The People Vs. Monsanto

We can thank our founding fathers for the “balance of powers” in our federal government, because that’s the only thing that is saving environmental regulation in this country, after the dark ages of the Clinton/Bush era.

Last week, Judge Jeffrey S. White of Federal District Court in San Francisco ruled that the US Department of Agriculture had failed to assess the environmental impact of planting genetically modified sugar beets when it granted Monsanto the go-ahead to market and sell its GMO beets.

This is a very important ruling. About 95% of the sugar beets planted in the US are Monsanto GMO beets, and about 50% of the US supply of sugar is made from sugar beets. Chances are, if you’ve eaten anything sugary in the past year, you’ve eaten a genetically modified organism and not known it.

The judge accepted evidence provided by the plaintiffs (the Center for Food Safety, the Sierra Club, the Organic Seed Alliance, and High Mowing Organic Seeds) that GMO sugar beets can cross-pollinate and contaminate table beets, kale, cabbage, and a number of other vegetables, and that organic farmers won’t be able to ensure that their crops are GMO-free if Monsanto is allowed to sell GMO beet seed.

Let’s be clear about what GMO crops are. Many people think that Monsanto and other companies are altering the genetic makeup of beets and other plants to make them more hardy and more resistant to pests and weeds. Not so. Monsanto genetically alters crops to make them more resistant to Monsanto’s highly profitable herbicide, Roundup, thereby increasing their profit and cornering the market: Monsanto provides the seeds, then provides the tons of herbicide the farmers need to make those beet plants grow big enough and produce enough beet to justify the high cost of the GMO seed they purchased from Monsanto in the first place.

The judge’s ruling is a major victory for environmental groups, consumers, and farmers (who’ve had no say in Monsanto’s efforts to squeeze more money out of them). The ruling could eventually lead to a ban on planting GMO sugar beets, since it requires that the USDA conduct an environmental impact statement, and there’s not a lot of extra money in the federal budget allocated for that purpose.

The judge will meet with both parties in the lawsuit and issue a remedy later this year, but so far it looks like Monsanto has lost this round.

The Afghan Sinkhole

I went to a book reading by Dahr Jamail last night and was reminded that the US is still engaged in two major wars which are draining our country of resources we could better use in addressing both healthcare reform and our financial crisis. Some folks would argue (including me) that the wars are one of the causes of our current financial crisis. It’s hard to argue that a record budget deficit has no impact on the country’s current struggle to emerge from the recession. While the Bush tax cuts for the rich helped make that budget deficit, the wars have had an equal impact.

Jamail didn’t really talk about those issues; the event was being held as fundraiser for the GI coffeehouse Coffee Strong, located near the Fort Lewis military reservation. So Jamail mostly discussed the fact that US military personnel are suffering from explosive rates of post-traumatic stress syndrome, inadequate healthcare, and the looming menace of “stop-loss” (the Pentagon program that allows the US military to void contracts with troops—in other words, just when a soldier thinks he or she has reached the end of their four-year commitment, the US Army can say, “sorry, but we’re invoking Stop Loss, which means we’re extending your contract indefinitely and sending you back to Afghanistan for another tour.”). He stressed that the US military is on the verge of collapse. This is the subject of his latest book, which is a collection of interviews with US military personnel who are resisting the wars in various ways.

I was deeply shocked by the high rates of sexual assault and rape within the military units based in Iraq and Afghanistan. While most of the victims are assumed to be women, they’re not exclusively so, unsurprising, given that the US military is now actively recruiting felons and gang members to fill out its ranks. What’s deeply shocking is the refusal of the US military brass to find and prosecute the perpetrators, as if the upper leadership at the Pentagon want to punish women for having won the right to serve in the armed forces.

So I wasn’t surprised to read this morning that the US government has given Hamid Karzai an assurance that we'll support him as the winner of the recent Afghan elections. Never mind the fact that the New York Times recently reviewed the results released by Karzai’s government and determined that approximately one in four votes should be subject to a recount because of the high number of ballots turned in by “nonexistent” polling stations. Yes, that's right: Karzai was so desperate to win, and so certain that he wouldn't, that his backers not only printed up massive numbers of fake ballots to stuff in ballot boxes, they also invented hundreds of polling stations with nonexistent ballot boxes to hold those fake ballots.

A 25% fraud figure would almost certainly invalidate Karzai’s self-declared 54% majority of the vote; in fact, in a better world where the US government truly stood for democracy, such overt cheating would invalidate the entire election.

But the Obama foreign policy, as run by a Defense director and a cadre of generals held over from the Bush administration, finds more value in supporting a corrupt narco-state that only control one-third of the county than it does in ensuring a fair election. General Stanley McCrystal, the head of US forces in Afghanistan, is expected to ask Obama for an additional 45,000 troops this week, and it’s not clear where those troops will come from.

According to Jamail’s interviews, “search and avoid missions” (wherein US troops pretend to patrol but instead find various ways to park their humvees, hide out, and avoid danger) are becoming more common in both Iraq and Afghanistan. This partly explains why those wars—particularly Afghanistan—are unwinnable. Now, more than ever, the US population needs to ask the same question that large numbers of US troops ask themselves every day: “What the hell are we doing in Afghanistan anyway?” Because once we ask that question, the notion of “stay the course” becomes patently absurd.

Special note: GI coffeehouse Coffee Strong provides essential support services, from counseling to legal help, for troops based at Fort Lewis. Coffee Strong is one of only two GI coffeehouses currently operating in the US. Because of a convergence of the ailing economy and the overseas deployment of about 60% of the forces at Fort Lewis (depriving Coffee Strong of much of their customer base), Coffee Strong is in dire need of financial support. Also, they are always in need of volunteers. To get in touch with them, visit their website at http://www.givevoice.org/coffeestrong or call them at 253-581-1565 or visit them at 15109 Union Avenue SW, Lakewood, WA 98499.

How The Seattle Times Lost Me as a Subscriber

[Phone rings.]

Me: Hello?

Woman on the other end of the line: I’m calling from The Seattle Times to offer you a subscription to the newspaper…

Me: No, no, no. This is the third time you’ve called me about this. I have a subscription on my Kindle. I already subscribe! Did you get that?

Seattle Times salesperson: Oh, we don’t have access to that information here.

Me: What? How can you not have access to subscriber information? Isn’t it all on a computerized system?

Seattle Times salesperson: Yes, but that’s the Circulation Department. I’m with Sales. I got your name because you owe us money—

Me: WHAT? I don’t owe you any money! Look up my account—

Seattle Times salesperson: Ma’am, I don’t have access to those records, but I can give you our Customer Service number and you can call and find out how much you owe.

Me: I already called Customer Service last month—the last time you called me with this bullshit story. They said I was paid in full. [A light goes on in my head.] Oh, you’re not really with The Seattle Times, are you?

Seattle Times salesperson [or maybe not]: Yes, I am—

Me: No you’re not! You’re really some third party caller who’s trying to scam me, aren’t you? I mean, look at it from my perspective. You call me up to offer me a subscription when I already have one, then you tell me you can’t access those records, then you say I owe you money when I don’t. Sounds like a scam to me.

Seattle Times salesperson [starting to get upset]: Ma’am, I can get my supervisor to talk to you, if you’d like…

Me: Yes, I’d like that.

Seattle Times salesperson: Okay, I’m putting you on hold now.

[Two minutes pass in silence while I’m on hold.]

Seattle Times salesperson [the same one]: Ma’am, I’m not able to transfer you to her line right now, but I can give you her phone number—

Me: Oh, no, no, no. I’m not spending one more dime to call you people again. Just take me off your call list or put a note by my name that says I have a Kindle subscription. Please.

Seattle Times salesperson [sounding a little snotty]: You know, you only get 30% of the paper’s articles on your Kindle, don’t you?

Me: Really?! [Shocked pause.] Oh, my god! You mean I’ve been paying to get less than a third of your content? Damn! I’m going to cancel my Kindle subscription like right now. I can get more articles from your website for free. Are you sure I can’t talk to your supervisor? I think she ought to know she just lost a subscriber—

Seattle Times salesperson: Ma’am, I have to hang up now. I can’t talk to you anymore.

Me: Okay, have a nice day.

And I really did go directly to my computer, log in, and cancel my Kindle subscription to The Seattle Times. Then I went to their website and left them a message telling them exactly why I cancelled.

Of course, I had other reasons to cancel, too--like an article in Thursday's edition that basically summed up all the crap Sean Hannity and Glen Beck spewed on their right-wing extremist opinion shows this week (and it wasn't on the Opinion Page, where it belonged).

If the Seattle Times goes out of business, I'll throw a party. Having no newspaper at all is better than reading a truly execrable one.

Mayor Nickels Proves He Can't Do Math

After closing down the entire public library system for a week and asking city employees to take ten unpaid days off this year, Mayor Nickels has the gall to ask the City Council for more money to run the loathed South Lake Union street car line.

Apparantly, advertising has only brought in about half the revenue expected and, gosh, only about 1300 people ride it per day (less than one-quarter the number of people who ride the average in-city bus route). Combined with zero enforcement of fare-paying, it’s no wonder the street car is a financial bust.

For one thing, it was never built to be integrated into any existing transportation system, since there’s no equipment to scan Puget Passes (issued by the tri-county bus agencies) or the new ORCA cards, which are compatible with the new light rail line. Hence, the city can’t ask Metro or Sound Transit for money.

No, it’s a toy train for Paul Allen—one that’s cost $2.2 million in city money so far, and will cost another $1.45 million in loans from “other city accounts” that don’t have the money to spare. Nickels says the money will be structured as a loan and paid back over a five-year period starting in 2018. Say what? How does the city, which runs the street car, justify paying itself interest? And who says the street car will still be running in 2023?

It’s high time we shut down the street car and sell off the equipment…if we can find a buyer—and that’s not so certain. Who would want the damn thing?

More Private Contractors in Afghanistan?

The War in Afghanistan is heating up and becoming more deadly for US troops, with a higher number of casualties in August than in any other month since the war started eight years ago.

The head of US command in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, wants more troops shipped to Afghanistan, but the US public would rather see troops come home.

President Obama, on the other hand, is more concerned about a record federal budget deficit. He has proposed saving money on the War in Afghanistan by bringing home noncombat troops and replacing them with private contractors, while shifting combat troops from Iraq to Afghanistan.

But there’s peril in that plan. For one thing, the use of private contractors has done a great deal of harm in Iraq, where the government has driven the largest private contracting company, Blackwater, out of Iraq in disgrace. And another, similar scandal is developing in Afghanistan.

According to a report by the Project On Government Oversight, private contractors working for ArmorGroup North America, have been accused by their own coworkers of engaging in lewd and deviant behavior, illegal hazing, and activities that imperil the security of the personnel they’re supposed to be guarding. ArmorGroup has a $180 million contract from the State Department to guard the US embassy in Kabul.

Where have we heard such charges before? Abu Ghraib comes to mind—in particular, the charges made by military guards that civilian contractors employed by the CIA to oversee interrogations encouraged their subordinates to engage in lewd behavior and outright torture.

In March, the Congressional Research Service reported that that, while there were 52,300 US military troops in Afghanistan, there were also 68,200 private contractors—the highest percentage of private contractor ever used in any war in US history.

President Obama needs to stand back and ask himself if that’s a good thing, or if he should extend his promise to "bring the troops home" to the US troops fighting right now to support a narco-state in Afghanistan.

Besides, shifting troops from Iraq to Afghanistan is not “bringing them home,” as their families would be quick to point out.


Sources: “General Seeks Shift in Afghan Strategy,” The Wall Street Journal, 9/1/09; “U.S. to beef up combat force in Aghanistan,” Julian E. Barnes, The Seattle Times, 9/2/09; and “Security guards for U.S. accused of deviant acts,” Ann Scott Tyson, The Seattle Times, 9/2/09.

Kudos to Ed Murray

State Sen. Ed Murray deserves a pat on the back for refusing to run a write-in campaign for mayor of Seattle.

Since the primary results knocked current Mayor Greg Nickels out of the running for another term, local Democrats and the business community have been in a panic. Neither of the two candidates on the ballot for November—Joe Mallahan, a Comcast executive, and Mike McGuinn, an environmentalist who wants to stop construction of the downtown traffic tunnel—have any prior experience in political office. Neither of them owes any favors to party bosses or major donors (McGuinn’s donations come primarily from individuals who support his environmental views and Mallahan has funded his campaign mostly out of his own deep pockets). Hence the pressure from the party for Democrat Ed Murray to run a write-in campaign.

But today Murray declined to run, saying he wanted to focus his efforts on a far more important goal: making sure the backers of Referendum 71 wouldn’t sink a new law that extends equal rights to gay couples in Washington State. He deserves a big “thank you” from all of Seattle’s citizens.

Today I listened to Murray say point-blank, on KUOW, that his energy would be better spent on the Ref. 71 struggle. Any self-serving politician might have argued the opposite: that he would be more effective in influencing the course of gay rights by becoming Seattle’s first openly gay mayor. But Murray showed a selfless restraint and respect for reality that is missing in so many politicians these days.

Thanks, Ed. And you’ll have my vote this November… to support gay rights in Washington State.