Unbossed and unbought
news and information you can use
Vol. 13 Issue 6…Dedicated
to the Dialogue on Race…February 7, 2010
Intuit's Vibe
Dawn
By M. Ivana Trevisani Bach
Icy January night:
Pins of limpid chill stars
Glittering, far, screeching in the dark.
Then, from the sea blackboard
A faint veil of dim glacial light slowly rises.
Over there, Eastwards,
Just over the horizon
A red hot coal burns
With flashes of dazzling light
Turns on the world's color maxi-screen.
Everywhere, of a sudden, life awakes.
Immediately, the charm breaks:
Snarling engines, jarring noises,
Deafening hooters, stinking smokes.
Millions of men in haste
Go to tear the Earth apart,
And, like greedy black ants,
They strip off its flesh
leaving deserts of fiery sands
And walls of grey cements.
Putrescent dirts rise
In impressive disgusting mountains
Among the shrill cries of greedy gulls.
Filthy flowers of plastic bags bloom
On the dirty river sides.
The sea waves vomit viscous bitumen
On beaches already dirty of sewages and scum.
Chimneys and smokestacks puff away
Black smoke clouds saturating with fetid hazes
The stinky, polluted air.
A day of ordinary violence again begins.
A day of violated Nature again begins.
Bit of
History
Joseph (José) Bové
Joseph "José" Bové, farmer and anti-globalization activist, was born June 11,
1953 in Bordeaux, France. His parents were agricultural chemists. Joseph's
father immigrated to France from Luxembourg and became a citizen after being
appointed regional director of the National Institute of Agricultural Sciences
Research (INRA) as well as a member of the French Academy of Sciences. They
moved to the United States to become researchers at the University of
California, Berkeley when José was three years old. While there, he became
fluent in English.
After
his family's return to France, Bové attended a Jesuit secondary school near
Paris and was expelled for expressing non-mainstream views on drugs. While a
university student, he associated with anarchists and pacifists. When asked to
serve in the army, he fled France and joined a group of conscientious
objectors. Returning in 1976, he joined a movement protesting a proposed
military camp expansion on the Larzac plateau that would have displaced sheep
farmers. The protest succeeded, when the military canceled its plans. Bové
remained on the plateau and became a sheep farmer, producing the famous
Roquefort cheese.
A
dedicated farmer, Bové helped form the Confédération Paysanne, an
agricultural union that placed its highest values on human rights, the
environment and organic farming. Outraged at what he called malbouffe
(bad food), Bové and the Confédération dismantled a McDonald's in
1999. Garnering world attention for his causes, the symbolic non-violent act
was designed to raise awareness about hormone-treated beef sold by McDonald.
Bové went to jail for 44 days.
Bowing to pressure generated by the incident, the European Union restricted
imports of hormone-treated beef. However, the WTO disallowed the restriction.
Faced with the EU's refusal to remove restrictions, the US placed tariffs on
certain European goods, including Roquefort cheese. Bové and his colleagues
were reduced to smuggling Roquefort into the US in luggage.
Over the years, Bové joined international activists to fight against
globalism, capitalism, war, exploitation and racism and for wealth
redistribution, democratization of global agreements, organic farming,
environmentalism, and other sustainability strategies. He joined Greenpeace on
the Rainbow Warrior to oppose nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific Ocean in
1995. He joined the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle. He was at the Zapatista
march across Mexico in an effort to encourage international solidarity against
global capitalism. Opposing genetically modified organisms (GMO), Bové
destroyed a French rice crop in 1998. Again, he helped destroy a GMO corn crop
in Brazil at the World Social Forum (2001).
Bové joined the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) that kept visual at
Yassir Arafat's Presidential Compound during the Israeli occupation of the
West Bank in April 2002, while Israeli political and military leaders
discussed storming the compound to capture or kill Arafat. ISM members served
as "human shields." Bové also intervened to support the Tahitians and the
Kanaks movements, indigenous Melanesian people of New Caledonia.
Bové became a veteran campaigner in 2005 when he fought the referendum on the
EU Constitution which was defeated. That experience helped when he became the
far left candidate in the 2007 French presidential election. Declaring his
candidacy would give "the people that have no voice" a say, he called for
unity on the radical left to counter the far right. Bové received 483,008
votes 1.32% of the popular vote.
Following that strong showing in the French presidential elections, Bové
teamed with Europe Écologie, a coalition of French environmentalist political
parties including the Green Party in the elections for European Parliament.
Bové and Europe Écologie garnered over 16% of the vote in a proportional
election system.
Bové represents what many around the world feel is a dying breed of humanist
leaders. Such individuals view the world as one community, and as a member,
each of us is responsible to each other and for the world we leave those that
come after us. We are only stewards, not owners of this fragile planet, and we
must fight those who view it as a tinker toy that we have lost interest in or
an empty beer can to be discarded now that we have sucked it dry.
WSF: Another View of the World
By John Burl Smith
Converging on Porto Alegre, Brazil, participants at the World Social Forum (WSF)
called for democratizing economics as an essential step to ending
discrimination in the struggle for social and environmental justice. Over its
10 year history of protesting the impact of uncontrolled capitalism, the Forum
has not only developed new tactics but new terminologies have emerged in the
battle against exorbitant profits, globalization, transnationals and
agro-business giants that seek to dominate food production as a means of
population control and profit maximization. Using such terms as "the gratis
economy, freeconomics and peoplization" to highlight its counter culture
vision of the world, the WSF views itself as the only realistic alternative to
the World Economic Forum (WEF), which gathers in Davos, a Swiss ski resort.
The WEF brings presidents, corporate leaders and other elite world leaders
together to discuss the current state of capitalism.
The WSF
draws people from the opposite end of the spectrum that work on a wide range
of issues, including demanding total state control of nations' natural
resources, environmental preservation, wealth redistribution, as well as
fighting inequality, hunger, racism and war. Unlike a movement, the WSF does
not represent a grand strategy for change with top down solutions.
Organizationally, it views itself as a space that serves as a platform to
exchange ideas and develop strategies to be implemented by participants in
their home countries as they push for change at the local level.
The WSF
projects a vision of the world that is counter to the Washington consensus or
the Davos view that free markets are the only means to prosperity. It was
agreed at the Porto Alegre conference that the failure of world leaders to
forge plans in Copenhagen to address global warming showed that capitalists,
because of their concern for profits, are incapable of developing solutions
that will save the environment and protect the poor from climate swings that
could devastate the planet and subsistence farmers.
Even
with its abundance of experts and insider information, Davos was unable to
predict the current economic crisis. The WEF in 2009 resembled a "wake" and
the lackluster turnout this year left the impression that capitalism is on
"government life support." WSF participants believe capitalists' solutions are
inadequate for solving the current financial crisis. Consequently, the world
economy must be retooled to benefit people, not transnational companies.
The WSF space strategy aims to boost the articulation of new strategies,
organizational goals and locally developed social movements that provide
responses and alternatives to the global crisis. For the WSF International
Council (IC), the challenge is not only to give an answer to the continuous
attacks on workers and living conditions, but also to build an exit strategy
that dislodges neo-liberalism for a more just social model. The World Social
Forum was created to provide an open platform to discuss resistance strategies
to the globalization model based on the belief that "Another World Is
Possible." The WSF open space is for discussing alternatives, exchanging
experiences and strengthening alliances among civil society organizations,
peoples and movements.
During the forum activities were organized around 10 thematic objectives that
were defined by organizations involved in the forum process. These themes
included peace, diversity, knowledge, anti-capitalism, sustainability,
sovereignty, fair trade, participatory democracy, and the environment.
Indigenous and environmental issues took center stage on "Pan-Amazonian Day"
with a focus on climate change, food sovereignty, and regional integration.
Indigenous delegates became a human sculpture with their bodies, forming the
words "Save the Amazon".
The
Assembly of Anti-War Movements called for global boycott campaigns against
Israeli products and companies, prosecution of Israel for war crimes in
Palestine under the International Court of Justice, and global mobilization
against the North-Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The Migration Assembly
strongly supported international recognition of the category of "environment"
and "climate" refugees, commitment from Governments for the regularization of
immigrants without documents and proposed May 17th as an official day for
mobilization against migration policies in the European Union.
The discussions on foreign debt in developing countries called on Governments
and civil society organizations to carry out public accounting of the on-going
debts, in order to identify irregularities and request compensations for
abusive forms of debt and payments and asked for developing countries`
Governments to abandon the G20 strategy. The Global Crisis Assembly called for
the establishment of mechanisms for social control and radical changes in
governance in financial policies and institutions and for international
measures to smash consumerism and commoditization of everyday life which have
become the focus of capitalism.
Complementing the economic and political activities were cultural activities,
including films, poetry, lectures, performing arts, and exhibitions. Every day
closed out with a series of concerts featuring a wide range of artistic
talents. The forum also witnessed the return of the youth camp, with 15,000
young people in camp with their own series of events. For many, this was a
cultural event, a Brazilian-style Woodstock, rather than a political event.
Parallel to the youth camp was a smaller children's camp that focused on
adolescence issues.
The WSF's belief that "Another World Is Possible" played out far more
realistically than the efforts to resuscitate unfettered capitalism at the
World Economic Forum at Davos. Most economists worth their salt willingly
admit that the Washington consensus of neoliberal free market capitalism is
unsustainable. Turning the page to find another view of the world, where does
one look for sustainable growth, if not at the kind of ideas that the World
Social Forum is offering? If the key to economic recovery is consumer
spending, world wide unemployment must be reduced significantly, which means
lower profits, higher wages, job programs that put money in people's hands not
tax credits, cuts in military spending and ending the wars in the Middle East.
News You Use
Your Cereal May Be Hazardous to World
Health
By John Burl Smith
Unfurling a giant banner at the headquarters building in Minneapolis that read
"Warning: General Mills Destroys Rainforests," the Rainforest Action Network
(RAN) notified the world that eating certain breakfast cereals can be
hazardous to the health of the planet. Alarmingly, palm oil plantations in
places such as Indonesia, Malaysia, New Guinea and Borneo have spread like a
plague or virus. They are gobbling up rainforest to feed the growing demand of
agri-businesses, like Cargill, which supply multinationals like General Mills,
whose cereal and other products are bought by millions each day. The
environment is paying a heavy price to keep children crunching on Fruit Loops
and their mothers in lipstick.
Seldom
is a choice of what one can do to fight global warming is clearer, as in the
case of palm oil. Look first at modern urbanized capitalistic countries like
the United States and Europe, where wealth makes fast, quick and easy food
choices seem like a right. Moreover, multinational companies honor no moral
code, greedily pursuing profits by feeding instant cravings of consumers
concerned only with convenience.
Taught to think of islands like Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua, New Guinea as
jungles of little value unless developed for business, Westerners sleep
soundly while the palm oil industry eats away rainforest like a disease. More
than just jungle, beneath these canopies lives human beings, plant and animal
species, not only in danger of losing habitat but their very existence, simply
to keep children gobbling down cereal and the fashionable with cosmetics.
What
makes palm oil a threat? On these islands, millions of people rely directly on
rainforests for their livelihoods. A single palm oil plantation can destroy
forest, watersheds, and sources of food for thousands, leaving entire forest
communities in poverty, working for slave wages cultivating palm plants.
Indonesia's tropical rainforests are the world's most diverse. They provide
critical habitat to species including highly endangered Sumatran tigers,
elephants and orangutans. Papua (PNG) houses one of the planet's last frontier
forests. These forests support a wealth of plants and animals as well as the
Earth's most diverse assemblage of cultures--some 830 languages are spoken.
Rainforests are the earth's largest sinks of carbon, safely storing the
greenhouse gases that cause climate change. Rainforests in Indonesia, Malaysia
and Papua are razed to create industrial palm oil plantations, releasing
massive quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. In fact,
deforestation causes 80% of Indonesia's CO2. Growing global demand for palm
oil and the ensuing cropland expansion are blamed for a wide range of
environmental ills, including tropical deforestation, peat land degradation,
biodiversity loss and increased CO2 emissions.
One of the world's most versatile agricultural commodities, palm oil is traded
globally and is used in 50% of all consumer goods and packaged food from body
lotion to Toaster Strudel. It can be used as edible vegetable oil, industrial
lubricant and feedstock for biofuel production. U.S. demand for palm oil has
tripled in the last five years. Chewing up rainforests for additional
cultivation is a major cause of rainforest destruction around the globe.
Approximately 85% of palm oil is grown in Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua on
industrial plantations severely impacting the environment, forest peoples and
the climate.
Hundred of products contain palm oil and its derivatives, including such
trusted General Mills brands as Pillsbury, Betty Crocker, Stovetop, Hamburger
Helper and Bisquick. These food products are the end-product of a complex
supply chain that brings rainforest destruction to convenience stores,
supermarkets, and homes. General Mills does not grow any of the tens of
thousands of tons of palm oil its products delivered to our dinner tables;
they rely on Cargill.
Another
U.S. agribusiness giant, among dozens of international companies that set up
operations in Southeast Asia, Cargill dominates the palm oil market. The US'
largest privately owned company, it owns five palm oil plantations in
Indonesia and PNG, and is the largest US palm oil importer. Cargill buys
roughly 11 % of Indonesia's total palm oil output.
A number of investigations have shown that Cargill's palm oil operation is
directly destroying forests, eliminating biodiversity and harming forest
peoples. Local NGOs have accused the firm of polluting rivers and manipulating
locals who signed agreements they do not understand. Some landowners say
Cargill has not delivered benefits it promised. This has resulted in their
dependence on an export-oriented crop they can't eat. Opposition to further
palm oil expansion is growing, especially in Oro Province, where Cargill's
plantations are located.
There
are no heroes in this story except for RAN, the group that provided the
report; there is only more bad news for the environment. Between 1972 and 2002
PNG lost more than 5 million hectares of forest, trailing only Brazil and
Indonesia. Even worse, the Indonesian government recently announced plans to
convert an area the size of Missouri, approximately 18 million more hectares
of rainforests, into palm oil plantations in the next 10 years.
RAN's
report concludes that, worldwide, the degradation and destruction of tropical
rainforests is responsible for 15% of all annual greenhouse gas emissions. The
carbon emissions resulting from Indonesia's rapid deforestation account for
around 8% of global emissions, more than the combined emissions from all the
cars, planes, trucks, buses and trains in United States. This huge carbon
footprint from forest destruction has made non-industrialized Indonesia the
third-largest global greenhouse gas emitter, behind only the U.S. and China.
What can an individual do to help? First stop buying products (especially
General Mills and Cargill) containing palm oil or its derivatives. Read
labels. Talk to your family and friends about the palm oil problem. Policing
and watch-dogging industries are everyone's concerns, but knowing just what
products to buy - finding out which are truly 'green' and which aren't -- can
be a daunting task. However, Rainforest Action Network's campaign to break
North America's oil and coal addictions, protect endangered forests and
Indigenous rights, and stop destructive investments around the world through
education, grassroots organizing, and nonviolent direct action can help.
Please visit:
www.ran.org for more
information on what you can do.
Hood Notes
Shrimp's Dirty Secrets (Excerpts)
By Jill Richardson
Americans love their shrimp. It's the most popular seafood in the country, but
unfortunately much of the shrimp we eat are a cocktail of chemicals, harvested
at the expense of one of the world's productive ecosystems. Worse, guidelines
for finding some kind of "sustainable shrimp" are so far nonexistent.
In his book, Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing
Seafood, Taras Grescoe paints a repulsive picture of how shrimp are
farmed in one region of India. The shrimp pond preparation begins with urea,
super-phosphate, and diesel, then progresses to the use of piscicides
(fish-killing chemicals like chlorine and rotenone), pesticides and
antibiotics (including some that are banned in the U.S.), and ends by treating
the shrimp with sodium tripolyphosphate (a suspected neuro-toxicant), Borax,
and occasionally caustic soda.
Upon
arrival in the U.S., few if any, are inspected by the FDA, and when
researchers have examined imported ready-to-eat shrimp, they found 162
separate species of bacteria with resistance to 10 different antibiotics. And
yet, as of 2008, Americans are eating 4.1 pounds of shrimp apiece each year --
significantly more than the 2.8 pounds per year we each ate of the second most
popular seafood, canned tuna. But what are we actually eating without knowing
it? And is it worth the price -- both to our health and the environment?
Only 15
percent of our total shrimp consumption comes from the U.S. The remaining 85
percent comes from other countries and about two-thirds of our imports are
farmed with the balance caught in the wild, mostly via trawling. China is the
world's top shrimp producer -- both farmed and wild -- but only 2 percent of
China's shrimp are imported to the U.S. The world's number two producer,
Thailand, is our top foreign source of shrimp. Fully one third of the shrimp
the U.S. imports comes from Thailand, and over 80 percent of those shrimp are
farmed.
The next
biggest sources of U.S. shrimp are Ecuador, Indonesia, China, Mexico, Vietnam,
Malaysia and India. Together, those countries provide nearly 90 percent of
America's imported shrimp. Interestingly, Ecuador's shrimp industry exists
almost entirely to supply U.S. demand, with over 93 percent of its shrimp
coming up north to the U.S. The vast majority of those shrimp (almost 90
percent) are farmed. Sadly, shrimp production is responsible for the
destruction of 70 percent of Ecuador's mangroves.
Geoff
Shester, senior science manager of Monterey Bay's Seafood Watch, says that
ethical shrimp consumption is a chicken and egg problem. On one hand, the
solution is for consumers to show demand for responsibly farmed and wild
shrimp by eating it but on the other hand, ethical shrimp choices are not yet
widely available. Seafood Watch is working with some of the largest seafood
buyers in the U.S. to help them buy better shrimp, but it's currently a major
challenge.
The
first challenge is that labeling and certification programs do not yet exist
to identify which farmed shrimp meet sustainable production standards. The
second challenge is that even when such programs are in place, the U.S. demand
will likely greatly exceed their supply.
Shester's advice to consumers right now is "only buy shrimp that you know
comes from a sustainable source. If you can't tell for sure, try something
else from the Seafood Watch yellow or green lists." Knowing that many will be
unwilling to give up America's favorite seafood, he advocates simply eating
less of it and keeping an eye on future updates to the Seafood Watch guide to
eating sustainable seafood.
About Me: Jill Richardson is the founder
of the blog La Vida Locavore and a member of the Organic Consumers Association
policy advisory board. She is the author of Recipe for America: Why Our Food
System Is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It. This article can re read in its
entirety at
www.alternet.org/investigations/145369.
Venue for an Artist
Dirty Secret (Excerpts)
By Kari Lydersen
On a
crisp late afternoon in November, pickup basketball and a softball game are
going strong in Cicero's Hawthorne Community Park. Nearby, a young girl plays
in a yard, chasing a border collie with a plastic rake. The sounds of laughter
and sports are underscored by a steady rumble, punctuated by loud honks and
mechanical gasps. These are the sounds of the Cicero Intermodal Facility
across the street, where giant cranes shift cargo containers between trains
and trucks 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It's one of the largest freight
transfer points in the country's largest rail hub-one- third of U.S. rail
freight passes through Chicago, and more rail freight passes through Illinois
than any other state.
To the
southeast of Hawthorne Park, one can see the twin smokestacks of the Crawford
Generating Station coal- burning power plant. The plant has been the focus of
local and national attention regarding the health risk posed by emissions of
particulate matter, nitrogen oxide and other contaminants. But few people
realize that the Cicero rail yard might be as much of a health risk as the
coal plant to the surrounding largely Latino, low- income population.
Diesel
exhaust from locomotives, trucks and other rail yard equipment is a likely
carcinogen and contains similar components found in coal-burning power plant
emissions: particulate matter, smog- and particulate- forming nitrogen oxide,
carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and other toxic compounds. Diesel exhaust can
be of particular concern since it is emitted close to the ground and contains
more of the ultrafine particles that can penetrate deep into the lungs and
cross into the blood stream.
According to a Chicago Reporter analysis, residents within a half mile of the
Cicero and other Chicago area rail yards could suffer a cancer risk more than
10 times higher on average than people four miles away.
Residents near rail yards would also be expected to suffer asthma attacks and
other respiratory and cardiac disease- and premature death-at a higher rate.
L. Bruce Hill, a senior scientist for the national advocacy group Clean Air
Task Force, said cardiac disease is an even bigger concern than cancer, since
particles from the exhaust can get into the blood stream and cause
inflammation. "There's no safe limit for particles," he said. "Particulate is
the most hazardous common pollutant in the air, and diesel trains, buses and
trucks really release it where you breathe it."
More than 37,000 rail cars move through the Chicago area each day, carrying a
wide range of commodities including coal, gravel, cement, automobiles, oil,
gas, lumber, fertilizer, paper, asphalt, metals, minerals and shipping
containers stuffed with all manner of consumer goods. According to the CREATE
initiative, a partnership between the city and state governments, Amtrak,
Metra, and freight rail companies, demand for rail transport through Chicago
is expected to double in the next 20 years.
And the ill effects of such rail traffic are felt by nearby residents. The
Reporter analysis shows that about 57,000 people- a majority of them
minority-live within a half mile of Chicago's 15 biggest "intermodal" rail
yards, where shipping containers are transferred between trains and trucks or
ships.
The Chicago metro area's major rail yards are primarily near minority
neighborhoods on the South Side, including Back of the Yards, Brighton Park,
Englewood, Roseland and south suburban Bedford Park. Several mostly white,
solidly middle class suburbs also host large rail yards, including Schiller
Park, Northlake and Willow Springs, a community with one of the region's
largest rail yards: a Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway facility that
handles freight from a nearby UPS site.
So what
can be done to make rail yards cleaner? EPA rules passed in 2008 mandate
locomotives burn cleaner fuel starting in 2012 and require cleaner-burning
engines for new locomotives starting in 2015. But the strictest EPA rules
don't apply to existing locomotives- many built decades ago and still going
strong.
Urbaszewski of Respiratory Health Association of Metropolitan Chicago said
rail companies could voluntarily do various things right now to significantly
reduce their emissions. "There's some low-hanging fruit- and fruit higher up
the tree as well," he said. "The easiest things to do are to use the cleanest
fuel possible and limit idling. Locomotives aren't really required to use
cleaner fuel until 2012, but it is widely available now."
About Me: This article first appeared in
The Chicago Reporter, which has been investigating issues involving race and
poverty since 1972. Kari Lydersen is a regular contributor. The complete Dirty
Secret, as well as the author's other articles, can be read online at
www.chicagoreporter.com.
Disgruntled says:
For an event that had only about a thousand attendees during the keynote
address, the Tea Party Convention garnered significant mainstream media
attention. Before Sarah Palin ripped a hole in the Obama administration for
everything from the economy to the nation's war on terror, former GOP
congressman Tom Tancredo suggested the country return to the practice of
administering a "literacy test" to prospective voters, ostensibly to prevent
the election of someone like President Barack Hussein Obama. One must assume
Tancredo made the recommendation as a way to prevent the election of another
black candidate. You will recall this practice kept black Americans off the
voting rolls and has been shown to have been racist. The Tea Party Convention,
with all its racist rhetoric, resoundingly threw overboard the notion that the
US moved into a post-racial period with Obama's election.
Disgruntled feels: Justified! The new
head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is Lisa Perez Jackson, an
African American who grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana. Her family's home was
destroyed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Jackson brings to the
position first-hand experience of a major disaster and a commitment to
environmental justice. As the first black to hold this position, Jackson can
give voice to the millions of poor and people of color most often the victims
of environmental injustices, which we call environmental racism. Since Jackson
has brought to this position such a commitment, we feel justified in being
optimistic that some of the many issues of environmental racism will finally
be addressed.
Disgruntled wants to know: The
unemployment rate fell three-tenths of a percent to 9.7% in January, according
to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For those who wanted to believe the economy
is no longer in recession, this report was heralded as one more bit of good
news on that front. Since I generally take a bottom up perspective on the
economy, the recession is not over until there is full employment, which means
that the unemployment rate among blacks and teens is significantly less than
double digits. Since the US government is obviously manipulating the numbers
to paint a rosier picture than the reality on the ground warrants, I take the
latest jobs' report with a bulldozer of salt. With so much massaging and
propaganda, it is difficult to know what to believe anymore. Is the latest
jobs' report worth the paper on which it is printed?
Mailbox: E-Mails, Faxes and
Telephone Calls
Email
www.oregonlive.com
White men get 51 percent of minority program money...The first audit of a
Portland program designed to hire more minorities and women for public
construction projects shows businesses owned by white men snagged 51 percent
of the money. Of the $13.7 million allocated since 1997 through the Sheltered
Market Program, companies owned by white women received 25 percent, African
Americans 11 percent, Latinos 9 percent, Native Americans 3 percent and Asian
Americans 1 percent. When city officials adopted the program, the ordinance
said it would remedy the disparity found in a 1996 study, which showed racial
and gender bias in public construction. Mayor Same Adams championed the
program as chief of staff to then-Mayor Vera Katz. He defended it in an email
to the Oregonian. He says the results show improvement is possible, and
there's a lot more work to do.
Email
www.ap.com US Reps from
MO to propose blocking EPA gas rules....By Chris Blank...Two congressional
members from Missouri said they plan to file legislation blocking the
Environmental Protection Agency from developing its own greenhouse gas rules.
US Reps Ike Skelton, a Democrat, and Jo Ann Emerson, a Republican, sharply
criticized federal environmental regulators and warned that because EPA
officials are not elected, the agency is not accountable to the farmers,
business owners and other Missouri residents who could be hurt. The EPA
concluded in December that emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse
gases represent a danger to public health, which allows it to consider rules
limiting them. That decision stems from a 2007 US Supreme Court ruling that
found greenhouse gases are air pollutants under federal clean-air laws.
Email
www.greenpeace.org
Bayer Admits GMO Contamination is Out of Control...Green peace welcomes the
United States federal jury ruling on December 4, 2009 that Bayer CropScience
LP must pay $2 million US dollars to two Missouri farmers after their rice
crop was contaminated with an experimental variety of rice that the company
was testing in 2006. The verdict confirms that the responsibility for the
consequences of GE (genetic engineering) contamination rests with the company
that releases GE crops. Bayer has admitted it has been unable to control the
spread of its genetically-engineered organisms despite 'the best practices (to
stop contamination).' The evidence shows that all outdoor field trials or
commercial growing of GE crops must be stopped before our crops are
irreversibly contaminated.
