James van Luik

[By clicking on this signature one has access to all articles of the JvL Bi-Weekly.]

1. SPREADING CANCER
(Depleted uranium turns Bush's lies into high-tech horror)

ROBERT C. KOEHLER

The unending game of “pretend” that the U.S. media allow George Bush to play on the global stage, so often letting his lying utterances hang suspended, unchallenged, in the middle of the story, as though they were plausible — as though a class of third-graders couldn’t demolish them with a few innocent questions — feels like the journalistic equivalent of waterboarding. Gasp! Some truth, please!

I suggest the prez has forfeited the right to command a headline, or half a story, or an uninterrupted quote: “. . . we’ll defend ourselves, but at the same time we’re actively working with our partners to spread peace and democracy,” he said last week in Austria.

Surely “spreading democracy” should no longer be allowed to appear in print, between now and 2008, unless accompanied by a parenthetical clarification (“not true,” stated as profanely as local standards allow). And that, of course, would only be the media’s first step back into integrity with the public.

The occupation of Iraq, the occupation of Afghanistan, the entire war (to promote) terror . . . please, please, can these no longer be trotted out in consequence-free abstraction, but as the high-tech malevolence they are, actively continuing the incalculable devastation of countries and their populations?

The bodies keep piling up, the toxic horrors spread. Hasn’t anyone in this place ever heard of depleted uranium? Is the health crisis in Iraq and, indeed, throughout the Middle East and Central Asia, not to mention Kosovo and among returning vets for the last four American wars, somehow irrelevant to “the course” we’re asked to stay?

“Two strange phenomena have come about in Basra which I have never seen before. The first is double and triple cancers in one patient. For example, leukemia and cancer of the stomach. We had one patient with two cancers — one in his stomach and kidney. Months later, primary cancer was developing in his other kidney — he had three different cancer types. The second is the clustering of cancer in families. We have 58 families here with more than one person affected by cancer. . . . My wife has nine members of her family with cancer.”

This is Dr. Jawad Al-Ali, director of the oncology center at the largest hospital in Basra, speaking in 2003 at a peace conference in Japan. Why is it that only peace activists are able to hear people like this? Why hasn’t he been asked to testify before Congress as its members debate the future of this war and the next?

“Children in particular are susceptible to DU poisoning,” he went on. “They have a much higher absorption rate as their blood is being used to build and nourish their bones and they have a lot of soft tissues. Bone cancer and leukemia used to be diseases affecting them the most. However, cancer of the lymph system, which can develop anywhere on the body and has rarely been seen before the age of 12, is now also common.”

Depleted uranium — DU — is the Defense Establishment euphemism for U-238, a byproduct of the uranium enrichment process and the ultimate dirty weapon material. It’s almost twice as dense as lead, catches fire when launched and explodes on impact into microscopically fine particles, or “nano-particles,” which are easily inhaled or absorbed through the skin; it’s also radioactive, with a half-life of 4.468 billion years.

And we make bombs and bullets out of it — it’s the ultimate penetrating weapon. We dropped at least 300 tons of it on Iraq during Gulf War I (the first time it was used in combat) and created Gulf War Syndrome. This time around, the estimated DU use on defenseless Iraq is 1,700 tons, far more of it in major population centers. Remember shock and awe? We were pounding Baghdad, in those triumphant early days, with low-grade nuclear weapons, raining down cancer, neurological disorders, birth defects and much, much more on the people we claimed to be liberating. We weren’t spreading democracy, we were altering the human genome.

As we “protected ourselves,” in the words of the president, from Iraq’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction, we opened our own arsenal of WMD on them, contaminating the country’s soil and polluting its air — indeed, unleashing a nuclear dust into the troposphere and contaminating the whole world.

“We used to think (DU) traveled up to a hundred miles,” Chris Busby told me. Busby, a chemical physicist and member of the British government’s radiation risk committee, as well as the founder of the European Committee of Radiation Risk, has monitored air quality in Great Britain. Based on these findings, “It looks like it goes quite around the planet,” he said.

While Bush mouths ironic whoppers — “We will be standing with the people of Afghanistan and Iraq until their hopes for freedom and liberty are fulfilled,” he told the U.N. General Assembly a while back — his actions pass, in the words of former Livermore Labs scientist Leuren Moret, “a death sentence on the Middle East and Central Asia.”

A war crime of unprecedented dimension is unfolding as we avert our eyes. Perhaps it’s simply too big to see, or to grasp, so we lull ourselves into the half-belief that the powers that be know what they’re doing and it will all turn out for the best. Meanwhile, the contagion spreads, the children die, the planet becomes uninhabitable.

There's an anthropologist in St. Louis who used a computer simulation to prove that people interbred with other species for at least a million years. You know what that means--Homo erectus is more ripe for punnage than ever. Washington University professor Alan R. Templeton published his findings in the recently issued Yearbook of Physical Anthropology, explaining that he'd finally disproved the popular "out of Africa" theory, which holds that Homo sapiens zoomed out of Africa roughly 100,000 years ago, killing every other hominid it met (including fellow tool users and fire makers Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalis).

Instead of killing, Templeton found, early humans were more likely having sex with these hominids on their way out of Africa into Asia and Europe. They also probably migrated out of Africa in three waves, rather than one or two, seeding Asia and Europe with early hominids who later cozied up with newly arrived groups.

Templeton figured all this out using a computer program called GEODIS, which reconstructs early human mating patterns by doing statistical analysis on population distributions of haplotypes, chunks of genes that get inherited together over long swaths of history. Based on what he found, Templeton says, "The hypothesis of no interbreeding is so grossly incompatible with the data that you can reject it."

It's always struck me as kind of weird that the dominant theory of human evolution --often called the "replacement theory" or "single origin hypothesis" -- holds that Homo Sapiens evolved all on its own in Africa, without any interbreeding with its comely hominid neighbors. The single origin hypothesis says that when Homo Sapiens migrated out of Africa, it simply destroyed (or, in polite anthropology-speak, "replaced") all the other hominids. But even if we assume that Homo sapiens are such a bloodthirsty lot that their response to another form of intelligent life is to battle it, we all know what happens in battles. The conquered are often raped and/or enslaved. This seems like such a time honored occurrence -- even inspiring a snotty little book by ssome prim profs a few years ago called A Natural History of Rape -- that it's hard to believe it wasn't happening in our earliest evolutionary incarnations.

Now you may be saying, sure, humans could have been raping Homo erectus, but that doesn't mean any of them made babies -- that's like saying humans who rape chimps are interbreeding. And you'd be right if it turned out to be true that there was only one migration out of Africa 100,000 years ago, when Homo sapiens had diverged enough from its fellow hominids that matings were likely to be sterile. But if Templeton's findings are accurate, there were migrations out of Africa 1.5 million years ago and 700,000 years ago, as well as the familiar one we all know and love, 100,000 years ago.

What Templeton's arguing is that the forebears of the creatures we are today -- Homo sapiens sapiens -- were interbreeding with the forebears of other hominid groups. His theory about the migrations at 700,000 years ago could help explain the sudden expansion in brain pan size among humans at that time, as well as evidence that tool use had begun to spring up among hominid groups across Europe and Asia. In Templeton's vision, we are hybrid hominids, not some pure species whose coolness and ingenuity allowed it to sweep over Asia and Europe "replacing" everything we found. We didn't "replace" other hominids; often, we merged with them.

Interestingly, Templeton sees his discoveries as a refutation of more than the replacement hypothesis. He sees it as scientific proof that racism has no rational basis. "You can be 99 percent confident that there was recurrent genetic interchange between African and Eurasian populations," he says. "So the idea of pure, distinct races in humans does not exist. We humans don't have a tree relationship, but rather a trellis. We're intertwined."

It's good to remember that for every scientist who wants to prove that Africans are genetically distinct from Europeans, there's one who wants to prove they aren't. Especially in conservative times, science is often the enemy of oppressed racial groups (think of "The Bell Curve," the Tuskegee syphilis studies and countless "scientific" eugenics programs). But once in a while, an anthropology geek with a cool computer program reminds us that real science does not give answers that fit easily into cultural stereotypes. Good science overturns them.

3. ADVANCING DESERTS FORCING PEOPLE TO MOVE

BY RAMESH JAURA

BERLIN - Creeping desertification affects every fifth inhabitant in the world, and it might force some 60 million to migrate from sub-Saharan Africa to northern Africa and Europe by 2020, according to experts.

The merciless transformation of arable and habitable land to desert where not even a blade of grass grows drew the focus at a conference last week (Jun. 19-21) in Tunis in which some 400 scientists and policy-makers from the world's parched regions participated.

The three-day conference titled the 'Future of Drylands' was co-organised by the Paris-based United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

Highlighting its nagging concern about desertification, UNESCO says in a media release posted on its website: "Desertification directly affects the lives of more than 250 million people and threatens another 1.2 billion in 110 countries."

An estimated 60 million of those affected in sub-Saharan Africa are expected to move towards northern Africa and Europe by 2020, it cautions.

"The economic impact is also considerable," says UNESCO. "Lost agricultural production due to drought and desertification costs an estimated 42 billion dollars annually. Another 2.4 billion dollars is spent each year fighting land degradation, and the problem is likely to worsen."

The warning comes at the right point in time: this year marks the UN International Year of Deserts and Desertification and the tenth anniversary of the ratification of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).

"It's sort of a wake-up call," said Bernhard Klocke, deputy director of the German Agricultural Museum at the reputed University of Hohenheim in southwestern Germany.

"But it's intriguing that we haven't yet gone far in fixing the problem that should concern everyone, though UNCCD enjoys a truly universal membership," Klocke told IPS.

The global desertification convention has been ratified by 191 countries and regional organisations. And it is the only internationally recognised legally binding instrument that addresses the problem of land degradation in dryland rural areas.

Uwe Holtz, professor at the University of Bonn and member of the panel of eminent personalities who support the UNCCD, also underlined the need to implement the convention full-heatedly.

"Land and in particular the topsoil are the skin of planet Earth. The skin is suffering from 'cancer', from land degradation and soil erosion," Holtz said.

"Since desertification is linked to many other problems such as poverty and hunger, environmental destruction, conflict and migration, greater public awareness and political will are required to tackle this kind of cancer," he told IPS.

Holtz -- who was a member of the German parliament for more than 20 years and a member of the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe -- also pointed to the significant role parliamentarians can play in influencing public opinion and government policies.

"Parliamentarians are opinion leaders and representatives of the people; in democratic countries of the North and the South they play a crucial role in shaping policies and budgetary processes," Holtz said.

He urged them to "do their utmost in strengthening the political will, which is essential for the successful implementation of the UNCCD and for the achievement of the MDGs (Millennium Development Goals)."

"Without a successful combat against desertification, sustainable human development for millions of people is out of reach," said Holtz, well known for his commitment to creating a more balanced world that allows the poorest to live in dignity.

Very much along the line of argumentation taken by Holtz, the Tunis declaration emerging from the last week's conference stresses the need for creating "an enabling environment" for the successful implementation of the multilateral environmental agreements and to achieve the MDGs.

The declaration posted also urges civil society, national authorities and the international community "to place combating desertification and development of drylands as a major priority."

In particular, it asks public, private, national and international institutions "to step up their efforts in providing funding for demand driven, integrated and application-oriented research in both the natural and social sciences for a better understanding of human-environment interrelations in the drylands."

Germany is taking a particular interest in the issue as the host nation of the UNCCD. Cooperation minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul from the ministry of economic cooperation and development (BMZ) said in a statement in response to questions emailed by IPS that combating desertification is an important contribution to the fight against poverty. It is a focal point of our work -- particularly in Africa."

"Germany is the largest bilateral donor in the battle against the spread of desertification. This by itself shows how seriously we take the problem," the minister said.

According to a background note by the ministry's press office, Germany's financial and technical cooperation supports more than 250 projects accounting for commitments of about 1.5 billion euros (1.87 billion dollars). Africa is the focus region of the UNCCD, and some 60 percent of projects are being carried out in 25 African countries, with 25 percent in Asia and 15 percent in Latin America.

In her statement Wieczorek-Zeul compliments the UNCCD for having "contributed significantly to advances made in combating desertification." She added: "We will continue to support it ardently."

The background note says: "Germany contributes 560,000 euros (about 700,363 dollars) or 8.4 percent towards the costs of the UNCCD secretariat. In addition, it gives voluntary contributions amounting to 1 million euros (1.25 million dollars) for the secretariat's general tasks and organisation of events -- from the so-called Bonn Fund -- to which it has committed itself while hosting the secretariat."

The secretariat of the convention to combat desertification is, however far from satisfied, as indicated by UNCCD executive secretary Hama Arba Diallo's comment on the report of the Joint Inspection Unit (JIU) of the UN system. The JIU report, which was critical of funding for the UNCCD, was presented to the seventh conference of parties to the convention last October in Nairobi.

"UNCCD is the chosen international treaty to combine such essential objectives as the maintenance of the drylands ecosystems that are home to a large proportion of the world poor, the protection of soil fertility and the promotion of sustainable water and land management practices," said Diallo.

As such, the success of its implementation is a significant condition for the success of the other conventions processes. Yet, in terms of the core budgets, the JIU had forcefully pointed out that UNCCD lags well behind other such organisations, Diallo remarked.

He said UNCCD approved budgets from assessed contributions for 2002-2003 and 2004-2005 were about less than 30 percent of those of the UNFCCC (UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, based in Bonn), and also less than those of CBD (Convention on Biological Diversity, hosted by Montreal).

"We also receive a lower core budget contribution from the host country than UNFCCC," Diallo said. "UNCCD also has less access to voluntary funding than UNFCCC, especially in the critical area of funding provided for national reporting processes, as documented by the inspectors."

4. BEYOND GM FOOD: NEW "CUTTING" EDGE MAS TECHNOLOGY MAKES GM FOOD OBSOLETE

JEREMY RIFKIN

For years, the life science companies—Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer, Pioneer, etc.—have argued that genetically modified (GM) food is the next great scientific and technological revolution in agriculture, and the only efficient and cheap way to feed a growing population in a shrinking world. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs), including my own, The Foundation on Economic Trends, have been cast as the villains in this unfolding agricultural drama, and often categorized as modern versions of the English Luddites, accused of continually blocking scientific and technological progress because of our opposition to GM food.

Now, in an ironic twist, new cutting edge technologies have made gene splicing and transgenic crops obsolete and a serious impediment to scientific progress.

The new frontier is called genomics and the new agricultural technology is called Marker Assisted Selection, or MAS. The new technology offers a sophisticated method to greatly accelerate classical breeding. A growing number of scientists believe that MAS— which is already being introduced into the market— will eventually replace GM food. Moreover, environmental organizations, like Greenpeace, that have long opposed GM crops, are guardedly supportive of MAS technology.

Rapidly accumulating information about crop genomes is allowing scientists to identify genes associated with traits like yield and then scan crop relatives for the presence of those genes. Instead of using molecular splicing techniques to transfer a gene from an unrelated species into the genome of a food crop to increase yield, resist pests, or improve nutrition, scientists are now using Marker Assisted Selection to locate desired traits in other varieties or, wild relatives of a particular food crop, then cross breeding those plants with the existing commercial varieties to improve the crop. With MAS, the breeding of new varieties always remain within a species, thus, greatly reducing the risk of environmental harm and potential adverse health effects associated with GM crops. Using MAS, researchers can upgrade classical breeding and reduce by 50% or more the time needed to develop new plant varieties by pinpointing appropriate plant partners at the gamete or seedling stage.

While MAS is emerging as a promising new agricultural technology with broad application, the limits of transgenic technology are becoming increasingly apparent. Most of the transgenic crops introduced into the fields express only two traits, resistance to pests and compatibility with herbicides and rely on the expression of a single gene- hardly the sweeping agricultural revolution touted by the life science companies at the beginning of the GM era.

Of course, MAS researchers emphasize that there is still much work to be done in understanding the choreography, for example, between single genetic markers and complex genetic clusters and environmental factors, all of which interact to affect the development of the plant, and produce desirable outcomes, like improved yield and drought resistance.

Enthusiasm notwithstanding, a word of caution is in order. It should be noted that MAS is of value to the extent that it is used as part of broader, agroecological approach to farming, that integrates new crop introductions with a proper regard for all of the other environmental, economic, and social factors that together determine the sustainability of farming.

The wrinkle is that the continued introduction of GM crops could contaminate existing plant varieties, making the new MAS technology more difficult to use. A landmark 2004 survey conducted by the Union of Concerned Scientists, found that non-GM seeds from three of America’s major agricultural crops—corn, soybeans, and canola—were already “pervasively contaminated with low levels of DNA sequences originating in genetically engineered varieties of these crops”. Cleaning up contaminated genetic programs could prove to be as troublesome and expensive in the future as cleaning up viruses that currently invade software programs.

As MAS technology becomes cheaper and easier to use, and as knowledge in genomics becomes more dispersed and easily available over the next decade, plant breeders around the world will be able to exchange information about “best practices” and democratize the technology. Already, plant breeders are talking about “open source” genomics, envisioning the sharing of genes just as Linux and other open source IT organizations currently share software. The struggle between a younger generation of sustainable agriculture enthusiasts anxious to share genetic information and entrenched company scientists determined to maintain control over the world’s seed stocks through patent protection, is likely to be hard fought, especially in the developing world.

If properly used as part of a much larger systemic and holistic approach to sustainable agricultural development, MAS technology could be the right technology at the right time in history.

5. BRITAIN FALLS OUT OF LOVE WITH AMERICA

ANTHONY KING

Tomorrow is the Fourth of July, when Americans celebrate Independence Day. But a YouGov survey for The Daily Telegraph suggests that the Stars and Stripes will be flying at half mast in the eyes of most Britons. There has probably never been a time when America was held in such low esteem on this side of the Atlantic.

A majority of Britons think American culture and the actions of the present American administration are making the world a worse place to live in, and almost no one believes America is now, if it ever was, a beacon to the world. Well over half of those interviewed regard the US as an imperial power bent on dominating the world by one means or another.

President George W Bush's standing in this country could scarcely be lower. More than three quarters of Britons believe the current president is a "poor" or even "terrible" world leader and almost as many believe that his rhetoric about promoting the cause of democracy in the world is merely a cover for his promotion of American national interests.

Americans as individuals are still held in high regard in Britain, but America's role in the world is not. The so-called "special relationship" may still thrive in Downing Street and at Camp David but it has obviously atrophied among the British public.

As the figures in the chart show, a large majority of Britons like Americans as people either "a little" (49 per cent) or "a lot" (21 per cent) and more than half, 54 per cent, are inclined to feel positively about the US in general. There are certainly few signs in YouGov's findings of an across-the-board anti-American prejudice.

The core problem is with America's relations with the rest of the world. George W Bush is no Franklin D Roosevelt, Dwight D Eisenhower or John F Kennedy. All of those American presidents inspired respect. Mr. Bush appears to inspire nothing but contempt. Fully 69 per cent of Britons say their overall opinion of the US has gone down in recent years.

YouGov also asked respondents to assess the Bush administration's impact on the world beyond America's shores. Their assessment is overwhelmingly negative. Fewer than one quarter, 22 per cent, believe that the present American government's policies and actions make the world a better place to live in. Three times that proportion, 65 per cent, regard America's influence in the world today as predominantly malign.

The reputation of American culture - fast-food restaurants, popular music, Hollywood movies - stands somewhat higher, with more than a third of YouGov's respondents approving of America's worldwide cultural impact. Even so, more than half of those interviewed, 52 per cent, clearly regard America's impact as, on balance, pernicious.

The figures in the section of the chart headed "America, Bush and the world" paint an even bleaker picture. Many Americans like to think of the US as a beacon to the world - as its "last, best hope". That view is not shared in this country. Only one in nine Britons, 11 per cent, accepts that view. A massive 77 per cent appear positively startled by the idea that the US may currently be setting the rest of the world a good example.

As the figures in the chart also show, confidence in America's ability to handle problems outside its own borders has plummeted over the past three decades. The Gallup Poll in 1975 found that roughly a quarter of Britons, 27 per cent, had considerable confidence in American leadership. That figure has now fallen by more than half to a mere 12 per cent.

President Bush's personal ratings in this country are horrendous. Almost no one holds him in high regard as a world leader. Fully 34 per cent think he is a "pretty poor" leader and even more, 43 per cent, reckon he is "terrible" in that role.

Opinion polls rarely produce figures quite as negative as these. Moreover, a majority of Britons regard the US President as not only incompetent but also as a complete hypocrite. As the findings in the chart indicate, 72 per cent of YouGov's respondents reckon Mr. Bush cares little for democracy and is merely using his pro-democracy rhetoric as a pretext for pursuing selfish American interests.

Even more of YouGov's respondents, 76 per cent, think that, even if the president really does want to promote the cause of freedom and democracy in the world, he is not going about it in the right way. Hardly anyone - a mere nine per cent - thinks Mr Bush is performing well, even in his own terms.

The view that America aspires to ultimate world domination is only a little less widespread. Despite America's anti-imperial past, well over half of YouGov's respondents, 58 per cent, reckon it is now fair to describe the US as "an essentially imperial power, one that wants to dominate the world by one means or another". Only 28 per cent dismiss such a view as unwarranted.

The section of the chart headed "How the US looks to us" will also make grim reading for America's many admirers. Respondents were offered pairs of contrasted words and phrases and asked to say which of each pair they thought best described the US today.

The figures turn much of America's self-image on its head. From this side of the Atlantic, America appears to be a class-divided and racially divided society and one that fails to offer its citizens equality of opportunity. Nearly three quarters of Britons, 72 per cent, believe American society is essentially "unequal".

More predictably, most Britons believe America is dominated by big business and preoccupied with money. Large majorities of Britons look down on America as "vulgar" (65 per cent) and "uncultured" (56 per cent).

Perhaps most worrying in political terms is the almost universal sense in this country that the US is determined to go its own way in the world, with an almost casual disregard for everybody else. Roughly three quarters of Britons think the US is "badly led" (73 per cent), "ignorant of the outside world" (73 per cent) and "doesn't care what the rest of the world thinks" (83 per cent).

Still, some individual Americans and US institutions do strike a chord on this side of the pond. As the figures in the chart indicate, YouGov's respondents take a positive view of such diverse American phenomena as Microsoft, Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, the Disney theme parks and television comedies such as Friends and The Simpsons.

They take a much dimmer view - or so they say - of 4x4 recreation vehicles, McDonald's, the two Hilton sisters Paris and Nicky and, unsurprisingly, Michael Jackson. YouGov's very last question was also the bluntest: "If you could, would you like to go and live in the United States?" A considerable minority, 19 per cent, replied that they would but more than three times that proportion, 67 per cent, indicated that they would prefer to stay put or go to some other country.

YouGov elicited the views of 1,962 adults across Great Britain online between June 26 and 28. The data have been weighted to conform to the demographic profile of British adults as a whole. YouGov abides by the rules of the British Polling Council.

6. WORLD SCIENTISTS UNITE TO ATTACK CREATONISM & "INTELLIGENT" DESIGN

SARAH CASSIDY

The world's scientific community united yesterday to launch one of the strongest attacks yet on creationism, warning that the origins of life were being "concealed, denied or confused".

The national science academies of 67 countries warned parents and teachers to ensure that they did not undermine the teaching of evolution or allow children to be taught that the world was created in six days.

Some schools in the US hold that evolution is merely a theory while the Bible represents the literal truth. There have also been fears that these views are creeping into British schools.

The statement, which the Royal Society signed on behalf of Britain's scientists, said: "We urge decision-makers, teachers and parents to educate all children about the methods and discoveries of science and foster an understanding of the science of nature. Knowledge of the natural world in which they live empowers people to meet human needs and protect the planet.

"Within science courses taught in certain public systems of education, scientific evidence, data, and testable theories about the origins and evolution of life on Earth are being concealed, denied, or confused with theories not testable by science."

The statement followed a long-running row over claims that some of Tony Blair's flagship city academies teach creationism in science lessons. Schools in the North-east backed by one academy sponsor, Sir Peter Vardy, have been accused of promoting creationism alongside evolution. The schools have denied the claims and insisted they abide by the national curriculum.

Academics in the US have voiced concern over similar theories being taught in American schools. Scientists also fear the spread of a theory known as "intelligent design". This suggests that species are too complex to have evolved through natural selection and must therefore be the product of a "designer".

Martin Rees, president of the Royal Society, said: "There is controversy in some parts of the world about the teaching of evolution to pupils and students, so this is a timely statement that makes clear the views of the scientific community. I hope this statement will help those who are attempting to uphold the rights of young people to have access to accurate scientific knowledge about the origins and evolution of life on Earth."

It has been revealed that creationism is being included in the science curricula of a growing number of UK universities. Leeds University plans to incorporate one or two compulsory lectures on creationism and intelligent design into its second-year course for zoology and genetics undergraduates next Christmas, according to The Times Higher Education Supplement. At Leicester University, academics discuss creationism and intelligent design with third-year genetics undergraduates for about 20 minutes in lectures.

In both cases, lecturers argue that the controversial theories will be presented as fallacies irreconcilable with scientific evidence. But the fact that these "alternatives" to evolution have been proposed for formal discussion in lectures at all has sparked concern among British scientists.

A THES investigation has also discovered there are at least 14 academics in science departments who consider themselves creationists. They believe all kinds of life were designed rather than evolved. Several others are proponents of intelligent design, which rejects evolution.

7. PUT AWAY THE FLAGS

HOWARD ZINN

On this July 4^th, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed.

Is not nationalism -- that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder -- one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred?

These ways of thinking -- cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on -- have been useful to those in power, and deadly for those out of power.

National spirit can be benign in a country that is small and lacking both in military power and a hunger for expansion (Switzerland, Norway, Costa Rica and many more). But in a nation like ours -- huge, possessing thousands of weapons of mass destruction -- what might have been harmless pride becomes an arrogant nationalism dangerous to others and to ourselves.

Our citizenry has been brought up to see our nation as different from others, an exception in the world, uniquely moral, expanding into other lands in order to bring civilization, liberty, democracy.

That self-deception started early.

When the first English settlers moved into Indian land in Massachusetts Bay and were resisted, the violence escalated into war with the Pequot Indians. The killing of Indians was seen as approved by God, the taking of land as commanded by the Bible. The Puritans cited one of the Psalms, which says: "Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the Earth for thy possession."

When the English set fire to a Pequot village and massacred men, women and children, the Puritan theologian Cotton Mather said: "It was supposed that no less than 600 Pequot souls were brought down to hell that day."

On the eve of the Mexican War, an American journalist declared it our "Manifest Destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence." After the invasion of Mexico began, The New York Herald announced: "We believe it is a part of our destiny to civilize that beautiful country."

It was always supposedly for benign purposes that our country went to war.

We invaded Cuba in 1898 to liberate the Cubans, and went to war in the Philippines shortly after, as President McKinley put it, "to civilize and Christianize" the Filipino people.

As our armies were committing massacres in the Philippines (at least 600,000 Filipinos died in a few years of conflict), Elihu Root, our secretary of war, was saying: "The American soldier is different from all other soldiers of all other countries since the war began. He is the advance guard of liberty and justice, of law and order, and of peace and happiness."

We see in Iraq that our soldiers are not different. They have, perhaps against their better nature, killed thousands of Iraq civilians. And some soldiers have shown themselves capable of brutality, of torture.

Yet they are victims, too, of our government's lies.

How many times have we heard President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld tell the troops that if they die, if they return without arms or legs, or blinded, it is for "liberty," for "democracy"?

One of the effects of nationalist thinking is a loss of a sense of proportion. The killing of 2,300 people at Pearl Harbor becomes the justification for killing 240,000 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The killing of 3,000 people on Sept. 11 becomes the justification for killing tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan and Iraq.

And nationalism is given a special virulence when it is said to be blessed by Providence. Today we have a president, invading two countries in four years, who announced on the campaign trail last year that God speaks through him.

We need to refute the idea that our nation is different from, morally superior to, the other imperial powers of world history.

We need to assert our allegiance to the human race, and not to any one nation.