Lies of Biotech Industry: Don't Buy GE Red Herring

By Roberta Actor-Thomas

In his "Straight Poop" Green Chain column, Norm Benson uses a strange urban legend having nothing to do with labeling to confuse readers about the need to label GE food.

A basic rule of economics is that if buyers can't obtain complete and truthful information, it's not really a competitive free market. Neither big corporations nor the government can tell us that we aren't smart enough to be told what we're buying.

The "inconvenient truth" is that genetic engineering (GE) is not the same as selective breeding or natural cross-pollination. It's a new and dangerous technology that's causing health and environmental problems. Unlabeled GE food is banned in most countries where the government has to pay for people's health care -- just think about the implications of that.

The policies governing the release of GE crops into our food supply were written 20 years ago when many scientists still thought that one gene caused each genetic trait, a hypothesis that was disproved by the Human Genome Project. They thought 90 percent of our DNA was "junk DNA" that had no function.

Geneticists still know little about what is now called non-coding DNA, but it does perform essential functions such as regulation of protein-coding sequences. Guess it's true -- God doesn't make junk.

So why would anyone think it's a good idea to shoot genes into these complex molecules and then put them into our food when we don't even know what they do? Benson's article ignores the biotech industry's reckless disregard for scientific advances and the rush to profit regardless of the risks.

Incidentally, the proposed law doesn't require warnings on GE food. The ingredients will simply include the words "genetically modified" when the soy, corn, sugar or canola actually are genetically modified.

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UK Officials Believe 15,000 Britons Are Incubating Human Mad Cow Disease (CJD)

By Frank Dobson
The government's expert advisers assume that as many as 15,000 people in this country are infected with the prion infection agents that cause the lethal brain disease, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob (vCJD), the human form of BSE or "mad cow disease". The experts don't know if this is the right figure. It could be a lot higher but ministers are refusing to fund trials of a new test to find out.

So far just 200 of our fellow citizens have developed the disease. But the prions that cause the disease can lie dormant for decades and people who are infected pose a risk to others if they are blood or organ donors, or if surgical instruments used on them are then reused on other patients.

The Medical Research Council Prion Unit at the UCL Institute of Neurology, led by Professor John Collinge, was set up at my behest to come up with ways to treat vCJD and, better still, prevent it. They were also asked to devise a test to identify vCJD in the general population. They recently announced a new blood test that does just that. This is a great breakthrough. It should enable our doctors and scientists, for the first time, to assess accurately the incidence of vCJD infection so policy decisions on how best to protect patients can be based on evidence, not guesswork.

As health secretary, the day I became aware in 1998 that it might be possible to transmit vCJD by blood and blood products, I got the experts together. Their advice was that infection through blood and blood products was likely but not certain and that the infection, if any, would probably be carried in the white blood cells.

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The Dangerously Deranged Ethics of Biotech Ag

By Steven McFadden
My unease about genetically engineered crops and animals dates back to the beginning. I had immediate concerns in the late 1980s and early 90s as I began to learn about the technology and associated marketplace machinations. Over the following decades as more and more facts emerged my concerns deepened.

Then just a couple of weeks ago my misgivings were rudely provoked to the forefront when I read an op-ed column by Nina Federoff, published in The New York Times. Her column amounted to a fact-deficient apologia for the GMO industry, and an exhortation to charge heedlessly forward with genetically engineered food. For me, and for millions of other people, this is a massively deranged and dangerous proposition.

So many factors are coming to a head now. Widespread famine, a global land grab, soaring food prices, a horde of profit-mad speculators, drought on the scale of the Dust Bowl, a host of other wildly wobbling environmental events, and a huge, well-organized, well-funded propaganda push by corporate industrial agriculture to claim that the only sensible way forward is with genetic engineering and its allied cauldron of petrochemical-based herbicides, fungicides, and pesticides. But it's not the only way forward. It is, instead, a profoundly perilous pathway encouraged by what I regard as dangerously deranged ethics.

After the Times published Federoff's column, well-reasoned rebuttals came swiftly from Anna Lappe writing for Civil Eats, from Tom Philpott in Grist, and from Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, Senior Scientist, Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA). Individually and collectively, their articles constitute a convincing, fact-backed refutation of Federoff's claims for GMO safety and suitability. They effectively assert the case for a global 21st century agrarian vision of human-scale organic sustainable farms and food.

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EU Court Puts Limits on Modified Honey

By Gabriele Steinhauser
BRUSSELS - Honey that contains traces of pollen from genetically modified crops needs special authorization before it can be sold in Europe, the European Union's top court said Tuesday, in a judgment that could have widespread consequences on the bloc's policy on genetically modified organisms, or GMOs.

The ruling from the European Court of Justice came after several Bavarian beekeepers demanded compensation from their government for honey and food supplements that contained traces of pollen from genetically modified maize.

The beekeepers had their hives close to fields where the Bavarian government was growing Monsanto's MON 810 maize for research purposes.

The EU has strict guidelines on authorizing and informing consumers about foods containing GMOs - a policy that has caused problems for producers of genetically modified seeds such as U.S.-based Monsanto Co. that are used to much laxer rules in other parts of the world.

Kelli Powers, a spokeswoman for Monsanto, said the company could not provide detailed comment on the ruling until the firm had a chance to read the entire judgment.

But Powers emphasized that the company's engineered corn seed has been approved as safe for human consumption.

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Organic Farming Can Be More Profitable in the Long-Term than Conventional Agriculture

By Jeremy Hance
Organic farming is more profitable and economically secure than conventional farming even over the long-term, according to a new study in Agronomy Journal. Using experimental farm plots, researchers with the University of Minnesota found that organic beat conventional even if organic price premiums (i.e. customers willing to pay more for organic) were to drop as much as 50 percent.

"Doing an economic study like this, it's important to get as complete a picture of the yield variability as we can," explains Timothy Delbridge, lead author of the study and a doctoral student studying agricultural economics at the University of Minnesota. "So, the length of this trial is a big asset. We're pretty confident that the full extent of the yield variability came through in the results."

Conducted over 18 years, the study found that a conventional farm, rotating corn, soy, oat, and alfalfa over 4 years brought in $273, while an organic farm netted $538. Even if the organic premium dropped by half, it would still be more profitable given that the cost of production was lower for organic, since organic farmers would spend nothing on chemicals.

"What we're looking at here are results between an established organic and an established conventional system. This research doesn't take into consideration the issue of the transition itself: how difficult or costly that may be," cautions Delbridge.

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Wikileaks Reveals Monsanto's Close Relationship with the US Government

By Jonathan Reynolds

For related articles and more information, please visit OCA's Politics and Democracy page, Genetic Engineering page, Millions Against Monsanto page.

In cables released by Wikileaks this past August, 2011, US diplomats asked the State Department for funding to send biotechnology experts to "target countries" for discussions with high-profile politicians and agricultural officials.

The "target countries" include African, Asian and South American countries where genetically modified (GM) agriculture has yet to gain a foothold. Even some European countries have been targeted, such as France, since it has been slow to adopt GM foods. Summarizing a French documentary, "The World According to Monsanto," a 2008 cable reads:

"Jeffrey Smith, Director, Institute for Responsible Technology, who is interviewed says that a number of Bush Administration officers were close to Monsanto, either having obtained campaign contributions from the company or having worked directly for it: John Ashcroft, Secretary of Justice, received contributions from Monsanto when he was reelected, as did Tommy Thompson, Secretary of Health; Ann Veneman, Secretary of Agriculture, was director of Calgene which belonged to Monsanto; and Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, was CEO of Searle, a Monsanto subsidiary; and Justice Clarence Thomas was a former lawyer for Monsanto."

Embassy diplomats requested Washington provide "talking points" so officers could respond to the documentary on an "if asked" basis and emphasize "the positive role ag biotech can play in meeting world food needs."

The close relationship between the US government and Monsanto has unfortunately continued into the Obama administration. President Obama nominated the former pro-biotech governor of Iowa, Tom Vilsack, as USDA Secretary; he nominated Michael Taylor, former Monsanto Vice President, as the FDA Deputy Commissioner for Foods; and he nominated Solicitor General Elena Kagan, who took Monsanto's side against organic farmers in the Roundup Ready alfalfa case, to the Supreme Court.

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The Health Hazards of Dental Mercury

By Dr. Mercola
Dr. Dave Simone works with Consumers for Dental Choice to fight amalgam because he fully appreciates how devastating amalgam fillings can be to your health. Dental amalgam emits mercury vapor even after it is placed in your mouth. This mercury is bioaccumulative and endangers your health in many ways, which we'll review below.

I urge you to watch the interview I did with Dr. Simone in its entirety, or at least read through the transcript, as he covers far more than what this summary contains. For example, he explains how mercury actually inhibits its own elimination mechanism:

 "

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10 Years Later, 9/11 Still Shrouded in Mystery

By Will Bunch
IF YOU THINK that on the 10th anniversary you know the whole story of 9/11 - and here I'm addressing conspiracy-minded "truthers" and the 13 percent who approved of the job Dick Cheney did as vice president - actually, you don't.

Time has upheld the broad story line of how hijackers loyal to Osama bin Laden hijacked four planes and killed nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001 - claims about holograms being used to attack buildings instead of jetliners notwithstanding. At the same time, the dictum of famed investigative reporter I.F. Stone about all governments - i.e., they lie - is no less true about 9/11 than any other event.

Here are 10 questions about 9/11 that remain unanswered.

1. Did the CIA cover up its advance knowledge of at least two of the 9/11 hijackers?

Richard Clarke, the national counterterrorism czar on 9/11, thinks so. In an interview for an upcoming radio documentary, Clarke claimed that top-level CIA officials deliberately withheld from the White House and the FBI knowledge as early as 2000 that two al Qaeda members - Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar - were living in San Diego.

The former anti-terror chief said he believes that the CIA kept the info under wraps because it wanted to recruit the two Saudis to serve as double agents within bin Laden's organization. Instead, the two terrorists ended up hijackers on American Flight 77. George Tenet, who was CIA director, claims that Clarke is "reckless and profoundly wrong."

2. How strong is the connection between the 9/11 site cleanup and cancer and other diseases?

Last week, the New York City Fire Department's Dr. David Prezant published research in the prestigious medical journal Lancet showing that male firefighters who responded to 9/11 now have a cancer rate that's 19 percent higher than unexposed co-workers. That comes on top of earlier reports of higher rates of asthma and post-traumatic stress disorder among the responders at Ground Zero.

Indeed, the real questions are a) Why was the Bush administration so lax in issuing warnings about the toxicity of the site in 2001? and b) Why did it take a comedian, Jon Stewart, to shame Congress into funding a health-care bill for the ailing heroes of Ground Zero?

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Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult

By Mike Lofgren
Barbara Stanwyck: "We're both rotten!"

Fred MacMurray: "Yeah - only you're a little more rotten." -"Double Indemnity" (1944)

Those lines of dialogue from a classic film noir sum up the state of the two political parties in contemporary America. Both parties are rotten - how could they not be, given the complete infestation of the political system by corporate money on a scale that now requires a presidential candidate to raise upwards of a billion dollars to be competitive in the general election? Both parties are captives to corporate loot. The main reason the Democrats' health care bill will be a budget buster once it fully phases in is the Democrats' rank capitulation to corporate interests - no single-payer system, in order to mollify the insurers; and no negotiation of drug prices, a craven surrender to Big Pharma.

But both parties are not rotten in quite the same way. The Democrats have their share of machine politicians, careerists, corporate bagmen, egomaniacs and kooks. Nothing, however, quite matches the modern GOP.

To those millions of Americans who have finally begun paying attention to politics and watched with exasperation the tragicomedy of the debt ceiling extension, it may have come as a shock that the Republican Party is so full of lunatics. To be sure, the party, like any political party on earth, has always had its share of crackpots, like Robert K. Dornan or William E. Dannemeyer. But the crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital center today: Steve King, Michele Bachman (now a leading presidential candidate as well), Paul Broun, Patrick McHenry, Virginia Foxx, Louie Gohmert, Allen West. The Congressional directory now reads like a casebook of lunacy.

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Headlines or Not, the Iraq War is Not Over

By Phyllis Bennis
It might seem like cause for celebration after reading the New York Times headline, "Iraq War Marks First Month with No U.S. Military Deaths." But the smaller print on the page reminds us why celebrating is not really in order: "Many Iraqis are killed..." The cost of this war is still way too high - in Iraqi lives and in our money.

With so much attention and so many billions of our tax dollars shifting from Iraq to the devastating and ever more costly war in Afghanistan, it is too easy to forget that there are still almost 50,000 U.S. troops occupying Iraq. We are still paying almost $50 billion just this year for the war in Iraq. And while we don't hear about it very often, many Iraqis are still being killed.

There's an awful lot of discussion underway about the massive cuts in the Pentagon's budget that may be looming as part of the deficit deal. But somehow few are mentioning that those potential cuts from the defense department's main budget don't even touch the actual war funding - this year alone it's $48 billion for Iraq and $122 billion for the war in Afghanistan.

Just imagine what we could do with those funds - we could provide health care for 43 million children for two years, or hire 2.4 million police officers to help keep our communities safe for a year. Or we could create and fund new green middle-class jobs for 3.4 million workers - maybe including those thousands of soldiers we could bring home from those useless wars.

Barack Obama, back when he was a presidential candidate, promised he would end the war in Iraq. In 2002, he called it a "dumb" war. The U.S. role in the war has gotten smaller but it sure isn't over. And it hasn't gotten any smarter. A year ago Obama told us that all combat operations in Iraq were about to end, that "our commitment in Iraq is changing from a military effort" to - what exactly? The 50,000 or so troops still in Iraq are there, we are told, to train Iraqi security forces, provide security for civilians, and, oh yes, to conduct counterterrorism operations. Apparently "counterterrorism operations" don't count as part of a military effort?

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Nepal's Women Farmers Discard Imported Hybrid Seeds and Husband Local Varieties in Co-Op Seed Banks

By Sudeshna Sarkar
Kathmandu - Learning a lesson from crop failures attributed to climate change, Nepal's women farmers are discarding imported hybrid seeds and husbanding hardier local varieties in cooperative seed banks.

"I had a crop failure two years ago," says Shobha Devkota, 32, from Jibjibe village in Rasuwa, a hilly district in central Nepal which is part of the Langtang National Park, a protected area encompassing two more districts, Nuwakot and Sindhupalchowk.

"The maize was attacked by pests, the paddy had no grain and the soil grew hard. I had a tough time trying to feed my three daughters and sending them to school."

Since her marriage 17 years ago, Shobha had been sharing farming chores with her husband Ram Krishna. However, when he left for Dubai four years ago to work as a security guard, farming became her responsibility entirely.

Though she has never been to school and can only scrawl her name, Shobha and other women in the village who share similar backgrounds, are keenly aware of changing climate and its adverse impact on livelihoods.

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Anti-GMO Movement in Europe Offers Lessons for the U.S.

By Lisa Marshall
If European states can ban genetically modified crops, why not America? See how global activism drove the charge against GMOs abroad-and how we can apply the same principle in the United States.

Get a group of people together to talk about the genetically modified organisms (GMOs) gobbling up American soil and, chances are, someone will bring up "what happened in Europe."

How is it that our neighbors across the pond were able to swiftly enact mandatory labeling laws and essentially ban genetically modified (GM) crops in six European states, while here in the United States we let the biotech machine plow on? What lessons can we learn from the Europeans?

Georgina Silby has some ideas.

Silby was among the legions of infuriated youth who took to European streets upon learning about the specter of genetic engineering in the mid-'90s. These young activists donned tomato costumes (or nothing at all) for their protests by day, dug up GM test crops by night and formed alliances with stakeholders around the globe. Their efforts generated what has eluded activists here so far: Media attention and mass-market consumer outrage.

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The Environmental Threat of Dental Mercury

By Dr. Mercola
Dental amalgams have been in use since the American Civil War. They are an anachronism that have been perpetuated by dental industry patents, and there's a conspiracy of silence that seeks to keep the 75 percent of Americans who are ignorant about the fact that amalgam fillings are actually 50 percent mercury.

Fortunately, in the last 10 years nearly half of dentists have recognized this and have stopped using them in their practice. However, 50 percent of all US dentists still use them, and that currently accounts for between 240-300 tons of mercury entering the market every year. In the United States, dental offices are the second largest user of mercury - and this mercury eventually ends up in our environment by one pathway or another.

Dental Mercury-A Major Source of Environmental Pollution

 Mercury from dental amalgam pollutes:

     Water via not only dental clinic releases and human waste (amalgam is by far the largest source of mercury in our wastewater)      Air via cremation, dental clinic emissions, sludge incineration, and respiration; and      Soil via landfills, burials, and fertilizer.

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9/11 After A Decade: Have We Learned Anything?

By Paul Craig Roberts
In a few days it will be the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001.  How well has the US government's official account of the event held up over the decade?

Not very well.  The chairman, vice chairman, and senior legal counsel of the 9/11 Commission wrote books partially disassociating themselves from the commission's report.  They said that the Bush administration put obstacles in their path, that information was withheld from them, that President Bush agreed to testify only if he was chaperoned by Vice President Cheney and neither were put under oath, that Pentagon and FAA officials lied to the commission and that the commission considered referring the false testimony for investigation for obstruction of justice.

In their book, the chairman and vice chairman, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, wrote that the 9/11 Commission was "set up to fail." Senior counsel John Farmer, Jr., wrote that the US government made "a decision not to tell the truth about what happened," and that the NORAD "tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public." Kean said, "We to this day don't know why NORAD told us what they told us, it was just so far from the truth."

Most of the questions from the 9/11 families were not answered. Important witnesses were not called. The commission only heard from those who supported the government's account. The commission was a controlled political operation, not an investigation of events and evidence. Its membership consisted of former politicians. No knowledgeable experts were appointed to the commission.

One member of the 9/11 Commission, former Senator Max Cleland, responded to the constraints placed on the commission by the White House:  "If this decision stands, I, as a member of the commission, cannot look any American in the eye, especially family members of victims, and say the commission had full access. This investigation is now compromised."  Cleland resigned rather than have his integrity compromised.

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Whole Foods Refuses to Support GMO-Mandatory Labeling Efforts in California

Recently, our intrepid real food activists and California Label GMO pioneers Pamm Larry and Stacey Hall reached out to Whole Foods Market asking them to allow educational events at their stores and for volunteers to be able to collect signatures from Californians who want mandatory labeling of GMOs--something that over 70% of people polled supported.  Below is their response.  We find it hard to believe that Whole Foods, ostensibly committed to healthy food and real choices, is against truth-in-labeling.  Please visit their Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/wholefoods or call your local Whole Foods and tell the manager that you would like them to allow signature gathering at their stores.  We have a real chance at victory in this campaign.  Let Whole Foods know they should be with us, not against us.

Hi Marci,
Thanks for getting back to us.  We are disappointed that Whole Foods is not interested in some of our suggestions.   And just to be clear, because it was not specifically addressed, we need to know whether Whole Foods will allow us to gather signatures in front of your stores in the Fall of 2011 for the California Genetically Engineered Food Labeling Act of 2012?  Signature gathering is expected to start in October so we need to know your answer by Friday, September 23rd at 5pm.  If we do not receive a response, we will assume that Whole Foods will not support signature gathering in front of your stores.  While we appreciate your strategy, polls show that consumers want mandatory labeling of genetically modified ingredients.  We hope that you will choose to support what your customers have repeatedly requested which is mandatory labeling.

I look forward to hearing from you.

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EU Court rules on GMO Contamination; Opens Door to Biotech Liability

By Rady Ananda
COTO Report, September 7, 2011
Straight to the Source

For related articles and more information, please visit OCA's Genetic Engineering page, Millions Against Monsanto page, Politics and Democracy page, and our Farm  page.

On Sept. 6, the European Union's top court paved the way for farmers and beekeepers to recoup losses when their crops or honey become genetically contaminated from neighboring GM fields.

The European Court of Justice ruled that all food products containing GMOs - whether intentional or not - must undergo an approval process.

This marks a much stricter view than that being pushed by European Union Commissioner for health and consumer affairs, John Dalli,  who wants no regulation of foods genetically contaminated "by accident," a ludicrous idea given that coexistence ensures genetic contamination.

At the center of the dispute is Bavarian beekeeper Karl Heinz Bablok who joined with several others in suing the state when its research plots of Monsanto's GM corn, MON 810, contaminated his honey.

In 2008, an administrative court banned Bablok from selling or giving away that honey.  But in a bizarre turn, the Augsburg court also ruled that beekeepers have no claim to protection against the growing of GM crops. They immediately filed a new lawsuit.

Discussing today's ruling, attorneys for the beekeepers noted that they may now have "a claim for damages against a farmer if MON 810 pollen from his cultivation gets into their honey."

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Debt Tantrum on a Sinking Ship by Richard Heinberg

By EJ
Richard Heinberg is Senior Fellow-in-Residence at Post Carbon Institute and the author of 10 books, including The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality. In this guest post, taken from the Post Carbon Institute blog July 26th, he explains the recent debt ceiling crisis  in a broader context, one of drastically altered economic structures - not recovery or recession but The End of Growth as we know it.

"President Obama and House Speaker Boehner are both right, but they're both tragically wrong. And unless they can somehow wake up and see why they're wrong, we all lose-big time.

Let me explain. But to do so will require setting three levels of context.

The immediate context is of course the fact that Republicans have created a political crisis by refusing to raise the nation's debt ceiling unless they achieve their priorities of dramatically reducing government spending-primarily on social programs.

A larger context is the fact that the U.S. is still reeling from an epic credit crunch. During the past decade, home prices were bid up to unrealistic levels and the financial industry magically and dramatically expanded the resulting bubble with the helium of securitization and derivatives. When the bubble popped, government bailouts and stimulus packages were deployed to prevent bank failures and help stanch the exploding levels of unemployment.

The even bigger, and most important, context is that we are entering a new historic era. Oil prices are high due to the ongoing depletion of giant, easy-to-produce oilfields discovered back in the 1950s and '60s, and the substitution of expensive oil from deepwater drilling and tar sands. Other non-renewable resources are also becoming scarcer. On top of that, the climate is changing and weird weather is helping drive up food prices. Oh, and let's not forget, the oceans are dying. Altogether, it seems reasonable to conclude that economic growth-fueled during past decades by cheap energy and raw materials, but also made possible by a stable climate-is coming to an end. 

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Too Many Farmers Markets or Not Enough Farmers?

By Tom Laskawy
On the heels of the USDA announcement that farmers markets are sprouting up at a swift pace comes a contrarian article in The New York Times suggesting that this phenomenal growth might represent too much of a good thing:

 Farmers in pockets of the country say the number of farmers' markets has outstripped demand, a consequence of a clamor for markets that are closer to customers and communities that want multiple markets.

 Some farmers say small new markets have lured away loyal customers and cut into profits. Other farmers say they must add markets to their weekly rotation to earn the same money they did a few years ago, reducing their time in the field and adding employee hours.

Blogger Matt Yglesias -- tempted to dismiss these farmers' concerns -- invokes Adam Smith to suggest that this is a case not of "supply outstripping demand" but of incumbent players wishing to reduce competition.

As someone who has recently lauded the growth of farmers markets as well as their job-creating potential, I'm certainly not inclined to assert that there are indeed too many of them. Yet there are issues worth exploring here. The prime complaint -- that farmers find themselves spending too much time driving from market to market -- suggests that some areas may be saturated with true farmers markets. One sign of this would be a spate of "counterfeit" farmers trying to get in to these new markets, i.e. resellers offering wholesale produce as their own. A dead giveaway is typically farm stands featuring out-of-season vegetables and tropical fruits.

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Expanding Deserts, Falling Water Tables and Toxins Driving People from Homes

By Lester Brown
WASHINGTON - People do not normally leave their homes, their families, and their communities unless they have no other option. Yet as environmental stresses mount, we can expect to see a growing number of environmental refugees. Rising seas and increasingly devastating storms grab headlines, but expanding deserts, falling water tables, and toxic waste and radiation are also forcing people from their homes.

Advancing deserts are now on the move almost everywhere. The Sahara desert, for example, is expanding in every direction. As it advances northward, it is squeezing the populations of Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria against the Mediterranean coast.

The Sahelian region of Africa - the vast swath of savannah that separates the southern Sahara desert from the tropical rainforests of central Africa - is shrinking as the desert moves southward. As the desert invades Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, from the north, farmers and herders are forced southward, squeezed into a shrinking area of productive land.

A 2006 U.N. conference on desertification in Tunisia projected that by 2020 up to 60 million people could migrate from sub-Saharan Africa to North Africa and Europe.

In Iran, villages abandoned because of spreading deserts or a lack of water number in the thousands. In Brazil, some 250,000 square miles of land are affected by desertification, much of it concentrated in the country's northeast.

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Extreme Weather Is the New Normal

By Julie Cart and Hailey Branson-Potts
Reporting from Los Angeles and Marshall, Okla.- Oklahomans are accustomed to cruel climate. Frigid winters and searing summers are often made more unbearable by scouring winds. But even by Oklahoma standards, it's been a year of whipsaw weather.

February was so cold - with the wind chill it felt like 16 below - that Tim Gillard installed a door in the long hallway of his home in the small farming town of Marshall, walling off three rooms to more affordably heat the rest of the house. Now, in this summer's unrelenting heat, his family huddles in the air conditioning behind that same door.

The Gillards' respite ended this month when a windstorm knocked out the town's electricity. That sent many of Marshall's 290 beleaguered residents out to their porches at night to sleep, cooler than inside but still sweltering. In July, Oklahoma's average statewide temperature of 89 was the highest ever recorded for any state.

Oklahoma's misery has been writ large across the country this year, which federal climate scientists have labeled one of the worst in American history for extreme weather. With punishing blizzards, epic flooding, devastating drought and a heat wave that has broiled a huge swath of the country, the 2011 weather has been unrelenting and extraordinary.

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Farming Makes a Comeback

By Connie Springer
There's no Aruba, Barbados or Maui for this bunch.

A modern farmer's life still portends grueling hours, endless chores and plenty of sweat, especially in the sweltering summertime when many of us head for the mountains or the beach.

Yet six local farmers insist that they wouldn't have it any other way.

"We don't really take vacations," says Teresa Biagi, of Hazelfield Farm in Owen County, Ky. "There is no place we would rather be."

Each of the farmers speak about being driven by the desire for fresh, unadulterated vegetables, self-sustainability and being close to nature. They find joy in handling the moist, rich soil and in nurturing tiny seeds that grow into fruits which, in turn, provide nourishment. As one farmer put it, farming is a lifestyle, not a job.

And as consumers increasingly look for fresh, local produce, farmers markets have proliferated, giving the farmer an ideal setting in which to sell their bounty.

Whether the farmer works the land full-time or has a day job and farms after-hours, Herculean best describes the level of work involved.

"It takes commitment and persistence, creativity and ingenuity, a whole host of skills, a can-do attitude and a never-give-up mentality," says Jeff Ashba, of the Organic Farm at Bear Creek, in Clermont County.

The farmers agree that the rewards of working in nature far outweigh the sacrifices.

"It is an honor to spend our time outside working and learning from Mother Nature," says Sarah Mancino, who with husband Adam, owns Farm Beach Bethel in Bethel, Ohio.

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CSA: The Sustenance of Small Farms

By Jennifer Kohlhepp
Among the rows of ripe organic tomatoes, sweet corn and string beans, dreams grow at Mendies Family Farm in Roosevelt, western Monmouth County.

The 30 acres of farmland along North Rochdale Avenue sat barren for a decade before Lawrence Mendies purchased it in 2005. At that time he used the property to expand his swimming pool and landscaping business, growing native plants and trees there to sell along with fieldstone, boulders and mulch.

While their father installed pools and created natural settings in backyards across New Jersey, the Mendies children, Lawrence Jr. and Niyasia, minded the roadside stand, selling small crops of watermelon, tomatoes, corn and other produce grown on the farm.

Mendies' wife, Heidi, toiled from sunrise to sunset to keep the farm running while her husband was landscaping. That was the family's life on the farm until the season his line of work dried up.

"At one point the phone stopped ringing for swimming pools and landscaping," Mendies said.

When the economy tanked a couple of years ago, it took the family's pool and landscaping business with it. The effects could have been devastating, but the farm served as a buffer for the family.

"Basically, when the economy went down, our farm grew," Mendies said. "People didn't want swimming pools or landscaping, but they still needed to eat."

The family planted more crops and built a new farm stand where they could offer people an expanded variety of farm-fresh produce.

To further meet the community's needs, they took their vegetables, flowers and herbs to people who could not get to the farm. They worked with Downtown Hightstown Inc. to develop an annual farmers market. Now in its third year, the weekly market is held on Fridays from June through September, offering an array of produce, baked goods, and arts and crafts from local vendors.

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You Shouldn't Be Able to Buy Soda with Food Stamps

By Tom Laskawy
On Friday, the USDA rejected New York City's proposal to restrict the use of food stamps to buy soda. According to The New York Times, there was much rejoicing:

The decision was a victory for the soft-drink industry, which had lobbied against the proposal, and for advocates for the poor and underfed, who had argued that the government should not stigmatize them by taking away their right to shop like other consumers. The food-selling industry also contended that it would be too complicated for stores to have to program their registers differently in the city than elsewhere.

"It was a big deal not to start breaking up the programs," said Jennifer Hatcher, senior vice president for government relations at the Food Marketing Institute in Washington.

Tellingly, the New York Times article noted ...

... the thrill in the voice of Joel Berg, the executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger who cheered the federal government for "deciding not to micromanage" the lives of poor people.

"The whole attempt was misguided and unworkable," Mr. Berg said. "This proposal was based on the false assumption that poor people were somehow ignorant or culturally deficient."

There are few issues that could put the soda lobby on the same side as the coalition for the hungry. Oh, wait. The massive federal Farm Bill does that, too. 

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Airport Beekeeping Project is a Win-Win-Win

By Japhet Koteen
I'm jaded, but sometimes an idea is so good that it breaks through my cynical shell and gives me hope. The Chicago O'Hare Airport apiary is one of those ideas: The project addresses three problems at once and should be immediately replicated by the rest of the airports in the world.

Problem 1: Bee populations are mysteriously dying. Read more about colony collapse disorder and the threat it poses to agricultural production.

Problem 2: Vacant land near airports cannot be used for development. FAA regulations prohibit many economically productive uses because having a plane crash-land on an office park is bad.

Problem 3: Ex-convicts and others struggle to find jobs in the weak economy.

Solution: Create a beekeeping project that uses vacant land in the flight path and trains ex-convicts in the art and science of beekeeping, selling the resulting honey and beeswax to support the program. Because the hives are largely unattended, otherwise-vacant land can be used productively. Since agriculture production depends on bees and other pollinators, we have a strong incentive to promote beekeeping and train unemployed workers to tend them. 

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ConAgra Sued Over GMO '100% Natural' Cooking Oils

By Michele Simon
If you use Wesson brand cooking oils, you may be able to join a class action against food giant ConAgra for deceptively marketing the products as natural.

These days it's hard to walk down a supermarket aisle without bumping into a food product that claims to be "all-natural." If you've ever wondered how even some junk food products can claim this moniker (witness: Cheetos Natural Puff White Cheddar Cheese Flavored Snacks - doesn't that sound like it came straight from your garden?) the answer is simple if illogical: the Food and Drug Administration has not defined the term natural.

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Nurses Union Calls for Nationwide Action September 1 to Rebuild Main Street

By Donna Smith
Main Street, USA - Nurses call their neighbors and their elected officials to come to Main Street on September 1, even as many of the elected officials continue chiding one another about returning to DC.

Main Street is where the damage has been done and is being felt most deeply; DC is where deals are cut to protect Wall Street with breath-taking regularity. This is not a time when political posturing for some distant election cycle by those largely insulated from the harsh financial realities they helped create ought to take precedence over the real-time, real-life needs of millions.

Lives depend on it; jobs depend on it; communities depend on it. 170,000 Registered Nurse members of National Nurses United throughout America have come together to re-build Main Street. We need you on our side. So, on Thursday, September 1, the nurses of National Nurses United will gather in more than 60 communities from Maine to Texas, and Massachusetts, Pennsylvania,Minnesota, Michigan, Florida, Illinois, California and beyond to call on the nation's elected officials to chose to protect and repair Main Street and stop cow-towing to Wall Street. Find an action on a Main Street near you and join in.

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US Food Supply in Serious Jeopardy after Obama's Decision

By Merlyn Seeley
According to Jeffrey Smith, The leading consumer advocate promoting healthier, non-GMO choices, "The person who may be responsible for more food-related illness and death than anyone in history has just been made the US food safety czar. This is no joke." Michael Taylor, the man that was once Monsanto's lawyer then became part of Monsanto and headed up the "GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) movement" has just been basically appointed over your food.

Obama has done it again, he appointed this man to be senior advisor to the commissioner of the FDA. That means the same company that produces the world's most deadly substance (Round-up) and the man that is behind getting GMO foods on the market shelves is now in charge of the US's food production. You will be eating this man's creation instead of nature's creation. Think obesity, food allergens, allergies, incurable diseases, sugar diabetes, cancer and unheard of diseases are bad now?

Just wait till this man steps up and makes your entire table of food genetically modified. Already there is un-tested corn, soy beans, rapeseed, honey, cotton, rice sugar cane, tomatoes, canola, potatoes, flax, papaya, squash, tobacco, meat, peas, sugar beets, vegetable oil, and dairy products just to name a few on the shelves that are all genetically modified. That means if you are eating the GMO versions of those listed there, you are not eating real food people.

You are eating chemicals, man-made crap that is destroying the earth and your body slowly. GMO's are responsible for cancer, obesity where the numbers are not in the 70 percent range for the whole US, and other incurable diseases just to name a few cons. There are no pros to mention, only the FDA and Monsanto can name their pros, that is money, money, money. Why did our president that is appointed to protect the US from harm and make good decisions for our country just appoint the devil to be in charge of your food?

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Fukushima Radiation Alarms Doctors

By Dahr Jamail
Scientists and doctors are calling for a new national policy in Japan that mandates the testing of food, soil, water, and the air for radioactivity still being emitted from Fukushima's heavily damaged Daiichi nuclear power plant.

"How much radioactive materials have been released from the plant?" asked Dr Tatsuhiko Kodama, a professor at the Research Centre for Advanced Science and Technology and Director of the University of Tokyo's Radioisotope Centre, in a July 27 speech to the Committee of Health, Labour and Welfare at Japan's House of Representatives.

"The government and TEPCO have not reported the total amount of the released radioactivity yet," said Kodama, who believes things are far worse than even the recent detection of extremely high radiation levels at the plant.

There is widespread concern in Japan about a general lack of government monitoring for radiation, which has caused people to begin their own independent monitoring, which are also finding disturbingly high levels of radiation.

Kodama's centre, using 27 facilities to measure radiation across the country, has been closely monitoring the situation at Fukushima - and their findings are alarming.

According to Dr Kodama, the total amount of radiation released over a period of more than five months from the ongoing Fukushima nuclear disaster is the equivalent to more than 29 "Hiroshima-type atomic bombs" and the amount of uranium released "is equivalent to 20" Hiroshima bombs.

Kodama, along with other scientists, is concerned about the ongoing crisis resulting from the Fukushima situation, as well as what he believes to be inadequate government reaction, and believes the government needs to begin a large-scale response in order to begin decontaminating affected areas.

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Why Music Needs to Get Political Again

By Billy Bragg
How ironic that The Clash should be on the cover of the NME in the week that London was burning, that their faces should be staring out from the shelves as newsagents were ransacked and robbed by looters intent on anarchy in the UK. Touching too, that the picture should be from very early in their career - Joe with curly blond hair - for The Clash were formed in the wake of a London riot: the disturbances that broke out at the end of the Notting Hill Carnival of 1976.

At the time, the press reported it as the mindless violence of black youth intent on causing trouble; now we look back and recognise that it was the stirrings of what became our multicultural society - the moment when the first generation of black Britons declared that these streets belonged to them too.

The Notting Hill Riots of 35 years ago created a genuine 'What The Fuck?' moment - the first in Britain since the violent clashes between mods and rockers in the early 60s. While west London burned, the rest of society recoiled in terror at the anger they saw manifested on the streets of England. In the aftermath, severe jail sentences were handed down and police patrols stepped up in areas where there was a large immigrant population. Sound familiar?

But something else happened too - in the months that followed, bands appeared that sought to make sense of what went down on that hot August night. Aswad, Steel Pulse and Misty in Roots were among the reggae bands that stepped forward to speak for the black community.   

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Forget Potatoes: Idaho Now Grows CAFOs

By Twilight Greenaway
When the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act (Proposition 2) passed in California in 2008, it granted laying hens nominally more space in their cages.

Proponents of humane animal husbandry cheered the fact that these birds would now have a little more room to stretch their wings. But industrial egg producers -- claiming their costs would go up -- threatened to leave the state before 2015, when key portions of the law go into effect.

Hope those disgruntled egg producers like potatoes. Perhaps sensing an opportunity, Idaho lawmakers passed a series of laws more or less inviting the poultry industry to their state. In this High Country News article (subs. req'd), Grist contributor Stephanie Ogburn tracks the state's Confined Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) laws and their repercussions throughout the state, and asks: Is Idaho a new haven for CAFOs?

Idaho's dairy industry (which surpassed potato production in 1997) has already ballooned out of control: In 1991, 2,000 dairies produced 3 billion pounds of milk; now a mere 650 dairies produce 11 billion pounds of milk.

How exactly did they usher in so many changes so fast? According to Ogburn, Idaho lawmakers started out by restricting public comment on CAFOS in 2000. They followed that by altering water rights laws, passing legislation ominously nicknamed the "CAFO Secrecy Bill" (which blocked oversight of CAFO manure-management plans by making them "proprietary"), and amending the state's Right to Farm law to prohibit local governments from regulating agricultural facilities as nuisances. The latter also barred neighbors from filing complaints using the nuisance law.

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Dramatizing Obama's Climate Dilemma

By Mark Engler
President Obama now has a clear choice on climate change. Major energy corporations are seeking to build a 1700-mile oil pipeline from Canada's tar sands to refineries in Texas. The Keystone XL Pipeline would itself carry social and environmental costs: cutting through fragile ecosystems, creating risk of spills, and negatively affecting indigenous communities. But, most significantly, it would be a boon to efforts to exploit the tar sands.

The Canadian tar sands are a particularly dirty source of fossil fuels that could produce egregious carbon emissions. As Elizabeth Kolbert reported at the New Yorker:

   Because tar-sands oil is so heavy, it has to be very heavily processed, which requires tremendous amounts of energy, usually in the form of natural gas. It's been estimated that, on what's known as a well-to-tank basis, tar-sands oil is responsible for eighty percent more greenhouse-gas emissions than ordinary crude.

Prominent climate scientist James Hansen has argued (in a now oft-quoted statement) that "if the tar sands are thrown into the mix, it is essentially game over" for the climate.

Before the end of the year, Obama's State Department must choose whether to approve or deny the pipeline project. To dramatize the president's choice, environmentalists have commenced two weeks of civil disobedience. On August 20 they began daily waves of sit-ins in front of the White House. As of this writing, near the end of week one, 322 people have been arrested.

Billed as the "biggest civil disobedience action in the environmental movement for many years," the two weeks of sit-ins and arrests in summer-recessed Washington, D.C., have thus far had difficulty in creating the tension that, at times, allows acts of civil disobedience to explode into mass public spectacles. The protests have not had a single, climactic date around which many thousands might mobilize. And since the deadline by which Obama must make his call is months away, administration officials have been able to drag their feet.

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