Greenies against the Jews

Followers of Hitler in that respect too

“The desert is groaning”, declares Cornerstone magazine, the Palestinian Sabeel Theology Center’s publication. “The Israeli army and settlers have polluted the Palestinian areas,” writes Reverend Naim Ateek, who heads the notorious anti-Jewish Christian center.

Despite the fact that Israel is the only country to enter the 21st century with a net gain in forest growth, Green activists today are among the most virulently anti-Jewish. The Green Party mayor of Aachen, Hilde Scheidt, has just waged a media campaign against Israel. Prominent German author Henryk Broder called her a “Green anti-Semite,” after she defended a cartoon depicting a man sporting a Star of David on his bib as he devours a young Palestinian boy with a fork draped in an American flag and a knife with the word “Gaza” written on it.

Back in 1991, German Green Party’s spokesman Hans Christian Stroebele defended Saddam Hussein’s rockets on Tel Aviv because “Iraq’s attacks are the logical, almost compelling, consequence of Israel’s politics vis-à-vis the Palestinians and the Arab states,”

The Green lies about “the ecology of occupation” are now spreading at the highest European levels. The French parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee recently published an unprecedented report accusing Israel of implementing “apartheid” in its allocation of water in Judea and Samaria.

Meanwhile, environmentalists accuse Israel’s army of being a major cause of cancer in Palestinian children. This blood libel began in 1999, when Suha Arafat declared that Israeli gas is poisoning Arab children: “Our people have been subjected to the daily and extensive use of poisonous gas by the Israeli forces, which has led to an increase in cancer cases among women and children.” She also said that Israel has “chemically contaminated about 80% of water sources used by Palestinians.”

Nazi-style rhetoric

The pollution myth spread through the literary milieu as well. British dramatist David Hare wrote that the Jews have “polluted” the Promised Land and “do not belong here.” According to this racist belief, “native species” originate in a certain place and that is where they “belong.” Hence, Israel’s "colonization" threatens the “original” Arab environment.

Green NGOs accuse Israel of “warfare ecology,” “deforestation,” “erosion of agricultural lands,” and “expropriation” of Arab land for Israel’s national park. European geographers denounce settler “cementification” and the “architecture of occupation" in a growing topography of hatred.

Elsewhere, Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine,” led by the British Richard Rogers, has called for a boycott of architects, planners and companies involved in building the security fence, which stopped the suicide bombers. Eyal Weizman, an Israeli architect living in London, calls it a “war crime.”

Elements within the Green movement have adopted Nazi-style rhetoric to blast Israeli businesses. Literature distributed by the boycotters outrageously describes Judea and Samaria citizens as “parasites.” Products from the Golan Heights, such as wines, mineral water and milk are targeted. Flowers are targeted by the BDS movement, because since Israel entered the flower export market in the 1970s this business has been blooming.

The Ahava cosmetics company is also targeted by Green activists. In the last three years, thousands of Western women in bikinis, belonging to the feminist association Code Pink, protested outside Ahava shops in the US and in European capitals. They are usually streaked with mud, some featuring the words “Ahava is a dirty business.” The slogan of the campaign is fashionable and catchy: “Stolen Beauty.”

Dutch government promoted an investigation to determine whether Ahava should enjoy tax privileges granted to foreign goods. Elsewhere, Sex and the City actress Kristin Davis was suspended by humanitarian group Oxfam International after joining an Ahava advertisement campaign.

In the final analysis, environmentalists have launched a primitive diatribe against Israel that smacks of classic, medieval-style anti-Semitic blood libels. It demonizes the Jews for “dispossessing” and “polluting” a fabricated, “archetypical Palestine.” Yet this campaign has proven, again, that anti-Semitism is the most dangerous pollutant.

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ADL: Fighting Yesterday's Battles

Charles Jacobs

The ADL is now caught flatfooted by its own paralysis

Republicans are all over national TV, arguing passionately over which (and whose) approaches - given the sorry state of American society - might best set things right. They know Democrats will use the best barbs they throw at each other against the eventual GOP nominee; even so, the most thoughtful among them value sharp debate about our serious problems - to test and clarify ideas. So if Republicans can do this, why not the Jews?

World Jewry is under significant strain. Iran presents an existential threat to Israel; the age-old virus of anti-Semitism has morphed into anti-Zionism - more difficult to fight; Muslim clergymen on every continent rage against the Jews; much of the far left loves "Palestine." The media and academe daily assault the Jewish state. Indeed, the story of our epoch is that the Jews live in a new time defined by a new threat: a Left/Muslim alliance - that attacks both Israel and Jews. This alliance menaces Europe's Jews and has spread to parts of the American elite, especially on our campuses.

Do Jews have the right leadership and organizations to deal with this threat? Why is public discourse on such vital issues absent? Who would try to block such a critical conversation? The ADL, for one.

It was sad to read the Anti-Defamation League's letter to The Advocate ("ADL fires back," Dec. 16 - see below), not solely for its personal attack, but also because it reflects how a once respectable and important Jewish organization has now reached new lows. The problem for the ADL, and this is not restricted only to this group, is that it has been unable - decades - to adjust to the new reality, and is now caught flatfooted by its own paralysis.

For decades, as Israel was defamed in the media, I watched ADL choose not to be the Anti-Defamation League for the Jewish state. (That's precisely why CAMERA was born.) For years, as Islamic Jew-hatred and leftwing anti-Zionism overtook rightwing anti-Semitism as the bigger threat to Jewish life, we've seen the ADL flinch. Students from around the country told me that ADL did not answer their calls as they were harassed and intimidated by anti-Israel faculty, students and administrations. (That's precisely why the David Project - and Stand with Us - were established.) But sure enough, when ADL found a swastika on some bathroom stall in Iowa, my mother-in-law got a fundraising letter.

Shifting the focus away from skinheads, neo-Nazis, and Christian bigots and onto radical leftists and Muslim Jew-hatred would be extraordinarily difficult. It would require a massive and unpopular effort: leading the Jews to think difficult thoughts about their new situation, thoughts that put them at odds with their comforting universalist theology of Political Correctness. And it would be costly: ADL would forfeit loads of leftwing money - and its liberal bona fides. The organization would hardly ever get a letter published in The New York Times. It would be viciously attacked by Islamist leadership. CAIR would be relentless. Abe Foxman, ADL's head, acknowledges that Islamic Jew hatred is the biggest threat we face (he's still shy about the radical left) - yet ADL spends much, much more time, effort, resources and focus on the older, less dangerous threats while practically ignoring the new, more ominous ones.

Stuck between a rock and hard place, the response of Ken Jacobson, ADL's national director, to our criticism (with an arrogance that only a $50 million budget might explain) could do nothing but call me names (the Defamation League?!) and skirt the issues.

Jacobson calls our study of ADL press releases - showing they are all but silent on Muslim anti-Semitism - "amateurish." But in the absence of information about ADL's internal budget - what proportion of funds is spent on Christian, Nazi, leftist, skinhead vs. Leftist/Islamic anti-Semitism - the data on ADL's press releases was the best statistical stand-in we could find. We strongly recommend that ADL's donors review its budget for a true understanding of the organization's priorities.

Jacobson suggested better indicators of ADL's deep concern about Islamic anti-Semitism. He cited its Center on Extremism. But see for yourselves that the center seems stuck in another world, almost totally devoted to Nazis and skinheads - with not one Islamic group named. In his letter last week to The Advocate, Professor Barry Rubin of the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya, Israel, wrote that a visit to ADL's Web site might leave you thinking that left-wing anti-Semitism, "the most significant form of Western-origin anti-Semitism," just doesn't exist.

Jacobson says ADL issues more reports today on Arab anti-Semitism. Yes, ADL loves to monitor and issue reports. In the age of video, who is reading these reports? For the most part, Jews and the public don't have a clue about the nature and extent of Islamic hatred. Finally, he says ADL trains law enforcement officials. Can he mean about the theory and practice of Islamic Jew-hatred in the West?

Jacobson mocks our concerns about ADL's backing a sale of a Michigan school building to the radical Islamic Cultural Association (ICA). He says we're "playing six degrees of Islamic separation." Actually, it's one degree: the ICA was originally funded by the North American Islamic Trust, identified by federal officials as a Muslim Brotherhood front.

Most tellingly perhaps, ADL's letter is silent on the shocking matter of its continued presence on a Detroit interfaith committee that includes CAIR, a Hamas front. ADL's excuse is that the NAACP and law enforcement groups also sit on the committee. But aren't Jews funding ADL to do the hard work of exposing our enemies? Shouldn't the ADL chapter quit the committee and then educate black leaders as well as law enforcement officials about the menace of Islamic anti-Semitism? Isn't that what the ADL is supposed to be doing?

The transformation of ADL into to a politically correct, liberal organization creates a leadership vacuum for the Jewish community. This, combined with the lack of public debate on the Islamist-Leftist threat, increases our vulnerability.

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An orgy of hatred

Atheists in America hate Christians. Atheists in Israel hate the ultra-Orthodox

In recent days I’ve been quarreling with all my friends. They are good people, these friends – liberal, tolerant, moderate and sensitive to any injustice. These are people that in our complex reality were never confused between good and bad. This is why I love them, among other things. I’d like to think that we are cut from the same cloth. That’s why I’m so amazed to see how uncaring and hateful they become when a group of people known as the haredim comes up for discussion.

My liberal friends propose various steps against the haredim and religious: A cadet who cannot bear female singing will not be an officer in the IDF, said one friend. As simple as that (“as simple as that” or “at once” are words that always accompany discussions about the haredim.) A segregated bus shall be stopped! The driver and bus operators should be sent to jail. A yeshiva that will not teach the core curriculum shall be closed at once! We shall not allow primitive ignoramuses to be raised here, and at our expense no less. A neighborhood that features separate sidewalks for women shall immediately lose its municipal services! They can go ahead and choke in their own garbage.

There are more proposals that are even more terrifying. Disconnect haredi neighborhoods from electricity, water and whatnot. The same people who would quiver, and rightfully so, if such proposals were made about Gaza, forget that behind the dark clothes, odd views and challenging (and annoying) behavior lie human beings. They are different than us, but they are human beings.

I’ve been following haredi society for many years yet I don’t remember such anger. And that’s odd, because the secular fury comes at a time when secularism is winning while the haredim are on the defense. Once upon a time the haredim sought to educate us. They made pretenses of telling us where and what to eat, what to do on Shabbat, where and how to be buried, and how to get married. Some time has passed, and the seculars won most battles.

Today it’s the seculars who wish to educate the haredim. The seculars are upset by the segregated bus routes. This doesn’t upset haredi women, but it does upset the secular Tania Rosenblit. The seculars are upset that math is not being taught at yeshivas. They know better than haredi parents what’s good for their sons. The seculars are upset by the relationship between men and women in haredi society. Why can’t the haredim be like us?

Wild incitement

I look at the holy secular anger and fail to understand it. It lacks the modesty of one who looks at another society from the outside. It has no hesitation – maybe we are wrong after all? Perhaps we failed in understanding the other?

I, for example, very much want the haredim to study the core curriculum, I will try to convince them this is needed, but I won’t enforce it upon them. Why? Because somewhere in my head I’m not certain that the core curriculum is truly important for the life meant for a haredi child. Perhaps for him math and English are less necessary than another Talmud class? In all such matters I will hesitate, because in my view when a civilized liberal looks at someone who is different, this should be done with the required modesty.

However, the seculars are furious and are unwilling to show any modesty in the way they look at the haredim. Had I been a religious Jew, I would be concerned. I would take this fury seriously and understand how I contributed to it. I would try to calm the atmosphere through some concessions.

And here I get to the heart of the matter: We need a new social covenant. The old status-quo may have secured political calm, yet caused a flare-up in secular-haredi relations. Both sides must be brave and go for a new covenant premised on a simple principle: Life in the country will be secular in every way. The haredim will let go of their need to care for our secular souls. This means buses on Shabbat, civil marriage and everything associated with a modern state.

On the other hand, the secular majority would allow the haredim to have full cultural autonomy within their neighborhoods. This means letting go of the need to education them and allowing them to live their life as they see fit. And yes, this means segregated buses in haredi population centers and tolerance to haredi education.

That’s the principle. Implementing it isn’t simple because there would be red lines, of course. If the haredim want to educate their children by beating them up, we won’t agree to. However, within the boundaries of logic, we must make every effort to accept the differences of the other.

In my arguments with my liberal friends, one of them sometimes places a hand on my shoulder and asks in a concerned voice: “Amnon, what happened to you? After all, you are secular, a devout atheist; what’s happening to you?” So here is the answer: It appears to me that being a liberal, progressive and humanist today means resisting this blatant incitement against the haredim; standing up against the bon-ton and saying: I’m not taking part in this orgy of hatred.

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Are Jews better off in Israel?

By Spengler

Israel's immigration ministry stopped running television ads exhorting Israelis living in America to come home after American Jewish organizations complained, the New York Times reported December 2:


"One video advertisement shows a Jewish elderly couple distraught that their Israeli granddaughter in the United States thinks Hanukkah is Christmas. Another shows a clueless American boyfriend who does not get why his Israeli expatriate girlfriend is saddened on Israel's memorial day. A third shows a toddler calling "Daddy! Daddy!" to his napping Israeli expatriate father, who finally awakens when the child switches to Hebrew: "Abba!"


"While we recognize the motivations behind the ad campaign," the Jewish Federations remonstrated in a December 1 statement, "we are strongly opposed to the messaging that American Jews do not understand Israel. We share the concerns many of you have expressed that this outrageous and insulting message could harm the Israel-Diaspora relationship." The Jewish organizations complained after a liberal blogger, Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic Monthly, denounced the ads.

The message that Jewish life in America is deficient is "outrageous" and "insulting", to be sure, but it has a single redeeming quality, namely truth. The vehemence of the official Jewish response to the Israeli advertisements betrays a guilty conscience: Jewish life in America is dying, as the same Jewish organizations warn in ever-gloomier studies of Jewish demographics. It seems inconsistent of the Jewish organizations to bewail the inexorable decline of American Jewish life on one hand, and condemn the Israelis for pointing to their manifest achievements in sustaining Jewish life.

The tragedy is that Jews have stopped being Jews because America has stopped being America. The Pilgrim Fathers founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony in conscious emulation of the people of Israel, undertaking a new Mission in the Wilderness to found a new Chosen People in a New Promised Land. From this emerged what Abraham Lincoln called an "almost-chosen people", a secular and democratic nation defined by the biblical concept of covenant.

Mainstream American culture holds in contempt the idea of a divine grantor of rights who has established individual freedom beyond the prerogative of any government to impinge. For the minority who understand the American founding as a continuation of the covenant of Mount Sinai, the survival of the Jewish people is proof that God's promises never attenuate; for mainstream culture, the Jews are a curious remnant of antique superstition. That is how most American Jews see the matter, and that is why most of them do not much trouble to be Jewish.

In principle, Jewish life should flourish in the United States. As Eric Nelson of Harvard demonstrated in his 2010 book The Hebrew Republic, the political theory by which America was founded drew on post-biblical rabbinic sources. Nowhere (except in the State of Israel) should Jews feel more at home than in America, whose founding drew on their classical sources.

Sadly, American Jews stand out as a horrible example of demographic failure. In the United States, secular and loosely affiliated American Jews, that is, the vast majority, have the lowest fertility rate of any identifiable segment of the American population.

As I wrote in my book How Civilizations Die (and Why Islam is Dying, Too):


"Nowhere is the fertility gap between religious and non-religious more extreme than among American Jews. As a group, American Jews show the lowest fertility of any ethnic group in the country. That is a matter of great anguish for Jewish community leaders. According to sociologist Steven Cohen, "We are now in the midst of a non-Orthodox Jewish population meltdown. ... Among Jews in their 50s, for every 100 Orthodox adults, we have 192 Orthodox children. And for the non-Orthodox, for every 100 adults, we have merely 55 such children."


Half of the non-Orthodox children, moreover, marry non-Jews, and very few children of mixed marriages will remain Jewish. As Reform Rabbi Lance J Sussman wrote in 2010, "With the exception of a number of Orthodox communities and a few other bright spots in or just off the mainstream of Jewish religious life, American Judaism is in precipitous decline ... the Reform movement has probably contracted by a full third in the last ten years!"

In Israel, by contrast, the Jewish fertility rate stands at around 3 children per female, by far the highest in the industrial world. Aside from the ultra-Orthodox minority, which has seven or eight children, the non-Orthodox Jewish fertility rate is around 2.6 children per female.

Jewish Fertility by Religious Current

Average Number of Children per Woman

Ultra-Orthodox 6.72
Modern Orthodox 3.39
Conservative 1.74
Reform 1.36
Secular 1.29

Source: Anthony Gordon and Richard Horowitz, National Jewish Population Survey (2000)

Israel's Jews identify with Jewish nationality more than American Jews, but they also observe the Jewish religion more than their American cousins. Daniel J Elazar of the Jerusalem Institute for Public Affairs observes:


"Israel's Jews are not divided into two groups but into four: ultra-orthodox, religious Zionists, traditional Jews, and secular. Some 8 percent are ultra-Orthodox. These are the strangely (to Western eyes) garbed, black hatted Jews who are featured in all the pictures, despite the fact that they represent only 8 percent of Israel's Jewish population. Another 17 percent are religious Zionists... similar to the modern or centrist Orthodox Jews in the diaspora, partaking of most or all aspects of modern civilization, except that they maintain Orthodox observance of Jewish religious law and tradition. The third group consists of the vast majority of Israeli Jews, some 55 percent, who define themselves as "traditional." ... They cover the whole range of belief and observance from people of fundamentalist belief and looser practice to people who have interpreted Judaism in the most modern manner but retain some of its customs and ceremonies."


Most Israeli Jews are not secular, but are partially observant. In a Jewish state where everyone speaks Hebrew, public school students have 12 years of Bible study, and Jewish holidays also are official holidays, it is easy to maintain a loose affiliation to Jewish observance. In the United States, nothing but the comprehensive commitment of Orthodox life sustains the Jewish community over the long term.

If present trends continue, Orthodox Jews will form the majority of a much-diminished American Jewish presence within a generation or two. And it is the Orthodox who identify most with the State of Israel; their children often spend a year at an Israeli yeshiva before college, and many serve in the Israeli army. None of the Orthodox organizations seem to have objected to the expat-come-home videos, and for good reason: living in the land of Israel is one of the most important commandments, and the Orthodox respect those who observe it.

On reflection, American Jews should reconsider their umbrage at Israel's Immigration Ministry. Their own organizations are painfully aware that loosely affiliated Jews of all shadings are falling away from the Jewish community, failing to bring enough children in the world to replace their existing numbers, and failing to raise them as Jews.

The controversial videos, in short, did nothing to insult American Jews. But the fact is that the Israelis run circles around their American co-religionists. One sees this in their accomplishments in a number of fields, for example, classical music, about which I know a bit.

Last year, I spent some time in Israel for The Tablet, a Jewish webzine where I write music criticism, to investigate the improbable success of Israelis in the classical music world. At New York's Mannes Conservatory, where I taught music theory a generation ago, there always seem to be one or two Israelis among the top 10 pianists - but rarely an American. The others are mostly Asian or Eastern European. Considering that China alone has more than 30 million piano students, five times' Israel's Jewish population, the Israelis punch 10 times above their weight.

Two generations ago, half of American music students, perhaps, were Jewish. Americans today, Jews included, lack the drive and discipline to practice eight hours a day. Not so the Israelis. The head of the piano department at the Tel Aviv Conservatory, Tomer Lev, explained why:


"This country, its existence, its continuity cannot be measured by realistic and rational gauges. Everything that happens here has a component of a miracle. The way people think here is not completely rational. It's a very interesting blend of rational modern thinking and quasi-religious mystical thinking. People here take the risk of trying a musical career even if they know on a rational basis that there's little money and security. Taking risks in Israel is part of life. You are taking a risk simply to live here.

Life in Israel is perhaps too intense. Art creates an outlet to this intensity. For sensitive people, the artistic outlet is a necessity; you need it or you go crazy. And we are a society of individualists, perhaps the most individualistic in the world, perhaps to an extreme. In such an atmosphere, the individual spirit has a great deal of freedom to be unique, to be special, not to be suppressed."


After interviewing a cross-section of Israel's top musicians, I concluded, "The sense of a future in Western classical music evokes the basic emotions with which human beings regard the future, namely hope and fear. When Israeli musicians speak of performing with a sense of risk, they mean the capacity to sustain hope in the presence of fear. It takes a certain kind of personality to do this on the concert stage, with all the attendant artistic and technical demands. Israel, whose existential premise is the triumph of hope over fear, incubates a disproportionately large number of musicians with this sort of personality."

Of course, music is only a small corner of Israeli life. As I wrote earlier in this space, Israel today occupies the position of the Dutch Republic during the Thirty Years War. It is the most entrepreneurial economy in the world. The 2009 bestseller Start-Up Nation by Dan Senor and Saul Singer asked, "How is it that Israel - a country of 7.1 million, only 60 years old, surrounded by enemies, in a constant state of war since its founding, with no natural resources - produces more start-up companies than large, peaceful, and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada and the UK?"

Israelis grow up with sense of urgency for excellence; in their neighborhood, First Prize is the chance to compete for First Prize once again, and Second Prize is, you're dead. American Jews live under no threat whatever; having made good in America, they have all the room in the world for indolence and self-deception.

Whatever the Jews are, they are not stupid, and American Jews knew perfectly well in 2008 that the Republican candidate, Senator John McCain, was a more reliable supporter of Israel's security than Barack Obama. Yet 78% of American Jews voted for Obama, in part because the liberal social agenda mattered more to them, and in part because they continued to believe in the Rabin-Arafat handshake long after the Israelis had written it off. (Audience: If you believe in the Peace Process, clap your hands!)

Liberalism is a self-liquidating proposition, and there are no liberals like Jewish liberals, who are a soon-to-be-endangered species. The sad thing is not that the liberal leadership of American Jewish organizations is complaining about Israel, but that they won't be around much longer to complain about anything.

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The great scare about lead

This is the second part of an article by James Delingpole. The first part is about global warming but I think this part is extensive enough to warrant being published separately

Dr Herbert Needleman was a US child psychologist who generated headlines in 1979 with his research paper showing that lead poisoning was dramatically affecting children's IQs. This "evidence" became a vital plank in the case of the Environmental Protection Agency's regulations from 1986 onwards to have almost all lead removed from petrol. Just one problem: Needleman's study was about as reliable as Michael Mann's Hockey Stick.

In the Needleman affair, the McIntyre/McKitrick role was played by another academic child psychologist Dr Claire Ernhart, who worked in the same field as Needleman. She noted that Needleman's research was based on serious methodological flaws. In particular, she claimed that he had not sufficiently allowed for "confounding variables" that might have explained the difference in IQ scores such as poor schools or parental neglect.

When an expert panel from the EPA tried looking into this, however, Needleman proved as reluctant to reveal the basis of his research as Mann did with raw data underpinning his Hockey Stick.

According to Booker/North:

"When in 1983 the panel visited Needleman's laboratory to look at his data, he handed over six books of computer printouts, but said that only two panel members could examine them, and only for two hours."

"Even during this cursory study, the panel found enough evidence to arouse profound doubts about Needleman's research. Although starting with 3,329 children, he had winnowed out so many, often for apparently arbitrary reasons, that he had ended up basing his conclusions first on 270 subjects, then on just 158. 'Exclusion of large numbers of eligible participants' the panel concluded, 'could have resulted in systematic bias'. In other words, it looked to the panel as though he might have selected his evidence to give the results he wanted."

The expert panel concluded that Needleman's studies "neither support nor refute the hypothesis that low or moderate levels of Pb (lead) exposure lead to cognitive or other behavioural impairments in children." In other words, that his researches were valueless.

But hey, guess what happened then. Pressure was applied. The expert panel – for reasons which were never satisfactorily explained – completely reversed its decision. And the head of the EPA William Ruckelshaus (the same man responsible for the DDT ban which effectively condemned millions in the third world to die of malaria) was able to use Needleman's study as the basis for doing what the EPA and environmental campaigners had been wanting to do anyway: ban lead from petrol.

Unsurprisingly, the EU soon eagerly followed suit. As even the Eu Commission admitted, the new rules would cost consumers an additional £4.8 billion a year, raise the average cost of a car by up to £600 a year and force oil companies into £70 billion-worth of new investment. Oh, and also, EU studies estimated, the switch to unleaded (it being less efficient than leaded) would also result in the creation of 15-17 million tonnes a year more greenhouse gas emissions.

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How to fight the nitrogen threat

First comprehensive look at protecting the environment from nitrogen recommends creating wetlands, planting less corn

Jim Galloway

As a scientist, it's the questions that keep me up at night.

When chemical nitrogen fertilizer is applied to crops, what happens to the nitrogen that isn't absorbed? When nitrogen is emitted to the atmosphere from fossil fuel combustion, where does it go, and what does it do?

Tackling these questions has been a major focus of my research, and that of a dedicated cadre of scientists around the globe, since the 1980s.

Several years ago, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Science Advisory Board recognized this major environmental challenge and gathered some of the nation's top scientists to examine the issue. I've been on the committee for five years and its chairman for three. This week, the Science Advisory Board is providing the EPA administrator with a seminal report. It's the first time nitrogen's impacts on the United States have been gathered in one place, and the findings are staggering.

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Nitrogen, as any farmer or gardener knows, is essential to plant life. But there's a limited amount available naturally, so 100 years ago, chemists developed a way to turn inert nitrogen gas in the atmosphere into reactive, biologically available nitrogen in the form of ammonia. The widespread use of this chemical nitrogen fertilizer to boost crop production has resulted in food to feed the world. It has also resulted in too much nitrogen getting into waterways and our air, essentially adding unwanted, unneeded fertilizer to our natural systems — with disastrous results. The combustion of fossil fuels adds even more reactive nitrogen to our environment. A single atom of reactive nitrogen can contribute to aquatic dead zones, smog, acid rain, climate change and ozone depletion as it moves through the air, water and soil.

Our report, "Reactive Nitrogen in the United States: an Analysis of Inputs, Flows, Consequences, and Management Options," carefully details the many ways reactive nitrogen is wreaking havoc across the United States: smog, acid rain, algal blooms, human health problems, fish kills, polluted drinking water and the coastal "dead zones" we've spent hundreds of millions of dollars battling in theChesapeake Bay.

And while the report notes that the United States is one of the world's largest contributors to human-caused nitrogen pollution, it also shows that major decreases in nitrogen pollution can be achieved using available technology.

We've done a great job over the past decade decreasing nitrogen pollution from power plants and cars, and our report recommends ways to extend those reductions. Yet pollution from chemical fertilizers and livestock manure continues to increase.

Our report outlines how farmers can help reduce agriculture's nitrogen footprint — both to save money and to protect the environment. Our recommendations include using existing technology to grow crops and raise animals more efficiently, and creating or restoring wetlands to capture nitrogen losses.

Another solution is to plant less corn, a notoriously "leaky" crop. Less than 35 percent of the nitrogen fertilizer applied on corn fields in the United States is taken up by plants; the remainder gets into rivers and stream or reacts with the air to form nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas. Reforming federal policies that incentivize the planting of corn for ethanol production would diversify our crop acreage and keep more nitrogen where it belongs: in the soil and plants. Taken together, these measures would decrease by 25 percent the amount of nitrogen to the U.S. environment. This is a great first step; more will be needed.

Farmers need support. Our report offers valuable recommendations at a time when lawmakers are considering changes to U.S. farm policy through the next Farm Bill. Whatever happens with cuts to the overall Farm Bill budget, we need to make sure we continue to fund valuable conservation programs that help farmers reduce nitrogen pollution. It's crucial that we begin to do a better job of balancing our use of nitrogen to maximize crop yields, so we can minimize its impacts on our environment and health. Knowing we're getting closer to achieving that balance would allow me to get a good night's rest, so I can move on to my next scientific question.

(Jim Galloway is the associate dean for the sciences in the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia, and the Sidman P. Poole Professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences. His email is jng@virginia.edu)

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Does Lowering Salt Shorten Lifespan?

Q. About 50 years ago we were told to cut way down on salt. My brother Elmer always ate a lot of salt anyway and was always more healthy than I was. Unfortunately, he was killed in an automobile collision when he was 85.

I am now 86. When I stopped restricting salt, my health improved. If salt causes some people problems, they should avoid it. It doesn't make sense for the rest of us to deprive ourselves.


A. It has been an article of faith for decades that everyone should reduce salt intake, but the data don't show that limiting sodium consumption makes a difference for otherwise healthy people.

The latest research in the Journal of the American Medical Association (May 4, 2011) reported that lower salt intake was not associated with lower blood pressure. The people who consumed the least salt had the greatest risk of death from cardiovascular complications.

As paradoxical as this seems, it is consistent with previous research. A national nutrition survey (Journal of General Internal Medicine, Sept., 2008) found that low sodium intake was linked to higher cardiovascular mortality. A recent study of people with type 1 diabetes found that those with the lowest sodium intake were most likely to die during its 10-year duration (Diabetes Care, April, 2011).

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CENSORSHIP, AMERICAN-STYLE

By Wim de Vriend

When I walk into the place, a large party of senior lunch customers is just leaving. One, a tiny lady with snow-white hair, grabs my arm and hails me as a long-lost hero. “Hello, how are you? I’ve been meaning to tell you I was all behind you, when you squirted those gals,” she gushes.

“Thank you so much,” I reply, and then I add: “But it sure was expensive.”

“But you had every right …” she starts. Sure, I had the moral right, but the political-legal establishment didn’t see it that way. What’s most astonishing, the incident with “those gals” happened over fifteen years ago, and she’s waited all this time to bring it up. So have several other people recently. There can be no doubt; as we come up to the sixteenth anniversary, I’m still known far and wide as the restaurant guy who hosed down the feminists. The latter a.k.a. locally as The Lesbians from Hell.

With some doubt that I can, I will try to make a very long story short. Halfway through the morning of Saturday July 3, 1993, I got a call at home, from the restaurant.

“Hey, they’re hee-ere,” Lynn droned in her deadpan way.

“Who is here?”

“The women’s crisis center crowd. They got signs, and they’re picketing, and they’re keeping people out of the restaurant.”

“Good grief. Ah -- are you doing any business?”

“Are you kidding? We’re standing around watching.”

“Ah -- I’ll be right over.”

Sure enough, when I got there I saw about two dozen picketers, mostly women, ambling around the place with the insouciance of hardened harridans who are sticking it to The Man. They waved picket signs. They stopped cars coming around the corner. They interfered with pedestrians headed for the restaurant by shouting things about rape, and by handing out flyers. The flyers went largely unread, but the sum total of their interference made every patron change his mind about coming in. The worst part, though, was their signs:


RAPE IS A HATE CRIME.
RAPE IS ANTI-HUMAN.
RAPE IS A GENDER BIAS CRIME.
DATE RAPE IS NOT A SPORT.
DATE RAPE IS A SERIOUS CRIME.
RAPE VIOLATES MY CIVIL RIGHTS.
BLAME RAPISTS NOT VICTIMS.
MALE ATTENTION YES, RAPE NO.
1 WOMAN IS RAPED EVERY 6 MINUTES IN U.S.
WIM DE VRIEND IS NO FRIEND.
WIM DE VRIEND, APOLOGIZE NOW.


In addition, a couple of the signs announced that this was an action by the Coos Coalition for Human Rights, the local homosexual lobby.


The restaurant is located on a downtown stretch of U.S. 101, the Pacific Coast highway. On an average day in 1993 some 15,000 vehicles passed that spot, a lot more on a summer day. This was a summer day. Hundreds, no, thousands of drivers might catch a glimpse of this scene. What would they think? Maybe what you thought when you read the slogans: that this restaurant or its owner had some sinister connection to the crime of rape. And sure enough, within days after the incident three acquaintances who had driven by told me their first thought was that I must have raped somebody. A damned infamy, when all I had done was write a letter to the paper, criticizing a radical anti-date-rape activist by the name of Dangerine, who seemed to be in charge of the picket. Dangerine had wormed herself into the position of chief of the local battered women’s home, which quickly had become known as the lesbian recruiting center. The most accurate way to describe her is to abuse Hobbes’s portrayal of primitive humanity: “nasty, brutish and short.” And what she had cooked up was not just business interference, but serious slander. I could not understand how she and her cohorts could be so blind. How was the public supposed to know that this was about a letter to the editor? Anybody with a smidgen of common sense would realize that most of those driving by had not even read it.

In a planned high-stress incident, the instigators have all the advantages of surprise. This bunch (as I discovered later) had planned their picket at meetings of the Human Rights crowd and at the Coos Bay Presbyterian Church. This church, like its national office, PC-USA, had become a haven for promoters of far-out political causes. I would also discover that nearly all of the picketers made their living off the taxpayers, which explained their disregard for my livelihood, and the support they got from the local power structure. Not counting the Human Rights boss, they included Dangerine, her lesbian “counselors” from the Women’s Crisis Center, a few county social workers, a public employees’ union activist, a probation officer, the wife of a retired public school administrator locally infamous for drunkenness on the job, and the wife of a judge. The conspirators had talked to the Coos Bay police about their plan, and the police had told them to go ahead but had not seen fit to tell me, or I might have done something more sensible than I did.

For I didn’t know most of these things I just told you; to me, these people were simple troublemakers interfering with my livelihood and ruining my reputation. When we called the police for help, we were told they were too busy. So I set out to get rid of the pests myself. In downtown Portland, along Burnside Avenue, merchants have had a lot of trouble with bums blocking access to their businesses and scaring off customers, and quite a few have installed sprinkler systems on the outside walls of their buildings. At irregular intervals they turn them on to dampen the spirit of the scruffy sidewalk assemblies. Having grown up in a water-rich country where disputes were often resolved by dunking obstreperous people in the nearest pond or canal (It happened to me), I thought water was a most sensible cure. So I quickly joined a couple of garden hoses together, climbed on my roof, and started hosing the picketers down. For a few minutes this made a few run away, especially the feminized men; but then they re-grouped en masse and started marching womanfully through the spray. According to a potential eyewitness who evaded showing up at trial, Dangerine urged her collaborators to get as wet as they could. In our highly politicized society, agents provocateurs often win the victim’s prize.

Once I realized that hosing the harridans was as effective as pouring gasoline on a fire, I sat down on my roof, at a loss what to do next. Then I saw that my gutter had collected so much dirt, grass was growing in it. I pulled out some clumps, intending to throw them into the back yard. Just then I caught sight of Dangerine down below, and she caught sight of me.
“You f-ckin’ …. !!!!” she screamed, shaking her calloused fist.



It was in my hand; I had to let go. But my aim has never been great.

“SPLAT!” said the clump of mud, glancing off her shoulder and missing a golden chance to improve her face.

Hmm. Now I felt I had done more than enough; a tactical retreat seemed advisable. Dragging the hoses back across the roof, I climbed down to get a situation report, and found the restaurant staff all shook up. While I was up there a frantic girl had burst into the place, screaming and carrying on about how terrible we all were until they pushed her out the door. As we found out later, that was Dangerine’s daughter.

But we didn’t know this, nor did we know much else; on our side, confusion reigned. I believe it was at that point that the picketers called the police, demanding that they arrest me. This time, two cops promptly arrived. After spending considerable time outside, interviewing the picketers, Coos Bay’s finest came in not to get my side of things but to charge me with multiple counts of “harassment” on account of the water-spraying, plus assault because Dangerine claimed her shoulder hurt due to the mud clod. She also said she was “pretty much covered with dirt”. The picture nearby shows the remains of the mud, near her feet. Draw your own conclusions. Regardless, the police said that an assault charge required me to be arrested and booked, so to the considerable glee of the picketers I was handcuffed and hauled off to the county courthouse to be booked.

Once there, the county jail deputies were as nice as they could be, and they were sorry that their holding cell contained nothing for me to read until a relative came to collect me. But before they started the fingerprinting and photographing, one deputy asked the city policemen what I had done. They told him.

“Whoa–” he stammered, “shouldn’t we give him a medal for that, instead?” Obviously the county jail was on the long list of places where Dangerine, that indomitable advocate of female innocence, had made a total pest of herself.

For a week or so it was not clear what would shake out of all this commotion. Business was slow for the time of year, and getting slower; clearly we’d been hurt where they meant to hurt us. But a lot of people expressed moral support, some making a point of patronizing my place, including several whom the picket first led to believe I must have raped somebody. Lord knows how many more never learned the truth. During those weeks, too, I gained a new respect for ordinary people because they, not the politicians, not the lawyers, and least of all the feminists, understood what this was all about. It was not about rape, and it was not about the “rights to free speech” of the picketers, although they loudly and constantly trumpeted those rights. One lady from North Dakota wrote: “Dear sir. I read in the paper about your spraying those women with a water hose. I feel you had a right to your opinion … I also think you had a right to protect your business from those who were obstructing your place.” Exactly. We might not have government-sanctioned censorship in the United States, but the picketers had appointed themselves censors. And, they got away with it. My consolation prize was an instant of national fame, as the restaurant owner who hosed down a bunch of picketing feminists. When I shopped out of town, merchants would recognize me and give me things. Some people sent money. That was welcome, for this was going to cost me.

Meanwhile my opponents spread lies, engaged in name-calling, and conducted a whisper-campaign to convince the public that I approved of rape. Deriding everything in my letter as untrue, they called me a fascist, which happens to be a tactic pioneered by Stalin. And as she had done throughout her do-gooder career, Dangerine took the opportunity to promote herself as the victim. She accused me of being a misogynist and an anti-Semite, and proposed that her staff at the picket be nominated for sainthood. That would have made the most peculiar set of saints in the history of Catholicism,

I also happened to run into Dangerine’s ex-husband, who apologized profusely: “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry for what she did you!”

“Well, it wasn’t exactly your fault.”

“I know! But I’m the one who brought her here! She’s a monster!”

And then he told me a story from his turbulent marriage. Not being an intellectual but more of a hands-on character, he offered neither an explanation nor an analysis, but it was so weird, he could not have made it up. Dangerine had been the spouse-abuser in their marriage. On one occasion she was beating him up in their bedroom. While pounding him on the side of the head – and she could put some weight into it – their daughter, then only 9 years old, was hiding under a blanket. And while pounding him Dangerine was screaming: “Ouch! You’re hurting me!” Afterward he needed medical attention for a shattered eardrum, and I could tell that he had suffered some hearing loss.

Shortly after this, one of his employees told me he was present when Dangerine gave her man another thrashing while the pair was rolling down the hillside outside their home. After that the husband had to go on tranquilizers, and he was not a weenie. Shortly after the picket I also learned that the daughter who had thrown the hissy-fit inside the restaurant had publicly beat up her boyfriend who lived next door, at the same time trashing his car and screaming that he was a stupid Mexican. Although it deserves to be made, my point is not that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Instead, it is that equality of the sexes or caring for abused people or any other feel-good cause is not what this kind of feminism is about. Those are pretexts. This feminism is about creating a new tyranny, but in order to do so it needs to impose its own belief system. And agnostics must be trashed.

I wrote a letter to the District attorney, demanding that he prosecute the picketers for intimidation, coercion, and violating my right to free speech. No response. Instead, increasingly ominous pieces of information dribbled in. One was the picket’s domination by government employees, including those with a connection to the local “justice” establishment, particularly the judge’s wife. When I contacted local attorneys about taking my case, nobody was interested. Neither was the local paper, which for some time already had been Dangerine’s mouthpiece, paid and unpaid. The paid items included advertisements that demonized men and heterosexuality. One ad hinted ominously:

“Dating someone is better than dating no one. OR IS IT? Abusive behavior occurs in 50% of all dating relationships.” Another ad was no less startling: “WARNING! Dating may be hazardous to your health!” And a picture of a man and woman having a pleasant conversation carried the startling message: “Did This Woman Deserve To Be Raped?”

Besides getting paid for spreading this kind of terror, the newspaper had been filling many free column-inches with Dangerine’s harangues against the American male as a spouse-beating brute, a serial date-rapist, and a pathological dirty old man who would subject his own little children to sexual abuse so horrible that they had forgotten all about it. Those buried horrors could then be “recovered” by therapists such as Dangerine.

An even-handed check of social-science research reveals that blaming men for all those problems is like Mark Twain’s reaction to his premature obituary: greatly exaggerated. People do bad things, yes, but both sexes do. With regard to domestic violence, studies have shown it is just as likely to be initiated by females as by males, with the females more likely to use weapons. But you’d never know it, as demonstrated by the customary refusal of women’s shelters to receive abused men. Studies also show that many women – up to half – lie about having been raped; we’ve seen some infamous cases in recent years. And while Dangerine’s third obsession, “recovered” memories of incest, has no scientific basis, it’s been shown that such memories can be implanted in the minds of neurotic women by overzealous social workers and prosecutors. But practical politics, as the famous historian Henry Brooks Adams observed, consists of ignoring facts. What is worse, politics seems to attract a lot of power-hungry people. Bullies who practice deceit and spread paranoia.

So now, you may wonder, what of this letter of mine that had provoked the Lesbians from Hell? Shortly before the picket, a majority-female jury had returned an acquittal in a local man’s “date-rape” trial. This had induced the Coos Bay paper to run another puff-piece on Dangerine, in which both she and the district attorney carried on like sore losers. Dangerine proclaimed that every man accused of rape must be presumed guilty and found guilty, and the woman, being incapable of lying, shouldn’t even have to appear in court. This had induced me to write my letter. In view of the results, I may fit a famous description by George Eliot: “[he] suspected himself of loving too well the losing causes of the world.”

“It is in the nature of our court system that not everyone accused of a crime is convicted, and that people accused of crimes may confront their accusers in court. It looks like [Dangerine] wants to do away with such inconveniences. … While foreign to our tradition, [Dangerine’s] legal concepts can be effective. During the French revolution, they made lots of innocent heads roll.

It is true that many date-rape cases are dismissed or end in acquittal. If this proves a conspiracy against women, I would like to know why the women on our juries participate in it.

We should all be grateful that juries substitute a considered opinion for the snap judgment of one extremist. … Certain noisy feminists excepted, women still enjoy flirtation and male attention. Our society has done away with the stigma attached to unmarried intercourse. So when relations occur after a couple of dates, or even one, who decides that it was rape? The man may have been better at wining and dining than at doing “it”. The woman may be disappointed. A few days later, she decides she has really been raped. How can a jury determine what happened … ?


For rape to occur, the woman must object before the fact, not after. And the most effective prevention consists of taking the bull by the horns. Remember: this is date-rape, no guns or knives. When the unwanted act is about to occur, the rapist will expose the necessary equipment. All that an unwilling woman has to do then is grab half of it and not let go. With some force, she then applies the movements used in wringing all the water from a wet towel. Any woman who doesn’t know the sensitivity of these male parts is too dumb to go out on dates. And every would-be rapist subjected to the procedure will change his mind faster than you can say ‘feminazi’”.

Did my letter contain logic? Yes it did. Did it contain truth? Nothing but. But what about my advice to women who didn’t want to be date-raped? I’ve heard some people say this could not possibly work. But they are uninformed. As a tactic it has proved itself, and it’s recommended by self-defense experts, too. It has even been promoted on Oprah. I’ll be glad to provide sources. But my tormentors on July 3 would have none of it.

In accusing me of anti-Semitism, Dangerine’s logic ran like this: I had called her a “feminazi”; she was of Jewish descent; so that made me an anti-Semite. Of these three statements, only her Jewish origin was true, sort of. I doubt that she practiced the Jewish faith, and in reality I was the Jew in this scenario. Sixty years on, the 1933 Nazi-German picket of Jewish merchants had been re-enacted, this time by American feminist storm troopers.

At first I had trouble believing that I would be prosecuted, when I had been the one victimized. But that’s what happened. The assault charge was not pursued, because Dangerine had no real injury. But since I had been arrested they had to charge me with something, so I faced multiple counts of “harassment” for the water-spraying and for throwing the mud-clod. The district attorney’s office offered to prosecute these charges as “violations” instead of misdemeanors, which would save me from a possible jail sentence, but mere violations did not qualify for a jury trial, just a trial before a judge. In hindsight, I believe the jail sentence threat was theoretical. But I took the bait and opted for the violations, and when I had second thoughts the court was adamant that I could not change that decision. A jury trial would have been far, far better for me.

What I should explain, though, is why I tied myself in knots over a court proceeding that could at worst cost me as much as a few technical traffic violations. This may sound strange, but I was fighting disillusionment. As an immigrant I had developed great admiration for the way the American government had been structured by the founders. I was especially awed by the federal First Amendment, aware that while most governments guarantee freedom of speech on paper, nobody has it except the Americans, since their government has accepted "… the principle of free thought, not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate." (Justice Holmes in U.S. vs. Schwimmer, 1929.) Every place else in this world, a mere expression of opinion may be prosecuted if some authority feels it may hurt somebody’s feelings, and unlike in America, truth is no defense. The élites in those countries advance good reasons for their speech bans, but they make sense only if you ignore the fact that opinions that offend nobody don’t need constitutional protection in the first place.

In truth, my admiration for the First Amendment made me overconfident, not to say naïve. No matter what the Constitution or the Supreme Court say on the subject, people will find ways to censor speech they don’t like. I was a latter-day Don Quixote, on a quest for a moral victory. But moral victories are more common in movies.

An eager-beaver junior prosecutor who must have made straight A’s in Arrogance-101 took charge of my multiple “violations”. That year’s session of the Oregon Legislature approved a bill forbidding prosecutors in the state from handling violations. But that came too late for my case, which demonstrated the pernicious effects of the American sports mania on legal morals – if such there be. In the legal business as in sports, it’s all about winning.

To get to his goal post, the junior d. a. used several tactics. One, he took the position that the picketers had not interfered with my business, which was laughable. Two, even if they had interfered (which he never admitted), or if they had defamed me, that had nothing to do with the charges against me, and should be pursued as a civil matter later on. This can be described as the “Salami-tactic”, see below. And third, he was nauseatingly obsequious to the picketers’ whining about being hosed, suggesting (among other things) that my garden hose had the power of a jet engine. In the process he got them to produce the kind of ranting typically produced by hormonal imbalances. The understandable part of these rants was that being sprayed with water was like being molested and raped.

The “salami-tactic” was identified many years ago by German students of politics. It consists of dividing an issue into segments small enough so no reasonable person can object to the disposition of each individual part. The party who divides the issue (or slices the salami) fully intends to eat all of it, but he doesn't let on. In the end, he gets everything he wants while everyone else wonders how such a thing could have happened.

The legal establishment is very fond of the salami-tactic, due to its belief that justice will result from splitting up every case into its smallest constituent pieces. After doing so, they concentrate on one little part while ignoring the rest. Once enough tiny sub-parts ‑‑ or salami slices, if you will – have been dealt with in this manner, the accumulation of multiple small decisions will acquire such momentous logic that the big one almost makes itself. And that, of course, was the real goal of the salami-eater.


In my case, the d. a. insisted that the judge could not consider the context of the incident and what the picketers were doing to me; he could only rule on what I had done in the heat of the moment – a moment the picketers had staged. In a regular trial we could have got the jury to consider the whole salami, not just the hosing of the harridans but the harm they inflicted on my livelihood and my reputation. A jury could have done so despite the instructions of a judge. In Oregon as in many states, juries have the power to judge whether applying the law in the case at hand will be just or not. If not, they can acquit. It’s called jury nullification. And there is nothing the judge can do about it, even though he pretends otherwise.

Also working to my advantage in a jury trial would have been the labor-union background of many jury members. My accusers were unanimous in claiming that they never meant to cause my business any harm. But most people in a blue-collar town know that the primary purpose of a business picket is to do exactly that: cause harm.

But I did not have a jury; my goose was cooked, for the judge went right along with the toadying d. a. and his pet victims. That is, when the pontifications of the “victims” were not putting him to sleep.


State: “Did you find when you were sprayed with water, is this offensive to you?”

Dangerine: “As an incest survivor, it was horrifying.” [Laughter]

State: “Did you ever state to Mr. de Vriend – “

Dangerine: “And I don’t find it funny that I am an incest survivor.” (p. 60, transcript)


State: “What was the reaction of the crowd once he started spraying them with water as far as from an emotional standpoint?”

Dangerine: “I hope this doesn’t again get laughs. But there were women there who are victims of sexual assault and they chose to come there and for somebody to again be assaulted, it is very upsetting. I realize I say things in this court room as why we were there, but it is offensive and it’s scary, it’s horrifying for somebody to then again be assaulted. This was an assault. For those of us who have been assaulted in our lives, reading this letter or having somebody spray us. Or having somebody hit us, is not a very pleasant experience, and I realize that there are many people in this court room who do not understand what I am saying, and that’s why we continue to do what we do.”

State: “And did all of these events occur in Coos County?”

Dangerine: “Yes.”

State: “Nothing further.”
. . .
Defense: “You said that it was horrifying to be hit with a dirt clod.”

Dangerine: “Yes, it was.”

Defense: “How do you equate a dirt clod with sexual assault?”

Dangerine: “I will equate it with what was written in the letter, be it assault and the words that were used against me and that somebody deliberately looked at me with the intent of not throwing it in any direction, excuse me, but in the intent of hurting me personally. And it brings back memories that are very uncomfortable for me.” (p. 62)


Loverless: “… And he looked me right in the eye, and he said, “You’re one of them.” And he sprayed me right in the face, and all down my body, up and down nice and slow, you know, like nice and slow. And by golly, I felt raped! (p. 79)


State: Did he spray you?

Cripling: Yes.

State: How wet did you get?

Cripling: Soaked.

State: Did you find this offensive?

Cripling: Yeah, it’s really scary because – you know – we knew how he felt about rape, and so I consider rape a violent crime, So, I considered him a violent man and I didn’t know what else he might do. (pp 98/99)

The judge gave no weight to the outrageous defamation generated by the picketers:

Defense: What did you see?

Booth: Well, I saw 15-20 people holding signs that I thought were very offensive towards Wim, libelous. … I thought they were almost blocking traffic – close to it. And the signs that I saw – all I could think was, “Jesus, what has Wim done?” You know – “Has he raped somebody?” Jesus – and his wife – you know – what could have happened? (p. 102)

West: … I had to slow a little bit, and the light was just turning and we saw this bunch of picketers walking in a circle around the sidewalk with their signs, and the only sign that stuck out in my mind, of course, as you are trying to drive and look over there, was one that somebody was carrying that I think had the words “Date Rape Is Not A Sport” or “Date Rape Is No Sport”, I don’t remember the exact words. They continued milling around and we went on through the light and my wife turned to me and asked, “Do you suppose that Wim got involved with one of his waitresses?” (p. 127)

The trial took the better part of a day – an unusually warm day for an area without air conditioning. Before long the unventilated, crowded court room became oppressive, and the break brought no relief when the audience got treated to a hallway show of giggling, smooching lesbians. At the end of the day the judge found me guilty on all charges, and fined me about $1,300.

Because of the presence of a Coos County judge’s wife among the picketers, the trial had originally been assigned to a judge from a different county, who seemed to be strict but fair. But to our surprise, at the last minute he’d been replaced by a retired Coos County judge who apparently needed a little moonlighting. As soon as he had pronounced his sentence and we walked out in a daze, I was approached by two different acquaintances who asked if I had noticed he had slept through part of the proceedings. I was astonished. I had hardly looked at the man, being so intent on what everyone else was saying.

But, outraged by the verdict, I armed myself with affidavits from both observers to lodge a complaint for misconduct with the state bar disciplinary association. That self-protective fraternity conducted some sort of procedure, but except for informing me that they had done so they never told me their decision. Them’s the rules of the old boys’ club.

Dark, restless nights followed dark days, although they were again brightened by some great people. The morning after the verdict my old friend Lorance Eickworth walked into the restaurant and handed me a check for $400. Lorance had been a life-long gadfly on Coos Bay’s body politic, and he knew a price has to be paid.

Meanwhile my opponents, flush with victory, conducted a campaign of harassment. Off and on we got weird phone calls at the restaurant from what sounded like a lesbian orgy, and when I finally received an obscene letter with the Women’s Crisis Center’s address, I took it to the police. The policeman reported that everyone at the Crisis Center denied having sent it, but they promised it wouldn’t happen again.

I suppose it was an act of defiance when I acquired a World War II “Save Freedom of Speech” poster to hang in the restaurant. The truth is, though, that Norman Rockwell’s scene has a maudlin element of unreality. I’ve never attended a public meeting where everybody lavished adoring looks on a common man speaking up; where are the bored, the skeptical, the scoffers and the dozers? Not to mention the teenage girls blowing bubble gum. More to the point, the poster calls on people to buy war bonds to protect freedom of speech. But does the primary danger to our civil liberties come from raving foreign dictators, or from ranting domestic do-gooders?

After several months I worked up enough steam to initiate the second phase of my tale, a civil suit for defamation and business damages, but that one was torpedoed by a judge’s ruling that the picket signs could not possibly have constituted defamation. How can you explain such a thing except by corruption or incompetence?

One night I woke up around 3 AM again, unable to sleep, went to my living room and took out my bible. It fell open to Matthew 5:11:

“Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” (NIV)

That one hit me hard; but I still possessed enough skepticism – or modesty, hopefully – to object silently that I had not exactly done it for Him. I had been feeding my pride.

“But I know how you feel.”