The Fight Over Food Deserts – Corporate America Weighs In

The Fight Over Food Deserts – Corporate America Weighs In | Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy:

Some 38.2% of households seeking food aid are home to at least one working adult. As the nation’s largest employer, it would seem obvious that the first step Wal-Mart would take to end hunger is ensure that the jobs it provides don’t leave its employees needing food aid. In 2008 alone, Wal-Mart settled 63 cases of wage theft.The settlement totalled $352 million in unpaid wages and involved hundreds of thousands of current and former Wal-Mart employees across the country.iv]

Even when the company does pay the agreed upon wage, workers still come up short. According to Good Jobs First, taxpayers subsidize Wal-Mart stores through numerous forms of public assistance--Medicaid, Food Stamps, public housing--that often allow workers to subsist on the company’s low wages. A report by the House Education and Workforce Committee conservatively places these costs deferred by the retail giant at $420,750 per store; the Wal-Mart Foundation's per-store charitable giving is just 11 percent of that amount ($47,222).[v]

Three companies will own U.S. meat market

If JBS gobbles up Smithfield, three companies will own U.S. meat market | Grist: "High on the hog

A typical supermarket's meat counter displays a landscape of easy bounty: shrink-wrapped chops, cutlets, steaks, roasts, loins, burger meat, and more, almost all of it priced to move.

But the dizzying variety cloaks a disturbing uniformity. As the chart below shows, the great bulk of the meat consumed in the United States comes from just four large, powerful companies. These companies wield tremendous power to dictate not just what meat is available, but how that meat is raised.

For these "meat titans," turning a profit selling cheap meat means slashing the cost of doing business. And that in turn means paying their farmer-suppliers as little as possible for live animals, and paying workers as little as possible to slaughter and process them.

Since the meat market began its dramatic arc of consolidation three decades ago, farmers have had to choose between scaling up, to make up on volume what they were losing on price, or exit the business altogether. As a result, millions of small, diversified farms have closed down their animal-raising operations over the past 30 years, and surviving farms have mostly scaled up, specialized in one species, and placed that species by the thousands in vast confinements known as concentrated animal feedlot operations, or CAFOs. These fragrant, teeming spaces are notorious sources of pollution and social decay in rural areas.

Three of the companies that now dominate the U.S. meat market -- Tyson, Smithfield, and Cargill -- will be familiar to most readers; the fourth isn't exactly a household name. Over the last two years, a Brazilian beef-packing conglomerate called JBS has come barreling into the U.S. meat market, taking advantage of a weak dollar and economic troubles among top domestic players.

First, it bought up two prominent beef players, grabbing a nearly quarter of the U.S. beef market. Only Tyson, with 28 percent, has a larger share; the agribusiness giant Cargill is tied with JBS for second place, with 24 percent of the market. Then JBS swooped in and bought two-thirds of chicken giant Pilgrim's Pilgrim's pride, giving it 18 percent of the U.S. poultry market, second only to Tyson's 22 percent. In the course of its dealmaking, JBS also acquired some pork interests, taking 12 percent of that market -- putting it in third place behind Tyson (19 percent) and hog king Smithfield (26 percent).

After all of those U.S. deals -- and its recent takeover of its former Brazilian beef rival, Bertin -- JBS is now the largest industrial-meat purveyor on the planet, bigger in terms of global meat sales than even Tyson and Cargill.

Nanotechnology: Transforming Food and the Environment - Spring 2010 | Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy

Nanotechnology: Transforming Food and the Environment - Spring 2010 | Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy:

Nano Food in the Grocery Store
A wide variety of nano-based products and processes are already on our plates, largely driven by the corporate sector, including Kraft Foods, H.J. Heinz, Nestle, Unilever, Cargill, Pepsi-Cola, Syngenta and Monsanto (Friends of the Earth, 2008). The Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars estimates at least 84 food-related items containing nano products are in the market, while investigations by Friends of the Earth report 104 food items and an additional 400-500 nano packaging products (Friends of the Earth, 2008). So what are the agri-food corporations up to at the nano scale?

Nano Farming
The agri-chemical and information technology industries have shifted down to the nano-scale to produce new agricultural chemicals, seeds, and livestock with novel functions and capabilities, as well as new systems of farm monitoring and management (Kuzma and VerHage, 2006; Friends of the Earth, 2008). Syngenta, BASF, Bayer Crop Science, Cargill and Monsanto are all undertaking research and commercialization in these areas. Syngenta, for example, has harnessed the properties of nano-scale materials to produce nano pesticides including “gutbuster” microcapsules that contain pesticides engineered to break open in the alkaline conditions of an insect’s stomach. They argue this will enable the more targeted delivery of pesticides (Syngenta, 2007). The convergence of nanotechnologies with biotechnology, also provides industry with new tools to modify genes and even produce new organisms. For example, nanobiotechnologies enable nanoparticles, nanofibres and nanocapsules to carry foreign DNA and chemicals that modify genes (ETC Group, 2004; Torney et al., 2007). In addition to the re-engineering of existing plants, novel plant varieties may be developed using synthetic biology; a new branch of technoscience that draws on the techniques of genetic engineering, nanotechnology and informatics. In a recent breakthrough in this area, researchers completely replaced the genetic material of one bacteria with that from another—transforming it from one species to another (ETC Group, 2007). These technologies clearly up the ante, increasing both the opportunities and risks offered by each of these technologies in isolation.

Nano Food
Nanotechnologies are being used to manufacture entirely new foods. These include ‘smart’ foods—nutritional profiles that respond to an individual’s allergies, dietary needs or food preferences. While such
designer food sounds like the stuff of fantasy, nanotechnologies make them scientifically possible. Nanotechnology is also being used to alter the properties and traits of food; including its nutrition, flavor, texture, heat tolerance and shelf life. For example, Unilever has reported breakthroughs in the manufacture of lowfat and low-calorie food that retains its rich and creamy taste and texture, applying this to a range of very low-fat ice-creams, mayonnaise and spreads (Daniells, 2008). Meanwhile, food companies are using microcapsules to deliver food components such as omega 3-rich fish oil. The release of fish oil into the human stomach is intended to deliver claimed health benefits of the fish oil, while masking its fishy taste (Friends of the Earth, 2008).

Nano Food Packaging
Nano food packaging is the most commercialized of the agri-food nanotechnologies. Nano packaging materials include barrier technologies, which enhance the shelf life, durability and freshness of food—or at least slow the rotting process. DuPont produces a nano titanium dioxide plastic additive that reduces UV exposure that they claim will minimize damage to food contained in transparent packaging (ElAmin, 2008).

Nano packaging is also being designed to enable materials to interact with the food it contacts; emitting antimicrobials, antioxidants, nutraceuticals and other inputs. This ‘smart’ or ‘active’ packaging, as manufacturers brand it, is being developed to respond to specific trigger events. For example, packaging may contain nanosensors that are engineered to change color if a food is beginning to spoil, or if it has been contaminated by pathogens. This technology is already being used in the U.S. with carbon nanotubes incorporated into packaging materials to detect microorganisms, toxic proteins and food spoilage (ElAmin, 2008).

How the Pentagon Turns Working-Class Men into the Deadliest Killers on the Planet | | AlterNet

How the Pentagon Turns Working-Class Men into the Deadliest Killers on the Planet | | AlterNet:
An excerpt from antiwar activist Swanson's new book, War Is a Lie.
December 10, 2010

Since the Vietnam War, the United States has dropped all pretense of a military draft equally applied to all. Instead we spend billions of dollars on recruitment, increase military pay, and offer signing bonuses until enough people "voluntarily" join by signing contracts that allow the military to change the terms at will. If more troops are needed, just extend the contracts of the ones you've got. Need more still? Federalize the National Guard and send kids off to war who signed up thinking they'd be helping hurricane victims. Still not enough? Hire contractors for transportation, cooking, cleaning, and construction. Let the soldiers be pure soldiers whose only job is to kill, just like the knights of old. Boom, you've instantly doubled the size of your force, and nobody's noticed except the profiteers.

Still need more killers? Hire mercenaries. Hire foreign mercenaries. Not enough? Spend trillions of dollars on technology to maximize the power of each person. Use unmanned aircraft so nobody gets hurt. Promise immigrants they'll be citizens if they join. Change the standards for enlistment: take 'em older, fatter, in worse health, with less education, with criminal records. Make high schools give recruiters aptitude test results and students' contact information, and promise students they can pursue their chosen field within the wonderful world of death, and that you'll send them to college if they live ? hey, just promising it costs you nothing. If they're resistant, you started too late. Put military video games in shopping malls. Send uniformed generals into kindergartens to warm the children up to the idea of truly and properly swearing allegiance to that flag. Spend 10 times the money on recruiting each new soldier as we spend educating each child. Do anything, anything, anything other than starting a draft.

But there's a name for this practice of avoiding a traditional draft. It's called a poverty draft. Because people tend not to want to participate in wars, those who have other career options tend to choose those other options. Those who see the military as one of their only choices, their only shot at a college education, or their only way to escape their troubled lives are more likely to enlist. According to the Not Your Soldier Project:

"The majority of military recruits come from below-median income neighborhoods.

"In 2004, 71 percent of black recruits, 65 percent of Latino recruits, and 58 percent of white recruits came from below-median income neighborhoods. "The percentage of recruits who were regular high school graduates dropped from 86 percent in 2004 to 73 percent in 2006. "[The recruiters] never mention that the college money is difficult to come by - only 16 percent of enlisted personnel who completed four years of military duty ever received money for schooling. They don't say that the job skills they promise won't transfer into the real world. Only 12 percent of male veterans and 6 percent of female veterans use skills learned in the military in their current jobs. And of course, they downplay the risk of being killed while on duty."

How the Oligarchs Took Over America | Economy | AlterNet

How the Oligarchs Took Over America | Economy | AlterNet: "you can't understand how the rich seized control of American politics, and arguably American society, without understanding how a small group of Americans got so much money in the first place.

There's no mistaking how, in less than a year, Citizens United has radically tilted the political playing field. Along with several other major court rulings, it ushered in American Crossroads, American Action Network, and many similar groups that now can reel in unlimited donations with pathetically few requirements to disclose their funders.

What the present Supreme Court, itself the fruit of successive tax-cutting and deregulating administrations, has ensured is this: that in an American “democracy,” only the public will remain in the dark. Even for dedicated reporters, tracking down these groups is like chasing shadows: official addresses lead to P.O. boxes; phone calls go unreturned; doors are shut in your face.

The limited glimpse we have of the people bankrolling these shadowy outfits is a who's-who of the New Oligarchy: the billionaire Koch Brothers ($21.5 billion); financier George Soros ($11 billion); hedge-fund CEO Paul Singer (his fund, Elliott Management, is worth $17 billion); investor Harold Simmons (net worth: $4.5 billion); New York venture capitalist Kenneth Langone ($1.1 billion); and real estate tycoon Bob Perry ($600 million).

Then there's the roster of corporations who have used their largesse to influence American politics. Health insurance companies, including UnitedHealth Group and Cigna, gave a whopping $86.2 million to the U.S. Chamber to kill the public option, funneling the money through the industry trade group America's Health Insurance Plans. And corporate titans like Goldman Sachs, Prudential Financial, and Dow Chemical have given millions more to the Chamber to lobby against new financial and chemical regulations.

As a result, the central story of the 2010 midterm elections isn’t Republican victory or Democratic defeat or Tea Party anger; it’s this blitzkrieg of outside spending, most of which came from right-leaning groups like Rove's American Crossroads and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. It's a grim illustration of what happens when so much money ends up in the hands of so few. And with campaign finance reforms soundly defeated for years to come, the spending wars will only get worse.

Indeed, pundits predict that spending in the 2012 elections will smash all records. Think of it this way: in 2008, total election spending reached $5.3 billion, while the $1.8 billion spent on the presidential race alone more than doubled 2004's total. How high could we go in 2012? $7 billion? $10 billion? It looks like the sky’s the limit.

The 9 Weirdest Things About the WikiLeaks Story | | AlterNet

The 9 Weirdest Things About the WikiLeaks Story |AlterNet:

The 9 Weirdest Things About the WikiLeaks Story

Here are the 9 craziest facets of the international uproar surrounding WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.

December 6, 2010 |

Photo Credit: AFP

The release of the US embassy cables has thus far been one of the most... interesting moments in recent US (and World) history, impacting global politics in a way that is unprecedented. Nestled amid the outrage and debate are some truly weird aspects that make the brouhaha seem like a lost installment in the Jason Bourne chronicles (or Catch Me If You Can). More important than the drama and gossip, WikiLeaks is a tentpost in the information age, a milestone potentially heralding a new era of internet transparency. As world governments balk at the exposure of their secrets -- and scramble to suppress the information -- Assange and his crew are expressing their right to free speech and facilitating the public's fundamental right to know exactly what their leaders are up to, particularly when it entails wars, torture, and secret military action. Here are the 8 craziest facets of the international uproar surrounding WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.

1. Hackers on the Offensive

A group of hackers have pledged to wage war against companies that have "censored" WikiLeaks. Yesterday morning Operation Payback targeted PayPal in a DDoS attack (the company no longer lets people donate to WikiLeaks through its service). Later in the day they launched a successful attack on PostFinance, the bank that froze the assets of the Julian Assange Defense Fund. As of last night, the PostFinance site was still down.

2. Julian Assange Has Not Broken Any Laws ... Yet Our Government and Others Treat Him Like He Has

A Canadian advisor called for Assange's assassination, Joe Lieberman pressured Amazon to hypocritically tear down the cables, and officials and media repeat accusations that he is a terrorist despite the fact that the Wikileaks' actions have resulted in no physical harm to anyone -- unlike, say, certain governments. But amid all this, it is important to note that neither Julian Assange nor WikiLeaks have broken any laws, whether American or Australian, in releasing the leaked documents. And yet some lawmakers are so hysterical, such as GOP Senate Minority Leader Mitch O'Connell, they are suggesting the US invent new laws, solely for the purpose of bringing Assange to trial. Meanwhile, the government continues to intimidate companies who host the cables, with no actual legal ground whatsoever. As Glenn Greenwald points out:

People often have a hard time believing that the terms "authoritarian" and "tyranny" apply to their own government, but that's because those who meekly stay in line and remain unthreatening are never targeted by such forces. The face of authoritarianism and tyranny reveals itself with how it responds to those who meaningfully dissent from and effectively challenge its authority: do they act within the law or solely through the use of unconstrained force?

The Swiss government has also frozen his legal defense fund, so even if someone does invent a way to nab him legally, his right to a fair trial is compromised.

3. Julian Assange Preps “Poison Pill” in Case He’s Killed or Arrested
As established, Wikileaks leader Assange is not wrong in assuming at some point he may be arrested (Interpol’s on the hunt) or killed (world leaders want his head). Or that WikiLeaks will be shut down. And so, like anyone who knows he's a walking target, he has put out a little bit of insurance on himself and WikiLeaks. Today he announced that, should anyone attempt to harm (or incarcerate) a hair on his head, he’ll pull the trigger on a “poison pill” that would allegedly expose even more explosive information, including some documents about BP, Bank of America and Guantanamo Bay. According to the Daily Mail, an encrypted file sent out to various fellow hackers contains the information, and can be disseminated all across the internet if he decides to give them the key -- an uncrackable password consisting of 256 digits. Mark Stephens, Assange’s lawyer in Britain, has said the information is tantamount to a “thermonuclear device,” consisting of “doomsday files.” Another lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, claims she’s been receiving intimidating letters from Washington.

Ms Robinson references a letter from a state department legal adviser addressed to both herself and Mr Assange - appearing to suggest that Wikileaks and its lawyers were one and the same.

She said: 'By eliding client and lawyer, that was a very inappropriate attempt to implicate me. That is really inappropriate to come from the state department of all places; they understand very well the rules on attorney-client protocol.'

Meanwhile, the lawyers have claimed they’re being watched by strange men in dark cars parked outside their homes. Reading newspapers. Probably about their client.

4. But You Can’t Really Arrest Julian Assange
A great novelist once wrote, “Sometimes a man retreats so far inward he mistakes isolation for dominion.” In this case, though, Assange’s essential MIA-ness (he’s supposedly in England) is pretty close to dominion. He is acting like a man without a country, and this is his armor against the world. As AOL notes, “The international nature of his organization makes questions of jurisdiction nearly impossible to answer.” And because he is not a US citizen, he can’t be tried for treason, a technicality apparently lost on some leaders and journalists. While the US could technically arrest him for spying, the best bet for those searching for his hide is if Sweden could extradite him for charges related to alleged rape. That is, if Sweden managed to get it together... their first attempt at extradition was foiled by bungled paperwork -- extradition papers filed with Great Britain did not state the maximum sentence for his charges, a small but important requirement for extradition. Meanwhile, Assange’s native Australia has upped the ante, promising him consular help if he’s arrested by a foreign government, even while condemning the leaks -- meaning he might be able to, simply, return home Down Under.

5. Columbia Students Warned Against Linking to Wikileaks ... then Columbia Decides Linking to Wikileaks is OK
Last week, Columbia University’s School of International and Political Affairs told its students not to link to or Tweet anything having to do with WikiLeaks, warning their curiosity could endanger their chances of ever being employed by the government. The school’s employment office sent out an email to the students, many aspiring diplomats, saying an alumni from the State Department gave them a heads up about seeking Wiki info, noting that even posting comments about the leaks "would call into question your ability to deal with confidential information." The directive scared a lot of grad students for quite a few days. That is, until yesterday, when SIPA Dean John H. Coatsworth decided to err on the side of free speech, clarifying the Columbia email that was initially seen as a scare tactic. In a subsequent email to students, Coatsworth wrote:

“Freedom of information and expression is a core value of our institution. Thus, SIPA’s position is that students have a right to discuss and debate any information in the public arena that they deem relevant to their studies or to their roles as global citizens, and to do so without fear of adverse consequences.”

Furthermore, another SIPA Professor told Wired.com that students would be remiss if they didn’t seek out the Wikileaks cables. “If anyone is a master’s student in international relations and they haven’t heard of WikiLeaks and gone looking for the documents that relate to their area of study,“ said Middle East expert Gary Sick, “then they don’t deserve to be a graduate student in international relations.” The First Amendment prevails. Also... touche.

6. “Sex by Surprise?"
The charges against Assange in Sweden have now been characterized as “sex by surprise” -- and no one seems to know exactly what that even means.

Assange's London attorney, Mark Stephens, told AOL News today that Swedish prosecutors told him that Assange is wanted not for allegations of rape, as previously reported, but for something called "sex by surprise," which he said involves a fine of 5,000 kronor or about $715. "Whatever 'sex by surprise' is, it's only a offense in Sweden -- not in the U.K. or the U.S. or even Ibiza," Stephens said. "I feel as if I'm in a surreal Swedish movie being threatened by bizarre trolls. The prosecutor has not asked to see Julian, never asked to interview him, and he hasn't been charged with anything. He's been told he's wanted for questioning, but he doesn't know the nature of the allegations against him."

The charges have something to do with condoms, and their lack of use, or breakage, although it’s largely unclear exactly what. The women accusing Assange have stood behind their accounts, but he believes the Swedish government's seemingly wishy-washy actions are part of a larger conspiracy to nab him for WikiLeaks. The New York Times:

According to accounts the women gave to the police and friends, they each had consensual sexual encounters with Mr. Assange that became nonconsensual. One woman said that Mr. Assange had ignored her appeals to stop after a condom broke. The other woman said that she and Mr. Assange had begun a sexual encounter using a condom, but that Mr. Assange did not comply with her appeals to stop when it was no longer in use. Mr. Assange has denied any wrongdoing and has questioned the veracity of those accounts.

Yesterday, new warrants were issued for Assange and he is presently making arrangements to meet with Scotland Yard. The premise for the warrants has not been revealed.

7. Future Cables Reference UFOs!
So maybe this is more like the X-Files. In a rare interview with the Guardian last week, in which Assange answered reader-submitted questions, he confirmed that not-yet-published documents reference unidentified flying objects. And lest you think he is jumping any sort of shark, it should be known that his information was vetted with journalistic rigor, just like every other piece of info he’s published. The full question and answer:

Mr Assange,
Have there ever been documents forwarded to you which deal with the topic of UFOs or extraterrestrials?

Assange: Many weirdos email us about UFOs or how they discovered that they were the anti-christ whilst talking with their ex-wife at a garden party over a pot-plant. However, as yet they have not satisfied two of our publishing rules.
1) that the documents not be self-authored;
2) that they be original.
However, it is worth noting that in yet-to-be-published parts of the cablegate archive there are indeed references to UFOs.

Of course, it’s not exactly proof of the existence of aliens (or even alien-like bacteria here on earth), but it is a fascinating bit that not only intrigues, but illustrates the breadth of information Assange is sitting on.

8. Feds Go Nuts to Prevent Soldiers from Seeing Wikleaks
Soldiers in Iraq attempting to read the leaked cables -- or even read articles about them -- get a redirect notice on their government network saying they’re on the verge of breaking the law. The redirect has affected virtually every major news website, clearly, since not one has refrained from covering Wikileaks (despite their mass condemnation of the stuff). But as Gawker points out, “Many of those soldiers receiving the warnings have security clearances that would have granted them access to the State Department cables before they were leaked.” One presumes the same goes for some of the government employees, who were issued a similar warning about reading the documents.

9. Iran Accuses US of Leaking Wikileaks
An ironic conspiracy theory when one considers the outrage Cablegate has sparked among everyone from Hillary Clinton to Mike Huckabee, although our Secretary of State exercised quite a bit more restraint than the gun-happy Huckabee. But considering what the leaks revealed -- that countries all across the Middle East have urged the US to strike against Iran -- it’s an understandable conclusion. The leaks prompted an Israeli paper to express triumphant joy in feeling solidarity for its extreme stance on Iran -- an op-ed was titled The World Thinks Like Us–and Ahmadinejad stated his view on the matter explicitly, asserting the American government made the cables ”organized to be released on a regular basis and they are pursuing political goals.” Meanwhile, cables that stated Iranian dissidents had some involvement with the Israeli Mossad would not only strengthen current powers but undermine the dissident movement itself -- endangering the lives of Iranians critical of Ahmadinejad’s policies. The Daily Beast:

“New and harmful” was how Freilich described the WikilLeaks revelation that Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, consulted with Washington about working with Iran's students and ethnic minorities to topple Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's regime in Iran.

Julianne Escobedo Shepherd is an associate editor at AlterNet and a Brooklyn-based freelance writer and editor. Formerly the executive editor of The FADER, her work has appeared in VIBE, SPIN, New York Times and various other magazines and websites.

three planets will go direct

three planets will go direct
- SCORPIO -
DEATH AND REBIRTH:
"Venus and Jupiter Turn Direct - November 18

An intensification of energy happens when a planet turns retrograde or direct. Like a focalized beam, the energy associated with the planet and the zodiac archetype penetrates into our collective and individual consciousness. Soon three planets will go direct, during which time their energies will act as spot lights to beam truth into our consciousness.

Both Venus (was in Scorpio, now at 28 degrees Libra) and Jupiter (in Pisces) go direct November 18. Mark November 17-19 on your calendar and be aware of what you feel. Do you feel clearer, more ready to move forward, more honest about what you really want, more connected to your heart? Do you feel more optimistic, more hopeful, less afraid, more courageous? Something has shifted inside you. What is it? This is part of your rebirth and recalibration process. Stay tuned to yourself. Another awakening is scheduled when Uranus in Pisces goes direct December 5.

Mercury Retrograde - December 10-30

Matt Taibbi: Courts Helping Banks Screw Over Homeowners | Rolling Stone Politics

Matt Taibbi: Courts Helping Banks Screw Over Homeowners | Rolling Stone Politics: "The rocket docket wasn't created to investigate any of that. It exists to launder the crime and bury the evidence by speeding thousands of fraudulent and predatory loans to the ends of their life cycles, so that the houses attached to them can be sold again with clean paperwork. The judges, in fact, openly admit that their primary mission is not justice but speed. One Jacksonville judge, the Honorable A.C. Soud, even told a local newspaper that his goal is to resolve 25 cases per hour. Given the way the system is rigged, that means His Honor could well be throwing one ass on the street every 2.4 minutes.

- Sent using Google Toolbar

THIS shows a culture that is slowly giving in to a futuristic nightmare ideology of computerized greed and unchecked financial violence. The monster in the foreclosure crisis has no face and no brain. The mortgages that are being foreclosed upon have no real owners. The lawyers bringing the cases to evict the humans have no real clients. It is complete and absolute legal and economic chaos. No single limb of this vast man-eating thing knows what the other is doing, which makes it nearly impossible to combat — and scary as hell to watch.

5 Mining Projects That Could Devastate the Entire Planet | | AlterNet

5 Mining Projects That Could Devastate the Entire Planet | | AlterNet: "5 Mining Projects That Could Devastate the Entire Planet
November 16, 2010

5 Mining Projects That Could Devastate the Entire Planet

Burning coal and oil for more than 100 years has resulted in human-made climate change. We cannot allow another 100 years of the same.

November 16, 2010 |

I’ll tell you about five Godzilla-scale fossil-digging projects in North America that if approved will set us on a course to repeat our past with grave implications for the future of our planet. You may have already heard about some of these projects individually, but the urgency to stop them collectively is more than ever before.

I’m not talking about fossil-digging projects that tell us something about our ecological past or our cultural past. I’m talking about digging for coal and oil. I remember reading somewhere that “the largest profits are made by making and selling products that go up in the air.” Throughout the twentieth century digging for coal and oil, and then burning it to send carbon into the air was enough to ensure astronomical profits for a handful of fossil-fuel corporations.

But I also remember the saying, “What goes up must come down.” For a hundred years, burning all that coal and oil gave us -- the humans -- great comforts, but the carbon we sent up in the air also resulted in the tremendous pain of climate change -- the rapid melting of sea ice and icebergs that is destroying Arctic marine ecology, the ocean acidification and coral deaths that are causing havoc to marine life in the tropical and temperate seas, droughts and beetle infestations that have killed hundreds of millions of trees around the world, intense forest fires and floods -- remember Russia and Pakistan this summer? The list goes on and on ... you know the story. Our planet is also experiencing the greatest rate of biodiversity loss ever and climate change will continue to worsen the ongoing tragedy of species extinction.

Recently, ecophilosopher and activist Dr. Vandana Shiva began her acceptance speech at the Sydney Opera House for the 2010 Sydney Peace Prize with these words: “When we think of wars in our times, our minds turn to Iraq and Afghanistan. But the bigger war is the war against the planet. This war has its roots in an economy that fails to respect ecological and ethical limits -- limits to inequality, limits to injustice, limits to greed and economic concentration.”

In terms of calendar years, we stepped into the twenty-first century about ten years ago, but in all other ways we have continued to live the life of the twentieth century, with our ongoing love affair with coal and oil. If you think we are entering the twenty-first century with a wonderful clean energy future that will be healthy for all life on earth, think again! If there is one thing the U.S. midterm election has guaranteed, it is this: Oil and coal lobbies and their climate denier supporters in Congress are ready to force us farther into the new century with another one hundred years of fossil-digging in North America. Right now they’re probably eating gourmet steak flown in from Argentina to gather strength and drinking fine Italian wine to gather passion to unleash an unprecedented fossil-digging campaign after the 112th Congress is sworn in come January.

The process has already begun. Last week Shell Oil launched a massive ad campaign to pressure the Obama administration into allowing them to begin drilling in the Beaufort Sea of Arctic Alaska during 2011. The New York Times reported, “The company (Shell) is placing ads for the rest of the month in national newspapers, liberal and conservative political magazines and media focused on Congress.” In late May, as the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico was unfolding in front of our eyes (a long-forgotten event for our amnesiac culture), I wrote a story titled “BPing the Arctic?” that pointed to the dangers if President Obama allows Shell to drill in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas of the Arctic Ocean. I also wrote about Shell’s “Let’s Go” ad campaign in September. If you read these pieces and understand what’s now unfolding, you’ll know Shell isn’t kidding around: They’re spending a lot of money that will go far toward their plan to drill in the icy Arctic Ocean. President Obama ought not to cave under the pressure of Shell’s ad campaign and must not issue the permit for 2011 Beaufort Sea drilling, and also Chukchi Sea drilling if they later ask for it.

How Much Fossil Fuel Are We Talking About?

It’s worth taking a quick look at some of the numbers from five massive fossil-digging projects that the fossil-fuel lobby will be pushing hard during the 112th Congress.

Oil in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas

By current estimates, there are some 30 billion barrels of oil in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas of Arctic Alaska. Let’s put that number in perspective. In the U. S. each year we consume a little over 7.5 billion barrels of oil, so those 30 billion barrels only amounts to 4 years of U. S. consumption. Not that long, right? But that’s not how it works. We don’t eat dinner with just a big hunk of steak only -- we may eat a salad before, plus a bit of steamed veggies, maybe even a baked potato, add a glass or two of wine or margarita, then maybe some desert, and even a cup of decaf coffee. Add all that up, and a 15-minute act is extended to an hour and a half. It’s the same way with America’s energy consumption, with oil coming from elsewhere and also coal, gas, and tar sands contributing to the energy needs. Shell could potentially keep drilling in the Arctic Ocean for the next twenty or thirty years. In the process, they’ll create massive dead zones in a cold, slow-growing habitat that will take centuries to heal, unlike the warm Gulf of Mexico, where things grow relatively fast. We must fight to stop Shell from drilling in America’s Arctic Seas.

Oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

For the past ten years, much of my work has focused on the ecological and human rights issues in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the most biologically diverse conservation area in the Arctic. I have worked closely with human rights organization Gwich’in Steering Committee in Fairbanks, Alaska and with activist environmental organization Alaska Wilderness League in Washington, D.C.

BP’s oil-and-methane spill in the Gulf of Mexico prompted Alaska Native peoples of the Gwich’in Nation to gather in late July in Fort Yukon, Alaska at the confluence of the Yukon and Porcupine Rivers. They created a magnificent human aerial-art PROTECT with images of caribou antler and salmon, two species the Gwich’in communities critically depend on for subsistence food, and both these species are threatened by climate change and potential oil-and-gas development. I’d urge you to visit the Gwich’in Steering Committee website to learn about the human-rights implications of drilling in the Arctic Refuge and the important work they have been doing since 1988 for the protection of the Arctic Refuge coastal plain from oil-and-gas drilling.

So how much oil is there in the Arctic Refuge? Best estimates go from about 7 billion to 16 billion barrels, meaning 1 to 2.5 years of U. S. annual oil consumption. Again, with some help from other energy sources, oil companies could potentially keep drilling in the Arctic Refuge for ten years or more. In the process, they’ll turn one of the most important ecocultural regions in the entire Arctic into an industrial wasteland and then leave.

As it happens, the 50th anniversary of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is on December 6. Photographer Jeff Jones and writer Laurie Hoyle has just published a magnificent photo-essay book Arctic Sanctuary: Images of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge that you can check out. And conservation organizations have a proposal in front of President Obama to once-and-for-all designate the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as a National Monument, which the President ought to do before the start of the 112th Congress.

Coal in the Utukok River Upland, Arctic Alaska

I doubt you’ve heard of the Utukok River Upland in northwest Arctic Alaska, or the projection that it contains the largest coal deposit in North America -- an estimated 3.5 trillion tons of bituminous coal, which is nearly 10% of world’s known coal reserves. Let’s put that number in perspective. The annual coal consumption in the U.S. is about 1 billion ton, which means at the current rate of consumption we could potentially burn the Arctic coal for the next 3,500 years. No, that’s not a typo -- 3,500 years! Burning coal for the past couple of centuries has brought our planet earth down to her knees with toxicity and now climate change. Can you even imagine what it would mean for life-on-earth if we burn all that coal for the next 3,500 years?

Much of that Arctic coal sits atop the core calving area of the Western Arctic caribou herd, the largest caribou herd in Alaska, estimated at some 377,000 animals that nearly 40 indigenous communities from three tribes -- Inupiat, Yupik, and Athabascan -- rely on for subsistence food, as well as cultural and spiritual identities. That coal is also on or near the surface of the land, meaning the development will be mountaintop removal, not unlike the devastation that has been taking place in the Appalachian coal belts of the American Southeast.

I first went to the Utukok River Upland in June 2006 with writer Peter Matthiessen and other colleagues. We witnessed caribous with newborn calves, wolves that seemed to have never seen a human before, grizzlies that ran away at catching our scent, birds that were nesting on the tundra and on the cliffs of riverbanks, and so much more. We came away with a great appreciation for the ecological fecundity of this magnificent and remote region. If you’re curious, you can read Peter’s essay on the experience, which appeared in The New York Review of Books, and my essay, which appeared in the anthology Alaska Native Reader: History, Culture, Politics.

While no coal development permit has yet been given in the Utukok River Uplands inside the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPRA), but in 2006 the Canadian mining company BHP Billiton began exploration just outside, in the land owned by the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, where the Western Arctic caribou herd with their newborn calves gather in massive numbers, up to 250,000 animals during their post-calving aggregation. We must make sure no permit for coal is ever given in the NPRA federal lands.

Tar Sands and Shale Oil in Alberta, the Rocky Mountains, and the Great Plains

In a powerful recent piece in Yale Environment 360, Keith Schneider points out some disturbing numbers: “The tar sands region of northern Alberta, Canada contains recoverable oil reserves conservatively estimated at 175 billion barrels, and with new technology could reach 400 billion barrels”; and “Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming hold oil shale reserves estimated to contain 1.2 trillion to 1.8 trillion barrels of oil.” Schneider continues, “If current projections turn out to be accurate, there would be enough oil and gas to power the United States for at least another century.”

There is one serious catch. Tar sands and shale oil are the dirtiest forms of energy and are the most environmentally destructive in its recovery and production. They produce far more greenhouse gas than conventional oil and gas, meaning more accelerated climate change, and require huge amounts of water for their production. It takes 2.5 to 6.5 gallons of water to produce 1 gallon of tar sands oil. You can do the math -- this is certainly not sustainable. At a time when the American West is already suffering from massive droughts and high temperatures due to climate change, these unconventional fossil-digging projects will undoubtedly spark great wars over oil-or-water.

Coal in Appalachia

In late September, leading climate scientist Dr. James Hansen and more than 100 activists from Appalachia Rising were arrested in front of the White House in Washington, D.C., for protesting mountaintop removal coal mining in the Appalachia. Jeff Biggers reported, “Appalachian residents are calling on the EPA to halt any new permit on the upcoming decision over the massive Spruce mountaintop removal mine.” The Spruce No. 1 mine in Logan County, West Virginia, would be a gigantic mountaintop removal mine that would bring great devastation to the region by destroying thousands of acres of forests, burying 7 miles of streams, and ending the way of life of many Appalachian families.

So how much coal is in the Appalachia? The Energy Information Administration has estimated that there are about 53 billion tons of coal reserves in the Appalachian Basin. Potentially we could be digging for that coal for the rest of this century. But that coal will come to us with great devastation. If you’d like to know more about the great social and environmental costs of mountaintop coal mining, you can check out this article, “Coal Controversy in Appalachia,” published in NASA’s Earth Observatory website.

On October 15, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson recommended the withdrawal of the Spruce No.1 mining permit. With climate deniers firmly placed in the 112th Congress, we can surmise safely that this fight is far from over.

To understand why Hansen is willing to risk his government job and his scientific credibility by getting arrested time and again, you simply have to take a look at the title of his article in late August in the Guardian: “Am I an activist for caring about my grandchildren’s future? I guess I am.”

We Must End Coal and Oil to Start Clean Energy

As I think about our inability so far to end our fossil-fuel based economy and start a clean-energy future, I think about the following words by T. S. Eliot from his poem, Little Gidding, which is part of his masterpiece Four Quartet:

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.

The beginning of coal and oil has been the beginning of the end of sustainable living on earth; to make an end for coal and oil would ensure a beginning for clean energy. But unless we make such an end, there’ll be no beginning for clean energy to take us back to sustainable living on earth.

Next year the First Family will be taking showers with water warmed by the mighty sun falling on the solar panels that will be installed on the roof of the White House. But such small symbolic action and other clean-energy initiatives will be meaningless if the five fossil fuel projects I mentioned take off happily during the 112th Congress.

We’ve burned coal and oil for more than hundred years that has resulted in the human-made climate change we’re dealing with right now. We cannot allow one more hundred years of the same. So we must stand up and STOP any maniacal plan that would set us on a path to ‘another one hundred years of fossil-digging in North America.’

Fighting these mega-scale projects may seem overwhelming for any individual, but here are a few things you can do this month:

Art -- Find out about 350 EARTH (November 20-28), the largest human aerial-art installation ever to fight climate change, and see how you can get involved.

Letter -- Write a letter for the ‘Million Letter March: The Write Way to Stop Climate Change’ campaign.

Petition -- Sign the Alaska Wilderness League ‘Keeping it Wild’ petition and urge President Obama to designate the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as a National Monument.

LTE -- Write ‘Letter to the Editor’ opposing Shell’s 2011 drilling plan in the Beaufort Sea.

Posters -- Work with artists and writers in your community and create posters on all of the five projects I mentioned and distribute them throughout your town to educate your community members. Being informed about these fossil-digging projects is the first step toward engagement that may lead to action.

For our part, we’ll regularly present stories on this series at ClimateStoryTellers.org.

The Placebo Effect – Works Better Than Pharmaceutical Drugs

The Placebo Effect – Works Better Than Pharmaceutical Drugs: "The New Magic that Can Heal You and Has the Drug Companies Running Scared

There is a new “product” on the market that is absolutely free to you and is giving drug companies a run for their money. It’s called the placebo effect … and it often works better than top pharmaceutical drugs.

As Wired Magazine reported:

“From 2001 to 2006, the percentage of new products cut from development after Phase II clinical trials, when drugs are first tested against placebo, rose by 20 percent. The failure rate in more extensive Phase III trials increased by 11 percent, mainly due to surprisingly poor showings against placebo.

Despite historic levels of industry investment in R&D, the US Food and Drug Administration approved only 19 first-of-their-kind remedies in 2007—the fewest since 1983—and just 24 in 2008. Half of all drugs that fail in late-stage trials drop out of the pipeline due to their inability to beat sugar pills.”

They continue:

“Some products that have been on the market for decades, like Prozac, are faltering in more recent follow-up tests. In many cases, these are the compounds that, in the late '90s, made Big Pharma more profitable than Big Oil. But if these same drugs were vetted now, the FDA might not approve some of them.

It's not that the old meds are getting weaker, drug developers say. It's as if the placebo effect is somehow getting stronger.

The fact that an increasing number of medications are unable to beat sugar pills has thrown the industry into crisis.”

Sources:

Forbes March 29, 2010

Wired August 24, 2009

Scientific American February 2009

Dr. Mercola's Comments:

Is it really possible to feel better simply by taking a sugar pill or receiving fake acupuncture, shamsurgery or another non active treatment? If you believe it is, then absolutely, yes.

The placebo effect has been demonstrated in countless studies published in prestigious medical journals, and much to the drug companies’ chagrin, placebos often work better than expensive and side-effect ridden drugs and surgeries.

How can this be?

How Does the Placebo Effect Work?

The science of epigenetics is now beginning to explain scenarios like placebo effect and spontaneous healing, which lacked a scientific basis until now.

Epigenetics literally means "above the genes." And what is above the genes?

Your mind!

One of the scientists on the forefront of mind-body biology is Bruce Lipton. Thanks to Dr. Lipton and other leading voices, the power of your mind is finally gaining the attention it deserves.

Your mind has the power to create or cure disease because your thoughts affect the expression of your genes. Today’s "New Biology" is overlapping with consciousness science and quantum physics, and it’s showing us that we have masterful control over our own lives, including how we feel pain, depression, anxiety and even our ability to overcome diseases like cancer.

Many illnesses, from Parkinson’s disease to irritable bowel syndrome, have been proven to improve after placebo pills and treatments. The jury is still out on whether the practice of taking a sugar pill or simply going through the ritual of treatment is what’s causing the beneficial responses … but either way studies show that if you think you’re receiving a treatment, and you expect that treatment to work, it often does.

As the above article in Scientific American shared:

“In recent decades reports have confirmed the efficacy of various sham treatments in nearly all areas of medicine. Placebos have helped alleviate pain, depression, anxiety, Parkinson’s disease, inflammatory disorders and even cancer.

Placebo effects can arise not only from a conscious belief in a drug but also from subconscious associations between recovery and the experience of being treated—from the pinch of a shot to a doctor’s white coat. Such subliminal conditioning can control bodily processes of which we are unaware, such as immune responses and the release of hormones.”

The Placebo Effect Has Been Working for Decades

That the placebo effect works to relieve symptoms and disease is not new … although it is only recently – due to increasing failed trials among drug companies – that public health agencies are being forced to face this elephant in the room.

But it was nearly 50 years ago, in 1955, that anesthetist Henry Beecher’s paper “The Powerful Placebo” was published in The Journal of the American Medical Association. This was the first to bring up the very real fact that simply taking a pill or receiving treatment (even if it was “fake”) could prompt healing changes.

As Wired Magazine reported, it was after this paper was published that the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act was amended to require drug trials to use placebo control groups. The “double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized clinical trial,” which is still used as the gold standard today, was a result of Henry Beecher’s work.

“Today, to win FDA approval, a new medication must beat placebo in at least two authenticated trials,” Wired Magazine reports.

The Antidepressant Scam

Unfortunately, there are many drugs and treatments on the market today that work no better than placebo, yet expose patients to serious side effects. Among the most problematic and blatant are antidepressants. As written in Wired:

“The blockbuster success of mood drugs in the '80s and '90s emboldened Big Pharma to promote remedies for a growing panoply of disorders that are intimately related to higher brain function. By attempting to dominate the central nervous system, Big Pharma gambled its future on treating ailments that have turned out to be particularly susceptible to the placebo effect.”

Every year, 230 million prescriptions for antidepressants are filled, making them one of the most prescribed drugs in the United States. The psychiatric industry itself is a $500 billion industry -- not bad for an enterprise that offers little in the way of cures.

Antidepressant drugs have been proven to be no more effective than sugar pills. Some studies have even found that sugar pills may produce better results than antidepressants!

Personally, I believe the reason for this astounding finding is that both pills work via the placebo effect, but the sugar pills produce far fewer detrimental side effects.

Every time a new study about the efficacy of antidepressants hits the journals, we see antidepressants plunge further into the abyss.

One study that is hot off the press in the January 2010 issue of JAMA concludes that there is little evidence that SSRIs (a popular group of antidepressants that includes Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft and others) have any benefit to people with mild to moderate depression, and that they work no better than a placebo.

That means that SSRIs are 33 percent effective, just like a sugar pill.

Similarly, in 2008, a meta-analysis published in PLoS Medicine concluded that the difference between antidepressants and placebo pills is very small -- and that both are ineffective for most depressed patients. Only the most severely depressed showed any response to antidepressants at all, and that response was quite minimal.

The article states:

“Given these results, the researchers conclude that there is little reason to prescribe new-generation antidepressant medications to any but the most severely depressed patients unless alternative treatments have been ineffective.”

Again, these are not new revelations.

Back in 2002, a meta-analysis of published clinical trials indicated that 75 percent of the response to antidepressants could be duplicated by placebo.

Many antidepressants may actually make your “mental illness” worse, because when your body doesn’t feel good, your mood crashes along with it.

Knee Surgery: Another Classic Placebo Effect

Outside of antidepressants, one of the most glaring examples of the power of the placebo effect was published in the classic New England Journal of Medicine knee surgery study.

This was, without question, one of the most amazing studies I have ever seen published, as it definitely proves the power of your mind in healing.

It was published in one of the most well-respected medical journals on the planet and was a double-blind, placebo-controlled, multicenter trial performed at some of the top U.S. hospitals.

What did the results show? That most knee surgery results in a $3-billion hoax in the United States. It is not actually the surgery itself that is responsible for the improvement, but rather is the placebo effect. More precisely, it's the ability of your brain to produce healing.

Research by Ted J. Kaptchuk, a Harvard medical professor, supports this theory, and goes a step further saying that the more extensive a treatment, the greater the placebo effect may be.

“… The bigger and more complicated the ritual, the greater the placebo effect. Surgery and medical devices often produce a bigger placebo effect than a pill because expectations for a cure are higher,” he told Forbes.

How to Use the Placebo Effect in Your Own Life

Folks, the placebo effect is REAL.

And when I say that, I mean that if you believe you will benefit from something, you will. And the more you focus your intention on this, the more you’ll find that you can manifest nearly any result you desire.

But there is one caveat: you must resolve any emotional blocks that are standing in your way first.

For example, this could be disbelief that the pain or illness will go away, resentment that you have the pain, or even an unconscious desire to keep the pain or disease because of the extra attention you gain from it.

As Dr. Bruce Lipton said in my interview with him:

“A lot of people use the energy psychology just like a drug. ‘Oh, you’ve got a pain here. If I do this, you can get rid of the pain.’ But here’s the problem. A symptom is not generally the problem. A symptom is a reflection of a problem.”

So the pain or symptoms are not what you should focus on relieving. Instead, you must get to the root of the problem, which started in your mind. If you simply relieve your pain without addressing the related emotional conflict, your body will manifest another ache, pain or illness to tell you that there’s a problem with your system.

This is a new way of thinking about healing for most people. But if you look at it in terms of energy -- pain is energy, and your mind is also energy -- you can see how one directly influences the other.

Emotional Freedom Technique/Meridian Tapping Technique (EFT/MTT) is an extremely powerful tool that you can use to get to the root of your emotional conflicts, and to release them.

EFT is a form of psychological acupressure, based on the same energy meridians used in traditional acupuncture to treat physical and emotional ailments for over 5,000 years, but without the invasiveness of needles. Instead, simple tapping with the fingertips is used to input kinetic energy onto specific meridians on your head and chest while you think about your specific problem -- whether it is a traumatic event, an addiction, pain, etc. -- and voice positive affirmations.

I highly suggest that you explore this healing modality for yourself, and if you have an especially traumatic, complex or deep-seated emotional challenge to overcome that you find an EFT therapist to guide you.

Related Links:

Five Ways to Help Beat Depression Without Antidepressants

3 Billion Dollar Hoax

The Secret Power of Sugar Pills

Fw: How to Clear Off Your Desk

A businessman from the Philippines once gave me priceless advice. He said, "Clear off your office desk every night before you leave. You'll be thankful in the morning." Since then, I have tried to do that very thing every evening before I leave. And I have seen numerous benefits from the practice:

• Less Distraction. A cluttered office desk is filled with potential distractions. Sticky-notes, business cards, file folders, and uncompleted projects all clamor for our attention every moment of the day. Removing them allows our mind to better focus on the most important project of the moment: the one you are working on.
• More Freedom. A clear desk grants freedom to pursue the project of your choosing. Your to-do list is not held captive by the folders on your desk. It is determined by you – even if you are getting direction from someone else.
• New Opportunity. A new day brings new opportunity and the potential to accomplish something great. Walking into an office with yesterday's work still visible immediately anchors you to the past, tying yesterday's rope to today's potential. But a clean desk breeds life, encouragement, and endless possibilities. Even if your new day is going to consist of completing yesterday's project, starting again or reopening the file offers new opportunity and a new way to see a problem or accomplish a task.
• Increased Reputation. A clean desk indicates a clean and focused mind. It makes you look efficient, accomplished, thorough, and organized. And while nothing can replace a job well done, a clear desk can only help improve your reputation among your co-workers.

Granted, a clear desk comes more naturally to some than others. But I stand as proof that the principle of a clean desk can be applied to any worker's personality. Here are six steps that I have found particularly helpful in making the transition:

1. Reduce your Office Items. The first step in keeping your desk clear is keeping less things on it and around it. Seems simple enough… almost so simple that it often gets overlooked. Take a look around your desk surface. What doesn't absolutely need to be there? Photos, calendars, books, supplies, and food should all be considered. If it's not essential, remove it permanently.
2. Use Drawers. Using drawers isn't cheating, it's smart. It keeps your projects, tools, and supplies at your fingertips while still removing them from your line of sight. In my drawers, I store all of my supplies (pens, stapler, etc.) and my current projects. My current projects are stored in labeled folders in my top drawer for easy access. And only the current project that I'm working on gets to be on my actual desk surface.
3. Finish Your Projects. One of the biggest enemies of desk clutter is unfinished projects. Sometimes, they lay on our desks for weeks distracting us and taunting us. The mind clutter of an unfinished project can be crippling at times. If the project can be completed in less than 20 minutes, see it through to completion right away. If the project will take longer, find a drawer to store it in until you are ready to pull it out and work on it again.
4. Store Things Digitally. A simple Contacts program and Tasks program can probably remove 95-100% of the notes cluttering your workspace (I have always used Microsoft Outlook). Find one and learn to use it. Those sticky-notes will no longer clutter your screen or distract your mind. And you'll never lose one again either. I have found this method to be both liberating and essential.
5. Limit Computer Distractions. While your computer can be essential in helping to eliminate the clutter from your desk, it can provide distraction of its own. Help your cause by decluttering your computer desktop along with your physical desk. For starters, find a non-distracting wallpaper image and remove all unnecessary icons.
6. Set aside 5 minutes. Take the last 5 minutes of every day to clear the surface of your desk. Rest assured that once you get started with the habit, it'll take far less than 5 minutes. But set that much aside at the beginning. Trust me, your morning you will thank you.

A clear office desk will grant you more focus, peace of mind, and productivity. And that's good for both you and your company.

Battle Lost, War to Win: (Some) Climate Scientists Fight Back | EcoSalon | The Green Gathering

Battle Lost, War to Win: (Some) Climate Scientists Fight Back | EcoSalon | The Green Gathering: "Science & Tech > HOME
November 11, 2010 at 4:11 pm by Scott Adelson
Battle Lost, War to Win: (Some) Climate Scientists Fight Back

As the dust (and political garbage) of the election settles, it’s time to take a breath of clean air, regroup and see the fear for what it was. Hyperbole, right? Scare tactics from The Left. Doomsday predictions if polluter-sponsored climate deniers won the day. Yes. It’s going to be fine. Just breathe.

Cough.

Okay, so it wasn’t hyberbole. What happened in last week’s elections was a serious body blow to the environmental movement and it’s going to be all we can to do to weather the anti-science storm that’s about to go down. Know this: Half of the new congressmen deny climate change. And they’re arriving in D.C. on a wave of cash supplied by some of the world’s most egregious corporate polluters. Tying ourselves to mast isn’t going to cut it. Make no mistake. These people want to turn the environmental protection clock backward.

This is why I got all excited the other day when I read a story in the Los Angeles Times saying that “faced with rising political attacks,” the non-partisan American Geophysical Union (AGU) – the world’s largest, not-for-profit, professional society of Earth and space scientists, with more than 58,000 members in over 135 countries – “plans to announce that 700 climate scientists have agreed to speak out as experts on questions about global warming and the role of man-made air pollution.”

Consider the milquetoast approach to taking it to the streets that’s gone down since Al Gore did his heavy lifting back in 2006 (with his powerful documentary, An Inconvenient Truth and subsequent Nobel Peace Prize). And remember the ugliness of the media rollover on Climategate, and then its pitiful and measly coverage of the debunking of the scandal. Left vs. Right aside, the tendency of progressives to make too many assumptions and preach to their own choir has resulted in this electoral cycle’s “mandate” against climate science reality. Non-partisan scientists getting heavily proactive (if it can still be called that) seems critical right now.

So I did a little research on the piece and here’s the thing: The AGU immediately denied the story (which had already been picked up by news outlets and then the blogosphere at large) saying the report of their push-communication effort was bogus. “In contrast to what has been reported in the LA Times and elsewhere, there is no campaign by AGU against climate skeptics or congressional conservatives,” says Christine McEntee, Executive Director and CEO of the American Geophysical Union. “AGU will continue to provide accurate scientific information on Earth and space topics to inform the general public and to support sound public policy development.” What the AGU is instead doing, says its release, is “relaunching” an ask-for-info-and-we’ll-give-it-you Q & A service for journalists to coincide with the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference in Cancun, Mexico.

This begs the question: What’s the problem here? Haven’t we learned that laying facts on the table and then walking away from them in the hopes that they will be eagerly devoured by a truth-hungry public is just well – milquetoast? I don’t want to jump on scientific groups who, like the AGU, don’t want to be advocates involved in any “commentary” on policy, but when are our specialists going to leave their towers and hit the streets with what they know?

I mean, hey, white coats, your high-profile presence is required! Here’s what was accurately reported in the LA Times story: Now-powerful congressmen such as Darrell Issa of California, Joe L. Barton of Texas and F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. of Wisconsin have pledged to “investigate the Environmental Protection Agency‘s regulation of greenhouse gas emissions” and the Climategate scandal.

Oh, and then there’s John Shimkus of Illinois (who wants to head the Energy and Commerce Committee) on why we need not worry about climate change: “God will decide when to end the Earth, not man.”

Cough.

As near as I can tell, the LA Times story may have been triggered by the activity of John Abraham of St. Thomas University in Minnesota, a scientist and climate science advocate who is involved in putting together a “climate rapid response team,” which “includes scientists prepared to go before what they consider potentially hostile audiences on conservative talk radio and television shows.” So far, his effort reportedly has dozens of leading scientists on board to “defend the consensus on global warming in the scientific community.”

Here’s what we need to hear more of: Scott Mandia, professor of physical sciences at Suffolk County Community College in New York, says “this group feels strongly that science and politics can’t be divorced and that we need to take bold measures to not only communicate science but also to aggressively engage the denialists and politicians who attack climate science and its scientists. We are taking the fight to them because we are, tired of taking the hits. The notion that truth will prevail is not working. The truth has been out there for the past two decades, and nothing has changed.”

Abraham wrote about his efforts in the guardian.co.uk (on the same day as the LA Times story), where he also mentioned the (later denied) AGU plan. In the piece, he points out that (wait for it…) “Scientists have not been effective communicators” as while “approximately 97 percent of the top climate scientists believe we have a problem – the general public and members of government are split on this issue.”

Perhaps prescient of the AGU’s shy stance, he adds, “It is a shame that scientists have to take personal and professional risks in order to be good citizens of the planet. It doesn’t have to be this way.”

Maybe I just have some post-election blues, but before the dust truly settles here, perhaps we had better kick it up again and maybe – (cough) – we could use some more noise from the folks in white.

Image: NASA Goddard Photo and Video

10 Foods You Didn't Know Were Processed | EcoSalon | The Green Gathering

10 Foods You Didn't Know Were Processed | EcoSalon | The Green Gathering: "Food & Recipes > HOME
November 9, 2010 at 12:45 pm by Mike Sowden
10 Foods You Didn’t Know Were Processed

In the wake of Unprocessed October, you may have developed a taste for more simply-prepared fare. Problem is, you can’t trust your senses. Think that rolled oats are as untouched as food gets? Think again – and check out the rest of this list of 10 surprisingly processed foods!

1. Oats. Ever tried to squash a groat? It’s an eye-opener into the effort required to roll an oat flat (above left). But that’s not all: the average rolled oat has also been steamed and lightly toasted. If you’re going for the steel-cut variety (above right), you’ll skip the rolling and enjoy extra bran in your diet, but they’re still steamed and then dried to keep them fresh.

2. Dried Pasta. Flour and eggs, mixed and squeezed into a variety of shapes. Sounds a simple process…until you look past the pasta and at the flour it’s made of. Industrial flour-making? Next time you have a few days spare, have a look at all the processing involved, especially when preservatives enter the mix.

3. Ice Cream. Ever fought to run your scoop through a tub of ice-cream fresh from the freezer? If the answer is “I only buy the soft stuff”, you’ll have stabilizers to thank. These compounds (usually polysaccharide gums) stop ice cream hardening and also separating into gritty ice-crystals. And let’s not forget emulsifiers, there to make your ice-cream smooth and whippy.

4. Olive oil. The first sight of an untreated, unprocessed olive can be a shock. This tiny green bullet is an olive? Imagine the energy expended in grinding it into paste, spread out and pressed until the oil squeezes out – at which point this oil is further processed to get the excess water out. (You’re allowed to feel a new respect for ancient farmers here).

5. Tofu. Take a handful of soya beans, compress them – get tofu? Sadly no. You need to coagulate soy milk, and that requires coagulants – gypsum, calcium chloride, or a host of other chemicals used in the process. Then comes the straining and pressing. Lots and lots of it. The firmer the raw tofu, the more processing it’s had.

6. Low Fat or No-fat Milk. In the old days, making low fat milk was as straightforward as skimming of the top layer to remove the cream, leaving the rest of the mix fat-depleted – but now they use centrifugal separators. Those health benefits come with an energy cost. Oh, and since no-fat milk feels watery in the mouth, dairies pop a little of the milk solids back in at the end. Yes, the cream.

7. Corn tortillas. Corn? Flour – and all the processing and additives that entails. Unless you aim for a masa that was made from maiz blanco (field corn) – and even then it can be a lengthy process to go from masa to tortilla.

8. Cheese. What a marvel cheese is. Leave milk until it forms curds and whey, add a lactic starter and watch as it lumps together into cheesy goodness. Well – kinda. That’s cottage cheese, the simplest form. Commercial cheesemaking requires all sorts of enzyme coagulants, bacteria (eg. penicillin for “blue” cheese), washing, pressing, ripening, and all those special ingredients that make each cheese distinct. There’s an awful lot to it all.

9. Bread. Domestic breadmaking is deliciously good fun, making your entire house smell like your local bakery and providing you with bread that tastes like bread. Go on, you know you want to. But if you insist on the commercial variety, know that the processes involves are many. “Quick breads” (those cheaper loaves at the supermarket) are chemically hurried along the leavening cycle, while yeast breads can still be stuffed with bread improvers.

10. Herbal Teas. Alas that our modern tastes demand that commercially-produced herbal teas – by their very nature bitter (but invigorating) brews – need a little adjustment before they hits our palates. Artificial flavors ahoy. Check the label carefully!

ACTION ALERT: Act by Nov. 17 on Senate Food Safety Legislation | Cornucopia Institute

ACTION ALERT: Act by Nov. 17 on Senate Food Safety Legislation | Cornucopia Institute:

ACTION ALERT: Act by Nov. 17 on Senate Food Safety Legislation

November 13th, 2010

Call your Senators MONDAY or TUESDAY— Urge their support for the Tester Amendment
The Cornucopia Institute

It now appears that the Food Safety Modernization Act (S. 510) will be voted on in the Senate during the “lame-duck” session as early as Wednesday, Nov. 17.

This bill, as we have noted before, would impose extremely burdensome and unnecessary requirements on the thousands of small farmers and food processors who are producing safe, nutrient-dense foods for their local communities — in fact, it may force some of these producers out of business.

A key amendment sponsored by Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) would exempt small farmers who direct market more than 50% of their products.

These famers must have gross sales (direct and non-direct combined) of less than $500,000, and sell to consumers, stores, or restaurants that are in-state or within 400 miles. This amendment is especially important for off-farm retail locations such as farmers markets and CSAs.

Please call your Senators today (most offices have voice mail where you can leave a message) and ask them to support the Tester Amendment on the Food Safety bill.

If you are a farmer this is important to protect your livelihood. If you are a consumer, where will you buy your safe and nutritious food if your local farmers are forced out of business?

It’s easy to call. Go to Congress.org and type in your zip code in the box in the upper right hand corner. Click on your Senator’s name, and then on the contact tab for their phone number. You can also call the Capitol Switchboard and ask to be directly connected to your Senator’s office: 202-224-3121. Once connected ask to speak to the legislative staff person responsible for agriculture. If they are unavailable leave a voice mail message. Be sure to include your name and phone number.
The message is simple:

“I am a constituent of Senator___________. I ask that he/she support the Tester Amendment to the food safety bill. The Tester Amendment will exempt the safest, small, owner-operator farms and food facilities and farmers who direct market their products to consumers, stores or restaurants. Food safety legislation should not create inappropriate and costly regulatory barriers to family farms and the growing healthy food movement in the drive to crack down on corporate bad actors. Please support the Tester Amendment and market opportunities for small and mid-sized family farms, and small food processing facilities.”

Thank you for your help and support for those producing some of the nation’s safest and most nutritious food!

The 7 modern sins

"The 7 modern sins: politics without principles, pleasures without conscience, wealth without work, knowledge without character, industry without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice." -Canon Frederick Donaldson

How Monsanto Monopolizes Genetically Modified Seeds

How Monsanto Monopolizes Genetically Modified Seeds: "Organic Food May Become a Thing of the Past
Posted By Dr. Mercola | November 11 2010 | 30,563 views

Over the past 15 years or so, a collection of five giant biotech corporations -- Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer, Dow and DuPont -- have bought up more than 200 other companies, allowing them to dominate access to seeds.

The takeover has been so dramatic that it is becoming difficult for farmers to find alternatives. As a result, in the U.S., 90 percent of soybeans are genetically-modified, and many conventional farmers have trouble obtaining non-genetically modified seeds.

According to The Ecologist:

"... [O]ne solution to restricting their control would be through banning the practice of granting patents on seeds, plants and genes. A patent gives a company exclusive rights to sell and develop a new invention. In the case of patents on plants and genes it grants them temporary monopolies and bans farmers from saving seeds".

Sources:

The Ecologist October 7, 2010

Grist October 20, 2010

At this point, a mere FIVE companies – biotechnology companies at that -- own the vast majority of all worldwide seeds. The enormous ramifications of this should be fairly obvious.

Genetically modified (GM) seeds, particularly corn and soy, have already taken over in many areas of the world, effectively eliminating the use of conventional and "heirloom" seeds, and along with them, the ancient, sustainable farming practices that produces healthful food.

For example, in the US, as of 2009 genetically modified (GM) soybeans accounted for 91 percent of the soybean market. Eighty-five percent of all corn grown was GM, as well as 88 percent of all cotton.

Many pro-GM crop fanatics argue that genetically engineered (GM) crops are superior in a number of ways, but evidence to the contrary is all around us…

Five Biotech Giants Now Control the Global Seed Market

The illustration below, provided by The Ecologist, shows how five biotech giants have gobbled up seed companies, large and small alike, across the world, with Monsanto clearly leading the pack.

Since the 1980s, Monsanto has become the world leader in genetic modification of seeds and has won at least 674 biotechnology patents, more than any other company.

This is not surprising, considering they invest over $2 million a day on research and development!

But Monsanto is not only patenting their own GMO seeds. They have also succeeded in slapping patents on a large number of common crop seeds, in essence patenting life forms for the first time -- without a single vote of the people or Congress.

By doing this, Monsanto has become the sole owner of many of the very seeds necessary to support the world's food supply … an incredibly powerful position that no for-profit company should ever hold.

The other heavyweights are Syngenta, Bayer, Dow, and DuPont.

Combined, they have acquired more than 200 seed companies in the past 15 years. And together, they not only threaten the continuation of sustainable, renewable farming practices, their monopoly over the food supply threatens the health of every single person on the planet.

The Impact of GM Seed Monopoly

Farmers are now increasingly forced to use GM seeds simply because there are so few alternative sources of seeds remaining. The effect of this is that we're losing renewable agriculture – the age-old practice of saving and replanting seeds from one harvest to the next.

As mentioned in The Ecologist, one solution to this growing problem would be to make patenting seeds, plants, and genes illegal. As it stands now, each GM seed is patented and sold under exclusive rights. Therefore, farmers must purchase the GM seeds anew each year, because saving seeds is considered to be patent infringement. Anyone who does save GM seeds must pay a license fee to actually re-sow them.

This, of course, results in higher prices and reduced product options.

Add in the increased need for pesticides and herbicides that GM crops require and the ever rising cost of these products, and what you end up with is a far more expensive crop that has the potential to not only fail more frequently than conventional crops, but that can also be extremely harmful to the animals and humans who eat them.

(For more information about the health hazards involved, please see What You Must Know About Dangerous Genetically Modified Foods.)

Talk about a lose-lose-lose situation.

GM Crops = Higher Costs, Lower Yields, and Far More Dangerous Foods

Two years ago, 400 scientists from around the world created a report that shows how seed and plant patents are increasing, as opposed to reducing, costs as promised. For example, between 1996, when GE seeds were introduced to the market, and 2007, the price for soy and corn seeds doubled.

But the price farmers pay for using GM seeds do not end there.

Heartbreaking proof of the devastating effect of this agricultural change can be seen in the skyrocketing suicide rate in India, where rising debt combined with frequent GM crop failures bring farmers to the brink of despair on a daily basis.

Africa is another nation that has been negatively impacted by GM crops.

SeattleGlobalJustice.org recently reported that "in 2009, Monsanto's genetically modified maize failed to produce kernels and hundreds of farmers were devastated. According to Mariam Mayet, environmental attorney and director of the Africa Centre for Biosafety in Johannesburg, some farmers suffered up to an 80 percent crop failure."

GM crops were brought to market with the promise of higher yields, lower costs, and reduced pesticide use. None of them have turned out to be true…

On the contrary, GM soya has decreased yields by up to 20 percent compared with non-GM soya, for example, and up to 100 percent failures of Bt cotton have been recorded in India.

In the US, studies by scientists from the USDA and the University of Georgia has shown that growing GM cotton can result in a drop in income by up to 40 percent.

As for pesticide use, USDA data shows that GM crops has increased pesticide use by 50 million pounds from 1996 to 2003 in the U.S., and the use of glyphosate went up more than 15-fold between 1994 and 2005, along with increases in other herbicides to cope with rising glyphosate resistant superweeds.

These Roundup tolerant superweeds and Bt resistant pests render the two major GM crop traits completely useless...

Not only that, we now have confirmed transgene contamination in the wild.

Although Monsanto and others denied this possibility, this was long ago predicted and precisely what one would expect.

Scientists have recently confirmed that the genome (whether plant, animal or human) is NOT constant and static, which is the scientific base for genetic engineering of plants and animals. Instead, geneticists have discovered that the genome is remarkably dynamic and changeable, constantly 'conversing' and adapting to the environment.

In reality, GM crops are a scientific experiment based on flawed assumptions, and anything is possible – and I can strongly guarantee you, it isn't good, and it won't get any better.

The report, 'Future of seeds and food', published last year by the international coalition of No Patents on Seeds, calls out for an end to patenting seeds, plants, and animals, and the need to stop the food monopoly created by Big Biotech. And I agree, little could be more important at this point in time.

There are already clear indications that unless the GM seed monopoly is put to an end, our whole ENTIRE food supply will become contaminated, putting everyone's health at risk.

How?

Many conventional and organic livestock farmers alike are now being forced to use GM feed, simply because there are no other options available!

Situation is Actually Worse than We Knew

Not only do we have the problems that have been previously discussed over the years with GM crops but there are some new elements to the equation. For now even those that are convinced of the dangers of GMO crops and want to avoid using them simply are unable to in some cases.

I recently received a personal letter from one such farmer, who runs a small ecological farm in Ohio. Even though she is dedicated to organic farming, she is now finding herself in the unthinkable predicament of being forced to buy Monsanto GM corn feed for her pigs and chickens.

Here is her story:

Be Part of the Solution

In spite of what you have likely heard, a large shift to organic agriculture -- which by definition is non-GM -- could protect and improve both the environment and animal- and human health.

It could even be the solution to world hunger. According to a Danish study presented to the U.N. in 2007, recent models of an organically grown, global food supply shows that a more environmentally friendly approach to agriculture is in fact capable of producing enough food for the world's current population.

What prevents many farmers from making the move to organic is that crop yields could initially drop as much as 50 percent in the very beginning, before evening out over time. However, that problem may be mitigated somewhat, because farmers wouldn't need to dole out precious money for toxic pesticides, the price of which have risen as much as 75 percent already.

Unfortunately, while we're waiting for the leaders of the world to catch up and realize the dire straits we're in as a species, we're running out of time. As evidenced by Cappello's story above, our ability to produce organic foods is under constant attack.

So, please, do not wait for some unspecified time in the future.

Instead, do what you can NOW to promote local organic food producers no matter where you live by taking advantage of local sources of organic foods as often as you can.

In addition, please take every measure you can to avoid as many GM foods as you possibly can. Here's a list of tips to help you do just that:

• Reduce or eliminate processed foods. Some 75 percent of processed foods contain GM ingredients.
• Read produce and food labels. When looking at a product label, if any ingredients such as corn flour and meal, dextrin, starch, soy sauce, margarine, and tofu (to name a few) are listed, there's a good chance it has come from GM corn or soy, unless it's listed as organic.
• Buy organic produce. Buying organic is currently the best way to ensure that your food has not been genetically modified.
• Download and use the Non-GMO Shopping Guide, and share it with your friends and family

Avoid purchasing Monsanto-made pesticides and herbicides for your home

Related Links:

Home Depot: Do the Right Thing and Dump Monsanto!

Can You Really Trust Monsanto? -- How They Corrupted Science

Monsanto Under Investigation by Seven U.S. States