“That were a kind of bastard hope indeed, so the sins of my mother should be visited upon me”

In June this year, the Court of Appeal found that the Jewish Free School in Brent had discriminated against a child on racial grounds. The school has an excellent Ofsted ranking, is constantly oversubscribed and is able, under the present rules, to pick and choose its pupils when there is a surplus of candidates. At the JFS, there always is.

The issue with ‘child M’ is that his father was born Jewish, but his mother is a convert. The Office of the Chief Rabbi does not recognise her conversion as valid, since the ritual was performed under Progressive, rather than Orthodox, auspices. Child M is an observant Jew, as are the members of his immediate family.

So it’s not the practice - it’s the paperwork.

Lord Pannick QC, for the school, which operates under Orthodox rules, argued that the discrimination was not ethnic: “… a faith school is entitled to adopt an oversubcription policy that gives priority to those children who are members of the religious faith as defined by the religious authority of the faith.” And the ‘religious authority of the faith’ here clearly likes to maintain a good degree of control over the validity of conversion rites.

I think this tortured issue is difficult, and even distasteful, to a modern, liberal mind for a few reasons. They revolve around the issue of identity in a modern context.

Firstly, there is the ethnic element – and there undoubtedly is one. Dinah Rose QC, representing child M, has pointed out that the JFS would accept a child of ethnically Jewish atheists but exclude others with non-Jewish mothers even when they were “Jewish by belief and practice”. And it occurs to me that as the OCR normally holds Jewishness to be matrilineal, this problem would presumably not arise with an ‘improperly’ converted father; his ethnicity would be irrelevant in relation to his child’s religious identity. So there are gender equality issues too.

Secondly, I think it jars with the modern trend to individuality, the permission to ‘self-declare’. We would resist being told which football team to support, which way to vote and which clothes to wear. We create our identities by our choices and we expect to be able to choose our religion: “Jesus is my saviour”, “There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the Messenger of God”; it’s unusual, in a modern context, to be excluded from a group after that.

There is an historical tradition of religions as guilds – protected organisations where you were ‘admitted’ rather than where you ‘joined’. Initiation into the Mithraic Mysteries was influenced by your class and profession (and certainly by your gender). Entering a medieval religious house was also encumbered, as you usually needed to bring money with you. Perhaps it’s a sign of demand that a group can afford to be so picky. It isn't a particularly modern model.

Thirdly, there is a modern sense that as an individual, you should pay the price of your own mistakes and benefit from the bounty of your own successes. We aren’t supposed to inherit sins or privilege. Horace’s "For the sins of your fathers you, though guiltless, must suffer" is often sadly true - babies are born with defects from alcoholic mothers, for example. But in a modern context it’s an sometimes admission of regrettable causality, not a mission statement.

For example, there is a class of indentured labourers in modern Pakistan called the haari who have been likened, even by organisations as august as the UN, to slaves. They are landless peasants with debts to pay before they gain their liberty, but these debts are not self-incurred. When a child of a few months has a debt that will take years to pay off, we have a sense that he is a different case than a man who has just blown the equity on his house in a poker game.

The Appeal Court in June appears to have judged that the tradition matrilineal test of Jewishness was by definition discriminatory: whether “benign or malignant, theological or supremacist” this “makes it no less and no more unlawful.” “The requirement that if a pupil is to qualify for admission his mother must be Jewish, whether by descent or conversion, is a test of ethnicity which contravenes the Race Relations Act”.

It pointed out that: “If for theological reasons a fully subscribed Christian faith school refused to admit a child on the ground that, albeit practising Christians, the child’s family were of Jewish origin, it is hard to see what answer there could be to a claim for race discrimination.”

The issue has certainly created a great deal of discussion within the Jewish community and there are probably significant splits of opinion between different groups, not least between the liberal and orthodox.

The school went to the Supreme Court to ‘appeal against the appeal’* at the end of last month. We await the final outcome.

But for me, the point of the matter is that in our own times, we expect a person to be defined by their practice rather than their provenance. It seems that the fact of this court action has achieved this in some measure, as the JFS’s new admissions policy gives weight to charitable works and attending the synagogue.

Personally, I support the BHA’s call to phase out religious schools “unless they too can be persuaded to become inclusive and accommodating institutions”. Where tax-payers' money is involved, it seems only fair.

Venera 3 is launched by the Soviet Union, later becoming the first space probe to reach the surface of another planet.t

Operation Paperclip: Some 88 German scientists are recruited to the U.S. to assist with rocket development.

LSD is first synthesized by Swiss chemist Dr. Albert Hofmann at the Sandoz Laboratories in Basel, Switzerland.

The U.S. Federal Reserve Bank officially opens.

The first and only flight of the Shuttle Buran, a planned Soviet competitor to the U.S. Space Shuttle that was subsequently shelved.

Intel release the 4004, the world's first commercial single-chip microprocessor.

The psychologists Anett Cepela and Bertold Meyer were not writing a theoretically well-founded criticism on the pre-shaped social interactions of social networking sites, they wanted to look at something more fundamental: What people use Facebook and why? Unfortunately, their efforts failed to provide any meaningful results.

Based on a study from 2007 by scientists of the Michigan State University (not referenced in the university's announcement), that found users of social networks are generally more satisfied and happier because of their higher social commitment, Cepela and Meyer designed an online-questionnaire with items on personality and social network usage that was completed by 681 participants, 573 of which used Facebook, and 335 used at least one additional social networking site. The rate of male (336) and female (345) participants was almost identical, the average number of "friends" claimed via their most-used social network was 187 (no idea whether this is arithmetical, median or mode[1]).

From this data, they tried to find agreements between the Web 2.0-usage and the so called "Big Five" personality traits, a model based on five dimensions of personality: Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.

The results? Meyer is quoted:

If Extraversion as a dimension of personality is accounted for, it can be seen that extroverted people can be found more often on Facebook and are quite satisfied with it. [...] [But,] if there was no Facebook, extroverted people would find other ways to communicate.

Words of wisdom, eh?

Turning our attention to the 62 non-users of social networks, at least Meyer cautions against over-generalisation, but nevertheless tells us that non-users rank high on the Conscientiousness-scale. And, since "other studies" (again, not referenced in the PR-blurb) found a high correlation between Conscientiousness and job-related success, that, according to Meyer, inevitably means that

people who are not participating in social networks are more conscientious and enjoy a higher rate of success in their professional careers.

Good thing nobody told them of social networks founded explicitly for furthering your career, like XING.

But, as usual with studies like this, there is a teeny qualifier at the end, jsut so the authors don't have to deal with pesky things like "scientific thoroughness" or "accountability":

The non-users are also older on average than the Facebook-users, which could play a role in these results. Further studies are to be conducted.

=====

Disclaimer:
The study itself does not seem to be available online (no reference even on Meyer's university homepage; Cepela doesn't even have such a page), nor is it referenced in the university's PR-piece. If anyone can give me direct access to it, that would be much appreciated.

Footnotes:
[1] cf. Darrell Huff: How to Lie with Statistics, 1993, pp. 27 - 36.

The MHRA, on the other hand, have not only responded promptly to my follow-up email, but have also said this:

Thank you for your message. I can confirm we shall be investigating this complaint and taking any appropriate action.

The MHRA took just one day to respond to my email, and have confirmed that they are at least investigating the complaint and action will be taken, should they deem it appropriate. Trading Standards, meanwhile, are yet to respond to me - having had a week in which to do so. In the four months since I originally contacted them, I haven't had any kind of response whatsoever from Trading Standards.

Here is the email I sent to North Yorkshire County Council:

Dear Sir or Madam,

I am writing to you with regard to a company based in Skipton and my correspondence with North Yorkshire Trading Standards regarding this company.

I contacted North Yorkshire Trading Standards in July regarding possible breaches of consumer protection and health and nutrition claims regulations and did not receive a response. I followed up on this 7 days ago, having noted that the website that may breach said regulations remains unaltered. I am yet to receive any kind of response either to the original contact made in July, or to my follow-up email (sent a week ago).

Given that North Yorkshire Trading Standards have failed to respond to my emails, neither to inform me of what action (if any) would be taken nor even to acknowledge that they are in receipt of my emails, I thought the best course of action would be to contact North Yorkshire County Council itself and ask for guidance on this matter.

The company in question is Principle Healthcare Limited, and the address on their website is recorded as being in "Skipton, North Yorkshire" - http://www.principlehealthcare.com/about_us.cfm

Yours faithfully,
James Cole.

I have at least received an automated acknowledgement from North Yorkshire County Council, which is better than North Yorkshire Trading Standards managed.

Judging by the experience of other writers tackling this subject, I'm probably going to get some flak for this, so I'll metaphorically duck behind senior Greenpeace scientist David Santillo, who has said:

"The problem with superlative statements that this is somehow a huge floating mass of plastic is that they inevitably lead to desensitizing people when they learn the truth of it."

And the superlatives come thick and fast. The Ocean Voyages Institute ludicrously talk with almost religious fervour of...

...the plastics which are converging in the Pacific ocean and forming an 8th continent. Never heard of it? You need to help us. This is a rescue mission designed to save the Pacific by mining plastic. This 8th Continent has been identified northeast of Hawaii in the Pacific. Sailors and scientists, fishers and individuals have watched with horror, as this new continent comprised of human discards, primarily plastic garbage, has grown and expanded exponentially over the last few years. Also called the plastic vortex, this 8th continent is currently twice the size of Texas and growing.

Environmentalist David Suzuki talks of "a massive, expanding island of plastic debris 30 metres deep and bigger than the province of Quebec", while Greenpeace themselves - no stranger to exaggeration - describe "one of the world’s largest floating garbage dumps." Newspaper reports sourced talk of there being six-to-eight times more plastic than plankton.

Some of these claims are obviously absurd - an 8th continent?! - but as John Zhu has eloquently pointed out, journalists reporting on the "trash vortex" have failed to really challenge the people they're reporting on, or draw on research to add context to their efforts.

In particular, a debate has sprung up recently around the reporting of Lindsay Hoshaw, a Spot.us community-sponsored journalist whose report on Project Karsei - an environmentalist research project sailing in the region - ended up in the New York Times.

The Spot.us community paid Lindsay Hoshaw $10,000 to visit the region, but appear to have received little in the way of incisive journalism for their money, with the result coming across as a fairly uncritical travel blog (an excellent criticism of which can be found here). Should they have sent her in the first place? Zhu makes the following excellent point:

"Maybe instead of paying for someone to go take pictures of the patch, that $10,000 should go to paying for a reporter to sit in a room somewhere, sift through reams of research data on the subject, visit fisheries, interview scientists, doctors, policy makers … It’s not as exciting as a trip to the garbage patch and certainly lacks that “once-in-a-lifetime” appeal, but it may be the better route toward actually getting good journalism on the subject."

Exactly.

Which brings me neatly to the science itself. I'm not an ocean scientist, but I do have some experience of ocean modelling, and many of the claims being made ring alarm bells.

Let's take the comparison with plankton first. When somebody makes the claim that there is x times more plastic than plankton, the obvious first question any journalist should ask is "well how much plankton is there?"

The image below shows concentrations of Chlorophyll A in the ocean, measured by satellite, the level of which corresponds to the amount of plankton in the water (through Ocean Color algorithms beyond the scope of this blog post). Below it I've reproduced the colour scale, courtesy of NASA.

Chlorophyll A

All you need to know is that the purplest areas have 0.01mg/m³ of chl-A, while the green areas have 1mg/m³ and the reddest areas have about 50-60mg/m³. In other words, some areas of the central Pacific have almost 100x less plankton than, say, the North Atlantic does, and as much as 5,000x less than parts of the Baltic sea or English channel.

Plankton don't generally live in great quantities inthe middle of oceans, so saying that there are 'x' lbs of plastic vs 'x' lbs of plankton is a bit like seeing a washing machine dumped in the middle of the Sahara and returning home to announce that washing machine parts outnumber grass in parts of the desert.

There are sod-all plankton in the mid-Pacific, and six times sod-all is still sod-all, a point starkly made by Greenpeace's own data, when they compile a table of the relative plastic content of the world's seas and oceans (Figure 4.15, on P30) (HT: Science Punk):

It should be noted that these are figures from visual inspection, and the amount of plastic that can be caught by nets may be far higher, but the point remains that there are other places with a far greater quantity of surface plastic than the North Pacific, making it frankly puzzling just so much attention has been devoted to surface plastic in this area. Indeed, we can look at lot closer to home, at the English Channel, to find a far more concerning levels of contamination that are orders of magnitude higher.

This is not to say that regions of high plastic contamination don't exist in the Pacific. Indeed, the NOAA describe two areas in the pacific, the North Pacific Subtropical High and the North Pacific Subtropical Convergence Zone (STCZ) (media reports generally refer to the former). The size of these areas though is highly variable, and unknown, meaning that guesstimates by activists should be taken with a pinch of salt.

It is therefore not at all clear that these patches are growing, and Hoshaw's assertion that the Texas-sized trash vortex "doubles in size every decade" is at best unevidenced and at worst made-up.

In the Atlantic, attempts to measure growth have been inconclusive. The Sea Education Association have got 22 years' worth of data on the North Atlantic and Carribean, centering on a high plastic concentration at about thirty degrees north. The interesting thing from their data is that the quantity of plastic found hasn't increased in the 22 years they've been measuring it. That doesn't mean there isn't more there somewhere, but certainly something curious is happening to it.

Researchers with that group describe the phenomenon as a "plastic soup", a much more appropriate description and in some ways more alarming: "It’s much worse. If it were an island, we could go get it. But we can’t, because it’s a thin soup of plastic fragments."

Even the effects of the plastic on life are not as clear-cut as reports would suggest. We know that many animals ingest small particles of plastic, but the end result of this is unclear and probably depends on the species. It is easy to post a photo of a dead chick with plastic in its stomach, and claim that the plastic was the cause of death; but far harder to back this up with evidence. Indeed, studies of albatross chick mortality in Hawaii in the late-1980s found no evidence of plastic related mortality.

It's additionally worth bearing in mind the vagueness about where these photos were taken, and the lack of experimental rigour in surveying contents by taking random photos. Personally I do believe plastic is likely to poison or kill some life, but we need more information about the precise extent. As shocking as these images are, they add little to our scientific knowledge of the problem.

It's difficult to cover this problem without being accused of anti-environmentalism. That simply isn't the case - plastic contamination in the oceans simply shouldn't be there, and there's no doubt that this is a problem that needs to be taken seriously. However, by attempting to spin tales of plastic "continents", environmentalists risk shooting themselves in the foot. People have little patience for such easily debunked claims, and there's a real danger of being the boy who cried wolf.

What we need aren't publicity stunts and travel blogs, but comprehensive research to understand the true extent of the problem, and what we can do about it. Feeding myths to the media doesn't aid this understanding, it simply misleads the public, and ultimately undermines those of us trying to pitch a rational, environmentalist message.

You don't need to invent an eighth continent to persuade people that plastic in the oceans is a problem.

While a number of factors are responsible for this oversight, including relative geographical isolation (Uzbekistan, along with Liechtenstein, is one of the world’s doubly landlocked nations, requiring crossing two other nations to gain access to the oceans), which currently limits energy exports available for the global market, there are a number of pluses that the country has for investors willing to “think outside the box.”

With a population of 27 million, Uzbekistan is Central Asia's most populous and dominant power. A conservative fiscal policy since 1991, including inconvertibility of the national currency, the som, has shielded its citizens from the hyperinflation that ravaged other former Soviet republics, but the policy previously diminished potential foreign investment.

Since the global recession that began a year ago, however, Uzbekistan’s fiscal conservatism, previously dismissed by the foreign investment community, has looked more and more like a pragmatic policy that isolated the country from the worst aspects of the recession in stark contrast to other post-Soviet states that fervently embraced free market capitalism like Lithuania, whose economy contracted 18.1% this year and is expected to shrink further by 3.9% in 2010. In a move certain to be welcomed by foreign investor Uzbekistan is slowly moving towards making its currency convertible but whenever it happens, for the present the country offers a fiscal stability unmatched by many of its more free-market neighbors.

And now, the good news about the country’s resources. In 2006 Uzbekistan's natural gas reserves were estimated at 1.798 trillion cubic meters (tcm). During the Soviet era Uzbekistan was the USSR’s third-largest producer of natural gas, accounting for more than 10% of the Soviet Union’s production, trailing only Russia and Turkmenistan. In 1992, the country’s first year of independence, Uzbekistan produced 42.8 billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas. Uzbekistan currently produces 60 bcm of natural gas annually, an amount nearly equal to Turkmenistan's production. Uzbekistan’s reserves are primarily concentrated in Qashqadaryo province and near Bukhara in the country’s south-central region. During the 1970s Uzbekistan’s largest natural gas deposit at Boyangora-Gadzhak was discovered in Surkhandaryia province north of the Afghan border.

Unlike its energy-rich neighbors to the West, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, nearly 80 percent of Uzbekistan's production, about 48.4 bcm, is currently reserved for domestic use at heavily subsidized rates. Of the remaining 12 bcm of natural gas that Uzbekistan exports, more than half currently goes to Russia, with the remainder to neighboring Central Asian states.

Under Uzbekistan’s fiercely patriotic President Islam Karimov relations with Europe’s favorite bête noire, Russia’s state-owned gas firm Gazprom, have been subject to fierce negotiations to win an equitable price for the country’s exports. Like other former Soviet republics, the Uzbek government chafed under Gazprom's "buy cheap, sell dear" policies and in early December 2008 scored a significant negotiating success by getting an agreement that in 2009 Gazprom would pay $305 per thousand cubic meters (tcm). To put the accomplishment in perspective, Uzbekistan’s state gas company Uzbekneftegaz sold gas to Gazprom for $130 per tcm in the first half of 2008, which then rose to $160 in the second half of 2008.

Those betting on the eventual pacification of Afghanistan and the subsequent pipelines that would crisscross the country to deliver Central Asian gas to the massive Pakistani and Indian markets would also do well to take note of Uzbekistan’s persistent, low key policies over more than a decade attempting to bring peace to its hapless southern neighbor. The initiatives put forward by Uzbek President Islom Karimov during the NATO summit in Bucharest in April 2008 take on heightened importance as one of the few foreign policy ideas offering some hope to quelling Afghanistan’s three decades of turmoil. The text of Karimov’s address can be found here.

Nearly completely overshadowed by the Bush administration’s relentless efforts to have Georgia and Ukraine join the alliance, Karimov proposed that the UN’s Afghanistan "6 plus 2" assembly, established in 1999, be revived by expanding it into a "6 plus 3" ensemble by including NATO because of its anti-terrorist operations in Afghanistan among the "six" members Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, China and Iran and the "two," the United States and Russia.

Noting that that it is impossible to solve Afghanistan's problems without the direct involvement of neighboring countries, which have felt the destructive impact of the Afghan crisis for more than 30 years, as Afghanistan's problems are now of global nature, Karimov told his audience in Bucharest that their resolution must also be global, with the participation of members of the international coalition that comprise NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). Karimov concluded by noting that the current situation in Afghanistan precludes a purely military solution and that while it is possible to continue increasing the foreign military presence there, without a clear model of national reconciliation it will be impossible to end the conflict.

Needless to say, one of the benefits of peace and the aforementioned pipelines for Uzbekistan would be that it could export its surplus gas through Afghanistan to southern Asian markets for a higher price than it receives at home or Gazprom’s miserly accountants. Acting on Tashkent’s belief that economic assistance is of greater utility than military operations, Uzbekistan has become involved in a host of reconstruction projects in Afghanistan, including railways, power generation, mining, agriculture, irrigation, education and the exchange of specialists as well as providing its neighbor with construction materials, metals, fertilizer, food and other goods. Uzbek companies and engineers have built 11 bridges in the Mazar-e-Sharif-Kabul area and are finishing the construction of a 275-mile high-voltage line capable of transmitting 150 megawatts from Termez to Kabul across some of the world’s most mountainous terrain, which when it becomes fully operational next month, will provide power and light not only to the capital but the country’s five northern provinces.

For now, Uzbekistan remains largely a transit country rather than a net energy exporter in its own right. But the fiercely independent nationalist policy that Tashkent has followed since 1991 indicates that any company whose policies most benefit the country will have an inside track, and as the old saying goes, “fortune favors the bold.” Chinese, Malaysian, Russian and South Korean companies have already begun investing in Uzbekistan’s energy infrastructure – what do they seemingly know that American and European companies do not?

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This article was written by John C.K. Daly for OilPrice.com - Who offer free information and analysis on Energy and Commodities. The site has sections devoted to Fossil Fuels, Alternative Energy, Metals, Oil prices and Geopolitics. To find out more visit their website at: http://www.oilprice.com

See archives and the latest from skeptical podcast The Pod Delusion!

The BBC launch their radio service.

Apollo 12 is launched, the second manned mission to the Moon.

Astronomers Michael E. Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David L. Rabinowitz discover Sedna, a Trans-Neptunian 'dwarf planet'.

“Ukraine is in the midst of what some might call swine-flu hysteria. The country is in virtual lockdown mode, with the government closing schools, universities and movie theaters and banning all public gatherings until the end of November. Pharmacies have run out of protective masks; those who missed the rush are improvising with scarves or homemade facsimiles. And rumors are running rampant, much as they did during Soviet times when the authorities tried to cover up disasters like the Chernobyl nuclear-plant meltdown. "We are worried that the swine flu has mutated and is killing scores of people," says Nina Sokolovska as she stands in line at a pharmacy."

A flu that seems as deadly as an out-of-control nuclear reactor? The whole story seems hushed up by the government? Rumours spreading faster than the disease itself? Public gatherings are banned and schools, universities and the likes are closed? Let's look at this from the beginning.

Influenza and “Swine Flu”

Everyone knows the “usual”, seasonal influenza, but this year there's also the virus strain of H1N1, popularly called “Swine Flu”. Just like SARS and the “Avian Influenza” (the H5N1 strain, emerging in 2003 and still in the wild), it is a zoonosis, an infectious disease that can be transmitted from animals to humans (or vice versa). And just like the “Avian Flu” in 2005 and 2006 made for sensationalist coverage in the media, precipitous actions by various governments and hysterical discussions in the public debate, so is the “Swine Flu” firing everyone's imagination.

FARNSWORTH
Dear Lord, they're back!

AMY
We're doomed!

HERMES
Dooomed!

[Bender takes a breath.]
BENDER
Doooo...!

Even though the run-of-the-mill variation of the influenza, the yearly seasonal flu “result[s] in about three to five million cases of severe illness, and about 250 000 to 500 000 deaths“ worldwide, whereas the "Swine Flu“ has, to date, taken less than 6300 lives worldwide, less than 700> of those in Europe (this disconnect between victim numbers and media hype is a topic for another day). Funnily enough, very few politicians are recommending to be vaccinated (German former Minister of the Interior, now Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, has publicly stated that he hasn't decided yet whether or not to get the vaccine).

Populism and the search for a scapegoat

In the aforementioned case of the Ukraine, the hysteria and fear is coupled with populism: It seems like politicians are adding fuel to the flame in order to score political points ahead of the January elections. Schools and universities are closing, public gatherings have been banned (just days after the big launch of current Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko's election campaign), medication was flown in and the landing plane greeted in a George W. Bush-style photo-op by Tymoshenko – a move so blatantly populist that the local newspapers seem to agree with the political opponent Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who calls this a distraction from the real problems the country is facing. Oh, and on top of all these sweeping measures, Tymoshenko publicly stated that she will not get vaccinated – draw your own conclusions from that.

An even more exaggerated reaction could be witnessed in Egypt, where – prior to any reported (much less confirmed) cases of “Swine Flu” - about 250 000 (!) pigs were needlessly slaughtered. Here, the pigs – and, in a case of guilty-by-association, their Coptic Christian owners - were presented as a scapegoat. This measure sparked not only riots and the (further) impoverishment of the Coptics11, but also a massive garbage-disposal problem: The Pigs, traditionally used to clean the streets of tons of organic waste are now dearly missed, making the authorities' initial reaction to international criticism during this spring's mass killings even more ironic:

When health officials worldwide said that the virus was not being passed by pigs, the Egyptian government said that the cull was no longer about the flu, but was about cleaning up the zabaleen’s crowded, filthy, neighborhood.

Historical Parallels

Now, that was a mighty long build-up for a post in the history section of this site, wasn't it?
But reading about all this reminded me of a certain historical topic. Which one? Society's reaction to a truly devastating epidemic of a zoonosis. More specifically: Medieval Europe's reaction to the catastrophe of the Bubonic Plague 1347 – 1351, commonly refered to as the “Black Death”.

The Plague, commonly seen as one of the quintessential events in the history of Europe, comparable in its impact to the Migration Period of the Germanic and Slavic peoples or the First and Second World War, has influenced European society in fields as diverse as politics, economy, arts and – of special importance here – mentality[2]. Some scholars even go so far to call the Plague Years with their estimated 20 - 30 million dead[3] (i.e. about a third (!) of Europe's inhabitants) the beginning of the end of the Middle Ages[4].

"sterben [...] von eime ende der welte untz an das ander" - "death […] from one end of the world unto the other"[5]

The literal reaction to these few years can still be witnessed, stemming from the originals of Boccaccio (sometimes called the Italian Shakespeare) and Petrarch to more modern writers, like Defoe or Camus. Even in modern times there are plenty of idioms that can be traced back to this deadly disease: The British and Germans alike may try to "avoid something like the plague" (German: "meiden wie die Pest"), the Germans say they "have the choice between plague and cholera" ("die Wahl zwischen Pest und Cholera") where the English are caught between a rock and a hard place.

So how did the contemporaries react, and where can we draw parallels to our own times?

Patterns of Interpretation

Without going into the details of the medieval concepts of health and disease, let's take a look at the dominant patterns of interpretation of the Plague:

The people of the 1300's saw a holistic connection between man and environment, microcosm and macrocosm, everyday life and religion, earthly and spiritual life. Therefore, the main topos found in contemporary literature is the "tribunal"[6] or "God's righteous wrath"[7]. The inexplicable infection mechanism, the rapid and so often fatal progress of the Plague as well as its more general effect on the society at large brought about a plethora of religious phenomena. First and foremost, the flaggelants spring to mind (even though there are instances of earlier flaggelation-movements), often accompanied by antisemitism (although both were mostly limited to the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation), the later here functioning as a sort of valve for built-up frustration, as well as serving as a scapegoat (although there were many contributing factors that played out to the Jews' disadvantage and the social elites that instigated these anti-Jewish riots often stood to gain financially from the Jews' demise)[8]. Less extreme religious tendencies can be witnessed in the increase in pilgrimages as well as the often held services of intercession.

But there is a paradox here: Even though the Plague was seen both as sent from God and as righteous punishment for society's sins, the medieval populace still tried to escape the disease by flight, penance and dozens of other actions. Some historians even go so far as to postulate a "scepticism about God's justness"[9], as is evident in some chronicles:

Oh Genoa, what crime did you commit in these days! Do tell, Sicily, and all you rich islands of the sea, of God's tribunal! Do explain, Venice, Tuscany, and the whole of Italy, how did you conduct yourselves! We from Genoa and Venice try hard to unravel God's resolution! Oh pain! When we sent our fleets against [foreign] towns, we turned on our own homes![10]

de Mussis cannot explain what, exactly, brought about the Plague's torment, God's tribunal, what is the deed that needs to be paid for. Petrarca even goes so far to ask a question that seemed unthinkable just a few years ago:

Or should it be true, what some great thinkers already suspected, that God does not care for the earthly world [any more]?[11]

Measures taken against the Plague

When talking about the provisions taken against this unprecedented disease, we have to distinguish between the institutions that enacted them: Local authorities, the Catholic Church, and the people themselves. Any ideas that were to be put into practise were not only hampered by the lacking understanding of the Plague itself, but also suffered heavily from the strain the epidemic put on the institutions: Personnel was lacking, civil unrest was spreading and there was little time to react once the first people become infected – and let's not speak of the unreliability of the rule of law even during the best of times in the middle ages.

The most strain was put on the social networks of the days, the family and the lower clergy. Both were the basic unit of care for the socially weak and ailing, and both suffered horrendously under the Plague: Friends and family did not dare to care for the sick any more, out of fear for their own lives. The lower clergy had even higher casualties than the medical professionals, because they not only supplied basic medical care but also had to administer the last rites[12].

Prophylaxis

While the first organised quarantine likely stems from 1377, even during the Black Death some rudimentary isolation mechanism can be witnessed. On a more basic level, no one wanted to have contact to the fleeing refugees from the already infected neighbouring towns, although the speed of the disease itself makes it seem unlikely that this was a complete or even good isolation: Especially friends and family will likely have breached this informal quarantine.

Some towns instituted a health check at the gates and refused entry for every sick person – sadly, because of the latent period of the Plague is significantly shorter than the incubation period; since another vector was the flea, this measure usually amounted to nothing. Similarly, the idea of improving municipal hygiene was doomed from the start: All efforts to clean up streets that were not paved, consisted mostly of compacted mud and refuse, were swarming with wild dogs and other animals and literally had streams of shit flowing through it were futile[13].

Counteractive Measures

That the bodies of those who had died of the Plague were highly infectious, was apparent to most contemporaries. This was evident in the extremely high death rate of the gravediggers and undertakers[14]. The quick removal of those corpses was often accompanied by an – again, informal – isolation of the deceased's belongings, as simply no one wanted to come into contact with them.

The burial procedures were shortened and handled less strictly, simply because of the shortage of qualified clergy, but also because fewer people wanted to attend out of fear of infection. Mass graves beyond the city gates were dug, against considerably protest of the local populace who did not approve of the constrains this put on the cult of the death. Sometimes, a maximum number of mourners was set, an obvious but half-hearted parallel to today's banning of public gatherings.

These measures were usually accompanied by a host of moral laws, banning gambling, Sunday work or swearing in public; increased pilgrimage and mass could be seen, too. And, most interestingly in my mind, is the medieval equivalent to the modern gagging order of the press: The death knell, used to announce a funeral, was often curbed or banned outright, in order to not agitate the populace any further[15].

The Bottom Line

As we have seen, these hysterias are not something that we can point and laugh at in other, supposedly “less educated” or “backwards” countries and times. In Germany, some local school boards have decided to implement a daily head-count of the attending children as a precaution against the “Swine Flu”, some school districts even completely close down whole schools with hundreds of pupils, if just one case of infection is confirmed; some parents refuse to send their kids to schools (German) that aren't closed if there is a “Swine Flu” case. And the media is to blame, as well: Germany's biggest tabloid newspaper, “Bild“, had the Swine flu (or the vaccination-controversy) as a lead story 12 times in 27 days (German); let's just say that serious information probably wasn't the primary concern here.

As we have seen, the kind of behaviour witnessed today can be traced back to the medieval times and is, apparently, anchored deep in the human psyche. These kinds of fear – when you worry about your own health as well as about your family – are hard to control by education.

Don't get me wrong: Get vaccinated, if possible against both seasonal as well as “Swine Flu”. Just don't buy into hype (of any kind) and scrutinise the actions taken and the arguments given for them. Otherwise, imagine what kind of panic the future might bring if this thing actually does get dangerous for the whole of society – for there are historical precedents.

=====

Footnotes

[1] cf. A.E. Hotchner: Papa Hemmingway, 1966.
[2] cf. Uwe Walter: Der "Schwarze Tod“ und seine Sippe – Versuch einer Bilanz, in: Mischa Meier (ed.): Pest. Die Geschichte eines Menschheitstraumas, 2005, p. 370f. (German).
[3] cf. Karl-Heinz Leven: Art. Pest B., in: LexMA Bd.6, 1993, Cls. 1920f. (German).
[4] cf. František Graus: Pest – Geissler – Judenmorde. Das 14. Jahrhundert als Krisenzeit, 1987, pp. 535 - 550 (German).
[5] Jakob Twinger von Königshofen: Deutsche Chronik, ca. 1400 (Middle High German).
[6] Gabriele de Mussis: Ystoria de morbo sive mortalitate quae fuit anno Domini 1348, in: Bergdolt, Klaus (Hrsg.): Die Pest 1348 in Italien. Fünfzig zeitgenössische Quellen, 1989, p. 22 (German).
[7] Giovanni Boccaccio: Il Decamerone, in: Bergdolt, Klaus (Hrsg.): Die Pest 1348 in Italien. Fünfzig zeitgenössische Quellen, Heidelberg 1989, p. 39 (German).
[8] cf. František Graus: Pest – Geissler – Judenmorde. Das 14. Jahrhundert als Krisenzeit, 1987 (German).
[9] Bergdolt, Klaus: Die Pest. Geschichte des Schwarzen Todes, 2006, p. 10 (German).
[10] Gabriele de Mussis Ystoria de morbo sive mortalitate quae fuit anno Domini 1348, in: Bergdolt, Klaus (Hrsg.): Die Pest 1348 in Italien. Fünfzig zeitgenössische Quellen, 1989, p. 23 (German).
[11] Francesco Petrarco: Brief Francesco Petrarcas an seinen Bruder Gherardo, in: Bergdolt, Klaus (Hrsg.): Die Pest 1348 in Italien. Fünfzig zeitgenössische Quellen, Heidelberg 1989, p. 141f. (German).
[12] cf. Gabriele de Mussis Ystoria de morbo sive mortalitate quae fuit anno Domini 1348, in: Bergdolt, Klaus (Hrsg.): Die Pest 1348 in Italien. Fünfzig zeitgenössische Quellen, 1989, p. 28 (German).
[13] cf. Kay Peter Jankrift: Brände, Stürme, Hungersnöte. Katastrophen in der mittelalterlichen Lebenswelt, 2003, pp. 147 - 180 (German).
[14] cf. Gabriele de Mussis Ystoria de morbo sive mortalitate quae fuit anno Domini 1348, in: Bergdolt, Klaus (Hrsg.): Die Pest 1348 in Italien. Fünfzig zeitgenössische Quellen, 1989, p. 28 (German).
[15] Klaus Bergdolt: Der Schwarze Tod im Mittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit, in: Kaldewei, Gerhard (Hrsg.): Pest, Plagen und Polykarpus 1454 / 2004. 550 Jahre St.-Polykarpus-Gilde zu Delmenhorst. Begleitveröffentlichung zur Ausstellung „Pest, Plagen und Polykarpus 1454 / 2004“ vom 13.6. - 5.9.2004 in den Museen der Stadt Delmenhorst auf der Nordwolle, 2004, p.
77 (German).

Evening all. Two jolly queer stories this week from Dock Green.

Firstly, Police in Lampeter spent £20,000 following up tips from psychics in a murder investigation. The suicide verdict was questioned when mediums told the police that a lion, a horse and a man called Tony Fox were important. So off went the Boys In Blue round all the local pubs with Lion or Horse in the name.

The police were told that the dead man's ghost had been in touch to say he was strangled by gangsters and forced to drink petrol and bleach. Oddly enough, a second postmortem found no trace of either substance. Tip for mediums: don't make claims that can be disproved in five minutes with a scalpel.

The Dyfed-Powys police said they followed up the leads 'to reassure the family that the full circumstances of the death were as they appeared. Police have a responsibility to the deceased, their family and the public to investigate all deaths thoroughly'.

Up to a point, lads. Going against post mortem evidence does not say a great deal for their trust in forensics either. The men and women in white coats can't be exactly delighted.

The dead man had a row with his girlfriend and local news added that 'Their relationship had deteriorated since the birth of their son Luca in 2005, and Miss Edwards, 23, said her former partner had developed bouts of anger. She said Mr Assaf, who had spent six months in jail for assaulting her in 2006, was addicted to amphetamines'.

Does this make the police more or less gullible? Were they fooled by an alleged psychic or were they just doing their job? Could the mediums have been giving them a real tip-off based on facts they were trying to dress up as knowledge from Beyond the Veil for who knows what motive? The police said they had to be sure no third party was involved and someone decided this was worth twenty grand of police time.

We will never know at what point in the mystic revelations the police decided they'd been had or, in their terms, decided that no third party was involved.

A police source commented: 'We are becoming a laughing stock'.

Well, yes.

Then, a few days later, there was another story, this time about Alan Power, a police trainer with Greater Manchester Police, who is going to court after being sacked because he believes psychics can help in police investigations.

Judge Russell at the Manchester Employment Tribunal said 'I am satisfied that the claimant's beliefs that there is life after death and that the dead can be contacted through mediums are worthy of respect in a democratic society and have sufficient cogency, seriousness, cohesion and importance to fall into the category of a philosophical belief for the purpose of the 2003 Regulations'.

He is referring to the Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003. This is the same law used by Tim Nicholson when he argued that green beliefs are equal to religious beliefs recently.

There's respect for someone's right to believe any old nonsense and then there's taking that nonsense seriously in the workplace, which requires quite a leap especially in a job where lives and safety are at stake.

The judge said that a later hearing would have to establish whether Power was 'dismissed for the possession of religious or philosophical beliefs or for his alleged inappropriate foisting of his beliefs on others'.

Power has belonged to a Spiritualist church for 30 years. He told the hearing that he believed in psychics and their 'usefulness to police investigations'. He is to call a psychic he has known since 1980 to testify that his association with the psychic has proved 'detrimental' to his police career.

Greater Manchester Police are going to argue at an appeal that Judge Russell 'erred in law' because Power did not originally claim to have a religious belief, only that he had a belief in psychics and their usefulness to the Force.

They must be aware that their public reputation is at stake - something Dyfed-Powys police might like to have considered.

On the one hand, is there really any difference between believing that the dead can be contacted and that (fill in any mainstream religious belief of your choice here). If the latter is 'worthy of respect in a democracy', why not the former? What is the difference between praying to a supernatural being to guide you in your investigation, solving the case and ascribing it to His Wisdom and bringing in a psychic? Both are world views based on faith not science, evidence or any testable claim. Both often involve post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning, confirmation bias, seeing patterns where there are none and a whole gamut of logical fails, not to mention leaps of imagination.

On the other hand, Manchester police do appear to be showing a lot more common sense than the Dyfed-Powys police. The fact that Power wants to prove his beliefs have been detrimental to his career means that he has form, that they have known about him for a while and he went too far.

If Power wins his case, then the floodgates will be open for people with any kind of belief to refuse to do certain work because it is against those beliefs, to bring those beliefs into the workplace, demand concessions or privileges and to appeal if they get sacked. As long as they can prove they didn't just make up a belief on the spot because they fancied a day off, they could have a case.

Two incidents of psychics and police do not make a trend, but it would be interesting to know just how many members of the Force have some sort of supernatural belief that they bring to work with them. There is a Christian Police Association , a Muslim Police Association, a Sikh group and a Pagan Police group.

The pagans wanted to take the Solstices and Halloween off and Hertfordshire police have appointed two pagan police chaplains. A member of Staffordshire Police is a practising Wiccan who has offered to do spells to help his colleagues.

In the light of all this, does using the dead to grass up the living seem so extreme?

Also published here with links: Tessera2009.blogspot.com/2009/11/psychic-detectives.

"I immediately got my camera ready and snapped the object which was then two to three feet above the surface of the water. I did not see any head, for what I took to be the front parts were under the water, but there was considerable movement from what seemed to be the tail."

The result, seen below, was the very first photograph of the legendary Loch Ness monster.

"I cannot give any definate opinion of size, except that it was very great - it was a dark greyish color; the skin was glistening and appeared smooth."

The early 1930s saw a new road built along the side of Loch Ness, and as the legend spread sightings of the beastie sky-rocketed. In 1934, the most famous photograph of all was taken by Robert Wilson. Sadly this was a hoax; a toy submarine outfitted with a fake serpent's head.

The legend has persisted to this day, with the 22 square mile lake believed by many - including tourists and canny locals with good business acument - to harbour some relic of the dinosaur age.

But in 2003, a BBC team put paid to the idea completely. They used GPS and several hundred sonar beams to scan every cubic foot of the Loch, and found nothing.

"We went from shoreline to shoreline, top to bottom on this one, we have covered everything in this loch and we saw no signs of any large living animal in the loch."

The BBC project went further, and revealed a fascinating insight into the psychology of our relationship with the Loch Ness Monster.

The BBC team says the only explanation for the persistence of the myth of the monster is that people see what they want to see.

To prove this, the researchers hid a fence post beneath the surface of the loch and raised it in front of a coach party of tourists.

Interviewed afterwards, most said they had observed a square object but several drew monster-shaped heads when asked to sketch what they had seen.

We want to believe, we really do. As a scientist and a skeptic I'm driven by the need for answers, but sometimes I find myself looking back to the Victorian age and mourning the mysteries that have been solved. In the modern world of lasers and sonar and GPS, there are few corners left for creatures like Nessie to exist. Mythological creatures are following their real-life cousins and becoming extinct, and when we lose them I think the world will be a slightly sadder place.

I wonder, if we ever leave leave this Earth and explore and colonize other planets, will our descendants create their own, new monsters? I'd like to think so.

To paraphrase Ariane Sherine, there's probably no Loch Ness Monster, but there is one aspect of the legend that is real, and is truly remarkable. Conservapedia have an entry for the Loch Ness Monster, which is reasonably well-written and doesn't mention gays, Muslims or atheists once.

Would you believe it?

If you have seen the video or read the reports you will already know that it was a complete rout for the Enlightenment with Widdecombe and Onaiyekan receiving a damn good verbal kicking. A boxing referee may well have shown pity and called a halt to the proceedings after round 2, but Zeinab Badawi allowed the punch drunk Catholics to cling on to the ropes for the duration.

I was of course, delighted to hear Hitchens and Fry drawing attention to the long list of unequivocal harm proliferated and condoned by the Catholic Church, both in its long history and indeed now. And I was of course unsurprised that the Catholic apologists where unable to justify the inhumane actions of their Church and disappointed that they were also unwilling to apologise for them.

Despite a resounding victory for free thought in the final vote of the evening, I wanted to ensure that the one positive point offered by Widdecombe and Onaiyekan was not simply ignored in the heat of the battle.

The strongest argument put forward from the Catholic camp to support the motion was the undeniable massive amount of much needed aid and charity supplied by the Church. However, before looking at this, allow me to backtrack a few hundred years.

When the church had a complete strangle hold on society, it was free to bolster its numbers in foreign parts and spread the good word with a good old fashioned Crusade. Thankfully, in these enlightened times the majority of us can see the immorality in such an approach. If however the term Crusade still holds a little romance for you, try substituting it for Jihad, as its true meaning is much clearer when not blurred by you own particular belief system.

Eventually replacing crusades with missionary work seemed to provide a more acceptable non-violent evangelism for spreading the gospel to those not fortunate enough to have been born into the one true faith. Although once again with modern eyes we can see how breaking Star Trek’s prime directive is not especially wise, and interfering with local cultures and superstitions to simply replace them with alternative foreign myths and dogmas is not an especially virtuous occupation.

Today’s missionary work proceeds by wrapping much needed aid, desperately required in the developing world, in a religious package. This may superficially seem like a pretty good deal. Food, money and education can be distributed by compassionate well meaning individuals where it is most needed along with a message of an all loving God than may also bring hope to many people.

Sadly however, I suspect the God packaging that accompanies this aid is not as benign as we would hope. Seeding the currently dominant western religion spreads the doctrines and creeds based on the myths and superstitious at the root of that religion. An ancient revealed truth is by definition problematic to update in line with the modern world and therefore frequently at odds with liberal thinking, gender equality, tolerance and the extended morality embraced by a more progressive secular society.

To draw an analogy, I recall a conversation many years ago with a religious friend who explained to me why she was boycotting all Nestle products. She explained how their policy of providing free formula milk to new mothers in the third world provided useful and immediate benefit but in the long term created a troublesome dependency.

While some religious aid may well be distributed without strings attached, there is nonetheless a certain amount of religious packaging to much of the aid. The spread of these ideas must surely be the cause in many of the current problems experienced in the developing world.

To give two short examples:

A local Nigerian priest denouncing a 5 year old child as a witch due to his religious delusion rather than a logical understanding of causation and correlation is sadly far from an isolated event. This report from the Telegraph details how hundreds of children have been branded as witches, and before being pushed out of their homes, have been beaten, slashed with knives, thrown onto fires or had acid poured over them in an attempt to make them confess to being possessed by demons. A harrowing echo of the Inquisition in our own pre-enlightened times and a direct consequence of a warped religious mindset.

And of course, as Ann Widdecombe will be expecting me to mention, the papal misinformation concerning his supposedly infallible claim that condoms actually contribute to the spread of the HIV Aids virus. I could not think of a more fatally dangerous meme to propagate in countries rife with the HIV virus.

In the Intelliegence2 debate, Hitchens and Fry held a strong set of trump cards that made it virtually impossible for them to loose the debate in front of a rational thinking audience. But why not ensure that Rationality and Reason hold the full set of the trump cards.

I’m somewhat embarrassed by the fact that pious believers can point at comparatively miserly levels of secular aid. Can we not strive to ensure we gradually increase the level of no strings attached, non religious aid offered. I’ve no wish for people to withdraw their support for a religious charity if they don’t replace it with an equivalent secular donation. But hopefully more people will eventually want to donate for humanitarian reasons rather than religious reasons, and I think things are indeed moving in that direction.

So finally, a hat-tip to Ariane Sherine, who recently edited the delightful, The Atheists Guide to Christmas, a book whose proceeds will go to the Terrence Higgins Trust, and hopefully in some way counter the harm caused by Papal Propaganda.

Marina 9 swings into orbit around Mars, becoming the first spacecraft to orbit another planet.

Half a million people are killed in a single night in the worst natural disaster of the 20th century, the Bhola Cyclone.

Collier's magazine accuses U.S. Secretary of the Interior Richard Ballinger of questionable dealings in Alaskan coal fields, in an anti-conservation scandal that would later split the Republican party.

Physician James Braid witnesses the first demonstration of what would later come to known as hypnotism.

Voyager 1 makes its closest approach to Saturn, capturing the first images of its rings.

The first photograph of the Loch Ness Monster was taken by Hugh Gray.

The frozen bodies of Scott and his men were found on the Ross Ice Shelf in the Antarctic.

A controversial teaching program linked to an alleged cult leader managed to slip into 44 New York City public schools because it didn't cost enough to trigger detailed background checks, school officials said yesterday.

Fees for the Brain Power program, developed by Seung Huen Lee, founder of Dahn Yoga -- said to help kids improve their focus -- were well under the $25,000 cutoff, said Education Department spokesman David Cantor.

Dahn Yoga has been embroiled in a federal lawsuit in Arizona after dozens of former employees accused the organisation of cult-like practices. The Boston Magazine has an in-depth article about a man who asked intervention expert Steve Hassan to rescue his son from the group.

The Indian Express report the following justification from a minister and ex-minister:

"We will put up an exhibition highlighting the work done by the government and throw open the doors to the public for a week," Minister for Gas Tragedy (Relief and Rehabilitation) Babulal Gaur told The Sunday Express.

[...]

"The government hopes that allowing people to visit the site would satisfy their curiosity and remove misconceptions that things at the plant have been kept under wraps," said former chief minister Gaur.

"I have visited the site numerous times and handled the waste on several occasions. There’s nothing to worry," he added.

The Environment and Forests Minister Jairam Ramesh made a similar remark while visiting the factory recently, prompting angry survivors to burn effigies of him. The Times of India report:

"I held the toxic waste in my hand. I'm still alive and not coughing." Later he said the "truth" about the gas tragedy and how it occurred were "extremely complex'' and "uncomfortable". He also advised 25 years after the tragedy, it was time to move on.

To understand just how insensitive these remarks were, we need to put them in context. That hundreds of tons of toxic waste remain at the site, leaking into local water supplies and contaminating drinking water up to several kilometres away is in itself a horrendous state of affairs; and many people werecoughing, or worse. The raw facts of the aftermath hint at the scale of the disaster:

"Thousands of people had succumbed by the morning hours. There were mass funerals and mass cremations as well as disposal of bodies in the Narmada river. 170,000 people were treated at hospitals and temporary dispensaries. 2,000 buffalo, goats, and other animals were collected and buried. Within a few days, leaves on trees yellowed and fell off. Supplies, including food, became scarce owing to suppliers' safety fears. Fishing was prohibited as well, which caused further supply shortages"

Around 20,000 dead, and perhaps ten times as many permanently injured, and that was just the aftermath. The long term effects of local contamination may have been dire. The exact scale of the ongoing health problems has been hard to measure, apparently in part due to a lack of political will-power, but local victims like Hamida Bi claim:

"We suffer from chronic pulmonary diseases, fight cancer and have physically challenged children."

Only in 2009 are the long-term health effects of the disaster being comprehensively studied, <a href="http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Scripting/ArticleWin.asp?From=Search&Source=Find&Key=TOIM/2009/03/07/13/Ar01302.xml&CollName=TOI_MUMBAI_DAILY_2006&DOCID=746143&Keyword=(%3Cmany%3E%3Cstem%3Ebhopal)&skin=TOI&AppName=1&PageLabel=13%20&ViewMode=HTML&GZ=T
">by the Indian Council of Medical Research.

While there may be no conclusive scientific evidence for the scale of problems arising from contamination in 2009, illness is still being reported, and the fact remains that the site is filled with toxic waste. Local water supplies are heavily contaminated with chemicals that killed or maimed a substantial percentage of the local population (a problem which is spreading across India as the country rapidly industrializes). It is a shocking state of affairs; and one which officials seem unwilling to grasp.

Opening the plant to the public for a week will not reassure the local population - what they want is healthcare, a clean-up operation, and reassurance that the government take the disaster seriously and will never let anything like it happen again.