OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel Finkelstein, a noted Israeli archeologist and academic at Tel Aviv university, questioned the Jewish claims about the discovery of King David palace in Khirbet Qeiyafa, west of occupied Jerusalem, expressing his belief that the finds belong to an ancient Arab civilization.
Finkelstein said that it could be true that the site discovered dates back to the eighth or tenth century BC, but it could have been built in that period by the Palestinians, the Arab Canaanites or other peoples in the region.
He said he believes that the site was probably built by other ancient kingdoms in the region, especially since there is no conclusive physical evidence suggesting it is the palace of King David.
Israeli archeologists had claimed to have discovered the site of King David Palace in Khirbet Qeiyafa, according to the Jerusalem Post. The report also said that the diggings have been going on for seven years at the site and had revealed two huge Jewish buildings, a palace and a storehouse.
An excellent presentation disputing man-made global warming using nothing but pure science and statistics by Professor Bob Carter (Australian geologist). It would be very difficult to dispute his facts. In this video he pretty much proves that over 10,000 years the earth has been cooling. Looking at shorter periods of time one can find whatever they want in the numbers. There have been many periods of rapid warming and cooling over this period.
He examines the data concerning climate change, Global warming, the problems with the idea that CO2 is driving climate change and global warming, & examples of the scientific data being ignored over popularist views about CO2 causing climate change and Global warming;… the hypothesis fails the test.
As Anthony and others have pointed out, even the New York Times has at last been constrained to admit what Dr. Pachauri of the IPCC was constrained to admit some months ago. There has been no global warming statistically distinguishable from zero for getting on for two decades.
The NYTsays the absence of warming arises because skeptics cherry-pick 1998, the year of the Great el Niño, as their starting point. However, as Anthony explained yesterday, the stasis goes back farther than that. He says we shall soon be approaching Dr. Ben Santer’s 17-year test: if there is no warming for 17 years, the models are wrong.
Usefully, the latest version of the Hadley Centre/Climatic Research Unit monthly global mean surface temperature anomaly series provides not only the anomalies themselves but also the 2 σ uncertainties.
Superimposing the temperature curve and its least-squares linear-regression trend on the statistical insignificance region bounded by the means of the trends on these published uncertainties since January 1996 demonstrates that there has been no statistically-significant warming in 17 years 4 months:
The fact that an apparent warming rate equivalent to almost 0.9 Cº is statistically insignificant may seem surprising at first sight, but there are two reasons for it. First, the published uncertainties are substantial: approximately 0.15 Cº either side of the central estimate.
Secondly, one weakness of linear regression is that it is unduly influenced by outliers. Visibly, the Great el Niño of 1998 is one such outlier.
If 1998 were the only outlier, and particularly if it were the largest, going back to 1996 would be much the same as cherry-picking 1998 itself as the start date.
However, the magnitude of the 1998 positive outlier is countervailed by that of the 1996/7 la Niña. Also, there is a still more substantial positive outlier in the shape of the 2007 el Niño, against which the la Niña of 2008 countervails.
In passing, note that the cooling from January 2007 to January 2008 is the fastest January-to-January cooling in the HadCRUT4 record going back to 1850.
Bearing these considerations in mind, going back to January 1996 is a fair test for statistical significance. And, as the graph shows, there has been no warming that we can statistically distinguish from zero throughout that period, for even the rightmost endpoint of the regression trend-line falls (albeit barely) within the region of statistical insignificance.
Be that as it may, one should beware of focusing the debate solely on how many years and months have passed without significant global warming. Another strong el Niño could – at least temporarily – bring the long period without warming to an end. If so, the cry-babies [salaried agenda-men – Aletho News] will screech that catastrophic global warming has resumed, the models were right all along, etc., etc.
It is better to focus on the ever-widening discrepancy between predicted and observed warming rates. The IPCC’s forthcoming Fifth Assessment Report backcasts the interval of 34 models’ global warming projections to 2005, since when the world should have been warming at a rate equivalent to 2.33 Cº/century. Instead, it has been cooling at a rate equivalent to a statistically-insignificant 0.87 Cº/century:
The variance between prediction and observation over the 100 months from January 2005 to April 2013 is thus equivalent to 3.2 Cº/century.
The correlation coefficient is low, the period of record is short, and I have not yet obtained the monthly projected-anomaly data from the modelers to allow a proper p-value comparison.
Yet it is becoming difficult to suggest with a straight face that the models’ projections are healthily on track.
From now on, I propose to publish a monthly index of the variance between the IPCC’s predicted global warming and the thermometers’ measurements. That variance may well inexorably widen over time.
In any event, the index will limit the scope for false claims that the world continues to warm at an unprecedented and dangerous rate.
Although many Americans believe their universities are places where administrators and faculty members coexist on a fairly equal basis, the reality is that this is far from the case.
According to recent surveys by the Chronicle of Higher Education, 35 private university presidents and 4 public university presidents topped $1 million in total earnings during the 2011-2012 fiscal year. Among the public university presidents, Graham Spanier of Pennsylvania State University received $2.9 million for that year, followed by Jay Gogue of Auburn University ($2.5 million), E. Gordon Gee of Ohio State University ($1.9 million), and Alan Merten of George Mason University ($1.9 million). Overall, the presidents of public universities — the poor relations of their private university counterparts — had a median annual total compensation of $441,392.
This very substantial income does not include many additional perks. According to the New York Times, President Gee is known for “the lavish lifestyle his job supports, including a rent-free mansion with an elevator, a pool and a tennis court and flights on private jets.”
Moreover, despite hard times, including pay cuts, for many Americans, university presidents are rapidly increasing their income. President Gogue’s annual earnings soared from $720,000 to $2.5 million in a single year. Between 2010-2011 and 2011-2012, the number of public university presidents in the $600,000 to $700,000 income range jumped from 13 to 28.
Of course, it might be argued that they “earned” these hefty incomes through superior performance on the job. But is this true?
President Spanier, whose $2.9 million income in 2011-2012 made him the best-paid public university president in the United States, resigned his post in November 2011. His resignation came five days after the arrest of Jerry Sandusky, the Penn State assistant football coach, on child sex abuse charges — charges that sparked nationwide outrage over that university’s failure for nearly a decade to alert law enforcement authorities to alleged sexual assault on campus. Spanier was himself charged criminally in an alleged cover-up of Sandusky’s crimes, although he continues to maintain his innocence.
In most cases, however, the bloated incomes of university presidents result from their fundraising prowess. President Gogue, whose $2.5 million compensation placed him second to Spanier, was lauded by Auburn University officials for his close relationship with business leaders. “In basic financial terms,” a university spokeswoman explained, “the return on investment is remarkably high.” Similarly, Hollis Hughes, Jr., the president of Ball State University’s board of trustees, justified the huge income of Jo Ann Gora, the university president — who, at just under $1 million income placed fifth in the financial ranking of public university presidents in 2011-2012 — on the basis of her success at fundraising.
Cultivating corporate and wealthy donors, of course, has long been a major task of university presidents, but it has become an obsession in recent years, especially as state governments have cut back funding for public universities. The nation’s largest public university system, the State University of New York, has gone from a situation in which the state paid 75 percent of the university’s costs and student tuition paid 25 percent to exactly the reverse, in which state support covers 25 percent of costs and student tuition covers most of the remainder. In these circumstances, public universities are desperately seeking to attract financial support from corporations and the wealthy, with obvious consequences when it comes to rewarding the top fundraisers and setting campus priorities.
Meanwhile, faculty members are left out in the cold. Despite the fact that most faculty at public universities have many years of graduate education, doctoral degrees, publications, and years of teaching experience, their average annual salary is just over $80,000 per year. These, of course, are the full-time, “regular” faculty. Part-timers, a talented but cheap labor force who administrators are increasingly substituting for full-timers, are paid, at best, a few thousand dollars per course. Thus, even when they shuttle from campus to campus, cobbling together the equivalent of a full course load, they are so impoverished that they qualify for food stamps. These part-timers and other “contingent” faculty — educators in temporary positions without job security– today constitute the vast majority of those who teach at American colleges and universities.
Nor do faculty salaries seem likely to rise very much. At the State University of New York, the faculty and professional staff are now voting on a new, five-year contract with the state that will provide them with a salary raise of about 1 percent a year – a raise that, when inflation is taken into account, will actually give them a salary reduction. Although United University Professions, their faculty/professional staff union that engaged in lengthy contract negotiations with the state, fought until the end for a minimum salary for part-time faculty, state negotiators — loyal to Governor Andrew Cuomo’s hostile approach to public sector workers — adamantly refused to consider it. Consequently, although top administrators can (and will) be paid increasingly outlandish amounts, there will be no salary floor for those who do the teaching and research.
On university campuses, it seems, everyone is equal. But some are much more equal than others.
Rio de Janeiro – Atomic power agencies from Brazil and Argentina signed an agreement to build two nuclear reactors for research and production of radioisotopes, said the Ministry of Science and Technology (MCT) today.
The agreement, signed by the Brazilian National Commission for Nuclear Energy (CNEN) and the National Commission of Atomic Energy (CNEA), is centered on the construction of two reactors: the Brazilian Multipurpose Reasearch Reactor (RMB) and the RA-10 in Argentina, said a spokesman from the MCT.
The action meets the Bilateral Integration and Coordination Mechanism, established in the Joint Declaration of 2008 and signed by Presidents Cristina Fernandez and Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva, said the source.
To carry out the project, both sides created the Bi-National Commission on Nuclear Energy (COBEN) which will be in charge of the construction of both reactors.
The atomic agencies of these South American countries have closely collaborated since 2008. Argentina provides Brazil 30 percent of the Molybdenum 99 (Mo99) radioisotopes which are indispensable in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer.
Since 2011 both countries agreed to move forward on greater integration, and carry out a joint project to develop multipurpose reactors, demonstrating the mutual interest in increasing the peaceful use of nuclear energy.
Both reactors, once manufactured and functioning, will have a total capacity to cover 40 percent of the world radioisotope market.
At the present, only France, Canada, South Africa, Australia and Argentina have the technology to produce radioisotopes.
To understand Iran’s real stance toward the issue of the Holocaust, it is worth reviewing President Mahmoud Ahmadienjad’s remarks.
In an interview with NBC NEWS’s Brian Williams on Sept 19, 2006, Ahmadinejad raised three questions about the Holocaust:
1) In the Second World War, over 60 million people (at least 50 million civilians) lost their lives. They were all human beings. Why is it that only a select group of those who were killed have become so prominent and important?
2) If this event (Holocaust) happened, and if it is a historical event, then we should allow everyone to research it and study it. The more research and studies are done, the more we can become aware of the realities that happened. We still leave open to further studies absolute knowledge of science or math. Historical events are always subject to revisions, and reviews and studies…Why is it that those who ask questions are persecuted? Why is every word so sensitivity or such prohibition on further studies on the subject? Where as we can openly question God, the prophet, concepts such as freedom and democracy?
3) If this happened, where did it happen? Did the Palestinian people have anything to do with it? Why should the Palestinians pay for it now? Five million displaced Palestinian people is what I’m talking about. Over 60 years of living under threat. Losing the lives of thousands of dear ones. And homes that are destroyed on a daily basis over people’s heads. You might argue that the Jews have the right to have a government. We’re not against that. But where? At a place where their people were — several people will vote for them, and where they can govern. Not at the cost of displacing a whole nation. And occupying the whole territory.
As Iran’s President has frequently asserted, if the Holocaust happened in Europe, what is the fault of the Palestinian people? The Palestinian people’s lives are being destroyed today in the pretext of the Holocaust. Lands have been occupied, usurped. But what is their fault? What role did they play in the Holocaust?
“Well, assuming that the Holocaust happened, then, what does it have to do with the Palestinian people?”
So, What Are Iran doubts?
Let’s review some major points Iran has raised about the Holocaust:
1. The evidence of the honoured history of each nation is always open to study; you have never heard of a ban on studying war crimes; for instance Iran has always presented evidence and proof to the world of what Iraq did to Iran’s people, as most countries do; but the Holocaust is the only part of history, which is kept out of questioning!
2. Let’s consider that the Holocaust is true, and as they say, “six million Jews during World War II, were murdered by Nazi Germany, led by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, throughout German-occupied territory.” Still we need to ask: Why Palestinians should pay the price?
Though the solution to this dispute is not very complicated! (Churchill once said: “Study history, study history. In history lies all the secrets of statecraft.”) Iran suggests that the Holocaust events should be further investigated by independent and impartial parties;
Iran is against using the Holocaust to justify the behaviour of Israel in the region, and this is a merely a political and humanitarian argument, nothing to do with Jews and cannot be interpreted as anti – Semitic.
Jews, like other minorities are living peacefully in Iran. Jews are protected in the Iranian constitution and a seat is reserved for a Jew in the Majlis (Iran’s Parliament). Iran hosts the largest Jewish population of any Muslim-majority country. And it is home to the second-largest Jewish population in the Middle East.
Since the early 1980’s the USDA Dietary Guidelines for Americans have urged trusting Americans to eat a low-fat high-carbohydrate diet for their health and weight control. Since then, there has been an alarming increase in chronic diseases such as cancer and diabetes. In addition, obesity rates have shot up to 30%, and more than 70% of Americans are overweight.
Can the dietary guidelines be to blame?
Many experts believe that the USDA and other government agencies have stubbornly disregarded the science and continued a 30-year long nutrition experiment on Americans that has had disastrous results.
What’s wrong with the government’s nutrition advice?
Dietary guidelines are a creation of politics and not science. Critics claim that the 2010 USDA Dietary Guidelines Committee ignored scientific research that validates low-carbohydrate diets for weight loss and improved health. Low-carb diets generally recommend 60 to 120 grams of unprocessed carbohydrates per day, although some provide more, and some as little as 20 grams.
Besides encouraging people to eat processed carbohydrates such as cereal, rice, pasta and bread, the guidelines have made Americans fearful of eating real natural whole foods such as whole milk, cheese, red meat, eggs, salt, butter and full-fat yogurt. As a result, Americans have stocked their pantries with processed fake soy meats, vegetable oils, margarine and skimmed dairy products, all of which are depleted or completely devoid of key nutrients, such as vitamins D, A, K and choline.
The Campaign Against Saturated Fats
Sally Fallon Morell, president of the Weston A. Price Foundation, faults the guidelines for continuing to demonize saturated fats based on unsound science. The most recent guidelines reduce the recommended intake of saturated fats from 10% of calories to less than 7%.
The proposed 2010 USDA Dietary Guidelines perpetuate the mistakes of previous guidelines in demonizing saturated fats and animal foods rich in saturated fatty acids such as egg yolks, butter, whole milk, cheese, fatty meats like bacon and animal fats for cooking. The current obesity epidemic emerged as vegetable oils and refined carbohydrates replaced these healthy, nutrient-dense traditional fats. Animal fats supply many essential nutrients that are difficult to obtain from other sources,” explained Ms. Morell in a press conference sponsored by the Healthy Nation Coalition.
Ms. Morell noted that for the past 60 or 70 years, saturated fats have been blamed for clogging arteries, and for causing heart disease, diabetes and even multiple sclerosis. None of these accusations is based on sound science she says.
Health Benefits of Saturated Fats
On the other hand, Ms. Morell points out the critical roles that saturated fats play in the body, including:
Make up 50% of cell membranes
Help the body put calcium in the bones
Lower Lp(a), a marker for heart disease
Protect the liver from alcohol and other poisons
Are required for lung and kidney function
Enhance the immune system
Work together with essential fatty acids
Support the body’s detoxification mechanisms
The government’s rationale for promoting a low-fat diet is the belief that fat makes us fat. Ms. Morell cites, however, the famous Framingham Heart Study which demonstrated that those eating more saturated fat, more cholesterol and more calories actually had lower blood serum cholesterol levels, weighed less and were more physically active.
In addition, a 1965 British heart study showed that heart attack survivors eating a saturated fat diet lived longer than those eating a diet of polyunsaturated or mono-unsaturated vegetable oils.
Finally, she cites a study of European countries which found that countries in which the population ate a diet high in saturated fats had lower rates of heart disease and those eating a low saturated fat diet had higher rates of heart disease.
The government and nutrition experts often lump saturated fats in with trans fats. Even worse, the fear of saturated fats has led many to replace the butter in their diets with trans fat laden margarine. Since 1926, Ms. Morell points out, use of butter in the U.S. has plummeted and at the same time rates of cancer and cardiovascular disease have skyrocketed.
Other “grave concerns” with the guidelines include
Restriction of dietary cholesterol to 300 mg per day (less than 2 eggs);
Restriction of sodium to 1,500 mg per day (2/3 of a teaspoon of salt);
Promotion of low-fat milk and lean meats;
Use of meat substitutes in federally funded school lunches; and
Absence of any restrictions on refined carbohydrates and sweeteners in school meals.
Ms. Morell warned that the harm resulting from these misguided recommendations fall disproportionately on the nation’s children who will be fed these nutrient poor, fat inducing diets every day at school. And that is a tragedy.
Last Friday, esteemed University of Chicago anthropologist Marshall Sahlins formally resigned from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), the United States’ most prestigious scientific society.
Sahlins states that he resigned because of his “objections to the election of [Napoleon] Chagnon, and to the military research projects of the Academy.” Sahlins was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1991. He issued the below statement explaining his resignation:
“By the evidence of his own writings as well as the testimony of others, including Amazonian peoples and professional scholars of the region, Chagnon has done serious harm to the indigenous communities among whom he did research. At the same time, his “scientific” claims about human evolution and the genetic selection for male violence–as in the notorious study he published in 1988 in Science–have proven to be shallow and baseless, much to the discredit of the anthropological disciple. At best, his election to the NAS was a large moral and intellectual blunder on the part of members of the Academy. So much so that my own participation in the Academy has become an embarrassment.
Nor do I wish to be a party to the aid, comfort, and support the NAS is giving to social science research on improving the combat performance of the US military, given the toll that military has taken on the blood, treasure, and happiness of American people, and the suffering it has imposed on other peoples in the unnecessary wars of this century. I believe that the NAS, if it involves itself at all in related research, should be studying how to promote peace, not how to make war.”
Napoleon Chagnon rose to fame after his fieldwork among the Yanomami (also known as Yanomamo) in the rainforests of northeastern South America’s Orinoco Basin in the 1960s and 70s. He wrote a bestselling ethnography used in introductory anthropology classes around the world, describing the Yanomami as “the fierce people” because of the high levels of intra- and inter-group warfare observed during his fieldwork, warfare that he would describe as innate and as representing humankind in some sort of imagined natural state.
Chagnon, is currently basking in the limelight of a national book tour, pitching a memoir (Nobel Savages) in which he castes the bulk of American anthropologists as soft-skulled anti-science postmodern cretins embroiled in a war against science.
The truth is that outside of the distortion field of the New York Times and a few other media vortexes, there is no “science war” raging in anthropology. Instead the widespread rejection of Chagnon’s work among many anthropologists has everything to do with the low quality of his research. On his blog, Anthropomics, anthropologist Jon Marks recently described Chagnon as an “incompetent anthropologist,” adding:
“Let me be clear about my use of the word “incompetent”. His methods for collecting, analyzing and interpreting his data are outside the range of acceptable anthropological practices. Yes, he saw the Yanomamo doing nasty things. But when he concluded from his observations that the Yanomamo are innately and primordially “fierce” he lost his anthropological credibility, because he had not demonstrated any such thing. He has a right to his views, as creationists and racists have a right to theirs, but the evidence does not support the conclusion, which makes it scientifically incompetent.”
The widely shared rejection of Chagnon’s interpretations among anthropologists comes from the shoddy quality of his work and the sociobiological nature of his analysis, not with an opposition to science.
Among Chagnon’s most dogged critics was my dissertation chair, anthropologist Marvin Harris, himself an arch positivist and a staunch advocate of the scientific method, yet Harris rejected Chagnon and his sociobiological findings in fierce academic debates that lasted for decades, not because Harris was anti-science, but because Chagnon was a bad scientist (I should note that Harris and Sahlins also famously feuded over fundamental theoretical differences; yet both shared common ground objecting to the militarization of the discipline, and rejecting Chagnon’s sociobiological work).
I suppose if there really were battles within anthropology between imagined camps embracing and rejecting science, I would be about as firmly in the camp of science as anyone; but if such divisions actually existed, I would be no closer to accepting the validity and reliability (the hallmarks of good science) of Chagnon’s findings than those imagined to reject the foundations of science.
In 2000, there was of course a huge painful crisis within the American Anthropological Association following the publication of Patrick Tierney’s book Darkness in El Dorado, in which numerous accusations of exploitation (and worse) were leveled against Chagnon and other anthropologists working with the Yanomami (see Barbara Rose Johnston’s essay on the José Padilha’s film, Secrets of the Tribe). Without detailing all the twists and turns involved in establishing the wreckage of Chagnon and the paucity of his claims, suffice it to say that the choice of offering one of the select seats in the National Academy of Sciences’ Section 51 to Dr. Chagnon is an affront to a broad range of anthropologists, be they self-identified as scientists or not.
Marshall Sahlins’ resignation is an heroic stand against the subversion of science to those claiming an innate nature of human violence, and a stand opposing the increasing militarization of science. While Sahlins’ credentials as an activist opposing the militarization of knowledge are well established—he is widely recognized as the creator of the “teach-in,” organizing the February 1965 University of Michigan teach-in—it still must have been difficult for him to resign this prestigious position.
In late 1965 Sahlins traveled to Vietnam to learn firsthand about the war and the Americans fighting it, work that resulted in his seminal essay “The Destruction of Conscience in Vietnam.” He became one of the clearest and most forceful anthropological voices speaking out against efforts (in the 1960s and 70s, and in again in post-9/11 America) to militarize anthropology.
In 2009 I was part of a conference at the University of Chicago critically examining renewed efforts by U.S. military and intelligence agencies to use anthropological data for counterinsurgency projects. Sahlins’ paper at the conference argued that, “in Vietnam, the famous anti-insurgency strategy was search and destroy; here it is research and destroy. One might think it good news that the military’s appropriation of anthropological theory is incoherent, simplistic and outmoded – not to mention tedious – even as its ethnographic protocols for learning the local society and culture amount to unworkable fantasies. ”
Yesterday, Sahlins sent me an email that had been circulated to NAS Section 51 (Anthropology) members, announcing two new “consensus projects” under sponsorship of the Army Research Institute. The first project examined “The Context of Military Environments: Social and Organizational Factors,” the second, “Measuring Human Capabilities: Performance Potential of Individuals and Collectives.” Reading the announcement of these projects forwarded by Sahlins, it is apparent that the military wants the help of social scientists who can streamline military operations, using social science and social engineering to enable interchangeable units of people working on military projects to smoothly interface. This seems to be increasingly becoming the role Americans see for anthropologists and other social scientists: that of military facilitator.
Below is the exchange, I had with Sahlins yesterday discussing his resignation, Chagnon’s election to the National Academy of Sciences, and the Academy’s links to military projects.
Price:How has Chagnon so successfully turned numerous attacks on his ethically troubling research and scientifically questionable methods and findings into what is widely seen as an attack on science itself?
Sahlins: There has been no address of the issues on Chagnon’s part, notably of the criticism of his supposed empirical results, as in the 1988 Science article, and the numerous criticisms from Amazonian anthropologists of his shallow ethnography and villainously distorted portrayal of Yanomami. These Cro-Chagnon scientists simply refuse to discuss the facts of the ethnographic case. Instead they issue ad hominem attacks–before it was against the Marxists, now it is the ‘fuzzy-headed humanists.’ Meanwhile they try to make it an ideological anti-science persecution–again ironically as a diversion from discussing the empirical findings. Meanwhile the serious harm, bodily and emotionally, inflicted on the Yanomami, plus the reckless instigation of war by his field methods, are completely ignored in the name of science. Research and destroy, as I called the method. A total moral copout.
Price: Most of the publicity surrounding your resignation from the National Academy of Sciences focuses either exclusively on Napoleon Chagnon’s election to the Association, or on the supposed “science wars” in anthropology, while little media attention has focused on your statements opposing the NAS’s increasing links to military projects. What were the reactions within NAS Section 51 to the October 2012 call to members of the Academy to conduct research aimed at improving the military’s mission effectiveness?
Sahlins: The National Association of Science would not itself do the war research. It would rather enlist recruits from its sections–as in the section 51 memos–and probably thus participate in the vetting of reports before publication. The National Research Council organizes the actual research, obviously in collaboration with the NAS. Here is another tentacle of the militarization of anthropology and other social sciences, of which the Human Terrain Systems is a familiar example. This one as insidious as it is perfidious.
Price:Was there any internal dialogue between members of NAS Section 51 when these calls for these new Army Research Institute funded projects were issued?
Sahlins:I was not privy to any correspondence, whether to the Section officers or between the fellows, if there was any–which I don’t know.
Price:What, if any reaction have you had from other NAS members?
Sahlins:Virtually none. One said I was always opposed to sociobiology
Price:To combine themes embedded in Chagnon’s claims of human nature, and the National Academy of Sciences supporting to social science for American military projects; can you comment on the role of science and scientific societies in a culture as centrally dominated by military culture as ours?
Sahlins:There is a paragraph or two in my pamphlet on The Western Illusion of Human Nature, of which I have no copy on hand, which cites Rumsfeld to the effect (paraphrasing Full Metal Jacket) that inside every Middle eastern Muslim there’s an American ready to come out, a self-interested freedom loving American, and we just have to force it out or force out the demons who are perpetrating other ideas [see page 42 of Sahlins; The Western Illusions of Human Nature]. Isn’t American global policy, especially neo-con policy, based on the confusion of capitalist greed and human nature? Just got to liberate them from their mistaken, externally imposed ideologies. For the alternative see the above mentioned pamphlet on the one true universal, kinship, and the little book I published last month: What Kinship Is–And Is Not.
Price:You mention a desire to shift funding streams from those offering military support, to those supporting peace. Do you have any insight on how we can work to achieve this shift?
Sahlins:I have not thought about it, probably because the idea that the National Academy of Sciences would so such a thing is essentially unthinkable today.
There is a rising international response supporting Sahlins’ stance. Marshall shared with me a message he received form Professor, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, of the National Museum, Rio de Janeiro, in which de Castro wrote,
“Chagnon’s writings on the Yanomami of Amazonia have contributed powerfully to reinforce the worst prejudices against this indigenous people, who certainly do not need the kind of stereotyping pseudo-scientific anthropology Chagnon has chosen to pursue at their cost. The Yanomami are anything but the nasty, callous sociobiological robots Chagnon makes them look – projecting, in all likelihood, his perception of his own society (or personality) onto the Yanomami. They are an indigenous people who have managed, against all odds, to survive in their traditional ways in an Amazonia increasingly threatened by social and environmental destruction. Their culture is original, robust and inventive; their society is infinitely less “violent” than Brazilian or American societies.
Virtually all anthropologists who have worked with the Yanomami, many of them with far larger field experience with this people than Chagnon, find his research methods objectionable (to put it mildly) and his ethnographic characterizations fantastic. Chagnon’s election to the NAS does not do honor to American science nor to anthropology as a discipline, and it also bodes ill to the Yanomami. As far as I am concerned, I deem Chagnon an enemy of Amazonian Indians. I can only thank Prof. Sahlins for his courageous and firm position in support of the Yanomami and of anthropological science.”
We are left to wonder what is to become of science, whether practiced with a capital (at times blind) “S” or a lower case inquisitive variety, when those questioning some of its practices, misapplications and outcomes are increasingly marginalized, while those whose findings align with our broader cultural values of warfare are embraced. The NAS’s rallying around such a divisive figure as Chagnon, demonizing his critics, claiming they are attacking not his practices and theories, but science itself damages the credibility of these scientists. It is unfortunate that the National Academy of Sciences has backed itself into this corner.
The dynamics of such divisiveness are not unique to this small segment of the scientific community. In his 1966 essay on, “The Destruction of Conscience in Vietnam,” Sahlins argued that to continue to wage the war, America had to destroy its own conscience—that facing those destroyed by our actions was too much for the nation to otherwise bear, writing: “Conscience must be destroyed: it has to end at the barrel of a gun, it cannot extend to the bullet. So all peripheral rationales fade into the background. It becomes a war of transcendent purpose, and in such a war all efforts on the side of Good are virtuous, and all deaths unfortunately necessary. The end justifies the means.”
It is a tragic state of affairs when good people of conscience see the only acceptable act before them to be that of resignation; but sometimes the choice of disassociation is the strongest statement one can courageously make.
Robert H. Lustig, MD, UCSF Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology, explores the damage caused by sugary foods. He argues that fructose (too much) and fiber (not enough) appear to be cornerstones of the obesity epidemic through their effects on insulin. Series: UCSF Mini Medical School for the Public.
The “Coca Cola conspiracy” and the obesity epidemic
The processed foods industry knew that their products would cause an epidemic of obesity among their customers, but they also realized that their bottom line would see a huge boost. The FDA and USDA provided all the cover needed and then some by pointing the finger in the wrong direction. The “low fat” foods fad was a complete hoax. …
Iran’s ambassador to the UN Gholamali Khoshroo has called for the total eradication of nuclear weapons.
Khoshroo reiterated Iran’s call during a UN conference aimed at creating a nuclear weapons ban treaty in New York on Tuesday.
“Iran, as a victim of chemical weapons, strongly feels the danger posed by the existence of weapons of mass destruction and is determined to engage actively in international diplomatic efforts to save humanity from the menace of nuclear weapons,” he said.
Khoshroo stressed that Iran is committed to its Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) obligations, which include negotiations based on effective nuclear disarmament measures.
He added that several countries continue to ignore international calls and treaties for nuclear disarmament and even continue to increase their nuclear stockpiles. “They do not have political determination to abandon doctrines of nuclear deterrence and nuclear terror,” he went on to say.
Iran’s UN ambassador noted that boycotting the talks by many countries, including the US, shows that the world’s nuclear powers are by no means committed to the eradication of nuclear arms. Britain and France were also among the some 40 countries that did not join the talks.
“We note that prohibition of nuclear weapons must be accompanied by the elimination of such weapons. There can be no doubt that without complete abolition of nuclear weapons, there will be no absolute guarantee against the danger of nuclear war and the use of such weapons,” Khoshroo added.
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The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
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OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel Finkelstein, a noted Israeli archeologist and academic at Tel Aviv university, questioned the Jewish claims about the discovery of King David palace in Khirbet Qeiyafa, west of occupied Jerusalem, expressing his belief that the finds belong to an ancient Arab civilization.
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