The Stacks

According to NYT, "Shy U.S. Intellectual Created Playbook Used in a Revolution"

2011-02-17T10:42:00.001-06:00

Few Americans have heard of Mr. Sharp. But for decades, his practical writings on nonviolent revolution — most notably “From Dictatorship to Democracy,” a 93-page guide to toppling autocrats, available for download in 24 languages — have inspired dissidents around the world, including in Burma, Bosnia, Estonia and Zimbabwe, and now Tunisia and Egypt.
...
Not everyone is so impressed. As’ad AbuKhalil, a Lebanese political scientist and founder of the Angry Arab News Service blog, was outraged by a passing mention of Mr. Sharp in The New York Times on Monday. He complained that Western journalists were looking for a “Lawrence of Arabia” to explain Egyptians’ success, in a colonialist attempt to deny credit to Egyptians.

I never heard of this guy either. Huh.

Wikileaks mirrors

2010-12-07T18:02:00.001-06:00

Wikileaks is currently mirrored on 1005 sites (updated 2010-12-07 21:55 GMT)
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2010-03-11T09:53:00.000-06:00

Bolivians look to ancient farming

2009-12-09T13:57:00.000-06:00

"One of the many extraordinary aspects of our camellones project is that poor communities living in the Beni today are using a similar technology to that developed by indigenous pre-Columbian cultures in the same region to solve a similar range of problems," says Oscar Saavedra, the director of the Kenneth Lee foundation.

He experimented for six years in his own garden to develop the complex system of hydrology.

Farmers Skirt Rules on Gene-Altered Crops, Report Says

2009-11-05T15:20:00.002-06:00

Mr. Jaffe obtained these reports from the E.P.A. through a request under the Freedom of Information Act. He found that based on industry surveys of farmers, from 2003 to 2006, about 90 percent of farmers growing corn resistant to one insect, the corn borer, established refuges of the required size. But the rate fell to 80 percent in 2007 and 78 percent in 2008.

Only 74 percent of farmers were setting up a big enough refuge for corn resistant to the rootworm in 2008, down from 89 percent in 2006. And only 63 percent of farmers had their rootworm refuges close enough to their BT fields.

Hurrah for intestinal worms!

2009-01-30T09:52:00.001-06:00

In studies of what is called the hygiene hypothesis, researchers are concluding that organisms like the millions of bacteria, viruses and especially worms that enter the body along with “dirt” spur the development of a healthy immune system. Several continuing studies suggest that worms may help to redirect an immune system that has gone awry and resulted in autoimmune disorders, allergies and asthma.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/health/27brod.html?em

As More Eat Meat, a Bid to Cut Emissions

2008-12-04T14:39:00.000-06:00

High-tech fixes include those like the project here, called “methane capture,” as well as inventing feed that will make cows belch less methane, which traps heat with 25 times the efficiency of carbon dioxide. California is already working on a program to encourage systems in pig and dairy farms like the one in Sterksel.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/04/science/earth/04meat.html

Settlers Who Long to Leave the West Bank

2008-11-14T01:05:00.000-06:00

It's nice to see Israeli dissenters get a mention in the American press now and again--especially the NYT, which can be pretty pandery to the Israeli right wing.

“I came here 25 years ago to live in the countryside and raise my family,” said David Avidan as he sat in a neighbor’s living room here one recent evening to discuss an exit strategy. “We wanted to resettle the whole land of Israel,” he added. “But now when I see how our soldiers treat Palestinians at the checkpoints, I am ashamed. I want us to get out of here. I want two states for two people. But I can’t get any money for my house and I can’t leave.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/14/world/middleeast/14settlers.html

2008-11-10T20:27:00.000-06:00

Life-obligations-wise, this is no time for me to take up blogging again, but I did want to keep track of this one:

The United States abandoned a nuclear weapon beneath the ice in northern Greenland following a crash in 1968, a BBC investigation has found.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7720049.stm

A couple of good ones...

2008-05-20T23:37:00.000-05:00

from the New York Times:

Forgetfulness is a sign of wisdom!

www.nytimes.com

People waste unimaginable quantities of food:

www.nytimes.com

and the blog it links to:

http://www.wastedfood.com/

Shortage of tradespeople

2008-04-22T22:49:00.000-05:00

Just thought this was interesting.

While the world pursues the knowledge economy, employers are increasingly desperate for plumbers, welders and other technical staff, U.S. employment services firm Manpower Inc said on Tuesday, in its annual survey of staff shortages.

The overall proportion of employers who can't hire the people they want fell to 31 percent from 41 percent last year, the survey found, largely reflecting the U.S. slowdown.

But the survey of nearly 43,000 employers in 32 countries found the rising lament almost everywhere was for trades people and similar skilled, but not necessarily highly educated, positions.

"We've grown up and others have grown up talking about the knowledge environment, and parents are encouraging their children to go to college and get ahead, if you will," Manpower Chief Executive Jeff Joerres told Reuters in a telephone interview.

"What is happening is that it is leaving a major void."

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/042208LB.shtml

Another exit plan

2008-04-05T17:08:00.000-05:00

Hey, this is pretty good! I hope these folks all get elected.

Discussions of Iraq in the media have focused almost entirely on military operations and issues, but any real solution will require us to look at a broader set of problems. Beyond redeploying our troops, we must place equal importance on applying the full arsenal of non-military tools at our disposal. The American public must also re-engage in the discussions and decision-making about how to proceed.

What follows is a series of objectives that, taken together, refocus our current military involvement in the region while repairing damage to the U.S. to prevent a repeat of our mistakes. We have included some sample legislation currently in Congress to show that these objectives have been identified and can be addressed given sufficient political will. We have also included recommendations that the Baker-Hamilton Commission published in the Iraq Study Group Report. In some cases, no existing legislation or clear recommendations exist and new authorizing legislation plus careful planning would be required.

A Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq

Greenies in the Lower Ninth

2008-03-18T19:50:00.000-05:00

The HCNA pursued a rebuilding effort that would address the ways New Orleans had chosen to violate the natural landscape. Unlike mostly middle-class, white Lakeview or largely Vietnamese-American New Orleans East, the Lower Ninth is not a new neighborhood or one on extremely low ground, and its ecological precariousness is relatively recent. There were inhabitants here in the early nineteenth century, long before the Industrial Canal cut off the Lower Ninth along its western edge from the rest of the city. This canal, dug in the 1920s to provide a direct waterway between Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River that forms the neighborhood's southern border, is penned in by levees that had failed catastrophically before, in Hurricane Betsy in 1965.

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/8/23/115646/721

Soybean groups kick researchers in the shins

2008-03-07T19:36:00.000-06:00

Ridiculous. Revolting. Farmers aren't really all that stupid, but you'd never know it from listening to some of the ag-industry groups. They seem to have confused their research funds with their advertising budget--they think if they pay for research, they've purchased the researcher.

A pair of agriculture groups has temporarily suspended about $1.5 million in grants to the University of Minnesota to protest a controversial study by U scientists earlier this month about biofuels and global warming.

The Minnesota Soybean Growers Association and the Minnesota Soybean Research and Promotion Council decided to stop paying additional research money until they meet with Allen Levine, dean of the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences, and other officials.

"The university hurt the farmers' feelings, OK? That's probably the best way to say it," said Jim Palmer, executive director of the two groups

http://www.startribune.com/local/15961652.html

Propolis and HIV

2008-03-05T09:39:00.000-06:00

Maybe I shouldn't speak too harshly of the college that's just admitted me with a sweet-deal research assistantship, but this is a frustrating illustration of the pitfalls of reductionist science. If propolis defeats HIV in a petri dish, the sensible next step is to start trialing propolis supplements for HIV patients--not all this complicated chemical analysis. After all, whole propolis is already known to be healthy and safe enough that you can market it for human consumption. Sure, it's desirable to find out exactly what are the primary active components, in hopes of concentrating and controlling them for more efficacy, but it's entirely possible that none of the fractions in isolation will be as beneficial as the whole. So there's just no sense in spending YEARS on fractionation and chemical analysis BEFORE trying to take advantage of the useful properties of the whole.

This is a prime example of the mindset that Western medicine has to jettison--and is just starting to, I think.

Propolis demonstrated antiviral activity against HIV, prompting a study on propolis that paired the medical school with a team of researchers from CFANS. That project showed promising results, but propolis is an incredibly complex substance, and the mystery of precisely which elements are active remained unsolved.
...
According to the limited research available on the chemical makeup of propolis, it is composed of between 300 and 500 compounds. But these researchers are interested in things present in very small amounts that may be novel and active, Cohen said, so the number may be closer to 3,000 to 5,000. In order to purify a single compound, he says, the researchers have to be able to analyze literally thousands of compounds. The key to analyzing so many compounds, and fractions of those compounds, is to create a process that can run a large number of tests of many different chemical compounds very quickly. In similar tests, such assays have taken longer because there was no screen with which to score relative antibacterial or antiviral activity.
...
The ultimate goal of the rapid assay will be to identify any new compounds—compounds that have not been identified or tested against HIV—that show anti-microbial activity, both toward bacteria and viruses using insect pathogens. Then the researchers will submit those compounds to an external service to do specific anti-HIV tests on enzymes unique to the virus.

“The danger with something like propolis, because it’s been looked at for literally millennia, is that you can move down the line, and discover something that’s already known,” says Gardner. “Our focus is on two key terms: active and novel.”

http://www.cfans.umn.edu/solutions/bees1.htm

CDC report on health effects of environmental toxins suppressed

2008-02-13T22:18:00.000-06:00

The Center for Public Integrity, a public interest investigative journalism organization, has obtained copies of a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study of environmental and health data in eight Great Lakes states that was scheduled for publication in July 2007. The report, which pointed to elevated rates of lung, colon, and breast cancer; low birth weight; and infant mortality in several of the geographical areas of concern has not yet been made public.

A few days before the report was slated to be released, it was pulled. Meanwhile, at precisely the same time, its lead author, Christopher De Rosa, has been removed from the position he held since 1992. The Center for Public Integrity is asking why.

The study, "Public Health Implications of Hazardous Substances in Twenty-Six U.S. Great Lakes Areas of Concern" was developed by the CDC's Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) at the request of the International Joint Commission, an independent U.S-Canadian organization that monitors and advises both governments on the use and quality of boundary waters.

The CDC report brings together two sets of data: environmental data on known "areas of concern" - including superfund sites and hazardous waste dumps - and separate health data collected by county or, in some cases, smaller geographical regions.

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/021308HA.shtml

Top Military Recruitment Lies

2008-02-04T20:35:00.000-06:00

2. The military contract guarantees nothing. The Department of Defense's own enlistment/re-enlistment document states, "Laws and regulations that govern military personnel may change without notice to me. Such changes may affect my status, pay allowances, benefits and responsibilities as a member of the Armed Forces REGARDLESS of the provisions of this enlistment/re-enlistment document" (DD Form4/1, 1998, Sec.9.5b).

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/62945/?page=1

Sen. Sanders on tomato slavery

2008-01-30T23:05:00.000-06:00

As someone who has spent her fair share of hot sweaty days picking tomatoes (and transplanting tomatoes, and staking tomatoes, and trellising tomatoes, irrigating tomatoes, and pulling up tomato stakes, and once dumping three bins of tomatoes off the back of the flatbed with my careless driving), I can say that tomatoes are a lot of work. Folks complain that tomatoes, especially organic ones, are outrageously expensive, and I won't deny it, but if they knew how much work goes into a tomato, they wouldn't grudge the price--and they would understand that the only way anyone can offer you really cheap tomatoes is by grossly exploiting the laborers who pick them. This is part of the reason why tomatoes are an especially good thing to grow at home--it saves you the ugly choice between painfully expensive and brutally exploitative.

These farmworkers pick the tomatoes many Americans eat at McDonald's, Taco Bell, Burger King and other fast food chains. They are paid 45 cents for a 32-pound bucket of tomatoes. It's grueling work, as Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser noted recently in a New York Times op-ed : "During a typical day each migrant picks, carries and unloads two tons of tomatoes." For that two tons the worker can expect about $50, and annual wages of $10,000-$14,000. Wages have been stagnant for more than two decades. Two weeks ago, six people were indicted on slavery charges for beating workers, chaining and locking them inside U-haul trucks, and threatening physical harm if the workers left their jobs. This is far from a rare occurrence, as the Miami Herald wrote, "… farm crew slavery stories and the brutal exploitation of undocumented workers have long since lost their shock value in Florida."

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) - a community-based worker organization - has "exposed a half-dozen slavery cases" that helped trigger the freeing of more than 1,000 workers, and also advocated for better wages, living conditions, respect from the industry, and an end to indentured servitude. CIW recently scored critical victories in negotiating a penny-per-pound surcharge - so workers would now receive about 77 cents per 32-pound bucket - with McDonald's and Yum! Brands (owner of Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, KFC). The corporations - not the tomato growers - would pay the 40 percent salary increase. Astonishingly, Burger King has refused to go along with the deal (tell Burger King to pony up) - it would cost them less than $300,000 annually and the corporation took in $2.23 billion in revenues in 2007. Not to mention three private equity firms control most of Burger King's stock, including Goldman Sachs. In 2006 Goldman Sachs' top 12 execs took home bonuses exceeding $200 million - "more than twice as much money as all of the roughly 10,000 tomato pickers in southern Florida earned that year," according to Schlosser.) Even more outrageous is the response of the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, representing 90 percent of the state's growers. The group has said it will fine any member $100,000 for accepting the extra penny per pound for worker wages.

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/013008LA.shtml

Surge to Nowhere

2008-01-23T12:54:00.000-06:00

As the violence in Baghdad and Anbar province abates, the political and economic dysfunction enveloping Iraq has become all the more apparent. The recent agreement to rehabilitate some former Baathists notwithstand ing, signs of lasting Sunni-Shiite reconciliation are scant. The United States has acquired a ramshackle, ungovernable and unresponsive dependency that is incapable of securing its own borders or managing its own affairs. More than three years after then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice handed President Bush a note announcing that "Iraq is sovereign," that sovereignty remains a fiction.

A nation-building project launched in the confident expectation that the United States would repeat in Iraq the successes it had achieved in Germany and Japan after 1945 instead compares unfavorably with the U.S. response to Hurricane Katrina. Even today, Iraqi electrical generation meets barely half the daily national requirements. Baghdad households now receive power an average of 12 hours each day -- six hours fewer than when Saddam Hussein ruled. Oil production still has not returned to pre-invasion levels. Reports of widespread fraud, waste and sheer ineptitude in the administration of U.S. aid have become so commonplace that they barely last a news cycle. (Recall, for example, the 110,000 AK-47s, 80,000 pistols, 135,000 items of body armor and 115,000 helmets intended for Iraqi security forces that, according to the Government Accountability Office, the Pentagon cannot account for.) U.S. officials repeatedly complain, to little avail, about the paralyzing squabbling inside the Iraqi parliament and the rampant corruption within Iraqi ministries. If a primary function of government is to provide services, then the government of Iraq can hardly be said to exist.

Moreover, recent evidence suggests that the United States is tacitly abandoning its efforts to create a truly functional government in Baghdad. By offering arms and bribes to Sunni insurgents -- an initiative that has been far more important to the temporary reduction in the level of violence than the influx of additional American troops -- U.S. forces have affirmed the fundamental irrelevance of the political apparatus bunkered inside the Green Zone.

Rather than fostering political reconciliation, accommodating Sunni tribal leaders ratifies the ethnic cleansing that resulted from the civil war touched off by the February 2006 bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, a Shiite shrine. That conflict has shredded the fragile connective tissue linking the various elements of Iraqi society; the deals being cut with insurgent factions serve only to ratify that dismal outcome. First Sgt. Richard Meiers of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division got it exactly right: "We're paying them not to blow us up. It looks good right now, but what happens when the money stops?"

http://www.washingtonpost.com

Gaza Border Breached

2008-01-23T12:50:00.000-06:00

Thousands of Palestinians streamed from the Gaza Strip into Egypt on Wednesday after a fence at the Rafah border crossing was toppled, going on a buying spree of fuel, medicine, soap, cigarettes and many other supplies that have been cut off during days of blockade by Israel.

The scene at the border was one of a great bazaar, with Palestinians piling donkeys, carts and motorcycles high with goats, mattresses, chickens, televisions, cement and other goods they had been unable to buy in Gaza.

http://www.nytimes.com

Hundreds of Gaza women had crashed a gate at the same border Tuesday to protest Egypt's cooperation with Israeli sanctions. They were turned back during a riot that injured 35 people and curtailed a resumption of food aid to the impoverished territory.

Gaza came under total blockade Thursday after a sharp increase in Palestinian rocket attacks against Israel. The attacks continued Tuesday, but at a reduced rate, with more than 20 rockets landing harmlessly.

Israel nonetheless eased the blockade Tuesday by delivering 317,000 gallons of diesel fuel for Gaza's shut-down power plant and for near-empty backup generators at hospitals. By evening, lights were back on in much of this capital after a two-day blackout.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/012308O.shtml

Organic undersupply stunts market growth

2008-01-10T14:35:00.000-06:00

This accords with what I've been hearing--organic milk and peanuts are two things I've heard are in particularly short supply. The OTA, however, is not to be trusted--look for this to mean more attempts to weaken the standards on, in particular, animal agriculture.

According to the Organic Trade Association's (OTA) 2007 Manufacturer Survey, organic foods are one of the fastest growing segments in the industry, with sales in 2006 increasing 21 percent to reach $16.7bn.

But results from the group's latest survey of organic manufacturers reveal that as more organic products are being churned out onto the market, securing raw materials is becoming a growing challenge.

Some 55 percent of survey respondents in 2007 said that a lack of dependable supply restricted their company from generating more sales of organic products. This compares to 52 percent last year.

Meat and dairy are amongst the categories hit in recent years by supply shortages, and according to OTA's new report these continued to be the two fastest-growing segments in 2006.

http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/news

Monsanto More Than Doubles Profit

2008-01-07T10:09:00.000-06:00

Revolting. But Martin predicts, and is probably right, that the whole corn-ethanol thing can't last--fertilizer costs have gone up so much that there's no profit in corn even with the higher prices. And now if Roundup prices are up as well...

So far as I can tell, any grower jumping on the corn bandwagon now is either desperate or stupid, or both.

Monsanto gained the most in 18 months and reached a record in New York Stock Exchange trading after corn-seed sales doubled to farmers in Brazil and Argentina and prices for Roundup weed killer surged. Chief Executive Officer Hugh Grant said rising biofuels production and food demand from China will continue to bolster crop prices.

http://www.bloomberg.com

Facebook owns your photos

2008-01-07T09:55:00.000-06:00

Did you know that? I didn't know that.

Facebook's 58 million active members have posted more than 2.7 billion photos, with more than 2.2 billion digital labels of people in the pictures. But what many users may not realize is that the company owns every photo. In fact, everything that people post is automatically licensed to Facebook for its perpetual and transferable use, distribution or public display. The terms of use reserve the right to grant and sublicense all "user content" posted on the site to other businesses. Facebook, a privately held company, rejected a buyout offer from Yahoo! last year and recently sold a 1.6 percent stake to Microsoft, which values the company at up to $15 billion. (Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation bought MySpace, the other leading social network site, for $580 million in 2005.)

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010608F.shtml

Justice's Voting Chief Steps Down Amid Controversy

2007-12-18T12:53:00.000-06:00

Tanner has been enmeshed for months in congressional investigations over his stewardship of the unit that was established to protect minority-voting rights. He drew increased focus this fall after he told a Latino group: "African-Americans don't become elderly the way white people do. They die."

In addition, the Justice Department opened an internal investigation into allegations that Tanner unfairly had deprived two veteran African-American staffers of bonuses and that he and a deputy had misused tax dollars on official trips.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/121507Y.shtml

Books, books

2007-12-18T12:50:00.000-06:00

Dissent in this country has become largely a culture of diagnosis rather than prescription, of describing what is wrong with them, rather than what is possible for us. But even in English, a robust minority tradition can be found. There are a handful of books that I think of as "the secret library of hope." None of them deny the awful things going on, but they approach them as if the future is still open to intervention rather than an inevitability. In describing how the world actually gets changed, they give us the tools to change it again.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/121707H.shtml

Nuke is NOT green!

2007-11-03T12:45:00.000-05:00

If we can't even figure out where to store our radioactive hospital waste, we'll never find a good place to put large quantities of nuclear power-plant waste. That's because there IS NO GOOD PLACE. Slowing global warming is all very well and good, but it's a pretty hollow victory if it comes at the price of contaminating our whole nice fresh cool globe.

Starting next summer, many power plants, hospitals, universities and companies in 36 states will be forced to store low-level radioactive waste on their own property because a South Carolina landfill is closing its doors to them.

The states have known for years that this day would come. But because of political opposition, environmental fears and cost concerns, most of them have done almost nothing to construct new landfills in the meantime.

At issue is the Barnwell County dump site, a 235-acre expanse that opened in 1971 close to the Georgia line. The equivalent of more than 40 tractor-trailers full of radioactive trash from 39 states was buried there each year before South Carolina lawmakers in 2000 ordered the place to scale back because they no longer wanted the state to be the nation's dumping ground.

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/110207EC.shtml

Update: Chertoff did it

2007-10-23T11:06:00.000-05:00

Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, waived several environmental laws yesterday to continue building a border fence through a national conservation area in Arizona, bypassing a federal court ruling that had suspended the fence construction.

Citing "unacceptable risks to our nation's security" if the fence along the border with Mexico was further delayed, Mr. Chertoff invoked waiver authority granted him under a 2005 bill that mandated construction of the fence.

He ordered work to continue on 6.9 miles of fence along the border through the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area in Cochise County in southeastern Arizona.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/102307O.shtml

NASA refuses to disclose air safety survey results

2007-10-22T10:45:00.000-05:00

The AP sought to obtain the survey data over 14 months under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.

"Release of the requested data, which are sensitive and safety-related, could materially affect the public confidence in, and the commercial welfare of, the air carriers and general aviation companies whose pilots participated in the survey," Luedtke wrote in a final denial letter to the AP. NASA also cited pilot confidentiality as a reason, although no airlines were identified in the survey, nor were the identities of pilots, all of whom were promised anonymity.

http://www.startribune.com/484/story/1499779.html

Blogging from Havana, secretly

2007-10-20T22:00:00.000-05:00

In a recent "Generación Y" posting (www.desdecuba.com/generaciony/), Sanchez wrote about the abundance of police patrolling the streets of Havana, checking documents and searching bags for black-market merchandise.

She and a handful of other independent bloggers are opening up a crack in the government's tight control over media and information to give the rest of the world a glimpse of life in a one-party, Communist state.

"We are taking advantage of an unregulated area. They can't control cyberspace out there," she said.

http://www.iht.com/

A roundup

2007-10-20T12:15:00.000-05:00

of the headlines that caught my eye this morning:

Comcast Blocks Some Internet Traffic

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/101907R.shtml

Guatemala Union Heads Killed Despite US Trade Deal

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/101907LA.shtml

Battling the Birth Control Price Hike

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/101907WA.shtml

Table Talk: A Conversation With Michael Pollan

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/101907HB.shtml

Clinton Bucks Trend, Rakes in Cash From Weapons Industry

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/101907O.shtml

Justice Dept.'s Focus Has Shifted

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/101807L.shtml

Stalled Health Tests Leave Storm Trailers in Limbo

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/101807M.shtml

Israel, Hezbollah and Gulf Monarchies Preparing for the Possibility of Strikes in Iran

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/101707S.shtml

Of all the infuriating...

2007-10-17T10:54:00.000-05:00

So...immigrant labor is so valuable that your farm economy will collapse without it--but not valuable enough to decriminalize the people who provide it?

This article is from March; I don't know how the situation developed as the season got underway.

Oh, and for the record, I have no problem with prisoners working in the prison on prison-related tasks, like cooking or gardening or maintenance. But NO ONE's private business should benefit from the exploitation of (virtually) unpaid laborers, convicts or not.

Under the program, which has drawn criticism from groups concerned about immigrants’ rights and from others seeking changes in the criminal justice system, farmers will pay a fee to the state, and the inmates, who volunteer for the work, will be paid about 60 cents a day, corrections officials said.
...
The program will make its debut in Pueblo County, where farmers have been hit hard by the labor shortage. Frank Sobolik, director of a Colorado State University extension program that works with farmers in Pueblo County, said he expected that about half of the 300 migrant workers employed by area farms might not return this season.

“There’s a feeling, a perception that these laborers won’t be back because it’s safer for them to find work in other states,” Mr. Sobolik said. “The farmers are really concerned. These are high-value crops we’re talking about here with a high labor requirement.”

Last year, the Colorado General Assembly passed tough legislation that included giving local law enforcement broader powers to check immigration status and restricting access to social services for workers without proper documentation.

The Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition estimates that there are 150,000 illegal immigrants in Colorado, many of them involved in agriculture. Migrant workers typically travel here from Mexico, Texas and New Mexico for the crop season, where their labor can last from May through the late fall, before returning home to their families. But those numbers could soon be reduced drastically, as workers who are in the country illegally are unwilling to risk exposing their status.

NY Times

Chertoff May Void Judge's Order to Halt Border Fence

2007-10-16T11:05:00.000-05:00

Congress is a joke--but we already knew that, didn't we?

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff is weighing whether to invoke a section of federal law that allows him to exempt border construction projects from any law, his press aide, Russ Knocke, told Capitol Media Services. That includes requirements for studies on environmental impacts of federally funded projects.

The move would not be unprecedented: Chertoff used the power at least twice since it was granted.
...
In his January decision dealing with the Goldwater bombing range, a military training ground, Chertoff declared that the high number of people entering the country illegally through that stretch of the desert create an immediate need to build not just fencing but also vehicle barriers, towers, sensors and cameras. That, he said, justified exemptions from the National Environmental Policy Act - the law being used by the two environmental groups to sue over the San Pedro project - as well as the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, the Wilderness Act, the National Historic Preservation Act and the National Wildlife Refuge Systems Administration Act.

Chertoff also exempted the project from another law, which requires his agency to follow certain administrative procedures.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/101507B.shtml

Aurora Dairy to change some practices

2007-10-14T09:26:00.000-05:00

Well, I still wouldn't recommend buying Aurora, but this seems like a fairly positive development.

A huge Colorado organic dairy agreed yesterday to stop applying the organic label to some of its milk and make major changes in its operation after the Department of Agriculture threatened to revoke its organic certification for, among other problems, failing to provide enough pasture to its cows.

The dairy, Aurora Organic Dairy, which supplies private-label organic milk for many supermarket chains, must also remove some animals from the organic herd at its Platteville, Colo., farm, according to a Department of Agriculture statement released late yesterday that outlined the terms of a consent agreement with the dairy.

NY Times via Rodale

As Logging Fades, Rich Carve Up Open Land in West

2007-10-14T09:08:00.000-05:00

Very interesting...

The rise of a new landed gentry in the West is partly another expression of gilded age economics in America; the super-wealthy elite wades ashore where it will.

With the timber industry in steep decline, recreation is pushing aside logging as the biggest undertaking in the national forests and grasslands, making nearby private tracts more desirable — and valuable, in a sort of ratchet effect — to people who enjoy outdoor activities and ample elbow room and who have the means to take title to what they want.

...
Some timber companies say that gaining conservationists as allies may be the only way to get back into the national forests, and so stay in business. But both sides say that success will require a turn of the historical momentum against logging in the West that began in the early ’90s.

A court decision in 1991 involving the northern spotted owl required the Forest Service to manage for more than just timber production. The national forests in the northern Rockies constricted logging, fostering expansion in other forest areas like the South.

“If there’s anything the industry should have learned over the years, it’s that we can’t do this by ourselves,” said Gordy Sanders, the resource manager at Pyramid Mountain Lumber, one of the mill operators involved in the Beaverhead and Deerlodge negotiations.

Many environmentalists say they have come to realize that cutting down trees, if done responsibly, is not the worst thing that can happen to a forest, when the alternative is selling the land to people who want to build houses.

NY Times

Why Men Should Be Included in Abortion Discussion

2007-09-09T11:36:00.000-05:00

The pro-choice movement, and feminists in general, seem to have historically shied away from the difficult but imperative task of involving men in conversations about abortion. It is understandable that the movement has been weary; no hot-button issue brings out more manipulation than this one. But it is time that feminists' commitment to equality, as well as the quality of both women and men's lives, trumps their fear that acknowledging men's hardships will only serve as fodder for pro-life spin doctors. There must be a way to talk about men's perspectives and experiences without compromising women's bodies.

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/090707WB.shtml

Local is good...and is one among many considerations

2007-08-06T19:28:00.000-05:00

My 2 cents: Yes, all this is true...AND it doesn't entail quite as much of a rethinking of the local-food-systems ideal as the author implies, given that one part of learning to eat local is learning to eat the things that are WELL-SUITED to production in your area--which is why artichokes (sadly) should always be a rare luxury in the Upper Midwest, despite the fact that they can be grown here, because raising them here requires lengthy and energy-intensive greenhouse periods.

Incorporating these measurements into their assessments, scientists reached surprising conclusions. Most notably, they found that lamb raised on New Zealand’s clover-choked pastures and shipped 11,000 miles by boat to Britain produced 1,520 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per ton while British lamb produced 6,280 pounds of carbon dioxide per ton, in part because poorer British pastures force farmers to use feed. In other words, it is four times more energy-efficient for Londoners to buy lamb imported from the other side of the world than to buy it from a producer in their backyard. Similar figures were found for dairy products and fruit.

These life-cycle measurements are causing environmentalists worldwide to rethink the logic of food miles. New Zealand’s most prominent environmental research organization, Landcare Research-Manaaki Whenua, explains that localism “is not always the most environmentally sound solution if more emissions are generated at other stages of the product life cycle than during transport.” The British government’s 2006 Food Industry Sustainability Strategy similarly seeks to consider the environmental costs “across the life cycle of the produce,” not just in transportation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/06/opinion/

CAFTA, sovereignty, people vs. (you guessed it) profits

2007-06-17T10:52:00.000-05:00

When I was in Matagalpa two years ago, the people I met there were at least as concerned with our upcoming elections than with their own, and largely because they didn't trust their own government, whichever candidate was elected, to keep them out of CAFTA, so they were rooting for us to elect someone who wouldn't push it. We didn't do such a good job of that.

This article is very informative and only slightly undermined by its half-assed attempt at the end to pardon Clinton for NAFTA.

In response to these health and safety concerns, the government of Guatemala could decide either to ban the cyanide process or to require the company to compensate surrounding communities for their risk. The vice president has said that the government wouldn't do anything the people don't want. But stopping the Glamis project now could be costly: Under CAFTA, the government of Guatemala could be liable for tens of millions of dollars.

How can a multinational corporation that objects to local environmental, health or safety regulations sue a national government? That license is provided under NAFTA. Once CAFTA is signed, it will provide the same right. In each case, a provision of the agreement allows a foreign corporation to sue a national government for money damages if it believes that the actions of the federal, state or local government in a given country are discriminatory, violate international law or can be considered -- directly or indirectly -- an expropriation of the company's investment. If complying with an environmental regulation makes a project no longer worth the cost, a company can claim that its investment has been expropriated by the state.

Whether the company is in the right won't be decided by an independent judge, however. Rather, it will be decided by a panel of three private international arbitrators chosen by the parties involved. These arbitrators are often corporate lawyers, who, in another suit, could be representing the investor. Affected citizens are not parties to the case. The government's right to protect the water supply in Guatemala, then, could be decided by British or American lawyers, for instance.

Washington Post

Colombian paramilitaries seizing land for biofuels production

2007-06-07T21:44:00.000-05:00

Buy local, folks! Local, local, local!

The revelations tarnish what has been considered an economic and environmental success story. The fruit of the palm oil tree produces a vegetable oil also used in cooking, employs 80,000 people, and is increasingly being turned into biofuel.

"Four years ago Colombia had 172,000 hectares of palm oil," President Alvaro Uribe told the Guardian. "This year we expect to finish with nearly 400,000."

"Four years ago Colombia didn't produce a litre of biofuel. Today, because of our administration, Colombia produces 1.2m litres per day." Investment in new installations would continue to boost production, he added.

However the lawlessness created by four decades of insurgency in the countryside has enabled rightwing paramilitaries, and also possibly leftwing rebels, to join the boom. Unlike coca, the armed groups' main income source, palm oil is a legal crop and therefore safe from state-backed eradication efforts.

Farmers who have been forced off their land at gunpoint say that in many cases their banana groves and cattle grazing fields were turned into palm oil plantations. Luis Hernandez (not his real name) fled his 170-hectare plot outside the town of Mutata in Antioquia province nine years ago after his father-in-law and several neighbours were gunned down. When he and other survivors were able to return recently, they found the land was in the hands of a local palm producer.

"The company tells me that it has legal papers for the land, but I don't know how that can be, as I have land titles dating back 20 years," said Mr Hernandez. He suspects palm companies collaborated with the paramilitaries. "I don't know if there was an official agreement between them, but a relationship of some sort definitely exists."

The article also contains this tidbit:

Under its Plan Colombia project, Washington has funnelled more than $5bn (£2.5bn) in mostly military aid to its South American ally since 2000 - its biggest aid project outside Afghanistan and the Middle East. The Democrats say the security forces are accused of human rights abuses and complicity with traffickers.
...
Plan Colombia began in 1999 and was supposed to halve production of coca within five years, using sprayer planes and officers on the ground. But the latest estimate suggests that since then it has risen 27%.

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/060607ED.shtml

Conscientious Objection to Female Genital Mutilation in Mali

2007-05-03T19:14:00.001-05:00

This makes so much more sense (to me) than the more obvious choice of casting excisers as villains and enemies.

Additionally, three villages have abandoned FGM through our efforts. In one of the villages, Moussala, the people made a big celebration out of the planting of a sign declaring the village had ended excision. They invited people from the adjoining villages, gave speeches, and danced. The two ex-excisers of the village were given Certificates of Honor. The ex-exciser/singer who made the video and another famous singer Adama Yalomba added to the festivities with their anti-FGM songs. Girls who were spared from being excised sang a song and there was music, dancing, and feasting.

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/050307WA.shtml

Another bee update

2007-04-16T21:18:00.000-05:00

New Development 5/3/07: The theory that cell phones are responsible for CCD is a media creation with apparently no basis in science. Sorry, folks, for the false alarm.

A small German scientific study looking at a specific type of cordless phones and homing systems of bees exploded over the Internet and late night television shows. It morphed into erroneous reports! blaming cell phones for the honeybee die-off, which scientists are calling Colony Collapse Disorder.

The scientist who wrote the paper, Stefan Kimmel, e-mailed The Associated Press to say that there is "no link between our tiny little study and the CCD-phenomenon ... anything else said or written is a lie." And U.S. Department of Agriculture top bee researcher Jeff Pettis laughs at the idea, because whenever he goes out to investigate dead bees, he cannot get a signal on his cell phone because the hives are in such remote areas

http://www.startribune.com/789/story/1158855.html

This is in interesting theory and I'm certainly ready to consider it, but it begs the question of why Colony Collapse Disorder first appeared in the US, when Europe and Asia have been cellular for at least as long.

They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world - the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops. Late last week, some bee-keepers claimed that the phenomenon - which started in the US, then spread to continental Europe - was beginning to hit Britain as well.

The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees' navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up.

The Independent

Lest we forget...

2007-04-12T14:32:00.000-05:00

...that Europe's much-vaunted "socialist" economies still reast heavily on the backs of disenfranchised people worldwide:

Since February 2005, logging roads have been driven deep into the forests near Lamoko and the company has started extracting and exporting trees, but the villages have yet to see their schools and pharmacies.

"We asked them to provide wood for our coffins and they even refused that," said one man who asked to remain anonymous.

The Lamoko agreement is just one of many contracts, or concessions, that European companies have signed with tribal chiefs in the DRC as the country begins to recover from a decade of civil wars and dictatorship.

But according to a Greenpeace report released today, Lamoko did better than many communities. Some contracts seen by the Guardian show only promises of sugar, salt and tools worth about $100 (£55) in return for permission to log. Others have reported that pledges made three years ago have still not been fulfilled. The report, which took two years to compile, claims that industrial logging backed by the World Bank is now out of control. "Younger people feel that elders have failed to look after the long-term interests of the community," it says.

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/041107EA.shtml

Maryland looking to circumvent Electoral College

2007-04-11T08:54:00.000-05:00

Seems risky--but quite possibly effective.

Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley signed into law yesterday a measure that would circumvent the Electoral College by awarding the state's electoral votes to the presidential candidate who wins the most votes nationwide.

The bill, one of 105 signed by the Democratic governor the day after the General Assembly adjourned, makes Maryland the first in the nation to agree to let the national popular vote trump statewide preference. It would not take effect until states that cumulatively hold 270 electoral votes - the number needed to win a presidential election - agree to do the same.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/041107P.shtml

An update on the bees

2007-03-23T20:22:00.000-05:00

Hm, this sounds rather dire.

In many cases, scientists have found evidence of almost all known bee viruses in the few surviving bees found in the hives after most have disappeared. Some had five or six infections at the same time and were infested with fungi - a sign, experts say, that the insects' immune system may have collapsed.

The scientists are also surprised that bees and other insects usually leave the abandoned hives untouched. Nearby bee populations or parasites would normally raid the honey and pollen stores of colonies that have died for other reasons, such as excessive winter cold. "This suggests that there is something toxic in the colony itself which is repelling them," says Cox-Foster.

Walter Haefeker, the German beekeeping official, speculates that "besides a number of other factors," the fact that genetically modified, insect-resistant plants are now used in 40 percent of cornfields in the United States could be playing a role. The figure is much lower in Germany - only 0.06 percent - and most of that occurs in the eastern states of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Brandenburg. Haefeker recently sent a researcher at the CCD Working Group some data from a bee study that he has long felt shows a possible connection between genetic engineering and diseases in bees.

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/032307EA.shtml

Banana foibles

2007-03-19T18:02:00.000-05:00

Chiquita Brands International Inc., owner of the namesake banana brand, pleaded guilty to U.S. charges of paying terrorist groups in Colombia for protection.

The plea was entered at a hearing today before U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth in Washington. No Chiquita executives were charged. The company agreed to pay a $25 million fine, to be levied at a sentencing hearing on June 1, and to cooperate in a Justice Department investigation of the payments.

Bloomberg News

Air-freighted food may lose organic label in UK

2007-03-08T11:23:00.000-06:00

The association's director, Patrick Holden, told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: "There is growing demand to reduce the carbon footprint of food distribution and we in the Soil Association take that very seriously."

He said the body's standards board would consider different labelling options, as well as carbon-offsetting plans as a way of managing the environmental impact of air-freighted food.

However, he said, "This initiative wouldn't have been taken if there wasn't a pretty strong chance that the standards board would eventually decide on a total ban."

The Guardian

Bush's new US Attorney Responsible for "Caging" Disenfrancisement

2007-03-08T11:18:00.000-06:00

In October 2004, our investigations team at BBC Newsnight received a series of astonishing emails from Mr. Griffin, then Research Director for the Republican National Committee. ... We dug in, decoding, and mapping the voters on what Griffin called, “Caging” lists, spreadsheets with 70,000 names of voters marked for challenge. Overwhelmingly, these were Black and Hispanic voters from Democratic precincts. [...]

[T]he RNC sent first-class letters to new voters in minority precincts marked, “Do not forward.” Several sheets contained nothing but soldiers, other sheets, homeless shelters. Targets included the Jacksonville Naval Air Station in Florida and that city’s State Street Rescue Mission. Another target, Edward Waters College, a school for African-Americans.

If these voters were not currently at their home voting address, they were tagged as “suspect” and their registration wiped out or their ballot challenged and not counted. Of course, these ‘cages’ captured thousands of students, the homeless and those in the military though they are legitimate voters.

http://southernstudies.org/facingsouth/

Chinese Prime Minister Deplores Growth-Provoked Excesses

2007-03-06T17:08:00.000-06:00

I know very little about the internal dynamics of Chinese policymaking, but they must be very interesting.

China consumes too much; doesn't succeed in protecting its environment and in reducing social disparities: during a speech given Monday March 5th before 3,000 deputies from the National People's Congress (NPC) - meeting for the opening of their annual session - Prime Minister Wen Jiabao made the official report of the "failings" of China's "economic growth model." While setting the objectives for 2007, he emphasized the problems posed by environmental degradation and deepening social inequalities.

In the name of the principle unceasingly reasserted by the Beijing regime of the "construction of a harmonious society," and after acknowledging the day before that the government had "failed" in 2006 in its efforts to control polluting emissions, Mr. Wen declared that the Chinese must "avoid seeking more rapid growth only" and deplored "the excesses in energy consumption and the serious pollution of the environment."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/030607G.shtml

9-year-old Canadian (and other kids) imprisoned in Texas

2007-03-05T21:38:00.000-06:00

Google turns up absolutely no reporting on this from American sources, except blogs that link back to the Canadian papers.

A woman had suffered a heart attack and died on board. After landing in Puerto Rico, everyone was told to disembark while emergency crew removed the body.

“They say we have to pass immigration, and they say because we have Greek passport, you need to get a visa for United States. I said no, our ticket is to Toronto, we have no plan to come here.”

After being held in Puerto Rico for five days, the family was brought to Taylor, Tex., about 45 kilometres northeast of Austin, to the main U.S. family detention centre for immigrants.

...

Everyone must wake up by 5:30 a.m. to take showers. They get 15 minutes to eat each meal. Everyone must be in bed by 9:30 p.m., when laser-triggered alarms are set to detect if anyone gets up.

“The day is very regimented,” said Barbara Hines, a law professor at the University of Texas who runs an immigration clinic with her students — the only way many of the detainees get representation.

“This is a prison. They have a head count three times a day where they have to be in their cells for an hour to be counted down.”

Globe and Mail

And an update (but bear in mind that he's not the only kid imprisoned there):

An appeal that may free a 9-year-old Canadian boy who is being held in a Texas detention centre with his Iranian parents is expected to go forward today.

Toronto lawyer Andrew Brouwer will file a formal application with Canadian immigration authorities for a temporary residency permit to allow the boy's parents to enter Canada.

Brouwer said last night that it was likely the U.S. authorities would release the family to Canada if this country would accept them.

http://www.thestar.com/News/article/188233

MIT Open Courseware

2007-02-28T13:17:00.000-06:00

a free and open educational resource (OER) for educators, students, and self-learners around the world.

MIT OCW:

Is a publication of MIT course materials
Does not require any registration
Is not a degree-granting or certificate-granting activity
Does not provide access to MIT faculty

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/index.htm

Honeybees Vanish, Leaving Crops and Keepers in Peril

2007-02-27T22:55:00.000-06:00

Trucking bees around the country?! This article will blow your mind.

The bee losses are ranging from 30 to 60 percent on the West Coast, with some beekeepers on the East Coast and in Texas reporting losses of more than 70 percent; beekeepers consider a loss of up to 20 percent in the offseason to be normal.

Beekeepers are the nomads of the agriculture world, working in obscurity in their white protective suits and frequently trekking around the country with their insects packed into 18-wheelers, looking for pollination work.

Once the domain of hobbyists with a handful of backyard hives, beekeeping has become increasingly commercial and consolidated. Over the last two decades, the number of beehives, now estimated by the Agriculture Department to be 2.4 million, has dropped by a quarter and the number of beekeepers by half.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022707H.shtml

US Iran Intelligence "Is Incorrect"

2007-02-27T11:56:00.000-06:00

This is no surprise, but it's good to make sure that it's firmly on the record.

And the article does go on to point out that, though the US's claims are bullshit, the IAEA is uncovering some evidence of its own that supports the accusation that Iran is thinking about nuclear weapons (which, by the way, I would like to be on the record as saying, is still not a good reason to start a war with them).

Much of the intelligence on Iran's nuclear facilities provided to UN inspectors by US spy agencies has turned out to be unfounded, diplomatic sources in Vienna said today.

The claims, reminiscent of the intelligence fiasco surrounding the Iraq war, coincided with a sharp increase in international tension as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that Iran was defying a UN security council ultimatum to freeze its nuclear programme.

That report, delivered to the security council by the IAEA director general, Mohammed ElBaradei, sets the stage for a fierce international debate on the imposition of stricter sanctions on Iran and raises the possibility that the US could resort to military action against Iranian nuclear sites.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022307J.shtml

Texas energy buyout on condition of environmental concessions

2007-02-26T20:22:00.000-06:00

TXU, the largest energy provider in Texas, agreed last night to a $45 billion buyout that would not only be the largest private-equity deal in history but would also feature an unusual twist: The buyers have promised environmental groups they would cancel a slew of coal-fired power plants on the firm's drawing boards.

The buyout firms' deal with environmental groups, which could become a landmark in the battle over climate-change policy, would force an abrupt turnaround in the strategy of TXU, which has defied environmentalists' and congressional criticism of its plans to expand coal use and carbon dioxide emissions.

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/022607EA.shtml

BP undermining AK safeguards to cut costs

2007-02-26T10:07:00.000-06:00

Yeah, I'm still a little leery of Jason Leopold, but I don't want to go tossing out good information either...

In a four-page letter sent earlier this month to Congressman John Dingell, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Chuck Hamel, an oil industry watchdog, alleges that he has obtained hard evidence from BP whistle-blowers that the oil behemoth substituted water for corrosion-inhibiting chemicals in Prudhoe Bay pipelines, and instructed its employees to allow its equipment to break down before replacing it. Hamel said BP is trying to save money at the same time the company has earned record profits on oil production

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022407B.shtml

Mexico to help AWOL medic

2007-02-25T20:57:00.000-06:00

The Mexican government agreed this week to assist a Mexican-born U.S. Army medic who refused to return to Iraq and who could face up to seven years in prison when his court-martial opens at a U.S. military base in Germany.
The Foreign Relations Secretariat said it would seek information on the health and legal situation of Agustín Aguayo, who faces charges of desertion and missing a troop movement. His application for status as a conscientious objector was denied, and he went absent without leave in September after being ordered to return to Iraq.

http://www.mexiconews.com.mx/miami/23514.html

Air power, again

2007-02-10T19:12:00.000-06:00

One valuable source is a national cross-sectional cluster sample survey of mortality in Iraq since the 2003 invasion. Carried out by epidemiologists at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health and Iraqi physicians organized through Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, it estimated 655,000 "excess Iraqi deaths as a consequence of the war." The study, published in the British medical journal, The Lancet, in October 2006, found that from March 2003 to June 2006, 13% of violent deaths in Iraq were caused by coalition air strikes. If the 655,000 figure, including over 601,000 violent deaths, is anywhere close to accurate - and the study offered a possible range of civilian deaths that ran from 392,979 to 942,636 - this would equal approximately 78,133 Iraqis killed by bombs, missiles, rockets, or cannon rounds from coalition aircraft between March 2003 when the invasion of Iraq began and last June when the study concluded.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/020707H.shtml

Rodale: organic farming sequesters carbon

2007-02-09T19:27:00.000-06:00

Findings from 23-year The Rodale Institute Farming Systems Trial® (FST) comparing organic and conventional cropping systems show organic/regenerative agriculture systems reduce carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas—positioning organic farming as a major player in efforts to slow climate change from runaway greenhouse gas increases.

newfarm.org

Lengthy discussion of Chavez

2007-02-04T21:24:00.000-06:00

Depending on who you ask some describe Mr Chávez as a liberator and an individual that has helped redistribute wealth, increase social services including greater investment in education and health care. Others say that he has hurt his people by mutilating the state companies that used to run the country's natural resources, as well as investing heavily abroad, neglecting some serious problems at home, and evident cronyism.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/020207H.shtml

Contractors running the goddamn country (says NY Times)

2007-02-04T13:10:00.000-06:00

In June, short of people to process cases of incompetence and fraud by federal contractors, officials at the General Services Administration responded with what has become the government's reflexive answer to almost every problem.

They hired another contractor.

It did not matter that the company they chose, CACI International, had itself recently avoided a suspension from federal contracting; or that the work, delving into investigative files on other contractors, appeared to pose a conflict of interest; or that each person supplied by the company would cost taxpayers $104 an hour. Six CACI workers soon joined hundreds of other private-sector workers at the G.S.A., the government's management agency.

Without a public debate or formal policy decision, contractors have become a virtual fourth branch of government. On the rise for decades, spending on federal contracts has soared during the Bush administration, to about $400 billion last year from $207 billion in 2000, fueled by the war in Iraq, domestic security and Hurricane Katrina, but also by a philosophy that encourages outsourcing almost everything government does.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/020407Z.shtml

Michigan Court: No Same-Sex Benefits

2007-02-02T17:20:00.000-06:00

We've got a long fight ahead...

Public universities and state and local governments would violate the state constitution by providing health insurance to the partners of gay employees, the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled Friday.

A three-judge panel said a 2004 voter-approved ban on gay marriage also applies to same-sex domestic partner benefits. The decision reverses a 2005 ruling from an Ingham County judge who said universities and governments could provide the benefits.

"The marriage amendment's plain language prohibits public employers from recognizing same-sex unions for any purpose," the court wrote.

A constitutional amendment passed by Michigan voters in November 2004 made the union between a man and a woman the only agreement recognized as a marriage "or similar union for any purpose." Those six words led to the court fight over benefits for gay couples.

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/020207HA.shtml

New Orleans in March

2007-01-23T19:58:00.000-06:00

I think I'll go here:

http://www.commongroundrelief.org/

Creating Green-Collar Jobs

2007-01-23T19:56:00.000-06:00

In the spirit of this weekend's Labor and Sustainability Conference...

First, let's take a step back. What are "green jobs"? And who are they for? It's pretty simple: Green jobs are jobs in the booming clean and green economy. The LOHAS Journal ("Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability") estimates green enterprise as a $229 billion market sector. CleanEdge.org reports clean/green technology as the third largest venture capital investment category in 2006. In California alone, investments in clean tech could create up to 114,000 new jobs by 2010.

These investment categories mean new green-collar jobs for American workers at a time when blue-collar jobs are drying up or shipping out: Solar panel manufacturer; green building construction worker; sustainable forestry worker. These are all green jobs - many of them unionized.

By their nature, green jobs are also local jobs, meaning that money stays in the community and creates a multiplier effect for the local economy. You can't outsource a green job, and a green job doesn't take a toll on public health.

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/012307LA.shtml

CSA Fighting Eminent Domain

2007-01-21T21:24:00.000-06:00

A preliminary study for the "Buckland Bypass," a proposed major highway to connect commuters from an adjacent county to Interstate 66 while avoiding our town of Gainesville, features a route that would plow right through the heart of Stoney Lonesome Farm, through our main pond.

As if that is not enough, the latest map of Dominion Power’s proposed transmission line runs 15-story towers and a 500-kilovolt power line not a hundred yards from the projected route of the "Bypass."

www.newfarm.org

An Experiment and a Protest in Shantytown for Homeless

2007-01-21T19:11:00.000-06:00

The city commissioner who represents the area, Michelle Spence-Jones, had tried to shut the settlement down with an ordinance to require a permit for gatherings on public land. But after several visits to Umoja, she withdrew the ordinance and instead promised to arrange for trash pickup at the site three times a week.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011607P.shtml

Israeli, Syrian Representatives Reach Secret Understandings

2007-01-16T19:27:00.000-06:00

# An agreement of principles will be signed between the two countries, and following the fulfillment of all commitments, a peace agreement will be signed.

# As part of the agreement on principles, Israel will withdraw from the Golan Heights to the lines of 4 June, 1967. The timetable for the withdrawal remained open: Syria demanded the pullout be carried out over a five-year period, while Israel asked for the withdrawal to be spread out over 15 years.

# At the buffer zone, along Lake Kinneret, a park will be set up for joint use by Israelis and Syrians. The park will cover a significant portion of the Golan Heights. Israelis will be free to access the park and their presence will not be dependent on Syrian approval.

# Israel will retain control over the use of the waters of the Jordan River and Lake Kinneret.

# The border area will be demilitarized along a 1:4 ratio (in terms of territory) in Israel's favor.

# According to the terms, Syria will also agree to end its support for Hezbollah and Hamas and will distance itself from Iran.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011607H.shtml

Escaped Military Surplus

2007-01-16T19:17:00.000-06:00

"Right Item, Right Time, Right Place, Right Price, Every Time. Best Value Solutions for America's Warfighters," the Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service says on its Web site, calling itself "the place to obtain original U.S. Government surplus property."

Federal investigators are increasingly anxious that Iran is within easy reach of a top priority on its shopping list: parts for the precious fleet of F-14 "Tomcat" fighter jets the United States let Iran buy in the 1970s when it was an ally.

In one case, convicted middlemen for Iran bought Tomcat parts from the Defense Department's surplus division. Customs agents confiscated them and returned them to the Pentagon, which sold them again - customs evidence tags still attached - to another buyer, a suspected broker for Iran.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011607B.shtml

Whys and Dollars and POGO's Dozen

2007-01-14T15:45:00.000-06:00

See, as far as I can tell, not even the nastiest neocon could possibly think that 20,000 more troops in Iraq are going to be able to muscle out the insurgency. After all, that's only a 15% increase. If you really wanted to win through force, you'd need a much bigger number. So the big question is, since it must be obvious to everyone concerned that Bush's surge/escalation will be ineffective, what is driving the policy?

It seems to me that there are several factions, threads, forces, that come together to make policy. First, there are the right-wing idealists, both secular and Christian imperialists, who really want to see us take control of the Middle East because they think it's what's right. Then there are the straight-up capitalists, who want to see markets opening in their favor. These two groups should be concerned with strategy and effectiveness, and may realize that relatively small bump in troop numbers will not achieve their goals, but, like a green who votes Green every time even in races where a compromise vote for a Dem might be better strategy for advancing their green values, the ideological and some of the capitalist right wing is probably voting their heart. This particular plan might be strategically ineffective for their agenda, but it just feels right to them. As for the smart right-wingers, the ones who are thinking strategically and really want to win, they may be driving policy toward more and more troops, but haven't been able to push the number past 20,000 because more would require a draft and that's unpalatable to the professional politicians in their coalition.

So the capitalist and ideologist factions are helping drive this policy but not really getting what they want out of it. Meanwhile, there is another faction driving with then and getting EXACTLY what they want--military contractors and indirect beneficiaries of every stripe, from Boeing to Halliburton to BearingPoint to the various private security companies to the chemical manufacturers and prosthetics researchers and media companies and research universities and frankly most of the industrial economy. These folks have an interest in escalating and prolonging war, any war, no matter the outcome. My best guess is that they are, indirectly at least, the motivation behind dangerous and patently useless shit like airstrikes on Somalia. And they drive a massive portion of our national economy, so the truth is that we ordinary Americans also have an interest in endless war. And war probably doesn't happen because Boeing sends a lobbyist to Congress to beg them to scrounge up some war, but it certainly can happen because Boeing sends campaign money and lobbyists to promote the fearmongering and blind nationalism that permit flailing, strategyless war efforts like what we're seeing now.

There are probably other threads--nationalists who want to push the draft issue because they figure national service is good for the national character, hotheads who just want revenge on anyone who's ever stood up to us, that sort of thing. But right now the sum of the vectors of all these various forces seems to be 20,000 more troops in Iraq, steady entanglement in Afghanistan, no draft for now, playing chicken with Iran, and bombs over Somalia.

So what to do? I don't know. I see three avenues at present, and have not been particulary successful at any, thought I have mostly been pursuing the first. First: build local economies that provide a humane alternative, allowing yourself and others to stop having a personal interest in war, and keeping your money out of the hands of those who drive war. Second: adjust the vectors. Speak, write, lobby, vote, add to the sum forces that point away from war. Also, pick apart the coalition. Show Christians that their leaders are undermining their values. Expose the corruption of one faction to the other factions. Third: interference. It doesn't matter what the policy is if they can't carry it out. If the troops refuse to go, Bush can't have his escalation. If a crowd of protestors takes over Boeing's offices, they are distracted from their lobbying--and if consumers cut down on their elective airline flights, Boeing loses money and therefore power. If a Hummer can't park on the street without getting its tires slashed, it starts to look like a considerably less attractive promotion of militaristic culture (I haven't tried this one, but it sure is tempting).

My $.02

-----------------------------------------

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, BearingPoint employees gave $117,000 (£60,000) to the 2000 and 2004 Bush election campaigns, more than any other Iraq contractor. Other recipients include three prominent Congressmen on the House of Representatives' defence sub-committee, which oversees defence department contracts.

One of the biggest single contributors to BearingPoint's in-house political fund was James Horner, who heads the company's emerging markets business which is working in Iraq and Afghanistan. He donated $5,000 in August 2005.

The company's shares have collapsed to a third of their value when the firm listed in 2001, and it faces being thrown out of the New York Stock Exchange altogether. Despite annual revenues of $3.4bn, the company made a loss of $722m in 2005. Those figures were released only last month, nine months late, and the company has not yet been able to report any fully audited figures at all for 2006.

Analysts in the US claim the reason is a culture of poor management controls stretching back to before the company was carved out of KPMG, the global accounting giant, at the start of the decade. A litany of failings included invoices going astray, poorly trained accounting staff and a failure to work out the tax implications of having so many employees working in foreign countries

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011407G.shtml

POGO’s 2007 "Baker’s Dozen” of Suggested Congressional Oversight Priorities

http://www.pogo.org/p/x/2007bakersdozen.html

Military Is Expanding Its Intelligence Role in US

2007-01-14T14:32:00.000-06:00

The Dems may have won the Congress, but let's not dig the grave of Neocon militarism until we've killed it.

Washington - The Pentagon has been using a little-known power to obtain banking and credit records of hundreds of Americans and others suspected of terrorism or espionage inside the United States, part of an aggressive expansion by the military into domestic intelligence gathering.

The C.I.A. has also been issuing what are known as national security letters to gain access to financial records from American companies, though it has done so only rarely, intelligence officials say.

Banks, credit card companies and other financial institutions receiving the letters usually have turned over documents voluntarily, allowing investigators to examine the financial assets and transactions of American military personnel and civilians, officials say.

The F.B.I., the lead agency on domestic counterterrorism and espionage, has issued thousands of national security letters since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, provoking criticism and court challenges from civil liberties advocates who see them as unjustified intrusions into Americans' private lives.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011407A.shtml

On Nuke Power

2007-01-11T15:51:00.000-06:00

To begin with, over half of the nation's dwindling uranium deposits lie under Navajo and Pueblo tribal land, and at least one in five tribal members recruited to mine the ore were exposed to the radioactive gas radon 220 and "have died and are continuing to die of lung cancer," Caldicott writes. "Thousands of Navajos are still affected by uranium-induced cancers," she adds.

As for uranium tailings discarded in the extraction process, 265 million tons of it have been left to pile up in the Southwest, and pollute it, even though they contain radioactive thorium. At the same time, uranium 238, also known as "depleted uranium," (DU) a discarded nuclear plant byproduct, "is lying around in thousands of leaking, disintegrating barrels" at the enrichment facilities in Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Portsmouth, Ohio; and Paducah, Kentucky - where ground water is now too polluted to drink, Caldicott writes.

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/011007EB.shtml

Gates Foundation: investments vs. works

2007-01-08T15:43:00.000-06:00

Score one more for the LA Times.

The Gates Foundation has poured $218 million into polio and measles immunization and research worldwide, including in the Niger Delta. At the same time that the foundation is funding inoculations to protect health, The Times found, it has invested $423 million in Eni, Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and Total of France - the companies responsible for most of the flares blanketing the delta with pollution, beyond anything permitted in the United States or Europe.

Indeed, local leaders blame oil development for fostering some of the very afflictions that the foundation combats.

Oil workers, for example, and soldiers protecting them are a magnet for prostitution, contributing to a surge in HIV and teenage pregnancy, both targets in the Gates Foundation's efforts to ease the ills of society, especially among the poor. Oil bore holes fill with stagnant water, which is ideal for mosquitoes that spread malaria, one of the diseases the foundation is fighting.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010807P.shtml

A little history

2007-01-07T14:08:00.000-06:00

That changed this summer, when the spike in sectarian violence and the failure of an offensive to secure Baghdad created what one Pentagon advisor called a "psychological break" within the administration. Until then, neoconservatives argued, the administration saw little proof that Abizaid's plan, which was backed by Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the military commander in Iraq, was failing.

The main reason for the new ascendancy of the neocon recommendations, said Kristol, is that "the Rumsfeld-Abizaid-Casey theory was tried and was found wanting…. Some of us challenged it very early on, but, of course, then we were just challenging it as a competing theory."

Although Kristol, Kagan and their intellectual allies have pushed hard for their policy change for more than three years, they bristle at the notion that the idea of a larger troop presence in Iraq and a different approach to securing the country is wholly a neoconservative idea.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010407D.shtml

Hamas accepts Israeli offer of 450 Palestinian prisoners for Shalit

2007-01-04T17:50:00.000-06:00

Another case in which Israel might as well have accepted a compromise when it was first offered, and saved itself a war.

Hamas on Tuesday accepted an Israeli offer to free 450 Palestinian prisoners in the second stage of a deal that would see the release of Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit, who was abducted from his army base on June 25.

Palestinian sources told Haaretz that under the terms of the proposal, Hamas would give Israel a video showing that the 20-year-old Shalit is alive, and in exchange, Israel would release an as-yet undecided number of women and minors held in its jails.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/808682.html

Bush claims authority to read mail

2007-01-04T17:42:00.000-06:00

Most of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act deals with mundane reform measures. But it also explicitly reinforced protections of first-class mail from searches without a court's approval.

Yet in his statement Bush said he will "construe" an exception, "which provides for opening of an item of a class of mail otherwise sealed against inspection in a manner consistent ... with the need to conduct searches in exigent circumstances."

Bush cited as examples the need to "protect human life and safety against hazardous materials and the need for physical searches specifically authorized by law for foreign intelligence collection."

White House spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore denied Bush was claiming any new authority.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010407R.shtml

The Fringe Economy

2007-01-02T17:04:00.000-06:00

Fringe-economy corporations argue that the high interest rates and fees they charge reflect the heightened risks of doing business with an economically unstable population. While fringe businesses have never made their pricing criteria public, some risks are clearly overstated. For example, ACE assesses the risk of each check-cashing transaction and reports losses of less than 1%. Since tax preparers file a borrower's taxes, they are reasonably assured that refund anticipation loans will not exceed refunds. To further guarantee repayment, they often establish an escrow account into which the IRS directly deposits the tax refund check. Pawnshops lend only about 50% of a pawned item's value, which leaves them a large buffer if the pawn goes unclaimed (industry trade groups claim that 70% of customers do redeem their goods). The rent-to-own furniture and appliance industry charges well above the "street price" for furniture and appliances, which is more than enough to offset any losses. Payday lenders require a post-dated check or electronic debit to assure repayment. Payday loan losses are about 6% or less, according to the Center for Responsible Lending.

http://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2006/1106karger.html

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/122906E.shtml

More Profiteering

2006-12-22T18:16:00.000-06:00

Buried within the overblown windbaggery of Chris Floyd's verbiage is yet another very important reason to despise Tony Blair.

But just before they were to fly down to claim the Swiss bank trove, Goldsmith ordered the SFO to stop the probe and turn over all their existing files for his examination. After two days of poring through the material (or perhaps not poring through it), Goldsmith suddenly announced that, upon consultation with the cabinet and the prime minister, he was quashing the entire investigation in the name of "the UK's security and foreign policy interests."

Legal experts told UK papers they could find no precedent for such a move. Oddly enough, Her Majesty's Attorney General - a certain Lord Goldsmith - had been of a similar mind just 10 days before, when, in response to a ferocious PR campaign against the SFO probe launched by BAE's friends among the great and good, he declared that he had "no intention of interfering with the investigation," as the Guardian reports. What a difference 10 days, Dick Cheney and Saudi blackmail makes!

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/122206A.shtml

Starbucks Against Ethiopia

2006-12-18T10:02:00.000-06:00

The American group proposes a geographic certification of Ethiopian coffees similar to the appellations controles of French wines, Florida orange juice or Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee. While Ethiopian farmers often obtain less than 5 percent of their product's final sale price, those of Jamaica get as much as 45 percent. The American authorities are suggesting that certification brings transparency to the system and that the additional revenue really will end up in the farmers' pockets.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/121506G.shtml

Looking Beyond Marriage

2006-12-10T17:23:00.000-06:00

The struggle for same-sex marriage rights is only one part of a larger effort to strengthen the security and stability of diverse households and families. LGBT communities have ample reason to recognize that families and relationships know no borders and will never slot narrowly into a single existing template. All families, relationships, and households struggling for stability and economic security will be helped by separating basic forms of legal and economic recognition from the requirement of marital and conjugal relationship.

http://www.beyondmarriage.org/

Accumulation

2006-12-08T17:10:00.000-06:00

Two percent of adults have more than half of the world's wealth, including property and financial assets, according to a study by the U.N. development research institute published on Tuesday.

While global income is distributed unequally, the spread of wealth is even more skewed, the study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research of the U.N. University said.

www.reuters.com

Why Gates sucks (who'd have guessed it?!)

2006-12-06T15:20:00.000-06:00

Gates has primarily two things going for him, which hardly suffice to justify confirmation:

* The Anyone-But-Rumsfeld syndrome, which has understandable appeal. Just how much appeal was brought home to me last week, when a former colleague who worked closely with Gates during Iran-Contra said, "Despite my misgivings, I would support Satan himself in preference to Rumsfeld."

* The Not-Enough-Evidence-To-Indict bromide offered reluctantly by Lawrence Walsh, the independent counsel who led the investigation of the Iran-Contra affair. Walsh was frustrated by Gates' remarkable inability to recall explosive information that his subordinates swore under oath they had told him "about Oliver North's illegal activities," for example. (Gates' supporters still brag about his "eidetic [institutional] memory.") Walsh wrote:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/120506J.shtml

Farm commodity theft

2006-12-05T17:20:00.000-06:00

These days it's relatively easy to steal commodities without getting caught, Mr. Yoshimoto says. For one, farms are bumping up against suburbs, shortening the time it takes potential crooks to get their hands on freestanding tanks of diesel, barrels of expensive fungicides, and rolls of copper wire. Oftentimes, thieves can operate in plain view since the heavy equipment and tractor-trailers they use to carry out their crimes are common in these parts. Internet trading has also cut down on paperwork, making scofflaws tougher to track down.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1012/p02s01-ussc.html

Census Counts 100,000 Contractors in Iraq

2006-12-05T17:17:00.000-06:00

It is also 10 times the estimated number of contractors that deployed during the Persian Gulf War in 1991, reflecting the Pentagon's growing post-Cold War reliance on contractors for such jobs as providing security, interrogating prisoners, cooking meals, fixing equipment and constructing bases that were once reserved for soldiers.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/120506A.shtml

Organic Farmer Elected to US Senate

2006-11-29T17:23:00.000-06:00

Hey! How come I didn't know about this?

Their crops this year included hard red wheat, hard white wheat, kamut, lentils, and purple barley. Tester is a strong believer in green manures, a type of cover crop grown to be plowed under and incorporated into the soil, adding natural sources of nitrogen and phosphorous, not to mention improving and protecting the soil.

http://www.ifoam.org/press/

Mercenaries

2006-11-15T17:57:00.000-06:00

An oldish article; more on this issue to follow.

Recent shootings of Iraqi civilians, allegedly involving the legion of U.S., British and other foreign security contractors operating in the country, are drawing increasing concern from Iraqi officials and U.S. commanders who say they undermine relations between foreign military forces and Iraqi civilians.

Washington Post

Bechtel Bails Out

2006-11-14T18:09:00.000-06:00

This is the first I've heard of "MEFTA"

Last month, the Bechtel Corp. became the first major U.S. contractor to announce that it was pulling out of Iraq. Bechtel's departure marks yet another significant failure for Bush's economic invasion of Iraq. It does not mark, however, the end of Bechtel's adventures in the Middle East as the company looks to take advantage of the Bush administration's expanding U.S.-Middle East Free Trade Area.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/111406G.shtml

Pentagon Budget Watchdog Position Unfilled

2006-11-14T18:05:00.000-06:00

This seems to be a genuinely complicated situation.

"The outstanding work done by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, particularly under extremely difficult circumstances, is a model of what real oversight is about," Laufman said. "If confirmed, I look forward to partnering with Mr. Bowen and serving as a force multiplier for oversight on Iraq."

Before joining the Justice Department, Laufman served on two investigations that cleared Bush's father's administration of wrongdoing, and he later served on the bipartisan panel that toughened House ethics rules in the mid-1990s.

His nomination is getting support from fellow inspectors general, including two credited with aggressively pursuing the Bush administration.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/111406F.shtml

Corporate and Government Looting of the Gulf Coast

2006-11-14T17:22:00.000-06:00

There's some information taken out of context here (Ceres Environmental does indeed provide mulch and potting soil, but it also appears that they do storm debris removal), but the point stands.

Ashbritt Inc., of Pompano Beach, Florida, has received contracts worth over $579 million for debris removal from Army Corps of Engineers despite apparently not owning a single dumptruck. Ashbritt had only recently paid $40,000 to the lobbying firm Barbour, Griffith & Rogers, which had been run by Mississippi governor and former National GOP chair Haley Barbour. The owners of Ashbritt gave $50,000 to the Republican National Committee in 2004.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/111306C.shtml

Also, it led me to this umimpressive-looking goldmine of a site:

http://www.governmentcontractswon.com/

Florida Recount, 2006-Style

2006-11-14T17:12:00.000-06:00

What I've been saying to anyone who'll listen is this: I am somewhat relieved by this election, because it suggests that our profoundly rotten system isn't broken in quite as many places as I feared it might have been. But the system is still corrupt and corroded.

Jennings is now crying foul. The Democrat won 53% of the vote in Sarasota County, and her campaign says, had even half the 17,811 "missing" machine votes been recorded, the she would have overcome her margin of defeat.

Compare the Election Day numbers to Sarasota's paper absentee ballots: only two-and-half percent of absentee ballots ignored the House race.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/111206X.shtml

SIGIR's fate and FBI files

2006-11-06T12:14:00.000-06:00

These aren't exactly related, but oh well...

The Conference Committee quietly terminates the office that I mentioned in the previous post:

Investigations led by a Republican lawyer named Stuart W. Bowen Jr. in Iraq have sent American occupation officials to jail on bribery and conspiracy charges, exposed disastrously poor construction work by well-connected companies like Halliburton and Parsons, and discovered that the military did not properly track hundreds of thousands of weapons it shipped to Iraqi security forces.

And tucked away in a huge military authorization bill that President Bush signed two weeks ago is what some of Mr. Bowen's supporters believe is his reward for repeatedly embarrassing the administration: a pink slip.

The order comes in the form of an obscure provision that terminates his federal oversight agency, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, on Oct. 1, 2007. The clause was inserted by the Republican side of the House Armed Services Committee over the objections of Democratic counterparts during a closed-door conference, and it has generated surprise and some outrage among lawmakers who say they had no idea it was in the final legislation.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/110306L.shtml

And the Electronic Frontier Foundation provides instructions on requesting your FBI file or other FOIA info:

http://www.eff.org/Activism/foia.kit

Gun running

2006-11-02T16:25:00.000-06:00

About the last thing the United States ought to be doing in Iraq is funneling weapons into black-market weapons bazaars, as sectarian militias arm themselves for civil war. Yet that is just what Washington may have been doing for the past several years, thanks to an inexplicable decision that standard Pentagon regulations for registering weapons transfers did not apply to the Iraq war.

Of more than 500,000 weapons turned over to the Iraqi Ministries of Defense and Interior since the American invasion - including rocket-propelled grenade launchers, assault rifles, machine guns and sniper rifles - the serial numbers of only 12,128 were properly recorded. Some 370,000 of these weapons, some of which are undoubtedly being used to kill American troops, were paid for by United States taxpayers, under the Orwellian-titled Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/103106D.shtml

Which led me to this:

http://www.sigir.mil/

The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, whose office produced the report I mentioned a few months ago of money poured into half-building, then abandoning, 100-some health centers in Iraq.

Studies on big-box impact

2006-10-25T12:19:00.000-05:00

A cost/benefit analysis of a proposed Wal-Mart store in St. Albans, Vermont, found that the store would cause dozens of existing businesses to close, leading to a net loss of 110,000 square feet of retail space. The 214 jobs created by the new superstore would be offset by the loss of 381 jobs at other businesses. The analysis also found that the overall tax losses expected from the small business failures would be greater than the tax revenue generated by the new Wal-Mart. Moreover, the city would incur a variety of new costs to provide roads, sewers, police, and fire protection to service the sprawling new development. The analysis concluded that for every dollar in tax benefit created by the superstore, there would be 2.5 dollars in tax losses and public costs.

Big Box Toolkit

Recycling Coalition Calls for Moratorium on PLA Bottles

2006-10-25T11:50:00.000-05:00

How odd. Especially since composting certainly seems like the most desirable disposal...

NatureWorks, a subsidiary of Cargill, has commercialized a new type of plastic resin made from corn, and claims PLA has preferable end-of-life advantages because, being bio-based, it is compostable. NatureWorks also claims that PLA can be physically recycled or chemically converted back into PLA. The coalition emphasized its support for bio-based resins for compostable food serviceware. However, it questioned the economic viability of recycling or composting PLA bottles. The coalition also raised concerns about PLA bottles in large numbers harming the economics of PET bottle recycling.

http://www.ilsr.org/columns/2006/102006.html

And the trail of links leads to this organization, which I bet you've never heard of:

Center for a Competitive Waste Industry

Outsourcing: The CIA's Travel Agent

2006-10-25T11:43:00.000-05:00

Boeing does not mention, either on its Web site or in its annual report, that Jeppesen's clients include the C.I.A., and that among the international trips that the company plans for the agency are secret "extraordinary rendition" flights for terrorism suspects. Most of the planes used in rendition flights are owned and operated by tiny charter airlines that function as C.I.A. front companies, but it is not widely known that the agency has turned to a division of Boeing, the publicly traded blue-chip behemoth, to handle many of the logistical and navigational details for these trips, including flight plans, clearance to fly over other countries, hotel reservations, and ground-crew arrangements.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/102406D.shtml

Beware elections

2006-10-20T19:03:00.000-05:00

I firmly believe that there really is widespread election fraud in this country. While there are no doubt a few dishonest Democrats tinkering with the works, it is generally Republicans that are both inclined AND positioned to make real havoc with vote numbers. And I strongly suspect that, alongside some genuinely isolated incidents, there is authorization and coordination on the highest levels for this shit. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but that's no insult if there really is a conspiracy.

A quick roundup of evidence and screeds:

Part II: Our Rigged Elections

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/101906O.shtml

Officials Probing Possible Theft of Voting Software in Maryland

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/102006R.shtml

New Laws and Machines May Spell Voting Woes

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/101906Z.shtml

http://blackboxvoting.com/s9/

Atty. general says GOP campaign linked to intimidating letter

http://www.sfgate.com/

Salon's shameful six

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/08/15/states/index.html

Letters on voter ID under fire

http://www.ajc.com/

The Long Shadow of Jim Crow: Voter Intimidation and Suppression in America Today

http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oId=16368

And another report by the same folks:

http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=22221

Revisiting the Air Travel Issue

2006-10-17T20:15:00.000-05:00

Forecasts suggest that the increase in flights will mean that by 2050, emissions from aviation could be between four and 10 times higher than they were in 1990, making it almost impossible for the government to achieve its target of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 60%.

"The government has to confront the contradictions in its policies," said Dr Brenda Boardman, the project leader of Oxford University's environmental change institute.

"Unless the rate of growth in flights is curbed, the UK cannot fulfil its commitments on climate change. If government wants to be confident about achieving its targets, it has to undertake demand management. Relying on technological fixes alone is totally unrealistic."

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/101706EA.shtml

INTERNET GUIDE TO FREIGHTER TRAVEL

Unfortunately, freighter travel is friggin' expensive.

http://www.geocities.com/freighterman.geo/mainmenu.html

Shopping...

2006-10-15T15:27:00.000-05:00

...is not generally what I recommend to "ease your conscience." And it can't be healthy for 40% of a country's economy to consist of a single export industry. But still...

Then, at the beginning of 2005, the Multi-Fibre Arrangement's quotas expired. Analysts from around the world predicted the demise of textile industries in countries such as Lesotho since brands could make all of their clothes in cheaper, more productive Chinese factories. And true to those predictions, in 2005, a number of brands closed or reduced their operations in Lesotho. Textile employment dipped to around 40,000. That's when Tsoeu lost her job.

But at the same time, an alliance of companies, NGOs, government representatives, and others were trying to find ways to protect the country's industry. Already, some brands had improved working conditions in Lesotho to answer concerns about sweatshop labor. The group realized that if Lesotho could start aggressively marketing itself as an ethical source of clothing, it could retain and even grow business.

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/101306LB.shtml

FEMA luvs Windy

2006-10-10T16:23:00.000-05:00

So...this program is so useless that it has to console its own employees with orderly toilet-paper-throwing sessions?

Surely someone involved with this project is doing legitimate counseling work and is very insulted by this article.

Doris O'Neal was a Project H.O.P.E. Wilma counselor in Palm Beach County from December through July, when she left because of illness.

"I think it's a waste of taxpayers' money," she told the Sun-Sentinel. "I mean, puppet shows? What is that doing? I felt guilty a lot of days going to work and earning a paycheck."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/100906G.shtml

More from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, including video of Windy Biggie:

H.O.P.E. programs get mixed reviews from audiences

The question is Why?, and the best clue, as usual, is Who benefits? I haven't been able to track down who's in charge of this project or what the funding process was (can't claim I tried too hard), but this gives a preliminary suggestion that it could be a simple legislative pork-barrel issue.

Big Box Swindle

2006-10-08T21:51:00.000-05:00

I want to read this book, but I'm hoping one of the libraries will acquire it...

In less than two decades, large retail chains have become the most powerful corporations in America. In this deft and revealing book, Stacy Mitchell illustrates how mega-retailers are fueling many of our most pressing problems, from the shrinking middle class to rising pollution and diminished civic engagement. She then shows how a growing number of communities and independent businesses are effectively fighting back.

http://www.ilsr.org/mm5/merchant.mvc

Well, it quacks like a sinking ship...

2006-10-08T21:38:00.000-05:00

The question, to my mind, is how the neocons will respond to losing the electorate over the next couple of years. Will they be voted out and vanish, will they manage to stage something so big that it re-hoodwinks the voters, will they simply rig the vote (the tampering was fairly obvious last time; the next time it would have to be simply blatant), will they try a coup? I don't think they're quite institutionalized enough to get their agenda accomplished if their people lose the elected positions, so if they want to keep power they'll probably have to seize it. The question is, do they have both the will and the ability to do that?

Democrats now outdistance Republicans on every single issue that could decide voters' choices come Nov. 7. In addition to winning - for the first time in the NEWSWEEK poll - on the question of which party is more trusted to fight the war on terror (44 to 37 percent) and moral values (42 percent to 36 percent), the Democrats now inspire more trust than the GOP on handling Iraq (47 to 34); the economy (53 to 31); health care (57 to 24); federal spending and the deficit (53 to 29); gas and oil prices (56 to 23); and immigration (43 to 34).

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/100806B.shtml

Report: Thousands Wrongly on Terror List

2006-10-07T16:51:00.000-05:00

Yeah, my dad was once told at the airport that he was on the no-fly list. And, sure enough, it was another guy with the same name.

When questions arose about tens of thousands of names between December 2003 and January 2006, the names were sent back to the agencies that put them on the lists, the GAO said. Half of those were found to be misidentified, the report found.
...
Maher Arar, a Canadian software engineer, was detained at New York's Kennedy Airport in 2002 because Canadian officials had asked that he be placed on a watch list. The U.S. transferred him without court approval to Syria where he was tortured and imprisoned for a year. A Canadian inquiry found that Arar should not have been on the list because he didn't do anything wrong.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/100706Z.shtml

Experts Warn of an Accidental Atomic War

2006-10-07T16:31:00.000-05:00

'Cause we all need a nuclear-danger update now and again...

A major technical problem exacerbates the risk of using the D5 as a conventional weapon: the decaying state of Russia's nuclear forces. Russia's nuclear missiles are tethered to early warning radars that have been in decline since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. And Russia, unlike the United States, lacks sufficient satellites to supplement the radars and confirm whether missile launches are truly under way or are false alarms.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/100706X.shtml

The No-Till+ Page

2006-09-15T22:30:00.000-05:00

Tillage is an ongoing issue full of questions, and no-till is still pretty much a new world to me--very interesting even though a couple of farmers I respect have kind of nudged me away from it.

http://www.newfarm.org/depts/notill/index.shtml