International news – Bladsy 13

The fire this time

Sara Mampane has been waiting for the African National Congress to fulfil its promise of a new home – what she calls a "proper house", where the only corrugated iron is on the roof and the walls are made of brick – since the party came to power with the collapse of apartheid 13 years ago.

The 43-year-old mother of three watched from her rickety two-room shack with no electricity in a squatter camp on the edge of Mamelodi township as others moved to one of the new box houses built by the government. She was content to wait her turn and be grateful for what did arrive, principally access to clean water and a health clinic for her children. But her patience snapped last month when men in red boiler suits came to demolish her home.

The feared "red ants" descended on the camp to remove the thousands of illegally built corrugated iron shacks that have spread out from the edge of the township in recent years. The residents were so incensed that they stoned one of the men to death and injured others, and set fire to four trucks.

"They promised me a house but they say wait, wait, wait," said Ms Mampane. "So I am waiting. But it is not right to come and knock down the house I have before they build me a new one. This is what we expected from apartheid, not from our own government. I think they have forgotten us."

Weeks of on and off rioting in Mamelodi over the demolitions and lack of services have rekindled memories of the township as a hotbed of protest against the apartheid regime two decades ago. Last week hundreds of angry protesters threw up barricades and burned tyres in clashes with police. Last month the residents set fire to local council offices.

The disturbances are not limited to Mamelodi. Hundreds of similar protests have spread across South Africa, fuelled by anger at the slow pace of change.

Thirteen years after the end of apartheid, the poverty gap in South Africa remains among the largest in the world – second only to Brazil by some measurements. More than 40% of South Africans live on less than eight rand (59p) a day. More than one third of the working-age population is unemployed.

But it is the evident wealth of others, mostly white but including a small newly enriched black elite, that has contributed to bitter divisions within the ANC over the government’s economic strategy. The issue is expected to dominate a party conference this week.

Time bomb

Some in the ANC are warning that the wealth gap is a time bomb for the country and the party, which is losing touch with the mass of its voters and "betraying the national democratic revolution" with too much focus on creating a liberal business climate.

Trade unions are leading the attack on economic priorities they say have principally benefited the emerging black elite, and the old white one, at the expense of the poor. "It’s like a doctor saying an operation has been successful when the patient is dead," Zwelinzima Vavi, secretary general of the Congress of South African Trade Unions, a partner in the ruling alliance with the ANC, told a rally in the Free State this month.

Few deny that the ANC has taken significant strides toward reducing poverty. According to figures released last week, the government has built more than 2m new homes since 1994, although the numbers of people living in squatter camps has risen by half over the same period.

About 85% of households have access to fresh water, up from 61% when the ANC came to power. More than 71% have inside toilets attached to the sewage system, up from about 50%. More than 4m homes have been connected to mains electricity over the same period, although the price of power has quadrupled and many people have been cut off because they cannot pay the bills.

South Africa’s minister of provincial and local government, Sydney Mufamadi, has said the protests reflect the government’s successes. "As we make progress in some municipalities, the residents in other municipalities become impatient: they expect their public representatives to deliver in the same way as progress is made in other municipalities," he told a UN news agency.

Unshared growth

The government’s latest strategy, the accelerated and shared growth initiative, seeks to halve poverty and unemployment by 2014 by continuing the significant economic growth of recent years and creating millions of new jobs.

Charles Meth, a respected researcher on poverty at Cape Town university, says the government is working on "over-optimistic" predictions, and that though economic growth is crucial it will take decades to eradicate endemic poverty. "The treasury is driving an agenda that says growth is going to rescue us," he says. "It’s nonsense.

"Within the state there’s a huge amount of tension over poverty policy. On the one hand you’ve got the minister of social development, Zola Skweyiya, very sensibly saying this is not going to be enough and we have to have some kind of basic grant for those people who are going to be left out by these anti-poverty policies and growth policies that you’re looking at. The cabinet rounds on him and says ‘bollocks’."

The government concedes that though poverty has decreased since 2000, the gap between rich and poor has not narrowed.

The poor can see it only too well. Where the fault line between the haves and the have nots once ran almost exclusively along racial lines, the ANC’s policy of black economic empowerment has created a new class of super-rich blacks driving the most expensive cars and living in mansions with servants and swimming pools. Many of the new elite have links to the ruling party.

The policy’s defenders say that it is forcing a shift in economic power to the black majority that will trickle down to the poor. Some of its critics say that all too often blacks have merely become the public face of white interests.

Smuts Ngonyama, a former spokesman for President Thabo Mbeki asked to explain why he received shares in a private company while working for the government, said he did not join the struggle against apartheid to remain poor. Tokyo Sexwale, one of the few ANC leaders to have declared he is running to succeed Mr Mbeki, has also been forced to defend his extraordinary accumulation of wealth.

The unions and ANC left have an uphill struggle to change the policy at this week’s party conference. The leadership wants an endorsement of a document that Johannesburg’s Centre for Policy Studies has described as so "bland, uncritical and vague" that it leaves the impression that the ANC "just doesn’t care for the poor and socially marginalised groups".

But Max Sisulu, one of the party’s economic policy strategists, says the ANC is not disturbed by the criticism.

"We are not worried about differences. We welcome them," he says. "We can only benefit from differences."

BEE bumbling: The rise of the new elite

The Black Economic Empowerment affirmative action policy to break the white stranglehold on the economy is either the fast track to addressing past wrongs or another get-rich-quick scheme in a country where a greed-is-good culture pervades.

BEE’s supporters say the shift in political power after apartheid is compromised by continued white control of the economy. Companies with a significant black stake control just 5% of the Johannesburg stock exchange. Empowerment laws require larger white-owned businesses to sell a 25% stake to black partners.

But BEE is also seen as just jobs for some of the ANC boys (and girls). Critics say the policy has encouraged black people to set up companies that serve no other purpose than to help white-owned firms meet their obligations. There have been a number of scandals, perhaps most notably that involving the woman known as the "Queen of BEE", Danisa Baloyi, who had to resign from more than a dozen company boards after two people were arrested on fraud allegations at one of the companies .

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Czech town rejects US radar

Residents of Mirosov, a small Czech town of some 2,000 near the Brdy military zone where the United States seeks to place a missile shield radar base, have rejected the US facility in a local referendum. On Sunday, the CTK news agency said all but 30 of the 897 valid votes cast were against erecting the radar base.

The referendum is not politically binding in Prague so it’s up to the town’s council to try and halt the base’s construction. Another 13 municipalities in the region have received the same mandate from their residents. Several other towns in the military zone’s vicinity have rejected the base in opinion polls.

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Psychopaths and History

For months I had three objections to seeing the film Apocalypto all defanged by the film itself:

One, although a former Marine, I detest anything that sounds like a "horror film," and a film about human sacrifice sounds appalling.

In fact, the violence in this film, which does show human sacrifice and those escaping it and fighting back, is not gratuitous but at the core essence of the story, and Gibson shows only half the gruesome Mayan-Aztec reality which the Spanish terminated after 1502. It may make professional anti-racists uncomfortable, but Apocalypto cleaves tightly to reality in details both large and small, right down to the colors of the plant dyes used in native clothing, the jade used by different classes of women and the feather headdress of the great king.

(Using artistic license, Gibson does blend different periods of Mayan architecture and decor, and by the time the Spanish came, as shown in the film, the jungle Mayan cities already had been mysteriously abandoned. It was actually further north, in the very similar and neighboring Aztec culture with its own human sacrifices, that the Spanish would find the same psychopathic atrocities, which caused them to eradicate the Aztec regime root and branch with the aid of oppressed local tribes.)

Two, I detest our national tendency to mindless action movies. Methinks Americans should break with their hyperactive national character by doing less and thinking more, perhaps precluding further Ritalin kid-faux cowboys in the White House.

What Apocalypto represents, however, is a mindful action movie. It is done by a storyteller worthy of Homer, a director worthy of Cecil B. DeMille (Gibson’s movie has 700 extras, all in differing accurate costumes), and a deeply spiritual man (when not off the wagon; Mel in Australia used to drink two scotches in beer, which he called "liquid violence").

Apocalypto transmits via entertainment a tremendous message, one that reflects the values of his father, Hutton Gibson, a courageous Holocaust revisionist, a Traditional Catholic–and an honored speaker at the 2003 conference held by this very magazine.

Not many Hollywood "action flicks" start with a quote from historian Will Durant (1885-1981), author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning, eleven-volume The Story of Civilization: "A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within."

Third, I wondered how much relevance Mayan Indios in 1502 had to me, a white man in 2007, except for the possible fact that my Washington, DC area is now being flooded by illegal alien descendants of the Mayans and Aztecs. (The greater DC area is now only 54% white.)

Actually, plenty of relevance: The entire movie delineates how a tiny psychopathic ruling class misrules, lies to, entertains with mass festivals, impoverishes and oppresses an entire nation–and how God and man ultimately thwart them.

The title "Apocalypto" comes from one of the very many utterly unique scenes in this revolutionary piece of film making. Mayan manhunters pass through an orphan girl’s smoldering shell of a village, not unlike the pulverized Ramadi or Fallujah in Iraq, or Dresden in 1945 Germany or Gaza in Palestine. They take along their captives destined for human sacrifice, neck-tied to a wooden rail, heading for their torture and death. The psychopaths prod her aside;-they have no time for starving orphans; the clock is ticking for show time in the Yucatan.

She dries her little-girl tears and thanks to Gibson, from somewhere real, inside the character, come two riveting eyeballs trained on them and a voice of doom that "spooks" even the hardened enslavers. She then "reveals the end" of all that they represent; in Greek, she "apocalyptizes" the final things.

The official Apocalypto poster from Icon Productions (Gibson’s own film company that also did Braveheart), depicts a Mayan high priest, with an obsidian knife in hand, striding forth from his ziggurat where for years he has been sacrificing trembling humans.

In 1486, in fact, during an Aztec temple dedication before huge and roaring crowds (just 16 years before Columbus’s fourth expedition, which landed in Central America), in a four-day festival twenty thousand live captives, knowing in advance what was going to happen to them, consciously saw and felt their hearts, hands and feet being surgically sliced away by the glass-like but razor-sharp obsidian knives, this before their heads were cut off and flung, followed by the torsos, bouncing and flipping down the pyramid steps–naturally "as the crowd roared."

Other Mayans were used as target practice for various elite weapons. Raids to small villages, as depicted in Apocalypto in an unforgettable 15-minute sequence, brought a never-ending supply of fright-sickened new victims.

But the Mayans also fought wars and humiliated captured foreign leaders; as Gibson relates in the fascinating "Director’s Commentary" on the DVD, they spent nine interminable years degrading, humiliating–and amputating various parts off–a captured head of state. As Gibson related, in the end the captives were just "balls of nerve endings." It would appear that the sociopathic priests enjoyed making fools even of their own kings; the Mayan heads of state were persuaded to try accessing the gods by driving a stingray spine through their penis. (See sidebar: "Mel didn’t show half of it.")

It reminds one of George Orwell’s description in the novel 1984 of the ultimate psychopathic regime. Big Brother’s spokesman explains with chutzpah to the captured Winston Smith: "Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship [or Mayan priestly rule] in order to safeguard a revolution [or new order]; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.

"The object of persecution is persecution.

The object of torture is torture.

The object of power is power."

–Part III, chapter three

Here speaks pure sociopathy from the summit of the State.

Vast swaths of forest were also cut down for fuel by the Mayan ruling class, heedless of devastation to the environment (especially of the top soil), all this to bake the clay bricks used for these ever-higher ziggurats.[However, the Mayan and Aztec cultures (and those of the Incas, Apaches, and other Amerindians) never even invented the wheel–except as a child’s toy!–despite all those round logs they cut down and rolled and despite the vast distances encountered in the Americas. Nor did they possess horses in pre-Columbian America. So everybody trudged along, carried or pushed something with human power until Spain came in 1502.

Nor did the Mayans and Aztecs, canoers, invent the sail in a hundred generations of feeling the wind blow their canoe sideways. Perhaps they were waiting for the "white gods" to return.

Ethnographer-adventurer Thor Heyerdahl of "Kon Tiki" fame wrote in 2000 a book called Ingen Grenser–Norwegian for "No Boundaries"–where he renews his thesis, shared by many Indians 500 years ago, that ancient whites, the "white gods," had very long before founded their pre-Columbian civilizations before vanishing, along with their influence.)

All film dialogue is spoken entirely in the authentic Mayan of the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico where the film was made, and all actors, including the star, Rudy Youngblood of Texas, are Amerindians from North and Central America. (As a young man awakened by horror to his destiny and abilities, Youngblood’s performance at the hands of producer-writer-director Gibson is superlative.)

It is said that in his 2004 The Passion of the Christ, the "antisemitic" (in reality "New Testament"!) remarks are left only in the Aramaic language and are not even printed in the subtitles. Interestingly, in the French subtitles to his most recent movie, Apocalypto, even more so than in the English or Spanish subtitles, the murderous high priest makes many Talmudic-sounding statements during the human sacrifice scene.

"These are the days of our great lament," the high priest intones to the crowds from atop his pyramid. Then he asserts to the overawed mob (again, this is in the French subtitles translating the Mayan): "Notre peuple a été choisi." That means: "Our people has been chosen." (French, because of the Norman conquest of England, is often similar in vocabulary to modern English.)

In the English and Spanish subtitles, this is prudently rephrased as "We are a people of destiny" (perhaps in dishonor of Franklin Roosevelt’s inaugural address: "This generation has a rendezvous with destiny.")[footnote2: Hutton Gibson was strongly opposed to Roosevelt and his war, albeit he was wounded in 1944 in the Pacific as an Army officer.]

One recalls that when Apocalypto was released in December 2006, it was just four months since Gibson’s famous July 28, 2006 "antisemitic tirade." On Gibson’s website one sympathizer, a born-again Christian, probably expressed best why the movie-going public shrugged off Gibson’s “anti-semitic rant” and went to see Apocalypto:

"I’d like to see what the Jews say about us when they get drunk!"

We further learn from Gibson in the Director’s Commentary on the DVD — which he dispenses together with the film’s Iranian co-producer and co-writer, Farhad Safinia– that for authenticity they had all the actors playing Mayan rulers "wear curved nose prostheses."

The curvy-nosed priest then continues with his harangue: "We were chosen to be the masters of time; we were chosen to walk with the gods."

In the telling closeup, the Mayan king and high priest nervously exchange glances during the high point of the killings. We know from archeology and temple architecture–when beams of light would fall on certain points–that the Mayan priests knew exactly when eclipses would take place, but the point was to be seen as miracle workers. But will the solar eclipse yet again "do the trick" and, as darkness overshadows the great city, overawe the trusting crowd, striking a quasi-9/11-like fear in them? Will the public believe forever that through killings their leaders protect the nation from ecliptic terror and doom?

The whole scam behind their grand pleasure in killing victims was that in this way the peuple choisi would "save the harvests and the nation." (Writer Margaret Huffstickler has commented: "The eclipse is like 9/11, and invading Iraq and establishing Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib is the ‘necessary’ human sacrifice.")[footnote: On Columbus’s last expedition, in 1503-04, he was stranded for over a year on Jamaica with wrecked ships. In a scam designed to intimidate the Arawak Indians of Jamaica into feeding him and his men, he used his trusty Ephemeris from the German astronomer Regiomontanus to correctly predict the lunar eclipse of February 29, 1504. It worked; they kept feeding him.]

In the subtitle of the official Apocalypto poster, above, we read the slogan: "No one can outrun their destiny." This certainly applied to the psychopathic native ruling class of pre-Columbian Central America. At the very end of the movie, ominously, the Spanish arrive in power from their great, dark ships, with soldiers, priests and brandished crucifixes, to eventually overthrow and annihilate the murderous Mayan ruling class. How interesting for Mel Gibson to introduce for the movie’s final scene the Spain that exactly ten years before, in 1492, had not only sailed the ocean blue but expelled the Jews and fully unleashed the Inquisition on the the marranos, the secret Jews still in power in the background. (To this day, 515 years later, only one resident of Spain in two thousand is Jewish.)

Through DVD technology, we can first enjoy the artist’s cinematic work and then, merely pressing the remote control, consult him personally through his commentary as to what he was thinking, aiming at and enduring technically trying to achieve each shot and scene. We can also appreciate his use of costumes, history, authentic weapons, makeup for men and women of different classes, and see the scenes, such as the one with the burnt and limping deer, that he cut for brevity or distraction of the storytelling flow.

Truly, in the hand of the masters, the cinema is the premier art form of our time. In Apocalypto, after viewing the two-hour masterpiece, the viewer therefore should spend another profitable two hours on another day reliving each scene with this truly great artist, Mel Columcille Gibson, and his brilliant Iranian colleague Farhad Safinia, and a third hour with the "Special Features" on the DVD of Apocalypto to understand the secret ocean of detail that Gibson has channeled into this mighty current. It is what Wagner would have called a Gesamtkunstwerk, a total art form. Then–as my Barnes Review-reading friends actually did–see Apocalypto another four to six times. That is doable with a great work of art.

What stands out, finally, is what the father says in the jungle to Jaguar Paw: "Fear makes you weak, and fear makes you sick." This is, as the Will Durant quote at its beginning shows, a movie about now, about the psychopathic regime now, and about transcending the real fears we face now. And, as the hero says after he takes the plunge over the waterfall, "This is MY forest." See the movie.

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Freedom, not climate, is at risk

We are living in strange times. One exceptionally warm winter is enough – irrespective of the fact that in the course of the 20th century the global temperature increased only by 0.6 per cent – for the environmentalists and their followers to suggest radical measures to do something about the weather, and to do it right now.

In the past year, Al Gore’s so-called “documentary” film was shown in cinemas worldwide, Britain’s – more or less Tony Blair’s – Stern report was published, the fourth report of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was put together and the Group of Eight summit announced ambitions to do something about the weather. Rational and freedom-loving people have to respond. The dictates of political correctness are strict and only one permitted truth, not for the first time in human history, is imposed on us. Everything else is denounced.

The author Michael Crichton stated it clearly: “the greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda”. I feel the same way, because global warming hysteria has become a prime example of the truth versus propaganda problem. It requires courage to oppose the “established” truth, although a lot of people – including top-class scientists – see the issue of climate change entirely differently. They protest against the arrogance of those who advocate the global warming hypothesis and relate it to human activities.

As someone who lived under communism for most of his life, I feel obliged to say that I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism. This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning.

The environmentalists ask for immediate political action because they do not believe in the long-term positive impact of economic growth and ignore both the technological progress that future generations will undoubtedly enjoy, and the proven fact that the higher the wealth of society, the higher is the quality of the environment. They are Malthusian pessimists.

The scientists should help us and take into consideration the political effects of their scientific opinions. They have an obligation to declare their political and value assumptions and how much they have affected their selection and interpretation of scientific evidence.

Does it make any sense to speak about warming of the Earth when we see it in the context of the evolution of our planet over hundreds of millions of years? Every child is taught at school about temperature variations, about the ice ages, about the much warmer climate in the Middle Ages. All of us have noticed that even during our life-time temperature changes occur (in both directions).

Due to advances in technology, increases in disposable wealth, the rationality of institutions and the ability of countries to organise themselves, the adaptability of human society has been radically increased. It will continue to increase and will solve any potential consequences of mild climate changes.

I agree with Professor Richard Lindzen from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who said: “future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age”.

The issue of global warming is more about social than natural sciences and more about man and his freedom than about tenths of a degree Celsius changes in average global temperature.

As a witness to today’s worldwide debate on climate change, I suggest the following:
■Small climate changes do not demand far-reaching restrictive measures
■Any suppression of freedom and democracy should be avoided
■Instead of organising people from above, let us allow everyone to live as he wants
■Let us resist the politicisation of science and oppose the term “scientific consensus”, which is always achieved only by a loud minority, never by a silent majority
■Instead of speaking about “the environment”, let us be attentive to it in our personal behaviour
■Let us be humble but confident in the spontaneous evolution of human society. Let us trust its rationality and not try to slow it down or divert it in any direction
■Let us not scare ourselves with catastrophic forecasts, or use them to defend and promote irrational interventions in human lives.

The writer is President of the Czech Republic

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Read the sunspots

Politicians and environmentalists these days convey the impression that climate-change research is an exceptionally dull field with little left to discover. We are assured by everyone from David Suzuki to Al Gore to Prime Minister Stephen Harper that "the science is settled." At the recent G8 summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel even attempted to convince world leaders to play God by restricting carbon-dioxide emissions to a level that would magically limit the rise in world temperatures to 2C.

The fact that science is many years away from properly understanding global climate doesn’t seem to bother our leaders at all. Inviting testimony only from those who don’t question political orthodoxy on the issue, parliamentarians are charging ahead with the impossible and expensive goal of "stopping global climate change." Liberal MP Ralph Goodale’s June 11 House of Commons assertion that Parliament should have "a real good discussion about the potential for carbon capture and sequestration in dealing with carbon dioxide, which has tremendous potential for improving the climate, not only here in Canada but around the world," would be humorous were he, and even the current government, not deadly serious about devoting vast resources to this hopeless crusade.

Climate stability has never been a feature of planet Earth. The only constant about climate is change; it changes continually and, at times, quite rapidly. Many times in the past, temperatures were far higher than today, and occasionally, temperatures were colder. As recently as 6,000 years ago, it was about 3C warmer than now. Ten thousand years ago, while the world was coming out of the thou-sand-year-long "Younger Dryas" cold episode, temperatures rose as much as 6C in a decade — 100 times faster than the past century’s 0.6C warming that has so upset environmentalists.

Climate-change research is now literally exploding with new findings. Since the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the field has had more research than in all previous years combined and the discoveries are completely shattering the myths. For example, I and the first-class scientists I work with are consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate. This is not surprising. The sun and the stars are the ultimate source of all energy on the planet.

My interest in the current climate-change debate was triggered in 1998, when I was funded by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council strategic project grant to determine if there were regular cycles in West Coast fish productivity. As a result of wide swings in the populations of anchovies, herring and other commercially important West Coast fish stock, fisheries managers were having a very difficult time establishing appropriate fishing quotas. One season there would be abundant stock and broad harvesting would be acceptable; the very next year the fisheries would collapse. No one really knew why or how to predict the future health of this crucially important resource.

Although climate was suspected to play a significant role in marine productivity, only since the beginning of the 20th century have accurate fishing and temperature records been kept in this region of the northeast Pacific. We needed indicators of fish productivity over thousands of years to see whether there were recurring cycles in populations and what phenomena may be driving the changes.

My research team began to collect and analyze core samples from the bottom of deep Western Canadian fjords. The regions in which we chose to conduct our research, Effingham Inlet on the West Coast of Vancouver Island, and in 2001, sounds in the Belize-Seymour Inlet complex on the mainland coast of British Columbia, were perfect for this sort of work. The topography of these fjords is such that they contain deep basins that are subject to little water transfer from the open ocean and so water near the bottom is relatively stagnant and very low in oxygen content. As a consequence, the floors of these basins are mostly lifeless and sediment layers build up year after year, undisturbed over millennia.

Using various coring technologies, we have been able to collect more than 5,000 years’ worth of mud in these basins, with the oldest layers coming from a depth of about 11 metres below the fjord floor. Clearly visible in our mud cores are annual changes that record the different seasons: corresponding to the cool, rainy winter seasons, we see dark layers composed mostly of dirt washed into the fjord from the land; in the warm summer months we see abundant fossilized fish scales and diatoms (the most common form of phytoplankton, or single-celled ocean plants) that have fallen to the fjord floor from nutrient-rich surface waters. In years when warm summers dominated climate in the region, we clearly see far thicker layers of diatoms and fish scales than we do in cooler years. Ours is one of the highest-quality climate records available anywhere today and in it we see obvious confirmation that natural climate change can be dramatic. For example, in the middle of a 62-year slice of the record at about 4,400 years ago, there was a shift in climate in only a couple of seasons from warm, dry and sunny conditions to one that was mostly cold and rainy for several decades.

Using computers to conduct what is referred to as a "time series analysis" on the colouration and thickness of the annual layers, we have discovered repeated cycles in marine productivity in this, a region larger than Europe. Specifically, we find a very strong and consistent 11-year cycle throughout the whole record in the sediments and diatom remains. This correlates closely to the well-known 11-year "Schwabe" sunspot cycle, during which the output of the sun varies by about 0.1%. Sunspots, violent storms on the surface of the sun, have the effect of increasing solar output, so, by counting the spots visible on the surface of our star, we have an indirect measure of its varying brightness. Such records have been kept for many centuries and match very well with the changes in marine productivity we are observing.

In the sediment, diatom and fish-scale records, we also see longer period cycles, all correlating closely with other well-known regular solar variations. In particular, we see marine productivity cycles that match well with the sun’s 75-90-year "Gleissberg Cycle," the 200-500-year "Suess Cycle" and the 1,100-1,500-year "Bond Cycle." The strength of these cycles is seen to vary over time, fading in and out over the millennia. The variation in the sun’s brightness over these longer cycles may be many times greater in magnitude than that measured over the short Schwabe cycle and so are seen to impact marine productivity even more significantly.

Our finding of a direct correlation between variations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate indicators (called "proxies") is not unique. Hundreds of other studies, using proxies from tree rings in Russia’s Kola Peninsula to water levels of the Nile, show exactly the same thing: The sun appears to drive climate change.

However, there was a problem. Despite this clear and repeated correlation, the measured variations in incoming solar energy were, on their own, not sufficient to cause the climate changes we have observed in our proxies. In addition, even though the sun is brighter now than at any time in the past 8,000 years, the increase in direct solar input is not calculated to be sufficient to cause the past century’s modest warming on its own. There had to be an amplifier of some sort for the sun to be a primary driver of climate change.

Indeed, that is precisely what has been discovered. In a series of groundbreaking scientific papers starting in 2002, Veizer, Shaviv, Carslaw, and most recently Svensmark et al., have collectively demonstrated that as the output of the sun varies, and with it, our star’s protective solar wind, varying amounts of galactic cosmic rays from deep space are able to enter our solar system and penetrate the Earth’s atmosphere. These cosmic rays enhance cloud formation which, overall, has a cooling effect on the planet. When the sun’s energy output is greater, not only does the Earth warm slightly due to direct solar heating, but the stronger solar wind generated during these "high sun" periods blocks many of the cosmic rays from entering our atmosphere. Cloud cover decreases and the Earth warms still more.

The opposite occurs when the sun is less bright. More cosmic rays are able to get through to Earth’s atmosphere, more clouds form, and the planet cools more than would otherwise be the case due to direct solar effects alone. This is precisely what happened from the middle of the 17th century into the early 18th century, when the solar energy input to our atmosphere, as indicated by the number of sunspots, was at a minimum and the planet was stuck in the Little Ice Age. These new findings suggest that changes in the output of the sun caused the most recent climate change. By comparison, CO2 variations show little correlation with our planet’s climate on long, medium and even short time scales.

In some fields the science is indeed "settled." For example, plate tectonics, once highly controversial, is now so well-established that we rarely see papers on the subject at all. But the science of global climate change is still in its infancy, with many thousands of papers published every year. In a 2003 poll conducted by German environmental researchers Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch, two-thirds of more than 530 climate scientists from 27 countries surveyed did not believe that "the current state of scientific knowledge is developed well enough to allow for a reasonable assessment of the effects of greenhouse gases." About half of those polled stated that the science of climate change was not sufficiently settled to pass the issue over to policymakers at all.

Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe solar cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth. Beginning to plan for adaptation to such a cool period, one which may continue well beyond one 11-year cycle, as did the Little Ice Age, should be a priority for governments. It is global cooling, not warming, that is the major climate threat to the world, especially Canada. As a country at the northern limit to agriculture in the world, it would take very little cooling to destroy much of our food crops, while a warming would only require that we adopt farming techniques practiced to the south of us.

Meantime, we need to continue research into this, the most complex field of science ever tackled, and immediately halt wasted expenditures on the King Canute-like task of "stopping climate change."

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U.S. To Open Investigation of BAE Corruption

The U.S. Department of Justice is almost certain to open an investigation of the scandal-ridden, British-based global defense contractor BAE Systems under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, according to a report in the British-based Guardian Unlimited today.

[…]

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, U.S. Vice president Dick Cheney, and former British Ministry of Defense procurement officer Baroness Liz Symons are tied up in the biggest bribery scandal in memory, involving at least $2 billion in payoffs to Saudi Prince Bandar over a 22-year period to secure weapons deals, and billions more in slush funds paid out elsewhere.

The U.S. criminal investigation, which the Guardian reports U.S. law enforcement sources say is "99% certain," will likely scuttle BAE’s plans for taking over major U.S. arms companies to become the world’s largest defense contractor. Immediately threatened is BAE’s attempted takeover of the American defense firm Armor Holdings, producer of Humvee armor, for $4.1 billion.

But the deeper implications of the scandal threaten to blow open the secret nexus of oil, international finance, and secret intelligence operations, which has controlled global politics since the death of Franklin Roosevelt.

The biggest loser in the still unfolding global "Watergate" could be Vice President Dick Cheney, whose close collusion with Prince Bandar has contributed to the slide of the entire Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia region into a state of total ungovernability and spreading civil war.

The governments of successive British Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher, John Major and Tony Blair; the British Monarchy; and leading elements within the Saudi Royal Family are all highly implicated.

The reason for such seemingly unrelated developments as the mysterious death of British biological warfare expert David Kelly in July 2003, and the London safehousing of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, a recipient of BAE payoffs from 1997 to 2004, can be expected to surface as this massive scandal unravels.

Investigations of BAE and the British cover-up of the bribery scandal are also underway in Switzerland, Sweden, and by the Europe-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. An anti-fraud arm of the European Union, Euro-Just, is investigating similar bribery scandals in South Africa, the Czech Republic, Romania, Tanzania and Qatar.

Expect more explosive developments shortly.

Scientist calls global warming ‘hooey’

Reid Bryson, known as the father of scientific climatology, considers global warming a bunch of hooey.

The UW-Madison professor emeritus, who stands against the scientific consensus on this issue, is referred to as a global warming skeptic. But he is not skeptical that global warming exists, he is just doubtful that humans are the cause of it.

There is no question the earth has been warming. It is coming out of the "Little Ice Age," he said in an interview this week.

"However, there is no credible evidence that it is due to mankind and carbon dioxide. We’ve been coming out of a Little Ice Age for 300 years. We have not been making very much carbon dioxide for 300 years. It’s been warming up for a long time," Bryson said.

The Little Ice Age was driven by volcanic activity. That settled down so it is getting warmer, he said.

Humans are polluting the air and adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, but the effect is tiny, Bryson said.

"It’s like there is an elephant charging in and you worry about the fact that there is a fly sitting on its head. It’s just a total misplacement of emphasis," he said. "It really isn’t science because there’s no really good scientific evidence."

Just because almost all of the scientific community believes in man-made global warming proves absolutely nothing, Bryson said. "Consensus doesn’t prove anything, in science or anywhere else, except in democracy, maybe."

Bryson, 87, was the founding chairman of the department of meteorology at UW-Madison and of the Institute for Environmental Studies, now known as the Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. He retired in 1985, but has gone into the office almost every day since. He does it without pay.

"I have now worked for zero dollars since I retired, long enough that I have paid back the people of Wisconsin every cent they paid me to give me a wonderful, wonderful career. So we are even now. And I feel good about that," said Bryson.

So, if global warming isn’t such a burning issue, why are thousands of scientists so concerned about it?

"Why are so many thousands not concerned about it?" Bryson shot back.

"There is a lot of money to be made in this," he added. "If you want to be an eminent scientist you have to have a lot of grad students and a lot of grants. You can’t get grants unless you say, ‘Oh global warming, yes, yes, carbon dioxide.’"

Speaking out against global warming is like being a heretic, Bryson noted.

And it’s not something that he does regularly.

"I can’t waste my time on that, I have too many other things to do," he said.

But if somebody asks him for his opinion on global warming, he’ll give it. "And I think I know about as much about it as anybody does."

Up against his students’ students: Reporters will often call the meteorology building seeking the opinion of a scientist and some beginning graduate student will pick up the phone and say he or she is a meteorologist, Bryson said. "And that goes in the paper as ‘scientists say.’"

The word of this young graduate student then trumps the views of someone like Bryson, who has been working in the field for more than 50 years, he said. "It is sort of a smear."

Bryson said he recently wrote something on the subject and two graduate students told him he was wrong, citing research done by one of their professors. That professor, Bryson noted, is probably the student of one of his students.

"Well, that professor happened to be wrong," he said.

"There is very little truth to what is being said and an awful lot of religion. It’s almost a religion. Where you have to believe in anthropogenic (or man-made) global warming or else you are nuts."

While Bryson doesn’t think that global warming is man-made, he said there is some evidence of an effect from mankind, but not an effect of carbon dioxide.

For example, in Wisconsin in the last 100 years the biggest heating has been around Madison, Milwaukee and in the Southeast, where the cities are. There was a slight change in the Green Bay area, he said. The rest of the state shows no warming at all.

"The growth of cities makes it hotter, but that was true back in the 1930s, too," Bryson said. "Big cities were hotter than the surrounding countryside because you concentrate the traffic and you concentrate the home heating. And you modify the surface, you pave a lot of it."

Bryson didn’t see Al Gore’s movie about global warming, "An Inconvenient Truth."

"Don’t make me throw up," he said. "It is not science. It is not true."

Not so fast, say scientists: Galen McKinley, an assistant professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at UW-Madison disagrees with Bryson, whom she notes is a respected researcher and professor with a long history at the university.

"There are innumerable studies that show that the shoe fits for global warming, I guess you could say, and the human causation for it," McKinley said.

"We understand very well the basic process of the greenhouse effect, which is that we know that the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases the heat trapped by the atmosphere. You put one dollar more in the bank and you have one dollar more there tomorrow. It’s a very clear feedback," she said.

Carbon dioxide emissions have been increasing over the industrial period, about 200 years, and can be observed very clearly through about 100 monitoring stations worldwide, McKinley said.

The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing consistently with the amount that humans are putting into the atmosphere, she said.

"We know humans are putting it there, we understand the basic mechanism and we know that the temperatures are warming. Many, many, many studies illustrate that both at the global scale and at the regional scale."

She cited the work of John Magnuson, a UW-Madison professor emeritus of limnology who is internationally known for his lake studies. Magnuson records the number of days of ice on the lakes in southern Wisconsin, including Mendota and Monona.

His research shows that over the course of the last 150 years, the average has gone from about four months of ice cover to more like 2.5 months, McKinley said.

Bryson would say that it is due to coming out of an Ice Age, McKinley notes, "but the rate of change that we are seeing on the planet is inconsistent with changes in the past that have been due to an Ice Age."

The huge changes in temperature that scientists are seeing are happening much faster than have ever been observed in the past due to the change from an Ice Age phase to a non-Ice Age phase, she said.

"We know that humans are putting CO2 into the atmosphere at an incredibly fast rate, much, much faster than any natural process has done it in the last at least 400,000 years and probably more like millions of years."

The rate of change is consistent with human activity, she said. That is why so many major scientific societies are concerned about global warming, she added.

The release in February of the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) put the likelihood that human beings are the cause of global warming at 90 percent. It noted that temperatures will continue to climb for decades, that heat waves and floods will become more frequent and that the last time the Arctic and the Antarctic were warmer than they are today for an extended period — before the start of the last Ice Age — global sea levels were at least thirteen feet higher.

IPCC, founded in 1988, is the joint venture of the United Nations Environment Program and the World Meteorological Organization. Every four or five years, it conducts an exhaustive survey of the available data and issues a multivolume assessment of the state of the climate. IPCC’s reports are vetted by thousands of scientists and the organization’s 190-plus participating governments.

"My views are very similar to those expressed by IPCC," said Steve Vavrus, an associate scientist at the UW-Madison Center for Climatic Research.

"Reid Bryson maintains his long-standing opinions on anthropogenic climate change, and he’s certainly entitled to them," Vavrus said.

"The scientific process is never 100 percent sure and it could be proven wrong," McKinley added.

"But I would say that the chances of that based on all of the best information at this current time are incredibly slim. And even though that possibility is out there, it would be irresponsible of us as a society not to act based on the best scientific information we have at the moment, which is that humans are causing the warming of the planet," she said.

"If you saw smoke in your house, it would be irresponsible not to get your family out, right?"

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Darfur conflict began as climate change

Just over a week ago, leaders of the world’s industrialized nations met in Heiligendamm, Germany, for their annual summit. Our modest goal: to win a breakthrough on climate change. And we got it — an agreement to cut greenhouse gases by 50 percent before 2050. Especially gratifying for me is that the methods will be negotiated via the United Nations, better ensuring that our efforts will be mutually reinforcing.

This week, the global focus shifted. Tough but patient diplomacy produced another win, as yet modest in scope but large in humanitarian potential. Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir accepted a plan to deploy, at long last, a joint United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur. This agreement, too, is personally gratifying. I have made Darfur a top priority and have invested considerable effort, often far from public view, toward this goal.

Clearly, uncertainties remain. This deal, like others before it, could yet come undone. It could be several months before the first new troops arrive and longer before the full 23,000-member contingent is in place. Meanwhile, the fighting will probably go on, even if less intensely and despite our many calls for a cease-fire. Still, in a conflict that has claimed more than 200,000 lives during four years of diplomatic inertia, this is significant progress, especially considering that it has come in only five months.

It would be natural to view these as distinct developments. In fact, they are linked. Almost invariably, we discuss Darfur in a convenient military and political shorthand — an ethnic conflict pitting Arab militias against black rebels and farmers. Look to its roots, though, and you discover a more complex dynamic. Amid the diverse social and political causes, the Darfur conflict began as an ecological crisis, arising at least in part from climate change.

Two decades ago, the rains in southern Sudan began to fail. According to U.N. statistics, average precipitation has declined some 40 percent since the early 1980s. Scientists at first considered this to be an unfortunate quirk of nature. But subsequent investigation found that it coincided with a rise in temperatures of the Indian Ocean, disrupting seasonal monsoons. This suggests that the drying of sub-Saharan Africa derives, to some degree, from man-made global warming.

It is no accident that the violence in Darfur erupted during the drought. Until then, Arab nomadic herders had lived amicably with settled farmers. A recent Atlantic Monthly article by Stephan Faris describes how black farmers would welcome herders as they crisscrossed the land, grazing their camels and sharing wells. But once the rains stopped, farmers fenced their land for fear it would be ruined by the passing herds. For the first time in memory, there was no longer enough food and water for all. Fighting broke out. By 2003, it evolved into the full-fledged tragedy we witness today.

A U.N. peacekeeping force will help moderate the violence and keep humanitarian aid flowing, saving many lives. Yet that is only a first step, as I emphasized to my colleagues at the summit in Germany. Any peace in Darfur must be built on solutions that go to the root causes of the conflict. We can hope for the return of more than 2 million refugees. We can safeguard villages and help rebuild homes. But what to do about the essential dilemma — the fact that there’s no longer enough good land to go around?

A political solution is required. My special envoy for Darfur, Jan Eliasson, and his A.U. counterpart, Salim Ahmed Salim, have worked out a road map, beginning with a political dialogue between rebel leaders and the government and culminating in formal negotiations for peace. The initial steps could be taken by this summer.

Ultimately, however, any real solution to Darfur’s troubles involves sustained economic development. Precisely what shape that might take is unclear. But we must begin thinking about it. New technologies can help, such as genetically modified grains that thrive in arid soils or new irrigation and water storage techniques. There must be money for new roads and communications infrastructure, not to mention health, education, sanitation and social reconstruction programs. The international community needs to help organize these efforts, teaming with the Sudanese government as well as the international aid agencies and nongovernmental organizations working so heroically on the ground.

The stakes go well beyond Darfur. Jeffrey Sachs, the Columbia University economist and one of my senior advisers, notes that the violence in Somalia grows from a similarly volatile mix of food and water insecurity. So do the troubles in Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso.

There are many other parts of the world where such problems will arise, for which any solutions we find in Darfur will be relevant. We have made slow but steady progress in recent weeks. The people of Darfur have suffered too much, for too long. Now the real work begins.

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Oil Wars

In the first U.S. combat operation of the war in Iraq, Navy commandos stormed an offshore oil-loading platform. "Swooping silently out of the Persian Gulf night," an overexcited reporter for the New York Times wrote on March 22, "Navy Seals seized two Iraqi oil terminals in bold raids that ended early this morning, overwhelming lightly-armed Iraqi guards and claiming a bloodless victory in the battle for Iraq’s vast oil empire."

A year and a half later, American soldiers are still struggling to maintain control over these vital petroleum facilities — and the fighting is no longer bloodless. On April 24, two American sailors and a coastguardsman were killed when a boat they sought to intercept, presumably carrying suicide bombers, exploded near the Khor al-Amaya loading platform. Other Americans have come under fire while protecting some of the many installations in Iraq’s "oil empire."

Indeed, Iraq has developed into a two-front war: the battles for control over Iraq’s cities and the constant struggle to protect its far-flung petroleum infrastructure against sabotage and attack. The first contest has been widely reported in the American press; the second has received far less attention. Yet the fate of Iraq’s oil infrastructure could prove no less significant than that of its embattled cities. A failure to prevail in this contest would eliminate the economic basis upon which a stable Iraqi government could someday emerge. "In the grand scheme of things," a senior officer told the New York Times, "there may be no other place where our armed forces are deployed that has a greater strategic importance." In recognition of this, significant numbers of U.S. soldiers have been assigned to oil-security functions.

Top officials insist that these duties will eventually be taken over by Iraqi forces, but day by day this glorious moment seems to recede ever further into the distance. So long as American forces remain in Iraq, a significant number of them will undoubtedly spend their time guarding highly vulnerable pipelines, refineries, loading facilities, and other petroleum installations. With thousands of miles of pipeline and hundreds of major facilities at risk, this task will prove endlessly demanding – and unrelievedly hazardous. At the moment, the guerrillas seem capable of striking the country’s oil lines at times and places of their choosing, their attacks often sparking massive explosions and fires.

It has been argued that our oil-protection role is a peculiar feature of the war in Iraq, where petroleum installations are strewn about and the national economy is largely dependent on oil revenues. But Iraq is hardly the only country where American troops are risking their lives on a daily basis to protect the flow of petroleum. In Colombia, Saudi Arabia, and the Republic of Georgia, U.S. personnel are also spending their days and nights protecting pipelines and refineries, or supervising the local forces assigned to this mission. American sailors are now on oil-protection patrol in the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea, the South China Sea, and along other sea routes that deliver oil to the United States and its allies. In fact, the American military is increasingly being converted into a global oil-protection service.

The situation in the Republic of Georgia is a perfect example of this trend. Ever since the Soviet Union broke apart in 1992, American oil companies and government officials have sought to gain access to the huge oil and natural gas reserves of the Caspian Sea basin — especially in Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. Some experts believe that as many as 200 billion barrels of untapped oil lie ready to be discovered in the Caspian area, about seven times the amount left in the United States. But the Caspian itself is landlocked and so the only way to transport its oil to market in the West is by pipelines crossing the Caucasus region — the area encompassing Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and the war-torn Russian republics of Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia, and North Ossetia.

American firms are now building a major pipeline through this volatile area. Stretching a perilous 1,000 miles from Baku in Azerbaijan through Tbilisi in Georgia to Ceyhan in Turkey, it is eventually slated to carry one million barrels of oil a day to the West; but will face the constant threat of sabotage by Islamic militants and ethnic separatists along its entire length. The United States has already assumed significant responsibility for its protection, providing millions of dollars in arms and equipment to the Georgian military and deploying military specialists in Tbilisi to train and advise the Georgian troops assigned to protect this vital conduit. This American presence is only likely to expand in 2005 or 2006 when the pipeline begins to transport oil and fighting in the area intensifies.

Or take embattled Colombia, where U.S. forces are increasingly assuming responsibility for the protection of that country’s vulnerable oil pipelines. These vital conduits carry crude petroleum from fields in the interior, where a guerrilla war boils, to ports on the Caribbean coast from which it can be shipped to buyers in the United States and elsewhere. For years, left-wing guerrillas have sabotaged the pipelines — portraying them as concrete expressions of foreign exploitation and elitist rule in Bogota, the capital — to deprive the Colombian government of desperately needed income. Seeking to prop up the government and enhance its capacity to fight the guerrillas, Washington is already spending hundreds of millions of dollars to enhance oil-infrastructure security, beginning with the Cano-Limon pipeline, the sole conduit connecting Occidental Petroleum’s prolific fields in Arauca province with the Caribbean coast. As part of this effort, U.S. Army Special Forces personnel from Fort Bragg, North Carolina are now helping to train, equip, and guide a new contingent of Colombian forces whose sole mission will be to guard the pipeline and fight the guerrillas along its 480-mile route.

The use of American military personnel to help protect vulnerable oil installations in conflict-prone, chronically unstable countries is certain to expand given three critical factors: America’s ever-increasing dependence on imported petroleum, a global shift in oil production from the developed to the developing world, and the growing militarization of our foreign energy policy.

America’s dependence on imported petroleum has been growing steadily since 1972, when domestic output reached its maximum (or "peak") output of 11.6 million barrels per day (mbd). Domestic production is now running at about 9 mbd and is expected to continue to decline as older fields are depleted. (Even if some oil is eventually extracted from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, as the Bush administration desires, this downward trend will not be reversed.) Yet our total oil consumption remains on an upward course; now approximating 20 mbd, it’s projected to reach 29 mbd by 2025. This means ever more of the nation’s total petroleum supply will have to be imported — 11 mbd today (about 55% of total U.S. consumption) but 20 mbd in 2025 (69% of consumption).

More significant than this growing reliance on foreign oil, an increasing share of that oil will come from hostile, war-torn countries in the developing world, not from friendly, stable countries like Canada or Norway. This is the case because the older industrialized countries have already consumed a large share of their oil inheritance, while many producers in the developing world still possess vast reserves of untapped petroleum. As a result, we are seeing a historic shift in the center of gravity for world oil production — from the industrialized countries of the global North to the developing nations of the global South, which are often politically unstable, torn by ethnic and religious conflicts, home to extremist organizations, or some combination of all three.

Whatever deeply-rooted historical antagonisms exist in these countries, oil production itself usually acts as a further destabilizing influence. Sudden infusions of petroleum wealth in otherwise poor and underdeveloped countries tend to deepen divides between rich and poor that often fall along ethnic or religious lines, leading to persistent conflict over the distribution of petroleum revenues. To prevent such turbulence, ruling elites like the royal family in Saudi Arabia or the new oil potentates of Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan restrict or prohibit public expressions of dissent and rely on the repressive machinery of state security forces to crush opposition movements. With legal, peaceful expressions of dissent foreclosed in this manner, opposition forces soon see no options but to engage in armed rebellion or terrorism.

There is another aspect of this situation that bears examination. Many of the emerging oil producers in the developing world were once colonies of and harbor deep hostility toward the former imperial powers of Europe. The United States is seen by many in these countries as the modern inheritor of this imperial tradition. Growing resentment over social and economic traumas induced by globalization is aimed at the United States. Because oil is viewed as the primary motive for American involvement in these areas, and because the giant U.S. oil corporations are seen as the very embodiment of American power, anything to do with oil — pipelines, wells, refineries, loading platforms — is seen by insurgents as a legitimate and attractive target for attack; hence the raids on pipelines in Iraq, on oil company offices in Saudi Arabia, and on oil tankers in Yemen.

American leaders have responded to this systemic challenge to stability in oil-producing areas in a consistent fashion: by employing military means to guarantee the unhindered flow of petroleum. This approach was first adopted by the Truman and Eisenhower administrations after World War II, when Soviet adventurism in Iran and pan-Arab upheavals in the Middle East seemed to threaten the safety of Persian Gulf oil deliveries. It was given formal expression by President Carter in January 1980, when, in response to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and the Islamic revolution in Iran, he announced that the secure flow of Persian Gulf oil was in "the vital interests of the United States of America," and that in protecting this interest we would use "any means necessary, including military force." Carter’s principle of using force to protect the flow of oil was later cited by President Bush the elder to justify American intervention in the Persian Gulf War of 1990-91, and it provided the underlying strategic rationale for our recent invasion of Iraq.

Originally, this policy was largely confined to the world’s most important oil-producing region, the Persian Gulf. But given America’s ever-growing requirement for imported petroleum, U.S. officials have begun to extend it to other major producing zones, including the Caspian Sea basin, Africa, and Latin America. The initial step in this direction was taken by President Clinton, who sought to exploit the energy potential of the Caspian basin and, worrying about instability in the area, established military ties with future suppliers, including Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, and with the pivotal transit state of Georgia. It was Clinton who first championed the construction of a pipeline from Baku to Ceyhan and who initially took steps to protect that conduit by boosting the military capabilities of the countries involved. President Bush junior has built on this effort, increasing military aid to these states and deploying American combat advisers in Georgia; Bush is also considering the establishment of permanent U.S. military bases in the Caspian region.

Typically, such moves are justified as being crucial to the "war on terror." A close reading of Pentagon and State Department documents shows, however, that anti-terrorism and the protection of oil supplies are closely related in administration thinking. When requesting funds in 2004 to establish a "rapid-reaction brigade" in Kazakhstan, for example, the State Department told Congress that such a force is needed to "enhance Kazakhstan’s capability to respond to major terrorist threats to oil platforms" in the Caspian Sea.

As noted, a very similar trajectory is now under way in Colombia. The American military presence in oil-producing areas of Africa, though less conspicuous, is growing rapidly. The Department of Defense has stepped up its arms deliveries to military forces in Angola and Nigeria, and is helping to train their officers and enlisted personnel; meanwhile, Pentagon officials have begun to look for permanent U.S. bases in the area, focusing on Senegal, Ghana, Mali, Uganda, and Kenya. Although these officials tend to talk only about terrorism when explaining the need for such facilities, one officer told Greg Jaffe of the Wall Street Journal in June 2003 that "a key mission for U.S. forces [in Africa] would be to ensure that Nigeria’s oil fields, which in the future could account for as much as 25 percent of all U.S. oil imports, are secure."

An increasing share of our naval forces is also being committed to the protection of foreign oil shipments. The Navy’s Fifth Fleet, based at the island state of Bahrain, now spends much of its time patrolling the vital tanker lanes of the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz — the narrow waterway connecting the Gulf to the Arabian Sea and the larger oceans beyond. The Navy has also beefed up its ability to protect vital sea lanes in the South China Sea — the site of promising oil fields claimed by China, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia — and in the Strait of Malacca, the critical sea-link between the Persian Gulf and America’s allies in East Asia. Even Africa has come in for increased attention from the Navy. In order to increase the U.S. naval presence in waters adjoining Nigeria and other key producers, carrier battle groups assigned to the European Command (which controls the South Atlantic) will shorten their future visits to the Mediterranean "and spend half the time going down the west coast of Africa," the command’s top officer, General James Jones, announced in May 2003.

This, then, is the future of U.S. military involvement abroad. While anti-terrorism and traditional national security rhetoric will be employed to explain risky deployments abroad, a growing number of American soldiers and sailors will be committed to the protection of overseas oil fields, pipeline, refineries, and tanker routes. And because these facilities are likely to come under increasing attack from guerrillas and terrorists, the risk to American lives will grow accordingly. Inevitably, we will pay a higher price in blood for every additional gallon of oil we obtain from abroad.

Has Baghdad Captured Petraeus?

When top British general Sir William Howe marched his powerful professional army of Redcoats, American Loyalists, and German mercenaries into Philadelphia in 1777 it appeared the American Revolutionary War was over.

At least Howe and King George III were convinced the American revolutionaries were defeated, their Congress forced to flee the city and General George Washington’s army apparently shocked and awed from the battlefield. The king’s troops entered Philadelphia in triumph and settled down for a comfortable winter in this, the British Empire’s second largest city, with its many Loyalists and their pretty ladies. To Parliament back in London, Howe’s capture of Philadelphia seemed a brilliant move – politically, at least: Howe had shown the hitherto unconvinced British population that a military solution to the American colonial uprising might be possible.

American revolutionary leaders were not, however, about to give up the fight. And as for Howe’s occupation of Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin described it another way:

“Howe has not captured Philadelphia. Philadelphia has captured Howe.”

The most powerful military force in North America – one of Britain’s best field armies – was actually bottled up far from its main supply base at New York. Howe was in Philadelphia, but what was he to do next if the revolutionaries continued to fight? And fighting was precisely Washington’s intention. He stepped up training at Valley Forge, and his army’s morale rose. Further, France, with its powerful navy, entered the war on the side of the revolutionaries. It became apparent that the revolution was not defeated, and the British army in Philadelphia could be cut off by land and sea.

Howe, a brilliant general, became the scapegoat for misguided British colonial policies and was compelled to resign his command – all this for taking Philadelphia! By springtime, Howe’s replacement, General Henry Clinton, had to abandon the city. Clinton began a fighting withdrawal, marching his troops back to New York.

On a hot and steamy June day at Monmouth, New Jersey, the Americans fought Howe’s best troops to a standstill, inflicting heavy losses. A formerly ragtag revolutionary force was now a formidable and confident field army. Now, the American Revolution could not be defeated.

The revolutionaries might not win by pitched battle, but time was on their side. They were fighting for their own homeland, on their own soil. It was a classic insurgent scenario, to be replayed many times in the following centuries, from Napoleon’s failed invasion of Russia to Hitler’s failed occupation of Europe and America’s failed campaigns in Indochina. The Revolutionary War dragged on another five years, but the result was total victory for the uprising. In the future, many of the best British regiments would mention little about the “American War” in their otherwise glorified regimental histories.

Is there a comparison to be made between Howe’s proud army and the tens of thousands of American troops now “occupying” Baghdad under the command of the much-admired General David Petraeus? Well, there is always a comparison in cases of military folly.

With Petraeus’s troops scattered in company-sized units planted in vulnerable outposts throughout the city’s ever-dangerous neighborhoods, the American army is being made captive. Captive to the teeming, violent city of Baghdad. Captive to the anti-occupation insurgents, who now have the initiative to strike when and where they choose. Captive, also, to the whims of American domestic politics, wherever they might lead. Captive to the arrogance of political and military leaders who said the seizure of Iraq would be a “cakewalk” and are now desperate for any victory, anything that might be described as victory, at whatever cost, in the coming few months.

Have President George Bush and the “Neoconservatives” and our leading military commanders walked into a trap of their own making in Baghdad? Just like Sir Billy Howe in Philadelphia?

More important, more crucial: What if the Iraqi puppet government collapses, and with it go the army and police – essential allies in any block-by-block contest? And if the Iraqi insurgents make it too costly in terms of truck drivers’ lives and helicopters to supply those thousands of duty-bound soldiers in their scattered outposts, how do we extricate them? As with Howe in 1777, the main American supply bases are far away – mostly to the south, in Kuwait and other client states. Vital American supply lines are vulnerable to being cut by roadside bombs and calculated, determined insurgent attacks.

An “exit strategy” from Iraq that depends on fighting rather than political agreements will wash Baghdad’s streets in blood this summer. Much of it American blood.

What then, as the question goes, are we fighting for?

To avoid a humiliating and bloody retreat from Baghdad? Is this what our soldiers are killing and dying for? Or to prevent a defeat that has been brought on by corrupt leadership at the highest level of our government? Or to prop up an incompetent administration in Washington until the next election?

Historically, the result of such misguided policies is always the same: Dead fighters on both sides. Many more dead civilians. And humiliation for the invaders, no matter how brave or patriotic they might be.

Now is the time, before it is too late, to lay the groundwork for all parties concerned with the destiny of Iraq to forge a truce that will permit General Petraeus and his army to leave Baghdad with some semblance of military honor. Otherwise, so many American soldiers will be stationed in vulnerable posts throughout the city that it could be said Baghdad has captured General Petraeus.

Just as Philadelphia once captured General Howe.

Stuart A.P. Murray, author of thirty five books, specializes in American history.

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The word ?marriage? is now ?hate speech?

The words “natural family,” “marriage” and “union of a man and a woman” can be punished as “hate speech” in government workplaces, according to a lawsuit that is being appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Briefs for Good News Employee Association vs. Hicks, which were filed June 5 with the nation’s highest court, lists D.C. school board President Robert C. Bobb as one of two plaintiffs. The case originated five years ago in Oakland, Calif., during his tenure there as city manager.

The dispute began in January 2003, when the two Oakland employees created a subgroup at their workplace called the “Good News Employee Association.” It was partly in response to a group of homosexual employees having formed their own group 10 months before and being given access to the city e-mail system. One e-mail, dated Oct. 11, 2002, invited city employees to participate in “National Coming-Out Day.”

When several employees asked whether such a posting was legitimate city business, they got an e-mail from City Council member Danny Wan, reminding them that a “celebration of the gay/lesbian culture and movement” was part of the city’s role to “celebrate diversity.”

In response, the Good News employees posted an introductory flier on the employee bulletin board Jan. 3.

It said: “Preserve Our Workplace With Integrity: Good News Employee Association is a forum for people of faith to express their views on the contemporary issues of the day.” It said it opposed “all views which seek to redefine the natural family and marriage,” which it defined as “a union of a man and a woman, according to California state law.”

Anyone who wanted to help preserve “integrity in the workplace” was invited to contact the two employees: Regina Rederford and Robin Christy.

A lesbian co-worker, Judith Jennings, spotted the flier and complained to the city attorney’s office that it made her feel “targeted” and “excluded,” according to a deposition. The flier was removed by a supervisor because it violated the city’s anti-discrimination rules.

A U.S. District Court for Northern California ruling said the words "natural family" and "marriage" had "anti-homosexual import."

However, Miss Rederford was told she could announce the group’s presence on the city’s e-mail system if she removed "verbiage that could be offensive to gay people."

In late February 2003, Joyce Hicks, a city deputy executive director and the other defendant in the suit, sent out a memo to city employees. It cited recent incidents where "fliers were placed in public view which contained statements of a homophobic nature" and warned employees they could be fired for posting such material.

Miss Rederford and Miss Christy sued the city, claiming their First Amendment rights had been violated. According to court documents, employees had posted bulletin announcements on everything from terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden to local sporting events, yet those had not been removed.

The district court disagreed, saying the women had other venues in which to proclaim their message. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said employees’ freedom of speech takes a back seat to employers’ "legitimate administrative interests." They were allowed to submit a new flier, subject to "certain editorial constraints."

"This incredible and devastating ruling has had the practical effect of silencing hundreds, if not thousands, of City of Oakland employees who simply wish to talk about marriage and family values," said a statement from the Pro-Family Law Center in Temecula, Calif., which represents the plaintiffs. "To the extent that this ruling has been shared by Oakland with other cities, there is a huge risk that these rulings are being treated as precedent by other cities across the nation," the statement continued.

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Sudan is secret partner of U.S.

Sudan has secretly worked with the CIA to spy on the insurgency in Iraq – an example of how the United States has continued to cooperate with the Sudanese regime even while condemning its role in the killing of tens of thousands of civilians in Darfur.

President Bush has condemned the killings in Darfur as genocide and has imposed sanctions on Sudan’s government. But some critics say the administration has soft-pedaled the sanctions to preserve its extensive intelligence collaboration with Sudan.

The relationship underscores the complex realities of the post-Sept. 11 world, in which the United States has relied heavily on intelligence and military cooperation from countries, including Sudan and Uzbekistan, that are considered pariah states for their records on human rights.

"Intelligence cooperation takes place for a whole lot of reasons," said a U.S. intelligence official, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity when discussing intelligence assessments. "It’s not always between people who love each other deeply."

Sudan has become increasingly valuable to the United States since the Sept. 11 attacks because the Sunni Arab nation is a crossroads for Islamic militants making their way to Iraq and Pakistan.

That steady flow of foreign fighters has provided cover for Sudan’s Mukhabarat intelligence service to insert spies into Iraq, officials said.

"If you’ve got jihadists traveling via Sudan to get into Iraq, there’s a pattern there in and of itself that would not raise suspicion," said a former high-ranking CIA official familiar with Sudan’s cooperation with the agency. "It creates an opportunity to send Sudanese into that pipeline."

As a result, Sudan’s spies have often been in better position than the CIA to gather information on al-Qaida’s presence in Iraq, as well as on the activities of other insurgent groups.

"There’s not much that blond-haired, blue-eyed case officers from the United States can do in the entire Middle East, and there’s nothing they can do in Iraq," said a second former CIA official familiar with Sudan’s cooperation. "Sudanese can go places we don’t go. They’re Arabs. They can wander around."

The officials declined to say whether the Mukhabarat has sent its own intelligence officers into the country, citing concern over the protection of sources and methods. They said that Sudan has assembled a network of informants in Iraq providing intelligence on the insurgency. Some may have been recruited as they traveled through the Sudanese capital, Khartoum.

The U.S.-Sudan relationship goes beyond Iraq. Sudan has helped the United States track the turmoil in Somalia, working to cultivate contacts with militias and Islamic courts in an effort to locate al-Qaida suspects hiding there. Sudan also has provided extensive cooperation in counter-terrorism operations, acting on U.S. requests to detain suspects as they pass through Khartoum.

Sudan gets a number of benefits in return. Its relationship with the CIA has given it an important back channel for communications with the U.S. government. The U.S. has also used this channel to lean on Sudan over the crisis in Darfur and for other issues.

And at a time when Sudan is being condemned in the international community, its counterterrorism work has won precious praise. The U.S. State Department recently issued a report calling Sudan a "strong partner in the war on terror."

Some critics accuse the Bush administration of being soft on Sudan for fear of jeopardizing the cooperation on counterterrorism. John Prendergast, the former director of African affairs for the National Security Council in the Clinton administration, called the latest sanctions announced by Bush last month "window dressing," designed to appear tough while putting little real pressure on Sudan to halt government-linked Arab militias from killing members of African tribes in Darfur.

"One of the main glass ceilings on real significant action in response to the genocide in Darfur has been our growing relationship with authorities in Khartoum on counterterrorism," said Prendergast, now with the International Crisis Group. "It is the single biggest contributor to why the gap between rhetoric and action is so large."

In an interview, Sudan’s ambassador to the United States, John Ukec Lueth Ukec, suggested that the sanctions could affect the country’s willingness to cooperate on intelligence matters. The steps announced by Bush include banning 31 businesses owned by the Sudanese government from access to the U.S. financial system.

The decision to impose financial penalties "was not a good idea," Ukec said. "It diminishes our cooperation. And it makes those who are on the extreme side, who do not want cooperation with the United States, stronger."

But White House and U.S. intelligence officials played down the prospect that the intelligence cooperation would suffer, saying that it is in both countries’ interests.

‘For God’s Sake, Please Stop the Aid!’

The Kenyan economics expert James Shikwati, 35, says that aid to Africa does more harm than good. The avid proponent of globalization spoke with SPIEGEL about the disastrous effects of Western development policy in Africa, corrupt rulers, and the tendency to overstate the AIDS problem.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Shikwati, the G8 summit at Gleneagles is about to beef up the development aid for Africa…

Shikwati: … for God’s sake, please just stop.

SPIEGEL: Stop? The industrialized nations of the West want to eliminate hunger and poverty.

Shikwati: Such intentions have been damaging our continent for the past 40 years. If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally terminate this awful aid. The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape. Despite the billions that have poured in to Africa, the continent remains poor.

SPIEGEL: Do you have an explanation for this paradox?

Shikwati: Huge bureaucracies are financed (with the aid money), corruption and complacency are promoted, Africans are taught to be beggars and not to be independent. In addition, development aid weakens the local markets everywhere and dampens the spirit of entrepreneurship that we so desperately need. As absurd as it may sound: Development aid is one of the reasons for Africa’s problems. If the West were to cancel these payments, normal Africans wouldn’t even notice. Only the functionaries would be hard hit. Which is why they maintain that the world would stop turning without this development aid.

SPIEGEL: Even in a country like Kenya, people are starving to death each year. Someone has got to help them.

Shikwati: But it has to be the Kenyans themselves who help these people. When there’s a drought in a region of Kenya, our corrupt politicians reflexively cry out for more help. This call then reaches the United Nations World Food Program — which is a massive agency of apparatchiks who are in the absurd situation of, on the one hand, being dedicated to the fight against hunger while, on the other hand, being faced with unemployment were hunger actually eliminated. It’s only natural that they willingly accept the plea for more help. And it’s not uncommon that they demand a little more money than the respective African government originally requested. They then forward that request to their headquarters, and before long, several thousands tons of corn are shipped to Africa …

SPIEGEL: … corn that predominantly comes from highly-subsidized European and American farmers …

Shikwati: … and at some point, this corn ends up in the harbor of Mombasa. A portion of the corn often goes directly into the hands of unsrupulous politicians who then pass it on to their own tribe to boost their next election campaign. Another portion of the shipment ends up on the black market where the corn is dumped at extremely low prices. Local farmers may as well put down their hoes right away; no one can compete with the UN’s World Food Program. And because the farmers go under in the face of this pressure, Kenya would have no reserves to draw on if there actually were a famine next year. It’s a simple but fatal cycle.

SPIEGEL: If the World Food Program didn’t do anything, the people would starve.

Shikwati: I don’t think so. In such a case, the Kenyans, for a change, would be forced to initiate trade relations with Uganda or Tanzania, and buy their food there. This type of trade is vital for Africa. It would force us to improve our own infrastructure, while making national borders — drawn by the Europeans by the way — more permeable. It would also force us to establish laws favoring market economy.

SPIEGEL: Would Africa actually be able to solve these problems on its own?

Shikwati: Of course. Hunger should not be a problem in most of the countries south of the Sahara. In addition, there are vast natural resources: oil, gold, diamonds. Africa is always only portrayed as a continent of suffering, but most figures are vastly exaggerated. In the industrial nations, there’s a sense that Africa would go under without development aid. But believe me, Africa existed before you Europeans came along. And we didn’t do all that poorly either.

SPIEGEL: But AIDS didn’t exist at that time.

Shikwati: If one were to believe all the horrorifying reports, then all Kenyans should actually be dead by now. But now, tests are being carried out everywhere, and it turns out that the figures were vastly exaggerated. It’s not three million Kenyans that are infected. All of the sudden, it’s only about one million. Malaria is just as much of a problem, but people rarely talk about that.

SPIEGEL: And why’s that?

Shikwati: AIDS is big business, maybe Africa’s biggest business. There’s nothing else that can generate as much aid money as shocking figures on AIDS. AIDS is a political disease here, and we should be very skeptical.

SPIEGEL: The Americans and Europeans have frozen funds previously pledged to Kenya. The country is too corrupt, they say.

Shikwati: I am afraid, though, that the money will still be transfered before long. After all, it has to go somewhere. Unfortunately, the Europeans’ devastating urge to do good can no longer be countered with reason. It makes no sense whatsoever that directly after the new Kenyan government was elected — a leadership change that ended the dictatorship of Daniel arap Mois — the faucets were suddenly opened and streams of money poured into the country.

SPIEGEL: Such aid is usually earmarked for a specific objective, though.

Shikwati: That doesn’t change anything. Millions of dollars earmarked for the fight against AIDS are still stashed away in Kenyan bank accounts and have not been spent. Our politicians were overwhelmed with money, and they try to siphon off as much as possible. The late tyrant of the Central African Republic, Jean Bedel Bokassa, cynically summed it up by saying: "The French government pays for everything in our country. We ask the French for money. We get it, and then we waste it."

SPIEGEL: In the West, there are many compassionate citizens wanting to help Africa. Each year, they donate money and pack their old clothes into collection bags …

Shikwati: … and they flood our markets with that stuff. We can buy these donated clothes cheaply at our so-called Mitumba markets. There are Germans who spend a few dollars to get used Bayern Munich or Werder Bremen jerseys, in other words, clothes that that some German kids sent to Africa for a good cause. After buying these jerseys, they auction them off at Ebay and send them back to Germany — for three times the price. That’s insanity …

SPIEGEL: … and hopefully an exception.

Shikwati: Why do we get these mountains of clothes? No one is freezing here. Instead, our tailors lose their livlihoods. They’re in the same position as our farmers. No one in the low-wage world of Africa can be cost-efficient enough to keep pace with donated products. In 1997, 137,000 workers were employed in Nigeria’s textile industry. By 2003, the figure had dropped to 57,000. The results are the same in all other areas where overwhelming helpfulness and fragile African markets collide.

SPIEGEL: Following World War II, Germany only managed to get back on its feet because the Americans poured money into the country through the Marshall Plan. Wouldn’t that qualify as successful development aid?

Shikwati: In Germany’s case, only the destroyed infrastructure had to be repaired. Despite the economic crisis of the Weimar Republic, Germany was a highly- industrialized country before the war. The damages created by the tsunami in Thailand can also be fixed with a little money and some reconstruction aid. Africa, however, must take the first steps into modernity on its own. There must be a change in mentality. We have to stop perceiving ourselves as beggars. These days, Africans only perceive themselves as victims. On the other hand, no one can really picture an African as a businessman. In order to change the current situation, it would be helpful if the aid organizations were to pull out.

SPIEGEL: If they did that, many jobs would be immediately lost …

Shikwati: … jobs that were created artificially in the first place and that distort reality. Jobs with foreign aid organizations are, of course, quite popular, and they can be very selective in choosing the best people. When an aid organization needs a driver, dozens apply for the job. And because it’s unacceptable that the aid worker’s chauffeur only speaks his own tribal language, an applicant is needed who also speaks English fluently — and, ideally, one who is also well mannered. So you end up with some African biochemist driving an aid worker around, distributing European food, and forcing local farmers out of their jobs. That’s just crazy!

SPIEGEL: The German government takes pride in precisely monitoring the recipients of its funds.

Shikwati: And what’s the result? A disaster. The German government threw money right at Rwanda’s president Paul Kagame. This is a man who has the deaths of a million people on his conscience — people that his army killed in the neighboring country of Congo.

SPIEGEL: What are the Germans supposed to do?

Shikwati: If they really want to fight poverty, they should completely halt development aid and give Africa the opportunity to ensure its own survival. Currently, Africa is like a child that immediately cries for its babysitter when something goes wrong. Africa should stand on its own two feet.

Interview conducted by Thilo Thielke

Translated from the German by Patrick Kessler

Pentagon wanted a “gay bomb”

A Berkeley watchdog organization that tracks military spending said it uncovered a strange U.S. military proposal to create a hormone bomb that could purportedly turn enemy soldiers into homosexuals and make them more interested in sex than fighting.

Pentagon officials on Friday confirmed to CBS 5 that military leaders had considered, and then subsquently rejected, building the so-called "Gay Bomb."

Edward Hammond, of Berkeley’s Sunshine Project, had used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain a copy of the proposal from the Air Force’s Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio.

As part of a military effort to develop non-lethal weapons, the proposal suggested, "One distasteful but completely non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behavior."

The documents show the Air Force lab asked for $7.5 million to develop such a chemical weapon.

"The Ohio Air Force lab proposed that a bomb be developed that contained a chemical that would cause enemy soliders to become gay, and to have their units break down because all their soldiers became irresistably attractive to one another," Hammond said after reviwing the documents.

"The notion was that a chemical that would probably be pleasant in the human body in low quantities could be identified, and by virtue of either breathing or having their skin exposed to this chemical, the notion was that soliders would become gay," explained Hammond.

The Pentagon told CBS 5 that the proposal was made by the Air Force in 1994.

"The Department of Defense is committed to identifying, researching and developing non-lethal weapons that will support our men and women in uniform," said a DOD spokesperson, who indicated that the "gay bomb" idea was quickly dismissed.

However, Hammond said the government records he obtained suggest the military gave the plan much stronger consideration than it has acknowledged.

"The truth of the matter is it would have never come to my attention if it was dismissed at the time it was proposed," he said. "In fact, the Pentagon has used it repeatedly and subsequently in an effort to promote non-lethal weapons, and in fact they submitted it to the highest scientific review body in the country for them to consider."

Military officials insisted Friday to CBS 5 that they are not currently working on any such idea and that the past plan was abandoned.

Gay community leaders in California said Friday that they found the notion of a "gay bomb" both offensive and almost laughable at the same time.

"Throughout history we have had so many brave men and women who are gay and lesbian serving the military with distinction," said Geoff Kors of Equality California. "So, it’s just offensive that they think by turning people gay that the other military would be incapable of doing their job. And its absurd because there’s so much medical data that shows that sexual orientation is immutable and cannot be changed."