Why anyone should have troubled to crucify the Christ of Liberal
Protestantism has always been a mystery.

- Readings in St John's Gospel part 2 p.xxiv

It is sheer lack of imagination to suppose that a vista of a
million million years can give more significance than a week or a fortnight
to our moral strivings, if at the end it is all to be as though we have
never been at all.

- Nature, Man & God p.449

Humanism consists, roughly speaking, in the acceptance of many
Christian standards of life with a rejection or neglect of the only sources
of power to attain to them.

- The Hope of a New World p.64

In 2001, Prof Gareth Jones (author of several books on bioethics; HOD
anatomy U of Otago) wrote
http://www.spc.org.nz/Science.asp :-

>At present, attempts to clone individuals, whether sheep or mice let alone
>humans, are fraught with uncertainty. This uncertainty alone is
>sufficient to render any attempts at human reproductive cloning profoundly
>unethical. It is likely that this situation will change at some future
>time, but even then clones will differ from their progenitors (if only
>because of extranuclear DNA). They will not be nearly as similar as
>identical twins.

Yet this morning this corporation 'Genetic Savings and Clone' is
given a free advertorial on Radio NZ's non-commercial national programme,
claiming with no hint of challenge that the 'cloned' cats will have
identical genetics to the nucleus-donor cat.

The entrepreneur further asserted, against all the evidence but
again without any sceptical interviewing, that their health will be fine.

R

Cloned Cat Sale Generates Ethics Debate
34 minutes ago
By PAUL ELIAS, AP Biotechnology Writer

SAN FRANCISCO - The first cloned-to-order pet sold in the United States is
named Little Nicky, a 9-week-old kitten delivered to a Texas woman saddened
by the loss of a cat she had owned for 17 years.

The kitten cost its owner $50,000 and was created from DNA from her beloved
cat, named Nicky, who died last year.

"He is identical. His personality is the same," the owner, Julie, told The
Associated Press in a telephone interview. Although she agreed to be
photographed with her cat, she asked that her last name and hometown not be
disclosed because she said she fears being targeted by groups opposed to
cloning.

Yet while Little Nicky, who was delivered two weeks ago, frolics in his new
home, the kitten's creation
and sale has reignited fierce ethical and scientific debate over cloning
technology, which is rapidly
advancing.

The company that created Little Nicky, Sausalito-based Genetic Savings and
Clone, said it hopes by May to have produced the world's first cloned dog -
a much more lucrative market than cats.
While it is based in the San Francisco Bay area, the company's cloning work
will be done at its new lab in Madison, Wis.
Commercial interests already are cloning prized cattle for about $20,000
each, and scientists have cloned mice, rabbits, goats, pigs, horses - and
even the endangered banteng, a wild bull that is found mostly in Indonesia.
Several research teams around the world, meanwhile, are racing to create
the first cloned monkey.
Aside from human cloning, which has been achieved only at the microscopic
embryo stage, no cloning project has fueled more debate than the marketing
plans of Genetic Savings and Clone.
"It's morally problematic and a little reprehensible," said David Magnus,
co-director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics at Stanford University.
"For $50,000, she could have provided homes for a lot of strays."
Animals rights activists complain that new feline production systems aren't
needed because thousands of stray cats are euthanized each year for want of
homes.

Lou Hawthorne, Genetic Savings and Clone's chief executive, said his
company purchases thousands of ovaries from spay clinics across the
country. It extracts the eggs, which are combined with the genetic
material from the animals to be cloned.

Critics also complain that the technology is available only to the wealthy,
that using it to create house pets is frivolous and that customers grieving
over lost pets have unrealistic expectations of what they're buying.

In fact, the first cat cloned in 2001 had a different coat from its genetic
donor, underscoring that environment and other biological variables make it
impossible to exactly duplicate animals.

"The thing that many people do not realize is that the cloned cat is not
the same as the original," said Bonnie Beaver, a Texas A&M animal
behaviorist who heads the American Veterinary Medical Association, which
has no position on the issue. "It has a different personality. It has
different life experiences. They want Fluffy, but it's not Fluffy."
Scientists also warn that cloned animals suffer from more health problems
than their traditionally bred peers and that cloning is still a very
inexact science. It takes many gruesome failures to produce just a single
clone. Genetic Savings and Clone said its new cloning technique, developed
by animal cloning pioneer James Robl has improved survival rates, health
and appearance. The new technique seeks to condense and transfer only the
donor's genetic material to a surrogate's egg instead of an entire cell
nucleus.

Between 15 percent and 45 percent of cloned cats born alive die within the
first 30 days, Hawthorne said. But he said that range is consistent with
natural births, depending on the breed of cat.

Austin, Texas-based ViaGen Inc., which has cloned hundreds of cows, pigs
and goats, also is experimenting with the new cloning technique.
"The jury is still out, but the research shows it to be promising," company
president Sara Davis said. "The technology is improving all the time."
Genetic Savings and Clone has been behind the creation of at least five
cats since 2001, including the first one created.

It hopes to deliver as many as five more clones to customers who have paid
the company's $50,000 fee. By the end of next year, it hopes to have cloned
as many as 50 cats.

The company has yet to turn a profit.

"God Is With Us": Hitler's Rhetoric and the Lure of "Moral Values"
by Maureen Farrell
http://www.buzzflash.com/farrell/04/12/far04041.html

"God does not make cowardly nations free." -- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

A couple weeks ago, while asserting that the Founding Founders
intended for the U.S. government to be infused with Christianity,
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said that the Holocaust was able
to flourish in Germany because of Europe's secular ways. "Did it turn
out that, by reason of the separation of church and state, the Jews
were safer in Europe than they were in the United States of America?"
Scalia asked a congregation at Manhattan's Shearith Israel synagogue.
"I don't think so."

One might expect regular citizens to be ignorant of history, but
a Supreme Court Justice? Does he imagine that the phrase "Gott mit Uns"
was a German clothier's interpretation of "Got Milk"?

If photographic evidence of the Third Reich's Christian leanings
were not enough, Hitler's own speeches and writings prove, at the very
least, that he presented many of the same faith-based arguments heard
in America today. Religion in the schools? Hitler was for it.
Intellectuals who practiced "anti-Christian, smug individualism"?
According to Hitler, their days were numbered. Divine Providence's role
in shaping Germany's ultimate victory? Who could argue? In other words,
there is enough historical evidence to color Scalia deluded. Writing
for Free Inquiry, John Patrick Michael Murphy explained:

"Hitler's Germany amalgamated state with church. Soldiers of
the vermacht wore belt buckles inscribed with the following: "Gott mit
uns" (God is with us). His troops were often sprinkled with holy water
by the priests. It was a real Christian country whose citizens were
indoctrinated by both state and church and blindly followed all
authority figures, political and ecclesiastical.

Hitler, like some of the today's politicians and preachers,
politicized "family values." He liked corporeal punishment in home and
school. Jesus prayers became mandatory in all schools under his
administration. While abortion was illegal in pre-Hitler Germany, he
took it to new depths of enforcement, requiring all doctors to report
to the government the circumstances of all miscarriages. He openly
despised homosexuality and criminalized it."

For anyone wanting even more proof, Mein Kampf is chock full of
the Fuhrer's musings on God. ("I believe that I am acting in accordance
with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the
Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord," Hitler wrote). But
anti-Semitic rants aside, some of Hitler's religious musings are
interchangeable with Mr. Bush's.

Hitler was raised a Catholic and spoke of his faith in God, yet,
singling out his rants against religion, politicians and pastors
continue to characterize him as a pagan barbarian. Such distortions are
convenient -- particularly in an age where propaganda concerning "moral
values" is readily gobbled up and Christian nation legislation waits in
the wings -- but, to paraphrase the Bible, overlooking the truth will
not make us free.

Scalia, who also cited the Bible to claim that government
"derives its moral authority from God," is hardly alone in his
assertions. Leo Strauss, the philosopher who has influenced
neoconservativism, and by proxy, George Bush's America, felt that
religion, like deception, was crucial to maintaining social order.
Meanwhile, neoconservative kingpin Irving Kristol has argued similar
points -- bragging about how easy it is to fool the public into
accepting the government's actions while arguing that America's
Founding Fathers were wrong to insist on the separation of church and
state. Why? According to Jim Lobe, it's because religion, as Strauss
and his disciples see it, is "absolutely essential in order to impose
moral law on the masses who otherwise would be out of control."

Saying that neoconservatives believe that secular society is
undesirable "because it leads to individualism, liberalism, and
relativism, precisely those traits that may promote dissent that in
turn could dangerously weaken society's ability to cope with external
threats," Lobe explained why Kristol and other neocons have "allied
themselves with the Christian Right" and, in some cases, have also
denounced Darwin's theory of evolution. "Neoconservatives are
pro-religion even though they themselves may not be believers," Reason
magazine's Ronald Bailey explained, pointing to publications like
Commentary which has espoused the virtues of religious fundamentalism
and has questioned evolutionary science.

(Hitler did the same. The book The German Churches Under Hitler
includes his assertion that secular schools should not be tolerated
while Hitler's Table Talk quotes him questioning the wisdom in teaching
children both creationism and the theory of evolution. "The present
system of teaching in schools permits the following absurdity: at 10
a.m. the pupils attend a lesson in the catechism, at which the creation
of the world is presented to them in accordance with the teachings of
the Bible; and at 11 a.m. they attend a lesson in natural science, at
which they are taught the theory of evolution,"he said. "Yet the two
doctrines are in complete contradiction. As a child, I suffered from
this contradiction, and ran my head against a wall.")

Professor Shadia B. Drury also noted the similarities between the
methods endorsed by Hitler and neoconservatives' favorite philosopher.
She explained:

"Strauss loved America enough to try to save her from the
errors and terrors of Europe. He was convinced that the liberal
democracy of the Weimar Republic led to the rise of the Nazis. That is
a debatable matter. But Strauss did not openly debate this issue or
provide arguments for his position in his writings. I am inclined to
think that it is Strauss's ideas, and not liberal ideas, that invite
the kinds of abuses he wished to avoid. It behooves us to remember that
Hitler had the utmost contempt for parliamentary democracy. He was
impatient with debate and dispute, on the grounds that they were a
waste of time for the great genius who knew instinctively the right
choices and policies that the people need. Hitler had a profound
contempt for the masses - the same contempt that is readily observed in
Strauss and his cohorts. But when force of circumstances made it
necessary to appeal to the masses, Hitler advocated lies, myths, and
illusions as necessary pabulum to placate the people and make them
comply with the will of the Fuhrer. Strauss's political philosophy
advocates the same solution to the problem of the recalcitrant masses.
Anyone who wants to avoid the horrors of the Nazi past is well advised
not to accept Strauss's version of ancient wisdom uncritically. But
this is exactly what Strauss encouraged his students to do."

Although several others, including the legendary Seymour Hersh,
have noted the neoconservatives' belief that deception is essential,
the religious aspect of their philosophy is especially unnerving.
Religion may be the opium of the masses, but when zealots become so
certain of their own righteousness that they ignore their own humanity,
horror is the natural consequence. Islamic extremism offers the most
glaring recent example, and now that Osama bin Laden has been granted
permission to nuke America, the most extreme changes within the U.S.
could very well come from the outside world.

In the meantime, however, for those who have not yet noticed, our
own homegrown zealots -- those who advocate hatred in the name of the
Lord -- have made considerable headway, with gays and lesbians
currently at the center of legislation which, should it pass, will
alter this country forever.

When the Marriage Protection Act passed the House in July, the
New York Times called it "a radical assault on the Constitution. "If it
passes in the Senate, the bill could obliterate the separation of
powers and wipe out Constitutional protections for all minorities,
stripping the courts and possibly paving the way for Christian
nationhood. Other pieces of court stripping legislation bills designed
to topple the wall between church and state are also in play.

This encroaching infusion of church and state, combined with
recent decrees concerning moral values, doesn't resonate with inclusive
tolerance. "When was the last time a Western nation had a leader so
obsessed with God and claiming God was on our side? If you answered
Adolph Hitler and Nazi Germany, you're correct," Bob Fitrakis wrote.
"Nothing can be more misleading than to categorize Hitler as a barbaric
pagan or Godless totalitarian, like Stalin."

While many of us reserve a soft spot for true Christian
generosity and the warm teachings of Jesus, it's important to remember
that Christianity can be (and has been) distorted for darker purposes.
Whether you're talking about Nazi Germany, the pre-Civil War American
South, or the atmosphere in the U.S. these past few years, whenever
questions of conscience are vigorously denounced, you can bet there is
trouble ahead -- and the hijacking of faith and the manipulation of
religion should always arouse suspicion. Moral values as a mandate?
What better way to foster civil obedience and "One nation Under God"
unity in a time of preventative war, suppressed liberty and sanctioned
torture.

So, yes, despite tales of Hitler's atheism and Germany's
godlessness, the list of Hitler's religious assertions and Nazi
Christian affiliations is long, and before Americans swallow more
WMD-type baloney, it's best to comprehend this history and understand
that no nation, including our own, is immune to faith-based fascism.

Substituting "America" for "Germany," many of Hitler's religious
assertions could have been uttered by Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson --
with Hitler even asserting that God punished Germany for turning away
from Him -- before promising that renewed piety would protect the
Fatherland and make it prosperous and successful once more. "Once the
mercy of God shown upon us, but we were not worthy of His mercy.
Providence withdrew its protection and our people fell, fell as
scarcely any other people heretofore. In this deep misery we again
learned to pray," Hitler said in 1936, sixty-five years before Falwell
and Robertson blamed abortionists and feminists for the tragedies of
Sept. 11.

Hitler's religious phrases could have also come from the lips of
George W. Bush. "Our prayer is: Lord God, let us never hesitate, let us
never play the coward, let us never forget the duty which we have taken
upon us,"Hitler said in March, 1933, sounding much like our president,
who believes that God wants him to liberate the people in Middle East
-- even if he has to torture, maim and kill tens of thousands in the
process. "I believe we have a duty to free people," Bush told Bob
Woodward. "I would hope we wouldn't have to do it militarily, but we
have a duty.. . . Going into this period, I was praying for strength to
do the Lord's will. . . ."

Speaking in Berlin in March, 1936, Hitler said something
remarkably similar. "I would like to thank Providence and the Almighty
for choosing me of all people to be allowed to wage this battle for
Germany," he said, before launching the preventive war heard round the
world.

Both leaders also promised peace while planning for war. "We seek
peace. We strive for peace. And sometimes peace must be defended," Bush
said, in his State of the Union address in Jan. 2003, two months before
launching a preventative war in Iraq. "Never in these long years have
we offered any other prayer but this: Lord, grant to our people peace
at home, and grant and preserve to them peace from the foreign
foe!"Hitler said in Nuremberg on Sept. 13, 1936.

Yes, many of Hitler's faith-based comments could have come from
George Bush himself, and are undoubtedly the kinds of sentiments many
Americans not only agree with -- but take comfort in. This is not to
say that Bush is Hitler or that religion is evil, but to serve as a
reminder that things are not always what they seem. Christianity was
used to justify everything from the Salem witch trials to slavery in
America, and facilitated group-think in Germany -- when individuality
and questions of conscience were needed the most. These are but a few
of the Fuhrer's assertions:

a.. "Secular schools can never be tolerated because such a
school has no religious instruction and a general moral instruction
without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all
character training and religion must be derived from faith." (The
German Churches Under Hitler, p.241)
b.. "We must turn all the sentiments of the Volk, all its
thinking, acting, even its beliefs, away from the anti-Christian, smug
individualism of the past, from the egotism and stupid Phariseeism of
personal arrogance, and we must educate the youth in particular in the
spirit of those of Christ's words that we must interpret anew: love one
another; be considerate of your fellow man; remember that each one of
you is not alone a creature of God, but that you are all brothers! This
youth will, with loathing and contempt, abandon those hypocrites who
have Christ on their lips but the devil in their hearts." (Hitler:
Memoirs of a Confidant, page 140)
c.. "It will be the Government's care to maintain honest
cooperation between Church and State; the struggle against
materialistic views and for a real national community is just as much
in the interest of the German nation as in that of the welfare of our
Christian faith." (At the Reichstag, March 23, 1933)
d.. "Without pledging ourselves to any particular Confession
[Protestantism or Catholicism], we have restored to faith its
prerequisites because we were convinced that the people need and
require this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the
atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical
declarations: we have stamped it out." (Berlin, Oct. 24, 1933)
e.. "But there is something else I believe, and that is that
there is a God. . . . And this God again has blessed our efforts during
the past 13 years." (Munich, Feb. 24, 1940)
f.. "You [blue-collar workers] represent the most noble of
slogans known to us: "God helps those who help themselves!' (Hitler:
Speeches and Proclamations, Vol. 2, page 1147)
g.. "Fifteen years ago I had nothing save my faith and my will.
Today the Movement is Germany, today this Movement has won the German
nation and formed the Reich. Would that have been possible without the
blessing of the Almighty? Or do they who ruined Germany wish to
maintain that they have had God's blessing? What we are we are, not
against but with the will of Providence. And so long as we are loyal,
honest, and ready to fight, so long as we believe in our great work and
do not capitulate, we shall also in the future have the blessing of
Providence." (Rosenheim, Aug. 11, 1935)
h.. "My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior
as a fighter. . . As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be
cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice....
And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting
rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have
also a duty to my own people." (Munich, April 12, 1922)
i.. "If positive Christianity means love of one's neighbor,
i.e. the tending of the sick, the clothing of the poor, the feeding of
the hungry, the giving of drink to those who are thirsty, then it is we
who are the more positive Christians. For in these spheres the
community of the people of National Socialist Germany has accomplished
a prodigious work." (Feb. 24, 1939)
j.. "We were convinced that the people needs and requires this
faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic
movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we
have stamped it out." (Berlin, Oct. 24, 1933)
k.. "An educated man retains the sense of the mysteries of
nature and bows before the unknowable. An educated man, on the other
hand, runs the risk of going over to atheism (which is a return to the
state of the animal)." (Hitler's Table Talk, 1941-1944, page 59)

In his book, They Thought They Were Free, Milton Mayer
interviewed Germans who discussed how their society changed right
before their eyes, and how, despite Hitler's rhetoric, God was nowhere
to be found. As one interviewee put it:

"The world you live in -- "your nation, your people" -- is not
the world you were in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched,
all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the
visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which
you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying
it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and
fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves;
when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a
system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system
itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to
sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way."

Of course, America has hardly "gone all the way" and is unlikely
to become as psychotic as Nazi Germany any time soon. But what do you
suppose God thinks of preventative war based upon deception? Or about
the use of depleted uranium? Or about dropping napalm on civilians? Are
Iraqi insurgents are any less certain that God is on their side than
our own Evangelical Marines?

Yes, Saddam Hussein was a brutal thug, but why do so many insist
on forgetting that the U.S. helped him to power in the first place?
Does God see our role in all of this as lightly as we do? And how many
U.S. citizens do you know, who, mired in fear, readily dismiss
America's use of torture and rationalize our disregard for
international law? What else might they overlook?

In 1937, Hitler said that because of Germany's belief in God and
God's favoritism towards Germany, the country would prevail and
prosper. "We, therefore, go our way into the future with the deepest
belief in God. Would all we have achieved been possible had Providence
not helped us? I know that the fruits of human labor are hard-won and
transitory if they are not blessed by the Omnipotent. Work such as ours
which has received the blessings of the Omnipotent can never again be
undone by mere mortals,"he said.

While attempting to solidify his power, Hitler also denounced
those who denounced religion -- as if he were talking about Hollywood
or blue states or Noam Chomsky. "For eight months we have been
conducting a fearless campaign against that Communism which is
threatening our entire nation, our culture, our art, and our public
morals, "Hitler said in a speech in Oct. 1933. "We have made an end of
denials of the Deity and the crying down of religion."

There will be no more crying down of religion in George Bush's
America, either. Though oft-repeated assertions made by the media in
the immediate aftermath of the election have proven to be nothing more
than myth, propagandists would have you believe that the American
people have spoken: "Moral values" reign supreme.

But how can any one of us know God's desires -- especially when
our enemies claim to have God on their side as well? And doesn't it
seem that religious hubris -- believing that God sanctions one's own
inhumane treatment of others -- always invites a fall?

"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that
his justice cannot sleep forever," Thomas Jefferson said, of the price
America would eventually pay for slavery. "Nations, like individuals,
are punished for their transgressions," Ulysses S. Grant advised,
describing karmic retribution without pointing hateful fingers at
lesbians.

And long before that, the poet John Milton tried to "justify the
ways of God to Man." But yet, the world, with its conflicting visions
of morality, ethics and truth, still struggles to comprehend.

Perhaps Truth, for want of a better definition, is what God sees
when he looks at any given situation. And perhaps it is ultimately
impossible for us to know God's mind. After all, it's obvious that
Hitler wasn't telling the truth when he spoke of God and country -- and
by the same token, it's difficult to look at Najaf or Fallujah or Abu
Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay and see God's hand in any of it.

After one of Bush's operatives promised to "export death and
violence to the four corners of the earth in defense of our great
nation" Bob Woodward wrote: "The president was casting his mission and
that of the country in the grand vision of God's Master Plan." And sure
enough, when Woodward asked Bush if he had discussed the impending
invasion of Iraq with his father, President George H.W. Bush (who could
have offered sage advice), the President responded: "He is the wrong
father to appeal to in terms of strength; there is a higher father that
I appeal to."

But, without knowing God's mind, most of us have only History to
help us judge. And the fact is, without the benefit of History, some of
the "moral values" Hitler embraced sound eerily like those being
peddled today.

George Bush is not Hitler. America is not Nazi Germany. But
buying into religious assertions or thinking that God is on your side
is not wise when it comes to matters of war -- particularly when that
war is an aggressive preventative war based on false premises and
assumptions.

So, aside from Jerry Falwell, who speaks with hate-filled
authority, most of us do not know how God will judge us. We will have
to settle for History's imperfect record.

All of this begs the question, however. Given his assertions
regarding God's role in helping him decide policy ("I pray that I be as
good a messenger of His will as possible" Bush told Woodward. . . "I
felt so strongly that [invading Iraq] was the right thing to do") how
does Bush view the more mundane, secular implications of his actions?
When asked by Woodward how History would judge the war in Iraq, Bush
replied: "History. We don't know. We'll all be dead."

I challenge anyone to find the moral value in that.

Maureen Farrell is a writer and media consultant who specializes
in helping other writers get television and radio exposure.

© Copyright 2004, Maureen Farrell

It's not a scientific theory, but is natural theology. That is an
entirely honourable status; why Dembski denies it I can't discern.

On the other hand, the "unconstitutional" line is utter crap. To
teach IDT or anything of the sort does not tend to *establish* any religion
in the USA, which is what's prohibited by the USA constitution.

R

Why It's Unconstitutional to Teach "Intelligent Design" in the Public
Schools, as an Alternative to Evolution

By MICHAEL C. DORF
Wednesday, Dec. 22, 2004
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dorf/20041222.html

Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union sued the Dover,
Pennsylvania School Board. The ACLU argues that the School Board
violated the Constitution's Establishment Clause by mandating that
students in public school biology classes be taught the theory of
"intelligent design" as an alternative to evolution.

Proponents of intelligent design--which is closely related to what is
sometimes called "creationism"--point to gaps in the fossil record and
other uncertainties to argue that evolution by natural selection cannot
explain the emergence of new species. They contend instead that an
intelligent agent must have been guiding the course of life on Earth.

Evolution opponents have recently scored political victories outside
Dover, Pennsylvania as well. In Cobb County, Georgia, public school
textbooks discussing evolution must now contain a disclaimer warning
that evolution is "a theory, not a fact." That policy, too, is the
subject of pending litigation.

And the November election returns in Kansas have given critics of
evolution a majority on that state's school board. It is only a matter
of time until Kansas mandates the teaching of alternatives to evolution.

Yet Supreme Court precedent holds that state-sponsored attacks on
evolution in the public schools are unconstitutional. Why, then, are
evolution opponents in Dover, Cobb County and Kansas, trying to change
curricula? Aren't these efforts doomed to fail once they are challenged
in court? Are the evolution opponents engaging in mere symbolic protest?

The surprising answer is: Perhaps not. That is because the leading
Supreme Court decision, in the 1987 case of Edwards v. Aguillard,
contains an apparent loophole that evolution's critics may hope to
exploit.

Aguillard appears to rest on the Justices' finding that the proponents
of theories like intelligent design were subjectively motivated by
religion. Accordingly, by keeping their religious motivation secret,
proponents of the policies in Dover, Cobb County, and elsewhere may hope
to evade the Aguillard decision.

However, as I argue below, this evasion should not succeed. Instead, the
First Amendment should be construed to bar the mandatory teaching of
intelligent design regardless of the purposes expressed by those
imposing the mandate.

The Aguillard Decision: Barring Teaching of Creation Science in Public
Schools

In the Dover case, the ACLU contends that the "intelligent agent" in
intelligent design theory is simply God in disguise, and that the Dover
policy therefore amounts to an unconstitutional establishment of
religion. At first blush, the Supreme Court's Aguillard decision would
appear to support the ACLU's position.

In Aguillard, the high court invalidated a Louisiana law that forbade
the teaching of evolution in public school unless "creation science" was
taught alongside it as an alternative. There, as in Dover, the law made
no express reference to God or to any religion. Yet the Justices
nonetheless found that its purpose "was to restructure the science
curriculum to conform with a particular religious viewpoint."

How did the Court know that was the purpose of the Louisiana law?
Justice Brennan's opinion looked at two sorts of evidence. First, and
unproblematically, it examined the law's actual requirements, to show
that the law did not further "academic freedom," as the law itself
stated it was meant to do.

Nothing in Louisiana law had previously barred critical analysis of
evolution, the Court observed, and so the actual impact of the law was
to narrow, rather than broaden, the curriculum.

But the Court went beyond the objective evidence of what the Louisiana
law did, invoking its legislative history as further proof that it was
impermissibly designed to advance religion. In particular, Justice
Brennan's opinion focused attention on the expressed views of the law's
principal sponsor.

The Potential Loophole in Aguillard: The Role of Subjective Motive

Justice Scalia, joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist, dissented from the
Aguillard ruling. These Justices took special exception to the
majority's reliance on evidence of the subjective motives of the
legislators who enacted the Louisiana law. In their view, the "purpose"
of the Louisiana legislature in enacting the challenged law was
necessarily a fiction--a composite of the multiple and mixed motives of
the many people composing the legislature.

Justice Scalia's seemingly categorical criticism of any constitutional
inquiry into subjective purpose was somewhat overstated. There are other
areas of the law in which even Justice Scalia himself accepts that
subjective legislative purpose holds the key to a law's
constitutionality. For example, under the Court's Equal Protection
doctrine, a law that has a disproportionate negative impact on a racial
group will be held invalid if, but only if, the law was adopted for the
subjective purpose of disadvantaging members of the racial group. To my
knowledge, neither Justice Scalia nor Chief Justice Rehnquist has
disavowed or even criticized this principle.

Nonetheless, the broader point of Justice Scalia's Aguillard dissent is
valid. Legislative purpose is something that courts construct, rather
than simply find.

Furthermore, clever legislators can readily evade a constitutional rule
that depends on finding evidence of an illicit purpose. The legislators
merely need to watch what they say in favor of the bill, expressly
relying only on permissible factors.

Whether the members of the Dover School Board were sufficiently
disciplined to survive scrutiny of their motives remains to be seen. But
the broader lesson that foes of evolution should take from Aguillard is
clear: Strictly avoid any reference to religion in your arguments for
the laws you seek to enact, even if you secretly favor these laws on
religious grounds.

How to Close the Aguillard Loophole

Nonetheless, if Aguillard is interpreted sensibly, even such a strategy
of referring only to secular arguments should fail. After all, Justice
Brennan's opinion in Aguillard does not state that the Louisiana law
would have been valid if only its sponsor had not slipped in
acknowledging a religious motive.

Indeed, as Justice Scalia noted, the law's sponsor "repeatedly and
vehemently denied that his purpose was to advance a particular religious
doctrine." The sponsor's statements quoted by Justice Brennan merely
showed that his true aim was not to increase the diversity of biological
viewpoints taught in the Louisiana schools.

Thus, the better reading of the Aguillard opinion makes the
constitutionality of a law challenged on Establishment Clause grounds
depend on its objective purpose--the purpose or purposes that a
reasonable person would attribute to the legislature, in light of what
the law actually requires. Justice Brennan's opinion saw through the
sponsor's stated aim, to his true aim. In the Dover case and other
litigation involving intelligent design, the courts ought to be able to
do the same.

Discerning the Objective Purpose of the Dover Policy: Why it Matters
Whether Intelligent Design is a Scientific Theory

But how should courts go about attributing a purpose to the proponents
of laws mandating the teaching of intelligent design? The obvious answer
is to ask whether intelligent design is a valid scientific theory.

To be clear, there is no general constitutional requirement that public
school students be taught the truth. For example, suppose a school board
mandates that high school American history courses emphasize inspiring
moments from our past--entirely omitting the shameful treatment of
Native Americans, the enslavement of millions of African Americans, and
the internment of Japanese Americans. Certainly, the school board would
thereby do its students and the community a disservice, but it would not
violate any provision of the Constitution with its highly selective
history classes.

Nor is science, or even evolution, different. In the old Soviet Union,
children were taught Lamarck's view that acquired characteristics are
inherited by the next generation--long after that view, as a matter of
science, had been discredited. Why? For a political reason: That
biological theory fit nicely with Communist ideology about the
malleability of man and the natural world. Suppose, for whatever reason,
that a contemporary American school board wished to handicap its
students by teaching them Lamarckian rather than Darwinian evolution.
The Constitution would be no obstacle to such a foolish policy.

But given the social reality, "intelligent design" is different. It is
an allegedly scientific theory that bears a striking resemblance to
religious views. When the government mandates that students be taught
such a theory, courts are rightly suspicious.

At that point, a court should ask whether intelligent design is, in
fact, a scientific theory at all. It should do so, not because of any
general obligation on the part of schools to teach science correctly,
but simply because if intelligent design is not science, then the
inference is almost inescapable that the state is impermissibly acting
for the purpose of fostering a religious viewpoint.

Is Intelligent Design a Scientific Theory?

Thus we come to the crucial question: Is intelligent design a scientific
theory? If by intelligent design, one means the Biblical account of
God's creation of the world in six days, the answer is clearly no.
Science is based on empirical observation rather than acceptance of
divinely revealed truth.

However, most versions of intelligent design offered as alternatives to
Darwinian evolution do not insist on the literal truth of the book of
Genesis. Rather, they contend that gaps in evolutionary theory can only
be plugged by the assumption that an intelligent agent has guided the
development of life on Earth.

Some proponents of intelligent design do raise real objections to
current understandings of Darwinian evolution. Based on my own reading
of the intelligent design literature, it appears that its two strongest
arguments point to the general absence of intermediate forms in the
fossil record, and to unanswered questions about how certain new,
complex patterns of animal bodies could have arisen through random
mutation and natural selection.

Nonetheless, for two reasons, it appears that intelligent design is not
a scientific theory.

The First Reason Intelligent Design Is Not a Scientific Theory:
Conflating Uncertainty with Error

First, insofar as it offers itself as a critique of standard Darwinian
evolution, intelligent design cherry-picks uncertainties at the edge of
our knowledge, and asserts that these undermine our core understandings.
But the fact that some phenomena remain unexplained by natural selection
hardly shows that natural selection--which provides a powerful
organizing principle for vast swaths of biological data--will not
eventually provide the best account of these phenomena.

Consider an analogy. Our best current understanding of gravity remains
mysterious because the most ambitious efforts to unify gravity with
other forces in the universe--comprising so-called superstring theories
or M-theory--have not been empirically tested. Yet that hardly calls
into question the principal analytical tools of modern physics.

If the intelligent designers were to apply the same criticisms to
physics that they apply to evolution, they would have to say that
gravity, too, is "just a theory." However, the fact of Darwinian
evolution is as real as the fact of gravity. To be sure, our
understanding of each phenomenon is incomplete, but the scientific
approach to plugging gaps in our knowledge is not to create a
new-anti-theory that dismisses the underlying phenomenon.

The Second Reason Intelligent Design Is Not a Scientific Theory: It
Isn't an Explanation

The second problem with intelligent design is even more fundamental: It
does not actually explain anything.

Darwinian evolution by natural selection posits a mechanism that
explains how species change over time: As environmental conditions
change, individual members of a species with traits suited to the new
environment survive and reproduce in greater numbers than those lacking
the traits. And so, over time, and aided by randomly occurring
occasionally adaptive mutations, the species evolves to adapt to the new
conditions.

By contrast, what does it mean to say that species arise or change
through "intelligent design?" Certainly the term connotes intervention
by some intelligent agent. But are the intelligent agent's interventions
themselves subject to the laws of the natural world, or are they
supernatural?

Even if one is prepared to accept the possibility that science could,
without sacrificing its essential premises, include accounts of
supernatural phenomena, the concept of "intelligent design," standing
alone, is simply a label, not an account.

To press the physics analogy, in classical mechanics, Newton's law of
gravity--according to which the attraction between two bodies increases
in proportion to the product of their masses and decreases in proportion
to the square of their distance--was for many years viewed as
problematic, because it described action at a distance. Scientists
wondered: How did distant celestial bodies transmit their masses and
positions to one another across space, such that they moved
instantaneously in reaction?

To a substantial extent, Einstein's theory of general relativity solved
the action-at-a-distance puzzle, but suppose that prior to Einstein
someone had proposed that gravity worked through the operation of an
"intelligent agent." It would have been a perfectly valid objection to
this proposal that it isn't an explanation at all, but merely a
restatement of the problem. For now, we must ask how the intelligent
agent accomplishes action at a distance.

In both biology and physics, in other words, supernatural phenomena may
be conceivable. But for an account of such phenomena to qualify as
science, it must do more than simply posit an intervention from outside
the ordinary natural order. It must also explain how the intervening
agent interacts with the natural world. Otherwise, it is simply an
article of faith rather than a scientific explanation.

Will Courts Have the Confidence to Declare That Intelligent Design is
Not Science?

Accordingly, absent either radical changes in nearly everything we know
about biology, or a wholesale reformulation of the tenets of intelligent
design, the latter should not be deemed a legitimate scientific theory.
And if intelligent design is not science, then it follows that the
objective purpose of those who would have it taught alongside evolution
in the public schools is to advance a religious view.

Nonetheless, I worry that courts may lack the confidence to declare the
mandatory teaching of intelligent design in public schools
unconstitutional on the grounds that it is unscientific. As lawyers,
most judges lack any serious training in science, and thus may not be
comfortable saying what is, and what is not, science.

But the alternative suggested by the Aguillard opinion--of relying
simply on the subjective purpose of those who mandate the teaching of
so-called alternatives to evolution--is far worse. For while judges can
learn enough science to distinguish the real from the fake, they can
only ever guess at what legislators are thinking.

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

Michael C. Dorf is the Michael I. Sovern Professor of Law at Columbia
University in New York City. His book, Constitutional Law Stories, is
published by Foundation Press, and tells the stories behind fifteen
leading constitutional cases.

Having no response, after months, to the msg copied below, I copy
it now to some concerned for control of gene-tampering.

Dr Shelling's failure to respond implies he can't deal with the
more serious queries. I'm dismayed at this refusal to deal with serious
concerns.

R
=========

To:
From: Robt Mann
Subject: your statements in Graeme's booklet

Dear Dr Shelling,

I'm a rtd U of Ak biochemist and sometime teacher of
Graeme Finlay. I keep my hand in with a few aspects of biochemistry e.g
http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/dec102003/1564.pdf but my main concern within
science is advocacy that gene-tampering be brought under control.

Last night I acquired Graeme's new booklets at the 'launch'
ceremony. May I query some of your statements in your chapter?

I hope you will be relieved to some extent when I mention that I
too am a Christian. Perhaps we can meet some time to discuss our common
concerns.

I deplore your conflation in: "[m]any people in New Zealand would
like GE to be restricted
or eliminated". It is, at best, ignorant to make out that these two
possible courses of action are essentially similar. Opinion polls have
shown consistently that most (not merely 'many') NZers would like GE to be
restricted to lab containment - within which, if properly secure, all
sorts of GE can proceed without opposition from anyone that I know of.
Even John Fraser's super-dangerous bacteria have met with no opposition.
By contrast, the majority of NZers refuse to accept that uncontained GMOs
are yet sufficiently tested; keeping the onus of proof on those who desire
environmental change, we the majority (including some significant
scientists) say ERMA has been doing wrong by rubber-stamping every
application for field tests. Even more strongly, release of GMOs with no
pretence of containment (as permitted with GM crops in a few countries) is
so unpopular in NZ that no application to do it has been pressed.

This distinction, contained v. uncontained, you try to abolish.
You thus misrepresent the policy of the Sustainability Council and many
other responsible citizens. I would be interested to learn why.

You go on to assert what you should have known to be false: "The
anti-GE lobby has set itself up to eliminate GE by 2005 in NZ". Who said
this? As the senior scientific NZ critic of GE, I don't recall anything
like it. Even the ignorant fearmongering powerHarpies like Susan Kedgley
list-MP do not say contained GE must end by 2005 - or ever.

You state "virtually all medical research would stop, or be
severely restricted" if "the anti-GE lobby" prevailed. Need a list of
non-GE medical research be recited? Can you be unaware that many medical
researchers make no use of GE? Much medical research would be unaffected
if prudent controls were created by ERMA.

Other aspects of your chapter are also misleading, if more subtly.
You say many disease-causing genes have been identified, but you omit to
say how little of practical use has yet flowed from these discoveries. You
fail to mention that gene therapy has so far had very little success.

Oddly, your sentence at the bottom of p. 29 is correct: "What most
New Zealanders would like is for genetic research to continue, but that
every aspect be closely scrutinised by experts, and evaluated in line with
stringent safety and ethical standards." The conditional tense 'would'
quietly admits what you elsewhere contradict - that this is not the
actual state of regulation in NZ.

It may not surprise you that I strongly condemn your
misrepresentations. There are real issues to be discussed, but you have
mis-stated the issues, setting up extremist straw men which are highly
misleading.

I have naturally complained also to Graeme who should as editor
have prevented these misleading statements from appearing in what is
otherwise a very good booklet. But I would like to hear from you any
comments you may have.

fw from a lapsed Christian who however still teaches at a RC high-school

Thanks. Brilliant.

With space, he could have gone into secular sects, and with that, the fundamental
texts to which they owe allegiance:

Mein Kampf, the CP Manifesto, Gramsci's prison writings, Darwin's of
course, though
currently the hegemonic discourse, The Humanist Manifestos, the UN CEDAW
Protocols,
in the USA that part of the First Amendment concerning religion... with
another cup
of coffee one could multiply the list several times. The EU Constitution could
easily go that way. Places of worship of the Church of Secularism can be
found on
most university campuses in the West, particularly in the Humanities
departments.

He nicely describes the situation regarding evolution/creation in schools.
Perhap
the most perceptive commentary I have seen on this is in "Kindly
Inquisitors" by
Jonathan Rauch (1993 U.Chic.Pr), subtitled "The New Attacks on Free
Thought". He is
by far the best of the libertarian/conservative gays. Probably easiest
obtained
through Te Puna.

> http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/001/17.62.html
>
> That Other Church
>
> Let's face it: Secularism is a religion. Let's treat it as such.

"Stan Freberg Presents The United States of America"cv "Vol 1 - The Early
Years" and "Vol. 2 - The Middle Years" available as a CD from Rhino
Records Inc.

For those of us who can remember such things Freberg was a television
pioneer with a puppet show --- "Time For Beany" --- on Los Angeles' KTLA-TV
in the 1950's which usually drew an audience of both children --- for the
puppet animation --- and adults for the witty, often biting dialogue. Since
that time Freberg's versatility has been widely revered as a cartoon voice,
actor, on-screen film actor, singer, musician, author, and an advertising
genius.

His satirical songs --- "St. George and the Dragonet," "John and Marsha,"
"the Yellow Rose of Texas," "Wun'erful, Wun'erful," and "Green Chri$tmas$"
were all gleeful satirical numbers in an age when satire was suspect, if
not subversive and un-American.

In 1961 he, backed by an all-star cast of character actors and actresses
and the musical arranger and conductor Billy May, released along with
Capitol Records Vol. 1 his "History of the United States of America" which
contained tracts that included "Columbus Discovers America," "The
Thanksgiving Story (Under the Double Turkey)," "The Sale of Manhattan,"
"The Boston Tea Party," "Washington Crosses the Delaware (Command
Decision)," "The Battle of Yorktown" among others and this writer's
personal favorite "A Man Can't Be Too Careful What He Signs These Days."

. . . . Jefferson: Well I've got this petition I've been circulating
around the neighborhood and kinda thought you'd like to sign it. It's
called the Declaration of Independence.
Franklin: Yes, I've heard about that, sounds a little suspect to me, if you
ask me.
Jefferson: What do you mean suspect?
Franklin: Well, you're advocating the overthrow of the British government
by force and violence, aren't yea?
Jefferson: Well yea, yea, but we've had it with that royal jazz.
Franklin: Whose we?
Jefferson: All the guys!
Franklin: Whose all the guys?
Jefferson: George, Jim Madison, Alex Hamilton, Johnny Adams, you know all
the guys.
Franklin: Ha, the lunatic fringe!
Jefferson: Oh, they are not
Franklin: A bunch of wild-eyed radicals, professional liberals, don't kid me!
Jefferson: You call George Washington a wild eyed radical?
Franklin: Washington, I don't see his name on there
Jefferson: No, but he promised to sign it
Franklin: Ooooooh yea !!! that's George for ya, talks up a storm with those
wooden teeth, can't shut him up, but when it comes to putting the name on
the ol' parchmentoroni, try to find him . . . ."

As a former high school civics teacher I can testify to the fact, as many
such teachers also wrote Freberg --- who flunked history in high school due
to the sheer boredom of the class --- students both welcomed and enjoyed
this unique approach to American history.

It was not until 1996 that Vol 2 was released, the 35 year gap due to what
Freberg attributes to "national security issues." Among its tracts, which
takes the listener from the Revolutionary War to the end of World War I,
are: "Madison, Jefferson, Franklin & Osbourne: The First Advertising
Agency," "Abe Lincoln in Analysis," "The Appomattox Courthouse Bar and
Grill," and "Henry Ford Invents Detroit" among others.

Any Kiwis who haven't yet noticed the aggressive promotion in NZ of
Creationism®should take notice. Our emulation of the USA extends to this
mind-buggering totalitarian fad! VisioNetNZ is soft on Creationism®,
publicizes it favourably in its monthly DayStar®, and obstructs
promulgation among NZ churches of the mainstream theology (technically
called theistic evolution) propounded by Prof John Morton, Prof Neil Broom,
Rupert Sheldrake, myself, etc.

IDT is not nearly so irrational as Creationism®, but has functional
connections with it, and is less than respectable scholarship. Foreign
agents peddling IDT commercially in NZ have treated insolently some leading
local exponents of theistic evolution. Overt pushers of Creationism have
gone further, using libellous insults.

All this poison (under the banner of USA-inspired caricatures of
Christianity) is supposed to be justified by the awful intellectual offence
of neoDarwinism, and its fraudulent posing as some rebuttal of religion.

Two wrongs make a right ... yeah.

Attempts were made by "creationists" in Hamilton 3 decade ago to
interfere with school library holdings. The NZ education system is, on
recent trends, in for a burgeoning series of attacks by these varieties of
fundamentalism.

R

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=594808
The school of creationism

Children in a Pennsylvania town will be taught that God made the world,
igniting a debate which splits the USA.
Andrew Buncombe reports from Dover

20 December 2004

Was the landscape around the small town of Dover in Pennsylvania created
in just six days? Were the gently curving hills perfected, the streams
formed and finished, the wide, empty skies fixed in place beneath the
firmament and the narrow wooded valleys completed? Was it all really done
in less than a week?

It was, at least according to the creationist beliefs of much of the
town's population of 1,800, who have little time for Charles Darwin's
theory of evolution. And their fundamental beliefs are set to gain further
currency.

As of next month, in a hugely controversial move, the town's high school
will become the first in the US for several generations to teach a form of
creationism as part of its curriculum.

But the controversy that has split the town of Dover, an hour's drive
north of Baltimore, is not simply some local squabble. Rather it is a
debate that is taking place in communities across the US.

Classrooms, courtrooms, public places, even the very pledges that
officials swear when taking office have become the focus of a bitterly
contested and growing dispute about whether Christianity should be
officially incorporated into civic life or if there should be a real and
meaningful separation of church and state.

It is a row that has pitched Christian against Christian, scientist
against scientist.

It has led to accusations of lies and deliberate misrepresentation and
even claims that America is turning its back on its traditions. And now
that President George Bush, a born again evangelical, has won a second term
in office with the assistance of a large turnout by evangelicals at the
polls, the dispute is likely to get even more heated.

At the eye of this storm is Dover, where a legal battle that could end up
costing local taxpayers very dear has been launched.

"I was very surprised. I would not have thought it [would come to this],"
said Steven Sough, one of 11 parents who last week filed a lawsuit with the
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to try to prevent the change to the
curriculum, arguing it would breach the US Constitution. "I have a
daughter, Ashley, who will be 14 in two-weeks time. This is a personal
issue. I want her learning science at school. I want her learning religion
at home with me or at church."

The dispute in Dover blew up in October when the elected members of the
district school board voted 6-3 that the biology course for 15-year-olds
should be amended to include a theory about the origins of life known as
intelligent design or ID.

The proponents of ID claim life is so complex that its origins must in
some way have been directed by a supernatural actor. The Seattle-based
Discovery Institute, a leading proponent of ID theory, says "certain
features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an
intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection".

In addition to ordering that pupils be taught about ID and "made aware in
the gaps or problems in Darwin's theory", the board arranged for the
donation to the school of 60 copies of a controversial biology book, Of
Pandas and People. Copies of the text, which is critical of Darwin's
"natural selection", were placed in the classrooms for pupils to browse.

After a meeting of the board on 18 October, two members, Carol and Jeff
Brown, resigned in protest. The Browns, both Christians, said they believed
religion had no place in science. "This country was founded on the belief
of freedom of religion and freedom from religion," said Mrs Brown, sitting
at her kitchen table, knitting with a ball of electric-blue wool.

Her husband said he also had practical concerns. "It is going to get
shot-down in court. We cannot afford it."

The lawsuit filed last week by the ACLU, accuses the school board of
breaching the First Amendment of the US Constitution which prohibits the
establishment of an official religion.

In its lawsuit it argued: "ID is a non-scientific argument or assertion,
made in opposition to the scientific theory of evolution that an
intelligent, supernatural actor has intervened in the history of life and
that life 'owes its origin to a master intellect'." It also noted that in
1987 the US Supreme Court ruled that creationism was a religious belief
that could not be taught alongside evolution.

The school board has insisted it is not trying to force religion into the
classroom. Vice-president Heather Geesey said its aim was simply to make
information about ID available. "All I want to do is have anything the
kids [could] learn, there for them to learn. That is our job, to teach
children everything we can. "I think [the row] has been [ the result of] a
misconception. Most of the people I know are in favour of it, or else are
once I explain it."

But what of intelligent design? Is it, as critics claim, simply
creationsim-lite? Glenn Branch, vice-president of the National Centre for
Science Education, which promotes Darwinism, said: "There is nothing wrong
with the idea of a creator but teaching it as [a part of science] leads to
detriment of both religion and science. There is a blurring of the two and
it involves a lot of misrepresentation of science."

The Discovery Institute's Centre for Science and Culture counters that
labelling creationism and ID together is simply an attempt by Darwinists to
limit scientific debate. Rob Crowther, a spokesman for the group, said:
"We advocate that schools teach more about evolution, not less. We think
that the scientific challenges to Darwinian evolution should be discussed
in the classroom, but that is much different from teaching any alternative
theory."

And what about Of Pandas and People? Now more than 15 years old, the book
is considered one of the seminal texts of ID. One of its co-authors, Dean
Kenyon, a controversial academic, is a fellow of the right-leaning
Discovery Institute.

But Professor Kenneth Miller of Brown University's biology department, who
wrote a stinging critique of the text during an earlier creationism row in
Kansas, said: "It's an awful book. It's filled with scientific mistakes
and misrepresentations. It is also out of date."

It is clear from even a day in the quiet town of Dover that behind the
rather academic argument about the strengths and weaknesses of Darwinism
and about its alleged gaps, the debate that is taking place here, as
elsewhere across the US, is really about two fundamentally different views
of the world. One says that America has for too long been in retreat from
its Christian traditions while the other argues that America's very
traditions include a separation of church and state.

In Dover, for instance, while the proponents of ID insist they do not wish
to put religion in the classroom, they readily admit their own
fundamentalist beliefs. The move to change the curriculum was initiated by
a school board member, William Buckingham, who at one public meeting
declared: "Two thousand years ago, someone died on a cross. Can't someone
take a stand for him?"

Mr Buckingham has declined to speak to reporters but his wife, Charlotte,
who works at one of the town's evangelical churches, told The Independent:
"All ID is saying is that the origin of life is so complex that it had to
be created by a higher power. That is all it says. It gives the students
a chance of going to think about that."

Asked whether she believed schools ought to be allowed to teach religion,
she said: "There are many people who homeschool their children because they
cannot get what want they want elsewhere, the truth about what we believe
about our creator."

Rumours suggest that the 60 copies of Pandas were donated to the school by
Irene and Don Bonsell, whose son is a board member. Mrs Bonsell, who
described herself as a creationist, refused to confirm or deny whether they
had donated the books. She said she approved of the books being available
to the students even though she also denied religion was being placed in
the classroom. "I think it's a good idea that students should learn this
theory," she said. "I'm a creationist. I don't understand what the
problem is [with ID]. It's another theory. Darwinism has never been
proved, it's just a theory. They are trying to take God out of everything,
out of the pledge, off our money."

Pandas also has evangelical links. The book is published by the
Texas-based Foundation for Truth and Ethics, a small conservative
think-tank which has published two other books, one promoting abstinence
before marriage and another which disputes that America's founding
principles came from Greek, Roman and Enlightenment traditions but rather
from Christianity.

The foundation's president, John Buell, who formerly worked to promote
Christianity on university campuses, said Pandas was not a religious book
even though he conceded that ID implied a "supernatural power".

In Dover, the school board will meet lawyers this week to discuss its
options and decide whether to go ahead with the changes to the curriculum
and fight the lawsuit. The members' decision will be carefully scrutinised
not just by the townsfolk of Dover but by school boards across the US which
are considering similar measures.

In Grantsburg, Wisconsin, for instance, a school board has revised its
curriculum to teach "various scientific models of theories of origin"
though it has since argued that it will only be teaching students "about
the controversy surrounding evolution" and not ID.

In Charles County, Maryland, the school board is considering a proposal to
eliminate textbooks "biased toward evolution" from classrooms. Similar
proposals have been considered this year in Missouri, Mississippi and
Oklahoma. In Cobb County, Georgia, school textbooks have for the last two
years contained a sticker which informs students: "Evolution is a theory,
not a fact."

Indeed, if recent polls are accurate, the Dover school board members may
not be lacking in support. A poll last month by Gallup suggested that 45
per cent of Americans believe that humans were created by God in their
current form within the past 10,000 years.

It is less clear what the students in Dover think about the proposed
changes. On a freezing afternoon last week, Melissa Owen, 16, and
18-year-old Alex Jones, were waiting for a lift home. They both believed
that the teaching of ID should be allowed in classes that were elective
rather than mandatory.

Melissa confirmed that all the students were talking about the
controversy. "It was freezing today, there was no heat," she said.
"People were joking that the school was saving money to pay for the
lawsuit."

I fw this rather long item because it strikes me as unusually
cogent. (I get the impression that editing may have been below par; peh nö
attentsionsz.)

Foreign Policy Research Institute WIRE
A Catalyst for Ideas
www.fpri.org

PUBLIC THEOLOGY AND DEMOCRACY'S FUTURE
by Max L. Stackhouse

Volume 12, Number 2
October 2004

Max L. Stackhouse is the Rimmer and Ruth de Vries Professor
of Reformed Theology and Public Life at the Princeton
Theological Seminary, where he directs Kuyper Center for
Public Theology. An ordained minister in the United Church
of Christ, Dr. Stackhouse is a member of the American
Academy of Religion. This essay is a condensed version of
the Templeton Lecture on Religion and World Affairs,
delivered on October 14, 2004. This lecture was established
by a grant from Dr. John M. Templeton, Jr. Previous
lecturers include Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the British
Commonwealth; George Weigel, biographer of Pope John Paul
II, and James Billington, Librarian of Congress. All the
lectures are posted on:

www.fpri.org/education/templetonlecture.html

PUBLIC THEOLOGY AND DEMOCRACY'S FUTURE
The 9th Annual Templeton Lecture On Religion and World Affairs
by Max L. Stackhouse

The defeat of fascism, the victory of anti-colonial
movements, and the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late
20th century made it appear possible that democracy would
spread worldwide, accompanied by a fuller realization of
human rights, a global economy that benefits more of the
world's people, and a reduction of military threats to the
world's security. That "end of history" view may yet prove
to be the most probable global direction -- some 120 nations
adopted democratically oriented constitutions for the first
time in the last half century. But there are many reasons
to be concerned about the character of a democratic future.
Some of the newly independent nations have become one-party
states hovering on failure. Some Islamists have repudiated
democracy altogether and advocate a return to Caliphate
governance under sharia. Russia sometimes seems bound to
resume a czarist model of centralized political control; and
China is adamant in resisting democratic movements.

Moreover, some oppose the idea of human rights, one of the
pillars of democracy, claiming that its implicit assumption
-- that humanity consists of autonomous individuals -- is a
modern secularist invention. Still others protest the
currently emerging global economy, viewing it as a threat to
sovereignty and a design of the rich to exploit the poor.
And many fear endless attacks by shadowy, stateless
terrorist networks or by ethnic factions, both of which
challenge democratic prospects by inducing such a
preoccupation with security that democratic freedoms are
eroded.

In this situation, the world's most dynamic democracy and
only superpower is expected to be not only the world's
policeman, but also its godfather, bringing peace,
prosperity, and democracy to Afghanistan and Iraq and
solving every other problem that appears on the horizon,
from Haiti to global warming to the AIDS crisis in
subsaharan Africa. This charge could tempt the nation into
a new imperialism. Even as the United States is criticized
for not engaging the problems of the world, it is condemned
for intervening everywhere and seducing the world's youth
away from their own cultures.

The deeper difficulty is that Americans do not have a clear
moral or spiritual view of what we are about, of why we
believe what we believe and do what we do. How can, should,
or may we use our power, and why? And what is the source of
that power?

Suppose that the U.S. succeeds in planting democracy
throughout the world. One might see this as either cultural
imperialism or a justifiable conversion of an unholy tyranny
to a just system that corresponds to the deepest levels of
human nature and the highest discernible sense of divine
intent. That sense might of course simply be the reigning
consensus among the currently powerful nations. Does that
consensus have, or need, a deeper grounding, an ultimate
source and norm of truth and justice that can guide how
humanity ought to live?

Historically, advocates of democracy believed that it did.
The late medieval "conciliarists" who displaced popes and
overrode emperors thought so, as did the Reformers and the
Puritans. We know that the deists and theists who advocated
the Bill of Rights thought so. And the U.S. didn't hesitate
to establish democratic regimes in Cuba and the Philippines
at the end of the Spanish-American War, in Germany and Japan
at the end of World War II, and in South Korea after the
conflict there.

Is there in fact a basis for democracy that is deeper than
the fact that it has apparently mostly worked better than
other forms, at least in the West? How can we make the case
for it today, especially with globalized media, technology,
economy, culture, and religions that are beyond the control
of any one government?

Critics regularly charge that America is an imperialist
nation bent on ruling the world, ready to override other
societies with its massive multinational corporations. No
doubt some Americans have such interests, but most see their
nation as rooted in "that order which we call freedom," with
a mission to help others form open societies, adopt
democratic values, and establish human rights in a
flourishing economy. We have sometimes failed in this
mission, but most agree on the mission.

However, religious leaders, theologians, political leaders,
and commentators have failed to enunciate the basis for our
mission, or identify ways to reform it when it goes wrong.
Can we justly clarify what it is that makes us ready to send
our young men and women to kill and die for democracy?

No civilization has yet endured that did not have a
religious vision at its core. History is littered with the
rubble of empires that fell as much by spiritual emptiness
as by economic and military weakness or external pressure.
But the enduring civilizations have had religious cores that
touch the hearts and minds of the people, becoming the moral
architecture to guide the leaders and evoke sacrificial
commitments. These enable the societies' continual renewal.
It is not that everyone agrees with the religious vision, or
has to, but that there is a framework within which debate
takes place.

One cannot imagine trying to understand the politics of
China or India without reference to Confucianism or
Hinduism, or the systems of government in Southeast Asia or
the Middle East without understanding Buddhism or Islam, or
what is going on in the EU without reference to the legacy
of traditional Christendom (even if the EU's current
advocates resist any reference to religion in its new
constitution). Nor can we understand the U.S. without an
awareness of Protestantism's historic influence -- or of the
failure of its mainline traditions to define the urgent
social issues -- and of the rise of Evangelicalism and
Pentecostalism, on the one hand, and post-Vatican II
Catholicism, on the other, as they seek to offer other
perspectives on the ultimate issues. It is not the duty of
religious organizations to make public policy, as some try
to do; but it is their responsibility to seek to influence
people's consciences so that their political decisions will
be informed by moral and spiritual convictions.

Harvard professor Samuel Huntington has pointed out that
many have tried to interpret the world as if religion were
not central to societies and politics. But he argues that
life cannot be understood exclusive of religious ideas, as
they are incarnate in the dominant values of the culture.
Indeed, Huntington speaks of the irrelevance of purely
secular thought to contemporary politics, holding that
politics is and must be religious:

During the twentieth century, a secular century, Lenin,
Ataturk, Nehru, Ben Gurion, and the Shah (for instance) all
defined the identity of their countries in the secular
century's terms. That has changed, the Shah is gone, the
Soviet Union is gone, and in its place is a Russia that in
public statements identifies itself quite explicitly with
Russian Orthodoxy. In Turkey, India, and Israel, major
political movements are challenging the secular definition
of identity. Politicians in many societies have found that
religion either is crucial to maintaining their legitimacy
as rulers or must be suppressed because it presents a
challenge to that legitimacy.[1]

Societies do tend to have common features in the sense that
we can study them comparatively and see how they similarly
adapt to similar conditions and interests. Yet, societies
develop differently because they are bent in different
directions by distinctive religions; regulating convictions
have become woven into cultural values.

Some of the regulating convictions that shape democracy
become clear when we speak of human rights, which are
affirmed by the vision behind democracy, notwithstanding our
horrible record with regard to slavery and women's rights,
and the betrayal of our own principles in wartime, from the
early struggles with Native Americans to Abu Ghraib in 2004.
Still, the conviction that humans have rights has prevailed
again and again. Indeed, even in dark moments, prophetic
voices have drawn on Biblical roots to demand the
recognition that each person is made in the image of God and
thus has inalienable rights -- even the criminal, the enemy,
the heretic, the prisoner, and the terrorist.

As Michael Perry, one of the nation's leading authorities on
law and morality, has put it, "some things should never be
done to anyone; and some things should be done for
everyone."[2] That is why the authors of America's
Declaration of Independence and the UN's Declaration of
Human Rights could appeal to Biblical principles to advocate
rights. They are "self-evident truths" that shape
consciences, civilizations, and history. When one appeals
to human rights in the face of tyranny, torture, servitude,
arbitrary arrest, extortion, discrimination, or religious
persecution, one has played a valid moral trump, and the
people have the basis to demand a law code and to form
judicial process as a recourse and remedy. The awareness of
such principles gives hope for democratic vitality under
just law.

A second feature of society that gives hope for democracy
has to do with economic life. Capitalism is the most
efficient and productive economic system yet to be devised,
and it is sweeping the world. It improves the well-being of
most people, including the poor. Not only parts of South
America and the "little tigers" of East Asia, but also the
two most populous nations of the world, India and China,
have turned to versions of capitalism, making it likely that
the World Bank and UN millennium goal of halving world
poverty within ten years can be met. However, these same
trends will also increase inequality. A great many are
raised a little, and a substantial number are raised a good
bit, but only a few are raised a great deal, widening the
gap between the wealthy and the still struggling. A free
society does not demand enforced equality of economic
status, but it must work to equalize opportunity.

The formation of new middle classes and the rising
aspirations of those who have grasped the lower rungs of the
ladder increase the prospects for democracy. People with
some financial means and even relative security are better
able to educate their children, adopt new technologies,
develop more stable lifestyles, and migrate out of
dependency. They gain some command over their destinies,
demand their freedom from restrictive constraints, and
become more concerned about developing excellence in various
areas of their lives -- professional, educational,
environmental, and institutional. They deal with others
with greater integrity and seek to provide goods or services
that make them contributing members of society.

But the formation of new middle classes does not guarantee
democracy's development. Only some parts of the middle
classes begin to extend economic opportunities, form
communities of commitment, and exercise citizen
participation. The prospect that the new middle classes
will seek to extend democratic possibilities depends on
their "calling." It is one thing to have a job and a
career, it is quite another to see what one does in all the
daily rounds of life as being under the scrutiny of a God
who cares how we live and has purposes for our lives. Max
Weber probably had it about right when he argued that this
doctrine of vocation in the world played a distinctive role
in bringing about the asceticism that generated the modern
middle classes and its quest for excellence and
professionalism.

Today's massive conversions to Pentecostalism in Latin
America and Africa, and to Evangelicalism in Asia replicate
the earlier Reformation dynamics, though usually without the
same doctrinal apparatus. This is also the case with the
growth of parallel movements in America, in the "mega-
churches" that puzzle the mainline churches that are
declining in membership. Those given the opportunity to
move toward the middle classes are questing for a new
ordering of their lives, and these movements are drawing
people into bonds of discipline and are often less tolerant
of libertine lifestyles, that are having a notable political
impact.

There are two key doctrinal points here that support
democratic prospects: first, that humans are made in the
image of God, and second, that God calls each person to live
a godly life that is manifest in the development of
excellence in all areas of worldly life. These doctrinal
points are incarnate in the now public dynamics that are
globalizing our world, one working through the attempt to
articulate principles of justice, the other appearing in the
forms of increased productivity and disciplined lifestyles.
One aids democratic prospects from above, one from below.
Both form a new middle.

I believe democracy does have a theological base, but a less
direct one. It usually depends on a basically mechanical
and statistical procedure whereby each person votes to
determine leadership or policy. That procedure involves
only two agents -- individual votes, cumulatively tabulated,
and the state, the organized body that manages the election
and accepts its results. The Terrors of the French
Revolution and of the Red Guard's Cultural Revolution remind
us of the perils of the mobocracy into which mere populism
can degenerate, while the fact that both Hitler and Stalin
both claimed to be elected reminds us of what statism can
become.

If a democracy is to have an inner moral fiber, it must have
several other things besides voters and the state, an
independent legal system that recognizes the voters' human
rights and civil liberties, and a free economic system.
It must also have:

* schools that teach critical thinking;

* media that provides information and inspiration from a
range of perspectives;

* stable families that nurture responsible persons and
inculcate moral habits and spiritual insight;

* political parties that voice the needs and hopes of
the people and form the "loyal opposition" when they are
not in power;

* voluntary associations that take up causes or perform
services that need attention but are not the obvious
duty of the government; and

* above all, independent religious communities able to
treat both the political and social aspects of life from
a transcendent point of view.

In short, a viable democracy depends on a division of powers
not only within the government, but among the institutions
outside state control in a viable civil society. This
demands a separation of church and state, with the religious
organizations providing an organized moral and spiritual
center of loyalty that does not allow interests to be the
only basis of politics.

Civil society is strongest where multiple religious
institutions are well developed. Democracy as a political
design was first mentioned in ancient Greece, but it did not
flourish there: it fell every time it was tried to tyranny,
mobocracy, plutocracy, or imperialism, for the character of
ancient Greece religion could not sustain a moral core.
Democracy only flourished after the church became a center
of loyalty and began to form schools, hospitals, guilds,
parties, and associations for fellowship and service, in
what was a long and slow, but providential, process.

Other forms of democracy, most notably deriving from the
French Revolution and influencing in various ways the German
Enlightenment, the Russian Revolution, and the secular
democrats of the Americas, renounced the idea that religion
was a necessary part of democracy. Secular democrats
attempted to establish a state-guided democracy based on
what Rousseau called the "general will." Religion would be
removed from public discourse, even prohibited from public
display (as we have seen in the recent banning of the
wearing of headscarves by Muslims and nuns, in schools and
government offices).

This development was partly understandable, for there are
forms of religious dogma that do not defend human rights and
that inhibit economic development. And there are movements
claiming roots in the Christian church that are anti-
intellectual and sectarian. These groups hate pluralism and
engender enclaves of self-righteous piety that worship a God
who only condemns the world.

But their critique of bad religion banishes too much. The
French Revolution yielded Napoleon, Germany's enlightened
philosophers easily succumbed to fascism, the Soviet
"people's democracy" fell to Bolshevism, and the secular
populists of the Americas became prey of liberationist
ideologies. As they say now in Latin America, the church
opted for the oppressed, and the poor opted for
Evangelicalism. Not only must religion be taken seriously,
but also the kind of theology that is willing and able to
touch the heart and address public issues must be seen as
necessary for the future of democracy. A profound theology
will press us toward a democracy ordered in a way that
accords with God's law and purposes. That poses the
critical issues.

All of us have a personal faith, a theology, a set of
personal convictions about ultimate reality; and millions of
people belong to some organized wing of their religious
tradition. Each tradition has a distinctive way of defining
the ideal political order. Some are more capable of
supporting the conditions under which democracy flourishes
than others. Most have some national or international
religious body, or chief representatives, who periodically
issue statements that have direct political implications --
ethical issues framed by a theological tradition tend not to
stay under the steeple.

Today, the debate about the morality of the Iraq war is very
alive, with theological convictions about "just war"
doctrines just below the surface. The question has arisen
whether human rights are being compromised for the sake of
security and national defense. The issue of the extent to
which government should control corporations' ecological or
outsourcing practices is also on the agenda, as well as the
propriety of limiting abortion or stem-cell research. An
open debate about these theologically laden issues is vital
to democracy.

Public theology has the task of engaging in public dialogue
on such ethical issues. The Judeo-Christian tradition
offers two deeply rooted Biblical themes that undergird the
"principled pluralism" that presses society toward the kind
of democracy that is the necessary supplement to the idea of
the image of God, on which human rights rest, and to the
idea of vocation, on which professional integrity rests.
These are the recognition of sin and the possibility of
covenant.

Recognizing sinfulness implies awareness that humans and
their societies are all imperfect. Thus, every idealistic
quest for harmony of all the parts will lead to pride and
totalitarianism. The consolidation of power in the hands of
the few tempts humanity to an arrogance that corrupts the
powerful and either exploits or makes passive the rest.
Accordingly, power must be distributed and thereby limited.
If each sphere of civil society is well developed, the
various spheres can correct one another or cooperate to
reform the whole.

That cooperation invites the possibility of forming
covenantal relationships. Daniel Elazar, one of the great
scholarly gems of the last century, traced this idea through
the West's history and documented how, from its roots in
ancient Judaism, it was adopted and adapted by certain
strands of Christianity and found resonance in many
cultures, engendered a passion for a pluralistic democracy,
and opposed both the hierarchical authoritarianism found in
most classical cultures and the balkanizing atomism of
modernity. The idea of covenant is based on the formation
of communities of commitment for purposes that include but
transcend our human material interests.

Christianity contributed to this concept the idea of love as
the inner spirit of covenantal bonding. That is what forms
character and reforms society in this life, even though
perfection is impossible and forgiveness is necessary.
Christians believe that this is what Christ manifests and
what is working among us in all the spheres of common life.
It is what gives us faith that, in spite of sin, evil will
not prevail. Being realistic about sin and confident in the
possibility of love allows Christians to believe that there
is a moral and spiritual heart of a democratic society and
political order.

If these theological motifs are, as I believe, already
present deep within democratic life, they need to be made
conscious for democracy to flourish and spread. A serious
public theology will have to engage the great world
religions to find out whether they have comparable concepts
and prospects and where they may be able to adjust such
motifs for the emerging global civil society. This is
another area, for many the newest one, where our theology
must be public.


Notes

[1] "Religion, Culture, and International Conflict After
September 11," Ethics and Public Policy Center
Conversations, June 17, 2002, www.eppc.org.

[2] The Idea of Human Rights, Oxford, 1998, p. 35.

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

Full written judgement next week, I assume, at

http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/vic/VCAT/recent-cases.html

From: "Roslyn Phillips"
Sent: Friday, December 17, 2004 6:27 PM
Subject: Shock ruling on religious vilification

17 December 2004

Shock ruling on religious vilification

Dear Friends,

We were just about to party, party, party at our end of year Christmas
celebration with our committee and mailing helpers when the news came
through from Melbourne.

Suddenly I no longer felt hungry. I was stunned.

This morning Judge Higgins of the Victorian Civil and Administrative
Tribunal announced that he has found Christian pastors Daniel Scot and
Danny Nalliah guilty of religious vilification.

The judge's 100 pages of reasons will be released next week, but a short
summary said that the two Daniels breached section 8 of the Racial and
Religious Tolerance Act 2001, which says a person cannot engage in
conduct which "incites hatred against, serious contempt for, or revulsion or
severe ridicule of, that other person or class of persons".

Judge Higgins said the exceptions allowed under the Act - which included
events held for any genuine religious purpose, did not apply in this
case because the conduct of the defendants could "not be regarded as
reasonable and in good faith".

This is astounding. The event in question, you may remember, was a
seminar for Christians held in a church, conducted by a pastor with expert
knowledge of Islam and the Quran, to explain Quranic teachings and to help
Christians know how best to reach out to Muslim people. There was no evidence
that Christian seminar attendees felt hatred towards Muslims as a result of
the teaching - rather the reverse, since Pastor Daniel Scot had encouraged
them to love Muslims and invite them into their homes.

However, the Act does not require such evidence to be provided. The
evidence of vilification, it seems, was not whether Christians felt hatred or
contempt towards Muslims as a result of the seminar, but whether the
three Muslim attendees (who did not reveal their faith and were technically
not invited) felt hurt by Daniel Scot's translations of Quranic verses. The
three Muslim attendees acknowledged under cross-examination that their
knowledge of the Quran was slight.

The judge said that Pastor Scot "failed to differentiate between Muslims
throughout the world, that he preached a literal translation of the
Quran and of Muslims' religious practices which were not mainstream".

Bill Muehlenberg of the Australian Family Association pointed out: "Most
Muslims would object to this, arguing that they do adhere to a literal
understanding and translation of the Quran. And how does a secular
judge with no expertise in religion make such decisions, when Islamic scholars
themselves are divided on such crucial questions of theology,
interpretation and exegesis?

"Much of what the judge considered offensive was simply quotations from
the Quran itself. To argue that quoting a religious book makes one guilty
of vilification would put 98% of religious discussion out of bounds," Bill
Muehlenberg said.

Indeed. Phillip Adams - the atheist columnist in The Australian who
seems to have a fixation against all things biblical and Christian - would be
behind bars in no time. Or would he? It seems that the Victorian Act
may only apply to religions other than Christianity. Moreover Queensland
has a similar Act, and the ALP wants a law against racial and religious
vilification to apply nationwide.

Bill Muehlenberg argues that such laws could mean the death of
Christianity in Australia. But that would only happen if we lie down and
let it die.

This is a wake up call!

Bill and others are encouraging us to write letters to the papers, phone
the talkbacks, and tell the true story to as many MPs and other people as
possible.

Amen! As never before, we must get on our knees, then jump to our
feet. We need to defend the fundamental right of free speech. We must
defend the
right to tell the truth.

After all, some people find even the truth of the Gospel - that all of
us are sinners in need of Christ's salvation - vilifying and offensive.
The day may come when we are not allowed to preach it, even in a church.
..........................................................................

http://www.news.com.au/

Church vilified Muslims: ruling

December 17, 2004

AN evangelical Christian
ministry has been found to have vilified Islam during a seminar and in a
newsletter which mocked the religion.

The Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal
(VCAT) today blasted the Catch the Fire Ministries, its pastor Danny
Nalliah and speaker Daniel Scot over the March 2002 seminar in Melbourne
and several articles in the church's newsletter.

In a decision handed down today in a key test of Victoria's three-year-old
racial and religious vilification laws, Judge Michael Higgins found in
favour of the Islamic Council of Victoria, which took the action against
Catch The Fire.

Judge Higgins found that Catch the Fire and Pastor Scot had breached
section eight of the Religious and Racial Tolerance Act.

Also found in breach was church leader Pastor Nalliah, who was an
unsuccessful senate candidate for the Family First party in this year's
federal election.Judge Higgins will decide on penalties, which could
include orders for an apology or damages, early next year.

Judge Higgins said the seminar run by the ministry, a newsletter on its
website, and a website article written by an author identified as Richard
all breached the Act.

In a summary of reasons for his decision, Judge Higgins said Pastor Scot
had throughout the seminar made fun of Muslim beliefs and conduct.

"It was done, not in the context of a serious discussion of Muslims'
religious beliefs," Judge Higgins said.

"It was presented in a way which is essentially hostile, demeaning and
derogatory of all Muslim people, their God, Allah, the prophet Mohammed and
in general Muslim religious beliefs and practices."

Judge Higgins said that, during the seminar, Pastor Scot had claimed that
the Koran promoted violence, killing and looting and that Muslims were
liars and demons.

Pastor Scot also had said Muslims had a plan to overrun western democracy
by violence and terror and wanted to turn Australia into an Islamic nation,
and he exaggerated Muslim population numbers in Australia.

"I find that Pastor Scot's conduct was not engaged in reasonably and in
good faith for any genuine religious purpose or any purpose that is in the
public interest," he said.

Judge Higgins said an article in the church's newsletter, written by Pastor
Nalliah, incited fear and hatred of Muslims, as did a third article by a
person identified as Richard, which claimed it was not possible to separate
Islam from terrorism.

Victoria's Equal Opportunity Commission welcomed the decision on the case,
which was the first to be heard by VCAT since the Racial and Religious
Tolerance Act took effect at the start of 2002.

"The decision is very significant in terms of showing how the Act operates
in practice," said the commission's chief executive, Dr Helen Szoke.

"It demonstrates where the line is drawn between legitimate public debate
and behaviour that incites hatred."

A full reason for the decision is expected to be handed down in the next
fortnight, including any penalties.

Yasser Soliman, president of the Islamic Council of Victoria, said it had
been important to make a stand against vilification of Muslims in the
community.

"We also had the support of the Catholic Church, the interfaith community
and the Uniting Church and the Jewish community" Mr Soliman said.

"Because it was very important that we all stood together against
vilification and understand that vilification is a tool used by extremists,
and we must always condemn extremism and vilification.

"That was important, because left unaddressed, it was limiting the (Muslim)
community's ability to be seen as average Australians.

"People were being demonised, (being denied) the ability to get jobs, to be
friends, to be safe.

"We had to act upon it and felt it was important to have it determined by law."

Mr Soliman said he was saddened that the Islamic Council had to take legal
action, but hoped the decision would help promote goodwill between
different religions.

He said he had told Pastor Nalliah that he would like to develop a better
relationship with his church.

Pastor Nalliah said the decision was a blow for freedom of speech in Victoria.

He said Catch the Fire would probably appeal to the High Court, depending
on the final decision and penalties imposed by Judge Higgins.

"Sadly, we've lost the right to speak as a nation, in a sense, as a result
of this verdict," he said.

"It's a loss for freedom of speech, not just for us, but for all Australians.

"Certainly it (the Act) goes too far."

AAP

This report appears on NEWS.com.au.

Anyone who advocates such destruction should say what arrangement
they prefer.

R

Subject: Out Of The United Nations?

http://moveamericaforward.org/?Page=Petition

To: U.S. President George W. Bush
Senate Majority Leader, Bill Frist
Senate Minority Leader, Harry Reid
Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert
House Majority Leader, Tom DeLay
House Majority Whip, Roy Blunt
House Minority Leader, Nancy Pelosi
House Minority Whip, Steny Hoyer
UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan
H.E. Mr. Jean Ping, President, UN General Assembly

During the past several years, the threat facing the United States of
America and much of the world from violent terrorist organizations has
grown exponentially. While the United Nations is chartered to promote
peace, its actions recently have made it an accessory to terrorist crimes.

This calls for straightforward action by the people of the United States to
protect our national interest. Americans must demand our government remove
the United Nations from our borders and cease serving as the major
financial supporter of an organization that has veered from its original
purpose.

The United Nations was originally founded according to its charter "to
unite our strength to maintain international peace and security. " However,
it has become apparent that leading voices in the United Nations have
positioned the organization so that it is increasingly a body that sides
with those who find the use of terrorism against unarmed and innocent
civilians tolerable.

Instead of serving as a rallying point for free nations and free people to
unite to combat terrorism, the United Nations has become a safe harbor,
apologist and defender of terrorist organizations and their agents.

Recently it has become clear that none other than the UN General Secretary
himself, Kofi Annan, has been implicated in covering up the troubling
"Oil for Food" scandal, and stonewalling investigators. The so-called
independent audit  of the alleged misdeeds of the UN s Oil for Food 
program is looking more and more like a whitewash.

Why? Evidence suggests that Mr. Annan and his son, Kojo, may themselves
have been involved in wrongdoing in partnership with Iraqi dictator, Saddam
Hussein. High-ranking officials throughout the UN are now suspected of
financially benefiting from maintaining Saddam Hussein in power, despite
his despotic rule and ties to worldwide terrorism and refusal to accept UN
resolutions.

Saddam Hussein served as one of the greatest advocates for international
terrorism, yet the United Nations is wrought with individuals who became
the greatest obstacles for putting an end to his promotion of international
terror.

In the aftermath of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Kofi Annan has added insult to
injury by calling the military operation enforcing UN resolutions
illegal.  This is despite a series of resolutions, including Resolution
1441, which stated, the Council has repeatedly warned Iraq that it will
face serious consequences as a result of its continued violations of its
obligations. 

That resolution included a dissenting opinion by three nations. Those
nations were France, Russia and China. Evidence has now emerged which
implicates those same three nations as being the most actively involved in
the UN-Iraq Oil for Food  corruption scandal.

Money from the Oil for Food  scheme not only went to pay the families of
Palestinian terrorists, and journalists and officials in countries opposing
the Iraqi action, but it looks like it also went to purchase the weapons
that so called insurgents  are now using in Iraq to kill coalition
forces, Iraqi security forces, and innocent Iraqi civilians.

No longer should the United States of America serve as the host to an
institution that serves as a forum for opposition to our national
interests. Further, the United States should reexamine the extent of its
financial support of such an agency.

The U.S. pays a membership fee to the United Nations of $360 million per
year (and billions more in payments to other UN organizations). These are
payments made to an organization that is serving as an obstacle in the war
against terrorism. That makes no sense, and we must take action to reduce
or cancel payment of these fees. [Currently the U.S. pays approximately 22%
of the UN s general budget and 27% of peacekeeping budgets.]

We, the undersigned, do therefore call for the following to take place
immediately:

Removal of the United Nations Headquarters facilities from New York,
relocating it outside of the United States and any of its territories.

A thorough review of the US financial contributions to the UN with a goal
of a more equitable payment schedule. Until that review is concluded,
eliminate all the payments made by the United States to the United Nations.

fw from my oldest friend

Seasons greetings!

With politicians et al doing their uttermost to engineer our society to
become even wackier, I enjoy reading a simple letter to the newspaper. So
here's one from last Saturday's "The ComPost" 11/12/04 that originates
from bucolic Eketahuna where surely, the air must be clearer viz.

"This is plain impossible. You have recently published several
articles giving details of a person who has undergone a so-called
sex-change operation. You referred to this person as a man till he had an
orchidectomy and afterwards as a woman. You also, of course, use the
pronouns "she" and "her". No amount of surgery or hormone treatment can
change a man into a woman. Every farmer would be only too pleased if his
ram lambs became ewes and his bull calves became cows after he castrated
them. But no way. They become wethers and steers. A man treated in the
same way becomes a eunuch. With modern scientific advances, particularly
in dna testing, someone subjected to this test would be found to be male.
Every cell in his body would shout this from the housetops. It does not
matter how many X chromosomes a person has. If there is just one Y
chromosome, the individual is male. I think this person should take his
advisers to court for claiming to do something that is plain impossible."

JUDITH BEST
Eketahuna

Its length notwithstanding, I make bold to send widely this essay
which I rank v highly.

Young has fallen victim to some confusions about Aristotle's 4
Causes, but at least he acknowledges their importance whereas Dawkins,
Wolpert, S Weinberg etc ignore them. Top Kiwi biologist J E Morton got
them straight 3 decade ago, I reckon (see attached).

Particularly impressive is Young's list (1/5 down) of phoney
dichotomies.

R

SCIENCE AND THE HUMANITIES
IN THE UNDERSTANDING OF HUMAN NATURE

by Robert M. Young

Inaugural Lecture as Professor of Psychotherapy and Psychoanalytic
Studies, Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies, University of Sheffield,
25 May 2000.

It is an odd sensation giving an inaugural lecture four months
before one's retirement. One consequence is that insofar as such
lectures are promissory notes I trust you will agree that it would be
prudent not promise to achieve much in the remainder of my tenure.
Fortunately there are other purposes for such occasions. One is meant
to stand back and take stock of something and locate one's place within
a research tradition. Since I am so near the retiring age, I feel I
have a special license. I can say more or less what I like. Not that
what I have to say is particularly rude or retaliatory, but it does
involve some plain speaking. Here is an example. The relationship
between science and the humanities is in an awful mess, and if we don't
sort it out the role of the universities in husbanding and enhancing
human civility will probably wither away. Something similar is true of
the wider culture.

I have held important positions in three universities and have had major
access to several media, in particular, publishing, television and radio.
Throughout the nearly forty years I have been so placed, things have got
more or less steadily worse, and the people in charge have, on the whole,
accelerated that process.

Our scientists do not learn enough in their education and training about
the humanities, in particular, about the moral, political and
ideological forces and issues from which their work emerges and into
which it feeds. As C. P. Snow rightly observed in his memorable lecture
on 'The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution', our arts people
know even less about science and technology and are by turns sneering
and culpably diffident. The people who try their damndest to mediate
between the sciences and the humanities get sniped at and undermined
from both sides. That is the space within which I have conducted my
academic career. It's a case of something approaching killing the
messenger.

I have had extensive education on both sides of this stupid divide.
That has given me some interesting vantage points, and I have been
present for some serious complacency. When I was in medical school I
recall a professor beginning a lecture on cardiac dynamics with the
remark, 'Before we get serious, let's have some history'. I have seen
the eminent English don, F. R. Leavis, snarl at scientists, and I have
been present when Watson, Crick, Brenner, Dawkins and Wolpert have
haughtily said genuinely philistine things about philosophy, religion,
social science and morality.

Now to my title. All of its key terms are problematic and fiercely
debated. As to the first, the world view and boundaries of science are
much disputed and are idealised and despised in different quarters.
Learned scientific societies and promoters of the discipline calling
itself 'the public understanding of science' assure us that there's
nothing more exemplary of humanity's highest aspirations and
achievements, while people who mount critiques of scientific and
technological rationality claim that for all the achievements of
science, technology and medicine, the world view underlying them is
alienated and alienating and is leading to serious pollution, premature
deployment of new developments, e.g., in pharmaceuticals and GM crops,
and in debasement of the labour process, a subject upon which I have
dwelt in several papers. The extension of the methods and assumptions
of science beyond rather strictly drawn boundaries is called
'scientism', and it underpins reckless avoidance of the political and
moral debates which should be part and parcel of scientific work at
every stage from hunch to formulation and from funding to application.
Scientists fiercely fight against what they consider to be the
intrusion of politics and ideology into their putatively value-neutral
and objective research, but the values are there, albeit often
implicit. They do so with consequences which are often disastrous. I
will return to some of the baleful consequences of the claimed
separation of facts from values. My own position is that science,
technology and medicine -- far from being value-neutral -- are the
embodiment of values in theories, things and therapies, in facts and
artifacts, in procedures and programs. I also believe that all facts
are theory-laden, all theories are value-laden and all values occur
within an ideology or world view.

The humanities, my second key term, are conventionally set over
against science in the prevailing world view and in the choices our
children face at alarmingly young ages. I would welcome some
comparative data on this matter, one which bears fundamentally on
whether we can integrate our debates about values with our scientific
and technical developments. The traditional definition of the
humanities in Renaissance humanism included grammar, rhetoric, history,
literature and moral philosophy. The rebirth which constituted the
renaissance was a rediscovery of ancient Greek and Latin texts, the
study of which was opposed to sterile mediaeval scholasticism. Our list
of subjects in the humanities would be longer, reflecting the growth of
disciplines in the 19 th and 20th centuries. As late as the mid-19th
century one could only study mathematics, classics or divinity at
Oxford and Cambridge. Universities such as this one -- so-called
redbrick universities -- were created to broaden the base of university
education to include the sciences and, above all, technology.
Technological education has, relatively speaking, eschewed the arts
cultivated by the leisured class, while technology has become more
central to our lives in successive waves. Along with these developments
the separation of the consideration of technological development from
moral, aesthetic, political and ideological determinations has become
increasingly problematic. This separation impoverishes those trained in
science, technology and medicine, and ignorance of the scientific and
technical side impoverishes those who study the humanities. It is a
disastrous and growing split.

The essence of the humanities is the exploration, husbanding and
conducting debates about values. That is central to literature, the
theatre, fine art, much of philosophy, cultural studies, history,
classical studies and much else. Our culture is riven. It is
characterised by sharp dichotomies, each and every one of which is a
false dichotomy, but our belief in them precludes unified deliberations
about the scientific and the moral. Here is my list of them:

humanities - science

society - science

culture - nature

qualitative - quantitative

value - fact

purpose - mechanism

subject - object

internal - external

secondary- primary (qualities)

thought - extension

mind - body

character - behaviour

I will not have time on this occasion to explore all of these, but
I will seek to undermine some of them.

To get to the bottom of the issue I will have to do what the
Renaissance humanists did and try to recover some ancient wisdom. The
separation of fact and value which we associate with modern science was
an innovation in the seventeenth century. The framework of explanation
which prevailed in ancient, mediaeval and Renaissance times was the
Aristotelian one in which causes or aitia (literally, the 'comings to
be' of things) always occurred in fours: the material, the efficient,
the formal and the final cause. If you did not come up with all four
causes you did not have an explanation. Most of them are familiar to
our modern scheme, because versions of them were carried over into the
paradigm of explanation of modern science. The material cause told you
out of what raw materials the effect came -- the matter. Our modern
concept of matter, including the periodic table of elements and of
fundamental particles, corresponds to this. The material cause of an
ordinary chair would be wood. The efficient cause is that which imparts
energy to it and would include intrinsic ideas of energy not altogether
unlike our own but also that which imparted change, in this case, the
carpenter. The formal cause was hugely important in the writings of
Plato and Aristotle, but we can only dwell on certain aspects -- what
type it was, where is sits in a classification. The chair partakes of
the form of 'chair-ness', but the formal cause can embrace architect's
plans, formal arrangements, structures, shapes, types, taxonomies.
There was a form for everything -- the good, the true, the beautiful,
for humankind, for dishonourableness, for dirt, for shit. As I say,
there were and still are huge debates about forms or types or concepts
-- where they come from and how we get them into our heads. People like
Locke, Piaget, Chomsky and, in psychoanalysis, Wilfred Bion, have
pondered such things. The fourth and last explanatory factor was the
purpose or use or aim and was called the final cause. The final cause
of a chair is to provide somewhere to sit.

As I said, three of the four Aristotelian causes found their way
into the explanatory paradigm of modern science, but the final cause or
purpose was considered not objective and was split off and relegated to
the mind of God and of people. It is not part of a scientific
explanation, at least not a reductionist or materialist explanation.
That's the official story at least, but it kept sneaking back in, for
example, in functional explanations in anatomy, physiology and
medicine, in evolutionary theory, in the functionalist tradition in the
human sciences which was based on biological analogies, e.g.,
structures, functions, organic analogies. But make no mistake, strictly
speaking, they had no place in the explanatory paradigm of materialist
science which allowed only matter, motion and number.

René Descartes, whose Discourse on Method was published in 1637 and
is often called the founding document of modern science, redefined the
basic furniture of reality. He divided the world into two sorts of
things -- extended substances and thinking substances. Extended
substances had extension, figure and motion and made up the world of
matter, while thinking substances were defined negatively as that which
does not pertain to matter, and their essence was will. We were left
with a world of minds and bodies ó since called Cartesian dualism. This
radical definition of reality was very useful for certain scientific
purposes, but it left a dreadful legacy of unsolved problems, for
example, how minds and bodies interact. Many, many philosophers have
lamented this split. One of my favourites is Alfred North Whitehead,
who wrote Science and the Modern World, in which he had this to say
about the modern world view:

The seventeenth century had finally produced a scheme of
scientific thought framed by mathematicians, for the use of
mathematicians. The enormous success of the scientific abstractions,
yielding on the one hand matter, on the other hand mind, perceiving,
suffering, reasoning, but not interfering, has foisted onto philosophy
the task of accepting them as the most concrete rendering of fact.

Thereby, modern philosophy has been ruined. It has oscillated
in a complex manner between three extremes. There are the dualists, who
accept matter and mind as on equal basis, and the two varieties of
monists, those who put mind inside matter, and those who put matter
inside mind. But this juggling with abstractions can never overcome the
inherent confusion introduced by the scientific scheme of the
seventeenth century (Whitehead, 1925, p. 70).

Edwin Arthur Burtt reflected on the consequences of this world view
for any attempt at understanding human nature.

...it does seem like strange perversity in these Newtonian
scientists to further their own conquests of external nature by loading
on mind everything refractory to exact mathematical handling and thus
rendering the latter still more difficult to study scientifically than
it had been before. Did it never cross their minds that sooner or later
people would appear who craved verifiable knowledge about mind in the
same way they craved it about physical events, and who might reasonably
curse their elder scientific brethren for buying easier success in
their own enter enterprise by throwing extra handicaps in the way of
their successors in social science? Apparently not; mind was to them a
convenient receptacle for the refuse, the chips and whittlings of
science, rather than a possible object of scientific knowledge (Burtt,
1932, pp. 318-19).

I have quoted the profound and searching critiques of Whitehead and
Burtt to indicate where we need to look for the metaphysical
foundations of the science-humanities split and the philosophical
defensiveness of the human sciences. This is particularly pertinent to
the restricted range of approaches to human nature adopted in most
psychology departments, a feature which disappoints and bewilders many
students. In a better world, for example, biography would be a
discipline taught in psychology curricula, not to mention
psychoanalysis.

Now we can begin to see why my research has had the trajectory it
has. I set out to find a scientific basis for the moral and
psychological issues which worried me as a young man. I thought I could
do so by understanding the theoretical basis for the sciences
underlying mental functions, i.e., brain physiology. That's why I
studied the history of cerebral localization. The natural
classification of the aspects of human nature would, I thought, be the
natural classification of the functions of the brain. But the brain
turned out not to speak its own classification. There are many overlays
of mental functioning -- primary sensory modalities, balance,
proprioception, higher mental functions, associations, emotional
functions, etc. The more you think about it, the more you realize that=20
you can ask the brain how it does anything; you can bring any overlay
to it. There are as many psychologies as there are -- what? -- as there
are views of human nature, as there are value systems, as there are
ideologies or world views.

I did not see that far at first. I asked myself where
classifications of mental functions came from. In research on cerebral
function in the early and mid-19th century they came from physiognomy
then phrenology, especially the work of Franz Joseph Gall, whom I
studied for a time. The next generation created an evolutionary
psychology inspired by Herbert Spencer, to whom Darwin deferred in
matters of psychology, then aphasia research, then John Hughlings
Jackson's clinical neurological studies of evolution and dissolution of
functions. Then Freud used them as a basis for his early work on
aphasia and then on hysteria and then the magnificent model of the mind
in Chapter VII of The Interpretation of Dreams, which brings us up to
1900. What I am trying to convey is that the context of brain research
turned out to be associationist psychology, clinical neurology and
evolutionary theory. The context of evolutionary theory was, in turn,
natural theology, uniformitarian geology and Malthusian population
theory. The context for these was debates about science, theology,
positivism and the theory of ideology in the nineteenth century. I
contend that to understand these matters we have to work with little or
no recognition of boundaries between science and the humanities. We
must go wherever the multidisciplinary history of ideas leads us.

I looked into all of these matters and wrote a history of ideas
about the functions of the brain, followed by a series of studies on
the 19th century debate on 'man's place in nature' (as it was then
called), which I published as Darwin's Metaphor: Nature's Place in
Victorian Culture. This research led in another direction in the
context of the ferment of the 1960s -- into the historiographic
traditions in thinking about Darwinism and the relationship between
science and ideology, a topic which had been debated since the school
of IdÈologie of Cabanis and Destutt de Tracy in Napoleonic France.
IdÈologie was a discipline first embraced than reviled by Napoleon. It
began life as the meta-discipline to which science was accountable. The
idÈologues' intellectual programme was 'to subject the ideas of science
to the science of ideas', something rather like metaphysics,
Aristotle's discipline which came after and was 'meta' to physics. But
when he fell out with this group, Napoleon gave the term a pejorative
connotation of polluted knowledge, one which it has largely retained.
It was that sense Marx and Engels invoked in their study of The German
Ideology, where, as in other places, they argued that the ruling ideas
of an age are the ideas of its ruling class, a proposition being
revived in the 1960s during the Vietnam War in the critique of the role
of the academy made by radical scholars. Along with other academic
disciplines, science was not being allowed to claim that it was above
the battle of contending ideologies. Scientific and technological and
medical rationality were seen as much as part of the problem as part of
the solution. This critique was led by the Frankfurt School of Critical
Theory, for example, Herbert Marcuse and J¸rgen Habermas, and it was
during this period that there was a movement for social responsibility
in science which attracted, among others, the Nobel laureate, Maurice
Wilkins. It also evoked a number of radical science periodicals, one of
which I edit. You may think I have strayed from my theme, but I believe
that I have been exemplifying ways in which the strict dichotomies I
listed above are problematic. I am suggesting that science is part of
culture, that how we see nature is, too, which is why the journal I
just mentioned is called Science as Culture and is based on the
assumption that research traditions cannot be reasonably claimed to be
set above the prevailing world view of the epoch. This is a radical
version of the research programme of the sociology of knowledge and is
known as social constructivism in science.

One particular manifestation of this point, an experimentum crucis,
has been a recurrent theme in my research. Darwin tells us in his
notebooks, his pencil sketch of 1842, his longer sketch of 1844, in On
the Origin of Species and other writings, in his letters and in his
autobiography that Malthus' population theory -- that populations
increase geometrically while food supply only grows arithmetically --
provided the key insight that led to his formulation of the theory of
evolution by natural selection. The gap between population growth and
resources created the pressure in the struggle for existence. I traced
this link with some care and gave a paper in Oxford entitled 'Malthus
and the Evolutionists: The Common Context of Biological and Social
Theory' (196. You would not believe the howls which came from
orthodox biologists. What I'd found meant that putatively pure biology,
the holy of holies of Darwin's mechanism for evolutionary change, the
foundation stone of modern biology, was in debt to, in bed with,
tainted social theory of an avowedly conservative kind. There has been
a running battle about this since I first wrote about it over thirty
years ago. I think it is now the consensus that my account has
prevailed. The scientific ideologues continue to hate it, though. I
take great pleasure in the integration of Malthusianism with Darwinism,
because I think history happens in that way. Assumptions about human
nature and society contribute fundamentally to approaches taken to
nature and living nature which are then extrapolated to account for
human nature and society. It was always so. Indeed, a number of studies
influenced by mine have made this point over a wide variety of
scientific disciplines. I think the best of all of them is the
magnificently detailed and meticulously written research of Donna
Haraway, whose magisterial volume Primate Visions: Gender, Race and
Nature in the World of Modern Science (1989) traces the wide range of
determinations which gave us the biological science of primatology, the
study of the animals closest to us in the evolutionary tree.

I cannot sufficiently stress how furious it makes many scientists
when scholars in the history, philosophy and social studies of science,
technology and medicine draw attention to the social forces at work in
the origination, funding and deployment of scientific research, in the
foundations of scientific disciplines and even in the scientific world
view. There have been scholarly writings on these issues for as long as
people have reflected on nature and human nature. Yet the education of
scientists in recent times has left out any study of the history and
philosophical bases of ideas about science and scientific rationality,
with the result that they think people who do think critically about
the philosophical and other dimensions of science are mad, bad,
polluting -- threatening the very fabric of rationality and society.
They hate it. They declare war. I am not exaggerating; the phrase 'the
Science Wars' is current in America and elsewhere. Lobbies for science
have largely succeeded in eliminating governmental funding for history,
philosophy and social studies of science. I have seen this problem at
first hand. Directors of studies in science and medicine in Cambridge
were hostile to and satirical about the History and philosophy of
Science Tripos, never mind that the RAE gave a5* to the department,
more than the university's distinguished philosophy department got. I
find that students who did their undergraduate degrees in science,
engineering or medicine tend to have such reactions. They take it that
studying social determinations means that it is claimed that there is
no rationality, no fabric of reality. They tend to become witch-hunting
and aggressive. I have been unlucky enough to be on the receiving end
of this sort of stuff at every stage of my academic career. Having been
the object of it in my time as a historian and philosopher of science,
I was less than delighted to get it again (sometimes from the same
ideologues) as I debated them in my role as a psychoanalytic
psychotherapist and as a scholar in psychoanalytic studies.

Come to that, a new colleague said in his very first intervention
at our weekly the Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies seminars that he
had been discussing things with the vice-chancellor at his last
university, who had said that humanities research was a luxury
universities could no longer afford and would have to become a private
hobby. At least one member of staff took that intervention to be a
defining moment in the history of the centre. What it conveyed to him
was that a group of accomplished humanities scholars could not find a
congenial home inside a medical faculty, because that faculty would be
so hostile to and uncomprehending of qualitative, scholarly book
research and would insist on experimental or at least quantitative
research, something for which one can get grants. I thought he was
being alarmist, but I think that in the long run he his likely to be
proved prescient

I now want to turn to a strong sense I have of what underlies this
view -- the pecking order of disciplines based on the pre-eminence of
natural science. What characterises science? A method. As I've said,
since the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, many have also argued that science strives to produce
explanations in terms of matter, motion and number, the framework of
ideas associated with Descartes, Copernicus, Galileo, Hobbes, Newton,
Locke, etc. An explanation in these terms is said to be better and more
basic than one couched in other terms. This is the
reductionist/materialist programme of modern science and is explicit in
many of the dismissive remarks natural scientists make about the
humanities. It is also implicit in the ranking of disciplines which
places mathematical and material sciences, e.g., physics and chemistry,
above biological ones. Among the biological ones molecular biology and
biochemistry rank above physiology, morphology, taxonomy, ethology and
evolutionary psychology. Biological scientists, in turn, peck
behavioural and social scientists. The medical sciences are all over
this map, since some are exquisitely experimental and quantitative,
e.g., neurochemistry and endocrinology, while others are far from being
so, e.g., psychiatry. Psychotherapy and especially psychoanalysis, are
hardly on the map, according to some, and hardly funded, even though
psychological difficulties constitute a large part of the reason people
go to doctors. Outside all this -- beyond the pale -- are the
humanities

One discipline which strikes me as helping us to see that natural
science does not shed enough light on human nature for us to rely
solely on science is the burgeoning field of evolutionary psychology
(which I shall mention again later). I recently went to a millennial
celebration of Darwin at his old school in Shrewsbury at which Matt
Ridley defended Darwinian reductionism, though he granted that there
was such a thing as greedy reductionism, which he deplored. By
Darwinian reductionism I mean the appeal to evolutionary selectionism
to explain aspects of human character and personality without allowing
due consideration of more proximal explanations drawn, for example,
from psychodynamic psychology, philosophy and literature. I expect to
learn more from 'Othello' about jealousy than from explanations
appealing to natural selection and competition for mates drawn from
Darwinian psychology. I suppose I mean that I don't want to be placed
in the position of having to choose between them. Why should I, unless
evolutionary explanations are somehow thought to be better than the
insights of Sophocles or Shakespeare or Freud? There is a militancy in
the representations of Darwinian psychologists, for example, the people
who mount the programme called Darwin@LSE, which frightens and affronts
me in the same way the assertive anti-humanities ways of Richard
Dawkins and Louis Wolpert affront me. I would gladly say 'Go in peace'
to them, but their explanatory imperialism strikes me as not allowing
due space for explanations drawn from the humanities. It is as if only
reductionist sciences can provide real explanations.

You could say that Darwinism provides the bridge between human
nature and the sciences. Let's place Darwin in the great scheme of the
history of ideas. There have been a number of blows to human arrogance.
The concept of the solar system dethroned the Earth from being regarded
as the centre of the universe. Darwinism showed that humanity is not
the specially created pinnacle of all living beings. Marxism showed
that economic and ideological forces fundamentally condition what
humans do. Freud showed that we do not even have access to the greater
part of our motivations, which are unconscious. These explanations
mitigate our conception of the human species and our planet as central
in the firmament and our humanity as adequately characterised by
rational intentionality and conscious control over our actions.

If we look at Darwinís theory as one of the great ideas in the
history of science, we can characterise it in two ways. Evolution ranks
with gravity, the central concept in physics, and affinity, the key
idea in chemistry, as one of the most basic concepts in the natural
sciences. Beyond that, however, evolution by natural selection is a
widely-applicable theory in two senses. It is the law which binds all
of life together and defines its relations with the physical
environment ó how the history of living nature relates to the history
of nature. And, of course, it binds humanity by causal laws to the rest
of life and nature. Evolution by natural selection is the process which
accounts for the history of living nature, including human nature. It
is arguably the most important idea in the history of the natural and
the human sciences

All of the above is fairly common knowledge, though the breadth and
depth of the scope of Darwinism is rarely adequately presented.
However, there is a huge problem which is left unresolved -- or perhaps
I should say it is in some hands too easily resolved -- by evolution.
If we take evolution to be an all-embracing explanation of living,
including human, phenomena, then it includes human psychology, society
and culture within the causal nexus of deterministic scientific laws.
If this is so, what is the basis for morality? Put another way, how
should we think of the role of values and morality in human nature? At
its most stark, evolution by natural selection proceeds by competition
for resources and/or mates to achieve viable offspring which live to
reproduce. How can this conception of the interrelations between
creatures be subtle enough to include processes which transcend
competition - altruism, charity, generosity, self-critical reflection.
How can it explain the diversity of customs and mores in different
cultures? Providing such explanations is, I take it, part of the
project of the new Darwinian sciences, in particular Darwinian
(sometimes called Evolutionary) Psychology. As I've said, the answers
they tend to provide often strike me as less useful than the ones we
can gain from more traditional ones employing human purposes,
consciously conceived and/or discerned in unconscious motivations,
which do not rely on selfish genes and competition for resources and/or
mates.

It seems to me to be approaching things the wrong way up to claim
that Darwinian explanations provide the most basic accounts for the
subtleties and complexities of human relations when literature,
philosophy, theology, analytical psychology and other cultural
approaches evoke and explore them so well. Perhaps I should say,
rather, that it seems wrong-headed to me to offer Darwinian
explanations as superior to or as replacements for traditional
explorations of such matters derived from the arts. It may be, of
course, that evolution explains humanity and all its works, but we must
still find a way of paying due respect to established forms of
reflection on human nature and not run headlong into a single
explanatory paradigm -- and a reductionist one, at that. The general
applicability of evolutionary explanation is not the same as its
replacing other explanations or as being seen as more appropriate or
basic than them. Hence we need science and the humanities; neither will
do alone now or, in my opinion, ever.

For example, I expect the discipline of biography to have an
enduring role in understanding human nature. It can weave together the
strands which make up a person's inner and outer lives. It can
illuminate character, the moral dimension of who we are. Writings in
literature and history can also shed light on civility, on generosity,
on compassion, on sectarian and nationalist conflicts and on the rise
and fall of societies and civilizations that I simply do not expect to
get to anything like the same degree from evolutionary explanations.
They are too crude and general, while biography, history and literature
are exquisitely particulate in their piecing together the vicissitudes
of lives of individuals, families, groups, societies and cultures.

You will not be surprised to hear that one reason I mind about this
stuff is that, along with other anti-humanities zealots, its advocates
relentlessly attack psychoanalysis -- as a theory of human nature, as a
method of investigation and as a therapy. It was not always so. Freud
was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society when he emigrated to
England in 1939. Indeed, the British Medical Association undertook a
careful assessment of psychoanalysis in the late 1920s and (not without
making some criticisms) gave it its imprimatur. I think the flak that
has come the way of psychoanalysis is in some ways very obvious and in
some ways very odd, unmerited and even perverse. I'll start with the
unmerited bit. There is an increasing number of writings coming from
inside the psychological and psychoanalytic community which assess it
as a therapy by high standards of clinical assessment and give it good
marks. (Our own Professor Glenys Parry contributed to one of the best
of these.). They demonstrate with great care that psychoanalytic
psychotherapy and psychoanalysis work. Indeed, one shows that people in
therapy benefit as much as people in full analysis, but three years
later the people who had full analysis have gone on improving, while
those who had less sessions per week are no worse than at the end of
treatment but are also no better. Other studies, including a huge one
overseen by the President of the American Psychological Association,
have shown that various sorts of psychotherapy work. More therapy
yields more benefit, and more training means more likelihood of
benefit. There is also a thriving and growing body of research going
on, including an international society and a journal entitled
Psychotherapy Research.

The vehement critiques of Freud and psychoanalysis do not take
account of these careful findings, ones which are growing apace. Those
who mount the critiques, on one side, and those who defend it, on the
other, make up what is known as 'The Freud Wars' and engage is polemics
strikingly reminiscent of the attacks on the history, philosophy and
social studies of science, technology and medicine in 'The Science
Wars' which I mentioned earlier. Another parallel is that their ranks,
along with other forces in medicine and its funding, have succeeded in
all but pushing psychotherapy out of psychiatry. There is a new and
important book deeply lamenting this trend, Of Two Minds: The Growing
Disorder in American Psychiatry by T. M. Luhrmann (2000). She traces
the growing polarization of treatment regimes, almost exclusively at
the expense of talking cures. What they have put in place of
psychotherapy, as is well known, is selective serotonin reuptake
inhibitors,

I think there is a deeper reason for the ideological attacks on
psychoanalysis: dumbing down. It is a widespread movement, widely
commented upon. I am sorry to say that think that the same deeply
superficial forces are at work in attacks on humanities and the
disciplines which reflect on science as are aimed at psychoanalysis --
a mistaken belief that all truths are truths of the surface, that our
inner natures, what Kleinians call our inner world, is not to be taken
account of, looked into, that we should not seek to take responsibility
for our unconsciouses and change. Moral struggle, which is at the heart
of psychoanalytic work, is just too tough for these times.

There is an appropriate movement, to which I have alluded, for
testing the efficacy of psychoanalysis and other psychotherapies. In
this sense it is rightly accountable to science. However, to tell the
truth, I am not personally much in sympathy with those who seek to
prove it is a science, though I am quick to grant the importance of
outcome studies. You could say that I am happy to have a science of
outcomes but believe that what the outcomes are outcomes of is a
humanistic relationship, a disciplined, empathic dialogue. I am
speaking up for a humanities 'take' on psychoanalysis and
psychotherapy. As I have said, I am quite happy to grant -- even
celebrate -- that the understanding if human nature is well-served by
the insights gleaned from the humanities. I am content, nay pleased,
when people write about Freud and Judaism, Freud the moralist, or the
religious and romantic roots of psychoanalysis. I am not a theist,
though I sometimes nostalgically wish I could be. I am, however, a
believer in the collective wisdom contained in religious traditions,
just as I appreciate the insights gleaned from literary traditions. I
appreciate the story of Job as I do the religious philosophical
writings of Kierkegaard, as I do those of Kafka, all much in the same
vein. Come to that, I celebrate Freud's lifelong exploration of the
depths of the meaning of the Oedipus myth for the human family, just as
others find in 'Hamlet' and 'King Lear' keys to intergenerational
dynamics.

Psychoanalysis, in turn, has had an important influence on
literature, and on literary studies, especially biography, the novel
and film, but it has also importantly influenced history and was at
least once (1957) the subject of the Presidential address of the
American Historical Association. The same can be said for social theory
and for the study of groups and institutions, where its influence is
growing. Indeed, psychoanalytic studies has been established as an
academic discipline in the midstof the Freud Wars, and innumerable new
books and journals have also come on stream.

I want also to make a claim for the role of the humanities in
illuminating science. Here we have literary and philosophical methods
employed in studying the writings at the heart of the natural sciences.
The current senior professor of English Literature at Cambridge,
Gillian Beer, founded her reputation on a close study of Darwin's
Plots, and she and others continue to contribute to the study of
science and literature under a single umbrella. Our own Professor Sally
Shuttleworth has made a number of studies of the relationship between
Victorian psychology, on the one hand, and literature and the broader
culture, on the other. I have made detailed historical and
philosophical studies of the basic concept in Darwin's explanation of
evolution, the metaphor of 'natural selection', and have demonstrated
the central role of teleology and anthropomorphism in the theory which
lies at the foundations of biological science. Margot Waddell has
studied both the influence of scientific ideas on George Eliot's novels
and (with Meg Harris Williams) the literary origins of the
psychoanalytic theory of the mind (1991). There are studies of how
Newton influenced poetry, how Darwin influenced literature, how
hermetical and alchemical traditions were at the heart of renaissance
and Elizabethan letters and in Newton's philosophy of nature. Scholars
study the philosophical assumptions and the forces in the society and
values of particular times which led scientists and whole movements in
science to ask the questions they did and to settle for the kinds of
answers they did. I have no time even to list the ways in which fiction
and science fiction explore science, technology and medicine from
Marlowe's 'Dr Faustus' to 'Jurassic Park'. Nor can I do more than
mention how science itself is illuminated by traditional humanities
genres employed by scientists, e.g., James Watson's The Double Helix.
There is, I am glad to say, no end to it.

Yet, for reasons I have tried to begin to illuminate, at the level
of the rhetoric of the press and the literary press, in the halls of
learned scientific societies, in granting agencies and charities,
scientific rationality is waxing at the expense of studies in the
humanities. I call this philistine and seriously dangerous. I think it
is at work in this university, among others. When I proposed the
expansion of the CPS into an institute of human relations on the model
of the ones established in the last century at Yale, at Harvard, at the
Tavistock Centre and at the New Bulgarian University, the proposal got
nowhere with the powers that be in the School for Health and Related
Research SCHARR (of which our centre is a member). The reason, I was
told, that it was a non-starter was that no one could see how it would
generate research funds and quantitative research relevant to our RAE
rating. I disagree profoundly. I put it to you that bringing together
various approaches to human nature from the humanities including
literature and philosophy, the human sciences and the helping
professions could be a distinguished and illuminating project to which
eminent scholars and researchers would, I promise you, flock. In the
immortal worlds of Kevin Cosner in 'Field of Dreams', 'If you build it
they will come'.

You may have noticed that I have not explicitly discoursed much on
the third term in my title, human nature. It is at least as problematic
as science and the humanities. Indeed, some Marxists have claimed that
it is only an ensemble of human relations, while others have written
excellent books rebutting this reading. Althusserians,
deconstructionists, Lacanians and postmodernists have reduced human
nature to a hook onto which inscriptions and on which constitutive
forces act. I defy you to make it go away. It is, of course, a subject
of debate in every newspaper and periodical, and I once collected
titles of a large number of books on my own bookshelves with the phrase
in their title. It is what we wish to fathom in deciding what we are up
against in ourselves and others, what we can hope for, what we may even
achieve: part biology, part socialization, part striving. For me it is
(you may find this limp) a mixture of good and bad, loving and
aggression, but all my studies and clinical work and family life have
taught me that it can to a degree be shifted for the better, as Freud
once put it, from unbearable misery to ordinary human unhappiness. My
own views are close to Freud's tempered pessimism, a sort of stoicism,
but let's keep on trying. In the last of his New Introductory Lectures
he claimed to have no weltangschauung or world view, while vehemently
attacking leftist views on human nature. I -- and I trust you -- do not
suffer under the delusion that I am free of ideology, but discerning
its role and picking and choosing among the philosophies of human
nature available to us is a task which is never-ending.

In my opinion psychoanalysis, seen as a discipline in the
humanities, is centrally complementary to biological approaches. As
Jonathan Lear has put it,

The point of psychoanalysis is to help us develop a clearer,
yet more flexible and creative, sense of what our ends might be. "How
shall we live?" is, for Socrates, the fundamental question of human
existence ó and the attempt to answer that question is, for him, what
makes human life worthwhile. And it is Plato and Shakespeare, Proust,
Nietzsche and, most recently, Freud who complicated the issue by
insisting that there are deep currents of meaning, often crosscurrents,
running through the human soul which can at best be glimpsed through a
glass darkly. This, if anything, is the Western tradition: not a
specific set of values, but a belief that the human soul is too deep
for there to be any easy answer to the question of how to live (Lear,
1998, p. 2.

Among the most Socratic books I have read are two which I have
recently had occasion to re-read and give to my children. Both are
about many things, but the first looks centrally at what's gone wrong
with our conceptions of the relations between the technical and the
world of values -- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974).
The other is not as celebrated. Seventeen years after Robert Pirsig
wrote ZenÖ he wrote Lila: An Enquiry into Morals. The central question
in the book is whether a derelict, feckless, mendacious wreck of a
woman had value. Throughout the book the issue hangs in the balance. I
want to live in an academic world in which it is thought important and
even natural that students in science, technology and medicine should
read and reflect upon those books.

In conclusion, I stand before you a venerable and bloody but
unbowed survivor of the Science Wars and the Freud Wars, both of which
are ongoing. I am suggesting, even pleading, that if we do not make
peace between the sciences and the humanities and seek to reintegrate
the metaphysical foundations of science with values, we will sink into
an ever-deepening pit of philistinism, false consciousness, reification
and moral decay. If we do, as a result of great struggle, manage to
reintegrate them, we can seriously hope to achieve and to bear ordinary
human unhappiness.

Copyright: The Author

Address for correspondence: 26 Freegrove Road, London N7 9RQ
robert@rmy1.demon.co.uk
http://human-nature.com/

The Human Nature Review © Ian Pitchford and Robert M. Young

Life's Biggest Question Still Needs an Answer
NZ Herald 22-3-99

The origins of human existence cannot be explained by discoveries of where and how life developed, but rather by asking why, write NEIL BROOM and ROBERT MANN .

Professor Paul Davies is certainly one of the most successful modern scientists in guiding towards "a rapprochement between science and spirituality". But his latest book, The Fifth Miracle , asserts that, if we find life elsewhere than on our planet, "the ramifications are profound in the extreme."

"They transcend mere science, and impact on such philosophical issues as whether there is a meaning to physical existence or whether life, the universe and everything are ultimately pointless and absurd" he writes.

"That is the momentous import of the search for life on Mars and beyond. The search for life in the universe is thus a search for ourselves - who we are and what our place is in the grand scheme of things".

The notion - called panspermia - that life first arose elsewhere and then came across space on to our planet has exerted only minor, fitful influence on evolutionary theory. The similar notion that our planet may have 'seeded' microbes far afield has an even scantier history. The other logical possibility is that life arose independently in two or more places. Few scientific facts point to such hypotheses, and none in any conclusive way.

But, whatever facts science may yet uncover on Mars or further away, these can not be important for the spiritual understanding which Davies seeks.

Davies says that the existence of life elsewhere, if factually confirmed, "would be the most definite indication of there being a purpose or direction to life . . . the closest we could get to proof of the existence of a 'god'." Similarly, he says that should life be found off the planet this would be "the greatest evidence for a creator".

These statements are, rather obviously, wrong. The spiritual questions grandly outlined by Davies cannot be illuminated by technical facts about where life first arose, or where else it moved to, on or off our planet. 'Where?', and even 'when?', are vastly less important, and infinitely less spiritual, than 'why?' - the question about causes & meaning.

Scholarly consideration of causes in biology is famously illuminated by William Paley’s scenario of finding, during a stroll on a heath, a watch. The evident order of this mechanism - especially if it was working when found - would rightly force the finder who studied it to infer the existence of a design and, therefore, a designer.

Watches can never be said to have arisen from an entirely impersonal, mindless cause. Such mechanical contrivances are always the expression of creativity, of some person who decided to construct a mechanism for the purpose of telling time.

Paley argued that the living mechanisms of nature - the complex machinery so evident in biology - must similarly be inferred to be designed.
However materialistic one’s views might be and however many millions or billions of years of evolution may be granted to us, the machinery of life surely requires an explanation of a personal rather than impersonal kind. We believe this argument has been wrongly neglected - certainly not refuted. Megatime is no substitute for purpose.

To discuss causes of life, one needs traditional understanding of the term 'causes'. The four categories of cause, identified by Aristotle and little challenged for 2.3 millennia, have rarely been taught to science students let alone the general public, but they are crucial for explanation in biology. Two of the four are simply ignored today by most scientist-philosophers.

Before the recent decline in the philosophy of science, the Auckland biologist John E. Morton, using science, as Aristotle of course could not, illustrated the 4 categories of cause by his 1972 'claret cameo' [in 'God, Science & Man', Collins 1972], which we paraphrase below.

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

Morton's 'claret cameo'

What are the causes of my bottle of claret?

The material cause includes the grape juice and the yeast, materials transformed by the efficient cause into this peculiar substance claret.

The efficient cause is the action of the yeast on the grape sugars and some minor components, resulting in aqueous ethanol and some minor new chemicals characteristic of claret.

But my bottle of claret has also a final cause: a man (named Babich) exerted his will to organise suitable vessels for the substances which are the material cause, and planned a sequence of operations for the purpose of making claret by maximising the likelihood that the efficient cause for claret would operate, i.e. the particular chemical action of the yeast on the grape juice leading to claret.

What Aristotle called the formal cause, on which we here say no more, is the 'claret idea' in Babich's mind.

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

{photo of a frog - caption Design secrets rest with the humble frog}

If a bottle of claret is required by human reason to have a final cause, how could it be denied that a frog also is designed?

The attempt to explain life is, we believe, severely incomplete until one faces up to final cause in biology. This is little assisted by panspermia, which merely pushes back one stage the scientific question of where & when life first showed up in the universe, and has negligible spiritual significance.

The "enlightment" assumption that science can, and soon will, give an essentially complete description and explanation of the physical (including biological) world constitutes scientism - faith in science as the "only" way of knowledge. The only type of final cause - person acting to bring about the observed change - is, in this modern approach, human will. ‘Who designed this watch?’ is thus an allowed question, but ‘who designed this frog?’ is not.

The attempt to illuminate spiritual questions by studying only nature without recourse to special revelation is called natural theology. One of us has recently tried to bring natural theology up to date in a small book concentrating on design in biology (How Blind is the Watchmaker ? , Ashgate 199. [2nd edn IVP 2001]

The existence of life on Mars or elsewhere seems to us a scientifically interesting but theologically trivial question. Attempts to discern anything about God, or spiritual matters more generally, from this sort of science are, in our opinion, doomed.

There is compelling evidence much ‘closer to home’ for a transcendent cause. Just take a look at any one of the marvellous mechanisms found in the living world. Such living ‘machines’ embody and express a degree of complexity, sophistication, and purposefulness, that far surpasses anything created by human hands. Are we then to conclude that there is no evidence of mindful orchestration in the living world? No Mastermind?

The really important questions about what we are and why we exist are not scientific, and science is a trespasser when it pronounces on such matters. This fundamental limitation of science was admirably summarised by Professor Morton a quarter of a century ago.

The feeling of breathless enchantment can be evoked by natural theology, and can lead the children of atheism & agnosticism to investigate more important parts of theology.

But bugs winging their way to or from Mars, or any other version of panspermia, are incapable of shedding light on the really important questions concerning purpose and meaning in life.

Neil Broom is associate professor of engineering, and Robert Mann was until retirement senior lecturer in environmental studies, at the University of Auckland.

......... it is this kind of activist zealotry against
pro-family and religious people and against groups like the Boy Scouts
of America and The Salvation Army - groups that merely seek to live out
their moral beliefs - that prompts the IFI (Illinois Family Institute)
to strongly oppose misguided legislation that would codify special
rights for homosexuals or criminalize expressed biblical views on
homosexual behavior as hate speech.
etc.

For the full item, please click on the URL listed below

http://www.crosswalk.com/news/1301629.html

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/12/15/MNGSQABVST1.DTL
Scientists debate decline of oil stores: Sooner or later?

...

>Nur said he suspected the diplomatically worded Chinese statement carried
>a veiled implication: that China recognizes the legitimacy of a nation's
>taking military action to ensure oil supplies. Conceivably, Nur said,
>that means that China, too, would be willing to take military action to
>maintain its oil imports.
>"This is a potentially emerging conflict that is huge in magnitude," Nur
>said. "The finiteness of recoverable oil and gas reserves is a fact. ...
>There doesn't have to be a third world war for oil, but there could be."

It's surprising how few today are aware that just before Pearl
Harbor the USA had throttled Japan's oil imports to 30% of what they had
been - in peaceful, non-militaristic effort to force Japan out of its
(particularly vicious) occupation of parts of China. Other resources also
lacked by Japan itself, e.g iron ore, were also being blocked in this
USA-led campaign. (Australian P.M Menzies breached the embargo by selling
scrap iron to Japan, an action widely deplored still today.)

One Japanese response to the blockade was a military attempt to
capture oilfields in N.E. Asia. This was promptly repelled by 'Zhukov's
warmup' - an impressive blitzkrieg implying more trouble for the Axis
before long from that military genius.

Only after that did Japan move S. for Dutch E. Indies oilfields.

So I don't think people should talk of war for oil as hypothetical.
It has happened, and the way those SUVs are gobbling fuel it will happen
again. No doubt the USA will contrive to look the innocent victim again.

R

H. L. Mencken writing in the Baltimore Evening Sun,
July 26, 1920:

"...when a candidate for public office faces the voters, he does not face
men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the
fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of
comprehending any save the most elemental - men whose whole thinking is done
in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot
understand.

So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or
be lost. All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most
devious and mediocre - the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that
his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to
such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more
closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On
some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's
desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."

*******

'Planning for the future without a sense of history is like planting cut
flowers.'

- Daniel Boorstin

>Re: ".. they are militant atheists bent on deceit"
>
>SPOT ON!

I am of course open to correction - but no attempt has yet
reached me. Meanwhile I'll go on expressing my opinion.

I remain staggered at the feebleness of the Church in response to
the brazen militant atheism of Dawkins, L Wolpert, S Weinberg etc. I fear
it's a corollary of the basic modern blunder of trying to appear similar to
the mainstream decadent culture. If one pretends long enough, one isn't
finally pretending! What is more puzzling is that even 'evangelicals' seem
stupefied by the atheistic attack, leaving the defence largely to
"creationism" which is such an embarrassment.

R

>A Yank wrote:
>
>> ID theory is without any serious scientific merit, so the only real
>>motivation for promoting it is religious, which does violate the
>>separation of church and state.
>
>Isn't it peculiar that so many Yanks misrepresent this aspect of
>their own constitution. Educated non-Yanks are well aware that the
>prohibition is on *establishment* of any religion - a technical term
>meaning legal privileges such as enjoyed by the Church of England and
>the Church of Scotland. The notion that "the separation of church and
>state"
>as required in that constitution goes much further, prohibiting e.g
>prayers
>in schools, or display of the Ten Commandments outside a public bldg, is
>blatant rubbish. The ACLU's assertion that teaching IDT "may violate
>the
>constitutional separation of church and state" is ludicrous. In their
>case, it is not credible that they are merely ignorant of what the
>constitution actually says; they are militant atheists bent on deceit.
>(Similarly, the "right to bear arms" is grossly misrepresented.
>Look up that clause in the constitution and then decide whether anything
>like open slather is promised.)
>
>BTW the newspaper story is wrong in saying that IDT is any
>"explanation of the origins of life". Like Darwinism, it is about how
>life evolved, not its origins.
>
>R
>
>>
>>http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=519&ncid=519&e=29&u=/ap
>/20041214
>>/ap_on_re_us/evolution_debate
>> ACLU to Sue Over Pa. Evolution Debate
>>Mon Dec 13
>>By MARTHA RAFFAELE, Associated Press Writer
>
>>HARRISBURG, Pa. - The state American Civil Liberties Union plans to file
>>a federal lawsuit Tuesday against a Pennsylvania school district that is
>>requiring students to learn about alternatives to the theory of evolution.
>>The ACLU said its lawsuit will be the first to challenge whether public
>>schools should teach "intelligent design," which holds that the universe
>>is so complex that it must have been created by some higher power.
>>The Dover Area School District was believed to be the first in the
>>nation to mandate intelligent design when it voted 6-3 in October in favor
>>of including the concept in the science curriculum.
>>The ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State have
>>scheduled a news conference Tuesday to discuss the suit, which will be
>>filed in U.S. District Court in Harrisburg, ACLU spokesman Paul Silva said
>>Monday.
>>Neither Silva nor Joe Conn, a spokesman for Americans United for
>>Separation of Church and State, would comment on the specifics of the
>>complaint.
>>School superintendent Richard Nilsen had no comment Monday.
>>Administrators have declined to comment on the mandate, which applies to
>>ninth-grade biology classes at Dover High School, in rural south-central
>>Pennsylvania.
>>School board member William Buckingham spearheaded the change as the
>>leader of the board's curriculum committee. He has said that he proposed
>>the change as a way of balancing evolution with competing theories that
>>raised questions about its scientific validity.
>>At least one other district has recently become embroiled in federal
>>litigation over teaching evolution. A federal judge in Georgia is
>>considering the constitutionality of a suburban Atlanta district's
>>decision to include a warning sticker about evolution in biology textbooks.
>>Last month, the Dover district issued a statement saying that state
>>academic standards require the teaching of evolution, which holds that
>>Earth is billions of years old and that life forms developed over millions
>>of years.
>>But the statement also said Charles Darwin's theory "is still being
>>tested as new evidence is discovered," and that intelligent design "is an
>>explanation of the origins of life that differs from Darwin's view."
>>Additionally, district officials said they would monitor the lessons "to
>>make sure no one is promoting but also not inhibiting religion."
>>The ACLU has said intelligent design is a more secular form of
>>creationism, a Biblical-based view that credits the origin of species to
>>God, and may violate the constitutional separation of church and state.

Scientists warn of DDT trap.

NZ Dairy Exporter
July 1999

The New Zealand dairy industry, in its enthusiasm to adopt biotechnology,
must be careful it doesn't fall into the same trap as the world did with
DDT.

That is because the introduction of genetically engineered products into
the agricultural environment is a "one-way street, but unlike DDT the
pollution from genetic engineering once introduced, will be
self-perpetuating in the soil, the plants, the animals and the rest of the
environment." This is the view of NZ and internationally recognised soil
scientists from Massey University, Dr Max Turner, a soil chemist, and Dr
Neil Macgregor, a soil microbiologist.

Both men consider themselves objective scientists without anti-science
leanings, though they say that in questioning the value of GE crops and
foods they will probably be labelled 'luddites' by those promoting genetic
engineering, and its products, mainly for the 'profit of the promoters and
at a cost to the gullible'.

For dairy farmers facing the prospect of genetic engineering of cows to
produce pharmaceuticals, and modification of crops like maize to resist
insect attack, there is a lack of information on potential risks involved,
the pair said in a recent joint interview.

Though there has been some debate on GMOs (genetically modified organisms)
and GMF (genetically modified food) issues in the press (mainly concerned
with human health and food safety issues), they said there was very little
research being done into the risk factors agriculture could face were
genetic engineering to be wholeheartedly embraced by NZ farmers.

"We believe," Dr Macgregor said, "the time has come for the technology to
be assessed on how safe it is for the environment and for sustainable
farming. The current research is not designed to evaluate risk, only to
find out how to make it work."

Dr Macgregor and Dr Turner feel that some NZ scientists could be dragged
into GE research and technology by non-scientists, amid the push for
profit-driven research funding. A giant company involved in genetic
engineering, like Monsanto, sees itself as a biotechnology company, but
they say GE issues embrace much wider parameters.

"The gains the corporates and their promoters are promising us from GE
will not solve any problems," Dr Macgregor said, "either from the view of
lowering costs or increasing production."

Citing USDA funded research through University of Wisconsin involving 5000
non-GE and 3000 GE soybean crops in 8 US states, he said it had been found
the GE modified crops yielded on average 6% to 8% less than non-modified
crops, and seed plus weed costs rose from around $20 to between $40 and
$100/acre. Less yield and higher costs of production for the GE crops was
not good news. In the United States, already more than 10 million acres
has been planted with GE crops, while research is just starting to assess
the environmental risks of the technology.

Broaden debate

For New Zealand, Dr Turner said, the only answer to the GE conundrum was
to broaden the debate and extend the research further from just food
safety aspects into the wider implications for land use and soils.

"Nobody has looked at the soil implications," Dr Turner said. "Most of the
current interest is in health and food safety issues, but no one has taken
into account that GE modified crops are likely to leave a genetic imprint
on land on which they are grown.

"For NZ this could mean that land on which these crops grow or on which GE
modified animals roam could lose value. The use of GE products could limit
the versatility of the land in a similar way to what DDT use on Canterbury
cropping and sheep farms has done; These farms have effectively been
devalued because they can no longer be used for dairying.

"No one has even thought of the implications of crop residues, from GE
crops, remaining in soils after the crops have been grown and harvested:'
he said.

Dr Macgregor and Dr Turner said they were speaking out on the GE issue
because they felt that some in the dairy industry hierarchy were pushing
GE solutions for problems which did not exist. They believed, as
Independent members of the academic community, it. was their duty to speak
out on controversial issues like GB when other scientists were not so free
to discuss these issues in public.

They said another problem with the GE debate to date was that anti-GE
arguments were labelled as 'emotive' when in their view the advocates of
GE technology were guilty of using emotive tags, such as solving the
world's food supply problem, to promote their stance.

"Being part of the global agricultural community" Dr Turner said, "we know
there are potential major risks associated with GE which are not being
properly recognised in NZ at the moment.

"The demand for NZ's produce is based on the perception of 'clean, green'
quality technology, and future profitability is likely to be tied to
servicing wealthy niche markets which may be put at risk forever by use of
GE products on our farms.

Two-edged sword

"From a farming point of view, farmers are in a bit of a cleft stick. They
are going to be told - they are being told - that GE will solve a myriad
of their problems. For that reason GE crops and products will offer
enormous appeal to them, but they must be made aware it is a double-edged
sword.

"For them it Is not so much the products that are the problems, but what
they could be doing to their land and to this nation's potential niche
markets.

Dr Turner and Dr Macgregor emphasised they were not just talking about the
on-farm risks to Individual farmers, but also for national trade reasons,
NZ's agricultural future, and possibly even the health of existing and
future citizens. Consumer perception, they said, was already turning
against GE products among the wealthy nations of the particularly in
Europe.

NZ farmers must realise and acknowledge this because their future wealth
generation was
probably not in commodity markets, because of the country's small size,
but lay within the rapidly growing wealthy niche markets, such as for
organic foods.

Noting that the British medical journal, the Lancet, had run articles
critical of the risks associated with GE modified food, they said they
felt the general trend in wealthy nations outside the United States would
be to be 'anti' these foods. They foresaw a time when in many markets
anti-GE sentiment could become more widespread, if not mainstream, as
consumers are more acquainted with the risks of GE technology. NZ farmers
should stay outside the GE trade war which they saw developing between the
US and the European community.

"The Europeans," Dr Macgregor said, "do not accept that GE foods have been
independently and adequately tested in the US, nor do they accept GE foods
on their supermarket shelves."

There was no necessity for them to accept them either, Dr Turner said. The
problems in world food production were not so much a general shortage of
food but where it was produced, how it was distributed, and at what price.
Dr Turner and Dr Macgregor predicted "GE is probably not the solution to
our agriculture, but could become the problem."

Dr Max Turner, a soil chemist, is a member of the Soil & Earth Sciences
Group within the institute of Natural Resources at Massey University, a
position he has held for almost 30 years. He obtained bachelor and masters
degrees in agricultural science at Massey and a PhD in soil science from
University of Minnesota. He held a postdoctoral position in the USDA Plant,
Soil & Nutrition Laboratory at Cornell University, New York, and has been
a visiting professor at University of Colorado in Fort Collins and
University of Wisconsin in Madison. He is a member of the American
Agronomy Society, the Soil Science Society of America, NZ Soil Science
Society, NZ Grasslands Association and NZ Agronomy Society. Dr Turner
teaches, or has taught, soil chemistry, soil fertility, fertiliser matters
to agricultural,
veterinary, degree and diploma students at graduate & postgraduate level.

Dr Neil Macgregor, a soil microbiologist, is an academic member of the
Soil & Earth Sciences group in the Institute of Natural Resources, Massey
University. He graduated BSc and MSc from University of Otago, and PhD
from Cornell University, New York. He has held faculty positions at
University of Arizona in Tucson and University of Wisconsin in Madison, and
research and technical advisory positions with Institute National Recherche
Agronomique, Montpellier, France, and International Atomic Energy Agency at
Vienna, Austria. A member of OPEG (Organic Producers Export Group) of
Tradenz, Dr Macgregor's primary lecturing and research activities are in
cell biology, soil biology and biochemistry (e.g., biological nitrogen
fixation), and microbiology, and co-ordinates the Organic Farming Systems
course.

Editor
Northern Advocate
15 Dec 2004

Dear Sir

Your correspondent D Smith of Kaikohe is badly misinformed about
the claims made for genetic manipulation (GM), better known as
gene-tampering. S/he says GM is extremely important because of possible
future benefits; I say it is extremely important because it has huge scope
for harm. Either way, accurate facts will be necessary if the public is to
make informed assessments.

To quote and correct just two of Mr/s Smith's grave errors:-

1 "Current cancer research is looking towards introducing organisms
genetically modified to attack only cancer cells into tumours rather than
using chemicals and radiation with all their associated undesirable side
effects."

Many PR images have been erected for cancer treatments using GM.
However, a decade of throwing millions of dollars at these images has
produced no significant treatments for cancer. And even the GM-fantasisers
do not intend to introduce into tumours any foreign _organisms_ as Smith
wildly alleges.

2 "Similar research is being done in introducing genetically modified
cells to produce insulin into diabetics to combat this ever increasing
disease."

This is a garbled account of the very promising non-GM developments
by New Zealand's famous Professor R Elliott using retrievable implants of
cultured pig islet cells (in something like a tea-bag) to trickle insulin
into type-1 diabetics. These world-leading experiments have been forced
offshore in a sneaky legislative action by the Director-general of Health
Ms Poutasi in league with the Green Party. It has nothing to do with GM.

GM has already caused an epidemic which killed hundreds and maimed
thousands - see ). Some
GM experiments could produce much more severe epidemics of humans, or of
economically important organisms such as potato, pine or sheep.

The hazards of GM are so enormous that you should take care not to
print drastic falsehoods in its promotion. This is admittedly difficult
for you, as nearly every utterance from the gene-tampering trade has been
warped by PR agents making it misleading. Indeed the trade maintains whole
PR agencies for this purpose, producing red herrings such as 'Corngate' and
many false claims of benefits, always playing down the hazards of
gene-tampering.

yrs etc

Robert Mann
sometime Senior Lecturer in Biochemistry
University of Auckland

Superficially similar. Porter, however, seems to have a not-too-cleverly
disguised ideology.
____

Standing up to aggressive secularism

December 9 2004
http://www.smh.com.au/text/articles/2004/12/08/1102182363720.html

The anti-Christmas drive is out of touch with people of all beliefs,
writes Miranda Devine.

Wogs-Are-Stealing-Christmas is the perennial festive season story,
popping up on talkback radio in late November with enduring reliability.
But this year - the year the ideology pendulum swung back towards reason
- the story has finally been exposed as a myth and a smokescreen.

As it turns out, multicultural Sydney just loves Christmas. Bankstown's
Centro shopping centre, smack bang in one of the most multicultural
areas of Australia, with more than 132 nationalities, 53 per cent of the
population born overseas, and an abundance of young mums with
headscarves, happens to boast one of the city's most lavish Christmas
displays.

"Despite Bankstown being one of Sydney's most ethnically and religiously
diverse areas, Christmas and what it stands for is a huge celebration in
my local area and we are proud of it," the Bankstown MP, Tony Stewart,
told the NSW Parliament last month. So keen was Stewart to explode the
old theft myth he even tabled a list of 226 Christmas songs played
"every hour of shopping time at Centro Bankstown". They include Six
White Boomers, The Spirit of Christmas, Santa Claus is Coming to Town
and We Wish You a Merry Christmas.

"We love to see Christians celebrating Christmas," said Keysar Trad, the
president of the Lakemba-based Lebanese Muslim Association. "We love
Christ and Mary."

After an outcry in December 2001, when the previous owner of the
Bankstown shopping centre downgraded the decorations and ditched the big
nativity scene, the new owner has installed almost $200,000 of Christmas
baubles. There is a Santa Claus with a real beard, nativity scene,
trees, elves, angels, bells and stars. A young woman who personalises
coloured Christmas balls for shoppers is Muslim, wearing a headscarf,
Trad said yesterday.

The decorations at multicultural Bankstown are far more elaborate than
the desiccated version of Christmas in the city of Sydney, under the
professed Catholic Lord Mayor Clover Moore. In contrast to her
predecessor Frank Sartor's generous, even over-the-top, coloured lights
and ornaments on the 19th-century sandstone Town Hall, Moore has
provided a drab little tree above the portico and a bleak Seasons
Greetings card.

The excuse is always used by those such as Moore and the head of the
Oporto chicken chain - who tried to ban Maltese Catholic franchisee
Charlie Saliba from putting up a nativity scene in his Hornsby store -
that keeping the Christianity in Christmas is offensive to minority
groups.

But there is no sign in this essentially easygoing country that Muslims,
Jews, Buddhists or Hindus are trying to ban Christmas. As is often the
case, self-appointed arbiters of public tolerance have simply co-opted a
non-existent cause to serve their own ends, damaging those they profess
to protect in the process.

"What purports to inspire tolerance instead inspires hostility and
intolerance," Waleed Aly, a member of the executive of the Islamic
Council of Victoria, wrote in The Australian newspaper this week. Jesus
is a revered prophet to Muslims. Driving an "anti-Christmas campaign" is
not Islam but "aggressive atheism".

Others, such as American rabbi Daniel Lapin, have called it
fundamentalist secularism, the umbrella under which new intolerances
have gathered in the name of tolerance.

"If Christmas decorations help bring people back to God, whether they
are Christian or Muslim, that is a good thing," said Trad. "At the
moment society is being told that religion is the cause of all conflict.
But religion is in fact the cause of unity, harmony, respect and all the
high principles."

Conservative Christians have much in common with moderate Muslims. Both
are under attack by the zealots of secularism. They share a desire to
stem the tide of the I Am Charlotte Simmons world created by intolerant
anti-religious fundamentalist secularism. It is a world of empty
materialism, patois and degrading hooking-up sex, which Tom Wolfe brings
to life in his latest novel about university existence.

It is a world in which a Bringelly father appears in Campbelltown Local
Court, charged with common assault and stalking, for trying to stop his
14-year-old daughter from having an affair with a middle-aged man. It is
a world in which a middle-aged married teacher has an affair with his
15-year-old student, shacks up with her, causing her to be permanently
estranged from her family and then receives $28,000 in compensation from
the NSW Government because he lost his job.

These topsy-turvy corrupted values are not the result of religion; they
are the result of no religion. Aggressive secularists have had a free
kick at religion and every other institution for the last 40 years,
blaming them for all the ills of the world, while steadily dismantling
the protections and respect for authority that kept them safe while they
were growing up.

And now their influence is waning, they are desperate to keep alive the
old myths. A perfect recent example is an article in The Guardian
newspaper about a coming movie, Kinsey, about the American sex
researcher Dr Alfred Kinsey. Reprinted in these pages this week under
the headline "Moral right tries to turn the flock back to dark ages of
sexuality", it claims no one had a "guilt-and-fear-free orgasm" until
Kinsey researched sex, Margaret Sanger launched bra-burning, and Hugh
Hefner mass-marketed big-breasted nudes.

It is a ridiculous proposition, since, in most religions, orgasms
between a husband and wife have always been as guilt-free as they come,
especially if they produce lots of little believers. Guilt - for
adherents - comes into the equation only if the sex occurs outside
marriage or is harmful to one or other party, which is less a case of
opposing sex than trying to harness desire for the sake, ultimately, of
protecting families.

This year, despite attempts to resurrect the old myth, Christmas in
Sydney is doing just fine, with or without the Town Hall's
participation. We should really thank Moore for her grim Clayton's cards
and her joyless approach to Christmas. She is an interesting reminder of
a disintegrating world view, a lagging indicator, quite out of step with
the spirit of the age.

devinemiranda@hotmail.com
________________

The post-Christian generation

The Age December 14 2004
http://theage.com.au/text/articles/2004/12/13/1102787011199.html

The religious amnesia evident in Australia at Christmas is not only sad,
it's dangerous, writes Muriel Porter.

Friends of mine recently took their young son to see the Myer Christmas
windows. He was engrossed by them, carefully following the story of The
Polar Express - a story he knows well - from scene to scene. Then he
came to the window depicting Mary, Joseph and the infant Jesus. The
nativity tableau was quite new to him. "So what's the story here then?"
he asked his parents.

Similar anecdotes could be told around the country, and not just about
schoolchildren. My friends' son belongs to the second generation at
least that has almost entirely missed out on learning the basic stories
of the Christian faith, the religion that shaped Western civilisation.

There are many reasons for this significant shift; the rapid decline in
church-going over the past 40 years is only the most obvious. As church
connection has waned, our culture has just as rapidly become
secularised. Misguided attempts to avoid possible offence to other world
faiths by stopping traditional Christian observances in schools and
kindergartens is the result of that secularisation, not its cause.

The mainstream churches wring their hands in despair, but some of the
blame clearly belongs with them. While the lives of women in particular
and families in general have changed dramatically since the 1960s, the
churches by and large have failed to listen, let alone lead.

The Catholic Church's blanket ban on artificial contraception, the
Anglican Church's hard-fought but only piecemeal concessions to female
equality, all the churches' resistance both to more fluid family
structures and to homosexual partnerships, have combined to give
Christianity a gloomy, life-denying, out-of-touch image. There has been
no great temptation for secular people to seek the God the Christian
churches preach.

As Christmas approaches, this cultural and religious amnesia is deeply
sad. At the heart of the festival is the scene depicted in the Myer
window - God incarnate in a baby born to a poor couple sheltering in a
stable in an occupied country. The deeper meaning of the story is that
God is one with us, intimately, not just 2000 years ago, but now,
always. As English poet John Betjeman put it, "The maker of the stars
and sea/ become a child on earth for me?" It is a story worth pondering,
or at the very least, hearing.

Generations of Australians are not just missing out on a story important
to their heritage. Their ignorance is making them vulnerable to
religious fundamentalism.

Our secular society's addiction to consumerism, gambling and large-scale
debt comes at a high price. The statistics on suicide, depression,
family break-up and dysfunction all indicate deep, long-term insecurity
and unhappiness.

When disillusionment sets in, people often long for a spiritual
dimension in their lives, and so become easy prey for fundamentalist
Christian groups with their slick marketing techniques and
pseudo-contemporary, music-focused programs. With no religious
background to provide the tools for discernment, they are readily swayed
by the clear certainties and the harsh take-it-or-leave-it morality
preached by charismatic authoritarian male church leaders.

It is no coincidence that the Pentecostal churches and the
fundamentalist sections of mainstream churches are drawing large numbers
of converts from the very generations who missed out on even a
rudimentary Christian education - people ranging from teenagers to the
early middle-aged. For a sizeable proportion of these young converts,
however, disillusionment will inevitably set in once more. They will
eventually chafe under the uncompromising, often loveless, teaching and
reject it completely. But without an earlier religious background to
provide perspective and suggest alternative approaches, they will reject
all of Christianity with it. A bitter cynicism and deeper malaise will
result.

And there is another sad result of secularisation. A culture without a
religious story is fragile and rudderless when it comes to death. People
with a residual belief in God but no coherent religious framework are
often left floundering when tragedy strikes. Without familiar holy
places, they resort to making shrines of the actual sites of death.
Homely memorials now dot our highways, or the sites of suicides.
Memorial plaques speak vaguely of God, but lack the hope and peace that
earlier generations - ironically much more deeply affected by sudden and
tragic family deaths - drew from their faith.

As a society, we have lost far more than we imagine by not having at
least a nodding acquaintance with the engaging story of Mary, Joseph,
and the Child of Bethlehem.

Dr Muriel Porter, an Anglican laywoman, writes regularly for The Age on
religion.

Dear Stephen Franks list-MP

This is intensely interesting to me, stating as you do more clearly
than most the problems of scientific authority as affecting those who
cannot themselves fully understand the technicalities - the theme of my
mini-tract below.

I have been deeply involved for 4 decade in explaining to lay
people such issues. As early as our case v. the Fr govt over their nuclear
explosions in the S. Pac., my writing was adjudged fit for incorporation
into Dr Finlay's pleadings. (Not that any permission or thanx were
forthcoming from the govt ... !)

>There is no justification for me, an amateur, trying to master a dispute
>between persons far more expert than me, when I have no portfolio
>responsibility for it, and too much to do in my own specialty areas.

That is clearly true. You cannot master the topic, for lack of
relevant education and of time. Unlike Kitschley list-MP, however, you
have sufficient intelligence to comprehend the outlines of the main issues
within the GM controversy. The PSRAST website will equip you to achieve
enough comprehension for your purposes.

>I have, of course been intrigued, and tried to form an informed view. I
>have been interested in science all my life (my subscription to Scientific
>American is about to lapse after 25 years).

It has been radically degraded by the new owners and I don't bother
to read it regularly these days. Same with New Scientist.

>As a politician I will, from time to time, have to vote on the issue,
>without confidence in my judgment of what is right and wrong. That is
>normal.

check

>Of course I fall back on the decision methods most of us use in the face
>of uncertainty and a
>perceived

you can delete that word

>impossibility of getting certainty - that is reliance on the opinions of
>folk we know whether they are informed or not

OK - but those of them who are uninformed will be less reliable
guides than those who are

> , clues from the opposition of folk we do not respect,

Here you allude to the fallacy I mentioned - that a fool & liar
like Kitschley or Fiddler Bunkum opposes GM does not prove it's OK

> wishful thinking, past experience of successful or unsuccessful
>risk-taking in the face of the unknown etc, etc.

Could I add: the record of scientists experienced in opposing
dangerous technologies?

>I know there are grave risks,

good - tell it to Wm Rolleston if you run into him

> but in the end I think collective and individual personality traits
>probably influence the conclusion more than careful assessment.

What a dismal conclusion - all the more so for its realism!

> I am excited by the unknown, and by gambles.

Your awareness of this vice will help you to control it.

But you have no right to indulge it at others' expense. Many GM
expts could lead to disastrous epidemics in humans or other spp. If you
want to gamble, do so with your own resources.

Again I say, please let us meet 'ere long to discuss GM.

cheers

R

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Robt Mann [mailto:robtm@maxnet.co.nz]
>Sent: Friday, 10 December 2004 12:51 p.m.
>To: Stephen Franks
>Subject: your attitude to gene-tampering
>
>
>Your recent remarks in Parlt on this topic are - to be plain -
>as sadly astray as those on homX "marriage" are right on. Just because Susan
>Kitschley list-MP opposes it does not prove it OK. Like Mulgoon, even this
>babbling airhead (and liar) is not always wrong!

>I entreat you to read this recent bull of mine - and then to look
>up, or get a reliable research asst to look up, the two websites I give at
>the end. (An article of mine is on http://www.psrast.org and has been
>subjected to no fault-alleging that I know of.)

>As I emailed to you on 14-10-04,
>>I would be glad to provide you with e.g the thoroughly-referenced
>>statement I gave the Eichelbaum commission (which they suppressed); but I
>>think a more readable introit for you would be the attached text of a
>>speech of mine to the Ak branch RSNZ.

>>If ever you have some spare time when in Ak I'd be very glad to
>>discuss this subject with you.
>
>
>cheers
>
>R
>
>MannGram®:
>The fine-sounding slogan "look at the evidence"
>Sep 2004
>
>The item below from within a recent email by Friends of the Earth NZ Ltd
>stimulates me to try to crystallize a worrying thought about GM.
>
>------
>
>"Some debating techniques
>That are seriously flawed enough to justify the title 'propaganda'".
>http://my.voyager.net/~jayjo/propagan.htm
>
>*Recourse to authority*
>
>I heard a sermon on the radio a few months ago in which the minister
>made a number of claims that were highly questionable. He preceded every
>one with a statement such as, "Dr Jones, the world's leading expert on
>...". He must have cited a dozen people in a row as the "world's leading
>expert" on one subject or another. I found myself asking, What makes
>these people the world's leading experts on these subjects? Was there a
>contest that they won, or is that just your opinion? Or do you just call
>them that because they happen to agree with you?
>
>One should always be suspicious of an argument whose weight relies on
>the fact that some authoritative person said so. Even if it is someone
>who deserves great respect, he could be wrong. Let's look at the
>evidence, not the speaker.
>
>-----------
>
>This is a sound, workable approach for many issues. But for GM it
>is scarcely workable. The trouble is that the main concepts in the
>technology are too far from ordinary education & experience. The
>fine-sounding slogan "look at the evidence" cannot be acted upon by those
>who have not learned the meanings of the main terms in which the evidence
>must be stated. In GM, many of the main concepts are built on pyramids of
>arcane scientific terms which are not understood by anyone who has not
>studied the relevant science.

>Take a simple example. One of the main political users of the GM
>issue for political attention-getting received (along with many others
>including media) a note of mine concerning plant GM using synthetic DNA.
>The gene-tamperer in question had reported using (like most such
>experimenters) different but synonymous codons selected to be more suitable
>for the host plant, instead of the codons actually used in the bacterial
>gene for the desired toxin. The politician replied "what is a codon?".
>She is among the more intelligent politicians, and has a degree - but in
>French & Music. Such a person would require at least some hours to grasp
>minimally the concept 'codon'. Even if she could then pass a simple exam
>to check her understanding of the term, she would still be far from able to
>appraise the significance of synthesising a gene with not the original
>codons but generally different ones (for the purpose of getting higher
>yields of the desired protein in the target cell - 'better expression',
>as the gene-tamperers say). What differences might conceivably be implied
>by imposing, in a foreign gene, codon 'weightings' it did not originally
>have? Unfortunately, only very limited thinking about such subtle
>questions can be done by those who have no understanding of the biochemical
>context in which codons function - let alone those who have only just got
>a superficial definition of 'codon'.

>Therefore the public wishing to form opinions on GM will be forced
>to have recourse to authority - rely on the advice of scientists who have
>the education & experience to understand details of GM.

>The question then becomes, which scientists. Among Monsanto's
>dozens of PR agents are some with Ph.Ds in gene-jiggering technology, who
>have the education to understand their employers' gene-tampering projects.
>Some of these are used by the BBC as if they were independent experts.
>This is obviously unethical journalism, especially when no other authority
>is used in the particular broadcast.

>But what about the mirror-image unethical journalism - presenting
>to the public, as pretender experts critical of GM, politicians who don't
>know a protein from a nucleic acid?
>
>An example of the politics of ignorance was a Sunday media stunt
>by the then NZ Minister of Consumer Affairs, the dreadful Fiddler Bunkum
>list-MP. She announced that thousands of aged electricity meters had
>become inaccurate and had never been checked. This revelation was worded
>to imply that she was exposing a wrongful handicap for consumers, against
>which she was bravely speaking out. The media failed to query whether, as
>a mains meter ages, it can run fast. The truth is it can only run slow,
>which favours the consumer who may be getting, say, 10 kWh of energy while
>the meter records only 9 kWh. This is a very simple example of a technical
>issue exploited for political deceit thru media that are too biased, or
>just too lazy, to examine the propaganda sceptically.

>If that simple error could go unchallenged, what chance is there
>that politicians such as Bunkum will give the public reliable facts, let
>alone interpretations, on GM which they do not comprehend? Why then are
>she (and her successors) persistently presented to the public as experts
>commenting on GM?

>The answer is that the media are primarily committed to PC
>propaganda - putting favourable spin on the ruling PC Axis {wimminsLib,
>neoRacism & hxism}. The media use the GM issue as a vehicle for
>publicizing politicians whose primary motivation in politics is what they
>call "feminism", or promoting woolly-minded white shame, or implementing
>the 1987 Kirk/Pill hx political programme (or two, or all three, of those
>ideologies). The only actual expert they ever consult - and that not
>often - is Dr Peter R Wills, a practitioner in molecular biology, OK by
>media because he's a staunch declared supporter of PC. He served for a
>period some y ago as ghost-writer for the babbling airhead Susan Kitschley
>list-MP; as a result, her TV appearances would begin with a rote-learned
>insightful (& grammatically complex) statement about GM, but she was not
>capable of discussing the subject. It is, I think, quite common for the PC
>politicians to have such 'back room boys'; but that scarcely equips the
>politicians to answer questions let alone to debate judgements about this
>or that GM technique.
>
>I have little or no expertise, and must therefore have recourse to
>authorities, in many areas of technology and science, and other types of
>knowledge - just a quick list that first comes to mind - electronics,
>metallurgy, Russian, Greek, calculus, relativity, civil engineering ...
>When I need some facts or interpretation in any of these fields, I resort
>to qualified experts. Because of my lifelong involvement in academe, I can
>find out relatively readily who are proven experts. I would not take
>notice of a politician posing in the media as expert in civil engineering
>but actually unqualified in this discipline. I would rely on known
>authorities.

>But the public cannot readily get reliable info on GM if actual
>experts happen to be PinC and are therefore blacked out by the media.

>The biased promotional role of the RS, RSNZ and USNAS must be
>particularly deplored. These bodies have drastically failed to tell the
>public the truth about GM. They have uncritically laundered claims of
>benefit, denied hazards of GM, and vilified independent scientists such as
>Pusztai who report harm from GM. They thus radically degrade the status
>of science, as many citizens detect how misleading are their utterances.
>And then they (thru e.g the appalling R Winston) moan that the status of
>science has declined!
>
>The information sources arrayed in the media are thus almost
>entirely spurious:
>1 PR agents for commercial GM, some of them scientists (e.g some Monsanto
>PR staff; entrepreneur scientists like James D Watson jr)
>2 Ostensibly independent ancillary PR operatives e.g V Moses of CropGen®,
>Roger Morton of CSIRO, R Roush, J Rafe Blanchfield, I Prigogine, James D
>Watson sr, Geo Petersen, M Berridge, Dan Cohen, Tony Conner, etc.
>3 Anti-GM enthusiasts primarily concerned to promote PC ideologies and
>therefore able to get media attention by posing as experts on GM which they
>are incapable of explaining to the public.
>
>Meanwhile, genuine independent experts who are critical of GM are
>blacked out by the media - e.g Prof Pat Brown of UC Davis, Prof David
>Schubert, Prof David S Williams, Drs Margaret Mellon & Jane Rissler of UCS,
>Prof Joe Cummins, Dr Elvira Domisse (formerly a NZ CRI gene-jockey), and
>myself.
>
>In this wildly distorted infoscene, the public have little help to
>"look at the evidence" on GM. It then becomes crucial that inquiring
>citizens be pointed in the direction of key sources, notably
>http://www.psrast.org, http://www.ucsusa.org.

Nature
Published online: 08 December 2004; |
doi:10.1038/432666a

Religion and science: Studies of faith

Tony Reichhardt1, David Cyranoski2 & Quirin Schiermeier2

1 Tony Reichhardt writes for Nature from Washington.

2 Additional reporting by David Cyranoski in Tokyo and Quirin Schiermeier
in Munich.

Embryonic stem-cell research is putting fresh strain on the already
fractious relationship between science and religion. TonyReichhardt
explores how faith is shaping the ever-changing landscape of bioethics.

When Pope John Paul II addressed the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in
1992, he tackled yet again Galileo's famous battles with the Church four
centuries ago. In his talk, entitled "Faith can never conflict with
reason", the Pope was doing his best to mend fences. Although science and
religion form "two realms of knowledge", he said, "the two realms are not
altogether foreign to each other, they have points of contact".

Despite the Pope's optimistic words, the tension between faith and science
never fully subsides. And as these realms regularly come into contact,
over everything from Darwin to Dolly the cloned sheep, they sometimes
collide with explosive force.

Today, with scientists manipulating the machinery of life as never before,
the debate is in full swing. Nanotechnology, artificial intelligence,
cloning, creationism and genetic modification (see 'A recipe for
disaster?') all test the strained relationship between faith and advancing
technology.

Today's frontline controversy stem-cell research has prompted a wide range
of reactions from religious leaders, much of it negative. But the
fundamental, religion-based belief in the sanctity of human life, even at
the stage of an embryo, clashes in this field with another fundamental
human desire: to alleviate suffering and cure disease. The debate does not
leave room for simple answers, for individuals or society as a whole.
Francis Collins, head of the US National Human Genome Research Institute in
Bethesda, Maryland, and a devout Christian, has described himself as being
"intensely conflicted" over stem-cell research. "It is a classic example
of a collision between two very important principles," he says. The
opposition to stem-cell research cannot be dismissed as merely
'anti-science'. Most religious traditions sincerely value medicine and
science, and make a serious effort to reconcile scientific thinking with
doctrine (see 'Science and the Vatican', page 669).

Where there's life...

This process of discussion and reconciliation may even be initiating a
fundamental change. Some Catholics are beginning to hope that recent
insights into developmental biology could move the Church from its
135-year-old position that human life begins at conception, the main
obstacle to it accepting the study of stem cells extracted from human
embryos.

Much of the theological debate about stem-cell research centres on the
question of when life begins. Some traditions, including most sects of
Judaism and Islam, aren't troubled by this because they don't consider the
early embryo fully human. Most Jewish Talmudic scholars, for example,
argue that 'ensoulment' takes place 40 days or more into pregnancy, once
the human form is roughly established. Before that, the embryo is
described as 'water'. Israel accepts embryonic stem-cell research, and the
Israeli Academy of Sciences and the Jewish Rabbinical Assembly,
headquartered in the United States, have both come out in favour.
Likewise, researchers at the Royan Institute in Tehran have developed
stem-cell lines with the full blessing of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei.

According to Hinduism, life begins at conception. But this does not make
for easy decisions on the ethics of stem-cell research. Destruction of an
embryo could still be justified if it is considered to be an
"extraordinary, unavoidable circumstance" and an act "done for greater
good", says Swami® Tyagananda, Hindu chaplain at the MIT Religious
Activities Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Based on these criteria,
many traditional Hindu priests are unwilling to condone the work, but it
has not provoked much opposition in India, for instance, where embryonic
stem-cell research is allowed.

The strongest objections come from Christian sects that regard the
sacrifice of an embryo, "even an undifferentiated clump of cells in a
three-day-old blastocyst", as totally unacceptable. Embryos cannot
be killed, they say, any more than Death Row prisoners can be used in
lethal experiments, even if the goal is to relieve suffering in others.

Evangelical Christianity relies on a specific interpretation of scripture
for its advice on this matter. Psalm 139: 13, for example, says: "For you
created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb." In
Jeremiah 1: 5 God tells the prophet, "Before I formed you in the womb I
knew you," implying that Jeremiah had 'personhood' in God's eyes even
before he was an embryo.

This roughly matches current Vatican thinking. The Catholic Church holds
that human life is sacred from the moment of fertilization. But some
Catholic theologians point out that the Church's view on the moral status
of the embryo has changed over time, and may change again. In fact,
scientific breakthroughs - the discovery of the mammalian ovum in 1827 and
the first microscopic views of developing embryos - helped to shape the
Vatican's thinking. The findings informed Pope Pius IX's decision in 1869
to abandon the Church's moral distinction between early- and late-term
abortions and to call instead for full protection of life from the moment
of conception.

Today, the Vatican does not strictly claim that the early embryo is a
person - only that it deserves respect as a potential human being, says
Carlos Bedate of the Autonomous University of Madrid. Bedate has an
unusual background as a Jesuit priest with a doctorate in molecular
biology, and has served on a Spanish advisory committee for bioethics. He
thinks the ambiguity in Catholic thought could open a window for the
Church's acceptance of embryonic stem-cell research. Recent advances in
developmental biology have shown that an embryo's viability depends on the
cellular environment as well as its own DNA, says Bedate. "We cannot
consider that in the early embryo there is the entire information needed
to complete the process of development," he says.

Open debate

A few Catholic theologians have spoken out in favour of human embryonic
stem-cell research, including Jean Porter of the University of Notre Dame
in Indiana, Margaret Farley of Yale University, and Christian Kummer, who
trained as a zoologist and is now director of an institute for scientific
issues related to philosophy and theology at the Jesuit Faculty of
Philosophy in Munich. Kummer says that they are free to voice these views
without fear of censure from the Church. "Academic freedom is more
pronounced than one would expect from knowing the Vatican's official
positions," he says.

Bedate thinks that the Vatican may eventually be open to reconsidering the
issue on the basis of new scientific understanding. But any formal change
in the Church's position is likely to come very slowly, as Galileo's case
once showed.

Arguments about the moment of ensoulment are crucial, but they are not the
only factor in religion-based objections to stem-cell research. As
evangelical Christian Nigel Cameron, a bioethicist at the Institute on
Biotechnology and the Human Future in Chicago, Illinois, told a US Senate
committee in 2001: "It is by no means necessary to take the view that the
early embryo is a full human person in order to be convinced that
deleterious experimentation is improper."

The Church of England, for example, does not contend that early embryos are
fully human. Yet they are "deserving of respect" nonetheless. In its
guidelines on ethical investment, the Church concludes that "companies, a
major part of whose business is engaged in the cloning of embryos (even for
therapeutic use), should be avoided."

Another point of controversy is the source of the embryo. Some stem-cell
researchers use embryos discarded from in vitro fertilization (IVF)
clinics, whereas others clone new embryos to harvest their cells.

The very practice of IVF has faced strict opposition from the Catholic
Church on the grounds that it breaks the God-given connection between sex
and procreation - a rule often voiced during discussions on the ethics of
contraception. Most other religious groups, including evangelicals, see
IVF as a good solution for infertile couples who want children. But that
acceptance is now coming under greater scrutiny because IVF clinics
frequently discard 'excess' embryos that are not needed for implantation.
Although the
issue hasn't received the same attention as abortion, some Christian
leaders have begun to speak out. "IVF kind of snuck up on evangelicals. We
weren't paying as close attention as we should have," says Ben Mitchell,
an bioethicist and evangelical Christian at Trinity International
University in Deerfield, Illinois.

Fertile ground

In predominantly Catholic Italy, attempts to find a compromise on the
issue have led only to new problems. The country passed a law this year
legalizing IVF despite Vatican opposition. But no embryos
can be destroyed - all have to be transferred to the mother's uterus.
This can increase the risk to mothers and even lead to miscarriages in the
case of multiple pregnancies.

Other denominations, including the Unitarian Universalists, one of the most
liberal of religious groups, take more umbrage with using custom-made
embryos than the 'leftovers' from IVF. Although the Unitarian Universalist
Association has no official consensus opinion on stem cells, its president,
William Sinkford, offered his personal opinion in 2001 that there should be
no ban on embryonic stem-cell research. But he added: "I would contend
that no human embryos should be created specifically for stem-cell
experimentation, thus turning human life and human reproduction into a
commodity - surely a clear affront to our first principle affirming the
inherent dignity of human beings."

Perhaps this dignity seems all the more affronted since the resulting
experiments have not, so far, yielded life-saving results. Damien Keown, a
specialist in Buddhist ethics at Goldsmiths College in London, sums it up:
"Scientific curiosity seems to be the main factor motivating cloning
experiments at present, and overall Buddhists are likely to be sceptical
about the need for this curiosity to be satisfied at the price of
destroying human life."

When Seoul National University's Woo Suk Hwang cloned human embryonic
stem-cell lines earlier this year he cited his own Buddhist beliefs, saying
that the experiments were a kind of "recycling of life" in line with
reincarnation. Some Buddhist groups in South Korea, where Buddhists
account for about a third of the population, supported him. But most
Buddhist scholars say the killing of an embryo at any stage violates a
central tenet that living things should not be harmed. Cloning for
reproductive purposes, on the other hand, does not require destroying the
embryo and so does not in itself violate Buddhist precepts.

"The problem is not when life is started, but when it is stopped, as in
therapeutic cloning," says Keown. "Dr Hwang is on shaky ground in claiming
that Buddhism supports cloning, without careful qualification."

Protestants, who make up another third of South Korea's population,
reacted strongly to the news of Hwang's experiments. Sixteen Protestant
groups, representing 6,000 people - half of them doctors in the Christian
Medical Fellowship - met in September to plan a campaign devoted to making
the use of human embryos in research illegal.

But the extent to which religious opinion influences politics and laws
varies dramatically from society to society. In Spain, where 99% of the
population is Catholic, a law was recently passed to allow the use of IVF
embryos in stem-cell research. But in Italy, which vehemently opposes the
use of European Union funding for stem-cell research, the population is
"much more reactionary on religious issues than the Church itself", says
Enrico Alleva, acting head of behavioural pathophysiology at the National
Institute of
Health in Rome. Alleva believes that this zeal, rather than formal
Catholic doctrine, is at the core of the recent creationist movement in
Italy (see Nature428, 595; 2004) and of other perceived 'anti-science'
tendencies throughout Europe.

Body politic

Another place where religion has proved to be the driving force for
politics is the United States. In November's election, President George W.
Bush owed his victory in part to votes from his fellow evangelical
Christians.

Evangelicals are not uniformly conservative in their political views - some
oppose capital punishment, for example. But most evangelical leaders are
strongly against embryonic stem-cell research. The Southern Baptist
Convention, which represents the second largest USA denomination after
Catholics, says it relies on a "crass utilitarian ethic which would
sacrifice the lives of the few for the benefits of the many".

Such statements have surely influenced the United States' rigid policy on
stem-cell research, in which federal funding is limited for use on a few
dozen pre-established cell lines, and cannot be used to establish new ones.

Does this reflect public attitudes? Polls reveal mixed opinions -
although a lot hinges on the wording of the question. In July 2004,
Catholics for Free Choice published a poll of 2,239 Catholics nationwide,
and found that 72% supported "allowing scientists to use stem cells
obtained from very early human embryos to find cures for serious diseases
such as Alzheimer's, diabetes and Parkinson's".

But "polls on embryonic stem-cell research often fail to mention that the
research requires destroying human embryos", says Richard Doerflinger,
deputy director of the US Conference of Catholic BishopsSecretariat for
Pro-Life Activities. In August the Catholic bishops released the results
of their own poll. When given a choice between funding both adult and
embryonic stem-cell research or only work
that didn't require destroying an embryo, Americans preferred the latter by
61% to 23%.

Difficult question

Efforts to establish ethical rules on stem cells that transcend national
and spiritual boundaries have proved remarkably unsuccessful. After years
of delayed decisions, on 19 November the United Nations came to what was
widely called a "compromise" position on cloning technologies - it adopted
a non-binding declaration that asks member states to adopt legislation that
respects "human dignity". In the end, this statement is likely to be
interpreted in as many different ways as some lines from the Bible.

So scientists and theologians will continue to talk - and to disagree.
At least one thing has changed in this debate since Galileo's day, for
better or for worse: now, science is the orthodox worldview, in the
industrialized world at least, and religion stands outside, raising
objections. At bioethics conferences, says John Evans, a sociologist of
religion at the University of California, San Diego, biologists rarely show
any knowledge of theology. But "religious people are expected to have
spent huge amounts of time learning all the science", he notes.

One thing is certain. Everyone agrees that fundamental ethical questions
underlying stem-cell research, many of which transcend religion, need to be
addressed. "The power of these new technologies is so great that we can no
longer deal with them in a vacuum. This affects everyone across the
board," says Kevin FitzGerald of Georgetown University in Washington DC, a
Jesuit priest with PhDs in molecular genetics and bioethics. And stem
cells are just the beginning. "The stuff that's coming down the pipe will
make this look like child's play," he says. "Organic mixed with inorganic,
one species mixed with another. Everything from the molecular level on up
will be fluid."

*******
WORLD RAINFOREST MOVEMENT
MOVIMIENTO MUNDIAL POR LOS BOSQUES

International Secretariat
Maldonado 1858; Montevideo, Uruguay
E-Mail: wrm@wrm.org.uy
Web page: http://www.wrm.org.uy
Editor: Ricardo Carrere
*******

=================================
W R M B U L L E T I N 88
November 2004 - English edition

This bulletin is also available in French, Portuguese, and Spanish. Please
let us know if you wish to receive it in some of these languages.
=================================

THE FOCUS OF THIS ISSUE: GENETICALLY MODIFIED TREES

A large number of scientists are actively working on genetically modifying
trees, to better serve industry's economic aims. Field trials are already
being carried out in a number of countries and GM poplars have already
been released in China, regardless of the dangers that all this implies
for the world's forests. This bulletin is aimed at sharing some of the
information available and at urging concerned people to involve themselves
in this issue. A good starting point would be to sign the petition for a
Global Ban on GM trees, (available at
http://elonmerkki.net/dyn/appeal/),***
which will be presented next month at the Conference of the Parties of the
Convention on Climate Change, in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

In this issue:

* OUR VIEWPOINT

- The release of GM trees must be banned

* THE GM TREE SCENARIO

- Resistance is fertile: Protests against GM trees
- Forestry corporations and GM tree research
- International Legislation and GM Trees
- Genetically Engineered Trees and Global Warming
- Does the World Bank have a position on GM trees?
- Pollen from pine plantations generates problems - what if in addition
they were transgenic pines?

* GM TREES IN THE SOUTH

- Brazil: Plantations, profits and GM trees
- Chile: Made-to-measure trees for the forestry industry
- Kenya: Biotechnology, eucalyptus but no GM trees

* GM TREES IN THE NORTH

- Finland: Some remarks on the campaign against GM trees
- GE Trees in the United States: An Update
- USA: Potlatch Corporation, FSC certification and GM trees

*********
* OUR VIEWPOINT

- The release of GM trees must be banned

Ever since Western forestry science defined forests as predominantly
wood-producing entities, efforts have concentrated on increasing
productivity of one single product: wood. Diverse forests were simplified,
by weeding out all the species that industry was not interested in, while
promoting the absolute predominance of "valuable" trees in the forest.

From that reductionist approach the following step appeared to be obvious:
to substitute forests by large stands of fast-growing monoculture tree
plantations. During the last decades, a few species of eucalyptus, pines
and acacias began to cover large areas of what had previously been forests
or grasslands, thus substantially reducing forest biodiversity and
appropriating local peoples' lands and livelihoods. They were defined as
either "forest plantations" or "planted forests", thus concealing the fact
that they had nothing in common with forests and, more importantly, hiding
their massive negative social and environmental impacts.

But that was not enough. Industry wanted more, so the next step was to
initiate a genetic selection process, whereby only some genetic traits
were considered, such as fast growth, height, diameter, wood quality, and
straight trunks with few branches. The genetic base of the chosen tree
species was thus further impoverished. Very soon those "super-trees" began
to be cloned and plantations became single-species and clonal at the same
time.

Within that logic, there was nothing more evident than the need to go a
step further into genetically modifying trees to make them even more
amenable to industry.

However, the dangers of genetically modified (GM) trees are in some ways
even more serious than those posed by GM crops. Trees live longer than
agricultural crops, which means that changes in their metabolism may occur
many years after they are planted. At the same time, trees are also
different from crops in that they are largely undomesticated and
scientists' knowledge about forest ecosystems is poor. This implies that
the ecological and other potential risks associated with GM trees are far
greater than in the case of crops.

Additionally, GM trees would exacerbate the impacts of the large-scale
tree monoculture model which is being increasingly challenged by local
communities and organizations throughout the world precisely because of
its impacts. Water would be depleted more quickly by faster-growing trees;
biodiversity would be further destroyed in biological deserts containing
trees engineered to be insect resistant, flowerless, fruitless and
seedless; the soil would be destroyed at a faster rate through higher
biomass extraction, intensive mechanization and increased agrochemical
use; more communities would be deprived of their means of livelihoods and
displaced to make way for even more of these "green deserts".

For those and many other reasons, the World Rainforest Movement and
Friends of the Earth International decided to produce a report on the GM
trees issue, which has now been finalized and its findings will be
presented during the Conference of the Parties of the UN Framework
Convention on Climate Change next month in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The main reason for having chosen that venue is that at its last meeting
in late 2003, the Convention on Climate Change explicitly allowed the
inclusion of GM trees to act as "carbon sinks" within the framework of the
Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism. That grave decision was
taken at the last minute, with practically no discussion or participation
>from concerned groups and governments. That totally unexpected and
dangerous outcome means that now this Convention not only supports the
expansion of monoculture tree plantations supposedly to act as "carbon
sinks", regardless of their negative social and environmental impacts, but
allows those same plantations to be composed of GM trees, thus multiplying
the impacts and adding new risks and uncertainties.

Together with many other groups, in Buenos Aires we will therefore call
upon all governments present at the Conference of the Parties to the
Convention on Climate Change to change course on this issue and to ban the
release of GM trees.

PS. The WRM-FoEI study, carried out by researcher Chris Lang ("Genetically
Modified Trees: the ultimate threat to forests"), is being published in
English and Spanish and will be soon available in the WRM web page at:
http://www.wrm.org.uy/publications/index.html, and in the FoEI page at
http://www.foei.org/publications . It will also be available in printed
format in those languages at WRM and FoEI offices and all our readers will
be informed once they become available.

********
* THE GM TREE SCENARIO
********

- Resistance is fertile: Protests against GM trees

Forestry scientists working on GM trees often point to the number of field
trials of GM trees worldwide as evidence that the technology is
increasingly accepted. In fact the reverse is true. As the number of
experiments increases so does the strength of the resistance against GM
trees.

Much of the media attention on protests against GM trees has focussed on a
handful of actions by small groups of activists calling themselves names
like Reclaim the Seeds or the Genetix Goblins. In the past six years,
activists have destroyed 12 GM tree trials, in Britain, Canada and the US.
In the US, the Earth Liberation Front has burned down offices and research
laboratories.

Industry and scientists responses to destruction of GM trials and property
focus on the damage caused and portray the protesters as irresponsible,
ignorant vandals. Their responses tend, predictably, to play down the
risks that their research might inflict on people and their environments.

In 1999, protesters in England cut down 152 GM poplars at agrochemical
company Zeneca's Jealot's Hill research station. Zeneca spokesperson Nigel
Poole appeared almost tearful. "The bark has been stripped from the trees.
These poor things are now dying a slow death," he told The Times
newspaper. Apparently Poole had forgotten that Zeneca planted the trees in
order that they could be chipped, boiled, pulped and made into paper.

When some of his GM tree trials were destroyed in March 2001, Oregon State
University's Steven Strauss tried to reassure the public that "It's all
regarded as highly safe. These people pronouncing it dangerous lack
expertise and are uninformed."

"The violent guys just don't understand the science," Strauss told
Associated Press.

Many people and organisations are involved in other types of activities
against GM trees. Protests against GM trees have taken many forms and have
included banner hangs, press conferences, meetings, letters to newspapers,
petitions, articles, campaigns to persuade companies not buy products from
GM trees, research into the companies and institutions involved, and
campaigns for GMO free zones.

Probably the first alliance of NGOs formed to oppose GM trees was the GE
Free Forests Coalition (GEFF), formed in Britain in April 1999. Three
months later, GEFF organised a demonstration at IUFRO's Forest
Biotechnology '99 conference in Oxford.

Steven Strauss commented, "The scientists at the meeting scratched their
heads and wondered how science and 'society' could be so out of whack in
Europe." Meanwhile, ordinary people were wondering how long the scientists
must have spent locked away in their laboratories to be surprised that
genetic modification was a controversial issue.

Resistance to GM trees continues to grow. In the US, around 80 NGOs have
signed on to a statement titled: "A Common Vision for Transforming the
Paper Industry". The Common Vision emerged from a November 2002 meeting of
more than 50 NGOs working on paper, pollution and forest issues. The
Common Vision includes a demand to the paper industry: "Stop the
introduction of paper fiber from genetically modified organisms,
particularly transgenic trees and plants with genes inserted from other
species of animals and plants."

Several countries have placed outright bans or moratoria on GMOs,
including Algeria, New Zealand, Peru, El Salvador and Australia (except
Queensland and the Northern Territory). In addition, several regions in
Europe and three counties in the US have voted in bans on GMOs. Thailand
has banned 49 GM plants.

Around the world environmental and social justice organisations are
campaigning for legislation to ban GMOs from their countries, provinces,
states, towns or counties. GM free zones have appeared all over the world,
including the US. In November 2004, Marin County, north of San Francisco,
joined California's Mendocino and Trinity counties in banning GMOs.

In December 2003, the Austrian province of Kärnten passed a law which
stated that GMOs cannot be planted within three kilometres of natural and
cultural areas that are worthy of protection. Approximately 20 per cent of
Kärnten's land is organically farmed. On the grounds that organic farming
is worthy of protection, in practice the authorities will give no permits
for planting GMOs.

In Britain, 14 million people live in areas with a GM-free policy. Twelve
counties have passed GM-free resolutions in addition to more than 30
towns, cities, districts and national park authorities. In France, more
than 1,250 mayors have issued GM free declarations for their towns.
Friends of the Earth Europe is running a GMO-free Europe campaign, aimed
at supporting regions to go GM-free (for more information, see
http://www.foeeurope.org/GMOs/gmofree).

People opposing GM trees are linking up with organisations around the
world: with networks that have opposed the spread of GMO crops in their
countries; with organisations working on climate change; with
anti-globalisation activists; with human rights activists and indigenous
peoples; with local communities and organisations that are resisting
industrial tree plantations and other forms of industrial forestry. The
resistance to GM trees is growing!

By: Chris Lang, e-mail: chrislang@t-online.de
*********

- Forestry corporations and GM tree research

GM trees are not a result of evolution. They are the result of decisions
taken at institutional and corporate levels for their development and
deployment. Companies, research institutions and universities work
together closely on this. Companies fund university research departments,
and influence what type of research is carried out.

Although there are numerous actors working on GM trees, some are clearly
more important than others. Most of the research is being carried in a
relatively small number of countries, among which the most prominent are
the USA, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Chile, United Kingdom, and
China.

Some of the major forestry corporations are directly involved in the
research. For instance, three giant forestry companies (International
Paper, Westvaco and Fletcher Challenge) formed in 1999 a joint venture
with Monsanto called ArborGen, which became the world's biggest GM tree
company. Monsanto pulled out of ArborGen six months after it was formed.
In January 2000, Genesis Research and Development, New Zealand's biggest
biotechnology company, joined the joint venture. Genesis and Fletcher
Challenge had been working together for five years on herbicide tolerant
GM eucalyptus, poplar and pine. In 2001, Rubicon (a New Zealand company)
bought Fletcher Challenge's biotechnology operations and took over its
commitments to ArborGen. Westvaco has since merged with Mead Paper Company
to form Meadwestvaco. In April 2003, Genesis announced a new plant science
subsidiary, AgriGenesis Biosciences, which takes over Genesis' involvement
in ArborGen.

ArborGen currently has 51 field trials of GM poplar, eucalyptus, pine and
sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua) in the US. ArborGen's scientists have
genetically manipulated trees to have less lignin, to grow faster and
straighter, to be sterile or to be resistant to disease or herbicide.

Another important company involved in GM trees is New Zealand-based
Horizon2 which was formed in March 2003 from a merger of Carter Holt
Harvey Forest Genetics and Rubicon's Trees and Technology. Carter Holt
Harvey is a New Zealand timber firm, which is 50 per cent owned by
International Paper.

Chilean-based company GenFor is a joint venture between Chilean technology
think tank Fundación Chile and Cellfor (Canada). The company was partly
financed by the Chilean Development Agency and has established research
agreements with Chilean forestry industry giants Arauco and Mininco. The
companies provide GenFor with their top specimens, GenFor supplies the
technology to "improve" them and earns the right to market the results of
the research.

GenFor's main research focus is GM radiata pine which makes up 80 per cent
of Chile's plantations. GenFor's researchers aim to create a GM pine
resistant to the European shoot-tip moth (Ryacionia buoliana), a pest
which is seriously affecting the 1.5 millions hectares of Radiata pine
plantations in that country.

GenFor's partner Cellfor has entered into collaborations with a series of
universities, including Oxford, Purdue, British Columbia, Alberta and
Victoria. Cellfor has also worked with the Institute of Molecular
Agrobiology in Singapore and SweTree Genomics in Sweden.

In addition to its research on insect resistant GM radiata pine, GenFor is
working on increasing the level of cellulose and reducing the amount of
lignin in radiata and loblolly pine (Pinus taeda).

In the U.S. several pulp and paper companies, including Weyerhaeuser,
International Paper, MacMillan Blodel, Aracruz Cellulose and Potlatch
Corporation have funded research at Oregon State University's Tree
Genomics, Biotechnology, and Breeding Programme, which is working on GM
trees for herbicide tolerance, sterility, resistance to fungus and insects
and reduced lignin.

Some forestry companies also carry out their own research. Such are the
cases of Aracruz Cellulose in Brazil and Japanese companies Oji Paper and
Nippon Paper Industries.

Aracruz, the world top producer of bleached eucalyptus pulp produced from
its huge plantations in Brazil is currently carrying out GM tree
laboratory research but, according to company officials is not yet
conducting either field trials or commercial plantations.

Nippon Paper, Japan's largest paper manufacturer has developed a GM
salt-tolerant eucalyptus tree. It is also working on GM poplar trees which
would be resistant to polluted environments. In 1995, Nippon signed an
agreement with Zeneca to work on modifying lignin in pulp trees and in
2001 had developed a GM eucalyptus tree which produced 20 per cent less
lignin, 10 per cent more cellulose and five per cent more pulp than non-GM
eucalyptus trees.

Oji Paper is one of the largest pulp and paper companies in the world. The
company has an active research programme into GM trees. Oji Paper's
scientists are working on GM trees with reduced lignin, GM trees which can
tolerate salty soils and GM eucalyptus that can grow in acidic soils.

All the above illustrates forestry companies' involvement in GM trees.
They want to be able to plant trees in any type of environment and to
ensure their fast growth; they want to accommodate plantation wood to
their industrial processes (e.g. with less lignin for pulp production);
they want their monocultures to be insect-resistant and
herbicide-tolerant; they want them to be sterile. In sum, their aim is to
manipulate nature to adapt it to their long-term economic objectives,
regardless of the uncertainties and risks that this involves.
************

- International Legislation and GM Trees

In spite of the risks posed by genetic modification of trees, there is no
international legislation specifically relating to GM trees. Instead,
legislation has been produced with GM food crops and seeds in mind, and
does not necessarily cover the problems presented by long-lived GM plants
such as trees.

International law covering GMOs is at present focussed on issues relating
to trade. There are two institutions which provide rulings covering
international trade in GMOs: the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)
and the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

The member countries of the CBD adopted the Cartagena Protocol on
Biosafety in January 2000. The Protocol provides regulations for
transboundary movements of GMOs and is based on the precautionary
principle.

Although three major exporters of GMOs (USA, Canada and Argentina) have
not ratified the Cartagena Protocol, the Protocol recognises a
government's right to ban imports of GMOs when insufficient information is
available to carry out an assessment of the risks. The burden of proof of
safety is thus pushed back to the country exporting the GMOs.

However, under the WTO, governments can be penalised for putting in place
legislation, such as a ban on GMOs, which the WTO rules is a barrier to
international trade.

The WTO also has an Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and
Phytosanitary Measures (SPS Agreement) covering food safety and animal and
plant health regulations. In setting their laws, to comply with the SPS
Agreement, governments must assess the risks involved, rather than use the
precautionary principle.

Mariam Mayet, director of the African Centre for Biosafety in South
Africa, points out that the Cartagena Protocol skips the issue of whether
it takes precedence over WTO rules, by stating that the two should be
"mutually supportive".

That the two sets of legislation are not mutually supportive was
illustrated in May 2003 when the US, Canada and Argentina filed a
complaint with the WTO about the European Union's legislation on GM foods.

Tewolde Egziabher, Director General of the Environmental Protection
Authority in Ethiopia, was one of the architects of the Cartagena
Protocol. In response to the US complaint to the WTO he wrote, "We in
African countries, who have fought long and hard for the agreement and
ratification of the Biosafety Protocol, feel that US actions are intended
to send a strong and aggressive message to us: that should we choose to
implement the Protocol and reject the import of GM foods, we may also face
the possibility of a WTO challenge. We cannot help but perceive that US
actions are a pre-emptive strike on the Biosafety Protocol and developing
country interests."

Forestry scientists are clear that genetic pollution from GM tree
plantations is inevitable. "Genes will eventually get out" as Oregon State
University's Steven Strauss puts it.

Apart from the ecological risks involved, the prospect of GM trees
crossing with wild relatives, resulting in feral GM trees containing
patented genes growing outside plantations, raises a number of legal
questions. Will the company that owns the patent on the gene have
ownership rights (or any other rights) over any trees which contain this
gene? Might forest owners find that the trees on their land in fact belong
to International Paper or Meadwestvaco because they contain the company's
patented genes?

Who will be liable, if gene pollution proves to have damaged trees in
forests? Will it be the plantation manager, the company that sold
the GM tree seedlings, the company that developed the GM tree using the
patented gene, or will it be the owner of the patent on the gene?

How is "damage" to trees in forests to be determined? Who will
decide what constitutes damage? Trees and forests are sacred in some
cultures and although superficially there may appear to be no harm done,
changing the genetic makeup of wild trees could be considered to be
genetic vandalism.

Tree pollen can travel huge distances. Seeds can be (and are) easily
smuggled across borders. No legislation in the world will prevent this
>from happening. If GM trees were to become weedy and start invading forest
ecosystems as a result of smuggled seeds, who would be liable?

In May 2004, the Canadian Supreme Court ruled that Monsanto had the right
to prosecute farmers who have crops containing Monsanto patented genes on
their land. Pat Mooney, director of the Action Group on Erosion,
Technology and Concentration, explains the implications of this ruling:
"They can now say that their rights extend to anything its genes get into,
whether plant, animal or human. Under this ruling spreading GM pollution
appears to be recognized as a viable corporate ownership strategy."
************

- Genetically Engineered Trees and Global Warming

On October 22, 2004 Russia ratified the Kyoto Protocol, the international
agreement created to begin addressing the problem of global warming.
Russia's ratification of the Kyoto Protocol now gives the agreement a high
enough level of participation by the countries most responsible for the
world's carbon emissions for the agreement to go into effect, even without
the United States' 25% of worldwide annual global carbon emissions.

Within days of Russia's announcement, carbon trading in Europe tripled.
The carbon market is expected to be the world's largest ever, projected to
reach US$60 billion by 2008. The carbon market is included as part of the
Kyoto Protocol. It was created to enable corporations to buy the right to
continue emitting carbon dioxide while purporting to address global
warming-a profitable commodity indeed. The carbon credits are purchased
>from countries or corporations that have in some way reduced carbon
emissions-by, for example, converting a coal burning plant to natural gas,
or by planting trees to soak up carbon emissions.

Last December in Milan, Italy the United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change, which oversees the Kyoto Protocol, agreed that genetically
engineered trees could be used in industrial tree plantations developed to
soak up carbon emissions. These plantations will likely be mainly
developed in the Global South, with subsidies from the World Bank, to
offset emissions from the industrial North.

This UN agreement coupled with the World Bank subsidies provide huge new
incentives to advance GE trees technology through the creation of this
profitable carbon market. Meanwhile, the Kyoto Protocol does not contain
provisions to effectively protect existing carbon-absorbing native
forests.

Scientists argue that trees can be genetically engineered to sequester
even more carbon than they do already, to enhance the ability of
plantations to offset industrial carbon. Unfortunately, there remain
several difficulties with this plan.

First is the problem of where these plantations will be located. Studies
at Duke University in the US have found that when trees are subjected to
increased carbon dioxide in the air, they will only increase their carbon
storage if soils are rich in nitrogen. Trees in poor soils did not
increase their carbon storage. This means that plantations developed
specifically to store carbon will need to be located on fertile soils.
Scientists at a Duke University conference on GE trees suggested these
plantations could be located on abandoned agricultural lands. But this
raises the question of where all of these abandoned fertile agricultural
lands exist? They must be a very well-kept secret. No, in reality these
plantations will be concentrated in the Global South where they will
likely displace communities, either by directly taking over their
agricultural lands for plantations, or by logging native forests and
replacing them with plantations, with all of the resultant impacts
plantations bring-from loss of fresh water and biodiversity to
contamination with toxic chemicals.

Additional concerns about carbon storage plantations include the issue of
protecting the plantations from any activity that would release the
carbon-such as logging or fire. Some have suggested that carbon offset
plantations would have to become virtual "human exclusion zones" where all
human activity is prohibited-a development that would almost certainly
lead to the displacement of communities.

The above problems are inherent in any carbon offset forestry plantation,
genetically engineered or not. Inclusion of GE trees in these
plantations, however, adds an entirely new layer of problems.

In addition to engineering trees for higher carbon absorption, scientists
are engineering trees to be resistant to insects and herbicides, grow
faster, and be sterile.

Nutrient-intensive monoculture tree plantations rapidly drain water tables
and deplete the soil. Trees genetically engineered to grow even faster
will exacerbate this problem. Satellite images from the 1980s have
revealed that vast expanses of land where native forests once stood have
now been converted to tree plantations. These plantations have been found
by the US Environmental Protection Agency and World Resources Institute to
sequester only 1/4 the carbon of their native forest predecessors. Faster
growing GE tree plantations that deplete soils and water will cause
additional deforestation as native forests are cleared to replace the land
denuded by the previous plantations. This process of native forest
conversion to plantations greatly contributes to global warming by
simultaneously releasing the carbon stored in the native forests,
eliminating the natural ability of native forests to regulate the Earth's
climate, and by replacing them with plantations that store carbon at a
dramatically reduced rate.

Industry asserts that trees genetically engineered for the above traits
will be sterile-preventing contamination. Sterility researchers have
admitted, however, that achieving 100% guaranteed sterility in trees is
not likely, due to the fact that trees can live for hundreds of years and
have genomes longer even than the human genome. In addition, tree pollen
has been documented to travel for 600 km or more. GE tree pollen is likely
to contaminate vast expanses of native forests with a wide variety of
destructive traits, destroying the delicate ecological balance of native
forests and causing increased forest mortality-and additional releases of
CO2 greenhouse gas.

GE tree plantations have no place in sustainable forest management
practices that maintain healthy forest ecosystems. They certainly have no
place in the fight to stop global warming. Proposals by the United
Nations and the World Bank for projects-such as GE tree plantations- allow
corporations to continue polluting and magnifying global warming at the
disproportionate expense of peoples and ecosystems in the Global South.

GJEP has a global campaign to stop genetically engineered trees. To get
involved, contact them at info@globaljusticeecology.org,
http://www.globaljusticeecology.org or write GJEP, PO Box 412, Hinesburg,
VT 05461 USA

By: Anne Petermann, Global Justice Ecology Project
************

- Does the World Bank have a position on GM trees?

Perhaps I'm being naïve, but I really thought that the World Bank would
have a position on GM trees. The first field trial of GM trees was in
1988. Surely, I thought, 16 years is long enough for the Bank's policy
experts to come up with something. When the Bank's shiny new forest policy
came out two years ago, it did so after a "stakeholder consultative
process" which was "supported by extensive analytical, technical and
economic studies, some commissioned by the World Bank and others done by
independent institutions and NGOs on a wide range of subjects," according
to the Bank. Surely the new policy has something to say on GM trees?

Er, no. The World Bank's Forest Policy makes no mention of GM trees.
Neither does the World Bank's Forest Strategy, a 99-page report (plus
appendices) which the Bank claims "provides nuanced guidance on the
different actions that should be considered in different circumstances".

The Bank's Forest Policy does state that the Bank will only fund
plantations that are "environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial,
and economically viable." This would, in a just and fair world, exclude
any GM tree plantations as they are neither "environmentally appropriate"
nor "socially beneficial". But some of those experts at the World Bank
have some pretty strange ideas about what is "appropriate" and
"beneficial" for rural communities living thousands of miles from
Washington DC.

The World Bank, through its Carbon Finance Unit is keen on financing
carbon projects, including tree plantations as carbon sinks. Since
December 2003, the Kyoto Protocol allows plantations of GM trees as carbon
sinks to be included under its clean development mechanism. So far no GM
tree carbon sink plantations have been established but scientists at Oak
Ridge National Laboratory, for example, are working on producing carbon
storing GM trees.

I was curious to find out whether this meant that the World Bank might be
funding GM tree carbon sinks in the future, so on 21 July 2004, I wrote to
Jason Steele at the World Bank's Carbon Finance Unit to ask a few
questions about GM trees. A week later he told me he was "still trying" to
find the answers.

A couple of months later, when I'd still not heard anything, I thought I
should jog his memory. I wrote again, told him I was working on an
article, the deadline was mid-November and I'd like an on-the-record
response. Steele responded immediately, but only to pass me on to the
Carbon Finance Unit's Senior Communication Officer, Anita Gordon.

I asked Anita Gordon the same questions I'd asked Jason Steele two months
earlier. Gordon also responded immediately, but only to pass me on to the
Carbon Finance Unit's Stakeholder Relations Specialist, Charles Cormier.

I met Charles Cormier in June 2004 at the World Bank organised Carbon Expo
in Cologne, Germany. I asked him for an interview about Plantar, an
industrial tree plantation project in Brazil funded by the World Bank's
Prototype Carbon Fund (PCF). In terms of the amount of carbon emissions
the project is supposed to save, Plantar is by far the largest project on
PCF's books. Cormier turned down my request for an interview. "I don't
know anything about Plantar," he said.

PCF's contract with Plantar requires that Plantar is certified as well
managed by the Forest Stewardship Council. If the FSC certification is
withdrawn for any reason, PCF will stop the payments to Plantar. FSC
standards state that the "use of genetically modified organisms shall be
prohibited". So, at least in Plantar's case, the World Bank will not fund
GM tree plantations.

"Charles Cormier will get back to you on your query," Anita Gordon
promised me back in September. I still haven't heard from him. Perhaps I
shouldn't be too surprised.

I looked up the "Who's Who" page of the World Bank's Forests and Forestry
web-site and wrote to the 18 Bank staff listed on that page to ask them
about the World Bank's policy on GM trees. I even clicked on a little
button and sent an e-mail to the Bank's "Advisory Service". The Bank's
web-site describes these people as "experts and specialists". They should,
at least in theory, know the World Bank's position on important forestry
issues like GM trees. But apart from four "out of office" automatic
replies, I haven't heard anything from any of them.

For the record, here are the four questions that I would like someone at
the World Bank to answer:

1. Does the World Bank have any guidelines on funding projects which
include GM trees?

2. In a question and answer sheet on its new forest policy, the World Bank
states that "The strategy does not commit the Bank to any such activities
[i.e. carbon forestry and carbon trading] unless these are specifically
allowed under the Clean Development Mechanism or Joint Implementation
mechanisms of the Kyoto Protocol . . . ." Since GM trees are included in
the Kyoto Protocol, does this mean that the Bank can fund GM tree
plantations as carbon sinks?

3. Does the Prototype Carbon Fund (or any of the other World Bank carbon
financing mechanisms) have any guidelines on funding projects which
include GM trees? If so, please provide details.

4. If there are World Bank documents which clarify the Bank's position on
GM trees, could you please send me copies?

I'm sure I can't be the only one who would like to know the answers to
these questions. So, if anyone in the World Bank is reading this, I'd be
delighted to hear from you.

By: Chris Lang, e-mail: chrislang@t-online.de
*********

- Pollen from pine plantations generates problems - what if in addition
they were transgenic pines?

Plant pollination takes place in different ways. One way is done by bees,
butterflies, humming birds and bats. Another type of pollination is caused
by wind blowing through plants that have their reproductive cells in open
flowers. This happens with coniferous trees (for example, pines). For
fecundation to be effective, these trees have to produce an enormous
amount of pollen that the wind blows away and distributes, passing it from
plant to plant and covering great distances.

Pollen can produce allergic reactions, such as conjunctivitis, hay-fever,
asthma and general malaise. The symptoms of irritation and a watery
secretion in eyes and nose announce the arrival of spring because in
general they appear when the mucous comes in contact with environmental
pollen transported by the wind. Seasonal hay-fever is suffered by 1 in 6
of the industrialized world's inhabitants.

Although pine pollen has been considered to cause a low degree of
sensitivity, the counts during pollination are usually very high.
Allergenic proteins have been found in a study carried out with the pollen
>from Pinus radiata, very abundant in the atmosphere in New Zealand, and
tests have been carried out for cross reactivity with the pollen of a
species of grass (Lolium perenne). Recently, other authors have found a
considerable increase in the allergenic properties of this pollen due to
the effect of air pollution.

Furthermore, the increase in levels of carbon dioxide associated with the
warming of the earth's atmosphere may be causing an increase in allergies.
Researchers have affirmed that in an atmosphere with twice the amount of
carbon dioxide than there is now, there would be 61 per cent more pollen.

In this scenario two factors further increasing the problem are
introduced: large-scale pine plantations and additionally, the project to
convert them into transgenic pine plantations.

Regarding large-scale monoculture pine plantations, it may be inferred
that the phenomenon related to pollination would be increased, one could
say in an exponential way. For example, in Chile, the area covered by
pines is over one and a half million hectares. It is not hard to imagine
what size the clouds of pollen could be from such an enormous quantity of
trees of the same species, generally close together and covering vast
spaces. The evidence from neighbours in the Community of Lumaco in the
Traiguen Commune, IX Region, reports that "in October, the pollen from the
pines leaves the fields all yellow. Health problems arise. The market
garden gets covered in yellow and the leaves of the plants have to be
watered to enable them to survive." "(...) really nobody knows what
happens with pine pollen. Perhaps it is causing us harm. We hear about
contamination and how water has to be to be able to drink it, but finally
one consumes what one has handy." Last August even the press recorded a
phenomenon called "Yellow rain" a layer of yellowish-green powder that
covered pavements, streets and cars and turned out to be pine pollen.

Something similar happened in Japan, where since 1950 there has been a
policy promoting plantations of practically a single species of fast
growth conifer (Cryptomeria japonica), which two years ago covered 10
million hectares. Now, each spring, a great cloud of pollen descends on
Japan, leaving 2 out of 6 inhabitants affected by allergy. In Tokyo over
the past ten years, the proportion of affected population has increased
>from 7 to 20 per cent (see WRM bulletin60).

Furthermore, concerning genetic manipulation of plant varieties,
indications of possible cases of allergy to transgenic maize pollen have
been observed. In July 2003, in Mindanao in the southern region of the
Philippines, various people from a rural population living in the
proximity of a transgenic Bt maize plantation (manipulated to exude the
Bacillus thuringensis toxin) suffered from fever, head-aches, nausea,
respiratory and intestinal disorders, general weakness and skin problems.
The situation coincided with the flowering season of transgenic maize in
the zone and persisted over several weeks. This led the Social Action
Centre to ask for help from various organizations and local NGOs, such as
Searice and Masipag, to try to identify the cause of the symptoms and to
find a solution.

The Director of the Norwegian Institute for Genetic Ecology, Dr. Terje
Traavik, carried out blood tests and followed up on the case. Dr. Traavik
stated that the antibodies present in the blood showed that the persons
affected had been exposed to the Bt toxin over the past few months. That
is to say, that the blood tests indicated that the symptoms were the
result of having inhaled pollen from GM maize.

In an extrapolation using common sense and prudence, the following
question arises: what would happen if, to the already problematic
disorders of massive pollen counts from commercial pine plantations are
added those of the uncertainty and risk of unknown effects from transgenic
pollen from pine trees that have been genetically manipulated for purely
commercial purposes? Perhaps this is yet another element to say a
resounding NO to transgenic trees?

Article based on information from: testimonials gathered by Ricardo
Carrere during a visit to the IX Region of Chile, Comuna Traiguén,
Comunidad Lumaco, in June 2004; "Preliminary Results of Study Show
Immunological Reaction to Bt Toxin", Gentech-news 91,
http://www.blauen-institut.ch/Tx/tM/tm_nov/tm0913.html ; "La invasión de
las plantaciones forestales en Chile", José Araya Cornejo, Observatorio
Latinoamericano de Conflictos Ambientales,
http://www.wrm.org.uy/paises/Chile/invasion.pdf; ""Lluvia amarilla" es
polen de pino",
http://www.australtemuco.cl/site/edic/20030819023407/pags/20030819025615.htm
l;:
"Pinos",
http://www.uma.es/Estudios/Departamentos/BiolVeg/02Aer/00HAer/PolPin.html;
"La producción de polen crecerá significativamente en 50 años",
http://www.diariomedico.com/edicion/noticia/0,2458,129561,00.html

************
* GM TREES IN THE SOUTH
********

- Brazil: Plantations, profits and GM trees

Proponents of industrial tree plantations often argue that plantations can
relieve pressure on forests. Brazil's pulp and paper industry
exposes this myth for the pro-industry propaganda that it is. Rather than
growing more wood on less land, the industry grows more wood on more land.
Every year the area of plantations increases and every year the area of
forest decreases.

Take Brazil's Aracruz Cellulose, for example, the world's largest producer
of bleached eucalyptus pulp. Aracruz's three pulp mills produce a total of
two million tons of pulp a year. The company's eucalyptus plantations were
established on the lands of the Tupinikim and Guarani indigenous peoples
and other local communities. The eucalyptus trees that feed Aracruz's pulp
mills are among the fastest growing trees in the world. Yet Aracruz
continues to expand both its pulp operations and the area of its
plantations, pushing yet more people off the land.

Aracruz is also carrying out laboratory research into genetically modified
trees. In 1998, Aracruz became the first company to receive permission
>from Brazil's National Technical Commission of Biosecurity (CTNBio) for
laboratory experiments on GM trees.

A year before receiving this application, which is still current, Aracruz
produced a statement on GM trees. "Many sectors such as agriculture are
using genetics, and there is no reason to impose a genetic prohibition on
the forestry industry, which, for plantations, follow the same basic
concepts as any food crop," the company explained. To Aracruz, then, there
is no difference between an annual food crop and trees which can live for
hundreds of years.

Gabriel Dehon Rezende, Forest Improvement Manager at Aracruz told me in
July 2004 that "the company believes that Genetic Engineering could help
bring about sustainable social, environmental and economic benefits to
agricultural and forestry activities in the future." Rezende was quick to
point out that at present "Aracruz does not use Genetically Modified
Organisms (GMOs) in its field trials or commercial plantations."

Brazilian pulp and paper company Suzano owns more than 180,000 hectares of
eucalyptus plantations in the states of Sao Paulo, Bahia, Espirito Santo,
Minas Gerais and Maranhao. Last year, Suzano spent US$180 million on
expanding its mills in Bahia and Sao Paulo and has plans to double its
production capacity by 2008.

Each year, Suzano spends US$2 million on research and development. Suzano
is financing research into GM eucalyptus at the Luiz de Queiroz
Agricultural College. The research aims to engineer trees with reduced
lignin and higher cellulose content, an attempt to find what Suzano
describes as the "perfect tree".

Suzano is also interested in producing a GM eucalyptus tree which can
withstand drought. While the company acknowledges that "the water shortage
already being experienced in some areas is a huge challenge", it fails to
mention that Suzano's water guzzling eucalyptus plantations are one of the
causes of the water shortage.

Suzano is among thirteen companies working with Brazil's Ministry for
Science and Technology on a project to map the eucalyptus genome. More
than 50 scientists are involved in the "Genolyptus" project, which focuses
particularly on the way genes affect wood formation and disease
resistance. The project started in 2002 and is due to be completed in
2006.

International Paper, the world's largest pulp and paper firm, has almost
200,000 hectares of industrial tree plantations in Brazil. Wood chips from
Brazil are exported to International Paper's mills in the US. Two years
ago, International Paper of Brazil received permission from CTNBio for
experiments with GM trees.

International Paper is a partner in ArborGen, the world's largest GM tree
company. ArborGen has plans to test its GM eucalyptus in Brazil. New
Zealand biotech firm Horizon2 has a research contract with ArborGen. The
company states that the research aims "to help improve the pulping
characteristics of eucalyptus destined for the Brazilian market."

In March 2004, Bruce Burton, the vice-president of Rubicon, a partner in
ArborGen, announced that ArborGen would not carry out any GM tree trials
in New Zealand. Instead, "we'll carry on doing test in the US and Brazil"
he said.

Aracruz, Suzano, International Paper and ArborGen are involved in research
into GM trees because they believe they can make more money by doing so.

In April this year, the Movement of Landless Peasants protested against
the pulp and paper industry's take over of vast tracts of land in Brazil.
Landless people occupied areas of industrial tree plantations owned by the
pulp and paper companies Veracel, Suzano, Klabin, VCP, Aracruz and
Trombini.

None of the companies hoping to plant GM trees in Brazil is doing so in
order to relieve pressure on forests or to help resolve the land problem
in Brazil. Their profits come at the expense of Brazil's people and
forests.

By: Chris Lang, e-mail: chrislang@t-online.de
*********

- Chile: Made-to-measure trees for the forestry industry

The Chilean forestry sector seems to accept no limits to the expansion of
its monoculture pine and eucalyptus plantations. On the one hand it has
turned to repression and lies to face local opposition. On the other, it
has extended its operations to other countries, such as Argentina and
Uruguay, where it has installed plantations, timber industries and pulp
mills, thus increasing its impact on other environments and populations.

In addition to the above, it also does not accept the limits imposed by
nature and is appealing to biotechnology to make trees with the right
characteristics to be able to plant more and obtain greater benefits.

At the present time, Chile leads the development of the biotechnology
sector in Latin America, and it may well become the first country to
market transgenic trees on a world level and a platform from which to
produce and export transgenic pines and technology to the Continent - a
dangerous issue.

Although the process began earlier, it started to strengthen in 1999 with
the establishment of GenFor as a joint venture between the Fundación Chile
and the Canadian company Cellfor. The initial hub of interest regarding
genetically modified tree production is to make pines resistant to the
pine shoot moth (Rhyacionia buoliana) which is affecting wide areas of
monoculture radiata pine plantations, covering one and a half million
hectares in Chile. The company hopes to have these pines ready for
commercial plantation by the year 2008.

To create this technology, Genfor has established an agreement with the
Forest Research Institute (FRI), a research body of the New Zealand
Government. The work at FRI is developed on the basis of genetic material
>from radiata pine, with different lines of selected embryos from Chile
being reproduced, in which three proteins with high pesticide levels have
been identified. This transgenic pine is obtained by incorporating a Bt
(Bacillus thuringiensis) gene, similar to the one used in transgenic crops
such as maize and cotton.

At the same time, GenFor is also working on the genetic modification of
radiata and loblolly pine to increase the level of cellulose and lessen
the amount of lignin in the wood. The objective of such studies is to
supply the industry with timber that contains a greater proportion of the
required raw material (cellulose) and a smaller percentage of what has to
be separated and discarded (lignin), thus considerably lowering production
costs.

Furthermore, in 2001, the Foundation for Agrarian Innovation (Fundación
para la Innovación Agraria -FIA) of the Chilean Ministry of Agriculture,
signed an agreement with the International Redbio Foundation, becoming its
representative branch in Chile. Its web page has a section on the subject
of "Biotechnology in Chile" summarizing its vision of the issue. It
states that "Chile has notoriously diversified its productive and export
base over the past years. However, its economic development continues to
be firmly based on exploitation and marketing of natural resources. In
this context, biotechnology appears to be a very useful tool in the
improvement of the competitive capacity of productive sectors." Regarding
the forestry sector, it mentions a project which "increases the cellulose
content and reduces the lignin content of radiata pine," adding that
"other applications will make it possible to produce better quality trees
that are more uniform and have better quality and yields."

This is not all. According to an entrepreneurial vision, there are many
hectares of land in Chile (they estimate at least half a million hectares)
that are being "sub-utilized" because the trees used in plantations cannot
resist the intense cold prevailing there. To solve this problem, the
Forestry Institute (Instituto Forestal - INFOR) and a group of forestry
companies are working in conventional genetic selection to produce clones
of cold-resistant eucalyptus. According to INFOR "In the pre-cordillera
Andes area there are soils that are extraordinarily well suited to the
production of Eucalyptus globulus, but they are presently unavailable due
to the limitation of the cold, a problem that could be solved with the
results of this project."

At the same time, the Universidad de la Frontera in the south of Chile is
studying (with funding from the Fund for Scientific and Technological
Development) the possible use of the genes of a small grass that survives
in the Antarctic (Deschampsia antartica) to produce cold-resistant trees.
Its particular tolerance to low temperatures has given rise to the
interest in identifying the responsible gene or genes to apply them to
eucalyptus and thus further increase the area to be planted with this
species.

Beyond all the problems discussed in this bulletin, caused by the
liberation of transgenic trees, all these technological "advances" choose
to ignore what is evident: that the large-scale monoculture pine and
eucalyptus plantations have caused serious social and environmental
problems in Chile and it is more than evident that the plantation of
transgenic trees will only make them even more serious.

Article based on information from: "La planta que mueve a la ciencia. UFRO
lidera atractiva investigación de Deschampsia antártica". Eduardo
Henríquez, Diario Austral, 8 June 2004
http://www.australtemuco.cl/prontus4_noticias/site/edic/2004_06_08_1/home/ho
me.html
Fundación Redbio: http://www.fundacionredbio.org/filichile.htm
"El futuro de la industria forestal...hoy". Bioplanet. Fundación Ciencia
para la Vida
http://www.bioplanet.net/magazine/bio_enefeb_2000/bio_2000_enefeb_reportaje.
htm
María Isabel Manzur.- "Investigación biotecnológica en Chile orientada a
la producción de transgénicos". Santiago, Fundación Sociedades
Sustentables, 2003
*********

- Kenya: Biotechnology, eucalyptus but no GM trees

Wangari Maathai and Florence Wambugu have dramatically opposing approaches
to tree planting in Kenya. Maathai's approach is anti-colonialist and
empowers the people planting trees. Wambugu's is neo-colonialist and makes
the people planting trees dependent on biotechnology.

Wangari Maathai is this year's Nobel Prize winner. Her Green Belt Movement
trains women to set up their own tree nurseries. "We make them independent
people who can take care of their environment by themselves," says
Maathai. As well as tree planting, Maathai is African Co-President of
Jubilee 2000 and is campaigning for the cancellation of Third World Debt.

Florence Wambugu is the founder of A Harvest Biotechnology Foundation
International. Until 2002, she was the director of the International
Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA).

In 1997, ISAAA started a "Tree Biotechnology Project". The project is a
partnership between the Kenyan Forest Department, the Kenyan Forestry
Research Institute and Mondi Forests, South Africa's pulp and paper giant.
Funding for the project comes from the UK's Gatsby Foundation.

Mondi supplied hybrid clonal eucalyptus trees for the project, a cross
between Eucalyptus grandis and Eucalyptus camaldulensis. The Tree
Biotechnology Project planted the clonal trees in trial plots to see which
grew best in Kenya's soils and climate. The project set up a nursery at
Karura, near Nairobi, which now produces more than one million tree
cuttings a year to be delivered to farmers.

ISAAA is pro-genetic modification. "Commercialized GM crops continue to
deliver significant economic, environmental, and social benefits to both
small and large farmers in developing and industrial countries," writes
ISAAA's chair Clive James. Florence Wambugu previously worked for Monsanto
on a GM virus-resistant sweet potato project. ISAAA's funders include
Bayer CropScience, Monsanto, Syngenta, Pioneer Hi-Bred and the
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council. Past and present
board members include representatives from Monsanto, Syngenta and the
AusBiotech Alliance.

ISAAA's statements about its tree planting project (as well as the word
"Biotechnology" in the project's title) hint at genetic modification.
ISAAA states that Mondi's "genetically superior Eucalyptus" grows faster
and "the hybrid is drought- and cold-tolerant." The project "aims to
provide superior clonal material to both rural and urban communities in
Kenya".

In a July 2004 article, EcoTerra accused Florence Wambugu of using the
project to import genetically modified trees from South Africa into Kenya.
In the UK, the Guardian reported that "GM eucalyptus is to replace the
country's forest cover."

ISAAA denies that the trees are genetically modified. "The project does
not involve transgenic trees, it involves genetically enhanced trees,
which are the result of traditional breeding programmes at Mondi Forests,"
ISAAA's Catherine Ngamau told me.

Peter Gardiner, Mondi Forests' Natural Resource Manager denies that Mondi
has ever produced GM trees. "We don't deploy any GMO material in the
research, on a research plot or commercially anywhere. We haven't done it
anywhere. There's no intention to do that," Gardiner told me.

Flic Blakeway was one of Mondi's forestry scientists that Florence Wambugu
met when she visited Mondi's nurseries in South Africa. Blakeway
co-authored a paper presented at the 1997 World Forestry Congress in
Turkey, which describes how scientists in Mondi's laboratories had started
"preliminary work" on GM trees, including "the transformation of
eucalyptus leaf and cell cultures using Agrobacterium mediated
procedures." Blakeway's paper reported that the experiments did not
produce any GM trees.

Although I've found no evidence to back EcoTerra's claim that Mondi and
Florence Wambugu have sneaked GM eucalyptus trees into Kenya, ISAAA's Tree
Biotechnology Project is not immune to problems.

Fast growing eucalyptus trees cause streams and ponds to dry up and the
water table to drop in the areas they are planted. One of the Kikuyu names
for eucalyptus is munyua maai, which means the "drinker of water". Little
or nothing will grow under the trees.

In 1995 in a presentation at the UN Women's conference in Beijing, Wangari
Maathai explained that during the colonial era, "species of trees like the
eucalyptus, black wattle and conifer trees replaced indigenous species not
only on farmlands but also in forest areas." As a result, she continued,
"farmlands have lost water and certain crops like bananas, sugarcanes and
local species of arrow roots no longer thrive on the drier farmlands to
give food security to the local communities."

Then there's the Blue Gum Chalcid, a tiny black insect which is
threatening Kenya's eucalyptus trees. Affected trees are useless for
timber or poles. In November 2004, the Daily Nation reported that the pest
could threaten up to 40 per cent of Kenya's plantations. Eston Mutitu of
the Kenya Forestry Research Institute commented that the worst affected
trees are those produced though biotechnology such as through ISAAA's
project.

"We are now experiencing exotic pests attacking exotic trees. It seems we
are getting the bad side of incorporating the exotic trees," Mutitu told
Biosafety News in April 2004.

Three years ago, at a conference in South Africa, Wangari Maathai said,
"We are trying to stop the current government from expanding the
plantations. The government sees indigenous forests as useless." It seems
that no one from the Kenyan government, ISAAA or Mondi was listening.
Perhaps they will pay attention now that the problems caused by planting
eucalyptus trees are becoming all too apparent.

By: Chris Lang, e-mail: chrislang@t-online.de

**********

!!!Cultural Stereotype Warning!!!

God went to the Arabs and said, "I have Commandments for you that will make
your lives better.

And the Arabs asked, "What are Commandments?"

And the Lord said, "They are rules for living."

"Can you give us an example?"

"Thou shalt not kill."

"Not kill? We're not interested."

So he went to the Blacks and said, "I have Commandments." And the Blacks
wanted an example, and the Lord said, "Honor thy Father and Mother."

"Father? We don't know who our fathers are."

So He went to the Mexicans and said, "I have Commandments." And the
Mexicans wanted an example, and the Lord said, "Thou shalt not steal."

"Not steal? We're not interested."

He went to the French and said, "I have Commandments." The French wanted an
example and the Lord said, "Thou shalt not commit adultery."

"Not commit adultery? We're not interested".

He went to the Jews and said, "I have Commandments."

"Commandments?" they said, "How much are they?"

"They're free."

"We'll take 10."

Please send an e-postcard to the Vatican; a quick and easy action. Thanks.

Best wishes,

R
_________

Subject: E-mail the Vatican, say missionaries
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2004 10:29:04 +0000

------

The Columban Missionaries - a Roman Catholic organisation of missionary
priests, sisters and laity -are calling for letters to be sent to the
Justice and Peace Council appealing to the Holy See not to endorse genetic
engineering as a solution to world hunger.

The Columban Missionaries are calling on the Vatican to instead organise a
serious and inclusive consultation on food and how to combat hunger in a
world of plenty.

They're asking for the consultation process to draw on the experience and
expertise of as wide a group as possible and for it to be particularly
sensitive to contributions from local churches where poverty and hunger are
widespread.

E-mail the Vatican:
http://www.columban.com/pd/postcards/cm.html

The concerns of the Columban Missionaries together with multiple resources on
this issue can be found on their website: http://www.columban.com

Here are some of their concerns:

Moral Imperative of Biotechnology ?
http://www.columban.com

Since November 2003, when the Vatican hosted an international seminar on
genetically modified foods, there has been a growing concern, especially
among grass roots environmental, development, farming organizations and
local Churches, particularly in the Third Word, that the Vatican is
supporting the use of genetically engineered crops.

Since then, another Conference organized by the Pontifical Academy of Science
and the US Embassy to the Holy See - 'Feeding the Hungry: Moral Imperative
of Biotechnology' - took place in the Gregorian University in September
2004.

The Study-Document on the Use of 'Genetically Modified Food Plants to Combat
Hunger in the World' published by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 2004
promotes genetically engineered crops as a way to solve world hunger.

The majority of the speakers invited to both conferences are well known GMO
advocates. There was a noticeable absence of scientists or development
workers who question both the safety of GE crops and the proposition that
these will play a significant role in banishing hunger.

Even though the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace denied the November
2003 conference was biased in favour of GMOs and insisted that both sides of
the issue will be considered when the Vatican finally made a decision on
GMOs, there is no evidence that critical views of GMOs are being seriously
entertained. ......

E-mail the Vatican - it only takes a moment
http://www.columban.com/pd/postcards/cm.html

More resources: http://www.columban.com

----------------------------------------------
http://conservation.catholic.org/ecologicalcrisis.htm
PEACE WITH GOD THE CREATOR, PEACE WITH ALL OF CREATION
Message of His Holiness Pope John Paul II for the celebration of the WORLD DAY
OF PEACE, January 1, 1990

EXTRACT: "Finally, we can only look with deep concern at the enormous
possibilities of biological research. We are not yet in a position to assess
the biological disturbance that could result from indiscriminate genetic
manipulation and from the unscrupulous development of new forms of plant and
animal life, to say nothing of unacceptable experimentation regarding the
origins of human life itself. It is evident to all that in any area as
delicate as this, indifference to fundamental ethical norms, or their
rejection, would lead mankind to the very threshold of self-destruction."

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

BATTLEFIELD EARTH

BILL MOYERS
AlterNet
December 4, 2004

This week the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard
Medical School presented its fourth annual Global Environment Citizen Award
to Bill Moyers. In presenting the award, Meryl Streep, a member of the
Center board, said, "Through resourceful, intrepid reportage and perceptive
voices from the forward edge of the debate, Moyers has examined an
environment under siege with the aim of engaging citizens." Following is
the text of Bill Moyers' response to Ms. Streep's presentation of the
award.

I accept this award on behalf of all the people behind the camera whom you
never see. And for all those scientists, advocates, activists, and just
plain citizens whose stories we have covered in reporting on how
environmental change affects our daily lives. We journalists are simply
beachcombers on the shores of other people's knowledge, other people's
experience, and other people's wisdom. We tell their stories.

The journalist who truly deserves this award is my friend, Bill McKibben.
He enjoys the most conspicuous place in my own pantheon of journalistic
heroes for his pioneer work in writing about the environment. His best
seller The End of Nature carried on where Rachel Carson's Silent Spring
left off.

Writing in Mother Jones recently, Bill described how the problems we
journalists routinely cover --- conventional, manageable programs like
budget shortfalls and pollution --- may be about to convert to chaotic,
unpredictable, unmanageable situations. The most unmanageable of all, he
writes, could be the accelerating deterioration of the environment,
creating perils with huge momentum like the greenhouse effect that is
causing the melting of the Arctic to release so much freshwater into the
North Atlantic that even the Pentagon is growing alarmed that a weakening
gulf stream could yield abrupt and overwhelming changes, the kind of
changes that could radically alter civilizations.

That's one challenge we journalists face --- how to tell such a story
without coming across as Cassandras, without turning off the people we most
want to understand what's happening, who must act on what they read and
hear.

As difficult as it is, however, for journalists to fashion a readable
narrative for complex issues without depressing our readers and viewers,
there is an even harder challenge --- to pierce the ideology that governs
official policy today. One of the biggest changes in politics in my
lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from
the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress.

For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of
power in Washington. Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven
true; ideologues hold stoutly to a world view despite being contradicted by
what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple,
their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is
the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts.

Remember James Watt, President Reagan's first secretary of the Interior?
My favorite online environmental journal, the ever-engaging Grist, reminded
us recently of how James Watt told the U.S. Congress that protecting
natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus
Christ. In public testimony he said, "after the last tree is felled, Christ
will come back."

Beltway elites snickered. The press corps didn't know what he was talking
about. But James Watt was serious. So were his compatriots out across the
country. They are the people who believe the bible is literally true ---
one-third of the American electorate, if a recent Gallup poll is accurate.
In this past election several million good and decent citizens went to the
polls believing in the rapture index.

That's right --- the rapture index. Google it and you will find that the
best-selling books in America today are the 12 volumes of the left-behind
series written by the Christian fundamentalist and religious right warrior,
Timothy LaHaye. These true believers subscribe to a fantastical theology
concocted in the 19th century by a couple of immigrant preachers who took
disparate passages from the Bible and wove them into a narrative that has
captivated the imagination of millions of Americans.

Its outline is rather simple, if bizarre (the British writer George Monbiot
recently did a brilliant dissection of it and I am indebted to him for
adding to my own understanding): once Israel has occupied the rest of its
"biblical lands," legions of the anti-Christ will attack it, triggering a
final showdown in the valley of Armageddon.

As the Jews who have not been converted are burned, the Messiah will return
for the rapture. True believers will be lifted out of theirclothes and
transported to heaven, where, seated next to the right hand of God, they
will watch their political and religious opponents suffer plagues of boils,
sores, locusts, and frogs during theseveral years of tribulation that
follow.

I'm not making this up. Like Monbiot, I've read the literature.
I'vereported on these people, following some of them from Texas to theWest
Bank. They are sincere, serious and polite as they tell you they feel
called to help bring the rapture on as fulfillment ofbiblical prophecy.
That's why they have declared solidarity withIsrael and the Jewish
settlements and backed up their support withmoney and volunteers.

It's why the invasion of Iraq for them was a warm-up act, predicted in the
Book of Revelations where four angels"which are bound in the great river
Euphrates will be released to slay the third part of man." A war with Islam
in the Middle East is
not something to be feared but welcomed --- an essential conflagration on
the road to redemption. The last time I Googled it, the rapture index stood
at 144 --- just one point below the critical threshold when the whole thing
will blow, the son of god will return, the righteous will enter heaven and
sinners will be condemned to eternal hellfire.

So what does this mean for public policy and the environment? Go to Grist
to read a remarkable work of reporting by the journalist, Glenn Scherer ---
"The Road to Environmental Apocalypse." Read it and you will see how
millions of Christian fundamentalists may believe that environmental
destruction is not only to be disregarded but actually welcomed --- even
hastened --- as a sign of the coming apocalypse.

As Grist makes clear, we're not talking about a handful of fringelawmakers
who hold or are beholden to these beliefs. Nearly half the U.S. Congress
before the recent election --- 231 legislators in total --- more since the
election --- are backed by the religious right. Forty-five senators and 186
members of the 108th congress earned 80% to 100% approval ratings from the
three most influential Christian right advocacy groups.

They include Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Assistant Majority Leader
Mitch McConnell, Conference Chair Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Policy
Chair Jon Kyl of Arizona, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, and Majority Whip
Roy Blunt.

The only Democrat to score 100% with the Christian coalition was Senator
Zell Miller of Georgia, who recently quoted from the biblical book of Amos
on the senate floor: "the days will come, sayeth the Lord God, that I will
send a famine in the land." he seemed to be relishing the thought.

And why not? There's a constituency for it. A 2002 TIME/CNN poll found that
59% of Americans believe that the prophecies found in the book of
Revelations are going to come true. Nearly one-quarter think the Bible
predicted the 9/11 attacks. Drive across the country with your radio tuned
to the more than 1,600 Christian
radio stations or in the motel turn some of the 250 Christian TV stations
and you can hear some of this end-time gospel.

And you will come to understand why people under the spell of such potent
prophecies cannot be expected, as Grist puts it, "to worry about the
environment. Why care about the earth when the droughts, floods, famine and
pestilence brought by ecological collapse are signs of the apocalypse
foretold in the bible?

Why care about global climate change when you and yours will be rescued in
the rapture? And why care about converting from oil to solar when the same
god who performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes can whip up a few
billion barrels of light crude with a word?"

Because these people believe that until Christ does return, the lord will
provide. One of their texts is a high school history book, America's
providential history. You'll find there these words: "the secular or
socialist has a limited resource mentality and views the world as a pie ...
that needs to be cut up so everyone can get a piece."

However, "[t]he Christian knows that the potential in god is unlimited and
that there is no shortage of resources in god's earth .. while many
secularists view the world as overpopulated, Christians know that god has
made the earth sufficiently large with plenty of resources to accommodate
all of the people." No wonder Karl Rove goes around the White House
whistling that militant hymn, "Onward Christian Soldiers." He turned out
millions of the foot soldiers on November 2, including many who have made
the apocalypse a powerful driving force in modern American politics.

I can see in the look on your faces just how had it is for the journalist
to report a story like this with any credibility. So let me put it on a
personal level. I myself don't know how to be in this world without
expecting a confident future and getting up every morning to do what I can
to bring it about. So I have always been an optimist. Now, however, I think
of my friend on Wall Street whom I once asked: "What do you think of the
market?" "I'm optimistic," he answered. "Then why do you look so worried?"
And he answered: "Because I am not sure my optimism is justified."

I'm not, either. Once upon a time I agreed with Eric Chivian and the Center
for Health and the Global Environment that people will protect the natural
environment when they realize its importance to their health and to the
health and lives of their children. Now I am not so sure. It's not that I
don't want to believe that --- it's just that I read the news and connect
the dots:

I read that the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
has declared the election a mandate for President Bush on the environment.
This for an administration that wants to rewrite the Clean Air Act, the
Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act protecting rare plant and
animal species and their habitats, as well as the National Environmental
Policy Act that requires the
government to judge beforehand if actions might damage natural resources.

That wants to relax pollution limits for ozone; eliminate vehicle tailpipe
inspections; and ease pollution standards for cars, sports utility vehicles
and diesel-powered big trucks and heavy equipment.

That wants a new international audit law to allow corporations to keep
certain information about environmental problems secret from the public.

That wants to drop all its new-source review suits against
pollutingcoal-fired power plans and weaken consent decrees reached earlier
with coal companies.

That wants to open the Arctic [National] Wildlife Refuge to drilling and
increase drilling in Padre Island National Seashore, the longest stretch of
undeveloped barrier island in the world and the last great coastal wild
land in America.

I read the news just this week and learned how the Environmental Protection
Agency had planned to spend nine million dollars --- two million of it from
the administration's friends at the American Chemistry Council --- to pay
poor families to continue to use pesticides in their homes.

These pesticides have been linked to neurological damage in children, but
instead of ordering an end to their use, the government and the industry
were going to offer the families $970 each, as well as a camcorder and
children's clothing,
to serve as guinea pigs for the study. I read all this in the news.

I read the news just last night and learned that the administration's
friends at the international policy network, which is supported by
ExxonMobil and others of like mind, have issued a new report that climate
change is "a myth, sea levels are not
rising," [and] scientists who believe catastrophe is possible are "an
embarrassment."

I not only read the news but the fine print of the recent appropriations
bill passed by Congress, with the obscure (and obscene) riders attached to
it: a clause removing all endangered species protections from pesticides;
language prohibiting judicial review for a forest in Oregon; a waiver of
environmental review for grazing permits on public lands; a rider pressed
by developers to
weaken protection for crucial habitats in California.

I read all this and look up at the pictures on my desk, next to the
computer --- pictures of my grandchildren: Henry, age 12; of Thomas, age
10; of Nancy, 7; Jassie, 3; Sara Jane, nine months. I see the future
looking back at me from those photographs and I say, "Father, forgive us,
for we know not what we do." And then I am stopped short by the thought:
"That's not right. We do know what we are doing. We are stealing their
future. Betraying their trust. Despoiling their world."

And I ask myself: Why? Is it because we don't care? Because we are greedy?
Because we have lost our capacity for outrage, our ability to sustain
indignation at injustice?

What has happened to out moral imagination?

On the heath Lear asks Gloucester: "How do you see the world?"And
Gloucester, who is blind, answers: "I see it feelingly.'"

I see it feelingly.

The news is not good these days. I can tell you, though, that as a
journalist I know the news is never the end of the story. The news can be
the truth that sets us free --- not only to feel but to fight for the
future we want. And the will to fight is the antidote to despair, the cure
for cynicism, and the answer to those faces looking back at me from those
photographs on my desk. What we need to match the science of human health
is what the ancient Israelites called "hochma" ? the science of the heart
... the capacity to see ... to feel ... and then to act ... as if the
future depended on you.

Believe me, it does.

JEFFERSON MEMORIAL, 2004
"I HAVE SWORN UPON THE ALTAR OF
GOD ETERNAL HOSTILITY AGAINST EVERY
FORM OF TYRANNY OVER THE MIND OF MAN"

JIM WALKER

Thomas Jefferson On Christianity and Religion

"Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who
believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong."
--- Thomas Jefferson (Notes on Virginia, 1782)

It spite of Christian right attempts to rewrite history to make Jefferson
into a Christian, little about his philosophy resembles that of
Christianity. Although Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence wrote
of the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God, there exists nothing in the
Declaration about Christianity . . . ..

Distortions of history occur in the minds of many Christians whenever they
see the word "God" embossed in statue or memorial concrete.

For example, those who visit the Jefferson Memorial in Washington will read
Jefferson's words engraved: "I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal
hostility against every from of tyranny over the mind of man." When they
see the word "God" many Christians see this as "proof" of his Christianity
without thinking that "God" can have many definitions ranging from nature
to supernatural.

Yet how many of them realize that this passage aimed at attacking the
tyranny of the Christian clergy of Philadelphia, or that Jefferson's God
was not the personal god of Christianity? Those memorial words came from a
letter written to Benjamin Rush in 1800 in response to Rush's warning about
the Philadelphia clergy attacking Jefferson (Jefferson was seen as an
infidel by his enemies during his election for President). The complete
statement reads as follows:

"The returning good sense of our country threatens abortion to their hopes,
& they [the clergy] believe that any portion of power confided to me, will
be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly; for I
have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of
tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: &
enough too in their opinion, & this is the cause of their printing lying
pamphlets against me. . ."

A BLUEPRINT FOR MOORE BASHING

MATT TAIBBI
New York Press
December 3, 2004

We've got to repudiate, you know, the most strident and insulting
anti-American voices out there sometimes on our party's left ... We can't
have our party identified by Michael Moore and Hollywood as our cultural
values.

--- Al From, CEO, Democratic Leadership Council

You know, let's let Hollywood and the Cannes Film Festival fawn all over
Michael Moore. We ought to make it pretty clear that he sure doesn't speak
for us when it comes to standing up for our country.
--- Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute, the think
tank of the DLC

The first thing I thought when reading these passages --- both taken from a
"soul-searching" roundtable held by the Democratic Leadership Council ---
was this: Who the hell is Will Marshall?

I couldn't remember seeing his name at the top of anybody's ballot. I
didn't remember which, if any, elections he had ever won. I was a little
mystified, in fact, by the nature of his popular support --- who he meant,
exactly, when he used the word "we" to talk about whom Michael Moore does
and does not speak for.

According to the last data I could find, Moore recently made a movie that
was seen by tens of millions of people around the world and has grossed
nearly $120 million in the U.S. alone. Furthermore, it was, according to
exit polls, a much better demographic success than the actual Democratic
party.

A Harris poll conducted in July found that 89 percent of Democrats agreed
with "Fahrenheit 9/11," along with 70% of independents. That means Moore
outperformed John Kerry among independents by about 19 points, if we are to
go just by the data presented by bum-licking power-worshipper Ron
Brownstein of the Los Angeles Times at the DLC roundtable.

Moore's revenues come from millions of ordinary people paying ten bucks a
pop to see his film. In contrast, only about 200 people a year visit the
DLC at the box office --- only they pay thousands of dollars per ticket,
and they all have names you'd recognize: Eli Lilly, Coca-Cola, Union
Carbide, Occidental Petroleum, BP and so on.

Like Moore, Marshall is a media figure. He is one of the chief contributors
to Blueprint magazine, the flagship publication of the DLC. Despite the
fact that subscriptions to this magazine are included free with membership
in the DLC, its annual circulation still lags slightly behind the gate for
"Fahrenheit 9/11," with about 20,000 readers per year.

An unfair dig, you say: Blueprint is a trade magazine. Seen in that light,
it indeed appears a much better market performer, with only about six times
fewer readers than the industry bible for horror makeup artists, Fangoria.

While it is not exactly clear who else Marshall is talking about in this
quotation, it is fairly clear that he means that Michael Moore does not
speak for him personally. Which makes sense, of course.

In addition to his duties as the president of the PPI, Marshall kept
himself busy in the last few years. Among other things, he served on the
board of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, an organization
co-chaired by Joe Lieberman and John McCain whose aim was to build
bipartisan support for the invasion of Iraq.

Marshall also signed, at the outset of the war, a letter issued by the
Project for the New American Century (PNAC) expressing support for the
invasion. Marshall signed a similar letter sent to President Bush put out
by the conservative Social Democrats/USA group on February .25, 2003, just
before the invasion. The SD/USA letter urged Bush to commit to "maintaining
substantial U.S. military forces in Iraq for as long as may be required to
ensure a stable, representative regime
is in place and functioning."

One of just a handful of Marshall's co-signatories on that letter was Bruce
Jackson, who also happens to be the head of the PNAC (whose letter Marshall
also signed) and the founder of the aforementioned Committee for the
Liberation of Iraq. Jackson is not only a neo-con of high rank and one of
the chief pom-pom wavers for the war effort. He was also a vice president
in the weapons division of Lockheed-Martin between 1993 and 2002 ? meaning
that he was one of the implied targets of "Bowling for Columbine," which
came out in Jackson's last year with the company.

Clearly, Marshall was thinking about the good of the Democratic Party, and
not the integrity of his grimy little network of missile-humping cronies,
when he and Al From made the curious ? andcuriously conspicuous ---
decision to denounce Moore, Hollywood and France at the DLC meeting in
early November.

There were a number of things that were strange about the release of this
obviously coordinated series of sound bites from the DLC heavies.

For one thing, people like Al From, Donna Brazile and DLC president Bruce
Reed --- event speakers who are all high-level political heavyweights whose
instinct for spontaneity died with their souls100 years ago, and would
never say anything without first calculating its potential impact --- would
seem to gain very little by mentioning Moore's name at all in the
conference.

To say openly in front of a roomful of reporters that the party has to
disavow Michael Moore is to remind a roomful of reporters that the
Democratic party is still currently linked to Michael Moore. This would be
like George Bush Sr. using the word "wimp" in public, or John Kerry using
the word "effete" or "snob." No alert political operative would recommend
it, under normal circumstances.

Furthermore, as both Marshall and From surely know, there was no effort
whatsoever even this time around by the Democratic Party to associate
itself with Michael Moore. Excepting the brief and mostly unrequited love
affair between Moore and Wes Clark, most of the party candidates recoiled
from the fat director as from a diseased thing throughout the entire
campaign season. They've already kept him at arm's length ? why talk about
the need to do it again? Why bring him up at all?

Well, that's easy. It's one thing to avoid public appearances with a
Michael Moore, and to accept his support only tacitly. But it's another
thing entirely to openly denounce him as anti-American, which is what Al
From did last week.

What From, Marshall and the other DLC speakers were doing last week was not
just ruminating out loud about the need to shy away from certain demonized
liberal icons. They were, instead, announcing their willingness to embrace
the other side's tactic --- I hate to lean on this overused word, but it is
a McCarthyite tactic --- of branding certain individuals as traitors and
anti-Americans. What
they were doing was sending up a trial balloon, to see if anyone noticed
this chilling affirmative shift in strategy and tactics.

Well, I noticed. I also noticed that unless something is done about it,
this unelected bund of corporate pawns is once again going to end up
writing the party platform and arranging things to make sure that no
anti-war candidate is allowed to compete for votes in the primaries. It
will push one of its own --- probably Harold Ickes, or Brazile --- in next
year's election for the chairman of the Democratic
Party. And when that person wins, the tens of millions of Democrats who
opposed the war will have to get used to people like Will Marshall
referring to them as "we" in front of roomfuls of reporters --- Marshall,
who this year wrote, in Blueprint, an article entitled "Stay and Win in
Iraq" that offered the following view of the
progress of the war:

"Coalition forces still face daily attacks but the body count tilts
massively in their favor."

Uh-huh.

And Michael Moore and Hollywood are the problem with the Democratic Party.

Your recent remarks in Parlt on this topic are - to be plain -
as sadly astray as those on homX marriage are right on. Just because Susan
Kitschley list-MP opposes it does not prove it OK. Like Mulgoon, even this
babbling airhead (and liar) is not always wrong!

I entreat you to read this recent bull of mine - and then to look
up, or get a reliable research asst to look up, the two websites I give at
the end. (An article of mine is on http://www.psrast.org and has been
subjected to no fault-alleging that I know of.)

As I emailed to you on 14-10-04,
> I would be glad to provide you with e.g the thoroughly-referenced
>statement I gave the Eichelbaum commission (which they suppressed); but I
>think a more readable introit for you would be the attached text of a
>speech of mine to the Ak branch RSNZ.

>If ever you have some spare time when in Ak I'd be very glad to
>discuss this subject with you.

cheers

R

MannGram®:
The fine-sounding slogan "look at the evidence"
Sep 2004

The item below from within a recent email by Friends of the Earth NZ Ltd
stimulates me to try to crystallize a worrying thought about GM.

------

"Some debating techniques
That are seriously flawed enough to justify the title 'propaganda'".
http://my.voyager.net/~jayjo/propagan.htm

*Recourse to authority*

I heard a sermon on the radio a few months ago in which the minister
made a number of claims that were highly questionable. He preceded every
one with a statement such as, "Dr Jones, the world's leading expert on
...". He must have cited a dozen people in a row as the "world's leading
expert" on one subject or another. I found myself asking, What makes
these people the world's leading experts on these subjects? Was there a
contest that they won, or is that just your opinion? Or do you just call
them that because they happen to agree with you?

One should always be suspicious of an argument whose weight relies on
the fact that some authoritative person said so. Even if it is someone
who deserves great respect, he could be wrong. Let's look at the
evidence, not the speaker.

-----------

This is a sound, workable approach for many issues. But for GM it
is scarcely workable. The trouble is that the main concepts in the
technology are too far from ordinary education & experience. The
fine-sounding slogan "look at the evidence" cannot be acted upon by those
who have not learned the meanings of the main terms in which the evidence
must be stated. In GM, many of the main concepts are built on pyramids of
arcane scientific terms which are not understood by anyone who has not
studied the relevant science.

Take a simple example. One of the main political users of the GM
issue for political attention-getting received (along with many others
including media) a note of mine concerning plant GM using synthetic DNA.
The gene-tamperer in question had reported using (like most such
experimenters) different but synonymous codons selected to be more suitable
for the host plant, instead of the codons actually used in the bacterial
gene for the desired toxin. The politician replied "what is a codon?".
She is among the more intelligent politicians, and has a degree - but in
French & Music. Such a person would require at least some hours to grasp
minimally the concept 'codon'. Even if she could then pass a simple exam
to check her understanding of the term, she would still be far from able to
appraise the significance of synthesising a gene with not the original
codons but generally different ones (for the purpose of getting higher
yields of the desired protein in the target cell - 'better expression',
as the gene-tamperers say). What differences might conceivably be implied
by imposing, in a foreign gene, codon 'weightings' it did not originally
have? Unfortunately, only very limited thinking about such subtle
questions can be done by those who have no understanding of the biochemical
context in which codons function - let alone those who have only just got
a superficial definition of 'codon'.

Therefore the public wishing to form opinions on GM will be forced
to have recourse to authority - rely on the advice of scientists who have
the education & experience to understand details of GM.

The question then becomes, which scientists. Among Monsanto's
dozens of PR agents are some with Ph.Ds in gene-jiggering technology, who
have the education to understand their employers' gene-tampering projects.
Some of these are used by the BBC as if they were independent experts.
This is obviously unethical journalism, especially when no other authority
is used in the particular broadcast.

But what about the mirror-image unethical journalism - presenting
to the public, as pretender experts critical of GM, politicians who don't
know a protein from a nucleic acid?

An example of the politics of ignorance was a Sunday media stunt
by the then NZ Minister of Consumer Affairs, the dreadful Fiddler Bunkum
list-MP. She announced that thousands of aged electricity meters had
become inaccurate and had never been checked. This revelation was worded
to imply that she was exposing a wrongful handicap for consumers, against
which she was bravely speaking out. The media failed to query whether, as
a mains meter ages, it can run fast. The truth is it can only run slow,
which favours the consumer who may be getting, say, 10 kWh of energy while
the meter records only 9 kWh. This is a very simple example of a technical
issue exploited for political deceit thru media that are too biased, or
just too lazy, to examine the propaganda sceptically.

If that simple error could go unchallenged, what chance is there
that politicians such as Bunkum will give the public reliable facts, let
alone interpretations, on GM which they do not comprehend? Why then are
she (and her successors) persistently presented to the public as experts
commenting on GM?

The answer is that the media are primarily committed to PC
propaganda - putting favourable spin on the ruling PC Axis {wimminsLib,
neoRacism & hxism}. The media use the GM issue as a vehicle for
publicizing politicians whose primary motivation in politics is what they
call "feminism", or promoting woolly-minded white shame, or implementing
the 1987 Kirk/Pill hx political programme (or two, or all three, of those
ideologies). The only actual expert they ever consult - and that not
often - is Dr Peter R Wills, a practitioner in molecular biology, OK by
media because he's a staunch declared supporter of PC. He served for a
period some y ago as ghost-writer for the babbling airhead Susan Kitschley
list-MP; as a result, her TV appearances would begin with a rote-learned
insightful (& grammatically complex) statement about GM, but she was not
capable of discussing the subject. It is, I think, quite common for the PC
politicians to have such 'back room boys'; but that scarcely equips the
politicians to answer questions let alone to debate judgements about this
or that GM technique.

I have little or no expertise, and must therefore have recourse to
authorities, in many areas of technology and science, and other types of
knowledge - just a quick list that first comes to mind - electronics,
metallurgy, Russian, Greek, calculus, relativity, civil engineering ...
When I need some facts or interpretation in any of these fields, I resort
to qualified experts. Because of my lifelong involvement in academe, I can
find out relatively readily who are proven experts. I would not take
notice of a politician posing in the media as expert in civil engineering
but actually unqualified in this discipline. I would rely on known
authorities.

But the public cannot readily get reliable info on GM if actual
experts happen to be PinC and are therefore blacked out by the media.

The biased promotional role of the RS, RSNZ and USNAS must be
particularly deplored. These bodies have drastically failed to tell the
public the truth about GM. They have uncritically laundered claims of
benefit, denied hazards of GM, and vilified independent scientists such as
Pusztai who report harm from GM. They thus radically degrade the status
of science, as many citizens detect how misleading are their utterances.
And then they (thru e.g the appalling R Winston) moan that the status of
science has declined!

The information sources arrayed in the media are thus almost
entirely spurious:

1 PR agents for commercial GM, some of them scientists (e.g some Monsanto
PR staff; entrepreneur scientists like James D Watson jr)
2 Ostensibly independent ancillary PR operatives e.g V Moses of CropGen®,
Roger Morton of CSIRO, R Roush, J Rafe Blanchfield, I Prigogine, James D
Watson sr, Geo Petersen, M Berridge, Dan Cohen, Tony Conner, etc.
3 Anti-GM enthusiasts primarily concerned to promote PC ideologies and
therefore able to get media attention by posing as experts on GM which they
are incapable of explaining to the public.

Meanwhile, genuine independent experts who are critical of GM are
blacked out by the media - e.g Prof Pat Brown of UC Davis, Prof David
Schubert, Prof David S Williams, Drs Margaret Mellon & Jane Rissler of UCS,
Prof Joe Cummins, Dr Elvira Domisse (formerly a NZ CRI gene-jockey), and
myself.

In this wildly distorted infoscene, the public have little help to
"look at the evidence" on GM. It then becomes crucial that inquiring
citizens be pointed in the direction of key sources, notably
http://www.psrast.org , http://www.ucsusa.org.

PR spinning is replacing the traditional dictum "full and truthful
reporting" in science. The PR spin is bad enough but the academic goon
squads who go after those they disagree with are most fearful.

Nature 432, 657 (09 December 2004); doi:10.1038/432657b

Spinning out of control

Researchers should beware of 'public relations' screens that are
anything but helpful to science communication.

Those who report on science should give constant thanks to those
scientists who explain their work with generosity and patience. Cynics
who argue that researchers just crave publicity should recognize that
the enthusiasm with which such information is typically imparted belies
any suspicion of self-serving motives.

Paradoxically, this willingness to engage with journalists is threatened
by the idea in the scientific community of 'public engagement'. Many
companies and research institutes now have slick PR offices in which the
ethos is informed not by the scientific tradition of exchange and
interaction, but by a culture of marketing. It may be natural that
organizations want to trumpet their achievements in triumphant press
releases,and journalists are generally canny enough to decode the hype.
And it is unsurprising that large companies often demand that their
researchers be chaperoned in interviews by press officers.

It is more disturbing when government-funded research agencies, such as
the US National Institutes of Health, erect PR screens between their
scientists and the media, so that all correspondence is mediated via
e-mail by a press officer. One result is that scientists might come to
believe it sufficient to respond to enquiries about publicly funded
research with chunks of management jargon.

A recent set of questions from a journalist was sifted by this mechanism
to elicit the following response, doctored here to spare some blushes:
"Based on past and current progress, the NIH believes that
mouthwashology is a key enabling technology platform with the potential
to transform the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of halitosis. NIH's
recently announced Alliance for Halitosis is designed to facilitate and
accelerate the progress of the twenty-first century research teams
needed to realize the promise of these and future mouthwash technologies
for halitosis sufferers."

A polite follow-up message from the reporter,
tactfully refraining from pointing out that this statement was useless
to any self-respecting journalist but suggesting that it failed to
address any of the questions originally posed, met with stony silence.

It will be a sad day if scientists start to believe that this sort of
bland and meaningless corporate-speak absolves them of the
responsibility to tell people what they are actually doing.

Subject: A Kiwi Christmas...

'Twas the Night before Xmas and all through the bach

Not even a weta was making a scratch

Woolly socks were hung by the pot belly with care

In the hopes that Santa soon would be there

The children were snoozing in a light summer's breeze

Whilst dreaming of spongy pud and lime-green cream freeze

And dad in his walk shorts and me in my jandals

Had just settled down for a couple of handles

When out on the lawn I heard such a ruckus

I sprang from my Lazy Boy to see what the fuss was

I ran to the sliding door, gasping and wheezing

Threw open the curtains and upped the venetians

The moon on the sand and the Trailer tarp

Lit the beach up just like Eden Park

But still when I saw, I thought I was asleep

A miniature Kingswood, pulled by eight tiny sheep

With a little old driver, sipping a Fanta

I knew in a moment, it had to be Santa

Faster than Phar Lap on steroids they came

And he coo-eed and shouted and called them by name

Now, Kevin! now, Sharlene! now, Rangi and Beck!

On, Darryl! On Shazza! on, Bilbo and Shrek!

To the top of the Pagoda, to the top of the wall

Get in behind, Get in behind, Get in behind, All!

As sandflies around a bar-b-que fly

When they sniff the sizzlers and take to the sky

So up to the top of the bach they flew

With a boot full of toys and Santa Claus too

With a handbrake stop, they arrived on the roof

Four Goodyear tyres and 32 hoofs

And as I quickly turned and ran to the lounge

Out from the chimney Santa came with a bound

He was wearing boardshorts, and gumboots on foot

And his Mambos were covered in six-month-old soot

A bundle of toys he had on his back

As if on OE with a brand new Macpac

He looked like he'd come from the beauty parlour

With rosy red cheeks like pohutakawa

A gorgeous big grin and white as white hair

With wee little tufts growing out of his ears

He had a broad chest and a round beer gut

That shook when he laughed like Jabba the Hutt

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly hobbit

And I laughed when I saw him, I couldn't stop it

He gave me a wink and a bonza thumbs up

And I quickly realised he wasn't a nut

He went straight to the socks without saying a thing

And filled them with barbies and Shrek 2 keyrings

Then giving his nose a jolly good scratch

He flew up the chimney with an almighty flash

He jumped in the Kingswood and cranked the ignition

And then they took off, like some NASA mission

But I think I could hear, as he drove out of sight

"Merry Christmas to all, have a bloody good night!"

http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/1273
Study Deems Federally Funded Sex Ed. Inaccurate, Misleading
by Julie Segraves

Abstinence-only programs funded by millions of tax-payer dollars were
found by a congressional study to provide false facts about reproductive
health.

Dec 4 - A congressional report released last week by Representative Henry
Waxman (D-California) found that many federally funded abstinence-only sex
education programs contain false and misleading information about
reproductive health.

The study, conducted by the House Committee on Government Reform's Special
Investigation Division, concluded that over two-thirds of the curricula
analyzed contain multiple scientific and medical inaccuracies.

House researchers limited their study to programs funded by Special
Programs of Regional and National Significance (SPRANS), which received the
bulk of the $138 million in federal monies budgeted for grants to
abstinence-only programs for fiscal year 2004. SPRANS programs received
$75 million of the available grants in 2004 for federally-funded abstinence
education. To qualify for a SPRANS grant, the curriculum cannot teach any
method other than abstinence to reduce the risk of pregnancy and can only
mention contraceptives in order to explain their rates of failure.

The study's findings concluded that eleven of the thirteen most used
curricula by SPRANS programs contained major errors and distortions of
public health information. These curricula were used in 25 states by state
health departments, school districts, hospitals and community-based
organizations.

The misrepresentations and errors ranged from inaccurate statistics about
abortion-related hazards to misstatements of scientific fact.

For instance, Me, My World, My Future, a textbook published by Teen-Aid,
says that five to ten percent of women who have a legal abortion will
become sterile. But, according to the Waxman study, there is no evidence
that elective abortions performed in the US alter a woman's fertility
except in extreme cases.

Another curriculum, published by Why kNOw Abstinence Education, teaches
that human cells have 24 chromosomes from each parent when in fact there
are 23. The same textbook erroneously teaches that "girls produce only
female ovum, boys, however, have both male and female sperm," as quoted by
the Waxman study.

The study also cited inaccurate assertions from the curricula about the
failure of condoms and the rates at which they prevent pregnancy and
sexually transmitted diseases.

"When used by real people in real-life situations, research confirms that
14 percent of the women who use condoms scrupulously for birth control
become pregnant within a year," teaches Big Talk Book, published by
Choosing the Best. As the study's authors point out, however, couples that
use condoms properly and "scrupulously," experience a failure rate of only
2 to 3 percent in the course of twelve months.

On the topic of HIV prevention through condom use, several of the
curricula cite a now-discredited study conducted by Dr. Susan Weller in
1993, according to the report released by Waxman. Weller's study, which
was rejected by the Department of Health and Human Services, the Federal
Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control, concluded that
condoms only reduce HIV transmission by 69 percent.

Waxman's report also found that stereotypes about men and women were being
taught as fact. For instance, the report quotes Why kNOw curriculum as
teaching that "women gauge their happiness and judge their success by their
relationships" while suggesting that "men's happiness and success hinge on
their accomplishments."

Teachers are also telling students that life begins at conception, as if
the controversial viewpoint were based on solid scientific data rather than
a religious belief system. According to the report, one lesson middle
school curriculum published by Northwest Family Services, states:
"Conception, also known as fertilization, occurs when one sperm unites with
one egg in the upper third of the fallopian tube. This is when life
begins." Meanwhile, Me, My World, My Future calls a 43-day-old fetus a
"thinking person."

In a press statement about the report, Rep. Waxman said: "It is absolutely
vital that the health education provided to America's youth be
scientifically and medically accurate. The abstinence-only programs
reviewed in this report fail to meet this standard. Something is seriously
wrong when federal dollars are being used to mislead kids about basic
health facts."

Abstinence proponents criticized Waxman's report for being politically
motivated and some of the curricula's publishers called the study
inaccurate and misleading. But pro-choice and women's rights groups
praised the report.

"They are actually requiring teachers to teach students blatant and
dangerous falsehoods," said Nancy Keenan, president of the nonprofit
women's rights organization NARAL Pro-Choice America. "Only when people
are armed with complete and accurate information can they make appropriate
decisions. It's time for Congress to wake up to the truth and block George
Bush's relentless drive to shift federal funding into these ideological
programs instead of responsible, medically accurate sex education."

To date, studies on the efficacy of abstinence-only sex education have not
shown conclusive proof that such programs work in preventing teen
pregnancy. A widely cited October 2002 study conducted for the
non-ideological National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy (NCPTP)
reviewed ten studies said by abstinence-only proponents to show that such
programs reduce sexual activity among youth. The survey found that "there
do not currently exist any abstinence-only programs with strong evidence
that they either delay sex or reduce teen pregnancy."

The NCPTP study's author, Dr. Douglas Kirby, pointed out that "this does
not mean that abstinence-only programs are not effective, nor does it mean
that they are effective." Instead, Kirby concluded that "given the great
diversity of abstinence-only programs combined with very few rigorous
studies of their impact, there is simply too little evidence to know
whether abstinence-only programs delay the initiation of sex."

On the other hand, a previous study by NCPTP found that sex education
programs that "deliver and consistently reinforce a clear message about
abstaining from sexual activity and/or using condoms or other forms of
contraception" and "provide basic, accurate information about the risks of
teen sexual activity and about ways to avoid intercourse or use methods of
protection against pregnancy and STDs" are most effective in decreasing
unprotected sexual activity by delaying sex or increasing contraceptive use.

Nevertheless, according to Cynthia Dailard of the Alan Guttmacher
Institute, a nonprofit organization focused on sexual and reproductive
health research and public education, there is no federal program that
funds comprehensive sexuality education.

Support for abstinence-only programs, however, has expanded rapidly under
the Bush Administration. Congress has budgeted $167 million for
abstinence-only education in fiscal year 2005 -- more than twice that spent
in FY 2001. The report released by Waxman states that abstinence-only
programs now reach "millions" of children and adolescents.

The United States has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in the
industrialized world, much higher than most European countries.

Some believe Europe's success is based on the comprehensive, relatively
progressive sex education curricula taught there. In an interview with
WebMD Medical News, Susheela Singh, director of research at the Alan
Guttmacher Institute, which conducted a study of worldwide teen pregnancy
and abortion rates, attributed reduced rates of teen pregnancy in many
European countries to the acceptance that teens are sexually active and the
provision of condoms, emergency contraception and comprehensive sex
education.

As James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth in Washington, DC,
explained to WebMD: "In Europe, sex is a public health issue, driven by
research. In the US, sex is a political issue driven by controversy."

Published on Sunday, December 5, 2004 by the lndependent/UK

Bush Sets Out Plan to Dismantle 30 Years of Environmental Laws
by Geoffrey Lean in Washington

George Bush's new administration, and its supporters controlling
Congress, are setting out to dismantle three decades of US
environmental protection.

We will now see an assault on the law which will set the US in the
direction of becoming a Third World country in terms of environmental
protection.

Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust
In little over a month since his re-election, they have announced that
they will comprehensively rewrite three of the country's most
important environmental laws, open up vast new areas for oil and gas
drilling, and reshape the official Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA).

They say that the election gave them a mandate for the measures -
which, ironically, will overturn a legislative system originally
established by the Republican Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford
- even though Mr Bush went out of his way to avoid emphasizing his
environmental plans during his campaign.

"The election was a validation of the philosophy and the agenda," said
Mike Leavitt, the Bush-appointed head of the EPA. He points out that
over a third of the agency's staff will become eligible for retirement
over the President's four-year term, enabling him to fill it with
people lenient to polluters.

The administration's first priority is the controversial plan to open
up the Arctic Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling. Two years ago the
Senate defeated plans to exploit the refuge - home to caribou, polar
bears , musk oxen and millions of migratory birds - by 52 votes to 48.

But with the election of four Republican senators in favor of the
drilling, and the disappearance of one who opposed it, the
administration now has the votes for victory.

It plans to follow with an energy bill - also defeated in the last
Congress - which would investigate vast new tracts for exploitation
for oil and gas. It will also encourage the building of nuclear power
stations, halted since the 1979 Three Mile Island accident.

Far more radical measures are also under way. Joe Barton, the Texas
Republican chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, who is
to help push through the energy bill, has also announced a
comprehensive review of the Clean Air Act, one of the world's most
successful environmental laws.

Environmentalists predict the emasculation of the Act, which has cut
air pollution across the country by more than half over the last 30
years. Not to be outdone, the Republican chairman of the House
Resources Committee, Richard Pombo, has announced a review of the
Endangered Species Act, for the protection of wildlife. The law has
been the main obstacle to the felling of much of the US's remaining
endangered rain forest. And in a third assault, Congressional leaders
have also announced an attack on the National Environmental Policy
Act, which requires details of the environmental effects of major
developments before they proceed.

Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, said last
week that the previous Bush administration had largely contented
itself with weakening environmental legislation, but the new one
intended to go much further. He added: "We will now see an assault on
the law which will set the US in the direction of becoming a Third
World country in terms of environmental protection."

The environmentalists point out that almost every local referendum on
environmental issues carried out on election day achieved a green
majority.

They recall the fate of the assault on environmental law - headed by
the former Congressional Speaker, Newt Gingrich, in the mid 1990s -
which caused such opposition that Congress enacted tough new green
legislation.

http://www.rsnz.org/news/date/2004/12/3

Mystics can pocket a million - when pigs can fly

Canadian magician and arch-sceptic James Randi is offering the reward to
any who can prove supernatural powers or a phenomenon beyond the reach
of science


---
I wonder if he will define in advance what standard of proof will be applied.

R

PEGGY NOONAN

The Education of Dan Rather
From the golden age of network TV to the end of its hegemony.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110005969

Thursday, December 2, 2004 12:01 a.m. WSJ

Life is complicated, people are complicated, and most of us are a jumble
of virtues, flaws and contradictions. I like to try to understand the
past, try to put it together in a way that makes sense to me. This can
involve judging not only your own actions and decisions but those of
others, which can be hard. I have a friend who once said in the middle
of a conversation, "Don't understand me too quickly." Don't categorize
me; don't decide you broke the code. Sit back and watch; it's more
interesting than you may know.

Which gets me to Dan Rather, who was once my boss, and who of course has
announced his retirement from the anchor chair at CBS News. Everyone I
know is asking me what I think of it. I think a lot of things.

I'm going to use the past tense in speaking of him because I'm speaking
of his career, and speaking of when I knew him in the past.

My first thought: It is a hard world. We all know this in the abstract,
but it can take you aback in the particular. In public life the entire
body of your work--an entire career of almost 50 years--can now
essentially be summed up and dismissed by the last headline on your
career, which in this case is "Rather Retires Under Cloud After Forged
Documents Story." If Dan had retired of his own volition a year ago,
that would not be the headline. "Long Career Reflected Stunning Rise of
U.S. Media" would be more like it.

I am not saying timing is everything, although it can be rather a lot.
I'm thinking of . . . well, Richard Nixon. Nixon had one of the great
gutsy careers in American political history, and on the greatest issue
of his lifetime--the ugliness and destructiveness of communism here and
abroad--he was right, and put his career on the line. He did much good.
But his headline is Watergate.

I think the bitterness of Nixon's presidential years, the personal
darkness he seemed to display, was in part a product of simple human
pain, and the pain was the result of this: He had been right and brave
and done the right thing in the 1950s, and the American left and its
cousin the American establishment would never forgive him for it. And he
couldn't stop wanting their approval. He put a traitor named Alger Hiss
in jail. The left would make him pay. He paid the price in terms of his
personal peace. He handed his enemies a sword.

One of those who picked it up and used it against him was Dan Rather.
There is an amazing and unseen circularity to life. And wanting approval
can make you do strange things.

Dan was a great boss. He was appreciative of good work and sympathetic
when it wasn't good. He was one of the men--Douglas Edwards and Dallas
Townsend were two others--to whom I am indebted, for they taught me how
to write for the ear, how to write for people who are listening as
opposed to reading. He was generous with praise. Someone who did a good
job on a story got flowers and a note. Someone in the newsroom once
knocked Dan in a magazine profile, saying he was insecure, always
sending too many flowers. Dan thought, Really? Life's tough, you can't
send too many flowers! He was open to ideas, he was democratic and not
hierarchical in his management style, and he tried to be fair in his
dealings with people in spite of a personal emotionalism that was deep,
ever present and not entirely predictable.

For three years, from 1981 through 1984, I wrote his daily radio
commentary, a four-minute essay with a one-minute spot that went out to
all the CBS affiliates and network-owned stations. It was a great job.
We did some good work. Here's how it got done: When I had been doing the
show for a few weeks I could see that my work was not good--uneven,
without voice, without a clear point of view. I thought I knew the
reason. I had become increasingly a political conservative. Dan, it was
obvious to me, was a sort of establishment liberal--not a wild leftist
and not an ideologue, but whatever smart liberals thought was more or
less what he wound up thinking, and saying. I couldn't write his views
well, because I didn't buy them and didn't fully understand them. I
couldn't write my views, because the show had to reflect his thinking.
So I went to him and told him my problem. He was great. He said: On any
given issue that we discuss, give the liberal point of view fairly and
give the conservative point of view fairly, and then we'll end it with
my opinion, because it's my show. I thought that sounded good.

And it worked. "Dan Rather Reporting" actually got something of a
conservative following, not because it was a conservative show--it
wasn't--but because it actually put forward the conservative point of
view in what might be called a fair and balanced way. At CBS News in
those days that was surprising.

CBS then was full of people who liked to argue about who opposed the
Vietnam war first, this producer or that reporter. It was a matter of
pride who was antiwar first. On the night in 1980 when Ronald Reagan
beat Jimmy Carter in a landslide, and brought with him a Republican
Senate, CBS News, a busy hive full of people charged with telling
America the news at a dramatic moment, was like a morgue. I was happy,
and the blue-collar workers--the cameramen who were bringing up families
on Long Island, the secretaries from Queens--were delirious. Finally
someone would lower their taxes--payroll taxes on overtime were killing
them--and stop the humiliation in Iran. But the white-collar workers,
the producers and writers and on-air talent--oh what a sad and depressed
lot they were. The forces of evil had won.

Two things to be said here. One is that CBS News hasn't changed that
much, and the other is that the media world in which it operates has
changed completely. The whole context has changed. No one has to accept
the enforced corporate liberalism of the networks anymore, as they did
from 1950 through 1990. They have options, from cable to Fox to the
Internet to hundreds and thousands of radio shows, newspapers,
magazines. The old network hegemony is over. That's why network news
viewership is down, that's why the evening news isn't appointment TV
anymore. America didn't turn crazily right, Americans just finally got
political options in how they'd get the news, and took advantage of
them.

Dan Rather's career traces all this. He rose as network TV rose, rose in
the age of Cronkite, and when he took Mr. Cronkite's chair it was
front-page news. He was one of the three men in America who'd tell the
entire country the news. It was big stuff.

Along the way, on the way, he had his dramas. He was the young reporter
at Parkland Memorial Hospital who got word from a priest that JFK was
dead. He had it first. He covered the civil rights era down South in the
1960s--an insufficiently appreciated shaper of the views of young
reporters of Dan's generation. They saw white men in uniforms use fire
hoses on young blacks; they saw black people trying to get a cup of
coffee at the counter at Woolworth's punched and dragged away; they
covered the bombing of the Birmingham church, and the funerals of the
little girls who died there. (Nine-year-old Condi Rice, who lived
nearby, could have been one of them.) The civil rights struggle seared
everyone, but few more than the young reporters who covered it, and few,
I think, more than Dan.

So did Vietnam, from which Dan reported, again at personal risk. Another
perhaps insufficiently appreciated fact: Part of the bitterness of
Vietnam was the bitterness of those who were risking their lives in the
fight on the ground only to perceive, day by day, that their government,
and its Clark Cliffords and other shrewd operators, were pulling the
plug on the war and not fighting to win. In Washington they were trying
to escape with their careers and reputations intact. On the ground in
country, as they used to say, they were trying to escape with their
lives. Imagine how you'd feel if you were a grunt losing your friends as
all this became clearer day by day. And imagine what it was like to be
young Dan, listening to those grunts each day.

And then Watergate. More and more I think that scandal will be
remembered as a kind of hysteria, a virus that jumped from reporter to
reporter, newsroom to newsroom, raising temperatures to fever pitch. Dan
was one of the reporters who went after Nixon, et al., with a vengeance.
Looking back one might ask: Why?

For a mix of reasons. Because it was good for business. Because it drove
up "Evening News" numbers. Because there was blood in the air. Because
Watergate seemed to illustrate what reporters knew, just knew, was the
secret truth residing in Richard Nixon's dark heart: a desire for
enemies lists and break-ins and IRS reviews. Because it built up
reporters as white knights, and reporters really didn't mind being seen
as white knights. Because it was exciting, and black and white. The good
guys were Democrats, investigators, special counsels and journalists
looking for The Truth. The bad: Nixon, Republicans, anyone who worked
for Nixon except a good source, Charles Colson, then a wild man, and G.
Gordon Liddy, a wild man to this day.

If you were a young Dan Rather you knew which side was the side to be
on. You knew which side your bosses were on. You knew which side would
lead to your rise. And you knew which side would win.

It wasn't exactly complicated. Every conservative in America in the last
century, especially in the media and in the colleges, knew they would be
dinged and damaged if they held to their beliefs. Every liberal in the
media and the academy knew they could rise if they espoused liberal
views. Dan wanted to rise.

Probably the worst moment in his career, because it was arguably the one
most obvious in showing bias and a political agenda, was the time Dan
tried to beat up George H.W. Bush live, on the "CBS Evening News," over
Iran-contra. Mr. Bush decked him instead, and with a question that
reverberates: How would you like your whole career to be judged by one
mistake? I do not doubt that CBS News that night thought it was going to
take down a vice president, and wanted to. And was embittered by its
failure. Which may have contributed to the years long, Ahab-like quest
of producer Mary Mapes to bring down George W. Bush with documents it
took bloggers less than 24 hours to reveal as fabrications.

And yet. Dan Rather was one of the great breaking-news reporters of our
time. Hurricanes, earthquakes, big sudden stuff--he loved it, and he
knew how to cover it. A friend reminded me of the beauty with which Dan
asked for silence as CBS's cameras lingered on the sun going down on
quake-ravaged San Francisco in 1989. And I think of his delicate
coverage of stories like Princess Diana's funeral.

I don't think Dan Rather ever saw himself as being destructive in his
views and biases when the story of the night was political. He always
seemed to me to love America, was moved, always, by those who fight for
it. He respected the armed forces and their sacrifices. He surprised me
one day by reciting from heart and with tears in his eyes the last
letter of Travis at the Alamo. And there was the time, after 9/11, when
he went on David Letterman's show and, in speaking of the heroism of
what he'd seen at Ground Zero and the tragedy of it, burst into sobs. He
felt it. Anyone who felt 9/11 down to his bones--well, who's to gainsay
that?

Ultimately this is what I think was true about Dan and his career. It's
not very nice but I think it is true. He was a young, modestly educated
Texas boy from nowhere, with no connections and a humble background. He
had great gifts, though: physical strength, attractiveness, ambition,
commitment and drive. He wanted to be a star. He was willing to learn
and willing to pay his dues. He covered hurricanes and demonstrations,
and when they got him to New York they let him know, as only an
establishment can, what was the right way to think, the intelligent
enlightened way, the Eastern way, the Ivy League way, the Murrow School
of Social Justice way. They let him know his simple Texan American
assumptions were not so much wrong as not fully thought through, not
fully nuanced, not fully appreciative of the multilayered nature of
international political realities. He swallowed it whole.
He had a strong Texas accent, but they let him know he wasn't in Texas
anymore. I remember once a nice man, an executive producer, confided in
me that he'd known Dan from the early days, from when he first came up
to New York. He laughed, not completely unkindly, and told me Dan wore
the wrong suits. I wish I could remember exactly what he said but it was
something like, "He had a yellow suit!" There was a sense of: We
educated him. Dan wound up in pinstripe suits made in London. Like Cyrus
Vance. Like Clark Clifford. He got educated. He fit right in. And much
of what he'd learned--from the civil rights movement, from Vietnam and
from Watergate--allowed him to think he was rising in the right way and
with the right crew and the right thinking.

People are complicated, careers are complicated, motives are
complicated. Dan Rather did some great work on stories that demanded
physical courage. He loved the news, and often made it look like the
most noble of enterprises. He had guts and fortitude. Those stories he
covered that touched on politics were unfortunately and consistently
marred by liberal political bias, and in this he was like too many in
his profession. But this is changing. The old hegemony has given way.
The old dominance is over. Good thing. Great thing. Onward.

http://www.thomhartmann.com
Thom Hartmann's Personal and Global Transformation Newsletter

Scalia To Synagogue - Jews Are Safer With Christians In Charge

by Thom Hartmann

Antonin Scalia, the man most likely to be our next Chief Justice of the
Supreme Court, turned history on its head recently when he attended an
Orthodox synagogue in New York and claimed that the Founders intended for
their Christianity to play a part in government.

Scalia then went so far as to suggest that the reason Hitler was able to
initiate the Holocaust was because of German separation of church and
state.

The Associated Press reported on November 23, 2004, "In the synagogue that
is home to America's oldest Jewish congregation, he [Scalia] noted that in
Europe, religion-neutral leaders almost never publicly use the word 'God.'"

"Did it turn out that," Scalia asked rhetorically, "by reason of the
separation of church and state, the Jews were safer in Europe than they
were in the United States of America?" He then answered himself, saying,
"I don't think so."

Scalia has an extraordinary way of not letting facts confound his
arguments, but this time he's gone completely over the top by suggesting
that a separation of church and state facilitated the Holocaust. If his
comments had gotten wider coverage (they were only noted in one small AP
article, and one in the Jerusalem Post), they may have brought America's
largest religious communities - both Christian and Jewish - into the
streets.

Born in 1936, Scalia is old enough to remember the photographs that came
out of Germany when he was a boy - they were all over the newspapers and
news magazines at war's end. It's difficult to believe he wasn't exposed
to them as a teenager, particularly having been raised Catholic. And if he
missed all that, one would think that his son the priest would have told
him about them.

The photos that can be seen, for instance, at
of the Catholic Bishops giving the
collective Nazi salute. The annual April 20th celebration, declared by Pope
Pius XII, of Hitler's birthday. The belt buckles of the German army, which
declared "Gott Mit Uns" ("God is with us"). The pictures of the 1933
investiture of Bishop Ludwig Müller, the official Bishop of the
1000-Years-Of-Peace Nazi Reich.

That last photo should be the most problematic for Scalia, because Hitler
had done exactly what Scalia is recommending - he merged church and state.

Article 1 of the
"Decree
concerning the Constitution of the German Protestant Church, of 14 July
1933," signed by Adolf Hitler himself, merged the German Protestant Church
into the Reich, and gave the Reich the legal authority to ordain priests.

Article Three provides absolute assurance to the new state church that the
Reich will fund it, even if that requires going to Hitler's cabinet. It
opens: "Should the competent agencies of a State Church refuse to include
assessments of the German Protestant Church in their budget, the
appropriate State Government will cause the expenditures to be included in
the budget upon request of the Reich Cabinet."

That new state-sponsored German church's constitution opens: "At a time in
which our German people are experiencing a great historical new era through
the grace of God," the new German state church "federates into a solemn
league all denominations that stem from the Reformation and stand equally
legitimately side by side, and thereby bears witness to: 'One Body and One
Spirit, One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism, One God and Father of All of Us,
who is Above All, and Through All, and In All.'"

Section Four, Article Five of he new constitution further established a
head for the new German state-church with the title of Reich Bishop. Hitler
quickly filled the job with a Lutheran pastor, Ludwig M¸ller, who held the
position until he committed suicide at the end of the war.

Which brings up one of the main reasons - almost always overlooked by
modern-day commentators, both left and right - that the Founders and
Framers were so careful to separate church and state: They didn't want
religion to be corrupted by government.

Many of the Founders were people of faith, and even the Deists like
Franklin, Washington, and Jefferson were deeply touched by what Franklin
called "The Mystery." And they'd seen how badly religious bodies became
corrupted when churches acquired power through affiliation with or
participation in government.

The Puritans, for example, passed a law in Plymouth Colony in 1658 that
said, "No Quaker Rantor or any other such corrupt person shall be a freeman
in this Corporation [the state of Massachusetts]." Puritans banned Quakers
from Massachusetts under pain of death, and, as Norman Cousins notes in his
book about the faith of the Founders, In God We Trust, "And when Quakers
persisted in returning [to Massachusetts] in defiance of law, and in
practicing their religious faith, the Puritans made good the threat of
death; Quaker women were burned at the stake."

Quakers were also officially banned from Virginia prior to the introduction
of the First Amendment to our Constitution. Cousins notes: "Quakers who
fled from England were warned against landing on Virginia shores. In fact,
the captains of sailing ships were put on notice that they would be
severely fined. Any Quaker who was discovered inside the state was fined
without bail."

Throughout most of the 1700s in Virginia, a citizen could be imprisoned for
life for saying that there was no god, or that the Bible wasn't inerrant.
"Little wonder," notes Cousins, "that Virginians like Washington,
Jefferson, and Madison believed the situation to be intolerable."

Even the oppressed Quakers got into the act in the 1700s. They finally
found a haven in Pennsylvania, where they infiltrated government and
promptly passed a law that levied harsh fines on any person who didn't show
up for church on Sunday or couldn't "prove" that s/he was home reading
scripture on that holy day.

Certainly the Founders wanted to protect government from being hijacked by
the religious, as I noted in a
previous article that
quotes Jefferson on this topic. But several of them were even more
concerned that the churches themselves would be corrupted by the lure of
government's easy access to money and power.

Religious leaders in the Founders' day, in defense of church/state
cooperation, pointed out that for centuries kings and queens in England had
said that if the state didn't support the church, the church would
eventually wither and die.

James Madison flatly rejected this argument, noting in a July 10, 1822
letter to Edward Livingston: "We are teaching the world the great truth,
that Governments do better without kings and nobles than with them. The
merit will be doubled by the other lesson: the Religion flourishes in
greater purity without, than with the aid of Government."

He added in that same letter, "I have no doubt that every new example will
succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and
Government will both exist in greater purity the less they are mixed
together."

Madison even objected to government giving money to churches to care for
the poor. It would be the beginning of a dangerous mixture, he believed -
dangerous both to government and churches alike. Thus, on February 21,
1811, President James Madison vetoed a bill passed by Congress that
authorized government payments to a church in Washington, DC to help the
poor.

In Madison's mind, caring for the poor was a public and civic duty - a
function of government - and must not be allowed to become a hole through
which churches could reach and seize political power or the taxpayer's
purse. Funding a church to provide for the poor would establish a "legal
agency" - a legal precedent - that would break down the wall of separation
the founders had put between church and state to protect Americans from
religious zealots gaining political power.

Thus, Madison said in his veto message to Congress, he was striking down
the proposed law, "Because the bill vests and said incorporated church an
also authority to provide for the support of the poor, and the education of
poor children of the same;..." which, Madison said, "would be a precedent
for giving to religious societies, as such, a legal agency in carrying into
effect a public and civil duty."

Madison also opposed - although he couldn't stop - the appointment of
chaplains for Congress. "Is the appointment of Chaplains to the two Houses
of Congress consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principle
of religious freedom?" he asked in 1820. His answer: "In the strictness the
answer on both points must be in the negative. ...The establishment of the
chaplainship to Congress is a palpable violation of equal rights, as well
as of Constitutional principles."

Madison went on to suggest that if members of Congress wanted a chaplain,
they should pay for it themselves. "If Religion consist in voluntary acts
of individuals, singly, or voluntarily associated, and it be proper that
public functionaries, as well as their Constituents should discharge their
religious duties, let them like their Constituents, do so at their own
expense. How small a contribution >from each member of Congress would
suffice for the purpose! How just would it be in its principle! How noble
in its exemplary sacrifice to the genius of the Constitution; and the
divine right of conscience! Why should the expense of a religious worship
be allowed for the Legislature, be paid by the public, more than that for
the Ex. or Judiciary branch of the Gov."

But always, in Madison's mind, the biggest problem was that religion itself
showed a long history of becoming corrupt when it had access to the levers
of governmental power and money.

In 1832, he wrote a letter to the Reverend Jasper Adams, pointing this out.
"I must admit moreover that it may not be easy, in every possible case, to
trace the line of separation between the rights of religion and the civil
authority with such distinctness as to avoid collisions and doubts on
unessential points. The tendency to a usurpation on one side or the other
or to a corrupting coalition or alliance between them will be best guarded
against by entire abstinence of the government from interference in any way
whatever, beyond the necessity of preserving public order and protecting
each sect against trespasses on its legal rights by others."

As he wrote to Edward Everett on March 18, 1823, "The settled opinion here
is, that religion is essentially distinct from civil Government, and exempt
from its cognizance; that a connection between them is injurious to
both..."

Yet now, in 2004, the religious appear to be on the verge of both
corrupting government and being corrupted themselves by the power and
influence government can wield.

For example, as Reverend Moon has moved more and more into the political
realm - from funding activities of both George H.W. Bush and his son George
W. Bush, to funding the money-losing but politically activist Washington
Times newspaper, to financially bailing out Jerry Falwell, to setting up
numerous charities that now ask for federal funding - we see an increasing
and ominous participation of legislators and Moonies. Moon, for example,
was crowned by several members of >Congress in the Senate Dirksen Office
building on March 23, 2004. As the Washington Post noted in a July 21 story
by Charles Babington, Moon himself proclaimed to our elected
representatives attending the ceremony, "Emperors, kings and presidents . .
. have declared to all Heaven and Earth that Reverend Sun Myung Moon is
none other than humanity's Savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True
Parent."

Others, like Falwell and Robertson, who want to use the money and power of
government to promote their religious agendas, are making rapid inroads
with George W. Bush's so-called "faith-based initiatives," which shift
money from government programs for the poor and needy to churches and
religious groups.

All of this - the merging of church and state - is now being aggressively
promoted by no less than Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, in
no less shocking a venue than the nation's oldest Orthodox synagogue.

In some distant place, Adolf Hitler and Bishop Müller must be smiling at
Scalia's encouragement of the growing conflation of church and state in
America. It's exactly what they worked so hard to achieve, and what helped
make their horrors possible.

And Thomas Jefferson and James Madison must have tears in their eyes.

Thom Hartmann (thom at thomhartmann.com) is a Project Censored
Award-winning best-selling author and host of a nationally syndicated daily
progressive talk show.
His most recent books are "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight," "Unequal
Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights,"
"We The People: A Call To Take Back America," and "What Would Jefferson
Do?: A Return To Democracy."

===========

Scalia in shul: State must back religion

Uriel Heilman, THE JERUSALEM POST

Nov. 23, 2004

US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia used an appearance at an Orthodox
synagogue in New York to assail the notion that the US government should
maintain a neutral stance toward religion, saying it has always supported
religion and the courts should not try to change that.

Speaking at a conference on religious freedom in America on Monday hosted
by Manhattan's Congregation Shearith Israel, the oldest Jewish congregation
in North America, Scalia said that the founding fathers never advocated the
separation of church and state and that America has prospered because of
its religiousness.

"There is something wrong with the principle of neutrality," said Scalia,
considered among the court's staunchest conservatives. Neutrality as
envisioned by the founding fathers, Scalia said, "is not neutrality between
religiousness and nonreligiousness; it is between denominations of
religion."

Scalia cited early examples of support of religion in the public sphere by
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, the last of
whom went so far as to argue at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 for
the institution of daily prayers.

Today, Scalia noted, the government exempts houses of worship from
real-estate tax, pays for chaplains in Congress, state legislatures, and
the military, and sanctions the opening of every Supreme Court session with
the cry, "God save the United States!"

"To say that the Constitution allows the court to sweep away that
long-standing attitude toward religion seems to me just wrong," he said. "I
do think we're forgetting our roots."

Scalia's speech, at a conference marking the 350th anniversary both of Jews
in America and of Shearith Israel, elicited a standing ovation.

Scalia was nominated to the nine-member Supreme Court in 1986 by president
Ronald Reagan to fill the seat vacated by William Rehnquist, who became the
chief justice after Warren Berger retired. Now, with speculation that
Rehnquist is on the verge of retirement after a recent diagnosis of thyroid
cancer, Scalia may be the leading candidate to take his place.

It is widely believed that President George W. Bush will appoint a staunch
conservative as chief justice if he gets the chance, and the only other
Supreme Court justice considered sufficiently conservative is Clarence
Thomas, appointed by president George H.W. Bush.

Originally from New York, Scalia wore a black skull cap as he addressed the
congregation with his back to the ark.

"The founding fathers never used the phrase 'separation of church and
state,'" he said, arguing that rigid separation of religion and state ñ as
in Europe, for example - would be bad for America and bad for the Jews.

"Do you think it's going to make Jews safer? It didn't prove that way in
Europe," he said.

"You will not hear the word 'God' cross the lips of a French premier or an
Italian head of state," Scalia said. "But that has never been the American
way."

Most establishment Jewish groups, however, are staunch supporters of
church-state separation. Earlier this month, for example, the American
Jewish Committee was part of a coalition that won a lawsuit to block a
Florida program allowing state aid to go to parochial schools. In 2000,
the Anti-Defamation League led several Jewish groups in criticizing vice
presidential candidate Sen. Joseph Lieberman for talking too much about God
on the campaign trail.

Scalia said expunging religion from public life would be bad for America,
and that the courts, instead, should come around to most Americans' way of
thinking and to the founding fathers' vision for the US. He noted that
after a San Francisco court last year barred the recitation of the Pledge
of Allegiance in public schools because it includes the phrase "under God,"
Congress voted nearly unanimously to condemn the decision and uphold use of
the phrase.

"I suggest that our jurisprudence should comport with our actions," he said.

If America's approach toward religion does change, it should be through
democratic process, not "judicial fiat." America believes in "a personal
God who takes an interest in the affairs of man," Scalia said. Quoting a
line from Psalms that says the faithful will surely prosper, he added, "I
think it is no accident that America has prospered."

This article can also be read at
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=110
1183314944&p=1078113566627

The Islamization of Europe?

David Pryce-Jones

Only a few years ago, mass-murder attacks on the West in the name of Islam,
like those of September 11, would have seemed like a thriller writer's
fantasy. Nor would anyone have imagined that a bombing by Islamists could
swing a general election in a European country, that a Dutch movie-maker
might be shot dead on the street for a film about the abuse of women in
Islam, or that one might find oneself watching, on television, the
beheading of Western hostages by men crying out Allahu Akhbar! over their
savage deeds. Pakistan now has a nuclear bomb, and this weapon is widely
described as an Islamic bomb. To judge by their pronouncements, the
Islamist leaders of Iran can hardly wait to perfect and use their
derivative of it.

At present, it is not clear whether the religious/ideological rage that is
the motive force behind these developments has any limits, whether it may
yet succeed in mobilizing truly huge numbers of Muslim masses, or whether
it can be deflected or crushed. What is clear is that a phenomenon that at
first looked like a cloud no bigger than a man's hand has lashed up into a
crisis with global implications.

Does this crisis amount to a "clash of civilizations"? Many people reject
that notion as too sweeping or downright misleading. Yet whether or not it
applies to, say, the situation in Iraq, or to the war on terror, the phrase
has much to recommend it as a description of what is going on inside Europe
today. As Yves Charles Zarka, a French philosopher and analyst, has
written: "there is taking place in France a central phase of the more
general and mutually conflicting encounter between the West and Islam,
which only someone completely blind or of radical bad faith, or possibly of
disconcerting naiveté, could fail to recognize." In the opinion of Bassam
Tibi, an academic of Syrian origins who lives in Germany, Europeans are
facing a stark alternative: "Either Islam gets Europeanized, or Europe gets
Islamized." Going still farther, the eminent historian Bernard Lewis has
speculated that the clash may well be over by the end of this century, at
which time, if present demographic trends continue, Europe itself will be
Muslim.

Today's situation has been a very long time--centuries--in the making. For
much of that time, of course, the encounter between Muslims and the West
remained stacked in favor of the latter, both militarily and culturally.
Which is not to say that Europeans of an earlier age were blind to the
danger posed to Western civilization by a resurgent Islam. One watchful
observer was Winston Churchill, who wrote about Islam--or Mohammedanism as
it was then called--in The River War (1899):

No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund,
Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread
throughout Central Africa, raising fearlessÝÝÝ warriors at every step, and
were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science .
. . the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization
of ancient Rome.


Hilaire Belloc had similar premonitions 30 years later in The Great
Heresies (193:

Will not perhaps the temporal power of Islam return and with it the menace
of an armed Muhammadan world which will shake the dominion of
Europeans--still nominally Christian--and reappear again as the prime enemy
of our civilization? . . . Since we have here a very great religion,
physically paralyzed, but morally intensely alive, we are in the presence
of an unstable equilibrium.

To these early observers, nevertheless, it did seem that Western cultural
and military superiority could be counted on to prevail, at least for the
foreseeable future. (Belloc is better remembered for his boast, "We have
got the Gatling gun, and they have not.") And prevail it did throughout a
good part of the 20th century. In the last decades, however, another
historical process has been at work drastically revising the calculus of
power.

Contemporary Islamism might be summed up as the effort to redress and
reverse the long-ago defeat of Muslim power by European (i.e., Christian)
civilization. Toward that end, it has followed two separate courses of
action: adopting the forms of nationalism that have appeared to many
Muslims to contain the secret of Western supremacy, or promoting Islam
itself as the one force capable of uniting Muslims everywhere and hence
ensuring their renewed power and dominance. In the hands of today's
Islamists, and with the complicity of Europe itself, these two approaches
have proved mutually reinforcing.

In Europe, the world wars of the last century finally undid and discredited
the idea of the sovereign nation-state, the engine of the continent's
preeminence and self-confidence. In place of this tried and tested
political arrangement, now suddenly seen as outmoded and dysfunctional,
institutions like the European Union and the United Nations were thought to
offer a firmer foundation for a new world order, one that would be based on
universal legal norms and in which sovereign power would be rendered
superfluous. It has been the resulting decline of the European nation-state
that has helped provide a unique opportunity for Islamism, itself based on
a world-wide, transnational community that has been united by faith and
custom since its inception and that traditionally has drawn no distinction
between the realm of faith and the realm of temporal power.

A number of ideological movements have spread and fortified the modern
projection of transnational Islam. Perhaps the most successful has been the
Muslim Brotherhood, founded by Hasan al-Banna in Egypt in 1928, with
branches today in some 40 to 50 countries. Yasir Arafat and Ayman
al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's deputy, are among those formed by the
Brotherhood. Its more recent inspiration derives from the Egyptian-born
Sayyid Qutb, whose three-year stay in the United States in the late 1940's
and early 1950's convinced him that the West and everything it stood for
had to be rejected, while Islam already provided every Muslim with state,
nation, religion, and identity all in one. Saudi Arabia has spent billions
of its petro-dollars financing groups, including terrorist groups, that
promote this idea.

The 1979 revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran was an opening test
of the new balance of forces between a rising transnational Islam and the
declining Western nation-state. European countries, which in the postwar
period seemed largely to have lost the will to respond to aggressive
challenges from without, presented no opposition to the totalitarian
Khomeini regime and no barrier to its aggrandizement. That left the United
States, still a nation-state very much committed to defending its
sovereignty. Indeed, to the ayatollahs and their allies, the U.S.
represented a final embodiment of the Great Satan, fit to be confronted in
holy war.

This remains the case today. In the meantime, though, a battle of a
different but no less decisive kind has been taking place within Europe,
where some 20 million Muslims have settled. Thanks on the one hand to their
high birthrate, and on the other hand to the sub-replacement birthrate that
has become the norm among other Europeans, the demographic facts alone
suggest a continent ripe for a determined effort to advance the Islamist
agenda.

In its global reach and in its aggressive intentions, Islamist ideology
bears some resemblance to another transnational belief system: namely,
Communism. Like today's Islamists, Communists of an earlier age saw
themselves as engaged in an apocalyptic struggle in which every member of a
Communist party anywhere was expected to comport himself as a frontline
soldier, and in which terror was seen as a wholly permissible means toward
victory in a war to the finish. Compare Stalin's "If the enemy does not
surrender he must be exterminated" with the refusal of the leader of
Hizballah in Lebanon to negotiate with or ask concessions from the West
because "We seek to exterminate you." To Sheik Omar Bakri Muhammad, a
Syrian with British citizenship who until recently led a group called
al-Muhajiroun, the terrorists of September 11 were "The Magnificent
Nineteen"--or, as he explains, the advance guard of an army of "our Muslim
brothers from abroad [who] will come one day and conquer here."

Throughout the cold-war era, the European democracies under threat from
Soviet expansionism were themselves home to Communist parties, as well as
to an array of front organizations ostensibly devoted to peace and
friendship and culture but in reality manipulated by and for Soviet
purposes. In addition, many people from all walks of life accommodated
themselves to Communism with varying degrees of emotional intensity and out
of various motives, including the wish to be on what they perceived as the
winning side and the converse fear of winding up on the losing side.

Each of these elements, in suitably transmuted form, is present today. The
pool of local recruits upon which Islamists draw is itself very large. Of
Europe's 20 million Muslims, it is estimated that 5 or 6 million live in
France alone, at least 3 million in Germany and 2 million in Britain, 1
million apiece in Holland and Italy, and a half-million apiece in Spain and
Austria.

It is true that most Muslim immigrants to Europe come simply with hopes for
a better life, and that these hopes are more important to them than any
apprehensions they might entertain about living in a society ruled by
non-Muslims--something historically prohibited in Islam. Indeed, large
numbers have assimilated with greater or lesser strain, and, in the manner
of other minorities, have become "hyphenated" as British-Muslim,
French-Muslim, Italian-Muslim, and the like. Religious life flourishes: if,
a half-century ago, there were but a handful of mosques throughout Europe,
today every leading country has over a thousand, and France and Germany
each have somewhere between five and six thousand. Muslim pressure groups,
lobbies, and charities operate effectively everywhere; in Britain alone
there are 350 Muslim bodies of one kind or another.

Among these various organizations, however, a number function as Islamist
fronts. Inspired by Saudi Arabia or Khomeinist Iran, by the Muslim
Brotherhood or al Qaeda, they work to undermine democracy in whatever ways
they can, just as Soviet front organizations once did. They push immigrants
to repudiate both the process and the very idea of integration, challenging
them as a matter of religious belief and identity to take up an
oppositional stance to the societies in which they live. Issues of Islamic
concern have been skillfully magnified into scandals in the attempt to
foment animosity on all sides and thus further deter or prevent the
integration of Muslims into mainstream European life.

The notorious 1989 fatwa condemning the novelist Salman Rushdie to death
for exercising his right to free speech as a British citizen was an early
example of this tactic of disruption and agitation. Another has been the
attempt in Britain to set up a Muslim "parliament" that will recognize only
Islamic law (shari'a) as binding, and not the law of the land. Still
another has been the insistence, in France, on the wearing of the hijab by
girls in public schools, a practice that clearly contradicts the ideals of
French republicanism and is in any case not an Islamic requirement. The
tactical thinking behind such incitements was well articulated by an
al-Qaeda leader who, calling upon British Muslims to "bring the West to its
knees," added that they, "the locals, and not foreigners," have the
advantage since they understand "the language, culture, area, and common
practices of the enemy whom they coexist among."

Still another phenomenon familiar from the Soviet era has lately made a
repeat appearance in the West, and that is voluntary accommodation, or
fellow-traveling, among non-Muslims. Leftist fellow-travelers once helped
to create a climate of opinion favorable to Communism. Many knew exactly
what they were doing. Others merely meant well; they were what Lenin called
"useful idiots." In like manner, Islamist fellow-travelers and useful
idiots are weaving a climate of opinion today that advances the purposes of
radical Islam and is deeply damaging to the prospects of reconciliation.

As in the 30's and throughout the cold war, intellectuals and journalists
are in the lead. Books pour from the presses to justify everything and
anything Muslims have done in the past and are doing in the present. Just
as every Soviet aggression was once defined as an act of self-defense
against the warmongering West, today terrorists of al Qaeda, or the Chechen
terrorists who killed children in the town of Beslan, are described in the
media as militants, activists, separatists, armed groups, guerrillas--in
short, as anything but terrorists. Dozens of apologists pretend that there
is no connection between the religion of Islam and those who practice
terror in its name, or suggest that Western leaders are no better or are
indeed worse than Islamist murderers. Thus Karen Armstrong, the well-known
historian of religion: "It's very difficult sometimes to distinguish
between Mr. Bush and Mr. bin Laden."

One form of Islamist fellow-traveling masquerades as a call for
"tolerance," or "diversity," and has penetrated right through the world of
European opinion and European institutions. The British Communist historian
Christopher Hill once concluded a book on Lenin with a reverent recital of
the epithets the party had devised to glorify him. Pious Muslims follow
the mention of the Prophet Muhammad with the invocation, "Peace be upon
him." This practice has now crept into a biography of the Prophet written
by a British writer not ostensibly a Muslim. To encourage such acts of
deference, there has been a complementary effort to stifle contrary or less
than fully respectful opinions. When the outspoken French novelist Michel
Houellebecq pronounced Islam to be hateful, stupid, and dangerous, Muslim
organizations and the League for the Rights of Man took him to court, just
as the Italian writer Oriana Fallaci was sued for her book tying the 9/11
attacks to the teachings of Islam. Although both writers won their cases,
the chilling effect was unmistakable.

The institutions that have been affected by Islamophile correctness run the
gamut. In Britain, a judge has agreed to prohibit Hindus and Jews from
sitting on a jury in the trial of a Muslim. The British Commission for
Racial Equality has ordained that businesses must provide prayer rooms for
Muslims and pay them for their absences on religious holidays. In a town in
the Midlands, a proposal to renovate a hundred-year-old statue of a pig was
rejected for fear of giving offense to Muslims. The British Council, an
international organization for cultural relations, fired a staff member who
published articles in the Sunday Telegraph arguing that the roots of terror
and jihad were nourished in the soil of Islam, while the BBC canceled the
contract of a popular television journalist for allegedly using negative
language to describe the Muslim Arab contribution to mankind.

Commercial society has likewise rushed to accommodate real or imagined
Muslim sensibilities: a British bank boasts that it will comply with
shari'a prohibitions on the uses of money, and the German state of
Saxony-Anhalt has become the first European body to issue a sukuk, or
Islamic bond. Religious society is not far behind: even as bin Laden speaks
of wresting Spain ("al-Andalus") from the infidels by violence, the
cathedral of Santiago has considered removing a statue of St. James
Matamoros ("the Moor slayer"), lest it give offense to Muslims. For the
same reason, the municipality of Seville has removed King Ferdinand III,
hitherto the city's patron saint, from fiesta celebrations because he
fought the Moors for 27 years. In Italy, where Islamists have threatened to
destroy the cathedral of Bologna because of a fresco illustrating the
Prophet Muhammad in the inferno (where Dante placed him), thought has been
given to deleting the art-work from the walls. Even the Pope has apologized
for the Crusades. In secular Denmark, the Qur'an (but not the Bible) is now
required reading for high-school students. And so forth.

The lengths to which apologists for Islamism are prepared to go is nicely
illustrated by the case of Tariq Ramadan, a professor of Islamic studies at
the University of Fribourg in Switzerland and a popular writer and speaker.
As is well known, the American university Notre Dame recently offered
Ramadan a professorship, but U.S. immigration authorities have so far
rejected his application for a visa. This has elicited some classic
examples of fellow-traveling obfuscation from both Americans and Europeans
outraged on his behalf. A letter to the Washington Post protesting
Ramadan's treatment undertook to explicate his supposed message to Western
Muslims: they "must find common values and build with fellow citizens a
society based on diversity and equality."

Not quite. What Tariq Ramadan has really proposed in his writings and
teachings is that Muslims in the West should conduct themselves not as
hyphenated citizens seeking to live by "common values" but as though they
were already in a Muslim-majority society and exempt on that account from
having to make concessions to the faith of others. What Ramadan advocates
is a kind of reverse imperialism. In his conception, Muslims in non-Muslim
countries should feel themselves entitled to live on their own
terms--while, under the terms of Western liberal tolerance, society as a
whole should feel obliged to respect that choice.

Ramadan happens to be a grandson of Hasan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim
Brotherhood, but he is also a guarded writer. In fact, his is a relatively
"moderate" and qualified expression of Islamic reverse imperialism. More
overtly, and with an implicit threat of violence, Dyab Abu Jahjah, a
Lebanese who has settled in Antwerp, has denounced the Western ideal of
assimilation as "cultural rape," and aims to bring all the Muslims of
Europe into a single independent community. He, too, needless to say, has
his defenders and apologists among European liberals.

Or consider the European reception of Yusuf al-Qaradawi, heir to Sayyid
Qutb as the religious authority of the Muslim Brotherhood. Wanted on
charges of terrorism in his native Egypt, al-Qaradawi now lives in Qatar.
Like Tariq Ramadan in Switzerland, he emphasizes that Muslims must keep
apart from liberal democracy as it is practiced in the West while also
availing themselves of its benefits and advantages. But he goes much
further. Unlike Ramadan, he approves of wife-beating in the forms
sanctioned by the Qur'an; as for homosexuals, he is agnostic on whether
they should be thrown off a high cliff or flogged to death. Yet this year,
in an official ceremony at London's City Hall, al-Qaradawi was welcomed as
"an Islamic scholar held in great respect" by the mayor of London, Ken
Livingstone. "You are truly, truly welcome," gushed Livingstone, an
otherwise enthusiastic supporter of gay pride.

Also appearing this year in London was Sheik Abdul Rahman al-Sudayyis, a
senior imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca; among his many distinctions,
al-Sudayyis has vituperated Jews as "the scum of the human race, the rats
of the world, the violators of pacts and agreements, the murderers of the
prophets, and the offspring of apes and pigs." Standing beside this apostle
of "diversity and equality" was a junior minister in the Blair government.

The Islamic Foundation, one of Britain's numerous Muslim bodies, has an
offshoot called the Markfield Institute. In July, the London Times linked
both the foundation and the institute to terrorism. An offended reader with
an English name wrote to protest: "I hope that Markfield . . . will be
allowed to help individual Muslims to practice their faith with peace and
respect, in a multicultural Britain." Another reader, an Anglican canon in
the Diocese of Leicester (a city with a Muslim majority today), asserted
that the institute was simply trying to teach imams and Muslim youngsters
alike to work within British institutions.

In just that spirit, and even in that vocabulary, the fellow-traveling
Beatrice Webb used to advance the transcendent virtues of the Soviet social
model. Gullible, false, and dangerous statements of this kind are now as
common as rain.

In the realm of classical Islam, Christians and Jews once lived as
dhimmis--that is to say, minorities with second-class rights, tolerated but
discriminated against by law and custom. Many contemporary Muslims appear
to idealize this long-lost supremacy over others, and aspire to reconstruct
it. One way to work for this end is through violence and terror. Another
way, the way of Tariq Ramadan and Yusuf al-Qaradawi, is through words. One
way and another, the project is advancing. Summing up the collective
achievement so far, Bat Ye'or, the historian of "dhimmitude," has written
that "Europe has evolved from a Judeo-Christian civilization with important
post-Enlightenment/secular elements to . . . a secular Muslim transitional
society with its traditional Judeo-Christian mores rapidly disappearing."
She calls this evolving entity "Eurabia."

If that is the case, or is becoming the case, is it any wonder that someÝ
Europeans are switching sides, so as to be on the winning one? The sheer
Èlan and cultural confidence displayed by Islamist spokesmen may have
something to do with the fact that every year, thousands of people all over
Europe convert to Islam. Some of these converts, from Britain, France, and
Germany, taking the direct route from words to action, have gone on to play
a disproportionate role in terrorism and Islamist militancy. Thus, at a
rally organized in London last year by a radical offshoot of the Muslim
Brotherhood, a high proportion of demonstrators were clearly not of Middle
Eastern origin. At a recent trial in Cairo in which three British citizens
were condemned to prison for subversion and intended terrorism, two were
English-born, with English names. They were led away shouting defiance of
the West.

There are certainly Muslims in Europe who look with horror upon what is
being done in their name, and who wish to have nothing to do with the
notion that they are entitled to live in the West as, in effect,
conquerors. For wholly understandable reasons, few of them have the courage
to speak out. One of the exceptional few recently wrote a letter to the
London Times, giving his name and address, and saying that he defines his
community as the people with whom he chooses to interact. He went on: "We
do not all subscribe to the same way of being a Muslim, neither do we push
our beliefs into the civic and political sphere." But, he continued, "Sadly
the public does not always get our point of view, because the only Muslims
who are consulted are those who choose to drag Islam into the political
sphere."

One could not ask for a clearer repudiation not only of all Muslim
Brotherhood-style proselytizers but, even more bitingly, of the patronizing
and indulgent attitude adopted toward them by the European establishment.
Those in Europe who have striven in ways great and small to extend special
privileges to Muslims while subtly deprecating their own national identity
and culture have indeed helped open the way to Islamic separatism and
Islamist agitation. They have thereby hastened the very clash of
civilizations that they (or some of them) foolishly claim they are
avoiding. If Bassam Tibi is correct in stating that "either Islam gets
Europeanized or Europe gets Islamized," powerful forces are at work to
foreclose the question.

DAVID PRYCE-JONES, the British political analyst, is a senior editor of
National Review and the author of, among other books, The Closed Circle and
The Strange Death of the Soviet Empire. An earlier version of the present
essay was delivered at a conference at Boston University in October.

3 December 2004

Hate Speech, Anti discrimination Law and Gay Marriage

Deciding how to vote on the Civil Union Bill should have been easy for a
believer that the State has no place in the bedrooms of consenting adults.
So why did I vote no?

For two reasons:

* Because the Civil Union Bill came back without its companion bill.
Without that no MP could know at this stage what they were voting for. *
Because I could get no undertaking to protect freedoms of association and
speech for people who continue to believe that homosexuality is wrong.

Without its companion Relationships (Statutory References) Bill the Civil
Union Bill is hollow. It merely sets out a process for registering that two
people have agreed to civilly unite. The bill contains no rights and no
indication of what that contract is about. Though marketed as state
support for long-term stable committed relationships, none of those words
or concepts appears.

All the legal consequences will be in the companion bill. But the
companionship has broken down. and the bills have separated. The companion
bill was shambolically misconceived and wont be reported back until next
year. It would have changed over 100 provisions to eliminate almost all
remaining legal differences between marriage, civil union, and de facto
status. You could be a de facto after shacking up for a couple of nights
with no specific plan to leave.

Giving de facto partners near identical legal status to marriage, whether
they want it or not made the Civil Union bill (and the Marriage Act)
legally redundant, except as a fashion statement. So instead of
underscoring the moral neutrality of the State, the Bill asks Parliament to
bless a "lifestyle statement".

Few submitters were aware of its legal hollowness. For example we heard
sincere and tearful accounts of insensitive denial of hospital visiting
rights. But we found they were never matters of law. They still are not.
Nothing in either of these bills deals with hospital visiting. Those
submitters were victims of political theatre.

When all of the effect of one bill is set out in another bill, passing the
first without knowing what is in the second is like signing a blank cheque.
I was not prepared to give a family law blank cheque to Ms Clark and Ms
Wilson.

I might still have voted for the hollow Bill, if I'd been confident that
meaningless meant harmless.

The Civil Union Bill is not harmless. The Human Rights Act could be used
to force civil union involvement on to people who think same sex marriage
is deeply wrong. For example a church could be forced to make their church
hall available.

I supported the Homosexual Law Reform Bill. I drafted a speech in support
for an MP who voted for it. I believed the gay lobby’s claim that all they
wanted was equality through decriminalisation. Then they turned around and
agitated for privilege. They gave the Human Rights Commissars powers to
suppress peaceful opponents of homosexuality. Now they urge
anti-vilification laws or the criminalisation of criticism as "hate speech".

I am not willing to give a blank cheque to the "normalisers" of same-sex
relationships while they withhold freedom of association and freedom of
speech, in relation to sexual orientation.

They want a Parliamentary blessing.

I will not pass up a chance to oblige them to reciprocate. I asked for
their promise to restore lost freedom.

Neither side of a contentious moral debate should be able to get their
hands on the levers of state power to enforce their views against the
other. The State should not be allowed to discriminate on such matters.
The State should be secular, ensuring freedom for tolerant coexistence
among people with diverse religious, ethical and cultural preferences.

The State should also protect, not prevent private individuals and
organisations from trying to influence each other. Tolerance means nothing
if it does not include substantial freedom to be offensive, without the
intervention of the police.

Informal private discouragement of undesired conduct, whether it is just
poor manners, or what is seen as a self-destructive lifestyle, is an
essential part of the peaceful self-regulation of any healthy community.
Communities also rely on practical favours to encourage desirable
behaviour. The right word for these mechanisms is discrimination.

Ordinary people exercise their influence in everyday choices. They
discourage what they consider undesirable or encourage "the way we do
things around here" by who they choose to associate with, or to employ, or
to do business with. That right to discriminate must be restored and
protected.

I urged the House to reject the Bill until
* MPs could know what they're voting on before they vote, and. * There were
provisions to ensure it could not be turned into a legal club against
people who don't like homosexuality. We must all protect their freedom
peacefully to express that view.

The State should have no place in the bedrooms of the nation - but nor
should it threaten to punish private citizens who do care what happens in
bedrooms if they refuse to pretend that they don't care.

Stephen Franks MP
ACT New Zealand

P.S. To see the changes I have proposed for the Human Rights Act go to
http://www.act.org.nz/item.jsp?id=26382

Stephen Franks MP
ACT New Zealand
Room 8.04, Level 8, Bowen House,
Parliament Buildings, Wellington
New Zealand
Ph: (04) 470 6636
Fax: (04) 473 3532
Email: daniel.mccaffrey@parliament.govt.nz

For more information, see Stephen Franks' webpage at
http://www.act.org.nz/mps/franks

My good old friend Richard Tong - a leading expert on the field
- especially recommends

http://www.xtremewaste.org.nz/

I know nothing of this author (except the 3-name format which
normally evokes some caution in me). But what she says here is pretty good.

R

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0411/S00304.htm

You Are The Heartland
Tuesday, 23 November 2004

You Are The Heartland

A letter to liberal America

By Barbara Sumner Burstyn

Since the election my liberal inbox has been filled with screeds of
hand-wringing articles dissecting the ascendancy of George W Bush. They
all talk of winning back the heartland, reinvigorating true democracy,
fighting the red-blue war of culture, ideology, politics and
psychology. But for all the column inches steeped in despair there were
very few action plans and even less insight. The reason is simple.
Democrats and Republicans are feeding at the same trough.

Drive through the liberal enclaves of any privileged blue state or
through the conservative interior of a red state and you see the same
big houses - or aspirations of big houses and the same super-sized
vehicles.

Open the door of a liberal or a conservative home (a double-wide
trailer, a mansion or a New York loft, it doesn't matter which) and
youíll find the same wide screen TV, the same huge sofa, the same
gigantic refrigerator overstocked with pretty much the same food.

Perhaps youíll find more organic labels in the liberal fridge but the
abundance and out-of-season array will be the same. Check the labels on
the clothes of a liberal or a conservative and you'll see they are all
made in the same out-sourced, third world sweatshop factories.

One commentator declared the forces of Bushim would eventually be
overthrown. But overthrown with what? The polite man who changed his
suites and even his ties to match the President, who participated in
sham debates, who never once deviated from the script, even when the
whole country was watching and he could have turned to the President
and asked him the real questions?

Some commentators have bemoaned the choice of Kerry. But did you, the
so-called liberal America really want someone different? Perhaps you
supported Kerry, who is neither a revolutionary nor a man of vision,
because you wanted business as usual, you wanted your politics like
your cappuccinos: fluffy and comforting.

That's why the streets aren't overflowing with protest. That's why
you're not massing outside the corporate owned television stations
demanding they retract their lies and rescind their self-censorship.

That's why all the columns about fraudulent electoral practices are no
more than hot air. Because actually no one wants the system to end,
because despite the increasing numbers of poor and working poor, the
vast and growing gap between the haves and have-nots, the majority of
you are just too dam comfortable.

Itís the great hypocrisy of the American left. Take the very liberal
Democrat supporting Sarah Jessica Parker. Pay her more money and she's
happy to re-voice the newly edited, sex-free Sex in the City to keep
the heartland happy.

Or Will Smith, the actor who respectfully declined to be present at
last years Academy Awards, supposedly in protest for the war, is happy
to make millions in a film like I Robot with a gun super-glued to his
hand as he saves the world from yet another black and white evil, with
barely a bad word for the corporate greed that created that evil.

That's because making money is the American way. Because money trumps
conviction every time. If youíre a liberal it's a sign you're
successful in a secular way. If you're a member of the new force of
evangelical conservatives it's a sign of God's blessing.

Where I come from the choice between Kerry or Bush is called a
Claytons choice: the choice you're having when you're not having a
choice.

Would the anguish and torment of the Iraqi people have ended under a
Democrat leader? Would the environment have been given the kind of
urgent priority needed to slow global warming? Would the rights of
pregnant women be respected? Would the price of gasoline have been
raised so high that Americans would limit their driving? Would coal
fired power plants have been forced to control their pollution? Would
the coded double-speak rhetoric that says one thing and means another
have ended? Would the pharmaceutical industry be called to heel? Would
anything have changed in any significant way?

Republicans may have co-opted religion and promoted morality over
economics, the environment and human rights. But how is that different
from senior Democrats such as Senator Harry Reid of Nevada?

A tee-totaling Mormon, who is about to become the conservative
standard bearer of the party Reid's stand on abortion would drop women
back into a dark age. Or California Democrat Senator Diane Feinstein
who recently commented that she believes very strongly the voice of the
moderates in caucus ought to have some sway (as if the Democrats were
somehow extreme). Or Sheldon Silver the Democratic speaker of the
Assembly who supports the death penalty. Or Hilary Clinton who is being
advised to represent herself as moderately pro-life. Or the scramble,
as outlined in the New York Times last week, by Democrats to organize
the ëreligious leftí and phrase their positions in more moral and
religious terms.

The great con is the idea that having an election makes you a
democracy, that your vote makes a difference. A difference to what?
The ideology of profit as the highest motivation? Or to the fact that the
invocation of religion and morality is no more than a smokescreen to
hide the reality of corporate feudalism. That perfect system that
ensures your serfdom while sating your senses with consumerism and
numbing your awareness that your country is run by and for the
corporations who are your real leaders and where in exchange for your
compliance you get your every whim sated in a consumer hog heaven.

That ís why you don't take your idols to task; your hypocritical movie
stars, your lying, Teflon suited politicians, your liberal neighbor in
his SUV. Yourself. So this is what I want to say to the liberals of
America. You're not going to win the heartland no matter how committed
you are to the environment or equality or if your heart bleeds for the
poor, or for the innocents of Iraq because you are the heartland. Every
time you switch the remote, start your gasoline engine, stuff another
McDonalds, chug on a Starbucks, down another anti-depressant, muscle
relaxant, painkiller, or shop at Gap you are the heartland.

The 2004 election was not a revolution of the right or a failure of
the left. It made no difference who you voted for, because until you
recognize the conscription of your consumption and your obedience to
it, until you smash your widescreens and your SUVs, until you renounce
your 'comfort at any cost' and all the other methods of your mass
distraction you will get the government you deserve. Because you are
the heartland.