Still No Democratic Debates. What’s Going On?
September 16, 2015
Dave Johnson


The second Republican Presidential candidate debate is tonight. The ratings for the first one were through the roof and tonight’s is also expected to be a ratings blockbuster. People are interested and tuning in to the campaign and the Republicans are getting all the “eyeballs.”

Meanwhile there hasn’t been even a hint of a Democratic candidate debate. What’s going on? Why are the Democrats letting Republicans have the attention? Do they feel the party has nothing to offer – or something to hide?

“Just spell my name right.” It is basic marketing that any publicity is good publicity....

http://ourfuture.org/20150916/still-no-democratic-debates-whats-going-on

Transcript of Cornel West’s January 17, 2013 statements regarding the use of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Bible during the inauguration of Barack Obama:


Now, when I got the news that my dear brother Barack Obama, President Obama, was going to put his precious hand on Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Bible, I got upset. And I got upset because you don’t play with Martin Luther King, Jr. and you don’t play with his people. And by his people, what I mean is people of good conscience, fundamentally committed to peace, and truth and justice. And especially the black tradition that produced it.

All the blood, sweat and tears that went into producing a Martin Luther King, Jr. generated a brother of such high decency and dignity that you don’t use his prophetic fire as just a moment in a presidential pageantry, without understanding the challenge that he presents to all of those in power no matter what color they are. No matter what color they are!

So, the righteous indignation of a Martin Luther King, Jr. becomes a moment in political calculation and that makes my blood boil. Why? Because Martin Luther King, Jr., he died knowing the three crimes against humanity he was wrestling with. Jim Crow – traumatizing, terrorizing, stigmatizing black people, lynching, insultful – not just segregation the way the press wants to talk about.

Second, carpet bombing in Vietnam, killing innocent people especially innocent children. Those are war crimes Martin Luther King, Jr. was willing to die for. And thirdly, was poverty of all colors. He said it’s a crime against humanity for the richest nation in the history of the world to have so many of its precious children of all colors living in poverty, and especially on the chocolate side of the nation, in Indian reservations, in brown barrios, in yellow slices, and black ghettos, then. We call them hoods now, but ghettos then.

So I said to myself, “ok nothing wrong with putting your hand on the Bible.” Even though the bible talks about justice and Jesus is talking bout “the least of these.” But when you put in Martin’s bible? I said, “this is personal for me. This is the tradition I came out of. This is the tradition that is connected to my grandmothers prayers, and my grandfathers sermons, and my mothers tears, and my fathers smile, and it’s over against all of those in power who refuse to follow decent policies.”

So I say to myself, “Brother Martin Luther King, Jr., what would you say about the new Jim Crow? What would you say about the prison industrial complex? What would you say about the invisibility of so many of our prisoners? So many of our incarcerated, especially when 62% of them are there for soft drugs, but not one executive of a Wall Street bank gone to jail? Not one!” Martin doesn’t like that. Not one wiretapper. Not one torturer under the Bush administration, at all.

Then, what you say about the drones bring dropped on our precious brothers and sisters in Pakistan and Somalia and Yemen? Those are war crimes, just like war crimes in Vietnam. Martin Luther King, Jr., what would you say? “My voice hollers out,” and don’t tame it with your hand on his bible. Allow his prophetic voice to be heard. Martin, what would you say about the poverty in America now, beginning with the children, then the elderly, then our working folk, and all colors not just here, around the world. Don’t hide and conceal his challenge. Don’t tame his prophetic fire.

So, that as much as I’m glad that Barack Obama won – I think that brother Mitt Romney would have been a catastrophe, and I understand my brother Newt told the truth about fat vampire capitalism but that’s true for the system as a whole not just Mitt Romney in that regard – but when Barack Obama attempts to use that rich tradition of Frederick Douglas and Ida B. Wells-Barnett? Use the tradition of A. Phillip Randolph? Use the tradition of Rabbi Joshua Heschel? Use the tradition of Tom Hayden and so many others struggling to produce that voice that pushed Martin in the direction that it did? I get upset.

People say, “Oh brother West, there’s Smiley and West, hating Obama.” No, no. We just loving the tradition that produced Martin Luther King, Jr. and were not going to allow it to be in any way sanitized, deodorized and sterilized, we want the subversive power to be heard. That’s what made me think, when you said he was gonna put in his hand on that bible. And I’m praying or him. I’m praying for him. As is Newt – both of us Christians, you Catholic, I’m Holy Ghost funkygut gutbucket Baptist – but we’re praying for him. Putting pressure on.

400+ Groups to Obama: You Have the Power to 'Keep it In the Ground'
'You can't be a climate leader while continuing to open up large amounts of federal land to extraction and encouraging continued fossil fuel development.'
by Deirdre Fulton, Common Dreams
9/14/2015

Hundreds of prominent organizations and leaders from Alaska to Florida are formally calling on President Barack Obama to stop new federal fossil fuel leasing on public lands and oceans in the United States, arguing that doing so would accomplish more in the global fight against climate change than any other single action taken by the president's administration.



In a letter to be delivered Tuesday to the White House, the 400-plus signatories note that "up to 450 billion tons of potential greenhouse gas pollution could be immediately removed from the global pool of potential climate pollution" if Obama were to deem unleased oil, gas, and coal "unburnable."

What's more, the letter continues, as "the world’s largest historic cumulative polluter and a global economic leader," the U.S. has an obligation to take such a bold action.

The American public owns nearly 650 million acres of federal public land and more than 1.7 billion acres of Outer Continental Shelf—as well as the fossil fuels beneath them.



...snip....Rainforest Action Network executive director Lindsey Allen: "The federal government is enabling some of the wealthiest companies in the world, with names like Exxon and Peabody, to mine and drill America’s public lands for private profit. This egregious drilling, fracking and mining is devastating the health of communities and endangering the stability of our climate. We are simply asking President Obama to stop selling off our national forests, oceans and sacred heritage sites for pennies on the dollar and slow the effects of climate change by stopping fossil fuel leasing on public lands."

An analysis released last month by Friends of the Earth and the Center for Biological Diversity—both signatories to this week's letter—showed that allowing unleased publicly owned fossil fuels to be developed would "cripple the U.S.' ability to meet its obligations to avert the worst effects of the global climate crisis," as the green groups put it at the time.......

full story~
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/09/14/400-groups-obama-you-have-power-keep-it-ground

The bill originally only prevented states from labeling products with GMOs. The version to be considered this week goes a step further, prohibiting state and local governments from protecting the environment and public health from the side effects of the production of GMO crops. The bill also allows companies to make “natural” claims on foods with GMOs and blocks state efforts to prohibit these misleading claims. These are more reasons that clean food advocates call the bill the Deny Americans the Right to Know, or DARK Act.

“This bad bill just keeps getting worse,” said Mary Ellen Kustin, EWG senior policy analyst. “The DARK Act has always been an infringement upon the well-established rights of states to regulate food labeling, but the most recent versions of the bill takes that overreach to a new level.”

Use of herbicides linked to cancer, especially glyphosate, has exploded alongside the increase in production of GMO crops engineered to withstand the application of these toxic chemicals. In the last 20 years, use of glyphosate, which was recently identified as a probable human carcinogen by the world’s leading cancer researchers, has increased 16-fold.

As glyphosate use has increased, weeds have started to develop resistance to it. In response, Dow Agrosciences has produced Enlist Duo, a combination of glyphosate and another herbicide, 2,4-D, which was recently labeled a possible human carcinogen. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has approved the use of Enlist Duo in 15 states, though the agency has not examined the safety risk of the two active ingredients when combined together.

“Because of the risks to human health posed by the widespread application of herbicides linked to cancer and other terrible diseases, like Parkinsons, of course local governments would want to keep farmers and farmworkers safe from exposure,” said Kustin. “If the federal government isn’t going to protect public health, responsible local officials will want to step up—but the DARK Act wants to make it impossible for them to do so. Backers of the bill keep adding more ways to keep Americans in the dark.”

http://ecowatch.com/2015/07/13/gmo-labeling-bill-dark-act/

....Snip...

"We are seeing the death of an industry in front of our eyes," Matt McLean says, scanning his groves. "These trees will not survive."

Worst of all, there is little McLean can do to save his crop.

Despite millions of dollars spent on research and hundreds of scientists working at a frenzied pace, no cure or prevention has yet been developed for citrus greening disease.

"We have survived a lot of things," McLean says, recalling deep freezes and other diseases like citrus canker that have wiped out thousands of trees. "But today, citrus greening has affected the entire state. We just don't know what will happen."

"But OJ, as you know it, may not exist anymore."

....McLean is not alone in his quest; researchers across the nation are using genetic material to figure out how to save American citrus. Others are busy preserving plant cuttings in a tundralike, tornado-proof vault in Colorado that could rebuild the nation's citrus groves if disease does indeed wipe them out.

...Matt's brother Ben has a master's degree in fruit crops and has been working furiously with industry colleagues, scientists and the government to find a way to stop citrus greening's spread. The disease flared west from Florida to Texas and it has now been found in groves in California, America's second largest citrus producer.

Scientists are developing bactericides and experimenting with tree treatments like heat therapy, says Michael Rogers, interim director of the University of Florida's Citrus Research and Education Center.

They are also breeding citrus that are tolerant to disease. About seven years ago, when citrus greening was starting its spread, a handful of Florida growers planted a new variety, LB8-9, as an experiment. Those trees are all infected now, but the amazing thing is they are still able to produce fruit, says Fred Gmitter, a citrus breeder and geneticist who works with Rogers.

...Some growers are considering using genetically modified strains of citrus, even though such artificial alterations remain highly controversial.

McLean won't go there. He remains resolute on finding a way to stop greening and is focusing on organic cures.

He has tried botanical oils like neem. And every 21 days, he releases thousands of parasitic wasps that lay eggs inside young Asian citrus psyllids, or nymphs. The eggs hatch and devour the nymphs' insides. The wasps can never eradicate citrus greening disease, but McLean says they provide some amount of control and management. The successes are modest compared to the rate at which citrus greening is killing McLean's trees.

Lately, McLean has had new reason to hope. The answer, he says, may be lurking in one of his grandfather's old orange groves.

When McLean announced he was going to start an organic business, his father chuckled.

"I graduated from UF in 1965. No one even knew how to spell herbicide then," Benny McLean laughs.

Father and son walk through one of their oldest orange groves, planted in 1944 on the southeast corner of a lake, which helped protect the trees through frigid winters. They are Temple oranges grown on Cleopatra Mandarin rootstock, known to thrive in Florida's sandy soil. The trees are lush with flavorful fruit.

"It's amazing that these trees have been here all these years," Benny McLean says. "You are looking at old genetic material. And this is all about the DNA and genetics. Old trees show a lot of resistance. Newer trees show high levels of susceptibility."

The older McLean has a theory about why not a single tree in this 2,000-strong grove has been infected with citrus greening disease even though across the highway, every tree is ailing.

He says this particular grove was not sprayed with chemicals until it was 25 years old and had already developed a strong immune system....

Really good read, worth the time~
http://www.kpax.com/story/30011027/the-big-squeeze-why-farmers-and-scientists-are-rushing-to-save-citrus

Cancer-linked herbicides are coming under closer scrutiny
8/19/15

U.S. regulators have relied on flawed and outdated research to allow expanded use of an herbicide linked to cancer, and new assessments should be urgently conducted, according to a column published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday.

There are two key factors that necessitate regulatory action to protect human health, according to the column: a sharp increase in herbicide applied to widely planted genetically modified (GMO) crops used in food, and a recent World Health Organization (WHO) determination that the most commonly used herbicide, known as glyphosate, is probably a human carcinogen.

...Glyphosate is best known as the key ingredient in Roundup developed by Monsanto Co, one of the world's most widely used herbicides, but it is used in more than 700 products.

It is sprayed directly over crops like corn genetically engineered to tolerate it and is sometimes used on non-GMO crops, like wheat before harvest. Residues of glyphosate have been detected in food and water.

Full story~
http://www.businessinsider.com/r-scientists-call-for-new-review-of-herbicide-cite-flawed-us-regulations-2015-8

Bees Win Big in Court, EPA’s Approval of Toxic Pesticide Overturned
by Taylor Hill | September 14, 2015 10:25 am
Ecowatch
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A federal court has overturned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) approval of sulfoxaflor, a pesticide linked to the mass die-off of honeybees that pollinate a third of the world’s food supply.

The three-judge panel said the EPA green-lit sulfoxaflor even though initial studies showed the product was highly toxic to pollinators such as bees.

The chemical compound belongs to a class of insecticides, known as neonicotinoids, that scientific studies have implicated in bee deaths.



“Because the EPA’s decision to unconditionally register sulfoxaflor was based on flawed and limited data, we conclude that the unconditional approval was not supported by substantial evidence,” the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit panel wrote in its opinion.

In her opinion, Judge Mary M. Schroeder wrote that the EPA had initially decided to conditionally approve the chemical but ordered more studies done to better understand the effects the systemic insecticide would have on bees.



....Snip...Sulfoxaflor, created by Indianapolis-based Dow AgroSciences, is a systemic insecticide. When it’s sprayed on soybean, cotton, citrus, fruit and vegetable crops, it kills bugs on contact and is also absorbed into the plant’s flowers, stems and roots. When insects ingest any part of the plant, they die too.

..... EU member nations banned three neonicotinoids in 2013 for two years after the chemicals were linked to the dramatic decline in bee populations there.

“This is the classic pesticide industry shell game,” Towers said. “As more science underscores the harms of a pesticide, they shift to newer, less studied products. And it takes regulators years to catch up.”

http://ecowatch.com/2015/09/14/epa-pesticide-overturned/