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Federal judge orders first-ever moratorium on sale of genetically-altered seed

USDA approval of genetically engineered alfalfa is vacated, seed sales halted

San Francisco, CA, March 12, 2007 - A Federal judge ruled today that the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) 2005 approval of genetically engineered (GE) alfalfa is vacated and ordered an immediate halt to sales of the GE seed. The ruling follows a hearing last week in the case brought by the Center for Food Safety (CFS) against the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for approving GE alfalfa without conducting the required Environmental Impact Statement.

“We are pleased that the judge called for halt to sales of this potentially damaging crop,” said Will Rostov, a Senior Attorney for CFS. “Roundup Ready alfalfa poses threats to farmers, to our export markets, and to the environment. We expect the USDA to abide by the law and give these harmful effects of the crop full consideration.”

The Lives of Others: Artistic life under Stalinism

The Lives of Others (Der Leben der Anderen) is an account of East Berlin artists under surveillance by the Stasi, the German Democratic Republic's feared secret police, during the GDR's last years. The film brings to light the systematic destruction of cultural creativity under authoritarian communism, in this case, East Germany. After the fall of Nazism in the 1940s, Germany became an occupied country - the capitalist U.S., U.K., and France to the west (including West Berlin) and Stalinist U.S.S.R. to the east (as well as East Berlin). The GDR, modeled after the Soviet Union's totalitarian, bureaucratic regime, proved to be no better than the Nazis. It is the East German setting where the fight for artistic freedom against Stalinism takes place.

Obstruction of justice

Don't blame Kyle Sampson for the administration's decision to fire seven United States Attorneys in the middle of their terms. The Attorney General's chief of staff may be this week's fall guy in the investigation of the firing of the prosecutors, but he was only doing what he knows how to do: He was doing politics.

         Kyle Sampson never worked as a prosecutor. He was barely out of law school when he came to Washington in 1999 to work for Sen. Orrin Hatch on the Judiciary Committee as a junior aide. From there, it was just a short step to the transition staff, where he put his newly gained knowledge of the nomination process to work in screening candidates with far more experience than he for jobs in the judiciary and the Justice Department.

         Then it was on to the White House staff, then to the Justice Department under John Ashcroft, then to a job as a "senior" aide to the new Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales. Barely seven years after arriving in Washington with almost no experience, Mr. Sampson was the chief of staff to the Attorney General, and deep in the process of replacing federal prosecutors.

Sacrificing our children on the altar of corporate greed

Our children are being sacrificed on the altar of corporate greed in Iraq. As the purported rationale for the war has metamorphosed from protecting ourselves from weapons of mass destruction and the specter of a ''mushroom shaped cloud,'' to regime change, to fighting terrorists, to spreading democracy at the point of a gun, two constants remain. The children of the poor, the working class, and the lower half of what is left of the shrinking middle class return to us in coffins, or limbless, or brain damaged, and emotionally scarred. The children of the power elite, for whom they fight the war, secure in their corporate boardrooms or on their yachts, reap unconscionable profits as the nation''s treasure and blood is being stuffed down the rat-hole that is the Iraq war.

Open letter calling on Ohio House of Representatives to vote on Iraqi refugee resolution

The Northeast Ohio American Friends Service Committee [AFSC], a Quaker social action organization, calls on the Ohio House of Representatives to take up the recently-passed state Senate resolution welcoming Iraqi refugees to Ohio. This is a timely moment to address this humanitarian concern. Next Monday, March 19, 2007 marks the 4th anniversary of the launch of the war, invasion and occupation of Iraq.

The AFSC believes Ohio’s reputation in the eyes of the world can be enhanced by agreeing to accept people who have fled from the violence and destruction of their nation following 4 years of US military occupation. We believe it is, indeed, the responsibility of our nation to accept the responsibility for our actions. Therefore, the Northeast Ohio AFSC calls for the Ohio House of Representatives to pass the Ohio Senate resolution – but only after adding the following “Whereas” clauses.

From Lawn-Boys to B-2’s: America’s penchant for mowing ‘em down

“I just look around and see people mowing their lawns on the same day we start to bomb Iraq and it drives me wild.”
--Mike Palecek

Having read and thoroughly enjoyed three of Mike Palecek’s novels, I felt particularly fortunate that he agreed to engage in a cyber-interview with me. His irreverent satirization of the myriad of ills plaguing the United States is unparalleled amongst current authors of sociopolitical fiction. Palecek may hyperbolize, but his fertile imagination has afforded US Americans a priceless opportunity to stop and examine what we are becoming as a nation. And he has done so in a fashion that is both absorbing and entertaining.

In some ways Palecek’s offerings are analogous with Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here. Though in Lewis’s case, he was prognosticating. Palecek is documenting what has already transpired.

Without further adieu, I give you the interview with Mike Palecek:

1 Readers will note with interest that you went from being a seminarian to being incarcerated in federal prison. How would you explain this ostensibly glaring contradiction?

Good, clean, green way to generate electricity is approved by city in San Diego County

It has the feel of the final scene in the movie “Back to the Future” where Doc Brown is feeding banana peels and other garbage into the Mr. Fusion appliance on top of the DeLorean to fuel it.

But what is happening in Vista, California, right now is not in any futuristic movie, it is the next wave of good, clean, green ways to generate electricity without substantial adverse effects on the environment.

Not quite Mr. Fusion, but close.

Forward-thinking city officials have approved a special use permit which allows Envirepel Energy Inc., to move forward with the balance of the permits required to finish construction of its renewable, bio energy facility and begin operation of it for an initial 18-months.

It will be using a process called “gasification combustion” which cleanly burns green waste and wood, to produce electricity. Not to be confused with “incineration” during which refuse is burned in lieu of burial in a landfill, gasification would not degrade the quality of the environment, result in long-term or cumulative impacts or have substantial adverse effects on human beings, either directly

Partisanship at justice isn't new

Someday, historians will wonder why the highest officials in the Bush Justice Department believed they could inflict heavy-handed political abuse on federal prosecutors -- and get away with it. The punishment of the eight dismissed U.S. attorneys betrays a strong sense of impunity in the White House, as if the president and his aides assumed nobody would complain about these outrages or attempt to hold them accountable. The precedent for their misconduct was set long ago.

            There was once another Republican prosecutor who insisted on behaving professionally instead of obeying partisan hints from the White House. His name was Charles A. Banks, and his story begins in the summer of 1992, as the presidential contest entered its final months, with Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton leading incumbent President George H.W. Bush.

Only nonviolence will end the war

On March 17, a huge mass of people will gather at the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C., and march from there to the Pentagon for the cause of impeachment and peace. http://www.impeach07.org

A handful of pro-war people, some volunteer and some probably paid to be there, will stage a counter-demonstration. This relatively tiny pro-death contingent will garner 50 percent of the media coverage if those on the side of peace do everything right. If a single demonstrator for peace turns violent in any way, that story will take up far more than 50 percent of the news, and that news will hurt the cause of peace and justice.

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