From Slate. Read original story in The Daily Beast | Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2010

Read original story in USA Today | Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2009

The following talk was given on February 13, 2009, at Cowell Theatre in Fort Mason Center, San Francisco, to an audience of 550 people. Audio and video of the talk will be available on Long Now Foundation web site.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for showing up. It’s certainly nice to travel all the way across the North American continent and have a few people come to see you, even if the occasion isn’t a happy one. You are here to listen to me talk about social collapse and the various ways we can avoid screwing that up along with everything else that’s gone wrong. I know it’s a lot to ask of you, because why wouldn’t you instead want to go and eat, drink, and be merry? Well, perhaps there will still be time left for that after my talk.

I would like to thank the Long Now Foundation for inviting me, and I feel very honored to appear in the same venue as many serious, professional people, such as Michael Pollan, who will be here in May, or some of the previous speakers, such as Nassim Taleb, or Brian Eno – some of my favorite people, really. I am just a tourist. I flew over here to give this talk and to take in the sights, and then I’ll fly back to Boston and go back to my day job. Well, I am also a blogger. And I also wrote a book. But then everyone has a book, or so it would seem.

You might ask yourself, then, Why on earth did he get invited to speak here tonight? It seems that I am enjoying my moment in the limelight, because I am one of the very few people who several years ago unequivocally predicted the demise of the United States as a global superpower. The idea that the USA will go the way of the USSR seemed preposterous at the time. It doesn’t seem so preposterous any more. I take it some of you are still hedging your bets. How is that hedge fund doing, by the way?

I think I prefer remaining just a tourist, because I have learned from experience – luckily, from other people’s experience – that being a superpower collapse predictor is not a good career choice. I learned that by observing what happened to the people who successfully predicted the collapse of the USSR. Do you know who Andrei Amalrik is? See, my point exactly. He successfully predicted the collapse of the USSR. He was off by just half a decade. That was another valuable lesson for me, which is why I will not give you an exact date when USA will turn into FUSA (“F” is for “Former”). But even if someone could choreograph the whole event, it still wouldn’t make for much of a career, because once it all starts falling apart, people have far more important things to attend to than marveling at the wonderful predictive abilities of some Cassandra-like person.

From Norfolk Genetic Information Network (Taken from Welcome to the Spin Machine by Michael Manville http://www.freezerbox.com/archive/2001/04/biotech/ http://www.freezerbox.com/ )

In 1985 Monsanto purchased G.D. Searle, the chemical company that held the patent to aspartame, the active ingredient in NutraSweet. Monsanto was apparently untroubled by aspartame’s clouded past, including a 1980 FDA Board of Inquiry, comprised of three independent scientists, which confirmed that it “might induce brain tumors.”

The FDA had actually banned aspartame based on this finding, only to have Searle Chairman Donald Rumsfeld (currently the Secretary of Defense) vow to “call in his markers,” to get it approved.

On January 21, 1981, the day after Ronald Reagan’s inauguration, Searle re-applied to the FDA for approval to use aspartame in food sweetener, and Reagan’s new FDA commissioner, Arthur Hayes Hull, Jr., appointed a 5-person Scientific Commission to review the board of inquiry’s decision.

It soon became clear that the panel would uphold the ban by a 3-2 decision, but Hull then installed a sixth member on the commission, and the vote became deadlocked. He then personally broke the tie in aspartame’s favor. Hull later left the FDA under allegations of impropriety, served briefly as Provost at New York Medical College, and then took a position with Burston-Marsteller, the chief public relations firm for both Monsanto and GD Searle. Since that time he has never spoken publicly about aspartame.

The Aspartame/NutraSweet Timeline

http://www.swankin-turner.com/aspartame.html http://www.swankin-turner.com/hist.html

Aspartame/NutraSweet: The History of the Aspartame Controversy

By James Turner, ESQ. Director of the National Institute of Science, Law, and Public Policy (NISLAPP)

National Institute of Science, Law, and Public Policy 1400 16th Street, NW, Suite 330, Washington, DC 20036 (202) 462-8800 Fax: (202) 265-6564 nislapp@swankin-turner.com

• December 1965– While working on an ulcer drug, James Schlatter, a chemist at G.D. Searle, accidentally discovers aspartame, a substance that is 180 times sweeter than sugar yet has no calories.
• Spring 1967– Searle begins the safety tests on aspartame that are necessary for applying for FDA approval of food additives.
• Fall 1967– Dr. Harold Waisman, a biochemist at the University of Wisconsin, conducts aspartame safety tests on infant monkeys on behalf of the Searle Company. Of the seven monkeys that were being fed aspartame mixed with milk, one dies and five others have grand mal seizures.
• November 1970– Cyclamate, the reigning low-calorie artificial sweetener — is pulled off the market after some scientists associate it with cancer. Questions are also raised about safety of saccharin, the only other artificial sweetener on the market, leaving the field wide open for aspartame.
• December 18, 1970– Searle Company executives lay out a “Food and Drug Sweetener Strategy’ that they feel will put the FDA into a positive frame of mind about aspartame. An internal policy memo describes psychological tactics the company should use to bring the FDA into a subconscious spirit of participation” with them on aspartame and get FDA regulators into the “habit of saying, “Yes”.”
• Spring 1971– Neuroscientist Dr. John Olney (whose pioneering work with monosodium glutamate was responsible for having it removed from baby foods) informs Searle that his studies show that aspartic acid (one of the ingredients of aspartame) caused holes in the brains of infant mice. One of Searle’s own researchers confirmed Dr. Olney’s findings in a similar study.
• February 1973– After spending tens of millions of dollars conducting safety tests, the G.D. Searle Company applies for FDA approval and submits over 100 studies they claim support aspartame’s safety.
• March 5, 1973– One of the first FDA scientists to review the aspartame safety data states that “the information provided (by Searle) is inadequate to permit an evaluation of the potential toxicity of aspartame”. She says in her report that in order to be certain that aspartame is safe, further clinical tests are needed.
• May 1974– Attorney, Jim Turner (consumer advocate who was instrumental in getting cyclamate taken off the market) meets with Searle representatives to discuss Dr. Olney’s 1971 study which showed that aspartic acid caused holes in the brains of infant mice.
• July 26, 1974– The FDA grants aspartame its first approval for restricted use in dry foods.
• August 1974– Jim Turner and Dr. John Olney file the first objections against aspartame’s approval.
• March 24, 1976– Turner and Olney’s petition triggers an FDA investigation of the laboratory practices of aspartame’s manufacturer, G.D. Searle. The investigation finds Searle’s testing procedures shoddy, full of inaccuracies and “manipulated” test data. The investigators report they “had never seen anything as bad as Searle’s testing.”
• January 10, 1977– The FDA formally requests the U.S. Attorney’s office to begin grand jury proceedings to investigate whether indictments should be filed against Searle for knowingly misrepresenting findings and “concealing material facts and making false statements” in aspartame safety tests. This is the first time in the FDA’s history that they request a criminal investigation of a manufacturer.
• January 26, 1977– While the grand jury probe is underway, Sidley & Austin, the law firm representing Searle, begins job negotiations with the U.S. Attorney in charge of the investigation, Samuel Skinner.
• March 8, 1977– G. D. Searle hires prominent Washington insider Donald Rumsfeld as the new CEO to try to turn the beleaguered company around. A former Member of Congress and Secretary of Defense in the Ford Administration, Rumsfeld brings in several of his Washington cronies as top management.
• July 1, 1977– Samuel Skinner leaves the U.S. Attorney’s office and takes a job with Searle’s law firm. (see Jan. 26th)
• August 1, 1977– The Bressler Report, compiled by FDA investigators and headed by Jerome Bressler, is released. The report finds that 98 of the 196 animals died during one of Searle’s studies and weren’t autopsied until later dates, in some cases over one year after death. Many other errors and inconsistencies are noted. For example, a rat was reported alive, then dead, then alive, then dead again; a mass, a uterine polyp, and ovarian neoplasms were found in animals but not reported or diagnosed in Searle’s reports.
• December 8, 1977– U.S. Attorney Skinner’s withdrawal and resignation stalls the Searle grand jury investigation for so long that the statue of limitations on the aspartame charges runs out. The grand jury investigation is dropped.
• June 1, 1979– The FDA established a Public Board of Inquiry (PBOI) to rule on safety issues surrounding NutraSweet.
• September 30, 1980– The Public Board of Inquiry concludes NutraSweet should not be approved pending further investigations of brain tumors in animals. The board states it “has not been presented with proof of reasonable certainty that aspartame is safe for use as a food additive.”
• January 1981– Donald Rumsfeld, CEO of Searle, states in a sales meeting that he is going to make a big push to get aspartame approved within the year. Rumsfeld says he will use his political pull in Washington, rather than scientific means, to make sure it gets approved.
• January 21, 1981– Ronald Reagan is sworn in as President of the United States. Reagan’s transition team, which includes Donald Rumsfeld, CEO of G. D. Searle, hand picks Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes Jr. to be the new FDA Commissioner.
• March, 1981– An FDA commissioner’s panel is established to review issues raised by the Public Board of Inquiry.
• May 19, 1981– Three of six in-house FDA scientists who were responsible for reviewing the brain tumor issues, Dr. Robert Condon, Dr. Satya Dubey, and Dr. Douglas Park, advise against approval of NutraSweet, stating on the record that the Searle tests are unreliable and not adequate to determine the safety of aspartame.
• July 15, 1981– In one of his first official acts, Dr. Arthur Hayes Jr., the new FDA commissioner, overrules the Public Board of Inquiry, ignores the recommendations of his own internal FDA team and approves NutraSweet for dry products. Hayes says that aspartame has been shown to be safe for its’ proposed uses and says few compounds have withstood such detailed testing and repeated close scrutiny.
• October 15, 1982– The FDA announces that Searle has filed a petition that aspartame be approved as a sweetener in carbonated beverages and other liquids.
• July 1, 1983– The National Soft Drink Association (NSDA) urges the FDA to delay approval of aspartame for carbonated beverages pending further testing because aspartame is very unstable in liquid form. When liquid aspartame is stored in temperatures above 85 degrees Fahrenheit, it breaks down into DKP and formaldehyde, both of which are known toxins.
• July 8, 1983– The National Soft Drink Association drafts an objection to the final ruling which permits the use of aspartame in carbonated beverages and syrup bases and requests a hearing on the objections. The association says that Searle has not provided responsible certainty that aspartame and its’ degradation products are safe for use in soft drinks.
• August 8, 1983– Consumer Attorney, Jim Turner of the Community Nutrition Institute and Dr. Woodrow Monte, Arizona State University’s Director of Food Science and Nutritional Laboratories, file suit with the FDA objecting to aspartame approval based on unresolved safety issues.
• September, 1983– FDA Commissioner Hayes resigns under a cloud of controversy about his taking unauthorized rides aboard a General Foods jet. (General foods is a major customer of NutraSweet) Burson-Marsteller, Searle’s public relation firm (which also represented several of NutraSweet’s major users), immediately hires Hayes as senior scientific consultant.
• Fall 1983– The first carbonated beverages containing aspartame are sold for public consumption.
• November 1984– Center for Disease Control (CDC) “Evaluation of consumer complaints related to aspartame use.” (summary by B. Mullarkey)
• November 3, 1987– U.S. hearing, “NutraSweet: Health and Safety Concerns,” Committee on Labor and Human Resources, Senator Howard Metzenbaum, chairman.

********************

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/857 RTM: www.dorway.com: original documents and long reviews of flaws in aspartame toxicity research 7.31.2 rmforall

http://www.dorway.com/upipart1.txt UPI reporter Gregory Gordon: 96K 3-part expose Oct 1987

“Survey of aspartame studies: correlation of outcome and funding sources,” 1998, unpublished: http://www.dorway.com/peerrev.html Walton found 166 separate published studies in the peer reviewed medical literature, which had relevance for questions of human safety. The 74 studies funded by industry all (100%) attested to aspartame’s safety, whereas of the 92 non-industry funded studies, 84 (91%) identified a problem. Six of the seven non-industry funded studies that were favorable to aspartame safety were from the FDA, which has a public record that shows a strong pro-industry bias. Ralph G. Walton, MD, Prof. of Clinical Psychology, Northeastern Ohio Universities, College of Medicine, Dept. of Psychiatry, Youngstown, OH 44501, Chairman, The Center for Behavioral Medicine, Northside Medical Center, 500 Gypsy Lane, P.O. Box 240 Youngstown, OH 44501 330-740-3621 rwalton193@aol.com http://www.neoucom.edu/DEPTS/Psychiatry/walton.htm

Why do they hate the West so much, we will ask

Robert Fisk, The Independent. 7 January 2009.

Israel in Gaza: Irrationality

Wallace Shawn. The Nation. 29 December 2008.

Jews, historically, have been irrationally feared, hated and killed. Given that background, it’s not surprising that the irrationality which surrounded them for so long, the fire of irrationality in which they were almost extinguished, has jumped across and taken hold of the soul of many Jews and indeed dominates the thinking of today’s Israeli leaders and their American supporters.

Recent history shows that the Jews, as a people, have found few friends who are honest and true. During World War II, when Hitler’s anti-Semitism was responsible for the murdering of the millions of Jews, the world and the United States expressed their own anti-Semitism by refusing to house and welcome the tortured race, preferring instead to let it be exterminated if need be. After the war, the world felt it owed the Jews something–but then showed its lack of true regard for the tormented group by “giving” them a piece of land populated and surrounded by another people–an act of European imperialism carried out exactly at the moment when non-European peoples all over the world were finally concluding that European imperialism was completely unacceptable and had to be resisted. And now we have the spectacle of American politicians encouraging and financing Israeli policies which will ultimately lead to more disaster and destruction for Jews.

There was a moment after 9/11 when the world’s attitude toward the United States was one of solidarity. Many of us were deeply grieved that Bush turned his back on the world, and fanned the flames of hatred-based fear of the Other instead. So soon, it seems, we have come upon another such rare moment in U.S. history, and the world again feels solidarity with us, only this time, not in mourning with us, but in celebration of our step in the direction of moral progress. “If America can elect a black man, then why can’t Kenya shun tribalism and elect anyone, regardless of tribe?”

November 6, 2008 | Washington Post Foreign Service

by Stephanie McCrummen

KOGELO, Kenya, Nov. 5 — By afternoon on Wednesday, truckloads of Kenyans from all over the country were making a kind of pilgrimage to a place now known as White House Africa.

It is the rural home of President-elect Barack Obama’s Kenyan grandmother, a modest but sprawling compound with neatly trimmed grass and deep-green mango trees, where crowds of cheering, dancing, singing people spent the day reveling in the victory of the man they simply call “our son.”

“It’s something we never thought we would achieve,” said John Omondi, 20, a student who lives in this village of farmers where Obama’s father grew up. “I’m so happy that America has set an example to the whole world, that any one of us can make it.”

The news of Obama’s triumph reached Kenya as the sun rose Wednesday, and within minutes, a wave of euphoria — and some serious reflection — washed across this East African nation, where weeks of violence after a presidential election in late 2007 left many people deeply pessimistic about democracy.

On Wednesday, though, Kenyans were speaking of a restored confidence and hope in their country. Prime Minister Raila Odinga, who is from the same area and tribe as Obama’s father and who says he lost the election because of vote rigging, declared Thursday a national holiday, saying Obama’s victory was also one for Kenya.

Revelers paraded through the streets waving American flags, Obama posters and branches of palms and other trees, and some neighborhoods and villages were renamed — Florida, Ohio, North Carolina.

People spoke jokingly of Kenya becoming a 51st U.S. state.

“This election shows that the kinds of changes we believe in are possible,” said Bonaventure Mboya, a textbook salesman named for a much-loved Kenyan politician assassinated in 1969. “We feel as if we are Americans.”

Mboya was among a few hundred people from this village who gathered in a field under tents through the cool Tuesday night. They had hoped for months, prayed for hours and now were watching election returns projected on a big white sheet. Some tallied electoral votes on scraps of paper. Others struggled to stay awake, not realizing the significance of early returns from some place called Pennsylvania.

When the announcement came, though, the reaction was quick.

“Hallelujah!” a preacher yelled into a microphone just after CNN anchorman Wolf Blitzer said Obama had won. “It’s celebration time! Obama has put Kenya on the world map and the whole of Africa on the world map!”

People began hugging and dancing, hoisting their white plastic chairs.

Others just stood there, as John Odihiambo did, taking it all in, tears in his eyes.

“It’s like a miracle,” he said, confessing to a cynicism that seemed to vanish with Obama’s victory. “There was that doubt that with black-white relations in America, that a black man could not be elected. But he was,” said Odihiambo, a government worker who, like many here, drew a parallel between overcoming racism in the United States and rising above tribalism, the bane of Kenyan society. “If America can elect a black man, then why can’t Kenya shun tribalism and elect anyone, regardless of tribe?”

Down the road, people in the town of Luanda gathered around a little TV at Hawker’s Base, a hardware store, and listened to Obama’s victory speech — in which he talked about the ability to change and perfect the American union.

“It’s wonderful,” said Mboya, the Kogelo salesman, who heard the news on the BBC and sent his wife a one-line text message: “We have done it.”

“He’s suggesting that the world has finally changed,” Mboya said.

As Obama began to invoke the signature line of his campaign — “Yes, we can” — before a sea of supporters in Chicago, a Kenyan on the other side of the world finished the speech for him.

“Twa wenza,” Mboya said, offering the phrase in Swahili.

Kenyans have been riveted by the U.S. election since Obama announced his candidacy last year. There has been a run on framed photos of Obama, as well as buttons and bumper stickers supporting his cause; artists have recorded reggae songs about Obama that blared from car radios and kiosks Wednesday. Babies have been named Barack Obama. A production called “Obama, The Musical” opened in Nairobi.

In Kisumu, the provincial capital about an hour from here that was hit hard by post-election riots in January, Kenyans held a mock vote Tuesday, with some people walking and biking for more than two hours to cast fake ballots for Obama.

But underneath the exuberant pride at seeing an American with Kenyan roots elected president, there was something else. Many here said Obama’s victory could inspire real change in Kenyan or even African politics, where cliques of insiders have dominated elections since independence by appealing to tribal voting blocs.

“Obama does not belong to the lineage of a political class, and he had no particular wealth to begin with except for his own convictions,” said Moses Mubula, 35, a farmer who was watching the returns on the white-sheet screen here as the sky began to glow light blue. “So the best part . . . is that it symbolizes the crumbling of racial barriers, age barriers, class barriers, and maybe we here in Kenya can break that jinx, too.”

Sitting next to Mubula, Robinson Stanley, 22, seemed to latch on to that idea, saying that Obama’s victory might inspire a younger generation of Kenyans to enter politics and pursue an office without appealing to tribalism.

“It is time for a younger generation,” said Stanley, who lives day-to-day selling vegetables in Kogelo, quotes Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Lincoln, and has tentative political ambitions. “This is an inspiration to all young people. We can see that America is a country of many tribes — you have Germans, British, French, Africans. . . . I see that America can only be great if they all come together.”

Obama’s grandmother, Sarah Hussein Obama, watched his victory from inside her home, which has been transformed in recent months as its significance became clear.

A fence was installed around the compound, and armed guards were posted out front to handle intruders and journalists who began camping out there as Election Day approached. For that matter, Kogelo has also been transformed, with its dirt roads widened and power lines installed in an area where people tend to rely on generators for electricity.

By midmorning, Sarah Obama was out in the sunshine dancing with other villagers and slaughtering bulls, goats and chickens for a celebration that carried on until sunset. At times, the festivities veered to the extreme: “Obama is king of the world!” one young man yelled.

About 6 p.m., a truck with an Obama poster plastered to the windshield brought in a load of revelers from Busia, a town near the border with Uganda. The passengers hopped out and began dancing around an American flag.

“We are very much grateful” for Obama’s win, said Samuel Walala, 40. “It’s as if our son became president. . . . Something has happened in America.”

Even when faced with new facts and insights, most voters don’t change their minds about their favorite candidates. A neurologist explains how they might.

Sept. 22, 2008 | Salon.com

by Robert Burton

“Let’s make sure that there is certainty during uncertain times” — George W. Bush, 2008

Last week, I jokingly asked a health club acquaintance whether he would change his mind about his choice for president if presented with sufficient facts that contradicted his present beliefs. He responded with utter confidence. “Absolutely not,” he said. “No new facts will change my mind because I know that these facts are correct.”

I was floored. In his brief rebuttal, he blindly demonstrated overconfidence in his own ideas and the inability to consider how new facts might alter a presently cherished opinion. Worse, he seemed unaware of how irrational his response might appear to others. It’s clear, I thought, that carefully constructed arguments and presentation of irrefutable evidence will not change this man’s mind.

In the current presidential election, a major percentage of voters are already committed to “their candidate”; new arguments and evidence fall on deaf ears. And yet, if we, as a country, truly want change, we must be open-minded, flexible and willing to revise our opinions when new evidence warrants it. Most important, we must be able to recognize and acknowledge when we are wrong.

Unfortunately, cognitive science offers some fairly sobering observations about our ability to judge ourselves and others.

Perhaps the single academic study most germane to the present election is the 1999 psychology paper by David Dunning and Justin Kruger, “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments.” The two Cornell psychologists began with the following assumptions.

Incompetent individuals tend to overestimate their own level of skill.

Incompetent individuals fail to recognize genuine skill in others.

Incompetent individuals fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy.

To put their theories to the test, the psychologists asked a group of Cornell undergraduates to undergo a series of self-assessments, including tests of logical reasoning taken from a Law School Admissions Test preparation guide. Prior to being shown their test scores, the subjects were asked to estimate how they thought they would fare in comparison with the others taking the tests.

On average, participants placed themselves in the 66th percentile, revealing that most of us tend to overestimate our skills somewhat. But those in the bottom 25 percent consistently overestimated their ability to the greatest extent. For example, in the logical reasoning section, individuals that scored in the 12th percentile believed that their general reasoning abilities fell at the 68th percentile, and that their overall scores would be in the 62nd percentile. The authors point out that the problem was not primarily underestimating how others had done; those in the bottom quartile overestimated the number of their correct answers by nearly 50 percent. Similarly, after seeing the answers of the best performers — those in the top quartile — those in the bottom quartile continued to believe that they had performed well.

The article’s conclusion should be posted as a caveat under every political speech of those seeking office. And it should serve as the epitaph for the Bush administration: “People who lack the knowledge or wisdom to perform well are often unaware of this fact. That is, the same incompetence that leads them to make wrong choices also deprives them of the savvy necessary to recognize competence, be it their own or anyone else’s.”

The converse also bears repeating. Despite the fact that students in the top quartile fairly accurately estimated how well they did, they also tended to overestimate the performance of others. In short, smart people tend to believe that everyone else “gets it.” Incompetent people display both an increasing tendency to overestimate their cognitive abilities and a belief that they are smarter than the majority of those demonstrably sharper.

Closely allied with this unshakable self-confidence in one’s decisions is a second separate aspect of meta-cognition, the feeling of being right. As I have pointed out in my recent book, “On Being Certain,” feelings of conviction, certainty and other similar states of “knowing what we know” may feel like logical conclusions, but are in fact involuntary mental sensations that function independently of reason. At their most extreme, these are the spontaneous “aha” or “Eureka” sensations that tell you that you have made a major discovery. Lesser forms include gut feelings, hunches and vague intuitions of knowing something, as well as the standard “yes, that’s right” feeling that you get when you solve a problem.

The evidence is substantial that these feelings do not correlate with the accuracy or quality of the thought. Indeed, these feelings can occur in the absence of any specific thought, such as with electrical and chemical brain stimulation. They can also occur spontaneously during so-called mystical or spiritual epiphanies in which the affected person senses an immediate “understanding of the meaning or purpose of the universe.” William James described this phenomenon as “felt knowledge.”

Feelings of absolute certainty and utter conviction are not rational deliberate conclusions; they are involuntary mental sensations generated by the brain. Like other powerful mental states such as love, anger and fear, they are extraordinarily difficult to dislodge through rational arguments. Just as it’s nearly impossible to reason with someone who’s enraged and combative, refuting or diminishing one’s sense of certainty is extraordinarily difficult. Certainty is neither created by nor dispelled by reason.

Similarly, without access to objective evidence, we are terrible at determining whether a candidate is telling us the truth. Most large-scale psychological studies suggest that the average person is incapable of accurately predicting whether someone is lying. In most studies, our abilities to make such predictions, based on facial expressions and body language, are no greater than by chance alone — hardly a recommendation for choosing a presidential candidate based upon a gut feeling that he or she is honest.

Worse, our ability to assess political candidates is particularly questionable when we have any strong feeling about them. An oft-quoted fMRI study by Emory psychologist Drew Westen illustrates how little conscious reason is involved in political decision-making.

Westen asked staunch party members from both sides to evaluate negative (defamatory) information about their 2004 presidential choice. Areas of the brain (prefrontal cortex) normally engaged during reasoning failed to show increased activation. Instead, the limbic system — the center for emotional processing — lit up dramatically. According to Westen, both Republicans and Democrats “reached totally biased conclusions by ignoring information that could not rationally be discounted” (cognitive dissonance).

In other words, we are as bad at judging ourselves as we are at judging others. Most cognitive scientists now believe that the majority of our thoughts originate in the areas of the brain inaccessible to conscious introspection. These beginnings of thoughts arrive in consciousness already colored with inherent bias. No two people see the world alike. Each of our perceptions is filtered through our genetic predispositions, inherent biologic differences and idiosyncratic life experiences. Your red is not my red. These differences extend to the very building blocks of thoughts; each of us will look at any given question from his own predispositions. Thinking may be as idiosyncratic as fingerprints.

As a result, we are all plagued by bias, self-deceit and poor character judgment. So, is there a better approach, a better methodology for assessing important personal qualities when the chips are down? After all, when that 3 a.m. emergency call comes, we won’t care about a president’s charm, church, oratorical abilities, cuteness of children, whether he or she wears designer glasses, is the world’s greatest war hero, has an Arabic-sounding middle name or “feels like one of us.”

Would we choose a neurosurgeon for those reasons? I would choose a neurosurgeon for his or her dexterity and decision-making. So I want a president aware of how his mind works, as well as what he suspects are his inborn biases and intellectual limitations. Ironically, the acknowledgment of intellectual limitations may be the best evidence for superior decision-making skills. Contrary to George Bush’s belief, we do not want certainty in the White House. We want flexibility and an acknowledgment that certainty is often a sign of ignorance.

Unfortunately, sound bites, TV interviews and presidential debates often fail to reveal the candidates’ real thought processes — how each would approach a new or complex problem for which he or she doesn’t already have a pat answer.

Ideally, I would like to put the candidates through a series of tests similar to those given to the Cornell undergraduates. The candidates would be given questions, including a variety of “thought experiments” for which they could not be prepared in advance. Then we could see their thought processes in action. We would have a better idea of how they reasoned and whether they rely on gut feelings and instincts. We could see their ability to step back from their own answers to judge their quality and accuracy.

As many of the most pressing issues of the day have a large science component, I would particularly want to focus on each candidate’s intellectual grasp of scientific method, from choosing and evaluating evidence to seeing how they would respond to a well-constructed contrary line of reasoning. I would want them to answer difficult, complex questions about aspects of science such as global warming, stem-cell research or alternative energy sources for which they may not have adequate knowledge. I want to see how the candidates respond when stumped. Are they evasive, flustered or straightforward in admitting what they don’t know or understand? Equally important, I would like to see how each responds when presented with evidence that his answers are wrong. Is he or she capable of admitting to having made an error? Would he or she be flexible enough to change an opinion?

And, when answers seem to conflict with traditional reasoning and scientific method, I would want the candidate to explain why he or she continues to hold such beliefs. For example, give me a reason-based, scientific explanation of speaking in tongues, or how one can objectively determine that one has “heard the voice of God,” or that the Earth is 7,000 years old. This is not meant as a challenge to one’s faith — each of us is entitled to our beliefs. But as a public servant, each candidate has the obligation to explain how non-scientific beliefs are justified. If a candidate insists on a faith-based decision, such as “knowing” that the Earth is only as old as written in the Bible, I want to hear how that is justified in the face of contrary evidence.

Each of the candidates has repeatedly emphasized that this is a pivotal moment in American history. They are all experienced in interviewing potential co-workers, running partners and job applicants. I doubt that they would stop at allowing an applicant to simply recite his qualifications. So the candidates should be willing, even eager to submit to the most difficult personal interrogations themselves. After all, this is an opportunity to demonstrate their intellectual prowess and skills with decision-making. Conversely, no candidate should be allowed to retreat into canned speeches or evasive comments.

Many of the failures of post-9/11 American policy were caused by or aggravated by the inability of our president to recognize his intellectual limitations (including his choice of advisors), keep an open mind, evaluate evidence such as the presence or absence of weapons of mass destruction, and listen to all sides of a complex issue. Perhaps this could have been avoided if Bush had been forced to publicly answer serious multifaceted questions prior to the election. Let’s not make the same mistake again.

The next six weeks are our only chance to elect the most qualified candidate. This is not a time for interviewer politeness and gentle repartee that sidesteps controversial or delicate issues. It is not enough to hear each candidate regurgitate memorized and rehearsed policy statements; we must know what they will do and how they will act in situations for which they have not been adequately prepared. Leadership is measured by the best decisions during the worst times.

Thanks to Eva Dadlez for bringing the article to my attention. –BL

[P]rices for corn, soybeans, wheat, oats, rice and other grains began shooting through the roof… food [is] becoming the new gold…. For the 1 billion living on less than a dollar a day, it is a matter of survival. In a mud hut on the Sahara’s edge, Manthita Sou, a 43-year-old widow in the Mauritanian desert village of Maghleg, is confronting wheat prices that are up 67 percent on local markets in the past year. Her solution: stop eating bread….

This year, at least a fifth and perhaps a quarter of the U.S. corn crop will be fed to ethanol plants.

A brutal convergence of events has hit an unprepared global market, and grain prices are sky high. The world’s poor suffer most.

Sunday, 27 April 2008; A01 | Washington Post

by Anthony Faiola

The globe’s worst food crisis in a generation emerged as a blip on the big boards and computer screens of America’s great grain exchanges. At first, it seemed like little more than a bout of bad weather.

In Chicago, Minneapolis and Kansas City, traders watched from the pits early last summer as wheat prices spiked amid mediocre harvests in the United States and Europe and signs of prolonged drought in Australia. But within a few weeks, the traders discerned an ominous snowball effect — one that would eventually bring down a prime minister in Haiti, make more children in Mauritania go to bed hungry, even cause American executives at Sam’s Club to restrict sales of large bags of rice.

As prices rose, major grain producers including Argentina and Ukraine, battling inflation caused in part by soaring oil bills, were moving to bar exports on a range of crops to control costs at home. It meant less supply on world markets even as global demand entered a fundamentally new phase. Already, corn prices had been climbing for months on the back of booming government-subsidized ethanol programs. Soybeans were facing pressure from surging demand in China. But as supplies in the pipelines of global trade shrank, prices for corn, soybeans, wheat, oats, rice and other grains began shooting through the roof.

At the same time, food was becoming the new gold. Investors fleeing Wall Street’s mortgage-related strife plowed hundreds of millions of dollars into grain futures, driving prices up even more. By Christmas, a global panic was building. With fewer places to turn, and tempted by the weaker dollar, nations staged a run on the American wheat harvest.

Foreign buyers, who typically seek to purchase one or two months’ supply of wheat at a time, suddenly began to stockpile. They put in orders on U.S. grain exchanges two to three times larger than normal as food riots began to erupt worldwide. This led major domestic U.S. mills to jump into the fray with their own massive orders, fearing that there would soon be no wheat left at any price.

“Japan, the Philippines, [South] Korea, Taiwan — they all came in with huge orders, and no matter how high prices go, they keep on buying,” said Jeff Voge, chairman of the Kansas City Board of Trade and also an independent trader. Grains have surged so high, he said, that some traders are walking off the floor for weeks at a time, unable to handle the stress.

“We have never seen anything like this before,” Voge said. “Prices are going up more in one day than they have during entire years in the past. But no matter the price, there always seems to be a buyer. . . . This isn’t just any commodity. It is food, and people need to eat.”

Beyond Hunger

The food price shock now roiling world markets is destabilizing governments, igniting street riots and threatening to send a new wave of hunger rippling through the world’s poorest nations. It is outpacing even the Soviet grain emergency of 1972-75, when world food prices rose 78 percent. By comparison, from the beginning of 2005 to early 2008, prices leapt 80 percent, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization. Much of the increase is being absorbed by middle men — distributors, processors, even governments — but consumers worldwide are still feeling the pinch.

The convergence of events has thrown world food supply and demand out of whack and snowballed into civil turmoil. After hungry mobs and violent riots beset Port-au-Prince, Haitian Prime Minister Jacques-?douard Alexis was forced to step down this month. At least 14 countries have been racked by food-related violence. In Malaysia, Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi is struggling for political survival after a March rebuke from voters furious over food prices. In Bangladesh, more than 20,000 factory workers protesting food prices rampaged through the streets two weeks ago, injuring at least 50 people.

To quell unrest, countries including Indonesia are digging deep to boost food subsidies. The U.N. World Food Program has warned of an alarming surge in hunger in areas as far-flung as North Korea and West Africa. The crisis, it fears, will plunge more than 100 million of the world’s poorest people deeper into poverty, forced to spend more and more of their income on skyrocketing food bills.

“This crisis could result in a cascade of others . . . and become a multidimensional problem affecting economic growth, social progress and even political security around the world,” U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said.

The New Normal

Prices for some crops — such as wheat — have already begun to descend off their highs. As farmers rush to plant more wheat now that profit prospects have climbed, analysts predict that prices may come down as much as 30 percent in the coming months. But that would still leave a year-over-year price hike of 45 percent. Few believe prices will go back to where they were in early 2006, suggesting that the world must cope with a new reality of more expensive food.

People worldwide are coping in different ways. For the 1 billion living on less than a dollar a day, it is a matter of survival. In a mud hut on the Sahara’s edge, Manthita Sou, a 43-year-old widow in the Mauritanian desert village of Maghleg, is confronting wheat prices that are up 67 percent on local markets in the past year. Her solution: stop eating bread. Instead, she has downgraded to cheaper foods, such as sorghum, a dark grain widely consumed by the world’s poorest people. But sorghum has jumped 20 percent in the past 12 months. Living on the 50 cents a day she earns weaving textiles to support a family of three, her answer has been to cut out breakfast, drink tea for lunch and ration a small serving of soupy sorghum meal for family dinners. “I don’t know how long we can survive like this,” she said.

Countries that have driven food demand in recent years are now grappling with the cost of their own success — rising prices. Although China has tried to calm its people by announcing reserve grain holdings of 30 to 40 percent of annual production, a number that had been a state secret, anxiety is still running high. In the southern province of Guangdong, there are reports of grain hoarding; and in Hong Kong, consumers have stripped store shelves of bags of rice.

Liu Yinhua, a retired factory worker who lives in the port city of Ningbo on China’s east coast, said her family of three still eats the same things, including pork ribs, fish and vegetables. But they are eating less of it.

“Almost everything is more expensive now, even normal green vegetables,” said Liu, 53. “The level of our quality of life is definitely reduced.”

In India, the government recently scrapped all import duties on cooking oils and banned exports of non-basmati rice. As in many parts of the developing world, the impact in India is being felt the most among the urban poor who have fled rural life to live in teeming slums. At a dusty and nearly empty market in one New Delhi neighborhood this week, shopkeeper Manjeet Singh, 52, said people at the market have started hoarding because of fear that rice and oil will run out.

“If one doesn’t have enough to fill one’s own stomach, then what’s the use of an economic boom in exports?” he said, looking sluggish in the scorching afternoon sun. He said his customers were asking for cheaper goods, like groundnut oil instead of soybean oil.

Even wealthy nations are being forced to adjust to a new normal. In Japan, a country with a distinct cultural aversion to cheaper, genetically modified grains, manufacturers are risking public backlash by importing them for use in processed foods for the first time. Inflation in the 15-country zone that uses the euro — which includes France, Germany, Spain and Italy — hit 3.6 percent in March, the highest rate since the currency was adopted almost a decade ago and well above the European Central Bank’s target of 2.0 percent. Food and oil prices were mostly to blame.

In the United States, experts say consumers are scaling down on quality and scaling up on quantity if it means a better unit price. In the meat aisles of major grocery stores, said Phil Lempert, a supermarket analyst, steaks are giving way to chopped beef and people used to buying fresh blueberries are moving to frozen. Some are even trying to grow their own vegetables.

“A bigger pinch than ever before,” said Pat Carroll, a retiree in Congress Heights. “I don’t ever remember paying $3 for a loaf of bread.”

Ill-Equipped Markets

The root cause of price surges varies from crop to crop. But the crisis is being driven in part by an unprecedented linkage of the food chain.

A big reason for higher wheat prices, for instance, is the multiyear drought in Australia, something that scientists say may become persistent because of global warming. But wheat prices are also rising because U.S. farmers have been planting less of it, or moving wheat to less fertile ground. That is partly because they are planting more corn to capitalize on the biofuel frenzy.

This year, at least a fifth and perhaps a quarter of the U.S. corn crop will be fed to ethanol plants. As food and fuel fuse, it has presented a boon to American farmers after years of stable prices. But it has also helped spark the broader food-price shock.

“If you didn’t have ethanol, you would not have the prices we have today,” said Bruce Babcock, a professor of economics and the director of the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development at Iowa State University. “It doesn’t mean it’s the sole driver. Prices would be higher than we saw earlier in this decade because world grain supplies are tighter now than earlier in the decade. But we’ve introduced a new demand into the market.”

In fact, many economists now say food prices should have climbed much higher much earlier.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the world seemed to shrink with rapidly opening markets, surging trade and improved communication and transportation technology. Given new market efficiencies and the wide availability of relatively cheap food, the once-common practice of hoarding grains to protect against the kind of shortfall the world is seeing now seemed more and more archaic. Global grain reserves plunged.

Yet there was one big problem. The global food trade never became the kind of well-honed machine that has made the price of manufactured goods such as personal computers and flat-screen TVs increasingly similar worldwide. With food, significant subsidies and other barriers meant to protect farmers — particularly in Europe, the United States and Japan — have distorted the real price of food globally, economists say, preventing the market from normal price adjustments as global demand has climbed.

If market forces had played a larger role in food trade, some now argue, the world would have had more time to adjust to more gradually rising prices.

“The international food trade didn’t undergo the same kind of liberalization as other trade,” said Richard Feltes, senior vice president of MF Global, a futures brokerage. “We can see now that the world has largely failed in its attempt to create an integrated food market.”

In recent years, there has been a great push to liberalize food markets worldwide — part of what is known as the “Doha round” of world trade talks — but resistance has come from both the developed and developing worlds. Perhaps more than any other sector, nations have a visceral desire to protect their farmers, and thusly, their food supply. The current food crisis is causing advocates on both sides to dig in.

Consider, for instance, the French.

The European Union doles out about $41 billion a year in agriculture subsidies, with France getting the biggest share, about $8.2 billion. The 27-nation bloc also has set a target for biofuels to supply 10 percent of transportation fuel needs by 2020 to combat global warming.

The French, whose farmers over the years have become addicted to generous government handouts, argue that agriculture subsidies must be continued and even increased in order to encourage more food production, especially with looming shortages.

Last week, French Agriculture Minister Michel Barnier warned E.U. officials against “too much trust in the free market.”

“We must not leave the vital issue of feeding people,” he said, “to the mercy of market laws and international speculation.”

Staff writers Dan Morgan, Steven Mufson and Jane Black in Washington and correspondents Ariana Eunjung Cha in Beijing, Emily Wax in New Delhi and John Ward Anderson in Paris contributed to this report.

Study found local ownership means more local news

15 September 2006 | FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting)

A 2004 Federal Communications Commission study that showed locally owned television stations provide more local news than others was ordered destroyed by FCC officials, and only came to light this week when a copy was leaked to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D.-Calif.).

Three years ago, then-FCC chair Michael Powell launched a proceeding on the effects of local ownership on television news as part of his drive to further deregulate media and allow for even greater consolidation. But the report commissioned under Powell turned out to undermine his argument that consolidation has no ill effects on local news, and, according to former FCC lawyer Adam Candeub, senior managers ordered “every last piece” of the study destroyed (AP, 9/14/06). On September 12, Senator Boxer, armed with the leaked report, questioned current FCC Chair Kevin Martin about it at his renomination hearing.

According to the report, locally owned stations in fact deliver nearly six minutes more of total news and almost five-and-a-half more minutes of local news in a 30-minute newscast than stations with non-local owners. This adds up to 33 more hours of local news a year–a remarkable figure, and a damning one for big media’s allies in the FCC, who are required to protect the public interest and to promote localism.

As the Prometheus Radio Project noted (9/15/06):

Former FCC Chairman Michael Powell…made many high-sounding pronouncements about the need for media policy to be rooted in empirical evidence. Powell also attempted to separate out the issue of media consolidation from localism, claiming that most of the millions of comments to the Commission stemmed from a concern about local content, not a concern about concentration of ownership into fewer hands.

Martin, who succeeded Powell in 2005 as chair, voted in 2003 for ownership rules that would have dramatically raised ownership caps. The rules were sharply contested by media activists and others, and a federal appeals court struck them down in 2004. Martin told Boxer he hadn’t been aware of the report and has promised to keep “an open mind” on media consolidation as the FCC embarks once again on a review of its media ownership rules (Daily Variety, 9/13/06). The FCC has since posted the full report on its website.

Powell likewise denied any knowledge of the report or responsibility for its suppression (AP, 9/15/06).

Boxer has called on the FCC’s inspector general to conduct a formal, independent investigation into the suppression of the study. As the FCC revisits its ownership rules once again, transparency and a true commitment to the public interest are vital.

ACTION: Contact the FCC and encourage the Inspector General to conduct an investigation into the suppression of the media ownership report.

CONTACT: FCC, Office of the Inspector General, hotline@fcc.gov, Phone: (202) 418-0470

You can also file a comment with the FCC at
http://www.stopbigmedia.com/coverup.php