Worth Quoting

25th April 2012

Theology – An effort to explain the unknowable by putting it into terms of the not worth knowing.

HL Mencken. (September 12, 1880 – January 29, 1956). Known as the ‘sage of Baltimore’, he was known for his coverage of the ‘Scopes Trial’ which he called the Monkey Trial. A keen cheerleader of scientific progress, he was very skeptical of economic theories and particularly critical of anti-intellectualism,bigotry, populism, Christian fundamentalism, creationism, organized religion, the existence of God, and osteopathic/chiropractic medicine.(from Wiki’s article).

He espoused controversial economic and political ideas and developed some pithy and pertinent sayings that are now quoted at large. My kind of bloke!

Julian Assange & Wikileaks

Julian Assange

These last few weeks have had the papers and blogs full of the intransigence or otherwise of Julian Assange and Wikileaks.

Now I am a fellow Aussie and Assange was born the same year as my younger son so I am familiar with the free style upbringing he had in Queensland as I lived in Mullumbimby where free lifestyles are the norm.

So I have a certain sympathy with Assange and his philosophical outlook on life and on his activities. I am appalled by the actions (or rather inaction or anti-action) of the Australian PM Julia Gillard and her Attorney General Robert McClelland.

This whole (so far) episode and its promise in the future shows the most enormous blight on western governments everywhere.

The United States of America is up to its old tricks, pulling manipulative strings to enforce its own agenda and Sweden is caving in like the good little dogsbody it appears to have become. I smell the CIA in there somewhere, even if it is supposed to have been dismantled. It still lives on, a hero in its own lunchtime, lurching from one disaster to the next.

At least there are some dissenters in Sweden albeit in a bunker prepared to add their name to servers dotted all around the world simultaneously hosting Wikileaks website.

Nice bunker!

It is 98 feet underground built in 1943 in the middle of Stockholm.

The argument pushed in all the government manipulated newspapers is that diplomatic relations have been severely damaged by the cables copied and apparently leaked to Wikileaks by one seemingly disenchanted American soldier Bradley Manning. Wikileaks has so far published some 2,000 of these cables. Watch out everyone. Small wonder Manning is being treated like shit and the big THEY want to incarcerate Assange.

Bradley Manning

It is reported that some 250,000 cables have been copied and leaked to Wikileaks during May 2010. Manning’s arrest and incarceration is another story all together. It is reported on World Watch that he has not been convicted of any crime but is being held in ‘inhumane’ conditions.

Well, I stand firmly behind Geoffrey Robertson and Mark Stephens. Again, I stand behind Daniel Ellsberg (arrested for the 80^th time on Thursday); I signed and donated to the GetUp! campaign in Australia to fund advertisements in the New York Times.

Ellingham Hall

Assange has been released on bail into the safe keeping of a friend Vaughan Smith who happens to own a palatial home called Ellingham Hall in Suffolk. Mind you, I have difficulty with the whole very shonky looking and sounding court proceedings to start with. I am convinced the Brits have lost the plot.

With wonky Americans like Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin and others calling for Assange’s incarceration as a terrorist and his execution, it is small wonder Assange and his lawyers fought any extradition to Sweden. Sweden has an extradition agreement with the US and the US is severely embarrassed by these cable leaks.

It is like the US, preening itself in front of a global mirror of its own making, has suddenly been caught with its pants down and it ain’t a pretty sight.

I also stand behind Noam Chomsky in his defence of Assange and Wikileaks and I wish Chalmers Johnson were alive today. He would champion Assange and Wikileaks to the fullest extent.

The utter hysteria unleashed by countries whose diplomatic behaviour has been brought into question merely lets the rest of us know that we have allowed this form of government too much leeway and licence.

It is time to show it up for what it is. A house of cards easily dismantled if only we have the fortitude and persistence. Not much hope in a world where a 15 second sound bite masquerades as concentration and memory.

Future Food Security

The World Food Summit of 1996 defined food security as existing “when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life”.

World Health Org. logo

So we aren’t there yet. I seriously doubt that anyone would claim that we have overcome the food supply issues that currently face the world.

Syngenta is the product of a merger in 2000 of Novartis and AstraZeneca, themselves having formed from earlier companies, stretching all the way back to Geigy in 1758. It’s quite a pedigree.

Market prices for veges

Anyway, the point is not to talk about Syngenta as such, but that of global agribusiness in general and the burgeoning of companies funding genetic modification, research and  the development of drought resistant, nutrient enhanced staple foods for farming in marginal areas.

I was listening to a Radio National programme on the ABC with regard to Australia’s role in all this. Now Australia exports over half of its agricultural produce (65%) and imports on a seasonal basis. Distribution costs add to the price to the end user of imported foodstuffs.

To maintain those levels in alternatively drying and flooding growing areas means smarter farming. There have been some silly experiments in Australia with regard to rice and cotton farming that have depleted natural resources and are a blight on Australia’s agricultural page.

However, it is not the only country having done stupid things that produce dustbowls and rivers with diminished flow. It is a global phenomenon born of ignorance about how to adapt best

Vertical Garden Melbourne

growing practice to the local place in which such growing is practised.

Desertification is driven by the imbalance between human demand and the supply of benefits by natural systems. Population growth, inappropriate policies, and some aspects of globalisation drive unsustainable pressure on dry lands. Occupying over 40 per cent of the world’s land area, dry lands are home to over two billion people. Half of all people living in poverty are in dry lands. The low water availability in dry lands today drives many of the challenges. The current average annual capacity at 1300 cubic metres per person is already well below the minimum threshold of 2000. United Nations Uni

Desertification in Australia

So what to do? As the global population burgeons, there are mouths to feed. I keep coming back to the definition of food security. I would rather include the ever growing global population and find ways to reduce that. And everything seems to come back to education and the empowering of women in the regulation of their reproduction cycles.

Education based on reality which means teaching science not belief in superstitions; we have enough of that already and it appears we have a propensity to imbibe more.

There are those who say the whole food security debate is a furphy designed to further vested interests. I don’t agree. Food security is a massive problem for governments and they are very aware of this. And it isn’t just poorer countries.

There are those who say that growing more food will not necessarily reduce the unequal distribution of food at all. I think it can change.

Imagine plenty of food

I agree that corporate profits push food prices higher while ensuring that excess food production unaffordable by poorer countries is wasted by dumping. Not to mention the food that is wasted in food rich countries by consumers. Not to mention the stored food that is consumed by other animals while in storage. India apparently loses well over 40% of stored grain to rats and mice.

Future food security is still an ideal, the reality of which is being researched by plant pathologists, such as Pam Ronald as well as the Syngenta type companies in the world.

Rice harvest Phillipines

Rice paddy prep.

When I hear the nay-sayers pontificating about the ‘evils’ of GM foodstuffs, none of which stand up to any scrutiny whatsoever, and then look at the number of people starving to death every day, I have to admit that my ire gets up.

I came across one Dr.Oz, a wooer of some note, mentioned by Ronald on her blog and was incensed enough to write a very vitriolic email to the said ‘doctor’. He’s an anti-vaxer as well. I will come across him and his ilk again and they will all get the back of my tongue in no small measure.

Apart from the stupidity of emotional arguments based on nothing (sounds like religion to me), none of these wooers have any practical proposal to feeding our growing population. We have to keep those already alive fed and clothed, let alone the ones that keep coming onto the planet.

Barley fodder for animals

So for me, I would far rather put my energy into the Pam Ronalds of the world and not whinge when Syngenta makes a profit. So long as knowledge keeps accruing and we get closer to keep our species alive without too drastic an effect on the world as we know it, we need to embrace the science that will help us all achieve future food security.