GOOD: If Mos Def Were President

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udwTkU1QKPc&feature=channel

VIDEO: Protesters Swarm Wall St. Lobbyists' Homes

— By Andy Kroll

| Sun May. 16, 2010 4:31 PM PDT

— Demonstrators occupy the front lawn at the house of Gregory Baer, a top lobbyist for Bank of America. Photo by Andy Kroll.

Late Sunday afternoon, the well-heeled residents of Chevy Chase, Maryland, a bucolic suburb northwest of Washington, DC, witnessed a commotion rare for their neighborhood. Toting signs and megaphones, fired up and chanting at the top of their lungs, some 700 demonstrators from around the nation paid a visit to two residents who work as powerful lobbyists for the United States' biggest banks: Gregory Baer, a deputy counsel for Bank of America, and Peter Scher, a high-ranking executive and lobbyist for JPMorgan Chase.

Bussed into Washington by the Service International Employees Union (SEIU) and National People’s Action (NPA), a community organzing network, the protesters visited Baer's and Scher’s homes as part of a multi-day stand in Washington. On Monday, SEIU and NPA will lead a series of protests on K Street in Washington—a street synonymous with influence and lobbying. The groups are pushing for strong new financial reforms (as teh Senate continues debating legislation to bolster the rules governing Wall Street) and urging banks to stop foreclosures and to promote job creation.

But before Main Street arrives on K Street, a fleet of yellow school buses and motor coaches delivered the demonstrators, clad in red, blue, and purple t-shirts, to a park in Chevy Chase near the home of Bank of America’s Baer. After a quick briefing, the throngs of protesters, hailing from Chicago, San Francisco, Staten Island, and other locales, gathered on Baer’s front lawn and marched to his front door. Members of NPA delivered a letter to a family member who opened the door. Baer, this family member said, wasn’t home. The letter, addressed to Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, asks Moynihan to meet with groups "to address the critical problems facing our neighborhoods and our country—problems that were caused in part by Bank of America and that continue to fester due to Bank of America’s inaction."

Here's a video, courtesy of National People's Action, of the scene at Baer's home:

Undeterred by Baer’s absence, the boisterous group chanted—"Bank of America, Bad for America," "Take It Back," "Fired Up, Can’t Take It No More"—and, via megaphone, blasted Bank of America for foreclosing on homeowners and lobbying against financial reform. One woman who took the mic explained how she’d called Bank of America dozens of times to fight off foreclosure but hadn’t had any success with the bank’s unresponsive and unhelpful employees. People in the crowd booed references to the bank. Many hoisted signs that read, "People First Economy”"and "Hold Wall Street Accountable."

Just as the crowd was about to leave around 4:15 pm, Baer, in a baseball cap and shorts, strode up his front lawn and into the crowd. Baer briefly spoke with one of the protest's organizers, declined to say much at all, then ducked into his house. The crowd hung around Baer’s house for another 25 minutes, their chants drawing curious (and agitated) neighbors onto their porches. Then they left for their second stop of the day.

Protesters crowd in front of JPMorgan Chase lobbyist Peter Scher's house in Chevy Chase, Md. Photo by Andy Kroll.A 15-minute ride later, the buses arrived at the stately home of JPMorgan lobbyist Peter Scher. Like the previous demonstration, people poured out of the buses and quickly filed onto the neatly manicured front lawn and rushed Scher’s red front door. This time, no one answered, despite repeated demands by the Rev. Eugene Barnes from Illinois People’s Action. At Scher’s house, Montgomery County police nudged protesters off the lawn onto a nearby street, where the speeches and chanting and banging of drums continued. (One of the officers said the event was "very peaceful.")

A handful of protesters walked to neighboring houses and handed fliers criticizing Scher and JPMorgan to neighbors watching the scene. On the street, Mark Freeman, a Minneapolis resident and lifelong union member, told of battling Bank of America, which was attempting to foreclose on his modest home in north Minneapolis. "It’s time that we repossess America," Freeman shouted into the megaphone.

As the sun sank lower in the sky, the activists returned to the buses and headed to their hotels. On Monday, their target is a more obvious one: K Street, the Rodeo Drive of Washington lobbying shops, where they will protest Wall Street's influence-peddlers' attempts to whittle down financial reform.

Andy Kroll is a reporter at Mother Jones. For more of his stories, click here. Email him with tips and insights at akroll (at) motherjones (dot) com.

http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/05/main-street-battles-wall-street-seiu-npa-gregory-baer-peter-scher-jpmorgan-chase-bank-of-america?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Motherjones%2Fmojoblog+%28MotherJones.com+|+MoJoBlog%29

Goldman Sachs Publicly Supports Financial Reform, But Fights It With Lobbyists

Huffington Post Investigative Fund
Adele Hampton
First Posted: 05-17-10 09:22 AM   |   
Updated: 05-17-10 10:24 AM

For all of Goldman Sachs' professed support for an overhaul of financial regulations, the megabank hasn't exactly withdrawn its army of lobbyists. Far from wearing out its welcome, the firm is busier than ever safeguarding its interests while a Wall Street crackdown takes shape in Washington.

Goldman has an unrivaled and influential network of lobbyists, including about 50 people with close ties to Congress and past White Houses, a Huffington Post Investigative Fund analysis of lobbying and campaign records shows. The lobbyists are challenging reforms aimed at Goldman's profit centers, including the trading of complex contracts known as derivatives. The Senate this week will continue debating proposed regulations of derivatives, which are blamed for fueling the financial crisis.

Perceptions of Goldman's role in the crisis, along with a civil fraud case brought against the bank last month by the Securities and Exchange Commission, have already spurred predictions of a less dominant future. But all is not lost for Goldman, which still stands out as perhaps the most influential of the nation's top six banks -- a remarkable feat given a crowded field of well-connected institutions.

Goldman's professional persuaders hail from 14 different lobbying firms, Senate lobbying records show. No other top bank -- not JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo or Citigroup -- has as many firms lobbying on its behalf. Goldman has hired nearly 40 lobbyists, all former government employees, to target financial reform alone, Senate disclosure records show.

These services have not come cheaply. Since the beginning of 2009, Goldman has spent nearly $6 million on lobbying, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. Only Citigroup and JPMorgan spent more.

So far this year, Goldman has revved up its lobbying even further. In the first three months of 2010, the bank spent $1.53 million lobbying, a 22 percent jump over the same period last year. Goldman also has increased its donations to political campaigns.

 "It does show how a corporation will leave no stone unturned -- creating a powerful and potentially influential lobbying force," said Ellen Miller, co-founder and executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington-based nonprofit organization that advocates for greater disclosure of how Washington works and is influenced.

To be sure, Goldman isn't the only investment bank with a sophisticated lobbying operation, and pro-financial reform groups have attacked them all. Last week, three liberal advocacy groups said they had tallied the amount of money big banks are spending to influence financial reform: An estimated $600 million on lobbying and political campaign contributions since the government bailed out Bear Stearns in March 2008, and a lobbying force of more than 240 former government officials and Capitol Hill staffers. (Labor groups today will take to the lobbying industry's venerable K Street corridor in Washington to protest the prominent role lobbyists are playing in the financial reform debate.)

Most of Goldman's lobbying is done through an internal firm, The Goldman Sachs Group.
Leading the group is Michael Paese, who was deputy staff director of the House Financial Services Committee until September 2008. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the committee, has prohibited Paese from lobbying the committee for two years. He did so to prevent Paese from influencing the House's Wall Street reform bill, which Frank largely crafted. Paese can still lobby other lawmakers, the White House and government agencies.

Paese and his group have indeed cast a wide net, lobbying the House, the Senate, the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, records examined by the Investigative Fund show. Last year, in the wake of the financial crisis, the group zeroed in on Congress' impending overhaul of Wall Street. They lobbied on financial reform issues each quarter, records show.  

A Goldman spokeswoman declined to comment for this story and several Goldman lobbyists did not return calls seeking comment. Without speaking to the lobbyists, it can be hard to tell exactly what they are arguing for or where they stand, because of the vagueness of lobbying disclosure reports.

Public statements suggest that, on the face of it, Goldman appears to support reform. "I think, on the whole, financial reform is absolutely essential," Goldman's Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein told the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations last month. "America will be a big beneficiary" from reform, he predicted, though he added, "we will as well."

But some congressional staffers note that big banks are vigorously opposed to reforming their profit-making ways.  

The legislation is "especially tough on Wall Street," said Steve Adamske, a spokesman for the financial services committee. "They've all come to talk to us, and none of them like the bill."

Financial reform legislation, in particular some proposed regulations of derivatives, could hit Goldman especially hard.

Derivatives protect companies from the risks of investing in stocks, commodities and mortgage-related securities, among other items. In the lead up to the 2008 financial collapse, Goldman would sometimes sell risky mortgage-related securities to investors, use derivatives to bet that the securities would fail and profit when they did.

At the hearing last month, Blankfein said he supported new derivatives rules, which for the first time would bring much of the $600 trillion private market onto regulated exchanges and clearinghouses.

"While derivatives are an important tool to help companies and financial institutions manage their risk, we need more transparency for the public and regulators as well as safeguards in the system for their use," Blankfein said.

But Senate disclosure records show that Goldman's lobbyists have paid close attention to proposed derivatives regulations during the past year. After all, the bank could lose 41 percent of its profits if the new derivatives regulations pass, according to a new report by Bernstein Research.

One controversial provision in the bill would prohibit banks from trading derivatives altogether, which could cost Goldman billions of dollars in revenue. The plan would force banks to spin off their derivatives trading into separate entities. This idea came from Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), chairwoman of the Senate Agricultural Committee, which passed a derivatives reform bill last month.

Goldman executives and lobbyists met with Lincoln last month to voice their objection to her proposal, according to news reports. Goldman also planned to host a campaign fundraiser in New York for Lincoln, who is facing a fierce primary challenge Tuesday. After the SEC filed its fraud case against Goldman, Lincoln canceled the fundraiser and said she wouldn't take any more cash from the bank. Goldman executives and the bank's political action committee have given about $2.4 million to federal candidates during the last two years, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Meanwhile, Goldman's arsenal of lobbyists -- a collection of former White House staffers, SEC employees and congressional committee aides -- has provided the bank with direct access to lawmakers.

Paese answers to Faryar Shirzad, head of global government affairs for the Goldman Sachs Group. Shirzad was a top economic and national security aide to President George W. Bush. The group also employs Ken Connolly, a former staff director for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee; Joyce Brayboy, a former chief of staff for Rep. Melvin Watt (D-N.C.); and Joe Wall, a former deputy assistant for legislative affairs under former Vice President Dick Cheney.

Goldman also hired 13 outside lobbying firms, according to Senate lobbying disclosure forms. These lobbyists include former House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt; Stephen Elmendorf, Gephardt's former adviser; Ken Duberstien, former chief of staff to President Ronald Reagan; and Janice O'Connell, former adviser to Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. Goldman also has tapped Harold Ford Sr., a former Democratic congressman from Tennessee and Daniel Meyer, former chief of staff to then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.

The bank, once nicknamed "Government Sachs," has a long tradition of swapping employees with the federal government, including Treasury Secretaries Henry Paulson and Robert Rubin. Elena Kagan, the U.S. solicitor general and recent nominee to the Supreme Court, served on a Goldman advisory council from 2005 to 2008. 

Goldman has also gained influence by hiring a series of Washington insiders who technically aren't lobbyists. In April, Goldman hired communications specialist Mark Fabiani, known as the "Master of Disaster" for his handling of public relations crises. The bank also hired veteran New York Times reporter Stephen Labaton, who wrote about regulatory issues. Labaton, who also is a lawyer, serves as a full-time consultant and reports to Blankfein.

Although Goldman's influence troops have largely focused on banking issues, the bank has also lobbied the House and Senate over transportation infrastructure legislation and renewable energy tax incentives for wind and solar power.

Goldman's lobbyists last year also aimed to influence the Treasury Department as it decided whether to allow the bank to pay back $10 billion in bailout funds received in 2008. In April of last year, the bank paid back the money in order to shake off compensation and hiring restrictions imposed on banks that took government aid. The bank expressed its "disapproval" of these restrictions, according to last year's lobbying records.

Goldman's more immediate concern, meanwhile, is the SEC's accusations of fraud and potential criminal charges that could ensue from that case.

In response to the commission's accusations, Goldman is beefing up its legal team. The megabank is projected to hire Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, a prominent corporate law firm, according to a Financial Times report. An SEC spokesman said he could not comment if Goldman, after hearing about the civil fraud investigation, dispatched lobbyists to dissuade the commission from pursuing the case.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/17/goldman-sachs-publicly-su_n_578434.html?view=print

Oceans’ fish could disappear in 40 years: UN

By Agence France-Presse
Monday, May 17th, 2010 -- 1:43 pm

The world faces the nightmare possibility of fishless oceans by 2050 without fundamental restructuring of the fishing industry, UN experts said Monday.

"If the various estimates we have received... come true, then we are in the situation where 40 years down the line we, effectively, are out of fish," Pavan Sukhdev, head of the UN Environment Program's green economy initiative, told journalists in New York.

A Green Economy report due later this year by UNEP and outside experts argues this disaster can be avoided if subsidies to fishing fleets are slashed and fish are given protected zones -- ultimately resulting in a thriving industry.

The report, which was opened to preview Monday, also assesses how surging global demand in other key areas including energy and fresh water can be met while preventing ecological destruction around the planet.

UNEP director Achim Steiner said the world was "drawing down to the very capital" on which it relies.

However, "our institutions, our governments are perfectly capable of changing course, as we have seen with the extraordinary uptake of interest. Around, I think it is almost 30 countries now have engaged with us directly, and there are many others revising the policies on the green economy," he said.

Collapse of fish stocks is not only an environmental matter.

One billion people, mostly from poorer countries, rely on fish as their main animal protein source, according to the UN.

The Green Economy report estimates there are 35 million people fishing around the world on 20 million boats. About 170 million jobs depend directly or indirectly on the sector, bringing the total web of people financially linked to 520 million.

According to the UN, 30 percent of fish stocks have already collapsed, meaning they yield less than 10 percent of their former potential, while virtually all fisheries risk running out of commercially viable catches by 2050.

The main scourge, the UNEP report says, are government subsidies encouraging ever bigger fishing fleets chasing ever fewer fish -- with little attempt to allow the fish populations to recover.

Fishing fleet capacity is "50 to 60 percent" higher than it should be, Sukhdev said.

"What is scarce here is fish," he said, calling for an increase in the stock of fish, not the stock of fishing capacity."

Creating marine preservation areas to allow female fish to grow to full size, thereby hugely increasing their fertility, is one vital solution, the report says.

Another is restructuring the fishing fleets to favor smaller boats that -- once fish stocks recover -- would be able to land bigger catches.

"We believe solutions are on hand, but we believe political will and clear economics are required," Sukhdev said.

http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0517/oceans-fish-disappear-40-years/

Class Warfare: Hundreds Protest Outside Bankers' Houses In DC

First Posted: 05-16-10 08:00 PM   |   Updated: 05-17-10 08:58 AM

Huge raucous crowds converged outside bank employees' houses on Sunday afternoon to demand banks stop lobbying against Wall Street reform.

"Bank of America: bad for America!" shouted community leaders outside the house of Bank of America general counsel Gregory Baer.

The Chicago-based grassroots organization National People's Action, in coordination with the SEIU, bused more than 700 workers from 20 states to Baer's neighborhood, one of the wealthiest corners of Washington. The action kicks off several days of protests targeting K Street for lobbyists' role in financial reform.

Baer himself apparently tried to blend in with the crowd until a neighbor outed him. The mob booed loudly as he walked into his house. "I don't have time for you," he said, according to Trenda Kennedy of Springfield, Ill. who used a bullhorn to tell the crowd about her trouble getting a mortgage modification from Baer's bank.

Kennedy told HuffPost she'd been making reduced monthly payments thanks to a trial modification via the Home Affordable Modification Program. She said that when the bank turned her down for a permanent mod, she was told she still owed all the money she'd been paying during the trial. She said she's been notified of several sheriff's sale dates but has somehow managed to keep her home.

"Every time I'm inches away from losing my house, by some miracle it's been pushed off," said Kennedy, who is a member of Illinois People's Action.

Passersby and dogwalkers smiled at the sight of people gathered all over Baer's lawn and blocking the road. Baer's neighbor from across the street won little sympathy when he angrily yelled at protesters for waking up his two-year-old daughter. Kennedy was one of several people who used a bullhorn to tell personal bank horror stories.

Baer, formerly a senior official at the Treasury department, is a lawyer for the bank's regulator and public policy legal group. Bank of America declined to comment.

"Bank of America came to the homes of everyday Americans when you spread predatory loans in neighborhoods across, the country, when you financed payday-lending storefronts, when your reckless behavior sent the economy to the brink of disaster, and when your bank-owned properties littered neighborhoods from coast to coast," said a letter the group asked Baer to deliver to CEO Brian Moynihan. "You've created a historic mess and have been unreceptive to very polite, very formal and very consistent requests to fix the problems you helped create."

The group also protested outside the house of Peter Scher, a lobbyist for JPMorgan Chase. Nobody answered the door.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/16/class-warfare-hundreds-pr_n_578015.html?view=print

Genetically Modified

By Layla Anwar

07 May, 2010

Arab Woman Blues

Some years ago, I knew a Western woman...she was was not exactly a friend, more like an acquaintance, a friend of a good friend of mine. Anyways, this woman I will call her Marion, was newly wed and she and her husband were very much looking forward to having a baby.

When Marion got pregnant, after careful planning, because Westerners love to plan everything right down to the last cent -- she had all the medical care she needed. Tests, ultrasounds and the rest....and during her 4th month of pregnancy she underwent the usual exam to determine that her baby was a healthy fetus.

Marion was devastated when her doctor informed her that her baby had some genetic deformity and she had to undergo an abortion. Marion then lapsed into a severe depression despite the fact that her doctor assured her that she can still have healthy babies in the future, she'd panic at the thought of getting pregnant again and her marital relation suffered a severe blow which ended up in a divorce...

During her grieving period, her friends and family showed her the utmost support...everyone sympathized with her losing a 4 month old fetus, empathy overflowed, so did the pampering, and the endless sessions with specialized psychiatrists who tried their best to help Marion overcome her grief...

It was a big deal...very big deal...how could nature deal such a fate to Marion - everyone wondered...and I saw heads shake in disbelief at this cruelty...and heard the exclamations of horrified indignation, for one pregnancy gone awry.

I felt - well yes it is sad, but it is not the end of the world. She's lucky she found out in mid pregnancy instead of waiting till delivery and she's still young and in good health, she has access to medical services, she lives in a healthy environment, she has a good diet, she has support, and she can get pregnant again...

The fuss was overdone in my opinion...but then Westerners care so much about life, healthy babies, healthy families, and their absolute right to have all of the above in the best conditions possible...

Years passed, I don't know what happened to spoiled Marion, maybe she conceived again, maybe she's still getting over the fact that she had to terminate a pregnancy because of some nature's mishap...but what I do know on the other hand -- is that thousands of Iraqi mothers are being asked not to get pregnant at all...

The latest I heard and it is unofficial, is that in Basra, doctors are advising women not to get pregnant for the next 25 years. Basra being an enclave of the shiite government, no one dares publicly announce that. It just circulates in secret among the newly wed...

In Falluja on the other hand, it is official --women are publicly advised not to have any babies, no number of years are indicated -- it is assumed for a long, long time...

The reason for this pregnancy dissuasion stems from the fact that the West who cares so much about its own little infants, had absolutely no qualms into pouring tons of lethal chemicals as in Weapons of Mass Destruction over the people of Basra and Falluja --to name but a few...chemical weapons like depleted uranium and phosphorus which caused cancer rates to soar among children and which produced the most ugly looking monsters -- genetically modified by "freedom and democracy"...

The mothers of Falluja and Basra don't have the luxury of some Marion...and their little Frankensteins are not a product of some odd nature's mishap.. no. Their little ones have been planned and conceived in Washington DC and 10 Downing Street. Their are the fruit of the West. The West's labor...and our pangs.

No one will fuss over the Iraqi mothers, nor will they receive the satin gloved support and empathy like Marion did...they will just lie in that delivery room, assuming there is one...and expel one monster after another...made in America and Great Britain.

But you see there is one thing that probably escapes you...these monstrous infants, these deformed babies -- not of nature but of your "civilization" -- are only a reflection of you own ugliness...in themselves these infants are beautiful...and in yourselves, you are just plain hideous.

http://www.countercurrents.org/anwar070510.htm

Fears for crops as shock figures from America show scale of bee catastrophe

The world may be on the brink of biological disaster after news that a third of US bee colonies did not survive the winter

Alison Benjamin
The Observer,
Sunday 2 May 2010

Honey bees are vital insect pollinators, responsible for the healthy development of many of the world’s major food crops. Photograph: David Silverman/Getty Images

Disturbing evidence that honeybees are in terminal decline has emerged from the United States where, for the fourth year in a row, more than a third of colonies have failed to survive the winter.

The decline of the country's estimated 2.4 million beehives began in 2006, when a phenomenon dubbed colony collapse disorder (CCD) led to the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of colonies. Since then more than three million colonies in the US and billions of honeybees worldwide have died and scientists are no nearer to knowing what is causing the catastrophic fall in numbers.

The number of managed honeybee colonies in the US fell by 33.8% last winter, according to the annual survey by the Apiary Inspectors of America and the US government's Agricultural Research Service (ARS).

The collapse in the global honeybee population is a major threat to crops. It is estimated that a third of everything we eat depends upon honeybee pollination, which means that bees contribute some £26bn to the global economy.

Potential causes range from parasites, such as the bloodsucking varroa mite, to viral and bacterial infections, pesticides and poor nutrition stemming from intensive farming methods. The disappearance of so many colonies has also been dubbed "Mary Celeste syndrome" due to the absence of dead bees in many of the empty hives.

US scientists have found 121 different pesticides in samples of bees, wax and pollen, lending credence to the notion that pesticides are a key problem. "We believe that some subtle interactions between nutrition, pesticide exposure and other stressors are converging to kill colonies," said Jeffery Pettis, of the ARS's bee research laboratory.

A global review of honeybee deaths by the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) reported last week that there was no one single cause, but pointed the finger at the "irresponsible use" of pesticides that may damage bee health and make them more susceptible to diseases. Bernard Vallat, the OIE's director-general, warned: "Bees contribute to global food security, and their extinction would represent a terrible biological disaster."

Dave Hackenberg of Hackenberg Apiaries, the Pennsylvania-based commercial beekeeper who first raised the alarm about CCD, said that last year had been the worst yet for bee losses, with 62% of his 2,600 hives dying between May 2009 and April 2010. "It's getting worse," he said. "The AIA survey doesn't give you the full picture because it is only measuring losses through the winter. In the summer the bees are exposed to lots of pesticides. Farmers mix them together and no one has any idea what the effects might be."

Pettis agreed that losses in some commercial operations are running at 50% or greater. "Continued losses of this magnitude are not economically sustainable for commercial beekeepers," he said, adding that a solution may be years away. "Look at Aids, they have billions in research dollars and a causative agent and still no cure. Research takes time and beehives are complex organisms."

In the UK it is still too early to judge how Britain's estimated 250,000 honeybee colonies have fared during the long winter. Tim Lovett, president of the British Beekeepers' Association, said: "Anecdotally, it is hugely variable. There are reports of some beekeepers losing almost a third of their hives and others losing none." Results from a survey of the association's 15,000 members are expected this month.

John Chapple, chairman of the London Beekeepers' Association, put losses among his 150 members at between a fifth and a quarter. Eight of his 36 hives across the capital did not survive. "There are still a lot of mysterious disappearances," he said. "We are no nearer to knowing what is causing them."

Bee farmers in Scotland have reported losses on the American scale for the past three years. Andrew Scarlett, a Perthshire-based bee farmer and honey packer, lost 80% of his 1,200 hives this winter. But he attributed the massive decline to a virulent bacterial infection that quickly spread because of a lack of bee inspectors, coupled with sustained poor weather that prevented honeybees from building up sufficient pollen and nectar stores.

The government's National Bee Unit has always denied the existence of CCD in Britain, despite honeybee losses of 20% during the winter of 2008-09 and close to a third the previous year. It attributes the demise to the varroa mite – which is found in almost every UK hive – and rainy summers that stop bees foraging for food.

In a hard-hitting report last year, the National Audit Office suggested that amateur beekeepers who failed to spot diseases in bees were a threat to honeybees' survival and called for the National Bee Unit to carry out more inspections and train more beekeepers. Last summer MPs on the influential cross-party public accounts committee called on the government to fund more research into what it called the "alarming" decline of honeybees.

The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has contributed £2.5m towards a £10m fund for research on pollinators. The public accounts committee has called for a significant proportion of this funding to be "ring-fenced" for honeybees. Decisions on which research projects to back are expected this month.

WHY BEES MATTER

Flowering plants require insects for pollination. The most effective is the honeybee, which pollinates 90 commercial crops worldwide. As well as most fruits and vegetables – including apples, oranges, strawberries, onions and carrots – they pollinate nuts, sunflowers and oil-seed rape. Coffee, soya beans, clovers – like alfafa, which is used for cattle feed – and even cotton are all dependent on honeybee pollination to increase yields.

In the UK alone, honeybee pollination is valued at £200m. Mankind has been managing and transporting bees for centuries to pollinate food and produce honey, nature's natural sweetener and antiseptic. Their extinction would mean not only a colourless, meatless diet of cereals and rice, and cottonless clothes, but a landscape without orchards, allotments and meadows of wildflowers – and the collapse of the food chain that sustains wild birds and animals.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/may/02/food-fear-mystery-beehives-collapse

Saudi-Funded Fox News Rejects Ad Arguing Against Middle East Oil Dependence

Last week, progressive veterans organization VoteVets.org released an ad arguing that “a clean energy climate plan would cut our dependence on foreign oil in half and cut oil profits for hostile nations.” The ad asserts that “every day, Iran gets $100 million richer selling oil around the world and peddling hate.”

While CNN and MSNBC have aired the ad, Fox News is refusing to do so. Politico reports Fox apparently found the ad “too confusing.” Watch the “confusing” ad:

There is nothing confusing about the ad. VoteVets’ assertion that hostile nations profit off our oil dependence is based on a Wonk Room analysis that finds, under the a strong carbon cap regime which restrains U.S. appetite for oil, Iran would lose $1.8 trillion worth of oil revenues over the next forty years — or, over $100 million a day. “If the world moves away from oil dependence, Iran’s regime will no longer be able to rely on petrodollars to stay afloat,” Brad Johnson writes in pretty simple terms.

In a statement issued to ThinkProgress, Richard Smith, a senior adviser to VoteVets who served in Afghanistan, says “the only confusing thing” is why Fox is rejecting the ad:

“There’s nothing confusing about the link between oil and terrorist funding, and even the most dyed-in-the-wool neocons agree on that point. The only confusing thing here is why FOX News would reject an ad that calls on Congress to defund our enemies by finding new sources of energy.”

It’s unclear what Fox News’ motivations are. As Media Matters has documented, the network is a reliable source of misinformation on clean energy reform. Interestingly, Saudi oil tycoon Prince Alwaleed bin Talal owns a 7 percent stake in Fox News’ parent company News Corp, making him the largest shareholder outside the family of CEO Rupert Murdoch. But Murdoch has said the he is for a mandatory cap on carbon emissions and believes that Fox News ought to be covering the issue differently.

http://thinkprogress.org/2010/05/05/saudi-fox-clean-energy-ad/

Media Ignore The Fact That Man Who Alerted Police To Failed Times Square Bombing Is A Muslim Immigrant

The chief suspect in the case of the failed Times Square car bombing is Pakistani-American Faisal Shahzad, who has confessed to the plot. Much of the media has latched onto Shahzad’s Muslim faith and his Pakistani identity, making inflammatory remarks and suggestions about Muslims and Pakistanis:

– CNN contributor and Redstate.com blogger Erick Erickson complained that the words “muslim” and “Islam” are “not mentioned” enough in stories about Shahzad. He wrote, “It really is pathetic that you’re more likely to see the words “racist” and “Republican” together in the newspaper these days than “terrorism” and “Islam.” [5/4/2010]

– Hate radio host Neal Boortz tweeted, “OMG! The Times Square Bomber is a Muslim! Shocker! Who would have believed it?” [5/4/2010]

– The cover of today’s Washington Post-published Express features a black-and-white photo of Shahzad with the sensationalist headline “MADE IN PAKISTAN” [5/5/2010]

Yet one fact being ignored in the American media’s sensationalist narrative about the failed bombing is that the man who was responsible for police finding the bomb was Muslim. The UK’s Times Online reports that Aliou Niasse, a Senagalese Muslim immigrant who works as a photograph vendor on Times Square, was the first to bring the smoking car to the police’s attention:

Aliou Niasse, a street vendor selling framed photographs of New York, said that he was the first to spot the car containing the bomb, which pulled up right in front of his cart on the corner of 45th street and Broadway next to the Marriott hotel.

“I didn’t see the car pull up or notice the driver because I was busy with customers. But when I looked up I saw that smoke appeared to be coming from the car. This would have been around 6.30pm.”

“I thought I should call 911, but my English is not very good and I had no credit left on my phone, so I walked over to Lance, who has the T-shirt stall next to mine, and told him. He said we shouldn’t call 911. Immediately he alerted a police officer near by,” said Mr Niasse, who is originally from Senegal and who has been a vendor in Times Square for about eight years.

As the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights notes, “South Asian, and Muslim communities may yield useful information to those fighting terrorism. Arabs and Arab Americans also offer the government an important source of Arabic speakers and translators. The singling out of Arabs, South Asians, Muslims, and Sikhs for investigation regardless of whether any credible evidence links them to terrorism will simply alienate these individuals and compromise the anti-terrorism effort.”

Reflecting on Niasse’s good samaritanism Muslim-American author Sumbul Ali-Karamali writes, “It’s somewhat consoling to know that the man who first noticed the smoking Nissan Pathfinder and sought help is also Muslim, a Senegalese immigrant. … I grew up Muslim in this country, with Muslim friends and non-Muslim friends, and there was very little difference between the two groups. We were all American.”

http://thinkprogress.org/2010/05/05/senagalese-muslim-vendor/

Far-left violence rising in Germany

By David Wroe in Berlin

 Last year's May Day in Berlin was the most violent in a decade [GALLO/GETTY]

Lukas sits drinking a beer in Baiz bar, a popular hangout for Berlin's leftwing scene.

He has a steady job, is well-groomed and wears a brand-name jacket. There is nothing that readily identifies him as a leftist radical.

Yet the 25-year-old is explaining what members of Germany's far-left jokingly refer to as "sports groups" - teams of young men whose "sport" consists of beating up neo-Nazis.

"A friend calls and says, 'There are neo-Nazis down in the park, playing their music'," he says, describing one incident he was involved in. "We said, 'Not anymore.' It was the first and last time they were there."

Lukas was in many such brawls in his younger days. Well-built and trained in martial arts, he survived them unscathed, though a friend once caught a broken bottle in the face and still has a thick scar to prove it.

Although he has retired from the "sport" and moved into more organised political activity - which is why he does not want his full name used - Lukas says he is still perfectly comfortable justifying violence against neo-Nazis.

"A friend once told me, 'You have to speak the language that people understand. Those guys, the neo-Nazis, they don't understand any other language'."

'Declaration of war'

Violence, it seems, is increasingly the preferred language of Germany's estimated 6,300 leftwing extremists.

The country, which is still grappling with its Nazi history 65 years after the fall of the Third Reich, has been shaken in recent months by a spate of brazen attacks targeting police, government buildings, large corporations and personal property - notably the almost nightly arson attacks on expensive cars.

In 2009, there were more leftwing than rightwing crimes in Germany [GALLO/GETTY]

Last month, Germany's interior ministry announced that there were 9,375 leftwing crimes committed in 2009 - a startling 39.4 per cent rise on the previous year.

Violent crime, including arson, rose even more sharply, jumping 53.4 per cent to a total of 1,822 offences.

For the first time since the current system of record keeping began in 2001, assaults committed by the left outnumbered those by the right - 849 against 800 - most of which were directed either at police during rallies or at neo-Nazis.

More than 400 cars - mostly expensive ones - were torched in Berlin and Hamburg last year.

In December, about 10 masked attackers set upon a manned police station in Hamburg, setting a patrol car on fire and hurling stones through the windows - an incident the head of the police union branded a "declaration of war".

With the traditional leftwing day of protest, May 1, on Saturday, authorities are bracing themselves.

Last year's May Day in Berlin was the most violent in a decade, with hundreds of arrests and dozens of police officers injured.
 
Fashionable 'cult'

Yet the causes of this surge in crime and violence remain frustratingly opaque.

Florian Herbs, 26, an unemployed graphic designer and member of the radical group Antifascist Revolutionary Action Berlin (Arab), admits that car burning has become a fashionable "cult".

But beneath that, there is genuine anger about the gentrification of previously poorer, working-class and immigrant districts of Berlin.

Arson has become a popular tool of Germany's leftwing extremists [GALLO/GETTY]

Wealthier residents are moving into leftist and anarchist heartlands such as Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain, pushing up rents and fuelling the clandestine attacks on cars, offices and upmarket property developments.

The backlash, Herbs says, is working: Dozens of attacks on property developments have served as a real deterrent to gentrification, he argues.

"Now nobody wants to buy one of those apartments."

To Lukas, the former "sportsman", the question is: Why shouldn't the left use violence?

"Why should we be the only ones to refrain?" he asks.

"It's too easy to say, 'Violence is terrible'. But this society is full of violence. The difference is that we don't go around beating immigrants."

A new generation

So what do they want? Experts say leftwing German militants today are very different from their predecessors.

Issues such as nuclear weapons and even the more recent anti-globalisation movement have faded in importance.

"The leftwing extremist scene is made up of a very heterogeneous group of people with different ideological views," says Stefan Ruppert, an expert on extremism and an MP for the pro-business Free Democrats party.

"Only the vague goal of overthrowing our existing social order serves as a unifying effect. This complexity ... makes it all the more difficult to grasp the problem as a whole and work out solutions."

His assessment is borne out by Herbs, who says his Arab group, which has 30 to 40 members, is one of about 30 radical groups in the Kreuzberg district alone.

Neighbouring Friedrichshain, another leftwing stronghold, probably has another 30 groups.

Further complicating things, some neo-Nazis - so-called nationalist autonomists, who answer to no political organisation - have come to resemble the radical left "autonomists" in appearance and even share their anti-capitalist views.

"That increases the potential for violence during confrontations between left and right wing extremist groups, which in turn raises the danger for the police forces," Ruppert says.

Legitimising each other

Indeed, some analysts point out that, without each other, the two sides would not have much to do.

"They legitimise each other," said Viola Neu, an expert on political extremism at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.

Leftwingers blockaded a far-right march in Dresden in February [GALLO/GETTY]

"They are there because the other exists. They are extremely interested in what the other lot is doing. They watch each other, they fight, and their arguments go back and forth."

No one is sure what to expect on Saturday.

Rightwing extremists are planning their own march through the leftist district of Prenzlauerberg - a gesture many on the left see as a provocation.

What is more, the left is full of confidence in the wake of its success in blockading a far-right march in February commemorating the 1945 allied bombing of Dresden. It will try the same on Saturday, forcing the police to intervene.

"Maybe there will be clashes," says Herbs.

"Maybe some people will start throwing things. There is a dynamic to the moment that we can't control."

"We hope it will stay peaceful, but with the capitalist crisis and gentrification, people are very angry. We'll see what happens."

http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/04/201042995544279317.html