence and
Education Fund, are helping some of them to apply for workers compensation,
a state-run programme that provides medical treatment and cash benefits for
workers injured on the job -- regardless of their legal status.
But despite government promises that Sep. 11 cases would be expedited,
advocates say insurance companies are conducting business as usual, meaning
the cases will likely take years to resolve.
"The main problem is that insurance companies have learned how to work the
system so that it takes so long, workers get discouraged and give up," said
NYCOSH's Beverly Tillery, who is coordinating some of the World Trade
Centre cases.
"We've seen that happening, where the energy it takes to get through the
process just isn't worth it for some people."
"Also, the response letters that the Workers' Compensation Board sent out
are all in English, and the one worker advocate we talked to didn't speak
Spanish."
In March, a group of recovery workers and downtown residents sued the EPA
to demand further testing and cleanup, as well as the creation of a fund to
pay for medical monitoring of affected individuals.
Kelly Colangelo, a plaintiff in the lawsuit, lived just one and a half
blocks from the World Trade Centre the day the towers collapsed. She says
that personal testing later found relatively high levels of fibreglass,
asbestos and other toxins in her home, and she worries she is at increased
risk for deadly illnesses like asbestosis and mesothelioma.
"Thick grey dust, mixed with burnt papers, pervaded the apartment through
the open windows," she told IPS. "I contracted a rash on my face, and began
suffering from severe headaches, sinus problems, and a deep cough after I
was allowed to enter my building on Sep.12. The air in my apartment was
cloudy with suspended dust, and I had trouble breathing."
Last week, two members of Congress proposed expanding federal health
insurance to downtown residents and all workers to cover their physical and
psychological treatment, as well as the cost of prescription drugs. The
bill would increase the number of people now being monitored from 12,000 to
40,000.
Unions and worker advocates applauded the proposal, but noted that other,
larger issues must also be addressed.
"Workers -- for utilities, sanitation, transportation -- who were not
considered 'first responders' really were and need training" (in the event
of another incident like 9/11) Shufro said.
"We also need to sort out the issue of who's in charge. OSHA (the federal
Occupational Safety and Health Administration) deferred to local
authorities on the pile. For nine months, OSHA standards were not enforced,
and that's unacceptable."
9/11 Blunders Left Workers, Residents Literally in the Dust
Katherine Stapp April 7, 2004
Even as the White House scrambles to defend its handling of the terrorist
attacks of Sep. 11, 2001, the poisonous gas and dust unleashed by the
disaster continue to settle in the lungs of thousands of recovery workers
and New York City residents. They are particularly exasperated with the
federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), because it quickly reassured
people that the air around the World Trade Centre site in New York's
Manhattan was safe to breathe, when in fact EPA scientists lacked
sufficient data to draw this conclusion.
An internal investigation later found that the White House Council on
Environmental Quality "convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and
delete cautionary ones" in its press releases.
In the months following the collapse of the centre, the EPA helped clean
some 4,000 apartments in the area through a voluntary programme. However,
tens of thousands of other sites, including offices and schools, have never
been officially checked for toxins like asbestos, mercury and lead.
"The question remains that thousands of homes could still be
contaminated," said Dr. Paul Lioy, one of the lead authors of a study
released in February by the National Institutes of Health on the
environmental and health impacts of the 9/11 attacks. "It's a very complex,
unprecedented situation."
With pressure building to assuage public fears, an expert panel of
scientists, doctors and one resident of Lower Manhattan is now in the midst
of re-evaluating the agency's actions.
"Nobody knows what people were exposed to," said Joel Shufro, the
executive director of the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and
Health (NYCOSH), a coalition of labour unions and workplace safety experts.
"The testing just hasn't been done. It's our assessment that the EPA and
Health Department never considered dust to be a public health hazard," he
said in an interview.
"The programmes they did create to deal with it were purely for political
cover. From day one, the primary concern was to reopen Wall Street."
According to the latest figures from Mount Sinai Hospital's occupational
health clinic, which has screened more than 9,000 rescue and recovery
workers, about one-half still suffer from respiratory problems and other
injuries. More than 40 percent have post-traumatic stress disorder.
"Those of us who responded to Ground Zero are in crisis," Jimmy Willis, a
member of the Transport Workers Union, recently testified before a
congressional subcommittee on national security.
"Transit workers toiled for weeks at Ground Zero without respirators.
Unfortunately, New York City Transit, the Department of Health and New York
State deferred site air quality and safety to the EPA," he said. "Of the
4,000 transit workers who responded to Ground Zero, as many as half of us
are now seriously ill."
Many also lack health insurance, and must rely on a handful of special
programmes to get treatment. The situation is especially bleak for the
undocumented day labourers who cleared dust from the apartments and office
buildings surrounding the World Trade Centre, without the benefit of
protective equipment.
A mobile clinic set up at Ground Zero in January and February 2002 saw 416
labourers, most of them from Colombia and Ecuador, while by last October
the Latin American Worker's Project had documented more than 600 day
labourers who helped in the clean-up.
Advocacy groups, like NYCOSH and the Puerto Rican Legal Defence and
Education Fund, are helping some of them to apply for workers compensation,
a state-run programme that provides medical treatment and cash benefits for
workers injured on the job -- regardless of their legal status.
But despite government promises that Sep. 11 cases would be expedited,
advocates say insurance companies are conducting business as usual, meaning
the cases will likely take years to resolve.
"The main problem is that insurance companies have learned how to work the
system so that it takes so long, workers get discouraged and give up," said
NYCOSH's Beverly Tillery, who is coordinating some of the World Trade
Centre cases.
"We've seen that happening, where the energy it takes to get through the
process just isn't worth it for some people."
"Also, the response letters that the Workers' Compensation Board sent out
are all in English, and the one worker advocate we talked to didn't speak
Spanish."
In March, a group of recovery workers and downtown residents sued the EPA
to demand further testing and cleanup, as well as the creation of a fund to
pay for medical monitoring of affected individuals.
Kelly Colangelo, a plaintiff in the lawsuit, lived just one and a half
blocks from the World Trade Centre the day the towers collapsed. She says
that personal testing later found relatively high levels of fibreglass,
asbestos and other toxins in her home, and she worries she is at increased
risk for deadly illnesses like asbestosis and mesothelioma.
"Thick grey dust, mixed with burnt papers, pervaded the apartment through
the open windows," she told IPS. "I contracted a rash on my face, and began
suffering from severe headaches, sinus problems, and a deep cough after I
was allowed to enter my building on Sep.12. The air in my apartment was
cloudy with suspended dust, and I had trouble breathing."
Last week, two members of Congress proposed expanding federal health
insurance to downtown residents and all workers to cover their physical and
psychological treatment, as well as the cost of prescription drugs. The
bill would increase the number of people now being monitored from 12,000 to
40,000.
Unions and worker advocates applauded the proposal, but noted that other,
larger issues must also be addressed.
"Workers -- for utilities, sanitation, transportation -- who were not
considered 'first responders' really were and need training" (in the event
of another incident like 9/11) Shufro said.
"We also need to sort out the issue of who's in charge. OSHA (the federal
Occupational Safety and Health Administration) deferred to local
authorities on the pile. For nine months, OSHA standards were not enforced,
and that's unacceptable."
04/17/04
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1186509,00.html
Comment
Jump on our bandwagon
The left must see that only environmentalism has the power to restrain
global corporations
George Monbiot
Tuesday April 6, 2004
The Guardian
Beside the disaster in Iraq, the new Islamist terror campaign and the
battle over immigration policy, the survival of the black-browed albatross
may not look like the most pressing political issue. For many of those on
the left, environmentalism is at a best a distraction, at worst a
regression. As Christopher Hitchens said in a debate last week:
"Environmentalism and ecology ... are conservative positions. They may be
honourable ones, they may be defensible ones, they are not radical ones."
This was once true. The modern European green movement began as a
response by landowners to the rise of the middle class and the industries
which empowered it. Industrialism threatened both the landscapes which
reflected an unchanging social order and the aristocracy's economic control.
Today, it would be foolish to claim that this tendency has entirely
disappeared. Much of the movement's funding in this country is provided by
people with inherited wealth, the most prominent of whom, Teddy Goldsmith,
happily describes himself as a reactionary.
< This is misleading.
< 1. Such modest wealth as Z.E has accumulated was trickled out
from the ill-gotten gains of his late money-maniac brother Jimmy. They did
not inherit a fortune.
< 2. Z.E's sense of humour abounds in self-deprecating jokes.
He is a conservative, but would not admit to being a reactionary (i.e
unreasoning opponent of all change).
- R
By reasserting the traditional Tory policy of trade protectionism, the
British Green party, which in other respects is a radical force, finds
itself allied to such ultra-conservative bodies as America First.
But while some of the policies of its adherents haven't changed, the
political meaning of environmentalism has. Corporations have become the
new aristocracy: an enthroned power which shows no sign of being usurped
from within. Far from becoming a catalyst for revolutionary change, they
have ensured that all that once melted into air becomes solid, as
intangible assets - the genome, the internet, even the weather - are bound
up by a new generation of property rights. Financial speculators establish
the limits of political action: if a government steps over the political
line and "loses the confidence of the markets", the economy collapses, and
the government soon follows.
Their world order is as dangerous to social welfare as feudalism. While
industrialisation still has liberating potential for poorer nations, its
global impact on the climate means that it could now destroy more lives
than it saves. Environmentalism and social justice have become
indivisible. To ignore the environmental impacts of economic decisions, as
some on the left still do, is to ignore one of the major sources of
oppression.
This is not to say that the classic leftist analysis of power relations
has become redundant. At the global level we can discern a dialectic of
precisely the kind Marx foresaw. As the same corporations seek to enforce
the same conditions everywhere, they create a universal class interest in
confronting them. No one needs to persuade the people fighting Monsanto in
Britain that they have common cause with the people fighting Monsanto in
Bangladesh or Bolivia. But because the corporations have so effectively
crushed the global workforce, much of the pressure for change now comes
from outside the factory gates.
Partly as a result of the changes they have engineered, partly as a result
of the depletion of natural resources, the corporations now appear to be
more vulnerable to environmental protest than they are to industrial
action. Having exhausted the most accessible reserves of oil, minerals,
timber, fish and freshwater, they are now forced into ever wider conflicts
with the local people whose land and water they must seize to maintain
production. As a result, the theft of resources and the ensuing pollution
have become major political issues almost everywhere.
At the same time, the drive to cut labour costs and find new markets
requires constant technological innovation. Science in countries like
Britain has been subordinated to the corporate demand for profitable new
technologies. To deploy these technologies, companies must also demand
ever-lower regulatory standards. These are the reasons why science policy
has become such a battleground, and why so many of those who claim to be
defending science instead appear to be defending corporate power.
The limiting factor for corporations, in other words, is no longer labour,
but the ecosystem and the regulations which protect it. This is why
battles over the environment are among the few that the world's dissident
movements are winning.
This might seem an odd thing to say, at a time when climate change seems
to be accelerating, the US government insists on raising the production of
an ozone-destroying chemical, and a new UN report suggests that vast "dead
zones" caused by sewage and farm pollution are spreading across the oceans.
But over the past week in Britain alone we've won four resounding victories.
Last Tuesday, Bayer, the company which just a month ago received
permission to start growing GM maize commercially in Britain, pulled out.
This means that no GM crops can be grown in Britain until at least 2008,
and perhaps never. On Thursday, the European commission, having
prevaricated for 14 years, ordered the nuclear power station at Sellafield
to clear up the plutonium it has been dumping. Since the 1950s Sellafield
is believed to have thrown 1.3 tonnes of plutonium - enough to make 162
atom bombs - into an open pond.
On Friday executives from the Lafarge conglomerate visited the Hebridean
island of Harris to announce that they had abandoned their plans to turn
Mount Roineabhal, part of a protected landscape, into roadstone. The
mountain, according to one of the quarry's backers, would have become the
biggest hole in the world.
On Saturday, the British Foreign Office, after threatening to sink it,
finally dropped its objections to a new treaty, enforceable in British
territorial waters in the south Atlantic, protecting albatrosses from
longline fishermen. So many albatrosses were being caught on baited hooks
that all 21 species are now threatened with extinction.
In all these cases, victory against some of the world's biggest
corporations was achieved by small groups of local people and roving
campaigners, armed with a tiny fraction of their opponents' budgets. They
haven't liberated the working class from oppression, but they have
restrained the power of the oppressors. These are victories for the common
people against the new aristocracy.
Nothing so undermines a cause as repeated failure. By showing that we can
win against great odds, we revitalise the campaign not only against
environmental destruction, but against other forms of oppression. Those
leftists who still see environmentalism as someone else's mobilisation are
missing a massive opportunity.
But if these victories are to spread, then both sides need to be more
consistent. The Green party, for example, claims to support the doctrine
of "contraction and convergence", in which the use of resources by the
different nations converges to equality. Yet it seeks, through
protectionism, to prevent the transfer of manufacturing and service jobs
from rich nations to poor which would assist this process. Similarly, if
the traditional left is to take a truly internationalist position, it must
cease to press for the kind of development at home which, through climate
change, destroys the lives of other people. If the greens junk their past
and the reds grasp their future, the new aristocracy will find itself in
serious trouble.
· George Monbiot's book The Age of Consent: a Manifesto for a New World
Order, is published, with new material, in paperback today.
monbiot.com
Comment
Jump on our bandwagon
The left must see that only environmentalism has the power to restrain
global corporations
George Monbiot
Tuesday April 6, 2004
The Guardian
Beside the disaster in Iraq, the new Islamist terror campaign and the
battle over immigration policy, the survival of the black-browed albatross
may not look like the most pressing political issue. For many of those on
the left, environmentalism is at a best a distraction, at worst a
regression. As Christopher Hitchens said in a debate last week:
"Environmentalism and ecology ... are conservative positions. They may be
honourable ones, they may be defensible ones, they are not radical ones."
This was once true. The modern European green movement began as a
response by landowners to the rise of the middle class and the industries
which empowered it. Industrialism threatened both the landscapes which
reflected an unchanging social order and the aristocracy's economic control.
Today, it would be foolish to claim that this tendency has entirely
disappeared. Much of the movement's funding in this country is provided by
people with inherited wealth, the most prominent of whom, Teddy Goldsmith,
happily describes himself as a reactionary.
< This is misleading.
< 1. Such modest wealth as Z.E has accumulated was trickled out
from the ill-gotten gains of his late money-maniac brother Jimmy. They did
not inherit a fortune.
< 2. Z.E's sense of humour abounds in self-deprecating jokes.
He is a conservative, but would not admit to being a reactionary (i.e
unreasoning opponent of all change).
- R
By reasserting the traditional Tory policy of trade protectionism, the
British Green party, which in other respects is a radical force, finds
itself allied to such ultra-conservative bodies as America First.
But while some of the policies of its adherents haven't changed, the
political meaning of environmentalism has. Corporations have become the
new aristocracy: an enthroned power which shows no sign of being usurped
from within. Far from becoming a catalyst for revolutionary change, they
have ensured that all that once melted into air becomes solid, as
intangible assets - the genome, the internet, even the weather - are bound
up by a new generation of property rights. Financial speculators establish
the limits of political action: if a government steps over the political
line and "loses the confidence of the markets", the economy collapses, and
the government soon follows.
Their world order is as dangerous to social welfare as feudalism. While
industrialisation still has liberating potential for poorer nations, its
global impact on the climate means that it could now destroy more lives
than it saves. Environmentalism and social justice have become
indivisible. To ignore the environmental impacts of economic decisions, as
some on the left still do, is to ignore one of the major sources of
oppression.
This is not to say that the classic leftist analysis of power relations
has become redundant. At the global level we can discern a dialectic of
precisely the kind Marx foresaw. As the same corporations seek to enforce
the same conditions everywhere, they create a universal class interest in
confronting them. No one needs to persuade the people fighting Monsanto in
Britain that they have common cause with the people fighting Monsanto in
Bangladesh or Bolivia. But because the corporations have so effectively
crushed the global workforce, much of the pressure for change now comes
from outside the factory gates.
Partly as a result of the changes they have engineered, partly as a result
of the depletion of natural resources, the corporations now appear to be
more vulnerable to environmental protest than they are to industrial
action. Having exhausted the most accessible reserves of oil, minerals,
timber, fish and freshwater, they are now forced into ever wider conflicts
with the local people whose land and water they must seize to maintain
production. As a result, the theft of resources and the ensuing pollution
have become major political issues almost everywhere.
At the same time, the drive to cut labour costs and find new markets
requires constant technological innovation. Science in countries like
Britain has been subordinated to the corporate demand for profitable new
technologies. To deploy these technologies, companies must also demand
ever-lower regulatory standards. These are the reasons why science policy
has become such a battleground, and why so many of those who claim to be
defending science instead appear to be defending corporate power.
The limiting factor for corporations, in other words, is no longer labour,
but the ecosystem and the regulations which protect it. This is why
battles over the environment are among the few that the world's dissident
movements are winning.
This might seem an odd thing to say, at a time when climate change seems
to be accelerating, the US government insists on raising the production of
an ozone-destroying chemical, and a new UN report suggests that vast "dead
zones" caused by sewage and farm pollution are spreading across the oceans.
But over the past week in Britain alone we've won four resounding victories.
Last Tuesday, Bayer, the company which just a month ago received
permission to start growing GM maize commercially in Britain, pulled out.
This means that no GM crops can be grown in Britain until at least 2008,
and perhaps never. On Thursday, the European commission, having
prevaricated for 14 years, ordered the nuclear power station at Sellafield
to clear up the plutonium it has been dumping. Since the 1950s Sellafield
is believed to have thrown 1.3 tonnes of plutonium - enough to make 162
atom bombs - into an open pond.
On Friday executives from the Lafarge conglomerate visited the Hebridean
island of Harris to announce that they had abandoned their plans to turn
Mount Roineabhal, part of a protected landscape, into roadstone. The
mountain, according to one of the quarry's backers, would have become the
biggest hole in the world.
On Saturday, the British Foreign Office, after threatening to sink it,
finally dropped its objections to a new treaty, enforceable in British
territorial waters in the south Atlantic, protecting albatrosses from
longline fishermen. So many albatrosses were being caught on baited hooks
that all 21 species are now threatened with extinction.
In all these cases, victory against some of the world's biggest
corporations was achieved by small groups of local people and roving
campaigners, armed with a tiny fraction of their opponents' budgets. They
haven't liberated the working class from oppression, but they have
restrained the power of the oppressors. These are victories for the common
people against the new aristocracy.
Nothing so undermines a cause as repeated failure. By showing that we can
win against great odds, we revitalise the campaign not only against
environmental destruction, but against other forms of oppression. Those
leftists who still see environmentalism as someone else's mobilisation are
missing a massive opportunity.
But if these victories are to spread, then both sides need to be more
consistent. The Green party, for example, claims to support the doctrine
of "contraction and convergence", in which the use of resources by the
different nations converges to equality. Yet it seeks, through
protectionism, to prevent the transfer of manufacturing and service jobs
from rich nations to poor which would assist this process. Similarly, if
the traditional left is to take a truly internationalist position, it must
cease to press for the kind of development at home which, through climate
change, destroys the lives of other people. If the greens junk their past
and the reds grasp their future, the new aristocracy will find itself in
serious trouble.
· George Monbiot's book The Age of Consent: a Manifesto for a New World
Order, is published, with new material, in paperback today.
monbiot.com
03/31/04
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_14/b3877031.htm
How To Stymie The Snoop In Your PC
It's legal to install spyware without consent
By now, anyone who uses a PC knows about viruses and the need to defend
against them. But they are not the only threat. Spyware, programs that
snoop on your online activities and send the info to third parties
without your knowledge, is another class of software that requires your
attention. As usual, the cure requires buying and running still more
software.
Spyware comes in several varieties of varying nastiness. Adware tracks
your Web surfing activities and reports back to agencies, which use the
data to send you ads supposedly tailored to your interests. Worse are
key loggers, which can record everything you type and report personal
data, including user names and passwords, to identity thieves.
Some programs have a legitimate reason to report information, but any
program that is going to send data to a third party should get your
explicit, informed permission. Google offers a model of the right way to
do it. When you download the Google Toolbar, it asks if you want to
install a feature that reports information to Google that is used to
improve searches. If you say no, you still get the toolbar, but it
cannot personalize search results as precisely.
OTHER PROGRAMS ARE LESS UP FRONT. RealNetworks' (RNWK
) RealPlayer will include
reporting software unless you uncheck a box during setup. With the Kazaa
music download service, you have to drill down through five pages to
learn that you are installing adware from Claria. Some programs slip a
line granting permission to send data into the license agreement that
few read. And the most unscrupulous ones don't bother asking for permission.
Your first line of defense against spyware is to be careful about what
software you install and to pay close attention to the options offered
during setup. For example, I let the Google Toolbar send data because I
find it invaluable and I trust Google. But I say no to most everything else.
How do you protect yourself against sneaky spyware? A firewall program,
such as Symantec's (SYMC )
Norton Personal Firewall ($49.95) or Zone Labs' ZoneAlarm ($39.95 for
Plus version; basic version is free), is of some help because it will
object when a program unknown to it tries to send data to the Web.
Running a firewall is always a good idea, though the approach fails when
spyware succeeds in hiding itself inside a program, such as Internet
Explorer, that is authorized to send data.
The best solution is to get additional protection by adding a program
that is specifically designed to detect and block spyware. Many are
available, but be careful of free products because there are reports
that some actually contain spyware.
I recommend three programs: Spy Sweeper from Webroot Software, the
established leader; the new McAfee AntiSpyware; and Ad-aware from
Lavasoft. Both Spy Sweeper ($29.95 with a free trial) and AntiSpyware
($39.95 with a $10 rebate) are sold like antivirus software, with annual
subscriptions. Ad-aware, which has an automatic update service, costs
$26.95 for the Plus edition; a basic version is free. The paid versions
of these products give you much more control over what you want to allow
and what you want to block.
These do a good job, but it's annoying to have to buy and run software
to deal with a problem that lawmakers could do something about.
Surprisingly, it is perfectly legal for companies to install most
spyware without a user's informed consent. (The legality of key loggers
has yet to be tested.) Several bills have been introduced in Congress to
restrict the practice, but action is unlikely this year. (Utah recently
became the first state to restrict spyware.) So I am left offering the
familiar, but critical, advice: Be careful about what you download and
install, and consider adding an anti-spyware program to your computer's
armor.
By Stephen H. Wildstrom
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_14/b3877031.htm
How To Stymie The Snoop In Your PC
It's legal to install spyware without consent
By now, anyone who uses a PC knows about viruses and the need to defend
against them. But they are not the only threat. Spyware, programs that
snoop on your online activities and send the info to third parties
without your knowledge, is another class of software that requires your
attention. As usual, the cure requires buying and running still more
software.
Spyware comes in several varieties of varying nastiness. Adware tracks
your Web surfing activities and reports back to agencies, which use the
data to send you ads supposedly tailored to your interests. Worse are
key loggers, which can record everything you type and report personal
data, including user names and passwords, to identity thieves.
Some programs have a legitimate reason to report information, but any
program that is going to send data to a third party should get your
explicit, informed permission. Google offers a model of the right way to
do it. When you download the Google Toolbar, it asks if you want to
install a feature that reports information to Google that is used to
improve searches. If you say no, you still get the toolbar, but it
cannot personalize search results as precisely.
OTHER PROGRAMS ARE LESS UP FRONT. RealNetworks' (RNWK
reporting software unless you uncheck a box during setup. With the Kazaa
music download service, you have to drill down through five pages to
learn that you are installing adware from Claria. Some programs slip a
line granting permission to send data into the license agreement that
few read. And the most unscrupulous ones don't bother asking for permission.
Your first line of defense against spyware is to be careful about what
software you install and to pay close attention to the options offered
during setup. For example, I let the Google Toolbar send data because I
find it invaluable and I trust Google. But I say no to most everything else.
How do you protect yourself against sneaky spyware? A firewall program,
such as Symantec's (SYMC
Norton Personal Firewall ($49.95) or Zone Labs' ZoneAlarm ($39.95 for
Plus version; basic version is free), is of some help because it will
object when a program unknown to it tries to send data to the Web.
Running a firewall is always a good idea, though the approach fails when
spyware succeeds in hiding itself inside a program, such as Internet
Explorer, that is authorized to send data.
The best solution is to get additional protection by adding a program
that is specifically designed to detect and block spyware. Many are
available, but be careful of free products because there are reports
that some actually contain spyware.
I recommend three programs: Spy Sweeper from Webroot Software, the
established leader; the new McAfee AntiSpyware; and Ad-aware from
Lavasoft. Both Spy Sweeper ($29.95 with a free trial) and AntiSpyware
($39.95 with a $10 rebate) are sold like antivirus software, with annual
subscriptions. Ad-aware, which has an automatic update service, costs
$26.95 for the Plus edition; a basic version is free. The paid versions
of these products give you much more control over what you want to allow
and what you want to block.
These do a good job, but it's annoying to have to buy and run software
to deal with a problem that lawmakers could do something about.
Surprisingly, it is perfectly legal for companies to install most
spyware without a user's informed consent. (The legality of key loggers
has yet to be tested.) Several bills have been introduced in Congress to
restrict the practice, but action is unlikely this year. (Utah recently
became the first state to restrict spyware.) So I am left offering the
familiar, but critical, advice: Be careful about what you download and
install, and consider adding an anti-spyware program to your computer's
armor.
By Stephen H. Wildstrom
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_14/b3877031.htm
03/30/04
March 29, 2004 ny times
Health Concerns in Nanotechnology
By BARNABY J. FEDER
Buckyballs, a spherical form of carbon discovered in 1985 and an important
material in the new field of nanotechnology, can cause extensive brain damage
in fish, according to research presented yesterday at a national meeting of
the American Chemical Society in Anaheim, Calif.
Eva Oberdörster, an environmental toxicologist at Southern Methodist
University in Dallas, said the buckyballs also altered the behavior of genes
in liver cells of the juvenile largemouth bass she studied.
Buckyballs are part of a group of materials called fullerenes for their
structural resemblance to the geodesic domes designed by Buckminster Fuller.
Synthetically produced buckyballs, along with more recently created fullerenes
like carbon nanotubes, have played a major role in igniting interest in
nanotechnology, the field in which researchers manipulate materials with
dimensions measured in nanometers. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter -
tens of thousands of times thinner than a human hair.
The new carbon molecules have been studied for numerous potential uses in
advanced computer processors, lubricants, fuel cells and drug delivery systems.
But yesterday's report is the latest of several that raise questions about the
potential health and environmental effects of synthetic nanoscale materials.
Other researchers, including Dr. Oberdörster's father, Günter Oberdörster, a
professor of environmental medicine at the University of Rochester, have shown
that such particles can enter the brain. The fish studies, however, were the
first to indicate destruction of lipid cells, the most common form of brain
tissue.
Dr. Oberdörster of S.M.U. said that the results underscored the need to learn
more about how buckyballs and other nanoscale materials are absorbed, how they
might damage organisms and what levels of exposure represent hazards. But she
rejected arguments made by some nanotechnology critics that the limited
toxicological research to date justified a moratorium on the development and
sale of the new materials.
"This is a yellow light, not a red one," Dr. Oberdörster said in a telephone
interview last week.
Vicki L. Colvin, whose laboratory at Rice University's Center for Biological
and Environmental Nanotechnology supplied the buckyballs used by Dr.
Oberdörster, was even more cautious about the results, which have not yet been
reviewed by other scientists.
Dr. Colvin said that the surface characteristics of the lab's buckyballs,
which are not a form that is commercially available, needed further study. She
said that they had not been coated, a process that is commonly used to limit
the toxicity of such materials in applications like drug delivery.
David B. Warheit, a DuPont researcher who led a session on nanoparticles last
week at the Society of Toxicology's national meeting in Baltimore and also
presented a paper in Anaheim yesterday, said that numerous fundamental
questions about their toxicity are beginning to be addressed. Dr. Warheit
said
that how nanoparticles are coated and how quickly they clump together may be
more important factors in toxicity than their size.
Some companies making nanoparticles have conducted toxicology studies that
might offer additional illumination. The extent of those studies is not
known,
and some results have not been disclosed, either for competitive reasons or
because of the costs of preparing the data for publication in scientific
journals.
For example, C Sixty Inc., a start-up company in Houston working on drugs and
drug delivery systems based on buckyballs, said that unreported data on its
coated buckyballs in zebra fish embryos and adult rodents showed toxicity
levels comparable to or lower than many existing medicines.
The rodent tests indicated that C Sixty's buckyballs collect in the kidneys
and liver and are excreted like other wastes after completing their function
of delivering medicines, said Russell M. Lebovitz, the company's vice
president for research and business development.
The zebra fish studies were conducted by a contractor; the rodent studies were
done by Dr. Laura L. Dugan, an associate professor of neurology and medicine
at Washington University in St. Louis, Mr. Lebovitz said. Dr. Dugan is
preparing her work for submission to a scientific journal.
Health Concerns in Nanotechnology
By BARNABY J. FEDER
Buckyballs, a spherical form of carbon discovered in 1985 and an important
material in the new field of nanotechnology, can cause extensive brain damage
in fish, according to research presented yesterday at a national meeting of
the American Chemical Society in Anaheim, Calif.
Eva Oberdörster, an environmental toxicologist at Southern Methodist
University in Dallas, said the buckyballs also altered the behavior of genes
in liver cells of the juvenile largemouth bass she studied.
Buckyballs are part of a group of materials called fullerenes for their
structural resemblance to the geodesic domes designed by Buckminster Fuller.
Synthetically produced buckyballs, along with more recently created fullerenes
like carbon nanotubes, have played a major role in igniting interest in
nanotechnology, the field in which researchers manipulate materials with
dimensions measured in nanometers. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter -
tens of thousands of times thinner than a human hair.
The new carbon molecules have been studied for numerous potential uses in
advanced computer processors, lubricants, fuel cells and drug delivery systems.
But yesterday's report is the latest of several that raise questions about the
potential health and environmental effects of synthetic nanoscale materials.
Other researchers, including Dr. Oberdörster's father, Günter Oberdörster, a
professor of environmental medicine at the University of Rochester, have shown
that such particles can enter the brain. The fish studies, however, were the
first to indicate destruction of lipid cells, the most common form of brain
tissue.
Dr. Oberdörster of S.M.U. said that the results underscored the need to learn
more about how buckyballs and other nanoscale materials are absorbed, how they
might damage organisms and what levels of exposure represent hazards. But she
rejected arguments made by some nanotechnology critics that the limited
toxicological research to date justified a moratorium on the development and
sale of the new materials.
"This is a yellow light, not a red one," Dr. Oberdörster said in a telephone
interview last week.
Vicki L. Colvin, whose laboratory at Rice University's Center for Biological
and Environmental Nanotechnology supplied the buckyballs used by Dr.
Oberdörster, was even more cautious about the results, which have not yet been
reviewed by other scientists.
Dr. Colvin said that the surface characteristics of the lab's buckyballs,
which are not a form that is commercially available, needed further study. She
said that they had not been coated, a process that is commonly used to limit
the toxicity of such materials in applications like drug delivery.
David B. Warheit, a DuPont researcher who led a session on nanoparticles last
week at the Society of Toxicology's national meeting in Baltimore and also
presented a paper in Anaheim yesterday, said that numerous fundamental
questions about their toxicity are beginning to be addressed. Dr. Warheit
said
that how nanoparticles are coated and how quickly they clump together may be
more important factors in toxicity than their size.
Some companies making nanoparticles have conducted toxicology studies that
might offer additional illumination. The extent of those studies is not
known,
and some results have not been disclosed, either for competitive reasons or
because of the costs of preparing the data for publication in scientific
journals.
For example, C Sixty Inc., a start-up company in Houston working on drugs and
drug delivery systems based on buckyballs, said that unreported data on its
coated buckyballs in zebra fish embryos and adult rodents showed toxicity
levels comparable to or lower than many existing medicines.
The rodent tests indicated that C Sixty's buckyballs collect in the kidneys
and liver and are excreted like other wastes after completing their function
of delivering medicines, said Russell M. Lebovitz, the company's vice
president for research and business development.
The zebra fish studies were conducted by a contractor; the rodent studies were
done by Dr. Laura L. Dugan, an associate professor of neurology and medicine
at Washington University in St. Louis, Mr. Lebovitz said. Dr. Dugan is
preparing her work for submission to a scientific journal.
03/24/04
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?reportID=53009
Iowa leader backs US-NZ 'pharma-crop' tie-in
NZ HERALD
25.03.2004
By SIMON COLLINS science reporter
A man who might be the next Vice-President of the United States would like
to see New Zealand growing genetically modified "pharma-crops" in the
American off-season.
Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack, one of a clutch of names being touted as a
possible running mate for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, is
in New Zealand leading a delegation of Iowa biotechnology businesses.
He said farmers in New Zealand, as in the Iowa corn belt, needed new
high-value products to replace low-value agricultural commodities.
"As Brazil and South America and Africa and some of the other parts of the
world get their agricultural act together, our farms are going to be at a
serious disadvantage," he said.
"The only way we in the US and you in New Zealand are going to continue to
have prosperity is to figure out something new to add value to the food
we're producing.
"One way to do that is to have a value-added crop designed for a particular
application, such as growing crops that are designed to convert to ethanol,
or for medicines or nutriceuticals."
Two farmers in Mr Vilsack's 30-strong trade mission, brothers Joe and Bill
Horan of the Iowa Co-operative, are already growing corn which has been
genetically altered to produce an enzyme that helps cystic fibrosis patients
to digest food.
Another company has manipulated corn to produce a protein that is normally
expressed in human tears, and which can deal with the impact of dehydration
and stop diarrhoea.
Mr Vilsack said the Iowa businesses wanted to understand New Zealand's
regulations to see if it would be feasible to grow such crops here. "You
could have a combination of New Zealand and Iowa and get a year-long growing
season."
He accepted that farmers growing normal corn might be worried about
contamination of their crops from nearby corn that had been engineered to
produce medical proteins. He said one answer would be non-pollinating or
self-pollinating crops.
Another Iowa company, Phytodyne, has developed techniques to "edit" the
genetic structure of plants directly, without leaving traces of markers or
other foreign DNA in the plants afterwards.
Mr Vilsack's mission is visiting New Zealand alone, and not Australia.
The trip was initiated by a Cedar Rapids business owner, Marcia Rogers, who
lived in New Zealand for several years and saw parallels between the
biologically based industries of this country and the US state of just under
three million people.
Iowa leader backs US-NZ 'pharma-crop' tie-in
NZ HERALD
25.03.2004
By SIMON COLLINS science reporter
A man who might be the next Vice-President of the United States would like
to see New Zealand growing genetically modified "pharma-crops" in the
American off-season.
Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack, one of a clutch of names being touted as a
possible running mate for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, is
in New Zealand leading a delegation of Iowa biotechnology businesses.
He said farmers in New Zealand, as in the Iowa corn belt, needed new
high-value products to replace low-value agricultural commodities.
"As Brazil and South America and Africa and some of the other parts of the
world get their agricultural act together, our farms are going to be at a
serious disadvantage," he said.
"The only way we in the US and you in New Zealand are going to continue to
have prosperity is to figure out something new to add value to the food
we're producing.
"One way to do that is to have a value-added crop designed for a particular
application, such as growing crops that are designed to convert to ethanol,
or for medicines or nutriceuticals."
Two farmers in Mr Vilsack's 30-strong trade mission, brothers Joe and Bill
Horan of the Iowa Co-operative, are already growing corn which has been
genetically altered to produce an enzyme that helps cystic fibrosis patients
to digest food.
Another company has manipulated corn to produce a protein that is normally
expressed in human tears, and which can deal with the impact of dehydration
and stop diarrhoea.
Mr Vilsack said the Iowa businesses wanted to understand New Zealand's
regulations to see if it would be feasible to grow such crops here. "You
could have a combination of New Zealand and Iowa and get a year-long growing
season."
He accepted that farmers growing normal corn might be worried about
contamination of their crops from nearby corn that had been engineered to
produce medical proteins. He said one answer would be non-pollinating or
self-pollinating crops.
Another Iowa company, Phytodyne, has developed techniques to "edit" the
genetic structure of plants directly, without leaving traces of markers or
other foreign DNA in the plants afterwards.
Mr Vilsack's mission is visiting New Zealand alone, and not Australia.
The trip was initiated by a Cedar Rapids business owner, Marcia Rogers, who
lived in New Zealand for several years and saw parallels between the
biologically based industries of this country and the US state of just under
three million people.
03/12/04
CumminsGram: Nonylphenol sex disrupter leaching from plastic containers for water [Catch-all] -
GEA - gormfach@gmail.com @ 05:00:15 PM
Nonylphenol is a potent endocrine hormone disrupter that has been
found to leach from plastic into water, milk and food. Spring water and
organic milk may get contaminated from the container that it comes in.
J. Agric. Food Chem., ASAP Article 10.1021/jf0345696 S0021-8561(03)04569-2
Web Release Date: March 11, 2004
Migration of Nonylphenol from Plastic Containers to Water and a Milk
Surrogate
Jorge E. Loyo-Rosales, Georgina C. Rosales-Rivera, Anika M. Lynch,
Clifford P. Rice, and Alba Torrents*
Environmental Engineering Program, Department of Civil and Environmental
Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, Area
de Química, FES-Zaragoza, UNAM, Prol. Plutarco Elias Calles y Batalla
del 5 de Mayo s/n, Mexico, 09239, DF, Mexico, Science Department,
Northwest High School, 13501 Richter Farm Road, Germantown, Maryland
20874, and Environmental Quality Laboratory, ANRI, ARS/USDA, 10300
Baltimore Avenue, Beltsville, Maryland 20705
Abstract:
Nonylphenol (NP) is used as an antioxidant and plasticizer in some
plastic products. After the discovery of its endocrine-disrupting
potential, concern over human exposure to this chemical has increased.
Recently, a group in Germany estimated the average daily intake of NP
>from food (7.5 g/day), excluding water. In the present study, NP,
octylphenol (OP), and their respective ethoxylates (1-5) were measured
in spring water bottled in three different types of plastic (HDPE, PET,
and PVC). NP was present in water from HDPE and PVC containers, at 180
and 300 ng/L respectively, which represent 4.8% and 8% of the value
calculated by the German group assuming a consumption of 2 L of water
per day. OP was found in water from HDPE extracts in lower amounts, 12
ng/L, and neither the NP- nor the OP-ethoxylates were detected in any of
the samples. Attempts to measure these compounds in tap water were
unsuccessful, probably because reaction with residual chlorine results
in the formation of chlorinated byproducts. Migration of NP from HDPE
containers to a milk surrogate was also evaluated; results indicate that
the amounts of NP leaching into milk might be similar to those in
bottled water.
found to leach from plastic into water, milk and food. Spring water and
organic milk may get contaminated from the container that it comes in.
J. Agric. Food Chem., ASAP Article 10.1021/jf0345696 S0021-8561(03)04569-2
Web Release Date: March 11, 2004
Migration of Nonylphenol from Plastic Containers to Water and a Milk
Surrogate
Jorge E. Loyo-Rosales, Georgina C. Rosales-Rivera, Anika M. Lynch,
Clifford P. Rice, and Alba Torrents*
Environmental Engineering Program, Department of Civil and Environmental
Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, Area
de Química, FES-Zaragoza, UNAM, Prol. Plutarco Elias Calles y Batalla
del 5 de Mayo s/n, Mexico, 09239, DF, Mexico, Science Department,
Northwest High School, 13501 Richter Farm Road, Germantown, Maryland
20874, and Environmental Quality Laboratory, ANRI, ARS/USDA, 10300
Baltimore Avenue, Beltsville, Maryland 20705
Abstract:
Nonylphenol (NP) is used as an antioxidant and plasticizer in some
plastic products. After the discovery of its endocrine-disrupting
potential, concern over human exposure to this chemical has increased.
Recently, a group in Germany estimated the average daily intake of NP
>from food (7.5 g/day), excluding water. In the present study, NP,
octylphenol (OP), and their respective ethoxylates (1-5) were measured
in spring water bottled in three different types of plastic (HDPE, PET,
and PVC). NP was present in water from HDPE and PVC containers, at 180
and 300 ng/L respectively, which represent 4.8% and 8% of the value
calculated by the German group assuming a consumption of 2 L of water
per day. OP was found in water from HDPE extracts in lower amounts, 12
ng/L, and neither the NP- nor the OP-ethoxylates were detected in any of
the samples. Attempts to measure these compounds in tap water were
unsuccessful, probably because reaction with residual chlorine results
in the formation of chlorinated byproducts. Migration of NP from HDPE
containers to a milk surrogate was also evaluated; results indicate that
the amounts of NP leaching into milk might be similar to those in
bottled water.
A decade ago, my survey (in Forest & Bird and pasted below) of supply & demand
for electricity in NZ revealed a thousand-megawatt surplus generating
capacity. The efforts of those in the electricity supply industry, and
those involved in selling new power stations e.g Bryan Leyland, to make out
that there was a shortage had extended even to staging a phoney shortage
the previous year. Nobody issued any public disputes with that article.
Have any experts, or any journos, investigated the trends in demand
and in supply during the decade since that survey? What happened last
winter? Was another phoney shortage staged in effort to panic the nation
into authorising unnecessary investment in new power stations?
I am grateful to John Blakeley for pointing out the 'Energy Data File'
http://www.med.govt.nz/ers/en_stats.html
- in particular, chart G.4b shows that annual electricity
generation (i.e demand) did not increase at all in the 3 y 1999-2002. The
figures for 2003 are not given. The general trend of this graph 1974-2002
is not even linear, let alone exponential: the trend of the slope (the rate
of increase) is generally downwards.
It is a shame that the media frontperson for saving the Waitaki is
less than satisfactory. When the slick PR man Seay for Meridian® had
allowed her to hold forth extensively on Radio NZ this morning, without
interrupting on that occasion, it was stupid, as well as rude, for her to
interrupt him so soon as she did.
It is to be hoped that the cttee of parlt now considering the
unwanted Fast Track bill for project Aqua will append to its report an
updated version of my article. I suspect that the new generating capacity
added in this past decade will have preserved most of that gigawatt of
surplus capacity.
What is in a way more worrying is that Mr Blakeley tells me there
is no longer a man with a dirty big ammeter and the power to order the
stations in their 'merit order' to prepare to come online. This is Max
Bradford's more efficient, kmpetiti'v shambles - giving lower prices, he
claimed.
There are plenty of other good reasons why this stupiid destructive
project should be abandoned, but I urge that lack of proven need be a main
criterion in appraisal of 'Aqua'. The burden of proof should be on
Meridian to show need; but as usual it falls to the conservationists to
prove lack of need.
Robt Mann
consultant ecologist
P O Box 28878 Remuera, Auckland 1005, New Zealand
(9) 524 2949
=============
So you've discovered a power station proposed for your district. Your branch of Forest & Bird, along with any suitable partners in a coalition, should present to the relevant planning authorities, and to the public, your clear & vigorous assessment of the proposal.
Or, even if no power station threatens your locality, you've realised that stabilising the electricity industry is required for the nation's and even the planet's health.
Either way, this article will be useful to you. Your primary argument will be lack of need - no new power stations are justified in N.Z. We give here the main facts which prove that conclusion.
NO MORE POWER STATIONS !
Robert Mann
Forest & Bird Nov. 1994
The nation was presented on May 19 with a concerted PR thrust for new power stations. The corporatised NZ Electricity Dept, now called Electricorp or ECNZ, asserted we may need extra power equivalent to 7 or even possibly 15 Clyde dams within a few decades. Another report the same day similarly suggested we must pay billions of dollars to meet accelerating "demand" for new power stations.
This is the latest flurry in a peculiar game which goes back at least a quarter-century. It was a power station scheme, Manapouri, which provoked the modern era of conservation awareness and action in this country. By the late 1970s, as a result of public participation especially around the Royal Commission on Nuclear Power, scientists became able to advise constructively what to do instead of new power stations:
• economically harness now-wasted electricity;
• deploy small-scale energy systems to capture renewable (solar) energy.
These preferable options still languish almost ignored. They are today even more potent because since the 1970s they have made considerable technical advances while big power stations have remained much the same dinosaurs. The above two principles were brought into focus in the late '70s, enunciated well in Amory Lovins' 'Soft Energy Paths' (1977), and remain correct but are still largely thwarted by those with vested interests in expanding mains electricity supply & consumption under the banner of economic growth. Any notion of saturation, or sufficiency, or limits to growth, seems beyond their ken.
Neglected too are tariff structures to discourage extravagant electricity consumption while allowing a reasonable amount at cheap rates.
In order to understand how we know that new power stations are the inferior path, we must be clear about a few words & numbers (see box).
================================================
{ BOX }
Energy is not Power
Power, an important technical term, is not the same as energy. Scientists & engineers use the word 'power' to mean instantaneous rate of flow of energy e.g. rate of doing work. The basic unit of power is the watt, but for many purposes the horsepower (746 W) or the kilowatt (kW) - 1,000 W - is a more convenient unit. A typical one-bar heater's rate of conversion of electrical energy to heat, that is its power, is 1 kW. One megawatt (MW) is one thousand kilowatts. The most powerful station on the N.Z. grid, Huntly, can send into the grid almost 1,000 MW of electrical power.
The familiar metered unit of electrical energy is the kilowatt-hour (kWh); a one-bar heater through which flows a power of 1 kW thus uses 1 kWh of energy each hour it runs. That same amount of electricity could run a 100W light-bulb for 10 hours. This amount of energy is the "unit" of our electricity bills.
Electricity supplies are subject also to measures of quality. Reliable supply - rather than blackout or brownout (voltage drop) - is more important to most householders and industries than small differences in energy price. More subtle aspects of quality include requirements, for certain types of electronic device, that the frequency of the mains must not vary more than a few percent from the standard 50 cycles per second.
================================================
The N.Z. Electricity System
The central government's NZ Electricity Dept built up (mainly through the Ministry of Works) a co-ordinated system of 40 power stations feeding into a national grid of high-power transmission lines.
Some electricity distributor/retailers run their own grid-connected mini-stations, mostly to save paying Electricorp's peak prices. These amount to about 5% of the grid's installed capacity.
A few industries, notably the geothermally-powered Tasman pulp mill (Kawerau), not only generate much or all of the electricity they use, and run industrial processes with leftover heat, but also are connected to the grid with sales in either direction. Such 'co-generation' or 'total energy' systems, if prudently encouraged, could be installed in various parts of the country, substituting at least 100 MW now drawn from the grid, and decreasing transmission losses.
The two latest Electricorp annual reports, and the 12-months report to 31-3-94, contain figures which have not been drawn to public attention, and which the NZ Herald has refused to publish, giving the lie to claims that new power stations are needed.
The installed generating capacity - the maximum power that could be fed into the grid if the corresponding demand ever occurred and if all stations were flat-out - is measured in megawatts. With the Clyde dam it reached, in round figures, 7700 MW. The maximum power that has ever been generated into the grid is far less: 5500 MW.
The actual surplus capacity is however not as much as that 40% margin. Electricorp has expressed the desire that 'spinning reserve', normal maintenance shutdowns, and other operating requirements should total 23% (1200 MW) beyond their peak generated power. Allowing that reserve capacity, we still have 1000MW surplus generating capacity. The Centre for Advanced Engineering, University of Canterbury, published recently a big report on reliability of electricity supply which states "there is ample installed capacity in New Zealand to meet power system peaks".
The peak power demanded of Electricorp was essentially constant (5150 MW) for 4 winters 1989-92. For 1993 it was 5240 MW. Thus, over the past half-decade, annual increases in Electricorp's peak power have averaged 0.54%.
A grid, even if it has ample installed generating capacity (MW), can run short of energy to convert into electrical energy (MWh) on a time-scale of a year. This can happen through e.g. shortage of water, especially in a grid which is largely hydro-power like ours; or mismanagement such as selling fuel from stockpiles just before a dry winter; or breakdown of a large station for years (one of the many reasons to be glad we rejected nukes); or mothballing stations as if they were not needed (while also claiming that new ones are). We need therefore to arrange the capacity to supply not only peak power but also sufficient annual electrical energy.
The annual electrical energy fed into our grid reached a total of 30 million MWh for the first time in 1991. The following year of the "shortage", the total was 2.6% lower. For the year ended 31-3-94, with unrestricted supply, generation was 31.2 M MWh, resulting for the half-decade in an average annual energy increase of 1.9%. During the "shortage" winter of 1992, the 580MW gas-fired New Plymouth station was run far below capacity, illustrating Electricorp's "economic limit": the fuel-fired stations are insinuated to be too expensive to run at design capacity, even when people and hot-water cylinders are freezing, and in spite of the allegedly dominant lust to get rid of the Maui gas by 2010. But Electricorp admits that the existing public supply system of N.Z. can generate 38M MWh even in a "1-in-60" dry year.
On both measures, then - peak power and annual energy - the country has a large surplus capacity, built at public expense of more than a billion dollars and causing serious ecological damage, e.g. confiscation of much of the Wanganui headwaters (still only partially restored). This overgrowth was perpetrated by a growthmaniac electricity-supply industry using phony projections ("forecasts") of what they were pleased to call "demand". Those projections were produced by methods kept obdurately secret in committees dominated by the electricity-supply industry. They typically asserted that power demand would double in only a decade (approx. 7% compound annual increase). On this basis the NZED annually gave Parliament a 15-year Power Plan envisaging many billions of dollars' worth of new stations, mostly thermal which would have wasted most of the energy from oil, gas, coal, and geothermal brines. The NZED launched a deluded nuclear programme, stopped by a half-decade of public outcry. Even after pruning of such grandiosities, the long-standing pattern remained that one-third of government capital expenditure, year after year, went into expanding the nation's capacity to generate & transmit electricity. The Clyde dam, not only unnecessary but even illegal (until a special Mulgoon-Beetham act of parliament overrode normal procedures), has become a nightmare of waste & danger. Electricorp say the cost of generating a kWh at Clyde is 12¢ whereas their average cost of generation is 1.17¢/kWh.
But today's system is even worse. No official power planning exists. Parliament no longer gets an annual Power Plan and "forecasts" open to democratic scrutiny. The modest-sounding 2 - 3% compound annual increases projected by the electricity industry (still by secret methods) correspond to roughly the same amount of extra generating capacity annually as the bigger percentages of two decades ago which procured today's overcapacity. Mr Barrie Leay's Electrical Supply Authorities Association solemnly projects 'demand' of 40M MWh in 2005, rising to 54M MWh in 2010. This means adding, in that half-decade, almost one-half of today's total electricity sales! We really have run out of reasonable dam sites; nevertheless, dozens of agencies are speculating money on possible power stations, mostly hydro, from which they feel they might make money. The fact that some very bad planning was done in the 1970s is supposed to justify the abolition of planning. Ideological hatred of public enterprise and of planning has turned the public electricity system, national and local, over to "the market" which is known to be even less capable of serving the public interest than was the old NZED/power boards system.
In order to generate electrical power at 1 MW (denoted 1 MWe), fuel-burning power stations have to produce thermal power at 2 - 5MWt , i.e. various types' efficiencies are in the range 50% - 20% ; most of the energy in the fuel is wasted. These thermal stations produce the corresponding notoriously large tonnages of carbon dioxide. Geothermal stations have yet worse efficiencies, and some also produce major carbon dioxide byproduct, for which no use or disposal is in sight. The growth fantasies glimpsed in the May 19th PR-flush are in the region of 75 - 300 MW extra capacity added each year. The financial and environmental costs of such expansion would be very severe. The image "15 Clyde dams" is proferred to 'monster' the nation into permitting and paying for the 2 or 3 which is probably about all that Electricorp think they could organise at once. It is essentially the same old game. The vague tacit threat "we will black you out if you don't indulge our growthmania" persists. Thus do beneficiaries pose as benefactors.
A regrettable variant is "we will get rid of the Maui gas by 2010, so we may as well have a new power station to burn it in". That line of course puts commercial arrangements ahead of planetary health, not to mention sustainability. Whether it will survive judicial examination of the proposed Stratford 400MWe gas-burner remains to be seen.
Compared with other forms of energy, electricity is inherently expensive; even the best (Huntly) of the NZED gas-fired stations is only 32% efficient. The combined-cycle station proposed for Stratford is claimed to be 50% efficient. Transpower's losses are stated to average about 6%; local low-voltage distribution entails losses which I would rank as the under-rated weakness of central electricity systems. Modern gas appliances produce as useful heat at least 80% of the energy in the gas. It is obviously better to promote direct gas use for low-temperature heat instead of the inherently wasteful & polluting indirect use through power stations.
Let us insist, in any case, on logic: only if a clear need had been proven should any new power station be permitted. A mere claim that some parties expect to profit can not justify the environmental damage entailed in such wasteful projects. One of the May 19th main advocates, PR'd as an expert on projecting "supply & demand" [ Bryan Leyland], has been for years himself centrally involved in the Auckland Electric Power Board's consultant-driven project to build a gas-fired power station at Southdown. The public will be better advised by independent experts who have no such conflict of interest.
But isn't some growth inevitable? No. Industrial activity is already excessive, if we hold the health of the biosphere as our prime criterion. We should plan to provide a steadily-decreasing supply of increasingly-reliable electricity, and get serious about sustainable energy systems. The Faust act has gone quite far enough. We have passed NZ's all-time peak of electricity consumption; now let's settle down and organise some stability.
Casinofication
Keeping the national grid available and meeting high standards of quality is a difficult operational task. This public service may be severely compromised by expensive attempts over the past several years, led by Mr Jim McLay and his longtime political colleague Mr Barrie Leay, to sketch a "wholesale [actually futures] electricity market". In the McLay/Leay notion, Electricorp would be split into several "competitive" corporations, and would split off the grid proper (i.e. the long-distance transmission system) as "independent" Transpower. The vision then entails trading of electricity futures contracts between many companies daily. Submissions are specifically invited on whether the trading could be in half-hour blocks! Under cover of false or meaningless chants ('efficiency', 'competitivity', etc.), our grid is thus threatened with alienation to casino status, its major public resources degraded to mere gambling chips. If this were permitted, our electricity would become both less reliable and more expensive. Just the attempt to meter all the transfers involved would entail ridiculous costs, and opportunities for white-collar theft.
In the 1970s I was instrumental in pointing out why the NZED deserved the title "No. 1 Environmental Vandal" - confirmed publicly by the then Commissioner of Works, Mr R G Norman, who also claimed second place for his department; but it is a pleasure for me to record now that I would far rather deal with those agencies than with the robber barons to whom the traitor Douglas has given our main public assets. Public enterprise planned & created a system which now generates the very cheapest electricity in the world; how can we keep it that way?
Better Ideas
The fact that our electricity is generated very cheaply does not mean it should be sold cheaply. Tariffs should reflect the need for conservation {see box}. But lately, a major new barrier to conservation has been erected by Barry Brill & other power company executives who have imposed huge fixed charges. The effect is that the more electricity you save the more you pay per unit. It is right that there should be a small standing charge, because the energy retailer has sunk capital in the cables, meter etc, and has some running costs in reading the meter etc. What is not right is that huge fixed charges be levied for the purpose of guaranteeing profit, and with the perverse indirect effect of penalising conservation.
================================================
{ BOX }
INCREASING BLOCK TARIFFS Conservationists have been advocating for two decades, to little or no effect so far amongst the money-maniacs, that electricity should be retailed with pricing structures of this general form:
¢/kWh (at margin)
| | ---------------
| |
| |---------------|
| |
|-----|
|_________ kWh/month
The numerical details for a particular power board will take some working out. This process is not merely technical; it also inevitably entails value judgements. But it is certainly simpler, and actually worthwhile, compared with the protracted McLay/Leay casinofication attempt. If this type of tariff were instituted, direct gas and solar energy would be allowed to compete fairly. (Advanced Kiwi Conservation Club exercise: draw your household's electricity tariff as a graph on the above diagram.)
================================================
We are foisted with a new era of growthmania, not only at the national level (Electricorp) but especially among some of the distributing and retailing companies which were until recently municipal departments or consumers' co-operatives (power boards). We shall not shake free from this new mania until the nation at least creates an energy policy and a working mechanism for planning & stabilising - certainly not casinofying - the system. Under the Resource Management Act, a national energy policy could be stated; it should be. Meanwhile, as no additional power stations are to be planned, what should the Electricorp design staff do? They must be encouraged to meet the neglected challenges of providing higher reliability, and given resources to get serious about wind, especially to replace hydro (dams silt up within a half-century) and generating more electricity from the same water e.g. by cleaning out the existing Manapouri tailrace. Growthmania and monumentalism have already brought engineering into enough disrepute; let's see some eco-engineering!
================================================
{ BOX }
The Global Picture
Only this century, and only in some societies, have people become accustomed to abundant availability & use of energy. This is an anomaly, both historically and geographically. New Zealand's per capita annual consumption of traded energy is about 30,000 kWh, not very far short of the USA (74,000). Contrast these with Brazil & China (5,800), or India & the Philippines (2,200). We consume vastly more than our share. NZ's population is not increasing much, but global population growth is still as high as 1.7% p.a., adding thirty NZs each year. Diminishing resources of fuels and of ecologically acceptable hydro-power sites, and burgeoning pollution (notably atmospheric carbon dioxide), mean we have only one reasonable option: both using less and wasting less energy. The binge is over.
================================================
Electricity, no matter how generated, is always a relatively expensive form of energy, in money and in natural resources. A first principle of household energy planning is therefore to use electricity for only those functions which are inherently electrical (amplifiers & other electronics, certain tools and motors). Nevertheless, lighting & refrigeration are usually powered by electricity though gas-powered versions should be considered for remote locations.
The typical residence's energy consumption (averaging approx. 1 kW) is mostly for low-temperature heat. Direct solar-thermal conversions using your roof can be the principal supply for this: solar water-heating, and solar room-heating. These should be incorporated in new buildings and can usually be fitted into existing buildings. Compared with common heating systems which use entirely combustion (wood, coal or gas) or electrical heating, these buildings will use far less fuel, or fewer kWh; but some topping-up will generally be needed in cold weather.
Diverting energy which is now going to waste is your principal opportunity to save electricity promptly. Electricity is converted to low-temperature heat at 100% efficiency, e.g. in water- or room-heaters, but large losses of that heat then leak to waste through gaps and poor insulation. Ask your electricity retailer to help you assess your options and instal draught-proofing strips, foil or blanket insulation above ceilings, better insulation on hot water tanks, etc.
Conversion of electricity to light is generally inefficient. Ordinary light bulbs give out as heat, not light, about 9/10 of the electricity they consume! Modern fluorescent lights are several times more efficient. They are still so expensive that the savings take many years to pay off; but the main payoff is in rivers saved, less contaminated air & land, etc. And they do last 8 times longer than the disgraceful planned failure of modern ordinary bulbs. Major savings can also be achieved by up-to-date electric motors and controls.
Economical methods abound for diverting to use energy now wasted. These 'negawatts' are cheaper, sooner available, more reliably sustained, and far less damaging to nature, than any new power station. They can economically substitute for at least one quarter of the electricity used these days, according to several expert estimates. Electricorp, and energy retailers, should help to deploy these wiser solutions, rather than compounding our problems by threatening to build power stations.
================================================ { BOX }
On balance, conservation is served (not to mention the eyesight of the workers assembling TV sets) by switching TV sets to 'warm standby' rather than off. The small electricity consumption on standby is not entirely waste, giving a trickle of warmth within a house. Much more importantly, the energy embodied in a TV set far exceeds its 'lifetime' operating consumption. (Even such a device as a car, made for the purpose of converting energy on a scale of scores of kW, embodies as much energy in its metals, tyres etc. as all the fuel it so powerfully consumes in its working lifetime.) A TV set's working life is shortened by cold starts. Most TV-set failures are in the power supply, a section of parts which last much longer if kept warm. Failure rates in picture tubes are also lowered. Junked TV tubes, like fluorescent tubes, are often smashed making sharp edges which are especially hazardous because the phosphors on the inside surface of the glass are poisonous, severely inhibiting healing of such wounds. As with any equipment relying on vacuum tubes (valves), leave it on 'warm standby' unless you foresee no use within a week. This example illustrates the fact that running costs are never the whole story in energy conservation; making equipment last longer is often more important.
================================================
Generally, of course, technical fixes for increased efficiency in consumption offer less value than the intelligent restraints of prudent lifestyles - turning off lights when not needed, putting on jerseys instead of heaters, turning hot-water thermostats down to 55°, etc. This second meaning of the term 'energy conservation' is routinely mocked as 'candles & caves'; but in truth, many modern end-uses of energy are careless, frivolous, or downright dangerous, and society will be happier when they are curbed. On this issue, ecology aligns with economy, justice, security, and even pleasure!
New Zealand's global role is to show the overdeveloped world an example of consuming less and enjoying it more. A main reason why F&B is so large & successful is that our advocacy is based in active nature-study. I would be happier about our nation's future if teachers were still being properly trained in Nature Study, and if the "Technology curriculum" were worthy of the name and competently organised. The skills needed to compile the main facts in this article are, evidently, lacking in mass media and in the staff of conservation groups today.
The quarter-century of energy/environment awareness has, unfortunately, stimulated considerable growth of perverted, sometimes pseudo-green, propagandists. Surely we conservationists can overtake and outmatch their analytical & communication abilities.
And how can we help to accelerate the deployment of technology & education for the transition to sustainable renewable-energy systems? Having answered the relatively easy question "are more power stations needed?", let us discuss these genuine problems.
Dr Mann, former Senior Lecturer in Environmental Studies, conducted (mainly with other University of Auckland staff) the Energy Project of the now-defunct Environmental Defence Society, 1973-83. He continues his work on energy/environment issues mainly with 'Forest & Bird', most recently for the Far North branch against the proposed Ngawha 8MWe geothermal power station.
for electricity in NZ revealed a thousand-megawatt surplus generating
capacity. The efforts of those in the electricity supply industry, and
those involved in selling new power stations e.g Bryan Leyland, to make out
that there was a shortage had extended even to staging a phoney shortage
the previous year. Nobody issued any public disputes with that article.
Have any experts, or any journos, investigated the trends in demand
and in supply during the decade since that survey? What happened last
winter? Was another phoney shortage staged in effort to panic the nation
into authorising unnecessary investment in new power stations?
I am grateful to John Blakeley for pointing out the 'Energy Data File'
http://www.med.govt.nz/ers/en_stats.html
- in particular, chart G.4b shows that annual electricity
generation (i.e demand) did not increase at all in the 3 y 1999-2002. The
figures for 2003 are not given. The general trend of this graph 1974-2002
is not even linear, let alone exponential: the trend of the slope (the rate
of increase) is generally downwards.
It is a shame that the media frontperson for saving the Waitaki is
less than satisfactory. When the slick PR man Seay for Meridian® had
allowed her to hold forth extensively on Radio NZ this morning, without
interrupting on that occasion, it was stupid, as well as rude, for her to
interrupt him so soon as she did.
It is to be hoped that the cttee of parlt now considering the
unwanted Fast Track bill for project Aqua will append to its report an
updated version of my article. I suspect that the new generating capacity
added in this past decade will have preserved most of that gigawatt of
surplus capacity.
What is in a way more worrying is that Mr Blakeley tells me there
is no longer a man with a dirty big ammeter and the power to order the
stations in their 'merit order' to prepare to come online. This is Max
Bradford's more efficient, kmpetiti'v shambles - giving lower prices, he
claimed.
There are plenty of other good reasons why this stupiid destructive
project should be abandoned, but I urge that lack of proven need be a main
criterion in appraisal of 'Aqua'. The burden of proof should be on
Meridian to show need; but as usual it falls to the conservationists to
prove lack of need.
Robt Mann
consultant ecologist
P O Box 28878 Remuera, Auckland 1005, New Zealand
(9) 524 2949
=============
So you've discovered a power station proposed for your district. Your branch of Forest & Bird, along with any suitable partners in a coalition, should present to the relevant planning authorities, and to the public, your clear & vigorous assessment of the proposal.
Or, even if no power station threatens your locality, you've realised that stabilising the electricity industry is required for the nation's and even the planet's health.
Either way, this article will be useful to you. Your primary argument will be lack of need - no new power stations are justified in N.Z. We give here the main facts which prove that conclusion.
NO MORE POWER STATIONS !
Robert Mann
Forest & Bird Nov. 1994
The nation was presented on May 19 with a concerted PR thrust for new power stations. The corporatised NZ Electricity Dept, now called Electricorp or ECNZ, asserted we may need extra power equivalent to 7 or even possibly 15 Clyde dams within a few decades. Another report the same day similarly suggested we must pay billions of dollars to meet accelerating "demand" for new power stations.
This is the latest flurry in a peculiar game which goes back at least a quarter-century. It was a power station scheme, Manapouri, which provoked the modern era of conservation awareness and action in this country. By the late 1970s, as a result of public participation especially around the Royal Commission on Nuclear Power, scientists became able to advise constructively what to do instead of new power stations:
• economically harness now-wasted electricity;
• deploy small-scale energy systems to capture renewable (solar) energy.
These preferable options still languish almost ignored. They are today even more potent because since the 1970s they have made considerable technical advances while big power stations have remained much the same dinosaurs. The above two principles were brought into focus in the late '70s, enunciated well in Amory Lovins' 'Soft Energy Paths' (1977), and remain correct but are still largely thwarted by those with vested interests in expanding mains electricity supply & consumption under the banner of economic growth. Any notion of saturation, or sufficiency, or limits to growth, seems beyond their ken.
Neglected too are tariff structures to discourage extravagant electricity consumption while allowing a reasonable amount at cheap rates.
In order to understand how we know that new power stations are the inferior path, we must be clear about a few words & numbers (see box).
================================================
{ BOX }
Energy is not Power
Power, an important technical term, is not the same as energy. Scientists & engineers use the word 'power' to mean instantaneous rate of flow of energy e.g. rate of doing work. The basic unit of power is the watt, but for many purposes the horsepower (746 W) or the kilowatt (kW) - 1,000 W - is a more convenient unit. A typical one-bar heater's rate of conversion of electrical energy to heat, that is its power, is 1 kW. One megawatt (MW) is one thousand kilowatts. The most powerful station on the N.Z. grid, Huntly, can send into the grid almost 1,000 MW of electrical power.
The familiar metered unit of electrical energy is the kilowatt-hour (kWh); a one-bar heater through which flows a power of 1 kW thus uses 1 kWh of energy each hour it runs. That same amount of electricity could run a 100W light-bulb for 10 hours. This amount of energy is the "unit" of our electricity bills.
Electricity supplies are subject also to measures of quality. Reliable supply - rather than blackout or brownout (voltage drop) - is more important to most householders and industries than small differences in energy price. More subtle aspects of quality include requirements, for certain types of electronic device, that the frequency of the mains must not vary more than a few percent from the standard 50 cycles per second.
================================================
The N.Z. Electricity System
The central government's NZ Electricity Dept built up (mainly through the Ministry of Works) a co-ordinated system of 40 power stations feeding into a national grid of high-power transmission lines.
Some electricity distributor/retailers run their own grid-connected mini-stations, mostly to save paying Electricorp's peak prices. These amount to about 5% of the grid's installed capacity.
A few industries, notably the geothermally-powered Tasman pulp mill (Kawerau), not only generate much or all of the electricity they use, and run industrial processes with leftover heat, but also are connected to the grid with sales in either direction. Such 'co-generation' or 'total energy' systems, if prudently encouraged, could be installed in various parts of the country, substituting at least 100 MW now drawn from the grid, and decreasing transmission losses.
The two latest Electricorp annual reports, and the 12-months report to 31-3-94, contain figures which have not been drawn to public attention, and which the NZ Herald has refused to publish, giving the lie to claims that new power stations are needed.
The installed generating capacity - the maximum power that could be fed into the grid if the corresponding demand ever occurred and if all stations were flat-out - is measured in megawatts. With the Clyde dam it reached, in round figures, 7700 MW. The maximum power that has ever been generated into the grid is far less: 5500 MW.
The actual surplus capacity is however not as much as that 40% margin. Electricorp has expressed the desire that 'spinning reserve', normal maintenance shutdowns, and other operating requirements should total 23% (1200 MW) beyond their peak generated power. Allowing that reserve capacity, we still have 1000MW surplus generating capacity. The Centre for Advanced Engineering, University of Canterbury, published recently a big report on reliability of electricity supply which states "there is ample installed capacity in New Zealand to meet power system peaks".
The peak power demanded of Electricorp was essentially constant (5150 MW) for 4 winters 1989-92. For 1993 it was 5240 MW. Thus, over the past half-decade, annual increases in Electricorp's peak power have averaged 0.54%.
A grid, even if it has ample installed generating capacity (MW), can run short of energy to convert into electrical energy (MWh) on a time-scale of a year. This can happen through e.g. shortage of water, especially in a grid which is largely hydro-power like ours; or mismanagement such as selling fuel from stockpiles just before a dry winter; or breakdown of a large station for years (one of the many reasons to be glad we rejected nukes); or mothballing stations as if they were not needed (while also claiming that new ones are). We need therefore to arrange the capacity to supply not only peak power but also sufficient annual electrical energy.
The annual electrical energy fed into our grid reached a total of 30 million MWh for the first time in 1991. The following year of the "shortage", the total was 2.6% lower. For the year ended 31-3-94, with unrestricted supply, generation was 31.2 M MWh, resulting for the half-decade in an average annual energy increase of 1.9%. During the "shortage" winter of 1992, the 580MW gas-fired New Plymouth station was run far below capacity, illustrating Electricorp's "economic limit": the fuel-fired stations are insinuated to be too expensive to run at design capacity, even when people and hot-water cylinders are freezing, and in spite of the allegedly dominant lust to get rid of the Maui gas by 2010. But Electricorp admits that the existing public supply system of N.Z. can generate 38M MWh even in a "1-in-60" dry year.
On both measures, then - peak power and annual energy - the country has a large surplus capacity, built at public expense of more than a billion dollars and causing serious ecological damage, e.g. confiscation of much of the Wanganui headwaters (still only partially restored). This overgrowth was perpetrated by a growthmaniac electricity-supply industry using phony projections ("forecasts") of what they were pleased to call "demand". Those projections were produced by methods kept obdurately secret in committees dominated by the electricity-supply industry. They typically asserted that power demand would double in only a decade (approx. 7% compound annual increase). On this basis the NZED annually gave Parliament a 15-year Power Plan envisaging many billions of dollars' worth of new stations, mostly thermal which would have wasted most of the energy from oil, gas, coal, and geothermal brines. The NZED launched a deluded nuclear programme, stopped by a half-decade of public outcry. Even after pruning of such grandiosities, the long-standing pattern remained that one-third of government capital expenditure, year after year, went into expanding the nation's capacity to generate & transmit electricity. The Clyde dam, not only unnecessary but even illegal (until a special Mulgoon-Beetham act of parliament overrode normal procedures), has become a nightmare of waste & danger. Electricorp say the cost of generating a kWh at Clyde is 12¢ whereas their average cost of generation is 1.17¢/kWh.
But today's system is even worse. No official power planning exists. Parliament no longer gets an annual Power Plan and "forecasts" open to democratic scrutiny. The modest-sounding 2 - 3% compound annual increases projected by the electricity industry (still by secret methods) correspond to roughly the same amount of extra generating capacity annually as the bigger percentages of two decades ago which procured today's overcapacity. Mr Barrie Leay's Electrical Supply Authorities Association solemnly projects 'demand' of 40M MWh in 2005, rising to 54M MWh in 2010. This means adding, in that half-decade, almost one-half of today's total electricity sales! We really have run out of reasonable dam sites; nevertheless, dozens of agencies are speculating money on possible power stations, mostly hydro, from which they feel they might make money. The fact that some very bad planning was done in the 1970s is supposed to justify the abolition of planning. Ideological hatred of public enterprise and of planning has turned the public electricity system, national and local, over to "the market" which is known to be even less capable of serving the public interest than was the old NZED/power boards system.
In order to generate electrical power at 1 MW (denoted 1 MWe), fuel-burning power stations have to produce thermal power at 2 - 5MWt , i.e. various types' efficiencies are in the range 50% - 20% ; most of the energy in the fuel is wasted. These thermal stations produce the corresponding notoriously large tonnages of carbon dioxide. Geothermal stations have yet worse efficiencies, and some also produce major carbon dioxide byproduct, for which no use or disposal is in sight. The growth fantasies glimpsed in the May 19th PR-flush are in the region of 75 - 300 MW extra capacity added each year. The financial and environmental costs of such expansion would be very severe. The image "15 Clyde dams" is proferred to 'monster' the nation into permitting and paying for the 2 or 3 which is probably about all that Electricorp think they could organise at once. It is essentially the same old game. The vague tacit threat "we will black you out if you don't indulge our growthmania" persists. Thus do beneficiaries pose as benefactors.
A regrettable variant is "we will get rid of the Maui gas by 2010, so we may as well have a new power station to burn it in". That line of course puts commercial arrangements ahead of planetary health, not to mention sustainability. Whether it will survive judicial examination of the proposed Stratford 400MWe gas-burner remains to be seen.
Compared with other forms of energy, electricity is inherently expensive; even the best (Huntly) of the NZED gas-fired stations is only 32% efficient. The combined-cycle station proposed for Stratford is claimed to be 50% efficient. Transpower's losses are stated to average about 6%; local low-voltage distribution entails losses which I would rank as the under-rated weakness of central electricity systems. Modern gas appliances produce as useful heat at least 80% of the energy in the gas. It is obviously better to promote direct gas use for low-temperature heat instead of the inherently wasteful & polluting indirect use through power stations.
Let us insist, in any case, on logic: only if a clear need had been proven should any new power station be permitted. A mere claim that some parties expect to profit can not justify the environmental damage entailed in such wasteful projects. One of the May 19th main advocates, PR'd as an expert on projecting "supply & demand" [ Bryan Leyland], has been for years himself centrally involved in the Auckland Electric Power Board's consultant-driven project to build a gas-fired power station at Southdown. The public will be better advised by independent experts who have no such conflict of interest.
But isn't some growth inevitable? No. Industrial activity is already excessive, if we hold the health of the biosphere as our prime criterion. We should plan to provide a steadily-decreasing supply of increasingly-reliable electricity, and get serious about sustainable energy systems. The Faust act has gone quite far enough. We have passed NZ's all-time peak of electricity consumption; now let's settle down and organise some stability.
Casinofication
Keeping the national grid available and meeting high standards of quality is a difficult operational task. This public service may be severely compromised by expensive attempts over the past several years, led by Mr Jim McLay and his longtime political colleague Mr Barrie Leay, to sketch a "wholesale [actually futures] electricity market". In the McLay/Leay notion, Electricorp would be split into several "competitive" corporations, and would split off the grid proper (i.e. the long-distance transmission system) as "independent" Transpower. The vision then entails trading of electricity futures contracts between many companies daily. Submissions are specifically invited on whether the trading could be in half-hour blocks! Under cover of false or meaningless chants ('efficiency', 'competitivity', etc.), our grid is thus threatened with alienation to casino status, its major public resources degraded to mere gambling chips. If this were permitted, our electricity would become both less reliable and more expensive. Just the attempt to meter all the transfers involved would entail ridiculous costs, and opportunities for white-collar theft.
In the 1970s I was instrumental in pointing out why the NZED deserved the title "No. 1 Environmental Vandal" - confirmed publicly by the then Commissioner of Works, Mr R G Norman, who also claimed second place for his department; but it is a pleasure for me to record now that I would far rather deal with those agencies than with the robber barons to whom the traitor Douglas has given our main public assets. Public enterprise planned & created a system which now generates the very cheapest electricity in the world; how can we keep it that way?
Better Ideas
The fact that our electricity is generated very cheaply does not mean it should be sold cheaply. Tariffs should reflect the need for conservation {see box}. But lately, a major new barrier to conservation has been erected by Barry Brill & other power company executives who have imposed huge fixed charges. The effect is that the more electricity you save the more you pay per unit. It is right that there should be a small standing charge, because the energy retailer has sunk capital in the cables, meter etc, and has some running costs in reading the meter etc. What is not right is that huge fixed charges be levied for the purpose of guaranteeing profit, and with the perverse indirect effect of penalising conservation.
================================================
{ BOX }
INCREASING BLOCK TARIFFS Conservationists have been advocating for two decades, to little or no effect so far amongst the money-maniacs, that electricity should be retailed with pricing structures of this general form:
¢/kWh (at margin)
| | ---------------
| |
| |---------------|
| |
|-----|
|_________ kWh/month
The numerical details for a particular power board will take some working out. This process is not merely technical; it also inevitably entails value judgements. But it is certainly simpler, and actually worthwhile, compared with the protracted McLay/Leay casinofication attempt. If this type of tariff were instituted, direct gas and solar energy would be allowed to compete fairly. (Advanced Kiwi Conservation Club exercise: draw your household's electricity tariff as a graph on the above diagram.)
================================================
We are foisted with a new era of growthmania, not only at the national level (Electricorp) but especially among some of the distributing and retailing companies which were until recently municipal departments or consumers' co-operatives (power boards). We shall not shake free from this new mania until the nation at least creates an energy policy and a working mechanism for planning & stabilising - certainly not casinofying - the system. Under the Resource Management Act, a national energy policy could be stated; it should be. Meanwhile, as no additional power stations are to be planned, what should the Electricorp design staff do? They must be encouraged to meet the neglected challenges of providing higher reliability, and given resources to get serious about wind, especially to replace hydro (dams silt up within a half-century) and generating more electricity from the same water e.g. by cleaning out the existing Manapouri tailrace. Growthmania and monumentalism have already brought engineering into enough disrepute; let's see some eco-engineering!
================================================
{ BOX }
The Global Picture
Only this century, and only in some societies, have people become accustomed to abundant availability & use of energy. This is an anomaly, both historically and geographically. New Zealand's per capita annual consumption of traded energy is about 30,000 kWh, not very far short of the USA (74,000). Contrast these with Brazil & China (5,800), or India & the Philippines (2,200). We consume vastly more than our share. NZ's population is not increasing much, but global population growth is still as high as 1.7% p.a., adding thirty NZs each year. Diminishing resources of fuels and of ecologically acceptable hydro-power sites, and burgeoning pollution (notably atmospheric carbon dioxide), mean we have only one reasonable option: both using less and wasting less energy. The binge is over.
================================================
Electricity, no matter how generated, is always a relatively expensive form of energy, in money and in natural resources. A first principle of household energy planning is therefore to use electricity for only those functions which are inherently electrical (amplifiers & other electronics, certain tools and motors). Nevertheless, lighting & refrigeration are usually powered by electricity though gas-powered versions should be considered for remote locations.
The typical residence's energy consumption (averaging approx. 1 kW) is mostly for low-temperature heat. Direct solar-thermal conversions using your roof can be the principal supply for this: solar water-heating, and solar room-heating. These should be incorporated in new buildings and can usually be fitted into existing buildings. Compared with common heating systems which use entirely combustion (wood, coal or gas) or electrical heating, these buildings will use far less fuel, or fewer kWh; but some topping-up will generally be needed in cold weather.
Diverting energy which is now going to waste is your principal opportunity to save electricity promptly. Electricity is converted to low-temperature heat at 100% efficiency, e.g. in water- or room-heaters, but large losses of that heat then leak to waste through gaps and poor insulation. Ask your electricity retailer to help you assess your options and instal draught-proofing strips, foil or blanket insulation above ceilings, better insulation on hot water tanks, etc.
Conversion of electricity to light is generally inefficient. Ordinary light bulbs give out as heat, not light, about 9/10 of the electricity they consume! Modern fluorescent lights are several times more efficient. They are still so expensive that the savings take many years to pay off; but the main payoff is in rivers saved, less contaminated air & land, etc. And they do last 8 times longer than the disgraceful planned failure of modern ordinary bulbs. Major savings can also be achieved by up-to-date electric motors and controls.
Economical methods abound for diverting to use energy now wasted. These 'negawatts' are cheaper, sooner available, more reliably sustained, and far less damaging to nature, than any new power station. They can economically substitute for at least one quarter of the electricity used these days, according to several expert estimates. Electricorp, and energy retailers, should help to deploy these wiser solutions, rather than compounding our problems by threatening to build power stations.
================================================ { BOX }
On balance, conservation is served (not to mention the eyesight of the workers assembling TV sets) by switching TV sets to 'warm standby' rather than off. The small electricity consumption on standby is not entirely waste, giving a trickle of warmth within a house. Much more importantly, the energy embodied in a TV set far exceeds its 'lifetime' operating consumption. (Even such a device as a car, made for the purpose of converting energy on a scale of scores of kW, embodies as much energy in its metals, tyres etc. as all the fuel it so powerfully consumes in its working lifetime.) A TV set's working life is shortened by cold starts. Most TV-set failures are in the power supply, a section of parts which last much longer if kept warm. Failure rates in picture tubes are also lowered. Junked TV tubes, like fluorescent tubes, are often smashed making sharp edges which are especially hazardous because the phosphors on the inside surface of the glass are poisonous, severely inhibiting healing of such wounds. As with any equipment relying on vacuum tubes (valves), leave it on 'warm standby' unless you foresee no use within a week. This example illustrates the fact that running costs are never the whole story in energy conservation; making equipment last longer is often more important.
================================================
Generally, of course, technical fixes for increased efficiency in consumption offer less value than the intelligent restraints of prudent lifestyles - turning off lights when not needed, putting on jerseys instead of heaters, turning hot-water thermostats down to 55°, etc. This second meaning of the term 'energy conservation' is routinely mocked as 'candles & caves'; but in truth, many modern end-uses of energy are careless, frivolous, or downright dangerous, and society will be happier when they are curbed. On this issue, ecology aligns with economy, justice, security, and even pleasure!
New Zealand's global role is to show the overdeveloped world an example of consuming less and enjoying it more. A main reason why F&B is so large & successful is that our advocacy is based in active nature-study. I would be happier about our nation's future if teachers were still being properly trained in Nature Study, and if the "Technology curriculum" were worthy of the name and competently organised. The skills needed to compile the main facts in this article are, evidently, lacking in mass media and in the staff of conservation groups today.
The quarter-century of energy/environment awareness has, unfortunately, stimulated considerable growth of perverted, sometimes pseudo-green, propagandists. Surely we conservationists can overtake and outmatch their analytical & communication abilities.
And how can we help to accelerate the deployment of technology & education for the transition to sustainable renewable-energy systems? Having answered the relatively easy question "are more power stations needed?", let us discuss these genuine problems.
Dr Mann, former Senior Lecturer in Environmental Studies, conducted (mainly with other University of Auckland staff) the Energy Project of the now-defunct Environmental Defence Society, 1973-83. He continues his work on energy/environment issues mainly with 'Forest & Bird', most recently for the Far North branch against the proposed Ngawha 8MWe geothermal power station.
02/27/04
> generating 5 to 10 mega-watts per hour
>of electricity
Should alone serve warning that this is not a genuine technology or
a reliable corporation. And there is vastly more evidence to similar
effect in the spam.
Both the "technology" outfit and the touting front "Wall Street
Financial Times" are blatant furphies. If the figures are within an order
of mag, this is worrying evidence of the lack of skill in technology
assessment, and makes it somewhat easier to understand how $10^11 has been
syphoned out of venture-drongos by gene-jockeys and some large total (a few
orders less?) by nanowankers.
At least one can get a few hollow laughs, e.g from that first
headline/motto/mission statement.
R
====
From: "Miles Lundy"
Subject: Subscribers benefit from our special stock updates vfryizxlcmzf [sic]
Date: Fri, 27 Feb 04
Wall Street Financial Times Newsletter
Specializing in Undervalued Small Cap Stocks for Immediate Breakout
We have the #1 track record for our picks in 2004:
GETC at .12 Currently .50 High .68 UP 467%
TLPE at 1.12 Currently 3.35 High 4.40 UP 293%
SWYC at .18 Currently .71 High .81 UP 350%
DNYY at .47 Currently 1.42 High 1.85 UP 294%
Immediate Investor Recommendation
Our Hottest Sales and Earnings Play
Projected to Triple in 7 Days:
Life Energy and Technology Holdings, Inc.
(OTCBB: LETH)
Price--- 1.27
Sales Orders Received '03--- over $150 Million +300% growth vs. '02
Est. Sales Growth '04--- +165%
Results from latest 10-Q:
Total Assets--- 36.8 million vs. 16.8 million
Cash--- 23.4 million vs. deficit
Shareholders Equity--- 12.0 million vs. 2.2 million
Shares Outstanding--- 29 mill
Est. Shares in Float--- 7 mill
Proj. Value Per Share--- 3.25 -- 3.50
Rating--- Urgent Buy
LETH is thriving as an emerging world leader in the conversion of waste
materials into electrical energy by utilizing their Biosphere Process
System, making them the hottest undervalued stock at this price level where
shares are ready to explode on huge investor attention.
Sales have rocketed beyond all estimates for LETH with no signs of
slowing. The numbers continue to stack-up as sales orders for the
Biosphere exceed $150 Million over the past year while the stock
price doesn't yet reflect the appearance of these impressive figures
on an upcoming balance sheet. We are not the first to uncover this phenomenon
as the stock is under accumulation, but we are acting aggressively on this
recently filed data.
The unique proprietary technology of the Biosphere fills an urgent
worldwide need for cost-effective renewable energy sources and a
corresponding universal need to solve critical problems in the disposal
of waste. The Biosphere System provides the highest level of innovative
technology while securing worldwide acceptance for a revolutionary
product designed to significantly impact the global waste problem
while simultaneously generating electricity.
The Biosphere System enables LETH to draw revenue from the disposal of
various types of waste at 5 to 7 tons per hour including such materials
as: Municipal Solid Waste, refinery wastes, agricultural surpluses or
effluents, medical waste, industrial waste, shale oil, sour natural gas,
and the huge market of used tires are all converted in the Biosphere Process.
LETH also profits from the sale of electricity created from the waste
conversion on a continuous basis by generating 5 to 10 mega-watts per hour
of electricity which is then sold to replenish the local or national grid.
LETH is an alliance partner with Tetra Tech, Inc. (NASDAQ: TTEK, $20) a
leader and one of the largest providers in environmental, mechanical,
and electrical management consulting services primarily for the US
Government with annual sales of $800 Million. Tetra Tech will coordinate
permitting, installation and continuous worldwide monitoring of the
Biosphere Process System for LETH. Tetra Tech is now in the process of
obtaining Department of Environmental Quality permitting for the Biosphere
Process in the state of Louisiana. This is a monumental event for LETH
which opens the floodgates for major project revenues in Louisiana while
having a parallel effect on LETH stock in the form of a huge near-
term announcement.
LETH has begun to catch the profit-making attention of investors by
embracing a major foothold on the global waste problem while a major
push for generating electricity from alternative sources continues to
be the hot topic due to shortages and massive power failures. LETH
contains all the ingredients for major profits as global demand to
solve two crisis areas, waste and electrical energy, reaches
unprecedented levels. We view this perfectly timed convergence of events
as the catalyst for additional contracts that will perpetuate the
shattering of the Company's own sales records. We are seeing substantial
gains for early investors in a ground floor opportunity
that carries our highest rating for short-term trading profits.
Required LETH information: Certain statements contained in this
newsletter may be forward looking statements within the meaning of The
Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such terms as "expect",
"believe", "may", "will", and "intend" or similar terms may identify
these statements. We are not a registered investment advisor or a broker
dealer. This is not an offer to buy or sell securities. No recommendation
that the securities of the companies profiled should be purchased, sold or
held by individuals or entities that learn of the profiled companies. This
is an independent electronic publication that was paid five thousand dollars
by an unaffiliated third party for the preparation of this company information.
Be advised that investments in companies profiled are considered to be high-
risk and use of the content provided is for information purposes only. If
anyone decides to
act as an investor they are advised not to invest without the proper
guidance from a financial advisor or a registered financial broker. If any
party decides to participate as an investor then it will be that investor's
sole risk. Be advised that the purchase of such high-risk securities may result
in the loss of some or all of the investment. Investors should not rely solely
on the information presented. Rather, investors should use the information
provided in this newsletter as a starting point for doing additional
independent
research on the profiled companies in order to allow the investor to form their
own opinion regarding investing in the profiled companies. Factual statements
made about the profiled companies are made as of the date
stated and are subject to change without notice. Investing in micro-cap
securities is highly speculative and carries an extremely high degree of risk.
All information provided about the profiled companies may include information
provided by outside sources, such as research reports, public filings, and
information provided by management of the profiled company.
>of electricity
Should alone serve warning that this is not a genuine technology or
a reliable corporation. And there is vastly more evidence to similar
effect in the spam.
Both the "technology" outfit and the touting front "Wall Street
Financial Times" are blatant furphies. If the figures are within an order
of mag, this is worrying evidence of the lack of skill in technology
assessment, and makes it somewhat easier to understand how $10^11 has been
syphoned out of venture-drongos by gene-jockeys and some large total (a few
orders less?) by nanowankers.
At least one can get a few hollow laughs, e.g from that first
headline/motto/mission statement.
R
====
From: "Miles Lundy"
Subject: Subscribers benefit from our special stock updates vfryizxlcmzf [sic]
Date: Fri, 27 Feb 04
Wall Street Financial Times Newsletter
Specializing in Undervalued Small Cap Stocks for Immediate Breakout
We have the #1 track record for our picks in 2004:
GETC at .12 Currently .50 High .68 UP 467%
TLPE at 1.12 Currently 3.35 High 4.40 UP 293%
SWYC at .18 Currently .71 High .81 UP 350%
DNYY at .47 Currently 1.42 High 1.85 UP 294%
Immediate Investor Recommendation
Our Hottest Sales and Earnings Play
Projected to Triple in 7 Days:
Life Energy and Technology Holdings, Inc.
(OTCBB: LETH)
Price--- 1.27
Sales Orders Received '03--- over $150 Million +300% growth vs. '02
Est. Sales Growth '04--- +165%
Results from latest 10-Q:
Total Assets--- 36.8 million vs. 16.8 million
Cash--- 23.4 million vs. deficit
Shareholders Equity--- 12.0 million vs. 2.2 million
Shares Outstanding--- 29 mill
Est. Shares in Float--- 7 mill
Proj. Value Per Share--- 3.25 -- 3.50
Rating--- Urgent Buy
LETH is thriving as an emerging world leader in the conversion of waste
materials into electrical energy by utilizing their Biosphere Process
System, making them the hottest undervalued stock at this price level where
shares are ready to explode on huge investor attention.
Sales have rocketed beyond all estimates for LETH with no signs of
slowing. The numbers continue to stack-up as sales orders for the
Biosphere exceed $150 Million over the past year while the stock
price doesn't yet reflect the appearance of these impressive figures
on an upcoming balance sheet. We are not the first to uncover this phenomenon
as the stock is under accumulation, but we are acting aggressively on this
recently filed data.
The unique proprietary technology of the Biosphere fills an urgent
worldwide need for cost-effective renewable energy sources and a
corresponding universal need to solve critical problems in the disposal
of waste. The Biosphere System provides the highest level of innovative
technology while securing worldwide acceptance for a revolutionary
product designed to significantly impact the global waste problem
while simultaneously generating electricity.
The Biosphere System enables LETH to draw revenue from the disposal of
various types of waste at 5 to 7 tons per hour including such materials
as: Municipal Solid Waste, refinery wastes, agricultural surpluses or
effluents, medical waste, industrial waste, shale oil, sour natural gas,
and the huge market of used tires are all converted in the Biosphere Process.
LETH also profits from the sale of electricity created from the waste
conversion on a continuous basis by generating 5 to 10 mega-watts per hour
of electricity which is then sold to replenish the local or national grid.
LETH is an alliance partner with Tetra Tech, Inc. (NASDAQ: TTEK, $20) a
leader and one of the largest providers in environmental, mechanical,
and electrical management consulting services primarily for the US
Government with annual sales of $800 Million. Tetra Tech will coordinate
permitting, installation and continuous worldwide monitoring of the
Biosphere Process System for LETH. Tetra Tech is now in the process of
obtaining Department of Environmental Quality permitting for the Biosphere
Process in the state of Louisiana. This is a monumental event for LETH
which opens the floodgates for major project revenues in Louisiana while
having a parallel effect on LETH stock in the form of a huge near-
term announcement.
LETH has begun to catch the profit-making attention of investors by
embracing a major foothold on the global waste problem while a major
push for generating electricity from alternative sources continues to
be the hot topic due to shortages and massive power failures. LETH
contains all the ingredients for major profits as global demand to
solve two crisis areas, waste and electrical energy, reaches
unprecedented levels. We view this perfectly timed convergence of events
as the catalyst for additional contracts that will perpetuate the
shattering of the Company's own sales records. We are seeing substantial
gains for early investors in a ground floor opportunity
that carries our highest rating for short-term trading profits.
Required LETH information: Certain statements contained in this
newsletter may be forward looking statements within the meaning of The
Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such terms as "expect",
"believe", "may", "will", and "intend" or similar terms may identify
these statements. We are not a registered investment advisor or a broker
dealer. This is not an offer to buy or sell securities. No recommendation
that the securities of the companies profiled should be purchased, sold or
held by individuals or entities that learn of the profiled companies. This
is an independent electronic publication that was paid five thousand dollars
by an unaffiliated third party for the preparation of this company information.
Be advised that investments in companies profiled are considered to be high-
risk and use of the content provided is for information purposes only. If
anyone decides to
act as an investor they are advised not to invest without the proper
guidance from a financial advisor or a registered financial broker. If any
party decides to participate as an investor then it will be that investor's
sole risk. Be advised that the purchase of such high-risk securities may result
in the loss of some or all of the investment. Investors should not rely solely
on the information presented. Rather, investors should use the information
provided in this newsletter as a starting point for doing additional
independent
research on the profiled companies in order to allow the investor to form their
own opinion regarding investing in the profiled companies. Factual statements
made about the profiled companies are made as of the date
stated and are subject to change without notice. Investing in micro-cap
securities is highly speculative and carries an extremely high degree of risk.
All information provided about the profiled companies may include information
provided by outside sources, such as research reports, public filings, and
information provided by management of the profiled company.
Content-Location: "http://www.nybooks.com/articles/16951"
Volume 51, Number 4 ·March 11, 2004
Review
The Trauma Trap
By Frederick C. Crews
Remembering Trauma
by Richard J. McNally
Belknap/Harvard University Press, 420 pp., $35
http://barnesandnoble.bfast.com/booklink/click?sourceid=119949&ISBN=0393702545
Memory, Trauma Treatment, and the Law
by Daniel Brown, Alan W. Scheflin, and D. Corydon Hammond
W. W. Norton, 768 pp., $100.00
1. Every now and then a book appears that can be instantly recognized as
essential for its field--a work that must become standard reading if that
field is to be purged of needless confusion and fortified against future
errors of the same general kind. Such a book is Remembering Trauma, by the
Harvard psychology professor Richard J. McNally. To be sure, the author's
intention is not revolutionary but only consolidating; he wants to show
what has already been learned, through well-designed experiments and
analyses of records, about the effects that psychological trauma typically
exerts on our memory. But what has been learned is not what is widely
believed, and McNally is obliged to clear away a heap of junk theory. In
doing so, he provides a brilliant object lesson in the exercise of rational
standards that are common to every science deserving of the name.
McNally's title Remembering Trauma neatly encapsulates the opposing views
that, for a whole generation now, have made the study of trauma into
psychology's most fiercely contested ground. Are scarring experiences well
remembered in the usual sense of the term, or can some of them be
remembered only much later, after the grip of a self-protective
psychological mechanism has been relaxed? This is the pivotal issue that
McNally decisively resolves. In the process, he also sheds light on a
number of related questions. Does memory of trauma stand apart
neurologically from normal memory? Does a certain kind of traumatic
experience leave recognizable long-term effects that can vouch for its
historical reality? What memory problems typify post-traumatic stress
disorder, and does the disorder itself "occur in nature" or is it a
cultural construct? And is memory retrieval a well-tested and effective
means of helping adults to shed depression, anxiety, and other
psychological afflictions?
One extended trauma, a public one, that won't be soon forgotten by the
involved parties is central to McNally's argument. I refer to the great
sex panic that gripped this continent from about 1985 to 1994. It wasn't
just an epidemic of runaway fear, rumor, and persecution but a grimly
practical test of the theories whose currency made it possible. And the
theories at issue were precisely those that are exhaustively reviewed in
Remembering Trauma. McNally uses that chapter of our history to show just
how much damage can be done when mistaken ideas about the mind get infused
with ideological zeal.
In the 1980s, as McNally relates, day care workers risked prosecution and
imprisonment on the coerced testimony of bewildered and intimidated
three-year-olds who were prodded to "remember" nonexistent molestations.
Meanwhile, poorly trained social workers, reasoning that signs of sexual
curiosity in children must be "behavioral memories" of rape, were charging
parents with incest and consigning their stunned offspring to foster homes.
And most remarkably, whole communities were frantically attempting to
expose envisioned covens of Satan worshipers who were said, largely on the
basis of hypnotically unlocked "memories," to be raising babies for sexual
torture, ritual murder, and cannibal feasts around the patio grill.
In the same period many psychotherapists, employing hypnosis, dream
analysis, "guided imagery," "age regression," and other
suggestion-amplifying devices, persuaded their mostly female patients to
"remember" having been molested by their fathers or stepfathers through
much of their childhood, in some cases with the active participation of
their mothers. The "perpetrators" thus fingered were devastated,
embittered, and often publicly shamed, and only a minority of their
accusers eventually recanted. Many, in fact, fell in with their
therapists' belief that young victims of sexual trauma, instead of
consciously recalling what was done to them, are likely to develop multiple
personalities. Disintegrating further, those unfortunates were then sent
off to costly "dissociative identity" wards, where their fantasies of
containing five, a dozen, or even hundreds of inner selves were humored
until their insurance coverage expired and they were abandoned in a crazed
condition. At the height of the scare, influential traumatologists were
opining that "between twenty and fifty percent of psychiatric patients
suffer from dissociative disorders" disorders whose reported
incidence plummeted toward zero as soon as some of the quacks who had
promoted them began to be sued for malpractice.
What we experienced, McNally shows, was a perfect storm, with forces for
mischief converging from every side. The fraudulent 1973 bestseller Sybil
had already helped to relaunch the long-dormant fad of multiple personality
and to link it to childhood sexual abuse.< #fn3>[3] Beginning in the early
1980s, the maverick Swiss psychoanalyst Alice Miller taught many American
readers what Sigmund Freud had once believed, that memories of early abuse
are typically repressed and must be therapeutically unlocked if the
resultant neuroses are to be cured. Jeffrey Masson's melodramatic book The
Assault on Truth (1984), misrepresenting Freud's "seduction" patients as
self-aware incest victims rather than as the doubters that they remained,
fanned the feminist anger that Miller had aroused, encouraging women to
believe that molestation by fathers must be pervasive.< #fn4>[4] Self-help
manuals such as The Courage to Heal (198 then equipped scientifically
ignorant psychotherapists with open-ended "symptom checklists," ensuring
that their patients would be diagnosed as suffering from buried memories of
violation. And all the while, Geraldo Rivera and less cynical alarmists
were whipping up fear of murderous devil cults.
If the origins of our mass delusion were complex, its dissipation in the
mid-1990s is easily explained. Like the Salem witch hunt three centuries
earlier, the sex panic had no internal brake that could prevent its
accusations from racing beyond all bounds of credibility. The stirring
motto "Believe the children" began to sound hollow when preschoolers who
finally agreed that they must have been inappropriately touched went on to
describe having been dropped into a pool of sharks or turned into a mouse.
The medical records of some alleged rape victims showed that they had still
been virgins at a later period. In one notorious case, influential at
first in promoting recovered memory but later in discrediting it, a woman
who got her father sentenced to life in prison for a murder/rape she had
remembered in hypnotic trances went on to recall his killing of another
person who proved to be wholly imaginary. And many patients, when urged to
dig deeper after producing a vague scene or two, reduced the process to
self-travesty by conjuring surreal orgies with Daddy's bridge partners,
visiting uncles, and the family pets.
One recovered memory case in particular, less absurd than most but
nevertheless lacking in prima facie plausibility, set in motion what the
movement's loyalists now bitterly characterize as "the backlash." In 1991
the future "betrayal trauma" psychologist Jennifer J. Freyd, after her
therapist had pointedly asked her in their second encounter whether she had
ever been abused, suddenly "remembered" that her father had continually
molested her between the ages of three and sixteen. It was Freyd's mother,
Pamela, convinced that she would surely have noticed some effects of
countless domestic sex crimes against her daughter, who then made contact
with other recently accused parents and established the False Memory
Syndrome Foundation. Under Pamela Freyd's leadership, the foundation (on
whose advisory board I serve) gathered and disseminated the most
authoritative scientific judgments about trauma, memory, and suggestive
influence judgments that swayed enough jurists, legislators, and
journalists to bring a healthy skepticism into play.
What put Jennifer Freyd's "memories" in question wasn't just their
dissonance with her mother's close observation. By alleging fourteen
years' worth of molestations that had been unknown to her conscious mind
prior to a therapist's prompting, Freyd was invoking an outlandish new
defense mechanism. Granted, some psychologists still believed in
repression, or the sequestering of a disagreeable thought or memory inside
"the unconscious"; and others subscribed to dissociation, the more radical
knack of "splitting the self" so quickly that no narrative memory of the
trauma gets formed at all. But Freyd's story, like many others that
surfaced during the sex panic, stretched those principles to cover any
number of serial traumatic incidents, as if a person could be subjected to
the same outrage hundreds of times without taking cognitive note of it.
This cumulative forgetting of harmful experience is what the social
psychologist Richard Ofshe disdainfully named robust repression a
startlingly maladaptive behavior that, if actual, ought to have aroused
wonder and consternation from the earliest times until now, if indeed it
didn't lead to the extinction of our species. Before the American 1980s,
however, it had apparently never once been remarked. Could robust
repression itself have been robustly repressed throughout the millennia?
Most recovered memory advocates have ducked the conundrum of robust
repression, and some have dismissed it as an alien notion devised by their
adversaries. But the alleged phenomenon, McNally shows, is nothing other
than the "massive repression" posited by such prominent traumatologists as
Judith Lewis Herman, Judith L. Alpert, Lenore C. Terr, and Jennifer J.
Freyd herself, each of whom understood that claims of sudden access to a
long string of previously unsuspected horrors require a basis in theory.
What could that basis be? McNally makes short work of the only systematic
attempts, Terr's and Freyd's, to maintain that serial traumas are easier to
forget than single ones. Moreover, all such efforts are doomed to be
question begging, because the only evidence favoring robust repression
consists of the very memories whose authenticity hangs in doubt.
The same stricture applies, however, to repression and dissociation per se.
Those notions became current in the 1880s and 1890s when Freud and Pierre
Janet independently attempted to trace the then fashionable complaint of
hysteria to pathogenic hidden memories and to expunge the ailment through
hypnotically induced recall. Freud, by far the more influential figure,
clung to repression though rendering it progressively more elastic and
ambiguous--even while repeatedly distancing himself from the diagnostic and
curative claims he had inferred from its supposed workings.
Before he was finished, Freud had conceived of repression as both a
conscious and an unconscious process acting upon feelings, thoughts, ideas,
and fantasies as well as memories. Such profligacy left repression without
any operational meaning; "the repressed" was simply any material that
Freud, who was given to ascribing his own punning associations to his
patients' minds, chose to identify as having been dismissed from awareness.
Yet the long vogue of psychoanalysis kept the concept alive, enabling it to
be virulently readapted, a century after its formal introduction, to the
same task of recruiting patients to victimhood that had preoccupied its
champion in 1895-96.
As McNally explains through deftly analyzed examples, it isn't just
therapists and their patients who fail to ask prudent questions about the
repression or dissociation of trauma. The body of research purporting to
validate those mechanisms is riddled with procedural errors, most of which
stem from naïve trust in the retrospection of subjects who have already
been led to believe that they must have undergone a trauma that was then
sequestered from memory. Along with such other inquirers as David Holmes
and Harrison G. Pope, Jr., McNally understands that a good test of
repression or dissociation has to be prospective. That is, it must track
down people who are known with certainty to have lived through ordeals
that would be expected to have triggered a self-protective loss of memory,
and it must then ascertain how many of those people are unable to recall
the event.
Holocaust survivors make up the most famous class of such subjects, but
whatever group or trauma is chosen, the upshot of well-conducted research
is always the same. Like Holmes and Pope, McNally finds that no
unanswerable evidence has been adduced to prove that anyone, anywhere, has
ever repressed or dissociated the memory of any occurrence. Traumatic
experiences may not always remain in the forefront of memory, but, unlike
"repressed" ones, they can be readily called to mind again. Unless a
victim received a physical shock to the brain or was so starved or sleep
deprived as to be thoroughly disoriented at the time, those experiences are
typically better remembered than ordinary ones. Thus Judith Herman's
much-quoted maxim, "The ordinary response to atrocities is to banish them
>from consciousness," would appear to be exactly opposite to the
truth. And once that fact is understood, the improvised and precarious
edifice of recovered memory theory collapses into rubble.
2. It would be a serious mistake, however, to assume that reckless
traumatology has now been permanently laid to rest. The conviction that
fathers are naturally prone to incestuous rape is still current. In some
academic departments, a dogged literalism about the repression/dissociation
of trauma has become oddly wedded to postmodernist suspicion of
science. Furthermore, most of the "trauma centers" that sprang up
in the 1990s to study and treat psychogenic amnesia are still operating
under the same premises as before. As for the theoreticians of recovered
memory, they continue to use their positions of authority in universities,
hospitals, and professional organizations to advance the views whose
hollowness McNally has exposed, and they can still count on a surprising
level of support from their colleagues.
Consider, in this regard, the following example of deafness to the lessons
of the sex panic. Each year the American Psychiatric Association, the body
that sets the most basic guidelines for sound practice in our mental health
professions, bestows its Manfred S. Guttmacher Award on what it deems to be
the best recent publication on legal psychiatry. The prize for 1999 went
to a 768-page tome by Daniel Brown, Alan W. Scheflin, and D. Corydon
Hammond, Memory, Trauma Treatment, and the Law. The authors characterize
themselves as "voices of moderation in the middle" opposing "zealots on
both sides" (p. 1). Their book, however, consists largely of sophistical
pleading for already lost causes: the forensic value of therapeutically
retrieved memories, the genuineness of multiple personality disorder, the
likelihood that some reports of ritual abuse cults are accurate, and the
desirability of allowing evidence obtained through hypnosis to be
admissible in court.
Memory, Trauma Treatment, and the Law isn't just a disingenuous book,
hiding its partisanship behind a screen of sanctimony; it is also a noxious
one. Lightly granting the possibility that therapy may occasionally lead
to pseudomemories, it trivializes the problem, deeming it serious only
"when the patient takes legal action or publically [sic] discloses abuse"
(p. 37)--as if the suffering of privately shattered families counted for
nothing. And the book's strategy of superficially "reviewing the
literature," citing both skeptical and (always more numerous) credulous
studies and then tilting the scales toward the latter, merely simulates
scientific neutrality.
These authors' activism in the cause of recovered memory was well known
long before they collaborated on their prize-winning volume. Daniel Brown
and Alan Scheflin had often served as expert witnesses minimizing the
hazards of memory retrieval, claiming to have found overwhelming
experimental support for the concept of repression, and denying that a
therapist could ever deceive a patient into thinking that she suffered from
multiple personality; and their collaborative papers were similarly
one-sided. In 1995, moreover, Scheflin had delivered a warmly
received address to a Texas conference held by the Society for the
Investigation, Treatment and Prevention of Ritual and Cult Abuse, whose
other speakers asserted, inter alia, that there were 500 Satanic cults in
New York City alone, committing 4000 human sacrifices per year, that Bill
Clinton was serving as the Antichrist in the worldwide Satanic fraternity
of the Illuminati and that the False Memory Syndrome Foundation is "a
Central Intelligence Agency action." Expressing solidarity with the
assembled psychotherapists whose diagnoses of ritual abuse were exposing
them to malpractice suits, Scheflin counseled them on the best means of
foiling the legal machinations of "the false memory people," whom he
characterizes as "the enemy."
But it is hypnotherapist D. Corydon Hammond, well known for his low regard
for experimental research on memory, whose name on the title page
of Memory, Trauma Treatment, and the Law ought to have prompted especial
wariness among the Guttmacher judges. Like Scheflin, Hammond has affirmed
the reality of both Satanic abuse cults and multiple personality disorder.
But whereas Scheflin stops short of asserting a proven link between those
two phenomena, Hammond is on record as a flamboyant true believer.
In a notorious 1992 lecture at a conference on sexual abuse and MPD,
Hammond revealed his conviction that many MPD sufferers have acquired their
split personalities through subjection, from early childhood onward, to
ritual sexual abuse, sadistic torture, and mind control programming. The
aim of the programmers, he disclosed, has been to produce remotely guided
"alters" who, unbeknownst to their core selves, will be slaves to a
worldwide intergenerational cult that is organized into "Illuminatic
councils." The cult, said Hammond, is headed by a shadowy "Dr. Greenbaum,"
a Hasidic Jewish collaborator with the Nazis who once assisted in death
camp experiments and later used the CIA to further his nefarious ends. "My
best guess," Hammond confided,
. . . is that they want an army of Manchurian Candidates, tens of thousands
of mental robots who will do prostitution, do child pornography, smuggle
drugs, engage in international arms smuggling, do snuff films, . . . and
eventually the megalomaniacs at the top believe they'll create a Satanic
order that will rule the world.
These colorful fantasies are significant, but not because they point to a
failure of reality testing on Hammond's part. Closely related ideas were
voiced in the heyday of the recovered memory movement by other prominent
MPD specialists such as Bennett Braun and Colin Ross. What matters is that
Hammond and the others all claim to have learned about the grand cabal from
their hypnotized patients, who, until they were placed in trances, hadn't
even known they were molestation victims, much less robotic smugglers,
whores, and assassins.< #fn11>[11] As Brown, Scheflin, and Hammond now put
it in arguing in favor of hypnotically obtained evidence in the courtroom,
"for some victims, hypnosis may provide the only avenue to the repressed
memories" (p. 647). Exactly. Without that means of exchanging and
embroidering false beliefs, Hammond himself could never have learned from
his patients about the evil Dr. Greenbaum and his thirst for absolute power
over us all.
The illogicalities and distortions in Memory, Trauma Treatment, and the Law
do not go unremarked in McNally's Remembering Trauma. Thus, when Brown et
al. cite one study as evidence that "amnesia for Nazi Holocaust camp
experiences has also been reported," McNally quotes that study's rather
different conclusion: "There is no doubt that almost all witnesses remember
Camp Erika in great detail, even after 40 years" (p. 192). And when Brown
et al., again straining to make psychologically motivated amnesia look
commonplace, cite another study to the effect that "two of the 38 children
studied after watching lightning strike and kill a playmate had no memory
of the event," McNally informs us that those two children "had themselves
been struck by side flashes from the main lightning bolt, knocked
unconscious, and nearly killed" (p. 192).
Such corrections, however damning, are peripheral to McNally's fundamental
critique of Brown and his colleagues. The heart of the matter is that
Brown et al. have miscast the entire debate over recovered memory by
marshaling evidence against a straw-man "extreme false memory position."
Supposedly, the extremists hold that all refreshed memories of abuse are
necessarily wrong. Then one could put the extremists in their place just
by citing a few cases of authenticated recall. But as McNally shows,
critics of recovered memory fully allow that a period of forgetfulness can
precede a genuine recollection. Indeed, that pattern is just what we would
expect if the young subject at the time of the act, never having been
warned against sexual predators, was unsure how to regard that act. What
the critics deny is that "memories" of trauma, surfacing for the first time
many years later, are so intrinsically reliable that they can serve as
useful evidence that the experience was real. Brown, Scheflin, and Hammond
want that extremism to be embraced once again by the legal system that has
finally learned to distrust it.
It would be reassuring to think that the the American Psychiatric
Association's Guttmacher jury merely skimmed Memory, Trauma Treatment, and
the Law and misconstrued it as a bland eclectic survey. Already in 1991,
however, another Guttmacher Award had been bestowed on co-author Scheflin
for a work that made several of the same legal arguments.< #fn12>[12] A more
likely explanation for the subsequent prize is that Brown et al., having
mounted a brief for the deep knowledge and expert testimony of
theory-minded clinicians, were gratefully perceived as siding with mental
health providers against their adversaries. If so, a larger question comes
into view. What role did our major societies representing
psychotherapists--the American Psychoanalytic Association, the American
Psychological Association, and the American Psychiatric Association
itself--play in condoning or actually facilitating the recovered memory
movement, and how much enlightened guidance can we expect from them in the
future?
3. As I have noted on several occasions, and as McNally confirms,
in the 1990s recovered memory therapy made significant inroads into the
practice of North American psychoanalysis. Even today, feminist clinicians
bearing diplomas from analytic institutes are probing for missing memories
of abuse and vigorously defending that practice in psychoanalytic books and
journals. But the American Psychoanalytic Association, representing over
3,000 members, has turned a blind eye to this trend and one can understand
why. The psychoanalytic movement is already embattled, and too much about
the historical ties between Freudianism and recovered memory would prove
embarrassing if attention were called to it. The elected custodians of
Freud's legacy have no desire to confront his early phase as a
self-deceived abuse detecter; or to admit the precedent he set, during that
phase and thereafter, in treating dreams, tics, obsessional acts, and
agitation in the consulting room as "behavioral memories" of inferrable
traumas; or to revisit the grave doubts that have been raised about
repression; or to be reminded of the way psychoanalysts, until quite
recently, insulted real victims of molestation by telling them that their
"screen memories" covered a repressed desire to have sex with their
fathers. No longer given to excommunicating dissidents, the
tottering Freudian patriarchy has made its peace with "recovered memory
psychoanalysis" by pretending that it doesn't exist.
The largest of the three societies riven by the issue of recovered memory,
the 95,000-member American Psychological Association (hereafter APA), is
nominally responsible for quality control in the administration of therapy
by the nation's clinical psychologists. Hence one APA division's
commendable effort in the 1990s to identify the most effective treatment
methods for specific complaints such as phobias and obsessive-compulsive
disorder. That initiative, however, met with disapproval from APA members
whose favorite regimens had not been found to give superior results. Some
practitioners worried that insurers would use the list of approved
treatments as an excuse to cut off reimbursement for all but the preferred
therapies, and others complained that the association seemed on the verge
of putting soulless experimentation ahead of clinical know-how. For now at
least, the organization as a whole is not recommending treatments, to say
nothing of disavowing dangerous ones. Recovered memory thus gets
the same free pass from the APA as "attachment therapy," "therapeutic
touch," "eye movement desensitization and reprocessing," "facilitated
communication," and the hypnotic debriefing of reincarnated princesses and
UFO abductees.
This reluctance to challenge the judgment of its therapist members is
deeply rooted in the APA's philosophy. Ever since 1971, when the
association gave its blessing to Ph.D. and Psy.D. programs that omitted any
scientific training, the APA has guided its course by reference to studies
indicating that the intuitive competence of clinicians, not their adherence
to one psychological doctrine or another, is what chiefly determines their
effectiveness. Those studies, however, were conducted before
recovered memory practitioners, using a mixture of peremptory guesswork and
unsubstantiated theory, began wrenching patients away from their families
and their remembered past.
In 1995 the APA did publish a brochure, "Questions and Answers about
Memories of Childhood Abuse," which can still be found on the "APA Online"
Web site. The document combined some prudent advice to patients with
soothing reassurance that "the issue of repressed or suggested memories has
been overreported and sensationalized." Further inquiry into the
phenomenon, it said, "will profit from collaborative efforts among
psychologists who specialize in memory research and those clinicians who
specialize in working with trauma and abuse victims."
But the APA directors already knew that such collaboration was impossible.
In 1993 they had established a "task force," the Working Group on the
Investigation of Memories of Childhood Abuse, self-defeatingly composed of
three research psychologists and three clinicians favorably disposed to
retrieval, and the task force had immediately degenerated into caucusing
and wrangling. After years of stalemate, the group predictably submitted
two reports that clashed on every major point; and the abashed APA,
presented with this vivid evidence that "clinical experience" can lead to
scientific heterodoxy, declined to circulate photocopies of the two
documents even to its own members except by individual demand.
Meanwhile, the organization repeatedly compromised its formal neutrality.
In 1994, for example, the APA's publishing house lent its prestigious
imprint to a book that not only recommended recovered memory therapy but
recycled the most heedless advice found in pop-psychological manuals. The
book, Lenore E. A. Walker's Abused Women and Survivor Therapy: A Practical
Guide for the Psychotherapist, touted hypnotism as a legitimate means of
gaining access to "buried memories of incest" and "different personalities"
within the victim (pp. 425-426). Walker provided a list of telltale
symptoms, any one of which might indicate a history of forgotten
molestation. These included "ambivalent or conflict ridden relationships,"
"poor body image," "quiet-voiced," "inability to trust or indiscriminate
trust," "high risk taking or inability to take risks," "fear of losing
control and need for intense control," "great appreciation of small favors
by others," "no sense of humor or constant wisecracking," and "blocking out
early childhood years" (p. 113) years which in fact are not remembered by
anyone.
Then in 1996 the APA published and conspicuously endorsed another book,
Recovered Memories of Abuse, aimed at equipping memory therapists and their
expert witnesses with every argument and precaution that could thwart
malpractice suits. The book's co-authors were well-known
advocates of recovered memory treatment, and one of them, Laura S. Brown,
was actually serving at the time on the deadlocked task force. She had
also supplied a foreword to Lenore Walker's bumbling Abused Women and
Survivor Therapy, calling it "invaluable and long overdue" (p. vii).
Unsurprisingly, then, Recovered Memories of Abuse characterized false
memory as an overrated problem and drew uncritically on much of the
research whose weaknesses Richard McNally has now exposed. The APA's
unabated promotion of that book, even today, suggests that the organization
remains more concerned with shielding its most wayward members than with
warning the public against therapeutic snake oil.
There remains, once again, the American Psychiatric Association "the voice
and conscience of modern psychiatry," as its Web site proclaims. Putting
aside the fiasco of the 1999 Guttmacher Award, we might expect that a
society representing 37,000 physicians, all of whom have been schooled in
the standard of care that requires treatments to be tested for safety and
effectiveness, would be especially vigilant against the dangers of
retrieval therapy. Thus far, however, that expectation has not been
fulfilled.
To be sure, the Psychiatric Association's 1993 "Statement on Memories of
Sexual Abuse" did warn clinicians not to "exert pressure on patients to
believe in events that may not have occurred. . . ." Yet the statement
inadvertently encouraged just such tampering by avowing that the "coping
mechanisms" of molested youngsters can "result in a lack of conscious
awareness of the abuse" and by characterizing "dissociative disorders" as a
typical outcome of that abuse. Those remarks constituted a discreet but
unmistakable vote of confidence in multiple personality disorder and its
imagined sexual etiology. And indeed, a year later the fourth edition of
the Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders (DSM-IV) reaffirmed the validity of MPD under the more dignified
and marketable name of dissociative identity disorder.
The Psychiatric Association's 1993 declaration on abuse memories performed
still another service, a subtle one, for the repression/dissociation lobby.
In explaining "implicit" memory the kind that is exercised in the routine
execution of skills or in the coloring of emotions by past impressions that
aren't being explicitly called to mind the statement proffered a curiously
strained example. "In the absence of explicit recall," it said, implicit
memory can torment "a combat veteran who panics when he hears the sound of
a helicopter, but cannot remember that he was in a helicopter crash which
killed his best friend." Here was an elision of the crucial gap between
merely not thinking about a past event, as in the normal operation of
implicit memory, and having total, psychologically motivated amnesia for
that event.
Knowledgeable readers would have seen that in taking this unusual step, the
statement's drafters were lending their authority to one controversial
interpretation of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which the
Psychiatric Association had first stamped as genuine in DSM-III of 1980.
But why should a primarily martial ailment have figured even indirectly in
a position paper on childhood sexual abuse? The mystery vanishes, however,
if we know that the recovered memory movement's favorite means of courting
respectability has been to fold the symptoms of repressed/dissociated abuse
into PTSD.
In 2000 the Psychiatric Association's trustees, eschewing risky flights
into theory, approved a lower-profile "Position Statement on Therapies
Focused on Memories of Childhood Physical and Sexual Abuse." This
declaration, however, was more pussyfooting than its predecessor. The
validity of recovered memory treatment, it whispered, "has been challenged"
in some quarters. While pointing out that memories can be altered as a
result of suggestions from "a trusted person or authority figure," the
drafters tactfully refrained from mentioning that the suggesting party is
usually a therapist. And clinicians were advised to avoid "prejudging the
veracity of the patient's reports" of abuse, as if false reports were
typically delivered to therapists out of the blue, without influence from
confabulation-enhancing devices employed within the treatment. The absence
of any mention of those devices, such as hypnosis and sodium amytal, marked
a step backward from the association's 1993 statement.
These equivocations neither helped nor impeded the already withering
recovered memory movement. As we will now see, however, the movement's
hopes of a comeback have been pinned on the Psychiatric Association's
fateful decision to treat post-traumatic stress disorder as an integral and
historically invariable malady. And that decision was a medically
unwarranted one. As McNally indicates with reference to several recent
studies, PTSD, like Victorian hysteria and like recovered memory itself,
can now be understood as an artifact of its era--a sociopolitical invention
of the post-Vietnam years, meant to replace "shell shock" and "combat
fatigue" with an enduring affliction that would tacitly indict war itself
as a psychological pathogen. However crippling the symptoms
associated with it may be for many individuals, the PTSD diagnosis itself
has proved to be a modern contagion.
Once certified by the American Psychiatric Association as natural and
beyond the sufferer's control, post-traumatic stress disorder began
attracting claimants, both civilian and military, who schooled themselves
in its listed symptoms and forged a new identity around remaining uncured.
By now, as McNally relates, PTSD compensation is demanded for such
complaints as "being fired from a job, one-mile-per-hour fender benders,
age discrimination, living within a few miles of an explosion (although
unaware that it had happened), and being kissed in public" (p. 281).
According to Paula Jones among others, PTSD can even be the outcome of a
consensual love affair. In view of such examples, the attempt to subsume
forgotten abuse under post-traumatic stress makes more cultural than
scientific sense; the same atmosphere of hypersensitivity and victimhood
brought both diagnoses to life.
As McNally shows in his concise and undemonstrative style, the national sex
panic left its mark on each successive version of the Psychiatric
Association's bible, which in turn congealed folklore into dogma. The 1980
DSM-III entry on post-traumatic stress disorder, mindful only of wars and
other shocking disasters, had defined a PTSD-triggering event as one that
falls "generally outside the range of usual human experience" and that
"would evoke significant symptoms of distress in almost everyone." In
1994, however, the fourth edition generously expanded the category of
precipitating causes to include "developmentally inappropriate sexual
experiences without threatened or actual violence or injury." Thus a
single-minded therapeutic sleuth could now place a questionably retrieved
incident of infantile genital fondling on the same etiological plane as the
Bataan death march or an ambush in the Mekong Delta.
It was the diagnostic manual, once again, that removed the largest obstacle
of all to the merger of post-traumatic stress and recovered memory. The
key sign of PTSD, as first conceived, was that accurate recollections of
the trauma keep intruding on the patient's conscious mind; this was just
the opposite of repressed or dissociated memory. But between DSM-III and
its revised edition of 1987, PTSD patients were discovered to have been
harboring a convenient new symptom. In 1980 they had shown only some
incidental "memory impairment or trouble concentrating" on daily affairs,
but the updated edition replaced routine forgetfulness with "inability to
recall an important aspect of the trauma" (emphasis added).
This retroactive infusion of amnesia into the clinical picture of PTSD
explains why the Psychiatric' Association's illustrative helicopter pilot
could have been troubled by a memory that had left no conscious imprint on
his mind. Here, too, was the opening needed to give dissociation an
appearance of hard-scientific concreteness. Post-traumatic stress, it was
now claimed, short-circuits narrative memory and finds another,
precognitive, channel through which it can flood the subject with anxiety.
Accordingly, diehard recovered memory theorists took up a last refuge in
neurobiology, now maintaining that dissociated sexual abuse generates
signature alterations of brain tissue.
With the arrival of McNally's Remembering Trauma, there is no longer any
excuse for such obfuscation. It makes no sense, McNally shows, to count
forgetfulness for some "aspect of the trauma" within the definition of
PTSD, because normal people as well as PTSD sufferers get disoriented by
shocking incidents and fail to memorize everything about the event, even
while knowing for the rest of their lives that it occurred. Likewise, it
has never been established, and it seems quite unbelievable, that people
can be haunted by memories that were never cognitively registered as such.
Nor can specific brain markers vouch for the reality of a long-past sexual
trauma, because, among other reasons, those features could have been
present from birth. "It is ironic," McNally reflects, "that so much has
been written about the biological mechanisms of traumatic psychological
amnesia when the very existence of the phenomenon is in doubt. What we
have here is a set of theories in search of a phenomenon" (p. 182n.).
Remembering Trauma is neither a polemic nor a sermon, and McNally offers
little counsel to psychotherapists beyond warning them against turning
moral disapproval of pedophilia into overconfidence that they can infer its
existence from behavioral clues observed twenty or thirty years after the
fact. But another lesson is implied throughout this important book.
Attention to the chimerical task of divining a patient's early traumas is
attention subtracted from sensible help in the here and now. The reason
why psychotherapists ought to familiarize themselves with actual knowledge
about the workings of memory, and why their professional societies should
stop waffling and promulgating misinformation about it, is not that good
science guarantees good therapy; it is simply that pseudoscience inevitably
leads to harm.
Notes
Bessel A. van der Kolk and Onno van der Hart, "The Intrusive
Past: The Flexibility of Memory and the Engraving of Trauma," American
Imago, vol. 48 (1991), pp. 425-454; the quotation is from p. 432.
The fullest treatment of the recovered memory episode and its
historical antecedents is Mark Pendergrast, Victims of Memory: Sex Abuse
Accusations and Shattered Lives, 2nd ed. (Upper Access, 1996). For a
concise and pointed account of the multiple personality fad, see Joan
Acocella, Creating Hysteria: Women and Multiple Personality Disorder
(Jossey-Bass, 1999). The best extended discussion is Nicholas P. Spanos,
Multiple Identities and False Memories: A Sociocognitive Perspective
(American Psychological Association, 1996). On Satanic abuse, see Jeffrey
S. Victor, Satanic Panic: The Creation of a Contemporary Legend (Open
Court, 1993), and Debbie Nathan and Michael Snedeker, Satan's Silence:
Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt (Basic Books,
1995). The plight of daycare workers who remain imprisoned even today is
treated by Dorothy Rabinowitz, No Crueler Tyrannies: Accusation, False
Witness, and Other Terrors of Our Times (Wall Street Press Books/Free
Press, 2003).
For the current state of knowledge about "Sybil," see Mikkel
Borch-Jacobsen, Folie à plusieurs: De l'hystérie à la dépression (Les
Empêcheurs de penser en rond/Le Seuil, 2002), pp. 111-168.
For Masson's errors about Freud's "seduction" phase, see Allen
Esterson, "Jeffrey Masson and Freud's Seduction Theory: A New Fable Based
on Old Myths," History of the Human Sciences, vol. 11 (199, pp. 1-21. In
his preface to a recently reprinted edition of The Assault on Truth (Random
House, 2003), Masson at last concedes that Freud's patients in 1895-96
resisted the incest stories that he tried to force upon them. Bizarrely,
however, Masson still counts those patients among the likely victims of
sexual abuse in Freud's day.
Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery (Basic Books, 1992), p. 1.
See, in this connection, the final chapter of Ruth Leys's
Trauma: A Genealogy (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2000).
In one paper, for example, Scheflin and Brown addressed the
problem of patients' suggestibility, but the danger they envisioned from
that quarter was only "false litigant syndrome," or surrender to
"pro-false-memory suggestive influences" emanating from "plaintiffs'
attorneys and expert witnesses" brought into malpractice suits against
their former therapists. See Alan W. Scheflin and Daniel Brown, "The False
Litigant Syndrome: ‘Nobody Would Say That Unless It Was the Truth,'"
Journal of Psychiatry and Law, vol. 27 (1999), pp. 649-705. This same
argument surfaces in Memory, Trauma Treatment, and the Law, which states
that pressures exerted in therapy "pale in comparison" (p. 39 with those
that can turn a patient into a litigious ingrate.
Transcripts of the Texas conference proceedings have been
available from Toronto radio station CKLN. See also Evan Harrington,
"Conspiracy Theories and Paranoia: Notes from a Mind-Control Conference,"
Skeptical Inquirer, vol. 20 (September/October 1996), pp.35-42.
"I think it's time somebody called for an open season on
academicians and researchers," Hammond said in 1997; ". . . it's time for
clinicians to begin bringing ethics charges for scientific malpractice
against researchers and journal editors" who disparage recovered memory
theory. "Investigating False Memory for the Unmemorable: A Critique of
Experimental Hypnosis and Memory Research," 14th International Congress of
Hypnosis and Psychosomatic Medicine, San Diego, June 1997. Tapes of
Hammond's talk have been offered by The Sound of Knowledge, Inc.
D. Corydon Hammond, "Hypnosis in MPD: Ritual Abuse," a paper
delivered at the Fourth Annual Eastern Regional Conference on Abuse and
Multiple Personality, Alexandria, VA, June 25, 1992. Understandably, tapes
of this talk have been withdrawn from sale; but a transcript, which repays
reading from start to finish, can be found at
www.heart7.net/mcf/greenbaum.htm.
Patients of hypnosis-wielding MPD enthusiasts really have
acquired crippling beliefs about their cult participation. That is why
Bennett Braun, in 1997, had his license to practice suspended and why his
insurers paid one of his tormented ex-patients a sobering malpractice
settlement of $10.6 million.
Alan W. Scheflin and Jerrold Lee Shapiro, Trance on Trial
(Guilford Press, 1989).
See, e.g., The Memory Wars: Freud's Legacy in Dispute (New
York Review Books, 1995), pp. 15-29; Unauthorized Freud: Doubters Confront
a Legend (Viking, 199, pp. x-xi; and "Forward to 1896? Commentary on
Papers by Harris and Davies," Psychoanalytic Dialogues, vol. 6 (1996), pp.
231-250. That special number of Psychoanalytic Dialogues became a book
edited by Richard B. Gartner, Memories of Sexual Betrayal: Truth, Fantasy,
Repression, and Dissociation (Jason Aronson, 1997). My own contribution,
however, was excised and replaced by an attack on my earlier criticisms of
psychoanalysis.
On this last point, see Bennett Simon, "‘Incest See Under
Oedipus Complex': The History of an Error in Psychoanalysis," Journal of
the American Psychoanalytic Association, vol. 40 (1992), pp. 955-988.
See David Glenn, "Nightmare Scenarios," Chronicle of Higher
Education, Oct. 24, 2003, pp. 14-17.
A welcome new critique of fad therapies is Science and
Pseudoscience in Clinical Psychology, ed. Scott O. Lilienfeld, Steven Jay
Lynn, and Jeffrey M. Lohr (Guilford Press, 2003).
See Robyn M. Dawes, House of Cards: Psychology and
Psychotherapy Built on Myth (Free Press, 1994), especially pp. 10-22.
Kenneth S. Pope and Laura S. Brown, Recovered Memories of
Abuse: Assessment, Therapy, Forensics (American Psychological Association,
1996).
See especially Allan Young, The Harmony of Illusions:
Inventing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (Princeton Univ. Press, 1995), and
Herb Kutchins and Stuart A. Kirk, Making Us Crazy: DSM: The Psychiatric
Bible and the Creation of Mental Disorders (Free Press, 1997).
As the Pied Pipers of recovered memory, Ellen Bass and Laura
Davis, told prospective survivors in 1988, "When you first remember your
abuse or acknowledge its effects, you may feel tremendous relief. Finally
there is a reason for your problems. There is someone, and something, to
blame." The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual
Abuse (Harper & Row, 198, p. 173.
Volume 51, Number 4 ·
Review
The Trauma Trap
By Frederick C. Crews
Remembering Trauma
by Richard J. McNally
Belknap/Harvard University Press, 420 pp., $35
http://barnesandnoble.bfast.com/booklink/click?sourceid=119949&ISBN=0393702545
Memory, Trauma Treatment, and the Law
by Daniel Brown, Alan W. Scheflin, and D. Corydon Hammond
W. W. Norton, 768 pp., $100.00
1. Every now and then a book appears that can be instantly recognized as
essential for its field--a work that must become standard reading if that
field is to be purged of needless confusion and fortified against future
errors of the same general kind. Such a book is Remembering Trauma, by the
Harvard psychology professor Richard J. McNally. To be sure, the author's
intention is not revolutionary but only consolidating; he wants to show
what has already been learned, through well-designed experiments and
analyses of records, about the effects that psychological trauma typically
exerts on our memory. But what has been learned is not what is widely
believed, and McNally is obliged to clear away a heap of junk theory. In
doing so, he provides a brilliant object lesson in the exercise of rational
standards that are common to every science deserving of the name.
McNally's title Remembering Trauma neatly encapsulates the opposing views
that, for a whole generation now, have made the study of trauma into
psychology's most fiercely contested ground. Are scarring experiences well
remembered in the usual sense of the term, or can some of them be
remembered only much later, after the grip of a self-protective
psychological mechanism has been relaxed? This is the pivotal issue that
McNally decisively resolves. In the process, he also sheds light on a
number of related questions. Does memory of trauma stand apart
neurologically from normal memory? Does a certain kind of traumatic
experience leave recognizable long-term effects that can vouch for its
historical reality? What memory problems typify post-traumatic stress
disorder, and does the disorder itself "occur in nature" or is it a
cultural construct? And is memory retrieval a well-tested and effective
means of helping adults to shed depression, anxiety, and other
psychological afflictions?
One extended trauma, a public one, that won't be soon forgotten by the
involved parties is central to McNally's argument. I refer to the great
sex panic that gripped this continent from about 1985 to 1994. It wasn't
just an epidemic of runaway fear, rumor, and persecution but a grimly
practical test of the theories whose currency made it possible. And the
theories at issue were precisely those that are exhaustively reviewed in
Remembering Trauma. McNally uses that chapter of our history to show just
how much damage can be done when mistaken ideas about the mind get infused
with ideological zeal.
In the 1980s, as McNally relates, day care workers risked prosecution and
imprisonment on the coerced testimony of bewildered and intimidated
three-year-olds who were prodded to "remember" nonexistent molestations.
Meanwhile, poorly trained social workers, reasoning that signs of sexual
curiosity in children must be "behavioral memories" of rape, were charging
parents with incest and consigning their stunned offspring to foster homes.
And most remarkably, whole communities were frantically attempting to
expose envisioned covens of Satan worshipers who were said, largely on the
basis of hypnotically unlocked "memories," to be raising babies for sexual
torture, ritual murder, and cannibal feasts around the patio grill.
In the same period many psychotherapists, employing hypnosis, dream
analysis, "guided imagery," "age regression," and other
suggestion-amplifying devices, persuaded their mostly female patients to
"remember" having been molested by their fathers or stepfathers through
much of their childhood, in some cases with the active participation of
their mothers. The "perpetrators" thus fingered were devastated,
embittered, and often publicly shamed, and only a minority of their
accusers eventually recanted. Many, in fact, fell in with their
therapists' belief that young victims of sexual trauma, instead of
consciously recalling what was done to them, are likely to develop multiple
personalities. Disintegrating further, those unfortunates were then sent
off to costly "dissociative identity" wards, where their fantasies of
containing five, a dozen, or even hundreds of inner selves were humored
until their insurance coverage expired and they were abandoned in a crazed
condition. At the height of the scare, influential traumatologists were
opining that "between twenty and fifty percent of psychiatric patients
suffer from dissociative disorders" disorders whose reported
incidence plummeted toward zero as soon as some of the quacks who had
promoted them began to be sued for malpractice.
What we experienced, McNally shows, was a perfect storm, with forces for
mischief converging from every side. The fraudulent 1973 bestseller Sybil
had already helped to relaunch the long-dormant fad of multiple personality
and to link it to childhood sexual abuse.< #fn3>[3] Beginning in the early
1980s, the maverick Swiss psychoanalyst Alice Miller taught many American
readers what Sigmund Freud had once believed, that memories of early abuse
are typically repressed and must be therapeutically unlocked if the
resultant neuroses are to be cured. Jeffrey Masson's melodramatic book The
Assault on Truth (1984), misrepresenting Freud's "seduction" patients as
self-aware incest victims rather than as the doubters that they remained,
fanned the feminist anger that Miller had aroused, encouraging women to
believe that molestation by fathers must be pervasive.< #fn4>[4] Self-help
manuals such as The Courage to Heal (198
then equipped scientificallyignorant psychotherapists with open-ended "symptom checklists," ensuring
that their patients would be diagnosed as suffering from buried memories of
violation. And all the while, Geraldo Rivera and less cynical alarmists
were whipping up fear of murderous devil cults.
If the origins of our mass delusion were complex, its dissipation in the
mid-1990s is easily explained. Like the Salem witch hunt three centuries
earlier, the sex panic had no internal brake that could prevent its
accusations from racing beyond all bounds of credibility. The stirring
motto "Believe the children" began to sound hollow when preschoolers who
finally agreed that they must have been inappropriately touched went on to
describe having been dropped into a pool of sharks or turned into a mouse.
The medical records of some alleged rape victims showed that they had still
been virgins at a later period. In one notorious case, influential at
first in promoting recovered memory but later in discrediting it, a woman
who got her father sentenced to life in prison for a murder/rape she had
remembered in hypnotic trances went on to recall his killing of another
person who proved to be wholly imaginary. And many patients, when urged to
dig deeper after producing a vague scene or two, reduced the process to
self-travesty by conjuring surreal orgies with Daddy's bridge partners,
visiting uncles, and the family pets.
One recovered memory case in particular, less absurd than most but
nevertheless lacking in prima facie plausibility, set in motion what the
movement's loyalists now bitterly characterize as "the backlash." In 1991
the future "betrayal trauma" psychologist Jennifer J. Freyd, after her
therapist had pointedly asked her in their second encounter whether she had
ever been abused, suddenly "remembered" that her father had continually
molested her between the ages of three and sixteen. It was Freyd's mother,
Pamela, convinced that she would surely have noticed some effects of
countless domestic sex crimes against her daughter, who then made contact
with other recently accused parents and established the False Memory
Syndrome Foundation. Under Pamela Freyd's leadership, the foundation (on
whose advisory board I serve) gathered and disseminated the most
authoritative scientific judgments about trauma, memory, and suggestive
influence judgments that swayed enough jurists, legislators, and
journalists to bring a healthy skepticism into play.
What put Jennifer Freyd's "memories" in question wasn't just their
dissonance with her mother's close observation. By alleging fourteen
years' worth of molestations that had been unknown to her conscious mind
prior to a therapist's prompting, Freyd was invoking an outlandish new
defense mechanism. Granted, some psychologists still believed in
repression, or the sequestering of a disagreeable thought or memory inside
"the unconscious"; and others subscribed to dissociation, the more radical
knack of "splitting the self" so quickly that no narrative memory of the
trauma gets formed at all. But Freyd's story, like many others that
surfaced during the sex panic, stretched those principles to cover any
number of serial traumatic incidents, as if a person could be subjected to
the same outrage hundreds of times without taking cognitive note of it.
This cumulative forgetting of harmful experience is what the social
psychologist Richard Ofshe disdainfully named robust repression a
startlingly maladaptive behavior that, if actual, ought to have aroused
wonder and consternation from the earliest times until now, if indeed it
didn't lead to the extinction of our species. Before the American 1980s,
however, it had apparently never once been remarked. Could robust
repression itself have been robustly repressed throughout the millennia?
Most recovered memory advocates have ducked the conundrum of robust
repression, and some have dismissed it as an alien notion devised by their
adversaries. But the alleged phenomenon, McNally shows, is nothing other
than the "massive repression" posited by such prominent traumatologists as
Judith Lewis Herman, Judith L. Alpert, Lenore C. Terr, and Jennifer J.
Freyd herself, each of whom understood that claims of sudden access to a
long string of previously unsuspected horrors require a basis in theory.
What could that basis be? McNally makes short work of the only systematic
attempts, Terr's and Freyd's, to maintain that serial traumas are easier to
forget than single ones. Moreover, all such efforts are doomed to be
question begging, because the only evidence favoring robust repression
consists of the very memories whose authenticity hangs in doubt.
The same stricture applies, however, to repression and dissociation per se.
Those notions became current in the 1880s and 1890s when Freud and Pierre
Janet independently attempted to trace the then fashionable complaint of
hysteria to pathogenic hidden memories and to expunge the ailment through
hypnotically induced recall. Freud, by far the more influential figure,
clung to repression though rendering it progressively more elastic and
ambiguous--even while repeatedly distancing himself from the diagnostic and
curative claims he had inferred from its supposed workings.
Before he was finished, Freud had conceived of repression as both a
conscious and an unconscious process acting upon feelings, thoughts, ideas,
and fantasies as well as memories. Such profligacy left repression without
any operational meaning; "the repressed" was simply any material that
Freud, who was given to ascribing his own punning associations to his
patients' minds, chose to identify as having been dismissed from awareness.
Yet the long vogue of psychoanalysis kept the concept alive, enabling it to
be virulently readapted, a century after its formal introduction, to the
same task of recruiting patients to victimhood that had preoccupied its
champion in 1895-96.
As McNally explains through deftly analyzed examples, it isn't just
therapists and their patients who fail to ask prudent questions about the
repression or dissociation of trauma. The body of research purporting to
validate those mechanisms is riddled with procedural errors, most of which
stem from naïve trust in the retrospection of subjects who have already
been led to believe that they must have undergone a trauma that was then
sequestered from memory. Along with such other inquirers as David Holmes
and Harrison G. Pope, Jr., McNally understands that a good test of
repression or dissociation has to be prospective. That is, it must track
down people who are known with certainty to have lived through ordeals
that would be expected to have triggered a self-protective loss of memory,
and it must then ascertain how many of those people are unable to recall
the event.
Holocaust survivors make up the most famous class of such subjects, but
whatever group or trauma is chosen, the upshot of well-conducted research
is always the same. Like Holmes and Pope, McNally finds that no
unanswerable evidence has been adduced to prove that anyone, anywhere, has
ever repressed or dissociated the memory of any occurrence. Traumatic
experiences may not always remain in the forefront of memory, but, unlike
"repressed" ones, they can be readily called to mind again. Unless a
victim received a physical shock to the brain or was so starved or sleep
deprived as to be thoroughly disoriented at the time, those experiences are
typically better remembered than ordinary ones. Thus Judith Herman's
much-quoted maxim, "The ordinary response to atrocities is to banish them
>from consciousness," would appear to be exactly opposite to the
truth. And once that fact is understood, the improvised and precarious
edifice of recovered memory theory collapses into rubble.
2. It would be a serious mistake, however, to assume that reckless
traumatology has now been permanently laid to rest. The conviction that
fathers are naturally prone to incestuous rape is still current. In some
academic departments, a dogged literalism about the repression/dissociation
of trauma has become oddly wedded to postmodernist suspicion of
science. Furthermore, most of the "trauma centers" that sprang up
in the 1990s to study and treat psychogenic amnesia are still operating
under the same premises as before. As for the theoreticians of recovered
memory, they continue to use their positions of authority in universities,
hospitals, and professional organizations to advance the views whose
hollowness McNally has exposed, and they can still count on a surprising
level of support from their colleagues.
Consider, in this regard, the following example of deafness to the lessons
of the sex panic. Each year the American Psychiatric Association, the body
that sets the most basic guidelines for sound practice in our mental health
professions, bestows its Manfred S. Guttmacher Award on what it deems to be
the best recent publication on legal psychiatry. The prize for 1999 went
to a 768-page tome by Daniel Brown, Alan W. Scheflin, and D. Corydon
Hammond, Memory, Trauma Treatment, and the Law. The authors characterize
themselves as "voices of moderation in the middle" opposing "zealots on
both sides" (p. 1). Their book, however, consists largely of sophistical
pleading for already lost causes: the forensic value of therapeutically
retrieved memories, the genuineness of multiple personality disorder, the
likelihood that some reports of ritual abuse cults are accurate, and the
desirability of allowing evidence obtained through hypnosis to be
admissible in court.
Memory, Trauma Treatment, and the Law isn't just a disingenuous book,
hiding its partisanship behind a screen of sanctimony; it is also a noxious
one. Lightly granting the possibility that therapy may occasionally lead
to pseudomemories, it trivializes the problem, deeming it serious only
"when the patient takes legal action or publically [sic] discloses abuse"
(p. 37)--as if the suffering of privately shattered families counted for
nothing. And the book's strategy of superficially "reviewing the
literature," citing both skeptical and (always more numerous) credulous
studies and then tilting the scales toward the latter, merely simulates
scientific neutrality.
These authors' activism in the cause of recovered memory was well known
long before they collaborated on their prize-winning volume. Daniel Brown
and Alan Scheflin had often served as expert witnesses minimizing the
hazards of memory retrieval, claiming to have found overwhelming
experimental support for the concept of repression, and denying that a
therapist could ever deceive a patient into thinking that she suffered from
multiple personality; and their collaborative papers were similarly
one-sided. In 1995, moreover, Scheflin had delivered a warmly
received address to a Texas conference held by the Society for the
Investigation, Treatment and Prevention of Ritual and Cult Abuse, whose
other speakers asserted, inter alia, that there were 500 Satanic cults in
New York City alone, committing 4000 human sacrifices per year, that Bill
Clinton was serving as the Antichrist in the worldwide Satanic fraternity
of the Illuminati and that the False Memory Syndrome Foundation is "a
Central Intelligence Agency action." Expressing solidarity with the
assembled psychotherapists whose diagnoses of ritual abuse were exposing
them to malpractice suits, Scheflin counseled them on the best means of
foiling the legal machinations of "the false memory people," whom he
characterizes as "the enemy."
But it is hypnotherapist D. Corydon Hammond, well known for his low regard
for experimental research on memory, whose name on the title page
of Memory, Trauma Treatment, and the Law ought to have prompted especial
wariness among the Guttmacher judges. Like Scheflin, Hammond has affirmed
the reality of both Satanic abuse cults and multiple personality disorder.
But whereas Scheflin stops short of asserting a proven link between those
two phenomena, Hammond is on record as a flamboyant true believer.
In a notorious 1992 lecture at a conference on sexual abuse and MPD,
Hammond revealed his conviction that many MPD sufferers have acquired their
split personalities through subjection, from early childhood onward, to
ritual sexual abuse, sadistic torture, and mind control programming. The
aim of the programmers, he disclosed, has been to produce remotely guided
"alters" who, unbeknownst to their core selves, will be slaves to a
worldwide intergenerational cult that is organized into "Illuminatic
councils." The cult, said Hammond, is headed by a shadowy "Dr. Greenbaum,"
a Hasidic Jewish collaborator with the Nazis who once assisted in death
camp experiments and later used the CIA to further his nefarious ends. "My
best guess," Hammond confided,
. . . is that they want an army of Manchurian Candidates, tens of thousands
of mental robots who will do prostitution, do child pornography, smuggle
drugs, engage in international arms smuggling, do snuff films, . . . and
eventually the megalomaniacs at the top believe they'll create a Satanic
order that will rule the world.
These colorful fantasies are significant, but not because they point to a
failure of reality testing on Hammond's part. Closely related ideas were
voiced in the heyday of the recovered memory movement by other prominent
MPD specialists such as Bennett Braun and Colin Ross. What matters is that
Hammond and the others all claim to have learned about the grand cabal from
their hypnotized patients, who, until they were placed in trances, hadn't
even known they were molestation victims, much less robotic smugglers,
whores, and assassins.< #fn11>[11] As Brown, Scheflin, and Hammond now put
it in arguing in favor of hypnotically obtained evidence in the courtroom,
"for some victims, hypnosis may provide the only avenue to the repressed
memories" (p. 647). Exactly. Without that means of exchanging and
embroidering false beliefs, Hammond himself could never have learned from
his patients about the evil Dr. Greenbaum and his thirst for absolute power
over us all.
The illogicalities and distortions in Memory, Trauma Treatment, and the Law
do not go unremarked in McNally's Remembering Trauma. Thus, when Brown et
al. cite one study as evidence that "amnesia for Nazi Holocaust camp
experiences has also been reported," McNally quotes that study's rather
different conclusion: "There is no doubt that almost all witnesses remember
Camp Erika in great detail, even after 40 years" (p. 192). And when Brown
et al., again straining to make psychologically motivated amnesia look
commonplace, cite another study to the effect that "two of the 38 children
studied after watching lightning strike and kill a playmate had no memory
of the event," McNally informs us that those two children "had themselves
been struck by side flashes from the main lightning bolt, knocked
unconscious, and nearly killed" (p. 192).
Such corrections, however damning, are peripheral to McNally's fundamental
critique of Brown and his colleagues. The heart of the matter is that
Brown et al. have miscast the entire debate over recovered memory by
marshaling evidence against a straw-man "extreme false memory position."
Supposedly, the extremists hold that all refreshed memories of abuse are
necessarily wrong. Then one could put the extremists in their place just
by citing a few cases of authenticated recall. But as McNally shows,
critics of recovered memory fully allow that a period of forgetfulness can
precede a genuine recollection. Indeed, that pattern is just what we would
expect if the young subject at the time of the act, never having been
warned against sexual predators, was unsure how to regard that act. What
the critics deny is that "memories" of trauma, surfacing for the first time
many years later, are so intrinsically reliable that they can serve as
useful evidence that the experience was real. Brown, Scheflin, and Hammond
want that extremism to be embraced once again by the legal system that has
finally learned to distrust it.
It would be reassuring to think that the the American Psychiatric
Association's Guttmacher jury merely skimmed Memory, Trauma Treatment, and
the Law and misconstrued it as a bland eclectic survey. Already in 1991,
however, another Guttmacher Award had been bestowed on co-author Scheflin
for a work that made several of the same legal arguments.< #fn12>[12] A more
likely explanation for the subsequent prize is that Brown et al., having
mounted a brief for the deep knowledge and expert testimony of
theory-minded clinicians, were gratefully perceived as siding with mental
health providers against their adversaries. If so, a larger question comes
into view. What role did our major societies representing
psychotherapists--the American Psychoanalytic Association, the American
Psychological Association, and the American Psychiatric Association
itself--play in condoning or actually facilitating the recovered memory
movement, and how much enlightened guidance can we expect from them in the
future?
3. As I have noted on several occasions, and as McNally confirms,
in the 1990s recovered memory therapy made significant inroads into the
practice of North American psychoanalysis. Even today, feminist clinicians
bearing diplomas from analytic institutes are probing for missing memories
of abuse and vigorously defending that practice in psychoanalytic books and
journals. But the American Psychoanalytic Association, representing over
3,000 members, has turned a blind eye to this trend and one can understand
why. The psychoanalytic movement is already embattled, and too much about
the historical ties between Freudianism and recovered memory would prove
embarrassing if attention were called to it. The elected custodians of
Freud's legacy have no desire to confront his early phase as a
self-deceived abuse detecter; or to admit the precedent he set, during that
phase and thereafter, in treating dreams, tics, obsessional acts, and
agitation in the consulting room as "behavioral memories" of inferrable
traumas; or to revisit the grave doubts that have been raised about
repression; or to be reminded of the way psychoanalysts, until quite
recently, insulted real victims of molestation by telling them that their
"screen memories" covered a repressed desire to have sex with their
fathers. No longer given to excommunicating dissidents, the
tottering Freudian patriarchy has made its peace with "recovered memory
psychoanalysis" by pretending that it doesn't exist.
The largest of the three societies riven by the issue of recovered memory,
the 95,000-member American Psychological Association (hereafter APA), is
nominally responsible for quality control in the administration of therapy
by the nation's clinical psychologists. Hence one APA division's
commendable effort in the 1990s to identify the most effective treatment
methods for specific complaints such as phobias and obsessive-compulsive
disorder. That initiative, however, met with disapproval from APA members
whose favorite regimens had not been found to give superior results. Some
practitioners worried that insurers would use the list of approved
treatments as an excuse to cut off reimbursement for all but the preferred
therapies, and others complained that the association seemed on the verge
of putting soulless experimentation ahead of clinical know-how. For now at
least, the organization as a whole is not recommending treatments, to say
nothing of disavowing dangerous ones. Recovered memory thus gets
the same free pass from the APA as "attachment therapy," "therapeutic
touch," "eye movement desensitization and reprocessing," "facilitated
communication," and the hypnotic debriefing of reincarnated princesses and
UFO abductees.
This reluctance to challenge the judgment of its therapist members is
deeply rooted in the APA's philosophy. Ever since 1971, when the
association gave its blessing to Ph.D. and Psy.D. programs that omitted any
scientific training, the APA has guided its course by reference to studies
indicating that the intuitive competence of clinicians, not their adherence
to one psychological doctrine or another, is what chiefly determines their
effectiveness. Those studies, however, were conducted before
recovered memory practitioners, using a mixture of peremptory guesswork and
unsubstantiated theory, began wrenching patients away from their families
and their remembered past.
In 1995 the APA did publish a brochure, "Questions and Answers about
Memories of Childhood Abuse," which can still be found on the "APA Online"
Web site. The document combined some prudent advice to patients with
soothing reassurance that "the issue of repressed or suggested memories has
been overreported and sensationalized." Further inquiry into the
phenomenon, it said, "will profit from collaborative efforts among
psychologists who specialize in memory research and those clinicians who
specialize in working with trauma and abuse victims."
But the APA directors already knew that such collaboration was impossible.
In 1993 they had established a "task force," the Working Group on the
Investigation of Memories of Childhood Abuse, self-defeatingly composed of
three research psychologists and three clinicians favorably disposed to
retrieval, and the task force had immediately degenerated into caucusing
and wrangling. After years of stalemate, the group predictably submitted
two reports that clashed on every major point; and the abashed APA,
presented with this vivid evidence that "clinical experience" can lead to
scientific heterodoxy, declined to circulate photocopies of the two
documents even to its own members except by individual demand.
Meanwhile, the organization repeatedly compromised its formal neutrality.
In 1994, for example, the APA's publishing house lent its prestigious
imprint to a book that not only recommended recovered memory therapy but
recycled the most heedless advice found in pop-psychological manuals. The
book, Lenore E. A. Walker's Abused Women and Survivor Therapy: A Practical
Guide for the Psychotherapist, touted hypnotism as a legitimate means of
gaining access to "buried memories of incest" and "different personalities"
within the victim (pp. 425-426). Walker provided a list of telltale
symptoms, any one of which might indicate a history of forgotten
molestation. These included "ambivalent or conflict ridden relationships,"
"poor body image," "quiet-voiced," "inability to trust or indiscriminate
trust," "high risk taking or inability to take risks," "fear of losing
control and need for intense control," "great appreciation of small favors
by others," "no sense of humor or constant wisecracking," and "blocking out
early childhood years" (p. 113) years which in fact are not remembered by
anyone.
Then in 1996 the APA published and conspicuously endorsed another book,
Recovered Memories of Abuse, aimed at equipping memory therapists and their
expert witnesses with every argument and precaution that could thwart
malpractice suits. The book's co-authors were well-known
advocates of recovered memory treatment, and one of them, Laura S. Brown,
was actually serving at the time on the deadlocked task force. She had
also supplied a foreword to Lenore Walker's bumbling Abused Women and
Survivor Therapy, calling it "invaluable and long overdue" (p. vii).
Unsurprisingly, then, Recovered Memories of Abuse characterized false
memory as an overrated problem and drew uncritically on much of the
research whose weaknesses Richard McNally has now exposed. The APA's
unabated promotion of that book, even today, suggests that the organization
remains more concerned with shielding its most wayward members than with
warning the public against therapeutic snake oil.
There remains, once again, the American Psychiatric Association "the voice
and conscience of modern psychiatry," as its Web site proclaims. Putting
aside the fiasco of the 1999 Guttmacher Award, we might expect that a
society representing 37,000 physicians, all of whom have been schooled in
the standard of care that requires treatments to be tested for safety and
effectiveness, would be especially vigilant against the dangers of
retrieval therapy. Thus far, however, that expectation has not been
fulfilled.
To be sure, the Psychiatric Association's 1993 "Statement on Memories of
Sexual Abuse" did warn clinicians not to "exert pressure on patients to
believe in events that may not have occurred. . . ." Yet the statement
inadvertently encouraged just such tampering by avowing that the "coping
mechanisms" of molested youngsters can "result in a lack of conscious
awareness of the abuse" and by characterizing "dissociative disorders" as a
typical outcome of that abuse. Those remarks constituted a discreet but
unmistakable vote of confidence in multiple personality disorder and its
imagined sexual etiology. And indeed, a year later the fourth edition of
the Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders (DSM-IV) reaffirmed the validity of MPD under the more dignified
and marketable name of dissociative identity disorder.
The Psychiatric Association's 1993 declaration on abuse memories performed
still another service, a subtle one, for the repression/dissociation lobby.
In explaining "implicit" memory the kind that is exercised in the routine
execution of skills or in the coloring of emotions by past impressions that
aren't being explicitly called to mind the statement proffered a curiously
strained example. "In the absence of explicit recall," it said, implicit
memory can torment "a combat veteran who panics when he hears the sound of
a helicopter, but cannot remember that he was in a helicopter crash which
killed his best friend." Here was an elision of the crucial gap between
merely not thinking about a past event, as in the normal operation of
implicit memory, and having total, psychologically motivated amnesia for
that event.
Knowledgeable readers would have seen that in taking this unusual step, the
statement's drafters were lending their authority to one controversial
interpretation of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which the
Psychiatric Association had first stamped as genuine in DSM-III of 1980.
But why should a primarily martial ailment have figured even indirectly in
a position paper on childhood sexual abuse? The mystery vanishes, however,
if we know that the recovered memory movement's favorite means of courting
respectability has been to fold the symptoms of repressed/dissociated abuse
into PTSD.
In 2000 the Psychiatric Association's trustees, eschewing risky flights
into theory, approved a lower-profile "Position Statement on Therapies
Focused on Memories of Childhood Physical and Sexual Abuse." This
declaration, however, was more pussyfooting than its predecessor. The
validity of recovered memory treatment, it whispered, "has been challenged"
in some quarters. While pointing out that memories can be altered as a
result of suggestions from "a trusted person or authority figure," the
drafters tactfully refrained from mentioning that the suggesting party is
usually a therapist. And clinicians were advised to avoid "prejudging the
veracity of the patient's reports" of abuse, as if false reports were
typically delivered to therapists out of the blue, without influence from
confabulation-enhancing devices employed within the treatment. The absence
of any mention of those devices, such as hypnosis and sodium amytal, marked
a step backward from the association's 1993 statement.
These equivocations neither helped nor impeded the already withering
recovered memory movement. As we will now see, however, the movement's
hopes of a comeback have been pinned on the Psychiatric Association's
fateful decision to treat post-traumatic stress disorder as an integral and
historically invariable malady. And that decision was a medically
unwarranted one. As McNally indicates with reference to several recent
studies, PTSD, like Victorian hysteria and like recovered memory itself,
can now be understood as an artifact of its era--a sociopolitical invention
of the post-Vietnam years, meant to replace "shell shock" and "combat
fatigue" with an enduring affliction that would tacitly indict war itself
as a psychological pathogen. However crippling the symptoms
associated with it may be for many individuals, the PTSD diagnosis itself
has proved to be a modern contagion.
Once certified by the American Psychiatric Association as natural and
beyond the sufferer's control, post-traumatic stress disorder began
attracting claimants, both civilian and military, who schooled themselves
in its listed symptoms and forged a new identity around remaining uncured.
By now, as McNally relates, PTSD compensation is demanded for such
complaints as "being fired from a job, one-mile-per-hour fender benders,
age discrimination, living within a few miles of an explosion (although
unaware that it had happened), and being kissed in public" (p. 281).
According to Paula Jones among others, PTSD can even be the outcome of a
consensual love affair. In view of such examples, the attempt to subsume
forgotten abuse under post-traumatic stress makes more cultural than
scientific sense; the same atmosphere of hypersensitivity and victimhood
brought both diagnoses to life.
As McNally shows in his concise and undemonstrative style, the national sex
panic left its mark on each successive version of the Psychiatric
Association's bible, which in turn congealed folklore into dogma. The 1980
DSM-III entry on post-traumatic stress disorder, mindful only of wars and
other shocking disasters, had defined a PTSD-triggering event as one that
falls "generally outside the range of usual human experience" and that
"would evoke significant symptoms of distress in almost everyone." In
1994, however, the fourth edition generously expanded the category of
precipitating causes to include "developmentally inappropriate sexual
experiences without threatened or actual violence or injury." Thus a
single-minded therapeutic sleuth could now place a questionably retrieved
incident of infantile genital fondling on the same etiological plane as the
Bataan death march or an ambush in the Mekong Delta.
It was the diagnostic manual, once again, that removed the largest obstacle
of all to the merger of post-traumatic stress and recovered memory. The
key sign of PTSD, as first conceived, was that accurate recollections of
the trauma keep intruding on the patient's conscious mind; this was just
the opposite of repressed or dissociated memory. But between DSM-III and
its revised edition of 1987, PTSD patients were discovered to have been
harboring a convenient new symptom. In 1980 they had shown only some
incidental "memory impairment or trouble concentrating" on daily affairs,
but the updated edition replaced routine forgetfulness with "inability to
recall an important aspect of the trauma" (emphasis added).
This retroactive infusion of amnesia into the clinical picture of PTSD
explains why the Psychiatric' Association's illustrative helicopter pilot
could have been troubled by a memory that had left no conscious imprint on
his mind. Here, too, was the opening needed to give dissociation an
appearance of hard-scientific concreteness. Post-traumatic stress, it was
now claimed, short-circuits narrative memory and finds another,
precognitive, channel through which it can flood the subject with anxiety.
Accordingly, diehard recovered memory theorists took up a last refuge in
neurobiology, now maintaining that dissociated sexual abuse generates
signature alterations of brain tissue.
With the arrival of McNally's Remembering Trauma, there is no longer any
excuse for such obfuscation. It makes no sense, McNally shows, to count
forgetfulness for some "aspect of the trauma" within the definition of
PTSD, because normal people as well as PTSD sufferers get disoriented by
shocking incidents and fail to memorize everything about the event, even
while knowing for the rest of their lives that it occurred. Likewise, it
has never been established, and it seems quite unbelievable, that people
can be haunted by memories that were never cognitively registered as such.
Nor can specific brain markers vouch for the reality of a long-past sexual
trauma, because, among other reasons, those features could have been
present from birth. "It is ironic," McNally reflects, "that so much has
been written about the biological mechanisms of traumatic psychological
amnesia when the very existence of the phenomenon is in doubt. What we
have here is a set of theories in search of a phenomenon" (p. 182n.).
Remembering Trauma is neither a polemic nor a sermon, and McNally offers
little counsel to psychotherapists beyond warning them against turning
moral disapproval of pedophilia into overconfidence that they can infer its
existence from behavioral clues observed twenty or thirty years after the
fact. But another lesson is implied throughout this important book.
Attention to the chimerical task of divining a patient's early traumas is
attention subtracted from sensible help in the here and now. The reason
why psychotherapists ought to familiarize themselves with actual knowledge
about the workings of memory, and why their professional societies should
stop waffling and promulgating misinformation about it, is not that good
science guarantees good therapy; it is simply that pseudoscience inevitably
leads to harm.
Notes
Bessel A. van der Kolk and Onno van der Hart, "The Intrusive
Past: The Flexibility of Memory and the Engraving of Trauma," American
Imago, vol. 48 (1991), pp. 425-454; the quotation is from p. 432.
The fullest treatment of the recovered memory episode and its
historical antecedents is Mark Pendergrast, Victims of Memory: Sex Abuse
Accusations and Shattered Lives, 2nd ed. (Upper Access, 1996). For a
concise and pointed account of the multiple personality fad, see Joan
Acocella, Creating Hysteria: Women and Multiple Personality Disorder
(Jossey-Bass, 1999). The best extended discussion is Nicholas P. Spanos,
Multiple Identities and False Memories: A Sociocognitive Perspective
(American Psychological Association, 1996). On Satanic abuse, see Jeffrey
S. Victor, Satanic Panic: The Creation of a Contemporary Legend (Open
Court, 1993), and Debbie Nathan and Michael Snedeker, Satan's Silence:
Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt (Basic Books,
1995). The plight of daycare workers who remain imprisoned even today is
treated by Dorothy Rabinowitz, No Crueler Tyrannies: Accusation, False
Witness, and Other Terrors of Our Times (Wall Street Press Books/Free
Press, 2003).
For the current state of knowledge about "Sybil," see Mikkel
Borch-Jacobsen, Folie à plusieurs: De l'hystérie à la dépression (Les
Empêcheurs de penser en rond/Le Seuil, 2002), pp. 111-168.
For Masson's errors about Freud's "seduction" phase, see Allen
Esterson, "Jeffrey Masson and Freud's Seduction Theory: A New Fable Based
on Old Myths," History of the Human Sciences, vol. 11 (199
, pp. 1-21. Inhis preface to a recently reprinted edition of The Assault on Truth (Random
House, 2003), Masson at last concedes that Freud's patients in 1895-96
resisted the incest stories that he tried to force upon them. Bizarrely,
however, Masson still counts those patients among the likely victims of
sexual abuse in Freud's day.
Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery (Basic Books, 1992), p. 1.
See, in this connection, the final chapter of Ruth Leys's
Trauma: A Genealogy (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2000).
In one paper, for example, Scheflin and Brown addressed the
problem of patients' suggestibility, but the danger they envisioned from
that quarter was only "false litigant syndrome," or surrender to
"pro-false-memory suggestive influences" emanating from "plaintiffs'
attorneys and expert witnesses" brought into malpractice suits against
their former therapists. See Alan W. Scheflin and Daniel Brown, "The False
Litigant Syndrome: ‘Nobody Would Say That Unless It Was the Truth,'"
Journal of Psychiatry and Law, vol. 27 (1999), pp. 649-705. This same
argument surfaces in Memory, Trauma Treatment, and the Law, which states
that pressures exerted in therapy "pale in comparison" (p. 39
with thosethat can turn a patient into a litigious ingrate.
Transcripts of the Texas conference proceedings have been
available from Toronto radio station CKLN. See also Evan Harrington,
"Conspiracy Theories and Paranoia: Notes from a Mind-Control Conference,"
Skeptical Inquirer, vol. 20 (September/October 1996), pp.35-42.
"I think it's time somebody called for an open season on
academicians and researchers," Hammond said in 1997; ". . . it's time for
clinicians to begin bringing ethics charges for scientific malpractice
against researchers and journal editors" who disparage recovered memory
theory. "Investigating False Memory for the Unmemorable: A Critique of
Experimental Hypnosis and Memory Research," 14th International Congress of
Hypnosis and Psychosomatic Medicine, San Diego, June 1997. Tapes of
Hammond's talk have been offered by The Sound of Knowledge, Inc.
D. Corydon Hammond, "Hypnosis in MPD: Ritual Abuse," a paper
delivered at the Fourth Annual Eastern Regional Conference on Abuse and
Multiple Personality, Alexandria, VA, June 25, 1992. Understandably, tapes
of this talk have been withdrawn from sale; but a transcript, which repays
reading from start to finish, can be found at
www.heart7.net/mcf/greenbaum.htm.
Patients of hypnosis-wielding MPD enthusiasts really have
acquired crippling beliefs about their cult participation. That is why
Bennett Braun, in 1997, had his license to practice suspended and why his
insurers paid one of his tormented ex-patients a sobering malpractice
settlement of $10.6 million.
Alan W. Scheflin and Jerrold Lee Shapiro, Trance on Trial
(Guilford Press, 1989).
See, e.g., The Memory Wars: Freud's Legacy in Dispute (New
York Review Books, 1995), pp. 15-29; Unauthorized Freud: Doubters Confront
a Legend (Viking, 199
, pp. x-xi; and "Forward to 1896? Commentary onPapers by Harris and Davies," Psychoanalytic Dialogues, vol. 6 (1996), pp.
231-250. That special number of Psychoanalytic Dialogues became a book
edited by Richard B. Gartner, Memories of Sexual Betrayal: Truth, Fantasy,
Repression, and Dissociation (Jason Aronson, 1997). My own contribution,
however, was excised and replaced by an attack on my earlier criticisms of
psychoanalysis.
On this last point, see Bennett Simon, "‘Incest See Under
Oedipus Complex': The History of an Error in Psychoanalysis," Journal of
the American Psychoanalytic Association, vol. 40 (1992), pp. 955-988.
See David Glenn, "Nightmare Scenarios," Chronicle of Higher
Education, Oct. 24, 2003, pp. 14-17.
A welcome new critique of fad therapies is Science and
Pseudoscience in Clinical Psychology, ed. Scott O. Lilienfeld, Steven Jay
Lynn, and Jeffrey M. Lohr (Guilford Press, 2003).
See Robyn M. Dawes, House of Cards: Psychology and
Psychotherapy Built on Myth (Free Press, 1994), especially pp. 10-22.
Kenneth S. Pope and Laura S. Brown, Recovered Memories of
Abuse: Assessment, Therapy, Forensics (American Psychological Association,
1996).
See especially Allan Young, The Harmony of Illusions:
Inventing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (Princeton Univ. Press, 1995), and
Herb Kutchins and Stuart A. Kirk, Making Us Crazy: DSM: The Psychiatric
Bible and the Creation of Mental Disorders (Free Press, 1997).
As the Pied Pipers of recovered memory, Ellen Bass and Laura
Davis, told prospective survivors in 1988, "When you first remember your
abuse or acknowledge its effects, you may feel tremendous relief. Finally
there is a reason for your problems. There is someone, and something, to
blame." The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual
Abuse (Harper & Row, 198
, p. 173.
letters to editor (maximum 200 words): email: Letters@nzherald.co.nz
full name & residential address,tel no.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3551645&thesection=news&t
hesubsection=general
Bioethics talks 'waste of time'
NZ HERALD
27.02.2004
By RENEE KIRIONA
Meetings being held by the Bioethics Council to discuss humans genes in
other organisms have been described as a waste of time.
The Auckland meeting was the second of 30 the council has organised
throughout the country to get an idea of people's views on cultural, ethical
and spiritual issues arising from the development of biotechnology.
The council's chairman, Sir Paul Reeves, not present at the meeting, said
decisions about biotechnology were too important to be left solely to the
Government, business or science.
However, environmentalist Max Tobin told those gathered the reality was that
those groups did have the power to make such decisions.
He also said the views of New Zealanders had already been expressed in
thousands of submissions, consultation meetings, public protests and
marches.
"Most New Zealanders are against the transfer of human genes, but the
Government has chosen not to listen. How many times do I have to repeat
myself?
"My view is that the Government doesn't pay any attention to the cultural,
spiritual and ethical. All they are concerned about is profit," Mr Tobin
said.
Only seven of the 50 allocated seats at the Portage Peninsula Hotel in
Avondale were filled. Twenty turned out for the Whangarei meeting on
Wednesday.
Environmentalist Marcus Graf and Mere Takoko of Te Waka Kai Ora / the
National Maori Organics Association also questioned the validity of the
meetings.
"The council needs to revisit those submissions then decide whether these
meetings are worth it or not," Mr Graf said.
"It seems like we are going over the same issues. Until the structure of
ERMA [the Environmental Risk Management Authority] has been addressed then
processes like this will continue to fail communities," Miss Takoko said.
Over the next four weeks similar meetings will be held in Whakatane, South
Auckland, Hamilton, New Plymouth, Wellington, Nelson, Gisborne,
Christchurch, Hastings and Dunedin.
Mr Reeves was encouraging South Auckland people to have their say at
tomorrow's hui, which will specifically canvass Maori views on
biotechnology.
GM Thinktank
Q: What is the Bioethics Council?
A: A cultural, ethical and spiritual adviser to the Environmental Risk
Management Authority, which makes decisions on applications to introduce
genetically modified organisms. Five of the eight authority members come
from the science industry.
full name & residential address,tel no.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3551645&thesection=news&t
hesubsection=general
Bioethics talks 'waste of time'
NZ HERALD
27.02.2004
By RENEE KIRIONA
Meetings being held by the Bioethics Council to discuss humans genes in
other organisms have been described as a waste of time.
The Auckland meeting was the second of 30 the council has organised
throughout the country to get an idea of people's views on cultural, ethical
and spiritual issues arising from the development of biotechnology.
The council's chairman, Sir Paul Reeves, not present at the meeting, said
decisions about biotechnology were too important to be left solely to the
Government, business or science.
However, environmentalist Max Tobin told those gathered the reality was that
those groups did have the power to make such decisions.
He also said the views of New Zealanders had already been expressed in
thousands of submissions, consultation meetings, public protests and
marches.
"Most New Zealanders are against the transfer of human genes, but the
Government has chosen not to listen. How many times do I have to repeat
myself?
"My view is that the Government doesn't pay any attention to the cultural,
spiritual and ethical. All they are concerned about is profit," Mr Tobin
said.
Only seven of the 50 allocated seats at the Portage Peninsula Hotel in
Avondale were filled. Twenty turned out for the Whangarei meeting on
Wednesday.
Environmentalist Marcus Graf and Mere Takoko of Te Waka Kai Ora / the
National Maori Organics Association also questioned the validity of the
meetings.
"The council needs to revisit those submissions then decide whether these
meetings are worth it or not," Mr Graf said.
"It seems like we are going over the same issues. Until the structure of
ERMA [the Environmental Risk Management Authority] has been addressed then
processes like this will continue to fail communities," Miss Takoko said.
Over the next four weeks similar meetings will be held in Whakatane, South
Auckland, Hamilton, New Plymouth, Wellington, Nelson, Gisborne,
Christchurch, Hastings and Dunedin.
Mr Reeves was encouraging South Auckland people to have their say at
tomorrow's hui, which will specifically canvass Maori views on
biotechnology.
GM Thinktank
Q: What is the Bioethics Council?
A: A cultural, ethical and spiritual adviser to the Environmental Risk
Management Authority, which makes decisions on applications to introduce
genetically modified organisms. Five of the eight authority members come
from the science industry.
02/22/04
Corner Post #319
Farm & Countryside Commentary by Elbert van Donkersgoed
January 26, 2003
When the United States Department of Agriculture announced North America's
second animal with mad cow disease, the first news was all about borders
slamming shut and the consequent impact on markets. McDonald's shares fell
five percent. U.S. Cattle prices tumbled almost 18 percent as a $3 billion
export market blinked out. There was talk that growth in U.S. fast food
outlets was at risk.
Within days the U.S. media coverage shifted dramatically. Almost every
non-government organization with peripheral connections to the U.S. food
system published essays; wrote letters to the editor or appeared on talk
shows. Their issue was not the market impact of one cow with a fatal
disease. It was not a business story. It was a food, health and environment
story. Even the would-be presidents in the race for the Democratic
nomination made pronouncements about the food system.
Incidentally this was quite different from the Canadian experience with one
sick cow seven months earlier. Most Canadian stories were based on official
information from government agencies, spokespeople for farm and food
businesses and key politicians like Albert's Premier Ralph Klein. To this
day, BSE is a business story in Canada but not in the U.S.
What makes one sick cow in the U.S. a food story?
First, conventional U.S. agriculture is a long way down the road to
industrialization - considerably further than Canada. The U.S. food system
is becoming a throughput machine where the dominant values are technology,
growth and the abandonment of restraint. It is a system that prizes
efficiency, competitiveness and maximum production above all else. It is a
system that, internally, lacks the ability to see the risks of taking cow
parts and rendering them into meat and bone meal as feed for the next
generation of livestock.
Second, we eat our environment. Food is the result of a complex system that
involves feedback loops, where nutrition is more important than quantity,
where unintended consequences and unpredictable developments are
commonplace. Think drought or grasshoppers or mealybugs or mad cow disease.
We eat in a complex relationship with creation. The discovery of one sick
cow in Washington drives home just how complex our food system has become.
Third, consumers are enabled to be more risk-averse because of the very
nature of our modern food system. We tend to be blasé about the risks that
we choose to take. Give us some control and many of us are risk-takers. Our
modern food system delivers abundant choice, but choice is not a substitute
for control. Choice allows consumers to abandon any product that has a whiff
of risk associated with it.
Industrialization, complexity and choice make one sick cow a food story.
===============
Elbert van Donkersgoed (P. Ag. Hon.) is the Strategic Policy Advisor of the
Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario, Canada. Corner Post has been heard
weekly on CFCO Radio, Chatham and CKNX Radio, Wingham, Ontario since 1997.
Corner Post has an email subscriber list of more than 3,000 and appears
regularly on @g Worldwide Correspondents at
www.agriculture.com/worldwide/correspondents/index.html. Copyright 2004
Terra Coeur. Send requests to print, post on a website or circulate
electronically to elbert@terracoeur.com.
Farm & Countryside Commentary by Elbert van Donkersgoed
January 26, 2003
When the United States Department of Agriculture announced North America's
second animal with mad cow disease, the first news was all about borders
slamming shut and the consequent impact on markets. McDonald's shares fell
five percent. U.S. Cattle prices tumbled almost 18 percent as a $3 billion
export market blinked out. There was talk that growth in U.S. fast food
outlets was at risk.
Within days the U.S. media coverage shifted dramatically. Almost every
non-government organization with peripheral connections to the U.S. food
system published essays; wrote letters to the editor or appeared on talk
shows. Their issue was not the market impact of one cow with a fatal
disease. It was not a business story. It was a food, health and environment
story. Even the would-be presidents in the race for the Democratic
nomination made pronouncements about the food system.
Incidentally this was quite different from the Canadian experience with one
sick cow seven months earlier. Most Canadian stories were based on official
information from government agencies, spokespeople for farm and food
businesses and key politicians like Albert's Premier Ralph Klein. To this
day, BSE is a business story in Canada but not in the U.S.
What makes one sick cow in the U.S. a food story?
First, conventional U.S. agriculture is a long way down the road to
industrialization - considerably further than Canada. The U.S. food system
is becoming a throughput machine where the dominant values are technology,
growth and the abandonment of restraint. It is a system that prizes
efficiency, competitiveness and maximum production above all else. It is a
system that, internally, lacks the ability to see the risks of taking cow
parts and rendering them into meat and bone meal as feed for the next
generation of livestock.
Second, we eat our environment. Food is the result of a complex system that
involves feedback loops, where nutrition is more important than quantity,
where unintended consequences and unpredictable developments are
commonplace. Think drought or grasshoppers or mealybugs or mad cow disease.
We eat in a complex relationship with creation. The discovery of one sick
cow in Washington drives home just how complex our food system has become.
Third, consumers are enabled to be more risk-averse because of the very
nature of our modern food system. We tend to be blasé about the risks that
we choose to take. Give us some control and many of us are risk-takers. Our
modern food system delivers abundant choice, but choice is not a substitute
for control. Choice allows consumers to abandon any product that has a whiff
of risk associated with it.
Industrialization, complexity and choice make one sick cow a food story.
===============
Elbert van Donkersgoed (P. Ag. Hon.) is the Strategic Policy Advisor of the
Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario, Canada. Corner Post has been heard
weekly on CFCO Radio, Chatham and CKNX Radio, Wingham, Ontario since 1997.
Corner Post has an email subscriber list of more than 3,000 and appears
regularly on @g Worldwide Correspondents at
www.agriculture.com/worldwide/correspondents/index.html. Copyright 2004
Terra Coeur. Send requests to print, post on a website or circulate
electronically to elbert@terracoeur.com.
02/21/04
ORGANIC BYTES #28
Food and Consumer News Tidbits with an Edge!
2/19/2004 By Organic Consumers Association
GE-related Excerpts-
MONSANTO BIOPIRATES STEALING INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE
The European Patent Office (EPO) has approved a patent which gives the
Monsanto Corporation "ownership" rights over a traditional variety of
wheat cultivated in rural communities in India for generations. Rainer
Osterwalder of the EPO claims that authorities don't have the legal
power to be able to stop corporations from committing "biopiracy".
"Sometimes the office cannot prevent that indigenous knowledge is used
for a patent, and then the indigenous people can not use it anymore.
Science is often one step ahead of the laws."
http://www.organicconsumers.org/Patent/biopirates.cfm
---------------------------------
MENDOCINO JUST DAYS AWAY FROM LANDMARK VOTE
March 2 marks the day when voters in Mendocino County (CA) will choose
whether or not their county will become the first in the U.S. to legally
ban genetically engineered crops. The biotech industry is using its
financial and political clout to try to stifle the voices of Mendocino
consumers and farmers, but the OCA predicts a victory for the people.
Stay tuned for the vote results...
http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/mendocino-gmos.cfm
---------------------------------
GENETICALLY ENGINEERED WHEAT GENERATES GRASSROOTS RESISTANCE
Monsanto, the corporation that brought us Agent Orange, DDT, Bovine
Growth Hormone and PCBs, has engineered wheat to withstand applications
of the company's toxic Roundup herbicide. Scientists from the University
of Manitoba recently released a report stating that "Under current
conditions the release of Roundup Ready wheat in Western Canada would be
environmentally unsafe." Monsanto's GE wheat would lead to an increase
in the use of glyphosate herbicide, a widely-used chemical now being
linked to increased growth of fungal plant pathogens, known as fusarium
head blight (FHB). FHB has already caused tens of millions of dollars in
losses for wheat farmers on the eastern prairies of Canada. Consumers in
Japan, South Korea and Europe - some of the biggest international
consumers of wheat - have indicated they do not want an engineered
version of the crop. http://www.organicconsumers.org/monlink.html
---------------------------------
KRAFT & GE WHEAT
FDA officials are completing their perfunctory review of Monsanto's
application for Roundup Ready wheat. Food companies, especially Kraft,
have publicly expressed concerns about consumers rejecting products with
engineered ingredients, especially the new engineered wheat. If Kraft,
the largest food company in the U.S., rejects wheat, it will send a
clear message to farmers not to grow it. Call Kraft CEO Roger Deromedi
at Kraft Foods Headquarters at 1-847-646-2000 or their consumer hotline
at 1-800-323-0768.
Please tell Kraft:
-You are concerned about the health, environmental and economic risks
posed by the new genetically engineered wheat and other genetically
engineered food, and -You'll avoid Kraft products that have genetically
engineered ingredients
Please ask Kraft to:
-Pledge not to use the new genetically engineered wheat
-Stop using genetically engineered ingredients in its products -Live up
to its promise to do more to ensure a safe food supply
http://www.Krafty.org
---------------------------------
WE NEED TO TALK
Interested in sharing your thoughts and ideas with thousands of other
like-minded folks locally and around the world? Register free for OCA's
new online web forum and chat center. The OCA website has been getting
4-6 million hits every month, so we decided it's time to open up the
communication channels and let everyone share their ideas, post
articles, comment on related issues, and come together with others who
share your concerns. Start talking with others in the organic consumers
community right now! http://www.organicconsumers.org/chat/index.php
---------------------------------
Help others learn about food safety, organics, and related topics. Place
a link on YOUR website to http://OrganicConsumers.org Banners for your
use http://OrganicConsumers.org/logos.htm
-------------------------------
NOTE TO CO-OP AND NATURAL FOOD STORE SUBSCRIBERS:
Organic Bytes is a great tool for keeping your staff and customers up to
date on the latest issues. Feel free to forward this email to your staff
and print for posting on bulletin boards and staff break tables. You are
also welcome to use this material for your newsletters. There's an
attractive print-friendly PDF version of this available for free
download at http://www.organicconsumers.org/organicbytes.htm
---------------------------------
To subscribe to Organic Bytes, send an email to:
biodemocracy-request@lists.organicconsumers.org with the word
"subscribe" in subject. To unsubscribe to Organic Bytes, send an email
to: biodemocracy-request@lists.organicconsumers.org with the word
"unsubscribe" in subject.
---------------------------------
ORGANIC BYTES is a publication of:
ORGANIC CONSUMERS ASSOCIATION 6101 Cliff Estate Road Little Marais, MN
55614 Phone: (21 226-4164 Fax: (21 353-7652
Food and Consumer News Tidbits with an Edge!
2/19/2004 By Organic Consumers Association
GE-related Excerpts-
MONSANTO BIOPIRATES STEALING INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE
The European Patent Office (EPO) has approved a patent which gives the
Monsanto Corporation "ownership" rights over a traditional variety of
wheat cultivated in rural communities in India for generations. Rainer
Osterwalder of the EPO claims that authorities don't have the legal
power to be able to stop corporations from committing "biopiracy".
"Sometimes the office cannot prevent that indigenous knowledge is used
for a patent, and then the indigenous people can not use it anymore.
Science is often one step ahead of the laws."
http://www.organicconsumers.org/Patent/biopirates.cfm
---------------------------------
MENDOCINO JUST DAYS AWAY FROM LANDMARK VOTE
March 2 marks the day when voters in Mendocino County (CA) will choose
whether or not their county will become the first in the U.S. to legally
ban genetically engineered crops. The biotech industry is using its
financial and political clout to try to stifle the voices of Mendocino
consumers and farmers, but the OCA predicts a victory for the people.
Stay tuned for the vote results...
http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/mendocino-gmos.cfm
---------------------------------
GENETICALLY ENGINEERED WHEAT GENERATES GRASSROOTS RESISTANCE
Monsanto, the corporation that brought us Agent Orange, DDT, Bovine
Growth Hormone and PCBs, has engineered wheat to withstand applications
of the company's toxic Roundup herbicide. Scientists from the University
of Manitoba recently released a report stating that "Under current
conditions the release of Roundup Ready wheat in Western Canada would be
environmentally unsafe." Monsanto's GE wheat would lead to an increase
in the use of glyphosate herbicide, a widely-used chemical now being
linked to increased growth of fungal plant pathogens, known as fusarium
head blight (FHB). FHB has already caused tens of millions of dollars in
losses for wheat farmers on the eastern prairies of Canada. Consumers in
Japan, South Korea and Europe - some of the biggest international
consumers of wheat - have indicated they do not want an engineered
version of the crop. http://www.organicconsumers.org/monlink.html
---------------------------------
KRAFT & GE WHEAT
FDA officials are completing their perfunctory review of Monsanto's
application for Roundup Ready wheat. Food companies, especially Kraft,
have publicly expressed concerns about consumers rejecting products with
engineered ingredients, especially the new engineered wheat. If Kraft,
the largest food company in the U.S., rejects wheat, it will send a
clear message to farmers not to grow it. Call Kraft CEO Roger Deromedi
at Kraft Foods Headquarters at 1-847-646-2000 or their consumer hotline
at 1-800-323-0768.
Please tell Kraft:
-You are concerned about the health, environmental and economic risks
posed by the new genetically engineered wheat and other genetically
engineered food, and -You'll avoid Kraft products that have genetically
engineered ingredients
Please ask Kraft to:
-Pledge not to use the new genetically engineered wheat
-Stop using genetically engineered ingredients in its products -Live up
to its promise to do more to ensure a safe food supply
http://www.Krafty.org
---------------------------------
WE NEED TO TALK
Interested in sharing your thoughts and ideas with thousands of other
like-minded folks locally and around the world? Register free for OCA's
new online web forum and chat center. The OCA website has been getting
4-6 million hits every month, so we decided it's time to open up the
communication channels and let everyone share their ideas, post
articles, comment on related issues, and come together with others who
share your concerns. Start talking with others in the organic consumers
community right now! http://www.organicconsumers.org/chat/index.php
---------------------------------
Help others learn about food safety, organics, and related topics. Place
a link on YOUR website to http://OrganicConsumers.org Banners for your
use http://OrganicConsumers.org/logos.htm
-------------------------------
NOTE TO CO-OP AND NATURAL FOOD STORE SUBSCRIBERS:
Organic Bytes is a great tool for keeping your staff and customers up to
date on the latest issues. Feel free to forward this email to your staff
and print for posting on bulletin boards and staff break tables. You are
also welcome to use this material for your newsletters. There's an
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02/19/04
> Editorials
>
> Leapfrogging the power grid 661
>
>The desire to mitigate climate change, and opportunities to empower
>consumers in the developed and developing worlds, all point towards a need
>for less-centralized energy generation.
So far so good. But if you think this organ is about to give
due coverage of wind power, small-scale biogas, SWH, solar aircond,
photovoltaic, etc 'less-centralized energy generation', let alone criteria
for improved storage of energy, you'll be disappointed:
> It's time to further boost hydrogen research.
doi:10.1038/427661a
Full Text
>
> Leapfrogging the power grid 661
>
>The desire to mitigate climate change, and opportunities to empower
>consumers in the developed and developing worlds, all point towards a need
>for less-centralized energy generation.
So far so good. But if you think this organ is about to give
due coverage of wind power, small-scale biogas, SWH, solar aircond,
photovoltaic, etc 'less-centralized energy generation', let alone criteria
for improved storage of energy, you'll be disappointed:
> It's time to further boost hydrogen research.
doi:10.1038/427661a
How transgenic fish cause extinction of normal and transgenic wild fish [Catch-all] -
GEA - gormfach@gmail.com @ 03:24:20 PM
Published online before print February 19, 2004
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 10.1073/pnas.0306285101
Ecology
Transgenic male mating advantage provides opportunity for Trojan gene
effect in a fish
( genetically modified organism | alternative mating tactics | sperm
competition | medaka )
Richard D. Howard *, J. Andrew DeWoody , and William M. Muir
Departments of *Biological Sciences, Forestry and Natural Resources, and
Animal Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907
Edited by M. T. Clegg, University of California, Riverside, CA, and
approved December 8, 2003 (received for review September 29, 2003)
Genetically modified (GM) strains now exist for many organisms,
producing significant promise for agricultural production. However, if
these organisms have some fitness advantage, they may also pose an
environmental harm when released. High mating success of GM males
relative to WT males provides such an important fitness advantage. Here,
we provide documentation that GM male medaka fish modified with salmon
growth hormone possess an overwhelming mating advantage. GM medaka
offspring possess a survival disadvantage relative to WT, however. When
both of these fitness components are included in our model, the
transgene is predicted to spread if GM individuals enter wild
populations (because of the mating advantage) and ultimately lead to
population extinction (because of the viability disadvantage). Mating
trials indicate that WT males use alternative mating tactics in an
effort to counter the mating advantage of GM males, and we use genetic
markers to ascertain the success of these alternative strategies.
Finally, we model the impact of alternative mating tactics by WT males
on transgene spread. Such tactics may reduce the rate of transgene
spread, but not the outcome.
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 10.1073/pnas.0306285101
Ecology
Transgenic male mating advantage provides opportunity for Trojan gene
effect in a fish
( genetically modified organism | alternative mating tactics | sperm
competition | medaka )
Richard D. Howard *, J. Andrew DeWoody , and William M. Muir
Departments of *Biological Sciences, Forestry and Natural Resources, and
Animal Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907
Edited by M. T. Clegg, University of California, Riverside, CA, and
approved December 8, 2003 (received for review September 29, 2003)
Genetically modified (GM) strains now exist for many organisms,
producing significant promise for agricultural production. However, if
these organisms have some fitness advantage, they may also pose an
environmental harm when released. High mating success of GM males
relative to WT males provides such an important fitness advantage. Here,
we provide documentation that GM male medaka fish modified with salmon
growth hormone possess an overwhelming mating advantage. GM medaka
offspring possess a survival disadvantage relative to WT, however. When
both of these fitness components are included in our model, the
transgene is predicted to spread if GM individuals enter wild
populations (because of the mating advantage) and ultimately lead to
population extinction (because of the viability disadvantage). Mating
trials indicate that WT males use alternative mating tactics in an
effort to counter the mating advantage of GM males, and we use genetic
markers to ascertain the success of these alternative strategies.
Finally, we model the impact of alternative mating tactics by WT males
on transgene spread. Such tactics may reduce the rate of transgene
spread, but not the outcome.
>Dr. A. Neil Macgregor
>Institute of Natural Resources
>Massey University
>PALMERSTON NORTH
>
>E-mail: < a.n.macgregor@massey.ac.nz >
17-2-04
Last evening Paul Hutchison (PH) addressed a small group of about 20
local Palmerston North RSNZ members. His talk was titled "The Value of
Science to NZ and National's Plans for Science". He was introduced as Nats
spokeperson on Science, CRI's, with associate involvement in ACC and Health
(did an stint in O&G at National Womens). The small audience contained a
number of seasoned CRI (Landcare) and university scientists who are about
to quit the science scene through redundancy or retirement. There is
little prospect of positions being filled by active recruitment.
The drift of his presentation was to get feedback on some issues for
NZ-science as he goes about the business of putting together in the next 2
months a forthcoming Nat policy statement about science for the next
general election.
PH identified (recited) the "issues" being addressed - those we know so
well, recently aired in the Knowledge Wave (he says): education and growth
are linked; NZ is lower down the OECD ladder of living standards than it
used to be; R & D is not given the national priority that is needed;
business/private sector funding support of science remains low by
international norms; etc.; and funding and the level of public funding in
science (he favours the use of "payback grants", but no details at this
point). As an aside, Paul Hutchison expressed a belief that Local
authorities are currently too autonomous (?) when it comes to science
funding.
He appears to be a devotee/ disciple of the BRT (Business Round Table) who
recently advised him to take on board the mantra of one Terence Kealey:
should government fund science? and of Adam Smith: "Wealth of Nations". Of
course the breaking up of DSIR as policy advisor/funding allocator/and
provider of outcomes viv-a-vis Simon Uptons CRI plans was raised as
"steering science in a necessary direction". [Nothing new here!]. He is
also, it seems, a mentee of Peter Gluckman who is alleged by Paul Hutchison
to be one of the architects of the present Science/R&D system operating in
NZ.
So, on what issues did Paul Hutchison (PH) want feedback? We never really
found out! Any forthcoming Nat science policy statement will be the
product of an about-to be-assembled group of Nat selected persons (any
practising scientists with sound reputations included?) and have something
to say about science : (1) with a NZ-base but with global relevance, (2) a
clear role of government (Nats) role in R&D, (3) the importance of links
involving education and business in science, (4) Nats view on how R&D can
be funded. PH proposed the forthcoming Nat Sci Policy statement will be
made available through RSNZ channels.
PH's talk/powerpoint presentation concluded with a view of a dog-sled team
pulling away through the snow etc with the caption: "When you are not the
first dog in the sled team, the view never changes".
Small though the audience was, sharp comments came from those who were
currently experiencing the demise of research teams from the drying-up
(reallocation) of FoRST funding, round after round. There was open
scepticism about the frequently used term "consultation" (it actually
doesn't mean that!) and PH was urged to get rid of it and seriously
introduce"dialogue". PH seems to have the extremely narrow
understanding/notion that "tenure", as exists in the USA for example, can
mistakenly mean only a "guaranteed job for life", and he does not seem to
have any real grasp of the needs of talented persons presently considering
science as a NZ career. He was appraised of the use of successful
project-funding to justify continuing employment in some CRI's. PH was
also appraised of the significance of research in the public interest, such
as hazard monitoring systems, effects of global warming, flood and erosion
control, environmental quality/didasters etc. that will continue to fall
outside the business model and private sector funding. He had little to
say on this. Few would have been convinced we had been listening to a
sharp and perceptive mind.
Who is included on his "think tank" of Nat sci advisors?
>Institute of Natural Resources
>Massey University
>PALMERSTON NORTH
>
>E-mail: < a.n.macgregor@massey.ac.nz >
17-2-04
Last evening Paul Hutchison (PH) addressed a small group of about 20
local Palmerston North RSNZ members. His talk was titled "The Value of
Science to NZ and National's Plans for Science". He was introduced as Nats
spokeperson on Science, CRI's, with associate involvement in ACC and Health
(did an stint in O&G at National Womens). The small audience contained a
number of seasoned CRI (Landcare) and university scientists who are about
to quit the science scene through redundancy or retirement. There is
little prospect of positions being filled by active recruitment.
The drift of his presentation was to get feedback on some issues for
NZ-science as he goes about the business of putting together in the next 2
months a forthcoming Nat policy statement about science for the next
general election.
PH identified (recited) the "issues" being addressed - those we know so
well, recently aired in the Knowledge Wave (he says): education and growth
are linked; NZ is lower down the OECD ladder of living standards than it
used to be; R & D is not given the national priority that is needed;
business/private sector funding support of science remains low by
international norms; etc.; and funding and the level of public funding in
science (he favours the use of "payback grants", but no details at this
point). As an aside, Paul Hutchison expressed a belief that Local
authorities are currently too autonomous (?) when it comes to science
funding.
He appears to be a devotee/ disciple of the BRT (Business Round Table) who
recently advised him to take on board the mantra of one Terence Kealey:
should government fund science? and of Adam Smith: "Wealth of Nations". Of
course the breaking up of DSIR as policy advisor/funding allocator/and
provider of outcomes viv-a-vis Simon Uptons CRI plans was raised as
"steering science in a necessary direction". [Nothing new here!]. He is
also, it seems, a mentee of Peter Gluckman who is alleged by Paul Hutchison
to be one of the architects of the present Science/R&D system operating in
NZ.
So, on what issues did Paul Hutchison (PH) want feedback? We never really
found out! Any forthcoming Nat science policy statement will be the
product of an about-to be-assembled group of Nat selected persons (any
practising scientists with sound reputations included?) and have something
to say about science : (1) with a NZ-base but with global relevance, (2) a
clear role of government (Nats) role in R&D, (3) the importance of links
involving education and business in science, (4) Nats view on how R&D can
be funded. PH proposed the forthcoming Nat Sci Policy statement will be
made available through RSNZ channels.
PH's talk/powerpoint presentation concluded with a view of a dog-sled team
pulling away through the snow etc with the caption: "When you are not the
first dog in the sled team, the view never changes".
Small though the audience was, sharp comments came from those who were
currently experiencing the demise of research teams from the drying-up
(reallocation) of FoRST funding, round after round. There was open
scepticism about the frequently used term "consultation" (it actually
doesn't mean that!) and PH was urged to get rid of it and seriously
introduce"dialogue". PH seems to have the extremely narrow
understanding/notion that "tenure", as exists in the USA for example, can
mistakenly mean only a "guaranteed job for life", and he does not seem to
have any real grasp of the needs of talented persons presently considering
science as a NZ career. He was appraised of the use of successful
project-funding to justify continuing employment in some CRI's. PH was
also appraised of the significance of research in the public interest, such
as hazard monitoring systems, effects of global warming, flood and erosion
control, environmental quality/didasters etc. that will continue to fall
outside the business model and private sector funding. He had little to
say on this. Few would have been convinced we had been listening to a
sharp and perceptive mind.
Who is included on his "think tank" of Nat sci advisors?
FW: NORTHLAND COUNCILS and LOCAL GOVERNMENT NZ SUPPORT INDEPENDENT GE REPORT Press Release GE FREE NORTHLAND (in food & environment) [Catch-all] -
GEA - gormfach@gmail.com @ 01:41:42 AM
GE FREE NORTHLAND (in Food & Environment)
Press Release
19 February 2004
NORTHLAND COUNCILS AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT NZ SUPPORT INDEPENDENT GE REPORT
Northland Regional Council has joined Kaipara, Far North, Rodney District
Council and Local Government NZ in supporting the Whangarei District Council
initiative to commission an independent GE report and legal opinion by Dr.
Royden Somerville, QC.
The report and legal opinion will explore two broad policy initiatives to
address the concerns of local government over the release of genetically
engineered organisms into the environment.
The initiatives include how the Northland local authorities could best
protect their interests under existing legislation and what changes could be
made to legislation to allow the councils to protect their interests
regarding the release of GMOs.
GE FREE NORTHLAND spokesperson Zelka Grammer said today she applauded the
commitment of local government to address the critical GE issue, as the
Labour - led government continues to ignore the concerns of many eminent
scientists, territorial authorities and our key markets, as well as the
majority of New Zealanders.
"It is critical that the interests of local government are protected and the
wishes of their communities are addressed."
Zelka Grammer said genetic engineering has galvanised Northlanders, with the
issue being one the most contentious during the annual plan process of
Northland's councils.
Councils concerns about GE relate mainly to uncertainties over the economic
risks to conventional and organic food producers, the uncertainties over who
should bear liability relating to these risks, and uncertainties over the
role of local government under current legislation.
The report is expected to be released before the end of the month.
GE FREE NORTHLAND is Encouraging the public to get involved with their local
council Long Term Council Community Plan (LTCCP) to ensure sound
environmental outcomes, and work to ensure their region is declared an
enforceable GE free zone and to declare their own properties as such.
ENDS
Contact: Zelka Grammer, Chairperson
GE FREE NORTHLAND (in Food & Environment)
09 432 2155
GE FREE NORTHLAND (in Food & Environment)
www.gefreenorthland.org.nz
GE FREE REGISTER
Chris Bone 4344066
www.gefreeregister.co.nz
Press Release
19 February 2004
NORTHLAND COUNCILS AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT NZ SUPPORT INDEPENDENT GE REPORT
Northland Regional Council has joined Kaipara, Far North, Rodney District
Council and Local Government NZ in supporting the Whangarei District Council
initiative to commission an independent GE report and legal opinion by Dr.
Royden Somerville, QC.
The report and legal opinion will explore two broad policy initiatives to
address the concerns of local government over the release of genetically
engineered organisms into the environment.
The initiatives include how the Northland local authorities could best
protect their interests under existing legislation and what changes could be
made to legislation to allow the councils to protect their interests
regarding the release of GMOs.
GE FREE NORTHLAND spokesperson Zelka Grammer said today she applauded the
commitment of local government to address the critical GE issue, as the
Labour - led government continues to ignore the concerns of many eminent
scientists, territorial authorities and our key markets, as well as the
majority of New Zealanders.
"It is critical that the interests of local government are protected and the
wishes of their communities are addressed."
Zelka Grammer said genetic engineering has galvanised Northlanders, with the
issue being one the most contentious during the annual plan process of
Northland's councils.
Councils concerns about GE relate mainly to uncertainties over the economic
risks to conventional and organic food producers, the uncertainties over who
should bear liability relating to these risks, and uncertainties over the
role of local government under current legislation.
The report is expected to be released before the end of the month.
GE FREE NORTHLAND is Encouraging the public to get involved with their local
council Long Term Council Community Plan (LTCCP) to ensure sound
environmental outcomes, and work to ensure their region is declared an
enforceable GE free zone and to declare their own properties as such.
ENDS
Contact: Zelka Grammer, Chairperson
GE FREE NORTHLAND (in Food & Environment)
09 432 2155
GE FREE NORTHLAND (in Food & Environment)
www.gefreenorthland.org.nz
GE FREE REGISTER
Chris Bone 4344066
www.gefreeregister.co.nz
02/18/04
Fish farms are pointing the way to GM fish. The problems of a polluting
industry will be magnified by the use of GM fish.
American Association for the Advancement of Science, Nature News Service
17 Feb. 2004
Seattle, February, 2004
Fish farms still ravage the sea
Sustainable aquaculture takes one step forward, two steps back.
17 February 2004
PETER ALDHOUS
Farmed fish such as salmon eat more than their own weight in wild-caught
fish.
Fish farms are in danger of losing any ground they may have gained over
the past few years to becoming a sustainable industry, according to
Rebecca Goldburg, a senior scientist with Environmental Defense in New York.
While aquaculture is proving less wasteful now than in the late 1990s,
it is using up more resources than ever before. And recent US policies
could be set to make things worse.
Environmental Defense is concerned about the sustainability of
aquaculture primarily because farmed fish are frequently fed on meal
made from wild-caught fish. In 2000, Goldburg co-authored a paper
revealing that 1.9 kilograms of wild fish were on average required to
produce every 1 kg of fish farmed in 1997.
Goldburg has now recalculated these figures with more recent data, and
has come up with some good news. In 2001, each kilo of farmed fish
consumed only 1.36 kg of wild-caught fish.
This increase in efficiency is due in large part to an expansion of
freshwater aquaculture in China, says Goldburg. Fish farmers there tend
to raise carp or tilapia, which are vegetarians, and so don't consume
any wild fish stocks.
Efforts are also being made to coax carnivorous fish, such as salmon,
into eating feed based on vegetable protein. "They're going to have to
figure out how to use less fishmeal in the long run," says Claude Boyd,
an expert on aquaculture at Auburn University in Alabama.
Claude Boyd
Auburn University, Alabama
But it's not all good news. The expansion of aquaculture has meant that
the total catch going towards fish food has continued to increase, from
10 million tonnes in 1997 to 12 million tonnes in 2001. As aquaculture
continues to boom, it will exact a growing toll on species such as
sardines and herring, Goldburg says.
The situation could be made worse by a new policy from the US National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which aims to promote
offshore farming of species such as red snapper and cod. By growing
these fish in cages held almost 5 kilometres off the coast, NOAA wants
to expand the worth of the US aquaculture industry from $1 billion to $5
billion per year.
The problem is that these fish are carnivores, which could reverse the
trend to use feed containing a lower proportion of fishmeal. "An
explosion in growing carnivorous fish can easily override these
efficiency gains," says Goldburg.
References
1. Naylor, R. L. et al. Effect of aquaculture on world fish
supplies. Nature, 405, 1017 - 1024, doi:10.1038/35016500 (2000).
2. Powell, K.. Fish farming: eat your veg. Nature, 426, 378 - 379 ,
doi:10.1038/426378a (2003).
industry will be magnified by the use of GM fish.
American Association for the Advancement of Science, Nature News Service
17 Feb. 2004
Seattle, February, 2004
Fish farms still ravage the sea
Sustainable aquaculture takes one step forward, two steps back.
17 February 2004
PETER ALDHOUS
Farmed fish such as salmon eat more than their own weight in wild-caught
fish.
Fish farms are in danger of losing any ground they may have gained over
the past few years to becoming a sustainable industry, according to
Rebecca Goldburg, a senior scientist with Environmental Defense in New York.
While aquaculture is proving less wasteful now than in the late 1990s,
it is using up more resources than ever before. And recent US policies
could be set to make things worse.
Environmental Defense is concerned about the sustainability of
aquaculture primarily because farmed fish are frequently fed on meal
made from wild-caught fish. In 2000, Goldburg co-authored a paper
revealing that 1.9 kilograms of wild fish were on average required to
produce every 1 kg of fish farmed in 1997.
Goldburg has now recalculated these figures with more recent data, and
has come up with some good news. In 2001, each kilo of farmed fish
consumed only 1.36 kg of wild-caught fish.
This increase in efficiency is due in large part to an expansion of
freshwater aquaculture in China, says Goldburg. Fish farmers there tend
to raise carp or tilapia, which are vegetarians, and so don't consume
any wild fish stocks.
Efforts are also being made to coax carnivorous fish, such as salmon,
into eating feed based on vegetable protein. "They're going to have to
figure out how to use less fishmeal in the long run," says Claude Boyd,
an expert on aquaculture at Auburn University in Alabama.
Claude Boyd
Auburn University, Alabama
But it's not all good news. The expansion of aquaculture has meant that
the total catch going towards fish food has continued to increase, from
10 million tonnes in 1997 to 12 million tonnes in 2001. As aquaculture
continues to boom, it will exact a growing toll on species such as
sardines and herring, Goldburg says.
The situation could be made worse by a new policy from the US National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which aims to promote
offshore farming of species such as red snapper and cod. By growing
these fish in cages held almost 5 kilometres off the coast, NOAA wants
to expand the worth of the US aquaculture industry from $1 billion to $5
billion per year.
The problem is that these fish are carnivores, which could reverse the
trend to use feed containing a lower proportion of fishmeal. "An
explosion in growing carnivorous fish can easily override these
efficiency gains," says Goldburg.
References
1. Naylor, R. L. et al. Effect of aquaculture on world fish
supplies. Nature, 405, 1017 - 1024, doi:10.1038/35016500 (2000).
2. Powell, K.. Fish farming: eat your veg. Nature, 426, 378 - 379 ,
doi:10.1038/426378a (2003).
02/16/04
A practical NZ response to this scientific info would be revival of
CNG as promised by the "co"leader of the Green Party the year before last.
Also an 8 - 10 km drilling in Taranaki would test whether Gold's
theory of deep natural gas applies to that province. If, as is v likely,
this pays off, then I would advocate a similar hole near Christchurch (the
biggest S. Is. concentration of energy consumption).
And meanwhile, offshore drilling should cease, as it's too risky
for the marine environment.
R
http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/2004/jf04/jf04cavallo.html
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
January/February 2004, Volume 60, No. 1, pp. 20-22, 70
Oil: The illusion of plenty
By Alfred Cavallo
One hundred and twelve billion of anything sounds like a limitless quantity.
But in terms of barrels of oil, it's just a drop in the gas tank. The world
uses about 27 billion barrels of oil per year, meaning that 112 billion
barrels--the proven oil reserves of Iraq, the second largest proven oil
reserves in the world--would last a little more than four years at today's
usage rates.
In the future, 112 billion barrels will likely prove even shorter-lived. In
the United States, gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles and larger homes are
deemed essential. As the underdeveloped world industrializes, demand for oil
by billions of people increases; China and India are building superhighways
and automobile factories. Energy demand is expected to rise by about 50
percent over the next 20 years, with about 40 percent of that demand to be
supplied by petroleum.
Ever-increasing supplies of low-cost petroleum are thought to be vital to
the U.S. and world economies, which is why the invasion of Iraq and the
belief that controlling its 112-billion-barrel reserve would give the United
States a limitless pipeline to cheap oil were so dangerous. The war in Iraq
will definitely have an effect on the U.S. and world economies, but not a
positive one. The invasion, occupation, and rebuilding of Iraq will cost the
people of the United States both blood and treasure. But more to the point,
Iraq could be a fatal distraction from many fundamental and extremely
unpleasant facts that actually threaten the United States--one of which is
the finite nature of petroleum resources.
Petroleum reserves are limited. Petroleum is not a renewable resource and
production cannot continue to increase indefinitely. A day of reckoning will
come sometime in the future. The point at which production can no longer
keep up with increasing demand will mean a radical and painful readjustment
globally to everyday life.
In spite of that indisputable fact, people behave as if the global petroleum
supply is unending. Predictions of the exhaustion of oil reserves seem to
have lost all credibility. The public assumes that inexpensive oil will be
available essentially forever. The idea that petroleum resources are finite
and that petroleum production might peak in the near future seems to have
vanished from all discussions of energy policy in Congress, in the press,
and even among public interest groups.
This surreal situation is due to several factors. One, certainly, is that
pessimists have cried wolf too often. Forecasts of imminent shortages of
oil, food, and other natural resources are confounded by the enormous
display of material goods that envelops consumers in the West.
For most people, the market price of any commodity is what signals shortage or
plenty. Time and again, collapsing oil prices have succeeded rising oil
prices, leading to the belief that oil will always become cheap again. That
oil supplies are currently abundant and inexpensive and have been for nearly
20 years, and that the models used to predict peak oil production are not
easy to understand, appear to ignore economic factors, and are based on
proprietary data, explain to some degree the present feeling of permanent
abundance.
In reality, the differential between petroleum production cost and market
price is so large that market price cannot be used as a measure of resource
depletion. For example, the variation in the average price of oil between
1998 ($10 per barrel) and 2000 ($24 per barrel) had nothing to do with
depletion of reserves and everything to do with an attempt to exercise
"market discipline" by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
OPEC).
But the most important reason there seems to be an unending supply of oil is
the activity of non-OPEC producers. Oil production is immensely lucrative.
Large amounts of petroleum have been and will continue to be produced
outside the Middle East at costs that are very low, $5-$10 per barrel,
compared to the desired OPEC price range of $22-$28 per barrel. The
opportunity to realize extraordinary profits provides irresistible pressure
to produce as much oil as possible, as soon as possible.
Yet oil is a finite resource, and there are only so many places to look for
it. Sooner or later petroleum production will decline, so sooner or later
the prophets of depletion will be correct. The question then becomes: Can a
peak oil forecast be made that is useful to the petroleum industry and to
consumers, one that will alert them to the problems and allow for a
redeployment of resources?
Answering that question requires an understanding of why the world's rising
petroleum needs are being met without skyrocketing prices or supply
shortages.
Everyone knows that the science and technology underpinning computers,
telecommunications, and medicine have advanced dramatically over the last 20
years. The proof is everywhere, from ever more powerful personal computers,
to increasingly sophisticated cell phones, to new medical imaging
technologies and pharmaceuticals.
Unknown to most people, however, advances in geological sciences and
petroleum technologies have been equally profound and dramatic. Since the
1970s, plate tectonics has been providing a uniform framework for
understanding the geology of the Earth's surface (including petroleum
formation). Much as X-ray and nuclear magnetic resonance tomography examine
structures within the human body non-invasively, three-dimensional
seismography now allows potential oil-bearing formations to be evaluated in
great detail. Nuclear magnetic resonance probes are used to determine
porosity and hydrocarbon content as well as to estimate the permeability of
these formations. Petroleum deposits are being brought into production on
the continental shelves off Texas, Brazil, and West Africa in water up to
8,000 feet deep--areas that were, until recently, inaccessible.
Technological advances like sub-sea terminals, directional drilling, and
floating production, storage, and offloading ships have been developed to
exploit smaller, previously uneconomic or unreachable deposits.
Sophisticated science and technology coupled with unparalleled profitability
has provided the foundation for the wide availability of oil.
Yet the same advances in geology and engineering that have provided
consumers with seemingly limitless petroleum also allow much better
estimates to be made of how much oil may ultimately be recovered. After a
five-year collaboration with representatives from the petroleum industry and
other U.S. government agencies, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) completed
a comprehensive study of oil resources. The "USGS World Petroleum Assessment
2000" is the first study to use modern science to estimate ultimate oil
resources. [1]
The importance of this assessment is difficult to overstate.
revious world oil resource evaluations have ranged from crude
back-of-the-envelope"
calculations to estimates based on proprietary databases, and have often
lacked enough detail to allow a comparison between production and estimated
reserves. We now have credible, easily accessible long-term production
records and science-based resource estimates for all of the important oil
producing regions in the world--crucial for understanding how oil production
might evolve over time.
The USGS assessment allocates reserves to three separate and distinct
categories. The first is "proven reserves," or petroleum that can be
produced using current technology. The second category is "undiscovered
reserves"--oil deposits that are highly likely to exist based on similar
areas already producing oil. The third category is "reserve growth" and
represents possible production from extensions of existing fields,
application of new technology, and decreased well spacing in existing fields.
Oil in this last category can be extracted much less rapidly than
oil in the proven and undiscovered categories. (For purposes of determining
the approximate year of peak or constant output, the best that can be hoped
for is that all proven reserves are produced and all undiscovered reserves
are found and produced as rapidly as needed. Petroleum from reserve growth,
produced at much lower rates, can be ignored. According to the USGS, it is
available only to lengthen the period of peak production or to reduce the
decline in a field's output.)
As of January 1, 1996, OPEC's proven and undiscovered reserves amounted to
about 853 billion barrels, while similar non-OPEC reserves were 769 billion
barrels, according to the USGS assessment. Based on actual production
patterns in many non-OPEC oil producers, output can increase until there
remains between 10 and 20 years of proven plus undiscovered reserves (as
determined by the USGS), at which point a production plateau or decline sets
in, depending on the reserve growth that is actually available.
Given that non-OPEC production rates are nearly twice as great as OPEC
rates, and assuming stable prices and 2 percent per year market growth,
non-OPEC production will reach a maximum sometime between 2010 and 2018
based on resource limitations alone (assuming complete cooperation of
producers and that all undiscovered oil is actually found and produced as
rapidly as needed). [2] Once this happens, OPEC will control the market
completely, and it is unlikely that production will increase much longer.
Yet this simplistic analysis is too optimistic. There is no such thing as
"non-OPEC oil," but rather U.S. oil, Norwegian oil, and oil produced by
various other countries. In particular, about 39 percent of non-OPEC proven
plus undiscovered reserves are located in the former Soviet Union. It is
only a matter of time before these countries reach an agreement with OPEC on
how to divide the oil market, at which point the current illusion of
unlimited oil resources will end, not due to resource constraints but to
political factors.
Yet the U.S. public, industrial and political leaders, environmentalists,
and policy-makers in general do not believe that they need to be concerned
with the finite supply of oil and its unfavorable (from the U.S.
perspective) geographic distribution. As noted earlier, the overwhelming
majority behaves as if inexpensive oil will be readily available far into
the distant future.
This attitude is reflected in U.S. policy toward Iraq. One might expect that
a major consequence of the U.S. conquest of Iraq would have been full
control of Iraqi oil reserves, reducing or eliminating the ability of OPEC
to set prices, and giving the United States a permanent--because oil is
forever--overwhelming strategic advantage. It would allow the United States
to dictate production rates and lower prices, which would serve two
important aims. Reduced prices would reward consumers in the West, buying
their support for U.S. policies. It would also deprive oil producers of the
revenues with which they could challenge the U.S. domination of the Middle
East.
Oil prices could be expected to drop to between $15 and $20 per barrel
once existing Iraqi fields were refurbished and large new deposits were
developed.
However, lower prices would stimulate consumption and decrease the incentive
to develop more inaccessible reserves, essentially those of the non-OPEC
producers. If non-OPEC producers fail to develop those harder-to-get-at
reserves, peak oil production will more likely occur earlier, at the front
end of the 2010-2018 forecast. So the very success of the current effort to
seize control of the Middle East would doom U.S. imperial ambition to
failure within the next 10 years, from an oil supply standpoint.
This scenario is now implausible given the bitter Iraqi resistance to U.S.
occupation, and it is not clear when Iraqi production might reach, much less
significantly exceed, its pre-invasion level.
To understand what may unfold, given current levels of sabotage and chaos
in Iraq, one must examine how the petroleum marketing system has changed
over the past year, and in particular the role that OPEC producers have played.
In 2002, Iraqi oil production averaged two million barrels per day. The
United States must have understood that an attack might interrupt
production, which would in turn cause a large increase in the price of oil.
Since this would have a severe negative impact on the world economy, it
would further inflame anti-American sentiment throughout the world and even
turn U.S. voters against the enterprise. The conclusion: Lost Iraqi
production had to be replaced. Thus, an agreement was reached with OPEC to
stabilize the markets by increasing production levels as needed.
In March 2003, the Saudi oil minister reassured the International Energy
Agency of Saudi Arabia's longstanding policy and practice of supplying the
oil markets reliably and promptly, and highlighted the collective
responsibility that producing countries have shown in addressing the
concerns of world oil markets. This was most likely viewed as a temporary
measure, as it was assumed that Iraqi production would be restored and
expanded rapidly after the United States took charge.
In addition to the impending interruption of Iraqi production, in early 2003
Venezuelan oil production was far below its OPEC quota due to a conflict
between populist president Hugo Chavez and the business community; Nigerian
production was also depressed by civil strife.
OPEC rose to the occasion (or, more likely, felt compelled to rise to the
occasion, given the huge U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf in
preparation for war) and increased production by about 3.2 million barrels
per day--equivalent to the production of the Norwegian North Sea
sector--virtually overnight, more than compensating for lost Iraqi,
Venezuelan, and Nigerian production.
About 65 percent of the increase came from just two countries, Saudi Arabia
and Kuwait; Saudi Arabia alone contributed more than half and probably
controls what remains of any spare production capacity.
The critical role that OPEC, in particular Saudi Arabia, plays as the swing
producer for the world oil market is clearly evident from this episode,
which allows one to quantify the ability of the Saudis to affect the world
oil market and the world economy.
The U.S. assault on Iraq has not undermined the power of OPEC and Saudi
Arabia. On the contrary, it has if anything enhanced that power. This will
not change until Iraqi oil production significantly exceeds its pre-invasion
level. Thus, even in the short term, and on the most cynical level, U.S.
Iraq policy vis-à-vis oil has been a failure.
Oil supplies are finite and will soon be controlled by a handful of nations;
the invasion of Iraq and control of its supplies will do little to change
that. One can only hope that an informed electorate and its principled
representatives will realize that the facts do matter, and that nature--not
military might--will soon dictate the ultimate availability of petroleum.
####
Alfred Cavallo is an energy consultant based in Princeton, New Jersey.
1. T. Ahlbrandt (project leader), "The USGS World Petroleum Assessment
2000." The assessment is available at www.usgs.gov and on compact disc. A
detailed analysis using the assessment appears in Alfred Cavallo,
"Predicting the Peak in World Oil Production," Natural Resources Research,
2002, vol. 11, pp. 187-195. Production statistics, based on data from the
International Energy Agency, are available in a variety of trade
publications, including Oil and Gas Journal, World Oil, and Petroleum
Economist.
2. The most popular method used to predict a peak in oil production is in M.
King Hubbert's monograph, Energy Resources: A Report to the Committee on
Natural Resources, National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council,
Publication 1000-D, December 1962. Hubbert noted that resource production
often (but not always) could be described by a logistic growth curve, and
used oil production records and estimates of proven oil reserves made by the
American Petroleum Institute's Committee on Petroleum Reserves to estimate
the year of U.S. peak production. Hubbert does not discuss the assumptions
implicit in his model, among which are stable markets, excellent
profitability, and affordable prices for oil. See also Colin Campbell and J.
H. Laherrere, "The End of Cheap Oil," Scientific American, March 1998, pp.
78-83. The Oil and Gas Journal has also recently published a series of
articles discussing the future of petroleum and its alternatives. See Bob
Williams, "Special Report: Debate Over Peak Oil Issue Boiling Over, With
Major Implications For Industry, Society," Oil and Gas Journal, July 14,
2003.
© 2004 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
CNG as promised by the "co"leader of the Green Party the year before last.
Also an 8 - 10 km drilling in Taranaki would test whether Gold's
theory of deep natural gas applies to that province. If, as is v likely,
this pays off, then I would advocate a similar hole near Christchurch (the
biggest S. Is. concentration of energy consumption).
And meanwhile, offshore drilling should cease, as it's too risky
for the marine environment.
R
http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/2004/jf04/jf04cavallo.html
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
January/February 2004, Volume 60, No. 1, pp. 20-22, 70
Oil: The illusion of plenty
By Alfred Cavallo
One hundred and twelve billion of anything sounds like a limitless quantity.
But in terms of barrels of oil, it's just a drop in the gas tank. The world
uses about 27 billion barrels of oil per year, meaning that 112 billion
barrels--the proven oil reserves of Iraq, the second largest proven oil
reserves in the world--would last a little more than four years at today's
usage rates.
In the future, 112 billion barrels will likely prove even shorter-lived. In
the United States, gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles and larger homes are
deemed essential. As the underdeveloped world industrializes, demand for oil
by billions of people increases; China and India are building superhighways
and automobile factories. Energy demand is expected to rise by about 50
percent over the next 20 years, with about 40 percent of that demand to be
supplied by petroleum.
Ever-increasing supplies of low-cost petroleum are thought to be vital to
the U.S. and world economies, which is why the invasion of Iraq and the
belief that controlling its 112-billion-barrel reserve would give the United
States a limitless pipeline to cheap oil were so dangerous. The war in Iraq
will definitely have an effect on the U.S. and world economies, but not a
positive one. The invasion, occupation, and rebuilding of Iraq will cost the
people of the United States both blood and treasure. But more to the point,
Iraq could be a fatal distraction from many fundamental and extremely
unpleasant facts that actually threaten the United States--one of which is
the finite nature of petroleum resources.
Petroleum reserves are limited. Petroleum is not a renewable resource and
production cannot continue to increase indefinitely. A day of reckoning will
come sometime in the future. The point at which production can no longer
keep up with increasing demand will mean a radical and painful readjustment
globally to everyday life.
In spite of that indisputable fact, people behave as if the global petroleum
supply is unending. Predictions of the exhaustion of oil reserves seem to
have lost all credibility. The public assumes that inexpensive oil will be
available essentially forever. The idea that petroleum resources are finite
and that petroleum production might peak in the near future seems to have
vanished from all discussions of energy policy in Congress, in the press,
and even among public interest groups.
This surreal situation is due to several factors. One, certainly, is that
pessimists have cried wolf too often. Forecasts of imminent shortages of
oil, food, and other natural resources are confounded by the enormous
display of material goods that envelops consumers in the West.
For most people, the market price of any commodity is what signals shortage or
plenty. Time and again, collapsing oil prices have succeeded rising oil
prices, leading to the belief that oil will always become cheap again. That
oil supplies are currently abundant and inexpensive and have been for nearly
20 years, and that the models used to predict peak oil production are not
easy to understand, appear to ignore economic factors, and are based on
proprietary data, explain to some degree the present feeling of permanent
abundance.
In reality, the differential between petroleum production cost and market
price is so large that market price cannot be used as a measure of resource
depletion. For example, the variation in the average price of oil between
1998 ($10 per barrel) and 2000 ($24 per barrel) had nothing to do with
depletion of reserves and everything to do with an attempt to exercise
"market discipline" by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
OPEC).
But the most important reason there seems to be an unending supply of oil is
the activity of non-OPEC producers. Oil production is immensely lucrative.
Large amounts of petroleum have been and will continue to be produced
outside the Middle East at costs that are very low, $5-$10 per barrel,
compared to the desired OPEC price range of $22-$28 per barrel. The
opportunity to realize extraordinary profits provides irresistible pressure
to produce as much oil as possible, as soon as possible.
Yet oil is a finite resource, and there are only so many places to look for
it. Sooner or later petroleum production will decline, so sooner or later
the prophets of depletion will be correct. The question then becomes: Can a
peak oil forecast be made that is useful to the petroleum industry and to
consumers, one that will alert them to the problems and allow for a
redeployment of resources?
Answering that question requires an understanding of why the world's rising
petroleum needs are being met without skyrocketing prices or supply
shortages.
Everyone knows that the science and technology underpinning computers,
telecommunications, and medicine have advanced dramatically over the last 20
years. The proof is everywhere, from ever more powerful personal computers,
to increasingly sophisticated cell phones, to new medical imaging
technologies and pharmaceuticals.
Unknown to most people, however, advances in geological sciences and
petroleum technologies have been equally profound and dramatic. Since the
1970s, plate tectonics has been providing a uniform framework for
understanding the geology of the Earth's surface (including petroleum
formation). Much as X-ray and nuclear magnetic resonance tomography examine
structures within the human body non-invasively, three-dimensional
seismography now allows potential oil-bearing formations to be evaluated in
great detail. Nuclear magnetic resonance probes are used to determine
porosity and hydrocarbon content as well as to estimate the permeability of
these formations. Petroleum deposits are being brought into production on
the continental shelves off Texas, Brazil, and West Africa in water up to
8,000 feet deep--areas that were, until recently, inaccessible.
Technological advances like sub-sea terminals, directional drilling, and
floating production, storage, and offloading ships have been developed to
exploit smaller, previously uneconomic or unreachable deposits.
Sophisticated science and technology coupled with unparalleled profitability
has provided the foundation for the wide availability of oil.
Yet the same advances in geology and engineering that have provided
consumers with seemingly limitless petroleum also allow much better
estimates to be made of how much oil may ultimately be recovered. After a
five-year collaboration with representatives from the petroleum industry and
other U.S. government agencies, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) completed
a comprehensive study of oil resources. The "USGS World Petroleum Assessment
2000" is the first study to use modern science to estimate ultimate oil
resources. [1]
The importance of this assessment is difficult to overstate.
revious world oil resource evaluations have ranged from crude
back-of-the-envelope"
calculations to estimates based on proprietary databases, and have often
lacked enough detail to allow a comparison between production and estimated
reserves. We now have credible, easily accessible long-term production
records and science-based resource estimates for all of the important oil
producing regions in the world--crucial for understanding how oil production
might evolve over time.
The USGS assessment allocates reserves to three separate and distinct
categories. The first is "proven reserves," or petroleum that can be
produced using current technology. The second category is "undiscovered
reserves"--oil deposits that are highly likely to exist based on similar
areas already producing oil. The third category is "reserve growth" and
represents possible production from extensions of existing fields,
application of new technology, and decreased well spacing in existing fields.
Oil in this last category can be extracted much less rapidly than
oil in the proven and undiscovered categories. (For purposes of determining
the approximate year of peak or constant output, the best that can be hoped
for is that all proven reserves are produced and all undiscovered reserves
are found and produced as rapidly as needed. Petroleum from reserve growth,
produced at much lower rates, can be ignored. According to the USGS, it is
available only to lengthen the period of peak production or to reduce the
decline in a field's output.)
As of January 1, 1996, OPEC's proven and undiscovered reserves amounted to
about 853 billion barrels, while similar non-OPEC reserves were 769 billion
barrels, according to the USGS assessment. Based on actual production
patterns in many non-OPEC oil producers, output can increase until there
remains between 10 and 20 years of proven plus undiscovered reserves (as
determined by the USGS), at which point a production plateau or decline sets
in, depending on the reserve growth that is actually available.
Given that non-OPEC production rates are nearly twice as great as OPEC
rates, and assuming stable prices and 2 percent per year market growth,
non-OPEC production will reach a maximum sometime between 2010 and 2018
based on resource limitations alone (assuming complete cooperation of
producers and that all undiscovered oil is actually found and produced as
rapidly as needed). [2] Once this happens, OPEC will control the market
completely, and it is unlikely that production will increase much longer.
Yet this simplistic analysis is too optimistic. There is no such thing as
"non-OPEC oil," but rather U.S. oil, Norwegian oil, and oil produced by
various other countries. In particular, about 39 percent of non-OPEC proven
plus undiscovered reserves are located in the former Soviet Union. It is
only a matter of time before these countries reach an agreement with OPEC on
how to divide the oil market, at which point the current illusion of
unlimited oil resources will end, not due to resource constraints but to
political factors.
Yet the U.S. public, industrial and political leaders, environmentalists,
and policy-makers in general do not believe that they need to be concerned
with the finite supply of oil and its unfavorable (from the U.S.
perspective) geographic distribution. As noted earlier, the overwhelming
majority behaves as if inexpensive oil will be readily available far into
the distant future.
This attitude is reflected in U.S. policy toward Iraq. One might expect that
a major consequence of the U.S. conquest of Iraq would have been full
control of Iraqi oil reserves, reducing or eliminating the ability of OPEC
to set prices, and giving the United States a permanent--because oil is
forever--overwhelming strategic advantage. It would allow the United States
to dictate production rates and lower prices, which would serve two
important aims. Reduced prices would reward consumers in the West, buying
their support for U.S. policies. It would also deprive oil producers of the
revenues with which they could challenge the U.S. domination of the Middle
East.
Oil prices could be expected to drop to between $15 and $20 per barrel
once existing Iraqi fields were refurbished and large new deposits were
developed.
However, lower prices would stimulate consumption and decrease the incentive
to develop more inaccessible reserves, essentially those of the non-OPEC
producers. If non-OPEC producers fail to develop those harder-to-get-at
reserves, peak oil production will more likely occur earlier, at the front
end of the 2010-2018 forecast. So the very success of the current effort to
seize control of the Middle East would doom U.S. imperial ambition to
failure within the next 10 years, from an oil supply standpoint.
This scenario is now implausible given the bitter Iraqi resistance to U.S.
occupation, and it is not clear when Iraqi production might reach, much less
significantly exceed, its pre-invasion level.
To understand what may unfold, given current levels of sabotage and chaos
in Iraq, one must examine how the petroleum marketing system has changed
over the past year, and in particular the role that OPEC producers have played.
In 2002, Iraqi oil production averaged two million barrels per day. The
United States must have understood that an attack might interrupt
production, which would in turn cause a large increase in the price of oil.
Since this would have a severe negative impact on the world economy, it
would further inflame anti-American sentiment throughout the world and even
turn U.S. voters against the enterprise. The conclusion: Lost Iraqi
production had to be replaced. Thus, an agreement was reached with OPEC to
stabilize the markets by increasing production levels as needed.
In March 2003, the Saudi oil minister reassured the International Energy
Agency of Saudi Arabia's longstanding policy and practice of supplying the
oil markets reliably and promptly, and highlighted the collective
responsibility that producing countries have shown in addressing the
concerns of world oil markets. This was most likely viewed as a temporary
measure, as it was assumed that Iraqi production would be restored and
expanded rapidly after the United States took charge.
In addition to the impending interruption of Iraqi production, in early 2003
Venezuelan oil production was far below its OPEC quota due to a conflict
between populist president Hugo Chavez and the business community; Nigerian
production was also depressed by civil strife.
OPEC rose to the occasion (or, more likely, felt compelled to rise to the
occasion, given the huge U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf in
preparation for war) and increased production by about 3.2 million barrels
per day--equivalent to the production of the Norwegian North Sea
sector--virtually overnight, more than compensating for lost Iraqi,
Venezuelan, and Nigerian production.
About 65 percent of the increase came from just two countries, Saudi Arabia
and Kuwait; Saudi Arabia alone contributed more than half and probably
controls what remains of any spare production capacity.
The critical role that OPEC, in particular Saudi Arabia, plays as the swing
producer for the world oil market is clearly evident from this episode,
which allows one to quantify the ability of the Saudis to affect the world
oil market and the world economy.
The U.S. assault on Iraq has not undermined the power of OPEC and Saudi
Arabia. On the contrary, it has if anything enhanced that power. This will
not change until Iraqi oil production significantly exceeds its pre-invasion
level. Thus, even in the short term, and on the most cynical level, U.S.
Iraq policy vis-à-vis oil has been a failure.
Oil supplies are finite and will soon be controlled by a handful of nations;
the invasion of Iraq and control of its supplies will do little to change
that. One can only hope that an informed electorate and its principled
representatives will realize that the facts do matter, and that nature--not
military might--will soon dictate the ultimate availability of petroleum.
####
Alfred Cavallo is an energy consultant based in Princeton, New Jersey.
1. T. Ahlbrandt (project leader), "The USGS World Petroleum Assessment
2000." The assessment is available at www.usgs.gov and on compact disc. A
detailed analysis using the assessment appears in Alfred Cavallo,
"Predicting the Peak in World Oil Production," Natural Resources Research,
2002, vol. 11, pp. 187-195. Production statistics, based on data from the
International Energy Agency, are available in a variety of trade
publications, including Oil and Gas Journal, World Oil, and Petroleum
Economist.
2. The most popular method used to predict a peak in oil production is in M.
King Hubbert's monograph, Energy Resources: A Report to the Committee on
Natural Resources, National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council,
Publication 1000-D, December 1962. Hubbert noted that resource production
often (but not always) could be described by a logistic growth curve, and
used oil production records and estimates of proven oil reserves made by the
American Petroleum Institute's Committee on Petroleum Reserves to estimate
the year of U.S. peak production. Hubbert does not discuss the assumptions
implicit in his model, among which are stable markets, excellent
profitability, and affordable prices for oil. See also Colin Campbell and J.
H. Laherrere, "The End of Cheap Oil," Scientific American, March 1998, pp.
78-83. The Oil and Gas Journal has also recently published a series of
articles discussing the future of petroleum and its alternatives. See Bob
Williams, "Special Report: Debate Over Peak Oil Issue Boiling Over, With
Major Implications For Industry, Society," Oil and Gas Journal, July 14,
2003.
© 2004 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
02/09/04
Well at last it's caught the Pentagon's interest! It took more than 35
years for them to acknowledge the facts, which they were given, and are
just now paying attention too - maybe? Vindicated, yes, . . . but without
any joy.
CLIMATE COLLAPSE
The Pentagon's Weather Nightmare
The climate could change radically, and fast.
That would be the mother of all national security issues.
FORTUNE Monday, January 26, 2004
By David Stipp
Global warming may be bad news for future generations, but let's face it,
most of us spend as little time worrying about it as we did about al Qaeda
before 9/11. Like the terrorists, though, the seemingly remote climate risk
may hit home sooner and harder than we ever imagined. In fact, the
prospect has become so real that the Pentagon's strategic planners are
grappling with it.
The threat that has riveted their attention is this: Global warming, rather
than causing gradual, centuries-spanning change, may be pushing the climate
to a tipping point. Growing evidence suggests the ocean-atmosphere system
that controls the world's climate can lurch from one state to another in
less than a decadeólike a canoe that's gradually tilted until suddenly it
flips over. Scientists don't know how close the system is to a critical
threshold. But abrupt climate change may well occur in the not-too-distant
future. If it does, the need to rapidly adapt may overwhelm many
societiesóthereby upsetting the geopolitical balance of power.
Though triggered by warming, such change would probably cause cooling in
the Northern Hemisphere, leading to longer, harsher winters in much of the
U.S. and Europe. Worse, it would cause massive droughts, turning farmland
to dust bowls and forests to ashes. Picture last fall's California
wildfires as a regular thing. Or imagine similar disasters destabilizing
nuclear powers such as Pakistan or Russiaóit's easy to see why the Pentagon
has become interested in abrupt climate change.
Climate researchers began getting seriously concerned about it a decade
ago, after studying temperature indicators embedded in ancient layers of
Arctic ice. The data show that a number of dramatic shifts in average
temperature took place in the past with shocking speedóin some cases, just
a few years.
The case for angst was buttressed by a theory regarded as the most likely
explanation for the abrupt changes. The eastern U.S. and northern Europe,
it seems, are warmed by a huge Atlantic Ocean current that flows north from
the tropicsóthat's why Britain, at Labrador's latitude, is relatively
temperate. Pumping out warm, moist air, this "great conveyor" current gets
cooler and denser as it moves north. That causes the current to sink in the
North Atlantic, where it heads south again in the ocean depths. The sinking
process draws more water from the south, keeping the roughly circular
current on the go.
But when the climate warms, according to the theory, fresh water from
melting Arctic glaciers flows into the North Atlantic, lowering the
current's salinityóand its density and tendency to sink. A warmer climate
also increases rainfall and runoff into the current, further lowering its
saltiness. As a result, the conveyor loses its main motive force and can
rapidly collapse, turning off the huge heat pump and altering the climate
over much of the Northern Hemisphere.
Scientists aren't sure what caused the warming that triggered such
collapses in the remote past. (Clearly it wasn't humans and their
factories.) But the data from Arctic ice and other sources suggest the
atmospheric changes that preceded earlier collapses were dismayingly
similar to today's global warming. As the Ice Age began drawing to a close
about 13,000 years ago, for example, temperatures in Greenland rose to
levels near those of recent decades. Then they abruptly plunged as the
conveyor apparently shut down, ushering in the "Younger Dryas" period, a
1,300-year reversion to ice-age conditions. (A dryas is an Arctic flower
that flourished in Europe at the time.)
Though Mother Nature caused past abrupt climate changes, the one that may
be shaping up today probably has more to do with us. In 2001 an
international panel of climate experts concluded that there is increasingly
strong evidence that most of the global warming observed over the past 50
years is attributable to human activitiesómainly the burning of fossil
fuels such as oil and coal, which release heat-trapping carbon dioxide.
Indicators of the warming include shrinking Arctic ice, melting alpine
glaciers, and markedly earlier springs at northerly latitudes. A few years
ago such changes seemed signs of possible trouble for our kids or
grandkids. Today they seem portents of a cataclysm that may not
conveniently wait until we're history.
Accordingly, the spotlight in climate research is shifting from gradual to
rapid change. In 2002 the National Academy of Sciences issued a report
concluding that human activities could trigger abrupt change. Last year the
World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, included a session at which
Robert Gagosian, director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in
Massachusetts, urged policymakers to consider the implications of possible
abrupt climate change within two decades.
Such jeremiads are beginning to reverberate more widely. Billionaire Gary
Comer, founder of Lands' End, has adopted abrupt climate change as a
philanthropic cause. Hollywood has also discovered the issueónext summer
20th Century Fox is expected to release The Day After Tomorrow, a
big-budget disaster movie starring Dennis Quaid as a scientist trying to
save the world from an ice age precipitated by global warming.
Fox's flick will doubtless be apocalyptically edifying. But what would
abrupt climate change really be like?
Scientists generally refuse to say much about that, citing a data deficit.
But recently, renowned Department of Defense planner Andrew Marshall
sponsored a groundbreaking effort to come to grips with the question. A
Pentagon legend, Marshall, 82, is known as the Defense Department's
"Yoda" balding, bespectacled sage whose pronouncements on looming risks
have long had an outsized influence on defense policy. Since 1973 he has
headed a secretive think tank whose role is to envision future threats to
national security. The Department of Defense's push on ballistic-missile
defense is known as his brainchild. Three years ago Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld picked him to lead a sweeping review on military
"transformation," the shift toward nimble forces and smart weapons.
When scientists' work on abrupt climate change popped onto his radar
screen, Marshall tapped another eminent visionary, Peter Schwartz, to write
a report on the national-security implications of the threat. Schwartz
formerly headed planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group and has since consulted
with organizations ranging from the CIA to DreamWorksóhe helped create
futuristic scenarios for Steven Spielberg's film Minority Report. Schwartz
and co-author Doug Randall at the Monitor Group's Global Business Network,
a scenario-planning think tank in Emeryville, Calif., contacted top climate
experts and pushed them to talk about what-ifs that they usually shy away
fromóat least in public.
The result is an unclassified report, completed late last year, that the
Pentagon has agreed to share with FORTUNE. It doesn't pretend to be a
forecast. Rather, it sketches a dramatic but plausible scenario to help
planners think about coping strategies. Here is an abridged version:
A total shutdown of the ocean conveyor might lead to a big chill like the
Younger Dryas, when icebergs appeared as far south as the coast of
Portugal. Or the conveyor might only temporarily slow down, potentially
causing an era like the "Little Ice Age," a time of hard winters, violent
storms, and droughts between 1300 and 1850. That period's weather extremes
caused horrific famines, but it was mild compared with the Younger Dryas.
For planning purposes, it makes sense to focus on a midrange case of abrupt
change. A century of cold, dry, windy weather across the Northern
Hemisphere that suddenly came on 8,200 years ago fits the bill - its severity
fell between that of the Younger Dryas and the Little Ice Age. The event is
thought to have been triggered by a conveyor collapse after a time of
rising temperatures not unlike today's global warming. Suppose it recurred,
beginning in 2010. Here are some of the things that might happen by 2020:
At first the changes are easily mistaken for normal weather
variation - allowing skeptics to dismiss them as a "blip" of little
importance and leaving policymakers and the public paralyzed with
uncertainty. But by 2020 there is little doubt that something drastic is
happening. The average temperature has fallen by up to five degrees
Fahrenheit in some regions of North America and Asia and up to six degrees
in parts of Europe. (By comparison, the average temperature over the North
Atlantic during the last ice age was ten to 15 degrees lower than it is
today.) Massive droughts have begun in key agricultural regions. The
average annual rainfall has dropped by nearly 30% in northern Europe, and
its climate has become more like Siberia's.
Violent storms are increasingly common as the conveyor becomes wobbly on
its way to collapse. A particularly severe storm causes the ocean to break
through levees in the Netherlands, making coastal cities such as the Hague
unlivable. In California the delta island levees in the Sacramento River
area are breached, disrupting the aqueduct system transporting water from
north to south.
Megadroughts afflict the U.S., especially in the southern states, along
with winds that are 15% stronger on average than they are now, causing
widespread dust storms and soil loss. The U.S. is better positioned to cope
than most nations, however, thanks to its diverse growing climates, wealth,
technology, and abundant resources. That has a downside, though: It
magnifies the haves-vs.-have-nots gap and fosters bellicose finger-pointing
at America.
Turning inward, the U.S. effectively seeks to build a fortress around
itself to preserve resources. Borders are strengthened to hold back
starving immigrants from Mexico, South America, and the Caribbean
islandsówaves of boat people pose especially grim problems. Tension between
the U.S. and Mexico rises as the U.S. reneges on a 1944 treaty that
guarantees water flow from the Colorado River into Mexico. America is
forced to meet its rising energy demand with options that are costly both
economically and politically, including nuclear power and onerous Middle
Eastern contracts. Yet it survives without catastrophic losses.
Europe, hardest hit by its temperature drop, struggles to deal with
immigrants from Scandinavia seeking warmer climes to the south. Southern
Europe is beleaguered by refugees from hard-hit countries in Africa and
elsewhere. But Western Europe's wealth helps buffer it from catastrophe.
Australia's size and resources help it cope, as does its locationóthe
conveyor shutdown mainly affects the Northern Hemisphere. Japan has fewer
resources but is able to draw on its social cohesion to copeóits government
is able to induce population-wide behavior changes to conserve resources.
China's huge population and food demand make it particularly vulnerable. It
is hit by increasingly unpredictable monsoon rains, which cause devastating
floods in drought-denuded areas. Other parts of Asia and East Africa are
similarly stressed. Much of Bangladesh becomes nearly uninhabitable because
of a rising sea level, which contaminates inland water supplies. Countries
whose diversity already produces conflict, such as India and Indonesia, are
hard-pressed to maintain internal order while coping with the unfolding
changes.
As the decade progresses, pressures to act become irresistible - history
shows that whenever humans have faced a choice between starving or raiding,
they raid. Imagine Eastern European countries, struggling to feed their
populations, invading Russiaówhich is weakened by a population that is
already in declineófor access to its minerals and energy supplies. Or
picture Japan eyeing nearby Russian oil and gas reserves to power
desalination plants and energy-intensive farming. Envision nuclear-armed
Pakistan, India, and China skirmishing at their borders over refugees,
access to shared rivers, and arable land. Or Spain and Portugal fighting
over fishing rightsófisheries are disrupted around the world as water
temperatures change, causing fish to migrate to new habitats.
Growing tensions engender novel alliances. Canada joins fortress America in
a North American bloc. (Alternatively, Canada may seek to keep its abundant
hydropower for itself, straining its ties with the energy-hungry U.S.)
North and South Korea align to create a technically savvy, nuclear-armed
entity. Europe forms a truly unified bloc to curb its immigration problems
and protect against aggressors. Russia, threatened by impoverished
neighbors in dire straits, may join the European bloc.
Nuclear arms proliferation is inevitable. Oil supplies are stretched thin
as climate cooling drives up demand. Many countries seek to shore up their
energy supplies with nuclear energy, accelerating nuclear proliferation.
Japan, South Korea, and Germany develop nuclear-weapons capabilities, as do
Iran, Egypt, and North Korea. Israel, China, India, and Pakistan also are
poised to use the bomb.
The changes relentlessly hammer the world's "carrying capacity"óthe natural
resources, social organizations, and economic networks that support the
population. Technological progress and market forces, which have long
helped boost Earth's carrying capacity, can do little to offset the
crisisóit is too widespread and unfolds too fast.
As the planet's carrying capacity shrinks, an ancient pattern reemerges:
the eruption of desperate, all-out wars over food, water, and energy
supplies. As Harvard archeologist Steven LeBlanc has noted, wars over
resources were the norm until about three centuries ago. When such
conflicts broke out, 25% of a population's adult males usually died. As
abrupt climate change hits home, warfare may again come to define human
life.
Over the past decade, data have accumulated suggesting that the
plausibility of abrupt climate change is higher than most of the scientific
community, and perhaps all of the political community, are prepared to
accept. In light of such findings, we should be asking when abrupt change
will happen, what the impacts will be, and how we can prepareónot whether
it will really happen. In fact, the climate record suggests that abrupt
change is inevitable at some point, regardless of human activity. Among
other things, we should:
- Speed research on the forces that can trigger abrupt climate change, how
it unfolds, and how we'll know it's occurring.
- Sponsor studies on the scenarios that might play out, including
ecological, social, economic, and political fallout on key food-producing
regions.
- Identify "no regrets" strategies to ensure reliable access to food and
water and to ensure our national security.
- Form teams to prepare responses to possible massive migration, and food
and water shortages.
- Explore ways to offset abrupt coolingótoday it appears easier to warm
than to cool the climate via human activities, so there may be
"geo-engineering" options available to prevent a catastrophic temperature
drop.
In sum, the risk of abrupt climate change remains uncertain, and it is
quite possibly small. But given its dire consequences, it should be
elevated beyond a scientific debate. Action now matters, because we may be
able to reduce its likelihood of happening, and we can certainly be better
prepared if it does. It is time to recognize it as a national security
concern.
The Pentagon's reaction to this sobering report isn't knownóin keeping with
his reputation for reticence, Andy Marshall declined to be interviewed. But
the fact that he's concerned may signal a sea change in the debate about
global warming. At least some federal thought leaders may be starting to
perceive climate change less as a political annoyance and more as an issue
demanding action.
If so, the case for acting now to address climate change, long a hard sell
in Washington, may be gaining influential support, if only behind the
scenes. Policymakers may even be emboldened to take steps such as
tightening fuel-economy standards for new passenger vehicles, a measure
that would simultaneously lower emissions of greenhouse gases, reduce
America's perilous reliance on OPEC oil, cut its trade deficit, and put
money in consumers' pockets. Oh, yesóand give the Pentagon's fretful Yoda a
little less to worry about.
Feedback: HYPERLINK "mailto:dstipp@fortunemail.com"
years for them to acknowledge the facts, which they were given, and are
just now paying attention too - maybe? Vindicated, yes, . . . but without
any joy.
CLIMATE COLLAPSE
The Pentagon's Weather Nightmare
The climate could change radically, and fast.
That would be the mother of all national security issues.
FORTUNE Monday, January 26, 2004
By David Stipp
Global warming may be bad news for future generations, but let's face it,
most of us spend as little time worrying about it as we did about al Qaeda
before 9/11. Like the terrorists, though, the seemingly remote climate risk
may hit home sooner and harder than we ever imagined. In fact, the
prospect has become so real that the Pentagon's strategic planners are
grappling with it.
The threat that has riveted their attention is this: Global warming, rather
than causing gradual, centuries-spanning change, may be pushing the climate
to a tipping point. Growing evidence suggests the ocean-atmosphere system
that controls the world's climate can lurch from one state to another in
less than a decadeólike a canoe that's gradually tilted until suddenly it
flips over. Scientists don't know how close the system is to a critical
threshold. But abrupt climate change may well occur in the not-too-distant
future. If it does, the need to rapidly adapt may overwhelm many
societiesóthereby upsetting the geopolitical balance of power.
Though triggered by warming, such change would probably cause cooling in
the Northern Hemisphere, leading to longer, harsher winters in much of the
U.S. and Europe. Worse, it would cause massive droughts, turning farmland
to dust bowls and forests to ashes. Picture last fall's California
wildfires as a regular thing. Or imagine similar disasters destabilizing
nuclear powers such as Pakistan or Russiaóit's easy to see why the Pentagon
has become interested in abrupt climate change.
Climate researchers began getting seriously concerned about it a decade
ago, after studying temperature indicators embedded in ancient layers of
Arctic ice. The data show that a number of dramatic shifts in average
temperature took place in the past with shocking speedóin some cases, just
a few years.
The case for angst was buttressed by a theory regarded as the most likely
explanation for the abrupt changes. The eastern U.S. and northern Europe,
it seems, are warmed by a huge Atlantic Ocean current that flows north from
the tropicsóthat's why Britain, at Labrador's latitude, is relatively
temperate. Pumping out warm, moist air, this "great conveyor" current gets
cooler and denser as it moves north. That causes the current to sink in the
North Atlantic, where it heads south again in the ocean depths. The sinking
process draws more water from the south, keeping the roughly circular
current on the go.
But when the climate warms, according to the theory, fresh water from
melting Arctic glaciers flows into the North Atlantic, lowering the
current's salinityóand its density and tendency to sink. A warmer climate
also increases rainfall and runoff into the current, further lowering its
saltiness. As a result, the conveyor loses its main motive force and can
rapidly collapse, turning off the huge heat pump and altering the climate
over much of the Northern Hemisphere.
Scientists aren't sure what caused the warming that triggered such
collapses in the remote past. (Clearly it wasn't humans and their
factories.) But the data from Arctic ice and other sources suggest the
atmospheric changes that preceded earlier collapses were dismayingly
similar to today's global warming. As the Ice Age began drawing to a close
about 13,000 years ago, for example, temperatures in Greenland rose to
levels near those of recent decades. Then they abruptly plunged as the
conveyor apparently shut down, ushering in the "Younger Dryas" period, a
1,300-year reversion to ice-age conditions. (A dryas is an Arctic flower
that flourished in Europe at the time.)
Though Mother Nature caused past abrupt climate changes, the one that may
be shaping up today probably has more to do with us. In 2001 an
international panel of climate experts concluded that there is increasingly
strong evidence that most of the global warming observed over the past 50
years is attributable to human activitiesómainly the burning of fossil
fuels such as oil and coal, which release heat-trapping carbon dioxide.
Indicators of the warming include shrinking Arctic ice, melting alpine
glaciers, and markedly earlier springs at northerly latitudes. A few years
ago such changes seemed signs of possible trouble for our kids or
grandkids. Today they seem portents of a cataclysm that may not
conveniently wait until we're history.
Accordingly, the spotlight in climate research is shifting from gradual to
rapid change. In 2002 the National Academy of Sciences issued a report
concluding that human activities could trigger abrupt change. Last year the
World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, included a session at which
Robert Gagosian, director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in
Massachusetts, urged policymakers to consider the implications of possible
abrupt climate change within two decades.
Such jeremiads are beginning to reverberate more widely. Billionaire Gary
Comer, founder of Lands' End, has adopted abrupt climate change as a
philanthropic cause. Hollywood has also discovered the issueónext summer
20th Century Fox is expected to release The Day After Tomorrow, a
big-budget disaster movie starring Dennis Quaid as a scientist trying to
save the world from an ice age precipitated by global warming.
Fox's flick will doubtless be apocalyptically edifying. But what would
abrupt climate change really be like?
Scientists generally refuse to say much about that, citing a data deficit.
But recently, renowned Department of Defense planner Andrew Marshall
sponsored a groundbreaking effort to come to grips with the question. A
Pentagon legend, Marshall, 82, is known as the Defense Department's
"Yoda" balding, bespectacled sage whose pronouncements on looming risks
have long had an outsized influence on defense policy. Since 1973 he has
headed a secretive think tank whose role is to envision future threats to
national security. The Department of Defense's push on ballistic-missile
defense is known as his brainchild. Three years ago Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld picked him to lead a sweeping review on military
"transformation," the shift toward nimble forces and smart weapons.
When scientists' work on abrupt climate change popped onto his radar
screen, Marshall tapped another eminent visionary, Peter Schwartz, to write
a report on the national-security implications of the threat. Schwartz
formerly headed planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group and has since consulted
with organizations ranging from the CIA to DreamWorksóhe helped create
futuristic scenarios for Steven Spielberg's film Minority Report. Schwartz
and co-author Doug Randall at the Monitor Group's Global Business Network,
a scenario-planning think tank in Emeryville, Calif., contacted top climate
experts and pushed them to talk about what-ifs that they usually shy away
fromóat least in public.
The result is an unclassified report, completed late last year, that the
Pentagon has agreed to share with FORTUNE. It doesn't pretend to be a
forecast. Rather, it sketches a dramatic but plausible scenario to help
planners think about coping strategies. Here is an abridged version:
A total shutdown of the ocean conveyor might lead to a big chill like the
Younger Dryas, when icebergs appeared as far south as the coast of
Portugal. Or the conveyor might only temporarily slow down, potentially
causing an era like the "Little Ice Age," a time of hard winters, violent
storms, and droughts between 1300 and 1850. That period's weather extremes
caused horrific famines, but it was mild compared with the Younger Dryas.
For planning purposes, it makes sense to focus on a midrange case of abrupt
change. A century of cold, dry, windy weather across the Northern
Hemisphere that suddenly came on 8,200 years ago fits the bill - its severity
fell between that of the Younger Dryas and the Little Ice Age. The event is
thought to have been triggered by a conveyor collapse after a time of
rising temperatures not unlike today's global warming. Suppose it recurred,
beginning in 2010. Here are some of the things that might happen by 2020:
At first the changes are easily mistaken for normal weather
variation - allowing skeptics to dismiss them as a "blip" of little
importance and leaving policymakers and the public paralyzed with
uncertainty. But by 2020 there is little doubt that something drastic is
happening. The average temperature has fallen by up to five degrees
Fahrenheit in some regions of North America and Asia and up to six degrees
in parts of Europe. (By comparison, the average temperature over the North
Atlantic during the last ice age was ten to 15 degrees lower than it is
today.) Massive droughts have begun in key agricultural regions. The
average annual rainfall has dropped by nearly 30% in northern Europe, and
its climate has become more like Siberia's.
Violent storms are increasingly common as the conveyor becomes wobbly on
its way to collapse. A particularly severe storm causes the ocean to break
through levees in the Netherlands, making coastal cities such as the Hague
unlivable. In California the delta island levees in the Sacramento River
area are breached, disrupting the aqueduct system transporting water from
north to south.
Megadroughts afflict the U.S., especially in the southern states, along
with winds that are 15% stronger on average than they are now, causing
widespread dust storms and soil loss. The U.S. is better positioned to cope
than most nations, however, thanks to its diverse growing climates, wealth,
technology, and abundant resources. That has a downside, though: It
magnifies the haves-vs.-have-nots gap and fosters bellicose finger-pointing
at America.
Turning inward, the U.S. effectively seeks to build a fortress around
itself to preserve resources. Borders are strengthened to hold back
starving immigrants from Mexico, South America, and the Caribbean
islandsówaves of boat people pose especially grim problems. Tension between
the U.S. and Mexico rises as the U.S. reneges on a 1944 treaty that
guarantees water flow from the Colorado River into Mexico. America is
forced to meet its rising energy demand with options that are costly both
economically and politically, including nuclear power and onerous Middle
Eastern contracts. Yet it survives without catastrophic losses.
Europe, hardest hit by its temperature drop, struggles to deal with
immigrants from Scandinavia seeking warmer climes to the south. Southern
Europe is beleaguered by refugees from hard-hit countries in Africa and
elsewhere. But Western Europe's wealth helps buffer it from catastrophe.
Australia's size and resources help it cope, as does its locationóthe
conveyor shutdown mainly affects the Northern Hemisphere. Japan has fewer
resources but is able to draw on its social cohesion to copeóits government
is able to induce population-wide behavior changes to conserve resources.
China's huge population and food demand make it particularly vulnerable. It
is hit by increasingly unpredictable monsoon rains, which cause devastating
floods in drought-denuded areas. Other parts of Asia and East Africa are
similarly stressed. Much of Bangladesh becomes nearly uninhabitable because
of a rising sea level, which contaminates inland water supplies. Countries
whose diversity already produces conflict, such as India and Indonesia, are
hard-pressed to maintain internal order while coping with the unfolding
changes.
As the decade progresses, pressures to act become irresistible - history
shows that whenever humans have faced a choice between starving or raiding,
they raid. Imagine Eastern European countries, struggling to feed their
populations, invading Russiaówhich is weakened by a population that is
already in declineófor access to its minerals and energy supplies. Or
picture Japan eyeing nearby Russian oil and gas reserves to power
desalination plants and energy-intensive farming. Envision nuclear-armed
Pakistan, India, and China skirmishing at their borders over refugees,
access to shared rivers, and arable land. Or Spain and Portugal fighting
over fishing rightsófisheries are disrupted around the world as water
temperatures change, causing fish to migrate to new habitats.
Growing tensions engender novel alliances. Canada joins fortress America in
a North American bloc. (Alternatively, Canada may seek to keep its abundant
hydropower for itself, straining its ties with the energy-hungry U.S.)
North and South Korea align to create a technically savvy, nuclear-armed
entity. Europe forms a truly unified bloc to curb its immigration problems
and protect against aggressors. Russia, threatened by impoverished
neighbors in dire straits, may join the European bloc.
Nuclear arms proliferation is inevitable. Oil supplies are stretched thin
as climate cooling drives up demand. Many countries seek to shore up their
energy supplies with nuclear energy, accelerating nuclear proliferation.
Japan, South Korea, and Germany develop nuclear-weapons capabilities, as do
Iran, Egypt, and North Korea. Israel, China, India, and Pakistan also are
poised to use the bomb.
The changes relentlessly hammer the world's "carrying capacity"óthe natural
resources, social organizations, and economic networks that support the
population. Technological progress and market forces, which have long
helped boost Earth's carrying capacity, can do little to offset the
crisisóit is too widespread and unfolds too fast.
As the planet's carrying capacity shrinks, an ancient pattern reemerges:
the eruption of desperate, all-out wars over food, water, and energy
supplies. As Harvard archeologist Steven LeBlanc has noted, wars over
resources were the norm until about three centuries ago. When such
conflicts broke out, 25% of a population's adult males usually died. As
abrupt climate change hits home, warfare may again come to define human
life.
Over the past decade, data have accumulated suggesting that the
plausibility of abrupt climate change is higher than most of the scientific
community, and perhaps all of the political community, are prepared to
accept. In light of such findings, we should be asking when abrupt change
will happen, what the impacts will be, and how we can prepareónot whether
it will really happen. In fact, the climate record suggests that abrupt
change is inevitable at some point, regardless of human activity. Among
other things, we should:
- Speed research on the forces that can trigger abrupt climate change, how
it unfolds, and how we'll know it's occurring.
- Sponsor studies on the scenarios that might play out, including
ecological, social, economic, and political fallout on key food-producing
regions.
- Identify "no regrets" strategies to ensure reliable access to food and
water and to ensure our national security.
- Form teams to prepare responses to possible massive migration, and food
and water shortages.
- Explore ways to offset abrupt coolingótoday it appears easier to warm
than to cool the climate via human activities, so there may be
"geo-engineering" options available to prevent a catastrophic temperature
drop.
In sum, the risk of abrupt climate change remains uncertain, and it is
quite possibly small. But given its dire consequences, it should be
elevated beyond a scientific debate. Action now matters, because we may be
able to reduce its likelihood of happening, and we can certainly be better
prepared if it does. It is time to recognize it as a national security
concern.
The Pentagon's reaction to this sobering report isn't knownóin keeping with
his reputation for reticence, Andy Marshall declined to be interviewed. But
the fact that he's concerned may signal a sea change in the debate about
global warming. At least some federal thought leaders may be starting to
perceive climate change less as a political annoyance and more as an issue
demanding action.
If so, the case for acting now to address climate change, long a hard sell
in Washington, may be gaining influential support, if only behind the
scenes. Policymakers may even be emboldened to take steps such as
tightening fuel-economy standards for new passenger vehicles, a measure
that would simultaneously lower emissions of greenhouse gases, reduce
America's perilous reliance on OPEC oil, cut its trade deficit, and put
money in consumers' pockets. Oh, yesóand give the Pentagon's fretful Yoda a
little less to worry about.
Feedback: HYPERLINK "mailto:dstipp@fortunemail.com"
01/31/04
Guardian | Monsanto's chapati patent raises Indian ire [Catch-all] -
GEA - gormfach@gmail.com @ 11:34:23 PM
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4848797-103681,00.html
Randeep Ramesh in New Delhi
Guardian (London) Saturday January 31,
Monsanto, the world's largest genetically modified seed company, has been
awarded patents on the wheat used for making chapati - the flat bread
staple of northern India.
The patents give the US multinational exclusive ownership over Nap Hal, a
strain of wheat whose gene sequence makes it particularly suited to
producing crisp breads.
Another patent, filed in Europe, gives Monsanto rights over the use of Nap
Hal wheat to make chapatis, which consist of flour, water and salt.
Environmentalists say Nap Hal's qualities are the result of generations of
farmers in India who spent years crossbreeding crops and collective, not
corporate, efforts should be recognised.
Monsanto, activists claim, is simply out to make "monopoly profits" from
food on which millions depend. Monsanto inherited a patent application
when it bought the cereals division of the Anglo-Dutch food giant Unilever
in 1998, and the patent has been granted to the new owner.
Unilever acquired Nap Hal seeds from a publicly funded British plant gene
bank. Its scientists identified the wheat's combination of genes and
patented them as an "invention".
Greenpeace is attempting to block Monsanto's patent, accusing the company
of "bio-piracy".
"It is theft of the results of the work in cultivation made by Indian
farmers," said Dr Christoph Then, Greenpeace's patent expert after a
meeting with the European Commission in Delhi.
"We want the European Patent Office to reverse its decision. Under
European law patents cannot be issued on plants that are normally
cultivated, but there are loophol
Randeep Ramesh in New Delhi
Guardian (London) Saturday January 31,
Monsanto, the world's largest genetically modified seed company, has been
awarded patents on the wheat used for making chapati - the flat bread
staple of northern India.
The patents give the US multinational exclusive ownership over Nap Hal, a
strain of wheat whose gene sequence makes it particularly suited to
producing crisp breads.
Another patent, filed in Europe, gives Monsanto rights over the use of Nap
Hal wheat to make chapatis, which consist of flour, water and salt.
Environmentalists say Nap Hal's qualities are the result of generations of
farmers in India who spent years crossbreeding crops and collective, not
corporate, efforts should be recognised.
Monsanto, activists claim, is simply out to make "monopoly profits" from
food on which millions depend. Monsanto inherited a patent application
when it bought the cereals division of the Anglo-Dutch food giant Unilever
in 1998, and the patent has been granted to the new owner.
Unilever acquired Nap Hal seeds from a publicly funded British plant gene
bank. Its scientists identified the wheat's combination of genes and
patented them as an "invention".
Greenpeace is attempting to block Monsanto's patent, accusing the company
of "bio-piracy".
"It is theft of the results of the work in cultivation made by Indian
farmers," said Dr Christoph Then, Greenpeace's patent expert after a
meeting with the European Commission in Delhi.
"We want the European Patent Office to reverse its decision. Under
European law patents cannot be issued on plants that are normally
cultivated, but there are loophol