This Ohso® writes vigorously from in the vicinity of San Francisco.

A Long And Twysted Road

Sure seems that way to me, Oh Gentle Lurkers of the net, but then I have
been navigating the curves of gender politics for some time now, and one
gets a little jaded. Still, as anyone sitting in front of a keyboard with
writers block can tell you, calling upon what the famed Redondo de Biscuit
once referred to as 'The imperative for creative naivety' (Harvard Lampoon
75: Big Book of College Life) as your personal muse, will only carry you
so far in the world of negotiating a keyboard, if you want to make letters
into words that is. For even with a corrupted spoolchucker to assist the
process, one must to come at least somewhat close to reality for even a
computer to decipher gibberish ...

However, as true aficionado of the art form can attest, when it comes to
genuinely rank hateful gibberish completely out of touch with any reality
save a burning core of Misandry (hatred of men), the tirades excreted by
the tenured harpys residing in the belfry that passes as "Womyn's Studies"
in the U.C. system are required reading. For it is here that we find the
answer to how rabid, frothing, hind foot thumping, feminazi psychodyke
hatemongers came to be in such positions of power, as to even stage their
own government sponsored anti male hate riots, while still posing as
victims.

While there are no doubt as many hyrstorical claimants to "mothyrhood"
of the Frisco Dyke Hate Riot as there are flies in the fat dyke
porta-potty, special mention must be given at this time to two academic
giants in the field of hate: the former Rape Hysteria Facilitator (Cheri ’
gobbles Gurse) and hyr henchdyke enforcer (Rita "rohm" Spaur) at the
University of California at Goleta, in Santa Barbara County. These two
ran a Secret Thought Policing (the "Real" kind, with guns and badges)
operation that reached out far beyond campus, and in addition to punishing
anyone who dared criticize their regime, helped the local dyke coven start
the mini-hate march known at "Take Back the Night".

Like most Psychodyke inspired lunacy in the 80s, the "Take Back" march in
Santa Babylon was 99 percent hate, and one percent anal retentive obsessive
ideological mothyr duck herding. For example, one of the early rules was
that men Must march Three Paces Behind the Womyn, in support of the
Womyn's leadership in gender hate evangelizing, as well as the guiding
principle of Fat Dykes First in the Porta-Potties. Part of the problem
was that some men (including the ms.guided) came along to support their
female friends but not walk behind them, and they were chastised for such
ungood ideas.

More amusing was to watch these cotton pony cowgyrls tying to herd the
march with bull horn hate chants (kind of like an ideological cattle drive,
only different), while simultaneously trying to maintain "order" by
keeping the right men behind the right womyn. See, the problem with the
whole plan was unless you have all the womyn march as a unit, and all the
men as one three paces behind, you are going to have the genders mixed
along the road. This was absolutely driving the Twysted Systerhood in to
a tizzy, as they tried to segregate men from the women they had come with
but keep them far enough apart that it appeared to their politically
measured eye that the womyn didn't appear to be marching behind the men
who were marching behind the womyn ahead.

It was this sort of insoluable conundrum that eventually led to scrapping
the idea of allowing any men in to the streets at all; along with the fact
that it was easier to scream in rage at the hated and despised brutish
raping patriarchal oppressor if they were properly removed to the
sidewalks, rather than right behind you walking with their female friends.
Besides, any womyn who would actually consider a raping pig hyr "friend"
probably wouldn't make the degree requirements in gender studies anyway.

As for the hoary hate traditions started by gobbles gurse and gang so
long ago, well they did have a point I guess (really twysted of course),
After all - what use is it being a well paid rape baiting academic mau mau
artiste if you can't go out and rattle the hated pigs out of the streets
once in a while?

Best keep quiet about it though, wouldn't want to spread any "Ism-Obia"

What with everything else going around and all

Ohso

"Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external
reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The Heresy of Heresies was
Common Sense."
George Orwell "1984" On the Thought Police

- may not be news to your sometime colleague ...

£220bn stolen by Nigeria's corrupt rulers

By David Blair in Abuja
25/06/2005

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/06/25/wnig25.xml

The scale of the task facing Tony Blair in his drive to help Africa was
laid bare yesterday when it emerged that Nigeria's past rulers stole or
misused £220 billion.

That is as much as all the western aid given to Africa in almost four
decades. The looting of Africa's most populous country amounted to a sum
equivalent to 300 years of British aid for the continent.

Former leader Gen Sani Abacha stole between £1bn and £3bn

The figures, compiled by Nigeria's anti-corruption commission, provide
dramatic evidence of the problems facing next month's summit in Gleneagles
of the G8 group of wealthy countries which are under pressure to approve a
programme of debt relief for Africa.

Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, has spoken of a new Marshall Plan for
Africa. But Nigeria's rulers have already pocketed the equivalent of six
Marshall Plans. After that mass theft, two thirds of the country's 130
million people - one in seven of the total African population - live in
abject poverty, a third is illiterate and 40 per cent have no safe water
supply.

With more people and more natural resources than any other African
country, Nigeria is the key to the continent's success.

Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, the chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes
Commission, set up three years ago, said that £220 billion was
"squandered" between independence from Britain in 1960 and the return of
civilian rule in 1999.

"We cannot be accurate down to the last figure but that is our
projection," Osita Nwajah, a commission spokesman, said in the capital,
Abuja.

The stolen fortune tallies almost exactly with the £220 billion of western
aid given to Africa between 1960 and 1997. That amounted to six times the
American help given to post-war Europe under the Marshall Plan.

British aid for Africa totalled £720 million last year. If that sum was
spent annually for the next three centuries, it would cover the cost of
Nigeria's looting.

Corruption on such a scale was made possible by the country's possession
of 35 billion barrels of proven oil reserves. That allowed a succession of
military rulers to line their pockets and deposit their gains mainly in
western banks.

Gen Sani Abacha, the late military dictator, stole between £1 billion and
£3 billion during his five-year rule.

"We are only now beginning to come to grips with some of what he did," Mr
Nwajah said.

Nigeria has scoured the world for Abacha's assets but has recovered only
about £500 million.

Olusegun Obasanjo, the current president, founded the commission and
launched a crackdown on corruption to try to end the country's reputation
as Africa's most venal. The figures all apply to the period before he came
to power.

The amount of money involved has prompted the Government to seek ways to
enhance Britain's ability to help developing countries recover stolen
funds. In the autumn the Government will introduce legislation to pave the
way for British ratification of the United Nations convention against
corruption.

A money laundering directive agreed by EU finance ministers this month
will impose new responsibilities on banks, casinos and other
establishments to be more alert to signs of corruption. They will be
expected to help stamp out financial abuse by high-risk customers in a
position to abuse public office for private gain.

Mr Obasanjo will travel to the G8 summit to press the case for debt
relief. Nigeria is Africa's biggest debtor, with loans of almost £20
billion, because previous rulers not only looted the country but also
borrowed heavily against future oil revenues.

The G8 has refused to cancel Nigeria's loans, despite writing off the
debts of 14 other African countries this month.

Prof Pat Utomi, of Lagos Business School, said that was the right
decision. "Who is to say you won't see the same behaviour again if it is
all written off?" he said.

david.blair@telegraph.co.uk

MPs & others
25-6-05

The National Party, and ACT, have again tried on some advocacy that
nuclear-propelled vessels be allowed into New Zealand's territorial waters.
Several cheap old lies about fission reactors are again being rolled out.
Those who want some facts on marine reactors will find the attached useful.

And a n-power station salesman has been touting on the Holmes®
show, with no attempt at balance.

The n-propelled surface ships e.g cruiser Long Beach and "frigate"
Truxtun are now decommissioned. Nuclear-propelled merchantmen being a
long-gone flop, and Russian nuclear-propelled icebreakers being undesirable
for various reasons, which n-vessels could possibly be invited by a future
NZ govt?

One peculiar aspect of the current revival of this settled issue is
that it has just been made known that nuclear-propelled USN hunter-killer
('attack') submarines are no longer to visit foreign ports, which leaves
few if any prospective nuclear visitors. Many y ago the USN
strategic-missile submarines ('boomers') ceased to visit foreign ports such
as Rota, Spain which they had used. Of interest is the level at which the
new policy on the hunter-killers became known: the no. 2 man in the USA
embassy in Wellington.

Let us leave behind for ever this tiresome stupid idea of
n-vessels in our harbours, or anywhere in our jurisdiction. No vessel
offering us any good is n-powered.

The late hevi-doodi protester Owen Wilkes went over to the other
side around the time of the Polittee. Some of my responses to his change
are in the attachment.

-
Robt Mann
consultant ecologist
P O Box 28878 Remuera, Auckland 1005, New Zealand
(9) 524 2949

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

AN OLD ANTI-NUKE'S PERSPECTIVE ON THE POLITTEE
(University of Auckland Centre for Peace Studies seminar July 3 1993
which in 2005 R E White denied he had 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 naive 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 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 original, 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 patterns1.

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.

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.

THE GLASS WALL OF MEDIA COVERAGE

SAM SMITH
Undernews
June 21, 2005

Dana Milbank's snotty attack on critics of White House behavior as revealed
in the Downing Street memos illuminates a carefully concealed truth about
the media: its definition of objectivity stops at the edge of anything left
of center. Standard Democratic policy is okay, even a liberal quote or
two, but anything further to the left is simply excluded from coverage
unless --- as in Milbank's case --- it is there to ridicule.

Milbank's dislike for the left began long ago and writes of it in a style
that might be called unmaturated preppie. For example, in September 2000
the Washington Post reporter said one of the presidential candidates, Ralph
Nader, that his "only enemy is the corporation." Skull & Bonesman Milbank
also described Greens as "radical activists in sandals."

Since your editor was soon to speak with Nader at an event in Washington, I
brought along a pair of sandals so Milbank's description would not be
totally false. Of course, he didn't show up because Nader and the Greens
fell into that classic media category: important enough to scorn but not
important enough to cover.

Being among the last progressive journalists in the capital I am conscious
of the massive disinterest of the rest of the media in anything left of
center. When I started in 1964, my work was appealing enough to mainstream
journalism to be offered jobs at the New York Times and the Washington
Post. I was frequently called by journalists wanting to know what was
going on in the civil rights or anti-war movement.

These calls were seldom hostile: the left was a reality that needed to be
covered and even the Post had some good reporters on the case. I tried,
then as now, to serve as an helpful interpreter rather than as a rhetorical
advocate and even developed a few friends along the way.

But these days I rarely get calls from the conventional media. Jim
Ridgeway of the Village Voice, down the hall from my office, reports a
similar phenomenon. Two guys with decades of history and background about
progressive politics that is considered totally irrelevant by establishment
Washington. The left, progressive movements, and social change are simply
not thought to be worthy subjects by the corporate media --- or by NPR for
that matter.

Being a stat freak, I have some proof of this. I keep a record of every
interview or call from a journalist. In the early 1990s the number of these
calls began to increase, peaking in 1998 at 98 for the year. The following
year, the calls dropped by a third, in part, I suspect, because I had been
included (among a number of others) in the Clinton do-not-call list given
to friendly reporters.

(I had already been blacklisted by CSPAN and banned from the local NPR
morning show). By 2001 --- with the inauguration of a GOP president ---
the calls were down two-thirds from three years earlier, dropping to a mere
16 last year.

This is only a minor example of a major phenomenon. Every day, for
example, I check about 75 websites. From the NY Times to Wonkette, the
left is considered just not worth mentioning.

Worse, the exception is that it is generally presumed amongst the media
that progressive are fair targets for mockery. In a recent article in the
faux hip Vanity Fair on Jeff Gannon, David Margolik and Richard Gooding
offered as a positive that Gannon "balanced off some of the left-wingers in
the room such as Russell Mokhiber, editor of the Corporate Crime Reporter,
and a Naderite, who once asked McCellan whether, given the administration's
support for the public display of the Ten commandments, President Bush
believed that the commandment 'Thou shalt not kill' applied to the U.S.
invasion of Iraq."

The fact that the authors considered that a stupid question tells much
about the sorry state of Washington journalism. Further, Russell Mokhiber
often tells more important truths in one column than Vanity Fair does in a
whole issue.

The trend is also confirmed by Harry Jaffe of the Washingtonian who has
published a list of a score of political blogs that DC journalists like.
Not one is to the left of Democratic Party liberalism, which these days
means saying, "right on" to whatever conservative Democrat is in charge.
Of the 20 sites, only two are on my list --- the libertarian Hit & Run and
the poll-heavy Real Politics. The common characteristic of many of the
others is their utter predictability.

Put simply, the media doesn't like the left, social change, Greens, or
progressive thought. It deals with them by ignoring them or mocking them,
in either case excluding them from its own perverted definition of
objectivity.

(Ed. Note: Making a mountain out of a mole hill...)

DOWNING STREET MEMO:
"THE INTELLIGENCE AND FACTS
WERE BEING FIXED AROUND THE POLICY"

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
June 17, 2005

[The so-called Downing Street memo was written in July 2002. It was first
published by the Sunday Times of London last month, and it suggests that
some British officials believe the White House was manipulating information
before the war to justify its argument to invade Iraq.]

SECRET AND STRICTLY
PERSONAL -- UK EYES ONLY
DAVID MANNING
[Prime Minister Tony Blair's foreign policy adviser]

From: Matthew Rycroft
[Manning's aide]
Date: 23 July 2002
S 195 /02

cc: Defence Secretary, Foreign Secretary, Attorney-General, Sir Richard
Wilson (Cabinet secretary), John Scarlett (chairman of the Joint
Intelligence Committee), Francis Richards (head of the "signals
intelligence establishment, " an intelligence agency that reports to the
foreign secretary), CDS (chief of defense staff, Adm. Sir Michael Boyce), C
(Sir Richard Dearlove, the chief of the MI6 Secret Intelligence Service),
Jonathan Powell (chief of staff), Sally Morgan (director of political and
government relations), Alastair Campbell (head of strategy)

IRAQ: PRIME MINISTER'S MEETING, 23 JULY

Copy addressees and you met the Prime Minister on 23 July to discuss Iraq.

This record is extremely sensitive. No further copies should be made. It
should be shown only to those with a genuine need to know its contents.

John Scarlett summarised the intelligence and latest JIC (Joint
Intelligence Committee) assessment. Saddam's regime was tough and based on
extreme fear. The only way to overthrow it was likely to be by massive
military action. Saddam was worried and expected an attack, probably by air
and land, but he was not convinced that it would be immediate or
overwhelming. His regime expected their neighbours to line up with the U.S.
Saddam knew that regular army morale was poor. Real support for Saddam
among the public was probably narrowly based.

C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift
in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to
remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of
terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around
the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm
for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little
discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.

CDS said that military planners would brief CENTCOM on 1-2 August, Rumsfeld
on 3 August and Bush on 4 August.

The two broad U.S. options were:

(a) Generated Start. A slow build-up of 250,000 U.S. troops, a short (72
hour) air campaign, then a move up to Baghdad from the south. Lead time of
90 days (30 days preparation plus 60 days deployment to Kuwait).

(b) Running Start. Use forces already in theatre (3 x 6,000), continuous
air campaign, initiated by an Iraqi casus belli. Total lead time of 60
days with the air campaign beginning even earlier. A hazardous option.

The U.S. saw the UK (and Kuwait) as essential, with basing in Diego Garcia
and Cyprus critical for either option. Turkey and other Gulf states were
also important, but less vital. The three main options for UK involvement
were:

(i) Basing in Diego Garcia and Cyprus, plus three SF squadrons.

(ii) As above, with maritime and air assets in addition.

(iii) As above, plus a land contribution of up to 40,000, perhaps with a
discrete role in Northern Iraq entering from Turkey, tying down two Iraqi
divisions.

The Defence Secretary (Geoff Hoon) said that the U.S. had already begun
"spikes of activity" to put pressure on the regime. No decisions had been
taken, but he thought the most likely timing in U.S. minds for military
action to begin was January, with the timeline beginning 30 days before the
U.S. Congressional elections.

The Foreign Secretary (Jack Straw) said he would discuss this with Colin
Powell this week. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take
military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was
thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was
less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. We should work up a plan for
an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This
would also help with the legal justification for the use of force.

The Attorney-General (Lord Goldsmith) said that the desire for regime
change was not a legal base for military action. There were three possible
legal bases: self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or UNSC (U.N.
Security Council) authorisation. The first and second could not be the base
in this case. Relying on UNSCR (U.N. Security Council Resolution) 1205 of
three years ago would be difficult. The situation might of course change.

The Prime Minister said that it would make a big difference politically and
legally if Saddam refused to allow in the UN inspectors. Regime change and
WMD were linked in the sense that it was the regime that was producing the
WMD. There were different strategies for dealing with Libya and Iran. If
the political context were right, people would support regime change. The
two key issues were whether the military plan worked and whether we had the
political strategy to give the military plan the space to work.

On the first, CDS said that we did not know yet if the U.S. battleplan was
workable. The military were continuing to ask lots of questions.

For instance, what were the consequences, if Saddam used WMD on day one, or
if Baghdad did not collapse and urban warfighting began? You said that
Saddam could also use his WMD on Kuwait. Or on Israel, added the Defence
Secretary.

The Foreign Secretary thought the U.S. would not go ahead with a military
plan unless convinced that it was a winning strategy. On this, U.S. and UK
interests converged. But on the political strategy, there could be US/UK
differences. Despite U.S. resistance, we should explore discreetly the
ultimatum. Saddam would continue to play hard-ball with the UN.

John Scarlett assessed that Saddam would allow the inspectors back in only
when he thought the threat of military action was real.

The Defence Secretary said that if the Prime Minister wanted UK military
involvement, he would need to decide this early. He cautioned that many in
the U.S. did not think it worth going down the ultimatum route. It would be
important for the Prime Minister to set out the political context to Bush.

Conclusions:

(a) We should work on the assumption that the UK would take part in any
military action. But we needed a fuller picture of U.S. planning before we
could take any firm decisions. CDS should tell the U.S. military that we
were considering a range of options.

(b) The Prime Minister would revert on the question of whether funds could
be spent in preparation for this operation.

(c) CDS would send the Prime Minister full details of the proposed military
campaign and possible UK contributions by the end of the week.

(d) The Foreign Secretary would send the Prime Minister the background on
the UN inspectors, and discreetly work up the ultimatum to Saddam.

He would also send the Prime Minister advice on the positions of countries
in the region especially Turkey, and of the key EU member states.

(e) John Scarlett would send the Prime Minister a full intelligence update.

(f) We must not ignore the legal issues: the Attorney-General would
consider legal advice with FCO/MOD legal advisers.

I have written separately to commission this follow-up work.

MATTHEW RYCROFT

Material in parentheses other than organizational headings added by The
Chronicle for clarification.

THE REAL NEWS IN THE DOWNING STREET MEMOS

MICHAEL SMITH.
Los Angeles Times Commentary
June 23, 2005

It is now nine months since I obtained the first of the "Downing Street
memos," thrust into my hand by someone who asked me to meet him in a quiet
watering hole in London for what I imagined would just be a friendly drink.

At the time, I was defense correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph, and
a staunch supporter of the decision to oust Saddam Hussein. The source was
a friend. He'd given me a few stories before but nothing nearly as
interesting as this.

The six leaked documents I took away with me that night were to change
completely my opinion of the decision to go to war and the honesty of Prime
Minister Tony Blair and President Bush.

They focused on the period leading up to the Crawford, Texas, summit
between Blair and Bush in early April 2002, and were most striking for the
way in which British officials warned the prime minister, with remarkable
prescience, what a mess post-war Iraq would become. Even by the cynical
standards of realpolitik, the decision to overrule this expert advice
seemed to be criminal.

The second batch of leaks arrived in the middle of this year's British
general election, by which time I was writing for a different newspaper,
the Sunday Times. These documents, which came from a different source,
related to a crucial meeting of Blair's war Cabinet on July 23, 2002. The
timing of the leak was significant, with Blair clearly in electoral
difficulties because of an unpopular war.

I did not then regard the now-infamous memo --- the one that includes the
minutes of the July 23 meeting --- as the most important. My main article
focused on the separate briefing paper for those taking part, prepared
beforehand by Cabinet Office experts.

It said that Blair agreed at Crawford that "the UK would support military
action to bring about regime change." Because this was illegal, the
officials noted, it was "necessary to create the conditions in which we
could legally support military action."

But Downing Street had a "clever" plan that it hoped would trap Hussein
into giving the allies the excuse they needed to go to war. It would
persuade the U.N. Security Council to give the Iraqi leader an ultimatum to
let in the weapons inspectors.

Although Blair and Bush still insist the decision to go to the U.N. was
about averting war, one memo states that it was, in fact, about
"wrong-footing" Hussein into giving them a legal justification for war.

British officials hoped the ultimatum could be framed in words that would
be so unacceptable to Hussein that he would reject it outright. But they
were far from certain this would work, so there was also a Plan B.

American media coverage of the Downing Street memo has largely focused on
the assertion by Sir Richard Dearlove, head of British foreign
intelligence, that war was seen as inevitable in Washington, where "the
intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

But another part of the memo is arguably more important. It quotes British
Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon as saying that "the U.S. had already begun
'spikes of activity' to put pressure on the regime." This we now realize
was Plan B.

Put simply, U.S. aircraft patrolling the southern no-fly zone were dropping
a lot more bombs in the hope of provoking a reaction that would give the
allies an excuse to carry out a full-scale bombing campaign, an air war,
the first stage of the conflict.

British government figures for the number of bombs dropped on southern Iraq
in 2002 show that although virtually none were used in March and April, an
average of 10 tons a month were dropped between May and August.

But these initial "spikes of activity" didn't have the desired effect. The
Iraqis didn't retaliate. They didn't provide the excuse Bush and Blair
needed. So at the end of August, the allies dramatically intensified the
bombing into what was effectively the initial air war.

The number of bombs dropped on southern Iraq by allied aircraft shot up to
54.6 tons in September alone, with the increased rates continuing into
2003.
In other words, Bush and Blair began their war not in March 2003, as
everyone believed, but at the end of August 2002, six weeks before Congress
approved military action against Iraq.

The way in which the intelligence was "fixed" to justify war is old news.
The real news is the shady April 2002 deal to go to war, the cynical use of
the U.N. to provide an excuse, and the secret, illegal air war without the
backing of Congress.

Michael Smith writes on defense issues for the Sunday Times of London

DECEPTION'S DAMNING DOCUMENTS

PAUL ROGAT LOEB
The Globe
June 21. 2005

It's bad enough that the Bush administration had so little international
support for the Iraqi war that its ''coalition of the willing" meant the
United States, Britain, and the equivalent of a child's imaginary friends.
It's even worse that, as the British Downing Street memo confirms, they had
so little evidence of real threats that they knew from the start that they
were going to have to manufacture excuses to go to war. What's more damning
still is that they effectively began this war even before the congressional
vote.

With Congressman John Conyers holding hearings, the media are finally
starting to cover the Downing Street memo. This transcript of a July 23,
2002, British prime minister's meeting, whose legitimacy the British
government confirms, details their response to the Bush administration's
intention to go to war against Iraq, no matter how Saddam Hussein
responded, and even while claiming they were still seeking peaceful
solutions.

''It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action,
even if the timing was not yet decided," states the document. ''But the
case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD
capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea, or Iran."

As the document states, ''the intelligence and facts were being fixed
around the policy." The document is damning, particularly coupled with the
testimony of former Bush ghost-writer Mickey Herskowitz that Bush was
talking about invading Iraq as
early as 1999. But it's even more disturbing as we start learning that this
administration began actively fighting the Iraq war well in advance of the
March 2003 official attack--before both the October 2002 U.S. congressional
authorization and the November United Nations resolution requiring that
Saddam Hussein open the country up to inspectors.

I follow Iraq pretty closely, but was taken aback when Charlie Clements,
now head of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, described driving
in Iraq months before the war ''and a building would just explode, hit by a
missile from 30,000 feet."

''What is that building?" Clements would ask.''Oh, that's a telephone
exchange." Later, at a conference at Nevada's Nellis Air Force Base,
Clements heard a US general boast ''that he began taking out assets that
could help in resisting an invasion at least six months before war was
declared."

Earlier this month, Jeremy Scahill wrote a powerful piece on the website of
The Nation, describing a huge air assault in September 2002.
''Approximately 100 U.S. and British planes flew from Kuwait into Iraqi
airspace," Scahill writes. ''At least seven types of aircraft were part of
this massive operation, including U.S. F-15 Strike Eagles and Royal Air
Force Tornado ground-attack planes.

They dropped precision-guided munitions on Saddam Hussein's major western
air-defense facility, clearing the path for Special Forces helicopters that
lay in wait in Jordan. Earlier attacks had been carried out against Iraqi
command and control centers, radar detection systems, Revolutionary Guard
units, communication centers, and mobile air-defense systems. The
Pentagon's goal was clear: Destroy Iraq's ability to resist."

Why aren't we talking about this? As Scahill points out, this was a month
before the congressional vote, and two months before the UN resolution.
Supposedly part of enforcing ''no fly zones," the bombings were actually
systematic assaults on Iraq's capacity to defend itself.

The United States had never declared war. Bush had no authorization, not
even a fig leaf. He was simply attacking another nation because he'd
decided to do so. This preemptive war preempted our own Congress, as well
as international law.

Most Americans don't know these prewar attacks ever happened. There was
little coverage at the time, and there's been little since. The bombings
that destroyed Iraq's air defenses were under the radar for both the
American media and American citizens.

If coverage of the Downing Street memo continues to increase, I suspect the
administration will try to dismiss it as mere diplomatic talk, just inside
baseball. But they weren't just manipulating intelligence so they could
attack no matter how Saddam Hussein responded. They weren't only bribing
would-be allies into participation. They were fighting a war they'd planned
long before. They just didn't bother to tell the American public.

Paul Rogat Loeb is the author of The Impossible Will Take a Little While:
A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear.

ANTIWAR GROUP SAYS LEAKED BRITISH MEMO SHOWS BUSH MISLED PUBLIC ON HIS WAR PLANS

SCOTT SHANE
New York Times
June 17, 2005

Opponents of the war in Iraq held an unofficial hearing on Capitol Hill on
Thursday to draw attention to a leaked British government document that
they say proves their case that President Bush misled the public about his
war plans in 2002 and distorted intelligence to support his policy.

In a jammed room in the basement of the Capitol, Representative John
Conyers Jr. of Michigan, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee,
presided as witnesses asserted that the "Downing Street memo" - minutes of
a July 23, 2002, meeting of Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top security
officials - vindicated their view that Mr. Bush made the decision to topple
Saddam Hussein long before he has admitted.

"Thanks to the Downing Street minutes, we now know the truth," said Ray
McGovern, a C.I.A. analyst for 27 years who helped organize a group of
other retired intelligence officers to oppose the war.

The memo said Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of British intelligence, had
said in the meeting that Mr. Bush had already decided on war, "but the
intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

Cindy Sheehan, mother of a 24-year-old soldier killed in Iraq last year,
said the memo "confirms what I already suspected: the leadership of this
country rushed us into an illegal invasion of another sovereign country on
prefabricated and cherry-picked intelligence."

The White House has maintained that Mr. Bush decided to invade Iraq only
after Secretary of State Colin L. Powell made the administration's case in
a lengthy presentation to the United Nations Security Council on February
5, 2003. His
argument focused on intelligence demonstrating that Iraq had illicit
weapons. No weapons, however, have been found.

Asked about the memo last week, President Bush said: "Nobody wants to
commit military into combat. It's the last option." He added, "We worked
hard to see if we could figure out how to do this peacefully."

After the hearing, Mr. Conyers and a dozen Congressional colleagues
delivered to the White House bundles that they said contained the names of
more than 560,000 Americans gathered on the Internet who had endorsed his
letter to the president demanding answers to questions raised by the
British memo. Some 122 members of Congress also signed the letter.

Asked about Mr. Conyers's letter and the British memo, Scott McClellan, the
president's chief spokesman, described the congressman as "an individual
who voted against the war in the first place and is simply trying to rehash
old debates that have already been addressed."

"And our focus is not on the past," Mr. McClellan said. "It's on the
future and working to make sure we succeed in Iraq."

The hearing and other events Thursday reflected antiwar sentiment
re-energized both by publication of the British memo and by evidence that
Congressional and public opinion has shifted significantly against the
president's conduct of the war.

A bipartisan group of House members introduced a resolution calling on the
administration to announce by the end of the year a plan for the withdrawal
of American forces, and more than 40 legislators announced the formation of
an "Out of Iraq" Congressional caucus led by Representative Maxine Waters,
a California Democrat.

Also, a New York Times/CBS News poll being published Friday found that 37%
of Americans questioned approve of how Mr. Bush is dealing with Iraq, down
from 45% in February.

At an antiwar rally across the street from the White House after Mr.
Conyers's hearing, speakers roused a crowd of several hundred people with
calls to bring the troops home and to impeach Mr. Bush. The protesters,
organized by a group called After Downing Street, called the British memo
the "smoking gun" proving their case against the administration.

The Downing Street memo, so named because the meeting was at the prime
minister's London residence, published in The Sunday Times of London on May
1.

It is one of seven prewar documents leaked since September to Michael
Smith, a reporter for The Daily Telegraph before he began working for The
Sunday Times. One, written in preparation for the July 23 meeting and
published Sunday by The Sunday Times, warned that "a postwar occupation of
Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise" in
which "Washington could look to us to share a disproportionate share of the
burden."

Activists have accused mainstream news organizations of playing down the
document's significance, even as antiwar bloggers have seized upon it as
evidence.

David Swanson, a Democratic activist and one of the founders of After
Downing Street, criticized those defenders of President Bush and
journalists who have called the memo "old news" because the president's war
preparations were widely reported by mid-2002.

"It's not old news to most Americans," Mr. Swanson said.

Fw from a buddy - sorry I don't know original URL ...

R

Monday, June 20, 2005
And now, The Economist wonders what happens "after the fall."

"A day of reckoning is close at hand ... Two-fifths of all American jobs
created since 2001 have been in housing-related sectors such as
construction, real estate lending and broking. If house prices
actually fall, this boost will turn into a substantial drag."

The Economist goes on to say the house party was fun while it lasted,
"the whole world economy is at risk ... the biggest increase in wealth
in history was largely an illusion."

In a recent interview on CNBC, on of the greatest "old-timer" funds
manager, Julian Robertson, said he was extremely worried about the
speculative bubble in real estate.

Robertson, or "Never Been Wrong Robertson," as he is often called, has
predicted "every economic cycle, every debacle, every bull market and
every bear market," and is so well respected that the Dow went down 50
points after his segment aired on CNBC.

His prediction for the ultimate burst in the speculative real estate
bubble? "Utter global collapse."......... wonder if we'll ever see him
on CNBC again...

"This is so frightening, and it's not just here...

"The real Estate bubble is a world-wide phenomenon. This is the
tech-bubble of the late 1990s, transferred to real estate. Post
tech-crash, the folks who run the world did not want to take the
well-deserved recession, rebalance the financial books & portfolios,
and get the macro-financial house in order. Bad for politics. Couple
that with the post-9/11 goosing of the money supply to keep people
going to Disneyland and buying big SUVs, and this is the Titanic
hitting the iceberg and backing up and moving forward again a couple
of times, just for good measure. ("Where the hell is all this salt
water coming from?" says the man....)

"From a macroeconomic perspective, it's a worldwide form of real
estate arbitrage, if not just plain old fashioned "kiting" except with
real estate instead of bouncing checks between banks. Buy a house you
cannot pay for, and sell it to someone else who cannot pay for it, but
do it before the mass of people catch on to the con and prices stop
rising. The cover of this week's Economist is picture of a brick
falling from the sky, representing the impending real estate bust,
with extensive editorial and news writing about the falling and/or
coming fall in real estate markets.

"This will, no doubt, be a major topic for discussion at the Agora
Wealth Symposium - and if anyone needs a reason to go the conference,
think of that great scene in the Broadway show 'The Sound of Music.'
Max Dettweiler, the slick promoter, is talking with Captain von Trapp
about the impending Anschluss of Germany towards Austria. Captain von
Trapp says something about how concerned he is about what is about to
happen to his edelweiss-like happy homeland. Max says, 'Georgi,
whatever is going to happen is going to happen. Just make sure it does
not happen to you.'

"Yea, Max is kind of cynical, but he is also a realist. He knows that
he cannot change the trends of history, and whatever is going to
happen is going to happen.

The fight is over money ... and different notions about how Europe
should be put together.

We've heard many opinions on the subject. But we've never actually
heard one worth listening to for anything other than entertainment.
Some people want a "strong, forward-moving" Europe because they think
it is the way to "progress." They are dismayed to see the thing
falling apart. Others want no part of further political integration.
They are afraid the Poles might get a shot at French plumbing ... or
Turks might start driving Paris taxicabs.

Only French farmers seem to know which side of their bread has the
jelly; they support the constitution because they want to continue
receiving generous subsidies.

"They should never put things like this to a popular vote," said a
French woman at this weekend's wedding. "Look at that man standing in
the doorway there [she pointed to a modest dwelling with a pensioner
looking out]. You can't let people like that decide the fate of
Europe. He only cares about protecting his retirement benefits. Louis
14th didn't put it to a vote before he built Versailles. Napoleon
didn't ask for referendum before attacking Russia."

"Maybe he should have
GREENSPAN IN THE HOT SEAT
I tried listening to Alan Greenspan flap his lips in front of the
Joint Economic Committee, but it was just more of the same. I was
actually handling it pretty well. There was some straining against my
restraints a few times, and making some pithy remarks, mostly about
how they are all liars and idiots and I hate all of them. And some
spitting.

"Do you think, in retrospect, that it was a good idea to slash
interest rates after the dotcom bust in 2000?"
The question should be, and if I was on the panel this is what I would
have asked, instead of his idiotic waste of time, "Do you think, in
retrospect, that is was a good idea to produce all that money and
credit, especially since 1997, in a stupefying deluge of egregious
monetary irresponsibility, which produced the stock market bubble,
which then busted in 2000, and caused a lot of misery? Huh? Is that
what you think? A lot of people's lives were destroyed, and then the
economy was on the verge of being destroyed, and then you had to
mercilessly slash interest rates - and the incomes of savers! - ever
since to save our stupid butts from destruction! Do you really,
really, really think we should thank you for impoverishing tens of
millions of small-saver Americans, who save their pitiful little bit
of money in Certificates of Deposit and their little savings accounts,
by slashing their incomes to almost zero? And your ridiculous economic
theories and your preposterous economic models so ruined everything
that you had to do it, month after month, and year after year, for
five long stinking years!

The only good part was when Greenspan allowed that the whole filthy
Federal Reserve exists only at the whim of Congress, and that it can
be eliminated at any time, which is an idea that I heartily endorse. I
further say, since you were so kind to ask, that the gold that we are
supposed to have stored be immediately used to turn the dollar back
into gold, as required by the Constitution. Theoretically, gold will
have to go to $5,000 an ounce, and so we let the gold bugs be the new
millionaires, who will (and I think I speak for all of us) serve as a
ready reference to anybody who thinks that real money CAN be anything
but silver and/or gold.

"Mr. Greenspan, when you came to power in 1987 and took control of
the Federal Reserve, the national debt was at $2.3 trillion, which is
a big, honking, pot load of money. But the interesting thing is that
now, only 18 years later, the national debt is $7.8 trillion. You have
allowed an almost tripling of the national debt! In 18 years! All by
yourself!"

"Now, it is commonplace for all governments to want to spend money,
lots of money. In the old days, when the Congress tried this silly
crap, the amount of money left for everyone else to borrow to conduct
ordinary business would have dried up. So the demand for money would
increase, while the supply of money was decreasing.

Leaning forward so that I can stare into his vacant eyes, I continue,
"But now, you, Alan Greenspan, think that you have found a way around
that, don't you? You think that now that our money is just paper and
electronic digits that you have found a marvelous, magical way to let
the damn government spend and spend and spend! My question to you, Mr.
Alan Greenspan, is the famous Big Freaking Question, which is: if
this is such a hot idea, how come no other country ever thought of it
before?"

Now, if I know Alan Greenspan, he will then turn and fly away, so you
are not going to get an answer from him. So I will tell you the
answer,..... The answer is that they all DID try that , and it ruined
every last one of them! Hahahaha! All governments always resort to
this money-creation thing at the end, after their previous
credit-fueled booms started petering out, and all the friends of the
government starting calling up and wanting the government to "do
something" to keep the stupid, bloated, misshapen, mal-invested and
preposterous economy from collapsing and dying from the cancer that
was eating it alive. And what they did was to create MORE money and
credit!

And since nobody else in history has ever pulled off this trick, and
in fact it destroyed their economies, I must assume that we
half-witted American boobs won't prove any more successful at it than
any of them.

"Faced with an asset bubble," writes Mr. Ip, "a central bank has two
choices: Prick it early or wait for it to burst and try to contain the
damage. The Fed in 1929 and the Bank of Japan in 1989 tried...raising
interest rates in response to rapidly rising asset prices. The result
in the U.S. in the 1930s was depression and deflation. In Japan it was
stagnation and deflation that continues today."

So this time, it is explained to us, they decided NOT to try and stop
the bubble and speculative excesses, but to let it expand until it
burst, and then lower interest rates to try and clean up the big
stinking mess!

"The article and the Fed argued from a false premise to a false
conclusion," states Mr. Fleckenstein, "by blaming the American bust of
the 1930s and the one in Tokyo in the 1990s on monetary tightening.
That is completely untrue. The aftermaths of both were caused by the
preceding asset bubbles, precipitated by reckless monetary policies.
It is asset bubbles that create the damage, not the small amount of
tightening that comes at the end. In fact, I would argue that the
tightening didn't end those bubbles.

For those who don't know of this author, he's a much respected
Cornell prof (and I believe a brother of the late great Geo Pimentel).

R

Environment, Development and Sustainability
ISSN: 1387-585X (Paper) 1573-2975 (Online)
Issue: Volume 7, Number 2
Date: June 2005
Pages: 229 - 252
Environmental and Economic Costs of the Application of Pesticides
Primarily in the United States

David Pimentel

Abstract

An obvious need for an updated and comprehensive study
prompted this investigation of the complex of environmental costs
resulting from the nation's dependence on pesticides.

Included in this assessment of an estimated $10 billion in environmental
and societal damages are analyses of:
pesticide impacts on public health;
livestock and livestock product losses;
increased control expenses resulting from pesticide-related destruction of
natural enemies and from the
development of pesticide resistance in pests;
crop pollination problems and honeybee losses;
crop and crop product losses;
bird, fish, and other wildlife losses; and
governmental expenditures to reduce the environmental and social costs of
the recommended application of pesticides.
The major economic and environmental losses due to the application of
pesticides in the USA were:
public health, $1.1 billion year;
pesticide resistance in pests, $1.5 billion;
crop losses caused by pesticides, $1.4 billion;
bird losses due to pesticides, $2.2 billion;
and groundwater contamination, $2.0 billion.

The trendy Paley watch this past half-decade has been the bacterial
flagellum, a microscopic organelle billed as so complex that it couldn't
have evolved in Darwinian fashion (especially if gradualism is -
unaccountably - insisted upon, megamutations being neglected, assumed
irrelevant).

This watch is running, at 15,000 rpm in E. coli and 100,000 rpm in
a vibrio. And it is reversible.

Why is this organelle chosen as most important among Paley
timepieces? Denton, and Broom, have pointed out numerous other watches,
grandfather clocks, atomic oscillators, hourglasses, clymnestras, etc which
can be approximately as useful in the Design argument.

Behe & Dembski say that the flagellum is complex enough so that
nobody has imagined a scenario that could evolve it gradually; but on the
other hand it is simple enough so that we have an impressively detailed
model of a couple dozen different macromolecules composing the rotor &
stator of the motor, and the protein-accelerator that squirts new flagellin
molecules along the hollow thread (which is an order of magnitude longer
than the cell). This appears ordered, for a purpose; a good Paley
timepiece, if arcane to the ordinary senses.

The chloroplast is another, briefly described by Broom in the best
IDT book 'How Blind is The Watchmaker?'. This organelle, earlier studied
than the flagellum, has proven harder to describe in both structure and,
especially, functions. It is considerably bigger & more complex. It might
be supposed that it's therefore even harder to describe how the chloroplast
could have evolved de novo. Margulis proposes it didn't, but originated as
an endosymbiont, a previously autonomous blue-green alga which became
'captured'. Its own DNA & ribosomes are consistent with this. So the more
complex organelle is not necessarily the harder to scenarioize.

Pros & cons could be tabulated for the timepieces described by Behe
and by Broom. Such a tabulation would be worth assembling. The flagellum
would, I suspect, be seen as having some advantages, but suffers from the
severe handicap that most people don't know the meaning of the term
'molecule'. Inordinate emphasis on this microscopic item is therefore open
to the accusation of obscurantism, compared with study of cooperative order
in macroscopic ecology, evident to the child, not needing instruments or
education.

The question arises, how much more IDT can we use? If Design is
not yet conceded by Dawkins, Wolpert, etc, why should anyone think they
will ever concede the logical point?

And I still don't grasp why Dembski says IDT is no variety of
natural theology.

Nevertheless, the flagellum will continue as an important example
of design. Its similarity to the TTSS ('needle organelle' etc) is
interesting, but that connection has been mentioned in peculiar ways. As
Macnab points out, the flagellum is believed to be ancient, whereas the
higher cells into which the TTSS injects toxic proteins are far more
recent. (Direct evidence for how ancient the flagellum actually is should
be sought, but meanwhile most will tend to agree with Macnab.) Thus, any
homology must be in the direction that the TTSS derived from some
threadless mutant flagellate. It is difficult to understand why Miller
doesn't mention this timing. Does Dembski mention it?

If I glimpse the outlines of the wrangle clearly enough:-

1 MB, WD: the flagellum is so complex no-one has imagined a scenario for
its gradual emergence.
2 Miller: the TTSS is v similar to the flagellar basal structure, and has
one of its functions (the protein-ejection), turned to another end. The
relationship between them is inferred to be homology. This is implied to
refute MB, WD.
3 RM: If they're homologous it's likely in the direction
flagellum-to-TTSS. The TTSS, which if discovered first would surely have
been deemed irreducibly complex, is plausibly explained by a threadless
mutation of the flagellum. The origin of the flagellum is therefore not
illuminated by the similarity to the TTSS.

Exploring the flagellum/TTSS science interests me, not only because
it is interesting science but also because this has become the arena for
conflict between neoDarwinism and some versions of Christianity. Whereas 2
decades ago evolution theory could ignore, indeed feel a duty to shun, the
embarrassingly crooked Gish & Morris, today Behe & Dembski present a much
more credible image. However, the campaigns using B & D as their champion
scientists are not straight but fanatical to various extents. And their
main critic Miller may not be so clean.

It is helpful that I knew main flagellum researcher Macnab of Yale
(recently deceased). We were grad students together. His attached review
in J Bact is useful.

The debate is odd. Why does the flagellum expert shown by
Discovery® in their video not feature in Macnab's refs? Where _does_ he
feature? Why can't Miller spell the name of his Ivy League counterpart -
which he spells McNab, as wrong as could be (for the pronunciation)? Why
is Miller so keen to use the key term 'homology' when Macnab does not?
Where are the discussions of sequences in flagellar proteins as compared
with TTSS proteins?

IMHO Miller's criticism of Dembski's "improbability drive" is
plainly correct and calls in question Dembski's competence - as a
mathematician. He may even be the sort of ignoramus who doesn't really
know the defn of the term 'probability' On the other hand, my
experiences with Geo Seber suggest to me the bitter conclusion that once
the type of fanatical faith exemplified by "creationism" takes hold, a math
expert can soon talk rubbish.

We cannot overlook the link btw Dembski and the polemical raver
Johnson who - after I've done him good - writes to me "you are not an
ally". Dembski said recently that theistic evolutionists are his most
implacable enemies.

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

Journal of Bacteriology,
December 1999, p. 7149-7153,
Vol. 181, No. 23
0021-9193/99/$04.00+0
Copyright © 1999, American
Society for Microbiology. All
rights reserved.

GUEST COMMENTARY

The Bacterial Flagellum:
Reversible Rotary Propellor
and Type III Export Apparatus

Robert M. Macnab*

Department of Molecular
Biophysics and Biochemistry,
Yale University, New Haven,
Connecticut 06520-8114

INTRODUCTION

Flagella and motility represent two of the richest
subjects in microbiology, involving not only
bacterial genetics, molecular biology, and
physiology but also bioenergetics, hydrodynamics,
structural analysis, and macromolecular assembly.

Our knowledge that bacteria actively move goes as far back as the discovery
of bacteria themselves (7). To quote from an article by Howard Berg in
1975 (4), written not long after the modern era of investigation of
bacterial flagella, motility, and chemotaxis had begun:

When Antony van Leeuwenhoek looked through a single-lens
microscope in 1676 and observed man's first recorded glimpse of
bacteria, it was their motion that most delighted him: "I must
say, for my part, that no more pleasant sight has ever yet come
before my eye than these many thousands of living creatures, seen
all alive in a little drop of water, moving among one another,
each several creature having its own proper motion."

Leeuwenhoek goes on to say, in a charming phrase: "...I can make out no
paws...[yet] I am persuaded that they too are furnished with paws withal."

The bacterial "paw," more commonly known as the flagellum, is a structure
with a very long (ca. 10-µm), thin (ca. 20-nm-diameter) external filament.
Besides its extreme thinness and length, the first thing that strikes one
about the flagellar filament is its "waviness." The active propagation of
this wave during motility was evident from early high-speed movies, so
there was no doubt that flagella were the organelles of bacterial motility.
Cells typically displayed more than one type of movement: in some cases,
simple forward and backward swimming and in other cases (e.g., Salmonella),
swimming and tumbling.

Around 1970, the major questions about bacterial motility could be
summarized as follows: (i) What is the shape of the wave, and is it
intrinsic to the flagellar structure? (ii) How is the waveform propagated?
(iii) What is the nature of the motor? (iv) What is responsible for the two
types of motility (swimming and tumbling in the case of Salmonella)? (v)
What is the energy source? In only a few years, the answers to these
questions were obtained, at least in broad outline.

A HELICAL PROPELLOR

Kamiya and colleagues (13) carried out extensive in vitro studies of
flagellar filaments. Their principal conclusions were that the waveform of
a filament in aqueous suspension is a perfect helix, that the helicity is
intrinsic (in vitro depolymerization and repolymerization occurs readily)
and so is a cause rather than a consequence of motility, and that filaments
exhibit polymorphism. At least two of the polymorphic forms are important
to normal motility (23). The helicity of the filament is both remarkable
and essential. Remarkable, because it is a consequence of a subtle breaking
of symmetry in a polymer made (in many species) from identical subunits;
normally, one would expect such a polymer to be straight. Essential,
because without the helicity, propulsion would be impossible.

Structural studies of filament, hook, basal body, etc. by DeRosier, Namba,
and others (mostly by analysis of electron microscopic images) have become
ever more refined, so that the subunit shapes and their quaternary
interactions are being seen in more and more detail, although the data
still do not approach atomic resolution.

A REVERSIBLE ROTARY MOTOR

There was a general presumption until the early 1970s that the waveform was
propagated as a conformational wave (much as one can drive a wave along a
rope by wrist movement). There was no evidence in favor of such a model,
and several good arguments against it. Yet the alternative[---]a rotational
model[---]seemed to be unpalatable, even though it could accommodate many
of the known observations (5). Then, in three back-to-back papers in
1974 from the laboratories of Simon, Adler, and Berg (3, 20, 32), the
rotational model was established beyond doubt, mostly on the basis of
experiments with tethered Escherichia coli cells, which whirled around
merrily.

These experiments generated another, equally important, finding. Not only
did the motor rotate, it rotated in both directions, clockwise (CW) and
counterclockwise (CCW). It reversed stochastically and indefinitely in the
absence of stimulation, rotated almost exclusively CCW upon addition of an
attractant, and almost exclusively CW upon addition of a repellent. Thus,
the basis for selective motion in response to chemical gradients,
chemotaxis, was reduced to the simple notion of a binary switch whose CCW
versus CW states had probabilities that were modulated by environmental
signals.

A tethered cell presents an artificially high load to the motor, so the
cell rotates relatively slowly (less than 500 rpm). At the much lower load
of a freely rotating filament, the motor is capable of astonishing speeds,
e.g. around 15,000 rpm in E. coli (21). The world record is for a Vibrio
cell clocked at 100,000 rpm by laser microscopy (24)!

STRUCTURE AND COMPOSITION OF THE FLAGELLAR MOTOR

What does this rotary motor look like? Electron micrographs of isolated
flagella taken by Cohen-Bazire and London in 1967 (6) had revealed a basal
structure containing four rings threaded by a rod. Subsequent work showed
that two of them, the M and S rings, lay in the cytoplasmic membrane and
just above it, respectively. Any rotary motor must have a rotor (the part
that does external work) and a stator (the anchor), so it was natural to
think that the M and S rings might fulfil such roles. The M and S rings,
however, are a single, double-flanged ring made from subunits of just one
protein (34). Also, studies of mutants showed that the MS ring does not
contribute to torque generation. Other studies established that the stator
consists of a series of membrane-imbedded studs or Mot complexes spaced
around the MS ring (15). These studs contain two components, MotA and MotB,
with the latter apparently binding to the peptidoglycan layer[---]about as
good a cellular anchor as one can get. The rotor turned out to be an
extensive structure projecting from the MS ring into the cytoplasm (10, 14,
16) and termed the C ring, a vital piece of the basal body that had escaped
detection with the protocols used heretofore. The C ring contains three of
the most interesting proteins in the flagellum, the motor/switch proteins.
These work against the Mot complexes to generate torque, and they also have
the ability to change their conformational state in a bimodal fashion, so
that the motor direction can be switched from CCW to CW and vice versa.
Despite much effort and the accumulation of much detailed
structure-function information, the nature of the conformational change
underlying motor switching remains elusive.

FLAGELLA ARE DRIVEN BY IONIC POTENTIALS, NOT ATP

Because of the large body of research into muscle and other biological
structures whose function is to produce mechanical work (all of them driven
by ATP hydrolysis), it was probably natural to suppose that ATP might drive
the bacterial flagellar motor also. This notion was dispelled in 1974 by
Larsen et al. (19), who showed that uncouplers of oxidative phosphorylation
like carbonyl cyanide m-chlorophenylhydrazone, or mutations that uncouple
the process, block motility even though ATP levels remain high. This was at
a time when Peter Mitchell's chemiosmotic hypothesis (27), while in general
circulation, had not gained full understanding or acceptance. Thus, the
Larsen et al. paper studiously avoids the statement that bacterial motility
is driven by proton motive force. Only in 1977 was this term used
explicitly, in a paper by Manson et al. (25) that included a staunch
Mitchellian, Franklin Harold, as one of its authors. Many bacterial
species, incidentally, use sodium motive force, arguing for an
electrostatic mechanism and against a hydrogen-bonding one.

HOW DOES THE MOTOR WORK?

In the 25 years since the rotary mechanism and the ionic energy source were
discovered, the bioenergetics of the motor have been studied in ever
greater detail by the laboratories of Berg, Aizawa, and others, so that its
empirical characteristics are well established. What is not well understood
is the mechanism by which ionic energy is converted into mechanical work.
Given the ubiquitous yet elusive character of the proton, this may not be
too surprising.

Initially, a common assumption was that the proton (or sodium ion) would
travel down its gradient via a series of binding sites contributed jointly
by the stator (Mot complexes) and rotor (motor/switch complex), developing
torque in the process. This notion has become less attractive as a result
of recent mutational analyses by Zhou and coworkers (37), who have found
that only one of the conserved protonatable residues in the five Mot and
switch proteins is essential. They suggest that the proton conductance
pathway may reside entirely within the Mot complexes and cause a
conformationally strained structure which, interacting with the
motor/switch complexes, relaxes to generate torque.

THE FLAGELLAR GENE SYSTEM IS COMPLEX

A structure such as the flagellum has, not surprisingly, a large genetic
basis. Our current detailed understanding of the many genes, their
products, and their transcriptional controls owes an enormous debt to the
classical work that has been carried out over several decades since the
1950s in many laboratories (including, for E. coli and Salmonella alone,
those of T. Iino, Komeda, K. Kutsukake, Parkinson, Simon, B. A. D. Stocker,
and Yamaguchi). In the early 1950s, a distinction was made between mutants
that lacked flagella (nonflagellate or fla mutants) and those that had
flagella but could not move them (paralyzed or mot mutants) (33). Later, it
was recognized that there were mutants that, though highly motile, were
nonchemotactic (che mutants) (2). Their motility was unusual in that it
consisted either of swimming with essentially no tumbling or tumbling with
essentially no swimming (now recognized as being due to a high CCW bias or
a high CW bias, respectively). There then followed an extended period of
research in which mutants were divided into ever finer complementation
groups, which now correspond to the genes that are known today by physical
mapping and sequencing.

Just how extensive are these gene systems? In Salmonella, there are
currently 44 known flagellar genes. Twenty-three of these encode structural
components of the flagellum. Of these components, five (MotA, MotB, FliG,
FliM, and FliN) are needed for torque generation and three of these five
(FliG, FliM and FliN) are also needed for switching; these components are
the heart of the motor. The principal remaining components are the filament
(propellor), the hook (universal joint), and the basal body; the latter can
be broken down into rod (transmission shaft), MS ring (motor mounting
plate), and LP ring or outer cylinder (bushing).

Another five flagellar genes or so fulfil regulatory roles. There is a
hierarchy of expression whose full complexity is just beginning to be
realized. One regulatory feature involves a flagellum-specific sigma factor
and its antagonist. The concept of a specialized sigma factor is not
unusual these days. What is unusual is the mechanism by which the
anti-sigma factor is inactivated at the appropriate point in flagellar
assembly: it is exported from the cell by the same system that is
responsible for assembling the flagellum itself (11, 1 (see below).

Almost all of the remaining genes (about 11 of them) appear to encode
components that are responsible for flagellar assembly. This brings us to
the point that[---]as the title to this Commentary indicates[---]the
flagellum performs not just one function, but two (Fig. 1). Not only is it
the organelle of propulsion for the bacterium but it also functions as a
sophisticated export and self-assembly apparatus.

FIG. 1. The flagellum is the motor organelle
for bacterial propulsion. Driven by a
View larger version transmembrane proton gradient

it rotates both CCW and CW;
the filament is helical and so converts torque
into thrust. The motor consists of stators or
Mot complexes (red) and a rotor or C ring
which also serves as the CCW
CW switch. As well as being
the organelle of motility, the flagellum is a
specialized type III export apparatus (lilac),
translocating subunits of its substrates (pale
blue) in an ATP-dependent manner across the
plane of the cytoplasmic membrane (CM) and
delivering them into a central channel in the
basal body-hook-filament structure where they
eventually reach their assembly point at the
distal end of the structure. PG, peptidoglycan
layer; OM, outer membrane.

FLAGELLAR PROTEINS TRAVEL THROUGH THEIR OWN STRUCTURE

The story of flagellar protein export begins with two reports published by
Iino in 1969 (12) and by Emerson et al. in 1970 (; both reports presented
convincing evidence that new flagellin monomers are added to growing
filaments at their distal end. It was known from structural studies in the
early 1960s (e.g., reference 22) that flagellar filaments were hollow
tubes, and we now know that this is true of the basal-body rod and the hook
also. Iino speculated on roles that the flagellar basal structure might
play: flagellin synthesis (where he was wrong [there is no flagellar
ribosome]), flagellar motion, and initiation of flagellar assembly.
Presciently, he suggested that "... accumulation of flagellin molecules in
the basal structure might cause the efficient diffusion or pushing of the
molecules through the hole to the tip of the flagellum."

AN ANTI-SIGMA FACTOR, A MURAMIDASE, AND A HOOK-LENGTH PROTEIN?

Most of the flagellar proteins that are exported are structural components,
but there are three interesting exceptions: One is the anti-sigma factor
that was alluded to earlier[---]when you no longer need it, get rid of it!
Another is a muramidase (2. Why would the cell want a flagellum-specific
muramidase, and why would it want to export this enzyme? The answer, for
which we already have some experimental support, is almost certainly to
punch a hole in the peptidoglycan layer in the early stage of flagellar
morphogenesis, in order to let the nascent rod penetrate it. The third
example is a fascinating protein that is implicated in controlling the
length of the flagellar hook; it has only recently been shown that it is
exported, and how it functions in the process of length control is not well
understood.

THE FLAGELLAR EXPORT APPARATUS

After the papers reporting distal growth, there followed a long hiatus in
the investigation of flagellar protein export, perhaps because everyone was
too busy examining flagellar structure, composition, function, genetics,
etc. But as the function of more and more flagellar genes was established,
it became evident that there was a residuum with no known function. This
triggered (at least in my mind) the realization that there was also a
function, flagellar protein export, with no known genes. Maybe there was a
match? In 1991, we performed a very simple experiment that yielded the
first tentative identification of a few export component genes (36); one of
these components is an ATPase that, inexplicably, is related to the
catalytic subunit of the F0F1 ATPase (1, 36). Subsequently, the total
number of components of the flagellar export apparatus has risen to at
least 8 (26) and perhaps as high as 13 if one includes components that may
have specialized functions such as chaperones.

AN EXPORT APPARATUS WITHIN THE BASAL-BODY MS RING?

Six of the export components are integral membrane proteins, three of which
we have already shown to be associated with the basal body (9, 26). Given
that their substrates have to be delivered into the hollow channel in the
rod-hook-filament structure, it seems difficult to avoid the conclusion
that the export apparatus resides in a patch of membrane within the central
pore of the MS ring. Soluble components, such as the ATPase, presumably
interact in a dynamic fashion with this membrane complex. Efforts to build
up evidence in support of this model represent an active area of current
research.

FLAGELLAR PROTEINS AND MANY VIRULENCE FACTORS ARE EXPORTED BY RELATED PATHWAYS

Bacteria export or secrete proteins by several different pathways (of which
perhaps the best known is the type II Sec-dependent general secretory
pathway or GSP (30), which entails signal peptide cleavage during
translocation of the protein across the cytoplasmic membrane). In the field
of bacterial pathogenesis, genes needed for export of virulence factors by
the so-called type III pathway (35), whose characteristics include a lack
of signal peptide cleavage, were rapidly being discovered during the 1990s,
and as their sequences and the sequences of putative flagellar export genes
became available, there was an almost overnight realization by many
laboratories that the flagellar export pathway and type III export pathways
for virulence factors are closely related (see, e.g., references 29 and
31). I consider, in fact, that the flagellar pathway is a type III pathway,
differing only in the nature of its export substrates and in the fact that
it operates via a working organelle of propulsion.

If the flagellar export apparatus resides within the basal body, is there a
corresponding structure for the virulence factor export apparatus? The
answer appears to be yes. Kubori et al. (17) have recently described the
existence in Salmonella of a "needle complex" that is constructed from
components of the export pathway and closely resembles a flagellar basal
body with an elongated rod (but of course no hook or filament!).
Ironically, S.-I. Aizawa (an author on the paper by Kubori et al.) and I
saw these structures in 1984 but dismissed them as being, perhaps,
virus-related[---]a clear illustration that (to misquote Pasteur) chance
disfavors the unprepared mind.

Which is the original pathway, the one for flagellar proteins or the one
for virulence factors? Flagella are very ancient organelles, predating by
far the targets for bacterial pathogenesis[---]plants, mammals, etc. So, it
seems to me that the rest of the type III pathways must have evolved from
the flagellar one.

FINAL COMMENTS

I leave the reader to contemplate the flagellum in all of its wonderful
complexity. It is an organelle that receives sensory information from the
cytoplasm, yet extends far beyond the cell itself; it rotates at high
speed, and switches rotation in a controlled fashion; at the same time, it
exports its own component proteins through itself and assembles them at its
distant tip; and together with its cognate sensory transduction system, it
generates a behavior, chemotaxis, that is critical for the cell's survival.
Although we have come a long way in our understanding of the flagellum,
much remains to be done.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Work in my laboratory is supported in part by USPHS grants AI12202 and
GM40335.

FOOTNOTES

* Mailing address: Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry,
Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520-8114. Phone: (203) 432-5590. Fax:
(203) 432-9782. E-mail: robert.macnab@yale.edu.

The views expressed in this Commentary do not necessarily reflect the views
of the journal or of ASM.

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Journal of Bacteriology, December 1999, p. 7149-7153, Vol. 181, No. 23
0021-9193/99/$04.00+0
Copyright © 1999, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.

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>These should be of interest to you.

naturally

Orr, mentioned, has not ackn my msg below.

> Suddenly, all the left wing newspaper are getting religion and publishing
>such stuff. Whatever is this world coming to?

They're not publishing traditional analyses of this phoney issue.

>Attachment converted: HD:In science, seeking Creator's i (PDF /CARO)
>(00059484)

Dear Prof Orr,

I've read with interest your recent NYer article. I hope
you get some stimulation from these few comments. Although I've been plain
in my criticisms, I can promise you polite discussion if you wish to take
up any of the disputed points.

Sincerely
R Mann

> http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/050530fa_fact
> ANNALS OF SCIENCE DEVOLUTION
> by H. ALLEN ORR
> Why intelligent design isn't.
> Issue of 2005-05-30

>I.D. is not Biblical literalism. Unlike earlier generations of
>creationists - the so-called Young Earthers and scientific creationists
>- proponents of intelligent design do not believe that the universe was
>created in six days, that Earth is ten thousand years old, or that the
>fossil record was deposited during Noah's flood.

How could Orr know what they believe on these issues?

Main IDTer Phil Johnson (a polemical lawyer and main strategist of
the ill-conceived 'wedge' strategy) refuses to tell me how old he thinks
the Earth is. Behe, a Roman Catholic, presumably believes according to RC
doctrines (which are pretty sensible to my mind). Dembski, so far as I'm
aware, never answers q's about the nature, or even number, of designer(s).
There is no reason to believe that IDTers all or nearly all believe any one
answer to each of these respective q's.

>(Indeed, they shun the label "creationism" altogether.) Nor does I.D.
>flatly reject evolution: adherents freely admit that some evolutionary
>change occurred during the history of life on Earth. Although the
>movement is loosely allied with, and heavily funded by, various
>conservative Christian groups - and although I.D. plainly maintains that
>life was created - it is generally silent about the identity of the
>creator.

This should read 'creator(s)' - i.e the Christians and Judaists
among them are failing to admit to main doctrines of their religions,
starting with the First Commandment. Hard-core IDTers, notably Dembski,
refuse to say anything about the designer(s); they merely harp on the
inference of design, waiting for Dawkins etc to admit it. They have a long
wait in store, with such radically illogical operatives as Dawkins.

>by 1940 or so most agreed that natural selection was a key force driving
>this evolution.

Natural selection is actually claimed only to narrow the variance
among the mutants, selecting against the less fit. This fails to explain
the emergence of new taxa, let alone their cooperation in ecology. It is
the biggest con-trick in intellectual history.

>Who says those thirty flagellar proteins weren't present in bacteria long
>before bacteria sported flagella? They may have been performing other
>jobs in the cell and only later got drafted into flagellum-building.
>Indeed, there's now strong evidence that several flagellar proteins once
>played roles in a type of molecular pump found in the membranes of
>bacterial cells.

Orr is either ignorant or dishonest on this point. The 'molecular
pump' he mentions, more precisely known as the TTSS, is hundreds of
millions of years newer than the flagellum. Its function is to inject
pathogens thru higher-cell membranes which didn't exist for most of the
aeons that bacteria have been squirting flagellin along their hollow
flagella using the basal structure from which the TTSS presumably evolved.

>because subsequent evolution builds on this addition, a part that was at
>first just advantageous might become essential. As this process is
>repeated through evolutionary time, more and more parts that were once
>merely beneficial become necessary. This idea was first set forth by H. J.
>Muller, the Nobel Prize-winning geneticist, in 1939, but it's a familiar
>process in the development of human technologies.

We add new parts like global-positioning systems to cars not because
they're necessary but because they're nice.

Those who claim evolution is blind, unplanned, not designed, cannot
validly use this analogy with technology which is planned.

>It's important to see that this process is thoroughly Darwinian: each
>change might well be small and each represents an improvement.

This is Broom's strong charge against Dawkins - the swindle of
assuming 'improvement' in creation of mutants when pretending that the
process is random & blind.

>The other leading theorist of the new creationism, William A. Dembski,
>holds a Ph.D. in mathematics, another in philosophy, and a master of
>divinity in theology. He has been a research professor in the conceptual
>foundations of science at Baylor University, and was recently appointed to
>the new Center for Science and Theology at Southern Baptist Theological
>Seminary. (He is a longtime senior fellow at the Discovery Institute as
>well.) Dembski publishes at a staggering pace. His books - including
>"The Design Inference," "Intelligent Design," "No Free Lunch," and "The
>Design Revolution" - are generally well written and packed with
>provocative ideas.

I disagree; I'd call them suspiciously verbose & obscure.

>Dembski's arguments have been met with tremendous enthusiasm in the I.D.
>movement. In part, that's because an innumerate public is easily impressed
>by a bit of mathematics. Also, when Dembski is wielding his equations, he
>gets to play the part of the hard scientist busily correcting the errors
>of those soft-headed biologists. (Evolutionary biology actually features
>an extraordinarily sophisticated body of mathematical theory, a fact not
>widely known because neither of evolution's great popularizers - Richard
>Dawkins and the late Stephen Jay Gould - did much math.)

Can it really be claimed that Dembski did much math, either?

>Organisms aren't trying to match any "independently given pattern":
>evolution has no goal, and the history of life isn't trying to get
>anywhere.

It is good to have this slogan spelt out; Orr should make clear
that it's a statement of faith, an axiom, rather than a fact.

>Darwinism is one of the best theories in the history of science: it has
>produced countless important experiments (let's re-create a natural
>species in the lab - yes, that's been done)

Again Orr is either drastically ignorant or dishonest. Nothing
remotely approaching the (re)creation of a natural sp in the lab has been
achieved, even by big-time businessman J Celera Venter who declared a few y
ago that he was setting out to do it.

>the idea that Darwinism is yoked to atheism, though popular, is also wrong.

This is a confusing statement. Prominent Christian biologists e.g
J E Morton, and indeed the whole church of Rome, have found Darwinism
proper to be fully consistent with monotheism. The problem arises when
Dawkins, L Wolpert, S Weinberg, etc claim that (neo)Darwinism fully
explains the creation of spp. and generally obviates religion.

>Pope John Paul II himself acknowledged, in a 1996 address to the
>Pontifical Academy of Sciences, that new research "leads to the
>recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis."

Right on J P. On the level of fact, evolution is proven. What is
in dispute is whether neoDarwinism provides a full explanation - a full
ascription of causes - for evolution.

>Intelligent design has come this far by faith.

- and so too has the atheistic version of Darwinism so crudely
asserted by Dawkins.

The only question is where you will place your faith. It is not
possible to live without faith. To take up Orr's word in his title, the
main devolution this past half-century has been the emergence of aggressive
crude atheists masquerading as intellectually fulfilled.

R

Smacking Ban Doesn't Work: Swede
14/06/2005 11:40 AM
NewstalkZB

A Swedish lobby group says a total ban on smacking does not work.

Sweden has already enacted legislation similar to that planned for New
Zealand, which would prevent parents using physical force to discipline their
children.

Lawyer Ruby Harrold-Claesson, from Sweden's Nordic Community for Human
Rights says as a result, parents live in fear and families are broken up on a
regular basis by the authorities.

She claims parents have been terrorised by officials, and children confiscated
and destroyed by the system.

She says 18,000 children are in care, and the foster home industry has become
a cash cow.

Ruby Harrold-Claesson says she is distressed another country wants to follow
Sweden's example where she claims social workers and the Administrative
courts have total control over parents.

Find this item at:


©2005 Xtra Limited

Foreign Policy Research Institute
50 Years of Ideas in Service to Our Nation
1955-2005
www.fpri.org

Footnotes
The Newsletter of FPRI's
Marvin Wachman Fund for International Education

UNDERSTANDING THE KOREAS
A REPORT OF FPRI'S HISTORY INSTITUTE FOR TEACHERS
by Trudy J. Kuehner, Rapporteur

Vol. 10, No. 2
June 2005

FPRI held its 13th History Institute for Teachers on April
9-10, 2005. Forty-one teachers from 17 states attended the
weekend program held in Bryn Mawr, Pa. The program was
supported in parts by grants from the Annenberg Foundation
and the James and Agnes Kim Foundation.

FPRI's History Institute for Teachers is chaired by David
Eisenhower and Walter A. McDougall.

Walter McDougall opened the conference, speaking of
Northeast Asia's role as "a major hinge, and at times the
most important hinge, of global geopolitics." One could even
argue that World War I was a direct result of the 1904
Russo-Japanese War over the Russians' penetration into
Manchuria and northern Korea. That war led the French and
the British, who were allied with the two sides, to sign the
Entente Cordiale; defeat by Japan led Russia to redirect its
foreign policy ambitions to the Balkans, where its support
for Serbia nationalism lit the fuse that ignited World War
I. This was not to suggest that the current tension on the
peninsula will lead to a global conflagration, "but then, no
one expected that in 1904, either." Lucien Ellington, a
senior fellow of FPRI's Marvin Wachman Fund for
International Education and editor of Education about Asia,
noted that we need to understand Korea in its own right,
with its culture older than even Japan's.

"THE SHRIMP BETWEEN TWO WHALES"
Edward J. Shultz, professor of Asian Studies at University
of Hawaii at Manoa, addressed the importance of the
perception of Korea as "the shrimp between two whales,"
China and Japan, in geopolitics. But Koreans are proud of
their own long history. Artifacts date its civilization back
to the Paleolithic age, and its written history begins at
the dawn of the common era. Inventions made there include
woodblock printing; the first moveable metallic print, in
1239; and ironclad vessels-the "turtle ships" used to stave
off the Japanese-in the 1590s. It was an early master of
ceramics, and perfected celadon beginning in the tenth
century.

Koreans remain bitter to this day about Korea having been
made into a Japanese colony (1910-45), but in addition to
exploiting the nation, Japan did implement successful
modernization efforts, and sparked Korean nationalism.
Korea's lingering resentments are seen in the major issues
today between the nations over Japanese history textbooks,
for instance, and sovereignty over the Tokdo islands in the
East Sea (Sea of Japan).

North Korea has 22 million people and South Korea 46
million. Together, Korea would be the world's 16th-largest
country. Its division into two countries in 1945, which was
to have been temporary, split a unified, harmonious nation
in two and led to the 1950-53 Korean War, which left 3
million dead and destroyed the nations' infrastructure.

By 1948 Kim Il-sung had consolidated his power in North
Korea, over which he reigned until his death in 1994, at
which time his son, Kim Jung-il, assumed power. The collapse
of the Soviet Union deprived the country of its major source
of aid, ruining much of its infrastructure and agriculture.
In South Korea, Gen. Park Chung-hee, who toppled founder
Rhee Syng-man in the 1960s, got the country organized and on
the road to an economic take-off. Democracy followed, with
Kim Young-sam becoming the first civilian elected president
(1992), followed by Kim Dae-jung (1997) and Roh Moo-hyun
(2002).

South Korea is now one of the most open societies in Asia, a
cultural influence globally, and an economic success story,
all made possible by its commitment to education. In
America, where Koreans have had a strong presence since
1893, they have the highest self-employment rate of any
ethnic group. Meanwhile North Korea's economy is smaller
than that of New Hampshire. The North also feels threatened,
with no backer since the fall of the Soviet Union. It has
only the nuclear card.

EARLY KOREAN HISTORY
Milan Hejtmanek, assistant professor of history at
University of Pennsylvania, also emphasized how deeply
Koreans care about their long past. He reviewed the earliest
Chinese settlements in Korean peninsula and the subsequent
Three Kingdoms period, with the rise of the Koguryo kingdom
(37 BC - 668 CE) in southern Manchuria and northern Korea;
Paekche (18 BCE - 660 CE) around the Han River Basin; and
Silla (57 BCE - 936 CE) in the southern part of Korea.
Today, the boundaries between these ancient kingdoms still
have political meaning: in the 1992 presidential election,
one candidate came from each of the three kingdom areas.
Large portions of Koguryo are now in North Korea, and
although Korea had been unified for 1,000 years, once the
nation was split in 1945, it was easy for North Korea to
fall back onto its Koguryo heritage, which was discriminated
against in the 19th century and with which North Korea
strongly identifies.

Koguryo was a warrior race that arose around the time of the
Roman Empire; its ancient capital of Guonei on the Yalu
River moved to Pyongyang in 427. Korea's territorial
demarcation with China is still disputed, and a strong
irredentist movement in South Korea believes that Korea's
destiny lies in recapturing its lost territory. Many Korean
ethnics have their own autonomous zone in Yanbian
(Manchuria) and identify with South Koreans, who view that
zone proprietarily. Many North Koreans have fled, for
economic and other reasons, into Manchuria, and this would
become a flood should North Korea collapse.

The Paekche kingdom is a challenge to historians. It has
connections to both the north and Japan, and became a bitter
enemy to Koguryo. Paekche arts were of the highest
sophistication and greatly influenced the Japanese, who also
learned to read and write from Koreans, who had achieved
literacy earlier via the Chinese.

Silla was the smallest of the kingdoms. Initially Paekche's
ally, it became its enemy once it was strong enough. It made
a dangerous alliance with Tang China, which used it to
defeat the other states in the 660s. Silla then united the
remnants of the other states into the Unified Silla State,
which had wide-ranging contacts with the world. (The notion
of Korea as a hermit kingdom may explain Korea in the 19th
century, but not in these early years.) Silla came apart by
the 19th century, and 20th-century Korean nationalists
lambasted Silla for having thrown away their patrimony.

A successor to the three kingdoms, the Koryo kingdom (918-
1392), extended Korean territory considerably, from Silla to
the Yalu River, and moved the capital north to Kaesong--the
probable future capital of a unified Korea, halfway in
between Seoul and Pyongyang. It featured a "twin ranks"
system, yangban, of civil and military aristocrats, civilian
rule, and a focus on education. Then came the Mongol
invasions, and in 1259 Kubla Kahn made Koryo a "son-in-law
state": Koryo princes would marry Mongol princesses, which
spared Koryo further ravages and gained it new technologies.

The Choson dynasty that reigned from 1392 until 1910
forcibly required Koreans to go it on their own. T'aejo, the
first emperor, banned Koreans from study in China, and
travel there was minimized. Under King Sejong the Great,
Korea led the world in topography, astronomy, linguistics,
music, and medicine, and in 1443 it finished creating its
own alphabet, the highly phonetic hangul. But Japanese
invasions brought China in, an eerie prefiguration of Korean
war. The Japanese retreated after six inconclusive years of
battle, and Korea was left with a permanent mistrust of
Japan.

MODERN KOREAN HISTORY, 1876-1953
G. Cameron Hurst III, professor and director of the Center
for East Asian Studies, University of Pennsylvania (and FPRI
Senior Fellow), covered Korea's forced opening by
imperialism. It lost its sovereignty, suffered 36 years of
colonial rule, was divided into two nations, and survived a
destructive civil war with international intervention. This
is not past, dead history, but is very much alive today.

As this period began in 1876, Korea was indeed what could be
called a "hermit kingdom." But the 1876 Treaty of Kanghwa
opened Korea up to interaction with and exploitation by
foreign powers. The treaty is something of a Japanese
version of Commodore's Perry's treaty opening up Japan. It
gave Japan three ports, extraterritoriality, residential
rights, and commercial privileges. "Enlightenment" advocates
then urged modernization and "self-strengthening" against
China. An 1882 treaty with the U.S. led to relations with
other Western powers and also is the root of anti-
Americanism: though the treaty called for the U.S. to "use
its good offices on Korea's behalf," Koreans feel that the
U.S. did little to discourage the Japanese from colonizing
it.

A soldiers' revolt that same year was emblematic of the
clash between forces of modernity and tradition. Chinese
forces came in to keep order, and Yuan Shih-k'ai soon became
resident Minister, with Chinese and foreigners such as Paul
Georg von Mollendorff as "advisors." He tried in harsh way
to remove reformists, stifle nationalism, and limit foreign
contacts. Even as China itself was crumbling under the same
foreign pressure, it sought to hold onto influence in Korea.
With first China and Japan, and now also Russia and England,
were clashing over interests in Korea, Korea was no longer
arbiter of its own destiny. The Sino-Japanese War was fought
around Korea, Japan's victory in which resulted in the
Treaty of Shimonoseki, granting Korea "independence and
forcing China to cede Taiwan and the Liaotung peninsula.
Russia saw opportunities in Korea, leading Japan to exert
firmer control. Dr. Philip Jaisohn (Soh Chae Pil) formed the
Independence Club to champion independence and reforms. This
was the last real chance for Koreans to effect reform, but
the club's leaders were jailed (Rhee) or deported to the
U.S. (Jaisohn). (Philp Jaisohn was the first Korean to
become a naturalized American citizen; he lived in Media, PA
>from 1925 to 1951, and his home is now a historic landmark
open to visitors. For information: see www.jaisohn.org.)

With tension increasing between Japan and Russia over
Manchuria and Korea, Japan finally attacked Russia in 1904.
Emboldened by its win, it made Korea a "protectorate," with
Ito Hirobumi as Resident General. The Koreans put up a
struggle against the Japanese forces and assassinated Ito,
after which Japan forced the Korean cabinet to sign a
document of annexation. Koreans still see the signers as
traitors, and this period of colonialism as an open wound,
especially the Japanese Occupation (1937-45), when Japan, to
support its war in China, occupied the country, used Koreans
as slave labor and "comfort women," imposed the Japanese
language and Shinto worship. This is the period of "lost
names," as Koreans were forced to give up their surnames.

Jubilation at liberation in 1945 was short-lived, as the
USSR and U.S. set the 38th parallel as a "temporary"
demarcation between them. Those two nations being unable to
make trusteeship work, in fall 1948 the ROK and DPRK were
established, under Rhee in the South and Kim in the North,
each of whom regarded the other as illegitimate and aspired
to absorb the other. That there was conflict between these
two artificial states is not surprising.

While it is common in the U.S. to view the Korean War (1950-
53) as embedded in Cold War history, Koreans knew it started
as a civil war. In all events, it was an exercise in
futility. The situation after the war was little different
>from before. The South lost Kaesong and gained other
territory, but the countries remained divided, hostility was
greater than ever, and the two nations' infrastructures were
destroyed. Perhaps 4 million people died. Importantly, the
war is not over. There is only an armistice which South
Korea itself did not sign (the UN signed for it), a
"cessation of hostilities," and the war is a fundamental
reason behind the current North Korean crisis.

ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS AFTER 1953
Soon Won Park, assistant professor of history at Howard
University, picked up Korean history after the war, with the
reconstruction of the late 1950s and early 1960s. In 1954,
Korea was a land of refugees and broken families, its social
fabric rent. Both Rhee and Kim had to accept a divided Korea
and work on consolidating their power, dependent on foreign
aid and defense. The two states exemplify the best and worst
of postcolonial experiences.

Rhee had little interest in the economy, focusing instead on
land reform. But after Gen. Park led a coup d'etat and came
to office in the early 1960s, his economic development plans
put the country back on track. Park was assassinated in
1979, after which his right-hand man, Chun Doo-hwan, assumed
power. The next year saw the worst experience in Korean
history after the war, the Kwangju bloodbath of 1980 that
started out a democratization protest. But the call for
democratization had been heard, which Roh Tae-woo, Korea's
last military ruler (1988-93) did introduce. The country's
self-confidence restored, it has continued to grow into one
of the four Asian Tigers (with Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong
Kong). This growth-made possible by centralized governance;
U.S. and Japan aid and loans, industries built up during the
war, cheap labor, and strong education-also, however, led to
labor exploitation, anti-government and anti-America
sentiments, and the usual problems of urbanization.

The North has had only two leaders, Kim Il-Sung (1948-94)
and his son, Kim Jung-Il. Kim combined Soviet-model
institution building and the Chinese Communist leader cult
into a can-do, juche ideology, a seclusion policy or Kim Il-
Sungism, which called for absolute unity at home, self-
reliance, and independence. Until the mid 1960s, North Korea
did much better with its economic plans than did the South,
but a slowdown began in 1969. Before long the negative
consequences of self-reliance were felt: the lack of capital
and overspending on the military.

KOREA'S RELIGIOUS MOSAIC
Donald Baker, associate professor of Asian Studies at
University of British Columbia, surveyed Korea's faiths.
While 80 percent of Korean-Americans are Christian (10
percent of them Roman Catholic), Korea is more Buddhist than
Christian. About half profess themselves to be non-
believers, one-quarter call themselves Buddhists, 20 percent
Protestants, 8 percent Catholics and 1 percent "other":
Confucianism, new religions such as the Unification Church,
Islam, Bahai, etc. The idea of professing a faith is new in
Korea, it must be noted. Koreans always went to temple, but
before Christianity introduced the idea of identifying
oneself as "a Christian" (which means Protestant in Korea),
they did not tend to identify themselves as "a Buddhist"
(which can mean simply "not a Christian"). Folk traditions
such as Animism and Shamanism have flourished alongside
these faiths.

Confucianism formally declared itself a religion in 1995,
but it has become primarily a set of ethical principles. The
Korean Catholic Church was born in 1784, before any
missionaries were in Korea, by those who learned of it in
China and self-converted; Protestantism came a century later
but took off immediately. There are now dozens of
Presbyterian, Methodist, and Holiness Church denominations.
The Full Gospel Holiness Church is the largest church in the
world, with 700,000 members, and Korea also has the world's
largest Presbyterian and Methodist churches. These tend to
be evangelical fundamentalist, patriarchal, and
hierarchical. It is an intense religiosity, with long and
frequent services, revivals, and retreats.

North Korea officially has freedom of religion, in order to
appear modern, and there are token Chondogyo, Buddhist,
Catholic, and Protestant organizations, some with political
parties. But the real religion is juche, the self-reliance
philosophy created by Kim Il-Sung, which teaches that "we
are not alive as individuals, but as members of a social,
political community."

South Koreans are growing more congregational and
confessional: they are increasingly identifying with
specific religious organizations and participating in group
worship. Whether or not this trend will favor Christianity
remains unclear.

KOREAN SOCIETY SINCE 1953
Mikyoung Kim, Fulbright visiting scholar at Portland State
University, highlighted the social effects of generational
and other tensions, Westernization, and development on
Korean society. Per capita income in South Korea went from
$100 in 1960 to $6,500 in 1980, and now $14,000. This growth
has brought about huge wealth accumulation in a very short
time span, as south Korea achieved in thirty years (1960-90)
the kind of mature capitalist system it has took 100 years
for earlier Western states to achieve.

All of this growth has been accompanied by urbanization-76
percent of Koreans now live in urban centers-and increasing
disparity in wealth distribution. Gen. Park, with his can-
do, aspirational ideology, did a remarkable job of lifting
the country from poverty to wealth and overcoming a
victimized mentality, but this has also put a great deal of
pressure on the country's youth. Additionally, the wage gap
between men and women has yet to be equalized. Part of this
is because men tend to hold positions in larger companies
where pay is higher, but Confucian values that subordinate
women also play a role. For now, divorce has skyrocketed to
higher than the Western rate, and the fertility rate is down
>from a total fertility rate of 4 in the 1960s to 0.63
children per woman today.

THE KOREAS AND U.S. FOREIGN POLICY
The conference concluded with a panel discussion on the
prospects for an open, meaningful dialogue between Pyongyang
and Washington. Roy U. T. Kim, professor of political
economy at Drexel University, FPRI Senior Fellow, and
advisor to Congressman Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), reported on Rep.
Weldon's "human-face diplomacy" with Korea, and in
particular on the congressional delegations to Pyongyang he
led in May/June 2003 and January 2005, to encourage its
participation in the six-party talks. Dr. Kim sees
Pyongyang's fear of U.S. attempts to achieve regime change
as the main barrier to its cooperation. China is more
concerned with the Taiwan issue at the moment and so can
offer only limited assistance in the talks, and the
abduction and textbook issues complicate Tokyo's position.

Many South Koreans now fear the U.S. more than North Korea,
with which it has achieved some cross-DMZ economic
integration, so it is doubtful how much South Korea would
support the U.S. if it attacked North Korea. Because South
Korea's cultural ties are greater with China than the U.S.,
it is China to whom South Korea increasingly turns to solve
the crisis. China is now South Korea's top trading partner,
and more South Korean students study in China than in the
U.S. The measure of Korea's maturing nationalism can be
taken in August 2005, when in all probability the North and
South will jointly celebrate the 60th anniversary of Korea's
liberation.

Donald Clark, professor of history at Trinity University in
San Antonio, addressed the United States' stakes in the
Korean peninsula. The U.S. has affirmed its commitment to
the ROK in blood and treasure, both in lives lost during the
war and, since then, in economic aid and with the mutual
security treaty. Since 1953, the U.S. has been at pains to
emphasize the illegitimacy of the North Korean regime, and
to insist that the ROK is the legitimate government of
Korean people, with rights to the entire territory. Until
about 1990 we therefore refused to talk to North Korea, and
have engaged in systematic economic warfare with it
comparable to what we do to Cuba. But North Korea found way
to force the U.S. into dialogue in 1992-93, after the fall
of its sponsor state, with its emergence as a nuclear
threat. And South Koreans, now unthreatened by the North, no
longer insist that the U.S. not talk to North Korea. In
fact, they encourage it.

Kongdan Oh of the Institute for Defense Analyses noted the
lack of U.S. area experts on North Korea. U.S. foreign
policy is dominated by functionalists (nuclear arms,
military, and trade), not by cultural/linguistic area
experts, who are turned to only when there is a crisis.
Official visits to the region tend to "leapfrog" from China
to Japan, skipping Korea. The administration has not devised
any strategy for Korea at a time when the gap between the
U.S. and South Korea is widening. South Koreans want to
pursue "peace and prosperity" and "education, environmental
health, and enjoyment of a better life" while our policy
could be described as "security and safety." South Korea
wishes to be benign at a time when we are seen as being more
aggressive. This is fueling an anti-Americanism that has to
be taken seriously.

While talks with North Korea continue to be spoken of as the
only option, none of the panelists felt that a Libya-like
solution to the crisis would be possible or that North Korea
would give up its weapons.

KEYNOTE: DEALING WITH THE NORTH KOREAN NUCLEAR THREAT
Donald Oberdorfer, distinguished journalist in residence at
Johns Hopkins University's Nitze School of Advanced
International Studies, gave the keynote address, on the
roots of the North Korean nuclear crisis. He stressed that
Korea is one of the oldest cultures on earth, one that was
unified for thirteen centuries prior to 1945. With the
Japanese suing for peace in August 1945, U.S. leaders asked
two colonels to draw a line across a map of the Korean
Peninsula, where the U.S. would divide occupation duties
with the USSR and try to stop the Soviets from taking the
entire Peninsula and perhaps moving on to Japan. One of
those colonels, Dean Rusk, reported in his memoirs that,
having only a National Geographic map to go by, they simply
drew a line at the 38th parallel, slightly above Seoul and
as far north as they thought they reasonably could.

This was to be a temporary expedient until the two sides
could get together and form some trusteeship arrangement,
but it did not work that way. The Soviet Union put guerrilla
commander Kim Il-Sung in charge, while the United States
brought in the 70-year-old, Western-educated Rhee. In 1950,
after the Chinese communists had triumphed over the
nationalists and the Soviet Union had exploded its first
atomic bomb, Stalin approved Kim's invading the South. The
Korean War was on, a bloody three-year battle up and down
the peninsula that ended very close to where it had begun.

North Korea remains the last Stalinist state on earth. It
has sometimes been unable to feed its people: an estimated 1
million North Koreans died of starvation and related
illnesses in the mid-1990s. It still has food shortages, as
a mountainous and not a very fertile country-it needs to
produce something to sell to the world, as South Korea does.
Human rights are deplorable. The North Koreans have always
wanted nuclear weapons, having been threatened by them
during the war, and especially after South Korea began a
secret nuclear weapons program in the 1970s. Even though
Washington stopped that program on finding out about it, by
the 1980s North Korea was building a plutonium-processing
factory at Yongbyon.

In 1994, the U.S. and North Korea negotiated the Agreed
Framework, as part of which North Korea would shut down
Yongbyon, which it did. But there were rumors even toward
the end of the Clinton administration that it was secretly
working instead on a highly-enriched uranium program, a
violation of the spirit if not the letter of the Framework,
and certainly a violation of the NPT. Early in 2003, while
the U.S. was preparing to invade Iraq, the North Koreans
kicked out the UN inspectors, announced that they had left
the NPT, and began manufacturing plutonium.

With these developments, the U.S. had to do something. The
idea was born of what later became the six-party talks among
the U.S., North Korea, South Korea, China, Japan, and
Russia. But after three rounds of talks, in February 2005,
the DPRK announced that it had nuclear weapons and that, as
a full-fledged nuclear state, it was not coming back unless
mutual disarmament became the main subject.

Each party to the talks has its own national interests
regarding North Korea. Most of South Korea's electorate is
under the age of 40, and sees North Korea not as a threat
but as a country to get along with. China, which itself has
had nuclear weapons since 1964, is more concerned that North
Korea's weapons might encourage South Korea and Japan to
become nuclear states. Nor does it want to see any kind of
destabilizing change in North Korea, which they need as a
buffer state. So they have a stake in maintaining the North
Korean regime as it is.

Japan's Prime Minister Koizumi would like to see a
negotiated agreement, but at the same time, the Japanese
have a serious problem. North Korea kidnapped a number of
Japanese citizens in the 1970s and early 1980s. Kim in
September 2002 acknowledged this and apologized to Japan,
hoping that this would settle the matter. But because the
North Koreans could not account for all those who had been
kidnapped, it simply ended up inflaming the issue. So Japan
is at the moment in an antagonistic posture with regard to
North Korea. And today's Russia is in no position to do much
about the matter.

Especially after 9/11, the U.S. fears a North Korean nuclear
program probably more than any other party, concerned that
North Korea could sell or leak out nuclear materials to some
state or non-state actor. Up until now, the Bush
administration has mainly urged North Korea to come back to
the talks, which it is unlikely to do. Up until now
Washington has not given nearly enough attention to this
problem, which has got some how to be solved. (A videofile
of the lecture has been posted on FPRI's website at the URL
listed at the end; the text will be posted shortly.)

BOOKS RECOMMENDED BY OUR SPEAKERS
Ki-baik Lee, A New History of Korea (Harvard, 1984).
Carter Eckart, et al., Korea, Old and New (Harvard, 1990).
Djun-kil Kim, The History of Korea (Greenwood, 2005).
Peter Lee, Sources of Korean Tradition, 2 vols. (Columbia Univ. Press,
1996, 1997).
Dae Sook Suh, Kim Il Sung (Columbia Univ. Press, 1993).
Don Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History (Basic Books,
rev. ed. 2001).
Kongdan Oh and Ralph Hassig, North Korea through the Looking Glass
(Brookings, 2000)
David Kang and Victor Cha, Nuclear North Korea (Columbia, 2004)

RECOMMENDED WEBSITES
University of Hawaii Center for Korean Studies,
www.hawaii.edu/korea
Asian Historical Architecture, www.orientalarchitecture.com

RECOMMENDED FILMS
Arirang: Part 1, The Korean-American Dream and Part 2, The
Korean-American Journey. DVD and VHS ($20,
www.koreancentennial.org).
Kim Ki-Duk's Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter_and Spring (2003)(DVD and VHS).

RELATED ITEMS ON FPRI'S WEBSITE
"Dealing with the North Korean Nuclear Threat," lecture by
Don Oberdorfer, April 9, 2005 (video file)
http://www.fpri.org/multimedia/20050409.oberdorfer.northkoreannuclearthreat.html

"The North Korean Nuclear Challenge," by Avery Goldstein,
FPRI E-Notes, October 21, 2003
http://www.fpri.org/enotes/20031031.asia.goldstein.koreapriorities.html

"Asia's Shifting Strategic Landscape," by Jacques deLisle,
FPRI E-Notes, November 26, 2003
http://www.fpri.org/enotes/20031126.asia.delisle.asiastrategiclandscape.html

"A Korea Peace Initiative," by Curt Weldon, FPRI E-Notes, June 23, 2003
http://www.fpri.org/enotes/20030626.asia.weldon.koreapeaceinitiative.html

"Japan's Relations with the U.S. and Its North Korean
Option," by Gilbert Rozman, FPRI E-Notes, December 3, 2002
http://www.fpri.org/enotes/asia.20021203.rozman.japanusrelationsnorthkorea.html

Note: Other materials from the History Institute on
"Understanding the Koreas" will be posted soon.

For materials from previous History Institute weekends, visit:
http://www.fpri.org/education/historyacademy.html

For information on our upcoming History Institutes for Teachers, visit:
http://www.fpri.org/education/teachingwaronterror/

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I insert the corresponding brickbats & bouquets on a peculiar
mixture of good & bad from Green Party "co"leader
last y.

They are now the main party of sexual deviance - see attached -
and racism.

R

>
>Debate on Prime Minister's Statement, Parliament, 10th February 2004

>Jeanette Fitzsimons, Green Party Co-Leader

>Aotearoa-New Zealand

That is not the name of the country to which you owe practically
all you have in this temporal realm. Must you begin by announcing your
adherence to PC racism?

>begins the year 2004 with the tragic feeling that the barricades are
>going up between Maori and other New Zealanders.

yes - owing mainly to the new racism of the Jackson Five, the
Harawira gang, the liar Turia, your Ms Turei list-MP, etc

>Trust is at its lowest ebb for many years. The silent sadness I
>witnessed at Waitangi is far more tragic than the open anger and will take
>far longer to heal than the effects of a mud pie.
>
>Shortly we will be presented with legislation to override the legal
>process Maori have won access to, and declare a new title for the Crown,
>dressed up as public domain, over the foreshore and seabed. It offends
>the sense of fair play of most New Zealanders to legislate away a legal
>right that has been won in the courts after 8 years of due process. And
>remember this is only a legal right to have a day in court. The massive
>over-reaction was unnecessary and unfair. It would have been simple to
>legislate to remove the power of the court to issue a fee simple, saleable
>title to foreshore and seabed but to confirm the power of the court to
>determine whether it could be shown to be ancestral land which confers
>kaitiakitanga.

Wouldn't say a peep against the demonically mischievous initiative
of Mrs Hugh Fletcher CJ, who tossed in this squib, would you? She's a
powerHarpie and is therefore beyond criticism.

>
>It s interesting, isn t it, that when you discuss customary title on a
>marae they talk of their responsibility for caring for that land,
>generation after generation, and to extend hospitality to visitors. When
>you discuss title with Europeans they so often talk of the right to
>exploit and exclude.

- and you'd assume the Maadi utterances are trustworthy, but the
non-Maadi not, wouldn't you?

>It would still be possible to resolve the issue in a way that recognises
>both the mana whenua of ancestral title, and the customary right of others
>to go to the beach. It is still possible to rebuild the trust, to heal
>the damaged relationship, to create reconciliation with justice. But only
>by taking time, sitting down together and listening as well as talking,
>and being prepared to design a solution by co-operation rather than
>imposition.

tell that to the Jackson Five, the Harawira criminal gang, Mike
Smith the criminal who destroyed the world's largest bonsai, Derek Fox,
Nicole Poananga, etc etc. They have v little record indeed of honest
exchange of ideas.

>The outcome might even have a lot in common with what is proposed now -
>the important thing is the process that develops it. Without that
>relationship, without that trust, there can be no just resolution. Sadly,
>I sense that that option is not on the table.
>
>Against this the speech at the Orewa Rotary Club by the man in the white
>hat is just a diversion and a distraction. The errors of fact are hardly
>worth a mention

an old cheap trick to waive the duty of specifying any - well you
won't fool many that way

> - does the National Party no longer have any researchers who can get the
>figures and do the simple calculation that Maori are only half as likely
>to be in the top income quartile as other New Zealanders?

another cheap trick - imply that you are refuting something he
said, when you're not.

>Much more worrying is the underlying ignorance of our history, our Treaty
>and our cultural diversity.

- and what does your phoney 'little girl' spokesperson Ms Turei
list-MP do to rectify, as opposed to worsening, this state of ignorance?

>He undermines the Treaty with a monocultural argument based on equality,
>an easy hit with many New Zealanders who are feeling economically
>marginalized or who are unaware of the Treaty agreements. What it
>assumes is that all people are the same, and the sameness means to have
>the attributes of a white middle class male.

Your "rainbow" policy assumes sexual perversions are equal to real
families; why is that OK when basic equality for individual citizens is not
OK by you?

>
>The argument that people should be supported on the basis of need, and
>not race denies the reality in New Zealand that need, in terms of
>education, health, economic resources is particularly real for Maori.

that's the way - "social justice", on racial groups which are
actually not identifiable, rather than citizens equal before the law.
You'd have done well in Germany between the world wars.

>Let's take health spending - less than 3% of the health budget goes to
>Maori providers or services provided by mainstream providers targeted at
>Maori. Yet their results are good because they deliver the service in a
>way that respects cultural differences.

that is not evidence but mere ideological racist rhetoric.

>Is that not equality - to have services delivered in a way that is
>culturally appropriate?

yes - if Maaadi culture entails misappropriation of public funds
in a big way, as it appears to. No matter what ethical breaches may be
entailed, as long as woolly-minded white guilt is being exploited, keep
throwing public resources at Maadi without assessment of the outcomes
(McCully MP has been good on this).

>Overall, roughly 14.7% of the health budget gets spend on Maori - about
>the same as the proportion of Maori in the population. Given the
>relatively poor health statistics of Maori they ought to be getting a
>higher proportion than that, on the basis of need. Despite a higher death
>rate from cardiovascular disease, there is evidence that Maori receive
>fewer cardiac interventions than would be expected, and these differences
>remain even after controlling for gender, age and deprivation
>
>Only 4% of the population older than 65 are Maori who tend to live ten
>years less on average than pakeha so they also get far less than their
>share of superannuation. I guess Dr Brash would argue that in a needs
>based  system they don t need it when they re dead. But we won t have
>equality until pakeha and Maori lead equally long and fulfilling lives,
>and addressing that means addressing complex questions of targeted health,
>education and welfare spending.
>
>All Maori over 60 were born into families which received a lower rate of
>family benefit, pension, invalid and widows benefit than pakeha families,
>just because they were Maori. This changed only in 1945.

but we will continue to flagellate current NZ with such long-gone
arrangements, trying to embarrass woolly-minded white liberals to throw
more money at Maadi who will, judging from the record, largely misuse it

>We have had race based laws throughout our history, always to the
>detriment of Maori.

You lying ideologue you. What about the Native Schools, peaking at
153 in the early 1950s, created & staffed by the central govt to serve
rural Maoris? What about the complete lack of conscription of Maoris in
both world wars?? Can you not imagine what it does to your reputation when
you spout obvious falsehoods like this?

>And some would still deny them the chance to catch up.

'Some', I dare say; your cheap implication that Brash would is a
desperate debating stunt.

>And then he argues that Maori can still practise their language and
>culture, just like the Chinese - positioning them as immigrants in their
>own land.

what stupid double-talk. Immigration is not implied.

>It seems to be the role of each generation to rebel against their
>parents. I had the privilege of knowing Rev Alan Brash well when I lived
>and worked in Geneva some 30 years ago. He was a fine, compassionate and
>visionary man, dedicated to social justice.

as you know, I have said for years that the son is not a patch on
his father. This does not justify any of your bullshit in this speech.

>Perhaps Don's present stance is just youthful rebellion.
>
>Another matter that takes me back 30 years is the cross roads we have
>reached in energy policy. Not since the so-called oil crises of the
>seventies have we been faced with such stark choices. The issues have not
>changed since then, but failure to act then has left us fewer options now.
>
>There has been surprisingly little discussion of the fact that Maui gas,
>which used to provide a quarter of our primary energy *has* run out

Where can we get confirmation of this drastic claim? I believe it
is false.

>, as it was always planned to do. It has coincided with three other events
>which limit our options for electricity:
> - the onset of a period of lower rainfall in the catchments of the main
>hydro lakes which is predicted to become the norm for the next twenty years
> - rapid growth in demand which has caught up with the surplus of
>generating capacity we used to have.

I look fw to your justifying this claim with an updated version of
my detailed analysis from a decade ago. You could conveniently append this
to your cttee's report on your examination of Project Aqua (in which I hear
Bechtel are involved). Indeed, must you wait that long? Can you let me
have a copy of the new analysis?

> - our signing - and not before time - of the Kyoto protocol on climate
>change which rules out burning coal, in order to limit greenhouse gas
>emissions.
>
>The response from our state owned electricity generating system has been
>the same as ever - if we want more power, we can wreck a bit more of our
>environment to provide it. I had thought that the days of Think Big were
>over. Governments now talk of sustainable development but only the
>language has changed.

oh too true

>As though we had learned nothing from the Clyde dam, the Synfuels plant

why not use this opportunity to label it 'the mothballed synfuels
factory'??

>, and the Aramoana smelter the response to rising power consumption is to
>wreck another river - to divert 73% of our largest braided river into a
>canal, drying up the habitat of threatened birds and native fish, ruining
>trout and salmon fishing, dominating the landscape of the Waitaki Valley
>with a structure as high as the beehive and as wide as Parliament
>buildings.
>
>Even Project Aqua won't save us of course - by the time it is built, if
>present trends continue, demand will have risen by the same amount as the
>scheme will produce and we will be looking for more. $1.2 billion is a
>lot of money just to stand still. Worse still, in a very dry winter it
>will provide nothing as there will be no spare water for the canal. The
>temptingly low cost of Aqua is a mirage -when you add on the cost of the
>new thermal stations that will have to be built to provide for dry winters
>it is not cheap power.
>
>The Energy Efficiency and Conservation Strategy is too timid, and aiming
>too low. It is seriously underfunded - less than 1% of the capital cost
>of Aqua goes into energy efficiency each year - yet we know it is capable
>of producing far more in power savings eventually than Aqua will generate.

*would* generate - if permitted, which it will not be. You
should not speak of it as if it is to exist.

>Last year this House saw many futile debates about whether we should
>build more hydro or more coal. The real point is that unless we get
>energy efficiency investments happening fast, it will not be hydro or coal
>or this river or that - it will be all our rivers ruined, coal stations on
>every corner, some token wind farms, imported liquefied natural gas at
>huge cost, eventually nuclear power and still we will be having power
>cuts. This is the year to face our energy future seriously and take a
>stand: to say "we will not expect our environment to keep paying for our
>waste and our carelessness and our greed. "

good one

>Because it's not just about electricity. The war in Iraq and recent
>fluctuations in oil prices are signs of the inescapable reality that we
>are close to the time when oil flows from known wells will not be enough
>to supply world demand. What does it matter whether that will be in five
>years or ten, or whether we have already passed the peak of oil production?

good point

>The world is already using four barrels for every one discovered. The
>oil companies know this. This Government, like all previous governments,
>is in denial. Its advisors are still publishing predictions that the price
>of oil will stay constant for the next twenty years.

hammer that

>There is a lot we could do to prepare, by making ourselves less reliant
>on oil. The Transport Strategy and the new legislation on which the
>Greens have worked very closely with the Government is a start, with its
>emphasis on energy efficient modes like rail and public transport. We
>must make sure that the opportunities it opens up are grasped this year.

Revival of CNG no longer a political cause??

>This government could be the one that wakes from the sleep of denial and
>leads a nation into a future where, with good planning, we can have
>prosperity and quality of life, despite the constraints of both oil supply
>and carbon emissions.
>
>We are waiting.
>
>Meanwhile, despite distancing ourselves somewhat from the US invasion of
>Iraq, we are still being led into that country's agenda. To justify their
>invasion of Iraq and whatever countries come next they are scaring the
>world into sacrificing their democracy and their civil liberties in the
>name of a "war on terror" which is in fact a war of terror.
>
>We continue to see the growing power of the security services combined
>with a dramatic deficit of accountability. Ahmed Zaoui personifies this -
>a man in prison without being charged, for crimes unknown, based on
>evidence the security services refuse to reveal.

It is disappointing that you front here for your communist
colleague. Can you seriously maintain that there should be no secrets of
this kind?

>How does locking up a democratically elected politician on the run from
>a military government determined to execute him make New Zealand a safer
>place?

If your type hadn't been sticking up for him, he'd no longer be in
gaol at our expense.

>
>If this government is serious about dealing to the causes of terrorism,
>they would do well to separate NZ from US foreign policy in the Middle
>East and increase the overseas aid budget to 0.7% of Gross National
>Income, as requested by the Council of International Development on the
>steps of Parliament today.

correct

>
>Nothing better illustrates the foolishness of buying into the US agenda
>than this government's determination to follow them into the dead end of
>genetic engineering - especially when their agricultural exports are the
>very low value commodities decried by the Prime Minister in her speech.
>Ours need to be high value products; products where buyers are discerning
>- buyers who have repeatedly demonstrated their rejection of GE food.

right on

>
>It is time we were brave enough to make our own decisions and control our
>own economy. The long darkness of free trade trampling unchecked over
>communities and ecosystems may be passing - in the last few days the EU's
>trade commissioner has suggested that countries ought to be allowed to ban
>imports from countries that did not share their national values and
>standards. Pascal Lamy says the WTO rules give too much weight to science
>- he could have said pseudo-science - and too little to local social and
>political sensitivities. It is time for us to side with the EU and the
>public on this issue, and in doing so stand up for sustainability over
>corporate greed.
>
>When we abandon control of our own economy the first places that suffer
>are small communities, especially rural communities, and they are hurting.
>Cutting tariffs will put people out of work in areas such as Levin, Lower
>Hutt and Te Kuiti. Other communities that are still reeling from the
>closure of their post offices are now facing no-go zones, a total lack of
>effective rural public transport and the closure of their schools -
>schools which are often the only community centre, meeting place, focus
>for the people who live there.
>
>Regional development policy is not helping these people. Big industrial
>wood processing plants do not support local economies, they make them more
>reliant on overseas owners, cheap energy and a favourable exchange rate.
>
>We need a strong local economy that sets global standards for social and
>environmental responsibility. We need to be much more self-reliant and we
>need to produce much more that lasts. Quality, durability and flexibility
>need to become the new bywords of industry.

right on

>
>The Greens support local initiatives that keep finance and production
>localised - green dollar schemes, community banks, credit unions,
>cooperatives and regional business support schemes. Opportunities abound
>for local eco-development and ecologically innovative business - in areas
>as diverse as waste reduction, energy efficiency retrofits, ecological
>restoration and organics.
>
>The Greens have lobbied the government since it took office to release
>some of the surplus Dr Cullen is squirreling away, to improve the lives of
>ordinary New Zealanders. We hope that the government will deliver
>generously on its promises in the Budget Policy Statement. The Greens want
>to see an end to the discrimination against parents on a benefit and to
>extend eligibility of the Child Tax Credit to all children of low income
>families.
>
>We applaud the government s continuing investment in early childhood
>education, but it is not enough if children are going hungry and parents
>are unable to financially cope at home.
>
>One step to addressing this is the reintroduction of a Universal Child
>Benefit and we are asking the government and New Zealanders to support Sue
>Bradford's private members bill.
>
>National s new leader has done us a service by reminding us that there
>are political choices in New Zealand, most obviously between
>reconciliation and blinkered denial. But the choices are more than that -
>the agenda for the right represents an unparalleled denial of the
>ecological crisis facing our planet - theirs is a call for more cars, more
>coal and more consumption. One could almost think they have given up and
>simply want to party while the ship sinks.
>
>The Greens also get extremely frustrated with Labour (as I am sure they
>do with us) Labour in our view has a lot to learn about ecological wisdom,
>peace and justice.

The same is becoming increasingly true of your party which has
largely lost its way.

>But we can and do work together - there is a common interest in a better
>future and a common belief that we are more than rational economic
>maximisers. We look forward to principled cooperation with Labour in the
>future on the issues we share.
>
>We will continue to work with the Government this year to progress the
>issues where we agree. In particular we want to see the new transport
>legislation start to work, freight move off our congested roads on to
>rail, and commuters have the option of excellent public transport systems,
>and the ability to walk and cycle in safety
>
>We are pleased to see the government will allow more students to qualify
>for allowances from next year. Of course, we would like to see the
>allowances universally available and to see a real programme to phase out
>fees altogether. This is an investment in our future not a cost.
>
>We are also pleased that government is looking at improvements to the
>Paid Parental Leave scheme. This scheme must be made available to more
>parents including those with less than one year tenure and self employed
>women. Leave should meet the international minimum standard of 14 weeks.
>
>We will continue to co-operate on bills such as the Care of Children,
>Resource Management (energy and climate change), Employment Relations Law
>Reform and the promised Civil Union

this last an atrocity

>, most of which rely on our support.
>
>However we cannot vote confidence in this government. Two-thirds of New
>Zealanders asked for the protection of the GE moratorium to be extended
>for a few years while more is learned about this unpredictable technology.
>They wrote letters, emailed, marched, wrote submissions, reasoned, brought
>the best scientific evidence, pleaded, argued the overwhelming economic
>case, but were ignored and often insulted.
>
>Almost every day I see new scientific articles on the down side of GE
>crops - their instability, their weediness, their contamination of other
>crops, the growing consumer opposition to them throughout the world.
>
>Only ERMA and a resolute public now stand between us and the release of
>those crops. My money is on the public! We said we could not support a
>government which allowed the release of GE organisms but we do not share
>National's reasons for voting no-confidence. So, as I have done since the
>last election, I move:
>
>"That the amendment be amended by omitting all the words after 'this
>house has no confidence' and substituting the following words 'in the
>Labour led minority Government because, despite there being some positive
>elements in its programme, its decision to allow the release of
>genetically engineered organisms exposes our health, our environment and
>our economy to significant and quite unnecessary risks'.

This would be correct.

R

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

*A truckload of nonsense*

The G8 plan to save Africa comes with conditions that make it little
more than an extortion racket

*George Monbiot*
*Tuesday June 14, 2005*

*Guardian*

An aura of sanctity is descending upon the world's most powerful men. On
Saturday the finance ministers from seven of the G8 nations (Russia was
not invited) promised to cancel the debts the poorest countries owe to
the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The hand that holds
the sword has been stayed by angels: angels with guitars rather than
harps.

Who, apart from the leader writers of the Daily Telegraph, could deny
that debt relief is a good thing? Never mind that much of this debt -
money lent by the World Bank and IMF to corrupt dictators - should never
have been pursued in the first place. Never mind that, in terms of
looted resources, stolen labour and now the damage caused by climate
change, the rich owe the poor far more than the poor owe the rich. Some
of the poorest countries have been paying more for debt than for health
or education. Whatever the origins of the problem, that is obscene.

You are waiting for me to say but, and I will not disappoint you. The
but comes in paragraph 2 of the finance ministers' statement. To qualify
for debt relief, developing countries must "tackle corruption, boost
private-sector development" and eliminate "impediments to private
investment, both domestic and foreign".

These are called conditionalities. Conditionalities are the policies
governments must follow before they receive aid and loans and debt
relief. At first sight they look like a good idea. Corruption cripples
poor nations, especially in Africa. The money which could have given
everyone a reasonable standard of living has instead made a handful
unbelievably rich. The powerful nations are justified in seeking to
discourage it.

That's the theory. In truth, corruption has seldom been a barrier to
foreign aid and loans: look at the money we have given, directly and
through the World Bank and IMF, to Mobutu, Suharto, Marcos, Moi and
every other premier-league crook. Robert Mugabe, the west's demon king,
has deservedly been frozen out by the rich nations. But he has caused
less suffering and is responsible for less corruption than Rwanda's Paul
Kagame or Uganda's Yoweri Museveni, both of whom are repeatedly cited by
the G8 countries as practitioners of "good governance". Their armies, as
the UN has shown, are largely responsible for the meltdown in the
eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which has so far claimed 4
million lives, and have walked off with billions of dollars' worth of
natural resources. Yet Britain, which is hosting the G8 summit, remains
their main bilateral funder. It has so far refused to make their
withdrawal from the DRC a conditionality for foreign aid.

The difference, of course, is that Mugabe has not confined his attacks
to black people; he has also dispossessed white farmers and confiscated
foreign assets. Kagame, on the other hand, has eagerly supplied us with
the materials we need for our mobile phones and computers: materials
that his troops have stolen from the DRC. "Corrupt" is often used by our
governments and newspapers to mean regimes that won't do what they're
told.

Genuine corruption, on the other hand, is tolerated and even encouraged.
Twenty-five countries have so far ratified the UN convention against
corruption, but none is a member of the G8. Why? Because our own
corporations do very nicely out of it. In the UK companies can legally
bribe the governments of Africa if they operate through our (profoundly
corrupt) tax haven of Jersey. Lord Falconer, the minister responsible
for sorting this out, refuses to act. When you see the list of the
island's clients, many of which sit in the FTSE 100 index, you begin to
understand.

The idea, swallowed by most commentators, that the conditions our
governments impose help to prevent corruption is laughable. To qualify
for World Bank funding, our model client Uganda was forced to privatise
most of its state-owned companies before it had any means of regulating
their sale. A sell-off that should have raised $500m for the Ugandan
exchequer instead raised $2m. The rest was nicked by government
officials. Unchastened, the World Bank insisted that - to qualify for
the debt-relief programme the G8 has now extended - the Ugandan
government sell off its water supplies, agricultural services and
commercial bank, again with minimal regulation.

And here we meet the real problem with the G8's conditionalities. They
do not stop at pretending to prevent corruption, but intrude into every
aspect of sovereign government. When the finance ministers say "good
governance" and "eliminating impediments to private investment", what
they mean is commercialisation, privatisation and the liberalisation of
trade and capital flows. And what this means is new opportunities for
western money.

Let's stick for a moment with Uganda. In the late 80s, the IMF and World
Bank forced it to impose "user fees" for basic healthcare and primary
education. The purpose appears to have been to create new markets for
private capital. School attendance, especially for girls, collapsed. So
did health services, particularly for the rural poor. To stave off a
possible revolution, Museveni reinstated free primary education in 1997
and free basic healthcare in 2001. Enrolment in primary school leapt
from 2.5 million to 6 million, and the number of outpatients almost
doubled. The World Bank and the IMF -which the G8 nations control - were
furious. At the donors' meeting in April 2001, the head of the bank's
delegation made it clear that, as a result of the change in policy, he
now saw the health ministry as a "bad investment".

There is an obvious conflict of interest in this relationship. The G8
governments claim they want to help poor countries develop and compete
successfully. But they have a powerful commercial incentive to ensure
that they compete unsuccessfully, and that our companies can grab their
public services and obtain their commodities at rock-bottom prices. The
conditionalities we impose on the poor nations keep them on a short leash.

That's not the only conflict. The G8 finance ministers' statement
insists that the World Bank and IMF will monitor the indebted countries'
progress, and decide whether they are fit to be relieved of their
burden. The World Bank and IMF, of course, are the agencies which have
the most to lose from this redemption. They have a vested interest in
ensuring that debt relief takes place as slowly as possible.

Attaching conditions like these to aid is bad enough. It amounts to
saying: "We will give you a trickle of money if you give us the crown
jewels." Attaching them to debt relief is in a different moral league:
"We will stop punching you in the face if you give us the crown jewels."
The G8's plan for saving Africa is little better than an extortion racket.

Do you still believe our newly sanctified leaders have earned their
haloes? If so, you have swallowed a truckload of nonsense. Yes, they
should cancel the debt. But they should cancel it unconditionally.

*.* www.monbiot.com
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,5214948-103390,00.html
***
more on debt relief here: Past aid became debt curse for Africa:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3312203a12,00.html

This item, a half-decade old, remains extremely relevant today.

R

NZ Herald
00-5-18

London, Reuters

Prince Charles warns that the world faces environmental disaster
unless it starts accepting that tampering with nature is an affront to God.

The Prince has already lambasted genetically modified foods but he
will use the BBC radio lecture today to make a wider attack on some methods
employed by modern science.

"We need to rediscover a reverence for the natural world,
irrespective of its usefulness to ourselves - to become more aware of the
relationship between God, man and creation" he will say.

"If literally nothing is held sacred any more, what is there to
prevent us treating our entire world as some 'great laboratory of life'
with potentially disastrous long-term consequences?

"Only by rediscovering the essential unity and order of the living
and spiritual world and by bridging the gap between cynical secularism and
the timelessness of traditional religion will we avoid the disintegration
of our environment."

Some advance extracts of his lecture were given front page coverage
yesterday. The 'Guardian' said Charles would take swipes at biotechnology,
the Labour Government's modernising zeal and economic globalisation.

But the Prince would be careful to build bridges between modern
science and the sacred, the newspaper said.

"We need to restore the balance between the heartfelt reason of
instinctive wisdom and the rational insights of scientific rational
insights of scientific analysis. Neither is much use without the other",
he will say.

Genetically altered food is now widely shunned in Britain and many
supermarkets like to tell their customers that it is no longer on their
shelves. British beekeepers have been told to move their hives 10 km from
genetically modified crop trial sites after after shop-bought honey was
found to contain GM pollen.

(Ed. Note - The Old York Times just can't leave it alone.)

RICHEST ARE LEAVING EVEN THE RICH FAR BEHIND

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON
New York Times
June 5, 2005

When F. Scott Fitzgerald pronounced that the very rich "are different from
you and me," Ernest Hemingway's famously dismissive response was: "Yes,
they have more money." Today he might well add: much, much, much more
money.

The people at the top of America's money pyramid have so prospered in
recent years that they have pulled far ahead of the rest of the population,
an analysis of tax records and other government data by The New York Times
shows. They have even left behind people making hundreds of thousands of
dollars a year.

Call them the hyper-rich.

They are not just a few Croesus-like rarities. Draw a line under the top
0.1 percent of income earners --- the top one-thousandth. Above that line
are about 145,000 taxpayers, each with at least $1.6 million in income and
often much more.

The average income for the top 0.1 percent was $3 million in 2002, the
latest year for which averages are available. That number is two and a
half times the $1.2 million, adjusted for inflation, that group reported in
1980. No other income group rose nearly as fast.

The share of the nation's income earned by those in this uppermost category
has more than doubled since 1980, to 7.4 percent in 2002. The share of
income earned by the rest of the top 10 percent rose far less, and the
share earned by the bottom 90% fell.

Next, examine the net worth of American households. The group with homes,
investments and other assets worth more than $10 million comprised 338,400
households in 2001, the last year for which data are available. The number
has grown more than 400% since 1980, after adjusting for inflation, while
the total number of households has grown only 27%.

The Bush administration tax cuts stand to widen the gap between the
hyper-rich and the rest of America. The merely rich, making hundreds of
thousands of dollars a year, will shoulder a disproportionate share of the
tax burden.

President Bush said during the third election debate last October that most
of the tax cuts went to low and middle-income Americans. In fact, most ---
53% --- will go to people with incomes in the top ten percent over the
first 15 years of the cuts, which began in 2001 and would have to be
reauthorized in 2010. And more than 15% will go just to the top 0.1
percent, those 145,000 taxpayers.

The Times set out to create a financial portrait of the very richest
Americans, how their incomes have changed over the decades and how the tax
cuts will affect them. It is no secret that the gap between the rich and
the poor has grown, but the extent to which the richest are leaving
everyone else behind is not widely known.

The Treasury Department uses a computer model to examine the effects of tax
cuts on various income groups but does not look in detail fine enough to
differentiate among those within the top one percent. To determine those
differences, The Times relied on a computer model based on the Treasury's.

Experts at organizations representing a range of views, including the
Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and Citizens for Tax Justice,
reviewed the projections and said they were reasonable, and the Treasury
Department said through a spokesman that the model was reliable.

The analysis also found the following:

* Under the Bush tax cuts, the 400 taxpayers with the highest incomes --- a
minimum of $87 million in 2000, the last year for which the government will
release such data --- now pay income, Medicare and Social Security taxes
amounting to virtually the same percentage of their incomes as people
making $50,000 to $75,000.

* Those earning more than $10 million a year now pay a lesser share of
their income in these taxes than those making $100,000 to $200,000.

* The alternative minimum tax, created 36 years ago to make sure the very
richest paid taxes, takes back a growing share of the tax cuts over time
from the majority of families earning $75,000 to $1 million --- thousands
and even tens of thousands of dollars annually. Far fewer of the very
wealthiest will be affected by this tax.

The analysis examined only income reported on tax returns. The Treasury
Department says that the very wealthiest find ways, legal and illegal, to
shelter a lot of income from taxes. So the gap between the very richest
and everyone else is almost certainly much larger.

The hyper-rich have emerged in the last three decades as the biggest
winners in a remarkable transformation of the American economy
characterized by, among other things, the creation of a more global
marketplace, new technology and investment spurred partly by tax cuts. The
stock market soared; so did pay in the highest ranks of business.

One way to understand the growing gap is to compare earnings increases over
time by the vast majority of taxpayers - say, everyone in the lower 90% ---
with those at the top, say, in the uppermost 0.01 percent (now about 14,000
households, each with $5.5 million or more in income last year).

From 1950 to 1970, for example, for every additional dollar earned by the
bottom 90% those in the top 0.01 percent earned an additional $162,
according to the Times analysis. From 1990 to 2002, for every extra dollar
earned by those in the bottom 90%, each taxpayer at the top brought in an
extra $18,000.

President Ronald Reagan signed tax bills that benefited the wealthiest
Americans and also gave tax breaks to the working poor. President Bill
Clinton raised income taxes for the wealthiest, cut taxes on investment
gains, and expanded breaks for the working poor. Mr. Bush eliminated
income taxes for families making under $40,000, but his tax cuts have also
benefited the wealthiest Americans far more than his predecessors' did.

The Bush administration says that the tax cuts have actually made the
income tax system more progressive, shifting the burden slightly more to
those with higher incomes. Still, an Internal Revenue Service study found
that the only taxpayers whose share of taxes declined in 2001 and 2002 were
those in the top 0.1 percent.

But a Treasury spokesman, Taylor Griffin, said the income tax system is
more progressive if the measurement is the share borne by the top 40% of
Americans rather than the top 0.1 percent.

The Times analysis also shows that over the next decade, the tax cuts Mr.
Bush wants to extend indefinitely would shift the burden further from the
richest Americans. With incomes of more than $1 million or so, they would
get the biggest share of the breaks, in total amounts and in the drop in
their share of federal taxes paid.

One reason the merely rich will fare much less well than the very richest
is the alternative minimum tax. This tax, the successor to one enacted in
1969 to make sure the wealthiest Americans could not use legal loopholes to
live tax-free, has never been adjusted for inflation. As a result, it
stings Americans whose incomes have crept above $75,000.

The Times analysis shows that by 2010 the tax will affect more than
four-fifths of the people making $100,000 to $500,000 and will take away
from them nearly one-half to more than two-thirds of the recent tax cuts.
For example, the group making $200,000 to $500,000 a year will lose 70% of
their tax cut to the alternative minimum tax in 2010, an average of $9,177
for those affected.

But because of the way it is devised, the tax affects far fewer of the very
richest: about a third of the taxpayers reporting more than $1 million in
income. One big reason is that dividends and investment gains, which go
mostly to the richest, are not subject to the tax.

Another reason that the wealthiest will fare much better is that the tax
cuts over the past decade have sharply lowered rates on income from
investments.

While most economists recognize that the richest are pulling away, they
disagree on what this means. Those who contend that the extraordinary
accumulation of wealth is a good thing say that while the rich are indeed
getting richer, so are most people who work hard and save. They say that
the tax cuts encourage the investment and the innovation that will make
everyone better off.

"In this income data I see a snapshot of a very innovative society," said
Tim Kane, an economist at the Heritage Foundation. "Lower taxes and lower
marginal tax rates are leading to more growth. There's an explosion of
wealth. We are so wealthy in a world that is profoundly poor."

But some of the wealthiest Americans, including Warren E. Buffett, George
Soros and Ted Turner, have warned that such a concentration of wealth can
turn a meritocracy into an aristocracy and ultimately stifle economic
growth by putting too much of the nation's capital in the hands of
inheritors rather than strivers and innovators.

Speaking of the increasing concentration of incomes, Alan Greenspan, the
Federal Reserve chairman, warned in Congressional testimony a year ago:
"For the democratic society, that is not a very desirable thing to allow it
to happen."

Others say most Americans have no problem with this trend. The central
question is mobility, said Bruce R. Bartlett, an advocate of lower taxes
who served in the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations. "As long as
people think
they have a chance of getting to the top, they just don't care how rich the
rich are."

But in fact, economic mobility --- moving from one income group to another
over a lifetime --- has actually stopped rising in the United States,
researchers say. Some recent studies suggest it has even declined over the
last generation.

Amnesty International and moral idiocy

Dennis Prager
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/dp20050607.shtml
June 7, 2005

Sometime in the 1970s, I sent a donation to Amnesty International. As
soon as I heard that a group had been formed to combat torture, I knew I
had to support it.

Unfortunately, like almost all international and most domestic groups,
the Left took over Amnesty International, and it devolved into another
predictably anti-American, morally destructive organization.

That devolution was most apparent years ago when Amnesty International
listed the United States as a major violator of human rights because it
executed murderers. The organization's inability to morally distinguish
between executing murderers and executing innocent people means that
Amnesty International is worse than ineffectual; the good it has done
notwithstanding, it is becoming harmful to the cause of human rights.

Amnesty International reached its nadir two weeks ago when the
secretary general of the organization, Irene Khan, branded the U.S.
prison camp at Guantanamo Bay "the gulag of our times." And rather than
fire her, Amnesty International has defended her. Among her defenders is
the American head of Amnesty International, William Schultz, who
apparently loves America as much as he loves moral clarity. He said on
Chris Matthews' "Hardball" that he acknowledges that there is a
difference "in scale" between Gulag and Guantanamo, but otherwise the
comparison is apt.

For the record, at Guantanamo there are about 520 prisoners, the vast
majority, if not all, of whom have been rounded up in anti-terror
warfare. They were non-uniformed terrorists who are not subject to
Geneva Convention rules on prisoners. But even if they did wear
uniforms, they would await release at the end of hostilities. They are,
even according to Schultz, provided with medical care and a fine diet
that honors their religious codes, and they are allowed to practice
their religion.

Now compare the estimated 20-30 million prisoners sent to the string of
camps across the Soviet Union. They obtained no medical care, were
served portions of food inadequate to human survival, and were frozen
and worked to death by the millions. Moreover, virtually everyone sent
there was entirely innocent of any crime. Every prisoner of the Gulag
would have given anything to be a prisoner in Guantanamo.

Calling Guantanamo "Gulag" smears America and trivializes the suffering
and deaths of millions upon millions of innocent people. But this does
not matter to leftist organizations and their defenders in the
mainstream media. What matters is hatred of President Bush.

The apotheosis of liberal moral confusion, the New York Times editorial
page, wrote: "What Guantanamo exemplifies . . . may or may not bring to
mind the Soviet Union's sprawling network of Stalinist penal colonies."
Guantanamo "may or may not" be compared to Gulag! What a courageous
stand.

The rare exception to the mainstream media silence (other than the Wall
Street Journal editorial page -- the one major conservative editorial
page) was the Washington Post. And the reason the Post condemned Amnesty
International was that Anne Applebaum, author of the most definitive
work yet on the Gulag, sits on the Post's editorial board. She knows how
immoral the comparison is.

She knows what happened at Gulag. But I believe that most members of
the press do not. Leftist moral confusion and animosity toward America
and President Bush are not the only reasons for the widespread
acceptance of the Amnesty International libel of America and its
trivialization of Stalin's horrors. The other is the simple ignorance of
history -- especially concerning Communist atrocities -- among many of
the world's journalists. An Associated Press report of May 26th (printed
in the Washington Post and countless other newspapers) described the
Gulag thus: "Thousands of prisoners of the so-called gulags died from
hunger, cold, harsh treatment and overwork."

Thousands? This is our mainstream news media. I am certain the average
journalist has little idea about how many people Stalin murdered in the
Gulag.

So, for the record, here are some comparisons between the Gulag and
Guantanamo, courtesy of David Bosco and published in The New Republic:

Individuals detained: Gulag -- 20 million. Guantanamo -- 750 total.

Number of camps: Gulag -- 476 separate camp complexes comprising
thousands of individual camps. Guantanamo -- five small camps on the
U.S. military base in Cuba.

Reasons for Imprisonment: Gulag -- Hiding grain; owning too many cows;
need for slave labor; being Jewish; being Finnish; being religious;
being middle class; having had contact with foreigners; refusing to
sleep with the head of Soviet counterintelligence; telling a joke about
Stalin. Guantanamo -- Fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan; being
suspected of links to Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

Red Cross Visits: Gulag -- none that Bosco could find. Guantanamo --
regular visits since January 2002.

Deaths as a Result of Poor Treatment: Gulag -- at least two to three
million (Bosco understates). Guantanamo -- no reports of prisoner
deaths.

If Amnesty International does not fire Irene Khan and retract her
obscene comparison, it is unworthy of respect or support. A new
non-leftist anti-torture organization must be built.

Forbes.com - Magazine Article

Current Events

Thoughts on the Existence of God

Paul Johnson, 06.20.05

Of all the fundamentalist groups at large in the world today, the
Darwinians seem to me the most objectionable. They are just as strident
and closed to argument as Christian or Muslim fundamentalists, but unlike
those two groups the Darwinians enjoy intellectual respectability.
Darwinians and their allies dominate the scientific establishments of the
West. They rule the campus. Their militant brand of atheism makes them
natural allies of the philosophical atheists who control most college
philosophy faculties. They dominate the leading scientific magazines and
prevent their critics and opponents from getting a hearing, and they secure
the best slots on TV. Yet the Darwinian brand of evolution is becoming
increasingly vulnerable as the progress of science reveals its weaknesses.
One day, perhaps soon, it will collapse in ruins.

Weak Underpinnings

Few people today doubt the concept of evolution as such. What seems
mistaken is Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection, whereby species
evolve by infinitesimally small stages. Neither Darwin nor any of his
followers--nor his noisy champions today--was a historian. None of them
thought of time historically or made their calculations chronologically.
Had they done so, they'd have seen that natural selection works much too
slowly to fit into the time line allowed by the ages of the universe and
our own planet. The process must somehow have been accelerated in jumps or
by catastrophes or outside intervention.

{tho' I've not seen Bird's work, many clever people have tried to
estimate whether there has been enough time for darwinian evolution. The
usual result is such huge uncertainties as to render the exercise
inconclusive.

But I think the error is not merely quantitative but worse -
qualitative: as I put it, megatime is no substitute for purpose in the
creation of coordinated working ecological order. - RM }

There are five other weaknesses the Darwinians cannot explain away either.
The best summary of these can be found in Richard J. Bird's Chaos and Life
(Columbia University Press), page 53. Warning: This book is tough going
but will reward the persistent.

If the theory of natural selection is incorrect, then the Darwinians' view
that there is no need or place for God in the universe is itself weakened,
though not necessarily overthrown. Physics, however, increasingly tends to
suggest that there is a God role, particularly with regard to the origin of
the universe. We now know this occurred about 13.7 billion years ago, and
our knowledge of what happened immediately afterward is becoming
increasingly detailed, down to the last microsecond.

Few now doubt there was a Big Bang. We know when it occurred and what
followed. But we are just as far as ever from understanding why it
happened or what--or who--caused it. Indeed, all calculations about the Big
Bang are based on the
assumption that nothing preceded it. It took place in an infinite vacuum.
There was no process of ignition, or traces of it would have been left.
Hence, this fundamental happening in history seems to conflict with all the
laws of physics and our notions of how the universe operates. It was an
event without a cause.

It also produced something out of nothing. More: It produced everything
out of nothing. The expansion of the universe has proceeded ever since,
and all the creative processes involved in it--including Earth and homo
sapiens--were written into the laws laid down in that first tremendous
explosion. We do not have to believe in an entirely deterministic universe
to see that the first microsecond of history foreshadowed everything that
has followed over the last 13-plus billion years.

If the laws of physics cannot explain how and why this event occurred, we
must invoke metaphysics. And that means some kind of divine force. I've
been rereading what Sir Isaac Newton wrote about God in the second edition
of his Principia (1713). Newton saw God not as a perfect being--or any
kind of being at all--but as a power, what he termed a "dominion." "We
reverence and adore Him on account of His dominion," he wrote. This power
was exercised "in a manner not at all human Š in a manner utterly unknown
to us." Newton knew God only through His works. "He is utterly void of
all body and bodily figure, and can therefore neither be seen, nor heard,
nor touched." Our knowledge of Him is limited "by His most wise and
excellent contrivances of things."

"... and the Word Was God"

This notion of God as an impersonal power or force, wholly outside the laws
of physics, fits with the role assigned him as author of the Big Bang. And
since that primal event there has been no need of further intervention by
God in the affairs of the universe.

Or has there? I've also been reading Guy Deutscher's The Unfolding of
Language (Metropolitan Books) and reflecting on the nature of words.
Speech is the greatest of man's inventions and the mother of all others.
Yet, in truth, nobody invented it. Its emergence and evolution proceeded
in ways that are still almost a total mystery. It is as close to a miracle
as anything associated with human beings.

Both the Hebrews and the Greeks, in different ways, believed there was
something divine about "the word," or logos. The Greeks thought the word
was the abstract principle of reason exhibited by an orderly universe. The
Jews thought it the image of God, the beginning and origin of all things.
It is possible, then, that the giving of the word to humanity was the
second intervention of the metaphysical force or dominion in the process of
history. That, I think, is the conclusion I have come to in these
difficult matters. What will be the third, I wonder?

Paul Johnson, eminent British historian and author; Lee Kuan Yew, minister
mentor of Singapore; and Ernesto Zedillo, director, Yale Center for the
Study of Globalization, former president of Mexico; in addition to Forbes
Chairman Caspar W. Weinberger, rotate in writing this column. To see past
Current Events columns, visit our Web site at www.forbes.com/currentevents.

MIGRANT LABOR CAMP, A MODERN VERSION OF SLAVERY,
RAIDED BY FEDERAL AGENTS

ASSOCIATED PRESS [ June 5, 2005 ] : Federal agents raided a migrant farm
labor camp where homeless men and women were kept in what labor officials
called a version of modern-day slavery.

Four people, including the camp's owner, Ronald Evans, face federal charges
in a case that officials said is likely to grow. Investigators are looking
into alleged environmental violations and drugs found at the East Palatka,
Florida camp in Friday's raid.

"The word is out that we are concerned about human trafficking, and we will
leave no stone or camp unturned," said Steve Cole, a spokesman for
Jacksonville U.S. attorney Paul I. Perez.

Officials said homeless people were recruited to the Evans Labor Camp
through offers of room and board, along with alcohol, tobacco and drugs,
which they bought on credit. But they never made enough in the field to
pay it off, according to an investigative summary.

"A lot of times, they get them indebted even before they get back to the
camp," said federal agent Rebecca Hall.

In a small central shed, investigators found about 100 rocks of suspected
crack cocaine along with cigarettes and beer. Detective Lt. John Merchant
described the shed as a "shop" where the rocks were sold for $20 each.

Department of Labor agents were joined in the raid by local officials and
agents from the Environmental Protection Agency, which was investigating
illegal dumping of raw sewage into a tributary of the St. Johns River.

"They've found what clearly looks like EPA violations, discharging raw
sewage into the environment," said Putnam County Sheriff's Capt. Gary
Bowling.

Seventy-eight potato field workers were interviewed at the compound south
of Jacksonville. Some were arrested on unrelated, outstanding warrants.

Federal civil rights attorneys waited outside the camp to talk to the
workers, offering them help getting out of the camp and finding other work.
About 20 left with the attorneys.

...and culture-sensitive military prison and interrogation processes in the
history of warfare, but still the agenda-laden 'human rights' whinging
continues.

such dishonesty...

Meanwhile, at time of posting, no mainstream western media have reported
the Indonesian bombing in Tentena (attached) ( also
http://www.barnabasfund.org/ ), the biggest since Bali.

such hypocrisy...

______

GITMO GROVEL: ENOUGH ALREADY

by Charles Krauthammer
Washington Post
June 3, 2005

The self-flagellation over reports of abuse at Guantanamo Bay has turned
into a full-scale panic. There are calls for the United States, with all
this worldwide publicity, to simply shut the place down.

A terrible idea. One does not run and hide simply because allegations
have been made. If the charges are unverified, as they overwhelmingly
are in this case, then they need to be challenged. The United States
ought to say what it has and has not done, and not simply surrender to
rumor.

Moreover, shutting down Guantanamo will solve nothing. We will capture
more terrorists, and we will have to interrogate them, if not at
Guantanamo then somewhere else. There will then be reports from that
somewhere else that will precisely mirror the charges coming out of
Guantanamo. What will we do then? Keep shutting down one detention
center after another?

The self-flagellation has gone far enough. We know that al Qaeda
operatives are trained to charge torture when they are in detention, and
specifically to charge abuse of the Koran to inflame fellow prisoners on
the inside and potential sympathizers on the outside.

In March the Navy inspector general reported that, out of about 24,000
interrogations at Guantanamo, there were seven confirmed cases of abuse,
"all of which were relatively minor." In the eyes of history, compared
to any other camp in any other war, this is an astonishingly small
number. Two of the documented offenses involved "female interrogators
who, on their own initiative, touched and spoke to detainees in a
sexually suggestive manner." Not exactly the gulag.

The most inflammatory allegations have been not about people but about
mishandling the Koran. What do we know here? The Pentagon reports (Brig.
Gen. Jay Hood, May 26) -- all these breathless "scoops" come from the
U.S. government's own investigations of itself -- that of 13 allegations
of Koran abuse, five were substantiated, of which two were most likely
accidental.

Let's understand what mishandling means. Under the rules the Pentagon
later instituted at Guantanamo, proper handling of the Koran means using
two hands and wearing gloves when touching it. Which means that if any
guard held the Koran with one hand or had neglected to put on gloves,
this would be considered mishandling.

On the scale of human crimes, where, say, 10 is the killing of 2,973
innocent people in one day and 0 is jaywalking, this ranks as perhaps a
0.01.

Moreover, what were the Korans doing there in the first place? The very
possibility of mishandling Korans arose because we gave them to each
prisoner. What kind of crazy tolerance is this? Is there any other
country that would give a prisoner precisely the religious text that
that prisoner and those affiliated with him invoke to justify the
slaughter of innocents? If the prisoners had to have reading material, I
would have given them the book "Portraits 9/11/01" -- vignettes of the
lives of those massacred on Sept. 11.

Why this abjectness on our part? On the very day the braying mob in
Pakistan demonstrated over the false Koran report in Newsweek, a suicide
bomber blew up an Islamic shrine in Islamabad, destroying not just
innocent men, women and children, but undoubtedly many Korans as well.
Not a word of condemnation. No demonstrations.

Even greater hypocrisy is to be found here at home. Civil libertarians,
who have been dogged in making sure that FBI-collected Guantanamo
allegations are released to the world, seem exquisitely sensitive to
mistreatment of the Koran. A rather selective scrupulousness. When an
American puts a crucifix in a jar of urine and places it in a museum,
civil libertarians rise immediately to defend it as free speech. And
when someone makes a painting of the Virgin Mary, smears it with
elephant dung and adorns it with porn, not only is that free speech, it
is art -- deserving of taxpayer funding and an ACLU brief supporting the
Brooklyn Museum when the mayor freezes its taxpayer subsidy.

Does the Koran deserve special respect? Of course it does. As do the
Bibles destroyed by the religious police in Saudi Arabia and the Torahs
blown up in various synagogues from Tunisia to Turkey.

Should the United States apologize? If there were mishandlings of the
Koran, we should say so and express regret. And that should be in the
context of our remarkably humane and tolerant treatment of the
Guantanamo prisoners, and in the context of a global war on terrorism
(for example, the campaign in Afghanistan) conducted with a
discrimination and a concern for civilian safety rarely seen in the
annals of warfare.

Then we should get over it, stop whimpering and start defending
ourselves.

This item is available on the Benador Associates website, at
http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/15505

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

TENTENA DOUBLE BOMBING THE CONTEXT

BF Email News
INDONESIA
03 June 2005

A TOWN WHERE GOD IS AT WORK

The most powerful bomb attack in Indonesia since the Bali bombing of October 2002 took place last Saturday in the small town of Tentena, Sulawesi. As well as the suspected Islamic militant bomber, at least 19 people were killed, all of them Christians [a].

TENTENA BACKGROUND: SAVED FROM “A BLOODY CHRISTMAS” WHEN
CHRISTIANS PRAYED

Tentena has a mainly Christian population and thus has been seen as a place of refuge for Christians during the anti-Christian violence which wracked Central Sulawesi from 2000-2002.

But this also made Tentena a focus of attention for the Islamic militants. We share with readers a story of how God answered prayer to save the people of Tentena.

At the height of the anti-Christian violence in Sulawesi, the small town of Tentena, in Poso district, became swollen with tens of thousands of Christian refugees from other parts of Poso. In December 2001 Tentena, full of Christian refugees, was under threat from Islamic militants who warned the Christians that they faced a “bloody Christmas”. The Indonesian police did nothing to intervene.

Barnabas Fund mobilised international prayer. The Christians were saved by the unexpected death of the local police commander. His replacement was a more diligent individual who quickly deployed security forces around Tentena to guard its inhabitants and the refugees within it.

THE TENTENA BOMB VICTIMS NEED YOUR HELP

Can you help meet the urgent needs of the survivors of the Tentena double bombing on 28th May 2005? You can make a donation through your Barnabas Fund area office or via our website donation page [1]. Remember to specify Project 22-556.

Gifts received will be used for:

1. Medical costs of the injured, both in hospital and after they have returned home.
2. Helping rebuild or repair shops and market stalls. 3. Financial assistance for families whose bread-winner has been killed or is too badly injured to work.

PRAYER ITEMS

* Please continue to pray for the people of Tentena now, especially those injured or bereaved in last Saturday’s bombing.

* Pray for courage as they know themselves to be once more a focus of the Islamic militant violence.

* Pray for comfort and healing for the bereaved and injured.

* Pray that all will love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them.

RELATED NEWS ITEMS

Double Bombing of Christian Town in Indonesia; Barnabas Fund Launches Appeal to Help Victims
[a] - http://www.barnabasfund.org/News/Archive/Indonesia/Indonesia-20050602.htm

WILL AMERICA SURVIVE ???
RELEARNING LESSONS ABOUT
LAW, POLITICS AND ECONOMICS

DR. ROBERT TAYLOR, ORGANIZATION OF COMPETITIVE MARKETS FELLOW: We are
living in troubling social and economic times. Corporate capitaism and Ayn
Rand "caricature" capitalism are rapidly replacing Adam Smith's "market"
capitalism based on true competition between many.

Massive consolidation and integration of global business translates into an
imbalance of economic power. We cannot wish away the fact that economic
power translates into raw political power, even in so-called democracies.

Consolidation of the news business --- the power of the press --- further
entrenches power of a few. An imbalance of economic and political power
often results in undesirable consequences for "the people," a lesson that
has been learned the hard way several times in our history Thomas
Jefferson, observing corporate challenges to the infant American Democracy
stated,

"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied
corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by
strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country." 1812.

Frederic Bastiat, a French economist and Statesman, commenting on the
socialization of France, stated:

"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in
society, they create for themselves in the course of time, a legal system
that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." The Law, 1846

Bastiat's comments about socialism apply equally well to the current
corporate takeover of democracy.

President Abraham Lincoln, looking ahead during a difficult time in America
said,

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes
me to tremble for the safety of my country ... corporations have been
enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the
money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working
upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few
hands and the Republic is destroyed." 1864

Lincoln's economic prophecy was partially realized as a few corporations
came to dominate the American economy; fortunately "Trust Busting" and
enactment and enforcement of antitrust laws kept the Republic from being
destroyed during the early 1900s.

In 1921 --- the same year the Packers and Stockyard Act was implemented ---
Frank Knight, who is now widely regarded as the Father of the Chicago
School of Economics, made the common sense observation that the "well
being" of society depends on maintaining a balance of economic efficiency,
economic power and economic freedom.

The so-called Chicago School of Thought --- basically economic imperialism
--- emerged from some of Knight's students who obviously did not learn all
of the master's lessons.

Knight also stated that the single-minded pursuit of economic efficiency
would be at the expense of maintaining a balance of economic power and at a
loss in economic freedom. Few would doubt that domestic and global economic
policy has been dominated by the single-minded pursuit of economic
efficiency in the past few decades. Many of us feel that this mindset has
resulted in an imbalance of power and a loss in economic freedom, to the
long-run detriment of America.

Through political and advertising power gained from economic power, a few
corporate executives are becoming the social planners for the masses. Knight
also comments indirectly on how the corporate game affects "people,"

"There is also a certain ethical repugnance attached to having the
livelihood of the masses of the people made a pawn in such a sport, however
fascinating the sport may be to its leaders." The Ethics of Competition,
1923.

Stephen John Nash, interpreting Frank Knight said,

"On a more practical level, policies which are aimed at increasing
efficiency --- for example relaxation of antitrust law when a large
imbalance of economic power exists --- will allow those with economic power
to further augment their own power. This will drive the imbalance of
economic power further away from its optimal position, reducing economic
freedom as well." Nash, 1998

Anyone who doubts a loss in economic freedom from consolidation and
integration of agriculture should talk to a contract poultry producer ---
except that they are afraid to talk. As a practical matter, entry into
poultry production is by invitation only, which means that economic freedom
is restricted.

Contract poultry growers loss of economic freedom comes from an imbalance of
economic power --- the grower's only decision is to accept or reject new
contract terms offered by the integrator. Rejecting new contract terms
often means bankruptcy. So the grower often has little choice but to accept
whatever the integrator offers. Even the "chosen ones"--- captive cattle
feeders --- often have no say about terms of captive supply agreements.

Even the giant agribusiness firm ConAgra --- with $15 billion in annual
sales --- is now complaining about being on the short end of the stick,

"The company's retail customers, such as supermarkets and warehouse clubs,
have consolidated in recent years and consolidation is expected to continue.
These consolidations have produced large, sophisticated customers with
increased buying power who are more capable of resisting price increases and
operating with reduced inventories.

"These customers may also in the future use more of their shelf space,
currently used for company products, for their private label products. If
the larger size of these customers results in additional negotiating
strength or less shelf space for company products, the company's
profitability could decline." Source: ConAgra SEC 10-K dated October 5,
2004

ConAgra is acknowledging to the SEC a problem with buyer power and a form of
captive supply (shelf space). Hmmm! Isn't this precisely the problem
independent livestock producers have with packers?

A common sense premise of economics is that a balance of economic power
between buyers and sellers is required for markets to be to be "fair" when
judged by the true competitive market norm. The need for balancing power is
just as true in a market for contracts as it is true for cash markets. And
balancing power is a requirement up and down a vertical chain, as well as
horizontally.

Bill Moyers, press secretary to President Johnson and PBS commentator,
succinctly stated our present situation in America,

"We are moving toward an oligarchic society where a relatively small
handful of the rich decide, with their money, who will run, who will win,
and how they will govern. The defenders of the present system will fight
hard to hold on to their privilege, and they write the rules. Nothing short
of an aroused public can change things, nothing less than democracy is at
stake. 2004

In a recent book aptly titled Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists, Rajan
and Zingales concluded,

"The nexus between economic and political power is of special concern in
two situations. If a few incumbents (the rich and/or corporate executives)
have much of the economic power, they can rely on their own political clout
to achieve business ends and may feel little need to establish transparent
rules that make markets accessible to all.

More dangerous still than this benign neglect of the market is if the
incumbents are incompetent at business, for they may then actively attempt
to suppress the competitive market so as to preserve their own positions.
2004

Rajan and Zingales echo a warning that OCM members have repeatedly sounded,

" . . .the public should be made more aware of how much it benefits from
the market and what the costs of seemingly innocuous anticompetitive
policies are, so that the public is less willing to remain passively on the
sidelines."

Looking back on concerns expressed by Jefferson, Lincoln, Bastiat, Moyers
and others, it is, as Yogi Berra would say, "de-ja vu" all over again".
Society doesn't seem to know where it is going, or recognize very real
threats to the foundation of the American political and economic system.

Engaging the public is the challenge for OCM and others who have the common
sense and moral concerns to recognize that democracy is threatened. As Bill
Moyers said,

"Nothing short of an aroused public can change things, nothing less than
democracy is at stake."

Will Lincoln's Republic be destroyed or squandered? Will American survive
the challenge that few seem to recognize? It's time for the people ---
common people --- to retake control of their future. [ May, 2005
Newsletter ]

WHAT LINCOLN FORESAW:
CORPORATIONS BEING "ENTHRONED"
AFTER THE CIVIL WAR AND RE-WRITING
THE LAWS DEFINING THEIR EXISTENCE

RICK CRAWFORD
crawford@cs.ucdavis.edu

Here is a sobering quote by Abraham Lincoln:

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes
me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . corporations have been
enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the
money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working
upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few
hands and the Republic is destroyed."

--- U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, November 21, 1864 (letter to Col.
William F. Elkins) Ref: The Lincoln Encyclopedia, Archer H. Shaw
(Macmillan, 1950, NY)

Some people expressed doubts about its authenticity, given Lincoln's work
as an attorney for railroad corporations! It was an interesting job
tracking it down and verifying its authenticity.

The first ref I heard for this quote was Jack London's 1908 Iron Heel. And
although the quote indeed appears there (near pg. 100), Jack London offered
neither context nor source.

More recently, David Korten's book, When Corporations Rule the World (1995,
Kumarian Press), sources the quote to Harvey Wasserman (America Born and
Reborn, Macmillan, 1983, pg. 89-90, 313), who in turn sources it to Paha
Sapa Reports, the newspaper of the Black Hills Alliance, Rapid City, South
Dakota, March 4 1982. But given Wasserman's ties to Howard Zinn, and his
status as co-founder (?) of the Liberation News Service, citing that kind
of trail is like waving a red flag for the skeptics.

Fortunately, after some burrowing in the univ. library, I was able to
confirm its authenticity. Here it is, with more surrounding context:

"We may congratulate ourselves that this cruel war is nearing its end.
It has cost a vast amount of treasure and blood. . . .
It has indeed been a trying hour for the Republic; but
I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes
me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war,
corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places
will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong
its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth
is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.
I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety
of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war.
God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless."

The passage appears in a letter from Lincoln to (Col.) William F. Elkins,
Nov. 21, 1864.

For a reliable pedigree, cite pg. 40 of The Lincoln Encyclopedia, by Archer
H. Shaw (Macmillan, 1950, NY). That traces the quote's lineage to pg. 954
of Abraham Lincoln: A New Portrait, (Vol. 2) by Emanuel Hertz (Horace
Liveright Inc, 1931, NY).

Based on about three hours of research, it appears Lincoln has been
extensively SANITIZED FOR OUR PROTECTION. The Hidden Lincoln; from the
Letters and Papers of William H. Herndon, by Emanuel Hertz (Viking Press,
1938, NY), details how Herndon (Lincoln's lifelong law partner) collected
an extensive oral history and aggregated much of Lincoln's writings into a
collection that served as the basis for many "authoritative" books on
Lincoln.

By all accounts, Herndon was scrupulously honest and plainspoken. Hertz
quotes Herndon's characterization of the various "big-name" authors who
relied on his collection for primary source materials:

"They are aiming, first, to do a superb piece of literary work; second, to
make the story WITH THE CLASSES AS AGAINST THE MASSES. [my emphasis added]
It will result in delineating the real Lincoln about as well as does a wax
figure in the museum."

In several books, I found numerous places where Lincoln spoke about Capital
and Labor ("Workingmen"). Lincoln re-used his own material frequently, and
virtually identical passages appear in several places. Lincoln praises the
moral rightness of both Capital and Labor, but this is invariably in the
context of a nation where NO MORE THAN ONE MAN IN EIGHT is a Capitalist or
a Laborer, ie, where 7/8 of the population are "self-employed" on their own
farms and homesteads.

This social context of general self-sufficiency would explain how Lincoln
could serve for years as a railroad corporation lawyer with (apparently) no
qualms, yet pen the "corporations enthroned" passage to Elkins.

A final Lincoln tidbit, although it pertains to one very specific case:

"These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert to fleece the
people, and now that they have got into a quarrel with themselves, we are
called upon to appropriate the people's money to settle the quarrel."

Speech to Illinois legislature, January, 1837. See Vol. 1, pg. 24 of
Lincoln's Complete Works, ed. by Nicolay and Hay, 1905)

You'll recall the clever manoeuvre of the Clark/Wilson regime,
after a disgraceful string of tamperings with our nation's constitution,
giving the man of many parties a Parltry Cttee to "stocktake" on NZ's
constitution. This has largely worked as a means of keeping their
treachery out of the media while they hatch the next batch.

I remind you also that Clark, and Dunne, and Cartwright, are known
republicans.

http://www.constitutional.parliament.govt.nz/ at last - after weeks of
struggle with the cttee staff - features under 'general' my statement to
Dunne's cttee which of course the Monarchist League is properly ignoring.

The struggle was of some interest, involving attempted censorship
over many weeks. I was not allowed to call racist e.g A Sykes Ll.B. My
response to this specified obstruction was to substitute 'Maadi' at every
use of the term 'racist'. This was in turn censored; the word 'Maori'
replaced it without my knowledge let alone consent. Since that latter word
had already been taken, within my text, for legitimate uses, Dunne
shouldn't let his PC staff tamper with my use of the code-term which is
routinely openly used by the Jackson Five, the Harawira gang, Te Kenehi
Mair, Annette Sykes, etc etc. The censorship consists in framing me up as
if I would call the specified personages Maori; I should not be forced to
appear so without my consent. They call themselves Maadi; their racist
supporters, including some MPs, call them Maadi; why shouldn't I allow them
to define their identity ?

Yer karn't -- as Bluey & Curley used to remark sagely from time
to time - ween ;-}

R