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Today's diary was inspired by reading an article about Occupy the Farm. I was reminded of the "back to the land" movement in the 70's as hippies started communes, collectives and individual farms in an effort to live more in harmony with the environment and change the culture to a more stable and sustainable way of life. Those thoughts focused and came full circle for me when I saw the mash up video below, based upon The Guess Who's early 70's song, "Share The Land." There are a couple of other videos from the period in the "A Little Night Music" section, the Kinks "Apeman," a song about alienation and a desire to get back to nature, and the Dillard's classic, "Old Home Place," a song expressing regret for leaving the farm. Enjoy.
“When the green hills are covered with talking wires and the wolves no longer sing, what good will the money you paid for our land be then”
― Chief Seattle
News
Occupying Farmland for Organic Food and Fairness Exposes University Elitism
On Earth Day—April 22, 2012—about 200 people, accompanied by children in strollers, dogs, rabbits, chickens, and carrying hundreds of pounds of compost and at least 10,000 seedlings entered a 14-acre piece of land containing the last Class I agricultural soil in the East Bay. Located on the Albany-Berkeley border in the Bay Area, the plot is owned by the University of California Berkeley. By the end of the day, they had weeded, tilled, and successfully cultivated about an acre of the land. By May 14, when 100 University of California riot police surrounded the tract and began arresting the farmers, Occupy the Farm had cultivated around five acres of the plot known as the Gill Tract. ...
On April 24, the University shut off the water supply and threatened the farmers with eviction. University administration has gone on a media offensive, attempting to pit researchers against the Occupy farmers and according to some reports, preventing them from negotiating with the farmers. Some faculty members have published statements in support of the farmers, arguing that the goals of the farm are aligned with the public policy goals of the state and the U.C. mission. ...
The 104-acre plot was sold to the University in 1928 by the Gill family with the condition that it be used as an agricultural research station. Under the Smith-Lever Act of 1914, part of the University’s mission as a land grant institution is to promote community involvement and initiatives in agriculture.
The turning point came in 1998, when Novartis gave $25 million to the Plant and Microbial Biology department to conduct genetic research on the land. “They kicked off the local organic pest management project to do gene research,” says Ulan McKnight of the Albany Farm Alliance. “What was here before directly benefitted the people of California; now what they do here directly benefits biotechnology companies. Instead of doing things that can help people, they are doing things that benefit the one percent.”
Occupy the Farm Dug In, Dug Up
A report on the goings on at the Gill Tract in Albany, California (next to Berkeley), a land granted research farm tract owned by the University of California that the community has some ideas about how they'd like it used. Sadly, those ideas are at odds with UC, that wants to sell it to commercial interests. Read all about it.
How the US Sold Africa to Multinationals Like Monsanto, Cargill, DuPont, PepsiCo and Others
Will Obama's New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition help farmers like Charity? The New Alliance was announced in conjunction with the G8 meeting last Friday. Under the scheme, some 45 corporations, including Monsanto, Syngenta, Yara International, Cargill, DuPont, and PepsiCo, have pledged a total of $3.5 billion in investment in Africa. The full list of corporations and commitments has just been released, and one of the most notable is Yara International's promise to build a $2 billion fertilizer plant in Africa. Syngenta pledged to build a $1 billion business in Africa over the next decade. These promises are not charity; they are business.
This is par for the course for the attempted “second green revolution” that is currently underway. The Gates Foundation and its Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa are working to build up a network of private seed companies and private agro-dealers across Africa. The goal is to increase average fertilizer use in Africa by more than a factor of six and to decrease the distance each African farmer must travel to reach a shop selling seeds and inputs. Those who support this vision have heaped praise on Obama and the G8's New Alliance. In fact, with both Republican and Democratic support, this is one of the only things both parties agree on. ...
The new G8 scheme to help African farmers does nothing to address the problems that are at the core of hunger and malnutrition. More likely, it will serve only to further poverty and inequality across the continent. The elites of the first world work together with the elites of the third world in the name of helping peasant farmers, but it nobody consults the peasant farmers themselves. Perhaps Obama could spend a week or two living with his Kenyan family members to find out what they actually want and need before he suggests another program to “help” the people of Africa.
Mexican Farmers Block New Law to Privatize Plants
Progressive small farmer organizations in Mexico scored a victory over transnational corporations that seek to monopolize seed and food patents. When the corporations pushed their bill to modify the Federal Law on Plant Varieties through the Committee on Agriculture and Livestock of the Mexican Chamber of Deputies on March 14, organizations of farmers from across the country sounded the alarm. By organizing quickly, they joined together to pressure legislators and achieved an agreement with the legislative committee to remove the bill from the floor.
What’s at stake is free and open access to plant biodiversity in agriculture. The proposed modifications promote a privatizing model that uses patents and “Plant Breeders’s Rights” (PBR) to deprive farmers of the labor of centuries in developing seed. The small farmers who worked to create this foundation of modern agriculture never charged royalties for its use. ...
The battle was won, but the bill is still pending as Monsanto and other large corporations wait for a better time. With Mexican elections just months away, they’re waiting for a time when the political cost of these measures that harm producers’ rights won’t have immediate electoral repercussions.
As now formulated, the reform would further strengthen the legal underpinnings for pillage that the Mexican Congress has been shaping since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) began to be negotiated and then went into effect. The proposed reforms derive directly from the intellectual property agreements contained in annex 1701.3 of NAFTA.
Bernie Sanders and Keith Ellison have some new legislation to cut corporate welfare to polluters...
Let’s end polluter welfare
It is time we end this corporate welfare in the form of massive subsidies and tax breaks [PDF] to hugely profitable fossil-fuel corporations. It is time for Congress to support the interests of the taxpayer instead of powerful special interests like the oil and coal industries. That is why I joined with Rep. Keith Ellison to introduce legislation in the Senate and the House called the End Polluter Welfare Act. Our proposal is backed by grassroots and public-interest organizations 350.org, Friends of the Earth, Taxpayers for Common Sense, and many others.
It is immoral that some in Congress advocate savage cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security while those same people vote to preserve billions in tax breaks for ExxonMobil, the most profitable corporation in America. It is equally obscene that as those members of Congress fight to continue never-ending fossil-fuel subsidies worth tens of billions, they are working overtime to deny a one-year extension for key sustainable energy incentives for the emerging wind and solar industries. Instead of passing strong legislation to help reverse global warming, Congress continues giveaways to the 200-year-old fossil-fuel industry even as that industry’s carbon pollution wreaks devastation on our planet. Enough is enough.
U.N. Probe: U.S. Should Return Stolen Land, Including Mt. Rushmore, to Native Americans
James Anaya, the U.N. special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, has conducted the United Nations’ first-ever investigation into the plight of Native Americans living in the United States. Anaya’s recommendations include advising the U.S. to return some land to Native American tribes, including South Dakota’s Black Hills, home to the famous Mt. Rushmore monument. Anaya says such a move would be a step toward addressing systemic discrimination against Native Americans that continues to this day.
"Job Creators"
FBI quietly forms secretive Net-surveillance unit
The FBI has recently formed a secretive surveillance unit with an ambitious goal: to invent technology that will let police more readily eavesdrop on Internet and wireless communications. ...
DCAC's mandate is broad, covering everything from trying to intercept and decode Skype conversations to building custom wiretap hardware or analyzing the gigabytes of data that a wireless provider or social network might turn over in response to a court order. It's also designed to serve as a kind of surveillance help desk for state, local, and other federal police.
The center represents the technological component of the bureau's "Going Dark" Internet wiretapping push, which was allocated $54 million by a Senate committee last month. The legal component is no less important: as CNET reported on May 4, the FBI wants Internet companies not to oppose a proposed law that would require social-networks and providers of VoIP, instant messaging, and Web e-mail to build in backdoors for government surveillance.
Army Readies Its Mammoth Spy Blimp for First Flight
TAMPA, Florida — Sure, it took an extra year or so, but Northrop Grumman has finally penciled in the first flight of the giant surveillance airship it’s building for the U.S. Army. The Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle — a football-field-size, helium-filled robot blimp fitted with sensors and data-links — should take to the air over Lakehurst, New Jersey, the first or second week of June. K.C. Brown, Jr., Northrop’s director of Army programs, crows: ”We’re about to fly the thing!” ...
The Air Force’s highly computerized (and potenitally missile-armed) Blue Devil 2 airship recently ran into integration problems, forcing the flying branch to cancel a planned test run in Afghanistan. (Although the service had never been too hot on airships in the first place.) The Navy meanwhile grounded its much smaller MZ-3A research blimp for a lack of work until the Army paid to take it over. The LEMV seemed to be losing air, too, as Northrop and the Army repeatedly delayed its first flight and planned combat deployment originally slated for the end of 2011.
As recently as last month Northrop and the Army declined to comment on the airship’s new flight schedule. Northrop VP Brad Metzger’s boast from last summer that the $500-million LEMV prototype would “redefine persistent surveillance” seemed hollow.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What Do the World's Most Powerful Pesticide Honchos Eat for Dinner?
[This paragraph makes the whole article worthwhile reading...]
That gave me the opportunity to deliver my critique of GMOs. After 25 years of R&D and 16 years in the field, the industry has so far delivered precisely two widely used traits: herbicide resistance (Roundup Ready) and pesticide expression (Bt). The first has already failed, and the second is showing signs of coming undone. Meanwhile, the so-called complex traits—crops that use less water or nitrogen—clearly aren't working. Moreover, despite all the "feed the world" rhetoric, GMOs have so far succeeded in boosting crop yields only marginally. GMOs have been a magnificent success in the marketplace, I declared, but what had they succeeded at? Mainly, I charged, at generating profits for a few big companies in the form of licensing fees and herbicide sales.
Map of the Corporate Consumer Universe
Convergence Alimentaire put together an illustration of the reach of the 10 biggest firms that sell to consumers. The top ten are: Kraft, Nestle, P&G, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, General Foods, Kellogg's, Mars, UniLever, and Johnson and Johnson.
Massive Chicago Teachers Union Rally Takes over Downtown by Hyde Park Johnny
A Little Night Music
The Kinks - Apeman
Spirit - Animal Zoo
The Dillards - The Old Home Place
Spirit - Nature's Way
Skip James - Hard Time Killin' Floor Blues
Ry Cooder - The Farmer is the Man Who Feeds Us All