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Saturday, August 13
Four Amendments and a Funeral
by
Trish Nelson
on Sat 13 Aug 2005 11:00 AM CDT
 Four
Amendments and a Funeral
by
Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
A
month inside the house of horrors that is Congress
Congress isn't the steady assembly line of consensus policy ideas it's
sold as, but a kind of permanent emergency in which a majority of
members work day and night to burgle the national treasure and burn the
Constitution. A largely castrated minority tries, Alamo-style, to slow
them down - but in the end spends most of its time beating calculated
retreats and making loose plans to fight another day.
It
was a fairy-tale political season for George W. Bush, and it seemed like no one
in the world noticed. Amid bombs in London, bloodshed in Iraq, a missing blonde in Aruba and a scandal curling up on
the doorstep of Karl Rove, Bush's Republican Party quietly celebrated a
massacre on Capitol Hill. Two of the most long-awaited legislative wet dreams
of the Washington Insiders Club - an energy bill and a much-delayed highway
bill - breezed into law. One mildly nervous evening was all it took to pass
through the House the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), for years
now a primary strategic focus of the battle-in-Seattle activist scene. And
accompanied by scarcely a whimper from the Democratic opposition, a second
version of the notorious USA Patriot Act passed triumphantly through both
houses of Congress, with most of the law being made permanent this time.
Bush's
summer bills were extraordinary pieces of legislation, broad in scope,
transparently brazen and audaciously indulgent. They gave an energy industry
drowning in the most obscene profits in its history billions of dollars in
subsidies and tax breaks, including $2.9 billion for the coal industry. The
highway bill set new standards for monstrous and indefensibly wasteful
spending, with Congress allocating $100,000 for a single traffic light in Canoga Park, California, and $223 million for the
construction of a bridge linking the mainland an Alaskan island with a
population of just fifty.
It
was a veritable bonfire of public money, and it raged with all the brilliance
of an Alabama book-burning. And what
fueled it all were the little details you never heard about. The energy bill
alone was 1,724 pages long. By the time the newspapers reduced this Tolstoyan
monster to the size of a single headline announcing its passage, only a very
few Americans understood that it was an ambitious giveaway to energy interests.
But the drama of the legislative process is never in the broad strokes but in
the bloody skirmishes and power plays that happen behind the scenes.
(click here to read the entire story)
Monsanto's Big Deal
by
Caroline Vernon
on Sat 13 Aug 2005 04:00 AM CDT
 Monsanto's Big Deal
by Karl Beitel and Nick Parker, Food First
This
serves as a reminder of where we are heading. As you know, Iowa has
already passed the Terminator Gene Bill. In my opinion, not only is
this a crime against nature, but serves as an example of the
irresponsible decisions that are being made in our government on behalf
of the highest bidder. He with the most gold makes the rules... and
evidently, now the seeds! As a mother, do you think I should be
concerned about what I feed my children?
The
world's food system is quickly consolidating. Five corporations control
90 percent of the global grain market while five supermarket chains
control most of the global retail trade. Monsanto knows that
consolidation of the global food system in the hands of a small number
of corporations is likely to continue. Wall Street analysts believe
Monsanto's future is dependent on the success of GE seed development.
Increasing its share of the proprietary seed market will allow Monsanto
to exercise significant control over the food we grow and eat. They
already control most of the biotech soy and corn markets. Now they've
extended that reach to the global seed market.
Monsanto's
announcement of their plans to purchase Seminis, the largest fruit and
vegetable seed producer in the world, was quickly followed by a
statement that Monsanto does not intend to apply biotech to develop
these seeds-at least not yet. This is a curious assertion from a
dominant biotech company.
Biotech
crops and food remain unpopular throughout much of the world. In the
United States, biotech corporations successfully fought labeling and
slipped the foods into grocery stores, knowing that these products
would likely have been rejected if consumers had a choice.
Europeans
actively oppose genetically engineered (GE) foods to the point that
major grocery chains in the European Union have vowed to remove GE
ingredients from their name-brand products. Subsequently, biotech
corporations have increasingly turned to the developing world to find
additional markets for GE foods. Even there resistance builds.
The
biotech industry promotes GE foods by claiming these technologies will
help break the cycle of hunger and increase food production. These
claims are not supported by available scientific evidence. Tests run by
the University of Nebraska, and in Australia and Argentina, discovered
significant drops in production associated with the switch to biotech
crops on the order of 10 to 30 percent.
But what if production increases are not the only reason biotech companies invest in GE foods?
Many
have argued that the real motive driving the development of GE seeds is
expanding control over the food system. Biotech crops are not only a
profitable patented product in and of themselves, they are also a
vehicle to sell other products. Monsanto sells "Roundup Ready" soybeans
as a proprietary package in which GE seeds are conveniently mated to
their Roundup pesticide. Farmers, who traditionally save seeds each
year, are prohibited from doing so with these GE seeds, which must be
purchased anew each growing season.
To read the rest of the article, click here.
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