EDITOR\PUBLISHER; A.V. Krebs
E-MAIL: avkrebs@earthlink.net

COMMENTARY:
REMEMBERING JOHN PAUL I
AS THE "GRAND INQUISITOR"
BECOMES POPE BENEDICT XVI

Emerging from the wisps of white smoke and the toll of bells, German
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger --- "the Grand Inquisitor" --- has become the
265th Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church --- Pope Benedict XVI.

Among some Catholics the man who has been Prefect of the Congregation for
the Doctrine of the Faith, responsible for enforcing Catholic orthodoxy, or
as his online fan club has claimed --- "putting the smackdown on heresy
since 1981" --- there is much joy.

They have a 78-year old Pope who while a cardinal admonished Latin
Americans for supporting "liberation theology" due to its "Marxist
leanings;" who has denounced any efforts to rewrite Scripture in gender
inclusive language; who has declared rock music as a "vehicle of
anti-religion;" who has dismissed any "feminist" meaning in the Bible; who
has called Buddhism a religion for the self-indulgent, and who believes
priests should be barred from counseling pregnant teenagers on their
options.

In addition the man who was ordained a priest in June, 1951 --- after being
drafted in 1943 as an assistant to a Nazi anti-aircraft unit and then
deserting the German army in May, 1945 --- forbade the American theologian
Rev. Charles Curran and the popular German theologian Rev. Hans Kung from
teaching because they "encouraged dissent."

He also has indicated that Turkey's bid to join the European Union
conflicts with Europe's "Christian roots."

For other Catholics throughout the world, including this editor, we can
only continue to trust the future of our Church to the Holy Spirit; taking
a certain reassurance at the same time in the cautionary thought "it is
wrong to say that the Holy Spirit elects the pope because there have been
popes the Holy Spirit would never elect."

The thought comes from none other than a German bishop by the name of
Joseph Ratzinger.

It was in the days between the death of Pope John Paul II and the election
of Ratzinger that the assembled cardinals held several meetings prior to
their conclave discussing Church matters, two of those days being devoted
to the Church's financial situation.

Ironically, within hours after their discussions it was announced that
murder charges had been filed by Italian authorities against four
individuals accused in the 1982 death of "God's banker" --- Roberto Calvi.
The Associated Press's Maria Sanminiatelli explains:

"Calvi, who had been the president of Banco Ambrosiano, was dubbed `God's
banker' because of his ties with the Vatican's bank and its former top
official, the American Archbishop Paul Marcinkus. Calvi's body was found
under London's Blackfriars Bridge on June 18, 1982, with a falsified
passport and thousands of dollars in various currencies.

"His death came amid the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano, in which the
Vatican's bank held a significant stake. The collapse was Italy's biggest
postwar banking scandal," she continues noting that initially Calvi's death
was called a suicide, but in July 2003, "Italian prosecutors issued a
report concluding that Calvi was killed."

What makes the revival of this story interesting is that it adds ever more
credence to the three-year investigation by the respected crime writer
David Yallop's detailed and meticulously documented 1984 book In God's
Name: An Investigation Into the Murder of Pope John Paul I (Bantam Books,
N.Y.)

Throughout the extensive and often repetitive media coverage of Pope John
Paul II's recent death and burial his immediate predecessor's name was only
occasionally noted, while the circumstances of his mysterious death after
serving only 33 days as Supreme Pontiff of the Church was never discussed
in any authoritative detail.

Yet, as Yallop reveals, John Paul I had in that short time decided on
startling changes that would affect the doctrine, finances and hierarchy of
the Roman Catholic Church. His changes, however, would be opposed by many
both inside and outside the Vatican, among them six powerful men, including
Bishop Marcinkus and Chicago Cardinal John Cody, "who knew the Pope's
decisions could mean the end of their careers, if not their lives. Unless
of course, they acted first."

Thus on the morning of September 29, 1978 John Paul I was found dead. No
official death certificate has ever been issued and no autopsy was
performed. Although his death (murder?) occurred sometime between 9:30 PM
on the 28th and 4:30 AM on the 29th, it was not announced to the world by
Vatican Radio until 7:27 AM.

Later the Vatican would authorize an investigation of Yallop's charges ---
published in a book A Thief in the Night --- which dismissed any idea of
murder. Now with the October trial of the four accused in the 1982 murder
of "God's banker" we may see a reopening of the whole ugly scandal,
especially since one of the four, according to Yallop, made extensive tape
recordings.

At the same time, hopefully, a rereading of Yallop's book and a
re-examination of its charges will not only lead the Church's faithful to
call for greater Vatican accountability, but also for a call that justice
not only be done, but be seen to be done.

Clearly since the untimely death of Pope John XXIII the Roman Church, save
for the aforementioned 33-day reign of John Paul I, has moved from
*aggiornamento* to entrenchment, from collegiality to centralization, from
progressive to regressive, from trust in the Holy Spirit to what religious
scholar Gary Wills has termed "structures of deceit" in defense of its
doctrines.

In that process the once self-proclaimed Universal Church has seen a mass
defection of its laity and clergy, outrageous harm visited upon its young,
an impersonal intolerance for the every-day problems of its flock, and a
theological polarization in doctrinal issues symbolized in its leader Pope
Benedict XVI.

As David Gibson, a former Vatican Radio journalist and author of The Coming
Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism
(Harper: San Francisco, 2003) observes:

"If he continues as pope the way he was as a cardinal we will see a
polarized church. He has said himself that he wanted a smaller, but purer
church."

GROUNDSWELL SWEPT
RATZINGER INTO OFFICE

SEBASTAIN ROTELLA, RICHARD BOUDREAUX, GERALDINE BAUM
Los Angeles Times
April 21, 2005

Although the conclave officially began when the ornate doors of the Sistine
Chapel closed Monday, the election of Pope Benedict XVI less than 24 hours
later was virtually decided before the balloting began.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger arrived with a solid base of votes that staved
off the emergence of any real challenger, culminating a juggernaut of a
campaign months in the making, cardinals and Vatican-watchers said
Wednesday.

As Ratzinger gathered momentum during the conclave, some holdouts changed
their votes "for the unity of the church," British Cardinal Cormac
Murphy-O'Connor said. The fourth ballot resulted in victory Tuesday
afternoon, a speedy outcome that seemed to awe the new pope.

"When the majority of 77 or 78 was reached, there was a gasp,"
Murphy-O'Connor said. "Everyone clapped. He had his head down. He must have
said a prayer. I didn't see his face. He must have been aware this could
happen, but when it does, it is a very special moment."

After the traditional burning of ballots and the pope's triumphant balcony
appearance Tuesday, Benedict XVI invited the cardinals back to a hasty
celebratory dinner. Caught off-guard, 20 nuns at the cardinals' Vatican
residence improvised a repast of soup, beans, cold cuts, ice cream and
Champagne.

Ratzinger's career had been building toward that night of pomp and joy. He
accumulated clout during two decades as the chief of the Vatican's
doctrinal watchdog office and, more recently, as dean of the College of
Cardinals. During the waning years of Pope John Paul II, he essentially ran
the church. He enjoyed unique access to an increasingly infirm pontiff who
helped pave his path to succeeding him.

The German cardinal drew increasing speculation as a papabile, or papal
candidate, late last year. The groundswell came partly from quiet promotion
by powerful conservative movements such as Opus Dei and Communion and
Liberation, an organization that is strong among the Italian political and
business elite.

"Ratzinger put nothing 'on sale' in order to be elected pope," Sandro
Magister, a veteran Vatican watcher, wrote in an online column Wednesday.
"The votes and consensus landed on him one after the other, month after
month, scrutiny after scrutiny, attracted only by his agenda, hard as a
diamond."

A telltale sign of his ascent took place at the funeral of Msgr. Luigi
Giussani, the founder of Communion and Liberation. The Mass in Milan's
Duomo cathedral on Feb. 24 drew Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi
and other notables.

Representing the ailing pope, Ratzinger presided over the funeral Mass
instead of Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi, archbishop of Milan, against the
expectations of some. Ratzinger's homily brought enthusiastic applause. The
audience responded to remarks by Tettamanzi, a rival candidate for pope,
with silence.

On April 8, Ratzinger stepped into the international limelight at another
funeral, that of John Paul II. His eloquent homily won praise. His
dominance of subsequent assemblies of cardinals added to a sense of
momentum going into the conclave.

After the 115 cardinals sequestered themselves Sunday at the hotel-like St.
Martha residence, there was a lot of "walking around and talking," Cardinal
Murphy-O'Connor said. John Paul had named all but two of the cardinals in
the conclave, and all were junior to Ratzinger.

At a Mass on Monday morning, Ratzinger delivered a broadside televised
around the world: a homily denouncing moral relativism and celebrating
Christian identity.

He spoke with the stern confidence of a candidate on the verge of victory.
"He says the homily and is applauded by the whole church," said Cardinal
Francisco Javier Errazuriz of Chile. "There were many signs, very clear
signs, that he appeared as the first choice."

Errazuriz was one of more than a dozen cardinals who spoke to The Times on
Wednesday. They provided some details about the ceremony and drama of the
conclave but, because of a secrecy oath, declined to reveal vote breakdowns
or name vote-getters other than the winner. Some information about those
topics came from interviews and accounts of Vatican specialists who had
talked to cardinals.

The conclave disproved the dictum that front-runners do not become pope. It
was the first papal election subjected to the 24-hour barrage of the
21st-century media machine. The coverage may have affected some cardinals;
several noted Wednesday that the press had anointed Ratzinger as the man to
beat.

"The newspapers were telling us that Cardinal Ratzinger was a favorite,"
said Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington during a tongue-in-cheek
exchange with reporters. "The Holy Spirit may even speak through the
newspapers."

The first vote took place Monday afternoon. Vatican-watchers estimated that
Ratzinger came close to 50 votes. Vatican Secretary of State Angelo Sodano
and other Italian cardinals in the Curia won votes from small blocs
designed to make them power-brokers, Luigi Accattoli of Corriere della Sera
newspaper said.

But an anticipated struggle between moderate cardinals and the
pro-Ratzinger forces never materialized. The moderates included Italians,
other Europeans and Americans who went into the conclave allied with
Tettamanzi and his predecessor as archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Carlo Maria
Martini, according to several accounts.
Several cardinals said voters were swayed by Ratzinger's intellect and a
sense that his closeness to the late pope made him a logical successor.

"The cardinals knew that he was so close to John Paul, that he was John
Paul's companion and accompanied him in all his work," said Cardinal Dario
Castrillon Hoyos of Colombia, who has known Ratzinger since the 1950s, when
Castrillon Hoyos was living in Germany.

Cardinals described the atmosphere of the vote as more like a spiritual
retreat than a political event. They recalled the wonder and solemnity of
an experience played out beneath Michelangelo's majestic fresco of the Last
Judgment.

The process was stately and laborious. The prelates, in ceremonial robes,
sat at 12 tables arranged in four rows, two rows on each side of the
chapel. They wrote out their votes by hand. The cardinals, many elderly,
rose, walked to silver, gold and bronze-plated urns, raised their ballots
and swore a special oath before depositing their votes.

"You take Christ as your witness that you will pick the best man, and then
you look up at the 'Last Judgment,' at all those people going to heaven and
all those going to hell," Errazuriz recalled. "I remember thinking, 'At
least in that hell there aren't ferocious flames.' And 115 people do that,
one right after the other, each with a very personal awareness that he is
standing alone before God."

"It's notable that in these circumstances, some cardinals change their
votes from one ballot to the next," he added. "It's a matter of reflection.
There were many, many hours of prayer."

The ballots were examined by three scrutineers, who were chosen at random.
Each vote was announced and all present wrote it down. With no winner
Monday evening, the cardinals had a light dinner and retired early.

Ratzinger looked relaxed and in control at breakfast Tuesday morning,
addressing cardinals at his table by name and in their diverse languages,
said Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles.

It became clear during the voting Tuesday that Ratzinger had support from
every region of the world.

"He had a consensus because firstly, he is someone capable of authority and
always guided by truths," said Cardinal Jozef Glemp of Poland. "He was the
dean of the College of Cardinals and he had reasons to become known…. He
inspired admiration."

Recent years had brought predictions that some cardinals would push for a
precedent-making pope from Latin America, where 40% of all Roman Catholics
live. But "there was a significant Latin American vote for Ratzinger from
the very beginning," said Alejandro Bermudez of Peru, the editor of
Lima-based ACI Prensa.

Most of the region's 20 cardinals were satisfied that John Paul II had
placed Latin Americans in powerful bastions of a bureaucracy once dominated
by Italians and saw Ratzinger as a status quo leader who would prevent an
Italian resurgence, Bermudez said.

"The Latin Americans do not feel neglected," he said. "Having a Latin
American pope was simply not a priority for the Latin American cardinals
themselves."

The Latin Americans' conquest of turf in Vatican City also meant that many
had little interest in decentralization, a priority of U.S. and Central
European moderates, he said.

The remnants of resistance to Ratzinger faded during the two ballots
Tuesday morning. Glemp, the Polish cardinal, said the consensus resulted
from patient discussion.

"Calmly, calmly, without propaganda, we talked and two-thirds thought he
was the best," Glemp said.

The shift in allegiance to Ratzinger included prominent members of the
reformist camp aligned with Martini, according to several accounts. Marco
Politi, the Vatican correspondent for the Rome daily La Repubblica,
reported that Martini sealed the outcome when he acquiesced.

At midday Tuesday, "Ratzinger's position had become so strong that it was
up to the other electors --- if they did not want to give an impression of
great disarray, disastrous for the church's international image --- to take
a step to give their votes to the most prestigious, and finally most
unifying, candidate," Politi wrote. "That's what happened with the blessing
of Martini."

After the decisive ballot Tuesday afternoon, the cardinals applauded
Ratzinger. Sodano, the secretary of state, then asked the ritualistic
question: "Do you accept your canonical election as supreme pontiff?"

"Yes, I accept," Ratzinger responded.

Ratzinger then told Sodano he had chosen the name Benedict XVI. Cardinal
Joachim Meisner of Germany said the new pope looked "a little forlorn" as
he headed into the chapel's Room of Tears, a name that refers to popes who
have wept as they donned white vestments.

Meisner himself did not remain dry-eyed.

"For me it was a miracle," he told journalists Wednesday. "I burst out
crying."
Amid the emotion and commotion, the new pope remembered that Cardinal
Justin Rigali of Philadelphia turned 70 that day and took a moment to wish
him a happy birthday.

"With all the things he had to think about, he had a very human touch,"
Rigali said.
Ratzinger invited his former peers to join him for a "convivial" dinner at
St. Martha, Murphy-O'Connor said, describing it as a light-hearted, festive
gathering.

"In he comes, all dressed up," Murphy-O'Connor said. "I often wondered what
he felt, really. So anyway, we gave him a great clap. We had a very
pleasant dinner with some Champagne to drink a toast. Then we tried some
songs. It was very difficult when you have about a hundred languages to get
one song…. And then he went to rest."
*
Times staff writers Maria De Cristofaro, Larry B. Stammer, Janet Stobart
and Tracy Wilkinson contributed to this report.

CARDINALS OFFER NEW VIEW
OF BENEDICT XVI: STILL AN
ENFORCER? U.S PRELATES
PLAY DOWN STERN IMAGE

DON LATTIN
San Francisco Chronicle
April 21, 2005

America's Roman Catholic cardinals began the job of selling Pope Benedict
XVI to the nation's 67 million-member church Wednesday, presenting a
gentler version of conservative Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

Seven of the nation's 11 voting cardinals said in Rome that the new pope
does not deserve his reputation as a stone-faced enforcer of rigid
orthodoxy.

"We have to be careful not to caricaturize the Holy Father," said Los
Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony, the only California church leader among the
115 cardinals who elected the 78-year-old Ratzinger on Tuesday. "He has so
many dimensions. We have to get to know him.''

In remarks Wednesday in the Sistine Chapel, Benedict also tried to reassure
Catholics and non-Catholics.

In a message read in Latin to cardinals gathered for the first Mass
celebrated by the new pope, Benedict said two of his priorities will be the
unification of Christianity and the continuation of an open and sincere
dialogue with other religions.

He also pledged to continue the work of the Second Vatican Council, the
1962-65 reforms that opened the church up to the modern world.

"I too ... want to affirm with decisive willingness to follow in the
commitment of carrying out the Second Vatican Council, in the wake of my
predecessors and in faithful continuity with the 2,000-year-old tradition
of the church," Benedict said.

Until his election as pontiff, Ratzinger of Germany was widely known as the
Vatican's keeper of Catholic orthodoxy. Some critics called him the "panzer
cardinal." As prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he
reined in dissident theologians and did not countenance proposals for
ordaining married men, admitting women to the priesthood or diluting the
church's teaching against homosexual acts.

As a result, liberal-minded Catholics --- many from the United States ---
have concerns about the coming papacy.

"Most Americans were looking for more of a centrist," said the Rev. Ken
Doyle, chancellor of the Diocese of Albany, New York., and the former Rome
bureau chief for Catholic News Service.

At the same time, Doyle said, he wouldn't be surprised if Benedict
surprises his critics.

During Vatican II, Ratzinger worked as a theological consultant to German
Cardinal Joseph Frings, a leading progressive voice in the early 1960s.

"One thing to remember is the job makes the man," Doyle said. "For 23
years, he was the watchdog of orthodoxy. Now he's moved into a broader role
--- to be the face of Christ to the world.''

Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington, D.C., one of the U.S. cardinals
speaking at a Wednesday press conference at North American College in Rome,
said the popular conception of the new pope is a misconception.

"There is this vision of the Holy Father as not a person of dialogue or
shared vision," McCarrick said. "But his presumed persona is not true. I
believe you will find in the papacy of Benedict XVI a good deal of
consultation, a good deal of collegiality."

All the members of the College of Cardinals take an oath of secrecy to say
nothing about the balloting in the conclave.

Gerard O'Connell, a Vatican analyst who works for the Union of Catholic
Asian News, thinks Ratzinger went into the conclave with 35-40 votes, just
half needed for election.

"Those who wanted a different style of leadership did not seem to be able
to coalesce around one candidate," he said.

O'Connell and other observers say the massive outpouring of public support
in the days leading up to John Paul's funeral helped Ratzinger.

"Quite a number of cardinals thought that after a giant, John Paul II, they
needed someone of stature who would guarantee continuity, and who was also
a strong person. They saw that he (Ratzinger) personified that," he said.

Another veteran Vatican analyst, John Allen, the Rome correspondent for the
National Catholic Reporter, said the speed of the conclave -- four ballots
in less than 24 hours to elect the new pope -- indicates that "the choice
was between Ratzinger and everybody else.''

"Those uncomfortable with Ratzinger had a hard time agreeing on an
alternative,'' he said.

The theme of Benedict's first day as pope was clearly to sound a
conciliatory note in the face of critics and a badly divided church.

Wearing the snow-white cassock and skullcap reserved for the pope, Benedict
left the Vatican for the first time as pontiff and spent a couple of hours
at his nearby apartment.

Later, back at the Vatican, Benedict walked through the marble halls of the
Apostolic Palace and to the papal apartment where he will now live. It was
sealed closed with red ribbon after John Paul's death and was reopened
Wednesday for its new occupant.

Vatican television showed him touring the apartment, then sitting at an
immaculate desk and signing a document.

He also visited his former staff at the Congregation for the Doctrine of
the Faith. He ate lunch with members of the Curia, the Vatican bureaucracy.

On Friday he will visit again with all the cardinals in Rome. Then on
Saturday, he will follow the example of his two predecessors and hold a
news conference, his first since being named the 265th leader of the Roman
Catholic Church.

The encounter, which was announced Wednesday by the Vatican, is expected to
be held in the Vatican press office in an auditorium outfitted with a live
television feed. If history is any guide, Benedict will make an
introductory statement and take questions.

Both John Paul I and John Paul II had similar news conferences soon after
their elections.

Angela Frucci of the Chronicle Foreign Service and Chronicle news services
contributed to this report.

CHOICE ACCENTUATES THE DIVIDE:
CONSERVATIVES ARE GENERALLY
ENTHUSIASTIC ABOUT OUTCOME

SUDARSAN RAGHAVEN
Washington Post
April 20, 2005

As bells rang across Catholic University yesterday to signal Cardinal
Joseph Ratzinger's election as pope, student Mary DeFusco rejoiced. As
Bendedict XVI, he would carry forward the conservatism that is the bedrock
of the Catholic Church, she said.

"Pope John Paul II would have been happy with this choice," said DeFusco,
19, a freshman from Towson, Maryland "I don't want things to change."

Her friend Stephen Carville, seated next to her on a bench on the Northeast
Washington campus, disagreed. He wanted a pope who would reconsider the
Vatican's stance on issues such as stem cell research, homosexuality and
condom use, and he did not expect Ratzinger to take that course.

"His ideology disagrees with mine," said Carville, 20, a freshman from
Baton Rouge, Louisiana "It may move the church in the wrong direction for
the 21st century."

Across the nation and the region, Catholics reacted with strong emotions to
the selection of Ratzinger. Many conservative Catholics, on the one hand,
welcomed the news, saying he would stand firm on moral issues while
bringing stability to the church. Many liberal Catholics, on the other
hand, said they were disappointed by the election of the German cardinal,
who has been called "God's Rottweiler" because of his statements supporting
rigorous enforcement of Catholic doctrine.

Jerry Hicks, 62, of Glen Burnie was in his car making a Meals on Wheels
delivery when he heard on the radio that a pontiff had been selected. The
choice of Ratizinger pleased him greatly.

"I've read some of his books. I own two of them," said Hicks, who attends
St. Alphonsus Church in Baltimore, where the traditional Latin mass is
still celebrated. "The reason why I like him so much is he's very orthodox,
very traditional."

He added, "I'm sure it will alienate anybody who wants big changes."

At St. Francis Xavier Church in New York, which welcomes gays, Ivy Reyes
said she hoped Ratzinger, despite his conservatism, would move toward
modernizing church policies on social issues. "I'm a Catholic, but I still
believe in stem cell research," said Reyes, 25, who had ducked out of her
job to offer a prayer for the new pope. "I'm hoping he can find a balance
with the science."

After the news broke that the cardinals had reached a decision, Catholics
around the region waited with anticipation to learn who he was.

Monsignor W. Ronald Jameson, rector of the Cathedral of St. Matthew in
downtown Washington, fiddled with the dials of his transistor radio to get
better reception as he stood outside the cathedral after the noon Mass.

"It's Ratzinger!" he said, as soon as he heard the name of the new pope.
"It's Cardinal Ratzinger."

As he announced the news to people leaving the cathedral, Jameson said:
"It's a time of celebration. We have a new leader not just for the church
but also for the whole world."

In Rockne, Texas, the predominantly German American congregation of Sacred
Heart Church was "overwhelmed with joy" said the pastor, the Rev. Krzysztof
Bugno. "We have our German pope," Bugno said.

Others, however, expressed frustration that a cardinal from Africa, Latin
America or Asia wasn't chosen at a time when the church is growing fastest
in the developing world.

Clement Odigwe, 55, of Oxon Hill, a native of Nigeria,said he had been
glued to the television ever since Pope John Paul II died, praying for the
election of Cardinal Frances Arinze, a Nigerian.

Now, he said, his prayer is for Pope Benedict to have a heart for Africa.

In Arlington, Susan Hoefling, 45, said she thought Arinze was better suited
to tackle issues in developing countries, including poverty and the
defection of some Catholics to other faiths. Hoefling, who was raised in
Nigeria, said a recent trip to Zimbabwe had convinced her that the new pope
must assist in the fight against AIDS.

"We need to look at the issues in Africa rather than avoid them and just
focus on Europe and the Middle East," Hoefling said.

She said she hoped Pope Benedict also would consider bringing women into
the priesthood to help stem a shortage of priests and nuns. But she said
she worried he would not go far enough.

In Miami, where some Catholic churches offer as many masses in Spanish and
Portuguese as English, continuity seemed to trump nationality. Hopes for a
Latin American pope were subsumed by a sense of relief that Ratzinger is
likely to follow John Paul's conservative model.

"We were praying that it not be someone who is too liberal," said Lidia Rio
Cardenas after the noon mass at Gezu Catholic Church in downtown Miami.

And outside Sacred Heart Church in the District's Mount Pleasant
neighborhood, Colombian immigrant Emerita Lopez was happy with the choice.
"People say he's very good . . . My friend told me he was always with the
pope and has the same ideas as the pope," said Lopez, 76, a teacher's aide
at Sacred Heart School.

Manuel Ramos, 48, a painter from El Salvador who worships at Sacred Heart,
said that it would have been nice to have a Latin American pope but that
"the Latin Americans were too young. He had to be old, over 70."

Several Jewish leaders welcomed the election of Ratzinger, who has revealed
in a memoir that he served against his will in Adolf Hitler's Nazi youth
movement and later was drafted into a Nazi antiaircraft unit that protected
a BMW plant.

"In Judaism, accepting repentance is a high value," said David L.
Bernstein, Washington area director of the American Jewish Committee. "And
this pope has been in a historic process of reconciliation, and we must
accept his ultimate intention to become a friend of the Jewish people."

At the Church of the Resurrection outside Ellicott City, the Rev. Ty
Hullinger, associate pastor, said he expects to hear criticism of the new
pope from some in his parish. "What I tell people is to be patient, give
him a chance," said Hullinger, who as a Baltimore seminary student met
Ratzinger on a trip to Rome in 2002. "I know the man I met. He seemed to be
a very humble, very gentle, a very compassionate man."

Hullinger said Pope Benedict will have to meet expectations established by
his predecessor.

"I think we're looking for a pope who would be open to the world in the way
John Paul II was, the openness to different faiths," he said. "I don't see
him in any way turning back from that course."

Contributing to this report were staff writers Bill Broadway, Karin
Brulliard, Susan DeFord, Petula Dvorak, Hamil R. Harris, Susan Kinzie, Mary
Otto and Mary Beth Sheridan in Washington; staff writer Manuel Roig-Franzia
in Miami; and special correspondents Michelle Garcia in New York, Kari
Lydersen in Chicago and Caroline Keating in Austin.

IS THE END IN SIGHT FOR ECUSA'S ORTHODOX?
By David W. Virtue
April 21, 2005

It is now obvious to even the most simple-minded that orthodox
priests caught in revisionist dioceses have no future. Their day is
done. Sooner or later, like Jews in death camps, their number will be
called and they will be marched into oblivion.

Six priests in the Diocese of Connecticut learned that bitter lesson
this week despite some 23 bishops active and retired who appealed to
Bishop Andrew Smith not to inhibit and depose them. At the end their
appeals fell on deaf ears.

The six will go. How they will go has now been determined -
inhibition and deposition - what they will do is uncertain. Will they
take their people to the AMIA or come under an overseas primate, or
will they simply resign and look for different work we do not, as
yet, know. But as Episcopal priests they are finished unless by some
miracle they are picked up by an orthodox bishop. But such jobs are
few and far between.

In a very real sense it doesn't matter. What happened to them has
been going on in dioceses like Los Angeles, Kentucky, Newark, Long
Island, Pennsylvania, Alabama, Central Pennsylvania and Florida to
name but a few.

And the story is nearly always the same. The priest offers up that he
cannot support a bishop who openly supports the consecration of a
homoerotic bishop to the episcopacy and seeks alternative episcopal
oversight.

The bishop fires back that he will give them DEPO in exchange for a
pledge of loyalty, more money and ultimate control over whom that
"delegated" bishop is and still maintain his right to visit whenever he
wants. DEPO is a farce that has yet to work in one single instance
and it is why the Archbishop of Canterbury offered up a panel of
reference in Ireland earlier this year, another idea that has yet to
see the light of day.

The priest(s) object to the bishop's demands for absolute obedience
and undying fealty and the fight is on.

The bishop offers up a lot of gracious-speak language in high-sounding
letters to the priests and the diocese to say he demands
their loyalty or he has no option but to take ecclesiastical action.
Lawyers are brought in and Canon Ten is invoked and the bishops' chew
up these priests and spit them out - all done with the tacit approval
of Frank Griswold who thinks the orthodox are working in league with
the Father of Lies anyway and the bishop destroys yet another group
of godly priests whose only desire was to preach the unsearchable
riches of Christ.

But here a ray of light shines. An attorney I spoke with says they
don't have "to go". They can, as did David Moyer did, go to the civil
courts. Canon 10 is being misused to deny the six priests the trial
to which they are entitled. Furthermore the validity of the Denis
Canon is in dispute, one can see that in the decision in California.
The civil court alternative can work. It is through discovery that
the false and fraudulent activities of revisionist bishops can be
uncovered.

But it is still death by a thousand cuts.

And the truth is there is nothing to stop this ecclesiastical carnage
until every single orthodox priest in 80 percent of the dioceses of
the Episcopal Church are finally broken and destroyed. Network leader
and Episcopal Bishop Bob Duncan has publicly declared that to be the
case and he has admitted that the Network can do nothing to save
them. So suffer he says; it is our lot. Sadly the six priests will
get no help from orthodox bishops other than statements.

The only orthodox survivors, in the future, will be found in orthodox
dioceses where the bishop still believes the historic faith, but even
there the orthodox should never look to any future General Convention to
offer them anything. That too is a lost cause. That day is done.
The fence sitters, revisionists, and pansexualists have won the day.
It is their show. They deserve to own a church in free fall.
Of course the victories won by these revisionist bishops come at a
price. A lot of the victory is pyrrhic.

These godless bishops lose not only godly clergy who have the ability
to make churches grow; they also lose huge numbers of dues paying
godly laity. By VirtueOnline's estimate, the recent losses in New
Hampshire, Kentucky, Alabama, Atlanta, North Carolina, Los Angeles,
Long Island, Pennsylvania, Central Pa. and Connecticut the figure is
well over 12,000 laity and that does not include the ongoing fallout
in the months ahead with increasingly disillusioned laity brought on
by bad publicity in the secular media and much more. They are lost
forever and will never be replaced.

The Anglican Mission in America will probably pick up the best of
them, some will come under an overseas primate, others will flee to
orthodox denominations with many simply dropping out fed up with the
whole business of church.

The bishop gets to keep largely empty properties which he must either
close down or put a priest in charge and hope that it can rebuild.
For the most part this is whistling Dixie.

But orthodox dioceses should not get cocky that they are immune from
the inroads of revisionism in their dioceses. Many have very slim
margins of orthodox priests, and a virulent move by a group of
revisionist priests can easily tip the balance where new bishops are
sought. A case in point is the Diocese of San Diego - once orthodox
under Gethin Hughes now gone liberal. Another diocese in point is the
Diocese of Florida. John Howard came in with great promise to replace
Steve Jecko, now he has all but sold out to the other side. That
diocese will, in time, bite the dust with a number of orthodox
priests already weighing their future.

Fence sitting bishops like Don Wimberly of Texas claim to be orthodox
but he ordains a gay deacon and you know it is only a matter of time
before his rollover is complete.

One organization that is making life hell for orthodox bishops is the Via
Media. They claim to speak for the diverse middle, read dead, white
Episcopalians who do whatever their priest and bishop tells
them but have no clue how they are being undermined and seduced. They
have never heard a clear distinct gospel proclamation and they are
easy prey for words like "inclusion," "diversity", and the smooth
talk of people like V. Gene Robinson. Via Media has the blessing of
Griswold and they are worming their way like a cancer into one
orthodox diocese after another.

In the Diocese of Pittsburgh Bob Duncan faces a lawsuit from this
gang with a black priest Harold Lewis leading the charge.
Add the sodomite organization Integrity with Via Media as the
controlling agent, arm them with a group of angry lesbian women
priests and disgruntled divorcees, salt them with an outspoken, whiny
homosexual priest or two and you have a cancer that is, in time,
unstoppable.

Dioceses that still have the ability to withstand the revisionist Via
Media onslaught include the dioceses of san Joaquin, Quincy, Ft.
Worth, Central Florida and South Carolina to name but a handful, but
the figure is not large and you can count them all on two hands. A
slight misstep by an orthodox bishop, or if his priests start to roll
over to the seductive siren call of inclusion steadily being advanced
by Louie Crew and the House of Bishops/Deputies list and the tilt
could prove fatal. Now add to the mix the constant bashing and
needling of orthodox groups by the Dallas flatfoot Jack Taylor and
the wear and tear begins to take effect. In time disillusionment sets
in and priests take early retirement, their replacement is often a
liberal posing as a conservative or a conservative gone over to the
other side, and like dominoes the diocese begins to fall.

It's only a matter of time, and time is fast running out, just ask
the "Connecticut Six" whose lives and ministries are on the verge of
being destroyed.

Hitler took six years to destroy six million Jews, The Episcopal
Church, over 40 years has quietly destroyed hundreds of godly priests
and with them tens of thousands of godly Episcopalians with the
spiritual cyanide of pansexuality and inclusion. Now the pace is
simply quickening, the end is just the same; is there is no eye to
pity and no arm to save?

From within the church the answer sadly is no. It is now up to the courts.

These reports are embarrassing for Anglicans. Nevertheless I
circulate them ; the accelerating white-anting of the church by secular
political ideologies and militant perversions will not be reversed unless
people know what is going down.

R

Gay Bishop Robinson Ignites Furious Response after Jesus Comments
April 21, 2005

Daniel Blake
daniel@christiantoday.com

The bishop whose consecration sparked a near schism throughout the
worldwide Anglican Communion has made comments that have outraged
conservatives around the world. Though the Communion is trying its utmost
to ensure a complete split of the denomination does not occur, in a recent
address, Bishop Gene Robinson has been interpreted by some as suggesting
that Jesus might have been homosexual.

The first openly gay Anglican Bishop, from the New Hampshire diocese, and
of the Episcopal Church of the United States (ECU) has seemingly made
comments that have angered and upset a huge proportion of the Anglican
Communion.

He commented that Jesus was an unmarried, "non-traditional man" who did not
uphold family values, "travelled with a bunch of men" and enjoyed an
especially close relationship with one of his disciples.

The comments came at a recent address at the Christ Church of Hamilton and
Wenham in Massachusetts, USA and was entitled "Homosexuality and the Body
of Christ: Is There a New Way?"

A question was raised to Robinson regarding how the acceptance of
homosexuality could be squared with the scriptural emphasis on the
redemption of sins. The Bishop replied in a way that will have
disillusioned many other clergymen: "Interestingly enough, in the day of
traditional family values, this man that we follow was single, as far as we
know, travelled with a bunch of men, had a disciple who was known as 'the
one whom Jesus loved' and said my family is not my mother and father, my
family is those who do the will of God. None of us likes those harsh
words. That's who Jesus is, that's who he was at heart, in his earthly
life."

A spokesperson for the evangelical Anglican organisation Anglican
Mainstream, Canon Chris Sugden was reported by the Telegraph newspaper as
saying, "He's really selective in what he's addressing. He makes no
mention of Jesus' teaching on marriage, for instance. And he does not
acknowledge that nowhere in the text or in ancient literature is there any
suggestion of any form of sexual impropriety among Jesus or the disciples.
Jesus broke the cultural traditions of the time and has women mixing with
men in public and having them teaching. Those of us who put scripture as a
priority are called on to obey the scripture even when that is in conflict
with our culture.

"Bishop Robinson is saying that the culture has moved in his direction and
that it's all becoming accepted, so he's looking for ways to interpret
scripture to support that instead of realising that scripture asks us to do
the unpopular thing and stand against the prevailing culture."

However, a spokesperson for Bishop Robinson, Mike Barwell said, "Jesus was
a non-traditional person who broke all the rules, and hung out with all the
wrong people. Anything else that people infer from the Bishop's comments
is all speculation."

======

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=43618

Sunday, April 3, 2005
TESTING THE FAITH
Rev. Gene Robinson:
Jesus 'might be 'gay''
1st openly 'out' Anglican bishop sparks outrage with queer idea
WorldNetDaily.com

Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson, the first openly homosexual bishop of his denomination, has angered traditionalist Anglicans by suggesting that Jesus Christ might have been homosexual.

Robinson, who left his wife - and mother of his two daughters - to cohabit with his male lover, Mark, made his inflammatory remarks during an address titled, "Homosexuality and the Body of Christ: Is There a New Way?" at Christ Church of Hamilton and Wenham, Massachusetts. The bishop was asked by a congregant how Christians could both accept homosexuality and the Bible's emphasis on redemption for sins.

"Interestingly enough, in this day of traditional family values," answered Robinson, "this man that we follow was single, as far as we know, traveled with a bunch of men, had a disciple who was known as 'the one whom Jesus loved' and said my family is not my mother and father, my family is those who do the will of God. None of us likes those harsh words. That's who Jesus is, that's who he was at heart, in his earthly life.

"Those who would posit the nuclear family as the be all and end all of God's creation probably don't find that much in the gospels to support it," he concluded.

"Rubbish," responds David Virtue who operates VirtueOnline, a website that bills itself as "the voice for global orthodox Anglicanism." "It is appalling deconstructionism from the liberal lobby which will spin even the remotest thing to turn it into a hint that Biblical figures are gay," says Virtue. "It is so
utterly preposterous to imply that Jesus' relationship with John was homo-erotic, but twisting the truth is the only way these people can get scriptural justification for their lifestyles. Can you imagine Calvin, Luther or Erasmus saying something like this? It is a wonder that thunder and lightning bolts don't strike Bishop Robinson down."

Canon Chris Sugden, spokesman for the traditionalist organization, Anglican Mainstream, also disputes Robinson's use of scripture and the implications he draws from them. "He's really selective in what he's addressing," says Sugden. "He makes no mention of Jesus' teaching on marriage, for instance. And he does not acknowledge that nowhere in the text or in ancient literature is there any suggestion of any form of sexual impropriety among Jesus or the disciples. Jesus broke the cultural traditions of the time and has women mixing with men in public and having them teaching. Those of us who put scripture as a priority are called on to obey the scripture even when that is in conflict with our culture. Bishop Robinson is saying that the culture has moved in his direction and that it's all becoming accepted, so he's looking for ways to interpret scripture to support that instead of realizing that scripture asks us to do the unpopular thing and stand against the prevailing culture."

Robinson's 2003 consecration created a schism in the Anglican church between liberals and traditionalists, causing some to suggest he should be "struck down by thunder and lightning bolts." In some cases, traditional congregations have sought to shift their affiliation with the worldwide Anglican communion from liberal American bishops to bishops in Africa where a conservative understanding of Biblical morality still dominates. Robinson, however remains undaunted by the criticism, saying he has reconciled his homosexuality and his faith. "God's light and God's life ooze over me like warm butter," he declares.

From: "Maxim Institute"
Subject: Maxim Institute - real issues - No 153

* < #1>Liberals in crisis in Canada

* < #2>Parenthood isn`t getting any easier

* < #3>Prostitution Law Review Committee releases report

* < #4>The neutral myth of education

Liberals in crisis in Canada

Canada has a lot of similarities to New Zealand. A centre-left liberal
party has controlled Canada's government since 1993. Its leader, Paul
Martin, confidently called an early election in June 2004 and won by a
comfortable margin. The Liberals, though, are now in trouble, particularly
because of corruption scandals, with a Conservative opposition likely to
force a June election. One of the 133 Liberal MPs left the party last week
to become an independent - is it too easy to recall Tariana Turia's
defection from Labour?

But there the similarity ends - 33 Liberals defied Mr Martin and voted
with the Conservatives to kill a government bill recognising same-sex
marriage.

The 'Culture War' is real and one of the key battles is about the nature
of marriage. The Canadian Parliament understands this, the United States
Congress knows it very well too, as indeed, do they in Canberra - but not
in Wellington. Not only have we had government-led creation of civil
unions, but also an insistence that marriage is no different from other
human relationships. New Zealand moves one way and the USA, Australia and
Canada move another.

A question arises. What is going on with our traditional allies? Even
Canada, that most liberal of countries, is showing signs of reacting
against 1970s relativist liberalism. Why, in New Zealand, are we so far
behind?

Parenthood isn`t getting any easier

On Wednesday the Law Commission released a report entitled New Issues in
Legal Parenthood. The report was concerned with tightening up the legal
situation surrounding parenthood, especially for the very small number of
children conceived through artificial reproductive technologies.

The report recommended that it be easier for a child to know the identity
of his or her father. In cases where the identity of a child's father is
debatable, a DNA test can resolve who the father is. Currently a child's
mother may refuse consent to this DNA test. The Law Commission makes the
positive recommendation that consent from either parent should be enough to
obtain a test.

The report has also made recommendations that would allow a child to have
three legal parents. It suggests that a sperm or egg donor should be deemed
a parent if agreement is made between a couple and the donor. Such a move,
if adopted by the government, would have far-reaching consequences in
redefining family, parenthood and the nature of intergenerational
connection.

The parenthood of a child has the potential to be further complicated by
new technology highlighted in the report, which would make it possible for
a child to be the result of combining three different sources of
DNA-replacing the nucleus of an egg with one from another women. It is
likely that in New Zealand in the near future we will have to decide
whether or not to allow this procedure.

The problems arise because we have begun using technology before dealing
with the ethical issues. Ethics are in danger of becoming subservient to
human desire, rather than restraining it.

To read the Law Commission's report visit:


Prostitution Law Review Committee releases report

The Prostitution Law Review Committee has released figures which show that
there were an estimated 6000 'sex workers' operating in New Zealand in June
2003. The Committee was established under the Prostitution Reform Act to
review the operation of the Act and in particular the number of people
working in prostitution. This information provides an important benchmark
against which the impact of the decriminalisation of prostitution in New
Zealand can be assessed in the future.

The second part of the Committee's report provides an analysis by the New
Zealand Prostitutes' Collective of the number of advertisements for sexual
services. The report shows, that particularly in Auckland, there has been
a rise in the number of advertisements for sexual services, which may
indicate a growth in the industry since the introduction of the Act. It
will be another three years though before the longer term impact of the Act
can be accurately assessed.

A rise in prostitution following decriminalisation would be consistent
with what has happened in other countries and states that have
decriminalised or legalised prostitution, such as New South Wales and
Victoria in Australia. By decriminalising prostitution, the law makes it
easier for vulnerable women and children to enter into an industry
characterised by violence and abuse.

To read the report of the Prostitution Law Review Committee visit:

stimation/index.html>

The neutral myth of education

The question of church schools teaching values has recently been up for
discussion. No education is values-free and we need to be mindful of this
when we consider the issue of schooling.

To read an article by Maxim on this topic published in The Press this
week, please visit:



THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK - Reinhold Niebuhr

Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination
to injustice makes democracy necessary.

http://counterpunch.org/nader04162005.html
Weekend Edition
April 16 / 17, 2005
Vaccines Don't Make the Same Profits for Big Pharma that Lifestyle Drugs Do

Scientists or Celebrities?
By RALPH NADER

Washington, DC

Question: have you ever heard of Maurice Hilleman? If your answer is No
or Who?, join about 99 percent of the American people. He passed away
this month in Philadelphia at the age of 85. Here is what the front page
New York Times article said about his medical career:

Dr. Maurice R. Hilleman developed vaccines for mumps, measles,
chickenpox, pneumonia, meningitis and other diseases, saving tens of
millions of lives. Much of modern preventive medicine is based on Dr.
Hilleman's work, though he never received the public recognition of Salk,
Sabin or Pasteur. He is credited with having developed more human and
animal vaccines than any other scientist, helping to extend human life
expectancy and improving the economies of many countries.

The Times quotes Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health
as saying: "The scientific quality and quantity of what he did was
amazing. One can say without hyperbole that Maurice changed the world
with his extraordinary contributions in so many disciplines: virology,
epidemiology, immunology, cancer research and vaccinology."

His associates, whom he regularly credited for their contributions,
marveled at his artistry in safely producing large quantities of weakened
live or dead micro-organisms. Dr. Hilleman credited his skills wryly to
growing up on a farm in Montana where he worked as a boy with chickens.
Chicken eggs are the fertilizing sites for many vaccines.

There are many fascinating stories about this scientist. Yet almost no
one knew about him, saw him on television, or read about him in newspapers
or magazines. His anonymity, in comparison with Madonna, Michael Jackson,
Jose Canseco, or an assortment of grade B actors, tells something about
our society's and media's concepts of celebrity; much less of the heroic.

This is not a frivolous observation.

Bringing the work of individuals who matter to so many people on the
important issues of lives and livelihoods is a prime way of educating the
citizenry about important matters. Media trumpeting of Madonna's latest
escapades alerts and motivates the public quite differently than
highlighting the frequent breakthroughs of a scientist like Dr. Hilleman.
The former sells records and pulp magazines, the latter keeps the American
people more knowledgeable about the critical perils that confront them if
recognition and resources are not dedicated to their prevention.

Today, in America, there are tens of billions of dollars being spent and
misspent on the struggle against stateless terrorists. Despite being
warned repeatedly by the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health
Organization, the Bush Administration is reacting feebly to the avian flu
risks coming from the Far East. Already having taken nearly one hundred
lives, should this avian flu mutate with a human virus, a deadly pandemic
could sweep the world with tens of millions of fatalities.

I have written thrice to President Bush about the need to launch a war
against this kind of microscopic terrorism by diversifying his speeches
and making room for a major national address on this subject. He could
put forth a program of greater support for training more infectious
diseases specialists and working with other countries for an early alert
system so that the requisite quarantines and vaccine development can get
underway in time. There have been no responses from the White House.

Such an initiative would cost a fraction of the annual $9 to $10 billion
dollars that Bush is spending on the boondoggle missile defense business.
(A technology so easily decoyable and dubious that it has been deemed
unworkable by the American Physical Society). But missile defense and
other massive military weapons programs, conceived for a Soviet Union era
of hostility, make big profits for corporations. Vaccines do not make big
profits for drug companies the way lifestyle drugs do.

The daily headlines are sounding grave alarms. Rob Stein and Shankar
Vedantam of The Washington Post report that a strain of the flu virus H2N2
that caused a worldwide pandemic and killed more than one million people
worldwide in 1957 and 1958 was mistakenly sent to thousands of
laboratories in the United States and around the world. Keith Bradsher's
reports from China for the Times have been getting ever more somber. The
latest dispatch headlines "Some Asian Bankers worry about the Economic
Toll from Bird Flu."

Maybe if business profits are jeopardized by what a pandemic can do to
an economy, officialdom will reorder its twisted priorities. The deadly
Marburg virus (nine of ten people afflicted die) now spreading slowly in
Angola is another wake-up call for our country to change its priorities
from continually adding to the largest major weapons arsenal in world
history (nuclear submarines, aircraft carriers, missiles, planes, etc.)
and moving to life-saving and health-preserving investments for prevention
before vaccines are needed.

It is time to know the names of the scientists already working on this
great venture for health and hear them out.

Hear ye, media!

The lesson 2 Tim 2: 8-15 which I had the privilege to read 10-10-04 features:

14 ... charge [people] solemnly before God to stop
disputing about mere words; it does no good, and is the ruin of those who
listen.

15 Try hard to show yourself worthy of God's approval, as
a labourer who need not be ashamed; be straightforward in your proclamation
of the truth.

Apply this to the popular PC method of refusing communication: you
have used words, e.g. 'wimp', 'PC', 'homX', which they define as obscene
and a sufficient excuse to refuse debate.

Many of these same PC operatives greatly value 'transgressivity' -
displays of condoms on TV, in art galleries, etc; laungauge designed to
shock, e.g from a recent Rev G Cardy PC sermon:

For some God is a potent energy of ecstasy, or a deep rootedness of
being. These words, ecstasy and rooted, of course have sexual connotations
and I use them purposefully.

So 'rooted' is OK in a sermon - not too rude - whereas 'wimp'
is inherently so rude in conversation outside church that whoever utters it
must be ostracized. Ae we to believe that these people are on the level?
Why do they have such a blatant double standard?

Please keep in mind that what we are dealing with is a political
strategy as outlined by Kirk & Pill in 1989 (attached). The pretence that
PC is only about manners is thoroughly deceitful.

In a slightly related context, the very word 'evolution' is treated
by some fundies as if it were obscene - as if anyone who uses the word is
thereby revealing such disrespect for Christian conventions that s/he is
beneath contempt, beyond the pale, and certainly not entitled to be heard
for ideas.

My strong suspicion is that those who work these dishonest stunts
will continue to go to great lengths to evade discussion of their ideas.
How do we counter their evasiveness, apart from our quoting 2 Tim 2:14 ?

R

The late John Paul II:

"One must be realistic and acknowledge with a deep and pained
sentiment that a great part of today's Christians feel lost,
confused, perplexed, and even disillusioned: ideas contradicting the
revealed and unchanging Truth have been spread far and wide; outright
heresies in the dogmatic and moral fields have been disseminated,
creating doubt, confusion, and rebellion; even the liturgy has been
altered. Immersed in intellectual and moral "relativism" and
therefore in permissiveness, Christians are tempted by atheism,
agnosticism, a vaguely moralistic illuminism, a sociological
Christianity, without defined dogmas and without objective morality."

- Allocution of Feb. 6, 1981, to religious and priests participating
in the First Italian National Congress on Missions to the People for
the 80s,

L'Osservatore Romano, Feb. 7 1981.

At this rate we can expect even better moral leadership from his successor,
who by extrapolation will call himself John Paul Ringo I.

R

This came to me from "Prout" ( P R Sarkar's AnandaMarga®) but may be OK

R

* Oil, Geopolitics, and the Coming War with Iran*
* Is America going broke?*

Oil, Geopolitics, and the Coming War with Iran

By Michael T. Klare

[this author was a leading critic in the 1970s of the USA
military-industrial complex - RM]

As the United States gears up for an attack on Iran, one thing is certain:
the Bush administration will never mention oil as a reason for going to
war. As in the case of Iraq, weapons of mass destruction (WMD) will be
cited as the principal justification for an American assault. "We will not
tolerate the construction of a nuclear weapon [by Iran]," is the way
President Bush put it in a much-quoted 2003 statement. But just as the
failure to discover illicit weapons in Iraq undermined the
administration's use of WMD as the paramount reason for its invasion, so
its claim that an attack on Iran would be justified because of its alleged
nuclear potential should invite widespread scepticism. More important, any
serious assessment of Iran's strategic importance to the United States
should focus on its role in the global energy equation.

Before proceeding further, let me state for the record that I do not claim
oil is the sole driving force behind the Bush administration's apparent
determination to destroy Iranian military capabilities. No doubt there are
many national security professionals in Washington who are truly worried
about Iran's nuclear program, just as there were many professionals who
were genuinely worried about Iraqi weapons capabilities. I respect this.
But no war is ever prompted by one factor alone, and it is evident from
the public record that many considerations, including oil, played a role
in the administration's decision to invade Iraq. Likewise, it is
reasonable to assume that many factors -- again including oil -- are
playing a role in the decision-making now underway over a possible assault
on Iran.

Just exactly how much weight the oil factor carries in the administration's
decision-making is not something that we can determine with absolute
assurance at this time, but given the importance energy has played in the
careers and thinking of various high officials of this administration, and
given Iran's immense resources, it would be ludicrous not to take the oil
factor into account -- and yet you can rest assured that, as relations
with Iran worsen, American media reports and analysis of the situation
will generally steer a course well clear of the subject (as they did in
the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq).

One further caveat: When talking about oil's importance in American
strategic thinking about Iran, it is important to go beyond the obvious
question of Iran's potential role in satisfying our country's future
energy requirements. Because Iran occupies a strategic location on the
north side of the Persian Gulf, it is in a position to threaten oil fields
in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, and the United Arab Emirates, which
together possess more than half of the world's known oil reserves. Iran
also sits athwart the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway through which,
daily, 40% of the world's oil exports pass. In addition, Iran is becoming
a major supplier of oil and natural gas to China, India, and Japan,
thereby giving Tehran additional clout in world affairs. It is these
geopolitical dimensions of energy, as much as Iran's potential to export
significant quantities of oil to the United States, that undoubtedly govern
the administration's strategic calculations.

Having said this, let me proceed to an assessment of Iran's future energy
potential. According to the most recent tally by Oil and Gas Journal, Iran
houses the second-largest pool of untapped petroleum in the world, an
estimated 125.8 billion barrels. Only Saudi Arabia, with an estimated 260
billion barrels, possesses more; Iraq, the third in line, has an estimated
115 billion barrels. With this much oil – about one-tenth of the world's
estimated total supply -- Iran is certain to play a key role in the global
energy equation, no matter what else occurs.

It is not, however, just sheer quantity that matters in Iran's case; no
less important is its future productive capacity. Although Saudi Arabia
possesses larger reserves, it is now producing oil at close to its maximum
sustainable rate (about 10 million barrels per day). It will probably be
unable to raise its output significantly over the next 20 years while
global demand, pushed by significantly higher consumption in the United
States, China, and India, is expected to rise by 50%. Iran, on the other
hand, has considerable growth potential: it is now producing about 4
million barrels per day, but is thought to be capable of boosting its
output by another 3 million barrels or so. Few, if any, other countries
possess this potential, so Iran's importance as a producer, already
significant, is bound to grow in the years ahead.

And it is not just oil that Iran possesses in great abundance, but also
natural gas. According to Oil and Gas Journal, Iran has an estimated 940
trillion cubic feet of gas, or approximately 16% of total world reserves.
(Only Russia, with 1,680 trillion cubic feet, has a larger supply.) As it
takes approximately 6,000 cubic feet of gas to equal the energy content of
1 barrel of oil, Iran's gas reserves represent the equivalent of about 155
billion barrels of oil. This, in turn, means that its combined hydrocarbon
reserves are the equivalent of some 280 billion barrels of oil, just
slightly behind Saudi Arabia's combined supply. At present, Iran is
producing only a small share of its gas reserves, about 2.7 trillion cubic
feet per year. This means that Iran is one of the few countries capable of
supplying much larger amounts of natural gas in the future.

What all this means is that Iran will play a critical role in the world's
future energy equation. This is especially true because the global demand
for natural gas is growing faster than that for any other source of
energy, including oil. While the world currently consumes more oil than
gas, the supply of petroleum is expected to contract in the
not-too-distant future as global production approaches its peak
sustainable level -- perhaps as soon as 2010 -- and then begins a gradual
but irreversible decline. The production of natural gas, on the other
hand, is not likely to peak until several decades from now, and so is
expected to take up much of the slack when oil supplies become less
abundant. Natural gas is also considered a more attractive fuel than oil in
many applications, especially because when consumed it releases less carbon
dioxide (a major contributor to the greenhouse effect).

No doubt the major U.S. energy companies would love to be working with
Iran today in developing these vast oil and gas supplies. At present,
however, they are prohibited from doing so by Executive Order (EO) 12959,
signed by President Clinton in 1995 and renewed by President Bush in March
2004. The United States has also threatened to punish foreign firms that
do business in Iran (under the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act of 1996), but this
has not deterred many large companies from seeking access to Iran's
reserves. China, which will need vast amounts of additional oil and gas to
fuel its red-hot economy, is paying particular attention to Iran.
According to the Department of Energy (DoE), Iran supplied 14% of China's
oil imports in 2003, and is expected to provide an even larger share in
the future. China is also expected to rely on Iran for a large share of
its liquid natural gas (LNG) imports. In October 2004, Iran signed a $100
billion, 25-year contract with Sinopec, a major Chinese energy firm, for
joint development of one of its major gas fields and the subsequent
delivery of LNG to China. If this deal is fully consummated, it will
constitute one of China's biggest overseas investments and represent a
major strategic linkage between the two countries.

India is also keen to obtain oil and gas from Iran. In January, the Gas
Authority of India Ltd. (GAIL) signed a 30-year deal with the National
Iranian Gas Export Corp. for the transfer of as much as 7.5 million tons
of LNG to India per year. The deal, worth an estimated $50 billion, will
also entail Indian involvement in the development of Iranian gas fields.
Even more noteworthy, Indian and Pakistani officials are discussing the
construction of a $3 billion natural gas pipeline from Iran to India via
Pakistan =AC an extraordinary step for two long-term adversaries. If
completed, the pipeline would provide both countries with a substantial
supply of gas and allow Pakistan to reap $200-$500 million per year in
transit fees. "The gas pipeline is a win-win proposition for Iran, India,
and Pakistan," Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz declared in January.

Despite the pipeline's obvious attractiveness as an incentive for
reconciliation between India and Pakistan -- nuclear powers that have
fought three wars over Kashmir since 1947 and remain deadlocked over the
future status of that troubled territory -- the project was condemned by
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a recent trip to India. "We
have communicated to the Indian government our concerns about the gas
pipeline co-operation between Iran and India," she said on March 16 after
meeting with Indian Foreign Minister Natwar Singh in New Delhi. The
administration has, in fact, proved unwilling to back any project that
offers an economic benefit to Iran. This has not, however, deterred India
from proceeding with the pipeline.

Japan has also broken ranks with Washington on the issue of energy ties
with Iran. In early 2003, a consortium of three Japanese companies
acquired a 20% stake in the development of the Soroush-Nowruz offshore
field in the Persian Gulf, a reservoir thought to hold 1 billion barrels
of oil. One year later, the Iranian Offshore Oil Company awarded a $1.26
billion contract to Japan's JGC Corporation for the recovery of natural
gas and natural gas liquids from Soroush-Nowruz and other offshore fields.

When considering Iran's role in the global energy equation, therefore, Bush
administration officials have two key strategic aims: a desire to open up
Iranian oil and gas fields to exploitation by American firms, and concern
over Iran's growing ties to America's competitors in the global energy
market. Under U.S. law, the first of these aims can only be achieved after
the President lifts EO 12959, and this is not likely to occur as long as
Iran is controlled by anti-American mullahs and refuses to abandon its
uranium enrichment activities with potential bomb-making applications.
Likewise, the ban on U.S. involvement in Iranian energy production and
export gives Tehran no choice but to pursue ties with other consuming
nations. From the Bush administration's point of view, there is only one
obvious and immediate way to alter this unappetising landscape -- by
inducing "regime change" in Iran and replacing the existing leadership
with one far friendlier to U.S. strategic interests.

That the Bush administration seeks to foster regime change in Iran is not
in any doubt. The very fact that Iran was included with Saddam's Iraq and
Kim Jong Il's North Korea in the "Axis of Evil" in the President's 2002
State of the Union Address was an unmistakable indicator of this. Bush let
his feelings be known again in June 2003, at a time when there were
anti-government protests by students in Tehran. "This is the beginning of
people expressing themselves toward a free Iran, which I think is
positive," he declared. In a more significant indication of White House
attitudes on the subject, the Department of Defence has failed to fully
disarm the People's Mujaheddin of Iran (or Mujaheddin-e Khalq, MEK), an
anti-government militia now based in Iraq that has conducted terrorist
actions in Iran and is listed on the State Department's roster of
terrorist organisations. In 2003, the Washington Post reported that some
senior administration figures would like to use the MEK as a proxy force
in Iran, in the same manner that the Northern Alliance was employed
against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The Iranian leadership is well aware that it faces a serious threat from
the Bush administration and is no doubt taking whatever steps it can to
prevent such an attack. Here, too, oil is a major factor in both Tehran's
and Washington's calculations. To deter a possible American assault, Iran
has threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz and otherwise obstruct oil
shipping in the Persian Gulf area. "An attack on Iran will be tantamount
to endangering Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and, in a word, the entire Middle
East oil," Iranian Expediency Council secretary Mohsen
Rezai said on March 1st.

Such threats are taken very seriously by the U.S. Department of Defence.
"We judge Iran can briefly close the Strait of Hormuz, relying on a
layered strategy using predominantly naval, air, and some ground forces,"
Vice Admiral Lowell E. Jacoby, the director of the Defence Intelligence
Agency, testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on February
16th.

Planning for such attacks is, beyond doubt, a major priority for top
Pentagon officials. In January, veteran investigative reporter Seymour
Hersh reported in the New Yorker magazine that the Department of Defence
was conducting covert reconnaissance raids into Iran, supposedly to
identify hidden Iranian nuclear and missile facilities that could be
struck in future air and missile attacks. "I was repeatedly told that the
next strategic target was Iran," Hersh said of his interviews with senior
military personnel. Shortly thereafter, the Washington Post revealed that
the Pentagon was flying surveillance drones over Iran to verify the
location of weapons sites and to test Iranian air defences. As noted by
the Post, "Aerial espionage [of this sort] is standard in military
preparations for an eventual air attack." There have also been reports of
talks between U.S. and Israeli officials about a possible Israeli strike
on Iranian weapons facilities, presumably with behind-the-scenes
assistance from the United States.

In reality, much of Washington's concern about Iran's pursuit of WMD and
ballistic missiles is sparked by fears for the safety of Saudi Arabia,
Kuwait, Iraq, other Persian Gulf oil producers, and Israel rather than by
fears of a direct Iranian assault on the United States. "Tehran has the
only military in the region that can threaten its neighbours and Gulf
security," Jacoby declared in his February testimony. "Its expanding
ballistic missile inventory presents a potential threat to states in the
region." It is this regional threat that American leaders are most
determined to eliminate.

In this sense, more than any other, the current planning for an attack on
Iran is fundamentally driven by concern over the safety of U.S. energy
supplies, as was the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. In the most telling
expression of White House motives for going to war against Iraq, Vice
President Dick Cheney (in an August 2002 address to the Veterans of
Foreign Wars) described the threat from Iraq as follows: "Should all [of
Hussein's WMD] ambitions be realised, the implications would be enormous
for the Middle East and the United States.... Armed with an arsenal of
these weapons of terror and a seat atop 10 percent of the world's oil
reserves, Saddam Hussein could then be expected to seek domination of the
entire Middle East, take control of a great portion of the world's energy
supplies, [and] directly threaten America's friends throughout the
region." This was, of course, unthinkable to Bush's inner circle. And all
one need do is substitute the words "Iranian mullahs" for Saddam Hussein,
and you have a perfect expression of the Bush administration case for
making war on Iran.

So, even while publicly focusing on Iran's weapons of mass destruction,
key administration figures are certainly thinking in geopolitical terms
about Iran's role in the global energy equation and its capacity to
obstruct the global flow of petroleum. As was the case with Iraq, the
White House is determined to eliminate this threat once and for all. And
so, while oil may not be the administration's sole reason for going to war
with Iran, it is an essential factor in the overall strategic calculation
that makes war likely.

Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at
Hampshire College and the author of Blood and Oil: The Dangers and
Consequences of America's Growing Dependency on Imported Oil (Metropolitan
Books).


*Is America going broke?

Record deficits, colossal debt and no clear plan for digging itself out. If
the U.S. sinks, it will take Canada down with it.

STEVE MAICH

David Walker can see the future, and it scares the hell out of him.

That wouldn't be terribly unusual if he were one of the thousands of
lobbyists, legislators and activists crawling all over Washington on any
given day, pontificating about the urgency of their pet issues. There is a
thriving industry here built on pushing policy prescriptions for every
ailment, real or imagined. But Walker isn't a lobbyist or an activist,
he's an accountant. His title is comptroller general of the United States,
which makes him the head auditor for the most important and powerful
government in the world. And he's desperately trying to get a message out
to anyone who'll listen: the United States of America's public finances
are a shambles. They're getting rapidly worse. And if something major
isn't done soon to solve the country's intractable budget problems, the
world will face an economic shake-up unlike anything ever seen before.

Seated in his wood-panelled office in downtown Washington, Walker measures
his words, trying to walk the fine line between raising an alarm and
fostering panic. He cringes when he hears prominent economists warning
about a financial "Armageddon," but he makes no bones about the fact the
situation is dire. "I don't like using words that are overly
inflammatory," he says, leaning forward in his chair. "At the same time, I
think it is critically important that the American people, as well as
their elected representatives, get a better understanding of just how
serious our situation is."

THE NUMBERS are staggering -- a US$43-trillion hole in America's public
finances that's getting worse every day. And the stakes are almost
inconceivable for a generation of politicians and voters raised in
relative prosperity, who've never known severe economic hardship. But that
plush North American lifestyle to which we've all grown accustomed has
been bought on credit, and the bill is rapidly nearing its due date. If
the United States can't find a way to pay up, the results will spill
beyond national borders, spreading economic misery far and wide. In
Canada, the country whose financial well-being is most tightly tied to
trade with the U.S., there wouldn't be a single region or industry left
untouched by a fiscal shock south of the border.

It's the looming presence of this potential crisis that brings Walker to
this office every day, through the doorway with the words "Honesty
Accountability Reliability" inscribed above, in hopes that someone will
listen and take up the challenge before it's too late. "The sooner we
start fixing this, the better," he says, "because right now the miracle of
compounding is working against us. Debt on debt is not good. We have to
first stop digging, and then figure out how we're going to fill the hole."
........

The United States is the world's best customer. It buys far more from
foreign countries than it sells to them, resulting in a sizeable trade
deficit. It also spends more on public programs than it collects in tax
revenues. And to pay for all these outlays, the U.S. must attract
mountains of foreign capital each year, which essentially amounts to
borrowing from foreign governments and investors. This is commonly
referred to as the current accounts deficit -- which was running at US$665
billion last year.

Those foreign countries don't lend out of the goodness of their hearts; for
the most part they lend because the U.S. uses that money to buy goods from
them and other nations.
..........

"You've got all the ingredients for a pretty spectacular crash that a
country as rich as the U.S. should just never be even close to flirting
with," says Josh Bivens, an economist with the non-partisan Economic
Policy Institute in D.C. "Another six or seven years along this path and I
think we'll really be flirting with it. It's rather insane."

And this insane behaviour is a huge problem for everyone else because of
America's importance to the world economy. Literally millions of workers in
Canada, the U.K., Germany, Japan and elsewhere are directly or indirectly
reliant on a healthy U.S. market for their jobs. "If suddenly Americans
were unable to buy those goods from those countries, the countries would
have to very quickly figure out how to keep their people employed," Bivens
explains. Accordingly, most economists agree that a severe downturn in the
United States would drag the rest of the world down with it. "If a country
as big as the U.S. gets sick, everybody's gonna get sick," says Bivens.
............

The full article can be obtained from
www.macleans.ca/topstories/world/article.jsp?content=20050307_101541_101541

People's News Agency (PNA) - is a service of Proutist Universal
Support for this service is welcomed and can be sent to Proutist Universal
P. O. Box 984, Nelson, New Zealand.
www.proutworld.org www.prout.org www.worldproutassembly.org

MP my man

You recently asked my opinion about the ban on n-propelled vessels
in NZ waters. My brief response was that I saw no reason to change the
policy. I confessed my bias, as instigator of the policy.

The attached may be of some interest in several ways.

One aspect is the embarrassing public defection of long-time
antinuclear activist Owen Wilkes. This remains unexplained; certainly, the
excuses he stated at the time were rubbish. If you happen upon any clue,
please let me know!

I hope you will urgently procure written confirmation from the USA
embassy of that statement to Dr Hoadley's research student that attack subs
are no longer to enter foreign ports.

Regarding naval n-weapons, it is relatively easy to believe that
USN ships no longer carry routinely, if ever, that array of surface-to-air
A-bombs which were always of little or no military use (because letting one
off will destroy by EMP the modern electronics of the fleet you're trying
to protect). It is much harder to believe that (especially near N. Korea)
they never carry n-warhead cruise missiles, or the good old n-depthcharges
which even the RN did admit to have some potential use for protecting
capital ships from subs.

cheers

R

AN OLD ANTI-NUKE'S PERSPECTIVE ON THE POLITTEE
(University of Auckland Centre for Peace Studies seminar July 3 1993
- which R E White now denies he organised)

Robert Mann

Introduction

Some of the older hands in the NZ anti-nuclear movement boycotted the Polittee, Poletti's special political committee on nuclear propulsion: we declined to make submissions to it. Our main reasons were as follows.

(1) There was (and there still is) no need whatever to review the matter; to insist on doing so is a cynical distraction and a waste of public resources.

(2) The review was presumably at foreign (USA) initiative.

(3) Prime Minister Bolger rejected the request by NZ's main environmental groups to include at least one anti-nuclear scientist on the committee.

(4) The inclusion of Prof. Alan Poletti, who had taken a position of vigorous public advocacy that n-ships are OK, therefore constituted a deliberate bias in the committee.

Such a biased exercise does not deserve the legitimising participation of anti-nuclear experts, or non-experts for that matter. It should have been ignored. The tiny turnout for this seminar may indicate that others have come, belatedly, to see this basic truth.

What I have heard of the Polittee's behaviour toward those naïve hopefuls who appeared before it in person compounds the above already crippling drawbacks.

On several other levels the Polittee is unsatisfactory and should be boycotted - with its ancillaries, of which this seminar is one. I am therefore not bothering to prepare what I would in the past have provided - a fully-referenced text. In any case that is presumably not needed, because a foreigner has appointed himself to convene an alternative committee on the subject, chosen (he says) for maximum expertise.

The refusals by 3/4 of the Polittee members to discuss their report by participating in this seminar should prompt to reconsideration any who still think it was a scientific, rather than a political, exercise. A further sign was the Polittee's listing, as if a reference, my most recent writing (with Dr Wills) on the subject while refusing to allude to any substantive scientific content of that article. Scientific reports do not list "reference"s while not referring to them.

A thorough scientific investigation of the purported subject would also have mentioned such authors as R E Webb (one of the few PhDs in nuclear engineering to have 'blown the whistle'); R Pollard (a retired submarine reactor operator now employed by the Union of Concerned Scientists); and the Committee for Nuclear Responsibility, led by Prof. John Gofman, a leading source of careful science regarding radiation risks. Some or all of those should also have been visited during the Polittee's overseas tour, which was instead predictably unbalanced.

Major Hazards

(At the seminar I outlined, from notes, the peculiar history of NZ arguments about them. This is not the place to detail those fascinating if sordid matters.)

Here I merely sketch mainstream understanding of the hazards and corresponding risks of marine propulsion reactors. This is an expanded version of a summary requested Oct '91 by Prof Peter Lorimer for SANA to use in revising their Fact Sheet, the first edition of which I had also drafted.

Nuclear fission reactors are used by several governments to propel submarines, and a few ships. All are military - experiments with nuclear-propelled freighters (USA, Japan, W. Germany) have proved costly failures.

Marine propulsion reactors are only 1/100 - 1/10 the rated power of typical nuclear power-station reactors. Nevertheless, they are capable of melting themselves in the event of various operator errors, materials failures, or sabotage. In the unlikely event of a meltdown, harbour water will be seriously contaminated for at least a year. The Polittee's marine biologist, who now refuses to discuss the science involved, bought a "new kitchen" with $700/day 'earned' from remarkably little contribution regarding marine radiobiology.

The distribution of radioactive material between air and water will depend on the mode of failure. I remind you that the reactor runs at about one ton weight per square inch, i.e. about 160 atm. Pollard has pointed out that brief excursions into overpressure are a real fear during startup. Neutron embrittlement of the pressure-vessel walls is an acknowledged problem, a main reason why the reactor pressure-vessel can burst, or blow off its lid. In such case the boat's hull will be ripped open by the flying fragments, and the proportion of the core material which is sent skyward may be relatively large. If the core-melt is initiated by a leak in the reactor's primary cooling system (a contingency against which, as the Polittee misrepresented, the marine reactors have no emergency core-cooling system corresponding to those on typical modern nuclear power stations), the fuel may melt its way down through the bottom of the hull. The Polittee quietly evaded the question of melt-thru, scarcely elaborating (p.51) on the old Ministry of Defence claim that a molten reactor will not do so. When the white-hot tons of material meet the sea, there may ensue a steam explosion such as has been recorded from accidents at metal foundries; but on the other hand the bulk of the debris may just be relatively quietly dispersed into the sea.

In any case, some airborne radioactive debris will fall out downwind; if the fraction airborne of the emitted materials is about 1/2, this could (depending on the state of the weather at the time) render much of Auckland or Wellington uninhabitable for decades. The amount of accumulated radioactive materials in such a reactor is smaller than that in a power station, but the proximity to people, if the vessel is in a harbour such as Auckland or Wellington, outweighs that factor with respect to attempted evacuation. The Polittee's assertion that only half-a-dozen could be killed relies on pretending that only a tiny fraction, represented by 10-5 of the radioiodine inventory, could be released. This write-down by 4 orders of magnitude is unjustifiable and misleading. The NZ government's so-called 'code' for nuclear-powered shipping was bad enough in this regard, but the Polittee has been emboldened to go even further! The USSR emergency plan for Murmansk appears to be based on a much more realistic assumption about this 'source term' and envisages scores of thousands of people potentially exposed to serious radiation doses.

No official NZ scientific study has been published of the possible scope for harm. Independent scientists have calculated that evacuation could be required 20km (or more) downwind - not a mere 0.6 km as claimed by NZ pro-nuclear publicists based in the NZ National Radiation Lab (NRL). To accomplish evacuation in the short time available is so extremely difficult as to be, for most of the city's people, impossible. No effective treatment exists for the most of the cancers, mutations and malformations which would be then expected over ensuing decades. Modelling the dispersal downwind is done with minimal scope for scientific dispute by using the model of the Rasmussen report as revised by J. Beyea at Princeton. This represents the mainstream of such applied maths. However, the Polittee did not refer to this approach1, but preferred a novel model created in apparent isolation by Smyth of the NRL (an organisation with a consistent history of apologetics for the nuclear industry). Smyth's novel, untested model postulates a "drop-kick" effect whereby thermal lofting prevents significant fallout within a zone of many km downwind. This may be one possible outcome, but by no means representative of the more plausible range of fallout patterns.

Writing-down the hazard (the scope for harm) is only one of the biased policies of groups such as the Polittee. The probability of severe mishap is also written-down far beyond what science can justify. The Port of London refused admission to the German nuclear-powered freighter Otto Hahn for lack of adequate insurance. To that authority at least, as later to the NZ democratic process, the risk (i.e. the probability) of a major mishap was not negligible.

The only plausible estimate of this probability is readily formed, as an approximate upper limit: about 6,000 reactor-years of operating experience with marine propulsion pressurised-water reactors is known to have produced one meltdown. (The CIA has reported that the USSR nuclear-powered icebreaker Lenin suffered a reactor meltdown. This is also stated in Zh. Medvedev's 1990 book 'The Legacy of Chernobyl', which the Polittee lists as a reference; but their dismissal of the meltdown {p.55} does not mention that evidence.) This permits the inference that the risk of a meltdown in future is unlikely to be much larger than one in 6,000 per reactor-year. The Polittee writes down this figure also by 4 magnitudes (or more, depending on which of their suggestions you take; my favourite is "lower than any number I could put my confidence on").

The Polittee's leader on risk, Prof. Elms, adopted without discussion the language-tampering of the USAEC's Rasmussen Report, misusing the word risk to mean the product of probability and consequences, which is properly called instead the expected loss value. This multiplication corresponds to no reality and is to be deprecated; and the word risk should not be hijacked for the purpose of such confusion. Suppose a recalculation of hazard led us to expect, say, one order of magnitude more damage. Would this worse hazard be completely compensated, for planning purposes, if the probability could be written down by one more order of magnitude? Even if the probabilities were calculable with any useful accuracy, which they are not, this phoney 'compensation' must be rejected.

Instead, planning should concentrate on disaster-prevention.

Minor Hazards

Auckland Harbour Board management led by Mr Lorimer in the late '70s opposed nuclear visits because of interference with normal port operations.

Routine radioactivity releases are very much smaller than the possible catastrophes, but are not easily monitored and have been the subject of systematic forgeries in Japan.

One hazard created by the Polittee is little known but could even have been listed as 'major': the recent request to Poletti by a government agency to compile (as if $700/day had been insufficient) a wish-list of what would be needed as infrastructure for New Zealand to move into the modern nuclear era: take care of not only nuclear shipping but also nuclear power stations and various other aspects of the nuclear industry. The NRL, with which Prof. Poletti has been closely involved, would of course expand enormously in the implementation of such a deluded warped vision for our land. Whatever the motives of the government in attempting some costings for a nuclear New Zealand, they are misguided and should be refused academic co-operation.

Conclusion

The point is that any further detailed discussion of this topic is, like the Polittee itself, superfluous - a wasteful distraction. Our country has, by a uniquely participatory process, evolved a democratic policy, and a law to give it expression, to exclude not only nuclear power stations but also marine reactors, as stated by the then largest petition to the NZ parliament (in 1976 - 1/3 million). There is, as I began by pointing out, no reason to reconsider this policy.

[bio note if wanted] Dr Mann taught biochemistry, environmental studies, and planning in the University of Auckland for two decades. He is now an inventor of appropriate technology, and writer.
----

(9) 524 2949
25 June 92

Owen Wilkes
P O Box 9314
Wellington

Dear Owen,

It was good to hear from you, at last, today. The matters I wish to pursue with you are partly general and partly personal.

Your 'standard handout' had already reached me - but only because Peter Wills was good enough to give me a copy. Your failure to do so much earlier was for reasons entirely unclear to me, and is unfortunately consistent with your classifying me as "on the fringes of the peace movement" and with your failure to mention our BAS paper in your revision for Peacelink. Have you any conscious basis for the attitude thus glimpsed? I can certainly assure you that no mirror-image attitude exists in me - which is why your extraordinary public utterances on the risks of n-ships particularly distressed me (beyond what their ignorant content would, regardless of author).

I can't "notice the excellent editorial which the Waikato Times did", because I've never seen it; but would of course be very glad to do so, partly to assess whether I should "take some of the credit".

In answer to your question, 80MW results from dividing a typical n-sub shaft power by the efficiency of typical steam turbines. What is wrong with you, that you babble about "electrical" ? - not impressive from one who makes the bold claim to have done more work on this issue than anyone else! At this rate you'll be reinforcing the actor Holmes® in his promulgation of the claim that we can add 70 - 100MW or more to our grid by hooking in a n-sub parked at a Wgton or Auckland wharf. The total electrical power generated on any of these vessels must be at most a few MW (except for the turbo-electric Lenin - which reminds me, why don't you count its major mishap in your impression of "safety"?).

If you are implying that one needs documented evidence for the inference that the Polittee was created at foreign instigation, you're being too sceptical. In the absence of any politically significant NZ initiative, the circumstantial evidence will serve.

If you had told me Poletti was bad, I'd have taken your word. He is much worse than I'd indicated to you. If you want details, I'll tell you next time I see you; as with the details of the technical matters on which you've revealed such surprising ignorance, I don't see why I should write a small book just for you when you've overlooked what has already been written.

Pat Helms I know nothing of.

Your own writing should reveal to you worrying aspects of your thinking and actions. You say on the one hand "Safety is not the issue" and then, assuming very plausibly that the report of the Polittee will be as implied by their biased public utterances so far, "the report will be very useful for the US in other parts of the world". Can't you see that the predictable help you've given them was unnecessary??! Your "little intervention" could not possibly have made the issue of n-ship hazards go away, and if you at any stage thought it would then I must conclude that your mental functioning was startlingly defective; I can only hope it isn't still.

If you go on calling idiots those who oppose letting n-ships in because they're not safe, you will at last overtax the tolerance of such as myself. The only reason I've not called you out publicly on your blunder is that I assumed you were undergoing some temporary stress (as is indeed hinted at by your handout, esp. para 2 p2).

I do not accept that "the nuke power establishment is now going to enormously greater lengths to keep it all safe", with respect to major mishaps as opposed to relatively small quasi-routine releases; and even if they were, I do not accept that their efforts could make a crucial difference. You assert "they have got the risks and hazards to way below what we happily put up with . . ."; what shred of evidence have you for decreased hazards?

You say "the risks in fact are so small that the consequences become negligible". This is a preposterous statement, and coming from you it is very worrying. The prospective damage from a major reactor mishap cannot become acceptable. The most "they" could do is to decrease the risk, i.e. probability; but when much of this island becomes uninhabitable (which a power station could do - as has been clear since WASH-740), the victims will not be helped by the prior claims of low risk. Your acceptance of the demonic "arithmetic" (as you wrongly call it) of discounting huge consequences through multiplying them by the alleged small probability shows that you are not familiar with the leading analysts in this field.

It is good to learn that you've more recently been doing a lot more reading up on the "safety" issue, because you certainly needed to. Your outburst revealed almost total ignorance of the relevant reasoning. (The actual arithmetic is not essentially complex.)

The claim that only 1% of naval meltdowns will breach containment completely has no standing amongst respectable analysts. You are not entitled to use it as though fact, nor even as though Peter had analysed & endorsed it. Your misbehaviour in so doing is exactly like that of a biased pro-nuclear activist. If you want to begin to understand the question, contemplate the sensible heat in the molten reactor remains, and see if you can figure out whether that white-hot gob will melt its way through the bottom of the boat. (During the big n-ship controversy of the late 70s, the Minister of Defence assured the Devonport Council in writing that it won't.) Also, we don't know what fraction of meltdowns will be preceded by catastrophic pressure-vessel rupture, the fragments from which will have breached "containment" (the very use of that word for naval reactors is itself something of a deceit).

How you can say the naval reactors are "safe" but not form any judgement on the power stations is quite some puzzle. The power stations at least don't use high-enriched fuel capable of a nuclear explosion, and they mostly have containment buildings which will decrease the hazard in many mishaps (though not all). Why so shy on this category while so bold on the other ? In my opinion the differences are of largely unknown magnitude yet minor significance because fission reactors (beyond, say, TRIGA) are all too dangerous. 0.1 or 3 GW are all far too big.

Having successfully advocated a Royal Commission on Nuclear Power, and read an enormous amount around that time, I suggest you peruse that yard of paper, and a few of its refs, before you speak out again as an apologist for such a hazardous technology.

Sometimes we just need to be reminded!

A well-known speaker started off his seminar by holding up a $20 bill.

In the room of 200, he asked, "Who would like this $20 bill?"

Hands started going up.

He said, "I am going to give this $20 to one of you ; but first, let me do
this.

He proceeded to crumple up the $20 dollar bill.

He then asked, "Who still wants it?"

Still the hands were up in the air.

Well, he replied, "What if I do this?"

And he dropped it on the ground and started to grind it into the
floor with his shoe.

He picked it up, now crumpled and dirty.
"Now, who still wants it?"
Still the hands went into the air.

"My friends, we have all learned a very valuable lesson.
No matter what I did to the money, you still wanted it because it did
not decrease in value.

It was still worth $20.

Many times in our lives, we are dropped, crumpled, and ground into the
dirt by the decisions we make and the circumstances that come our way.
We feel as though we are worthless.

But no matter what has happened or what will happen, you will never
lose your value.

Dirty or clean, crumpled or finely creased, you are still priceless
to those who DO LOVE you. The worth of our lives comes not in what we
do or who we know, but by WHO WE ARE.

You are special - Don't EVER forget it."

If you do not pass this on, you may never know the lives it touches, the
hurting hearts it speaks to, or the hope that it can bring.

Count your blessings, not your problems.
And remember: amateurs built the ark ...
professionals built the Titanic.

If God brings you to it - He will bring you through it.

Bill Would Bar Obesity Lawsuits

As your attorney, I advise you to lay off those french fries.


Bill Would Bar Obesity Lawsuits

April 14, 2005 — By R.A. Dyer, Fort Worth Star-Telegram
AUSTIN — As your attorney, I advise you to lay off those french fries.

That's the message from state Rep. Corbin Van Arsdale, a Houston-area lawmaker who has drafted legislation that will bar lawyers (and their fast-food loving clients) from winning legal judgments because they get fat.

"This basically is supposed to shield folks who sell food, or raise animals that are made into food ... from having to defend themselves against lawsuits ... over obesity claims from over-eating," said Van Arsdale, R-Tomball.

In other words, if you eat too much fast food and get fat -- don't bother suing McDonalds over it. Van Arsdale's legislation will protect fast-food restaurants, farming interests and grocery stores from liability in such cases.

The measure, House Bill 107, is pending in the House Civil Practices Committee. About 15 other states have passed similar bills.

To see more of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.dfw.com. Copyright (c) 2005, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

A U.S. businessman friend of mine reacted to that latest raft of
RSNZ teasers with the following imaginative futuristic version.

*Items Web-mounted on Wednesday, April 13, 2025****


1. Researchers have found that the major conversion to meat and milk from
cloned animals has caused premature aging in human consumers.

IT proprietors AgResearch® deny causal involvement, liability.

2. Severe diarrhea continues to plague the billion urban Chinese and ALL
exports of food products have been banned.

Japanese biotech corporation Showa Denko has denied that one of its
gene-gentled bacteria which had gotten loose is causing the debilitating
condition. Pres. Chaney has announced a multi-billion-dollar USAID
contract granted to private corporation Bechtel of San Francisco to expand
Chinese cities' sewage plants.

3. Another biohazard quarantine has been placed on New Zealand owing to
unmonitored mutant virus from research labs there.

IT proprietors AgResearch® deny causal involvement, liability.

4. Mutations of Ebola virus, designated Ebola-8e, are responsible for the
pandemic spreading across the European continent.

The Wistar Institute of Philadelphia, accused by fringe groups such
as Greepneace of creating the mutant virus, has not only denied causal
involvement, liability but also been given a multi-billion-dollar contract
to research treatments for the promptly lethal viral infection.

5. Embryonic stem cell harvesting has hit an estimated US$15 Billion on
the black market and shows no sign of abating.

California citizens' initiative 10632 will give voters at the next
election the option of withdrawing the subsidies to this trade begun by a
deceptive Citizens' Initiative in 2004.

6. Since the incubation period of Mad Cow disease can take 10-25 years,
the heretofore denial of the existence of Mad Cow disease in the U.S.A. has
hit home with over 25,000 reported cases in the first six months of 2025
alone.

GM-cows resistant to prion diseases are to be developed by a
multi-billion-dollar contract from the USA FDA to GM-aces AgResearch® of
New Zealand on a further grant from the NZ Govt. Asked by reporters
whether they admitted causal involvement in the USA epidemic, AgResearch®
PR operatives declined to comment, saying this information is commercially
sensitive.

7. A GM-soybean developed to grow hair has "accidentally" been introduced
in the school lunch program. It is reported that third- and
fourth-graders have been growing copious body hair. GM conglomerate
SynAgGenVentria® deny causal involvement, liability; may fund research on
psychological advantages of the hirsudity.

8. A Caucasian genetic researcher has traced his ancestry to a black
Nigerian family.

"Those mid-C20 Germans may have indicated unworkability of the
concept 'race' as a basis for politics", said a USFDA official who did not
wish to be named.

9. Nanites have established a beachhead in the Antarctic where it was
thought they could be safely contained.

The "nucular" option is being considered, according to a source
close to Pres. Chaney. Prompted with the "I told you so" reaction, King
Charles III declined to comment.

The Evangelical Scandal
Ron Sider says the movement is riddled with hypocrisy, and that it's time for serious change.
Interview by Stan Guthrie | posted 04/13/2005

Ron Sider has been a burr in the ethical saddle of the evangelical world for decades. His 1977 book, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, took fellow believers to task for materialism in the face of desperate global needs. Sider, who is professor of theology, holistic ministry, and public policy at Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary, has just released a new jeremiad: The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience (Baker Books, 2005). In it, Sider plays off Mark Noll's critique of American evangelicalism's anti-intellectualism in The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. Sider says the current crisis encompasses both mind and heart. Stan Guthrie, Christianity Today's senior associate news editor, interviewed Sider.

What troubles you the most about evangelicals today?

The heart of the matter is the scandalous failure to live what we preach. The tragedy is that poll after poll by Gallup and Barna show that evangelicals live just like the world. Contrast that with what the New Testament says about what happens when people come to living faith in Christ. There's supposed to be radical transformation in the power of the Holy Spirit. The disconnect between our biblical beliefs and our practice is just, I think, heart-rending.

I'm a deeply committed evangelical. I've been committed to evangelical beliefs and to renewing the evangelical church all of my life. And the stats just break my heart. They make me weep. And somehow we must face that reality and change it.

You have often spoken about evangelical failures in society, for example, in Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. This latest critique covers not only social justice issues but also issues of personal morality. Was that intentional?

I've always been concerned with a whole range of biblical things. My commitment is to be biblically faithful, not to pick out one issue. But a good bit of my writing has dealt with the social issues that have called evangelicals to be more engaged, for example, with questions of poverty here and abroad. But you're right. This book is talking about a range of things that we evangelicals all agree are biblical demands.

Evangelical Christians and born-again Christians get divorced just as often, if not a little more, than the general population. And Barna has discovered that 90 percent of the born-again Christians who are divorced got divorced after they accepted Christ. On sexual promiscuity, we're probably doing a little better than the general population. Josh McDowell has estimated that maybe our evangelical youth are 10 percent better, Lord help us.

So at least it's a measurable difference.

Well it is measurable, although there's not so much hard [data] on that question as with some of the others. John Green, one of the best evangelical pollsters, says that about a third of all evangelicals say that premarital sex is okay. And about 15 percent say that adultery is okay.

Take the issue of racism. A Gallup study discovered that when they asked the question, "Do you object if a black neighbor moves in next door?" the least prejudiced were Catholics and non-evangelicals. The next group, in terms of prejudice, was mainline Protestants. Evangelicals and Southern Baptists were the worst.

Several studies find that physical and sexual abuse in theologically conservative homes is about the same as elsewhere. A large study of the Christian Reformed Church, a member of the nae, discovered that the frequency of physical and sexual abuse in this evangelical denomination was about the same as in the general population. One recent study, though, suggests that evangelical men who attend church regularly are less likely than the general population to commit domestic violence.

Materialism continues to be an incredible scandal. The average church member [from across the denominations] today gives about 2.6 percent of his or her incomeóa quarter of a titheóto the church. Evangelicals used to be quite a lot better [in giving] than mainline denominations. But their giving has declined every year for several decades, and they're now getting very close to the norm. The average evangelical giving is about 4.2 percentóabout two-fifths of a tithe.

Six percent of the "born-again" people tithe; nine percent of evangelicals do. Our income has gone up fabulously over the last 30-plus years. The average household income now in the U.S. is $42,000-plus. If the average American Christian tithed, we'd have another $143 billion.

In an era in which people holding to traditional values appear to be returning to center stage in politics, your book says that all is not well with our day-to-day choices in the private realm. In effect, you're accusing evangelicals of hypocrisy. Is that a fair conclusion?

I'm not doing that gladly. I'm doing that with tears in my eyes. We have to face the reality. It strikes me as being incredibly tragic and, yes, hypocritical for the evidence to show that precisely at a time when evangelicals have more political power to raise the issue of moral values in this society than they've had in a long time, the hard statistics on their own living show that they don't live what they're talking about. And sure, I'm afraid that's hypocrisy. So we have to set our own house in order before we're going to have either any integrity or any effectiveness in terms of helping the larger society recover wholesome two-parent families.

Has there ever been a time when the typical church has lived out the faith much better than now? Some might argue that this is just the nature of a sinful church before the Second Coming.

We don't have polling data from the 1860s or the 1700s, so it's hard to answer that question with precision. But as we look back over church history, we see that there has been ebb and flow, and that at times the church was especially unfaithful and full of disobedience and hypocrisy. At other times there was powerful renewal, and large groups of Christians were wonderfully transformed. There are stories from the Welsh Revival in which the prisons were essentially empty and not too many people went to pubs because there had been a radical transformation of large numbers of people.

To what historical era would you compare our own time?

If the question is evangelical obedience, then we're certainly not in a time of revival.

How do we turn the ship around?

We need to rethink our theology. We need to ask, "Are we really biblical?" Cheap grace is right at the core of the problem. Cheap grace results when we reduce the gospel to forgiveness of sins only; when we limit salvation to personal fire insurance against hell; when we misunderstand persons as primarily souls; when we at best grasp only half of what the Bible says about sin; when we embrace the individualism and materialism and relativism of our current culture. We also lack a biblical understanding and practice of the church.

I would think that evangelicals would want to get biblical and define the gospel the way Jesus didówhich is that it's the Good News of the kingdom. Then we see that it means that the way to get into this kingdom is through unconditional grace because Jesus died for us. But it also means there's now a new kingdom community of Jesus' disciples, and that embracing Jesus means not just getting fire insurance so that one doesn't go to hell, but it means embracing Jesus as Lord as well as Savior. And it means beginning to live as a part of his new community where everything is being transformed.

You're pinning at least a good chunk of the blame on American individualism.

There's no question that that's at the core of it. We tend to reduce salvation to just forgiveness of sins. And in the New Testament, salvation means that, thank God, but it also means the new transformed life that's possible in the power of the Spirit. And it means the new communal existence of the body of believers.
One of my favorite examples is the story of Zacchaeus. He is involved in social sin as a wicked tax collector. When he comes to Jesus, he gives away half his goods and pays back everything that he's taken wrongly. Jesus says at the end of the story, "Today salvation has come to this house." There's not a word in the text about forgiveness of sins. Now, I'm sure Jesus forgave the rascal's sins; he clearly needed it. But what the text talks about is the new transformed economic relationships that happen when Zacchaeus comes to Jesus.

Salvation is a lot more than just a new right relationship with God through forgiveness of sins. It's a new, transformed lifestyle that you can see visible in the body of believers.

Obviously to be a disciple means there's discipline. Do you see the neglect of church discipline in our day as a factor in this moral crisis?

It's part of the larger question of recovering the New Testament understanding of the church. This culture is radically individualistic and relativistic. Whatever feels right for me is right for me; whatever feels right to you is right for you. That's the dominant value. It's considered outrageous for somebody to say somebody else is wrong.

But historic biblical faith understood the church as a new community. The basic New Testament images of the church are of the body of Christ, the people of God, and the family of God. All these stress the fact that we're talking about a new communityóa new, visible social order. That new community in the New Testament was living so differently from the world that people would say, "Wow, what's going on here?" Jews were accepting Gentiles. The rich were accepting the poor and sharing with the poor. Men were accepting women as equals. It just astonished people because the church was so different from the world. It was countercultural.

Furthermore, [the New Testament church] understood that being a member of the body of Christ meant that you were accountable to each other. If one suffered, you all suffered. If one rejoiced, you all rejoiced. There was dramatic economic sharing in the New Testament, and there was church discipline. Jesus talked explicitly about church discipline in Matthew 18. Paul clearly had his churches live that out. All of the great traditions at the core of American evangelicalism, whether the Reformed tradition, the Wesleyan Methodist tradition, or the Anabaptist tradition, understood church discipline when they were strong and thriving. But very few evangelical churches these days have any serious appropriation and practice of church discipline.

Isn't that at least in part because church discipline has been abused or become legalistic and mean-spirited?

Sure, that's a part of it. But we don't give up on marriage just because a lot of people have messed it up so badly. And we shouldn't give up on church discipline just because we've so often done it in a legalistic way. We have to recover the New Testament understanding. John Wesley put it wonderfully when he said church discipline is watching over one another in love.

Today, when so many congregations are abandoning biblical truth, you say in the book that all congregations need to be connected to a denomination. Are you serious?

Absolutely. It's simply wrong for a local congregation to have no accountability to a larger body. Now I'm not saying it has to be one of the current denominations. There can be new structures of accountability. Any congregations that feel they must break away from older denominations that are no longer faithful theologically or in terms of moral practice should be a part of some new denominational, organizational structure so they're not isolated lone rangers.

They need to have a larger structure of accountability. It is flatly unbiblical and heretical for an individual congregation to say, "We'll just be by ourselves and not be accountable to anybody."

What is the church doing right?

The small-group movement is a hopeful sign. One of the most important ways we develop mutual accountability in the local congregation is through small groups. It's almost impossible to follow Jesus either in [matters of] sex and marriage or in money and helping the poor by yourself. You need the strong support of brothers and sisters. While the whole congregation should be like that, we need small groups to struggle with the specifics and talk about our struggles and get encouragement and prayer support. I wish every person in all of our churches with more than 50 members were in a small group.

What other things are contemporary evangelicals doing well?

Over the last 30 years, we've made significant progress in understanding that the mission of the church is both to do evangelism and to do social ministry. There's also growing understanding that we can't have a one-issue agenda as we get involved in public life. The recent National Association of Evangelicals declaration, "For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility," explicitly rejects one-issue politics and says faithful evangelical political engagement will be based on a biblically balanced agenda. That means, yes, by all means, a concern with the sanctity of human life and with the renewal of the family. But it will also mean a concern for justice for the poor. It will mean concern for creation care, for human rights, and for peacemaking. We simply can't allow right-wing or left-wing politics to provide the political agenda.

What areas are you personally working on?

Over the years I've needed to continue to work at making sure that my personal spiritual life is solid in terms of time for prayer and devotions regularly. That continues to be an ongoing challenge. I really, passionately want every corner of my life to be submitted to Jesus Christ and biblical truth. Living that out in terms of my money continues to be a challenge. Nothing is easy. But if we make that our resolve and ask the Spirit to transform us, I think wonderful things can happen.

Are you hopeful about the matters that you've written about? Or are you ready to give up?

I'm personally, by nature, something of an optimist. That may not come through clearly in this book, but I think it's true. I'm genuinely enthusiastic by the renewal of the evangelical world in the last 50 years. It's been a tremendous movement of change and growth since Carl Henry wrote The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. There has been fabulous growth of evangelical colleges and seminaries, evangelical scholarship, evangelical churches. I pointed to the way that we've grown, I think, in understanding the mission of the church as being both evangelism and social ministry.

We've grown certainly in the number of evangelical agencies working with the poor. Fifty years ago World Vision was a Korean orphan's choir. Now it's a huge agency, and there are dozens of other evangelical multi-million-dollar relief-and-development agencies.

On some days I'm discouraged, and other days I think, Wow, the next few decades could be just fabulous. But what I'm sure about is that we won't get close to the promise and the fulfillment of what's possible unless we face head-on the scandalous way that we're currently not living what we're preaching.

Is it going to be the end of the evangelical movement if we don't do something about these problems?

The Lord doesn't take hypocrisy and disobedience lightly. He punishes, and there's an inevitable kind of decline that sets in if you are hypocritical and don't practice what you preach. It won't happen instantly; our institutions are strong. But over a period of time it certainly will mean major decline.

I find it incredibly ironic that in the last few months, the importance of political life nurturing moral values and wholesome families and so on is center stage. And then you have this astonishing data that evangelicals live just like the world in terms of divorce. And it's incredibly ironic that one of the issuesóand one I agree vigorously withóis concerned with how public life affects marriage. I'm in favor of the marriage amendment. But at precisely a point in time when our political rhetoric as evangelicals has focused on that, we have to face the fact that we're not any different from the world. And that's just incredible hypocrisy and it undercuts our message to the larger society in a terrible way.

Copyright © 2005 Christianity Today.

This immaculate note from the consistently correct Jim Diamond M.D
is exactly along the lines - esp the final sentence - propounded for the
past half-decade by my colleagues studying the Showa Denko EMS disaster.

R

Monsanto and other ag industry players and their apologists say
that GE foods have been extensively tested, found by the FDA to pose no
dangers to human health, and that years of use in the U.S.A. are an
additional proof of safety.

Against this claim, it's informative to note how many deaths piled up
before the painkiller Vioxx was taken off the market by Merck. To quote,

"Last year, the FDA belatedly faced up to research showing that the
painkiller Vioxx, which it approved in 1999, markedly increases the risk of
heart attacks and strokes. It has been estimated that more than 25,000
people died before Merck pulled the drug from the market in September."

An editorial in Nature comments on how inadequate post-marketing
surveillance is. Under the title, "Drug safety on trial" this leading
science journal starts off by saying:

"The current US system for checking the safety of drugs already on
the market is toothless. Why isn't the government doing more to strengthen
it?

A revealing notice appeared last month in the Federal Register,
the US government compendium of agency rules and notices. The Food and
Drug Administration (FDA) was reporting on compliance by pharmaceutical
companies with its requests for studies of the clinical safety and efficacy
of drugs already on the market. Of nearly 1,200 such studies committed to
by drug firms but not completed, some 70% have yet to begin."

It goes on to say that, ". . . the FDA depends on companies for
post-market safety studies but has no legal authority to force firms to do
them."

The full article (subscription required) is online at
http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v434/n7033/full/
434545a_fs.html or in print in the 31March05 issue. My point in quoting it
here is to ask: if relatively straightforward bad effects like heart
attacks and deaths in the tens of thousands occurring in people who are
currently taking the drugs in question can escape detection for many years,
then how likely is it that the system would find problems associated with
unlabeled genetically engineered products, especially if they are less
dramatic than heart attacks or take longer to become manifest?

Jim Diamond, M.D.
Sierra Club Genetic Engineering Committee

LOCKHEED AND THE FUTURE OF WARFARE

TIM WEINER
New York Times
November 28, 2004

Lockheed Martin doesn't run the United States. But it does help run a
breathtakingly big part of it.

Over the last decade, Lockheed, the nation's largest military contractor,
has built a formidable information-technology empire that now stretches
from the Pentagon to the post office. It sorts your mail and totals your
taxes. It cuts Social Security checks and counts the United States census.
It runs space flights and monitors air traffic. To make all that happen,
Lockheed writes more computer code than Microsoft.

Of course, Lockheed, based in Bethesda, Maryland, is best known for its
weapons, which are the heart of America's arsenal. It builds most of the
nation's warplanes. It creates rockets for nuclear missiles, sensors for
spy satellites and scores of other military and intelligence systems. The
Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency might have difficulty
functioning without the contractor's expertise.

But in the post-9/11 world, Lockheed has become more than just the biggest
corporate cog in what Dwight D. Eisenhower called the military-industrial
complex. It is increasingly putting its stamp on the nation's military
policies, too.

Lockheed stands at "the intersection of policy and technology," and that
"is really a very interesting place to me," said its new chief executive,
Robert J. Stevens, a tightly wound former Marine. "We are deployed
entirely in developing daunting technology," he said, and that requires
"thinking through the policy dimensions of national security as well as
technological dimensions."

To critics, however, Lockheed's deep ties with the Pentagon raise some
questions. "It's impossible to tell where the government ends and Lockheed
begins," said Danielle Brian of the Project on Government Oversight, a
nonprofit group in Washington that monitors government contracts. "The fox
isn't guarding the henhouse. He lives there."

No contractor is in a better position than Lockheed to do business in
Washington. Nearly 80% of its revenue comes from the United States
government. Most of the rest comes from foreign military sales, many
financed with tax dollars. And former Lockheed executives, lobbyists and
lawyers hold crucial posts at the White House and the Pentagon, picking
weapons and setting policies.

Obviously, war and crisis have been good for business. The Pentagon's
budget for buying new weapons rose by about a third over the last three
years, to $81 billion in fiscal 2004, up from $60 billion in 2001.
Lockheed's sales also rose by about a third, to nearly $32 billion in the
2003 calendar year, from $24 billion in 2001. It was the No. 1 recipient of
Pentagon primary contracts, with $21.9 billion in fiscal 2003. Boeing had
$17.3 billion, Northrop Grumman had $11.1 billion and General Dynamics had
$8.2 billion.

Lockheed also has many tens of billions of dollars in future orders on its
books. The company's stock has tripled in the last four years, to just
under $60.

"It used to be just an airplane company," said John Pike, a longtime
military analyst and director of GlobalSecurity.org, a research
organization in Alexandria, Virginia. "Now it's a warfare company. It's an
integrated solution provider. It's a one-stop shop. Anything you need to
kill the enemy, they will sell you."

As its influence grows, Lockheed is not just seeking to solve the problems
of national security. It is framing the questions as well:

Are there too few soldiers to secure the farthest reaches of Iraq? Lockheed
is creating robot soldiers and neural software --- "intelligent agents" ---
to do their work. "We've now created policy options where you can elect to
put a human in or you can elect to put an intelligent agent in place," Mr.
Stevens said.

Are thousands of C.I.A. and Pentagon analysts drowning under a flood of
data, incapable of seeing patterns? Lockheed's "intelligence information
factory" will do their thinking for them. Mining and sifting categories of
facts --- for example, linking an adversary's movements and telephone calls
--- would "offload the mental work by making connections," said Stanton D.
Sloane, executive vice president for integrated systems and solutions at
Lockheed.

Are American soldiers hard-pressed to tell friend from foe in the crags of
Afghanistan? Lockheed is transferring spy satellite technology, created for
mapping mountain ridges, to build a mobile lab for reading fingerprints.
Lockheed executives say the mobile lab, the size of a laptop, is just the
tool for special-operations commandos. It can be loaded with the prints of
suspected terrorists, they say, and linked to the F.B.I.'s 470 million
print files. They say they think that American police departments will want
it, too.

Does the Department of Homeland Security have the best tools to protect the
nation? Lockheed has a host of military and intelligence technologies to
offer. "What they do for the military in downtown Falluja, they can do for
the police in downtown Reno," said Jondavid Black of the company's
Horizontal Integration Vision division. Lockheed is also building a huge
high-altitude airship, 25 times bigger than the Goodyear blimp, intended to
help the Pentagon with the unsolved problem of protecting the nation from
ballistic missiles. The airship, with two tons of surveillance sensors,
could be used by the Department of Homeland Security to stare down at the
United States, Lockheed officials said.

In a pilot program for the department, Lockheed has set up spy cameras and
sensors on the U.S.S. New Jersey, anchored in the Delaware River, providing
24-hour surveillance of the ports of Philadelphia and Camden, New Jersey.
The program grew out of the Aegis weapons and surveillance systems for Navy
ships, and it soon may spread throughout the United States.

The melding of military and intelligence programs, information-technology
and domestic security spending began in earnest after the September 11
attacks. Lockheed was perfectly positioned to take advantage of the shift.
When the United States government decided a decade ago to let corporate
America handle federal information technology, Lockheed leapt at the
opportunity. Its information-technology sales have quadrupled since 1995,
and, for all those years, Lockheed has been the No. 1 supplier to the
federal government, which now outsources 83% of its I.T. work.

Lockheed has taken over the job of making data flow throughout the
government, from the F.B.I.'s long-dysfunctional computer networks to the
Department of Health and Human Services system for tracking child support.
The company just won a $525 million contract to fix the Social Security
Administration's information systems. It has an $87 million contract to
make computers communicate and secrets stream throughout the Department of
Homeland Security.

On top of all that, the company is helping to rebuild the United States
Coast Guard --- a $17 billion program --- and to supply, under the Patriot
Act, biometric identity cards for six million Americans who work in
transportation.

Lockheed is also the strongest corporate force driving the Pentagon's plans
for "net-centric warfare": the big idea of fusing military, intelligence
and weapons programs through a new military Internet, called the Global
Information Grid, to give American soldiers throughout the world an instant
picture of the battlefield around them. "We want to know what's going on
anytime, anyplace on the planet," said Lorraine M. Martin, vice president
and deputy of the company's Joint Command, Control and Communications
Systems division.

Lockheed's global reach is also growing. Its "critical mass" of
salesmanship lets it "produce global products for a global marketplace,"
said Robert H. Trice Jr., the senior vice president for corporate business
development. With its dominant position in fighter jets, missiles, rockets
and other weapons, Lockheed's technology will drive the security spending
for many American allies in coming decades. Lockheed now sells aircraft and
weapons to more than 40 countries. The American taxpayer is financing many
of those sales. For example, Israel spends much of the $1.8 billion in
annual military aid from the United States to buy F-16 warplanes from
Lockheed.

Twenty-four nations are flying the F-16, or will be soon. Lockheed's
factory in Fort Worth is building ten for Chile. Oman will receive a dozen
next year. Poland will get 48 in 2006; the United States Treasury will
cover the cost through a $3.8 billion loan.

In the future, Lockheed hopes to build and sell hundreds of billions of
dollars' worth of the next generation of warplanes, the F-35, to the United
States Army, Navy and Air Force, and to dozens of United States allies.
Three years ago, Lockheed won the competition to be the prime contractor
for this aircraft, known as the Joint Strike Fighter.

The program was valued at $200 billion, the biggest Pentagon project in
history, but it may be worth more. The F-35 is in its first stages of
development in Fort Worth; its onboard computers will require 3.5 million
lines of code. Each of the American military services wants a different
version of the jet.

There have been glitches involving the weight of the craft. "We did not get
it right the first time," said Tom Burbage, a Lockheed executive vice
president working on the program. But a day will come, he said, "when
everybody's flying the F-35." Lockheed hopes to sell 4,000 or 5,000 of the
planes, with roughly half the sales to foreign nations, including those
that bought the F-16.

"It's a terrific opportunity for us," said Bob Elrod, a senior Lockheed
manager for the F-35 program. "It could be a tremendous success, at the
level of the F-16 --- 4,000-plus and growing." That would represent "world
domination" for Lockheed, he said.

In the United States, where national security spending now surpasses $500
billion a year, Lockheed's dominance is growing. Its own executives say the
concentration of power among military contractors is more intense than in
any other sector of business outside banking. Three or four major companies
--- Lockheed, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman and arguably Boeing ---
rule the industry. They often work like general contractors building
customized houses, farming out the painting, the floors and the cabinets to
smaller subcontractors and taking their own share of the money.

AND, after 9/11, cost is hardly the most important variable for Pentagon
planners. Lockheed has now won approval to build as many F-22's as
possible. The current price, $258 million apiece, easily makes the F-22 the
most expensive fighter jet in history.

Mr. Stevens, whose compensation last year as Lockheed's chief operating
officer was more than $9.5 million, says cost is essentially irrelevant
when national security is at stake. "Some folks might think, well, here's a
fighter that costs a lot," he said. "This is not a business where in the
purest economical sense there's a broad market of supply and demand and
price and value can be determined in that exchange. It's more challenging
to define its value."

Lockheed says it has transformed its corporate culture. In the 1970's, it
was discovered that the company had paid millions of dollars to foreign
officials around the world in order to sell its planes. In one case, Kakuei
Tanaka, who had been the prime minister of Japan, was convicted of
accepting bribes.

"Without Lockheed, there never would have been a Foreign Corrupt Practices
Act," said Jerome Levinson, who was the staff director of the Senate
subcommittee that uncovered the bribery.

The antibribery provisions of that law, passed in 1977, owed their
existence to the Lockheed investigation, he said. The last bribery case
involving Lockheed came a decade ago, when a Lockheed executive and the
corporation admitted paying $1.2 million in bribes to an Egyptian official
to seal the sales of three Lockheed C-130 cargo planes.

Mr. Trice, Lockheed's senior vice president for business development, says
the company cleaned up its act at home and overseas since the last of the
series of major mergers and acquisitions that gave the corporation its
present shape in March 1995. "You simply have to look people in the eye and
say 'we don't do business that way,' " he said.

There really is no need to do business that way any more --- not in a world
where so much of Lockheed's wealth flows directly from the Treasury, where
competition for foreign markets is both controlled and subsidized by the
White House and Congress, and where Lockheed's influence runs so deep. Men
who have worked, lobbied and lawyered for Lockheed hold the posts of
secretary of the Navy, secretary of transportation, director of the
national nuclear weapons complex and director of the national spy satellite
agency. The list also includes Stephen J. Hadley, who has been named the
next national security adviser to the president, succeeding Condoleezza
Rice.

Former Lockheed executives serve on the Defense Policy Board, the Defense
Science Board and the Homeland Security Advisory Council, which help make
military and intelligence policy and pick weapons for future battles.
Lockheed's board includes E. C. Aldridge Jr., who, as the Pentagon's chief
weapons buyer, gave the go-ahead to build the F-22.

None of those posts and positions violate the Pentagon's rules about the
"revolving door" between industry and government. Lockheed has stayed clear
of the kind of conflict-of-interest cases that have afflicted its
competitor, Boeing, and the Air Force in recent months.

"We need to be politically aware and astute," Mr. Stevens said. "We work
with the Congress. We work with the executive branch." In these dialogues,
he said, Lockheed's end of the conversation is "saying we think this is
feasible, we think this is possible, we think we might have invented a new
approach."

Lockheed makes about $1 million a year in campaign contributions through
political action committees, singling out members of the Congressional
committees controlling the Pentagon's budget, and spends many millions more
on lobbying. Political stalwarts who have lobbied for Lockheed at one point
or another include Haley Barbour, the governor of Mississippi and a former
Republican national chairman; Otto Reich, who persuaded Congress to sell
F-16's to Chile before becoming President Bush's main Latin America policy
aide in 2002; and Norman Y. Mineta, the transportation secretary and former
member of Congress.

Its connections give Lockheed a "tremendous opportunity to influence
contracts flowing to the company," said Ms. Brian of the Project on
Government Oversight. "More subtly valuable is the ability of the company
to benefit from their eyes and ears inside the government, to know what's
on the horizon, what are the best bets for the government's future
technology needs."

SO who serves as the overseer for the biggest military contractors and
their costly weapons? Usually, the customer itself: the Pentagon.

"These programs are huge," said Dov S. Zakheim, the Pentagon's comptroller
and chief financial officer for the last three years, who recently joined
Booz Allen Hamilton, the consulting firm. "There is a historical tendency
to underestimate their test schedules, their technological hurdles, the
likely weight of an airplane and, as a result, to underestimate costs.

"Because you have so few contractors, you don't get the level of attention
that the average citizen would think would be devoted to a program costing
billions of dollars," he said. "With this massive agglomeration into a very
small number of companies, you get far less visibility as to whether the
subcontractors are effectively managed. Problems accumulate."

"Twenty years ago, the complaint was, it takes so long to build things," he
said. Weapons designed in the depths of the cold war were built long after
the Berlin Wall crumbled. That led some people, including George W. Bush
while running for president in 1999, to suggest that the Pentagon skip a
generation of weapons set to roll off the assembly line in this decade and
concentrate instead on lighter, faster, smarter systems for the future.

That didn't happen. It still takes two decades to build a major weapons
system, and the costs are still staggering.

"The complaints haven't changed 20 years later," Mr. Zakheim said. The
difference between then and now is the concentration of expertise,
experience and power in a few hands, he said, "and I don't think the effect
has necessarily been a good one."

Mr. Stevens rejected that criticism. "I can't tell you the number of times
I've heard 'not progressive, not sophisticated, ponderous, slow' " as terms
used to describe Lockheed, he said. "I see none of that."

What he sees is a far grander vision. Lockheed, he said, is promising to
transform the very nature of war. During the cold war, when Lockheed and
its component parts built an empire of nuclear weapons, Mr. Stevens said,
the watchword was: "Be more fearful. 'Deterrence,' isn't that Latin?
'Deterrere.' Induce fear. Terrorize."

Today, Lockheed is building weapons so smart that they can change the world
by virtue of their precision, he said; they aim to wage war without the
death of innocents, without weapons misfiring, without fatal
miscalculation.

"I know the fog of war exists," Mr. Stevens said, adding that it could be
lifted. "We envision a world where you don't have any more fratricide," no
more friendly fire, he said. "With technology we've been able to make
ourselves more secure and more humane.

"And we aren't there yet --- but we sure have pioneered the kind of work
that is taking us well along that trajectory. And there's a lot of evidence
that says we're doing well. And we're setting the bar high and we expect to
be able to do that. Now that's pretty exciting stuff.

"I don't say this lightly," he said. "Our industry has contributed to a
change in humankind."

RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH NEWS #812
http://www.rachel.org
Mar. 3, 2005
Published April 7, 2005

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Try This At Home

By Jane Anne Morris*

The Ambassador

It was Colombian Independence Day, so I suppose I should have
expected to bump into the U.S. ambassador in the mummy room of
the National Museum in Bogota. What better way for the
ambassador to demonstrate her deep concern for the people of
Colombia and bone up on Colombian history? Like the fact that
the National Museum building was originally designed to be the
perfect prison -- an application of the principles of
Utilitarian Jeremy Bentham's 1787 Panopticon. From a single
vantage point, one unseen overseer could monitor all activities
of all prisoners, 24/7. Significantly, Bentham noted that the
plan would work just as well for factories, schools,
poorhouses, and hospitals.

From 1905 until after World War II, "El Panoptico" was
Colombia's most fearsome prison. The central surveillance point
was a round guard tower (now an airy rotunda sponsored by the
Siemens Corporation) with lines of sight radiating out toward
eyelid-shaped windows on three floors of tiny prison cells. The
Panopticon -- like the junior high school intercom left on when
the teacher is out, like the invisible "cookie" behind your
computer screen -- is about hierarchy and control. The system
requires fewer overseers with whips, because inmates do the
heavy mental lifting. Shrouded in a wrap-around one-way mirror,
the prisoner (student, teacher, consumer, citizen) is shaped
more by the possibility of sanction than by its actual
presence. Physical force stands down and waits on-call for
special occasions, while self-censorship takes over daily
operations. Because it derives its power from the inmates'
internalization of the work of the watcher, the Panopticon
succeeds whether or not there's anyone in the guard tower.

In Colombia, almost-daily massacres and assassinations are
necessary to maintain corporate power, but in the United States
the Panopticon is functioning quite well -- it is most often
the little man in one's own head that makes people into
enthusiastic foot soldiers in the war against themselves. We
live in a corporate-controlled Democracy Theme Park. Popular
rides include the Regulatory Agency Roller Coaster and the
Voluntary Code of Conduct Mule Train. The Reform Gallery
features Welfare Reform and Campaign Finance Reform. In the
Constitutional Rights Hall of Fame, people can take part in
regular reenactments of famous battles. The democracy theme
park even has its own museum, where other corporate power grabs
are reinterpreted as "peoples' victories."

Ambassador Patterson has a role to play in the U.S. democracy
theme park. So on Independence Day, the ambassador goes not to
inspect helicopters used in the "War on Drugs," but through
downtown Bogota with its "Plan Colombia = guerra" graffiti to
the national museum to check out the props for the "War on
Democracy." When not mummy-gazing, Anne Patterson, the U.S.
ambassador, is the on-site point person for stage-managing the
Colombia campaign, a critical testing ground for global
corporatization. Her job is to transform a corporate resource-
grab of mind-boggling proportions and unsurpassed brutality
into a fairy tale with a "War on Drugs" theme song. There will
be lots of heroic action against giant mutant coca plants and
cartoonlike bad guy "drug lords". Patterson has lots to do. She
has to deny that U.S. aid supports right-wing paramilitary
death squads. She has to deny that U.S.-sponsored "coca
fumigations" are killing subsistence crops, domestic animals,
and people. She has to deny a U.S. role in the provision of a
Colombian army escort for a U.S. corporation's illegal drilling
on indigenous lands. She has to deny U.S. complicity in the
methodical assassination of Colombian labor leaders by U.S.
soft drink corporation thugs. She also has to advertise and
promote numerous U.S.-backed social, health, and educational
programs whose primary existence is on billboards. And she has
to read and sometimes respond to letters, faxes, and e-mails
from pesky activists in the United States.

The Activist

Patterson is no busier than Sally, from Anytown, U.S.A. -- she's
"one of us" -- who keeps a diary of her activism. Here
is the last week's worth:

On Monday, she stuffs envelopes for Save the Dolphins campaign,
and goes to a neighborhood meeting to discuss organic,
sustainable food.

On Tuesday, she does research for her regulatory agency
testimony to fight a local corporation's pollution permit; she
leaflets at a demonstration to support boycotting a brand of
gasoline.

By Wednesday it's time to work on Voluntary Code of Conduct
provisions for corporations, then have a meeting to decide
which "socially responsible" investments to recommend. (Here
there's a note that the meeting broke up after an argument
between two factions. One favored the corporation that hires
people of color and women to build nuclear power plants; the
other favored the corporation that's famous for union-busting
but builds fuel-efficient cars.)

Come Thursday, she sits down to write letters to state
legislators, urging broader disclosure laws for chemicals. Then
there's that fax to Colombia urging the U.S. ambassador to
begin an investigation of the latest government-assisted
civilian massacre. In the evening she "persons" a literature
table at a panel discussion of unions and globalization.

On Friday there's a strategy meeting on helping the Community
Health Clinic stay open two days per week. After that her group
tries to decide what to do about sweatshops and deregulation.

Saturday is money day. In the morning there's a bake sale to
pay lawyers to pursue regulatory agency and court appeals. In
the afternoon there's a 5K Run fund-raiser to pay fees, fines,
and lawyers to bail out banner-hangers from their last
demonstration.

It's Sunday as she looks over her diary, the day that she must
set priorities for the next week. She can't possibly contribute
to all the causes that she cares about. Should she skip the
dolphins and add social security? Should she forget Colombia
and switch to Nigeria or East Timor? Should she work on
radioactive waste storage and worker safety instead of campaign
finance reform and groundwater contamination? Should she skip
the demos so she can spend more time in the library reading
about others going to demos? Should she dress up as a mutant to
publicize pesticide use in public schools?

By this time it's late Sunday night. Sally drifts off to sleep,
and has a dream:

At a company picnic, two teams are playing a soccer game.
Sally's on a team made up of people from the neighborhood,
activists, and other concerned citizens; the other team is
sponsored by something called MegaCorporation. Sally's team was
getting close to scoring, but then Mega tilted the field so
that the others had to run uphill. Then Mega disqualified some
of Sally's teammates and declared that certain plays couldn't
be used. But Sally and her friends kept playing harder and
almost scored again. This time Mega stopped play and decreed
that Sally's team would have to play blindfolded. Then they
bought off the referees. Sally's team finally scored anyway but
the referees said the goal didn't count.

The next morning over coffee, Sally remembers her dream and
proceeds to interpret it:

The soccer game is how we're always fighting against Mega
Corporation. When they tilt the field, that means that they
have a built-in advantage with more resources to use against
us, and tax-deductible expenses. Disqualifying our players is
like when they sue us for writing letters to the editor, or
tell us that we don't have standing. Banning certain plays is
like when they say we aren't allowed to bring up certain topics
or issues at hearings, or when our testimony is limited to two
minutes. By withholding information -- like about what
chemicals they're using -- corporations force us to play
blindfolded. Buying off the referees is like when they grant
favors to politicians, make campaign contributions, and use
their political power to influence regulatory agencies and
courts. When we score a goal but it doesn't count, that's like
when suddenly a corporation is granted exemptions and variances
from existing law. Or when a federal court throws out as
unconstitutional a local law that we've worked for years to
pass.

The Corporations

There is quite obviously a fundamental asymmetry between
activist strategy and corporate strategy. We activists dress up
as corporate executives to get into meetings and buildings, and
as animals to get media coverage. When was the last time a
corporate executive dressed up as an Earth First! member or a
turtle or an U'wa to get attention for themselves? While we are
stuffing envelopes, writing letters to our "representatives,"
and talking to twelve people at a time in living rooms,
corporate executives are writing laws and buying television
stations.

While the community response is to play harder -- to try for
bigger demonstrations at the Capitol, more letters to elected
officials, more experts at the hearings -- the corporate
response is to simply change the ground rules. With
increasingly unfair ground rules, no matter how hard we play,
we won't ever score, or we won't score enough to matter. And
corporate ground rules are not intended so much to affect a
particular issue -- though they do that -- as to frustrate and
dilute people's efforts over a broad range of issues.

People's efforts usually apply to only one issue at a time.
Even if we share common values and care about many of the same
issues, we are inevitably rivals structurally. Like Sally, we
find that if we have spent our efforts trying to save the
dolphins or promote sustainable agriculture, we have fewer
resources and less time left to work on toxic cleanups or
prisoners' rights. This same fragmentation is evident at
conferences, where after an opening keynote speech, attendees
fan off into an almost endless array of particularized
workshops and panel discussions. How to stop one corporation
from using one chemical. How to get communities to recycle one
type of container. How to get one framed political prisoner out
of jail. This isn't what corporate strategy looks like.

Corporate strategy is to change the ground rules for all --
labor organizers, human rights workers, toxics campaigners,
everybody. A corporation doesn't have a separate team of
lawyers, experts, lobbyists, and public relations persons for
each of the thousands of chemicals dumped into the environment.
Or for each separate labor law violation. Or for each state, or
each voluntary code of conduct, or each chamber of commerce.
Most of what corporate strategists do works across the board:
it helps the particular corporation in many areas, and, it
makes corporations in general more powerful. This is what
working on ground rules does for you.

As a result of this difference in strategy, where people's
efforts are subtractive and divisive, corporation efforts are
cumulative and synergistic. A score or victory for one
corporation helps all corporations, but our work on one issue
or campaign takes resources from others. In the soccer game
analogy, we're exhausting ourselves struggling uphill trying to
score a goal, and they're tilting the field. What we have
termed ground rules amounts to no less than the political
process, the assumptions and understandings that in a democracy
are supposed to result in self-governance by the people. The
democracy theme park has obscured both the current ground rules
and "who" is using and writing them. This "who" is not "The
Corporation" because the corporation is not a who at all.
People say "Monsanto did this" and "Philip Morris did that"
with the casualness and familiarity you'd expect when
describing an errant uncle with a hip flask. The more accurate
term for the abstract legal fiction is Monsanto Corporation or
Philip Morris Corporation. But corporations don't really do
anything. The things that get done in the name of the
corporation are done by people. Corporate executives make
corporate policy, award each other golden parachutes, and hire
lawyers to manage lawsuits and regulatory agency matters. They
extract wealth from the work of others, call this the
corporation's wealth, then use it to externalize costs onto
society and the earth while funneling profits to a tiny group.

Business corporations in their current form -- as vehicles for
the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of an elite
-- are incompatible with democracy.[1] That's why they are so
popular with an elite whose status depends on ensuring that
democratic processes don't happen. A corporation is the most
recent and most successful effort to do all the things that
elites hoped the Panopticon would do: preserve elite power.
Corporate executives make decisions and manage the money, while
workers follow orders (on pain of losing their livelihoods) and
add value. The "corporation" is a legal fiction to hold money
and power for a few; it gives them access to "corporate"
resources and shields them from responsibility for their
actions. But, finally, a corporation is not a sentient being,
not a conscious actor, not a target, not a "citizen." It cannot
be "punished" or negotiated with. It can't be "socially
responsible," or have an opinion on global warming. It can't
have "rights." If people believe it can do any of these things,
then the corporation succeeds as a decoy to confuse issues and
take the flak for an elite. But the corporation can still be
deconstructed, and not a moment too soon. [To be concluded next
time.]

===================

* Jane Anne Morris is a corporate anthropologist who lives in
Madison, Wisconsin. She is the author of Not in My Backyard:
The Handbook, available at America's biggest unionized book
store, Powell's
(http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=1-0962494577-3),
and she is a member of POCLAD, the program on Corporations, Law
and Democracy (http://www.poclad.org/). Some of her work has
appeared previously in Rachel's (#488, #489, #502, and #806),
available at http://www.rachel.org. This essay originally
appeared in David Solnit, editor, Globalize Liberation (San
Francisco: City Lights Books, 2004, pgs. 73-86.

[1] In current U.S. law, the term "corporation" encompasses
municipal corporations, for-profit corporations, and many kinds
of nonprofit corporations (including trade industry groups and
educational and religious corporations). A century and a half
ago in the United States, the form that the "business
corporation" took would be nearly unrecognizable today. In some
cases, for example, stockholders did not have "limited
liability" as we know it today.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH NEWS
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 160
New Brunswick, N.J. 08903
Fax (732) 791-4603;
E-mail: erf@rachel.org

The Washington Post's Mensa Invitational once again asked readers to take
any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing
one letter, and supply a new definition. Here are this year's winners:

1. Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you
realize it was your money to start with.
2. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly
3. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright
ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign
of breaking down in the near future.
4. Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of
getting laid.
5. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject
financially impotent for an indefinite period.
6. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.
7. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person
who doesn't get it.
8. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
9. Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.
10. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)
11. Karmageddon: It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really
bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a
serious bummer.
12. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day
consuming only things that are good for you.
13. Glibido: All talk and no action.
14. Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they
come at you rapidly.
15. Arachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've
accidentally walked through a spider web.
16. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your
bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.
17. Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the
fruit you're eating.

And the pick of the literature:
18. Ignoranus: A person who's both stupid and an asshole.

I rec'd this, as one does, of unclear provenance:

>An English professor wrote the words: "WOMAN WITHOUT HER MAN IS NOTHING"
>on the blackboard, and directed the students to punctuate it correctly.
>
>The men wrote: "Woman, WITHOUT HER MAN, is nothing."
>
>The women wrote: "WOMAN!! WITHOUT HER, man is nothing!"

My comment is that there's no conflict (tho' I fear some wish to
see this cameo as implying contradiction).

R

CRISIS IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

HANS KUNG
Spiegel Online

Outwardly Pope John Paul II, who has been actively involved in battling war
and suppression, is a beacon of hope for those who long for freedom.
Internally, however, his anti-reformist tenure has plunged the Roman
Catholic church into an epochal credibility crisis. Don't be fooled by the
crowds: Millions have left the Catholic Church under Pope John Paul II's
leadership. . .

In my view, Karol Wojtyla is not the greatest, but certainly the most
contradictory, pope of the 20th century. A pope of many great gifts and
many wrong decisions. To summarize his tenure and reduce it to a common
denominator: His "foreign policy" demands conversion, reform and dialogue
from the rest of the world. But this is sharply contradicted by his
"domestic policy," which is oriented toward the restoration of the
pre-council status quo, obstructing reform, denying dialogue within the
church, and absolute Roman dominance.

This inconsistency is evident in many areas. While expressly acknowledging
the positive sides of this pontificate, which, incidentally, have received
plenty of official emphasis, I would like to focus on the most glaring
contradictions:

HUMAN RIGHTS: Outwardly, John Paul II supports human rights, while inwardly
withholding them from bishops, theologians and especially women. . .

THE ROLE OF WOMEN: The great worshiper of the Virgin Mary preaches a noble
concept of womanhood, but at the same time forbids women from practising
birth control and bars them from ordination. . .

SEXUAL MORALS: This pope, while preaching against mass poverty and suffering
in the world, makes himself partially responsible for this suffering as a
result of his attitudes toward birth control and explosive population
growth. . .

CELIBACY AMONG PRIESTS: By propagating the traditional image of the
celibate male priest, Karol Wojtyla bears the principal responsibility for
the catastrophic dearth of priests, the collapse of spiritual welfare in
many countries, and the many pedophilia scandals the church is no longer
able to cover up. . .

ECUMENICAL MOVEMENT: The pope likes to be seen as a spokesman for the
ecumenical movement. At the same time, however, he has weighed heavily on
the Vatican's relations with orthodox and reform churches, and has refused
to recognize their ecclesiastical offices and Communion services. . .

PERSONNEL POLICY: As a suffragan bishop and later as archbishop of Krakow,
Karol Wojtyla took part in the Second Vatican Council. But as pope, he
disregarded the collegiality which had been agreed to there and instead
celebrated the triumph of his papacy at the cost of the bishops. . .

CLERICALISM: The Polish pope comes across as a deeply religious
representative of a Christian Europe, but his triumphant appearances and
his reactionary policies unintentionally promote hostility to the church
and even an aversion to Christianity. . .

NEW BLOOD IN THE CHURCH: As a charismatic communicator and media star, this
pope is especially effective among young people, even as he grows older.
But he achieves this by drawing in large part on the conservative "new
movements" of Italian origin, the "Opus Dei" movement that originated in
Spain, and an uncritical public loyal to the pope. All of this is
symptomatic of the pope's approach to dealing with the lay public and his
inability to converse with his critics. . .

SINS OF THE PAST: Despite the fact that in 2000 he forced himself through a
public confession of the church's historical transgressions, John Paul II
has drawn almost no practical consequences from it. . . The pope never
commented on the Curia's dealings with the Mafia, and in fact contributed
more to covering up than uncovering scandals and criminal behavior. The
Vatican has also been extremely slow to prosecute pedophilia scandals
involving Catholic clergy. . .

Contrary to all intentions conveyed in the Second Vatican Council, the
medieval Roman system, a power apparatus with totalitarian features, was
restored through clever and ruthless personnel and academic policies.
Bishops were brought into line, pastors overloaded, theologians muzzled,
the laity deprived of their rights, women discriminated against, national
synods and churchgoers' requests ignored, along with sex scandals,
prohibitions on discussion, liturgical spoon-feeding, a ban on sermons by
lay theologians, incitement to denunciation, prevention of Holy Communion
--- "the world" can hardly be blamed for all of this.

The upshot is that the Catholic church has completely lost the enormous
credibility it once enjoyed under the papacy of John XXIII and in the wake
of the Second Vatican Council.

[Hans Kung is a Catholic theologian. Küng has been embroiled in an ongoing
feud with church authorities for decades. As a result of his critical
inquiries on the papacy, the Vatican withdrew his church authority to teach
in 1979. Nevertheless, Küng, 75, is still a priest and, until his
retirement in 1995, taught ecumenical theology at the University of
Tübingen. This was written during his last days]

This man is not just any citizen with opinions on homX & les
relations. He is an expert of high status.

The ignoring of Dr Whitehead's scientific summary by the
Klark/Wilson stooges on the Parlt'ry Cttee is one of the more ominous signs
that fact & reason are being allowed only v minor roles in the headlong
plunging of our country into legalised perversions. The nightmarish vision
now takes vague form of a "Labour"/"Green" coalition govt dedicated to this
antisocial cause.

R

Submission on the Statutes Amendment (Relationships) Bill 2004

N.E.Whitehead
February 2005

From my knowledge of relevant scientific survey material I realise this bill will seriously disadvantage children involved in these new groupings as compared with those in traditional heterosexual families. It will lead to a kind of child abuse. It will also introduce a form of discrimination: selectively disadvantaging these children compared to others.

I am Neil Evan Whitehead (Ph.D.), consultant research scientist, previously with the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (NZ), the NZ Geological and Nuclear Sciences Crown Research Institute, and International Atomic Energy Agency (United Nations). My work as a Senior Research Fellow at Osaka University in biofilms research ended in March 2004, followed by recent work for the New Zealand Ministry of Research Science and Technology and my previous Crown Research Institute. From this October, I am Visiting Professor at Hiroshima University for six months. I have published over 110 refereed research papers on a very wide variety of subjects including survey techniques, and three books on homosexuality, arising out of about 14 years research in the subject. I have drawn heavily on my constant professional use of statistical techniques. For the homosexuality research I and my wife received a NARTH fellow award1 in 2002 (“In recognition for your outstanding contribution to the scientific literature”).

This is an independently motivated submission. However the facts I draw upon represent the mainstream literature of the international scientific community.

I am a member of various learned societies, including the International Twin Studies Association, the relevance of which will appear in the addendum.

The bill will lead to more social units headed by two people of the same sex, and more children in such units than currently exist. I submit those children will suffer for the following two reasons.

1. Break-up of relationships

Such a child can almost be guaranteed to suffer through what amounts to a divorce. The average longevity of a gay or lesbian couple relationship is 2-3 years, as established by numerous good quality sociological surveys3. A few relationships survive longer but they are statistical freaks, a small proportion of the total. This compares with at least 17 years for a heterosexual couple4. This means a child in such a novel grouping will be greatly distressed by a very predictable split-up.

This definitely also applies to lesbian relationships which surveys show are much less long-lasting than popularly thought5, the mean length being statistically indistinguishable from that of gay couples i.e. is also 2-3 years. Recent work by many of the same team3, 4 suggests that in large cities the length will be even less.

In New Zealand (and probably Australia as well) the most important factor leading to poverty for adults is relationship break-up8, which in a heterosexual context means solo parenthood. The equivalent in a homosexual context is also likely to seriously disadvantage such children.

A recent survey in the Netherlands10 might seem to indicate this danger might not be very great, but the authors concede their results may be deceptive. Since homosexual persons have been allowed to marry in that country records have been kept and the rate of breakup of homosexual couples was about equivalent to that of heterosexual couples for the same period. However the authors say that these couples had waited a long time to be allowed to “marry”, and were rather special cases. They were not typical of the average Netherlands gay couple for whom a median length of relationship in Amsterdam is 1.5 years9.

2. Poorer mental environment

Children will suffer through increased exposure to mentally unstable and alcoholic households. This second factor, as shown by a long NZ study and others6 is that gays and lesbians are approximately three times as likely to be involved in substance abuse or mental problems as heterosexuals. This is not caused by discrimination, because countries with widely different attitudes to homosexuality have about the same numerical factor. These problems will also disadvantage children involved in these relationships.

I have read most of the scientific literature (ca 50 studies) connected with children brought up by gay or lesbian parents. Most of the studies claim to show their abilities characteristics and achievements are about equivalent to those brought up by heterosexual parents, but they are very misleading, because in fact

1. The comparison (even if present) is usually to single-parent heterosexual families who are definitely worse off than traditional heterosexual families - the children are therefore somewhat disadvantaged7
2. The studies are poorly designed and usually do not have sufficient sample size to show any difference at all7
3. They were usually snapshots and could not take into account future deaths and break-ups in the relationships.

This last point is very significant. If during the course of a study of children with gay/lesbian caregivers there is a split-up, those subjects would have to be excluded from the study because the control group (usually solo heterosexual parents) could not have that happen to them. Thus virtually all studies are of pre-split-up situations, and not relevant.

The conclusion is that children brought up this way are likely to be seriously disadvantaged compared with those from heterosexual families.

If as a scientist, I proposed to my local ethics committee that I set up groupings of children and gay/lesbian permanent caregivers and gave the committee the above facts, they would turn down my application on the grounds that it would be too economically/socially risky and hence would be unethical. On what possible grounds can such an unethical situation be disregarded?

In this case it is chiefly the children, on whose behalf I appeal. This legislation would lead to increased child abuse. The rights of children should be more jealously guarded than those of adults who are much more able to defend and indulge themselves.

Addendum: Relative weak effects on sexual orientation

It may be alleged by some submissions to this committee that proposed novel social groupings may strongly affect the sexual orientation or the gender identity of these children. However any effect would be weak for the following reason.

Gay and lesbian people are not born that way. This is proved by twin studies. In the best of these studies2 (Australian) if one of an identical twin pair was gay, there was an 11% chance that the co-twin was gay. Within error the same percentage applied to lesbians. Identical twins have identical genes and essentially identical upbringing. In spite of this, surveys show they are almost always different. It is chiefly chance that is responsible.

I emphasise this 11% concordance includes all factors known and yet to be discovered, so the result cannot radically change in future. This statement represents the mainstream scientific conclusion – identical twin studies show that gay and lesbian status (and most other traits including those in children) is not innate in the sense of inescapable. Genes create a tendency not a tyranny. Children in these newer social groupings will not be greatly influenced except in the ways described in points 1-2 above.

Appendix

(1) NARTH is a 1500-strong professional group of North American psychology professionals involved with research and therapy among those with same sex attraction.
(2) Bailey,JM; Dunne,MP; Martin,NG (2000): Genetic and Environmental influences on sexual orientation and its correlates in an Australian twin sample. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 78, 524-536.
(3) The best data are from the very large Chicago study summarised in Michael,RT; Gagnon,JH; Laumann,EO; Kolata,G (1994): Sex in America. Little Brown, Boston. This gives a mean of 2.5 years, but at least another 7 studies confirm it. The figure may be considered robust. It tends to be 1.5 years in the large urban centres in the USA.
(4) Laumann,EO; Gagnon,JH; Michael,RT; Michaels,S (1994): The Social Organization of Sexuality. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
(5) Sarantakos,S (1996): Same-sex couples: problems and prospects. Journal of Family Studies 2, 147-163. This Australian study is typical of half a dozen others, and gave a mean of 2.6 years.
(6) Fergusson,DM; Horwood,LJ; Beautrais,AL (1999): Is sexual orientation related to mental health problems and suicidality in young people? Archives of General Psychiatry 56, 876-880. This showed that most study problems were ca 3x more prevalent in gays/lesbians. The numerical factor was similar in the Netherlands and USA, all with differing attitudes to homosexuality. The other two papers are respectively: Sandfort,T.G.M.; de Graaf,R.; Bijl,R.V.; Schnabel (2001): Same-sex sexual behavior and psychiatric disorders. Arch. Gen. Psychiatry. 58, 85-91. and Herrell,R.; Goldberg,J.; True,W.R.; Ramakrishnan,V.; Lyons,M.; Eisen,S.; Tsuang,M.T. (1999): Sexual orientation and suicidality: a co-twin control study in adult men. Archives of General Psychiatry 56, 867-874.
(7) Lerner,R; Nagai,AK (2001): No Basis: What the Studies Don't Tell Us About Same-Sex Parenting. Marriage Law Project, Washington, DC. 149 pages. A sociologically rigorous and critical examination.
( O’Donovan, B. (2005): What’s happening with wages? New Zealand Listener February 8-12, 16-19. The author is chief economist for Westpac.
(9) Xiridou , MA, Geskus, RA, de Wit, JAB, Coutinho, RAC, Kretzschmar, MD, (2003) The contribution of steady and casual partnerships to the incidence of HIV infection among homosexual me in Amsterdam. AIDS 17, 1029-1038.
(10) Sterling, T. (2005). Gay divorce rate in Holland comparable to those of heterosexuals. Associated Press release 4/4/5.

http://www.greens.org.nz/docs/policy/rainbow.htm

[Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand] Party Policy

Celebrating a Rainbow Nation

The Green Party Sexual Orientation Policy

Launched 8 June 1999

For further information contact: Richard Davies & Rosemary Segedin.

To propose amendments contact: Roland Sapsford, National Policy Convenor, for details.

Summary of Main Points

The Green Party supports:

* celebration of diversity and encouragement of appreciation between groups

* elimination of legislative barriers to full participation in society

* elimination of institutional discrimination

* education in school, workplace and the community about sexual orientation

* fostering enduring, cohesive and participatory communities through well resourced social services

* research into issues confronting the "rainbow" communities holistic health services accessible to all

Green Values

The human family encompasses a rich diversity of ages,
genders, ethnicities, abilities and sexual orientations.
Upbringing, education and circumstance further add to our
diversity. The Green Party embraces this human diversity.
New Zealand society is enhanced by each step it takes along
the path from prejudice to appreciation to celebration of
diversity.

This policy is derived from the Green Party's principles of
social justice and appropriate decision-making. We recognise
an intimate connection between our rights as individuals and
our responsibilities to our neighbours, our communities and
the Earth. Much remains to be done in many areas to provide
a decent and secure life for everyone. A sense of balance
between our rights and responsibilities grows from
participation in the decisions that affect all aspects of
our lives.

Policy Statement

New Zealanders with a sexual orientation or gender identity
different from that of the majority include people who
identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, transgender,
intersex, takataapui and fa'fafine. These New Zealanders are
a significant group in our society which has been
marginalised through legislative barriers, institutional
discrimination and casual prejudice. Some research suggests
that these groups together constitute anything between 4 and
10% of the total population.

In this policy document we will use rainbow as an inclusive
term to describe any person (or community) who is not
predominantly heterosexual, or has an identity that is not
their assigned gender role, or anyone questioning their
gender or sexuality, or experiencing same sex love or
attraction.

The Green Party encourages social cohesion and acceptance
within New Zealand. People of differing sexual orientations
or gender identity should treat each other with courtesy,
respect and appreciation. The "rainbow" communities are a
minority that crosses social, educational and economic
boundaries. As a result they are natural champions of
diversity that has the potential to enrich us all. The Green
Party's fundamental values lead us to promote an inclusive
society in which each minority group feels at home. We count
the "rainbow" communities as our colleagues in this
significant social task.

Specific Policies

To this end we will use our influence to advance the
following specific policies:

1. "Rainbow" communities are entitled to equal
opportunities in law and in practice. We support making
the government comply fully with the Human Rights Act
1993. We support workplace programmes in the public and
private sector to eliminate prejudice, discrimination
and harassment. The Consistency 2000 programme will be
pursued to its completion.

2. "Rainbow" and heterosexual partnerships are equally
entitled to respect and support. We support extending
the option of legal partnership arrangements and rights
to same-sex couples.

3. Parenting skills are distinct from sexual orientation
or gender identity. We support equal criteria for both
"rainbow" and heterosexual couples in their assessment
for suitability and eligibility for parenting.

4. Community development is crucial for the empowerment of
"rainbow" communities. We encourage the development of
adequately resourced community centres, outreach
programmes and events and the creative self-expression
of people with "rainbow" identities through drama and
literature and the arts.

5. "Rainbow" communities have special health needs. The
Green Party supports a holistic approach to health that
acknowledges the relationships between human rights and
health and encompasses physical, mental, social and
spiritual aspects within the wider context of the
environment in which we live, work and play. We support
the development of specific programmes, including
professional education, in partnership with "rainbow"
communities. All people, including those with HIV/AIDS,
have the right to adequate medical care and protection
from discrimination within the health services.

6. The interests and identity of "rainbow" students in
schools and tertiary institutions need to be protected.
We support the creation of safe and supportive
educational environments. We support human rights
education as a core part of the curriculum. We support
a partnership with schools and "rainbow" youth
organisations to reduce the unacceptably high level of
suicide and drug abuse among youth. We will ensure that
teachers are adequately trained in educating for
diversity through the inclusion of sexual orientation
in teacher training and development.

7. "Rainbow" communities are entitled to fair and just
treatment in their dealings with police, penal
institutions, courts, and the military. We support
initiatives to educate all these institutions in sexual
orientation and gender identity issues.

8. There has been little research on issues confronting
"rainbow" communities. We encourage research to help
identify discriminatory workplace and institutional
practices. We also support participatory research into
individual life experience to identify ways to
encourage "rainbow" communities' physical and mental
health and safety.

9. New Zealand has a proud tradition in international
human rights advocacy. We support New Zealand taking an
active role within the international community to
promote human rights issues in relation to sexual
orientation.

[Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand - Quality of Life]

-------------------------------------------------------------
Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand > Green Library > Party Policy
http://www.greens.org.nz/docs/policy/rainbow.htm

Roundup Doesn't Poison Only Weeds
By Herve Morin
Le Monde, 12 March 2005
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/032805HB.shtml

The most used herbicide in the world: Monsanto's Roundup and its
competitors, formulated, like Roundup, on a base of glyphosate, have
long enjoyed a reputation for harmlessness to human health and the
environment. However, several recent studies seem to indicate that this
active ingredient, used by farmers as well as by public road services
and Sunday gardeners, could well not be as inoffensive as its promoters
claim. The stakes are big, because the usage of glyphosate grows along
with that of genetically modified organisms, the great majority of which
have been specifically conceived to "tolerate" this active ingredient,
fatal to plants.

In fact, while Roundup and similar products were originally used against
weeds, "they have become a food product, since they are used on GMOs,
which can absorb them without dying," maintains the biochemist
Gilles-Eric Seralini. A member for years of the French Commission on
Biomolecular Genetics (CBG), responsible for preparing the files for
requests for field studies, then GMO commercialization, he ceaselessly
demands more intense studies on their eventual health impact.

Also a member of Criigen, an association which has made control of GMOs
its passion, he has oriented his own research toward the study of the
impact of glyphosate. In an article published February 24 in the
American journal Environmental Health Perspective, the biochemist and
his team from the University of Caen demonstrate, in vitro, several
toxic effects of this compound as well as of the additives associated
with it to facilitate its diffusion.

For their study, the researchers used human placental cell lines, in
which very weak doses of glyphosate showed toxic effects and, at still
weaker concentrations, endocrinal disturbances. This, for Gilles-Eric
Seralini, could explain the high levels of premature births and
miscarriages observed in certain epidemiological studies - which are,
however, controversial - covering women farmers using glyphosate. "The
effect we have observed is proportional to the dose, but also to the
length of exposure," he emphasizes.

His team has also compared the comparative effects of glyphosate and
Roundup. And it has observed that the commercial product is more
disruptive than its isolated main active ingredient. "Consequently the
evaluation of herbicides must take into account the combination with
additives in the product," he says.

Gilles-Eric Seralini acknowledges that his study must be extended by
animal experiments. But he rejects criticisms that have been made on the
absence of any real link between in vitro and normal utilization:
"Farmers dilute the pure product and are punctually exposed to doses
10,000 times stronger," he insists. "Our results show that the length of
exposure must be taken into account."


Sea-Urchin Models

He is joined in his conclusions by Robert Belle, from the National
Center for Social Research (CNRS) biological station in Roscoff
(Finistere), whose team has been studying the impact of glyphosate
formulations on sea-urchin cells for several years. This recognized
model for the study of early stages of cancer genesis earned Tim Hunt
the 2001 Nobel Prize in medicine. In 2002, the Finisterian team had
shown that Roundup acted on one of the key stages of cellular division.

"This deregulation can lead to cancer," warns Robert Belle, who, to make
himself understood, insists on summarizing the mechanisms of cancer
genesis: during the division of a cell into two daughter cells, the two
copies of genetic inheritance, in the form of DNA, may give rise to very
numerous errors, up to 50,000 per cell. That's why repair mechanisms or
natural cell death (apoptosis) are automatically set in motion. However,
it happens that a cell escapes these alternatives (death or repair) and
can perpetuate itself in an unstable form, potentially cancerous over
the long term.

The Breton team has recently demonstrated (Toxicological Science,
December 2004) that a "control point" for DNA damage was affected by
Roundup, while glyphosate alone had no effect. "We have shown that it's
a definite risk factor, but we have not evaluated the number of cancers
potentially induced, nor the time frame within which they would declare
themselves," the researcher acknowledges. A sprayed droplet could affect
thousands of cells. On the other hand, "the concentration in water and
fruits is lower, which is rather reassuring."

For the researcher, it's not necessarily a matter of banning the product
- "Now it's for the public authorities to evaluate the benefits and the
risks" - but it is important that users take every possible precaution,
for themselves as well as for the public. "I've seen people in their
underwear spray several square meters in a playground," he exclaimed,
revolted.

"Such in vitro studies are not adequate for deducing the effects on
people," however, insists Sophie Gallotti, coordinator of studies on
contaminants at the Agence francaise pour la swcurite sanitaire des
aliments (Afssa) [French Agency for Food Health Security]. The same
sentiment is expressed by Remi Maximilien, toxicological expert at
Afssa, for whom the sea-urchin experiment "shows a potential mechanism
for cancer genesis that remains to be proved in human beings."


Contested Interpretation

Monsanto is not impressed by these results. "It's not up to us to judge
the interest of these publications, the validity of which we do not
contest, but the interpretation," indicates Mathilde Durif, spokeswoman
for the French subsidiary of the American giant. These results
contradict sixty other available studies and "neither the European
authorities nor the World Health Organization, nor the United Nations
Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) have classified this product as
carcinogenic."

Glyphosate is, however, an active ingredient and "it is necessary to use
it according to the recommended usage." A cautious attitude that seems
slightly in contradiction with the firm's marketing efforts. And these
are now already under attack by the Breton association, which reproaches
Monsanto with making its product's "biodegradability" an advertising
argument - one already judged to be a lie by the American legal system.

Translation: by t r u t h o u t French language correspondent
leslie.thatcher@truthout.org

fw from www.religionwatch.ca

>In January of this year Professor James A. Beverley did an extensive
>interview with Flew at his home in Reading, England. The interview formed
>the basis for an article about Flew in the April issue of
>Christianity Today magazine.
>
>During his Ph.D. course work in 1985 Professor Beverley studied with Flew
>and has been in regular contact with him in the last two decades.

{pic of the two together}

> This interview explores Flew's change of mind about God and also gets
>Flew's opinions about Islam, Marxism, the resurrection of Jesus, life
>after death, and the case for deism.

[For most of these you'll have to sock Beverley $6 + p&h. ]

> The tape provides both direct quotes from the interview along with
>commentary from Professor Beverley about the background to all the issues
>covered in the wide-ranging conversation.

RM comments:

Flew was a leading atheist. But now we're told he "has agnosticsworried".

For those who see large scope for natl theol, Flew's sojourn in the
no-man's-land of deism should prove a period of useful progress. Temple
said "deism is dead and needs no reviving". Flew himself casting around
for interest in a rather arid environment will find some interest in modern
natl theol, and might even write a good review of Broom 'How Blind Is the
Watchmaker?', which makes no resort to revelation. Such review in one or
more jnls lately dominated by Ryle, Ayer, S Blackburn etc could establish a
beachhead for natl theol such as Dawkins, Wolpert etc have avoided so far.

Antony's deistic interest in the Creator(s) some of whose
properties are glimpsed by natl theol will ripen into new respect for Wm
Temple. Let's do what we can to put him in touch with that strand of natl
theol blacked out by the IDT which, worryingly, Flew mentions respectfully.

Ranking Alvin Plantinga 'dean of Christian philosophers' will get
Don Nield going; but, if that is dubious - now that Temple is dead, who are
the top few Christian philosophers?

NB. a slightly discouraging note from interviewer Beverley's

www.ReligionWatch.ca:

>Abandoning Atheism - Flew Interview
>
>Antony Flew, one of the world's leading philosophers, becomes a theist.
>Hear for yourself his reasons for abandoning atheism.

The main point of Beverley's CT article is that Flew has become a
deist. In abandoning atheism he has explicitly not gone as far as theism.
Bev knows the difference between deist and theist. Looks as if someone on
his mailorder staff is trying to confuse with a conflation comparable to
the classic 'evolution *or* creation'. Such language-tampering works
widespread confusion of a demonic quality.

* * *

If we were better organized we'd have made more of Mort in this
multimedia world. The actual talent in NZ for natl theol is at least as
good as any elsewhere. How can we make the most of Flew's progress - and
encourage him to keep looking over the horizon from no-man's-land to the
sunny uplands of theism?

R

The following article is located at: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/004/29.80.html

Thinking Straighter

Why the world's most famous atheist now believes in God.
by James A. Beverley | posted 04/08/2005 09:00 a.m.

Antony Flew, one of the world's leading philosophers, has changed his mind about God. And he has agnostics worried.

Some are mystified and others are angry. Typical of many responses is this one skeptical blogger: "Sounds to me like an old man, confronted by the end of life, making one final desperate attempt at salvation." Richard Carrier of The Secular Web even accuses him of "willfully sloppy scholarship."

His pedigree in philosophy explains the recent media frenzy and controversy. Raised in a Christian home and son of a famous Methodist minister, Flew became an atheist at age 15. A student of Gilbert Ryle's at Oxford, Flew won the prestigious John Locke Prize in Mental Philosophy. He has written 26 books, many of them classics like God and Philosophy and How to Think Straight. A 1949 lecture given to C. S. Lewis's Oxford Socratic Club became one of the most widely published essays in philosophy. The Times Literary Supplement said Flew fomented a change in both the theological and philosophical worlds.

Flew taught at Oxford, Aberdeen, Keele, Reading, and has lectured in North America, Australia, Africa, South America, and Asia. The Times of London referred to him as "one of the most renowned atheists of the past half-century, whose papers and lectures have formed the bedrock of unbelief for many adherents."
Last summer he hinted at his abandonment of naturalism in a letter to Philosophy Now. Rumors began circulating on the internet about Flew's inclinations towards belief in God, and then Richard Ostling broke the story in early December for the Associated Press. According to Craig Hazen, associate professor of comparative religions and apologetics at Biola, the school received more than 35,000 hits on their site that contains Flew's interview for Philosophia Christi, the journal of the Evangelical Philosophical Society. At his home in Reading, west of London, Flew told me: "I have been simply amazed by the attention given to my change of mind." So what exactly is the reason for and nature of his "change of mind"?

Jeffersonian Deist

Flew has had to assure former students that he does not now believe in revealed religion. "Even one of my daughters asked if this meant we were going to say grace at meals," he said. "The answer is no."

Flew is also quick to point out that he is not a Christian. "I have become a deist like Thomas Jefferson." He cites his affinity with Einstein who believed in "an Intelligence that produced the integrative complexity of creation." To make things perfectly clear, he told me: "I understand why Christians are excited, but if they think I am going to become a convert to Christ in the near future, they are very much mistaken."

"Are you Paul on the road to Damascus?" I asked him.

"Certainly not."

Comedian Jay Leno suggested a motive for the change on The Tonight Show: "Of course he believes in God now. He's 81 years old." It's something many agnostics have said more seriously. However, Flew is not worried about impending death or post-mortem salvation. "I don't want a future life. I have never wanted a future life," he told me. He assured the reporter for The Times: "I want to be dead when I'm dead and that's an end to it." He even ended an interview with the Humanist Network News by stating: "Goodbye. We shall never meet again."

Flew's U-turn on God lies in a far more significant reality. It is about evidence. "Since the beginning of my philosophical life I have followed the policy of Plato's Socrates: We must follow the argument wherever it leads." I asked him if it was tough to change his mind. "No. It was not hard. I've always engaged in inquiry. If I am shown to have been wrong, well, okay, so I was wrong."

The Impact of Evangelical Scholars

Actually, Flew has been rethinking the arguments for a Designer for several years. When I saw him in London in the spring of 2003, he told me he was still an atheist but was impressed by Intelligent Design theorists. By early 2004 he had made the move to deism. Surprisingly, he gives first place to Aristotle in having the most significant impact on him. "I was not a specialist on Aristotle, so I was reading parts of his philosophy for the first time." He was aided in this by The Rediscovery of Wisdom, a work on Aristotle by David Conway, one of Flew's former students.

Flew also cites the influence of Gerald Schroeder, an Israeli physicist, and Roy Abraham Varghese, author of The Wonder of the World and an Eastern Rite Catholic. Flew appeared with both scientists at a New York symposium last May where he acknowledged his changed conviction about the necessity for a Creator. In the broader picture, both Varghese and Schroeder, author of The Hidden Face of God, argue from the fine-tuning of the universe that it is impossible to explain the origin of life without God. This forms the substance of what led Flew to move away from Darwinian naturalism.

I studied with Flew in 1985 in Toronto, and he told me then about the positive impression he had of emerging evangelical scholarship. That year Varghese had arranged a Dallas conference on God, and included atheists, like Flew, and theists. That same year Flew had his first debate with historian Gary Habermas of Liberty University on the resurrection of Jesus, recorded in Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? They have debated twice since on the same topic.

Flew has also debated Terry Miethe, who holds doctorates in both philosophy and religion, on the existence of God, and he has been involved in philosophical exchanges with J. P. Moreland, another well-known Christian philosopher. In 1998 he had a major debate in Madison, Wisconsin, with William Lane Craig, research professor at Talbot, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the famous BBC debate between Bertrand Russell and F. C. Copleston, the brilliant Catholic philosopher.
In Reading, I asked Flew more explicitly about the impact of these and other scholars. "Who amazes you the most of the defenders of Christian theism?"
He replied, "I would have to put Alvin Plantinga pretty high," and he also complimented Miethe, Moreland, and Craig for their philosophical skills. He regards Richard Swinburne, the Oxford philosophy of religion professor, as the leading figure in the United Kingdom. "There is really no competition to him." He said that Habermas has made "the most impressive case for Christian theism on the basis of New Testament writings."

These Christian philosophers have uniform respect for Flew as a person and as a thinker. Craig spoke of him as "an enduring figure in positivistic philosophy" and was "rather surprised by his giving up his atheistic views." He, Miethe, and Habermas have found Flew to be a perfect gentleman both in public debate and private conversations. Swinburne says Flew has always been a tough thinker, though less dogmatic as the years went by. Plantinga, the founder of the Society of Christian Philosophers, said that Flew's change is "a tribute to his open-mindedness as well as an indication of the strength of current broadly scientific arguments against atheism."

What Holds Him Back from Christianity?

Flew's preference for deism and continued dislike of alleged revelation emerge from two deep impulses in his philosophy. First, Flew has an almost unshakable view against the supernatural, a view that he learned chiefly from David Hume, the 18th-century Scottish philosopher. Flew, a leading authority on Hume, wrote the classic essay on miracles in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

What is rather surprising in Flew's dogmatism is that he believes Hume did not and could not prove that miracles are, strictly speaking, impossible. "If this is the case, why not be open to God's possible intervention?" I asked. He replied by saying that the laws of nature are so well established that testimonies about miracles are easy for him to ignore. He is not impressed by people who hear regularly from God. He did concede, reluctantly and after considerable discussion, that God could, in principle, puncture his bias against the supernatural.

Of more significance, Flew detests any notion that a loving God would send any of his creatures to eternal flames. He cannot fathom how intelligent Christians can believe this doctrine. He even said in his debate with Terry Miethe that he has entertained the thought that the Creator should punish, though not endlessly, only those who defend the notion of eternal torment. On this matter, Flew is willing to entertain fresh approaches to divine justice. In fact, he had just obtained Lewis's book The Great Divorce in order to assess Lewis's unique interpretation on the topic of judgment.

When I asked Flew about his broader case for deism, he asked rhetorically: "Why should God be concerned about what his creatures think about him anymore than he should be directly concerned with their conduct?" I reminded him of biblical verses that also ask rhetorically: "He who planted the ear, does he not hear? He who formed the eye, does he not see?" (Ps. 94:9) It seems incredible to argue that any human cares more about the world than God does. "Is the Creator really morally clueless?" I asked. Flew responded to what he called this "interesting argument" with openness. Moreland, who teaches at Biola, says he hopes that Flew "will become even more curious about whether or not God has ever made himself clearly known to humanity."

Unlike many other modern philosophers, Flew has a high regard for the person of Jesus. Early in the interview, he stated rather abruptly: "There's absolutely no good reason for believing in Islam, whereas in Christianity you have the charismatic figure of Jesus, the defining example of what is meant by charismatic." By charismatic, he means dynamic and impressive. He dismissed views that Jesus never existed as "ridiculous."

Later I asked, "Are you basically impressed with Jesus?"

"Oh yes. He is a defining instance of a charismatic figure, perplexing in many ways, of course." Beyond this, Flew remains agnostic about orthodox views of Jesus, though he has made some very positive remarks about the case for the Resurrection. In the journal Philosophia Christi he states: "The evidence for the Resurrection is better than for claimed miracles in any other religion." No, he still does not believe that Jesus rose from the dead. However, he told me, the case for an empty tomb is "considerably better than I thought previously."

Plantinga, the dean of Christian philosophers, told me that the radical change in Christian scholarship over Flew's career has been remarkable. When Flew originally attacked theism more than 50 years ago, there were few Christians working in philosophy. Now there are a large and growing number of scholars committed to intellectual defense of the gospel. It is, of course, no small matter that one of the world's leading philosophers has moved somewhat closer to the side of the angels.

James A. Beverley is professor of Christian apologetics at Tyndale Seminary in Toronto. For more information on the interview with Flew, see Beverley's website at www.religionwatch. ca.

ChristianityToday.com Copyright © 1994–2002 Christianity Today International

From: "Corner Post"

Corner Post #377

Farm & Countryside Commentary by Elbert van Donkersgoed

The controversy around transgenic modified foods just won't go away.

Riceland Foods, a farmer-owned cooperative and the world's largest rice
miller, has asked U.S. regulators to deny a request from a competitor to
grow about 200 acres of transgenic modified rice in Missouri. Riceland
Foods, as the largest marketer of rice, fears for its world markets. It
believes that transgenic rice has no level of acceptance among consumers.

Almost a year ago the agricultural multinational Monsanto announced that it
had given up on further development or open field trials for its transgenic
"RoundupReady" wheat. That decision was a marketplace decision. Many
overseas wheat buyers do not want transgenic wheat. Many overseas
countries now have mandatory labeling rules for transgenics. Should
consumers choose to buy primarily non-transgenic foods, food wheat will at
great risk of being reduced to livestock feed. As livestock feed it would
compete with corn and drive feed prices -- already at a 25-year low - still
lower.

Also last year Mendocino County in California became the first jurisdiction
in North America to prohibit the "propagation, cultivation, raising and
growing of genetically modified organisms" in a ballot designed to protect
the health, welfare, economy, and private property rights of residents.
The concept of GMO-Free Zones is catching on around the continent -- not
without controversy. There are currently nine US states with new
legislation in various stages of development designed to pre-empt the
rights of local cities and counties. In Iowa a new law blocks "a local
governmental entity from adopting or enforcing legislation which relates to
the production, use, advertising, sale, distribution, storage,
transportation, formulation, packaging, labeling, certification, or
registration of agricultural seed. "

In the UK, farm scale trials of transgenic modified crops have been
completed. Of the four trial crops, three of the conventional crop
varieties tested better for the environment than their transgenic
equivalents.

Closer to home, the Prince Edward Island legislature has asked its Standing
Committee on Agriculture, Forestry and the Environment to hold public
hearings on making Canada's smallest province a GMO-Free Zone. PEI is
looking for ways to differentiate its agricultural, fisheries and
aquacultural food products in the marketplace. The committee has already
held eight hearings -- presenters from all over North America are still
waiting in line to have their say. Meanwhile, a Greenpeace-sponsored poll
shows that 62% of PEI residents are in favour of PEI being declared a
GMO-Free Zone. Elsewhere in Canada, 58% of respondents said they want
their province to go GMO-Free.

Finally, I note that the eleventh edition of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate
Dictionary has added a new word that means genetically engineered food --
"Frankenfood."
__

For the P.E.I. government's consultation on "biotechnology" visit:
www.assembly.pe.ca/consult/biotech.php

Elbert van Donkersgoed P. Ag. (Hon.) is the Strategic Policy Advisor of
the Christian Farmers Federation of Ontario, Canada. Corner Post is heard
weekly on CFCO Radio, Chatham and CKNX Radio, Wingham, Ontario. Corner Post
has a complimentary email subscriber list of more than 3,500 and appears
regularly on Agriculture Online/Views at www.agriculture.com/ag/views/ and
as Letter from Ontario  on The New Farm website at www.newfarm.org. CFFO
is supported by 4,300 family farmers across Ontario. Corner Post is
archived on the CFFO website:

www.christianfarmers.org/sub_news_commentaries/sub2_news_com_corner_post/news_com_corner_post.htm.

From GM Watch

1.Roundup Herbicide Runoff Is Lethal To Amphibians
2.Roundup® highly lethal to amphibians, finds University of Pittsburgh
researcher

EXCERPT: This field experiment is one of the most extensive studies on
the effects of pesticides on nontarget organisms in a natural setting,
and the results may provide a key link to global amphibian declines.

------

1.Roundup Herbicide Runoff Is Lethal To Amphibians
Posted on Mon Apr 4th, 2005

The herbicide Roundup is widely used to eradicate weeds, particularly
around genetically engineered crops that have been given the
controversial genes of immunity to this chemical. The patented
"Roundup-ready gene" is currently being put in every single crop type
you can imagine, and is resulting in skyrocketing Roundup herbicide use.

Unfortunately, it looks like frogs don't have a Roundup-ready gene,
which is too bad considering they have no choice but to live and breed
in watersheds and run-off zones.

A study published today by a University of Pittsburgh researcher finds
that the chemical may be eradicating much more than weeds. Pitt
assistant professor of biology Rick Relyea found that Roundup, the
second most commonly applied herbicide in the United States, is
extremely lethal to amphibians.

This field experiment is one of the most extensive studies on the
effects of pesticides on nontarget organisms in a natural setting, and
the results may provide a key link to global amphibian declines.

In a paper titled "The Impact of Insecticides and Herbicides on the
Biodiversity and Productivity of Aquatic Communities," published in the
journal Ecological Applications, Relyea examined how a pond's entire
community--25 species, including crustaceans, insects, snails, and
tadpoles--responded to the addition of the manufacturers' recommended
doses of two insecticides--Sevin (carbaryl) and malathion--and two
herbicides--Roundup; (glyphosate) and 2,4-D.

Relyea found that Roundup caused a 70 percent decline in amphibian
biodiversity and an 86 percent decline in the total mass of tadpoles.
Leopard frog tadpoles and gray tree frog tadpoles were completely
eliminated and wood frog tadpoles and toad tadpoles were nearly
eliminated. One species of frog, spring peepers, was unaffected.

"The most shocking insight coming out of this was that Roundup,
something designed to kill plants, was extremely lethal to amphibians,"
said Relyea, who conducted the research at Pitt's Pymatuning Laboratory
of Ecology. "We added Roundup, and the next day we looked in the tanks
and there were dead tadpoles all over the bottom."

Relyea initially conducted the experiment to see whether the Roundup
would have an indirect effect on the frogs by killing their food source,
the algae. However, he found that Roundup, although an herbicide,
actually increased the amount of algae in the pond because it killed
most of the frogs.

"It's like killing all the cows in a field and seeing that the field has
more grass in it--not because you made the grass grow better, but
because you killed everything that eats grass," he said.

Previous research had found that the lethal ingredient in Roundup was
not the herbicide itself, glyphosate, but rather the surfactant, or
detergent, that allows the herbicide to penetrate the waxy surfaces of
plants. In Roundup, that surfactant is a chemical called polyethoxylated
tallowamine. Other herbicides have less dangerous surfactants: For
example, Relyea's study found that 2,4-D had no effect on tadpoles.

"We've repeated the experiment, so we're confident that this is, in
fact, a repeatable result that we see," said Relyea. "It's fair to say
that nobody would have guessed Roundup was going to be so lethal to
amphibians."

From a UPMC press release
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-04/uopm-rhl040105.php [see
below]

------

2.Roundup® highly lethal to amphibians, finds University of Pittsburgh
researcher
Public release date: 1-Apr-2005
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-04/uopm-rhl040105.php

Contact: Karen Hoffman
klh52@pitt.edu
412-624-4356
University of Pittsburgh Medical Center

PITTSBURGH--The herbicide Roundup® is widely used to eradicate weeds.
But a study published today by a University of Pittsburgh researcher
finds that the chemical may be eradicating much more than that.

Pitt assistant professor of biology Rick Relyea found that Roundup®, the
second most commonly applied herbicide in the United States, is
"extremely lethal" to amphibians. This field
experiment is one of the most extensive studies on the effects of
pesticides on nontarget organisms in a natural setting, and the results
may provide a key link to global amphibian declines.

In a paper titled "The Impact of Insecticides and Herbicides on the
Biodiversity and Productivity of Aquatic Communities," published in the
journal Ecological Applications, Relyea examined how a pond's entire
community--25 species, including crustaceans, insects, snails, and
tadpoles--responded to the addition of the manufacturers' recommended
doses of two insecticides--Sevin® (carbaryl) and malathion--and two
herbicides--Roundup® (glyphosate) and 2,4-D.

Relyea found that Roundup® caused a 70 percent decline in amphibian
biodiversity and an 86 percent decline in the total mass of tadpoles.
Leopard frog tadpoles and gray tree frog tadpoles were completely
eliminated and wood frog tadpoles and toad tadpoles were nearly
eliminated. One species of frog, spring peepers, was unaffected.

"The most shocking insight coming out of this was that Roundup®,
something designed to kill plants, was extremely lethal to amphibians,"
said Relyea, who conducted the research at Pitt's Pymatuning Laboratory
of Ecology. "We added Roundup®, and the next day we looked in the tanks
and there were dead tadpoles all over the bottom."

Relyea initially conducted the experiment to see whether the Roundup®
would have an indirect effect on the frogs by killing their food source,
the algae. However, he found that Roundup®, although an herbicide,
actually increased the amount of algae in the pond because it killed
most of the frogs.

"It's like killing all the cows in a field and seeing that the field has
more grass in it--not
because you made the grass grow better, but because you killed
everything that eats grass," he said.

Previous research had found that the lethal ingredient in Roundup® was
not the herbicide itself, glyphosate, but rather the surfactant, or
detergent, that allows the herbicide to penetrate the waxy surfaces of
plants. In Roundup®, that surfactant is a chemical called
polyethoxylated tallowamine. Other herbicides have less dangerous
surfactants: For example, Relyea's study found that 2,4-D had no effect
on tadpoles.

"We've repeated the experiment, so we're confident that this is, in
fact, a repeatable result that we see," said Relyea. "It's fair to say
that nobody would have guessed Roundup® was going to be so lethal to
amphibians."

The current work comes on the heels of French work showing strong effects of this herbicide on animal reproduction after exposure to levels of herbicide one tenth the level expected from recommended spraying. Glyphosate should be re-evaluated by EPA at this time. However, the response from the regulators will likely be a PR campaign defending the pesticide rather than the frogs.

Can the planet live after the frogs are all wiped out? We may be shocked at the impact of the end of frogs may have on the framework of life on the planet.

Ecological Applications, 15(2), 2005, pp. 618-627

THE IMPACT OF INSECTICIDES AND HERBICIDES ON THE BIODIVERSITY AND PRODUCTIVITY OF AQUATIC COMMUNITIES
RICK A. RELYEA1
Department of Biological Sciences, 101 Clapp Hall, University of
Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15260 USA

Abstract.

Pesticides constitute a major anthropogenic addition to natural communities. In aquatic communities, a great majority of pesticide impacts are determined from single species experiments conducted under laboratory conditions. Although this is an essential protocol to rapidly identify the direct impacts of pesticides on organisms, it prevents an assessment of direct and indirect pesticide effects on organisms embedded in their natural ecological contexts. In this study, I examined the impact of four globally common pesticides (two insecticides, carbaryl [Sevin] and malathion; two herbicides, glyphosate [Roundup] and 2,4-D) on the biodiversity of aquatic communities containing algae and 25 species of animals. Species richness was reduced by 15% with Sevin, 30% with malathion, and 22% with Roundup, whereas 2,4-D had no effect. Both insecticides reduced zooplankton diversity by eliminating cladocerans but not copepods (the latter increased in abundance). The insecticides also reduced the diversity and biomass of predatory insects and had an apparent indirect positive effect on several species of tadpoles, but had no effect on snails. The two herbicides had no effects on zooplankton, insect predators, or snails.

Moreover, the herbicide 2-4-D had no effect on tadpoles. However, Roundup completely eliminated two species of tadpoles and nearly exterminated a third species, resulting in a 70% decline in the species richness of tadpoles. This study represents one of the most extensive experimental investigations of pesticide effects on aquatic communities and offers a comprehensive perspective on the impacts of pesticides when non-target organisms are examined under ecologically relevant conditions.

Pesticide Action Network North America, April 06, 2005

Tell Bayer Not to Sell Lindane Products in U.S.!

The United States is one of the few countries in the world that still
permits agricultural uses of the pesticide lindane. More than 50
countries--including all of Europe, Canada, and most recently Mexico--have
phased out lindane use in agriculture. Ninety-nine percent of remaining
lindane use in the U.S. is for seed treatment of a handful of grain crops.

Lindane, a dangerous neurotoxic pesticide, persists in the environment and
builds up in our bodies. A recent study from the Centers for Disease
Control found lindane's breakdown product in 62% of people whose blood was
sampled in the United States, with the highest levels in women of
childbearing age. Lindane is also transported on wind and air currents to
the Arctic region, where it is one of the most commonly found chemicals in
the environment and a particular threat to indigenous people in the region.

Bayer Crop Science recently acquired the company that distributes lindane
agricultural products in North America. Canada has already banned seed
treatment with lindane, and in early 2005, Bayer announced that it will
withdraw registration of lindane seed treatment products in Mexico. Bayer
executives need to know that the U.S. public wants to join Canada, Mexico
and the rest of the world and stop using this dangerous pesticide!

Act Now: Write to Esmail Zirakparvar, President and CEO of Bayer
CropScience's North American offices, urging him to immediately withdraw
registration of lindane seed treatment products in the U.S.:
http://ga4.org/campaign/Bayer

About Lindane

Banned in at least 52 countries and severely restricted in more than 33
others, the organochlorine pesticide lindane is currently registered for
use in Canada, Mexico and the U.S. While Mexico recently committed to
phase out all uses and Canada has phased out all agricultural uses, the
U.S. continues seed treatment uses of lindane for corn, wheat and a
handful of other grains. In an average year, 142,000 pounds of lindane are
used agriculturally in the U.S. for seed treatment. Lindane use to control
headlice and scabies also continues in the U.S. and Canada.

Agricultural uses are largely responsible for the pervasiveness of lindane
and its breakdown products in the Arctic environment, where it is found
more often than any other pesticide. Indigenous peoples of the north who
rely on traditional diets of marine mammals and fish are particularly at
risk from lindane exposure through foods. In 1997, the Northern
Contaminants Program estimated 15 to 20 percent of Inuit women on southern
Baffin Island are exposed to dangerous levels of lindane in their daily
diet.

Lindane can cause seizures and damage to the nervous system, and can
weaken the immune system. Case-controlled research shows a significant
association between brain tumors in children and the use of
lindane-containing lice shampoos. The insecticide is also a suspected
carcinogen and hormone disruptor. Lindane and its breakdown products
persist in the environment, where they can expose people and wildlife long
after the pesticide is applied. A 2003 study from the U.S. Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention found that 62% of U.S. residents sampled
carry the insecticide in their body, and the highest levels are found
among women of childbearing age.

In addition to agricultural uses, the Food and Drug Administration
continues to approve use of this dangerous insecticide in shampoos and
lotions for control of lice and scabies. These pharmaceutical uses are
also approved in Canada. Given that elementary schools are frequently
plagued with infestations of head lice and children are known to be
particularly vulnerable to lindane's toxic effects, approval of this
neurotoxin for head lice is especially risky. Use of these products on
young children appears to be continuing despite new labeling required by
FDA warning of the dangers of lindane use. Safer and more effective
alternatives are available for all pharmaceutical uses of lindane. Careful
combing with a specially designed fine-tooth comb for lice control is one
example.

Lindane is also a significant contaminate in urban sewer systems and can
pollute sources of drinking water. The Los Angeles County Sanitation
District estimates that one dose of lindane shampoo used as a treatment
for head lice contaminates six million gallons of water. This threat to
clean drinking water, and the enormous costs of clean up, prompted
California to ban lindane shampoos and lotions in 2002. After the ban,
levels of lindane leaving Los Angeles County reclamation plants dropped
dramatically.

Coalition against BAYER-dangers (Germany)
www.CBGnetwork.org
CBGnetwork@aol.com
Fax: (+49) 211-333 940 Tel: (+49) 211-333 911

MannGram®: Cartegena Protocol propaganda
R Mann
Ap 2005

I have just been shocked to find the UN Environment Programme peddling
crude propaganda for GM.

>BIOSAFETY AND THE ENVIRONMENT
>An introduction to the Cartegena Biosafety Protocol
>by the UN Environment Programme
>http://www.biodiv.org/doc/press/presskits/bs/cpbs-unep-cbd-en.pdf

This took me 5 min to receive. It turns out to have far more dud
characters than I thought a PDF could have, but its gist is still horribly
apparent. I reprint the first 2 pp and then go thru them point by point.

Genetic manipulation is not new. For millennia, farmers have relied on
selective breeding and cross-fertilization to modify plants and animals and
encourage desirable traits that improve food production and satisfy other
human needs. Artisans have exploited traditional fermentation techniques
to transform grains into bread and beer and milk into cheese.
Such intentional modification of the natural world has contributed
enormously to human well-being.

Over the past 30 years, however, our ability to alter life-forms has been
revolutionized by modern biotechnology.

Scientists have learned how to extract and transfer strands of DNA and
entire genes - which contain the biochemical instructions governing how an
organism will develop - from one species to another. Using
sophisticated techniques, they can precisely manipulate the intricate
genetic structure of individual
living cells.

For example, they can insert genes from a coldwater fish into a tomato to
create a frost-resistant
plant, or use bacterial genes to make herbicide-tolerant corn. The results
are known as living modified organisms (LMOs) or, more popularly,
genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
Since the first genetically modified tomato became available in shops in
the United States in 1994, dozens of food crops and animals have been
modified for greater commercial value, higher yield, improved nutrition or
resistance to pests and disease.

While modern biotechnology may have great potential, it must be developed
and used with adequate safety measures, particularly for the environment.

Proponents argue that biotechnology will boost food security for the
world's growing population by raising sustainable food production. It will
benefit the environment by reducing the need for more farmland,
irrigation and pesticides. It will also provide better medical treatments
and vaccines, new industrial products and improved fibres and fuels.

For many people, however, this rapidly advancing science raises a tangle of
ethical, environmental, social and health issues. Because modern
biotechnology is still so new, they say, much is unknown about how its
products may behave and evolve, and how they may interact with other species.
Could an ability to tolerate herbicides, for example, transfer from GM
crops to related wild species? Might plants that have been genetically
modified to repel pests also harm beneficial insects? Could the increased
competitiveness of a GMO cause it to damage biologically-rich ecosystems?
Such concerns have kept GMOs in the headlines. One new scientific study
concludes that modified organisms pose little risk - and then another
raises difficult new questions.

Modified soya is found in export shipments that had been declared GMO free,
or pollen from modified corn is detected in a nearby non-modified field.
Editors fret about potential trade conflicts, and commentators
recite emotional arguments about the pros and cons of modern biotechnology.
Fortunately, this debate has led to a broad consensus that, while modern
biotechnology may have great potential, it must be developed and used with
adequate safety measures, particularly for the enviro-ment.
Countries with strong biotechnology industries do have national legislation
and risk-assessment systems in place. However, many developing countries
interested in modern biotechnology and its products are still in the
process of drafting regulations. And because bio-technology is a global
industry, and
GMOs are traded across borders, international rules are needed as well.
In 1995, the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity responded to
this challenge by launching
negotiations on a legally binding agreement that would address potential
risks posed by GMOs.

These discussions culminated in January 2000 with the adoption of the
Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety.
Named after the Colombian city where the final round of talks was launched,
the Protocol for the first
time sets out a comprehensive regulatory system for ensuring the safe
transfer, handling and use of GMOs subject to transboundary movement.
In this way, the Protocol seeks to meet the needs of consumers, industry
and the environment for many
decades to come. This booklet explains how this system works.

-----

>Genetic manipulation is not new. For millennia, farmers have relied on
>selective breeding and cross-fertilization to modify plants and animals
>and encourage desirable traits that improve food production and satisfy
>other human needs.

This is a GM-industry slogan, calculated to deceive. GM is nothing
like selective breeding. Current GMOs are made by illegitimate
recombination, and any surviving mutant is properly called a GM-bastard.

I disbelieve that the UNO operatives who put out this propaganda
are not well aware of the huge differences.

>Artisans have exploited traditional fermentation techniques to transform
>grains into bread and beer and milk into cheese.

Use of GMOs in food technology is novel - and one of the first
industrial attempts, only 2 decade ago, killed one or two hundred people
and maimed thousands. Do the UN propagandists not know this? Mentioning
ancient trusted foods & drinks like this is deceitful.

>Such intentional modification of the natural world has contributed
>enormously to human well-being.

Credit is thus illegitimately claimed for GM from the
accomplishments of breeders, brewers etc over the centuries who have indeed
benefitted mankind. This type of deceit is morally as low as lying.

>Over the past 30 years, however, our ability to alter life-forms has been
>revolutionized by modern biotechnology.

This term is itself an item of propaganda. The term is genetic
manipulation or gene-splicing.

>Scientists have learned how to extract and transfer strands of DNA and
>entire genes - which contain the biochemical instructions governing how an
>organism will develop - from one species to another.

Actually what they insert is scarcely if ever natural genes. Your
typical genes-cassette features synthetic DNA, often deliberately different
from any natural gene, spliced with synthetic modified parts from the DNA
of viruses, bacteria, etc - all for slamming into illegitimate
recombination to procreate a GM-bastard.

>Using
>sophisticated techniques, they can precisely manipulate the intricate
>genetic structure of individual
>living cells.

The techniques so far have been anything but precise, crassly
blasting cassettes into genomes by 'weapons greed' methods not resembling
natural breeding, with no means of controlling where DNA-insertion will
occur. Most of the target cells are killed, and most of the survivors are
obvious monsters. A tiny minority show the desired trait based on the
transgene e.g resistance to RoundUp®. Defects are liable to emerge later
in any GM-bastards that *apparently* show only the desired trait e.g
producing a modified version of a Bt toxin.

>For example, they can insert genes from a coldwater fish into a tomato to
>create a frost-resistant
>plant, or use bacterial genes to make herbicide-tolerant corn. The
>results are known as living modified organisms (LMOs) or, more popularly,
>genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
>Since the first genetically modified tomato became available in shops in
>the United States in 1994, dozens of food crops and animals have been
>modified for greater commercial value, higher yield, improved nutrition or
>resistance to pests and disease.
>
>While modern biotechnology may have great potential, it must be developed
>and used with
>adequate safety measures, particularly for the environment.
>
>Proponents argue that biotechnology will boost food security for the
>world's growing population by raising sustainable food production.

Cunning - the first 2 words seem to make this PR agent just a
neutral reporter, not a promotor.

>It will benefit the environment by reducing the need for more farmland,
>irrigation and pesticides. It will also provide better medical treatments
>and vaccines, new industrial
>products and improved fibres and fuels.

These are essentially fantasies - but stated as if facts, and no
longer with the 'proponents argue' or equivalent.

So now we are down to barefaced lying.

>For many people, however, this rapidly advancing science raises a tangle
>of ethical, environmental, social and health issues.

'Tangle', eh? = too complicated to explain.

>Because modern biotechnology is still so new, they say, much is unknown
>about how its
>products may behave and evolve, and how they may interact with other species.

That is true; but why not also mention actual known harm? And note
the 'they say'.

>Could an ability to tolerate herbicides, for example, transfer from GM
>crops to related wild species?

So drawbacks are expressed as hypotheses, questions -
speculations. The fact that this type of problem has already emerged on a
serious scale e.g among GM-rape in Canada, is suppressed.

>Might plants that have been genetically modified to repel pests also harm
>beneficial insects?

ditto - Losey's monarch caterpillars aren't mentioned

>Could the increased competitiveness of a GMO cause it to damage
>biologically-rich ecosystems?

ditto

>Such concerns have kept GMOs in the headlines.

There are many other well-founded concerns, not mentioned by UNEP.

>One new scientific study concludes that modified organisms pose little
>risk - and then another raises difficult new questions.

This is a deceitful sentence, designed to imply there's no clear
evidence of harm.

UNEP is also failing to reveal that scarcely any benefits have yet
been manifested by GMOs for farmers or indeed anybody but the GM-bastard
makers and the DNA-kits mfrs.

>Modified soya is found in export shipments that had been declared GMO
>free, or pollen from modified corn is detected in a nearby non-modified
>field.

Still no mention of why any such outcomes should matter.

>Editors fret about potential trade conflicts

Very funny - as if your typical modern editor is anything better
than totally cynical, refusing to fret about anything. This disgusting
document was composed by jaded if clever PR agents.

>, and commentators recite emotional arguments about the pros and cons of
>modern biotechnology.

The UN Environment agency won't link readers to, let alone itself
outline, the very strong scientific and ethical reasons to keep GMOs in
containment (and to get much tougher on the lab containment systems &
personnel).

>Fortunately, this debate has led to a broad consensus that, while modern
>biotechnology may have great potential,

What, PR operatives - some loss of nerve? Or are you wishing to
create wording you could later point to, taken out of context, in case your
bosses ask you in future why you didn't warn them?

Nearly all of the claimed benefits of GM are fantasies stated as if
they're reality

>it must be developed and used with adequate safety measures, particularly
>for the enviroment.

- but be careful not to indicate the main concerns about GMOs in
the environment, won't you?

>Countries with strong biotechnology industries do have national
>legislation and risk-assessment systems in place.

These function almost entirely as rubber stamps.

>However, many developing countries interested in modern biotechnology and
>its products are still in the process of drafting regulations.

There is little hope that most of them will ever create regulatory
charades, let alone effective regulatory regimes. Some will probably
outsource charades to Arthur D Little corp, J Arthur Young, or other
transnational accountancy/PR corporation.

>And because bio-technology is a global industry,

Who says so? It is obnoxious propaganda to assert this slogan.
Most countries have no GM nor any desire for GM crops or for importing
GM-food.

>and
>GMOs are traded across borders, international rules are needed as well.

It remains open to a nation to refuse such international trade.

>In 1995, the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity responded
>to this challenge by launching
>negotiations on a legally binding agreement that would address potential
>risks posed by GMOs.
>These discussions culminated in January 2000 with the adoption of the
>Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety.
>Named after the Colombian city where the final round of talks was
>launched, the Protocol for the first
>time sets out a comprehensive regulatory system for ensuring the safe
>transfer, handling and use of GMOs subject to transboundary movement.
>In this way, the Protocol seeks to meet the needs of consumers, industry
>and the environment for many
>decades to come. This booklet explains how this system works.

The Cartagena Protocol itself is omitted from this corrupt PDF. I
hope some capable lawyers, cooperating with suitable scientists, will
tackle the uninviting prospect of finding out why this treaty is of so
little use in protecting nations (parties or not) from injection of GMOs.
Someone has to do it.

I was asked to review this UNEP propaganda by a very eager if
somewhat sloppy worker for control of GM. She was suggesting NZ may be
functioning in the Cartagena regime to promote GM. She wanted comment on
the notion that a couple Mss in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Trade
should be advised to work for improvement of the Cartagena regime.
More research, by experts in international agreements, is urgently
needed before we can decide what best to do regarding the performance of
our govts in the Cartagena regime.

R

>>Tough Love vs. Spanking
>>
>>Most of America's populace thinks it very improper to spank
>>children, so my spouse and I have tried other methods to control
>>our kids when they have one of those "junior moments". One which we
>>found very effective is for me to just take the child for a car ride
>>and talk. They usually calm down and stop misbehaving
>>after our little car ride together. I've included the photo below of
>>one of my sessions with our son in case you would like to use the
>>technique.
>>
>>It's very effective!

< >

>That is priceless. I will send it on to others. I recall the story of
>the small boy, who, on entering a toy store climbed onto a rocking horse
>and refused to get off. Despite everything the mother and father could
>do from threats to bribes, the child remained immovable and screamed with
>rage when his father attempted to remove him by force. At that
>moment an assistant came up. "Don't worry sir" he said in calming tones
>"I'll call our store psychiatrist". The psychiatrist came, summed up
>the situation at a glance, walked up to the child and whispered
>something in his ear. Promptly the child dismounted, went up to his
>parents and said "I'm ready to go home now".

>The father was deeply impressed. He asked the psychiatrist what it
>was that he had said. The psychiatrist replied "I didn't spend 6 years
>obtaining a medical degree and gaining my ability to communicate for
>nothing. I am not sharing my secrets with you or anyone else". The
>father pleaded earnestly, saying that life in his home had become
>unbearable and that if only the psychiatrist could take pity on him he
>would be eternally grateful. When the father became tearful and and
>desperate the psychiatrist decided to take pity on him. "Will you
>promise never to reveal this information to a living soul?"" "Of course"
>said the father. "I said to your son

'If you don't get off that horse I 'll beat your head in and spread your
brains around this shop'".

This rings less true, and is I suggest less suitable, than
something more realistic threatening normal smacking such as the father
should have established as the recourse against persistent defiance - and
if the father has defaulted in the past, as the facts imply, he should try
now to establish, better late than never, suitable discipline. Smacking
will evidently be needed. A few bursts of pain in the short run will
prevent real violence later - by &/or on the spoilt brat.

Lurid bikie/criminal/Hollywood ultraviolence images have little
valid role. I query whether they will be as likely to work; a child who
can recognise a non-credible threat as a bluff is less likely to yield.
Threaten what you are ready & willing to deliver. If it has been delivered
in the past, the threat will probably suffice this time; if not (as appears
to be the case in this example), better make a start.

The sporadic feminazi campaign to create a new criminal offence -
corporal punishment on your own child in your own home - is being
cautiously pushed by Phil Goff on behalf of the sisterhood that he denies
controls the "Labour" caucus. We are talking *education* ... for a
while ...

>And the moral of the story is: Don't reveal your best secrets to
>strangers!

well, that's one moral ...


SHOULD SPANKING BE PROHIBITED ?
Robert Mann
slightly revised from NZ Herald 5-11-97

Television news reported early November that a New Zealander had stopped selling videotapes of children being strapped as discipline. The prime objection suggested on TV to have stopped him was from unidentified agencies saying "it tends to legitimise violence", as if any physical discipline must be always wrong.

This is only the latest of attempts to ban spanking. In order to appraise this advocacy, we rely on beliefs about nothing less important than human nature. One young neighbour of mine, a doting first-time parent, gushed to me "a child comes into the world perfect, and our duty is not to interfere with its blossoming". Stan Freberg spoofed this attitude in his song 'That's My Boy' - remember the cooing line "look at him load that gun!"? Whatever else you may think of Freud, I hope you will prefer his more realistic slogan: "the arrival of a baby in a household constitutes a barbarian invasion".

If you see your toddler across the room about to electrocute or scald itself, too far away for you to restrain the child physically, do you or do you not want the child to obey your command at a distance? If that child is to act safely (contrary to its own ignorant inquisitive impulse at the time), it will have to freeze or take evasive action in direct, blind, trusting obedience to your order. A clear example of such a life-saving relationship is recounted by Catherine Caughey in her autobiography 'World Wanderer'. Her sister when 3 was ordered at a distance to freeze, so that a deadly snake glided on past the child rather than attacking as movement would probably have provoked.

I contend that adults owe children such previous conditioning as will cause obedience in such emergencies.

What background must have been established between you and the child in order for that obedience to be forthcoming when required? In general, the previous history of the child will have included many probings of limits, which were of course met in the first instance by verbal prohibitions. Indeed, the selfish (if not barbarian!) will of the child is asserted long before it can understand or utter language; this early period is a window of opportunity for parents to link their verbal tone with physical penalties.

As the child escalated defiance on previous occasions, after one or two stages of to-&-fro a stage arrived when the parent (or guardian) either used physical force on the child to assert due authority or allowed the child’s will to prevail. If the child has always been allowed the last word or action, then the child will likely assume the emergency sketched above to be just another opportunity for assertiveness, just another verbal joust in which s/he can expect to “win”. Unless a few previous experiences have convinced the child that an extreme ‘emergency command’ tone must be obeyed, the child will likely go ahead and maim or kill itself. Mere previous verbal exchanges will not have ensured the needed obedience.

The parent will thus have failed the child by failing to insist that the basis of running the world is the superior knowledge & wisdom which adults do, by & large, accumulate.

The criterion of the child’s personal safety, which I have relied upon in the above example, is of course not the whole story; other criteria also apply. A child's desires cannot be allowed to prevail always over the legitimate needs & desires of adults. I contend that adults owe children guidance on the limits of behaviour which constitute civilisation. Today over-indulged wilful children are hampering education by sabotaging schoolroom work just for ‘fun’, and the teachers no longer have available to them the recourse of corporal punishment to curb serious persistent antisocial behaviour. This is bad for the offenders, sooner or later, as well as everyone else involved.

Worse, Jane Ritchie has for some years been advocating the creation of a new crime: corporal punishment on your own child in your own home. Since starting this campaign, she has stated on national radio that she does not envisage any actual prosecutions if this crime were to get inserted on the statute book. She thus reveals a confused, if sincere, attitude to the law. It is no proper function of Parliament to pass laws which are not intended to be enforced.

Obviously, excessive force - let alone habitual brutality without any pretence at justice, as forced upon the child Kipling - must be deterred and punished where possible. But a reasonably considered smack is not at all like those excesses. It is the minimal violence which will prevent later, much worse, violence - some of it on innocent third parties such as those maimed in road crashes by selfish young drivers.

I emphasize the concept of minimising violence, as opposed to the stupid doomed trend to attempt abolition of violence. It does seem to me that the best we can hope for is to optimise violence. Actually, smacking as I define it is not violence at all - not being intended or likely to injure.

To assist choices between types of punishment, let us augment the proverb "sticks & stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me" with the wisdom of the (originally Samoan) proverb "the thrust of the spear may be parried but the hurtful word cuts to the bone".

Unfortunately these choices are being steadily restricted, even warped, by the gender war. By & large, a woman cannot prevail against a man in a physical fight, especially if in domestic circumstances and without weapons. WimminsLib has therefore pretended that justice will be served by exaggerating men's domestic violence (e.g. the biased 'Hitting Home' propaganda from the Ministry of Justice) and by purporting that verbal punishments can serve as the final enforcement mechanism for domestic order, instead of the sting of a few smacks.

On the traditional approach, the typical child’s upbringing will require a few well-chosen careful smacks which will cause no injury. These must be such that the child will understand (insofar as it is able) the justice involved, and will be treated throughout with evident stern love. Many of my friends agree that this type of upbringing served them very well; and they thank, rather than resent, their parents & teachers for it.

The Swedish blunder of prohibiting corporal punishment even in the home must not be copied here. And I urge that suitable arrangements be restored for teachers to use this method of discipline.

(Ed. Note: Panic is right and jumbled facts)

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/032805A.shtml
The Savage Carnival

By John Cory

28 March 2005

America has become a savage carnival of freak show religiosity and
circus clown politics.

Let's call them what they are: Ghoulish Obscene Panderers. How else to
describe Tom Delay and Bill Frist, et al., as they crawl into bed with
a brain-dead woman to pose for a political Polaroid?

If Bill Frist is the paragon of compassionate-conservative medicine in
this country, it is no wonder the GOP wants to do away with trial
lawyers and medical malpractice awards. I mean, if Dr. Frist can
diagnose via video, surely we can all be diagnosed and healed by
touching the magic screens of our televisions, powered by the
celebrated and all knowing all-powerful Dr. Oz and his
media-evangelists, cured through Our Lady of the Sacred Cable Cathedral
and the Holy Order of St. Arbitron, all included in our monthly
satellite and cable subscription fees. Better than national healthcare.
God is good.

And while the circus of life unfolds before us, notice how no one
acknowledges the rampage of giant pink elephants. The media, like a
good Ring Master, barks and waves, diverting our attention to the
death-defying trapeze artists, the bearded lady, the two-headed boy,
and the miniature fire engine loaded with seltzer-spraying pundits
fresh from clown college. Modern journalism under the Big Top.

No one wants you to see what just happened. They hide the fact that
Congress passed legislation that 80 percent of America thinks is wrong
and invasive, that Congress passed this act with only a minimum of
congressional and senate membership present, which should scare the
living bejeebers out of all of us. What about separation of powers? GOP
is the power. What about the rule of law? Only the GOP makes the law.
Constitution? Just another dead document. What about activist courts
and judges? The GOP will tell you when activism is good and when the
evil liberals do bad activism, and never mind the difference!

Wake up America! The Republic is dead. Welcome to the United States of
Jesus, sponsored by the GOP Gospel Hour Medicine Show.

It's all a cheap savage carnival on the midway of mendacity. If you
want to know these people's moral values, look no further than their
pocketbook. And remember, George Bush says their money is our money.
Our values are their values.

For every $1 we spend on education in this country, we spend $6 on the
defense industry. Are we really six times more dedicated to killing
than educating?

While Congressional Christian Conservatives fight to keep a brain-dead
woman alive, they cut millions and millions of dollars of VA Healthcare
for the treatment of brain-injured soldiers returning from the Iraq
war, as well as dozens of programs intended to help the wounded
veterans and their families. Why are they so eager to bury the living
while digging up the dead for political fundraising?

Helping the poor and homeless is called "entitlements," while tax cuts
for the wealthy and tax-subsidies for corporations are considered the
"America way." Sort of like saying that kicking people while they are
down is the best way to get a good shoe shine.

They fight to keep a brain-dead woman alive while allowing our
youngsters easier access to guns than to mental healthcare. But hey,
it's only ten little Indians in Red Lake, and besides, Terri Schiavo is
a true American.

And like that old adage, "follow the money," if you watch the deposits
and withdrawals of our moral leadership, you'll see exactly where their
values are, and in turn, why they couldn't care less about your values.
Because it is not about values, it is about power and winning and
ruling. Values are like congressional ethics, flexible moral standards
based on convenience and financial contribution. How else to explain
Democratic support of the vile and onerous bankruptcy legislation? I
guess it's true that a conservative Democrat is just a Republican in
cheap clothing.

These folks hold the Constitution as irrelevant and Catechisms as the
only key to America's greatness. They want the Ten Commandments in all
public buildings and the 12 Apostles in Congress. They want the Virgin
Mary to teach sex education, and they believe in the Holy Trinity of
Bush the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Rove.

Money is free speech for those who can afford it, while "silence is
golden" applies to the middle class and working poor.

So here we are, in a nation that claims to value the sanctity of life
above all else - even as Justice Scalia bemoans no longer being able to
put teenagers to death - but content with enforcing capital punishment
on mentally retarded prisoners.

It's a freak show, folks. For one thin dime, one tenth of a dollar, you
can dance with Christian cannibals while being baptized in the healing
waters of the Potomac and witness the second coming of GOP's chosen
children - them that's got.

It is a savage carnival that fights to keep a brain-dead woman alive,
while pulling the plug on democracy and the Constitution.

John Cory is a Vietnam veteran. He received the Purple Heart and Bronze
Star with V device, 1969 - 1970.

http://www.socialistworker.org/2005-1/537/537_08_Evolution.shtml
>What's at stake in...
>The battle over evolution
>
>April 1, 2005 | Page 8
>
>DAVID WHITEHOUSE explains what's important about the theory of evolution.

and R Mann inserts comments

>POLITICIANS IN 19 states are trying to force biology teachers to sow
>doubts about the theory of evolution. Doubts are all they can manage for
>now, since the alternative view--"creation science," which has also been
>repackaged as something called "intelligent design theory"--finds little
>support among people who actually study living things.

"Creation science", a term now largely supplanted by "creationism",
holds that all spp were created at once, in a completed creation. In the
most extreme version, Young Earth Creationism (e.g Answers® in Genesis
Inc.), there were 6 literal days of creation, less than 10,000 y ago. In
the less extreme Old Earth Creationism, e.g Hugh Ross's 'Reasons to
Believe' of S. Calif, the 'days' of creation are held to be much longer,
but evolution is still denied.

IDT is a loosely (if not furtively) connected newer sect, asserting
far less - stuck on Paley's 1802 point that the complex machinery so
evident in organisms cannot have resulted from chance but must have been
designed. Its leaders Dembski, Behe stand pat on this one point, as if
waiting for rabid materialists like Dawkins, Wolpert, S Weinberg to admit
it; they will evidently wait till hell freezes over, so defective is the
reasoning of those aggressive atheists. IDT is an aggressive sect more or
less led by polemical rtd Berkeley law prof Phil Johnson. Their 'wedge' is
being driven in with intent - mistaken, in my view - to overthrow the
methodological materialism of scientific method.

IDT is sometimes called a stalking horse for "creationism". I
suspect that's its main role.

Theistic evolutionists e.g Broom, Nield, Sheldrake and myself,
carry on the thread never referenced by Dembski - J E Morton, Wm Temple,
Sir Alister Hardy, etc. traceable back to Aristotle. This line of
scholarship propounds creation - as distinct from materialism - but
fully acknowledges that billions-of-years evolution is real and has indeed
been the 'how' of creation. But we then go further and insist that 'why'
must also be asked.

>Virtually all biologists believe that material processes, not divine
>intervention, account for the origin of life from inanimate matter --and
>for the adaptive "fit" between organisms and their environments.

That is a typical example of wishful thinking by materialists.
What fraction of biologists are anti-materialism (like Broom, Morton,
Sheldrake, myself, etc)? So many Yank biologists must be Christians that I
don't see how the stats could be as Whitehouse claims - "virtually all
biologists believe ... ". He is making this up, isn't he?

>As a result, courts have ruled since 1968 that mandating creation
>"science" in public schools is an unlawful imposition of a religious view.

I have previously pointed out the ludicrous exaggeration &
falsehood entailed in these court rulings. What the USA Constitution
prohibits is *establishment* of any religion, which is vastly more than the
mere discussing of theology in schools which so threatens the insecure
atheist.


>Faced with these setbacks, creationists now propose teaching the
>"controversy" over evolution as a matter of free speech. This new
>strategy resembles the tobacco companies' four-decade attempt to convince
>people that there was a "controversy" over the connection between smoking
>and disease.

This is a misleading analogy. There exists no significant
controversy over the causation of diseases by smoking. There exists
long-standing, unresolved, highly respectable controversy over the
Darwinist notion that evolution can be explained by random mutation
followed by selecting out the less fit mutants. Broom & I, for example,
call (neo)Darwinism the biggest con-trick in intellectual history.
Megatime is no substitute for purpose in the creation of coordinated
ecology. All 4 causes, not just material and efficient causes, are needed
to explain evolution.

>As with the corporate-sponsored tobacco "researchers," creationists have
>a hidden motive for pushing discredited ideas. The companies were after
>profits--and the creationists are pushing a conservative social agenda.

It is difficult to ascertain the social agenda of the
"creationists", let alone the much more diplomatic if not downright coy
IDTers. I doubt they have any tight agenda. Their leaders probably look
no further ahead than their own totalitarian power over their duped,
mind-buggered followers chanting "the first 3 chapters of the Bible, and
plus you get your Noah story, are literally true" - a statement that
cannot be genuinely believed by any informed person. Phil Johnson fiercely
protects them, and refuses to tell me how old he thinks the Earth is.

>THE ATTRACTION of creationism for conservatives is that it presents a
>static, unchanging view of nature--a view they use to justify the social
>status quo.

I have noticed them doing little of that, at least overtly. Mind
you, I'm in an export market, far from the wellsprings of Orange County
Calif and Lubbock, Tex. And one has now to add Seattle, Wash, a channel
for funding by Rev Sun Myung Moon thru Wells in the Discovery Inst, where
Dembski is also affiliated. 'Teach the controversy' they intone - yet
Dembski refuses to put anything from me on his well-funded www.iscid.org.
It does look as if IDT is Creaionism Lite, but the links are few &
lo-profile.

>A God that produces an unchanging natural order would, of course, produce
>a similarly "perfect" social order and prescribe the proper function of
>everything in both.

"Creationists" are a variety of fundamentalist Christian. They
believe little more than anyone else that a perfect social order has been
produced. They do of course, like all theists, believe that the Creator
has let us know how he wants us to live.

Theists could not possibly desire the social status quo. They
deplore its many depravities and work in various ways to improve society.

>Creationists claim that their God prescribes a social structure in which
>some people must be subordinate to others--just as humans must obey God.
>Further, the nuclear family--with a man in command--is supposed to be the
>eternal social unit for rearing children. The creationists also say that
>God created sex only for reproduction. That way, they can condemn
>abortion and gay sexuality without having to make a real argument.

These social attitudes don't come along as part of the
"creationist" package. There would be many "creationists" who aren't
particularly concerned let alone bigotted about homosexuality. To the
extent that they oppose PC ideologies, their reasons will be essentially
unrelated to their wonky beliefs against evolution.

>Unfortunately for the creationists, 150 years of investigation has
>strengthened Charles Darwin's arguments that species change--and even
>change into new species.
>
>As Darwin pointed out, the resemblance of fossils to today's species
>indicates that some species give rise to changed versions of themselves.
>Genetic and other physical similarities between species indicate how
>closely related they are to each other. Human genes, for example, are 99
>percent the same as a chimpanzee's.

If Whitehouse means to imply that these facts prove common descent,
I'll point out they don't quite do so.

>The geographic locations of different species confirm these judgments.

That is a very disputable claim. Biogeography contains many
unsolved puzzles.

>Related species, even ones that are adapted to different ways of life,
>tend to be found in adjoining areas--as we should expect if they have a
>common ancestor.
>
>For these and a thousand other observations, creationists have only
>twisted explanations.

They ignore as many of them as they can get away with - the vast
majority of the evidence.

This is one of the several ways in which they are dishonest.

>Lacking support from the evidence, creation "science" is propped up by
>political-religious fervor--and by the money that flows to those who
>promise to make backward views seem respectable.

correct

>IF CREATIONISM lends support to the political right, does evolution
>confirm left-wing ideas? Lots of people have thought so.

But they are deluding themselves. In fact, as well as in theory,
evolution is consistent with both right- and left-wing beliefs. The
question of how the millions of spp came to be (9/10 now extinct) at
successive times over 4 By has little to do with the left-right spectrum
which so concerned Churchill, Stalin, etc during C20 but is now scarcely
visible in the fog of PR, PC, etc: state ownership v. capitalism.

Public ownership for the purpose of democratic control of major
utilities, especially natural monopolies, was endorsed by all significant
political parties in New Zealand, 1950-75. There was ample scope for
corporate enterprise, some of which was NZ-owned. And producers'
cooperatives developed - e.g the NZ Dairy Board was the largest
international trader of dairy products.

The Yugoslav experiment was perhaps the least unpleasant version of
communism - family firms could employ a half-dozen non-family. Across at
the far end of the R-L spectrum loom the state terrorist nightmares of
Lenin, Mao, Hoxha, Kim ... And around the R extreme of this still
significant spectrum, the nominees are ... ? new Russia? USA? typical
USA puppet regimes in Latin Amer ...

I contend that the L-R spectrum is today
* still important
* proven by expt to be needlessly nasty at both extremes
* proven to be at about the right point in mixed economies, New Zealand &
Australia 1950-75

If so, theorising in favour of one extreme or the other is
unrealistic, evasive, and bloody tiresome.

> If nature has a history, they've reasoned, then human relations can
>change, too. What's more, if the changes in nature come from processes
>that are internal to nature itself--and not from an outside force, like
>God--then changes in society may be possible through the actions of humans
>themselves. In other words, humans created oppressive institutions, and
>humans could change them.

It is a misleading caricature to make out that even fundamentalists
such as "creationists" deny the possibility of changing human relations.
Christ preached radical changes such as have not yet been fully
implemented, and his followers today are anything but frozen but are still
toiling for change. The Amish etc may be the nearest to an exception. But
typical theistic evolutionists are also eager for social change.

>Ideas like these--including some of the first scientific ideas of
>biological evolution--inspired many leaders of the French Revolution of
>1789, 60 years before Darwin published his theory. Some favored a
>thoroughly materialist outlook, dispensing with talk of gods and spirits
>in order to seek a natural understanding of everything.

Only in an ill-educated society could a materialist try on that
nightmare of state terror as an example of progress.

...

>Although Darwinism and Marxism are compatible and even kindred theories,
>the truth of Darwinism doesn't come close to proving that socialist
>revolution could work. Certainties belong to those who have a pipeline to
>an "absolute" authority. Materialists, however, have to prove their ideas
>in practice.

- and have so utterly failed to do so that materialism should be
by now disreputable. However, its current vigorous advocates e.g Dawkins,
Wolpert, S Weinberg, etc get far more publicity than theistic evolutionists
who represent the mainstream of scholarship.

R

LOOSE CANON

On reading an article in a recent Church magazine, I was reminded that at
an annual conference a Bishop reaffirmed marriage "as a covenant between a
man and a woman that derives from a biblical theology of life-long
intention, mutuality, sexuality, faithfulness, respect and
interdependence. It offers hope and security in the process of procreation
and stability in the nurturing of children, whose rights need protection
just as much as any other human rights under the law of the land".

The author judges such a statement as being unremarkable in the history of
the Church. What was remarkable however, was that several members at the
conference regarded the inclusion of the statement as being "unfortunate".
He goes on to say that it is indeed a strange state of affairs when a
bishop is obliged to defend himself within his own diocese for his comment
that marriage is a good thing.

I suspect that the embarrassment of the members to such a strong statement
lies in a growing desire by some people to make the Church "relevant" to
the community. This has often been described as the skill required to
"sell" what the Church has to offer to the world so that people are
attracted to it.

The Church has always tried to open its arms to people in need. Quite
often that translates to physical need and this is where the City Missions
of our country do such a wonderful job. But more and more frequently
people come because they have an inner or spiritual need. Jesus was
frequently criticised because he showed compassion and care of those in his
community who were, to quote a cliché, "marginalised", those who were not
respectable and people who were generally unlovely or even repulsive.

I am led to the conclusion that the objections to the Bishop's words were
not because they were wrong in themselves but that making strong
statements about marriage makes those who choose to live in any other
relationship feel uncomfortable. The reaction is that the Church needs to
avoid giving offence to such people, especially when the Government of the
land, far from making make any criticism of their lifestyle, are completely
neutral about their choice despite the enormous cost to this country in
social breakdown.

I hope that most people will see that taken to its logical conclusion the
Church might muzzle itself on every occasion in its care to avoid a cause
for embarrassment or where people could be offended. Some people are
never offended. I am reminded of the Church joke where a man who arrived
for a service soaked in a rainstorm, thanked the Vicar afterwards for
preaching on the ten commandments, saying that when he got to the seventh
commandment he recalled where he had left his umbrella.

There is a popular myth that Jesus was "understanding" about sin. His
meeting with people who needed his love and forgiveness found his
compassion overwhelming mainly because he refused to judge them relying
instead on the impact of his words and the beauty of his presence to call
out the medicine of repentance from within them.

A far better pen than mine has written, "We need to be very careful that
we do not find ourselves praying to another God, one whose prevailing
character is to pat us on the back and reacting to our petitions in the
granting all of our earthly desires. Do we pray to a quite extraordinary
God who while he expresses his own love in agony and self sacrifice,
chooses that his children should express theirs in a continuous round of
self-fulfilment ? Did we pray perhaps to that truly incomprehensible God
who chooses for his sinless Son the way of suffering and grants to his
sinful sons and daughters the realisation of all their earthly dreams?"
(Harry Blamires)

It is important that we should pray to the Christian God and not a God of
our own devising.

*********
THE REV. CANON G.J.J.A. HADLOW
25 Ann Street,
Utuhina,
Rotorua 3201,
NEW ZEALAND
Telephone (07) 348 9894
e-mail: ghadlow@clear.net.nz
*********

I'm passing this commentary along. It's interesting that these bills to
pre-empt local regulation of genetically engineered seed are being
introduced all over but not yet in California, and that they don t
actually mention GE seed by name. This is clearly part of a
well-thought-out strategy by the GE seed companies (or perhaps Monsanto
alone).

-Jim Diamond M.D.
Sierra Club GE cttee

9 US states limit local GM regs

Ellinghuysen, 30 March 2005

http://www.truthabouttrade.org/article.asp?id=3616

At least nine US states, including Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Dakota,
Iowa, Idaho, Indiana, Oklahoma, Arizona, and West Virginia have either
passed or introduced legislation that would preempt local cities and
counties from restricting the sale of genetically modified seeds.

The bills are viewed as a nationally coordinated attempt to block GMO-free
ordinances similar to those approved by citizens in Mendocino and Marin
counties in California in 2004.

In March, Iowa's House of Representative passed a bill, House File 642,
that would preempt "a local governmental entity & from adopting or
enforcing legislation which relates to the production, use, advertising,
sale, distribution, storage, transportation, formulation, packaging,
labeling, certification, or registration of agricultural seed." A similar
bill was introduced into the Iowa Senate.

State Representative Sandy Greiner (R-Keota), who introduced HF 642, argued
the bill is needed to make seed regulations uniform statewide instead of a
"patchwork" of local regulations.

Mona Bond, of the Agribusiness Association of Iowa, which lobbied to
introduce the bill, said, "The bill is not about GMOs, it s about seed.
Farmers shouldn't be prohibited from growing what they want to grow."

"Legislate by and for the biotechnology industry"

However, opponents say HF 642 aims to protect producers of genetically
modified seed. Sate Representative Mark Kuhn, (D-Floyd) called the bill
"an attempt to legislate by and for the biotechnology industry." Kuhn said
the real issue is the economic damage caused to family farmers by market
rejection of GM crops.

State Representative John Whitaker (D-Van Buren) sees the bill as a further
erosion of local control over controversial agricultural practices, such as
genetically modified crops and hog confinement facilities that raise
significant health and environmental concerns.

"Soon, large corporations will be replacing small grain farmers because
they can't compete. This devastates rural communities and Main Streets,"
said Whitaker.

Roger Lansink, an organic farmer, said, "What if some areas want to
establish a GMC free zone for economic advantage? These bills will shout
the door to that possibility."

LaVon Griffieon, a farmer who produces GM seed, worries that the bill would
allow unregulated planting and contamination from crops engineered to
produce pharmaceuticals.

Officials at Vedic City, an Iowa town that has an ordinance requiring the
sale of organic food only, also oppose the bill. "We believe very strongly
in organic because organic does no harm to the environment," said Mayor
Robert Wynne.

Aims to stop GMO-free initiatives

Opponents also charge that the main purpose of the bill is to block
GMO-free ballot measures similar to those passed in Mendocino and Marin
counties in California last year.

Citizens in those counties enacted local bans on cultivation of GM crops.
"What it really is, is an attempt to prevent, in Iowa, what has happened in
California, where counties have banned the growing of genetically
engineered crops," said Jeffrey Smith, director of the Institute for
Responsible Technology, based in Fairfield.

In early March, the House and Senate agricultural committees approved their
respective versions of the seed bill, and the full House passed it by
70-27. If the Senate approves the bill, Governor Tom Vilsack is expected
to sign it into law.

During a House debate, Kuhn introduced an amendment to the bill that would
allow for the creation of "identity preserved" production zones for
producing organic and non-GM crops, but the measure was voted down 62-35.

Bills passed in PA, GA, ND; other states enacting legislation

If passed, the Iowa seed bill would be the fourth such legislation passed
in the United States. Last December, Pennsylvania passed House Bill 2387,
which states, "no ordinance or regulation of political subdivision or home
rule municipality may prohibit or in any way attempt to regulate any matter
relating to the registration, labeling, sale, storage, transportation,
distribution, notification of use or use of seeds."

In February, Georgia passed Senate Bill 87 that prohibits local governments
from regulating "seeds." In early March, the North Dakota legislature
passed a similar bill, Senate Bill 2277, by a 69 to 25 vote. Ken Bertsch,
seed commissioner with the North Dakot State Seed Department, acknowledged
that the bill aims to prevent passage of Mendocino-type ordinances. "There
is concern that what happened in California could happen here, and that
absent this type of legislation there could develop a patchwork of
different ordinances that could be difficult to enforce," he said.

Similar seed bills have been introduced and are working their way through
legislatures in Idaho, Indiana, Oklahoma, Arizona, and West Virginia.

"Organized by big industry players"

Language in all the seed bills is similar, containing words such as
"registration, labeling, sale, storage, transportation, use, and
notification of use: of seed". NO bills mention "genetically modified," or
"biotechnology" though Idaho's House Bill 38 states that local regulations
"are often not based on principles or good science," a thinly-veiled
reference to Mendocino County's rejection of GM crops.

Does the similar language indicate a coordinated nation wide effort to pass
such legislation? Joseph Mendelson, legal director at the Center for Food
Safety, thinks so. "I'm sure that it is organized by big industry players
who are fearful that the California strategy (GMO-free initiatives) may
spread," he said.

This might interest some of the politically minded.

cheers

R


Goodbye to All That
From our April issue: The spirit of '68 still lives on in some quarters of the left. Too bad -- there are much more effective ways to be an opposition party than by reliving the past.
By Kevin Mattson
Web Exclusive: 03.28.05

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With conservatism dominant in every branch of government, it is clear that liberals are an opposition party. We have to think, act, and strategize like an opposition party. That means figuring out ways to articulate what we stand for while not alienating those who may disagree with us but can be persuaded to see things our way. That’s a difficult balancing act. Of course, the postwar left has been in opposition before, and that’s a historical fact that can be turned to advantage -- there’s a track record to examine and think through, and a set of political styles and strategies for change to reflect upon. Examining this history can mean recycling good ideas and tactics. But what if it means recycling bad ones?

No doubt, some progressives will be drawn to the protest movements of the 1960s to inspire opposition today. There are good reasons for this. The world that existed before the ’60s is one that no one wants to go back to. The decade witnessed enormous victories for African Americans, women, and the poor. The civil-rights movement -- with its pioneering use of nonviolent and grass-roots “direct action” -- prompted these advances. It also gave birth to a new form of politics that championed the energy of ordinary citizens and that carried on within the peace movement’s struggle against the Vietnam War. College students, through the teach-in movement, learned how to connect their learning to political engagement. The decade seemed a golden age of political idealism.

Remembering the ’60s as a time of heroic activism -- when ordinary citizens changed the terms of politics -- suggests we might be able to recycle those protest styles today. Younger activists are doing that as they march on Washington, against the Iraq War or in favor of abortion rights. The left is often identified, in the press and in popular imagination, as a series of marches. Protest has become an easy way to express dissent. It’s often highly visible and focused in terms of time and resources. When people mass in the streets -- as they were known to during the 1960s -- it appears something is wrong in the country that demands attention. And because protest activists are the most vocal element of the left, they attract the energy of young idealists yearning for a way to express their political disaffection. Take it from someone who’s marched a lot in his life: There’s an emotional appeal to massing with others you share solidarity with.

But there’s also a limit to protest. With its emphasis on criticizing rather than building, it nurtures a narrow conception of opposition. Of course we need to criticize, especially with this administration in power. But for the long term, it’s far more important at this historical moment that we build. The left needs to think about long-term and broader ideas of change. Protest doesn’t help here; it’s too fleeting and spasmodic.

To romanticize protest and the decade of the 1960s cuts us off from rethinking -- with a cold, analytical eye -- the decade’s lessons. The spirit of the ’60s has something to teach us, for sure, but it’s a mixed message, one that lives on in the activist wing of today’s left in troubling ways. We need to search out styles, dispositions, and ideas that can inform our present sense of being an opposition party -- and we need to widen what we choose from. We also need to recognize how the past’s influence precludes more productive strategies for the present, how what might have worked in a previous context no longer works today. To get a sense of this, we need to travel back to 1968, to a time when the decade’s meaning crystallized, a time that seems far gone at first but whose images and memories live on in disturbing ways today. Remembering the past critically allows us to be a more effective opposition in the present.

Protest and Confrontation as Politics
Both internationally and in the United States, 1968 remains one of the most evocative years in the history of the left. The spirit lives through images of protesters massing in the streets and Molotov cocktails zinging through the air. Protest and anger aren’t the only tendencies from the time, but they are certainly the most evocative. Mark Kurlansky, in his book 1968: The Year that Rocked the World, explains the allure: “People under twenty-five do not have much influence in the world. But it is amazing what they can do if they are ready to march.” Breaking from the limitations of the sidewalk into the streets now conjures a feeling of exhilaration and radical accomplishment.

No occasion in American history symbolizes this more than Chicago’s Democratic convention during the summer of 1968. Memories of Chicago come easy due to its highly charged political theater. Abbie Hoffman’s organization, the Youth International Party (Yippies), planned to protest the Democratic convention with a “Festival of Life” that would nominate a pig picked up from a local farm for president. Protesters were refused permits but insisted on marching, while Richard Daley, the mayor of Chicago, did all he could to spark a fight. Chicago became a pressure cooker, a leading Yippie calling it “a revolutionary wet dream come true.” When the riots occurred and the police clubs started swinging, protesters chanted, infamously, “The whole world is watching.” Unfortunately for the protesters, America watched, all right -- and cheered for the working-class cops of Chicago, for the “man” sticking it to the longhairs in the streets. Protest, confrontation, and outrage didn’t elicit the intended sympathetic response. Anger killed strategy.

It may be easy to overstate the resonance of such tactics today, but a romanticism about them does exist among those who still believe in street protests. When Rick Perlstein interviewed organizers of the 2004 protests at the Republican convention, he found them championing direct action and confrontation as a tactic. Check out the A31 (August 31) Action Coalition, an organization based in Brooklyn that was angry at New York City’s permitting system that confined protesters to certain areas. A31’s leaders hoped to “transform the streets of NYC into stages of resistance ... .” They called for people to “sit down and refuse to move,” and to ignore the limitations of “protest pens” set up by police. To make the connection to 1968 crystal clear, they posted a recent op-ed by Tom Hayden on their Web site -- no surprise, as Hayden had argued in 1968 that Chicago symbolized a move toward “direct action and organization outside the parliamentary process,” language remarkably similar to that used by A31.

This was not the only organization that recycled protest styles of 1968. There was Dontjustvote.com and the old peace movement organization, The War Resisters’ League (WRL), both celebrating action in the streets, no matter the consequence. A leader of the WRL told Perlstein, “We need to do what we think is right to do, and not so much worry about, ah, ‘Well, what if this? What if that?’ I think we need to do what our conscience tells us is important to do … .” When Perlstein asked if this might alienate the wrong people, the organizers shrugged. These activists seemed in the clutches of 1968, transported back to Chicago and prepared for the worst. Fortunately, this time, the “whole world” wasn’t watching.

It’s remarkable how much these protesters live in another era. Over and over, they use Martin Luther King Jr.’s words to justify their actions. They especially like the following quote (seen on numerous Web sites) from “Letter from a Birmingham City Jail” (1963): “Nonviolent direct action seeks to create … a crisis and establish such creative tension so that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue.” Plucked out of context, the quote suggests thoughtful political strategy. After all, these activists are appropriating America’s best political thinker on nonviolence and democratic change.

But in plucking the quote, these activists ignore its context. Go to the rest of the document and you find much more. King was explaining how a minority, African Americans, could struggle to make a moral appeal to a majority. He believed black Americans had to highlight “the best in the American dream” in order to be heard. And civil-rights protesters had to rule out other options before embracing the challenging ethic of nonviolent direct action. You had to have moral merit on your side -- what Reinhold Niebuhr called a “spiritual discipline against resentment” -- before rushing into the streets.

Today’s protesters ignore King’s reflections on his own historical context. Consider that John F. Kennedy was president when King wrote his letter, and that King was one of Kennedy’s most astute critics. King believed in 1960 that candidate Kennedy “had the intelligence and the skill and the moral fervor to give the leadership” the civil-rights movement had “been waiting for.” Soon, though, King realized Kennedy had “the political skill” but not “the moral passion.” Nonviolent direct action, with its intention of creating conflict to expose tension, was precisely the tool to jump-start that moral passion. King saw an opening that the movement could prod, and this got him the legislation he desired: the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The year 1963 was its own time, distinct from 1968 and certainly 2004. George W. Bush is no John F. Kennedy, and today’s Republican leadership in Congress is a far cry from the Congress of 1963–64. The chance that Bush and congressional Republicans would be prodded into some kind of action by such protests is zero (unless, indeed, protest moves them to act more forcefully in the other direction). The protesters at the Republican convention of 2004 might have imagined themselves as working in the tradition of King. But the context had shifted so drastically that their actions fell on -- quite literally -- deaf ears. It wasn’t even clear what they hoped to accomplish. And when the goals aren’t clear, protest means little more than expressing rage. That’s why it often takes the form of political theater, which too often encapsulates those who make it in their own hermetic world; it replaces explanation of political ideas and policies with in-jokes and references that confirm pre-existing opinions. If you know a pig stands for a white guy with power, you get it; if not, you don’t.

There’s a recent, evocative documentary, The Yes Men, that focuses on two activists inspired by the French Situationists (intellectual forerunners to 1968 France) and the Diggers (politically minded hippies before Hoffman). They pose as representatives of the World Trade Organization and attend business gatherings exhibiting a television monitor that polices workers and pops up like a phallus in a blow-up suit. They get applause in rooms of 30 people, although it’s not clear why. The movie winds up showing these “activists” as all-knowing lefties snickering at their opposition. The climactic scene involves their presentation to a college classroom, where students protest their idea of turning human feces into McDonald’s hamburgers sold to citizens of the Third World.

Unlike political humor that entertains, political theater has a pretense of changing public life. The Yes Men think of themselves as activists, but the tendency to laugh at their opposition rather than engage it betrays their project’s limitation. Asked about the “mind-set of the corporate man” who might resist their jokes, these activists call them “ready to goosestep.” Generally, people are “easy prey for the ideas of the corporate decision-makers.” The Yes Men characterize their opposition as “dumb asses” who wouldn’t “listen anyhow.” “Criticizing those in power with a smile and a middle finger” is what they intend. Expression trumps strategy.

Expressive Anti-Politics
Indeed, guerilla theater and protest as outrage suggest another legacy of 1968: expressive anti-politics. This element of political style draws from pop existentialism and participatory democracy. Once again, it crystallized in Chicago, and specifically in Tom Hayden. By 1968, Hayden was disenchanted with electoral politics and supported urban riots and Third World guerilla fighters. Chicago ratified his break from electoral politics, especially when Eugene McCarthy’s supporters spilled out of the convention and into the streets. The left had literally split -- those inside the hotel symbolizing electoral politics (the fogies), and those outside practicing direct democracy in the streets (the youth). Here can be found the essence of expressive anti-politics and its long legacy of liberal powerlessness.

The impulsive nature of direct action -- its immediacy -- is precisely its major appeal for today’s activist left. L.A. Kauffman, an organizer involved with United for Peace and Justice (a leading anti-war organization that formed in the last few years), explains, “Direct actionists devote little if any energy to lobbying or passing legislation; if they interact with the government, it’s almost always by raising a ruckus.” Here’s a curious embrace of protest over power -- the bizarre idea that a presence in the streets can substitute for a presence in the halls of government, or that reacting to government action is morally superior to initiating it. The sentiment is echoed in the ideas of Dontjustvote.com, an organization that was created for protests at the Republican convention of 2004 and a clear inheritor of the spirit of ’68. As its Web site explains, the organization embraces “the power of direct action” and “direct democracy as a viable alternative to representation.” This is the political theory of street action or, put more positively, “participatory democracy.”

The idea’s salience arises from its respectable lineage in American political thought, which stretches back to Thomas Jefferson and John Dewey. Dewey believed democracy required a home in the local neighborhood where discussion and association took place. When members of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) gathered in Michigan in 1962 to write the famous “Port Huron Statement,” they outlined the demands of participatory democracy and invoked Dewey’s ideals. But they also invoked a jargon of authenticity taken from existentialist philosophy. While embracing “a democracy of individual participation,” they hoped to find “a meaning in life that is personally authentic.”

But there’s a problem with proclaiming both of those as goals: Authenticity of the self and actually living in a democratic community with other citizens who hold varying opinions are two very different -- if not, in fact, irreconcilable -- demands. In Chicago, the two ideals clashed, and authenticity won out. Protesters pitted themselves against the inauthentic masses -- the police, those who believed in the Vietnam War, the “pigs.” When this occurred, participatory democracy no longer supplemented representative democracy but replaced it; authenticity displaced the challenge of deliberating with other citizens who might disagree. To be authentic meant to give direct expression to desire rather than to work through a longer process of changing representative institutions. It focused on what George Cotkin, the historian of American existentialism, called “catharsis.”

Critics noticed the dangers at the time. As Christopher Lasch wrote soon after the Chicago convention, “The search for personal integrity could lead only to a politics in which ‘authenticity’ was equated with the degree of one’s alienation, the degree of one’s willingness to undertake existential acts of defiance.” Bayard Rustin agreed, arguing that the participatory ethic of protest threatened the importance of doing actual politics, which required coalition-building and compromise, and wound up pitting leftists against liberals in a dangerous internecine warfare and mutual alienation. But clear as this might have been to some back then, the idea’s appeal lives on in the activist left’s disposition to political action combined with a lack of realism -- a disposition apparent today when expression trumps effectiveness. Go back and read the statements of Naderites in 2000, or the shriller ones from 2004. You can hear moral fervor trumping political responsibility -- the idea that voting is about expressing conscience rather than influencing policy. When The Progressive interviewed the few remaining Naderites working in the swing state of Wisconsin in 2004, the publication confronted purist sentiment. Supporters explained that they were “principled” while those supporting the Democrats were “muted.” One went so far as to say, “It’s not important who’s sitting in the White House, it’s who’s sitting in.”

This is the ugly legacy of 1968: the authenticity of conscience pitted against the requirements of a pluralistic and conflicted society, the ethic of expression winning out against all other aims, including practicality. “Direct nonviolent action” no longer means what King believed it meant; it now means remaining pure by turning “Your Back on Bush,” as recent protesters did at the inauguration, even if the result wasn’t anything more than making them feel better. Expressive anti-politics is the last refuge of the powerless. Impulsive, it bursts like a flame and then burns out, to be felt only in the heart of the participant while the ruling class, unperturbed, goes on its merry way.

The Right(’s) Lessons from the ’60s
Burnout is a constant theme of 1968. We’ve heard the refrain about “tired radicals,” and the one about Yippies turning into yuppies. Even while appreciating the social movements from this time, Paul Berman (who was a part of it all) admits, “The uprisings proved amazingly unproductive in regard to conventional political or economic change.” The historian Alan Brinkley comments, “The new radicals” of 1968 “never developed the organizational or institutional skills necessary for building an enduring movement.”

Meanwhile, of course, an enduring movement was being built during the ’60s -- but it was on the right. Historians of the decade used to focus on left-wing organizations, writing books about sds, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, or the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, typically culminating in the tumult of 1968 and thus telling a story of factionalism and decline. Today, however, historians are growing more interested in documenting the right and telling a tale not of decline but of ascendance. James Miller, who wrote a marvelous book about sds, explained to the magazine Lingua Franca a few years back that “in terms of the political history of this country, the New Left just isn’t an important story.” Focusing on the left, he explained with a certain irony about his own historical work, evades “the extraordinary success of the forces that first supported [Barry] Goldwater, then [Ronald] Reagan as governor of California, and then [George] Wallace. I can’t help but see that absence in the historiography as integral to the mythologization of the Sixties.” Miller echoes the argument of M. Stanton Evans, a leading conservative intellectual and popular writer, who wrote, “Historians may well record the decade of the 1960s as the era in which conservatism, as a viable political force, finally came into its own.”

When Evans wrote that line he was discussing an organization that still grabs the attention of young historians today: Young Americans for Freedom (YAF). YAF’s membership was always more stable and often larger than SDS’s, but more importantly, the group created a longer-lasting infrastructure. It engaged young people philosophically, through a ringing endorsement of liberty and individualism; but it also engaged them with well-organized chapters on campuses that cultivated long-lasting skills for activists (Richard Viguerie, for instance, pioneered his direct-mail tactics through YAF). YAF worked with the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists to coordinate lectures of right-wing thinkers and circulate conservative books to students. It linked up with Goldwater and Reagan, supplying an army of young volunteers for their campaigns. Did it engage in protest? Certainly not. During its “heyday in the early ’60s,” Maurice Isserman and Michael Kazin point out, YAF members went to “the lectern and the party caucus more than into the streets.”

The networks of YAF were replicated for adults in places like Orange County, California. Here, there were chapters of the John Birch Society that supported local school-board candidates and institutions like the Orange County School of Anti-Communism, where conservatives could fraternize, learn about boycotts of corporations selling products to communist countries, and hear Reagan speak before he even considered a run for governor. There were also barbecues, coffee klatches, and discussion groups that congealed a conservative animosity toward the federal government and liberalism. Churches and right-wing bookstores helped provide “movement centers,” and the infrastructure was especially impressive considering the decentralized, suburban setting.

These networks explain the passion and long-lasting influence behind Goldwater’s run for the presidency in 1964. Traditionally, the campaign was seen as a right-wing disaster. Goldwater’s convention speech in favor of “extremism” still sounds scary. But now, more remarkable is the infrastructure that stood behind Goldwater. A strong network of activists worked hard to push the Republican Party toward the right, away from centrists like Nelson Rockefeller. It wasn’t enough to win the presidency in 1964, but that same infrastructure -- YAF, John Birch Society chapters, and general right-wing networks -- helped Reagan become governor of California in 1966. As Isserman and Kazin explain, conservatives “sustained morale and kept expanding their numbers for years after the young radicals had splintered in various directions.”

We can link this scholarship about conservative grass-roots activism to something already well-known: that throughout the 1960s, the right was developing ideas that would come to fruition much later. Leading this initiative was the well-known (now at least) American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Though founded in 1943, it changed form during the 1960s. Its leader, William Baroody, believed it should not just reflect the right’s primary “special interest” -- corporations -- but develop bigger ideas. Baroody “understood,” as Sidney Blumenthal explained in The Rise of the Counter-Establishment, “that without conservative theory there could be no conservative movement.” Baroody forged alliances with the Goldwater campaign quietly, behind the scenes. He focused on long-term goals so that, when the excesses of the ’60s erupted, there was a place neoconservative intellectuals could go to develop their ideas during the ’70s. The AEI articulated both particular public policies and a broader philosophy of the free market -- something that undergirds conservative political action today. And, of course, it provided a model for other conservative think tanks during the ’70s.

The power of YAF, grass-roots networks, and think tanks like the AEI show that the right focused its energy on infrastructure and ideas during a time when the left focused on protest. The right’s tactics weren’t loud or theatrical. Its activists operated under the radar to lay the groundwork. They worked almost entirely within the system, changing the Republican Party from moderate to conservative precinct by precinct. And their story challenges the left-wing narrative of idealism during the decade. That’s precisely why it should inform the way liberals think about the future. To win real power, liberals need to think about infrastructure, institutions, and ideas. And they’re not going to get these if they look to the late ’60s for inspiration.

The Spirit of 1948: New Ideas in the Old
This is especially true for ideas. Who now reads left-wing books from 1968? Just try Hoffman’s Revolution for the Hell of It or Woodstock Nation. Or try Theodore Roszak’s The Making of a Counter Culture, a puff piece about the “non-intellective” exploration of “visionary splendor” and “human communion.” Or read the prognostication of “revolution” of “consciousness” in Charles Reich’s The Greening of America. Read even the otherwise smart Susan Sontag, who praises the worst elements of Third World revolutions in Styles of Radical Will (she later stood down from many of those positions). All of these books reflect a utopian hallucination not dissimilar from the style of protests on the streets of Chicago in 1968.

Younger thinkers today are going further back than the ’60s to rediscover good ideas. It’s been the Cold War liberalism of the ’40s and ’50s that has garnered the most interest. Books like Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.’s The Vital Center or Niebuhr’s The Irony of American History or John Kenneth Galbraith’s American Capitalism seem much more interesting than The Making of a Counter Culture. There’s good reason for this, because though we might feel closer to the ’60s chronologically, our own age is much more parallel to the ’40s. Then, as now, liberals faced an international enemy -- Niebuhr’s “children of darkness” -- willing to murder for salvation. Then, as now, liberals confronted conservatives who entertained dangerous ideas of launching preemptive wars abroad while slashing social programs at home. And, if we take the ’48ers up to 1952 and the election of JFK in 1960, then, as now, liberals were often an opposition party.

The ’48ers knew they had to articulate a public philosophy, the way conservatives would later. They sketched out broad principles that transcended liberal interest groups. Those principles grew out of their faith in the American nation as a community of citizens sharing mutual obligations to one another -- the sort that they saw during World War II and that they hoped could live on afterward. The ideas of national greatness and patriotism grounded their political thought. They upheld a public purpose that highlighted the weaknesses of the libertarian right and led them to criticize the “social imbalance” of a society enamored of consumerism and markets, and not America’s civic fabric. Politically, they supported the idea of a “pluralist” government with many voices participating, not just those of business and privilege. They wanted influence on the inside, not protest from the outside. In The Vital Center, Schlesinger wrote, “Our democratic tradition has been at its best an activist tradition. It has found its fulfillment, not in complaint or in escapism, but in responsibility and decision.”

The ’48ers, so far as I know, never marched against American actions abroad. What they did do was construct a framework for a liberal foreign policy, a robust alternative to conservative emphasis on military action and “rolling back” the enemy. The idea of containment was not simply a doctrine of realism but a moral disposition toward the demands of national power. America certainly had a strong role to play abroad, the ’48ers argued, but it had to do so with a sense of “humility.” So, for instance, Niebuhr, drawing upon Christian ethics (not yet the sole property of the right), argued against “preventive war.” Those who articulated such an idea “assume a prescience about the future which no man or nation possesses.” He went on to explain, “We would, I think, have a better chance of success in our struggle against a fanatical foe if we were less sure of our purity and virtue.” Learning this lesson required America to work with others to “reconstruct” poorer economies as much as engage with military power. This was to be a war of ideas as well as guns.

These thinkers didn’t just think; they put ideas into action. They attended international conferences of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, where they argued that America stood for more than a prosperous consumer economy. (Richard Nixon had made this assertion to Nikita Khrushchev in 1959, displaying a gleaming American kitchen to the Soviet leader at an exhibition fair; Galbraith chided Nixon’s equation of democracy with consumer triumph as a “simple-minded and mechanical view of man and his liberties.”) The ’48ers also befriended politicians. Unlike our own age, when politicians hire overpaid consultants with few ideas, during the ’50s, politicians turned to intellectuals. In 1953, Galbraith formed the Finletter Group, which collected papers on topics by scholars and writers, crafted speeches, and found ways to have ideas inform public debate. Most famously, Americans for Democratic Action became an organizational forum where intellectuals and politicians could formulate foreign and domestic policy together. In this and other ways, they found outlets for ideas that could become a source of opposition as well as inspiration.

These strengths shouldn’t allow us to ignore their limitations. These thinkers took things for granted, including their privileged status as white, highly educated men. They sometimes had a hard time accepting the activism of the ’60s, and they were slow to see how their own anti-communism, legitimate though it was, could descend ineluctably into the disaster of Vietnam. Their experience of the staid 1950s, when bureaucratic corporations accustomed themselves to the welfare state, made them take Keynesian policies for granted. In going back to these thinkers, we need not romanticize them. Indeed, one of their central weaknesses, taking the welfare state for granted, should inspire our thinking today.

The Past’s Lessons for the Future
This quick tour through postwar history gets us closer to what it means to be an opposition party today. First, we need to question the legacy of protest politics and political theater, which makes activists feel good but alienates and confuses others. We need to build a grass-roots infrastructure, like that developed by the right. We should also start reconstructing liberalism by going deeper into the past, while recognizing the limits any set of ideas from the past naturally have. These are some good first steps to take, but obviously they are just the beginning, and mostly about looking backward, not forward.

If we take these lessons seriously, our biggest challenge moving ahead is how to articulate our opposition to the right’s well-developed agenda while simultaneously developing a public philosophy like that of the ’48ers. The need for this became abundantly clear in the last presidential election. John Kerry lost because Americans didn’t understand what he stood for. They understood him as an opposition candidate but not as someone who had “values” that could be articulated and explained. This wasn’t just Kerry’s problem; it is the problem of liberalism generally. The public perceives liberalism negatively, due to the long war the right waged against it from the 1960s onward. Unlike the ’48ers, we cannot assume that our ideas resonate; we need to make them resonate.

To rearticulate liberal ideals while acting in opposition is not as hard as first appears. Take Social Security. Clearly, Bush is surprised by the backlash against privatization, as he scrambles around the country garnering support. This appears a dream come true for progressives, but it’s much more. It’s a challenge to articulate not just opposition but a public philosophy that can explain what liberals stand for. We shouldn’t defend a program inherited from the New Deal in a rearguard fashion but should reiterate the idea of a shared national purpose based on collective sacrifice.

Nor should we turn this into a demographic issue and bank on the elderly supporting Democrats; that’s interest-group politics, not a long-range public philosophy. We need to explain what Social Security teaches the nation about deeper principles. Why do Americans react against the term “privatize”? Because there is still a sense of shared obligation to one another, and it’s up to liberals to articulate that public philosophy while they oppose the president. We can show how the president’s proposal reflects the “social imbalance” the ’48ers perceived, the elevation of the self’s interest above the common good. None of this requires protest. It requires public argument. The time for protest may come, but it will undoubtedly rely on a change of leadership first and serious thinking about strategy later.

The same needs to be done on foreign policy. It’s not good enough to protest the Iraq War. Occasionally, Kerry articulated an alternative, albeit muted, to Bush’s foreign policy that embraced the ’48er idea of national humility and a critique of hubris. Today, we need to articulate this liberal foreign policy more forcefully. Its central message should be that American responsibility abroad shouldn’t rely on guns alone or a sense of superior moral virtue. Liberals should argue for nurturing civil society and democratic institutions throughout the world, envisioning an equivalent of the Marshall Plan for the Middle East and elsewhere. Liberals need to emphasize that the war against terrorism is a war of ideas as much as a war of military power and intelligence. Like the ’48ers, liberal intellectuals should define America abroad as more than just its well-known Hollywood films. We need not allow Bush to expropriate the rhetoric of democracy and freedom; we need to reshape these ideas in a more responsible and meaningful manner.

Liberals must also talk about shared sacrifice during wartime. This shouldn’t be about getting the military vote, even if that wouldn’t hurt. The tradition of national greatness expects shared sacrifice from all members of our society. As JFK quipped, “Ask what you can do for your country.” Only liberals will make it clear that the wealthiest elements of society should provide for the common good, so that we have enough to pay veterans’ benefits and provide other services. None of this will come from protest marches against the war, which to date have accomplished little more -- as unfair as this might seem -- than to permit the partisans of the right to raise questions about the left’s patriotism.

The problem with what I outline here is the lack of places to build articulate ideas and have them inform the thinking of Democratic politicians. Now is certainly the time for progressives to invest in building an infrastructure -- the only alternative to spasmodic protests in the streets. The term “progressive infrastructure” seems to spark interest among some funders today, especially considering how the quickie infrastructure built in 2004 -- notably America Coming Together -- didn’t quite do the trick. It’s time for institutions that can approximate what Americans for Democratic Action did during the Cold War -- provide a space where thinkers and politicians meet -- and build local networks. Of course, this requires that Democratic politicians stop relying so heavily on overpaid consultants, and that wealthier progressives pony up money for institutions without immediate impact.

This leaves open the question of how to relate to the “actually existing” protest left today. The ’48er spirit was recently invoked to call for a purge of the protest wing of the left today. Writing in The New Republic, Peter Beinart suggested that MoveOn should be pushed out of a more responsible left. While I think MoveOn deserves criticism for its pacifism and teaming up with hard-left dinosaurs like ANSWER, it doesn’t merit a purge (purge from what, exactly?). What MoveOn needs is an articulation of the principle of “responsibility” that Schlesinger set out against the spirit of alienated protest. There’s reason for hope on this front. After all, Mother Jones described MoveOn’s young leader, Eli Pariser, as a “scruffy indie-rock fan who not long ago was chanting anti-globalization slogans and confronting riot police at World Bank meetings.” At one anti–International Monetary Fund protest, though, he talked with police and, in his own words, “realized that the scripted confrontation of attacking and antagonizing them wasn’t going to get us anywhere. It changed the way I was thinking, tactically.” This idea of laying groundwork for an infrastructure also came out in MoveOn’s work during the last election; it didn’t succeed, but with a little help from a stronger intellectual infrastructure in the future, it might.

My tempered hope about this comes from a sense of urgency about the Bush administration. Such a sense threatens to degenerate into protest theatrics and expressive anti-politics. Instead of embracing those styles from the past, liberals should take their lessons from the right during the 1960s. Liberals will never be as powerful as the right. That’s not just because the right is richer but because the liberal faith is, by definition, weaker. Unlike evangelical Christianity, liberalism can never provide absolute zeal or commitment. We can draw some inspiration from the “fighting faith” of the ’48ers’ liberalism, but we also face challenges that they never faced, especially the infrastructure the right has built over the last few decades. With this said, liberals don’t need to be as weak as they are now. We need not recycle protest and alienation from the past. Liberals have been in the opposition before, and they’ve managed to win back political power. But it took care and precision and some serious thinking about strategy. That’s our charge today.

Kevin Mattson teaches American history at Ohio University and is the author, most recently, of When America Was Great: The Fighting Faith of Postwar Liberalism.

Copyright © 2005 by The American Prospect, Inc. Preferred Citation: Kevin Mattson, "Goodbye to All That", The American Prospect Online, Mar 28, 2005. This article may not be resold, reprinted, or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior written permission from the author. Direct questions about permissions to permissions@prospect.org.

GENETIC CROSSROADS

NEWSLETTER OF THE CENTER FOR GENETICS AND SOCIETY

JANUARY 24, 2005

NOTABLE QUOTE

"The top two officials of California's new stem cell research agency are multimillionaire entrepreneurs with vast real estate and biotechnology company holdings, according to financial disclosure forms filed Tuesday with the state's political campaign watchdog."

-Associated Press (January 19)

I FEATURE: MOUNTING CONTROVERSY OVER STEM CELL INSTITUTE IN CALIFORNIA
Public interest groups challenge the stem cell committee
Press and media coverage of the controversies
Will other states repeat California's mistakes?

II REPORTS

December 9: "The Next Four Years, the Biotech Agenda, the Human Future: What Direction for Liberals and Progressives?"
December 16: "Babies by Design"

III EVENTS
January 26-31: World Social Forum
February 25-27: Women Coming Together: Claiming the Law for Social Change
March 11-12: Incite! Color of Violence 3: Stopping the War on Women of Color Conference
April 8-13: Biomedicine Within the Limits of Human Existence
October 20-22: Money, Money, Money: Bioethic$ Confront$ Dollar$ and $en$e

IV RESOURCES
Investigative Report: "Technology Allows Choice; Embryo Screening Stirs Ethics Debate"
Organization: Women's Bioethics Project
Study Guide: Human Genetics and Progress: Faithfully Engaging Science, the Possible and the Limits of Human Progress
Report: "Altered Nuclear Transfer Crosses Ethical Boundaries"
Investigative Report: "Law, Heal Thyself: Sex Detection a Pretext to Harass Honest Doctors"

V NEWS
South Korea approves cloning research
China criminalizes sex selection
Italian court approves referendum on parts of ART law

I FEATURE: MOUNTING CONTROVERSY OVER STEM CELL INSTITUTE IN CALIFORNIA

The aftermath of the passage of the $3 billion stem cell initiative in California last November has been one of mounting controversy. Over just the past six weeks:

The California State Attorney General ruled that the agenda for the first meeting of the new stem cell governing board, the Independent Citizens Oversight Committee (ICOC), was in violation of California's Open Meeting Act.

Klein
Real estate mogul and Proposition 71 author and chief contributor Robert Klein was elected Chair and interim president of the ICOC without a serious search for other candidates. It was widely presumed that Klein's key role in drafting Prop 71 was a factor in the close fit between the qualifications for Chair written into the initiative and Klein's own resume.

California public interest organizations began raising questions about the ICOC. Public interest lawyer Charles Halpern drew attention to multiple violations of open government laws [first, second letters to ICOC, to Attorney General], as did Californians Aware [letter, news release]. The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights called the ICOC "rife with conflicts of interest." Two founders of the Pro-Choice Alliance Against Proposition 71 authored a blistering op-ed in the Los Angeles Times titled "The Stem Cell Chair to the Highest Bidder?" The California Nurses Association reiterated concerns raised during the campaign about using public funds for private biotech and the lack of research safeguards, especially regarding the extraction of women's eggs.

California State Senator Deborah Ortiz, a leading supporter of Proposition 71, introduced Senate Bill 18 to address what she now characterized as the initiative's "flaws," including key areas in which it falls "glaringly short."

Penhoet
The release of financial disclosure statements [PDF] showed that ICOC vice-chair Edward Penhoet is "the ultimate corporate biotech insider," heavily invested in numerous biotech firms, a partner in a major biotech venture capital outfit, and a former director of BIO, the country's leading biotech lobbying organization.
Before the November election press coverage of Proposition 71 tended to reflect its sponsors' portrayal of the measure as an unmitigated blessing. But the post-election coverage has been strikingly different:

"California's New Stem-Cell Initiative Is Already Raising Concerns," New York Times (Nov. 27)
"Editorial: Proposition 71 needs reform," San Francisco Examiner (Dec. 7)
"Prop 71's fine print contains surprises: Tightly written law leaves little room for oversight or changes," San Francisco Chronicle (Dec.
"Controversy embroils stem cell panel," Sacramento Bee (Dec. 17)
"Editorial: Stem cell board must find way to hold open meetings," Oakland Tribune (Dec. 21)
"Editorial: Stem-Cell Reality Check," Wall Street Journal (Dec. 27, 2004)
"Calif. $3 billion stem cell plan draws criticism," Reuters (Jan. 4)
"New Calif. Stem Cell Agency Under Fire," Associated Press, (Jan. 6)
"Stem cell committee urged to slow down," San Diego Union Tribune (Jan. 7)
"Editorial: Stem cell panel must show accountability to the public," San Jose Mercury News, (Jan. 12)
"Stem cell panelists show holdings - Economic reports leave some observers uneasy," San Jose Mercury News (Jan. 19)
"Stem Cell Holdings Criticized," Sacramento Bee (Jan. 21)
The New York Times put it succinctly: "As California moves to begin a lushly financed program of embryonic stem cell research, medical ethicists and other skeptics are concerned that the $3 billion that state voters approved for the endeavor could become a bonanza for private profiteers."

Unfortunately, legislators in other states appear unaware of the growing controversy around California's foray into stem-cell research:

"Stem cell bill tops agenda as [Massachusetts] Legislature convenes," Boston Globe (Jan. 6)
"[Conn. Gov.] Rell announces $20 million for stem cell research," Associated Press (Jan. 21)
"Governor Declares State of the State," (Includes "a $750 million public and private investment in biotechnology and stem cell research") WBAY (Jan. 7)
"New Jersey Plans $380 Million for Stem Cell Research," Reuters (Jan. 12)
"New York Dem. Leaders Want $1 Billion Toward Stem Cell Study" Associated Press (Jan. 16)
The Center for Genetics and Society played an active role in organizing pro-choice and progressive opposition to Proposition 71 and post-election challenges to the ICOC. Reforms needed to ensure that the ICOC operates in accord with the public interest include:

full compliance with California's Open Meetings Act,
meaningful conflict of interest rules for ICOC and working group members,
strong protections for subjects asked to participate in clinical trials and egg extraction procedures,
an open and accountable decision-making process for controversial research proposals,
effective oversight and regulation of any approved research involving human embryos,
ensure that any successfully developed treatments are accessible and affordable,
ensure that the California public receives a fair share of any financial returns, in accordance with campaign promises; limits on profit shares to biotech and facilities development companies.

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

The new California state agency that will fund stem cell research, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), is having a troubled launch. The Center for Genetics and Society, along with other progressives who support embryonic stem cell research, opposed Proposition 71, which authorized CIRM's creation. As CIRM's work has gotten underway since the election, the concerns raised during the campaign—lack of accountability to the public and to elected officials, the conflicts of interest inherent in the structure of CIRM, inadequate protection of egg providers and research subjects, the absence of clear standards for returns to the public and the state—have increasingly been voiced by public interest groups, by several state Democratic legislators, and in news stories and editorials in major California newspapers.

The first two meetings of CIRM's governing committee have been held amid controversy about its violations of the state's Open Meetings Act, its existing and potential conflicts of interest, and the consolidation of ever greater powers over its trajectory by Robert Klein. Klein was the chief author of Proposition 71 and its largest contributor, providing upwards of $5 million of his personal funds to the campaign. Since the November election, he has become first the chairperson and then the interim president of the the so-called Independent Citizens' Oversight Committee (ICOC), which in fact is dominated by representatives of groups who hope to receive grants from the $3 billion of public funding authorized by Proposition 71.

A number of public interest groups are now carefully tracking the activities of the ICOC. Californians Aware has criticized its violations of open government laws. California Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights issued a press release calling the ICOC "rife with conflicts of interest." The California Nurses Association reiterated the concerns it had raised during the campaign about "the allocation of public funds for private biotech and pharmaceutical industry profits, the closed door process of key decision making, and lack of safeguards" and noted that "many Californians are now experiencing buyer's remorse" about the initiative.

These concerns have been echoed in recent editorials in major media outlets, including both some that had endorsed Proposition 71 (such as the San Francisco Chronicle and the Oakland Tribune) and some that had urged a "no" vote (the Sacramento Bee, San Jose Mercury News, and Wall Street Journal). And two California legislators—Senator Deborah Ortiz (D-Sacramento), a prominent supporter of Proposition 17, and Assembly member Gloria Negrete McLeod (D-Chino)—have introduced bills aimed at fixing some of the initiative's flaws.

"The Stem Cell Chair to the Highest Bidder?"

In the weeks after the November election, members of the ICOC were appointed by the top California elected officials specified in Proposition 71. Four officials were given the authority to nominate a chairperson; all of them—Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, Treasurer Phil Angelides, and Controller Steve Westley—selected Robert Klein.

Klein's longstanding wish to head up the ICOC was clear, since the "mandatory criteria for chairperson" given in the text of Proposition 71 bore a striking resemblance to his own resume. But revelations that he had donated more than $175,000 to three of the four politicians who nominated him raised many eyebrows, and led to editorial characterizations of the first ICOC meeting as a "coronation" (San Diego Union Tribune, Dec 15) and a "consolidat[ion of] too much power (Sacramento Bee, Dec 16).

The ICOC was scheduled to vote on Klein's nomination when it convened for the first time on December 17 in San Francisco, and then to proceed to consider an ambitious agenda. But two days before the meeting, public interest lawyer Charles Halpern sent a letter to the California Attorney General and ICOC members, pointing out that the public had not been given the advance notice of the agenda required by California's Open Meetings Act.

The Attorney General's office concurred, and the meeting was held as an "emergency session," with the ICOC's election of chair and vice-chair as its only agenda items. The committee proceeded to unanimously and ceremoniously approve Klein for chair, and to select the vice-chair nominee who had received Klein's endorsement.

Amid questions about conflicts of interest, Klein pledged not to hold any biomedical stocks or investments in real estate companies that could benefit from Prop 71 monies. To date, neither vice-chair Edward Penhoet, founder of the biotech giant Chiron Corporation, nor other members of the ICOC have followed this lead.

More Power, More Secrecy, More Conflicts of Interest

The ICOC fared poorly as well at its January 6 meeting in Los Angeles. By then, criticism was mounting of the new pro-CIRM non-profit organization, the California Research and Cures Coalition, which Klein chaired. It is essentially the "Yes on 71" campaign under a new name, with largely the same staff, web address, and offices as the original operation, and has announced that its mission is to influence "opinion leaders, elected officials and policy makers, medical professionals, media and the general public." Yet it was granted the responsibility of coordinating the second ICOC meeting, and is holding a series of public forums on CIRM and "best practices" around the state.

At the January meeting, Klein announced his resignation as chair of the Coalition. But he acknowledged that, in his expanded role as the interim President of CIRM, he is likely to hire Coalition staff to help run the stem cell institute. As the Sacramento Bee points out, this "will further ensure Klein isn't challenged by anyone who has a different mind-set." The CIRM, the Bee editorialized, "is developing clone-like characteristics of Klein's nonprofit group."

As for the other members of the ICOC, they have not yet shown any inclination to question Klein's preferences. After unanimously accepting his sole candidacy for chair as legitimate, and then overwhelmingly backing his pick for vice-chair, the ICOC unanimously ceded him the additional powers of interim president. And several ICOC members were quick to defend Klein's stated intention of retaining the ill-advised provisions of Proposition 71 that allow the crucially important "working groups" to meet entirely in secret, and its members to be exempted from disclosing their conflicts of interest. Though some closed sessions to protect confidentiality are appropriate, a blanket exemption from open government rules is unacceptable.

The (Financial) Ties that Bind

As Genetic Crossroads was "going to press," the financial disclosure statements of some ICOC members became available. ICOC vice-chair Edward Penhoet is a salaried partner at a venture capital firm with extensive investments in biotechnology, has millions of dollars in investments in biotech, and has served on the board of the Biotechnology Industry Organization. Michael Goldberg is also a partner at a biotech venture capital outfit; he donated $58,000 to the Yes on 71 campaign. David Baltimore, the president of CalTech, sits on the boards of Amgen, the world's largest biotechnology corporation, and a Swiss biotech investment firm. Others, however, were clear of investments and income in areas which may pose conflicts. Philip Pizzo, for example, receives income only from his position as dean of the Stanford University School of Medicine.

Links

New web page on the Institute from the Center for Genetics and Society

Press Advisory: "CGS Calls for the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine to delay grants until guidelines in place" (January 3, 2005)
Jesse Reynolds, "Stem Cell Cronyism," San Francisco Bay Guardian (December 29, 2004 to January 4, 2005 issue)
"Skepticism and Questions Follow Passage of California's $3 Billion Stem-Cell Initiative," Genetic Crossroads (December 2, 2004)
Editorials: San Jose Mercury News (Jan. 11), Sacramento Bee (Jan. 9), San Francisco Chronicle (Jan. 5), Wall Street Journal (Dec. 27), Oakland Tribune (Dec. 21), Sacramento Bee (Dec. 16), San Francisco Chronicle (Dec. 9), San Francisco Examiner (Dec. 7)
Francine Coeytaux and Susan Berke Fogel, "The Stem Cell Chair to the Highest Bidder?," Los Angeles Times (December 17, 2004)
Chris Thompson, "Refereeing the Next Big Boom," East Bay Express (January 19, 2005)
Steve Usdin, "Prop. 71: Promises to Keep," BioCentury (November 8, 2004)
Tali Woodward and Laura M. Allen, "Second-guessing Prop. 71," San Francisco Bay Guardian (December 22, 2004)

II REPORTS

December 9: "The Next Four Years, the Biotech Agenda, the Human Future: What Direction for Liberals and Progressives?"
Over four hundred people gathered at the City University of New York Graduate Center for this post-election symposium. Participants heard Sheldon Krimsky of Tufts University, Dorothy Roberts of Northwestern University, William Saletan of Slate, Stuart Newman of New York Medical College, and Marcy Darnovsky of CGS make the case for socially responsible policies governing the new human genetic technologies. Richard Hayes of CGS moderated. The symposium was cosponsored by the Center for Genetics and Society, City University of New York Graduate Center, the Nation Institute, the New York Open Center, and Demos. For more information and an online video of the entire event, see our full report on the symposium. Audio of the symposium will be broadcast on WBAI 99.5 FM, New York City, on Tuesday, January 25, at 6 to 9 PM EST.

Dec. 16: "Babies by Design"
The Genetics and Public Policy Center in Washington, DC, convened this invitation-only meeting to discuss the prospects for germline genetic modification of human beings (also known as inheritable genetic modification). Representatives of CGS and a number of like-minded groups were present. Although the 80 or so participants reflected a generally fair distribution of concerned constituencies, as did the closing panel, the major presentations were by scientists and bioethicists who voiced little opposition to this eugenic technology. Will Saletan's story on Slate.com, "Homo Respect-us: The Creature that Genetic Engineers Fear Most," captures the tone well.

III EVENTS

Sujatha Jesudason, director of the CGS Program on Gender, Justice and Human Genetics, is speaking at three public events in the next three months:

January 26-31, Porto Alegre, Brazil: World Social Forum
Sujatha will be speaking on "(Re)creating Life: Ethical, Social and Gender Aspects of New Human Genetic Technologies" as part of the Heinrich Böll Foundation workshop on the "The Biopolitics of Life: The Privatization of Life and Knowledge."

February 25-27, Cincinnati: Women Coming Together: Claiming the Law for Social Change
Sujatha is on a panel on "Emerging Issues in Reproductive Health: Impact of Ideology and Technology on Women's Access and Rights" at this University of Cincinnati conference sponsored by the Ford Foundation.

March 11-12, New Orleans: Incite! Color of Violence 3: Stopping the War on Women of Color Conference
Sujatha is giving a workshop on "Gender-Based Violence of Biotechnology and Sex Selection," with collaborative partners Rajani Bhatia from the Committee on Women, Population, and the Environment, Rupsa Mallik of Center for Health and Gender Equity, and Shamita Das Dasgupta of Manavi, a South Asian domestic violence prevention organization.

Please contact Sujatha if you are interested in learning more about any of these events.

April 8-13, Doorn, The Netherlands: Biomedicine Within the Limits of Human Existence
This conference, the second in a series focusing on "Biomedical Technology and Practice Reconsidered," will address morality and the limits of human existence, power, and knowledge. Ethicists as well as researchers from the life sciences and medicine, sociologists, anthropologists and researchers of philosophy of law are invited.

October 20-22, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada: Money, Money, Money: Bioethic$ Confront$ Dollar$ And $en$e
The annual meeting of the Canadian Bioethics Society, to be held at Dalhousie University, will focus on the role of money and economics in bioethics. In addition, there will be a pre-conference on "Ethical Challenges in Human Development and Genetics." See the flyer [MS Word doc].

IV RESOURCES

Investigative Report: Rob Stein, "Technology Allows Choice; Embryo Screening Stirs Ethics Debate," Washington Post (December 14)
A front-page report describes the rising use of pre-pregnancy social sex selection methods in the United States.

Organization: Women's Bioethics Project
WBP is an independent, nonprofit, nonpartisan, public-policy think tank devoted to research, analysis, education, and publication, headquartered in Seattle. It seeks to promote "the thoughtful application of biotechnology to improve the status of women's lives and seeks to protect vulnerable populations by anticipating unintended consequences, safeguarding women's bodies from harm, and ensuring that women's life priorities are recognized." Key issues include stem cell research, cloning, and genetic testing, as well as broader women's health concerns.

Study Guide: Human Genetics and Progress: Faithfully Engaging Science, the Possible and the Limits of Human Progress
In 2002 the National Council of Churches of Christ began studying the implications of the new human genetic technologies from the perspective of mainstream Protestant and Orthodox faith traditions. As part of this effort the NCCC prepared a study guide for congregations, based on the noted book by Bill McKibben, Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age.

Report: "Altered Nuclear Transfer Crosses Ethical Boundaries," International Center for Technology Assessment [PDF]
In December the President's Council on Bioethics heard a proposal from one of its religious conservative members that was meant to circumvent opposition to the use of embryos for stem cell research. The basic plan was to use somatic cell nuclear transfer to create embryos that had no chance of being viable, and use those "altered" embryos to extract stem cells for research. Few commentators seemed to notice two serious problems with this proposal: first, that it still requires women's eggs, and thus that women undergo risky egg extraction procedures; and second, that the procedure would set dangerous precedents that could further the development of eugenic technologies.

Investigative Report: Ravinder Kaur, "Law, Heal Thyself: Sex Detection a Pretext to Harass Honest Doctors," Times of India (January 13)
The Indian government promulgated the PNDT (Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques) Act in order to prevent sex-selective abortion and "end the unfair treatment of girl children in the womb." Yet, this seemingly positive step has become a source of harassment for radiologists who do not practice sex detection.

V NEWS

South Korea approves cloning research: New South Korean legislation regulating the biotechnology sector became effective at the start of the new year. Among other things, it bans reproductive cloning but allows research cloning, though only under a license. The first license was issued to the laboratory which last year produced the first confirmed human clonal embryos.

China criminalizes sex selection: The Chinese government announced that it will ban sex selective abortions and the use of ultrasound scans to determine the sex of a fetus. The combination of that country's controversial one-child policy, free ultrasounds and abortions, and a strong preference for male children, has resulted in a sex ratio of 119 newborn boys for every 100 newborn girls - and as high as 133 boys in some areas.

Italian Court Approves Referendum on parts of ART law: The Italian constitutional court on Thursday rejected a petition by the country's Radical Party for a referendum to overturn in its entirety a 2004 law that restricts access to assisted reproductive treatments but accepted calls for a referendum on the law's "most controversial parts."

28mar05

DEMOCRACY is a friend to the common man and authoritarianism is a crutch for millionaires with a villa in Italy – right? Maybe no longer. Lady Liberty has acquired a new dancing partner.

In Europe, the US and Australia, the waltzes and foxtrots of politics during the late 20th century unhitched the Left from its trusted partner, democracy. Labor Party figures in Australia and Democratic Party ones in the US often spurn blue-collar opinion, which is democracy's soil. They mostly reject global idealism, which is liberty's post-communism vocation.
In the US, all this allows a Republican president to make democracy his cause. On the new dance floor of the 21st century, the Right clutches Lady Liberty. This is a historic ideological realignment.

In the late 19th century, the birth of labour parties in Britain and Australia, and of social-democratic parties in Germany and elsewhere in Europe, was seen by trade unions as a logical extension of democracy. First the struggle for parliaments. Second the drive to extend voting to every man and woman. Third the use of the ballot box and the reins of power to legislate for workers' advancement. The moderate Left was in the vanguard of democracy's surge.

Suffragettes were on the Left in England. In the US, civil rights activists from the Left pushed the black vote in the south. Voices for democracy and decolonisation around the world were mostly from left of centre. Think of Herbert Evatt's pro-UN enthusiasm in the 1940s.

Meanwhile, not a few northern hemisphere conservatives were lukewarm about democracy: in Europe, out of lingering aristocratic snobbery; in the US, because of low interest in global freedom. A conservative fringe was virtually anti-democratic, including Hilaire Belloc in the UK and Charles E. Coughlin, the "radio priest" of the '30s, in the US. Today, with rare exceptions, all is different. Pro-Kerry folk's petulant talk of "going to Canada" if the US election went against them did not suggest belief in democracy. Nor did Alan Ramsey's lament in The Sydney Morning Herald that "the people's will has got it dreadfully wrong", the day after "deceived" and "greedy" Australians "put this scheming, mendacious little man [John Howard] and his miserable claque back in office for another three years".

The liberal New York Times urged postponement of the ultimately triumphant election in Iraq because al-Qa'ida made threats against it.

European and American media sent scores of reporters to Switzerland in late January to cover the chatterings of the Davos Forum, an unelected seminar with not a democratic bone in its body.

"The Democrats are the minority party in Congress," says Senator Edward Kennedy, "but we speak for a majority of the American people." Excuse me. Don't the winners of an election have a better – if imperfect – right to speak for a majority of the American people than the losers? Not so to a Left whose eyes bulge with self-entitlement and whose pale hand is estranged from physical labour.

The Democratic Party and the ALP seem to sharply disagree with President George W. Bush's statement at his second inauguration: "The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands." Sometimes, there are good reasons for this prudence, but the change of voice is stark.

Why has the historic change of partners occurred? The left-of-centre parties in many countries embraced identity politics from the '70s. Gays, minorities, women and others were cultivated as building blocks for a progressive edifice. But the "rights" of blocks cut against democratic principles – notably, in Australia, the rights of trade unions in the ALP. The individual going to the ballot box does not want to be taken for granted in deference to identity blocks. The irreducible autonomy of the individual has been jettisoned by a Left clutching at identity and factional politics for reasons originally justified but recently lazy.

Other factors in the US – happily much less evident in Australia – include the Left's discovery that courts help the cause of social engineering more readily than ballots, and the appalling role of money in elections. (The latter, to be sure, is equally present on the Right, and I could write a whole article about some American conservatives' wobbling on democracy.)

The Left's attachment to a notion of "international community" also dilutes democratic principles. If the UN chief says US actions in Iraq are illegal, he must be correct, the argument goes, which means the American and Australian majority must be wrong. Yet many government leaders sitting at UN sessions have never been elected to their posts. John Kerry's "global test" for US military action abroad shows weak support for democratic principle, no less than does his lukewarm stance on Iraq's election on January 30.

Not least, the cultural gatekeepers of our time in the media and in academe, many of whom sprang from the counter-culture of the '60s, have come to picture themselves as adjudicators, even rivals of democracy. Telling us how we are going to vote (polls) and then why we voted (more polls) is a usurpation of democracy, as Paul Sheehan wrote last year in The Sydney Morning Herald. Consider the arrogance of the exit poll: CNN announces the result before the result exists. Or the question that greets me on a leading newspaper's web page in the US: "Should Bush be president? You say!" Voter, the system is not yours to infuse from below; it is the media priests' to re-engineer from above.

What a strange moment for the Left to lose faith in democracy. The Soviet Union and other Leninist dictatorships gone in a puff of smoke. Democracy taking root in Latin America. In East Asia, South Korea, Indonesia, Taiwan, Mongolia and Thailand all newly democratic. Throughout the 20th century, war and authoritarianism were inseparable. For 30 years, democracy and free markets have surged and no war has occurred anywhere on the scale of Korea and Vietnam, let alone World War I and World War II.

Seymour Hersh, investigative writer for The New Yorker, recently told Democracy Now radio that the US was in a bad way because "eight or nine neo-conservatives" have "grabbed the Government". Not mentioning that Bush was elected by 51 per cent of the American people, Hersh did detect a ray of hope: one "salvation may be the economy". Hersh, a writer I generally admire, said regrettably: "It's going to go very bad, folks. You know, if you have not sold your stocks and bought property in Italy, you better do it quick."

A Left that sees a lousy economy as political salvation and frets about stocks and a villa in Italy is not the idealistic, worker-respecting Left any more. Certainly it is not a believer in democracy.

Ross Terrill is a research associate in East Asian studies at Harvard University. He is author of, among other books, Socialism as Fellowship: R.H. Tawney and His Times (Harvard University Press) and The Australians: The Way We Live Now (Doubleday, 2000).

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