Ministers are trying to scrap an international agreement banning the world’s most controversial genetic modification of crops, grimly nicknamed “terminator technology”, a move which threatens to increase hunger in the Third World. Their plans, unveiled in a new official document buried in a government website, will cause outrage among environmentalists and hunger campaigners. Michael Meacher, who took a lead as environment minister in negotiating the ban six years ago, has written Margaret Beckett, the Secretary of State for the Environment, to object. The Government is to push for terminator crops to be considered for approval on a “case-by-case basis” at two meetings this month; its position closely mirrors the stance of the United States and other GM-promoting countries. Terminator technology, so abominated even Monsanto will not develop it, would stop hundreds of millions of poor farmers from saving seeds from their crops for resowing for the following harvest, forcing them to buy new ones from biotech companies every year. More than 1.4 billion poor Third World farmers and their families pursue the age-old practice. The technique is officially known as genetic use restriction technology (Gurt), making crops produce sterile seeds. It could be applied to any […]
NEW YORK The Bush administration, seeking to limit leaks of classified information, has launched initiatives — some not widely revealed until now–targeting journalists and their possible government sources, Dan Eggen reveals in a front-page article in Sunday’s Washington Post. “The efforts include several FBI probes, a polygraph investigation inside the CIA and a warning from the Justice Department that reporters could be prosecuted under espionage laws,” he writes. A little-known recent episode involving the Sacramento Bee may also be significiant. “Some media watchers, lawyers and editors say that, taken together, the incidents represent perhaps the most extensive and overt campaign against leaks in a generation, and that they have worsened the already-tense relationship between mainstream news organizations and the White House,” Eggen writes. He relates: “In recent weeks, dozens of employees at the CIA, the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies have been interviewed by agents from the FBI’s Washington field office, who are investigating possible leaks that led to reports about secret CIA prisons and the NSA’s warrantless domestic surveillance program, according to law enforcement and intelligence officials familiar with the two cases. Numerous employees at the CIA, FBI, Justice Department and other […]
Aspen Baker does something most women don’t do: she talks about her abortion. When she got pregnant at 23 she wasn’t ready to be a mother and her relationship was already dissolving. Pro-choice, Baker unexpectedly found herself facing a moral quandary about her decision. “I really struggled,” she says. After the abortion, she figured she’d be given a list of support groups or even just a number to call. But the California hospital that performed the surgery sent her home with only a prescription. The procedure left Baker relieved, but sad enough to seek out counseling. What she found, though, were mostly judgmental pro-life Web sites and religious groups. Even when her search led her to volunteer at CARAL, the California affiliate of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, she didn’t find many sympathetic ears. The battle to keep abortion legal left no room for emotional turmoil. Neither side of the polarized political debate really spoke to her. Abortion is either tragic or a simple choice, Baker says. But I had a lot of complicated feelings about it. Today, six years later, Baker finally has a number to call. In fact, it’s a post-abortion counseling hotline […]
WASHINGTON – A State Department-commissioned poll taken days before January’s Palestinian elections warned U.S. policymakers that the militant Islamic group Hamas was in a position to win. Nevertheless, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said after the election that they had no advance indication of a major Hamas triumph. The poll found that Hamas had been gaining support in previous months and was running neck-and-neck with the secular Fatah party – 30 percent vs. 32 percent – among likely voters. It was distributed within the State Department on Jan. 19, six days before the elections. The poll found that corruption in the Palestinian Authority was the leading issue among Palestinians, and that 52 percent believed that Hamas was more qualified to clean it up, compared with 35 percent who put their faith in Fatah, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas’ moderate faction. Hamas, which is dedicated to the destruction of Israel and is considered a terrorist organization by the State Department, won a landslide victory, throwing American policy into confusion because the Bush administration had anticipated a Fatah win. “I don’t know anyone who wasn’t caught off guard by its very strong showing,” Rice said on Jan. 29 […]
Last Thursday morning, in one of the smaller function rooms at the National Press Club, in Washington, an ad-hoc bunch of amateurs, once-weres, might-bes, and goo-goos floated an initiative that, with a little luck, could enable our ramshackle republic to take a long, and long overdue, step toward a more perfect union. The idea behind their initiative is this: that the President of the United States should be elected by the people of the United States. This idea is neither new nor outlandish, but for most of the past couple of centuries it has been dismissed as unachievable. The Electoral College is enshrined in the Constitution itself, so getting rid of it would require the concurrence of two-thirds of both houses of Congress plus three-quarters of the state legislatures. That’s not going to happen. But maybe it doesn’t have to. The promoters of the Campaign for a National Popular Vote, as they’re calling themselves, have come up with an elegant finesse. Instead of trying to change the Constitution, they propose to apply it, one bit in particular: Article II, Section 1, which instructs each state to appoint its Presidential electors in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
