Thursday, 12 August 2010
Ill Blu & the DMCA
exilestreet @Hyperdub received a DMCA notice at my blog for linking to this mix http://bit.ly/cIjgLU that you tweeted. Do the IFPI really act on yr say?
Hyperdub @exilestreet owt to do with us.The usual bullshit from the IFPI...
three out of my four DMCA notices have been for legal links, two at archive.org and now this!
three out of my four DMCA notices have been for legal links, two at archive.org and now this!
The Ploy to Promote Genetically Engineered Seeds and Pesticides to Poor Mexican Farmers Is Impoverishing Their Communities
The Obama administration's Feed the Future initiative promises a second Green Revolution that will feed a planet of nine billion people by doubling crop yields by 2050. But considering that we produce enough food to feed the planet today and a billion people still go hungry, are yields really the problem? And if they are, are providing Green Revolution technologies like hybrid and genetically engineered seeds, chemical fertilizer and pesticides to subsistence farmers the best way to achieve them? I visited subsistence farmers in Mexico to find out.The homes of campesinos, peasant farmers, in the rural areas surrounding Cuquio, Mexico (about an hour from Guadalajara) no longer have dirt floors. The Mexican government initiated a program to replace them with cement floors in 2008 and now most homes sport a plaque celebrating their new piso firmes. Electricity came about 20 years ago. For many, running water and bathroom facilities are modern conveniences they do not yet have. The government has recently distributed composting toilets to many, but not all, families.
One of the tiny adobe homes is decorated by flowers growing in upside-down Coca-Cola bottles turned into flower pots. Another is located next to a fencepost sporting an empty bag of Monsanto corn seeds -- seeds presumably planted in the adjoining cornfield, or milpa. This little corner of the world and the people who live here seem to be forgotten by everyone except for Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and multinational agribusiness corporations like Monsanto and DuPont.
The campesinos here are easy prey for savvy, first-world corporate marketers. Many have only a sixth-grade education, and they know how to grow their traditional milpas of intercropped corn, beans and squash because they learned the techniques practiced by generations before them, often first handling a horse and plow at the tender age of 6. They know their lives are hard and that some years they don't produce enough food to eat. Moreover, they are desperate to give their children better lives through education, but subsistence farming does not come with a salary and many cannot afford the fees, supplies or uniforms required by schools. Several express regret (or even despair) that their children had to drop out of school to work at the local shoe factory for 500 pesos per week -- about $1.05 per hour with current exchange rates. A new technology that could provide enough food and perhaps some income would be welcome.
Further depressing news from the "World of Managers" with deliberate sales of highly toxic chemicals to countries that require food sustainability, and not the ongoing problems associated with poisonous chemical usage. That these "intelligent managers" and shareholders condone and profit from the misery they produce is a blight on Western society. Once again the prevailing cheers of profits before people, deafen the less fortunate in cycles of starvation, pollution and toxic lifestyles, for a few dollars more. With these chemical substances banned by Western society for agricultural use, the continued production and sale to other countries, despite all available knowledge of their toxicity, surely ranks as a crime against humanity. How can this "World of Managers" and shareholders blithely add to the misery of so many people/, when the effects of their products are so widely, scientifically known?
One of the tiny adobe homes is decorated by flowers growing in upside-down Coca-Cola bottles turned into flower pots. Another is located next to a fencepost sporting an empty bag of Monsanto corn seeds -- seeds presumably planted in the adjoining cornfield, or milpa. This little corner of the world and the people who live here seem to be forgotten by everyone except for Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and multinational agribusiness corporations like Monsanto and DuPont.
The campesinos here are easy prey for savvy, first-world corporate marketers. Many have only a sixth-grade education, and they know how to grow their traditional milpas of intercropped corn, beans and squash because they learned the techniques practiced by generations before them, often first handling a horse and plow at the tender age of 6. They know their lives are hard and that some years they don't produce enough food to eat. Moreover, they are desperate to give their children better lives through education, but subsistence farming does not come with a salary and many cannot afford the fees, supplies or uniforms required by schools. Several express regret (or even despair) that their children had to drop out of school to work at the local shoe factory for 500 pesos per week -- about $1.05 per hour with current exchange rates. A new technology that could provide enough food and perhaps some income would be welcome.
Continue reading
Jill Richardson @'AlterNet'
Jill Richardson's Blog Further depressing news from the "World of Managers" with deliberate sales of highly toxic chemicals to countries that require food sustainability, and not the ongoing problems associated with poisonous chemical usage. That these "intelligent managers" and shareholders condone and profit from the misery they produce is a blight on Western society. Once again the prevailing cheers of profits before people, deafen the less fortunate in cycles of starvation, pollution and toxic lifestyles, for a few dollars more. With these chemical substances banned by Western society for agricultural use, the continued production and sale to other countries, despite all available knowledge of their toxicity, surely ranks as a crime against humanity. How can this "World of Managers" and shareholders blithely add to the misery of so many people/, when the effects of their products are so widely, scientifically known?
♪♫ Demdike Stare - Extwistle Hall vs Forest Of Evil (Dusk)
Fact Mix 151
Tracklist:
1. Demdike Stare – Rain And Shame
2. Demdike Stare – Matilda’s Dream
3. Guru Guru – Atommolch
4. Demdike Stare – Caged In Stammheim
5. Keith Hudson – Satan Side
6. Unknown – Unknown Thai track
7. Elias Rahbani – La Dance De Nadia
8. Robert Hood – Grace Under Fire ( Nightime Mix )
9. Demdike Stare – The Stars Are Moving
10. Carl Craig – Darkness
1. Demdike Stare – Rain And Shame
2. Demdike Stare – Matilda’s Dream
3. Guru Guru – Atommolch
4. Demdike Stare – Caged In Stammheim
5. Keith Hudson – Satan Side
6. Unknown – Unknown Thai track
7. Elias Rahbani – La Dance De Nadia
8. Robert Hood – Grace Under Fire ( Nightime Mix )
9. Demdike Stare – The Stars Are Moving
10. Carl Craig – Darkness
♪♫ Dan Bull - Dear Mandy [an open letter to Lord Mandelson]
the lyrics
Samples used:
Lily Allen - Never Gonna Happen
Lily Allen - Who'd Have Known
Dan on Twitter: http://twitter.com/itsDanBull
Dan on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/itsDanBull
MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/danbull
download
Historic Russian Seed Bank Faces Destruction
Priceless Plant Collection in Peril
Ninety percent of the more than 5,000 varieties of berries and fruit seed at the Vavilov Research Institute of Plant Industry seed bank in Leningrad, Russia are found in no other seed bank or plant research center in the world. During WWII, with Leningrad under siege, twelve scientists protecting the seed bank's valuable specimens starved to death, unwilling to eat the rare seeds.
What makes a few hundred thousand plant seeds worth dying for? The carefully tended seed collection at VRI -- one of the oldest seed banks in the world -- preserves rare genetic traits that could one day help farmers save entire nations from famine.
Yet today, part of Vavilov's priceless repository is in danger of being lost forever. The seed bank's research station at Pavlovsk, home to thousands of rare plant varieties, is facing destruction by one of the most banal evils imaginable: a housing development. A group of Russian real estate developers plans to bulldoze the historic agricultural research center -- and its fields of rare berry bushes and fruit trees -- to build the Russian equivalent of a subdivision of McMansions.
TAKE ACTION: SAVE THE SEED BANK FROM DESTRUCTION!
The Crop Diversity Crisis
Modern industrialized agriculture has encouraged the standardization of crop seeds. Most of the world now depends on fewer than 150 species of plants for food, and 90% of the crop varieties grown just 100 years ago are no longer commercially produced, leaving most of humanity dependent on just a few varieties of vital food crops like corn, wheat or apples.
This lack of crop diversity makes the food plants most people depend on for survival highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, disease and insect pests. With an artificially limited gene pool, most conventional food crops cannot evolve new defenses quickly from one generation to the next to deal with a changing environment. And planting the same variety of a plant from one field to the next makes it easy for plant diseases to spread. A new virus or fungus might wipe out not just one farmer's field, but an entire state's crop.
But older, heirloom varieties of food plants often carry genes that can help plants withstand drought, flooding and pestilence. And that is why seed banks like the one at Pavlovsk are so vitally important -- by preserving a wide variety of plants and seeds, seed banks preserve genetic traits that one day might save entire plant species from extinction.
Save the Seed Bank
If the Russian real estate developers have their way, the Pavlovsk agricultural research station might be destroyed in just a few months. The Global Crop Diversity Trust and botanists around the world are petitioning the Russian government to save Pavlovsk's seeds.
The director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, Dr. Cary Fowler, is encouraging anyone who would like the Russian government to stop the destruction of this historic seed bank to join a Twitter campaign to convince Russia's President, Dmitry Medvedev, (@kremlinrussia_e)to intervene.
TAKE ACTION:
Costs of Major U.S. Wars Compared
More than a trillion dollars has been appropriated since September 11, 2001 for U.S. military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. This makes the “war on terrorism” the most costly of any military engagement in U.S. history in absolute terms or, if correcting for inflation, the second most expensive U.S. military action after World War II.
A newly updated report from the Congressional Research Service estimated the financial costs of major U.S. wars from the American Revolution ($2.4 billion in FY 2011 dollars) to World War I ($334 billion) to World War II ($4.1 trillion) to the second Iraq war ($784 billion) and the war in Afghanistan ($321 billion). CRS provided its estimates in current year dollars (i.e. the year they were spent) and in constant year dollars (adjusted for inflation), and as a percentage of gross domestic product. Many caveats apply to these figures, which are spelled out in the CRS report.
In constant dollars, World War II is still the most expensive of all U.S. wars, having consumed a massive 35.8% of GDP at its height and having cost $4.1 trillion in FY2011 dollars. See “Costs of Major U.S. Wars,” June 29, 2010.
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