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Why Scandinavian women make the rest of the world jealous

Monday, November 18th, 2013

Icelanders are among the happiest and healthiestpeople on Earth. They publish more books per capita than any other country, and they havemore artists. They boast the most prevalent belief in evolution — and elves, too. Iceland is the world’s most peaceful nation (the cops don’t even carry guns), and the best place for kids. Oh, and they had a lesbian head of state, the world’s first. Granted, the national dish is putrefied shark meat, but you can’t have everything.

Iceland is also the best place to have a uterus, according to the folks at the World Economic Forum. The Global Gender Gap Report ranks countries based on where women have the most equal access to education and healthcare, and where they can participate most fully in the country’s political and economic life.

According to the 2013 report, Icelandic women pretty much have it all. Their sisters in Finland, Norway, and Sweden have it pretty good, too: those countries came in second, third and fourth, respectively. Denmark is not far behind at number seven.

The U.S. comes in at a dismal 23rd, which is a notch down from last year. At least we’re not Yemen, which is dead last out of 136 countries.

So how did a string of countries settled by Vikings become leaders in gender enlightenment? Bloodthirsty raiding parties don’t exactly sound like models of egalitarianism, and the early days weren’t pretty. Medieval Icelandic law prohibited women from bearing arms or even having short hair. Viking women could not be chiefs or judges, and they had to remain silent in assemblies. On the flip side, they could request a divorce and inherit property. But that’s not quite a blueprint for the world’s premier egalitarian society.

The change came with literacy, for one thing. Today almost everybody in Scandinavia can read, a legacy of the Reformation and early Christian missionaries, who were interested in teaching all citizens to read the Bible. Following a long period of turmoil, Nordic states also turned to literacy as a stabilizing force in the late 18^th century. By 1842, Sweden had made education compulsory for both boys and girls.

Researchers have found that the more literate the society in general, the more egalitarian it is likely to be, and vice versa. But the literacy rate is very high in the U.S., too, so there must be something else going on in Scandinavia. Turns out that a whole smorgasbord of ingredients makes gender equality a high priority in Nordic countries.

– More: ➡

Posted in And Now for Something Completely Different, CounterCurrents, Politics - The Right Way, Religion - The Right Way | No Comments »

AND NOW THE REST OF THE STORY ABOUT OBAMACARE

Wednesday, November 13th, 2013

– ObamaCare – we’ve all been hearing a lot of ‘bad’ news about it (and all that bad news is well funded and backed by the very people (read big business) who stand to lose money if people in the U.S. actually got a better deal on healthcare).

– Well, here’s the other side of the story that you WON’T find on the big U.S. networks (controlled as they are by big business).

– Thanks to my friend, Ron, at the Sky Valley Chronicle in the U.S. for writing this.

-dennis

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Just a few facts the nightly news left out

You would think that after the past few weeks watching the mainstream/lamestream nightly TV news shows and reading some newspapers that the screw ups with the rollout of the national website for the Affordable Health care Act (e.g. Obamacare) was of world importance.

Something right up there with global terrorism and young guys walking into schools, malls and airports with AK-47’s and commencing target practice.

Night after night (as modern Europe watches this surrealistic circus show and shakes its collective head in disbelief) Americans have been treated to lead stories about how horrible this terrible thing is/was/will forever be.

The screw up, we are led to believe is on the same par with the United States invading the wrong country (Iraq) that had nothing to do with the 911 terrorist attacks.

To find out how much that little number has cost you so far in your “hard earned tax dollars” and how much is still being rung up on the national credit card each second of every day, check here .

Makes the health care web site screw up look like a Pee Wee Herman movie by comparison.

And when it comes to right wing leaning media like Fox News, this government screw up is the equivalent of the end of Western Civilization.

According to Fox News there are as we speak roving bands of wild eyed, blood drooling socialists going house to house strangling with their bare hands women and children and little old grandmas.

And as they squeeze the last living breath out of them, the murdering socialists (who are probably atheists as well) look their victims straight in the eye and scream, “Obamacare sent us! And we’re gonna kill ya all!”

The world has come to an end. The sky is falling. Fade to black.

But is it possible, just barely possible that a few things are being left out of that story?

Let us look and see, shall we?

AND NOW, THE REST OF THE STORY

There is a woman most of you have probably never heard of as her story was one of many like it that perhaps never made it as a lead story on the nightly Big Three network news or at Fox News of late.

Her name is Lela Petersen and she is the owner of a small store called “Anything And Everything” in Flagler, Colorado.

She is one of millions of small business people across America that the GOP is always so concerned about. The GOP is forever saying this and that will “harm small business people.”

So the GOP will probably love this story because Ms. Petersen and her hubbie can now look forward to a retirement thanks to Obamacare.

You see, under the current spiffy “free market” health care “system” Petersen, 57 and her husband Mike, 60, have been stuck with God awful expensive health insurance.

The HMO policy they’ve had since 1992 is now costing $1,950 per month, just for the two of them. It is, and has been, eating them alive financially.

Lela told a reporter for National Public Radio (NPR), “When you pay $1,950 for insurance you might as well forget retirement. There’s just no way.”

Five years ago she was looking at early retirement but never in her wildest dreams did she imagine health insurance costing as much as the rest of her bills combined.

For Lela that free market health care boogie wasn’t working very well. But thanks to America’s new Affordable Care Act ,Lela expects her insurance bill will be cut by more than half in January

In case you didn’t catch that as the nightly news did not: a MORE than a 50% reduction in her family’s cost for insurance.

At the start of October she checked out Colorado’s insurance exchange and found the exact same policy from the same insurer for only $832 a month. “It’s dropping us down about $1,100 a month. We can retire. We can go fishing. We can actually see a future,” Petersen told NPR.

Here is what made the difference. Becoming part of an insurance “pool” created by the act helped Petersen reduce her cost. The federal law also forbids insurance companies from charging more for pre-existing conditions. That saved her a ton of dough and then federal tax credits brought the cost down even further.

Now, there are millions of small business people across this country who are in exactly the same boat as Lela was/is. See the significance?

MILLIONS.

Does it strike you as odd these stories weren’t part of the bombastic news coverage of late?

And according to NPR’s coverage, “The Affordable Care Act will bring big changes for a lot of people,especially those who want to retire before they’re eligible for Medicare.

A 2012 survey by Employee Benefit Research Institute found 53 percent of workers polled planned to stay in their jobs longer than they wanted to, so they could keep health insurance through their employer.”

Read more about Lela’s new lifeline to a retirement here .

THE HORROR STORIES OF OBAMACARE

Would it surprise you to know that some journalists have followed up on some of these horror stories of late about Obamacare that have been carried on the TV news and right wing media sites and found that…well, they only told part of the story?

A recent post on CNN noted, “Here are just some of the mythical stories journalists have helped dispel and the lessons we can learn from them about the reality of the Affordable Care Act.”

Among the stories was one about Deborah Cavallaro who “was making the rounds on television complaining about how her current insurance plan was canceled under Obamacare.”

So a Washington Post columnist named Michael Hiltzik talked to her. He found out her current plan cost $293 per month but had a deductible of $5,000 per year and out-of-pocket annual limits of $8,500. Also, the current plan covered just two doctor’s visits per year.

But in the California insurance exchange (that ol’ debil Obamacare) which Hiltzik helped Cavallaro check, she could get a “silver” plan for $333 per month — $40 more than she’s currently paying.

But the kicker is this: the new plan has only a $2,000 deductible and maximum out-of-pocket expenses at $6,350. Plus all doctor visits would be covered. Hiltzik writes, “Is that better than her current plan? Yes, by a mile.”

So the real story here is this: the tootie-fruitie fruit loop Cavallaro was suckering TV shows into letting her slobber all over the tube an untrue sob story about how Obamacare was hurting her – because she didn’t have brains enough to check things out herself – when the reality is Obamacare is saving her little tooshie money and getting her better health coverage to boot.

Or how about a woman named Dianne Barrette?

She shows up on a CBS News (that bastion of news credibility) report in which she bitched and moaned that her $54-per-month insurance plan had been “canceled” under Obamacare.

Then a woman named Nancy Metcalf at Consumer Reports looks into Barrette’s sob story and found that her current policy was a “textbook example of a junk plan that isn’t real health insurance at all.”

“According to Metcalf, if Barrette had ever tried to use her insurance for anything more than a sporadic doctor’s visit, “she would have ended up with tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical debt,” according to the CNN report.

Do you still trust CBS News, the fabled “news” network “that Murrow built”?

Metcalf also found that Barrett’s plan, for instance, only pays for hospitalization in cases of “complications of pregnancy.”

“Instead, Metcalf found that Barrette could get a “silver” plan in the state insurance exchange for $165 per month that would actually cover Barrette in the case of any sort of serious or even moderate illness. Which is the very definition of insurance, isn’t it?,” says the CNN report.

Editor’s Note 11/9/13: A few days after this story was published, CBS News was forced to make a very public and embarrassing retraction of an “exclusive” news story it broadcast on the CBS news magazine show “Sixty Minutes,” about ten days ago as of this writing.

Why did the network have to retract it? Because much like the Dianne Barrette incident noted in this story that left egg on their newsie faces, the great journalists at CBS simply took somebody’s word for something without thoroughly checking that somebody out.

For the sordid truth about how CBS checks its sources go here .

Or how about this item from the same CNN report:

“According to a report by Dylan Scott at Talking Points Memo, a Seattle woman named Donna received a cancellation letter from her insurance company regarding her current plan. The letter steered Donna and her family into a more expensive option and said, “If you’re happy with this plan, do nothing.”

The letter made no mention of the Washington State insurance exchange, where Donna could find plenty of other more affordable choices, because the company wanted a convenient excuse to jack up Donna’s rates.

Had Donna “done nothing,” she would have ended up spending about $1,000 more per month on insurance than the cost of insurance she ultimately chose through the Obamacare exchange. In fact, the practice of trying to mislead customers has become so widespread that Washington state regulators issued a consumer alert to customers.”

You can find more such stories in that CNN report here .

Reuters ran a story recently about Mark Sullivan, a 31-year-old Texan who says he managed to sign up for coverage on the screwed up Obamacare website HealthCare.gov, and he says his new policy will save him enough money that he’ll l be able to start a new web-based business.

“A lot of reporters want to talk about the problems with the website,” Sullivan told Reuters. “I can understand that focus, but a lot are missing the bigger story” that many people in Obamacare will save money on their insurance.

Ah yes, the bigger story. What we called “the rest of the story” at the start of this piece.

Here is another part of that rest of the story. You’ve heard complaints from some people that their insurance companies are jacking up their rates or canceling their policies and blaming it on the Affordable Care Act?

The fact of the matter is insurance companies can do whatever they want in regards to raising your rates at the moment because the part of the Affordable Health Care Act that protects you from things like that will not come into fruition until 2014.

At that time the law will protect you from your rates being raised arbitrarily by an insurance industry that is not exactly known for looking out for consumers. (Look up the fun health insurance industry practice known as “rescission” – for years an industry secret – for an eye opener about this industry).

THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT: NOT A CURE ALL FOR A LONG SCREWED UP “THING”

And finally, it is good to remember that the Affordable Care Act does not fix every little thing that is wrong with a long screwed up, long out of control patchwork health insurance/health care thing (it’s not really a “system”) in this country. Far from it.

The Affordable Care Act is, after all, a huge compromise and one that was painfully made to satisfy Republicans and hard core conservatives who wanted nothing whatsoever done to fix America’s out of control health care nightmare, ergo their never ending false tales of “socialized medicine” and “death panels.”

You see by keeping the health insurance nightmare as it was, some people made a fortune off the misery of others.

Those people and corporations who made a fortune then spent lavishly on the campaigns of lawmakers who would in turn fight tooth and nail to keep the status quo — and make sure that millions of Americans never got access to affordable health insurance, even though they desperately needed it.

America is the only modern nation in the world where we make health care a game of winners and losers.

When all those European nations looked around at how to construct a health care/health insurance package for their citizens, it is telling that not one of them chose the system of winners and losers that was made famous in America

Not one.

Some think that if sensible minds had prevailed Democrats would have disregarded the GOP assault on health care reform and, when they had the votes in both houses, pushed through a simple, single payer system much like they have in Europe and that alone might have ended a good portion of the nightmare of health insurance in this country.

But even though it is a vast compromise, the Affordable health Care Act does make a huge difference in terms of offering better coverage to far more people and particularly women — such as eliminating co-pays for cancer screenings, adding in additional detection and prevention services such as mammograms and providing guaranteed treatment to women with preexisting conditions.

Many consider the Affordable Health Care Act as simply a first step, one of many, toward reforming health care in America so that it works for everyone — not just the rich, not just those who can afford it or have it supplied to them by an employer.

And in terms of women, over 45 million women have already taken advantage of the services provided to them since Obamacare was signed into law.

And for those who truly have lost a good health insurance plan they wanted to keep and will need to spend a bit more money due to requirements of the Affordable health Care Act – and there are some in that boat – President Obama has apologized that people are, “Finding themselves in this situation based on assurances they got from me… we’ve got to work hard to make sure that they know we hear them, and we are going to do everything we can to deal with folks who find themselves in a tough position as a consequence of this.”

“We didn’t do a good enough job in terms of how we crafted the law,” Obama told NBC News.

THE LOWDOWN

Most people buying insurance through the state run health exchanges will be eligible for federal subsidies in the form of tax credits.

Taking into account these subsidies, the administration has said a family of four with an income of $50,000 will generally be able to buy a silver-level plan for $282 a month, while a 27-year-old with income of $25,000 will be able to get such coverage for $145 a month.

The government says in Washington State for example, 758,004 people (91%) of Washington’s uninsured and eligible population may qualify for lower costs on coverage in the Marketplace, including through Medicaid.

Here in Washington State the insurance-exchange marketplace went online October 1st as theWashington HealthPlanFinder which is designed to be a one-stop shopping site to help and guide those that need affordable insurance but are not covered by a health plan where they work.

RATES

A chart produced by the New York Times on costs of the plans, state by state, shows a 27-year old individual who makes $45,960 a year in Iowa will be able to afford to buy a quality health insurance plan for $189 a month and a family of four in the same state that has an annual income of $50,000 a year and getting subsidies will be able to cover the entire family with health insurance for $282 a month.

That state by state chart can be found here .

However there are some exchanges across the country that won’t be fully operational for weeks and in some cases months.

Any insurance coverage that is purchased through the exchanges won’t actually take effect until January 1, 2014 when the health care law starts requiring most Americans to have insurance or pay a tax penalty.

To be covered starting Jan. 1st, people need to sign up for coverage through the exchanges by Dec. 15th.

The first open enrollment period runs from Oct. 1 to March 31.

Gary Cohen, Director of the federal Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight said premiums will be generally lower in states with strong competition in their insurance markets.

In the 36 states where the federal government has primary responsibility for the exchanges Cohen said people will be able to choose from an average of 53 health plans.

More on how the new health care exchanges operate can be found here .

The Seattle Times has a comprehensive “users guide” to the changes that are going into effect today that you’ll find here .

– To the original story: ➡

Posted in Capitalism & Corporations, Corporate takeover of Government, Corruption, CrashBlogging, Financial melt-down, Human Rights, Politics - The Wrong Way, Social Breakdown, The Perfect Storm, Wealth Disparity | 2 Comments »

‘Uncomfortable’ climates to devastate cities within a decade, study says

Monday, November 4th, 2013

– This is what John Roach of NBC News has to say on October 9th, 2013

– But this has all been coming, writ large, for a long time.

-It’s been coming since:

Lyndon Johnson discussed the CO2 we were putting into the atmosphere in 1965.

Since the Club of Rome discussions and their paper on “The Limits to Growth” in 1972.

Since the World Scientists issued their warning to Humanity in 1992.

– But it is only just now beginning to reach the evening news as plausible news.

– We have just a few greedy, self-centered people and corporations to thank for the fact that their misinformation has been instrumental in delaying humanities waking up on these threats until it is virtually too late.

Most recently, Naomi Oreskes showed us this in her book, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming.

– Some of us remember how Mussolini ended up. I wonder, when the damages are finally appreciated, if these folks may fare the same. I won’t cry any crocodile tears for them; that’s for sure.

-By their actions many, many millions will die, cities and nations will fall, species innumerable will go extinct and most of our descendants will have less than optimal lives to look forward to; if they manage to live through the changes that are coming.

– dennis

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The world is hurtling toward a stark future where the web of life unravels, human cultures are uprooted, and millions of species go extinct, according to a new study. This doomsday scenario isn’t far off, either: It may start within a decade in parts of Indonesia, and begin playing out over most of the world — including cities across the United States — by mid-century.

What’s more, even a serious effort to stabilize spiraling greenhouse gas emissions will only stave off these changes until around 2069, notes the study from the University of Hawaii, Manoa, published online Wednesday in the journal Nature. The authors warn that the time is now to prepare for a world where even the coldest of years will be warmer than the hottest years of the past century and a half.

“We are used to the climate that we live in. With this climate change, what is going to happen is we’re going to be moving outside this comfort zone,” biologist Camilo Mora, the study’s lead author, told NBC News. “It is going to be uncomfortable for us as humans and it will be very uncomfortable for species as well.”

– To Read More of this article: ➡

– Still with the doubts, Sweetpea? Then please read this: ➡

Posted in Biodiversity Loss, Capitalism & Corporations, Climate Change, Conflict, Corporate takeover of Government, Corruption, CrashBlogging, Culture - How not to do it, CyberChaos, Deforestation, Desertification, Extinctions, Financial melt-down, Food Shortages, Fundamentalism, Human Rights, Immigration Stress, Mental Irrationality, Methane, Nuclear Waste, Ocean Acidification, Ocean Dead Zones, Pandemics, Politics - The Wrong Way, Pollution, Religion - The Wrong Way, Rising Ocean Levels, Social Breakdown, Terrorism, The Perfect Storm, Water Shortages, Wealth Disparity, Weather deterioration | No Comments »

Naomi Klein: How science is telling us all to revolt

Tuesday, October 29th, 2013

– I don’t think the best of our idealists are going to be going out on Greenpeace ships any more to protest politely. Not when they stand to lose the most of their young lives sitting in Russian prisons for the crime of idealism and the crime of trying to wake people up to the stupidity and danger gathering all around us.

– The days or holding signs and protesting peacefully are withering away all over the world as people realize that none of that has been effective. And now it is become downright dangerous.

– I first read that an ecologically sane world and the world of Capitalism may not be compatible bedfellows on this planet back in 2008 when I read The Bridge at the Edge of the World by James Gustave Speth; Yale University. He is and has been a major leading light in all things environment in the U.S. and he’s been a team player all along. So, this was a hard conclusion for him to come to.

– In the article, below, Naomi Klein tells us that others up and down the line are coming to the same conclusions.

– If what we’ve been doing isn’t working and losing is not an option for those of us who love this world and our children, then quite simply, new measures will be needed.

– dennis

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Is our relentless quest for economic growth killing the planet? Climate scientists have seen the data – and they are coming to some incendiary conclusions.

In December 2012, a pink-haired complex systems researcher named Brad Werner made his way through the throng of 24,000 earth and space scientists at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union, held annually in San Francisco. This year’s conference had some big-name participants, from Ed Stone of Nasa’s Voyager project, explaining a new milestone on the path to interstellar space, to the film-maker James Cameron, discussing his adventures in deep-sea submersibles.

But it was Werner’s own session that was attracting much of the buzz. It was titled “Is Earth F**ked?” (full title: “Is Earth F**ked? Dynamical Futility of Global Environmental Management and Possibilities for Sustainability via Direct Action Activism”).

Standing at the front of the conference room, the geophysicist from the University of California, San Diego walked the crowd through the advanced computer model he was using to answer that question. He talked about system boundaries, perturbations, dissipation, attractors, bifurcations and a whole bunch of other stuff largely incomprehensible to those of us uninitiated in complex systems theory. But the bottom line was clear enough: global capitalism has made the depletion of resources so rapid, convenient and barrier-free that “earth-human systems” are becoming dangerously unstable in response. When pressed by a journalist for a clear answer on the “are we f**ked” question, Werner set the jargon aside and replied, “More or less.”

There was one dynamic in the model, however, that offered some hope. Werner termed it “resistance” – movements of “people or groups of people” who “adopt a certain set of dynamics that does not fit within the capitalist culture”. According to the abstract for his presentation, this includes “environmental direct action, resistance taken from outside the dominant culture, as in protests, blockades and sabotage by indigenous peoples, workers, anarchists and other activist groups”.

Serious scientific gatherings don’t usually feature calls for mass political resistance, much less direct action and sabotage. But then again, Werner wasn’t exactly calling for those things. He was merely observing that mass uprisings of people – along the lines of the abolition movement, the civil rights movement or Occupy Wall Street – represent the likeliest source of “friction” to slow down an economic machine that is careening out of control. We know that past social movements have “had tremendous influence on . . . how the dominant culture evolved”, he pointed out. So it stands to reason that, “if we’re thinking about the future of the earth, and the future of our coupling to the environment, we have to include resistance as part of that dynamics”. And that, Werner argued, is not a matter of opinion, but “really a geophysics problem”.

Plenty of scientists have been moved by their research findings to take action in the streets. Physicists, astronomers, medical doctors and biologists have been at the forefront of movements against nuclear weapons, nuclear power, war, chemical contamination and creationism. And in November 2012,Nature published a commentary by the financier and environmental philanthropist Jeremy Grantham urging scientists to join this tradition and “be arrested if necessary”, because climate change “is not only the crisis of your lives – it is also the crisis of our species’ existence”.

– More: ➡

Posted in Biodiversity Loss, Capitalism & Corporations, Climate Change, Conflict, Corporate takeover of Government, Corruption, CrashBlogging, Culture - How not to do it, Deforestation, Desertification, Extinctions, Financial melt-down, Food Shortages, Fundamentalism, Human Rights, Mental Irrationality, Methane, Nuclear Waste, Ocean Acidification, Ocean Dead Zones, Pandemics, Politics - The Wrong Way, Pollution, Rising Ocean Levels, Social Breakdown, Terrorism, The Perfect Storm, Water Shortages, Wealth Disparity, Weather deterioration, Women's Rights | No Comments »

Final wrap-up on the major travel we’ve been doing these last four months

Monday, October 21st, 2013

Vancouver’s West End

Wrap up

This will be a final wrap-up for the major trip Colette and I have been on these last four months.

We’ve been back in New Zealand from our trip now for about ten days. We left on June 3rd for the U.S. where we spent a month touring up and down the west coast seeing friends and family. We traveled from Orange County, on the south, to Vancouver, B.C., on the north. I’ve done this trip four times now and this was Colette’s 2nd go-round. All the cross country driving is fun.

U.S. West Coast

Benicia lunch with Dave

We saw a ton of stuff and the especially good bits, other than the friends and family we saw (smile), were Las Vegas, Yosemite and Vancouver, B.C. We’re especially pumped about the city of Vancouver and it is on our list for next year’s live-in immersion adventure; along with Montreal.

My head is spinning as I’m reflecting on and remembering all the places we’ve been in these last four months.

From the U.S., we flew July 1st to Frankfurt, Germany and then onto Paris; arriving on the 2nd.

Family in Irvine

It wasn’t going to be a smooth trip, as we discovered, when we left my friend Dave’s house, bound for the BART station where we were going to catch a train to San Francisco Airport. It turned out that we had chanced to try our travel on the very day of the first BART strike in 16 years and BART train stations all across the Bay Area were shuttered.

After the initial shock of learning this for all of us, Dave stepped up to the plate and said he’d drive us all the way into the airport and off we went with our only guide; his GPS. That little guide was, itself, a gamble as he hadn’t brought its charger so it was running on batteries and none of us had any idea how much juice it had left. If it died on the way, we’d be lost and we’d be toast.

But it lasted, thanks to the God of small batteries, and we arrived in time. And, with profuse thanks to our host and transporter, Dave, for his hospitality and for being willing to drive us all the way into the airport with zero notice, we took leave of him to catch our flight.

Away to Paris

A flight which, as it turned out, was an hour late taking off from San Francisco. Which meant that later, when we arrived in Frankfurt, we then failed to make the connection with our Paris flight to Charles de Gaulle airport. Ah my, it was, indeed, a day of travel problems.

Gerry and Colette at the Louvre

Our Parisian friend, Gerry, was waiting for us in Paris at Charles de Gaulle and he managed to work out what probably had happened to us when we didn’t get off the expected plane. So, bless him, he stayed around for the next plane, which we were on, and all was well; though we were a bit frazzled after all of that fun.

And then began three months in Paris as Gerry’s guest in his extra apartment.

That was, indeed, a beautiful and very special time for us. But, since I’ve already written extensively on our adventures in Paris, I’m not going to wax on further here about that. Instead, I’m going to press on to describe the last part of our trip; which was Singapore.

We departed Paris for Singapore on September 30th and, after an overnight flight, we arrived in Singapore on October 1st.

And on to Singapore

Singapore Skyline

It’s hard for me to recall what I expected from visiting Singapore. When we booked, it was just a place I’d heard of that we were going to pass through on the way home to Christchurch. But, since I’d never been there, we decided to lay over for the better part of a week and have a look around. Really, at the time we booked it, it was nothing more than idle curiosity on my part. Colette had been there once before years earlier and said it was nice; though hot.

Well, it is not an exaggeration to say that the place really knocked my socks off.

Singapore is one of the wonders of the modern world in many ways. If you don’t get anything else out of reading this, treat yourself and go read the Wikipedia article about Singapore here. You will learn a lot that will surprise you, I expect.

High-rise Apartments

The first thing we noticed was the intense urban feel of the place and the high rise apartment and business buildings in all directions.

Singapore Island and Metro System

There are four to five million people living here on a small island that is at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula. The main island is approximately 42km east to west and 23 km north to south. Or, in miles, it is 31 by 19. There are, as well, a number of smaller islands but only one big one.

Weather? It is very hot and humid as you are just slightly north of the equator.

I’d heard about the cleanliness of the place but, still, it is something to see. No trash, no gum blobs on the sidewalks, Metro trains that run smooth as silk and a mixed racial population that seems to get on very well. There’s feeling of prosperity in the air in the dense central city areas of the eastern end of the island where we began our explorations.

Another Shopping Mall

Shopping Mall

Colette finds ‘her’ store

Walking down the main shopping road; Orchard Road, you could easily imagine yourself back in Paris. All the big fashion names are there. And you will find shopping mall after shopping mall; each one more amazing than the last in its architecture.

Beating the hea

On the first day, we went out and walked a lot but I found that really tiring. The heat was like a hammer and the difference between being in the sun or the shade was huge. And shade was hard to come by at mid-day because the sun was straight overhead.

After I was throughly hot and miserable (Colette had an umbrella so she handled all of this better than I did), we finally found a nice cafe with shade and settled in for an afternoon beer and some relaxed people watching and I began to recover a bit.

Double-decker bus touring

The next day, we were smarter. We found out that for $18 Singaporean each, you could ride a city double-decker tour bus and get on and off as you liked for the entire day. It went around the most interesting and dense areas of the city on the eastern end of the island and it came by every 30 minutes.

So, we did this. In the morning we got on and sat on the right side of the bus and went all the way around the loop just looking and talking and taking pictures. It took about two and a half hours.

Hindu Temple

In the heat of the day

Building everywhere

High-rise Apartments

Then, we got off on Orchard Road and wandered until we found a nice lunch place and then, after a short rest, we got back on the bus again. And this time, we sat on the left side and went all the way around again. It was well worth the money and we saw a ton of things without having to suffer and sweat in the tropical sun.

The street to our Hotel

The five evenings we were there, we mostly followed the same pattern and ate at the restaurant on the ground floor of our hotel. By that time of day (6 or 7pm), the temperature was nice and sitting outside was a great pleasure. We sat outside and ate slowly and watched the traffic and the people passing by and discussed all that we’d seen during the day.

Singapore evening meal

Genesis of Singapore

For me, there was a lot more to Singapore than the glossy surfaces we were seeing. In odd moments, I delved into reading about it and learning how the place came to be; and it was a fascinating story.

In a nutshell, Singapore, Malaysia and other former colonies of Britain in the area came together to form a new Malaysian Federation in 1963.

At that time, Singapore had been a long time British colony and had a thriving harbor and was a regional trade center. But it was also an uncomfortably hot tropical place where most folks lived in poverty, corruption was the rule, squalor was everywhere and there was a lot of racial disharmony.

The new union of Singapore and Malaysia was an uneasy one from the beginning and the issues were mostly racial.

Malaysia wanted to pass laws making the Malaysian people the first among equals to keep them ascendant over the Chinese.

The folks on Singapore strongly favored the alternative idea that all races should have equal rights. Singapore today is 75% or better Chinese and it was probably a similar mixture back then.

Singapore’s birth

There was a lot a strife over all this and the situation looked like it might evolve into a civil war. But Malaysia acted preemptively and ejected Singapore by a unanimous vote from the Federation in 1965.

And at that point, Singapore found itself, by surprise, as an island city-state and as a newly minted nation.

The first years were quite scary, I think, as SIngapore could have easily been subsumed into Indonesia or reabsorbed back into Malaysia under less than optimal conditions in either case.

But, they were lucky in that they had a leader named Lee Kuan Yew. He was a take-charge fellow and a visionary and he took Singapore in hand and began to mold it.

Lee Kuan Yew

And this molding wasn’t of the standard dictatorial militaristic take-all-the-money, bank it and suppress any dissent type. No, it was a beneficent moulding. Yew’s motives, so far as I can see from reading history and by looking around me, were to shape the place for the good of the people.

This doesn’t mean he was a Communist or a Socialist. He was a Capitalist; but one of a different sort than seems to predominate in the world today.

He believed in using the power of business to raise the living standards of his people. I believe he saw Capitalism as a tool but he also saw, that as a tool, it must always remain subordinate to the greater goal; which was “the good of the people”.

In my opinion, what’s where most of us in Capitalist countries have deeply lost the plot. We’ve never established that the highest goal of our countries should be to maximize the quality of life for all of the country’s citizens. And, not having made that decision, we’ve left a vacuum into which others have rushed to promote the supremacy of their visions of personal wealth, of political power, of corporate domination and on and on. In the absence of clear priorities, the pushiest and the greediest find their ways to the front of the bus.

Within 10 years Yew had rehoused most of Singapore’s population in high rise apartment buildings.

Early on. he passed laws with real teeth against graft and corruption; laws that were actually enforced at all levels.

He declared that English would the first language of the land (though everyone could and did have a second language of choice which they were free to us).

He mandated racial equality and built support for it into the school curriculums to teach it at every level.

He poured a large amount of the nation’s wealth into housing, into their military (modeled after the West German and Israeli models), into education and into transport (busses and Metro) and into communications needs.

Ship Building

He realized the value of having a diversified economy and he moved Singapore into many types of business that were new to it and he did this very successfully.

He made the price of owning cars so prohibitive that today only one person in 10 in Singapore owns one.

He promoted Singapore’s involvement in finance and Singapore today is one of the world’s largest financial centers.

But it has to be said that the Singaporean government is essentially a benevolent dictatorship in spite of having a multiparty parliamentary system.

Yew ruled from independence in 1965 until 1990, Then a protégé of his, Goh Chok Tong, ruled from 1990 to 2004. And then Yew’s eldest son, Lee Hsien Loong, took over and he still rules today. So, it’s been very much a dynasty with a controlled succession.

They allow multiple parties in Singapore but the party Yew was part of, the People’s Action Party (PAP), has won every election since the country was founded. And of all the seats in the legislature, the vast majority have always gone to PAP candidates.

That sounds like it could be a dismal situation, politically, but in fact the results say otherwise.

People in Singapore live well. 80 to 90% own their own homes. They are an enormously well educated bunch and the per capita wealth level is very high (third highest in the world).

Death for drugs

There is a hard side to the place, however, but maybe its not so bad. If you spit on the sidewalk or throw trash, you can get a major fine. And if you bring drugs into the country, they will simply execute you.

There’s a lot of superlatives about the place.

Singapore is the world’s fourth largest financial centre.

Its harbor is one of the busiest in the world (it is the fifth largest).

Singapore is one of the four ‘Asian Tiger” nations.

Democracy – are we smart enough?

All of this information made me quite reflective as we wandered around. In thinking about Singapore being a beneficent dictatorship, I remembered what Churchill had to say about Democracy:

“Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

I reflect on this saying a lot because I’m not convinced people in general are smart enough for the responsibility of participating in a democracy. But, on the other hand there’s very little to be said for Communism or dictatorships either.

So Singapore, for me, was a bit of a revelation because it represents another possibility; a third way.

A way in which power is gathered at the top and wielded sincerely for the good of the people being governed rather than for the good of those who govern (as in dictatorships) or for the good of the wealthy (as in the case of many western democracies today).

You may say that Singapore is a very rare and special case and could not exist except for the small size of the place and the remarkable circumstances of its birth. And I would have to agree; it is remarkable and it is probably not a pattern we will see often; no matter how admirable it might be.

The way they were and how they changed

Racial tension was a part of the early Singapore. Today, Singapore is 75% Chinese and most of the rest is made of up Malays and Indians with an odd smattering of Europeans. But the melding is working.

The government helps to make it work in an intelligent manner. For example, each apartment building, as the units are sold, is supervised to make sure that the racial mixes of the apartments agrees with the racial mix of the country. School programs actively structure things so that everyone get a good look inside the cultures of the other groups in Singapore as they grow up. The government works actively to diffuse enclaves of different racial groups from forming in the different neighborhoods; with the exception of Chinatown and Little India which are grandfathered in.

Anyway, all of this was background for me as we wandered around and looked at the place. Reading the newspapers and absorbing the evening news fascinated me daily as I looked to see if the place seemed like it was really working as well as it claimed to. And for me, it looked like it really was.

Chinatown and Little India

Chinatown Delux

The day after the big bus tour, we went to Chinatown and then onto Little India; both of which are special enclaves within the city which survive from pre-independence days. We walked and looked and shopped. Colette bought a pair of pants she loved for $6 Singaporean; which was a serious steal.

In Chinatown, we saw a very beautiful Buddhist Temple.

In the Buddhist Temple

A man and his beer

At one point in Chinatown, we sat in a side street cafe outside (but shaded) for a long time while I imbibed a 660 ml Tiger beer and we people watched. Yum.

Then, in Little India, we found a lot of fun and amazing things; including an upstairs clothing sales area that was absolutely chock-a-block with tens of thousands of Indian dresses of every description. If you couldn’t find it here, you were not going to find it.

Colette does the shop

Then we sat down in a large courtyard surrounded by little food stalls selling all sorts of ethnic dishes and I had a coke and we just watched it all flow by; contentedly.

Life for the average man and women

On the last full day, we did a favorite things of ours.; we got on the Metro and bought a ticket to the end-of-the-line and went all 30 miles or so to the western end of the island – just to see what was there.

And along the way, it was something to see. Mile after mile of high rise apartment buildings of all sorts of vintages all the way back the the first one built in the late 60’s. These were intermixed with industrial areas and off in the far distances, I could see huge cranes and I recalled reading that Singapore is a major ship building and repairing port as well.

Metro Train Station

Periodically, at the train stations, there would be huge shopping centers. Really, these were small cites in their own right.

And, beside the larger train stations would be huge parking lots exclusively for busses by the dozens which would carry people to the north and south of the Metro line to and from their apartment homes or their work.

Along the tracks, in addition to the high rises and industrial areas, were nice parklands as well. Singapore has dedicated 5% of itself to parklands. But of native bush there wasn’t much to be seen. Truly, the Singaporeans have nearly filled their island and the only way for them is up.

We rode to the far end of the East/West line to a place called, “Joo Koon”. And it really was the end of the line.

There was a fair amount of industrial stuff scattered around but not much in the way of high rise housing there. We came on a Sunday so it was pretty quiet. A few locals stared at us and we couldn’t find a any place to get a cup of coffee or to wander and shop a bit so we got back on the train and headed east again after 15 minutes.

I expect that the high rise apartments will build their way out to Joo Koon soon. If we come back in a few years, I’ll have another look and see what’s happened.

Heading east, we got off at Jurong East. This is a junction where we could transfer to a train that went north and then east again and looped across the top of the island before finally finding its way back into the denser eastern areas.

Switching trains would show us entire areas of the island that we hadn’t seen before. But before we did the transfer, we got off at Jurong East and walked over to one of the ubiquitous, massive shopping centers.

This area was definitely off the beaten tourist track; which would mostly run up and down the shops on Orchard Road and through Chinatown and Little India in the dense easter sections. Here, we were seeing where the real Singaporeans lived and shopped; away from the tourists.

Starbucks in Jurong East

The truth was, it wasn’t much different. We found a Starbucks in the shopping center and had a coffee and a snack.

Around us were kids talking and studying their laptops and their assignments; much as you might find anywhere in the world. A European couple sat a few tables down from us absorbed in their conversation and not looking out of place at all. A boy and a girl were sitting and talking quietly near us and I thought they were in a new relationship by the way they looked at each other. No one was rowdy, no one was rude, and no one paid us the slightest attention. And the coffee was excellent.

We got back on the train and began the ride north. Along the way, we passed stations with catchy names like “Bukit Batok”, “Bukit Gombak”, “Choa Chu Kang” and “Yew Tee”.

It was a long and slow trip and the train was quite crowded at times. Outside, the scenery was always changing but, yet, always the same. High rises, parklands, industrial areas, and shopping centers. Only at one point on the northern journey did I see a bit of what might remain of the original rain forests that once filled the island. I read on-line that of the entire island, only 100 hectares of land remains in use for farming.

After awhile, the train’s rocking and the crowded spaces got to Colette and she felt a bit queasy so we got off and sat on a bench in a station, “Khatib”, I think. She felt better in 10 minutes or so and we got back onto the next train after that and completed the circuit back to our home station at Novena which is about a 15 minute walk from our hotel.

View from our room

Out hotel was nice and clean; though the room was a bit small. I liked it though because I could look directly out our window on the 9th floor and see a huge number of apartments in the 25 story apartment building just across from us. It was one of the more recently built buildings and I thought it compared favorably with the nice high rises we’d seen in Vancouver back in June.

View from our hotel’s 9th floor

The next day, we played a bit and then, in the afternoon, we caught an overnight flight direct from Singapore to Christchurch which took 9 hours.

Singapore Airlines

Singapore had one last lesson to teach me; even as we were leaving. We flew out on Singapore Airlines and the service was very impressive and we were just flying in coach.

Most of the world’s airlines are caught in the “maximize profits and minimize costs” cycle which is an essential thing to do if, as a corporation, your bottom line is focused on maximizing the returns on investment for your shareholders.

Buying coach fare these days on most airlines is like riding in a third-world cattle car. If you get a nod and a small bag of peanuts, you should count yourself lucky.

It wasn’t like that on Singapore Airlines.

Singapore Airlines Menu

I realized it was going to be different when they came around with the menus. I was so impressed with getting a menu, I kept mine. First, they came around before we ate with hot cloths to clean your hands or to wipe your face. Then, we had a glass of wine before the meal was served. Then they served a nice meal which we chose from the menu. Later, during the night, as most of us slept or watched movies, they came around three times with apple juice to keep us hydrated and with snacks. In the morning, it was excellence again as they came around with another hot cloth before we ate breakfast.

I spent sometime on the flight wondering why, in a world in which all sorts of businesses seem to deliver less and less service for more and more money, why should Singapore Airlines be different. I think it may be a lack of greed.

Virtually all large corporate businesses are focused on maximizing the return on investment for their shareholders. The CEO’s of these companies keep their jobs if they can maximize profits and minimize costs and they are tossed out if they fail. And with huge pay packages and bonuses CEO get, they have a huge motivations to succeed. In truth, most corporations make so much money that the impact of these large pay packages is minuscule in the bigger picture.

But why is Singapore Airlines different? Singapore, the state, owns the majority of the stock of Singapore airlines. The state, through all the wise things it has done, is doing very well financially and it is also doing well with its goals to optimize the quality of life for its citizens.

Singapore, the country, doesn’t need to grind every last penny out of Singapore Airlines. In fact, it can afford the extra it costs to make the brand a quality brand by providing superior services for the money paid. And they know that’s going to be good in the long run for Singapore and all its citizens.

What I like about Singapore

There are no controlling shareholders who have to be appeased. If the airline makes money and runs in the black, then it is a success, it is good enough and it speaks well of the overall enterprise; Singapore. There is no need to squeeze it for more profit out of greed.

That’s a good deal of what I liked about Singapore. They clearly have the notion of Capitalism in hand. But they also get the idea of ‘enough’. More is not better; balance is better.

The people and the government of the place are doing well. It has the world’s 11th larger foreign reserves which is huge. Remember, this is a tiny city-state of only four to five million people.

Every 6th household in Singapore has more than a million dollars U.S. of disposable wealth. This doesn’t include property, businesses or luxury goods.

They are rated at the very top, along with New Zealand and the Scandinavian countries, as the least corrupt in the world.

The World Bank rated Singapore the easiest country in the world to do business in.

So, why, with the people and the government doing so very well, would they need to grind out more profit? They don’t; they understand ‘enough’ and ‘balance’. They are using Capitalism for their purposes and not letting it use them; as seems to be the case in so many other places.

Singapore has a game plan that puts the good of the population first and then harnesses Capitalism to serve that goal.

Well, after that little philosophical burst of enthusiasm on my part that probably gave a few conservative ‘me-me-me’ profit maximizing Capitalists a bit of heart burn, I think I’m going to wrap this long travel saga up.

End of the line

I’m back in Christchurch, New Zealand, now and settling in for awhile. Next year, in August, I will be able to get my New Zealand citizenship and I am looking forward to that.

Truly, folks, I see myself as an Internationalist. I don’t feel aligned with any particular country. I am aligned with what works; with what might make for a better world. I hope some of you will join me in thinking this way.

Cheers, from the end of the current road.

Home again for awhile

– 10Nov2013 – More on Singapore here: ➡

Posted in Personal, Politics - The Right Way | 1 Comment »

The corrosive power of big money

Wednesday, May 22nd, 2013

– Tonight, at the suggestion of a friend, I watched a documentary called, “Park Avenue: Money, Power & the American Dream“. Here’s a link to it on youtube : ➡

– It was a very powerful piece about how American is being taken over by the richest of the rich and everyone else is being left to eat dirt.

– I can’t begin to do the film justice. You should find 30 or 40 minutes and watch it.

– Afterwards, when I wrote my friend back to thank him for the suggestion, I was telling him in my E-Mail that I was surprised that the American Public Broadcasting System (PBS) still had enough independence to broadcast such a thing.

– Well, not long after I penned those words, I came across this story which proves that they were not independent enough and they’ve had their feathers clipped.

– Money talks.

– dennis

– research thanks to John P.

Posted in Capitalism & Corporations, Corporate takeover of Government, Corruption, CrashBlogging, Culture - How not to do it, Financial melt-down, Human Rights, Politics - The Wrong Way, Social Breakdown, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

Rise Up or Die

Tuesday, May 21st, 2013

– It seems to me that perceptions of the ongoing take-over of government by multinational corporations and the very wealthy is gaining traction in the Blog-o-sphere and in the internet’s left side musings.

– dennis

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

By Chris Hedges

Joe Sacco and I spent two years reporting from the poorest pockets of the United States for our book “Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt.” We went into our nation’s impoverished “sacrifice zones”—the first areas forced to kneel before the dictates of the marketplace—to show what happens when unfettered corporate capitalism and ceaseless economic expansion no longer have external impediments. We wanted to illustrate what unrestrained corporate exploitation does to families, communities and the natural world. We wanted to challenge the reigning ideology of globalization and laissez-faire capitalism to illustrate what life becomes when human beings and the ecosystem are ruthlessly turned into commodities to exploit until exhaustion or collapse. And we wanted to expose as impotent the formal liberal and governmental institutions that once made reform possible, institutions no longer equipped with enough authority to check the assault of corporate power.

What has taken place in these sacrifice zones—in postindustrial cities such as Camden, N.J., and Detroit, in coalfields of southern West Virginia where mining companies blast off mountaintops, in Indian reservations where the demented project of limitless economic expansion and exploitation worked some of its earliest evil, and in produce fields where laborers often endure conditions that replicate slavery—is now happening to much of the rest of the country. These sacrifice zones succumbed first. You and I are next.

Corporations write our legislation. They control our systems of information. They manage the political theater of electoral politics and impose our educational curriculum. They have turned the judiciary into one of their wholly owned subsidiaries. They have decimated labor unions and other independent mass organizations, as well as having bought off the Democratic Party, which once defended the rights of workers. With the evisceration of piecemeal and incremental reform—the primary role of liberal, democratic institutions—we are left defenseless against corporate power.

– More… ➡

TransPacific Partnership Will Undermine Democracy, Empower Transnational Corporations

Tuesday, May 21st, 2013

– I’ve written and displayed articles on this issue before.

– dennis

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Our country’s democratic values could be under threat if President Obama fast tracks the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

On critical issues, the massive Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) being negotiated in secret by the Obama administration willundermine democracy in the United States and around the world and further empower transnational corporations. It will circumvent protections for health care, wages, labor rights, consumers’ rights and the environment, and decrease regulation of big finance and risky investment practices.

The only way this treaty, which will be very unpopular with the American people once they are aware of it, can be approved is if the Obama administration avoids the democratic process by using an authority known as “Fast Track,” which limits the constitutional checks and balances of Congress.

If the TPP is approved, the sovereignty of the United States and other member nations will be dissipated by trade tribunals that favor corporate power and force national laws to be subservient to corporate interests.

Circumventing the Checks and Balances of US Democracy

President Nixon first developed the idea of “Fast Track” in 1973 as a way to secure Congressional approval of trade agreements, and it has been a key to passing many unpopular agreements such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) and NAFTA. As people have caught on to the offshoring of jobs and other detrimental consequences of these agreements, civil society now understands how important it is to not allow a president to circumvent the democratic role of Congress. Fast Track expired in 2007, so President Obama must have it re-instated in order to pass the TPP. His administration is moving to have Fast Track approved and hopes it will happen by this summer.

Under Fast Track, the president was allowed to negotiate and sign trade agreements with whatever countries the executive branch selected – all before Congress voted on the agreement. Fast Track meant that the Congressional committee processes were circumvented and the executive branch was empowered to write lengthy implementing legislation for each trade pact without Congress. These executive-only authored bills required US law to conform to the trade agreement. For example,Glass-Steagall had to be repealed under President Clinton to conform to the WTO. And, Fast Track empowered the president to submit the executive-branch written bill for a mandatory vote within a set number of days, with all amendments forbidden, normal Senate rules waived, and debate limited in both chambers of Congress. Fast Track clearly undermined democracy.

Indeed, Fast Track turned the US Constitution on its head. Under Article I Section 8, Congress has exclusive authority “to regulate commerce with foreign nations” and to “lay and collect taxes [and] duties.” Under the Constitution, the president is empowered to negotiate treaties, but Congress must vote to approve them. Thus, Fast Track took constitutional power from Congress and prevented the checks and balances needed to prevent an imperial presidency.

For most of the history of the United States, treaties and trade agreements went through the normal congressional process described in the Constitution. Fast Track is a relatively new concept that coincides with an era of increasing presidential power, which includes the power to declare war and to murder US citizens without warning or judicial oversight. If Congress had reviewed agreements such as the WTO and NAFTA beforehand and civil society had been able to participate in a democratic process, would the United States have made the mistake of passing these laws that have so injured our economy and others?

Fast Track is very unpopular, so now President Obama and others who advocate for it do not use the term. Instead they call it by the euphemism “Trade Promotion Authority.” But changing the name does not change what it is – a method of ceding the constitutional power of Congress and undermining the checks and balances built into the constitutional framework.

Congress needs to consider what agreements such as the TPP will do to jobs, trade balances and the environment. Since Nixon, Fast Track has been used by presidents to go way beyond trade and tariffs. These agreements have been used to change US law by establishing “rules related to domestic environmental, health, safety and essential-service regulations, including deregulation of financial services; establishment of immigration policies; creation of limits on local development and land-use policy; extension of domestic patent terms; establishment of new rights and greater protections for foreign investors operating within the United States that extend beyond US law; and even limitation of how domestic procurement dollars may be spent.” Thus, not only has the constitutional power of Congress to regulate commerce with foreign nations been undermined, but a whole host of domestic laws have been rewritten to satisfy international trade.

– More… ➡

Tags:TPP
Posted in Capitalism & Corporations, Corporate takeover of Government, Corruption, CrashBlogging, Financial melt-down, Human Rights, Politics - The Wrong Way, Social Breakdown, The Perfect Storm, Wealth Disparity | No Comments »

‘Monsanto Protection Act’ slips silently through US Congress

Saturday, May 18th, 2013

The future approaching

– This was perhaps for me the last straw with President Obama. That he signed this bill is unforgivable and deeply inconsistent with the values I’d hoped he represented.

– Monsanto represents what is so deeply disquieting about the gathering ascendancy of corporate power and money over governmental processes which are suppose to act in and for the good of a nation’s people.

– dennis

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

The US House of Representatives quietly passed a last-minute addition to the Agricultural Appropriations Bill for 2013 last week – including a provision protecting genetically modified seeds from litigation in the face of health risks.

The rider, which is officially known as the Farmer Assurance Provision, has been derided by opponents of biotech lobbying as the “Monsanto Protection Act,” as it would strip federal courts of the authority to immediately halt the planting and sale of genetically modified (GMO) seed crop regardless of any consumer health concerns.

The provision, also decried as a “biotech rider,” should have gone through the Agricultural or Judiciary Committees for review. Instead, no hearings were held, and the piece was evidently unknown to most Democrats (who hold the majority in the Senate) prior to its approval as part of HR 993, the short-term funding bill that was approved to avoid a federal government shutdown.

Senator John Tester (D-MT) proved to be the lone dissenter to the so-called Monsanto Protection Act, though his proposed amendment to strip the rider from the bill was never put to a vote.

As the US legal system functions today, and largely as a result of prior lawsuits, the USDA is required to complete environmental impact statements (EIS) prior to both the planting and sale of GMO crops. The extent and effectiveness to which the USDA exercises this rule is in itself a source of serious dispute.

The reviews have been the focus of heated debate between food safety advocacy groups and the biotech industry in the past. In December of 2009, for example, Food Democracy Now collected signatures during the EIS commenting period in a bid to prevent the approval of Monsanto’s GMO alfalfa, which many feared would contaminate organic feed used by dairy farmers; it was approved regardless.

Previously discovered pathogens in Monsanto’s Roundup Ready corn and soy are suspected of causing infertility in livestock and to impact the health of plants.

So, just how much of a victory is this for biotech companies like Monsanto? Critics are thus far alarmed by the very way in which the provision made it through Congress — the rider was introduced anonymously as the larger bill progressed through the Senate Appropriations Committee. Now, groups like the Center for Food Safety are holding Senator Mikulski (D-MD), chairman of that committee, to task and lobbing accusations of a “backroom deal” with the biotech industry.

– more… ➡

Tags:Monsanto
Posted in Biodiversity Loss, Capitalism & Corporations, Corporate takeover of Government, Corruption, CrashBlogging, Human Rights, Politics - The Wrong Way, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

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Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category

Why Scandinavian women make the rest of the world jealous

Final wrap-up on the major travel we’ve been doing these last four months

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U.S. West Coast

Away to Paris

And on to Singapore

Genesis of Singapore

Democracy – are we smart enough?

The way they were and how they changed

Chinatown and Little India

Life for the average man and women

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What I like about Singapore

End of the line

‘Monsanto Protection Act’ slips silently through US Congress

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