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This article identifies a tendency internationally to desensitize the public to the mass-murder by Western-supported governments of whole peoples whom they find inconvenient. Australia has a history of cultivating 'wilful blindness' to these events in our neighborhood, under the leadership of powerful government figures. Geoffrey Taylor here draws our attention to an example of such a complex attitude in an interview with Paul Keating last year. [This article started out as a response to Tigerquoll's comment, "Willful Blindness in East Timor, Sri Lanka, and now West Papua".]

This article identifies a tendency internationally to desensitize the public to the mass-murder by Western-supported governments of whole peoples whom they find inconvenient. Often the victims of this persecution are described as or even call themselves 'communists'. Usually they would more correctly be called nationalist peasant movements against Western supported governments that are privatising and corporatising [colonising] the common and traditional land of these people and depriving them of their right to self-government. Such genocides are later 'economically' justified by an averaged rise in living standards with increased GDP that comes with the overtaking of small subsistence holdings and their adaptation to commercial agriculture and other industries. That these agricultural and industrial changes could only come about by mass dispossession and slaughter of the original land-holders is almost never acknowledged in any manner that might be meaningfully pinned on the political, private and corporate entities which ultimately profit from these despicable colonial events. Australia has a history of cultivating 'wilful blindness' to these events in our neighborhood, under the leadership of powerful government figures.

Geoffrey Taylor here draws our attention to an example of such a complex attitude in an interview with Paul Keating last year. Keating stands out as a prime minister who, along with the United States and the United Kingdom, cultivated Australia's supportive relationship with the brutal and oppressive Suharto Government in Indonesia. Candobetter Ed.

In a recent interview (24 Mb MP3 file here) on 2 November last year with the ABC's Richard Fidler, former 'Labor' Prime Minister Keating dismissed concerns for human rights and democracy in Indonesia. He claimed that figures given by economists proved that ordinary Indonesians had been lifted from poverty to prosperity by the policies of former dictator Suharto, who came to power in the coup of 1965 in which more than half a million members and supporters of the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) were murdered.[1]

Keating's apologies for the Suharto dictatorship have to be read to be believed. I have not yet fully transcribed all that is of interest from the above-mentioned MP3 file, but below is some:

Richard Fidler (RF): One of the things I get from your book is that you, kind of, seem indifferent toward -- you shrug at the idea of democracy in Asia. ...

Paul Keating (PK): No, no ..

RF: You treat it like an over-rated virtue like chastity before marriage or something like that. You're going to go: Ahh!, ... We make too much fuss about the idea of ...

PK: Yeah, A lot of this came from our debate about Indonesia. Here is our largest neighbour, about two hundred and thirty million people. -- the largest, you know, five or six flying hours across the archipelago, ... -- because of what happened at Balibo in Timor, the Fairfax newspapers, especially the Sydney Morning Herald, ran this brutal campaign against Indonesia for nearly 30 years. In fact the Sydney Morning Herald editorialised in favour of a military attack by Australia on Indonesia. You can imagine it. ... And this is all because they don't share our democratic values. The fact that Suharto's New Order Government pulled two hundred and thirty million people from abject poverty and brought them to a reasonable standard of living --- In fact, the year before the economic collapse of '97/'98 the World Bank said that the declines in infant mortality and the rise in education standards, the general improvements in health and the distribution of income are greater in Indonesia than any country under study. ...

RF: But do you ...

PK: This cuts no ice, of course, with the donkeys at the Sydney Morning Herald

RF: That's, that's true, but you know, then, that Suharto was pretty much a gangster in many ways ...

PK: No, he wasn't. No, no!

RF: His whole family were into that economy in a big way ...

PK: No, no!

RF: The cars, tobacco ..

PK: No, no! You don't know that ...

RF: Clothes. They were all in on that

PK: They were

RF: I think what you're saying is that, like you have got to watch your terms. This guy down the road -- the gangster down the road isn't such a bad bloke, because he keeps the streets quiet.

PK: No, no. You've ... Let's get the argument set right right here. In the country which has got no wealth, he local people, the ..? boomies as they call them ...

The demonisation of Communism, which has increased in recent years, allows the large scale killing of Communists in countries such as Vietnam, Korea and Indonesia to be glossed over in the way Keating did or else depicted as other than the gross crimes against humanity that they in fact are.

In truth, most Communist Party members in those countries listed above had little in common with Stalin, whose terrible record had been used to so darken the name of Communism. Most would have been much more at home in the Australian Labor Party (ALP) than running Stalin's gulags. The murder of half a million PKI members would have had affected Indonesia in a fashion similar to what the murder of around 20,000-30,000 member of the ALP would have done to Australia at the same time.

The destruction of the PKI served to strategically protect the rear of the United States military as they commenced to obliterate Vietnam Laos and Cambodia with more bombs than were dropped in the Second World War, resulting in the loss of more than 3 million dead in Vietnam alone.

The scale of the crime against humanity, made possible or directly committed by the Indonesian dictators so applauded by Keating, is chilling - and this man was Prime Minister of Australia from 1991 to 1996!

FOOTNOTES

[1] That and other estimates of 300,000 and 1,0000,000 are given on page 25 of Pretext for Mass murder (2006) by John Roosa. As so much of the mass murder was covered up by Suharto's police state, it was not possible to properly investigate the mass murder until after Suharto's resignation in 1998.

Having spent her working life as a police officer seeing the most horrific acts of human depravity and violence and where she was hurt on duty, Terri says she could handle that ... what she can't handle is the barbaric cruelty inflicted on those that cannot fight back and has seen many animals who were beyond her care because of a sickness in society today.

For close to 40 years, Terri Eather has been caring for injured and orphaned wildlife. This Angel of Australia is one of the most respected wildlife carers in this vast country. Spending a day with Terri at her Cornubia home gives you a fair idea of why this disability pensioner is the backbone of saving a plethora of native animal species.

Little "Butterfly" is her latest joey to be in her care...yet another orphan who has lost their precious mother to an uncaring driver who didnt stop to attend to this vulnerable baby. With feeds every few hours, sleep is a luxury, but Terri would never stop being a foster mother to our furry friends as well as any sick, injured or orphaned wildlife that crosses her path.

Having spent her working life as a police officer seeing the most horrific acts of human depravity and violence and where she was hurt on duty, Terri says she could handle that ... what she can't handle is the barbaric cruelty inflicted on those that cannot fight back and has seen many animals who were beyond her care because of a sickness in society today.

She counts Bob Irwin as a dear friend having known him many years because of her voluntary work back in the day that saw the beginning of Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital and was there sitting quietly in the stands when the big boy in khaki was farewelled by the world...another dear friend and one she misses deeply.

With calls coming in from every corner of Australia, this Angel takes it all in her stride giving medical advice akin to something heard in an E.R. room. The main difference is there is no wage for Terri, no grants, no government funding and paying for everything out of a disability pension leaves this proud lady scraping for coins most weeks. Terri jokes, she tries to pay for things with Koala Food Gum Leaves!

Her acreage in Cornubia is her sanctuary and when contacted about the hoons speeding up and down outside her home, a local Logan City Councillor wrote to residents requesting they please drive slowly and quietly in the immediate areas as stress from noise can kill wildlife. There also were two 1800 high steel signs in the ground with steel posts and unbelievably, one was stolen and police believe it would have taken the perpetrators over an hour to break the steel post so the sign could be removed. Patience is something Terri has bucketloads of as unfortunately drivers still speed and the hoons are still driving with excess noise. Some lovely neighbours do occasionaly bring her injured wildlife also.

Without Terri, there would be far few koalas, roos, birds, lizards, snakes and a range of other native animals able to live another day in their natural habitat...her love is felt in the Aussie bush through and through.

You can visit Terri's blog here: http://www.fourthcrossingwildlife.com/TerriEather.htm The section on wildlife information is unusual and useful.

For the Animals

Jaylene Musgrave
Vegan Warriors

In her marvellously lucid book, Wilful Blindness, Margaret Heffernan, writes about the institutionalisation of denial in the service of profit, the acquisition of wealth, and the defence of personally comforting ideologies. "Bandura has spent a lifetime dissecting the moral disengagement required for the perpetration of criminal and inhuman acts, a journey that has taken him from the tobacco industry, the gun lobby, the television business to the multiple industries implicated in environmental degradation. He has a deep understanding of the forces at work which encourage employees to be blind to their collusion in these processes. But nothing enrages him more than the economic justifications used to defend continued population growth."

'Wilful blindness' is an English legal concept that arose in a 19th century case where a person could not be convicted of stealing government property unless they either knew where the property came from or they had 'wilfully shut their eyes' to its origin. Modern travellers are asked to sign declarations that they are aware of the contents of their suitcases, which may then be used against them if illegal drugs come to light during customs searches. Not knowing was also no defence for the guilty in the Enron trials. Legally it doesn't matter whether or not your knowledge was unconscious, but outside the courts you can still get away with manslaughter and dispossession for commercial purposes by kidding yourself and you will find that most people in the community will back you right up.

An amazing list of almost unbelievable (but well-documented) wilful blindnesses

Heffernan examines a remarkable list of wilful blindnesses that have caused innumerable deaths and other highly adverse circumstances. Most of her cases are huge and massively documented, yet a number were quite unknown to me. Her book is a remarkable document for that reason, of enormous use for the political and social researcher, as well as a jolly good read. Among the cases she examines in detail are:

- childhood cancer and foetal X-rays. The very strong link and occurrence was proven for decades yet doctors continued to X-ray pregnant women until the mid-1980s.
- Enron and how everyone there looked the other way
- asbestosis and how an entire town was moribund but refusing to face the cause in the local mine, instead ill-treating the only woman in the town who tried to fight the mine
- Greenspan before Congress, finally admitting his market-ideology was flawed
- Avoidable collisions of battleships where officers followed a captain's orders even though they knew these would cause two ships to collide
- Hospitals that protected an incompetent surgeon and ostracised the doctor who tried to stop him
- BP's remarkable record of ignoring safety regulations and orders and causing death among workers before it even came to Deepwater Horizon.

Margaret Heffernan asks why whistleblowers and Cassandras are so rare, when they save lives and communities often simply by stating the obvious over and over again. She writes on the several ways individuals become deliberately blind by denial of painful truths, interspersing her political and social case studies with records of psychological experiments and theory.

Wilful Blindness and the Population Growth Lobby

Hearing of this wilful blindness legal concept, before I read the book, I wondered how it might apply to those who maintain the growth lobby for their own and corporate profit against democratic wishes of the majority and in the face of costs it imposes on individuals and communities. On reading the book I was very interested to read the following about overpopulation, in which she quotes another clear thinker, Professor Bandura, of Stanford University.

“No one visiting Stanford University could fail to be impressed by its sheer scale or its wealth. Over twelve square miles, it's ten times larger than Vatican City and the vast avenues of palms leading to fountains and Spanish courtyards are reminiscent more of Renaissance papal power play than 21st-century cutting-edge research. Such lavish public buildings feel brash in their confidence, but their rooms harbour perpetrators of doubt and scepticism. At the heart of the campus, ensconced in an unremarkable lino-floored, booklined room, sits Albert ‘Al’ Bandura. In many respects, Bandura is the grand old man of psychology: its most cited living author, the father of social-learning theory and one of the first people to argue that children's behavior derived not just from reward and punishment but horn what they observed around them. That this seems such an obvious thought to us nowadays is testimony to how profound Bandura's impact has been on our thinking. The very phrase 'role model' would scarcely exist without him.

Much of Bandura's work has so seeped into public consciousness that we are barely aware that it is there, and his work has attracted scores of awards, honours and distinctions. But today, at the age of eighty-five, this hasn't stopped him working, nor has it rendered him complacent. For all his eminence, he's an engaging and accessible man whose mild manner belies a tenacious mind. And one of the issues he has wrestled with for years is the process by which individuals lose sight of morality in their need to preserve their sense of self-worth.

‘People are highly driven to do things that build self-worth; you can't transgress and think of yourself as bad. You need to protect your sense of yourself as good. And so people transform harmful practices into worthy ones, by coming up with social justification, by distancing themselves with euphemisms, by ignoring the long-term consequences of their actions.’

One of the most prominent ways in which people justify their harmful practices is by using arguments about money to obscure moral and social issues. Because we can't and won't acknowledge that some of our choices are socially and morally harmful, we distance ourselves from them by claiming they're necessary for wealth creation. Nowhere is this more dangerous, he argues, than in our attitudes to the environment and population growth. The easiest way for those who resist calls to curb population growth, and who oppose environmental controls, is to represent themselves as the good guys because they just want to make everyone better-off.

'To defend their positions, they can't say "Sure, we're the bad guys and we want to rape and pillage the planet",’ Bandura told me. 'They have to vindicate harmful practices that take such a heavy toll on the environment and the quality of human life-they have to make out that what's harmful is, in fact, good. And one way they do that is to use the notion of nature as, in fact, an economic commodity. So they see nature in terms of its market value rather than its inherent value.'

That's why, Bandura argues, those who claim to love nature can also support, for example, drilling for oil in Alaska. They can't see themselves as destroyers, so they position themselves as the rational liberators of natural wealth. In this vein, Bandura quotes Newt Gingrich: 'To get the best ecosystem for our buck, we should use decentralised and entrepreneurial strategies.' Similarly, when China signed a multi-billion-dollar deal with the Indonesian Government to clearcut four million acres of forest, in order to replace it with palm-oil plantations, a clan elder could not conceive of himself as doing the wrong thing. As he put it succinctly, 'Wood is gold.' It is, says Bandura, the economic justification that makes the environmentally damaging decision possible. Seeing nature as just a source of money blinds such decision makers to the moral consequences of their decisions.

Bandura has spent a lifetime dissecting the moral disengagement required for e perpetration of criminal and inhuman acts, a journey that has taken him from the tobacco industry, the gun lobby, the television business to the multiple industries implicated in environmental degradation. He has a deep understanding of the forces at work which encourage employees to be blind to their collusion in these processes. But nothing enrages him more than the economic justifications used to defend continued population growth.

'I went to a conference in Germany,' Bandura recalled, 'where a young African woman spoke about the tremendous difference that birth control and health education had had on her community. The fact that she and her peers now had control over the number of children that they conceived and raised had transformed their lives. And she spoke of this very eloquently. And there, in that audience of well-heeled Europeans, rich Westerners, she was booed!'

When he recovered from his shock, Bandura analysed what was going on in the minds of the audience. What drove them, he reasoned, was their recognition that Western birth rates won't pay for the pension requirements of the elderly; if the West doesn't produce more children, it can't produce the wealth needed to look after parents when they retire. Therefore, even though consumption and environmental degradation are clearly linked, the needs of the market trump the needs of the planet.

Nor was this a purely Western phenomenon. The need for money effectively positions infants as money-making machines.

In some countries (Bandura writes], the pressure on women to boost their childbearing includes punitive, threats as well. The former prime minister of Japan, Yoshiro Mori, suggested that women who bore no children should be barred from receiving pensions, saying 'It is truly strange to say we have to use tax money to take care of women who don't even give birth once, who grow old living their lives selfishly and singing the praises of freedom.' In this campaign for more babies, childbearing is reduced to a means for economic growth.

In this mindset, children are nothing more than money-makers in the eyes of politicians merely crunching the numbers, blind to the moral, environmental or humanitarian consequences of their policies. Market thinking has obliterated moral thinking on a grand scale.

So persuasive (and pervasive) has the economic argument in favour of population growth become, says Bandura, that all of the major NGOs have had to stand aside from it. Fear of alienating donors, criticism from the progressive left and disparagement by conservative vested interests claiming that overpopulation is a 'myth' served as further incentives to cast off the rising global population as a factor in environmental degradation. Population growth vanished from the agendas of mainstream environmental organisations that previously regarded escalating numbers as a major environmental threat. Greenpeace announced that population ‘is not an issue for us’. Friends of the Earth declared that 'it is unhelpful to enter into a debate about numbers'. The fear of losing money disabled those very organisations best placed to understand the ultimate consequences of thinking only about money.

What money does, Bandura argues, is allow us to disengage from the moral and social effects of our decisions. As long as we can frame everything as an economic argument, we don't have to confront the social or moral consequences of our decisions. That economics has become such a dominant, if not the prevalent, mindset for evaluating social and political choices has been one of the defining characteristics of our age. As long as the numbers work, we feel absolved of the harder, more inchoate ethical choices that face us none the less. We appear to have gone from having a market economy to being a market society (if that isn't an oxymoron) and it's an interesting thought that our obsession with economics has just been one long sustained phase of displacement activity.

Money is just one of the forces that blind us to information and issues which we could pay attention to - but don't. It exacerbates and often rewards all the other drivers of wilful blindness: our preference for the familiar, our love for individuals and for big ideas, a love of busyness and our dislike of conflict and change, the human instinct to obey and conform and our skill at displacing and diffusing responsibility. All of these operate and collaborate with varying intensities at different moments in our lives. The common denominator is that they all make us protect our sense of self-worth, reducing dissonance and conferring a sense of security, however illusory. In some ways, they all act like money: making us feel good at first, with consequences we don't see. We wouldn't be so blind if our blindness didn't deliver rewards: the benefit of comfort and ease.

But in failing to confront the greatest challenge of our age - climate change - all the forces of wilful blindness come together, like synchronised swimmers in a spectacular water ballet. We live with people like ourselves, and sharing consumption habits blinds us to their cost. Like the unwitting spouse of an alcoholic, we know there's something amiss but we don't want to acknowledge that the lifestyles we love may be killing us. The dissonance produced by reading about our environmental impact on the one hand, and living as we do, is resolved by minor alterations in what we buy or eat, but very few significant social shifts. Sometimes we get so anxious we consume more. We keep too busy to confront our worries, a kind of wild displacement activity with schedules that don't allow us to be as green as we'd like. The gravitational pull of the status quo exerts its influence and global conferences end when no one has the stomach for the levels of conflict they engender. In our own countries, no politician shows the nerve for the political battles real change would require.

We're obedient consumers and we might change if we were told to, but we're not. We conform to the consumption patterns we see around us as we all become bystanders, hoping someone else somewhere will intervene. Our governments and corporations grow too complex to communicate or to change and we are left just where we do not want to be, where our only consolation is cash.

This is wilful blindness on a spectacular scale and it would leave us abject with despair, were it not that, all around us, are individuals who aren't blind. That they can and do see more, and act on what they see, offers a possibility that we can be wilfully sighted too.”

Most interesting and alarming of all, despite all of these cases and situations being well known and recognised at academic or legal level, the general public remains in the dark because somehow, these lessons learned are never institutionalised for our collective good. With rare exceptions politicians, governments and the mass media, continue to maintain fictions blown apart time and again, because they have a vested interest. Somehow, somewhere, this time, they maintain, it will be different.

I was particularly struck, as an Australian, by how the following statement sums up what is happening in Australia:

"In this mindset, children are nothing more than money-makers in the eyes of politicians merely crunching the numbers, blind to the moral, environmental or humanitarian consequences of their policies. Market thinking has obliterated moral thinking on a grand scale."

And it has obliterated democracy in Australia - aided and abetted by 'moral' books that seem wilfully blind to the focused benefits that population growth brings to the growth lobby, like Ian Angus and Simon Butler's, Too many people, Haymarket Books, Chicago, 2011, published with the help of the US-based Lannan Foundation and the Wallace Global Fund. It seems true to say that, if you'll defend controlling population upwards, you can always find a wealthy sponsor.

So, what has become of all that grey power in Australia? The 'aging population' promoted as such a threat by various grey-haired politicians, seems to be awfully quiet. Why aren't they raging in the streets over here? Opinions and theories welcome. We need to solve the mystery and galvanise and organise the greys.

Click to the pic hear these chicks sing their song.

Grey-haired establishment does not speak for grey-haired majority

Yes, indeed, the aging and grey minority have a high profile in the rapacious activities of property development, banking and parliament, where they are seen, filmed, interviewed and promoted talking economic rationalism and high density living. And they are there to represent money; they are enemies of wisdom, social solidarity and citizen self-government. But what of the great majority of greys who are old enough and wise enough to know that this country is being robbed by its politicians, bankers and property developers? What of those who remember wars to defend this country? What of those who huddle miserable in sub-standard accommodation, unable to pay rising electricity bills and rents? What of those in special accom houses? What of those silently gagging in front of tv cookshows and wondering is that all there is? What of those anxiously watching their children and their grandchildren and hoping to be able to salvage something from the mortgage to assist those children and grandchildren in the increasingly desperate race to survive that is the present condition of so many Australians?

Where are they? What are they doing? Where is their song? Where are their marches and their cries of rage?

Over Fifties publications seem to have been glossied and corporatised, vehicles for pushing superannuation deals and investment packages to the wealthy elderly. Grey Power organisations seem to be orphaned, drifting without support. Here's a sample of what's on offer for over fifties: "Entertainment, travel, retirement villages, dating for the over-fifties..." You would think that people over 50 were children to be entertained. What is this mentality? Where are the politics for Over Fifties?

Look at the history of Grey Power in Wikipedia. What's going on?

This article is about the Australian lobby group. For the New Zealand lobby group, see Grey Power (New Zealand).

Grey Power, an Australian political party lobby group, first registered in 1983. At the federal elections of 1984 and 1987 it ran candidates, but on both occasions these candidates (who included former Liberal cabinet minister Bill Wentworth) did poorly. The group was designed to represent the elderly vote, advocating issues dealing with aged care and a mature perspective on national policy; hence the name "grey power".

Grey Power ran in the Western Australian election of 1989, garnering 5.2% of the total lower house vote. The last election which Grey Power contested was the South Australian election of 1997, but then it only managed to receive 1.6% of the South Australian Legislative Council vote.

The best result Grey Power ever achieved was at the 1994 Taylor by-election in South Australia, at state level. Without a Liberal candidate in the running on this occasion, Grey Power managed to get 13% of the primary vote, and finished second after preferences had been distributed, acquiring 27% of the vote. Labor retained the seat.

Did loss of seniority system in workforce fundamentally destabilise our society?

A generation ago or less there was a strong tradition and enforcement of promotion by seniority in the public service and in many other forms of work. Promotion by so-called 'merit' has merely turned out to foster croneyism, bureaucracy and a culture of obedience. A range of personality disorders with little capacity for empathy and a tendency to focus on bean-counting and enforcing petty rules has come to dominate managment in most systems. Bullying is the major symptom. Natural human organisations do not promote youth over wisdom or encourage youth to compete. Natural human organisations are led by the council of their elders.

We now see a huge rise in unemployment, homelessness, and isolation among middle-aged and older men and women who would previously have held stable and respected positions - in business, local activities, and their homes. Society did not adapt this new order of things all at once. It required sustained social engineering, carried out by and for the benefit of economic rationalists and market-force theorists. The result has been a society with a dearth of mature citizens in positions of power in the workforce, which is the major social system that dominates most people's lives, either through participation or exclusion. When people with years of experience had security, it was possible to speak out in the workforce, in the public service, and demand that things be done properly. No more. People are cowed and frightened. I don't think that Howard would have got away with his workplace disempowerment laws if senior people had been able to retain careers in the public service. I cannot include senior people who are the public face of official politics - those who rise to the top of the Labour and Liberal parties - as true representatives. They have been chosen for their decadent values - money, privilege and status - and they speak only for the moneyed and powerful.

The vast majority of 'seniors' are now just seen as a cohort of cash-cows, to frighten with financial insecurity and to market commodities to.

We should bring back seniority to our society and to our workforce.

Can anybody hear me out there?

Photo: Mature silverback citizen mentors little one.

Maybe one of the things that went wrong with grey power was too narrow a focus. I mean grey power should be about people power, not just about what happens to you when you need aged assistance. Greybeards, silverbacks and raging grannies should be looking after their clan and tribe and their clan and tribe should look up to them and support them as real representatives.

Politics are free. You can meet people like yourself. You can speak your mind. You can become engaged. Put down those antidepressants (slowly of course, to avoid significant withdrawals) and combat with political engagement that awful feeling that you are disappearing. Yes. Take a lesson from the existentionalists. You have to be in it to feel like you are alive.

Show your confused and dispossessed, endebted and oppressed children and grandchildren that you don't have to be 'Someone' to participate in politics; you just have to be a citizen. You don't have to be rich to have an opinion; you just have to start speaking out.

Let's get organised again. But this time, don't look for 'corporate sponsorship' or government grants or recognition from the mainstream press. Those forces will just take us over, make money, then spit us out, whilst continuing to sail falsely under the banners we first erected. We have to remake our society for us - and that means doing it together, not for money.

Video and transcript below: SOPA stands for "Stop Online Piracy Act". "Just as the printing press led to the widespread publication of the Bible in the vernacular and ultimately to the Reformation which forever transformed the power structure in European society, so too has the internet allowed the public to receive, correlate and distribute information that challenges official government narratives." This threatens the powerbases of our self-appointed masters and they will do anything to stop it.

Beyond SOPA: The Past, Present and Future of Internet Censorship

By James Corbett
grtv.ca
29 January, 2012
(Originally published on the Corbett Report at http://www.corbettreport.com/beyond-sopa-the-past-present-and-future-of-internet-censorship/.)

When legislators in the US abandoned their support of SOPA and PIPA in the wake of mass popular protest earlier this month, many of those who had been mobilized by the legislation–which would have granted the US government almost total power to block access to foreign websites accused of so much as linking to copyrighted material–did not have long to enjoy their “victory.” The very next day the New Zealand police swooped in to the million-dollar estate of MegaUpload.com founder Kim Dotcom, arresting him and three others at the US government’s request for alleged racketeering, copyright infringement and money laundering. The Department of Justice is now seeking the MegaUpload CEO’s extradition to the US.

Some amongst those who had been campaigning against SOPA and PIPA did not know that the US government already had the authority to shut down entire websites and in fact has exercised that authority on numerous occasions. What many are now learning is that, far from some potential future threat, internet censorship already exists in a variety of legislation that is already on the books in the United States and in nations around the world.

Although most commonly associated with China, which has implemented strict internet filters that prevent its citizens from finding politically sensitive material, various internet censorship programs have already been implemented by countries around the globe.

In 2010, Japan passed amendments to its copyright law making it illegal to download copyrighted material. The move has yet to curtail file-sharing in the country, so the Japanese government recently announced that they are going to begin putting fake copies of popular tv dramas on file-sharing websites that, when opened, remind users that it is illegal to download such material.

In July of 2010, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement seized the domains of 8 websites that it accused of hosting illegal copies of copyrighted material as part of an investigation dubbed Operation In Our Sites. The seizures came before any trial took place, and six of the websites did not actually host any of the copyrighted material in question, only linking to it. That November, ICE acted once again, this time seizing 82 domains. In December of 2011, over one year later, the agency returned one of the domains, Dajaz1.com, to its owner, after admitting that it had not in fact breached any laws.

In May of last year, the US Justice Department began seeking the extradition of one of the website’s operators, Richard O’Dwyer, from the UK. O’Dwyer is a British citizen who established TVShack.net in December of 2007. The DOJ is hoping to bring O’Dwyer to the US under the Extradition Act of 2003 to face charges of copyright infringement in the Southern District of New York.

Late last year, a number of nations signed a new global copyright agreement known as the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement or ACTA. Signatories include the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, South Korea, and, as of this past week, 22 member states of the European Union.

Purported to be a treaty against counterfeit goods, generic drugs and copyright, it threatens to fundamentally alter the internet as it has so far existed.

When the Polish government announced its intention to sign earlier this month, protests sprang up around the country.

While the public is only beginning to understand the implications of ACTA, which has already been signed by a number of countries, others are pointing to these types of agreements as only the thin edge of the wedge for the implementation of outright totalitarian control over the internet as a whole. Indeed, perhaps even more worrying than the existing legislation and agreements for internet censorship are the numerous proposals for even more restrictive measures that have been made time and again by political leaders in a variety of contexts.

In October of 2008, the Labor government in Australia proposed a mandatory filter for the entire Australian internet. The proposal, dubbed “Clean Feed” would ostensibly block any content deemed to break Australia’s media regulations. When a list of the websites supposed to be banned under the scheme was released in early 2009, it included the websites of numerous innocuous Australian businesses, as well as overtly political websites that had no illegal or offending material. The current government has said they would not vote for any such legislation, and the proposal would be unlikely to reach parliament until 2013.

In 2010 the UK passed the Digital Economy Act, which theoretically allows for the UK government to ban copyright violators from the Internet. In August of 2011, parts of the legislation proposing the blocking of sites believed to be linking to copyrighted material was declared to be unenforceable and were dropped from the legislation.

In March of 2009, Senator Jay Rockefeller opined during a subcommittee hearing that the internet is proving to be such a threat to America’s national security that it would have been better if it had never existed.

In June of 2010, Senator Joe Lieberman stated that he believed the US needed the same ability to shut down the internet as China currently has.

While these proposals are sometimes couched in business-friendly rhetoric about protecting intellectual property, sometimes as a national security question about defending cyber infrastructure from foreign enemies and sometimes as attempts to protect children or stop the spread of child pornography, the proponents of internet censorship are becoming increasingly honest about their real worry: the free spread of ideas amongst a public that is allowed to choose for themselves what information to believe and what to discard.

Last year, Bill Clinton advocated the idea that the US government create an agency for “fact-checking” websites on the internet.

Earlier this month, Evgeny Morozov of Stanford, who previously served as a Fellow of George Soros’ Open Society Institute, wrote an article calling on Google and other search engines to use banners to warn users about websites that are deemed to be pseudoscientific or conspiratorial. Perhaps realizing that the proposal sounds drastic, Morozov concludes:

“such a move might trigger conspiracy theories of its own—e.g. is Google shilling for Big Pharma or for Al Gore?—but this is a risk worth taking as long as it can help thwart the growth of fringe movements.”

Here we see the real danger of the internet for those who seek to control the spread of information. The internet, like every other medium that has come before it, changes not just the way in which people create, distribute and receive information, but the information itself. Just as the printing press led to the widespread publication of the Bible in the vernacular and ultimately to the Reformation which forever transformed the power structure in European society, so too has the internet allowed the public to receive, correlate and distribute information that challenges official government narratives in a way that threatens to transform the power structure of our society. And as the traditional media has begun to bleed away the remains of its increasingly dissatisfied customer base, self-immolated on the fantastic failure to challenge the status quo on issues like Saddam’s WMD or the growing apparatus of the police state or the never-ending bailouts of the too-big-to-fails, a new, independent media has arisen to take its place, empowered by technologies that allow for the instantaneous and nearly costless transmission of ideas to the farthest corners of the globe.

When situated in this context, the recent struggle over the SOPA and PIPA bills are seen for what they are: one battle in a much larger war for internet freedom, and ultimately, the cognitive liberty of the American public. But it is possible to win the battle and yet lose the war, as the millions of MegaUpload users who just had all of their files seized by the FBI found out the hard way. The only hope is that the movement that has arisen to face this, the greatest threat to the rise of this new era of mental independence, does not wane in the wake of the SOPA and PIPA “victory,” but instead rises to meet the even greater internet clampdown that awaits. After all, all the authorities are waiting for is for the public to fall back asleep.

We were successful today! In fact even more so than we expected. The injunction phase was skipped and we’re going straight to trial now. It’ll be heard in April rather than Sept/Oct. as we were planning. This has to be good for us and the forests. This article has been retitled from "Injunction to stop logging of Cobb Hill rainforest Site." The teaser then was, "If this application is successful, it will be the third time VicForests will face the courts to be sued by a community group for what is believed to be illegal logging of protected areas of public forest."

Update

We were successful today! In fact even more so that we expected. The injunction phase was skipped and we’re going straight to trial now. It’ll be heard in April rather than Sept/Oct. as we were planning. This has to be good for us and the forests.

I imagine VicForests will not be very happy chappies. They opposed this speedy trial as proposed by His Honour Justice Jack Forrest. And they lost. The next round will be very interesting.

We’ll let you know when we have exact dates.

By the way – we still need dollars for this. If you can help – here’s an easy safe method to help us ... http://www.givenow.com.au/environmenteastgippsland
Thanks.

Jill

PS VicForests has given an undertaking not to log this area until the trial is heard.
_____________

Jill Redwood

Coordinator
Environment East Gippsland
Locked Bag 3
ORBOST Vic 3888
(03) 5154 0145
www.eastgippsland.net.au
EAST GIPPSLAND - OUR BREATHING SPACE

Earlier post regarding an application for an injunction

When: 12 noon, Monday 30th January.

Where: Court 10, Melbourne Supreme Court.

Other: If this application is successful, it will be the third time VicForests will face the courts to be sued by a community group for what is believed to be illegal logging of protected areas of public forest.

VicForests gave an undertaking not to log this site until the application for an injunction could be heard. His Honour Justice Forrest is hearing our interlocutory injunction application on Monday. Justice Jack Forrest granted the interlocutory injunction in the Brown Mountain case in 2009.

For comment or updates after the application is heard: Liz Ingham 0409 333 595

29th January
Jill Redwood
Coordinator
Environment East Gippsland
Locked Bag 3
ORBOST Vic 3888

Below see video for the non-technical. This article is about a new free and open source software solution for schools that cuts down radically on power, hardware and commercial licences - therefore on cost. Userful Corporation, which calls itself "the global leader in Linux desktop virtualization", has released the next generation of it's Userful MultiSeat™ solution which it describes as turning "one Linux computer into multiple high performance independent computer stations using the HP t200 thin client. At $99 including the keyboard and mouse, the HP t200 is the worlds lowest cost thin client device."

Candobetter Ed. This article is about free software in a commercial hardware package. Although it promotes a product of Hewlett Packard, it is interesting because that product promotes and uses an entirely Linux-based free and opensource system, thus liberating computer-users from expensive, energy and time-consuming Microsoft software, where licences can run into thousands of dollars for a professional and much more for an organisation like a school. Another problem with Microsoft is the mandatory expensive and time consuming updates, plus the new investment in new licenses with every new computer or major upgrade. Those familiar with Linux might say that anyone can run Linux programs and free and open source software in any computer, but others would admit that finding a reliable Linux solution among the hundreds available, one that is easily synchronised with hardware and software, can be extremely problematic. This "Userful MultiSeat" Linux version is promising to avoid those problems, and quotes many testing hours. Anyone who has a different or confirmatory experience, please write to us and tell us in the comments at the base of this article.

$99 Canadian per mouse and pc - Userful MultiSeat Linux Solution in Hewlett Packard box

Calgary, AB – Jan 31, 2012 – Userful Corporation, which calls itself "the global leader in Linux desktop virtualization", has emailed candobetter about its next generation of it's Userful MultiSeat™ solution which it describes as making one Linux computer into multiple high performance independent computer stations "using the HP t200 thin client."

Sold at $99 CAD including the keyboard and mouse, the HP t200 claims to be the worlds lowest cost 'thin client device'.[1] Userful MultiSeat enables schools and businesses to deploy more than twice as many computers for the same cost, while enabling multiple users to use different applications at the same time from one host computer, each with their own monitor, keyboard, and mouse. The HP t200 provides the capability to connect multiple stations to a single host PC such as the HP ms6200 directly over USB for close proximity computing environments without the need for a LAN, or install computer stations in multiple rooms using a single host PC with each station connected over Ethernet.

Userful MultiSeat enables schools to quickly deploy large numbers of computer stations for a very low cost, whether in the classroom, computer lab, or school library. It is easy to set up, use and maintain, and provides teachers with the tools they need to give their students a high quality computer-based education. It dramatically reduces electricity use, paying for the computers in power savings alone in 4 years or less, and reduces environmental heat, noise and pollution at the same time. It also enables schools to reinvest by starting new computer labs with the computers recovered as a result of a MultiSeat computing upgrade.

"The HP t200 thin client combined with Userful MultiSeat software provides the highest performance shared computing solution available on the market today," said Tim Griffin, President of Userful. "The HP t200's support of both Ethernet and USB provides the flexibility to position stations far away from the host computer, or operate without a LAN, making it a very compelling solution for many use cases."

More than 50,000 schools worldwide are already using Userful MultiSeat to provide millions of students with computer access. Userful has proven to be the computer solution of choice for governments with digital inclusion mandates to provide school age children with computer access, on limited budgets. Countries such as Brazil, who have already successfully deployed over 500,000 Userful computer stations to schools in every municipality, have shown that with the combined cost savings of Userful MultiSeat, Linux, and open source software, it is feasible to provide every student with a comprehensive education using computers, regardless of whether they live in a city or a remote indigenous village with little infrastructure. The Brazilian Ministry of Education has reported saving 60% in up-front costs, and 80% in annual power savings as compared to their previous PC-per-station solutions.

Every ministry of education worldwide is eligible for a free 90 day pilot so that educators can easily experience first hand the high performance, and ease of use of the solution. Support for Ethernet and up to 15 stations per PC is currently available for evaluation purposes. Commercial support starting Q2 2012. An update to support more than 15 stations per PC will follow.

For more information, visit: http://userful.com/products/userful-multiseat-linux

For more information on the HP t200 multiseat device, visit: HP t200 Thin Client product information

About Userful:

Userful Corporation is the trusted partner for government education with millions of users of its MultiSeat solutions in over 100 countries. Userful provides the software that powers the world's largest educational computer deployments, and has sold more than 800,000 MultiSeat desktops worldwide. Userful focuses exclusively on Linux, and is the foremost expert in Linux shared computing with more than 10 years experience in MultiSeat. Userful is headquartered in Calgary, Canada, with offices and partners around the world. The company's software which turns one computer into many lowers desktop computing costs, improves manageability, and reduces both electricity consumption and e-waste. More information about Userful is available at: http://www.userful.com.

Trademark notice: HP™ is a trademark of Hewlett-Packard Company. Userful MultiSeat Linux™, and Userful MultiSeat™ are trademarks of Userful Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

[1] A "thin device" is a small box that you plug a mouse monitor and keyboard into to make a computer station. You plug up to 15 of those small boxes into a regular PC, and 15 people can use the computer independently at the same time, each with their own monitor keyboard and mouse. For instance, this is the HP t200 thin client device: http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF06b/12454-12454-321959-338927-5112717-5171156-5171158-5210837.html

The following is a report filed by Madeline Weld, President of the Population Institute of Canada, on the Montreal book-launch by Ian Angus, co-author (with Australia's Simon Butler) of "Too Many People? Population, Immigration and the Environmental Crisis". This launch took place at 7:30 p.m. on January 2012 in the Greenhouse of Concordia University on the 12th floor. Madeline attended the previous launch at Ottawa University in December, and her account of the proceedings can be found in the SPA newsletter for February 2012. (Tim Murray) See also "A real Ecosocialist review of that cornucopian book, Too Many People".

Our Mission

This event was brought to PIC's attention by Joe Bish of the Population Media Center (Shelburne, VT), who pointed out the public rift among those who call themselves "ecosocialists" at the Climate and Capitalism website, edited by Ian Angus. Angus' book, co-written with Simon Butler, got a scathing review by Alan Thornett, which, along with the authors' reply, can be seen at http://climateandcapitalism.com/?p=6308. Joe was hoping that PIC had human resources in Montreal to attend the book launch and hand out copies of the unfavourable book review. PIC does have human resources in Montreal, but it turns out they were going to be on vacation in Mexico. So Ottawa PICers Madeline Weld and Paul Bendus drove to Montreal (about 2 hours east of Ottawa) to attend the launch.

The Scene

The Concordia greenhouse (actually on the 13th floor) is accessed by a set of stairs from the 12th floor. Paul and I got there about 20 minutes before launch time. Some people were already sitting in the rows of chairs of varying type and stability facing the front of the greenhouse or milling around in the narrow walkway beside the greenhouse. A young man and woman were strumming on guitars at the back of the greenhouse. All very mellow. Angus obviously recognized me from our encounter at his Ottawa book launch. His greeting "Oh, hello" was decidedly unenthusiastic. I tried to make my "Hello" sound a little cheerier. Paul and I set to handing out the literature packets we had brought with us: the standard PIC brochure for public events inside of which were Thornett's unfavourable book review and a two-sided sheet created especially for the occasion, challenging the assertion that overpopulation was a myth.

The Preliminaries

Since there was nothing going on other than the background serenade, many people began reading our literature while waiting. It was gratifying to see so many people reading the PIC literature challenging what they were about to hear. We continued to hand out our packets to new arrivals and as launch time approached, Paul went to the stairs to nab any latecomers. In all, there were about 30 people in attendance. Unlike the Ottawa book launch where there were only half as many people, everyone (aside from Angus, Yves Engler who introduced him, Paul and myself) was very young, probably all students. None looked like they could be older than 25.

The Introductions

Angus got two introductions. The first was by Matthew Brett, a student in political science, and whom a web search later revealed is an editor and contributor to Canadian Dimension (a left wing magazine founded in the 1960s), a booster of the Occupy movement, and involved with the Society for Socialist Studies. The second introduction was by Yves Engler, in his early thirties, and whom an internet search reveals to be a left-wing activist, former president of the Concordia Student Union, and an anti-Zionist, who helped organize the riots that aborted Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu's speech at Concordia in 2002. (According to Wikipedia, this cost him the job of president of the CSU for "vexatious conduct" which he unsuccessfully tried to get back.) You can learn what Engler says about himself here http://yvesengler.com/about/ (also check out the items on the menu bar at the top of the page) and Wikipedia's take here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yves_Engler. Of the three people who spoke that evening (Brett, Engler, and Angus), Engler was by far the most aggressive in his language toward populationists. However, everyone remained civil and there were no incidents.

First Michael Brett

Matthew Brett spoke first and introduced himself as a student in political science. He praised Angus' book, calling it a "rich book" and "comprehensive" and "where the cutting edge of activism is today." He urged people to buy the book and said the first few buyers would get a copy of Canadian Dimension. He thanked the organizers, Naomi Large of Sustainable Concordia and Jackie Martin, co-ordinator of the greenhouse. You can read about the greenhouse project here http://sustainable.concordia.ca/ourinitiatives/greenhouse/. It is probably symptomatic of the politicized population-denial culture of our progressive universities that sustainability advocates were involved in hosting the book launch of a population-denying Bolshevik.

Brett then praised Yves Engler and his work on Haiti. [Wikipedia tells us that this includes Engler pouring a bottle of cranberry juice on Minister of Foreign Affairs Pierre Pettigrew at a 2005 press conference, saying "Pettigrew lies, Haitians die" to symbolize the blood on Canada's hands for its involvement in the 2004 coup ousting Aristide.] Engler's "Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy" was an excellent work on corruption and gamesmanship, Brett said. For Angus' book "Too Many People?", the question mark was critical. Ian is one of the most important people of the radical left when it comes to the environment, Brett said. He is the editor of the website Climate and Capitalism and author of the book, The Global Fight for Climate Justice.

Then Yves Engler

Yves Engler spoke next. He said the book was about a topic he didn't know much about and he thought it was a burden, but he was happy that Matt had burdened him with introducing it because it was incredibly interesting. Engler said that what we needed to guard against as people concerned about the environment is racist and anti-human ideologies. There are people who are set in making the issue of population the overarching issue. He hadn't been aware of this and was glad to be made aware of these antihuman and racist ideologies. Then Engler went on about "blaming victims," calling them the "overbreeding poor" and diverting attention away from the real vandals, who are tied into a history of racism and imperialism. [As you can imagine, it was hard to listen to this stuff, but Paul and I bit our tongues.]

Engler said that the book cited a study that we have the capacity to feed 9 billion people with sustainable agriculture. Most people who are undernourished are tied into the food production process. The main point is the diversion that a focus on population creates, taking the focus from the main driver of destruction: an economic system of growth and an economic and political system driving our species toward devastation. The real danger is that liberal feminists and activists will strengthen the right if we allow society to be diverted by population away from things like the tarsands.

Finally Ian Angus

Ian Angus then spoke, thanking Sustainable Concordia and Greenhouse Concordia. According to the UN, the world population is 7 billion, he said. The UN chose October 31 as the official date, and some of his conspiracy theory-oriented friends thought Halloween was chosen on purpose. He seemed to be dubious about that. Ironically, despite all the media attention, there were articles complaining that no one talks about population. He and Simon Butler included "Immigration" in the subtitle of their book because of the argument that rich countries could solve their problems by keeping immigrants out: "They've messed up their place, keep them out of ours."

'Tertullian' Blindness not necessarily an affliction of 'bigots'

Angus then said that the overpopulation argument is not only put forward by bigots. Many honest sincere environmentalists think that we need to solve the population problem in order to solve other problems. Focusing on population diverts attention away from the real causes of those problems. However, it's not a new argument. In "The Population Bomb," (1968) Paul Ehrlich said that the battle to feed humanity is over. The prediction was all wrong. Paul Ehrlich was an early populationist but not the only one or the first. Angus cited Tertullian, a founder of modern Christianity (in the 2nd century) on how wars, famines, earthquakes etc were necessary to prune humanity's numbers. And other things being equal, a larger population means people will be eating more, wearing more clothes etc. So it is easy to conclude that too many people cause problems. But that's the case only if you think that the social and economic system in place is the only one possible. Tertullian couldn't have imagined a system that wasn't based on slavery or that didn't get all its energy from animal and human labour. In his day, a small class of landowners had all the land. Much of the food produced went to feed the army. A lot of the food produced in North Africa went to Rome.

Three Arguments Against A Population-Focus

If you don't believe that a different way of life is possible, you will think that there are too many people. Angus said that he would focus on three core arguments (1) statistics are misleading, (2) individual behaviour doesn't cause climate change, and (3) population is not the real cause of our problems.

Regarding statistics, Angus said that in one of his courses, the teacher said that in a European city, the number of storks correlated with the number of babies. Of course, we know that the storks aren't bringing the babies. Similarly, the increase in greenhouse gases (GHGs) is not associated with the increase in population. When you break things down, the correlation disappears. Most countries with the highest birth rates have very low emissions. He then gave some statistics on birth rates and emissions. So something other than birth rates is driving emissions. Many people assume that the total emissions are driven by the sum of the people emitting GHGs. Al Gore's book advised people on ways to reduce their GHG emissions. But if everyone did everything that Gore recommended, GHG emissions would fall by only 20%. Most of the emissions are from corporations and the military. In discussing emissions, one can't ignore class. The richest 7% of the global population produce 50% of the GHG emissions while the poorest 45% produce only 7% of the emissions.

Regarding point number 3, concerns about population ignore corporate power. At the time of the fuss over 7 billion, the Occupy movement was happening. In the US, the richest 1% own the majority of all stocks and corporate equity. An British consulting firm called Trucost found that 3000 corporations caused $2.15 trillion in environmental problems (higher than the GDP of all but six countries). And this number actually understates the damage because it doesn't include things outside of normal operations, such as oilspills like BP's in the Gulf of Mexico, or ecosystem destruction such as what Shell Oil has done to the Niger River Delta or Chevron to Ecuador's rainforests, or the impact of global warming resulting from normal operations, or the damage caused by worldwide use of products. The focus on population ignores real and immediate threats. Nothing we do about population will change things quickly enough.

The Overpopulation Argument Ignores The Role That Capitalism Plays In Our Environmental Crisis

Bill McKibben has called the Alberta tarsands the biggest crime. One can look at it as a simple statistic: If there were fewer people, there would be fewer cars, so emissions would decline. But by 2020, the tarsands alone will produce more GHGs than all cars and trucks. [Corporations?] are the fundamental cause of climate change. There is an artificial dichotomy of too many people and too much consumption that has prevented a real debate. The fundamental problem is an economy totally dependent on oil. Changing the birthrates would not stop deforestation in Ecuador, wouldn't stop the US army (using up resources), wouldn't stop coal burning. If we misdiagnose the problem, we won't find the cure. The argument of "too many people" ignores the role of the capitalist system.

"Pollution begins not in the family bedroom, but in the corporate boardroom" said Barry Commoner (author of The Closing Circle). 1800 years ago, Tertullian could never have imagined that the system could be different. For the idea that population causes environmental destruction, Commoner made an analogy of trying to save a leaky ship by throwing passengers overboard instead of fixing the ship.

Let The Questions Begin

That was the end of the presentations. Brett and Engler took questions from the audience for Angus to answer. One of them (Engler I think) informed us that they would favour first-time questioners over people who had asked a question before and that they would alternate between male and female questioners. Since no one was quick to ask a first question, I became the first in the audience to have a say. I didn't ask a question, but expressed the opinion that a simple comparison of birthrates and GHG emissions did not look at the totality of environmental damage. The countries with the highest birth rates tend to be among the poorest with low industrialization, but can cause a lot of environmental damage through deforestation, overuse of water etc (giving the example of the Nile that no longer reaches the Mediterranean). Also, as countries become wealthier and industrialize, like China, their GHGS increase, and having a large population exacerbates that.

Jackie (of the greenhouse) then asked a question about strategies for a more sustainable agriculture system. The answer was that there was a problem in distribution, not that there wasn't enough food. The food doesn't get to the poor people and they can't afford to buy it. And we could also get rid of waste. But should we feed 9 billion people? Fertilizer in the US is spread over fields and results in dead areas in the Gulf of Mexico. Could we feed 7 billion people without doing that? Agrimonde in France undertook a massive study of world agriculture and concluded that we could feed 9 billion with or without sustainable agriculture but global warming will make some [currently fertile] areas non-fertile.

Paul was called on next and commented on Angus' use of statistics. For someone who had criticised the use of statistics, Angus certainly cited a lot of them, he said. Paul also criticized the idea of the possibility of endless growth. Pointing out that both he and Angus were early baby boomers, he said that the world population had grown almost 4 times during their lifetimes [closer to 3 times]. Paul also pointed out that there had to be a market for the products produced by the oilsands and that market was affected by population.

Angus Answers Back

A woman then asked if Angus knew of any specific corporations that benefitted from population. Angus' answer seemed a little disjointed or perhaps I had exceeded my absorptive capacity. He said that regarding the comments on birthrates in Africa (mine), one can't blame it (presumably environmental impacts) all on population. The average doesn't show the distribution of use. Do humans just use oil for fun? If so, why are there ads? Why is there built-in obsolescence? The management of demand is a problem of capitalism. About governments and corporations favouring a populationist approach, that is mostly based on ideology. The UK is cutting immigration instead of dealing with the problem of unemployment. Margaret Wente of the Globe and Mail said there is no way to deal with problems unless we get the birthrate down.

Angus: Population Is Not The Decisive Variable

Another woman then said that she loved Angus' clarification. He said that individual consumption is not a problem while capitalism is. But she saw it as a cycle. Angus said he didn't disagree with her. The problem with the population argument is that it treats one variable as decisive. He said something along the lines of fracking being related to everything else but where does the power lie and referred to population as an abstraction.

Population Is NOT An 'Abstraction'

At this point, since no one else had their hand up, I was called on again. (That's 3 women in a row. Apparently breaking the alternating sex rule was ok if there were no questions from the sex whose turn it was.) I asserted that population was not an abstraction. I told of having been in Rwanda in 1986 to see the mountain gorillas (on my honeymoon). I said that Rwanda is a hilly country and its hills had been entirely terraced for agriculture and the only remnant of original forest was in the park where the gorillas lived. Every woman I saw had a baby on her back and I wondered what the next generation would do. Later, when I checked the total fertility rate of Rwanda at the time, it was 8.2 kids per woman. I suggested that pressure on resources increases the likelihood of conflict and mentioned the brutality of the conflict in places like the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Blame It On Imperialism, Colonialism And The Slave Trade

A young man was called on next and, referring to my comments, he said that it was hard to look at the issue and not take into account centuries of imperialism. In their imperial wars, Belgium and Holland used ethnic groups as their local armies. There were also centuries of the slave trade. It was the same in South Africa.

I believe it was Angus who then asked "Where is the power in those dynamics?" There isn't a group interested in population growth. There is an interest in driving demands.

Matthew Brett then said that the question was what can we do. There are activities that he sees (in the book?) that he knows and that he doesn't know. What can we do for alternatives and resistance?

Think And Act Globally

Angus said that what they (he and Butler) say in the final chapter about ecosocialism is that there is no socialist revolution that isn't ecological and no ecological revolution that isn't socialist. We can't turn back the tide. Some things are hard to cope with. In the US, the greens are in the Democratic Party. (I think he was saying that the greens shouldn't buy into current political systems.) There's the slogan "Think globally and act locally" but we also have to think globally and act globally, in solidarity with the oppressed. The environmental movement in Canada has not been good at linking up with the indigenous environmental movement. An example is the indigenous fight against the tarsands. This is not just a fight in the abstract but a fight for justice.

The Left-Wing Anti-Population Bias Of 'Sustainable Concordia'

That concluded the launch. Some people then went to the front to buy books. Paul and I knew that bad weather was on its way for the drive back to Ottawa and did not mingle. While no one made a bee line for us to learn more about PIC, almost everyone seems to have kept the literature we handed out. I collected only one copy from the floor. In total, we handed out about 30. I believe that the perspective we were offering was different from the one that these students were usually exposed to. For example, by organizing the book launch of a population denier, "Sustainable Concordia" was implicitly denying the importance of population growth. And based on the remark of the young man to what I said about Rwanda, some of the kids have been pretty thoroughly indoctrinated to understand that everything bad can be attributed to western imperialism. It is possible that the audience was not representative of the student body. Given the association of the two introductory speakers with socialist causes, many members of the audience may have come with that perspective. However, given that Yves Engler was a former president of the Concordia Students' Union, I suspect that the socialists have quite a strong presence on the campus.

Some Consolation In Knowing That 30 Students Have Finally Been Exposed To A Different Perspective

Of course, the format was frustrating for us in that only Angus got to answer the questions of students and we didn't have the opportunity to refute his answers. Having equal time would have been much more satisfying. Still, at least 30 students at Concordia U have now been exposed to sensible arguments on population and know that not everyone who is concerned about population has a white robe and hood stashed away in his closet. Let's hope we hear from some of them.

Madeline Weld
January 29, 2012

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, in an article republished from Global Research and his own web site, warns his readers, "Tyranny looms, and Ron Paul is the only candidate who stands against tyranny." However, he argues that Ron Paul's "small government" libertarian policies may not be able to solve America's environmental problems or help the poor and so could make it harder for Paul to win sufficient support. He offers some alternative policy suggestions. (Sub-headings and emphasis have been added by myself.)

In the Soviet Union common criminals were punished less harshly and received better treatment than political prisoners. A person who had committed a violent crime had more rights than someone who expressed criticism of the government and could be portrayed as having acted against the government. We now have the same situation in the US.

In a recent case the Supreme Court overturned the sentence of a drug dealer who was convicted on the basis of a warrantless 28-day search by having a GPS device affixed to his car. In other words, a common criminal still has privacy rights under the Constitution, but not US citizens who are suspected of vague and nebulous "terrorist support."

The only candidate commited to stopping war, preserving democracy

Both Republicans and Democrats have demonstrated disregard for the civil liberty protections guaranteed by the US Constitution. Among the visible candidates for president, only Ron Paul has respect for the Constitution. As it is now possible for the executive branch to take away the life and liberty of a US citizen without due process of law, the Constitution is for all practical purposes lost. Tyranny looms, and Ron Paul is the only candidate who stands against tyranny.

This is why I have written that Ron Paul is our last chance and encouraged his libertarian handlers to be flexible enough for the electorate to elect Ron Paul. I agree that Ron Paul, if elected president, would be hamstrung by the Establishment, but the other candidates offer no hope whatsoever.

What is at stake is not libertarianism, but the US Constitution. Unfortunately, not many libertarians see that. Neither do many progressives. If truth be known, Americans are too divided and in opposition to one another to be able to unite against tyranny.

Low income Americans need protection by government

In previous columns I explained how Ron Paul could appeal to low income Americans, to elderly Americans, and to those Americans concerned about illegal immigration. I suggested that Ron Paul endorse Ron Unz's proposal to raise the minimum wage to $12 per hour as a way of turning the jobs taken by illegal immigrants into a more livable income for Americans. I suggested that Ron Paul should acknowledge that people who have paid a payroll tax all their working lives have private property rights to Social Security and Medicare benefits.

A number of libertarians replied, as I knew they would from my long years of association with them, with their standard dogmatism that the minimum wage causes unemployment and that Social Security and Medicare are government programs not private property. They were blind to Ron Unz's point that low wages cause unemployment among Americans who are unable to live on the wages, and, thus, cause an inflow of illegal immigrants who take the low wage jobs.

I don't need to repeat my suggestions as the columns are available on my web site. I will, however, point out that the fact that Medicare and Social Security are intergenerational transfers does not mean that they are not private property. Consider your homeowner's policy. If your neighbor's home burns down or a person's home in a distant location, the insurance company draws on the pool of funds created by policy holders' premiums in order to compensate the person who lost his home. The damaged homeowner is not simply compensated from his own paid-in premiums. If more homeowners are elderly than young, it is an intergenerational transfer when a young homeowner's home burns down.

Like Medicare, private health insurance is a transfer payment as premiums from the healthy support the care of the sick. Private medical insurance could also be an intergenerational transfer. Premium are adjusted for age, but generally speaking, the young are more healthy than the old.

For Ron Paul to further broaden his base, he also needs to add to my previous suggestions his endorsement of regulation to protect the environment and to protect private savers from fraud and irresponsible debt leverage by private financial institutions.

How private investment threatens our environment

Libertarians claim that the best way to protect the environment is to have it privately owned. If streams, oceans, and underground aquifers were privately owned, the owners could sue polluters such as the oil companies, the mining companies, agri-business, etc. Thus, private property would protect the environment. Whether this would work or not, we are a long way from such private ownership, and many private economic activities are destroying common environmental resources.

The list is endless. The World Wildlife Fund reports that Asia Pulp & Paper is destroying the last remaining Sumatran tigers by clear cutting the tigers' last remaining refuge in order to produce toilet paper marketed in the US under the Paseo and LIVI brand names. "Feel the Power! Buy our product and flush a tiger and a rain forest!"

The National Defense Resource Council reports that under an Obama regime and state of Utah plan, massive coal mining will be permitted adjacent to Bryce Canyon National Park. Three hundred heavy diesel trucks per day will travel down the scenic two-lane higway to supply China with dirty coal.

The Obama regime has granted Shell Oil tentative approval to begin drilling off the coast of the Arctic Refuge, the main on-shore birthing ground for polar bears.

Defenders of Wildlife reports that Shell Oil is pushing to open Bristol Bay to oil drilling, despite the danger to fisheries and wildlife and despite the fact that the long-term value of the renewable fisheries far exceeds the short-term value of nonrenewable fossil fuel extraction in the area.

In the Powder River Basin in Montana, coal companies are mobilizing to destroy the water resources and ranchers in the eastern part of the state.

All of these are current hot ticket items with progressives, environmentalists, and ranchers. Obama is vulnerable. He has put the tar sands pipeline on hold, but many believe he will approve the environmentally destructive project once he is re-elected.

Air, water, wildlife, and fish in the sea are not private property and have no protectors. They are being destroyed by the lack of regulation. Moreover, private property has not protected forests from being clearcut or soil from being depleted of its natural nutrients. The chemical farming with which agri-business has replaced natural farming has polluted America's aquifers, streams, lakes, rivers, and the Gulf of Mexico, which has extensive dead areas from chemical fertilizer run-off.

As Herman Daly and other environmental economists have made clear, the world is running out of sinks into which to dump its wastes. The external costs of unregulated activity are mounting. Once a threshold is crossed, the environment is ruined. The drive to maximize short-run profits is a great source of ruin. The external costs associated with maximizing short-run profits can exceed the value of the private output.

Could libertarian dogmatism deny the choice needed by US voters?

A candidate committed to saving the Constitution, environment, private savings, protecting the security of the elderly, opposing war, and boosting the incomes of the worst off, which has the added benefit of reducing illegal immigration, is a candidate without equal in the presidential election.

We will not have such a candidate, because libertarian sectarian dogmatism will prevent it. Libertarians will be pure to the end and take the Constitution and the rest of us down with them.

Craig Dilworth writes "From a biological/ecological point of view, the growth of the human population can be likened to that of lemming populations prior to their periodic migrations. Such a rate of growth is unprecedented in any large animal species.....The human population is 'swarming'. We are behaving like an r-selected species.....Key to this whole process is our constantly meeting vital needs through the application of new forms of technology to both renewable and non-renewable resources, combined with the fact that there have to date always existed resources amenable to that development....If technological development were truly an aid to the survival of the human species, it would not have led to the elimination of a significant part of the population's resource base, only to have replaced by an inferior substitute. There is something wrong with the development of technology in the hands of humans...."

Question. Why the hell was "T" inserted in the "IPAT" equation? And why do environmentalists still believe that technology "minimizes" the total human footprint, when in fact, as Jevons, Khazoom, Brookes and Dilworth have shown, it INCREASES it?

In my book Too Smart for Our Own Good, I present an ecological theory intended to explain human evolution and development, and I apply that theory to all major aspects of our actual evo-lution and development over the past 7 million years. In this paper, I shall summarise the treat-ment that population growth in particular receives in Too Smart.

The most fundamental determinants of a population’s behaviour are its species’ instincts. These instincts evolve with the species; and the species’ environment at the time the species first comes into existence is probably the one best suited to the species. It is on the basis of its instinctual behaviour that a species avoids extinction. When operating properly, instincts see to it that the species’ population stays in dynamic equilibrium with the other physical and biological systems making up its surroundings. Doing this will mean the species’ populations’ not becoming either too small or too large.

The earlier in a species’ evolution a type of instinct appears, the more basic instincts of that type are. Along these lines I distinguish three kinds of instinct: survival, sexual and social. The more sophisticated the species, the greater the number and sophistication of its instincts.

The most primitive instincts are the survival, which exist in all animals, and include consuming food, and avoiding being consumed. The ‘fight or flight’ response falls under the survival instincts.

Next are the sexual instincts, found in all sexually reproducing animals, first among them being to impregnate or get impregnated. In more-developed species they include the maternal and other parental instincts. The influence of parental instincts increases with the relative brain size of the members of the species, since infants will be progressively less mature when born and thus need more care. Both the survival and sexual instincts support the individual’s gene line (its genetic fitness); and it is in the context of sexual instincts in particular that individual territoriality arises.

Virtually all animals have individual territories, but social animals are characterised by having group territories. Social instincts arise in conjunction with group territory, and include those manifest in supporting one’s group by e.g. defending it against attack from other groups of the same species, or by killing one’s own offspring in times of overpopulation. Similar instincts exist in non-social animals, as manifest e.g. in lemming migrations and guppy cannibalism. Social species include primates, amongst whom group territoriality is manifest in combative behaviour between groups, keeping them apart, while individual territoriality is manifest as combative behaviour among males within the group, which works towards the determination of the group’s power structure and smooth organisation.

A general demarcation between more and less sophisticated species is recognised in the difference between r-selected and K-selected species. K-selected species are more sophisticated than are r-selected, and include most mammals and other animals that care for their young; r-selected species include e.g. insects and other classes whose members live less than a year. In being more primitive, r-selected species have only survival and sexual instincts, while some K-selected spe-cies have social instincts as well.

The instinct in K-selected species to acquire and protect individual territory is nevertheless more basic than that concerning group territory, since social species were preceded evolutionarily by non-social species. All social instincts are evolved from lower-level instincts (particularly sexual), just as all sexual instincts are evolved from survival instincts. For any social species however, groups must exist if the species is to exist, and social instincts are needed to support the gene line of the group in particular.

All three sorts of instinct exist so as to support the continuing existence of the species. Ultimately animals do not try to preserve their own lives ‘for the sake of’ their genetic fitness, but because through supporting their genetic fitness they are at the same time supporting the continu-ing existence of their species. The existence of the species is a precondition for the existence of its members, and the species’ survival takes precedence over the survival of individuals.

In most cases these three types of instinct work in concert. But in certain situations there can arise a ‘conflict of interest’ among them. In such a case the more-basic instincts have a tendency to override the less-basic (e.g. hunger takes precedence over the sexual drive), a phenomenon which, if it persists too far, can lead to disequilibrium and the demise of the species. In this re-gard, the social instincts differ from the survival and sexual instincts in that they may support the species’ existence at the expense of particular individuals’ gene lines, at least in the short term. Thus there can arise situations in which an individual’s supporting its own genetic fitness (sexual instincts) can reduce the fitness of the species – such as when a pair rears more than a replace-ment number of offspring in an overpopulated group. Infanticide, for example, is the result of the operation of a social instinct that helps maintain the health of the group. It is here, in the context of the manifestation of social instincts, that altruism and morals come into existence.

As regards human social instincts I cite Darwin:

We have now seen that actions are regarded by savages, and were probably so regarded by primeval man, as good or bad, solely as they obviously affect the welfare of the tribe. This conclusion agrees well with the belief that the so-called moral sense is aboriginally derived from the social instincts, for both relate at first exclusively to the community. (1874), p. 123.

And:

[T]he social instincts which no doubt are acquired by man as by the lower animals for the good of the community, will from the first have given him some wish to aid his fellows, some feeling of sympathy, and have compelled him to regard their approbation and disapprobation. Such impulses will have served him at a very early period as a rude rule of right and wrong. (1874), p. 128.

The modern-human chromosomal structure or karyotype is such that it supported the continued existence of our species given the conditions when the species first came into existence, i.e. given the state of the physical and biological systems with which we interacted in Africa 200,000 years ago. As the subsequent development of our species has made clear, a central aspect of the human karyotype which allowed us to survive was the plasticity of behaviour it implied. In other words, the human karyotype, to a much greater extent than those of other organisms, favoured learning over instinct. This proclivity for learning provided us with a great ‘advantage’ over other species, both competitors and prey. Given our intellectual endowment, that the total population of the human species would become too small was not a problem; but that it would become too large certainly was.

What limits the growth of a population, preventing disequilibrium due to overpopulation, are various sorts of check. The most fundamental of these are external checks, though physically internal checks such as bodily aging are also fundamental. External checks stem from outside the population, and are typical of r-selected species. They can take the form of a limit of some kind – e.g. of food or breeding sites; or they can take the form of disease, or predators.

Malthus’ principle of population tells us that populations have a tendency to grow through the procreation of individuals beyond replacement level. This principle applies straightforwardly to r-selected species. Their populations have a constant tendency to grow, and are stopped by external checks.

Looking at population growth from a systems point of view, we can say that the population sizes of almost all species constantly vacillate about a mean, increasing and decreasing in cycles. As the population grows, its food consumption increases, which, unless some other check comes into play first, eventually leads to the population’s experiencing scarcity. This in turn necessitates reduced consumption, which leads to a reduction in the size of the population – paradigmatically through an increase in infant mortality – allowing the resource to recover. Such populations as continue indefinitely in this way are systems in equilibrium.

Whether systems in equilibrium grow or shrink largely depends on the availability of food and breeding sites and the prevalence of predators. But all species, to continue to exist, must maintain equilibrium with their surroundings. This means that in order to survive, a species’ total popula-tion must not become so large that, for example, it eliminates the species’ source of food, nor so small that, e.g., there is inbreeding. If equilibrium is not maintained, i.e. if the population grows or shrinks beyond certain limits, the species will go extinct.

In the case of K-selected species as distinct from r-selected, apart from external checks, there may also be internal checks, stemming from within the population. Though the sizes of such populations also vacillate about a mean, the population stops its own growth when it tends to lead to disequilibrium. (Such checks in the case of humans could be learned, but their basis would still be instinctual, i.e. stem from our karyotype.) In other words, there are biological mechanisms in the populations of such species that see to it that their members participate in the limitation or reduction of their own number when that number tends to become too large. Such internal population checks can take many forms, some somatic, such as the having of miscar-riages, and some behavioural, such as infanticide and the excluding of particular individuals from food. In the case of humans, they include culturally reinforced checks, such as marriage, abortion (in primitive societies) and young men fighting (and dying) for their tribe or country. Internal checks to growth exist in virtually all vertebrates and even sea-anemones.

Temporary periods of scarcity occur naturally for all living organisms given the normally occurring changes in their environments, such as increases or decreases in temperature or rainfall. To survive as a species the populations that constitute the species must be able to live through such changes, which they do, given the changes are not too great, thanks to their adaptability. Predatory animals do not chronically depress their stocks of prey, nor do herbivores impair the regeneration of their food. The normal state of affairs for any species is one of dynamic equilib-rium, where, for most of the time, hardship is not experienced by the vast majority. But if there is a severe or lengthy scarcity of food or breeding sites, the population size will diminish; and, of course, if it diminishes enough, the species will become extinct.

If, on the other hand, there is a surplus of food and breeding sites, the pioneering principle, a corollary to the population principle, tells us that there will be a tendency for the population to grow until it fills the new space.

The pioneering principle is that any increase in food or space, given a surplus of the other, will tend to be consumed or occupied by a population, with the result that the population grows.

For any population, a surplus of food tends to lead to population growth, given the availability of breeding sites; but when a certain density is reached, internal population checks (for those species which have them) are normally manifest. But if the surplus is large, lengthy or sudden, not only is the externalcheck of starvation pushed back, but the social setting is destabilised. In practice this means that the survival and sexual instincts take precedence over the social instincts (which, in humans, are often culturally manifest). This is precisely what has happened and is happening in the case of the human species. Given the constantly increasing surplus humankind has experienced right from its inception, overpopulation has constantly been the case, and with it our species’ loss of equilibrium. More than this, from a systems-ecological point of view it would appear that the human population has gone beyond the limit at which dynamic equilibrium might possibly be regained. I would myself guess this limit to have been passed at the latest by 6000 years ago, when humans first became dependent on non-renewable resources.

A number of studies have been done of populations of mammals which, given a sudden and large surplus, have first increased drastically, after which a large proportion die off over a number of years, followed by an increase in the size of the population, but not to the same extent as previously. Eventually an equilibrium is reached, at which point the normally-functioning internal checks have once again become established. What happens in some cases however is that the species in question so badly abuses its environment that it no longer has any food, and goes ex-tinct.

In 1912 or 1913 a few moose crossed over the ice from the Michigan mainland to Isle Royale in Lake Superior. This island is some 73 km long and 14 km wide, and the moose had no serious enemies there, with the result that by 1930 their numbers had risen to between 1000 and 3000. Numbers then fell sharply to about 200 in 1935, then rose gradually to 800 in 1948, then fell again, so that in 1950 there were only 500.

Similar phenomena have been witnessed with reindeer and mule or black-tailed deer, both of which over-exploited their habitats in response to a drastic weakening of external checks, and suffered marked die-back through starvation as a result, the reindeer dying out completely, while the mule deer continued to destroy the vegetation, and continued to fall in numbers, for more than ten years after their initial heavy decrease. We can see this as being partly the result of the reaction principle:

The reaction principle is that the members of any species will tend to react to their immediate environment.

Selection operates in the short term; as is implied by the reaction principle, species are selected for the immediate requirements of their environments. If environmental conditions change, a species’ attributes that were previously adaptive may no longer be so.
If the reaction principle is operative in a situation of a large or lengthy surplus, we get the overshoot principle:

The overshoot principle is that, given a pioneering situation, populations of slow-breeding animals will expand beyond the carrying capacity of their environment.

The reaction, pioneering and overshoot principles apply to humans as well as to other K-selected species. Their application to humans is special however, in that we are the only species to over-come periods of scarcity through technological innovation. In other words, we are the only species to use technology to create a pioneering situation. This brings us to the vicious circle principle, which applies only to humans:

The vicious circle principle

Humankind’s development consists in an accelerating movement from situations of scarcity, to technological innovation, to increased resource availability, to increased consumption, to popul-ation growth, to resource depletion, to scarcity once again, and so on.

The vicious circle principle (VCP) is both easy to understand and in keeping not only with modern science but also with common sense. Briefly put, it says that in the case of humans the experience of need, resulting e.g. from changed environmental conditions, sometimes leads to technological innovation, which becomes widely employed, allowing more to be taken from the environment, thereby promoting population growth, which leads back to a situation of need. Or, seeing as it is a matter of a circle, it could for example be expressed as: increasing population size leads to technological innovation, which allows more to be taken from the environment, thereby promoting further population growth; or as: technological innovation allows more to be taken from the environment, the increase promoting population growth, which in turn creates a demand for further technological innovation.

Human population checks, whether internal or external, operate so as to counteract the turning of the vicious circle. What we see with the expression of the VCP through the whole of our species’ development is a steady weakening of these checks. At the same time the constantly altering conditions and increasing complexity of human society lead to the checks’ taking new forms, or to certain forms manifesting themselves to a greater or lesser extent than earlier.

Technological innovation increases the potential for a particular area of land to support human habitation beyond the needs of its contemporary population, thereby constitut¬ing a major factor in that population’s losing its incentive to control its own numbers. This loss of incentive may be manifest e.g. in a cultural shift condoning earlier marriages, or in increasing the convenience of having large families. And, given the surplus, which weakens internal checks, there is nothing to stop the population from once again becoming too large relative to what it is able to extract from its resource base, until external checks come into play. The way that this eventuality has been mitigated or avoided has been through the introduction of yet more efficient technology, allow-ing even more to be extracted from the resource base.

Humans’ development of technology distinguishes us from other life forms. It is what has made us the only species whose population has constantly grown from its inception. Not only has our population constantly grown, the rate at which it has grown has constantly increased: human population growth has always been accelerating.

Unlike other species, humans have invented and employed such devices as the hand-axe, fire, clothing, the bowl, spears, boats, the bow and arrow, the hoe, the plough, irrigation, watermills and windmills, sailboats, various petroleum-driven engines, and electricity generators operated by nuclear power. And this technology, paradigmatically, has had the effect of pushing back the limits to human population size, a phenomenon we do not see in other species.

Humans’ development of technology has been exponential, and has led to a corresponding exponential increase in our total resource consumption as well as in the size of our population – even before Homo sapiens came into existence. Most notable in this regard are early humans’ harnessing of fire some 1.5 million years ago, the horticultural revolution 10,000 years ago, the beginning of the mining of metals 6000 years ago, and the industrial revolution 250 years ago. But this process is going on all the time, with such apparently minor technological innovations as that of the stirrup or horseshoe, or ball-bearing or adjustable wrench, each contributing to the end result of increasing the number of humans that can occupy a given area of land.

There can be no human population growth beyond a certain limit without technological changes permitting more food to be provided per given unit of land. Population and technology have a feedback relationship: population growth provides the push, technological change the pull.

Humans must eat to survive, so an increase in the size of the population will mean an increase in its food requirement. Due to the presence of a surplus of food and breeding sites thanks to technological development (and in the latter case thanks to our adaptability), we humans, as would other animals in a similar situation, and as is suggested by the principle of population, tend to have more than a replacement number of offspring. And as suggested by the reaction principle, the inclination of the members of any species is naturally to react to their immediate situation. Though our reason may tell us that an alternative mode of action is appropriate, in the main we follow our instincts, including our social instincts. And, again thanks to technological innovation and the surplus it provides, since at least some of the extra children we produce are not eliminated by internal or external checks, the result is the constant growth of the human population.

In terms of systems, technological development undermines the homeostasis of the human species; where there is no technological development, and resources are being used sustainably, homeostasis tends to assert or reassert itself. In terms of a thermostat analogy, the constant presence of a surplus of food and the diminution in the area necessary to raise a family lead to higher settings at which the thermostat controlling population growth clicks in.

According to the VCP, technology’s role in the growth of the human population is central, such that one may say that without technological development the population’s size would be minis-cule as compared to what it is today. And technological development itself, together with the existence of resources to which it can be applied, constitutes the most important aspect of the vicious circle.

You could say that from the beginning we were not biologically equipped as a species to han-dle developing technology. This is clear from our using new technology (spears) to eradicate a huge proportion of the genera of the world’s large animals when we were still in our hunter-gatherer stage. If technological development were truly an aid to the survival of the human spe-cies, it would not have led to the elimination of a significant part of the population’s resource base, only to have it replaced by an inferior substitute. There is something wrong with the devel-opment of technology in the hands of humans – but then, you could say, something would be wrong with technological development in the ‘hands’ of any organism.

The next major revolution in the development of humankind after the industrial, namely the ecological, will be the first to result from a general decrease in available resources. That is to say, it will be the first and largest revolution involving the slowing down and eventual stopping of the vicious circle. The coming overshoot will not be that of just one turn of the vicious circle, but of the circle itself. The repercussions will be tremendous.

In systems terms, each new species in our development meant a change not only of structure but of organisation, i.e. there was a constant introduction of new systems. Each of these systems has been out of equilibrium with its environment (otherwise it wouldn’t have disappeared) – and each to an increasing degree.

With the reduction in resource availability, technology will no longer be able to provide a surdplus that supports continued population growth, but will rather be fighting off a deficit that in-flicts constantly increasing mortality. World peaks in population, standard of living, energy use, food production, trade, and rate of innovation will all be behind us. The social effects of reduced resource consumption will include an increase in experienced population pressure and consequent violence, including war.

From a biological/ecological point of view, the growth of the human population can be likened to that of lemming populations prior to their periodic migrations. Such a rate of growth is unprecedented in any large animal species. The global aggregate weight of humans is today ca. 350 million tons – well ahead of any other category except cattle. The human population is ‘swarm-ing.’ We are behaving like an r-selected species.

Humankind’s ensnarement in the VCP works counter to our survival as a species, involving as it does constantly increasing consumption, population, and quantities of waste, all of which tend to move us further out of equilibrium with our surroundings, thereby increasing the likelihood of our becoming extinct. Key to this whole process is our constantly meeting vital needs through the application of new forms of technology to both renewable and non-renewable resources, combined with the fact that there have to date always existed resources amenable to that development.

References
Darwin, C. (1874) The Descent of Man, 2nd ed., Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1998.
Dilworth, C. (2005) The selfish karyotype – An analysis of the biological basis of morals, Biology Forum 98: 125–154.
Dilworth, C. (2009) Too Smart for Our Own Good. The Ecological Predicament of Humankind, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

For information on Too Smart for Our Own Good, check out the link:
http://www.amazon.com/Too-Smart-Our-Own-Good/dp/052176436X.

On the northern coast of N.S.W. adjoining the Gold Coast and S.E.Queensland lies Tweed Shire, christened as the Green Caldera by once Environment Minister Peter Garrett. This area is famous for one of the highest biodiversity levels in Australia and infamous for the greatest level of biodiversity loss in N.S.W. thanks to the fact that the vast majority of Tweed councillors are pro-development. But in the case of Kings Forest, a massive housing development for 15,000 people worth $2 billion, NSW State Planning took control under the massively unpopular Part 3a legislation, depriving the council of all controls.
If this development is approved, it will be goodbye koalas on Tweed coast within 5-10 years. HAVE YOUR SAY!!

Kings Forest development plan includes 4500 housing lots, a golf course, two primary schools, and shopping facilities, and will occupy a large area between Kingscliff and Cabarita with a single entrance along Tweed Coast Road.

The social impacts of this development are huge. Just what will life look like with another 15,000 or so people driving around, looking for parking, jobs, needing infrastructure like hospitals, schools, libraries? Who will pay for the infrastructure - ratepayers?

While it is commonly believed by local businessmen that this will be good for business, the truth is that an increase in population may not automatically create employment, because most of the jobs created will be short term construction jobs and at the same time there will be an increase in job seekers.

(photo: Cudgen Nature Reserve)
There are many environmental impacts of this development, especially the risk to the remaining population of 144 Tweed Coast koalas, placing the population at high risk of localised extinction. Also at risk are 21 Threatened Species of fauna including the Wallum Froglet, Wallum Sedge frog, Grass Owl, Bush Stone Curlew and Long-Nosed Potoroo, 6 species of flora and 3 endangered ecological communities.

Many changes will be needed to protect adjacent Cudgen Nature Reserve and State Significant Cudgen Lake, which could well be at risk. The developer should dedicate land to the Nature Reserve ahead of the development so that the flora and fauna can be protected from the bulk earthworks. Bulk earthworks will move 1 million cubic meters to flatten out the site for housing. The development application has not indicated when the land will become reserve, it may happen after it has already been seriously disturbed. Fencing of the nature reserve should also happen ahead of the development to protect fauna that try to move through the development. The fencing should be of a different specification to what is proposed by the developer - it needs to be floppy top cyclone fencing, or the koalas will climb over it.

Friends of the Cudgen Nature Reserve is concerned about the water course to Cudgen Lake, and also the drainage pattern which appears to using Blacks Creek as the major channel to drain KF which then goes through the nature reserve. Unless certain extra measures aren’t taken, this development will threaten the viability of the nature reserve, a jewel in the Tweed Coast.

In addition to Section 94 contributions, there should be an environmental maintenance fund established by the developer because a lot of the environmental measures they propose have no monitoring, feedback or evaluation. It's not realistic to assume people are going to move in with their dogs and just obey a few signs.

Kings Forest has confusion and conflicting development application information. It has almost no Ecologically Sustainable Development 'footprints' concerning the future wellbeing of the people who currently live and work on the Tweed Coast. The demonstrated community consultation and awareness about this development is completely lacking. The owner and developer of Kings Forest is not even a Tweed Shire resident, who has cleared and mismanaged valuable ecological wetland areas, native wildlife habitats and altered catchment profiles of Tweed coastal land. There has been no invitation to qualified individuals with excellent local knowledge who could help the developer and workers on the property manage it in a sensible ecologically sustainable framework.

There should at least be a moratorium placed on this development by the NSW and Federal governments until issues of past rezoning processes, past and current land and water management issues and illegal clearing of valuable ecological habitat are resolved. It is up to the NSW State and Federal governments to actively pursue these questionable issues.

Many in the community are voicing an urgent need for remedy to the current mismanagement of this development and to the development's processes which needs to be addressed before further works continue on the site. The habitat and ecological damage that has already occurred could take decades to repair, some may never be repaired, if the development goes ahead as per current planning documents. Nor does there appear to be any documented environmental benchmarks attached to the past and current development process by which environmental accountability can be assessed.

The cost of this urgent remedy should be borne by the developer, not Tweed shire community. The valuable community environmental volunteers who have been serving the Tweed coast for many years appear to have been very poorly treated by the regime that is Kings Forest Part 3a development.

On 11th December, approximately 70 protesters assembled peacefully to protest against Kings Forest. The developer had their own rent-a-crowd comprised of employees (most of whom had Queensland number plates) and their kids, all holding virtually identical (mostly professionally printed) placards saying 'WE WANT JOBS, WE WANT HOSPITALS, WE WANT A FUTURE'. Some protesters overheard Leda's manager Reg van Rij say to one of them "You are not supposed to know me." The rent-a-crowd protesting our protest began by rudely placing their signs over ours. Apart from this flagrantly defiant act, and a few wheelies near our information tent, there was no trouble. Some conversation between their head protester and us revealed that they honestly believed that all the threatened species should be just moved out and put in a sanctuary somewhere. When one of our protesters commented that there had been illegal clearing at Blacks' Creek, they all looked sheepishly to the ground and said nothing. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=nvbCBw06OrM

(photo: Protest at entrance to Kings Forest site)

The deadline for submissions on Kings Forest development Stage 1, bulk earthworks, Koala Plan of Management and first lot of subdivisions is January 25th. Your comment can be emailed to [email protected]

For suggestions in making a submission, however short,
and for more information on Kings Forest, go to http://bluecray.org
or view the project application at majorprojects.planning.nsw.gov.au/index.pl?action=view_job&job_id=2642

POEM by Mark Comport

Our home, the valley of contrasts, the beautiful Tweed
We all take a piece of her while she silently bleeds
She bleeds overdevelopment, loss of habitat, erosion, roadkill
We’re taking too much, we’re making her ill

To move more of us in, more of her has to go
Mother nature is dying … dying slow
We argue over who was here first or who could care for her best
While we are, she’s being raped and robbed – we’ll fight for what’s left.

MEDIA Articles
http://www.mydailynews.com.au/story/2011/12/12/submission-extension-for-kings/
http://www.goldcoast.com.au/article/2011/12/12/373261_gold-coast-news.html
http://www.goldcoast.com.au/article/2012/01/10/380711_tweed-byron-news.html
http://www.mydailynews.com.au/story/2012/01/12/call-for-dog-ban-at-kings/
http://www.goldcoast.com.au/article/2012/01/16/382541_tweed-byron-news.html

As of 24 January, Tweed Shire councillors recommend that Dept of Planning allow dogs at Kings Forest.
http://www.mydailynews.com.au/story/2012/01/24/dog-ban-lifted-at-kings-forest/

Hi there! We're the Percapitas.

We've cut consumption

We've cut per capita consumption and our per capita waste. We compost, we conserve, we re-use and we recycle. And we're going to teach our three carbon footprints----Mark, David and Robert---to do the same.

We are very knowledgeable

Yes, we know that each of us will require more than 38,000 pounds of mined resources each and every year to maintain our cosmetically green American lifestyle, or 2.96 million pounds in our average lifetime of 77.9 years. That's 8,509 lbs. of stone, 5,599 lbs. of sand and gravel, 496 lbs. of cement, 357 lbs. of iron ore, 421 lbs. of salt, 217 lbs. of phosphate rock, 164 lbs. of clay, 65 lbs. of aluminum, 12 lbs. of copper, 11 lbs. of lead, 6 lbs. of zinc, 36 lbs. of soda ash, 5 lbs. of manganese, 332 lbs. of other non-metals for making glass, chemicals, soaps, paper, computers and cell phones, 24 lbs. of other metals for the same uses plus electronics, TV and video equipment and more-----not to mention 951 gallons of petroleum, 6,792 lbs. of coal, 80,905 cubic feet of natural gas and 1/4 lb. of uranium to generate the energy each of us uses in one year. http:/minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/

And we also know that our typical surburban house-----the one with the Prius in the driveway----was constructed with a million pounds of minerals and metals as were 130 million other homes across the country. Ours needed insulation (using silica, feldspar, and trona), roofing (silica sands, limestone and petroleum) and hardware (iron, zinc, copper, steel, brass), as well as windows made from trona, silica sand, limestone and feldspar, and concrete foundations made from sand, gravel and cement, which in turn is made of limestone, bauxite, clay, shale and gypsum and is re-inforced by steel rods. And we expect that another 70 million such homes will need to be built by mid-century to accommodate the next 150 million additional people who will make America their home, making us even more vibrant, diverse and strong than we already are now. People are our greatest resource----and besides, our local Sierra Club branch assures us that we can "de-couple" population and economic growth from environmental degradation! We can't wait until they de-couple ice cream consumption from caloric gain and thirst from the desire for fluid.

We are college-educated

Now, some doomsayers like analyst Chris Clugston have warned us that 69 metals and minerals vital to our industrial economy have peaked and will soon not be affordably accessible. But we both majored in classic economics at Northwestern and so we know that substitutes will be always be found if the price is right. You can never discount human ingenuity and there is a technological fix for everything. We can have 'green growth'. What we can't have though, is pessimism. We need hope to get us through the night. Cassandras need not apply!

Our children are not your business

OK, it's true. We could have done better. By not having three kids we could have saved the atmosphere from an extra 28,223 metric tons of C02 each year---or 58 times the amount that we have saved by switching to a fuel efficient car, driving less, recycling, installing CFLs, replacing our inefficient refrigerator and old windows. And by adopting rather than conceiving, we would not have added to the 350,000 children who are born every day to a planet now burdened with 7 billion humans, and braced for more. But we thought that it was vitally necessary that the world have our genes and that our children have the same pair of eyes or ears that we have. And besides, if educated, responsible and morally superior people like us don't have children, then "they" will overwhelm us. So let the breeding war begin!

Oh, and by the way, our procreative choices are NOYB. Pushing other people and other species off the plate is our sacred personal right.

We're the Percapitas. We're green, we're progressive, we read Utne magazine and Mother Jones, we listen to National Public Radio, vote liberal Democrat and we are oh so much more aware and responsible than you are!

(Does anybody have a cream pie handy?)

Tim Murray
July 19/2011

Originally posted at

Yes, yes. We all know that transmitting private information over the internet isn't safe. And we understand that Google and other search engines use cookies to monitor where we like to go on the internet. Yes, gmail probably wasn't air-tight, but I didn't realise that google was actually monitoring my email for commercial purposes - or that's what they seem to be telling me.

"Make the ads that you see on the web more interesting
Many websites, such as news sites and blogs, partner with us to show ads to their visitors. To see ads that are more related to you and your interests, edit the categories below, which are based on sites that you have recently visited. Learn More

Your interests are associated with an advertising cookie that's stored in your browser. If you don't want us to store your interests, you can opt out below. Your ad preferences only apply in this browser on this computer. They are reset if you delete your browser's cookies."

Hi,
I'm one of candobetter.net's editors. I don't know all that much about the internet and maybe some of what I have understood is wrong, but I'm going to put this out here for discussion.

Targeted ad in my gmail box

A couple of days ago I found an ad from a health insurance company that was aimed at immigrants to Australia seeking to comply with Australian regulations for new immigrants. It turned out that it was sent to me by google because their study of my email had led them to believe that I might be a good target for this kind of advertising. They added that, if I didn't like the ad (I dislike unsolicited, invasive ads on principle), I could view and manage my 'ads preferences' and block this particular advertiser if I did not wish to receive more ads from him.

Although I had realised that gmail could be viewed by others, I had naively believed that gmail would not actually read or monitor my emails so closely that they could try to tailor advertising to my profile.

Is Google automatically shrinking my search options?

For some time, also, I had been bothered by google search's limitation on my searches to the English language and an unsought preferencing for www.google.com.au. Since I read several languages and frequently search on foreign sites, it bothered me that my searches were being so arbitrarily restricted and without any say-so from me.

Maybe a year or two ago I realised it was hard to get out of www.google.com.au. I seemed to lose that precious access to the many different perspectives of different countries of the world which had been mine from about 1998 or so.

I felt like I was being corralled.

I had also begun for some time to wonder if, when I did a search on google, I was getting results like anyone else, or if these results were being filtered for me specially. As a researcher I am far more interested in getting a wide take on what is out there rather than having my own prejudices catered to (with the exception of unsolicited ads in my email boxes, where my preference is for no ads, period, as they say in the US).

My latest discovery of an ad in my email-on-line box made me want to ask google questions about its privacy policy and the impacts of its personsalisation of services.

Google doesn't recognise multilingual clients?

I also wanted to ask why it had become difficult to access other languages. There used to be an option that you could select to do a search for information in any language. This has now disappeared or become inaccessible to me.

Unfortunately, google users have to write a snail mail letter to some place in the United States if they want to ask Google anything about their privacy practices. Frankly I would like the answer more quickly. So, instead, I am writing this article. Maybe I will get more information and ideas from other people and maybe Google will respond to this article.

Ultimately, I was reassured when I went to look at my profile and other information that Google has compiled on me (from this computer at any rate). They had got just about everything wrong, from my name and my sex to the state that I live in, and they seemed to have overlooked my chief interests - or maybe my chief interests simply are not that remunerative in the commercial sense, so they don't get picked up.

I like Google. I'm really impressed at what they have achieved and at the services they provide, but I am now looking at other options for emails.

Below is a preview of Google's next privacy policy. Hopefully they won't mind me reproducing it here:

Preview: Privacy Policy

Please, please follow the recommendations of Jill Redwood and Environment East Gippsland. All of the incredible battles won, rare animals and precious forests will be trashed unless we prevent this new legislation.
Please act ASAP.

URGENT

This is an interim email while we prepare an East Gippsland forest update.

Most would recall that the Baillieu government, in response to our 2010 court win for Brown Mountain, is set to alter the laws governing protection of rare wildlife. It would allow logging to go ahead regardless of what is found there. We suspect they have their sights set on clearfelling Brown Mountain when this is passed – as pay-back.

For those who can, we are asking people to send comments (submissions) into the DSE opposing this plan in the strongest terms possible. Deadline is close of business on Wednesday 1^st Feb. But please don’t put this aside. The sooner the better.

The story in brief:

Our Sept 2010 Brown Mountain Supreme Court win for endangered wildlife has upset the new Baillieu Coalition government - so they are going to change the laws that says they must be protected.

To start with, they are set to change a few words in the Code of Practice for Timber Production 2007 (see below).This Code is a ‘loggers environmental rule book’ of sorts and is part of the legal regime that is meant to ‘protect’ our forests while they are being clearfelled yeah ... I know).

The proposed change will take out ‘must do’ protection for threatened species and their habitat. It will allow the DSE Secretary to approve any and all forests planned for logging regardless of whether endangered wildlife live there. This lacks any transparency or accountability. It basically overrides the Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act’s individual Action Statements for species protection.

They are knowingly and deliberately rendering useless, the only part out of the FFG Act that logging had to adhere to (especially since our court win). Quolls, Potoroos, the large owls and gliders would all have their home ranges or large parts of it wiped off the map if the logging industry says it must log those forests. And of course it will.

As part of the protocol for changing these rules, the government has to ask us, the public, what we think.

This is their main planned change:

“Forest management planning and all forestry operations must comply with measures specified in relevant Flora and Fauna Guarantee Act Action Statements (unless determined by the Secretary that the requirements of an Action Statement do not apply) and any Flora and Fauna Guarantee Orders."

If you can let them know what you think about all this, below are some dot points that might give you some ideas to pad out and reword in any order or way you want – and as few or as many points as you want to use.

Send them to: [email protected] headed "Submission to Code change" (or similar). You could also CC it to Baillieu himself so his staff will know what people think as well. [email protected]

Please help deluge the government. Don’t forget. Bung it in your desk or computer’s diary or better still do it now. Let’s see if we can hit them with at least a hundred letters/emails. Five hundred would be even better!

Dot points

1. This further weakens Victoria’s already weak legal framework for biodiversity protection.

2. Can’t claim wildlife is well protected elsewhere without first doing multiple and thorough surveys in every reserved forest in the state and in every season.

3. The FFGA listed species has already had a scientific committee assess the status and needs of each species. It was agreed that these animals are in danger of disappearing, hence their Action Statement. The secretary must not override these scientific findings.

4. Victoria’s forest dependent threatened wildlife like Quolls and those that need hollow trees are in serious decline mostly due to logging.

5. The past decade of fires has added to Victoria’s forest wildlife’s serious decline .

6. Simply assuming that wildlife can ‘survive and flourish’ (to quote the FFGA) inside the small disjointed reserves is being irresponsible and unscientific.

7. Parks and reserves have historically been declared in areas deemed unnecessary for development or resource extraction, or are of low quality for other uses. This does not always provide the prime habitat needed for many rare species such as gliders and owls.

8. Habitat modelling is not a fool-proof way to protect rare wildlife. They can be found in unpredictable habitats and not found in seemingly suitable areas.

9. There is a very real possibility of wildlife being made extinct in Victoria due to ongoing habitat destruction.
This will have Ted Baillieu’s name on it.

10. There is no credibility in the claim of ‘balancing’ the needs of logging industry and environment. It has been balanced in favour of logging for the past 40 years.

11. Looking after species at a “landscape level” is also rubbish. The species are listed as needing protection for the very reason that they no longer occur “at a landscape level” but in small often isolated patches.

12. The exemption of the logging industry from the FFGA, via the Code is outrageous.

13. The fact that the secretary is unaccountable to anyone in this decision is an outrage. He MUST consult with experts, notify the public of a decision and give reasons and evidence he used. His decisions MUST be able to be scrutinised, reviewed and challenged. To cut out this basic tool of democracy to aid one industry is another outrage.

14. Every forest stand which supports a listed species MUST be left intact and not clearfelled and burnt by VicForests.

15. Baillieu promised his government would restore integrity, transparency and accountability. Let’s see it.

Jill Redwood
Environment East Gippsland

This advertisement from Kuala Lumpur shows how development companies are not only selling Australian houses in Asia but are offering Australian taxpayer-funded government grants to further entice Kuala-Lumpurans to buy here. These grants were intended to help young Australians get into the housing market but instead the developers are offering them to foreigners. The ad is for housing in the Whittlesea area of Victoria, but the reality is that the same thing is going on all over Australia.

How can politicians tell us we have a housing shortage? If we did, they could sell the houses here and not have to go to foreigners. Why is the government allowing this land way out of town to be built on at all and then sold to foreigners?

We are being taken for fools.

This ad has been sent to Matthew Guy, the Victorian Minister for Planning, and to a local federal mp. How about sending it to your MPs as well, if you feel it is wrong.

The advertisement says, "Hurry, get the AUD$13,000 Australian Government Grant." Foreign buyers can also save on stamp duty.

Whittlesea is just north of Mill Park, where wildlife activists and residents unsuccessfully tried to stop government slaughter of displaced kangaroos last year. To get to Plenty Road from the city you pass through some of the densest populations in the world, and then past endless suburbs, many of them only built within the last two to five years. Wildlife activists have deplored the fate of wildlife as the greedy developers and complicit state governments have turned a blind eye or aimed a gun. Residents have watched in horror as completely undemocratic decisions have been made to maim and mutilate the countryside, overpopulating it, rapidly increasing demand for services and resources, driving their prices beyond the reach of all but the well-off. At the same time, salaries are not increasing but job insecurity is increasing. Australians have little slack and nowhere to turn except to demand that their MPs start to represent them and stop this abuse of the system.

Whittlesea residents need to take out an ad in the Kuala Lumpur paper where this offensive ad for Whittlesea land and housing was run. The ad should politely inform Kuala Lumpurans of the situation and that Australians did not agree to have their taxes used to facilitate foreign investors making the situation worse for wildlife and for the homeless and the mortgage-burdened.

Contact your local MP and ask him/her what he is doing about this further pressure on the green wedges and on housing prices and this funelling of Australian taxes into foreign purses. Then write to candobetter.net as a comment to this article and tell us what your MP's answer was. We will publish it. Exert pressure. The situation is unacceptable. It is scandalous and has population impacts which may lead to ordinary Australians becoming destitute due to inflated power, land, and housing costs within the foreseeable future.

Martin Collacott from the Fraser Institute looks at whether meaningful immigration reform is finally coming to Canada - video newslink.

Canada has even higher immigration numbers than Australia and its refugee rules are almost open house. These problems have been known for years, but, due to the presence of a huge growth lobby, almost all democratic demand for a slow down has been suppressed, unrepresented and sidelined.

From 5:00 UTC on Wednesday, January 18th Wikipedia blacked itself out in a dramatic attempt to show people what would happen if SOPA and PIPA were passed by the US congress. People responded in their millions, but the threat has not gone away. We join in publicising these links for our readers' benefit and urge you to do whatever you can to protect your ability to read and publish on the internet. And please be aware of copyright infringements.

"Thank you.

The Wikipedia blackout is over — and you have spoken.

Source: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/SOPA/Blackoutpage
More than 162 million people saw our message asking if you could imagine a world without free knowledge. You said no. You shut down Congress’s switchboards. You melted their servers. From all around the world your messages dominated social media and the news. Millions of people have spoken in defense of a free and open Internet.

For us, this is not about money. It’s about knowledge. As a community of authors, editors, photographers, and programmers, we invite everyone to share and build upon our work.

Our mission is to empower and engage people to document the sum of all human knowledge, and to make it available to all humanity, in perpetuity. We care passionately about the rights of authors, because we are authors.

SOPA and PIPA are not dead: they are waiting in the shadows. What’s happened in the last 24 hours, though, is extraordinary. The internet has enabled creativity, knowledge, and innovation to shine, and as Wikipedia went dark, you've directed your energy to protecting it.

We’re turning the lights back on. Help us keep them shining brightly.

Read more

If you live in the U.S., contact your representatives.
Your ZIP code:

Make your voice heard!"

This article is based on the talk by Dr. Chris Busby about scientific dishonesty in nuclear issues at the Royal Society in London last November. Please also see the video of the talk -- There is also a Powerpoint presentation.

Dishonesty and the Science Policy Interface
Dr Christopher Busby

There is a problem I want to draw to the attention of those who watch the world and the antics of those who run it. It is a problem that has exercised my mind for some time, one that I came to as a result of my interest in the health effects of low dose radiation. I have written about my researches and discoveries in this area (Busby 1995, 2006) and most recently about the health effects of uranium weapons (Busby UNIDIR 2009). But as I conducted my naïve enquiries in these areas of science, it dawned on me quite early on, that there was a dangerous gap between what the politicians and those who ran the show believed (or said they believed) and the facts, if I may (also naïvely) call them that. In 2003 I was asked to become the leader of the Science Policy Interface group of an EU funded outfit, the Policy Information Network on Child Health and the Environment (PINCHE). Here I met a wide range of eminent research scientists and doctors from across Europe, and in the meetings we had, we discussed the ways in which science is translated into policy, a subject that I had studied and seen in the area of radiation risk. I think I was chosen for this position because of my experience in the area and my cynicism. I certainly used it to ensure that the final report made clear to the EU Commissioners (van den Hazel et al. 2006) that there was a bias at the Science Policy Interface that needed putting right (in case they didn’t already know, that is). I wrote about all this at some length in my book Wolves of Water. What I want to do here is to try and take the issue further. I base this essay on the presentation I made at the Royal Society London in October 2007 where I was asked by Roger Coghill to dish the dirt on this area of science and policy based on some of my experiences.

Let me begin by saying that those who think that there is a conspiracy to exclude the truth in various areas associated with environmental risk are quite correct. There is. Quite how it works I am not so sure about even in the quite well-defined cases I will present here. Why do those who are key figures act like they do? I think that probably there are many factors; financial, cultural, legal, psychological and economic among them. Also fear: in the Committee Examining Radiation Risk of Internal Emitters (CERRIE) committee members were threatened with personal litigation and they subsequently changed their position and voted in the opposite direction (CERRIE 2004b). There are certainly dirty tricks. What I have noticed is that very often the individuals I find at the centre of some questionable or dishonest behaviour are people from what I call a subordinate culture, people who have been poor in their childhood, people from the colonies who want to belong or to be important, from poor areas of the country, people who didn’t go to the best universities, people who have some reason to tie their psychological security to their position, a position, usually a key position, handed to them by government. They are so grateful and so fearful! I guess a lot of politicians are like that: why else would you wish to be a politician? The selective filtering of personality types into power is an interesting area in itself and one that essentially makes a nonsense of democracy.

But the end result is that because of their behaviour, scientific evidence is ignored or marginalised or alternatively incorrect scientific evidence is used as a basis for policy. Often, in fact usually, such policy is necessary for the well being of some powerful industry or group, or the military. An excellent and well known example is that of BSE/CJD, Mad Cow disease. We all know that the government committee that considered the scientific arguments that the disease could infect humans discounted experimental evidence and made wrong decisions that led to the deaths of many people. I note that no-one has been put in court for this and no industrial company manufacturing the poisoned animal feedstuffs has been fined. Interestingly, the Chair of that committee, Sir Richard Southwood, was also Chair of the National Radiological Protection Board for many years, including the period of Chernobyl. He was wrong there too. But he is not in gaol. And the scientists on that committee who were responsible, should they not be at least accused of scientific dishonesty, of some crime? Let me put this in another context. If there is a murder and the murderer is in the dock and a witness is called who swears that the murderer is innocent and does not refer to evidence which he has that the murderer is guilty: is not such a person guilty of a crime? I am going to present some cases to you that I have personal experience of. I am going to leave it to you to decide whether these people were dishonest or just stupid or maybe culturally biased, by which I mean, they honestly thought that they knew what the real picture was and could discount evidence which for some defensible reason they disagreed with. But whatever the decision you come to in each case, I want you to be aware that as a result of these actions, policies and laws remain in place that have resulted in and will result in the deaths of millions of people. This is not an exaggeration. The death yield from the radioactive contamination permitted by the behaviour of such people is in excess of 60 million (ECRR2003) and this issue is the greatest public health scandal of history. Much is said and written about Hitler and the gas chambers. The systematic poisoning of the human race by novel radioactive pollution and now by uranium particles makes the World War II death yields seem quite mild.

Ideally democracy depends upon the policymakers having the best knowledge of the consequences of their decisions. Research has shown that politicians are generally scientifically illiterate and therefore have to depend upon scientific expert committees to obtain this knowledge. Membership of these committees is not democratic and this introduces bias. Scott Cato, Bramhall and Busby: I don’t know much about Science, 2000). Scientific committees depend upon peer-review literature and ignore grey literature. They also often ignore peer-review literature if it does not conform to some pre-existing belief. Their interpretation of the literature is always biased by their affiliations. (Ruden 2000, 2001, 2003. PINCHE 2005, Judson, 2006). Peer-review literature itself is often biased by the affiliation of the researchers, and the affiliations of the reviewer or the editor. In addition, peer-review literature may be biased by the choice of the research topic (therefore who funds the research). Peer review literature may in fact be so brushed and spun as to approach dishonesty; it may have false data and indeed be dishonest. There is currently no law against such dishonesty or biased advice and culprits are not seen as criminals nor are they punished in any way in the UK. There is currently no such thing as a Scientific Crime and in my view there should be.

How could scientific dishonesty be criminal? How do we judge scientists? What ethical framework can apply? In British Courts, evidence given in a case affects the outcome. For this reason, witnesses have to swear an oath to tell the Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing But the Truth. If they are later found to have lied they can be prosecuted and gaoled. I submit that in the present system of Science and Policy, Society should apply the same argument. Scientists, because of the serious and real consequences of their evidence on human health, have the same responsibility as a witness in a criminal case.
Let me list some examples:

1. Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy; BSE/CJD; Here an expert committee ignored scientists (e.g. Prof. Richard Lacey) who brought evidence that the agent crossed species barriers; many died. Chair was Sir Richard Southwood.

2. Chernobyl; National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB) and the infant leukemias; After Chernobyl NRPB advised that Cs-137 contamination of upland areas (Wales, Cumbria Yorkshire) was at safe levels and would clear in weeks (Chair Sir Richard Southwood); areas are still under sheep restriction today. Children died of leukemia. Adult cancer rates increased; the cancer registry falsified figures (see Wolves of Water).

3. Trichloroethylene carcinogenicity and the EU; Christina Ruden, a philosopher from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, showed in three papers how biased arguments advanced by scientists working for industry delayed the classification of TCE as a carcinogen by 5 years or more. Many will have died because adequate limits were not put in place (see PINCHE reports).

4. Radioactive pollution and cancer; following the Sellafield child leukemia cluster discovered in 1983 by Yorkshire TV there was a high-level cover up of the effects of low dose internal radiation exposure involving Committee on the Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment (COMARE), The Small Areas Health Statistics Unit (SAHSU), CERRIE and, as it applied to Uranium weapons, the Royal Society. Hundreds of thousands have died or are sick. The evidence has not been translated into policy due to scientific bias.

5. Mobile phones and cancer; this issue is current and as a consequence of scientific bias and dishonesty a very large number of people will become sick and die.

6. The Royal Society and Depleted Uranium
Prof. Brian Spratt FRS and Prof William Bonfield FRS, who I will present below.

At the Royal Society meeting, I gave examples of a number of scientists whose actions and publications were questionable, and I invited the audience to consider them in the context of scientific dishonesty. My accusations were not new. I had put the stories in my book Wolves of Water which I wrote principally to draw attention to the failures of science, or rather the way in which science was being used to ensure the survival of industry and the military in a democratic society whose members were being systematically poisoned.

In this brief essay I will concentrate on four of the stories that I presented to give a flavour of the kind of problem that we face. I will look at Professor Dudley Goodhead and the CERRIE committee, at Professor Ray Cartwright the epidemiologist, Professor Sarah Darby and the late Professor Richard Doll, both epidemiologists, and at the Royal Society, Professors Brian Spratt and William Bonfield.

Prof Dudley Goodhead
Goodhead, a South African originally from Durban, became head of the Medical Research Council radiation biology group at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment Harwell. In 2001 he was appointed Chair of the Committee Examining Radiation Risks from Internal Emitters CERRIE.

CERRIE was founded in 2001 by Michael Meacher, the Environment Minister to examine concerns raised by me and my colleagues about cancer near the Irish Sea, near nuclear sites and in infants in Europe after Chernobyl. Goodhead initially agreed to, and arranged for, joint epidemiological studies on ward level cancer near the Bradwell nuclear site to be carried out by Chris Busby, Colin Muirhead (NRPB) and Richard Wakeford (BNFL). The team would examine ward level data obtained from the Office for National Statistics by the committee to confirm the high levels of breast cancer reported by Busby in studies by Green Audit (but denied by the government’s Small Area Health Statistics Unit, SAHSU) near the radioactive contaminated estuary of the River Blackwater. In 2004, after Meacher had been sacked by Tony Blair, Goodhead shut down the project despite the protocols having been agreed at several meetings of the CERRIE epidemiology sub-committee. This is because by then it was clear that the government SAHSU studies of the issue were seriously flawed by mistakes in omission of ward populations. In addition Goodhead also cancelled the joint study on childhood leukemia by age of mother which would have investigated the effect on the disease of weapons fallout in the 1960s. Furthermore, Goodhead blocked the inclusion in the final CERRIE report of a section outlining dissent from the majority views despite having agreed under Meacher to include such views. He did this by threatening the individual committee members with legal action of they allowed any dissenting views to be included in the final report. He presented what were said to be two legal opinions from departmental (i.e government) lawyers. He tabled them at the last meeting thus denying committee members any opportunity to consider them in advance or to take independent advice. Both opinions indicated, vaguely but threateningly, that including misleading or factually wrong material in the final report might result in individual committee members being sued. This was enough to frighten members into voting to exclude the oppositional section from the final report, as the original founding remit demanded. Our own legal advisers later advised us that the opinions were absurd, but by then it was too late. Thus the entire purpose of the CERRIE committee was nullified, all that work and money wasted. Goodhead received an OBE shortly before changing his position on the outcome of the final report. He was accused of scientific bias in a letter (which I have published in Busby 2005) by one member of his own secretariat, Marion Hill, who resigned over the issue. The second member of the three person secretariat, Dr Paul Dorfman, joined with me and my colleague Richard Bramhall to produce and publish an independent CERRIE Minority Report (CERRIE 2004b).

Prof Ray Cartwright
Ultimately Director of Epidemiology of the Cancer Research Campaign, Cartwright, as a researcher, was co-author of a study in 1990 showing a link between man-made radiation in estuaries (e.g. from the Sellafield reprocessing plant) and child leukemia. He was soon promoted to Director and then later was put in charge of the United Kingdom Childhood Cancer Research study, a 16 million pound project to discover the cause of the increases in childhood cancer in the UK. This money came from the government but also from charities, and from ordinary people who put their hands in their pockets after seeing the pictures of the dying children. One of the initial questions to be asked by this study was about radiation exposure, and since Cartwright had clear evidence that this might be a possible cause he should have included it in the study. He did not. In a letter to Busby in 1994 he stated that the research would not look at man-made radionuclides (i.e. from nuclear power, from Sellafield, or from weapons fallout). After the study was completed in 1999 he was questioned in an open meeting by Richard Bramhall of the Low level Radiation Campaign (LLRC) about his 1990 estuary study and why he did not use the results to inform the protocol of the UKCCR study. He replied that it was because he had done a second further study which showed no effect and disagreed with his first study. When challenged to produce it over the next year, he could not. It turned out that it was a lie. A formal complaint was sent by LLRC to the British Medical Association General Medical Council. They investigated and discovered that no such study existed, although in the mean time Cartwright rapidly produced a thesis by one of his students, Frances Lloyd that he argued showed there was no effect. This study was so flawed as to laughable, and was dismissed by the CERRIE committee. Cartwright was asked by the BMA to apologise for misleading the public and he eventually did apologise to LLRC in a letter. The fact remains that the 16 million pound UKCCR childhood leukemia study omitted examining the most likely cause of the increases in childhood cancer because the director pointed the study in the wrong direction, whilst already having evidence from his own research what the cause (or a cause) was. At one point during this period Cartwright was on the Organising Committee of the British Nuclear Energy Society. He certainly became very important as the epidemiology head of the Cancer Research Campaign, he will have earned a lot of money, been feted, been on a fat salary. Is that an explanation?

Prof Sarah Darby
Although not a member of the initial CERRIE committee Sarah Darby was brought in by Goodhead as an ‘independent’ epidemiologist. Darby was famously the main author of at least two seriously flawed radiation studies, both with the late Prof Sir Richard Doll, who himself was recently reported to have been compromised in his epidemiology by financial links with industry.

The first study was the Nordic Leukemia Study, published in the British Medical Journal in 1993 (see reference in reference section below) around the time of the Sellafield child leukemia trial Reay and Hope vs BNFL. This is covered in some length in my book Wolves of Water (pp.305-321). Briefly, the authors spliced together data from different cancer registries in different periods to argue that there was no significant increase in child leukemia over the period of atmospheric weapons testing. This was arguably a cold-blooded cover up of the clear increases shown in the Danish Cancer Registry data which the authors had employed as one of the datasets and which they eventually admitted they knew about following an investigation in CERRIE and another investigation by the ethical committee of the British Medical Journal, who I complained to. These Danish data and earlier research on the issue were not cited in the paper by Darby et al., and when challenged in the CERRIE committee Sarah Darby stated that the data had been destroyed. Later, following the complaint to the BMJ and to the Danish Committee for Scientific Dishonesty by Busby, Darby said the data had been found; it showed the existence of a peak which had been submerged by Darby et al. by statistical chicanery and inappropriate presentations. Busby also went to Copenhagen and obtained original data from the founder of the Danish Cancer Registry Johannes Clemmesen confirming this.

In addition to the childhood leukemia scam, the Darby Doll team (with others) carried out two studies of the UK A-Bomb Test veterans which were seriously flawed for many reasons, the main ones being a change in the protocol half way through the study which reduced the significance of an increase in leukemia in the veterans found in the initial analysis.

Professor Brian Spratt, Professor William Bonfield
I now turn to the matter of Uranium weapons and specifically the behaviour of the Royal Society. After all, The Royal Society should be the one place where you would expect to find purity and independence, a place where you would not expect to find bias and scientific dishonesty.

By the mid 1990s Gulf War syndrome had incapacitated 20% of those UK and US soldiers who had served in Iraq. There were increases in cancer, leukemia and birth defects in Iraqi populations. Following further use of DU in the Balkans, similar increases in cancer began to be reported from affected areas, and studies of Italian veteran peacekeepers showed increases in leukemia and lymphoma. There was a widespread belief that these effects were caused by exposures to Depleted Uranium munitions which, when employed, produce large quantities of widely dispersed and respirable sub-micron uranium oxide particles. Despite many reports from establishment scientists and risk agencies arguing that the radioactivity from uranium was too weak to be the cause of any cancer or other ill health at the likely levels of contamination, there was little acceptance of this viewpoint by the veterans or the public.

In 2000, the Royal Society set up a committee to examine the issue. The British Environment Minister Michael Meacher suggested that I should be in this committee but the RS refused. However, they agreed to ask me to give evidence.

Here let’s pause for thought: Why the Royal Society? Why did the Royal Society set up such a committee? The WHO, IAEA, EURATOM, the UN, the military, the NRPB, all said DU was safe. Did someone at the RS wake up one morning and think: What a good idea? Or were they asked to by the government? To use the good name of the RS to reassure the veterans? To reassure the public that the UK was not responsible for all the dying children in Iraq?

Prof Brian Spratt FRS, a microbiologist, was made Chair of the Royal Society Committee on the Health Effects of Depleted Uranium Weapons. The Committee’s advisor on radiological effects was Prof Dudley Goodhead whom we have met already.

Over two years the RS committee took evidence from many scientists, and eventually produced two reports on the issue. The radiological report published in 2001 concluded that the weapon produced dust which did not travel far from the impact site and did not represent a hazard unless inhaled in very large (choking) quantities. This conclusion was based entirely on advice from NRPB and Goodhead, who was responsible for the radiological section of the report.

I gave evidence to the RS committee arguing that the DU dust was a novel exposure, that such exposures caused high local internal doses and could not be addressed by the ICRP model which was only valid for external acute doses. I brought evidence from my trips to Kosovo and Iraq that the dust travelled large distances and remained in the environment for many years. This was ignored and omitted from the report.

I gave the veterans’ response to the final 2001 RS report launch at Carlton House. I argued that the epidemiological data and the new scientific evidence of anomalous radiation effects from internal exposures meant that the RS report was a whitewash, and that the good name of the RS was being used for political purposes. My report: ‘Depleted Science’ was presented at various conferences and published on the internet on several sites (www.cerrie.org/committee_papers/INFO_12-H.doc). However the story did not stop there.

Following the Royal Society Report, the MoD set up the independent Depleted Uranium Oversight Board (DUOB) to measure Uranium isotopes in the Gulf War 1 vets and to examine new scientific evidence. Spratt was a member of this committee. So was I. In addition to developing measurement protocols, each meeting of the DUOB examined new evidence relating to the health effects of Uranium. In the four years of the DUOB there were many new studies published in the peer-review literature showing that uranium exposure had anomalous and serious genotoxic effects and that uranium could not be assessed using the conventional radiological risk models which were based on acute external high doses at Hiroshima. Senior and influential scientists argued that there was a problem. I brought many of these arguments before Brian Spratt in the DUOB. All were dismissed or ignored in the final reports.
One such argument now becomes the focus of this story. It concerns uranium and photoelectrons. In 2003 I presented a new photoelectron enhancement theory of uranium radiotoxicity to CERRIE at their International Conference at St Catherine’s College Oxford and also later to the DUOB. I presented it to Brain Spratt, chair of the RS committee which had reported that DU was not a problem.

I will just explain the idea here. It is quite simple. All elements absorb natural background gamma radiation in proportion to the fourth power of their atomic number Z. This means that uranium (Z=92) has the highest absorption of gamma rays of any naturally occurring element The effective atomic number of living tissue is Z = 3.4 Uranium, as UO2++ ion (uranyl ion) also binds strongly to DNA, and this property has been used to image DNA in the electron microscope since Uranium’s affinity for DNA was discovered by Huxley in 1960. It follows that uranium particles collect natural background radiation and focus it in the human body. It follows that, as uranium binds to DNA, it focuses natural background into the DNA. The fourth power ratio between uranium and living tissue is about 250,000. This is not fantasy. In 2005, a researcher in the USA, Hainfeld, patented gold (Z=79) nanoparticles for enhancing X-ray treatments in tumour destruction; this meant that my idea is basically correct. In 2007 my colleague Andreas Elsaesser applied the CERN FLUKA Monte Carlo radiation track program to the problem of gold and uranium particles; results showed that my predictions of photoelectron enhancement of ionization density near uranium atoms and particles were correct.

I asked Prof Spratt, after my presentation to the DUOB (where Professor Goodhead was also present) whether he still thought that the Royal Society report had been correct in stating that Uranium was not a problem at the levels being generated by weapons usage. I asked him how a way forward could be found, since people were dying, uranium was still being used and the Royal Society was still the main authority underpinning its use. Spratt, cornered and in public, said I should send the theory to the Royal Society Journal: if they published it then the Royal Society would have to take notice. In 2007, after the Hainfeld paper was brought to my attention, I took out a provisional patent on uranium and photoelectron enhancement. I did a literature search and discovered that photoelectron enhancement had been dealt with mathematically and empirically in a number of papers from 1947 onwards, dealing mainly with gold. I wrote two papers, one on uranium particles and one on uranium bound to DNA. I sent them to the Proceedings of the Royal Society B in June 2007. They were both immediately ‘unsubmitted’ by the editors.

I telephoned the editors and complained. They said it was not biology: I should submit it to the Journal of the Royal Society Interface. Accordingly I sent the papers to Interface, editor Prof William Bonfield FRS, a scientist whose area of research (and links with industry and therefore research money) is prosthetic materials i.e. metal substances used inside the human body. The high Z theory will have an effect on the use of such materials since gold and platinum are often employed (and would explain cancers which turn up in people with prostheses). Bonfield sent the paper to three referees, all people who I know and who told me they had received the papers. They all said they recommended publication after some minor revisions.

But Bonfield rejected the papers: the explanation was that there was pressure on space in the journal. It is unheard of for an editor to overrule the referees, especially in an area where the consequences are so important for human health. I complained to the in-house Royal Society editor Tim Holt. I made the obvious points about the Royal Society DU committee and politics. Holt agreed to talk to Bonfield. Bonfield again rejected the papers. I contacted the Assistant Secretary of the Royal Society Peter Collins. His explanation was that the Journal Royal Society Interface was not part of the Royal Society, despite the name. He said he would talk to Bonfield. But eventually he wrote to say he could do nothing. The papers were rejected. The USA based oversight board including 41 scientists and experts complained in an open letter to the President of the Royal Society. But they were ignored.

So here are my questions.

Are the people I have presented guilty of crimes? Are they guilty of stupidity or cowardice? Are they innocent? Did the children who died because they were in the womb at the time of Chernobyl die because they represented the chance level for the event of 1 in 100,000,000? What about the BSE victims? The Sellafield leukemia children?

Having listened to Goodhead, and later seeing that new research showed Goodhead to be wrong, should Spratt have reconvened the RS committee on DU and saved thousands of lives?
Should Darby and Doll be prosecuted for splicing together two separate cancer series to remove evidence that fallout caused child leukemia, failing to cite earlier Danish evidence in papers and pretending that the data was destroyed?

Should the scientists I have introduced here and many that I have not had the space to introduce but who I have named in my books, suffer some kind of investigation and criminal prosecution?
Remember, we are dealing with the illness and death of innocent people resulting from twisted evidence and political and scientific chicanery. Or on occasion, maybe not, maybe just genuine differences of opinion. And we have to be careful: if such an organization as a committee for scientific dishonesty was set up, could it not be used, as the Royal Society was used, to itself deny good research or underpin bad practice? I believe that the answer is transparency and oppositional committees. CERRIE was set up as such a committee, and it would have fulfilled its remit if the final report had been allowed to include all sides of the argument, and if the research had been allowed to continue. Then politicians could have made up their minds and the public could have seen the arguments.

What all these stories have in common is that there is no such ‘committee to investigate scientific dishonesty.’ In the UK everything is informal, but this means nothing happens. Complaints were made to the BMA, and the BMJ about three of the above, Darby, Doll and Cartwright. In each case, the finding was that there had been a case to answer but nothing could be done. The BMA can sanction a doctor for sexually molesting a patient, can remove him from practice, but it can do nothing about a doctor who writes a bogus research paper that supports an industry which is routinely killing thousands with its environmental releases. I reported Darby and Doll to the Danish Committee for Scientific Dishonesty, but their investigating judge eventually ruled that too much time had elapsed between the paper (1993) and the complaint (2003) so their statute of limitations applied.

By their bias and their inappropriate epidemiology and support of an incorrect model underpinning radiation releases from nuclear sites, these people have been responsible for the deaths of thousands of people. They are as culpable as if they had poisoned them. They are not alone: I can name many people who are equally culpable and should answer in a court of law. If the Thalidomide research scientists were sentenced in Germany for their contribution to the teratogenic effect of the drug, then these people and other scientists who exclude evidence, bias their own results or knowingly use science to support harmful processes should also be sent to prison. Laws were laid down in times when science was not an issue and contamination and its effects were not tied so strongly to financial interests. Society has been overtaken by scientific crimes which are not presently recognized, though in effect they have the same effect as other crimes and often have much more serious and wide ranging consequences. It is time that an independent UK Scientific Oversight Board, or Committee for Scientific Dishonesty was set up to try these scientists and journal referees, using Judges and rules of evidence, with prosecution and defence counsel and scientists acting as expert witnesses.

Postscript October 2011

The essay above was a contribution to the book Iraq Silent Death edited by Christian Scherrer of the Hiroshima Peace Institute and published recently by University Sains Malaysia ISBN No 978-983-861-504-4. But you won’t find it on Amazon. The basis of the essay was a presentation I made at the Royal Society in London in 2008 in a meeting called “Scientific Dishonesty.” I was referring to events at the science policy interface that had occurred between 2001 and 2007. These instances of scientific dishonesty and bias were a result of scientists who had become enrolled in a system. But since then things have got a great deal worse. A taster of this is given in the same book by the philosopher Piotr Bein who draws out in his essay the system of media control and infiltration of NGOs being developed by the military and the pro nuclear groups. The situation now, following the Fukushima catastrophe, which is a potential catastrophe for the nuclear military combine as well as a very real catastrophe for the people of Japan, is alarming and clear. I will briefly introduce some more characters who I believe are dishonest scientists: but in these cases, their positioning history and behaviour make it clear that their positions and status have been orchestrated to ensure that the wrong advice is given to government, advice that protects the nuclear industry, the military and powerful financial interests. In asking for independent experts to assess science for policymakers, the existence of these individuals (and there are others in key positions) shows that some serious mistakes have been made.

1. Dr Richard Wakeford

Wakeford worked for British Nuclear Fuels Sellafield for most of his working life and was ultimately head of research on the radiation health effects. His degree was in physics and his PhD from Liverpool University (which apparently had to be resubmitted) was in some arcane area of particle physics.
He admitted to me that he knows nothing about chemistry or biology, and cares less. And although he has published in the area of epidemiology, like me he is not a university trained epidemiologist.

I first came across him in Ireland when he was sent to pacify the Irish who were exercised about the cancer increases along the Irish Sea coast which locals (rightly) blamed on the huge amounts of contamination from BNFL Sellafield, Wakeford’s employers. His job was to attack anyone who argued differently and this he did with great gusto, describing himself to me once as “BNFLs Rottweiler.” He collaborated with other scientifically dishonest people including Dr Sarah Darby (who I introduced in the essay above) and Sir Richard Doll. The focus was to show that low levels of exposure to internal radioactivity were harmless, something that Darby and Doll had tried doing with the Nordic Leukemia study, a classic case of scientific dishonesty. Wakeford has recently put out a new paper of his own (Wakeford 2010) on this which is equally dishonest in that he has displaced a time series data point to the beginning of its span, thus suggesting no effect where in fact there was an effect. He also failed to address or cite the child leukemia peak in Denmark, the only data stream that goes back far enough to detect the effect (See Wolves of Water, pp.305-316, and see see Low Level Radiation Campaign >> click on “Dishonesty” in the left-hand nav bar).

But I digress. It is not my purpose to show Wakeford to be biased, dishonest and wrong (all of which is true). What concerns me is his trajectory, his career. In 2004 he was on the CERRIE committee, representing BNFL. And he did represent BNFL. But that’s OK. Everyone knew where he was coming from and could make allowances. After CERRIE, Wakeford began attacking me personally in the columns of the Journal of Radiological Protection of which he was Editor. This is very bad form, as no one was peer reviewing what he wrote. And what he wrote was libelous and untrue. He did not ask me to respond. The attacks were about cancer and leukemia near the Irish Sea, and also other studies I had done which showed internal radiation exposure to be seriously hazardous. But again, everyone knew where he was coming from.

Around the time I began to show theoretically that Uranium was a serious hazard due to its secondary photoelectron effects ([see Wings of Death, Chapter 7, p. 188- and Wolves of Water, p.59, p.450, p.456]) which explained the cancers and malformations in Iraq, it became transparently obvious that the ICRP risk model that Wakeford was using was in complete disarray. The National Radiological Protection Board (which had become the appropriately named HPARP, Health Protection Agency, Radiation Protection Division) and others, had tried to address this issue but could not. They (and Wakeford) had lost the scientific argument. Dr Jack Valentin, the top man in ICRP (not quite the top man, see below) had taken retirement: he had had enough. The writing was on the wall. Valentin had conceded that the ICRP model was faulty and could not be used to assess risk in situations like Fukushima. This was on video, captured by Ditta Rietuma and put on the Internet e.g. at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2JFxnAkTW4

What to do?

Here is what they did. Clearly Wakeford was the sharpest knife in their drawer. He is clever, knowledgeable, unprincipled and vicious. But they could not use him as he was working for BNFL. He was demonstrably biased. So he “took early retirement.” Immediately he was made a “Visiting Professor” at the Dalton Institute, which is the nuclear energy funded school of the University of Manchester. Now he was “independent” and soon he appeared as an independent advisor. He turned up at the Kings Cliffe enquiry into the (disgraceful and dangerous) plan to bury huge amounts of radioactive waste in a landfill near Peterborough. I was asked by the locals to act as expert witness in that enquiry which was before a planning inspector, not a judge. I investigated the issues and soon found evidence of a conspiracy between the company making the application and their independent advisors, and possibly also the Environment Agency. It was quite clear cut. Additionally I found massive errors in both the application, the impact statements and the Environment Agency documents passing the application as being safe. But Wakeford got up and told the enquiry that I represent the wildest end of scientific understanding in this area and suggested that everything I wrote and said should be ignored. Nothing new there except that Wakeford was described as “independent scientific expert” and on the basis of his evidence, the planning officer totally ignored the evidence I gave.

Then there is Fukushima. When this happened I was the first to draw attention to the obvious massiveness of the events and to compare them with Chernobyl. I said on TV and radio, BBC, ITV and Russia Today that Fukushima was worse than Chernobyl. I was rapidly excluded from the BBC who shamefully went along with the pro-nuclear views and continue to do so. But who was there talking down the accident? Richard Wakeford, independent scientific expert.

Now there is another planning enquiry, into the new-build of a nuclear power station in Somerset at Hinkley Point, a place where I have done several studies showing significant excess risks from breast cancer and also infant deaths. Who will be the main expert for the health issues? Professor Richard Wakeford, independent scientist from the Dalton Institute in Manchester. But most worrying of all is that he has now appeared on Committee 1 of the ICRP (www.icrp.org), which has now moved from Sweden to Canada. Wakeford is also advising the EU and was on the UK Department of Health Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) committee advising the government on the seriousness of Fukushima (totally wrongly as it turned out) and the Japanese government also. He pops up everywhere, Fukushima, Kings Cliffe, at the EU in Brussels, Hinkley Point, the Scarlet Pimpernel of the nuclear industry.

So what is my point? It is this. The nuclear-military complex are orchestrating their people into key positions. It was always so, but now is screamingly apparent as they have had to dispense with subtlety owing to the panic resulting in nuclear power following Fukushima. So my message: Beware of Richard Wakeford. Oh, one last thing. He is almost certainly the anonymous blogger Richard D who puts up the chrisbusbyexposed website. The knowledge the blogger has of the research area, and what I have done, and the very words he uses make it clear that either Wakeford is the writer of this blog or he feeds him with information. Wakeford denies this. The nuclear military complex have a machine, a media machine, a propaganda black ops machine, and Wakeford is part of it, the science part.

Finally there is an interesting angle here. The nuclear industry needs somewhere to stick the nuclear waste. The Swedes have come up with the solution: They will put it in copper cylinders in a deep repository under the Baltic Sea, already the most radioactive sea in the world. To ensure that the project is seen to be fairly assessed, the Swedish radiological protection outfit, SSM are enrolling “independent experts.” The protocol for ensuring the independence of these external experts was set up by the International Atomic Energy Agency, an agency that “seeks to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace, health and prosperity throughout the world.” (IAEA Statute, Article 2) No bias there then. The requirement for independence is that the expert will not have worked for the nuclear industry for two years prior to being enrolled. That’s how a person like Professor Richard Wakeford can become an “independent expert.” The activity of the nuclear operators in Sweden is not restricted to Forsmark. There is a rapidly developing waste recycling plant run by Studsvik (company name) near Nyköping in eastern Sweden which dilutes Canadian reactor parts into saucepans and tips the excess waste in the Baltic. Who is the chief health authority in Sweden?

2. Dr Lars-Erik Holm

Well, I won't say too much about Lars-Erik Holm. He is the ex-Chair of ICRP and a member of the main committee in 1986-89 and a delegate to UNSCEAR for many years. He was the head of the Swedish Radiation Protection organization, previously known as SSI, was also Chair of UNSCEAR in 2001 and a delegate to UNSCEAR in 2006. He is famously on record as stating that the total death toll of Chernobyl is limited to 30 highly irradiated power station operators. He began his career researching the effects of radioiodine. He did this by an epidemiological study of patients who had received radioactive iodine treatment to reduce overactive thyroid glands. Dr John Gofman, ex-head of biomedical effects for the USA Atomic Energy Agency, took some time to deconstruct the Holm Iodine study. He pointed out that Holm had removed any patient whose cancer developed in the first five years after treatment and concluded after more than 11 pages of analysis in his book (Gofman 1990) that the Holm Iodine study was a “A Fatally Flawed Study.” It used incorrect controls to argue that internal exposure from radioiodine was less effective in causing cancer than external radiation at the same dose. Its results certainly protected the nuclear industry, enabling the ICRP to set limits to exposure high, and it was only when the Chernobyl accident occurred that Holm's flawed study was seen to have produced wildly incorrect predictors of harm. It is truly extraordinary that such a study made it through peer review.

In any event, this was Holm's first step on the ladder to fame and fortune. But here is the best of all. Lars-Erik Holm is currently the Medical Officer of Health for Sweden. The man who is at the very top of the Swedish Health system — a country bordering the Baltic Sea, the most radioactive in the world, where the effects of Chernobyl are significant and measurable (Tondel 1996), where there is a renaissance of nuclear power and where a huge nuclear waste repository is being built under the Baltic Sea at Forsmark. And from this position he was instrumental in having Martin Tondel cease research which showed that the health effects of the Chernobyl accident in Sweden has caused a significant increase in cancer. Yet what he found was perhaps the most important finding (see reference below) in cancer research of the last twenty years.

The nuclear-military complex had to have their man in at the top in Sweden for all this to go ahead. And there he is. Lars-Erik Holm.

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

References:

Busby, C. C. (1995), Wings of Death: Nuclear Pollution and Human Health (Aberystwyth: Green Audit)

Busby Chris (2006), Wolves of Water. A Study Constructed from Atomic Radiation, Morality, Epidemiology, Science, Bias, Philosophy and Death. Aberystwyth: Green Audit

Busby C.C (2003) ed with Bertell R, Yablokov A, Schmitz Feuerhake I and Scott Cato M. ECRR2003: 2003 recommendations of the European Committee on Radiation Risk- The health effects of ionizing radiation at low dose--Regulator's edition. (Brussels: ECRR) 2004 Translations of the above into French Japanese Russian and Spanish (see www.euradcom.org for details)

Busby CC (2005) Depleted Uranium Weapons, metal particles and radiation dose. European J. Biology and Bioelectromagnetics. 1(1) 82-93

Busby CC (2005) Does uranium contamination amplify natural background radiation dose to the DNA? European J. Biology and Bioelectromagnetics. 1 (2) 120-131

Busby CC, Bramhall R and Dorfman P (2004) CERRIE Minority Report 2004: Minority Report of the UK Department of Health/ Department of Environment (DEFRA) Committee Examining Radiation Risk from Internal Emitters (CERRIE) Aberystwyth: Sosiumi Press
Busby Chris (2009) Depleted Uranium, Why all the fuss? Disarmament Forum 3 25-33 Geneva: United Nations

CERRIE (2004) Report of the Committee Examining Radiation Risk from Internal Emitters (CERRIE) Chilton, UK: National Radiological Protection Board

Darby, S. C., Olsen, J. H., Doll, R., Thakrav, B., de Nully Brown, P., Storm, H. H., Barlow, L., Langmark, F., Teppo, L., and Tulinius, H. (1992), `Trends in Childhood Leukemia in the Nordic Countries in Relation to Fallout from Nuclear Weapons Testing', British Medical Journal, 304: 1005-9.

Gofman 1990 Radiation-Induced cancer from Low-Dose Exposure: an Independent Analysis. John W. Gofman M.D/, Ph.D. First Edition. Committee for Social Responsibility, Inc. CNR Book Division. Post Office Box 11207 San Francisco California 94101 USA [For more information see www.llrc.org >> click on “Dishonesty” in the left-hand nav bar.]

Scott Cato MS, Busby CC, Bramhall R (2000) I don’t know Much about Science: political decision making in scientific and technical areas. Aberystwyth: Green Audit (this book influenced the structure and formation of the CERRIE committee and advocates an oppositional structure to science advisory committees in order to allow for cultural bias in science advice. It has now been carried forward by PINCHE in Europe.).

Tondel M, Carlsson G, Eriiksson M, Jakobssen S, Flodin U, Skoldestig A, Axelson O (1996) Incidence of neoplasms in ages 0-19 y in parts of Sweden with high 137Cs fallout after the Chernobyl accident. Health Phys; 71: 947-50

Van den Hazel P, Zuurbier M, Bistrup M L, Busby C, Fucic A, Koppe JG et al (2006) Policy and science in children’s health and environment: Recommendations from the PINCHE project. Acta Paediatrica S 453 114-119

Wakeford Richard, Darby Sarah and Murphy Michael M G (2010) Temporal trends in childhood leukaemia incidence following exposure to radioactive fallout from atmospheric nuclear weapons testing. Rad. Envir. Biophys. 49 213-227

In a shocking announcement outside his San Francisco office, Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune,---who only succeeded Carl Pope to that position less than two years ago--- told surprised reporters that he was stepping down in favour of an android developed by technicians attached to an Artificial Intelligence laboratory financed by Texas billionaire T. Boone Pickens. The android will replace Brune and everyone else on the Sierra Club payroll.

Introducing Robo-Pop(e), Mark II

It seems that even the bloated bureaucracies of mainstream environmental organizations are feeling the pinch of the Great Recession, forcing labour-saving economies on even the richest of them. The latest move by the Sierra Club therefore makes sense. Since their high-priced front men have given us robotic answers to perennial questions, why not replace them with a bona-fide robot who will work on the cheap, as American workers have been forced to after the influx of 12-20 illegal immigrants which the Sierra Club has refused to oppose? Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce "Robo-Pop(e) Mark II, designed using long-term Sierra Club director Carl Pope as a template.

Robo-Pop(e) (pictured at right), who goes by the anthropomorphic Christian name of “Carlos”, has now become the sole voice of the Sierra Club, the flagship organization of the environmental movement.

Shocking announcement

In a shocking announcement made before a hastily assembled press conference outside his San Francisco office, Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune,---who only succeeded Carl Pope to that position less than two years ago--- told surprised reporters that he was stepping down in favour of an android developed by technicians attached to an Artificial Intelligence laboratory financed by Texas billionaire T. Boone Pickens. The android will replace Brune and everyone else on the Sierra Club payroll.

Response to criticism

The move apparently came in response to long-standing criticism that the bloated $100 million annual budget of the Sierra Club was consumed by an expensive bureaucracy of careerists intent upon growing the Club by continuing to ignore the root cause of America’s environmental degradation (overpopulation). As long immigration-driven population growth remains unaddressed, critics noted, a growing myriad of environmental problems would afflict the country and citizens would turn to the Sierra Club for help, thus ensuring a steady stream of donations and membership dues. Rather than return to its former policy position of favouring restricted immigration, however, the Board of Directors elected to cut costs by appointing an android who would perform all the duties hitherto assigned to the President, the Vice-President, the Treasurer, the Executive Director, the Executive Chairman, the Secretary , the Fifth Officer and ten directors.

      
Michael Brune and  Executive Chairman Carl Pope, are now both out.

Efficiency move

 In “decoupling” the Sierra Club from human guidance,  the outgoing Board has effectively supplanted the robotic control of one entity, the Executive Director, with another ---Robo-Pop---- as well as a dump the salaries and benefits that accrued to employees,  including medical, dental, vision, life insurance options, flexible spending accounts, an employee assistance program, free Sierra Club membership, discounts on Sierra Club outings and books, long term disability insurance, generous holiday and vacation policies as well as a 401k pension plan. As Robo-Pop will work for nothing and live beyond human extinction, the Sierra Club hopes to cut its overhead by 99% and offer proof to its corporate benefactors that it can screw the working class as well as they can.

Carlos speaks Spanish, but that's not all ...

It should also be appreciated that Robo-Pop, or “Carlos” as he is affectionately known  to outgoing staff-----a name made to appeal to illegal Hispanics whom the Club hopes to recruit in gratitude for its stand in favour of porous borders and unenforced federal immigration law---- has been designed to integrate corporate priorities into its deepest thought processes, so that the Club’s donor base can be secured.

 In addition to an amazing array of attributes, which include the ability to take dictation and type at 3,000 words a minute while answering 100 incoming phone calls simultaneously----Robo-Pop  is programmed to speak Spanish and Arabic to appeal to the growing demographic the Sierra Club hopes to pander to as the United States hurtles toward a population of a half billion by mid-century. Nevertheless, Greenwash will remain as the Official Language of the Club, enabling it to network with other mainstream environmental NGOs on the corporate take. Moreover,  Robo-Pop, it has been learned, will also have a regular column with Huffington Post.  Technicians were careful to hardwire ‘progressive’ political cant into its neural circuitry, so that it can lace its doublespeak with words like “diverse”, “inclusive”, “vibrant”, “cooperative”,  “sustainable”, “just” and “equitable”.

Sierra Club tradition of 'smart growth' continues

To test the new “broom”, we phoned the Sierra Club head office and sure enough, Robo-Pop replied in Spanish monotones. Then, after pressing “3” for Greenwash, Robo-Pop spewed out a string of green buzzwords and oxymoronic phrases like "smart growth", referred us to the website for inquiries about population policy and then promptly hung up. The more things change, the more they remain the same.

Tim Murray
October 17, 2011

"Greed has helped destroy the planet...maybe now it can help save it"...Bill McKibben

With what appears to be modesty but comes close to boasting, Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org and its evil twin OneSky, says: "I am not an activist". He then spoils it all for us by saying "Population is not our biggest problem". In case we haven't gotten the message, he says "I've always been opposed to population control. In climate terms, population is not the biggest problem going forward. Most of the population growth ....will use very little energy so that it doesn't matter very much". It doesn't take much brain matter to know that human activities not directly connected to energy consumption are giving rise to things that really do matter very much.

What McKibben has left out - there is nothing between the lines here - is the stark fact that climate change induced by overconsumption of energy in large part but in equal part by overpopulation everywhere will hit the poor countries the hardest. Rising sea level will inundate low lying agricultural areas like Bangladesh and island nations, destroying crops and estuaries and turning drinking water wells to salt. Glaciers are disappearing from the Himalayas (whose rivers serve billions of people in India and its neighbors) and the Andes. Crop irrigation and overpumping of aquifers to serve growing populations is lowering aquifers by tens of meters in India and elsewhere, threatening food supplies and diminishing freshwater needed for drinking. Acidification of the oceans will destroy ocean fisheries, already overfished by poor nations in small cottage industries not using much energy, who in some cases sell it abroad for income instead of eating it. (Check out the film "Darwin's Nightmare"). The clearance of forests by timber companies plus the spread of unemployed workers from overpopulated regions as well as countries (Haitian immigrants are now moving to Brazil in droves) into pristine rainforests means more intense harvesting of jungle meat and drastic destruction of trees, habitat and biodiversity.

The competition for land, water and resources is not only between humans as in most African nations but between humans and nonhumans. As population grows, nonhuman species diminish and disappear. At the present rate of growth, with population doubling in 35 years, it is not hyperbole to wonder if anything will be left of wildlife and wilderness by the end of the century. Impoverished unemployed humans do not have the energy or will to make ethical judgments about "the rights of Nature".

It is abundantly clear that the overpopulation crisis will affect the less developed countries more rapidly and intensively than the industrialized west. They are on the front lines. They, not us, will starve, die from drought and famine, as they are forced to destroy their natural resources and water supplies in a desperate attempt to merely stay alive. What we saw last year in Somalia is the future of most of Africa. Yet his holiness McKibben, seemingly in a perpetual spiritual stupor that bemoans "the end of Nature" but refuses to finger the criminals and criminality that is responsible, has no recommendations for action, no policy or legislative agenda, because apparently to hold any of these would require him to become the activist that he so firmly rejects. His creed is Faith-based Science.
Papal bull indeed.

In May 2010 I placed a full page open letter, to McKibben, at my own expense, in The Nation, asking why he refused to take or propose actual policies or legislation to curb climate change. In response to an earlier communication with him asking why he isn't promoting specific policies and legislation, he said in effect that this would be useless given our present congress. The closest he has come to taking ANY position was to say we need to "put a price on carbon". He mentions no price nor has he actually used the term carbon tax, which WOULD put a price on carbon. Otherwise he has remained silent, while loudly proclaiming that his campaign has been instrumental on the issue. All this means is that he is telling decision makers to "take action". No specifics of course. Just "action".

In this respect he is no different from other religious leaders who see no evil worth reporting on, at least with names, but cannot help exhorting the faithful (the least culpable for the problem) to promote "peace", "social justice", "equality", and all those liberal homilies intended to smooth over, to the point of invisibility, the actual crimes being committed daily by foreign theocracies, monarchs, oligarchs and pseudo-populists....all in the name of peace, justice, and "freedom" of course. Instead, our own country (the US) bears the major burden of double-standard excoriation, along with the threatened nation of Israel surrounded by fanatic live organic ammunition looking for a place to explode. Religion appears to be the main stimulus for McKibben and others, not least Rabbi Michael Lerner, who yearned for a president full of "the spirit of God".

None of this is new nor would it be remarkable were it not for another less publicized side of the McKibben coin : his gross grovelling solicitation of the American business community to support his 350 ppm campaign, using the tried and true incentive of more profits and a better public image. Yes indeed, this is McKibben's unabashed tack. The centrality of economic growth and overconsumption is not even given a footnote or token lip service. Instead, McKibben, with his Rockefeller money (in an interview last year he pretended to not know the source of his funding) has done intense and unconditional solicitation - call it pimping for capitalism - to the business community. Here are some excerpts from a 350.org mailing of January 2011.

...."you can put information about what 350 means for climate change on your next green product (like Camelbak)
..."put a 'Business for 350' poster in your store-front or a similar badge on your website..
..."host a mini-rally (with your logo on the banner) like the staff of Keen Footware......this is marketing which we're supposed to be good at."
"...grab the 'Business for 350' web badge ...You'll be building the base and increasing your company's visibility .."
"Think of it as a giant branding campaign......think of something useful and beautiful to do with your business...get in touch with our
business coordinator to let us know that you're on board. She's helping coordinate businesses for the project and will be able to give you all the info and resources you need".

Other benefits touted by 350:

"provide increased engagement from your employees... renewed loyalty from your customers..and a (sic )health and happiness for your community".

So the tax-deductible Rockefeller grants and the public donations to 350. org are being used to assist the business community improve its image......isn't it heartwarming? But there's more. McKibben is pals with Richard Matthew's The Green Market, which promotes

"the convergence of sustainable capitalism (sic) and the global environment".

McKibben picks and chooses his capitalist friends carefully, shunning the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which compared to the energy industry is only a squeal, not the whole hog. It is worthwhile looking more closely at Matthews and The Green Market project.

Canadian energy activist Cory Morningstar has written extensively, no-holds-barred, on the "Climate Cartel" of 350.org, OneSky and Climate Solutions, and extensively on McKibben's craven capitulation to capitalism, saying to Matthews: "If we truly want to save some semblance of a livable planet for our children, we must confront and reject the non-profit industrial complex, who in reality cannot and will not bite the hand that feeds them..the hand upon which they depend in order to continue to exist".

Matthews' response to this was to defend "the growing relationship between business and the 'nonprofit industrial complex' as driving the green economy and benefiting the environment, saying "It is nothing short of absurd to dismiss the business community's pivotal role in carbon reduction". But he saves the best for last, saying

"Morningstar's Marxist-Leninist rants reduce the war against climate change to class conflict....(her) revolutionary zeal is unproductive and does nothing to solve the dire crisis we are facing. We have seen this tired rhetoric before and as we look back on the arc of history we see that anti-capitalist regimes are the polar opposite of a panacea".

Meanwhile, according to B.C. environmental analyst Tim Murray, West Coast Environmental Law in Vancouver (WCEL), rationalizing their intake of corporate cash, recently quoted a poll suggesting that only 15% of British Columbians are concerned about "charitable funding" of environmental groups. They argued that such funding helps right the imbalance between ordinary citizens and the influence of multinational corporations, cleverly referring to these corporate sources as "U.S. philanthropic foundations". When WCEL's executive director Jessica Clog was asked about the slippery slope between taking dirty corporate money and knuckling under to a corporate agenda, she admitted this was of concern, adding that Murray could help reduce WCEL's reliance on this money by writing her a check to help her cause.

The general public is not merely being deceived but is being led like lambs to the slaughter, in the belief that they have principled and muscular leadership on the climate change issue. Nothing could be further from the truth. Between the fat cat enviros like Natural Resources Defense Council and Environmental Defense Fund protecting their access to congress and policy makers, and the
leaders at the grassroots who refuse to lead, the citizenry and the planet are in grave danger, with no rescue in sight. At the very least they need to know who is deceiving them, and Bill McKibben is at the top of that list.

Lorna Salzman

The tragic sinking of Carnival's 'Costa Concordia last Friday off the Italian Isola del Giglio is symptomatic of a greedy cruise ship industry fanatical about cramming as many paying passengers as possible on bigger and more ships, while driving a cost-cutting culture to constantly boost profit performance for shareholders on global stock markets. These days modern cruise ships are expected to be unsinkable. Almost exactly one hundred years ago, people expected the same of the Titanic. People thought the Titanic was unsinkable because it was so large and mighty. Today, people marvel that a ship like the Concordia could have run aground while sailing a routine course.. The parallels between the underlying causes of the Costa Concordia sinking and the Titanic are disturbingly similar.

On 15th April back in 1912, the passenger liner RMS Titanic struck an iceberg off Newfoundland and sank in three hours. The Costa Concordia struck a rock that got stuck inside the left side, making it lean over and take on a lot of water in the space of two, three minutes. The Titanic had 2,223 passengers on board, but only carried lifeboats for 1,178. The media have reported that the Costa Concordia had over 4200 passengers on board at the time of running aground on the rock, although the bookings website states a 3000 passenger capacity.

The Titanic was the biggest most luxurious ship built to date in England at that time, being nearly 900 feet long, standing 25 stories high, and weighed an incredible 46,000 tons. With turn-of-the-century design and technology, including sixteen major watertight compartments in her lower section that could easily be sealed off in the event of a punctured hull, the Titanic was deemed an unsinkable ship. According to her builders, even in the worst possible accident at sea, two ships colliding, the Titanic would stay afloat for two to three days, which would provide enough time for nearby ships to help. The Titanic's engineers, believing a ship so large and powerful was unlikely to sink anyway, neglected to take into account the fact that the bulkheads dividing the 16 compartments came up only 10 feet above the waterline, meaning water could still flood the closest compartments even if intact.

Owned by giant US cruise line Carnival Corporation, the Costa Concordia is the world’s 26th largest passenger ship and the biggest ship built so far in Italy. The 950-ft Costa Concordia was built in 2005 and (was) the largest and most luxurious in the Costa cruise fleet, boasting bars, restaurants, a gym, large spa and several lavish suites and eleven decks! The Costa Concordia boasted as being the largest, longest and best ship in the Costa fleet for fitness and relaxation. It had a Fitness Area on two decks, covering a total of almost 20,450 square feet, four swimming pools, two with retractable glass roofs. There were 13 bars, 4 restaurants, a club, a theatre and 500 cabins with balconies. It had a 4 star rating.

Perhaps more money ought to have been spent on training its crew. Had the Captain of the Costa Concordia stayed in deep water, the compartmentalization of the ship's hull would likely have kept the ship afloat and life boats could have been used. Instead he tried to bring it closer to shore which frankly was really stupid. He ran it aground-still to far to swim- and the boat tipped over. I would know better than to do that. Or maybe it was the First Mate who screwed up and the Captain was dining with passengers as they are wont to do.

It is not yet public how many lifeboats were on board, but reports are than many were inaccessible due to the degree of listing of the ship. Many passengers aboard the Concordia have complained the crew didn't give them good directions on evacuating and waited so long to lower the lifeboats that many couldn't be released because the ship was listing so heavily. One passenger accounted "We couldn't get the lifeboats off and the life rafts that the staff use were stuck to the side of the ship. It was frightening." He used his height to bridge a gap between decks three and four as a human ladder and help passengers reach lifeboats. There were negligent delays in effecting the evacuation. The public announcements misleadingly advised passengers of an electrical problem for a critical 45 minutes. Robert Elcombe, 50, from Colchester but who now lives in Australia, said he and his wife Tracy got into a life boat – but were ordered out again when staff said it was ‘only a generator problem’ that could be fixed.

Originally, a lifeboat drill was scheduled to take place on board the Titanic on April 14, 1912 - the day the Titanic hit the iceberg. However, for an unknown reason, Captain Smith canceled the drill. Many believe that had the drill taken place, more lives could have been saved.

Costa Concordia passengers said the line did not have a muster/lifeboat drill for passengers prior to departure or on Friday night. Lifeboats also are required to be capable of being loaded, launched and maneuvered away from the ship within 30 minutes of the Master's signal to abandon ship. But unlike many cruise lines that routinely operate a full-blown muster/lifeboat drill an hour or so prior to departure, Costa apparently had scheduled the lifeboat drill for late Saturday afternoon. The International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS), an international treaty which governs safety on ships, only requires ships like Costa Concordia to have a safety/lifeboat drill within 24 hours of sailing. So while Costa’s procedure to hold a lifeboat drill on Saturday appears to be acceptable by law, from a feasibility standpoint some guests – particularly new cruisers -- may not have known exactly what to do and where to go at the time of the accident.

The average tonnage of cruise ships has doubled in the last decade makes a full-scale evacuation at sea more problematic.

The British inquiry into the Titanic's sinking confirmed that the sinking was exacerbated by the ship's "excessive speed" in its collision with the iceberg. This was Captain E. J. Smith's retirement trip. All he had to do was get to New York in record time. Captain E. J. Smith said years before the Titanic's voyage, "I cannot imagine any condition which would cause a ship to founder. Modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that." Captain Smith ignored seven iceberg warnings from his crew and other ships. If he had called for the ship to slow down then maybe the Titanic disaster would not have happened.

The Master of the Costa Concordia, Captain Francesco Schettino, was sailing off course. "The route of the vessel appears to have been too close to the shore, and the captain's judgment in handling the ­emergency appears to have not followed standard Costa procedures," a statement said. Initial assessment points toward Captain Schettino deliberately maneuvered the ship too close to the island to provide a "beautiful spectacle," for the tourists of Giglio. He has admitted that he tried to maneuver the ship close to the island as part of "tourist navigation," suggesting that he deviated from the permitted navigation route to entertain the islanders. The ship was a mere 150 metres from the shore when it ran aground.

Both captains were reckless and grossly irresponsible. Both companies were/are contributory in the respective disasters due to the inadequacies and failings of their systems/procedures and perhaps even corporate culture and so culpable.

The cruise industry has boomed since the 1980s, with more than 19 million passengers taking one last year and nine or more newly-built cruise ships of 100,000 tonnes or greater being built every year for the past decade. The cruise industry has become the fastest growing travel sector in the world. In 2010 the total cruise industry economic impact in the U.S. was $37.85 billion of gross output, a 7.8 % increase over the previous year.

But with increased demand has come increased competition. Carnival Corporation, owner of the Costa Concordia, has grown by revenues and acquisitions to become the world's largest cruise ship operator, headquartered in coastal Southampton, England. Besides the Carnival cruise line, the company owns Princess Cruises, AIDA Cruises, Seaborn, Costa Cruises, Cunard, Holland America Line, ibero cruseros and P&O Cruises. The cruise offerings from Carnival provide cruise vacations around the globe from budget cruises to the highest levels of high-cost luxury. At the end of 2010, Carnival owned 98 cruise ships with capacity for over 190,000 guests.

Carnival is a globally listed company traded on both the London Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange. Increasing bottom-line profits is the main challenge for Carnival in an environment of rising fuel prices, low value of the US dollar, high shipbuilding costs, and increasing expectations of passengers. So far Carnival has managed to return a reliable profit hovering around 5% p.a after a gross profit margin of 30%.

Perhaps more of that profit needs to be put back into quality control of operations and risk management. The cruise ship industry has focused on cramming as many paying passengers as possible on bigger and more ships. Going aground in relatively warm protected waters off Tuscany is a dire warning. A similar incident with Carnival's Antarctic or Alaskan cruises in freezing remote seas would truly be another Titanic disaster.

The guest speaker at the AGM will be Kelvin Thomson, Federal Member of Parliament for Wills and advocate of sustainable population. He will speak on: "A bigger Melbourne is not a better Melbourne”. All are very welcome to the meeting.

Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc (PPL VIC) Annual General Meeting Saturday 28 January 2012 Flemington Community Centre

Here are the arrangements:

Time: 1:45 pm for a 2 pm start

Date: Saturday 28 January 2012

Event: PPL VIC AGM 2011. (It had to be deferred from 2011)

Venue: Flemington Community Centre, Debneys Park, Mt Alexander Road, Flemington.

Transport: Parking is available at the Centre. There is a tram along Mt Alexander Road. (Note, however, that you will have to get off the tram at Stop 22 before the Centre OR at tramstop 25 further up the road beyond the Centre, as there are works in progress on a supertram stop outside the Centre.) There is a nearby train station and cycle trail along the Moonee Ponds Creek which comes out at Mt Alexander Road under the 'Sound Tube" connection with CitiLink. Melways Map Reference: 29 12 A .

Speaker: Kelvin Thomson, Federal Member of Parliament for Wills and advocate of sustainable population. He will speak on: "A bigger Melbourne is not a better Melbourne”. All are very welcome to the meeting.

Topics for Discussion: In addition to the overpopulation crisis, we can discuss of the looming threat of revived State Governmet plans for the East West Link and other sections of the freeway network plus the need to advocate for public transport improvements, in particular railways.

Nomination of PPL VIC Committee: Attached please find a nomination form for the Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc. committee positions. Note we are required to circulate the form under incorporation regulations before the meeting. Please return via email or send a hard copy to our post office address (see below)

Please Circulate this notice to members of your group (if you have one) plus anyone interested in the key issues of the day which are to be discussed at the meeting.

Julianne Bell
Secretary
Protectors of Public Lands Victoria Inc.
PO Box 197
Parkville 3052

Mobile: 0408022408

Alan Thornett, an ecosocialist, amazes positively in this thoughtful review of yet another pseudo-environmental book. Simon Butler and Ian Angus's Too Many People predictably attempts to stifle linking population numbers to ecological survival. (Simon Butler is co-editor of the Australian publication Green Left Weekly.) "Unfortunately it is the authors themselves who continue to draw false lessons from the past: i.e. that the left should leave this subject alone, keep out of the debates, and insist that there is nothing to discuss. The problem with this is that it is not just wrong but dangerous. If socialists have nothing to say about the population of the planet the field is left open to the reactionaries, and they will be very pleased to fill it. And one thing the authors are certainly right about is that there are plenty of such people out there with some very nasty solutions indeed." Even more surprisingly, this article was first published by a British Trotskyist organisation.

Introduction to this review:

Candobetter Editor: Candobetter.net wants to believe that there is a socialist organisation out there that is in favour of free speech, science, and rich ecology. One of our tests for this is sound environmental thinking on human population numbers and ecology. The review below, published by Socialist Resistance, demonstrates sound thinking, in our view on ecology and on democracy. Socialist Resistance describes itself as "the ecosocialist magazine in Britain, has relaunched itself as the British section of the Fourth International, the worldwide socialist organisation. A national conference on July 4 completed a regroupment process begun a year earlier." But, one swallow does not a summer make, and Trotskyist organisations (i.e. socialist organisations aligned with the Fourth International) have notoriously been infiltrated by the establishment, and push growth by aggressively opposing the anti-growth lobby, thereby defending the growth lobby and the kinds of planners, developers and governments, who are destroying democracy, abrogating land-rights, and placing whole populations in precarity all over the world. We are therefore keeping our fingers crossed about the Socialist Resistance, but not holding our breaths.

Too many people? A review

First published here: http://socialistresistance.org/3013/too-many-people-a-review

Alan Thornett reviews Too Many People? by Ian Angus and Simon Butler published by Haymarket at £13.99.

As a long-time comrade of Ian Angus, a fellow ecosocialist, and an admirer of his work on Marxism and ecology, I am disappointed by the tone he has adopted in his new book on population Too Many People?—which he has authored jointly with Simon Butler, co-editor of the Australian publication Green Left Weekly.

The thesis they advance is that the population of the planet is irrelevant to its ecology, and that even discussing it is a dangerous or even reactionary diversion—a taboo subject. They even argue that such discussion is divisive and detrimental environmental campaigning. [page 97]

The book appears to be a response to Laurie Mazur’s very useful book published last year A Pivotal Moment— Population, Justice and the environmental challenge. This was reviewed by Sheila Malone in SR (July 2010), as part of a debate on the issue.

Mazur argues that it is not a matter of choosing between reactionary policies from the past but that “we can fight for population policies that are firmly grounded in human rights and social justice”. I agree with her on this point, though not with everything in her book.

I didn’t expect to agree with Ian’s book as such, since I have differed with him on this issue for some time. I did expect, however, an objective presentation of the debates without the ideas of fellow ecosocialists being lumped together with those of reactionaries and despots.

What we have is the branding (in heavy polemical tones) of anyone with a contrary view to the authors as ‘Malthusianist’—i.e. supporters of the 18^th century population theorist the Reverend Thomas Malthus who advocated starving the poor to stop them breeding—or more precisely as ‘populationist’, by which the authors mean neo-Malthusianist.

They explain it this way: “Throughout the book we use the term ‘populationism‘ to refer to ideologies that attribute social and ecological ills to human numbers and ‘populationist’ to people who support such ideas.” They go on: “We prefer those terms to the more traditional Malthusianism and Malthusian, for two reasons”. The first is because not everyone is familiar with Malthus and the second is because most of their protagonists don’t actually agree with what he wrote. The “more traditional term”, however, never goes away. [page XX1]

This leaves the book stuck in the past, more concerned with rehashing the polarised conflicts of the last 200 years than engaging with the contemporary debates.

The authors are right to say that population is not the root cause of the environmental problems of the planet. It is capitalism. They are also right to say that stabilising the population would not in itself resolve them. But they are wrong to say that it is irrelevant. The fact is that current rate of increase is unsustainable were it to continue—and whether it will continue or for how long no one knows. What we do know it that it has almost tripled in just over 60 years—from 2.5bn in 1950 to the recently reached figure of 7bn.

According to UN figures it will reach between 8bn and 11bn (with 9.5bn as the median figure) by 2050. After that it could begin to stabilise—possibly doing so by the end of the 21^st century. Even this, however, is highly speculative. Long-term population predictions, as the authors themselves acknowledge, are notoriously inaccurate. Meanwhile nearly half the current world population is under 25—which is a huge base for further growth.

Yet throughout the book the charge of ‘Malthusianism’ or ‘populationism’ is aggressively leveled against anyone who suggests that rising population is a legitimate, let alone important, subject for discussion. These range from those who do indeed see population as the primary cause of the ecological crisis to those who blame capitalism for it but see population as an important issue to be addressed within that.

This is reinforced by a sleight of hand by the authors over the term population ‘control’. They refuse to draw any distinction between control and empowerment and then brand those they polemicise against—including fellow ecosocialists who advocate empowerment—as being in favour of population ‘control’. This allows them to create a highly objectionable amalgam between every reactionary advocate of population control they can find—and there is no shortage of them including Malthusians—and those who are opposed to such control. This is then referred to throughout the book as “the populationist establishment”.

My own views would certainly fall within this so-called establishment. Yet I am opposed to population control and support policies based on empowerment—policies based on human rights and social justice, socially progressive in and of themselves, which can at the same time start to stabilise the population of the planet.

Such policies involve lifting people out of poverty in the poorest parts of the globe. They involve enabling women to control their own fertility through the provision of contraception and abortion services. It means challenging the influence of religion and other conservative influences such as patriarchal pressure. They involve giving women in impoverished communities access to education.

These are major strategic objectives in their own right, with the issue of rising population giving them an additional urgency. Yet the book dismisses them as secondary, as issues already dealt with! This reflects the fact that the book has nothing at all to say on the substantive (and huge) issue of women and population.

Some important progress towards empowerment policies was made at the UN conference on population and development held in Cairo in 1994. This, for the first time, pointed to the stabilisation of the global population through the elimination of poverty, the empowerment of women, and the effective implementation of basic human rights. That its proposals were sidelined by a vicious pro-life backlash and the arrival of George W Bush on the world stage does not invalidate the contribution it made.

The above approach, however, along with the Cairo Conference, is heavily slapped down in the book. In fact this is one of the author’s principal preoccupations. Empowerment is presented as the slippery slope to not only population control but “at its most extreme” to programs, human rights abuses, enforced or coercive sterilization, sex-selective abortion, female infanticide, and even to ethnic cleansing! [page 94]

The authors put it this way:

“Most supporters of population control today say that it is meant as a kindness — a benevolent measure that can empower women, help climate change, and lift people out of poverty, hunger, and underdevelopment. But population control has a dark past that must be taken into account by anyone seeking solutions to the ecological crisis.”(page 83) They go on: “…At its most extreme, this logic has led to sterilisation of the ‘unfit’ or ethnic cleansing. But even family planning could be a form of population control when the proponents aim to plan other people’s families.” [page 84]

The term population ‘control’ is again perversely attributed to anyone with contrary views and we are again warned of the ‘dark past’ of population debates and the dangers of engaging in them—and anything can be abused, of course, including family planning. But only enforced contraception, which we all oppose, could rationally be seen population control—not the extension to women of the ability to control their own fertility.

Equally mistaken is the crass assertion that to raise the issue of population under conditions where fertility levels are highest in the global south and declining in the north is in some way to target the women of the south and to blame them for the situation. For Fred Pearce, who endorses the book, makes advocates of empowerment into “people haters”: “How did apparently progressive greens and defenders of the underprivileged turn into people-haters, convinced of the evils of overbreeding amongst the world’s poor”.

What the empowerment approach actually targets, of course, is the appalling conditions under which women of the global south are forced to live and the denial basic human rights to which they are subjected. It demands that they have the same opportunities and resources as the women of the global north.

Even more confused is the allegation that the provision of contraception to women in the global south is in some way an attack on their reproductive rights; an attempt to stop them having the family size they would otherwise want — a view which appears to be endorsed in the Socialist Review review of the book. If that were the case, of course, it would not be the right to choose but enforced contraception.

In any case the proposition that most women in the global south, given genuine choice, would choose to have the large families of today is not supported by the evidence. Over 200m women in the global south are currently denied such services and there are between 70m and 80m unintended pregnancies a year—of which 46m end in abortions. 74,000 women die every year as a result of failed back-street abortions—a disproportionate number of these in the global south.

After attacking empowerment from every conceivable angle the authors then appear to accept at least the possibility that not all of us who think population is an important issue to discuss support enforced sterilisation and human rights abuses:

“We are not suggesting that everyone who thinks population growth is an ecological issue would support compulsory sterilisation or human rights abuses. Most modern-day populationists reject the coercive programmes of the 20^th century, but that does not mean that they have drawn the necessary lessons from those experiences.” [page 95]

Unfortunately it is the authors themselves who continue to draw false lessons from the past: i.e. that the left should leave this subject alone, keep out of the debates, and insist that there is nothing to discuss.

The problem with this is that it is not just wrong but dangerous. If socialists have nothing to say about the population of the planet the field is left open to the reactionaries, and they will be very pleased to fill it. And one thing the authors are certainly right about is that there are plenty of such people out there with some very nasty solutions indeed.

You've got to see this video. Salt and cronies rattling on at an industry talk-fest.
Warning: Likely to cause anger, nausea or both. An even bigger chance of dying laughing at these unselfconcious antics of the Property and Growth Lobby.
http://australianpropertyforum.com/topic/9032052/1/

The powerpoint slides and Salt monologue give way to footage of Co-conspirators... well conspiring.
One of those present is the CEO of Parramatta Council. All those on-stage seemed completely naive to the notion of democracy or the public interest. This was a 2011 talkfest by KPMG and the Property Council of Australia which has been sitting in our draft articles for some time, but age has not tarnished it.

Debating them would be like debating the three stooges - which is perhaps why they never debate any of the counter-growth lobby.

They seem utterly clueless regarding the nature of their opposition.

There are comments below the video on the above site from people who seem amazed at these antics. Most of candobetter.net's readers would not be amazed, but amused to see what we knew to be true actually played out on stage. There are also comments about some nasty sock-puppets who seem to be located in Prosper Australia. One of them is noted to attack people who want to stop undemocratic population growth in Australia. The same guy seems to get around a lot - from the Refugee Alliance and their friends in Right to Life, amongst shouter-downs in the Greens, the Socialist Alliance and even in Bicycles Victoria. (What do all these organisations have in common that could interest him? - Political turf.)

This page from another site also carries the same video and discusses the issue of online property shills and astroturfing.

http://www.differenthere.com/2011/08/on-internet-nobody-knows-youre-dog-or.html

This page, also from the site above, is also very interesting. It discusses the commercial collapse of The Block'

http://www.differenthere.com/2011/08/real-estate-in-crisis-block-auction.html

Here's an example of a comment posted after watching this video:

"This is very disturbing.

KPMG's Bernard Salt is advocating the creation of groups of paid shills and spruikers, backed by big business and the property industry, to 'counter the negativity' by posting on opinion pages of newspapers, forums, social media, twitter and the blogosphere. He wants these groups to take on the 'doomsayers' by seeking out and 'balancing extreme views'. He says individuals can't do it but there are ways to fund groups to do it.

His guests say the property council used to do this a lot to promote the property industry but vacated that space in recent years and he recommends they return with broad campaigns at the PR level to fight negative sentiment in the property market.

It makes you wonder whether they've already been successful in doing this, and the bulls and spruikers on forums like this one are bankrolled by the real estate industry and big business to sow seeds of uncertainty and doubt among the dominant (and correct IMO) bearish viewpoint. Would it surprise you if our one-eyed permabulls and their socks are puppets of the propaganda arm of the real estate industry, here to manipulate public opinion and drown out reality? Who to trust?"

Resource scarcity is the root of war and terrorism, and liberty is the first casualty of conflict. But as oppressive as state surveillance and detention can be, nature's noose will be even tighter.

The Window For Protest Is Rapidly Closing

The window of opportunity is shutting down for all of us everywhere. In Canada, the United States, Britain....and as you can see here, Australia as well. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-01-07/brown-slams-spying-on-environmental-activists/3762308 We are being monitored, and as surveillance cameras track us, legislation is being prepared or has been prepared to give governments emergency powers to arrest and detain us without further ado. Consider the stakes----trillions of dollars of oil, natural gas, coal, hydro-electricity, pipelines and transmission lines that need to be marshalled for the insatiable and desperate appetite of our voracious industrial economy. Surely it would be naive to think that the fate of this goliath of capital investment would be put at risk by any democratic indulgence. Corporations and governments have a kit bag of dirty tricks to reach into, and a media that can spin the news to depict us as enemies of the people. Why do we think that we are exempt from the fate that has befallen protesters in other lands without democratic traditions, people who stood in the way of logging in Sumatra or environmental vandalism in Nigeria or the former Soviet Union? One could recall the prescient remark of Louisiana's Huey Long, after he was asked in the 1930s if fascism would ever come to America. "Yes," Long replied, "only they'll call it anti-fascism". American resource analyst Chris Clugston has made a similar prediction:

"Interestingly, those who claim today that any and all forms of "uncivilized behavior" are despicable and unacceptable, will be those who will justify them in the next few years, in the name of "the people". Those who protest now are considered "extremists"; those who protest in the future will be considered "enemies of the people", and will be dealt with according to the provisions of laws such as the Defense Authorization Act. It will be like Nazi Germany on steroids... NNR scarcity is like a vise around the collective skulls of humanity; a vise that tightens at the rate of 1/1000 of a turn per day. While the incremental pressure is almost imperceptible on a daily basis, the handle on the vise will turn 3 full revolutions in 10 years, and 6 full revolutions in 20 years. Somewhere along the line, humanity will crack. Given such phenomena as the incessant global riots, the OWSers, and our persistent global economic malaise, I'd say we're showing signs of stress already."

Idiot America And The Death Of Democracy

Democracy needs an educated, vigilant and assertive citizenry. Do you see that now in Idiot America? How many of the 99% bothered to get off their duffs or make a statement about our current predicament? Statistically, quite few. And the few who did were far from clear in their message. The Department of Education spent over $67 billion on dummed-down "education" in the United States in 2009, and the result? A population most of whom believe in the literal truth of Genesis, and a generation of teenagers whose conversation is much like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0i_5YBnQdac&feature=relmfu

Think about it. This you tube got 10 million hits, while this you tube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTWduFB_RX0 about our critical overpopulation crisis will be lucky to be seen by five percent of that number. And just for good measure, for the ten or fifteen percent of the population who do understand that something is terribly wrong or dysfunctional about the "system", our so-called environmental "watchdogs", flush with corporate donations, and the "progessive-left" media, stand ready with greenwash and politically correct euphemisms to further stupefy us.

The Language Of Insight Has Been Hijacked

As Orwell told us, the purpose of "Newspeak" is to narrow our perceptions by limiting our vocabulary, to render us incapable of thinking "outside the box" by robbing us of the words we need to get there, to channel our thinking along prescribed lines. Language is now more a tool of deception than elucidation. Some of us may know that the system is broken and the industrial machine is rigged for destruction, but having gotten by that first line of defence, we can't go further because we can't identify root causes for want of verbal precision and the critical thinking it permits. The language of radical insight has been coopted and twisted to mean its opposite. What remains are the time-worn shibboleths of the civil rights movement and various identity groups, including the pathetic lexicon of a rejuvenated Marxism that dresses up in green colours to beguile a new generation while preaching a line so obsolete that it would be comic if not so dangerous.

A Generation Stuck In Ideological Ruts

As John M. Owen IV recently wrote in the NY Times ("Why Islamism is Winning" Jan. 6, 2012)), the ideology that harvests current discontent can be compared to a channel dug by one generation of activists and kept open, "sometimes quietly", by their successors in the next generation. "When the storms of revolution arrive, the waters will find those channels." Thus it is the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamic extremists who will reap the dividends of the Arab Spring, and I would add, just as the myths of the New Left were launched from the platform of the Old Left, this generation of so-called "Eco-socialists" and "climate justice" or "environmental justice" activists carry on to lay down the channels of thought and discourse which form concrete conduits that steer the digital generation away from any real grasp of biophysical laws or the concept of ecological limits. They don't see overpopulation or the terminal and unrelenting decline of non-renewable resources because they live in a conceptual straitjacket defended by impenetrable jargon and politically incorrect no-go zones. They have a religious conviction that poverty is merely a function of maldistribution and the profit motive and some even have the cheek to call this conviction "scientific" socialism. Theoretically, an equal division of the global economic pie would indeed, for the time being, secure a per capita income equivalent to a decent 'Brazilian' lifestyle. The problem however, is that the pie would continue shrinking as affordably accessible non-renewable resources upon which we all depend remorsely diminish.

We Can Shut Down A Pipeline But We Can't Shut Down Peak Non-Renewables

The point is, we are hemmed in on both sides. On one side by those who would physically quarantine us as security threats, and on the other side by those who would quarantine our ideas because they contest their version of radical change, the managed dissent of fake rebellion. Lenin said that the best way to beat the opposition is to lead it. It looks like corporations have it all covered. They fund Green Inc. and then let their useful idiots on the green-left lead a charge down a blind alley. The truth is, direct action can theoretically shut down a pipeline or an energy project, but it cannot solve non-renewable resource shortages. We can protest against envrionmental devastation, but nature is deaf to any protests against peak oil, metals and minerals. There are too many of us, we consume too much, and more than that, our existence depends on consuming stuff that cannot be replenished. The language of social justice and equality apparently does not have a word for that kind of scarcity. Like the inmates of a remote Siberian gulag amidst an endless frozen wasteland, we don't really need Patriot Acts, surveilance and prison guards to control us---- nature is our ultimate jailor. Amoral, indifferent and unmoved by our pleadings for justice and fair play.

Tim Murray
January 9, 2012

ABC News

January 07, 2012

Greens leader Bob Brown has accused Federal Resources Minister Martin
Ferguson of turning Australia into a police state, after reports he
pushed for increased surveillance of environmental activists.

A report in Fairfax newspapers details documents, obtained under Freedom
of Information laws, that show Mr Ferguson requested additional
monitoring of anti-coal mining groups and other environmental groups.

Senator Brown claims coal and fossil fuel companies pressured Mr
Ferguson into having the federal police spy on environment groups who
protest against energy companies.

Senator Brown says tens of thousands of dollars of taxpayers' money is
being spent having private contractors monitor activists.

"That paying of private corporations to spy on community groups is an
abuse of taxpayers' money," he said.

"Martin Ferguson should never have been allowed to promote that and it
should be stopped.

"The Attorney-General, if not the Prime Minister, should see that it
stops immediately."

A spokeswoman for Mr Ferguson says governments are concerned with
maintaining energy security.

She says this includes maintaining the rule of law and energy supply,
where issues-motivated groups seek to engage in unlawful activity.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-01-07/brown-slams-spying-on-environmental-activists/3762308

Talk by Dr. Chris Busby about scientific dishonesty in nuclear issues at the Royal Society in London last November. How do the government committees work? How are scientific papers selected or deselected for publication in the mainstream journals? How does scientific fraud become established knowledge, thereby sweeping the illness and death of thousands of people under the carpet to protect the use of nuclear materials for military purposes? It's all in here... Powerpoint presentation added on 11 Jan 2012.

I think it's well worth your time to see the video and hear what Chris Busby has to say!
Or Download the 1.92MB powerpoint presentation here.

Dr Chris Busby at the Royal Society: Scientific Dishonesty

Final comment: If this is happening in the UK, what do you think is going on in Japan, the USA, and also in Australia? And not just over nuclear issues - how about BSE, GE crops and food, biotechnology in general, and global warming?

Thanks and have a nice day!

Global economic turbulence and the prospect of deep recession as we move towards an energy crisis, presents huge challenge. There has been little forewarning and planning. Every local and national authority needs to start now to address these challenges seriously, yet still we carry on with our head in the sands, wasting resources on an epic scale.

According to a little noticed report in 2009 by the respected (US) Energy Information Administration, the supply of the world's most essential energy source is going off a cliff. Not in the distant future, but within two years. It says Production of all liquid fuels, including oil, will drop within 20 years to half what it is today, when energy demand is rising rapidly. And the difference needs to be made up with "unidentified projects".

If the EIA is right – and it has been endorsed by the US joint military command, we stand on the edge of a precipice, with no prior warning from either the industry or governments, which ostensibly protect the public interest.

A huge problem is nearly all alternative energy sources are poor energy performers because they need a high-energy input to provide a given energy return.

Already there is a crisis in ‘business as usual’ capitalism, with little sign of recovery, warns Robert Peston in his December 11 BBC programme, ‘The Party’s Over’.

Many world leaders are spending billions they haven’t got in a panic “to restore growth,” whatever it takes, in a world of rapidly depleting resources. Maybe we should be welcoming this warning for the endless "growth is good" mindset that will devour our planet. Do we plan for a secure and better life or do we carry on blindly toward a minefield of lethal limits?

The perpetual growth myth knows no ecological bounds. Damage to ‘the environment’ is considered to be a mere externality. Resource shortages can be relieved just through expanding trade and technology will find a substitute for any depleting resource. Perpetual growthists regard any critics as imposing a dangerous drag on the world’s growth-based pursuit of progress.

The crisis has revealed the fragile interdependence of the globalised economy, where many countries can be involved in the supply chain to produce a component manufactured in one of them. In a few years, the markets will face another major trauma when they realise that once plentiful oil supplies are running down rapidly and the 'globalised' economy this has supported will have to rethink completely.

A clear opportunity now exists to transform our economy and our society for the better. The current global recession should be an opportunity to forge a new economic system able to avoid the shocks and negative impacts associated with our reliance on endless growth. Where is the strategic thinking to build a dynamic, steady state economy in a sustainable environment?

The UK-based New Economics Foundation publishes a "Happy Planet Index," which shows that it is possible for a nation to have a strong sense of well-being with a lower consumption and ecological footprint.

Some Inconvenient Facts for Growthists
If prosperity depended on growing populations to feed economic growth, the Philippines and many countries in Africa would be rich, not poor.
According to the World Bank, the top ten wealthiest countries, as measured by per capita GDP, were, in order of wealth: 1. Luxembourg: 491,000 people. 2. Norway: 4.8 million people. 3. Singapore: 4.8 million people 4. USA: 306 million people 5. Ireland: 4.5 million people 6. Switzerland: 7.7 million people 7. Austria: 8.3 million people 8. Netherlands: 16 million 9. Iceland: 319,000 people 10. Sweden: 9.1 million.

Many countries have small populations and are quite prosperous and successful - New Zealand and Botswana are examples. Of the ten countries listed, all but one, the United States, have small total populations and The United States, with runaway population growth in the past two decades, has not been doing well of late.

Japan is often seen as a forerunner of all that is doomed in the economies of the euro zone and the United States because of its ‘ageing population’ and what is seen as a static economy. But look at Japan's economic performance over the past ten years and "the second lost decade", if not the first, is a misnomer. More than half its population is over 45, but most Japanese have grown richer. In part, because its population has shrunk whereas America's population has increased rapidly.

In aggregate, Japan's economy grew at half the pace of America's between 2001 and 2010. Yet if judged by growth in GDP wealth per person over the same period, then Japan has outperformed America and the euro zone.

Relationship between Growth and Prosperity in 100 Largest U.S. Metropolitan Areas (Eben Fodor, December 2010. www.FodorandAssociates.com)

Most cities operate on the assumption that growth is inherently beneficial and that more and faster growth will benefit local residents economically. The report examined the 100 largest metro areas, representing 66% of the total U.S. population, finding those that did best have the lowest growth rates.

The annual population growth rate of each metro area from 2000 to 2009 was used to compare economic well-being in terms of per capita income, unemployment rate, and poverty rate. The report found:

- Faster growth rates are associated with lower incomes, greater income declines, and higher poverty rates.
- The 25 slowest-growing metro areas outperformed the 25 fastest growing in every category and averaged $8,455 more in per capita personal income in 2009.
- The policy of pursuing growth is enormously expensive, costing local taxpayers more than a hundred billion dollars every year for the new infrastructure alone.

Australia’s GDP per person for the December 2008 quarter fell in every state – linked to population growth, says Dr John Coulter, former President of Sustainable Population Australia. Tasmania, with the lowest population growth, showed only a 0.1% fall per capita. Western Australia, with the highest rate of population growth, showed the second largest fall in per capita GDP at almost 2%. South Australia with a high rate of population growth relative to the economy had the largest decline in per capita GDP at 2.5%.

For centuries, before the industrial revolution humans have lived in a relatively steady state economy. There was virtually no interest in economic growth as a policy objective anywhere before 1950. Yet, by the 1960’s, rapid economic growth had bubbled to the top as the overriding objective of policy to remedy all the ailments of western economies.

Jobs
In 2010 the United States population reached 308 million and is (conservatively) predicted to grow to 430 million in the next 40 years – an increase of 122 million people. Taking a (modest) average household size of 4 people and a modest 1.5 jobs per household, this means an extra 95,000 jobs need to be created every month for the next 40 years just to meet minimum demand for new jobs. US unemployment is currently around 9% (officially) and unofficially significantly higher.

Globally - present population around 7 billion, at a conservative estimate population in 2050 will be 9.3 billion - increase 2.3 billion, Assume five people in family unit instead of the four in the US calculation, and assume only one job per family unit. Based on those estimates we need to provide over one million new jobs per month for the next 480 months.

Can we really meet such relentless demand in a world of diminishing resources?

The world’s largest economy created 64,000 private sector jobs in September 2010 and lost 95,000 jobs overall. (US Labor Department). Over the last decade net job creation in the United States was zero.

UK data extrapolated from Summary of National Labour Force Survey Data Table 1.
United Kingdom Age 16+ (Thousands) seasonally adjusted
Total in Employment
Quarter January-March 1971 24,613,00m
Quarter February-April 2011 29,239,000m
Change in 40 years + 4.6 million
Of the total 29,239m, 7,953m worked part-time. 15.6% wanted but could not find full-time work. (Table 3)

The world was completely transformed by oil for the duration of the twentieth century, but if the EIA graph is right, within 20 years it will be vastly depleted as we face rising demand and trying to support over 4 billion more people in just 40 years. Here are just some of the issues:

- planning for the replacement of oil in its essential role in EVERY industry;
- planning how to replace cars and transport in our daily lives, and distribute agricultural produce and manufactured goods;
- manufacturing and installing millions of home energy installations to replace fossil fuel-sourced heating;
- planning how to replace and fuel the largest military establishment in history, almost completely dependent upon oil;
- supporting a global population that, at currently fertility rates, is heading for over 11 billion people by 2050 (UNPD) - without the "green agricultural revolution," made possible by the age of oil and where over two billion are already suffering from malnutrition;
- re-powering tractors essential to producing food on a large scale;
- securing imperilled water pumping and sewage plants, dependent on fossil fuel energy to work.

There will be few oil-burning ships transporting grain and other goods to the billions now dependent on them, or oil-burning airlines serving the world's major cities and the vital global tourist economy. Yet in September 2011 the Airbus Company predicted that the global passenger plane fleet will more than double by 2030. They are in dreamland.

– not least greater national food security, not more speculative office blocks on prime agricultural land. There is a vast amount that could be done without impacting on our quality of life. Some reductions many people would welcome. To name just a few:

- reducing unnecessary road lighting in the country and reduced but better lighting optics in our towns, along with cutting office lighting at night;
- cutting TV advertising screens in supermarkets and multiple TVs in bars;
- controlling the mass of unsolicited mail-shots falling out of papers and through our doors;
- cutting multiple daily flights on short-haul routes, by expanding high-speed train networks;
- cutting production of gas-guzzling performance vehicles.

Every local and national authority needs to start now to address these challenges seriously and examine services considered most vulnerable to long-term reduction in available fuel supplies. Still we carry on with our head in the sands, wasting resources on an epic scale. There has been little forewarning and planning. Our children won’t thank us for inheriting a world taken to an abyss.

The events of “Arab Spring” have given the United States an opportunity to reevaluate our entire foreign and military policy. That reevaluation has not yet happened, but it must. End the empire!

See also: thepatriots.us.

The events of “Arab Spring” have given the United States an opportunity to reevaluate our entire foreign and military policy. That reevaluation has not yet happened, but it must.

Candobetter Editor: We welcome essays and papers from Dr Robert Bowman. Robert Bowman was in charge of the program to build an outer space missile defense shield in the early 1970s under Presidents Ford and Carter. He retired in 1978. In 1980, when President Reagan took over the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) it was put into the hands of a group of people who wanted to turn it into a means to launch a first strike nuclear attack against the Soviet Union. Many of the top brass under Reagan were opposed to this but could not speak out publicly. Robert Bowman, as he was already retired, was free to speak without incurring any penalty. Because he was free to speak, the top generals, who themselves felt unable to speak up, appealed to Robert Bowman to use his voice to stop the SDI. Bowman gave thousands of public speeches against the SDI and, of his own efforts, turned American public opinion around, so that the SDI, as a first strike weapon, had to be abandoned.

Arab Spring

Most of the revolts of 2011 have been popular uprisings against aging dictators who have for decades kept their people in poverty and without a voice in their governance. The successful revolt against Hosni Mubarak in Egypt is a good example. It was a genuine popular uprising of ordinary people. The protesters were unarmed and mostly peaceful. They quickly gained the support of people all across the country and from all walks of life. Even the Army refused to fire on them. The media called them “pro-democracy” forces, but most of the demonstrators had little interest in “democracy” as such, and little understanding of what it is. What they wanted was a better life. They were demonstrating against unemployment, poverty, and hunger. And they succeeded. It is doubtful that any meaningful democracy will result, but the Egyptian people at least have a chance for a better standard of living. The dictator they overthrew, Hosni Mubarak, was an ally of the United States and Israel. But he was not deemed essential to our elites. We did not interfere. After all, puppet dictators come and go. Once in a while, you have to throw one of them under the bus.

It’s another story in Yemen and Bahrain, where the local dictators have given us military bases and active cooperation in our “War on Terror.” In these countries, the dictators are brutally repressing the demonstrators and killing unarmed civilians, with our tacit approval and probably with the assistance of the CIA. Having armed these dictators, we don’t have to send troops in to help them (that the American people would not stand for). But we certainly won’t help the “pro-democracy” demonstrators. For them, “Arab Spring” is nothing but a long, hard winter of discontent.

Libya

So what’s goin on in Libya? Why are the vast majority of the Libyan people standing behind Moammar Khaddafi? And why are we sending the full air power of NATO to assist a small band of armed revolutionaries in Libya?

The answers are simple. First, Khaddafi has been, for the most part, a benevolent dictator. He has enormously bettered the lives of his people until their standard of living is the highest in the Arab world. Education is free. Medical care is free. Housing is free. Automobiles are heavily subsidized, as is the gasoline to run them. Young married couples start wedded life with a $50,000 subsidy. Every Libyan man, woman, and child gets something like $500 a year directly from the oil profits. Khaddafi has built the world’s largest public works project, pumping rivers of fresh water from aquifers under the desert of southern Libya north to the cities along the Mediterranean where the people live. This has allowed the people to have clean drinking water, and has enabled agriculture. In short, the economic factors behind most of the revolts of “Arab Spring” are absent in Libya. No wonder the people, for the most part, support him (democracy or no).

Then who are the armed rebels, and why are we supporting them? Easy. They are Islamist malcontents. Some of them are unhappy that Khaddafi is taking a leading role in uniting African countries. They look down on black Africans, and want Libya to align itself with Europe. Some have long been CIA operatives, fighting against the Russians in Afghanistan, and now against the Americans (like so many “Al Qaeda”). Having no political loyalties, they are happy to accept CIA and NATO help in taking over Libya as an Islamist state.

For our part, we are using them to get rid of a thorn that has long been in our side. All of the dictators (former puppets of ours or not) that we have turned on (Saddam Hussein, Manuel Noriega, all the way back to Mossadegh in Iran) have committed one of these two cardinal sins: (1) they have nationalized the oil industry, denying the Western oil companies billions in profits, or (2) they have declared independence from the global banking cartel, refusing to borrow from the IMF and World Bank. This has cost the banks billions in interest, and prevented them from imposing harsh austerity measures which impoverish the people and make them permanent debt slaves. Khaddafi committed BOTH of these cardinal sins. First, he nationalized the oil industry, kicking out the western corporations. Instead of having a central bank under the thumb of the Rothschilds (like the US, Greece, Ireland, etc), Khaddafi printed his own money, backing it with gold from oil sales. He used the money to better the lives of his people.

These actions sealed Khaddafi’s fate. The West has been waiting decades for an opportunity to take him out. The NATO “no fly zone” and the incessant bombing of Tripoli have nothing to do with protecting civilians from the Libyan army. They, like all our military adventures since World War II, have to do with protecting the global financial interests of multinational corporations and banks and the billionaires who own them. It’s a desperate attempt to maintain the financial empire which owes no loyalty to this or any other country, which pays no taxes to our government, but which somehow has gotten control of our government and both major political parties, uses our sons and daughters as cannon fodder in their wars of aggression, and (believe it or not) gets us taxpayers to pay for it all!

Are we stupid or what?

Syria

As we write this in mid-June, it appears that Bashar al-Assad of Syria may be the next dictator to feel the wrath of US military power. He and his father Haffez al-Assad before him have been closer to Russia than to the West, allowing Russia access to Naval bases on the Mediterranean. They have also been supporters of Hezbollah and Hamas. But they have (like their fellow Ba’athist in Iraq, Saddam Hussein) also opposed militant Sunni Islamists, and allowed significant religious freedom to their Christian minority (about 10%).. That did not save Saddam, and it won’t save Assad.

Afghanistan

Our ten-year war against Afghanistan has nothing to do with 9/11 or our national security. It is a war to secure the oil pipeline through Afghanistan that the Taliban refused to give to Unocal. It was planned in detail before the attacks on 9/11 (which the Taliban had nothing to do with). (According to the FBI, we don’t even have any evidence that Osama bin Laden had anything to do with 9/11.) Like all the others, it is a war of Empire.

Iraq

The war against Iraq had even less justification than that on Afghanistan. Since there was no connection whatsoever between Iraq and 9/11, the G. W. Bush administration invented the WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) excuse — one they knew was false. Would our generals have massed 150,000 troops in one spot in Kuwait if they thought there was any chance Saddam had even one WMD that could wipe out our entire force with one attack? No. But Iraq was the centerpiece of the grand plan of the Empire to establish 14 permanent military bases in Iraq, from which they (according to their own PNAC document) could control the entire Middle East and its tens of trillions of dollars in oil and gas.

End the Empire

We have hundreds of thousands of troops on over 700 bases in nearly 200 countries. After 56 years, we are still occupying Germany and Japan. It’s time to end the Empire, bring all our troops home, end the corporate wars of aggression, give up our foreign military bases, abolish the CIA, and adopt a Constitutional foreign and military policy that uses our Armed Forces to protect our borders and our people — period. No more puppet dictators. Let the corporations and banks protect their own financial interests, and pay for it out of their own ill-gotten profits. We must take political power away from the corporations, banks, and billionaires so we can, once and for all, end the Empire!

By Dr. Bob Bowman, Lt. Col., USAF, ret.
National Commander, “The Patriots”
[email protected]

See also: thepatriots.us. (In spite of not being as current as Dr. Bowman would wish, it is, nevertheless, a fantastic resource.)