Of Interest - from Strange Maps

Federal Lands in the US

The United States government has direct ownership of almost 650 million acres of land (2.63 million square kilometers) - nearly 30% of its total territory. These federal lands are used as military bases or testing grounds, nature parks and reserves and indian reservations, or are leased to the private sector for commercial exploitation (e.g. forestry, mining, agriculture). They are managed by different administrations, such as the Bureau of Land Management, the US Forest Service, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Park Service, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the US Department of Defense, the US Army Corps of Engineers, the US Bureau of Reclamation or the Tennessee Valley Authority.

This map details the percentage of state territory owned by the federal government. The top 10 list of states with the highest percentage of federally owned land looks like this:

1. Nevada 84.5%
2. Alaska 69.1%
3. Utah 57.4%
4. Oregon 53.1%
5. Idaho 50.2%
6. Arizona 48.1%
7. California 45.3%
8. Wyoming 42.3%
9. New Mexico 41.8%
10. Colorado 36.6%

Notable is that all these states are in the West (except Alaska, which strictly speaking is also a western state, albeit northwestern). Also notable is the contrast between the highest and the lowest percentages of federal land ownership. The US government owns a whopping 84.5% of Nevada, but only a puny 0.4% of Rhode Island and Connecticut. The lowest-percentage states are mainly in the East, but some are also in the Midwest and in the South:

1. Connecticut 0.4%
2. Rhode Island 0.4%
3. Iowa 0.8%
4. New York 0.8%
5. Maine 1.1%
6. Kansas 1.2%
7. Nebraska 1.4%
8. Alabama 1.6%
9. Ohio 1.7%
10. Illinois 1.8%

Even the 10^th place is still below the two percent mark. One territory is not specified on the map: Washington D.C. It could be argued that this is the only main administrative division of US territory to be fully owned by the federal government. It could, but that would be wrong - and upsetting to those private citizens who own part of the nation’s capital in the form of their real estate. It would be more correct to state that the District of Columbia by default falls under the direct tutelage of the Federal Government.

Many thanks to Jonathan Leblang and Adam Hahn for signaling this map, which appeared as an illustration to ‘Can the West Lead Us To A Better Place?‘, an article in Stanford Magazine, a periodical for and about alumni from that university.

The Boss "This Land is your Land"

June 24, 2008

The Corporate Grip on Food Tightens

They've Got the World by the Belly

By P. SAINATH

When you’re down to distributing fertilizer from a police station, you have a problem. It’s what they did in Hingoli, here in the Indian state of in Maharashtra. That was a week ago, but the police are still, in a sense, involved in its distribution there and elsewhere. In Hingoli itself, there are lots of policemen controlling the queues outside dealers’ outlets. The dealers won’t open up otherwise. Thanks to the police, Hingoli’s farmers got some fertilizer. Sort of gives a whole new meaning to the acronym PDS. Police Distribution System.

In Nanded, cops wielding riot sticks charged angry farmers demanding fertilizer needed urgently with the rains setting in. In Akola, there is heavy police security precautions for the same reasons. More than one Agriculture Officer has fled his workplace to escape mobs.

Link

June 23, 2008

Biotech's Assault on Mexico

Killing Farmers with Killer Seed

By JOHN ROSS

As the global food crisis escalates, Big Biotech (Monsanto, Novartis, Syngenta, Dupont-Pioneer, Dow et al) are capitalizing on the desperation of the hungry at runaway prices and rapidly diminishing reserves as a wedge to foist genetically modified (GMO) seeds on a reluctant Third World.

Latin America is a prime marketing target for Big Biotech's little darlings, often tagged "semillas asasinas" or "killer seeds" for their devastating impacts on local food stocks. Now the killer GMOs are suspected of literally provoking murder most foul.

Link

Leaving Behind the Trucker Hat

By ALLEN SALKIN

Tivoli, N.Y.

THEIR Carhartts are no longer ironic. Now they have real dirt on them.

Until three years ago, Benjamin Shute was living in Williamsburg, where he kept Brooklyn Lager in his refrigerator and played darts in a league.

Raised on the Upper East Side by a father who is a foundation executive and a mother who writes about criminal justice, Mr. Shute graduated from Amherst and worked for an antihunger charity. But something nagged at him. To learn about food production, he had volunteered at a farm in Massachusetts. He liked the dirt, the work and the coaxing of land long fallow into producing eggplant and garlic.

Link

An Immodest Proposal: Sink your teeth into this….
By Jason Miller
Let’s face it, my fellow freedom and burger loving Americans. It is becoming painfully obvious that our non-negotiable American Way of Life is increasingly under attack. Yet while our meat consumption may be a wedge issue our foes are using against us, it can also be our salvation.

We are facing swarms of terrorists in the Animal Liberation Front, mobs of fanatical extremists at PETA, and hordes of Nazi-like, in-your-face vegans and vegetarians. Like deranged street prophets, they spout all kinds of nonsense about speciesism, the suffering of sentient beings, animal rights, compassion for livestock in factory farms, and other deluded ramblings.

Though we recognize their ridiculous utterances, beliefs, and acts to be those of mentally unbalanced losers who need a ridiculous cause in their miserable lives to prevent them doing the world a favor by committing suicide, how long can we afford to ignore these violent and dangerous individuals? Their numbers are growing way too rapidly for my comfort.

LINK TO CON.

Hello All!

Well I am off the computer grid for the next ten days starting tomorrow! Look for Kadira to post a few, and besides that stay cool!

Peace.

Monsanto Company Announces Agreement to Acquire Semillas Cristiani Burkard, the Leading Central American Corn Seed Company

Acquisition expected to expand Monsanto's hybrid corn portfolio in Central America enabling it to deliver dependable, high-yielding seeds to farmers. ST. LOUIS, June 19

ST. LOUIS, June 19 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Monsanto Company (NYSE: MON)
has agreed to acquire Marmot, S.A., which operates Semillas Cristiani Burkard
(SCB), a privately-held seed company headquartered in Guatemala City,
Guatemala. Once completed, the acquisition will build on Monsanto's corn
business leadership and enable it to offer farmers in Central American
countries broader access to corn seed varieties. The transaction will be
completed as soon as practical. Additional terms of the agreement were not
disclosed.

LINK TO CON.

I Freed Millions From Barbarism, Says President With No Regrets
In an exclusive and wide-ranging interview with Ned Temko, Bush defends his legacy, issues a stern warning to Iran ... and reveals his plans for a freedom institute devoted to 'universal values'
By Ned Temko

For a political leader who has rivalled Gordon Brown's vertiginous nosedive in the opinion polls in the past year, president George W Bush looked remarkably untroubled by self-doubt as he crossed Europe last week.

The focus back home has shifted to the battle between Barack Obama and John McCain to succeed him. But Bush, on his last European tour as American President, is determined to prosecute his foreign policy agenda for his final seven months in the White House. Dealing aggressively with Iran, and its continuing nuclear aspirations, is top of the list. Stabilising and rebuilding Iraq, staying the course in Afghanistan and building a 'unity' alliance with key European leaders to achieve these goals are the other themes of the farewell trip.

At street level, the president's visit to Slovenia, Germany, Italy, France and now Britain has sometimes had an almost surreal quality. It is not just the politicians and pundits who seem to have begun shifting their gaze to a post-Bush era. Despite a small scattering of demonstrations, with a further protest expected in London, there has been little of the fire and fury that greeted him at the height of the controversy over the Iraq invasion.

LINK TO CON.

Talking food with Barack Obama
by Ari LeVaux
Food and agriculture issues might not make the headlines very often in a presidential race, but they affect everything from health to the economy. That’s why I’ve been trying for weeks to reach the three remaining presidential candidates for some comments on food and agriculture policy. I finally made some headway with the Obama campaign, which invited me to e-mail some questions to the senator. Below is our exchange.

Flash: You voted for the Farm Bill, despite the enormous subsidies it provides to wealthy farmers. Why?

Obama: The Farm Bill has many positive provisions, in particular, an increase in federal funding for the development of renewable fuels, which will help reduce our nation’s dependence on foreign oil. The legislation provides an additional $10.3 billion for nutrition assistance programs, such as food stamps and school lunches.

Although the Farm Bill is far from perfect, I support the legislation because it recognizes the important role of America’s farmers and ranchers, and the need to develop our rural economy. It is regrettable that John McCain (who voted against it) does not agree.

While the Farm Bill does lower significantly the income limits of farmers eligible for subsidies, it doesn’t provide as much reform as I have advocated.

LINK TO CON.

How a Kenyan village tripled its corn harvest
The Millennium Villages Project is pricey. But it may hold answers to tackling the global food crisis.
By Eliza Barclay

Sauri, Kenya - The dry months of April, May, and June were once equated with hunger for Agre Ranyondo and his neighbors in this community of 55,000 people.

Mr. Ranyondo, a farmer, waited for the rains to come before he could plant corn on his six-acre plot. Often the 10 bags of corn he harvested through two planting seasons weren't enough to feed his family of eight. But the cycle of hunger was broken last year.

The change began in 2005, when Ranyondo met with agricultural extension workers dispatched by the Millennium Villages Project (MVP), an international organization conceived by economist Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University's Earth Institute. He was given seeds better suited to the region, fertilizers, and was taught how to use them. By 2007, Ranyondo had quintupled his annual output to 50 bags of corn, 20 of which he sold for cash and the other 30 he used to feed his family.

LINK TO CON.

Food Revolution That Starts With Rice
By WILLIAM J. BROAD, NY TIMES

ITHACA, N.Y. — Many a professor dreams of revolution. But Norman T. Uphoff, working in a leafy corner of the Cornell University campus, is leading an inconspicuous one centered on solving the global food crisis. The secret, he says, is a new way of growing rice.

Rejecting old customs as well as the modern reliance on genetic engineering, Dr. Uphoff, 67, an emeritus professor of government and international agriculture with a trim white beard and a tidy office, advocates a management revolt.

Harvests typically double, he says, if farmers plant early, give seedlings more room to grow and stop flooding fields. That cuts water and seed costs while promoting root and leaf growth.

LINK TO CON.

Fighting Resistance To Voting for Ralph Nader
by Joel S. Hirschhorn

In so many ways Ralph Nader deserves to be president of the U.S. more than any Republican or Democratic candidate. For anyone that understands the need to overturn the two-party plutocracy and the corporate money that supports both major parties, Nader is the only credible candidate. He is also the most honest one and the only one that has the best interests of ordinary Americans as his highest priority. Yet most of the millions of independents and progressives that are disillusioned with the two major parties will probably not vote for him in November. Here is the case why the two most prevalent reasons they will use are without merit.

First, there is the classic view that Nader cannot win and therefore that voting for him is just a wasted vote. On this point the wisdom of I.F. Stone has kept me committed to always voting for Nader:

The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you are going to lose, because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins. In order for somebody to win an important, major fight 100 years hence, a lot of other people have got to be willing -- for the sheer fun and joy of it -- to go right ahead and fight, knowing you're going to lose. You mustn't feel like a martyr. You've got to enjoy it.
In other words, when voting for an independent like Nader it is psychologically necessary to consciously accept the fact that the fight is not about electing Nader president. We need a long view of history and revolution. No, a vote for Nader is a most effective way to participate in the corrupt political system by expressing utter disdain for the two-party plutocracy. A vote for Nader is all about overthrowing the power structure that is killing the middle class and fostering rising economic inequality. The misplaced zeal for candidates like Ron Paul, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama is based on a short-term embrace of a particular candidate, rather than devotion to the battle to destroy the two-party plutocracy. When Nader runs and loses we the people are not losing, we are stubbornly still fighting for what must ultimately be victorious -- restoration of American democracy by overturning the two-party plutocracy.

LINK TO CON.

Don't Panic; Go Organic
By RONNIE CUMMINS

Rising food prices and shortages have joined the energy and climate crisis, economic recession, and the war in Iraq, as headline news. While consumers struggle to pay their bills and put food on the table, Monsanto, Cargill, and Archer Daniels Midland rake in billions from taxpayer-subsidized biofuels. Monopolizing markets, polluting the environment with genetically modified organisms, and hoarding future reserves of crop seeds, wheat, rice, soy, corn, and other grains, the food and gene giants profit from global crisis and misery. Adding fuel to the fire, Wall Street speculators have shifted their greed from sub-prime mortgages to food and non-renewable resources.

The public are becoming aware of the causes of the food crisis: millions of acres of corn and soybeans diverted into biofuels; corporate-driven free trade agreements that discourage nations from maintaining grain reserves and becoming self-sufficient in food production; massive subsidies for industrial agriculture and a misguided export model that have forced millions of family farmers off the land; sharply escalating oil prices, farm inputs, and transportation costs; commodity speculation; population growth; a growing demand for feed grains for meat consumption, and, most ominously, a destabilized climate spawning deadly droughts, pests, floods, and unpredictable weather.

LINK TO CON.

Truth Before Reconciliation
Thank You, Dennis Kucinich!
By NIRANJAN RAMAKRISHNAN

In an article in Counterpunch yesterday (Iraq War Becomes Suicidal), Saul Landau spoke of meeting a young man of 26, an Iraq veteran with shrapnel in his spine, in unceasing pain, penniless and homeless, now facing a lifetime of heroin addiction. Many of his buddies were worse off, the man said. some with brain injuries, others who had lost their eyes. Phil Donahue has produced a whole movie (Body of War) on the plight of just one American soldier, paralyzed in Iraq. There must be times when these youngsters envy comrades such as Casey Sheehan, who was spared such suffering, for he died in Iraq.

This is the true 'legacy' of George W. Bush's presidency. And yes, the legacy of us all, his accomplices willing or unwilling but never unwitting, who allowed it to happen.

Sometimes it is not how many times something is said that counts, but when, where and how. Nearly four years after re-electing George W. Bush (knowing the WMD thing was a crock, knowing of Abu Ghraib, knowing of Blackwater, knowing of wa profiteering), the American people, now paying 4 dollars for a gallon of gas (under 2 dollars before a war one of whose 'wink-wink' aims was to insure cheap oil), a mortgage collapse and a general and pervasive angst (dare one call it 'malaise'?).

LINK TO CON.

How Europe Underdevelops Africa
By PATRICK BOND
and RICHARD KAMIDZA

In even the most exploitative African sites of repression and capital accumulation, sometimes corporations take a hit, and victims sometimes unite on continental lines instead of being divided-and-conquered. Turns in the class struggle might have surprised Walter Rodney, the political economist whose 1972 classic How Europe Underdeveloped Africa provided detailed critiques of corporate looting.

In early June, the British-Dutch firm Shell Oil - one of Rodney's targets - was instructed to depart from the Ogoniland region within the Niger Delta, where in 1995 Shell officials were responsible for the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa by Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha. After decades of abuse, women protesters, local NGOs and the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) gave Shell the shove. France's Total appears next in line, in part because of additional pressure from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta.

Across the continent, exploitation by other European capitalists and politicians has become so extreme that something has to break. Although it was six months ago that the European Union's ultramanipulative trade negotiator, Peter Mandelson, cajoled 18 weak African leaderships - including crisis-ridden Cote d'Ivoire, neoliberal Ghana and numerous frightened agro-exporting countries - into the trap of signing interim "Economic Partnership Agreements" (EPAs), a backlash is now growing.

LINK TO CON.

The Politics of Timber Theft
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR

Stealing trees is as old as the King's timber reserves. The sanctions for such sylvan thievery have always been harsh. In medieval England, it meant public torture and slow death. In the US, the levy was a kind of financial death penalty --triple damages plus serious jail time.

A couple of years ago, two tree poachers drove a log truck onto a small farm in central Indiana after midnight, cut down two 100-year old black walnut trees in the small woodlot, loaded the pilfered trunks onto their truck and fled across a cornfield. The county sheriff caught them when their truck stalled in the field and sank in the mud. It turns out that the men had been hired by a local sawmill owner, who was set to sell the lumber to a German timber broker. All three men were tried and convicted of tree theft.

The black walnut trees, highly prized by German furniture makers, were valued at $150,000 each. The men were hit with $900,000 in fines and three years of jail time.

LINK TO CON.

Where Have All the Fish Gone?
By Moises Velasquez-Manoff

Early European explorers to the Americas encountered an astounding abundance of marine life. White beluga whales, now limited to the arctic, swam as far south as Boston Bay. Cod off Newfoundland were so plentiful that fishermen could catch them with nothing more than a weighted basket lowered into the water. As late as the mid-19th century, river herring ran so thick in the eastern United States that wading across certain waterways meant treading on fish. And everywhere sharks were so numerous that, after hauling in their catches, fishers often found them stripped to the bone.

"It completely bowled me over when I started reading some of these early accounts," says Callum Roberts, a professor of marine conservation at the University of York, England, and author of "The Unnatural History of the Sea," which tells much of this tale. "The picture painted is one of an abundance of life which is very hard for us to grasp today."

Hundreds of years of fishing -- and especially the last half century of industrialized fishing -- have drastically altered the oceans. Measured by weight, only 1/10th of the large predators that once swam the seas -- the big fish and sharks that shape the entire ecosystem -- is estimated to remain. And many of these changes have occurred relatively recently. Any middle-aged fisherman will wax nostalgic about the catches of just 20 years ago. Any marine scientist will glumly check off reefs they once studied that are now bleached and overgrown with algae as a result of overfishing and pollution, and the marine life that's simply disappeared.

LINK TO CON.

Bad Cow Disease
By PAUL KRUGMAN

“Mary had a little lamb / And when she saw it sicken / She shipped it off to Packingtown / And now it’s labeled chicken.”

That little ditty famously summarized the message of “The Jungle,” Upton Sinclair’s 1906 exposé of conditions in America’s meat-packing industry. Sinclair’s muckraking helped Theodore Roosevelt pass the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act — and for most of the next century, Americans trusted government inspectors to keep their food safe.

Lately, however, there always seems to be at least one food-safety crisis in the headlines — tainted spinach, poisonous peanut butter and, currently, the attack of the killer tomatoes. The declining credibility of U.S. food regulation has even led to a foreign-policy crisis: there have been mass demonstrations in South Korea protesting the pro-American prime minister’s decision to allow imports of U.S. beef, banned after mad cow disease was detected in 2003.

LINK TO CON.

This Land - Jimmy LaFave

There Will Be Water
Boone Pickens thinks water is the new oil—and he's betting $100 million that he's right.
BY: Susan Berfieldspan

Roberts County is a neat square in a remote corner of the Texas Panhandle, a land of rolling hills, tall grass, oak trees, mesquite, and cattle. It has a desolate beauty, a striking sparseness. The county encompasses 924 square miles and is home to fewer than 900 people. One of them is T. Boone Pickens, the oilman and corporate raider, who first bought some property here in 1971 to hunt quail. He's now the largest landowner in the county: His Mesa Vista ranch sprawls across some 68,000 acres. Pickens has also bought up the rights to a considerable amount of water that lies below this part of the High Plains in a vast aquifer that came into existence millions of years ago.

Link

John McCain’s Chilling Project for America

By Elliot Cohen —

John McCain has long been a major player in a radical militaristic group driven by an ideology of global expansionism and dominance attained through perpetual, pre-emptive, unilateral, multiple wars. Over its two terms, the George W. Bush administration has planted the seeds for this geopolitical master plan, and now appears to be counting on the McCain administration, if one comes to power, to nurture it.

Link

Ben Sollee - It's Not Impossible (Boys Don't Cry)

Letterman lays it out!

Gore Vidal’s Article of Impeachment

By Gore Vidal

On June 9, 2008, a counterrevolution began on the floor of the House of Representatives against the gas and oil crooks who had seized control of the federal government. This counterrevolution began in the exact place which had slumbered during the all-out assault on our liberties and the Constitution itself.

I wish to draw the attention of the blog world to Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s articles of impeachment presented to the House in order that two faithless public servants be removed from office for crimes against the American people. As I listened to Rep. Kucinich invoke the great engine of impeachment—he listed some 35 crimes by these two faithless officials—we heard, like great bells tolling, the voice of the Constitution itself speak out ringingly against those who had tried to destroy it.

LINK TO CON.

Aaron Espe - Melody
Not great quality for still nice

Camphor - Castaway Music Video

Playing With Your Money

Wall Street Gamblers
By RALPH NADER

Move over Las Vegas. The big time gamblers are on Wall Street and they are gambling with your money, your pensions, and your livelihoods.

Unlike Las Vegas casinos, these big investment banks, commercial banks and stock brokerage houses are supposed to have a fiduciary relationship with your money. They are supposed to be trustees for the money you have given them to safeguard, and tell you when they are making risky investments.

Because Washington, D.C. has increasingly become corporate-occupied territory, the Wall Street Boys have been taking even greater risks with your money. The more they produce cycles of financial failure, the more they pay themselves through their rubberstamp boards of directors.

With each cycle of failure, the burden of government bailouts grows larger, meaning debt, deficit and your tax dollars. The Savings and Loan collapse in the late Eighties—costing before the bailout instruments are paid off at least $500 billion, looks small by comparison with what is going on today.

LINK TO CON.

Meat Wagon: Filthy swine
U.S. officials dither while antibiotic-resistant bacteria strains creep into our pork supply
Posted by Tom Philpott

The good news is that people are earnestly trying to figure out if a deadly antibiotic-resistant bacteria strain is infecting our nation's vast supply of pork.

The bad news is, they don't work for a government regulator with the power to do something about it. Rather, they're university researchers and journalists, whose only real power is the public outrage they can generate through their work.

Prepare to be outraged by the work of University of Iowa professor Tara Smith and veteran Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporter Andrew Schneider. Prepare also to give up industrially produced pork, if you're still eating (or, even worse, cooking with) the stuff.

First, some background. No one disputes that a bacteria called MRSA -- methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus -- has become a major public-health menace.

LINK TO CON.

Kucinich Forces Vote On Bush's Impeachment
By Ben Pershing

Having failed in efforts to impeach Vice President Cheney, Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio) escalated his battle against the administration this week by introducing 35 articles of impeachment against President Bush, using a parliamentary maneuver that will probably force a vote today.

Kucinich's impeachment measure accuses Bush of taking the country to war in Iraq under false pretenses; he introduced it as a "privileged resolution," which requires the House to take it up within two legislative days. Any lawmaker may offer a privileged resolution, but it is usually done only by party leaders.

Kucinich, upon introducing his articles of impeachment Monday evening, insisted on reading the resolution into the Congressional Record, a process that took nearly five hours. He finished reading it late yesterday after the close of legislative business.

LINK TO CON.

Putting Meat Back in Its Place
By MARK BITTMAN

LET’S suppose you’ve decided to eat less meat, or are considering it. And let’s ignore your reasons for doing so. They may be economic, ethical, altruistic, nutritional or even irrational. The arguments for eating less meat are myriad and well-publicized, but at the moment they’re irrelevant, because what I want to address here is (almost) purely pragmatic: How do you do it?

I’m not talking about eating no meat; I’m talking about cutting back, which in some ways is harder than quitting. Vegetarian recipes and traditions are everywhere. But in the American style of eating — with meat usually at the center of the plate — it can be difficult to eat two ounces of beef and call it dinner.

Cutting back on meat is not an isolated process. Unlike, say, taking up meditation or exercise, it usually has consequences for others.

The keys are to keep at least some of your decisions personal so they affect no one but yourself and, when they do affect others, minimize the pain and don’t preach. (No one likes a proselytizer.)

LINK TO CON.

Banking on Gardening
By MARIAN BURROS

CASSANDRA FEELEY prefers organic ingredients, especially for her baby, but she finds it hard to manage on her husband’s salary as an Army sergeant. So this year she did something she has wanted to do for a long time: she planted vegetables in her yard to save money.

“One organic cucumber is $3 and I can produce it for pennies,” she said.

For her first garden, Ms. Feeley has gone whole hog, hand-tilling a quarter acre in the backyard of her house near the Fort Campbell Army base in Kentucky. She has put in 15 tomato plants, five rows of corn, potatoes, cucumbers, squash, okra, peas, watermelon, green beans. An old barn on the property has been converted to a chicken coop, its residents arriving next month; the goats will be arriving next year.

“I spent $100 on it and I know I will save at least $75 a month on food,” she said. She is one of the growing number of Americans who, driven by higher grocery costs and a stumbling economy, have taken up vegetable gardening for the first time. Others have increased the size of their existing gardens.

LINK TO CON.

Eating only what grows around you
Once the purview of foodies and hippies, 'locavorism' is going mainstream
By Allison Linn

When Katherine Gray takes her kids to the grocery store, they can pick out as many apples and pears as their hearts desire. But bananas? Pineapples? Mangoes? Sorry kids, if they weren’t grown within 100 miles of Gray’s house in Portland, Ore., chances are they won’t make it into the grocery cart.

For years, the idea of eating only food grown locally and in season was reserved for upscale chefs like Alice Waters of Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif., or serious hippies living off the grid, while the rest of us didn’t think twice about gulping down blueberries from Chile or avocadoes from Mexico.

Recently, however, a small but devoted number of Americans have started to think a lot more about the origin of the food going into their grocery cart. Worried about the environmental impact of shipping food hundreds of miles, plus the dwindling fate of local farmers – and obsessed with the idea of eating really good food – these extreme eaters try to only buy food that is grown within a 100-mile radius of their own home.

LINK TO CON.

Fifty Million Go to Bed Hungry

Killing Foods, Killing People
By JOHN ROSS

"Orlando" (not his real name) eats after everyone else has eaten - if there's enough left over to eat. All day, he scavenges in the garbage cans outside of the three MacDonald's outlets here in the old quarter of the city with an occasional stop-off at KTC. He shows a neighbor his catch of the day: two mostly-eaten Big Macs, a gnawed chicken leg, a handful of stiff, ketchup-flecked French fries, and rubs his greasy belly in delight. Orlando has a hard time pronouncing words in the way others can understand. Most passer-bys studiously step around the filthy, crippled man as he sprawls on the public sidewalk.

Because Orlando has no fixed address, he is not counted on Mexico's official census of the hungry -- and, in fact, he isn't hungry today. As long as more affluent Mexicans continue to supersize themselves at the fast food franchises in the neighborhood, he isn't going to go hungry.

How many Mexicans are going hungry in these days of soaring food prices and diminishing reserves as food crisis sweeps what used to be called the Third World? The rightist government of Felipe Calderon counts 14,000,000 Mexicans living in extreme poverty who are enrolled in its ironically entitled "Oportunidades" (Opportunities) program. Another 12,000,000 at-risk citizens are counted in the administration's equally euphemistic "Vivir Mejor" ("Live Better") bureaucracy - both programs are designed to feed an electoral clientele and do not reflect actual hunger.

LINK TO CON.

Switzerland Bans GMOs till 2012
GM crops banned in Switzerland until 2012
Agra Europe, 5/29/08

The Swiss Federal Council (government) has voted to extend the country's moratorium on genetically modified (GM) plants for a further three years beyond the current expiry date of November 2010, Dow Jones reports.

The extension is to allow time for a national research programme into the benefits and risks of GM crops to be completed and the results assessed. Questions over the biological safety of GM plants and the coexistence of GM, conventional and organic crops are being addressed.

The Council imposed a moratorium on the commercial cultivation of GM crops in 2005, on the basis that there was no demand for them in Switzerland at the time and that big gaps remained in scientific knowledge about the risks of this technology.

LINK TO CON.

CD Review:

Sister Hazel
Before the amplifiers: live acoustic
Rock Ridge Music

The Gainesville, Florida acoustic alternative pop band Sister Hazel, formed in 1993 at Humblefest, returns with a live acoustic album. Adding to an extensive list of seven albums, including studio, acoustic, and hybrid releases, before the amplifiers is a live collection of Sister Hazel’s hits, fan favorites, and live staples.

The first track Champagne High comes from their 2000 CD Fortress while the band was still part of the Universal Records group (and two live albums). Being a fan of acoustic, I prefer the new addition/rendition to the older one. The original Verizon comes across as to much “pop” while the new one seems more like a nice acoustic sing along. Hold On comes from the 2004 release Lift that was with the new label Rock Ridge Music like the new album. Again the acoustic version takes away some of the pop sound that seems to be a studio album necessity for Sister Hazel. A nice song that sounds much improved acoustic, although still a bit Pop for my taste. Shame comes from the 2006 CD Absolutely and is a good tune. In this case, I prefer the studio rendition better then the acoustic. All for you comes from the 1997 CD …somewhere more familiar (and Universal) and is, at least in my case, their best none song. The acoustic extended addition is a nice change to the radio track we have all heard played repeatedly. Your Winter is another track from Fortress. In this case, I prefer the acoustic but both are to pop for my taste. World Inside My Head come from Lift and is another nice guitar/piano song. Strange Cup of Tea comes from Fortress and is a nice alternative Jam song. Mandolin Moon comes from Absolutely and is a great acoustic rock song. Just Remember comes from …somewhere more familiar and is a nice acoustic ballad song. Come Around is from the 2003 Chasing Daylight album and is a lovely song. Swan Dive comes from Lift and a nice song about diving into life. In this case, the play and sing along by the crowd takes away from the song. Happy comes from …somewhere more familiar as well and is a nice slow song. This Kind of Live is from Absolutely and too much of a slow love pop song for my likening. Starfish comes from …somewhere more familiar and is a great jam band, banjo song. The best dance along song on this CD. Change your mind is from Fortress and is a nice little song. Finally, Feel It is from the self-titled 1994 Sister Hazel CD and was a great final song to end the set.

Overall, the CD is a nice addition to the Sister Hazel repertoire of albums. No new music but rather new formats takes some from the originality of the music. Alas, I like acoustic music, so I prefer these greatest hits to their other albums.

The Crime of the Century
by Alicia Morgan

I drank up Vincent Bugliosi's new book, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder like a thirsty person in the desert. Or, perhaps, like a drunken frat boy at a kegger.

I have admired Mr. Bugliosi ever since Helter Skelter. He pulls no punches and has a passion for truth and justice. I believe him when he says that if it were a Democratic president who had perpetrated these crimes, he would be writing the exact same book.

But the most important thing that I took away from this book was the reminder that the invasion of Iraq facilitated by lies is the most egregious crime that this pack of criminals has perpetrated upon the world, and not merely one of the many failures of the Bush Administration. In its magnitude it must not be compared to anything else, but stand alone in its atrocity, horror and shame. We can't lump it in with the other misdeeds such as wiretapping, tax cuts for the rich while stealing from the poor, protecting corporations while it attacks individuals, decimating a formerly robust middle class, gutting or usurping government agencies and laws that are supposed to be safeguarding the American people and putting the foxes in charge of the henhouse; although all of these are related and all of these are heinous in themselves, they pale beside the indisputable fact that our beloved country was lied into a war of choice. Not our choice, mind you; the choice of Bush and his 'advisors' the PNAC neo-conservative crowd, and the defense corporations and 'support' corporations who profit massively from it.

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Kelleher's Revolution

"Socialist" Wins Republican Nomination in Montana
By JOSHUA FRANK

Kelleher wants a “non-violent” revolution to essentially dismantle the government in Washington, doing away with the presidency, Senate and House, and replacing it with a parliamentary body, where citizens don’t vote for individuals, but for parties. He wants massive Keynesian-style work programs to eliminate poverty; he favors real socialized medicine, an end to neoliberal trade policies, and a revamping of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, to name a few of his positions.

Kelleher’s opponent, Max Baucus, has already refused to debate Kelleher, and has said assertively that he is “not running against anyone”. Nonetheless, Baucus certainly deserves the challenge. He’s supported the invasion of Iraq, trade policies that have hurt working Montanans, and an agenda that is shaped by corporate influence, which has helped him amass over $10 million for a campaign he has said he basically is not going to run.

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Blackwater's Private CIA
By Jeremy Scahill, The Nation.

This past September, the secretive mercenary company Blackwater USA found its name splashed across front pages throughout the world after the company's shooters gunned down seventeen Iraqi civilians in Baghdad's Nisour Square. But by early 2008, Blackwater had largely receded from the headlines save for the occasional blip on the media radar sparked by Congressman Henry Waxman's ongoing investigations into its activities. Its forces remained deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and business continued to pour in. In the two weeks directly following Nisour Square, Blackwater signed more than $144 million in contracts with the State Department for "protective services" in Iraq and Afghanistan alone and, over the following weeks and months, won millions more in contracts with other federal entities like the Coast Guard, the Navy and the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.

Blackwater's Iraq contract was extended in April, but the company is by no means betting the house on its long-term presence there. While the firm is quietly maintaining its Iraq work, it is aggressively pursuing other business opportunities. In September it was revealed that Blackwater had been "tapped" by the Pentagon's Counter Narcoterrorism Technology Program Office to compete for a share of a five-year, $15 billion budget "to fight terrorists with drug-trade ties." According to the Army Times, the contract "could include antidrug technologies and equipment, special vehicles and aircraft, communications, security training, pilot training, geographic information systems and in-field support." A spokesperson for another company bidding for the work said that "80 percent of the work will be overseas." As Richard Douglas, a deputy assistant secretary of defense, explained, "The fact is, we use Blackwater to do a lot of our training of counternarcotics police in Afghanistan. I have to say that Blackwater has done a very good job."

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Enjoy

Garden variety
Why mow the grass when you can harvest salad greens?
Posted by Tom Philpott

Lawn grass is the largest irrigated U.S. crop. "Even conservatively," notes NASA researcher Cristina Milesi, "I estimate there are three times more acres of lawns in the U.S. than irrigated corn."

Wow, that's a lot of ornamental grass -- about 128,000 square kilometers worth, roughly equal in size to the state of Wisconsin. According Milesi, keeping all of that grass green requires about 200 gallons of fresh, typically drinking-quality water per person per day. (Interestingly, Milesi does find that lawns are net carbon sinks, but she doesn't mention emissions associated with mowing.)

Happily, people are increasingly finding more productive -- and delicious -- uses for their little patches of land. From the Wall Street Journal lifestyle section:

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Food crisis softens resistance to genetically modified (GM) food
At Rome summit, UN calls for $20 billion a year to feed hungry and fund a new ‘green revolution.’
By Robert Marquand

Opposition to genetically modified (GM) foods, still strongest in Europe, is starting to erode in the face of the global food crisis.

But the pressure for change, so far, is more economic than political.

Indeed, it was the political fighting over biofuels, farm subsidies, and trade policies, that threatened to undermine the efforts of 40 world leaders seeking a solution to soaring food costs at a UN summit in Rome that ended Thursday.

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) asked governments to provide at least $20 billion a year to revive world agriculture research, to help feed nearly 1 billion hungry people, and to spark a new “green revolution.” But what advocates describe as a promising solution to hunger – GM foods – did not get much play in

Rome, save its promotion by US Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer.

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The Real Cost of Cheap Food
By Will Allen,

Sometimes shoppers are confused by the differences in price between food grown organically and food grown conventionally. Usually organic loses the price war argument in comparison to what is called "conventional" food. Of course, we are all mostly aware that organic means grown and processed without chemical fertilizers, antibiotics, hormones, toxic pesticides, sewage sludge, irradiation and genetic manipulation.

But, what does "conventional" mean? Is food called "conventional" grown and processed with chemical fertilizers, antibiotics, hormones, toxic pesticides, sewage sludge, irradiation and genetic manipulation? Yes it is. And, this is one reason why the price war argument should be reframed. Instead of comparing the price of organic food with "conventional" foods (which sounds so normal and safe), let's compare organic food prices to the food price of toxic or poisonous food, which is what "conventional" food is.

The vegetables, fruits and grains that grocers and agribusiness giants label "conventional" are actually loaded with systemic chemicals, which you cannot wash off. The meat is laced with hormones, antibiotics, prions and multiple resistant bacteria that are difficult or impossible to cook out of beef, lamb, chicken or pork.

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All hail Monsanto!
When the benevolent seed giant declares it's going to save the world, why be skeptical?
By Claire Hope Cummins

Do you worry about where your food comes from? Are you concerned that farmers might use too many toxic chemicals, or that health and safety agencies of the U.S. government might not be looking out for your best interests?

Well then, you suffer from too much skepticism. You probably need to learn to trust what you are told more often. Maybe you should consider some pharmacological support for your worry problem. I know. My name is Claire and I'm a skeptic.

I thought all you other skeptics out there might like to know that the latest word on our problem comes from a company who knows a lot about food, farming, and chemicals. This week, the CEO of Monsanto Corporation, Hugh Grant, told Public Radio International's Marketplace that he expects people to be skeptical about what Monsanto says but also, given the food problems the world is facing, "skepticism is a commodity the world can't afford right now."

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PassAfire - Workingman's Song (Playing at the Taos Solar Music Festival)
This is one of the more popular songs by the Savannah, GA based Reggae Rock band PassAfire. I, Justin Lundholm Directed Photography and was on Camera, Sebastien Urrea Directed, and Natalee Tyler Produced

Time for Congress to Stand Up in its Own Defense: Impeach Bush and Cheney Now!
by Dave Lindorff

The last couple of weeks have brought confirmation--as if it were needed--even in the corporate media, that President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and the gang of thugs and sycophants around them in the White House, engaged in a massive conspiracy to lie the country into a war in Iraq.

The release of a confessional book by former White House press spokesman Scott McClellan and the subsequent release of a long blocked report by the Senate Intelligence Committee make it clear that Bush, Cheney & Company deliberately lied to Congress and the American public back in 2002 and early 2003 about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein (there was none). McClellan also states that Bush and Cheney conspired to "out" CIA undercover operative Valerie Plame Wilson, as part of a compaign to prevent her husband from exposing a major part of that campaign of lies: the claim that Saddam Hussein was seeking to build nuclear weapons.

It would be hard to overstate the extent of or the damage caused by these crimes that are now exposed to the light of day.

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The prophet of boom and doom

When this man said the world’s economy was heading for disaster, he was scorned. Now traders, economists, even Nasa, are clamouring to hear him speak

by Bryan Appleyard

A noisy cafe in Newport Beach, California. Nassim Nicholas Taleb is eating three successive salads, carefully picking out anything with a high carbohydrate content. He is telling me how to live. “The only way you can say ‘F*** you’ to fate is by saying it’s not going to affect how I live. So if somebody puts you to death, make sure you shave.”

Link

Time To Be Unfaithful to Old Faithful
by George Black

Okay, here's the plan. Sell Yellowstone to ExxonMobil. Or if that's too much to stomach, maybe hand it off to one of the more enlightened energy giants -- BP, say, or Shell, although getting a foreign ownership deal through Congress might be tricky.

Think of all that geothermal energy going to waste, all of it clean, all endlessly renewable. Set up corporate headquarters at the Old Faithful Inn, lay pipes along the Firehole, drill secondary extraction points in each of the main geyser basins. Surely the surrender of a national park, even if it was our first, is a small price to pay for making a dent in our reliance on fossil fuels and the Saudi royal family.

Well, the votes are in, and apparently this modest proposal has been given the thumbs-down in our readers' poll. Yellowstone is too much to surrender. But then, what are we prepared to give up? Because the reality is that we have to accept some major trade-offs here, and quickly. The situation is too grim, too urgent, to duck them. Idealism may be what gets us up in the morning, yet these days it may not be enough to help us sleep at night.

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Zambezi Honey

Zambezi Honey

The Zambezi Honey story - "...Hidden in a lush forest at the source of the mighty Zambezi River lives a special honeybee that feeds only on flowering trees. Gathered using sustainable methods, our traditional beekeepers help to preserve the forest as well as the bees...the honey is wild-crafted by 5,000 registered organic farmers in the remote Miombo forests of Zambia.
Link

Jim James ( My morning Jacket) and Calexico from "I'm not There" movie

The farm bill: what went wrong
Michael Pollan calls for crafting a viable alternative for next time

After many, many months of wrangling, Congress recently passed a farm bill, overriding a veto by the president. In my view, it is not a very good bill -- it preserves more or less intact the whole structure of subsidies responsible for so much that is wrong in the American food system.

On the other hand, it does contain some significant new provisions that, with luck, will advance the growing movement toward a more just, sustainable, and healthy food system.

You might rightly ask why there was so little movement on commodity subsidies, in a year when crop prices are at record highs and public scrutiny of the subsidy system has been intense. Indeed, the people on the Hill I talk to tell me they have not seen so much political activism around the farm bill in a generation. All the calls, cards, and emails sent by ordinary eaters clearly made a difference.

So why so little change on the key issue? Why didn't we get a food bill, rather than another farm bill? Here's what I think happened.

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Bush's Secret Deal Would Ensure Permanent U.S. Occupation of Iraq
By PATRICK COCKBURN

A secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the U.S. presidential election in November.

The terms of the impending deal, details of which have been leaked to this reporter, are likely to have an explosive political effect in Iraq.
Iraqi officials fear that the accord, under which U.S. troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law, will destabilize Iraq's position in the Middle East and lay the basis for unending conflict in their country.
But the accord also threatens to provoke a political crisis in the U.S.
President Bush wants to push it through by the end of next month so he can declare a military victory and claim his 2003 invasion has been vindicated.

But by perpetuating the U.S. presence in Iraq, the long-term settlement would undercut pledges by the Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama, to withdraw U.S. troops if he is elected president in November.
The timing of the agreement would also boost the Republican candidate, John McCain, who has claimed the United States is on the verge of victory in Iraq -- a victory that he says Obama would throw away by a premature military withdrawal.

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Food Is Gold, So Billions Invested in Farming
By DIANA B. HENRIQUES

Huge investment funds have already poured hundreds of billions of dollars into booming financial markets for commodities like wheat, corn and soybeans. But a few big private investors are starting to make bolder and longer-term bets that the world’s need for food will greatly increase — by buying farmland, fertilizer, grain elevators and shipping equipment.

One has bought several ethanol plants, Canadian farmland and enough storage space in the Midwest to hold millions of bushels of grain.

Another is buying more than five dozen grain elevators, nearly that many fertilizer distribution outlets and a fleet of barges and ships.

And three institutional investors, including the giant BlackRock fund group in New York, are separately planning to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in agriculture, chiefly farmland, from sub-Saharan Africa to the English countryside

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McCain: I'd Spy on Americans Secretly, Too
By Ryan Singel

If elected president, Senator John McCain would reserve the right to run his own warrantless wiretapping program against Americans, based on the theory that the president's wartime powers trump federal criminal statutes and court oversight, according to a statement released by his campaign Monday.

McCain's new tack towards the Bush administration's theory of executive power comes some 10 days after a McCain surrogate stated, incorrectly it seems, that the senator wanted hearings into telecom companies' cooperation with President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program, before he'd support giving those companies retroactive legal immunity.

As first reported by Threat Level, Chuck Fish, a full-time lawyer for the McCain campaign, also said McCain wanted stricter rules on how the nation's telecoms work with U.S. spy agencies, and expected those companies to apologize for any lawbreaking before winning amnesty.

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Too Much Stuff! America's New Love Affair With Self-Storage
By Martin John Brown, AlterNet.

A strange new shadow land has grown up in America. It's a world of cinderblock villas and plywood hallways, garish under halogen security bulbs. It clings to the underside of Western towns like Roman catacombs, pushes up funereal fault blocks in urban centers, and festoons suburban freeways with palaces styled after castles and forts. If you could peer inside those locked rooms, you'd see, well, practically any object you could imagine: a pair of skis, five toadstool-style cookie jars, twelve years' back issues of Martha Stewart Living, a single broken bed frame, all waiting like Egyptian tomb dressing to serve in some afterlife. But you'd rarely see a person, because all these new, gray places are for stuff.

The "self storage" business started small three or four decades ago, as a few "mini-warehouses" around military bases in the Southwest, according to industry legend. Now it's a $22 billion-per-year industry, and maybe a whole way of life. Like VCRs and cell phones, self-storage is a product Americans didn't need until they discovered it, and now they can't live without.

The numbers are astounding. According to the Self Storage Association, an industry advocacy group, square footage of rentable storage has increased 740 percent in the past two decades; a billion square feet of storage space was created between 1998 and 2005; and there are now 6.8 square feet of storage for every man, woman and child in America. Chris Sonne, a storage expert at Cushman & Wakefield Inc., estimates there are 45,000 storage facilities today compared to zero 50 years ago.

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Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World's Food System

By Raj Patel, Melville House Publishing.

Today, when we produce more food than ever before, more than one in ten people on Earth are hungry. The hunger of 800 million happens at the same time as another historical first: that they are outnumbered by the one billion people on this planet who are overweight.

Global hunger and obesity are symptoms of the same problem and, what's more, the route to eradicating world hunger is also the way to prevent global epidemics of diabetes and heart disease, and to address a host of environmental and social ills. Overweight and hungry people are linked through the chains of production that bring food from fields to our plate.

Guided by the profit motive, the corporations that sell our food shape and constrain how we eat, and how we think about food. The limitations are clearest at the fast food outlet, where the spectrum of choice runs from McMuffin to McNugget. But there are hidden and systemic constraints even when we feel we're beyond the purview of Ronald McDonald. Even when we want to buy something healthy, something to keep the doctor away, we're trapped in the very same system that has created our Fast Food Nations?

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Blackbird - Beatles Cover on Ukulele

you - plej

Farm Hands Down
To create a truly sustainable food system, we'll have to confront the farm-labor crisis
By Tom Philpott

When I think about what a truly healthy, vibrant food system would look like, I envision more farms: small farms serving specific communities, and diversified, midsized farms geared to supplying their surrounding regions.

Of course, there would still be interstate and global trade -- you can't grow olives or coffee in Iowa, or enough wheat in Florida to supply the state's bakers. But with more farms across the nation, we could all generally eat much closer to home, consuming fewer resources and throwing off less pollution in the process. Traveling would be more interesting as well. Imagine finding region-specific, seasonal specialties -- not standardized burgers -- at train stations across the land. (Oh yeah, in my vision, there'd also be a high-functioning national rail system.)

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America's Democratic Collapse
By Chris Hedges, Truthdig.

Note: Chris Hedges gave this keynote address on Wednesday, May 28, in Furman University's Younts Conference Center. The address was part of protests by faculty and students over the South Carolina college's decision to invite George W. Bush to give the May 31 commencement address.

When it was announced in May that Bush would deliver the commencement address, 222 students and faculty signed and posted on the school's Web site a statement titled "We Object." The statement cites the war in Iraq and the administration's "obstructing progress on reducing greenhouse gases while favoring billions in tax breaks and subsidies to oil companies that are earning record profits."

"We are ashamed of the actions of this administration. The war in Iraq has cost the lives of over 4,000 brave and honorable U.S. military personnel," the statement read. "Because we love this country and the ideals it stands for, we accept our civic responsibility to speak out against these actions that violate American values."

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For frugalists, bargain hunting is a lifestyle
For these extreme anti-consumers, your trash is their food, furniture
By Allison Linn

It’s an unseasonably cold day in Seattle, and Rebecca is standing in her kitchen, preparing for her regular Sunday afternoon outing. As she gathers her backpack and grocery bags, her dog sniffs around excitedly, anticipating the long walk and treats that await. In the course of their errands, Rebecca and her dog will visit several stores and coffee shops, a bakery and a chocolate factory. But instead of walking in the front door, she plans to head out back and go Dumpster diving.

Rebecca, 51, owns a small duplex and has a job running an art program for a health care organization. She’s also an artist in her own right whose accomplishments include a piece that hangs in the Seattle Art Museum. And she gets 99 percent of her food from the Dumpster. “It’s so easy to eat for free,” she says. “The only things I buy are butter and milk.”

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In Spain, Water Is a New Battleground
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

FORTUNA, Spain — Lush fields of lettuce and hothouses of tomatoes line the roads. Verdant new developments of plush pastel vacation homes beckon buyers from Britain and Germany. Golf courses — dozens of them, all recently built — give way to the beach. At last, this hardscrabble corner of southeast Spain is thriving.

There is only one problem with the picture of bounty: this province, Murcia, is running out of water. Swaths of southeast Spain are steadily turning into desert, a process spurred on by global warming and poorly planned development.

Murcia, traditionally a poor farming region, has undergone a resort-building boom in recent years, even as many of its farmers have switched to more thirsty crops, encouraged by water transfer plans, which have become increasingly untenable. The combination has put new pressures on the land and its dwindling supply of water.

This year, farmers are fighting developers over water rights. They are fighting one another over who gets to water their crops. And in a sign of their mounting desperation, they are buying and selling water like gold on a rapidly growing black market, mostly from illegal wells.

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Kenya's Poor Hungry in the Midst of Plenty
Nick Wadhams in Nairobi, Kenya
for National Geographic News

On a muddy track that creeps between wooden stalls in Nairobi's Kibera slum, Difna Bosibori sells bundles of kale for about ten Kenyan shillings (seven U.S. cents) each. But business has been horrible. There is simply no way she can hide that for the same price she is selling bundles half the size they were a few months ago.

"I haven't even sold a quarter of my stock," Bosibori said. "So when I go home, I cook less for the children, and I go hungry sometimes because I only eat if there's enough left over." Places like the Kibera slum are on the front line in the global crunch over rising food prices. Half of Kenyans live on the equivalent of less than a dollar a day, and people who were already struggling to survive now find that spikes in food prices mean they must eat less—and sometimes not at all.

The slum is a telling example of what some experts call the new face of hunger—a situation in which shops and markets have plenty of food, but not enough customers who can pay for it.

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Amid economic slowdown, signs of new world order
Emerging markets are helping buoy global growth.
By Mark Trumbull
The world economy is cooling this year thanks to a slowdown in the United States, but something new is playing out: This slowdown is serving to amplify a shift in financial power toward Asia and developing nations.

Countries such as China and India are now big enough to help guide the global economy. In the past, a sharp downshift in the US and Europe would decisively slow the rate of global growth.

This time, emerging markets appear poised to grow collectively by 6.7 percent this year, according to recent forecasts by the International Monetary Fund. As a result, the IMF sees world gross domestic product (GDP) growing 3.7 percent, even though the US might experience a recession.

The US economy remains the world's mightiest. But even for Americans, this new economic order has immediate implications:

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Africa: Are We Ready to Risk Smaller Brains, Livers And Testicles?
John Mbaria
Nairobi

ALTHOUGH evidence is mounting that GM crops are not safe for consumption and that they pose significant risks for the environment, Africa is still being exhorted to feed its people on GMOs.

The GMO push, backed by big dollars, is coming at a time when the technology is being rejected elsewhere. For instance, in April 1999, the anti-GMO campaign in Europe forced most big manufacturers there to publicly commit themselves to stop using GM ingredients in their European brands.

European anti-GMO campaign received a massive boost from one of the top researchers in the field, Arpad Puszai, in early 1999. Working at the Rowett Institute in Scotland, he managed to prove that rats fed on supposedly harmless GM products developed cells that were potentially cancerous, smaller brains, livers, and testicles, and ended up with damaged immune systems. Puszai found that the rats' plight was due to the unpredictable side-effects arising from the very process of manipulating genes.

By implication, this meant that GM foods already on the European market, which were created from the same process, could also have been having such effects on humans.

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Will the Amazon Be Flooded for a Hydro Dam?
By Patrick Cunningham, Independent UK.
The Amazonian city of Altamira played host to one of the more uneven contests in recent Brazilian history this week, as a colourful alliance of indigenous leaders gathered to take on the might of the state power corporation and stop the construction of an immense hydroelectric dam on a tributary of the Amazon.

At stake are plans to flood large areas of rainforest to make way for the huge Belo Monte hydroelectric dam on the Xingu river. The government is pushing the project as a sustainable energy solution, but critics complain the environmental and social costs are too high.

For people living beside the river, the dam will bring an end to their way of life. Thousands of homes will be submerged and changes in the local ecology will wipe out the livelihoods of many more, killing their main food sources and destroying their raw materials.

For the 10,000 tribal indians of the Xingu, whose lives have changed little since the arrival of Europeans five centuries ago, this will be a devastating blow.

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THANKS TO KADIRA for posting while I was romping down the US highway system burning gas!

The GreenHouse Project

In the inner-city of Johannesburg, The GreenHouse Project is turning one urban park into a seedbed for sustainable communities. The program takes a holistic approach to the city's challenges, integrating green building and design, efficient and renewable energy, recycling, organic farming and nutrition.

America’s Largest Corporate Dairy Processor Muscles Its Way into Organics
Clout-Heavy Dean Foods Kills USDA Investigation of Their Horizon Label

CORNUCOPIA, WI: After a three-and-a-half year battle with Dean Foods regarding the legality of milk it labels as Horizon Organic, the country’s most aggressive organic industry watchdog filed additional legal actions today. Dean, the nation’s largest dairy processor, with nearly $12 billion in sales and controlling 50 different milk brands, has obtained a large percentage of its organic milk supply from giant factory farms milking thousands of cows each.
The Cornucopia Institute has filed a formal legal complaint with the USDA claiming that one of Dean’s Horizon suppliers, a dairy in Snelling, California, was skirting the law by confining the majority of their cows to a filthy feedlot rather than allowing them fresh grass and access to pasture as the federal organic regulations require.
Cornucopia has also asked the Inspector General at the USDA to investigate appearances of favoritism at the agency that has benefitted Dean Foods. Cornucopia charges that past enforcement of the Organic Foods Production Act, the law governing organic food labeling and production, has been unequally applied toward major corporate agribusiness by the USDA.
“We are asking the USDA, once again, to investigate serious alleged improprieties at dairies that produce Horizon organic milk,” said Mark A. Kastel, Senior Farm Policy Analyst with the Wisconsin-based Cornucopia Institute.
Besides the legal issues that Cornucopia raised, they suggest Dean Foods has seriously injured the value of its Horizon label and the reputation of organic milk. “In the eyes of consumers, factory farms—with questions about humane animal husbandry and records of endemic pollution—do not meet the ethical litmus test,” Kastel added.

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