WEIRD AND WONDERFUL WORLD OF CHI

The Pineapple Problem

2011-11-26T09:38:00.000-06:00

"http://tinyurl.com/2vjyzq2"

Costa Rica is a beautiful country with a perfect climate for growing some of the world's most popular plants (both ornamental and nutritious). But does this translate into real economic benefit for the people of Costa Rica? For at least 100 years, foreign agri-business has been attempting to despoil Costa Rica's riches and often succeeding. It began with United Fruit and banana plantations and continued with pineapple and other crops and with first USA and then international conglomerates such as Chiquita Banana, Dole, and others. I was told that "they" came in with huge tractors separated by a kilometer and with a razor sharp blade or wire between them and simply bulldozed huge swaths of rain forest to make pineapple plantations. "They" paid off politicians and government workers to get whatever permits they wanted and then hired the locals whom they paid very little, required long back-breaking work from them, and treated them as sub-human. Then Costa Rica got tougher with them and the labor laws became tougher and more fairly enforced so that "they"had to start paying a minimum wage and pay into the government health and pensions funds. I now that as long ago as 2008, Dole Pineapple was getting around many of these restrictions by hiring workers by the day, trucking them in in the backs of cattle trucks, and then letting them go. So they were only temporary, casual, and part-time workers according to the legal records. They would then send the cattle trucks out again and collect the workers lined up waiting for a job. The work, of course, is seasonal. That makes it easy for Dole and other such companies to get around various labor laws.

I have been told by workers in the banana plantations and in the rice fields that pesticides are sprayed from crop dusters while the workers are in the fields working. The incidence of sterility, birth defects, and cancers among these workers and their families is very high.

The ecological damage done by the clearing of huge areas of forest to plant a single crop is enormous. The on-going damage is still not completely known.

The economic questions is this: Do the losses to the environment and the public health get cancelled out by economic benefits to the people of Costa Rica?

This blog from PoveryMatters Blog, attemps to answer the question. Anyone interested in the Costa Rica left behind by tourists, should be aware of how outside interests and mega agribusiness in particular are affecting the country.

Gratuitous Violence

2011-11-20T17:39:00.000-06:00

http://tinyurl.com/cmzrpox

The above link gives information posted on Anonymous about the campus police officer in California who deliberately spetrayed seated non-violent protesters with pepper spray at point blank range right into their eyes. Contacts to voice your opinions of his actions are also given.

A policeman is responsible for public safety and that includes the safety of people exercising their right to freely assemble and to express their concerns about government without threat as long as they are causing no harm.

Please let relevant people know that you want the policeman in question removed from duty. He is obviously not psychologically fit for his responsibilities.

snopes.com: YouTube/Facebook Virus

2011-11-20T17:07:00.000-06:00

snopes.com: YouTube/Facebook Virus:

This is apparently for real folks! A very dangerous Trojan horse that is using Facebook and other social media. Names of your friends/contacts are hijacked and used to entice you into opening the email and clicking on a link or downloading a virus that destroys your main hard drive in the computer. No fix for it as of yet.

'via Blog this'

Copyright Mary B. ThormanAll rights reserved

Relative Values

2011-10-21T10:44:00.000-06:00

Foreigners often experience 'Culture Shock" when they move to Costa Rica. The values are different here. Below is something I recently wrote to a friend who had sent me information about how the phone companies in the USA earned money from text messaging:

t's strange. Here the text messaging is free, but the calls are more expensive. So everyone wants a cell phone to get that free texting and they all use it instead of calling. But once they have the cell phone, they can't resist the instant voice contact, so they start using that frequently as well. Of course, here, smart phones (especially iPhone) are a status symbol. Heidi went to the local grammar school with Nogui one day for some event. In front of her were Nogui's seven-year-old daughter, Hellen, and a friend of hers. The little girls saw Heidi taking pictures with her iPhone. One said, "Is that an iPhone?" When Heidi said it was, the other little girl said, "An iPhone 4?" "Well, no, " said Heidi. It's an iPhone 3.5." The little girls rolled their eyes at this apparent lack of taste in a Gringa and said, "so . . . it's ONLY an OLD one." Imagine this with seven-year-old disgust! Neither of their families, of course, could afford even an old iPhone, but they had expected better from a Gringa. Too funny! Little kids so in tune with what's IN. When the iPhone 4s were finally introduced in Costa Rica (San Jose area only) several months ago, the line for the limited number available (1000, I believe) filled Parque La Sabana which is BIG and then around the several kilometers of sidewalk surrounding the park. People had camped out overnight to be closer to the first ones to get a phone. These same folks will do without new clothes or more food in order to have the new gimmick. ICE said it had seriously underestimated the demand and quickly made arrangements to import thousands more. Which were all grabbed up. A new house is out of most people's reach. A new car or a new horse (horse's being more expensive than most houses) is also out of reach. So people need something to show status. Bling, the latest hi-tech gadgets, and knock-off "stylish" clothing are the best ways to do that. Very few people have a good understanding of what the real value of jewels (eg. diamonds) is, so they'd rather have a very large zirconium engagement ring to flash at everyone than a smaller real diamond. It's all a matter of perception of value which is very much a cultural thing and not based on hard data.

Study Places Costa Rica Among The Largest Consumer of Pesticides In The World

2011-10-19T16:34:00.000-06:00

Study Places Costa Rica Among The Largest Consumer of Pesticides In The World:

'via Blog this'

A Time for Change

2011-10-08T20:28:00.000-06:00

I've been using this blog to highlight problems and to get us thinking about genetically modified foods, about how big agri-business goes about its world-wide takeover of our food supply, and especially about Monsanto. BUT now it is time for a change. No longer will I blog about these particular things exclusively.

From now on I hope to bring you information, insight, ideas, and ideals from my own life here in the Costa Rica. Stay tuned.

Some links regarding Monsanto that YOU should check out.

2011-10-08T20:24:00.000-06:00

http://tinyurl.com/4y3mg63
http://tinyurl.com/6xz4naq
http://tinyurl.com/3fhyckj
http://tinyurl.com/3oa2z73
http://tinyurl.com/5tcggy8
http://tinyurl.com/42sfl7a
http://tinyurl.com/3w3s5jt
http://tinyurl.com/5sn7ssx

Consumers have right to choose

2011-09-29T21:15:00.000-06:00

Tuesday, August 02, 2011 11:12 AM PDT

Consumers have right to choose
The Lake County Record-Bee Tue, 02 Aug 2011 09:19 AM PDT
Earlier this year, Canadian scientists researching utero-placental toxicities reported that blood from 93 percent of pregnant women and blood from 80 percent of their umbilical cords, contained a pesticide from Monsanto s Bt MON810 (the most common genetically modified corn).

Hidden Byproduct: Tons of Molten Slag From Making Herbicide

2011-08-01T12:25:00.000-06:00

Hidden Byproduct: Tons of Molten Slag From Making Herbicide

Huge quantities of radioactive slag are dumped by Monsanto during the phosphate mining process needed to produce Monsanto's herbicide! Does anyone monitor this stuff?

Hidden Byproduct: Tons of Molten Slag From Making Herbicide

From the June 2011 issue; published online July 30, 2011

THE MOMENT Molten slag is added to a heap near Monsanto’s phosphate processing plant in Soda Springs, Idaho. The slag, which typically includes some radioactive uranium and radium in addition to calcium minerals, is the waste product from the conversion of phosphate ore to phosphorus. Monsanto operates the only such plant in the United States and uses the phosphorus to produce glyphosate, the main ingredient in the herbicide Roundup. According to the EPA, each pound of phosphorus produced generates about four pounds of slag. Monsanto’s Soda Springs plant produces more than 200 million pounds of phosphorus each year.

THE SHOT Photograph by Tom Fowlks using a Horseman LS with a Schneider 240mm lens. Watching one truck after another pull up to dump the slag cauldrons was “hypnotic and surreal,” he says.

Monsanto says Erie farmers didn't violate seed agreement

2011-07-18T22:38:00.000-06:00

Monsanto says Erie farmers didn't violate seed agreement: "Monsanto says Erie farmers didn't violate seed agreement
Thursday, July 14, 2011
By Rich Lord, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
A day after an attorney filed a federal complaint accusing two Erie-area farmers of violating Monsanto Co.'s patents, the agrichemical firm announced Thursday that the accusation was made in error.

The two farmers, Harold V. Wiser and Steve Wiser, may owe money for seeds for corn, soybean and wheat products they received in recent years, according to a statement issued by Monsanto. But they are no longer accused of violating their agreement not to use seeds saved from plants grown from Monsanto's genetically engineered kernels.

'The filing was submitted by a third-party vendor and mistakenly included a claim for patent infringement and named Monsanto as the plaintiff. The filing will be amended today,' the company's statement said.

The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh, and then transferred to Erie, said the farmers bought Monsanto's wheat, soybean and corn seeds. The seeds are genetically engineered to be resistant to Monsanto's pesticides. Monsanto bars farmers from saving a portion of their harvest of such plants and replanting them in subsequent years, which is otherwise a time-honored farming practice.

Rich Lord: rlord@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1542."

Insider Trading Found Prior to DE Stock Price Drop - Technology News - redOrbit

2011-07-18T22:34:00.000-06:00

Insider Trading Found Prior to DE Stock Price Drop - Technology News - redOrbit

Monsanto Company: Substantial Stock Option Sale made by company C-Level Officers and Directors on July 13th, at stock price (US$75.00). Disclose date: July 14th.

Greenpeace attacks Canberra GM wheat it says is for secret human trials, links Monsanto

2011-07-14T18:33:00.000-06:00

GREENPEACE activists have attacked a genetically modified wheat crop being grown at a CSIRO experimental station in Canberra.

The group claims the trial crop is part of a secret experiment which will involve human feeding trials later this year.

Greenpeace said two of its members used whipper snippers to remove the wheat from a CSIRO site at Ginninderra in Canberra's north.

The attack came after CSIRO denied a Freedom of Information request for more information about the trials.

Greenpeace has called for the organisation to reveal what financial arrangements it has with GM companies such as the US-based multinational Monsanto.

"The only reason our CSIRO is putting it in the ground is because they've been bought out by foreign GM companies," Greenpeace campaigner Laura Kelly said.

In a statement released to News.com.au the CSIRO said police were investigating the incident.

"CSIRO can confirm there has been a break-in overnight at their crop trial site at Ginninderra in the ACT," the statement read.

"The police, and the government’s gene technology regulatory authority - the Office of the Gene Technology Regulator (OGTR) – have been informed and are inspecting the site.

"CSIRO is currently assessing the damage to the trial crops and considering next steps."

The statement did not confirm or deny the trial was to include human feeding or connected to any private companies involved in GM research, but provided a link to its policy on gene technology on its website.

Greenpeace claims CSIRO animal feeding tests show that there are risks associated with GM crops.

"They fed GM crops to mice and the mice displayed allergic reactions and failed to gain weight," Ms Kelly said, adding the effect on humans was still unknown because it had never been tested.

Australia's $4.7 billion wheat export industry was too important to hand over to foreign GM companies, she said.

Intereresting Hacktivism?

2011-07-13T18:52:00.000-06:00

IV. Monsanto Attacked

In related news, Anonymous vowed Monday to step up attacks on contractor Monsanto Comp. (MON).

Monsanto is a firm with a long and controversial history. It is accused of abusing intellectual property rights to sue small farms (allowing its patented crops to blow seeds onto their properties, then suing them); trying to bribe officials in Canada and Indonesia [1][2]; and suing dairy farmers who advertise that their milk doesn't contain growth hormones. And they also were the company responsible for spraying Agent Orange all over soldiers in Vietnam, which is thought to have led to cancer and other ailments.

Anonymous broke the news of new possible attacks, writing:

@MonsatoCo is now suing small dairy farmers for advertising that they use no growth hormones. For NOT using their product.

The operation's Twitter account "OpMonsanto", posted on June 26:

We're going to hit @MonsantoCo with something a little bit more serious than a DDoS this time around. Fuck 'em. #ExpectUs

It posted a brief press release, writing:

Over the last 2 months we have pushed the exposure of hundreds of pages of articles detailing Monsanto's corrupt, unethical, and downright evil business practices. We've created a nice go-to reference guide on piratepad/anonpad(anonpad.org/opmonsanto, backed up elsewhere), where anyone can read up on and add their own info about MonsantoCo.
We blasted their web infrastructure to shit for 2 days straight, crippling all 3 of their mail servers as well as taking down their main websites world-wide. We dropped dox on 2500+ employees and associates, including full names, addresses, phone numbers, and exactly where they work. We are also in the process of setting up a wiki, to try and get all collected information in a more centralized and stable environment. Not bad for 2 months, I'd say.
What's next? Not sure... it might have something to do with that open 6666 IRC port on their nexus server though ;)
Expect Us

It indeed "doxed" Monsanto's employees -- in fact it appears to have exposed the names and addresses of 2,500+ of them. How this information might be used/abused is unknown, but it could lead to at least some minor harassment.

Monsanto Under Investigation - Again!

2011-07-09T20:23:00.000-06:00

WASHINGTON -- Global agribusiness giant Monsanto is under federal investigation for using cash incentives to persuade distributors to use Roundup, the world's top-selling weedkiller.

Monsanto announced Wednesday the company would cooperate with the Securities and Exchange Commission's probe of its "customer incentives" programs and a subpoena for documents pertaining to the sale of Monsanto's glyphosate products in fiscal years 2009 and 2010.

The US-based company has allegedly been offering distributors up to $20 per acre to use Roundup, as well as Roundup Ready seeds, which have been genetically modified to resist the glyphosate-based herbicide.

Ban on GM crops' field trials in Karnataka demanded | Calcutta News.Net

2011-07-09T20:08:00.000-06:00

Ban on GM crops' field trials in Karnataka demanded | Calcutta News.Net

Civil society organisations and farmers' union Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha Monday sought a ban on field trials of genetically modified (GM) corn by Monsanto and action against the US-based multinational seed major for violating bio-safety rules.

'Monsanto had taken up seed production for two transgenic corn hybrids in the field of a farmer, Amrit Gowda, at Banihatti village in Bijapur district of North Karnataka. We found the company flouting every procedure to ensure bio-safety from such GM products in experimental and research stages,' international non-governmental environmental organisation Greenpeace India said in a statement here Monday.

Seeking a ban on all open field experiments of GM crops in the country, Greenpeace campaigner Shivani Shah said the bio-safety assessment of GM corn was not completed during open cultivation, leading to seed and transgenic leakage.

'GM corn cobs with viable seeds were lying in the field, which was harvested June 1, leading to concerns about seeds from the plot spreading to nearby areas and volunteer plants coming up in the upcoming season. As a result, the rule to destroy residues after harvesting the GM crop was violated,' Shah told reporters here.

Though the 2008 guidelines for field experiments of GM crops in confined conditions stipulates that all crops have to be destroyed post the harvest, the farmer was allowed to keep the refuge, which could have been contaminated with the transgenes from the GM corn, Shah said.

'The violation of bio-safety norms raises serious concerns about the health of the farmer and his family who may have consumed the corn and the possibility of these contaminated seeds spreading. In fact, the refuge was left over by the company for the farmer to use as feed for his cattle,' Shah recalled.

When Greenpeace volunteers inspected the field, residues of GM corn were found lying there over a month and cattle were found grazing in the trial plot.

'There was neither fence around the field during the trials nor a signboard, indicating that the field had a unregulated, untested GM corn in an experimental stage,' Shah pointed out.

Noting that the farmer was not given information on what precautionary measures need to be taken before or after the trial, Shah said Monsanto was permitted to take up trials in rabi season 2010-2011 or kharif season 2011 but the particular field was neither a rabi nor kharif crop but was sown as a summer crop.

'Monsanto executed a seasonal agreement with the farmer's relative in contravention to the guidelines set by GEAC (Genetic Engineering Approval Committee) for the usage of farmers' fields, according to which the applicant has to have at least a three-year lease agreement with a farmer whose field is being used for GM trials,' Shah added.

www.outlookindia.com | A Dark Lining To The Shine

2011-03-22T22:59:00.000-06:00

www.outlookindia.com | A Dark Lining To The Shine

Copyright Mary B. ThormanAll rights reserved

Getting Older. Hope I'm getting wiser, too.

2010-06-02T09:10:00.000-06:00

LEADERSHIP WISDOM

2010-02-04T09:04:00.000-06:00

http://www.developmentcrossing.com/profiles/blogs/wisdom-we-need-more-leadership

I found this great article on Development Crossing's site. If you have a business or are part of a business that is part of the process for change to a more sustainable world, you should sign up and be counted.

Three Monsanto Genuity Corn Traits Receive Mexican Import Approval - Yahoo! Finance

2010-02-03T17:04:00.001-06:00

Three Monsanto Genuity Corn Traits Receive Mexican Import Approval - Yahoo! Finance

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The Seed Industry's Scary Consolidation - GOOD Blog - GOOD

2010-02-03T16:48:00.003-06:00

The Seed Industry's Scary Consolidation - GOOD Blog - GOOD

Posted using ShareThis

The Seed Industry's Scary Consolidation - GOOD Blog - GOOD

2010-02-03T16:48:00.001-06:00

The Seed Industry's Scary Consolidation - GOOD Blog - GOOD

Posted using ShareThis

The Seed Industry's Scary Consolidation - GOOD Blog - GOOD

2010-02-03T16:44:00.003-06:00

The Seed Industry's Scary Consolidation - GOOD Blog - GOOD

Posted using ShareThis

The Seed Industry's Scary Consolidation - GOOD Blog - GOOD

2010-02-03T16:44:00.001-06:00

The Seed Industry's Scary Consolidation - GOOD Blog - GOOD

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All you wanted to know about Bt brinjal : Rediff.com Business

2010-02-03T16:34:00.002-06:00

All you wanted to know about Bt brinjal : Rediff.com Business

Rediff Business Desk

Bacillus Thuringiensis Brinjal, popularly known as Bt brinjal, is at the centre of a major controversy in India.
Bt brinjal, a genetically modified strain created by India's number one seeds company Mahyco in collaboration with American multinational Monsanto, claims to improve yields and help the agriculture sector.
However, the debate over the safety of Bt brinjal continues with mixed views from scientists working for the government, farmers and environment activists.
Environment activists says the effect of GM (genetically modified) crops on rats have shown to be fatal for lungs and kidneys. It is dangerous to introduce these experimental foods into the market without proper research, they say.
A study by French scientist Gilles-Eric Seralini says the tests conducted by Mahyco, the company producing Bt brinjal, were simply not valid and raised serious health concerns.
Besides the environment hazards, activists allege that the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) has shown a bias towards companies like the Monsanto.
This would be a big threat to India's agriculture with MNCs charging Indian farmers for their seeds. The supply of seeds will be regulated and thus costlier. Indian farmers would have to depend on MNCs for seeds.
Bt cotton has already been declared a farce with crop failures and mass suicides of farmers in India. What will be the fate of Indian agriculture, farmers and consumers if Bt brinjal and other genetically modified crops are introduced?

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http://yankton.net/articles/2010/02/01/neighbors/doc4b626d123a6a0019137831.txt

2010-02-01T18:27:00.000-06:00

http://yankton.net/articles/2010/02/01/neighbors/doc4b626d123a6a0019137831.txt

Roundup Ready Generics Present New Opportunities And Maybe New Obstacles

By Daryll Ray

Published: Saturday, January 30, 2010 12:28 AM CST

The impending loss of Monsanto’s patent on its Roundup Ready soybean in 2014 raises a number of important policy issues in addition to those raised in DuPont’s anti-trust case against Monsanto and the opening of an antitrust investigation of Monsanto by the US Department of Justice.

Monsanto’s Roundup Ready genetics is used in 90 percent of all soybeans grown in the United States. Other major crops containing the Roundup Ready genetics are corn and cotton.

The advent of this technology in soybeans in 1996 spelled the end to bean walking and bean bars as a means of controlling weeds in soybeans. Spraying glyphosate on soybeans with the Roundup Ready gene killed the weeds while allowing the soybean plants to continue growing and providing farmers with a superior weed-control technology.

While the technology did not affect yields appreciably, it saved farmers time and effort. The Roundup Ready technology also provided weed control for no-till agriculture.

One of the contractual obligations farmers accepted in buying Roundup Ready soybeans was a prohibition on the saving of seed as had been common among soybean farmers before the advent of the technology. In addition to paying a higher price for the seed, farmers pay a technology fee.

Monsanto was able to achieve the 90 percent utilization rate in part by licensing the technology to competing seed firms, subject to contractual obligations. The lawsuit between Monsanto and DuPont involved a restriction in the contract between the two parties that did not allow DuPont to use the Roundup Ready gene in its Optimum GAT line of seeds.

In that case, the court narrowly ruled that DuPont violated its contract with Monsanto. At the same time it allowed DuPont’s antitrust case to move forward. That part of the lawsuit alleges that by restricting other seed producers from combining the Roundup Ready technology with their own genetic technology Monsanto is engaged in anti-competitive behavior.

These issues get more complicated with Monsanto losing its patent protection in a couple of years. To protect itself, Monsanto has created Roundup Ready 2 Yield using the same glyphosate-tolerant property but inserting it in a different location in the soybean gene. Monsanto is beginning to work to persuade its licensees to begin switching to the new technology—covered by a new patent—before its old patent runs out.

While the regulatory environment for the production of generic medicines is clear when a drug patent runs out, no such set of rules is in place for the production of a generic glyphosate-tolerant—undoubtedly “Roundup Ready” will remain a trademark of Monsanto, so those who produce a generic will not be able to use that term—soybean, let alone any other genetically modified organism (GMO).

In the absence of public policy in this area, the company is free to initially determine the rules. This will undoubtedly spark lawsuits in addition to DuPont’s.

Below is a sampling of the issues that need to be clarified with regard to saving glyphosate-tolerant soybeans by farmers or its production by other seed firms:

• While farmers would be allowed to save Roundup Ready seed, will they be able to find seed that is not “stacked with other patented traits?” This possibility, which was indentified in a National Public Radio (NPR) January 12, 2010 story, would be a problem for farmers but less so for seed companies who want to produce a generic glyphosate-tolerant seed. On the other hand, will seed companies go to the trouble of producing a generic glyphosate-tolerant seed knowing that once farmers buy it, farmers could/will tap their soybean granaries for seed from then on?

• In obtaining permission to sell seeds with the Roundup Ready trait in them, Monsanto had to provide a large amount of technical data to federal agencies. As NPR says, “generic providers would probably still need access to Monsanto’s proprietary data to get federal approval to sell the Roundup Ready trait.”

• They’d also need closely held technical data to update licenses that keep the trait legal in big, important markets like China and the EU,” NPR reports.

• Monsanto has indicated that they will not enforce some of the other patents they have on technology that is necessary to insert the Roundup Ready gene in the seed gene, but how far does that go? Could Monsanto change its mind? Could Monsanto put limits on those other “process” technologies in the Roundup Ready 1 trait when used in combination with additional traits developed by others?

• If a farmer does manage to find glyphosate tolerant soybean seeds that are not stacked with other patented genes, how will they prove to Monsanto that they are using seeds with the Roundup Ready 1 trait and not the Roundup Ready 2 Yield trait, especially if they try the new trait and decide to go back to the earlier technology?

• After the patent runs out, can farmers sell some of their Roundup Ready soybean seeds to their neighbors who have never used the technology?

The permutations of potential issues seem endless in the absence of a clear set of public policies.

In coming years a large number of seed technologies will lose their patent protection. It would seem that a well thought out set of publicly developed rules and regulations is preferable to those announced by a private firm. This could provide protection for seed firms and farmers alike.

Daryll E. Ray holds the Blasingame Chair of Excellence in Agricultural Policy, Institute of Agriculture, University of Tennessee, and is the Director of UT’s Agricultural Policy Analysis Center (APAC).

http://www.wenatcheeworld.com/news/2010/jan/09/monsanto-control-could-lead-to-price-increases/

2010-01-10T10:01:00.000-06:00

http://www.wenatcheeworld.com/news/2010/jan/09/monsanto-control-could-lead-to-price-increases/

By Christopher Leonard Associated Press writer

Saturday, January 9, 2010

AP photo

Bill Cook, co-owner of M-Pride Genetics seed company, stands in his cornfield near Garden City, Mo., last month. “They have the capital, they have the resources, they own lots of companies, and are buying more,” says Cook, about Monsanto. “We’re small town, they’re Wall Street.”

AP photo

Bill Cook, co-owner of M-Pride Genetics seed company, stands in his corn field near Garden City, Mo., last month.

AP file photo

A farmer holds Monsanto’s Roundup Ready soybean seeds at his family farm in Bunceton, Mo., in July 2008.

AP file photo

The sign at the Monsanto Co. headquarters located in St. Louis, in June 2009.

ST. LOUIS — Confidential contracts detailing Monsanto Co.’s business practices reveal how the world’s biggest seed developer is squeezing competitors, controlling smaller seed companies and protecting its dominance over the multibillion-dollar market for genetically altered crops, an Associated Press investigation has found.
With Monsanto’s patented genes being inserted into roughly 95 percent of all soybeans and 80 percent of all corn grown in the U.S., the company also is using its wide reach to control the ability of new biotech firms to get wide distribution for their products, according to a review of several Monsanto licensing agreements and dozens of interviews with seed industry participants, agriculture and legal experts.
Declining competition in the seed business could lead to price increases that ripple out to every family’s dinner table. That’s because the corn flakes you had for breakfast, soda you drank at lunch and beef stew you ate for dinner likely were produced from crops grown with Monsanto’s patented genes.
Monsanto’s methods are spelled out in a series of confidential commercial licensing agreements obtained by the AP. The contracts, as long as 30 pages, include basic terms for the selling of engineered crops resistant to Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, along with shorter supplementary agreements that address new Monsanto traits or other contract amendments.
The company has used the agreements to spread its technology — giving some 200 smaller companies the right to insert Monsanto’s genes in their separate strains of corn and soybean plants. But, the AP found, access to Monsanto’s genes comes at a cost, and with plenty of strings attached.
For example, one contract provision bans independent companies from breeding plants that contain both Monsanto’s genes and the genes of any of its competitors, unless Monsanto gives prior written permission — giving Monsanto the ability to effectively lock out competitors from inserting their patented traits into the vast share of U.S. crops that already contain Monsanto’s genes.
U.S. Department of Justice investigating possible antitrust
Monsanto’s business strategies and licensing agreements are being investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice and at least two state attorneys general, who are trying to determine if the practices violate U.S. antitrust laws. The practices also are at the heart of civil antitrust suits filed against Monsanto by its competitors, including a 2004 suit filed by Syngenta AG that was settled with an agreement and ongoing litigation filed this summer by DuPont in response to a Monsanto lawsuit.
The suburban St. Louis-based agricultural giant said it’s done nothing wrong.
“We do not believe there is any merit to allegations about our licensing agreement or the terms within,” said Monsanto spokesman Lee Quarles. He said he couldn’t comment on many specific provisions of the agreements because they are confidential and the subject of ongoing litigation.
“Our approach to licensing (with) many companies is pro-competitive and has enabled literally hundreds of seed companies, including all of our major direct competitors, to offer thousands of new seed products to farmers,” he said.
The benefit of Monsanto’s technology for farmers has been undeniable, but some of its major competitors and smaller seed firms claim the company is using strong-arm tactics to further its control.
“We now believe that Monsanto has control over as much as 90 percent of (seed genetics). This level of control is almost unbelievable,” said Neil Harl, agricultural economist at Iowa State University who has studied the seed industry for decades. “The upshot of that is that it’s tightening Monsanto’s control, and makes it possible for them to increase their prices long term.”
Seed prices could affect world food supply
At issue is how much power one company can have over seeds, the foundation of the world’s food supply. Without stiff competition, Monsanto could raise its seed prices at will, which in turn could raise the cost of everything from animal feed to wheat bread and cookies.
The price of seeds is already rising. Monsanto increased some corn seed prices last year by 25 percent, with an additional 7 percent increase planned for corn seeds in 2010. Monsanto brand soybean seeds climbed 28 percent last year and will be flat or up 6 percent in 2010, said company spokeswoman Kelli Powers.
Monsanto’s broad use of licensing agreements has made its biotech traits among the most widely and rapidly adopted technologies in farming history. These days, when farmers buy bags of seed with obscure brand names like AgVenture or M-Pride Genetics, they are paying for Monsanto’s licensed products.
One of the numerous provisions in the licensing agreements is a ban on mixing genes — or “stacking” in industry lingo — that enhance Monsanto’s power.
One contract provision likely helped Monsanto buy 24 independent seed companies throughout the Farm Belt over the last few years: That corn seed agreement says that if a smaller company changes ownership, its inventory with Monsanto’s traits “shall be destroyed immediately.”
Quarles, however, said recently he wasn’t familiar with that older agreement, obtained by the AP, but said, “as I understand it,” Monsanto includes provisions in all its contracts that allow companies to sell out their inventory if ownership changes, rather than force the firms to destroy the inventory immediately.
Another provision from contracts earlier last decade— regarding rebates — also help explain Monsanto’s rapid growth as it rolled out new products.
One contract gave an independent seed company deep discounts if the company ensured that Monsanto’s products would make up 70 percent of its total corn seed inventory. In its 2004 lawsuit, Syngenta called the discounts part of Monsanto’s “scorched earth campaign” to keep Syngenta’s new traits out of the market.
Quarles said the discounts were used to entice seed companies to carry Monsanto products when the technology was new and farmers hadn’t yet used it. Now that the products are widespread, Monsanto has discontinued the discounts, he said.
Confidentiality clauses keeping seed companies quiet
The Monsanto contracts reviewed by the AP prohibit seed companies from discussing terms, and Monsanto has the right to cancel deals and wipe out the inventory of a business if the confidentiality clauses are violated.
Thomas Terral, chief executive officer of Terral Seed in Louisiana, said he recently rejected a Monsanto contract because it put too many restrictions on his business. But Terral refused to provide the unsigned contract to AP or even discuss its contents because he was afraid Monsanto would retaliate and cancel the rest of his agreements.
Independent seed company owners could drop their contracts with Monsanto and return to selling conventional seed, but they say it could be financially ruinous. Monsanto’s Roundup Ready gene has become the industry standard over the last decade, and small companies fear losing customers if they drop it. It also can take years of breeding and investment to mix Monsanto’s genes into a seed company’s product line, so dropping the genes can be costly.
Attorneys general involved in investigation
Monsanto acknowledged that U.S. Department of Justice lawyers are seeking documents and interviewing company employees about its marketing practices. The DOJ wouldn’t comment.
A spokesman for Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller said the office is examining possible antitrust violations. Additionally, two sources familiar with an investigation in Texas said state Attorney General Greg Abbott’s office is considering the same issues.
States have the authority to enforce federal antitrust law, and attorneys general are often involved in such cases.
Monsanto chairman and chief executive officer Hugh Grant told investment analysts during a conference call this fall that the price increases are justified by the productivity boost farmers get from the company’s seeds. Farmers and seed company owners agree that Monsanto’s technology has boosted yields and profits, saving farmers time they once spent weeding and money they once spent on pesticides.
But recent price increases have still been tough to swallow on the farm.
“It’s just like I got hit with bad weather and got a poor yield. It just means I’ve got less in the bottom line,” said Markus Reinke, a corn and soybean farmer near Concordia, Mo., who took over his family’s farm in 1965. “They can charge because they can do it, and get away with it. And us farmers just complain, and shake our heads and go along with it.”
Any Justice Department case against Monsanto could break new ground in balancing a company’s right to control its patented products while protecting competitors’ right to free and open competition, said Kevin Arquit, former director of the Federal Trade Commission competition bureau, now an antitrust attorney with Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP in New York.
“These are very interesting issues ... for the Justice Department,” Arquit said. “They’re in an area where there is uncertainty in the law and there are consumer welfare implications and government policy implications for whatever the result is.”
Other seed companies have followed Monsanto’s lead by including restrictive clauses in their licensing agreements, but their products only penetrate smaller segments of the U.S. seed market.
Company rose to power through science and patent laws
Monsanto was only a niche player in the seed business just 12 years ago. It rose to the top thanks to innovation by its scientists and aggressive use of patent law by its attorneys.
First came the science, when Monsanto in 1996 introduced the world’s first commercial strain of genetically engineered soybeans. The Roundup Ready plants were resistant to the herbicide, allowing farmers to spray Roundup whenever they wanted rather than wait until soybeans had grown enough to withstand the chemical.
The company soon released other genetically altered crops, such as corn plants that produced a natural pesticide to ward off bugs.
Monsanto became among the first to widely patent its genes and gain the right to strictly control how they were used. That control let it spread its technology through licensing agreements, while shaping the marketplace around them.
Back in the 1970s, public universities developed new traits for corn and soybean seeds that made them grow hardy and resist pests. Small seed companies got the traits cheaply and could blend them to breed superior crops without restriction. But the agreements give Monsanto control over mixing multiple biotech traits into crops.
The restrictions even apply to taxpayer-funded researchers. Roger Boerma, a research professor at the University of Georgia, is developing specialized strains of soybeans that grow well in southeastern states, but his current research is tangled up in such restrictions from Monsanto and its competitors.
“It’s made one level of our life incredibly challenging and difficult,” Boerma said.
The rules also can restrict research. Boerma halted research on a line of new soybean plants that contain a trait from a Monsanto competitor when he learned that the trait was ineffective unless it could be mixed with Monsanto’s Roundup Ready gene.
Boerma said he hasn’t considered asking Monsanto’s permission to mix its traits with the competitor’s trait.
“I think the co-mingling of their trait technology with another company’s trait technology would likely be a serious problem for them,” he said.
Quarles pointed out that Monsanto has signed agreements with several companies allowing them to stack their traits with Monsanto’s. At the same time, Monsanto’s patent rights give it the authority to say how independent companies use its traits, he said.
“Please also keep in mind that, as the (intellectual property developer), it is our right to determine who will obtain rights to our technology and for what purpose,” he said.
Monsanto’s provision requiring companies to destroy seeds containing Monsanto’s traits if a competitor buys them prohibited DuPont or other big firms from bidding against Monsanto when it snapped up two dozen smaller seed companies over the last five years, said David Boies, a lawyer representing DuPont who previously was a prosecutor on the federal antitrust case against Microsoft Corp.
Competitive bids from companies like DuPont could have made it far more expensive for Monsanto to bring the smaller companies into its fold. But that contract provision prevented bidding wars, according to DuPont.
“If the independent seed company is losing their license and has to destroy their seeds, they’re not going to have anything, in effect, to sell,” Boies said. “It requires them to destroy things — destroy things they paid for — if they go competitive. That’s exactly the kind of restriction on competitive choice that the antitrust laws outlaw.”
Some independent seed company owners say they feel increasingly pinched as Monsanto cements its leadership in the industry.
“They have the capital, they have the resources, they own lots of companies, and are buying more. We’re small town, they’re Wall Street,” said Bill Cook, co-owner of M-Pride Genetics seed company in Garden City, Mo., who also declined to discuss or provide the agreements. “It’s very difficult to compete in this environment against companies like Monsanto.”

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klynn (Krista Herling) says...

There was an article on Monsanto in Vanity Fair last year that was equally disconcerting. Beyond driving up food prices the article also alleged that Monsanto has genetically engineered their seed to be non-reproductive, meaning you can't grow another crop from the seeds of the first crop. Basically this forces the farmers to continue to buy new seed every year rather than harvesting their own seed to re-use. This is especially a problem in third world countries, where yes, Monsanto seed is used. I'm not usually for government interference, but this company really scares me. They can control our food sources!
January 9, 2010 at 9:59 p.m.

Monsanto guilty in 'false ad' row

2009-10-18T10:39:00.000-06:00

Monsanto guilty in 'false ad' row

France's highest court has ruled that US agrochemical giant Monsanto had not told the truth about the safety of its best-selling weed-killer, Roundup.
The court confirmed an earlier judgment that Monsanto had falsely advertised its herbicide as "biodegradable" and claimed it "left the soil clean".
The company was fined 15,000 euros (£13,800; $22,400). It has yet to comment on the judgment.
Roundup is the world's best-selling herbicide.

Monsanto also sells crops genetically-engineered to be tolerant to Roundup.
French environmental groups had brought the case in 2001 on the basis that glyphosate, Roundup's main ingredient, is classed as "dangerous for the environment" by the European Union.
In the latest ruling, France's Supreme Court upheld two earlier convictions against Monsanto by the Lyon criminal court in 2007, and the Lyon court of appeal in 2008, the AFP news agency reports.
Earlier this month, Monsanto reported a fourth quarter loss of $233m (£147m), driven mostly by a drop in sales of its Roundup brand.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/8308903.stm

Published: 2009/10/15 13:13:44 GMT

© BBC MMIX

World's Richest People: Asia Poised to Pass U.S.

2009-10-16T12:28:00.000-06:00

World's Richest People: Asia Poised to Pass U.S.

The link above will take you to a story in Time Magazine.
It says that Asia's richest people will be richer than America's richest people by 2013 or some such.

My first thought was "By 2013 we will be experiencing climate change related disasters on an unprecedented scale. Billions of people will be dead or dying. And we have to worry about the richest people in the world getting richer in one place than another?

How may people constitute the "richest people in the world?" How many people are in immediate danger of starvation? How could the world's resources be distributed in such a way that billions of people didn't have to die to support 100 rich people?

Where are our brains, folks?

Copyright Mary B. Thorman
All rights reserved

GM CROPS - DEFIANCE AND CAVE IN: GERMANY, NIGERIA

2009-04-15T17:52:00.001-06:00

Nigeria: ERA Condemns FG's Plan to Distribute GMO Seeds to Farmers
AllAfrica.com Tue, 14 Apr 2009 23:52 PM PDT
THE Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth, Nigeria (ERA/FoEN) has condemned plans by the Federal Government to distribute Genetically Modified Crops to Nigerian farmers in the current farming season, saying the decision is at the instance of biotech firms that want to dictate Nigeria's food needs for profit motives only.

Germany bans GM maize
Nature Tue, 14 Apr 2009 17:54 PM PDT
State defies European Union directive on genetically modified crops.

ANOTHER DISSENTING VOICE!

2009-04-15T17:49:00.001-06:00

Gene-Altered Crops Do Little for Yields, Group Says (Update2)
Bloomberg Tue, 14 Apr 2009 17:45 PM PDT
April 14 (Bloomberg) -- Genetically engineered crops do little to improve yields and instead promote the proliferation of herbicide-resistant weeds that actually curb production, according to a study by the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Recreational Poverty

2009-03-31T18:20:00.005-06:00

For those who would claim that illegal immigrants fleeing poverty and natural disasters don't deserve a better life elsewhere, here is a photo I took in a neighborhood of San Jose, Costa Rica's capital. The children and older relatives are relaxing after a game of soccer on the lovely soccer field in front of their palatial hand-crafted homes.

Bankrupting Family Farms for Fun and Profit

2009-03-16T22:39:00.001-06:00

March 15, 2009

Critics sow doubt as 'Farmer Protection Act' hearing nears

By JOHN S. ADAMS Tribune Capitol Bureau

HELENA — Arlo Skari's family doesn't grow genetically modified crops on their farm north of Chester, but Skari said he doesn't want multinational agricultural biotechnology companies suing him to prove it.

"I've been aware for quite some time of companies like Monsanto coming down hard on farmers when they find these patented genetically modified seeds growing in a farmer's field when the farmer didn't know they where there," Skari said.

That's why he is supporting House Bill 445, dubbed the Montana Farmer Protection Act.

Depending on which side of the issue people stand, HB 445 is either a measure designed to protect innocent Montana farmers from legal harassment by major corporations or it's part of a plot by environmentalists to undermine the use of biotech crops in the state and legalize seed piracy.

On Tuesday, the Senate Agriculture Committee will hear all sides of the argument when its takes up the measure, introduced by Rep. Betsy Hands, D-Missoula.

Hands said her bill lays out a legal framework by which companies such as Monsanto Company — the world's largest producer of genetically modified seeds — can pursue accusations of seed piracy while protecting farmers who unknowingly end up with patented genetic materials on their land.

"It actually gives access to patent holders to sample crops," Hands said. "I think that's really important to recognize. We're not restricting patent holders. We're actually giving them a legitimate way to sample crops that they suspect may have their patents."

The industry sees the bill in a far different light.

"It restricts the ability of patent holders and the legal system to enforce patent-protection laws," said North Dakota farmer Al Skogen, president of Growers for Biotechnology and a major supporter of Monsanto's biotech products. "It really opens the door for farmers to pirate patent seeds and then claim innocence and be exempt from liability."

An Indiana farmer who found himself on the receiving end of Monsanto's accusations of seed piracy said that if it wasn't for a farmer protection law in his state, he may have faced legal costs that would have buried his family farm.

David Runyon spent years fighting accusations that he illegally planted Monsanto's patented Roundup-Ready soybeans on his 900-acre farm. The seeds were modified to resist Monsanto's popular and widely used herbicide Roundup. Runyon said he never planted Monsanto's genetically modified seeds on his property, adding he has records and receipts to prove it.

He said the Indiana farmer protection law did two things to help save his farm. First, it prevented Monsanto's investigators from coming onto his property to sample crops without his permission. Secondly, it required any legal action against him or his family to take place in an Indiana federal court rather than a courtroom in St. Louis, where Monsanto's headquarters are located.

"Indiana has a farmer protection bill that passed in 2003. Before that bill, all they would have done is filed out in St. Louis in federal court," Runyon said.

Runyon said that without the farmer protection law, the legal fees, travel expenses and time away from his young family would have been enough to destroy his farm.

He said that after Monsanto investigators visited his home in July of 2004, he tested his soybean crop to see if it had any Monsanto genetics. It turns out it did, but not because he planted Monsanto's seeds.

"I'm using public varieties. One variety comes out of the state of Illinois and two varieties from Ohio State University," Runyon said.

It's difficult — if not impossible — to prevent the genetics of crops in one field from contaminating the genetics of crops in another one. Cross pollination by wind, insects, animals or major weather events can contaminate non-genetically modified crops with patented genetics. That's why Runyon said it's important Montana pass a bill protecting farmers who unknowingly or unwillingly end up with patented material on their land.

"If you're contaminated and you don't have the law, they will take you to federal court and pull you in to St. Louis, where you'll have to pay $300 to $400 per hour for a lawyer," Runyon said. "Who can afford that?"

In Runyon's case, Monsanto eventually gave up its pursuit.

"They never had any evidence other than the receipts I gave them," he said.

Skogen said backers of HB 445 are trying to legalize seed pirating. He said companies such as Monsanto have no interest in suing the very customers it is trying to sell its products to. He said companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars introducing genetic traits into crops in order to create higher yields and higher profitability for farmers, so they have to protect their investment from illegal piracy.

If HB 445 passes, Skogen believes it will have a detrimental impact on Montana farmers who might otherwise benefit from the private genetic research conducted by companies such as Monsanto.

"The public cannot afford to fund all research. We need private investment. This research is extremely expensive. If the laws prohibit (companies) from protecting their patents and recouping the costs of research, they will simply refocus their efforts somewhere else," Skogen said.

Skari said he plans to travel to Helena on Tuesday to support HB 445.

"Legal logic tells you that if somebody affects your grain or your property negatively, then they should be the ones held liable, but what has happened is that the companies have taken it and put the liability on the farmer, an unknowing recipient of someone else's actions," Skari said. "This bill just protects the farmer from liability from seed companies."

The House passed HB 445 by a wide margin last month. The Senate Agriculture Committee is scheduled to hear arguments on the measure at 3 p.m. Tuesday in the Capitol.

Reach Tribune Capitol Bureau Chief John S. Adams at 442-9493, or jadams@greatfallstribune.com

Additional Facts

Tuesday hearing

The Senate Agriculture Committee is scheduled to hear arguments on HB 445 at 3 p.m. Tuesday in the Capitol. The House passed the measure last month.

Monsanto Tries Secrecy

2009-03-01T16:08:00.001-06:00

It comes as no surprise that Monsanto Corporation has stooped to secrecy to avoid citizen oversight of its operations. Check out this site: http://snipurl.com/c511p

Parallel Evolution

2009-02-28T22:04:00.002-06:00

Check out this beautiful video of a newly discovered fish species. Pay attention especially to the way it uses its front fins and to it's forward facing (binocular vision) eyes. http://tinyurl.com/bdn3gx

Monsanto and Secrecy

2009-02-18T14:55:00.001-06:00

EU court attacks GM crop secrecy
Anti-GM protest in Luxembourg, 20 Oct 08
Anti-GM campaigners have widespread support in the EU

Europe's top court has ruled that EU governments have no right to conceal the location of field trials of genetically modified (GM) crops.

The European Court of Justice was responding to a case brought by Pierre Azelvandre in Alsace, eastern France.

He wanted to know where GM field trials had taken place in his local area.

The only EU-approved GM crop is a strain of corn developed by the US firm Monsanto. But GM trials for research are legal, under strict controls.

The court in Luxembourg ruled on Tuesday that "information relating to the location of the release can in no case be kept confidential".

It said "considerations relating to the protection of public order and other secrets protected by law... cannot constitute reasons capable of restricting access to the information listed by the [EU] directive, including in particular those relating to the location of release".

On Monday, the European Commission failed in a bid to force the governments of France and Greece to allow Monsanto's GM corn to be grown in their countries.

Opponents of GM crops say more scientific data is needed, arguing that their long-term genetic impact on humans and wildlife could be harmful.

The biotech industry says the crops are as safe as traditional varieties, and that they would provide plentiful, cheaper food.

Et Tu, Obama?

2009-01-06T19:10:00.002-06:00

from the December 26, 2008 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/1226/p09s02-coop.html
A food agenda for Obama
Now's the time to reinvent America's farm and food policies.
By Christopher D. Cook

San Francisco

Within hours of former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack's nomination last week as Agriculture secretary, websites were humming with well-documented critiques of his affinity for genetically engineered crops, agribusiness giant Monsanto, heavily polluting factory farms, and other Big Farm interests.

Some critics expressed outrage, others surprise, especially since they had mounted a vigorous, 55,000-plus strong online petition to persuade President-elect Barack Obama to nominate someone more progressive who would promote sustainable food and farming.

The need for sweeping change could not be clearer when it comes to our food: At taxpayer expense, current policy subsidizes large corporate farms and destructive industrial agriculture, which rob the countryside of economic diversity and precious environmental resources, such as water and topsoil.

These same subsidies, and anemic regulatory enforcement, encourage an increasingly monopolized food system, and a "cheap food" policy that lards us with fatty, processed foods – the cost of which is ultimately dear, more than $100 billion annually for obesity and diet-related diseases. Today's food system also generates a sizable portion of America's greenhouse gases, and rests on fast-dwindling and volatile oil supplies.

Now is the time for something different – change we can eat.

As Mr. Obama weighs a massive stimulus package, he should include new funding streams that promote sustainable food – to build up alternatives such as farmer's markets, local "foodshed" programs that promote consumption of local produce, and farm-to-institution projects that encourage schools, hospitals, and other large buyers to purchase local organic foods when possible.

The change we need in food is as urgent as any we face – changes that affect national health, energy security, global warming, and more. Here, then, is a not-so-modest nine-point platform for food reform, some of which could be included in Obama's stimulus package. Other elements may require a lengthier policy push:

1. New public investments targeting sustainable agriculture, defined as organic, small- to mid-sized, diversified farming.

2. New investments in local/regional food networks and foodsheds – to help build up the connections between farmers and consumers, to open up and expand new markets for organic farmers and those considering the transition; for more farmer's markets and food stores that feature local produce.

3. A moratorium on agribusiness mergers, and strenuous antitrust provisions and enforcement to protect what little is left of diversity in the food economy.

4. A moratorium on all new genetically modified (GMO) products, and an expansion of existing ones, and appointment of a blue-ribbon panel/commission to assess the impact of GMO foods on our environment and our health.

5. A moratorium on – and gradual phasing out of – concentrated animal feeding operations, aka factory farms, which are among the nation's top polluters of water and air, and breeders of widespread and virulent bacterial strains.

6. Dramatically expanded regulatory enforcement and staffing in the US Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration to protect food safety and meat industry labor and environmental practices.

7. Slowing the hazardously fast meatpacking (and poultry) assembly line, to protect workers and consumers.

8. Incentives for small-scale urban, suburban, and rural farming ventures oriented toward diversified local food systems.

9. Bold public investment in a raft of public awareness campaigns that build support, and expand markets and demand, for sustainable alternatives such as urban agriculture and gardening, and reducing fast-food consumption.

10. Fill in the blank, and send me your thoughts at www.christopherdcook.com.

Food is a vital cornerstone of both individual life and civil society, and our current system is making us fatter, churning out greenhouse gases, and abusing workers and animals.

With a new administration elected on a "change" agenda, it's a timely moment to press for the most basic change of all: change in the food that ends up on our plates and in our bodies.

• Christopher D. Cook is a journalist and the author of "Diet for a Dead Planet: Big Business and the Coming Food Crisis."

CONSPIRACY THEORY: EPA, MONSANTO,AND THE LOSS OF HONEY BEES

2009-01-06T18:17:00.002-06:00

Letters to the Editor

(From MetroActive)

How Can This Bee

Thank you for Colleen Watson's well researched article "Bee Afraid," Cover Story, Dec. 17).

Several years ago, Bayer, Monsanto and Syngenta acquired patents to coat some crop seeds with neonicotinoids. David Hackenburg, former president of the American Beekeeping Federation, told Sierra Club, "Look at what's time based. The massive bee decimation started when regulatory agencies rubber stamped the use of neonicotinoid spraying and coating."

There are holes in the science. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has failed to evaluate the risks from sub-lethal effects due to low-level exposures of the neonicotinoids on honeybees. Neonicotinoids have been quantified in the nectar and pollen and even corn syrup fed to honeybees. These pesticides can affect their navigational skills and ability to fight off infections.

Sierra Club urged the EPA to protect honeybees and the food supply over the bottom line of multinational corporations. In light of the mounting evidence that the neonicotinoids are deadly to bees, Sierra Club called for a precautionary moratorium on these powerful crop treatments, until more study can be done.

The EPA refused. It's unfortunate that regulatory agencies are using doublespeak. They claim to protect our food supply, yet they aren't doing the proper studies.

Laurel Hopwood
Chair, Sierra Club Genetic Engineering Action Team
Cleveland, Ohio

Bugging Me

Re Honeybee Colony Collapse: Is there anything a backyard gardener can do to help? Would a hive in my own small yard (one-third acre) help the overall honeybee population? I'm not really interested in the bee products, but would like to help the problem if possible.

Mary Ann Lahann
Newcastle

See below for one possibility.—Editor

Backyard Bees

This letter is in response to the excellent article "Bee Afraid."

Not only are nicotine-based pesticides used commercially, but many natural gardening recipes advocate the use of tobacco to repel insects. If organic gardeners used such a recipe the world over—and if this is, in fact, the cause of honeybee decline—there could be a significant impact even from backyard users.

Since tobacco can harm tomatoes, it's often avoided where fruits and veggies are grown. But, flower enthusiasts may use it in place of synthetics, believing they are using a safer alternative for their families, pets and the environment. I bet if they knew they maybe risking the health of honeybees, they'd rethink the application.

Lisa Bracken
Silt, Colo.

Monster-to Corp. Sqeaks by Environmental Laws

2009-01-06T17:30:00.005-06:00

TUESDAY JANUARY 6, 2009 :: Last modified: Thursday, January 1, 2009 6:05 PM MST

Idaho miners won't have to restore groundwater; Site is near Wyoming border

By JOHN MILLER
Associated Press writer

BOISE, Idaho -- Monsanto Co., Agrium Inc., and J.R. Simplot Co. will be able to mine phosphate without being forced to restore groundwater beneath their operations to its natural condition, according to a new rule awaiting approval by the 2009 Legislature.

The rule is backed by industry but opposed by environmentalists including the Greater Yellowstone Coalition and Idaho Conservation League, who say it gives mining companies near the Idaho-Wyoming border license to pollute forever.

It stops short of a 2007 draft proposal developed by the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality but never formalized. That would have required companies to clean up groundwater below their mines within eight years of ceasing activities.

According to the new rule, mining companies could pollute groundwater below their extraction, reclamation and tailing activities with high concentrations of naturally occurring elements such as selenium. They would be required to monitor groundwater at so-called "points of compliance" as close as possible to the mining area, to make sure the pollution stayed put.

Jack Lyman, a lobbyist with the Idaho Mining Association, said the new rule would protect groundwater outside mining areas without saddling companies aiming to build new mines or expand existing ones with onerous, unrealistic cleanup mandates.

"We have never asked for the right to mess up someone else's beneficial use of the groundwater," Lyman told The Associated Press this week. "The department came up with a rule they think is workable, without putting our industry into a difficult situation where we'd be unable to comply."

Efforts to revise Idaho's 16-year-old Groundwater Quality Plan began in 2007 after the Department of Environmental Quality, the mining industry and environmentalists agreed the exemption allowing mines to pollute groundwater in some instances was ambiguous. Mining companies feared uncertainty over cleanup requirements could stifle new projects; environmentalists said vagueness made it easier for companies to pollute.

After more than a year of wrangling, the proposed rule was approved by the Department of Environmental Quality Board earlier this year. It will be taken up by the 2009 Legislature when the session starts Jan. 12. Such rules are rarely rejected, especially after securing board support.

Justin Hayes, with the Idaho Conservation League, contends the state agency "caved in" to industry pressure. Environmental groups are fearful of mining pollution in eastern Idaho, especially after at least four horses and hundreds of sheep died in the late 1990s after drinking selenium-contaminated water from defunct phosphate mines and their waste piles near Soda Springs.

"By its very nature, groundwater doesn't stay in one place," Hayes said. "An aquifer is recharged by rain and snow water, then it moves somewhere else. Aquifers are in motion. Eventually, the contamination is going to move off site."

Lyman insists environmentalists are exaggerating the danger that mining pollution will migrate. He drew a comparison between the septic tank at his home near Caldwell and open-pit phosphate mines.

"I've never worried about anything I put in my sink showing up a quarter of a mile away on my neighbor's property," Lyman said, adding that just because groundwater below a mine is polluted "does not mean that's going to flow down into Soda Springs, Idaho."

IMPORTANT FILM RE. YOUR FUTURE

2009-01-06T13:07:00.000-06:00

"The World According to Monsanto" - video powered by Metacafe

"Matrix" on Windows

2008-11-11T16:52:00.004-06:00

I use Windows XT. I am a cybergeek. I understand the meaning of such words as "crash" "error message" and "freeze." I can leap tall buildings at a single bound (in my dreams). Watch this!

OBAMA WINS!

2008-11-04T23:28:00.004-06:00

Even this old cynic, wept with emotion! A truly memorable day in the history of the United States of America and of the world. He is the right man with the right message at the right time. I watched President-Elect Obama's acceptance speech on CNN. What really got to me was the seeing all those young people weeping with the excitement and emotion of the moment. The faces of hope. Mr. Barrack will have his work cut out for him. His first year in office will be extremely difficult. He has inherited a world in crisis. He'll need the help and support of not only every American, but everyone on the planet in one form or another. I'm sure he'll have it. I have renewed hope for the future. Now we must all work together to save this sorry planet.

Old TV and New Ideas

2008-10-25T16:12:00.002-06:00

Check out this video!

See more Ron Howard videos at Funny or Die

Up Close and Spineless

2008-10-18T13:47:00.004-06:00

No, this is not an interview with George W. Bush. This is a PHOTOGRAPHIC EXHIBIT. And for all photography buffs as well as those of us fascinated by the world of living things, this is a must see.

Weird and wonderful world of creepy-crawlies
These invertebrate photographs were submitted to the Up Close and Spineless competition, and are on display at the Australian Museum from 18 October 2008. They include photographs of a huntsman spider catching a lift on a cow horn, a bright green scarab beetle, and a cute grasshopper...

Grasshopper by Greg West

Science Group: Biotech Regs Could Allow Drugs In Food

2008-10-17T14:25:00.000-06:00

Science Group: Biotech Regs Could Allow Drugs In Food

Published: Monday, October 13, 2008 3:08 PM CDT
WASHINGTON — The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) recently denounced newly proposed U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) rules governing genetically engineered crops, including food crops engineered to produce pharmaceutical and industrial products. The proposed rules, UCS charged, would not protect the U.S. food supply from potential contamination by drugs from "pharma" crops and could allow drugs that it deems "safe" to enter the food supply. This contamination could occur through cross-pollination or seed mixing between pharma food crops and crops intended for consumption.

The USDA ignored recommendations for a ban on the outdoor production of pharma food crops from the Grocery Manufacturers Association, major food companies, UCS, and more than 100 environmental, agricultural, health, and consumer organizations.

Below is a statement by Jane Rissler, UCS's Food and Environment Program deputy director:

"Under the proposed rules, USDA's new motto is 'Only safe levels of drugs in U.S. food.‚ If these proposals are enacted into law, American consumers must accept the possibility of drugs in their breakfast cereal or other common foods. Moreover, these rules likely will lead to contamination scares, which will hurt the food industry.

"The USDA proposal, unlike the ban we recommended, offers no incentives to drug companies to pursue already existing, safer methods for producing drugs.

"In its rush to enact the proposed rules into law before the end of the Bush administration, the USDA has given short shrift to public participation. The department is allowing only 45 days for the public to analyze and comment on this major proposal, which will determine the government's approach to regulating genetically engineered organisms for years to come.

http://yankton.net/articles/2008/10/17/neighbors/doc48f3aaa2e5e9e984781507.txt#rate

http://snipurl.com/4gigv

Making Sense

2008-09-24T14:15:00.008-06:00

From: Congressman Dennis Kucinich

Subject: Protecting the public interest in any economic "bailout"

Date: September 23, 2008 11:14:43 AM CDT

Dear Friend,

The U.S. government has been turned into an engine that accelerates the wealth upwards into the hands of a few. The Wall Street bailout, the Iraq War, military spending, tax cuts to the rich, and a for-profit health care system are all about the acceleration of wealth upwards. And now, the American people are about to pay the price of the collapse of the $513 trillion Ponzi scheme of derivatives. Yes, that’s half a quadrillion dollars. Our first trillion dollar compression bandage will hardly stem the hemorrhaging of an unsustainable Ponzi scheme built on debt "de-leverages." Does anyone seriously think that our public and private debts of some $45 trillion will be paid? That the administration's growth of the federal debt from $5.6 trillion to $9.8 trillion while borrowing another trillion dollars from Social Security has nothing to do with this? Does anyone not see that when we spend nearly $16,000 for every family of four in our society for the military each year that we are heading over the cliff? This is a debt crisis, not a credit crisis. Just as FDR had to save capitalism after Wall Street excesses, we have to re-invigorate our economy with real - not imaginary - growth. It does not address the never-ending war on the middle class. The same corporate interests that profited from the closing of U.S. factories, the movement of millions of jobs out of America, the off-shoring of profits, the out-sourcing of workers, the crushing of pension funds, the knocking down of wages, the cancellation of health care benefits, the sub-prime lending are now rushing to Washington to get money to protect themselves. The double standard is stunning: their profits are their profits, but their losses are our losses. This bailout will not bring real jobs back to America. It will not bring back jobs that make things. It does not rebuild our schools, streets, neighborhoods, parks or bridges. The major product of this financial economy is now debt. Industrial capitalism has been destroyed. In the next few days I will push for a plan that includes equity for every American in any taxpayer investment in this so-called bail-out plan. Since the bailout will cost each and every American about $2,300, I have proposed the creation of a United States Mutual Trust Fund, which will take control of $700 billion in stock assets, convert those assets to shares, and distribute $2,300 worth of shares to new individual savings accounts in the name of each and every American. I will also insist that all of the following issues be considered in whatever Congress passes: Reinstatement of the provisions of Glass-Steagall, which forbade speculation Re-regulation of the finance, insurance, and real estate industries Accountability on the part of those who took the companies down: a) resignations of management b) givebacks of executive compensation packages c) limitations on executive compensation d) admission by CEO's of what went wrong and how, prior to any government bailout Demands for transparencey a) with respect to analyzing the transactions which took the companies down b) with respect to Treasury's dealings with the companies pre and post-bailout An equity position for the taxpayers a) some form of ownership of assets Some credible formula for evaluating the price of the assets that the government is buying. A sunset clause on the legislation Full public disclosure by members of Congress of assets held, with possible conflicts put in blind trust. A ban on political campaign contributions from officers of corporations receiving bailouts A requirement that 2008 cycle candidates return political contributions to officers and representatives of corporations receiving bailouts And, most importantly, some mechanism for direct assistance to homeowners saddled with unreasonable or unmanageable mortgages, as well as protection for renters who have lived up to their obligation but fall victim to financial tragedy when the property they live in undergoes foreclosure. These are just some thoughts on the run. You will hear more from me tomorrow. Dennis J Kucinich www.Kucinich.us 216-252-9000 877-933-6647

Online Exclusive - Do you know what you're eating? - Features

2008-09-23T19:34:00.000-06:00

Online Exclusive - Do you know what you're eating? - Features

The "Free" Press

2008-09-03T13:17:00.003-06:00

As a result of having been glued to the major television news channels and newspaper reports, I've come to believe the public is being ILL SERVED as regards good news reporting and true investigative journalism. Therefore, I am adding to my links a number of Internet news sites that DO the investigative reporting Americans (and the world) need to know in order to make informed decisions about their own futures. These new links include the following:

http://www.consortiumnews.com
http://www.truthout.org/
http://www.indymedia.org/or/index.shtml
http://www.commondreams.org/
http://www.alternet.org/
http://www.fair.org/
http://www.takebackthemedia.com/
http://www.buzzflash.com/
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/
http://therealnews.com/.

And this is just a small sample of great resources that can give you more than the pap the big news media feed us. There are also some great blogs and special interest sites. Don't allow BIG MEDIA to bury your head in the sand for you. Get information from many different alternative sources, check out resources that have views contrary to your own so that you can expose your mind to a greater world view. Prevent hardening of the categories! You may not change your mind about anything, but you will be making up your mind on the basis of a wider spectrum of opinion and information. In other words, alternative news can help you become a more rounded individual and a better citizen. Good luck. Let me know what you think of these links.

SKY ALERT! TUESDAY SPECTACLE

2008-08-11T23:24:00.005-06:00

Perseid meteor shower set to dazzle

David Shiga

Enlarge image

A Perseid meteor streaks through auroras above Colorado in 2000 (Image: Jimmy Westlake)

Enlarge image

The Perseids appear to originate from the constellation Perseus (Illustration: NASA)

Tuesday morning will provide one of the year's best opportunities to see some "shooting stars", with the peak of the annual Perseid meteor display.

Meteors are bits of dust or rock that plunge into Earth's atmosphere at high speed, producing a glowing trail when they excite gas particles. On any clear night, a handful of meteors can be seen per hour, but that rises to dozens per hour during a meteor shower.

The Perseid meteor shower is one of the best annual displays and is best seen from the northern hemisphere.

From a dark site, far from city lights, viewers should be able to catch around 60 meteors per hour at the peak. For observers at most locations, the peak will arrive in the early morning hours on Tuesday, local time, before dawn breaks.

Smaller numbers of meteors will be visible on Monday evening, since light from a nearly full Moon will wash out fainter meteors. The number of meteors visible will increase when the Moon sets at around 0130 local time on Tuesday for observers at mid-northern latitudes.

The meteors will appear all over the sky, so the best strategy is to lie down and stare at as large a patch of sky as possible – away from the Moon, if it is still up. Tracing the paths of the meteors backwards will lead to a point in the constellation Perseus, which gives the yearly display its name (scroll down for image).

Perseid meteors are bits of debris shed by comet Swift-Tuttle, which takes 133 years to orbit the Sun and last passed through the inner solar system in 1992.

Its fragments hit the atmosphere at an average speed of 59 kilometres per second, causing most to disintegrate far above Earth, at altitudes of 80 to 120 kilometres – around the edge of space at 100 km.

A typical meteor barrelling through the thin atmosphere at this height is just the size of a grain of sand or a small pebble. But it creates a column of glowing gas tens of kilometres long and hundreds of metres wide.

Earth accumulates an estimated 1000 to 10,000 tonnes of material from meteorites each day.

Comets and Asteroids – Learn more in our special report.

Burned-up meteors add to Martian atmosphere
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8264
03 November 2005
Falling stars may cause rainy days
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18725145.000
25 August 2005
How to catch a falling star
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18424792.200
25 December 2004

Weblinks

More Monsanto Tidbits

2008-08-11T08:50:00.007-06:00

Refer back to this post . Read that and then compare the information to these two news summaries from Yahoo! It's enough to make a poor humble consumer smile.

Monsanto looking to sell bovine hormone business
The Ithaca Journal Fri, 08 Aug 2008 2:27 AM PDT
Fifteen years after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved recombinant bovine growth hormone for use in dairy production, Monsanto has decided it may not be such a cash cow.

Monsanto puts bovine growth hormone out to pasture [60-Second Science Blog]
Scientific American Thu, 07 Aug 2008 12:53 PM PDT
After years of legal wrangling over the proper labeling of milk from cows treated with its artificial hormone, Monsanto wants to sell its milk business--specifically, POSILAC, the bovine growth hormone given to cows to boost their production of milk. [More]

Monsanto the Monster Being Monitored

2008-08-07T00:23:00.002-06:00

Check out this informative site to find out what our least favorite corporation is up to and how it is destroying the world's food production for corporate profit.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Monsanto

The World According to Monsanto

2008-08-06T23:47:00.003-06:00

&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;

The World According to Monsanto: A toxic tour from Toronto Star

Received in an Email

2008-08-04T09:51:00.006-06:00

The following is a letter I received in my inbox (email) yesterday:

"STORE CLOSINGS AND LAYOFFS

If you have gift cards, hurry up and use them!!

Just passing this along - FYI

Ann Taylor closing 117 stores nationwide A company spokeswoman said the company hasn't revealed which stores will be shuttered.. It will let the stores that will close this fiscal year know over the next month

Eddie Bauer to close more stores
Eddie Bauer has already closed 27 shops in the first quarter and plans to close up to two more outlet stores by the end of the year.

Cache closing stores
Women's retailer Cache announced that it is closing 20 to 23 stores this year.

Lane Bryant, Fashion Bug, Catherine's closing 150 stores nationwide The owner of retailers Lane Bryant , Fashion Bug , Catherine's Plus Sizes will close about 150 underperforming stores this year.
The company hasn't provided a list of specific store closures and can't say when it will offer that info, spokeswoman Brooke Perry said today.

Talbots, J. Jill closing stores
About a month ago, Talbots announced that it will be shuttering all 78 of its kids and men's stores. Now the company says it will close another 22 underperforming stores.. The 22 stores will be a mix of Talbots women's and J. Jill , another chain it owns. The closures will occur this fiscal year, according to a company press release.

Gap Inc. closing 85 stores
In addition to its namesake chain, Gap also owns Old Navy and Banana Republic . The company said the closures - all planned for fiscal 2008 - will be weighted toward the Gap brand

Foot Locker to close 140 stores
In the company press release and during its conference call with analysts today, it did not specify where the future store closures - all plan need in fiscal 2008 - will be. The company could not be immediately reached for comment

Wickes is going out of business
Wickes Furniture is going out of business and closing all of its stores, Wickes, a 37-year-old retailer that targets middle-income customers, filed for bankruptcy protection last month.

Goodbye Levitz / BOMBAY - closed already
The furniture retailer, which is going out of business. Levitz first announced it was going out of business and closing all 76 of its stores in December. The retailer dates back to 1910 when Richard Levitz opened his first furniture store in Lebanon, PA. In the 1960s, the warehouse/showroom concept brought Levitz to the forefront of the furniture industry. The local Levitz closures will follow the shutdown of Bombay.

Zales, Piercing Pagoda closing stores
The owner of Zales and Piercing Pagoda previously said it plans to close 82 st ores by July 31. Today, it announced that it is closing another 23 underperforming stores. The company said it's n ot pro viding a list of specific store closures. Of the 105 locations planned for closure, 50 are kiosks and 55 are stores.

Disney Store owner has the right to close 98 stores The Walt Disney Company announced it acquired about 220 Disney Stores from subsidiaries of The Children's Place Retail Stores. The exact number of stores acquired will depend on negotiations with landlords. Those subsidiaries of Children's Place filed for bankruptcy protection in late March. Walt Disney in the news release said it has also obtained the right to close about 98 Disney Stores in the U.S. The press release didn't list those stores.

Home Depot store closings (E. Brunswick, Rt 18 just put up their closing sign)
ATLANTA - Nearly 7+ months after its chief executive said there were no plans to cut the number of its c ore retail stores, The Home Depot Inc. announced Thursday that it is shuttering 15 of them amid a slumping US. economy and housing market. The move will affect 1,300 employees. It is the first time the world's largest home improvement store chain has ever closed a flagship store for performance reasons. Its shares rose almost 5 percent. The Atlanta-based company said the underperforming U.S.stores being closed represent less than 1 percent of its existing sto res. They will be shuttered within the next two months.

CompUSA (CLOSED) clarifies details on store closings Any extended warranties purchased for products through CompUSA will be honored by a third-party provider, Assurant Solutions. Gift cards, rain checks, and rebates purchased prior to December 12 can be redeemed at any time during the final sale. For those who have a gadget currently in for service with CompUSA,

Macy's - 9 stores

Movie Gallery - 160 stores as part of reorganization plan to exit bankruptcyThe video rental company plans to close 400 of 3,500 Movie Gallery and Hollywood Video stores in addition to the 520 locations the video rental chain closed last fall.

Pacific Sunwear - 153 Demo stores

Pep Boys - 33 stores

Sprint Nextel - 125 retail locations New Sprint Nextel CEO Dan Hesse appears to have inherited a company bleeding subsc ribers by the thousands, and will now officially be dropping the ax on
4,000 employees and 125 retail locations. Amid the loss of 639,000 postpaid customers in the fourth quarter, Sprint will be cutting a total of 6.7% of its work force (following the 5,000 layoffs last year) and 8% of company-owned brick-and-mortar stores, while remaining mute on other rumors that it will consolidate its headquarters in Kansas . Sprint Nextel shares are down $2.89, or nearly 25%, at the time of this writing.

J. C. Penney, Lowe's and Office Depot are scaling back

Ethan Allen Interiors: The company announced plans to close 12 of 300+ stores in an effort to cut costs.

Wilsons the Leather Experts - 158 stores

Pacific Sunwear will close its 154 Demo stores after a review of strategic alternatives for the urban-apparel brand Seventy-four underperforming Demo stores closed last May.

Sharper Image: The company recently filed for bankruptcy protection and an nounced that 90 of its 184 stores are closing. The retailer will still operate 94 stores to pay off debts, but 90 of these stores have performed poorly and also may close.

Bombay Company: (Freehold Mall store closed) The company unveiled plans to close all 384 U.S.-based Bombay Company stores. The company's online storefront has discontinued operations.

KB Toys posted a list of 356 stores that it is closing around the United States as part of its bankruptcy reorganization. To see the list of store closings, go to the KB Toys Information web site, and click on Press Information

Dillard's to Close More Stores
Dillard's Inc. said it will continue to focus on closing underperforming stores, reducing expenses and improving its merchandise in 2008. At the company's annual shareholder meeting, CEO William Dillard II said the company will close another six underperforming stores this year.

THANK YOU MR. BUSH AND THE ENTIRE REPUBLICAN PARTY. WE ALL HOPE THE 16 TRILLION DOLLARS SPENT IN IRAQ WAS WORTH IT! OUR ENEMYS SUPPORT YOUR EFFORTS.."

Well . . . this seems to say something about the old "butter or guns" theory. Things are looking very bad economically for folks in the USA. How will all of this affect the rest of the world? The petroleum sector is making huge profits. Maybe they'll buy up all these bankrupt companies and put people back to work? Nah! Why should they? Any comments? Post below:

WEIRD AND WONDERFUL WORLD OF CHI: Anthrax Lies and Press/Government Complicity

2008-08-02T16:21:00.000-06:00

WEIRD AND WONDERFUL WORLD OF CHI: Anthrax Lies and Press/Government Complicity

Anthrax Lies and Press/Government Complicity

2008-08-02T14:56:00.006-06:00

The FBI's lead suspect in the September, 2001 anthrax attacks -- Bruce E. Ivins -- died Tuesday night, apparently by suicide, just as the Justice Department was about to charge him with responsibility for the attacks. For the last 18 years, Ivins was a top anthrax researcher at the U.S. Government's biological weapons research laboratories at Ft. Detrick, Maryland, where he was one of the most elite government anthrax scientists on the research team at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease (USAMRIID).The 2001 anthrax attacks remain one of the great mysteries of the post-9/11 era. After 9/11 itself, the anthrax attacks were probably the most consequential event of the Bush presidency. One could make a persuasive case that they were actually more consequential

For full article and commentary, please go to this URL: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/01/anthrax/index.html My own comments on the article: Very intriguing article. There was a report on television's CNN that the government was postulating that Ivins may have released anthrax in order to test his own vaccine development against anthrax. The whole story is so bizarre that it takes on a kind of "conspiracy theory" mythic "smell." It is certainly time for public disclosure of ALL FACTS related to this story by all parties involved - including McCain! If I were part of the Democratic campaign, I'd start digging for the dirt now and spill everything found to be factual. Is Ivins another possible scapegoat as was said of Lee Harvey Oswald after the Kennedy assassination? Was he a lose canon? Was he merely a guy doing what he was told to do by his supervisors? We do know that many media outlets have (and still do) accepted government press releases as fact without doing any investigative journalism during the last eight years. We know there are members of the Bush "team" even now accused of lying to Congress and the press. We have ample reason to be suspicious. If Americans are ever going to regain faith in their government, the truth must come out ASAP. What can you do? Write to every newspaper you normally read, write to your senators and repesentatives, let others know about this article. Use the power of the Internet to get the word out that America must be protected from its own government excesses!

Capitol Crimes

2008-08-01T02:34:00.006-06:00

consortiumnews.com

Wave of 'Capitol Crimes' Continues

By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
July 31, 2008

Like the largesse he spread so bountifully to members of Congress and the White House staff -- countless fancy meals, skybox tickets to basketball games and U2 concerts, golfing sprees in Scotland -- Jack Abramoff is the gift that keeps on giving.

The notorious lobbyist and his cohorts (including conservatives Tom DeLay, Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed) shook down Native American tribal councils and other clients for tens of millions of dollars, buying influence via a coalition of equally corrupt government officials and cronies dedicated to dismantling government by selling it off, making massive profits as they tore the principles of a representative democracy to shreds.

A report earlier this summer from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform builds on an earlier committee investigation that detailed some 485 contacts between Abramoff and the Bush administration.

According to the new report, "Senior White House officials told the Committee that White House officials held Mr. Abramoff and members of his lobbying team in high regard and solicited recommendations from Mr. Abramoff and his colleagues on policy matters."

Now Abramoff's doing time in Maryland, at a minimum security Federal prison.

He's serving five years and ten months for unrelated, fraudulent business practices involving a fake wire transfer he and a partner fabricated to secure a loan to buy SunCruz Casinos, a line of Florida cruise ships that ferried high and low rollers into international waters to gamble (its original owner, Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis, was gunned down, Mafia-style, in February 2001).

But come September, Abramoff will be sentenced for his larger-than-life role in one of the biggest scandals in American history, a collection of outrages that has already sent one member of Congress to jail, others into retirement and dozens of accomplices running for cover.

Over the last couple of years he has been singing to the authorities, which is why he has been kept in a detention facility close to DC and the reason his sentencing for tax evasion, the defrauding of Indians and the bribing of Washington officials has been delayed -- the FBI is thought to be using Abramoff's testimony to build an ever-expanding case that may continue to shake those who live within the Beltway bubble for months and years to come.

Bill Moyers Journal is airing an updated edition of "Capitol Crimes," a special that was first produced for public television two years ago, relating the entire sordid story of the Abramoff scandals.

Produced by Sherry Jones, the rebroadcast comes at a moment of renewed interest, with not only Abramoff's sentencing imminent, but the most important national elections in decades little more than three months away and continuing, seemingly daily revelations of further, profligate abuses of power.

Politicizing Justice

Monday saw the publication of a 140-page report from the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility, confirming that, as the Washington Post recounted, "For nearly two years, a young political aide sought to cultivate a 'farm system' for Republicans at the Justice Department, hiring scores of prosecutors and immigration judges who espoused conservative priorities and Christian lifestyle choices.

"That aide, Monica M. Goodling, exercised what amounted to veto power over a wide range of critical jobs, asking candidates for their views on abortion and same-sex marriage and maneuvering around senior officials who outranked her, including the department's second-in-command... [The report] concluded yesterday that Goodling and others had broken civil service laws, run afoul of department policy and engaged in 'misconduct,' a finding that could expose them to further scrutiny and sanctions."

With the next day's sunrise came the indictment of Alaskan Republican Ted Stevens, the first sitting U.S. Senator to face criminal charges in 15 years.

Apparently, the senator was playing the home version of "The Price Is Right," for among the gifts a grand jury says were illegally rewarded him by the oil company VECO were a Viking gas grill, tool cabinet and a wraparound deck for his mountainside house in Anchorage.

In fact, VECO allegedly gave the place an entire new first floor, with two bedrooms and a bath. How neighborly.

(By the way, just to round the circle, Senator Stevens received $1,000 in campaign contributions from Jack Abramoff directly, which subsequently he donated to the Alaskan chapter of the Red Cross, and $16,500 from Native American tribes and others represented by Abramoff, which Stevens gave to other charities.)

Coincidentally, this week also marks the publication of a new book, The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule, written by Thomas Frank, the author of What's the Matter with Kansas? In an essay in the August issue of Harper's magazine, adapted from the book, Frank adroitly weaves the actions of Abramoff and his pals into a vastly larger ideological framework.

"Fantastic misgovernment is not an accident," he writes, "nor is it the work of a few bad individuals. It is the consequence of triumph by a particular philosophy of government, by a movement that understands the liberal state as a perversion and considers the market the ideal nexus of human society.

"This movement is friendly to industry not just by force of campaign contributions but by conviction; it believes in entrepreneurship not merely in commerce but in politics; and the inevitable results of its ascendance are, first, the capture of the state by business and, second, what follows from that: incompetence, graft, and all the other wretched flotsam that we've come to expect from Washington. …

"The conservatism that speaks to us through its actions in Washington is institutionally opposed to those baseline good intentions we learned about in elementary school. Its leaders laugh off the idea of the public interest as airy-fairy nonsense; they caution against bringing top-notch talent into government service; they declare war on public workers.

"They have made a cult of outsourcing and privatizing, they have wrecked established federal operations because they disagree with them, and they have deliberately piled up an Everest of debt in order to force the government into crisis. The ruination they have wrought has been thorough; it has been a professional job.

"Repairing it will require years of political action."

Have we the stamina, commitment -- or even the attention span -- to take such action?

Abramoff may be cooling his heels in minimum security but his pals DeLay, Norquist and Reed appear on television and radio whose hosts treat them as political savants with nary a nod to their past nefarious association with Abramoff.

Few in the audience seem to notice or care.

Former House majority leader DeLay's awaiting trial on money laundering charges, and the incorrigible Ralph Reed, who played Christian pastors in Texas for suckers in enlisting their unwitting help for Abramoff's gambling clients, even has a political potboiler of a novel out -- Dark Horse, the story of a failed Democratic presidential candidate who finds God, then runs as an independent, funded, presumably, by the supreme being's political action committee.

"Do we Americans really want good government?" That's a question asked, not by Thomas Frank, but the muckraking journalist Lincoln Steffens, writing more than a century ago in his book, The Shame of the Cities.

Steffens wrote, "We are a free and sovereign people, we govern ourselves and the government is ours. But that is the point. We are responsible, not our leaders, since we follow them. We let them divert our loyalty from the United States to some 'party;' we let them boss the party and turn our municipal democracies into autocracies and our republican nation into a plutocracy.

"We cheat our government and we let our leaders loot it, and we let them wheedle and bribe our sovereignty from us."

From more than a hundred years' distance, Steffens would recognize Abramoff & company for what they are. And we for who we are; a nation too easily distracted and looking the other way as everything rightfully ours is taken.

Bill Moyers is managing editor and Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs program Bill Moyers Journal, which airs Friday night on PBS. Check local airtimes or comment at The Moyers Blog at www.pbs.org/moyers.

To comment at Consortiumblog, click here. (To make a blog comment about this or other stories, you can use your normal e-mail address and password. Ignore the prompt for a Google account.) To comment to us by e-mail, click here. To donate so we can continue reporting and publishing stories like the one you just read, click here.

http://www.consortiumnews.com/Print/2008/073108a.html

http://snipurl.com/38qvd

EXTINCTION 100 TIMES MORE LIKELY NOW

2008-07-04T13:15:00.002-06:00

Yahoo! News
Back to Story - Help
Extinction risks vastly underestimated: study

Wed Jul 2, 1:41 PM ET

Some endangered species may face an extinction risk that is up to a hundred times greater than previously thought, according to a study released Wednesday.

By overlooking random differences between individuals in a given population, researchers may have badly underestimated the perils confronting threatened wildlife, it said.

"Many larger populations previously considered relatively safe would actually be at risk," Brett Melbourne, a professor at the University of Colorado and the study's lead author, told AFP.

There are more than 16,000 species worldwide threatened with extinction, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

One in four mammals, one in eight birds and one in three amphibians are on the IUCN's endangered species "Red List".

In a study released on Wednesday by the journal Nature, Melbourne said the current models used draw up such lists typically look only at two risk factors.

One is the individual deaths within a small population, such as Indian tigers or rare whales.

When a species dwindles beyond a certain point, even the loss of a handful of individuals can have devastating long-term consequences, Melbourne explained.

There are less than 400 specimens of several species of whale, for example, and probably no more than 4,000 tigers roaming in the wild.

The second commonly-used factor is environmental conditions that can influence birth and death rates, such as habitat destruction, or fluctuations in temperature or rainfall, both of which can be linked to climate change.

Melbourne and co-author Alan Hastings from the University of California at Davis argue that these factors must be widened in order to give a fuller picture of extinction risk.

They say that two other determinants must be taken into account: male-to-female ratios in a species, and a wider definition of randomness in individual births and deaths.

These complex variables can determine whether a fragile population can overcome a sudden decline in numbers, such as through habitat loss, or whether it will be wiped out.

"This seems subtle and technical, but it turns out to be important," Melbourne said in an email. "Population sizes might need to be much larger for species to be relatively safe from extinction."

The new mathematical tool will be most useful for biologists who want to assess the survival prospects of species such as marine fish whose numbers can suddenly fluctuate and for which data is limited, the authors say.

Copyright © 2008 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AFP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Agence France Presse.
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Free Will?

2008-06-28T22:57:00.003-06:00

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal tells us about brain research suggesting that we make decisions below the level of consciousness. We actually aren't aware of the decision already made by the brain for 10 seconds. This raises many interesting questions about what it means to be human.
Read the article HERE and then comment on it in the comments section below.

Do we really have Free Will? What is consciousness? How does consciously thinking about a problem affect the outcome? Is the experiment described in the article a valid one?

Congress Considering Impeaching Bush

2008-06-28T22:10:00.003-06:00

Bomb Iran? What's to Stop Us?

2008-06-26T15:20:00.004-06:00

consortiumnews.com

Bomb Iran? What's to Stop Us?

By Ray McGovern
June 19, 2008

It’s crazy, but it’s coming soon – from the same folks who brought us Iraq.

Unlike the attack on Iraq five years ago, to deal with Iran there need be no massing of troops. And, with the propaganda buildup already well under way, there need be little, if any, forewarning before shock and awe and pox – in the form of air and missile attacks – begin.

This time it will be largely the Air Force’s show, punctuated by missile and air strikes by the Navy. Israeli-American agreement has now been reached at the highest level; the armed forces planners, plotters and pilots are working out the details.

Emerging from a 90-minute White House meeting with President George W. Bush on June 4, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the two leaders were of one mind:

“We reached agreement on the need to take care of the Iranian threat. I left with a lot less question marks [than] I had entered with regarding the means, the timetable restrictions, and American resoluteness to deal with the problem. George Bush understands the severity of the Iranian threat and the need to vanquish it, and intends to act on that matter before the end of his term in the White House.”

Does that sound like a man concerned that Bush is just bluff and bluster?

A member of Olmert’s delegation noted that same day that the two countries had agreed to cooperate in case of an attack by Iran, and that “the meetings focused on ‘operational matters’ pertaining to the Iranian threat.” So bring ‘em on!

A show of hands please. How many believe Iran is about to attack the U.S. or Israel?

You say you missed Olmert’s account of what Bush has undertaken to do? So did I. We are indebted to intrepid journalist Chris Hedges for including the quote in his article of June 8, “The Iran Trap.”

We can perhaps be excused for missing Olmert’s confident words about “Israel’s best friend” that week. Your attention – like mine – may have been riveted on the June 5 release of the findings of the Senate Intelligence Committee regarding administration misrepresentations of pre-Iraq-war intelligence – the so-called “Phase II” investigation (also known, irreverently, as the “Waiting-for-Godot Study”).

Better late than never, I suppose.

Oversight?

Yet I found myself thinking: It took them five years, and that is what passes for oversight? Yes, the president and vice president and their courtiers lied us into war. And now a bipartisan report could assert that fact formally; and committee chair Jay Rockefeller could sum it up succinctly:

“In making the case for war, the administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent. As a result, the American people were led to believe that the threat from Iraq was much greater than actually existed.”

But as I listened to Senator Rockefeller, I had this sinking feeling that in five or six years time, those of us still around will be listening to a very similar post mortem looking back on an even more disastrous attack on Iran.

My colleagues and I in Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) issued repeated warnings, before the invasion of Iraq, about the warping of intelligence. And our memoranda met considerable resonance in foreign media.

We could get no ink or airtime, however, in the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) in the U.S. Nor can we now.

In a same-day critique of Colin Powell’s unfortunate speech to the U.N. on Feb. 5, 2003, we warned the president to widen his circle of advisers “beyond those clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic.”

It was a no-brainer for anyone who knew anything about intelligence, the Middle East, and the brown noses leading intelligence analysis at the CIA.

Former U.N. senior weapons inspector and former Marine major, Scott Ritter, and many others were saying the same thing. But none of us could get past the president’s praetorian guard to drop a memo into his in-box, so to speak. Nor can we now.

The “Iranian Threat”

However much the same warnings are called for now with respect to Iran, there is even less prospect that any contrarians could puncture and break through what former White House spokesman Scott McClellan calls the president’s “bubble.”

By all indications, Vice President Dick Cheney and his huge staff continue to control the flow of information to the president.

But, you say, the president cannot be unaware of the far-reaching disaster an attack on Iran would bring?

Well, this is a president who admits he does not read newspapers, but rather depends on his staff to keep him informed. And the memos Cheney does brief to Bush pooh-pooh the dangers.

This time no one is saying we will be welcomed as liberators, since the planning does not include – officially, at least – any U.S. boots on the ground.

Besides, even on important issues like the price of gasoline, the performance of the president’s staff has been spotty.

Think back on the White House press conference of Feb. 28, when Bush was asked what advice he would give to Americans facing the prospect of $4-a-gallon gasoline.

“Wait, what did you just say?” the president interrupted. “You’re predicting $4-a-gallon gasoline?…That’s interesting. I hadn’t heard that.”

A poll in January showed that nearly three-quarters of Americans were expecting $4-a-gallon gas. That forecast was widely reported in late February, and discussed by the White House press secretary at the media briefing the day before the president’s press conference.

Here’s the alarming thing: Unlike Iraq, which was prostrate after the Gulf War and a dozen years of sanctions, Iran can retaliate in a number of dangerous ways, launching a war for which our forces are ill-prepared.

The lethality, intensity and breadth of ensuing hostilities will make the violence in Iraq look, in comparison, like a volleyball game between St. Helena’s High School and Mount St. Ursula.

Cheney’s Brainchild

Attacking Iran is Vice President Dick Cheney’s brainchild, if that is the correct word.

Cheney proposed launching air strikes last summer on Iranian Revolutionary Guards bases, but was thwarted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff who insisted that would be unwise, according to J. Scott Carpenter, a senior State Department official at the time.

Chastened by the unending debacle in Iraq, this time around Pentagon officials reportedly are insisting on a “policy decision” regarding “what would happen after the Iranians would go after our folks,” according to Carpenter.

Serious concerns include the vulnerability of the critical U.S. supply line from Kuwait to Baghdad, our inability to reinforce and the eventual possibility that the U.S. might be forced into a choice between ignominious retreat and using, or threatening to use, “mini-nukes.”

Pentagon opposition was confirmed in a July 2007 commentary by former Bush adviser Michael Gerson, who noted the “fear of the military leadership” that Iran would have “escalation dominance” in any conflict with the U.S.

Writing in the Washington Post last July, Gerson indicated that “escalation dominance” means, “in a broadened conflict, the Iranians could complicate our lives in Iraq and the region more than we complicate theirs.”

The Joint Chiefs also have opposed the option of attacking Iran’s nuclear sites, according to former Iran specialist at the National Security Council, Hillary Mann, who has close ties with senior Pentagon officials.

Mann confirmed that Adm. William Fallon joined the Joint Chiefs in strongly opposing such an attack, adding that he made his opposition known to the White House, as well.

The outspoken Fallon was forced to resign in March, and will be replaced as CENTCOM commander by Gen. David Petraeus – apparently in September. Petraeus has already demonstrated his penchant to circumvent the chain of command in order to do Cheney’s bidding (by making false claims about Iranian weaponry in Iraq, for example).

In sum, a perfect storm seems to be gathering in late summer or early fall.

Controlled Media

The experience of those of us whose job it was to analyze the controlled media of the Soviet Union and China for insights into Russian and Chinese intentions have been able to put that experience to good use in monitoring our own controlled media as they parrot the party line.

Suffice it to say that the FCM is already well embarked, a la Iraq, on its accustomed mission to provide stenographic services for the White House to indoctrinate Americans on the “threat” from Iran and prepare them for the planned air and missile attacks.

At least this time we are spared the “mushroom cloud” bugaboo. Neither Bush nor Cheney wish to call attention, even indirectly, to the fact that all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies concluded last November that Iran had stopped nuclear weapons-related work in 2003 and had not resumed it as of last year.

In a pre-FCM age, it would have been looked on as inopportune, at the least, to manufacture intelligence to justify another war hard on the heels of a congressional report that on Iraq the administration made significant claims not supported by the intelligence.

But (surprise, surprise!) the very damning Senate Intelligence Committee report got meager exposure in the media.

So far it has been a handful of senior military officers that have kept us from war with Iran. It hardly suffices to give them vocal encouragement, or to warn them that the post WW-II Nuremberg Tribunal ruled explicitly that “just-following-orders” is no defense when war crimes are involved.

And still less when the “supreme international crime” – a war of aggression is involved.

Senior officers trying to slow the juggernaut lumbering along toward an attack on Iran have been scandalized watching what can only be described as unconscionable dereliction of duty in the House of Representatives, which the Constitution charges with the duty of impeaching a president, vice president or other senior official charged with high crimes and misdemeanors.

Where Are You, Conyers?

In 2005, before John Conyers became chair of the House Committee on the Judiciary, he introduced a bill to explore impeaching the president and was asked by Lewis Lapham of Harpers why he was for impeachment then. He replied:

“To take away the excuse that we didn’t know. So that two, or four, or ten years from now, if somebody should ask, ‘Where were you, Conyers, and where was the U.S. Congress?’ when the Bush administration declared the Constitution inoperative…none of the company here present can plead ignorance or temporary insanity [or] say that ‘somehow it escaped our notice.’”

In the three years since then, the train of abuses and usurpations has gotten longer and Conyers has become chair of the committee. Yet he has dawdled and dawdled, and has shown no appetite for impeachment.

On July 23, 2007, Conyers told Cindy Sheehan, Rev. Lennox Yearwood, and me that he would need 218 votes in the House and they were not there.

A week ago, 251 members of the House voted to refer to Conyers’ committee the 35 Articles of Impeachment proposed by Congressman Dennis Kucinich.

Former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman, who sat on Judiciary with Conyers when it voted out three articles of impeachment on President Richard Nixon, spoke out immediately: “The House should commence an impeachment inquiry forthwith.”

Much of the work has been done. As Holtzman noted, Kucinich’s Articles of Impeachment, together with the Senate report that on Iraq we were led to war based on false pretenses – arguably the most serious charge – go a long way toward jump-starting any additional investigative work Congress needs to do.

And seldom mentioned is the voluminous book published by Conyers himself, “Constitution in Crisis,” containing a wealth of relevant detail on the crimes of the current executive.

Conyers’ complaint that there is not enough time is a dog that won’t hunt, as Lyndon Johnson would say.

How can Conyers say this one day, and on the next say that if Bush attacks Iran, well then, the House may move toward impeachment.

Afraid of the media?

During the meeting last July with Cindy Sheehan, Rev. Yearwood and me, and during an interview in December on “Democracy Now,” Conyers was surprisingly candid in expressing his fear of Fox News and how it could paint Democrats as divisive if they pursued impeachment.

Ironically, this time it is Fox and the rest of the FCM that is afraid – witness their virtual silence on Kucinich’s very damning 35 Articles of Impeachment.

The only way to encourage constructive media attention would be for Conyers to act. The FCM could be expected to fulminate against that, but they could not afford to ignore impeachment, as they are able to ignore other unpleasant things – like preparations for another “war of choice.”

I would argue that perhaps the most effective way to prevent air and missile attacks on Iran and a wider Middle East war is to proceed as Elizabeth Holtzman urges – with impeachment “forthwith.”

Does Conyers not owe at least that much encouragement to those courageous officers who have stood up to Cheney in trying to prevent wider war and catastrophe in the Middle East?

Scott McClellan has been quite clear in reminding us that once the president decided to invade Iraq, he was not going to let anything stop him. There is ample evidence that Bush has taken a similar decision with respect to Iran – with Olmert as his chief counsel, no less.

It is getting late, but this is due largely to Conyers’ own dithering. Now, to his credit, Dennis Kucinich has forced the issue with 35 well-drafted Articles of Impeachment.

What the country needs is the young John Conyers back. Not the one now surrounded by fancy lawyers and held in check by the House leaders.

In October 1974, after he and the even younger Elizabeth Holtzman faced up to their duty on House Judiciary and voted out three Articles of Impeachment on President Richard Nixon, Conyers wrote this:

“This inquiry was forced on us by an accumulation of disclosures which, finally and after unnecessary delays, could no longer be ignored…Impeachment is difficult and it is painful, but the courage to do what must be done is the price of remaining free.”

Someone needs to ask John Conyers if he still believes that; and, if he does, he must summon the courage to “do what must be done.”

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He was Army intelligence/infantry officer and a CIA analyst for 27 years, and now serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

Oye! Veh!

2008-06-26T14:43:00.002-06:00

Check out this article from New Scientist at this address and below:

Could nuclear warheads go off 'like popcorn'?

26 June 2008

Web Links

YOU might think nuclear weapons have been carefully designed not to go off by accident. Yet more than 1700 of them have design flaws that could conceivably cause multiple warheads to explode one after another - an effect known as "popcorning" - according to a UK Ministry of Defence safety manual.

A typical Trident nuclear missile contains from three to six warheads, and a US submarine might carry up to 24 missiles. Weapons builders aim to prevent accidental explosions of warheads by designing them to be "single-point safe". This means that a sudden knock at a single point - say if it were dropped from a crane while being unloaded from a submarine - should not detonate the plutonium core.

However, a nuclear-weapons safety manual drawn up by the MoD's internal nuclear-weapons regulator argues that this standard single-point design might not be enough to prevent popcorning. The document was declassified last month.

The manual says that warheads should be capable of resisting multiple simultaneous impacts. This "would contribute to the prevention of popcorning and should be a design objective".

It also recommends replacing the highly sensitive explosive that surrounds the warheads' plutonium cores. A single knock may not detonate the core, but could set off this explosive. Less-sensitive explosives are available, but they are heavier and bulkier than those currently in use, so the warheads would have to be redesigned.

The effects of a popcorning accident would be dire.

Pain KILLERS!

2008-06-20T12:32:00.000-06:00

FDA sued for failure to act on risky painkiller

Thu Jun 19, 4:03 PM ET

A prescription painkiller sold under such names as Darvon and Darvocet is too risky to stay on the market, a consumer advocacy group argued Thursday in suing the Food and Drug Administration.

Public Citizen petitioned the FDA two years ago seeking a ban on the drug, calling it no more effective than safer painkillers and citing the accidental deaths of more than 2,000 people since 1981.

Thursday, Public Citizen filed suit in U.S. District Court in Washington arguing that FDA has violated the law by not ruling on its petition within the required six months.

At issue is a narcotic known chemically as propoxyphene, sold by numerous generic manufacturers as well as under the brand names Darvon and Darvocet.

It is considered a relatively weak painkiller. Public Citizen's Dr. Sidney Wolfe cited a recent review of research studies that found ibuprofen worked better for most kinds of pain.

Yet propoxyphene is addictive, and even when used properly it can cause slowed heartbeat and other serious cardiac side effects, the lawsuit says. In addition, Wolfe said it has been deemed inappropriate for the elderly because of other side effects, include sedation and confusion, that increase risk of falls and fractures.

British health authorities ordered the drug phased out there in 2005, saying at the time that it was associated with a few hundred accidental deaths and suicides a year.

In the U.S., propoxyphene remains one of the most widely prescribed generic drugs, with 22 million prescriptions filled last year.

Neither FDA nor one of the drug's main manufacturers immediately responded to requests for comment.

___

http://snipurl.com/2luyt

Mind Games

2008-06-20T12:25:00.001-06:00

I'm adding a new link for those of us who love mental stimulation!

http://www.mentalfloss.com

In Your Guts You Know He's Nuts

2008-06-20T11:46:00.003-06:00

The following article appears on the on-line version of The New York Times. Nuclear Energy is one of the most wasteful and dangerous forms of energy production on the planet. We saw how many nuclear power plants had to be "contained" following China's earthquake this year and how many others are affected in other countries as well. We see that the USA government has actually sent fissionable nuclear materials via ordinary truck and rail carriers through some of the most populous regions of the country. We know about Chernobyl and Three-Mile-Island. We know that producing electricity via nuclear fission is like trying to shoot a mosquito with an elephant gun. We also know that metal fatigue from exposure to radiation is much greater than originally anticipated and that the dangers are far greater than the governments and utilities industries want us to know. Add to that the costs (government subsidies to outweigh the high cost of production) and the problem STILL UNSOLVED of what to do with all that radioactive waste!

McCain Sets Goal of 45 New Nuclear Reactors by 2030

By ELISABETH BUMILLER

Published: June 19, 2008

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — Senator John McCain said Wednesday that he wanted 45 new nuclear reactors built in the United States by 2030, a course he called "as difficult as it is necessary."

In his third straight day of campaign speechmaking about energy and $4-a-gallon gasoline, Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, told the crowd at a town-hall-style meeting at Missouri State University that he saw nuclear power as a clean, safe alternative to traditional sources of energy that emit greenhouse gases. He said his ultimate goal was 100 new nuclear plants.

Mr. McCain has long promoted nuclear reactors, but Wednesday was the first time that he specified the number of plants he envisioned.

Currently there are 104 reactors in the country supplying some 20 percent of electricity consumed. No new nuclear power plant has been built in the United States since the 1970s.

"China, Russia and India are all planning to build more than a hundred new power plants among them in the coming decades," Mr. McCain said in this pocket of Missouri that is reliably Republican. "Across Europe there are 197 reactors in operation, and nations including France and Belgium derive more than half their electricity from nuclear power. And if all of these nations can find a way to carry out great goals in energy policy, then I assure you that the United States is more than equal to the challenge."

Although there has been a shift of opinion in the industry and among some environmentalists toward more nuclear power — it is clean and far safer than at the time of the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979 — most environmentalists are skeptical of the latest claims by its advocates. They also say that no utility will put its own financing into building a plant unless the federal government lavishly subsidizes it.

"Wall Street won't invest in these plants because they are too expensive and unreliable, so Senator McCain wants to shower the nuclear industry with billions of dollars of taxpayer handouts," said Daniel J. Weiss, who heads the global warming program at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a liberal research group.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Mr. McCain's chief domestic policy adviser, said Mr. McCain had arrived at the goal of 45 as consistent with his desire to expand nuclear power, "but not so large as to be infeasible given permitting and construction times."

Doodles Deluxe

2008-06-19T11:39:00.001-06:00

Learning to use this new art tool is half the fun! Trial and error makes pretty designs.

Try it here.

LiveScience.com : RSS - Science, Technology, Health, Environment | LiveScience

2008-06-16T18:41:00.000-06:00

<cite>LiveScience.com : RSS - Science, Technology, Health, Environment | LiveScience</cite>: "

http://feeds.livescience.com/livescience/strangenews

The Way We Think

2008-06-15T20:03:00.002-06:00

EAT DIRT!

2008-06-06T17:44:00.003-06:00

Bats Eat Dirt to Stay Healthy

Charles Q. Choi
Special to LiveScience
LiveScience.comWed Jun 4, 9:10 AM ET

The strange act of eating dirt - known as "geophagy" - is actually common in the animal kingdom. Not only do our closest living relatives the chimpanzees do it - in order to help fight malaria - but so occasionally do humans all over the world.

Researchers suspect geophagy could help animals get key minerals they need for nutrition, much as they might from a salt lick. But hitting the dirt might also help them fight off poisons.

Chemical combat

When eating, people cut the green off potatoes because it is bad for you. Many fruits, leaves and things animals munch on naturally contain molecules that are toxic or could trigger cancer or birth defects. The minerals in the dirt animals eat could bind to electrically charged portions of the poisonous compounds and neutralize them.

Each night, tropical fruit-eating bats devour large amounts of such poisonous chemicals with their food. These molecules could prove especially dangerous to young bats, both those as yet unborn and ones still nursing from their mothers.

To see why bats might eat dirt, a team of researchers spent a month lurking around six mineral licks in the Amazonian rainforest at night.

"It is quite astonishing to see all the paths that lead to the mineral licks that were created by generations of tapirs and wild pigs," said researcher Christian Voigt, a behavioral ecologist at the Berlin Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Germany. "Indians hunted at these sites as well. Mineral licks are hot spots of mammalian activity."

The scientists captured bats with nets, briefly took some tissue samples, and released the creatures. They also sampled the clay they ate and the mineral-rich water they drank.

"At first glance it seemed that bats visit these sites for the same purpose as other animals such as large tapirs or birds - that is, to meet their daily mineral requirements," Voigt said.

Detox

But the researchers found the bats that stopped most often at mineral licks were fruit-eaters, not insect-eaters. And fruits are rich in minerals already.

Instead, Voigt and his colleagues suspect the bats eat dirt to detoxify themselves. The bats that stop at mineral licks are often pregnant or nursing mothers, so this geophagy may help them protect their young.

"Bats are doing the same as humans, especially Indian tribes in the Amazon," Voigt explained. Some tribes are known to eat dirt while pregnant or nursing. "Somehow the bats have found the same solution for the problem of toxic compounds in fruits."

The scientists now hope to investigate how specifically the minerals work, research that could lead to novel therapies.

"It is astonishing that eating mud is so widespread in mammals," Voigt told LiveScience. "Possibly, we should reconsider our assumptions regarding clay consumption. Maybe it is good stuff."

Voigt and his colleagues detailed their findings online on April 23 in the journal PLoS ONE.

Video: How Bats Fly Video: Smoking Out Secrets of Bat Flight Bat's Wrinkly Face Improves Sonar Original Story: Bats Eat Dirt to Stay Healthy

Visit LiveScience.com for more daily news, views and scientific inquiry with an original, provocative point of view. LiveScience reports amazing, real world breakthroughs, made simple and stimulating for people on the go. Check out our collection of Science, Animal and Dinosaur Pictures, Science Videos, Hot Topics, Trivia, Top 10s, Voting, Amazing Images, Reader Favorites, and more. Get cool gadgets at the new LiveScience Store, sign up for our free daily email newsletter and check out our RSS feeds today!

Note: My grandmother used to say a baby needed to eat a peck of dirt to start life well. I guess she knew much more than I knew! She was from Poland and had visions which were later coaberated. A wise woman. Cockroaches and earthworms eat dirt, too. There are many micro-nutients in soil.

TROJAN HORSE

2008-06-02T16:41:00.003-06:00

Bush seeks $770M in food help during crisis

Kareem Elgazzar

Issue date: 6/2/08 Section: News

As part of a broader $70 billion Iraq war funding measure for 2009, the Bush administration has added an aid package encouraging the use of genetically modified crops for the world's disadvantaged populations.

The Bush administration is seeking congressional approval of a $770 million food package in an effort to ease the world food crisis. If approved, the U.S. Agency for International Development would spend $150 million on development farming, which would include the use of genetically modified crops.

Genetically modified crops are produced from crops whose genetic makeup have been altered through a process called recombinant DNA, or gene splicing, to give the plant a desirable trait, according to a 2003 report in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's FDA Consumer.

Using the tools of genetic engineering allows the transfer of useful genes from one organism to a totally unrelated organism. Plants can be used, for example, to produce human proteins, such as insulin and antibodies, according to "Plants and Society," a textbook co-authored by Estelle Levetin and Karen McMahon.

"The building blocks for DNA and proteins are largely universal across organisms," said Susan Dunford, associate professor of biological sciences and instructor of a plants and people course. "As with any technology, the potential benefits, which are considerable, need to be weighed against the potential risks."

As the value or detriment of genetically modified, or bioengineered, food is ambiguous to researchers in the U.S. and Europe, the Ohio Department of Agriculture has done little research or development into the issue.

© 2008 The News Record

Poor farmers world wide can't take advantage of genetically modified crops since the modifications are meant to save time and man-power ONLY in large agri-businesses. In addition, the seeds produced by GM crops are engineered to prevent normal reproduction of the plant. That means that today's poor farmer using GM crops will have to BUY seed for next year's crops instead of simply harvesting seed as is done normally. Including GM crops in any package of food aid is like sending in a Trojan Horse filled with future hunger and/or dependence on the supplier of the GM seed (most likely, Monsanto) to those markets not currently under the control of the GM crop patent holder. Instead of helping people, the addition of a GM crops provision will actually harm them! It's time for Congress to take a long hard look at future damages that could result from this sneaky maneuver.

JUST ANOTHER NAIL-BITER

2008-05-29T20:11:00.002-06:00

Runaway Global Warming 635 Million Years Ago

LiveScience Staff

LiveScience.comWed May 28, 4:16 PM ET

A sudden and extreme case of runaway global warming 635 million years ago was caused by an abrupt release of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, scientists said today.

The methane seeped from ice sheets that covered much of the planet toward the end of a frigid era called Snowball Earth. The gas escaped gradually at first and then very quickly from clathrates, or methane ice that forms and stabilizes beneath water ice sheets. As the water ice melted, pressure was relieved on the clathrates and they began to de-gas.

The transition represents one of the earliest known cases of what scientists now call a climatic tipping-point.

The big question scientists are now pondering: Could it happen again?

"Our findings document an abrupt and catastrophic global warming that led from a very cold, seemingly stable climate state to a very warm, also stable, climate state - with no pause in between," said geologist Martin Kennedy of the University of California at Riverside, who led the research team.

"What we now need to know is the sensitivity of the trigger," Kennedy said. "How much forcing does it take to move from one stable state to the other - and are we approaching something like that today with current carbon dioxide warming?"

Also called marsh gas, methane is a colorless, odorless gas. As a greenhouse gas, it is about 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

Methane clathrates still exist in Arctic permafrost and beneath the oceans at continental margins. Kennedy said it's possible that very little warming could unleash this trapped methane, potentially warming the planet by tens of degrees.

Kennedy and colleagues collected hundreds of marine sediment samples in South Australia for stable isotope analysis, an important tool used in climate reconstruction. They found the broadest range of oxygen isotopic variation ever reported from marine sediments, which they attribute to melting waters in ice sheets as well as destabilization of clathrates by glacial meltwater.

"Today we're conducting a global-scale experiment with Earth's climate system," Kennedy said, "and witnessing an unprecedented rate of warming, all with little or no knowledge of what instabilities lurk in the climate system and how they can influence life on Earth."

He said Nature did a similar experiment 635 million years ago, "and the outcome is preserved in the geologic record. We see that strong forcing on the climate, not unlike the current carbon dioxide forcing, results in the activation of latent controls in the climate system that, once initiated, change climate to a completely different state."

The research, detailed in the May 29 issue of the journal Nature, was supported by the National Science Foundation and NASA's Exobiology Program.

Top 10 Ways to Destroy Earth Global Melt: Sea Ice Seen From Orbit How Lowly Bacteria Froze Earth Solid Original Story: Runaway Global Warming 635 Million Years Ago

RAIN, RAIN: GO AWAY!

2008-05-29T09:55:00.007-06:00

It has been raining here for three days and nights. Not just rain, but downpours with high winds! Every tiny defect in the galvanized iron roofs of the people in Costa Rica has been exaggerated many fold. We've got big pots scattered all over the house and/or attic to collect the water from the leaks. It is impossible now to do any repairs because we haven't had even ten minutes of sunshine in which to work. This is a Central American country not far from the equator. And it has been COLD!

My wood-burning stove's chimney pipe burnt through a month ago, and I've been waiting for my neighbor and builder, Carlos, to finish another project so that he can come over here and make a new chimney. Now, with a big hole in the chimney pipe, I cannot use the stove to heat the house and dry out some of the air. And my solar hot water heater is no longer producing hot water. So no hot showers. I do have LP gas for my kitchen stove and we are only losing electricity sporatically (as usual) so no big problems with cooking or lights, etc. I have a huge back-up water tank holding potable water in case of national potable water service failures, but that doesn't look as though it will be a problem.

I have chronic sinus problems and now I've been having sinus bleeds and much pain for two days. A result of very low pressure systems over the country. Ouch!

But it could be much, much worse. We did have three little earthquakes a couple of days ago, but they caused no damage, thank goodness! Guanacaste Province in the north had been in the depths of a very serious drought! Cattle died and crops withered. Now they are suddenly dealing with major flooding.

I have just learned that this nasty weather system has been declared a tropical storm and is moving toward Nicaragua where it is expected to make landfall. Poor Nicas! The economy of Nicaragua is in shambles and Costa Rica is flooded with illegal immigrants fleeing starvation and seeking some kind of income to send to families in Nicaragua. So that poor nation certainly doesn't need more troubles! The tiny isthmus called Central America doesn't need more trouble. It has been plagued by war, disease, hunger, floods, earthquakes, and dictatorships! Costa Rica and Panama are making some progress toward a better life for its citizens, but the rest of Central America still has a long, long way to go.

Does it seem that this year has already been one of the most devastating in memory for natural disasters worldwide? Or am I seeing things with a jaundiced eye?

It is hard for people who have enough and more than enough security to carry them through any rough times to realize what the reality is for the people caught in the aftermath of a natural disaster. It is worse than a return to the stone age in terms of living day to day. It is surviving a minute at a time in constant fear and post-traumatic stress without enough food, water, or shelter and with the menacing possibilities that even worse tragedies lie ahead for survivors. We lucky few in this world who never have to live for months without bathing, with only enough water to sip a bit at a time, with scavenging for food, with cold, wet, and hunger gnawing at their bodies while grief and fear and anger battle in their souls - we lucky few cannot begin to imagine the true horror of these disasters.

And I wonder if this is not just a fluke of nature, but the beginning of the end. Is it too late to save life on this planet? Are we now facing another great extinction such as the one that wiped out the dinosaurs?

Don't just sit there shrugging! Do something useful! It's now or never, Folks!

FAMINE! IN YOUR FUTURE?

2008-05-19T11:26:00.003-06:00

Are bio-fuels as much of a disaster as the use of petroleum and coal? Many think the answer is definitely. And, say many experts, it will be coming to YOUR country soon! Even the United States is vulnerable. Add the rush to produce corn and soy for the making of ethanol (which really doesn't do much in the way of lowering dependence on petroleum) which is not of food grade plus the introduction of genetically modified crops controlled by a very small handful of huge international corporations, and we can easily see the people world-wide losing the ability to produce their own foods! The dangers are so significant and so insidious that we can truly consider world-wide Super Famine (with its attendant diseases) killing even middle income families in the United States - and soon!

If no food is available at affordable prices, people will starve. Fact. It has happened many times in the past in many countries. But never before have we been faced with a Super Famine that will kill the majority of the population in every country, in every city, in every town. and in every neighborhood as we do NOW! The seeds (literally) of our destruction are now being planted.

What can YOU do to protect your family? Consider that the name of the game is short-term profits and politics. Consider that unless governmental bodies are forced to deal with reality and with the very real future consequences of current policies, we are all doomed. Every animal depends on plants ultimately for survival. Predators depend on herbivores. Herbivores depend on plants. When the loss of variability in food and feed crops is assured by GM crops and when not enough food is being grown to feed the ever-expanding population, a small disruption in agricultural production by weather, natural disasters, or the inevitable development of new crop diseases, will drop the entire planet into chaos.

What happens when people are starving? They are driven to do whatever they need to do to survive. Crime, war, murder, migration! Those are not unnatural human acts. Those are the realities with which humankind has been dealing for as long as their were humans. Survivalists think that by arming themselves and building defensible communities and growing their own food they will be safe from the coming calamity. Nothing could be further from the truth. They will be the targets first of governments and then, as governments crumble, of desperate ungoverned people with nothing to lose. What's more, even the super survivalist cannot predict the exact nature of the crisis to come. For how long can food, water, and other necessities be stock-piled? For how long can fearful people within the "family" be controlled? What happens when the children are the first to die and the population of a community drops below that which can sustain the community? How many of us can or are willing to live on starvation rations hidden in a cave and alone?

The only way to truly try to protect YOUR family is to become an activist for environmental stability and sustainable living styles. You can start by setting an example for others. You can join with others to increase your clout politically and economically. You MUST let your voice be heard! Every day brings us ALL closer to the catastrophe looming before us. And we must realize NOW that what affects people on the other side of the globe also affects us.

Check out a few of these links:
http://heidiallen.com/heartfire/energy.htm
http://www.enn.com/
http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=12196737&postID=2174804809549948203
http://w3chi.blogspot.com/2008/05/deadly-gift-from-monsanto-to-india.html
http://www.loe.org/
http://www.ucsusa.org /
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/
http://www.toxicnation.ca/
http://www.edf.org/

Monsanto is the gorilla controlling the seed industry

2008-05-16T21:13:00.002-06:00

POSTED: May 12, 2008 By David Kruse
The Times-Republican
135 West Main Street,
Marshalltown, IA 50158
641-753-6611

Fred Stokes, a prominent figure in the Organization for Competitive Markets wrote: “As you know, the seed industry has become highly concentrated, with Monsanto becoming the dominant global player in the industry.”

It is said that he who controls the seed controls the food supply. Monsanto clearly is the 800-pound gorilla and has a reputation for playing rough. The OCM is launching a new project that will take a critical look at the seed industry and the ills of concentration. On Wednesday, April 16, Michael Stumo, OCM General Counsel, and I were guests on the Derry Brownfield Show and discussed the new project and seed industry concentration.

The following Monday, Derry Brownfield was notified that his right to broadcast over the Learfield Communications Network was being terminated; presumably because of the April 16th broadcast.”

Monsanto is ranked 305th out of the fortune 500 in 2007, with revenue of over $8.6 billion and profits of $993 million, up 44.1%. A recent article in Vanity Fair called “Monsanto’s Harvest of Fear,” was scathing in accusations describing Monsanto corporate tactics as “ruthless.”

Vanity Fair wrote, “In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a five-to-four decision, turned seeds into widgets, laying the groundwork for a handful of corporations to begin taking control of the world’s food supply. In its decision, the court extended patent law to cover ‘a live human-made microorganism.’

The precedent was set, and Monsanto took advantage of it. Since the 1980’s, Monsanto has become the world leader in genetic modification of seeds and has won 674 biotechnology patents, more than any other company, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data.”

Monsanto first went through the court system to solidify its legal grip on the patent rights of the genetics it develops and then went about changing long held practices of farmers by selling seed but retaining the rights to the genetic traits they have patented. Farmers were used to saving seed, ‘brown bagging’ it as the practice was called.

Farmers were denied the right to save Monsanto’s seed from one crop for the next. When they buy patented seed they don’t “own” the genetic rights, they’re only renting them on an annual basis for a fee.

A lot of farmers did not initially accept the new way of doing business or Monsanto’s patent rights and Monsanto went methodically about teaching lessons to all those who violated their patented rights and seed agreements. Whether Monsanto’s claim to their genetic monopoly is morally right or wrong, it has been legalized by the courts. Monsanto aggressively defends those rights.

You can think the worst of them and call them bad names but Monsanto holds the genetic keys to the future of global food production in their vault and without them, the world will produce less food and fiber at a higher cost. That’s a heck of a valuable monopoly to own.

Monsanto is not infallible. A number of years ago, I challenged them and lived to tell about it.

I have never challenged their patent rights. My companies follow the law and seed agreements both here and in Brazil. I’m a “good” customer of Monsanto and very pleased with the products they sell today. I wasn’t always pleased, however. That’s where my run in with Monsanto occurred.

When they first introduced RR soybeans it was common knowledge that initially in a rush to get their product on the market, they put the RR gene into poor genetic soybean seed and yields lagged. University yield trials showed the yield lag. I confirmed it on my own farm as did neighbors, yet Monsanto bombarded the air waves with a commercial that claimed “higher yields” from their new RR soybean varieties.

A local radio station provided me a copy of the commercial and I produced a CommStock Radio Report interviewing a local farmer who had experienced the RR soybean yield lag and pasted in Monsanto’s erroneous claim to higher yields as “but Monsanto says ... Higher Yields!” Monsanto spends a lot on advertising, giving them clout beyond the control of what gets aired in their commercials. I was summoned by the station owner, who in a very uncomfortable situation for him, backed me.

I was right. Everybody knew it. The result was that Monsanto dropped the “higher yields’ commercials. They ceased to air. Maybe that was a coincidence, but I doubt it. It was simple truth in advertising.

An Asgrow agronomist (Monsanto owns Asgrow), confirmed the technical reasons for the initial RR soybean yield lag and also why it would eventually go away as their breeding program matured.

It did. He was right. I grow RR soybeans today. I don’t believe Monsanto will allow the same thing to happen with their new genetic products. I think it was a case where their advertising department temporarily overshot their genetic capability.

Today, RR soybeans likely do out yield non-GMO varieties, if for no other reason than that nothing is put into seed research for non-GMO varieties any more because seed companies make less money from plain seed and farmers want GMO seed traits. Trendline corn/soybean yields are climbing today and Monsanto genetics can take a lot of credit for that.

Not long after my on air challenge of Monsanto’s commercial advertising, a Monsanto executive paid me a visit. He was professional, cordial and unthreatening. I practice the Golden Rule.

————

David Kruse is president of CommStock Investments,Inc., author and producer of The CommStock Report, an ag commentary and market analysis available daily by radio and by subscription on DTN/FarmDayta and the Internet.

Deadly gift from Monsanto to India

2008-05-16T20:45:00.003-06:00

ISIS Press Release 12/05/08
The Institute of Science in Society, PO Box 51885, London NW2 9DH
telephone: [44 20 8452 2729] [44 20 7272 5636]

To follow up on your articles, Organic Cotton Beats Bt Cotton in India ( SiS 27) and Message from Andra Predesh:Return to organic cotton & avoid the Bt cotton trap ( SiS 29), I enclose photographs of mealy bugs infested cotton plants in the demonstration plots of different seed companies in Vidarbha: Ganga Kavari, Paras Bbhrahma, and Banny. All of the plots have the Bollgard label. These mealy bugs have never been in our region on any plants before Bt cotton was introduced. I learned about the devastation of cotton in China two years ago. This alerted me to photograph and video the demonstration plots regularly. So, anybody can say with confidence now that the mealy bug has entered Vidarbha cotton fields through the Bt cottonseed.
Now when the cotton plants have died, the mealy bug is shifting to nearby plants. By mid June, farmers will go for the new cotton crop or plant another crop. But before that, the bug will have multiplied like any thing. It has shifted to Congress weed nearby, and many other weeds and plants in gardens.
At the same time I am studying the sudden death of plants. The new generation cotton seeds, called ‘Research Hybrid seeds'; are all male sterile. In short, they are terminator seeds; and proven by the high-level government committee in 1993. I have the report of it. The breeder then published an article advising farmers that they should not use the F2 seeds of such hybrids, as the plants coming out of them are 100 percent sterile. Your article, Killing Fields Near You ( ISIS News 7/8) confirmed this for me.
I am an organic farmer residing at Yavatmal in the state of Maharashtra. Our organisation, Vidarbha Organic Farmers Association, has been propagating organic farming since 1994. We have been helped a lot by Dr Vandana Shiva. She was the first person to tell us about about terminators. Right now, we are working for her organisation Navdanya.
Ram Kalaspurkar , organic farmer, Vidarbha Organic Farmers Association, Yavatmal, Maharashtra, India

Bt cotton plant infested with mealy bugs

Close-up of big mealy bug on Bt cotton plant

It CAN be done! Toward a greener future

2008-05-13T20:57:00.004-06:00

Norway island stores wind power for still days

by Nina LarsonTue May 13, 7:27 AM ET

How to keep the lights on when all is still and the local windmill won't budge? A small Norwegian island testing a way to store wind-generated energy for calm days may have found the answer.

The tiny, windswept island of Utsira, situated off Norway's southwestern coast, is home to what is said to be the world's first full-scale system for cleanly transforming surplus wind power into hydrogen.

Perched atop a 40-metre-high wind turbine on a perfectly windstill day, technician Inge Linghammer explains that at times like this or on days when the gales whipping the unsheltered island get too strong the windmill shuts down and stops pumping out power.

"You need to have back-up power when this happens," he says, nodding towards the motionless blades.

On a good day, the island's two wind turbines, planted on a small hill overlooking several red-painted wooden houses, produce more energy than the 210 people living here can use.

When they are down however, most of Utsira, which measures only six square kilometres, is furnished with electricity from the mainland.

But 10 households receive clean, wind-generated electricity regardless of the weather conditions, thanks to a pilot project launched here in July, 2004 making it possible to store wind power by transforming it into hydrogen.

Surplus wind-generated energy is passed through water and, using electrolysis, the hydrogen atoms are separated from the oxygen atoms that make up water molecules.

The hydrogen is then compressed and stored in a container that can hold enough hydrogen gas to cover the energy needs of the 10 households for two windless days.

"Utsira has more than enough wind power to be self-sustained ... but the problem arises on a day like today when there is not enough wind," explains Halgeir Oeya, who heads up the hydrogen technology unit at Norwegian energy giant StatoilHydro, which is running the project.

"This system allows us to deliver power with expected quality and reliability," he says, standing next to the large metal electrolyser box baking in the spring sun.

Combining renewable energy and hydrogen, he says, makes most sense in secluded areas like the numerous islands lining the European coast or in remote Australian communities, which until now have been heavily dependent on carbon dioxide-spewing diesel fuel provided by a constant flow of truck convoys.

Islands like Utsira have long been considered ideal laboratories for renewable energy due to their total dependence on outside energy supplies and their access to powerful wind energy.

Oeya boasts that the people participating in the Utsira test project have no restrictions on how they use power, switching on the lights, dishwashers, television sets and stereos without a thought to how the wind is blowing.

And amid growing alarm over greenhouse gas-promoted global warming, they can do so with a clean conscience, he says, pointing out that "the only emission is oxygen."

Producing and storing energy this way however is still, nearly four years after testing began, far more expensive than the hydraulic power produced on Norway's mainland.

StatoilHydro has no intention of building up the system to compete with large-scale energy production, but even making it competitive in the small, remote communities far off the grid that make up its target market remains years off.

"This is not a commercial project as it stands," Oeya acknowledges.

"We must have a bigger scale in order to compete ... and this will take a number of years," he says.

Utsira mayor Jarle Nilsen is nonetheless ecstatic about the system and its effects on his small island community.

"This is a fantastic project that has been good for Utsira," he says, pointing out that initial concerns about noise levels and birds getting caught in the turbines had been laid to rest.

"We haven't found a single dead bird," he says.

Most importantly, the system was helping nudge his Utsira towards its goal of zero emissions within the next decade and had become a major tourist attraction.

"The tourists go over to the lighthouse first, but then they go to look at our windmills. They want to see the world's first full scale wind and hydrogen project in action," he says proudly.

WOW!

2008-05-04T14:18:00.003-06:00

As a photographer I find it deeply satisfying to see some of the truly stupendous art, web pages, ads, and other uses of my photos. In many of the art photos, the original photo is all but unrecognizable in the finished product. This one in Devianart.com is just one example. Check it out. You can also check out some of my original photos on Morguefile.com (artist Puravida), and many other photo sites. The photos posted on Morguefile are available free of charge to any non-profit organization or person.

Spiral Spoken by ~Sparrow667 on deviant ART

Free Trade anyone?

2008-04-23T15:14:00.002-06:00

By David Sirota

April 22nd, 2008 - 4:45pm ET

General Electric's former CEO Jack Welch is one of the great economic royalists of the modern day. He is the guy who said the businessman's dream is to "have every plant you own on a barge" - so that the plant can move away anytime workers demand better wages, working conditions or environmental standards. So it is no surprise that Welch is spending his retirement years penning warmed-over press releases for the back page of Businessweek - the latest of which repackages the same tired arguments for NAFTA trade model that have drowned out every rational economic argument for the last two decades.

What's telling about the piece is how vapid it really is. In 594 words, we are given just three selective statistics that portray NAFTA as a net plus for domestic employment, wages and exports - despite the more macro statistics that show NAFTA has been a net job killer, driven down wages and exacerbated our trade deficits. The rest of the Welch press release is rhetoric about the wonders of free market ideology - ya know, the same free market ideology that created the financial crisis.

We could write this off as the silly ramblings of a past-his-prime CEO, except the propaganda goes from Jack Welch's screeds to George Bush's mouth. As the Associated Press reports, Bush used a pro-NAFTA conference with Mexico and Canada to reiterate his demand for Congress to pass the Colombia Free Trade Agreement. Here's the key comment from our President:

"It makes no sense to me to say that Colombian goods can come into our country duty-free, yet our goods can't go into Colombia duty-free,'' Bush said sternly. "And yet that's the case. An agreement with Colombia would level the playing field.''

The statement teems with Welch-ian ignorance, telling us that this MBA president has almost no concept of basic economic history. It makes perfect sense that American goods can't go into Colombia duty free. Such tariff protection is the way developing world countries (and that includes pre-industrial America) have always built themselves into modernized countries: They protect their infant industries so that those industries can become competitive. As Ha-Joon Chang shows in his book Bad Samaritans, this has been Economics 101 for most of modern history - until the present era, when corporations started buying trade policy like just another commodity.

The alternative was seen - not coincidentally - in NAFTA. Because that trade deal forced Mexico to stop protecting its agricultural industries, multinational agribusiness was able to wipe out indigenous farmers, causing economic unrest in Mexico, and a major increase in illegal immigration pressure at our southern border as out-of-work farmers headed north looking for jobs.

This isn't to say that all tariffs are a good thing - not even close. But the fact that an American president says he has no idea why a developing world country would protect its economy displays a stunning level of stupidity.

One thing that Bush is right about: It does make no sense that Colombian goods come into the United States duty free - especially when you consider that the Colombian government looks the other way when corporations partner with death squads to execute union organizers. In fact, "looks the other way" is putting it mildly. As the AP reports today, many high-ranking Colombian government officials are tied to the paramilitary death squads responsible for the oppression. That includes close allies to President Uribe like his own cousin.

Here's the deal: When we give the duty-free status to countries that allow corporations to engage in inhumane or unacceptable cost-cutting behavior (ie. killing union organizers, degrading the environment, enslaving workers, etc.), we are providing an economic incentive for businesses to engage in that behavior. Without any kind of social tariff, we are effectively telling corporations that it's AOK with us for them to pick up their operations in America and head to places like Colombia, where they can cut their labor costs by hiring hit men to kill off pesky union organizers that might get the workforce to demand better wages. And that kind of policy is not just immoral - it's self-destructive for our own interests. American workers cannot economically compete with workers who get shot for forming a union.

And that gets us back to what really drives our trade policy these days: Jack Welch's "barge" ideology. The goal of policies like NAFTA and the Colombian Free Trade Agreement are not to better nations' economies - it is to better the bottom line of corporate campaign contributors, regardless of whether that destroys nations' economies.

Check this Video Out

2008-04-22T17:42:00.002-06:00

A friend turned me on to this kid's videos. I don't know how old he is, but he's extremely clever, a great mimic, and handsome to boot. We'll be seeing more of him I'm sure!

Family Study Associates Pesticide Use With Parkinson's Risk

2008-03-30T02:02:00.000-06:00

Fri Mar 28, 11:46 PM ET

FRIDAY, March 28 (HealthDay News) -- Parkinson's disease has been linked to exposure to pesticides in a new study comparing people with the neurological disorder and their unaffected relatives.

The study, published online in the open-access journal BMC Neurology, found the strongest ties to the use of herbicides and insecticides, such as organochlorides and organophosphates. Drinking well water or living or working on a farm, two common experiences for pesticide exposures, did not appear to be associated with Parkinson's.

Many Parkinson's disease cases are thought to be due to an interaction between genetic and environmental factors. By studying related individuals who share environmental and genetic backgrounds, researchers said they could identify specific differences in exposures between individuals with and without the disease.

"Previous studies have shown that individuals with Parkinson's disease are over twice as likely to report being exposed to pesticides as unaffected individuals, but few studies have looked at this association in people from the same family or have assessed associations between specific classes of pesticides and Parkinson's disease," study author Dana Hancock said in a prepared statement.

Researchers from both Duke University Medical Center and the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine interviewed 319 Parkinson's patients and more than 200 of their relatives to get details about whether they ever were exposed to pesticides, lived or worked on a farm, or drank water from wells.

Parkinson's disease, which affects about 1 million people in the United States, is characterized by symptoms such as tremors and muscle rigidity. Several gene variations have been tagged as contributing to the disease, but these rare defects account for a small proportion of those affected by disorder.

While several other studies have supported pesticides as a risk factor for Parkinson's, "biological evidence is presently insufficient to conclude that pesticide exposure causes PD," Hancock said.

"Further investigation of these specific pesticides and others may lead to identification of pertinent biological pathways influencing PD development," he said.

More information

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has more about pesticide safety.

Little Guy strikes tiny blow on Monsanto

2008-03-26T20:01:00.001-06:00

Monsanto pays Percy Schmeiser

Saskatchewan farmer Percy Schmeiser spent 1998 to 2004 standing up to one of the most influential agricultural companies in the world: Monsanto. While it was Monsanto that took Schmesier to court on that occasion, the roles were reversed on Wednesday, March 19, 2008, when Monsanto found itself being taken to court by Schmeiser.

It was the first case between Monsanto and Schmeiser that led to the 2004 Supreme Court of Canada decision that ruled in favour of Monsanto. While the decision assured that regardless of contamination, a farmer cannot grow patented seeds, Schmeiser recognized that if the company is indeed the owner of the plant, then it should be liable for the damages that their property causes others.

There is no legal precedent in Canada that has determined who maintains the liability for damages caused by patented plants. Monsanto does however accept moral responsiblity for what are known as "volunteers" -- unwanted plants appearing on farmers' fields.

The company employs a program that offers to remove volunteer plants.

In October 2005, Schmeiser's farm was visited yet again by Monsanto, and again, in the form of its RoundUp Ready Canola. Schmeiser took advantage of the company's removal program, but discovered that it would only remove the plants if he signed a release form that contained a confidentiality clause, which he disapproved of. What followed led to an out-of-court settlement on March 19, 2008, and Monsanto paid Schmeiser the $660 it cost him to have the plants removed.

LBy Jon Steinman
Published: March 21, 2008
TheTyee.ca

Citizens’ group wants a law to ban genetically engineered crops.

2008-03-26T18:45:00.000-06:00

Printed from the Monterey County Weekly website: http://www.montereycountyweekly.com/archives/2008/2008-Mar-06/20-citizens-group-wants-a-law-to-ban-genetically-engineered-crops
Ag Advisory Committee considers GMOs
Citizens’ group wants a law to ban genetically engineered crops.
Posted March 06, 2008

By Zachary Stahl
Leading the Charge
Lorna Moffat (front) wants a countywide ban on genetically modified crops.

Several years ago seed giant Monsanto offered Salinas Valley growers a genetic solution to their weed problem with spring mix. Monsanto was developing a lettuce variety resistant to Roundup, the company’s leading herbicide. Farmers could have killed weeds with Roundup without harming the genetically engineered spring mix. But the industry shied away.

“It was dropped very quickly,” says Jim Manassero, chairman of the Monterey County Agricultural Advisory Committee. “Number one, the industry didn’t want it.” Manassero says a state law would have had to change to allow the vegetables to be harvested after being doused with Roundup. Plus, consumers would have balked at the prospect.

“It becomes very easy for that type of science to get blown out of proportion by the media and to make it all lettuce is poisoned or could be,” Manassero says.

The genetically modified seeds never reached the valley floor. While Monsanto has taken over the corn and soybean seed market, Monterey County ag officials maintain that no genetically engineered crops have been grown in the county. Some local organic farmers and environmentalists want to keep it this way.

On Feb. 28 a group of small farmers and Monterey Peninsula residents asked the Agricultural Advisory Committee to recommend a county ban on GE crops. Lorna Moffat, who is spearheading the effort, proposed the moratorium in response to a November speech by Dr. Henry Daniell of the University of Florida about producing insulin from genetically modified lettuce.

Moffat told the committee that federal agencies do a poor job monitoring GE crops, and no long-term studies have been done to monitor their health impacts. “Few regulations to protect public health and our environment are in place,” Moffat said, warning that GE crops could cross-pollinate other produce.

Alex Sancen is an organic farmer who grows on less than five acres at the Agricultural & Land-Based Training Association outside Salinas. Sancen told the committee that his farmers market customers are concerned about GE crops tainting their produce. “They are speaking of buying vegetables from Santa Cruz County if you guys don’t do anything,” Sancen said.

Sancen and dozens of other ALBA farmers want the Monterey County Board of Supervisors to adopt an ordinance similar to one that exists in Santa Cruz County. In 2006 Santa Cruz supervisors banned growing genetically engineered crops. The county code makes exemptions for GE pharmaceuticals grown in state or federally licensed, indoor labs.

Santa Cruz is the most recent California county to prohibit GM crops. In 2004, Mendocino County became the first in the U.S. to ban GMOs, followed by Trinity and Marin counties. While a handful of liberal, coastal counties have outlawed the crops, anti-GMO ballot initiatives in Butte, Humboldt, San Luis Obispo and Sonoma counties have failed at the polls.

In addition, at least 12 counties, mostly in the conservative and agriculturally-rich Central Valley, have passed resolutions supporting ag biotechnology.

The only related thing that Monterey County has on the books is a code regulating the experimental release of GE microorganisms. The county crafted the code in the ‘70s in response to a bacteria intended to prevent frost on strawberries, says Bob Roach, assistant agricultural commissioner.

Pesticide-resistant crops, GE plants and pharmaceuticals fall under the purview of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Agriculture and Food and Drug Administration, respectively, Roach says. County ordinances “are largely symbolic because no one really wanted to grow these crops in these counties,” he adds.

The same goes for Monterey County. “I don’t think they are on our door step,” Roach says. “I don’t think they are even coming up the walk yet.”

But Salinas Mayor Dennis Donohue and some ag officials want to leave the door open for GE research. Donohue hopes to usher in higher-paying jobs by attracting pharmaceutical, biotechnology and alternative energy firms. He says he will oppose any regulations restricting biotechnology. “The reality is our scientists want to be free to do business,” he says.

Donohue says just because Daniell spoke in Salinas about insulin-producing lettuce doesn’t mean that research is moving forward. “This is all speculative,” he says. “He gave a speech. Nobody is making plans. Nobody is advocating GMO crops.”

Manassero says the Ag Advisory Committee will schedule a presentation from a UC Davis professor about the benefits of genetic engineering. The committee will then recommend a course of action to county supervisors. But it’s clear the committee chairman doesn’t think a ban is necessary.

“Why pass an ordinance that would close a potential scientific and high-tech solution to a problem that we don’t know about yet?” Manassero asks.

Manassero dismisses the concerns of GMO opponents. Since vegetables are harvested when they are immature, he says they don’t pollinate. Therefore, Manassero says, the crops wouldn’t cross-pollinate. As for organic farmers losing business, Manassero calls it a “scare tactic that is being used to push the GMO ordinance in Monterey County.”

If Monterey County sides with GE crops, Sancen says it could hurt the county’s farming reputation. Sancen points to the drawbacks of GE crops, including increased food allergies, damage to beneficial insects and the creation of “superweeds.” “It’s not just for small farmers,” he says. “It’s for the whole ag industry.”

Indeed, fruit and vegetable crops are one of the last stands in an ag industry increasingly dominated by GE crops. Since their introduction in 1996 GE crops have ballooned to make up more than 80 percent of soybean production and more than 60 percent of cotton acreage. Sancen calls on the county to rein in GMOs before they spread locally. “We have to regulate this,” he says.

MONSTER MONSANTO GROWS MEANER

2008-03-26T18:37:00.001-06:00

MONSANTO SEEKS TO BAN THE TRUTH

Ben & Jerry's Homemade Holdings Inc. is now owned by a conglomerate, but the company's luscious ice cream still is made from milk that contains no synthetic growth hormones in it – a fact the company proudly advertises right on its cartons. And that really POs Monsanto.

Monsanto is not in the ice-cream business, but it is in the deadly serious business of trying to ice anyone who disses the synthetic hormone that it manufactures. Some dairy farmers inject their cows with Monsanto's recombinant bovine growth hormone product, which forces the animals to give more milk. It isn't good for the cows, and there are unanswered questions about its impact on human health, so many consumers don't want milk products with this stuff in it, preferring not to have their families used as guinea pigs for corporate profit.

Thus, Monsanto has waged a long campaign to keep consumers from knowing, opposing efforts to label any dairy products as being free from the synthetic hormone. Last year, however, Monsanto lost its effort to get the Food and Drug Administration to ban such labels. But now there's a new group standing against consumer choice on this issue. It's called American Farmers for the Advancement and Conservation of Technology.

Sounds very science-y, doesn't it? It isn't; it's a lobbying front that's going state to state, trying to get legislatures to prevent companies like Ben & Jerry's from advertising that their goods contain none of the synthetic stuff. Guess who's behind this outfit? Right: It's funded by Monsanto.

You'd think that any effort to ban companies from making a true statement on their labels would be laughed out of any legislature, but Monsanto is determined to kill the consumer's right to know, already having pushed for bills and regulations in Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. To keep informed about where Monsanto's attack squad will strike next, contact www.organicconsumers.org.

Chi's comment: Think twice. Monsanto isn't nice.

Brazillian Demonstrators Destroy Monsanto Experiments

2008-03-26T18:25:00.002-06:00

Woman peasants destroy Monsanto's transgenic experiments in Brazil
Some 300 Brazilian women dedicated to fighting peasants' rights on Friday took over a plantation of U.S.-headquartered Monsanto Company, and destroyed part of the company's materials for experiments on transgenic biotechnology.

The women belonging to the social movement Via Campesina were protesting against the National Bio-security Council's authorization for the commercialization of two types of transgenic corn, announced on Feb. 12.

According to Monsanto, the one-and-half-hour protest destroyed the specimens of transgenic corn planted in the municipality of Santa Cruz das Palmeiras, 244 km away from the capital city of Sao Paulo. In the 31-hectare plantation, transgenic soybeans and cotton are also cultivated.

In a press statement, the world's leading producer of herbicides condemned "vehemently illegal acts like that," stressing that the protest did not even respect "judicial decisions."

"The company believes that disagreements either ideological or not "must be expressed by means of legal ways, and not by means of attacks on individuals and on private property," Monsanto stressed.

The company added that the protesters left the farm before the police arrived.

Source: Xinhua

My Thoughts: IS MONSANTO A MONSTER? Monsanto says people should always obey the law even when the laws are influenced dramatically by Monsanto!! The more I read about Monsanto, the more I'm feeling as if I'm reading one of those thrillers in which a ruthless set of people working under the guise of a big business starts taking over the world with a snowball effect until all humanity are slaves to them. Is this our future folks?

Your Right to Know

2008-03-15T21:55:00.001-06:00

Centre Daily Times (State College, PA)

March 12, 2008
Section: COMMENTARY
Page: 8

OUR VIEW<>
FROM CDT EDITORIAL STAFF

Monsanto, its customers and its academic spokespeople, bless them, don't want us poor, illiterate consumers -- and again, don't you love being characterized by what you use up and throw out? -- to be confused by all those fancy, scientific words on food labels. You know the ones. Synthetic hormones. Genetically altered. Words and phrases like that. Unnecessary information, and misleading besides. After all, Monsanto and its official government arm, the Food and Drug Administration, have already determined that what these unnecessary and misleading words refer to are completely safe.

Honest. What you don't know, can't hurt you. Trust them. Or, if you insist on knowing how your food was produced -- whether the cows that gave your milk were injected with (perfectly safe, according to the FDA) hormones that some scientists aren't quite certain about, or the cereal you pour it over was made with Roundup-Ready, structurally modified grain -- you will be vilified. Many people, in fact, would like that information. But all that mumbo-jumbo on milk-carton labels just confuses people, our intellectual and agri-corporate superiors inform us. They'll tell us what we need to know. The artificial hormone marketed and sold by Monsanto improves milk production -- about a gallon per day per cow. "We know it's a technology that makes us money and is safe for our cows," a Kansas dairy farmer and co-chairman of American Farmers for the Advancement and Conservation of Technology, said. That independent, "grass-roots" group, incidentally, was organized in part by Monsanto and a Colorado consultant who lists the agribusiness giant as a client, as a recent New York Times report noted. Even the grass and its roots, it appears, are structurally modified. If dairy farmers want to use the bovine growth hormone, that's fine. It's not illegal. Heck, the FDA says it is entirely safe. But if people don't want to drink milk from injected cows, even if they have to pay more for it, that's fine, too. In fact, it's more than fine. It is their fundamental right to know what it is they are putting into their bodies and those of their children. The same with herbicide-resistant grain or cloned meat. To say that it is too confusing to include "produced without synthetic hormones" or "natural" or "organic" on labels or that such labeling somehow implies that hormone-free is better ... And to say that consumers -- that lovely term again -- can't be trusted to tell the difference and determine for themselves what they want ... Well, that artificially alters the structure of something else that many still consider to be important. The truth.

More "News for Nerds"

2008-03-13T17:06:00.004-06:00

Paul Krugman's 1978 Theory of Interstellar Trade

(Posted by kdawson on Wednesday March 12, @02:52AM
from the world's-pre-eminent-stand-up-economist dept.
It's funny. Laugh. Space)

jerryasher recommends Paul Krugman's blog at the NYTimes, where he introduces a paper he wrote, The Theory of Interstellar Trade, with tongue very much in cheek. Some packrat academician was kind enough to send him a scan, because "back then academics did their work with typewriters, abacuses, and stone axes." Abstract: This paper extends interplanetary trade theory to an interstellar setting. It is chiefly concerned with the following question: how should interest rates on goods in transit be computed when the goods travel at close to the speed of light? This is a problem because the time taken in transit will appear less to an observer traveling with the goods than to a stationary observer. A solution is derived from economic theory, and two useless but true theorems are proved... This paper, then, is a serious analysis of a ridiculous subject, which is of course the opposite of what is usual in economics."

PATENT REFORM: WHAT, WHY?

2008-03-10T14:28:00.001-06:00

Patent reform is a big issue in communications, computer, and software industries as well as genetic engineering. But what exactly is the purpose of a patent? Why is there a patent law and exactly how should it be changed to meet the challenges posed by ever-newer technologis undreamed of when the original patent laws were written?

clipped from news.yahoo.com

The Patent Reform Act would overhaul the U.S. patent system. Among other things, it would create a new way to challenge patents after they've been granted, and it would allow courts to change the way they assess damages in patent-infringement cases. Currently, courts generally consider the value of the entire product when a small piece of the product infringes a patent. The legislation would allow courts to base damages only on the value of the infringing piece.

Many large tech vendors, including BSA members Microsoft, Symantec and Apple, say it's too easy for patent holders to claim that a small piece of a tech product infringes a patent and to collect huge court awards. But some small tech vendors, independent inventors and pharmaceutical companies have opposed the Patent Reform Act, saying it would water down the value of patents and give small companies fewer protections against large companies that steal their ideas.

Important Notice

2008-03-09T22:18:00.003-06:00

I recently received the following message on my computer. What do you think it means?

A Golf Story

2008-03-07T10:59:00.000-06:00

Golf accident

Two women were playing golf. One teed off and watched in horror as
her ball headed directly toward a foursome of men playing the next
hole. The ball hit one of the men. He immediately clasped his hands
together at his groin, fell to the ground and proceeded to roll
around in agony.

The woman rushed down to the man, and immediately began to
apologize.

'Please allow me to help. I'm a Physical Therapist and I know I could
relieve your pain if you'd allow me,'she told him.

'Oh, no, I'll be all right. I'll be fine in a few minutes,' the man
replied.

He was in obvious agony, lying in the fetal position, still clasping
his hands together at his groin.

At her persistence, however, he finally allowed her to help.

She gently took his hands away and laid them to the side, loosened his
pants and put her hands inside.

She administered tender and artful massage for several long moments and
asked, 'How does that feel'?

He replied:

'It feels great, but I still think my thumb's broken.'

Oops!

2008-03-05T18:20:00.001-06:00

Give us your poor, your tired, your genetic modification experiments
Salon.com Wed, 05 Mar 2008 10:15 AM PST
A French biotechnology company moves its research to the U.S., citing domestic issues. As in, France hates Monsanto.

NIMBY

2008-03-05T18:18:00.001-06:00

Environment News Service Fri, 29 Feb 2008 3:31 PM PST
The Pharmacia Corporation, a successor to the Monsanto Company, which manufactured chemicals at the site, and Bayer CropScience Inc., a successor to Stauffer Chemical Company, which manufactured glue products at the site, must address soil, sediment, groundwater and surface water contamination at the site.

BREAKING NEWS

2008-03-05T17:35:00.000-06:00

Diebold Leaks Election Results!

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/diebold_accidentally_leaks

Stay tuned.

Monsanto and Glyphosate

2008-03-03T15:10:00.002-06:00

Monsanto no longer retains its patent on Round-up generically known as Glyphosate. But it still controls Glyphosate! Why be concerned?

Glyphosate has been shown to cause birds to lay eggs with soft shells. This was a major problem with DDT as clearly shown to the world in Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring"! DDT was finally banned when the public outcry showed it to be a political hot potato. Of course, once DDT became a public issue, scientific studies showed it to be harmful to humans as well.

FarmOnline
Stock & Land Thu, 28 Feb 2008 3:36 PM PST
For a little more than a year, on a global basis the demand for glyphosate has been going up faster than the supply. "We anticipated this, so it's not a situation where we were caught off guard," says Jim Zimmer, vice president of Monsanto's United States business.

From Wikipedia:

Glyphosate (N-(phosphonomethyl) glycine is a non-selective systemic herbicide, absorbed through the leaves, used to kill weeds, especially perennials. Some crops have been genetically engineered to be resistant to it. Glyphosate was first sold by Monsanto under the tradename Roundup, but is no longer under patent.

IF THERE IS NO PUBLIC OUTCRY, WHY BOTHER?

2008-02-28T21:55:00.003-06:00

I have my doubts!

Monsanto backs Utah's proposal on milk labels

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

02/27/2008

SALT LAKE CITY — Utah officials want to control the labels on milk cartons.

Milk processors would be able to promote their product as being free of artificial hormones. But only if they also say there's no significant difference when compared to milk from cows that are treated with growth hormones.

The proposal ran into some opposition during a public hearing Tuesday.

The Utah Food Industry Association says the federal government should regulate labels, not states. The Dairy Foods Association, based in Washington, D.C., says there's no public outcry for label restrictions.

The maker of the artificial hormone, Creve Coeur-based Monsanto Co., says the Utah rule is a good idea.

Nowhere To Hide

2008-02-28T00:01:00.001-06:00

clipped from news.yahoo.com

Study: Contaminent levels high in parks

By MATTHEW BROWN, Associated Press Writer

Wed Feb 27, 5:41 PM ET

The substances detected ranged from mercury produced by power plants and industrial chemicals such as PCBs to the banned insecticides dieldrin and DDT. Those can cause health problems in humans including nervous system damage, dampened immune system responses and lowered reproductive success.

Contaminants that accumulated in fish exceeded human consumption thresholds at the eight parks that researchers focussed on most: Sequoia and Kings Canyon, Mount Rainier, Olympic, Glacier, Rocky Mountain, Gates of the Arctic and Denali national parks and Alaska's Noatak National Preserve.

A parks advocacy group called the federal report "a wake-up call" that should mobilize Congress to take a tougher stance on air pollution.

The study also included researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Forest Service.

BUSH AGAIN PROVES HIS TIES TO BIG OIL

2008-02-27T23:49:00.001-06:00

Contact your senators and representatives to get this bill passed by a large enough margin to over-ride a veto from Petroleums's biggest fan.

clipped from news.yahoo.com

Veto threat looms over oil taxes bill

By H. JOSEF HEBERT, Associated Press Writer

Tue Feb 26, 5:57 PM ET

If Congress passes legislation to roll back nearly $18 billion in tax breaks for large oil companies, advisers to President Bush will recommend a veto, the White House said Tuesday.

The revenues from oil companies would be used to pay for tax incentives for wind, solar and other renewable energy sources including for ethanol produced from feedstock other than corn, and tax breaks for energy efficiency programs.

While the oil companies have lobbied vigorously against the legislation, other energy companies, including the solar and wind energy industries, have campaigned for it on Capitol Hill.

The bill also would extend for two years energy efficiency tax breaks for homeowners, including a $300 consumer tax credit linked to energy efficiency improvements.

A FREE PRESS AND A FREE INTERNET

2008-02-27T22:11:00.004-06:00

Allegations Fly in FCC Hearing Aftermath
From Associated Press, February 26, 2008
By Mark Jewell

The organizer of a federal hearing at Harvard Law School on Comcast Corp.’s treatment of subscriber Internet traffic on Wednesday said “seat-warmers” apparently hired by the company prevented other attendees from getting in.

Comcast has acknowledged that it hired an unspecified number of people to fill seats, but said the seat-warmers gave up their spots when Boston area Comcast employees who were advised about the hearing arrived.

But Catherine Bracy, the administrative manager at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, said most of the three dozen seat-warmers who arrived hours before the Federal Communications Commission hearing’s start on Monday remained during the event’s opening hours, as many other members of the public were turned away.

Bracy said she saw a couple of the hired people dozing in the front row during opening remarks.

“I think it’s disingenuous to say they were holding spots for Comcast employees,” Bracy told The Associated Press, a day after advocacy groups that filed an FCC complaint over Comcast’s network management accused the firm of trying to stifle debate at the hearing.

Bracy said when she arrived at 7:15 a.m. as doors opened for the 11 a.m. hearing, none of the 35 to 40 people waiting to get in appeared to know what the hearing’s subject matter would be.

“No employees came in to take those seats when the event started,” Bracy said.

Comcast spokeswoman Sena Fitzmaurice said it hired seat-holders only after an advocacy group called Free Press urged its backers to attend.

“For the past week, the Free Press has engaged in a much more extensive campaign to lobby people to attend the hearing on its behalf,” Philadelphia-based Comcast said in a statement.

Fitzmaurice declined to comment further Wednesday in response to Bracy’s statements.

The event featured hearty applause — some in response to comments from a Comcast executive who testified before the FCC’s five commissioners, and some in response to Comcast critics’ testimony.

The practice of hiring people to fill seats in advance of public hearings isn’t unknown in Congress and other forums, but Comcast critics said this case was unique.

“First, Comcast was caught blocking the Internet. Now it has been caught blocking the public from the debate,” said Timothy Karr, director of an advocacy campaign backed by a coalition including Free Press. “The only people cheering Comcast are those paid to do so.”

FCC spokesman Robert Kenny declined to comment.

The hearing came in response to complaints before the FCC that Comcast, the nation’s largest cable company, hampered file-sharing traffic on its cable-modem service. The company has repeatedly said that its traffic management practices are necessary to keep other Internet traffic, like Web content, flowing smoothly.

During the hearing, FCC commissioners signaled that they were looking for greater openness from Internet providers about their traffic management practices, and were ready to step in to enforce the agency’s “open Internet” policies.

In addition to serving as the event host, Harvard’s Berkman Center has another tie to the controversy. A codirector at the center, Charles Nesson, is among the parties that signed a petition along with Free Press asking the FCC to find that such practices violate agency policies.

This article is from Associated Press. If you found it informative and valuable, we strongly encourage you to visit their Web site and register an account, if necessary, to view all their articles on the Web. Support quality journalism.
This article is copyrighted material, the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Note from Chi: # Tell the FCC to stop Comcast Web blocking.
# Urge your representative to support the "Internet Freedom Preservation Act."
# Tell your friends to take action at SavetheInternet.com.

No More Windshield Wipers?

2008-02-25T14:27:00.004-06:00

From Slashdot.com comes yet another link to a story about using nanotechnology to keep windshields clean. This comes during an online debate I have been having with an engineer friend about the possible uses of rain drop power with both nanotechnology and shape recalling deformable substrates that could produce tiny amounts of electric current with each deformation. Hmmm!

Nanotechnology-Powered Wiper-Less Windshield
Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday February 22, @09:28PM
from the plenty-of-room-at-the-bottom dept.
Technology Science
fab writes "Italian car designer Leonardo Fioravanti (who worked for Pininfarina for a number of years) has developed a car prototype without windshield wipers. This amazing technological feat is made possible thanks to the use of 4 layers of glass modified using nanotechnology. The first layer filters the sun and repels the water. The second layer, using 'nano-dust' is able to push dirt to the side. The third layer acts as a sensor that activates the second layer when it detects dirt, while the fourth layer is a conductor of electricity to power this complex mechanism. I haven't been able to find an English article, but there is always a google powered translation of the Italian article."

2008-02-24T16:59:00.000-06:00

Know your Congress: Fight Back

2008-02-24T11:45:00.005-06:00

Check out this link to find out which of your senators and representatives are protecting the future or are more interested in short-term profits for themselves! Then vote accordingly.

MONSANTO WANTS TO CONTROL THE SEEDS

2008-02-20T18:12:00.002-06:00

On February 20th, 2008, Monsanto announced that it was establishing a global seed treatment platform. The global seed treatment platform is a natural complement to the company’s seed strategy as well as our investments in breeding and biotechnology. In line with this announcement, Monsanto announced that it is focused on identifying new proprietary seed-based technologies that can be launched in parallel with our soybean, corn and cotton platforms.

In 2009, Monsanto plans to treat all Roundup Ready 2 Yield soybeans with a proprietary treatment. Today less than 25 percent of soybean seeds sold in the United States are treated.
In 2010, we plan to have a proprietary seed treatment for the launch of our SmartStax corn product.
In 2011, Monsanto plans to have a proprietary seed treatment solution for our Deltapine cotton genetics portfolio.

To support the development of these proprietary seed treatments, the company is currently working to negotiate and finalize a number of licensing and supply agreements. Monsanto announced that it has already formed a number of strategic alliances including separate agreements with Becker Underwood and Plant Health Care Inc. The agreement between Monsanto and Becker Underwood is focused on evaluating a biological seed treatment aimed at helping soybeans improve both their nitrogen fixation ability and overall plant performance. Monsanto is also working with Plant Health Care Inc. to develop and commercialize a novel seed-based solution for nematodes, a plant parasite that can severely limit crop yields around the world in crops such as corn, soybeans, cotton and vegetables.

The global seed treatment industry generates annual sales of greater than $1.5 billion, with almost $900 million in the crops key to Monsanto’s business. Currently, Monsanto treats more than 1 billion pounds of seed each year and sees the potential to expand treatment to new crops and new geographies.

Note from Chi: Notice the use of PROPRIETARY SEED BASED TECHNOLOGIES. What this means is that the farmer has to use seeds treated by Monsanto's patented methodology in order to remain competitive - in the short term. Over the longer term (three or more years) the farmers will be totally dependent on these seeds. Doesn't this ring anyone's alarm bells?

DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION AND THE INTERNET

2008-02-20T13:13:00.002-06:00

Internet Users worldwide are becoming more and more concerned about their rights to read and to publish in the digital press. Censorship at it's worst can be seen here.

WEIRD AND WONDERFUL WORLD OF CHI

The Pineapple Problem

Gratuitous Violence

snopes.com: YouTube/Facebook Virus

Relative Values

Study Places Costa Rica Among The Largest Consumer of Pesticides In The World

A Time for Change

Some links regarding Monsanto that YOU should check out.

Consumers have right to choose

Hidden Byproduct: Tons of Molten Slag From Making Herbicide

Hidden Byproduct: Tons of Molten Slag From Making Herbicide

Monsanto says Erie farmers didn't violate seed agreement

Insider Trading Found Prior to DE Stock Price Drop - Technology News - redOrbit

Greenpeace attacks Canberra GM wheat it says is for secret human trials, links Monsanto

Intereresting Hacktivism?

Monsanto Under Investigation - Again!

Ban on GM crops' field trials in Karnataka demanded | Calcutta News.Net

www.outlookindia.com | A Dark Lining To The Shine

Getting Older. Hope I'm getting wiser, too.

LEADERSHIP WISDOM

Three Monsanto Genuity Corn Traits Receive Mexican Import Approval - Yahoo! Finance

The Seed Industry's Scary Consolidation - GOOD Blog - GOOD

The Seed Industry's Scary Consolidation - GOOD Blog - GOOD

The Seed Industry's Scary Consolidation - GOOD Blog - GOOD

The Seed Industry's Scary Consolidation - GOOD Blog - GOOD

All you wanted to know about Bt brinjal : Rediff.com Business

http://yankton.net/articles/2010/02/01/neighbors/doc4b626d123a6a0019137831.txt

Roundup Ready Generics Present New Opportunities And Maybe New Obstacles

By Daryll Ray

http://www.wenatcheeworld.com/news/2010/jan/09/monsanto-control-could-lead-to-price-increases/

Monsanto control could lead to price increases for consumers

Comments

klynn (Krista Herling) says...

Monsanto guilty in 'false ad' row

World's Richest People: Asia Poised to Pass U.S.

GM CROPS - DEFIANCE AND CAVE IN: GERMANY, NIGERIA

ANOTHER DISSENTING VOICE!

Recreational Poverty

Bankrupting Family Farms for Fun and Profit

Monsanto Tries Secrecy

Parallel Evolution

Monsanto and Secrecy

Et Tu, Obama?

CONSPIRACY THEORY: EPA, MONSANTO,AND THE LOSS OF HONEY BEES

Monster-to Corp. Sqeaks by Environmental Laws

IMPORTANT FILM RE. YOUR FUTURE

"Matrix" on Windows

OBAMA WINS!

Old TV and New Ideas

Up Close and Spineless

Science Group: Biotech Regs Could Allow Drugs In Food

Making Sense

Online Exclusive - Do you know what you're eating? - Features

The "Free" Press

SKY ALERT! TUESDAY SPECTACLE

Perseid meteor shower set to dazzle

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Weblinks

More Monsanto Tidbits

Monsanto the Monster Being Monitored

The World According to Monsanto

Received in an Email

WEIRD AND WONDERFUL WORLD OF CHI: Anthrax Lies and Press/Government Complicity

Anthrax Lies and Press/Government Complicity

Capitol Crimes

EXTINCTION 100 TIMES MORE LIKELY NOW

Free Will?

Congress Considering Impeaching Bush

Bomb Iran? What's to Stop Us?

The “Iranian Threat”

However much the same warnings are called for now with respect to Iran, there is even less prospect that any contrarians could puncture and break through what former White House spokesman Scott McClellan calls the president’s “bubble.”

Cheney’s Brainchild

Attacking Iran is Vice President Dick Cheney’s brainchild, if that is the correct word.

Oye! Veh!

Could nuclear warheads go off 'like popcorn'?

Web Links

Pain KILLERS!

Mind Games

In Your Guts You Know He's Nuts

Doodles Deluxe