Newsreel, June 2009

Some interesting stuff in the news these days.

The US Global Change Research Program has presented to Congress and the American President a 190 page paper entitled ‘Global Climate Change Impacts in The United States.‘ If you are still wondering whether or not global climate change is real, or whether or not it is anthropogenic, the answers are here. This paper includes the most up-to-date, most thorough answers science has to offer. And if you are wondering if and when and how that might affect you, this paper addresses that, too. Well worth a read. Or if you don’t have time to read the whole thing, you can browse the colorful graphics.

Of course, admitting there is a problem isn’t the same as solving it. Where to begin? Well, there’s the Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill. Hummmm. Seems Monsanto (one of my all-time favorite moustache-twirling villains) and Dow Chemical (okay, I have more than one favorite!) are pulling some behind the scene shenanigans to promote poisoning of the earth and cornering the entire world’s seed stock as carbon off-sets worthy of subsidies. Lex Luthor would be proud!

In the meantime, we’ve had another shooting in Pensacola. It seems a certain mobile home park got behind on its water bill and so the more than 100 residents (who have been paying their rent all along – which supposedly includes utilities) had their water cut off. No water for over a week and the sewers were beginning to back up. Well, a local church decided to help out. They came over with water, food, and giving hearts. In the midst of this community bonding, a 17-year old from a neighboring town showed up. He had a beef with one of the residents over a stolen wallet, so he shot him in the face. The victim has since died.

If that wasn’t bad enough, a few days later some deputies responded to a call for assistance with a young man who was having a seizure at this very same mobile home park. Somehow, someway, their K-9 dog got out of the sheriff’s car and attacked the patient’s mother, sending her to the hospital with multiple bite wounds. Police aren’t sure how the dog got out of the car, but suggest that the woman aggravated the situation by reacting inappropriately, “’It didn't help that she was hysterical,’ Roy said.”

Bottom line is that if your water is cut off, your sewer is backing up, your neighbor is shot and killed during a church cook-out, your son is having a seizure, and you are being attacked by a police dog, by all means don’t get hysterical!

I am struck by how readily a trigger gets pulled. I am struck by the callousness of the water company and how readily they turned the water off. I am struck by how easily things can go awry when deputies overreact. I am struck by the ‘blame the victim’ attitude of law enforcement. I am struck by the one ray of light in this story – the church members who showed up to offer relief.

I am concerned about the number of guns in this country. I am concerned that hardship brings out the worst in some people. I am concerned that this story is only the beginning . . .

It's What Should be on the News but Isn't

Okay, so the American economy is on a roller coaster ride. Palin is still making speeches. Madonna is getting divorced. But did you know that:

Over the past six months, China, South Korea, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other nations have been buying and leasing huge quantities of foreign land for the production of food or biofuels for domestic consumption. It's a modern day version of the 19th-century scramble for Africa.

This year's bubble in food prices – driven by financial speculators, biofuels and compounded when some countries halted food exports to ensure their own supplies – led to pain for nations dependent on imports.

Alarm bells rang, with many governments alerted to what might lie ahead as climate change and soil destruction reduce the supply of food on the world market. The result, a huge international land grab, raises many troublesome issues.

So what? Well --

The investors will want a quick return. They will practise an industrial model of agriculture that in many parts of the world has already produced poverty and environmental destruction, as well as farm-chemical pollution.

Furthermore, many local communities will be evicted to make way for the foreign takeover. The governments and investors will argue that jobs will be created and some of the food produced will be made available for local communities, but this does not disguise what is essentially a process of dispossession. Lands will be taken away from smallholders or forest dwellers and converted into large industrial estates connected to distant markets.

Ironically, these very small communities may have a key role to play in helping the world confront the interlinked climate and food crises. Many such communities have a profound knowledge of local biodiversity and often cultivate little-known varieties of crops that can survive drought and other weather extremes.

Scientific studies have shown that farming methods that are not based on fossil-fuel inputs and are under the control of local farmers can be more productive than industrial farming and are almost always more sustainable.

More articles on the land grabs here, and if you're into graphics, there is a map here.

Okay, now what about all that piracy in the news? Want to hear the side that isn't getting told? 'We consider ourselves heroes' - a Somali pirate speaks:

I am 42 years old and have nine children. I am a boss with boats operating in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean.

I finished high school and wanted to go to university but there was no money. So I became a fisherman in Eyl in Puntland like my father, even though I still dreamed of working for a company. That never happened as the Somali government was destroyed [in 1991] and the country became unstable.

At sea foreign fishing vessels often confronted us. Some had no licence, others had permission from the Puntland authorities but did not want us there to compete. They would destroy our boats and force us to flee for our lives.

I started to hijack these fishing boats in 1998. I did not have any special training but was not afraid. For our first captured ship we got $300,000. With the money we bought AK-47s and small speedboats. I don't know exactly how many ships I have captured since then but I think it is about 60. Sometimes when we are going to hijack a ship we face rough winds, and some of us get sick and some die.

We give priority to ships from Europe because we get bigger ransoms. To get their attention we shoot near the ship. If it does not stop we use a rope ladder to get on board. We count the crew and find out their nationalities. After checking the cargo we ask the captain to phone the owner and say that have seized the ship and will keep it until the ransom is paid.

We make friends with the hostages, telling them that we only want money, not to kill them. Sometimes we even eat rice, fish, pasta with them. When the money is delivered to our ship we count the dollars and let the hostages go.

Then our friends come to welcome us back in Eyl and we go to Garowe in Land Cruisers. We split the money. For example, if we get $1.8m, we would send $380,000 to the investment man who gives us cash to fund the missions, and then divide the rest between us.

Our community thinks we are pirates getting illegal money. But we consider ourselves heroes running away from poverty. We don't see the hijacking as a criminal act but as a road tax because we have no central government to control our sea. With foreign warships now on patrol we have difficulties.

But we are getting new boats and weapons. We will not stop until we have a central government that can control our sea.

Or how about what we are doing to the foodchain in our oceans?

For decades the Soviet Union was the only country to harvest krill. Krill mince became a Polish and German speciality in the 1970s, and in the Far East krill is still eaten, with a premium paid for females carrying extra fat. But the biggest krill market has always been as animal feeds and aquaculture.

“If ever evidence were needed that we’ve fished our way down the food chain, then here it is,” said Willie Mackenzie, of Greenpeace’s oceans campaign. “Krill is the basis of the Antarctic food web, on which fish, seals, penguins and whales all rely.”

He added: “It’s simplistic short-termist spin to refer to krill fishing as sustainable when there are huge gaps in knowledge of the species’ life history, population dynamics, and the impacts that climate change is having on its abundance.”

Is there any part of this world that is safe from human greed? Do we not understand that what we are doing is unsustainable and that we must change our ways or die, taking much of the world down with us? How are we going to find the answers when we aren't even asking the right questions?