"Britain" was revived to heal a fractured nation. An idea whose time has come?
By Charles Moore
27/08/2005
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2005/08/27/do2701.xml

Since four British citizens killed themselves and 52 others, mainly fellow citizens, on July 7, we have all been discussing Britishness. That must be a wholly good, if sadly belated thing. But I wish I knew what is meant by "British values".

It's a free-for-all, this "values" talk. One says "a sense of humour" is a great British value. Another says the same of our unsmiling reserve. A third points out that a sense of humour is scarcely unique to these islands. Each is right, but none gets us very far.

"Values" are symptoms more than causes. Freedom, tolerance, moderation are all good values in our culture (though not in our culture alone), but to identify them does not in itself explain them, protect them or advance them. It is as if, by pointing out all the signs of good health in the human body - lithe limbs, bright eyes - we thought we could guarantee its continuation.

Behind the "values" of a country lies its history. This is affected and dramatised by individuals, which is why it is good, 200 years on from Trafalgar, to be learning about Nelson once more. But even more important than single men and women are institutions. The history of the interaction of people and institutions tells us what Britishness has been, and therefore the basis for what it can become. That history is no longer taught or celebrated. Strange that a government that is always talking about the need for "a narrative" to explain its own policies fights shy of the narrative of the nation it governs. It is time to look at the history again.

Take sport. Isn't it rather interesting and important that most of the greatest sports in the world - soccer, rugby, golf, cricket, tennis, racing - began, or first took organised shape, in this country? This wasn't because the British were mysteriously physically better at playing games than other people. It was because their culture combined the freedom to play what you wanted with the civic sense that you would do this best if you agreed your rules and enforced them through your own clubs, rather than through state control.

Take the professions. The reason that our troops generally behave well in wars and usually win them is not because the British are ethnically, genetically braver than other people. It is because they have long developed a regimental system on land and a ship-based one at sea that cements loyalty and passes on experience across the generations. Something comparable happens at teaching hospitals, or with pupillage at the Bar.

Take the joint stock company, the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England, Oxford and Cambridge, the ancient universities in Scotland. Take Scouts and Guides, the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme, mutual societies, charities, private clubs, trade unions, and residents' associations. Take the Church of England, the Church of Scotland, the Methodist Church, the Royal Society, the Royal Academy, the National Trust, the Hospice Movement, Battersea Dogs' Home and - for all I know - the Royal and Ancient Order of Buffaloes. There is almost no end to the list of British institutions, some of them so successful that they have gone global.

Or take the extra day we shall be enjoying (or, given traffic, enduring) this weekend. It was invented by a banker, Sir John Lubbock, in 1871. In his job, he observed that the health of bank clerks suffered from working too hard: they needed more time off than that provided by the existing religious holidays. He realised that no bank would close for a day unless all did, so he persuaded Parliament (he was also an MP) to legislate for it. "Rest is not idleness," he said, "and to lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer's day is by no means a waste of time."

Lubbock certainly did not waste time. In fact, he is a case study of Britishness in its energetic Victorian version. He was slightly absurd in what his biographer called his "relentless optimism", even experimenting for three months to see if he could teach his poodle to read. But it says something for a culture that optimism can thrive. Tutored by Charles Darwin as a young man, Lubbock produced serious studies of ants, was the first to make the distinction between the palaeolithic and neolithic stages of human development, revolutionised the system of clearing cheques in banks, and published a very successful selection - the One Hundr ed Books that he thought necessary to read to be civilised: it included the Koran ("portions of"). When he was made a peer, he took the title of Avebury out of affection for the Druidic stone circle there which he had saved from destruction. In everything he did, he believed in a link between personal achievement and the wider public culture, confident that each helped the other.
Now that confidence is gone, weakened by Marxism, post-colonial guilt, two world wars, the European Union and much more. It is interesting to see our Government, which for years promoted the destruction of Britishness more assiduously than any of its predecessors, now fumbling its way back to it. How distant the Millennium Dome and the British Airways ethnic tailfins now seem. Here are a few ideas to help it on its journey.

1) Teach the English language. Language is, in a way, our best-shared, most flexible institution, containing what is common while enabling what is individual. Not to be able to speak English well is to be cut off from almost everything else that composes Britishness. David Cameron, who wants to be the next Conservative leader, made a good speech this week about Islamist terrorism, in which he pointed out that many of our citizens cannot speak it at all. He quoted a Home Office figure that only 26 per cent of Pakistanis and Bangladeshis here are fluent in English (the equivalent in America is 68 per cent). If that is true, it is terrifying.
2) Restore Parliament. The word itself derives from the French for speaking: Parliament is supposed to be the place where the language concentrates in public form for public purposes. But now the action happens elsewhere and so the speeches are not worth hearing. Ours is the first generation since the 17th century to hold Parliament in contempt. If that continues, political stability and national unity cannot last.
3) Look again at the word "Britain". Unlike England, Scotland or Wales, "Britain" is essentially a political word, originally revived more than 300 years ago to bind up a populated, multi-cultural space that was busy uniting first our crowns and, later, our parliaments. The figure of Britannia appeared on coins of some of the Roman emperors and then vanished for 1,200 years or so, until Charles II got a lady friend of his to model in the role for a copper coin of 1665. The idea was to dramatise a national political identity that needed forging after civil war. This month, Gordon Brown announced that he was removing Britannia from the back of the 50p piece and holding a competition for a design to "reflect Britain today".

Wouldn't he do better to learn from the history of the last time Britishness was an issue of life and death on our mainland - and leave her there?

Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World

by Nicholas Ostler

This learned and entertaining book starts around 3,300 BC and works forwards. Given that it's a short history of the last 5,000 years, it is remarkably comprehensive as well as thought-provoking. For most people, learning a first language is so 'easy' you don't remember doing it and picking up others later on is a tedious chore.

It therefore seems reasonable that any time one group of people conquers another, the victors should impose their language, but historically, things haven't always worked like that. Nicholas Ostler's aim is to look at why some languages survive and spread, while others, for example the Aboriginal languages of Australia, fail.

He identifies three major paths to success: breed your way to majority status (like Chinese), spread by conquest (like Arabic) or give rise to a popular religion (like Sanskrit). But there is also another aspect contributing to the long-term survival of a language, which is to become classical.

We normally think of classics as 'Latin and Greek', but there have been a good few others. Sumerian outlived its political heyday by a millennium and half; I was pleased to discover that one of its leading writers was the world's first major poetess, Enheduanna, daughter of Sargon of Akka, in the 24th century BC.
There's an old linguist's joke that a language is a dialect with an army, but the material in this book suggests that the real key to survival is for a language to be a dialect with a civil service. A class of bureaucrats with the power to defend its monopoly can keep a language going for centuries, as can a set of scriptures, while conquerors come and go.

Once a particular language is universally used for an empire's laws, tax records and so forth, it takes a lot more than mere conquest to force a change. Whether incomers imposed their language or adopted that of their subjects usually relates to whether they wanted business - and taxpaying - to go on as before or whether they arrived equipped with pen-pushers of their own.

Consequently, German's inability to establish itself as a world language is less of a mystery than Ostler tries to make it. 'German conquerors' did not storm into the Roman world as monoglot speakers of Germanic dialects. Most were from tribes which had served Rome for generations and they arrived, in the main, with some official sanction and equipped with the functional Latin which they had learned as mercenaries. Because they wished the economy to go on working, they adopted the language common to both sides: Latin.

By contrast, in England, where the Roman state had stopped functioning, the Angles and Saxons displaced both Latin and British Celtic with remarkable thoroughness.

Ostler also enters on the vexed question of whether any special qualities in a particular language contribute to its success, beyond the good fortune of being attached to an convenient writing technology (it was the development of the first workable script of record, cuneiform, which ensured that after 2,000 years, Akkadian scribes were still using bits of Sumerian as shorthand, just as, equivalently, we use i.e. and e.g.).

Ostler is clearly carrying a torch for Sanskrit, perhaps the most self-conscious language which the world has ever produced. The argument he makes for its intrinsic lovableness is that 'because of its elaborated descriptions and analyses of itself, it could always demonstrate what was best and why it was best. It thereby made itself irresistibly attractive to upwardly mobile institutions. Being concretely defined in the grammar books, Sanskrit was eminently learnable'.

This is superficially attractive, but it is equally true of classical old Irish, a tongue which has been singularly unable to attract external devotees, though the Irish also had a sophisticated grammatical tradition and similarly lauded their language's comprehensiveness, beauty, and primacy over all others.
The worldwide success of English in the twentieth century is normally linked with American cultural and economic imperialism. Ostler, however, makes a provocative case that it actually builds on 19th-century British colonialism and is also strongly related to Britain's role in Europe, though the reasons why English has become the major working language of the EU may in itself have to do with the existence, offstage, of America. But it is worth observing that economic power in itself does not inevitably make a language attractive, if politics are against it. Despite the commercial success of post-war Japan, the 'Asian co-prosperity sphere' it tried to create has stoutly resisted Japanese.

If one asks whether Ostler successfully makes his case for a set of objective criteria why some languages have achieved global status, the answer has to be not quite. A language can experience favouring or unfavouring circumstances, but its actual fate involves a large measure of contingency.

As with the extinction of species, explanations can only be retrospective. There was nothing obviously wrong with blaauwbok or with Phoenician except that they died out, whereas their respective cousins, sable antelopes and Hebrew, survive and thrive.

Ostler is looking for universal theories of why languages succeed, but what the stories boil down to is: this is what happened. However, that doesn't prevent Ostler from using the final chapters to look at the future, on which his thoughts are iconoclastic. Again and again, as Ostler shows, writing technologies have survived the language which gave them birth and there is no reason to assume that the modern world will be any different in this respect.

English-language postings on the web have dropped below 50 per cent of total traffic and Spanish is now the majority language of the US. Habla usted español? If not, it might be wise to learn.

IN LANDMARK DECISION AGAINST BUSH ADMINISTRATION, FEDERAL COURT
RECOGNIZES HARM CAUSED BY GLOBAL WARMING

Lawsuit by Environmental Groups and Cities Goes Forward

SAN FRANCISCO -- A federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the
Northern District of California ruled yesterday against the Bush
Administration and allowed a groundbreaking global warming lawsuit to
proceed. The landmark decision is the first time that a federal court
has specifically granted legal standing for a lawsuit exclusively
alleging injury from global warming and challenging the federal
government's failure to evaluate the impacts of its actions on the
Earth's climate and U.S. citizens.

The judge's decision can be read at http://www.climatelawsuit.org.

The case, filed in August 2002 by Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, and
four cities, charges that the Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im) and the
Oversees Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) have provided financial
assistance to oil and other fossil fuel projects without first evaluating
the projects' global warming impacts to the United States. The cities of
Oakland, Arcata and Santa Monica, Calif. and Boulder, Colo. are parties
to the suit.

The judge concluded that the plaintiffs' "evidence is sufficient to
demonstrate it is reasonably probable that emissions from projects
supported by OPIC and Ex-Im . . . will threaten Plaintiffs' concrete
interests."

The judge also highlighted evidence demonstrating that:

"projects supported by OPIC and Ex-Im are directly or indirectly
responsible for approximately 1,911 million tonnes of carbon dioxide and
methane emissions annually, which equals nearly eight percent of the
world's emissions and is equivalent to one third of the total carbon
emissions from the United States in 2003."

"This ruling is a wake up call for the federal government to tackle
the growing environmental and human impacts of global warming," said
Norman L. Dean, Executive Director of Friends of the Earth.
"This case once again highlights the fact that global warming
pollution doesn't recognize political borders," said Kert Davies,
Research Director of Greenpeace. "The judge acknowledged that these
taxpayer-funded projects in other countries have impact back home in the
United States."

"Tragically, the federal government is violating federal law, which
requires an assessment of cumulative impacts. This injures the citizens
of Oakland, and every person in this country. We'll fight as long as it
takes to get federal law properly enforced," said Jerry Brown, Mayor of
the City of Oakland.

The excellent series SecretsOfWar.com on History Channel
features named rtd CIA & army intelligence officers saying to camera
that there may have been no more than some sonar operator
misinterpreting his instruments. The script, read richly by Charlton
Heston, states that every USS Maddox & C. Turner Joy crew member said
at debriefing that he had not heard any N.V.N fire.

Before then, unmarked US ships had been kidnapping,
sabotaging etc on N.V.N shores.

R

I am fwding to Ms Audrey Jarvis' "interchurch commission" the link below to the British 'GM Watch' site, in response to her accusation in her newsletter that my appraisal of xenotransplantation, and (she implies) of gene-tampering, is "wholly scientific" and lacks cultural & religious dimensions - a calculated insult which she will have known to be false.

Ms Jarvis has from early on protected her little sandpit from impingement from my perspective (3 decades of experience in appraisal of dangerous technologies).

Her front-wimp (Richard Davis, still?) will doubtless continue to print anything actually written by me in their Broadsheet .

The largest NZ church is not represented in Ms Jarvis' sandpit, but she has been able to use it to get a big picture of herself in a newspaper, and I expect her to run for political office of some sort. Meanwhile she is wasting time & money - and being insolent.

-----

+ GM BASED ON DUD SCIENCE
A wide range of scientists should speak out for much stricter control of gene-tampering because it is based on dud science, says scientist and Christian Dr Robert Mann.

More: http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5637
--

Robt Mann
consultant ecologist
P O Box 28878 Remuera, Auckland 1005, New Zealand
(9) 524 2949
http://www.kuratrading.com/HTMLArticles/writings.htm

Theory behind gene-tampering

L R B Mann
Dec 2003 rev. Aug 2005

Not only practising gene-manipulators but also a much wider range of scientists should speak out for much stricter control of gene-tampering because it is based on dud science.

Prof Richard Strohman has pointed out, in a sporadic small series of articles in Nature Biotechnology, many defects in the Lego model of biology which 'informs' the gene-tampering trade. Dogma long refuted is crucial among the axioms of the gene-jiggerers, e.g
• "one gene one protein",
• "only 4 letters in the DNA code",
• "randomness becomes utmost precision as we slam in synthetic nucleic acids by weapons-grade biolistics",
• "seen one redwood y' seen 'em all - especially once we've patented & cloned lo-lignin™ sequoia";
• etc etc.

The main characteristic of this set of slogans is that they are scientific drivel. The Schubert Letter (Nat Biotech Oct 2002 p. 969) would alone serve to refute them.

The main general scientific answer is that nature is far from random. The idea that slapping in - randomly ! - a few genes by radically unnatural processes will have more predictable effects than offering a whole genome of 104- 105 genes in cross-pollination is wrong for the main reason that it assumes natural crosses to be random or nearly so. A top-level affirmation of this assumption was stated by main Monsanto-connected gene-jockeys Roger Beachy et bulk in their (Nat Biotech Nov 2002) 'enraged' response to the Schubert Letter:-

' The reality is that "unintentional consequences" are much more likely to occur in nature than in biotechnology because nature relies on the unintentional consequences of blind random genetic mutation and rearrangement to produce adaptive phenotypic results, whereas GM technology employs precise, specific, and rationally designed genetic modification toward a specific engineering goal. '

The immediate response to this furphy is that there's almost nothing random in nature. We know, admittedly, v little about the natural barriers to error in traditional breeding; that does not prove they're unreal or random. A gene-jockey of plants, Prof Patrick Brown, has made this & related points at www.psrast.org.

What is so precise, specific, or rational about GM as done so far? The answer is, very little indeed. Its outcomes are inherently unpredictable. The tiny minority of target cells that both survive and have incorporated somewhere in the genome the desired gene cassette will, in general, also develop other unforeseeable properties, e.g deviant metabolism generating toxins or allergens.

Indeed, the assertion of Beachy et al. is refuted by the known figures on frequency of unexpected mutations in GM-cells compared with mutation rates from breeding.

The fundamental general answer however is that nature is extremely orderly. It is complex, but not like a bowl of alphabet soup; nature - especially life - is systematic. This should be agreed by all scientists, even atheists; of course, us theists ascribe the systematic order to design, but those who resist belief in design will, I hope, agree nature to be systematically orderly. If you think, like Dawkins, that nature is just the result of the outworkings of physics & chemistry, then you could fairly easily assume that even random insertion of 'cassettes' would be no more likely than traditional breeding to cause harm. If on the other hand you believe (to take a specific case) that an apple is not just a random collection of biochemicals but a creation of a benign Creator, and that Grandmother Smith in a Seedknee suburb was a humble agent of that Creator (selecting a new mutant that had arrived according to His rules), then you will contrast such natural processes with the overwhelming of natural barriers to slam in viral promoters joined onto synthetic approximate copies of bacterial genes by biolistics, or modified T-plasmids - violent processes expected to disrupt the target genome. Breeding entails natural protections from error which are overwhelmed by gene-tampering.

I tend to think it is on this level that the issue really turns. For those who think so, re-reading of Genesis 3 may be salutory.

In a culture that has largely turned away from the religion that gave rise to its legal principles, the ethics of gene-tampering is in drastic need of fundamental review. Gene-jiggering has already sucked in $1011, and still only a few corporations have produced anything saleable (except those selling the enzyme kits etc for the gene-tampering expts). The science behind this commercial frenzy is junk; the Lego model of biology never looked promising and is now known to be wrong. Proper biology points to the Schubert Letter, and in response a gaggle of Monsanto stooges intones 'enragedly' the moronic atheistic rubbish quoted above.

Never in the history of science has a family of "technologies" been developed, and deployed in many organisms, based on such junk science as stated by Beachy et al.

But the ethical appraisal of GM is even more backward. The most dangerous technology of all history blunders on, little understood by venture-drongos and by ethicists. The good scientists like Pat Brown and David Schubert are crucially valuable. The Union of Concerned Scientists should emulate its anti-nuclear activism of the golden Kendall era. Go to it, Yanks!

Much more importantly, If the human has no duties to a higher power, how can selfishness & greed be curbed? The religion that gave rise to the code of ethics claimed to be implemented, if imperfectly, in British & USA legal systems had better get involved in renewal of ethics. It is a major embarrassment to Christians that a bishop (of my denomination) contributed scarcely at all to the Royal Commission on GM, flagging away opportunities to discuss ethics in public hearings. A minor powerHarpie has set up tiny sandpits with pompous titles 'Interchurch Commission' etc but has produced nothing significant. As an Anglican I have said for years that the churches are the sleepers in the movement for control of GM. I hope & pray they will take GM much more seriously.

>you, along with 10 of
>millions of others, may believe what ever you want, but it will not change
>one single item of that which is true.

an excellent principle which I'm happy to enforce as fully as I can.


>I say there is no god. That is where is begins and where it ends. You say
there is... and nearly 6 billion others say there is but not one will agree
what is the mind of god.. When is the last time you have heard of an atheist
taking the life of another

This line of abuse is one of the more bold rackets tried on
by polemical atheists. The record-holders for mass murder are
militant atheists - Stalin, Mao (40M), etc. And the ways of life,
for those they didn't kill, imposed by these vicious paranoids were
incomparably more terror-laden than anything done by even the worst
excesses of Christendom (which came to an end many centuries ago).
Can you not admire the ethics behind the attached Kipling? What
atheist regime ever achieved decency on such a scale?


>, molesting a child

Rapes by the Red Army as it moved westward to Berlin have
recently been assessed in Paul Beavor's book at around a million.
You think they drew the line at age 16, or 15, or ... ?

Are you not aware of the Mongols' record-winning mass
slaughters? You think they left children out of their 10^5-at-a-time
massacres?

>, stealing from funds set aside
>for the poor... but on the other, how many 'religious' people have?

Interesting that you keep behind rhetorical q's, rather than
asserting any facts. Is this a sign of awareness how far your
insinuations are from the truth?

>
>You can make all claims you wish, as did the majority of Australians did
>concerning Linda Chamberlain, and it will not change the process of life..
>Take a look at ALL the nations where Islam is the main religion and you will
>find a single common factor. In the realm of science, they have contributed
>all most nothing..

There was an interesting brief period when they did - see attached.

>They are technological parasites, feeding off the
>knowledge of others while contributing little in return. Look at them and
>you are seeing a possible future of the US...

I am not primarily concerned to advocate monotheism, tho' I
do think it has a better record on the whole than atheism or other
religions. My primary aim is to point out that one monotheism has
done much better than Judaism let alone Islam.

But then in turn I say that has been a mere 'effortless
byproduct' in this world of preparing for the next.

As I said, our differences would appear to be minimally
susceptible to email. Perhaps we can meet if you ever visit Ak.

cheers

R

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Robt Mann [mailto:robtm@xtra.co.nz]
>Sent: Friday, 26 August 2005 8:32 a.m.
>To: William Ball
>Subject: Re: Intelligent Design?
>
>Dear Wm Ball,
>Your perspective is so different
>from mine that we probably can't get far by email.
>But, just in case, I send some notes that may be of interest.

>I've already pointed out that, whatever
>IDT may be, it certainly isn't an oxymoron.
>
>
>>Scientific method is not a belief, it is the rules set forth to test
>beliefs
>>and Intelligent Design is an oxymoron, with accent is on moron.
>>
>>From time to time I emerge from my cloistered world up here on my hill
>where
>>I commune with bright, kind, intelligent and talented people only to find
>>there still reign a host of muddled minded citizens masquerading as
>>knowledgeable on the subject of evolution, pontificating the merits of
>>Intelligent Design or some similar moronic babble.
>
>
>
>MannGramR: On the roles of mutation v. selection
>March 2004
>
>Neo-Darwinian theory resulted from
>merging 4 lines of theory: mutation,
>selecting-out of the less fit, genetics, and
>population dynamics. It is touted by aggressive
>atheists e.g R Dawkins, S Weinberg, L Wolpert,
>claiming it is a thorough explanation of how
>species evolved.

>NeoDarwinism is at last going thru some
>sceptical examination - and is faring badly as
>in my opinion it deserves to because it can't
>explain much.

>Too few realise that natural selection is
>envisaged only as decreases in the reproduction,
>and therefore after "1 generation the abundance,
>of mutants that are somehow less fit for their
>environment at the successive times when they
>live. No creativity is hinted at in this
>'natural rogueing' role. Natural selection is
>actually claimed only to *narrow* the variance.
>In the strict version, explicitly atheistic,
>natural selection is blind, operating only to
>disfavour those who breed less on the 'strength
>of properties expressed at the time. The
>environment which does the selecting is assumed
>to be utterly unintelligent.

>All the creativity in evolution is thus,
>in this theory, assigned to mutation. This
>process is normally stated to be random - not
>at all to any plan but merely changing nucleic
>acids (DNA or RNA) randomly (through damage by
>radiation or chemical mutagens, etc).

>If you can believe that randomness can
>lead - with remarkable foresight - to
>coordinated ecosystems, or even so much as a
>single cell, I suggest you read N Broom 'How
>Blind is The Watchmaker?' (IVP 2001).
>

>A reason why I summarise this controversy
>is that many have assumed neoDarwinism is well
>founded and a sufficient basis for predicting
>how, say, bees or their pathogens will evolve in
>this or that changed environment.

>Gene-tampering is probably the most
>hazardous 'technology', threatening a wide
>variety of novel epidemics & pathogens. Agencies
>(e.g the NZ govts's quasi-judicial ERMA) claiming
>to assess these hazards in GMOs are bluffing.
>More & more scientists are coming to the view
>that this is a major example of the emperor's new
>clothes.

>In addition to pointing out how
>neoDarwinism is inadequate, we must point out the
>next step forward in this line of theorising -
>morphogenic fields.
>
>R

RECASTING ESTABLISHMENT HISTORY
“THE ROOTS OF SCIENCE”

Harold Turner

Presented abbreviated as a lecture to the symposium 'Science and Christianity',
Auckland 01-4-21.
pub. in 'Science & Christianity' ed. L. R. B. Mann
University of Auckland Centre for Continuing Education 2001
267p pbk, with 14 illustrations
pp.149-176

The 20th century saw the previous century’s fascination with the idea of progress replaced by a focus on the term ‘culture’ as a basic reference point. All human beings and all societies live within one or more cultures; nothing human escapes the cultural. One way of exploring the concept further is to see a culture as made up of the ways in which we habitually relate to the whole human context – the physical context of the natural world, the social context of our fellow humans, and the transcendent context of the spiritual realm .

It is the internal relations of two of these, the first and the last, that I deal with in this paper. We relate to the natural world through technology and our knowledge of science, and to the transcendent realm through our religions. On this occasion our theme is “Science and (one particular religion) Christianity”. We are therefore dealing with two of the basic features of the Western culture to which we primarily belong: with the central place it gives to science, and with its major religious inheritance from Western European Christendom. These features cannot be examined only in their contemporary forms but first of all historically, for “a culture without a history is like someone without a memory”. The history of science, although less than a century old as a discipline, has become essential to our self-understanding; it can help us to see why and how science became such a dominant feature of our culture. The history of Christianity is vastly older but can still produce new dimensions, as we shall see when we come to the long-lost John Philoponus below.

What am I doing here?

In my “Investigative Journey Through the World’s Religions” I found the “Roots of Science” in the same historical milieu as the roots of Christendom, within the emerging culture of the Hebrew people over the two millennia BCE. Science and Christianity, as two of the basic cultural dimensions of Western culture, had their roots historically intertwined. This was in stark contradiction of the received version of the history of science taught in our educational systems. Science, we are told, came from the Greeks, with small inputs from the Arabs and the Indians, and perhaps the Chinese. While still recognizing the specific contributions of each of these peoples I have ventured to say that science developed in spite of their cultures, and only because of the peculiar features of the culture of a small and insignificant people, the Hebrews.

I am by no means the first to make this radical recasting of the history of science, and I am dependent on substantial historical scholars largely bypassed by the establishment – people such as M. B. Foster in the 1930s when the subject was taking shape as a discipline, C. N. Cochrane in 1940 on the basic intellectual bankruptcy of Graeco-Roman culture, and since then Sam Sambursky, Stanley Jaki, C. B. Kaiser, H. P. Nebelsick, Richard Sorabji and T. F. Torrance among others. Most of these scholars are grouped together by the history of science establishment and dismissed as “revisionists”. You will seldom find their names in the indexes or bibliographies of the histories of science, and that in itself starts to tell the story I am exploring.

Now these are all professionals in science, history or philosophy, so how is it that I, neither scientist nor historian, come to be writing about the “historical roots” of science, and making the claim that one of the figures I identify in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, John Philoponus of the 6th century, should be seen as the greatest theoretical natural philosopher before Isaac Newton? How brash can these New Zealanders be?

Laying foundations in Hebrew culture

So I ask myself, how have I come so late in life to be so emphatic on such an unexpected subject for which I had no obvious preparation? The question then becomes autobiographical, and I do not find the answer in my first year of basic sciences as an engineering student, nor in the two years as a demonstrator in the first experimental psychology laboratory in New Zealand, at the university in Christchurch. I now see that the answer to my question lies in another area altogether. The answer begins later, in 1936; there was an entrance scholarship to the theological college of the Presbyterian Church in Dunedin based on an examination in elementary Hebrew to be acquired before theological training – a rather unexpected idea for New Zealand. I needed the money and I mugged up enough Hebrew to win it; I don’t know if there were any other candidates. Then for three years Hebrew was a normal requirement, and later I acquired a B.D. degree where it was also essential.

None of this comes anywhere near making me a Hebrew scholar, but it came in handy when in 1955 I had gone to Britain and was applying for any teaching work that came up. I even had enough nerve, or desperation, to apply for a lectureship in Old Testament in something called the University College of Sierra Leone, wherever that was. The position was offered to a real Old Testament scholar, but he withdrew. It seems I was the only other person with “Hebrew” in his c.v. and who was prepared to go to a country in West Africa formerly known as “the white man’s grave”.

By this queer route I found myself teaching Old Testament in what was recognized as an overseas college of the University of Durham – teaching for the Durham B.A.(Theology) for the laity, where Hebrew was not required, although of course it remained important for the teacher. So for the next seven years I was immersed in the Old Testament. This was an enjoyable and stimulating experience, especially in the multi-cultural situation of the tribal religions and cultures of West Africa. Of course I had no idea that I was getting the feel of that Hebrew culture where I was over 30 years later to find the roots of science.

Religious studies and discovery of the synagogue

During these years I stumbled across the works of the then doyen of religious studies, Mircea Eliade of Chicago, and I discovered this new tool for the study of religions and the world-views at the base of all cultures. Then in 1963 I went to teach religious studies in the new University of Nigeria amid yet another set of cultures. All around was virgin territory for religious research. Besides the tribal shrines and Muslim mosques of Nigeria there were hosts of churches derived from Christian missions and the many varieties of independent African-founded denominations that had in Sierra Leone become a major research subject for me. So one of my projects concerned places of worship, in Nigeria and across all religions.

Fifteen years later this work led to my From Temple to Meeting House . Historical and comparative study revealed that the Hebrew synagogue represented a radical revolution in places of worship, over against the classic sacred places of shrine and temple. The following table sets forth the many layers of contrasts I had found between the temple form of worship and the new form constituted by the synagogue .

TEMPLE FEATURES SYNAGOGUE FEATURES

Special consecrated place or building Any secular and non-consecrated building
Gradation of sanctity towards a sanctuary No gradation of sanctity within building
Sanctuaries as special holy places with altars No sanctuaries or altars
Priestly control, conduct and leadership Lay (rabbis) control, conduct and leadership

Worship occasional, for personal needs, and on major communal occasions Worship regular for all, on daily, weekly, etc. basis, plus special communal occasions
Celebrate mythological and natural events Celebrate formative historical events
Observational worship: main ritual acts delegated to specialists – priests Participatory, corporate worship by the whole congregation
Sacrificial offerings and complex rituals Non-sacrificial, with simple rituals
Special education confined to priests Education and edification for all.
Community centres for ritual purposes only Centres for multiple and secular purposes

This led to a two-part typology of worship places for religious studies, the temple type on the one hand, and the meeting house type on the other – hence the title of the book. The latter form first appeared in history in the Jewish synagogue, and then became the ancestor and norm of the churches and mosques in the related Semitic religions, Christianity and Islam. In comparison with the quite different temples of antiquity the synagogue had nothing going for it, either architecturally or aesthetically, and all it needed was ten men in a room in a private house. It was not a sacred place, not consecrated, had no sacrifices or rituals; it had teaching rabbis instead of ordained priests, and in principle it was no different from a Quaker meeting house. When the synagogue was developing, the Jews had no inkling of what they were initiating, but in terms of the history and phenomenology of religions this was a revolution transcending all others in religious history.

I was then entirely innocent of seeing any significance in this for the history of science, just as the reader will be wondering where all this is getting us on the same subject. But it was apparent that the synagogue was the most explicit and visible expression of this so distinctive Hebrew culture with its radically de-sacralized view of nature – a totally new worldview in human history. That is why in this discussion it occupies the central place as representative of the first formulations of the view of the created world in the Judaeo-Christian tradition. In the synagogue, matter, space, time and human beings had all been de-sacralized.

Encountering Philoponus

These are some of the main features of my intellectual autobiography up to 1979, but there was still no sign of insights into “the roots of science”. Then in the Scottish Journal of Theology Professor T. F. Torrance of Edinburgh reported a conference in London in 1983 of 75 scholars devoted to the study of a 6th-c. Christian layman of whom I had never heard. This was John Philoponus, a philosopher in the great Academy in Alexandria. I already knew Torrance as a leader in the relations between theology and science, in which I was interested in a general sort of way. Now Torrance was presenting Philoponus’ natural philosophy as a key development in the history of science. This was worth following up, which I have been doing with growing fascination ever since.

Now how did Philoponus shape my thinking and link up with Hebrew culture and its synagogue on the one hand, and with the book I have written on the other? We must start from Aristotle of Athens, the most comprehensive and influential thinker in antiquity in almost all realms. He dominated European thought until well into its second millennium and continues to provide courses of study in our universities . Likewise he dominates the history of science when its origins are traced to the Greeks. Here we are concerned only with Aristotle’s natural philosophy, especially with his physics, the basic science.

John Philoponus (ca. 490 - ca. 566; the name means workaholic) has been called the most learned man of his time, and the Academy at Alexandria was for long established as the greatest centre of learning in the Graeco-Roman world. He was an expert on Aristotle, for whom he had the greatest respect; he had adopted much of his system and wrote commentaries on nine of his works. In these he was led to make a number of radical rejections of Aristotle’s natural philosophy, all of which proved essential for the later development of what we know as science .

De-sacralizing the heavens

One of the most radical changes was to reject the distinction between the earth as an imperfect sub-lunary body and all the other supra-lunary bodies, outside the orbit of the moon; these were perfect, animated and divine beings, a view which is the basis of astrology. For Philoponus all bodies, earthly and heavenly, were made of the same stuff. The light of the stars was the same as the light of a glow-worm – a sheer heresy in the Greek world.

Nor was the universe eternal, or moving in eternal cycles of time; it had a beginning and now had a history, for it was made out of nothing by the Creator God of the Scriptures, not by mere fabrication out of pre-existing material. These radical changes involved a totally new view of the fundamentals of the physical universe. Matter, and with it space, had been de-sacralized, as well also as time. Nor did space contain any inherently sacred places beyond human scrutiny and control. The whole universe outside the earth had been de-divinized and brought into the same categories as this imperfect earth. Matter, space and time were all of a piece anywhere in the universe and were open to human investigation.

This was a revolutionary worldview, asserting the unity and uniformity of the whole universe. Philoponus was rejecting what C. N. Cochrane called “the most vicious of heresies, the heresy of two worlds” . The basic distinction now was between the Creator and the creation, between the sacred located in the divine, and the secular universe where human beings were placed and for which they were responsible. With this new natural philosophy the world had been cleared of gods and spirits, declared to be the good creation of the one rational God, and the foundations had been laid ready for the study of the universe that we know as science.

Impetus: a second form of motion

Philoponus’ second critique concerned another basic concept in physics, that of the motion of material bodies. For Aristotle this was always due to a mover external to the body moved. The issue was discussed in terms of the motion of a projectile. Aristotle explained this as due to the air displaced from the front end rushing down alongside the projectile and then turning in to prevent a vacuum developing behind it and so impelling the projectile as an external force from the rear; a void was an impossibility for Aristotle.

Philoponus made mock of this as “bordering on the fantastic”. He proposed a thought-experiment where 10,000 wind machines blew upon the rear of a row of military projectiles balanced upon the wall of a fortress. Instead of taking off into flight, he said, they would simply fall to the ground a little away from the wall; which of course was true. Philoponus’ caustic comment was matched by my wife, for before I had quite finished explaining Aristotle’s view she burst into laughter! I know it is not quite fair to mock a great man, for his theory was all of a piece with the rest of his physics; but this was simply wrong, as Philoponus’ simple thought-experiment would have shown him if tested. The experimental method, however, was still some two millennia ahead of Aristotle, and another millennium of Philoponus.

In place of all motion being due to an external cause Philoponus proposed a further kind of motion imparted to the projectile and then retained internally by it when the external force was removed. This transfer from external to internal force opened up the concept of impetus given to a moving body. This was a radical development in physics that was further developed by the time of Newton into the concepts of inertia and the momentum possessed by a moving object. This was Newton’s first law of motion – that once launched, a moving body would continue in a straight line indefinitely, unless something interfered. Although Philoponus regarded the internal force not as permanent but as fading out , he had made the radical break from the system of Aristotle into kinetic theory.

A natural philosophy replacing Aristotle's

In other breaks from Aristotelian orthodoxy Philoponus affirmed the reality of a vacuum or void, and anticipated Galileo on the equal acceleration of bodies of different weights when dropped together from a height. Aristotle had taught that their speeds would be proportional to their weights. Philoponus also replaced Aristotle’s static theory of light by a dynamic theory of particles moving from the external seen object to the eye at almost infinite velocity; this is congruent with James Clerk Maxwell’s discovery that both light and electro-magnetic radiations travelled at the same very high speeds.

It would be pretentious to downgrade Aristotle, perhaps the greatest and most influential mind of antiquity; despite his errors in these areas he offered the greatest overall stimulus by any one person towards what has emerged as science. But Aristotle’s physics was simply wrong on the eternity of the universe, on the dualism of its two divisions perfect and imperfect, and therefore on the different composition of the heavens as against the earth, wrong again on the impossibility of a void, on the cause of the motion of a projectile, and on the rate of acceleration of dropped objects.

It is these remarkable corrections by Philoponus, seen as 6th-c. anticipations of Galileo, Newton and Maxwell, that support my description of Philoponus as the greatest natural philosopher before Newton. When we consider also that all this was without benefit of the experimental method and mathematical proofs that mark modern science we are compelled to ask where Philoponus got it all from. The answer to this question will bring us back to where we left off with Hebrew culture and the synagogue.

Were there earlier thinkers among the Greeks who anticipated Philoponus in his new ideas? The chief candidate for this role has been the learned astronomical observer Hipparchus of Nicaea (ca.190 - ca.25 BCE) in whom Galileo and many modern scholars have found the precursor of the impetus theory. In the 1993 London conference on Philoponus, Michael Wolff effectively disposed of an Hipparchian origin, placed Hipparchus firmly back within Aristotelianism, and concluded that apart from Philoponus there was no ancient author who argues for impetus in any sense .

Scientific stirrings among the Ionians

In the 6th c, a de-sacralized universe had appeared among the very first Greek philosophers, in the colonists in the cities of Miletus and Ephesus in the Ionian area of Asia Minor. Here Thales and others took the first critical steps towards science, towards a rational and unified view of the universe. They asked new questions that sought causes within nature itself, and so left the capricious Olympian gods out. They were materialists and monists with no personification or deification of nature; they totally de-sacralized it. Likewise, another Ionian, Democritus in the 5th c, saw the world as the random movement of tiny atoms – a mechanistic view that returned in the 17th century of our era and is still influential in science and the popular mind today.

In the same 6th c. other new scientific ideas emerged among Greek colonists to the west, in southern Italy, where Pythagoras (originally an Ionian) developed a unified view of the world as either actually consisting of numbers or at least ordered mathematically. For this and his work in arithmetic and geometry that anticipated Euclid he has been called “the father of science”. There was a potentiality here to de-sacralize the world, like the other Ionians; on the contrary there was a religious side to the Pythagorean movement with features that were no advance on those found in various tribal faiths and their religious cultures.

Then in the 5th c. another of the pre-Socratic philosophers and again an Ionian, Anaxagoras, had brought new ideas of the universe to Athens itself. Based on the evidence of a meteorite he suggested that the heavenly bodies might be composed of stone-like materials as found on earth, and that the sun was a large incandescent stone. This de-sacralization anticipated Philoponus' views a millennium later, and also what Galileo saw through his telescope after a further millennium. For such heresy Anaxagoras was prosecuted and had to return to Ionia.

Philosophers’ revival of the sacred

In the great 4th c. BCE Plato and Aristotle would have none of these first sights of science, for in removing divinity from the world the Ionians had also deprived it of plan and purpose. So the Athenian philosophers restored these features to the world of nature in the form of Plato’s Demiurge, a rational divine craftsman, or of Aristotle’s Prime Unmoved Mover. These were living deities, far removed from the anthropomorphic Greek gods. Ultimately, however, they were no more than philosophers’ creations which were never able to become the objects of worship in the cult of any actual religion.

Despite its magnificent deposits in literature, art and architecture, its philosophic wrestlings and scientific searchings, its Euclid and Archimedes, its late flowering in Ptolemy and Galen, despite “the glory that was Greece”, its gods were either too close and too human, or too remote and impersonal. Greece went into decline and its great Athenian schools were closed by the 2nd c. CE. A wholly new theology was needed, a re-thinking of what was meant by “divinity”. Amid the decline of the Graeco-Roman world, this was supplied by the theology developing among the unimportant Hebrew people and in the ensuing Christian tradition. As C. N. Cochrane put it in philosophic terms , the new doctrine of the trinitarian God answered the unsolved Greek problem of the relation of the one to the many, the relation of the ultimate unities of the philosophers to the rampant pluralism of the Olympic divinities.

And so to return empty-handed after our search among the Greeks for the origins of Philoponus’ radical departure from Aristotelian natural philosophy. In fairness to Aristotle we must remember that both he and Philoponus were working deductively from their respective worldviews. They got no closer to the later experimental inductive methods than Aristotle with his remarkable biological researches, and Philoponus with his imaginative thought-experiments and some common-sense observations. They were both dependent on the assumptions and concepts of the worldviews available to them, the one in Athens in the 4th c. BCE, the other in Alexandria nearly nine centuries later. In what had happened during those centuries in the world of Philoponus we shall find the clues to his remarkable critiques of Aristotle.

The Alexandrian heritage

Philoponus was working over Aristotle’s questions and answers, but from a quite different “fiduciary stance”. The Academy at Alexandria possessed a long tradition from pre-Christian times. By the second century BCE, here at this same Alexandria the first translation of the Hebrew scriptures had been completed, into Greek as the Septuagint, which later gave Christian scholars ready access to the book of Genesis with its creation stories. Around the turn of the millennium Alexandria had been the largest Jewish city in the world with Philo, a contemporary of Jesus, as its greatest Jewish scholar. From the 2nd c. CE Alexandria had been a major centre of church organization and Christian theology and remained so during the five centuries of Christian thinkers, the patristic period, the age of the Fathers of the Church that produced the classic or ecumenical creeds.

There was also the new doctrine of the created universe, although less prominent in the creeds. By the end of the 1st c. CE Clement of Rome was rejecting Greek dualism, insisting that there was only one universe, all of a piece, created good and orderly by God. In The Roots of Science I have summarized the similar contributions of Clement’s successors: Athenagoras in Alexandria itself, Tertullian, the other Clement (of Alexandria), Origen, Athanasius, Augustine, and Boethius with his great “Hymn to the Creator” and only a decade younger than Philoponus. Further afield Basil in Cappadocia affirmed the same single created universe, and used everyday observations in support – the eternity of the universe was not represented by the circle, because to draw it one had to start and stop somewhere. Likewise he was on the verge of impetus theory in its alternative circular form when he likened the Creator setting the universe in motion to a child setting a top spinning – continuing indefinitely if there was no resistance.

Amid much debate a new doctrine of the universe was being defined. As the patristic period was ending it provided a new cultural atmosphere in natural philosophy, and it was Philoponus who articulated this in a way that has remained substantially intact ever since.

We should also observe that the only place of Jewish worship that the Christian scholars ever saw was the synagogue which implicitly and publicly summed up the central feature of the new worldview, a de-sacralized universe. There is no suggestion that Philoponus ever thought in these particular terms about places of worship; but for me I had already taken the synagogue as an authentic expression of the biblical worldview where the roots of his natural philosophy also lay. This is how the unexpected intrusion of this new figure into my thinking made sense, as I explored Philoponus working out the physical behaviour of a de-divinized Judaeo-Christian creation in ways that supported my synagogue thesis.

Why then do we hear no more of him?

The immediate question arises: if Philoponus is of this stature why does he not replace the Greeks, and especially Aristotle the most influential of them all, in the succeeding history of science? There are many factors of various import in the answer. The Roman empire was collapsing, and Philoponus stood at the apparent end of Graeco-Roman culture, with the invasions of tribal barbarians from the north and of Islamic armies from east and south. The Greek-speaking Academy at Alexandria came to an end when the city was captured in 646 by the Muslims and much of its library of Greek manuscripts was carried off to their centre of learning in Damascus. Here, and later in their new city of Baghdad and at the Nestorian Christian centre at Nisibis which Islam controlled, these manuscripts were translated into Syriac and Arabic, but not into Latin. Thus it was that the cultural deposits of classical antiquity, including Aristotle and his later commentators and critics such as Philoponus, lay in the east, out of reach of the Latin-speaking Western scholarship during its so-called “dark ages”.

This loose term covers some six succeeding centuries when there were cathedral and monastic schools with their more modest libraries, developed for the education of the clergy. The fate of Philoponus’ scientific achievements was tied to the sad fate of great centres of learning such as the academies at Alexandria, Athens and elsewhere. These were not replaced until the mediaeval European universities developed in the west, in the 12th to the 14th centuries, more independently of the church schools and with wider agenda. These gave science its necessary institutional base, but they were still largely tied to their limited Latin resources, and knew little directly of Plato or Aristotle and almost nothing of Philoponus.

Then classical learning began to filter through to the west by renewed contact through merchants and Crusaders, especially the Fourth Crusade which looted Constantinople in 1204, and above all through the Muslim invasions and the Islamic scholars and resources they brought with them. Thus began the European recovery of the impressive resources of classical Greece that had been preserved and translated in Islam’s eastern centres of learning. Aristotle was rediscovered, along with his commentators and Philoponus among them. Widely distributed Arabic scholars such as the Persian Avicenna (980-1037), and the Spaniards Avempace (d. 113 and Averroes (1126-119, were well aware of the dispute between Aristotelianism and Philoponus over impetus and the eternity of the universe and other matters, but came to no agreed conclusions, and in effect favoured Aristotle. Zimmerman points out why the Christians who should have been promoting Philoponus and so hastening the development of science were in fact doing the opposite – since he was an embarrassment to them. As Zimmerman puts it:

“… the name of Philoponus did not … inspire trust and admiration … his reputation was flawed. For in the eyes of posterity he had doubly disgraced himself by embracing the short-lived Tritheist faction within the Monophysite party and by attacking … his own school (the philosophical tradition from Aristotle to Proclus) from behind ... His writings, then and later, enjoyed notoriety rather than authority … His impetus theory seems to be a case in point: it was adopted without due credit given to its author.”

A heretical “monophysite”?

With these theological charges of heresy we come to the heart of the tragic history and subsequent obscurity of Philoponus. Not long before his time, in 451, the Council of Chalcedon had debated the relation between the two “natures” of Jesus Christ, the divine and the human. It had apparently reconciled the different formulas presented, and issued the famous four-point epistemological guidelines that I suggest are still basic to all thinking today . Different parties, however, were using key words in different senses; the Constantinople (Byzantium) theologians were still under the influence of Greek dualism, whereas the Alexandrians were suspected of a monist emphasis upon the one “nature”, the divine, and so were branded as heretical Monophysites (one “phusis” or “nature”). The issue was vital, and had really been neither solved nor settled at Chalcedon.

Ultimately it arose from the fact that the new Judaeo-Christian worldview was being hammered out by the early Christian Fathers in Alexandria with greater freedom there from Aristotelianism than in the heart of the Byzantine empire. This new worldview, like any such major change, required changed meanings in old terms and some new terms altogether. The New Testament had already done this within the common Greek language of its day; Faraday, Maxwell, and Einstein did it again in physics, and we have all had to repeat the process in the new computer world.

This process had begun among predecessors of Philoponus at Alexandria such as Athanasius (d. 373) and Cyril (375-444), as well as Severus (465-535) at Antioch. It is impossible here to follow the various political, ecclesiastical and theological factors at work in several centuries of turgid history, nor the various degrees, as it were, of monophysitism, and the arguments about the use of key words and the effects of different contexts upon their meanings. The overall result was that the Byzantines won and Philoponus was posthumously placed under an anathema as a heretical monophysite and tritheist by the third Council of Constantinople (680-81). This was confirmed by Photius, the powerful Patriarch of Constantinople in the 9th c. “Aristotle became the one officially licensed philosopher of the Byzantine world.” This “retarded scientific development for a thousand years and contributed to the domination of Aristotelianism in the West. That was one of the greatest tragedies in the history of thought.”14

Henceforth, and most importantly when the universities and the sciences were developing in Europe, Christian scholars eschewed him. Aquinas, for example, being no scientist, firmly rejected the impetus theory of projectile motion in favour of Aristotle’s view . Philoponus the heretic was left to the Muslims. Although their theology could not accommodate to him, it was through them that his ideas about the universe and impetus, etc., percolated through without acknowledgement and surfaced as new discoveries for use in the controversies with the Aristotelians. It is true that Christian critique of Aristotelian science took specific shape in the 219 propositions issued in 1277 by the Bishop of Paris that included most of Philoponus’ positions, and later scholars like Buridan and Oresme made advances in impetus and other scientific theory, using the resources of the same Judaeo-Christian tradition upon which Philoponus drew. But he himself had almost vanished from the scene.

The long wait for recognition

The anathema of 681 remained in place for over 13 centuries until through the initiative of Professor T. F. Torrance the Greek Orthodox Church formally lifted it in the 1990s. In a series of studies, some unpublished, Professor Torrance has detailed the language issues, especially as between the terms for “nature” and for “reality” or “truth” . He has shown that Philoponus was no monophysite or tritheist, and also why he was misunderstood in these ways, as he sought to go beyond the static thought-world and logic of the Greeks into the more dynamic way of thinking opened up by his ideas about impetus and about light. This judgement is confirmed by the way the eastern churches, Coptic, Syrian and Armenian, rejected as “monophysite” by Western churches for well over a millennium, have in more recent times been informally recognized as orthodox.

A setback of “a thousand years” – a vast exaggeration, surely? Not if one realizes that when the great scientific development came in the 17th century it was still distorted by the continuing Greek dualism of Descartes and later of Kant. It was something like a millennium after Photius that Faraday and Maxwell broke through to a new dynamic and relational way of thinking, with fields of force that had their first anticipations in the writings of Philoponus. As Christians, all working from their fiduciary stance in trinitarian relational theology, they might well have understood one another.

Here we may speculate upon one of the great might-have-beens of history, greater even than the 17th-c. prospect of a French-speaking North America, or the mid-19th-c. possibility of a nominally Christian China under the Taiping revolution. If Christians had used Philoponus instead of suppressing him, the mediaeval dominance of Aristotle might have ended sooner, and the experimental method and other prerequisites might have developed faster. The historians have missed this might-have-been, but history is full of examples and only some of the more obvious ever receive attention.

The rediscovery of Philoponus after a millennium began in the Renaissance period, when the newly accumulated resources of classical culture through Arabic channels made their public impact on Europe, and the effect of church anathemas on any of their authors might well have been counter-productive among the Renaissance humanists. In the 16th c. the recent advent of printing made the works of Aristotle and all his commentators readily available in Greek, and these were usually shortly followed by Latin translations. Thus it was that Philoponus at last became freely available, as evidenced by his Physics appearing in Latin versions nine times between 1546 and 1581 .

The major figures in the 17th-c. scientific revolution therefore had access to Philoponus, and Galileo thought highly of him. The question then arises: why does he seem to have fallen out of sight for the second time, and again for centuries? In the founding period of modern science most of the leading figures were Christians of one kind or another, so that as a major and early Christian critic of Aristotle he might even have received a certain respect. I have asked around on this question and no-one seems to have an answer. It seems inadequate to suggest that his basic ideas had already been developed beyond his formulations, and that experimental and mathematical methods had replaced his deductive procedures, so that he would not be attuned to the modern scientific atmosphere. The 17th-c. scholars must be excused as not being historians of science in the new 20th-c. manner.

The re-rediscovery of Philoponus

The modern re-rediscovery might be said to have begun in 1847 when the early contribution of Philoponus to the development of impetus theory was warmly recognized by the German naturalist Alexander von Humbolt . There was a flurry of interest in the decade around the year 1900, when the Berlin Academy of Sciences published German translations of some of Philoponus’ works. Von Humboldt was picked up and developed rather uncertainly by Emil Wohlwill in an essay in 1906 . But the first to take Philoponus seriously in the history of impetus theory was one of the founders of the modern history of science, Pierre Duhem, as in a 1913 essay . Only eight years later, the only reference to Philoponus in the great 12-volume Hastings Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics was in an article on “Tritheism” (of all places) where he was described as a “distinguished Aristotelian”, a monophysite and virtually a tritheist – wrong at every point. This is doubly offensive when I find it was written by the professor of systematic theology in the university where I had my longest and happiest stay, Aberdeen. Unhappily, and surprisingly, this great encyclopaedia, finished in 1921, is still in print in 2001 and so continues to propagate this major error.

The availability of Philoponus in English for serious study commences in 1948 with seven pages of text from his commentary on Aristotle’s Physics . A similar source followed in 1955 , and by 1962 Philoponus rated discussion in a whole final chapter . One might have expected more than one passing reference in Stanley Jaki’s Gifford Lectures in 1974-75, but he devotes three pages to Philoponus in his 1986 Science and Creation . The main work now is the collection of scholarly essays on Philoponus, some of which have been quoted above, edited by Richard Sorabji in 1987 . That the publishing programme of reliable texts initiated at the 1983 London conference is well under way is indicated by the items by or associated with Philoponus now in the library of the University of Auckland. Apart from two translations in French and German, and the early works mentioned above and Sorabji, there are at last checking twelve works of Philoponus himself in English; all of these have been added since 1983, and most in the last few years.

Clearly he is coming into his own in the history of science. But much has yet to be done for he does not rate a personal entry in the recent 900-page Reader’s Guide to the History of Science . It is an illuminating exercise to look for the name of Philoponus in the indexes of works by historians of both science and of Christianity. The content of history of science and Church history courses would be equally revealing. Be prepared for disappointment, for total absence or a mere passing mention or even for gross error. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church has an entry for Philoponus, but still in 1997 leaves him as a condemned monophysite .

Philoponus and the synagogue

It might appear that in this extensive treatment of the neglected Philoponus we are a long way from the synagogue, which I used as a sign of the Judaeo-Christian de-sacralization of the world. Yet behind our account there has been the ongoing articulation of the Christian doctrine of the created world, whether recognized or not as providing the basic worldview and metaphysics necessary for the work of science – a basis I have summed up in the uniqueness of the synagogue among the world’s places of worship. Since my study in this area was published in 1979 there have been two crowded decades of discovery of Philoponus and the Christian Fathers in support of my de-sacralization thesis and its meaning for science.

That is my story. First the apprenticeship in studies of the Hebrew Scriptures, then the application of religious studies to places of worship and discovery of the revolutionary significance of the synagogue, followed by realizing that the de-sacralization of the world represented so vividly in the synagogue was the same as the de-sacralized worldview of this new figure John Philoponus. And so it was that I ventured to write The Roots of Science, showing that the abandonment of the world of temples and the collapse of the Aristotelian world were different expressions of the Judaeo-Christian view of the universe. Since this book was confined to the historical roots of science up to the 17th-c. developments, I found I had to extend this history into our own era in the subsequent Frames of Mind, and as a further testing of the thesis as to the necessary relation between science and the Christian religion.

From dualistic Cartesianism to relational field theory

This I did with critiques of the dualism of two key figures, Descartes and Kant, and with inquiry into the inter-relation of faith and science in Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell – the key figures in the transposition from Cartesianism into the scientific world of Einstein, Rutherford, Bohr and so many others of distinction. The biographies of Faraday and Maxwell show how their scientific work and their religious faith were distinguished but never separated. We can see that they came to their scientific inquiries with minds already and continually shaped by the unique trinitarian relational view of God, and found that this was reflected in the relational structures of nature, with their interacting fields of force. They were not producing an argument from nature’s evident design to the existence of nature’s unseen Designer; their independent convictions about the Designer made them receptive to this kind of Designer’s handiwork all around them in nature.

The roots of science and its ongoing development up till our own era therefore depend on theologies – on emancipation from the theology and accompanying worldview of the Greeks and on the adoption of the Judaeo-Christian theology and worldview first developed among the Hebrews. These are sharp alternatives, not matters of degree.

I am now placing Philoponus and the Faraday-Maxwell combination at two of the key points in the history of science, where they broke from the ontology, epistemology and cosmology of the Greek dualist worldview, and replaced it with a more unified, relational and dynamic understanding that corresponds more closely to the way things actually are in the universe. The breakthrough occurred in principle in the 6th c. and might have moved into practice much earlier but for the tragic fate of Philoponus, for which Christians were mainly to blame. The dualist position not only of the Greeks but also of the Axial faiths of Asia was long in the dying in the science of the Western world, for its final obsequies only began in the middle of the 19th c.

Christianity in the happenstance theory

Modern historians of science are mostly prepared to accept a modicum of Judaeo-Christian influence as a contributory factor among the complex of factors evident in that history, but not as the essential basis. I fully recognize that this worldview although absolutely necessary is not in itself sufficient for the rise of science which had to await the historical appearance of alphabetic languages, decimals, the re-discovery of the Greek natural philosophers, Arabic enumeration, universities, technologies such as accurate time measurement and the telescope and microscope, and socio-economic and political changes that provided wealth, leisure and freedom of inquiry and debate, not forgetting the unpredictable individuals of genius like Copernicus, Galileo and Newton. Then this multi-factor theory asserts that this fortunate combination of factors, happening in the later centuries of a Europe civilized by Christendom, this unique mix at last had all the ingredients for the birth of science in the 17th c. It is the “happenstance” view of history, asserting that there was no primacy or hierarchy among these factors, and that such a combination might well have occurred in a number of other great cultures – China with its amazing technologies and wealth of resources is often the favoured alternative, although below we see that this was rejected by its chief authority .

This so-called happenstance assembly of factors was by no means casual but was interlocked in known and unknown ways, and especially interlocked with some aspect or other of the comprehensive worldview that was ousting that of the Greeks. At this level there are the three sharp cosmological alternatives that I have presented in the opening sections of The Roots of Science, and this essay is a fuller account of how I have come to choose the Judaeo-Christian option.

This is the “revisionist” position – properly it should be “radical revisionist” since all history is liable to have a degree of revision, or simply “recasting” as in my title. It was well summarized over five pages in an essay by Rolf Gruner back in 1975 (but with no mention of Philoponus), and then rejected as a biased apologetic rather than serious history .

The rejection of revisionist history

A compact rejection of the “revisionist thesis” occurs in an excellent book to which I am much indebted, Geoffrey Cantor’s Michael Faraday: Sandemanian and Scientist , which studies the relation between Faraday’s science and his Christian belief as a devoted member of this small (now extinct) Christian church. Unfortunately there is a gratuitous paragraph in the Epilogue summing up the “extreme version” of the revisionist argument, wherein “its proponents (usually Protestants) argue that Christianity and Christianity alone provided the essential soil from which modern science grew”. I am guilty therefore of extremism, which more balanced historians presumably avoid, but I do share this with eminent Catholics, notably Pierre Duhem (Catholic physicist-historian), and especially Stanley Jaki (Benedictine physicist-historian).

“Extremism” is a senseless criterion when thus applied. Must the truth about nature be balanced somewhere between the opposed extremes of Aristotle and Philoponus? One of the Fathers, Origen, tried something like this when he demoted the divine and perfect heavenly bodies to the status of fallen angels, nearer to the class of us human beings, but that didn’t improve his astrology. Nor did the truth about the solar system lie in some balance between Ptolemy’s geocentrism and the heliocentrism of Copernicus. Ptolemy was simply wrong, and when Kepler came to refine the Copernican system it was not by any movement towards the Ptolemaic. A “balanced view” applies when evaluating a large complex of factors and should mean “giving each factor its due”; when applied simpliciter to the many either/or situations in history it quickly becomes ridiculous. Sometimes the truth happens to be at an extreme of some range of possibilities. Shunning of extremes is certainly not a principle of epistemology.

Cantor’s paragraph then proceeds: “There are many arguments against this strong version of the revisionist thesis: for example, it depreciates Greek, Islamic and Chinese science.” Even in my small The Roots of Science I took particular care to avoid this and devoted some five pages to outlining Egyptian, Greek, Indian and Chinese achievements, and later some seven pages to those of Islam, and the impasse that prevented the further development of Islamic science.

He then adds the question as to why, on the revisionist theory, “modern science had to wait in the wings during some 16 centuries of Christianity”. We might ask the parallel question of why the Greek influence had to wait a similar length of time between its classical period in the Athenian academies and its massive impact on mediaeval Western Europe. The collapse of the Hellenic and Roman empires and the rise of the Islamic are well-known factors, and the second factor, the entrance of Islam, is shared by both questions. There is nothing at all unusual in what Cantor turns into a criticism.

In the Christian case I have explained the two main causes of this delay. Firstly, it was internal conflicts and misunderstandings that long prevented the epochal work of Philoponus from bearing fruit. Secondly, the Judaeo-Christian worldview, though essential and basic, was not sufficient in itself to support the emergence of modern science in the 17th c.; the convergence of other contributory factors was also required, and some of these were themselves products of mediaeval Christendom. Even if freed from his anathema Philoponus would probably not have been followed up in the “dark ages”; and then his battles with Aristotelianism would still have had to be fought again by others in the succeeding mediaeval period.

Any historian knows that Christianity was far from “waiting in the wings during some 16 centuries”, as it were idling instead of snapping into modern science. It spent some six centuries articulating its new theology and untangling itself from Greek and gnostic influences, some five centuries providing the only framework for administration and scholarship after the collapse of the Roman empire, then four centuries setting up the first great attempt at a synthesis between the Gospel and culture in public life known as Christendom. This included fighting the renewed Aristotelianism, founding universities as an institutional base for science, encouraging scholarship further in mathematics and physics, and finally attempting a radical internal critique of its own history in the Reformation. It had a pretty busy 16 centuries where it was deeply involved in the - to us - slow processes of history; and when the times were ready it was mainly Christians with a biblical view of creation who took the great leap forward and then founded the Royal Society, the first “scientific guild” in England.

Cantor’s final criticism is that “revisionists are hard put to find passages in the Bible that are manifestly conducive to modern science”. The answer lies not in some verses of literal support, but in the doctrine of creation and its Creator contained in those outstanding first two chapters of Genesis, in Psalm 104 and running through the whole Bible. More precisely, this worldview makes science possible with its orderly structured universe and with human minds similarly structured to understand this, and makes science necessary if humans are to carry out their responsible stewardship within creation and to worship with understanding . It is not revisionism that “turns out to be untenable” but rather each sentence in this unfortunate paragraph.

If not the Greeks, then the Chinese?

The main alternative contender for the origins of science is China, as presented by the greatest Western sinologist of the 20th c., Joseph Needham. His multi-volume and enthusiastic Science and Civilization in China is a fascinating account of the manifold and amazing achievements of Chinese technology and scientific interests when Europe consisted mostly of barbarian tribes. I cannot resist one example: in the 2nd c. BCE they had rigs with steel drilling bits on the end of sectioned bamboo pipes, operated like a modern hammer drill with both rotary and vertical motion, penetrating over 600 metres for natural gas and for brine, and then burning the gas to evaporate the brine for production of salt. And along with technology there were more theoretical achievements such as concerning magnetism, and including decimals and place value for numerals – according to Needham, before these were discovered in India.

The question therefore that faced him was why science developed only in the West when China was so far ahead in so many areas both practical and theoretical. In The Grand Titration: Science and Society in East and West Needham returns to this question at the end of every essay, and repeatedly admits “the undeniable fact that modern science was born in Europe and only in Europe” . In attempted explanation he rules out Caucasian racial superiority, and also the happenstance theory for this “is to declare the bankruptcy of history as a form of enlightenment of the human mind”.

His explanations include the defects of Chinese philosophy, especially that “It was not that there was no order in Nature for the Chinese, but rather that it was not an order ordained by a rational personal being, and hence there was no conviction that rational personal beings would be able to spell out in their lesser earthly languages the divine code of laws which he had decreed beforetime”. The “ideas of a Supreme Being … present from the earliest times, became depersonalized so soon and … lacked the idea of creativity, that they prevented the … conception of laws ordained from the beginning by a celestial lawgiver for non-human nature” – i.e. laws of nature . The arbitrary dualism of the Yin and Yang structure of the universe, and the polytheism of lesser gods, were no substitute for such a rational, personal ultimate being; the contrast with the Judaeo-Christian worldview is obvious.

Needham (1900-95) was a liturgically-minded Anglo-Catholic with a liberal theology mixed with the Marxism common among Cambridge intellectuals in the 1930s. He had actually tried out a vocation for the priesthood. His Christianity therefore was especially unfitted to recognize the Judaeo-Christian view of the universe and its law-giving Creator as the exact answer to the defect he identified so accurately in Chinese culture. Instead of looking to what he saw as an old-fashioned pre-scientific Christian tradition, he declared over and over again that the explanation of the European birth of science would emerge from fuller analysis not of the theological but of the sociological factors. In this weak answer Needham focussed on the Renaissance which brought the Greek originators of science into play, along with the development of mercantile and industrial capitalism lacking in China but free to support and exploit new developments in Europe. He was therefore not what many would make him, a “revisionist” on behalf of China, and he was a long, long way from the Hebrew worldview I have summarized in the synagogue, which lay behind a Philoponus .

Explaining and closing the gap in the history of science

In finding the roots of science in the Judaeo-Christian worldview I do not intend to denigrate the immense amount of scholarly work in the history of science by professional historians and scientists in its short history since the 1930s. They could not possibly have been expected to start by looking to the Hebrews who had neither science nor notable technology and little philosophy, much less by learning Hebrew and studying the Hebrew Scriptures and the history of Israel and of its places of worship. Nor can they be expected to have found any significant cosmology or worldview in such a mundane object as the synagogue. Yet again, they cannot be blamed for not exploring the Christian theologians of the patristic period and its lead up to Philoponus. Indeed many modern patristic scholars themselves show little sense of his significance, for they are not geared to the history of science, and he is uniformly absent from church histories. From the viewpoint of many in other disciplines in a modern university, and indeed for too many in the churches, the study of Israel is archaic, and the early Christian centuries are seen as full of hair-splitting debates about arcane and useless matters such as an alleged trinitarian God and the incarnate divinity of Jesus.

This atmosphere does not encourage would-be historians of science to look in the Judaeo-Christian direction, so that most have hardly even heard of Philoponus. All this means that the evidence from some two millennia of history that has proved to be of the greatest cultural significance in the making of the modern world has been effectively ignored in the history of science, and certainly in its most popular exponents. This defect is of the utmost seriousness, but the blame can hardly be placed upon these modern scholars; they have been the victims of the resources, the institutions and the culture with which they have been presented. The current emphasis upon the relevance of context within their own discipline applies firstly and clearly to themselves.

My own history and resources have been unexpectedly rich in the very areas where the science historians have been deprived. In no sense is this or my personal discovery of Philoponus to my credit, although I may perhaps take some satisfaction from seeing his significance and relating this to the same significance in the synagogue. In New Testament teaching the Jerusalem temple is not replaced by the synagogue but by the personalized “new temple” as in the Epistle to the Hebrews. By the same token there is no physical temple in the vision of

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GM AND YIELDS
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+ POOR RECORD ON CROP YIELDS FROM 40 YEARS OF BIOLOGICAL RESEARCH
Here's an antidote to the numerous articles in the media claiming that GM will solve food shortages through higher yields. An article by leading researcher Tom Sinclair, published in Trends in Plant Science, points out that very few GM crops show increased yield:

EXCERPTS: Genetic engineering techniques are frequently proposed as ways to increase crop yields, especially in areas of the developing world where the people suffer from malnutrition and agricultural productivity is low. However, despite 40 years of biochemical and physiological research, there have been very few cases that led directly to improved cultivars with better yield.

A target for genetic engineers has been to increase 'nitrogen-use efficiency. However, efforts to improve a plant's nitrogen metabolism by changing its genome are unlikely to succeed because plant biochemistry is already extremely 'efficient' in nitrogen uptake and use. It may be difficult to improve whole plant traits because it seems unlikely that engineering a single or even a few genes can easily manipulate these traits.

Much biochemical and physiological research has focused on drought tolerance, to enable plants to survive long periods of drought. However, for most annual grain crops, a drought severe enough to threaten the plant's survival will inevitably result in such a low yield that survival is a moot point.
http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5635

and plus you get your bon-bon:
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DUD SCIENCE
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+ GM BASED ON DUD SCIENCE
A wide range of scientists should speak out for much stricter control of gene-tampering because it is based on dud science, says scientist and Christian Dr Robert Mann.

More: http://www.gmwatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=5637

from a South African publication.

The Breaking Point

By Peter Maass

August 21, 2005

The largest oil terminal in the world, Ras Tanura, is located on the
eastern coast of Saudi Arabia, along the Persian Gulf. From Ras
Tanura's control tower, you can see the classic totems of oil's
dominion -- supertankers coming and going, row upon row of storage
tanks and miles and miles of pipes. Ras Tanura, which I visited in
June, is the funnel through which nearly 10 percent of the world's
daily supply of petroleum flows. Standing in the control tower, you
are surrounded by more than 50 million barrels of oil, yet not a drop
can be seen.

The oil is there, of course. In a technological sleight of hand, oil
can be extracted from the deserts of Arabia, processed to get rid of
water and gas, sent through pipelines to a terminal on the gulf,
loaded onto a supertanker and shipped to a port thousands of miles
away, then run through a refinery and poured into a tanker truck that
delivers it to a suburban gas station, where it is pumped into an
S.U.V. -- all without anyone's actually glimpsing the stuff. So long
as there is enough oil to fuel the global economy, it is not only out
of sight but also out of mind, at least for consumers.

I visited Ras Tanura because oil is no longer out of mind, thanks to
record prices caused by refinery shortages and surging demand -- most
notably in the United States and China -- which has strained the
capacity of oil producers and especially Saudi Arabia, the largest
exporter of all. Unlike the 1973 crisis, when the embargo by the Arab
members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries created
an artificial shortfall, today's shortage, or near-shortage, is real.
If demand surges even more, or if a producer goes offline because of
unrest or terrorism, there may suddenly not be enough oil to go
around.

As Aref al-Ali, my escort from Saudi Aramco, the giant state-owned oil
company, pointed out, "One mistake at Ras Tanura today, and the price
of oil will go up." This has turned the port into a fortress; its
entrances have an array of gates and bomb barriers to prevent
terrorists from cutting off the black oxygen that the modern world
depends on. Yet the problem is far greater than the brief havoc that
could be wrought by a speeding zealot with 50 pounds of TNT in the
trunk of his car. Concerns are being voiced by some oil experts that
Saudi Arabia and other producers may, in the near future, be unable to
meet rising world demand. The producers are not running out of oil,
not yet, but their decades-old reservoirs are not as full and
geologically spry as they used to be, and they may be incapable of
producing, on a daily basis, the increasing volumes of oil that the
world requires. "One thing is clear," warns Chevron, the
second-largest American oil company, in a series of new
advertisements, "the era of easy oil is over."

In the past several years, the gap between demand and supply, once
considerable, has steadily narrowed, and today is almost negligible.
The consequences of an actual shortfall of supply would be immense. If
consumption begins to exceed production by even a small amount, the
price of a barrel of oil could soar to triple-digit levels. This, in
turn, could bring on a global recession, a result of exorbitant prices
for transport fuels and for products that rely on petrochemicals --
which is to say, almost every product on the market. The impact on the
American way of life would be profound: cars cannot be propelled by
roof-borne windmills. The suburban and exurban lifestyles, hinged to
two-car families and constant trips to work, school and Wal-Mart,
might become unaffordable or, if gas rationing is imposed, impossible.
Carpools would be the least imposing of many inconveniences; the cost
of home heating would soar -- assuming, of course, that
climate-controlled habitats do not become just a fond memory.

But will such a situation really come to pass? That depends on Saudi
Arabia. To know the answer, you need to know whether the Saudis, who
possess 22 percent of the world's oil reserves, can increase their
country's output beyond its current limit of 10.5 million barrels a
day, and even beyond the 12.5-million-barrel target it has set for
2009. (World consumption is about 84 million barrels a day.) Saudi
Arabia is the sole oil superpower. No other producer possesses
reserves close to its 263 billion barrels, which is almost twice as
much as the runner-up, Iran, with 133 billion barrels. New fields in
other countries are discovered now and then, but they tend to offer
only small increments. For example, the much-contested and
as-yet-unexploited reserves in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge are
believed to amount to about 10 billion barrels, or just a fraction of
what the Saudis possess.

But the truth about Saudi oil is hard to figure out. Oil reservoirs
cannot be inventoried like wood in a wilderness: the oil is
underground, unseen by geologists and engineers, who can, at best,
make highly educated guesses about how much is underfoot and how much
can be extracted in the future. And there is a further obstacle: the
Saudis will not let outsiders audit their confidential data on
reserves and production. Oil is an industry in which not only is the
product hidden from sight but so is reliable information about it. And
because we do not know when a supply-demand shortfall might arrive, we
do not know when to begin preparing for it, so as to soften its
impact; the economic blow may come as a sledgehammer from the
darkness.

Of course the Saudis do have something to say about this prospect.
Before journeying to the kingdom, I went to Washington to hear the
Saudi oil minister, Ali al-Naimi, speak at an energy conference in the
mammoth Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, not far
from the White House. Naimi was the star attraction at a gathering of
the American petro-political nexus. Samuel Bodman, the U.S. energy
secretary, was on the dais next to him. David O'Reilly, chairman and
C.E.O. of Chevron, was waiting in the wings. The moderator was an
éminence grise of the oil world, James Schlesinger, a former energy
secretary, defense secretary and C.I.A. director.

"I want to assure you here today that Saudi Arabia's reserves are
plentiful, and we stand ready to increase output as the market
dictates," said Naimi, dressed in a gray business suit and speaking
with only a slight Arabic accent. He addressed skeptics who contend
that Saudi reservoirs cannot be tapped for larger amounts of oil. "I
am quite bullish on technology as the key to our energy future," he
said. "Technological innovation will allow us to find and extract more
oil around the world." He described the task of increasing output as
just "a question of investment" in new wells and pipelines, and he
noted that consuming nations urgently need to build new refineries to
process increased supplies of crude. "There is absolutely no lack of
resources worldwide," he repeated.

His assurances did not assure. A barrel of oil cost $55 at the time of
his speech; less than three months later, the price had jumped by 20
percent. The truth of the matter -- whether the world will really have
enough petroleum in the years ahead -- was as well concealed as the
millions of barrels of oil I couldn't see at Ras Tanura.

For 31 years, Matthew Simmons has prospered as the head of his own
firm, Simmons & Company International, which advises energy companies
on mergers and acquisitions. A member of the Council on Foreign
Relations, a graduate of the Harvard Business School and an unpaid
adviser on energy policy to the 2000 presidential campaign of George
W. Bush, he would be a card-carrying member of the global oil
nomenclatura, if cards were issued for such things. Yet he is one of
the principal reasons the oil world is beginning to ask hard questions
of itself.

Two years ago, Simmons went to Saudi Arabia on a government tour for
business executives. The group was presented with the usual
dog-and-pony show, but instead of being impressed, as most visitors
tend to be, with the size and expertise of the Saudi oil industry,
Simmons became perplexed. As he recalls in his somewhat heretical new
book, "Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the
World Economy," a senior manager at Aramco told the visitors that
"fuzzy logic" would be used to estimate the amount of oil that could
be recovered. Simmons had never heard of fuzzy logic. What could be
fuzzy about an oil reservoir? He suspected that Aramco, despite its
promises of endless supplies, might in fact not know how much oil
remained to be recovered.

Simmons returned home with an itch to scratch. Saudi Arabia was one of
the charter members of OPEC, founded in 1960 in Baghdad to coordinate
the policies of oil producers. Like every OPEC country, Saudi Arabia
provides only general numbers about its output and reserves; it does
not release details about how much oil is extracted from each
reservoir and what methods are used to extract that oil, and it does
not permit audits by outsiders. The condition of Saudi fields, and
those of other OPEC nations, is a closely guarded secret. That's
largely because OPEC quotas, which were first imposed in 1983 to limit
the output of member countries, were based on overall reserves; the
higher an OPEC member's reserves, the higher its quota. It is widely
believed that most, if not all, OPEC members exaggerated the sizes of
their reserves in order to have the largest possible quota -- and thus
the largest possible revenue stream.

In the days of excess supply, bankers like Simmons did not know, or
care, about the fudging; whether or not reserves were hyped, there was
plenty of oil coming out of the ground. Through the 1970's, 80's and
90's, the capacity of OPEC and non-OPEC countries exceeded demand, and
that's why OPEC imposed a quota system -- to keep some product off the
market (although many OPEC members, seeking as much revenue as
possible, quietly sold more oil than they were supposed to). Until
quite recently, the only reason to fear a shortage was if a boycott,
war or strike were to halt supplies. Few people imagined a time when
supply would dry up because of demand alone. But a steady surge in
demand in recent years -- led by China's emergence as a voracious
importer of oil -- has changed that.

This demand-driven scarcity has prompted the emergence of a cottage
industry of experts who predict an impending crisis that will dwarf
anything seen before. Their point is not that we are running out of
oil, per se; although as much as half of the world's recoverable
reserves are estimated to have been consumed, about a trillion barrels
remain underground. Rather, they are concerned with what is called
"capacity" -- the amount of oil that can be pumped to the surface on a
daily basis. These experts -- still a minority in the oil world --
contend that because of the peculiarities of geology and the limits of
modern technology, it will soon be impossible for the world's
reservoirs to surrender enough oil to meet daily demand.

One of the starkest warnings came in a February report commissioned by
the United States Department of Energy's National Energy Technology
Laboratory. "Because oil prices have been relatively high for the past
decade, oil companies have conducted extensive exploration over that
period, but their results have been disappointing," stated the report,
assembled by Science Applications International, a research company
that works on security and energy issues.

That corporation is notoriously crooked, I can assure you.
This doesn't mean they're wrong on this particular point;
but you shouldn't take their word for it (or for anything else,
absent independent confirmation). - RM

"If recent trends hold, there is little reason to expect that exploration
success will dramatically improve in the future. . . .
The image is one of a world moving from a long period in which
reserves additions were much greater than consumption to an era
in which annual additions are falling increasingly short of annual consumption.
This is but one of a number of trends that
suggest the world is fast approaching the
inevitable peaking of conventional world oil production."

The reference to "peaking" is not a haphazard word choice -- "peaking"
is a term used in oil geology to define the critical point at which
reservoirs can no longer produce increasing amounts of oil. (This
tends to happen when reservoirs are about half-empty.) "Peak oil" is
the point at which maximum production is reached; afterward, no matter
how many wells are drilled in a country, production begins to decline.
Saudi Arabia and other OPEC members may have enough oil to last for
generations, but that is no longer the issue. The eventual and painful
shift to different sources of energy -- the start of the post-oil age
-- does not begin when the last drop of oil is sucked from under the
Arabian desert. It begins when producers are unable to continue
increasing their output to meet rising demand. Crunch time comes long
before the last drop.

"The world has never faced a problem like this," the report for the
Energy Department concluded. "Without massive mitigation more than a
decade before the fact, the problem will be pervasive and will not be
temporary. Previous energy transitions (wood to coal and coal to oil)
were gradual and evolutionary; oil peaking will be abrupt and
revolutionary."

Most experts do not share Simmons's concerns about the imminence of
peak oil. One of the industry's most prominent consultants, Daniel
Yergin, author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning book about petroleum,
dismisses the doomsday visions. "This is not the first time that the
world has 'run out of oil,"' he wrote in a recent Washington Post
opinion essay. "It's more like the fifth. Cycles of shortage and
surplus characterize the entire history of the oil industry." Yergin
says that a number of oil projects that are under construction will
increase the supply by 20 percent in five years and that technological
advances will increase the amount of oil that can be recovered from
existing reservoirs. (Typically, with today's technology, only about
40 percent of a reservoir's oil can be pumped to the surface.)

Yergin's bullish view has something in common with the views of the
pessimists -- it rests on unknowns. Will the new projects that are
under way yield as much oil as their financial backers hope? Will new
technologies increase recovery rates as much as he expects? These
questions are next to impossible to answer because coaxing oil out of
the ground is an extraordinarily complex undertaking. The popular
notion of reservoirs as underground lakes, from which wells extract
oil like straws sucking a milkshake from a glass, is incorrect. Oil
exists in drops between and inside porous rocks. A new reservoir may
contain sufficient pressure to make these drops of oil flow to the
surface in a gusher, but after a while -- usually within a few years
and often sooner than that -- natural pressure lets up and is no
longer sufficient to push oil to the surface. At that point,
"secondary" recovery efforts are begun, like pumping water or gas into
the reservoirs to increase the pressure.

This process is unpredictable; reservoirs are extremely temperamental.
If too much oil is extracted too quickly or if the wrong types or
amounts of secondary efforts are employed, the amount of oil that can
be recovered from a field can be greatly reduced; this is known in the
oil world as "damaging a reservoir." A widely cited example is Oman:
in 2001, its daily production reached more than 960,000 barrels, but
then suddenly declined, despite the use of advanced technologies.
Today, Oman produces 785,000 barrels of oil a day. Herman Franssen, a
consultant who worked in Oman for a decade, sees that country's
experience as a possible lesson in the limits of technology for other
producers that try to increase or maintain high levels of output.
"They reached a million barrels a day, and then a few years later
production collapsed," Franssen said in a phone interview. "They used
all these new technologies, but they haven't been able to stop the
decline yet."

The vague production and reserve data that gets published does not
begin to tell the whole story of an oil field's health, production
potential or even its size. For a clear-as-possible picture of a
country's oil situation, you need to know what is happening in each
field -- how many wells it has, how much oil each well is producing,
what recovery methods are being used and how long they've been used
and the trend line since the field went into production. Data of that
sort are typically not released by state-owned companies like Saudi
Aramco.

As Matthew Simmons searched for clues to the truth of the Saudi
situation, he immersed himself in the minutiae of oil geology. He
realized that data about Saudi fields might be found in the files of
the Society of Petroleum Engineers. Oil engineers, like most
professional groups, have regular conferences at which they discuss
papers that delve into the work they do. The papers, which focus on
particular wells that highlight a problem or a solution to a problem,
are presented and debated at the conferences and published by the
S.P.E. -- and then forgotten.

Before Simmons poked around, no one had taken the time to pull
together the S.P.E. papers that involved Saudi oil fields and review
them en masse. Simmons found more than 200 such papers and studied
them carefully. Although the papers cover only a portion of the
kingdom's wells and date back, in some cases, several decades, they
constitute perhaps the best public data about the condition and
prospects of Saudi reservoirs.

Ghawar is the treasure of the Saudi treasure chest. It is the largest
oil field in the world and has produced, in the past 50 years, about
55 billion barrels of oil, which amounts to more than half of Saudi
production in that period. The field currently produces more than five
million barrels a day, which is about half of the kingdom's output. If
Ghawar is facing problems, then so is Saudi Arabia and, indeed, the
entire world.

Simmons found that the Saudis are using increasingly large amounts of
water to force oil out of Ghawar. Most of the wells are concentrated
in the northern portion of the 174-mile-long field. That might seem
like good news -- when the north runs low, the Saudis need only to
drill wells in the south. But in fact it is bad news, Simmons
concluded, because the southern portions of Ghawar are geologically
more difficult to draw oil from. "Someday (and perhaps that day will
be soon), the remarkably high well flow rates at Ghawar's northern end
will fade, as reservoir pressures finally plummet," Simmons writes in
his book. "Then, Saudi Arabian oil output will clearly have peaked.
The death of this great king" -- meaning Ghawar -- "leaves no field of
vaguely comparable stature in the line of succession. Twilight at
Ghawar is fast approaching." He goes on: "The geological phenomena and
natural driving forces that created the Saudi oil miracle are
conspiring now in normal and predictable ways to bring it to its
conclusion, in a time frame potentially far shorter than officialdom
would have us believe." Simmons concludes, "Saudi Arabia clearly seems
to be nearing or at its peak output and cannot materially grow its oil
production."

Saudi officials belittle Simmons's work. Nansen Saleri, a senior
Aramco official, has described Simmons as a banker "trying to come
across as a scientist." In a speech last year, Saleri wryly said, "I
can read 200 papers on neurology, but you wouldn't want me to operate
on your relatives." I caught up with Simmons in June, during a trip he
made to Manhattan to talk with a group of oil-shipping executives. The
impression he gives is of an enthusiastic inventor sharing a discovery
that took him by surprise. He has a certain wide-eyed wonder in his
regard, as if a bit of mystery can be found in everything that catches
his eye. And he has a rumpled aspect -- thinning hair slightly askew,
shirt sleeves a fraction too long. Though he delivers a bracing
message, his discourse can wander. He is a successful businessman, and
it is clear that he did not achieve his position by being a man of
impeccable convention. He certainly has not lost sight of the rule
that people who shout "the end is nigh" do not tend to be favorably
reviewed by historians, let alone by their peers. He notes in his book
that way back in 1979, The New York Times published an investigative
story by Seymour Hersh under the headline "Saudi Oil Capacity
Questioned." He knows that in past decades the Cassandras failed to
foresee new technologies, like deep-water and horizontal drilling,
that provided new sources of oil and raised the amount of oil that can
be recovered from reservoirs.

But Simmons says that there are only so many rabbits technology can
pull out of its petro-hat. He impishly notes that if the Saudis really
wanted to, they could easily prove him wrong. "If they want to satisfy
people, they should issue field-by-field production reports and
reserve data and have it audited," he told me. "It would then take
anybody less than a week to say, 'Gosh, Matt is totally wrong,' or
'Matt actually might be too optimistic."'

Simmons has a lot riding on his campaign -- not only his name but also
his business, which would not be rewarded if he is proved to be a
fool. What, I asked, if the data show that the Saudis will be able to
sustain production of not only 12.5 million barrels a day -- their
target for 2009 -- but 15 million barrels, which global demand is
expected to require of them in the not-too-distant future? "The odds
of them sustaining 12 million barrels a day is very low," Simmons
replied. "The odds of them getting to 15 million for 50 years --
there's a better chance of me having Bill Gates's net worth, and I
wouldn't bet a dime on that forecast."

The gathering of executives took place in a restaurant at Chelsea
Piers; about 35 men sat around a set of tables as the host introduced
Simmons. He rambled a bit but hit his talking points, and the
executives listened raptly; at one point, the man on my right broke
into a soft whistle, of the sort that means "Holy cow." Simmons
didn't let up. "We're going to look back at history and say $55 a
barrel was cheap," he said, recalling a TV interview in which he
predicted that a barrel might hit triple digits. He said that the
anchor scoffed, in disbelief, "A hundred dollars?" Simmons replied,
"I wasn't talking about low triple digits."

The onset of triple-digit prices might seem a blessing for the Saudis
-- they would receive greater amounts of money for their increasingly
scarce oil. But one popular misunderstanding about the Saudis -- and
about OPEC in general -- is that high prices, no matter how high, are
to their benefit.

Although oil costing more than $60 a barrel hasn't caused a global
recession, that could still happen: it can take a while for high
prices to have their ruinous impact. And the higher above $60 that
prices rise, the more likely a recession will become. High oil prices
are inflationary; they raise the cost of virtually everything -- from
gasoline to jet fuel to

PLASTICS

and fertilizers -- and that means people buy less and travel less,
which means a drop-off in economic activity. So after a brief windfall
for producers, oil prices would slide as recession sets in and
once-voracious economies slow down, using less oil. Prices have
collapsed before, and not so long ago: in 1998, oil fell to $10 a
barrel after an untimely increase in OPEC production and a reduction
in demand from Asia, which was suffering through a financial crash.
Saudi Arabia and the other members of OPEC entered crisis mode back
then; adjusted for inflation, oil was at its lowest price since the
cartel's creation, threatening to feed unrest among the ranks of
jobless citizens in OPEC states.

"The Saudis are very happy with oil at $55 per barrel, but they're
also nervous," a Western diplomat in Riyadh told me in May, referring
to the price that prevailed then. (Like all the diplomats I spoke to,
he insisted on speaking anonymously because of the sensitivities of
relations with Saudi Arabia.) "They don't know where this magic line
has moved to. Is it now $65? Is it $75? Is it $80? They don't want to
find out, because if you did have oil move that far north . . . the
chain reaction can come back to a price collapse again."

High prices can have another unfortunate effect for producers. When
crude costs $10 a barrel or even $30 a barrel, alternative fuels are
prohibitively expensive. For example, Canada has vast amounts of tar
sands that can be rendered into heavy oil, but the cost of doing so is
quite high. Yet those tar sands and other alternatives, like
bioethanol, hydrogen fuel cells and liquid fuel from natural gas or
coal, become economically viable as the going rate for a barrel rises
past, say, $40 or more, especially if consuming governments choose to
offer their own incentives or subsidies. So even if high prices don't
cause a recession, the Saudis risk losing market share to rivals into
whose nonfundamentalist hands Americans would much prefer to channel
their energy dollars. A concerted push for greater energy conservation
in the United States, which consumes one-quarter of the world's oil
(mostly to fuel our cars, as gasoline), would hurt producing nations,
too. Basically, any significant reduction in the demand for oil would
be ruinous for OPEC members, who have little to offer the world but
oil; if a substitute can be found, their future is bleak. Another
Western diplomat explained the problem facing the Saudis: "You want to
have the price as high as possible without sending the consuming
nations into a recession and at the same time not have the price so
high that it encourages alternative technologies."

>From the American standpoint, one argument in favor of conservation
and a switch to alternative fuels is that by limiting oil imports, the
United States and its Western allies would reduce their dependence on
a potentially unstable region. (In fact, in an effort to offset the
risks of relying on the Saudis, America's top oil suppliers are Canada
and Mexico.) In addition, sending less money to Saudi Arabia would
mean less money in the hands of a regime that has spent the past few
decades doling out huge amounts of its oil revenue to mosques,
madrassas and other institutions that have fanned the fires of Islamic
radicalism. The oil money has been dispensed not just by the Saudi
royal family but by private individuals who benefited from the oil
boom -- like Osama bin Laden, whose ample funds, probably eroded now,
came from his father, a construction magnate. Without its oil
windfall, Saudi Arabia would have had a hard time financing radical
Islamists across the globe.

For the Saudis, the political ramifications of reduced demand for its
oil would not be negligible. The royal family has amassed vast
personal wealth from the country's oil revenues. If, suddenly, Saudis
became aware that the royal family had also failed to protect the
value of the country's treasured resource, the response could be
severe. The mere admission that Saudi reserves are not as impressively
inexhaustible as the royal family has claimed could lead to hard
questions about why the country, and the world, had been misled. With
the death earlier this month of the long-ailing King Fahd, the royal
family is undergoing another period of scrutiny; the new king,
Abdullah, is in his 80's, and the crown prince, his half-brother
Sultan, is in his 70's, so the issue of generational change remains to
be settled. As long as the country is swimming in petro-dollars --
even as it is paying off debt accrued during its lean years --
everyone is relatively happy, but that can change. One diplomat I
spoke to recalled a comment from Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani, the
larger-than-life Saudi oil minister during the 1970's: "The Stone Age
didn't end for lack of stone, and the oil age will end long before the
world runs out of oil."

Until now, the Saudis had an excess of production capacity that
allowed them, when necessary, to flood the market to drive prices
down. They did that in 1990, when the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait
eliminated not only Kuwait's supply of oil but also Iraq's. The Saudis
functioned, as they always had, as the central bank of oil, releasing
supply to the market when it was needed and withdrawing supply to keep
prices from going lower than the cartel would have liked. In other
words, they controlled not only the price of oil but their own destiny
as well.

"That is what the world has called on them to do before -- turn on the
taps to produce more and get prices down," a senior Western diplomat
in Riyadh told me recently. "Decreasing prices used to keep out
alternative fuels. I don't see how they're able to do that anymore.
This is a huge change, and it is a big step in the move to whatever is
coming next. That's what's really happening."

Without the ability to flood the markets with oil, the Saudis are
resorting to flooding the market with promises; it is a sort of
petro-jawboning. That's why Ali al-Naimi, the oil minister, told his
Washington audience that Saudi Arabia has embarked on a crash program
to raise its capacity to 12.5 million barrels a day by 2009 and even
higher in the years after that. Naimi is not unlike a factory manager
who needs to promise the moon to his valuable clients, for fear of
losing or alarming them. He has no choice. The moment he says anything
bracing, the touchy energy markets will probably panic, pushing prices
even higher and thereby hastening the onset of recession, a switch to
alternative fuels or new conservation efforts -- or all three. Just a
few words of honest caution could move the markets; Naimi's speeches
are followed nearly as closely in the financial world as those of Alan
Greenspan.

I journeyed to Saudi Arabia to interview Naimi and other senior
officials, to get as far beyond their prepared remarks as might be
possible. Although I was allowed to see Ras Tanura, my interview
requests were denied. I was invited to visit Aramco's oil museum in
Dhahran, but that is something a Saudi schoolchild can do on a field
trip. It was a "show but don't tell" policy. I was able to speak about
production issues only with Ibrahim al-Muhanna, the oil ministry
spokesman, who reluctantly met me over coffee in the lobby of my hotel
in Riyadh. He defended Saudi Arabia's refusal to share more data,
noting that the Saudis are no different from most oil producers.

"They will not tell you," he said. "Nobody will. And that is not going
to change." Referring to the fact that Saudi Arabia is often called
the central bank of oil, he added: "If an outsider goes to the Fed and
asks, 'How much money do you have?' they will tell you. If you say,
'Can I come and count it?' they will not let you. This applies to oil
companies and oil countries." I mentioned to Muhanna that many people
think his government's "trust us" stance is not convincing in light of
the cheating that has gone on within OPEC and in the industry as a
whole; even Royal Dutch/Shell, a publicly listed oil company that
undergoes regular audits, has admitted that it overstated its 2002
reserves by 23 percent.

"There is no reason for any country or company to lie," Muhanna
replied. "There is a lot of oil around." I didn't need to ask about
Simmons and his peak-oil theory; when I met Muhanna at the conference
in Washington, he nearly broke off our conversation at the mention of
Simmons's name. "He does not know anything," Muhanna said. "The only
thing he has is a big mouth. We should not pay attention to him.
Either you believe us or you don't."

So whom to believe? Before leaving New York for Saudi Arabia, I was
advised by several oil experts to try to interview Sadad al-Husseini,
who retired last year after serving as Aramco's top executive for
exploration and production. I faxed him in Dhahran and received a
surprisingly quick reply; he agreed to meet me. A week later, after I
arrived in Riyadh, Husseini e-mailed me, asking when I would come to
Dhahran; in a follow-up phone call, he offered to pick me up at the
airport . He was, it seemed, eager to talk.

It can be argued that in a nation devoted to oil, Husseini knows more
about it than anyone else. Born in Syria, Husseini was raised in Saudi
Arabia, where his father was a government official whose family took
on Saudi citizenship. Husseini earned a Ph.D. in geological sciences
from Brown University in 1973 and went to work in Aramco's exploration
department, eventually rising to the highest position. Until his
retirement last year -- said to have been caused by a top-level
dispute, the nature of which is the source of many rumors -- Husseini
was a member of the company's board and its management committee. He
is one of the most respected and accomplished oilmen in the world.

After meeting me at the cavernous airport that serves Dhahran, he
drove me in his luxury sedan to the villa that houses his private
office. As we entered, he pointed to an armoire that displayed a dozen
or so vials of black liquid. "These are samples from oil fields I
discovered," he explained. Upstairs, there were even more vials, and
he would have possessed more than that except, as he said, laughing,
"I didn't start collecting early enough."

We spoke for several hours. The message he delivered was clear: the
world is heading for an oil shortage. His warning is quite different
from the calming speeches that Naimi and other Saudis, along with
senior American officials, deliver on an almost daily basis. Husseini
explained that the need to produce more oil is coming from two
directions. Most obviously, demand is rising; in recent years, global
demand has increased by two million barrels a day. (Current daily
consumption, remember, is about 84 million barrels a day.) Less
obviously, oil producers deplete their reserves every time they pump
out a barrel of oil. This means that merely to maintain their reserve
base, they have to replace the oil they extract from declining fields.
It's the geological equivalent of running to stay in place. Husseini
acknowledged that new fields are coming online, like offshore West
Africa and the Caspian basin, but he said that their output isn't big
enough to offset this growing need.

"You look at the globe and ask, 'Where are the big increments?' and
there's hardly anything but Saudi Arabia," he said. "The kingdom and
Ghawar field are not the problem. That misses the whole point. The
problem is that you go from 79 million barrels a day in 2002 to 82.5
in 2003 to 84.5 in 2004. You're leaping by two million to three
million a year, and if you have to cover declines, that's another four
to five million." In other words, if demand and depletion patterns
continue, every year the world will need to open enough fields or
wells to pump an additional six to eight million barrels a day -- at
least two million new barrels a day to meet the rising demand and at
least four million to compensate for the declining production of
existing fields. "That's like a whole new Saudi Arabia every couple of
years," Husseini said. "It can't be done indefinitely. It's not
sustainable."

Husseini speaks patiently, like a teacher who hopes someone is
listening. He is in the enviable position of knowing what he talks
about while having the freedom to speak openly about it. He did not
disclose precise information about Saudi reserves or production --
which remain the equivalent of state secrets -- but he felt free to
speak in generalities that were forthright, even when they conflicted
with the reassuring statements of current Aramco officials. When I
asked why he was willing to be so frank, he said it was because he
sees a shortage ahead and wants to do what he can to avert it. I
assumed that he would not be particularly distressed if his rivals in
the Saudi oil establishment were embarrassed by his frankness.

Although Matthew Simmons says it is unlikely that the Saudis will be
able to produce 12.5 million barrels a day or sustain output at that
level for a significant period of time, Husseini says the target is
realistic; he says that Simmons is wrong to state that Saudi Arabia
has reached its peak. But 12.5 million is just an interim marker, as
far as consuming nations are concerned, on the way to 15 million
barrels a day and beyond -- and that is the point at which Husseini
says problems will arise.

At the conference in Washington in May, James Schlesinger, the
moderator, conducted a question-and-answer session with Naimi at the
conclusion of the minister's speech. One of the first questions
involved peak oil: might it be true that Saudi Arabia, which has
relied on the same reservoirs, and especially Ghawar, for more than
five decades, is nearing the geological limit of its output?

Naimi wouldn't hear of it.

"I can assure you that we haven't peaked," he responded. "If we
peaked, we would not be going to 12.5 and we would not be visualizing
a 15-million-barrel-per-day production capacity. . . . We can maintain
12.5 or 15 million for the next 30 to 50 years."

Experts like Husseini are very concerned by the prospect of trying to
produce 15 million barrels a day. Even if production can be ramped up
that high, geology may not be forgiving. Fields that are overproduced
can drop off, in terms of output, quite sharply and suddenly, leaving
behind large amounts of oil that cannot be coaxed out with existing
technology. This is called trapped oil, because the rocks or sediment
around it prevent it from escaping to the surface. Unless new
technologies are developed, that oil will never be extracted. In other
words, the haste to recover oil can lead to less oil being recovered.

"You could go to 15, but that's when the questions of depletion rate,
reservoir management and damaging the fields come into play," says
Nawaf Obaid, a Saudi oil and security analyst who is regarded as being
exceptionally well connected to key Saudi leaders. "There is an
understanding across the board within the kingdom, in the highest
spheres, that if you're going to 15, you'll hit 15, but there will be
considerable risks . . . of a steep decline curve that Aramco will not
be able to do anything about."

Even if the Saudis are willing to risk damaging their fields, or even
if the risk is overstated, Husseini points out a practical problem. To
produce and sustain 15 million barrels a day, Saudi Arabia will have
to drill a lot more wells and build a lot more pipelines and
processing facilities. Currently, the global oil industry suffers a
deficit of qualified engineers tooversee such projects and the
equipment and the raw materials -- for example, rigs and steel -- to
build them. These things cannot be wished from thin air or developed
quickly enough to meet the demand.

"If we had two dozen Texas A&M's producing a thousand new engineers a
year and the industrial infrastructure in the kingdom, with the
drilling rigs and power plants, we would have a better chance, but you
cannot put that into place overnight," Husseini said. "Capacity is not
just a function of reserves. It is a function of reserves plus
know-how plus a commercial economic system that is designed to
increase the resource exploitation. For example, in the U.S. you have
infrastructure -- there must be tens of thousands of miles of
pipelines. If we, in Saudi Arabia, evolve to that level of commercial
maturity, we could probably produce a heck of a lot more oil. But to
get there is a very tedious, slow process."

He worries that the rising global demand for oil will lead to the
petroleum equivalent of running an engine at ever-increasing speeds
without stopping to cool it down or change the oil. Husseini does not
want to see the fragile and irreplaceable reservoirs of the Middle
East become damaged through wanton overproduction.

"If you are ramping up production so fast and jump from high to higher
to highest, and you're not having enough time to do what needs to be
done, to understand what needs to be done, then you can damage
reservoirs," he said. "Systematic development is not just a matter of
money. It's a matter of reservoir dynamics, understanding what's
there, analyzing and understanding information. That's where people
come in, experience comes in. These are not universally available
resources."

The most worrisome part of the crisis ahead revolves around a set of
statistics from the Energy Information Administration, which is part
of the U.S. Department of Energy. The E.I.A. forecast in 2004 that by
2020 Saudi Arabia would produce 18.2 million barrels of oil a day, and
that by 2025 it would produce 22.5 million barrels a day. Those
estimates were unusual, though. They were not based on secret
information about Saudi capacity, but on the projected needs of energy
consumers. The figures simply assumed that Saudi Arabia would be able
to produce whatever the United States needed it to produce. Just last
month, the E.I.A. suddenly revised those figures downward -- not
because of startling new information about world demand or Saudi
supply but because the figures had given so much ammunition to
critics. Husseini, for example, described the 2004 forecast as
unrealistic.

"That's not how you would manage a national, let alone an
international, economy," he explained. "That's the part that is scary.
You draw some assumptions and then say, 'O.K., based on these
assumptions, let's go forward and consume like hell and burn like
hell."' When I asked whether the kingdom could produce 20 million
barrels a day -- about twice what it is producing today from fields
that may be past their prime -- Husseini paused for a second or two.
It wasn't clear if he was taking a moment to figure out the answer or
if he needed a moment to decide if he should utter it. He finally
replied with a single word: No. "It's becoming unrealistic," he said.
"The expectations are beyond what is achievable. This is a global
problem . . . that is not going to be solved by tinkering with the
Saudi industry."

It would be unfair to blame the Saudis alone for failing to warn of
whatever shortages or catastrophes might lie ahead. In the political
and corporate realms of the oil world, there are few incentives to be
forthright. Executives of major oil companies have been reluctant to
raise alarms; the mere mention of scarce supplies could alienate the
governments that hand out lucrative exploration contracts and also
send a message to investors that oil companies, though wildly
profitable at the moment, have a Malthusian long-term future.
Fortunately, that attitude seems to be beginning to change. Chevron's
"easy oil is over" advertising campaign is an indication that even the
boosters of an oil-drenched future are not as bullish as they once
were.

Politicians remain in the dark. During the 2004 presidential campaign,
which occurred as gas prices were rising to record levels, the debate
on energy policy was all but nonexistent. The Bush campaign produced
an advertisement that concluded: "Some people have wacky ideas. Like
taxing gasoline more so people drive less.

Husseini, for one, doesn't buy that approach. "Everybody is looking at
the producers to pull the chestnuts out of the fire, as if it's our
job to fix everybody's problems," he told me. "It's not our problem to
tell a democratically elected government that you have to do something
about your runaway consumers. If your government can't do the job, you
can't expect other governments to do it for them." Back in the 70's,
President Carter called for the moral equivalent of war to reduce our
dependence on foreign oil; he was not re-elected. Since then, few
politicians have spoken of an energy crisis or suggested that major
policy changes are necessary to avert one. The energy bill signed
earlier this month by President Bush did not even raise
fuel-efficiency standards for passenger cars. When a crisis comes --
whether in a year or 2 or 10 -- it will be all the more painful
because we will have done little or nothing to prepare for it.

Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846.
John F. Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946.

Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860.
John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960.

Both were particularly concerned with civil rights.
Both wives lost children while living in the White House.

Both Presidents were shot on a Friday.
Both Presidents were shot in the head.

Lincoln 's secretary was named Kennedy.
Kennedy's Secretary was named Lincoln.

Both were assassinated by Southerners.
Both were succeeded by Southerners named Johnson.
Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, was born in 1808.
Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, was born in 1908.

John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Lincoln, was born in 1839.
Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated Kennedy, was born in 1939.
Both assassins were known by their three names.
Both names are composed of fifteen letters.

Lincoln's secretary, Kennedy, warned him not to go to the theatre. Kennedy's secretary, Lincoln, warned him not to go to Dallas.

Lincoln was shot at the theater named 'Ford.'
Kennedy was shot in a car called ' Lincoln' made by 'Ford.'
Lincoln was shot in a theater and his assassin ran and hid in a warehouse.
Kennedy was shot from a warehouse and his assassin ran and hid in a theater.

Booth and Oswald were assassinated before their trials.

A week before Lincoln was shot, he was in Monroe, Maryland
A week before Kennedy was shot, he was with Marilyn Monroe.

>In response to which, some wag has coined:

When Kennedy was shot, the car he was riding in was a Lincoln. Lincoln's last name was Lincoln.

Kennedy slept with Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn Monroe was in Some Like it Hot with Jack Lemmon. Jack Lemmon was in JFK, which tells the life story of John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated just like Lincoln.

John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln in his theater booth. Lee Harvey Oswald shot Kennedy in a motorcade.

"Abraham Lincoln" has 14 letters; "John Fitzgerald Kennedy" has 21 letters; "Assassinate" has 11 letters.

Both men (except Kennedy) were born in log houses.

Lincoln's wife's maiden name was Todd, which (ignoring one of the d's) read backwards, is dot, one of the two symbols used in Morse code, created by Samuel Morse, who invented the telegraph in 1844. Kennedy's wife Jackie married Aristotle Onassis, from Greece, which had a civil war in 1944, exactly 100 years later.

Both Lincoln and Kennedy were succeeded by their Vice-Presidents.

Lincoln's nickname was "Honest Abe." After chopping down his father's cherry tree, Kennedy once said, "I cannot tell a lie."

Lincoln and Kennedy both died of Lou Gehrig's Disease, not from being shot, as is commonly believed.

Both Presidents were assassinated (died of Lou Gehrig's Disease) the same day: October 12, 1979.

Despite DNA testing, a 100-year separation, and overwhelming popular belief, Lincoln and Kennedy were actually the same man.

The Conservation-Conscious Salute This Man's Commute
As Americans worry over high gas prices, Jeff Kline glides along for less than a penny a day in his shiny new velomobile. His what? "People want to know what it is," Kline says, standing alongside the narrow, 9-foot-long fiberglass vehicle he got two months ago. "I tell them it is a motorized bicycle."

The Conservation-Conscious Salute This Man's Commute

August 24, 2005 — By Kevin Murphy, The Kansas City Star

ST. LOUIS — As Americans worry over high gas prices, Jeff Kline glides along for less than a penny a day in his shiny new velomobile.

His what?

"People want to know what it is," Kline says, standing alongside the narrow, 9-foot-long fiberglass vehicle he got two months ago. "I tell them it is a motorized bicycle."

Picture Fred Flintstone, running on the ground to get his car going before it zips away under its own power. Kline starts pedaling, and then batteries take over to move the vehicle along at an average cruising speed of about 22 mph.

But Kline didn't spend $7,500 to amuse people. Hybrid vehicles are being taken seriously as people look for ways to avoid rising fuel expenses and be conservation-conscious. Sales of cars partly powered by batteries are soaring in the United States.

"Today's gas prices are creating significant interest in fuel-efficient vehicles, hybrids in particular," said Jim Kliesch, research associate for the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy in Washington.

Kline's velomobile, made in the Netherlands, is a hybrid among hybrids.

While there are more than 1,000 velomobiles in Europe, there are only about 45 in the United States, said Ethan Davis, who operates a Web site called velomobiles.net. The majority are pedal-only, Davis said.

Kline said he has the only velomobile in Missouri or Kansas. He also has one of the country's two Aerorider models, a fully enclosed vehicle with turn signals, lights and other features that make it drive like a car even though it is technically a bicycle. It does not require vehicle plates or registration.

"There is definitely a uniqueness factor to it," Kline said.

Kline said he gets plenty of double takes as he clips along in regular traffic lanes during his 28-mile round-trip commute to work in suburban St. Louis. He stays on side streets with speed limits of 35 mph or less, feels safe and, he said, other drivers show him respect on the road, often giving him a wave and a smile.

"People are not sure it's a bike or a car and so they tend to treat it like a car and give you more space," Kline said.

Kline said he can operate the vehicle entirely on pedals, entirely on batteries or in combination -- his usual method. His top speed has been 36 mph, and his record time for the 14-mile trip between home and work is 32 minutes.

Kline, 43, is a data analyst for Biomedical Systems, a Maryland Heights company that helps conduct clinical drug trials. Kline persuaded the company owner, a bike enthusiast, to have the company pay part of the cost of the vehicle, which has a Biomedical logo on each side.

Another employee of Biomedical Systems, Bruce Stahl, said Kline gets some kidding. "It's something to see his little three-wheeler parked between two Suburbans," he said.

But most people admire what Kline has done, Stahl said. And as gasoline prices creep ever higher, Kline looks pretty smart, said Andrew Kroehnke, another co-worker.

"More and more people are agreeing with him -- he is saving money while we are spending it," Kroehnke said.

Kline, who also has a two-door car and a minivan for himself, his wife and three children, said the only energy cost of his velomobile is charging the batteries. That has been calculated at less than a penny for 50 miles of travel.

Kline says, however, that he does not ever expect to cover the cost of his velomobile through fuel savings.

"To truly get your money back, you would have to go completely car-free," he said. He could then eliminate insurance, maintenance and other costs.

Still, Kline said, saving money is one reason he has the velomobile, along with wanting to exercise, reduce pollution and conserve fuel.

"You know you are doing something good; you are avoiding passive riding in a car," Kline said.

Davis said he is trying to raise money to get U.S. licensing for sale of one of the pedal-only velomobile models. Velomobiles should become more popular when more people, especially bikers, know about them, Davis said.

But no one should expect Americans to turn suddenly to hybrid vehicles, said John Brooking, founder of a fledgling Maine-based environmental group called the Organization of Petroleum Avoiding Consumers, or OPAC.

"It's going to be gradual," said Brooking, who rides a bike five miles to his job as a computer programmer. "It's not like overnight everyone is going to change."

Brooking said, however, that as hybrids become more visible and gas prices keep rising, "enough people will start paying attention" to the need to burn less fuel.

Stahl said the way the media cover a hybrid such as Kline's could help make it popular.

"My concern is for the media to create a wow factor," Stahl said. "It has to be a cool thing to have."

OTHER VEHICLE OPTIONS

--For people who want small carlike vehicles without pedaling, the next step up is something commonly called a neighborhood electric vehicle, basically a golf cart with a top, windows, lights and other features. They generally are licensed to be used on roads with speed limits of up to 35 mph.

--There are about 30,000 such vehicles licensed in the United States, said Jennifer Watts, marketing communications associate for the Electric Drive Transportation Association in Washington. They operate on rechargeable batteries.

--As for full-fledged cars, hybrids such as the Toyota Prius are becoming more popular. Toyota reported selling 9,191 Prius cars in July, up 92 percent from a year earlier. The Prius saves on fuel by using supplementary battery power.

--Toyota plans to have 10 different types of hybrid vehicles, ranging from sport-utility vehicles to small cars, within the next few years, while Ford Motor Co. has said it will have five different hybrid models by 2008. A new law granting tax credits to hybrid buyers is intended to boost sales.

To see more of The Kansas City Star, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.kansascity.com.

Source: Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

[Another "precise" technique to genetically engineer plants. It's
supposed to work, "in theory".]

GM plants use carbon nanofibres
August 15, 2005
Azonano.com
http://www.azonano.com/

Researchers are, according to this story, developing new techniques that
use nanoparticles for smuggling foreign DNA into cells.

The story says that, for example, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the
US Department of Energy lab that played a major role in the production
of enriched uranium for the Manhattan Project, researchers have hit upon
a nano-technique for injecting DNA into millions of cells at once.
Millions of carbon nanofibres are grown sticking out of a silicon chip
with strands of synthetic DNA attached to the nanofibres. Living cells
are then thrown against and pierced by the fibres, injecting the DNA
into the cells in the process.

Timothy McKnight, engineer, Oak Ridge Laboratory, was quoted as saying,
"It's like throwing a bunch of baseballs against a bed of nails ... We
literally throw the cells onto the fibers, and then smash the cells into
the chip to further poke the fibers into the cell."

The story adds that Oak Ridge has entered into collaboration with the
Institute of Paper Science and Technology in a project aimed to use this
technique for genetic manipulation of loblolly pine, the primary source
of pulpwood for the paper industry in the USA.

Unlike existing genetic engineering methods, the technique developed by
Oak Ridge scientists does not pass modified traits on to further
generations because, in theory, the DNA remains attached to the carbon
nanofibre, unable to integrate into the plants' own genome. The
implication is that it would be possible to reprogram cells for one time
only. According to Oak Ridge scientists, this relieves concerns about
gene flow associated with genetically modified plants, where genes are
transferred between unrelated organisms or are removed or rearranged
within a species.

The story asks if the new technique enables researchers to selectively
switch on or off a key trait such as fertility, will seed corporations
use the tiny terminators to prevent farmers from saving and re-using
harvested seed - compelling them to return to the commercial seed market
every year to obtain the activated genetic trait they need?

SACRAMENTO, CA -- Gubernatorial candidate Gary Ashford today in the
state capital launched with power & compassion his campaign to
'straighten out the problem of illegal aliens'.

'Some very confused politicians are suggesting illegal aliens
should be eligible for drivers' licenses' said the burly contender,
48. 'That is a very short-sighted, indeed stupid, idea,' he affirmed
from the buddy-seat of his Screamin' Eagle boosted hawg.

'This nation has never admitted to racism as a basis for
politics, and we must not do so now. We stand against racism. We
hold that it will be best for all legitimate interests if the USA at
last gets serious about illegal aliens. This son of mine at my side
- does it matter whether his mother is from Japan? Should it matter
whether he gets mistaken for a native Mexican, and victimised by
insecure white racists? No; race is not the issue. What is at issue
is, simply, law & order.'

'The only hope for minimizing racism is to insist that
citizens are equal before the law - regardless of race. We have
some way to go, but that is the only correct goal.

'But non-citizens do not, in the real world, in any country,
have rights equal to those of citizens of the nation. The world
today is organised into nation-states, and each of those countries
denies to non-citizens some rights which are guaranteed to its
citizens.

'The USA, notably California, has cynically exploited
illegal immigrants, many from Mexico, as low-paid labour, often in
dirty & dangerous processes. Many stunts have been staged to create
the impression that these 'wetbacks' are not wanted by the federal or
state government on behalf of the owners of agribusiness.

Candidate Ashford brought on - in more senses than one -
singer Joan Baez, who sang as a duet with him W Guthrie's moving
'Deportee'. Mrs Ashford declared gamely that she was sticking to
him. They roared off on his hawg.

Gubernatorial incumbent Beeug Ornie could not be contacted for comment.

--
Robt Mann
Mulgoon Professor emeritus of Environmental Studies, U of Auckland
consultant stirrer & motorcyclist
P O Box 28878, Remuera, Auckland 1005, New Zealand (9) 524 2949 Robt Mann
http://www.kuratrading.com/HTMLArticles/writings.htm

RadioNZ 'Checkpoint' 24-8-05
jottings by R Mann

Mary Wilson RadioNZ Carey College is a pvte school catering for about 50 children. We've just interviewed the principal; now the commissioner for children, Cindy Kiro.

MW You find this quite upsetting - but it isn't illegal is it?

CK not as far as I know - but it's irresponsible. The debate is borne out by the wording of the leaflet - using 'spanking' not 'smacking', and confusing 'hitting' with smacking*. It is a very unhelpful msg.

MW Not illegal for parents to hit their children.

CL I've spent time reviewing all the evidence - see report last year on our website. The evidence says overwhelmingly that what works is affirming good behaviour as in Little Angels programmes on TV. Do the best by positively affirming good behaviour. Focussing on negative behaviour
If you want children to develop moral conscience, behaving non-violently, model that.

MW But if parents think it can be done with love, anything you might do won't change their mind.

CK That is precisely why we're having a debate about repealling s59 Crimes Act.

MW Meanwhile can you do anything about the school?

CK Not entirely sure - but have written to the principal and intend to follow thru. It's wrong for the school sending out info on how to hit children. There's lots of people that can help.

* This rort is breathtaking in its Goebbelesque boldness. Kiro, S Bradford list-MP, and their allies, are the prime - indeed I suspect the only - offenders in exactly this regard, yet now CK has the gall to pose as complaining about exactly this confusing misuse of the word 'hitting'.

Subject: [ecoversity] Situation: How Far American Christianity Has Fallen...!
Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2005 01:13:38 -0700 (PDT)
From: fred woody
Reply-To: ecoversity@yahoogroups.com
To: ecoversity@yahoogroups.com

This is really very sad in a way ... all three versions
of the Ten Commandments include that one about...
"Thou shalt not kill".

1. That particular commandment prohibits murder. We have to kill to live; neither Judaism nor Christianity has ever been confused about that.
2. The headline 'Cuthroat Christans' vaguely implies that Christians tend to commit more murders than some other unspecified groups. Their last major religious wars were centuries ago. Within the past one century, the top-ranking mass murderers have been Stalin, Mao, and other militant atheists.

Or, if you insist on centuries-old evidence as allegedly relevant to what Christianity offers today, look into the all-time record-holders the Mongols.

R

http://www.wfmynews2.com/news/local_state/local_article.aspx?storyid=47339

Reverend Pat Robertson Says US Should Kill Venezuelan President
Associated Press, Maila Rible
8/22/2005

Virginia Beach, VA -- The founder of the Christian
Broadcasting Network says the United States should
assassinate Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chavez.

On Monday's broadcast of "The 700 Club," the Reverend
Pat Robertson said, "We have the ability to take him
out, and I think the time has come that we exercise
that ability."

Chavez, who often expresses strident opposition to US
policies and influence, has spent the last several
days in Cuba meeting with the island's communist
leader Fidel Castro.

Calling the president of oil-rich Venezuela a threat
to US security, the Reverend Robertson said
assassinating Chavez would be "a whole lot cheaper
than starting a war." He added, "It's a whole lot
easier to have some of the covert operatives do the
job and get it over with."

NZ Election 2005 - Actor Sam Neill's address to the Labour Launch

Sam Neill is a member of The Sustainability Council
------------------------------------------------------------------------

21 August 2005
Auckland Town Hall.

I just returned to New Zealand yesterday, and it's always
good to be home. I have to say, in a tense and anxious
world, this seems like a pretty sensible and sane place to
be. God bless these shores.

First of all an apology - As they say in Washington, I
misspoke! I've been quoted before as saying a Don Brash -
led government would put this country back 20 years. I was
wrong. It's more like 30 years.

Today I am here to support this government, this
fair-minded and sensible government. And I am here to
support Helen Clark. Because I believe that in this
country (which I love) we now recognise and hold to
certain principles. And these principles keep us secure
and define us as a people and a nation - and we must not
give them up.

We have come to recognize that we are people of the
Pacific Ocean. That the Pacific sustains us and demands
our protection and that no one has any business polluting
it, over exploiting it or testing their nuclear weapons in
it. And here I give thanks to Norman Kirk.

We have come to recognize and believe that our land and
our waters should be, and remain, nuclear free. And here I
give thanks to David Lange.

And we now recognise that we should never blindly follow
our friends and allies if the cause is not just, or the
reasoning is not wise. And here I give thanks to Helen
Clark

(Because make no mistake - this war in Iraq is a bloody
fiasco. It is cruel, misguided, counter productive,
illegal, and founded on lies, and if Don Brash had his way,
we'd be there by lunchtime.)

These are principles, by which we as New Zealanders know
ourselves, and by which we are known in the world, and in
which we rightly take pride.

And we should utterly condemn those who would sacrifice
our principles, our independence and our security, in the
vain quest for some kind of free trade agreement.
(Let me say - in my view there is NOTHING "free" about
today's "free trade".)

We also believe we need the best possible health services
and education. We must and will do better - it is the
measure of a good society how it cares for children, for
the old and the frail and the ill. But let us be clear:
only a fool or a fraudster would tell you that you can
have better health and education AND give more tax cuts to
the rich - it cannot be done!

And we have also come to understand and believe that this
country owes a fair deal to ALL New Zealanders - Maori,
Pakeha, Pacific Islander, immigrant, Asian, Muslim and so
on.

My own family is not untypical these days, and is a kind
of New Zealand story - we are Pakeha, Maori, Asian, even
African American. Some of us have been here 1000 years,
some 150, some are newly arrived. But we can't remember
which because we are together, we love each other, and we
love where we live. We are all New Zealanders. And when
people, as in this election, start Maori bashing, and
Asian bashing, and treaty bashing, and Muslim bashing, and
bashing single mums and so on - they're bashing my family,
and they're bashing my friends, and my neighbours, and my
society they are bashing New Zealand and I won't have it.

And that is why I support this government - a government
that is prepared to listen, to look for consensus, that
refuses to marginalize minorities, that seeks to bring us
together,

And take us forward to a peaceful and harmonious, secure
future.

Finally - the Prime Minister. I travel a great deal - but
you don't need to do that to know there are some dangerous
fools and scoundrels running the world today. And some
dangerous ideas.

It is to our great credit that we have a Prime Minister
that will stand up to these fools, and these ideas. When
she speaks she commands respect. She is a face and a voice
the world knows well. And the world respects New Zealand
in large part because of her.

And of course the team behind her. Ladies and gentlemen,
may I welcome onto the stage, Labour's senior team.

There are many things that give me pride in my country and
one of them is that we have a PM of the calibre of Helen
Clark.

She is a leader of courage and compassion, of strength and
vision of common sense and intelligence.

Ladies and gentlemen - accompanied by her husband Peter
Davis - the Prime Minister of New Zealand - Helen Clark..

PS. Feel free to flick this on,

BBC NEWS
The struggle over science

A POINT OF VIEW
By Harold Evans

In his weekly opinion column, Harold Evans considers rising concern in the
US over the Bush administration's hostility to science.

I used to get mad at the way it was left to America to bring to full
fruition fine achievements by Britain's scientists, inventors and
engineers. Take Alexander Fleming's penicillin, Frank Whittle's jet engine,
Alan Turing's computer and Robert Watson Watt's radar.

All these breakthroughs found their fullest exploitation in the United
States. Indeed, they all contributed to America's pre-eminence in
science-based manufacturing and services.

Think of the personal computer and wonder drugs, of the jumbo jetliner,
video games and the pacemaker, the laser that counts your groceries and the
laser, or the global positioning satellite, that tells you to turn left at
the roundabout.

That is why there is furious bewilderment here in the universities and the
higher levels of business at the chilly indifference - not to say hostility
- of the Bush White House to science. Actually, I've seen a movie like this
once before and I know how it ends.

When I was a science reporter in Britain in the 50s, it was a thrill to
visit the centre of government research, the National Physical Laboratory
at Teddington, Middlesex. It was hallowed ground.

I was in the lab where Watson Watt did his breakthrough work on radar in
time for the Royal Air Force to find the Luftwaffe in the invisible skies
and win the Battle of Britain.

I stood in awe before that much-photographed early computer - the
wall-length monster called ACE - designed in 1945 by the wartime
code-breaker, Alan Turing. It was then the fastest in the world, spewing
out instant answers to reams of calculations I was allowed to feed into its
innards.

Inertia

You would have thought that the National Physical Laboratory would be the
darling of every British Government. Not so. I was invited to visit at that
time because they were concerned the government did not fully appreciate
that science in peace was as vital as science in war.

The researchers were doing what they could on a tiny budget and even that
was about to be cut. Not just in the government, but in business and
society, there was a general indifference to science and scientific
education that seems odd today.

The consequence of that inertia in government and lethargy in business was
that the US came to dominate the computer industry, despite all the
brilliant work of Turing at Manchester University and others at Ferranti.

Young Americans are opting for better paid law and medicine over science
and engineering and visa restrictions on bright foreign students further
dilute the talent pool

The question now tormenting Americans - who don't have a natural aptitude
for worry - is whether the same writing is on the wall for them. Vinton
Cerf is one who thinks it is, and he is no ordinary hand-wringer.

He's the mathematician who is often referred to as the "father of the
internet". From 1972 to 1986, he was one of the key people in the US
Defense Department who made it possible for distant and different computers
to exchange packets of information - and that's the foundation of the
internet on top of which rides the world wide web today.

Nothing daunted, he is now working on the protocols for planet to planet
communication. In short, he knows whereof he speaks. And Cerf has just
emitted a cry of pain.

The Bush administration does not take kindly to anyone who has drawn a
federal dollar being critical - and being critical moreover in the
businessman's' bible, the Wall street Journal.

Talent pool

So it is brave of Cerf to risk future disfavour and inveigh against "the
stewards of our national destiny" for cutting money from key areas of
research in its 2006 budget. That's a recipe, says Cerf, for "irrelevance
and decline."

The president's science adviser, John Marburger, concedes that the budget
is "pretty close to flat" but stoutly maintains "we are not going
backwards", pointing to an extra $733 million for research and development
(R&D) funding.

In fact, this is the first time in a decade that federal funding has failed
to keep pace with inflation. And in the entrails of the complex budget - no
one should go there alone - you find there is indeed less money in real
terms for what's called basic research and less for Cerf's area of
particular concern, computer science.

BBC NEWS: AUDIO
Hear A Point of View in the BBC Radio Player

Funding university research for that has been falling through the first
Bush term and is now about half what it was in 2001.

All told, anyway, America now ranks sixth in the world in the percentage of
its wealth it spends on R&D. Yet the downward trend isn't solely the result
of the parsimony of "the hick in the White House", as one motor mouth put
it.

It is largely a reflection of rising educational standards around the
world, so it's a comparative decline. In real terms, no single country can
even come close to matching the US in the total scientific investment by
government, corporations and foundations.

So what is there to worry about? Well, there are some facts Americans find
hard to swallow after decades of striding the frontiers of science. Fewer
of the Nobel prizes go to American scientists, down to about half from a
peak in the 90s. Papers from Americans occupied 61% of published research
in 1983, now the total is just under 29%.

'Freedom of inquiry'

It may not get better soon since a higher proportion of young Americans are
opting for better paid law and medicine over science and engineering and
visa restrictions on bright foreign students further dilute the talent
pool. "The rest of the world is catching up," says John E. Jankowski, a
senior analyst at the National Science Foundation.

Since some of these trends have been developing on the watch of presidents
from Reagan onwards, I sought a science policy health check from luminaries
in the field.

Professor Neal Lane at Rice University was the science adviser reporting
directly to President Clinton, but as a former director of the National
Science Foundation he cannot be dismissed as partisan.

Like others I spoke with, he is less concerned with the international
league tables and the familiar salami processes of the budget, than the
well-documented readiness of the Bush administration to manipulate and
suppress scientific findings - manifestly to appease industrial interests
and religious constituencies.

This is not just on global warming and stem cells, currently in the news,
but on a whole range of issues - lead and mercury poisoning in children,
women's health, birth control, safety standards for drinking water, forest
management, air pollution and on and on.

"It's disturbing," Professor Lane told me. "This is the first time to the
best of my knowledge through successive Republican and Democratic
administrations, that the issue of scientific integrity has reared its
head."

Of similar mind is Russell Train, an administrator of the Environmental
Protection Agency under Republican Presidents Nixon and Ford. He says: "How
radically we have moved away from regulation based on professional analysis
of scientific data ...to regulation controlled by the White House and
driven by political considerations."

The White House denies such accusations and says it makes decisions based
on the best available science.

But these two speak for what is now a considerable body of alarmed and
angry scientists. For more than a year, the nationally well-regarded Union
of Concerned Scientists - a non-partisan body - has been receiving hundreds
of signatures backing the Union's call for regulatory and legislative
action to restore scientific integrity to policy making. To date no fewer
than 7,600 scientists have signed, including 49 Nobel Laureates.

Perhaps another voice should be added to the clamour. "Science relies on
freedom of inquiry, and one of the hallmarks of that freedom is objectivity
- government relies on the impartial perspective of science for
guidance..." Those are the words of President Bush in 1990 - George Herbert
Walker, the father - not the son.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/magazine/4172504.stm

Published: 2005/08/23 08:46:34 GMT

© BBC MMV

Ivan Handler
Networking for Democracy
ihandler@igc.org

How Terrorism Obstructs Radical Islam
by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
August 23, 2005

Do terrorist atrocities in the West, such as the attacks of September 11, 2001 and those in Bali, Madrid, Beslan, and London, help radical Islam achieve its goal of gaining power?

No, they are counterproductive. That's because radical Islam has two distinct wings - one violent and illegal, the other lawful and political - and they exist in tension with each other. The lawful strategy has proven itself effective, but the violent approach gets in its way.

The violent wing is foremost represented by the world's no. 1 fugitive, Osama bin Laden. The popular and powerful prime minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdog˜an, represents the lawful wing. Even as "Al Qaeda has more state adversaries than nearly any force in history," as Daniel C. Twining observes, political imams like Yusuf al-Qaradawi instruct huge audiences on Al-Jazeera television and visit with the mayor of London, Ken Livingstone. As Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr skulks around Iraq, looking for a role, Ayatollah Sistani dominates the country's political life.

Yes, terrorism kills enemies, instills fear, and disrupts the economy. Yes, it boosts morale and recruits non-Muslims to Islam and Muslims to Islamism. It creates an opportunity for Islamists to fight for their favorite causes, such as the elimination of Israel or the disengagement of coalition forces from Iraq. It provides, as Mark Steyn notes, intelligence information on the enemy. And yes, it prompts politically correct talk about Islam being a "religion of peace," with Muslims portrayed as victims.

But for two main reasons, terrorism does radical Islam more harm than good.
First, it alarms and galvanizes Westerners. For example, the July 7 bombings took place during the G8 summit in Scotland, where world leaders were focused on global warming, aid to Africa, and macro-economic issues. In a London minute, the politicians then redirected their attention toward counterterrorism. Thus did the terrorists stiffen, as Mona Charen points out, "whatever small residue of resolve remains in flaccid Western civilization."

More broadly, Mr. Twining notes, "Al Qaeda's rise has produced the kind of great power entente not seen since the Concert of Europe took shape in 1815." (Even the Madrid bombings, an apparent exception, led to a marked strengthening of counterterrorism measures by Spain and other European countries.)

Second, terrorism obstructs the quiet work of political Islamism. In tranquil times, organizations like the Muslim Council of Britain and the Council on American-Islamic Relations effectively go about their business, promoting their agenda to make Islam "dominant" and imposing dhimmitude (whereby non-Muslims accept Islamic superiority and Muslim privilege). Westerners generally respond like slowly boiled frogs are supposed to, not noticing a thing.

Thus does the Muslim Council of Britain delight in a knighthood from the queen, enthusiastic support from Prime Minister Blair, influence within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and £250,000 in taxpayer money from the Department of Trade and Industry.

Across the Atlantic, CAIR insinuates itself into an array of important North American institutions, including the FBI, NASA, and Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper. It has won endorsements from high-ranking politicians, both Republican (Florida's governor, Jeb Bush) and Democrat (the House Democratic leader, Rep. Nancy Pelosi). It has organized a meeting of Muslims with Canada's prime minister Paul Martin. It has gotten a Hollywood studio to change a feature film plot and a television network to run a public service announcement. It has goaded a radio station to fire a talk-show host.

Terrorism impedes these advances, stimulating hostility to Islam and Muslims. It brings Islamic organizations under unwanted scrutiny by the media, the government, and law enforcement. CAIR and MCB then have to fight rearguard battles. The July 7 bombings dramatically (if temporarily) disrupted the progress of "Londonistan," Britain's decline into multicultural lassitude and counterterrorist ineptitude.

Some Islamists recognize this problem. One British writer admonished fellow Muslims on a Web site: "Don't you know that Islam is growing in Europe??? What the heck are you doing mingling things up???" Likewise, a Muslim watch repairer in London observed, "We don't need to fight. We are taking over!" Soumayya Ghannoushi of the University of London bitterly points out that Al-Qaeda's major achievements consist of shedding innocent blood and "fanning the flames of hostility to Islam and Muslims."

Things are not as they seem. Terrorism hurts radical Islam and helps its opponents. The violence and victims' agony make this hard to see, but without education by murder, the lawful Islamist movement would make greater gains.
From www.danielpipes.org | Original article available at: www.danielpipes.org/article/2888

MannGram®: clarifying "the" theory of evolution
May 2005

Which aspects of the theory of evolution are in dispute? A thickening fog of verbiage now makes it harder than ever for students to discover fact, and to understand theory, regarding evolution.

A few hundred words can, I hope, do some justice to the urgent task of clarifying "the" theory of evolution. (I've written a few thousand words elsewhere - some at my page http://www.kuratrading.com/HTMLArticles/writings.htm )

1. Fact as distinct from Theory
The term 'evolution' means the appearance over time (Margulis & Schwartz 199 of new life-forms - new species, and larger taxa (genus, family, order, class, phylum, kingdom). Science has inferred from a large body of observations that life appeared on our planet as blue-green algae 4 x 10^9 year BP; later emergences include complex animals 1 x 10^9 y, mammals 2 x 10^8 y, and man somewhere in the region 10^6 -10^5 y BP. Thus, insofar as facts can ever be confirmed regarding pre-human processes, evolution is a fact - in the sense that new life-forms have appeared over billions of years. Most species were created much later than the first.

However, evidence for change in descent from one to another has been difficult to come by and is sparser, at least to date, than sometimes assumed.

2. Theory
To explain evolution, as to explain any process in nature, all categories of cause will be required. The 4 categories of cause, originally defined by Aristotle, hold key potential for improving evolution theory. The recent restricting by e.g. Dawkins of causality in evolution theory to only 2 categories of cause is a main confusion in evolution theory.

The biologist John Morton (1972 Ch.1), noting that at Aristotle's period in the development of science he was in no position to understand chemical process, offered a more modern version of the 4 causes which I précis and commend for wide spreading:

* * *

What are the causes of the bottle of claret I'm now decanting?

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

The *efficient* cause, as in Aristotle's prototypical example 'the making of a statue', is the action of the yeast on the grape sugars and some minor components, a process resulting in aqueous ethanol and some minor chemicals characteristic of claret.

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

Aristotle's *formal* cause is in this example the 'claret idea' in Babich's mind.

* * *

Some rationalisation for the label 'final' is offered by Temple (1923):

This is the essence of "intellection" or science, that it asks "why" perpetually; as soon as it is answered, it asks "Why?" again ... But if from some other department of Mind's activity an answer is suggested, the intellect (if not impeded by "intellectualist" dogmatism) will gladly accept it. And Mind does accept as final an explanation in terms of Purpose and Will; for this (and, so far as our experience goes, this alone) combines efficient and final causation. "Why is this canvas covered with paint?" "Because I painted it." "Why did you do that?" "Because I hoped to create a thing of beauty for the delight of myself and others."

I believe this Categories of Cause concept - surely one of the most important ideas in the whole of philosophy - is the lever to break the confused logjam of "creationist"® fundamentalism, 'intelligent design theory' IDT®, and neoDarwinism.

NeoDarwinism, the current mainstream scientific theory, explains change in descent by mutation (usually said to be random) followed by natural selection which narrows the variance among the mutants by selecting against the less fit. Those processes, involving only material causes and efficient causes, are necessary, but not sufficient, to explain evolution.

What can be said to explain - ascribe all the causes of - an organism and its evolution? DNA is a material cause of all (so far as is known) organisms, and operates as parts of efficient causes through the several types of RNA and the many enzymes essential for biosynthesis of proteins & other biochemicals; but DNA is surely not a Final cause. As Morton has recently put it, DNA is not the kind of thing that can cause other things as if paints could leap from tubes to create a Turner, or vibrations & percussions form themselves into a work of Mozart. A person implementing a plan - a final cause - is a prerequisite for such things to come into existence. This is a clearer way of putting the point which IDT® emphasizes. No amount of explanation in the categories of material & efficient causes can suffice to explain life.

Technology - and more widely, all human acts willed to modify the universe - cannot be explained without using the concept Final Cause. The only type of final cause - person acting with a purpose - is, in the militant atheist Dawkins' approach, human will. Thus "who designed this watch?" would be an allowed question, but "who designed this frog?" disallowed - as an assumption of atheism. But ecology, and evolution of ecosystems, are purposeful, and Dawkins' descriptions of evolution are always laden with the language of purpose.

How is a modern biology to deal with Final cause?

A conservative answer today could be to continue the methodological convention that science will pursue only efficient (and material) causes, but also to advocate that science should be taught & practised in a context of philosophy acknowledging all the categories of Causes. This can be readily done consistent with the USA constitutional amendment so misrepresented by USA courts this past half-century; there need be no tendency to establish any church with legal privileges.

If science consists in discovering materials (e.g. chemical elements & compounds), energies (so far just 4), and forms (e.g. species of organism) and elucidating qualitatively & quantitatively the processes - including energy conversions - which result in new physical situations, then material and efficient causes are the only causes science can study. But this methodological restriction in the scope of scientific theory does not constitute any reason to say that no final causes operate in evolution. How much science can hint about these final causes remains to be seen, but will not amount to much; natural theology - the study of nature with intent to infer who created it, without recourse to revelation - is only a small part of comprehensive theology. Philosophy and theology will have to revive for the metaphysics needed to study final and formal causes in evolution.

The mainstream Christian doctrine is that evolution is God's process for creating new types of organism. Recent, and eccentric, is the fundamentalist claim that evolution is refuted by Genesis 1-3 & 8-9. These very figurative sections are among the most myth-laden biblical texts and were written long before science. Their theological wealth is neglected by the novel mischievous pretence ("creationism") to understand them as literally contradicting science.
Discussion of final cause in biology may well begin with Hume's quip "[t]his world, for aught [any man] knows, is very faulty and imperfect compared to a superior standard; and was only the first rude essay of some infant deity, who afterwards abandoned it, ashamed of his lame performance." As a Christian, I'm willing to discuss starting as far back as that sceptical position. But anyhow, let's go forward, shall we, IDTers? And I challenge Dawkins to a public debate about his depauperate 2-causes philosophy.

= = =

Readings

Broom, N., 1998. How Blind is The Watchmaker? Aldershot: Ashgate ; rev edn IVP 2001.
Flew, A., 1989. Introduction to Western Philosophy p.159 London: Thames & Hudson.
Margulis, L. & Schwartz, K. V., 1998. Five Kingdoms New York: Freeman.
Morton, J., 1972. Man, Science and God Auckland & London: Collins.
Temple, W., 1923 . Mens Creatrix - an essay Macmillan.
Temple, W., 1934 . Nature, Man and God Macmillan.

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/york220805.html

Hydrogen Hoopla

by Richard York

In a time of rising concentrations of carbon dioxide in the earth's
atmosphere and ever more prominent signs of global warming, General Motors
and other apologists for global capitalism are seeking to assure us of
their concern for the environment and their commitment to move beyond
fossil fuels. Unsurprisingly, they do not propose putting a stop to the
capitalist dream of ever expanding accumulation among the corporate elite
that, to a large extent, drives environmental degradation. Nor do they
advocate the more modest goal of moving away from the unsustainable
automobile-centric transportation system now dominant in the United States
and a growing number of other nations, and toward a more rational system
based on mass public transit and pedestrian-centric development. The
auto-industry's solution is simple: hydrogen. In a recent ad in the May
2nd issue of The New Yorker, GM informs us that they are "eliminating
emissions and doubters" through their development of hydrogen fuel cell
technology. Their implicit assumption is clear: no change to the
prevailing political economy and social relations is necessary. All that
society is faced with is a challenge that can be overcome with technology.
And, of course, as at least those of us who grew up in the United States
have been told since elementary school, nothing spurs technological
innovation quite like the free market. Yankee ingenuity will save us all,
as long as the radicals and malcontents can be prevented from meddling in
the business of business.

Perhaps I will be forgiven if I do not have the fullest of confidence that
GM, the company that has a history of undermining public transportation
and fighting fuel economy standards and safety regulations -- and that
brought you that gas-guzzling danger of the road, the Hummer -- is as
concerned about the fate of the global environment as you and I are. GM
is apparently undertaking some quite interesting projects. Their website
reports that on April 1, 2005:

Senator H. Rodham Clinton joined GM and the U.S. military for the
unveiling and ceremonial delivery of a GM fuel cell-powered pickup
truck built for the U.S. military. Developing partnerships with
customers like the U.S. military, whose goals match GM's, will advance
a hydrogen economy, help gain real-world experience with hydrogen and
fuel cells and create the potential for additional future joint
transportation ventures with the military.

Although it is comforting to know that GM is teaming up with Hillary
Rodham Clinton and the U.S. military -- that institution known for its
concern for preserving a livable world and "whose goals match GM's," after
all -- one is left to wonder whether the hydrogen economy will in fact
emerge, and, if it does, whether it will be environmentally sustainable.
Although I have no doubt that the U.S. military wants to be assured that
they can continue waging war long into the future, even after fossil fuel
resources are depleted, I suspect that perhaps something other than a
sincere effort to reduce environmental degradation is going on here.

Hydrogen is no miracle solution to our energy problems. First and
foremost, it is important to recognize that no reserves of hydrogen are
just lying around waiting to be exploited. On the contrary, to generate
hydrogen takes energy -- energy that typically is supplied by the
combustion of fossil fuels -- to liberate hydrogen atoms from their bonds
with other atoms in molecules such as the common hydrogen-oxygen molecule
H2O (water). Due to the law of conservation of energy, it takes at least
as much energy to break such a bond as one receives back when a fuel cell
recombines the hydrogen and oxygen to form water. So, although it is true
that a hydrogen-powered car can in principle operate while only emitting
water, the ultimate impact of a hydrogen transportation system depends on
how the hydrogen is produced. In effect, hydrogen is only an energy
storage device (like a battery), not a primary source of energy. Hydrogen
fuel cell technology, then, does nothing to address the reasons for our
extraordinary energy demands or to spur development of renewable sources
of energy.

Might it just be possible that GM's talk about hydrogen cars is merely a
ploy to avoid taking serious actions to address our energy problems?
Although I don't wish to disillusion some of the more naïve readers out
there, I feel impelled to suggest that GM only sees the myriad of
environmental problems they are generating as a public relations problem,
and that their efforts are all about PR, not about environmental
sustainability. Perhaps we should not sit back and wait for GM, the U.S.
military, and Hillary Rodham Clinton to deliver a clean, green hydrogen
economy.

Richard York teaches sociology at the University of Oregon. His research,
which focuses primarily on human interaction with the natural environment,
has been published in Ambio, American Sociological Review, Ecological
Economics, Gender & Society, Human Ecology Review, Organization and
Environment, and other scholarly journals.

Hi Robert

Thanks for your thoughtful response, and for taking the trouble to write. If I do get to Auckland I may give you a call.

Many thanks,

barney

----- Original Message -----

From: Robt Mann
To: bzwartz
Sent: Sunday, August 21, 2005
Subject: Oz discussion of ID

I insert comments from a theistic evolution viewpoint.

R


Let's have a proper scientific debate
August 18 2005
http://theage.com.au/text/articles/2005/08/17/1123958129538.html

Intelligent design evokes strong responses. Time for cool investigation, writes Barney Zwartz.

Opponents of intelligent design theories fear the evolution debate has been hijacked by the fundamentalists. I fear they are right, but it's scientistic (blind faith in science) fundamentalists, not religious.

>sorry - it's both.

Intelligent design theorists say evolution is largely demonstrable but is not the result of mere chance. The traditional

>I object to this label for scientistic neoDarwinism. The really traditional approach is exemplified by John Morton, Neil Broom, Wm Temple, etc.

account of a steady but gradual development, they say, is at odds with the incredible complexity of even the simplest cell, whose structures are interdependent and could not develop without each other.

Intelligent design theorists also point to the "anthropic principle", the recognition in the past 30 years that all the seemingly arbitrary constants in physics have one strange thing in common - they are precisely the values needed for the universe to produce life.

>This is all too rarely mentioned

The concept of intelligent design was developed by non-Christian scientists such as molecular biologist Michael Behe

>It is no secret that he is a Catholic. I see no evidence that this distorts his IDT reasoning. Anyone who tries to wipe Behe's IDT because he's a Christian should also wipe Dawkins because he is what Zwartz later describes him as.

, not because of the presuppositions of faith but because science took them there, through difficulties in making the facts fit the theory. (This, after all, is how scientific progress is supposed to happen.)

The trouble is that evolution is an absolute article of faith with some scientists, at least as deep-rooted as God is with creationists. They believe science has or will have the answer to everything, and no other discourse is needed.

>yes that is the current scientism fad.

Take scientist Richard Dawkins, as extreme an anti-religious bigot as I've come across, who says anyone who doesn't believe in evolution is either stupid, insane or wicked. That's a radical moral judgement for a cool, dispassionate believer in rationality.
I suspect the reason for this clenched-fist, eyes-shut commitment to an evolution beyond questioning is that it is the only counter-explanation to God for the existence of life. Doubt that, and the chasm beckons. It is not science that drives people such as Dawkins but an obsession psychologists might be best equipped to explain.

>check

Let me emphasise that I am not against science, which is in general a brilliantly successful and beneficial field of human endeavour, and I do not fear its findings. Nor do I deny evolution. But it must be qualified.
What scientists should properly say is that evolution is the best explanation we have for the development of life, but it has lacunae and difficulties. Thus, like other "best explanations", such as Newtonian physics, it should be open to question.

But let anyone, theist or not, suggest this and hear the howls emerge from the temples of science and watch the defensive artillery deployed even before the arguments are digested. Take the case of Rick Sternberg, who was hounded out of his job as editor of the Smithsonian Institution's journal after publishing a piece sympathetic to intelligent design theory.

Sternberg got the usual approval from three scientific peers, but the article - on the pre-Cambrian fossil record - outraged the academic establishment because the American Association for the Advancement of Science has proclaimed that intelligent design is "unscientific by definition". And here's the point, put by the paper's author, Stephen Meyer: "Rather than critique the paper on its scientific merits, they appeal to a doctrinal statement." The case demonstrates fundamentalist evolutionists' insecurity. As Meyer says: "You don't resort to authoritarianism if you can answer it." Galileo, here we go again.

>This is a fair outline of that scandalous case.

Philosopher Anthony Flew, one of the world's most famous atheists, said last year that scientific developments, particularly in DNA, had led him to accept intelligent design. But he has not become a Christian.

>He announced that he had become a deist. I predict he cannot long dwell in that peculiar position.

That's because these are separate debates. Intelligent design may have theological implications beyond science, but that's not the business of scientists. Their business is to examine the arguments of irreducible complexity with an open mind. And suppose they do find evidence of design, then its author may be beyond the realms of science.
Now it is true that religious fundamentalists in the United States have seized on intelligent design and pushed it beyond science, but its claims shouldn't be discredited simply because of its fellow travellers.

>check

On this page on Friday, Melbourne University lecturer Robert Marshall attacked intelligent design as fundamentalist religious zealotry under another guise, and said the designer was an unprovable assertion. Certainly it is

>this is an unfortunate, excessively generous concession.

- and his counter-proposal of mere chance is equally unprovable. Chance does not produce changes; you need cause and effect for that.

>yes - that latter is the way out of the current confusion.

I agree that theology must not enter scientific endeavour. I want the intelligent design debate to be properly scientific. And I want proponents of science to stop claiming, as some do, that the answers in every field of human life lie within science.

>check - that scientism is the problem

Marshall says science deals with how, not why. If only scientists all really did that - and only that.

Barney Zwartz is religion editor.
Email: bzwartz@theage.com.au

The Legislative Council ... roughly corresponded to the
British House of Lords ...

In 1950 ... the new National Government appointed sufficient
of its supporters to give it a majority on the Legislative Council.
This group became known as the "Suicide Squad", for its members were
appointed for the express purpose of voing themselves out of office
and the Legislative Council out of existence!

- p. 84
anon

Our Country - post primary history course
a brief survey of New Zealand history and civics
13th printing extensively revised 1960 pp.227

This is a much better book than almost all recently-written NZ
history. I have suggested to some in Pol St that its author(s)
should be discovered & credited. It would need rather little
revision to re-enter school as a main textbook.

R

Press Release
Hon Pete Hodgson, Convenor, Ministerial Group on Climate Change

23 August 2005
Kyoto turns Paeroa gas to cash

Paeroa landfill gas energy project awarded emissions units.

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

This government's ratification of the Kyoto Protocol is set to result in more clean, green power flowing. HG Leach and Company Limited's Tirohia landfill gas project has been awarded 28,000 internationally tradable emissions units under the government's Projects to Reduce Emissions programme.

"This government is taking a responsible approach to climate change and managing our economy. The key to this is the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. Under it we are transforming our economy for growth in a world where greenhouse gas emissions are priced," says Convenor of the Ministerial Group on Climate Change Pete Hodgson.

"The Programme would not exist if we were not in Kyoto. It alone is forecast to help us save over 11 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions and has helped bring forward hundreds of megawatts of power projects."

HG Leach' proposed project would install and operate four modular electricity sets to produce power from landfill gas that would otherwise be flared at the Tirohia landfill near Paeroa. The electricity generated would be primarily fed into the local power supply network with some power being used on-site. The project is forecast to offset the emission of around 30,288 tonnes of carbon dioxide between 2008 and 2012; the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol.

"By tackling climate change in this way, this scheme is helping to protect the environment and the unique Kiwi lifestyle for future generations. At the same time, it will help meet the power needs of a growing regional economy in a sustainable way."

Under the Programme, units are awarded to projects that lead to a net reduction in emission against business as usual that would otherwise not go ahead and that are successful in a tender round. To date, 10 million units, which are internationally tradable, have been put out for tender.

The proposal is subject to normal planning processes.

ENDS

For those who haven't spotted a number with markedly exaggerated precision,
SCROLL DOWN








The estimated yield of fuel gas from the tip is uncertain in its 2nd figure. So, presumably is '28,000 internationally tradable emissions units', on which the calculation is based. Therefore 'around 30,288 tonnes of carbon dioxide' is a furphy, and the 'around' doesn't quite excuse the assertion of meaningless figures. For this PR, the number would be better stated as3 x 10^4 . However, our education system has never taught this extremely useful notation, so one would probably have to say 'around 30,000 tonne'.

All of this is of course before any shelf hapu gets activated to slap a claim on the revenue from the gas ...

I leave youse to apply the principle of aligning precision with the accuracy of what is being forecast to predictions of tax revenue ...

R

Instead of any discussion on important policies, the media have been largely wasting time on speculations about tax policies yet to be announced. I hope this item below will remind us that there are important policies, and the moral decay promoted by the Klark regime is vastly more important than any of the plausible tax changes.

R


Sent: Sunday, 21 August 2005
To: [a priest of the Ak cathedral parish]
Subject: Why Abortion is Always Evil
Dear Fr. [deleted]

As you will be aware, I attended the presentation yesterday morning on the Cathedral Restoration project.

Prior to the commencement of the meeting, I had a conversation with other attendees and the subject turned to the forthcoming general election.

One young lady (I do not know her name but she is a Reader), mentioned that she would never vote for the Destiny party because of their extremist policies.

I said that I had not heard any details of the Destiny policies and asked for an example of such "extremist" polices.

Her response was that Destiny wanted to outlaw abortion.

My response was that this was entirely in accordance with Catholic teaching - abortion was baby murder and has been condemned by the Church since day one. Her response was that if abortion was illegal, there would be back-street abortions "using coathangers".

This appears to imply "if it will happen anyway, there is no point in banning it".

To have a supposedly-devout baptised catholic spouting such nonsense was of concern to me. There are many things that devout catholics can, in good conscience, have divergent opinions on - abortion is not one of them.

You may wish to include this topic in one of your pre-election homilies. Any catholic who knowingly votes for a pro-abortion candidate is an accessory to murder and puts his/her [the catholic voter] eternal salvation at risk.

As our beloved late, great Holy Father Pope John Paul II said:

"Human life is sacred and inviolable at every moment of existence, including the initial phase which preceded birth. All human beings, from their mother's womb, belong to God who searches them and knows them, who forms them and knits them together with His own hands, who gazes on them when they are helpless embryos and already sees in them the adults of tomorrow whose days are numbered and whose vocation is even now written in the 'book of life'".

[As quoted in 'John Paul II Centre for Life Special Report' Spring 2005].

[name deleted]
Parishioner Cathedral Parish
Phone: xxx xxxx (Home)

MannGram®: theory behind gene-tampering
Dec 2003 rev. Aug 2005

Not only practising gene-manipulators but also a much wider range of scientists should speak out for much stricter control of gene-tampering because it is based on dud science.

Prof Richard Strohman has pointed out, in a sporadic small series of articles in Nature Biotech, many defects in the Lego model of biology which 'informs' the gene-tampering trade. Dogma long refuted is crucial among the axioms of the gene-jiggerers, e.g

* "one gene one protein",
* "only 4 letters in the DNA code",
* "randomness becomes utmost precision as we slam in synthetic nucleic acids by weapons-grade biolistics",
* "seen one redwood y' seen 'em all - especially once we've cloned & patented lo-lignin sequoia";
* etc etc.

The main characteristic of this set of slogans is that they are scientific drivel. The Schubert Letter (Nat Biotech Oct 2002 p. 969) would alone serve to refute them.

The main general scientific answer is that nature is far from random. The idea that slapping in - randomly ! - a few genes by radically unnatural processes will have more predictable effects than offering a whole genome of 10^4 - 10^5 genes in cross-pollination is wrong for the main reason that it assumes natural crosses to be random or nearly so. A top-level affirmation of this assumption was stated by main Monsanto-connected gene-jockeys Roger Beachy et bulk in their (Nat Biotech Nov 2002) 'enraged' response to the Schubert Letter:-

'The reality is that "unintentional consequences" are much more likely to occur in nature than in biotechnology because nature relies on the unintentional consequences of blind random genetic mutation and rearrangement to produce adaptive phenotypic results, whereas GM technology employs precise, specific, and rationally designed genetic modification toward a specific engineering goal.

'The immediate response to this furphy is that there's almost nothing random in nature. We know, admittedly, v little about the natural barriers to error in traditional breeding; that does not prove they're unreal or random. A gene-jockey of plants, Prof Patrick Brown, has made this & related points at www.psrast.org.

What is so precise, specific, or rational about GM as done so far? The answer is, very little indeed. Its outcomes are inherently unpredictable. The tiny minority of target cells that both survive and have incorporated somewhere in the genome the desired gene cassette will, in general, also develop other unforeseeable properties, e.g deviant metabolism generating toxins or allergens.

Indeed, the assertion of Beachy et al. is refuted by the known figures on frequency of unexpected mutations in GM-cells compared with mutation rates from breeding.

The fundamental general answer however is that nature is extremely orderly. It is complex, but not like a bowl of alphabet soup; nature - especially life - is systematic. This should be agreed by all scientists, even atheists; of course, us theists ascribe the systematic order to design, but those who resist belief in design will, I hope, agree nature to be systematically orderly. If you think, like Dawkins, that nature is just the result of the outworkings of physics & chemistry, then you could fairly easily assume that even random insertion of 'cassettes' would be no more likely than traditional breeding to cause harm. If on the other hand you believe (to take a specific case) that an apple is not just a random collection of biochemicals but a creation of a benign Creator, and that Grandmother Smith in a Seedknee suburb was a humble agent of that Creator (selecting a new mutant that had arrived according to His rules), then you will contrast such natural processes with the overwhelming of natural barriers to slam in viral promoters joined onto synthetic approximate copies of bacterial genes by biolistics, or modified T-plasmids - violent processes expected to disrupt the target genome. Breeding entails natural protections from error which are overwhelmed by gene-tampering.

I tend to think it is on this level that the issue really turns. For those who think so, re-reading of Genesis 3 may be salutory.

In a culture that has largely turned away from the religion that gave rise to its legal principles, the ethics of gene-tampering is in drastic need of fundamental review. Gene-jiggering has already sucked in $10^11, and still only a few corporations have produced anything saleable (except those selling the enzyme kits etc for the gene-tampering expts). The science behind this commercial frenzy is junk; the Lego model of biology never looked promising and is now known to be wrong. Proper biology points to the Schubert Letter, and in response a gaggle of Monsanto stooges intones 'enragedly' the atheistic moronic rubbish quoted above.

Never in the history of science has a family of "technologies" been developed, and deployed in many organisms, based on such junk science as stated by Beachy et al.

But the ethical appraisal of GM is even more backward. The most dangerous technology of all history blunders on, little understood by venture-drongos and by ethicists. The good scientists like Pat Brown and David Schubert are crucially valuable. The Union of Concerned Scientists should emulate its anti-nuclear activism of the golden Kendall era. Go to it, Yanks!

Much more importantly, If the human has no duties to a higher power, how can selfishness & greed be curbed? The religion that gave rise to the code of ethics claimed to be implemented, if imperfectly, in British & USA legal systems had better get involved in renewal of ethics. It is a major embarrassment to Christians that a bishop (of my denomination) contributed scarcely at all to the Royal Commission on GM, flagging away opportunities to discuss ethics in public hearings. A minor powerHarpie has set up tiny sandpits with pompous titles 'Interchurch Commission' etc but has produced nothing significant. As an Anglican I have said for years that the churches are the sleepers in the movement for control of GM. I hope & pray they will take GM much more seriously.

R

The New York Times
August 22, 2005
In Explaining Life's Complexity, Darwinists and Doubters Clash
By KENNETH CHANG

At the heart of the debate over intelligent design is this question: Can a scientific explanation of the history of life include the actions of an unseen higher being?

The proponents of intelligent design, a school of thought that some have argued should be taught alongside evolution in the nation's schools, say that the complexity and diversity of life go beyond what evolution can explain.

Biological marvels like the optical precision of an eye, the little spinning motors that propel bacteria and the cascade of proteins that cause blood to clot, they say, point to the hand of a higher being at work in the world.

In one often-cited argument, Michael J. Behe, a professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University and a leading design theorist, compares complex biological phenomena like blood clotting to a mousetrap: Take away any one piece - the spring, the baseboard, the metal piece that snags the mouse - and the mousetrap stops being able to catch mice.

Similarly, Dr. Behe argues, if any one of the more than 20 proteins involved in blood clotting is missing or deficient, as happens in hemophilia, for instance, clots will not form properly.

Such all-or-none systems, Dr. Behe and other design proponents say, could not have arisen through the incremental changes that evolution says allowed life to progress to the big brains and the sophisticated abilities of humans from primitive bacteria.

These complex systems are "always associated with design," Dr. Behe, the author of the 1996 book "Darwin's Black Box," said in an interview. "We find such systems in biology, and since we know of no other way that these things can be produced, Darwinian claims notwithstanding, then we are rational to conclude they were indeed designed."

It is an argument that appeals to many Americans of faith.

But mainstream scientists say that the claims of intelligent design run counter to a century of research supporting the explanatory and predictive power of Darwinian evolution, and that the design approach suffers from fundamental problems that place it outside the realm of science. For one thing, these scientists say, invoking a higher being as an explanation is unscientific.

"One of the rules of science is, no miracles allowed," said Douglas H. Erwin, a paleobiologist at the Smithsonian Institution. "That's a fundamental presumption of what we do."

That does not mean that scientists do not believe in God. Many do. But they see science as an effort to find out how the material world works, with nothing to say about why we are here or how we should live.

And in that quest, they say, there is no need to resort to otherworldly explanations. So much evidence has been provided by evolutionary studies that biologists are able to explain even the most complex natural phenomena and to fill in whatever blanks remain with solid theories.

This is possible, in large part, because evolution leaves tracks like the fossil remains of early animals or the chemical footprints in DNA that have been revealed by genetic research.

For example, while Dr. Behe and other leading design proponents see the blood clotting system as a product of design, mainstream scientists see it as a result of a coherent sequence of evolutionary events.

Early vertebrates like jawless fish had a simple clotting system, scientists believe, involving a few proteins that made blood stick together, said Russell F. Doolittle, a professor of molecular biology at the University of California, San Diego.

Scientists hypothesize that at some point, a mistake during the copying of DNA resulted in the duplication of a gene, increasing the amount of protein produced by cells.

Most often, such a change would be useless. But in this case the extra protein helped blood clot, and animals with the extra protein were more likely to survive and reproduce. Over time, as higher-order species evolved, other proteins joined the clotting system. For instance, several proteins involved in the clotting of blood appear to have started as digestive enzymes.

By studying the evolutionary tree and the genetics and biochemistry of living organisms, Dr. Doolittle said, scientists have largely been able to determine the order in which different proteins became involved in helping blood clot, eventually producing the sophisticated clotting mechanisms of humans and other higher animals. The sequencing of animal genomes has provided evidence to support this view.

For example, scientists had predicted that more primitive animals such as fish would be missing certain blood-clotting proteins. In fact, the recent sequencing of the fish genome has shown just this.

"The evidence is rock solid," Dr. Doolittle said.

Intelligent design proponents have advanced their views in books for popular audiences and in a few scientific articles. Some have developed mathematical formulas intended to tell whether something was designed or formed by natural processes.

Mainstream scientists say that intelligent design represents a more sophisticated - and thus more seductive - attack on evolution. Unlike creationists, design proponents accept many of the conclusions of modern science. They agree with cosmologists that the age of the universe is 13.6 billion years, not fewer than 10,000 years, as a literal reading of the Bible would suggest. They accept that mutation and natural selection, the central mechanisms of evolution, have acted on the natural world in small ways, for example, leading to the decay of eyes in certain salamanders that live underground.

Some intelligent design advocates even accept common descent, the notion that all species came from a common ancestor, a central tenet of evolution.

Although a vast majority of scientists accept evolution, the Discovery Institute, a research group in Seattle that has emerged as a clearinghouse for the intelligent design movement, says that 404 scientists, including 70 biologists, have signed a petition saying they are skeptical of Darwinism.
Nonetheless, many scientists regard intelligent design as little more than creationism dressed up in pseudoscientific clothing. Despite its use of scientific language and the fact that some design advocates are scientists, they say, the design approach has so far offered only philosophical objections to evolution, not any positive evidence for the intervention of a designer.

Full: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/22/national/22design.html

Commercial Diesel Motorcycle Extras.


SUPERCHARGER by Rynhart R&D - One that didn't make it into production.

The facts

Any owner of a Hatz powered diesel motorcycle would have been
overjoyed at the prospect of being able to supercharge their
machine. This looked very much as if it would be possible what
with the progress made by Irelands Rynhart R&D in this field. An
article detailing this companies development work up until 2002 is
available from the Bullet-in magazine(see links page under
literature), available on the internet (.pdf format).

Unfortunately things have taken a turn for the worse over the last
year or so. Derek Rynhart told this site that he had been forced to
call it a day and wind his company up due to the fact that his
superchargers were too good. Combustion pressures of the Hatz 1B30
are 55bar but Rynharts supercharger put these up to 100bar which
resulted in four broken crankshafts. The superchargers were O.K.
on the bigger 1B40 engines but still there were problems. The
engines fuel pumps could not generate enough pressure to get the
diesel into the chambers.

It was with these problems in mind that Hatz told Rynhart they
were not prepared to upgrade all of their engines to take account
of the super chargers capabilities. Given that Rynhart managed to
more than double the BHP of the 1B30, this is a shame for riders
who ride 1B30 Hatz engined bikes. No doubt there are more details
that may come out in time but those above give the main reasons why
we will see no supercharged hatz motorcycles in the near future.

A Rynhart R&D Supercharger fitted to a Hatz-1B30-powered Royal Enfield.

This Hatz sure looks mean with that supercharger on.

http://www.peace65.freeserve.co.uk/Pictures/diesel.htm

The world's fastest Indian

The trailer to the movie 'The World's Fastest Indian'. Starring Sir Anthony Hopkins, it recounts the true story of Kiwi Burt Munro, who in 1967 went to the salt flats of Utah and set a new motorcycle speed record. more>>

--

Robt Mann
Mulgoon Professor emeritus of Environmental Studies, U of Auckland
consultant stirrer & motorcyclist
P O Box 28878, Remuera, Auckland 1005, New Zealand (9) 524 2949 Robt Mann
http://www.kuratrading.com/HTMLArticles/writings.htm

This story is, on its face, a furphy - and an interesting specimen of how desperate the gene-tampering trade is to claim some success.

The losses poured down the GM-rathole in a couple decades approximate Gates' accumulated ill-gotten gains. (If only these two evil money-flows could somehow cancel each other!) Dozens of billions of dollars, and more seriously thousands of diverted scientific careers, have produced only a handful of saleable items made by gene-tampering. This latest cultured-cell skin 'graft' is not claimed to be one, according to any allegation in the actual story, yet some subeditor has been allowed to slip in, bold as brass, the first two words:

>Genetically engineered

The technique described is, if you like, biotech; but there's no hint of any splicing of synthetic DNA into any genome, and it is therefore not genetic engineering (GE) or genetic manipulation (GM). It looks to be a promising technique, and likely to be commercially deployed (if it passes suitable testing); but it is not gene-jiggering, and should not be claimed as a success of that disreputable 'technology'.

>The descendants of Goebbels are getting ever more numerous, and more brazen.

R

truthout http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/081805HB.shtml

original

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=healthNews&storyID=2005-08-18T152036Z_01_SCH855222_RTRIDST_0_HEALTH-FETAL-SKIN-CELLS-DC.XML


Fetal Skin Cells Help Heal Burn Wounds in Children
By Karla Gale
Reuters

Thursday 18 August 2005

New York - Genetically engineered tissue dressings derived from fetal skin cells have been used successfully to treat second- and third-degree burns without scarring in pediatric patients, researchers in Switzerland report.

The use of fetal tissue in wound repair could avoid difficulties of tissue engineering, such as immune rejection, small growth capacity and incompatibility, Dr. Lee Ann Laurent-Applegate and colleagues note in their report, published online August 18 by The Lancet.

"The main advantage was that we could avoid a (skin graft) procedure in all cases," study co-author Dr. Patrick Hohlfeld told Reuters Health.

The research team, based at University Hospital of Lausanne, obtained a 4-cm skin donation from a 14-week aborted male fetus. Cells were expanded in culture and used to seed collagen sheets, and then grown for two more days before the sheets were applied to the burn wounds.

The fetal cells were used to treat eight children considered to be candidates for traditional skin grafting, approximately 10 days after their injury. As the cells biodegraded, they were replaced every three to four days.

"These cells stimulate spontaneous healing of the wound through secretion of multiple growth factors," Hohlfeld said. The average time to healing was 15.3 days after the first cell application.

The cosmetic and functional results "were excellent in all eight children," who had little degradation of the new skin with no retraction or breakdown of the healed surfaces, the research team reports. The one patient who had dark skin had recovery of skin pigmentation.

The researchers estimate that the one fetal skin donation could yield "several million" skin constructs. "We only need one very small biopsy once, giving us the potential to treat thousands of people," Hohlfeld pointed out. He considers it possible to obtain effective skin cells from miscarriages of second trimester fetuses.

And although fetal skin cells have not yet been used to treat adults, he expects that similar tissue dressing constructs will be successful in treating other types of wounds, such as bedsores and venous leg ulcers.

-------

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. t r u t h o u t has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is t r u t h o u t endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

Hawaii Reporter
Freedom to Report Real News

State Uses Illegal Tactics to Push Controversial Biotech Project
Board of Agriculture Redefines Own Rules To Avoid Contested Case Hearing

By Haumea Hanakahi, Henry Curtis and Andrew Kimbrell, 8/16/2005

In a controversial case involving 7 strains of newly created mutated alga, the Board of Agriculture's most recent actions, again, seem to support corporate agenda over the public trust. After the 6/28/05 hearing of which over 120 testimonials were submitted urging the denial of permit, the Board stunned the crowd with a cavalier quoting of Wanda Adams, Food Editor of the Honolulu Advertiser "remember when we were all warned microwaves were dangerous, and now we all use them Š" a vote was called, and the Board approved (6-2) the permit to import, grow, and export the mutated algae.

In the aftermath of the decision and amid serious concerns for impact upon agriculture, health and safety, native resources and the environment, a coalition called Na Maka o Hawaii Nei was spontaneously formed to protect and nurture our island wealth. On 7/7/2005 the coalition of over 22 groups and individuals filed an official request for a contested case hearing with the Board of Agriculture to challenge the permit granted the financially troubled Mera Pharmaceuticals to grow the genetically engineered algae at the state's Natural Energy Lab of Hawaii Authority (NELHA) on the Kona coast of Hawaii Island.

On 8/15/05, the coalition Na Maka o Hawaii Nei received a letter from the Dept. of Agriculture stating that only the applicant of a permit can ask for a contested case hearing. The one-paragraph letter reads "Neither statute nor constitutional due process require a contested case hearing in this situation and the Board's rules do not provide for a contested case hearing for persons such as the HUI [coalition]."

"The letter contradicts the clear and obvious intent of the Hawaii Administrative Rules" said Henry Curtis, advocate and party to the petition. Under the Hawaii Administrative Rules (HAR) 4-1-36(b): "A person aggrieved by a decision or ruling of the board shall file a request for hearing within ten calendar days after mailing of written notice of board action" and HAR 4-1-2 Definitions: "'Person' means individuals, partnerships, corporations, associations, or public or private organizations of any character other than the board [of agriculture] or the department [of agriculture]."

"The coalition is shocked and outraged that the state has denied the public's right to challenge a permit." said Kat Brady of Life of the Land. "Genetically engineered algae have never been grown at this level anywhere in the world and the hui [coalition] is concerned that escape of these algae will cause extensive harm to our fragile ecosystem. This is a great concern since the state currently spends $47 million a year on eradication of invasive species."

Economy

"We don't understand why the State is investing in a failing industry that has losses of over $43 billion." says Haumea Hanakahi of Hui Hoaka, also a party in the petition. The industry she refers to is biotechnology. Overall, airlines accumulated a net loss of $5 billion from 1947 to 2003. Publicly traded biotechnology companies in the U.S. lost $41 billion from 1990 to 2003, according to Ernst & Young LLC. [1] "The State is prostituting our islands. The State gives away massive amounts of tax credits to the industry for biotech business investment, research development, net operating loss, exclusions of royalties from gross income and even tax exemption on stock options. That's plenty in lost tax revenues that could help our schools, our kupuna, our communities. Instead, the irresponsible of these corporations come, take from Hawaii, make plenty opala, and leave state taxpayers with legal liability for the irreversible damage and messes they make. Strange, yeah, Rincon Pharmaceuticals is a new biotech startup and partner in the project but they're never named on the permit. Zero liability to them. Hmmm. It's just a matter of time when these mutant algae become a new invasive species contaminating our water, soils, air and agriculture. Can we afford that? Why is the Board of Agriculture ignoring all the expert testimony that came in from around the world warning of serious consequences?" she asks.

Health

The Na Maka o Hawaii Nei coalition also states strong health concerns. The Board of Agriculture's decision to allow Mera and Rincon Pharmaceuticals to import 7 strains of mutated algae without a comprehensive risk assessment signals profit over people. These companies hope to cash in on creating drugs from the algae. However, these laboratory created algae that contain synthetic human-like antibodies are unlikely to ever be approved for drug manufacture. Andrew Kimbrell, Executive Director for the Center for Food & Safety, WA DC stated "the State is illegally permitting a Biotech startup to endanger Hawaii's environment and people for a project that is doomed from the start. The federal government has never given commercial approval of a drug to be made from genetically modified or engineered plants or organisms. The chances of success are nil and the risks too great."

In response to Mera and Rincon Pharmaceutical's assurances that their GE algae are "safe", Dr. Doug Gurian-Sherman, Senior Scientist for the Center for Food Safety, WA DC and currently serving on the FDA's Biotechnology Advisory Subcommittee wrote "those assurances are not based on safety testing, but on conjecture. For example, proteins such as those produced in Mera's algae might cause immune reactions if ingested or inhaled, as may occur from aerosolized or desiccated algae if they escape and reproduce in the environment. And such immune responses can conceivably occur at very low exposures. For example, several years ago expert allergists and immunologists would not allow exposure to as little as 20 parts per billion of genetically engineered StarLink protein after food was contaminated because they could not be sure that allergy would not occurŠDoing the right thing to ensure safety will pay in the long run with increased citizen confidence."

Environment

On 8/2/05 a lawsuit was filed against the Board of Agriculture to comply with Hawaii's Environmental Protection Act. "The law requires the State to fully examine the potential impacts of bringing these alien, drug-laden algae to our islands," said Earthjustice attorney Isaac Moriwake. "The government and public need to understand the potential impacts and available alternatives before this experiment begins."

Dr. R. Malcolm Brown, Jr., Univ. Texas, Professor of Biology wrote "I have identified both native and indigenous strains of Chlamydomonas. So much more needs to be studied. The introduced alga has the potential to hybridize with the native and indigenous strain of this alga. That would mean genetic alteration of yet another pristine species from Hawaii's world renown biodiversity. Not only that, but native strains of this alga are found in air, soils, and fresh and brackish water of Hawaii. This indicates that once introduced into the native population, the genetically modified strains could rapidly spread to all parts of Hawaii. The immense invasive species problem this presents should be addressed".

The coalition Na Maka o Hawaii Nei agrees that "We encourage good business that actually DOES good in Hawaii. We have zero tolerance for any business that would inflict harm upon Hawaii's communities." You can add "zero tolerance for any government behaviors that would inflict harm upon Hawaii's communities." Perhaps the Governor needs to hear from her constituents.

[1] For more information on failed biotech industry see "Biotech's Dismal Bottom Line: More than $40 Billion in Losses," by David P. Hamilton, Wall Street Journal, May 20, 2004, and "States, Cities Court Biotech, But Is It Worth It?," by Paul Elias, AP June 9, 2004.

Na Maka o Hawaii Nei is a coalition protecting and nurturing the islands' wealth. For more information, contact Haumea Hanakahi, Hui Hoaka (808-896-9926); Henry Curtis, Life of the Land (808-927-0709); Andrew Kimbrell, The Center for Food Safety (202-547-9359)

HawaiiReporter.com reports the real news, and prints all editorials submitted, even if they do not represent the viewpoint of the editors, as long as they are written clearly. Send editorials to: Malia@HawaiiReporter.com

Restricted only to the corporate world? I doubt it. And don't just think of govt bureaucracies either - what about churches??

R

Working to live? Seems you are not alone
http://theage.com.au/text/articles/2005/08/20/1124435150863.html
August 20 2005

By Nick O'malley

BORED by meaningless work, management jargon, memos and meetings, a new type of slacker has emerged from the professional classes - the actively disengaged.

Rather than quitting and moving to the coast, this species hides in the ghettos of the corporate world, avoiding work where possible and putting up with the drudgery so they can bank their pay cheque.

These time servers have a new hero in Corinne Maier, the French author of Hello Laziness, an angry manifesto against modern working life.

The book, published in France as Bonjour Paresse, was outsold there only by The Da Vinci Code last year.

"In the biggest companies seek out the most useless positions: those in consultancy, appraisal, research and study. The more useless your position, the less possible it will be to assess your 'contribution to the firms assets'," instructs Maier, who also works as an economist for the state-owned Electricit *aace de France.

Once safely out of sight, she advises, "avoid all change". "Only the most visible managers are let go."

Hello Laziness: Why Hard Work Doesn't Pay will be released in Australia next month. Maier argues the modern corporation is a stultifying beast that demands everything and returns little. You owe it nothing but your time, she says.

The malaise she identifies is as much Australian as French, says Carol Royal, a senior lecturer at the University of New South Wales' School of Organisation and Management. Consultant Tim Orton says all large organisations must have departments that contribute nothing to the core of the business — they neither make nor sell things — but are vital nonetheless.

Ironically, the book might have sunk without a trace had Maier's employer not taken legal action against her for "spreading gangrene through the system".
Le Monde picked up the story and the book's success was sealed. The legal action was quietly dropped. So why, asked one journalist, has she not quit her job? "I stay only because it makes my boss very angry."

I insert comments from a theistic evolution viewpoint.

R

Let's have a proper scientific debate
August 18 2005
http://theage.com.au/text/articles/2005/08/17/1123958129538.html
Intelligent design evokes strong responses. Time for cool investigation, writes Barney Zwartz.

Opponents of intelligent design theories fear the evolution debate has been hijacked by the fundamentalists. I fear they are right, but it's scientistic (blind faith in science) fundamentalists, not religious.

>sorry - it's both.

Intelligent design theorists say evolution is largely demonstrable but is not the result of mere chance. The traditional

>I object to this label for scientistic neoDarwinism. The really traditional approach is exemplified by John Morton, Neil Broom, Wm Temple, etc.

account of a steady but gradual development, they say, is at odds with the incredible complexity of even the simplest cell, whose structures are interdependent and could not develop without each other.

Intelligent design theorists also point to the "anthropic principle", the recognition in the past 30 years that all the seemingly arbitrary constants in physics have one strange thing in common - they are precisely the values needed for the universe to produce life.

>this is all too rarely mentioned

The concept of intelligent design was developed by non-Christian scientists such as molecular biologist Michael Behe

>It is no secret that he is a Catholic. I see no evidence that this distorts his IDT reasoning. Anyone who tries to wipe Behe's IDT because he's a Christian should also wipe Dawkins because he is what Zwartz later describes him as.

, not because of the presuppositions of faith but because science took them there, through difficulties in making the facts fit the theory. (This, after all, is how scientific progress is supposed to happen.)
The trouble is that evolution is an absolute article of faith with some scientists, at least as deep-rooted as God is with creationists. They believe science has or will have the answer to everything, and no other discourse is needed.

>yes that is the current scientism fad.

Take scientist Richard Dawkins, as extreme an anti-religious bigot as I've come across, who says anyone who doesn't believe in evolution is either stupid, insane or wicked. That's a radical moral judgement for a cool, dispassionate believer in rationality.

I suspect the reason for this clenched-fist, eyes-shut commitment to an evolution beyond questioning is that it is the only counter-explanation to God for the existence of life. Doubt that, and the chasm beckons. It is not science that drives people such as Dawkins but an obsession psychologists might be best equipped to explain.

>check

Let me emphasise that I am not against science, which is in general a brilliantly successful and beneficial field of human endeavour, and I do not fear its findings. Nor do I deny evolution. But it must be qualified.
What scientists should properly say is that evolution is the best explanation we have for the development of life, but it has lacunae and difficulties. Thus, like other "best explanations", such as Newtonian physics, it should be open to question.

But let anyone, theist or not, suggest this and hear the howls emerge from the temples of science and watch the defensive artillery deployed even before the arguments are digested. Take the case of Rick Sternberg, who was hounded out of his job as editor of the Smithsonian Institution's journal after publishing a piece sympathetic to intelligent design theory.

Sternberg got the usual approval from three scientific peers, but the article - on the pre-Cambrian fossil record - outraged the academic establishment because the American Association for the Advancement of Science has proclaimed that intelligent design is "unscientific by definition". And here's the point, put by the paper's author, Stephen Meyer: "Rather than critique the paper on its scientific merits, they appeal to a doctrinal statement." The case demonstrates fundamentalist evolutionists' insecurity. As Meyer says: "You don't resort to authoritarianism if you can answer it." Galileo, here we go again.

>this is a fair outline of that scandalous case.

Philosopher Anthony Flew, one of the world's most famous atheists, said last year that scientific developments, particularly in DNA, had led him to accept intelligent design. But he has not become a Christian.

>He announced that he had become a deist. I predict he cannot long dwell in that peculiar position.

That's because these are separate debates. Intelligent design may have theological implications beyond science, but that's not the business of scientists. Their business is to examine the arguments of irreducible complexity with an open mind. And suppose they do find evidence of design, then its author may be beyond the realms of science.
Now it is true that religious fundamentalists in the United States have seized on intelligent design and pushed it beyond science, but its claims shouldn't be discredited simply because of its fellow travellers.

>check

On this page on Friday, Melbourne University lecturer Robert Marshall attacked intelligent design as fundamentalist religious zealotry under another guise, and said the designer was an unprovable assertion. Certainly it is

>this is an unfortunate, excessively generous concession.

- and his counter-proposal of mere chance is equally unprovable. Chance does not produce changes; you need cause and effect for that.

>yes - that latter is the way out of the current confusion.

I agree that theology must not enter scientific endeavour. I want the intelligent design debate to be properly scientific. And I want proponents of science to stop claiming, as some do, that the answers in every field of human life lie within science.

>check - that scientism is the problem

Marshall says science deals with how, not why. If only scientists all really did that - and only that.

Barney Zwartz is religion editor.
Email: bzwartz@theage.com.au

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20050813.WATER13/BNPrint/th
eglobeandmail/Email

AND ANOTHER THING. . .
Some things about this city, we've discovered, really bug people.

By DIANNE RINEHART

Saturday, August 13, 2005
Updated at 3:38 PM EDT

Water torture

Waiters in Toronto have water on the brain these days. Selling bottles of
chichi water produces a higher sale per table, which the boss likes, and a
bigger tip when their 15 per cent is calculated.

So there are incentives for them to tow the water line -- that is, bottled
water is cleaner, classier and tastier. Not that they are alone in this
belief. Starting four years ago, after Walkerton, the city began running a
water education campaign touting the safety of water flowing out of the tap
to counteract the perception that tap water is fit only for goldfish. The
latest print and TTC shelter ads are running this month.

"A certain segment of the population, younger people, are distrustful of
drinking water, or they are on the go all the time and they want the
convenience of bottled water," said Paulette den Elzen, senior
communications co-ordinator for the city's water department.

Little do bottled-water fans know that about 40 per cent of all bottled
water is simply retreated tap water. Or that some sparkling spring waters
get their fizz from a carbonator, and bottled waters often lose out in taste
and contaminant tests to mere municipal water.

But why let facts dampen the dream of the "Big Four" bottled water companies
-- Nestle, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola and Danone -- which magically market water as,
well, water and guzzle back their share of this estimated $35-billion-a-year
business?

Take a water bug of a waiter at Little Italy's Giancarlo Trattoria, for
example. When we ask for tap water, he insistently preaches about their
lovely bottled waters. We persist. Attitude emerges -- a suggestion,
perhaps, that we are not sufficiently refined and need to be educated.

Does it matter that we prefer municipal water? Is he worried other diners
will be offended by the sight of a jug? Or is he so crass and shortsighted
that he would alienate repeat customers over a bottle of water? Contrast
that to the Miller Tavern, where waiters bring pre-chilled flasks of tap
water with lime, on arrival.

Perhaps the measure of a fine restaurant, other than its cuisine, is its
wine -- not water -- list along with its courteous servers.

Some more facts for the waiter's water table: A World Wildlife Fund 2001
study found: "Bottled water may be no safer or healthier than tap water in
many countries, while it sells for up to 1,000 times the price."

(A U.S. Natural Resources Defence Council study cited by the Polaris
Institute found bottled water was priced from 240 to 10,000 times more than
tap water.)

In blind taste tests, Hamilton and New York City waters, among others, beat
out best-selling bottled waters.

Bottled water is not necessarily purer. Laboratory tests commissioned by The
Globe and Mail in 2000 found that five of 11 brands exhibited higher levels
of bacteria than a sample of Toronto tap water (though they still fell
within federal drinking-water guidelines).

Tap water is tested every day and the results are posted in an annual report
on the Web (http://www.city.toronto.on.ca/water), though the city hopes to
post results more often in the future. Bottled water has to meet the same
federal requirements, but Polaris found Canadian bottling plants are
inspected by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, on average, only once
every three years.

And where do the 1.5 million tons of plastic used in water bottling end up?
In Toronto, you'll see those pesky plastics nestling on street curbs and
lawns and overflowing from trash cans on city streets and at sporting
events.

From there, they may be sent to sorter plants to ensure they are recycled or
they may slip through (along with bottles in home trash) to be trucked to
Michigan dumps, all at taxpayers' expense.

Do we really want to set the precedent that we must pay big corporations in
order to get clean water?

Sure, put bottled waters on the menu for those who prefer them. But in the
future I'll be eating only at restaurants that also happily offer water on
tap.

© Copyright 2005 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Anon.
Broadsheet 103 Aug 2005
newsletter of the Churches' Agency on Social Issues {Methodist, Presbyterian, Churches of Christ, Quakers}

Recently [4 months ago] Dr Bob Mann of Auckland wrote to Broadsheet on the subject of xeno-transplantation, saying the churches were failing to produce 'answers' for concerned people and the true experts, who should be listened to, are 'those who have been stringently tested for knowledge and judgement'.

Dr Mann's letter focussed on the possible health benefits of transplanting pancreas cells from pigs into people with diabetes to undertake [sic] their insulin production.

The anon writer then gives 7x the space to comments by chairharpie Audrey Jarvis, purporting to reply to what I'd said - e.g stating as if a fact that my approach is merely scientific and ignores cultural & religious dimensions.
Readers are of course not to be allowed to see what I actually wrote. Here it is; see whether you think the anon 'CASI' writer (Richard Davis?) has been fair.

The editor, Broadsheet,
Churches' Agency on Social Issues
21-4-05

Dear Sir

Audrey Jarvis mentions, in her questions (Ap 2005) about xenotransplantation, experiments transplanting cultured pig pancreas cells into diabetics, which are no longer allowed in New Zealand.

Half a decade on from her taking over 'interchurch' activities on bioethics, Ms Jarvis is still mainly listing questions. By now some answers are known, and I give below some which should be promulgated.

But I think also that this is a good occasion to look into the context. In many important controversies today, media are presenting pseudo-experts who lack the education &/or experience to qualify them as experts. Individuals incapable of discussing or understanding complex technologies are thus misinforming the public, while actual experts are suppressed.

A current example is the victimisation of the much-respected Professor R B Elliott whose treatment for diabetes is being actively pursued in several countries but is no longer allowed in New Zealand.

The government has persistently declared its belief that biotechnology is a main aspect of what they call Knowledge Economy, Bright Future, etc. Elliott's xenotransplants, developed further by his company Diatranz, would appear to fit the bill - and do not entail any gene-tampering.

In a decade of careful experimentation, this noted medical researcher has developed a method of trickling insulin from cells, cultured from pancreas cells of piglets, contained within a retrievable 'tea-bag' floating in the diabetic's peritoneal liquid. The cells are coated to prevent immune reactions, and the patients' immune systems are not interfered with at all. It is misleading to talk about foreign cells proliferating throughout the body - they cannot get out of the 'tea bag' which itself can be removed altogether should any unforeseen trouble emerge.

Of the most recent 18 informed diabetic volunteers, 9 have reported considerable
benefits from the current version of xenotransplants. Permission was sought for a further 24 monitored patients to improve the treatment.

The obvious good question whether pig insulin is safe for humans had been answered by decades of injecting millions of diabetics with pig insulin (purified from pancreas byproduct of meatworks), which is a slightly different chemical from human insulin. But there is a possible hazard from these xenotransplants. I happened to be the scientist who warned Elliott, a decade ago, of the need to monitor for novel viruses in his volunteer xenotransplant recipients. Each of these patients is now closely monitored by Auckland medical-school experts for any signs of such problems. Both the monitoring and the measured health of the pig-pancreas cells are widely agreed to be world-leading.

Why then have Diatranz's proposals for a further 24 patients been blocked for years by Karen Poutasi M.B, director-general of health - most recently through special legislation to abolish Diatranz's normal legal rights to have such proposals considered? This victimising legislative clause, slipped into a Bill on another subject (_viz_ gene-tampering), was approved by a parliamentary committee including Mss Bunkle, Yates, and Fitzsimons, who were given full details by relevant experts but persisted in the victimisation Poutasi had instigated.

In order to understand what has gone wrong, we must see an important trend of the past decade or so: usurpation of expert status. The persons who have forced Diatranz offshore have mostly been not experts but political operatives.
Professor Roger Morris of the NZ veterinary school is a world expert on transfer of animal viruses to humans - a main advisor to the UK government on foot-&-mouth disease and to the Hong Kong government on duck & hen infections jumping into humans. " It's riskier going to the zoo than to have one of these pancreatic cell transplants" declares this expert - adding "and I don't believe it's risky going to the zoo."

Morris conducted a thorough scientific review of the possibilities for infections from the Diatranz pig cells, including pig endogenous retrovirus (PERV). All mammals have many copies in their DNA of so-called 'endogenous retroviruses', which Morris views as probably a key to mammalian pregnancy, instrumental in formation of the placenta. They are called "endogenous" because they replicate only within a cell as nucleic acid (DNA to RNA to DNA) but without ever forming a virus particle, and are transmitted in the germline.

The name 'endogenous retrovirus' is regrettably misleading in much the same way as 'carcinoma in situ' the misnomer for microscopic anomalies of unknown significance in the cervix which are not carcinomas.

DNA sequences in the misnamed category 'endogenous retrovirus' make up by enormous repetition several percent of typical mammalian genomes (total equipage of DNA). The broad architecture of these DNA sequences is similar across most organisms. Many classes of endogenous retrovirus are known, but currently only two similar blocks of DNA, with other distinctive genes, cause human disease through infectious retrovirus: HIV and HTLV-I & its relatives.

There's no reason to believe that even if PERV got established & multiplying in man it would cause disease. The most plausible fear is that it might undergo mutation or recombination to generate a novel retrovirus that might cross species barriers - as presumably HIV did. Retroviruses are notably prone to recombination, though this has not been shown to occur between the pig and the human. The patients are closely monitored for any new viruses.

Infection of immune-intact humans or other mammals by anything originating from genetically unaltered pig tissues has not been demonstrated, despite thousands of attempts to do so over a dozen years. The transplantation of enclosed porcine pancreatic islet cells is an extremely low-risk procedure. Diabetics facing gangrene, blindness, etc within a year or so are not concerned that cancer decades later has not been ruled out - a risk limited to them, as cancer is non-infectious.

Poutasi has posed as ultra-precautionary on this project, while cheerfully condoning far more dubious experiments in GM. This is a case of what we in Australasia call the 'tall poppy syndrome'. But it is also more, and worse, than that. This therapy is being misused as a lightning rod for vague fears - an irrational over-reaction, making the government look cautious while vastly more dangerous procedures go unchallenged.

New Zealand has been a leader in this promising treatment for a nasty disease; we have the healthiest pigs as well as the best monitoring technology. But now New Zealand diabetics will be going overseas for these transplants, which are permitted in such advanced countries as Switzerland, Sweden & the USA.

And all because political power-seekers have usurped expert status.

Their _modus operandi_ is pretty easy to identify, once you've seen its main features. The "science" promoted by the usurpers consists of simplistic slogans, easy to memorize but vague. The prototypical example is "The 'Pap' smear is a good early warning test for cervical cancer" - misleading but the basis for political careers by Bunkle, Coney, & Dame S Cartwright who not merely contradicted but vilified leading experts. A newer example is "Pig viruses might emerge from Diatranz xenotransplants and become endemic in the human", presented repeatedly on TV by an ambitious female politician with a degree in French & music. This saying was, I believe, useful when I stated it a decade ago; but to present it now, instead of expert comment in the light of all that has been found meanwhile, is radically biased.

The science involved in such issues is, unfortunately but incorrigibly, far beyond ordinary citizens' understanding. They cannot make informed judgements on these arcane matters. They must therefore rely on the judgements of the few specialists who do understand the meaning of 'retrovirus' etc. But the media have made hardly any effort to convey expert judgements. Very important issues are thus cynically misused as vehicles for self-publicity by pseudo-experts.

A culture dependent on dangerous technologies will quickly get in trouble this way. (Complex technologies are not the only dangerous ones: look what happens when people feed cows ground-up cow. )

Experts are those who have been stringently tested for knowledge & judgement, not those who merely wish to hijack topics of public concern for personal attention-getting.

This is the context within which the churches are almost comprehensively failing to produce answers for concerned members and the wider public.

Yo, Ho, Ho And Rum Based Beverages

BY DAVE BARRY

(This classic Dave Barry column was originally published on Jan. 30,
2000.)

I am a hearty seafaring type of individual, so recently I spent a
week faring around the sea aboard the largest cruise ship in the
world that has not yet hit an iceberg. It is called the Voyager, and
it weighs 140,000 tons, which is approximately the amount I ate in
desserts alone.

The Voyager sails out of Miami every week carrying 3,200 passengers
determined to relax or die trying. The ship has (I am not making any
of this up) an ice-skating rink, a large theater, a shopping mall, a
rock-climbing wall and a nine-hole miniature golf course. We have
come a long way indeed from the days when the Pilgrims crossed the
Atlantic aboard the Mayflower, which - hard as it is to imagine today
- had no skating rink and only four golf holes.

While aboard the ship, we passengers engaged in a wide range of
traditional cruise-ship activities, including eating breakfast,
snacking, eating lunch, drinking complex rum-based beverages while
lying on deck absorbing solar radiation until we glowed like exit
signs, snacking some more, eating dinner, eating more snacks and
passing out face-down in the pate section of the midnight buffet.
Needless to say I did not attempt to climb the rock wall, which is
good because the resulting disaster would have made for a chilling
newspaper headline:

CRUISE SHIP EVACUATED AS MAN FALLS, EXPLODES;
HUNDREDS SPATTERED BY SEMIDIGESTED SHRIMP

The only stressful part of our shipboard routine was looking at
photographs of ourselves. When you're on a cruise, photographers
constantly pop up and take pictures of you; they put these on display
in hopes that you'll buy them as souvenirs. At night, my wife and I
would join the throng of passengers looking through the photos,
hoping to find a nice flattering shot of ourselves, and then suddenly
- YIKES - we'd be confronted with this terrifying image of two
bloated, bright-red sluglike bodies with our faces. Jabba and Mrs.
Hutt go to sea!

When every passenger had attained roughly the same body weight as a
Buick Riviera, the ship would stop at a Caribbean island, and the
passengers would waddle ashore to experience the traditional local
culture, by which I mean shop for European jewelry and watches. I
frankly don't know why it makes economic sense for a tourist from
Montana to fly to Miami, get on a ship and sail to Jamaica for the
purpose of purchasing a watch made in Switzerland, but apparently it
does, because shopping is very important to cruise passengers. If
these people ever get to Mars, they WILL expect to find jewelry
stores.

The other thing you do when your ship is in port is take guided tours
to Local Points of Interest. Under international law, every tour
group must include one tourist who has the IQ of sod. In Jamaica, we
toured a plantation, and our group included a woman whose brain
operated on some kind of tape delay, as we see from this typical
exchange between her and our guide:

GUIDE: These are banana plants, which produce bananas. You can see
the bananas growing on these banana plants.

WOMAN: (in a loud voice): What kind of plants are these?

GUIDE: Banana.

WOMAN: Huh! (To her husband Frank, these are banana plants!

The woman repeated virtually everything the guide said to Frank. One
day he will kill her with a kitchen appliance.

But I am proud to say that winner of the award for Biggest Tourist
Doofus was: me. What happened was, during the tour, a man
demonstrated how he could climb a coconut tree using only a small
rope made from twisted banana fibers. When he came down, he showed me
the rope, and I, out of politeness, pretended to be interested in it,
although in fact it was, basically, a rope. The man handed it to me
and suggested I might want to ''take it home to the kids.'' I frankly
doubted that any modern Nintendo-raised American child would be
thrilled by such a gift (''Look, Timmy! A rope!''). But I pretended
to be grateful. Then the man told me that such ropes USUALLY sell for
$15 (he did not say where), but he would let it go for $10. And so,
unable to figure out how to escape, I gave him $10. I imagine the
other plantation workers laughed far into the night when he told
them. (''He gave you $10 for the ROPE?'' ''Yes! He must be even
stupider than the tape-delay woman!'')

But don't get me wrong: I truly enjoyed the cruise. It was fun and
relaxing, and it gave me a rare chance, amid all the hustle and
bustle of my busy life, to pick up a substantial amount of body mass.
Cruising is also romantic, so let me just say this to you couples out
there: If you're looking for a way to rekindle the flame in your
relationship, I'll sell you my rope.

SAN FRANCISCO MAN BECOMES FIRST YANK TO GRASP SIGNIFICANCE OF IRONY

Jay Fullmer, 38, yesterday became the first American to get to grips
with the concept of irony.

"It was weird" Fullmer said. "I was in London and like, talking to
this guy and it was raining and he like, pulled a face and said,
"Great weather eh?" and I thought - "Wait a minute, no way is it
great weather".

Fullmer then realised that the other man's 'mistake' was in fact deliberate.

Fullmer, who is 39 next month and married with two children, aged 8
and 3, plans to use irony himself in future.

"I'm, like, using it all the time" he said.

"Last weekend I was grilling steaks and I burned them and I said
"Hey, great weather!"

In The Financial Express, India, August 16, 2005
Syngenta bid to monopolise rice patents
http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=99412
ASHOK B SHARMA

edited

According to this article, the Swiss biotech giant Syngenta has tightened
its monopoly control over rice by seeking global patents over thousands of
gene sequences.

A single grain of rice contains 37,544 genes, roughly one-fourth more than
the genes in a human body. With the multinational all set to own rice, the
world's most important staple food crop, there may be serious implications
for future research in this crop.

These patents are filed before the European Patent Office, US Patent and
Trademark Office and the World Intellectual Property Rights Organisation
(WIPO).

"If conceded, it will be the beginning of scientific apartheid not only
against India but for all Third World countries," said Devinder Sharma,
chair of the New Delhi-based Forum for Biotechnology & Food Security.

The former director-general of Indian Council of Agricultural Research
(ICAR) and present vice-chancellor of Banaras Hindu University Dr Punjab
Singh said, "The situation is very serious. All patent applications need
proper scrutiny and India should fight to safeguard its interests, if they
are affected."

Syngenta's patent claims are also aimed at other important food crops like
wheat, corn, sorghum, rye, banana, soyabean, fruits and vegetables besides
others.

Geo Monbiot http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1549878,00.html quoth:

Darwinism implies that the only eternal life we have is in the recycling of our atoms. I find that comforting

That article raises several q's. My first is posed by that beginning: if anyone believes their life ceases at death, why would they fear death?

I have long wondered about this. I can see that an 'oblivionist' such as Monbiot claims to be could find impending death annoying - won't be able to finish projects now part-way along, etc. But what could be fearsome about it? If you simply are going to cease to exist, how could that evoke fear?

Monbiot's first sentence also features an error in that Darwinism is merely a theory of how evolution has occurred, and implies nothing about eternal life. It has been used as a weapon to club religion, with the insinuation that it supplants all religion; but this game is a crude bluff. Even if Darwinism were utterly satisfactory as science, it would leave open at the very least deism (the school of thought recently joined by long-time active atheist A Flew).

R

Solar Empowered

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger unveiled a program last August to establish a self-sufficient solar industry in 10 years by encouraging installation of solar panel systems in 1 million homes. The program -- currently at the top of the docket for California legislators -- could reduce carbon emissions equivalent to 850,000 cars each year, according to the Department of Energy

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/GMOSandHumanHealth.phpISIS Press Release 16/08/05

GMOs and Human Health

Dr. Mae-Wan Ho told the People's Health Assembly that GM is proving
bad for health because it goes against the grain of the new genetics
science

A GMO or genetically modified organism is one whose natural genetic
material has been modified by having synthetic genetic material
inserted into it. That is how we have GM crops grown for food and
feed, for fibre and for a range of pharmaceuticals and industrial
products in the latest offering, if we don't manage to stop it.

Maybe you have heard the mantra from certain scientists that GM food
is perfectly safe because the technology is so very precise and
wonderful and the regulation the strictest in the world; that GM is
good for biodiversity, increases yield, reduces pesticide use, and so
on. All of the claims have been falsified, with data collected by
the US Department of Agriculture and by independent scientists .

The World Health Organization has just issued a report, Modern food
biotechnology, human health and development: an evidence-based study
(23 June 2005) claiming that although there may be potential risks
involved in the use of GMOs, the GM crops that are grown today are
not likely to present health risks.

Yet there has been a string of incidents indicating GM food and feed
are far from safe. These include studies carried out by biotech
companies producing the GM crops, which they have kept secret under
confidential business information.

Kidney and blood abnormalities in rats fed one of Monsanto's GM maize
in Monsanto's secret dossier.

Villagers in the south of the Philippines who suffered mysterious
illnesses when another GM maize came into flower in a nearby field
two years in a row. Antibodies to the Bt protein inserted into the
GM maize were found in the villagers.

A dozen cows that died after eating a third GM maize made by
Syngenta, and others in the herd had to be slaughtered because of
mysterious illnesses. Autopsies failed to be carried out, which is
why Greenpeace and farmers are demonstrating in front of the Robert
Koch Institute.

Senior scientist Arpad Pusztai and colleagues in Scotland found young
rats fed GM potatoes ended up with damage in every organ system; the
most dramatic being an increase in thickness of the stomach lining to
twice that in controls. Scientists in Egypt found similar effects in
mice fed GM potatoes with another gene.

The US Food and Drug Administration had data dating back to early
1990s that rats fed GM tomatoes had developed small holes in their
stomach.

To cut a long story short, different species of GM food and feed
crops with different genes had adversely affected several species of
animals. You don't have to be a scientific genius to see that there
may be something in the genetic engineering process itself that's
harmful .

So what's wrong with GMOs?
First, new genes and combinations of genes made in the laboratory,
which have never existed in billions of years of evolution, are being
introduced into our food chain.

Allergies and other toxicities come to mind. In fact, 22 out of 33
proteins incorporated into GM crops were found to have similarities
to known allergens, and are therefore suspected allergens.

The synthetic genetic material are introduced into the cells of
organisms with invasive methods that are uncontrollable, unreliable
and unpredictable, and far from precise.

It ends up damaging the natural genetic material of the organism with
many unpredictable, unintended effects, including gross abnormalities
that you can see, and metabolic changes that may be toxic that you
can't see.

Many foreign synthetic genes are copies of those from bacteria and
viruses that cause diseases.

They also contain antibiotic resistance marker genes to help track
the movements of the foreign gene inserts and select for cells that
have taken up the foreign genes.

Right from the beginning, in the mid1970s, geneticists themselves
have worried that releasing those synthetic genetic material runs the
risk of creating new viruses and bacteria that cause diseases, and
spreading antibiotic resistance to make infections untreatable. As
the result of the Asilomar Declaration, a moratorium was imposed.
Unfortunately, the moratorium was short-lived, as geneticists were in
a hurry for commercial exploitation of genetic engineering.

The dangers arise because the genetic material persists long after
the cells or organism is dead, and can be taken up by bacteria and
viruses that are in all environments

This process - called horizontal gene transfer and recombination - is
the main route to creating dangerous pathogens.

Genetic engineering is nothing if not greatly enhanced horizontal
gene transfer and recombination, and nasty surprises have already
been sprung.

Researchers in Australia 'accidentally' transformed a harmless
mousepox virus into a lethal pathogen that killed all the mice, even
those that were supposed to be resistant to the virus. Headlines in
the New Scientist editorial: "The Genie is out, Biotech has just
sprung a nasty surprise. Next time, it could be catastrophic."

The lead article continued in the same vein: "Disaster in the making.
An engineered mouse virus leaves us one step away from the ultimate
bioweapon."

The researchers added a gene coding for an immune signalling molecule
to the virus, which they thought would boost antibody production;
instead, it suppressed immune responses. The researchers had
previously put the same gene into a vaccinia virus and found it
delayed the clearance of virus from the animals, so it may well have
the same immune suppressive effects for all viruses. Imagine what
would happen if this gene ever got into a smallpox virus!

More surprisingly, researchers at the University of California in
Berkeley found that disrupting a set of disease-causing genes in
Mycobacterium tuberculosis , the tuberculosis bacterium, resulted in
a hyper-virulent mutant strain that killed all the mice by 41 weeks,
while all the control mice exposed to the unmodified bacterium
survived.

There is yet another insidious danger.

The synthetic genes created for genetic modification are designed to
cross species barriers and to jump into the natural genetic material
of cells. Such constructs jumping into the natural genetic material
of human cells can trigger cancer .

This is not just a theoretical possibility. It has happened in gene
therapy, which is genetic modification of human cells.

In 2000, researchers in the Neckar Hospital in Paris, France treated
infants with X-linked Severe Combined Immune Deficiency apparently
successfully by isolating bone marrow cells from the patients,
applying gene therapy, and then injecting the genetically modified
cells back into the patients. But since 2002, 3 infants have
developed leukaemia. One child has died. The foreign synthetic gene
has inserted near a human gene that controls cell division, making it
overactive, resulting in uncontrollable multiplication of the white
blood cells.

I have only scratched the surface of the problems and hazards of
genetic modification. But you can already see that there has been a
massive campaign of misinformation and disinformation on the part of
the GM proponents.

The greatest danger, I think, is the mindset of the GM proponents.
Genetic engineering of plants and animals began in the mid 1970s
under the illusion that the genetic material is constant and static
and the characteristics of organisms are hardwired in their genes.
One gene determines one characteristic. But geneticists soon
discovered to their great surprise that the genetic material is
dynamic and fluid, in that both the expression and structure of genes
are constantly changing under the influence of the environment.
Geneticists have coined the term, "the fluid genome", which
encapsulated this major paradigm change. The genome is the totality
of all the genetic material in an organism.

The processes responsible for the fluid genome are precisely
orchestrated by the organism as a whole in a dance of life that's
necessary for survival. In contrast, genetic engineering in the lab
is crude, imprecise and invasive. The rogue genes inserted into a
genome to make a GMO can land anywhere in any form and has a tendency
to be unstable, basically because these rogue genes do not know the
language of the dance. Genetic engineers haven't learned to dance
with life.

That is why dozens of prominent scientists from seven countries
launched ourselves as the Independent Science Panel, to overcome the
campaign of disinformation from pro-GM scientists who are working to
promote the corporate agenda, and to reclaim science for the public
good. We compiled all the evidence against GM crops as well as the
evidence on the successes and benefits of all forms of sustainable
non-GM agriculture. Based on this evidence, we are calling for a ban
on the environmental releases of GM crops and a comprehensive shift
to sustainable agriculture. I hope the Assembly will support this
call!

Plenary lecture to the People's Health Assembly 2, 17-22 July 2005,
Cuenca, Ecuador. For further information please visit the Institute
of Science in Society website: www.i-sis.org.uk

Green Party PR

16 August 2005
3 out of 4 voters want NZ to stay GE-Free; does National?

The three out of four voters who want New Zealand's food production to remain GE-Free deserve to know where all political parties, particularly National, stand on the GE issue, Green Co-Leader Jeanette Fitzsimons says.

The Sustainability Council has today released a new poll that has found 74.5 percent are in favour of New Zealand's food production remaining GE-Free. This is up from 70.3 percent support in answer to the same question in an August 2003 poll. It confirms polls commissioned by the Green Party before the 2002 election, which showed between two thirds, and three quarters of New Zealanders were not in favour of GE release.

"The Sustainability Council has challenged political parties to say where they stand. In case anyone has any doubts, the Green Party's position remains that there must be no release of living Genetically Modified Organisms, GMOs, into New Zealand's environment or food production.

"Voters going into the polling booths on 17 September have a right to know particularly where the National Party stands on GE. Given the clear concern in the farming community to the potential damage to our markets from a GE release, they would be wise to also respond to the Sustainability Council's call," Ms Fitzsimons says.

Islam’s threat to democracy

Alexis Stuart

The recent fantasy tales in this newspaper have done nothing to convince me that terrorism and Islam are not connected. From the convoluted apologist Yvonne Ridley to the confused defence of Saddam Hussein by Richard Harman, the ‘moderate’ voice of Islam remains disturbingly restrained.

Ridley, who refuses to denounce suicide bombers, wants Donald Rumsfeld’s head on a plate and scolds British Muslims for not being radical enough. She dreams of the Queen crying out ‘Allah Akbar’ and has nothing to say about the shameless acts of violence done in the name of her religion.

Why are Muslims not screaming at the male supremacists, despots and bloodbath aficionados? Why no positive things to say about western religious freedom, separation of church and state and equality under the law?

In New Zealand we believe in progress so strongly we are blind and unprepared for the appalling contradiction of the barbaric rise and rise of Islamist terrorism. We can only shake our heads in disbelief.

Even before I was born in 1970 three planes were hijacked by Islamic terrorists. They demanded the release of Arab terrorists imprisoned in Switzerland, West Germany and Britain. The terrorists who assassinated Anwar el-Sadat in 1981 were supported by an influential Islamist philosopher, who influenced Osama bin Laden, Adbullah Assam. He sought one goal; the establishment of Allah’s rule on earth.

Christians are being slaughtered all around the world. Never in world history has there been so much widespread Christian persecution. Just a couple of weeks ago, in Bangladesh, two young Christian evangelists where stabbed to death after showing the Jesus film alongside health education films. I wish this scenario was rare but it isn’t.

Dare I mention what many in the faith do to Jews, female adulterers, homosexuals and female rape victims? A week before September 11 the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet reported that 65% of rapes on Norwegian women were committed by ‘non-western immigrants’ – a category in Norway that consists almost entirely of Muslims. Apparently, the problem is that Muslim men found the way Norwegian women dress provocative and therefore, argued the academics, the women had to take their share of the responsibility. The conclusion – Norwegian women must understand they live in a multicultural society and adapt themselves.

Secular multiculturalism has no way of resisting militants or discerning how they differ from moderate Islam. It allows Muslim communities to consolidate and create parallel societies. Winston Peters is right when he points out that it can also happen here. There is little doubt that the ultimate aim of many Muslims in Britain and in Europe is to govern their own affairs and then as a finishing touch everyone else’s as well. And before you think it would never happen here remember the Ministry of Women’s Affairs has long announced the need to relax our laws on polygamy in order to accommodate immigrants.

Islamism is now the dominant voice in contemporary Islam and the seedbed of radical movements. This is not understood by New Zealanders and it is obscured by a range of well meaning but confused political liberals.

The problem is profoundly ironic. Unable to any longer comprehend or accept the Judeo-Christian heritage and ethic we are at a loss to understand the implication of a theocratic and coercive religion which also controls the state.

Christchurch Islamacist, Dr Bill Shepherd’s claim that, “although Christians are under threat from Muslim extremists in some places, the Christian faith rarely comes under direct threat from Muslims” is outrageously wrong.

Western liberal democracies are in danger from Islam. Not only from terrorism but simply because immigration and population statistics are predicting Muslim majorities in some Western nations.

Islam has never known the separation of church and state which has shaped social and political development in the West. There is no concept of democracy or civil rights. Some Muslim countries have religious rulers, others have nationalist and secular rulers but all (with the possible exceptions of Turkey and Malaysia) are despotisms, in which the rule of law is a matter to be negotiated. Everywhere the secret police and the military are an ominous presence.

A question needs to be asked. Is there within Islam, a context in which politically alienated young men in particular, can be radicalised? Or in other words are thousands of young men fanatics because of some legitimate interpretation of Islam or are they politically alienated fanatics in spite of it?

And there is a follow up question. Is moderation in Islam a consequence of a deeper understanding of that faith or is it more the result of its modification by Western values of tolerance?

It is not xenophobic to wonder what the future holds for New Zealand with an increasing minority of Muslims. This should be a concern for Kiwi Muslims as much as it is for the rest of us.

The Press, Christchurch
Tuesday July 26 2005
Email copy may differ slightly from printed version
Qantas Media Awards - Social Issues Columnist of the Year.

Pretty much what fringe elements like me and the Commission for the Future were saying a quarter-century ago!

R

NS Essay - 'As oil ceases to be cheap and reserves start to deplete, we will be left with an enormous surplus population that the earth will not support'

James Howard Kunstler
Monday 1st August 2005

Somehow we have persuaded ourselves that fossil fuels will never run out. But they will, and much sooner than we think. In an extract from his chilling new book, James Howard Kunstler describes the long emergency that lies before us.

Carl Jung famously remarked that "people cannot stand too much reality". What follows may challenge your assumptions about the kind of world we live in, and especially the kind of world into which time and events are propelling us. We are in for a rough ride through uncharted territory.

Our war against militant Islamic fundamentalism is only one element among an array of events already under way that will alter our relations with the rest of the world, and compel us to live differently at home whether we like it or not. Above all, and most immediately, we face the end of the cheap fossil fuel era. It is no exaggeration to state that reliable supplies of cheap oil and natural gas underlie everything we identify as a benefit of modern life. All the necessities, comforts, luxuries and miracles of our time - central heating, air-conditioning, cars, airplanes, electric lighting, cheap clothing, recorded music, movies, supermarkets, power tools, hip replacement surgery, the national defences, you name it - owe their origins or continued existence in one way or another to cheap fossil fuels. Even our nuclear power plants ultimately depend on cheap oil and gas for the procedures of construction, maintenance, and extracting and processing nuclear fuels.

The blandishments of cheap oil and gas were so seductive, and induced such transports of mesmerising contentment, that we ceased paying attention to the essential nature of these miraculous gifts from the earth: that they exist in finite, non-renewable supplies, unevenly distributed around the world. To aggravate matters, the wonders of steady technological progress under the reign of oil have tricked us into a kind of "Jiminy Cricket syndrome", leading many to believe that anything we wish for hard enough can come true. These days, even people who ought to know better are wishing ardently that a smooth, seamless transition from fossil fuels to their putative replacements - hydrogen, solar power, whatever - lies just a few years ahead. This is a dangerous fantasy. The true best-case scenario may be that it will take decades to develop some of these technologies - meaning that we can expect an extremely turbulent interval between the end of cheap oil and whatever comes next. A more likely scenario is that new fuels and technologies may never replace fossil fuels at the rate, scale and manner that the world currently consumes them.

What is generally not comprehended is that the developed world will begin to suffer long before the oil and gas actually run out. The western way of life - which is now virtually synonymous with suburbia - can run only on reliable supplies of dependably cheap oil and gas. Even mild-to-moderate deviations in either price or supply will crush our economy and make the logistics of daily life impossible. Fossil fuel reserves are not scattered equally around the world. They tend to be concentrated in places where the native peoples don't like the west, places physically very remote, places where we exercise little control.

The decline of fossil fuels is certain to ignite chronic strife between nations contesting the remaining supplies. These resource wars have already begun. There will be more of them. They are likely to grind on for decades. They will only aggravate a situation that, in and of itself, could bring down civilisations. The extent of suffering in the west will certainly depend on how tenaciously we attempt to cling to obsolete habits, customs and assumptions - for instance, how fiercely we decide to fight to maintain suburban lifestyles which simply cannot be rationalised any longer.

It has been estimated that the world population stood at one billion around the early 1800s, which was roughly when industrialisation began to gain traction. It has been inferred from this that a billion people is about the limit that the planet Earth can support when it is run on a non-industrial basis. The world population is now past six and a half billion, having more than doubled since my childhood in the 1950s. The mid-20th century was a time of rising anxiety over the "population explosion". The marvellous technological victory over food shortages, including the "green revolution" in crop yields, accelerated the already robust leap in world population that had begun with modernity. Dramatic improvements in sanitation and medicine extended lives. Industry sopped up expanding populations and reassigned them from rural lands to work in the burgeoning cities. The perceived ability of the world to accommodate these newcomers and latecomers in a wholly new disposition of social and economic arrangements seemed to be the final nail in the coffin of Thomas Robert Malthus, the much-abused author of An Essay on the Principle of Population, as it Affects the Future Improvement of Society (179.

Malthus (1766-1834), an English country clergyman, has been the whipping boy of idealists and technooptimists for 200 years. His famous essay proposed that human population, if unconstrained, would grow exponentially while food supplies grew only arithmetically, and that therefore population growth faced strict and inevitable natural limits. I would argue that Malthus was correct, but that cheap oil has skewed the equation over the past hundred years while the human race has enjoyed an unprecedented orgy of non-renewable condensed solar energy accumulated over aeons of prehistory. The "green revolution" in crop yields was minimally about scientific innovation in crop genetics and mostly about dumping huge amounts of fertilisers and pesticides made out of fossil fuels on to crops, as well as employing irrigation at a fantastic scale, made possible by abundant oil and gas. The cheap-oil age created an artificial bubble of plenitude for a period not much longer than a human lifetime, a century. Within that comfortable bubble the idea took hold that only grouches, spoilsports and godless maniacs considered population hypergrowth a problem, and that it was indecent even to raise the issue. I hazard to assert that as oil ceases to be cheap and world reserves move towards depletion, we will suddenly be left with an enormous surplus population that the ecology of Planet Earth will not support. No political program of birth control will avail. The people are already here.
The so-called global economy was not a permanent institution, as some seem to believe, but a set of transient circumstances peculiar to a certain time: the Indian summer of the fossil fuel era. What primarily made it possible was a world-scaled oil - market allocation system able to operate in an extraordinary sustained period of relative world peace. Cheap oil, available everywhere, along with ubiquitous machines for making other machines, neutralised many former comparative advantages, especially of geography, while creating new ones - hyper-cheap labour, for instance. It no longer mattered where a nation was situated, or whether it had any prior experience with manufacturing. Cheap oil brought electricity to distant parts of the world where ancient traditional societies had previously depended on renewables such as wood and dung, mainly for cooking. Factories could be started up in countries such as Sri Lanka and Malaysia, where swollen populations provided trainable workers willing to labour for much less than those in the United States or Europe. Products then moved around the globe in a highly rationalised system, not unlike the oil allocation system, using immense vessels, automated port facilities, and truck-scaled shipping containers at a minuscule cost-per-unit of whatever was made and transported. Shirts or coffee-makers manufactured 12,000 miles away could be shipped to Wal-Marts all over America and sold cheaply.

The ability to globalise industrial manufacturing this way stimulated a worldwide movement to relax trade barriers that had existed previously to fortify earlier comparative advantages, which were now deemed obsolete. The idea was that a rising tide of increased world trade would lift all boats. The period (roughly 1980-2001) during which international treaties relaxing trade barriers were made - the General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) - coincided with a steep and persistent drop in world oil and gas prices which occurred precisely because the oil crises of the 1970s had stimulated so much frantic drilling and extraction that a 20-year oil glut ensued. The glut, in turn, allowed world leaders to forget that the globalism they were engineering depended wholly on non-renewable fossil fuels and the fragile political arrangements which allowed their distribution. The silly idea took hold in the west that the 1970s oil crises had been fake emergencies, and that oil was now super-abundant. This was a misunderstanding of the fact that the North Sea and Alaskan North Slope oilfields had temporarily saved the industrial west when they became operative in the early 1980s, postponing the fossil fuel depletion towards which the world has been inexorably moving.

Meanwhile, among economists and government figures, globalism developed the sexy glow of an intellectual fad. Globalism allowed them to believe that burgeoning wealth in the developed countries, and the spread of industria1 activity to formerly primitive regions, was based on the potency of their own ideas and policies rather than on cheap oil. Margaret Thatcher's apparent success in turning around Britain's sclerotic economy was an advertisement for these policies, which included a heavy dose of privatisation and deregulation. What globalism overlooked, however, was that Thatcher's success in reviving Britain coincided with a fantastic new revenue stream from North Sea oil, as quaint old Britannia became energy-self-sufficient and a net energy-exporting nation for the first time since the heyday of coal. Then, when Ronald Reagan became US president in 1981, globalism infected America. Reagan's "supply-side" economic advisers sold a set of fiscal ideas that neatly fitted with the new notions about free trade and deregulation: chiefly that hugely reducing taxes would result in greater revenues as the greater aggregate of business activity generated a greater aggregate of taxes, even at lower rates. (What it actually generated was a huge government deficit.)

Globalism as we have known it is in the process of ending. Its demise will coincide with the end of the cheap-oil age. For better or worse, many of the circumstances we associate with globalism will be reversed. Markets will close as political turbulence and military mischief interrupt trade relations. Societies will turn increasingly to import replacement for economic survival. The cost of transport will no longer be negligible in a post-cheap-oil age. Many of our agricultural products will have to be produced closer to home, and probably by more intensive hand labour as oil and natural-gas supplies become increasingly unstable. The world will stop shrinking and become larger again. Virtually all the economic relationships among persons, nations and institutions, things that we have taken for granted, will radically change. Life will become intensely and increasingly local.

Much of the west finds itself nearing the end of the cheap-oil age having invested its wealth in a living arrangement - suburban sprawl - that has no future. When media commentators cast about struggling to explain what is happening economically, they uniformly overlook the colossal misinvestment that suburbia represents - a prodigious, unparalleled misallocation of resources. This is quite apart from its social, spiritual and ecological deficiencies as an everyday environment. We constructed an armature for daily living that simply won't work without liberal supplies of cheap oil, and very soon we will be without both the oil needed to run it and the wealth needed to replace it. Nor are we likely to come up with a miraculous energy replacement for oil that will allow us to run all this everyday infrastructure even remotely the same way.

The tragic truth is that much of suburbia is unreformable. It does not lend itself to being retrofitted in the kind of smaller-scaled, more finely grained, walkable environments that we will need to carry on daily life in the coming age of greatly reduced motoring. Nor is a Jolly Green Giant going to pick up the millions of suburban houses on their half-acre plots on cul-de-sac streets and set them back down closer together to make more civic environments. Instead, this suburban real estate, including the chipboard and vinyl McHouses, the strip malls, the office parks and all the other components, will enter a phase of rapid and cruel devaluation. Many suburban subdivisions will become the slums of the future.

As the suburbs disintegrate, we will be lucky if we can reconstitute our existing towns and cities brick by brick and street by street, painfully by hand. Our bigger cities will be in trouble, and some of them may not remain habitable - especially if the natural-gas supply problem proves to be as dire as it now appears and the electric power generation that depends on it becomes erratic. Skyscrapers will prove to be more experimental than we had come to think. In general, we will probably have to return to a settlement pattern of towns and small cities surrounded by intensively cultivated agricultural hinterlands. When that happens, we will be a far less affluent society and the amount, scale and increment of new building will seem very modest by current standards. We will have access to far fewer, if any, modular building systems. Construction will be much more dependent on traditional masonry, carpentry and other journeyman skills. Increasingly our building and zoning laws will be ignored. If we return to a human scale of building, there is a good chance that our new urban quarters will be more humane and beautiful. The automobile era proved that people easily tolerated ugly, utilitarian buildings and horrible streetscapes as long as they had the compensation of being able to escape quickly in cars appointed with the finest digital stereo sound, air- conditioning and cup holders for iced beverages. This will change radically. There will be far less motoring. The future will be much more about staying where you are than travelling incessantly from place to place.

We are about to enter an era of tremendous trauma for the human race. It is likely to entail political turbulence every bit as extreme as the economic conditions that prompt it. We will not believe that this is happening to us, that 200 years of modernity can be brought to its knees by a worldwide power shortage. The prospect will be so grim that many individuals, and even whole countries, may become suicidally depressed. The survivors will have to cultivate a religion of hope - that is, a deep and comprehensive belief that humanity is worth carrying on.

If it happens that the human race doesn't make it, then the fact that we were here once will not be altered: that once upon a time we peopled this astonishing blue planet, and wondered intelligently at everything about it and the other things that lived here with us on it; that we celebrated the beauty of it in music, art, architecture, literature and dance; that there were times when we approached something godlike in our abilities and aspirations. We emerged out of depthless mystery, and back into mystery we returned; and, in the end, the mystery is all there is.

This is an edited extract from ‘The Long Emergency: surviving the converging catastrophes of the 21st century’ published on 5 August by Atlantic Books
This article first appeared in the New Statesman

BLESSING THE BOMBS: THE HIROSHIMA BOMBERS' CHAPLAIN FACES CHRIST
GEORGE ZABELKA
Pax Christi Conference
August, 1985

[This article is excerpted from a speech George Zabelka gave at a Pax Christi
conference in August 1985 (tape of speech obtained from Notre Dame University
Archives). The first two paragraphs are from an interview with Zabelka published in Sojourners magazine, August 1980.]

The destruction of civilians in war was always forbidden by the church, and if a
soldier came to me and asked if he could put a bullet through a child’s head, I would have told him, absolutely not. That would be mortally sinful. But in 1945 Tinian Island was the largest airfield in the world.

Three planes a minute could take off from it around the clock. Many of these planes went to Japan with the express purpose of killing not one child or one civilian but of slaughtering hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands of children and civilians --- and I said nothing.

I never preached a single sermon against killing civilians to the men who were doing it. I was brainwashed! It never entered my mind to protest publicly the consequences of these massive air raids. I was told it was necessary --- told openly by the military and told implicitly by my church’s leadership.

(To the best of my knowledge no American cardinals or bishops were opposing these mass air raids. Silence in such matters is a stamp of approval.)
I worked with Martin Luther King, Jr. during the Civil Rights struggle in Flint, Michigan.

His example and his words of nonviolent action, choosing love instead of hate, truth instead of lies, and nonviolence instead of violence stirred me deeply. This brought me face to face with pacifism --- active nonviolent resistance to evil.

I recall his words after he was jailed in Montgomery, and this blew my mind. He said, "Blood may flow in the streets of Montgomery before we gain our freedom, but it must be our blood that flows, and not that of the white man. We must not harm a single hair on the head of our white brothers."
I struggled. I argued. But yes, there it was in the Sermon on the Mount, very clear:

"Love your enemies. Return good for evil." I went through a crisis of faith. Either accept what Christ said, as impossible and silly as it may seem, or deny him completely.

For the last 1700 years the church has not only been making war respectable: it has been inducing people to believe it is an honorable profession, an honorable
Christian profession. This is not true. We have been brainwashed. This is a lie.

War is now, always has been, and always will be bad, bad news. I was there. I saw real war. Those who have seen real war will bear me out. I assure you, it is not of Christ. It is not Christ’s way. There is no way to conduct real war in conformity with the teachings of Jesus. There is no way to train people for real war in conformity with the teachings of Jesus.

The morality of the balance of terrorism is a morality that Christ never taught. The ethics of mass butchery cannot be found in the teachings of Jesus. In Just War ethics, Jesus Christ, who is supposed to be all in the Christian life, is irrelevant. He might as well never have existed. In Just War ethics, no appeal is made to him or his teaching, because no appeal can be made to him or his teaching, for neither he nor his teaching gives standards for Christians to follow in order to determine what level of slaughter is acceptable.

So the world is watching today. Ethical hairsplitting over the morality of various types of instruments and structures of mass slaughter is not what the world needs from the church, although it is what the world has come to expect from the followers of Christ.

What the world needs is a grouping of Christians that will stand up and pay up with Jesus Christ. What the world needs is Christians who, in language that the simplest soul could understand, will proclaim: the follower of Christ cannot participate in mass slaughter. He or she must love as Christ loved, live as Christ lived and, if necessary, die as Christ died, loving ones enemies.
For the 300 years immediately following Jesus’ resurrection, the church universally saw Christ and his teaching as nonviolent. Remember that the church taught this ethic in the face of at least three serious attempts by the state to liquidate her. It was subject to horrendous and ongoing torture and death.
If ever there was an occasion for justified retaliation and defensive slaughter, whether in form of a just war or a just revolution, this was it. The economic and political elite of the Roman state and their military had turned the citizens of the state against Christians and were embarked on a murderous public policy of exterminating the Christian community.

Yet the church, in the face of the heinous crimes committed against her members,
insisted without reservation that when Christ disarmed Peter he disarmed all
Christians. Christians continued to believe that Christ was, to use the words of an ancient liturgy, their fortress, their refuge, and their strength, and that if Christ was all they needed for security and defense, then Christ was all they should have. Indeed, this was a new security ethic.

Christians understood that if they would only follow Christ and his teaching, they couldn’t fail. When opportunities were given for Christians to appease the state by joining the fighting Roman army, these opportunities were rejected, because the early church saw a complete and an obvious incompatibility between loving as Christ loved and killing. It was Christ, not Mars, who gave security and peace.

Today the world is on the brink of ruin because the church refuses to be the church, because we Christians have been deceiving ourselves and the non-Christian world about the truth of Christ. There is no way to follow Christ, to love as Christ loved, and simultaneously to kill other people.

It is a lie to say that the spirit that moves the trigger of a flamethrower is the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ. It is a lie to say that learning to kill is learning to be Christ-like. It is a lie to say that learning to drive a bayonet into the heart of another is motivated from having put on the mind of Christ. Militarized Christianity is a lie. It is radically out of conformity with the teaching, life, and spirit of Jesus.

Now, brothers and sisters, on the anniversary of this terrible atrocity carried out by Christians, I must be the first to say that I made a terrible mistake. I was had by the father of lies. I participated in the big ecumenical lie of the Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox churches. I wore the uniform.

I was part of the system. When I said Mass over there I put on those beautiful vestments over my uniform. (When Father Dave Becker left the Trident submarine base in 1982 and resigned as Catholic chaplain there, he said, "Every time I went to Mass in my uniform and put the vestments on over my uniform, I couldn’t help but think of the words of Christ applying to me: Beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing.")

As an Air Force chaplain I painted a machine gun in the loving hands of the
nonviolent Jesus, and then handed this perverse picture to the world as truth. I sang "Praise the Lord" and passed the ammunition. As Catholic chaplain for the 509th Composite Group, I was the final channel that communicated this fraudulent image of Christ to the crews of the Enola Gay and the Boxcar.

All I can say today is that I was wrong. Christ would not be the instrument to unleash such horror on his people. Therefore no follower of Christ can legitimately unleash the horror of war on God’s people. Excuses and self-justifying explanations are without merit. All I can say is: I was wrong! But, if this is all I can say, this I must do, feeble as it is. For to do otherwise would be to bypass the first and absolutely essential step in the process of repentance and reconciliation: admission of error, admission of guilt.
I was there, and I was wrong. Yes, war is hell, and Christ did not come to justify the creation of hell on earth by his disciples. The justification of war may be compatible with some religions and philosophies, but it is not compatible with the nonviolent teaching of Jesus. I was wrong. And to those of whatever nationality or religion who have been hurt because I fell under the influence of the father of lies, I say with my whole heart and soul I am sorry. I beg forgiveness.

I asked forgiveness from the Hibakushas (the Japanese survivors of the atomic
bombings) in Japan last year, in a pilgrimage that I made with a group from Tokyo to Hiroshima. I fell on my face there at the peace shrine after offering flowers, and I prayed for forgiveness --- for myself, for my country, for my church. Both Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

This year in Toronto, I again asked forgiveness from the Hibakushas present. I asked forgiveness, and they asked forgiveness for Pearl Harbor and some of the horrible deeds of the Japanese military, and there were some, and I knew of them. We embraced. We cried. Tears flowed. That is the first step of reconciliation --- admission of guilt and forgiveness. Pray to God that others will find this way to peace.

All religions have taught brotherhood. All people want peace. It is only the
governments and war departments that promote war and slaughter. So today again I call upon people to make their voices heard. We can no longer just leave this to our leaders, both political and religious. They will move when we make them move.
They represent us. Let us tell them that they must think and act for the safety and security of all the people in our world, not just for the safety and security of one country. All countries are inter-dependent. We all need one another. It is no longer possible for individual countries to think only of themselves. We can all live together as brothers and sisters or we are doomed to die together as fools in a world holocaust.

Each one of us becomes responsible for the crime of war by cooperating in its
preparation and in its execution. This includes the military. This includes the making of weapons. And it includes paying for the weapons. There’s no question about that.

We’ve got to realize we all become responsible. Silence, doing nothing, can be one of the greatest sins.

The bombing of Nagasaki means even more to me than the bombing of Hiroshima.
By August 9, 1945, we knew what that bomb would do, but we still dropped it. We
knew that agonies and sufferings would ensue, and we also knew—at least our
leaders knew --- that it was not necessary.

The Japanese were already defeated. They were already suing for peace. But we insisted on unconditional surrender, and this is even against the Just War theory. Once the enemy is defeated, once the enemy is not able to hurt you, you must make peace.

As a Catholic chaplain I watched as the Boxcar, piloted by a good Irish Catholic
pilot, dropped the bomb on Urakami Cathedral in Nagasaki, the center of Catholicism in Japan. I knew that St. Francis Xavier, centuries before, had brought the Catholic faith to Japan. I knew that schools, churches, and religious orders were annihilated. And yet I said nothing.

Thank God that I’m able to stand here today and speak out against war, all war. The prophets of the Old Testament spoke out against all false gods of gold, silver, and metal. Today we are worshipping the gods of metal, the bomb. We are putting our trust in physical power, militarism, and nationalism. The bomb, not God, is our security and our strength. The prophets of the Old Testament said simply: Do not put your trust in chariots and weapons, but put your trust in God. Their message was simple, and so is mine.

We must all become prophets. I really mean that. We must all do something for
peace. We must stop this insanity of worshipping the gods of metal. We must take a stand against evil and idolatry. This is our destiny at the most critical time of human history. But it’s also the greatest opportunity ever offered to any group of people in the history of our world --- to save our world from complete annihilation.

Father George Zabelka, a Catholic chaplain with the U.S. Air Force, served as a priest for the airmen who dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, and gave them his blessing. Days later he counseled an airman who had flown a low-level reconnaissance flight over the city of Nagasaki shortly after the detonation of "Fat Man." The man described how thousands of scorched, twisted bodies writhed on the ground in the final throes of death, while those still on their feet wandered aimlessly in shock --- flesh seared, melted, and falling off.

The crewman’s description raised a stifled cry from the depths of Zabelka’s soul: "My God, what have we done?" Over the next twenty years, he gradually came to believe that he had been terribly wrong, that he had denied the very foundations of his faith by lending moral and religious support to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Zabelka died in 1992, but his message, in this speech given on the 40th anniversary of the bombings, must never be forgotten. ]

NAGASAKI MAYOR:
U.S HAS IGNORED INTERNATIONAL COMMITMENTS, MADE NO CHANGE IN STANCE ON NUCLEAR DETERRENCE
KATHLEEN E. MCLAUGHLIN
San Francisco Chronicle
August 10, 2005

The physical devastation is mostly gone or covered over, and the rolling mountains that open into a wide seaport are lush again with greenery.
Still, this forgotten city remembers all too well the day 60 years ago Tuesday when the United States dropped the 4.5-ton bomb called "Fat Man."
Nagasaki is an international city that has become a growing tourist hub in Japan. But it often plays second fiddle to Hiroshima, its unfortunate twin in atomic destruction, even though the devastation wrought here August 9, 1945, was just as heart-wrenching and widespread as that touched off by the first atomic bomb three days earlier and some 200 miles northeast.

Air-raid sirens sounded and bells tolled at 11:02 a.m. Tuesday in Nagasaki as about 6,000 people gathered at the site of the bombing to remember the 40,000 to 70,000 who died instantly and 74,000 others who were horribly wounded that morning. The city added another 2,748 names to its bomb death toll this year, as the hibakusha -- atomic bomb survivors --- age and fade away.

Fumie Sakamoto, a junior high school student home for lunch when the bomb struck Nagasaki, spoke to the crowd with resolve and anger. "The world around me was lost in a cloud of dust," she said, and she ran for shelter in the forest.
"People, clothes ripped and torn, with gaping chest wounds, whose hearts were exposed and could still be seen twitching; people burned so badly one could not tell front from back," she said. "The wood was full of such people."
Sakamoto, dressed in a deep purple kimono, her eyes and voice sharp and clear, said doctors had told her she was bound for death and not worth treating. She somehow survived over a "long and painful road."

"Yet war still persists on this Earth and, far from abolishing nuclear arms, I have heard there are even plans to develop nuclear weapons with new capabilities," she said. "We have devoted our lives to demanding that there never be A-bomb victims again, but why are our voices not heard?"
Nagasaki Mayor Iccho Itoh chastised the United States for continued nuclear proliferation and Japan for taking cover in America's nuclear fold.
"The nuclear weapons states, the United States of America in particular, have ignored their international commitments and have made no change in their unyielding stance on nuclear deterrence," Itoh said. "We strongly resent the trampling of the hopes of the world's people."

Japan Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi --- fresh from dissolving the lower house of parliament a day earlier after losing his battle to privatize the banking arm of the nation's postal service --- spoke briefly and pledged to work toward nuclear nonproliferation. This gathering was much smaller than the one in Hiroshima, but security around Koizumi was far tighter.

Nagasaki's anniversary ceremonies were less staid, packed more emotion and carried more vibrant color than did Hiroshima's.

Nagasaki's famous paper cranes have a lot to do with that. In a tradition started years ago, children from Japan and subsequently around the world make origami cranes to symbolize peace. These vibrant strands of reds, golds, purples and greens now are draped throughout the town on memorials and in the worst-hit areas.

One of those is the site of the rebuilt Urakami Cathedral, which took nearly a direct hit from the atomic bomb. Then called the grandest Catholic church in East Asia, the cathedral was blown to bits and all its clergy killed. This anniversary was very special for the cathedral; it displayed the surviving 11-inch-tall head of the original cathedral's Virgin Mary statue, which somehow remained intact. Long hidden from public view, the head rests on an altar carved by the son of a woman killed by the bomb.

Leaders of Japan's religious sects gathered at the Nagasaki bomb site Monday to pay homage to victims and pray for world peace. From Shinto monks in brilliant white with traditional black headdresses to robed Catholic bishops and gold-clad Buddhist monks, they made a brilliant display of color and music.

"We stand together for peace and human rights," said a Buddhist priest name Kanzaki, who was 5 years old and living in a nearby suburb when the bomb hit.
Nestled on the country's far southwestern edge, Nagasaki has been compared to San Francisco for its rolling hills, streetcars and broad bay, and to some European cities for its legacy of literature and poetry.

For some two centuries during Japan's period of world isolation, it was one of few trading ports open to the outside world. As the setting for Giacomo Puccini's opera "Madama Butterfly," Nagasaki feels far less wholly defined by the A-bomb than its bigger sister. Nagasaki simply didn't need to rely on A- bomb history for economic development, said Brian Burke-Gaffney, a Canadian professor of cross-cultural studies who has lived in Nagasaki since the early 1980s.
The city also is relatively open about its wartime past. Nagasaki is still a major base of operations for Mitsubishi, a leading Japanese arms and warship producer during World War II. In fact, local museums and books point out that the bomb landed on a munitions factory, and many of the people killed in the initial blast were building weapons.

Dozens of those killed in Nagasaki were not Japanese. Many were Chinese, Dutch, Korean and other prisoners of war forced into shipbuilding and other severe labor. The bomb destroyed a wartime prison near Urakami, killing 44 international inmates in what the Nagasaki Testimonial Society describes as "the greatest single disaster in the history of penal servitude."

So why doesn't the world pay as much attention to this place as it does to Hiroshima? It wasn't even the first choice to bomb, hit only after the U.S. plane made three passes over Kuroka to the north and quit because of smoke and cloud cover.

Maybe it's human nature. Scholar Robert Dujarric of the Japan Institute of International Affairs compared it to the moon walk.

"If you're first, you're famous, Neil Armstrong," he said. "If you're second, you're less, Buzz Aldrin."

The content here is not greatly different from that delivered by the Melbourne-based Catch the Fire Ministries, where that organisation is now deciding whether to appeal the ruling against it under Victoria's religious vilification law.

It is a clear unambiguous statement, obviously actionable in Victoria, and possibly under the new law in Britian. I see it as a direct challenge to that law.

UK Muslims have Sookhdeo in their sights. He is not backing off. He preached at St Geo's Epsom a couple month ago and I spoke with him afterwards.
__________

THE ISLAMIZATION OF EUROPE

www.barnabasfund.org
Dr Patrick Sookhdeo
11 August 2005

On Friday 20th May 2005 a crowd of some 300 Muslims burned a wooden
cross outside the American embassy in London. This was part of a
protest against the rumoured desecration of a Qur'an by American
soldiers in Guantanamo Bay, during which British and American flags
were also burned. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this event
was that it was not deemed to be newsworthy, receiving little
attention in the national press.

The whole scenario is reminiscent of what happens in so many
Muslim-majority countries: a rumour of an insult to Islam, a violent
and blasphemous anti-Christian reaction, police watching idly, and a
complete lack of public interest let alone outrage. It could have
been Pakistan, Egypt, Indonesia or Northern Nigeria. But it was the
UK.

Europe is undergoing a rapid process of change as Muslims make their
presence felt in politics, economics, law, education and the media.
While there is a wide range of attitudes amongst Muslims in Europe,
with many who are broadly content with the status quo and just want to
live their lives peacefully, others are striving deliberately to drive
forward the changes. As a result of the efforts of the latter, Europe
is gradually being transformed into a society in which Islam takes its
place, not just as an equal alongside the many other faith
communities, but often as the dominant player. This is not purely, or
even primarily, a matter of numbers, but is more a matter of control
of the structures of society. It is not happening by chance but is
the result of a careful and deliberate strategy by certain Muslim
leaders.

Though the effects are only now becoming noticeable, the planning was
done decades ago. In 1980 the Islamic Council of Europe published a
book called Muslim Communities in Non-Muslim States which clearly
explained the Islamic agenda in Europe. When Muslims live as a
minority they face theological problems, because classical Islamic
teaching always presupposed a context of Islamic dominance; hence the
need for guidance on how to live in non-Muslim states. The
instructions given in the book told Muslims to get together and
organise themselves with the aim of establishing a viable Muslim
community based on Islamic principles. This is the duty of every
individual Muslim living within a non-Muslim political entity. They
should set up mosques, community centres and Islamic schools. At all
costs they must avoid being assimilated by the majority. In order to
resist assimilation, they must group themselves geographically,
forming areas of high Muslim concentration within the population as a
whole. Yet they must also interact with non-Muslims so as to share
the message of Islam with them. Every Muslim individual is required
to participate in the plan; it is not allowed for anyone simply to
live as a "good Muslim" without assisting the overall strategy. The
ultimate goal of this strategy is that the Muslims should become a
majority and the entire nation be governed according to Islam. (M.
Ali Kettani "The Problems of Muslim Minorities and their Solutions" in
Muslim Communities in Non-Muslim States (London: Islamic Council of
Europe, 1980) pp.96-105)

Not all Muslims would support this action plan. The more secularized
are happy to become integrated within the majority society. Even
amongst those who agree on the ultimate goal of creating an Islamic
state, there are differences about methodology i.e. whether this
should be a slow and peaceful transition, or whether it should be
hastened by means of political dominance or even - say some - by
violence.

Despite the variety of opinion amongst Muslims, it is not hard to
recognize the different stages of the Islamic Council of Europe's
strategy being put into practice within today's Europe. Muslims do
tend to live in tightly concentrated areas, and show little sign of
integrating into wider society. Saudi funding is paying for the
erection of large and beautiful mosques, staffed by imams brought over
to Europe from the "home countries". Sweden's third largest city,
Malmø, is effectively ruled by violent gangs of Muslims, and some of
the Muslim residents of the city still cannot read or write Swedish
though they have lived there for 20 years. Denmark has recently seen
the Nordgårdsskolen in Aarhus become the first school in the country
to have 100% Muslim pupils. Britain's Muslim population (variously
estimated at between 1.6 and 3 million) is concentrated in three
areas: north-west England, the midlands and London. In some of these
areas Muslims are now targeting the remaining Christian presence,
arsoning churches, physically attacking church leaders and their
property; the aim seems to be to "cleanse" these areas of non-Muslims.


European Muslims are Islamizing many aspects of life that also affect
non-Muslims. Spanish Muslims have expressed their desire to "regain"
the mosque of Cordoba. This building was originally a church, then
turned into a mosque, and then turned back into a place of Christian
worship. Halal meat is now routinely served in many British prisons,
schools and hospitals, sometimes to Muslim and non-Muslim alike, and
the hijab [Islamic headscarf] is worn in British schools. Muslims in
the London borough of Tower Hamlets have forced name-changes for
districts and local amenities if the existing name sounds too
Christian for their liking.

In the UK, where Islam is making its most rapid advance, Islamic law
(shari'a) is already practised unofficially, with shari'a councils and
shari'a courts giving judgments on Muslim family matters. In
education numerous concessions are being made to British Muslims,
Islam often being given more prominence and respect than other faiths
at state schools. An increasing number of university posts are being
funded from Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries on condition that
a certain line of thinking is promoted.

The ultimate goal of taking control of society, as depicted by the
Islamic Council of Europe in 1980, is clearly in the minds of at least
some Muslim leaders. A Dutch Imam has stated that Islamic law is
superior to other forms of legislation so there is no need to obey
other laws. Some Finnish imams preach on the Islamic duty to kill a
Muslim who converts to another faith, adding that it is difficult to
carry this out in Finland at present because Muslims do not yet "own
the state". Furthermore, the freedoms of European society are being
exploited by Islamic militants and their supporters to plan terrorist
activities around the world. London - or "Londonistan" as it is
becoming known - is one of the most important bases for Islamic
terrorism worldwide. This has been illustrated by the July bombings
in London itself.

Despite all these advances, Muslims still tend to portray themselves
as victims in European society, while the majority society in turn
struggles to affirm them and to avoid giving any accidental offence.

But this kind of reaction by non-Muslims can be seen as the typical
behaviour of dhimmi. In classical Islam, Christian and Jewish
minorities within an Islamic state were called dhimmi. They were free
to worship and live out their faith, but had to submit to a raft of
discriminatory and humiliating laws. They learned to be subservient,
and to consider the dominance of Muslims as normal as the Muslims
themselves did.

It is typical of dhimmi not to protest if a Christian cross is burned
by an angry crowd, nor even to feel that anything outrageous has
occurred. Likewise the Muslim scheme to turn the cathedral of Cordoba
back into a mosque has the backing of some Spanish government leaders
in the city.

At a political level, European countries are responding in different
ways to the challenge of Islam. France is determinedly protecting its
secularism, and has banned the hijab in school. The Netherlands have
recently swung from one extreme to the other, following the ritualized
killing of Dutch film director Theo van Gogh by a young Muslim in
November 2004; they are turning against multiculturalism and becoming
concerned to control immigration. The UK seems to be seeking to
replicate the segregation and communalism of the British Raj in India,
whereby the various religious communities were each given their own
laws. This policy would certainly mesh well with some Muslim leaders'
own plans for Britain. If Britain is to be sub-divided in this way,
perhaps geographically as well as legally, it raises the question of
how the Church would survive in areas of Islamic rule. What form
would Christian ministry be able to take in these areas?

Muslims are still a minority in numerical terms in Europe, with an
estimated 20 million living in the European Union. No country apart
from Albania has a Muslim community amounting to more than about 10%
of the population. However, demographic studies indicate that Muslim
populations are growing far faster than the non-Muslim populations.
This is due partly to continued immigration, partly to conversion, but
mainly to the larger number of children which Muslim families
typically have. The growing Muslim community is a mosaic of different
ethnic, linguistic, cultural, sectarian and geographical backgrounds,
and characterized by increasing internal tensions particularly over
how to relate to the host society.

Some Christians have decried as faithless pessimism those who predict
the Islamization of Europe before the end of the century. But it must
be remembered that the region which is now Pakistan and Afghanistan
was once Christian, as was North Africa. The Church was completely
eradicated from these areas by the advance of Islam. It would surely
be arrogant to think that this could never happen to the Church in
Europe.

As individual Christians we must love our Muslim neighbours and
forgive any wrongs done to us. But as a community the Church must
defend herself, as well as the Judaeo-Christian heritage with which
Europe is blessed. For this her leaders need great wisdom and
courage.

Homosexuality is becoming more prominent in Western nations, leading to growing pressure to accept the legitimacy of homosexual lifestyles in society and the churches. This biblical study of Romans 1:24-32 sees the issue as a symptom of the wider phenomenon of moral decline in societies and civilizations. Originally preached as a sermon at St Albans Presbyterian Church, Palmerston North, New Zealand, on 1 May 1994, it was published in a special insert on 'Homosexuality and the Church’, in Renewal News (Rotorua, New Zealand, Presbyterian Renewal Ministries), June 1996, pp. 4-6.

This passage is one of the darkest and most sordid in the whole Bible. But I make no apology for preaching about it. Paul has said that the Gospel is ‘the power of God for salvation’ (1:16 ) - God’s effective means of transforming people’s lives and conduct. Now he goes on to show what the Gospel saves people from - their sin and depravity. The Gospel is glorious. The sin from which it saves us is sordid.
Paul identifies three factors in the moral decline of societies and civilizations:

Its History

First of all, moral decline has a history, a progression. It starts with the denial of God, and leads on to the degrading of humanity. It begins with suppression of truth (18-23), and leads on to the corruption of morals (24-32). A Chinese proverb says: ‘A fish rots first in the head.’ To reject God, when God is plainly known from what he has made; to put idols in God’s place when so plainly they are not God - this involves a ‘darkening’ of the mind (21). It is something ‘foolish.’ To regard such things as ultimate is an expression not of wisdom, but of stupidity. But darkening of the mind leads on to a degrading of the body (24,26). Darkened thinking results in depraved behaviour. A society declines morally only because it has first deteriorated spiritually. The present moral state of New Zealand is the expression of an underlying spiritual deterioration in our nation.

Its Logic

Secondly, moral decline has a logic, a perverse but consistent logic. In one sense there is no logic in sin, because sin, by definition, has no place in God’s purpose for human life. God never intended us to sin. Our humanity and our humanness cannot be truly satisfied if we sin. But in another sense there is a certain perverse logic in sin: if we reject God, and want to be free of God, then logically we must reject everything that God has made, everything that God has given us, everything that reminds us of God. We must not only deny God, but deny the human nature created by God - including its sexual structure, physiology and orientation.

The philosopher Michael Polanyi calls this process ‘moral inversion.’ He sees the passionate espousal of immoral ends as a major phenomenon of our times. Today moral people have become afflicted with moral cowardice, while immoral people become have become imbued with moral passion. Through a reversal of moral terms (Paul calls it an ‘exchange’), good is called evil and evil is called good. ‘Fair is foul and foul is fair,’ as the witches say in the opening scene of Macbeth.
Moral inversion can be compared to the polarity of an electric motor: if it is reversed, the very same current drives it in the opposite direction. Similarly, says Paul, the moral decline of society involves an exchange, a reversal of polarity, the replacement of one set of conditions for its opposite:

‘The truth’ → ‘The lie’
‘The Creator’ → ‘The creature’
‘Natural relations’ ‘Unnatural relations’
→
(Heterosexual intercourse) (Homosexual intercourse)
‘The glory of the immortal God’ → ‘Shameful,’ ‘indecent’ and
‘degrading’ conduct’

In this inversion the truth about God is exchanged for ‘the lie’ (Paul uses the definite article, because the view that God does not exist and that human beings are not accountable to him for their actions is the ultimate untruth). When God is denied, created things are then worshipped or treated as ultimate in God’s place. Because created relationships cannot carry such ultimate significance, natural relationships break down and give way to relationships that are ‘unnatural’ or ‘contrary to nature.’ What is ennobling and enriching of life (‘The glory of the immortal God’) is replaced by depraved and indecent conduct. Thus the logic of sin leads from the denial of God to the degrading of humanity.

Its Pathology

Moral decline, thirdly, has a social pathology, a grim and sobering set of symptoms. Paul uses two significant terms to describe these outcomes:
Three times he uses the verb, ‘they exchanged.’ ‘They exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images’ (23). ‘They exchanged the truth of God for a lie’ (25). ‘They exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones’ (26). Depraved and perverted sexual conduct is not a simple matter of biological determinism, but an expression of free will and choice. What we do with our sexual condition, with our abilities or disabilities, with our life experiences, hinges on our own personal responsibility. ‘To exchange’ is to turn from one form of conduct to another, as a matter of deliberate volition and choice. This is particularly obvious today in the public flaunting of bisexuality and transvestism.
Also used three times by Paul is the phrase ‘God gave them over.’ ‘God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity’ (24). ‘God gave them over to shameful lusts’ (26). ‘God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done’ (28 ). If we persistently choose to live our life in defiance of God, God will ultimately give us over to the way of life we have chosen. C.S. Lewis says that the damned ‘enjoy forever the horrible freedom they have demanded.’ Or, as David Pawson puts it in his sermon on this passage: ‘If you don’t want God’s presence, you must forfeit God’s protection.’

God does not do this lightly. He does not give up on those who stumble temporarily then repent, but only on those who are persistently obdurate and defiant. God’s giving us over to our choices is something akin to what the Bible elsewhere calls the sin against the Holy Spirit. An example is Pharaoh, who persistently rejected offers of God’s grace and ten times closed his heart to God’s appeals, bringing down judgement on his nation. The phrase ‘God gave them over’ indicates a moral threshold, a critical magnitude below which people cease to be responsive to moral appeal and become reprobate. Just as water ceases to be fluid and becomes solid below freezing point, so too human beings, when they persistently lower their spiritual temperature, reach a point where they cease to be capable of repentance and moral change and become fixed in the lifestyle they have chosen.

A Symptomatic Sin

It is ominous when God gives up on a people; when a society, with its brakes off, begins to roll down hill on a disaster course of its own choosing. And it is significant that Paul mentions one form of sexual sin as indicating when a society is approaching this moral threshold. That symptomatic sin is homosexual conduct - the exchange of natural for unnatural sexual relationships (24, 26-27). It is not the only depravity listed here. Paul also mentions twenty four other forms of wickedness (28-32). Rather like the characters in Dostoevsky’s The Possessed, who go beyond good and evil and defy every social norm, Paul speaks of those who commit ‘every kind of wickedness,’ who display overweening pride, insolence and rebelliousness, and who practice hatred, cruelty and heartlessness towards other human beings. But it is the public condoning of widespread homosexual practice that indicates a society which God is about to give up on - a civilization in the advanced stages of moral degeneration and decline.

Why is this so? It is because our sexual nature as male and female is at the very heart of our humanity as created by God. Sexual identity and practice touches something that goes to the very heart of human sensibility. In Genesis 1:26-27 there is a vision of human sexuality unparalleled in ancient or modern times: human beings are created in a co-humanity, male and female, in the likeness of a relational, triune God. Our sexual nature is God-given; it is an expression of God’s image in us; it is right at the heart of our human identity.

Thus, rejection of heterosexual intercourse strikes at the very core of our humanity. It is a flagrant rejection of the human nature that God has created - which includes the differentiation and physiology of the sexes. ‘They exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural,’ says Paul, or, as the Greek literally means, for relations that are ‘against nature’ or ‘contrary to nature’ (26). A skilled cabinetmaker works with the grain of the timber. To go against the grain is to foul it up. Similarly, our human physiology has been delicately designed for heterosexual rather than homosexual intercourse. The tissue of the female vagina is strong and lubricated, unlike the thin, easily ruptured lining of the rectum. Because male semen includes a powerful immune suppressant, necessary to penetrate the defences of the ovum for fertilization to occur, anal intercourse is not only a depraved but a highly dangerous practice. The resultant Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome corroborates Paul’s analysis exactly: ‘men received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion’ (27).

Disorientation and Defiance

For some, homosexual tendencies are the result of events or circumstances in their upbringing - the absence of a father figure, violation by a family member, teenage experimentation. For others, homosexual experience can be the pathetic expression of a confused and disoriented society that has lost its sexual moorings. Cat Stevens expressed this confusion in his 1970s song ‘Tuesday’s

Dead’:
What’s my sex?
What’s my name?
All in all
it’s all the same.
Everybody plays
a different game.
That is all.

But for others within the militant Gay community homosexual activity is an act of what the French existentialist philosopher Albert Camus has called ‘metaphysical rebellion’: rebellion against the human condition itself. To deny God completely, it is also necessary to repudiate every trace of God, including one’s God-given sexuality and physiology. Charles Colson, a man with a great deal of experience of criminal homosexuality through his work with Prison Fellowship, says of homosexual intercourse: ‘It is perhaps the most radical rebellion against God, the rudest rejection of God’s authority, the ugliest expression of the creation saying to the Creator: "Why did you make me like this?"’

History shows that widespread homosexuality shows up in the advanced stages of a society’s decline. It signals that God’s judgement is upon us (18, 32). One thinks of Pompeii and Herculaneum, of Sodom and Gomorrah. A Jewish tradition says that the generation of the Noahic Flood was wiped out because they wrote marriage contracts between males just as they did for heterosexual couples. The more homosexual behaviour is normalized, the more clearly those with eyes to see will recognize that our society’s destruction is at hand. There is no room for moral smugness or superiority on our part - Paul goes on to critique that in chapter 2. Rather, we must get on our knees to plead with God not to give us up, not take his hands off our society, not to abandon us to our own devices. May God have mercy upon us.

Rob Yule 1 May 1994

© 1994, St Albans Presbyterian Church, & 1996, Presbyterian Renewal Ministries

Submission on the Statutes Amendment (Relationships) Bill 2004

N.E.Whitehead
February 2005

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Appendix

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

My question to all of you is: Would you have made the same choice?

At a fundraising dinner for a school that serves learning disabled children,
the father of one of the students delivered a speech that would never be
forgotten by all who attended.

After extolling the school and its dedicated staff, he offered question.
"When not interfered with by outside influences, everything nature does is
done with perfection. Yet my son, Shay, cannot learn things as other
children do. He cannot understand things as other children do.
Where is the natural order of things in my son?"

The audience was stilled by the query.

The father continued. "I believe, that when a child like Shay comes into
the world, an oportunity to realize true human nature presents itself, and
it comes, in the way other people treat that child."

Then he told the following story: Shay and his father had walked past a
park where some boys Shay knew were playing baseball.

Shay asked, "Do you think they'll let me play?"

Shay's father knew that most of the boys would not want someone like Shay
on their team, but the father also understood that if his son were allowed
to play, it would give him a much-needed sense of belonging.

Shay's father approached one of the boys on the field and asked if Shay
could play.

The boy looked around for guidance and, getting none, he took matters into
his own hands and said, "We're losing by six runs and the game is in the
eighth inning. I guess he can be on our team and we'll try to put him in to
bat in the ninth inning."

In the bottom of the eighth inning, Shay's team scored a few runs but was
still behind by three. In the top of the ninth inning, Shay put on glove
and played in the outfield.

Even though no hits came his way, he was obviously ecstatic just to be in
the game and on the field, grinning from ear to ear as his father waved to
him from the stands.

In the bottom of the ninth inning, Shay's team scored again. Now, with two
outs and the bases loaded, the potential winning run was on base and Shay
was scheduled to be next at bat.

Should they, at this juncture, let Shay bat and give away their chance to
win the game?

Surprisingly, Shay was given the bat. Everyone knew that a hit was all but
impossible 'cause Shay didn't even know how to hold the bat properly, much
less connect with the ball.

However, as Shay stepped up to the plate, the pitcher moved in a few steps
to lob the ball in softly so Shay could at least be able to make contact.

The first pitch came and Shay swung clumsily and missed.

The pitcher again took a few steps forward to toss the ball softly towards
Shay.

As the pitch came in, Shay swung at the ball and hit a slow ground ball
right back to the pitcher.

The pitcher picked up the soft grounder and could have easily thrown the
ball to the first baseman. Shay would have been out and that would have
been the end of the game.

Instead, the pitcher took the ball and turned and threw the ball on a high
arc to right field, far beyond the reach of the first baseman.

Everyone started yelling, "Shay, run to first! Run to first!"

Never in his life had Shay ever made it to first base. He scampered down
the baseline, wide-eyed and startled.

Everyone yelled, "Run to second, run to second!"

By the time Shay rounded first base, the right fielder had the ball.

He could have thrown the ball to the second-baseman for the tag, but he
understood the pitcher's intentions and intentionally threw the ball high
and far over the third-baseman's head.

Shay ran toward second base as the runners ahead of him deliriously circled
the bases toward home.

Shay reached second base, the opposing shortstop ran to him, turned him in
the direction of third base, and shouted, "Run to third!"

As Shay rounded third, the boys from both teams were screaming, "Shay, run
home!"

Shay ran to home, stepped on the plate, and was cheered as the hero who
hit the "grand slam" and won the game for his team.

"That day," said the father softly with tears now rolling down his face,
"the boys from both teams helped bring a piece of true love and humanity
to this world."

AND, NOW A LITTLE FOOTNOTE TO THIS STORY:

We all send thousands of jokes through the e-mail without a second thought,
but when it comes to sending messages about life choices, people think
twice about sharing.

The crude, vulgar, and often obscene pass freely through cyberspace, but
public discussion about decency is too often suppressed in our schools and
workplaces.

If you're thinking about forwarding this message, chances are that you're
probably sorting out the people on your address list that aren't the
"appropriate" ones to receive this type of message.
Well, the person who sent you this believes that we all can make a
difference.

We all have thousands of opportunities every single day to help realize
the "natural order of things."

So many seemingly trivial interactions between two people present us with a
choice:
Do we pass along a little spark of love and humanity or do we pass up that
opportunity, and leave the world a little bit colder in the process?

You now have two choices:

1. Delete

2. Forward

The atheist C K Stead is one of New
Zealand's most respected writers of novels,
poetry, and criticism. The slim volume 'Voices'
(GP 1990) was his "response to a commission from
the Hon Dr Michael Bassett, Minister of Arts &
Culture, to write a poem for the New Zealand 1990
sesquicentenary". The book is a sequence of a
few dozen poems. Stead explains that in each
poem "the speaker is a particular persona. Some
are real, some fictional, some a mixture of the
two." The poems have titles like '1941 The
Soldier'. C K is a friend of mine and assures
me he won't make any issue of copyright for use
of this poem.

1820 The Missionary
- C K Stead

1

Ten men to hold the wheel, children screaming,
our whole world shuddering, heaving, breaking -
how potent those words to calm us: "They that go down
to the sea in ships, that have business in great waters,
see the Work of the Lord and his Wonders in the deep."

God who delivered us out of Leviathan's jaws
has brought us here where welcoming thighs open
to the dark pathway. Better we had gone down
in that cold hell than in false paradise.
Dreams and mosquitoes plague me in my tent.

Marsden's lash, Kendall's lusts of the flesh, -
where is our faith? Our half-drunk countrymen trade
muskets for women. The natives kill without rancour.
On still evenings I listen to small waves lapping
along the shoreline. It might be the language of God.

2

Our visitor put on green glasses and a wig.
We shouted "Atua!" The natives ran from our table.
They say their recent dead go by this headland
on their way to Reinga. At night they hear them whistle.
I wonder, mocking their faith, do we mock our own.

For hillslope, riverflat and eastern bay was paid
fish-hooks, hoes, axes, blankets, trousers.
Also tobacco. The old chief made his mark -
eager to sell. Discreetly I asked him why.
He thought me mad. Had I never felt, he asked,

south wind around bare shoulders? Shaped a bone hook?
Felled trees and carved them with stone implements?
Tomorrow, next year, for ever, the land would be there.
We could not take it away. Why did we value so little
iron axes, fish-hooks, trousers, blankets of wool?

3

Today our first plough turned New Zealand soil.
I walked behind six bullocks. Dark loam rolled out
like a bow wave. I thought of what is to come
and wished this day might be remembered well.
How fortunate we first! God speed the plough!

This evening on the estuary, three canoes,
their chant preceeding them - [ italics] hoea! toia!
Over still green water. Soft voiced Hongi Ika
splendid in feathers, kai tangata, eater of men -
he paddles out of silence, and into the past.

I give this moment to my kin-of-place
now and for ever. The seed of your growing is here
in this Bay of Islands. Europe is in our books
and in our boxes. We will unpack them slowly.
God save this bright air, these untroubled waters.

* * *

I congratulated C K on understanding
Christian perspectives to such an extent tho'
he's an atheist. (Also I told him "Marsden's
lash" is no fairer than "Cook's lash"; both of
these great men were as generous as the rules
then allowed in their positions. Look what
happened to Cook's protégé Bligh who flogged even
less.)

Many New Zealandes would find 'Voices' insightful as I did.

THE
CALAMITY HOWLER
August 9, 2005 Issue #65
EDITOR\PUBLISHER; A.V. Krebs
E-MAIL: avkrebs@earthlink.net
TO RECEIVE: Send name and address

COMMENTARY:
LEST WE FORGET !!!
Sixty years ago today at 11:02 a.m., under the guise of hastening the end of World War II and avoiding further U.S. blood shed by invading the home islands of Japan, a United States Air Force bomber --- "Bock's Car" --- dropped a plutonium bomb --- the Fat Boy --- on Nagasaki, killing about 80,000 people.

Nagasaki Mayor Itcho Ito recalls "in an instant, the resulting heat, blast and radiation descended upon Nagasaki and transformed the city into a hell on earth.".

While Hiroshima, where the first atomic bomb was dropped three days earlier, has over the years, received most of the attention, Nagasaki's loss of human life and long-term causalities is perhaps even more scandalous and an indelible stain on the American moral conscience.

For in 2003 alone Nagasaki added 2,692 people to a list of those who have died from aftereffects, bringing that city's count of the total number of bomb victims to 131,885 at that time.

If one ignores the growing body of historical evidence that the reason the U.S. dropped its two atomic bombs was to simply impress the Russians --- who in fact came into the war against Japan the day before the Nagasaki bombing --- and accepts the Truman rationale that we did it to frighten the Japanese into surrendering without invading their homeland, then the reasoning behind the Nagasaki bombing falls apart.

After the Hiroshima bomb was dropped on August 6 with a loss of life of 140,000 and a city left in ruins the Japanese high command in Tokyo still had not pieced together exactly what had happened in Hiroshima. In other words even before they were able to adequately assimilate what had happened in Hiroshima news of the Nagasaki fire and destruction reached them.

Thus, one can conclude that the U.S. determined after spending billions of dollars in developing, at the time, its two atomic bombs they were going to use them both, come hell or high water. In a perverse sort of way they got what they wished for -- a living "hell on earth" but for tens of thousands of innocent human beings and for the dubious distinction of our being the only nation in the history of warfare to ever use atomic weapons in anger.

One can only say in response:
"Vengeance is mine, sayth the Lord !!!"

DOROTHY DAY ON
THE ATOMIC BOMB
DOROTHY DAY
The Catholic Worker
September, 1945

Mr. Truman was jubilant. President Truman. True man; what a strange name, come to think of it. We refer to Jesus Christ as true God and true Man. Truman is a true man of his time in that he was jubilant. He was not a son of God, brother of Christ, brother of the Japanese, jubilating as he did. He went from table to table on the cruiser which was bringing him home from the Big Three conference, telling the great news; "jubilant" the newspapers said. Jubilate Deo. We have killed 318,000 Japanese.

That is, we hope we have killed them, the Associated Press, on page one, column one of the Herald Tribune says. The effect is hoped for, not known. It is to be hoped they are vaporized, our Japanese brothers, scattered, men, women and babies, to the four winds, over the seven seas. Perhaps we will breathe their dust into our nostrils, feel them in the fog of New York on our faces, feel them in the rain on the hills of Eaton.

Jubilate Deo. President Truman was jubilant. We have created. We have created destruction. We have created a new element, called Pluto. Nature had nothing to do with it.

The papers list the scientists (the murderers) who are credited with perfecting this new weapon. Scientists, army officers, great universities, and captains of industry-all are given credit lines in the press for their work of preparing the bomb-and other bombs, the President assures us, are in production now.

Everyone says, "I wonder what the Pope thinks of it?" How everyone turns to the Vatican for judgment, even though they do not seem to listen to the voice there! But our Lord Himself has already pronounced judgment on the atomic bomb. When James and John (John the beloved) wished to call down fire from heaven on their enemies, Jesus said:
"You know not of what spirit you are. The Son of Man came not to destroy souls but to save." He said also, "What you do unto the least of these my brethren, you do unto me.

HIROSHIMA
COVER-UP EXPOSED
GREG MITCHELL
Editor & Publisher
August 5, 2005

In the weeks following the atomic attacks on Japan almost 60 years ago, and then for decades afterward, the United States engaged in airtight suppression of all film shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the bombings. This included footage shot by U.S. military crews and Japanese newsreel teams. In addition, for many years all but a handful of newspaper photographs were seized or prohibited.

The public did not see any of the newsreel footage for 25 years, and the U.S. military film remained hidden for nearly four decades.

The full story of this atomic cover-up is told fully for the first time at Editor & Publisher, as the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombings approaches later this week. Some of the long-suppressed footage will be aired on television this Saturday.

Six weeks ago, E&P broke the story that articles written by famed Chicago Daily News war correspondent George Weller about the effects of the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki were finally published, in Japan, almost six decades after they had been spiked by U.S. officials.

This drew national attention, but suppressing film footage shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was even more significant, as this country rushed into the nuclear age with its citizens having neither a true understanding of the effects of the bomb on human beings, nor why the atomic attacks drew condemnation around the world.

As editor of Nuclear Times magazine in the 1980s, I met Herbert Sussan, one of the members of the U.S. military film crew, and Erik Barnouw, the famed documentarian who first showed some of the Japanese footage on American TV in 1970. In fact, that newsreel footage might have disappeared forever if the Japanese filmmakers had not hidden one print from the Americans in a ceiling.
The color U.S. military footage would remain hidden until the early 1980s, and has never been fully aired. It rests today at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, in the form of 90,000 feet of raw footage labeled #342 USAF.

When that footage finally emerged, I corresponded and spoke with the man at the center of this drama: Lt. Col. (Ret.) Daniel A. McGovern, who directed the U.S. military filmmakers in 1945-1946, managed the Japanese footage, and then kept watch on all of the top-secret material for decades.
"I always had the sense," McGovern told me, "that people in the Atomic Energy Commission were sorry we had dropped the bomb. The Air Force --- it was also sorry. I was told by people in the Pentagon that they didn't want those [film] images out because they showed effects on man, woman and child. ... They didn't want the general public to know what their weapons had done --- at a time they were
planning on more bomb tests. We didn't want the material out because ... we were sorry for our sins."

Sussan, meanwhile, struggled for years to get some of the American footage aired on national TV, taking his request as high as President Truman, Robert F. Kennedy and Edward R. Murrow, to no avail.
More recently, McGovern declared that Americans should have seen the damage wrought by the bomb. "The main reason it was classified was ... because of the horror, the devastation," he said. Because the footage shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was hidden for so long, the atomic bombings quickly sank, unconfronted and unresolved, into the deeper recesses of American awareness, as a costly nuclear arms race, and nuclear proliferation, accelerated.

The atomic cover-up also reveals what can happen in any country that carries out deadly attacks on civilians in any war and then keeps images of what occurred from its own people.

Ten years ago, I co-authored (with Robert Jay Lifton) the book Hiroshima in America, and new material has emerged since. On August 6, and on following days, the Sundance cable channel will air "Original Child Bomb," a prize-winning documentary on which I worked. The film includes some of the once-censored footage --- along with home movies filmed by McGovern in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb over Hiroshima, killing at least 70,000 instantly and perhaps 50,000 more in the days and months to follow. Three days later, it exploded another atomic bomb over Nagasaki, slightly off target, killing 40,000 immediately and dooming tens of thousands of others. Within days, Japan had surrendered, and the U.S. readied plans for occupying the defeated country --- and documenting the first atomic catastrophe.

But the Japanese also wanted to study it. Within days of the second atomic attack, officials at the Tokyo-based newsreel company Nippon Eigasha discussed shooting film in the two stricken cities. In early September, just after the Japanese surrender, and as the American occupation began, director Sueo Ito set off for Nagasaki. There his crew filmed the utter destruction near ground zero and scenes in hospitals of the badly burned and those suffering from the lingering effects of radiation.
On September 15, another crew headed for Hiroshima. When the first rushes came back to Toyko, Akira Iwasaki, the chief producer, felt "every frame burned into my brain," he later said.

At this point, the American public knew little about conditions in the atomic cities beyond Japanese assertions that a mysterious affliction was attacking many of those who survived the initial blasts (claims that were largely taken to be propaganda). Newspaper photographs of victims were non-existent, or censored. Life magazine would later observe that for years "the world ... knew only the physical facts of atomic destruction."

Tens of thousands of American GIs occupied the two cities. Because of the alleged absence of residual radiation, no one was urged to take precautions.

Then, on October 24, 1945, a Japanese cameraman in Nagasaki was ordered to stop shooting by an American military policeman. His film, and then the rest of the 26,000 feet of Nippon Eisasha footage, was confiscated by the U.S. General Headquarters (GHQ). An order soon arrived banning all further filming. It was at this point that Lt. Daniel McGovern took charge.

In early September, 1945, less than a month after the two bombs fell, Lt. McGovern -- who as a member of Hollywood's famed First Motion Picture Unit shot some of the footage for William Wyler's "Memphis Belle" --- had become one of the first Americans to arrive in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He was a director with the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, organized by the Army the previous November to study the effects of the air campaign against Germany, and now Japan.

As he made plans to shoot the official American record, McGovern learned about the seizure of the Japanese footage. He felt it wouldbe a waste to not take advantage of the newsreel footage, noting in a letter to his superiors that "the conditions under which it was taken will not be duplicated, until another atomic bomb is released under combat conditions."

McGovern proposed hiring some of the Japanese crew to edit and "caption" the material, so it would have "scientific value." He took charge of this effort in early January 1946, even as the Japanese feared that, when they were done, they would never see even a scrap of their film again.

At the same time, McGovern was ordered by General Douglas MacArthur on January 1, 1946 to document the results of the U.S. air campaign in more than 20 Japanese cities. His crew would shoot exclusively on color film, Kodachrome and Technicolor, rarely used at the time even in Hollywood. McGovern assembled a crew of eleven, including two civilians. Third in command was a young lieutenant from New York named Herbert Sussan.

The unit left Tokyo in a specially outfitted train, and made it to Nagasaki. "Nothing and no one had prepared me for the devastation I met there," Sussan later told me. "We were the only people with adequate ability and equipment to make a record of this holocaust. ... I felt that if we did not capture this horror on film, no one would ever really understand the dimensions of what had happened. At that time people back home had not seen anything but black and white pictures of blasted buildings or a mushroom cloud."

Along with the rest of McGovern's crew, Sussan documented the physical effects of the bomb, including the ghostly shadows of vaporized civilians burned into walls; and, most chillingly, dozens of people in hospitals who had survived (at least momentarily) and were asked to display their burns, scars, and other lingering effects for the camera as a warning to the world.

At the Red Cross Hospital in Hiroshima, a Japanese physician traced the hideous, bright red scars that covered several of the patients ---- and then took off his white doctor's shirt and displayed his own burns and cuts.

After sticking a camera on a rail car and building their own tracks through the ruins, the Americans filmed hair-raising tracking shots that could have been lifted right from a Hollywood movie. Their chief cameramen was a Japanese man, Harry Mimura, who in 1943 had shot "Sanshiro Sugata," the first feature film by a then-unknown Japanese director named Akira Kurosawa.

While all this was going on, the Japanese newsreel team was completing its work of editing and labeling all their black & white footage into a rough cut of just under three hours. At this point, several members of Japanese team took the courageous step of ordering from the lab a duplicate of the footage they had shot before the Americans took over the project.

Director Ito later said: "The four of us agreed to be ready for ten years of hard labor in the case of being discovered." One incomplete, silent print would reside in a ceiling until the Occupation ended.

The negative of the finished Japanese film, nearly 15,000 feet of footage on 19 reels, was sent off to the U.S. in early May 1946. The Japanese were also ordered to include in this shipment all photographs and related material. The footage would be labeled SECRET and not emerge from the shadows for more than 20 years.

The following month, McGovern was abruptly ordered to return to the U.S. He hauled the 90,000 feet of color footage, on dozens of reels in huge footlockers, to the Pentagon and turned it over to General Orvil Anderson. Locked up and declared top secret, it did not see the light of day for more than 30 years.

McGovern would be charged with watching over it. Sussan would become obsessed with finding it and getting it aired.

Fearful that his film might get "buried," McGovern stayed on at the Pentagon as an aide to Gen. Anderson, who was fascinated by the footage and had no qualms about showing it to the American people. "He was that kind of man, he didn't give a damn what people thought," McGovern told me. "He just wanted the story told."

In an article in his hometown Buffalo Evening News, McGovern said that he hoped that "this epic will be made available to the American public." He planned to call the edited movie "Japan in Defeat."
Once they eyeballed the footage, however, most of the top brass didn't want it widely shown and the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was also opposed, according to McGovern. It nixed a Warner Brothers feature film project based on the footage that Anderson had negotiated, while paying another studio about $80,000 to help make four training films.

In a March 3, 1947 memo, Francis E. Rundell, a major in the Air Corps, explained that the film would be classified "secret." This was determined "after study of subject material, especially concerning footage taken at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is believed that the information contained in the films should be safeguarded until cleared by the Atomic Energy Commission." After the training films were completed, the status would be raised to "Top Secret" pending final classification by the AEC.

The color footage was shipped to the Wright-Patterson base in Ohio. McGovern went along after being told to put an I.D. number on the film "and not let anyone touch it --- and that's the way it stayed," as he put it. After cataloging it, he placed it in a vault in the top-secret area.
"Dan McGovern stayed with the film all the time," Sussan later said. "He told me they could not release the film [because] what it showed was too horrible."

Sussan wrote a letter to President Truman, suggesting that a film based on the footage "would vividly and clearly reveal the implications and effects of the weapons that confront us at this serious moment in our history." A reply from a Truman aide threw cold water on that idea, saying such a film would lack "wide public appeal."

McGovern, meanwhile, continued to "babysit" the film, now at Norton Air Force base in California. "It was never out of my control," he said later, but he couldn't make a film out of it any more than Sussan could (but unlike Herb, he at least knew where it was).

At the same time, McGovern was looking after the Japanese footage. Fearful that it might get lost forever in the military/government bureaucracy, he secretly made a 16 mm print and deposited it in the U.S. Air Force Central Film Depository at Wright-Patterson. There it remained out of sight, and generally out of mind. (The original negative and production materials remain missing, according to Abe Mark Nornes, who teaches at the University of Michigan and has researched the Japanese footage more than anyone.)

The Japanese government repeatedly asked the U.S. for the full footage of what was known in that country as "the film of illusion," to no avail. A rare article about what it called this "sensitive" dispute appeared in The New York Times on May 18, 1967, declaring right in its headline that the film had been "Suppressed by U.S. for 22 Years."

Surprisingly, it revealed that while some of the footage was already in Japan (likely a reference to the film hidden in the ceiling), the U.S. had put a "hold" on the Japanese using it --- even though the American control of that country had ceased many years earlier.

Despite rising nuclear fears in the 1960s, before and after the Cuban Missile Crisis, few in the U.S. challenged the consensus view that dropping the bomb on two Japanese cities was necessary. The United States maintained its "first-use" nuclear policy: Under certain circumstances it would strike first with the bomb and ask questions later. In other words, there was no real taboo against using the bomb. This notion of acceptability had started with Hiroshima. A firm line against using nuclear weapons had been drawn --- in the sand. The U.S., in fact, had threatened to use nuclear weapons during the Cuban Missile Crisis and on other occasions.

On Sept. 12, 1967, the Air Force transferred the Japanese footage to the National Archives Audio Visual Branch in Washington, with the film "not to be released without approval of DOD (Department of Defense)."

Then, one morning in the summer of 1968, Erik Barnouw, author of landmark histories of film and broadcasting, opened his mail to discover a clipping from a Tokyo newspaper sent by a friend. It indicated that the United States had finally shipped to Japan a copy of black & white newsreel footage shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Japanese had negotiated with the State Department for its return.

From the Pentagon, Barnouw learned in 1968 that the original nitrate film had been quietly turned over to the National Archives, so he went to take a look. Soon Barnouw realized that, despite its marginal film quality, "enough of the footage was unforgettable in its implications, and historic in its importance, to warrant duplicating all of it," he later wrote.

Attempting to create a subtle, quiet, even poetic, black and white film, he and his associates cut it from 160 to 16 minutes, with a montage of human effects clustered near the end for impact. Barnouw arranged a screening at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and invited the press. A throng turned out and sat in respectful silence at its finish.

(One can only imagine what impact the color footage with many more human effects would have had.) "Hiroshima-Nagasaki 1945" proved to be a sketchy but quite moving document of the aftermath of the bombing, captured in grainy but often startling black and white images: shadows of objects or people burned into walls, ruins of schools, miles of razed landscape viewed from the roof of a building.

In the weeks ahead, however, none of the (then) three TV networks expressed interest in airing it. "Only NBC thought it might use the film," Barnouw later wrote, "if it could find a 'news hook.' We dared not speculate what kind of event this might call for."

But then an article appeared in Parade magazine, and an editorial in the
Boston Globe blasted the networks, saying that everyone in the country should see this film: "Television has brought the sight of war into America's sitting rooms from Vietnam. Surely it can find 16 minutes of prime time to show Americans what the first A-bombs, puny by today's weapons, did to people and property 25 years ago."

This at last pushed public television into the void. What was then called National Educational Television (NET) agreed to show the documentary on August 3, 1970, to coincide with the 25th anniversary of dropping the bomb. "I feel that classifying all of this filmed material was a misuse of the secrecy system since none of it had any military or national security aspect at all," Barnouw told me. "The reason must have been--that if the public had seen it and Congressmen had seen it --- it would have been much harder to appropriate money for more bombs."

About a decade later, by pure chance, Herb Sussan would spark the emergence of the American footage, ending its decades in the dark.

In the mid-1970s, Japanese antinuclear activists, led by a Tokyo teacher named Tsutomu Iwakura, discovered that few pictures of the aftermath of the atomic bombings existed in their country. Many had been seized by the U.S. military after the war, they learned, and taken out of Japan. The Japanese had as little visual exposure to the true effects of the bomb as most Americans. Activists managed to track down hundreds of pictures in archives and private collections and published them in a popular book. In 1979 they mounted an exhibit at the United Nations in New York.

There, by chance, Iwakura met Sussan, who told him about the U.S. military footage.

Iwakura made a few calls and found that the color footage, recently declassified, might be at the National Archives. A trip to Washington, D.C. verified this. He found eighty reels of film, labeled #342 USAF, with the reels numbered 11000 to 11079. About one-fifth of the footage covered the atomic cities. According to a shot list, reel #11010 included, for example: "School, deaf and dumb, blast effect, damaged ... Commercial school demolished ... School, engineering, demolished. ... School, Shirayama elementary, demolished, blast effect ... Tenements, demolished."

The film had been quietly declassified a few years earlier, but no one in the outside world knew it. An archivist there told me at the time, "If no one knows about the film to ask forit, it's as closed as when it was classified."

Eventually 200,000 Japanese citizens contributed half a million dollars and Iwakura was able to buy the film. He then traveled around Japan filming survivors who had posed for Sussan and McGovern in 1946. Iwakura quickly completed a documentary called "Prophecy" and in late spring 1982 arranged for a New York premiere.

That fall a small part of the McGovern/Sussan footage turned up for the first time in an American film, one of the sensations of York Film Festival, called "Dark Circle." It's co-director, Chris Beaver, told me, "No wonder the government didn't want us to see it. I think they didn't want Americans to see themselves in that picture. It's one thing to know about that and another thing to see it."

Despite this exposure, not a single story had yet appeared in an American newspaper about the shooting of the footage, its suppression or release. And Sussan was now ill with a form of lymphoma doctors had found in soldiers exposed to radiation in atomic tests during the 1950s --- or in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In late 1982, editing Nuclear Times, I met Sussan and Erik Barnouw --- and talked on several occasions with Daniel McGovern, out in Northridge, California. "It would make a fine documentary even today," McGovern said of the color footage. "Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a movie of the burning of Atlanta?"

After he hauled the footage back to the Pentagon, McGovern said, he was told that under no circumstances would the footage be released for outside use. "They were fearful of it being circulated,"McGovern said. He confirmed that the color footage, like the black and white, had been declassified over time, taking it from top secret to "for public release" (but only if the public knew about it and asked for it).

Still, the question of precisely why the footage remained secret for so long lingered. Here McGovern added his considerable voice. "The main reason it was classified was...because of the horror, the devastation," he said. "The medical effects were pretty gory. ... The attitude was: do not show any medical effects. Don't make people sick."

But who was behind this? "I always had the sense," McGovern answered, "that people in the AEC were sorry they had dropped the bomb. The Air Force --- it was also sorry. I was told by people in the Pentagon that they didn't want those images out because they showed effects on man, woman and child. But the AEC, they were the ones that stopped it from coming out. They had power of God over everybody," he declared. "If it had anything to do with nukes, they had to see it. They were the ones who destroyed a lot of film and pictures of the first U.S. nuclear tests after the war."
Even so, McGovern believed, his footage might have surfaced "if someone had grabbed the ball and run with it but the AEC did not want it released."

As "Dark Circle" director Chris Beaver had said, "With the government trying to sell the public on a new civil defense program and Reagan arguing that a nuclear war is survivable, this footage could be awfully bad publicity."

In the summer of 1984, I made my own pilgrimage to the atomic cities, to walk in the footsteps of Dan McGovern and Herb Sussan, and meet some of the people they filmed in 1946. By then, the McGovern/ Sussan footage had turned up in several new documentaries. On September 2, 1985, however, Herb Sussan passed away. His final request to his children: Would they scatter his ashes at ground zero in Hiroshima?

In the mid-1990s, researching Hiroshima in America, a book I would write with Robert Jay Lifton, I discovered the deeper context for suppression of the U.S. Army film: it was part of a broad effort to suppress a wide range of material related to the atomic bombings, including photographs, newspaper reports on radiation effects, information about the decision to drop the bomb, even a Hollywood movie.

The 50th anniversary of the bombing drew extensive print and television coverage --- and wide use of excerpts from the McGovern/Sussan footage --- but no strong shift in American attitudes on the use of the bomb.

Then, in 2003, as adviser to a documentary film, "Original Child Bomb," I urged director Carey Schonegevel to draw on the atomic footage as much as possible. She not only did so but also obtained from McGovern's son copies of home movies he had shot in Japan while shooting the official film.
"Original Child Bomb" went on to debut at the 2004 Tribeca Film Festival, win a major documentary award, and this week, on August 6 and 7, it will debut on the Sundance cable channel. After 60 years at least a small portion of that footage will finally reach part of the American public in the unflinching and powerful form its creators intended.

Only then will the Americans who see it be able to fully judge for themselves what McGovern and Sussan were trying to accomplish in shooting the film, why the authorities felt they had to suppress it, and what impact their footage, if widely aired, might have had on the nuclear arms race --- and the nuclear proliferation that plagues, and endangers, us today.

THE MYTHS
OF HIROSHIMA
KAI BIRD AND MARTIN SHERWIN
Los Angeles Times
August 5, 2005

Sixty years ago tomorrow, an atomic bomb was dropped without warning on the center of the Japanese city of Hiroshima. One hundred and forty thousand people were killed, more than 95% of them women and children and other noncombatants. At least half of the victims died of radiation poisoning over the next few months. Three days after Hiroshima was obliterated, the city of Nagasaki suffered a similar fate.

The magnitude of death was enormous, but on August 14, 1945 --- just five days after the Nagasaki bombing --- Radio Tokyo announced that the Japanese emperor had accepted the U.S. terms for surrender. To many Americans at the time, and still for many today, it seemed clear that the bomb had ended the war, even "saving" a million lives that might have been lost if the U.S. had been required to invade mainland Japan.

This powerful narrative took root quickly and is now deeply embedded in our historical sense of who we are as a nation. A decade ago, on the 50th anniversary, this narrative was reinforced in an exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution on the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the first bomb. The exhibit, which had been the subject of a bruising political battle, presented nearly 4 million Americans with an officially sanctioned view of the atomic bombings that again portrayed them as a necessary act in a just war.

But although patriotically correct, the exhibit and the narrative on which it was based were historically inaccurate. For one thing, the Smithsonian downplayed the casualties, saying only that the bombs "caused many tens of thousands of deaths" and that Hiroshima was "a definite military target."

Americans were also told that use of the bombs "led to the immediate surrender of Japan and made unnecessary the planned invasion of the Japanese home islands." But it's not that straightforward. As Tsuyoshi Hasegawa has shown definitively in his new book, Racing the Enemy --- and many other historians have long argued --- it was the Soviet Union's entry into the Pacific war on August 8, two days after the Hiroshima bombing, that provided the final "shock" that led to Japan's capitulation.

The Enola Gay exhibit also repeated such outright lies as the assertion that "special leaflets were dropped on Japanese cities" warning civilians to evacuate. The fact is that atomic bomb warning leaflets were dropped on Japanese cities, but only after Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been destroyed.
The hard truth is that the atomic bombings were unnecessary. A million lives were not saved. Indeed, McGeorge Bundy, the man who first popularized this figure, later confessed that he had pulled it out of thin air in order to justify the bombings in a 1947 Harper's magazine essay he had ghostwritten for Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson.

The bomb was dropped, as J. Robert Oppenheimer, scientific director of the Manhattan Project, said in November 1945, on "an essentially defeated enemy." President Truman and his closest advisor, Secretary of State James Byrnes, quite plainly used it primarily to prevent the Soviets from sharing in the occupation of Japan. And they used it on August 6 even though they had agreed among themselves as they returned home from the Potsdam Conference on Aug. 3 that the Japanese were looking for peace.

These unpleasant historical facts were censored from the 1995 Smithsonian exhibit, an action that should trouble every American. When a government substitutes an officially sanctioned view for publicly debated history, democracy is diminished. Today, in the post-September 11 era, it is critically important that the U.S. face the truth about the atomic bomb.

For one thing, the myths surrounding Hiroshima have made it possible for our defense establishment to argue that atomic bombs are legitimate weapons that belong in a democracy's arsenal. But if, as Oppenheimer said, "they are weapons of aggression, of surprise and of terror," how can a democracy rely on such weapons?

Oppenheimer understood very soon after Hiroshima that these weapons would ultimately threaten our very survival.

Presciently, he even warned us against what is now our worst national nightmare --- and Osama bin Laden's frequently voiced dream --- an atomic suitcase bomb smuggled into an American city: "Of course it could be done," Oppenheimer told a Senate committee, "and people could destroy New York."
Ironically, Hiroshima's myths are now motivating our enemies to attack us with the very weapon we invented. Bin Laden repeatedly refers to Hiroshima in his rambling speeches. It was, he believes, the atomic bombings that shocked the Japanese imperial government into an early surrender --- and, he says, he is planning an atomic attack on the U.S. that will similarly shock us into retreating from the Mideast.

Finally, Hiroshima's myths have gradually given rise to an American unilateralism born of atomic arrogance.

Oppenheimer warned against this "sleazy sense of omnipotence." He observed that "if you approach the problem and say, 'We know what is right and we would like to use the atomic bomb to persuade you to agree with us,' then you are in a very weak position and you will not succeed…. You will find yourselves attempting by force of arms to prevent a disaster."

HANFORD'S A-BOMB
BUILDERS FOCUS ON
THE LIVES THEY SAVED
ATHIMA CHANSANCHAI
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
August 8, 2005

No one at Hanford Engineer Works knew they were making history.
There were signs, but all told them to keep quiet. They were told they were serving their country and furthering the war effort.
But they were curious.

Why were they --- thousands of men and women --- converting an isolated Central Washington farming community into a bustling industrial complex, virtually overnight? Where were trucks and railcars filled with tons of precious steel and aluminum going? Why did they have to wear radiation meters?

What was so top secret?

The answer came on August 6, 1945. With the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, the people of Hanford and Richland finally discovered what they had been working on for two years: the Manhattan Project's atomic bombs.

Later, those workers would find out it was their "Fat Man" bomb that devastated Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. Both bombs led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people through the initial blasts and subsequent radiation.

On August 14, 1945, headlines in a Richland newspaper blared: "PEACE! OUR BOMB CLINCHED IT!" in announcing the Japanese surrender.

Employees of the Hanford Engineer Works believed --- and still believe --- the end of the war justified the means. As part of the massive work force that made up the world's first plutonium producing plant, they carried the firm conviction that hundreds of thousands more would have perished had the bombs not been detonated. They also faced the stigma of being labeled as warmongers, or worse.

"It scared us to think of what we had made," said Larry Denton, 80 of Kennewick, about four hours east of Seattle. "Everyone was dubious as to whether it should have been done. But when you piece together all the American lives that would have been lost if we hadn't dropped the second bomb, I feel like it was worth it."

Denton was 18 when he followed his father --- a World War I Marine --- to Hanford to work on the project in September 1943. The younger Denton was 4F and denied military service. His older brother was stationed in England with the Air Corps; buddies from high school were also fighting abroad. The Idaho lumberjack started as a shipping clerk at Hanford, sharing a tent with three other men. He retired in 1987 as a manager of maintenance surveillance of all the reactors.

"I was destined to find something else where I could be used," Denton said.

Denton and his co-workers lived in a world in which the war was the No.1 priority. Rationing limited food and gas, newsreels played in-between feature films and it seemed like everyone had a loved one fighting Axis troops halfway across the globe or knew a boy who hadn't come home. By August 1945, more than 400,000 U.S. soldiers had been killed.

Patriotism was so strong that all 51,000 workers at Hanford donated a day's wages --- $300,000 --- to purchase the aptly named "Day's Pay" B-17 Seattle-built bomber for the war effort.

While the country celebrated the end of the war in Europe with V-E Day on May 8, 1945, reminders of the combat raging in the Pacific were everywhere.

Pearl Harbor had become lodged in the American psyche. Returning soldiers brought home stories of Japanese kamikaze pilots, hand-to-hand combat in the Pacific islands and the Bataan Death March. Hard-fought victories at Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima came at the cost of thousands of American lives, while stories circulated about how Japanese soldiers and civilians chose suicide rather than surrender. The idea that U.S. forces might have to invade Japan gained momentum. Under these conditions, Hanford support for President Truman's decision was nearly unanimous.

"They regret that Pearl Harbor was attacked. They regret that Hitler and Tojo and Mussolini came to power and ruined their youthful times by pulling them into war, absences from home, terror and exhaustion. They regret that they had to learn to kill, and to be thrust into terrible situations in combat and in manufacturing armaments," said Michele Gerber, a Richland-based historian and president of the B Reactor Museum Association, which is trying to preserve the world's first nuclear reactor in Hanford. "But the bombings they do not regret. They believe that the bombings ended all of this horror."

The U.S. government contracted DuPont to oversee the Hanford project, so employees came from all over the country, many of them employed by DuPont or its subsidiaries.

Hanford appealed to them because of the steady work (many still felt the sting of the Depression), plentiful subsidized meals, cheap housing and the chance to contribute to the war effort. The average age of the mostly male work force was 40 and those with families found the living camp at Hanford and the burgeoning town of Richland provided for all their needs: schools, all kinds of stores, post offices, fire stations, dog pounds, barber/beauty shops and even movie theaters.
Secrecy was sacrosanct. Signs posted throughout the facilities urged workers to shush. Husbands did not talk to their wives about work. Undercover agents looked out for loose lips. Most of the workers were isolated in their specific tasks; few could conceive of all the elements that went into building the atomic bomb.

But Roger Rohrbacher, 85, of Kennewick, said hints were all over the place. As a chemist and physicist -- jokingly called "peons with Ph.D's" -- he probably had an advantage over others. He noticed restricted supplies like aluminum and steel pouring into Hanford, and the presence of uranium was a dead giveaway.

Dee McCullough, 91, of Richland was fixing radios and movie projectors when he got to Hanford in January 1944. The Utah native was 30, a father of three and told his choice was either the Manhattan Project or the Army.

He became an instrument technician, installing and testing meters that measured neutron flux. He remembers wearing "pencils" --- radiation detectors. Later, he assisted the initial startup of B Reactor with Enrico Fermi, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and the leader of one of the Manhattan Project teams whose experiments led to in the first controlled nuclear chain reaction.
"Some people criticize us for making the bomb and killing so many people, but they don't realize how many people we saved," McCullough said. "Armies were ready to go to Japan."

Hanford's role in ending the war remains part of local lore in Richland and the surrounding area, where being "Proud of the Cloud" is a common saying and alums from Richland High School bristle at changing the school's mascot: The Bombers.

Shirley Gilson Schiller (Bomber class of 1947) of Tacoma was 14 when she followed her parents to Hanford. "We were really thrilled and happy to hear the war was over, but it was a terrible way to end it. We felt bad about that, but we rejoiced that more of our own people didn't have to die."
Virginia Miller, 74, of Richland (Bomber '49) still beams with pride when she talks about her father, Harry Miller, a works engineer who arrived in Hanford in 1943.

Miller said the children of those Hanford workers were always aware of their shared heritage.
"I'm very proud of living in history," Miller said. "We were making history."

BUILDING THE BOMB
Hanford Engineer Works (1943-45)
* Construction completed over 30 months at a cost of $230 million.
* 554 buildings spread over 640 square miles; 158 miles of railroad.
* 51,000 workers (only 4,000 women); seven-day workweeks.
* In one meal, employees consumed 2,500 pounds of pot roast; 18,000 pork chops; 900 pies; and 5,000 heads of lettuce.
* Three reactors built, including B Reactor, the world's first full-scale nuclear reactor.
"FAT MAN BOMB
For more information: www.b-reactor.org or www.hanford.gov/doe/history/?history=manhattan

* "Fat Man" bomb detonated at Nagasaki Aug. 9, 1945
* Weight: more than 10,000 pounds; a similar bomb is shown above.
* It was an implosion type of bomb with a plutonium core about the size of a tennis ball surrounded by more than 5,000 pounds of high explosives.
* Equivalent to a little more than 20,000 tons of TNT.

60 YEARS AFTER
A-BOMB, OLD FOES
MEET OVER A DEEP DIVIDE
ANTHONY FAIOLA
Washington Post
August 7, 2005

Sixty years ago today, the world went black for Keijiro Matsushima, then a 16-year-old Hiroshima schoolboy. He vividly recalled an airplane he now knows was the Enola Gay shimmering in the sky like a "flying Popsicle" before the great flash from the atomic bomb vaporized tens of thousands and left a ghostly parade of "the half-living covered in ash and burns" to die in the months ahead.
Since those days, Matsushima said he has felt a "deep if troubled" connection to this Pacific island, about the size of Manhattan, that housed the runways and staging area for the U.S. atomic strikes. The same can be said for Michael Kuryla, 79. He is among the few remaining survivors of the USS Indianapolis, sunk on July 30, 1945, by a Japanese submarine after delivering parts of the bomb to Tinian. Kuryla spent five days adrift before being rescued, watching scores of his fellow crewmen drown while others were devoured by sharks.

On opposite sides of the fateful mushroom cloud, Matsushima and Kuryla are bound by invisible links that drew them and 200 others this week to an extraordinary and controversial commemoration here. Few questions in modern history remain more divisive than whether the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified. Six decades after the war, and with their countries now the closest of allies, no two groups remain more polarized on the issue than U.S. Pacific war veterans and Japanese survivors of the attacks.

At what most participants described as the last major gathering at this historic site for a vanishing generation of World War II vets, the local organizers did the once-unthinkable --- they brought the two sides together.

For some, like Kuryla, who raptly listened to Matsushima's accounts, the event became the final act of cleansing of a long-harbored hatred. The stocky Chicago resident staunchly believes that dropping the bombs saved countless lives by forcing Japan's early surrender. He gradually came to forgive, he said. And after hearing Matsushima's recollections in a conference room, Kuryla stood up in tears to offer his hand in friendship.

"Yes, it was a horrible thing," Kuryla said. "You suffered the bomb effects, and I wish we didn't have to do it. We feel sorry about that. Believe me. But it was war."

"I did not come here to blame," said Matsushima, a slight man with a strong command of English. "You veterans did your job. But at the same time, what you dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was very horrible. Now, if possible, please, just a drop of your tears, and a prayer that this never happens again."

The two men then embraced, taking one step toward a reconciliation that -- like the ultimate question of the bombings itself --- is not that simple. The unprecedented attempt had successes and failures. Most here reached their limits at agreeing to disagree.

The Japanese remain on a campaign to force the world --- and Americans in particular --- to remember and reflect on the horror of those bombings. But many no longer see merit in discussing it. Dozens of American veterans of the Pacific theater chose not to attend the event, including the surviving crew members of the Enola Gay and Bock's Car, which delivered the August 9, 1945, bomb on Nagasaki. Some cited ill health.

Others bitterly opposed the mayor of Tinian's proposal to turn this commemoration into a "peace conference" by inviting the Japanese delegation. It included Japanese veterans who fought here and on nearby Saipan --- Tinian's sister island in the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.

Those who did come, including 38 U.S. vets involved in some way with the atomic bomb missions, mostly welcomed the chance to engage the Japanese. But U.S. military authorities did not attend. One poll by a Saipan newspaper indicated that only one in three island residents supported the event, some claiming it would dishonor the memory of American veterans.

"This was not easy for us to pull off --- a lot of people were against this idea," confessed Francisco M. Borja, mayor of Tinian, a lush island with 4,500 residents. His mission is to create a museum here "that will tell both sides" of the atomic legacy, he said.

That legacy remains the last major sore spot in the extraordinary peacetime relationship of the United States and Japan. As the 60th anniversary of World War II's end in the Pacific is marked on August 15, Japan is still struggling to mend fences with China and South Korea over charges that the Japanese have yet to fully atone for wartime atrocities.

In stark contrast, the United States and Japan are jointly developing a missile defense system and beefing up strategic cooperation with the long-term goal of serving as a counterbalance to China's growing might. Japan, which has embraced pacifism since the bombings, now seeks to play a major role on the world stage. The government is moving toward changing its constitution, which renounces war, and hopes to gain a permanent seat on the United Nation Security Council.

Yet the atomic bombs --- which killed about 140,000 in Hiroshima and about 80,000 in Nagasaki while leaving tens of thousands survivors maimed or plagued by radiation sickness --- still haunt the United States and Japan. A joint poll last month by the Associated Press and Japan's Kyodo News Service found 75% of Japanese still feel the bombings were unnecessary, while 68% of Americans called them unavoidable.

Matsushima said many in Hiroshima were also opposed to his visit. But he said he thought it was a chance to share his story with American vets and "see this place in honor of the bomb's victims."
He and Kiyoshi Nishida, a 76-year-old Nagasaki survivor, were driven by event organizers to the now-overgrown runways where the U.S. B-29s carrying the bombs took off. They stoically studied the condition and quality of what in 1945 was the world's largest airfield. But at the now glass-encased pits that had stored Little Boy, the bomb that hit Hiroshima, and Fat Man, which hit Nagasaki, their reserve shattered.

"So this is where it came from. Somehow, I am glad to have seen it with my own eyes," Matsushima said, softly crying and clutching a bracelet of wooden Buddhist prayer beads. "This is what human did. So many dead. Maybe they were doing their jobs, but for us, it was hell."

Matsushima later participated in a panel discussion with one of the best-known American vets here, Harold Agnew, 84, who measured the yield of the Hiroshima bomb while in flight alongside the Enola Gay. During the 1970s, he was director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where the bombs were developed.

"So, you saw the mushroom cloud. I was underneath it," Matsushima said.
"Yes, you're lucky to be here," Agnew said.
Agnew nodded in agreement when Matsushima seemed to concede that the bomb, at least, had helped shorten the war. Last month, Agnew was flown by a Tokyo television station to Hiroshima, where he held a discussion with bomb survivors who had demanded an apology. Agnew, a tall, blunt man, had stood up in disgust and proclaimed "Remember Pearl Harbor!" The discussion abruptly ended.
"There is nothing to apologize for," Agnew later said in an interview. "This is exactly why the Chinese are still upset with them. Many Japanese still refuse to take responsibility for what they did, for starting that war. They can point at us. But believe me, they did some awful bad things. We saved Japanese lives with those bombs -- an invasion would have been worse."

Such tensions rarely flared at this reunion, perhaps because the organizers divided the Japanese and Americans into different dining times and distinct tours. There were carefully arranged encounters between both sides -- but many impromptu ones, too.

Fumiyaki Kajiya, 66, who saw his three-year-old sister impaled by searing steel in Hiroshima, was visiting the pit where Little Boy was stored when he came across Leon Smith, the weapon's test officer who had been in charge of maintaining the bomb in Tinian. The men struck up a conversation through interpreters about the horror of the victims, the American rationale for dropping the bomb, and the paradox of Japan's ongoing protection under the U.S. nuclear umbrella. Beside the atomic pit, the two shook hands.

"This is not something that can be resolved or agreed upon," Kajiya said. "But I feel that we've achieved something very important. We've finally started talking."
Special correspondent Taeko Kawamura contributed to this report

HIROSHIMA MARKS
ATOMIC BOMB ANNIVERSARY
ASSOCIATED PRESS
August 6, 2005

Hiroshima marked the 60th anniversary of the first atomic bomb attack Saturday with prayers and water for the dead and a call by the mayor for nuclear powers to abandon their arsenals and stop "jeopardizing human survival."

At 8:15 a.m., the instant of the blast, the city's trolleys stopped and more than 55,000 people at Peace Memorial Park observed a moment of silence that was broken only by the ringing of a bronze bell.

A flock of doves was released into the sky. Then wreaths and ladles of water --- symbolizing the suffering of those who died in the atomic inferno --- were offered at a simple, arch-shaped stone monument at the center of the park.

Outside the nearby A-Bomb Dome, one of the few buildings left standing after the blast, peace activists held a "die-in" --- falling to the ground to dramatize the toll from a bombing that turned life to death for more than 140,000 and forever changed the face of war.

Thousands of paper lanterns symbolizing the souls of the dead were to be floated in a river next to the park.

Fumie Yoshida was just 16 when Hiroshima was bombed. She survived but lost her father, brother and sister. On Saturday, she chose not to attend the formal memorial, but paid her respects privately with a small group of friends in the peace park.

"My father's remains have never been found," she said. "Those of us who went through this all know that we must never repeat this tragedy. But I think many Japanese today are forgetting."

In a "Peace Declaration," Hiroshima's outspoken Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba vowed to never allow a repeat of the tragedy and gave an impassioned plea for the abolition of nuclear weapons, saying the United States, Russia and other members of the nuclear club are "jeopardizing human survival."

"Many people around the world have succumbed to the feeling that there is nothing we can do," he said. "Within the United Nations, nuclear club members use their veto power to override the global majority and pursue their selfish objectives."

In a more subdued speech, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi offered condolences for the dead.
"I offer deep prayers from my heart to those who were killed," he said, vowing that Japan would be a leader in the international movement against nuclear proliferation.

Though Hiroshima has risen from the rubble to become a thriving city of 3 million, most of whom were born after the war, the anniversary underscores its ongoing tragedy.

Officials estimate that about 140,000 people were killed instantly or died within a few months after the Enola Gay dropped its deadly payload over the city, which then had a population of about 350,000.

Three days later, another U.S. bomber, Bock's Car, dropped a plutonium bomb on the Japanese city of Nagasaki, killing about 80,000 people. Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945, ending World War II.
Including those initially listed as missing or who died afterward from a loosely defined set of bomb-related ailments, including cancers, Hiroshima officials now put the total number of dead in this city alone at 242,437.

This year, 5,373 more names were added to the list.

In central London, more than 200 anti-nuclear activists and others gathered at Tavistock Square, where a cherry tree was planted in 1967 in memory of the victims of the Hiroshima bombing.
Jeremy Corbyn, a lawmaker in the governing Labour Party and vocal anti-war campaigner, urged people to remember the "unique horror" of what happened in 1945.

CONSEQUENCES OF
HIROSHIMA YET UNSEEN
TED VAN DYK
Seattle Post-Intelligencer Columnist
August 4, 2005

On Saturday, we will observe the 60th anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. Seattle, in 1945 as now, was enjoying glorious summer weather. After Hiroshima, and the strike three days later against Nagasaki, sunsets here and across the Pacific became vividly red.

War in Europe had ended, but war with Japan had not. Many local families' kids had been killed or wounded in the fierce Okinawa and Iwo Jima battles just completed. Heavy bombing raids over Japan were exacting a frightful toll. Yet Japanese resistance remained stiff. It generally was estimated that a million casualties would result when U.S. and allied troops mounted an invasion of the Japanese homeland.

Only a few in the U.S. government and scientific communities knew nuclear weapons were being developed. Thousands were laboring at the secret Hanford Works in the Eastern Washington desert. President Harry Truman, when he assumed office in April 1945, after President Franklin Roosevelt's death, was briefed for the first time on the weapons and their potential.

Three years ago I wrote a column questioning the rightness of Truman's decision to drop nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Most readers responding argued that Truman had no choice. A land invasion of Japan would have taken far more lives. The use of the bombs shortened and ended the war.
Yet there were other options. The prevailing mind-set prevented their serious discussion at the time.

A blockade of the home islands would have cut off Japan's depleted petroleum and other vital supplies and ended its war-making capability. A nuclear weapon dropped on a lightly inhabited northern Japanese island could have demonstrated dramatically to Emperor Hirohito and his government the weapons' potential for destruction and led to peace negotiations.

There also is a legitimate question as to why the Nagasaki bomb was dropped so soon after the one on Hiroshima. The Japanese government needed time after the first bomb to absorb its implications and reach an obvious decision to sue for peace. The Nagasaki strike simply took additional lives without reason. Some 120,000 mostly civilian lives were claimed immediately in the two strikes. A larger number died later, sometimes years later, from the effects of radiation.

The main thrust of U.S. thinking was that nuclear weapons were like other weapons --- only more powerful. During the Cold War period, school kids practiced "duck-and-cover" drills in anticipation of Soviet nuclear attacks on the United States. Gen. Douglas MacArthur urged use of nuclear weapons against North Korean and Chinese targets in the Korean War. Vice President Richard Nixon unsuccessfully lobbied President Eisenhower for their use to bail out French colonial forces at the decisive Indochinese battle of Dienbienphu.

Doing reserve duty as an Army intelligence analyst, I helped prepare a1960 report on the anticipated effects of nuclear attacks on U.S. regions and metropolitan areas. It found that only Oregon and northern Maine would be spared from both blast and lethal fallout. Neither contained a target or would be swept by prevailing radioactive winds. Post-attack aerial photos of Seattle would have resembled those of Hiroshima.

Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy in his 1960 campaign charged the Eisenhower administration with dereliction in allowing Soviet ICBM production to exceed our own. (As it turned out, this "missile gap" charge was false.) Then, in 1961, while serving at the Pentagon during the Berlin Crisis --- when the Soviet Union erected a wall between East and West Berlin --- I took part in planning based on the presumption that a Soviet/Warsaw Pact invasion of Western Europe could be stopped only with tactical nuclear weapons. Use of the weapons would have devastated Germany. It also could have led to an exchange of intercontinental ballistic missiles. The Cuban Missile Crisis, in 1962, again almost resulted in use of nuclear weapons.

Since those years, we have been leaders in trying to limit nuclear weapons proliferation and risk. Yet, because technology cannot be contained, additional countries continue to acquire the weapons. Most of the new and aspiring nuclear powers --- countries such as North Korea and Iran --- hold the view that we once held: Namely, that nukes are like other weapons, only more powerful. Al-Qaida and other groups want them not only to terrorize the West but to exert leverage on behalf of their political aims.

There is menacing news: Sixty years into the nuclear age, we and others not only have been left with self-inflicted wounds of nuclear contamination, we also must face the reality that the nuclear-weapons genie is not in its bottle, after all. The danger that nuclear weapons will be used is again growing, not receding.

Our conventional bombing attacks on Japan killed far more civilians in 1945 than did the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. Yet, in deciding to use them, we set in motion later consequences not yet fully seen. Saturday will be not be a time for celebration.

Ted Van Dyk has been involved in national policy and politics since 1960

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/08/08/MNGU5E4JUH1.DTL
Bush pushes very hot button
President's comments embolden anti-evolutionists

- Joe Garofoli, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, August 8, 2005

The real impact of President Bush weighing in on the national debate over how to teach the origins of life may be felt in the classroom, where much of the anti-evolutionary lobbying is done under the radar.

One tactic is for a student or parent to present the teacher with a list that's popular in conservative circles called, "Ten questions to ask your biology teacher."

The result, observers say, is that some teachers fear even mentioning "the e-word."

"That's what people would somewhat jokingly call it," said Al Janulaw, who spent more than 30 years teaching science in elementary and middle schools. For the past six he has been a Sonoma State University instructor teaching student teachers how to teach science.

The White House entered one of the country's most politically charged red- and-blue battles last week when Bush was asked at a news conference about his views on evolution and intelligent design -- a critique that says Charles Darwin's natural selection theory doesn't explain some features of the natural world.

"I felt like both sides ought to be properly taught," Bush said. "I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought."

The mere fact that Bush mentioned intelligent design on the same footing as evolutionary teaching is being seen as a huge moral boost for anti-Darwin critics.

Although California schools are not in the center of the debate, as are schools in other parts of the country, some of the state's science teachers are apprehensive and see Bush's comments as an unwelcome intrusion of religion into the science curriculum.

Supporters of intelligent design say some elements of the natural world "are best explained as the product of an intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection," said John West of the Discovery Institute.

But defenders of traditional evolutionary theory say intelligent design is really a euphemism for creationism. If there's an intelligent design, they say, then there must be an intelligent designer. Or creator.

"Our guys here were calling it 'Creationism Lite,' " said California Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell. He said evolutionary theory is tightly interwoven throughout California's science teaching standards and is not in danger of changing at the statewide level, where policy is crafted.

But many of the attacks on teaching evolution are largely unreported, and are raised in scattered school board meetings and classrooms.

One member of the California Science Teachers Association said the issue is most likely to come up in more conservative Southern California school districts.

"There are teachers who avoid teaching evolution -- or put it off until the end of the curriculum so if they don't get to it, they can skip it," said longtime teacher Judy Scotchmoor, a board member of the association. She said she was speaking only for herself.

"This (evolution controversy) is a very, very weird situation that we're in," she said. "It's a game that we (science teachers) don't know how to play. It's 'he said, she said,' and we're used to proving things scientifically.

UC Berkeley biology Professor David Lindberg tells the story of a Christian pastor who appeared at the classroom of a Contra Costa County teacher on the first day of school.

The pastor had a simple question for the teacher: "How do you plan to teach biology this year?"

The implication of such visits to teachers, according to Lindberg and other evolutionary theory defenders: You'd better at least mention intelligent design or some other critique of evolution or you'll have to answer to some angry parents or other clergy. Or possibly the school board. Or a court.

Even though Bush's science adviser, John H. Marburger III, downplayed the president's remarks by telling the New York Times that "evolution is the cornerstone of modern biology" and "intelligent design is not a scientific concept," others were pleased to hear the remarks coming from the nation's bully pulpit.

"We're happy that he said that," said West of the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, one of the nation's leading think tanks in the fight to include Darwinian challenges in the classroom.

West said his organization "isn't pushing for intelligent design; what we are pushing for is for the scientific criticism of Darwin's theory" of all kinds.

Conservative scholars and legal theorists supporting the president's position -- it is a favorite of evangelical Christians -- cast this as a free speech issue, and they feel that their side is not getting equal play in the nation's public schools.

After Bush's remarks, more than 95 percent of the 78,000-plus votes cast in an online poll offered by the conservative American Family Association say "students should be exposed to the theory of intelligent design in public schools" as opposed to "shield(ing) them" from it.

However, 54 percent of 50,000-plus respondents to an America Online poll opposed teaching intelligent design.

"This is about critical thinking," said Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute, a Sacramento organization that generally defends conservative positions in cases involving religious freedom issues. "And critical thinking has nothing to do with theology.

"This shows the degree of close-mindedness academics have when it comes to challenges like this."

Intelligent design has been gaining political support in school districts in several states, but the vast majority of the nation's scientists, starting with the president of the National Academy of Sciences, says intelligent design is not even worthy of being compared to the theory of evolution on a scientific level.

"The president and most people in this country don't understand how science works," said Lindberg, chair of UC Berkeley's Department of Integrative Biology and curator for the UC Museum of Paleontology, which created a Web site, evolution.berkeley.edu, to help teachers fend off the attacks of evolutionary challengers.

"Words like 'theory' and 'hypothesis' mean something to scientists. Gravity is a theory. Evolution is a theory," he said. "Science is not a democracy. We don't vote on what theory we like best.

"And I have to say that we, as scientists, have not done a good job explaining to people how science works.'

The Bay Area is home to big thinkers on both sides of this debate -- including one of the leading proponents of intelligent design, UC Berkeley law Professor Phillip Johnson, and evolutionary teaching's defenders at the National Center for Science Education in Oakland -- but few believe that intelligent design has made significant inroads in California.

In Roseville, parent and attorney Larry Caldwell has been fighting for two years -- so far without success -- to have "the scientific weaknesses of evolutionary theory" included in the public schools there. Dacus said he's fielded calls from school board members in a dozen different districts over the past year or so inquiring about how evolution is taught.

But state schools chief O'Connell said intelligent design is "not an issue in California. It just hasn't come up."

When told about teachers avoiding the e-word, O'Connell said, "That's really regrettable."

"What (Bush) is doing is divisive, something to take people's attention away from all the other things going on with schools," he said.

"Why isn't he talking about funding issues, or class size or," O'Connell said, pausing, "Do you want me to go on?"

E-mail Joe Garofoli at jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com
--
Robt Mann
consultant ecologist
P O Box 28878 Remuera, Auckland 1005, New Zealand
(9) 524 2949

Dear Joe Garofoli,

I appreciated your 'President's comments embolden anti-evolutionists'. If you pursue this topic, you may find some help from my writings below, and the more general pubd article attached. The other attached article is specifically about the 'ten gassers' that you mention in your article.

I'm the founder of a Science & Faith group in Auckland, which staged a symposium for Dembski when he visited here. (He was congenial, but unresponsive.) If ever you're coming over here, perhaps you'd let us know in advance ...

THE ILLOGIC OF CREATIONISM

L R B MANN

Sep 2003

The word 'evolution' has become, for some Christians, a
provocation. They have been led to believe that evolution is essentially
an atheistic idea. This misunderstanding has been misused for much
unnecessary disputing.

VisioNetworkNZ leader Glyn Carpenter writes (DayStar Sep 03) that
the creationist v. evolution argument is "also referred to as the young
earth / old earth debate". This is an unfortunate confusion. Let's get a
clear understanding of what the terms mean, and what are the various main
beliefs, connected with evolution.

Two main sub-sects of "creationism" exist. One version of
"creationism" asserts not only that all species were created in 6 days but
also that this brief period of biological creation occurred less than
10,000 years ago. That is 'young earth creationism' (YEC). 'Old earth
creationism' (OEC), exemplified by Hugh Ross's 'Reasons to Believe'
organisation of S. Calif., acknowledges the scientific evidence that the
Earth is much, much older, but also asserts like YEC that evolution has not
occurred. The difference between these two sub-sects is of some interest,
but it is different from the dispute between those who believe in evolution
and those who refuse to believe that evolution has occurred.

These differing views on evolution and creation can be diagrammed
as a logic-tree, to be read from the bottom:

theistic evolution OEC YEC
x x x
x x x
x creationism
x x
x x
theism deism atheism
x x x
x x x
x x
x x
x x
x

The diagram summarises the main logical options.
You can believe in God, or not; this is the basic, most important,
choice in the logic-tree.

If you choose the atheism fork, you can then try like Dawkins etc
to explain how the incomparable coherent complexity of ecosystems, or even
just the functions of a humble bacterial flagellum, could have evolved by
the workings of physical & chemical laws, with no creative planning.

If instead you choose to believe in God, you have an option of a
largely defunct view, deism, holding that God did create the universe but
that he then turned it loose, like a clockwork toy he had wound up and left
to run by the natural laws which he'd created. By contrast, theism holds
that God not only created the universe but also sustains & guides it from
moment to moment.

The tendency known as creationism is - though not usually billed
as such by its adherents - a version of deism in its purported
explanation of life. Proceeding up the logic-tree, within the creationism
branch, we find the two versions, YEC and OEC, holding that, at least
regarding the creation of species of organism, God did it all at the start
and has not done any more creation since then. Although most creationists
are theists in that they believe in God's continuing involvement in the
world (in the Incarnation, the Resurrection, God's responses to prayer,
etc), they are deists in their biology - they believe in a completed
creation.

Both YEC and OEC are opposed to the mainstream Christian view,
which is theistic evolution, combining traditional theology with scientific
findings that the different types of organism have been created at
successive times over several billion years. God as the maker & sustainer
of the universe is affirmed by theistic evolution. To me as a Christian,
physical & chemical laws are an expression of creative planning, not an
alternative to it. Dawkins just has to accept them as an extraordinary
brute fact, the origin of which he studiously ignores (overlooking two of
the four categories of cause).

Theistic evolution results from reading both the book of scripture
and the book of nature. It relies on faith that God will not mislead us if
we examine honestly what we find in strata, fossils, molecules, and other
aspects of nature that allow us to infer past processes in biology.
Creationists have misrepresented these scientific findings in many ways
(and as a scientist I deeply deplore that misbehaviour, documented in e.g.
Prof. Ian Plimer's book 'Telling Lies for God'). Attached is a batch of
corrections of a minor peripatetic creationist pseudo-scientist.

But it is their logic that is the prime defect of creationism,
counterposing the concepts of creation "vs." evolution, implying that they
are somehow incompatible.

Where in this logic-tree does Intelligent Design fit? Exemplified
by the video 'Unlocking the Mystery of Life' and the writings of William
Dembski, this approach to explaining life confines itself to what is called
natural theology, i.e. reading the book of nature with intent to infer
properties of the designer(s). ID's effect is thus at the base of the
logic-tree, helping those who have yet to decide whether organisms are
caused by merely material processes or are designed. This is the Argument
to Design developed by William Paley two centuries ago. It is fine as far
as it goes but is only a tiny, if basic, part of theistic evolution as set
forth by leading Christian scholars such as William Temple, Sir Alister
Hardy, and our own John Morton (see 'Man, Science and God', Collins 1972).
Another leading scholar in natural theology, but taking a broader view than
Dembski expounds, is Neil Broom of the University of Auckland (see 'How
Blind Is the Watchmaker?' IVP 2001). Broom expounds the Argument to
Design as well as anyone, while seeing no theological difficulty in an
ancient biosphere and evolution as shown by science.

My essay in the book 'Science & Christianity' maintains -
following Morton - that a more intelligible, direct & conclusive argument
is to insist on all four causes as required to explain life, rather than
relying principally on gaps in scientific understanding of the evolution of
bacterial flagella etc.

CREATIONISM & IDT
L R B Mann
Oct 2003; rev Jan 2005

Can you imagine what offence is achieved on scientists who are Christians by the persistent lying of "creationism"? The fanatics make aggressive insolent public attacks on evolution, insisting on the moronic, indeed demonic axiom " EITHER the book of scripture OR the book of nature". These demonic agents promulgate fanatically the idea that to read the book of nature honestly is to contradict, even to insult, the book of scripture. Devout scholars such as John Morton are in effect called liars or fools for their reading the book of nature; and the fanatics who do so misrepresent science with a persistent wickedness that is particularly offensive to one brought up in science.

This sectarian tendency, intellectually headquartered near Disneyland and bankrolled out of (so far as I've traced it) Lubbock, Tex., is more active in NZ than ever; DayStar® carried an advertorial 'interview' of which the leading fanatic then has the cheek to complain in the next issue; a large colour advertisement is placed near the advertorial interview. This is a form of corruption I've seen before with other editors.

IDT is an ally of Creationism®, franchised into NZ by Focus on the Family.

IDT is only a small part of natl theol, and is being blown far out of proportion by huge funding linked quietly to "creationist" fanatics thru Johnson & Wells. It relies basically on lack of knowledge - e.g lack of any current explanation how the bacterial flagellum could have evolved in a Darwinian, Steve Jones fashion. This is 'God of the gaps' reasoning, dangerous because the gap may be filled tomorrow by new facts &/or reasoning. Why not reason more directly from the macroscopic observables of ecology? A child can see, without education or instruments, that ecology is wonderfully planned. I believe microstructures needing instruments & theory to imagine - e.g the bacterial flagellum, or a DNA secondary structure - are inferior as main examples of Paley timepieces. They're not wrong, but they are to a degree obscurantist.

At an early age Morton's "claret cameo" should be intelligible; all 4 causes are needed in biology, not just the 2 with which Dawkins tries to make out biology can be explained.

It is murky - annoyingly, and I suppose deliberately - but we have to read the picture as best we can. As Harold Turner said, creationism is a waste of time; and I would add that IDT is at best a drag, pedantically OK but not worth much time. I infer from the glimpses that have come my way that they're connected, organisationally and to a degree intellectually thru e.g Wells, to creationism®.

Meanwhile, Sheldrake & Morton, spearhead of the mainstream thrust thru Temple, are ignored by IDT entrepreneurs.

The IDT site www.iscid.org controllers Sparacio & Dembski have repeatedly refused to allow me to contribute criticisms. Here is an example.

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"Creationism" is a significant cross-current within Christianity, distracting efforts from real issues. And it presents to ignorant, lazy or dishonest outsiders a very misleading image of the logic & honesty of Christians. A target is thus created, which is nothing better than a caricature, for atheists to mock.

IDT is essentially Paley 1802 - fine, as far as it goes. Broom's book is the best IDT I know of - and fully acknowledging not only a billions-of-years biosphere but also evolution. The IDT 'wedge' however has become to some extent a front for "creationism". Don Nield has argued, and I agree, that IDT is trying to drive in its wedge at the wrong place.

Full 28 y ago a leading local statistician (later prof.), George Seber, tried to get me to debate publicly against Duane Gish. The notion was in some ways attractive, not least because we're both Berkeley Ph.D biochemists; but I declined, saying I would not dignify his cause by sharing a stage with him. This reticence, uncharacteristic for me, I have never regretted.

Much more recently, I gave a talk on Creationism to our local Christian Academics Group. In moving the vote of thanks, George insisted on ignoring my main point by expressing hope that there will be tolerance of Creationism alongside the mainstream position which I had advocated.

My own position is similar to that of our leading emeritus zoology prof John Morton (see his 'Man, Science and God', Collins 1972). Although generally critical of the Vatican, I think its doctrine on evolution is hard to fault, and I credit it for the fact that Rome has had little trouble regarding evolution. On this issue if no others, general Christian doctrine should learn from the Vatican.

Around 2 decade ago Creationists tried to tamper with school book holdings in Hamilton N.Z. I have not learned whether this attempt persisted.

In 1983 I photographed in the Science Museum, Kensington, an exhibit which asserted the axiom that *either* organisms have evolved *or* God has created them. This furphy, not normally so clearly enunciated, seems to me to be not only the fundamental error of the Creationist® fanaticism but also typical in its illogic of most if not all fundamentalisms. I suggest the racket common to them is the requirement of assent to a proposition which is not subtly but flagrantly false. This is not ancillary or accidental: I believe it is essential, in that once a person has overtly signalled switching-off of God-given reason in favour of a pointedly false slogan from the sect leader(s), obedience can be thereafter required much more generally. This is in the nature of totalitarian systems' social psychology. "The Slavs are sub-human" is a prototypical modern example of a blatantly false slogan which you had to assent to overtly if you were to attain the temporary social security of the National Socialist Party. "The first 3 chapters of the Bible, plus the Noah story, must be taken literally" is similar mischief. I don't see why this racket is not more widely & vigorously condemned. Those who propound it do not in fact advocate that other parts of the Bible be read literally; Broom & I point to John the Baptist's hailing "the Lamb of God" - why do fundamentalists not try to insist that Christ assumed ovine form for that occasion on the banks of the Jordan?

As a scientist active in natural theology, I support the general gist of IDT as such but fear that it functions on the edge of a "creationist" whirlpool.

In defence of the persistent lying of creationism®, I've received impassioned slogans 'Jesus died for them too', to which I replied "yes - and for Himmler & Stalin also". A senior Presbyterian minister, Rev Bruce Nicholls, defends the deceivers by claiming they're not proven liars. Prof Don Nield has shown in detail that hevi-doodi creationist J Wells has falsified standard biology texbooks in order to create straw men to knock down. The version of creation presented by main aggressive creationists H Morris, D Gish, J Sarfati, Wells, etc relies on falsifying evidence and on misinterpreting facts grossly, as well as wholesale ignoring of most facts (because they imply a 10^9 y evolution).

The real issue of the day is how to convert the billions who have never heard the Good News, as well as the approx 1 billion overdeveloped who have gone for "Enlightenment"®, Noo Eege, or just nihilism. Christianity has much to offer the children of atheism & agnosticism, starting for many educated in science by a careful exposition of all 4 Causes, a review of facts on evolution, and an honest presentation of natural theology as in Temple, Hardy, Morton & Sheldrake. The USA sects I've been criticising do little or nothing to meet these needs. Their conduct is variously devious, dishonest and mind-buggering. They are distracting lay folk away from what science has to tell them. I'd be grateful if the USA would cease to export these prdkts - whether deemed kmpetit'v or not.

R
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Robt Mann
consultant ecologist
P O Box 28878 Remuera, Auckland 1005, New Zealand

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Creationism v. evolution
but not
creation v. evolution

Robert Mann and Neil Broom

very slightly adapted from Stimulus 8 (2) 16-20 (May 2000)
Many Christians believe that the very idea of evolution – most crucially, the idea that the species Homo sapiens evolved from many previous species now extinct – entails denial of true religion. We wish to argue that there need be no real dispute. The fear appears to be that to admit evolution as a fact - i.e. admit to life unfolding over time with increasing complexity & variety - would bring one into a crisis of faith in Holy Scripture. Maintaining it is a misunderstanding we seek to resolve this apparent conflict in the present paper.

But before we delve into the theory of evolution we note that the facts in direct support of the specific idea of Homo sapiens evolving from ape-like ancestors are – as science now stands – very scanty. The old ‘missing link’ objection still holds good to a large extent regarding factual evidence of immediate human evolution. Indeed, the whole record of evolution is riddled with discontinuities, e.g. the frogs suddenly appear, not preceded by any proto-frogs. The main reason why almost all scientists believe in evolution is that it has been exceedingly successful as an integrating theory within biology.

Nevertheless, one must point out that the evidence is fairly conclusive that humans appeared only about a million years ago, certainly long after many species that have existed for hundreds of millions of years (in contrast to the face value of the story in Genesis 2). More importantly, we maintain that even if a seamless sequence of fossils were demonstrated with no missing links in human evolution, such a finding need have no theological significance regarding the central doctrines that man is created by God and made in the image of God.

Perhaps we should make clear at the start the perspective from which we attempt to contribute to this fraught arena of (sometimes intemperate) argumentation. We are scientists working on aspects of biology, and we are mainstream Christians who hold to traditional doctrines as summarised in the Apostles’ Creed. In other words, we find ourselves able to live by the belief that Christianity does not conflict with a science that is conducted with intellectual integrity - a science that acknowledges the finitude of all human knowing and therefore its inability to proclaim on ultimate issues save what is given by special revelation.

For many Christians the science/God debate automatically focuses on an attempted literal reading of the first two chapters of Genesis. Many assert, and quite strenuously, that Genesis outlines literally the actual history and scientific principles of creation, and any secular science that contradicts this ‘Bible science’ must be rejected outright.

In this literal interpretation of a particular part of Scripture, creation is believed to have taken place over six 24-hour days and perhaps no more than 10,000 years ago. ‘Creation science’ rejects any thought of an ancient earth spanning periods of geological time of many millions of years, and denies any gradual development or evolving of life forms. It is a philosophical position that rejects a huge amount of scientific evidence gathered by a vast community of scientists who hold a wide spectrum of religious (Christian and others) and non-religious viewpoints about the origin of life.

Our personal conviction is that ‘creation science’ is fighting the wrong battle. We say this for two important reasons. Firstly, it makes the dubious assumption that Genesis 1 & 2 must be read in a strictly literal sense if they are to be read in a God-honouring way. It is not at all clear to us that the narrative form of the early chapters of Genesis is literal or even remotely scientific in its intent. The creation texts contain a very simple storyline that is timeless and relevant for all people for all time. But is it science? Science as the modern discipline which gave rise to the creation/evolution discussion hadn’t evolved when the author(s) penned these narratives. The burning issues of the day were what we would call theological, not scientific. Who made the cosmos? Who is in charge of it? Who is to be worshipped? Were the people of God to place their faith in the many divinities of polytheism or in the one true God of the Israelites?

Despite the impact on contemporary culture of postmodernity’s disaffection with science, there is a significant continuing acceptance of 'old fashioned' modernism - scientific materialism and loss of a moral base. The full potential of Genesis 1-3 to help us address these issues will not be realised unless we shoulder the responsibility of interpretation with all the difficulties and even pitfalls that this may entail.

It seems to us that the main point of the creation narratives is to put nature – including mankind – fairly and squarely in its place as created, and thus as a consequence never to be accorded the status of divinity. No part of creation was to be the object of man’s worship. No part of creation was to shape the ultimate destiny of humanity, and this was to include the heavenly bodies. God alone was to be acknowledged as the source and sustainer of all created things.

We must discern very carefully the type of literary narrative being used in each part of scripture. It may be disastrous if we apply an interpretation not intended by the author. It seems to us that when we come to a central Christian truth such as the Resurrection the various accounts given in all four Gospels confront us with a flesh-and-blood, time-and-place narrative that almost ‘screams’ out to be read in a literal sense. Everything about the Resurrection narratives seems to insist we take them literally.

By contrast the early chapters of Genesis do not read in this same flesh-and-blood historic way. They have an entirely contrasting literary flavour. Their structure is much more stylised and poetic. The already-established 7-day Hebrew week is, in all probability, used as a means of systematically working through each realm of the created world with the very powerful pronouncement that all such realms and their inhabitants were the creation of God. What more powerful way to demolish for all time the pagan myth that within the world there were powers and forces that could hold sway over the destinies of people and enslave them in the vice of fear-ridden subservience?

The text reads much more like a series of epic declarations – that God is the supreme commander of the universe, and that all things large and small owe their existence to him. These are, perhaps, words that attempt to describe the indescribable – events of such cosmic proportions as to be literally beyond our understanding as created beings. The language is surely conveying what we would call religious, not scientific truth.

Clear evidence that the text is not meant to be read in a scientific sense is got by comparing the two different creation accounts contained in Genesis 1: 1-2:3 and 2: 4-25. As an obvious example of the author’s(s’) clear disregard for chronological accuracy, in the first account land animals are created before humans whereas in the second account animals are created after man. This apparent conflict is important only if we try to interpret the narratives in a narrow literal sense. Surely an important purpose of both accounts is to place humanity at the apex of creation, separate relationally from all that is beneath; for this theological point, timing is hardly relevant.

We hold that science in general and evolution in particular can offer no genuine conflict with Christianity. There are well-known general grounds for our attitude. The purview of science is restricted: it is as narrow as the physical realm of matter & energy (including living organisms), but no spiritual entities. The fact that science can study only this restricted realm (within which it has achieved very impressive discoveries) is no handicap; it is simply a fact that the scientific method applies only to energy & matter as defined by science, and when science attempts to pronounce on moral questions, let alone spiritual questions, it is a trespasser.

We can say that science is a human activity able to deal only with the lower levels of material cause and effect. By contrast, what we think of as ‘religion’ is concerned with the big picture, the ultimate issues concerning the cosmos and its relationship to the creator. The issues of governance, purpose and meaning are outside the scope of science. The material world operates as a subset within the much larger framework illuminated by revealed religion. In using the word ‘subset’ here we are attempting to stress the importance of not letting theology and science retreat to supposedly unconnected spheres. We wish to provoke renewed co-operation, rather than spurious conflict, between them.

We hope these generalities set the stage as we turn to particulars about the evolution of organisms and about, on the other hand, the vastly more important ‘why’ and ‘who’ questions which only revealed religion can tackle.

Outline of Evolutionary Theory

Modern science has existed for only a few centuries. Why it took so long to begin is discussed in Harold Turner’s recent book and in Renton Maclachlan’s thoughtful review of that book in this journal . Unfortunately that review complains at Rev Dr Turner’s ‘repeated, scathing dismissal of “creation science” without any justification whatsoever being given’. As friends of Harold Turner we are aware he reached the conclusion years ago that “creation science” is a waste of time. He does not bother in his book to expound his reasons for his dismissive attitude to it. Our purpose now is to assist readers by outlining how such a conclusion as Dr Turner’s is not merely reasonable but essential to the goal - dauntingly ambitious to some - of reconciling science and religion.

Since the originators Darwin and Wallace, biology has amassed a compelling body of evidence for organic evolution, i.e. evidence that life has unfolded over a long time, as a tree with many branches and many 'missing' branches, developing a generally more complex range of life-forms, with Homo sapiens appearing only recently. The facts gleaned from fossils, augmented recently by molecular details, strongly suggest that evolution has occurred. The body of evidence from which this deduction flows is so huge, so multi-faceted, and so coherent, that evolution is regarded as a fact by almost every scientist today.

The evidence for evolution, minimally mixed with neo-Darwinian theory, is interesting to review as it stood around the time when modern 'creationism' arose in the USA.

We immediately, emphatically add: how evolution has occurred is a different (and much more difficult) question from the simpler question of whether organisms have evolved. And Goldsmith has pointed out vigorously, in an exchange with the militant atheist Wolpert, that it is a mere assumption to say that evolution must have worked by the mechanism of natural selection.

Many readers will be aware of a supremely confident brand of scientific atheism that is currently fashionable, largely popularised by Oxford University’s Richard Dawkins. Dawkins contemptuously dismisses any suggestion that evolution requires anything more than the blind forces of physics. He says “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist”. Dawkins views Darwin’s idea of natural selection as providing an entirely material means by which the chance variations in an organism’s offspring are channelled in the direction of ‘evolving’ (read increasing) complexity. What is important is that evolution is viewed by Dawkins as an entirely mindless process; hence his confident atheistic stance.

We consider Dawkins in error at a fundamental conceptual level and wish to highlight this by reference to just one of the illustrations he employs to support his scientific atheism - namely the evolution of the eye as expounded in one of his recent books Climbing Mt. Improbable .

Dawkins likens the evolution of the eye to climbing a high mountain. In this scheme of things the evolution of biological novelty (i.e. reaching the summit of Mount Improbable) is achieved in the neo-Darwinian sense by gradual, almost imperceptible steps of improvement. In his metaphor we take a route up the gentle slopes rather than attempting to scale the impossibly steep cliffs and precipices. All that is required is that we head towards the summit.

The emphasis is on small, easy improvements in the organism rather than large leaps in sophistication. Like many of Dawkins’ illustrations, the mountain-climbing analogy seems, at least superficially, to make a lot of sense. It is common for technological advances to proceed in much the same gradual, bit-by-bit fashion.

But let’s look closely at the claimed connection between the development of an eye and Dawkins’ mountain-climbing metaphor.

We arrive at this most improbable structure - the fully functioning eye - by imperceptibly small steps in improvement. No big leaps of innovation, no wild attempts at scaling ‘steep cliffs or precipices’, just an easy meander up the gentle grassy slopes until the summit of optical sophistication is reached.

To support his case Dawkins describes in some detail a computer study conducted by Swedish biologists Dan Nilsson and Susanne Pelger. These scientists devised a computer program to simulate the evolution of what they describe as a simple eye representation. Remember, this is a virtual, not a real, eye.

They begin with a 2-dimensional picture of a flat layer of imaginary light-sensitive cells sandwiched between an imaginary transparent layer and an imaginary dark backing layer. The two biologists admit in their study that they don’t pretend to explain how the light-sensitive cells that their model commences with might have evolved. This is entirely understandable as the origin of the first living cell remains just one of the innumerable mysteries of the biological world, and how any became light-sensitive is also unknown.

The model works (and always in a virtual sense) by producing at random small percentage changes in the degree of curvature of the sandwich, in the diameter of a light-restricting aperture, in the thickness of the transparent layer, and in the local value of its refractive index (light-bending ability). The computer model is programmed to perform a simple calculation of the sandwich’s optical resolving power every time a change occurs at random in the three variables noted above. This is done by a simple ray-tracing procedure, one familiar to any physics student.

In a relatively small number of steps (1829 steps if each step involved a 1% change in any of the variables) the computer model is shown to transform the flat sandwich through continuous minor improvements into a configuration representing a virtual, focussed eye lens. Dawkins claims this transformation of the initially flat configuration into a focussed configuration by a series of tiny but connected steps is exactly analogous to climbing the mountain of biological complexity: “Going upwards means mutating, one small step at a time, and only accepting mutations that improve optical performance. So, where do we get to? Pleasingly, through a smooth upward pathway, starting from no proper eye at all, we reach a familiar fish eye, complete with lens.” (Climbing Mt. Improbable, p. 151.)

However, any careful reader will immediately see that Dawkins’ claim to explain eye evolution involves a most blatant transgression of the rules of his own materialistic science. Note how logic requires him to impose a highly artificial and purposeful constraint on the behaviour of the eye model: he inserts the crucial proviso of “only accepting mutations that improve optical performance”. In terms of his mountain-climbing analogy, one must “aim for the summit”. He has committed a cardinal breach by introducing a profoundly personal dimension into his scientific materialism: it is persons that have aims, with the foresight to discern whether an immediate change of no use in itself heads toward a distant co-ordinated usefulness.

Ask any serious mountaineer, ask one of New Zealand’s most famous citizens - Sir Edmund Hillary: high summits are conquered only because the mountaineer has a powerful desire to get to the top. The activity is loaded with purpose. The mountaineer is possessed of a burning obsession to achieve the very difficult. Ed Hillary and Norgay Tenzing reached the summit of Everest in 1953 because they really wanted to get there!

If Richard Dawkins is required to use a metaphor such as mountain-climbing to explain the role of ‘natural’ selection then this is surely the most bare-faced admission that he really does require more than a set of purely material mechanisms to explain the evolution of complexity in the living world. ‘Aiming for the top’ is to admit to a guiding principle that cannot be expressed in terms of the impersonal processes of physics and chemistry. For a much more detailed critique of Dawkins’ approach and of scientific materialism in general, the interested reader is referred to the book How Blind is the Watchmaker? Theism or atheism: should science decide? published recently by one of the present authors.

We do know – insofar as one could know about events in the distant past that cannot be directly observed or repeated – that evolution has occurred; but we have only vague ideas of its mechanisms. It is important to keep clearly distinguished these two distinct questions. In our opinion, the mechanism postulated by neo-Darwinism is very inadequate. We agree that mutations occur (more or less randomly), but we believe the notion of selection among those mutants by "the environment" which is said to be blind and purposeless, is no better than an intellectual con trick. This main axiom of neoDarwinism is a bald unsupported assumption that what Aristotle called final cause is absent from biology. That which is officially denied by Dawkins – purpose – is quietly admitted when he talks about “aiming for the summit”, the vital missing link in modern materialistic biology.

Most educated people are aware that as soon as Darwin announced his concept of the origin of species a heated dispute arose which has been raging fitfully ever since . Our contention is that this is a phoney dispute, a series of misunderstandings; and this leads us naturally to the topic of ‘creationism’.

Creationism

The basic assumption of ‘creationism’ is:-
either God has created and sustained the universe, including all life,
or organisms have evolved (as scientific evidence strongly suggests).
This axiom is – rather obviously – unsatisfactory; the two propositions are not logical alternatives but, from the viewpoint of scientifically informed Christians, both are true. We have every right – even (as we would argue) a duty – to study with our God-given faculties the world as we find it, including the evidence of its past changes; and when we do so, we find overwhelming evidence of evolution – a fact of little or no theological significance.

The body of evidence amassed by thousands of scientists – including no small number of Christians – fills many books. As against this there exists a tiny group of works maintaining a ‘young Earth’ theory and attempting to interpret the facts on the basis of the belief that all species were created within a very short time, relatively recently.

The first comment on this confrontation must be the general principle – which Christians, especially, should never forget – that truth is not decided by voting. The fact that “creation science” is propounded by only a very tiny minority of scientists is no proof of its unreliability; remind yourself of the long series of scientific theories that have been mocked and marginalised for a period after first challenging orthodoxy, but have later gained credence. For instance, Wegener’s continental drift hypothesis was, within living memory, dismissed by the leading biologists and (more persistently) geologists, but has now become standard theory. The history of science is not merely sprinkled with but largely consists of such revolutions in theory . And indeed the idea of evolution itself was, for a while, widely rejected. Today the resistance to it among scientists is down to an extremely tiny minority. But that does not tell us whether it is true.

We suggest to readers who are outside science that this ‘creation science’ does indeed deserve the inverted commas assigned to it by Renton Maclachlan. It is not real science but a form of pseudo-science within which the facts are selectively distorted or ignored for the purpose of forcing a conclusion that cannot follow from application of the scientific method to the full array of known facts.

‘Creationist’ fundamentalists insist that the first three chapters of the Bible must only be read in a strictly literal sense. On this axiom is built the fear that evolution threatens true faith by challenging the reliability of Scripture. This is the essential confusion in the ‘creationism’ position.

Reconciling science with Christianity will require, we suggest, nothing short of the abandonment of the fundamentalism which asserts that there is always a straightforward, clearly recognised, strictly literal, reading of texts and that such a reading is the only possible reading of Scripture. The attempt to understand the Scriptures without interpretation is impossible – all communication necessarily involves interpretation. The attempt to understand the Scriptures without interpretation is doomed to failure and should be abandoned. Only if we have faith that God does not play tricks on us, either in the Scriptures or in our observations of the world he has made and sustained, can we break through to the reconciliation which is sorely needed.

This may seem a daunting challenge to some devout Christians whose feelings we have no wish to bruise.

We are puzzled at the insistence of fundamentalists on literal reading of, especially, the first three chapters of Genesis while apparently accepting poetic language in, say, Ezekiel, and in the New Testament (to take one example out of many: John the Baptist hails ‘the lamb of God’ in an important metaphor which nobody tries to take literally). We see no reason to assume that just a few parts of the Bible are devoid of symbolism, figures of speech, even poetry; indeed, on the grand difficult topics of the origins and the nature and the fate of humans we would expect, if anything, unusual recourse to such devices of communication. In dealing with the issue of origins the biblical narrative is entering territory that must surely ultimately transcend what is accessible to the human mind, and especially the mind trained in the sciences. Indeed, the sciences themselves rely on model, metaphor, symbol and analogy to picture the objects of scientific inquiry. How much more will we need pictures and symbols to present reality that lies beyond normal experience, such as the origin of creation?! The language of imagery and symbolism (picture language really) must surely play a crucial role in communicating such cosmic truths to people of all ages and times. We think it is evident that only on such a basis can the creation stories of Genesis be understood at all.

One argument against a non-literal or symbolic reading of the early chapters of Genesis cites the several references to Adam and Eve, to Cain and Abel, and to Noah in both the Gospels and elsewhere in the NT. How can both Christ and Paul speak of real figures and we then deny their historical reality? Again we need not respond to this challenge by ‘accelerating straight down the road’ of panicky literalism. Theologically there is a recognised plasticity in the meaning of the word ‘Adam’; it is far from certain that it was used in Genesis to speak only of a single first man. The symbolic, representative meaning of Adam may be much more relevant to our deeper understanding of the Genesis narratives than the secular, literal approach with its necessary exclusion of sacred, symbolic content.

It may be helpful to remind ourselves that for most of the Christian era it has been held that the Scriptures should not be available outside a very small exclusive cadre. Those who first tried to make the Bible available to the masses were victimised severely. One reason for that punitive attitude was fear that the individual Christian left to interpret Scripture will fall into error. This fear has today been supplanted by faith that the Holy Spirit will guide our prayerful reading so that on the whole we shall be better off than if interpretation and even reading of Scripture had been reserved to an elite few.

The fundamentalist claim that holy Scripture can be read without interpretation – that the reader can, and should, refrain from interpreting what is read, but should instead somehow simply take it only at ‘face value’, whatever that might actually mean – resembles that earlier belief that ordinary people cannot be entrusted to read the Scriptures at all. Indeed it is worse, in that restriction of Scripture-reading was at the time more or less feasible (if not moral) whereas to read without interpreting is actually infeasible.

We suggest that the promulgation of lay reading of the Bible has been a glorious effort doing vastly more good than harm. The fact that some extremist sects have arisen during this era of vernacular Scripture-reading hardly begins to outweigh the magnificent achievements of the many campaigns to bring the gospel, in writing as well as orally, to every corner of this world in the spirit of the Great Commission.

The Reconciliation

The key theological doctrine which evolution does not, cannot touch, is that the human being is a special creation of God, destined for relationship with him and especially loved. (Christians do not have such clear beliefs about other species, although the Bible is clear that God is the creator of all things and will bring creation as a whole to its fulfilment under the headship of Christ.) In that theological setting, our argument against ‘creationism’ is: the physical series of events whereby the species Homo sapiens came to emerge is a matter for valid investigation by science, and has little if any theological significance.

In maintaining that the holy Scriptures are inspired we wish to suggest that the ‘interpret only literally’ recipe actually leads to an impoverished understanding of the intended meaning of certain texts. Are they to be understood literally? Is there not a deeper level of sacred truth conveyed by these words? This is surely the crucial issue facing any serious student of the Bible. Has not a slavish commitment to a superficial literalism - derived very largely from our secular scientific culture with its own slavish commitment to facts, numbers and data stripped of any symbolic sacred value - hampered the discovering of the sacred meaning of the text?

To those mostly modern Christians who have become habituated to the false antinomy ‘evolution or faith’ we pass the vision of leading scientists such as Professor Morton. Evolution is, as best we can make out the facts, evidently the method whereby God has brought into this world the wonderful range of species (approx. 9/10 of them now extinct). There seems to be no good reason to resist this conclusion drawn, we believe, from a dispassionate examination of the facts revealed by an enormous body of scientific investigation.

One level on which the issue should not be decided is one’s subjective, aesthetic reactions to the two approaches. Nevertheless, we would like to say that, to our mind, the marvellous panoply of unfolding creation over aeons is surely tribute to a Creator who operates on a scale of time that hints at the eternal. Rocks as old as 3,500 million years contain evidence of organisms similar to the photosynthetic blue-green algae still functioning on earth today. The earliest fossilised animals have been found in a complex of sedimentary rocks that stretch back more than 600 million years. These were first discovered in Australia, and have subsequently been found in South Africa, England, Siberia, and Newfoundland, and form what is called the Ediacara fossil complex. The challenge to us today is to avoid the secular temptation to pit the prescientific, religious Genesis narrative against the hard-won picture that science has unfolded during the past couple of centuries. The narrative reading of the early chapters of Genesis and the narrative reading of a genuinely-conducted science must surely speak from different vantage points. The task before us today is to interpret the Creation narratives of Genesis in the light of what has been discovered within the past couple of centuries. We beseech our fellow Christians to do so in faith that God will not let us down or play tricks with our reasoning. The truth – and only the truth – is consistent. Those who adopt the spurious axiom of Creationism (as discussed above – the assumption that one can believe in either creation or evolution but not both) are risking severe cognitive dissonance. It is a false statement which if adopted must lead to contradictions and endless trouble.

We must object to Renton Maclachlan’s attempt to enlist on the side of modern fundamentalism the great scientists Maxwell and Faraday. It is hypothetical in the worst sense to say ‘if these two were alive today they would be numbered firmly among those holding to . . . "creation science" '. This is a completely untestable, almost meaningless assertion. There can be – short of a miracle – no such thing as Faraday alive today in a position to consider the evidence now available. It is simply impossible to know how that devout (though very nonconformist) Christian would have viewed the issue as it now stands. All one can say is that, as one of the three greatest scientists of all history, Faraday earned a most illustrious reputation for honouring the facts observed by science, and did not allow interpretation of them (as they then stood) to be warped by sectarian dogma.

Ecclesiastical and Political Implications

Those who persist in ‘creationism’ often project it into civil life in objectionable ways. Militant ‘creationist’ campaigns (emanating, so far as we have traced them, out of Lubbock, Tex. and Orange County, Calif.) have attempted to purge library holdings and to censor school science curricula to protect pupils from the teaching of evolution. This is a tragic, and even menacing, confusion. Only if evolution gets taught with the false overlay of suggesting that it contradicts or weakens Christianity should it be interfered with. This is certainly the case with the materialistic explanation for evolution, i.e. neo-Darwinism, but it is certainly not so if we view evolution as the means by which God has unfolded the splendour of his creation. The compromise is readily available for secular public schools to teach evolution as science but without metaphysical comment of any sort. We Christians of course regard such a compromise as unsatisfactory.

There are, however, some leaders who wish to protract the phoney conflict. Psychologically, this mistaken approach tends to consolidate their followers by the well-known mechanism of focussing on the need for solidarity against an external enemy. But science practised with integrity is not an enemy of Christianity, and the sooner this is realised the better. The phoney war makes for bad science and for distorted religion.

Conclusion

The real intellectual battle today is scientific atheism versus biblical theism, not evolution ‘versus ‘ creation. The creation ‘versus ‘ evolution wrangle serves only to channel valuable human energy into a futile side-issue that the secular world assumes to be the defining issue upon which Christianity stands or falls. Scientific atheism (read in part, neo-Darwinism) then rides on in a posture of uncriticised intellectual triumph, gathering apparent strength in the eyes of our materialistic, irreligious culture for having exposed the absurdity of a simplistic ‘creation science’ without having its own absurd assumptions challenged.

Christians are confronted with more than enough genuine tasks to keep us busy in the service of the Lord. Billions of people around the world have never heard the Word, and about one billion are malnourished, often ill-clad and ill-housed. The church cannot justify the dedication of books, rhetoric and misdirected work in the cause of “creation science”. It is not real science, and its theological motives are confused. Let us move beyond this distraction.

Neil Broom is associate professor of Engineering, and Robert Mann was until retirement senior lecturer in Environmental Studies, in the University of Auckland.

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

This article was published in the New Zealand Science Teacher, no. 97, 2001, pp. 42-44
A response to "Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth" by
Jonathan Wells

Donald A. Nield
Department of Engineering Science, University of Auckland, P.B 92019, Auckland

All teachers of biology at the secondary level should read the book "Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth?: Why Much of What We Teach About Evolution is Wrong", by Jonathan Wells, Regnery Publishing Inc., Washington DC, 2000, if only to be able to give an informed answer to the "Ten questions to ask your biology teacher about evolution" posted at www.iconsofevolution.com.

The reader should be aware that Jonathan Wells has publicly stated (see the document at www.tparents.org) that he has dedicated his life to destroying Darwinism. This is not mentioned in his book, the promotional description of which reads:
'In this shocking book, Berkeley-educated doctor of biology Jonathan Wells lets you in on scientific discoveries you won't learn about from college and high school textbooks - and reveals a dirty little secret known only to some of his fellow biologists.

The best known "icons of evolution" - from pictures of apes evolving into humans, to comparisons of fish and human embryos to moths on tree trunks - are false or misleading. For decades, biology students have been taught things about evolution that are simply untrue.

These icons of evolution appear in the most recent textbooks, although the scientific literature is full of evidence that they are false. Apparently, dogmatic promoters of Darwinian evolution fear that without these icons public faith in their claims will disappear, so they knowingly misinform our children and suppress scientific evidence.'

With one exception, the ten questions mentioned at the beginning of this article correspond to ten chapters of the book, and I discuss these in detail below. In his final chapter, Wells claims that dogmatic promoters of Darwinian evolution are not merely distorting the truth but they use their position of dominance in the biological sciences in the English-speaking world to censor dissenting viewpoints. He suggests that scientists who deliberately distort the evidence should be disqualified from receiving public funds.

The book has two appendices. The first reports on an evaluation of ten recent biology textbooks published in the U.S.A. They are all given a failing grade by Wells. The second appendix lists ten warning labels which Wells suggests that owners of textbooks can insert in their books.

There is little doubt that a number of textbook writers have been sloppy, and this is a matter of concern, but I do not accept that any of the authors have been deliberately fraudulent. Further, though the individual scientific facts may have been accurately presented by Wells, he has been selective in what he has reported and he has put his own particular spin on those facts.

I now list the ten questions, interleaved with my tentative brief answers (the reader is invited to improve them), which are composed in the light of both what Wells has written and what is actually written in the introductory biology text (one of those evaluated by Wells) in current use at the University of Auckland, namely Neil A. Campbell, Jane B. Reece and Lawrence G. Mitchell, Biology: Concepts and Connections Menlo Park: Cummings, 5th edn1999). I shall abbreviate this reference by CRM.

The questions and my answers are:

Q1. Why do textbooks claim that the Miller-Urey experiment shows how life's building blocks may have formed on the early Earth -- when conditions on the early Earth were probably nothing like those in the experiment, and the origin of life remains a mystery?
A1. CRM (p.494) says: "The atmosphere in the Miller-Urey model was made up of … the gases that researchers in the 1950s believed prevailed in the ancient world. This atmosphere was probably more strongly reducing than the actual atmosphere of the early Earth … Traces of O2 may even have been present. Many laboratories have repeated the Miller-Urey experiment using a variety of recipes for the atmosphere, including a mixture having a very low concentration of O2. Abiotic synthesis of organic compounds occurred in these modified models, though yields were generally less than in the original experiment. Laboratory analogs of primeval Earth have produced all 20 amino acids commonly found in organisms … The Miller-Urey experiments still stimulate debate and research." The authors do not claim that the problem of the origin of life on Earth, or even of its building blocks, has been solved. Nevertheless, it is clear that substantial progress has been made.

Q2. Why don't textbooks discuss the "Cambrian explosion", in which all major animal groups appear together in the fossil record fully formed instead of branching from a common ancestor -- thus contradicting the evolutionary tree of life?
A2. CRM (pp. 595-596) does discuss the Cambrian "explosion", which may have been spread over as much as 40 million years. The so-called explosion can be interpreted quite well using the idea of punctuated equilibrium, something that Wells avoids mentioning. On the appropriate time scale, the tree of life concept (with gradual changes as a result of natural selection) is not refuted.

Q3. Why do textbooks define homology as similar to common ancestry, then claim that it is evidence for their common ancestry -- a circular argument masquerading as scientific evidence?
A3. CRM (p.424) says "Similarity in characteristics resulting from common ancestry is known as homology … Comparative anatomy is consistent with other evidence in testifying that evolution is a remodeling process in which ancestral structures that functioned in one capacity become modified as they take on new functions." Wells does not mention that in individual cases it is usually clear whether similarities in structure are examples of homology or of analogy, and this means that the apparent circularity in the argument can be broken.

Q4. Why do textbooks use drawings of similarities in vertebrate embryos as evidence for their common ancestry -- even though biologists have known for over a century that vertebrate embryos are not most similar in their early stages, and the drawings are faked?
A4. CRM has a single figure illustrating comparative embryology. This is a photograph of a 4-week-old human embryo which clearly shows gill pouches and a postanal tail, two of the trademarks of all vertebrate embryos. The caption says that comparative embryology helps biologists identify anatomical homology that is less apparent in adults because the structures are extensively modified in different ways during later development of the organisms. The text (p. 424) reads: "Inspired by the Darwinian principle of descent with modification, many embryologists in the late nineteenth century proposed the extreme view that 'ontogeny' recapitulates 'phylogeny'. This notion holds that the development of an individual organism, ontogeny, is a replay of the evolutionary history of the evolutionary history of the species, phylogeny. The theory of recapitulation is an overstatement." Here the authors clearly point out that in the past some scientists have been led astray by their theoretical assumptions.

Q5. Why do textbooks portray this fossil [Archaeopteryx] as the missing link between dinosaurs and modern birds -- even though modern birds are probably not descended from it, and its supposed ancestors do not appear until millions of years after it?
A5. CRM (p.649) says: "Archaeopteryx is not considered the ancestor of modern birds, and paleontologists place it on a side branch of the avian lineage. Nonetheless, Archaeopteryx probably was derived from ancestral forms that also gave rise to modern birds." Wells fails to make the distinction between 'transitional' and 'ancestral', and he wrongly assumes that more primitive organisms cannot survive after the evolution of more evolved descendants.

Q6. Why do textbooks use pictures of peppered moths camouflaged on tree trunks as evidence for natural selection -- when biologists have known since the 1980s that the moths don't normally rest on tree trunks, and all the pictures have been staged?
A6. The topic of peppered moths is not mentioned by CRM. Wells refers to Jerry Coyne, but in a letter to a newspaper editor Coyne says that Wells has misrepresented him. Michael Majerus, the authority on the subject, notes that Coyne dealt with only a small part of the scientific evidence when he reviewed Majerus's book in Nature . Evolution by natural selection remains the best explanation of melanism in moths.

Q7. Why do textbooks claim that beak changes in Galapagos finches during a severe drought can explain the origin of species by natural selection -- even though the changes were reversed after the drought ended, and no net evolution occurred?
A7. CRM uses the experimental results of Peter & Rosemary Grant just as an illustration of how inheritable characteristics of finches track changes in climate. Clearly, cyclical changes in climate produce cyclical changes in characteristics, as Wells points out. However, what Wells does not mention is that long-term changes in climate can lead to long-term changes in characteristics, and this, coupled with isolation of breeding stocks, could lead to species differentiation. In connection with similar illustrations, CRM (p. 422) mentions that researchers have published more than 100 other accounts of natural selection in the wild.

Q8. Why do textbooks use fruit flies with an extra pair of wings as evidence that DNA mutations can supply raw materials for evolution -- even though the extra wings have no muscles and those disabled mutants cannot survive outside the laboratory?
A8. The topic of four-winged fruit flies is not mentioned by CRM. This item illustrates a process that contributes to evolution, and is not evidence for evolution per se.

Q9. Why are artists' drawings of ape-like humans used to justify materialistic claims that we are just animals and our existence is a mere accident -- when fossil experts cannot even agree on who our supposed ancestors were or what they looked like?
A9. At the beginning of its discussion of human evolution, CRM says: "Another misconception envisions human evolution as a ladder with a series of steps leading directly from the ancestral anthropoid to Homo sapiens. This is often illustrated as a parade of fossil hominids (members of the human family) becoming progressively more modern as they march across the page. If human evolution is a parade, then it is a disorderly one, with many splinter groups having traveled down dead ends… " Wells has not presented an accurate account of what is now known about human evolution.

Q10. Why are we told that Darwin's theory of evolution is a scientific fact -- even though many of its claims are based on misrepresentations of the facts?
A10. The question itself is based on a misrepresentation. The claims of Darwin's theory of evolution are not based on a misrepresentation of the facts. The reader is invited to read the whole of the relevant chapters in CRM so as to see something of the solid pillars behind the icons.

Various reviews and discussions of the book are posted at www.don-lindsay-archive.org/creation/icons_evolution.html.

The writer is grateful to Dr Robert Mann for his comments on a draft of this article.

Environmental Wager

Why evangelicals are—but shouldn't be—cool toward global warming.
by Andy Crouch
Christianity Today August 2005, Vol. 49, No. 8, Page 66

The theory is taken for granted by nearly every scientist working in the field. But because it is difficult to confirm experimentally, a few vocal skeptics continue to raise pointed questions. The skeptics find a ready audience among evangelical Christians, with groups like Focus on the Family saying that "significant disagreement exists within the scientific community regarding the validity of this theory."

I'm not talking about evolution. Or maybe I am.

The issue in question is not our distant past but our near future. The theory is the all-but-unanimous scientific consensus that human beings are changing the climate by emitting gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere, and that if we do nothing to change our behavior, the warming trend that has taken hold for the past century may well become a runaway gallop.
Prompt action could not only avert the worst consequences—extreme drought and ocean levels rising as much as three feet by 2100—but could actually open up a new era of prosperity through the development of new, more efficient technologies. Some evangelical leaders—including the editors of this magazine—have called for action to address climate change. But the Bush administration, which generally listens carefully to conservative Christians, apparently hasn't heard enough to reconsider its indifference. For many churchgoers, the issue seems murky, its complexity amplified by claims of "significant disagreement."

There is in fact no serious disagreement among scientists that human beings are playing a major role in global warming. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose scientific working group was chaired for many years by the evangelical Christian Sir John Houghton, concluded in 2001 that "most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities." These conclusions, Houghton points out, were vetted by more than 100 governments including the United States: "No assessments on any other scientific topic have been so thoroughly researched and reviewed."

Unfortunately, there is another politically loaded issue where scientific agreement has failed to convince the public. If evangelicals mistrust scientists when they make pronouncements about the future, it may be because of the history of antagonism between biblical faith and evolution. As pro-evolution philosopher Michael Ruse points out in a recent book, evolution began as an alternative to Christianity before it acquired scientific respectability. It was evolutionism—a naturalistic worldview that excluded the biblical Creator—before it was science.
The resulting battle between evolutionism and Christian faith has had countless unfortunate consequences. Some Christians resorted to a wooden interpretation of the first pages of Genesis that was no better as science than evolution was as a worldview. More recently, some scientists have reacted with fanatical hostility to the questions that proponents of Intelligent Design ask about evolution.

But perhaps no result of the creation-evolution stalemate is as potentially disastrous as the way it has stymied courageous action on climate change. In May, for a serious article about Intelligent Design that described one proponent's books as "packed with provocative ideas," the editors of The New Yorker chose the snippy headline, "Why intelligent design isn't." Rhetoric like that hardly disposes conservative Christians to trust the impeccably researched articles about climate change the magazine published earlier in the year.

All science is ultimately a matter of trust. The tools, methods, and mathematical skills scientists acquire over years of training are beyond the reach of the rest of us, even of scientists in different fields. Thanks to the creation-evolution debate, mistrust between scientists and conservative Christians runs deep. But those scarred by battles with evolutionists might still consider heeding the scientists who are warning us about climate change. As an evangelical scientist said to me recently, the debate over climate change is very much like Pascal's wager, that famous argument for belief in God.

Believe in God though he does not exist, Pascal argued, and you lose nothing in the end. Fail to believe when he does in fact exist, and you lose everything. Likewise, we have little to lose, and much technological progress, energy security, and economic efficiency to gain, if we act on climate change now—even if the worst predictions fail to come to pass. But if we choose inaction and are mistaken, we will leave our descendants a blighted world. As Pascal said, "You must wager. It is not optional. You are embarked. Which will you choose then? Let us see."

School Notes from Arkansas

These are real notes written from parents in an Arkansas school district. (Spellings have been left intact.)

My son is under a doctor's care and should not take P.E. today. Please execute him.

Please excuse Lisa for being absent. She was sick and I had her shot.

Dear School: Please ekscuse John being absent on Jan. 28, 29, 30,31, 32, and also the 33.

Please excuse Gloria from Jim today. She is administrating

Please excuse Roland from P.E. for a few days. Yesterday he Fell out of a tree and misplaced his hip.

John has been absent because he had two teeth taken out of his face.

Carlos was absent yesterday because he was playing football. He was hurt in the growing part.

Please excuse Ray Friday from school. He has very loose vowels.

Please excuse Pedro from being absent yesterday. He had diahre dyrea direathe the shits. [Highlighted words were crossed out]

Please excuse Tommy for being absent yesterday. He had diarr hea and his boots leak.

Irving was absent yesterday because he missed his bust.

Please excuse Jimmy for being. It was his father's fault.

Sally won't be in school a week from Friday. We have to Attend her funeral.

My daughter was absent yesterday because she was tired. She spent a weekend with the Marines.

Please excuse Mary for being absent yesterday. She was in bed with gramps.

Gloria was absent yesterday as she was having a gangover.

We could not imagine . . .

In her characteristic sharp wit, Rosemary McLeod wrote a stinging attack on the current moral situation in New Zealand, highlighting the effects that “tolerance” has had on women and children. McLeod, one of the founders of the wimminsLib newssheet BroadSheet, continues to hold many "feminist" ideals and beliefs. Yet over time, she has become increasingly concerned with many of the doctrinaire positions and attitudes of this movement; she is now an outspoken critic of a number of its excesses. McLeod repeatedly writes that “we did not foresee . . .” the teleological ends of exalting tolerance, especially in the area of “sexual morality” correctly termed sexual licentiousness.

I can’t remember the last time I was well and truly shocked . . . [we weren’t shocked when we learned that] Bert Potter’s commune at Centrepoint the children naturally watched adults going at it like rabbits in the dormitories. We did not foresee the court cases that would follow, involving sexual abuse of children by Potter and other commune men . . . [nor were we shocked when] Alister Taylor published Down Under the Plum Trees, accounts of the first sexual experiences of young people . . . We did not foresee that the book would become a manual for paedophiles.
We should have abortion on demand . . . we would not have believed how the abortion rate would soar – up to 18,200 in the past year . . . We could not imagine that babies would become a mere unwelcome side-effect of sex, that sex itself would become so divorced from procreation that heterosexual intercourse wouldn’t rate in hardcore porn by 2005. Porn stars prefer to ejaculate on to women’s faces. Vaginas are out of style . . . The Helen Clark Labour-led government may well be remembered best for its legalisation of prostitution and its introduction of civil unions, effectively gay marriages . . . [yet] we did not seem free to discuss openly for fear – once again – of seeming pathetically uncool . . . Lesbians and gays – yesterday’s deviants – can get state-funded artificial insemination, and adopt children. Whoring is a valid career choice.

Gay sex has been normalized and sodomy and fellatio, formerly considered to be homosexual acts, now star in heterosexual porn. The cult of the body beautiful and of serial sexual partners, long mainstream in gay culture, is increasingly a heterosexual obsession. Even the All Blacks are presented as gay eye candy . . . We thought gays wanted to be like us, with marriage-like commitments, but only 54 civil unions have been recorded, not all of them between gays. It’s families that are newly marginalized – solo mothers struggling in poverty, middle-income earners no better off working than they would be on welfare . . . So what’s shocking now? If [Sue] Kedgley is any guide, it’s the state of strawberries and meningococcal vaccines. And battery hens.

=====

Sue Kedgley is a Green Party List MP.
Rosemary McLeod, “Hell in a Handcart?” in: Sunday Star Times, 7 August 2005, p C3+4. (author’s bolding)

Katherine Ernst
Screwy NARAL
What do feminists really want? | 14 July 2005

If the militant feminist, pro-choice movement is known for anything, a sense of warmth is not it. These are the women—excuse me, womyn—who will happily follow lefty Hollywood hack Whoopi Goldberg on a march through Washington, the “Keep the U.S. Off My Uterus” crowd, the Bush-hating, humorless bunch who might flatten a man should he attempt to open a car door for one of them. So when part of the gang has a night of feminist fun, rest assured it’s not dinner and a movie topped off with a swell game of Parcheesi.

No: tonight the Washington state chapter of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL) has planned what promises to be an unforgettable evening of pro-choice ecstasy—the “Screw Abstinence Party”—and they want you to be a part of it! Please, dear citizen, “PRINT OUT FLYER AND BRING ALL YOUR FRIENDS!” so you can watch while Seattle’s “hottest sketch comedy group [perform] a sex ed class for adults” (Edgy!), while “sex-positive purveyors of adult toys offer tips on ‘Sexy Safer Sex’” (Ooh . . . Dirty!), and you can listen to Lady Jane DJ spin “the latest in Hip-Hop and R&B.”

But don’t dare get your knickers in a twist, fellow Conservative, or you’ll be snapping at some not-so-ingenious bait. With the exception of Planned Parenthood, perhaps no other liberal organization has been as dangerously effective with pro-abortion demagoguery as NARAL. As any judicial scholar worth his or her salt will tell you, Roe v. Wade is the Adam and Eve of modern-day judicial activism—a case where seven liberal justices, fueled by ideology and emotion, found a constitutional right to a procedure that, oddly enough, the Constitution is silent on. And yet, NARAL has successfully shifted the debate from the legal merit of the Court’s opinion, states’ rights, and the rugged terrain of bioethics to the creation of a faux-threat: the Right-Wing-Christian-Boogeyman who aims to eliminate “women’s rights”—even in cases of rape and incest (as NARAL’s broken-record scare talk wrongly claims). Indeed, the Washington branch of NARAL’s website has a picture of the current Supreme Court: those Justices who would uphold Roe have halos over their heads, while Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas model devil horns. The group even wrote a mock want-ad for the current Supreme Court vacancy: “Seeking a right-wing yes man. . . . Narrow mindedness and interest in turning back the clock on women’s rights a plus.” So clever!

Hence, the “Screw Abstinence” trap. The organizers would love for the Right to rise up, put on their stuffiest shirts, and flood the media with Sodom and Gomorrah-style sound bites (the party is for those age 21 and older); such a stark juxtaposition allows NARAL to avoid making any intellectual defense of their hyper-abortion platform and paints Conservatives as out-of-touch prudish, Scarlet Letter Salemites. If NARAL can get a Conservative offended at the prospect of those over the drinking age not abstaining from sex, they have reached the pot of gold at the end of their liberal rainbow: proof that what abortion foes really seek is to make everyone save it for marriage—or even for procreation in marriage. But it’s not the prospect of young adults engaging in sexual relations that should give anyone pause, but rather NARAL’s implication, in this party invite, that abortion is their favorite form of birth control. “Let them know you keep it real when it comes to your sexual health and decision-making,” the online invitation boasts. “Keep it real?” Is this their wimpy attempt at appealing to the MTV generation, or is P. Diddy writing their press releases? “Come laugh, learn, socialize and buck the system,” they add. “Buck the system?” Cuban or Iranian dissidents “buck the system”; 20-something Seattleites (complete with thrift-store T-shirts and iPods full of Tori Amos tunes) at a liberal party are not exactly “bucking the system,” but acting as cliché as they can. This is NARAL gratifying itself by playing smoking-in-the-girls-room on a political stage; a way to feel cool and rebellious against Principal Bush and Dean Conservative. It deserves not fear but only a raised-eyebrow sneer.

Those on the Right cannot be blamed for feeling a little Schadenfreude in all this, either; Justice O’Connor’s retirement, coupled with Bush’s soon-to-be-tested resolve in picking an originalist nominee, is causing a near crack-up in Liberalville—as illustrated by “Screw Abstinence.” Despite the tired, old mantra that liberals want abortions to be “safe, legal, and rare,” the pro-choicers’ actions are demonstrating otherwise. (“Screw[ing] Abstinence” doesn’t exactly help the “rare” part.) And selling “I Had An Abortion” T-shirts (Planned Parenthood) or “I ♥ Pro-Choice Boys/Girls” wear (NARAL), and fighting common-sense parental-notification laws (which, polls show, a vast majority of Americans favor) won’t help to win many people over, either. NARAL and its ilk have become politically tone deaf. The lack of public support for their militant abortion-on-demand fantasy-land, plus the weakness of their legal argument, has made them intellectually lazy: they have been reduced to flippant T-shirt vendors and feminist yentas armed with placards and coat-hangers.

So fret not the end of civilized society when the guys and gals of NARAL throw their party tonight. “Screw Abstinence” is, after all, a last gasp for air; a way to attract the young and hang on to relevancy as the rest of America continues to erode out of their kooky hands.

The Internet

In ancient Israel, it came to pass that a trader by the name of Abraham Com did take unto himself a young wife by the name of Dot. And Dot Com was a comely woman, broad of shoulder and long of leg. Indeed, she had been called Amazon Dot Com.

She said unto Abraham, her husband, "Why doth thou travel far from town to town with thy goods when thou can trade without ever leaving thy tent?" And Abraham did look at her as though she were several saddle bags short of a camel load, but simply said, "How, Dear?"

And Dot replied, "I will place drums in all the towns and drums in between, to send messages saying what you have for sale, and they will reply telling you which drums and delivery made by Uriah's Pony Stable (UPS)." Abraham thought long and decided he would let Dot have her way with the drums. The drums rang out and were an immediate success. Abraham sold all the goods he had at the top price, without ever moving from his tent. But this success did arouse envy. A man named Maccabia did secrete himself inside Abraham's drum and was accused of insider trading. And the young men did take to Dot Com's trading as doth the greedy horsefly take to camel dung. They were called Nomadic Ecclesiastical Rich Dominican Siderites, or NERDS for short.

And lo, the land was so feverish with joy at the new prosperity and the deafening sound of drums that no one noticed that the real riches were going to the drum maker, one Brother William of Gates, who bought up every drum company in the land. And indeed he did insist on making drums that would work only with Brother Gates's drumheads and drumsticks.

And seeing it, Dot did say, "Oh, Abraham, what we have started is being taken over by others, and I fear that Job's son Stephen will not be able to pull our fat out of the fire as he did of yore with his fruit of the apple tree."

And as Abraham paddled his way across the water on his log, he looked out over the Bay of Ezekiel, or as it came to be known "eBay" and said, "We need a name that reflects what we are," and Dot replied, Do not worry yourself, my husband. Just log on. We will call our name, "Young Ambitious Hebrew Owner-Operators."

"YAHOO!", said Abraham.
And that is how it all began.

Unfranked 6 Aug 05

Taking the Law Into Your Own Hands

Last Sunday if you read Deborah Coddington's column in the Herald on Sunday you'll know part of a story about a man who caught a would-be burglar and called the police to come and collect him. This Sunday evening, if you watch TV One's Sunday program you'll get an update.

Deborah told about Michael Vaimauga a 24-year-old father of four who works as a dispatcher and lives next to the Guthrie Bowron store in Panmure. "Vaimauga woke at 4.30am last February to the sound of three guys smashing their way into the store. Did our hero go back to bed, ignore a crime taking place under his nose, and bury his head under the pillow muttering 'not my problem'? No. He phoned the police, grabbed his baseball bat and shouted at the would-be thieves to stop. When they took off, he chased one, whereupon he was attacked. Vaimauga responded in kind with his baseball bat and felled the attacker with a blow to the shin. He then dragged him down the road to the service station and waited for the police".

The police duly arrived, talked to both men, then arrested Vaimauga for assault and sent the other guy to hospital. After losing time off work for at least five court appearances this young man with no previous convictions was discharged without conviction, but the judge ordered him to pay $150 to a charity. She told him he must not take the law into his own hands. The would-be burglar was never charged.

The man should have got a medal. His legal aid lawyer was paid $910. With four kids the days off work hit Michael and his family hard. I've sent him my own practical medal - a small contribution toward the costs of those days off work.

Do watch the programme on Sunday. If you too think Michael needs such a medal send me a cheque made out to him, and I'll ensure he gets them. Letters can be addressed to me without postage at Parliament Buildings, Wellington.

The TV programme will reveal a lot about the attitudes of the police, and judges - the insiders of our criminal justice system. But there is a lot TV won't have time to include.

As soon as I heard about the case I sought access to the court file. That was over a month ago and still I have not seen it.

I've explained to the court that I do not like to propose changes to the law, or criticise decisions, without knowing as much as I can find out. I got Vaimauga's consent to disclosure, and the court now has it in writing.

First, a court clerk referred my request to the Minister for Courts for vetting. I went to the court office. I've now heard from the Chief District Court Judge, Judge Mathers, and the Minister, that the court clerk was mistaken in telling me there was a protocol requiring such referral, and that the decision is for the judge alone. I have not heard what they are going to do to shore up understanding in the Registrar's office of the concept of judicial independence from the Executive.

I suspect that this is another case where the justice system has stolen a precious right from the man charged. The judge told Michael that he should not take the law into his own hands.

But the law was already in his hands, and in our hands, and it always has been. It does not belong to the system insiders - the judges, police and the lawyers. The Crimes Act is clear about citizen's arrest immunities. Judicial carping at people who take the law into their own hands is now common but that does not make it lawful. The justice insiders may think that citizens arrest provisions are old-fashioned. They may want to confine enforcement decisions and powers exclusively to themselves, but sections 35 to 39 of the Crimes Act have not been repealed. Punishing people who uphold the law is stealing rights from us all. Do you find the following obscure?

"35 Arrest of persons found committing certain crimes. Every one is justified and arresting without warrant any person whom he finds by night committing any offence against this Act.

'39 Force used in executing process or in arrest. Where any person is justified or protected from criminal responsibility Š in making Š any arrest, that justification or protection shall extend and apply to the use by him of such force as may be necessary to overcome any force used in resisting such execution or arrest, unless the Š arrest [can be] made by reasonable means in a less violent manner".

Every controversial prosecution in effect narrows these provisions. Why prosecute? It might be different if the police could even credibly pretend to be able to stop such burglaries. When the state can't protect people and their property it has no right to stop the brave volunteers who try. This is not a call for vigilantes. Michael did not set out to punish the offenders. He tried to bring them to justice.

I am campaigning for the right of individuals and the community to defend themselves. It is a campaign for existing rights, and for restoration of rights lost to politically correct practice only in the last 25 years. New Zealand will never re-attain the low violent crime we enjoyed until 30 years ago until we have restored the routine expectation that people will defend themselves and others against criminality. This campaign is a call for the courts and the police to uphold the law themselves, even if they don't approve of it.

Dr Martin Lally of Victoria University read last Sunday's Herald and copied to me his letter to the Minister for Courts. You can see the message he has taken from the case in these excerpts:

"1. The fact that the police were unable to locate the victim of the assault is rather disturbing. Obviously, he is entitled to compensation (and should probably get it if he can secure appropriate legal services at the taxpayer's expense). I trust you will spare no expense in attempting to locate him for this purpose, and institute procedural changes to ensure that these sorts of errors do not recur. Š
3. The fact that the Judge ordered Mr Vaimauga to pay $150 to a charity is rather disturbing. I thought our courts had got well past the point of compelling anyone to do anything. Of course, the circumstances were exceptional (taking the law into one's own hands in defense of private property is obviously serious stuff) and she doubtless took this into account in departing from the accepted practice.
4. It is commendable that Judge Mather asserted that taking the law into one's own hands is unacceptable. However, she should have added that there are NO exceptions to this general principle. Some misguided members of the public might, for example, feel that had Mr Vaimauga witnessed rape, it would have been acceptable for him to confront the assailant and strike him on the shin with a baseball bat. Of course, as we both know, the right course of action here would be to ring the police and patiently await their arrival (and this would remain true even if the call did not get through, or the location was misunderstood by the dispatcher, or a taxi sent in substitution)."

Here are some recent Ministerial questions. A lot more in this genre will be posted on the ACT website. To me the answers are contemptuous of the public. What do you think?

Questions for Written Answer
Received 4th August 2005

Question: 08412 (2005) Published - Police - Corrected Reply

Portfolio: Police
Minister: Hon George Hawkins
Date Lodged: 20/07/2005
Date Received: 03/08/2005

Question: What steps, if any, has he taken to encourage people to oppose crime and apprehend offenders using the rights set out in sections 34 to 48 of the Crimes Act; and if none why?

Answer: I have not considered it necessary to encourage people to exercise the rights set out in sections 34 to 48 of the Crime Act, as the public continues to assist Police in the prevention of crime and apprehension of offenders.

Question: 08421 (2005) Published - Police - Corrected Reply

Question: Does he think the police should issue statements criticising as foolhardy the actions of people who actively oppose criminal actions, or attempt to apprehend offenders?
Answer: I agree with the advice given by Police and Neighbourhood Support New Zealand cautioning members of the public to act within the law and to not take unnecessary risks when confronted by criminal offending.

Question: 08404 (2005) Published - Police - Corrected Reply

Question: Is there a police or government policy preference to press charges so that the court can decide whether the use of force was justified in defence of self or another or in attempting to stop offences by another, instead of exercising the discretion not to prosecute even where the police consider that conviction is less than likely, and if so what does the Minister think of that policy?

Answer: There is no Police or Government policy preference to press charges so that the court can decide whether the use of force was justified in defence of self or another or in attempting to stop offences by another. I am advised that the outcome of the Police's exercise of its prosecutorial discretion depends on the circumstances of individual cases and the Solicitor-General's prosecution guidelines. This response also answers parliamentary question for written answer No. 8410 (2005).

Question: 08410 (2005) Published - Police - Corrected Reply

Question: What weight do the police give to their effect on public willingness to help prevent crime or to apprehend offenders, before prosecuting people who have acted with such motives?

Answer: I refer the Member to my response to parliamentary question for written answer No. 8404 (2005).

Question: 08414 (2005) Published - Police - Normal Reply

Question: To what extent, if any, does he consider that police should have special powers or privileges not available to ordinary citizens?

Answer: All New Zealanders are bound by the laws of New Zealand. This response also answers parliamentary questions for written answer No. 4815, 8416, 8417, 8418, 8419, 8423, 8424, 8425, 8426, 8427, 8428, 8429, 8430 (2005).

Question: 08430 (2005) Published - Police - Normal Reply

Question: Does he think members of the public should attempt to apprehend offenders, beyond taking details and reporting to the police; and if not why not?
Answer: I refer the Member to my response to parliamentary question for written answer No. 8414 (2005

Question: 08429 (2005) Published - Police - Normal Reply

Question: Does he think members of the public should intervene to stop crime while it is underway, beyond taking details and calling the police; and if not why not?
Answer: I refer the Member to my response to parliamentary question for written answer No. 8414 (2005).

Question: 08426 (2005) Published - Police - Normal Reply

Question: In what manner if any, has the Minister ever raised with the Commissioner of Police the question whether prosecution of people whose offending may be characterised as "taking the law into their own hands" discourages public assistance in combating crime, or discourages exercise of the rights reflected in sections 34 to 48 of the Crimes Act; and if it was raised what was the result?
Answer: I refer the Member to my response to parliamentary question for written answer No. 8414 (2005).

Question: 08423 (2005) Published - Police - Normal Reply

Question: What guidance is available to police exercising the prosecution discretion, on distinguishing between "taking the law into your own hands" and exercise of the rights reflected in sections 34 to 48 of the Crimes Act, and what does it say?
Answer: I refer the Member to my response to parliamentary question for written answer No. 8414 (2005).

Question: 08425 (2005) Published - Police - Normal Reply

Question: In what manner, if any, has the Minister ever raised with the Attorney General or the Crown Law Office the question whether prosecutions for "taking the law into their own hands" may be discouraging public assistance in combating crime, or discouraging exercise of the rights reflected in sections 34 to 48 of the Crimes Act; and if it was raised what was the result?
Answer: I refer the Member to my response to parliamentary question for written answer No. 8414 (2005).

Question: 08419 (2005) Published - Police - Normal Reply

Question: To what extent, if any, does he disagree with Sir Robert Peel's seventh principle of policing: "To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen, in the interests of community welfare and existence"?
Answer: I refer the Member to my response to parliamentary question for written answer No. 8414 (2005).

Question: 08417 (2005) Published - Police - Normal Reply

Question: To what extent, if any, does he disagree with Sir Robert Peel's fourth principle of policing "To recognize always that the extent to which the cooperation of the public can be secured diminishes, proportionately, the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives"?
Answer: I refer the Member to my response to parliamentary question for written answer No. 8414 (2005).

Question: 1021

Portfolio: Police
Minister: Hon George Hawkins
Date Lodged 15/02/2005
Date Received: 02/03/2005

Question: What policies or written material are readily available to guide Police asked to advise the public about their exercise of rights of citizens' arrest?

Answer I refer the Member to my response to parliamentary question for written answer No.1011 (2005).

Police are guided by sections 48 and 52 to 56 of the Crimes Act 1961. Because each situation is different, and because "reasonable force" and "necessary" have a legal meaning, police are in a position to dispense very general advice only. However, it is the role of the police to enforce the law, not to provide detailed legal advice.

[Note that those sections have nothing whatsoever to do with the citizens arrest immunities]

Question: 1022

Portfolio: Police
Minister: Hon George Hawkins
Date Lodged: 15/02/2005
Date Received: 02/03/2005

Question: How do Police ensure they give accurate advice when asked to explain to the public the nature or limits on rights of defence of home, person or property?

Answer I refer the Member to my response to parliamentary question for written answer No.1011 (2005).

Police are guided by sections 48 and 52 to 56 of the Crimes Act 1961. Because each situation is different, and because "reasonable force" and "necessary" have a legal meaning, police are in a position to dispense very general advice only. However, it is the role of the police to enforce the law, not to provide detailed legal advice.

Question: 1027

Portfolio: Police
Minister: Hon George Hawkins
Date Lodged 15/02/2005
Date Received: 02/03/2005

Question: Have Police any survey or other information that would indicate the views of "frontline" officers on the clarity or practical comprehensibility of the law governing self defence of home or property, and if so, what does it say?
Answer Police are guided by sections 48 and 52 to 56 of the Crimes Act 1961. Because each situation is different, and because "reasonable force" and "necessary" have a legal meaning, police are in a position to dispense very general advice only. However, it is the role of the police to enforce the law, not to provide detailed legal advice.

Portfolio: Police
Minister: Hon George Hawkins
Date Lodged: 15/02/2005
Date Received: 03/03/2005

Question: Is it the Police view that property owners who warn off intruders increase their risk of injury if they carry a weapon when they do it, and if so, on what information is that view based?

Answer I have been advised that the Police view, which is shared by many groups including Victim Support New Zealand, is that property owners who warn off intruders increase their risk of injury if they carry a weapon. There have been too many instances of people taking the law into their own hands and getting injured or killed. Police consider that the best option is to call the police.

Contact Us
Daniel McCaffrey
Executive Secretary to Stephen Franks MP
Telephone: 04 470 6636
Fax: 04 473 3532
E-mail: daniel.mccaffrey@parliament.govt.nz
Web: http://www.act.org.nz

fw from Ray Bradley, with his attached conceptual map: (Map not included as BLOG will not accept)

> You might also be interested in taking a look at the conceptual map that I have drawn up as a guide to clear thinking about issues involving Intelligent Design. It must be understood in light of the conventions and logical rules laid down at the bottom of the page. (This is the sort of logic diagram that I encouraged you to work on a year or so ago). You will see that, as a matter of strict logic, there is no incompatibility between certain kinds of theism and either evolutionary theory or proposals re biogenesis. I think you agree.

This is a far more elaborate, more nearly complete map, in regard to the number of concepts displayed, than the simple one which Ray mentions (copied below & in attachment). I first composed this in response to VisioNet Glyn Carpenter's mischievous falsehood in DayStar - that the creationist/evolution argument is "also referred to as the young earth / old earth debate". My compughter graphics are far cruder than Ray's, and the following diagram doesn't always come thru email accurately; therefore I attach it also in the article I sent in response to Glyn's furphy.

Ray's map is certainly more complete wrt mentioning concepts. However, I will strongly criticise some of his assertions about the logical relations between them.

First, here's my initial crude logic chart:

> ... These differing views on evolution and creation can be diagrammed
>as a logic-tree, to be read from the bottom. OEC = Old Earth Creationism; YEC = Young Earth Creationism.

theistic evolution OEC YEC
x x x
x x x
x creationism
x x
x x
theism deism atheism
x x x
x x x
x x
x x
x x
x

In response to some constructive criticism from Ray, I added the warning:
The diagram summarises the main logical options. I notice he too stipulates Note that the design concepts depicted here are not exhaustive of all possibilities. Fair enough for both of us. My chart is far less complete in its mentions of concepts, but his too is admittedly still incomplete. (I don't suspect any omission from his will prove very important, and indeed I'm grateful to him for compiling the list of concepts; it's the commissions that are gravely wonky.)

I am at this stage primarily concerned to see ideas fairly represented. Especially do I wish to see theism properly represented. The logic of Bradley's chart is woefully astray.

Ray tells us the GOD OF CREATIONISM is logically implied by

either

Intelligent design
of nature with
revelation plus
intervention to
produce
origins of life

or

Intelligent design
of nature with
revelation plus
creation of each
different species

Ray then tells us that this GOD OF CREATIONISM logically implies - in one of the two ways to logically imply this concept - the
THEISTIC GOD
of e.g. Judaism,
Christianity, Islam

The only other way which he depicts for logical inference of the god of monotheism is from

Intelligent design
of nature with
revelation but no other
subsequent intervention

This from a man brought up a Christian. Need I expatiate on this misrepresentation? It is a drastically false picture of what Christians (and those other monotheistic religions) believe.

For a start, the whole notion of logically inferring God is not a prime motive for Christians' belief in God.

Secondly, it is outlandish to say that Christians believe Intelligent design of nature with revelation but no other subsequent intervention. The interventions in Palestine 2 millennia ago are central, but untold interventions are believed in - especially answers to prayer - down to the present moment, not to mention many in Ur, Egypt, Palestine etc during previous millennia. Ray may himself somehow have tragically ceased to believe thus, but he has no right to misrepresent what is believed by normal Christians.

The logical implications pointing to
DEISTIC GOD
of,e.g., Hume,
Paine, Jefferson
are also in my opinion mis-stated, but perhaps I should leave to new deist A. Flew the defence of that school of thought which Temple said 7 decades ago "is dead, and needs no reviving".

Having thus misrepresented, or at least grossly mis-stated, the logical liaisons of monotheism and theories of origins of life, Ray then across the bottom of his chart sketches how science is supposed to account for life better, obviating need of metaphysical concepts. I leave for a possible future occasion my criticisms of that part of Ray's flow-chart; for now I'll say it's misleadingly defective, in much the same ways that Broom & I have been pointing out for years in the crudities of Dawkins, Wolpert, S Weinberg, etc.

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

THE ILLOGIC OF CREATIONISM

summarily rejected by DayStar® Sept 03

L R B MANN

The word 'evolution' has become, for some Christians, a provocation. They have been led to believe that evolution is essentially an atheistic idea. This misunderstanding has been misused for much unnecessary disputing.

VisionNetwork leader Glyn Carpenter writes (DayStar Sept 03) that the creationist/evolution argument is "also referred to as the young earth / old earth debate". This is an unfortunate confusion. Let's get a clear understanding of what the terms mean, and what are the various beliefs, connected with evolution.

Two main sub-sects of "creationism" exist. One version of "creationism" asserts not only that all species were created in 6 days but also that this brief period of biological creation occurred less than 10,000 years ago. That is 'young earth creationism' (YEC). 'Old earth creationism' (OEC), exemplified by Hugh Ross's 'Reasons to Believe' organisation of S. Calif., acknowledges the scientific evidence that the Earth is much, much older, but also asserts like YEC that evolution has not occurred. The difference between these two sub-sects is of some interest, but it is different from the dispute between those who believe in evolution and those who refuse to believe in evolution.

These differing views on evolution and creation can be diagrammed as a logic-tree, to be read from the bottom:

theistic evolution OEC YEC
x x x
x x
x creationism
x x
x x
theism deism atheism
x x x
x x x
x x
x x
x x
x

The diagram summarises the main logical options.
You can believe in God, or not; this is the basic, most important, choice in the logic-tree.
If you choose the atheism fork, you can then try like Dawkins etc to explain how the incomparable coherent complexity of ecosystems, or even just the functions of a humble bacterial flagellum, could have evolved by the workings of physical & chemical laws, with no creative planning.

If instead you believe in God, you have an option of a largely defunct view, deism, holding that God did create the universe but that he then turned it loose, like a clockwork toy he'd wound up and left to run by the natural laws which he'd created. In contrast, theism holds that God not only created the universe but also sustains & guides it from moment to moment.

The tendency known as creationism is - though not usually billed as such by its adherents - a version of deism in its purported explanation of life. Proceeding up the logic-tree, within the "creationism" branch, we find the two versions, YEC and OEC, holding that, at least regarding the creation of species of organism, God did it all at the start and has not done any more creation since then. Although most creationists are theists because they believe in God's continuing involvement in the world (in the Incarnation, the Resurrection, God's responses to prayer, etc), they are deists in their biology - they believe in a completed creation.

Both YEC and OEC are opposed to the mainstream Christian view, which is theistic evolution, combining traditional theology with scientific findings that the different types of organism have been created at successive times over several billion years. God as the maker & sustainer of the universe is affirmed by theistic evolution. To me as a Christian, physical & chemical laws are an expression of creative planning, not an alternative to it. Dawkins just has to accept them as an extraordinary brute fact, the origin of which he studiously ignores.

Theistic evolution results from reading both the book of scripture and the book of nature. It relies on faith that God will not mislead us if we examine honestly what we find in strata, fossils, molecules, and other aspects of nature that allow us to infer past processes in biology. Creationists have misrepresented these scientific findings in many ways (and as a scientist I deeply deplore that misbehaviour, documented in e.g. Prof. Ian Plimer's book 'Telling Lies for God'). But it is their logic that is the prime defect of creationism, counterposing the concepts of creation "vs." evolution, implying that they are somehow incompatible.

Where in this logic-tree does Intelligent Design fit? Exemplified by the video 'Unlocking the Mystery of Life' and the writings of William Dembski, this approach to explaining life confines itself to what is known as natural theology, i.e. reading the book of nature with intent to infer properties of the designer(s). The effect is thus at the base of the logic-tree, helping those who have yet to decide whether organisms are caused by merely material processes or are designed. This is the Argument to Design developed by William Paley two centuries ago. It is fine as far as it goes but is only a tiny, if basic, part of theistic evolution as set forth by leading Christian scholars such as William Temple, Sir Alister Hardy, and our own John Morton (see 'Man, Science and God', Collins 1972). Another leading scholar in natural theology, but taking a broader view than Dembski expounds, is Neil Broom of the University of Auckland (see 'How Blind Is the Watchmaker?' IVP 2001). Broom expounds the Argument to Design as well as anyone, while seeing no theological difficulty in an ancient biosphere and evolution as shown by science.

My essay available at maintains - following Morton - that a more intelligible, direct & conclusive argument is to be found in reason, insisting on all four causes as required to explain life, rather than relying principally on gaps in scientific understanding of the evolution of bacterial flagella etc.

All World's Glaciers Could Melt, Latest Scientific Data Indicates

(See http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/aug2005/2005-08-05-05.asp if you want the pictures)

ZURICH, Switzerland, August 5, 2005 (ENS) - Global warming caused by human activities may result in the complete disappearance of glaciers from entire mountain ranges, according to the latest update of a United Nations supported report issued once every five years. The World Glacier Monitoring Service warns that the greenhouse effect is leading to processes "without precedent in the history of the Earth."

"The last five-year period of the 20th century has been characterized by an overall tendency of continuous if not accelerated glacier melting," says the World Glacier Monitoring Service 1995-2000 edition of the Fluctuations of Glaciers report, complied with the support of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

"The two decades [from] 1980-2000 show a trend of increasingly negative balances with average annual ice thickness losses of a few decimetres," the report adds. "The observed trend of increasingly negative mass balances is consistent with accelerated global warming."

Analysis of repeated inventories shows that glaciers in the European Alps have lost more than 50 percent of their volume since the middle of the 19th century, and that a further loss of roughly one fourth the remaining volume is estimated to have occurred since the 1970s, the report states.

"With a realistic scenario of future atmospheric warming, almost complete deglaciation of many mountain ranges could occur within decades, leaving only some ice on the very highest peaks," it says.

The series "Fluctuations of Glaciers," prepared by the Service, continuously publishes internationally collected, standardized data on changes in glaciers throughout the world once every five years. The Service is based at the Department of Geography University of Zurich.

The objective of the publication is to reproduce a global set of data which affords a general view of the changes, encourages more extensive measurements, invites further processing of the results, facilitates consultation of the further sources, and serves as a basis for research.

This standardized data set is presented as a working tool for the scientific community, especially concerning the fields of glaciology, climatology, hydrology, and quarternary geology.

Since the initiation in 1894 of a worldwide program for collecting standardized information on glacier changes, various aspects involved have changed "in a most remarkable way," the report says.

Concern increases that the ongoing trend of worldwide and fast if not accelerating glacier shrinkage at the century time scale is of non-cyclic nature.

While earlier reports anticipated a periodic variation in glaciers, "there is definitely no more question of the originally envisaged "variations périodiques des glaciers" as a natural cyclical phenomenon, the latest report states.

"Due to the human impacts on the climate system (enhanced greenhouse effect), dramatic scenarios of future developments - including complete deglaciation of entire mountain ranges - must be taken into consideration," it emphasizes.

The report says, "Such scenarios may lead far beyond the range of historical/holocene variability and most likely introduce processes without precedence in the history of the Earth."

The scientific opinion on climate change, as expressed by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and endorsed by the national science academies of the G8 nations, is that the average global temperature has risen 0.6 ± 0.2°C since the late 19th century, and that "most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities."

Greenhouse gases emitted by the combustion of coal, oil and gas form a atmospheric blanket, trapping the Sun's heat close to the planet and raising the surface temperature.

The World Glacier Monitoring Service is online at: http://www.geo.unizh.ch/wgms/

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/05/opinion/05krugman.html

August 5, 2005
Design for Confusion
By PAUL KRUGMAN

I'd like to nominate Irving Kristol, the neoconservative former editor of The Public Interest, as the father of "intelligent design." No, he didn't play any role in developing the doctrine. But he is the father of the political strategy that lies behind the intelligent design movement - a strategy that has been used with great success by the economic right and has now been adopted by the religious right.

Back in 1978 Mr. Kristol urged corporations to make "philanthropic contributions to scholars and institutions who are likely to advocate preservation of a strong private sector." That was delicately worded, but the clear implication was that corporations that didn't like the results of academic research, however valid, should support people willing to say something more to their liking.

Mr. Kristol led by example, using The Public Interest to promote supply-side economics, a doctrine whose central claim - that tax cuts have such miraculous positive effects on the economy that they pay for themselves - has never been backed by evidence. He would later concede, or perhaps boast, that he had a "cavalier attitude toward the budget deficit."

"Political effectiveness was the priority," he wrote in 1995, "not the accounting deficiencies of government."

Corporations followed his lead, pouring a steady stream of money into think tanks that created a sort of parallel intellectual universe, a world of "scholars" whose careers are based on toeing an ideological line, rather than on doing research that stands up to scrutiny by their peers.

You might have thought that a strategy of creating doubt about inconvenient research results could work only in soft fields like economics. But it turns out that the strategy works equally well when deployed against the hard sciences.

The most spectacular example is the campaign to discredit research on global warming. Despite an overwhelming scientific consensus, many people have the impression that the issue is still unresolved. This impression reflects the assiduous work of conservative think tanks, which produce and promote skeptical reports that look like peer-reviewed research, but aren't. And behind it all lies lavish financing from the energy industry, especially ExxonMobil.

There are several reasons why fake research is so effective. One is that nonscientists sometimes find it hard to tell the difference between research and advocacy - if it's got numbers and charts in it, doesn't that make it science?

Even when reporters do know the difference, the conventions of he-said-she-said journalism get in the way of conveying that knowledge to readers. I once joked that if President Bush said that the Earth was flat, the headlines of news articles would read, "Opinions Differ on Shape of the Earth." The headlines on many articles about the intelligent design controversy come pretty close.

Finally, the self-policing nature of science - scientific truth is determined by peer review, not public opinion - can be exploited by skilled purveyors of cultural resentment. Do virtually all biologists agree that Darwin was right? Well, that just shows that they're elitists who think they're smarter than the rest of us.

Which brings us, finally, to intelligent design. Some of America's most powerful politicians have a deep hatred for Darwinism. Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, blamed the theory of evolution for the Columbine school shootings. But sheer political power hasn't been enough to get creationism into the school curriculum. The theory of evolution has overwhelming scientific support, and the country isn't ready - yet - to teach religious doctrine in public schools.

But what if creationists do to evolutionary theory what corporate interests did to global warming: create a widespread impression that the scientific consensus has shaky foundations?

Creationists failed when they pretended to be engaged in science, not religious indoctrination: "creation science" was too crude to fool anyone. But intelligent design, which spreads doubt about evolution without being too overtly religious, may succeed where creation science failed.

The important thing to remember is that like supply-side economics or global-warming skepticism, intelligent design doesn't have to attract significant support from actual researchers to be effective. All it has to do is create confusion, to make it seem as if there really is a controversy about the validity of evolutionary theory. That, together with the political muscle of the religious right, may be enough to start a process that ends with banishing Darwin from the classroom.

E-mail: krugman@nytimes.com

I insert a few comments in this recent PR from Dick Matthews' wayward daughter.

R


This is the final speech made by a Green Party MP for this Parliamentary term. It reflects on many of our significant achievements over the last three years - and touches on areas that you have expressed an interest in.

Adjournment Debate - Wednesday 3 August 2005
Sue Bradford - Green Party

Madam Speaker,

As we reach the end of this term of Parliament, the second in which the Green Party is represented here in our own right, we face an absolutely critical election in a volatile environment, locally and internationally.

Overseas, wars in Iraq and elsewhere simmer and burn; millions live in poverty and continue to die of starvation, AIDS & other diseases; the planet keeps getting hotter; and our ability to depend on fossil fuels as our main source of energy is starting to decline rapidly.

Here in Aotearoa New Zealand


we ignore all of that at our peril. The general election, in just over six weeks' time, pales into insignificance when put up against those global concerns, yet, as always, it is in our own place that we can all try to make our primary contribution to improving the state of the world.

I hope our next Government will be one that prefers peace to war, that does not chase slavishly after American neo conservative ambitions, and which continues to increase our own small contributions to helping to deal with desperate poverty and environmental degradation in the world out there.

< Are those last 2 words anything better than annoying?

We have in front of us a stark choice in this election between a Government lead by Don Brash and backed mainly by NZ First, and one lead by Helen Clark and backed primarily by the Green Party.

< If that is so, it is stark indeed for those concerned to defend the family from the highly destructive PC sabotages wrought by the Clark regime. Mss Fitzsimons, Bradford, Locke etc have largely supported the sneaky attacks on marriage. If the attached page from the Green Party's website reflects anything near their current attitude (and I've not heard of any resiling), we must conclude that the Green party has been for years the party of sexual deviance, as well as PC racism & sexism. If they had maintained down to the election the 10% party poll reported before the diabolical Corngate® PR stunt, the next half-dozen on their list would have become MPs - I call them the mod squad as they were nearly all sexual deviants (Meriel Watts etc). Bradford introduced, and dishonestly promoted, a bill to criminalise smacking - see attached - a viciously antisocial move.

These two possibilities present very different outcomes, and I hope people will consider quite deeply which kind of future they prefer.
Unlike some others of the smaller parties, we in the Greens have made it quite clear where we stand. We will not support a National lead

< someone should teach her the word 'led'

Government post election under any circumstances, and I'm sure National feels pretty much the same way about any possibility of an arrangement with us.

However, we will be open to negotiating an agreement with Labour should it be open to that possibility. Indications so far are that it might well be.
We nine Green MPs stand on our record through the last two terms of Parliament, and believe we have a lot to offer should the voters give us - and Labour - the possibility and opportunity to work together in the next Government.

The Green Party brings a kaupapa of environmental nurturing, social justice, non-violence and participatory democracy to the table.

We have no bottom lines.

< This is a startling statement. It recalls Minister of Foreign Affairs Goff saying in Parlt soon after '9/11' "these terrorists have no bottom lines".

Through both the Values Party and the Green Party we have maintained our principles for three decades despite the oft times derision and contempt of our political opponents, and now we believe we have reached the point that we are ready to give Government a go.

Labour needs us too, it is not a one-way street. It needs our commitment to a sustainable future and a fairer society and our many ideas about solutions to environmental and social problems. A Labour - New Zealand First Government would look very different from a Green - Labour one. One only has to look at Winston Peters' approach to immigrants and refugees or outright support for forced work for the dole to see in what direction he'd like to quickly take the country.

While over the last three years of this parliamentary term the Greens have basically been an opposition party giving support to Government when we've seen fit, within this we have brought a voice and a vision to Parliament and public discourse that would not otherwise be heard or visible.
Our achievements in the last couple of years include our private members' bills, among them Sue Kedgley's bill promoting flexible working hours, and now my own bill aims to repeal section 59 of the Crimes Act. Both of these are now before Select Committees.

Our MPs also had a major input into the development of the Land Transport Management Act. We foiled the Government's plans to set up a trans Tasman regulatory authority based in Canberra, helped to stop Project Aqua on the Waitaki, put animal welfare, food safety and waste reduction firmly on the political agenda, and supported civil unions

< see what I mean ?

, Maori Television and the clean slate legislation.

< Tandoori's greatest hit ...

We have played a key role in the two-year campaign to get Ahmed Zaoui out of jail.

< How many NZers think that was good?

We have kept child - and adult - poverty on the political agenda, negotiated a Government commitment to an independent prison inspectorate, instigated an inquiry into cannabis and catalysed party pill legislation.

We have kept pressing for the reduction of the student debt burden and a universal living allowance for students. We have supported Labour on all its reforming legislation around ACC and workers' rights and conditions.

We have consistently opposed the Foreshore and Seabed legislation and got the Government to adopt a proposal for a community-driven national dialogue on the Treaty

< oh? community-driven, not Govt website-driven Claudia Orange propaganda? Pray tell more.

, and taken a leadership role on issues of human rights and peace.

< These have now become PC code-terms.

There is still no commercial release of GE into the environment of this country. A new monitoring programme for GE in food has begun after years of Green lobbying.

Green - Government cooperation on transport issues has assisted in achieving the buyback of the track, action on vehicles emissions screening, and a big boost to Auckland rail and bus services, including bus and cycle lanes.

Our MPs have continued, as we did in our first term here, to take a principled stand on issues, and not trade between them. Nor do we get into personal stoushes here in the House.

We are here to make a serious contribution and that is what we've done, and will continue to do after September 17.

There is a lot of unfinished business. Just in my portfolio areas alone I am aware of legislation like the Residential Tenancies Amendment Bill, which would reform and improve the law for people living in boarding houses, but which has sadly lingered on the order paper for years and still hasn't seen the light of day in this House for reasons unknown to me.

The NZ Sign Language Bill and the Disabled Persons Employment Promotion Repeal Bill also languish on the order paper and I'm sorry that these two bills, both of which are geared to improving the situation for big groups of people within the disabilities sector have not quite made it out of the gate.

As with the three bills I have just named, my own bill to repeal Section 59 and remove the defence of 'reasonable force' which allows parents to seriously beat their children and get away with it, legitimised by the State, will only survive if we end up with a new Parliament which supports continuing with such legislation.

This year the Green Party is campaigning hard for the return of political parties to this Parliament who can work together in a cooperative and consultative way for the common good.

Our kaupapa and our people can help give Labour the heart, soul and spine it needs not only push through some of this legislation which has been left half done, but also to instigate a whole lot of new and positive progress on social, economic and environmental issues.

We would like the opportunity to do more to protect our native plants and animals, and to restrict the sale of high country land and coastal property to NZ citizens and residents.

It is critical that we speed up progress on protecting our marine environment and nurture our coastal fisheries so that anyone can go out and catch a fish for dinner again.

We must prepare for the end of cheap oil by future-proofing New Zealand against the shocks to come, through our energy, transport and housing strategies.

The Green Party is committed to doing everything we can to bring an end to endemic child poverty. The legacy of the last two decades, which still affects over 20% of our country's children, even after five and a half year's of a Labour Government. The minimum wage should be put up to $12 an hour immediately; we would very much like to introduce a Universal Child Benefit like the old family benefit; and our income support system should be enough for people to actually live on without going endlessly into deeper and deeper debt.

We will continue to oppose GE food and GE release into our environment.

We will do everything we can to protect and nurture taonga Maori including the foreshore and seabed, including from inappropriate mining. Our waterways should be safe for swimming and collecting kai for the whanau.

The food our children eat should be fresh and healthy, and so much more.

The Green Party stands here in Parliament to give a voice to those who haven't often had a voice in this place - children, people who've had mental illness or suffer from physical or intellectual disability; those who've been abused or raped. We stand here for prisoners, refugees, migrants, unemployed workers, beneficiaries and also for the non-human lives of our world, which are totally defenceless here unless we give them expression.

The Greens can and will add enormous value to the next Government. We intend to be back here very shortly - bigger, bolder and stronger and ready to continue our work for a future that will work for all of us here in this land, and for all the species that share it with us.

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

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

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

WHAT THEY DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW

RAINBOW YOUTH IS B-A-D FOR YOUTH

“RAINBOW YOUTH IS ABOUT YOUTH SAYING
‘F . . . OFF! I AM WHO I AM!!!’”

(According to Aaron Hockly, ex-Rainbow Youth male chairperson –1)

The official opening of Rainbow Youth House, next to the Methodist Wesley Care Centre in Mount Eden Road, Auckland on 17th September 2001, sees a giant step being taken by this homosexual political lobby group. From being a mere referral group it now moves into the area of being a service provider, of accommodation and support services. Ostensibly it is for those aged 17 years and under who are homosexual, bi-sexual, transgendered, or who “identify” as any of these, and who have been “kicked” out of home, are involved in under-aged prostitution, “at risk” re drink, drugs, suicide, etc. or who are just generally “queer” and homeless.

However, the house is also to serve as the administrative centre and base for Rainbow Youth and its political activism. Therefore it should be remembered that behind this new, apparently benevolent, benign and respectable facade as a caring service provider it is still, nevertheless, ideologically driven, and with a decidedly anti-social, atheistic bias to its seemingly humanitarian activities. Ironically, the house is owned by the Methodist Mission!

What is Rainbow Youth? Originally Auckland Lesbian Gay Youth (ALGY), it began following the Easter 1989 Auckland homosexual conference, and was for high school and older teenagers. The aim was always to become politically active in the schools, and to this end it has been ably assisted by other homosexual political groups and individuals. Back in 1993 they sought to run school workshops on “ ‘Coming Out’ at high school”; “dealing with your parents”; “Christianity and ‘gay’ youth” etc.

Since the mid-1990’s the group has reinvented its image to the more positive and politically neutral-sounding Rainbow Youth. Its politics and its morally corrupting influences remain, however, albeit skilfully disguised behind concerns for “homophobia”, homeless “queer” youth, “unsafe” environments, “safe sex” etc..

Take, for example, the words of Aaron Hockly, a former Rainbow Youth male chairperson : “Rainbow Youth is about youth saying ‘F... off, I am who I am’!”(1) Or the activities and attitudes of ex-male chairperson Steven Oates, one of the personnel who now “educates” on “homophobia” in some schools on behalf of the group. He is known as well as drag queen “Jewellry Sparkle”, and also fronts the Auckland homosexual “Around The Bend” Sunday night programme on 95b FM.

On 21st March 1999 he coolly and unabashedly conducted a 45 minute conversation with ex-male prostitute and sadomasochist “Master Martin”, a bondage and discipline “practitioner”. Oates matter-of-factly allowed disgusting and horrific details of such perversions to be spelt out on air, and this, to a youth-oriented audience. Nor did Oates even demur or question this guest when he pointed out what a good money earner it would be for study fees!

Such people as Hockly and Oates are increasingly gaining access to unsuspecting and trusting youngsters through the N.Z. school system, under the pretext of concern for “queer” youth, “homophobia”, “hate” speech, etc. Then, if current plans are successful to amend New Zealand’s Human Rights Act (as instigated by homosexual M.P. Tim Barnett) a bevy of “human rights” lawyers will be on hand to help school students bring pressure to bear in the form of litigation against schools which allegedly fail to keep them “safe” from “homophobia” etc., and even win massive payouts in some cases, as is occurring overseas.

Indeed there could be vast numbers eligible and tempted to sue, judging by the arbitrary, loose and preposterous definition of “homophobia” (“The creation of a feeling of uncomfortableness” ) being used by Rainbow Youth’s current male chairperson Brent Carey, and accepted without question by sycophantic Radio N.Z. “Whenua” host, and fellow homosexual, Henare Te Ua. (Inter alia, he had unctuously observed to the group’s ex-chairperson Amy Churchouse that the early predecessors of Rainbow Youth “Must have been very brave...to go into schools” etc..)(2)

Rainbow Youth House will provide ideal facilities for such indoctrination of youngsters into the homosexual “culture”, and with funding for it anticipated to be coming from the taxpayers and the corporate sector. COGS and Lottery Youth have obliged up until now, and already the Department of Child Youth and their Families is assisting also. They envisage needing $300,000.00 per year to keep operating. If YOU oppose public funding for this project, protest to your M.P. and others.

Massive trickery lies behind homosexual political activism. Because of almost blanket media manipulation of the facts, vast sectors of the populace accept political advances by the homosexual lobby simply as being good and necessary in a “tolerant” society. Ironically this lobby speaks for very few homosexuals because very very few ever become politically involved. Moreover there are even non-political homosexuals who vehemently oppose and decry such political zealotry – broadcaster Lindsay Perigo, for just one.(3)

“10%” lie. A major part of this trickery is the dishonest repeating of the “10% of the population” figure. Based upon unscientific and now-discredited Kinsey research, even some of the more honest homosexual political activists themselves now acknowledge this. One, prominent writer Edmund White : “I honestly believe ‘gays’ only represent about 3%....so we’re really only a tiny minority.”(4)

“No link between homosexuality and paedophilia” lie. Dictionaries themselves put a lie to this fiction, such as in Collins Concise (198. While “paedophilia” is defined only loosely as “The condition of being sexually attracted to children”, under “paederasty” it is far more precise : “Homosexual relations between men and boys”. However, with even political lobbies pursuing paedophile/paederast “rights”, and acknowledging their homosexual membership, (5) still the lie persists that children are never at risk from homosexuals. Yet, even if they do not prey on youngsters sexually, they can and often do so politically, as shown above.

“All born that way”. A further key piece of homosexual political propaganda, and essential in order to try and justify placing themselves on apar with racial, ethnic, religious and women’s groups, the disabled etc. in the field of human rights, but fraudulent for all that. For example, when it suits, when they seek to recruit to boost their political numbers, they even exclaim “You can choose to be ‘gay’!”(6)

The wider picture. Such insidious political chicanery is better understood when seen as part of the wider gender war. There we see undeniable evidence of cunning and unscrupulous operators in their pursuit of the radical homosexual political agenda. Twenty years ago they were at least open and honest enough to name their “enemy” : capitalism, and the Christian “patriarchy”. In the 1980’s, however, a cunning plan was hatched to camouflage the ideological nature of the struggle.

In their article “The Overhauling of Straight America”, in Guide Magazine, November 1987, Marshall K. Kirk and Erastes Pill solemnly reasoned : “If you can only get (people)to think that (homosexuality) is just another thing, with a shrug of their shoulders, then your battle for legal and social rights is virtually won. And to get to that stage, ‘gays’ as a class must cease to appear mysterious, alien, loathsome and contrary.” The writers explained that a large scale media campaign would be required “to change the image of ‘gays’ in America....It should do six things, which briefly, are :-

1. Talk about ‘gays’ and ‘gayness’ as loudly and as often as possible. 2. Portray ‘gays’ as victims.....of fate (‘born that way’) and of society (suffering from ‘hate’ crimes, ‘homophobia’ etc.). 3. Give protectors a just cause (‘anti-discrimination’ campaigns). 4. Make ‘gays’ look good. 5. Make the ‘victimisers’ look bad. 6. Solicit funds.

By 1990 Kirk, along with Hunter Madsen, had written “After The Ball : How America will conquer its fear and hatred of ‘Gays’ in the 90’s” (Plume). The success of this drastic and deeply deceitful shift in political strategy is now evident for all to see, stretching as it does far beyond the U.S.A.

Cultural battle for hearts and minds. In the general quagmire of confused thinking associated with the homosexual lobby - false information, mixed messages about values, and general political manipulation of youth - it is ironical that this same lobby has obsessively sought to prove a link between “homophobia” and youth suicide, but in vain. The grim reality, surely, could far more likely be the very opposite. Some youngsters could well become suicidal after being so caught up in this social/psychological tug-of-war being so cruelly exerted for their hearts and minds. This fits well with some quotes from two angry, English, heterosexual teenage girls:-

“We read a directive to communists in Florida : ‘Corrupt youth, alienate it from religion, direct its interest to sex, let it become superficial, destroy its idealism, use every means to bring about the collapse of moral virtues, honesty, purity, temperance and trust in the given word.’” Also : “Lenin once said, ‘If we want to destroy a nation we must first destroy its morals. Then that nation will fall into our lap like ripe fruit.’”(7)

1.Express 31st August 2000; 2. Radio N.Z. 13th Sept. 2001; 3. Further details from Credo Society; 4“This Way Out”, Planet 104.6FM Auckland, 10th March 2001; 5. For one, the now defunct Aotearoa Man-Boy Love Assn.(AMBLA) on Radio GALA, Access Radio Auckland, 7th April 1991; 6. As did two lesbians from the National Gay Rights Coalition (N.Z.) on Radio Pacific Auckland, 20th May 1979; also lesbian activist Jenny Rankine : “A lesbian is a woman who CHOOSES to call herself a lesbian!” – G & T Show, Planet 104.6FM, 26th July 2001; 7. Anne-Louise de Verteuil & Nicola Brooks : Teenage Marketplace, (Methuen PB 1975)

Compiled 14th September 2001 by Credo Society Inc. P.O.Box 105-105, AUCKLAND, N.Z.
Phone/Fax 09-480-9995 (all times) e-mail : credo@surfer.co.nz
(Credo, established in 1981, is a service organisation with no political or religious affiliations, aiming for a more informed public on issues of vital concern)

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

SHOULD SPANKING BE PROHIBITED ?
Robert Mann

expanded from NZ Herald 5-11-97

The media on June 2 2004 gave extensive, uncritical coverage to yet another bout of advocacy that a new criminal offence be created - smacking your own child in your own home - by repeal of s.59 of the Crimes Act.

The excuse for this largely one-sided publicity was a claim by a Professor Anne Smith of Otago that she was going - in a week or two - to publish some account of research in many countries, said to show that smacking children causes long-term harm. The Commissioner for Children, Ms Cindy Kiro, appeared to have provided funding for Prof. Smith, and weighed in with the particular opinion that there is no threshold for this harm - any smacking will damage the child, later.

This is only the latest of several attempts to ban spanking.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Those who claim that smacking is immoral routinely allege that alternative punishments exist. They usually fail to specify any; but one sometimes mentioned is euphemistically termed "time out" - more honestly called solitary confinement. The cruel mental effects of this unusual punishment are rarely discussed.

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

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

For those who have come this far with my argument, the question arises: what are the WimminsLib ideologues hoping to achieve by their campaign to ban smacking? This intriguing puzzle invites some speculation.

Firstly, if interpersonal conflict gets confined to verbal methods, physical impact having been banned, women will tend to gain power because women tend to more unrestrained brutality in vocal conflict. Second, if men are not allowed ever to hit women, it will become prohibited for a husband to sober up his wife by a sharp smack when she is going hysterically irrational. This particular action is, in my opinion, very important for social stability - nothing less than a main basis for social order. I have seen a wife pleading for such action when she was going out of control.

Those who join the fray against the campaign to ban smacking should keep in mind that we are up against radical dishonesty in some of its main promotors. Dirty tricks are frequent e.g. defining smacking in the same single category as physical abuse; misusing the term 'violence'; withholding the Smith/Kiro 'report' while using its claimed conclusions for political purposes; etc etc. We are up against radical dishonesty bent on misleading. It will be best if we treat it as such, not as if it were an honest, merely misconceived, campaign.

The following item is to be found on page A15 of today's NZH. I
think you will wholeheartedly agree with Ray and give him credit for
articulating the exasperation you and I and others have with the
illogical and dismissive attitudes of some Maori towards scientific
studies concerning their origins. Intimately connected with this
obstructive attitude is the crippling diversion to similar racists of
a large fraction of what little govt expenditure goes toward control
of GM.

It is embarrassing that the church has given so little leadership
against the new racism, and has indeed fostered much of it, so that
it is now left to a rabid atheist to make the basic criticism ably
presented here.

A minor regret is failure to condemn the term 'Western science'.
Posturing as 'Maadi science' is a main delusion of Meremere Roberts
and other neoRacists under whose twisted spell have fallen many
official agencies. There is only one science, despite attempts to
create Soviet science, Maadi science, etc.

R


Charlatan Tohunga

Raymond D. Bradley
NZ Herald 05.08.05 p.A15

"The old world created by our Polynesian ancestors has passed away,
and a new world is in the process of being fashioned." So wrote Te
Rangi Hiroa of Taranaki, widely known as Sir Peter Buck, in the
epilogue to his book Vikings of the Sunrise.

Athlete, doctor, health administrator, military leader, politician,
museum director and famed anthropologist, Sir Peter was a true
Renaissance man. For him, the new world was that of science.

So it was for many of his peers. The most distinguished include Sir
Apirana Ngata of Ngati Porou, the first Maori to complete a degree at
the then University of New Zealand, first Maori politician to serve
as Deputy Prime Minister, and well-known promoter of Maori culture
and language.

Sir Maui Pomare of Te Ati Awa, the first Maori to gain a medical
degree, went on to use his scientific knowledge to better the life of
his people. He pressed them to sanitise drinking water.

Verbally attacked at a marae for being brainwashed by Pakeha, he
brought out his microscope and demonstrated that the water they were
drinking was full of "bully-headed bugs" that could be killed only by
boiling. Thus did he, a Maori, introduce the new world of science to
free his people from those he called "charlatan tohunga".

These men and other pioneer scientists would have welcomed the
research being done now by National Geographic's Genographic Project,
a project that seeks to establish, through voluntary DNA sampling
around the world, how and when all its people got where they are
today.

And all would have deplored the irrationality and muddled thinking
displayed by Paul Reynolds, Linita Manu'atu, Michael Mansell, and
Mere Kepa in their diatribes against that project, "Stirring up the
gene pool", in the Weekend Herald.

For Sir Peter Buck, their criticisms, if taken seriously, would have
jeopardised further explorations in the field that was his passion:
research into Maori and Polynesian origins and migrations.

One can easily imagine how these learned men of a century ago would
respond to each of our contemporary tohunga.

To Mere Kepa's outburst, "I'm tired and exhausted of learning from
Western scientists that I'm sad, bad and mad", they might respond:
"Western scientists don't say that sort of thing, and neither do we
Maori scientists. However, your own claim is self-indicting. It is
symptomatic of intellectual paranoia. And paranoia is indeed 'sad,
bad, and mad'. "

To Paul Reynolds' claim, "It's race-based research, and therefore can
be manipulated and used for political purposes," they might respond:
"It's research being facilitated by scientists of all races,
including the likes of Maori anthropologist Mike Stevens. It has no
preconceptions about what it will yield.

"In any case scientific discoveries have a value in themselves, no
matter what practical, religious, or political ends they are made to
serve.

"One shouldn't condemn the discovery of fire because fire was used to
burn religious heretics at the stake."

To Manu'atu's claim, "For Tongans, we were created in Tonga," they
would respond: "The way you put it makes you sound like a
head-in-the-sands creationist, with your gods creating Tongans as a
special kind of creature with no genetic or geographic links to any
other members of our species."

To the claim of Australian Aboriginal Michael Mansell, "We didn't
come from anywhere", they would respond along the same lines as to
Manu'atu, with perhaps the additional remark: "You can't be serious!"

What is especially troubling about our 21st-century tohunga is that
they seem unable to recognise the role and value of myth and its
relationship to science.

The Maori graduates of Te Aute College, which produced Sir Peter
Buck, Sir Maui Pomare and others such as Rewiti Kohere, Tutere We
Rapa, and Edward Ellison, cherished Maori myths about their people's
origins for what they were: poetically imaginative stories. But just
plain myths, for all that. They were not in rivalry with science,
hence were not threatened by it.

But their opponents are akin to the fundamentalists of all races and
religions. They insist on taking literally their sacred stories,
especially their origin myths.

Isaac Asimov once described such literalists as "armies of the night"
intent on riding backward, with their myths held high, into the Dark
Ages where dogma triumphs over reason and superstition shrivels the
seeds of scientific inquiry.

Maoridom has no need for them. Education should have no place for
them. Yet many are teaching in our tertiary institutions. Woe
betide those who fall under their spell.

* Raymond D. Bradley is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, Simon
Fraser University, and one-time Professor of Philosophy, University
of Auckland.

MannGram®: do not fw to Wh Winiata ...

R Mann
Aug 2005

Of the tiny official expenditure toward controlling gene-tampering in NZ, too much has been diverted to racist posturings. ERMA's Meremere Roberts, Leatrice Welch, and a half-dozen other beneficiaries have been accomodated in hotels while critics of GM who aren't primarily motivated by racism are ignored in agencies such as ERMA, Min for Envir, etc.

Vague "spiritual" objections to GM have been humoured while the major scientific objections are ignored. Unfalsifiable "spiritual" burblings delay decisions - to this extent I sympathise with applicants who deserve faster decisions - but then will not prove compatible with a British-type legal system or with a proper status for scientific evidence.

I mention the particular troublemaker Prof Wh Winiata (of my alma mater) because he drafted the "Three Tikanga" constitution for the Anglican church of NZ, and he has advocated that the whole plurry country should have a similar racist constitution. The annotated rave below by a more junior racist of VUW will, I hope, help people to face up to the extremist nonsense that has been hogging far too much of the small official expenditure on technology assessment of GM.

R

http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2005/08/01/featherstone-ej/index.html

E-Raced
EPA says race, income shouldn't be environmental-justice factors

By Liza Featherstone
01 Aug 2005

It may surprise some people to hear that the Bush administration's EPA just drafted a strategic plan on environmental justice. Insidiously, and perhaps less surprisingly, advocates say, the move threatens to redefine that term into irrelevance.

The agency's new plan defines environmental justice as "the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies."
That sounds uncontroversial enough on the surface, but the trouble lies in the word regardless. The field of environmental justice is based on the idea that some people -- specifically, racial minorities and the poor -- are more affected by environmental problems than others. It's an idea based on substantial evidence, which has been accumulating for decades. For example, in the early 1980s, a landmark U.S. General Accounting Office study found that three out of four landfills in the Southeast were located in communities of color. A 1992 National Law Journal study found that Superfund offenders paid 54 percent lower fines in communities of color than in white communities. And recent studies have found that Latinos and blacks are much more likely to develop -- and die of -- diseases related to pollution, like asthma.

As Diane Takvorian, executive director of the Environmental Health Coalition, a 25-year-old group focusing on border communities in San Diego and Tijuana, explains, "We have always worked in low-income communities of color, because that's where the pollution is the worst." These areas are often ignored by local and state environmental authorities, she says, and activists in her group "have had to take enforcers by the hand into their communities" because the officials were afraid to go into "bad" neighborhoods.

In 1994, after years of pressure from the environmental-justice movement, then-President Clinton issued an executive order decreeing that all relevant federal agencies must work to identify and address "disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects of its programs, policies, and activities on minority populations and low-income populations in the United States." The EPA's new draft plan, by contrast, removes race and income from special consideration.

In the years since Clinton's executive order, says Takvorian, things have improved, "especially at the regional level. The EPA has had a greater sensitivity, and taken approaches more appropriate to our communities." She is not optimistic about the implications of the new plan: "We assume that sensitivity, and the resources now applied to environmental justice, will disappear."

Robert Bullard of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University has called the EPA's draft "a giant step backwards." Other advocates agree. "We think this is the wrong direction for the EPA to go," says Will Rostov, staff attorney for Communities for a Better Environment, a California-based environmental-justice group. "Essentially what they're trying to do is not have an environmental-justice program." Eliminating considerations of race and income, he says, "makes the program meaningless."

This reaction goes beyond the world of environmental-justice activists. Last week, more than 70 legislators, including Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), and Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.), signed a letter saying that the EPA's draft plan "fails to address the real environmental-justice problems facing our nation's most polluted communities" and lambasting the dismissal of race as "a significant departure from existing environmental-justice policies." In their letter, the legislators also say the draft violates Clinton's 1994 executive order.

EPA spokesperson Stacie Keller denies that. She emailed Grist a statement promising that the agency "has a continuing commitment to environmental justice and the full implementation of the executive order." Asked why consideration of race appeared to have been excised from the agency's definition of environmental justice, Keller said she would check with the program office, but did not respond before deadline.

In addition to being unhappy with the plan itself, environmental-justice activists are troubled by the process surrounding it. The EPA says it welcomes outside comments on the draft, but Rostov criticizes the agency for permitting a "very short time frame" for such feedback. "One of the principles of environmental justice is getting the public to participate," he says, "and they allowed less than 30 days to have people comment, in the summer." Although the original public-input period ended July 16, EPA announced on July 28 that it would hear comments until August 15. The agency expects to issue a final plan by September 2006.

It's not as if there is any doubt that race and income affect a person's likelihood of living in a polluted neighborhood, or suffering from the effects of inadequate environmental policies, observers say. "There is a disparate impact," says Takvorian. "There are 200-plus studies that demonstrate that. So the question isn't, 'Is this true?' We know it's true. The question is, 'What are we going to do about it?'"

Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.), one of the legislators who signed the letter criticizing the EPA draft, puts it even more bluntly. "It isn't that EPA doesn't know what problems exist," he said. "It's their willingness to do anything about it. Shame on them."

- - - - - - - - - -

Liza Featherstone is a freelance journalist who writes for Salon, Newsday, and many other publications. A contributing editor at The Nation, she is also the author of Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers' Rights at Wal-Mart.

========

I have interspersed some critical comments, and am posting this annotated version to the list whence it reached me.

Briefly, I think this is an example of very confused, obnoxious neoracism.
Connections to Vandi may be inferred.

__________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
http://www.ainfos.ca/
__________

Genetic Modification - Aotearoa - Royal Commission from one
Maori perspective

(see the end for rough translations of some of the indigenous terms
used)

"It's our culture, its our land, its our food, its our children, its our
tipuna" Jessica Hutchings advised the Royal Commission on Genetic
Modification (GM) at a recent hui held in Wellington. A lecturer in the
Science Faculty at Victoria University and also a member of Nga Wahine
Tiaki o Te Ao, Hutchings gave evidence on behalf of Maori women
guardians of the World.

Between juggling her life as a lecturer, a solo mum and an advocator of
environmental justice, Hutchings gave us time to interview her. We
arrived at her home, armed with pen, paper and koha - her piece of
paradise, surrounded by the industrial choke of urban Wellington.

True to a busy schedule, her phone rang constantly while we were there.
Yet, she gave us time.

Q. What are some of your concerns regarding Genetic Modification (GM)?

I have several. GM is one trait of globalisation. The problem is
people are segmenting it into one issue.

>>RM Is this really THE problem? Jessica fails to support this claim.

However, globally it can be
traced as a profiteering tool for multinationals to assist in their
desire to corner the global food market. Presently there are five
multinationals that control the majority of the world's food source. It
is these companies, not governments of countries,

>>RM In reality, BOTH are typically doing it. The NZ govt Dairy Board has committed NZ$150M for gene-tampering in the coming half-decade.

which are accelerating
the experimentation and production of GM foods, food sources (seeds
etc.) and transgenic animals - usually deliberately disguised to gain
uninformed public opinion - but only where public opinion is required.

People seem to think it is a recent issue. Yet this debate has been
happening in Aotearoa for around three decades. Within Government the
discussions on GM in New Zealand have been around since at least the
1970's. Within Maoridom, in the late 1980's a hui was held in Kawhia
recommending all experimentation be halted to allow for discussions.

Men from within a western reductionist paradigm have led the GM debate.

>>RM What a pile of shit. Vandi and Ho have had vastly more attention than genuine reliable experts such as Prof Jonathan King of MIT, or Peter Wills, or myself. Ruth Hubbard has (I'm happy to say, because she is a sensible scientist and not primarily a racist or sexist like Jessica) had some leadership role; and the estimable Dorothy Nelkin . . . but Jessica may not have heard of these women; unless she can read English better than she can utter it, she probably won't have.

Resulting in the exclusion of indigenous peoples knowledge. More
importantly, this has excluded indigenous women globally.

>>RM again, a pile of shit. In NZ, the insolent racist sexist female Meremere has been generously funded by the ERMA to maintain a racist advisory cttee for them, featuring also the incoherent Ms Leatrice Welsh. Male scientists such as myself, Prof R B Elliott, Dr Wills, etc, have been ignored. And what about the ultraMaadi Dr on the Royal Commission? She is dismissed as 'not representing Maadi', in much the same way as Margaret Thatcher was claimed not to count as a female by the PC ravers. They utter doubletalk.

Also, Maori have not been given the opportunity to properly discuss this
issue within their respective Iwi and hapu.

>>RM The Royal Commission gave enormously disproportionate time (and undisclosed money) to such gatherings. Whose fault is it if Maoris didn't show up at those gatherings? Moaning 'we weren't consulted' after refusing to take part in the relevant meetings is a frequent Maadi racket which should not fool anyone.

Consequently some that
accept money from multinationals to purport false messages, spread
mistruths. This deliberate misleading results in miseducation.

GM, a trait of globalisation, its part of the whole process to
extinguish other peoples whakaaro, enforcing their own.
Indigenous people globally are leading the fight against the
globalisation of GM.

>>RM This racist bragging is just too far out. Vandi & Ho issue their error-riddled bullying raves, and insult anyone who tries (even in private) to point out where they're wrong. To the extent that they are leading the fight, it is ill served.

>>RM Notice too how this bold claim contradicts the immediately-above wallowing in the victim role "excluded indigenous women globally". It is a sign of fanaticism that a person can rave on in self-contradicting slogans like these. And it is a sign of a confused, demoralised society that such a raver can go largely uncriticised and can get an academic job.

Maori are failing to link the debate on GM as a
characteristic of globalisation. GM stems from a science that is
derived from a western reductionist paradigm, this form of knowing
excludes and tramples upon a Maori worldview.

Monsanto (voted 2nd worst pro-GM manufacturer in Australia)

>>RM oh really? who beat them out for the title?

has got
patents on hundreds of organisms - novel inventions based on the cultural
and intellectual property of indigenous people. Monsanto essentially
steals traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples and patents it within
the global arena - requiring Indigenous people to pay for the use
through loss of livelihood, markets and practices. Monsanto uses the
corporate philosophy of theft and patent - biopiracy. Profits from
these are sent overseas, to offshore multinational investors.

>>RM This is a familiar Vandi line, little related to reality.

Some Maori have been dismal at rejecting globalisation. It seems to be
too difficult for some. Those that have been given
tokenistic standing are being used to further fuel the globalisation
train. If the recent issues regarding GM happened in 1970- and 1980,
this would had been at the top of
the pile. That was the height of Maori awareness and protest - what has
happened to our critical analysis of these events?

Q. I understand the EU has banned all GM food/products from America. What
is that all about?

America is finding it increasingly harder to export GM foods. Greece
has had a total freeze since April 1999. Simply, it's no longer
acceptable. People do not want GM foods.

Parts of the European Union have emphatically rejected GM food from
America. Consequently America has re-routed the GM foods to third
world, under developed countries - disguised as Food Aid. GM Soymilk
infant formula is being purposively sent to Africa. This has caused
the decline in breastfeeding. Mothers, are instead, feeding their
children GM soya formula. An African doctor, who recently visited
Aotearoa advised Africans do not want the GM foods disguised as food
aid. Neither do they want the seeds produced through GM
experimentation. They are calling for resources to reclaim their
traditional methods of land sustenance - repairing the soil, growing
planting traditional crops.

It's like when they try to qualify their argument by asking 'why does
your mauri object to transgenic cows?' is pathetic. They are imposing a
western worldview to make us explain why we disagree with GM.
Fundamentally, they do not understand mauri, its context, its concept.
Their imposition in trying to justify my mauri within a western paradigm is derogatory, inappropriate
and incorrect.

>>RM This is a very clear example of the unfalsifiable raving which has got Meremere and her racist ilk so much money & attention - all to set up a PC charade of objections to GM *on very weak grounds that are bound to fail*. The concepts mentioned are not generally known with any clarity. They are, in social psychology, akin to 'M.E.' and other unfalsifiable pseudo-medical postures. In each case the assertions, made while wallowing in the victim role, are not open to ordinary reasoning.

>>RM Note too the internal illogic of slogans such as "Their imposition in trying to justify my mauri".

>>RM They were not actually trying to justify her mauri, but she has so little command of English that she can't even say what she wants and we can therefore only very dimly make out what she may be driving at. That this is a lecturer in my alma mater embarrasses me. But of course that's where affirmative action has got us.

Q. What has been the role of Maori in this debate?

There has been no equitable participation of Maori involvement in this
debate. Maori have been speaking a long time - but people are not
making the link between the korero. Deliberately segregating the korero
instead of understanding the holistic framework in which it has been
undertaken. This is a trait of colonisation. That is, to separate and
segmentate. You cannot separate out mauri, wairua, tapu - they are all
part of each other.

>>RM Again I point to the extensive, expensive consultations by the racist ERMA cttee of Leatrice & Meremere (mentioned later by Jessica), and the numerous special Maori gatherings funded by the Royal Commission. It is ludicrous for this racist harpie to carp on as if neglected when in fact racism has been so lavishly favoured.

However, there also has been a lack of debate within ourselves. Some
Maori men appear to have deliberately segregated the korero excluding
issues from each other. Maori men purport this segmentation by
enforcing notions of tapu, taboo and called cultural protocol. We need
to speak our views, have open debate. Hui without deliberate cultural
taboos being used to inhibit korero.

>>RM - except, of course, Jessica's particular 'cultural' prejudices, which she implies to carry mysterious racial authority.

It seems that Maori society works within a dualist framework. An
example being, if you speak te reo or you don't speak te reo, urban or
rural, anti globalisation or pro globalisation determines whether you
are Maori. This binary opposition is at the detriment of Maori women.

>>RM well, well - hadn't anyone noticed any such 'dualism' in Jessica's own raving above?!

It detaches Maori women's interaction with the environment. It has been
disappointing that some Maori men purport the binary opposition of
western reductionist science, promoting the false statement that we need
GM.

>>RM GM is not based on science but on a vulgar dishonest caricature of technology.

Last year the Brazilian Government announced that by 2020, the Amazon
will have 80% of its forest destroyed. It is irreversible damage.

>>RM what has that to do with the topic?

Every day, in karakia and on the paepae, we pay homage to Papatuanuku
yet this is a contradiction in terms of what we support and how we
behave. They miss the point. Essentially our culture has been removed
from our kaitiakitanga of Papatuanuku through colonisation and we must
reclaim it.

>>RM what a pathetic pseudo-religious rave. The deity mentioned is a dead letter and no good can come of pretending to revive her. Most Maori tribes made enormous progress, probably unrivalled in the whole world, by embracing Christianity and springboarding themselves - with the crucial help of many well-disposed Brits, and then of the native-born such as myself - out of a Stone Age culture dominated by war, slavery, and cannibalism. Within 150y they had learned to cope with modern life, and volunteered famously to resist the fascist Axis. They were loyal New Zealanders. Racist hatemongers like Jessica are traitors to what was the finest modern nation.

Others see Maori as an emancipated culture. Yet within the GM debate
some Maori supporting this technology are supporting the recolonisation
of other indigenous peoples through advocating GM by life science
companies who are the thieves of intellectual and culture property of
other indigenous peoples. We need to stop and listen to the korero and
not allow others to determine a timeframe for the debate.

>>RM The NZ govt has vaguely defined a timescale; it will not be useful just to sit back chanting 'we were not consulted', an obvious lie.

I believe that this science is reluctant to give credibility to
indigenous women participation. The colonisation of Maori mythology.
Hine Nui te Po is seen as a scorned woman. We need to decolonise the
mythology.

>>RM The mythology, as outlined above, was enthusiastically replaced with Christianity under the leadership of nearly all the important chiefs right from the time of Cook. Nobody bothered to colonise Hinenui; why would one want to? Indeed, what does the phrase 'colonise Hinenui' mean at all?

Q. So who are the Maori in this debate?

Nga Kaihautu Tikanga Taiao (is an advisory committee appointed by the
Environmental Risk Management Authority (ERMA) under clause 42 of the
first schedule to the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (HSNO) Act)
is seen as the large voice in public arena on Maori and GM issues.
However it's powers is recommendation only. It has no binding
jurisdiction.

>>RM and how, under the rule of law embraced by Ngata, Buck, Reeves, etc etc, could it? It was not contemplated by our Parliament when it created the empowering statute for the ERMA.

Recommendations on applications are only sought when ERMA
rules that it is needed. (re: AgResearch of Ruakura Cows. Nga Kaihautu
had a split decision - equal for and equal against).

There is a push for more Maori scientists. The government has set up
scholarship funding specifically targeted to Maori for science learning.

Ngai Tahu has set up a research arm. The challenge is, what type of
scientists do they want to produce. Western science is based on
reductionism - in which scientists leading the pro GM research are
taught and creating from.

>>RM She seems unaware that the main critics of GM - including Vandi & Ho - are trying to criticise GM as junk science (which it sure is). The fact that those two are, like our own Ms Meremere, not very good scientists is of secondary importance (fingers crossed). The reason why so many people trained in science are doing GM is that they have abandoned good science for a pile of crap. It is utterly incorrect to concede that GM is based in science and that to oppose it one has to abandon science.

We need to create our own scientists from
within a Matauranga Maori paradigm. Therefore we will be able to arrive
at our own analysis from a Maori worldview. Not a western reductionist
paradigm. That is, Maori have our own different realities, our own
cultural taboos.

>>RM This type of 'different realities' talk occurs blatantly in most or all recent PC ideological posturings. It is crap - and dangerous crap at that. See Sokal & Bricmont's book exposing postmodernism!

GM has a huge impact on the environment - impacts include that of
discriminating others forms of knowing such as holistic science, organic
agriculture, food aid, development issues - these are all indigenous
issues.

>>RM There is nothing particularly 'indigenous' about any of those important issues.

The patriarchal framework also stems from colonisation.

>>RM Utter bullshit. Nothing could be more patriarchal than the classical Maori culture outlined above. Women got a far better run when Christianity was adopted.

I add of course that patriarchy has in fact been universal (see S Goldberg 'Why Men Rule').

Where are the
Maori men in this debate?
Most Maori submissions to the Royal Commission appear to come from Maori
men. This furthers the sexist ideology. This makes it harder for Maori
women with learnings to have a say in the debate.

>>RM This is just paranoid raving. No men have had any means of obstructing Maori women from making submissions to the RC. To the extent that Maori men have engaged with the RC, what is wrong with that? It has not been at the expense of Maori women, whose access has certainly been better than that of non-Maori citizens such as myself who have been marginalised as the RC has been very reluctant to hear from informed critics of GM. Submissions critical of GM, even if only a few pages, have been kept off the RCGM website. This has been the real victimisation in the RC procedures - not any racism.

Q. So, why do Maori men let this happen?

Maori men are unwilling to relinquish power - threat to personal power.
This is a result of colonisation (pedagogy of the oppressed).

>>RM It has precious little to do with colonisation. Men have always occupied the main positions in Maori society - ESPECIALLY in the classical culture *before* colonisation.

The colonisation of the Tino Rangatiratanga movement. Crown establishes
positions that perpetuate mana munching - it doesn't create experts, it
provides positions of manipulation by the government. They use brown
faces to show support in western science. The colony deciding where
Maori should be within science.

>>RM Any meaning here?

Q. What has been the role of wahine in this debate?

Women, we have a particular role in the GM debate. Our connection with
the whenua (hapu, whanau). It tenents deeply connected to the land and
environment.

>>RM I hope you can get some meaning from that last sentence.

We have children. It's the same properties globally. We
are kaitiaki and our role is guided through that responsibility, we must
fight to retain this role.

>>RM Doubletalk again. What she wants is new forms of power, based on racism and sexism.
'Retain' in this context takes its place alongside 'reforms' (Rogernomics, Ruthanasia, Thatcherism), 'reclaim' (fill in, of estuaries or wetlands), 'feminism', etc, amongst major Lies In The Language that Goebbels would have loved.

Globally we are participating in the debate. We are asking the hard
questions,

>>RM oh yes? and where can we see them?

looking for answers to problems we know will impact our
children. Indigenous women have been leading the calls against
biodiversity

>>RM here again we see the signs of heated raving - obviously saying the opposite of what is meant. But lately 'enraged' has been a prime term of endearment at sexist gatherings; RAGE was the name of the antiGE group dominated by Susan Kitschley MP (until it was wrested from her by another PowerHarpie); these PC ideologues actually avoid clear intelligible language. They prefer unintelligible ravings.

and the erosion of their respective cultures. Yet, we are
not visible in the debate.

Q. Why is that?

It has been set up to exclude women.

>>RM What about the two women on the RCGM (with two men)? Why is that not a reasonable representation? What does this harpie want - all Maadi women?

Male scientists have led the
debate, research and experimentation of GM in New Zealand.

>>RM Bullshit. Jean Fleming, member of the RCGM, is an actual gene-tamperer. The extravagantly inaccurate Paula Jameson of Massey U, a professor (God help us), is a member of the "Independent" Biotek Advisory Ccl, as is Dr Jan Wright. Joanna Putterill is a main gene-jockey (of plants) in the U of Ak. Karen Cronin manages the PR for ERMA. Ms Meremere has far more money & power than I have. It is seriously false & misleading to claim that women scientists have been a minor influence on GM in NZ.

scientist purport a learning from within a colonial paradigm. This
deliberately excludes indigenous people's worldviews. It also
deliberately excludes indigenous women worldviews. Consequently the
framework is fundamentally flawed.

Women are the kaitiaki.

>>RM It is worth mentioning that this line of talk got going in the 1980s with the deluded lesbians using Ngati Te Ata (Nganeko Minhinnick) as a front for ludicrous claims to the Manukau Harbour etc.

To set oneself up as the 'guardian' of others, trying to rip off pubic property, is an obnoxious way to grab power. Ask the Austrians, Czechs, . . . how they reacted to a previous protection racket in the mid-20th c. With guardians like Jessica, who needs enemies?

We have been marginalised in the debate. Women
have been asking questions which others have not been asking. Questions
include : who owns the work completed through GM? Who gets the profits?

>>RM More ludicrous posturing. These questions are fairly well known, if not well answered, and have certainly been asked around the world by good men. Why misrepresent the truth on this?

The work being undertaken through GM is erosive, irreversible and it
effects those who are of the lowest socio-economic decile.

Q. But what about those that use GM medicines for cures?

Scientist claim GM is contributing to the advancement of human kind.
Majority of the evidence available on GM does not support this claim.
We have choices. The present western orthodox medicine excludes
homeopathy, rongoa and holistic medicine. At least with these we know
implications

>>RM that's a good one

- GM medicines, the implications are not known. It's about
choices, instead of imposing something GM without knowing the potential
damage, which is irreversible.

It appears New Zealand is heading the race to undertake GM
experimentation. The Ruakura Cows, injected with genetically engineered
synthetic human DNA, this research could not be carried out in Europe.
Whereas New Zealand approved the experimental research.

AgResearch advising that MS sufferers will suffer from the high court
decision to halt all experiments regarding the Ruakura cows. Cures for
MS are currently being developed over seas. This research was rejected
overseas. The only reason it is here, is because New Zealand said yes.

Q. In 2000, you participated in a forum of scientific understanding at
Schumaster College in the UK. What was that like?

The learning's advised western science needed to move away from the
controlling paradigm it exists within into a holistic form of
understanding and participation. For example, presently science
undertakes experimentation on organisms by first isolating the exact
area of the organism it will use. it is argued the segmentation cannot
undertake value free experimentation because the organism is a whole,
therefore it operates as a whole. You cannot isolate one area of an
organism and successfully analyse experimentation undertaken because the
organism is only partly being monitored. You need the whole organism to
document total change. Without which, it renders the research invalid.
Everything is interconnected. To isolate one area, breaks the
connection. Therefore any analysis would not be truly accurate.

Personally, I believe our science is inextricably linked to
spirituality. It pulses everywhere, but we don't see it. We need to
reclaim our spirituality. Religion is too restricting. Only 9% of New
Zealanders attend conventional church. We need to challenge our
assumptions, which are usually underpinned by canons of western
framework. We need to look outside and move in the bush and remember
who we are and where we are from - Papatuanuku is a divine source.

>>RM One does not have to be a Christian to see real dangers in this line of babble.

Mind you we need to take responsibility ourselves. We can't wait for
the government to accept responsibility. They won't fix it. So we need
to do something about it.

Q. But, isn't it healthy to have debate? It provides for equitable
discussion.

People have the right to say there is benefits - as an individual.
Maori men purport a pro-GM stance because they have accepted money. It
is morally wrong to accept money, then purport a message as being Maori
when it is the message and intent of the individual making the pro-GM
statement.

>>RM At last something intelligible, and potentially interesting.
Why not name the offenders right here?

Q. The Royal Commission is due to release their findings on 27th July. How
do you think they will fare?

From a Maori perspective, the findings will be null and void because it
is a breach of Te Tiriti O Waitangi. It was undertaken without full
consultation with Maori; also it is in direct breach of article 2 of the
Treaty of Waitangi.

>>RM babbling nonsense

I find it infuriating that Maori concerns are being pigeon holed into
spiritual concerns, therefore having no western scientific validity.

>>RM not far above, Jessica was trying to do just this herself.

Western science

>>RM Is there some other kind?

was created from the crash of the dark ages. The period
of enlightenment challenged assumptions. A quantum leap in knowledge.
That's why the commission will fail to understand the Maori worldview -
because it is seen as spiritual as opposed to fundamental.

>>RM Anyone following by this stage?

Q. In the late 1980's a hui was organised to primarily discuss the
patenting of indigenous flora and fauna by multinationals. This was
held in Kawhia. It was at this hui, the call to halt genetic
modification experimentation was sought. How do you think the GM issue
falls within the Waitangi 262 claim?

>>RM Foreigners may not know that this is a decade-old claim to the Waitangi Tribunal (a govt advisory body) for rights, if not patents, on all indigenous flora & fauna. This is racism writ large - but asserted by Maadi, and therefore OK to PC whites.

The GM decision in Aoteaora should be based on the wai 262 findings.
Without doing so makes a farce of the Waitangi Tribunal treaty process.
It is a tragedy the commissioners did not attend submissions made by the
Wai 262 Maori claimants - allowing themselves to learn from stories,
which tell what they feel. Instead they asked for a half-hour brief
from the tribunal, advising what Maori thought.

Ma te whakama e patu (Let Shame Be Extracted)

Maori and the Royal Commission
NZ has an interesting legal system and I use the term interesting
loosely because it's intriguing that a system that purports to serve
justice has a known history of injustice among Maori. This past history
leads Maori to expect that a fair and just representation of Maori
opinion within a non-Maori system is ludicrous which was affirmed in the
Royal Commission hearings on GM.

This for Maori is a reality, as clinical as many of the western
trained scientists who appeared before the Royal Commission. The Royal
Commission itself descends from the same genealogy as NZ's legal system
and it identified its' affinity by refusing Maori legal practices to
occur in its proceedings (namely the hearing of evidence upon marae)

>>RM This is a lie. Many marae gatherings from one end of the country to the other were arranged for the RCGM. (What was the _per virtual capita_ funding paid from the public purse for these?)

claiming equality was to be provided to all parties which it was able to
grant from its downtown Wellington location. So Maori scepticism of the
Royal Commission hearings were justified as our own traditional
governing practices were rejected.

Te Ao Maori (The Maori World View)
All peoples had governing systems reflecting the cultural, spiritual
and physical needs of those communities. This is supported by the fact
that without these systems that society would cease to exist.

>>RM which they were in the process of doing when Cook got here.
Maori lived here only a millennium, and did not get very far in nutrition, health, safety, etc.

>>RM They then adapted British customs to better advantage (as remarked above) than any other nonliterate people. In all the era of European colonisation, Maoris got the best deal. Not a very good basis for endless moaning today, one might think; one would be wrong, so aimless is New Zealand now.

Prior to
colonisation Maori were no different. Maori governance or legal systems
were robust and proven to represent the needs of our society (refer to
He Whaipainga Hou: Jackson M: 1986). These systems included the
practice of rigorous open debate often conducted upon the marae known as
kanohi ki te kanohi literally face to face or open debate.

Kanohi ki te kanohi is the basic litmus test of evidence in te ao
Maori. Evidence is presented and scrutinised by the collective ensuring
honesty and transparency.

>>RM This should not go unchallenged. The lawcourt system was generally embraced rapidly, e.g. by Te Kooti, and today Maoris use the legal system to strip hundreds of millions of dollars from the public assets. But still this harpie acts exploited.

This in turn was overseen by the practice of
whakama (shame). Honesty was duly maintained for fear of attracting
whakama upon oneself or ones family. These age old practices were
usurped when the Royal Commission was established and in turn denied
Maori the right to present evidence on marae allowing the hearings to be
subjected to dubious proof.

The Royal Commission and Maori
Sadly in environments far removed from our own the appearance of
untested Maori evidence increases of which was seen when Maori
consultants were handsomely rewarded for pro GM evidence. It is
necessary to say the majority of this evidence is openly available to
those with the knowledge of its whereabouts and those with internet
access. Conversely for the majority of Maori awareness and internet
access act as barriers. These barriers in turn provide protection to
unaccountable consultants who provide information (however dubious) to
satisfy their contractual obligations while denigrating cultural
responsibilities.

Another issue of concern regarding Maori submissions to the Royal
Commission was the absence of the wahine Maori voice. Out of
approximately 12 submissions presented by Maori only one submission, Nga
Wahine Tiaki o Te Ao had a specific wahine Maori perspective. Granted
women's opinions were canvassed (and abused) by various submissions but
they were not presented nor subjected to debate by women, which makes a
mockery of the belief Ko te wahine te kaitiaki o te whare tangata (women
are the guardians of the house of mankind). One would surmise that as
guardians of life wahine Maori would be granted the time and space to
participate fully in issues which allegedly enhance quality of life and
mirror our role as guardians of life.

Ki te Ao Marama (Into the world of light)
Examples of evidence that went before the Royal Commission that were not
presented before Maori was The Separation of Earth & Sky
Theory (Royal Commission on GM: Witness Brief: NZ Life Sciences Network
(Inc): Paora Ammunson & Tamati Cairns). In this evidence
it is claimed that the separation of Rangi and Papa was " a lesson about
the need for Tane and his descendants to sometimes take control of the
world around them for the betterment of the people." (sc13: L3)
and goes on to say "In a sense it is also the first significant genetic
modification" (sc14: L1)

In response to these claims by Ammunson & Cairns, Angeline Greensill of
Nga Wahine Tiaki o Te Ao states
"That is an inappropriate explanation because what you are seeing is
like all pregnancies, the off spring must come out sometime. Women are
a whare tangata I think it is appropriate that women look at this from
their angle ... If anything it was probably the first separation or
divorce caused by the children of Ranginui and Papatuanku." (Royal
Commission on GM: Transcript Nga Wahine Tiaki o Te Ao oral evidence, A
Greensill: 04177 L12 - 19)
Greensill also refutes the Ammunson & Cairns claim that Tane and his
descendants needed to take control of the world around them with the
statement in relation to mankind,
"We were the last born, we were the youngest. By what right do we have
to tell our parents what to do" (Nga Wahine Tiaki o Te Ao, 04178 L 2)

Ma te whakama (Let shame be extracted)
The Ammunson & Cairns Separation theory and similar evidence went
untested. Its developers did not test its validity according to tikanga
Maori at the National Hui on GM, Turangawaewae Marae, April 01. If such
evidence had been presented to the National Maori Hui it may have been
granted a position within the debate (it was rejected by the Hui)
however failure to do so supports the criticisms expressed by Greensill
and others. After 2 days of debate the Hui passed 16 various
resolutions soundly rejecting GM including:

- That a moratorium be placed upon all activities related to GM
and GMO's immediately.
- That we outlaw the patenting of any lifeforms.
- That the crown stop free trade negotiations and stop
biotechnology multi-nationals from entering Aotearoa to conduct GM
experiments.

Kei hea tatou e ahu ana? (Where to now)
Aside from the atrocities of GM and the harm caused by the Royal Commission process, the denigration of traditional knowledge for
monetary compensation is a further harm that requires immediate
attention. Restorative processes such as exposure and discussion must
be enacted to negate the harm caused by the creation of inaccurate
knowledge. This will be possible at a National Maori Hui on GM, 7 - 9
Sept, Taiporohenui Marae, Hawera.

>>RM Why should that gathering, presumably organised by political allies of Jessica, be more authoritative than the RCGM's very extensive Maori gatherings???

Will those Maori who were paid to
give evidence on behalf of pro GM supporters appear before the people
kanohi ki te kanohi? Time will tell.

For National Maori Hui Resolutions on GM:
http://aotearoa.wellington.net.nz/he/gm.html

For all GM submissions, witness briefs and oral evidence transcripts:
www.gmcommission.govt.co.nz

Indigenous vocabulary used
(Please note: some Maori concepts and vocabulary are very difficult to
explain in a colonial language, for some concepts the colonial language
is inadequte in explaining the relevant concept so these translations
are a rough guide only)

Maori : Indigenous people of Aotearoa / New Zealand
Nga Wahine Tiaki o Te Ao : Maori women guardians of the World.

whakaaro : thoughts, opinions
Papatuanuku : Earth mother an ancestor of all people, according to Maori
belief
korero: talk, discussion
mauri: lifeforce
wahine: women
whare tangata: the house of people, the womb
wairua: spirit
tapu: sacred, taboo

karakia: prayers, blessings

whenua: land, placenta
hapu: subtribe, to become preganant
iwi: tribe, bones
Ngai Tahu: a southern tribe
kaitiaki : guardian
kaitiakitanga: guardianship
marae: traditional gathering places for Maori
Rangi : Skyfather an ancestor of all people according to Maori belief.
Tiriti o Waitangi : Treaty of Waitangi see
http://aotearoa.wellington.net.nz/back/quick.htm for more info
Tino Rangatiratanga : see
http://aotearoa.wellington.net.nz/back/intro.htm

**
** The A-Infos News Service ****

It is embarrassing to see racist, sexist muck promulgated from my country. I hope foreigners will get some glimpse from my comments of why it commands little respect from decent New Zealanders.

THE CALAMITY HOWLER
August 4, 2005 Issue #64
EDITOR\PUBLISHER; A.V. Krebs
E-MAIL: avkrebs@earthlink.net

LIVING WITH THE BOMB
RICHARD RHODES
National Geographic
August, 2005

Sixty years ago, on a stormy night in 1945, the charismatic American Physicist Robert Oppenheimer mounted the stage of a movie theater in the secret city of Los Alamos, New Mexico. Lean and intense, he was there to address hundreds of scientists --- the men and women who built the first atomic bombs under his direction.

Exploded over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, those bombs had just ended the most destructive war in human history --- and changed the face of war forever.

The world would soon learn what they already knew, Oppenheimer warned: Nuclear weapons were surprisingly cheap and easy to make, once you understood how. Soon, he said, other countries would be making them, too.

Their power of destruction --- "already incomparably greater than that of any other weapon" --- will grow, he declared. Despite these unsettling predictions, Oppenheimer found positive benefit in the breakthrough, calling nuclear weapons "not only a great peril, but a great hope."

What was Oppenheimer thinking ? The peril was obvious: Hiroshima and Nagasaki lay in ruins, with tens of thousands killed and thousands more seriously injured. What "great hope" nuclear weapons might offer was hard to imagine, even in victory. Sixty years later it still is.

Today eight countries brandish known nuclear arsenals, while approximately 20 others possess the technology and materials to go nuclear in a year or so if they choose. And nations are only part of the story.

The breakup of the Soviet Union put a vast array of Nuclear weapons and materials at risk of theft or clandestine sale to non-state actors, either terrorist groups or criminal networks. Expertise too is in demand.

The so-called father of the Pakistani bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan, is reported to have passed nuclear secrets, weapons production technology and bomb designs to Libya, North Korea and Iran; some fear his network may have passed secrets to others as well.

Since the mid-1990's Osama bin Laden and his followers have dreamed of acquiring nuclear devices to use in devastating attacks on the United States. No one knows whether terrorists are closing in on a radiological dirty bomb or even a nuclear weapon . . . . .

"Living With the Bomb" continues along with a number of companion features in the August, 2005 issue of National Geographic.

SHOCKWAVE: COUNTDOWN TO HIROSHIMA
DENNIS DRABELLE
Washington Post
July 31, 2005;

Those who revere John Hersey's Hiroshima as a classic piece of reporting about an act unprecedented in human history --- the instantaneous annihilation of tens of thousands of civilians by human agency-- may approach a new book on the subject with lowered expectations. But in Shockwave: Countdown to Hiroshima (HarperCollins, $26.95), Stephen Walker has painted on a larger canvas, beginning this tale of both ghastly destruction and a gamble to end a protracted war by visiting the site in the New Mexico desert where the atomic bomb was first tested.

From then on, he switches back and forth from the United States to the doomed Japanese city, from the Imperial Palace in Tokyo to the so-called "Little White House" near Potsdam, Germany, where President Harry Truman got a briefing on the new weapon's progress in late July 1945.

In Hiroshima, Walker zeroes in on the experience of a soldier named Toshiaki Tanaka. Separated from his wife and child by his military duties when the bomb fell, Tanaka went searching for them the next day but knew there was no hope once he found a neighbor, recognizable only by a telltale belt buckle he had worn. Then Tanaka saw "two figures, like charcoal sticks, fused together on the ground, facing what was once the doorway [to the family-owned liquor store]. One of the figures was much smaller than the other, a tiny, shapeless bundle pressed against the other's back, as if somehow clinging to it. He knew immediately this was his wife and baby daughter.

"He stood perfectly still, staring at them. Despite the terrible burns their bones stood out. They were extraordinarily white. He could not understand how it was possible they were so white. He bent down beside them. Then he picked up the bones, placing them one by one in his handkerchief. . . . He walked out into the street that no longer existed and took the bones of his wife and child all the way back to the barracks in Ujina. There he placed them, still in their handkerchief, on a shelf above his bed in his quarters. It was the only home he had left."

HIROSHIMA BOMB MAY HAVE CARRIED HIDDEN AGENDA
ROB EDWARDS
New Scientist
July 21, 2005

The U.S. decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 was meant to kick-start the Cold War rather than end the Second World War, according to two nuclear historians who say they have new evidence backing the controversial theory.

Causing a fission reaction in several kilograms of uranium and plutonium and killing over 200,000 people 60 years ago was done more to impress the Soviet Union than to cow Japan, they say. And the U.S. President who took the decision, Harry Truman, was culpable, they add.

"He knew he was beginning the process of annihilation of the species," says Peter Kuznick, director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University in Washington DC, U.S.

"It was not just a war crime; it was a crime against humanity."
According to the official U.S. version of history, an A-bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6 1945, and another on Nagasaki three days later, to force Japan to surrender. The destruction was necessary to bring a rapid end to the war without the need for a costly U.S. invasion.

But this is disputed by Kuznick and Mark Selden, a historian from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, U.S.. They are presenting their evidence at a meeting in London on Thursday organised by Greenpeace and others to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the bombings.

New studies of the U.S., Japanese and Soviet diplomatic archives suggest that Truman's main motive was to limit Soviet expansion in Asia, Kuznick claims. Japan surrendered because the Soviet Union began an invasion a few days after the Hiroshima bombing, not because of the atomic bombs themselves, he says.

According to an account by Walter Brown, assistant to then-U.S. secretary of state James Byrnes, Truman agreed at a meeting three days before the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima that Japan was "looking for peace". Truman was told by his army generals, Douglas Macarthur and Dwight Eisenhower, and his naval chief of staff, William Leahy, that there was no military need to use the bomb.

"Impressing Russia was more important than ending the war in Japan," says Selden. Truman was also worried that he would be accused of wasting money on the Manhattan Project to build the first nuclear bombs, if the bomb was not used, he adds.

Kuznick and Selden's arguments, however, were dismissed as "discredited" by Lawrence Freedman, a war expert from King's College London, UK. He says that Truman's decision to bomb Hiroshima was "understandable in the circumstances".
Truman's main aim had been to end the war with Japan, Freedman says, but adds that, with the wisdom of hindsight, the bombing may not have been militarily justified. Some people assumed that the U.S. always had "a malicious and nasty motive", he says, "but it ain't necessarily so."

GOD, BUSH AND THE BOMB
PAUL CANTOR
Syndicated Columnist

"Thank God for the atom bomb," wrote William Manchester in a memoir recounting his service as a marine during World War II Sixty years ago, on August 6 and August 9, 1945, atom bombs killed over 100,000 people and destroyed the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Consequently, according to the widely held view echoed by Manchester, they forced Japan to surrender on August 14 and thereby obviated the need for an invasion that would have cost even more lives. The United States Strategic Bombing Survey, on the other hand, concluded that "even without the atomic bombing attacks, air supremacy over Japan could have exerted sufficient pressure to bring about unconditional surrender and obviate the need for invasion."

Even given the Survey’s conclusion, however, many think we should still "thank God for the atom bomb." The bomb, they reason, made it clear there would be no victors in a nuclear confrontation.

Consequently there has never been a World War III.

This is an argument favored by the neo conservatives in the Bush administration. It implies that by maintaining its preeminent nuclear arsenal the United States prevents other nuclear nations from attacking it or its allies. But if that is the case then there is no need to worry about nuclear proliferation and there was no need to attack Iraq.

Indeed, the fact that Bush invaded Iraq under his "preemptive war" doctrine
indicates that either he doesn’t really believe that simply maintaining the world’s preeminent nuclear arsenal is enough to keep the peace or that he lied about the real reason for the invasion.

The truth, of course, is that the bomb does not keep the peace. Rather in the sixty years since Hiroshima and Nagasaki in which we have been steadily upgrading our nuclear arsenal we have been involved in major wars in Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf and Iraq. Furthermore, during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis we almost went to war with the Soviet Union.

Nor can it be said that our preeminent nuclear arsenal has made us safer. Rather it has led other nations to intensify their efforts to obtain or upgrade their own nuclear arsenals while doing nothing to discourage terrorist attacks against us.

What then should we do? There are four steps we should take immediately to begin to eliminate the threat of a nuclear confrontation.

First, we should apologize for dropping the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As a nation we need to recognize that together these two acts were among the greatest atrocities of the 20th century.

Unfortunately we tend to think we occupy the moral high ground even though, as never before in our history, the rest of the world doesn’t see it that way. Today we have Abu Gharib to add to the slaughter of Indians, slavery, the firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo, and the overthrow of democratic regimes in Chile, Guatemala, and Iran as a stain on our past.

Second, we should pull out of Iraq and renounce our unilateral preemptive war policy.

Third, we should pledge not to devote more resources to upgrading our nuclear arsenal with bunker busting bombs and other more devastating weapons.

Fourth we should announce our intention to work through the United Nations to bring all nuclear weapons under international control and then begin to eliminate them.

It is only by taking steps such as these that we can gain credibility as a nation committed to pursuing peace and justice in the world rather than our own selfish interests But of course none of these steps will be taken under the current administration. Therefore, it is not too soon to begin thinking about a change in
leadership.

WHY FEEL GUILTY ABOUT HIROSHIMA ???
MAX BOOT
Los Angeles Times
August 3, 2005

The 60th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, has not so far provoked the kind of anguished debate that accompanied the 50th anniversary. The lack of controversy is fitting because there wasn't much soul-searching at the time. In 1945, 85% of Americans approved of a step deemed necessary to end the war and head off a costly invasion of Japan.

Only with the Axis threat long vanquished have numerous historians and philosophers come forward to claim that the use of the A-bomb was unnecessary and an atrocity that blemishes American honor.

These criticisms rest, it seems to me, on a profoundly ahistorical assumption: that there was something unusual about what happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It's true that the atomic bombs were, by many orders of magnitude, the most powerful explosives ever employed. But the havoc they caused, with a combined death toll of over 100,000, was far from unprecedented.
By the time the Enola Gay took off, at least 600,000 Germans and 200,000 Japanese had already been killed in Allied air raids. Conventional explosives had reduced all of the major cities of both countries to rubble. In the end, no more than one-third of the total Japanese deaths from air raids --- and just 3.5% of the total land area destroyed --- could be attributed to Fat Man and Little Boy.

Far from being unusual, then, those two A-bombs merely marked the culmination of an already well-established principle: that urban areas were fair game for aerial attack. The first such raid occurred on August 30, 1914 --- less than 11 years after the Wright brothers' first flight --- when a flimsy German monoplane dropped five small bombs on Paris.

Britain and France quickly retaliated with their own raids on German soil. Though losses from aerial bombardment were minuscule during World War I (Germany suffered 1,900 killed and wounded), vast improvements in aircraft after 1918 ushered in an age of annihilation.

The Western democracies protested in 1937 when the German Condor Legion pounded Guernica and Japanese aircraft did the same to Shanghai, but it did not take long for them to emulate the enemy's example. Starting in 1940, the Royal Air Force unleashed bomber raids against German cities, to be joined in 1942 by American B-17s and B-24s.

Long-range B-29s (whose development cost more than the Manhattan Project) allowed Japan to be added to the target list in 1944.

To avoid the implication that they were guilty of "terror" bombing, Allied leaders claimed they were simply "de-housing" German workers or eliminating "cottage industries" that supported the Japanese war effort. But they knew perfectly well that bombing was so inaccurate that hitting anything, even a major war plant, required saturating a large area --- including plenty of civilians --- with high explosives or incendiaries.

Oh, how times change. Today we can put "smart" bombs through the window of an office building. Along with greater accuracy has come a growing impatience with "collateral damage." A bomb that goes astray and hits a foreign embassy or a wedding party now causes international outrage, whereas 60 years ago the destruction of an entire city was a frequent occurrence.

Does this make us more enlightened than the "greatest generation"? Perhaps. We certainly have the luxury of being more discriminating in the application of violence. But even today, there is cause to doubt whether more precision is always better.

During the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003, the U.S. was so sparing in its use of force that many Baathists never understood they were beaten. The butcher's bill we dodged early on is now being paid with compound interest.
It is hard to imagine how many more GIs and Tommies would have perished in 1944-45 had Anglo-American leaders flinched from using all the means at their disposal to hasten the end of the war. Indeed, if the U.S. had staged a blood-drenched invasion of Japan while holding back its atomic arsenal, President Truman would have been indicted for that decision too.

I can't claim to have worked out the moral calculus of bombing. I remain troubled by the deliberate killing of civilians, whether by the United States or by its enemies. But I don't think the atomic bombing of Japan was a uniquely reprehensible event. There is plenty of blame to go around for the horrors of World War II, and most of it belongs to the original "Axis of evil." In short, I refuse to participate in the self-indulgent second-guessing that has become a growth industry in the history profession.

Max Boot is Olin Senior Fellow in National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. He is also a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and a weekly columnist for the Los Angeles Times.

HIROSHIMA: BIRTH OF NUCLEAR WARFARE
JAMES STEMGOLD
San Francisco Chronicle
August 1, 2005

The atomic bombing of Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, was to change the course of history, but as Harold Agnew witnessed the flash that is estimated to have killed more than 100,000 people, he thought of just one thing --- destroying the enemy.
Agnew, then a frightened 24-year-old physicist flying in a plane alongside the Enola Gay bomber, was in charge of measuring the yield of a blast that burned hotter than the sun. He had helped design the atomic bomb at Los Alamos, New Mexico. But for all the impact this unique new weapon would have on science, military planning and geopolitical rivalries, Agnew, now 84, said he and his colleagues saw the bomb in simpler terms, as an instrument of their anger at Japan for launching the war, and as a way of stopping the war.

"We all wanted to crush the Japanese," Agnew, who became director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in the 1970s, said in an interview. "My only concern was winning the war. To say we were embittered would have been an understatement."

Within a few years, the full import of the 9,600-pound "Little Boy" warhead dropped on Hiroshima became clear. The technology spread, the arms race and Cold War with the Soviet Union revved up and immensely more powerful thermonuclear warheads were developed. An abstract and dangerous poker game was played by the superpowers in which the stakes were apocalyptic. But catastrophe seemed to grow increasingly remote because the feared war strategies involving the launching of thousands of missiles never took place.

Now a new, lower-profile arms race has started that, experts say, is far less abstract and could prove to be more dangerous. Six decades after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and 16 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, nuclear technology is proliferating among second-tier powers and, it's a possibility, among terrorist groups. The legacy of Hiroshima --- when the weapons were built not just to deter but to be used --- has painful new relevance.

It is almost as though history has come full circle. The concern now is not Cold War brinksmanship but the prospect, once again, that a single weapon detonated in anger could instantly send history in a violent new direction.

"Today, a single nuclear detonation in Detroit or New York City would dramatically change our society in every respect: our politics, our civil liberties, our relations with other states," said Steve Andreasen, a nuclear weapons expert in the Reagan, first Bush and Clinton administrations.
"During the Cold War, the idea of a single explosion was not seen as a credible issue," Andreasen said. "Now we're back again to the notion of small- scale use of a nuclear weapon, and the reality is that the effect would be as great as it was 60 years ago."

"The likelihood of a single attack in a single city is greater than ever, not the massive attacks we imagined in the Cold War," said Graham Allison, the director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and a senior Defense Department official in the Clinton administration.

Eugene Habiger, a retired Air Force general who during the 1990s led the U.S. Strategic Command, the military arm that prepares for and would manage a nuclear war, said a bomb would not even have to be used accurately.

"It would have a horrific impact by any measure," said Habiger, now a member of the board of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, an international nongovernmental group that is working to reduce nuclear stockpiles. "You might only kill 5,000 people or so, but you would change the society, the politics, the economics of the United States of America. That's what I call the greatest threat in the 21st century.

"It's no longer about large military forces fighting head to head," Habiger added. "It's what I call asymmetric warfare."

One of the few things President Bush and Sen. John Kerry agreed on in the 2004 presidential campaign was that nuclear terrorism was the single gravest threat the U.S. faces. The president has placed halting North Korea's and Iran's nuclear programs at the top of his policy agenda, and he has refused to rule out military strikes or war to stop them.

But many experts say the problem goes well beyond those countries, and some worry that Bush's nuclear policies are increasing the threat. The president has indicated he wants to replace the current aging stockpile with a new generation of more flexible warheads, which some experts say could make possession of the weapons appear even more essential and encourage other countries to ramp up their own efforts.

The president offered last month to provide India with commercial nuclear technology, abandoning a long-standing U.S. policy of not helping India so long as it remains outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the system for monitoring nuclear facilities and preventing the spread of weapons technology.

"How do you say India can and Iran can't?" said Sidney Drell, a longtime government nuclear policy adviser and a professor and deputy director emeritus at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. "I'm more than a little uncomfortable with our India policy. We're at a danger point as to maintaining a hold on the nonproliferation regime."

William Potter, who leads the nonproliferation program at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, said Bush is sending a mixed signal that might push some countries to consider the nuclear option.

"The Bush administration is really saying that some proliferation is bad and some is good," Potter said. "The president is working at odds with his own policy."
The current threat goes well beyond North Korea and Iran, said Allison, the former Clinton administration official.

"There could be a cascade of proliferation if North Korea and Iran both go nuclear," said Allison, who has written extensively on nuclear terrorism. "People take a false comfort from the Cold War experience. The strategic logic (now) is this: Nuclear weapons are the equalizer for the weak, not the stronger."
Three factors generally make the new arms race slowly taking shape more troubling than the Cold War version, experts said.

* First, only a tiny number of industrialized countries had the technological means to build warheads during the Cold War. Today, eight states possess the weapons, with North Korea possibly the ninth. But there are now dozens of countries that have developed the basic capability to enrich uranium or reprocess plutonium, the key to producing warheads.

Perhaps 40 countries now have such technical knowledge, Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said in an interview last year. Few are in fact enriching uranium, but ElBaradei said these efforts amount to "latent weapons programs."

Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and South Africa fall into this category.
* Second, with the dissemination of nuclear know-how to countries from Pakistan to Sweden to Brazil, shadowy nuclear technology rings have taken shape, making once forbidden equipment and expertise far more widely available to terrorists and other groups, as well as nations.

Concerns over such networks have grown sharply since Pakistan disclosed that the father of its weapons program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, had for years been illegally selling nuclear enrichment technology and even bomb plans to North Korea, Libya and, it is believed, Iran. He relied on a network that wove its way through Qatar, Malaysia and other countries.

* The third and perhaps most troubling aspect of the new arms race is the presence of terrorist groups like al Qaeda that are not bound by the discipline of self-preservation, which helped restrain the Soviets and the United States, as well as China, which has its own small nuclear arsenal, during the Cold War.
Groups that produce suicide bombers by the dozen are believed eager not just to obtain nuclear weapons but to use them, no matter the costs. They don't follow the logic of deterrence, so Cold War tactics don't apply; these groups rarely even have an easily identified headquarters to retaliate against.

Such groups would focus not on precision or maximum yield, just detonating a nuclear device in a populated area.

Theirs is not unlike the thinking behind the Hiroshima bombing, which, as Agnew recalled, was fraught with uncertainties. Agnew, who is retired and living near San Diego, said that while preparing for the Hiroshima blast he had been terrified that he might not survive it, that he might be on a suicide mission. No one knew how the bombers would be affected. He recorded only one thought, he recalled, in his flight log.

"Wow! It really went off," he said he wrote without acknowledgement of the broader meaning of the moment. "It really worked."

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, few expected a new arms race. There was widespread talk of weapons reductions, even disarmament, as one of the peace dividends Americans would enjoy. It now seems distant, but in 1995 an anti-nuclear organization, the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, won the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of the new tenor of the times.

The superpowers have made some strides in reducing their arsenals. The United States, which at its peak fielded more than 32,000 warheads, now has about 10,000; Russia has about 7,200. The two countries have deactivated 6,632 warheads and destroyed 582 intercontinental ballistic missiles, according to the Russian American Nuclear Security Advisory Council. Under the Moscow Treaty, each side has committed to reducing its arsenal to 2,200 or fewer deployed warheads by 2012.

The desire to prevent nuclear proliferation traces back to the months immediately following the horrifying bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

President Harry Truman always said he had no regrets about dropping the two atomic bombs on Japan to end World War II. But he did worry about the spread of the weapons.

"The hope of civilization lies in international arrangements looking, if possible, to the renunciation of the use and development of the atomic bomb," he wrote in a letter to Congress on October 3, 1945.

The next U.S. president, Dwight Eisenhower, proposed in his famous "Atoms for Peace" speech at the United Nations on December 8, 1953, that the United States and the Soviets scrap their warheads. He suggested that they hand over the secrets of the atom to a U.N. body that would share them for civilian purposes and produce an age of prosperity.

But neither side gave up its warheads, and the arms race roared on. Eisenhower's proposal fostered a system that provided training and civilian nuclear equipment to scientists around the world, unintentionally setting the stage for the proliferation of nuclear technology.

Superpower rivalries no longer drive the arms race, making the Cold War model all but irrelevant. Regional tensions that long predate that ideological conflict and far exceed its emotional content are the challenge now.

In their standoff, India and Pakistan have both developed and tested nuclear weapons.

Israel has built what is believed to be a large clandestine arsenal to fend off its neighbors, including Syria, Egypt and Iran.

If Iran succeeds in building warheads, it is expected to increase the pressure on Turkey, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt to push forward with programs.

And similar friction has eastern Asia on edge as it watches American negotiators trying to force North Korea to abandon its weapons and extensive nuclear facilities.

Donald Gregg, president of the Korea Society in New York and a former senior CIA officer in Asia and ambassador to South Korea, said that if the United States fails, then Japan, South Korea and even Taiwan could consider building arsenals. They already have advanced nuclear capabilities.

"There is a sort of nuclear domino theory now," said Gregg, who traveled three times recently to North Korea. "If we can stop North Korea I think we can stop the region from going nuclear. This is our last best shot."

GREEN LIGHT
FOR BOMB BUILDERS
EDITORIAL
New York Times
July 22, 2005

The Bush administration is full of tough talk about opposing the spread of nuclear weapons. But it keeps undermining the world's most effective instrument for doing so: the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. In May, top administration officials stood aside as a crucial review conference meant to strengthen the treaty ended in a stalemate.

Now Washington wants to allow India an end run around the treaty's basic bargain - the one that rewards the countries that are willing to renounce nuclear weapons with the opportunity to import highly sensitive nuclear technology for power
reactors.

The strength of that bargain has dissuaded many countries that are capable of building or buying nuclear arms from doing so, including Brazil, South Africa, South Korea, Japan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. The bargain's credibility has depended on the willingness of the major nuclear exporters to uphold it.
One of the most powerful examples of the price a nation would pay for ignoring the rules has been the nuclear export restrictions the United States has imposed on India for decades, ever since India declined to sign the treaty and tested a nuclear device, using materials and technology diverted from a civilian nuclear power program.

Lifting these restrictions would encourage other countries to follow New Delhi's dangerous example. It is now up to Congress and the other nuclear supplier nations to take back what President Bush has so carelessly given away.

India is a great nation with a great future and many common interests with the United States. But India is also one of only four countries in the world that does not abide by the nonproliferation treaty. Pakistan and Israel have also refused to sign it, and North Korea dropped out. None of these other holdouts are now eligible to buy the kind of sensitive nuclear technology being proposed for India.

Besides the four holdouts and the five established nuclear powers recognized under the treaty --- the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China --- no other nations are known to have nuclear weapons. Without the treaty, there
might now be as many as 20 or 25 nuclear weapons states.

The Bush administration is, of course, eager to stop governments it does not like from acquiring nuclear weapons. It regularly rattles military and diplomatic sabers at North Korea and Iran. But it seems to have almost as much contempt for international treaties as it has for rogue states.

Given the increasing accessibility of nuclear weapons technology and the growing number of potential governmental and nongovernmental suppliers of the needed materials and equipment, only a strengthened nonproliferation treaty, enforced without exceptions, stands any chance of slowing the spread of nuclear arsenals. A nonproliferation policy that is selective and unilateral is no policy at all.

NUCLEAR TEST FALL-OUT
KILLED THOUSANDS IN U.S.
ROB EDWARDS
New Scientist
March 1, 2002

Radioactive fall-out from the world's nuclear weapons tests during the Cold War has killed 11,000 Americans with cancer, according to a new report by US scientists. Experts say that many thousands more are likely to have died in other countries.

The report, prepared by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHSS) for Congress, is the first attempt to estimate the total number of cancers caused by the atmospheric testing programme. Between 1951 and 1963, 390 nuclear bombs were exploded above the ground, 205 by the US, 160 by the former Soviet Union, 21 by Britain and four by France.

The fall-out from these explosions circulated the globe and exposed the world's population to radioactivity. Scientists have long assumed that this would result in extra cancers, but until now no government has tried to estimate how many.
The new report concludes that the number of fatal cancers attributable to global fall-out amongst Americans alive between 1951 and 2000 is 11,000. This includes deaths from leukaemia caused by exposure to strontium 90 and from a host of other cancers triggered by other isotopes.

"This is a useful estimate of the long term effects of global fall-out on the population of the U.S., but it is only part of the story," says Dudley Goodhead, a leading radiation specialist with the Medical Research Council in Harwell, UK.
"Similar assumptions would lead to estimates of many thousands more cancers throughout the world because fall-out from the atmospheric tests was distributed globally," he notes.

The sites where bombs were exploded included the Nevada desert in the US, Pacific islands and sites in Kazakhstan and Russia. Atmospheric testing was outlawed by the Partial Test Ban Treaty in 1963, although dozens of atmospheric tests have since been conducted by France and China.

The DHSS report, which was obtained by U.S. senator Tom Harken, does not take fall-out from explosions since 1963 into account. Nor does it include fall-out from the seven atmospheric explosions detonated by the U.S. prior to 1951 such as Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

The estimate of 11,000 fatal cancers also does not include internal radiation exposure caused by the breathing in or swallowing of radioactive particles.

Because of this, the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, in Takoma Park, Maryland, argues that the actual number of fatal cancers could be 17,000.

The U.S. evidence is likely to provoke demands for other countries to face up to the death toll from nuclear tests. "It's a horrific legacy," says Sue Roff, a radiation researcher from the University of Dundee medical school. "The complacency of governments about acceptable levels of environmental radioactivity has been punctured by this authoritative report."

HANFORD LIKELY CAUSED
CANCER DOWNWIND, JURY DECIDES
WARREN CORNWALL
Seattle Times
May 20, 2005

A federal jury yesterday found that the Hanford factories that produced plutonium for the nation's nuclear arsenal probably caused cancer in two people living in nearby towns.

The decision by the jury in Spokane is a historic first for those who have accused the federal government and contractors of sickening people by secretly releasing radiation --- affirming the claims of at least some "downwinders." A jury has never before said a U.S. nuclear-bomb plant sickened citizens living downwind.

The 12-member jury found that thyroid cancer suffered by two plaintiffs more likely than not came from radiation that Hanford released, exposing them as children in the 1940s and early '50s.

But the jury rejected the claims of three others who suffered noncancerous thyroid diseases. And it deadlocked on the case of a woman with thyroid cancer who received a lower radiation dose than the other two plaintiffs with cancer.
The jury awarded one of the cancer victims, Steve Stanton of Walla Walla, $227,508 for economic losses and pain and suffering. The other, Gloria Wise of Kennewick, was awarded $317,251.

While the verdicts may bolster the cases of other downwinders with cancer and high radiation exposures, they also suggest those who don't have cancer --- many of the more than 2,300 plaintiffs in pending lawsuits --- may have a hard time convincing a jury that Hanford is to blame for their illnesses.

The trial pitted former Hanford neighbors against DuPont and General Electric, the companies that ran the Hanford site for the federal government. While the government wasn't a defendant, it's paying the bill for the defense --- at least $50 million so far --- and would have to pay any awards or settlements because it indemnified the contractors for their work there.

The two sides yesterday offered vastly different interpretations of what the verdict meant. Each declared victory in the cases, which are supposed to provide a precedent for any settlement talks involving the remaining plaintiffs.

While losing three of the cases was a disappointment, winning the two cancer cases against a government-funded defense team representing two powerful companies should force settlement talks, said Louise Roselle, lead counsel for the downwinders.

"The government and these defendants have an obligation to this community and it's time that they honor it. And that's what this jury is saying," Roselle said. "The implication is that the defendant and the government should sit down and talk settlement. We've shown them that we can win cases."

But Kevin Van Wart, the lead defense attorney, said the rejection of the noncancer cases and the size of the judgments posed major problems for the plaintiffs' attorneys. Thyroid-cancer claims make up around 250 of the 2,300 downwinder cases; most of the remaining cases involve noncancer thyroid disease or other types of cancer, he said.

"These are very small awards. And the cost of litigating these claims for the plaintiffs far exceeded the recoveries," Van Wart said. "At the end of the day it's unclear if they will recover a nickel even if these verdicts are upheld, just because of the expense of putting on this case."

Roselle, however, said yesterday's verdict doesn't erase the chances of people with noncancerous thyroid diseases.

"Just because we lost those cases with this jury doesn't say anything about what would happen with another jury," she said.

Meetings will be scheduled soon to determine what to do about the hung jury in the case of Shannon Rhodes, and how to deal with the others who have filed claims, U.S. District Judge William Fremming Nielsen said. Yesterday's decisions also could be appealed.

"I hope at this stage the parties give a good-faith effort to mediation," Nielsen said.

The Department of Energy, the federal agency that oversees Hanford, had little to say. The agency "was not party to the proceedings that have taken place and therefore it would be inappropriate for me to comment," a spokesman said.
The lawsuits stem from decades of operations at factories that were both the centerpiece of the nation's nuclear-weapons program and a source of radiation that spread across Eastern Washington.

Beginning in 1944, Hanford converted uranium into plutonium for the core of nuclear bombs. First built as part of the World War II-era Manhattan Project, it produced the plutonium for the first nuclear explosion during the Trinity test in New Mexico, and for the bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Nagasaki.

The factories also spewed radioactivity into the air and water. That included radioactive iodine, I-131, which is linked to increased risks of thyroid disease and thyroid cancer. The six cases before the jury involved people suffering thyroid problems who were children during the height of the iodine releases in the 1940s and early 1950s.

Hanford's plutonium-processing work stopped in the 1990s.
Stanton, a 60-year-old engineer, welcomed the verdict as a vindication of what he has believed all along --- that the thyroid cancer discovered in 1996 stemmed from radiation he absorbed growing up in Walla Walla. He said the jury award was fine.

"Money is an issue. But I think the principle of the thing is probably more important: that government and big business need to be more careful what they put out in the atmosphere that could hurt people," he said.

His case and the others, however, could continue to wend their way through the courts. Both sides have said they are considering appealing rulings by the judge that may have influenced the outcome.

Plaintiffs' attorneys said they are considering whether to seek a new trial for Rhodes, the woman with thyroid cancer whose case the jury couldn't agree on.

NUCLEAR WASTE
OUTPACES SOLUTION
RALPH VARTABEDIAN
Los Angeles Times
June 12, 2005

Along the headwaters of the Illinois River, engineers at the Dresden nuclear power station have erected two dozen steel and concrete silos that rise 20 feet above the Midwest plain.

The gray structures are unremarkable except for what is loaded inside: Each contains roughly 13 tons of high-level nuclear waste that has been accumulating at the plant since the Eisenhower administration. With nowhere to go, the waste will most likely remain in place for decades.

Dresden's reactors have produced one of the largest stockpiles --- 1,347 tons --- of civilian nuclear waste in the nation. With the plant churning out nearly 48 tons more waste each year, engineers are preparing to double the size of the outdoor storage pad this summer.

The plant has the same problem as nearly all of the nation's 103 commercial reactors: They were never designed to store waste long-term and are now forced to deal with large quantities of spent uranium fuel rods that produce high levels of radiation.

The problem reflects decades of miscalculations and missteps by the federal government, which promised at the dawn of the nuclear age to accept ownership of the waste. The plan to build a waste repository at Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert has faced so many political, legal and technical problems that it's impossible to project when --- or even if --- it will be built.

As a result, the most lethal waste product of industrial society is being handled outside any federal policy and without any roadmap for how it will be managed in the future, according to industry officials, nuclear waste experts, lawyers and academicians.

"It is a statement of reality," acknowledges Clay Sell, deputy secretary of Energy. "Is it the right policy? No."

The deep storage pools traditionally used to safely keep nuclear waste are filling up at most plants. Utilities have turned to outdoor storage in so-called dry casks as the de facto standard for dealing with waste.

From California to South Carolina, utilities have loaded 700 of the steel and concrete casks, and scores of additional casks are scheduled to be filled this year.

It is a stopgap measure that has averted a shutdown of the nuclear power industry.

But it means leaving all of the roughly 50,000 tons of civilian nuclear waste spread across the nation for the next half-century or more. And storing the waste at power plant sites is creating significant economic, environmental, legal and security challenges --- including the potential for it to become a terrorist target.

A recent study by the National Academy of Sciences found that the waste stored in pools was most vulnerable, but the outdoor casks also were potential targets. Such an attack could trigger an environmental catastrophe.

"These are the ultimate dirty bombs," said Bob Alvarez, a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and a former Energy Department official. "Let's not pretend the way we are storing this waste is safe and secure in an age of terrorism."

Utility executives and government officials sharply dispute such allegations, saying the plants have multiple layers of protection from any attack. Exelon Corp., the nation's largest nuclear utility, has erected heavy barriers and security towers at Dresden that are staffed around the clock by guards with automatic weapons.

Though the nuclear industry has a good record for preventing radiation leaks during normal operations and dry casks are widely regarded as safe, many outside experts say their biggest fear is that future generations may lack the willpower and financial capability to safeguard tons of radioactive waste dispersed across the nation. Waste is already stored in casks at five shuttered nuclear plant sites.

"We are muddling into an alternative plan by default," says Joe Egan, a longtime attorney for the nuclear industry who now represents Nevada in fighting Yucca Mountain.

Nuclear waste has also created a legal mess. The Energy Department is facing more than four dozen lawsuits by the utility industry for its failure to take the waste. Damages could reach $56 billion over the next three decades, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, a powerful trade group for nuclear utilities.
At the Department of Energy, Sell argues that deep geologic storage of the waste at Yucca Mountain would be the best technical solution. He believes the project will eventually be completed. But the loss of a key court case last year and political resistance in Congress have put the dump at least 14 years behind schedule.

Without a dump, utilities have few options short of shutting down their reactors and eliminating 20% of the U.S. electricity supply that comes from nuclear power. And without a solution to waste, the proposal by President Bush to start a new era of nuclear plant construction could go nowhere.

Indefinite storage of nuclear waste at current reactor sites is a bitter pill for
many politicians, particularly those from environmentally fragile areas such as Lake Michigan, which is ringed by nuclear plants.

"I want the waste off the shores of Lake Michigan," said Rep. Fred Upton (Rep.-Michigan), whose district includes two nuclear plants built on the lake's eastern boundary. "Ultimately, there is a safety problem."

Nuclear waste at power plants will remain radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years. The fission of uranium inside reactors produces heat for electricity production. Afterward, the uranium fuel rods are far more radioactive than when they entered the reactor.

To maximize storage capacity for the spent fuel rods, the nuclear industry devised a way to pack them more closely in the 50-foot-deep storage pools than initially planned. Critics say this kind of dense packing poses a safety risk, however. If terrorists were to puncture the pool wall and drain the water, the rods could ignite and disperse lethal amounts of radiation, according to a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences.

Even with dense packing, the pools are running out of space. Twenty years ago, nuclear plants began removing the oldest fuel rods, which have radioactively decayed somewhat, and started storing them in massive outdoor storage casks like the ones at Dresden.

Officials at Nuclear Regulatory Commission "anticipate that there will be an increase in the number of casks being loaded over the next few years," said E. William Brach, director of the commission's spent fuel project office.

The logistics of nuclear waste ensure it will be around a long time. Even if the federal government gets a license to operate Yucca Mountain, the earliest it could accept waste shipments would be 2012. By that year, more than 60,000 tons of civilian nuclear waste would be spread across about three dozen states.
It would take about 50 years to work down the backlog, according to Frank von Hippel, a nuclear expert at Princeton University and former White House national security advisor. That's because under current plans Yucca could process a maximum of 3,000 tons of waste annually, while nuclear power plants would be generating 2,000 new tons of waste each year. That means a net reduction of just 1,000 tons each year, he said.

"We have to assume that these casks will be around for a very long time," Von Hippel said. "It will take quite a while to move them, even if we had someplace to send them today."

In any case, "on the day Yucca Mountain opens" it would be too small to handle all the waste, acknowledges Sell, the Energy Department official. There is no Plan B. Under federal law, the department can pursue only Yucca Mountain.
Further complicating matters are the divided lines of authority between the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Energy Department. The commission regulates waste at plant sites and authorizes dry cask storage but has no role in national policy for disposing of nuclear waste. That policy responsibility rests with the Energy Department, which has no voice or authority in the use of dry casks.
In the vacuum, a private consortium is planning to build an above-ground storage site for hundreds of casks on an Indian reservation in Utah. Despite state opposition, it is getting approval from the nuclear commission.

Meanwhile, utilities see dry cask storage as a cheap and safe, if not permanent, solution.

Holtec International, one of the leading suppliers, says its casks can safely store waste for at least 100 years without leaking, according to company marketing manager Joy Russell.

The regulatory commission typically licenses the casks for 20 years but last year renewed Dominion Electric's license for 40 years, another signal that the waste would remain in place for a long time.

Holtec's casks are constructed of two concentric rings of 1-inch-thick steel, separated by 27 inches of concrete that is poured at the power plant site. The casks sit on 2-foot-thick concrete pads, requiring no electricity, water or instrumentation. Inside, the spent fuel continues to radioactively decay, generating heat that is vented out the sides.

The only maintenance involves periodic painting and keeping up the radioactive warning labels on the steel shells.

On the inside of the casks, the waste is so radioactive it would deliver a fatal dose in minutes, but the outside can be touched.

"An individual can stand right next to the cask," Brach said. "There is a dose, but it is a minimal dose."

There have been some relatively minor accidents around the nation involving the casks, including one case in which a welding spark ignited hydrogen gas inside a cask. The ignition dislodged the cask's lid but did not cause other damage.

Antinuclear groups, such as the Washington-based Nuclear Information and Resource Service and the Chicago-based Nuclear Energy Information Service, say the casks should be better protected. In Germany, for example, the casks are inside hardened buildings.

Government tests at the Army's Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland showed that a shoulder-fired missile could penetrate a cask wall, causing some radioactive fuel to disperse.

"We don't want this 10-pin bowling alley out in the open," said Dave Kraft, an antinuclear activist for more than 20 years. "Anybody with a shoulder-fired missile could hit one of these things from outside the plant."

Though utilities defend the safety of the casks, they also are demanding that the federal government take the waste.

Exelon, formerly Commonwealth Edison, filed one of the 56 suits against the Energy Department when the agency failed to meet its legal commitment to open Yucca Mountain by 1998. It is the only company to settle so far, accepting $600 million for its costs over the next ten years, according to Adam H. Levin, Exelon director of spent fuel.

"We expect at some time that the Energy Department will perform," he said.
Across the river from the Dresden plant in the Village of Channahon, a residential building boom is occurring, attracting people who make the hour-and-a-half commute to jobs in Chicago.

"You can see the nuclear waste right across the river," said Joe Petrovic, who lives in a subdivision near the plant and builds homes in the area for a living. "The plant hasn't scared anyone from buying a home there."

The plant is in Grundy County, which has three nuclear power plants as well as a large independent waste storage pool operated by General Electric Co. It probably has more nuclear waste than any county in the nation, though such statistics are not kept by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

"I don't see the casks as a problem," said Grundy County Administrator Alfred Bourdelais. "Maybe in 200 or 300 years, but today there isn't any more risk from those casks than there is from the plant, and it has a really low risk."

Such local acceptance of cask storage worries experts who say that in the future the casks will become a poor permanent solution.

Kevin Crowley, a nuclear expert at the National Academy of Sciences who helped guide an investigation into the vulnerability of spent fuel storage, said the casks would become a risky legacy if left in place too long.

"The major uncertainty," he said, "is in the confidence that future societies will continue to monitor and maintain such facilities."

A.V. Krebs contributes a regular column "Calamity Howler" to the bi-monthly The
Progressive Populist. Sample copies of the paper and subscriptions can be
obtained at P.O. Box 487, Storm Lake, Iowa 50588 or at
http://www.populist.com

Postmodernism

Postmodernism is a complicated term, or set of ideas, one that has only emerged as an area of academic study since the mid-1980s. Postmodernism is hard to define, because it is a concept that appears in a wide variety of disciplines or areas of study, including art, architecture, music, film, literature, sociology, communications, fashion, and technology. It's hard to locate it temporally or historically, because it's not clear exactly when postmodernism begins.

Perhaps the easiest way to start thinking about post-modernism is by thinking about modernism, the movement from which postmodernism seems to grow or emerge. Modernism has two facets, or two modes of definition, both of which are relevant to understanding postmodernism.

The first facet or definition of modernism comes from the aesthetic movement broadly labeled "modernism." This movement is roughly coterminous with twentieth century Western ideas about art (though traces of it in emergent forms can be found in the nineteenth century as well). Modernism, as you probably know, is the movement in visual arts, music, literature, and drama which rejected the old Victorian standards of how art should be made, consumed, and what it should mean. In the period of "high modernism," from around 1910 to 1930, the major figures of modernism literature helped radically to redefine what poetry and fiction could be and do: figures like Woolf, Joyce, Eliot, Pound, Stevens, Proust, Mallarme, Kafka, and Rilke are considered the founders of twentieth-century modernism.

From a literary perspective, the main characteristics of modernism include:
1. an emphasis on impressionism and subjectivity in writing (and in visual arts as well); an emphasis on HOW seeing (or reading or perception itself) takes place, rather than on WHAT is perceived. An example of this would be stream-of-consciousness writing.
2. a movement away from the apparent objectivity provided by omniscient third-person narrators, fixed narrative points of view, and clear-cut moral positions. Faulkner's multiply-narrated stories are an example of this aspect of modernism.
3. a blurring of distinctions between genres, so that poetry seems more documentary (as in T.S. Eliot or ee cummings) and prose seems more poetic (as in Woolf or Joyce).
4. an emphasis on fragmented forms, discontinuous narratives, and random-seeming collages of different materials.
5. a tendency toward reflexivity, or self-consciousness, about the production of the work of art, so that each piece calls attention to its own status as a production, as something constructed and consumed in particular ways.
6. a rejection of elaborate formal aesthetics in favor of minimalist designs (as in the poetry of William Carlos Williams) and a rejection, in large part, of formal aesthetic theories, in favor of spontaneity and discovery in creation.
7. A rejection of the distinction between "high" and "low" or popular culture, both in choice of materials used to produce art and in methods of displaying, distributing, and consuming art.

Postmodernism, like modernism, follows most of these same ideas, rejecting boundaries between high and low forms of art, rejecting rigid genre distinctions, emphasiz-ing pastiche, parody, bricolage, irony, and playfulness. Postmodern art (and thought) favors reflexivity and self-consciousness, fragmentation and discontinuity (especially in narrative structures), ambiguity, simultaneity, and an emphasis on the destructured, decentered, dehumanized subject.

But--while postmodernism seems very much like modernism in these ways, it differs from modernism in its attitude toward a lot of these trends. Modernism, for example, tends to present a fragmented view of human subjectivity and history (think of The Wasteland, for instance, or of Woolf's To the Lighthouse), but presents that fragmentation as something tragic, something to be lamented and mourned as a loss. Many modernist works try to uphold the idea that works of art can provide the unity, coherence, and meaning which has been lost in most of modern life; art will do what other human institutions fail to do. Postmodernism, in contrast, doesn't lament the idea of fragmentation, provisionality, or incoherence, but rather celebrates that. The world is meaningless? Let's not pretend that art can make meaning then, let's just play with nonsense.
Another way of looking at the relation between modernism and postmodernism helps to clarify some of these distinctions. According to Frederic Jameson, modernism and postmodernism are cultural formations which accompany particular stages of capitalism. Jameson outlines three primary phases of capitalism which dictate particular cultural practices (including what kind of art and literature is produced). The first is market capitalism, which occurred in the eighteenth through the late nineteenth centuries in Western Europe, England, and the United States (and all their spheres of influence). This first phase is associated with particular technological developments, namely, the steam-driven motor, and with a particular kind of aesthetics, namely, realism. The second phase occurred from the late nineteenth century until the mid-twentieth century (about WWII); this phase, monopoly capitalism, is associated with electric and internal combustion motors, and with modernism. The third, the phase we're in now, is multinational or consumer capitalism (with the emphasis placed on marketing, selling, and consuming commodities, not on producing them), associated with nuclear and electronic technologies, and correlated with postmodernism.

Like Jameson's characterization of postmodernism in terms of modes of production and technologies, the second facet, or definition, of postmodernism comes more from history and sociology than from literature or art history. This approach defines postmodernism as the name of an entire social formation, or set of social/historical attitudes; more precisely,this approach contrasts "postmodernity" with "modernity," rather than "postmodernism" with "modernism."
What's the difference? "Modernism" generally refers to the broad aesthetic movements of the twentieth century; "modernity" refers to a set of philosophical, political, and ethical ideas which provide the basis for the aesthetic aspect of modernism. "Modernity" is older than "modernism;" the label "modern," first articulated in nineteenth-century sociology, was meant to distinguish the present era from the previous one, which was labeled "antiquity." Scholars are always debating when exactly the "modern" period began, and how to distinguish between what is modern and what is not modern; it seems like the modern period starts earlier and earlier every time historians look at it. But generally, the "modern" era is associated with the European Enlightenment, which begins roughly in the middle of the eighteenth century. (Other historians trace elements of enlightenment thought back to the Renaissance or earlier, and one could argue that Enlightenment thinking begins with the eighteenth century. I usually date "modern" from 1750, if only because I got my Ph.D. from a program at Stanford called "Modern Thought and Literature," and that program focused on works written after 1750).

The basic ideas of the Enlightenment are roughly the same as the basic ideas of humanism. Jane Flax's article gives a good summary of these ideas or premises (on p. 41). I'll add a few things to her list.
1. There is a stable, coherent, knowable self. This self is conscious, rational, autonomous, and universal--no physical conditions or differences substantially affect how this self operates.
2. This self knows itself and the world through reason, or rationality, posited as the highest form of mental functioning, and the only objective form.
3. The mode of knowing produced by the objective rational self is "science," which can provide universal truths about the world, regardless of the individual status of the knower.
4. The knowledge produced by science is "truth," and is eternal.
5. The knowledge/truth produced by science (by the rational objective knowing self) will always lead toward progress and perfection. All human institutions and practices can be analyzed by science (reason/objectivity) and improved.
6. Reason is the ultimate judge of what is true, and therefore of what is right, and what is good (what is legal and what is ethical). Freedom consists of obedience to the laws that conform to the knowledge discovered by reason.
7. In a world governed by reason, the true will always be the same as the good and the right (and the beautiful); there can be no conflict between what is true and what is right (etc.).
8. Science thus stands as the paradigm for any and all socially useful forms of knowledge. Science is neutral and objective; scientists, those who produce scientific knowledge through their unbiased rational capacities, must be free to follow the laws of reason, and not be motivated by other concerns (such as money or power).
9. Language, or the mode of expression used in producing and disseminating knowledge, must be rational also. To be rational, language must be transparent; it must function only to represent the real/perceivable world which the rational mind observes. There must be a firm and objective connection between the objects of perception and the words used to name them (between signifier and signified).
These are some of the fundamental premises of humanism, or of modernism. They serve--as you can probably tell--to justify and explain virtually all of our social structures and institutions, including democracy, law, science, ethics, and aesthetics.

Modernity is fundamentally about order: about rationality and rationalization, creating order out of chaos. The assumption is that creating more rationality is conducive to creating more order, and that the more ordered a society is, the better it will function (the more rationally it will function). Because modernity is about the pursuit of ever-increasing levels of order, modern societies constantly are on guard against anything and everything labeled as "disorder," which might disrupt order. Thus modern societies rely on continually establishing a binary opposition between "order" and "disorder," so that they can assert the superiority of "order." But to do this, they have to have things that represent "disorder"--modern societies thus continually have to create/construct "disorder." In western culture, this disorder becomes "the other"--defined in relation to other binary oppositions. Thus anything non-white, non-male, non-heterosexual, non-hygienic, non-rational, (etc.) becomes part of "disorder," and has to be eliminated from the ordered, rational modern society.

The ways that modern societies go about creating categories labeled as "order" or "disorder" have to do with the effort to achieve stability. Francois Lyotard (the theorist whose works Sarup describes in his article on postmodernism) equates that stability with the idea of "totality," or a totalized system (think here of Derrida's idea of "totality" as the wholeness or completeness of a system). Totality, and stability, and order, Lyotard argues, are maintained in modern societies through the means of "grand narratives" or "master narratives," which are stories a culture tells itself about its practices and beliefs. A "grand narrative" in American culture might be the story that democracy is the most enlightened (rational) form of government, and that democracy can and will lead to universal human happiness. Every belief system or ideology has its grand narratives, according to Lyotard; for Marxism, for instance, the "grand narrative" is the idea that capitalism will collapse in on itself and a utopian socialist world will evolve. You might think of grand narratives as a kind of meta-theory, or meta-ideology, that is, an ideology that explains an ideology (as with Marxism); a story that is told to explain the belief systems that exist.
Lyotard argues that all aspects of modern societies, including science as the primary form of knowledge, depend on these grand narratives. Postmodernism then is the critique of grand narratives, the awareness that such narratives serve to mask the contradictions and instabilities that are inherent in any social organization or practice. In other words, every attempt to create "order" always demands the creation of an equal amount of "disorder," but a "grand narrative" masks the constructedness of these categories by explaining that "disorder" REALLY IS chaotic and bad, and that "order" REALLY IS rational and good.

Postmodernism, in rejecting grand narratives, favors "mini-narratives," stories that explain small practices, local events, rather than large-scale universal or global concepts. Postmodern "mini-narratives" are always situational, provisional, contingent, and temporary, making no claim to universality, truth, reason, or stability.

Another aspect of Enlightenment thought--the final of my 9 points--is the idea that language is transparent, that words serve only as representations of thoughts or things, and don't have any function beyond that. Modern societies depend on the idea that signifiers always point to signifieds, and that reality resides in signifieds. In postmodernism, however, there are only signifiers. The idea of any stable or permanent reality disappears, and with it the idea of signifieds that signifiers point to. Rather, for postmodern societies, there are only surfaces, without depth; only signifiers, with no signifieds.

Another way of saying this, according to Jean Baudrillard, is that in postmodern society there are no originals, only copies--or what he calls "simulacra." You might think, for example, about painting or sculpture, where there is an original work (by Van Gogh, for instance), and there might also be thousands of copies, but the original is the one with the highest value (particularly monetary value). Contrast that with cds or music recordings, where there is no "original," as in painting--no recording that is hung on a wall, or kept in a vault; rather, there are only copies, by the millions, that are all the same, and all sold for (approximately) the same amount of money. Another version of Baudrillard's "simulacrum" would be the concept of virtual reality, a reality created by simulation, for which there is no original. This is particularly evident in computer games/simulations--think of Sim City, Sim Ant, etc.

Finally, postmodernism is concerned with questions of the organization of knowledge. In modern societies, knowledge was equated with science, and was contrasted to narrative; science was good knowledge, and narrative was bad, primitive, irrational (and thus associated with women, children, primitives, and insane people). Knowledge, however, was good for its own sake; one gained knowledge, via education, in order to be knowledgeable in general, to become an educated person. This is the ideal of the liberal arts education. In a postmodern society, however, knowledge becomes functional--you learn things, not to know them, but to use that knowledge. As Sarup points out (p. 13, educational policy today puts emphasis on skills and training, rather than on a vague humanist ideal of education in general. This is particularly acute for English majors. "What will you DO with your degree?"

Not only is knowledge in postmodern societies charac-terized by its utility, but knowledge is also distributed, stored, and arranged differently in postmodern societies than in modern ones. Specifically, the advent of electronic computer technologies has revolutionized the modes of knowledge production, distribution, and consumption in our society (indeed, some might argue that postmodern-ism is best described by, and correlated with, the emergence of computer technology, starting in the 1960s, as the dominant force in all aspects of social life). In post-modern societies, anything which is not able to be translated into a form recognizable and storable by a computer--i.e. anything that's not digitizable--will cease to be knowledge. In this paradigm, the opposite of "knowledge" is not "ignorance," as it is the modern/ humanist paradigm, but rather "noise." Anything that doesn't qualify as a kind of knowledge is "noise," is something that is not recognizable as anything within this system.

Lyotard says (and this is what Sarup spends a lot of time explaining) that the important question for postmodern societies is who decides what knowledge is (and what "noise" is), and who knows what needs to be decided. Such decisions about knowledge don't involve the old modern/humanist qualifications: for example, to assess knowledge as truth (its technical quality), or as goodness or justice (its ethical quality) or as beauty (its aesthetic quality). Rather, Lyotard argues, knowledge follows the paradigm of a language game, as laid out by Wittgenstein. I won't go into the details of Wittgenstein's ideas of language games; Sarup gives a pretty good explanation of this concept in his article, for those who are interested.

There are lots of questions to be asked about postmodernism, and one of the most important is about the politics involved--or, more simply, is this movement toward fragmentation, provisionality, performance, and instability something good or something bad? There are various answers to that; in our contemporary society, however, the desire to return to the pre-postmodern era (modern/humanist/Enlightenment thinking) tends to get associated with conservative political, religious, and philosophical groups. In fact, one of the consequences of postmodernism seems to be the rise of religious fundamentalism, as a form of resistance to the questioning of the "grand narratives" of religious truth. This is perhaps most obvious (to us in the US, anyway) in muslim fundamentalism in the Middle East, which ban postmodern books--like Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses --because they deconstruct such grand narratives.
This association between the rejection of postmodern-ism and conservatism or fundamentalism may explain in part why the postmodern avowal of fragmentation and multiplicity tends to attract liberals and radicals. This is why, in part, feminist theorists have found postmodernism so attractive, as Sarup, Flax, and Butler all point out.

On another level, however, postmodernism seems to offer some alternatives to joining the global culture of consumption, where commodities and forms of knowledge are offered by forces far beyond any individual's control. These alternatives focus on thinking of any and all action (or social struggle) as necessarily local, limited, and partial--but nonetheless effective. By discarding "grand narratives" (like the liberation of the entire working class) and focusing on specific local goals (such as improved day care centers for working mothers in your own community), postmodernist politics offers a way to theorize local situations as fluid and unpredictable, though influenced by global trends. Hence the motto for postmodern politics might well be "think globally, act locally"--and don't worry about any grand scheme or master plan.

All materials on this site are written by, and remain the property of, Dr. Mary Klages, Associate Professor, English Department, University of Colorado, Boulder. You are welcome to quote from this essay, or to link this page to your own site, with proper attribution. For information about citing electronic sources, see English 2010 Home Page

Last revision: December 3, 1997

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The Gospel and Postmodernism

©2000 by Ross P. Rohde.

Published in www.postmission.com by kind permission

For more papers on Postmodernity and Christian Mission, go to http://www.postmission.com/

A comment that is often heard in missiological circles is that Europe and even the United States is becoming post-Christian. Some go so far as to state that Europe is already post-Christian. I think this statement carries a lot of truth. However, I think this statement tends to mask the real issue. I would suggest that the real issue in not post-Christendom but postmodernism. The western world is undergoing a rapid cultural shift away from a previously held worldview. This shift is affecting the way religion and Christianity are perceived by those who have undergone this shift of worldview or hold some aspects of the new worldview. It is this shift in worldview and the Church’s failure to understand and adjust to this new way of perceiving reality that is to a large measure, causing the rejection of organized religion and more specifically Evangelical Christianity in Europe and to a lesser extent in the United States.

One of the difficulties of this shift in world view is that it is has caused significant cultural change that does not have the usual earmarks of a different culture. Western postmodernists look, dress, and speak just like western modernists. They eat in the same restaurants, work in the same offices, and their children go to the same schools. In other words they seem to be just like us yet at the level of values and how they perceive their world they are very different.
Because of this difficulty to easily discern this subtle yet profound cultural shift, we may very well be missing a tremendous opportunity. While this shift in worldview may tend to leave those of us with the old worldview bewildered and even angry, it has some elements to it that bode well for the Christian faith if we deal with these elements strategically and wisely. One of the great strengths of Christianity has been its ability to adjust to different cultures and worldviews without losing its essence. I would suggest that we need to look at the new worldview of postmodernism from a strategic point of view and ask ourselves, how can Christianity be expressed in this new culture without losing its fundamental essence? We also need to ask ourselves, where are positive points of contact within the postmodern worldview that God can use to make contact with these people for Christ?

A Discussion with Paco

On Saturday February 26, 2000 I had a conversation with Paco Lledo, a non–Christian friend of mine in Madrid which started me thinking about postmodernism and its strategic ramifications in the preaching of the Gospel. Paco was telling me about a book he had just finished about Mani the founder of the ancient religious movement that later became the Assassins. Paco related how Mani did not use his political privileges, given to him by the Persian King, to teach his “truth”. He mentioned that Mani did not teach his doctrine as exclusive but as inclusive. He never belittled other religions, but rather portrayed himself as one who could give further truth. He talked about how Mani tried to get people to “find the light within”. I asked Paco how he felt personally about these things.

In general Paco related that he was favorably disposed towards Mani because he was not argumentative, but was humble, inclusive and tried to put people in touch with the “light that was within”. I asked Paco how he responded to modern day religion. He said he was a non-practicing Catholic. He did not like the history of the Catholic Church in Spain, particularly their abuse of power and the use of coercion to make people conform to their belief system. He did not believe they had an exclusive spiritual truth that was unavailable to others apart from the Catholic Church. He related that he believed that his own experience told him that there was “something more” and that whatever it was, he wanted it. This something more should impact his life in practical ways. I asked him how he would find it? He said that when he saw someone who was displaying something spiritual in his or her life “that person can be a spiritual guide for me.” At that point I summarized what I had heard to make sure I was getting the fine points. I expressed his views as being postmodern. He was familiar with this term and agreed with me that his point of view was postmodern. He also agreed with my summary of his views. Following is my summary of Paco’s views:

- He does not appreciate the abuse of power or influence in the name of religion.
- He is sensitive to the hypocrisy of those who claim religious truth.
- He does not believe in exclusive truth.
- He does not believe that one religion has all the answers.
- Argument against another religion, no matter what it is, offends him.
- He defines himself as a non-practicing Catholic. However “Catholic” is still part of his cultural heritage and his religious definition for himself.
- He believes that there is something beyond what we normally experience.
- He believes this “something more” is spiritual.
- He believes that he can find this something more by looking for the light within.
- Spirituality must have practical application in life.
- He would be open to someone being his spiritual guide.
- One gains the right to be his spiritual guide by invitation.
- One also gains this right to be his spiritual guide by demonstrating an undefined spirituality in their own life.

Bad News and Good News

For me as an Evangelical there are some disturbing concepts in Paco’s understanding of truth. His understanding of reality does not fit my Biblical or cultural worldview. Among some of the elements I find disturbing are:

- He does not believe in exclusive truth.
- He does not believe that one religion has all the answers.
- Argument against another religion, no matter what it is, offends him.
- He defines himself as a non-practicing Catholic. However “Catholic” is still part of his cultural heritage and his religious definition for himself.
- He believes that he can find spirituality by looking for the light within.

As an Evangelical I believe in both objective and exclusive truth. I believe the Bible is God’s revelation to mankind; it is true and furthermore Jesus is the ultimate expression of truth. He said I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. I believe this truth to be exclusive, because as Jesus said, no one comes to the Father but by Me. Since no one comes to the Father but by Jesus I believe we have exclusive answers to ultimate questions. If this is true, then other religions are by logical deduction not true. Like most Evangelicals I have concerns about some of the Catholic Church’s doctrines which are part of Paco’s cultural and religious self-definition. To look for the light within sounds very much like New Age thought which I find dangerous and uncomfortable.

What this tells me is that given Paco’s worldview, if I were to preach to him that my Bible, my faith and my understandings were true and even more, exclusively true, I would lose my hearing with him. He would probably not “hear” the core of my message because my exclusivity and rejection of others would render me as an unfit messenger of light.

However there is some good news. Many of Paco’s affirmations have positive strategic implication for the preaching of the gospel.

- He believes that there is something beyond what we normally experience.
- He believes this “something more” is spiritual.
- Spirituality must have practical application in life.
- He would be open to someone being his spiritual guide.
- One gains the right to be his spiritual guide by invitation.
- One also gains this right to be his spiritual guide by demonstrating an undefined spirituality in their life.

Paco is not an atheist. He believes that there is something more and that his very nature testifies to this. He might as well have quoted Romans 1:19-20. He is seeking spirituality. He wants a spirituality that has practical application in his life. He is willing to listen to someone who he perceives as having demonstrated spirituality in his or her own life. Jesus Christ has exactly what Paco is looking for. If one has a good testimony with him they can gain the right to become his spiritual guide. But this will probably not come by quoting the Bible or by sharing doctrinal truths. It comes by showing Christ alive in one’s life.

Postmodernism

In many ways Paco is quite typical as a postmodernist. I found it interesting that Paco was familiar with the term and willing to include himself in this group. Paco is a well-educated man. He is an engineer working for an aeronautical firm designing helicopters. Yet he openly discusses spirituality and his desire to find it. I did a web search on the concept postmodernism and found an article by Dr. Mary Klages, who is an Associate Professor of the English Department at University of Colorado, Boulder entitled Postmodernism, which I have found helpful (http://www.colorado.edu/English/ENGL2012Klages/pomo.html). In this brief article Klages defines Postmodernism both from a literary perspective and from a historical/sociological perspective. While these points of view are interrelated, it is the sociological implications of postmodernism that have strategic implication for the preaching of the Gospel in modern western society.

“… the second facet, or definition, of postmodernism comes more from history and sociology than from literature or art history. This approach defines postmodernism as the name of an entire social formation, or set of social/historical attitudes; more precisely, this approach contrast “postmodernity” with modernity,” rather than “postmodernism” with “modernism.” (Klages p. 2).

I have tried to extract some of the tendencies of postmodernity. However it should be noted that we do not live in a completely postmodern society, but rather in a society that is moving rapidly from a traditional society to postmodernity. Social change on this scale takes generations. Francisco Andrés Orizo, a Spanish sociologist, in his book Sistemas de valores en la España de los 90 writes:

Y no es una casualidad que muchas de estas manifestaciones que rompen los esquemas de la modernidad se lideren dentro del escenario español, cuando aún no habíamos completado las prescritas etapas de un proceso de modernización. Nos hemos hecho posmodernos sin haber ejercido antes de modernos.1
(And it is not a coincidence that many of these expressions that shatter the preconceptions of modernity may have come upon the Spanish scene, when we haven’t even completed the prescribed stages of the process of modernization. We have become postmodern without having previously practiced modernism.)
According to Orizo the prevailing worldview in Spain before postmodernism was the traditional worldview. So Spain has jumped from a traditional (or premodern) worldview to a postmodern worldview without having gone through modernity. While we may encounter people in Europe or the United States who are thoroughly modern in outlook; most Spaniards are either traditional in their worldview or postmodern. It is probably much more common to find people who have many postmodern values, some having more than others. However this is the direction in which Western society is moving, and each succeeding generation will have a higher percentage of postmodernists and be more thoroughly immersed in postmodern thought. It should also be noted that in reality Europe is much more postmodern than modern. Also in this age of rapid and powerful communication, social change occurs more rapidly that it did in past generations. So it would be reasonable to expect a more rapid shift from modern or traditional to post modern than from ancient to modern or even from one modern expression to another, for example from Renaissance to Enlightenment.

While this monumental change takes time Orizo’s research seems to indicate that in general, Spaniards who were born before 1945 tend to be traditional in outlook, those who were born after this date have a stronger tendency for a postmodern outlook. The younger a Spaniard is the more likely their value system will reflect postmodernism and their postmodernism will be tend to be more ideologically pure.

Tendencies of Postmodernity

Taken from the Klages article:

- Subjectivity
- Rejection of rigid distinctions
- Local, personal and specific truth
- Rejection of absolute truths
- Rejection of “grand narratives” which explain reality such as capitalism or communism. These grand narratives are seen as old and simplistic and don’t adequately explain the world’s complexity.
- Practicality
- Inclusiveness or tolerance
- Diversity of morals and lifestyle
- Tendency to perceive information that does not fit their worldview as “noise”.
- Tendency to see conservative religion or politics as the enemy.
- Language is fluid and subjective (the hearer brings as much to the conversation as the listener).

Other tendencies not specifically mentioned by Klages:
- Desire for spirituality
- Desire for community
- Rejection of negativity

1 Francisco Andrés Orizo, sistemas de valores en la España de los 90, (Madrid, Centro de Investigaciones Sociolóicas. 1996). Page LV-LVI.

Tendencies of Modernity
- Rationality
- Autonomy
- Objectivity
- Science as the objective arbiter of truth
- Knowledge produced by science is “truth” and is eternal
- Value of progress and perfection
- Order
- Language is rational and transparent (it means exactly what it says)
- Rejection of that which does not represent order
- Rejection of that which is considered “other” i.e. lack of tolerance

Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism as Expressions of Modernism
What struck me as Klages described modernity was that Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism are modern expressions of Christianity. I do not in any way mean to disparage either of these expressions of our faith. I merely mean that they are an expression of their historical/cultural context, a context that is rapidly changing. Protestantism itself started with the Renaissance, which was the first cultural expression of modernity. The various expressions of Protestantism developed as modernity developed. Evangelicalism and Christian Fundamentalism as we now know them are the fullest expressions of the modern worldview brought into the Christian faith. These expressions have a distinctly American flavor, although each country will have its own variations.

Orizo’s observation that Spain has passed from a traditional society to a postmodern society without having fully passed through modernism goes a long way in explaining why the Evangelical Church expressing itself in modernist forms has never been able to make strong inroads into the Spanish culture. This paper will focus on the contrast of modernism and postmodernism because the modernism of the Evangelical Church and the postmodernism of the Spanish society has become a critical strategic issue.

Following are some ways in which we express our modern cultural underpinnings. I do not in any way want to imply that these are wrong, merely that we have expressed our faith from a specific worldview.

A scientific view of the Bible. The Bible is our book of theological facts. We investigate this book to extract these facts. Our hermeneutic could be metaphorically described as putting the Bible under a microscope. The evangelical hermeneutic is highly objective. We want to know exactly what the text means by what it says. In other words the language of the Bible is transparent.

Emphasis on doctrine. Doctrines are our theological facts. We have a tendency to disagree and even argue over these facts because to get the facts right is of very high value to modernists. We have a low tolerance for ambiguity in doctrine because the modern mind wants everything clearly explained.

High value on rightness. The modern mind wants everything analyzed and put in order. Whatever does not fit our order must be rejected. What fits the order or scheme is right; what does not must be rejected. Thus modern Evangelical scholarship places high value of systematic theology and on schools of systematic theology, for example Calvinism.

Low tolerance for mystery. I am not using the word mystery in the Pauline sense of the word as “a previously unknown truth which is now revealed” but in its more generic sense of something that can not be easily explained or understood or perhaps isn’t completely explainable or understandable.

High value on Truth. We often state our faith as a series of “truths”. This is as old as Christianity itself. It goes back to the first Christian creed which is Jesus is Lord and continues through the various other creeds such as the Nicene and the Apostles Creed. However, these creeds are relatively simple and brief compared to the systemization and expression of doctrine common in modern Christianity (think of Chafer’s Systematic Theology in eight volumes). We have systematically tried to extract every truth from the Bible and have tried to express each truth doctrinally.

Low tolerance for aberration. Modern Christianity has a fairly low tolerance for aberration in doctrine and lifestyle. We highly value lifestyles that reflect our doctrines and feel we need to confront those lifestyles that do not fit Biblical/Doctrinal norms. This is one of the differences between Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism. Evangelicalism is more tolerant in doctrinal aberration than is Fundamentalism. Two moral issues which are currently important to most expressions of the Christian faith are homosexuality and abortion. Doctrinally, most Christians would affirm their love of those who practice these lifestyles, while expressing abhorrence for the practice itself. Often though, we are perceived by outsiders as hating both of these lifestyles and those who practice these lifestyles.

Proclamation of the Gospel as Doctrine. One of the great strengths of modern Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism is our ability to proclaim the truths of the Gospel in clear concise ways. We do this in a number of ways: The Four Spiritual Laws, Steps to Peace with God, The Bridge Illustration and The Roman Road, among others. Our very ability to be concise and clear reflects our modern worldview. The Gospel itself is viewed as a doctrinal truth to be accepted and believed as fact. More ancient forms of Christianity such as Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy struggle with this. This is because their worldview tends more toward an ancient mindset. Thus, the Christian faith is viewed as a series of mysteries, symbols, creeds and paradoxes to be meditated on. In contemplation of the symbols, mysteries and creeds one might come into communion with God.
High value in teaching and preaching. Because we tend to view our faith doctrinally and we so highly value truth, we feel a high expression of Christian maturity is to be doctrinally and Biblically knowledgeable. Therefore there is a high value put on teaching. This is particularly expressed in the large proportion of time devoted to preaching and teaching in the typical Evangelical or Fundamentalist service. Among many, there is a very high value put on expository Bible teaching. In other words, what exactly does the text say and therefore how does this doctrine apply to our lives. It is quite common for churches to systematically go through a book of the Bible or even the entire Bible itself. This is a fairly recent phenomenon in the Church. Thirty or forty years ago in Evangelical or Fundamentalist circles most sermons were topical sermons. Three or four centuries ago they were homilies.
Low value in personal discipleship. Because there tends to be such a high value on teaching in the church service, there is a correspondingly lower value placed on strong personal discipleship. When personal discipleship is expressed it is often focused on teaching Biblical and doctrinal knowledge or Bible memorization. Often there is even a failure to distinguish between personal discipleship and teaching such as in Sunday School (another modern expression). This is not to say that discipleship is non-existent but that it is fairly uncommon and when expressed it is often highly doctrinal in nature. Compare modern forms of discipleship with more ancient forms which were much more personal, intimate and intense such as spiritual formation.
Autonomy in church practice. There is a strong sense of the autonomy of believers and of individual churches. The priesthood of all believers was one of the foundational principals of Protestantism. This high value on autonomy is a tendency of modernism. Because there is a high value also placed on truth and because we can not agree on the fine points of doctrinal truth, there is also a tendency for the fragmentation of the Church into denominations and even individual church bodies holding firmly to their specific doctrines.
These practices are not necessarily right or wrong, they are expressions that have grown out of a specific cultural/historical context. Some very good things have come out of these modern expressions of Christianity, for example the ability to clearly and simply express the gospel and a deep and exhaustive understanding of Biblical truth. However, like all cultural expressions of Christianity, if exposed to another worldview or culture without contextualization there will be a tendency to reject the message because of the way it is communicated. We have to also realize that, as in all cultural expressions of Christianity, there will be weaknesses which others can clearly see but to which we are insensitive or even blind.

Barriers and Bridges

As modern Christianity moves into this new worldview or culture of postmodernism, it will encounter barriers of understanding. These barriers of understanding become one of our two chief strategic stumbling blocks. At the same time there may very well be bridges of natural affinity to our message that we will not recognize because they are so foreign to us or are expressed in ways that make us uncomfortable. This becomes our other chief stumbling block.

Barriers

Some of the potential barriers we will face:
Truth and Subjectivity. Modernism puts a high value on exclusive truth. Postmodernism places a high value on subjectivity. To a postmodernist it is truth if it is true for me. This could be expressed as this is my truth; you can have your own. It is true for me. This resonates with me. You believe what you want to, I will believe what I want to.

Rejection of rigid distinctions. Postmodernists tend to not like rigid distinctions made about themselves or others. Even more so, they will bristle at negative judgements made about different opinions or lifestyles. They may not agree with these opinions or lifestyles themselves but they would uphold the right of others to hold different views or practice different lifestyles. This may be expressed in the following ways: How dare you judge someone else. I believe in tolerance. The only thing I am intolerant of is intolerance. I believe in diversity of lifestyles.

Local, personal and specific truth. As stated above, postmodernism places a high value on subjectivity. This is true to the point that there is a tendency to view truth as personal and specific. Everyone can have his or her own truth. Postmodernists also tend to take on as truth what their peer group or community believes. If a group to which they identify has strong value structures they will also tend to hold these values.

Rejection of absolute truths. Klages in her work titled Postmodernism refers to Francois Lyotard’s concept of the “grand narrative”,
Totality, and stability, and order, Lyotard argues, are maintained in modern societies through the means of “grand narratives” or “master narratives,” which are stories a culture tells itself about its practices and beliefs. A “grand narrative” in American culture might be the story that democracy is the most enlightened (rational) form of government, and that democracy can and will lead to universal human happiness. Every belief system or ideology has its grand narratives, according to Lyotard; for Marxism, for instance, the “grand narrative” is the idea that capitalism will collapse in on itself and a utopian socialist world will evolve. You might think of grand narratives as a kind of meta-theory, or meta-ideology, that is, an ideology that explains an ideology (as in Marxism); a story that is told to explain the belief systems that exist.” (p.4)

Klages goes on to explain:

Postmodernism then is the critique of grand narratives, the awareness that such narratives serve to mask the contradictions and instabilities that are inherent in any social organization or practice… Post modernism, in rejecting grand narratives, favors “mini-narratives,” stories that explain small practices, local events, rather than large-scale universal or global concepts. Post modern “mini-narratives” are always situational, provisional, contingent, and temporary, making no claim to universality, truth, reason, or stability. (p.4)
Christianity by its very nature is a grand-narrative which claims to be absolute truth. Most postmodernists would reject out of hand ideas and concepts presented in this way.

Inclusiveness or tolerance. As stated above postmodernists have a low tolerance for intolerance. This may seem a logical contradiction to a modernist, but like it or not this is their tendency. This becomes a strategic barrier when we express low tolerance or lack of tolerance for other religious expressions, lifestyles or morals.

Diversity of morals and lifestyles. Postmodernists desire the freedom to express and live their own personal morals and lifestyles. Initial hostility to these lifestyles, opinions or morals will create an almost insurmountable strategic barrier.

Tendency to perceive information that does not fit their worldview as “noise”. In the modern conception the opposite of knowledge is ignorance, but in the postmodern worldview it is noise (Klages p. 5). Postmodernists have just as much trouble understanding ideas which are not formulated in their paradigms as do other worldviews. By communicating with postmodernists in modern paradigms we risk our ideas being classified as having no value (noise). At this point, this is the chief barrier we are encountering in the preaching of the gospel to postmodernists. We tend to start at the wrong points, and present our truth in the wrong ways and we immediately get turned off as noise, just like someone switching the channel to static.

Rejection of negativity. Postmodernists do not appreciate statements that are perceived as negative or lacking in appreciation of personal freedom. To express hostility to another religious expression would tend to create a barrier of communication. To express hostility to a given lifestyle or value would be perceived as negative and would also create a barrier of communication. It would not only be noise, but it would be viewed as intolerant. This does not mean that the postmodernist personally holds these views, but rather he or she upholds the rights of other to have different views, values or lifestyles.

Tendency to see conservative religion or politics as the enemy.

…the desire to return to the pre-postmodern era (modern/humanist/Enlightenment thinking) tends to get associated with conservative political, religious, and philosophical groups. In fact, one of the consequences of postmodernism seems to be the rise of religious fundamentalism, as a form of resistance to the questioning of the “grand narratives” of religious truth. (Klages p.5)
There are natural and inherent conflicts in the encounter between the modern worldview and the postmodern worldview. There are also inherent conflicts in the encounter of modern expressions of Christianity as it encounters postmodern culture. Postmodernists feel this keenly and tend to view us as the enemy.

Bridges

However, there are several bridges into the postmodernist’s life which have encouraging strategic potential.

Tendency for spiritual sensitivity. One clear characteristic of postmodernists is that they have a tendency to be spiritual seekers. Newsweek magazine reports that people are buying more books on meditation, prayer, and spirituality than on sex or self-help.2 Of course not all postmodernists are spiritual seekers, but many are. This bodes well for those who wish to preach the gospel to them. However, this spiritual search is a search for something experiential, personal and practical in nature. They are looking for their own personal spirituality. Thus we see the rise of Eastern religions in Western societies. New Age thinking, for example, is becoming more and more popular. We should think of New Age as an expression of postmodern spirituality because it is experiential, personal and from the practitioners point of view practical.

Experiential Spirituality. One of the major advantages we have as Christians in dealing with postmodernists is that we have a God who is real and who is active in our lives. Unfortunately, this personal interaction has been somewhat downplayed in our modern expressions of Christianity. Many postmodernists are looking for a real spiritual encounter. They want to make actual contact with spiritual forces. They can make contact with Jesus who is real and very powerful.
Personal Spirituality. While at first this looks like a disadvantage it can be turned to an advantage. Those postmodernists who are spiritually minded want to have personal interaction with spiritual forces. Christians have a personal love relationship with Jesus Christ. We encounter Him through abiding, Christian meditation, Bible study and prayer. He is interested in every detail of our lives and is willing to become involved in the most intimate and minute details of our lives. He answers our prayers supernaturally. This is a very positive message for a postmodernist if we can communicate it to them in their cultural language.
Practicality. Postmodernists want answers to the real problems they are facing in their daily lives. They don’t want grand narratives, they don’t want doctrinal answers, they want results. We have a God who can meet their needs. We have a God who has spoken to mankind in practical ways about their significant needs. He continues to interact with mankind through meditation of the Scriptures, the body life of the Church, and the Church’s interaction with society. We have a God who has given us practical guidelines on marriage, child rearing, family, lifestyle, relationships, and dealing with problem areas of our lives, among others.
Social needs. Postmodernists, while rejecting the grand narratives, do want answers to local problems. If we were to talk to most postmodernists about the large sociopolitical problems that cause world hunger they would turn off the noise. However, if we were to send food and clothing to flood victims they would respect us for having a social conscience. They want to see action that is doing something about real problems. This will be perceived as showing spiritual light, we call it having a good testimony.

Shalom. Postmodernists are looking for a better life. But the improvements they are looking for are not merely material. They have the benefits of modern technology and they appreciate them, but they want something more. They want emotional comfort, happiness, peace, joy, and love. They may not know how to express it in our terms but they are looking for shalom. This is good news because Jesus wants to give them shalom.

2 Dr. Bruce Demarest, Satisfy Your Soul: Restoring the Heart of Christian Spirituality (Colorado Springs: Navpress, 1999), p.44.

They are willing to break out of former norms. Postmodernists are willing and even anxious to break out of modern forms including and even especially religious forms. However, religion expressed in modernism is something they are adamantly against. They would be willing to try new religious forms if they were practical, spiritual and spoke their language. In Spain we need to keep in mind that Catholicism is viewed as part of the social fabric of life; it is part of being Spanish. They may not like Catholicism as it now exists as a religious practice but they don’t want to lose their Spanishness. Any expression of spirituality that looks, tastes and feels Spanish will be greatly appreciated.
They are looking for spiritual guides. My first reaction to Paco’s statement that someone could be a spiritual guide for him made me think of New Age spirituality, which concerned me. However, once I could get past the language I realized that this is exactly what a witness is, someone who points a non-believer to Jesus. Witness needs to come from relationship not from proclamation. Their idea of a spiritual guide is not someone who points them to the right trail but rather someone who says, “I have experienced the trail. I love the trail. I am on the trail. Come with me.” Furthermore, they need to sense that indeed we are on a spiritual trail and that that trail could be good and practical for them. Proclamation of the doctrinal truth of the gospel as a theological fact to be believed will be turned off as noise. In fact, that is what most of us are experiencing as we preach the gospel to postmodernists. We need to find ways of making relationship and then inviting them join us on the trail.

Moving In the Direction of Solutions

How do we get past the cultural and communication barriers between modernists and postmodernists and cross the bridges that exist so they can meet Jesus? Following are some ideas to ponder. I don’t claim that I have concrete failsafe solutions but as we work together and experiment together perhaps the Holy Spirit will guide us to ways to make contact and allow us to be spiritual guides to our postmodern friends.

Lead with Jesus. Those postmodernists who are spiritually minded want encounters with a personal spiritual force. This of course can be a very dangerous desire if it is focused in the wrong direction. However, if focused on Jesus it can lead to an encounter with the loving, gracious God of the universe. We might consider talking with our friends about what Jesus is doing in our lives. We need to talk about Him just as He is, personal and spiritual.

We also need to be careful. Going too fast or too aggressively will be perceived as noise and we will be turned off.

Be practical. Postmodernists want to hear practical solutions. How is Jesus affecting our marriage? How is Jesus helping me overcome bitterness? How is Jesus helping me raise my kids? What is Jesus leading me to do for my neighbors who have needs?

Be spiritual. Our modern tendency is to avoid being too spiritual. To the point that we often view mysticism with skepticism. Christian mysticism is as old as the Church. Postmodernists who are looking for spirituality are probably much more open to personal spiritual encounter than a non-Christian modernist would be.

Think of introducing them personally to Jesus. Our modern tendency is to preach the gospel as a doctrine to be accepted and believed as truth. It might be wise to consider introducing our postmodern friends to a spiritual Jesus who offers practical solutions; one of the most important of which is that Jesus wants to cleanse us spiritually. He wants to offer grace, love and peace to those who formerly didn’t know Him. Then we can go to the cross as a highly personal act that showed the extent to which He would go to meet us and spiritually cleanse us.

George G. Hunter III in his book How to Reach Secular People suggest that instead of trying to convince someone of the rightness of our point of view and then ask for a decision or conversion as we do with modernists we should look for a series of mini-conversions. He suggests that we should do this from relationship looking for changes of perspective in these following six points in the following order:

- awareness
- relevance
- interest
- trial
- adoption
- reinforcement In other words first we help our friend become aware of our relationship to Jesus (mini¬conversion #1). Next we show how Jesus can be relevant in their personal life (mini¬conversion #2). We then try to cultivate interest in their investigating a relationship with Jesus (mini-conversion #3). We challenge our friend to see if Jesus won’t respond to their felt need such as in helping them heal a broken marriage or dealing with children (a trial). We can do this through introducing them to what God has said in his Word and through their own prayer to Jesus (mini-conversion #4). When they have an experience with Jesus we tell them of other things that Jesus offers especially forgiveness of sin, or spiritual cleansing (mini-conversion #5). We then need to encourage our friend that he or she has made the right choice. One way to do this is through introducing them to other Christians so they have a sense of community and they can begin to adopt the values of that community (mini-conversion #6). All of this comes from relationship and must be done over time. It is not something that can be done in one conversation, one week or probably even in one month.

Think about spiritual formation as a model. As discussed before, most postmodernists have an aversion to doctrine, but this does not mean they would be disinterested in spirituality and spiritual growth. One ancient model that would probably appeal to new postmodern Christians would be spiritual formation. In this model the spiritual director works through practical and spiritual problems with the disciple by directing the disciple to pray through and meditate on certain scriptures. He may give the disciple a specific spiritual task to accomplish or a question to answer; he may even strongly confront the disciple. This is intense biblical discipleship but it is not based on doctrinal knowledge but rather focused, deep, practical spiritual growth.

Look for an invitation to be a spiritual guide. Postmodernists reserve the right to invite us into their spiritual world. They don’t want us to invite ourselves. However that doesn’t mean that we have to sit around and do nothing. I like the analogy of fishing. We need to put out the concept of what Jesus is doing in our lives as “bait”. If they respond, we give them a little more. If they don’t, we build relationship and give them some more bait later. We can even tease them with the bait. But we should be very careful of coming on too hard. The second we are perceived as coercive we become noise to be switched off.

Look for discipleship relationships. We tend to think the gospel comes first, then introduction of the new Christian to a church, then discipleship through teaching. When the new Christian enters the church he will meet new Christian friends. We might consider changing the order of this model. Friendship comes first. In the process of friendship comes opportunity to become a spiritual guide. It is at this point that discipleship really starts. In the process of discipleship (or spiritual formation) we introduce the person to Jesus. We continue to guide this person in their relationship with Jesus. In the process as we begin to see spiritual growth we introduce the new disciple to others who know Jesus and who enjoy worshiping Jesus together. When the disciple is ready we introduce them to corporate worship in some sort of group or even church setting.
Look to the Creeds. Postmodernists tend to be allergic to systematic doctrine, but that does not mean that they do not need doctrine or shouldn’t be introduced to the foundational truths of Christianity. One way to do this would be to have them meditate of the basic creeds of the Church such as the Nicene and Apostles Creeds. This is also an opportunity to show wholeness of the body of Christ. We can say that different churches have different customs that comes from different periods of our rich history, but we all agree on these foundational truths.
Focus on the disciplines. The cardinal Christian disciplines of prayer, meditative Bible study, Christian meditation, fasting and scripture memorization would be something a new postmodern Christian might be drawn to as long as they were presented as spiritual exercises to draw closer to Christ and to gain practical solutions in ones spiritual life.

Focus on abiding. One of the key Christian disciplines that has tended to be de-emphasized in modern Christianity is abiding in Christ. Perhaps it is because abiding can be so mystical. Postmodern Christians will probably warm up immediately to the concept of Christ’s spiritual control and guidance in our life as we abide in Him and He abides in us.

Focus on prayer. Prayer is something that many non-Christian and new Christian postmodernists can relate to, after all, it is highly spiritual behavior. It would probably be wise to emphasize fully orbed Christian prayer. By this I mean that in modern Christianity we have tended to focus on supplication, thanksgiving and confession; down played worship and almost completely ignored meditative prayerful Bible study, Christian meditation, ecstatic prayer and prayers of silence. Some of our Pentecostal brothers have tended to focus on one specific style of ecstatic prayer (tongues) at the expense of other forms of prayer. We all have tended to do much more talking than listening in prayer. Postmodernists would be just as drawn to these other forms of prayer as they would supplication or tongues.

Find ways to express Spanishness. To be Spanish is to be Catholic. It will be hard to convince most Spaniards of anything else. The older a Spaniard is the more likely they are to hold to their Catholicness. Until we give them reason to believe otherwise they will view Protestantism as noise to be turned off. But if we can invite them to Church sponsored events that are very Spanish they will feel more at home. These need to be celebrations or social activities not teaching services. It becomes our burden to show one can be an Evangelical Christian and still be very Spanish. One way might be to avoid the words Protestant and Evangelical. We have the right to use the word Christian just as much as Catholics do. Use of this term, if done well becomes inclusive rather than exclusive. This may avoid an unnecessary barrier. We need to remember that any negative statements about the Catholic Church will not only be seen as intolerance but as anti-Spanish. We need to look for ways to build bridges of friendship to the Catholic Church without losing our own spiritual heritage; particularly to those in the Catholic Church who are truly born again. This does not mean we are in agreement with all the doctrines of the Catholic Church, but that we are trying to avoid a serious strategic barrier to the preaching of the gospel.

Find ways to express culture. Spaniards are very interested in their own cultural/historical/literary heritage. This is probably true of other expressions of European postmodernism. We might explore different ways of expressing and celebrating Spanish cultural and artistic events in the name of Jesus.
Offer shalom. Postmodernists are looking for wholeness, particularly emotional and spiritual wholeness. The biblical word for this is shalom. This is what Jesus is offering his people. This would be a concept that postmodernists could warm up to.

Meet real needs in the community and the world. Postmodernists want mini solutions to real problems. They are much more likely to warm up to giving blood at the blood mobile than to a march against world

From: Dick Ryan
To: ninetonoon@radionz.co.nz
Sent: Wednesday, August 03, 2005 9:56 AM
Subject: nuclear nonsense

Oh dear - political hypocrisy climbing steeply towards the election.
Labour trumpeting its ludicrous nuclear free act, which is no more innovative than its predecessor of twenty years, the treaty of Tlatalelco - a no smoking zone that only applies to non smokers, and this from the Party that has treasonably left us undefended in the air just as terrorism takes to it.

National tiptoeing around the nuclear eggs, unable to see that being in ANZUS (and even Lange was happy not to withdraw us from this Nuclear Pact) actually places us in the firing line of any conflict between the USA and - well, an Alliance has to be AGAINST somebody, and the USSR has collapsed so it will have to be China.

Yet the only argument we get is about the percentage possibility of nuclear ships melting down in NZ Ports.

Dick Ryan,
Democratic Party member.

The Orthodox Avant-Garde

Armed with traditional faith, these Christians subverted the establishment, putting secular ideas under the microscope of the eternal.

Interview by Rob Moll | posted 07/26/2005 09:00 a.m.

It's not easy to place thinkers as diverse as Walker Percy, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Martin Luther King Jr., G.K. Chesterton, and Northrop Frye into the same category. But Robert Inchausti, English professor at California State Polytechnic, San Luis Obispo, says they were all avant-garde orthodox Christians. No matter their different political, denominational, or literary positions, they all sought to be faithful to Jesus while engaging the world. In Subversive Orthodoxy: Outlaws, Revolutionaries, and Other Christians in Disguise, Inchausi discusses Christian thinkers, writers, and activists who challenged secular worldviews on their own turf, yet remained thoroughly Christian.

Who are the avant-garde Orthodox?

These were orthodox Christian thinkers and artists who were not theologians and made important and somewhat revolutionary contributions to various secular disciplines. They're interesting people because they're both subversive of the existing modern order, but they are not subversive of the church or subversive of the faith.

They have a unique status as people who model for us how it is possible for believing Christians to enter into dialogue with the secular culture in a way that revolutionizes and transforms the secular culture and doesn't just protest against it or isolate from it.

If you look at some of the major Christian artists and thinkers and social critics over the last hundred years, you find a variety of political, artistic, and intellectual schools within which they operate. Yet, they still share Christ as their major inspiration. You have somebody like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who from an American political perspective would be very conservative. He single-handedly did away with Marxism as an attractive philosophy for Paris intellectuals. And at the same time you have somebody like Dorothy Day, whose entire witness to the poor in the United States was to defend small families and small farms and collectives and indigenous poor against a social Darwinism that she thought was running away with American culture during the Cold War years.
Few people know these believers were Christians. E.F. Schumacher, the Small Is Beautiful fellow, is often recognized as the guy who wrote about Buddhist economics, because of a chapter in his book Small Is Beautiful. But he was a Christian, and he said he put in Buddhism because he didn't want it to seem like special pleading. He just wanted to make it clear that the economic systems had religious under pinning. In order to demonstrate that in a way that he could get a hearing, he used the example of Buddhism. But he himself was a Christian thinker.

Not only was their Christianity misunderstood, but often their message was misunderstood. You include Jack Kerouac, who dismissed his hippie followers who got into Buddhism, but Kerouac was a conservative and a Catholic.

Kerouac was really only a Buddhist for three years of his life. He was a very traditional Catholic growing up, and then he toyed with Buddhism for about three years. He came back to his faith and wrote a lot of stuff about Jesus and refused to give up his love of Jesus for the Buddha. Later, when he was having a hard time kicking his alcoholism, he started getting attacked by the New York critics for a pretty accurate description of his work, in which they said, This is a form of Christian primitivism.

Kerouac captures a spiritual search in a way that many novelists don't. You make the point that the novel has the ability to probe the soul in a way that Enlightenment attempts to discover truth can't.

That's why Solzhenitsyn was so wise to novelize his history of the gulag. When he transformed the sufferings of millions of people into stories we could feel, it became real. Pasternack, in Doctor Zhivago, made the spiritual sufferings of the lost intelligentsia of the revolution real in a way that we could feel. Kerouac does the same thing with a spiritual longing that was useful in the 50s and 60s to say there's more going on then just the Cold War. We should be telling our stories to one another about our inner lives.

Thomas Merton was another Catholic writing spiritual literature during the Cold War years.

The Seven Storey Mountain was a great conversion story. It provided a criticism of materialism, modernism, the Bohemian art theme, and left-wing politics, all these things that tempted him, that he turned away from 20 years before anybody else in the country had discovered them.

Then after he died, all his journals and letters came out, and it turns out that all those years that he was in the monastery, he was having these deep conversations with people from all different backgrounds and was thinking through his faith and bringing it into dialogue with all kinds of things, which made him a different writer. Now, we even read The Seven Storey Mountain differently.
It's ironic that while Merton had left the world for the monastery, through his letters, he was active politically. Many of these Christians have a different take on political action.

If you want to argue politics in the modern world you immediately find yourself hamstrung by definitions imposed on you by politicians who have laid out the rhetorical terrain. So the best way to deal with it is to refuse to play the game by the rules. These Christians offer an alternative vision that addresses political problems from a humble and inclusive Christian perspective that doesn't argue about things so much as reveal things.

Let me give you an example of this. At the end of my book, I say these people don't want to change the world. Changing the world is not their number one priority. Their number one priority is to love and serve the world in the light of Christian revelation. Now if that means that you have to stand up to an injustice, if that means you have to change the way the mass media is run, or change curriculums or something, that will mean that you will engage in dialogue with people, and you will witness, and you will listen. You don't come in with this top down agenda and take everybody's life apart so that you can put it back together again.

[Kentucky writer and farmer] Wendell Berry's method is to ask how this reform is going to affect my community and enter into dialogue with the people for whom these political reforms are going to change. The guy I think who was really on to this is Dostoyevsky. I guess you could call him a sentimental naturalist in his first book, Poor Folk. And then he was sent to the camps and he had his eye opened to the true nature of human beings. He came back and said until we deal with the irrational in man and healing one's suspicions of another, you could have the greatest political ideology and people would subvert it out of sheer spite. Somehow, trust has to be regained between people before you can talk about politics. And that's why ideological posturing, even if you're right, is counterproductive.

What kind of impact have these thinkers had, or should have?

In the 20th century, the contemplative side of Christianity was made much more accessible by Merton's Seven Storey Mountain. Solzhenitsyn also had a great world impact.

Some of Martin Luther King Jr.'s views have been misunderstood or co-opted. We think of him more as a civil-rights icon than as an engaged prophetic Christian trying to figure out non violence. I think he had a much more troubled, interesting, complex message to America than what we have decided it was in our history books and in our one-paragraph summaries of him. I would say that his legacy probably has not been fully understood.

I don't think the full impact of what Schumacher has written about economics has really hit yet, the defense of family business and local community economies. That's starting to have resurgence in the third world with these micro credit organizations. If you start taking Schumacher seriously, then economics is due for a quantum leap, and that hasn't happened yet. We need to rethink the way we do economics, to question the assumption that we're all self-maximizing individuals.

I think Northrop Frye is another one who was understood too quickly, or misunderstood. Literary studies over the past 20 years has been struggling with a lot of competing materialisms. Frye had offered in the early 60s a radical mystic contemplative vision of the literary studies, which doomed him to obsolescence in 1963. But now that practices like lectio divina and those contemplative ways of reading are being rediscovered, you look back at Northrop Frye, and he's the guy who provides the most interesting ideas and paradigms. But I think such a recovery is going to have to be done by religious folk. Because if you try secularizing his categories, they just don't work. It's only through religious eyes that Frye's literary cosmology makes sense, in the same way that Lord of the Rings has a deeper meaning to those who see its Christian themes.

In Frye's letters and journals and also his sermons, because he was a pastor, you get to see the full Christian dimension of his thinking. He discussed how to read prophetically, how to read contemplatively. These were issues that Frye addressed that the last 20- 25-five years of literary criticism just ignored. I think what's going to happen in about 10 years is they're going to rediscover the language in which Frye was writing and learn he was trying to teach us how to read in a way that deepened our inner lives, not just increased our intellectual sophistication.

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The Twilight of Atheism

Why this once exciting and 'liberating' philosophy failed to capture the world's imagination.

by Alister McGrath | posted 02/28/2005 09:30 a.m.

The celebration of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in June 1897 marked the high point of British imperial history. It was a supreme moment of national self-confidence and congratulation. The British had created an empire on which the sun never set, and much of its colorful diversity was on display in the streets of London that summer.

But Earth's proud empires fade away. The same process of growth and decay can be seen in the empires of the mind. There comes a point when their attraction pales and their credibility falters. To wit: Atheism is in trouble. Its future seems increasingly to lie in the private beliefs of individuals rather than in the great public domain it once regarded as its natural habitat.

Pathology No Longer

Atheism was once new, exciting, and liberating, and for those reasons held to be devoid of the vices of the faiths it displaced. With time, it turned out to have just as many frauds, psychopaths, and careerists as religion does. Many have now concluded that these personality types are endemic to all human groups, rather than being the peculiar preserve of religious folks. With Stalin and Madalyn Murray O'Hair, atheism seems to have ended up mimicking the vices of the Spanish Inquisition and the worst televangelists, respectively.

One of the most important criticisms that Sigmund Freud directed against religion was that it encourages unhealthy and dysfunctional outlooks on life. Having dismissed religion as an illusion, Freud went on to argue that it is a negative factor in personal development. At times, Freud's influence has been such that the elimination of a person's religious beliefs has been seen as a precondition for mental health.

Freud is now a fallen idol, the fall having been all the heavier for its postponement. There is now growing awareness of the importance of spirituality in health care, both as a positive factor in relation to well-being and as an issue to which patients have a right. The "Spirituality and Healing in Medicine" conference sponsored by Harvard Medical School in 1998 brought reports that 86 percent of Americans as a whole, 99 percent of family physicians, and 94 percent of hmo professionals believe that prayer, meditation, and other spiritual and religious practices exercise a major positive role within the healing process.

Restoring Community

With the breakdown of social cohesion in recent decades, creating a sense of community has become an increasingly important political issue in many Western cultures. The question of how community can be recovered invites a comparison of religious and atheistic approaches.

One of the most obvious indicators of the ongoing importance of religion is the well-documented tendency of immigrant communities to define themselves in religious terms--Sikh, Hindu, and Muslim communities in Great Britain, and in France, Muslims from Algeria and other North African nations.

Christian churches have long been the centers of community life in the West. People want to belong, not just believe.

The growth of community churches has helped meet this need. There is a sense of belonging to a common group, of shared common values, and of knowing each other. People don't just go to community churches; they see themselves as belonging there. At a time when American society appears to be fragmenting, the community churches offer cohesion.

It is important to make this connection with the changing face of America. In his much-cited article "The Age of Social Transformation," published in the November 1994 Atlantic Monthly, management guru Peter Drucker pointed out that traditional communities of family, village, and parish have practically disappeared.

"Their place has largely been taken by the new unit of social integration, the organization," Drucker wrote. "Where community was fate, organization is voluntary membership." In the old days, community was defined by where you lived. It was part of the inherited order of things, something that you were born into. Now, it has to be created--and the agency that creates this community is increasingly the voluntary organization. Christian churches are strategically placed to create and foster community. The community churches have proved especially effective in this role, and have grown immensely in consequence.
But what of atheism? The former Soviet Union realized the importance of creating a sense of community. Having eliminated religion from the public life of the nation, Soviet planners recognized the importance of creating rituals and events, which fostered social cohesion and a sense of identity. Thus the Saturday just before Easter was celebrated as Communist Saturday. Other holidays included May Day, Victory Day (May 9), Constitution Day (October 7), and Revolution Day (November 7-. The Soviets devised additional rituals as counterparts to the Christian rites of baptism and confirmation--for example, the "family event" to mark the birth of a new child, or the ceremony to mark admission to the Communist Party.

The nearest thing in the West to this Soviet model is found in Canada, which seems to think that a sense of community identity can only be created by eliminating any religious presence in the public arena. In the United States, atheism spawns organizations; it does not create community. The state chapters and national convention of American Atheists, coupled with this organization's atheist equivalent of creeds, certainly did something to create a sense of shared identity. Yet the community thus created seems to be based solely on distaste for religion. It doesn't even have a good organizational base and lacks charismatic leadership--a fatal weakness, to which we now turn.

Institutional Atheism

Atheist thinkers are more than happy to appear on the nation's chat shows to promote their latest books. But they have failed to communicate a compelling vision of atheism that is capable of drawing and holding large numbers of people.
Atheists widely discuss this comprehensive failure of leadership within their circles. Howard Thompson, sometime editor of the Texas Atheist, is undoubtedly one of the most able and reflective atheists in the United States. Thompson has criticized the movement for its lack of direction: "Atheism in America is poorly defined with little organization," he wrote in an op-ed piece. "We have less social and cultural infrastructure than even the smallest religious groups. . . . Atheism desperately needs effective public voices."

And why has this failed to happen? Thompson lays much of the blame at the feet of O'Hair, whom he regards as the movement's greatest liability. He believes her organization has failed to learn from her mistakes and persists in depicting her as a hero, even a martyr, for the atheist cause.

For 30 years O'Hair was the most visible atheist. What O'Hair did and said was atheism to the public, and it was nasty. The disappearance of the O'Hairs in September 1995 gave hope that more positive atheist initiatives might develop. That's why atheists should worry about the revival of her American Atheists under the leadership of Ellen Johnson, who assumed the office of president in a questionable board of directors meeting. Johnson is also a die-hard O'Hair fan who continues to present her as an atheist heroine. What atheism doesn't need is a continuation of O'Hair's negativity; her style and limited vision stifled positive atheist growth.

Her atheism was crude, anti-intellectual, and homophobic, making even the most zealous fundamentalist Christian seem a model of liberal values. For Thompson, the answer is clear: Grow leaders. In another op-ed piece, "The Unlit Bonfire," Thompson argues that a new dawn awaits--if only the leadership issue can be resolved. "Total victory is the only acceptable goal in a mind-control war because humanity is diminished so long as a single mind remains trapped in superstition by programming or choice." But who will lead them? And can this goal actually be achieved?

The fatal flaw within Thompson's argument, found within many other atheist tracts and publications, is his strident insistence that humanity has been enslaved by supernaturalist superstition. It is merely necessary to educate people, he believes, and these mad ideas will fall away. Thompson and his colleagues have not even begun to understand a fundamental fact about religion: People actually like their faith, find it helpful in structuring their lives, and inconveniently believe that it might actually be true.

Thompson's alternative to the rich fare of a transcendent faith is "a materialistic culture that frees humanity from superstition." This sounds dull, dated, and gray, about as exciting as a lecture on Bulgarian Marxist dialectics. The failure of atheism to capture the public imagination in the West reflects its failure to articulate a compelling, imaginative vision of a godless future that is capable of exciting people and making them want to gather together to celebrate and proclaim it.

The same dullness pervades the National Secular Society (founded in 1866), the nearest thing Great Britain has to an atheist network. In 2002, its website included a museum of modernity, untroubled by the awkward rise of postmodernity. You could buy a secular mug with the slogan "Just say no to religion!" Or even better, you could download an official Certificate of De-Baptism (medieval font needed) that lets your friends know that you have rejected the "creeds and all other such superstition" in the name of reason.

Rationalism, having quietly died out in most places, still lives on here. Yet Western culture has bypassed this aging little ghetto, having long since recognized the limitations of reason. The Enlightenment lives on for secularists. Atheism is wedded to philosophical modernity, and both are aging gracefully in the cultural equivalent of an old folks' home.

And, for those who find their tracts wearisome, the society thoughtfully provides a religious jokes page--though in poor taste, they carry a significantly higher intellectual content than the rest of the site. Here's an example of atheism's winsome arguments: Question: What's the difference between Jesus and a painting? Answer: It only takes one nail to hang a painting.

The joke makes my friends outside the church cringe. Yet I have the impression this is actually meant to persuade people of the intellectual and cultural superiority of a world without religion. Thompson clearly has a point.

Nevertheless, serious issues are occasionally debated on the website, including the question of why secular humanism, with its commitment to atheism, has so singularly failed to capture the public imagination. One obvious answer might be the National Secular Society itself, which exudes a pious tedium, trapped in a time warp of the closing decades of the 19th century, that seems almost to have been deliberately designed to alienate potential recruits.

Reginald Le Sueur put his finger unerringly on the real point at issue: "The problem with humanism as such is that, although rational, secular, and 'true,' it is, in comparison with major religions, somewhat wishy-washy and just plain unexciting."

Le Sueur recognizes atheism as derivative, its attraction residing primarily in what it denies rather than what it articulates as an alternative. So does atheism have a future?

No doubt it does--but not an especially distinguished or exciting future. Listen to John Updike: "Among the repulsions of atheism for me has been its drastic uninterestingness as an intellectual position." I have to confess that I now share his catatonic sense of utter tedium when I reread some of the atheist works I once found fascinating as a teenager. They now seem simplistic, failing to engage with the complexities of human experience, and seriously out of tune with our postmodern culture.

Why Atheism Matters

On the other hand, the greatest virtue of atheism is its moral seriousness--its criticisms and passionate demands for justice directed against the corruptions of, say, the French church of the 18th century.

The moral passion of atheism, especially when set alongside the laziness and complacency of European state churches in the 18th century, cannot be dismissed. Some Christian leaders at the time of the French Revolution saw that event as a divine judgment against a failing church. Some believed God was using the atheist critiques of the church as a means of reforming it.

Paradoxically, what propels people toward atheism is above all a sense of revulsion against the excesses and failures of organized religion. Atheism is ultimately a worldview of fear--a fear, often merited, of what might happen if religious maniacs were to take over the world.

As the critics of Homeric religion made clear, the attractions of a godless world rest upon a sense of revulsion against the gods. Who wanted to worship or imitate gods such as Zeus and Athena, when they merely immortalized the worst moral failings of human beings?

Moving Target

In the end, debates about whether God's existence can be proved remain marginal. The central issue is moral and imaginative. The most fundamental criticisms directed against Christianity have to do with the moral character of its God. They often focus on the issue of eternal punishment. No theological issue posed greater difficulties for Victorian England, as the writings of George Eliot make clear. It was for this reason that Charles Darwin found his faith, surprisingly unchallenged by his views on evolution, to be stretched beyond its modest capacity.

Others had similarly serious misgivings. "Eternal punishment must be eternal cruelty," said secular humanist orator Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1899), "and I do not see how any man, unless he has the brain of an idiot, or the heart of a wild beast, can believe in eternal punishment." Despite its opportunistic overstatement, Ingersoll's complaint resonates deeply with many who find a contradiction between their deepest intuitions of fairness and the Christian God.
We cannot assert eternal damnation and expect Western culture to nod approvingly. This culture is not predisposed to reject Christian doctrines as a matter of principle; rather, it is surprised by what seems a massive retreat from society's fundamental notions of decency and evenhandedness. Atheism arises mainly through a profound sense that religious ideas and values are at least inferior to, and possibly irreconcilable with, the best moral standards and ideals of human culture.

In its most intense and authentic forms, atheism enters a powerful protest against what it sees to be morally or intellectually inferior visions of reality. In their place, atheism offers visions of a larger freedom, allowing humanity to throw aside its chains and enter a new and glorious phase in history. It is perhaps not surprising that many sympathize with Dostoyevsky's character Ivan Karamazov when he respectfully returns God's ticket, in the face of the suffering, pain, and injustice of the world. Christianity must provide good answers to such fair questions.

But the real significance of atheism has to do with its critique of power and privilege. Whatever their failings, atheist organizations are right in challenging the idea that any religious grouping can enjoy special privileges in a democratic society. Such groupings deserve respect. But when religion becomes the establishment, a corrupting abuse of power can result. Atheism soars in its appeal.

The converse can be true. The rise of militant Islam in Afghanistan was the direct outcome of the Soviet invasion of that nation in 1979 and its clumsy attempts to support an atheistic regime. As Karen Armstrong points out in her The Battle for God (2000), the best way to encourage the rise of religious fundamentalism is to impose a secular agenda on people who want to get on with their religious lives.

Atheism's concerns about the Christian exertion of power resonate with many within the church. The assumption of the New Testament is that Christianity is excluded from the establishment and thus insulated from the temptations and corruption that power brings. For many reflective Christians, the church began to lose its compelling moral and spiritual vision with the conversion of Constantine, the first Christian Roman emperor. A movement that was at its most authentic while powerless and weak now became exposed to forces that compromised its integrity.

Yet it must be noted that Christianity is a dynamic entity, constantly changing in its forms as it seeks to relate its foundational heritage in the New Testament to the situations in which it finds itself. Atheist criticisms of the church are at their most compelling and persuasive when they are directed against the failings of the church.

The essential difficulty here is that, with the rise of dynamic churches especially in the Southern Hemisphere, the classic atheist criticisms of the church do not quite ring true any longer--even in the homelands of the much-derided state churches of Western Europe. The repetition of stale clichés from the golden age of atheism sounds increasingly out of touch with postmodern reality.

The atheist dilemma is that Christianity is a moving target, whose trajectory is capable of being redirected without losing its anchor point in the New Testament. And as theologian John Henry Newman pointed out, Christianity must listen to such criticisms from outside its bounds, precisely because listening may be a way of recapturing its vision of the gospel.

Some atheists have argued that the phenomenon of globalization can only advance a secularist agenda, eliminating religion from the public arena. If the world is to have a shared future, it can only be by eliminating what divides its nations and peoples--such as religious beliefs. Yet many have pointed out in response that globalization seems to be resulting in a quite different outcome.

Far from being secularized, the West is experiencing a new interest in religion. Patterns of immigration mean that Islam and Hinduism are now major living presences in the cities of Western Europe and North America. Pentecostalism is a rapidly growing force, strengthened by the arrival of many Asian and African Christians in the West. The future looks nothing like the godless and religionless world so confidently predicted 40 years ago. The atheist agenda, once seen as a positive force for progress, is now seen as disrespectful toward cultural diversity.

Paradoxically, the future of atheism will be determined by its religious rivals. Those atheists looking for a surefire way to increase their appeal need only to hope for harsh, vindictive, and unthinking forms of religion to arise in the West.

In his problematic but fascinating work, The Decline of the West, Oswald Spengler argued that history shows that cultures came into being for religious reasons. As they exhausted the potential of that spirituality, religion gave way to atheism, before a phase of religious renewal gave them a new sense of direction. Might atheism have run its course, and now give way to religious renewal? The tides of cultural shift have, for the time being, left atheism beached on the sands of modernity, while Westerners explore a new postmodern interest in the forbidden fruit of spirituality.

Alister McGrath is professor of historical theology at Oxford University, and author of The Twilight of Atheism: The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World (Doubleday, 2004), from which this essay was excerpted and condensed.

Copyright © 2005 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

March 2005, Vol. 49, No. 3, Page 36

Posted on Mon, Aug. 01, 2005

Bush endorses teaching `intelligent design' theory in schools

By Ron Hutcheson
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON -- President Bush waded into the debate over evolution and "intelligent design" Monday, saying schools should teach both theories on the creation and complexity of life.

In a wide-ranging question-and-answer session with a small group of reporters, Bush essentially endorsed efforts by Christian conservatives to give intelligent design equal standing with the theory of evolution in the nation's schools.

On other topics, Bush said he has no idea how Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts would vote in a case challenging the legality of abortion because he never asked him about it. He also defended Baltimore Orioles first baseman Rafael Palmeiro, who was suspended Monday for using performance-enhancing steroids.

Bush declined to state his personal views on "intelligent design," the belief that life forms are so complex that their creation can't be explained by Darwinian evolutionary theory alone, but rather points to intentional creation, presumably divine.

The theory of evolution, first articulated by British naturalist Charles Darwin in 1859, is based on the idea that life organisms developed over time through random mutations and factors in nature that favored certain traits that helped species survive.

Scientists concede that evolution doesn't answer every question about the creation of life, but most consider intelligent design an attempt to inject religion into science courses.

Bush compared the current debate to earlier disputes over "creationism," a related view that adheres more closely to biblical explanations. As governor of Texas, Bush said students should be exposed to both creationism and evolution.

On Monday the president said he favors the same approach for intelligent design "so people can understand what the debate is about."

The Kansas Board of Education is considering changes to encourage the teaching of intelligent design in Kansas schools, and Christian conservatives are pushing for similar changes in other school districts across the country.

"I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought," Bush said. " You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes."

The National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science have both concluded that there's no scientific basis for intelligent design and oppose its inclusion in school science classes.

"The claim that equity demands balanced treatment of evolutionary theory and special creation in science classrooms reflects a misunderstanding of what science is and how it is conducted," the academy said in a 1999 assessment. "Creationism, intelligent design, and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life or of species are not science because they are not testable by the methods of science."

Some scientists have declined to join the debate, fearing that amplifying the discussion only gives intelligent design more legitimacy.

But advocates of intelligent design also claim support from scientists. The Discovery® Institute, a conservative think tank in Seattle that's the leading proponent for intelligent design, said it has compiled a list of more than 400 scientists, including 70 biologists, who are skeptical about evolution.

"The fact is that a significant number of scientists are extremely skeptical that Darwinian evolution can explain the origins of life," John West, associate director of the organization's Center for Science and Culture, said in a prepared statement.

Bush didn't seem eager to talk about the topic.
Full: http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/12278497.htm