Tuesday, January 20, 2004

Organic fgood as agribusiness Posted here Tuesday, January 20, 2004 at 2:21:21 PM     Symptom ORGANIC AGRICULTURE AT A CROSSROADS University of California, Santa Cruz / Newswise January 12, 2004 http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/502719/ Thirty years after the birth of organic agriculture in California, the industry looks more than ever like the agribusiness model it set out to oppose. The early dream of producing food in ecologically sustainable ways has withered under multiple pressures, but an analysis by a geographer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, suggests that government subsidies would help restore the organic movement as a force for environmental and social transformation. "The organic industry in California has largely replicated what it set out to oppose," said Julie Guthman, assistant professor of community studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the author of the forthcoming book Agrarian Dreams: The Paradox of Organic Farming in California (Berkeley: UC Press, 2004). Guthman will discuss her analysis during the 24th Annual Ecological Farming Conference January 21-24, the world's foremost sustainable agriculture conference, at the Asilomar Conference Center in Pacific Grove. Guthman's workshop, entitled "Impacts and Implications of Concentration in the Organic Industry," is scheduled for Friday, January 23, at 10:30 a.m. Guthman, a faculty affiliate of the UCSC Center for Agroecology & Sustainable Food Systems, is part of a contingent of sustainable agriculture experts from UCSC who will be presenting during Eco-Farm... Corporate buyouts of smaller organic operations are a visible sign of change in the organic industry, but Guthman insists that the paradox of organic is much more complex than a story of "big versus small, or good guys versus bad guys. I call it a trilemma, because it's about what growers need, what consumers need, and what workers need."   The fate of the food industry is crucial, and I sense that the industry is fragile. The loss of the ability to produce locally is worisome, but the trend towards monopolization in food is worse. ********

from Poorman in Iraq occupation over Posted here Tuesday, January 20, 2004 at 1:54:05 PM     on Iraq barring an American willingness to inflict serious wartime horrors on defiant Shi'a, the occupation is over. ********

Kerry bytes Posted here Tuesday, January 20, 2004 at 1:41:29 PM     starting a collection of core campaign pieces. They will be archived in politcal bytes Up on his chair Kerry was talking about special interests. "If you look around the country today, people are hurting," he said. "This thing is rigged against them because [of] powerful moneyed interests. ... Powerful political interests walk into the White House and have secret meetings with the president." This is of course the signature--and much derided--message of Bob Shrum, the Kerry media adviser who came to be associated with the autumn turbulence in the campaign ********

Bush and Churchill - from the whitehouse page Posted here Tuesday, January 20, 2004 at 11:46:59 AM     President Bush accepts a bust of Sir Winston Churchill from ambassador of England, Sir Christopher Meyer July 16, 2001. "He was a man of great courage. He knew what he believed. And he really kind of went after it in a way that seemed like a Texan to me," said the President explaining why he would like the likeness of an Englishman placed inside the Oval Offfice. "He charged ahead, and the world is better for it.". White House photo by Paul Morse. comment: this is late, but important. The way Bush looks for a model that justifies action but not thoughtful consieration. ********

Cheney and Scalia and the ducks Posted here Tuesday, January 20, 2004 at 11:43:20 AM     diagnostic WASHINGTON — Vice President Dick Cheney and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia spent part of last week duck hunting together at a private camp in southern Louisiana just three weeks after the court agreed to take up the vice president's appeal in lawsuits over his handling of the administration's energy task force. While Scalia and Cheney are avid hunters and longtime friends, several experts in legal ethics questioned the timing of their trip and said it raised doubts about Scalia's ability to judge the case impartially. What kind of a culture are we developing? ********

Task for the country from Billmon Posted here Tuesday, January 20, 2004 at 11:06:49 AM     I agree The task of building a progressive coalition that can turn America in a fundamentally different direction is a vast undertaking -- so vast as to seem almost impossible: as impossible, perhaps, as ending segregation must have seemed to the early civil rights activists of the 1920s and '30s. Under the most favorable conditions imaginable (conditions which we are extremely unlikely to see) the process will take years, if not decades. ********