Cricket: What is Momentum and how relevant is it?

Mark Nicholas in Cricinfo

What exactly is momentum in sport and how relevant is it? Do New Zealand's cricketers have enough momentum to carry them past Australia this weekend? Can momentum overcome talent?

Essentially momentum is form and confidence. It is usually associated with a winning streak, a succession of performances that either truly reflect ability or, better still, lift that ability beyond its norm. This is presently the case with Brendon McCullum, whose bravado is driven by the need to prove to his team that anything is possible. He wants them to play without inhibition of any kind and if that means breaking boundaries (metaphorically and literally) then so be it. This is because most cricketers play with traffic in their head. The game bares heart, mind and soul. Insecurity, affectation and failure are the enemies. The enemies play tricks and cause confusion. A clear head is the holy grail.

McCullum might as well be saying: "If you think you can or you think you can't, you are probably right."

In Riding the Wave of Momentum, American author Jeff Greenwald says: "The reason momentum is so powerful is the heightened sense of self-confidence it gives us. There is a phrase in sports psychology known as self-efficacy, which is simply a player's belief in his or her ability to perform a specific task or shot. Typically, a player's success depends on this efficacy."

I once asked Andy Flower what he thought was the most important part of his job as the England coach. He said it was to have the players ready and able to make the right choices under pressure. This caught me off guard but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Single moments define cricket matches. At critical times these may be any one of a brave shot made, or one not attempted; a brilliant ball that outthinks the batsman; smart anticipation by a fielder that leads to a run-out; a masterly move by the captain who understands what the opponent likes least.

Flower felt that for a period under Andrew Strauss, England consistently made good choices. This led them to become the No. 1 team in the world. The flaw in Strauss' team was the formulaic nature of the play. If an opponent had the mind to challenge it, and the efficacy to pull it off, the England team seemed oddly unable to react. Witness Hashim Amla's 311 at The Oval, during which Graeme Swann, a key figure for Strauss, was so comfortably played from a guard on and outside off stump. In all the time I watched Swann bowl, I never saw him so witless in response. And by such a simple tactic!

During a momentum shift, self-efficacy is very high as the players have immediate proof of their ability to match the challenge. They then experience subsequent increases in energy and motivation that lead to a feeling of enthusiasm and control. The corollary is that a sportsman's image of himself changes. He feels invincible, which, naturally enough, takes him to a higher level.

David Warner is a good illustration of this. First a devastating T20 batsman, then a prolific Test batsman and now an intimidating 50-over batsman. With the various ages of Warner have come a variety of changes - some to technique and application, some to attitude, others to fitness, health and lifestyle. His momentum has run parallel to the improved performances by the Australian team. This is no surprise. They go hand in hand. The trick for Warner now is to retain - some might say regain - humility.

In his formative years Robin Smith was coached by the highly intelligent former Natal player Grayson Heath. Probably Robin was over-coached. Heath grooved technique and shot execution. But he did not free the mind. This is less a criticism than a reflection of the time. It was a more respectful age, both in society and of bowlers, whose examination of technique was greater than it is now.

Heath - a wonderful man, with cricket set deep in his soul - would marvel at McCullum, or AB de Villiers, as much for their carefree approach as their inspirational effect. Heath preached an equation: A + H = C. Arrogance plus humility equals confidence. Both de Villiers and McCullum perfectly reflect the equation. Humility in a sportsman is paramount. Without humility, momentum will easily be derailed. After all, momentum is winning and no person or team wins all the time.

The key to not losing momentum is to retain perspective and to remain grounded. Why do Chelsea, dominant in the Premiership, suddenly concede four goals and lose to Bradford in the FA Cup? I wasn't there but the fair bet would be indifference (inexcusable) or complacency (believable). Hard as José Mourinho must work to avoid this, even he cannot invade the heads of his players and correct them in a season of some 60-odd matches.

The other explanation for such a defeat is fatigue. Mourinho watches this closely but tends to play his MVPs for long stretches. No sportsman can beat fatigue. It is inevitable. The point is that you will lose some time. How you lose is what matters. Did you cover all bases? If so, momentum need not be lost.

The test for New Zealand, though it may not apply to Saturday's group match, will be to deal with the pressure of an event that troubles the mind. Australian cricketers trouble the mind. McCullum's assault against England was a real f*** you of a performance. It said to his men: "They are not worthy." Had he got out cheaply, it would have said the same dismissive thing - like his approach in the chase against Scotland. Had New Zealand lost, it would have been awkward and may have derailed the team. But he didn't think for a minute they would lose and his innings sent that message loud and clear.

His captaincy does much the same: "We are all over you and don't forget it." His tactics challenge prosaic thinking. His bowlers are empowered to take wickets. His fieldsmen are inspired by his own startling fielding performances. This style is more All Black than Black Cap. But for Richie McCaw read Brendon McCullum.



All Black or Black Caps? © Getty Images





The journey has not been easy. Ross Taylor was popular and the fall-out from McCullum's obvious desire to take his job was unpleasant. Taylor withdrew into himself, a loss of cricket expression that New Zealand could ill afford. Former players raged against the machine. McCullum had to deliver or he was toast.

Like Taylor, he is a good man. Arguably, he is more secure. This tournament will define him.

In the face of Australia, the Black Caps must, and surely will, continue to play McCullum's game. This means sticking to the flow, not overthinking or overanalysing. The minute you change approach, or even marginalise, you screw up. If you focus too much on the outcome, it becomes difficult to play so freely. An attacking mindset can all too easily become a defensive mindset. The outcome needs to be a given. Concern for the consequences diverts attention from what must be done.

Australia are the more talented team but they have been sleeping for a fortnight; the captain has been immobilised for three months. This is the time to get them. Momentum should carry New Zealand over this line because the consequences are not a major issue. Come the knockout stage, the traffic will creep in. Creep, creep until the brain is scrambled. Can McCullum's bold interpretation of cricket remain New Zealand's force when the stakes are at their highest? Or will momentum suddenly count for nothing?

Freedom from the Known - Jiddu Krishnamurthi

An audio book courtesy the Krishnamurthi Foundation


The book is available in PDF form here

Cricket - The fear of the ringer

 

Jonathan Wilson in Cricinfo

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Slow straight bowling can become infused with mystery and terror when you think you're facing a ringer  © PA Photos

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Cricket, probably more than any other sport, encourages the ringer. Everybody who has ever played at any kind of amateur level knows that Sunday morning feeling, either calling round mates and mates of mates to see if anybody fancies making up the numbers, or getting an unexpected phone call from somebody you last saw in a bar at university ten years earlier seeing if you fancy a game.

It happens in other sports as well, of course, but cricket, as an individual sport dressed in a team game's clothing, seems more conducive to the ringer. A footballer or a hockey player suddenly introduced to an unfamiliar team will stand out a mile, the holistic nature of those sports meaning he won't be making a run he needs to, or he'll be providing cover where none is needed. In cricket, though, you pick up the ball and bowl, or pick up the bat and bat, and - apart from knowing the idiosyncrasies of how other batsmen run or the vagaries of who fields best where, essentially you can just get on with it. 

Even better, because of the self-regulatory element of cricket, the way a batsman can retire, or a bowler can be taken off if he's bowling so well he threatens to unbalance the game, it doesn't really matter if there's one player who's far better than everybody else. It doesn't really matter if there's one player who's far worse: even good players score ducks, so the weak link doesn't stand out as he would in another sport.

The best ringer I ever played with was the West Indies offspinner Omari Banks who, aged 16 or 17, for reasons I can't recall, joined our college team for a tour. He was an up-and-coming star, we were told, a bowler who was expected to play Test cricket sooner rather than later.

A first glance was confusing. He belted the ball miles and clearly had a superb eye, but his frequently short offbreaks were remarkably unthreatening. He must be a quick taking it easy on us, we thought; five years later, he was taking three wickets (for lots) and scoring 47 not out as West Indies chased down 418 to beat Australia in Antigua. There was something rather comforting in that: he'd seemed far more like a batsman than a bowler to us.

Clean though his hitting had been, the truth is Banks had been a little bit of a disappointment to us. Hearing we were getting a West Indies bowler, we'd assumed we could play along and then chuck him the ball as soon as a partnership began to get annoying, effectively guaranteeing wins.

Absurdly, the following year, I found myself cast unwittingly in the Banks role - in relative terms; nobody would ever have pretended I was on the verge of a Test debut. I'd just finished my Masters and was temping at a data entry centre in Sunderland. A mate was working at the City of Newcastle Development Agency and called me one day to see if I fancied playing against British Airways the following day. By starting work early and taking only 15 minutes for lunch, I was able to get up to Ponteland, to a bleak field near the airport, in time to play.

"What do you do?" the captain asked. The honest answer would have been, "Nothing very well," but I grunted, "Bits and pieces."

He nodded and, having won the toss and opted to bat, asked me to open. I had occasionally opened for my college Second XI as an undergrad, so it didn't seem that odd, although at Durham I'd tended to bat at seven or eight for the Graduate Society. On a horrible, sticky pitch, I ground my way to 27 at which, having heard the grumbles from the boundary, I slashed at a wide one and was caught at deep cover. My slow start having forced others to play overly aggressively, I ended up top-scoring as we made 90-odd in 20 overs.

That, I assumed, was that. I fielded at backward point and took a catch, but the game seemed to be drifting slowly away from us when the captain suddenly asked me to bowl the 13th over. This seemed very strange, but I wasn't going to say no. The batsman was set, had scored 30 or so, and looked far better than anybody else in the game.

My first ball, a pushed through offbreak, was blocked. The second he clubbed through midwicket for four, although it had turned a little and it had come slightly off the inside edge. The third ball I tossed up, it didn't turn, he played for spin that wasn't there and chipped it to cover. "Thinking cricket," said the captain, apparently in the belief there'd been some element of skill of planning in what had just happened.

What happened next was mystifying. The new batsman blocked out the over. They blocked out the 15th over as well. Ludicrously I had figures of 2-1-4-1. Suddenly they needed over a run a ball. The third over, the batsman, having to force the pace, came down the track, yorked himself and was stumped. Two balls later the new batsman did the same thing. We ended up winning by 12 runs and, without really knowing how, I'd taken 3 for 14.

It later turned out my mate had rather oversold me, or rather, our captain had assumed the level of college cricket at my university was rather higher than it was. After I'd batted so sluggishly, he'd assumed I must be a bowler and so had decided to give me four overs at the death. He'd even let on to the opposing captain that I was a ringer, with a suitably inflated suggestion of my abilities. When I'd then fortuitously dismissed their best player, it confirmed their fears, which explained the nine successive balls nobody had tried to hit. Slow straight bowling had become infused with mystery and terror.

None of it was real, of course. The wickets had been conjured by fear of the ringer. It was a valuable lesson: pretend you know what you're doing, and opponents might just destroy themselves by believing you.

How to make hard choices : Ruth Chang

The challenge of leaving a faith - From Islam to Atheism

Sarah Morrison in The Independent

Amal Farah, a 32-year-old banking executive, is laughing about a contestant singing off-key in the last series of The X Factor. For a woman who was not allowed to listen to music when she was growing up, this is a delight. After years of turmoil, she is in control of her own life.

On the face of it, she is a product of modern Britain. Born in Somalia to Muslim parents, she grew up in Yemen and came to the UK in her late teens. After questioning her faith, she became an atheist and married a Jewish lawyer. But this has come at a cost. When she turned her back on her religion, she was disowned by her family and received death threats. She has not seen her mother or her siblings for eight years. None of them have met her husband or daughter.

“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done – telling my observant family that I was having doubts. My mum was shocked; she began to cry. It was very painful for her. When she realised I actually meant it, she cut communication with me,” said Ms Farah. “She was suspicious of me being in contact with my brothers and sisters. She didn’t want me to poison their heads in any way. I felt like a leper and I lived in fear. As long as they knew where I was, I wasn’t safe.”

This is the first time Ms Farah has spoken publicly about her experience of leaving her faith, after realising that she did not want to keep a low profile for ever. She is an extreme case – her mother, now back in Somalia, has become increasingly radical in her religious views. But Ms Farah is not alone in wanting to speak out.

It can be difficult to leave any religion, and those that do can face stigma and even threats of violence. But there is a growing movement, led by former Muslims, to recognise their existence. Last week, an Afghan man is believed to have become the first atheist to have received asylum in Britain on religious grounds. He was brought up as a Muslim but became an atheist, according to his lawyers, who said he would face persecution and possibly death if he returned to Afghanistan.

In more than a dozen countries people who espouse atheism or reject the official state religion of Islam can be executed under the law, according to a recent report by the International Humanist and Ethical Union. But there is an ongoing debate about the “Islamic” way to deal with apostates. Broadcaster Mohammed Ansar says the idea that apostates should be put to death is “not applicable” in Islam today because the act was traditionally conflated with state treason.

Some scholars point out that it is against the teachings of Islam to force anyone to stay within the faith. “The position of many a scholar I have discussed the issue with is if people want to leave, they can leave,” said Shaykh Ibrahim Mogra, the assistant secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain. “I don’t believe they should be discriminated against or harmed in any way whatsoever. There is no compulsion in religion.”

Baroness Warsi, the Minister of State for Faith and Communities, agreed. “One of the things I’ve done is put freedom of religion and belief as top priority at the Foreign Office,” she said. “I’ve been vocal that it’s about the freedom to manifest your faith, practise your faith and change your faith. We couldn’t be any clearer. Mutual respect and tolerance are what is required for people to live alongside each other.”

Yet, even in Britain, where the freedom to change faiths is recognised, there is a growing number of people who choose to define themselves by the religion they left behind. The Ex-Muslim Forum, a group of former Muslims, was set up seven years ago. Then, about 15 people were involved; now they have more than 3,000 members around the world. Membership has reportedly doubled in the past two years. Another branch, the Ex-Muslims of North America, was launched last year.

Their increasing visibility is controversial. There are those who question why anyone needs to define themselves as an “ex-Muslim”; others accuse the group of having an  anti-Muslim agenda (a claim that the group denies).

Maryam Namazie, a spokeswoman for the forum – which is affiliated with the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain (CEMB) – said: “The idea behind coming out in public is to show we exist and that we’re not going anywhere. A lot of people feel crazy [when they leave their faith]; they think they’re not normal. The forum is a place to meet like-minded people; to feel safe and secure.”

Sulaiman (who does not want to reveal his surname), a Kenyan-born 32-year-old software engineer living in East Northamptonshire, lost his faith six years ago. His family disowned him. “I knew they would have to shun me,” he said. “They are a religious family from a [close] community in Leicester. If anyone [finds out] their son is not a Muslim, it looks bad for them.” He added that people “find it strange” that he meets up with ex-Muslims, but he said it is important to know “there is a community out there who care about you and understand your issues”.

Another former Muslim in her late twenties, who does not want to be named, said the “ex-Muslim” identity was particularly important to her. “Within Islam, leaving [the religion] is inconceivable. [The term] atheist doesn’t capture my struggle,” she said, adding that her family does not know the truth about how she feels.

Pakistani-born Sayed (not his real name), 51, who lives in Leeds, lost his faith decades ago. He left home at 23 and moved between bedsits to avoid family members who were looking for him. He told his family about his atheism only two years ago. “I was brought up a strict Muslim, but one day, I realised there was no God,” he said. He told his mother and sister by letter that he was an atheist but they found it difficult to comprehend.

“Whenever I tell my sister or my mum that I am depressed, stressed or paranoid, they say it’s because I don’t pray or read the Koran enough,” he said, adding that he will not go to his mother’s funeral when she dies. “I won’t be able to cope with the stress or the religious prayers. There’s quite a lot of stigma around.”

Iranian-born Maryam Namazie, 47, said that it does not have to be this way. Her religious parents supported her decision to leave their faith in her late teens. “After I left, they still used to whisper verses in my ear for safety, but then I asked them not to. There was no pressure involved and they never threatened me,” she said. “If we want to belong to a political party, or religious group, we should be able to make such choices.”

Zaheer Rayasat, 26, from London, has not yet told his parents that he is an atheist. Born into a traditional Pakistani family, he said he knew he didn’t believe in God from the age of 15.

“Most people transition out of faith, but I would say I crashed out. It was sudden and it left a big black hole. I found it hard to reconcile hell with the idea that God was beneficent and merciful.

“I’m sort of worried what will happen when [my parents] find out. For a lot of older Muslims, to be a Muslim is an identity, whereas, for me, it’s a theological, philosophical position. They might feel they have failed as parents; some malicious people might call them up, gloating about it. Some would see it as an act of betrayal. My hope is that they will eventually forgive me for it.”

Nobel Prize winners say markets are irrational, yet efficient

S A Aiyar in The Times of India

Are stock markets irrational, driven by greed and fear, subject to euphoria and panic? Or are they highly efficient indicators of intrinsic value? Both, says the Nobel Prize Comittee for Economics, with no sense of contradiction.

It has just awarded the prize jointly to economists with opposing views. Robert Shiller is famous for two versions of his book 'Irrational Exuberance'. The first version appeared in 2000 at the height of the dotcom boom, and correctly predicted that this was a bubble about to burst. The second version came in 2005 just as the housing market was skyrocketing, and predicted (again correctly) that this too was a bubble likely to burst resoundingly.

This confirmed Shiller's status as a behavioural economist. Such economists laugh at the notion that human beings are rational economic actors, as portrayed in textbooks. No, say behaviourists, humans are driven by fads, prejudices, manias, and irrational bouts of optimism and pessimism. Yet Shiller is going to share the Nobel Prize with Eugene Fama, famous for his "efficient markets hypothesis." This states that markets are like computers processing information from millions of sources on millions of economic actors, and hence produce more efficient long-run valuations than the most talented genius.

Fama's market behaviour is fundamentally random, so future trends cannot be predicted by even the cleverest investors. He implies that choosing stocks by throwing darts at a stock market chart can beat the recommendations of top experts. This has been verified by some, though not all, dartthrowing contests.

Corollary: ordinary investors must not pay high fees to experts to pick winners. Instead they should invest passively in a group of shares (like the 30 shares constituting the Bombay Sensex or Dow Jones Industrial Average), and ride these bandwagons without paying any fees. This has led to the spectacularly successful emergence of Index-traded funds (like those run by Vanguard in the US). Such funds are indexed to share groups like the Sensex or the Banks Nifty. Rather than try to pick individual winners in say the auto, pharma or realty sectors, index funds invest passively in a group of auto, pharma or realty companies. This has proved successful and popular.

Two groups criticize the efficient markets hypothesis: big investment gurus and, paradoxically, leftists viewing financial markets as instruments of the devil. Investment gurus like Warren Buffett in the US or Rakesh Jhunjhunwala in India claim to have beaten the market average handsomely, thus disproving the efficient markets hypothesis. Not so says Fama: in any large collection of investors there will always be some who perform above average and some below average - this is a matter of statistical chance, not skill. Moreover, investment gurus have so many contacts that they may have insider information enabling them to beat the market by unfair means.

As for Shiller's successful predictions, Fama says capitalism is driven by booms and busts. To predict at the height of a boom (like Shiller) that a bust will follow is banality, not genius. It is as unremarkable to predict during every bust that a boom will follow.

After the 2008 global financial crisis, the new conventional wisdom is that governments need macro prudential policies to check future financial crises, and that finance should be more strictly regulated than ever before. However, the counter is that the financial crisis occurred even though the financial sector was already the most regulated (with 12,000 regulators in the US alone). Governments had encouraged reckless lending by guaranteeing large banks and investment banks against failure, and by creating governmentbacked underwriters like Fannie Mae who shouldered any burdens caused by mass default.

Perhaps the Nobel Prize Committee is right in implying that markets can be both irrational and efficient at the same time. Since humans are irrational, they will always create markets that have booms and busts, marked by irrational optimism and pessimism. An efficient markets defined by Fama and his followers is not one that produces steady growth without booms, busts or crises. It is efficient only in the limited sense that, whether the markets are calm or irrational, they represent the processed information of millions of actions of millions of actors, and this is inherently more efficient than the efforts of any individual investor.

The argument is analogous to the one against communism or dictatorship. Communists believed that the great and good politburo, motivated entirely by the public interest and not profit, would run the economy better than the chaos, irrationality and imperfections of the capitalist market. Yet the market, with all its flaws and irrationality, proved infinitely more efficient.

Fama holds that this is true of financial markets too. This is compatible with Shiller's analysis. Markets can be both irrational and efficient.

Freeze energy prices and cause the Apocalypse

MARK STEEL in THE INDEPENDENT

If energy companies are asked to get by on £6bn a year, they might as well not bother

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By the weekend I expect we’ll have more details about the consequences of Labour’s proposed price freeze. EDF will announce that once its profits are curtailed slightly, it’ll have to sack the man who checks for bare sparking wires at the National Grid, so Devon will burn down, and the smoke from a flaming Torquay will cause planes full of especially furry puppies to crash into the Atlantic causing a tsunami that puts out the sun, making us turn the heating up even more than usual.

With no gas we’ll have to live on tinned food, but with no light we’ll cut ourselves on the jagged lids, and the smell of an entire nation bleeding will attract sharks that will evolve legs and the ability to live in dark and cold and will rule the world. So think about that before you vote Labour.

Some newspapers and politicians are suggesting this collapse into a post-electric wasteland will be inevitable. The Daily Mail listed seven steps toward “blackouts, pensions hit and years of uncertainty”. Tomorrow it’ll explain the next seven, starting: “Step 1 – with no gas fires, Britain will turn into a glacier, and Ranulph Fiennes will be appointed Prime Minister as he’ll be the only person who can travel to work.” And: “Step 2 – as our blood turns to ice some of us will be drained and used as a venue in the Winter Olympics.”

The proposal is “insane”, it says, and an assortment of experts have made comments such as: “Not putting up gas all the time is clearly PSYCHOTIC and DERANGED. It’s also emerged that Harold Shipman started out by not wanting to put up the price of gas, and only when he got away with that did he take it one stage further and murder everyone.”

Neil Woodford, the largest shareholder in the energy company Centrica, has already said: “If Centrica can’t make money supplying electricity then they won’t supply it. The lights will go off, the economy will shut down.”

That sounds a little like a threat, the sort of thing The Joker’s spokesperson might say, having rephrased the original statement of “everyone must pay me what I demand or I will plunge the city into darkness and steal their economy mwaaaaa ha ha haaaaa”. Still, at least he’s not holding the country to ransom, like teachers who vote for a half-day strike.

A spokesman for Centrica said the catastrophe would happen because “it would not be economically viable to continue supplying energy if prices were capped”. And you can sympathise, because last year the six main energy companies were only able to pay dividends of £7bn. So if they’re asked for one year to get by on only £6bn, they might as well not bother and plunge the country into an apocalyptic arena of death instead.

The energy companies also state that falling dividends will make us worse off, because this will hit pension funds. And we can be sure that’s their main concern. Sam Laidlaw, the chief executive of Centrica with a salary of £5m, and the five British Gas executives who took a total of £11m in bonuses, will be distraught at the effect on pensioners, and won’t for a moment have considered the impact on their own pay. Hopefully, they’ll receive counselling, from someone who can explain they must think of themselves occasionally, as they can’t just worry about the needs of old people ALL the time.

What we’re asked to understand by critics of this proposal, is that if the energy companies have to keep their prices down, that makes the majority of us worse off. So if you’re sensible, when you receive your gas bill you’ll say: “Oh no, is that all it is? I hope next time I have to pay much more, otherwise I’ll be short of money.”

If those who insist lower energy bills make us worse off are right, instead of freezing their prices, the Government needs to make us take a second job delivering pizzas and send all the money to npower, ensuring we’re much better off. If pensioners are too old to ride a moped, they should be forced to sell their pets as food and send in the cash, for their own good.

Despite this logic, Ed Miliband’s promise to restrain detested companies seems popular, as even the Daily Mail admits. So Peter Mandelson has condemned it, his argument being: “He mustn’t suggest a policy that most people like, can’t he see that makes him unelectable.”

I suppose the unease is due to the uncertain electoral outcome of this proposal, which depends on the arithmetic. Chief executives of energy companies are now less likely to vote Labour, whereas everyone else is more likely, so someone will have to work out which of these two categories is bigger.

It could also be argued, that as Centrica executives have stated a brief marginal reduction in their gargantuan profits will mean it won’t be worthwhile continuing to supply electricity at all, in which case they will merrily turn off the entire supply, they are the people least worthy of being in charge of it, and it ought to be taken off them altogether and given to any random person in the street rather than left in the hands of such a bunch of psychos.

Maybe Ed can fill in that detail in the manifesto 

Keep the pause button on GM pressed

JACK A. HEINEMANN in The hindu

  

 

Questioning a technology, especially of the kind that has serious unknowns and lacks clear social benefits, is not an attack on science

Jairam Ramesh, former Environment Minister for India, made the brave decision in 2010 to tell his then apex regulator of genetically modified organisms (GEAC) that it had failed to properly use available science to determine the safety — to human health and the environment — of Bt brinjal, created using genetic modification (GM). His decision followed careful evaluation of the science.

I was involved in Ramesh’s review. I read first hand the scientific evidence in my area of expertise provided to the GEAC and its responses. I was heartened to see that his decision was validated by the esteemed scientists that made up the Supreme Court Technical Expert Committee who have advised the Court on the need for better research and better process before continuing to release GM crops into the environment or using them as food.

Creating confusion

G. Padmanaban (“Sow the wind, reap a storm,” The Hindu, September 2) believes that the events surrounding the evaluation of Bt brinjal and now extending to other kinds of GM plants is an assault on science. He confuses science with technology. Science is the process of knowledge creation (or discovery) whereas technology is the means of knowledge application. This confusion causes some scientists to defend technologies that are questioned because they perceive questions on the technology as an attack on science. It is not.

There is much knowledge discovered or to be discovered that cannot be applied wisely — at least not now. GM plants are among the technologies that have both serious scientific unknowns and lack a clear social benefit — at least for now.

For over 30 years, GM has been promised to produce plants that will resist the stresses of drought, heavy metals and salt, that will increase yield, reduce the use of toxic pesticides and even fix their own nitrogen. To be fair, some GM crops have reduced the use of some toxic insecticides for a brief period. To be precise, though, none of these promises has been sustainably delivered to farmers.

Why not? Well, it isn’t complex regulation holding them back. By the year 2005, over 1,000 applications were approved to field trial stress-tolerant GM plants in the United States alone. None ever progressed out of the testing phase. The explanation for this is likely because stress tolerance is not a solution to the causes of stress. No matter how tolerant you make the plant to drought, using it in soil low in organic matter and unable to hold water will eventually further deplete the soil of moisture and the plant will struggle or die. GM is an attempt to use genetics to overcome the environment. This never works for long. That is why some call GM a distraction from investing in real solutions to the problems faced by real farmers.

A symptom

Herbicide use is increasing in the U.S. since it adopted GM maize (corn), soybeans and cotton. Insecticide use is down by a small bit, but extremely high compared to countries such as France which do not use GM crops. Western Europe’s maize yields match or exceed the U.S.’ yields using less pesticide. The yields in wheat and oilseed rape are increasing at an even faster rate in Western Europe than in the U.S. and Canada. This indicates a dangerous trend: those countries choosing to innovate in agriculture using GM are demonstrating lower productivity increases and greater dependence on chemical inputs in all crops compared to economically and environmentally comparable countries choosing to not use GM crops.

What is it about investing in GM products that seems to undermine other technologies in agriculture? GM products attract the strictest intellectual property (IP) rights instruments possible in agriculture (e.g., process patents). The use of those instruments concentrates investment and drives out simple but even more effective technologies.

Now every government research centre and public university seeks to compensate for the fall in direct public investment through licensing royalties from IP and the creation of partnerships with the private sector. This necessarily changes the kinds of questions they favour being asked by their researchers, the kind that will be supported by institutional resources or rewarded with promotion. With these policies in place we shouldn’t be surprised that every problem looks like it has a GM solution even to researchers who claim to have no entrepreneurial motivations.

Prof. Padmanaban’s ambition for a crop that provides all nutritional needs and grows everywhere demonstrates the poverty of the GM approach to hunger and malnourishment. Such a crop would quickly become obsolete as it would also serve as a wonderful meal for every conceivable form of pest. Meanwhile, it would undermine both biological and agricultural diversity as it became a weed in its own right.

Instead of that approach, supporting communities with education on nutrition and farmers with technologies that build up their soils, manage pests with little or no application of pesticide and manufactured fertilizers gives them the means and independence to grow a variety of crops and livestock to meet their dietary needs and sell their surplus in local markets.

This investment in agriculture is not as good at making intellectual property, but better for growing food. To properly support India’s mainly small holder farming requires removing the penalties and incentives on the public scientist to develop primarily technologies that bring direct revenue to their institutions. Instead, invest in them with public money and measure their success by the yields of farmers, the reduction of pesticides and fertilizer they use, and the increase in their wealth and health.

No missed opportunities

India is not missing out on the benefits of GM. So far, there haven’t been any proven to exist, or proven to be sustainable. GM crops are not designed to increase intrinsic yield and the largest scale and longest term studies bear out that they don’t yield more. Meanwhile, the cost of GM seeds is the fastest growing expense for U.S. farmers who are simultaneously suffering from weeds resistant to the herbicides excessively used on GM crops and pests resistant to the insecticides over-used in Bt crops. That likely would be India’s experience had it commercialised Bt brinjal which was developed with the least effective form of Bt for the target pest.

In addition, the safety issue still lingers over these products. It shouldn’t. The science needed to establish their safety exists and is affordable but it must be applied dispassionately and transparently. That is all Jairam Ramesh asked.

Claiming that GM crops are demonstrated safe by the absence of specific health claims from Americans is glib. There are no validated health surveillance programmes in the U.S. which could both detect and diagnose the cause of the most likely manifestations of harm if they do exist.

Meanwhile, more research studies accumulate with evidence of adverse effects, some quite serious. These studies require replication, but they run into roadblocks or fail to find new funding. Most often these studies report low level health effects using animal feeding studies, so it is not clear whether the effect would be the same, more or less in humans and more or less likely to be caused using GM plants cooked and processed, as humans eat them, rather than raw or processed the way they are provided to test animals.

Hunger, pestilence, and economic failure are the images of fear increasingly being used to drive acceptance of GM crops. Ignorance, anti-science, ideology and hypocrisy are the insults used to counter questions about the safety of GM crops coming from scientists and the public. What is right for India’s agriculture is too important a question to leave to fear and insult to decide. I think that both Ramesh and the scientists of the Technical Expert 

Committee knew this when they asked India to pause on the use of GM products. Pause so that all voices can be heard. Reflect on what the problems are and whether technologies solve them or mask them for a time, or even make them worse later.

The left's irrational fear of American intervention

In Syria, as elsewhere, US military might is the best available means of preventing crimes against humanity

• 
• • Niall Ferguson
  • The Guardian, Friday 6 September 2013 16.15 BST

Protesters in Seattle pictured during a march against US intervention in Syria. Photograph: Rick Barry/Demotix/Corbis

Not for the first time, human rights violations by a Middle Eastern tyrant pose a dilemma for leftists on both sides of the Atlantic. (Editor's comment - not true the right is divided on this issue). On the one hand, they don't like reading about people being gassed. On the other, they are deeply reluctant to will the means to end the killing, for fear of acknowledging that western – meaning, in practice, American – military power can be a force for good. (For Ferguson it is an act of faith - Editor)

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Also read

We should have been traumatised into action by this war in 2011. And 2012. But now?

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Ever since the 1990s, when the United States finally bestirred itself to end the post-Yugoslav violence in the Balkans, I have made three arguments that the left cannot abide. The first is that American military power is the best available means of preventing crimes against humanity. The second is that, unfortunately, the US is a reluctant "liberal empire" because of three deficits: of manpower, money and attention. And the third is that, when it retreats from global hegemony, we shall see more not less violence (yes due to the power vacuum created but did the hegemon maintains its power by non violent means?).

More recently, almost exactly year ago, I was lambasted for arguing that Barack Obama's principal weaknesses were a tendency to defer difficult decisions to Congress and a lack of coherent strategy in the Middle East. Events have confirmed the predictive power of all this analysis.

To the isolationists on both left and right, Obama's addiction to half- and quarter-measures is just fine – anything rather than risk "another Iraq". But such complacency (not to say callousness) understates the danger of the dynamics at work in the Middle East today. Just because the US is being led by the geopolitical equivalent of Hamlet doesn't mean stasis on the global stage. On the contrary, the less the US does, the more rapidly the region changes, as the various actors jostle for position in a post-American Middle East.

Syria today is in the process of being partitioned. Note that something similar has already happened in Iraq (How did this happen Niall?). What we are witnessing is not just the end of the Middle East of the 1970s. This could be the end of the Middle East of the 1920s. The borders of today, as is well known, can be traced back to the work of British and French diplomats during the first world war. The infamous Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 was the first of a series of steps that led to the breakup of the Ottoman empire and the creation of the states we know today as Syria and Iraq, as well as Jordan, Lebanon and Israel.

As we approach the centenary of the outbreak of the first world war, there is no obvious reason why these states should all survive in their present form.

It is tempting to think of this as a re-Ottomanisation process, as the region reverts to its pre-1914 borders. But it may be more accurate to see this as a second Yugoslavia, with sectarian conflict leading to "ethnic cleansing" and a permanent redrawing of the maps. In the case of Bosnia and Kosovo, it took another Democrat US president an agonisingly long time to face up to the need for intervention. But he eventually did. I would not be surprised to see a repeat performance if that president's wife should end up succeeding Obama in the White House. After all, there is strong evidence to suggest Obama agreed to the original chemical weapons "red line" only under pressure from Hillary Clinton's state department.

Yet the president may not be able to sustain his brand of minimalist interventionism until 2016. While all eyes are focused on chemical weapons in Syria, the mullahs in Iran continue with their efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. The latest IAEA report on this subject makes for disturbing reading. I find it hard to believe that even the pusillanimous Obama would be able to ignore evidence that Tehran had crossed that red line, even if it was drawn by the Israeli prime minister rather than by him.

The Iranian factor is one of a number of key differences between the break up of Yugoslavia and the breakup of countries like Syria and Iraq.

The Middle East is not the Balkans. The population is larger, younger, poorer and less educated. The forces of radical Islam are far more powerful. It is impossible to identify a single "bad guy" in the way that Slobodan Milosevic became the west's bete noire. And there are multiple regional players – Iran, Turkey, the Saudis, as well as the Russians – with deep pockets and serious military capabilities. All in all, the end of pan-Arabism is a much scarier process than the end of pan-Slavism. And the longer the US dithers, the bigger the sectarian conflicts in the region are likely to become.

The proponents of non-intervention – or, indeed, of ineffectual intervention – need to face a simple reality. Inaction is a policy that also has consequences measurable in terms of human life. The assumption that there is nothing worse in the world than American empire is an article of leftwing faith (I agree and the left has to overcome this bias). It is not supported by the historical record.

So the innocent have nothing to fear?

After David Miranda we now know where this leads

The destructive power of state snooping is on display for all to see. The press must not yield to this intimidation

• 
• • Simon Jenkins
  • The Guardian, Tuesday 20 August 2013 20.30 BST

'But it remains worrying that many otherwise liberal-minded Britons seem reluctant to take seriously the abuses revealed in the nature and growth of state surveillance.' Photograph: Yannis Behrakis/Reuters

You've had your fun: now we want the stuff back. With these words the British government embarked on the most bizarre act of state censorship of the internet age. In a Guardian basement, officials from GCHQ gazed with satisfaction on a pile of mangled hard drives like so many book burners sent by the Spanish Inquisition. They were unmoved by the fact that copies of the drives were lodged round the globe. They wanted their symbolic auto-da-fe. Had the Guardian refused this ritual they said they would have obtained a search and destroy order from a compliant British court.

Two great forces are now in fierce but unresolved contention. The material revealed by Edward Snowden through the Guardian and the Washington Post is of a wholly different order from WikiLeaks and other recent whistle-blowing incidents. It indicates not just that the modern state is gathering, storing and processing for its own ends electronic communication from around the world; far more serious, it reveals that this power has so corrupted those wielding it as to put them beyond effective democratic control. It was not the scope of NSA surveillance that led to Snowden's defection. It was hearing his boss lie to Congress about it for hours on end.

Last week in Washington, Congressional investigators discovered that the America's foreign intelligence surveillance court, a body set up specifically to oversee the NSA, had itself been defied by the agency "thousands of times". It was victim to "a culture of misinformation" as orders to destroy intercepts, emails and files were simply disregarded; an intelligence community that seems neither intelligent nor a community commanding a global empire that could suborn the world's largest corporations, draw up targets for drone assassination, blackmail US Muslims into becoming spies and haul passengers off planes.

Yet like all empires, this one has bred its own antibodies. The American (or Anglo-American?) surveillance industry has grown so big by exploiting laws to combat terrorism that it is as impossible to manage internally as it is to control externally. It cannot sustain its own security. Some two million people were reported to have had access to the WikiLeaks material disseminated by Bradley Manning from his Baghdad cell. Snowden himself was a mere employee of a subcontractor to the NSA, yet had full access to its data. The thousands, millions, billions of messages now being devoured daily by US data storage centres may be beyond the dreams of Space Odyssey's HAL 9000. But even HAL proved vulnerable to human morality. Manning and Snowden cannot have been the only US officials to have pondered blowing a whistle on data abuse. There must be hundreds more waiting in the wings – and always will be.

There is clearly a case for prior censorship of some matters of national security. A state secret once revealed cannot be later rectified by a mere denial. Yet the parliamentary and legal institutions for deciding these secrets are plainly no longer fit for purpose. They are treated by the services they supposedly supervise with falsehoods and contempt. In America, the constitution protects the press from pre-publication censorship, leaving those who reveal state secrets to the mercy of the courts and the judgment of public debate – hence the Putinesque treatment of Manning and Snowden. But at least Congress has put the US director of national intelligence, James Clapper, under severe pressure. Even President Barack Obama has welcomed the debate and accepted that the Patriot Act may need revision.

In Britain, there has been no such response. GCHQ could boast to its American counterpart of its "light oversight regime compared to the US". Parliamentary and legal control is a charade, a patsy of the secrecy lobby. The press, normally robust in its treatment of politicians, seems cowed by a regime of informal notification of "defence sensitivity". This D-Notice system used to be confined to cases where the police felt lives to be at risk in current operations. In the case of Snowden the D-Notice has been used to warn editors off publishing material potentially embarrassing to politicians and the security services under the spurious claim that it "might give comfort to terrorists".

Most of the British press (though not the BBC, to its credit) has clearly felt inhibited. As with the "deterrent" smashing of Guardian hard drives and the harassing of David Miranda at Heathrow, a regime of prior restraint has been instigated in Britain whose apparent purpose seems to be simply to show off the security services as macho to their American friends.

Those who question the primacy of the "mainstream" media in the digital age should note that it has been two traditional newspapers, in London and Washington, that have researched, co-ordinated and edited the Snowden revelations. They have even held back material that the NSA and GCHQ had proved unable to protect. No blog, Twitter or Facebook campaign has the resources or the clout to confront the power of the state.

There is no conceivable way copies of the Snowden revelations seized this week at Heathrow could aid terrorism or "threaten the security of the British state" – as charged today by Mark Pritchard, an MP on the parliamentary committee on national security strategy. When the supposed monitors of the secret services merely parrot their jargon against press freedom, we should know this regime is not up to its job.

The war between state power and those holding it to account needs constant refreshment. As Snowden shows, the whistleblowers and hacktivists can win the occasional skirmish. But it remains worrying that many otherwise liberal-minded Britons seem reluctant to take seriously the abuses revealed in the nature and growth of state surveillance. The arrogance of this abuse is now widespread. The same police force that harassed Miranda for nine hours at Heathrow is the one recently revealed as using surveillance to blackmail Lawrence family supporters and draw up lists of trouble-makers to hand over to private contractors. We can see where this leads.

I hesitate to draw parallels with history, but I wonder how those now running the surveillance state – and their appeasers – would have behaved under the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century. We hear today so many phrases we have heard before. The innocent have nothing to fear. Our critics merely comfort the enemy. You cannot be too safe. Loyalty is all. As one official said in wielding his legal stick over the Guardian: "You have had your debate. There's no need to write any more."

Yes, there bloody well is.