hunterkirk - News Clips
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News Clips
1) Students Riot in Italy Over Budget Cuts... Liberal/Violence
2) Two years in, things aren't looking so good for the President.... Obama/Popularity
3) Former Inmate: Jews Used Witchcraft on Guantanamo Prisoners, Made Me Feel a Cat Was Trying to Penetrate Me... Islamic Terrorist/Stupidity/Judism
4) U.S. Approved Business With Blacklisted Nations... Obama/Pro Iran/Pro Islam
5) How Hanukkah is celebrated in Israel... Hanukkah/Israel
6) Genetically Engineered Alfalfa Could Be Growing in U.S. Fields by Spring... Science/Agriculture
7) Official: Christmas Eve bombings in Nigeria kill 31... Islamic Violence/Christian Oppression
8) EPA moving unilaterally to limit greenhouse gases... Obama/Environmental Dictatorship/By Passing Congress
9) Afghan sex practices concern U.S., British forces... Islam/Pedophiles/Afghanistan
1) Students Riot in Italy Over Budget Cuts... Liberal/Violence
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/students-riot-in-italy-over-budget-cuts/
December 22, 2010
Russia Today reports:
Student protesters in Italy clashed with police in the Sicilian capital Palermo on Wednesday as part of nation-wide demonstrations over university budget cuts that are expected to be approved by parliament. Carrying placards bearing the name of famous books, thousands of protesters marched through the streets, some wearing helmets similar to those used by riot police. One of Rome’s most famous fountains on Gianicolo Hill ran red after demonstrators poured red paint into the water. Students said the red colour symbolised both the blood spilt in last week’s violent protests, and the budgets of Italy’s education system. Its reported that protests in Rome, Milan and Sardegna had so far passed off peacefully
2) Two years in, things aren't looking so good for the President.... Obama/Popularity
http://rightnetwork.com/posts/bang-a-drum-slowly
The economy is in neutral, and it's not showing any signs of moving. The President's domestic agenda is in tatters: between persistently high unemployment, crippling uncertainty on the part of business owners, and steadily-escalating fiscal crises in Blue States there's little appetite for further adventures in big government. Among the big government initiatives that have passed--TARP (admittedly pre-Obama), the 'stimulus,' and Obamacare--the greatest political beneficiaries of the legislation have been the politicians who ran on platforms condemning them. Speaking of elections, despite the President's best efforts Republicans have won key elections in . . . pretty much everywhere except California, which is right now in such bad shape that a 1906-level earthquake might actually improve the situation. Obama's few successes--the tax compromise and elements of the GWOT--are grafted from the GOP, something that the upcoming Republican Speaker of the House will no doubt point out with great vigor over the next two years. The Right despises Obama; the Middle is indifferent to him; and the Left no longer trusts him. And absolutely worst of all, he has to sneak his cigarettes.
If this was a comedy movie from the 1990s, the man would be ripe for a vision quest right now.
You know what I'm talking about, of course: the Simpsons rather brutally parodied the concept, back in the day (and yes, that's really Johnny Cash as the talking coyote). A man--it's almost always a man--is lost in this world, and thus must find himself, or enlightenment, or the path forward; add some regurgitated, half-understood philosophy, a big heap of condescending, exaggerated deference to a culture unlikely to sue, and possibly an amusing scene or three involving illicit soft drug use and you're ready to go. At the end, of course, it is discovered that the one undergoing the quest didn't actually need to do it; the answer was within him all along, only he wasn't ready to face it yet. Or else he had to wait for a convenient redemption episode at the end of the film. Or perhaps a gorilla needed to be involved, although I can't actually find an example of that on YouTube.
Now, one could argue that the preceding paragraph was merely an opportunity to snicker a bit at a President who ran on a campaign of being competent and self-aware, only to demonstrate that he wasn't particularly either--and one would be almost right to do so. The reason that one would be almost right is that, like it or not, there really is a question about what, if anything, motivates President Obama. A recent poll indicated that 40% of the American voting public doubts that the President even believes in American exceptionalism, which is like expressing doubt that the President likes oxygen and food. Even his most loyal supporters are wondering these days what Obama does believe in. One wonders if even he knows.
So... maybe he should have a vision quest. Or pick your favorite metaphor, because one of the most devastating arguments that the Right can and does make about the man is that Obama seems to have gotten to his position largely on autopilot, going for a more important job once he grew bored with any given old one. And now that Obama's at the summit--it doesn't get more powerful than President of the United States of America--he's got nowhere else to go, so the old strategy won't work anymore. Seeing as I live in this country, I would prefer that the President find something that will motivate him to do his job for the next two years.
It's better for the country that way.
After that, we'll replace him. Of course.
3) Former Inmate: Jews Used Witchcraft on Guantanamo Prisoners, Made Me Feel a Cat Was Trying to Penetrate Me... Islamic Terrorist/Stupidity/Judism
http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/4858.htm
December 12, 2010.
Following are excerpts from an interview with Walid Muhammad Hajj a Sudanese national released from the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, which aired on Al-Jazeera TV on December 12, 2010.
To view this clip on MEMRI TV, visit http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/2730.htm.
"The Most Common Method to Wear Down the Brothers was Witchcraft"
Walid Muhammad Hajj: "The psychologist would come and say: 'You want to kill yourself.' I never said that I wanted to kill myself. The psychologist would say: 'You want to kill yourself, so you must undergo psychiatric treatment.' I didn't do anything. I don't want to kill myself. He'd say: 'You want to kill yourself, and that's why we have taken your clothes, and we will give you pills.'"
Interviewer: "They are the ones who started spreading rumors about mental illnesses when they found that the detainees were not suffering from mental illnesses."
Walid Muhammad Hajj: "That's right. They would give you the pills, and if you refused to take them, you would be in a very difficult situation. They would immediately open your personal file, write down the type of pills they prescribed for you, and they would force you to take them. That's it. From now on, you are officially crazy in their view."
Interviewer: "How many prisoners were treated this way?"
Walid Muhammad Hajj: "Most of the brothers. This method was used by the people at the mental clinic, which was controlled by the interrogators. If an interrogator wanted to wear down someone who was not talking, he would send him to the psychiatrist, who would use these methods."
Interviewer: "He would use means that would drive him insane."
Walid Muhammad Hajj: "Yes. The most common method to wear down the brothers was witchcraft."
Jews on the Guantanamo Staff Engaged in Witchcraft
Interviewer: "How did they do this?"
Walid Muhammad Hajj: "There were, of course, Jews among the [staff of] the Guantanamo base, and they would set traps for the guys."
Interviewer: "Give me an example of witchcraft."
Walid Muhammad Hajj: "Witchcraft was used on most of the guys."
Interviewer: "They would cast a spell on them?"
Walid Muhammad Hajj: "Yes, but by the grace of Allah, through frequent reading of the Koran and invocation of the names of Allah, they managed to withstand this."
Interviewer: "How did you know that somebody was under a spell?"
Walid Muhammad Hajj: "Someone like that would change."
Interviewer: "In what way?"
Walid Muhammad Hajj: "For example, somebody would take his clothes off, all of a sudden, or would sit on his bed for three days straight without sleeping. [...]
"They would use all kinds of witchcraft against the guys."
Interviewer: "Tell me more."
Walid Muhammad Hajj: "I will tell you how the witchcraft affected the guys. A person would suddenly see his brothers and sisters naked before him."
Interviewer: "And they weren't really there?"
Walid Muhammad Hajj: "Absolutely not. It was as if he was in a different world."
Interviewer: "You mean, his brothers and sisters from back home."
Walid Muhammad Hajj: "That's right. I remembered an incident with a guy who sat next to me in the morning. When they brought the milk, he began to urinate into the milk."
Interviewer: "In front of you?"
Walid Muhammad Hajj: "Yes. I said to him: 'Why are you urinating in the milk?' That's when we knew that he was under a spell. After he had recovered a little, after we read Koranic verses to him, he said to me: 'The birds on the barbed wire would talk to me, and tell me to urinate in the milk. When the guards pass by my cell, the sound made by their pants talks to me.'"
Interviewer: "They tell him to urinate in the milk?"
Walid Muhammad Hajj: "Yes." [...]
Interviewer: "Did they ever use witchcraft on you?"
Walid Muhammad Hajj: "There was one attempt."
Interviewer: "How did they do it?"
Walid Muhammad Hajj: "Once, when I was sleeping – on the floor, not on a bed – I suddenly felt that a cat was trying to penetrate me. It tried to penetrate me again and again. I recited the kursi verse again and again until the cat left."
Interviewer: "But there wasn't really any cat there?"
Walid Muhammad Hajj: "Absolutely not." [...]
4) U.S. Approved Business With Blacklisted Nations... Obama/Pro Iran/Pro Islam
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/24/world/24sanctions.html?_r=1
December 23, 2010
Despite sanctions and trade embargoes, over the past decade the United States government has allowed American companies to do billions of dollars in business with Iran and other countries blacklisted as state sponsors of terrorism, an examination by The New York Times has found.
At the behest of a host of companies — from Kraft Food and Pepsi to some of the nation’s largest banks — a little-known office of the Treasury Department has granted nearly 10,000 licenses for deals involving countries that have been cast into economic purgatory, beyond the reach of American business.
Most of the licenses were approved under a decade-old law mandating that agricultural and medical humanitarian aid be exempted from sanctions. But the law, pushed by the farm lobby and other industry groups, was written so broadly that allowable humanitarian aid has included cigarettes, Wrigley’s gum, Louisiana hot sauce, weight-loss remedies, body-building supplements and sports rehabilitation equipment sold to the institute that trains Iran’s Olympic athletes.
Hundreds of other licenses were approved because they passed a litmus test: They were deemed to serve American foreign policy goals. And many clearly do, among them deals to provide famine relief in North Korea or to improve Internet connections — and nurture democracy — in Iran. But the examination also found cases in which the foreign-policy benefits were considerably less clear.
In one instance, an American company was permitted to bid on a pipeline job that would have helped Iran sell natural gas to Europe, even though the United States opposes such projects. Several other American businesses were permitted to deal with foreign companies believed to be involved in terrorism or weapons proliferation. In one such case, involving equipment bought by a medical waste disposal plant in Hawaii, the government was preparing to deny the license until an influential politician intervened.
In an interview, the Obama administration’s point man on sanctions, Stuart A. Levey, said that focusing on the exceptions “misses the forest for the trees.” Indeed, the exceptions represent only a small counterweight to the overall force of America’s trade sanctions, which are among the toughest in the world. Now they are particularly focused on Iran, where on top of a broad embargo that prohibits most trade, the United States and its allies this year adopted a new round of sanctions that have effectively shut Iran off from much of the international financial system.
“No one can doubt that we are serious about this,” Mr. Levey said.
But as the administration tries to press Iran even harder to abandon its nuclear program — officials this week announced several new sanctions measures — some diplomats and foreign affairs experts worry that by allowing the sale of even small-ticket items with no military application, the United States muddies its moral and diplomatic authority.
“It’s not a bad thing to grant exceptions if it represents a conscious policy decision to give countries an incentive,” said Stuart Eizenstat, who oversaw sanctions policy for the Clinton administration when the humanitarian-aid law was passed. “But when you create loopholes like this that you can drive a Mack truck through, you are giving countries something for nothing, and they just laugh in their teeth. I think there have been abuses.”
What’s more, in countries like Iran where elements of the government have assumed control over large portions of the economy, it is increasingly difficult to separate exceptions that help the people from those that enrich the state. Indeed, records show that the United States has approved the sale of luxury food items to chain stores owned by blacklisted banks, despite requirements that potential purchasers be scrutinized for just such connections.
Enforcement of America’s sanctions rests with Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, which can make exceptions with guidance from the State Department. The Treasury office resisted disclosing information about the licenses, but after The Times filed a federal Freedom of Information lawsuit, the government agreed to turn over a list of companies granted exceptions and, in a little more than 100 cases, underlying files explaining the nature and details of the deals. The process took three years, and the government heavily redacted many documents, saying they contained trade secrets and personal information. Still, the files offer a snapshot — albeit a piecemeal one — of a system that at times appears out of sync with its own licensing policies and America’s goals abroad.
In some cases, licensing rules failed to keep pace with changing diplomatic circumstances. For instance, American companies were able to import cheap blouses and raw material for steel from North Korea because restrictions loosened when that government promised to renounce its nuclear weapons program and were not recalibrated after the agreement fell apart.
Mr. Levey, a Treasury under secretary who held the same job in the Bush administration, pointed out that the United States did far less business with Iran than did China or Europe; in the first quarter of this year, 0.02 percent of American exports went to Iran. And while it is “a fair policy question” to ask whether Congress’s definition of humanitarian aid is overly broad, he said, the exception has helped the United States argue that it opposes Iran’s government, not its people. That, in turn, has helped build international support for the tightly focused financial sanctions.
Beyond that, he and the licensing office’s director, Adam Szubin, said the agency’s other, case-by-case, determinations often reflected a desire to balance sanctions policy against the realities of the business world, where companies may unwittingly find themselves in transactions involving blacklisted entities.
“I haven’t seen any licenses that I thought we should have done differently,” Mr. Szubin said.
Behind a 2000 Law
For all the speechifying about humanitarian aid that attended its passage, the 2000 law allowing agricultural and medical exceptions to sanctions was ultimately the product of economic stress and political pressure. American farmers, facing sharp declines in commodity prices and exports, hoped to offset their losses with sales to blacklisted countries.
The law defined allowable agricultural exports as any product on a list maintained by the Agriculture Department, which went beyond traditional humanitarian aid like seed and grain and included products like beer, soda, utility poles and more loosely defined categories of “food commodities” and “food additives.”
Even before the law’s final passage, companies and their lobbyists inundated the licensing office with claims that their products fit the bill.
Take, for instance, chewing gum, sold in a number of blacklisted countries by Mars Inc., which owns Wrigley’s. “We debated that one for a month. Was it food? Did it have nutritional value? We concluded it did,” Hal Eren, a former senior sanctions adviser at the licensing office, recalled before pausing and conceding, “We were probably rolled on that issue by outside forces.”
While Cuba was the primary focus of the initial legislative push, Iran, with its relative wealth and large population, was also a promising prospect. American exports, virtually nonexistent before the law’s passage, have totaled more than $1.7 billion since.
In response to questions for this article, companies argued that they were operating in full accordance with American law.
Henry Lapidos, export manager for the American Pop Corn Company, acknowledged that calling the Jolly Time popcorn he sold in Sudan and Iran a humanitarian good was “pushing the envelope,” though he did give it a try. “It depends on how you look at it — popcorn has fibers, which are helpful to the digestive system,” he explained, before switching to a different tack. “What’s the harm?” he asked, adding that he didn’t think Iranian soldiers “would be taking microwavable popcorn” to war.
Even the sale of benign goods can benefit bad actors, though, which is why the licensing office and State Department are required to check the purchasers of humanitarian aid products for links to terrorism. But that does not always happen.
In its application to sell salt substitutes, marinades, food colorings and cake sprinkles in Iran, McCormick & Co. listed a number of chain stores that planned to buy its products. A quick check of the Web site of one store, Refah, revealed that its major investors were banks on an American blacklist. The government of Tehran owns Shahrvand, another store listed in the license. A third chain store, Ghods, draws many top officials from the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which the United States considers a terrorist organization.
The licensing office’s director, Mr. Szubin, said that given his limited resources, they were better spent on stopping weapons technology from reaching Iran. Even if the connections in the McCormick case had come to light, he said, he still might have had to approve the license: the law requires him to do so unless he can prove that the investors engaged in terrorist activities own more than half of a company.
“Are we checking end users? Yes,” he said. “But are we doing corporate due diligence on every Iranian importer? No.”
A McCormick spokesman, Jim Lynn, said, “We were not aware of the information you shared with us and are looking into it.”
Political Influence
Beyond the humanitarian umbrella, the agency has wide discretion to make case-by-case exceptions. Sometimes, political influence plays a role in those deliberations, as in a case involving Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii and a medical-waste disposal plant in Honolulu.
On July 28, 2003, the plant’s owner, Samuel Liu, ordered 200 graphite electrodes from a Chinese government-owned company, China Precision Machinery Import Export Corporation. In an interview, Mr. Liu said he had chosen the company because the electrodes available in the United States were harder to find and more expensive. Two days later, the Bush administration barred American citizens from doing business with the Chinese company, which had already been penalized repeatedly for providing missile technology to Pakistan and Iran.
By the time Customs seized the electrodes on Nov. 5, waste was piling up in the sun. Nor did prospects look good for Mr. Liu’s application to the licensing office seeking to do an end run around the sanctions. On Nov. 21, a State Department official, Ralph Palmiero, recommended that the agency deny the request since the sanctions explicitly mandated the “termination of existing contracts” like Mr. Liu’s.
That is when Senator Inouye’s office stepped in. While his electrodes were at sea, Mr. Liu had made his first ever political contribution, giving the senator’s campaign $2,000. Mr. Liu says the timing was coincidental, that he was simply feeling more politically inclined. Records show that an Inouye aide called the licensing office on Mr. Liu’s behalf the same day that Mr. Palmiero recommended denying the application. The senator himself wrote two days later.
Mr. Inouye’s spokesman, Peter Boylan, said the contribution had “no impact whatsoever” on the senator’s actions, which he said were motivated solely by concern for the community’s health and welfare.
The pressure appears to have worked. The following day, the licensing office’s director at the time asked the State Department to reconsider in an e-mail that prominently noted the senator’s interest. A few days later, the State Department found that the purchase qualified for a special “medical and humanitarian” exception.
The license was issued Dec. 10. Two months later, Mr. Liu sent the senator another $2,000 contribution, the maximum allowable. Mr. Levey said he could not comment on the details of a decision predating his tenure. But he noted that sanctions against the Chinese company had since been toughened, and added, “Certainly this transaction wouldn’t be authorized today.”
Curious Exemptions
Mr. Liu’s license is hardly the only one to raise questions about how the government determines that a license serves American foreign policy.
There is also, for instance, the case of Irisl, an Iranian government-owned shipping line that the United States blacklisted in 2008, charging that because it routinely used front companies and misleading terms to shroud shipments of banned arms and other technology with military uses, it was impossible to tell whether its shipments were “licit or illicit.”
Less than nine months earlier, the licensing office had permitted a Japanese subsidiary of Citibank to carry out the very type of transaction it was now warning against. Records show that the bank had agreed to confirm a letter of credit guaranteeing payment to a Malaysian exporter upon delivery of what were described as split-system air-conditioners to a Turkish importer. Though the government had yet to blacklist Irisl, sanctions rules already prohibited dealings with Iranian companies. So when the bank learned that the goods were to be shipped aboard the Irisl-owned Iran Ilam, it sought a license.
The license was granted, even though the Treasury Department’s investigation of Irisl was well under way and the United States had reason to be suspicious of the Iran Ilam in particular; that summer, the ship had attracted the attention of the intelligence community when it delivered a lathe used to make nuclear centrifuge parts from China to Iran, according to government officials who requested anonymity to speak about a previously unpublicized intelligence matter.
Mr. Szubin said that since the blacklisting of Irisl, his agency had forced banks to extricate themselves from such transactions. But at the time the Citibank license was issued, his agency regularly issued licenses in cases like this one, where at the time of the transaction, the bank had no way of knowing that Irisl was involved and where the shipping line would be paid by a foreign third party anyway. To depart from the norm, he said, risked facing a lawsuit charging unfair treatment and tipping Irisl off that it was under investigation.
But if the government has sometimes been willing to grant American businesses a break, some companies have recently decided that the cost to their reputations outweighs the potential profit.
General Electric, which has been one of the leading recipients of licenses, says it has stopped all but humanitarian business in countries listed as sponsors of terrorism and has promised to donate its profits from Iran to charity.
As Joshua Kamens, the head of a company called Anndorll, put it, he knew from almost the minute he applied for a license to sell sugar in Iran that “it would come back to haunt me.” Although he received the go-ahead, he decided to back out of the deal.
“I’m an American,” he said. “Even though it’s legal to sell that type of product, I didn’t want to have any trade with a country like Iran.”
5) How Hanukkah is celebrated in Israel... Hanukkah/Israel
http://www.helium.com/items/1266789-how-hanukkah-is-celebrated-in-israel
Hanukkah is celebrated in Israel just like every where else in the world where Jews live. The Hanukkiah is lit, prayers are recited and everybody eat doughnuts and livivot (potato pancakes), lots of them!
In Israel Hanukkah is not a major holiday. Banks and businesses are open as usual, but the schools are closed for a ten day holiday. Hanukkah, just like Christmas, is celebrated by attending a lot of parties.
Your children's kindergarten, the local synagogue, the community center, your neighbours and even the pensioners club all host parties. Most Israelis attend two or more parties during Hanukkah. Many times parents have to split up to manage to attend all their children's parties.
The children sing Hanukkah songs and have a little "light show". This can include the lightning of the Hanukkia candles, or a dance with torches or little lasers. Since Hanukkah is in the middle of the winter, hot drinks like mint tea are served with doughnuts.
The doughnuts here in Israel are round, filled with red jelly and brushed with icing sugar. It makes for a very fattening, calorie dense treat. About a month before Hanukkah bakeries and supermarkets tempt everybody with the delicious smell of freshly baked doughnuts.
The only religious observance related Hanukkah, is the lighting of candles. Most households, even the secular ones, light the candles on a hanukkiah, a candelabrum. Each night an extra candle is lighted until all nine candles are it. The lightning of the candles are accompanied by reciting prayers and singing songs that that is connected to Hanukkah.
It is a Jewish custom to place your Hanukkia in the window sill where it can be seem by passersby. If it is not possible, the Hanukkia must be placed where it can be seen properly in the house. And of course where it will be safe to leave a lighted candelabra.
Israelis like to walk through the streets of Ultra- Orthodox neighbourhoods like Bnei Brak in Tel-Aviv and Meir Sharim in Jerusalem during Hanukkah. The sight of the lighted Hanukkiot in all the homes are beautiful.
One of the customs during Hanukkah is to play the "sevvivon" or four-sided spinning top. Only old people who speak Yiddish will call it a dreidl in Israel. On each of the sides you can find a Hebrew letter. The N, G, H, and P stands for "nes gadol hia poh" and means a great miracle happened here.
This miracle refers to the first Hanukkah miracle when the oil that was only enough to lit the menorah for one day carried on burning for eight days. The spinning tops in countries other than Israel have the letters: N,G, H, and S, not P. They stand for " nes gadol hia sham", a great miracle happened there.
It has been said that Jews have started to give their children presents so that they will not feel left out from their Christian friends. Here in Israel the Jewish children get presents anyway. Israelis love giving gifts, especially to children, no matter which holiday it is.
So if you want to experience a different culture, attend a lot of parties and be encouraged to eat many doughnuts, come and visit us. You will enjoy to see how Hanukkah is celebrated in Israel.
6) Genetically Engineered Alfalfa Could Be Growing in U.S. Fields by Spring... Science/Agriculture
http://www.rodale.com/ge-alfalfa?cm_mmc=DailyNewsNL-_-2010_12_21-_-Top5-_-NA
Eating genetically engineered Roundup Ready crops makes pigs infertile. So what's going to happen to farm animals (and us) if GE alfalfa is approved?
RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—A genetically engineered crop used in conjunction with a common pesticide that's known to reduce a plant's ability to take up micronutrients essential for human life may be approved and in the ground by the spring 2011 growing season. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) last week released the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) investigating potential negative environmental effects that could occur if the agency allows farmers to start planting Monsanto's genetically engineered (GE) Roundup Ready alfalfa seeds. Just like the Roundup Ready corn, soy, and canola already being grown all over the country, the GE alfalfa would allow farmers to spray the weed-killing pesticide Roundup over alfalfa without killing the crop. Since GE corn, soy, and canola have the ability to cross-pollinate and contaminate organic crops, sustainable farmers are worried that the same will happen with GE alfalfa, threatening organic grass-fed beef and dairy operations.
"Just from the gene flow, within five years of Roundup Ready alfalfa, there will be no such thing as non-Roundup Ready alfalfa, regardless of restrictions government puts on it," says Don Huber, PhD, professor emeritus at Purdue University and APS coordinator for the USDA's National Plant Disease Recovery System.
Besides the threat to organic farmers and human health, expanding the genetically engineered, chemical farming system threatens to wipe out America's farmland. Despite a growing number of reports finding that Roundup (also known as glyphosate) creates superweeds that force farmers to abandon millions of acres of land or use more toxic pesticide combinations, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack repeatedly emphasized last week that USDA plans to meet the needs not just of farmers, but also of the companies and researchers investing in the creation of biotech seeds. He also explained his desire to give farmers the choice of growing whichever type of alfalfa crop (GE, conventional, or organic) they choose in 2011, meaning a decision on GE alfalfa will likely come very soon, given that farmers buy their seeds for the upcoming season at this time of year.
Interestingly, there doesn't appear to be a crushing demand for GE alfalfa. "I've never been to a farm meeting where I've heard a farmer say, 'Now, what we really need is GE alfalfa to make our lives easier,'" says Jeff Moyer, farm director at Rodale Institute, an organic research farm in Pennsylvania.
THE DETAILS: While the FEIS report does not approve GE alfalfa use, it does lay out three USDA options for Roundup Ready alfalfa use. The two preferred options are to completely deregulate the crop, allowing it be grown anywhere, or to impose geographic restrictions and isolation requirements limiting where the crop can be grown, in an attempt to protect organic farmers. Another possible option is to continue the ban on the crop because of its environmental and economic impacts. "It’s a breakthrough that the USDA is considering putting restrictions on planting a GM [genetically modified] crop. This is a first, and I’m glad the agency has considered the concerns of organic and non-GMO farmers," says Ken Roseboro, editor of The Organic & Non-GMO Report and author of the 2011 Non-GMO Source Book. "But many organic agriculture experts say 'coexistence' between GMO and organic won’t work, and I don’t think it will, either. It basically means how much GMO contamination are organic farmers willing to put up with, when they don’t want any."
Monsanto has been fighting for approval of its GE alfalfa for about seven years, and the report issued last week was the result of a 2007 lawsuit in which a federal court ruled that the USDA's approval of GE alfalfa violated environmental laws by failing to analyze risks such as the contamination of conventional and organic alfalfa and the development of superweeds, which has been well documented in other GE crop systems. "The only option that will protect organic and conventional alfalfa growers and dairies is for the USDA to deny any approval of GE alfalfa," Andrew Kimbrell, executive director of the Center for Food Safety, said in a statement. "We are disappointed that the agency has not made this one of its preferred options, but are encouraged that it remains an option being considered by the agency."
In June 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the ban on Monsanto's GE alfalfa unless future deregulation status occurred.
The next step is for USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service to submit the FEIS to the Environmental Protection Agency for publication in the Federal Register, which is likely to occur on Dec. 23. That will be followed by a 30-day comment period before USDA makes its final decision.
WHAT IT MEANS: The question many environmental and food safety groups are asking is "Why do we even need GE Roundup Ready alfalfa?" The authors of the FEIS outline that production practices for alfalfa mean that less glyphosate is needed compared to other crops. So if current, non-GE alfalfa doesn't require much Roundup, why would farmers want a GE crop that can resist Roundup, particularly at a time when weeds are growing resistant to that very chemical because millions of pounds of the chemical are dumped on farmland every year? "If [Roundup] was used judiciously and with common sense, it could have been a useful tool," explains Huber. "But we've abused it to the nth degree, and it's coming back to haunt us now in both our animal and crop production, and the implication is pretty strong for all animals' health and physiological functioning, including humans."
Roundup Ready crops are strongly linked to infertility in farm animals, according to Huber, who notes that just the gene in Roundup Ready crops can impact a plant's enzymatic functioning and reduce its micronutrient content by 10 to 70 percent. Add toxic Roundup to the mix, which has been linked to hormone disruption, certain cancers, and liver cell damage, and you've got a recipe for a major public-health problem.
There are also legal issues involved—like who pays when organic crops are contaminated by GE pollen? "European Union nations, such as Germany, are putting the burden of liability on GE farmers," explains Roseboro. But in the U.S., the biotech companies that produce the GE seeds and the farmers who plant them have no liability, and organic farmers who suffer contamination and lose the value of their crop have no recourse for compensation for their losses. "Biotech companies need to be held responsible for their wayward genes when they harm organic and non-GMO farmers," says Roseboro.
Here's how to put the brakes on bringing more GE crops into the market.
• Eat what the doctors (and President) order. Food-safety advocates, doctors (including The American Academy of Environmental Medicine), and sustainable-farming advocates forecast several problems associated with the approval of GE alfalfa. For starters, genetically modified foods have been linked to accelerated aging, immune problems, infertility, changes in organs and the GI tract, and faulty insulin regulation. The American Academy of Environmental Medicine recommends eating a diet free of GE (also referred to as genetically modified organism, or GMO) ingredients.
The President's Cancer Panel earlier this year also instructed Americans to eat organic food to lower their risk of cancer and other diseases.
• Vote against GMOs with your food dollars. "If we get a tipping point soon, we solve everything," says bestselling author Jeffrey Smith, executive director of the Institute for Responsible Technology. He believes consumer demand for non-GMO products is the No. 1 way to put Monsanto out of business and force farmers to plant organic, or at least conventional non-GMO, crops.
To avoid eating genetically manipulated food, buy organic—it's the easiest way to avoid harmful pesticide exposure as well as GMO ingredients. The Non-GMO Shopping Guide and free iPhone APP can also help keep GE ingredients out of your belly.
• Demand a choice. Polls have consistently found that the majority of American people do not want to eat genetically engineered crops or animals, and 90 percent think GE ingredients should be, at the very least, labeled. If you'd like to know what you're eating, tell your federal representative to support H.R. 5577 Genetically Engineered Food Right to Know Act.
7) Official: Christmas Eve bombings in Nigeria kill 31... Islamic Violence/Christian Oppression
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/africa/12/24/nigeria.bombs.fatalities/index.html?eref=mrss_igoogle_cnn
December 25, 2010
Borno state governor Ali Modu Sherif (in white kaftan) inspect the charred remains of a car outside a Victory Baptist church in Alamderi neighbourhood of the northern Nigerian city of Maiduguri on Saturday.
Five blasts went off in the Nigerian city of Jos Friday night as residents were celebrating Christmas Eve, leaving 31 dead, a regional government official said.
Choji Gyang, a special adviser to the governor of Nigeria's Plateau state, said two bombs went off in the Angwa Rukuba area of Jos. Within five to 20 minutes, three more blasts happened in the area of Kabong, he said.
"We have a lot of casualties and are struggling to cope," Gyang said.
Hassan John, a Jos resident and journalist with the media department of the Anglican Diocese of Jos, had just come out of church about 7 p.m. (1 p.m. ET) when he heard the sound of the first explosion. He rushed to the site, which he described as a beer parlor frequented by locals.
"By the time I got there, there were women crying, people screaming. It was all chaos, people were screaming, blood everywhere."
"I counted eight corpses all over, seven in the building," John said. He added that a second blast went off within a couple of minutes after the first one. "We cannot say if there are more bodies under the rubble because it was dark," John said.
Gyang, who is special adviser on religious affairs to the governor, said it was unclear who set off the blasts or whether they were related.
"It was Christmas Eve, lots of activities was going on. People were still preparing for Christmas, lots of people were coming into town. A blast went off, those around the area -- some were killed, some injured and the houses and cars caught fire," Gyang said. He said he received reports of "a lot of dead bodies."
"The way they went off was in the same manner. They all went to where people were concentrated,"Gyang said.
Several injured people were taken to a local hospital while some who were not severely injured left the scene on their own.
John said the beer-parlor scene was chaotic as residents, especially young men, became agitated over the lack of security in what has been a volatile area. Hundreds of people from both faiths have died in violence between Christians and Muslims in Nigeria in the past decade.
"Soldiers fired a couple of rounds into the air because a riot was developing," John said.
The first blasts occurred just a few buildings away from a police station and a military checkpoint, according to both Gyang and John.
Gyang said that during the preceding two days, a special task force that had been sent to the Plateau state by the federal government had gone on radio telling residents to go about their business and not to worry about the security situation in the area. The government had increased security and checkpoints throughout the past week, including additional a patrols in various areas of Jos, Gyang said
"Five different bombs blasts in the heart of Jos. This is the height of insecurity in this city," Gyang said.
"There is a lapse in security, specifically by the special task force," he said. "They have not been doing what they were expected to and as a result we had these attacks."
In recent weeks, the governor's office had received letters purported to be from some Muslim organizations threatening attacks against Christians, Gyang said. "The security officials didn't take the threat letters seriously. They were thought of as gimmicks, and at the end of the day, they became reality."
8) EPA moving unilaterally to limit greenhouse gases... Obama/Environmental Dictatorship/By Passing Congress
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/ap/politics/2010/Dec/24/epa_moving_unilaterally_to_limit_greenhouse_gases.html
December 24, 2010
Stymied in Congress, the Obama administration is moving unilaterally to clamp down on power plant and oil refinery greenhouse emissions, announcing plans for developing new standards over the next year.
In a statement posted on the agency's website late Thursday, Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson said the aim was to better cope with pollution contributing to climate change.
"We are following through on our commitment to proceed in a measured and careful way to reduce GHG pollution that threatens the health and welfare of Americans," Jackson said in a statement. She said emissions from power plants and oil refineries constitute about 40 percent of the greenhouse gas pollution in this country.
President Barack Obama had said two days after the midterm elections that he was disappointed Congress hadn't acted on legislation achieving the same end, signaling that other options were under consideration.
Jackson's announcement came on the same day that the administration showed a go-it-alone approach on federal wilderness protection — another major environmental issue. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said his agency was repealing the Bush era's policy limiting wilderness protection, which was adopted under former Interior Secretary Gale Norton.
On climate change, legislation in Congress putting a limit on heat-trapping greenhouse gases and allowing companies to buy and sell pollution permits under that ceiling — a system known as "cap and trade" — stalled in the Senate earlier this year after narrowly clearing the House. Republicans assailed it as "cap and tax," arguing that it would raise energy prices.
But the Senate in late June rejected by a 53-47 vote a challenge brought by Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski that would have denied the EPA the authority to move ahead with the rules.
Jackson noted in Thursday's statement that her agency that several state and local governments and environmental groups had sued EPA over the agency's failure to update or publish new standards for fossil fuel plants and petroleum refineries. The announcement Thursday came in connection with a settlement of the suit the states brought against the EPA.
The EPA also announced Thursday that it was taking the unprecedented step of directly issuing air permits to industries in Texas, citing the state's unwillingness to comply with greenhouse gas regulations going into effect Jan. 2. EPA officials said they reluctantly were taking over Clean Air Act Permits for greenhouse gas emissions because "officials in Texas have made clear.they have no intention of implementing this portion of the federal air permitting program."
Two days after the midterm elections, Obama served notice that he would look for ways to control global warming pollution other than Congress placing a ceiling on it.
"Cap-and-trade was just one way of skinning the cat; it was not the only way," he said. "I'm going to be looking for other means to address this problem."
The EPA was at the center of the battle in Congress over climate change policy, especially in the wake of a 2007 Supreme Court ruling giving the agency the authority to regulate heat-trapping gases.
"While there will be attacks on (EPA's) authority, it is important that there not be any surrender on EPA's ability to do the job," Trip Van Noppen, president of the environmental group Earthjustice, said earlier this year.
The EPA moved against climate change on another front earlier this year, issuing the first-ever federal guidelines for reducing greenhouse emissions from industrial sources. On Nov. 10, the agency sent new guidelines to states. It suggested that dirty fuel used to power oil refineries be replaced with cleaner sources and it called for more efficient electricity and energy use with existing nuclear power plants.
In Thursday's announcement, Jackson said that under an agreement associated with the court suit, EPA will propose standards for power plants in July 2011 and refineries in December 2011 and will issue final standards in May and November 2012, respectively.
In this time, the agency will schedule "listening sessions" with representatives of business and local governments, ahead of the formal rule-making process.
9) Afghan sex practices concern U.S., British forces... Islam/Pedophiles/Afghanistan
http://washingtonexaminer.com/news/world/2010/12/afghan-sex-practices-concern-us-british-forces#ixzz18mZwf6Uv
12/20/10
A document released by WikiLeaks described efforts by high-ranking Afghan officials to quash reports of police officers and other Afghans arrested for "purchasing a service from a child."
The leaked diplomatic cable quoted former Minister of the Interior Hanif Atmar's concern that publicity about the arrests, which involved the hiring of "dancing boys," would "endanger lives."
The author of the diplomatic cable fretted that the case would be "blown out of proportion, an outcome that would not be good for either the U.S. or Afghanistan."
The vast gulf between U.S. and Afghan attitudes about homosexuality and pedophilia has generated concern among U.S. advisers in Afghanistan since the American presence there began to expand.
In late 2009, U.S. and British forces ordered a study of Pashtun male sexuality. They were worried that homosexuality and pedophilia among Afghan security forces and tribes could create cultural misunderstanding with allied troops, according to a copy of the report obtained by The Washington Examiner.
The study, requested by 2nd Marine Expeditionary Battalion along with British forces in Lashkar Gah, was conducted by members of one of the Defense Department's Human Terrain Teams stationed in Afghanistan. The report was authored by team member Anna Maria Cardinalli, who said the goal was to learn how to advise "U.S. and British service members who report encounters with men displaying apparently homosexual tendencies. These service members are frequently confused [by] this behavior."
The report described unease by U.S. Marines and British soldiers who felt they were being propositioned, or who were outraged by apparent acts of pedophilia by Afghan soldiers and police. It documented one case in which 12 of 20 Pashtun interpreters working with one U.S. Army unit had contracted gonorrhea from homosexual encounters.
Troops interviewed by The Examiner say they are frequently forced to deal with a radically different attitude toward sex with male youths by Afghan security forces.
"I know Marines and soldiers who have refused to work with Afghan military or police," said one U.S. military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "It's not about homosexuality as much as it is about the young boys. Some of them like to show pictures on their cell phone -- that should be illegal. Some of the Afghans have their own young boys they use for sexual purposes and we can't do anything about it."
Cardinalli told The Examiner by e-mail that she is writing a book about widespread acceptance of male homosexuality among Pashtuns, a culture where far fewer opportunities for premarital heterosexual encounters exist.
"To dismiss the existence of this dynamic out of desire to avoid Western discomfort is to risk failing to comprehend an essential social force underlying Pashtun culture which can potentially effect the success" of the U.S. effort there, Cardinalli wrote in the report.
An American military official who works closely with Afghan security forces called the discomfort among U.S. and British troops "the elephant in the closet that no one's talking about, but needs to."
The study makes a number of observations about the extreme segregation of women in Pashtun culture.
It discusses the prohibitive cost of marriage within Pashtun tribes and the long-standing traditions in which boys are appreciated for their physical beauty and apprenticed to older men to learn a trade at an early age.
"Homosexuality is strictly prohibited in Islam, but cultural interpretations of Islamic teaching prevalent in Pashtun areas of southern Afghanistan tacitly condone it in comparison to heterosexual relationships," the study states.
For a male to have sex with a boy is considered a "foible," the report said. By contrast, having sex with an "ineligible woman" would set up "issues of revenge and honor killings."
Years of living under that cultural construct have greatly altered sexual attitudes, the study said. "One of the country's favorite sayings is 'women are for children, boys are for pleasure," the report noted.
The study said the prevailing sexual attitudes in some parts of Afghanistan are creating a cycle damaging to boys and young men.
"There is frequently the risk that Pashtun boys will face a set of experiences that mold their beliefs regarding sexuality as adults in ways that are ultimately damaging, both to themselves and to Afghan society," the report concludes. "It appears that this set of experiences becomes cyclical, affecting generations, and that this cycle that has existed long enough to affect the underpinnings of Afghan culture itself."
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