LORD OF UNREASON - TAVERNE, HIS PALS & HIS BOOK

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GMW: LORD OF UNREASON - TAVERNE, HIS PALS & HIS BOOK

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Sun, 13 Mar 2005 22:53:43 GMT

 

 

GM WATCH daily

http://www.gmwatch.org

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LORD OF UNREASON - TAVERNE, HIS PALS & HIS BOOK

 

 

Tomorrow (Monday) sees the publication of 'The March of Unreason:

Science, Democracy and the New Fundamentalism' by Lord Dick Taverne. It's

published by OUP at GBP 18.99.

http://www.us.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Politics/AmericanPolitics/Legis\

lativeStudies/?view=usa & ci=0192804855

 

While we haven't yet had a chance to enjoy it, Britain's Sunday

Telegraph today carried an excerpt under the headline, " A little

pesticide

does you good but 'organic' farming harms the world. " This from the man

that Mark Henderson, The Times' science correspondent, describes as " one

of Britain's most thoughtful commentators on science " !!

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8122-1520030,00.html

 

Taverne, a close associate of Lord Sainsbury, is probably best known as

Chairman of the pro-GM lobby group Sense About Science.

http://www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=127

 

So to mark the publication of The March of Unreason, we thought we'd

reprint our PANTS ON FIRE citation for Lord Dick and his pals. For the

original, including a couple of great cartoons (if we may say so), see:

http://www.gmwatch.org/p2temp2.asp?aid=60 & page=1 & op=2

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When pants burn, the truth goes up in smoke!

 

*Smelliest Newcomer award*

 

Lord Dick Lets Rip

 

" When crops burn, the truth goes up in smoke " , was the striking

headline of an opinion piece in The Thunderer section of The (London)

Times by

Lord Dick Taverne. In it Taverne denounced the " anti-GM campaign " as " a

crusade " led by " eco-fundamentalists " . He warned, " when campaigns

become crusades, crusaders are more likely to turn to violence " . He

referred

to farmers being " terrorised " and claimed that " the tactics of animal

welfare terrorists " were being adopted against GM researchers.

 

New Pants On The Block

 

Taverne's article was part of a media campaign orchestrated by the

lobby group Sense About Science, of which Taverne is Chairman. Sense

About

Science was launched in 2002 in the run up to the UK's official GM

Public Debate.

 

While it claims independence, Sense About Science's altruistic

supporters include the biotech-industry backed ISAAA, the John Innes

Centre

(which has benefited from multi-million pound investments from GM

corporations), Martin Livermore (a PR consultant on biotech who

formerly worked

for DuPont), Amersham Biosciences, GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca,

Pfizer, Oxford GlycoSciences and the Association of the British

Pharmaceutical Industry.

 

(Non)Sense About Science

 

Sense About Science's campaign to smear critics of GM as violent

extremists kicked off with another article in The Times - " GM vandals

force

science firms to reduce research " . Based on a survey by Sense About

Science, the article quoted the lobby group's director, Tracey Brown, as

complaining, " The burden of trying to organise the research community to

pre-empt and protect from vandalism is potentially disastrous. "

 

Articles in the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) and elsewhere

followed. These suggested that the GM public debate had been " hijacked "

by " activists " . This claim was repeated in a letter from GM-supporting

scientists to Tony Blair, ostensibly organised by Prof Derek Burke but

in reality the work of Sense About Science. However, no credible

evidence to show the debate had been hijacked was ever provided,

although an

article in New Scientist put forward the theory that it was the

" middle-aged mothers " of the Women's Institute what fixed it. (UK public

strongly rejects GM foods )

 

Sense About Science - Fiction!

 

The THES articles claimed that scientists who support GM were being

subjected to a campaign of physical and mental abuse, leading some to

leave the country for jobs abroad. One THES article was headlined,

" Scientists quit UK amid GM attacks " . Another - " GM debate cut down by

threats

and abuse " - sounded a still more sinister note. It spoke of " the

increasingly violent anti-GM lobby " , " growing levels of physical and

mental

intimidation " , " hardcore tactics of protesters " , " intimidation by

anti-GM lobbyists... mirroring animal-rights activism " , " increasingly

vicious protests " , " a baying mob of anti-GM activists " , and " a string of

personal threats " . It quoted a scientist's call for " the government to

intervene to protect researchers. "

 

This article, like all the others, failed to cite a single instance of

anyone being assaulted or anything else " violent " or " vicious " having

occurred. There were claims of " threats " but the only specific threat of

any seriousness cited in any of the articles was an alleged bomb hoax

that had taken place some 5 years earlier.

 

Don't Choke On That Smoke!

 

The attempt to portray anti-GM activists as terrorists was no

spur-of-the-moment inspiration on the part of Taverne and his team at

Sense

About Science. It is a carefully calculated tactic borrowed from

America's

pro-corporate Wise Use movement, which has long used the " terrorist "

label to marginalize and discredit environmental campaigners.

 

Though Wise Use tactics have never before gained a foothold in the UK,

it's not from want of trying. Wise Users were featured as environmental

experts in the Channel 4 TV series Against Nature, which represented

environmentalists as doom-mongering imperialists responsible for the

death and deprivation of millions in the Third World.

 

Subsequent investigations revealed that there was more to Against

Nature than met the eye. Some of the programme makers and several key

contributors were closely aligned, or even directly involved, with a

magazine

called LM. In March 1998, LM ran an article by Wise Use founder Ron

Arnold. According to Arnold, " Our goal is to destroy, to eradicate the

environmental movement. "

 

Ever Ready Frank Furedi

 

LM's star columnist, and the star of Against Nature, was the

sociologist Frank Furedi. In recent years, Furry Frank has written for

the Centre

for Policy Studies (founded by Keith Joseph and Margaret Thatcher) and

contacted the big supermarket chains, offering to educate their

customers against food scares - for an appropriate fee! A once-fervent

Trotskyist, Furry Frank now appears to be in search of a piece of the

action

and has even been found defending Monsanto in the pages of The Wall

Street Journal.

 

It's That Man Again!

 

The phone number for Sense About Science is the same as that of the

'publishing house' Global Futures. But the only publication on the Global

Futures website is by Frank Furedi. Sense About Science's assistant

director, Ellen Raphael, used to be listed by the Charity Commissiononers

as the contact person for Global Futures.

 

Like Tracey Brown , Raphael studied under, er... Frank Furedi, who

eulogises technologies like genetic engineering and human cloning. Brown

and Raphael then went on to work for the PR firm Regester Larkin, which

has leading biotechnology firms among its clients. Both Brown and

Raphael have also contributed to LM and to the Furedi-following post-LM

organisations, the lnstitute of ldeas (IoI) and Spiked-online.

 

Sense About Science has set up a Working Party on peer review, which is

expected to be used as a vehicle for attacking GM-critical research

like that of Arpad Pusztai. In addition to leading Fellows of the Royal

Society, its members include Fiona Fox (sister of lol director Claire

Fox) and Tony Gilland (lol science and society director and co-signatory

of Furry Frank's pitch to the supermarkets).

 

Crazy Like A Fox?

 

Some of LM's most controversial material sought to excuse or deny acts

of horrific violence. In fact, the magazine was finally sued out of

existence after an article falsely accused journalists working for

British

news broadcaster ITN of fabricating evidence of war crimes in Bosnia.

LM's contributors have even turned up as defence witnesses at tribunals

for people subsequently convicted of war crimes and genocide.

 

One particularly notorious LM piece denying the Rwandan genocide was

written under a pseudonym by Sense About Science Working Party member

Fiona Fox. It caused an outcry, winning the condemnation of the

Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center amongst others. Other articles by

Fox

provided a platform for those opposing the peace process in Northern

Ireland.

In them Fox describes convicted terrorists as " prisoners of war " .

 

Genocide? What Genocide?

 

There's a splendidly Pants on Fiery irony about Lord Dick - head of

Sense About Science - firing off unsupported allegations of anti-GM

" extremists " adopting the tactics of " terrorists " , while his own

staff, and

co-members of the Working Party on which he sits, are part of a

genuinely extreme ideological network which has played into the hands of

genocidal killers in Rwanda and war criminals in Bosnia and Belgrade, by

denying the significance, and in some cases even the reality, of their

crimes against humanity.

 

Pants on Fire Fighter in Chief, Jean de Bris commented, " When pants

burn, what a smoke-filled world we get! If you object to GM crops, you're

part of the baying mob; you're a vicious anti-truth extremist. Going in

for genocide, on the other hand, seems to be less of a problem! "

 

Denier, Denier, De Pants Are On Fire!

 

The Pants on Fire Brigade leader concluded, " The stench from the

undergarments of Lord Dick and his techno-jackbooted pals has to be

amongst

the most noxious ever to billow out of the lingerie-conflagration

department. I have no hesitation in bestowing the Smelliest Newcomer

award on

the incendiary Sense About Science. "

 

 

*Afterword: Unlike his staff and others around him, Lord Taverne is not

himself part of the LM network. He is a Liberal Democrat peer. This may

explain why he appears to find the techo-jackboots of the LM brigade so

congenial. His own Party policy calls for a moratorium on the planting

of all GM crops.

 

 

 

 

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