Meat
If you go down to the meatworks today this is what you'll find. A large tilting steel floor upon which sheep are herded then electrocuted. Perhaps you might see a large bull shot with two or three bolts and yet still desperately trying to escape.
These are the inhumane and outrageous facts. If it takes a lifetime of not eating meat before these things cease to happen the effort will be worth it. The meat industry and its grisly jobs are not.
Michael Albrecht
Melbourne
Cattle and grain
Advocates of a vegetarian diet have included in their range of arguments the assertion that vegetarianism is an environmental imperative. Feeding grain to cattle is condemned as "inefficient". Yet the environmental damage occasioned by the production of grain in the first place passes without comment.
At the present time if we were to restrict ourselves to food produced in a sustainable manner, we would starve. Our fruit comes from irrigated lands suffering salinization while topsoil from Australia's wheat fields periodically blows half way to New Zealand and both are sustained by broadacre application of chemicals. Soil erosion in south and east Asia has increased by an order of magnitude over natural rates due to the impact of primarily agricultural production. Historically, when the loess plateau which supplies sediment to the Huanghe River has reverted from agriculture to pastoralism soil erosion has slowed. Also recall that the American dustbowl of the thirties was caused by cotton and corn production (or over production).
Sustainable food production, if it exists at all, has not risen above the hobby farm scale. The challenge facing a rational society will be to construct such a system on an industrial scale.
Along the way we must decide whether the concept of "maximum efficiency in the production of energy and protein" is synonymous or a prerequisite for "a sustainable land use practice". I'm not convinced that it is.
There are situations where pastoralism may be preferable to agriculture, most notably in natural grasslands and semi-arid environments where the soil is generally susceptible to erosion. Where a permanent grass cover can be maintained it has advantages over cereal cropping which leaves the soil exposed for part of the year. Where a complete grass cover cannot be maintained it is unlikely that agriculture can be practised anyway. In such areas it is possible to decrease the population density of animals to a level which can be supported by the land in a way which is difficult to envisage for crops.
I am not suggesting that our current level of consumption of meat can continue, but that there are environmental niches where meat production is more viable than agriculture. The simplistic pro-vegetarianism arguments ignore too many issues. I hope that this contribution will engender a wider debate on the construction of a sustainable system of food production.
David Wheeler
Gwynneville NSW
Jurassic politics
As a result of the federal budget 1993, the Liberals are now defined as negative whingers that block everything and Jurassic dinosaurs. They see the negative of everything and support yesterday's painful negatives of Australia such as business, multinationals and the blue rinse monarchist set.
The Democrats are now seen as mere popularist green Labor. They virtually support anything that Labor says with a few cosmetic changes. The Democrats are just a third mainstream popularist party to assist business, who claim to be Australia's only goodness.
Business can do no wrong. Yet business is yet to prove it can do anything right. Ask the unemployed, debt collectors and environmental realists.
Unfortunately by not supporting Labor as easily as the Democrats, the Greens aren't being seen as the economic, environmental and social geniuses that they are. They are being portrayed as Green Liberals dictating to Australia and Australians. Business, the angels of Australia are scared of the Greens who are seen as threats to business domination of Australia.
After all, Tim Fischer doesn't approve of the unemployed, Allan Ramsay says the Greens are out of their depth, and everyone knows every politician, every business, and every white settler is out of their depth in Australia.
The Greens are redefining, reorganising, and restructuring Australian politics. It's about time business got a rival with brains.
Assumpta Howard
Gwynneville NSW
Tanks
Hands were raised in horror when tanks were sent into Tiananmen Square in 1989. What's the difference between that and tanks roaring into the Palacio de la Moneda in 1973 in Chile, Panama City in 1990, and Russia's parliament in 1993? (and in the last three cases the violence was directed against representatives of a democratically elected parliament)? The number of people killed depends on what paper you read.
Rosemary Evans
St Kilda Vic
Disgusted
The SA government and the capitalists who promote and produce the massive pollutive excrement fest commonly referred to as the grand prix, have certainly come up with another mark to put into their black books of public disgust and embarrassment. I refer specifically to the "motto" that has been used to promote this year's grand prix. The motto being "one great race meets another".
To put it mildly, I am absolutely disgusted, particularly when you consider the general practice the government puts into operation during the four days of this crap fest. I find it most interesting to note that the government that is promoting unity between indigenous peoples and a capitalist fair day, is the same one who "persuades" the Aboriginal groups that congregate in Victoria Square, within Adelaide's C.B.D., to leave during the four days of the prix, and not return until afterwards.
This, plus the general silencing of any opposition towards the prix by anyone who raises the environmental and financing problems involved with it, is simply to be expected by a government that disregards anyone who doesn't make a certain amount of money, or wear a suit, or read government endorsed papers.
P. Frangiosa
Dulwich SA
Masquerading
The substantive question raised by recent letters from myself (22/9) and Peter Macgregor (8/9 and 13/10) is whether GLW is (or is becoming) a DSP promotional organ masquerading as a coalition left paper, and whether this is reflected in its neglect and ridicule of other groups and issues. The privilege of editorial capping (22/9) is used to divert attention from this question, reducing relevant examples to personal gripes about publication. Since only an editor has full knowledge of what is not published, it is hard to refute any editorial claim that the activism and issues of certain non-DSP groups are not reported only because they do not send in contributions. The justice of this claim is what my counterexamples (including our unpublished story about the fire which destroyed the Canberra theatre squat in August) were designed to dispute, not my personal tally of publications. In fact GLW has published 3 out of 5 of the articles I have sent in. Both the omitted articles were on homelessness, an issue associated with certain non-DSP groups and (like other issues that fall outside the old "worker" paradigm) systematically neglected in GLW. Cases can be multiplied: for example GLW similarly ignored a batch of press releases from Direct Action Against Homelessness on its Catherine Street squatting action in Sydney and the subsequent violent eviction, but did find space to tell us about the tour of a British SWP leader (15/9).
If GLW expects to be taken seriously as a broad left paper, it should not only, as Peter Macgregor (13/10) suggests, seek to publish a wider range of authors, groups and issues, but should also publish a list of what it receives but does not print (authors' contact could then facilitate dissemination). This measure would help, but alone will not be enough to remove/reveal bias, since persistent non-publication of stories will often discourage further submission, and much may have already been achieved along these lines. Outright rejection is not the only way to ensure non-publication of the wrong people and issues; persistent editorial unavailability can often achieve the same results. I and my co-author attempted to contact the editor over a period of several weeks to discuss presentation of the Fortune Theatre fire story. When our persistence finally paid off, the editor made no suggestion of rewriting, saying the item would appear shortly. The only change to our text I requested myself in our brief conversation was the deletion of the four word heading (hardly "ghost-writing" or "rewriting" the article, as is now claimed (22/9) to justify its non-appearance).
Val Plumwood
Braidwood ACT
[Since readers have no way to know what Val Plumwood and DAAH did or didn't send and/or say, I don't propose to continue debating it publicly. Readers can judge for themselves whether GL neglects any important issue. They can also check at least one of Val Plumwood's firmly asserted "facts" â that we have published three, not four, of her articles â by turning to the issues of September 11, 1991; March 25, 1992; June 17, 1992; and August 12, 1992. â Editor.]
Sexuality and research
Just a short note on Solomon's commentary on sexuality and research (GLW #119).
Firstly I have not argued that Levay, Hamer or Bailey are homophobic. I have argued that at best they are politically grossly naive. Bailey, even worse, is a blatant Popper-style Positivist, just read his "Science and the Fear of Knowledge" in the Chicago Tribune of March 25, 1993. This in my view is even more awful than being just politically naive as Levay is.
Apart from that, I have put their research in the broader context of the last century's homosexuality research. The exact phrasing of my statement can be found in Bioethics News 1993; 12(5); 1-5, or alternatively in the December 1993 issue of the US gay magazine Christopher Street. Only ignorance of the history of homosexuality research in the biomedical sciences could come to different conclusions. A summary of that history can be found in my review article in R Lautmann; Homosexualitt â Ein Handbuch der Theorie â und Forschungsgeschichte, Frankfurt/New York: Campus 1993; 307-17.
Secondly the argument that society as a whole should have more control over the direction of scientific research fits nicely into my claim that those in favour of this research are, if not homophobes, then undoubtedly naive. Society at large is homophobic, what does Solomon believe societal control of scientific research in this area might change? Only one thing, they would spend more money to find the cause faster, and to either heal "perverts" or prevent their existence. As simple as that.
Udo Schueklenk
Centre for Human Bioethics
Monash University, Clayton
Germs
Hume's Pasteur Exposed is faulty if Rob McKinnon-Lower quotes it rightly (GL 20/10). Pasteur did not plagiarize from Bechamp's microzymas. Partridge's Origins derives microbe from mikros small bios life, and the scientific word components -zyme, zymo- (of/ by/ with ferment/ enzyme) from zume leaven. These terms come from Greek, as most scientific word coinages do. But Bechamp's zymas do far more than any enzyme. He claims they procreate, something no molecules except DNA have been shown to do in fact, unless he has a new unexplained meaning for procreate. Another odd thing about his procreating molecules: they aren't chemicals. This gives either chemical or molecule an unexplained meaning new to me.
I wasn't taught that Pasteur claimed all life came from germs of the air or that he ignored germs of the soil. He did claim specific germs originate specific diseases. This has helped in managing accepted "specific" infections, those which fairly reliably meet Koch's four postulates: the germ 1. is present in each case of the disease, 2. can be isolated and grown separately, 3. reproduces the disease in a susceptible victim and 4. can be recovered from that victim. Processes that look clear-cut may on occasion be due to some other than the widely apparent cause. This applies to some degree in all scientific observations, because all rely on theories of cause and effect.
So different specific germs (or other environmental factors) may produce similar specific diseases. A virus may spread to epidemic proportions in filling a faulty environmental niche left by the widespread rout of bacteria sensitive to widely used antibiotics. It may turn out that the near-defeat of syphilis has contributed to the upsurge of HIV, but there are perhaps more persuasive examples in pneumonia and meningoencephalitis. This does nothing to validate microzyma theory, or to disprove that specific germs are a factor in at least a proportion of specific diseases.
Orthodox authorities agree that vaccination damages people. This in no way validates Bechamp. Originally "vaccination" meant only using live cowpox (vaccinia) exudates to give cross-immunity to smallpox, which much more deeply scarred exposed skin and had a disastrously higher death rate than cowpox.
Bechamp seems to have said that the claimed specific germ may or may not be produced by an illness, but is never a cause; the only causes are the constitution (presumably of the victim, not the germ) and the "soil" or organic surroundings which turn the function of the microzyma from well to ill. Orthodoxy agrees that these factors occur, but would substitute interaction between victim and environment, including microbial environment, instead of the unseen, unshown, undefined microzyma. To make germs a possible effect but never a cause of disease is as logical as making pests an effect but never the cause of farming failures.
A global cowpox vaccination campaign some 20 years ago ousted the last smallpox â the first example of successful deliberate extinction of a species. This vindicates what Creighton in the 1885 Encyclopedia Britannica called "grotesque superstition". I'm not holding my breath for the cyclical return of smallpox predicted by Rene Dubois, but if it comes I'll bet on cowpox proving itself even faster then unless a better weapon appears in the meantime.
Archie Kalokerinos has saved children from immunization damage or death but I understand not so much by ceasing immunization as by deferring it till he controlled some immune deficiency, evidenced e.g. by chronic infection and/or malnutrition. He may or may not have shown a racial genetic susceptibility or poor immune responses to some vaccines and/or diseases. This would not be surprising. Isolated communities, including Aborigines, have been decimated by diseases first brought to them by colonizers who had mild reactions to the germs or were merely carriers. This is no evidence that microzymas exist other than as victim (constitution), soil (including germs) and their interaction. Interaction seems more explanatory than microzyma for this.
AIDS may subside, or be eradicated in some early cases at great cost â this won't guarantee survival, for in the end we all die; there are deaths that fit the picture of AIDS, for example cancer or pneumonia that may or may not go with HIV or other features of AIDS; lots of diseases are non-infective and all are a product of constitution and environment. None of this proves that HIV never or seldom causes AIDS or that non-specific microzymas (except as the interactions mentioned) are more likely to do the damage in every case of even many cases.
Vaccine production earns millions, but increasingly so will pollution prevention. And despite slowly growing pollution, immunization is also spreading and its target diseases receding.
Doug Everingham
Westlake Qld
Human rights
When I heard that a Professor Ross Garnaut had accused the Australian government of being too "raucous" on human rights issues in Asia (Sydney Morning Herald 28/10/93) I nearly choked on my muesli. It was the cue for Senator Gareth Evans to posture, incredibly, as a defender of other people's rights.
Is Professor Garnaut serious? Is he talking about the Australian government that conspires to hush up the Indonesian regime's conduct, at the U.N.? The same government that signed in our name the Timor Gap Treaty, to divide up the spoils of the 1975 invasion of East Timor? It will be interesting to see if any fellow Australian professors can sum up some coverage and integrity and challenge his words, as the Paddlers for Peace so valiantly challenged the three Indonesian ships in the harbour on Sunday, October 24.
For the sake of money the Australian government is saying what racist Europeans have always said, non-European lives are cheap. As if it is different for parents when their child disappears, depending on where they come from, or that non-Europeans somehow don't mind living in fear. The fact is that the collaboration with the Indonesian regime since the 1975 invasion of East Timor, has dragged Australia's name through the mud, internationally.
I know there are many worthwhile causes that deserve support, but I urge all GLW readers to join an East Timor solidarity group. The one I am NSW branch secretary of, is the Australia-East Timor Association (AETA). We have monthly meetings in Sydney and Melbourne. To join send $10 ($5 concession) to AETA, PO Box 93, Fitzroy, Vic 3065. You can phone me on (02) 331 5986.
Stephen Langford
Paddington NSW