DEMOCRACY NOW! – “The United States is in an information war, and we are losing that war,” said U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week as she praised Al Jazeera’s dedication to “real news.” To win the war, Clinton called for expanding U.S. propaganda TV and radio broadcasts overseas. At the same time, public broadcasting and community media are under attack in the United States. Last month, the House voted to eliminate all financing for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting by the year 2013. We speak to Robert McChesney, co-founder of Free Press, and broadcast highlights from Amy Goodman’s three-day “Don’t Ice Out Public Media” tour in Colorado.

Click to read the full transcript about Clinton’s calls for increased propaganda funding.

© Copyright Democracy Now!, 2011

The Story of Citizens United v. FEC: Why Democracy Only Works When People Are in Charge

THE STORY OF STUFF PROJECT – The Story of Citizens United v. FEC is being released to support the growing movement for a constitutional amendment. The Story of Stuff Project will hold over 500 house parties around the country for participants to learn more about the Supreme Court’s decision and to organize in support of a constitutional amendment.

The Story of Citizens United v. FEC companion website (www.storyofcitizensunited.org) will serve as an interactive launch pad for information and activism. The site offers viewers additional educational resources, including an annotated script and FAQs, as well as ways to get involved in the constitutional amendment campaigns of Public Citizen, Free Speech for People and People for the American Way.

© Copyright The Story of Stuff Project, 2011

ASSOCIATED PRESS – Republicans in the Wisconsin Assembly took the first significant action on their plan to strip collective bargaining rights from most public workers, abruptly passing the measure early Friday morning before sleep-deprived Democrats realized what was happening.

The vote ended three straight days of punishing debate in the Assembly that made it the longest continuous session in Assembly history.

But the political standoff over the bill — and the monumental protests at the state Capitol against it — appear far from over.

The Assembly’s vote sent the bill on to the Senate, but minority Democrats in that house have fled to Illinois to prevent a vote. No one knows when they will return from hiding. Republicans who control the chamber sent state troopers out looking for them at their homes on Thursday, but they turned up nothing.

“I applaud the Democrats in the Assembly for earnestly debating this bill and urge their counterparts in the state Senate to return to work and do the same,” Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald, R-Horicon, said in a statement issued moments after the vote.

The plan from Republican Gov. Scott Walker contains a number of provisions he says are designed to fill the state’s $137 million deficit and lay the groundwork for fixing a projected $3.6 billion shortfall in the upcoming 2011-13 budget.

The flashpoint is language that would require public workers to contribute more to their pensions and health insurance and strip them of their right to collectively bargain benefits and work conditions.

Democrats and unions see the measure as an attack on workers’ rights and an attempt to cripple union support for Democrats. Union leaders say they would make pension and health care concessions if they can keep their bargaining rights, but Walker has refused to compromise.

Tens of thousands of people have jammed the Capitol since last week to protest, pounding on drums and chanting so loudly that police providing security have resorted to ear plugs. Hundreds have taken to sleeping in the building overnight, dragging in air mattresses and blankets.

Click to read full article on Wisconsin Assembly Taking Away Union Rights.

Article by Todd Richmond of the Associated Press

© Copyright Associated Press, 2011

Photograph by flickr user: Lost Albatross

MEDIA ROOTS – “As machines replace skill, they disconnect themselves from life; they come between us and life. They begin to enact our ignorance of value – of essential sources, dependences, and relationships.

The catch is that we cannot live in machines. We can only live in the world, in life. To live, our contact with the sources of life must remain direct; we must eat, drink, breathe, move, mate, etc. When we let machines and machine skills obscure the values that represent these fundamental dependences, then we inevitably damage the world; we diminish life. We begin to ‘prosper’ at the cost of a fundamental degradation.”

-Wendell Berry in The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture.

One look at American culture and Berry’s words ring true. We are, beyond a doubt, humans living through machines.

Steel and plastic cages transport our bodies from place to place, while treadmills and ellipticals are used to burn mounting calories. At home, hours are spent fixed to a television or computer screen, as processed foods from the petroleum-based American diet are cooked by microwave. Cell phones in hand, activities previously left to the home or office, are accessed everywhere. Now, as a mobile dictionary, encyclopedia, GPS, internet, television, video game player, camera, audio recorder, telephone and social networking device, the smarter phones become, the stronger the attachment to them and the more constant their use throughout the day.

Suffice it to say, days pass for some people when contact with technology and machines trump their time spent engaging with other humans and the natural world.

In our reliance on technology we forget our own basic skills, functions and needs of movement, human connection, and nourishment of the mind, body and spirit. By neglecting to honor the link that joins our inherent human abilities and our fundamental human needs, we begin to devalue life as our understanding of its ‘essential sources, dependences and relationships,’ weakens.

For example, excessive cell phone and computer use can detract from important face-to-face human interactions, as well as physical movement. These technologies remove us from the present surrounding environment by putting us instantaneously in contact with people in other places and information of every sort. Video and computer games further enable their users to shed themselves of reality through the creation of avatars with their own independent, digital lives, such as in the game Second Life.

While there are tremendous benefits to having immediate access to information and long-distance contact with others, people who spend the vast majority of their daily hours in use of these technologies can develop addictions that leave them uncomfortable and anxious when such immediate response and instant entertainment is not within grasp.

This dependency has potentially crippling consequences. Finding peace in the calm of the present moment can become difficult. With attention divided among people, devices and other input, important details of the present moment go unnoticed, like subtle human interactions and other small things that can bring great joy to life.

The way we communicate, which is fundamental to enriching relationships and thriving communities, is also altered as more interactions take place digitally. In this medium of communication we lose the richness of experience that body language, facial expression, and the sensation of touch and smell, can create.

Hours tethered to a computer, TV or the steering wheel of a car, significantly limit our physical movement to slight motions of the arm at best, diminishing our physical and psychological health while simultaneously degrading our muscular capabilities. Just as dogs need walks, or animals that become restless in cages, we too have an intrinsic need for movement and exercise.

Many of us find ourselves bouncing between digital and natural environments, attempting to achieve balance in a culture that often feels as if it’s herding us towards one singular monotonous way of being. The beauty of this balancing act though, is that we control technology – we have the power to set limits for ourselves, to power off our devices, and to re-engage.

Simple acts can be transformative. For those who live within a 2-mile radius of frequented places, walking or riding a bicycle is an excellent option that, contrary to popular thought, saves time while adding exercise into the day. Restaurants, cafes and other time spent with friends and family provide good opportunity to detach from technology and give into what is around us.

Another limit-setting technique is to avoid the computer right before bed and for the first hour every morning. It is amazing how a simple and fresh approach to the morning can set the day off right.

As with most things, moderation is key, joined with a genuine respect and appreciation for the human element of the world and our need for movement.

Wendell Berry, in The Unsettling of America, insightfully writes of what we must work to avoid:

“We are wasting our bodies exactly as we are wasting our land. Our bodies are fat, weak, joyless, sickly, ugly, the virtual prey of the manufacturers of medicine and cosmetics. Our bodies have become marginal they are growing useless like our ‘marginal’ land because we have less and less use for them. After the games and idle flourishes of modern youth, we use them only as shipping cartons to transport our brains and our few employable muscles back and forth to work.”

As dark and unforgiving as this portrayal is, it is worth remembering that we live in a country with growing obesity rates and chronic illness. Whether it’s the nature of the work we do, or the food system that feeds us, it is easy to find outlets for blame, yet the responsibility for our well-being rests largely on us.  

The concept of health is originally rooted in wholeness, wholeness with our internal and external selves, as well as with our surrounding environment and community. As humans we have the power of our will to act consciously for the enrichment of our lives and the life of the planet, through movement, breath, love and the lightness of body and soul.

It is up to each of us to seek out a lifestyle that integrates these basic needs and abilities. This could be one of the most important day-to-day choices we make because, simply said, our communities will not be healthy until we choose health for ourselves.

If you feel stuck in old patterns and dependencies, realize that you have the ability to shift your body and habits to reach greater strength and peace. You are your own worst enemy. Only you can choose steadfast commitment and determination to truly live, in direct contact with the sources of life.

So, stand with me now, step away from the computer, push your chair back and reach your hands for the sky.

Stretch, breathe deep, smile.

We were made to move. The energy is in you, waiting for release.

Written by alicia roldán ©

Photography by Rick Pickett

GRIST – Bittman: Time to label GMOs

With the USDA’s recent flurry of green lights for genetically modified crops — evidently at the urging of the White House  — the Obama administration should brace itself for a big push on the labeling question. Popular sentiment may be swelling for something the agrichemical/biotech industry really doesn’t want: labels on food products proclaiming the presence of GM material. The New York Times’ Mark Bittman is a widely read and influential writer. His latest column puts the case for labeling in terms that the administration will have trouble refuting:

“Even more than questionable approvals, it’s the unwillingness to label these products as such — even the G.E. salmon will be sold without distinction — that is demeaning and undemocratic, and the real reason is clear: producers and producer-friendly agencies correctly suspect that consumers will steer clear of G.E. products if they can identify them. Which may make them unprofitable. Where is the free market when we need it?”

He who controls the research …

At the L.A. Times, the Union of Concerned Scientists’ wonderful Doug Gurian-Sherman has a must-read op-ed for anyone who thinks people are hysterical to oppose GMOs (or want them labelled). Writes Gurian-Sherman about the alleged benefits of GMOs:

“We don’t have the complete picture. That’s no accident. Multibillion-dollar agricultural corporations, including Monsanto and Syngenta, have restricted independent research on their genetically engineered crops. They have often refused to provide independent scientists with seeds, or they’ve set restrictive conditions that severely limit research options.”

Those facts should be pondered whenever you hear anyone mouth the platitude that GMOs “have been proven safe” or “never hurt anyone” or deliver X, Y, or Z benefits. Empowered by a generous intellectual-property regime, the seed giants dictate who does what research and how. As Gurian-Sherman reports, the industry and the EPA were embarrassed in 2009 when 26 university entomologists wrote a letter to the agency complaining of lack of access to seeds. “No truly independent research can be legally conducted on many critical questions involving these crops,” they wrote. Monsanto and other companies have been shamed into reaching agreements to allow access to seeds to USDA and unversity researchers — but the deals are voluntary, opaque, and still quite limited. As Gurian-Sherman writes: “The Monsanto agreement with the USDA covers research into crop production practices, for example, not research into issues such as the health risks of genetically engineered crops.”

A defense of GMO alfalfa gets mowed down

James McWilliams is a vegan, so he deplores the planting of alfalfa, which is mainly used as cow feed. But if it must be planted, he argues on the Atlantic website, it might as well be from Monsanto-patented seed genetically engineered to withstand Roundup, Monsanto’s flagship herbicide. The USDA itself [PDF] and mainstream ag scientists are on record warning that Monsanto’s alfalfa will cross-pollinate with organic and non-engineered alfalfa. The USDA chose to “deregulate” it anyway, enraging the organic community. In his Atlantic piece, McWilliams set out to defend that decision by debunking the contamination fears. A few days later, Organic Inc. author Sam Fromartz completely obliterated McWilliams’ argument, documenting several past cases of GMO contamination.

Time’s Bryan Walsh: the food movement can revive environmentalism

Bryan Walsh makes a rousing case for the food movement as savior of environmentalism, which, he argues, has “stalled.” There’s a lot to what Walsh is saying here, but I think there’s something different going on than what he describes. I don’t think environmentalism has stalled; I think efforts to make big policy changes have stalled. Climate legislation failed ignominiously last year, and not before being hopelessly compromised and stepped on by industry interests. And that was with Democrats in charge of the White House and both legislative chambers. Meanwhile, global climate talks are in limbo. What now? No one has figured out a way to crack that nut.

What the food movement offers is a hands-on way to create a world that makes sense in your immediate community. It is environmentalism brought into the kitchen, the yard, the neighborhood, the city farmers’ market, the soil in the surrounding countryside. You can get your hands on food, taste it, make friends around it. The change you see is immediate. And just as the environmental movement spawned the environmental-justice movement — based on the idea that certain groups were more focused on whales than on toxic poisoning in low-income communities — a food-justice movement has sprung up. Indeed, much of today’s food movement sprouted in low-income urban areas in the early ’90s.

But on the grand policy level — Michelle Obama’s garden and kids initiative aside — the food movement is getting squashed, too, as Food and Water Watch’s Wenonah Hauter recently argued in a pungent essay. The lesson: Changing policy is hard, long, grinding work, often abstract and rife with defeats. To keep going, it helps to have on-the-ground successes, and that — often enough — is what community food work provides. (Not that there aren’t setbacks, squabbles, and frustrations built into it.) All that said, I agree with Walsh that the food and environmental movements are now intertwined and will thrive or languish together.

Click to continue reading full article the case for labeling GMOs.

Article by Tom Philpott, Grist’s senior food and agriculture writer.

© Copyright Grist, 2011

Image by flickr user, Askokas Change Makers

Monsanto Crop Circle photo by Melvyn Calderon:Greenpeace