GMO's sprout in WikiLeaks

SUBHEAD: Leaked cable references attempt at upward speculation in commodity prices to pressure ultimately unsuccessful GM crop approval in Europe.

By Rady Ananda on 15 December 2010 for Activist Post - (http://www.activistpost.com/2010/12/leaked-cable-hike-food-prices-to-boost.html) Image above: GMO Free Europe graphic. From (http://www.gmo-free-regions.org/conference2010/downloads.html).

In a January 2008 meeting, US and Spain trade officials strategized how to increase acceptance of genetically modified foods in Europe, including inflating food prices on the commodities market, according to a leaked US diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks. During the meeting, Secretary of State for International Trade, Pedro Mejia, and Secretary General Alfredo Bonet “noted that commodity price hikes might spur greater liberalization on biotech imports.” It seems Wall Street traders got the word. By June 2008, food prices had spiked so severely that “The Economist announced that the real price of food had reached its highest level since 1845, the year the magazine first calculated the number,” reports Fred Kaufman in The Food Bubble: How Wall Street starved millions and got away with it. The unprecedented high in food prices in 2008 caused an additional 250 million people to go hungry, pushing the global number to over a billion. 2008 is also the first year “since such statistics have been kept, that the proportion of the world’s population without enough to eat ratcheted upward,” said Kaufman. All to boost acceptance of GM foods, and done via a trading scheme on which Wall Street speculators profited enormously. Mass food riots in several nations ensued, as did an investigation by the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, resulting in a finding that, yes, unrestricted speculation in food commodities caused soaring prices.

In a comment at the end of the cable, the diplomat also revealed a level of pessimism about Spain’s willingness to help force GM foods on Europe:

This was a very good substantive discussion. However, it is clear that while Spain will continue sometimes to vote in favor of biotechnology liberalization proposals, the Spaniards will tread warily on this issue given their own domestic sensitivities and other equities Spain has in the EU.

That pessimism was largely unfounded, as “Spain planted 80 percent of all the Bt maize in the EU in 2009 and maintained its record adoption rate of 22 percent from the previous year,” noted a reportby the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA). The leaked cables, amounting to over 1,300 right now, reveal US obsession with expanding the biotech market:

• One leaked cable confirms US concern with promoting GM foods in Africa, whichRichard Brenneman described as “a significant item on the State Department’s agenda.”
• In another leaked cable describing the potential to expand US interests in “isolationist” Austria, that nation’s ban on GM foods is highlighted.
• According to a leaked cable from 2007, of concern was French President Sarkozy’s desire to implement a ban on GM foods in line with populist sentiment. According to GM Free Regions, France maintains its opposition to GM foods today.
• In this leaked cable, the Pope openly blamed global hunger on commodity speculation and corrupt public officials, so far refusing to support the use of GM foods. (Also see my Dec. 12 piece, “Leaked cables confirm Pope’s distance from GMO debate and limited stance on bioethics.”)More may be revealed in the remaining cables.

Profiteering Leaves World open to Future Price Manipulation

Food commodity speculation was enabled in 2000 by the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. Deregulation handyman Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX) introduced the bill, coauthored by financial industry lobbyists and cosponsored by Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN), the chairman of the Agriculture Committee. Mother Jones describes the legislative climate when the bill passed:

As part of a decades-long anti-regulatory crusade, Gramm pulled a sly legislative maneuver that greased the way to the multibillion-dollar subprime meltdown….

Gramm’s most cunning coup on behalf of his friends in the financial services industry—friends who gave him millions over his 24-year congressional career—came on December 15, 2000. It was an especially tense time in Washington. Only two days earlier, the Supreme Court had issued its decision on Bush v. Gore. President Bill Clinton and the Republican-controlled Congress were locked in a budget showdown. It was the perfect moment for a wily senator to game the system. As Congress and the White House were hurriedly hammering out a $384-billion omnibus spending bill, Gramm slipped in a 262-page measure called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act.

Not only did that Act enable the subprime meltdown that crashed the economy and put tens of millions into foreclosure, it also enabled Wall Street investors to artificially spike the price of food. “Bankers had taken control of the world’s food, money chased money, and a billion people went hungry,” Kaufman clarified. After a year long investigation, he confirmed that price hikes in food from 2005 thru the peak in June 2008 had nothing to do with the supply chain, but instead occurred as a result of a Wall Street investment scheme known as Commodity Investment Funds. The first to develop the idea was Goldman Sachs, which took 18 different food sources, including cattle, coffee, cocoa, corn, hogs and wheat, and created an investment package. Kaufman explains:

They weighted the investment value of each element, blended and commingled the parts into sums, then reduced what had been a complicated collection of real things into a mathematical formula that could be expressed as a single manifestation, to be known thenceforward as the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index. Then they began to offer shares.

(Kaufman summarizes his report in this June 2010 interview by Thom Hartmann, and in this July Democracy Now interview.) Kaufman points out that also in 2008, ConAgra Foods was able to sell its trading arm to a hedge fund for $2.8 billion. The world’s largest grain trader and GMO giant, Cargill, recorded an 86% jump in annual profits in the first quarter of 2008, attributed to commodity trading and an expanding biofuels market. The Star Tribune calculated that Cargill earned $471,611 an hour that quarter. The investment bubble burst in June 2008 and “aggregate commodity prices fell about 60% by mid-November 2008,” notes Steve Suppan of the Institute for Agricultural and Trade Policy. Though the US House of Representatives introduced a regulatory bill, “legislative loopholes will exempt at least 40-45%” of such trades. Supporting the loopholes is Cargill, among other multinational corporations. Suppan concludes:

The outlook for a sustainable and transparent financial system to underwrite trade dependent food security is not good… [T]he budget for the just launched congressional Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, scheduled to report December 15, [2010] is just $8 million. The Wall Street lobbying budget for defeating financial reform legislation is thus far $344 million…

The final bill was signed into law in July 2010 (summarized by the New York Times), and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission continues to issue new rules purportedly aimed at regulating financial markets. “But big banks influence the rules governing derivatives through a variety of industry groups,” notes another New York Times piece. Did the artificial price hike open EU doors to GM foods?

No, in fact ISAAA noted that: “Six European countries planted 94,750 hectares of biotech crops in 2009, down from seven countries and 107,719 hectares in 2008, as Germany discontinued its planting.” A closer look at EU member state actions on GM foods after June 2008 details some of the GM-free battle in Europe:

• In December 2008, after a ten-year hiatus, Italy agreed to open field tests of GM crops.
• The Czech Republic became the second largest grower of Bt corn in the EU in 2008, nearly doubling the acreage planted in 2007. The USDA characterized it as being an investment target not only in agriculture but also in vaccine development.
• At the EU level, “In an apparent U-turn in his attitude as one of EU executive’s most GM-wary commissioners, environment chief Stavros Dimas” wrote draft approvals for two more varieties of GM corn, reported Reuters in December 2008.
• However, by September 2008, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland had all become GM-free, and urged the UK to do likewise. Though pressured by the European Commission, in January 2009 Hungary refused to lift its ban on GM foods. Its sovereign right to reject GMOs, along with Austria’s, was later upheld by an EU vote with 20 member states supporting such bans.
• In March 2009, Luxembourg became the fifth EU nation to ban GM foods, following France, Hungary, Greece and Austria.
• In October 2009, Turkey banned the import of biotech products.
GMO-Free Europe. European states handle the issue differently than in the US, allowing regions within a nation to maintain GM-free zones. Each step a nation takes toward GM approval invariably draws regional resistance. Biotech Crops Expand Globally in 2009

Though the strategy to hike food prices to spur European acceptance of GM foods failed, it worked elsewhere. Globally, biotech crops expanded by 7% in 2009 over 2008 figures, according to this chart by ISAAA:

In fact, ISAAA asserted GM expansion was due to the 2008 price hikes, as noted by chairman and founder Clive James: “With last year’s food crisis, price spikes, and hunger and malnutrition afflicting more than 1 billion people for the first time ever, there has been a global shift from efforts for just food security to food self-sufficiency.” Poorer nations hardest hit by hunger — in Africa and South America — are more vulnerable to price hikes. But even after the geologically unusual earthquake in January, Haitian farmers rejectedMonsanto’s “gift” of GM seeds. However, the big push remains in Africa and China. A Wary Future

Although it is now widely accepted that Wall Street speculation caused the food bubble, starving hundreds of millions, regulators have so far failed to curb the practices that allow international banksters to manipulate food prices. Meanwhile, the biotech industry continues to repeat its mantra that GM food can cure world hunger. This claim is not backed by the science and it seems to hold less sway in the GM food debate, especially with the Pope recognizing what many others assert: There is no shortage of food; hunger expanded because of price hikes.

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SUBHEAD: Leaked cables reveal Pope's situational positions on bioethics and GMO's.

By Rady Ananda on 13 December 2010 for Activist Post - (http://www.activistpost.com/2010/12/leaked-cables-confirm-popes-distance.html)

Video above: "Julian Assange interrupts SNL, again" on 12/18/10 from (http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20026127-71.html)

A leaked June 2009 cable from the US Vatican Embassy confirms the Pontiff’s refusal to take a stance on genetically modified foods. The Pope’s refusal to reject GM foods creates a vacuum in light of his condemnation of human genetic manipulation and his promotion of environmental stewardship. Last month, at least one news source falsely reported that the Pope approves genetically modified foods. Vatican officials immediately denied such claims, but did admit there is debate within the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. The cable confirms:

The Vatican has not taken a formal position on genetically modified (GM) crops — some Church leaders oppose them because GM technology is mostly in the hands of multinational corporations, while others support their use as an element in a larger strategy to address world hunger.

The cable, released by WikiLeaks, also confirms the Pope’s view that world hunger is more about failings in the distribution infrastructure and as a result of commodity food trading that drove up food prices:

In his World Food Day message in October 2008, the Pope noted that the world can produce enough food to meet increasing needs, but said factors like speculation in foodstuffs, corrupt public officials, and growing investments in weapons prevented food from reaching the hungry. In this Democracy Now interview, Frederick Kaufman, a contributing editor at Harper’s Magazine, detailed how a speculative food bubble increased the number of those going hungry by 250 million. Wall Street investors like Goldman Sachs, AIG, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and JPMorgan Chase bought “futures” on commodities, refusing to sell them. This created a false shortage, causing prices to skyrocket. Another leaked cable discusses a Papal visit to Spain in July 2009 when Pope Benedict XVI condemned genetic research. Embassy official Peter Martin described the speech this way:

Benedict did not shy away from comments on same-sex marriage, abortion, and genetic research, but the comments were not so much finger-wagging at the Spanish government, as a message aimed at the Western world in general.

In a June 2008 Doctrinal Instruction concerning bioethics, Pope Benedict XVI clarifies the Catholic Church’s opposition to genetic engineering on the grounds of a “eugenics mentality.” His argument about protecting the dignity of human life can be equally extended to all life. Indeed, in the June 2009 leaked cable, the Pope’s concern for the environment is well noted:

The Pope speaks frequently about the importance of caring for God’s creation…. The Holy See is an active observer at the UN Environment Program, Food and Agriculture Organization and other international for a.… The Pope has even joined with other religious leaders … to issue moral appeals to their faithful on humanity’s responsibility to be good stewards of nature. The Vatican’s environmental message is consistent: nature is a gift from God, so human beings have a responsibility to care for and not to abuse it.

If the integrity of the human person needs to be maintained, and if humans should care for the environment, shouldn’t the integrity of all life forms be maintained? While recognizing advances in biomedical science, the 2008 Doctrinal Instruction fails to consider the burgeoning agriceutical industry, which amounts to mass drugging the population thru a genetically modified food supply. This scheme falls squarely outside Papal and Hippocratic protectionism toward humans. Though the Church condemns genetic manipulation only as far as humans go, Papal arguments on the sanctity of natural life can easily be applied to genetically engineered foods, as well. It’s not that far of a stretch to oppose GM foods after opposing other forms of genetic manipulation. Rady Ananda’s work has appeared in several online and print publications. She holds a B.S. in Natural Resources from The Ohio State University’s School of Agriculture.

What Chemtrails? Here on Kauai?

SUBHEAD: Geoengineering sparks international ban and first-ever congressional report. Meanwhile, recent video footage of chemtrails being laid above Kauai, without 'informed consent.'


By Juliet Eilperin on 30 October 2010 for Washington Post - 
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/29/AR2010102906361.html)

Picture of chemtrails across southeastern U.S. [This image no longer available. From (http://www.coffinman.co.uk/aluminium_heavy_metals_and_chemtrails.htm)

A senior House Democrat from Tennessee issued the first congressional report on geoengineering Friday, just as delegates from 193 nations approved a ban on such research under a global biodiversity treaty.

The debate over whether humans should explore ways to manipulate the climate has taken on increased urgency over the past year, as efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions linked to global warming have encountered political roadblocks in the United States and elsewhere.

 The measure adopted under the Convention on Biological Diversity, which recently concluded in Nagoya, Japan, states "that no climate-related geo-engineering activities that may affect biodiversity take place, until there is an adequate scientific basis on which to justify such activities and appropriate consideration of the associated risks for the environment and biodiversity and associated social, economic and cultural impacts, with the exception of small-scale scientific research studies" under controlled circumstances.

  Video above: "Kauai Chemtrails Today 12/15/2010" from (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkDxwyd5kcA)

Although some scientists and environmentalists have called for geoengineering research as a precautionary measure against catastrophic global warming, activists hailed the moratorium as a way to keep individual actors from altering the climate. The prohibition does not apply to the United States, which has yet to ratify the convention.

House Science and Technology Committee Chairman Bart Gordon (D) said his report was "in no way meant as an endorsement of climate engineering" but instead an effort to give "insight into where existing federal research capacities lie that could be leveraged for these activities."

"Climate engineering carries with it a tremendous range of uncertainties and possibilities, ethical and political concerns, and the potential for catastrophic side effects," Gordon said. "If we find ourselves passing an environmental tipping point, we will need to have done research to understand our options."

The National Science Foundation is best positioned to take the lead on the matter, according to the 56-page report, which also identifies several other agencies that can play a key role.

  Video above: "Chemtrail Spraying North Shore Kauai 12/15/2010" 9:20am. From (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZvBQmvhw4E)  

In Japan, delegates to the convention warned that such study should be limited and not stray into actual scientific trials.

"Any private or public experimentation or adventurism intended to manipulate the planetary thermostat will be in violation of this carefully crafted U.N. consensus," said Silvia Ribeiro, Latin American director of ETC Group, a grass-roots advocacy organization.

But Ken Caldeira, an environmental science professor at the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology who testified before Gordon's panel last year, said countries need to "undertake studies on what we might do" in a climate crisis, given the current trajectory of carbon concentrations in the atmosphere.

"Nobody likes the idea of engineering Earth's climate," Caldeira wrote in an e-mail. "Unfortunately, at some point, our other options may be even more unpleasant."

Video above: "Kauai Chemtrails 12/15/2010 9:50am". From (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kMVz6pZXD0&feature=related)  

Case for Hawaiian Sovereignty

SUBHEAD: Sai versus Obama, et al - Hawaii's legal case against the United States of America. By Jon Letman on 13 December 2010 for TruthOut.org - (http://www.truth-out.org/sai-v-obama-et-al-hawaiis-legal-case-against-united-states65850) Image above: "Fake State" demonstration in Lihue on "50th Anniversary" of Hawaiian statehood with participation the the Reinstated Nation of Hawaii. Photo by Juan Wilson. From (http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2009/08/50-years-of-hawaiian-fakehood.html).

"You can't spend what you ain't got; you can't lose what you ain't never had." – Muddy Waters

"How long do we have to stay in Bosnia, how long do we have to stay in South Korea, how long are we going to stay in Japan, how long are we going to stay in Germany? All of those: 50, 60 year period. No one complains." – Sen. John McCain

Imagine if you grew up being told that you had been adopted, only to learn that you were, in fact, kidnapped. That might spur you to start searching for the adoption papers. Now imagine that you could find no papers and no one could produce any.

That's how Dr. David Keanu Sai, a retired Army Captain with a PhD in political science and instructor at Kapiolani Community College in Hawaii, characterizes Hawaii's international legal status. Since 1993, Sai has been researching the history of the Kingdom of Hawaii and its complicated relationship to the United States.

Over the last 17 years, Sai has lectured and testified publicly in Hawaii, New Zealand, Canada, across the US, at the United Nations and at the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague on Hawaiian land issues on Hawaii's international status and how Hawaii came to be regarded as a US territory and, eventually, the 50th state.

To explain why he and others insist that Hawaii is not now and never has been lawfully part of the United States, Sai presents an overview of Hawaii's feudal land system and its history as an independent, sovereign kingdom prior to the overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani on January 16, 1893.

Sai likens his lectures to a scene in the film The Matrix in which the character Morpheus tells Neo, "Remember, all I'm offering is the truth. Nothing more."

"You guys are going to swallow the little red pill and will find that what you thought you knew may not be what actually was," Sai warns his audiences. Like The Matrix, which is an assumption of a false reality, Hawaii's history needs to be reexamined through a legal framework, he says. "What I've done is step aside from politics and power and look at Hawaii not through an ethnic or cultural lens, but through the rule of law."

"A lot of sovereignty groups assume they don't have it. Sovereignty never left. We just don't have a government." – Dr. David Keanu Sai

Sai's lectures review history from 1842, when the Hawaiian Kingdom under King Kamehameha III sent envoys to France, Great Britain and the United States to secure recognition of Hawaii's sovereignty. US President John Tyler recognized Hawaiian independence on December 19, 1842, with France and Great Britain following in November of 1843. November 28 became recognized as La Kuokoa (Independence Day).

Over the next 44 years, Hawaiian independence was recognized by more than a dozen countries across Europe, Asia and the Pacific, with each establishing foreign embassies and consulates in Hawaii. By 1893, the Kingdom of Hawaii had opened 90 embassies and consulates around the world, including Washington, DC, with consul generals in San Francisco and New York. The United States opened its own embassy in Hawaii after entering into a treaty of friendship, commerce and navigation on December 20, 1849.

In 1854, in response to concerns about naval battles potentially being fought in the Pacific region during the Crimean war, King Kamehameha III declared Hawaii to be a neutral state, a "Switzerland of the Pacific."

All in the Ohana

SUBHEAD: How Hawaiians embrace the land, its abundance, and their responsibility to each other. By Puanani Burgess on 13 December 2010 in Yes Magazine - (http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/what-happy-families-know/all-in-the-ohana) Image above: Puanani Burgess family photo from original article.

The Hawaiian culture is one of inclusion. Our language and our processes and our traditions—it’s all about trying to make people family. We end up, like I have, with very large families.

Hanai is one of the ways we build family. It started out as a kind of adoption. Traditionally, hanai was first-born children going to be raised by their grandparents. It was a way of making sure the culture survived—that each new generation learned traditions from the generation closest to the source. It wasn’t optional for the parents. If the grandparents wanted the child, they got the child.

That still went on, even in my lifetime. My grandmother hanai’d one of my cousins. My aunt didn’t want to give up the child, but she felt compelled to, because it was a duty traditionally. But the word means a lot of things now. Hawai‘i has many cultures, and they mix together, and words change meanings.

Hanai can also be a lot like adoption. When my father married my mother, she already had a daughter. My father hanai’d her, and she was brought up as much my father’s child as I was. He eventually adopted her, but it’s different. Adoption is a legal thing—it gives you duties that the law can enforce. Hanai is a kuleana—a moral duty. The consequences of breaking a kuleana are really worse than breaking a legal duty. You can be shunned, or cursed.

Building Bridges

I think even in traditional times hanai came to be a way of building bridges between families so that there wouldn’t be as much animosity when it came to disagreements. If I hanai’d your child into my family, you and I are family now. And so that makes it more difficult for you to come and fight with me. So it was a way of aligning perspectives.

And I think that’s partly what my father was doing when he and my mother hanai’d me to my father’s brother when I was eight. My parents were going through hard times, and that was part of it, too. My uncle and aunt didn’t have children, so they were in a position to take care of me.

But I think it was also a way for my father to build bridges within his own family. When my dad married my mother, his family didn’t approve. My father was Japanese, and when I was born, intermarriage between Japanese and other ethnic groups, especially Hawaiians, was really unpopular. I think my father sent me to live with his brother as a way to try to make peace with his family.

I lived with my Japanese uncle and aunt for three years, and then my parents were able to take care of me again. We moved to Waianae, right around the corner from where I live now. My grandmother had purchased this row of Quonset huts. My family moved into one of the Quonset huts, and all of my aunts and uncles lived in the other ones. So in a little patch of ground, there were about 14 kids. We sort of lived in between each other’s porches and houses, and played on the road at night. It was a lovely time. And in my cousins’ households, there were lots of hanai kids. And that’s another meaning of hanai—the kids go where they need to go, to anyone who can take care of them.

The rule is: you all belong to every one of us. So, if you’re doing something naughty, anyone can spank you or yell at you, and unless they do something really horrendous, nobody ever goes back and yells at the adults for doing that. So there was a lot of interchange, and we ate at everybody else’s house, and they ate at ours.

Then my mother and grandmother got into an argument, so my grandmother kicked us out. We ended up sharing a house with some cousins. It was in Damon Tract—a place that was thought of as a ghetto. And, you know, I didn’t know that I lived in a ghetto.

There were a lot of us. So some of us, the older ones like me, we had to sleep on benches, and then the smaller kids got the beds. There were a bunch of kids who slept on the bed, and then there were a bunch of us who slept on the floor, or slept on a bench, or we just figured out where to sleep. It was an interesting time of life, and I really remember the good times.

That was my family—or my families —growing up. Family is complicated. Everywhere it’s complicated.

My life took a complete turn when I met Poka, who’s been my husband for 43 years. I was at the University of Hawai‘i, and a friend of his introduced us. We stood in the hallway of Gartley Hall for four hours, and we just talked. We eventually ended up—in Hawai‘i you always end up—talking about “What’s your family name?” and “Where’d you grow up?” And it turned out we lived around the corner from each other in Waianae. And that day I knew that we were going to be married.

Poka grew up in a big family—seven boys and one girl. They weren’t rich at all, but they owned their land. So they had a stable place to live. When Poka brought me into this family, they really hanai’d me. Just like with adoption, it’s more than being an in-law. It’s really becoming a member of the family as much as anyone who was born into the family—they know how to bring you into them. I learned how to be a parent, how to be an adult, from the Burgess family. I learned to talk to people; I had people who loved me very openly.

Family Portrait

Now Poka and I are the elders—we live in the same place where he grew up—and we have our own family, both our children and the people we’ve hanai’d in our own way.

So I was supposed to get my family together for a picture to go with this story in the magazine. That could have been a lot—enough to fill up the yard—because we’ve been here forever, and we could call about a third of the people in Waianae family. One of the ways that’s happened is through aquaculture.

About 20 years ago, a group of us started an economic independence project to give families a way to make money at home—this is not a wealthy town. We reached back to the Hawaiian tradition of aquaculture: Huge fish farms were part of ancient Hawaiian culture. We set people up with fish tanks in their back yards to grow tilapia. They could eat some and sell some, and both ways they got something they needed: good traditional food and some money for things they had to buy.

We found that setting up the tanks was a bigger job than one family could handle, so in order to participate, three families had to agree to work together. That built bridges within the community and got families working together. And the fish need a lot of attention—raising hundreds of fish in a tank takes constant care. It turned out the people who did that best were children and elders. So it reminded families that those members had something valuable to contribute.

In our family, our fish tank is one way we all stay close. When it’s time to harvest the fish, we get together, and we process the fish, and then we have a feast. We harvested just a couple of weeks before we got together for the family picture. All the fish—400 pounds—went to family members.

My elder brother is Haloa—the taro. When we harvest tilapia, we also dig taro to make poi—it’s a traditional Hawaiian fish and poi feast. When you eat the taro, you reconnect to the ancestor, all of us who are sharing a bowl of poi. And he’s in our family picture, along with our fish tank.

The cooking is done by my sister-in-law, Pola Decambra. She’s married to Poka’s brother David, who’s a chemist. Pola’s the most wonderful cook in the world—the Decambras are all great cooks.

Then there’s Ho’ipo. She’s a Decambra by marriage. When I asked her to be in the picture, she asked me “Can Herbie come?” Herbie passed away, but they were married for 48 years, and she still has this incredibly interesting and vibrant relationship with her husband, so she wanted to bring his ashes so he could be in the picture.

There’s another person like that in the picture, our friend Kenneth. He was a client at our mental health center, and he worked in our yard. Before he died, we asked him where he wanted to be—we invited him to come live at our house. So after he died, we had a ceremony in our back yard, and put his ashes in the ground, and planted a mountain apple tree over him. So we hanai’d Kenneth, and he’s next to the fish tank and the taro patch that he helped take care of.

Poka’s older sister, Ku‘ulei, married Sanford Haines, who’s from Alabama, and they lived there for many years. They moved in next door about five years ago. All their children live on the mainland, so we’re their local family. Sanford couldn’t make it for the picture because he was back in Alabama visiting his family.

Of course, my children are in the picture, except my daughter Pua‘Ena F. Burgess. She had to teach the day of the picture, and the gap in the picture is painful for me. She’s the closest one in her generation to this land, because she spent a lot of her childhood here. When she was young, I was in college and Poka was in law school, and I guess you could say that Pua‘Ena was hanai’d to her grandparents—almost like the traditional hanai.

And Anna couldn’t be there. She and my son Mauna ‘Ala have given us the new generation in the picture, Layla Ahonui-a-Lanakila Burgess.

I would have liked for my father, Christopher Y. Sonoda, to be in the picture. But he’s 85, and although he’s very active, he doesn’t like coming to the country.

That’s just the closest ring of my family. If you add in nieces and nephews and in-laws and their kin, it gets up to 300 pretty quickly. I’ve been learning about how to make family all my life. It just keeps growing.

.

What Does a Better Economy Look Like?

SUBHEAD: A book review - "Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet". And, can we have it? By George Mobus on 16 December 2010 in Question Everything - (http://questioneverything.typepad.com/question_everything/2010/12/what-does-a-better-economy-look-like.html) Image above: Woodworking shop of Andrew Lunn where he makes custom saws. From (http://woodtalkonline.com/blog/35/entry-721-woodworking-spotlight-andrew-lunn/).

We are currently stuck in the zeitgeist that holds prosperity can only come with growth. Growth is defined as the period-to-period increase in Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The question is: Is it true that prosperity only comes from growth in economic output (production of wealth)? Or might there be some other form of economic activity able to sustain a sense of well-being, prosperity, that is not dependent on wealth production in the sense we generally think of it? These are the key issues that Tim Jackson is addressing.

Every living thing starts out small and grows larger, that is, increases in biomass. They grow until either they are bounded from without by things like competition for resources, or from within by growth regulation mechanisms. The latter evolved within individual metabolic regulatory subsystems to prevent runaway expansion. Outside of individuals, say at the population level, we see no such regulation as a rule, because these systems invariably are limited by resource access restrictions.

Either other species compete for the same resources, or consider members of the population as a resource (predation). Even so there have evolved limited forms of self-regulation at the level of ecosystems that are mature and at what is called the climax state. One might also argue that there are some forms of population self-regulation as when some species demonstrate infertility increases under stress from increased population density.

Evolution provided these regulatory mechanisms where needed simply because unlimited growth would eventually destroy life. The artificial case of yeast fermenting sugars to produce alcohol in wine is a case in point. As yeast life goes, they are likely quite happy with their situation at first. Seemingly all the sugar they could ever possibly want to consume. They happily bud off offspring who proceed to gobble up sugar. At first the concentration of alcohol, an excretion by the yeast, is minimal, more of an annoyance than a threat. But then the miracle of compound interest, or rather exponential growth, produces a completely different end. With nowhere left to excrete their wastes (for our happy imbibing) and no more sugar to eat, they all die and sink to the bottom of the barrel. Poor yeasts.

Cancer is another case where runaway growth causes death. This time it is because of a failure of the internal regulation mechanisms that allow cells to proliferate and rob healthy tissues of their nutrients. Any biological system in which the constraints have been removed will do what it is programmed to do and attempt to grow, consuming necessary resources and excreting waste products. Exuberant growth is often taken as a sign of health in the young (children or jungles). We have a word for healthy growth. It is called flourishing. If a population grows we tend to think of the individuals as flourishing. The same applies to us humans. We have pockets, geographical areas, where populations have and continue to flourish. And, apparently without constraint.

Jackson, Economics Commissioner on the Sustainable Development Commission in the UK and Professor of Sustainable Development at the University of Surrey, has tackled what may be the toughest problem of our age. The human economy represents a biological system where external constraints seemed to have been removed by technology and where no internal self-regulation mechanism is in place to bring growth to a halt once the population size and consumption rate per individual reached the limits of the planet's ability to provide. We find ourselves facing the same conditions that the yeast faced. I wonder if the yeast, toward the end, kept thinking that surely someone will discover a new source of sugar, and somehow we can get rid of this noxious waste product. Oh wait. Yeast don't think, as far as we know.

The problem Jackson tackled, summed up in the title, is this: Is it possible to have something (an economy) that we all could agree felt like prosperity but would not be growing in its size and the throughput of finite natural resources? I won't go so far as to say he has definitively found an answer. There are still many unanswered questions. But he certainly hits on the right aspects of the problem and that has to be a first step in finding a solution (if one exists).

To be fair, Jackson does outline the steps to a possibly feasible solution in his last several chapters (see below). That work is generally based on Herman Daly's notions of a steady state economy (Daly wrote one of the four forewords). Jackson's thesis summed thusly:

"An economy predicated on the perpetual expansion of debt-driven materialistic consumption is unsustainable ecologically, problematic socially and unstable economically... Changing this requires the development of a new macro-economics for sustainability...: an economic engine that doesn't rely for its stability on relentless consumption growth and expanding material throughput. Building that new framework is an urgent priority."

The First Problem — Limits to Growth

Growth is linked to human acquisitiveness. On the face of it we seem to like to get stuff. To consume, or not to consume? That is the question.

The argument for growth and consumeristic behavior is that jobs ultimately depend on them. If customers don't buy goods and services, and use them up over time (so they will need perpetual replacement), then there will be no need for companies to produce them. Then there will be no need for employees. And then the people who might have earned a wage with which to buy goods and services can no longer do so. Which puts us right at the beginning of this paragraph. A vicious cycle, according to neoclassical economics.

Or is it?

What about the argument that there are natural, real physical limits? Can GDP grow indefinitely into the far future? Proponents of growth claim that it will be necessary if for no other reason than to help developing countries rise out of subsistence living conditions and enjoy the benefits of a materially advanced economy. They argue, too, that growth is actually good for the environment, pointing to instances where increased wealth per capita has resulted in more of that wealth being routed toward mitigation of environmental degradations. Yet it is now becoming quite clear that two things are overtaking the production of wealth. One is resource depletion; even supposed renewable resources like soils and forests are being depleted because the rate of extraction far exceeds the rate of renewal. The second is the rising accumulation of non-recyclable and toxic wastes, again a problem due to the rate of production versus the rate at which nature could absorb and detoxify them.

Jackson examines this question and also analyzes the typical economist response that GDP, in dollars, can decouple from material throughput (the production that crashes into those limits). Economists measure things in dollars, not in mass, density, or joules of energy consumed. And they are quick to point out that for the last several decades of the 20th century the ratio of energy or materials to GDP has been in decline, suggesting that the efficiency of the economy has been going up. The problem with this argument is that the denominator (GDP) has indeed been rising faster than the measures in the numerator, but because the denominator is greatly inflated by the fact that most of the expansion has come from the so-called financial sector. Every time banks created credit, every time house prices 'appreciated', every time stocks or bonds were sold on speculation that they would be worth more in the future, the GDP rose. Worse yet, every time expenses for a funeral for an American service person killed in one of our two wars were paid, the GDP rose. The government's purchases of goods and services aimed at purely defensive activities, or recovering from natural disasters, counts toward GDP.

The argument that resource intensity (the ratio of resource to GDP) has gone down, indicating that the money economy is decoupling from the material economy, falls to shambles on this account alone. But Jackson goes further. He notes that the decoupling that economists typically refer to is only relative. In order to avoid the limits (well too late for that) we have to decouple absolutely. That means that at a steady-state throughput that is 'coupled' appropriately with nature's ability to supply resources and absorb wastes the GDP can still rise without limits. I suppose that means that when we are all bankers or Wall Street brokers we can all enjoy rising bonuses each year and buy houses in the Hamptons. Oh wait! Building those houses takes resources. Feeding all of those bankers means somebody has to run the farms -- maybe robot farmers. As Jackson points out there are many logical fallacies buried in the assumptions of growth. He examines some of these pointing out the various 'impossibility theorems' that attend such thinking.

We now have some real-world experience with the interplay between the real material- and energy-based economy, which continued to grow on a global basis, and the financially inflated economy. The Great Recession of 2009 demonstrated in stark relief that a growing GDP does not translate into real wealth. We are fooled into believing it because for so long we were able to purchase real goods and services with money and for most people in the developed world — the so-called middle class — their wages seemed to be increasing over time.

Jackson does an excellent job of teasing apart the interrelations between debt, income, savings, productivity, and a host of economic variables as they play out in a growth scenario.

Without specifically blaming democracy along with capitalism for the basic problem, he notes that the dynamic between these two, which many others besides myself have recognized, traps us in a downward spiral now that the limits are breached. Our political leaders depend on votes to gain power. We vote for whoever promises us the most material prosperity; in other words, whoever promises us growth of the economy. They then need to find any way necessary to keep the GDP numbers growing. One clever way to do it is to take the leashes (regulations) off the financial sector and allow them to expand their contribution to GDP by selling increasingly risky instruments. If there has been any 'decoupling' going on it is between the GDP as a measure of wealth and our true well-being. The growing disparity between the really wealthy (in dollars) and the poor, along with the decline of the middle class should provide the strongest evidence of this fact.

This is another impossibility theorem — a double bind. We want the freedoms afforded by both democratic politics and free market capitalism, but at, and beyond, the physical limits these very freedoms threaten to cause us all to suffer the greatest constraints imaginable in the near future. It is a conundrum and a paradox. How can maximum personal freedom lead to the minimum ability to exercise that nominal freedom? This is perhaps the most difficult conundrum for the general public to get their heads around. They will deny it. They will ask why now? They will, in general, relegate the notion to the doom-and-gloom crowd (in the derogatory sense). They will not accept that this generation of human beings will be the first to experience the beginning of restrictions on freedoms.

Of course, my own view is that if things get really bad in a worst-case scenario they will be more willing to accept an authoritarian solution. History has shown that this is a common response to clear crises.

A Way Out? A Way Forward?

Drawing from a variety of disciplines and traditions, Jackson sets about trying to envision alternative definitions of prosperity to the prevail consumeristic-growth version so operative in the world today. Borrowing a framework for categorizing concepts of prosperity from Amartya Sen (1984, “The living standard”, Oxford Economic Papers 36, 74-90) he examines the ideas of prosperity as 1) opulence; 2) utility; and 3) capabilities for flourishing. Opulence captures the prevailing notion that prosperity is about material wealth. Little more need be said about this and Jackson spends little time on it as he had previously made the case that it is a huge mistake to think so. Utility requires a little more unpacking. This is the classical economics version of why a rational agent decides on this purchase versus that one. The rational agent supposedly gets more marginal utility (whatever that is) from the first, according to the theory. But Jackson rapidly dispatches this idea as he points out how flawed utility is if it is meant to actually be some kind of measure of “satisfaction” or “happiness”. There is a large and growing body of literature both in and out of the burgeoning field of behavioral economics and psychology to show that neither agents are rational nor are they necessarily happy with their purchasing decisions; at least they are not as happy as they would have predicted they would be (a very readable book on this is Daniel Gilbert's “Stumbling on Happiness”, 2006, Alfred Knopf, New A. York).

That leaves prosperity as the capacity for flourishing. Here Jackson explains that what makes people truly happy and well off is the ability to meet their physical and social needs, with or without physical opulence. This version is near and dear to my heart. I have explored what this means in practical terms in a series of blog postings starting with “What is a feasible living situation for future humans” (http://questioneverything.typepad.com/question_everything/2010/02/what-is-a-feasible-living-situation-for-future-humans.html).

I started with the requirement that people need to be able to lead lives in which they are first and foremost able to achieve what Abraham Maslow called self-actualization, the top level in his hierarchy of needs (physical needs being at the base level - see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-actualization). This state of self fulfillment, what we can more reasonably consider as happiness, is possible, according to Maslow, when all lower-level needs are met and it doesn't matter how in terms of having material goods. One does not require the latest product from Apple Computers in order to achieve self-actualization. Indeed there is evidence that the counter is true: that if you think you need the latest such product to be happy then you are probably not a candidate for being self-actualized!

A sense of prosperity, then, is tied to a sense of self-worth and actualization even if you have to do a lot of manual labor to sustain a capacity for flourishing (being well and producing healthy offspring that you can readily raise to adulthood, should you choose). This really makes sense. For the vast majority of human history most people have flourished in this sense. Otherwise, we wouldn't even be here. The problem is that we have flourished all too well.

We have gotten into the habit of unbounded growth not recognizing that it was made possible by virtue of our continuing to find and exploit new and better sources of energy. But beware. That we have succeeded doing this in the past is no guarantee that we will do so in the future. Jackson addresses the sad reality that many of us have been cautioning about for years. So-called alternative energy sources (e.g. solar and wind), while likely necessary in the age of depleting fossil fuels, will never provide the kind of energy density (power) our modern industrial economy thrives on. This bodes ill for thinking that the future economy (and population) will be anything like the current (dying) one has been.

The answer to the central question depends on how we construct an economic system that recognizes the fallacy of growth, especially based on increasing consumerism, and works within the limits of nature. That is no mean task. Getting to this core issue Jackson dispatches a few widely held but fallacious notions about restoring an economy based on growth and consumption (programs every current politician and media talking head seem to agree needs to be done), even one that consumes green products. Growth, no matter how you cut it is a blind alley for sustainable prosperity.

So what would a prosperous, sustainable economy look like? For this vision Jackson turns rightly, in my opinion, to the field of ecological economics, which models the human economy using principles from systems ecology. The central point is that nature figured out how to construct sustainable economies long ago through the process of evolution, natural selection. Ecological economists seek to mirror this design pattern in human economies.

A major concern for ecological economics is how to match the inputs to the human economy to the resource production rate of nature and the outputs from the human economy to the uptake and detoxification rates of natural sinks. Right now these are horribly out of correspondence. But such a matching is no easy task. Indeed, some of us claim it is impossible with the size population we have now (on the planet) at consumption or throughput rates that come even a little bit close to those needed to allow every human the capacity to flourish.

But also, in my opinion, Jackson doesn't go far enough. Owing to some dissatisfaction with ecological economics getting hung up on ‘pricing nature's services’, some folk have spun off a newer version of economics based on ecology (most of this work started with Howard T. Odum's work in systems ecology applied to economics; (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_ecology).

Charles A. S. Hall (who was a student of H. T. Odum's) has organized a group around the term ‘biophysical economics’ (http://web.mac.com/biophysicalecon/iWeb/Site/Welcome.html). The central tenet of this approach is that energy flows are the key to understanding economics better than any other physical phenomenon. This follows from the same tenet in systems ecology that investigates the complex interrelationships between all species in an ecological system on the basis of who eats whom, when, etc. as well as where does the driving energy inputs come from (primary producers use sunlight) to where does the final waste heat dissipate to.

Jackson acknowledges the special role of energy flow to some degree, but most ecology-aware economists are still too tied to the kind of thinking from neoclassical economics where they picture energy as just another kind of commodity. Unfortunately, the Second Law of Thermodynamics precludes treating energy in this way. That is another, and longer story. So I will leave it at that. The real point is that until economists understand the primacy of energy flow and real work there is little hope of finding an economics that is truly ecological in the sense that Jackson and many others seek.

Is This Possible???

What I like about this book is that Jackson has taken the arguments about the failures of capitalism, consumerism, and democracy much further than any other author I have read (there certainly may be others out there that have gone as far or further). He doesn't just wave his arms about these problems, he dissects the arguments (both pro and con) and derives supportable positions from the evidence and logic. I also like that he at least tackles the solutions head on in his closing chapters.

He assembles a myriad of arguments along the line of: if this is the problem then the way to solve it is... What I'm afraid I don't like (but this isn't really Jackson's fault nor speaks to any shortcomings) is that like so many authors before him the solutions he suggest are indeed arm waving. Invariably these arguments boil down to: If we would only change our minds/habits/ways, etc. then we could solve these problems. He lays out a perfectly reasonable argument for how to construct an alternative economy, but it depends on people redefining, in their own minds, what prosperity really means.

It depends on politicians, to some degree, becoming altruistic and stopping the worry about how to win the next election. It depends on one hell of a lot of attitude adjustment, especially among the portions of the population that are most likely incapable of adjusting (see below). Logically we could transition to an ecological economy. A number of people have worked out a lot of the details. The problem is that we, as a species, really aren't logical.

Alas, we humans are very good at solving the problem of how can we organize matter in such a way that we maximize the current flow of energy to support our desires for stuff. We are a clever species. In fact, if I had my say we would be called Homo calidus, man the clever, instead of Homo sapiens, man the wise. Collectively and individually I don't think we are very wise at all. Wise thinking is strategic, that is long-term and wide area, thinking. It is systemic thinking. And it is moral thinking — what is the best for the greatest number? Very few of we humans display this kind of thinking. And those that do are so vastly outnumbered by those who can't even comprehend what that means that their voices are drowned out by the clamor for lower taxes and higher pay by the masses.

This is why, in the end, I am a pessimist when it comes to ideas like Jackson's thoughts about a transition to a sustainable economy that provides the capacity to flourish. Don't get me wrong. I think there will be such a transition, but only after a major and probably very painful calamity and only if the wiser voices succeed in surviving and positioning themselves to have more influence in some future time. Big ifs probably.

In spite of my doubts, I still think Jackson's book is worth the read. If nothing else it will get you thinking and with any luck you and other readers will find ways to prove my doubts and cynicism unfounded. That would be a great outcome. I would very happily eat crow!

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I Have No Choice

SUBHEAD: Am I going to fight the system that enslaves my brothers and sisters and, ultimately, me? I have no choice. By Peaceful Life on 19 December 2010 in Nature Bats Last - (http://guymcpherson.com/2010/12/i-have-no-choice) Image above: "Couch Potato" sculpture by Guillermo Forchino. From (http://kaynegallery.com/forchino.html).

Whether it’s systematic dinosaur bureaucracy fueled by greed and ignorant arrogance or a lineage of agenda steeped in cowardly filth is not my concern. It’s broken. It doesn’t work, for me or you. For those at the top of the power pyramid, it’s all going perfectly well. For those who buy the nonsense spewed by the mainstream media and the corporations backing them, progress is proceeding according to plan.

Take a big bite of the bullshit sandwich at your own risk.

The generally narcissistic, self-absorbed, zombie-like, attitude we see among most individuals in our communities are bearing the expectedly rotten fruits of a self-devouring television culture addicted to dietary poisons, dependent on nation-states, big Pharma, and big Ag, hence denied any semblance of a real education. If that’s the point, then the system is working nicely.

And work it must, for the veil of perpetuated bullshit is so thin that the slightest winds of knowledge will tear it apart like a whale breaching the surface to exhale stagnant toxins and inhale the oxygen of truth. Yet, in “working,” the system leaves its architects totally devoid of empathy, so morally bankrupt that there is not one single metaphorical place to which I could allocate a place for their existence, other than the toy attic.

This status quo has brought us to a point at which, in order for it to be maintained, I must accept innocent people being slaughtered so I can drive my car. Entire countries must be raped of their dignity. Resources must be utterly destroyed so I can eat “inexpensive” food. Entire populations must be brutally enslaved — for me — so I can have cheap clothes and economic “goods” forced down my throat. And we buy it because from birth we are assaulted by mass marketing. The PR tyrants are no better than the bastards they “deal” with. Perhaps we’re right there with them.

Meanwhile, the laws of industrialized humans battle the laws of nature. The living planet convulses, as do the tyrants battling each other for nature’s bounty. They fight to keep delusional power over nature, not appreciating the irony of nature’s gifts: Immersed in Plato’s cave, we are governed by the false economic prophets du jour as they grasp at the shadows of fictional profit. The bright fires of reality intensify behind them.

No sane person would accept these false prophets. But the price for recognizing your own sanity is the cruel hand dealt you as the ones you care about, those you love, are so entangled in the web of denial that they simply can’t shake free. Shackled by lead boots, so brow beaten by the system’s dogmatic tricks, they have insufficient self-confidence to act against the imperial system and its masters.

Thus are we torn. The frustration becomes unbearable as our loved ones and friends fade from us. We see them trapped on the merry-go round of unwitting pain and destruction even as we stand begging, screaming, crying from the sidelines of hope, all the while knowing that they see us as crazy ideological fools. Tis cruel. Take heart, fellow freedom fighters: The system is so far out of kilter with respect to history, evolution, and sanity that our species can and must shed the diseased elitist power brokers from our gene pool.

This is cerebral evolution? Am I meant to accept that this system is simply the way it is, and should be? I think not, so I have no choice.

I have no choice but to take note that the choices we were given were never choices at all. Sitting in the school of life and eager for the answers, we sat down to exams filled with questions that could only be answered with lies that were deemed truths. And of course the main objective was to force a complete, surreal disconnect between reality and an unsustainable, unnatural system.

Indeed you did achieve this system, Dr. Kissinger and crew. But now we’re going back to nature and you can stick your Bernays mall where the sun don’t shine. The dirty tricks of politics duped us for a while, but now the people see it all and we’re coming back in style. Be careful in your fall from grace, as you are destined to join the people, to chat with them, face to face.

We must, and we will, transition to relocalization. This is not mere flippancy: The truth is, we have no choice. We demand a better world.

Am I going to fight the system that enslaves my brothers and sisters and, ultimately, me? I have no choice.

Do you?

. Peaceful Life claims to be a humanitarian activist living in the United Kingdom.

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Media piles on to TSA problems

SUBHEAD: Nation's leading federal policy newspaper reports on calls for revamping of airport checkpoint system.

By Anne Kornblut & Ashley Halsey on 17 December 2010 for Washington Post - (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/16/AR2010121606216.html) Image above: TSA Crash. From (http://gizmodo.com/5696160/why-the-tsa-could-lead-us-to-public-rebellion-or-a-terrorist-attack).

Nine years after the Sept. 11 attacks and decades after hijackers first began to target passenger airliners, the United States has invested billions of dollars in an airport system that makes technology the last line of defense to intercept terrorists.

It has yet to catch one.

In every known recent attempt, terrorists have used a different tactic to evade the latest technology at airport checkpoints, only to be thwarted by information unearthed through intelligence work - or by alert passengers in flight.

The result is an emerging consensus among experts and lawmakers that the checkpoint-heavy approach - searching nearly every passenger - may not be the most effective.

Instead, many of them say, the system should focus more urgently on individuals, gathering a greater range of information about people to identify those most likely to present a real danger.

Scanners, pat-downs and bomb-sniffing dogs are all vital parts of the process but should be integrated into a multilayered system that includes far-reaching, computer-filtered data about people, along with face-to-face monitoring by the modern equivalent of a beat cop, several officials and experts said. Technology matters, they said, but it is akin to putting up a series of picket fences for terrorists to evade.

U.S. officials and lawmakers acknowledge that broader revisions may be necessary, saying it is only a matter of time before the airport security apparatus fails.

"Let's be honest: We've been lucky the last few times," said Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.). "With the Christmas Day bomber over Detroit and the Times Square bomber and

As a result of those attempts, passengers must surrender sharp objects (a response to the Sept. 11 attacks) and slip off their shoes (a response to the 2001 would-be shoe bomber). They must remove liquids from their bags (a result of a 2006 plot to blow up planes), and, as of a few weeks ago, they must submit to body scans or pat-downs (a process accelerated by the attempted airline bombing last Christmas Day).

Yet lawmakers and government reports question the capability of some specific measures. Year after year, undercover testers manage to sneak loaded weapons past screeners... [rest of article]

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SUBHEAD: Peer-reviewed industry journal, "evaluation of airport x-ray backscatter units" reveals flaws with full body scanners.

By Leon Kaufman & Joseph Carlson on 26 November 2010 for Journal of Transportation Security - (http://www.springerlink.com/content/g6620thk08679160)

Video above: "TSA Airport Scanners Radiation Cancer X-Ray..." from (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eS0UxXDNs4w). Abstract Little information exists on the performance of x-ray backscatter machines now being deployed through UK, US and other airports. We implement a Monte Carlo simulation using as input what is known about the x-ray spectra used for imaging, device specifications and available images to estimate penetration and exposure to the body from the x-ray beam, and sensitivity to dangerous contraband materials. We show that the body is exposed throughout to the incident x-rays, and that although images can be made at the exposure levels claimed (under 100 nanoGrey per view), detection of contraband can be foiled in these systems. Because front and back views are obtained, low Z materials can only be reliable detected if they are packed outside the sides of the body or with hard edges, while high Z materials are well seen when placed in front or back of the body, but not to the sides. Even if exposure were to be increased significantly, normal anatomy would make a dangerous amount of plastic explosive with tapered edges difficult if not impossible to detect. [full article]

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SUBHEAD: Analysis reveals legal flaws in TSA searches. Significantly, judicial decisions have found actions must be 'minimally intrusive' and proven 'effective.'

By Bob Unruh on 12 December 2010 for WND.com -

(http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=237793)

Video above: "93 year old Involved in Shake Down over Applesauce by TSA". From (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHxy5GattLY).

An attorney who teaches college courses on constitutional law, has a radio program to address those issues and still is engaged in several campaigns on behalf of the United States Justice Foundation has concluded that the Transportation Security Administration's new invasive screening procedures likely will be struck down by the courts.

"Cases on the 4th Amendment seem to set a clear pattern that airport screening is permissible and will be upheld," wrote Michael Connelly, a retired attorney and U.S. Army veteran who practiced law for decades in Baton Rouge, La., specializing in cases involving the Bill of Rights.

He currently teaches four law courses including one on constitutional law, has a radio program called "Our Constitution" and is an author.

"However, all of the cases made two other very important points," he continued. "First, any searches must be minimally intrusive on the individual being searched and second, the searches must be effective in screening out weapons and terrorists.

"I believe it can be effectively argued that neither of these criteria is met by the TSA system of full body scans and pat-downs," he said...

<>"There is no doubt that the use of the full body scanners and alternate pat-downs has raised the bar when it comes to intrusive warrantless searches of individuals at airports and other locations," he said.

On its face, the 4th Amendment protects Americans from warrantless searches, stating, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

He explains that in the past few decades several exemptions have been created by the courts that would allow warrantless searches – called mostly "administrative searches."

"These searches fall under several limited categories and suspicionless checkpoints is one of these. Under this doctrine a person can be searched even though there is no probable cause for a search and he or she is not directly suspected of having committed or intending to commit a crime," he said.

Courts have found in the past that such circumstances arise when "the gravity of the public concerns served by the seizure, the degree to which the seizure advances the public interests, and the severity of the interference with individual liberty."

In fact, one of the cases, United States v. Hartwell from 2006, that finds long-standing airport security screening procedures acceptable was written by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito while he was on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Other cases have found, for example, that sobriety checkpoints on state roads are reasonable because of the state's interest in preventing drunken driving and the degree of intrusion on individual motorists "who are briefly stopped."

Connelly explained that past cases have dealt with the constitutionality of metal detectors, the use of hand-held scanners and in rare circumstances, pat-downs that do not involve contact with a person's private parts.

"There is no question that the full body scanners amount to a strip-search and that has not been upheld as permissible in the general airport security plan. In fact, the Supreme Court has recently given a definite thumbs down to strip-searches that are warrantless and do not meet the probable cause test. Safford Unified School District #1 v. Redding [a 2009 case] held that a strip-search of a high school girl was excessively intrusive and violated her rights. This was despite the fact that the school officials had reason to believe that she might have prescription drugs on her person," he found.

"There is no such suspicion to justify these searches at airports. They are very intrusive because in effect passengers must submit their nude bodies to visual examination by complete strangers. The alternative is not much better since it allows TSA agents to pat down a person including the most intimate parts of a person’s anatomy," he suggested.

Secondly, there is the "serious question of effectiveness."

"TSA officials are quick to defend these techniques by pointing to the so-called 'underwear bomber.' Since a terrorist may not be carrying a weapon or explosive device that is made of metal it is true that it will not be picked up by the standard metal detector. The explosive powder being carried by the underwear bomber would probably have been found by a thorough pat-down, but according to experts not by the body scanner. Since the pat-down is an alternative to the body scanner it may never have occurred in that situation."

In fact, a peer-reviewed scientific study reveals that the TSA's full-body imaging machines could be fooled by terrorists who simply would mold explosives to conform to their bodies.

"There is scant evidence that many non-metal explosive devices will be detected by the body scanner. Plastic explosives are a prime example of this since they can be molded to look like part of the body. These deficiencies have been recognized by many experts in Europe," Connelly said.

Third, he cited the "potential health risk" from the scanners.

"There are … concerns being raised about the effects of intense radiation on people with immune system deficiencies, as well as possible altering of DNA in individuals, and sperm counts in men. In addition, there has been no determination about the possible health risks to young children, seniors, or pregnant women and their unborn children.

<>"Members of the scientific community and medical profession who are talking about these issues have not been reassured by the broad and unsubstantiated assurances by the TSA that there is nothing for people to worry about," he said... [rest of article]

Video above: "TSA Thugs Lose Case Against Woman with Applesauce". From (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jz8OocnnH0g).

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Total Lunar Eclipse in Hawaii

SOURCE: Dick Mayer (dickmayer@earthlink.net) SUBHEAD: Total lunar eclipse in Hawaii this Monday night, December 20th, at 9:40pm. Image above: Total lunar eclipse on 3 March 2003. From (http://www.astrosurf.com/re/eclipse_20070303.html). On Monday evening, Dec. 20, a total eclipse of the Moon will be visible. The full Moon and the Sun will be exactly opposite each other in our skies, and the Earth gets between them. This means that the Earth’s shadow falls on the Moon, darkening it over the course of several hours. This eclipse will be democratically visible all over the U.S. On Monday evening, the sun will set and the full moon will rise at 5:39pm. When Will the Eclipse Happen in HAWAI'I?

Partial Eclipse starts ABOUT 8:32pm HST Totoal Eclipse Starts ABOUT 9:40pm HST Totality will last about 73 minutes Total Eclipse Emds ABOUT 10:53pm HST Partial eclipse ends ABOUT MIDNIGHT

As the shadow of the Earth slowly moves across the Moon, we first see only part of the Moon darkening (partial eclipse). When the shadow complete covers the Moon, we have a total eclipse. (Of course, if it’s cloudy, we would not be able to see anything.) What is Visible During a Lunar Eclipse? Are there colors? As the shadow of the Earth covers the Moon, note that our natural satellite doesn’t become completely dark. Light bent through the Earth’s atmosphere still reaches the shadowed Moon and gives it a dull brown or reddish glow. The exact color of the glow and its darkness depend on the “sooty-ness” of our atmosphere -- how recently volcanoes have gone off and how much cloud cover, storm activity, and human pollution there is around the globe. Is it Safe to Watch a Lunar Eclipse? YES Here is this eclipse's technical information with a neat simulation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/December_2010_lunar_eclipse .

WikiLeak's lesson on Haiti

SUBHEAD: People who do not understand U.S. foreign policy think that control over Haiti does not matter to Washington.

By Marv Weisbrot on 17 December 2010 for the Guardian - (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/dec/17/haiti-wikileaks)

Image above: Demonstration to free Haiti from occupation in Calgary, Canada. From (http://www.flickr.com/photos/grantneufeld/1799669476).

The polarization of the debate around Wikileaks is pretty simple, really. Of all the governments in the world, the United States government is the greatest threat to world peace and security today. This is obvious to anyone who looks at the facts with a modicum of objectivity. The Iraq war has claimed hundreds of thousands, and most likely more than a million lives. It was completely unnecessary and unjustifiable, and based on lies. Now, Washington is moving toward a military confrontation with Iran.

As Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell, pointed out in an interview recently, in the preparation for a war with Iran, we are at about the level of 1998 in the build-up to the Iraq war.

On this basis, even ignoring the tremendous harm that Washington causes to developing countries in such areas as economic development (through such institutions as the International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organization), or climate change, it is clear that any information which sheds light on U.S. "diplomacy" is more than useful. It has the potential to help save millions of human lives.

You either get this or you don't. Brazil's president Lula da Silva, who earned Washington's displeasure last May when he tried to help defuse the confrontation with Iran, gets it. That's why he defended and declared his "solidarity" with embattled WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, even though the leaked cables were not pleasant reading for his own government.

One area of U.S. foreign policy that the WikiLeaks cables help illuminate, which the major media has predictably ignored, is the occupation of Haiti. In 2004, the country's democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was overthrown for the second time, through an effort led by the United States government. Officials of the constitutional government were jailed and thousands of its supporters were killed.

The Haitian coup, besides being a repeat of Aristide's overthrow in 1991, was also very similar to the attempted coup in Venezuela in 2002 -- which also had Washington's fingerprints all over it. Some of the same people in Washington were even involved in both efforts. But the Venezuelan coup failed -- partly because Latin American governments immediately and forcefully declared that they would not recognize the coup government.

In the case of Haiti, Washington had learned from its mistakes in the Venezuelan coup and had gathered support for an illegitimate government in advance. A UN resolution was passed just days after the coup, and UN forces, headed by Brazil, were sent to the country. The mission is still headed by Brazil, and has troops from a number of other Latin American governments that are left of center, including Bolivia, Argentina and Uruguay. They are also joined by Chile, Peru and Guatemala from Latin America.

Would these governments have sent troops to occupy Venezuela if that coup had succeeded? Clearly they would not have considered such a move, yet the occupation of Haiti is no more justifiable. South America's progressive governments have strongly challenged U.S. foreign policy in the region and the world, with some of them regularly using words like imperialism and empire as synonyms for Washington. They have built new institutions such as UNASUR to prevent these kinds of abuses from the north. Bolivia expelled the U.S. ambassador in September of 2008 for interfering in its own internal affairs.

Is it because Haitians are poor and black that their most fundamental human and democratic rights can be trampled upon?

The participation of these governments in the occupation of Haiti is a serious political contradiction for them, and it is getting worse. The WikiLeaks cables illustrate how important the control of Haiti is to the United States.

A long memo from the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince to the U.S. Secretary of State answers detailed questions about Haitian president Rene Preval's political, personal, and family life, including such vital national security questions as "How many drinks can Preval consume before he shows signs of inebriation?" It also expresses one of Washington's main concerns:

"...his reflexive nationalism, and his disinterest in managing bilateral relations in a broad diplomatic sense, will lead to periodic frictions as we move forward our bilateral agenda. Case in point, we believe that in terms of foreign policy, Preval is most interested in gaining increased assistance from any available resource. He is likely to be tempted to frame his relationship with Venezuela and Chavez-allies in the hemisphere in a way that he hopes will create a competitive atmosphere as far as who can provide the most to Haiti."

This is why they got rid of Aristide -- who was much to the left of Preval -- and won't let him back in the country. This is why Washington funded the recent "elections" that excluded Haiti's largest political party, the equivalent of shutting out the Democrats and Republicans in the United States. And this is why MINUSTAH is still occupying the country, more than six years after the coup, without any apparent mission other than replacing the hated Haitian army - which Aristide abolished - as a repressive force.

People who do not understand U.S. foreign policy think that control over Haiti does not matter to Washington, because it is so poor and has no strategic minerals or resources. But that is not how Washington operates, as the Wikileaks cables repeatedly illustrate. For the State Department and its allies, it is all a ruthless chess game, and the pawns matter. Left governments will be removed or prevented from taking power where it is possible to do so; and the poorest countries -- like Honduras last year -- present the most opportune targets. A democratically elected government in Haiti, due to the country's history and the population's consciousness, will inevitably be a left government -- and one that will not line up with Washington's foreign policy priorities for the region. Hence, democracy is not allowed.

Thousands of Haitians have been protesting the sham elections, as well as MINUSTAH's role in causing the cholera epidemic, which has already taken more than 2,300 lives and can be expected to kill thousands more in the coming months and years. Judging from the rapid spread of the disease, there may have been gross criminal negligence on the part of MINUSTAH - i.e. large-scale dumping of fecal waste into the Artibonite river. This is another huge reason for them to leave Haiti.

This is a mission that costs over $500 million a year, when the UN can't even raise a third of that to fight the epidemic that the mission caused, or to provide clean water for Haitians. And now the UN is asking for an increase to over $850 million for MINUSTAH.

It is high time that the progressive governments of Latin America quit this occupation, which goes against their own principles and deeply held beliefs, and is against the will of the Haitian people.

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