EU Panel Votes to Import Genetically Engineered Material in Animal Feed

The European Union (EU) standing committee on Tuesday decided to allow a 0.1 percent contamination threshold for unauthorized Genetically Engineered (GE) products in animal feed imports that would change the bloc’s zero-tolerance attitude toward biotech food. The EU Commission and Parliament are expected to accept the rule by this summer. If the vote is allowed through by the European Parliament and Council, those shipments could contain GE seeds that are authorized in their home country but may not even have been tested in Europe.

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What Really Happened to the 1960s: How Mass Media Culture Failed American Democracy
By Edward P. Morgan, Professor of Political Science, Lehigh University

Ted Morgan will be speaking at the McNally Jackson Bookstore, at 52 Prince St. in Manhattan, on Tuesday evening, March 1, at 7:00 p.m. Introduced by Mark Crispin Miller, Morgan will discuss his great new book, What Really Happened to the Sixties, and take questions from the audience.

McNally Jackson Bookstore
52 Prince St. (b/t Lafayette & Mulberry)
NY, NY
212-274-1160

Here’s a Facebook page on boycotting Koch products:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Boycott-and-Defeat-Koch-Industries/155879361093898?v=info

And here is a much longer list of things we should stop buying:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/08/24/895947/-Boycott-Koch-Products

• Lycra
• Stainmaster Carpet
• Dense Armor Drywall and Decking
• ToughArmor Gypsum board
• ToughArmor Gypsum board
• Georgia pacific Plytanium Plywood
• Flexrock
• Densglass sheathing
• G/P Industrial plasters (some products used by a lot of crafters)-
• Plaster
• Arts & Crafts Plaster
• Dental Plaster
• General Purpose Plaster
• Glass-reinforced Gypsum (GRG)
• Industrial Tooling Plaster
• Investment Casting Plaster
• Medical Plaster
• Metal Casting Plaster
• Pottery Plaster
• FibreStrong Rim board
• G/P Lam board
• Blue Ribbon OSB Rated Sheathing
• Blue Ribbon Sub-floor
• DryGuard Enhanced OSB
• Nautilus Wall Sheathing
• Thermostat OSB Radiant Barrier Sheathing
• Broadspan Engineered Wood Products
• XJ 85 I-Joists
• FireDefender Banded Cores
• FireDefender FS
• FireDefender Mineral Core
• Hardboard and Thin MDF including Auto Hardboard,Perforated Hardboard and Thin MDF
• Wood Fiberboard -
• Commercial Roof Fiberboard
• Hushboard Sound Deadening Board
• Regular Fiberboard Sheathing
• Structural Fiberboard Sheathing
• COMFOREL® fiberfill
• COOLMAX® fabric
• CORDURA® fabric
• DACRON® fiber
• POLYSHIELD® resin
• SOLARMAX® fabric
• SOMERELLE® bedding products
• STAINMASTER® carpet
• SUPPLEX® fabric
• TACTEL® fiber
• TACTESSE® carpet fiber
• TERATE® polyols
• TERATHANE® polyether glycol
• THERMOLITE® fabric
• PHENREZ® resin
• POLARGUARD® fiber and
• LYCRA® fiber

Joanna Zelman HuffPost Reporting
Mayor Calvin Tillman Leaves Dish, Texas Fearing ‘Fracking’ Effects On Family’s Health

Fearing for his children’s health, Mayor Calvin Tillman is leaving behind his government position and getting out of Dodge… or rather, Dish.

Dish, Texas is a town consisting of 200 residents and 60 gas wells. When Tillman’s sons repeatedly woke up in the middle of the night with mysterious nosebleeds, he knew it was time to move — even if it meant leaving his community behind. In an exclusive interview with The Huffington Post, Mayor Tillman reveals that when it came down to family or politics, the choice wasn’t a tough one to make.

Tillman, first elected mayor of Dish, Texas in 2007, has spent his time in office fighting to regulate natural gas companies that are drilling into the Barnett shale, which holds up to 735 billion cubic meters of natural gas.

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Oscar-Nominated ‘Gasland’ Director Calls Latest Attack on His Film ‘Outlandish’ and Tells Why the Industry Is Getting Desperate
By Brad Jacobson, AlterNet
Posted on February 22, 2011, Printed on February 25, 2011

Editor’s Note: Read the letter Josh Fox wrote in response to the gas industry’s attacks on his film.

When the gas industry sent an open letter this month to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences demanding it revoke its best documentary nomination for the gas-drilling exposé Gasland, many seemed surprised by this brazen missive.

Gasland director Josh Fox wasn’t one of those people.

“What this points to is the culture of that industry, which is bullying, which is aggressive, which is outlandish in their tactics, which will stop at nothing,” Fox told AlterNet during a nearly hour-long interview.

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February 26, 2011
Regulation Is Lax for Water From Gas Wells
By IAN URBINA

The American landscape is dotted with hundreds of thousands of new wells and drilling rigs, as the country scrambles to tap into this century’s gold rush — for natural gas.

The gas has always been there, of course, trapped deep underground in countless tiny bubbles, like frozen spills of seltzer water between thin layers of shale rock. But drilling companies have only in recent years developed techniques to unlock the enormous reserves, thought to be enough to supply the country with gas for heating buildings, generating electricity and powering vehicles for up to a hundred years.

So energy companies are clamoring to drill. And they are getting rare support from their usual sparring partners. Environmentalists say using natural gas will help slow climate change because it burns more cleanly than coal and oil. Lawmakers hail the gas as a source of jobs. They also see it as a way to wean the United States from its dependency on other countries for oil.

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BOYCOTT KOCH INDUSTRIES PRODUCTS

• Angel Soft toilet paper
• Brawny paper towels
• Dixie plates, bowls, napkins & cups
• Mardi Gras napkins and towels
• Quilted Northern toilet paper
• Soft ‘n Gentle toilet paper
• Sparkle napkins
• Vanity fair napkins
• Zee napkins
• Georgia-Pacific paper products & envelopes
• All Georgia-Pacific lumber & building products
• (INVISTA Products)
• Lycra
• Stainmaster Carpet

24 February 2011 Last updated at 19:08 ET
Former Guantanamo inmate Saad Iqbal Madni’s ‘agony’
By Orla Guerin BBC News, Lahore

Former Guantanamo prisoner Saad Iqbal Madni: “I wake up screaming”

Every other night Saad Iqbal Madni wakes up screaming. For more than five years the Pakistani Islamic scholar was one ghost among many – Prisoner Number 746 in Guantanamo Bay.

In terror-filled moments, in the dead of night, he still is.

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February 25, 2011
Biggest Fish Face Little Risk of Being Caught
By JOE NOCERA

So much for Angelo Mozilo taking the fall for the financial crisis.

Late last week, word leaked out that Mr. Mozilo, who had co-founded Countrywide Financial in 1969 — and, for nearly 40 years, presided over its astonishing rise and its equally astonishing fall — would not be prosecuted by the Justice Department. Not for insider trading. Not for failing to disclose to investors his private worries about subprime loans. Not for helping to create a culture at Countrywide in which mortgage originators were rewarded for pushing fraudulent loans on borrowers.

In its article about the Justice Department’s decision, The Los Angeles Times said prosecutors had concluded that Mr. Mozilo’s actions “did not amount to criminal wrongdoing.”

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Glenn Greenwald | Targeting Assange, Manning and WikiLeaks Supporters
Glenn Greenwald, Democracy Now!

Glenn Greenwald discusses the issue of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s extradition to Sweden to face questioning on allegations of sexual crimes and potentially being extradited to the United States. Also included in the interview are questions about alleged whistleblower Army Private Bradley Manning, and a recently disclosed plot by three private intelligence firms to target WikiLeaks and its supporters.

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