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:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Date: July 23, 2004

CONTACT:
Laurel Hopwood, 216-371-9779
Ronnie Cummins, 218-226-4164

TRADER JOE'S GIVES FALSE AND MISLEADING INFORMATION TO CONSUMERS

Environmental and consumer groups today criticize Trader Joe's for its use
of the genetically engineered (or recombinant) bovine growth (rBGH).

Trader Joe's is selling cheese that comes from cows that have been injected
with rBGH. Yet on Trader Joe's website, it states "We have identified any
product containing ingredients that could potentially be derived from
genetically engineered crops and worked with our suppliers to replace
offending ingredients with acceptable alternatives."

Laurel Hopwood, member of Sierra Club's Genetic Engineering Committee,
cited evidence that this genetically engineered hormone increases
production of insulin growth factor (IGF-1) in milk, which has been shown
to promote breast, prostate and colorectal cancers.

Ronnie Cummins, national director of the Organic Consumers Association,
noted that injected cows get painful mastitis and persistent sores,
contributing to the overuse of antibiotics and the worldwide crisis of drug
resistant disease. Canada and the European Union have banned the use of
rBGH. Although the U.S. government has approved its use, Cummins said, "We
hear consumers say, 'I don't want any more hormones in my food and I
don't want to be part of a system that's cruel to dairy cows!'"

The Sierra Club and Organic Consumers Association provided Trader Joe's
with a list of rBGH free cheese
(www.sierraclub.org/biotech/nonrBGH.asp) yet Trader Joe's refused to sell
what it claims to be selling.

Sierra Club, America's largest grassroots conservation organization, and
the Organic Consumers Association, a leading consumers organization, oppose
use of genetically engineered crops and also of rBGH to force
increased milk production from cows.

###

>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 ... ;-}

Blogger Note: Posted under protest due to excessive politicalization of subject matter.

Bush's `sound science' Turning a deaf ear to reality

San Diego Union-Tribune
9-7-04

By David Schubert

The foundation of our modern society and its continued existence is
dependent upon our scientific understanding of the world around us.

During the last three years, we have witnessed an unprecedented assault
by the executive branch of our government upon the ability of U.S.
scientists to freely share their data and insights about our world with the
public. Much of the justification for this repression of scientific
communication falls under the Orwellian concept of "sound science," which
is clearly understood by the scientific community to mean
the misrepresentation of scientific data to reflect the administration's
political and social agendas.

This political manipulation of U.S. science began well below the level
of public awareness within days after the current administration took
office. Highly respected scientists on dozens of advisory committees were
replaced with individuals who promote the sound science defined by industry
and the religious right.

The concept of sound science, not to be confused with good science, was
coined by Newt Gingrich and the incoming 1994 Republican Congress as part
of an effort to bypass regulatory hurdles. Sound science required endless
analysis and an extreme burden of proof of harm before anything could be
regulated by federal agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency.
However, the legislation proposed by this group was never made into law.

Now that the Republicans are in total control of the government, the
promises of sound science are coming to fruition. The egregious censorship
and interference with independent scientific inquiry by the Bush
administration were explicitly documented on a case-by-case basis in a
recent report published by the Union of Concerned Scientists. The report
was endorsed by over 60 Nobel prize winners and leading scientists.

During the last few weeks, the administration has added to this list an
unprecedented series of declarations that have the potential to even more
seriously affect public health and safety.

First, they have demanded the power to approve all U.S. scientists who
sit on World Health Organization committees. The WHO is the public health
arm of the United Nations responsible for coordinating responses to
epidemics like SARS and eradicating diseases such as smallpox. It also
makes recommendations on environmental and industrial threats. The WHO's
expert panels have historically been made up of the very best scientists
chosen on the basis of expertise and merit, not political ideology.

Second, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services blocked the
travel of over 150 U.S. scientists to the International AIDS Conference to
be held in Bangkok next week. Many believe that this is because the
organizer of the conference refused a request by U.S. officials to invite
the Rev. Franklin Graham, the evangelist Billy Graham's son, as the keynote
speaker to promote faith-based approaches to the global AIDS epidemic.

Third, in the name of sound science, the U.S. Department of Agriculture
denied the Creekstone Farms slaughterhouse in Kansas a request to test all
of its cattle for mad cow disease. The testing was an effort by Creekstone
to promote the sale of its beef to Japan, where all cattle are routinely
tested.

The most likely reason for the denial of this increased safety
precaution is that the government fears additional cases of the disease
will be found, for only a tiny fraction of the 35 million cattle
slaughtered each year are examined. Indeed, another case of the disease
was recently identified, but the USDA rapidly proclaimed the test to be a
false positive without giving any details.

This incident brings me to the most frightening administration policy
of all, which is an attempt by the White House Office of Management and
Budget to gain complete control over the release of all public declarations
from federal agencies responsible for public safety, health and the
environment. OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs uses the
excuse of sound science to justify stripping scientists of their
traditional authority and adding an additional layer of political review
for such life-threatening scenarios as epidemics, nuclear accidents and
cases of mad cow disease?

Although this policy has been criticized by every scientific
organization in the country, the OMB has already silenced EPA statements
regarding public health threats due to arsenic, lead and mercury in our
environment, rewritten the EPA science on global warming and prevented the
EPA from declaring a public health emergency due to a case of asbestos
contamination in Montana.

Just as the Bush administration manipulated the intelligence on Iraq,
it is now trying to change the facts of nature to meet their political and
ideological goals. This distortion of reality is going to have long-term
consequences for our health, safety and the environment.

If you believe that Big Brother is taking care of you, you can rest
assured that he is doing it in the name of sound science.


Schubert is a professor and laboratory head of the Cellular Neurobiology Laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla.

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.

The paper below shows that organic is truly effective and provides convincing
molecular profiles to back up that conclusion.

Published online before print July 12, 2004
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 10.1073/pnas.0403496101

Agricultural Sciences
An alternative agriculture system is defined by a distinct expression
profile of select gene transcripts and proteins

Vinod Kumar *, Douglas J. Mills , James D. Anderson , and Autar K. Mattoo *¶
*Vegetable Laboratory, Sustainable Agricultural Systems Laboratory, and Plant
Sciences Institute, Henry A. Wallace Beltsville Agricultural Research Center,
United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service,
Building 010A, Beltsville, MD 20705-2350

Conventional agriculture has relied heavily on chemical inputs that have
negatively impacted the environment and increased production costs. Transition
to agricultural sustainability is a major challenge and requires that
alternative agricultural practices are scientifically analyzed to provide a
sufficiently informative knowledge base in favor of alternative farming
practices. We show a molecular basis for delayed leaf senescence and tolerance
to diseases in tomato plants cultivated in a legume (hairy vetch) mulch-based
alternative agricultural system. In the hairy vetch-cultivated plants,
expression of specific and select classes of genes is up-regulated compared to
those grown on black polyethylene mulch. These include N-responsive genes such
as NiR, GS1, rbcL, rbcS, and G6PD; chaperone genes such as hsp70 and BiP;
defense genes such as chitinase and osmotin; a cytokinin-responsive gene CKR;
and gibberellic acid 20 oxidase. We present a model of how their protein
products likely complement one another in a field scenario to effect efficient
utilization and mobilization of C and N, promote defense against disease, and
enhance longevity.

Gay wedding ban backed

Blackwell, bishop urge senators to pass constitutional amendment

By Greg Wright
Gannett News Service

WASHINGTON - Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, one of the top
elected black Republicans in the nation, urged Republican U.S. senators
Thursday to pass a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, calling
homosexuality "a lifestyle choice."

Blackwell told about two dozen senators that gay groups cannot argue for the
same rights as minority groups.

"There is a difference between a lifestyle choice and an immutable
characteristic like race or ethnicity," Blackwell said.

Bishop Keith Butler of the Word of Faith International Christian Center in
Michigan joined Blackwell at the hour-long meeting in the U.S. Capitol.
Butler is part of a coalition of black ministers that is disturbed that gays
are linking gay marriage to the civil rights movement that ended legal
discrimination against blacks.

Gays in Ohio said Blackwell's argument that homosexuality is a choice is
misguided.

"I feel it is innate - it is genetic," said Leo Radel, one of the founders
of Dignity, a gay rights group in Columbus. "I think the science is heading
in that direction."

Meanwhile Terry Payne, chairman of Stonewall Cincinnati, a gay rights group,
said a nationwide movement to give homosexuals marriage and other rights is
growing despite indifference in Ohio. "He needs to be more conscious and
aware," Payne said of Blackwell.

In February, Ohio enacted a law that said only a man and a woman can marry.
Citizens groups in Ohio are circulating petitions to put a question on the
November ballot on whether to include a gay marriage ban in the state
constitution.

The constitutional ban would prevent judges from making gay marriage legal,
Blackwell said. A Massachusetts court recently ruled homosexual couples
should have the same rights as heterosexuals.

Senate Republicans who support an amendment to the U.S. Constitution banning
gay marriage say it has little chance of getting the 67 votes it needs to
move forward when it comes up for a vote next week.

Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, went to the Blackwell meeting, but fellow
Republican Sen. George Voinovich could not because he was attending a
funeral in Ohio for John Stozich, the former director of the Ohio Department
of Industrial Relations.

DeWine left the meeting without talking to reporters, referring questions to
his staff.

DeWine and Voinovich believe marriage should be between a man and a woman,
their spokespeople said.

DeWine is undecided on whether he would vote to amend the Constitution to
say that, spokeswoman Amanda Flaig said.

Voinovich has said it would be difficult to pass a gay marriage ban
amendment because Congress has approved just four constitutional changes in
50 years.

Instead, Voinovich said, Congress should continue to make sure the 1996
Defense of Marriage Act is upheld. That law does not require a state to
recognize a gay marriage declared legal in another state.

If judges overrule state laws on gay marriage, then a constitutional
amendment must be passed, Voinovich said.

E-mail gwright@gannett.com

July 2004

Ian Shearer B.E (elec) NZED &bar
Climate Defence Network
Wellington N.Z.

Ian my man

Thanx for your good statement, which I am fwding widely copied below.
However, I must pull you up on the old error, still widespread: you
say the evil outcomes WILL happen. This wrong tense undermines your own
argument.

Forgive any avuncularity of my tone. Evidence that I got the
highest mark thru 1956 in School Cert English can be claimed to have gone
up in the Aotea Quay document blaze, but anyhow I have taken some interest
in my precious native language (the best that ever was) and its misuse by
media for purposes of deceit. I commend to your attention the appalling
sordid PR trade so brilliantly spotlighted in the sporadic, offpeaktime TV
'Spin Doctors'. The media/PR boundary is vague, shifting.

Confusion is the stock-in-trade for the industries who so wickedly
hire PR agents to deny IPCC, Kyoto treaty, etc. Similarly, tampering with
language is crucial to gene-tampering. If fair accounts were promoted by
the media, dangerous GMO releases would be far rarer than they
unfortunately are.

You are arguing that the proposed RMA amendments would, if they
were passed by Parlt, cause the damage which you sketch. The tense is
CONDITIONAL: would. If you also use the tense 'will', you are subliminally
undermining your own argument.

When you say some harmful outcome will be, you are
(subconsciously) implying defeat. Better to hew to 'would be' , 'if
permitted', 'if inferior planning were to prevail', 'if the ghost of
Mulgoon in nightmarish cahoots with the clones of the traitor Douglas
abandon planning even for airports of national security significance', etc.

Lest you think this is some novel hobbyhorse of mine, I attach a
1997 letter to PR man Edwards about lies in the language. He was evidently
impressed, but could of course not credit the PinC Mann for a useful
lesson. The lies-in-the-language I was then pointing out were nouns
('reclamation' etc); your statement illustrates how language can become
misleading in verbs.

One defence against expansion of PR is our saying just what we
mean. I trust you won't mind my taking your example from thousands.

Keep up the good work for climate conservation

R

======

The >8 July 2004 - Wellington
>Climate Defence Network
>
>MEDIA RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE USE
>
>RMA proposals will worsen climate change
>
>
>A coalition of environment, energy, public health and resource management
>organisations is calling on the Government to abandon proposed changes to
>the Resource Management Act (RMA) that will undermine New Zealand's efforts
>to address climate change and betray low-lying Pacific nations.
>
>"The proposed changes are irresponsible economics and will foist polluting
>industries onto unwilling communities," said Ian Shearer, spokesperson for
>the Climate Defence Network.
>
>"Robert Muldoon wanted to make it easier for major projects to get planning
>permission and gave us Think Big and the National Development Act. Those
>days appear to be returning," he said.
>
>"Proposals to add a national interest clause into the RMA and speed up RMA
>processes for major projects are just a modern form of the National
>Development Act. This will just encourage more climate, health and
>environment damaging developments like coal mining, thermal power stations
>and unnecessary motorways," he said.
>
>"At a recent meeting, officials were unable to provide any evidence of why
>the changes were needed. In fact, the evidence suggests that New Zealand's
>compliance costs are moderate by international standards and are not a
>barrier to responsible development," he said.
>
>"This week, Nelson MP Nick Smith campaigned against the RMA claiming it
>needed to be changed to allow an upgrade of transmission lines at the top of
>the South Island. Transpower, the company that maintains the lines rejected
>this claim. The campaign against the RMA is based on misinformation,
>anecdote and distortion," he said.
>
>"Applications for wind farms in the Wairarapa and Manawatu have gained
>permission without difficulty. Climate friendly generation, properly
>located faces few barriers under the RMA," he said.
>
>ENDS
>
>Note Members of the Climate Defence Network include: Cycling Advocates
>Network; Ecoaction; Engineers for Social Responsibility; Environment and
>Conservation Organisations of New Zealand (ECO); Environmental Defence
>Society; Federated Mountain Clubs; Forest & Bird; Friends of the Earth NZ;
>Greenpeace NZ; MedEco; Nelson Environment Centre; South Pacific Institute for
>Resource Management; Public Health Association; Sustainable Energy Forum.
>
>This message is from the news-group operated by the New Zealand Climate
>Defence Network, P O Box 11-057, Wellington, New Zealand.
>Contact : climate_nz-owner@yahoogroups.com
-
Robt Mann
consultant ecologist
P O Box 28878 Remuera, Auckland 1005, New Zealand
(9) 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.

1. When his .38-caliber revolver failed to fire at its intended
victim during a holdup in Long Beach, California, robber James Elliot did
something that can only inspire wonder: he peered down the barrel and
tried the trigger again. Happily for most concerned, this time it worked.

2. Laborer Alexander Robinson of Mobile, Alabama, redefined the limits
of tactlessness when he opened his eyes after surgery to restore his sight
and said agreeably to his wife: 'Boy, you sure have got fat in four years.'

3. The chef at a hotel in Switzerland lost a finger in a meat-cutting
machine and, after a little hopping around, submitted a claim to his
insurance company. The company, suspecting negligence, sent out one of its
men to have a look for himself. He tried the machine out and lost a
finger. The chef's claim was approved.

4. Mourners at the funeral of Anna Bochinsky in Moinesti, Rumania, were
naturally somewhat taken aback when she abruptly leapt from her coffin as
it was being carried to the grave. Before they could react to this
unexpected outburst, the woman bounded into the nearest road, where she was
run over and killed by a passing car.

5. An American tourist in South America had the misfortune to be
attacked by killer bees as he stood on the bank of the Amazon. Seeking
refuge, he leapt into the river - and was devoured by piranha fish.

6. A Malaysian monkey that had been trained to gather coconuts from
trees demonstrated a pressing need for a refresher course when it leapt
onto the shoulders of a passerby in Kuala Lumpur and tried to twist his
head off. The passerby was treated at a local hospital for a sprained neck.

7. In Fort Lauderdale, Florida, a sixteen-year-old youth was charged
with beating up his fifteen-year-old wife after the latter hid the caps to
his toy pistol.

8. A man who shoveled snow for an hour to clear a space for his car
during a blizzard in Chicago returned with his vehicle to find a woman had
taken the space. Understandably, he shot her dead.

9. One of the criteria by which Miss Nude USA was chosen in 1979 was taste
in clothing.

10. After stopping for drinks at an illegal bar, a Zimbabwean bus driver
found that the 20 mental patients he was supposed to be transporting from
Harare to Bulawayo had escaped. Not wanting to admit his incompetence, the
driver went to a nearby bus-stop and offered everyone in the queue a free
ride. He then delivered the passengers to the mental hospital, telling
staff that the patients were very excitable and prone to bizarre fantasies.
The deception wasn't discovered for 3 days.

11. In Minneapolis, USA, 28 year old Derrick L Richardson has been
charged with third-degree murder of his much loved cousin, Ken E.
Richardson. According to local police, Derrick had suggested to Ken that
they play a game of Russian Roulette, but, having no revolver, instead put
a semiautomatic pistol to his cousin's head. Apparently, he did not
realize that one bullet always loads into the firing chamber of a
semiautomatic.

12. Texan prisons have banned convicts on death row from having a last
cigarette, on the grounds that it is bad for their health. However, to
compensate for this, condemned men will instead be permitted to chew a
stick of celery.

13. An American teenager was in hospital yesterday recovering from
serious head wounds received from an oncoming train. When asked about how
he received the injuries, the lad told the police that he was simply trying
to see how close he could get his head to a moving train before he was hit.

14. Thrash-happy judges in Saudi Arabia have sentenced a Filipino man to
75 lashes for possession of alcohol - after he was caught with two liqueur
chocolates at an airport.

15. Following the initiatives of the Afghan Taliban government - which
has banned kite-flying, TV watching, and the wearing of white socks - Iran
is also cracking down on its more decadent citizens. Ayatollah Mohammed
Yadzi has decreed that dog walking is to be made illegal, saying that
taking dogs out onto the streets was 'a public insult,' as it is a blind
imitation of Westerners. .

16. A mother took her daughter to the doctor and asked him to give her an
examination to determine the cause of her daughters swollen abdomen. It
only took the doctor about 2 minutes to say "Gimmee a break lady! Your
daughter is pregnant." The mother turned red with fury and she argued with
the doctor that her daughter was a good girl and would never compromise her
reputation by having sex with a boy. The doctor faced the window and
silently watched the horizon. The mother became enraged and screamed, "Quit
looking out the window! Aren't you paying attention to me?" "Yes, of course
I am paying attention ma'am. It's just that the last time this happened, a
star appeared in the east, and three wise men came. I was hoping they
would show up again and help me figure out who got your daughter pregnant."

"If you're wary of GE, then you must be anti-science." Heard that one?

Medical researcher Dr David S. Williams probably hasn't. He's a gene therapist
working to develop a cure for a type of inherited blindness, but he has
serious concerns about the way GE foods are developed.

He told the NZ Herald that GE agriculture is "crude and rude", especially
the way it throws genes from one species into another.

--------------

http://www.90degrees.co.nz/register.aspx

----------
GE medical researcher concerned by GE agriculture
"Crude and rude" approach of throwing genes between species

(Source: NZ Herald)
http://www.90degrees.net.nz/view.aspx?id=L4MOuQeD1E6yDBrdpk9OOg
----------

Northland Council gets tough on GE
Revised long-term plan calls for moratorium until liability sorted
http://www.90degrees.net.nz/view.aspx?id=DPZVhFLIBE-3oH4hANVPOQ
----------

Whangarei District Council takes precautionary approach
Public submissions support tougher GE policy
http://www.90degrees.net.nz/view.aspx?id=KhI4cM98PU22-qux7ZCLPw
----------

Action - Last two weeks for GE trade submissions
Should countries have the right to say no to GE imports?
http://www.90degrees.net.nz/view.aspx?id=bT7XEh9amEOrS5aIzYFFOQ
----------

Taxpayer could be liable for GE mix-up
It's time to get liability sorted, says GE-Free NZ
http://www.90degrees.net.nz/view.aspx?id=NhheorCt8ky9ZrQJPmRW0w
----------

Syngenta closes down in UK
Last big GE company ups sticks to the US
http://www.90degrees.net.nz/view.aspx?id=WkAA0sGBWkidItYXdc5wXw
----------

Watch your language please
No "modified" or "engineered" plants around here
http://www.90degrees.net.nz/view.aspx?id=gD-ae*XbbUyrNOXgyFaDQg

http://foreignpolicy.com/issue_mayjune_2003/debate.html


Foreign Policy

1779 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Washington, DC 20036-2103
Phone: 202-939-2230
Fax: 202-483-4430

Blessed Are the Warmakers?

The United States and the European Union both want peace in the Middle
East but that s about all they agree upon. While Washington
believes that regime change in Iraq will usher in an era of regional peace
and stability, Brussels worries that U.S. adventurism will make the clash
of civilizations a self-fulfilling prophecy. Will war in Iraq prove to
be an act of creative destruction, or simply destruction? Two outspoken
thinkers from opposite sides of the Atlantic

Richard

Perle, a key national security advisor to the Pentagon, and
Daniel Cohn-Bendit, leader of the
European Parliament's Green Party traded views and barbs at a
recent debate in Washington, D.C., at the invitation of Helga
Flores Trejo, the new Director of the Heinrich Böll Foundation.

Daniel Cohn-Bendit: If I could sit down with the president
of the United States, I would say, Mr. Bush, I am no pacifist,
and I know military intervention can be absolutely necessary. When the
Allies landed in Normandy in 1944, my parents took the first opportunity
to conceive a child as a celebration of their new freedom.



Richard Perle: I never imagined we owe you to former U.S.
President Dwight Eisenhower.

Cohn-Bendit: That's life. But recently, your government has been
behaving like the Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution. You want
to change the whole world! Like them, you claim that history will show
that truth is on your side. You want the world to follow the American
dream, and you believe that you know what is best for Iraq, Syria, Saudi
Arabia, North Korea, Africa, Liberia, Yemen, and all other countries.
Like every revolutionary, you have good ideas, but your problem lies in
the means you want to use to realize them. Suddenly you want to bring
democracy to the world, starting with Iraq. What happened to this
administration, which began with promises and plans for a humble
foreign policy and nonintervention?

Perle: A fair question. We are interested in democracy in Iraq
because we are, in the first place, interested in disarming Saddam
Hussein. Now, if we are going to remove Saddam to get rid of his weapons
of mass destruction, consider democracy as an added benefit. The Middle
East is unstable, and, in many ways, it is becoming more unstable.
Democracies do not wage aggressive wars. We want to bring real
stability to the region. That's why we want to change the
political system in Iraq.

Cohn-Bendit: I do not question the value of democracy. On the
contrary, I am asking how best to achieve democracy. First of all,
remember former French General and later President Charles de Gaulle,
who insisted to Dwight Eisenhower in 1944 that he, as a French leader,
had to enter liberated Paris, however weak he was. The point was that
only the French themselves -not an American general- could remake
France after the shame of the country's collaboration with the Nazis.
Second, you are making a mistake as you try to lead the region down the
path toward democracy. The key to a peaceful and stable Middle East is
Iran. In contrast to Iraq, Iran has a strong, organized civil society
that is already very close to making a breakthrough toward democratization.
Or, in a different category, we should really solve the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict. Israel does not comply with U.N. resolutions any more than does
Iraq. You will say that I cannot compare the two. But the Arab population
makes this comparison. And as long as many people do not believe in you,
you will have a difficult time in Iraq.

Perle: You are imagining a U.S. general riding roughshod over
Iraqis and confirming the worst fears of Muslims around the world
that we are an aggressive, imperialist power. I have another view. We
have Ahmed Chalabi, chief of the opposition Iraqi National Congress, to
enter Baghdad. Ending the current Iraqi regime will liberate the Iraqis.
We will leave both governance and oil in their hands. We will hand over
power quickly not in years, maybe not even in months -to give
Iraqis a chance to shape their own destiny. The whole world will see this.
And I expect the Iraqis to be at least as thankful as French President
Jacques Chirac was for France's liberation.

Cohn-Bendit: Oh, come on. It's not true.

Perle: Nobody has to say, Thank you. It is quite sufficient for
us to know that people in Iraq will no longer live in abject fear.

Cohn-Bendit: With Iraq, you are talking about nation building.
Yet we have not finished our job in Afghanistan. We see a backlash
against women and deteriorating security. We have barely secured the
capital, Kabul. It is my biggest fear that Afghan warlord
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar will take over Kabul while you are fighting in
Iraq. After the war, you will neglect Iraq and shift your
attention to Syria, then Saudi Arabia. Because you are Americans,
you have the biggest army in the world you can do anything you
want. This is revolutionary hubris.

Perle: I do not know that this is any American official's view.

Cohn-Bendit: Don't say that. After the war in Iraq, you will
adopt this view. Syria is financing the Hamas terrorist
organization, right?

Perle: Yes, and Syria is not alone. But I think we will have a
very good opportunity to persuade Syria to stop sponsoring terrorism.
I promise we will be more effective in that if we remove Hussein, rather
than crawling back from where we are today, throwing up our hands, and
saying, It's too hard. We couldn't do it, we had too little
support. Would you rather talk with Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad about terrorism before or after the liberation of Iraq?

Cohn-Bendit: Before.

Perle: You think you would achieve anything?

Cohn-Bendit: That's why I am saying. Let's change the agenda
together! Europe and America have to agree on means and ends if
we want to trigger a peaceful domino effect in the Middle East.
Solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must be part of this agenda.
I accept wars that are necessary, but I still believe that war against
Iraq is not necessary. I have proposed to contain Saddam Hussein with
U.S. troops in the Gulf, and to convene a summit like the Helsinki
Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe in 1975. The
U.N. should declare a Palestinian state, and, with an
international mandate, we should secure Israel and Palestine.
This is where we could reach a mutual understanding! And if you
put this project on the agenda, the whole region will look at
America with different eyes.

Perle: The chances for a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict will improve as soon as Saddam is gone. Iraqi opposition leader
Ahmed Chalabi and his people have confirmed that they want a real peace
process, and that they would recognize the state of Israel. There is no
doubt about that if they come to power. We cannot expect the peace process
to be any more promising than it is now as long as Saddam Hussein actively
works against it, including raining rockets on Israel as he did during
the 1991 Gulf War. President George W. Bush presented his vision for the
Middle East on June 24, 2002. Yet his plan has not received the attention
it deserves. Bush said, if the Palestinians establish themselves as
interlocutors who operate without corruption and terrorism, then
the United States will support the creation of a Palestinian
state. Yet the Europeans are supporting Arafat and sending checks
from Brussels. We have reached a dead end. The checks are standing
in the way of the kind of democratic reform needed in the
Palestinian National Authority that can open the door for peace.

Cohn-Bendit: This difference of opinion is not limited to Arafat.
America has to learn that, after a war with Iraq, the trans-Atlantic
relationship will change. Hitherto, it has been like a traditional
male-female relationship: Man calls, woman follows. Then, there
was emancipation. I do want something new in Europe, and not the
French way anti-Americanism no matter what. Europe can take on
responsibilities, and I dream that it will be able to handle alone
something like Bosnia in the future. This new relationship is not
against America, but it is not for America either. It is for
Europe. European interests are not equal to American interests.
You Americans did not believe in Europe before, with the euro. You laughed
at us. We did it, and it is not so bad. And you will see, we will do much
more. We have differing views on the Kyoto Protocol, and on the
International Criminal Court. I understand the American position,
because the two continents have completely different
understandings of sovereignty.

Perle: If my prediction that everything will go well with Iraq
becomes reality, then the damage recently done to trans-Atlantic
relations will rapidly be repaired. We will still have the problem
of French ambitions to build a Europe in opposition to the United
States. And if the French are indeed creating a counterweight, do
not call their relationship with the United States an alliance anymore.
In that case we, as Americans, will have to consider how we deal with
this European departure from the trans-Atlantic axis.

Copied below is a recent email bull from a political party.
If you're puzzled by the incantations at the end, I apologize for this PC
fatuity.
> Karere Rorohiko

is a new chant - presumably some novel translation of 'email'.

> Katya.Paquin@Parliament.govt.nz

Could be related to starlet A Paquin of that embarrassing Piano
movie. Not a native Maori speaker, I'll wager; just posturing in the New
Racism.

Peh neh attentionss.

Some interesting issues arise in Ms Paquin's msg. Changing GMOs to
LMOs is highly suspicious - corresponding to the name change for PR
purposes Windscale to Sellafield. For Kiwis the main issue is the
grotesque cynical waste in this po-faced elaborate consultation on a
relatively simple & minor decision. The main aim of the govt is to decoy
earnest critics of GM into wasted effort. Many other aspects of GM deserve
exposition & discussion, but have been neglected & suppressed (including
the Royal Commission, a travesty); this one should have been settled a year
ago by the preposterous drongo Marian Hobbs, minister "for" the
environment.

Most of what is offered by the media has been massaged & spun into
the media by PR-agents for the GM bubble. The billions lost to produce a
few products, many of them dubious, and the lack of anything saleable even
from James D Watson jr, should prove to anyone that market forces, even
when msssively boosted by govt grants, cannot make worthwhile a technology
based on junk science. Certainly the dangerous uncharacterised GM-bastards
resulting from these expts should be kept out of our country at least as
thoroughly as the Cartagena protocol envisages. The issue deserves little
if any more discussion. We should then get on with controlling the
dangerous gene-jockeys Conner, Cohen, etc within our own borders.

R

======

Submissions needed on NZ s Ratification of the Cartegena Protocol
(pertaining to the import and export of live genetically modified organisms)

The Cartegena Protocol is part of the Convention on Biological Diversity
(CBD). The CBD aims to protect biodiversity. The Cartegena Protocol, in
particular, aims to protect biodiversity and human health from possible
harm due to living genetically engineered organisms (what the Protocol
calls LMOs). It does not cover genetically engineered organisms which have
been processed into foods.

The Protocol puts the Precautionary Principle into international law. It
gives countries the right to reject shipments of LMO s if they think the
LMO s could be harmful to their biodiversity, without having to prove it
first.

New Zealand signed the Protocol on 24th May 2000 but has yet to ratify it,
despite the Protocol coming into force on 9th September 2003. New Zealand
attended the first Meeting of the Parties to the Protocol, held in Kuala
Lumpur in February 2004, as an observer (with no voting rights). The
Government is now considering whether to ratify the Protocol and seeks
public submissions on it. The Government plans to make the decision in
August.

Submissions must be received by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade
by 16th July 2004. Submissions should be sent via email to
or as paper mail to:

Biosafety Protocol Consultation,
Environment Division,
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade,
Private Bag 18 901
Wellington.

Very important: Please note that this consultation is not about New Zealand's domestic GE policy. If you write about that it will be ignored. Instead,
the consultation is about whether New Zealand should ratify an
international agreement about the trade of LMOs.

We suggest you:

1) Express support for New Zealand ratifying the Protocol

2) Give reasons why you think this is appropriate such as some of the
following:

a) All countries have the right to know what they are importing and to
decide whether or not to allow LMOs to be imported. No other country or
individual exporter has the right to put the biodiversity or human health
of a prospective importing country at risk without the explicit agreement
of the prospective importing country. (The Advanced Informed Agreement
aspect of the Protocol provides for prospective importing countries to be
told about any LMOs others wish to export to them.)

b) These rights to know and decide are rights that should not be
constrained by the economic situation of a country. The poor have the same
right as the wealthy to know about and decide what they will import. (The
Protocol provides for poor countries to be assisted to develop capacity to
assess the likely impacts of LMOs on their biodiversity and human
population and to reach decisions concerning imports of LMOs.)

c) In answer to an oral question in Parliament (#12, 10/9/03) Ms Hobbs
said that the Government does support the right embodied in the Cartagena
Protocol of countries to decide for themselves whether they allow the
introduction of living genetically modified organisms into their
environment and the right to use the precautionary principle when making
decisions. Need to emphasise that ratifying the Protocol turns words of
support into actions of support.

d) The Protocol incorporates the precautionary principle which gives
countries the right to turn away shipments of LMO s when they may be
harmful to the environment, biodiversity or human health, WITHOUT needing
to prove harm scientifically. While there remains so much scientific debate
about the short and long-term impacts of genetically modified organisms, it
is prudent for countries to be able to err on the side of caution - it is
their environment and their health that is at stake. Many countries do not
have the equivalent of ERMA to assess risks adequately and so, for them,
the only sensible path is to act cautiously.

e) Ratifying does not seem to contradict the Govt s decision to
proceed with caution with development and production of LMOs. In fact, the
Protocol provides for all countries to proceed with caution at the level
they themselves deem appropriate for their circumstances (be that risk
aversion, or lack of capacity to carry out comprehensive risk assessment)

f) It is better for New Zealand to be part of multilateral agreements
so that we can better influence their form than to not be part. Although
some aspects of the Protocol are not yet finally decided (e.g liability,
compliance) New Zealand needs to be part of discussions. That every aspect
of the Protocol is not yet set in concrete is not a good reason for New
Zealand not to ratify as multilateral agreements normally undergo
refinement during their early years.

g) However, New Zealand must not be a spoiler, representing the
interests of countries (like the USA, Argentina, Australia, Canada) which
are major exporters of agricultural products, and preventing the Protocol
from evolving. (Decisions by Parties to the Protocol require concensus,
which means that one country can block progress). If New Zealand is really
unhappy about the Protocol once it has been a Party to it, then it should
withdraw from the Protocol. (Although this is very rarely done, it remains
an option)

h) New Zealand must put the interest of international biodiversity
and human health ahead of narrow trade interests.

i) Ratifying the Protocol would cost New Zealanders very little, since
rules around importing GE organisms are already covered by HSNO and
Biosecurity legislation, which meet the requirements of the Protocol. Some
additional cost might accrue for New Zealand exporters of
commercially-grown LMOs (of which there are currently none, as we don t
commercially grow any GE organisms). They would have to provide more
information than they currently do. However, because people must get
approval from ERMA to use or produce GE organisms in New Zealand, exporters
will already have the information that the Protocol requires them to make
available to prospective importing countries. Thus, this cost to exporters
of New Zealand ratifying the Protocol will be minor. Furthermore, exporters
will have to meet the requirements of importing countries which are Parties
to the Protocol whether we are a Party to it or not. (note that no
authorisations for commercial production of GE organisms have yet been
given New Zealand but, under current laws, this could happen in the future)

j) The only situation in which a NZ exporter could face considerable
cost would be if a country to which it wished to export LMOs requested that
it fund an environmental impact assessment. This seems entirely reasonable
given that the prospective country of import will have different
biodiversity and different health conditions from those in New Zealand and
so the impacts may be different here. This is about New Zealanders taking
responsibility for their actions and the possible consequences of their
actions

k) MfE s view is that the protection of the New Zealand environment
will not be improved by ratifying the Protocol because our HSNO legislation
is stricter than the Protocol and in the short term, we consider that New
Zealand's trade is unlikely to be affected directly by either ratifying or
not ratifying the Protocol. (email sarah.adams-linton@mfe.govt.nz to Zelka
Grammer, 1/12/03)

l) In answer to written parliamentary question 01374 (2004) about why
New Zealand has yet to ratify the Protocol, Marian Hobbs said New Zealand
s signature of the Cartagena Protocol indicates our support for its
objective, which is to seek to ensure the safe transboundary movement of
living modified organisms that may have adverse effects on human health or
the environment.  We need to ratify to demonstrate that our support for
the objective of the Protocol is more than just rhetoric.

m) Need to be part of important multilateral agreements. As a small
country New Zealand depends on and strongly advocates for multilateral
approaches to issues as a way to protect our interests. Ratifying the
Cartegena Protocol is consistent with this. However, New Zealand s
ratification of international agreements doesn t have to be in purely in
New Zealand s interest and can even be against our interest. Our positons
on whaling, persistent organic pollutant (Stockholm Convention) are
examples where we scarcely derive any direct benefit from ratifying
agreements but where we do so because we want to set an example of what is
the right thing. Think about our international reputation and greater
good, especially the ability of developing countries for self-determination.

Please, elaborate on whichever points you feel most important or add other
ideas of your own. Putting anything you use from the above into your own
words is always a good idea.

More information about the Protocol is available at
< http://ww
w.mfat.govt.nz/foreign/env/biosafety/cartagenaprotocol.html> Public
Discussion Paper: Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety. Consideration of New
Zealand decision on ratification 

The Protocol itself can be viewed at
< http://www.biodiv.org/biosafety/p
rotocol.asp>

Katya Paquin
Executive Assistant to Jeanette Fitzsimons MP
Green Party Co-Leader
Ruma 14.14 Bowen House
Parliament Buildings
Te Whanganui-A-Tara
Waea: 04-470-6665 Waea Whakaahua: 04-472-6003
Karere Rorohiko: Katya.Paquin@Parliament.govt.nz

Keep up to date with Green issues.
Register at:

http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJVF&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.

ISP Press Release 27/05/04

ISP to FAO: GM Crops Not the Answer

The Independent Science Panel (ISP) has criticised the Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO) of the United Nations for its qualified backing of
genetically modified (GM) crops in the global fight against hunger.

The FAO recently released its annual publication, The State of Food and
Agriculture 2003-2004. This year, the theme was on "Agricultural Biotechnology: Meeting the needs of the poor?" The report touches on the full range of agricultural biotechnology tools and applications, but focuses largely on transgenic or GM crops and their impact on poor people in poor countries.

While acknowledging that biotechnology is not a panacea, the FAO maintains that it holds great promise as a new scientific tool for generating applied agricultural technologies. The report claims that biotechnology is capable of benefiting small, resource-poor farmers, yet also cautions, "Given that technologies that are on the shelf today (generated by conventional research methods) have not yet reached the poorest farmer’s fields, there is no guarantee that the new biotechnologies will fare any better."

Thus, the FAO seems to ignore the implicit message of its own study: GM crops have thus far delivered negligible benefits to the world's poor. And there is little indication that these trends will change in favour of the poor. As the report points out, crops and agronomic traits of importance to developing countries and marginal production areas have been ignored.

Instead, the focus has been on four crops (soybean, maize, cotton, canola) more suited for industrial agriculture and unlikely to meet the food security needs of poor farmers, and two traits (herbicide tolerance and insect resistance) of limited relevance; herbicide resistance, in particular, is less relevant for developing countries where farm labour is abundant.

These four crops and two traits have, however, been the mainstay of the GM
industry, controlled largely by transnational corporations that have reaped most of the benefits. This private sector-led investment in agricultural research and development depends on strong protection of intellectual property rights (IPRs) over GM crops.

The FAO is disingenuous when it calls on countries to develop stronger IPR
regimes to promote GM crop research, even as the independent Commission on
Intellectual Property Rights has expressed reservations over patent protection for plants and animals. Many developing countries that are World Trade Organisation (WTO) members, particularly the Africa Group, have also expressed similar concerns, joining countless non-governmental and civil society organisations, and some 700 scientists (including ISP members), to call for no patents on living organisms.

Is the FAO ignoring these views, much as it seems to be selective in the evidence it draws on to justify the reportís conclusions? For example, in the section on public attitudes, the report relies heavily on a survey that asks imbalanced questions. This section concludes that people in developing countries are generally likely to support agricultural biotechnology, which is not surprising, given that the risks are not mentioned in the questions asked, only the potential benefits.

Yet the risks of GM crops are increasingly apparent. The FAO report is unacceptably silent on the transgenic contamination of traditional varieties of maize in Mexico, a centre of origin and diversity of maize; it doesn’t discuss biodiversity and food security impacts, let alone the immense implications on cultural and indigenous practices.

Dr. Mae-Wan Ho, director of the Institute of Science in Society (ISIS) and
member of the ISP, points to further flaws: "The FAO claims that scientists
generally agree that current transgenic crops and the foods derived from
them are safe to eat. But there are many scientists - ISP members included -
who have questioned this premise, and there is increasing evidence that
casts doubt on GM food safety."

The ISP’s report, The Case for a GM-Free Sustainable World
, is an
extensive review of the scientific and other evidence on the problems and
hazards of GM crops and the manifold benefits of all forms of sustainable agriculture (see Executive Summary, appended).

It is clear, from the evidence therein, that there are many unanswered
questions on the safety of GM crops. Very few studies have been conducted,
particularly as to the effects of GM foods on human health. There is a dearth of published scientific papers on which a reliable database of safety can be
established, and the few independent studies that have been carried out raise serious concerns. There is also increasing indication of the environmental and socioeconomic impacts of GM crops, particularly on smallholder farmers.

The ISP has called for a global ban on environmental release of GM crops, to make way for agroecology, organic farming and other forms of sustainable agriculture. There is growing evidence that many smallholder farmers in developing countries already have the knowledge, experience and innovative spirit that enable them to farm sustainably and productively, without depending on GM crops. These traditional farming practices best address agriculture that is complex, diverse and risk-prone; GM crops would create many more risks for these farmers. The FAO should be calling for more research into these sustainable practices, so as to better them and make them equitably accessible, rather than into GM crops.

If the world is to seriously address hunger, this means rethinking agriculture and associated policy making, and exploring how traditional knowledge and science can work together, while learning from farmers themselves. World hunger today is more a consequence of economic and political forces that hamper distribution, and less one of inadequate food supply. These, and other issues including access to land, water, credit and markets, the loss of agricultural biodiversity and the inequities in multilateral policies that affect agriculture and rural development, must be addressed.

The FAO would do better to focus on these issues, rather than on GM crops, if it is really serious in "helping build a world without hunger".

Written by Lim Li Ching for the ISP

The Case for A GM-Free Sustainable World - Executive Summary

Why GM Free?

1. GM crops failed to deliver promised benefits

The consistent finding from independent research and on-farm surveys since 1999 is that GM crops have failed to deliver the promised benefits of significantly increasing yields or reducing herbicide and pesticide use. GM crops have cost the United States an estimated $12 billion in farm subsidies, lost sales and product recalls due to transgenic contamination. Massive failures in Bt cotton of up to 100% were reported in India.

Biotech corporations have suffered rapid decline since 2000, and investment
advisors forecast no future for the agricultural sector. Meanwhile worldwide resistance to GM has reached a climax in 2002 when Zambia refused GM maize in food aid despite the threat of famine.

2. GM crops posing escalating problems on the farm

The instability of transgenic lines has plagued the industry from the beginning, and this may be responsible for a string of major crop failures. A review in 1994 stated, "While there are some examples of plants which show stable expression of a transgene these may prove to be the exceptions to the rule. In an informal survey of over 30 companies involved in the commercialisation of transgenic crop plants, almost all of the respondents indicated that they had observed some level of transgene inaction. Many respondents indicated that most cases of transgene inactivation never reach the literature."

Triple herbicide-tolerant oilseed rape volunteers that have combined transgenic and non-transgenic traits are now widespread in Canada. Similar multiple herbicide-tolerant volunteers and weeds have emerged in the United States. In the United States, glyphosate-tolerant weeds are plaguing GM cotton and soya fields, and atrazine, one of the most toxic herbicides, has had to be used with glufosinate-tolerant GM maize.

Bt biopesticide traits are simultaneously threatening to create superweeds and Bt-resistant pests.

3. Extensive transgenic contamination unavoidable

Extensive transgenic contamination has occurred in maize landraces growing in remote regions in Mexico despite an official moratorium that has been in place since 1998. High levels of contamination have since been found in Canada. In a test of 33 certified seed stocks, 32 were found contaminated.

New research shows that transgenic pollen, wind-blown and deposited elsewhere, or fallen directly to the ground, is a major source of transgenic contamination. Contamination is generally acknowledged to be unavoidable, hence there can be no coexistence of transgenic and non-transgenic crops.

4. GM crops not safe

Contrary to the claims of proponents, GM crops have not been proven safe. The regulatory framework was fatally flawed from the start. It was based on an anti-precautionary approach designed to expedite product approval at the expense of safety considerations. The principle of “substantial equivalence”, on which risk assessment is based, is intended to be vague and ill-defined, thereby giving companies complete licence in claiming transgenic products “substantially equivalent” to non-transgenic products, and hence “safe”.

5. GM food raises serious safety concerns

There have been very few credible studies on GM food safety. Nevertheless, the available findings already give cause for concern. In the still only systematic investigation on GM food ever carried out in the world, 'growth factor-like' effects were found in the stomach and small intestine of young rats that were not fully accounted for by the transgene product, and were hence attributable to the transgenic process or the transgenic construct, and may hence be general to all GM food. There have been at least two other, more limited, studies that also raised serious safety concerns.

6. Dangerous gene products are incorporated into crops

Bt proteins, incorporated into 25% of all transgenic crops worldwide, have been found harmful to a range of non-target insects. Some of them are also potent immunogens and allergens. A team of scientists have cautioned against releasing Bt crops for human use. Food crops are increasingly used to produce pharmaceuticals and drugs, including cytokines known to suppress the immune system, induce sickness and central nervous system toxicity; interferon alpha, reported to cause dementia, neurotoxicity and mood and cognitive side effects; vaccines; and viral sequences such as the 'spike' protein gene of the pig coronavirus, in the same family as the SARS virus linked to the current epidemic. The glycoprotein gene gp120 of the AIDS virus HIV-1, incorporated into GM maize as a "cheap, edible oral vaccine", serves as yet another biological time-bomb, as it can interfere with the immune system and recombine with viruses and bacteria to generate new and unpredictable pathogens.

7. Terminator crops spread male sterility

Crops engineered with ësuicideí genes for male sterility have been promoted as a means of "containing", i.e., preventing, the spread of transgenes. In reality, the hybrid crops sold to farmers spread both male sterile suicide genes as well herbicide tolerance genes via pollen.

8. Broad-spectrum herbicides highly toxic to humans and other species

Glufosinate ammonium and glyphosate are used with the herbicide-tolerant transgenic crops that currently account for 75% of all transgenic crops worldwide. Both are systemic metabolic poisons expected to have a wide range of harmful effects, and these have been confirmed. Glufosinate ammonium is linked to neurological, respiratory, gastrointestinal and haematological toxicities, and birth defects in humans and mammals. It is toxic to butterflies and a number of beneficial insects, also to the larvae of clams and oysters, Daphnia and some freshwater fish, especially the rainbow trout. It inhibits beneficial soil bacteria and fungi, especially those that fix nitrogen.

Glyphosate is the most frequent cause of complaints and poisoning in the
UK. Disturbances of many body functions have been reported after exposures
at normal use levels. Glyphosate exposure nearly doubled the risk of late spontaneous abortion, and children born to users of glyphosate had elevated
neurobehavioral defects. Glyphosate caused retarded development of the foetal skeleton in laboratory rats. Glyphosate inhibits the synthesis of steroids, and is genotoxic in mammals, fish and frogs. Field dose exposure of earthworms caused at least 50 percent mortality and significant intestinal damage among surviving worms.

Roundup caused cell division dysfunction that may be linked to human cancers.

The known effects of both glufosinate and glyphosate are sufficiently serious for all further uses of the herbicides to be halted.

9. Genetic engineering creates super- viruses

By far the most insidious dangers of genetic engineering are inherent to the process itself, which greatly enhances the scope and probability of horizontal gene transfer and recombination, the main route to creating viruses and bacteria that cause disease epidemics. This was highlighted, in 2001, by the "accidental" creation of a killer mouse virus in the course of an apparently innocent genetic engineering experiment.

Newer techniques, such as DNA shuffling are allowing geneticists to create in a matter of minutes in the laboratory millions of recombinant viruses that have never existed in billions of years of evolution. Disease-causing viruses and bacteria and their genetic material are the predominant materials and tools for genetic engineering, as much as for the intentional creation of bio-weapons.

10. Transgenic DNA in food taken up by bacteria in human gut

There is already experimental evidence that transgenic DNA from plants has been taken up by bacteria in the soil and in the gut of human volunteers. Antibiotic resistance marker genes can spread from transgenic food to Pathogenic bacteria, making infections very difficult to treat.

11. Transgenic DNA and cancer

Transgenic DNA is known to survive digestion in the gut and to jump into the genome of mammalian cells, raising the possibility for triggering cancer. The possibility cannot be excluded that feeding GM products such as maize to animals also carries risks, not just for the animals but also for human beings consuming the animal products.

12. CaMV 35S promoter increases horizontal gene transfer

Evidence suggests that transgenic constructs with the CaMV 35S promoter might be especially unstable and prone to horizontal gene transfer and recombination, with all the attendant hazards: gene mutations due to random insertion, cancer, reactivation of dormant viruses and generation of new viruses. This promoter is present in most GM crops being grown commercially today.

13. A history of misrepresentation and suppression of scientific evidence

There has been a history of misrepresentation and suppression of scientific
evidence, especially on horizontal gene transfer. Key experiments failed
to be performed, or were performed badly and then misrepresented. Many
experiments were not followed up, including investigations on whether the
CaMV 35S promoter is responsible for the 'growth-factor-like' effects observed in young rats fed GM potatoes.

In conclusion, GM crops have failed to deliver the promised benefits and are posing escalating problems on the farm. Transgenic contamination is now widely acknowledged to be unavoidable, and hence there can be no co-existence of GM and non-GM agriculture. Most important of all, GM crops have not been proven safe.

On the contrary, sufficient evidence has emerged to raise serious safety concerns, that if ignored could result in irreversible damage to health and the environment. GM crops should be firmly rejected now.

Why Sustainable Agriculture?

1. Higher productivity and yields, especially in the Third World

Some 8.98 million farmers have adopted sustainable agriculture practices on 28.92 million hectares in Asia, Latin America and Africa. Reliable data from 89 projects show higher productivity and yields: 50-100% increase in yield for rainfed crops, and 5-10% for irrigated crops. Top successes include Burkina Faso, which turned a cereal deficit of 644 kg per year to an annual surplus of 153 kg; Ethiopia, where 12 500 households enjoyed 60% increase in crop yields; and Honduras and Guatemala, where 45,000 families increased yields from 400-600 kg/ha to 2 000-2 500 kg/ha.

Long-term studies in industrialised countries show yields for organic comparable to conventional agriculture, and sometimes higher.

2. Better soils

Sustainable agricultural practices tend to reduce soil erosion, as well as improve soil physical structure and water-holding capacity, which are crucial in averting crop failures during periods of drought.

Soil fertility is maintained or increased by various sustainable agriculture practices. Studies show that soil organic matter and nitrogen levels are higher in organic than in conventional fields.

Biological activity has also been found to be higher in organic soils. There are more earthworms, arthropods, mycorrhizal and other fungi, and micro-organisms, all of which are beneficial for nutrient recycling and suppression of disease.

3. Cleaner environment

There is little or no polluting chemical-input with sustainable agriculture. Moreover, research suggests that less nitrate and phosphorus are leached to groundwater from organic soils. Better water infiltration rates are found in organic systems. Therefore, they are less prone to erosion and less likely to contribute to water pollution from surface runoff.

4. Reduced pesticides and no increase in pests

Organic farming prohibits routine pesticide application. Integrated pest management has cut the number of pesticide sprays in Vietnam from 3.4 to one per season, in Sri Lanka from 2.9 to 0.5 per season, and in Indonesia from 2.9 to 1.1 per season.

Research showed no increase in crop losses due to pest damage, despite the
withdrawal of synthetic insecticides in Californian tomato production.

Pest control is achievable without pesticides, reversing crop losses, as for example, by using ëtrap cropsí to attract stem borer, a major pest in East Africa. Other benefits of avoiding pesticides arise from utilising the complex inter-relationships between species in an ecosystem.

5. Supporting biodiversity and using diversity

Sustainable agriculture promotes agricultural biodiversity, which is crucial for food security and rural livelihoods. Organic farming can also support much greater biodiversity, benefiting species that have significantly declined.

Biodiverse systems are more productive than monocultures. Integrated Farming systems in Cuba are 1.45 to 2.82 times more productive than monocultures. Thousands of Chinese rice farmers have doubled yields and nearly eliminated the most devastating disease simply by mixed planting of two varieties.

Soil biodiversity is enhanced by organic practices, bringing beneficial effects such as recovery and rehabilitation of degraded soils, improved soil structure and water infiltration.

6. Environmentally and economically sustainable

Research on apple production systems ranked the organic system first in environmental and economic sustainability, the integrated system second and the conventional system last. Organic apples were most profitable due to price premiums, quicker investment return and fast recovery of costs.

A Europe-wide study showed that organic farming performs better than conventional farming in the majority of environmental indicators. A review by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) concluded that well-managed organic agriculture leads to more favourable conditions at all environmental levels.

7. Ameliorating climate change by reducing direct & indirect energy use Organic agriculture uses energy much more efficiently and greatly reduces CO2 emissions compared with conventional agriculture, both with respect to direct energy consumption in fuel and oil and indirect consumption in synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.

Sustainable agriculture restores soil organic matter content, increasing carbon sequestration below ground, thereby recovering an important carbon sink. Organic systems have shown significant ability to absorb and retain carbon, raising the possibility that sustainable agriculture practices can help reduce the impact of global warming.

Organic agriculture is likely to emit less nitrous oxide (N2O), another important greenhouse gas and also a cause of stratospheric ozone depletion.

8. Efficient, profitable production

Any yield reduction in organic agriculture is more than offset by ecological and efficiency gains. Research has shown that the organic approach can be commercially viable in the long- term, producing more food per unit of energy or resources.

Data show that smaller farms produce far more per unit area than the larger farms characteristic of conventional farming. Though the yield per unit area of one crop may be lower on a small farm than on a large monoculture, the total output per unit area, often composed of more than a dozen crops and various animal products, can be far higher.

Production costs for organic farming are often lower than for conventional farming, bringing equivalent or higher net returns even without organic price premiums. When price premiums are factored in, organic systems are almost always more profitable.

9. Improved food security and benefits to local communities

A review of sustainable agriculture projects in developing countries showed that average food production per household increased by 1.71 tonnes per year (up 73%) for 4.42 million farmers on 3.58 million hectares, bringing food security and health benefits to local communities.

Increasing agricultural productivity has been shown to also increase food supplies and raise incomes, thereby reducing poverty, increasing access to food, reducing malnutrition and improving health and livelihoods.

Sustainable agricultural approaches draw extensively on traditional and indigenous knowledge, and place emphasis on the farmersí experience and innovation. This thereby utilises appropriate, low-cost and readily available local resources as well as improves farmersí status and autonomy, enhancing social and cultural relations within local communities.

Local means of sale and distribution can generate more money for the local economy. For every £1 spent at an organic box scheme from Cusgarne Organics
(UK), £2.59 is generated for the local economy; but for every £1 spent at a
supermarket, only £1.40 is generated for the local economy.

10. Better food quality for health

Organic food is safer, as organic farming prohibits routine pesticide and
herbicide use, so harmful chemical residues are rarely found.

Organic production also bans the use of artificial food additives such as hydrogenated fats, phosphoric acid, aspartame and monosodium glutamate, which have been linked to health problems as diverse as heart disease, osteoporosis, migraines and hyperactivity.

Studies have shown that, on average, organic food has higher vitamin C, higher mineral levels and higher plant phenolics ñ plant compounds that can fight cancer and heart disease, and combat age-related neurological dysfunctions - and significantly less nitrates, a toxic compound.

Sustainable agricultural practices have proven beneficial in all aspects relevant to health and the environment. In addition, they bring food security and social and cultural well-being to local communities everywhere. There is an urgent need for a comprehensive global shift to all forms of Sustainable agriculture.

------------------

This article can be found on the I-SIS website at
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/ISPtoFAO.php

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 in his 1972 'claret cameo', which we paraphrase {see Box}.

**************

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 person (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.

Aristotle's 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.

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-century ago [in his book 'Man, Science & God' Collins 1972].

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.

Date: Sat, 03 Jul 2004

FYI - EVENT - WORLD FREEDOM SUMMIT - MONEY TALKS

For those who can afford NZ$1099 [perhaps less for campers & backpackers]
an opportunity has arisen to attend a 5 day conference in Rotorua and to
bask in the intellectual company of well-known New Zealand thinkers such as
Lance Kennedy, William Rolleston, Robert White, Sir Roger Douglas, and
Roger Kerr. Details of this event together with biosnaps of the
presenters are as follows:

____________
International Society for Individual Liberty

WORLD FREEDOM SUMMIT

ROTORUA, NEW ZEALAND

July 21 to 26, 2004

Annual world conference will focus in part on New Zealand's radical
free-market reforms® of the 1980s and the impressive results they brought
about. Major architects of these reforms®, as well as parliamentary
critics who worry about backsliding, will speak. There will also be
presentations and debates on numerous other issues, including
environmentalism

An Exotic Venue

With the great success of the Lord of the Rings movies, "Middle Earth" is
very "in" these days. Not only does New Zealand boast beautiful and exotic
landscapes with steaming pools and geysers, volcanoes, and awe-inspiring
mountain ranges, it is also the site of one of the great rejections of
socialism – the New Zealand "Miracle" of the 1980's. The 2004 ISIL World
Conference which is to be held in the picturesque resort town of Rotorua –
just south of Auckland on North Island – is being hosted by Aristotle's
Book Store and the Institute for Liberal Values

www.liberalvalues.org.nz –
(both in Auckland and run by long-time libertarian/Objectivist® activist
Jim Peron). Believe me, you're not going to want to miss this one. The
combination of spectacular scenery at the world's #1 tourist destination –
and a stimulating conference speaker lineup – will make for an
unforgettable experience. And the prices are unbeatable.

Heartland of Maori Culture

As an added attraction, Rotorua is also the heartland of the colorful
native Maori culture. Exotic native crafts are available for sale locally.

A Visit to Hobbiton

A special attraction for conference attendees will be an optional visit to
Hobbiton, the set from the famous "Lord of the Rings" movie. We are
currently making arrangements for lunch for ISIL conference attendees at
the new Shire's Rest restaurant in Hobbiton.

Conference speakers already confirmed include:

* Elbegdorj Tsakhia (past prime minister of Mongolia). Tsakhia lead the
demonstrations that brought the 70 year communist dictatorship in his
country to an end. He is currently president of Mongolia's Liberty Centre
and is leading an initiative to free Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Aung San
Sue Kyi who has been imprisoned by the Burmese military junta. * * The
traitor Douglas (New Zealand). As Finance Minister, Sir Roger Douglas
pushed through major market reforms which the OECD today credits for the
turnaround in the New Zealand economy. His topic: "New Zealand's Economic
Reforms."

* Michael Cloud (USA) will deliver his famous lectures on The Art of
Political Persuasion. Michael is a dynamic speaker who shows how to
communicate liberal ideas to the public. His seminars are guaranteed to
improve your ability to present freedom as an alternative and make you a
more effective representative. They will revolutionize your perception of
how to view politics and change the way you deal with people when
explaining liberal ideas.

* Vincent Gray (New Zealand) a PhD in Chemistry from Cambridge University,
is a specialist in Climate Science. He has been an Expert Reviewer for
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for some years and besides a
number of scientific papers on the greenhouse effect has recently published
"The Greenhouse Delusion: A Critique of 'Climate Change 2001" and will
speak on that subject.

* Dave Henderson (New Zealand) is a well known property developer who was
bankrupted by the IRD (New Zealand's IRS) but is now their landlord. His
topic: "How I Fought Inland Revenue and Ended Up Their Landlord." *
Rodney Hide (New Zealand), Member of Parliament (champion perk buster and
member of the Board of the Institute for Liberal® Values). His topic is:
"How to be an MP and Enjoy It."

* Louis James (USA) is an ISIL Director and CEO of Free- market.net. He
will speak on: "Tolkein's Ring: An Allegory for the Modern State"

* Lance Kennedy (New Zealand), author of Ecomyth, will speak on exposing
the junk science, disinformation and myths perpetrated by the radical Green
movement.

* Norman LaRocque (New Zealand) is an adviser to the Education Forum and
an Advisory council member of EG West Centre for Market Solutions in
Education at the University of Newcastle, UK. He will speak on: "Private
Education Around the World."

* Roger Kerr (New Zealand), a former senior official with New Zealand
Treasury Department, is Executive Director of the New Zealand Business
Roundtable. He will speak on "The Freedom Word in New Zealand and the
World" (why are some politicians afraid of the "freedom" word?)

* Lindsay Mitchell (New Zealand) is a Research Fellow at the Institute
for Liberal Values. She will speak on "Welfarism and the Destruction of
Values"

* Barun Mitra is ISIL's rep for India. He is founder and director of the
Liberty Institute in New Delhi – a non-profit research and educational
organization. He is author of the prize winning book Population: the
Ultimate Resource. His topic will be: "Development is Good for the
Environment".

* Jan Narveson (Canada) is Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Waterloo (Ontario, Canada) and is an Officer of the Order of Canada. He is
author of numerous books including the classic "The Libertarian Idea". He
will speak on "Globalization of Labour Markets: Gaps and Bridges."

* Jim Peron (New Zealand) is the Executive Director of the Institute for
Liberal Values and owner of Aristotle's Books in Auckland. His topic is:
"Globalisation and the Third World."

* Dr. William Rolleston (New Zealand) is chairman of the Life Sciences
Network. He will speak on "Genetic Modification: A Future in New Zealand?"

* Sudha Shenoy (Australia) is a lecturer in economic history at the
University of Newcastle in Australia. She is author India: Progress or
Poverty and Underdevelopment and Economic Growth. She will speak on,
"Austrian Economics and the Common Law"

* George H. Smith (USA) has served the Director of the Forum for
Philosophical Studies in Los Angeles and as a lecturer on American History
at the Cato Institute. He was also a lecturer on political philosophy and
intellectual history at George Mason University's Institute for Humane
Studies. He was author of the scripts for the official US Bicentennial tape
series (narrated by George C Scott and Walter Kronkite). He will speak on
"The Origins of Classical Liberalism."

* Robert White (New Zealand) is a tutor in political philosophy at the
University of Auckland, and is just finishing his thesis (via a Doctoral
Scholarship) on the political thought of Ayn Rand. His topic: "Ayn Rand's
Place in Liberalism."

* Plus more to be announced *

A Sensational Post-Conference Tour

We also have a spectacular 3-day Post-Conference North Island tour
planned. It will include a visit to the Art Deco town of Napier, an
excursion to Taupo and the largest lake in New Zealand where we will be
able to view Mount Ruapehu volcano. Then we will visit an active thermal
park area with geysers, steaming pools, bubbling mud pits, etc. Then we
will visit Plymouth and the famous Glow Worm caves of Waitomo. On the way
back we will enjoy some free time. Options include taking the the daring
and pulse-quickening high speed boat trip seen on recent TV New Zealand
travelogues — and for the utterly fearless, bungie jumping (both extra cost
options). In Auckland we will visit the famous Sky Tower to take in a
spectacular view of the city ... and much more. The post-tour is only
550NZ$ (shared accommodations) or 850NZ$ — single.

— TOUR DATES —

Post-Conference tour days are: July 26th (depart from conference hotel in
AM after breakfast), 27th and 28th (arriving late in Auckland). We will
stay at an Auckland hotel overnight and say our goodbyes in the morning of
the 29th after breakfast.

REGISTRATION

Your conference package is just 1099NZ$ for shared accommodations rate
(approx. $732US). (The single rate is 1499NZ$ ) The package includes
conference registration fees, 1st-class accommodations at the luxury
Novotel Rotorua hotel which features a grand view of a park the lake - plus
all meals (including an opening reception, and a gala closing banquet).
NOTE: Due to currency fluctuations, all conference fees are stated in New
Zealand dollar amounts. But please make payments in US Dollars - based on
NZ$ exchange rates at the time of payment. New Zealand has been the top
tourist destination in the world for two years in a row, and as a result we
are seeing many good deals in air travel. In particular, keep an eye on
Quantas Airlines for travel specials. Quite often attractive fares are
offered by Quantas - particularly for those who may choose to extend their
trip for a visit to Australia. Elaine Matheson, our travel agent at
Ellinwood Travel in Benicia, California has been carefully watching for
travel deals and alerting us when they appear (specials come and go). If
you have had trouble finding suitable fares, Elaine may be able to help.
Say you are with the ISIL group. Tel: (707) 748-0888 Fax: (707) 745-6234
ellinwood.elaine@sbcglobal.net
[Achtung!] 2003 Conference
Report: Vilnius, Lithuania 2002 Conference Report: Puerto
Vallarta, Mexico 2001
Conference Report: Dax, France International Society for Individual
Liberty 836-B Southampton Rd. #299 Benicia, CA 94510-1960 Phone: +707
746-8796 Fax: +707 746-8797 E-Mail: isil@isil.org

The foregoing event has also been advertised by the Heritage Association
www.heritage.org/about/community/

See also neoliberally related Institutions: The Acton Institute, 161
Ottawa NW, Ste. 301, Grand Rapids, MI 49503, 616/454-3080, fax
616/454-9454, info@acton.org The AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulato-ry
Studies, 1150 Seventeenth St., NW, Ste. 1100, Washington, DC 20036,
202/862-5847, fax 202/862-7169, jcenter@aei-brookings.org The American
Council on Science and Health, 1995 Broadway, 2nd Floor, New York, NY
10023-5860, 212/362-7044, fax 212/362-4919, acsh@acsh.org 602/275-1110, fax
602/275-2591 Association of American Physicians and Sur-geons, 1601 N.
Tucson Blvd., Ste. 9, Tucson, AZ 85716, 800/635-1196 The Bruges Group, 216
Linen Hall, 162-168 Regent St., London, W1B 5TB, 20/7287-4414, fax
20/7787-5522, info@brugesgroup.com The Capital Research Center, 1513 16th
St., NW, Washington DC 20036-1480, 202/483- 6900,

preilly@capitalresearch.org The Cato Institute, 1000 Massachusetts Ave.,
NW, Washington, DC 20001, 202/842-0200, fax 202/842-3490, service@cato.org
______________

SOROS castigated for considering libertarians to be extremists:

n/machan32.html>
George Soros's betrayal Source: Strike the Root Author: Tibor R. Machan
Country: United States

"Soros ... has been supporting Liberal Democrats lately and considers
libertarians extremists. It is sad, though, that a man who left the Nazis
and the Communists behind, as did I, would then opt not for a categorical
rejection of the use of coercive force in human relations but merely a
tempering of this, not allowing it to get too much out of hand." (3/2/04)

n/machan32.html>
George Soros's betrayal
Source: Strike the Root
Author: Tibor R. Machan
Country: United States

"Soros ... has been supporting Liberal Democrats lately and considers
libertarians extremists. It is sad, though, that a man who left the Nazis
and the Communists behind, as did I, would then opt not for a categorical
rejection of the use of coercive force in human relations but merely a
tempering of this, not allowing it to get too much out of hand." (3/2/04)

MEDITATIONS ON A HIGH HOLY DAY:
THE FOURTH OF JULY
By Walter A. McDougall

Foreign Policy Research Institute
WATCH ON THE WEST
www.fpri.org
Volume 5, Number 4
July 4, 2004

Walter A. McDougall is Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy
Research Institute and co-chair of FPRI's Center for the
Study of America and the West. He is also a Pulitzer
prizewinning historian and author of the just released
"Freedom Just Around the Corner: A New American History
1585-1828"(HarperCollins, 2004).

MEDITATIONS ON A HIGH HOLY DAY:
THE FOURTH OF JULY

By Walter A. McDougall

I. NATION WITH THE SOUL OF A CHURCH
Last September a group of apprehensive students gathered for
the first meeting of a seminar I was offering for the first
time. They weren't sure they wanted to take the class.
Indeed, they weren't even sure what it was about. Imagine,
then, their discomfort when I dispensed with all
introductory remarks and bade them sit still for 32 minutes
while I played a videotape of the entire presidential
inaugural ceremony from January 2001. "Forget whether you
favored Al Gore or George W. Bush," I admonished, "and try
to ignore Bill Clinton's smirks in the background. Just
watch the proceedings and think about what is transpiring."

After the last ruffles and flourishes I asked the students--
in a seeming non sequitur--what sorts of activities make up
the liturgy of a church or synagogue service. Prayers, they
answered, and hymns, psalms, a sermon. Did we just observe
those activities on the tape, I asked? We certainly did, if
we agree that inaugural addresses function as political
sermons. Did we witness a solemn procession, invocation of
the Divine, and convocation in which the congregation
celebrates its shared beliefs? Yes, we did. How about a
call to repentance and amendment of those ills that beset
our society? Yes, again. And a dismissal in which the
newly installed high priest calls on the assembled to go
forth in faith and do good works? Indeed. Well then, I
asked, if a presidential inauguration possesses all the
properties of a religious service, what is the religion it
serves? That, of course, was the mysterious subject of our
semester's quest "In Search of the American Civil Religion."

The spiritual qualities of public rhetoric in American
politics, courtrooms, churches, schools, and patriotic fetes
used to be so pervasive, familiar, and unobjectionable that
we citizens just took it for granted (until the advent of
litigious atheists). Our national motto is "In God We
Trust." Our Pledge says we're a nation "under God." Our
Congress and Supreme Court pray at the start of sessions.
Presidents of all parties and persuasions have made ritual
supplications that the United States might be blessed with
divine protection. The last stanza of "America" begins "Our
father's God to thee, author of liberty, to thee we sing"
and ends by naming "great God," not George III, "our King".
The last stanza of the "Star Spangled Banner" asks our
"heaven rescued land" to "praise the Power that has made and
preserved us a Nation." "America the Beautiful" asks that
"God shed His grace on thee."

Most Americans, even today, would likely agree with Boston
Puritans John Winthrop, John Adams, and Jonathan Mayhew,
Princeton Presbyterian Jonathan Witherspoon and his disciple
James Madison, Virginian Anglican (and Freemason) George
Washington, and Deists Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin
Franklin that Americans are "called unto liberty" (a phrase
from Paul's epistle to the Galatians)--that we are a new
chosen people and ours a new promised land, and that our
mission is to bestow liberty on all mankind, by example if
not exertion. To be sure, the majority of Americans always
found it easy to identify the God who watches over America
with the God of their Protestant theology. But thanks to
the free exercise of religion--the "lustre of our country"
ensured by the First Amendment--religious minorities have
been free to embrace the American Creed with equal or
greater fervor.

Thus did Bishop John Carroll, founder of the American
Catholic Church, "sing canticles of praise to the Lord" for
granting his flock "country now become our own and taking us
into her protection." Thus did Jewish immigrant Irving
Berlin liken Americans to the Children of Israel being led
through the Sinai: "God Bless America, land that I love,
stand beside her and guide her through the night with a
light from above." When Americans of all sects or no sect
gather in civil ceremonies to praise their freedom, honor
its Author, and rededicate themselves to their nation's
deals, they do not merely prove themselves a religious
people, they prove the United States of America is itself a
sort of religion, a civil religion, or as G. K. Chesterton
put it in 1922, "a nation with the soul of a church."

II. FAITH OF OUR FATHERS
Civil religion broadly defined is a universal phenomenon.
The ancient Greeks and Romans worshiped the gods and
goddesses whom they believed to be patrons of their local
city-states and regional empires. To chant "Great is Diana
of the Ephesians" or to burn incense to Caesar was to pay
political as well spiritual obeisance. The cults of the
god-kings and god-emperors of Egypt, China, Korea, and Japan
were civil as well as religious. Even monotheistic Judaism
displayed features of a civic cult in the eras of its
monarchy and two temples. In late medieval and early modern
Europe, the divine right of kings conflated civil and
religious loyalties, while the city-states of the Italian
Renaissance, emulating as the ancients, inspired their own
patronage cults albeit this time to saints (e.g., St. Mark
in Venice). But the modern concept of civil religion was
born of the Protestant Reformation's notion of civic polity
as a holy covenant or social contract made by the people
themselves. James Harrington, theoretician of Cromwell's
Puritan Commonwealth in mid-17th century England, and Jean-
Jacques Rousseau, philosopher from the Geneva Republic in
the mid-18th century, asked, what might hold a government of
the people together in the absence of royal or
ecclesiastical hierarchy? Their answer was civil religion, a
faith and commitment all the more powerful for being
voluntary (not imposed), devoted to the unity and prosperity
of the commonwealth (not a king or oneself), and inspired by
devotion to God or Nature (rather than corrupt human
authorities). Patriotic American choirs gave voice to such
religiosity when they sang in 1778, "To the King they shall
sing Hallelujah, and all the continent shall sing: down with
this earthly King; no king but God."

I was not aware of our American civil religion (ACR) until I
began researching my new book, Freedom Just Around the
Corner. Evidence of the ACR piled up until I was obliged to
make it a major theme in the story of American independence
and early national growth. Then, while preparing my
seminar, I learned how few Americans in the 19th and 20th
centuries were fully conscious of the religion they shared.
Walt Whitman, the ACR's poet laureate, certainly was, as was
Whitman's hero Abraham Lincoln, the ACR's martyr and
messiah. Later, when the United States got into the
business of exporting its faith in the Spanish-American and
First World Wars, a handful of scholars wrote books on "the
American religion" and "the religion of the flag." But
otherwise American statesmen, artists, teachers, and
preachers disseminated the creation myth, martyrology, moral
code, theology, liturgy, and eschatology of American
republicanism without explicitly acknowledging its status as
a transcendental creed.

Indeed, not until 1967 did Berkeley sociologist Robert N.
Bellah describe, in a celebrated article, what he christened
"the American Civil Religion." Curiously, what inspired him
to think about the matter was the 1961 inauguration of the
nation's first Roman Catholic president, John F. Kennedy.
Prior to that, intellectual scoffers could dismiss the "God
talk" permeating American public life as evangelical cant
aimed at Bible Belt voters. Bellah observed a young, hip,
liberal, rich, Harvard-trained Catholic politician intoning
"the belief that the rights of man come not from the
generosity of the state but from the hand of God" and
"asking His blessing and His help" in the knowledge "that
here on earth God's work must truly be our own." Fascinated
by the nonsectarian (or polysectarian) cast of this
rhetoric, Bellah recalled President Eisenhower's
observation, "Our government makes no sense unless it is
founded in a deeply felt religious faith--and I don't care
what it is!" Clearly there was more to this than feel-good
piety or pandering to the "religious right" (or, in past
eras, left). So Bellah turned to history and found he could
trace the ACR back to the Founding Fathers. They had indeed
preached a civil faith meant not to replace Bible-based
denominations, but rather to stand above them in benign
toleration so a disparate people might unite and fulfill the
glorious destiny God planned for them.

But who is this God of the Founders, the God of the ACR, if
not Jehovah or the Holy Trinity? He is the God with no
name, but a hundred names. Franklin called him Father of
Lights and Supreme Architect; Washington the Almighty Being,
Invisible Hand, and Parent of the Human Race; John Adams the
Patron of Order, Fountain of Justice, and Protector;
Jefferson the Infinite Power; Madison the Being who
Regulates the Destiny of Nations; Monroe merely Providence
and the Almighty; John Quincy Adams the Ark of our Salvation
and Heaven; Andrew Jackson that Power and Almighty Being Who
mercifully protected our national infancy; and so on down to
Lincoln who reached the tragic understanding that
Northerners and Southerners prayed--as Christians--to the
same God in the Civil War, but as Americans must hear "the
mystic chords of memory," indulge "the better angels of our
nature," admit "the judgments of the Lord are true and
righteous altogether," and strive to bind up the nation's
wounds "with malice toward none, with charity for all, with
firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right."

Lincoln never could bring himself to embrace Christian
faith, but was himself the Christ of the ACR. Jackson posed
for electoral purposes as a Presbyterian, but was in fact a
fervent Freemason who believed in a God above all
theologies, the very God whose All-Seeing Eye looks down
benignly on the Unfinished Pyramid of the Great Seal of the
United States and our one-dollar bill. Jefferson was an
Enlightened philosopher who clung romantically to a faith in
reason alone. Yet they, no less than devout Protestant
presidents, swore fealty to the Providence that seemed to
watch over the American people.

"Seemed to watch over" is a loaded phrase. For however much
historians trace the intellectual origins of the American
Creed to Harrington's republicanism, John Locke's human
rights philosophy ("life, liberty, and property"), the
Scottish Enlightenment ("the pursuit of happiness," "common
sense," and free markets), English common law, Whig
ideology, and the evangelical individualism of the First
Great Awakening, the fact remains that the ACR derived in
large part from American colonists' experience over 150
years. The Bible makes clear that Jews and Christians did
not invent their religions; rather it was their experience
of Divine intercessions in history that turned them into
Jews and Christians in the first place. In like fashion,
the things that happened to American colonists--material
blessings beyond measure, deliverance from "Egyptian
bondage" in the Old World, the liberty and self-governance
sheer remoteness allowed, a sense of being guided for some
higher purpose, not least the extraordinary series of
"lucky" events that permitted 13 ragtag, divided colonies to
win independence from earth's greatest empire--invited
Patriots to embrace an inchoate but powerful faith that
they, their forbears, and their descendants were actors in a
play scripted by the Author of History. Indeed, it is
almost impossible to imagine the Continental Congress,
comprised mostly of wealthy, well-connected men with the
most to lose by rebellion, ever taking the leap of declaring
independence without faith that the justice of their cause
ensured divine blessing on their cause.

But divine blessing comes at a price. That was the message
of Abraham, Moses, Jonah, Jeremiah, St. Paul, and the
Revelation to St. John. It was also the message of the
radical Deist and immediate inspiration for the Declaration
of Independence, Tom Paine.

III. PROPHET OF EXODUS
Early in 1775 the 13 colonies were ablaze with resistance to
Britain's Intolerable Acts. In the years following the
great Anglo-American victory in the last French and Indian
War, the British Parliament, with the blessing of the king,
violated all the spirits that had infused the English
imperial mission for 200 years: anti-Catholicism, rivalry
with France and Spain, agricultural and mercantile
capitalism, and displacement of "savage" peoples who made
little use of their lands (e.g., the Irish and Native
Americans). Thus, Americans were shocked by Parliament's
Quebec Act, which tolerated the Roman church in newly won
Canada, outraged by the royal Proclamation Line forbidding
new frontier settlements in the name of sheltering Indians,
and incredulous that the peace treaty of 1763 drove France
out of North America, only to cede the west bank of the
Mississippi to equally hated Spain. But most of all, the
new taxes, commercial restrictions, and monopolies imposed
on the colonies, whether or not they were particularly
onerous, forced colonists to ask what taxes and monopolies
Parliament might not impose in the future if its powers and
sovereignty were once granted in principle. No wonder
Patriots such as John Dickinson spied in Parliament's acts a
plot to reduce the colonists to the status of slavery.

The Stamp Act Congress of 1765 and Continental Congress in
1774 urged the colonies to unite, resist, and make
themselves worthy of divine protection by boycotting English
luxuries and staging days of fasting and prayer. The
British were equally determined to punish colonial
impudence, fearing that their whole empire might unravel if
they did not. Accordingly, after the infamous Boston Tea
Party, the Royal Navy blockaded the port and Redcoats
patrolled its streets. Down in Philadelphia, Congress urged
solidarity with Massachusetts lest all the colonies lose
their liberties, while Patrick Henry preached a fiery sermon
in Richmond. Everyone knows its stirring climax, "Give me
liberty or give me death!" But Henry preceded that by
assuring his listeners:

We shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God
who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will
raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle,
sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the
active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. If we
were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire
>from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and
slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard
on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable--and let it
come! I repeat it, sir, let it come.

The war came in April 1775 on Lexington Green. Yet the
colonies' representatives shrank for over a year from
severing their ties to the crown. Many New Englanders and
Virginians may have been eager to train the rhetorical and
genuine cannon, so recently aimed at the French crown and
Catholic church, on the English crown and Anglican church.
But many New Yorkers, Rhode Islanders, and South Carolinians
looked to their trade, which was bound to suffer gravely in
war. The Quakers of the Delaware Valley were pacifist on
principle. Several colonies counted as many Loyalists
(Tories) as Patriots. How was it then, in the words of John
Adams, that thirteen clocks at last struck as one?

Tom Paine was a 37-year-old ne'er-do-well when he landed in
Philadelphia in November 1774. The rudely educated son of a
Quaker father and Anglican mother, he had failed in two
marriages and numerous jobs ranging from corset-maker to
collector of taxes on tobacco and liquor. His sole
achievement in life was a broadside exposing corruption
among excise officials, which he blamed on the low wages
they received. But by chance (or Providence), the colonial
agent in London, Benjamin Franklin, advised Paine to seek
his fortune in America. Armed with Franklin's
recommendation, Paine was invited to write articles for the
Pennsylvania Magazine which in turn caught the eye of Dr.
Benjamin Rush. He spied in this fellow a fearless
polemicist in the mold of George III's nemesis, John Wilkes.

So Rush suggested that Paine pen an essay weighing the
arguments for and against independence. He even suggested
the title. But Paine's Common Sense did much more than
weigh arguments. His choleric 50-page indictment of British
oppression targeted the king himself, not misguided
ministers or members of Parliament. It took as its text the
Old Testament prophet Samuel, who rebuked the Israelites for
demanding a king when they had the Lord and His prophets and
judges to govern them. It invited Americans to heed
Samuel's godly admonition and liberate themselves and
mankind from three millennia of oppression. It reminded
Americans how they were uniquely blessed with self-
government in a new world. It described the stark choice
faced by the colonists as one between acquiescing in their
own enslavement, which amounted to rebellion against God's
purpose for man, and claiming their freedom, which amounted
to rebellion against the crown. Indeed, Paine accused
colonists who shrank from a declaration of independence of
lacking not only common sense, but virtue and manhood
itself.

Published in January 1776, Common Sense went through so many
printings that 150,000 copies were in circulation by spring,
most of them read or heard by multiple people. In
Washington's estimation, the "unanswerable" tract worked a
magnificent change in its readers' minds. With brilliant
intuition, Paine tapped both vocabularies--Enlightenment
philosophy and moral evangelism--that resonated with
Americans eager to know their destiny. He demanded the
colonies separate from Britain before they themselves were
corrupted beyond redemption. His sublime aphorisms,
exhortations, and jeremiads thrilled and horrified. Paine
did in print what Patrick Henry did with his voice.

Yet liberty comes at a price, which Paine was not sure
Americans were willing to pay. So, no less than John
Winthrop's "Citty Upon a Hill" sermon of 1630, Paine's
Common Sense echoed the farewell address in Deuteronomy, in
which Moses promised the children of Israel every blessing
if they hearkened to the law of the Lord, but warned they
would be cast out and a byword among nations if they
rejected the Lord and the law. Paine foresaw a continental
union of limitless potential arising in North America, yet
warned that that union might prove as fragile as glass. He
damned governmental authority, yet called for its relentless
exercise lest the American cause abort. He told Americans
they were like Noah's family, free to begin the world over
again, yet suspected they lacked the virtue that task
required. He preached liberty, yet called on Patriots to
repress enemies in their midst. He extolled equality, yet
feared "the mind of the multitude." He foresaw unimagined
prosperity, yet warned that materialism bored and corrupted.
He praised Americans' rebelliousness, yet chided them for
their lawlessness. He pleaded for reason, yet played on a
keyboard of emotions ranging from hatred, anger, and
vengeance to fear, self-love, and self-doubt. In fact, the
pamphlet's demagogic style and "democratical" implications
moved John Adams to write a hasty rebuttal.

But Paine, after just one year in America, understood the
colonists' needs better than Adams. Paine preached a civil
religion in language that appealed to Americans of whatever
persuasion. Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and Baptists
nodded in agreement when Paine labeled vice the solvent of
liberty and established churches and monarchies the symptoms
of sin, not its correctives. Deists and skeptics nodded in
agreement when Paine employed Biblical allusions to make
secular political points. "Ye that oppose independence now,
ye know not what ye do" made independence itself the Messiah
and fainthearted colonists the Roman soldiers on Calvary.
In sum, Christians reading Common Sense found in it the God
of the Bible and a politics derived from religion. Deists
found in the pamphlet the God of Nature and a religion
derived from politics. Paine even foresaw the three ways by
which the colonists might achieve nationhood: "by the legal
voice of the people in Congress; by a military power; or by
a mob." He hoped for a combination of all three, which is
precisely what Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Massachusetts
proceeded to make.

Paine's remarkable pamphlet cemented the alliance between
the Awakened and the Enlightened, summoned them to a just
war, and promised a kind of heaven on earth if they won.
That is why some historians miss the point when they
denigrate the role of religion in the American rebellion.
The American cause was profoundly religious for Theists and
Deists alike because both identified America's future with a
Providential design, both entertained millenarian hopes, and
both placed their cosmologies at the service of an
overarching civil religion. Paine, like St. Paul, became
"all things to all men," crafting a template for all
American political rhetoric to come. He made unity the
first and greatest civic virtue and did unite most Americans
in hatred and fear of external oppressors and internal
dissenters. Paine implied that to be lukewarm or cold
toward the glorious cause was sacrilege. Paine invited--
nay, commanded--colonists to become part of his ubiquitous
"we," adding always the not-so-veiled threat that "we" will
get all who don't. Devising a new form of government--"the
noblest, purest constitution on the face of the earth"--
could wait. The first task was to wrest power away from
corrupt British lords. That could only be done by winning
the war, which could only be done by declaring independence.
Only then would Americans be forced to hang together lest
they be hanged as traitors. Only then could Americans gain
the French and Spanish help needed to prevail in the war,
and so enlist monarchy in a holy war against monarchy.

IV. PASSOVER
During the months Common Sense swept up and down the
Atlantic seaboard, two wars of nerves played themselves out.
The first was in Paris, where the court of Louis XVI balked
at aiding the English colonies before being assured of their
commitment to independence. The second was in Philadelphia,
where the Continental Congress balked at declaring
independence before being assured of French aid! The French
logjam broke on May 2, 1776, when Louis approved clandestine
shipments of money and arms to the colonial rebels. The
American logjam broke on May 15, when Congress, riding the
storm stirred up by Paine, instructed the 13 colonies to
suppress royal authority and organize as autonomous states.

Most colonies already had conventions or committees at work
designing provisional governments. These were for the most
part in the hands of radical Patriots, being chosen by
bodies that prohibited voting by Tories. They justified
their acts with local declarations of independence that
borrowed freely from each other's language and displayed
remarkable similarities. Almost all cited the king's use of
foreign mercenaries (the Hessians) as the last straw,
justified separation by appeal to natural law or Providence,
and named as their purpose the preservation of liberties.
Jefferson described preservation of liberty as "the whole
object of the present controversy" and rued having to go to
Philadelphia because it meant he would miss Virginia's
constitutional convention.

Patriots knew the survival of their 13 new sovereignties
depended on the success of a people acting "in Congress."
Hence the May 15 resolution called on colonies to fashion
governments that were not only "sufficient to the exigencies
of their affairs" but conduced to the happiness and safety
of America in general and provided "for defense of lives,
liberties, and properties against the hostile invasions and
cruel depredations of their enemies." Congress thereby
proclaimed the existence of a new people and nation, lurched
into republicanism, and echoed Paine's call for vigilance
against Tories, traitors, and pacifists, as well as the
king's men. Some delegates protested the haste, but down in
Richmond on the same day Edmund Randolph authorized
Virginia's delegation to propose that Congress declare the
colonies "free and independent states" so they could make
foreign alliances. The Carolinas and Georgia, menaced by
British invasion, likewise instructed their delegations to
pursue all measures necessary to defend America and win
foreign allies.

On June 7, Richard Henry Lee moved that Congress declare
independence and unite under a constitution. Such audacious
steps would be worse than useless if not unanimous, but
foot-draggers argued that the Middle colonies were still
undecided. Proponents retorted that "the people" of the
Middle colonies were in fact pro-independence, even if some
of their delegates frustrated popular will. So Congress
agreed to postpone a vote until July 1, which gave both
sides three weeks to bully, bribe, cajole, or persuade
undecided delegates from Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey,
and New York. Meanwhile, a committee chaired by John Adams
was charged with preparing a text. Since the other members,
notably Franklin, had more important chores to perform, they
asked their cerebral 33-year-old colleague Jefferson to
scribble out a first draft.

"American Scripture" is the epithet historian Pauline Maier
attached to the Declaration of Independence. And rightly
so, because it did become holy writ and is venerated today
like a relic. But it did not begin life in apotheosis.
Jefferson himself confessed that he took up the quill in his
parlor on Market Street not to discover "new principles, or
new arguments," but simply to state "the common sense of the
subject." What is more, most of the original passages in
Jefferson's draft were not very good, while the good ones
were not very original. The text's lofty philosophical
introduction, bill of particulars against King George, and
syllogistic conclusion calling for independence were a
pastiche of phrases lifted from Paine, the "little
declarations" issued by colonies, and Virginia's magnificent
Declaration of Rights written by George Mason and published
in Philadelphia on June 12. It was Mason who based
Virginia's government on the premise that all men are "born
equally free and independent." It was Mason who listed the
rights of man as the "enjoyment of Life and Liberty, with
the Means of acquiring and possessing Property, and pursuing
and obtaining Happiness." It was Mason who traced those
rights to "God and Nature, vested in, and consequently
derived from the People." It was Mason who called for
abolition of privilege, separation of powers, an independent
judiciary, a bill of rights, a free press, and "the fullest
Toleration in the Exercise of Religion."

Jefferson did compose the elegant preamble "When in the
course of human events_," tighten Mason's list to "life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," and conclude with
the moving pledge of "our lives, fortunes, and sacred
honor." But in between those majestic heights lay a murky
swamp of complaints that stick to a reader's boots even
today. One that especially troubled Congress was
Jefferson's diatribe against the British people, whom he
accused of being "deaf to the voice of justice and
consanguinity" despite "our former love for them" and
necessitating "our everlasting Adieu!" Its romantic and
false sentimentality aside, the passage shifted the focus of
American ire away from the crown while gratuitously
insulting the very people Congress hoped might pressure
Parliament to change course.

More bizarre still, Jefferson embarrassed American merchants
and planters by blaming the British crown for the slave
trade. Since he cannot possibly have believed this canard,
he must have been groping for some way to square the
persistence of slavery with his postulate "all men are
created equal." Congress retained the latter phrase for its
ring, but otherwise saw the wisdom in taking its stand on
particular abuses, not universal principles. So Congress
deleted a full fourth of Jefferson's draft, tweaked the
rest, and appealed to Providence at the end--all to good
effect. Nevertheless, Jefferson maintained his text had
been "mangled" and went into a funk that lasted all summer.
But as Richard Henry Lee put it, so long as the Declaration
did no harm, its wording was less important than "the Thing
itself."

Still, "the Thing itself" was far from certain during the
days Jefferson worked on the draft. The New England-
Virginia alliance appeared to hold firm, but South
Carolinians expressed doubts about independence, while
delegates from New York--a Tory stronghold--pleaded a lack
of instructions. Most anxious were delegates from the
Delaware Valley, where the stakes were gigantic. For if
Pennsylvania's Quakers, pietist Germans, and Tories carried
a "nay" on independence, chances were New Jersey, Delaware,
and New York (soon to be under British occupation) would
follow suit and the American edifice collapse for want of a
keystone. Exactly how that was forestalled will never be
known, but the story began in 1774, when Proprietary
Governor John Penn forbade the Pennsylvania assembly to send
delegates to the First Continental Congress. Dickinson
defied Penn by calling an ad hoc convention that met in the
same Carpenters' Hall as the Congress. Penn hastily
summoned the regular assembly into session to restore his
authority, with the result that Pennsylvania now had two
legislatures speaking in the name of the people. As late as
spring 1776 a majority of Penn's assemblymen opposed
independence. That suggests that the May 15 call from
Congress to suppress authority "under the crown" may have
been, among other things, an invitation to local Patriots to
disperse Penn's assembly by force. Pennsylvania's
militiamen did not go that far, but in mid-June they
resolved to ignore any orders issuing from the assembly.
The atmosphere in steamy Philadelphia could hardly have been
more electric.

War news also weighed on wafflers in Congress. Back in
autumn 1775, a militia force under Richard Montgomery struck
north via Lake Champlain in hopes of conquering Canada.
Washington supported him with a second detachment under
Benedict Arnold. But a winter campaign in Quebec was
madness: the two columns lost half their men before reaching
the citadel on the St. Lawrence. Still, Arnold and
Montgomery threw their thousand frigid Americans into
Quebec's lower town in the midst of a blizzard on New Year's
Eve. A melee ensued in which Montgomery was killed, Arnold
was wounded, and young Aaron Burr was heroic. But the
garrison held, and when reinforcements arrived in the
spring, the Redcoats pushed south to menace New England with
invasion. Elsewhere, the news seemed better. In North
Carolina, Patriots routed a band of Scots Loyalists at
Moore's Creek in February 1776. In New England, General
Howe evacuated his Redcoats from Boston by sea on March 17.
In South Carolina (though Congress did not know it yet), the
citizens of Charleston, led by Christopher Gadsden and
William Moultrie, pummeled a British squadron from their
palmetto forts. But even good news portended bad. Yes,
those crazy Highlanders were cut down, but they proved how
easily Tory militias might organize. Yes, Howe had left
Boston, but he was free to return in greater force at a time
and place of his choosing. Yes, Charleston humiliated the
Royal Navy, but what vengeance might its proud captains
exact elsewhere?

Indeed, by July 1, 1776, when Congress resumed debate on
Lee's motions, hundreds of sails had already been sighted at
sea off Long Island. Was this the right moment to declare
independence, or the worst possible? Would a clean break
with King George end equivocation, energize the war effort,
and secure an alliance with France? Or would it unleash
civil wars in the states, steel British resolve, and condemn
members of Congress to the gallows? Dickinson suspected the
latter. He told of the folly of tearing down one's house in
winter before a replacement was built, warned that the
British lion had barely begun to roar, and imagined Indian
scalping parties rampaging down Market and Wall Streets.
John Adams turned no magic phrases, but made a sincere and
logical case that no alternative to independence remained
and freedom was worth any risk. The vote was a letdown for
both. Nine colonies favored independence, Pennsylvania and
South Carolina split narrowly against it, Delaware
deadlocked (with one member absent), and New York abstained.
What happened next is uncertain except that many comings and
goings were made that thunderous summer evening. Caesar
Rodney, the missing Delaware delegate, rode all night
through rain and lightning to cast an exhausted, asthmatic
"aye" on July 2. The South Carolinians were probably
brought into line by Virginians. But what turned
Pennsylvania around is a mystery. All we know is that the
two dissenters, Dickinson and Robert Morris, failed to
attend the caucus the following day. Had John Hancock, the
wealthy president of Congress, bought them off in some
fashion? Were they threatened in dark corners by Patriot
goons? Or did they just shrink from taking responsibility
for aborting the majority cause? Whatever the reason,
Pennsylvania's delegates divided 3-2 in favor of
independence instead of 4-3 against, permitting Congress to
declare itself "unanimously" (New York still abstaining) the
voice of the people of the United States of America on July
2, 1776.

What occurred on the Fourth of July was the anticlimactic
approval of the text of the Declaration, which was generally
read once on parade grounds, tavern steps, and village
greens, then cheered and forgotten. Patriots had more
pressing concerns. For on July 3, 1776, General Howe began
to land 32,000 Redcoats and Hessians on Staten Island, just
sixty miles from Philadelphia. No wonder Congress
suppressed distribution of official signed copies of its
treasonous Declaration until the military situation
improved, at least for awhile, in January 1777.

V. THE FOURTH OF JULY IN AMERICA'S HOLY "CHURCH CALENDAR"
Like all great religions, the ACR only gradually developed
its creeds, canonized scriptures, inspired hymns and
liturgies, blessed its martyrs, commemorated heroes, and
sanctified holidays. Indeed, Jefferson's main contribution
came less from his role in the Declaration than his role as
the young nation's premier politician, founder of its party
system, and theologian of unity. Even after the
Constitution was ratified in 1789, the content of the ACR
remained a matter of hot dispute. Only in 1801, when
Jefferson delivered his masterful inaugural address, did
Americans acquire a creed and catechism. The first
principle, as always, was unity, hence Jefferson, the first
"party man," told his people "We are all Federalists, we are
all Republicans." Next, he pronounced us a people
"acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which
by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the
happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter."
Next, he told us what we revere, including

Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or
persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and
honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances
with none; the support of the State governments in all their
rights...; the preservation of the General Government in its
whole constitutional vigor...; a jealous care of the right
of election by the people; absolute acquiescence in the
decisions of the majority...; a well-disciplined militia...;
the supremacy of the civil over the military authority;
economy in public expense...; the honest payment of our
debts...; encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as
its handmaid....; freedom of religion; freedom of the press,
and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas
corpus and trial by juries impartially selected. [These]
should be the creed of our political faith.

The Banquo's Ghost in that litany was, of course, slavery,
which mocked Jefferson's equal justice but persisted thanks
to Jefferson's states' rights. Americans were aware of that
scandal, yet chose to ignore it in the name of their highest
principle, national unity. For without unity there would be
no "church" at all and surely no continental and global
destiny under Providence. So Americans formed a conspiracy
of silence over slavery that lasted long enough for them to
annex Texas, occupy the Oregon Territory, and seize
California and the Southwest in the Mexican War of 1846-48.
During those decades of expansion and "Jacksonian
democracy," the iconography of the ACR reflected both the
flimsiness and mighty ambitions of the Union. There were no
official holidays, and the only ones unofficially celebrated
were the Fourth of July and Washington's Birthday (a
republican version of the King's Birthday). However, New
England Puritans, eschewing "popish" feasts such as
Christmas and Easter, contributed four precocious examples
of civil religious observance: Election Day (honoring the
polity); Training Day (honoring the militia); Graduation Day
(honoring education); and Thanksgiving Day (honoring the
Lord's blessing on America).

The only members of an American pantheon prior to 1850 were
Washington and Franklin. The Star-Spangled Banner grew
popular, but another century passed before it became the
national anthem. Nor was the flag, though "dyed in the
blood of our forefathers," especially revered until the
Mexican War. What did fire the American imagination was
liberty and its fruits, peace and prosperity. The eagle and
goddess of liberty were ubiquitous subjects of illustration,
the former protecting the latter. But by the 1820s and
'30s, liberty increasingly surrendered her place to images
of boundless frontiers, bountiful crops, bustling ports,
busy canals, boisterous machinery, booming exports, and the
promise of more to come for generations unborn. The ACR's
balance between worship of God and Mammon tilted dangerously
in the direction of Mammon.

No wonder the Constitution, a compromise contract that
preserved national unity and incidentally guaranteed
slavery, became the lodestone for Southerners and
Northerners, Democrats and Whigs, while the Declaration of
Independence was squirreled away and ignored. The actual
document was almost lost several times and almost destroyed
in the British sack of Washington, D.C. in 1814. It then
sat for years in the archives of the State Department until,
in 1841, it went on modest display in the Patent Office. At
last the schism in the ACR over slavery-- and the Civil War
it fomented--resurrected the Declaration as the premier
statement of the American Creed. At Gettysburg, Lincoln
reminded the American people what had happened "Four score
and seven years ago," trumped states' constitutional rights
with "all men are created equal," and bade Americans'
midwife "a new birth of freedom."

Still, the document itself stayed in hiding except for a
cameo appearance at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition.
Needless to say, the parchment grew frayed, rotten, and
faded. Only in 1921 did the Library of Congress fashion a
votary for the Declaration and seek scientific methods to
preserve it. Only during World War II and the Cold War was
the Declaration (and Constitution) beatified. Perhaps
Americans needed, then more than ever, to remember what they
stood for in their mortal combat against fascists and
communists. So at last the "American Scripture" came to be
enshrined in a chemically and climatically controlled
tabernacle ringed by a chancel rail over which endless
queues of pilgrims squint. Some scoffers have drawn
analogies to the embalmed Lenin and Stalin, saying that if
the Spirit of 1776 still lived in Americans' hearts, they
would not make a piece of paper into an idol. But the
analogy could not be falser. Communism was born of faith in
an idea that communists tried to prove was still living by
embalming human beings. Americanism was born of faith in
human beings, who prove their faith lives by embalming and
venerating their founding ideas.

Indeed, the ACR's entire "church calendar" is a cycle of
feasts and commemorations of the human beings who kindled
and defended the American faith. Starting in January, they
include: Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Presidents' Day, VE
Day, Armed Forces Day, Memorial Day, Flag Day, VJ Day, Labor
Day, Columbus Day, Constitution Day, Veterans Day, and last
but not least Thanksgiving. Indeed, if there is a second
candidate for high holy honors in the ACR, it is surely the
Pilgrims' original feast. For on Thanksgiving all
Americans, whatever our creed or source, may comfortably
praise whatever we choose to name God for carrying our
immigrant ancestors safely across the water, forging us into
a nation dedicated to humane propositions, and blessing us
(relative to the rest of the world) with unimaginable
wealth.

But the highest of all holy days is still the Fourth of
July. After the Civil War it gained even more prominence
because Independence Day called Southerners and Northerners
alike back to what unified them in the first place: their
faith in themselves, in God's special providence, in their
ancestors' courage and sacrifice, in the life, liberty, and
pursuit of happiness a unified federal republic made
possible. Should the Fourth of July ever cease to be a day
"set apart" for joy, pride, and community, then the text
approved on that day will turn as cold as the body in
Lenin's tomb. But so, too, may it perish if the Fourth of
July becomes nothing but a day of self-congratulation and
pride. It is a day when Americans, especially young ones,
must reflect on how absurdly implausible the birth of this
nation was, how its survival hung by a thread on many
occasions, and how its Founders were emboldened because--be
they Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Deists, or Freemasons -
they believed the Author of History meant this to happen.

* * *

Portions of this essay are adapted from Prof. McDougall's
Freedom Just Around the Corner: A New American History 1585-
1828 (New York: HarperCollins, 2004). That book's footnotes
provide extensive documentation on the topics discussed in
this essay. A selected bibliography of the works consulted
(and quoted from) for this essay is available at FPRI's
website, www.fpri.org.


----------------------------------------------------------
You may forward this email, provided that you send it in
its entirety, attribute it to the Foreign Policy Research
Institute, and include our web address (www.fpri.org). If
you post it on a mailing list, please contact FPRI with the
name, location, purpose, and number of recipients of the
mailing list.

If you receive this as a forward and would like to be placed
directly on our mailing list, send email to FPRI@fpri.org.
Include your name, address, and affiliation.

For further information or to inquire about membership in
FPRI, please contact Alan Luxenberg at al@fpri.org or call
(215) 732-3774 x105.

If you would like to be removed from our distribution list,
please type "Remove" in an email message to fpri@fpri.org.
----------------------------------------------------------

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?