| Thursday, July 7, 2005 |  |
| BioDemocracy Faces Hijack Threat in Marin | 0 comments |
| 7 Jul 2005 @ 17:05 BioDemocracy Facing Hijack Threat July 5, 2005 Marin Independent Journal Keri Brenner Marin's biotech crop ban, approved by voters last November, could be threatened by "hijacking" attempts in the state Legislature that would pre-empt county ordinances, local activists said. "They're trying to sneak it in at the end of the legislative session," said Mark Squire, leader of GMO Free Marin, which spearheaded the successful Measure B initiative last year. "The end of the Legislature (session) is traditionally the way to sneak things in so there's not time for opposition to build or for the public to make a lot of comment." Squire, owner of Good Earth Natural Foods in Fairfax, made his comments in the wake of last week's two attempts by legislators to amend bills in the state Assembly and Senate. The process of cutting and pasting bills to insert new language is referred to as "hijacking." The amended bills, which are slated to be heard again this week, would remove local government authority over any seed regulations. "We feel it's typical of the way the biotech industry has attempted to market their technology by avoiding public debate," Squire said. Genetically engineered crops - also called GMOs for genetically modified organisms, or biotech crops - refer to crops in which the DNA in seeds has been altered to add a specific quality, such as resistance to pesticides or disease. Proponents say genetically modified crops - such as some types of corn, wheat, soy and rice - increase farm production and streamline farming costs. Opponents, however, say the biotech industry's interest in the altered crops is financial. If the companies can control the seed patents, they can force farmers to pay for new seeds every year, critics say. Marin is one of three counties, along with Mendocino and Trinity, with a ban on cultivation of genetically altered crops. Fairfax Councilman Frank Egger said he will introduce an item at tonight's Town Council meeting to oppose any "GMO pre-emption legislation." He is organizing Marin activists to appear in Sacramento this week to request the Legislature vote "no" on the two bills. "The sneaky move is similar to the pesticide industry's pre-empting the right of Mendocino County to prohibit aerial pesticide spraying after the California Supreme Court upheld their voters' right to that ban," Egger said. "That legislative pre-emption then covered all 478 cities and 58 counties in California." Squire's and Egger's comments come as a new statewide farm group, the California Healthy Foods Coalition, announced it was forming to provide more public education and grassroots programs on the benefits of biotechnology. "Family farmers understand some people have questions about biotechnology," said California Farm Bureau President Bill Pauli. "Our coalition will provide people with the facts and will support agricultural innovations that will improve the quality of life for California consumers." The group has engaged a public relations firm, Sacramento-based River City Communications, to launch a series of media announcements explaining the coalition's intent and purpose. "California's family farmers serve an important role in providing safe and healthy food to consumers around the world," said River City President Marko Mlikotin. At issue in the current campaign is a genetically engineered crop ban initiative approved for the November ballot in Sonoma County. Sonoma's ballot measure was withdrawn last year after a technical flaw, but it has been revamped and reintroduced. Farm bureaus across the state - including the Marin County Farm Bureau - opposed the series of biotech crop bans on the California ballot last November. Marin farm officials said even though Marin does not have any biotech crops, they wanted to have the flexibility to use any new technologies they felt could be helpful in their operations. A ban was approved in Marin by 61 percent of voters, but similar measures were defeated in Butte and San Luis Obispo counties. "Measure B won by 61 percent after an open public discourse around the GMO issue," Squire said. "When people have a chance to hear the story, they do the right thing." Renata Brillinger of Californians for GE-Free Agriculture of Occidental said the legislative attempts in Sacramento were "part of a nationally coordinated highjacking of local democratic rights by the biotechnology industry." Similar laws have been attempted or passed into law in 15 other states, she said. "The measure is driven by narrow private interests seeking to protect their economic stake by convincing members of the Legislature to strip away the democratic rights of their own constituents," Brillinger said. The state bills in question are Assembly Bill 1508 and Senate Bill 1056. Assemblymen Simon Salinas, D-Salinas, and Juan Arambula, D-Fresno, and Sen. Dean Florez, D-Bakersfield, wrote the amendments. "We feel that Marin does have the right to protect our health, farms and environment from GMOs that the state and federal governments regulate so poorly," Squire said. "It is obvious that the federal government, whose job it is to protect us from such risky technologies, is asleep at the wheel. |
| Brazil Likely to Penalize the US for Failing to Comply with WTO Ruling | 0 comments |
| 7 Jul 2005 @ 17:03 Brazil Likely to Penalize the US for Failing to Comply with WTO Ruling Brazil Asks WTO to Allow U.S. Penalties By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Published: July 5, 2005 Filed at 7:57 a.m. ET GENEVA (AP) -- Brazil said Tuesday it was asking the World Trade Organization for permission to penalize the United States for its failure to comply with a WTO ruling against U.S. subsidies for cotton growers. ''We are asking for retaliation,'' Paulo Mesquita, Brazil's deputy trade negotiator to the WTO, told The Associated Press. ''We are following all the procedural steps to preserve our rights.'' Mesquita said Brazil still was consulting with Washington, but needed to file its request so it can impose penalties if negotiations fail. In its request -- to be formally filed later Tuesday -- Brazil will ask the WTO to allow it to increase import duties on certain U.S. goods to penalize the United States for failing to sufficiently change its export programs, Mesquita said. He didn't specify which U.S. products might be targeted. ''We still hope the United States will comply in a manner so we don't have to carry these (retaliatory measures) out,'' Mesquita said. In March, the world trade body upheld a ruling condemning government help for cotton producers in the United States, saying that many U.S. programs include illegal export subsidies or domestic payments that are higher than WTO rules allow. The WTO gave the United States government a June 30 deadline to end its illegal export subsidies and domestic payments. ''It would be strange if we didn't submit this request following the lack of implementation by the U.S.,'' Luiz Felipe de Seixas de Correa, Brazil's ambassador to the WTO, told the AP. The U.S. Agriculture Department said last week it would alter three export credit guarantee programs ahead of the deadline to comply with the WTO ruling. The alterations were intended to satisfy the WTO's finding against the guarantees, which help U.S. growers sell commodities by making financing available to foreign customers. But the department didn't address the WTO finding against the government's cotton marketing program, called Step-2, which makes payments to exporters and domestic mill users to compensate them for buying higher-priced U.S. cotton. U.S. lawmakers have indicated they will try to deal with the issue during the congressional budgeting process this year. Brazil brought the complaint to the WTO, arguing that the U.S. has maintained its dominance as the world's top cotton exporter, and second-biggest cotton producer, through subsidies to cotton growers averaging more than $2.7 billion annually from 1999 to 2003. The U.S. said its payments to farmers fall within levels allowed under WTO rules, arguing that many of the payments don't meet the WTO definition of subsidies and should not have been considered government aid. Under an accord last summer, WTO members set up a special committee to deal with cotton within the global body's broader agriculture negotiations. The committee is meant to look to a proposal from West Africa for the elimination of export and domestic subsidies by rich producers. Poor nations say subsidies in rich nations cause artificially low international prices and hurt farmers in developing countries because rich country producers are able to ''dump'' their cheap cotton on the world market. |
| The So-Called "Brain Behind Bush": Guilty of Treason? | 1 comment |
| 7 Jul 2005 @ 17:02 The So-Called "Brain Behind Bush": Guilty of Treason? 'Karl Rove: Worse than Osama bin Laden' July 05, 2005 By Ted Rall, Yahoo NEW YORK--In war collaborators are more dangerous than enemy forces, for they betray with intimate knowledge in painful detail and demoralize by their cynical example. This explains why, at the end of occupations, the newly liberated exact vengeance upon their treasonous countrymen even they allow foreign troops to conduct an orderly withdrawal. If, as state-controlled media insists, there is such a creature as a Global War on Terrorism, our enemies are underground Islamist organizations allied with or ideologically similar to those that attacked us on 9/11. But who are the collaborators? The right points to critics like Michael Moore, yours truly, and Ward Churchill, the Colorado professor who points out the gaping chasm between America's high-falooting rhetoric and its historical record. But these bête noires are guilty only of the all-American actions of criticism and dissent, not to mention speaking uncomfortable truths to liars and deniers. As far as we know, no one on what passes for the "left" (which would be the center-right anywhere else) has betrayed the United States in the GWOT. No anti-Bush progressive has made common cause with Al Qaeda, Hamas, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan or any other officially designated "terrorist" group. No American liberal has handed over classified information or worked to undermine the CIA. But it now appears that Karl Rove, GOP golden boy, has done exactly that. Last week Time magazine turned over its reporter's notes to a special prosecutor assigned to learn who told Republican columnist Bob Novak that Valerie Plame was a CIA agent. The revelation, which effectively ended Plame's CIA career and may have endangered her life, followed her husband Joe Wilson's publication of a New York Times op-ed piece that embarrassed the Bush Administration by debunking its claims that Saddam Hussein tried to buy uranium from Niger. Time's cowardly decision to break its promise to a confidential source has had one beneficial side effect: according to Newsweek, it indicates that Karl Rove himself made the call to Novak. One might have expected Rove, the master White House political strategist who engineered Bush's 2000 coup d'état and post-9/11 permanent war public relations campaign, to have ordered a flunky underling to carry out this act of high treason. But as the Arab saying goes, arrogance diminishes wisdom. Rove, whose gaping maw recently vomited forth that Democrats didn't care about 9/11, is atypically silent. He did talk to the Time reporter but "never knowingly disclosed classified information," claims his attorney. But there's circumstantial evidence to go along with Time's leaked notes. Ari Fleischer abruptly resigned as Bush's press secretary on May 16, 2003, about the same time the White House became aware of Ambassador Wilson's plans to go public. (Wilson's article appeared July 6.) Did Fleischer quit because he didn't want to act as spokesman for Rove's plan to betray CIA agent Plame? Another interesting coincidence: Novak published his Plame column on July 14, Fleischer's last day on the job. If Newsweek's report is accurate, Karl Rove is more morally repugnant and more anti-American than Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden, after all, has no affiliation with, and therefore no presumed loyalty to, the United States. Rove, on the other hand, is a U.S. citizen and, as deputy White House chief of staff, a high-ranking official of the U.S. government sworn to uphold and defend our nation, its laws and its interests. Yet he sold out America just to get even with Joe Wilson. Osama bin Laden, conversely, is loyal to his cause. He has never exposed an Al Qaeda agent's identity to the media. "[Knowingly revealing Plame's name and undercover status to the media]...is a violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act and is punishable by as much as ten years in prison," notes the Washington Post. Unmasking an intelligent agent during a time of war, however, surely rises to giving aid and comfort to America's enemies--treason. Treason is punishable by execution under the United States Code. How far up the White House food chain does the rot of treason go? "Bush has always known how to keep Rove in his place," wrote Time in 2002 about a "symbiotic relationship" that dates to 1973. This isn't some rogue "plumbers" operation. Rove would never go it alone on a high-stakes action like Valerie Plame. It's a safe bet that other, higher-ranking figures in the Bush cabal--almost certainly Dick Cheney and possibly Bush himself--signed off before Rove called Novak. For the sake of national security, those involved should be removed from office at once. Rove and his collaborators should quickly resign and face prosecution for betraying their country, but given their sense of personal entitlement impeachment is probably the best we can hope for. Congress, and all Americans, should place patriotism ahead of party loyalty. More > |
| South Coast Permaculture Newsletter and Schedule of Events | 1 comment |
| 7 Jul 2005 @ 16:45 Here is a complete list from the South Coast Permaculture Guild of international workshops and lectures that cover a range of topics from green building design, water management, solar energy, sustainability, organic gardening etc. Click MORE for schedule... More > |
| Supreme Court Nominations Crucial for the environment | 0 comments |
| 7 Jul 2005 @ 05:28 My dear friend Jeremy sent me this. Dear Friend, There's a lot at stake for the environment in the upcoming battle over the next Supreme Court nomination. The Supreme Court has the final say on whether to uphold and enforce--or limit and strike down--the laws that safeguard our nation's air, water, wildlife, and wilderness. Earthjustice--a nonprofit law firm for the environment that I support--is part of an all-out effort to keep the Supreme Court fair and independent. If you believe that a fair and independent Supreme Court is vital to protecting our environment, please join Earthjustice and me in taking action TODAY. Follow the link below to take action: [link] -- Any fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius-and a lot of courage-to move in the opposite direction. -- Albert Einstein Jeremy B. Paster Senior Forest Campaigner, Greenpeace US Direct: 415-255-9221 x321 Mobile: 415-218-7025 Fax: 415-255-9201 |