From: Walter Watts (wlwatts@cox.net)
Date: Fri May 07 2004 - 19:08:05 MDT
We can't leave Iraq, we can't stay in Iraq, AND, to top it all off, the
whole fucking Arab world sees us as imperialists satan-worshippers.
Jesus christ on a popsickle stick!!!
And there are SO many other good reasons to dump Bush without Iraq, like
the one below:
---------------------------------------
SA Perspectives
May 2004 Scientific American
Bush-League Lysenkoism
Starting in the 1930s, the Soviets spurned genetics in favor of
Lysenkoism, a fraudulent theory of heredity inspired by Communist
ideology. Doing so crippled agriculture in the U.S.S.R. for decades. You
would think that bad precedent would have taught President George W.
Bush something. But perhaps he is no better at history than at science.
In February his White House received failing marks in a statement signed
by 62 leading scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, 19 recipients of
the National Medal of Science, and advisers to the Eisenhower and Nixon
administrations. It begins, “Successful application of science has
played a large part in the policies that have made the United States of
America the world’s most powerful nation and its citizens increasingly
prosperous and healthy. Although scientific input to the government is
rarely the only factor in public policy decisions, this input should
always be weighed from an objective and impartial perspective to avoid
perilous consequences. . . . The administration of George W. Bush has,
however, disregarded this principle.” Doubters of that judgment should
read the report from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) that
accompanies the statement, “Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policy
Making” (available at www.ucsusa. org). Among the affronts that it
details: The administration misrepresented the findings of the National
Academy of Sciences and other experts on climate change. It meddled with
the discussion of climate change in an Environmental Protection Agency
report until the EPA eliminated that section.
It suppressed another EPA study that showed that the administration’s
proposed Clear Skies Act would do less than current law to reduce air
pollution and mercury contamination of fish. It even dropped independent
scientists from advisory committees on lead poisoning and drug abuse in
favor of ones with ties to industry. Let us offer more examples of our
own. The Department of Health and Human Services deleted information
from its Web sites that runs contrary to the president’s preference for
“abstinence only” sex education programs. The Office of Foreign Assets
Control made it much more difficult for anyone from “hostile nations” to
be published in the U.S., so some scientific journals will no longer
consider submissions from them. The Office of Management and Budget has
proposed overhauling peer review for funding of science that bears on
environmental and health regulations —in effect, industry scientists
would get to approve what research is conducted by the EPA. None of
those criticisms fazes the president, though. Less than two weeks after
the UCS statement was released, Bush unceremoniously replaced two
advocates of human embryonic stem cell research on his advisory Council
on Bioethics with individuals more likely to give him a hallelujah
chorus of opposition to it. Blind loyalists to the president will
dismiss the UCS report because that organization often tilts left—never
mind that some of those signatories are conservatives. They may brush
off this magazine’s reproofs the same way, as well as the regular salvos
launched by California Representative Henry A. Waxman of the House
Government Reform Committee [see Insights, on page
52] and maybe even Arizona Senator John McCain’s scrutiny for the
Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. But it is
increasingly impossible to ignore that this White House disdains
research that inconveniences it.
-- Walter Watts Tulsa Network Solutions, Inc. "Pursue the small utopias... nature, music, friendship, love" --Kupferberg-- --- To unsubscribe from the Virus list go to <http://www.lucifer.com/cgi-bin/virus-l>
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