Backpedalling of the Beclowned

Last week, Beck was all, like, the science on DDT is 'not a sturdy cornerstone of scientific truth but rather an elaborate tissue of exaggerations and lies.'

This week, Beck is all 'Where did I say that DDT is harmless?'. He's also muttering something about bald eagles, and denies having been shown any links to scientific research, despite being directed to links on this blog, to those at Lambert and Darrell, and to those of his friends at Pure Poison. As Tobias Ziegler noted on the latter blog, all of this could have been ascertained with about 5 minutes googling. Beck must have been too busy googling the latest on Jeremy Sear's grooming habits.

Beclowning Continues

My recent post looking briefly at J. F. Beck's article on DDT and Carson seems to have gotten Beck a little upset.

To recap, Beck claimed that 'In making her case against DDT Carson constructs not a sturdy cornerstone of scientific truth but rather an elaborate tissue of exaggerations and lies.'

Unfortunately for Beck, he attempts to make his case by citing two passages from Carson that don't actually have anything to do with DDT. He then goes to claim that 'no amount of DDT can cause leukemia or any other form of cancer to develop in a matter of months, if ever', and that if DDT is toxic, it is not 'acutely' so. He calls to his aid one researcher named Ames, who apparently says that 'a single cup of coffee contains more potential natural carcinogens than a human will consume of potentially carcinogenic synthetic pesticide residues in a year'.

Beck was called on this stupidity, and began backpedalling and qualifying his inane comments. He also accuses me of stupidity and relies on ad hom arguments to make his clumsy points.

Beck's obfuscation notwithstanding, the facts are clear. Beck has repeatedly lied in order to misrepresent Carson, in order for he followers to be able to demonise an environmentalist.

DDT has been linked, repeatedly, with a range of medical conditions, including forms of cancer. Evidence for this can be found in the links and comments for the previous post, all of which have been duly ignored by Beck. Over time, governments around the world have decided that the costs of DDT outweigh the benefits. (It may comfort Beck to know that its use is allowed in North Korea). The benefits are themselves over-rated, given that insects can be become resistant to the pesticide. Furthermore, concerns about DDT arose long before Carson ever wrote her book, as can be seen from this article from 1945. The article on Marxist-controlled Wikipedia has plenty of detail on the dangers and problems associated with DDT. Like his US-based namesake on Fox, Beck will no doubt prefer conspiracy theorists and smear tactics to anything like evidence.

The Ames Test, whilst legitimate, has been implicated in secret testing by tobacco companies, and is not the 'bullshit' that Beck claims. (Quiggin has links regarding other connections between DDT and Big Tobacco).

Beck tries a bait-and-switch with some irrelevant trivia about Bendiocrab. He then claims that 'No chemical insecticide is without risk – it's a matter of weighing the risks against the benefits'. It's nice for Beck to say this, but nowhere does he explain that DDT has been repeatedly shown to pose many risks. Instead, he lies and dissembles, like many of his fellow 'conservatives' on this issue, in order to smear Carson and environmentalists more generally. As I indicated earlier, it's evident that these people couldn't care less how many people in developed countries develop medical conditions through massive exposure of DDT. All that matters is scoring a cheap political point.

Finally, and bizarrely, Beck invoked one Tim Blair in his little tirade. I can't imagine why, unless, perhaps, like his comrade, Beck has been so intellectually out-gunned that he's feeling immeasurably hurt.


UPDATE:

It turns out that Bendi... was misspelt. Beck, true to form, has been big on smear and name-calling in his responses to my posting, but very light on when it comes to actual argument. He doesn't seem to realise the extent of his backpedalling.


Beck in Quadrant:

[A] single cup of coffee contains more potential natural carcinogens than a human will consume of potentially carcinogenic synthetic pesticide residues in a year.


Beck now:

I didn't say "that a splash of ddt is safer than a morning coffee", and neither did Bruce Ames. Ames' point is that the danger to human health from pesticide residues in food is overstated.

Pathetic. Stay tuned.

Beck Beclowned

J. F. Beck, a keen stalker observer of the left, with a penchant for attacking minor publications, gets himself printed in a minor publication. (Well, not actually printed, as Quadrant probably couldn't spare the ink).

In any case, it seems that early environmentalist Rachel Carson was, like all her Green comrades, responsible for malaria deaths, and exhibited a Luddite fear of chemicals. (According to Beck, coffee is worse for you than pesticide).

Or maybe not.

Confrontations

The Age, Melbourne's leading broadsheet newspaper, has an undeserved reputation for leaning to the left. In reality, the paper adopts a series of often meaningless causes in a tokenistic fashion (such as its support for 'Earth Day'). It is harder to find articles on class struggle, or imperialism, or with an anti-corporate message, or anything else that is recognisably 'left'. On the contrary - if we examine the glossier sections of the paper (particularly the lift-outs and magazines) - the paper is filled with expensive consumer items (and not merely as ads) presumably pitched to well-heeled, middle-aged bourgeois types who are happy to regard themselves as 'progressive'.

It was therefore pleasing to note an article included in yesterday's columns, re-printed from the Washington Post. Its author, Dionne, argued that we are presently at an economic juncture equivalent to the Great Depression of the 1930s, or the stagflation of the 1970s, and that we can therefore expect to see significant challenges to neoliberal economic orthodoxy. Dionne doesn't advocate anything too radical, merely additional 'regulation'.

Let us briefly consider the context of this economic moment. In Australia, inflation is higher than it has been for some years. An ailing labour movement has failed to assert itself in the face of this inflation, and some have argued that wages for workers have stalled, in spite of the economy having 'rocketed along'.

In the meantime, we are seeing an unprecedented focus on addressing issues of environmental concern. Or course, the politicians who are discussing carbon-trading schemes and the like are unwilling to consider the possibility that environmental destruction is a symptom of capitalism, and is not going to be cured by this latter economic system. The focus on the climate change pseudo-debate as the centre of environmental concerns is misleading. We do not require complex modelling to note the appalling pollution of many of the world's cities, or the fact of the Mongolian desert, the Gobi, expanding inexorably toward Beijing, or the massive deforestation that continues in developing countries. That industrial capitalism could fail to be implicated in these problems speaks volumes about the dishonesty of our politicians and media.

These problems, economic and environmental, provide a challenge and an opportunity to the left. In Australia, as elsewhere, electoral politics has almost entirely failed to provide left-leaning individuals with genuine representation. Yet almost never before have leftist politics and the critique of capitalism been more relevant or more urgent.

Naturally, a moment of crisis can also be seized upon by the lunatic elements of the right, whose constituent feels the effects of economic calamity just as keenly as anybody else. In addition, perfectly legitimate concerns about globalisation are displaced onto minority ethnic and religious groups. Hence, we see the (re-)birth of 'protectionist parties'.

Our tasks are becoming clearer - to develop a genuine worker's movement, which may mean unshackling trade unions from fat bureaucrats and other careerists, as well as the ALP machinery. Environmental problems are well-explained by a critical, Marxist viewpoint - just like the expropriation of surplus value by capitalists, environmental destruction is absolutely not the raison d'etre of capital. It is, however, its logical and inevitable consequence. This link, between the economic and the environmental, must be made explicitly and repeatedly. Finally, Green movements and parties need to appeal to an economic, class-based constituent, and not merely those who profess 'progressive' views on the environment and other matters. A Greens party whose sole focus is on elections, which cannot muster sufficient votes in working class areas to achieve anything of note, and whose modus operandi is merely to serve as an ideological chorus on the margins of parliamentary politics is a party that is stillborn before it could ever really take off.

An Aside on the Environment

Environmental issues are not a particular interest of mine. There are plenty of bloggers who do a much better job than I could of discussing issues such as climate change, for instance.

As Al Gore has just won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in this issue, we might predict that the blogosphere will be working overtime, particularly with rightards eager to denounce climate change as a vast left-wing conspiracy.

To be clear, I am no fan of Gore, and I haven't seen his movie. To me, all post-WWII Democrats are merely Republicans with velvet gloves. Besides, the Nobel literature prize is usually more interesting than the one for peace.

It should also be remembered that environmental issues are by no means traditional leftist causes. To be sure, Marx noted that capital's insatiable need to reproduce itself was likely to have disastrous environmental consequences, but this observation was an aside from his more general theses on capital. As recently as a few decades ago, leftist interest in environmental issues might well have been seen as a petite-bourgeois indulgence.

This has changed more recently, with climate change being recognised almost universally as an 'issue'. Greens parties, across a number of Western parliamentary democracies, increasingly represent a form of organised leftism.

What are we to make of this phenomenon? Clearly, there is strong opposition to the notion of climate change, and to any consequent environmental remedies. It is appropriate to examine the source of this opposition.

It is hardly surprising that oil companies and the like should voice strong opposition. It is also sadly predictable that these companies' pimps in think tanks and the intelligentsia should likewise attack any notion of climate change.

What is more surprising is the other opposition that has emerged. The opponents of climate change engage in such poor reasoning and, frankly bizarre belief systems as to almost represent, a fortiori, evidence of that which they oppose. There can be no greater argument in favour of man-made climate change than the oil companies, their unctuous salesmen, and the right-wing ideologues and conspiracy theorists who oppose it.

Can there be any serious doubt that industry and capital impinge on the environment? The climate change sceptics need only inhale some of the polluted air of Athens, or Budapest, or Beijing, or any number of other places to see that yes, pollution has a discernible impact at a local level. If this impact exists locally, what reason exists to think it would not exist globally, or have ramifications beyond the the immediate surrounds of a given industry. After all, as Heraclitus noted some time ago, air and water move.

Let us take a more local example, that of Francis Street, Yarraville, an inner suburb of Melbourne. This street is a short suburban street in a residential area. Unfortunately for the residents, this street also serves as a link between several of Melbourne's major freeways. In particular, trucks use the road to go between the Westlink Tullamarine Freeway, and the Westgate Freeway, which itself splits into the Princes Freeway and Western Ring Road a short distance away. In addition to linking four of Melbourne's major freeways, the street is also near a number of major industrial sites and Melbourne's docks, giving trucks another reason to be in the area.

Having travelled on the road myself, the pollution caused by fumes was clearly evident. Should there be any doubt as to the veracity of my senses, the EPA also set up a booth in Francis Street, monitoring air quality and noise pollution. The EPA concluded that the air quality had deteriorated, largely as a result of truck activity, and that this deterioration had potentially serious health risks attached. The air pollution in this street was even reported to be significantly worse than that in one of Melbourne's major arterials, the appalling Hoddle Street.

Obviously, it doesn't take a Nobel Prize winner to work out that spewing massive amounts of fumes into the environment will have some unpleasant consequences. To our climate change sceptics, however, these sorts of results are the product of a labyrinthine leftist conspiracy, intended to recruit followers into the Green 'religion'. Not prone to hyperbolae, our good sceptics (such as Senator Brandis, or Andrew Bolt) have even compared the Green movement to the Nazi party.

I suspect that 'scepticism' is far too dignified a term for this delusionalists. Scepticism implies a reasoned philosophical position, which in turn, presupposes a degree of reasoning. When you smell the air in the cities I mentioned, when you view the smog-filled skylines, I do not see anything remotely like 'scepticism', but rather, merely psychotic denial.

My crackpot theories are better than your crackpot theories...

Pathetic Terrorgraph hack, anti-Muslim blogger, and botched abortion of a 'journalist', Tim Blair, has often justified his extremist views under the aegis of 'freedom of speech'.

For instance, the controversial cartoons of the prophet Mohammad that sparked riots in Muslim countries, were published on Blair's site. Blair fixated on the issue for months, and newspapers that refused to publish the cartoons were treated with scorn. As the ABC's Media Watch pointed out not long ago, Blair's anti-Islamic posts are well-received by his clique of psychopath sycophants, who typically respond to the topic of 'Islamofascism' by agitating for anti-Muslim pogroms. Being fairly thick-headed characters, one suspects the irony is lost on them. One can only suppose that these champions of freedom would also have cheered the anti-Semitic cartoons of 1930's Germany and Austria.

In addition, as one would expect from a two-bit hack known mainly for spouting right-wing catchphrases, Blair has been a vocal critic of climate change activists, and has supported the ABC's screening of The Great Global Warming Swindle (aired last night). All in the name of 'free speech', and 'fair and balanced' reporting, you see.

It is rather amusing then, that this courageous advocate for 'free speech' (and moreover, of the 'free' market) should criticise the 'revisionist' pay TV's History Channel for airing a conspiracy-laden documentary entitled Loose Change. This latter 'documentary' purports to prove that 9/11 was an 'inside job' by the US Government. In his characteristic style, our champion of free speech and free markets doesn't actually argue against either the documentary, or the History Channel, preferring instead to merely 'dog whistle', and let his degenerate audience do the barking.

I suspect many readers will be familiar with the conspiracy theories surrounding the attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. I see no reason to consider them true, and think they ought to be consigned to the category of 'pseudo-science', along with the Swindle. There may well be holes in the 'official' narrative of 9/11 (to say nothing of suppressed elements), but there are 'holes' in virtually all of the US Government's narratives, whether these relate to Iraq or Afghanistan, to false reports of Saddam's WMD's, or to refusal to sign the Kyoto Protocol. To be sure, the Bush Administration has used the terrorist attacks as a pretext for launching to ongoing wars. Nonetheless, we know from America's modern history that its Governments do not need to go to the lengths of 9/11 to fabricate a pretext for a 'pre-emptive strike'.

How comical then, that this clown, who supports the publication of inflammatory anti-Muslim material, and who supports a crackpot 'documentary' backed by frothing-at-the-mouth LaRouchites being screened as propaganda on 'our' ABC, all in the name of 'free speech', is opposed to a 'free market' pay TV station airing a similarly loopy film that opposes his views.

It will come as a surprise to nobody, but Tim Bleh can now confidently add the title of 'hypocrite' to his illustrious resume.