The justices rule that civil rights law protects a woman who was fired after answering questions in a harassment probe.
By Warren Richey | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
from the January 27, 2009 edition
Employees who provide evidence during an informal investigation of discrimination in the workplace are legally protected against retaliation from the boss or other senior managers.
In an important workers' rights decision announced Monday, the US Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 shields employees from retaliatory acts even when the employee hasn't filed a formal complaint.
In an eight-page decision written by Justice David Souter, the high court cast a broad blanket of protection over American workers struggling in a hostile work environment. Those employees who help identify and root out allegedly discriminatory actions by senior managers and supervisors – even though they may not have filed a formal complaint – are nonetheless protected from retaliation, the court said.
The decision puts managers and supervisors on notice that they face legal consequences if they use their power in the organization to try to cover up their own discriminatory actions by retaliating against complaining employees. In addition, the decision puts employees on notice that, when they come forward to help expose discrimination in the workplace, they clearly enjoy the protections of the law.
The decision comes in the case of Vicky Crawford, a 30-year employee in the payroll department of the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County, Tenn. Ms. Crawford agreed to answer questions during an informal inquiry into allegations that the director of employee relations had engaged in sexual harassment of female workers in the office. Among the director's duties was investigation of sexual-harassment complaints.
Crawford did not initiate the investigation, nor had she filed any formal charges. The internal inquiry was conducted by a female lawyer in the legal department. Crawford told the lawyer she was afraid she might lose her job if she told the truth about the manager's behavior.
Crawford eventually answered the questions. She was one of three women who told the lawyer that the director of employee relations had made repeated inappropriate gestures and comments of a sexual nature in the workplace.
After the investigation, the director of employee relations received a verbal reprimand, but no other disciplinary action was taken. Senior management then began an investigation of Crawford and her department. She and the two other women were fired.
Crawford sued, claiming protection under Title VII. But a federal judge and a panel of the Sixth US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against her. They said Title VII protects only those employees who had demonstrated active "opposition" to the alleged conduct by having already filed a formal discrimination charge with the company or the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
On Monday, the Supreme Court reversed that decision.
"The Sixth Circuit thought answering questions fell short of opposition, taking the view that the [law] demands active, consistent opposing activities to warrant protection against retaliation," Justice Souter wrote. "Though these requirements obviously exemplify opposition as commonly understood, they are not limits of it."
He noted that, for example, many people are known to oppose capital punishment without writing public letters or demonstrating in the streets. "We would call it 'opposition' if an employee took a stand against an employer's discriminatory practices not by instigating action, but by standing pat, say, by refusing to follow a supervisor's order to fire a junior worker for discriminatory reasons."
The central issue in the case was whether Crawford's actions were sufficient to trigger the protections of the law. In passing Title VII, Congress outlawed retaliation against employees who "participate" in a discrimination probe or who "oppose" a form of discrimination they are encountering.
In its decision, the high court focused on the statute's "opposition" requirement and concluded that Crawford's answering of the company lawyers' questions qualified as "opposition" under Title VII.
Lawyers for the Metropolitan Government have argued in the case that Crawford couldn't claim antiretaliation protection under Title VII because she hadn't filed a formal charge with the EEOC against the senior manager or taken other direct action in opposition to the alleged harassment.
The high court disagreed. "Nothing in the statute requires a freakish rule protecting an employee who reports discrimination on her own initiative but not one who reports the same discrimination in the same words when her boss asks a question," Souter wrote.
Employment lawyers had warned that the Sixth Circuit's view of the law would create a strong incentive for workers to stay silent in the face of discrimination and retaliation by their bosses. Some say that incentive already existed.
According to one study, 62 percent of state workers who complained of sexual harassment reported that they faced retaliation in the form of lowered job evaluations, denial of promotions, and being transferred or fired.
More than half of women in the US face some form of workplace sexual harassment, and most of them never report it, according to the National Women's Law Center.
Souter recognized the danger in his opinion. "If it were clear law that an employee who reported discrimination in answering an employer's questions could be penalized with no remedy, prudent employees would have good reason to keep quiet," he wrote. "The [Sixth Circuit] appeals court rule would thus create a real dilemma for any knowledgeable employee in a hostile work environment."
http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0127/p03s01-usju.html
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Iraq won't allow Blackwater to operate in country
By SINAN SALAHEDDIN, Associated Press writer Sinan Salaheddin, Associated Press Writer 1 hr 37 mins ago
BAGHDAD – Iraq will not allow Blackwater Worldwide to continue providing security protection for U.S. diplomats in the country, Iraqi and U.S. officials said Thursday.
Blackwater's image in Iraq was irrevocably tarnished by the September 2007 killing of 17 Iraqi civilians in Nisoor Square. Five former Blackwater guards pleaded not guilty Jan. 6 in federal court in Washington to manslaughter and gun charges in that shooting.
The decision not to issue Blackwater an operating license was due to "improper conduct and excessive use of force," said Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf.
Neither Khalaf nor a U.S. Embassy official gave a date for Blackwater personnel to leave the country and neither said whether they would be allowed to continue guarding U.S. diplomats during the interim.
A U.S.-Iraqi security agreement approved in November gives the Iraqis the authority to determine which Western security companies operate in Iraq.
Blackwater employees who have not been implicated in the shooting have the right to work with a different employer.
"We sent our decision to the U.S. Embassy last Friday," Khalaf told The Associated Press in a phone interview. "They have to find a new security company."
The U.S. Embassy official confirmed it received the government's decision, saying that U.S. officials were working with the Iraqi government and its contractors to address the "implications of this decision."
The official made the statement on condition of anonymity under embassy regulations.
In the 2007 shooting, Blackwater maintains its guards opened fire after coming under attack after a car in a State Department convoy broke down.
The Iraqi government has labeled the guards "criminals" and is closely watching the case.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090129/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iraq/print
BAGHDAD – Iraq will not allow Blackwater Worldwide to continue providing security protection for U.S. diplomats in the country, Iraqi and U.S. officials said Thursday.
Blackwater's image in Iraq was irrevocably tarnished by the September 2007 killing of 17 Iraqi civilians in Nisoor Square. Five former Blackwater guards pleaded not guilty Jan. 6 in federal court in Washington to manslaughter and gun charges in that shooting.
The decision not to issue Blackwater an operating license was due to "improper conduct and excessive use of force," said Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf.
Neither Khalaf nor a U.S. Embassy official gave a date for Blackwater personnel to leave the country and neither said whether they would be allowed to continue guarding U.S. diplomats during the interim.
A U.S.-Iraqi security agreement approved in November gives the Iraqis the authority to determine which Western security companies operate in Iraq.
Blackwater employees who have not been implicated in the shooting have the right to work with a different employer.
"We sent our decision to the U.S. Embassy last Friday," Khalaf told The Associated Press in a phone interview. "They have to find a new security company."
The U.S. Embassy official confirmed it received the government's decision, saying that U.S. officials were working with the Iraqi government and its contractors to address the "implications of this decision."
The official made the statement on condition of anonymity under embassy regulations.
In the 2007 shooting, Blackwater maintains its guards opened fire after coming under attack after a car in a State Department convoy broke down.
The Iraqi government has labeled the guards "criminals" and is closely watching the case.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090129/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iraq/print
Holder Nomination Approved by Senate Judiciary
By Keith Perine, CQ Staff Keith Perine, Cq Staff Wed Jan 28, 12:57 pm ET
The Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday approved the nomination of Eric H. Holder Jr. to be attorney general by a wide, bipartisan vote.
The panel voted 17-2 to recommend that the full Senate confirm Holder. Republicans John Cornyn of Texas and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma voted no.
The full Senate is expected to vote as early as Thursday. "It'll either be tomorrow or Friday," Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin, D-Ill., said. "We'd like it to be sooner rather than later," he said, but added that the Senate first must complete action on an expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (HR 2).
Durbin said he did not anticipate GOP delaying tactics. "The vote was so strong in committee, I feel good on the floor," he said.
Although the fate of Holder's nomination was never seriously in doubt, committee Republicans had questioned whether he would be politically independent from President Obama. Republicans, led by ranking member Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, had pointed to Holder's involvement, as deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration, in controversial pardons Clinton issued in 1999 and 2001.
"Eric Holder is a good man," committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., said. "He's a decent man, he's a public servant committed to the rule of law, and he will be a good attorney general."
Specter said endorsements of Holder by people such as former FBI Director Louis J. Freeh, and the traditional deference the Senate gives presidents in filling Cabinet posts, "overbalances" his misgivings about Holder's role in the Clinton pardons.
"I'm aware of the enormous problems President Obama faces," Specter said. "To the extent there can be cooperation, consistent with my conscience and our responsibilities under separation of powers, checks and balances, I intend to cooperate with President Obama."
Republicans had fretted that Holder's involvement in the clemencies Clinton granted to 16 Puerto Rican separatists in 1999, and his 2001 pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich, could mean that he would be too willing to bow to Obama's wishes.
Cornyn said he felt that Holder had not sufficiently explained his role in those matters. Cornyn said that "nothing in Holder's testimony convincingly rebuts the widely held suspicion" that his posture regarding the Rich pardon was "based on the desire to give president Clinton the answer he wanted."
Seasoned Nominee If confirmed, Holder will be the first African-American attorney general. Leahy said that a vote against Holder "would put that senator in the wrong side of history."
Unlike the last several attorneys general, Holder has extensive experience inside the Justice Department, where he prosecuted public corruption straight out of Columbia Law School in 1976.
He has been through the Senate confirmation process three times before. He was named to the District of Columbia Superior Court by President Ronald Reagan in 1988. President Bill Clinton made him the District's U.S. attorney in 1993. And from 1997 until the end of the Clinton administration, Holder was deputy attorney general.
Since leaving the government, he has been a partner at the Washington, D.C., law firm of Covington and Burling.
After Holder is confirmed, Leahy said he will begin to process Obama's nominations to other senior Justice Department posts.
Specter, who had been Holder's fiercest Senate critic, decided to vote for him after meeting with him privately on Jan. 22, at Leahy's suggestion.
"I think it's been a learning experience for Mr. Holder and for all of us," Specter said.
-- Kathleen Hunter contributed to this story.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/cq/20090128/pl_cq_politics/politics3019856_3/print
The Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday approved the nomination of Eric H. Holder Jr. to be attorney general by a wide, bipartisan vote.
The panel voted 17-2 to recommend that the full Senate confirm Holder. Republicans John Cornyn of Texas and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma voted no.
The full Senate is expected to vote as early as Thursday. "It'll either be tomorrow or Friday," Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin, D-Ill., said. "We'd like it to be sooner rather than later," he said, but added that the Senate first must complete action on an expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (HR 2).
Durbin said he did not anticipate GOP delaying tactics. "The vote was so strong in committee, I feel good on the floor," he said.
Although the fate of Holder's nomination was never seriously in doubt, committee Republicans had questioned whether he would be politically independent from President Obama. Republicans, led by ranking member Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, had pointed to Holder's involvement, as deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration, in controversial pardons Clinton issued in 1999 and 2001.
"Eric Holder is a good man," committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., said. "He's a decent man, he's a public servant committed to the rule of law, and he will be a good attorney general."
Specter said endorsements of Holder by people such as former FBI Director Louis J. Freeh, and the traditional deference the Senate gives presidents in filling Cabinet posts, "overbalances" his misgivings about Holder's role in the Clinton pardons.
"I'm aware of the enormous problems President Obama faces," Specter said. "To the extent there can be cooperation, consistent with my conscience and our responsibilities under separation of powers, checks and balances, I intend to cooperate with President Obama."
Republicans had fretted that Holder's involvement in the clemencies Clinton granted to 16 Puerto Rican separatists in 1999, and his 2001 pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich, could mean that he would be too willing to bow to Obama's wishes.
Cornyn said he felt that Holder had not sufficiently explained his role in those matters. Cornyn said that "nothing in Holder's testimony convincingly rebuts the widely held suspicion" that his posture regarding the Rich pardon was "based on the desire to give president Clinton the answer he wanted."
Seasoned Nominee If confirmed, Holder will be the first African-American attorney general. Leahy said that a vote against Holder "would put that senator in the wrong side of history."
Unlike the last several attorneys general, Holder has extensive experience inside the Justice Department, where he prosecuted public corruption straight out of Columbia Law School in 1976.
He has been through the Senate confirmation process three times before. He was named to the District of Columbia Superior Court by President Ronald Reagan in 1988. President Bill Clinton made him the District's U.S. attorney in 1993. And from 1997 until the end of the Clinton administration, Holder was deputy attorney general.
Since leaving the government, he has been a partner at the Washington, D.C., law firm of Covington and Burling.
After Holder is confirmed, Leahy said he will begin to process Obama's nominations to other senior Justice Department posts.
Specter, who had been Holder's fiercest Senate critic, decided to vote for him after meeting with him privately on Jan. 22, at Leahy's suggestion.
"I think it's been a learning experience for Mr. Holder and for all of us," Specter said.
-- Kathleen Hunter contributed to this story.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/cq/20090128/pl_cq_politics/politics3019856_3/print
Life after the apocalypse
What if the doomsayers are right ... what if society, as we know it, really is about to collapse? Do you have what it takes to make it in a world without electricity and running water? Tanya Gold offers an essential survival guide
Tanya Gold
The Guardian, Thursday 29 January 2009
I am standing in a wood with a tall man and a dead pheasant. There is blood everywhere: on my shoes, my hands, my face. Why am I here? Because the man - his name is Leon Durbin - is preparing me for the apocalypse, now.
What would happen if you awoke one morning and everyone was dead? Or if, less melodramatically, the world as we know it - and our teetering financial systems - ceased to function? What if you awoke to find your bubble-wrapped, gilded life was over, and for good? Could you survive? Could I?
I am an urban girl. I have no skills except whingeing and bingeing. I can barely open a packet of Hobnobs without an explosive device. But, unlike you, doomed and dying reader, I have decided to prepare for The End, and I am prepared to share the life-saving knowledge I will accrue. This is your cut-out-and-keep guide to the apocalypse. Put it in a drawer. One day you may need it.
So you wake up; everyone is dead. For the purpose of this exercise, imagine it's like Survivors, the cheap BBC rendition of the apocalypse, where a plague wipes out humanity and then everyone is mildly annoyed that the trains are delayed. We could imagine total financial or ecological collapse leading to the failure of social structures, but let's say it's a plague. So, how long can you stay in your house?
The answer is: not long. According to the people at the National Grid, the electricity will stop. So will the water. These systems have buttons. Buttons need fingers. Fingers need people who are alive. You have a day, maybe two, of electricity. Then you will be in darkness, with no way of washing your face.
What should you do? You can steal food from supermarkets but the rotting corpses on the floor of Sainsbury's will be fetid fonts of infection. And if you try to sit out the plague in your home, you could burn or drown. After a lightning strike, fires will begin and they will not stop. And if you live in London, the Thames barrier will fail without electricity and the low-lying areas of the city will flood.
So you have to leave. But where do you go? The apocalyptic norm - see 28 Days Later and Survivors - is for survivors to sit in desirable country mansions, eat tinned tomatoes, develop post-traumatic psychosis and shoot each other. Never in any apocalyptic scenario in any movie I have seen - and I have seen them all - does anyone try to live off the land. They prefer to feed on the crumbs of the lost civilisation. It never works. How can you rebuild civilisation with tinned tomatoes? You need to grow your own food.
But where? I choose Devon. It is warm and wet and fertile, and I have been happy there. There are cows. This is where I would live off the land, but I need to learn how. This thinking has led me to Durbin and the dead bird.
Durbin is tall and tweedy. He is the sort of man who keeps firewood kindling in his pocket, just in case. He owns Wildwood Bushcraft, a company that explains how to survive if you are dropped into the wilderness with no supplies, no warning and no clue.
Durbin leads me through the spindly, sleeping trees, pointing out different kinds of branch and bush, and their uses. According to him, the wood is a shop that will give you everything you need. "Willow bark can be boiled to relieve a headache," he says. "Yew is for making long bows. Oak is for shelters. Ash is for tool handles. Have you ever had a beech-leaf sandwich?" I don't bother replying.
To be competent in bushcraft, you have to be well equipped: before you leave the city, stop for a saw, chisel, spade, axe and hunting knife. Durbin has them all. They poke out of his rucksack in a manly fashion.
We arrive at a clearing and Durbin demonstrates how to light a fire. He places a small block of wood on the ground and puts a wooden stake on it, point down. He takes a bow, made of wood and string, places it round the stake and, when he moves the bow in a sideways motion, the stake rotates very fast. Its friction with the block of wood magically creates a pile of super-hot matter. It can ignite dry hay or bark. This creates a conflagration that can light a fire.
How will I get water? Durbin runs bushcraft weekends for angry executives here, so he knows where it is. "Water," I cry, lunging at a small stream. "Careful," says Durbin. "We have to filter the water with a sock full of sand. Then we have to bring it to a rolling boil." Why a sock? He ignores me.
Food is harder. It is winter and the countryside is closed for repairs. My two main vegetarian foods, Durbin explains, will be burdock root and hazelnut. Both are high-energy. You can make chips out of burdock and you can boil, mash and dry hazelnut to produce a repulsive kind of biscuit. Durbin picks up a spade and starts digging for burdock. He finds some, but it's rotten. "Winter," he sighs. "Hmmm."
So, with a fiendish flourish, I produce a dead pheasant from my handbag. I had spent the day before negotiating with the Guardian as to the legal and moral implications of murdering a rabbit for the purposes of this article. Finally we had compromised, and I had gone to a posh butcher's in Mayfair and bought this beautiful pheasant for £3.50. Durbin looks impressed. "You have to pull off its head," he says. "Just twist it."
I close my eyes and twist. The head comes off easily; it feels like wringing out a slightly damp scarf. Then Durbin makes a hole in the pheasant's bottom and I stick my hand up and clutch everything inside. Out comes a squelchy mass of once-living flesh. Durbin grabs the heart and cuts it open. "Very nutritious," he says. I am slightly sick in my mouth. I pluck, and soon I have a pile of bloodstained feathers - and a nude bird. Durbin sticks it on a spit over the fire. When it is cooked, we eat it. It tastes slightly of excrement but I still feel strangely empowered. It was much easier than I thought it would be, to rip this bird apart.
I now have bloodlust. I ask Durbin how to trap animals. I could theoretically shoot them, but trapping is more suitable for the lazy or incompetent survivor. He looks slightly nervous. "It's illegal," he says slowly. But I prod and he tells me about different types of trap. I could try the pit trap, he says, where you dig a hole in the forest floor, line it with sharpened stakes and camouflage it. It is for large animals - deer, wild boar, parents, other journalists. There is also the deadfall trap, which is for small animals. They saunter over a trigger mechanism, and a lump of wood falls on their head. Bon appetit and ha ha.
But what would I eat if I couldn't trap? "Bugs," says Durbin happily. "Worms." There are 40 calories in a worm, apparently; this is the equivalent of two Maltesers. "Or snails," he adds. "But quarantine the snail for three days before you eat it. It may have eaten poisonous plants, and you will have to wait until it expels them."
Now you need shelter. If I had the choice, I would probably look for a small stone cottage - hardy and easy to maintain - but if I am foraging, I have to go to where the food is. So Durbin shows me how to make a survival shelter. He hurls logs up against a tree trunk, and covers them with a foot of leaves and bracken and mud. "It is waterproof," he says. I climb in and lie down. It is a hole that only a troll could love. But there they are, the four pillars of survival: food, water, fire and shelter.
The next day, I go to Pullabrook Wood in Devon to practise my skills. It was easy to survive yesterday, with Durbin standing by. Can I cope alone? Pullabrook is a lovely wood, administered by the Woodland Trust. It is full of happy Tories and happy Labradors. But now I have my own mini-apocalypse. I fail at bow drilling. I find a stream, but a happy Tory says the water is poisonous, even if filtered by sock. Why? "Because sheep droppings have contaminated it," he says. Death by Sheep is only slightly behind Death by Snail in the encyclopaedia of embarrassing ways to die.
The first shelter I build is too small for me to enter. My second shelter collapses. I decide to abandon bushcraft. I will try my hand at farming. Woman cannot live on worm alone.
So, a few days later, I am standing inside an Iron Age roundhouse at Butser Ancient Farm in Hampshire. Butser is a project that re-enacts Iron Age life. The roundhouse is huge and round and dim. I feel a bit as if I am standing inside a giant breast. Steve Dyer is the archaeological director. He is tall and red-faced, with a frizzy white beard.
"Roundhouses are easy to make," he says, waving his arms. He points out two animal skulls, tied to the entrance posts. Is that a cow's skull? Dyer grimaces politely. "It's a horse," he says, before proceeding to tell me how to make a roundhouse.
The ingredients are: 27 large oak trees, 60 small oak trees, 100 hazel trees, 100 ash trees, wheat straw for thatching, and animal hair, clay, manure, soil and water for the walls.
You will also need animals. Dyer escorts me to his pigpen to meet two nameless pigs. To domesticate animals, he says, you just have to enclose them in smaller and smaller areas. Provide them with what they need - food, water and attention - and they will obey you. You can then eat them, and peel them, and tan their hides for soft furnishings. But beware of sheep, he says, waving a bright red finger. "I know this guy called Si," he says. "He approached a frisky ram. It jumped up and broke his nose." I am back at Death by Sheep.
I telephone the psychologist Cecelia De Felice. I want to know if I will go insane in my new one-woman world, especially when faced with tasks such as chopping down 27 large oaks. "You will be in a state of trauma," she agrees. "You will quickly become lonely and paranoid. It is possible you will have a breakdown." And if I meet other survivors? Be cautious, she advises. "They too will be lonely and paranoid. Of course you are stronger in a group. But you do not know whether they will help you or just steal your resources. Trust no one."
I am (vaguely) confident I will not starve. But there is one other thing I am sweating over: nuclear power stations. Professor Alan Weisman wrote The World Without Us, a description of what he believes would happen to Earth if we all vanished. I call him. He says I am right to worry. Why? Because most nuclear plants are water-cooled. Water, he explains, in a dry, calm voice, needs to circulate around the reactors, or they will explode. If there were no humans to operate it, the plant would shut down automatically, and the water would be cooled with diesel fuel. For about a week. Then the heat from the reactor would evaporate and expose the core. "It will either melt down or burst into very radioactive flames," he says. So what would you do, Professor Weisman? "I would probably go to Canada," he says. "There aren't many nuclear power stations in Canada."
So, it comes to this. No matter how hard you try, Britain will probably become a nuclear wasteland. The snails that are your lunch will either die, or look very weird. So, again, what to do? My considered advice is this. You, Guardian reader, need to begin building a boat - a sailing ship, actually - to take you to - yes, Canada. Before you leave the city you should pause at a library and steal the entire boat-making and maintenance shelf. Canada may be your only hope of salvation. And that is as fitting an obituary for our civilisation as I can type. In The End, it turns out you don't just have to be the heroine of Survivors. You need to bloody well be Noah too.
Happy apocalypse.
It's not all bad: Fun things you could do after the apocalypse
• Pop into the National Gallery and take Jan Van Eyck's Portrait of a Man off the wall. (If you have no taste, take a Renoir.) The Van Eyck is hanging in the Sainsbury Wing. If you want to preserve it properly, Thomas Almeroth-Williams of the National Gallery suggests you store it in a slate mine, where the temperature and humidity levels are perfect for its conservation.
• Go to the British Library and help yourself to one of its two copies of Shakespeare's First Folio. One is in a box in a strong room under the library floor; the other is in a glass case in the Treasure Room. If you want to preserve it properly, Helen Shenton of the British Library suggests you store it in a cool, dark place, and watch it carefully for infestations by animals or fungi. Dust regularly.
• Steal the crown jewels. If you can. "There are contingency plans in place in event of a power failure," says a Royal Palaces spokesperson, "so the crown jewels should remain safe." Really? To preserve them properly, do nothing. A diamond is for ever.
• Invade the News of the World - it's in Wapping - and read all its secret files. Then break into M15. It's on Millbank. Read all its secret files too. Oh, no! She was murdered! I knew it!
• Go and stand on the stage at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. Skip over the bodies of the dead actors. Re-enact the whole of Oliver!
The vital skills you will need
How to make bread
I type this in full because I want bread at The End, and I want you to have it too (should you survive). So, clear the land, turn the soil over to create furrows, take seed from any wheat growing wild, sow it 20cm apart and kick the soil over. Make sure that the birds don't eat the seed.
Stop browsing animals by hedging the field off and root out weeds. When the corn is ripe, thresh it by hitting it with a stick and mill it by rubbing it between large stones. Add the flour to water to make dough. Stick it in a pan on the fire. Result? Wholemeal flatbread!
How to make sanitary products and toilet paper
Find some sphagnum moss and use that. It is very spongy and it contains iodine, so it is slightly antiseptic.
How to eat snails
Always, always quarantine snails before eating them. Take the snail and put it where there is nothing for it to eat. Ignore its cries of hunger, leave for three days and then consume.
How to purify water
Collect the water from the purest source available, ideally a spring, minimising sediment and avoiding chemical contamination. Filter it through a sock full of sand. Sterilise the water by bringing it to a rolling boil for a few seconds.
How to clay bake a fish
Wrap the fish in large leaves, tying up the parcel with nettle stalk. Dig for clay in the earth. After combining the clay with water, cover the fish with a centimetre of clay, leaving no cracks. Scrape a shallow pit in the centre of the fire and lay the fish in it. Cover the fish with embers. After an hour, remove the fish and crack the outer shell open. The fish should be perfectly cooked.
How to remove the skin from a cow
You can kill a cow by strangulation apparently, although I have never met anyone who has done it. Or you can cut its throat, or spear it through the heart. Split the cow along its belly from the groin to the throat. Remove the internal organs. Hang the cow up by its hooves for several days to let the blood run out. Cows are heavy, so do not attempt to do this alone. To take the skin off, slide a blade or a sharp stone between the skin and the flesh. Once you have inserted the tool a little way, you can just peel the skin off.
How to shoot a deer with a bow and arrow
Deer are sensitive to human noise and smell. If you stomp through the wood with a bow and arrow you will never find one. Find out where the deer are going to be - they often walk the same way to the same place. Camouflage your scent, be quiet and do not move. When you see a deer, shoot it from 20m away. You ideally need a kill shot, eg in a lung. You don't want to hit it in the bottom, because it will run off and you won't get your dinner. TG
• Sources: Leon Durbin (Wildwood Bushcraft), Steve Dyer (Butser Ancient Farm) and Ben Jones (Merlin Archery Centre).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/jan/29/apocalypse-survival-guide-tanya-gold
Tanya Gold
The Guardian, Thursday 29 January 2009
I am standing in a wood with a tall man and a dead pheasant. There is blood everywhere: on my shoes, my hands, my face. Why am I here? Because the man - his name is Leon Durbin - is preparing me for the apocalypse, now.
What would happen if you awoke one morning and everyone was dead? Or if, less melodramatically, the world as we know it - and our teetering financial systems - ceased to function? What if you awoke to find your bubble-wrapped, gilded life was over, and for good? Could you survive? Could I?
I am an urban girl. I have no skills except whingeing and bingeing. I can barely open a packet of Hobnobs without an explosive device. But, unlike you, doomed and dying reader, I have decided to prepare for The End, and I am prepared to share the life-saving knowledge I will accrue. This is your cut-out-and-keep guide to the apocalypse. Put it in a drawer. One day you may need it.
So you wake up; everyone is dead. For the purpose of this exercise, imagine it's like Survivors, the cheap BBC rendition of the apocalypse, where a plague wipes out humanity and then everyone is mildly annoyed that the trains are delayed. We could imagine total financial or ecological collapse leading to the failure of social structures, but let's say it's a plague. So, how long can you stay in your house?
The answer is: not long. According to the people at the National Grid, the electricity will stop. So will the water. These systems have buttons. Buttons need fingers. Fingers need people who are alive. You have a day, maybe two, of electricity. Then you will be in darkness, with no way of washing your face.
What should you do? You can steal food from supermarkets but the rotting corpses on the floor of Sainsbury's will be fetid fonts of infection. And if you try to sit out the plague in your home, you could burn or drown. After a lightning strike, fires will begin and they will not stop. And if you live in London, the Thames barrier will fail without electricity and the low-lying areas of the city will flood.
So you have to leave. But where do you go? The apocalyptic norm - see 28 Days Later and Survivors - is for survivors to sit in desirable country mansions, eat tinned tomatoes, develop post-traumatic psychosis and shoot each other. Never in any apocalyptic scenario in any movie I have seen - and I have seen them all - does anyone try to live off the land. They prefer to feed on the crumbs of the lost civilisation. It never works. How can you rebuild civilisation with tinned tomatoes? You need to grow your own food.
But where? I choose Devon. It is warm and wet and fertile, and I have been happy there. There are cows. This is where I would live off the land, but I need to learn how. This thinking has led me to Durbin and the dead bird.
Durbin is tall and tweedy. He is the sort of man who keeps firewood kindling in his pocket, just in case. He owns Wildwood Bushcraft, a company that explains how to survive if you are dropped into the wilderness with no supplies, no warning and no clue.
Durbin leads me through the spindly, sleeping trees, pointing out different kinds of branch and bush, and their uses. According to him, the wood is a shop that will give you everything you need. "Willow bark can be boiled to relieve a headache," he says. "Yew is for making long bows. Oak is for shelters. Ash is for tool handles. Have you ever had a beech-leaf sandwich?" I don't bother replying.
To be competent in bushcraft, you have to be well equipped: before you leave the city, stop for a saw, chisel, spade, axe and hunting knife. Durbin has them all. They poke out of his rucksack in a manly fashion.
We arrive at a clearing and Durbin demonstrates how to light a fire. He places a small block of wood on the ground and puts a wooden stake on it, point down. He takes a bow, made of wood and string, places it round the stake and, when he moves the bow in a sideways motion, the stake rotates very fast. Its friction with the block of wood magically creates a pile of super-hot matter. It can ignite dry hay or bark. This creates a conflagration that can light a fire.
How will I get water? Durbin runs bushcraft weekends for angry executives here, so he knows where it is. "Water," I cry, lunging at a small stream. "Careful," says Durbin. "We have to filter the water with a sock full of sand. Then we have to bring it to a rolling boil." Why a sock? He ignores me.
Food is harder. It is winter and the countryside is closed for repairs. My two main vegetarian foods, Durbin explains, will be burdock root and hazelnut. Both are high-energy. You can make chips out of burdock and you can boil, mash and dry hazelnut to produce a repulsive kind of biscuit. Durbin picks up a spade and starts digging for burdock. He finds some, but it's rotten. "Winter," he sighs. "Hmmm."
So, with a fiendish flourish, I produce a dead pheasant from my handbag. I had spent the day before negotiating with the Guardian as to the legal and moral implications of murdering a rabbit for the purposes of this article. Finally we had compromised, and I had gone to a posh butcher's in Mayfair and bought this beautiful pheasant for £3.50. Durbin looks impressed. "You have to pull off its head," he says. "Just twist it."
I close my eyes and twist. The head comes off easily; it feels like wringing out a slightly damp scarf. Then Durbin makes a hole in the pheasant's bottom and I stick my hand up and clutch everything inside. Out comes a squelchy mass of once-living flesh. Durbin grabs the heart and cuts it open. "Very nutritious," he says. I am slightly sick in my mouth. I pluck, and soon I have a pile of bloodstained feathers - and a nude bird. Durbin sticks it on a spit over the fire. When it is cooked, we eat it. It tastes slightly of excrement but I still feel strangely empowered. It was much easier than I thought it would be, to rip this bird apart.
I now have bloodlust. I ask Durbin how to trap animals. I could theoretically shoot them, but trapping is more suitable for the lazy or incompetent survivor. He looks slightly nervous. "It's illegal," he says slowly. But I prod and he tells me about different types of trap. I could try the pit trap, he says, where you dig a hole in the forest floor, line it with sharpened stakes and camouflage it. It is for large animals - deer, wild boar, parents, other journalists. There is also the deadfall trap, which is for small animals. They saunter over a trigger mechanism, and a lump of wood falls on their head. Bon appetit and ha ha.
But what would I eat if I couldn't trap? "Bugs," says Durbin happily. "Worms." There are 40 calories in a worm, apparently; this is the equivalent of two Maltesers. "Or snails," he adds. "But quarantine the snail for three days before you eat it. It may have eaten poisonous plants, and you will have to wait until it expels them."
Now you need shelter. If I had the choice, I would probably look for a small stone cottage - hardy and easy to maintain - but if I am foraging, I have to go to where the food is. So Durbin shows me how to make a survival shelter. He hurls logs up against a tree trunk, and covers them with a foot of leaves and bracken and mud. "It is waterproof," he says. I climb in and lie down. It is a hole that only a troll could love. But there they are, the four pillars of survival: food, water, fire and shelter.
The next day, I go to Pullabrook Wood in Devon to practise my skills. It was easy to survive yesterday, with Durbin standing by. Can I cope alone? Pullabrook is a lovely wood, administered by the Woodland Trust. It is full of happy Tories and happy Labradors. But now I have my own mini-apocalypse. I fail at bow drilling. I find a stream, but a happy Tory says the water is poisonous, even if filtered by sock. Why? "Because sheep droppings have contaminated it," he says. Death by Sheep is only slightly behind Death by Snail in the encyclopaedia of embarrassing ways to die.
The first shelter I build is too small for me to enter. My second shelter collapses. I decide to abandon bushcraft. I will try my hand at farming. Woman cannot live on worm alone.
So, a few days later, I am standing inside an Iron Age roundhouse at Butser Ancient Farm in Hampshire. Butser is a project that re-enacts Iron Age life. The roundhouse is huge and round and dim. I feel a bit as if I am standing inside a giant breast. Steve Dyer is the archaeological director. He is tall and red-faced, with a frizzy white beard.
"Roundhouses are easy to make," he says, waving his arms. He points out two animal skulls, tied to the entrance posts. Is that a cow's skull? Dyer grimaces politely. "It's a horse," he says, before proceeding to tell me how to make a roundhouse.
The ingredients are: 27 large oak trees, 60 small oak trees, 100 hazel trees, 100 ash trees, wheat straw for thatching, and animal hair, clay, manure, soil and water for the walls.
You will also need animals. Dyer escorts me to his pigpen to meet two nameless pigs. To domesticate animals, he says, you just have to enclose them in smaller and smaller areas. Provide them with what they need - food, water and attention - and they will obey you. You can then eat them, and peel them, and tan their hides for soft furnishings. But beware of sheep, he says, waving a bright red finger. "I know this guy called Si," he says. "He approached a frisky ram. It jumped up and broke his nose." I am back at Death by Sheep.
I telephone the psychologist Cecelia De Felice. I want to know if I will go insane in my new one-woman world, especially when faced with tasks such as chopping down 27 large oaks. "You will be in a state of trauma," she agrees. "You will quickly become lonely and paranoid. It is possible you will have a breakdown." And if I meet other survivors? Be cautious, she advises. "They too will be lonely and paranoid. Of course you are stronger in a group. But you do not know whether they will help you or just steal your resources. Trust no one."
I am (vaguely) confident I will not starve. But there is one other thing I am sweating over: nuclear power stations. Professor Alan Weisman wrote The World Without Us, a description of what he believes would happen to Earth if we all vanished. I call him. He says I am right to worry. Why? Because most nuclear plants are water-cooled. Water, he explains, in a dry, calm voice, needs to circulate around the reactors, or they will explode. If there were no humans to operate it, the plant would shut down automatically, and the water would be cooled with diesel fuel. For about a week. Then the heat from the reactor would evaporate and expose the core. "It will either melt down or burst into very radioactive flames," he says. So what would you do, Professor Weisman? "I would probably go to Canada," he says. "There aren't many nuclear power stations in Canada."
So, it comes to this. No matter how hard you try, Britain will probably become a nuclear wasteland. The snails that are your lunch will either die, or look very weird. So, again, what to do? My considered advice is this. You, Guardian reader, need to begin building a boat - a sailing ship, actually - to take you to - yes, Canada. Before you leave the city you should pause at a library and steal the entire boat-making and maintenance shelf. Canada may be your only hope of salvation. And that is as fitting an obituary for our civilisation as I can type. In The End, it turns out you don't just have to be the heroine of Survivors. You need to bloody well be Noah too.
Happy apocalypse.
It's not all bad: Fun things you could do after the apocalypse
• Pop into the National Gallery and take Jan Van Eyck's Portrait of a Man off the wall. (If you have no taste, take a Renoir.) The Van Eyck is hanging in the Sainsbury Wing. If you want to preserve it properly, Thomas Almeroth-Williams of the National Gallery suggests you store it in a slate mine, where the temperature and humidity levels are perfect for its conservation.
• Go to the British Library and help yourself to one of its two copies of Shakespeare's First Folio. One is in a box in a strong room under the library floor; the other is in a glass case in the Treasure Room. If you want to preserve it properly, Helen Shenton of the British Library suggests you store it in a cool, dark place, and watch it carefully for infestations by animals or fungi. Dust regularly.
• Steal the crown jewels. If you can. "There are contingency plans in place in event of a power failure," says a Royal Palaces spokesperson, "so the crown jewels should remain safe." Really? To preserve them properly, do nothing. A diamond is for ever.
• Invade the News of the World - it's in Wapping - and read all its secret files. Then break into M15. It's on Millbank. Read all its secret files too. Oh, no! She was murdered! I knew it!
• Go and stand on the stage at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. Skip over the bodies of the dead actors. Re-enact the whole of Oliver!
The vital skills you will need
How to make bread
I type this in full because I want bread at The End, and I want you to have it too (should you survive). So, clear the land, turn the soil over to create furrows, take seed from any wheat growing wild, sow it 20cm apart and kick the soil over. Make sure that the birds don't eat the seed.
Stop browsing animals by hedging the field off and root out weeds. When the corn is ripe, thresh it by hitting it with a stick and mill it by rubbing it between large stones. Add the flour to water to make dough. Stick it in a pan on the fire. Result? Wholemeal flatbread!
How to make sanitary products and toilet paper
Find some sphagnum moss and use that. It is very spongy and it contains iodine, so it is slightly antiseptic.
How to eat snails
Always, always quarantine snails before eating them. Take the snail and put it where there is nothing for it to eat. Ignore its cries of hunger, leave for three days and then consume.
How to purify water
Collect the water from the purest source available, ideally a spring, minimising sediment and avoiding chemical contamination. Filter it through a sock full of sand. Sterilise the water by bringing it to a rolling boil for a few seconds.
How to clay bake a fish
Wrap the fish in large leaves, tying up the parcel with nettle stalk. Dig for clay in the earth. After combining the clay with water, cover the fish with a centimetre of clay, leaving no cracks. Scrape a shallow pit in the centre of the fire and lay the fish in it. Cover the fish with embers. After an hour, remove the fish and crack the outer shell open. The fish should be perfectly cooked.
How to remove the skin from a cow
You can kill a cow by strangulation apparently, although I have never met anyone who has done it. Or you can cut its throat, or spear it through the heart. Split the cow along its belly from the groin to the throat. Remove the internal organs. Hang the cow up by its hooves for several days to let the blood run out. Cows are heavy, so do not attempt to do this alone. To take the skin off, slide a blade or a sharp stone between the skin and the flesh. Once you have inserted the tool a little way, you can just peel the skin off.
How to shoot a deer with a bow and arrow
Deer are sensitive to human noise and smell. If you stomp through the wood with a bow and arrow you will never find one. Find out where the deer are going to be - they often walk the same way to the same place. Camouflage your scent, be quiet and do not move. When you see a deer, shoot it from 20m away. You ideally need a kill shot, eg in a lung. You don't want to hit it in the bottom, because it will run off and you won't get your dinner. TG
• Sources: Leon Durbin (Wildwood Bushcraft), Steve Dyer (Butser Ancient Farm) and Ben Jones (Merlin Archery Centre).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/jan/29/apocalypse-survival-guide-tanya-gold
KBR Must Be Accountable for Iraq Deaths: US Senators
Published on Wednesday, January 28, 2009 by Reuters
by Andrea Shalal-Esa
WASHINGTON - U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday raised concerns about the U.S. military's increased use of private contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, and said KBR and other companies should be held accountable for the electrocution deaths of U.S. soldiers and other mistakes.
[Pfc. Justin Shults shows some of the burn wounds he received after being electrocuted in a shower facility in Iraq, in this photo taken Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2009 in San Antonio, Texas. Shults suffered third-degree burns on 13-percent of his body. He is suing contractor KBR Inc. for faulty wiring of the facility. (AP Photo/San Antonio Express-News, Kin Man Hui) ]Pfc. Justin Shults shows some of the burn wounds he received after being electrocuted in a shower facility in Iraq, in this photo taken Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2009 in San Antonio, Texas. Shults suffered third-degree burns on 13-percent of his body. He is suing contractor KBR Inc. for faulty wiring of the facility. (AP Photo/San Antonio Express-News, Kin Man Hui)
Democratic Sens. Robert Casey of Pennsylvania and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota said the Army recently told the mother of a U.S. soldier that her son's electrocution death in Iraq was not accidental, but a "negligent homicide" by contractor KBR and two of its supervisors.
"Soldiers have died. Someone needs to be accountable for that," Dorgan told a news conference, describing the Pentagon's use of contractors in Iraq a "huge mess."
KBR spokeswoman Heather Browne said the company's investigation had produced no evidence linking the company to the death of Staff Sgt. Ryan Maseth, who died from electrocution while taking a shower at his Baghdad base.
"KBR takes exception to the senators' assertion that we have been derelict in our duties to protect the troops," she said, pledging continued cooperation with the investigation.
Sen. Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who heads the Senate Armed Services Committee, repeatedly questioned Defense Secretary Robert Gates at a hearing Tuesday about the use of contractors to protect U.S. facilities in war zones.
Such work was "an inherently governmental function," he said. "It should not be performed by contractors."
Gates told the committee the U.S. military would need to continue using private contractors to provide security in Afghanistan, at least until U.S. troop levels there increased.
But he said he was creating a supervisory structure to oversee the work of private contractors in Afghanistan, based on an oversight body built up in Iraq over the past year.
"We're trying to take the lessons learned out of Iraq over the last couple of years in terms of the lack of oversight, and transfer that to Afghanistan," Gates said, adding that a broad study was underway about the use of private contractors.
He declined to comment on a report in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday which said U.S. troops had come into conflict with private security companies in Afghanistan, and some employees were taking orders from the Taliban.
Last month, five security guards who worked for North Carolina-based Blackwater, the largest security contractor in Iraq, were charged with killing 14 unarmed civilians and wounding 20 others in a 2007 shooting in Baghdad that outraged Iraqis and strained U.S.-Iraqi relations.
Gates did not address the electrocution death or the Blackwater incident directly. But he said the use of contractors "grew willy-nilly in Iraq after 2003."
"All of a sudden, we had a very large number of people over there and ... as became clear, inadequate capacity to monitor them," Gates told the committee.
He said training was one area that could be done legitimately and less expensively by contractors, but there had not been any coherent strategy thus far on "what we will allow contractors to do and what we won't allow contractors to do."
Gates said the military also needed to decide what to do with large quantities of U.S. government-owned equipment now being operated by private contractors, particularly once the United States began drawing down its forces in Iraq.
"All of this is going to require a high level of supervision and I think we need to think pretty quickly and ... with some agility in the Department of Defense to make sure that we get this right," Gates said.
Dorgan and Casey said they asked Gates to meet with them and Cheryl Harris, Maseth's mother, after an Army investigator told Harris in a December email that two KBR employees and the company itself could be criminally liable for Maseth's death.
Dorgan, who heads the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, said he has chaired 18 oversight hearings on contracting abuses and corruption in Iraq and Afghanistan, exposing "billions of dollars in wasteful spending," shoddy work by private contractors, and unsafe water supplies.
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal-Esa; Editing by Richard Chang)
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/01/28-6
by Andrea Shalal-Esa
WASHINGTON - U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday raised concerns about the U.S. military's increased use of private contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, and said KBR and other companies should be held accountable for the electrocution deaths of U.S. soldiers and other mistakes.
[Pfc. Justin Shults shows some of the burn wounds he received after being electrocuted in a shower facility in Iraq, in this photo taken Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2009 in San Antonio, Texas. Shults suffered third-degree burns on 13-percent of his body. He is suing contractor KBR Inc. for faulty wiring of the facility. (AP Photo/San Antonio Express-News, Kin Man Hui) ]Pfc. Justin Shults shows some of the burn wounds he received after being electrocuted in a shower facility in Iraq, in this photo taken Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2009 in San Antonio, Texas. Shults suffered third-degree burns on 13-percent of his body. He is suing contractor KBR Inc. for faulty wiring of the facility. (AP Photo/San Antonio Express-News, Kin Man Hui)
Democratic Sens. Robert Casey of Pennsylvania and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota said the Army recently told the mother of a U.S. soldier that her son's electrocution death in Iraq was not accidental, but a "negligent homicide" by contractor KBR and two of its supervisors.
"Soldiers have died. Someone needs to be accountable for that," Dorgan told a news conference, describing the Pentagon's use of contractors in Iraq a "huge mess."
KBR spokeswoman Heather Browne said the company's investigation had produced no evidence linking the company to the death of Staff Sgt. Ryan Maseth, who died from electrocution while taking a shower at his Baghdad base.
"KBR takes exception to the senators' assertion that we have been derelict in our duties to protect the troops," she said, pledging continued cooperation with the investigation.
Sen. Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who heads the Senate Armed Services Committee, repeatedly questioned Defense Secretary Robert Gates at a hearing Tuesday about the use of contractors to protect U.S. facilities in war zones.
Such work was "an inherently governmental function," he said. "It should not be performed by contractors."
Gates told the committee the U.S. military would need to continue using private contractors to provide security in Afghanistan, at least until U.S. troop levels there increased.
But he said he was creating a supervisory structure to oversee the work of private contractors in Afghanistan, based on an oversight body built up in Iraq over the past year.
"We're trying to take the lessons learned out of Iraq over the last couple of years in terms of the lack of oversight, and transfer that to Afghanistan," Gates said, adding that a broad study was underway about the use of private contractors.
He declined to comment on a report in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday which said U.S. troops had come into conflict with private security companies in Afghanistan, and some employees were taking orders from the Taliban.
Last month, five security guards who worked for North Carolina-based Blackwater, the largest security contractor in Iraq, were charged with killing 14 unarmed civilians and wounding 20 others in a 2007 shooting in Baghdad that outraged Iraqis and strained U.S.-Iraqi relations.
Gates did not address the electrocution death or the Blackwater incident directly. But he said the use of contractors "grew willy-nilly in Iraq after 2003."
"All of a sudden, we had a very large number of people over there and ... as became clear, inadequate capacity to monitor them," Gates told the committee.
He said training was one area that could be done legitimately and less expensively by contractors, but there had not been any coherent strategy thus far on "what we will allow contractors to do and what we won't allow contractors to do."
Gates said the military also needed to decide what to do with large quantities of U.S. government-owned equipment now being operated by private contractors, particularly once the United States began drawing down its forces in Iraq.
"All of this is going to require a high level of supervision and I think we need to think pretty quickly and ... with some agility in the Department of Defense to make sure that we get this right," Gates said.
Dorgan and Casey said they asked Gates to meet with them and Cheryl Harris, Maseth's mother, after an Army investigator told Harris in a December email that two KBR employees and the company itself could be criminally liable for Maseth's death.
Dorgan, who heads the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, said he has chaired 18 oversight hearings on contracting abuses and corruption in Iraq and Afghanistan, exposing "billions of dollars in wasteful spending," shoddy work by private contractors, and unsafe water supplies.
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal-Esa; Editing by Richard Chang)
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/01/28-6
California prepares to stop paying bills
Come Feb. 1, tax refunds, welfare checks replaced with IOUs
Posted: January 26, 2009
9:47 pm Eastern
By Drew Zahn
© 2009 WorldNetDaily
California State Controller John Chiang
The state of California has run out of money.
Facing a $42 billion budget deficit, State Controller John Chiang told the Sacramento Bee he has already borrowed $21.5 billion to try to cover the state's checks, but by Feb. 1, there will be no more options left but to simply stop paying some of the bills – including tax refunds, welfare checks, student grants and other payments owned to California citizens.
"It pains me to pull this trigger," Chiang said at a news conference held in his office. "But it is an action that is critically necessary."
Federal law requires that many school and healthcare programs – a total of about $6.6 billion in California – must be paid, the Los Angeles Times reports, so Chiang has announced an expected payment freeze on $3.7 billion worth of the state's bills, most of it refunds owed to taxpayers.
But even with the freeze beginning next week, the Times reports, California will still fall $346 million short for the month of February, forcing Chiang to consider something only done once since the Great Depression: issuing IOUs.
Formally called "registered warrants," the state's IOUs consist of little more than a piece of paper that says the state owes a payee money, plus interest, to be paid at some point in the future.
The last time California issued registered warrants was in 1992, during two-month budget battle between then-Gov. Pete Wilson and the state's legislators. But after the state issued almost $4 billion worth of IOUs, many banks stopped accepting them as deposits, claiming the five percent interest didn't pay for the hassle of processing them.
The Times reports that state officials have already designed an IOU template for February and begun negotiating with banks to avoid a repeat of 1992's problems.
Beth Mills, a spokeswoman for the California Bankers Association, however, told the Bee that the group's members still have "a lot of technical and operational questions we're trying to get some resolution on" about IOUs.
For now, state officials are hoping that Chiang's promised payment freezes can delay the budget crisis long enough for Gov. Schwarzenegger and the Legislature to find a solution.
Among the $3.7 billion in payments Chiang has targeted to freeze include $1.91 billion in personal income tax refunds, $205 million in court operations, $122 million scheduled to help counties with welfare administration, $13 million in student aid
and over $700 million in aid to various disabled and needy groups.
State officials also got a glimmer of hope last week when they learned that more than $11 billion of President Obama's $825 billion economic stimulus plan may land in California's coffers.
"This takes a big bite out of the state's budget gap," Jean Ross, executive director of the California Budget Project, told the Times. "It is better news than many of us had anticipated."
Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles, however, warned that lawmakers can't rely on Washington to fix the problem.
"We have to make really horrible cuts, and we have to raise revenue," Bass told the Times. "We are just hoping whatever we get will help us avoid deeper cuts."
If the cuts aren't deep enough, California may be forced to consider issuing the IOUs. Continued borrowing, Chiang said, is not an option.
"We are the eighth largest economy," Chiang said, speaking of California's rank among the world's nations, were it an independent country. But comparing it to other states, he said, "We have the 50th or we are tied for last in the credit ratings. We are a world economic power, but we have fiscal mismanagement in this state."
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/?pageId=87175
Posted: January 26, 2009
9:47 pm Eastern
By Drew Zahn
© 2009 WorldNetDaily
California State Controller John Chiang
The state of California has run out of money.
Facing a $42 billion budget deficit, State Controller John Chiang told the Sacramento Bee he has already borrowed $21.5 billion to try to cover the state's checks, but by Feb. 1, there will be no more options left but to simply stop paying some of the bills – including tax refunds, welfare checks, student grants and other payments owned to California citizens.
"It pains me to pull this trigger," Chiang said at a news conference held in his office. "But it is an action that is critically necessary."
Federal law requires that many school and healthcare programs – a total of about $6.6 billion in California – must be paid, the Los Angeles Times reports, so Chiang has announced an expected payment freeze on $3.7 billion worth of the state's bills, most of it refunds owed to taxpayers.
But even with the freeze beginning next week, the Times reports, California will still fall $346 million short for the month of February, forcing Chiang to consider something only done once since the Great Depression: issuing IOUs.
Formally called "registered warrants," the state's IOUs consist of little more than a piece of paper that says the state owes a payee money, plus interest, to be paid at some point in the future.
The last time California issued registered warrants was in 1992, during two-month budget battle between then-Gov. Pete Wilson and the state's legislators. But after the state issued almost $4 billion worth of IOUs, many banks stopped accepting them as deposits, claiming the five percent interest didn't pay for the hassle of processing them.
The Times reports that state officials have already designed an IOU template for February and begun negotiating with banks to avoid a repeat of 1992's problems.
Beth Mills, a spokeswoman for the California Bankers Association, however, told the Bee that the group's members still have "a lot of technical and operational questions we're trying to get some resolution on" about IOUs.
For now, state officials are hoping that Chiang's promised payment freezes can delay the budget crisis long enough for Gov. Schwarzenegger and the Legislature to find a solution.
Among the $3.7 billion in payments Chiang has targeted to freeze include $1.91 billion in personal income tax refunds, $205 million in court operations, $122 million scheduled to help counties with welfare administration, $13 million in student aid
and over $700 million in aid to various disabled and needy groups.
State officials also got a glimmer of hope last week when they learned that more than $11 billion of President Obama's $825 billion economic stimulus plan may land in California's coffers.
"This takes a big bite out of the state's budget gap," Jean Ross, executive director of the California Budget Project, told the Times. "It is better news than many of us had anticipated."
Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles, however, warned that lawmakers can't rely on Washington to fix the problem.
"We have to make really horrible cuts, and we have to raise revenue," Bass told the Times. "We are just hoping whatever we get will help us avoid deeper cuts."
If the cuts aren't deep enough, California may be forced to consider issuing the IOUs. Continued borrowing, Chiang said, is not an option.
"We are the eighth largest economy," Chiang said, speaking of California's rank among the world's nations, were it an independent country. But comparing it to other states, he said, "We have the 50th or we are tied for last in the credit ratings. We are a world economic power, but we have fiscal mismanagement in this state."
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/?pageId=87175
Is It Time to Bail Out of the US?
By Paul Craig Roberts
January 28, 2009 "Information Clearinghouse" -- California State Controller John Chiang announced on January 26 that California’s bills exceed its tax revenues and credit line and that the state is going to print its own money known as IOUs. The template is already designed.
Instead of receiving their state tax refunds in dollars, California residents will receive IOUs. Student aid and payments to disabled and needy will also come in the form of IOUs. California is negotiating with banks to get them to accept the IOUs as deposits.
California is often identified as the world’s eighth largest economy, and it is broke.
A person might think that California’s plight would introduce some realism into Washington, DC, but it has not. President Obama is taking steps to intensify the war in Afghanistan and, perhaps, to expand it to Pakistan.
Obama has retained the Republican warmongers in the Pentagon, and the US continues to illegally bomb Pakistan and to murder its civilians. At the World Economic Forum at Davos this week, Pakistan’s prime minister, Y. R. Gilani, said that the American attacks on Pakistan are counterproductive and done without Pakistan’s permission. In an interview with CNN, Gilani said: “I want to put on record that we do not have any agreement between the government of the United States and the government of Pakistan.”
How long before Washington will be printing money?
On January 28 Obama announced his $825 billion bailout plan. This comes on top of President Bush’s $700 billion bailout of just a few months ago.
Obama says his plan will be more transparent than Bush’s and will do more good for the economy.
As large as the bailouts are--a total of $1.5 trillion in four months--the amount is small in relation to the reported size of troubled assets that are in the tens of trillions of dollars. How do we know that by June there won’t be another bailout, say $950 billion?
Where will the money come from?
Obama’s bailout plan, added to the FY 2009 budget deficit he has inherited from Bush, opens a gaping expenditure hole of about $3 trillion.
Who is going to purchase $3 trillion of US Treasury bonds?
Not the US consumer. The consumer is out of work and out of money. Private sector credit market debt is 174% of GDP. The personal savings rate is 2 percent. Ten percent of households are in foreclosure or arrears. Household debt-service ratio is at an all-time high. Household net worth has declined at a record rate. Housing inventories are at record highs.
Not America’s foreign creditors. At best, the Chinese, Japanese, and Saudis can recycle their trade surpluses with the US into Treasury bonds, but the combined surplus does not approach the size of the US budget deficit.
Perhaps another drop in the stock market will drive Americans’ remaining wealth into “safe” US Treasury bonds.
If not, there’s only the printing press.
The printing press would turn a deflationary depression into an inflationary depression.
Unemployment combined with rising prices would be a killer.
Inflation would kill the dollar as well, leaving the US unable to pay for its imports.
All the Obama regime sees is a “credit problem.” But the crisis goes far beyond banks’ bad investments. The United States is busted. Many of the state governments are busted. Homeowners are busted. Consumers are busted. Jobs are busted. Companies are busted.
And Obama thinks he has the money to fight wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Except for the superrich and those banksters and CEOs who stole wealth from investors and shareholders, Americans have suffered enormous losses in wealth and income.
The stock market decline has destroyed about 45% of their IRAs, 401Ks, and other equity investments. On top of this comes the decline in home prices, lost jobs and health care, lost customers. The realized gains in mutual funds and investment partnerships, on which Americans paid taxes, have been wiped out.
The government should give those taxes back.
Americans who have seen their retirement savings devastated by complicity of government regulators and lawmakers with financial gangsters should not have to pay
any income tax when they draw on their pensions.
The financial damage inflicted on Americans by their own government is as great as would be expected from foreign conquest. While Washington “protected” us from terrorists by fighting pointless wars abroad, the US economy collapsed.
How can President Obama even think about fighting wars half way around the world while California cannot pay its bills, while Americans are being turned out of their homes, while, as Business Week reports, retirees will work throughout their retirement (which assumes that there will be jobs), while careers are being destroyed and stores and factories shuttered.
Americans are facing tremendous unemployment and hardship. Obama doesn’t have another dollar to spend on Bush’s wars.
Taxpayers are busted. They cannot stand another day of being milked by the military-security complex. The US government is paying private mercenaries more by the day than the monthly checks it is providing to Social Security retirees.
This is insanity.
The banksters robbed us twice. First it was our home and stock values. Then the government rewarded the banksters for their misdeeds by bailing out the banksters, not their victims, and putting the cost on the taxpayers’ books.
The government has also robbed the taxpayers of $3 trillion dollars to fight its wars. About $600 billion are out of pocket costs, and the rest is on the taxpayers’ books.
When foreign creditors look at the debt piled on the taxpayers’ books, they don’t see a good credit risk.
Washington is so accustomed to ripping off the taxpayers for the benefit of special interests that the practice is now in the DNA. While bailouts are being piled upon bailouts, wars are being piled upon wars.
Before Obama gets in any deeper, he must ask his economic team where the money is coming from. When he finds out, he needs to tell the rest of us.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21867.htm
January 28, 2009 "Information Clearinghouse" -- California State Controller John Chiang announced on January 26 that California’s bills exceed its tax revenues and credit line and that the state is going to print its own money known as IOUs. The template is already designed.
Instead of receiving their state tax refunds in dollars, California residents will receive IOUs. Student aid and payments to disabled and needy will also come in the form of IOUs. California is negotiating with banks to get them to accept the IOUs as deposits.
California is often identified as the world’s eighth largest economy, and it is broke.
A person might think that California’s plight would introduce some realism into Washington, DC, but it has not. President Obama is taking steps to intensify the war in Afghanistan and, perhaps, to expand it to Pakistan.
Obama has retained the Republican warmongers in the Pentagon, and the US continues to illegally bomb Pakistan and to murder its civilians. At the World Economic Forum at Davos this week, Pakistan’s prime minister, Y. R. Gilani, said that the American attacks on Pakistan are counterproductive and done without Pakistan’s permission. In an interview with CNN, Gilani said: “I want to put on record that we do not have any agreement between the government of the United States and the government of Pakistan.”
How long before Washington will be printing money?
On January 28 Obama announced his $825 billion bailout plan. This comes on top of President Bush’s $700 billion bailout of just a few months ago.
Obama says his plan will be more transparent than Bush’s and will do more good for the economy.
As large as the bailouts are--a total of $1.5 trillion in four months--the amount is small in relation to the reported size of troubled assets that are in the tens of trillions of dollars. How do we know that by June there won’t be another bailout, say $950 billion?
Where will the money come from?
Obama’s bailout plan, added to the FY 2009 budget deficit he has inherited from Bush, opens a gaping expenditure hole of about $3 trillion.
Who is going to purchase $3 trillion of US Treasury bonds?
Not the US consumer. The consumer is out of work and out of money. Private sector credit market debt is 174% of GDP. The personal savings rate is 2 percent. Ten percent of households are in foreclosure or arrears. Household debt-service ratio is at an all-time high. Household net worth has declined at a record rate. Housing inventories are at record highs.
Not America’s foreign creditors. At best, the Chinese, Japanese, and Saudis can recycle their trade surpluses with the US into Treasury bonds, but the combined surplus does not approach the size of the US budget deficit.
Perhaps another drop in the stock market will drive Americans’ remaining wealth into “safe” US Treasury bonds.
If not, there’s only the printing press.
The printing press would turn a deflationary depression into an inflationary depression.
Unemployment combined with rising prices would be a killer.
Inflation would kill the dollar as well, leaving the US unable to pay for its imports.
All the Obama regime sees is a “credit problem.” But the crisis goes far beyond banks’ bad investments. The United States is busted. Many of the state governments are busted. Homeowners are busted. Consumers are busted. Jobs are busted. Companies are busted.
And Obama thinks he has the money to fight wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Except for the superrich and those banksters and CEOs who stole wealth from investors and shareholders, Americans have suffered enormous losses in wealth and income.
The stock market decline has destroyed about 45% of their IRAs, 401Ks, and other equity investments. On top of this comes the decline in home prices, lost jobs and health care, lost customers. The realized gains in mutual funds and investment partnerships, on which Americans paid taxes, have been wiped out.
The government should give those taxes back.
Americans who have seen their retirement savings devastated by complicity of government regulators and lawmakers with financial gangsters should not have to pay
any income tax when they draw on their pensions.
The financial damage inflicted on Americans by their own government is as great as would be expected from foreign conquest. While Washington “protected” us from terrorists by fighting pointless wars abroad, the US economy collapsed.
How can President Obama even think about fighting wars half way around the world while California cannot pay its bills, while Americans are being turned out of their homes, while, as Business Week reports, retirees will work throughout their retirement (which assumes that there will be jobs), while careers are being destroyed and stores and factories shuttered.
Americans are facing tremendous unemployment and hardship. Obama doesn’t have another dollar to spend on Bush’s wars.
Taxpayers are busted. They cannot stand another day of being milked by the military-security complex. The US government is paying private mercenaries more by the day than the monthly checks it is providing to Social Security retirees.
This is insanity.
The banksters robbed us twice. First it was our home and stock values. Then the government rewarded the banksters for their misdeeds by bailing out the banksters, not their victims, and putting the cost on the taxpayers’ books.
The government has also robbed the taxpayers of $3 trillion dollars to fight its wars. About $600 billion are out of pocket costs, and the rest is on the taxpayers’ books.
When foreign creditors look at the debt piled on the taxpayers’ books, they don’t see a good credit risk.
Washington is so accustomed to ripping off the taxpayers for the benefit of special interests that the practice is now in the DNA. While bailouts are being piled upon bailouts, wars are being piled upon wars.
Before Obama gets in any deeper, he must ask his economic team where the money is coming from. When he finds out, he needs to tell the rest of us.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21867.htm
Is America on the Brink of a Food Crisis?
By Robert Jensen, AlterNet
Posted on January 29, 2009, Printed on January 29, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/122822/
As everyone scrambles for a solution to the crises in the nation's economy, Wes Jackson suggests we look to nature's economy for some of the answers. With everyone focused on a stimulus package in the short term, he counsels that we pay more attention to the soil over the long haul.
"We live off of what comes out of the soil, not what's in the bank," said Jackson, president of the Land Institute. "If we squander the ecological capital of the soil, the capital on paper won't much matter."
Jackson doesn't minimize the threat of the current financial problems but argues that the new administration should consider a "50-year farm bill," which he and the writer/farmer Wendell Berry proposed in a New York Times op-ed earlier this month.
Central to such a bill would be soil. A plan for sustainable agriculture capable of producing healthful food has to come to solve the twin problems of soil erosion and contamination, said Jackson, who co-founded the research center in 1976 after leaving his job as a environmental studies professor at California State University, Sacramento.
Jackson believes that a key part of the solution is in approaches to growing food that mimic nature instead of trying to subdue it. While Jackson and his fellow researchers at the Land Institute continue their work on natural systems agriculture, he also ponders how to turn the possibilities into policy. He spoke with me from his office in Salina, Kansas.
Robert Jensen: This is a short-term culture, and federal policies typically are aimed at short-term results. Why the call for a farm bill that looks so far ahead, especially in tough economic times?
Wes Jackson: For the past 50 or 60 years, we have followed industrialized agricultural policies that have increased the rate of destruction of productive farmland. For those 50 or 60 years, we have let ourselves believe the absurd notion that as long as we have money we will have food. If we continue our offenses against the land and the labor by which we are fed, the food supply will decline, and we will have a problem far more complex than the failure of our paper economy.
We need to reverse that destructive process, which means recognizing the need for fundamental changes in the way agriculture is practiced. That requires thinking beyond the next quarterly earnings report of the agribusiness corporations and beyond this fiscal year of the feds. We need farm bills -- laid out in five-year segments, with a view to the next 50 years -- that can be mileposts for moving agriculture from an extractive to a renewable economy.
RJ: What are some of the key aspects of a long-term solution?
WJ: Support for soil conservation and protecting water resources have to be central. There needs to be funding for research on a different model for agriculture. And we have to avoid wasting any more resources on biofuels made from annual crops, especially corn, which is certain to exacerbate soil erosion, chemical contamination and a larger dead zone in the gulf.
RJ: But it is true that most people, including those in the new administration, are focused on short-term problems in the financial and industrial economy. Is there any chance people -- especially people in an overwhelmingly urban nation -- will pay attention right now?
WJ: Remember, if our agriculture is not sustainable then our food supply is not sustainable, and food is an issue as close to every one of us as our own stomachs. Either we pay attention or we pay a huge price, not so far down the road. When we face the fact that civilizations have destroyed themselves by destroying their farmland, it's clear that we don't really have a choice. Beyond that, changing the way agriculture is practiced would incorporate partial solutions to major problems that people do care about: climate change, overconsumption of energy, water problems. Yes, a 50-year bill is sensible right now.
RJ: What would such a 50-year plan look like? What are the key features?
WJ: We start by acknowledging the necessity of moving from an extractive, unsustainable economy to one that is renewable and sustainable, and the first place to look is to the production of the most basic commodity -- food. Once we face that necessity, we move to examining the possibilities for achieving this, recognizing that we have to act now while we still have slack, some room to move. Here's a sobering thought: If we don't achieve this sustainability first in agriculture, it's highly unlikely we will in any other sector of the economy and society. That's what makes this so imperative.
RJ: OK, start with the necessity: How is agriculture, as it is practiced today, an extractive enterprise that is unsustainable?
WJ: All organisms are carbon-based and in a constant search for energy-rich carbon. About 10,000 years ago, humans moved from gathering/hunting to agriculture, tapping into the first major pool of energy-rich carbon -- the soil. It was agriculture that allowed us effectively to mine, as well as waste, the soil's carbon and other soil-bound nutrients. Humans went on to exploit the carbon of the forests, coal, oil and natural gas. But through all that, we've continued to practice agriculture that led to soil erosion beyond natural replacement levels. That's the basic problem of agriculture.
Added to the problem of soil loss, the industrialization of agriculture has given us pollution by toxic chemicals, now universally present in our farmlands and streams. We have less soil and it is more degraded. We've masked that for years through the use of petrochemicals -- pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers. But that "solution" is no solution and is, in fact, part of the problem. There are no technological substitutes for healthy soil and no miraculous technological fixes for the problem of agriculture. We need to move past the industrial model and adopt an ecological model.
RJ: This concern about chemicals has led to increased support for organic agriculture. Is that the solution?
WJ: Organic agriculture is a start but by itself is insufficient. Eliminating the chemicals is only half the problem -- we still have to deal with soil erosion. Remember that we humans had organic agriculture until very recently, when we got industrial agriculture, and we still lost soil all along the way, for the last 10,000 years. There is good reason to believe we started the increase of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere about then (with the carbon compound of the soil being oxidized). It has only become a crisis in our time due to the scale increase of people and material and energy throughput.
RJ: OK, so organic alone isn't the answer. Isn't that where no-till or minimum-till farming comes in?
WJ: Those methods help deal with erosion, but as practiced today they require unacceptable levels of chemical inputs and end up eliminating biodiversity. Once again, it doesn't offer a way out of the extractive economy and the problem of contamination.
RJ: So, where does that leave us?
WJ: Let's go back to basics: The core of this idea is the marriage of agriculture and ecology. As Wendell [Berry] says, we need to take nature as the measure. We need to look to nature for models of how to manage ecosystems in a sustainable fashion. At the Land Institute, we think that leads to perennial polycultures. Instead of annual crops grown in monocultures on an industrial model, we are looking at perennials in mixtures, which we think can solve a number of problems regarding erosion and contamination.
RJ: Before I ask about the details, a basic question: Is that feasible, given the 6.5 billion people on the planet? Can such strategies focused on perennials produce enough food?
WJ: First, let's recognize that without fossil fuels, the industrial-agriculture strategies we have now could not feed even the current population, and population growth makes these changes more important than ever. As populations grow, there's increasing pressure to put more and more marginal land into production, which increases the rate of degradation. A new model is essential.
At the Land Institute, we've been working on perennializing the major crops and domesticating a few promising wild species. By increasing the use of mixtures of grain-bearing perennials, we can not only better protect the soil but also help reduce greenhouse gases, fossil-fuel use and toxic pollution. Carbon sequestration would increase, and the husbandry of water and soil nutrients would become much more efficient.
RJ: Let's assume that natural systems agriculture and similar projects hold the promise you suggest. Those practices will have to be implemented in the real world, which is structured by the larger extractive economy in capitalism, at a time of crisis -- some would say, even, a time of collapse. What has to happen to make that possible?
WJ: You're right that it's not just about plants and science; it's also about people and society. We think that protecting the soil is not only an ecological imperative but an opportunity for positive economic and cultural change as well. The proposals we're discussing would increase employment opportunities in agriculture -- sustainable farming will require more "eyes per acre," and replacing fossil-fuel energy with human energy and ecological knowledge makes good economic sense. With the reduced need for the hoe or plow, and land management relying more on fire and grazing, we draw on the naturalist instinct in nearly all of us, rather than presenting farm work as nothing but the "sweat of the brow" amid "thistles and thorns." This will be necessary to counter the longstanding denigration of the countryside and rural communities, which has been a feature of our so-called cosmopolitan culture.
We're seeing that on a small scale now, with more young farmers staying on the land, with creative new endeavors in community-supported agriculture. People recognize that life is more than working in a small cubicle and consuming in a big-box store. People are hungry for good food, and they're also hungry for a good life. People are ready to explore what it would mean to come home, not to a romanticized vision of the past but to a sustainable future.
RJ: How would a farm bill that you and Wendell might write differ from what we see today?
WJ: The farm bills we've had largely address exports, commodity problems, subsidies and food programs. They all involve here-and-now concerns. A 50-year farm bill represents a vision that stresses the need to protect soil from erosion, cut the wastefulness of water, cut fossil-fuel dependence, eliminate toxins in soil and water, manage carefully the nitrogen of the soil, reduce dead zones, restore an agrarian way of life and preserve farmland from development. The best way to accomplish most of these goals is to gradually increase the number of acres with perennial vegetation, first of all through rotations and increase in the number of grass-fed dairies sprinkled about the countryside, and second, through progress toward perennializing the major crops. A good bill could help farmers accomplish those things.
RJ: It's also likely that many people reading this will dismiss you as idealistic, as unrealistic. How would you answer that?
WJ: These are the same people who believe it's realistic to continue practices they know to be unsustainable. The basic choice is simple: Do we want to work at coming up with a system that can produce healthful food and healthy communities, one that is economically and ecologically viable? Or do we want to continue to contaminate our soil and water as we watch that soil continue to be eroded by that water? That contamination and erosion are both material reality and metaphor for our cultural and economic condition.
Look, I'm a scientist from the countryside, which means I have spent my life dealing with reality in research and on the farm. These are necessary and possible goals. Without the necessity, it may be considered grandiose. Without the possibility, it could be regarded as grandiose. The test for grandiosity, in my view, fails. As a nation, we are blessed with some of the world's best soils. Increasingly, city people want healthier and safer food. And we're at a political moment when everybody and his dog is talking about the need for change. So, let's get to it.
Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas, Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center. His latest book, All My Bones Shake: Radical Politics in the Prophetic Voice, will be published in 2009 by Soft Skull Press. He also is the author of Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (South End Press, 2007).
© 2009 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/122822/
Posted on January 29, 2009, Printed on January 29, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/122822/
As everyone scrambles for a solution to the crises in the nation's economy, Wes Jackson suggests we look to nature's economy for some of the answers. With everyone focused on a stimulus package in the short term, he counsels that we pay more attention to the soil over the long haul.
"We live off of what comes out of the soil, not what's in the bank," said Jackson, president of the Land Institute. "If we squander the ecological capital of the soil, the capital on paper won't much matter."
Jackson doesn't minimize the threat of the current financial problems but argues that the new administration should consider a "50-year farm bill," which he and the writer/farmer Wendell Berry proposed in a New York Times op-ed earlier this month.
Central to such a bill would be soil. A plan for sustainable agriculture capable of producing healthful food has to come to solve the twin problems of soil erosion and contamination, said Jackson, who co-founded the research center in 1976 after leaving his job as a environmental studies professor at California State University, Sacramento.
Jackson believes that a key part of the solution is in approaches to growing food that mimic nature instead of trying to subdue it. While Jackson and his fellow researchers at the Land Institute continue their work on natural systems agriculture, he also ponders how to turn the possibilities into policy. He spoke with me from his office in Salina, Kansas.
Robert Jensen: This is a short-term culture, and federal policies typically are aimed at short-term results. Why the call for a farm bill that looks so far ahead, especially in tough economic times?
Wes Jackson: For the past 50 or 60 years, we have followed industrialized agricultural policies that have increased the rate of destruction of productive farmland. For those 50 or 60 years, we have let ourselves believe the absurd notion that as long as we have money we will have food. If we continue our offenses against the land and the labor by which we are fed, the food supply will decline, and we will have a problem far more complex than the failure of our paper economy.
We need to reverse that destructive process, which means recognizing the need for fundamental changes in the way agriculture is practiced. That requires thinking beyond the next quarterly earnings report of the agribusiness corporations and beyond this fiscal year of the feds. We need farm bills -- laid out in five-year segments, with a view to the next 50 years -- that can be mileposts for moving agriculture from an extractive to a renewable economy.
RJ: What are some of the key aspects of a long-term solution?
WJ: Support for soil conservation and protecting water resources have to be central. There needs to be funding for research on a different model for agriculture. And we have to avoid wasting any more resources on biofuels made from annual crops, especially corn, which is certain to exacerbate soil erosion, chemical contamination and a larger dead zone in the gulf.
RJ: But it is true that most people, including those in the new administration, are focused on short-term problems in the financial and industrial economy. Is there any chance people -- especially people in an overwhelmingly urban nation -- will pay attention right now?
WJ: Remember, if our agriculture is not sustainable then our food supply is not sustainable, and food is an issue as close to every one of us as our own stomachs. Either we pay attention or we pay a huge price, not so far down the road. When we face the fact that civilizations have destroyed themselves by destroying their farmland, it's clear that we don't really have a choice. Beyond that, changing the way agriculture is practiced would incorporate partial solutions to major problems that people do care about: climate change, overconsumption of energy, water problems. Yes, a 50-year bill is sensible right now.
RJ: What would such a 50-year plan look like? What are the key features?
WJ: We start by acknowledging the necessity of moving from an extractive, unsustainable economy to one that is renewable and sustainable, and the first place to look is to the production of the most basic commodity -- food. Once we face that necessity, we move to examining the possibilities for achieving this, recognizing that we have to act now while we still have slack, some room to move. Here's a sobering thought: If we don't achieve this sustainability first in agriculture, it's highly unlikely we will in any other sector of the economy and society. That's what makes this so imperative.
RJ: OK, start with the necessity: How is agriculture, as it is practiced today, an extractive enterprise that is unsustainable?
WJ: All organisms are carbon-based and in a constant search for energy-rich carbon. About 10,000 years ago, humans moved from gathering/hunting to agriculture, tapping into the first major pool of energy-rich carbon -- the soil. It was agriculture that allowed us effectively to mine, as well as waste, the soil's carbon and other soil-bound nutrients. Humans went on to exploit the carbon of the forests, coal, oil and natural gas. But through all that, we've continued to practice agriculture that led to soil erosion beyond natural replacement levels. That's the basic problem of agriculture.
Added to the problem of soil loss, the industrialization of agriculture has given us pollution by toxic chemicals, now universally present in our farmlands and streams. We have less soil and it is more degraded. We've masked that for years through the use of petrochemicals -- pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers. But that "solution" is no solution and is, in fact, part of the problem. There are no technological substitutes for healthy soil and no miraculous technological fixes for the problem of agriculture. We need to move past the industrial model and adopt an ecological model.
RJ: This concern about chemicals has led to increased support for organic agriculture. Is that the solution?
WJ: Organic agriculture is a start but by itself is insufficient. Eliminating the chemicals is only half the problem -- we still have to deal with soil erosion. Remember that we humans had organic agriculture until very recently, when we got industrial agriculture, and we still lost soil all along the way, for the last 10,000 years. There is good reason to believe we started the increase of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere about then (with the carbon compound of the soil being oxidized). It has only become a crisis in our time due to the scale increase of people and material and energy throughput.
RJ: OK, so organic alone isn't the answer. Isn't that where no-till or minimum-till farming comes in?
WJ: Those methods help deal with erosion, but as practiced today they require unacceptable levels of chemical inputs and end up eliminating biodiversity. Once again, it doesn't offer a way out of the extractive economy and the problem of contamination.
RJ: So, where does that leave us?
WJ: Let's go back to basics: The core of this idea is the marriage of agriculture and ecology. As Wendell [Berry] says, we need to take nature as the measure. We need to look to nature for models of how to manage ecosystems in a sustainable fashion. At the Land Institute, we think that leads to perennial polycultures. Instead of annual crops grown in monocultures on an industrial model, we are looking at perennials in mixtures, which we think can solve a number of problems regarding erosion and contamination.
RJ: Before I ask about the details, a basic question: Is that feasible, given the 6.5 billion people on the planet? Can such strategies focused on perennials produce enough food?
WJ: First, let's recognize that without fossil fuels, the industrial-agriculture strategies we have now could not feed even the current population, and population growth makes these changes more important than ever. As populations grow, there's increasing pressure to put more and more marginal land into production, which increases the rate of degradation. A new model is essential.
At the Land Institute, we've been working on perennializing the major crops and domesticating a few promising wild species. By increasing the use of mixtures of grain-bearing perennials, we can not only better protect the soil but also help reduce greenhouse gases, fossil-fuel use and toxic pollution. Carbon sequestration would increase, and the husbandry of water and soil nutrients would become much more efficient.
RJ: Let's assume that natural systems agriculture and similar projects hold the promise you suggest. Those practices will have to be implemented in the real world, which is structured by the larger extractive economy in capitalism, at a time of crisis -- some would say, even, a time of collapse. What has to happen to make that possible?
WJ: You're right that it's not just about plants and science; it's also about people and society. We think that protecting the soil is not only an ecological imperative but an opportunity for positive economic and cultural change as well. The proposals we're discussing would increase employment opportunities in agriculture -- sustainable farming will require more "eyes per acre," and replacing fossil-fuel energy with human energy and ecological knowledge makes good economic sense. With the reduced need for the hoe or plow, and land management relying more on fire and grazing, we draw on the naturalist instinct in nearly all of us, rather than presenting farm work as nothing but the "sweat of the brow" amid "thistles and thorns." This will be necessary to counter the longstanding denigration of the countryside and rural communities, which has been a feature of our so-called cosmopolitan culture.
We're seeing that on a small scale now, with more young farmers staying on the land, with creative new endeavors in community-supported agriculture. People recognize that life is more than working in a small cubicle and consuming in a big-box store. People are hungry for good food, and they're also hungry for a good life. People are ready to explore what it would mean to come home, not to a romanticized vision of the past but to a sustainable future.
RJ: How would a farm bill that you and Wendell might write differ from what we see today?
WJ: The farm bills we've had largely address exports, commodity problems, subsidies and food programs. They all involve here-and-now concerns. A 50-year farm bill represents a vision that stresses the need to protect soil from erosion, cut the wastefulness of water, cut fossil-fuel dependence, eliminate toxins in soil and water, manage carefully the nitrogen of the soil, reduce dead zones, restore an agrarian way of life and preserve farmland from development. The best way to accomplish most of these goals is to gradually increase the number of acres with perennial vegetation, first of all through rotations and increase in the number of grass-fed dairies sprinkled about the countryside, and second, through progress toward perennializing the major crops. A good bill could help farmers accomplish those things.
RJ: It's also likely that many people reading this will dismiss you as idealistic, as unrealistic. How would you answer that?
WJ: These are the same people who believe it's realistic to continue practices they know to be unsustainable. The basic choice is simple: Do we want to work at coming up with a system that can produce healthful food and healthy communities, one that is economically and ecologically viable? Or do we want to continue to contaminate our soil and water as we watch that soil continue to be eroded by that water? That contamination and erosion are both material reality and metaphor for our cultural and economic condition.
Look, I'm a scientist from the countryside, which means I have spent my life dealing with reality in research and on the farm. These are necessary and possible goals. Without the necessity, it may be considered grandiose. Without the possibility, it could be regarded as grandiose. The test for grandiosity, in my view, fails. As a nation, we are blessed with some of the world's best soils. Increasingly, city people want healthier and safer food. And we're at a political moment when everybody and his dog is talking about the need for change. So, let's get to it.
Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas, Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center. His latest book, All My Bones Shake: Radical Politics in the Prophetic Voice, will be published in 2009 by Soft Skull Press. He also is the author of Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (South End Press, 2007).
© 2009 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/122822/
Berlusconi criticized over rape comments
Posted on Sun, Jan. 25, 2009
The Associated Press
Premier Silvio Berlusconi sparked outrage Sunday for suggesting that Italy's women were so beautiful they needed military escorts to avoid being raped.
Berlusconi made the comments in response to questions about his proposal to deploy 300,000 soldiers in the streets to fight crime. A series of violent attacks, including a rape in Rome on New Year's Eve and another outside the capital this week, have put pressure on the government to crack down on crime.
But Berlusconi said that, even in a militarized state, crimes like rape can happen. "You can't consider deploying a force that would be sufficient to prevent the risk," the ANSA and Apcom news agencies quoted him as saying. "We would have to have so many soldiers because our women are so beautiful."
Opposition lawmakers denounced the comments.
Giovanna Melandri of the opposition Democratic Party said Berlusconi's comments were "profoundly offensive," saying the pain of rape could never be joked about in such a way.
Berlusconi, in an effort to explain himself, said he was complimenting Italian women "because there are only about 100,000 people in law enforcement, while there are millions of beautiful women."
He stressed that rape was a serious and "disgraceful" crime. But he added that people should never forget a sense of "levity and good humor" whenever his comments are concerned.
Berlusconi, a billionaire media-mogul-turned politician, has a history of gaffes. He courted controversy when he compared a German politician to a Nazi camp guard and when he said, shortly after 9/11, that Western civilization was superior to Islam.
http://www.kansascity.com/451/v-print/story/1000429.html
The Associated Press
Premier Silvio Berlusconi sparked outrage Sunday for suggesting that Italy's women were so beautiful they needed military escorts to avoid being raped.
Berlusconi made the comments in response to questions about his proposal to deploy 300,000 soldiers in the streets to fight crime. A series of violent attacks, including a rape in Rome on New Year's Eve and another outside the capital this week, have put pressure on the government to crack down on crime.
But Berlusconi said that, even in a militarized state, crimes like rape can happen. "You can't consider deploying a force that would be sufficient to prevent the risk," the ANSA and Apcom news agencies quoted him as saying. "We would have to have so many soldiers because our women are so beautiful."
Opposition lawmakers denounced the comments.
Giovanna Melandri of the opposition Democratic Party said Berlusconi's comments were "profoundly offensive," saying the pain of rape could never be joked about in such a way.
Berlusconi, in an effort to explain himself, said he was complimenting Italian women "because there are only about 100,000 people in law enforcement, while there are millions of beautiful women."
He stressed that rape was a serious and "disgraceful" crime. But he added that people should never forget a sense of "levity and good humor" whenever his comments are concerned.
Berlusconi, a billionaire media-mogul-turned politician, has a history of gaffes. He courted controversy when he compared a German politician to a Nazi camp guard and when he said, shortly after 9/11, that Western civilization was superior to Islam.
http://www.kansascity.com/451/v-print/story/1000429.html
French strike nationwide over economic crisis
Thu Jan 29, 2009 6:37am EST
By Estelle Shirbon
PARIS (Reuters) - Hundreds of thousands of French workers staged a nationwide strike on Thursday to try to force President Nicolas Sarkozy and business leaders to do more to protect jobs and wages during the economic crisis.
The strike, in a country with a strong protest culture, aimed to highlight fears over growing unemployment, discontent over Sarkozy's reluctance to help consumers and resentment toward bankers blamed for the economic slump.
It was the first such protest linked to the slump in a major industrialized nation and was backed by the majority of French voters, according to opinion polls.
It did not however paralyze activity as past strikes in France have done. The "black Thursday" announced by media beforehand did not quite materialize.
One in three schoolteachers and one in four staffers at the post office and the electricity company EDF walked off the job, and participation was high in many parts of the public transport network with erratic train, tram and bus services.
The strike cut 11,000 megawatts in power capacity, unions said, but EDF said supplies to customers would not be disrupted.
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE50S1MX20090129
By Estelle Shirbon
PARIS (Reuters) - Hundreds of thousands of French workers staged a nationwide strike on Thursday to try to force President Nicolas Sarkozy and business leaders to do more to protect jobs and wages during the economic crisis.
The strike, in a country with a strong protest culture, aimed to highlight fears over growing unemployment, discontent over Sarkozy's reluctance to help consumers and resentment toward bankers blamed for the economic slump.
It was the first such protest linked to the slump in a major industrialized nation and was backed by the majority of French voters, according to opinion polls.
It did not however paralyze activity as past strikes in France have done. The "black Thursday" announced by media beforehand did not quite materialize.
One in three schoolteachers and one in four staffers at the post office and the electricity company EDF walked off the job, and participation was high in many parts of the public transport network with erratic train, tram and bus services.
The strike cut 11,000 megawatts in power capacity, unions said, but EDF said supplies to customers would not be disrupted.
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE50S1MX20090129
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