Re: real-life example
Thomas: I have long puzzled over this question of democracy and I would like to propose the Democratic Lottery. For it to work, there is only one assumption that needs to be made and that every citizen is capable of making decisions. Whether you are a hooker, housewife, drunk, tradesman, businessman, genius or over trained academic, we all are capable of having opinions and making decisions. I suggest that every citizen over 18 have their name put into a National Electoral Lottery. I suggest "draws" every two years at which time 1/3 of the Parliment is selected. Each member chosen will serve one six year term. The first two years are the equivalent of a backbencher in which the individual learns how parliment works and can vote on all legislation. The second two years, the member serves on various committees that are required by parliment. The third and final term is one from which the parliment as whole choses a leader for two years and also appoints new heads to all the standing committees. This does away with the professional politician, political parties, and the dictatorship of party leadership of the ruling party and it's specific cabinet. It ensures a learning curve for each prospective parlimentarian and allows in the final term the emergence of the best leader as judged by all of parliment. Every parlimentarian knows that he will be removed from office at the end of the sixth year. We could extend this to the Senate in which parlimentarians who have served for the full six years could participate in a Lottery to select Senate members who would hold office for a period of 12 years. This would give us a wise council of experienced elders to guide parliment and because the Senate could only take a small increase of new members every two years, only the most respected members of parliment would be voted by parlimentarians into a Senate position. This would eliminate political parties - it would eliminate the need for re-election, it would eliminate campaign financing and all the chicannery that goes with money. It would provide a broad representation of gender, ethnic groupings, regional groupings, age spread and abilities - and though some may question abilities, the prepronderance of lawyers in government has not proven to be superior. If the idea of a representative democracy is for citizens to represent citizens, then a choice by lottery is surely the fairest and has the least possibility of corruption, greed or the seeking of power to satisfy a particular agenda. Respectfully, Thomas Lunde -Original Message- From: Colin Stark [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: January 27, 1999 4:42 PM Subject: Re: real-life example At 11:50 AM 1/26/99 -1000, Jay Hanson wrote: - Original Message - From: Edward Weick [EMAIL PROTECTED] and social complexity grew. While hunting and gathering societies needed only transitory hierarchies, more complex societies needed permanent ones. However, there is no reason on earth why these couldn't be democratic, allowing a particular leadership limited powers and only a limited tenure. Democracy makes no sense. If society is seeking a leader with the best skills, the selection should be based on merit -- testing and xperience -- not popularity. Government by popularity contest is a stupid idea. Jay Democracy does not mean putting the most "popular" candidate in the job. A broad range of people (e.g. the workers in a factory) might choose a DIFFERENT leader from what the Elite would choose, but they will not be more likely to make a "stupid" choice. But beyond the "choice of a leader" is the question of the "accountability of the leader". In our N. American democratic (so-called) systems the leader is not accountable to ANYONE (i.e. is a virtual Dictator), except that once every 4 or 5 years the people (those who think it worthwhile to vote), can kick the bum out and choose another gentleperson who will be equally UNACCOUNTABLE, and who will thus, corrupted by power, become a BUM also! Hence the concept of Direct Democracy: " a SYSTEM of citizen-initiated binding referendums whereby voters can directly amend, introduce and remove policies and laws" Colin Stark Vice-President Canadians for Direct Democracy Vancouver, B.C. http://www.npsnet.com/cdd/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Listserv)
Re: democracy/cornucopia
Yes, the resources are finite, and the only way we can survive to the point where our population level out without any war or other means of mass death, if we use what we have sustainably, which needs global cooperative employment of the best science we can muster. It cannot be done with the present profit-centered system. It can only be done with everybody taking part voluntarily. Eva Re: William Rees and his "ecological footprint" . Most people still don't "get" it. The Globe and Mail had an editorial yesterday ridiculing him and maintaining everyone's right to go to Florida for the winter and to drive a van. They see no limits to the size of the pie, as U.S. consumers who are now spending more than they earn to keep fueling their economy. The Globe's article ridiculed Rees for presuming to know that "happiness" does not depend on material wealth. To be rich is glorious. But to be happy? Melanie [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: democracy
At 09:32 PM 1/29/99 -0500, you wrote: So an unambiguous fact about Democracy, is that Iceland has had one longer than any Western Country as was pointed out to me on this list last year. There are also many pure Democracies in traditional cultures around the world. They are however, remarkably weak militarily and usually small in numbers. We had several in this hemisphere with the "Cuna" in Panama being the oldest. It is generally considered to be a couple of thousand years old, although I don't know how they can tell. Their governmental form is the "town meeting" similar to the old New England version that the settlers took from the Quakers and the Iroquois Confederacy's "Great Law of Peace". It is my understanding that the Maori in New Zealand are also a pure Democracy but perhaps one of our New Zealand list members could help with that more than I. From what I have read on this list regarding democracy several themes stand out. One of these themes seems to be that much of what has been said is very idealistic and divorced from reality. One of these is this idea of "pure" democracy, whatever that means. Some systems may be more democratic than others but no system can be said to be "pure". When Abraham Lincoln gave us that simplistic definition of democracy, "Government for the people, by the people, of the people," he was taking on the role of an idealist since in no situation is this definition strictly true. The idea of "pure" democracy sounds suspiciously like pluralism where it is claimed consensus is reached by balancing out the claims of competing interest groups to reach an amicable solution. Maybe you might like to explain again - I probably missed it - what you mean by "pure democracy". I could be taking the wrong interpretation out of it as obviously my interpretation differs from your interpretation. But democracy is not about consensus, it is about strategies and tactics by those wielding the power including vested interests and lobby groups ( multinational corporations, employer groups, unions, etc), some of whom wield a very powerful influence on 'public opinion' (again, how are we to define 'public opinion'?) and the mechanics of government. It is about half truths and in some cases straight out lies, just so long as these lies are made to appear like 'the truth'. It is about money and lots of it. The vast resources that some organisations can pour into swaying 'public opinion', (the 'public' has got a lot to answer for). Above all, democracy is about manipulation and control in how people, or at least the majority of the people think, so that at the end of the day, the opposition is thoroughly discredited and your side can claim 'victory' by whatever means at your disposal. Whether there is any justification for discrediting 'the enemy' is irrelevant. It is for these reasons that pluralism and the idea of "pure" democracy has to be rejected. If my interpretation is correct and getting back to New Zealand's case, at no stage could the case of the Maori in New Zealand be said to be an example of "pure democracy". Anyone who knows anything of the history of the Maori in New Zealand and the Treaty of Waitangi (1840) knows that it is a history of conflict between the indigenous culture (the Maori) with values based around The Land and collectivism. The mana of the tribe is more important than the interests of any one member. In Maori culture great stress is placed on the spiritual values surrounding these concepts. The early European colonists on the other hand brought with them values diametrically opposed to those of the Maori. These were the individualistic values associated with capitalism, namely private ownership and extreme materialism. What is more, the early colonists and missionaries were extremely ethnocentric in that it was assumed that European culture was "superior" to that of the indigenous culture. There was a mission to bring 'civilisation' to the 'backward savages'. It was not recognised that Maori culture was not 'inferior' - it was just different. Thus, integration was the prevailing attitude of the 19th Century rather than partnership, which the Treaty of Waitangi was suposed to stand for. Such attitudes are not dead today by any means, though significant progress has been made to settle disputes, such as the confiscation of land last century, through the Waitangi Tribunal. This brief outline traces the roots of calls within New Zealand for Maori Sovereignty, a separate Maori parliament (Kiwi version), and a separate Justice and Education System. It is an attempt to show that while Maori may have integrated fairly well into the Westminster style of parliamentary democracy imported into New Zealand by the early settlers, there are still deep divisions within New Zealand society between pakeha (Maori name for 'the White man') and Maori, an inevitable consequence of imposing one culture on another. These divisions relate to land,
Re: Re: The Taliban's War on Women
Caspar Davis,[EMAIL PROTECTED],Internet writes: ...there certainly comes a point where further knowledge merely numbs or depresses. Too true, unfortunately, and the condition of women in fundamentalist countries is a case in point. I gather that support for the petition was so great that the ISP receiving all the copies was flooded and closed down the account. Anyway, don't feel guilty about passing the word along--obviously, we all did, to the point where it became unproductive. Regards, Judyth
Re: an alternative to Lundemocracy
with both the lottery and this proposal you are basically suggesting that the power should be wrangled from the hands of those now, representing the interests of capitalists/multinationals. I thought someone need to spell it out for you... Good luck, I am with you all the way! Eva I like Thomas' suggestion for governance by a parliament comprised of citizens chosen by lottery. It certainly eliminates a lot of distortions in the system such as political parties, campaign donations by corporations, etc. I frankly don't think it has a hope in hell of ever being realized. In the same spirit I will offer a proposal that I have long championed. Somewhere American social historian Studs Terkel tells the story of a university president who wondered what it was like to be really poor. When he got a sabbatical, he put his money in escrow and lived on the streets, sometimes sleeping on grates. He found, for instance, that it was none too easy for a homeless person without references to get even casual work as a dishwasher. Inspired by this story, I have proposed the Moccasin Rule for government. Walk a mile in the other person's moccasins. Before the government introduces any law, the minister responsible should live under the conditions it would impose on citizens. Before Ontario Social Services Minister Janet Ecker lowered the allowance to the homeless, she should have lived on the streets for six months on $180 a month. Before Canadian Finance Minister Paul Martin and his predecessor Michael Wilson tampered with unemployment insurance benefits, they should have lived for six months on the median benefit paid out to the unemployed. If our Minister of Labour contemplates changes to labour law, I would be only to happy to show him the ropes in the factory where I work. Live long and prosper Victor Milne Pat Gottlieb FIGHT THE BASTARDS! An anti-neoconservative website at http://www3.sympatico.ca/pat-vic/pat-vic/ LONESOME ACRES RIDING STABLE at http://www3.sympatico.ca/pat-vic/ [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: democracy/cornucopia
sounds like he equated capitalism with democracy. Big mistake... Eva Octavio Paz's In Light of India, where I came across this passage: "In the West since the l8th century change has been overvalued. Traditional India, like old European societies prized immutabilityAlong with change the modern West glorifies the individual...Change and the individual fulfill each other. With his habitual insight, Tocqueville differentiated between egotism and individiualism. The first "is born from blind instinct..it is a vice as old as the world and is found in all societies." Individualism, in contrast, was born with democracy, and it tends to separate each person and his family from society. In individualistic societies, the private sphere displaces the public. For the Athenian, the greatest honor was citizenship, which gave him the right to take part in public affairs. The modern citizen defends his privacy, his economic interests, his philosophy, his property, what couonts is himself and his small circle, not the general interests of his city or nation. " ...Aristocratic societies were heroic: the fidelity of the vassal for his lord, the soldier for his faith. These attitudes have almost completely disappeared in the modern world. In democratic societies, where change is continual, the ties that bind the individual with his ancestors have vanished, and those that connect him with his fellow citizens have slackened. Indifference and envy are democracy's great defects. Tocqueville concludes: Democracy makes each individual not only forget his ancestors, but also neglect his descendents and separate himself from his contemporaries: he is plunged forever into himself and, in the end, is eternally surrounded by the solitude of his own soul" , A prophecy that has been utterly fulfilled in our time. I find modern societies repellent on two accounts. On the one hand, they have taken the human race--a species in which each individual, according to all the philosophies and religions, is a unique being-- and turned it into a homogeneous mass; modern humans seem to have all come out of a factory, not a womb. On the other hand, they have made every one of those beings a hermit. Capitalist democracies have created uniformity, not equality, and they have replaced fraternity with a perpetual struggle among individuals. It was once believed that, with the growth of the private sphere, the individual would have more leisure time and would devote it to the arts, reading, and self-reflection. We now know that people don't know what to do with their time. They have become slaves of entertainments that are generally idiotic, and the hours that are not devoted to cash are spent in facile hedonism. I do not condemn the cult of pleasure; I lament the general vulgarity. I note the evilsw of contemporary individualism not to defend the caste system, but to mitigate a little the hypocritical horror it provokes among our contemporaries. Castes must not disappear so that its victims may turn into the servants of the voracious gods of individualism, but rather that, between us, we may discover a fraternity. Durant wrote: Yes, the resources are finite, and the only way we can survive to the point where our population level out without any war or other means of mass death, if we use what we have sustainably, which needs global cooperative employment of the best science we can muster. It cannot be done with the present profit-centered system. It can only be done with everybody taking part voluntarily. Eva Re: William Rees and his "ecological footprint" . Most people still don't "get" it. The Globe and Mail had an editorial yesterday ridiculing him and maintaining everyone's right to go to Florida for the winter and to drive a van. They see no limits to the size of the pie, as U.S. consumers who are now spending more than they earn to keep fueling their economy. The Globe's article ridiculed Rees for presuming to know that "happiness" does not depend on material wealth. To be rich is glorious. But to be happy? Melanie [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: democracy
I agree with what you say here. I've never used the term "pure democrcy". I am aware of the dynamic relationship between democracy and dictatorship; it is democracy for those who are part of the power, the real decisionmaking, the control of information, and is basically dictatorship for everybody else, whether the power elite claims to "mean well" or to act in "the name of the people" or not. The more people are there to actively participate in power as above, the more functional is the democracy, the aim is to have every member of the communities - and eventually, the globe in there. Even then, in every decision there will be a minority against whose wishes the majority will have to execute a decision. However, not every issue is such yes-no option and in every issue the majorities and minorities would consist of different individuals. Eva From what I have read on this list regarding democracy several themes stand out. One of these themes seems to be that much of what has been said is very idealistic and divorced from reality. One of these is this idea of "pure" democracy, whatever that means. Some systems may be more democratic than others but no system can be said to be "pure". When Abraham Lincoln gave us that simplistic definition of democracy, "Government for the people, by the people, of the people," he was taking on the role of an idealist since in no situation is this definition strictly true. The idea of "pure" democracy sounds suspiciously like pluralism where it is claimed consensus is reached by balancing out the claims of competing interest groups to reach an amicable solution. Maybe you might like to explain again - I probably missed it - what you mean by "pure democracy". I could be taking the wrong interpretation out of it as obviously my interpretation differs from your interpretation. But democracy is not about consensus, it is about strategies and tactics by those wielding the power including vested interests and lobby groups ( multinational corporations, employer groups, unions, etc), some of whom wield a very powerful influence on 'public opinion' (again, how are we to define 'public opinion'?) and the mechanics of government. It is about half truths and in some cases straight out lies, just so long as these lies are made to appear like 'the truth'. It is about money and lots of it. The vast resources that some organisations can pour into swaying 'public opinion', (the 'public' has got a lot to answer for). Above all, democracy is about manipulation and control in how people, or at least the majority of the people think, so that at the end of the day, the opposition is thoroughly discredited and your side can claim 'victory' by whatever means at your disposal. Whether there is any justification for discrediting 'the enemy' is irrelevant. It is for these reasons that pluralism and the idea of "pure" democracy has to be rejected. If my interpretation is correct and getting back to New Zealand's case, at no stage could the case of the Maori in New Zealand be said to be an example of "pure democracy". Anyone who knows anything of the history of the Maori in New Zealand and the Treaty of Waitangi (1840) knows that it is a history of conflict between the indigenous culture (the Maori) with values based around The Land and collectivism. The mana of the tribe is more important than the interests of any one member. In Maori culture great stress is placed on the spiritual values surrounding these concepts. The early European colonists on the other hand brought with them values diametrically opposed to those of the Maori. These were the individualistic values associated with capitalism, namely private ownership and extreme materialism. What is more, the early colonists and missionaries were extremely ethnocentric in that it was assumed that European culture was "superior" to that of the indigenous culture. There was a mission to bring 'civilisation' to the 'backward savages'. It was not recognised that Maori culture was not 'inferior' - it was just different. Thus, integration was the prevailing attitude of the 19th Century rather than partnership, which the Treaty of Waitangi was suposed to stand for. Such attitudes are not dead today by any means, though significant progress has been made to settle disputes, such as the confiscation of land last century, through the Waitangi Tribunal. This brief outline traces the roots of calls within New Zealand for Maori Sovereignty, a separate Maori parliament (Kiwi version), and a separate Justice and Education System. It is an attempt to show that while Maori may have integrated fairly well into the Westminster style of parliamentary democracy imported into New Zealand by the early settlers, there are still deep divisions within New Zealand society between pakeha (Maori name for 'the White man') and Maori, an inevitable consequence of
Re: The Taliban's War on Women
This document has been circulating for more than a month, comes back
regularly on every newsgroup I know, and should not be answered to, because
the organiser's e-mail adress has been removed, due to being inundated with
thousand upon thousands of answers. It's dangerous to ask people to mail
something to 50 others and then mail everything back to you. Just imagine
what is 50 to the 4th power only, by the first 50 people who send this
through you ideally get 2500 responding mails. Even if only 10% of the list
is reaching the next 50 you come at 62500 by the next stage. If only 10% of
those mails on the next step is 39.062.500. Even with only 1% of people
doing what is asked you still get... 390.625 responses. In the fourth
stage, assuming only 1% of the third stage continues (!) you come to an
absolutely impossible amount of returning mail, but by that time the
receiving mailbox (which belonged to a private person was already flooded
and had to be closed down).
You can try sending an e-mail to it.
Jan Matthieu
Flemish Green Party
--
Van: Mehtap Cakan [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Aan: Caspar Davis [EMAIL PROTECTED]
CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Onderwerp: Re: The Taliban's War on Women
Datum: zondag 31 januari 1999 2:01
On Fri, 29 Jan 1999, Caspar Davis wrote:
Please sign and pass on if you feel comfortable doing so:
-Forwarded Message-
Subject: Please sign and pass on.
The Taliban's War on Women:
Please sign at the bottom to support, and include your town.
Then copy and e-mail to as many people as possible. If you receive
this list with more than 50 names on it, please e-mail a copy of it
to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Krugman and the Austrians
Mike Gurstein just posted a piece on the closure of Devco in Cape Breton Canfutures, in which are to be found these two paragraphs, describing frictions in the labour market and wealth effects which Krugman claims not to exist. Mike H The emotion that greeted Premier Russell MacLellan Friday in his belated trip Sydney Mines was raw. Miners have good reason to be frightened. Most will not qualify for pensions, despite work records stretching back a quarter century. They have little education and few marketable skills should they decide to move away, and many incumbrances that make moving impractical. Most own homes that would not fetch enough for a down payment in the robust real estate markets where jobs are said to be plentiful. They have family and community ties that make it possible to live in Sydney Mines on incomes that would not sustain them elsewhere.
(Fwd) Re: Albert Einstein
From the esteemed listowner of skeptic: ... Basically, I suspect anyone claiming Einstein on their side -- and irreligious people do this as often as people defending various religions -- is not paying as much attention to the context of Einstein's overall philosophy as they should. Frankly, other than a broadly Platonic approach and its associated quasi-mystical attitude, I see little definite about religion in Einstein's writings. ... From what I've seen, Einstein was a third-rate philosopher at best, with negligible insight, a boring style, and a point of view which would have been deservedly forgotten if he wasn't also a first-rate physicist. Anyone who claims Einstein the philosopher on their side, even if they accurately represent him, goes down in my esteem. Taner Edis While it is true that scientific results are entirely independent from religious or moral considerations, those individuals to whom we owe the great creative achievements of science were all of them imbued with the truly religious conviction that this universe of ours is something perfect and susceptible to the rational striving for knowledge. -- Albert Einstein (Ideas and Opinions, 1954) [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: an alternative to Lundemocracy
- Original Message - From: Victor Milne [EMAIL PROTECTED] I like Thomas' suggestion for governance by a parliament comprised of citizens chosen by lottery. It certainly eliminates a lot of distortions in Inspired by this story, I have proposed the Moccasin Rule for government. These are both really good ideas that should be incorporated into any new social system. Jay
Primates learning the rules of commerce (fwd)
-- Forwarded message -- Date: Sun, 31 Jan 1999 07:38:57 -0800 (PST) From: MichaelP [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: "unlikely.suspects": ; Subject: Primates learning the rules of commerce It's hard for me to resist this story. - In the 15m years that have passed since humans and orang-utans evolved separately from a common ape ancestor, mankind has gained skills such that no other animal possesses. These include the power of remote control - mass death/destruction at the touch of a button, -- the power to distinguish between real and manipulated foods to the detriment of their diet -- and . I suppose this poses the question as to what the meaning of UP is = Sunday Times (London) January 31 1999 BRITAIN Line Apes swing up evolution ladder with first lessons in shopping by Steve Farrar Science Correspondent EVERY child remembers the day when they were first entrusted with pocket money - and how they squandered it. Now a group of orang-utans is about to undergo the same rite of passage. The pocket-money primates are to be taught the rules of commerce in an experiment designed to reveal the hidden depths of their intelligence. The apes will be paid a daily allowance of metal coins in a variety of values, which they can spend on buying bananas, popcorn and other items. Zoologists hope the orang-utans, who have already grasped a simple language of abstract symbols, will take to this new commercial regime and prove adept at handling numbers, judging an item's worth, and maybe even start trading among themselves. If they pass this test, the animals will have demonstrated a level of intellectual sophistication that pushes them still closer to their human cousins. This prospect will please science-fiction buffs currently celebrating the 30th anniversary of the movie Planet of the Apes, in which intelligent apes enslave mankind. Dr Robert Shumaker, who is leading the project at the National Zoological Park in Washington DC, said: "Nobody has ever asked an orang-utan to learn such sophisticated tasks before - it will reveal a lot about what is going on inside their minds." Two of Shumaker's orang-utans, Indah and Azy, have already learnt elements of a language where abstract written symbols represent 10 different foods, objects and verbs such as grape, bag and open. In front of zoo visitors, in a test area called the Think Tank, they are learning to string these together into simple sentences before being taught numbers and how to count, tasks that have been done by chimpanzees in previous experiments. The apes will then be given a daily salary of large metal tokens with their numerical value written on them. The zoologists will charge them a fee for food, such as one for an apple or three for a bag of popcorn. They will have to juggle numbers to add up the different values of their tokens to buy treats, consider whether the price the scientists are charging represents good value, and plan ahead to save up enough for the most expensive items. Anthropologists will watch how the commerce changes the social relationships between the orang-utans, which could reveal hints of how this process may have affected prehistoric human society. "We are wondering whether they will trade tokens with each other, perhaps offering them in return for being groomed. My suspicion is that they are inherently selfish and their last inclination would be to share anything," said Shumaker. In the wild, orang-utans lead solitary lives - the far more social behaviour of chimpanzees has meant they have usually been preferred for similar experiments in the past. At the Yerkes Regional Primate Center in America, Dr Bill Hopkins has documented chimps using tokens that they earned by performing tasks and later exchanged with the scientists for food. He believed they naturally gave different foods different values. "The National Zoo scientists are taking this paradigm to the next step by using symbols representing quantities and value rather than real items to be exchanged," he said. In the 15m years that have passed since humans and orang-utans evolved separately from a common ape ancestor, mankind has gained skills such as language - essential for negotiating trade - that no other animal possesses, said Dr Robert Barton, a primatologist at Durham University. "Fifteen million years is a small gap in the broad scale of evolution but in everyday life terms it's immense," he said. However, Dr Cecilia Heyes, a psychologist at University College London warned: "We have a tendency to see animals as more like us than they are likely to be. We almost see them as children, and it is scientifically unsafe to do so." ** NOTICE: In accordance
Re: democracy/cornucopia
It's not a ridiculous idea...just very limited. For example that "footprint" should be measured in 3 space not 2 space. FWP. On Sat, 30 Jan 1999, Melanie Milanich wrote: Re: William Rees and his "ecological footprint" . Most people still don't "get" it. The Globe and Mail had an editorial yesterday ridiculing him and maintaining everyone's right to go to Florida for the winter and to drive a van. They see no limits to the size of the pie, as U.S. consumers who are now spending more than they earn to keep fueling their economy. The Globe's article ridiculed Rees for presuming to know that "happiness" does not depend on material wealth. To be rich is glorious. But to be happy? Melanie Steve Kurtz wrote: Durant wrote: At the moment it is a big enough pie, Not according to thousands of scientists including majority of living Nobel winners. Not according to Wm. Rees Mathis Wackernagel, _The Ecological Footprint_. Their estimate is that 2Billion is maximum population sustainable at the *current global average per capita consumption level*. (NOT the western/northern/developed level) If you won't dispute their data and calculations in a systematic way, you are merely indicating that you wish it were otherwise. The DAILY loss of species, the daily net drop in aquifers, topsoil, trees, marine life, ...are not refutable. Your plea is like a tape in a loop, replayed ad infinitum without evidence. Mid-winter break for me; next episode in Spring. Steve *** [EMAIL PROTECTED] Send "Subscribe Future.Cities" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] See http://users.uniserve.com/~culturex ***
chefs speak up against genetically manipulated foods (fwd)
-- Forwarded message -- Date: Sun, 31 Jan 1999 07:15:04 -0800 (PST) From: MichaelP [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: "unlikely.suspects": ; Subject: chefs speak up against genetically manipulated foods This is about - Why governments can't be trusted to protect us against genetically manipulated foods. Cheers MichaelP Guardian (London) Jan 31, 1999 Something happened on Tuesday that kicked one issue to the top of the consumer food agenda . In an unprecedented action more than 130 of Britain's leading food writers and chefs shared a platform with Greenpeace to call for a ban on gene foods. Food writers don't agree easily on on anything; we'll split arcane hairs over how much humidity should be left in sun-dried tomatoes or the optimum cocoa solid ratio for dark chocolate. That's why our concensus that gene foods are a recipe for disater is so significant. Our action started with the realisation that gene foods are the single most important food issue of our lifetimes Gene food s have been creeping into my awareness since 1993, when some top German chefs announced their opposition because of the risks they pose to human health and the enviroment. Since then I have watched the relentless progress of this genetic experiment, through the regulatory process with a growing sense of frustration. Governments and bureaucrats are rolling over for the biotech industry although every indicator of public opinion in Europe and the UK shows that the more consumers know about gene foods the less they want them. Now foods with genetically modified are on our shelves and it has become apparent that we were always going to get them, against our wishes and against our consent. It makes nonsense of any notion of demacratic public control of our precious food chain. I suspected that many other food writers would share that reaction and suggested to Greenpeace that we might approach them for support in calling for a ban. I thought that if 20 or more agreed we could make a minor fuss. But the response snowballed . In a fortnite or so, with relatively litle effort, we had the great and the good of the food writing establishment at our back. Nigel Slater, Nigella Lawson, Fay Maschler, Derek Cooper, Egon Ronay, Valentia Harris, Anna del Conte, Darina Allen, Antony Worral Thompson. Poeple who inform what the public eats and cooks through books broadcasts and columns. People who who between them hold a massive amount of expertise on food matter. We discovered that both the Eurotoques - The European association of top chefs and the UK Guild of Food writers felt that the same and had already drawn up policy to this effect. Even as we launched our campaign at the Savoy over an organic breakfast pre-pared by Anton Edelman, the biotech giant Monsanto was already on the phone to the newsdesks trying to nuetralise our stance, saying that it was dismayed by the foodwriter's endorsement of Greenpeace's views on genetic engineering. It said we of all people should have "faith in the regulatory process which ensures that all food that comes into the market goes through a rigorous safety approval process". Post BSE, it has become patently obvoius that we cannot trust government to put public health and the enviroment concerns first. The BSE enquiry is turning into one long depressing tale of guardians of the public health tellijg us that there is no risk and subsequently being shown to be entirely wrong. The recent House of Lord's report on gene foods was BSE all over again. Despite Monsanto's attempts to portray us as a irrational and uninformed, our opposition is profoundly sensible and easy to justify. Unlike dangerous baby car seats, theres no product recall. Once gene altered foods are released into the enviroment, theres no way of getting them back or predicting their effect, If genetic manipulation of our foodstuffs goes wrong it could make the fall out from BSE disaster look like child's play. Gene foods have already gone horribly wrong. Take the genetically engineered super salmon . It grows bigger, faster, and is also deformed. Then there's milk produced by cows injected with the growth hormone rBST. The cows do produce more milk than but it contains more IGF1, an insulin like growth factor which, at elevated levels can increase the likelyhood of cancerin humans. It has been demonstrated thast herbicide tolerance can be transferred accidentally from genetically engineered crops to conventional crops and, more worryingly, to weeds in neighbouring fields. Among food writers, there is not only the conviction that gene foods are dangerous, but that they are unnecessary. As author Lynda Btrown puts it: "They represent a double whammy . Not only do we get foods that we don't but there is less chance of getting the food we want." Go down the path to of genetic manipulation of the food chain and you prejudice the very existance of the organic food the public is demanding. Organic farmers simply cannot police every or
