GMO Food, a Scam, US Government Inside Job for Monsanto, Wal-mart, Dow, et al

Here's how rhetorical grace comes about after reading a purely self-interested Opinion piece in the New York Times on why genetically engineered foods are great (NOT).

Genetic modified plants Warning! Nina Federoff — former “Science and Technology Advisor” to the U.S. State Department and well-known genetic engineering apologist — is back on her soapbox. In an Op Ed [www.nytimes.com] published in the New York Times last week, Federoff strings together one blazing falsehood after another, extolling the virtues of a technology that much of the rest of the world has rightly rejected. What is behind her evangelical commitment to this particular technology? Let’s take a look.

Conflict of interest?

Thanks to Tom Philpott [www.grist.org], we know that for the 5-year period before she joined the State Department, Federoff served on the scientific advisory board at Evogene [www.evogene.com]. This Israeli agriculture-biotech firm works closely with Monsanto, Pioneer Hi-Bred, Bayer CropScience, Syngenta and others. She also served on the board of Sigma-Aldrich [www.sigmaaldrich.com], a transnational corporation that provides services and products — including transgenic animals — to agricultural biotech companies.

And she herself was one of the early patent-holders [www.patentstorm.us] on transgenic technologies, back in the 1980s. Federoff was one of the early patent-holders on transgenic technologies, back in the 1980s.

These solid corporate credentials proved just the ticket into the G.W. Bush Administration’s State Department; tapped initially by Condoleeza Rice, she was kept on by Hillary Clinton. During the same period (2007-2010),Federoff also served as the Science and Technical Advisor to the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development. USAID [www.panna.org] works with Monsanto and other partners to develop and commercialize GE crops, advancing U.S. trade interests in opening new markets abroad for these products.

Feeding the world? Or feeding U.S. geopolitical interests?

Corporate connections aside, it is entirely possible that Federoff truly believes in the technologies and products associated with high external input, industrial agriculture as the panacea for the world’s woes. Unfortunately, many (though certainly not all) molecular biologists and geneticists have a disciplinary habit of thinking in such narrow, reductionist terms that they miss a lot of historical and political context.

For instance, often missed in such myopic preoccupations with what's on the other end of a microscopic gaze is the cold hard fact that the Green Revolution’s origins in 1940s Mexico were not really about feeding the world; Mexico was a food exporter at the time. Rather, the aims included stabilizing restive rural populations in our neighbor to the south, and making friends with a government that at the time was selling supplies to the World War II Axis powers and confiscating oil fields held by Standard Oil (a funding source for for the Rockefeller Foundation, one of the key architects of the Green Revolution).

The dark underbelly of the Green Revolution — how it was driven largely by the political, economic and trade agendas of the U.S., then taken up by key partners including the World Bank and international research centers, is brilliantly dissected by historian Nick Cullather in his new book, The Hungry World, recently reviewed [motherjones.com] by Tom Philpott in Mother Jones. (Note to self: send copy to Federoff.)

Today, the geo-political agenda behind the first Green Revolution, combined with a blind preference for silver-bullet solutions to complex global problems, has led to what Sussex University researcher Sally Brooks calls a “lock in” of genetics-led strategies that fail to meet the diverse needs of people on the ground. And hence, we are forced to read too many ill-informed commercials for corporate technologies — like the one by Federoff — published by news outlets that one would hope might know better.

“Sorry, my dogma ate my homework”

As the kids say now, Federoff gets a FAIL for her latest rant. She provides no empirical evidence to back up her sweeping claims, and blithely ignores the abundance of reports from U.N. agencies and independent scientific studies that have — over the past several years — consistently concluded that GE technologies are unlikely to reduce either hunger or poverty, but do pose a serious threat to food and livelihood security.

For the empirically inclined, here's a quick roundup of the evidence:

*  Meeting the climate, water, energy and food challenges of the 21st century requires investing in agroecology [www.panna.org];   in contrast, GE technologies [www.panna.org] are unlikely to get us where we need to go (concludes the UN-led IAASTD    [www.agassessment.org).

*  GE crops neither increase yield [www.ucsusa.org] nor provide nutritional benefits. They have led to a massive increase in  herbicide use [www.organic-center.org] and epidemic of herbicide-resistant superweeds [www.nytimes.com];

*  GE won’t feed the world (see Anna Lappé's Civil Eats [civileats.com] rebuttal of Federoff and her Foreign Policy     [www.foreignpolicy.com] dispatch of the ardent GE-proponent, Robert Paarlberg);

*  Agroecological farming can double food production [www.panna.org], save our soil [www.panna.org], protect biodiversity [www.panna.org] and help farmers adapt to climate change [www.panna.org]; and

*  Organic farming and reliance on traditional seed systems is the best option for achieving food security in Mexico   [motherjones.com], Gaza [motherjones.com] and across Africa [www.unctad.org];

*  oh, and it's more energy efficient  [www.panna.org] too.

This is not the first time that the New York Times has completely missed the mark [www.panna.org] in identifying the causes of world hunger — which makes it awfully difficult to identify the solutions.
Fed up with Federoff? If you’re tired of being bombarded by pro-GE rants, and would rather get the real scoop on GE, food and ecological justice from leading thinkers, scientists and activists in CA, then join me next month at the Justice Begins with Seeds [biosafetyalliance.org] conference in San Francisco.

See you there!

Marcia Ishii-Eiteman [www.panna.org]

*******************

Here's the reason for Marcia's response --

August 18, 2011

Engineering Food for All

By NINA V. FEDOROFF

Washington

FOOD prices are at record highs and the ranks of the hungry are swelling once again. A warming climate is beginning to nibble at crop yields worldwide. The United Nations predicts that there will be one to three billion more people to feed by midcentury.

Yet even as the Obama administration says it wants to stimulate innovation by eliminating unnecessary regulations, the Environmental Protection Agency wants to require even more data on genetically modified crops, which have been improved using technology with great promise and a track record of safety. The process for approving these crops has become so costly and burdensome that it is choking off innovation.

Civilization depends on our expanding ability to produce food efficiently, which has markedly accelerated thanks to science and technology. The use of chemicals for fertilization and for pest and disease control, the induction of beneficial mutations in plants with chemicals or radiation to improve yields, and the mechanization of agriculture have all increased the amount of food that can be grown on each acre of land by as much as 10 times in the last 100 years.

These extraordinary increases must be doubled by 2050 if we are to continue to feed an expanding population. As people around the world become more affluent, they are demanding diets richer in animal protein, which will require ever more robust feed crop yields to sustain.

New molecular methods that add or modify genes can protect plants from diseases and pests and improve crops in ways that are both more environmentally benign and beyond the capability of older methods. This is because the gene modifications are crafted based on knowledge of what genes do, in contrast to the shotgun approach of traditional breeding or using chemicals or radiation to induce mutations. The results have been spectacular.

For example, genetically modified crops containing an extra gene that confers resistance to certain insects require much less pesticide. This is good for the environment because toxic pesticides decrease the supply of food for birds and run off the land to poison rivers, lakes and oceans.

The rapid adoption of genetically modified herbicide-tolerant soybeans has made it easier for farmers to park their plows and forgo tilling for weed control. No-till farming is more sustainable and environmentally benign because it decreases soil erosion and shrinks agriculture’s carbon footprint.

In 2010, crops modified by molecular methods were grown in 29 countries on more than 360 million acres. Of the 15.4 million farmers growing these crops, 90 percent are poor, with small operations. The reason farmers turn to genetically modified crops is simple: yields increase and costs decrease.

Myths about the dire effects of genetically modified foods on health and the environment abound, but they have not held up to scientific scrutiny. And, although many concerns have been expressed about the potential for unexpected consequences, the unexpected effects that have been observed so far have been benign. Contamination by carcinogenic fungal toxins, for example, is as much as 90 percent lower in insect-resistant genetically modified corn than in nonmodified corn. This is because the fungi that make the toxins follow insects boring into the plants. No insect holes, no fungi, no toxins.

Yet today we have only a handful of genetically modified crops, primarily soybeans, corn, canola and cotton. All are commodity crops mainly used for feed or fiber and all were developed by big biotech companies. Only big companies can muster the money necessary to navigate the regulatory thicket woven by the government’s three oversight agencies: the E.P.A., the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration.

Decades ago, when molecular approaches to plant improvement were relatively new, there was some rationale for a cautious approach.

But now the evidence is in. These crop modification methods are not dangerous. The European Union has spent more than $425 million studying the safety of genetically modified crops over the past 25 years. Its recent, lengthy report on the matter can be summarized in one sentence: Crop modification by molecular methods is no more dangerous than crop modification by other methods. Serious scientific bodies that have analyzed the issue, including the National Academy of Sciences and the British Royal Society, have come to the same conclusion.

It is time to relieve the regulatory burden slowing down the development of genetically modified crops. The three United States regulatory agencies need to develop a single set of requirements and focus solely on the hazards — if any — posed by new traits.

And above all, the government needs to stop regulating genetic modifications for which there is no scientifically credible evidence of harm.

Nina V. Fedoroff, who was the science and technology adviser to the secretary of state from 2007 to 2010, is a professor of biology at Pennsylvania State University.

**********************

Wiki-Leaks strikes at GMO thugs:

New WikiLeaks Cables Show US Diplomats Promote Genetically Engineered Crops Worldwide

Thursday 25 August 2011

by: Mike Ludwig, Truthout | Report

(Image: JR / t r u t h o u t [3]; Adapted: Peter Blanchard [4], Wikileaks [5])

Dozens of United States diplomatic cables released in the latest WikiLeaks dump on Wednesday [6] reveal new details of the US effort to push foreign governments to approve genetically engineered (GE) crops and promote the worldwide interests of agribusiness giants like Monsanto and DuPont.

The cables further confirm previous Truthout reports on the diplomatic pressure the US has put on Spain [7] and France [8], two countries with powerful anti-GE crop movements, to speed up their biotech approval process and quell anti-GE sentiment within the European Union (EU).

Several cables describe "biotechnology outreach programs" in countries across the globe, including African, Asian and South American countries where Western biotech agriculture had yet to gain a foothold. In some cables (such as this 2010 cable [9] from Morocco) US diplomats ask the State Department for funds to send US biotech experts and trade industry representatives to target countries for discussions with high-profile politicians and agricultural officials.

Truthout recently reported [10] on front groups supported by the US government, philanthropic foundations and companies like Monsanto that are working to introduce pro-biotechnology policy initiatives and GE crops in developing African countries, and several cables released this week confirm that American diplomats have promoted biotech agriculture to countries like Tunisia [11], South Africa [12] and Mozambique [13].

Cables detail US efforts to influence the biotech policies of developed countries such as Egypt and Turkey, but France continues to stand out as a high-profile target.

In a 2007 cable [14], the US embassy in Paris reported on a meeting among US diplomats and representatives from Monsanto, DuPont and Dow-Agro-sciences. The companies were concerned about a movement of French farmers, who were vandalizing GE crop farms at the time, and suggested diplomatic angles for speeding up EU approvals of GE Crops.

In 2008 cable [15] describing a "rancorous" debate within the French Parliament over proposed biotech legislation, Craig Stapleton, the former US ambassador to France under the Bush administration, included an update on MON-810, a Monsanto corn variety banned in France.

Stapleton wrote that French officials "expect retaliation via the World Trade Organization" for upholding the ban on MON-810 and stalling the French GE crop approval process. "There is nothing to be gained in France from delaying retaliation," Stapleton wrote.

Tough regulations and bans on GE crops can deal hefty blows to US exports. About 94 percent of soybeans, 72 percent of corn and 73 percent of the cotton grown in the US now use GE-tolerate herbicides like Monsanto's Roundup, according to the US Agriculture Department. [16]
A 2007 cable [17], for example, reports that the French ban on MON-810 could cost the US $30 million to $50 million in exports.

In a 2007 cable obtained by Truthout in January, Stapleton threatened "moving to retaliate" against France for banning MON-810. Several other European countries, including Germany, Austria, Hungary and Bulgaria [18], have also placed bans on MON-810 in recent years. MON-810 is engineered to excrete the Bt toxin, which kills some insect pests.

************

One more response to Fedoroff:

Letters to the Editor
      New York Times
      August 22, 2011

      In “Engineering Food for All” (op-ed, 8/18), Ms. Fedoroff rehashes
      industry-sponsored myths about genetically-engineered (GE) crops, while ignoring
      some ugly facts.  First, massive adoption of GE crops has coincided with a
      swelling of the world’s hungry by over 100 million, consistent with science
      showing no yield boost from GE [1].  Second, herbicide-resistant GE crops
      have not reduced soil erosion (the no-till farming revolution preceded their
      mid-1990s’ introduction) [2]; but they have increased herbicide use, spawned an
      epidemic of herbicide-resistant weeds, and forced a return to tillage and even
      hand-weeding for many farmers [3].  That beneficial GE crops have not been
      developed is due to the technology’s high failure rate, not the extremely lax US
      regulatory system [4].

      William Freese, Senior Science Analyst
      International Center for Technology Assessment
      660 Pennsylvania Ave., SE, Suite 302
      Washington, DC 20003
      bfreese@icta.org
      814-237-2767 (home office)
      202-547-9359 (work)

      Notes to Editor (FYI only of course, not for inclusion in the letter):

      [1]  Frankly, we do not share Ms. Fedoroff’s simplistic assumption that
      increasing yields equate to less hunger.  Yet this emotive card is regularly
      played (always in the future tense!) by biotech proponents who do not understand
      or care to learn about the overriding political factors that cause poverty and
      hunger.  That said, increasing yields in exporting nations where most GE crops
      are grown would mean more abundant harvests; all other things being equal, this
      could slightly lower world food prices, benefitting the urban poor in
      import-dependent developing countries.  Yet, as stated: 1) The world’s hungry
      have increased by over 100 million since the mid-1990s, when GE crops were first
      introduced (see chart of UN FAO figures at http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm [www.worldhunger.org]);       and 2) GE crops are not designed to, and do not, increase yields.  See  Gurian-Sherman, D. (2009).  “Failure to Yield,” Union of Concerned       Scientists: http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/science_and_impacts/science/failure-to-yield.html
      [www.ucsusa.org].  Real solutions must come from helping poor farmers produce more, and GE crops do not do that.  84% of world GE crop acreage is planted with herbicide-resistant crops
      that are irrelevant to poor farmers, who cannot afford herbicides.

      [2]  USDA National Resources Conservation Service (2010).  “2007 National
      Resources Inventory: Soil Erosion on
      Cropland,” http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/nrcs143_012269.pdf [www.nrcs.usda.gov].  See
       the table on page 2, which shows a large decrease in soil erosion from 1982 to
      1997, attributable to rapid adoption of conservation tillage (including
      no-till), and a leveling off of soil erosion in the years GE herbicide-resistant
      crops were massively adopted, from 1997 to 2007.  (Note: GE herbicide-resistant
      crops in the U.S. expanded from just 16.0 to 117.2 million acres from 1997 to
      2007, as documented in Benbrook, C. (2009).  “Impacts of Genetically Engineered
      Crops in the U.S.: The First Thirteen Years,” The Organic Center, Supplemental
      Table 5,
      at http://www.organic-center.org/science.pest.php?action=view&report_id=159 [www.organic-center.org]).

      [3]  See Benbrook, C. (2009), cited above.  The NYT’s Andrew Pollack also
      reported on this last
      year http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/04/business/energy-environment/04weed.html [www.nytimes.com].  It
       is disingenuous of Ms. Fedoroff to ignore the responsibility of GE crops for
      increasing herbicide use, resistant weeds, increased use of soil-eroding
      tillage, and sharply rising weed control costs, regarded by agricultural
      scientists as major challenges facing U.S. farmers.
      [4]  See pages 2-3 of the letter (the section entitled “Regulation does not
      ‘stifle’ GE crop innovation”) to USDA Secretary Vilsack, August 3, 2011, from 22
      farming and consumer protection groups, food companies and trade associations
      regarding US regulation of GE crops,
      at http://www.agra-net.com/content/agra/ips/pdf/APHIS-Rules-Letter.pdf [www.agra-net.com].

Burning Trash in War Zone; Politics; Cult of Celebrity; Food Facts

"Veterans Administration and private physicians have seen a significant increase in respiratory problems in soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Other physical problems among war veterans include shortness of breath, headaches and coughing up blood. Almost all of these soldiers had exposure to burn pits as well as battlefield smoke and dust storms. It seems unlikely that the thousands of Iraqis and Afghans working on U.S. military bases or living nearby have escaped such debilitating ailments themselves."

Pulled from a recent article on the USA's grand sustainability and green methods in Afghanistan -- burn pits. That's 10 pounds of trash generated by each American soldier (100,000 total), maybe more by the tens of thousands of contractors shooting up the desert. Pretty nifty -- each ground troop in Afghanistan costs around $1.2 million a year to keep alive and "supported" by infrastructure, energy output, etc.

Going to hell in a hand basket. Hmm, how apropos is that? Read the great piece here --

http://www.guernicamag.com/features/2972/burn_pits_afghanistan_8_15_11/

****************

WING Nut central -- Aspirants Bachmann and Perry are losers when it comes to basic science -- here's a pulled chunk from a great piece in Alternet:

Science. Both Perry and Bachmann object to the theory of evolution, even though evolution has a similar scientific consensus to the theory that mammals need to breathe oxygen to survive. Perry put his anti-science views into action, appointing creationists to the Texas School Board in hopes they can deceive Texas schoolchildren about reality.

Perry and Bachmann also object to global warming, even though it also enjoys scientific consensus. Bachmann’s objections to science won her a space on the House GOP American Energy Solutions Group, which is dedicated to killing off any actual solutions to American energy problems. Perry went beyond vague insinuations that he somehow knows better than scientists about climate into the territory of promoting the theory that climate change is a global hoax involving thousands---millions?---of scientists and leaders, in order to get the sweet cash from imaginary funders who have some non-disclosed interest in cutting into oil profits. Instead of listening to scientists on the subject of climate, Perry prefers a more 12th-century approach, asking people instead to pray for rain.

http://www.alternet.org/story/152096/michele_bachmann_vs._rick_perry%3A_who%27s_the_bigger_right-wing_extremist?page=1

We are heading for the Bronze Age, for sure, and James Howard Kunstler, of The Long Emergency and Geography of Nowhere fame, predicted the USA would be putting in more and more radically stupid and superstitious folk in low and high elected office. This is where we are heading, for sure, when you look at the GOP and tea bag party.

**********************************

Okay, Matt Damon for president is another reaction to these bizarre times --

The Guardian mentioned Damon as a defender of teachers and public education. As a misguided establishment consensus has emerged around standardized testing, privatization and charter schools, Damon has made a full-throated and deeply personal defense of public education, teachers and even the much-maligned teachers’ unions. He gave a real barnburner speech at a recent pro-public education “Save Our Schools” rally.

Like many other progressives, Damon has grown weary of Democrats looking for phony centrism instead of standing up to a shockingly far-right Republican party. Against this backdrop, Damon’s principled and public stands do indeed make us sit up and pay attention.

*****************

Our own Spokane has some wing nuts running, including Mike Fagan for City Council --

Here are some questions pulled from the Seeping Spokesman Review --

LIBRARIES, PARKS AND ENVIRONMENT

12. Spokane’s library system offers significantly fewer hours than many of the 20 largest cities in Washington. Would you be willing to ask voters for a tax to boost this service as was requested earlier this year by the city library board?

Again, NO MORE TAXES! Please see answer #8. It is very imperative that we get a firm control on labor costs. Lower taxes, smaller and less intrusive and transparent government. To hear the Mayor claim that we are cut to the bone is laughable.

13. A consultant hired by the city to review city services in 2006 said that the city was not investing enough in its urban forest. Should the city do more to plant and maintain street trees. If so, how?

I believe the urban forest is adequate. While I love trees, they sure can do a lot of damage and require a lot of maintenance to our infrastructure, i.e. pruning, leaves, sidewalks, sewer, and water pipes. Let’s not forget, the expansion of our urban forest program has been a contributing factor to growing the size of our city government also as we now have at least 3 arborists working for the city and parks.

14. Do you support the sustainability plan promoted by Mayor Mary Verner, which was adopted by the Spokane City Council in 2010? Do you support the decision of former Mayor Dennis Hession to sign the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement?

I actively practice and support conservation, composting and recycling. I have been schooled and have hands-on experience with LEAN principles. I have had a hand in the creation of several community gardens in northeast Spokane, but, I do not and cannot support any taxation or regulation which has its roots in the “global warming” lie.

15. Some nearby cities have crafted restrictions for watering lawns during certain hours. Would you support instituting similar rules in Spokane?

AHH, notice the tea bag, Patriot Party, Libertarian-faux guy go at all these things. He'll be with some interesting council members, if Fagan wins. Laughable, the city would be, but then we had a child rapist mayor, Jim West, supported by conservatives, Christian-talkers, no less.

***********************
Food, sustainable sanity --

Lastly, these are real tough times for people trying to eat, but here is a phalanx of ways to connect to positive action -- Nourishing the Planet (dot) ORG:

Nourishing the Planet also highlighted five plants that not only provide nutritious crops, but also help farmers mitigate the effects of climate change. And we discussed how energy from the sun is being used to provide water for crops. 

All the best,
Danielle Nierenberg
Nourishing the Planet Co-Project Director
www.nourishingtheplanet.org
Please connect with us on Facebook!
  
Here are some highlights from the week:

Marula Tree

Five plants you've never heard of that can slow climate change

Nourishing the Planet provides five plants that are helping farmers adapt to changes in the climate. Crop yields are estimated to decrease by 30 percent by the end of the century in the United States as a result of climate change. But heartier and more tolerant crops, such as the marula tree and marama, have significant potential to heal degraded soils and aid in the global fight against climate change.

SELF Innovation of the Week: Harnessing the Sun's Power to Make the Water Flow

This week's innovation discusses how energy from the sun is being used to get water to crops. In the Kalalé district of northern Benin, agriculture is a source of livelihood for 95 percent of the population, yet small-scale farmers lack access to effective irrigation systems. But the Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF), a U.S. nonprofit, has introduced an innovative solar-powered drip irrigation system that is helping farmers-especially women-irrigate their fields.   

Ending the Hunger Season

Fred Bahnson, co-founder of the Anathoth Community Garden in North Carolina, discusses the work that the Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization (ECHO), a Florida-based group, are doing to reduce global food insecurity. In addition to conducting research, ECHO provides free consulting for development workers, and promotes agricultural practices, such as growing indigenous crops, to make marginal land more productive. By helping small farmers, the staff at ECHO believe you increase food security for the whole country--and the world.
  

NtP TV Nourishing the Planet TV: Farmers Groups and Cooperatives

In this week's episode, we discuss the role cooperatives have in supporting small scale farmers in Africa. We highlight the role that organizations, including Urban Harvest and the Oromia Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union, play in helping farmers establish local groups, which help to increase crop yields and improve access to markets.

Creating a sustainable world: An interview with Barton Seaver

In this interview, National Geographic fellow and chef, Barton Seaver, discusses the role that a chef can play in creating a sustainable food system. He believes that chefs can act as advocates and educators and can be an important part of changing people's food habits and food choices.

Food Waste -- Letting funding go to waste

In the United States, an estimated 27 percent of all food available for consumption is thrown away. Food waste in the United States amounts to about 30 million tons and accounts for 12 percent of total waste produced in a year. But organizations, including the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, are working to ensure that food that would otherwise be thrown away is delivered to the people in need.

30 Project Dinner kicks-off in San Francisco

Ellen Gustafson and her colleagues brought together food advocates from a variety of organizations,including California Food Policy Advocates (CFPA), CoFed, and the Jamie Oliver Foundation, to eat and talk about the best ways to change the global food system. This is the first of 30 dinners that Gustafson will host in 30 states, where she plans to bring policy makers and other important stakeholders to the table to discuss the future of domestic food policies.

 
What did you think of this newsletter? Please give us your feedback...we will use your comments to constantly improve our work. Write Danielle Nierenberg, Senior Researcher and Co-Project Director of Nourishing the Planet, at dnierenberg@worldwatch.org.

Young Greenies, Sustainability Advocates -- Learn How to Write Your Congress-woman!

Below is a blog post from my friend and colleague, Paul Dillon. I am not trying to harp on friends who understand sustainability, but we have to be a lot more steeled and aggressive against lobbyist-loving politicians. Kid gloves, contrived respect for the person and the office, well, those days are long gone -- after Roy Cohen, Hoover, Reagan, Nixon, Bush, Rove, Rumsfeld, Newt, and the Tea Bag Express. Palin and the other women radical government haters and people disclaimers, well, time is now to fight with tools. Writer's tools. Not back peddling, no honoring politicians who dishonor their role in our community called the State of Washington, the State of the Union.

So, a little bit of fun below that as I commented on Paul's DOWN to EARTH blog --

http://www.downtoearthnw.com/blogs/down-earth/2011/aug/12/friday-quote-cathy-mcmorris-rodgers-response-my-message-about-gutting-epa-smart-growth-division/

Mr. Dillon:

Thank you for contacting me regarding the FY 2012 Interior Appropriations Act. It is an honor to represent the people of Eastern Washington and I appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts with me.

 

Like you, I believe it is important that we protect our wildlife and the environment. However, these efforts should not come at the expense of grown [sic] and development. I believe the two policies can coexist. The FY 2012 Department of Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act reflects this balance, providing $27.5 billion to ensure than our wildlife and environmental policies are consistent with growth and job creation. Be assured that I will keep your views in mind as the House considers this bill.

Thank you again for contacting me on this important issue. As your Representative in Congress, I am committed to putting the best interests of Eastern Washington first. I invite you to visit my website at www.mcmorrisrodgers.house.gov for additional information or to sign up for my e-newsletter. Please do not hesitate to contact me if I can be of further assistance.

 

Best wishes,

 

Cathy McMorris Rodgers

 **************

 

My original letter:

Dear Rep. McMorris Rodgers:

The House Appropriations Committee recently passed the FY2012 Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies appropriations bill that will significantly reduce funding for the Environmental Protection Agency, and in particular the Office of Smart Growth. The bill would reduce overall funding for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency by $1.5 billion and completely eliminate the Office of Smart Growth. The bill, approved along party lines, also cuts Clean and Drinking Water State Revolving Funds by $1 billion; Brownfields funding by $40 million; The Historic Preservation fund by $5 million.

As an advocate for smart growth, I urge you to reject this funding proposal. Spokane has benefited from this program and we have won awards from the program on two occasions:

 

•  2006 - Spokane, WA Smart Growth Implementation Assistance (SGIA) for market analysis to identify smart growth development opportunities in the University District.

•  2007 - Spokane, WA Smart Growth Implementation Assistance for market opportunities for smart growth development.

 

The Washington Growth Management Act (GMA) encourages smart growth in that state law mandates that growth be directed into urban growth areas where urban services already exist. Smart growth strategies help create the housing, transportation and business resources necessary to keep America competitive in a global, 21st century economy. The EPA’s Office of Smart Growth is a critical part of implementing these strategies for a stronger America. Eliminating federal support for this program will hurt towns still struggling to rebound economically, American families looking to reduce their dependence on oil, and the businesses that need strong local economies to survive.

  

In addition, the Office of Smart Growth is a central part of the federal Partnership for Sustainable Communities, an innovative, interagency initiative that coordinates federal investments in housing, transportation and the environment to make the most of taxpayer dollars. Cutting funding to the Office of Smart Growth would seriously damage the Partnership and its efforts to help federal dollars go further in communities across the country.

  I urge you to reject budget cuts to the EPA, and fully fund the Office of Smart Growth in the FY 2012 budget.

  

Best, Paul Dillon
**************************************

 

Paul Haeder on August 12 at 12:47 p.m.

 

 

 

Paul, Paul, Paul — Take the kid gloves off. Boise's doing it. Portland's doing it. So are Vancouver, BC., Seattle, and. Chicago.

 

Learn to write politicians letters that have some meat and punch:

 

Dear Out of Touch Lobby-hound McMorris —

  

First, WE are here because of the environment — clean air, water, sound soils, land for growing food, and land and ecosystems that give Spokane and any city like it big development bucks, tourists, and outdoor activities you can not imagine. This is not treehugger stuff. This is deep planning, deep architecture, deep economics, deep biology, deep sociology, deep health care, deep engineering, deep human services, deep creativity, deep, deep, deep.

 

First, you need, ma'am, to leave the shallows and take off the floaties and begin to swim with the big guys, the adults, the smart kids who know your white girl's rap song so-so well.

Chicago is preparing for 110 degree summers, 30 or 40 days in a row. That's the mayor's office, business people, insurance companies, citizens, law makers, the smart professors, etc. We are talking by 2020, heat and death, That being said, other cities understand to be resilient to fossil fuel shortages and to deal with the energy companies' crook pricing facilitated by elected chumps … and to deal with the rain that never comes, or storms that come at the wrong time, and the heat that broils grass and forest under stories, they know that compact growth and new urbanism — call it smart growth — are tools to HELP communities. Tools. We need thousands of tools in the tool chest. One is not the only way, but to cut a tested and emerging area is backwards, unAmerican, and typical of your out of touch and uneducated style.

It's called sustainability. Put that word in a metacrawler.com search — “sustainability and Boise” or “sustainability and smart growth and cities” or “sustainability and peak oil” or finally, “sustainability and climate change”. Start reading. See how businesses and communities are working together, and it isn't about tea bag or radical conservatism. It's about thinking and critical analysis.

 

You obviously had a lapse in your edification — major and medium cities know that EPA needs more tools, that citizens live longer with good food, good air, and sanity. Jobs, jobs, jobs is not about the next hotel chain coming to town, killing unions, forcing workers to work injured, and gouging wages. Or maybe a nuclear waste plant to process the stuff of Fukashima. Build on Green Bluff. Come on, ma'am, you are a person seemingly stuck in the 1950s.

 

Please start getting staffers to help you learn what cities must do to get through the next 100 years. How jobs are tied to clean energy, new architecture, new transportation models, and a new generation of youth living smaller and more compactly thanks largely to unregulated growth, car use, and fossil fuel waste generated by parents and grandparents. The RV trip and constant jet trips you are taking have caused some oxygen debt. .

So, please, please, stop the empty worded politicking and find voice in education. Many schools are helping teachers understand that their 8 th graders or younger know what wind turbines are, know what melting ice caps do, and how humanity is in need of a huge shift in how we do business. Gutting programs kills jobs, futures, and potential genius thinking of the next and the next generation.

 

Thanks, your loyal truth meter who knows a hustling political operative when he crosses her on the street 

 

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I don't know, Paul. Think Tim DeChristopher more when you start engaging in these letters. Guts, our wonderful language, and think of the history of great writers like Twain, Atwood, Octovio Paz, Vonnegut, Gore Vidal, She is showing zero respect for milliions of thinkers from around the world who are dedicated to sustainability, smart growth and economic growth. She is on the wrong side of history, and you have to have the tools to tell her that. Mano y mano with a political hack gets you nowhere, my friend, except a dose of Prozac.

 

Think TIM DeChristopher.

 

 http://www.peacefuluprising.org/climate-trial

 

 http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/news-and-blogs/campaign-blog/tim-dechristopher-a-new-hero/blog/36147/

Collapse, The Monkey Business of Cap and Trade, Mondragon Basque

His Guns, Germs and Steel ended up as a PBS series --

http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/


Think about James Hansen's newest book when thinking about Jared Diamond, and the previous Blogpost here above on PacifiCAD on Costa's book --

In Storms of My Grandchildren, James Hansen gives us the opportunity to watch a scientist who is sick of silence and compromise…offer up the fruits of four-plus decades of inquiry and ingenuity just in case he might change the course of history.

— L.A. Times

James Hansen is perhaps best known for bringing global warming to the world’s attention in the 1980s, when he first testified before Congress. A member of the National Academy of Sciences, an adjunct professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University and at Columbia’s Earth Institute, and director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, he is frequently called to testify before Congress on climate issues. Dr. Hansen’s background in both space and earth sciences allows a broad perspective on the status and prospects of our home planet. This is his first book.

In Storms of My Grandchildren, Dr. James Hansen—the nation’s leading scientist on climate issues—speaks out for the first time with the full truth about global warming: The planet is hurtling even more rapidly than previously acknowledged to a climatic point of no return.

Although the threat of human-caused climate change is now widely recognized, politicians have failed to connect policy with the science, responding instead with ineffectual remedies dictated by special interests. Hansen shows why President Obama’s solution, cap-and-trade, which Al Gore has signed on to, won’t work; why we must phase out all coal; and why 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a goal we must achieve if our children and grandchildren are to avoid global meltdown and the horrific storms of the book’s title. This urgent manifesto bucks conventional wisdom (including the Kyoto Protocol) and is sure to stir controversy, but Hansen—whose climate predictions have come to pass again and again, beginning in the 1980s when he first warned Congress about global warming—is the single most credible voice on the subject worldwide.

Hansen paints a devastating, all-too-realistic picture of what will happen in the near future, mere years and decades from now, if we follow the course we’re on. But he is also an optimist, showing that there is still time to do what we need to save the planet. Urgent, strong action is needed, and this book will be key in setting the agenda going forward to create a groundswell, a tipping point, to save humanity—and our grandchildren—from a dire fate more imminent than we had supposed.

****************************************************************

So, how do we get these conversations going inside the boardrooms, in the heads of the Murdoch's of the world, the tar sand profiteers, the GE CEOs and VPs, the Obama Administration, the tea bag party honchos? We really have to celebrate some of cultures' successes, but we have to work harder on prepping for a world without ice, with peak resources, etc.

These conversations are difficult, and they end up reverting to some really shallow timelines, shallow responses, and much of the response is tied to making money and watching safety nets fray, burn. Can technology, computer whizzes, and industry and business really lead? These questions are not knee jerk.

******************************************************************


From Grist --

Diamond's newest book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, restores human agency to the picture. Through a grab bag of case studies that range from the Mayan Empire to modern China, Diamond tries to distill a unified theory about why societies fail or succeed. He identifies five factors that contribute to collapse: climate change, hostile neighbors, trade partners (that is, alternative sources of essential goods), environmental problems, and, finally, a society's response to its environmental problems. The first four may or may not prove significant in each society's demise, Diamond claims, but the fifth always does. The salient point, of course, is that a society's response to environmental problems is completely within its control, which is not always true of the other factors. In other words, as his subtitle puts it, a society can "choose to fail."

Collapse by Jared Diamond, Viking Books, 592 pgs., 2005.

Diamond then identifies the 12 environmental problems that are portents of doom: destruction of natural habitats (mainly through deforestation); reduction of wild foods; loss of biodiversity; erosion of soil; depletion of natural resources; pollution of freshwater; maximizing of natural photosynthetic resources; introduction by humans of toxins and alien species; artificially induced climate change; and, finally, overpopulation and its impact.

These issues, which dovetail neatly with the flashpoints of the modern environmental movement, will be familiar enough to readers of Grist. But while the factors that Diamond believes lead societies to collapse may be clear, his definitions of both "society" and "collapse" are less so.

"Collapse" can refer to complete extinction (Pitcairn Island),

 population crash (Easter Island),

resettlement (Vikings),

 civil war (Rwanda),

 anarchy (Somalia, Haiti),

or even just the demise of a political ideology (the disintegration of the Soviet Union).

His definition of "society" is equally vague; he variously uses it to refer to

a settlement (e.g., various Viking communities),

a nation (ranging from Rwanda and Haiti, two of the smaller countries in the world,

to China, one of the largest),

a state (Montana), and an island (Easter).

Each individual example makes sense, but as analogues -- to each other or to the situation in today's globalized world -- they often falter.

*****************************************************

There are small nations examples of how sustainability might be the leading edge for getting into climate disruption, resource extinction and rotten governments. Here is one model cooperative --

Led by The Cleveland Foundation (the nation’s oldest community foundation), the collaborative Cleveland Model has started to close the wealth gap. Its funding comes from the city of Cleveland, banks, and the Evergreen Development Fund—set up by the Cleveland Foundation and anchor institutions to underwrite the co-op businesses.

The Cleveland Model draws upon the experience of the Mondragón Corporation in the Basque Country of Spain, the world’s most successful large-scale cooperative effort. It employs over 100,000 people in an integrated network of more than 120 high-tech, industrial, service, construction, financial, and other cooperatively owned businesses.


Mondragón is now the 7^th largest business in Spain, so it isn’t “a small scale hippie mainstay,” according to Judith Schwartz in Time, but rather “it is huge, hard-nosed, business-wise, and successful.” Last November, the United Steelworkers (USW) and Mondragón Internacional, S.A. announced a partnership framework for establishing manufacturing cooperatives in the US and Canada, integrating collective bargaining principles into the Mondragón worker ownership model of “one worker, one vote”.

Can Green festivals teach us to end ‘corporatocracy’?

Gatherings blend commercial with social justice, spiritual healing

Paul K. Haeder

Note -- This is the conclusion of a look at the 10th annual Green Festival in Seattle. Read part 1 here
http://www.downtoearthnw.com/stories/2011/jun/19/seattle-green-festival-crossroads-crosshairs-green/


It was “the economic hit man” telling the greenies about “a new way” to a peaceful world that is another chink in the armor of capitalism’s loosening grip on the rest of the world.

“It’s the first time in human history we are all being impacted by the same problems,” John Perkins told 150 or so in the grandstand at the 2011 Seattle Green Festival. “We are all in this together,” Perkins continued. “It’s all our space station, except this one doesn’t have shuttles to resupply.”

Perkins once was a gung ho soldier of empire as a National Security Agency thug, and a higher-up in an international consulting firm where he ended up in Indonesia, Panama, Ecuador, Colombia, Saudi Arabia, Iran and other strategically important countries.

He was working deeply for the U.S. ‘corporatocracy’ – banks, corporations and Uncle Sam – to wedge into those areas by promulgating despotic regimes, resource plunder and gross social injustice.

Earlier this year, Perkins was also the headliner at the Green Festival, an event full of pseudo pop change of consciousness razzmatazz. He now lives in the Pacific Northwest, and his new moniker – anti-predatory capitalist – lets him look toward melting glaciers of the Himalayas and Amazonian shamans to guide the world into one of self-actualization.

Perkins professes he helped put into place the mechanisms of “shock capitalism” worldwide, and those policies led to the elements leading to Sept. 11, 2001.

Here’s what the Boston Herald says about his book, “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man:” “(His) story is so astonishing it defies belief…. imagine the conceptual love child of James Bond and Milton Friedman.”

So what could top his personal confession and 180-degree green/social justice turnaround, away from the purveyors of the industrial military, prison, oil and mining complexes he once helped prop up?

Sneakers by Ethletic? Sweatshop free, Fair Trade certified, eco-friendly, and vegan. These tennies are something else, from the www.autonomieproject.com – fighting global poverty and global warming one shoe step at a time.

This festival rah-rah is brought to us by Global Exchange and Co-op America – all with the triple bottom line in mind: sustainable economy, ecological balance, social justice.

Kevin Danaher is called the Paul Revere of globalization’s woes, and he’s co-founder of Global Exchange and the brain behind “green festivals.” I’ve interviewed him on my radio show, “Tipping Points: Voices from the Edge,” have been on a panel with him at the Community Building via teleconferencing, broke bread with him in Spokane, and listened to him at last year’s Sustainable September where he was the keynote speaker.

Danaher has written about the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and World Trade Organization.

“The Green Festival was kind of a secondary institution in that about seven or eight years ago Global Exchange was having one of those strategic direction discussions, this one around growth. How do we grow the organization?” he said.

He and others identified two growth models: one is to expand your membership, revenues, staff, programs, etc. The other is create a larger institution of real estate, a commercial real estate property, where your organization is a tenant, and bring in allied organizations to fill the building, and become the revolution center, “the green-global-economy-people’s-bottom-up-development center, or whatever you call it.”

“So we came up with the idea of Global Citizen Center, but I wanted the ground floor retail portion to be Green-Mart, the opposite of Wal-Mart, the entire green economy eco-mall, which nobody’s done yet, surprisingly enough, and I realized that I didn’t know the green economy movement because my 10 books were all about the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization, all this big, global economy kind of stuff,” Danaher said. “So we figured that if we did a weekend event, The Green Festival, that would get us to know this green economy movement, build some credibility.”

What the Green Festival can do is bring the minds of people like those from Co-op America, a non-profit that works on responsible shopping by breaking the spin of sweatshop purveyors. For instance, the CEO of Kohl’s makes $5.4 million a year, yet sweatshop abuses tied to 12-hour work days, denial of medical care after on-the-job injuries, contaminated water and impossible production goals have been prevalent in Kohl’s Guatemalan, Salvadoran, Nicaraguan and Bangladesh source clothing factories.

Exchange Kohl’s with The Gap (CEO salary — $8.89 million) or J.C. Penney (CEO salary — $10.3 million), and you get the idea. While Edward Humes was hawking his pro-Wal-Mart book and blathering on about how Wal-Mart was the next best green thing since Al Gore, think of Wal-Mart’s CEO making $29.6 million annually, plus another $4.5 million in stock options, as abuses overseas and domestically persist.

The Green Festival, as is reflective of many contemporary green events, was full of contradictions, hope, and the reality that we have all been colonized by monopolists like Bill Gates and frauds like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg (as of 2011, his personal wealth was estimated to be $13.5 billion).

Danaher has been citing Jed Emerson’s philosophical vision of this “movement” – “He uses the term, ‘blended value,’ and he talks about how do you get those three sets of values to blend, so that you are healing society, healing nature, and making a profit—but you’re not making a profit so you can be Donald Trump and be a billionaire and waste money on a coke habit, but you can plow that money back into the project, which is to save humanity from itself,” he said. “That’s the challenge that’s in front of us now, not ‘save the planet.’ The planet will save itself by exterminating us. It will shuck us off like any other bad bug.”

The ideas of a global brain and paradigm shifts to the 5th power swirl around Green Festivals like granola sticks to a vegetarian’s ribs.

The future is in the hands of children, and Zoe Weil of Human Education inspired the festival audience with hope and belief that teaching kids critical thinking skills is one thing, but helping them become choice makers and change makers for the ”movement” is a whole other kettle of fish.

She talked about teaching compassion and engaging students to learn what it means to respect the work of animal welfare, environmental preservation , and social justice. She’s looking for curricula that not only motivates educators to mentor youth to acquire relevant knowledge, skills, and a commitment to live ethically, sustainably, and peaceably, but cuts to the very fabric of education – all levels should be about meaningful information that is inspiration and provides tools for creating a safe and humane world.

“Solutionaires” is what Zoe calls graduates of the new educational model, armed with vision and solutions.

That’s what we hoped would emanate from the early Green Festivals. Maybe this global brain Danaher talks about is full of the pulsating bio-polar ADD, co-dependent traits of our individual brains. Maybe we all are suffering the fatigue of economic meltdown, technological dependence and community destruction?

Maybe we need to honor both the profound and profane that comes with these Green Festivals. Maybe we need to stop perpetuating the problems and redefine how we live with each other, with our soul and heart – nature.

The Land of the Free is Seeing the Land of the Greedy Dominate Our Lives

NEWS FLASH: Brief break in the PacifiCAD sustainability blog.

WHY: The Economy

(note: well, not really "the economy." It's about those few people who have benefited from corporate welfare and bailout greed who have helped, over the past 30 years, put community and sustainability into a tailspin. Now, well, young people wanting a higher education are jeapordized)

WHAT: I've been putting myself on the chopping block, so to speak, as a 53-year-old four-degree holding educator-writer-community organizer-media expert. That's a big, heavy lift sending out job applications, cover letters, all the necessary materials those organizations ask for in a very bleak job market, where people from all over are applying for low-paying organizer jobs in Seattle. From overseas, too. Seattle, a stratified and paved over city with some shining stars but plenty of empty lives too.

CAVEAT: It's worse for youth, for those 75 million 1 to 17 year olds in this country who are seeing their futures gutted by greed, stupidity, wars, and a society that is called by one Chilean economist, and underdevelopming nation -- the first one. Us, the good old US of A.

Chilean Economist Manfred Max-Neef: US Is Becoming an 'Underdeveloping Nation'
Manfred Max-Neef won the Right Livelihood Award in 1983, two years after the publication of his book Outside Looking In: Experiences in Barefoot Economics. Look him up on Democracy Now -- www.democracynow.org

******************************************************************************
I've got the skills that would plow through any company's stasis or inertia, plus the creativity, energy and multidisciplinary approach to seeing problems and knowing what systems thinking is from a broader, holistic challenge of solving problems systemically.

I am applying to the West Side of Washington, where Amazon's "campus" employs software developers and other knowledge workers at $130,000 a year in some cases, with puny bachelors degrees. It's an interesting time having multi-lingual skills, all the education and experience as a college instructor, curriculum developer, media expert, climate change and sustainability commentator, radio producer, journalist, and planning graduate of a master's program, and seeing faces twitch and hearing doors slam. Because of all these job qualifications and experiences I have, because that narrative and life frame are not very valued in this country. I've written novels, published magazine articles, hitchhiked from Nogales to Panama with cameras and notepads in hand, been to Vietnam as a writer and logistics expert for a multi-national biodiversity project. I'm a certified diver master, been on reefs off Belize, Cozumel, Baja, Thailand, the Red Sea, the Pacific Northwest, and the list goes on. I have organized huge events on the Vietnam War, Climate Change and sustainability. I'm a photographer and muckraker.

I am looking to make a splash as a communication director or strategic planner (or you name the multi-tasking job you can think of) in the non-profit arena, in Seattle. I'm looking at those rare full-time positions at our state's under siege community colleges.

I'm not going to go on and on in attempt to produce a cover letter for some job out there that doesn't exist. The point of this is -- I have been working my tail off teaching as an adjunct instructor, journalist and blogger. I've been remiss here not tapping into this blog as much as I have in the past. I believe blogs and Wiki leaks and others like Democracy Now's Juan Gonzalez and Amy Goodman are absolutely vital to questioning this country's out of synch entitlement, graft and political prostitution. I've seen greed all over Mexico, Central America and in parts of Asian, and here in this country, from Texas to Montana to Seattle. Greed kills hope for youth, kills a country's backbone, kills life on the planet.

I had a conversation with a guy in Seattle as he stepped over two street kids on his way the curb where his 130,000 dollar Maserati was parked. I tried engaging him in a conversation, but he was easily frightened, easily shamed. Maybe it was $185,000 car, come to think of it. I made sure to bring to his attention how insulting it is to even own one of those worthless cars, let alone drive it in a city with major unemployment issues and disparity beyond belief. This is the face of greed, maybe even the kind your grandmother would like her granddaughter to invite over for dinner.

Amazon dot com(munista) doing what to Wiki-leaks?

"Amazon.com Inc. forced WikiLeaks to stop using the U.S. company's computers to distribute embarrassing State Department communications and other documents, WikiLeaks said Wednesday.

The ouster came after congressional staff had questioned Amazon about its relationship with WikiLeaks, said Sen. Joe Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut.

WikiLeaks confirmed it hours after The Associated Press reported that Amazon's servers had stopped hosting WikiLeaks' site. The site was unavailable for several hours before it moved back to its previous Swedish host, Bahnhof."

Facebook allowing a backdoor entrance by US internal spies to get information without any due process, any warrant, any pre-notification to the FB user?

http://www.alternet.org/media/147760/how_facebook_betrayed_users_and_undermined_online_privacy/
The stories in techie land, including the gutting of Internet Neutrality, well, what more do techies need to know about how the rest of us feel about their industry?

"Comcast Demonstrates Why We Need Net Neutrality

Two big technology stories broke yesterday, demonstrating that

a) Comcast is evil,

but also b) it needs to be reined in by strict net neutrality regulations"

http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/371768/comcast_demonstrates_why_we_need_net_neutrality/

So, I'll be highlighting COP16, Cancun climate talks.

http://www.globalwarmingisreal.com/2010/11/12/cop16-taking-the-long-view-in-cancun/

For now, though, Bernie Sanders says it right here. If those in techie land or those with quasi-successful businesses do not get it yet, there is a way on, and it's against education, against youth, against the middle and lower classes, against science and against sustainability.

WATCH: Senator's Impassioned Speech: "There Is a War Being Waged Against the Working Families of America"

Independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders gave a lively, impassioned speech before Congress earlier this week on how the U.S. is becoming a banana republic and waging a war against its working families.


At a time when the middle class is disappearing and when the top 1% now earns more income than the bottom 50 percent, this Congress is going to have to be very careful about how it goes forward on deficit reduction. In my view, we must not balance the budget on the backs of working families, the elderly or the poor. Instead, we’ve got to do away with the enormous tax breaks and loop-holes that have been given to millionaires and billionaires and take a hard look at the excessive amount of money we spend on the military as well as some other government agencies.

Dissent? Not in the Land of Free Speech

NOTE -- I've written a lot over the years about the illegal wars in Central America during the Ray-gun years. But our Latin America experience predates that: The Frank Church commission that found USA complicit in murdering Salvadore Allende, democratically elected in Chile. Before that, Vallejo, Neruda, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and the United Fruit Company. Major US corporations sending blood into the streets of Central American countries, and South America. I did plenty of work covering the fake War on Drugs while reporting on the border in Arizona, Texas and the other side, Mexico.

It's easy to see how my brethern faculty have caved in. My media cronies, they've been rooted out and legit journalism is all but gone -- FROM the so-called MAIN Stream. From many camps' points of view, that stream in mainstream represents a lot of elephant "you know what." Yellow journalism has turned into Corporate Sound Bytes.

And here's the sad news this morning: I've been asked by a friend to scrub a pretty mild interview of him from my column in the Spokesman Review's Down to Earth North West. Because he fears retaliation as an artist, fears coming from an agent who says state funding and grants and sponsors in the private sector might blackball him for some pretty tame words tied to the British Petroleum debacle in his southern sphere. He fears not being able to photograph and fund his art.

Brave New World. Complicit consumers to the corporate lies. What do we give young people now to protest injustice, environmental terrorism and their own bankrupt society that places CEOs' profits over their futures -- affordable education is now on the chopping block and being bled empty.

You don't treat abused dogs like we treat our youth. They will either rebel, zone out, or flip out. Why not concentrate on education for all, not for some rich elite?

We shall see how the techies, the IT gurus, the Google and Amazon lovers and the rest of that skewed part of our class-stratified society will do when their lives are put to shame because they failed to protect their society, their cities, their world. People have to do the work of civilization in a warming climate globe. It's not about IT and Facebook and all the next line of bells and whistles. It's about builders, educators, biologists, thinkers, planners, crafts people, and all the other folk working seriously on sustainability.

REALLY.

Here's Chris Hedges, and you all should read some of his books, listen to his talks on the Internet, find him, his articles.

Hedges: We're Losing Our Intelligence -- How the Purge of True Dissent Has Starved Our Discourse

By Chris Hedges, Truthdig

Posted on November 15, 2010, Printed on November 21, 2010

http://www.alternet.org/story/148858/

The blacklisted mathematics instructor Chandler Davis, after serving six months in the Danbury federal penitentiary for refusing to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), warned the universities that ousted him and thousands of other professors that the purges would decimate the country’s intellectual life.

“You must welcome dissent; you must welcome serious, systematic, proselytizing dissent—not only the playful, the fitful, or the eclectic; you must value it enough, not merely to refrain from expelling it yourselves, but to refuse to have it torn from you by outsiders,” he wrote in his 1959 essay “...From an Exile.” “You must welcome dissent not in a whisper when alone, but publicly so potential dissenters can hear you. What potential dissenters see now is that you accept an academic world from which we are excluded for our thoughts. This is a manifest signpost over all your arches, telling them: Think at your peril. You must not let it stand. You must (defying outside power; gritting your teeth as we grit ours) take us back.”

But they did not take Davis back. Davis, whom I met a few days ago in Toronto, could not find a job after his prison sentence and left for Canada. He has spent his career teaching mathematics at the University of Toronto. He was one of the lucky ones. Most of the professors ousted from universities never taught again. Radical and left-wing ideas were effectively stamped out. The purges, most carried out internally and away from public view, announced to everyone inside the universities that dissent was not protected. The confrontation of ideas was killed.

“Political discourse has been impoverished since then,” Davis said. “In the 1930s it was understood by anyone who thought about it that sales taxes were regressive. They collected more proportionately from the poor than from the rich. Regressive taxation was bad for the economy. If only the rich had money, that decreased economic activity. The poor had to spend what they had and the rich could sit on it. Justice demands that we take more from the rich so as to reduce inequality. This philosophy was not refuted in the 1950s and it was not the target of the purge of the 1950s. But this idea, along with most ideas concerning economic justice and people’s control over the economy, was cleansed from the debate. Certain ideas have since become unthinkable, which is in the interest of corporations such as Goldman Sachs. The power to exclude certain ideas serves the power of corporations. It is unfortunate that there is no political party in the United States to run against Goldman Sachs. I am in favor of elections, but there is no way I can vote against Goldman Sachs.”

The silencing of radicals such as Davis, who had been a member of the Communist Party, although he had left it by the time he was investigated by HUAC, has left academics and intellectuals without the language, vocabulary of class war and analysis to critique the ideology of globalism, the savagery of unfettered capitalism and the ascendancy of the corporate state. And while the turmoil of the 1960s saw discontent sweep through student bodies with some occasional support from faculty, the focus was largely limited to issues of identity politics—feminism, anti-racism—and the anti-war movements.

The broader calls for socialism, the detailed Marxist critique of capitalism, the open rejection of the sanctity of markets, remained muted or unheard. Davis argues that not only did socialism and communism become outlaw terms, but once these were tagged as heresies, the right wing tried to make liberal, secular and pluralist outlaw terms as well. The result is an impoverishment of ideas and analysis at a moment when we desperately need radical voices to make sense of the corporate destruction of the global economy and the ecosystem. The “centrist” liberals manage to retain a voice in mainstream society because they pay homage to the marvels of corporate capitalism even as it disembowels the nation and the planet.

“Repression does not target original thought,” Davis noted. “It targets already established heretical movements, which are not experimental but codified. If it succeeds very well in punishing heresies, it may in the next stage punish originality. And in the population, fear of uttering such a taboo word as communism may in the next stage become general paralysis of social thought.”

It is this paralysis he watches from Toronto. It is a paralysis he predicted. Opinions and questions regarded as possible in the 1930s are, he mourns, now forgotten and no longer part of intellectual and political debate. And perhaps even more egregiously the fight and struggle of radical communists, socialists and anarchists in the 1930s against lynching, discrimination, segregation and sexism were largely purged from the history books. It was as if the civil rights movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had no antecedents in the battles of the Wobblies as well as the socialist and communist movements.

“Even the protests that were organized entirely by Trotskyists were written out of history,” Davis noted acidly.

Those who remained in charge of American intellectual thought went on to establish the wider “heresy of leftism” in the name of academic objectivity. And they have succeeded. Universities stand as cowardly, mute and silent accomplices of the corporate state, taking corporate money and doing corporate bidding. And those with a conscience inside the walls of the university understand that tenure and promotion require them to remain silent.

“Not only were a number of us driven out of the American academic scene, our questions were driven out,” said Davis, who at 84 continues to work as emeritus professor of mathematics at the University of Toronto. “Ideas which were on the agenda a hundred years ago and sixty years ago have dropped out of memory because they are too far from the new center of discourse.”

Davis has published science fiction stories, is the editor of The Mathematical Intelligencer and is an innovator in the theory of operators and matrices. He is a director of Science for Peace. He also writes poetry. His nimble mind ranges swiftly in our conversation over numerous disciplines and he speaks with the enthusiasm and passion of a new undergraduate. His commitment to radical politics remains fierce and undiminished. And he believes that the loss of his voice and the voices of thousands like him, many of whom were never members of the Communist Party but had the courage to challenge the orthodoxy of the Cold War and corporate capitalism, deadened intellectual and political discourse in the United States.

During World War II Davis joined the Navy and worked on the minesweeping research program. But by the end of the war, with the saturation bombings of Dresden and Tokyo, as well as the dropping of the nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he came to regret his service in the military. He has spent most of his life working in a variety of anti-war and anti-nuclear movements.

“In retrospect I am sorry I didn’t declare myself as a conscientious objector,” he said. “Not at the beginning of the war, because if you are ever going to use military force for anything, that was a situation in which I would be happy to do it. I was wholehearted about that. But once I knew about the destruction of Dresden and the other massacres of civilian populations by the Allies, I think the ethical thing to do would have been to declare myself a CO.”

He was a “Red diaper baby.” His father was a professor, union agitator and member of the old Communist Party who was hauled in front of HUAC shortly before his son. Davis grew up reading New Masses and moved from one city to the next because of his father’s frequent firings.

“I was raised in the movement,” he said. “It wasn’t a cinch I would be in the Communist Party, but in fact I was, starting in 1943 and then resigning soon after on instructions from the party because I was in the military service. This was part of the coexistence of the Communist Party with Roosevelt and the military. It would not disrupt things during the war. When I got out of the Navy I rejoined the Communist Party, but that lapsed in June of 1953. I never got back in touch with them. At the time I was subpoenaed I was technically an ex-Communist, but I did not feel I had left the movement and in some sense I never did.”

Davis got his doctorate from Harvard in mathematics and seemed in the 1950s destined for a life as a professor. But the witch hunts directed against “Reds” swiftly ended his career on the University of Michigan faculty. He mounted a challenge to the Committee on Un-American Activities that went to the Supreme Court. The court, ruling in 1960, three years after Joseph McCarthy was dead, denied Davis’ assertion that the committee had violated the First Amendment protection of freedom of speech. He was sent to prison. Davis, while incarcerated, authored a research paper that had an acknowledgement reading: “Research supported in part by the Federal Prison System. Opinions expressed in this paper are the author’s and are not necessarily those of the Bureau of Prisons.”

Davis, who has lived in Canada longer than he lived in the United States, said that his experience of marginalization was “good for the soul and better for the intellect.”

“Though you see the remnants of the former academic left still, though some of us were never fired, though I return to the United States from my exile frequently, we are gone,” he said. “We did not survive as we were. Some of us saved our skins without betraying others or ourselves. But almost all of the targets either did crumble or were fired and blacklisted. David Bohm and Moses Finley and Jules Dassin and many less celebrated people were forced into exile. Most of the rest had to leave the academic world. A few suffered suicide or other premature death. There weren’t the sort of wholesale casualties you saw in Argentina or El Salvador, but the Red-hunt did succeed in axing a lot of those it went after, and cowing most of the rest. We were out, and we were kept out.”

“I was a scientist four years past my Ph.D. and the regents’ decision was to extinguish, it seemed, my professional career,” he said. “What could they do now to restore to me 35 years of that life? If it could be done, I would refuse. The life I had is my life. It’s not that I’m all that pleased with what I’ve made of my life, yet I sincerely rejoice that I lived it, that I don’t have to be Professor X who rode out the 1950s and 1960s in his academic tenure and his virtuously anti-Communist centrism.”


Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, is a senior fellow at the Nation Institute. He writes a regular column for TruthDig every Monday. His latest book is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.

Photographer Jordan takes viewers through ‘the numbers’

Mass consumption, mass culture collide in artist’s giant photos

Paul K. Haeder


Photography is this fabulous medium from which the human shared vision of the world captured in silvers, dyes and digital pixels has transformed culture.

The Gulf of Mexico and the coast itself have been captured over decades in the viewfinders of artists, and now we are at the point of cataloguing and reflecting the pain of the BP oil disaster through multitudes of photographers who have amassed there to tell a story.

Photographs are now being used to raise consciousness, and one area that the photographic image plows into ethos and pathos is the environment.

Lucky for Spokane, and thanks to a benefactor from Boeing and his widow, we have not only a riveting event featuring an internationally acclaimed photographer, but Whitworth University now has one of the country’s largest collection of photography books.

Thanks to Floyd and Shirley Daniel, hundreds of books – coffee table types – are in a special collections group at Whitworth’s Library.

According to Tad Wisenor, the university’s director of campaign planning and fund raising, having the Daniel Collection brings to the private college an historical record of photography’s impact on our world. Daniel was an avid videographer and photographer who heard about Whitworth at his Seattle church.

Bringing to campus Seattle-based photographer Chris Jordan Oct. 12, 7 p.m. to the Weyerhaeuser building, ties into the college’s effort to teach the Christian community about the impact of photography on world cultures and consumerism’s impact on ecosystems.

[see his work here:

http://www.chrisjordan.com/gallery/epu/#e-pluribus-unum


“We want the Whitworth community to realize the decisions they make have a broader impact on the world,” Wisenor said.

Jordan’s work is varied, and he is famously known for those huge digitally manipulated panels of the junk and stuff our consumer society uses and throws away. His work is haunting and beautiful, even when we find out that that horizon that looks from a distance like a colorful beach is made up of 2 million plastic bottles, the number the U.S. uses every five minutes.

His artwork’s themes tie together various forms of dualism: “E Pluribus Unum”; “Midway; Running the Numbers I” and “II;” “Intolerable Beauty; In Katrina’s Wake.”

Jordan says this about his show, “In Katrina’s Wake: Portraits of Loss from an Unnatural Disaster”: “There is evidence to suggest that Katrina was not an entirely natural event like an earthquake or tsunami. The 2005 hurricane season’s extraordinary severity can be linked to global warming, which America contributes to in disproportionate measure through our extravagant consumer and industrial practices.

Never before have the cumulative effects of our consumerism become so powerfully focused into a visible form, like the sun’s rays narrowed through a magnifying glass. Almost 300,000 Americans lost everything they owned in the Katrina disaster. The question in my mind is whether we are all responsible in some degree.”

His images of rotting and desiccated remains of seabirds in the continuing project, “Midway: Message from the Gyre,” awakens in many viewers the reality we dump so much plastic into the ocean and around its edges that we are yearly responsible for the deaths of millions of birds, marine mammals and fish who eat things like BIC lighters and soda pop six-pack rings.

One portrait, huge at 64-inches by 94-inches, shows a hammerhead and blue shark, with Japanese calligraphy in the center. Almost like a tattoo some sailor would have scribed into leathery skin. Except this image was “made” using 270,000 fossilized shark teeth in a pointillist genre, the total number of sharks killed everyday for their fins (known as the extinction-facilitating shark-finning practice to serve mostly Asian palates.

Some of his images represent the futility of modern culture to want something nature never intended – in “Barbie Dolls” (2008, 60 inches x 80 inches), the viewer standing way back sees the contours of a woman’s torso and breasts. Upon closer inspection, the flesh color canvas is made up of thousands of pods, almost like some Rose Bowl float flower-like shape. Except each shape is made up of Barbie dolls, 32,000 in all, equalling the number of elective breast augmentation surgeries done in the U.S. monthly in 2006.

Jordan has made a name for himself using the photographic art form to sculpt a certain visceral and intellectual reaction from us, his audience and his consumer masses. The impact of the number of cellular phones tossed away daily, shaped like an undulating sea, or the 1.14 million paper grocery bags used hourly in the U.S. manipulated to look like a birch forest pull the average viewer into his own personal space – how and why we are all shaped by this hyper-consumerism society, where obsolescence is either perceived or planned.

I’ve had the opportunity to attend classes at the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, and I’ve interviewed a few artists, and photographers specifically for newspaper and radio shows. One show (heard here) included talking with Arizona physician Michael Collier, who has for 30 years created 13 books showing his love of geology, photography and aeronautics.

“I want people to see beauty in the landscape,” Collier says. “If they can start there and realize that there are tendrils of information, that there are stories buried in it, then I’ve done the work I’m supposed to be doing.”

His work covers beautiful shapes and colors, contours and lines and geometrics, all seen from this single-engine Cessna 180. His photos can be seen in many publications, but one of his books, “Over the Mountains, An Aerial View of Geology”(Mikaya Press), is the kick-off picture book focused on the morphology or evolution of landscapes.

Matthew White (read interview here -- http://www.downtoearthnw.com/stories/2010/jun/28/some-say-character-develops-darkness/)

has spent decades in the Gulf of Mexico, photographing towns, ecosystems, and the intersection between nature and development. White believes in showing the reality of the oil spill, not exploiting people’s misery.

What these photographers bring to their work is a larger sense of how the image brings to the human eye a conscious decision to allow the sheer vastness of our landscape and our consumption to overtake our intuition.

Jordan’s talk ties into the larger goal of sustainability at Whitworth, which Wisenor says has had much impetus – from students – over the past five years. Wisenor, with a master’s in urban and regional planning from Eastern Washington University, says this effort to show students the “value of creation protection” (ecological awareness) allows students who haven’t necessarily been exposed to sustainability issues to connect their lives and consumerism to negative effects Jordan so beautifully shapes in his photographs.

Photographer Chris Jordan and his photos will be at the Weyerhaeuser building at Whitworth University at 7 p.m. Oct. 12. Reception is free to the public. For more information on Jordan, visit www.chrisjordan.com.