Badlands Journal

Finally, valley's farmers get seat at USDA's table...Editorial

http://www.modbee.com/opinion/story/13254925p-13889404c.html
Unlike previous incarnations, this farm bill proposal is actually important to farmers in the Northern San Joaquin Valley. Anne Cannon, who spearheads Rep. Dennis Cardoza's team on ag issues, was particularly pleased with that: "For the USDA to specifically recognize us in such a fashion is hugely important." Cardoza is particularly well placed to have an impact. He is chairman of the subcommittee on fruits and vegetables and sits on subcommittees that deal with livestock and conservation. He also sits on the important Rules Committee, which sets the agenda for all of Congress. That makes him important to every other representative. Despite all the positives, this proposal could be in for a rough ride. Congress, not the USDA, writes legislation and already considerable resistance is developing. Ag issues split on regional lines rather than partisan, so it wasn't surprising when one Midwestern Republican senator greeted the proposal with a press release that said, essentially, "we'll see" about subsidy reductions.

Clearly, the trauma experienced by Big Wine, Big Cheeze, Big Milk and Big Cotton of not having their own USDA secretary from Modesto for a year and a half has unbalanced the mind of McClatchy-Modesto’s editorial staff. Modesto has produced two USDA secretaries in the last 20 years, Dick Lyng and Ann Veneman, and three state Department of Food and Agriculture secretaries, Lyng, Veneman, and Bill Lyons, Jr. The Modesto Assembly district has produced two Assembly Ag Committee chairmen in recent years, John Thurman and Dennis Cardoza.

The anxiety of agricultural commerce without a Modestan secretary of USDA may have popped big pumpkins in the north San Joaquin Valley.

It is true that a strong, bipartisan campaign including a strong showing by state and national environmental groups defeated Rep. RichPAC Pombo, Buffalo Slayer-Tracy, who might well have become the chairman of the House Ag Committee. But he and Cardoza formed the Pomboza, funded by developers, to try to gut the Endangered Species Act.

Meanwhile, Valley agriculture lost the enormous clout of chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Bill Thomas, R-Bakersfield, who retired.

So, now Big Wine, Big Cheese, etc., are stuck with Cardoza, the senior Valley Democrat in the newly elected Democratic Congress. Cardoza has been appointed chairman of an agricultural subcommittee on specialty crops. We find nothing in his political career to indicate he is interested in anything but the speculative real estate value of the land on which these fruits, nuts and vegetables are being grown. I have never met a farmer or rancher in the 18th congressional district who had confidence in Cardoza’s grasp of agricultural issues. Perhaps his agricultural “spearhead” knows the answers.

Hardway Hardesty was removing sleeping cats from his kitchen sink when he noticed his neighbor Leroy walking down the road from Way Up the Crik, kicking rocks. From Hardway’s angle, it looked like Leroy had a cloud over his head. But it could have just been flies, the Crik’s premier scientist figured, because Leroy didn’t wash much and worked with stinky camels.

Leroy knocked on the door.

“Leroy,” Hardway said, “you look like a man of a thousand sorrows this morning. Can I offer you a brownie and a beer?”

“Don’t want none of your damn psychotic pastries, Hardway,” Leroy said. “I got problems and I need some counsel.”

“What’s up,” Hardesty asked, placing a cold one in the hands of his neighbor.

“I am under attack!”

“The organic growers want to tax you?”

“Hell, that’s nothing. I raise my organic camels for transport, not for food. They can’t touch me. Los Angeles just bought up Up the Crik, for starters.”

Hardesty, whose recent windfalls had provided funds for well drilling, no longer cared what happened to Up the Crik, but expressed his sympathies anyway.

“Yep, Up the Crik’s going south next summer,” Leroy said.

“Well, camels don’t drink much, do they?”

“They drink something, though, don’t they?” Leroy snarled. “But that ain’t the worst of it.”

“What could be worse than an organic camel farm with no water?” Hardesty asked.

“Lookee yonder, down to the valley. What do you see?” Leroy wailed.

“Row crops. Cotton, probably.”

“Wrong! What you see down there is next year’s ethanol crop, the natural economic enemy of a camel-transport based economy! I am ruined.”

“Jeez, Leroy, sure you don’t want a brownie?” Hardesty asked, who had already invested a little in the grain futures market.

“Ha ha,” Leroy said, sarcastically. “You said the future was in camels and I believed you. You said I couldn’t go wrong with camels. You said the world would beat a path to my door if I had camels for sale. What with all the camels getting blown up in the Arab countries, you said, I couldn’t lose. You said about the time I got my herd built up the automobile would disappear. But what I got is $50 oil and all that damn corn all over America.”

“Leroy, a visionary investor must have guts of steel,” Hardesty. “Yours are turning to mush.”

“Hell, I could have bought real estate,” Leroy replied. “Instead I bought camels. And now I don’t even know where I’m going to find water for them.”

“And where would you be right now with a bunch of houses?” Hardway asked.

“Up the Crik without a bunch of damn camels,” Leroy said.

“Lemme ask you: how much diesel do you use in a year to feed your herd?”

“Well, not as much as it would cost me to grow 20 acres of corn, not to mention the water savings.”

“That’s my point. When the ethanol speculators figure that one out, they will be beating your door down. Houses last year, ethanol this year, camels next year. You’ll be making a fortune. Be positive. Yesterday’s real estate speculator will be arbitraging tomorrow’s camel-sperm futures market.”

“You think so?” Leroy asked, wide-eyed with amazement and hope.

“I know so, my friend. Trust me on this,” Hardesty assured his neighbor. “An entrepreneur has got to believe in his product!”

“That just leaves the water,” Leroy said.

“I’ll make you a deal,” Hardesty said.

“That’s what them guys from LA said when they was damming up the crik. I said I got me riparian rights to the Crik. They said they’d make me a deal: one standpipe for my personal use but no water for the camels.

“It’s prejudice, Hardway, that’s what it is,” Leroy said. “You take your ordinary American who works for a corporate water thief, he’s a nice enough fellow. Probably has a nice wife, some babies, goes to church. But, he looks at the camel and he can’t see the future in the camel. He can’t accept reality and begin to adjust. He don’t want to. He’s still making payments on his latest pickup and then there’s the speedboat he’d got in his driveway. Now, the camel doesn’t fit into his picture of life.

“It’s nothing but prejudice.”

“It’s true, Leroy,” Hardesty said, “you are a man ahead of your time. You are a man of surpassing sanity with a gift to the world, if the world would only see it. It’s also true that your camels suggest a future without pickups, petroleum products, speedboats and such. An old, slower, quieter, gentler world, one of long caravans crossing vast wastes, bearing water jugs for trade with whoever remains here after the floods.

“No, Leroy, you are the future. You’re a dozen steps ahead. You’re a prophet dishonored up his own crik, except here in my house, of course.

“You can water them here for the dry season,” Hardway said, “I have a stake in your vision. I hope to live to see the day when no American family is without its camel. But you must understand the politics.”

“Politics? Leroy asked. “What politics?”

“First, you should write your congressman, who is said to be interested in specialty crops and organic agriculture. What could be more special than your growing herd of organic camels?”

“I wrote my congressman about the theft of Up the Crik,” Leroy replied. “Someone wrote me back – here, I have the letter –“ Leroy said, rummaging around in his homespun camel-hair cowboy vest – “It says right here, ‘the congressman does not get involved in local issues.’

“Water? A local issue?”

“Oh well, he’s young and, being a Democrat, terribly timid.”

“That’s one word for it.”

Hardesty continued, saying that there were other political aspects to Leroy’s product, although he corrected himself once, to say they might be “more cultural than strictly speaking political.” He said he felt that Americans in fact did have certain prejudices against camels, not so much because of a dislike about the beast itself, which had had a career in parts of the Western US in earlier days, but of the future that the beast implied. Hardesty felt that this was a future it would be hard for the average American to square with the commonly accepted notion of eternal Progress through the American Way of Life.

“I don’t know about no American Way of Life,” Leroy said. “I come from Up the Crik, America. We’ll take any way of life we can git. Now, your camel is drought resistant, eats grass, carries a load and is a genuine thrifty form of transportation. That’s what I call American.”

“As I recall, Leroy, you don’t have a TV up there, do you?”

“You find me one that runs on wood smoke, you let me know and I’ll swap you a camel for it.”

“Ah.”

“You telling me I can’t be an American if I don’t have TV?”

“Now that’s a very interesting question. I might have to take a rain check on it, though,” Hardesty said. “Meanwhile, Leroy, you stick with your vision and your camels. The way this economy is going, you may have off-shore banking types knocking at your door in a few years, if you know what I mean.”

“I don’t have a clue what you mean and I never did, Hardway,” Leroy said. “No offense. I enjoy your company and all. Best man in the world for drinking a morning beer with.”

With that, the neighbors parted, good friends just chewing the fat on a cold morning Up the Crik.

1-24-07
Tracy Press
Supes vote to back bio-lab...John Upton
http://tracypress.com/content/view/7317/2/
Acting on the advice of its agricultural committee, the San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 on Tuesday to support an anti-biological terrorism laboratory that could be built southwest of Tracy to research incurable fatal diseases that affect both animals and people. Superintendent Steven Gutierrez voted against his colleagues, saying it was too early to determine whether the research activities would help safeguard and support the general public. “What research activity” Gutierrez said. “You don’t know what they’re going to do.” The Department of Homeland Security and Lawrence Livermore have not yet announced what types of diseases will be studied at the bio-lab, how the pathogens will be shipped in and out of the bio-lab, or whether accidents will be publicly reported. The Tracy City Council is expected to vote on whether it supports the bio-lab proposal at its meeting Feb. 6. Lawrence Livermore is managed by the University of California. The university’s agricultural division’s government and external relations director, Steve Nation, said after the meeting that the agricultural industry strongly supports the proposed bio-lab. He said the California Farm Bureau, the California Cattlemen’s Association, a woolgrowers association and Foster Farms support the bio-lab …

Let us return to ground recently covered. Rep. RichPAC Pombo, Buffalo Slayer-Tracy, was defeated by a coalition of state and national environmental groups because he and Rep. Dennis Cardoza, Shrimp Slayer-Merced, collectively known as the Pomboza, tried to gut the Endangered Species Act, one of the most popular laws in America.

Cardoza’s membership in the Pomboza stemmed from his support of the University of California’s attempts to destroy the richest fields of vernal pools, containing 15 endangered plants and animals, in the nation.

UC/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory wants to win the contract to put a level-4 biowarfare laboratory on Site 300, the Livermore lab’s bomb-testing site, near Tracy. This lab would test the most dangerous biological toxins known to man. And it would get lots of defense grants for UC.

Congressional hearings are currently being held that raise the question: is UC, even with Bechtel at its side, incapable of running Los Alamos National Laboratory competently, or is it just impossible to run a weapons of mass destruction lab securely?

The ordinary person in Northern California has read a number of articles in recent years pointing out that UC security at the Livermore lab is not too hot either.

Maybe, that ordinary citizen, especially if he or she lives downwind from Tracy, does one more step of reasoning. You have to coat a bomb with plutonium and detonate it for its dust to spread around too much and pollute the groundwater, as it has near Tracy. It would seem that all you would have to do with a killer virus would be to drop a bottle of it on the floor and it could be all over the region rather quickly. Isn’t that what they do in a state of nature?

When that sort of thought goes through Joe Sixpack’s head, he rolls his eyes, groans, grabs another beer, turns on the TV and hopes he can really, really get into the football game.

An environmentally oriented person will protest this lab, as hundreds of people who have signed petitions against it have done.

Now, here comes the California Farm Bureau, the California Cattlemen’s Association, a woolgrowers association and Foster Farms. They support the lab, they told the San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors’ agricultural committee to support it, and they did, leaving it up to the Tracy City Council to hold the line on Feb. 6.

Given the nature of the full-court flak press by UC, the federal government is not interested in putting such an incredibly dangerous laboratory near a place where there is real controversy about it. UC tried several years ago to site this same laboratory at UC Davis, the Davis City Council opposed it adamantly, and the biowarfare lab did not go to Davis. So far, UC has had better luck with the Pomboza.

The decision by agribusiness to support the project was made apparently based on some sort of promises by UC Livermore lab to do some work on animal diseases. This will be done by bringing the animal diseases in concentrated form to the bio lab to research them, right in the middle of the densest populations of cattle and poultry in the state. It is not that these industries lack the benefits of modern agricultural science through the UC Cooperative Extension, the USDA and numerous other scientific entities.

Let’s bring Avian Flu here to the Valley to study it. UC has a proven record of security lapses, but agribusiness knows that UC can do no wrong. If the Avian Flu gets out and wipes out the poultry industry, the migrating birds on the Pacific Flyway and some people, agribusiness and UC can blame it on terrorists. Terrorists are an extremely important part of biowarfare research, because without terrorists, there would be no reason for the research because the terrorists are the ones who are going to introduce the deadly toxins into our environment for which the biowarfare lab is going to create antidotes. The terrorists are going to do this because they hate freedom. If they hate freedom enough to sneak past UC’s porous security and liberate a few deadly cattle and poultry viruses from the Tracy level-4 biowarfare lab, who are you going to blame for that? Osama. Boy, will we be mad at Osama then. We’ll get him for sure if that happens. You bet. But, we’ll have all the antidote we need to inoculate millions of cows, chickens, turkeys, migrating ducks and humans by that time. You bet. UC and the federal government together cannot go wrong.

The only possible explanation for this political decision on the part of agribusiness is that it is anti-environmental. By golly, we’re going to stick it to them damn environmentalists this time! However, one lone San Joaquin County supervisor wisely said that nobody really knew what UC would be studying at the level-4 biowarfare lab. It reminded us in Merced of where UC Merced is going to get its water.

What the proposed biowarfare lab will study will depend on the grants it gets. It will depend overwhelmingly on federal government priorities, which returns us in a dismal circle to the terrorists again. I wonder if there is any other way of getting the terrorists not to unleash deadly plagues upon our livestock, migrating ducks and ourselves other than importing them to the neighborhood to experiment on in another leaky UC weapons of mass destruction lab that would seem to be an attraction for freedom-hating terrorists. But it’s never so simple. Because, in addition to your freedom-hating terrorists, you’ve got those terrorists who just hate Americans because Americans killed their relatives. But that gets into the metaphysics of the imperial defense industry, distracting us from the evolutionary facts on the ground.

Looking at agribusiness from an environmental point of view puts us in mind of what happens to endangered species when they lose too much of their habitat.

Scientific advisory c ommittee to Badlands editorial board
----------------------

Notes:

1-24-07
Stockton Record
Pombo in talks to join Oregon-based lobbying firm...Hank Shaw
http://recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070124/A_NEWS/701240320
The Washington insider paper Roll Call reported Tuesday: "The former House Resources chairman is in talks with Pac/West Communications, an Oregon-based PR and lobbying firm that has a roster of timber and energy clients." ...the company already has signed a deal with Pombo's former staff director, Steve Ding, to open a California office in Sacramento. Pombo, who, despite reports to the contrary, isn't rolling in dough, might very well need the added income - especially now that he'll probably keep his town house in Virginia.

1-31-07
Contra Costa Times
Nuclear security agency at risk...AP, MedialNews staff writer Ian Hoffman contributed to this story
http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/16586727.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Fed-up lawmakers on a House oversight committee said Tuesday that they want to strip a federal nuclear-weapons agency of its security responsibilities, and they threatened to shut down Los Alamos National Laboratory, now under new managers from the Bay Area. The lawmakers criticized the lab for its most recent security breach, in which a contract worker walked out with more than 1,500 pages of classified documents. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, said that if problems cannot be solved this time, he will ask that Los Alamos lab, the birthplace of the atomic bomb, be shut down. After more than 60 years of operation by the University of California, the lab now is run by former Lawrence Livermore lab director Michael Anastasio and a consortium led by UC and San Francisco-based Bechtel National. Barton, Dingell and others on the House Energy and Commerce Committee introduced a measure Tuesday to strip the National Nuclear Security Administration of its primary security responsibilities and turn them back to the Energy Department...expressed concerns that NNSA has not fixed Los Alamos security problems despite hundreds of millions of dollars spent on improvements. A new management team was installed at Los Alamos less than a year ago, in part to reverse years of security and safety problems. The embarrassing October incident involving the classified documents resulted in a shake-up in the agency that oversees the lab. Linton Brooks, already reprimanded for an earlier incident, resigned this month as NNSA chief. Tuesday's four-hour hearing, lawmakers asked repeatedly why the lab needs to exist and whether it simply has too much responsibility for too many secret materials. Deputy energy secretary Clay Sell said Los Alamos probably could not be replaced or duplicated...is the only place where plutonium fission cores for weapons can be made...much of what happens at Los Alamos is secret because the lab is responsible for the bulk of the strategic nuclear weapons stockpile. "It has been suggested that we shoot the dog," Sell responded. "I have to reject that suggestion.”

Former Rep. RichPAC Pombo, Buffalo Slayer-Tracy, has climbed through the revolving door from House committee chairman up to the real power: he's joining a lobbying firm representing Northwest and Alaskan timber interests and oil companies among others. He is no doubt an attractive candidate for elevation into the lobbying ranks because he would bring some clients with him -- the same handful of north San Joaquin Valley developers on whose behalf he nearly gutted the Endangered Species Act, Indian casinos, off-shore oil-drilling companies, Western agribusiness, Pacific island sweatshops, as well as various and sundry haters of environmental law and regulation. Pombo had an able teacher in the lobbying game, Jack Abramoff, who last year pleaded guilty to fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials.

Pombo in Washington with adequate funds is no doubt a profound relief to the special interests of the former Pombozastan, that region comprising the 11th and 18th congressional districts, the latter represented by Dennis Cardoza, Merced. Without Pombo to guide him, it was looking like Cardoza was going to lose his focus on the developers' agenda and wander off among the organic fruits and nuts and House rules.

But now Pombo will be in Washington to watch over his protege and guide him with a steady, cash-filled hand right back into his pocket. Together again, with their hands on the money, the Pomboza lives. Perhaps it will be stronger now in the backroom than it ever were out front, back when the House Natural Resources Committee was called the House Resources Committee, Pombo was its chair and Cardoza was introducing a bill a year to gut provisions in the ESA.

Badlands editorial board
----------------

Note:

1-24-07
Stockton Record
Pombo in talks to join Oregon-based lobbying firm...Hank Shaw
http://recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070124/A_NEWS/701240320
The Washington insider paper Roll Call reported Tuesday: "The former House Resources chairman is in talks with Pac/West Communications, an Oregon-based PR and lobbying firm that has a roster of timber and energy clients." ...the company already has signed a deal with Pombo's former staff director, Steve Ding, to open a California office in Sacramento. Pombo, who, despite reports to the contrary, isn't rolling in dough, might very well need the added income - especially now that he'll probably keep his town house in Virginia...

Build the rooftops and the lobbyist may come.

Build a mile-long, illegal 42-inch pipeline to your sewer plant on County land without a County permit, maybe you need the former state Assembly Speaker and Lt. Governor as your lobbyist.

But can Livingston, not the wealthiest community in Merced County, afford Bustamante? It leads the public to consider whether it is the people behind the sewer line and the development it could induce who are paying for the long-time state elected official. If the Merced County fix is no longer as secure as it was when former Bill Lockyer was state Attorney General, who knows, people could be asking questions.

Another question is Livingston's alleged motive for hiring a lobbyist -- more better Highway 99 improvements around Livingston. Perhaps the one thing Livingston actually has is the best stretch of 99 in the county. So, the public can safely discount this as the reason for hiring a lobbyist and consider other regional transportation plans as the more likely target, like the Big Beltway that will exit Highway 99 between Livingston and Atwater, run through prime farmland to UC Merced, then down the Campus Parkway to the WalMart distribution center. Other plans for expanding roads from the Livingston area toward Stevinson, fitting in with development plans of the Kelley and Mike Gallo families are also likely topics of conversation between the former Lt. governor and the new generation of legislators.

Livingston may need Bustamante, not the worse politician from the Valley to have served in the state Legislature and Executive. But why would Bustamante want to launch his new lobbyist career representing Livingston?

To get closer to money, the mother's milk, Cheerios and New York steak of politics.

Badlands Journal editorial staff
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2-6-07
Merced Sun-Star
Livingston may hire lobbyist Bustamante...Scott Jason
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/local/story/13267202p-13900255c.html
After more than 30 years in politics, former Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante remained guarded last month about his career after leaving office. But the Sacramento insider is returning to the political arena, this time on the other side of the table. The Livingston City Council will consider hiring Bustamante, 54, tonight to lobby Sacramento leaders with hopes that their multimillion-dollar highway construction plans will be fast-tracked. Livingston could be the second Merced County city to hire a lobbyist this month to maintain a presence in Sacramento. Merced's City Council awarded a $65,000 one-year contract to Townsend Public Affairs, an Irvine-based lobbying firm, Monday night. Two contract options with Bustamante will come before the City Council. One is for six months at $10,000 a month. The second is a two-year contract with the first six months at $10,000 a month, which decreases to $7,500 for the remaining 18 months.

Former Merced County Supervisor Mike Bogna, while in office, once demonstrated his solidarity with agribusiness by quaffing a glass of guthion. Although organophosphate pesticides have been banned or highly restricted for a number of years, the good old boys evidently keep a small supply around and Bogna got into it again, before writing this letter.

To begin, Riverside Motorsports Park Promoter John Condren's financial ability to fund the massive autosports complex project the Merced County Board of Supervisors approved ought to have been some part of the deliberation in its approval of the environmental impact on the project. The project required a General Plan amendment, a zone change and an override of the Castle Airport Land Use Commission's designated two-mile noise/safety zone. Bogna's legal theory that the county could be sued for questioning the financial bona fides of the promoter of a $250-million project suggests he may have graduated from guthion to parathion since his last term on the board.

Bogna writes:

Third, one must keep in mind that it's entirely possible this project may never be built. To suggest the board was taken for a ride and that the public will be left "looking like suckers" clearly demonstrates that Mr. Cameron has no understanding of the public policy process.

Mr. Cameron, a sportswriter, can be forgiven for not understanding "the public policy process." He covers events that have rules. The natural allies in any newsroom are the crime reporter and the political reporter, who cover the lawless side of community life.

What Bogna is saying is that the Riverside Motorsports Park may be, as some have suspected from the beginning, a paper project, a fantastic diversion for the purpose of a General Plan amendment, a zoning change, and the airport commission override. In other words, as those who read it suspected, the EIR for this project is also "paper." The next stage of this organophosphate logic is that the lawsuits filed against the paper racetrack's paper EIR are also just paper. And the money to prepare the EIR, the money paid the county staff to work on it, the expense of the two public hearings on the project and the three town hall meetings held on the project -- every hour of county staff time and overtime that was paid for by the public -- plus the money paid for the lawsuits, is all just Monopoly money.

Bogna continues:

Regarding whether or not RMP will be able to come up with the investment necessary to make this project a reality, it simply won't happen unless the money comes.

How can we possibly reply to this remarkable statement? Before approval of the EIR Condren had a project worth a reported $5 million. After the approval, he is reported to have got a $12.5-million loan on it from a Missouri bank. So, the board's approval of the project was worth a possible $7.5 million in capital to Condren (if any of the financial figures involved with this racetrack are accurately reported). Other possibly more reliable sources said he paid less for the property and so, if the loan figure is accurate, has more working capital at hand to pursue whatever course he wishes. But, don't fret. According to our retired pesticide tippler and authority on the ways of government, it's all just paper money, a currency that either comes or it doesn't.

Wasn't Bogna on the board when E. Anne Eisenhower was asked to provide a business plan for the Pegasus project at Castle?

Bogna notes that it is "ironic" that the newspaper endorsed the project and then published some negative background information on promoter John Condren, Alleged Pillager of Nauvoo. Here we go again with Merced irony, a mysterious form of expression to say the least. We feel sure that what Old Pesticide means by "irony" here is that the newspaper got hustled before the project was passed and that some powerful malcontent leaked the dirt on Condren after it was passed.

Bogna concludes:

I learned in my many years of public service that there will always be a group of naysayers suggesting that something will not be of benefit to our county. Fortunately, our country was built on hope and opportunity.

In other words, have Confidence!

Badlands Journal editorial board
-----------------

Note:

2-6-07
Sports editor got it wrong...Mike Bogna, Atwater...Letters to the editor
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/opinion/story/13270165p-13903048c.html
Letter to the Editor: Sports editor got it wrong

Editor: As a former two-term Merced County Supervisor, I'm well positioned to comment on the Jan. 31 column written by Sun-Star Sports Editor Steve Cameron titled, "Supervisors: Anyone awake down there?" Not only did Mr. Cameron miss the mark on several accounts, he fails to have a common understanding of what is and what is not taken into consideration as part of decisions made by the Board of Supervisors.
First, Mr. John Condren's alleged background was not a matter related to the environmental impact report. The Board of Supervisors was being asked to either certify or reject RMP's environmental document. This was the sole basis of the decision.

Second, whether one agrees or not, the Board of Supervisors and city councils do not look into the personal backgrounds of project applicants primarily for one reason: should they reject a project based upon such a background check, they could be sued for discrimination.

Third, one must keep in mind that it's entirely possible this project may never be built. To suggest the board was taken for a ride and that the public will be left "looking like suckers" clearly demonstrates that Mr. Cameron has no understanding of the public policy process. Just a few years ago, this same exact land was being developed for a business park. After aspects of the project fell through, the land use was reverted back to agricultural zoning. This could take place again.

Regarding whether or not RMP will be able to come up with the investment necessary to make this project a reality, it simply won't happen unless the money comes. Again, the board can only make a decision based upon the information presented to it including land use concerns, environmental impacts and the merits of the project. Whether RMP can attract the investment is an issue for them to address, not the Merced County Board of Supervisors.

Fourth, and hopefully this is just a result of not fact-checking and nothing more, the vote certifying the project was 3 to 2 and not the four-fifths as suggested in his column. Supervisors Deidre Kelsey and John Pedrozo voted against the project.

Lastly, Mr. Cameron suggested that the Board of Supervisors should have looked into Mr. Condren's background before voting. It's rather ironic that the Sun-Star editorial board endorsed the RMP project prior to any vote of the Board of Supervisors, apparently without doing their own homework and research.

I learned in my many years of public service that there will always be a group of naysayers suggesting that something will not be of benefit to our county. Fortunately, our country was built on hope and opportunity.

Mike Bogna

The Tracy City Council voted on Tuesday to oppose the UC/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory proposal to build a level-4 biowarfare laboratory at Site 300, a nearby bomb-testing site owned by the Department of Energy and managed by UC/Lawrence Livermore.

At the same meeting, the council voted to support trebling the amount of explosives that can be used on Site 300.

Both votes were 3-1.

Site 300 is outside the Tracy city limits.

Presumably, the two votes make sense in Tracy.

Bill Hatch
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2-7-07
Tracy Press
Council votes against proposed bio-lab...John Upton
http://tracypress.com/content/view/7689/2/
Councilwoman Irene Sundberg, Councilwoman Evelyn Tolbert and Councilman Steve Abercombie voted Tuesday night to oppose a proposal by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to build the bio-lab at Site 300 in the hills southwest of Tracy, even though the council has no jurisdiction over the site. Acting Mayor Suzanne Tucker voted against opposing the lab... University of California Vice Provost for Research Lawrence Coleman asked Tracy City Council to not take a position on the bio-lab until the Department of Homeland Security provides more information later this year. The University of California operates Lawrence Livermore for the Department of Energy. Sundberg criticized Lawrence Livermore for taking too long to clean Site 300 contaminants...You’ve got no money to clean it up. And now you want to put more stuff in my backyard. Activist Bob Sarvey played an audio tape from a Nov. 15 public forum on the bio-lab, in which Lawrence Livermore spokeswoman Susan Houghton acknowledged that human errors could occur at the bio-lab and that homeowners might need to warn potential homebuyers about the facility. Stockton resident Mike Robinson, president of the San Joaquin County Farm Bureau, and Livermore resident Darrel Sweet, a past president of the California Cattleman’s Association, said the agricultural industry supports building the bio-lab at Site 300 in part because it would help speed up detection of exotic diseases in California’s agricultural stock.

2-8-07
Tracy votes down controversial bio lab...Jake Armstrong
http://recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070208/A_NEWS/702080318
The Tracy City Council voted late Tuesday night to oppose the University of California's bid to locate a federal laboratory that would research incurable diseases on a high-explosives test range southwest of the city...called the National Bio- and Agro-Defense Facility. In a twist of irony, moments later, the council by the same margin voted to support an increase in the amount of explosives used in tests on the range known as Site 300, a 7,000-acre parcel owned by the U.S. Department of Energy and operated by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Air pollution regulators in December gave Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory approval to more than triple the amount of explosives it uses in its outdoor tests at Site 300. The San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control Hearing Board was set Wednesday to hear an appeal of the permit, which allows the laboratory to use 350 pounds of explosives a day and up to 8,000 pounds a year. However, the board voted to continue the hearing to next month in order to handle a request for public documents. Tracy council does not have jurisdiction over Site 300, which is just outside city limits, the city's opposition to the bio lab will be put into a letter to U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials who are evaluating more than a dozen proposals from universities and laboratories seeking to win the facility. The lab would also research incurable pathogens in an area of the strictest containment level, or Bio-Safety Level 4. Other factors that will influence the final decision are a local work force with experience running high-level bio-safety labs and access to multiple forms of transportation from the site, Kelly said. The 18 contenders for the bio lab face a Feb. 16 deadline to submit more information on their proposals to DHS, which plans to visit the sites and make final recommendations sometime from March to May. Environmental impact studies on a short list of sites will begin in July, with a finalist being named in October 2008. Construction is scheduled to begin in 2010, and the bio lab is expected to be up and running as early as 2013.

Once there was a town where apples were grown in great abundance. Yuppies moved in years ago and now there are few orchards left in the area, but the story related here took place back when agriculture in that part of California seemed quite viable and farmers could plan for a future.

A fellow in his late 30s returned to his hometown after wandering the world. He took over management of a family orchard. Although, from his background, he knew more about apple farming than most people reading this story, he didn’t know it all. One thing he did not know was where to buy the best rootstock for a particular variety of apple tree, the most profitable in the area.

To find out the best place to buy the most profitable rootstock, he decided to ask the old apple growers. First, he selected a grower who had the reputation for growing the best apples in the region, and he asked him what the best nursery was. The grower told him. Next, he asked the richest grower in the region the same question. This grower told the fellow he would think about it and get back to him.

The next time the richest grower and the best grower found themselves together before dawn drinking coffee and eating pancakes, they started talking about the young grower. Interest in the subject of a new grower in the region lay somewhere between shooting deer out of season and whose tractor driver was in jail that morning. But if you have breakfast in the same restaurant with same company since the end of World War II, novelty has its place in the conversation.

“He asked me what the best nursery was,” the richest grower said.

“He asked me the same question,” the best grower said.

“What the Hell?” they said to each other. “What did you tell him?”

“I told him the best place,” the best grower said.

At that point another grower, chimed in, “He asked me the same question.”

“What did you tell him?” the best and richest growers asked.

“Why should I tell you?” the other grower said. “I will say I didn’t tell him the best place.”

“Why not?” they asked.

“I never liked his grandfather,” the other grower said.

“Yeah, but he’s going to get crap from that nursery,” the best grower said.

“I hope so,” the neither the best nor richest, grower said.

“But, why’s he asking everybody where to get the best rootstock?” asked the richest grower. “Any one of us could have told him there’s only one good nursery for that variety.”

“Don’t ask me. Must be part of Modern Business Management Practices,” the other grower said. “’Check with your local growers. Sometimes the peasants have valuable experience that, if scientifically cultivated, can produce great wealth and prosperity?’ Something like that?”

“Well, what are we going to do about this guy?” the best grower asked. “He asks me, he asks you and you and who knows how many other people. That ain’t right. If you’re going to help a guy, that’s a personal deal. It’s nobody else’s business. Hell, I never would have said anything about it if you hadn’t. I was embarrassed about it when he asked me, to be honest with you. He's not my son, is he?"

So, the growers assembled their valuable peasant experience and figured out a line to feed the young modern agricultural manager about getting just the right trees that would guarantee that his new block of the profitable variety would be unprofitable.

This unprofitability came to pass in due time and the young scientific manager came to the feed and seed store and asked the growers what happened. Employing peasant cunning, they asked him what phase the moon was in when he’d planted the trees. He consulted old calendars in the public library until he returned with the right answer.

“Ah,” the best, the richest, and neither the best nor richest grower replied unanimously, “wrong phase.”

“But, you never told me about the moon!” the young grower exclaimed.

“Did he ask you about the moon?” the growers asked each other, shaking their heads.

“You never asked us about the moon,” they agreed.

“But you should have told me!” the young grower said.

“Who should have told you?” the best grower said. “Me? Him? Him?”

“What difference does it make?” the young grower asked. “Somebody. Anybody.”

The richest grower asked the best grower, “Are you Somebody? Am I Anybody?”

“Naw,” said the neither the richest or best grower, “you’re nobody but a couple of apple growers.”

After the young grower retreated from the seed and feed store, the richest grower asked the best grower what phase of the moon he used.

“The one my father told me to use,” the best grower said.

“What one is that?” asked the neither best nor richest grower.

I was struck by a sense of danger this weekend. I haven't had this sense as strongly for decades. In me, this feeling belongs to the period of the Vietnam War when, suddenly a certain combination of news stories would bring me back from work and daily life to consciousness of deepening crisis.

We who went through that war in our various ways (mine was very protected compared to many others' experiences) cannot help seeing analogies with this war, although we seem to agree widely that history never repeats itself exactly, no matter how similar personal alarm bells from within may sound. There are strong similarities between wars in which imperial powers with vastly superior armament invade foreign nations whose people must defend their lands. This sort of war seems to end up in prolonged, bloody battles with high casualties in the rubble of city streets.

Yet, American politics moves blithely on, as if it were the most important thing. Our latest new voice is Barak Obama, who announced his candidacy for president last weekend, stressing that he "listens" to the people. Those of us old enough to remember the Vietnam War also remember American political party conventions where politicians were forced to listen to the people inside and even outside the convention hall, even if all they heard outside were cries of pain, protest and anger as the people were being beaten and arrested by police. We think Chicagoan Obama is listening to Chicago Mayor Richard Daly, Jr., son of Hizzoner Richard Daly, who unleashed his police force on anti-war demonstrators at the Democratic Party convention in 1968, not long after the assassination of Bobby Kennedy. We think Obama is also listening closely to Daly's brother, Bill Daly, chief lobbyist in the campaign to pass the North American Free Trade Agreement. To the extent that Obama is listening to the people as opposed to the party elite, what he is likely to hear?

· Echoes of the same sort of propaganda broadcast through corporate media that deceived the people about the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?

· Confusion, fear and doubt from the people who do not to believe the Bush propaganda about Iran, but do not know what to believe at a moment in which catastrophic decisions are being made in the name of the listeners.

· Or simply, the pitches of economic special interests benefitting from the present crisis?

"Elect me, I stand for your confusion, fear, doubt, and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the world’s largest and most diverse derivatives exchange"?

To look at this bright, eloquent young man from this distance, with this much skepticism, is to admit one is a member of a generation -- largely but not entirely unconcious -- who lived through previous imperial wars, among them Central America.

In Iraq, the famously publicized "surge" is forcing American troops into the high command's original, announced nightmare, an urban, block-by-block street war in Baghdad. Presumably, the cynical Bush administration figures it can now take the higher casualty rate because America has become numb to the war. Or else, coupled with a full-on propaganda campaign, the regime will use it to enrage the American public into supporting war against Iran.

The insurgents have also been knocking down helicopters in increasing numbers, indicating new, better weaponry. As Tom Englehart put it,

Let's not forget that the beginning of the end of the Russian occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s came when CIA-supplied Stinger missiles began to take down Russian helicopters in significant numbers.

Early reports about how the "surge" on Baghdad will be conducted indicate more American air power will be used, causing Fallujah-level destruction to many neighborhoods. The Bush regime has reached the point where it will destroy Baghdad to save it.

The Vietnam village that engendered that unforgettable phrase, was destroyed and perhaps the US will manage to destroy Baghdad, or at least large portions of it in the coming surge. One of the driving forces in this war is the defense industry, a collection of arms manufacturers who are not in business to minimize their profits and have most excellent lobbyists to persuade the federal government to spend more for their products to kill people and destroy cities. It is beginning to appear that limits of this expenditure might possibly come, not from domestic political resistance to the war, any checks by the government or limitation or greed among defense contractors, but from foreign sources.

The domestic anti-war movement seems weak and fractured at this time and unable to put enough pressure on the Democratic Party in control of Congress to even slow down the escalation, much less stop it. John Ward, an excellent reporter of domestic political dissent, covered the Jan. 29 anti-war protest in Washington. He noted the absence of Ralph Nader, Jason Raimundo, libertarian editor of the great Antiwar.com, and Republican anti-war speakers. Apparently, it was an all-liberal Democrat event. Progressives who think they will wrest control of the Democratic Party from pro-war and empire lobbyists, including the Israeli lobby, are wandering in delusion. The anti-war movement in America this time seemed to bargain away power before they had enough to sell for a decent price. As one US Army Vietnam veteran commented to me recently, “Who would ever have thought the American people would have gone to the ballot box to oppose the war.” Yet, that is what Americans did and the Democrats are now selling them out just as dissidents – most steadily Nader – have been saying they would.

The docile protests against the Iraq War lead an American of middle age to wonder: when do the cracks begin to open, how deep will they be? What sort of fearful future are we headed toward, without benefit of strong political dissent and habeas corpus? What should we do, now? What public strategy and tactics would lead toward peace? Collaboration with the Democratic Party does not top my list.

On the international front, Russian President Vladimir Putin blasted the US policy last weekend:

RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin yesterday warned that the United States' increased use of military force is creating a new arms race, with smaller nations turning toward developing nuclear weapons.

Speaking at a conference of the world's top security officials, including Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani, Putin said nations "are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of force in international relations".

He told the audience of 250 officials, including more than 40 defence and foreign ministers: "The US has overstepped its national borders in every way. This is very dangerous, nobody feels secure any more because nobody can hide behind international law.

"This is nourishing an arms race, with the desire of countries to get nuclear weapons," he added, without singling out one nation.

Although criticized by Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-CN, for being "provocative," it seems that Putin had every right to speak as he did, both as president of a nation as experienced as the US was in both nuclear arms races and non-proliferation agreements, and because Russia is not now invading foreign nations. I don't regard Lieberman as a great patriot. I believe he is a reliable spokesman for the neocons and the rightwing contingent in power in Israel. Neither of these interests reflect broad-based American public opinion, Israeli public opinion, or the opinion of American supporters of Israel.

However, aside from the utter immorality of the US invasion of Iraq, we have discovered something that the least acquaintance with history would suggest: Arabs and Afghanis are very good at war in defense of their territory. They hate our guts. I don't think it takes a PhD in international relations to figure that out or some rudimentary reasons for it. If we weren't often awed to silence by the horrendous tragedy of this war, we could see through the hubris and madness of this to its nemesis. In fact, at this moment, Egyptians, Iranians and Syrians might be able to explain to the Bush regime what is happening and could happen . But the Bush regime listens only to the rightwing rulers of Israel and its American clones, the neoconservatives. It took eight centuries to produce a world leader as powerful and stupid as George W. Bush, to start a new crusade. Now, more American troops have died than died in 9/11 and many times more Iraqis and Afghanis. Bush is not conducting foreign policy; he is having a temper tantrum with the most powerful military in the world as his baby rattle.

In the constant barrage of propaganda targeted at the US population, the new demon is Iran. Patrick Cockburn, who has reported from Iraq since long before the war, comments:

The answer to this question is probably that the anti-Iranian tilt of the Bush administration has more to do with American than Iraqi politics. A fresh demon is being presented to the US voter. Iran is portrayed as the hidden hand behind US failure in both Iraq and in Lebanon. The US media, gullible over WMD, is showing itself equally gullible over this exaggerated Iranian threat.

The Bush administration has always shown itself more interested in holding power in Washington than in Baghdad. Whatever its failures on the battlefield, the Republicans were able to retain the presidency and both Houses of Congress in 2004. Confrontation with Iran, diverting attention from the fiasco in Iraq, may be their best chance of holding the White House in 2008.

The Achilles Heel of this glorious war to bring freedom and democracy to the Islamic masses could be economic. Economic columnist for Asia Times, Chan Akya, reflects on China's changing investment policies, involving $1 trillion. His argument is that investment in US Treasury bills, the strategy recommended by the IMF for developing countries, does not produce the income necessary to buy the commodities China needs to continue to grow. Therefore, China must buy oil and mineral resources in commodity markets and through direct purchase around the world. Akya draws a drastic conclusion for both the US and Iran from this:

As for the Islamic powers of the Middle East, they will sell oil to China if only to spite Europe and the US. In doing so, they will also invite more unwanted attention from the US, which is reeling from its lost campaign in Iraq. The main scenario of the US trying to consolidate its hold over the Middle East continues, and argues for getting more desperate in the light of China's growing self-sufficiency in commodities. Thus, to preserve its role, the US has no option but to attack Iran. [4] The consequences will be horrifying for both parties, and push both combatants toward an inexorable decline.

About time,too.

Some of the more forceful domestic anti-war voices come from dissenting Republicans. Former Assistant US Treasury Secretary Paul Craig Roberts' criticism of the Bush regime continues to evolve rapidly along the lines of Kevin Phillips' and Chalmers Johnson's recent historical theses of tragic American decline due to the stupidity of Bush the Lesser’s regime.

But Roberts, a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institute, is not content to describe the inexorable forces. He has a program for how the world can save itself and us from Bush:

The US is totally dependent upon foreigners to finance its budget and trade deficits. By financing these deficits, foreign governments are complicit in the Bush Regime's military aggressions and war crimes. The Bush Regime's two largest lenders are China and Japan. It is ironic that Japan, the only nation to experience nuclear attack by the US, is banker to the Bush Regime as it prepares a possible nuclear attack on Iran.

If the rest of the world would simply stop purchasing US Treasuries, and instead dump their surplus dollars into the foreign exchange market, the Bush Regime would be overwhelmed with economic crisis and unable to wage war. The arrogant hubris associated with the "sole superpower" myth would burst like the bubble it is.

The collapse of the dollar would also end the US government's ability to subvert other countries by purchasing their leaders to do America's will.

The demise of the US dollar is only a question of time. It would save the world from war and devastation if the dollar is brought to its demise before the Bush Regime launches its planned attack on Iran.

A possible consequence that does not seem to be intended by Roberts' program is that by plunging the US into a great depression, perhaps bringing down the entire world economy along with it, a slowdown of global warming might occur.

Political dissent, rather than alliances with gravediggers like the major American political parties, is a hopeful solution. Massive, unified, inclusive popular, non-violent dissent is a powerful weapon for bringing down tyrants, but only if it is used and refuses to be manipulated for political ambitions. In fact, the future of any American's political ambition may at this moment depend on it being used to preserve the political system in which those ambitions play.

Bill Hatch
----------

Notes:

Tomgram: Schwartz on Surging into Catastrophe in Iraq, Feb. 11, 2007,
http://www.Tomdispatch.com

Putin attacks America over nuclear arms race
David Rising (AP), Feb. 10, 2007
http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=223662007

Nader and Libertarians Not Welcome
A Splintered Antiwar Movement
By JOHN WALSH, Feb. 12, 2007
Counterpunch
http://www.counterpunch.com/walsh02122007.html

Scapegoating Iran
It's No Use Blaming Iran for a Lost War
Patrick Cockburn, Feb. 12, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.com/

Sun Tzu's art of investing
By Chan Akya, Feb. 10, 2007
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China_Business/IB10Cb04.html

Dump the Dollar!
How the World Can Stop Bush
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS, Feb. 12, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.com/roberts02122007.html

"First you killed your own Indians and now you want to kill us!" the farmer shouted angrily ... Now the Zapatistas are freezing their seed corn to preserve pure Mayan germ plasma so that there will never be a world without it. -- John Ross, CounterPunch, Feb. 14, 2007

A pair of recent reports about the career of the infamous genetic engineering racket, spreading weird genes in our food wherever it goes. They come from that great GE watchdog in California, Thomas Wittman (GE_NEWS@eco-farm.org). Tom has born steady, daily witness for a decade to the evolving corporate business of patenting the staffs of life.

Badlands

Big Biotech is Forcing Farmers to Buy GMO Seeds
The Plot Against Mexican Corn
By JOHN ROSS
CounterPunch, February 14 2007
http://www.counterpunch.org/ross02142007.html

The "diableros" (hand truck hostlers) from Lagunilla market clustered around La Lupita's Ricos Tacos in the rough and tumble barrio of Tepito were not smiling. "Yesterday these cost me six pesos. Today, it's eight. Tomorrow, who knows, ten?" complained Rodrigo Aldama, 28, pointing at the three greasy tacos on his paper plate, "Vitamin T is rich man's food now." Vitamin T, a staple of urban diet here, includes tacos, tostadas, tamales, tortillas, and most any kind of street food concocted from corn.

The steep jump of tortilla prices here this January to as high as 18 pesos a kilo (they were six in November) have unleashed a storm of protest and suspicion. "Someone's getting rich on my 'ricos tacos' but it isn't me" lamented Lupita Perez. Many point fingers at the corn distribution system, which is run by transnationals.

Rodrigo had another theory: "the tortilla is Mexico but now they want us to eat white bread like the gringos." Others see even more sinister motives behind the sudden spike in tortilla prices which the government of freshman president Felipe Calderon blames on short supply and high prices for white and yellow corn - the opening of the Mexican milpa or corn patch to genetically modified corn.

World corn prices are currently at an all-time high due to burgeoning interest in ethanol production as a petroleum substitute. In Mexico the price of corn has been pushed upwards by the cost of diesel and petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides despite the fact that Mexico is a major oil producer. Crop failures due to drought, flooding, and even ice storms have contributed to the price surge. But whatever the immediate causes, the dismantlement of government agricultural programs and the brutal impacts of the North American Free Trade Agreement have deepened the crisis in Mexican corn production.

Competing with highly subsidized U.S. farmers is driving their Mexican counterparts into bankruptcy. Whereas south of the border, guaranteed prices for farmers' crops is a thing of the past, corporate corn growers north of the Rio Bravo can receive up to $21,000 an acre in subsidies from their government, enabling them to dump their corn over the border at 80% of cost. The impact of this inundation has been to force 6,000,000 farmers and their families here to abandon their plots and leap into the migration stream, according to a 2004 Carnegie Endowment study.

This assault on poor farmers down at the bottom of the food chain will be exacerbated at the end of 2007 when all tariffs on U.S. corn are abolished. Meanwhile President Calderon seeks to tamp down tortilla prices by importing up to 2,000,000 duty-free tons to augment what Mexican farmers can or cannot produce. Such a solution is guaranteed to drive more farmers off the land. Even worse is that much of the new influx of NAFTA corn will be transgenic.

A great deal of the 36,000,000 tons of corn Mexico has imported from the U.S. in the past six years is genetically modified - 40% to 60% estimates the environmental group Greenpeace, reasoning that U.S. producers, barred from dealing GMO corn in Europe and Japan are using Mexico as a dumping ground for the grain.

GMO corn began pouring into Mexico in 1998 and by 2001 was being detected in the remote sierras of Oaxaca and Puebla, a region in which maize was first domesticated seven millenniums ago - both BT and Starlink strains (Monsanto and Novartis brands) were found in Oaxaca's Sierra de Juarez in 2001 and 2002. 11 out of 22 corn-growing regions in the two states registered readings of contamination as high as 60% in a 2002 government study that was suppressed by the Secretary of Agriculture.

Although Mexico imports millions of tons of transgenic corn, it remains a crime here to plant genetically modified seed. In 1998, the National Biosecurity Commission, an interdisciplinary body that involves the health and agricultural secretariats, declared a moratorium on planting genetically modified corn until its impacts could be determined, and the ban remains in place although under heavy attack from big biotech and agribiz and transnational grain purveyors like the Cargill Corporation which now controls much of Mexican corn distribution.

To keep the industry at bay, the Biosecurity commission now grants permits for "experimental" stations where the grain can be grown under government supervision - the Monsanto corporation is now testing its "YieldGuard" brand corn on hundreds of hectares in Sinaloa state, the most prolific corn-producing state in Mexico. A spillover of YieldGuard in Sinaloa could contaminate a big chunk of the existing corn supply.

Despite the prohibitions on planting, there is plenty of transgenic corn tassling up in the Mexican milpas these days. Some of it is accidental. Massive imports of NAFTA corn distributed in rural regions through state-owned Diconsa warehouses threaten vast swatches of the Mexican "campo." Diconsa trucks are old and the roads rough and the GMO corn blows off into the wind contaminating cornfields for miles around.

Although more and more licenses are issued every year for experimental planting, producers groups are now threatening to plant GMO corn without government permission - "If the moratorium is not relaxed, we will start planting the transgenic corn in the spring cycle" warns Perfecto Solis, director of the U.S.-Mexican agribusiness giant Corn Products Systems.

Despite the prohibitions, big corn growers have been sewing transgenic maize without government permission for years. Roberto Gonzalez Barrera, "El Rey de la Tortilla", whose Maseca-Gruma, now a third owned by the Archer Daniels Midlands conglomerate, rules the corn flour and tortilla market (between 60 and 80%), once boasted that he had thousands of hectares under transgenic corn.

Maseca-Gruma is indeed a major player in the "transgenization" of the tortilla industry. During the administration of the now-reviled Carlos Salinas (1988-94), Gonzalez Barrera began marketing an instant corn flour mix milled from both genetically modified and natural corn. Taco shells milled and confected by Gruma and marketed by Kraft were found to contain Starlink corn, then not yet authorized for human consumption, resulting in the largest call-back of any transgenically contaminated product in U.S. history.

The Maseca mix has largely supplanted the traditional Indian way of preparing corn for tortillas - the "nixtamal" in which the "granos" or kernels are put to soak overnight in a brew whose main ingredient is quicklime. As payback for market domination, the King of the Tortillas flew Salinas into self-exile in his private jet in 1995 after the ex-president's brother was arrested for murder.

Barrera and his ADM partners and their transnational associates at Cargill-Consolidated Mexico and Mimsa-Corn Products now control the Mexican maize market. It is that monopoly, which has caused the current panic, considers Luis Hernandez Navarro, op-ed editor at La Jornada, the national left daily, and a writer intimately familiar with agricultural issues. When ex-president Ernesto Zedillo (1994-2000) closed down CONASUPO, the state grain distribution system in 1997, the transnationals moved in and have taken control, says Hernandez. "When Mexican corn is in danger so is Mexico" he cautions, echoing the old refrain "no hay pais sin maiz" - there is no country without corn.

Hernandez and other veteran observers of the Mexican "campo" strongly suspect that the current corn crisis is being manipulated to end the moratorium on planting transgenic corn in Mexico. "The transnationals want to end the moratorium and are using this made-up crisis to pressure the SAGARPA (Agricultural Secretariat) to do away with it" figures investigator Antonio Serratos at the prestigious College of Mexico think tank. "It is part of their strategy for taking control of the entire agricultural sector."

As if to confirm Serratos' hunch, Big Agro is already petitioning the Biosecurity Commission to permit widespread planting in 2007. "Bio-tech is the only solution to growing more corn and keeping the tortilla affordable" advises Jaime Yesaki, director of the National Agriculture and Livestock Council or C.N.A, the principal agri-business federation in the country.

The C.N.A. was joined in its petition to the Secretary of Agriculture to vacate the ban on growing GMO corn by the National Association of Supermarkets and Retail Stores which is controlled by the U.S. transnational Wal-Mart - Wal-Mart is now Mexico's number one retailer of tortillas and other foodstuffs and, with 700 mega-stores, the nation's largest employer.

The subtext of the corn conflict is control of the seed market. "We have been patiently waiting to end the moratorium for ten years now" complained Eduardo Perez Pico, director of Monsanto-Mexico, the St. Louis-based conglomerate that dominates world seed markets. "Meanwhile Mexico is falling behind the rest of the world in applying new seed technologies that can better feed its people" the magnate recently told La Jornada.

The Mexican geography produces hundreds of varieties of corn that have adapted to the country's myriad bioregions over millenniums. The introduction of transgenic seed will work to homogenize these strains, reasons Dr. Ignacio Chapela, the University of California-Berkeley biologist who was the first to locate GMO contamination here while doing fieldwork in the tiny Oaxaca sierra town of Calpulapan in 2001. "Millions of years of biological history will be lost if transgenic seeds are allowed to be planted in the Mexican milpa" Chapela affirms.

Big Biotech with Monsanto leading the pack wants to replace those millions of years with seeds like the Terminator (named for the action hero governor of California) which goes sterile after one growing cycle and obligates farmers (they sign binding contracts with Monsanto) to buy more, a process Mexican investigator Silvia Ribiero tags "bio-slavery".

Corn is not just nutrition and livelihood in Mexico but also culture and religion. Maiz came from the gods and the Aztecs and Mayas nourished those gods with sacrificial victims to keep it coming. The transnational attack on corn stirs passions and paranoias amongst the descendants of Mexico's first peoples. At a meeting of NAFTA scientists a few years back, some with deep ties to Big Biotech, and charged with investigating allegations brought by 17 Mexican NGOs that GMO corn was a threat to the nation's 57 distinct indigenous peoples, an Indian farmer from Oaxaca seized the mic and accused the scientists of practicing genocide by pushing transgenics. "First you killed your own Indians and now you want to kill us!" the farmer shouted angrily.

The Zapatistas are Mayans and the Mayans are the People of the Corn. According to their sacred books, the Popul Vuh and the Chilam Balaam, they are actually made from maiz. Manuel, a member of the ecology-agricultural commission at Oventik, the most accessible Zapatista "caracol" or public center in the mountains above San Cristobal de las Casas, venerates these roots. "We are the corn - if it is poisoned so are we" he insisted during this New Year's "Encounter Between the Peoples of the World and the Peoples of the Zapatista Communities" up at the Caracol "Resistance and Rebellion for Humanity." Now the Zapatistas are freezing their seed corn to preserve pure Mayan germ plasma so that there will never be a world without it. You can even purchase the seeds on the World Wide Web. Check out www.schoolsforchiapas.com.

U.S. Agency Violated Law in Seed Case, Judge Rules
Andrew Pollack
New York Times, February 14 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/14/business/14crop.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

A federal judge ruled yesterday that the Agriculture Department violated the
law by failing to adequately assess possible environmental impacts before
approving Monsanto<'s genetically engineered alfalfa.

Judge Charles R. Breyer of Federal District Court in San Francisco said the
agency had been "cavalier" in deciding that a full environmental impact
statement was not needed because the potential environmental and economic
effects of the crop were not significant.

Plaintiffs in the case  some alfalfa seed companies and environmental and
farm advocacy groups — said they would push to stop the sales and planting of
the alfalfa, which is resistant to Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide.

Joseph Mendelson, legal director of the Center for Food Safety, a Washington
advocacy group that organized the lawsuit, said the decision by itself could
block commercial sales of genetically engineered alfalfa seeds but that the
plaintiffs would ask for an injunction to make sure. Judge Breyer asked the
parties to meet and propose remedies to him by Feb. 26.

Christopher R. Horner, a spokesman for Monsanto, said the company had not
seen the decision but thought it would not affect its business. Monsanto was not
named in the suit, which was filed against the Agriculture Department.

Calls to several spokesmen for the Agriculture Department were not returned.
A recording in the department’s communications office said the government
closed early yesterday because of expected bad weather in Washington.

A federal judge in Washington said last week that the Agriculture Department
had not done adequate assessments before approving field trials of genetically
engineered grass. And last August a federal judge in Hawaii, in a case
involving field trials of crops engineered to produce pharmaceuticals, ruled
that the Agriculture Department had not adequately assessed the possible impact on
endangered species.

Mr. Mendelson of the Center for Food Safety said yesterday’s decision could
set a precedent that would require the Agriculture Department to do full impact
statements for other biotech crops before they are approved.

The Roundup Ready alfalfa was deregulated by the Agriculture Department in
June 2005, meaning it could be grown outside of field trials. It was the first
approval in years of a new genetically engineered crop. Because alfalfa is the
fourth most widely planted crop in the United States, the action presented a
big opportunity for Monsanto.

The Agriculture Department had first done an environmental assessment, which
concluded that a longer and more detailed environmental impact statement was
not needed. This was in part, the agency said, because the implanted gene
conferring herbicide resistance was harmless to people and livestock.

But Judge Breyer, in his 20-page opinion, said that the agency had not
adequately considered the possibility that the gene could be transferred by
pollen
to organic or conventional alfalfa, hurting sales of organic farmers or exports
to countries like Japan that did not want the genetically engineered variety.

"An action which potentially eliminates or at least greatly reduces the
availability of a particular plant — here, nonengineered alfalfa — has a
significant effect on the human environment," he wrote.

The judge also said that the Agriculture Department had too easily dismissed
the possibility that planting Roundup-resistant alfalfa would lead to wider
use of Roundup, which in turn would contribute to the development of weeds
resistant to the popular herbicide. That is particularly a risk, he said,
because many other crops like soybeans and corn are also resistant to Roundup, which is
known generically as glyphosate.

"One would expect that some federal agency is considering whether there is
some risk to engineering all of America’s crops to include the gene that
confers resistance to glyphosate," he wrote.