[P]rices for corn, soybeans, wheat, oats, rice and other grains began shooting through the roof... food [is] becoming the new gold.... For the 1 billion living on less than a dollar a day, it is a matter of survival. In a mud hut on the Sahara's edge, Manthita Sou, a 43-year-old widow in the Mauritanian desert village of Maghleg, is confronting wheat prices that are up 67 percent on local markets in the past year. Her solution: stop eating bread....

The root cause of price surges varies from crop to crop. But the crisis is being driven in part by an unprecedented linkage of the food chain.

A big reason for higher wheat prices, for instance, is the multiyear drought in Australia, something that scientists say may become persistent because of global warming. But wheat prices are also rising because U.S. farmers have been planting less of it, or moving wheat to less fertile ground. That is partly because they are planting more corn to capitalize on the biofuel frenzy.

This year, at least a fifth and perhaps a quarter of the U.S. corn crop will be fed to ethanol plants.

Sunday, 27 April 2008; A01 | Washington Post

by Anthony Faiola

The globe's worst food crisis in a generation emerged as a blip on the big boards and computer screens of America's great grain exchanges. At first, it seemed like little more than a bout of bad weather.

In Chicago, Minneapolis and Kansas City, traders watched from the pits early last summer as wheat prices spiked amid mediocre harvests in the United States and Europe and signs of prolonged drought in Australia. But within a few weeks, the traders discerned an ominous snowball effect -- one that would eventually bring down a prime minister in Haiti, make more children in Mauritania go to bed hungry, even cause American executives at Sam's Club to restrict sales of large bags of rice.

Study found local ownership means more local news

A 2004 Federal Communications Commission study that showed locally owned television stations provide more local news than others was ordered destroyed by FCC officials, and only came to light this week when a copy was leaked to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D.-Calif.).

Three years ago, then-FCC chair Michael Powell launched a proceeding on the effects of local ownership on television news as part of his drive to further deregulate media and allow for even greater consolidation. But the report commissioned under Powell turned out to undermine his argument that consolidation has no ill effects on local news, and, according to former FCC lawyer Adam Candeub, senior managers ordered "every last piece" of the study destroyed (AP, 9/14/06). On September 12, Senator Boxer, armed with the leaked report, questioned current FCC Chair Kevin Martin about it at his renomination hearing.

According to the report, locally owned stations in fact deliver nearly six minutes more of total news and almost five-and-a-half more minutes of local news in a 30-minute newscast than stations with non-local owners. This adds up to 33 more hours of local news a year--a remarkable figure, and a damning one for big media's allies in the FCC, who are required to protect the public interest and to promote localism.

As the Prometheus Radio Project noted (9/15/06):

Former FCC Chairman Michael Powell...made many high-sounding pronouncements about the need for media policy to be rooted in empirical evidence. Powell also attempted to separate out the issue of media consolidation from localism, claiming that most of the millions of comments to the Commission stemmed from a concern about local content, not a concern about concentration of ownership into fewer hands.

Impermanence

The Buddha implored us not just to talk about impermanence, but to use it as an instrument to help us penetrate deeply into reality and obtain liberating insight. We may be tempted to say that because things are impermanent, there is suffering. But the Buddha encouraged us to look again. Without impermanence, life is not possible. How can we transform our suffering if things are not impermanent? ... How can the situation in the world improve? We need impermanence for social justice and for hope.

If you suffer, it is not because things are impermanent. It is because you believe things are permanent. When a flower dies, you don't suffer much, because you understand that flowers are impermanent. But you cannot accept the impermanence of your beloved one, and you suffer deeply when she passes away.

If you look deeply into impermanence, you will do your best to make her happy right now. Aware of impermanence, you become positive, loving and wise. Impermanence is good news. Without impermanence, nothing would be possible. With impermanence, every door is open for change. Impermanence is an instrument for our liberation.

-- Thich Nhat Hanh

Impermanence and there it is . org

In late August, 2006, there it is . org lost functionality and lots of content (hundreds of articles) representing an immense investment of energy, time, and heart when its web hosting company disappeared without a trace. Impermanence! I thought I had a full backup of the database so I could restore the site; but I was wrong. My backup did not contain essential data. I am now deciding whether to rebuild the site's functionality and attempt to recover the content of the most recent 200+ articles that were not preserved in my most recent backup. (I am currently running a program to regather some of the articles, which I might then put in an on-site "museum" as a tribute to the past!) But perhaps it's best just to move on, investing energy in the future rather than in saving past achievements.

There it is . org remains my hub on the net; but expect its nature to change over time.

--Brendan Lalor

by Robert Sherrill

George Bush and Dick Cheney may get your vote as the worst, the dumbest, the most venal, and the most dangerous bunglers in foreign affairs in U.S. history. But this book will show you that their equals have appeared before. Author Stephen Kinzer's Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change From Hawaii to Iraq (Times Books, 2006) is an infuriating recitation of our government's military bullying over the past 110 years -- a century of interventions around the world that resulted in the overthrow of 14 governments -- in Hawaii, Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Vietnam, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, Panama, Chile, Iran, Grenada, Afghanistan, and ... Iraq.

[ This is a July 20, 2006 letter to Senator Russ Feingold from Alexandra Dadlez. --BL ]

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), expected to run for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination on an anti-war platform, said, ?I stand firmly with the people of Israel and their government as they defend themselves against these outrageous attacks.?

In an interview with an Iowa newspaper, he linked the issue to his opposition to the Iraq war.

?What we have done by becoming mired in Iraq, and by deciding to change the balance of power in that region, is enable Iran and Syria to be much more open in tormenting Israel, the United States and our allies,? he said in a Journal-Sentinel interview.

"...Iran and Syria (are) tormenting Israel, the United States and our allies..."

?I stand firmly with the people of Israel and their government as they defend themselves against these outrageous attacks.?

Finally today, when the war broke out in the Middle East, the first thing I thought about was the old story of the frog and the scorpion who were trying to cross a river there. The scorpion couldn't swim, the frog was lost. So the scorpion proposed a deal, ‘Give me a ride on your back, and I'll show you the way.’ The frog agreed, and the trip went fine until they got to the middle of the river, and then suddenly the scorpion just stung the frog. As they were sinking, the frog asked, in his dying breath, ‘Why would you do that?’ To which the scorpion replied, ‘Because this is the Middle East.’

It is worth noting that the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip did not kidnap that Israeli soldier and provoke all of this because the Israelis were invading Gaza. No, all this happened in the wake of the Israeli withdrawal, which was what the Palestinians supposedly wanted. But this is the Middle East. Why would fundamentalists in Gaza and Lebanon choose to provoke this war at this time? There is no real answer except this is the Middle East.

• Centralizing power within the executive branch to an unprecedented degree
  
• Starting two major wars, one started with questionable intelligence and in a manner with which the military disagreed
  
• Placing on the Supreme Court two far-right justices, and stacking the lower federal courts with many more
  
• Cutting taxes during wartime, an unprecedented event
  
• Passing a number of controversial bills such as the PATRIOT Act, the No Child Left Behind Act, the Medicare Drug bill, the Bankruptcy bill and a number of massive tax cuts
  
• Rolling back and refusing to enforce a host of basic regulatory protections
  
• Appointing industry officials to oversee regulatory agencies
  
• Establishing a greater role for religion through faith-based initiatives
  
• Passing Orwellian-titled legislation assaulting the environment -- "The Healthy Forests Act" and the "Clear Skies Initiative" -- to deforest public lands, and put more pollution in our skies
  
• Winning re-election and solidifying his party's grip on Congress

The Mouse on Steroids

[ Nelson argues that

[i]f you care about local and democratic control, demand a Farm Bill that curbs the power of factory farms and the influence of lobbyists for large food corporations. If you care about health and nutrition for children, demand a Farm Bill that puts more fresh, wholesome food in our cities' schools. If you want your children and grandchildren to enjoy the benefits of a clean environment, demand a Farm Bill that increases protection of our natural resources by helping farmers transition to organic and more sustainable growing methods.

As the editors of AlterNet point out, this article appeared in the Spring 2006 issue of Waterkeeper, the official magazine of Waterkeeper Alliance. --BL ]

by Willie Nelson

As one of the founders of Farm Aid, I have watched with admiration and a good amount of satisfaction the growth of what many now call the "Good Food Movement" -- the growing interest in and demand for organic, humanely-raised and family farm-identified food that is transforming the way America grows its food and how our food gets to our tables.

While it might seem obvious to many, good food comes from farms with healthy soil and clean water. I've always believed that the most important people on the planet are the ones who plant the seeds and care for the soil where they grow. As the stewards of the land, family farmers are the foundation of this movement, as well as its guarantor.

No one can say they planted the original seed that gave rise to this movement, but many can claim they have helped nurture and cultivate its growth. Farm Aid's vision for America is to have many family farmers on the land -- a vision born out of our strong conviction that who grows our food and who cares for the land and water is of vital national importance; that farmers and their fields are the fabric that holds our country together.

Many have asked me, "What is the Good Food movement?" The Good Food movement isn't just about good and delicious food -- although this is certainly one of its greatest achievements. The Good Food movement is at the center of some of the most important issues and debates that will define American society for years to come: issues like stewardship of our soil and water, local and democratic control of decision making and land use, health and nutrition and a thriving and sustainable food and farm economy needed to feed and fuel America.

[ Dahr Jamail, one of the few independent U.S. journalists in Iraq, does not write for Corporate Media in the insulated U.S. However, his work can be found in stories reported by the BBC, Inter Press Service, The Asia Times, The Sunday Herald, the Guardian, The Independent, and elsewhere. This piece ties in with other important articles appearing here on the psychology of evil. --BL ]

The blurb from Organic Consumers Assn's Organic Bytes letter runs:

An average of over seven calories of fossil fuel is burned up for every calorie of energy we get from our food. This means that the average 2000 calorie daily diet requires approximately two quarts of crude oil to produce, process, package and transport.

The processing of just one pound of coffee requires over 8,000 calories of fossil-fuel energy -- the equivalent energy found in nearly 30 cubic feet of natural gas, or around two and a half pounds of coal.

To reduce the amount of fossil fuels consumed and greenhouse gases generated by the foods you eat, buy locally grown organic products, foods with minimal packaging, and avoid highly processed foods.

--BL

My Saudi Arabian Breakfast

[ This piece about Sweden's commitment to convert to fossil-free fuels shames the rest of the developed world. Sure, Sweden's got ethanol on the table as a possible part of its strategy, contra voices of sanity (like that of James Howard Kunstler), insight (like that of Richard Manning), and manifesto (like the editors of The Stranger, who call for real solutions). But at least Sweden is treating the issue of sustainable energy policy as urgent. --BL ]

Trial of the True Believers

by Onnesha Roychoudhuri

As the trial of Enron's Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay enters its second week, journalists are again pointing to the connections between the Bush family and administration and the former corporate Goliath. It's certainly not difficult to unearth the laundry list of ties between Bush's tight-knit Republican circle and the company that cheated Americans out of over $1 billion in retirement funds and some 4,500 jobs.

But perhaps the more interesting connection between the Bush administration and Enron is how people from both entities have flouted the law by spinning their own versions of reality and defending their actions with claims of good intent.

No one can deny Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling's leadership of Enron was creative. As Peter Elkind, senior writer at Fortune and co-author of "The Smartest Guys in the Room," told AlterNet in a recent interview, "It was the most innovative company in America, we just didn't know how innovative."

Enron traders were encouraged to seek out every loophole in any law that stood in the way of Enron making another buck. This kind of market manipulation has been referred to as a "phantom deal." In the case of the California energy crisis, there was no shortage of electricity, and yet Enron was getting profits by shutting down power plants to artificially push up the price. Without creating anything, Enron was making billions in profits.

But while many of their deals -- as well as the company's profits -- were "phantom," the fallout from the company's collapse was hardly apparitional. Even now, the repercussions of the energy crisis are being felt. Residents in many parts of California are paying record electricity costs as the remaining debt hovers. Thousands of employees lost their jobs, and an even larger number of people lost retirement benefits.

Despite the diligent cataloguing of the many disingenuous deals made by Enron, the outcome of Skilling and Lay's trial is hardly predictable. That's because the prosecution team has to prove that Skilling and Lay intended to mislead investors, and that they knew the company was headed for disaster. But Skilling and Lay repeatedly insist that they were true believers and never thought the company would collapse. This may come down to the issue of what Skilling and Lay allowed themselves to believe.

It may come as no surprise, then, that both men are eager to take the stand. Rather than feeling ashamed or repentant for the collapse of Enron, Skilling and Lay's lawyers have promised the jury that both men will take the stand. In fact, they're eager to let jurors know just how passionately they felt about Enron.

From Peter Elkind and Bethany McLean's interviews in "The Smartest Guys in the Room," it becomes clear that Enron was a cult of personalities -- driven in large part by Jeff Skilling. It was Skilling's repeated refusal to accept defeat that revealed the chink in Enron's armor: The only thing keeping Enron from failing was Skilling and Lay's desperate insistence that Enron was a success.

The alternate reality that Skilling and Lay had so successfully fabricated, by keeping it sealed off from the public and using every loophole to keep afloat, collapsed as soon as the public started asking questions. And while the illegitimacy of the company's deals revealed Enron to be a house of cards, the repercussions from its collapse -- high energy prices, the loss of jobs and retirement funds -- remain a stark reminder of the very real consequences of allowing those with a fervent ideology access to unchecked power. For those so driven, facts become secondary, mere details to be fabricated in order to further furnish their version of reality.

It's an interesting irony that the more incapable Skilling and Lay are of seeing how their actions were wrong or illegal, the more likely they are to escape discipline. Fortune writer Roger Parloff likens this kind of defense to the "Emperor's clothes" metaphor:

To commit most crimes, one has to intend to do something wrong. Accordingly, truly deluding oneself -- gullibly trusting a deceitful subordinate (in the emperor's case, the tailor), relying on yes-men advisors, resting undue confidence on one's own innovative brilliance -- is a defense. An individual cannot be a criminal unless he has a certain baseline level of self-knowledge. Without that, psychiatrists may have labels for him, but the penal code does not.

In the world of seeking legal relief, it is harder to legally prosecute someone who truly believes in their own sense of reality, regardless of how clearly it may conflict with that of the general public. It's a strange incentive to believe your own lies, to surround yourself with nothing but what you want to hear and people who will support your version of reality.

It seems impeccable timing that, parallel to the Enron trial, the Bush administration is being called to account for its warrantless spying program. The Senate Judiciary Committee, headed up by Arlen Specter, is now pushing the administration to explain why it has created a completely alternate system to the legal wiretap methods in place.

As laid out in the DoJ legal briefing, the president feels justified in his actions because he deems it his "responsibility" under the Constitution to protect Americans. That is to say, the president's intentions to protect the public give him the right to find every legal loophole possible to redefine "torture," drag the United States into an arguably endless war and generally turn our entire legal system on its head -- the detainment of Guantanamo detainees without charge or trial and the extralegal wiretapping of Americans all point to the new legal supposition that, in the war on terror, we are all guilty until proven innocent.

And, in true Enron fashion, the administration continually refuses to discuss its inner workings or justifications, continually assuaging the public with repeated claims that everything is just fine, and that one would have to be a fool to question the president's integrity.

Driven to justify a worldview in which global terrorism is a unified, extinguishable evil force, facts have become secondary to the importance of the vision. One need only recall the Downing Street Memo to see that facts have never stood in the way of this administration's agenda. It's a tactic that is seen in those the president has chosen to surround himself with as well. Jeanne of the blog Body and Soul, recently wondered whether the administration was trying to make Americans crazy by so blatantly contradicting basic information. She points to White House spokesman Scott McClellan's response to a press inquiry:

QUESTION: There are allegations that we sent people to Syria to be tortured.
McCLELLAN: To Syria?
QUESTION: Yes. You've never heard of any allegations like that?
McCLELLAN: No, I've never heard that one. That's a new one.
QUESTION: Syria? You haven't heard that one?
McCLELLAN: That's a new one.

Hard to believe considering the Washington Post published these allegations on page A1. Not to mention they also appeared in the New York Times, the Associated Press, and the New Yorker. Even if McClellan doesn't read the news, perhaps he could recall being asked the very same question regarding Syria a year ago. When asked about allegations, the president and his spokesmen either play dumb or insist that the allegation, regardless of how widespread the evidence, is false.

This week's Senate Judiciary hearings just might be the start of unraveling the administration's alternate sense of reality. As Specter rightly points out in his questions for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, with well-established programs like FISA in place, the rational question is: Why does the administration continue to put our safety secondary to its agenda to expand executive power? Specter writes, "The FISA Court has a record establishing its reliability for non-disclosure or leaking contrasted with concerns that disclosure to many members of Congress involved a high risk of disclosure or leaking. The FISA Court is at least as reliable, if not more so, than the Executive Branch on avoiding disclosure or leaks."

Shayana Kadidal, one of the lawyers at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) bringing legal action against the president and security agencies, explained to AlterNet why the wiretap program has endangered our security. Apart from the hollow justifications the president utilizes to defend the NSA program, its incredibly broad reach has left security agencies swamped with bum leads. Another piece of related legislation [PDF], the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) vs. AT&T, characterizes the NSA program as "the biggest fishing expedition ever devised." EFF charges that AT&T, by providing the NSA with access to its customers records, is violating the First and Fourth amendments of the Constitution.

True to the new "guilty until proven innocent" ideology, the NSA "collects and analyzes a vast amount of communications traffic data to identify persons whose communications patterns the government believes may link them, even if indirectly, to investigatory targets." Kadidal notes that the waste and duplication in this form of intelligence gathering is preventing law enforcement agencies from focusing its resources on areas of real threat.

And even if useful information is obtained, it cannot be legally used to protect Americans. James Risen, in his recent book "State of War", notes some 10 percent to 20 percent of FISA wiretap orders are now based on evidence that has been illegally collected through the NSA program. Risen writes:

Because the intelligence based on the warrantless wiretaps would almost certainly not be admissible in an American court, it is possible that the Bush administration is not attempting to take those cases to trial. Several high-profile terrorism-related cases since 9/11 have ended in plea bargains and out-of-court settlements; few have actually gone to trial. One reason for that legal strategy may be that the administration is fearful of getting caught conducting illegal surveillance operations.

The point is that the logic simply doesn't add up. So, why is the administration holding on so relentlessly to this alternate reality? Shayana Kadidal points to Vice President Dick Cheney's recent remark that there needs to be a reversal of what he has perceived as an erosion of executive power.

"Realistically," says Kadidal, "when you look at this program, it's really an attempt to say, 'We don't need Congressional approval, we don't need to go to a judge, these are all powers that ought to inherently belong to the presidency. And Congress, even when it legislates specifically, ought to not have the power to take away from the presidency.'" What it comes down to, says Kadidal, is ideology, facts be damned.

By seeking out loopholes in laws in order to fit their agenda, and deluding the public (and possibly themselves) into thinking that these things were done in public interest, both Enron and the Bush administration have proven masters of generating alternate realities. They are symbols of a new paradigm wherein claims of following the specific letter of the law are accompanied by an incredible contempt for the substance of it.

Many of those following the Enron trial have argued that this case will set a precedent for what will and will not be tolerated in the business world. But the implications of the trial stretch much further. This trial is less about the laws that Skilling and Lay broke and more to do with whether or not supposedly "good intentions" and a deliberately skewed sense of reality can excuse unconscionable actions.

As the Bush administration gears up to defend its NSA program -- to the Senate Judiciary Committee, to the Center for Constitutional Rights and to the American Civil Liberties Union, we will see a conflict of realities. While these organizations will be fueled by logic and legality, the administration will be desperately clinging to its ideological stance, pushing to keep an ever-more-fragile house of cards intact.

Onnesha Roychoudhuri is an editorial fellow at AlterNet.

[ I presume you're up on recent news from my Progressive Trinity -- TruthOut, Common Dreams, and DemocracyNow! -- which has reported a lot of scary news lately about the extent to which the impeachable Bush administration's illegality is documentable, about nuclear noise from Iran, and other depressing matters. But as much as climate change seems like background noise, it may force its way into the foreground before long. --BL ]

[ Many right-wingers continue to dismiss reports about the John Hopkins University study published in the British medical journal The Lancet which concluded, at the time of the study, there were probably about 100,000 excess deaths since the Anglo-American invasion. But my informal survey suggests that very few people have heard the telling interview about the study's methodology which aired on This American Life ("What's in a Number?," 28 October 2005, episode 300) with one of the researchers (to get to the most relevant point in the interview, move ahead 12 minutes into the show). The article below, forwarded by Eva Dadlez, provides a further defense of the methodology, and suggests the 100,000 figure may well be low. --BL ]

by ANDREW COCKBURN

President Bush's off-hand summation last month of the number of Iraqis who have so far died as a result of our invasion and occupation as "30,000, more or less" was quite certainly an under-estimate. The true number is probably hitting around 180,000 by now, with a possibility, as we shall see, that it has reached as high as half a million.

[ Thanks to Alexandra Dadlez for news about this piece. --BL ]

by James Bamford

Meet John Rendon, Bush's general in the propaganda war

The road to war in Iraq led through many unlikely places. One of them was a chic hotel nestled among the strip bars and brothels that cater to foreigners in the town of Pattaya, on the Gulf of Thailand.

On December 17th, 2001, in a small room within the sound of the crashing tide, a CIA officer attached metal electrodes to t