The DISH

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.