The Organic Elite Surrenders to Monsanto: What Now?
By Ronnie Cummins
Organic Consumers Association, Jan 27, 2011
Straight to the Source

“The policy set for GE alfalfa will most likely guide policies for other GE crops as well. True coexistence is a must.” – Whole Foods Market, Jan. 21, 2011

In the wake of a 12-year battle to keep Monsanto’s Genetically Engineered (GE) crops from contaminating the nation’s 25,000 organic farms and ranches, America’s organic consumers and producers are facing betrayal. A self-appointed cabal of the Organic Elite, spearheaded by Whole Foods Market, Organic Valley, and Stonyfield Farm, has decided it’s time to surrender to Monsanto. Top executives from these companies have publicly admitted that they no longer oppose the mass commercialization of GE crops, such as Monsanto’s controversial Roundup Ready alfalfa, and are prepared to sit down and cut a deal for “coexistence” with Monsanto and USDA biotech cheerleader Tom Vilsack.

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News Updates from Citizens For Legitimate Government
27 Jan 2011
http://www.legitgov.org

Utah Army post reopens after VX nerve agent vial found –Dugway Proving Ground Reopens After Lockdown 27 Jan 2011 The Army says Dugway Proving Ground, where military weapons are tested, was locked down for hours because a small [?] amount of a nerve agent was unaccounted for. The military said in a statement Thursday the amount missing was less than one fourth of a teaspoon of VX nerve agent, which affects the body’s ability to carry messages through the nerves. The missing vial prompted a lockdown late Wednesday afternoon that lasted until the agent was found early Thursday. [Wikipedia: VX, IUPAC name O-ethyl S-[2-(diisopropylamino)ethyl] methylphosphonothioate, is an extremely toxic substance whose only application is in chemical warfare as a nerve agent. As a chemical weapon, it is classified as a weapon of mass destruction by the United Nations in UN Resolution 687. The production and stockpiling of VX was outlawed by the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993.]

Utah Army base housing chemical and biological weapons shut down over ‘serious concern’ –Army officials refused to say what prompted the lockdown. 27 Jan 2011 The Army shut down a sprawling Utah desert base where chemical and biological weapons are tested amid a “serious concern,” military officials said. Armed sentries blocked the entrances to the Dugway Proving Grounds 90 miles southwest of Salt Lake City beginning at about 7 p.m. local time. The gates were re-opened by daylight.

From: Mark A. Kastel – The Cornucopia Institute
Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2011 4:34 PM
To: Organic Integrity Project
Subject: CORNUCOPIA – BREAKING NEWS: USDA to Fully Deregulate Monsanto’s Genetically Engineer Alfalfa —-Gene Contamination of Feed, Milk, Meat and Other Products to Follow…
Importance: High

USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack this afternoon announced that the agency will fully deregulate Monsanto’s controversial genetically engineered alfalfa. The choice was favored by the biotech industry and one of three options identified in the USDA’s Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) released last month.

USDA could have maintained regulatory status over the perennial crop that is so important as
forage for the livestock industry. Or they could have chosen a limited regulation strategy with
bans on the planting of GE alfalfa seeds in seed growing regions to attempt to limit the contamination of alfalfa seed stock by foreign DNA from Monsanto’s crop. (alfalfa is pollinated by bees and other insects and has a pollination radius of five miles). Instead, the agency, under heavy pressure from
the biotech sector, chose total deregulation. Over 250,000 public comments were received during
the FEIS process, with the vast majority opposing deregulation.

Vilsack did announce that the USDA WOULD establish a second germ plasm/seed center for alfalfa in the state of Idaho to try, and the operative word is “try,” to maintain GE-free strains of alfalfa. They currently operate such a facility in Prosser, WA. He said the FEIS process brought home two key points to USDA: choice and trust.

The Center for Food Safety, with The Cornucopia Institute and others, has been embroiled in a court case fighting the release of GE-alfalfa. The case has been on hold while the USDA completed its court-ordered EIS. Opponents of GE-alfalfa are evaluating their choices and likely will resume their legal battle.

Will FANTLE
The Cornucopia Institute

THE NEW, NEW THING
WikiLeaks + Hyperlocal = Localeaks
By David Cohen

Inspired by WikiLeaks, the City University of New York Graduate School’s Entrepreneurial Journalism program created Localeaks, a simple online form that allows users to send anonymous tips to more than 1,400 newspapers in the United States, ReadWriteWeb reported.

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Let’s Take A Closer Look At Clarence Thomas
By Andrew Kreig / Director’s Blog

The Los Angeles Times published a remarkable story over the weekend about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas that deserves active follow up by bar authorities and the mainstream media, not simply legal reform organizations. We’ll be pursuing this at the Justice Integrity Project. But first, we provide the basics with a link to the original story.

Los Angeles Times, Clarence Thomas failed to report wife’s income, watchdog says, Kim Geiger, Jan. 22, 2011. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas failed to report his wife’s income from a conservative think tank on financial disclosure forms for at least five years, the watchdog group Common Cause said Friday. Between 2003 and 2007, Virginia Thomas, a longtime conservative activist, earned $686,589 from the Heritage Foundation, according to a Common Cause review of the foundation’s IRS records. Thomas failed to note the income in his Supreme Court financial disclosure forms for those years, instead checking a box labeled “none” where “spousal noninvestment income” would be disclosed.

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Hogwash, Mr. President
Robert Scheer

What is the state of the union? You certainly couldn’t tell from that platitudinous hogwash that the president dished out Tuesday evening. I had expected Barack Obama to be his eloquent self, appealing to our better nature, but instead he was mealy-mouthed in avoiding the tough choices that a leader should delineate in a time of trouble. He embraced clean air and a faster Internet while ignoring the depth of our economic pain and the Wall Street scoundrels who were responsible — understandably so, since they so prominently populate the highest reaches of his administration.

He had the effrontery to condemn “a parade of lobbyists” for rigging government after he appointed the top Washington representative of JPMorgan Chase to be his new chief of staff.

The speech was a distraction from what seriously ails us: an unabated mortgage crisis, stubbornly high unemployment and a debt that spiraled out of control while the government wasted trillions making the bankers whole. Instead the president conveyed the insular optimism of his fat-cat associates: “We are poised for progress. Two years after the worst recession most of us have ever known, the stock market has come roaring back. Corporate profits are up. The economy is growing again.” How convenient to ignore the fact that this bubble of prosperity, which has failed the tens of millions losing their homes and jobs, was floated by enormous government indebtedness now forcing deep cuts in social services including state financial aid for those better-educated students the president claims to be so concerned about.

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Alito, Thomas Headlined Political Fundraisers Chaired By Leading Right-Wing Donor Paul Singer
By Lee Fang | Sourced from ThinkProgress

A few months ago, ThinkProgress launched a series of investigations into relationship of the right flank of the Supreme Court – Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Antonin Scalia – with corporate donors and Republican operatives. In October, we revealed, through a document obtained from Koch Industries, that Scalia and Thomas had attended secret right-wing fundraisers organized by Charles Koch to coordinate political strategy. ThinkProgress has now discovered more events attended by conservative Supreme Court justices.

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Blackwater deaths suit tossed after six years
By Mike Baker
Wednesday, January 26, 2011

RALEIGH, N.C. – A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit that blamed the security company formerly known as Blackwater for the deaths of four contractors killed in a 2004 ambush on the restive streets of Iraq.

U.S. District Judge James C. Fox [a Reagan appointee-MCM] said court-ordered arbitration fell apart because neither side was paying the costs of that process, so he decided to end the case nearly seven years after the killings.

Katy Helvenston, the mother of contractor Scott Helvenston, said Tuesday that the families could not afford the costs and that she fears the case is over. The lawsuit was filed about a year after the men’s deaths.

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US child appeals against being tried for murder as an adult
by Ed Pilkington in New York

Jordan Brown, who was 11 when he allegedly killed his father’s pregnant fiancee, could face life sentence with no parole

Lawyers for a child in Pennsylvania who was 11 when he allegedly shot and killed his father’s pregnant fiancee attempted today to persuade an appeals court not to try him as an adult under America’s harsh system of juvenile justice.

Unless the lawyers for Jordan Brown who is now aged 13, can convince the judges to change tack, he will be tried in adult court and if convicted will serve an automatic life sentence with no chance of parole. He would become the youngest child in US history to be sentenced to be incarcerated forever.

The US is the only country where juveniles are serving life imprisonment without parole under the so-called “life means life” policy. Only the US and Somalia have refused to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which rules out life sentences with no chance of release for crimes committed before the age of 18.

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Clarence Thomas breaks a federal law–and walks!
Will Clarence Thomas Get Away With a Federal Crime?

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is amending financial-disclosure forms dating back more than 20 years, in an apparent effort to avoid prosecution for making false statements to the United States government.

Hal Neilson, an FBI special agent in Oxford, Mississippi, undoubtedly wishes he had been given such an opportunity. He also probably wishes the mainstream press would try to make the kind of excuses for him that are being made for Clarence Thomas.

Neilson was indicted on January 14 for failing to disclose his financial interests and making false statements to a federal agency. According to a Mississippi-based law blog, Neilson was indicted under 18 U.S. Code 1001. That’s the same law that Thomas clearly violated when he failed to disclose almost $700,000 of his wife’s income over at least a five-year period.

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