Re: [Biofuel] Drivers face road charge by satellite in UK

[Kirk McLoren]

The major destroyer of roads in my region is over gross commercial vehicles 
during hot weather.
  Down by the potato plant they put grooves in the road in 6 weeks. Under 
proper loads that road lasts 15 years.
  Need more men with portable scales 
  or strain guages built into 18 wheeler trailers.
   
  Kirk

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  In the late 1980's I read a study by Pollution Probe of Toronto which
calculated that if all costs incured by cars and their drivers were paid
by a fuel tax, gasoline would cost $5 or $6 Canadian per Imperial gallon.
Today it would be double that price. I recall that medical costs of
accidents and the cost of policing (to prevent even worse carnage on the
roads) were major components of the high cost of driving.

As I recall, these calculations did not include the high costs of urban
infrastructure made necessary by sprawl to accomodate cars.

As James Howard Kunstler has pointed out, the car culture and the
settlement patterns it has produced are so expensive to operate in a time
of high-cost oil in declining supply, that their appalling costs will
force a very painful change to a more rational transportation and
settlement pattern. We wouldn't be in this desperate situation if it
hadn't been for the political pressure of automotive welfare bums and the
corporate interests and the politicians who pander to them.

Making drivers pay their way is the first step to economic rationality and
a future that doesn't involve freezing in the dark. If you don't want Big
Brother to know where you are, take the bus or the train. Air travelers
have been dealing with this for years.

Doug Woodard
St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada



> UK - Road tax - Government petition
> From: Loren Brown
>
> Subject: FW: Road tax - Government petition
> This is the biggest move to tax & infringe on
> privacy ever proposed in this Country [UK]!
>
> It was stated on the news this morning (27th
> November 2006) one of the reasons this proposal
> has been suggested was to raise money for
> possible road building and improvements to
> existing roads. It should be noted that all the
> money currently collected by the DVLA for road
> fund licences, only 23% - 24% is actually spent
> on road building and improvements!
>
> The government's proposal to introduce road
> pricing will mean you having to purchase a
> tracking device for your car and paying a monthly
> bill to use it. The tracking device will cost
> about £200 and in a recent study by the BBC the
> lowest monthly bill was £28 for a rural florist
> and £194 for a delivery driver. A non working Mum
> who used the car to take the kids to school paid
> £86 in one month. On top of this massive increase
> in tax, you will be tracked. Somebody will know
> where you are at all times. They will also know
> how fast you have been going, so even if you
> accidentally creep over a speed limit you can
> expect an NIP with your monthly bill. If you care
> about our freedoms and stopping the constant
> bashing of the car driver, please sign the
> petition on No 10's new website, sign up here
> 
> Even if you don't have a car please feel free to forward this e-mail on.



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Re: [Biofuel] FDA announces cloned meat safe to eat

[Keith Addison]

Hi Doug

>In 1948 Henry C. Simons published a book called "Economic Policy for a
>Free Society." Simons was a conservative who made the point that if one
>wanted small government it was necesary to intervene in the market with
>anti-trust legislation to keep individual businesses small enough so that
>no one firm could influence the market. If one left the market to itself
>business would grow to the point where there was a need and a demand for a
>countervailing power of big government.
>
>The right-wing radicals of our time who call themselves conservatives have
>ignored this.

Well after all it might have a negative impact on their campaign 
contributions and so on.

"Free" markets favour those with excess funds. There's probably a 
stage where it's still controllable, but beyond that stage it's not 
controllable because the big businesses have bought the government 
already.

Funny thing, none of the "developed" economies got that way by 
non-intervention and the "free market" creed, nor did any of the East 
Asian NICs, and everywhere that creed has been applied (IMF-style) 
it's proven a disaster.

There seems to be no shortage of viable solutions to this non-viable 
situation we've landed in thanks to our wise and noble leadership. 
Usually people say the problem is a lack of political will, but I 
think that's a much too kind way of describing outright obstruction.

This is an interesting read:
http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/msg34207.html
Re: [biofuel] The Wealth of Nature
5 May 2004

Best

Keith '


>Doug Woodard
>St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada
>
>
>[snip]
>
> > With many of these issues, what all the externalisations end up
> > amounting to is that, free choice or not, nobody is excluded in the
> > end from the manufactured non-decisions of the masses, as Robert has
> > just been lamenting: "We simply can't get away from the problem
> > anymore."
> >
> > So please don't leave such things for the magic of the marketplace to
> > provide solutions, because any such magic has long ago been hijacked.
> > We have to see these things coming in time to stop them if necessary,
> > or at least to enforce due precaution.
> >
> > Best
> >
> > Keith
>
>[snip]


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Re: [Biofuel] Drivers face road charge by satellite in UK

[dwoodard]

In the late 1980's I read a study by Pollution Probe of Toronto which
calculated that if all costs incured by cars and their drivers were paid
by a fuel tax, gasoline would cost $5 or $6 Canadian per Imperial gallon.
Today it would be double that price. I recall that medical costs of
accidents and the cost of policing (to prevent even worse carnage on the
roads) were major components of the high cost of driving.

As I recall, these calculations did not include the high costs of urban
infrastructure made necessary by sprawl to accomodate cars.

As James Howard Kunstler has pointed out, the car culture and the
settlement patterns it has produced are so expensive to operate in a time
of high-cost oil in declining supply, that their appalling costs will
force a very painful change to a more rational transportation and
settlement pattern. We wouldn't be in this desperate situation if  it
hadn't been for the political pressure of automotive welfare bums and the
corporate interests and the politicians who pander to them.

Making drivers pay their way is the first step to economic rationality and
a future that doesn't involve freezing in the dark. If you don't want Big
Brother to know where you are, take the bus or the train. Air travelers
have been dealing with this for years.

Doug Woodard
St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada



>  UK - Road tax - Government petition
> From: Loren Brown
>
> Subject: FW: Road tax - Government petition
> This is the biggest move to tax & infringe on
> privacy ever proposed in this Country [UK]!
>
> It was stated on the news this morning (27th
> November 2006) one of the reasons this proposal
> has been suggested was to raise money for
> possible road building and improvements to
> existing roads. It should be noted that all the
> money currently collected by the DVLA for road
> fund licences, only 23% - 24% is actually spent
> on road building and improvements!
>
> The government's proposal to introduce road
> pricing will mean you having to purchase a
> tracking device for your car and paying a monthly
> bill to use it. The tracking device will cost
> about £200 and in a recent study by the BBC the
> lowest monthly bill was £28 for a rural florist
> and £194 for a delivery driver. A non working Mum
> who used the car to take the kids to school paid
> £86 in one month. On top of this massive increase
> in tax, you will be tracked. Somebody will know
> where you are at all times. They will also know
> how fast you have been going, so even if you
> accidentally creep over a speed limit you can
> expect an NIP with your monthly bill. If you care
> about our freedoms and stopping the constant
> bashing of the car driver, please sign the
> petition on No 10's new website, sign up here
> 
> Even if you don't have a car please feel free to forward this e-mail on.



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Re: [Biofuel] FDA announces cloned meat safe to eat

[dwoodard]

In 1948 Henry C. Simons published a book called "Economic Policy for a
Free Society." Simons was a conservative who made the point that if one
wanted small government it was necesary to intervene in the market with
anti-trust legislation to keep individual businesses small enough so that
no one firm could influence the market. If one left the market to itself
business would grow to the point where there was a need and a demand for a
countervailing power of big government.

The right-wing radicals of our time who call themselves conservatives have
ignored this.

Doug Woodard
St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada


[snip]

> With many of these issues, what all the externalisations end up
> amounting to is that, free choice or not, nobody is excluded in the
> end from the manufactured non-decisions of the masses, as Robert has
> just been lamenting: "We simply can't get away from the problem
> anymore."
>
> So please don't leave such things for the magic of the marketplace to
> provide solutions, because any such magic has long ago been hijacked.
> We have to see these things coming in time to stop them if necessary,
> or at least to enforce due precaution.
>
> Best
>
> Keith

[snip]


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[Biofuel] Drivers face road charge by satellite in UK

[D. Mindock]

 UK - Road tax - Government petition
From: Loren Brown

Subject: FW: Road tax - Government petition
This is the biggest move to tax & infringe on 
privacy ever proposed in this Country [UK]!

It was stated on the news this morning (27th 
November 2006) one of the reasons this proposal 
has been suggested was to raise money for 
possible road building and improvements to 
existing roads. It should be noted that all the 
money currently collected by the DVLA for road 
fund licences, only 23% - 24% is actually spent 
on road building and improvements!

The government's proposal to introduce road 
pricing will mean you having to purchase a 
tracking device for your car and paying a monthly 
bill to use it. The tracking device will cost 
about £200 and in a recent study by the BBC the 
lowest monthly bill was £28 for a rural florist 
and £194 for a delivery driver. A non working Mum 
who used the car to take the kids to school paid 
£86 in one month. On top of this massive increase 
in tax, you will be tracked. Somebody will know 
where you are at all times. They will also know 
how fast you have been going, so even if you 
accidentally creep over a speed limit you can 
expect an NIP with your monthly bill. If you care 
about our freedoms and stopping the constant 
bashing of the car driver, please sign the 
petition on No 10's new website, sign up here 

Even if you don't have a car please feel free to forward this e-mail on.

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Re: [Biofuel] FDA announces cloned meat safe to eat

[Keith Addison]

>I disagree with cloning for food etc
>But I maintain that if people still want to go down the road of the 
>"convenience" of the supermarket/stupidmarket that maybe cloning is 
>the only way to go for keeping up with demand
>If we really are concerned with what we eat we should be producing 
>or supporting producers more on a local scale. Growing a tomato 
>plant does not require a whole lot of skill or effort. If the 
>individual does not take control of how they want their food then it 
>is up to the corporations to supply. And as my Dad told me when i 
>complained that I didn't like what Mum cooked "you'll eat it, and 
>what's more you'll like it"
>If you don't like the idea of cloned products Don't Buy Em
>Leo

Leo, I think you're making a mistake in assuming that there's some 
kind of free choice at work. There isn't, much - yes, it is possible 
to exercise individual choice, but in the face of a massive, 
pervasive and effective barrage of persuasion such as the world has 
never before seen from the extremely well-funded and well-connected 
opinion manufacturing industry, the fragment of the populace actually 
capable of making their own free choice is kept small enough to make 
sure it will never be a popular decision, and the rest get the wrong 
information anyway, no thanks to a supine media.

With many of these issues, what all the externalisations end up 
amounting to is that, free choice or not, nobody is excluded in the 
end from the manufactured non-decisions of the masses, as Robert has 
just been lamenting: "We simply can't get away from the problem 
anymore."

So please don't leave such things for the magic of the marketplace to 
provide solutions, because any such magic has long ago been hijacked. 
We have to see these things coming in time to stop them if necessary, 
or at least to enforce due precaution.

Best

Keith
 

>Keith Addison <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> >From: "Hank Herrera"
> >To: "'Community Food Security Coalition'"
> >Date: Thu, 28 Dec 2006 19:21:45 -0500
> >Subject: [COMFOOD:] FDA announces cloned meat safe to eat
> >
> >Today the Food and Drug Administration issued a press release on
> >cloned meat (http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2006/NEW01541.html).
> >
> >The release covers the following points (copied from the release;
> >the release has more detail):
> >
> >Draft risk assessment
> >
> >The draft risk assessment finds that meat and milk from clones of
> >adult cattle, pigs and goats, and their offspring, are as safe to
> >eat as food from conventionally bred animals. The assessment was
> >peer-reviewed by a group of independent scientific experts in
> >cloning and animal health. They agreed with the methods FDA used to
> >evaluate the data and the conclusions set out in the document.
> >
> >Proposed risk management plan
> >
> >The proposed risk management plan addresses risks to animal health
> >and potential remaining uncertainties associated with feed and food
> >from animal clones and their offspring.
> >
> >Draft guidance for industry
> >
> >The draft guidance for industry addresses the use of food and feed
> >products derived from clones and their offspring. The guidance is
> >directed at clone producers, livestock breeders, and farmers and
> >ranchers purchasing clones. It provides the agency's current
> >thinking on use of clones and their offspring in human food or
> >animal feed.
> >
> >The FDA wants comments
> >
> >FDA is seeking comments from the public on the three documents for
> >the next 90 days. To submit electronic comments on the three
> >documents, visit
> >http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/oc/dockets/comments/commentdocke
> >t.cfm?AGENCY=FDA. Written comments may be sent to: Division of
> >Dockets Management (HFA-305), Food and Drug Administration, 5630
> >Fishers Lane, Rm. 1061, Rockville, MD, 20852. Comments must be
> >received by Apr. 2, 2007 and should include the docket number
> >2003N-0573.
> >
> >For more information, visit http://www.fda.gov/cvm/CloneRiskAssessment.htm.
>
>-
>
>The Consumer Federation of America has released a statement opposing
>the FDA's decision.
>
>On the question of whether FDA should consider the ethical issues
>involved:
>
>"This first decision to advance animal biotechnology raises ethical
>issues beyond the FDA's expertise. Neither the agency nor animal
>scientists are qualified to tell us whether and when it is ethically
>acceptable for humans to alter the essential nature of animals. We
>need a national discussion, including ethicists and religious leaders,
>to consider the wisdom of creating cloned and transgenic animals. The
>President should halt further FDA action on cloning and set in motion
>a process for beginning this broader discussion."
>
>http://www.consumerfed.org/pdfs/dec28pressrelease.pdf
>FDA DISDAINS PUBLIC OPPOSITION;
>PROMOTES ANIMAL CLONING
>STATEMENT OF CONSUMER FEDERATION'S
>CAROL TUCKER FOREMAN
>
>The Food and Drug Administration today announced it intends to a

Re: [Biofuel] FDA announces cloned meat safe to eat

[leo bunyan]

I disagree with cloning for food etc
But I maintain that if people still want to go down the road of the 
"convenience" of the supermarket/stupidmarket that maybe cloning is the only 
way to go for keeping up with demand
If we really are concerned with what we eat we should be producing or 
supporting producers more on a local scale. Growing a tomato plant does not 
require a whole lot of skill or effort. If the individual does not take control 
of how they want their food then it is up to the corporations to supply. And as 
my Dad told me when i complained that I didn't like what Mum cooked "you'll eat 
it, and what's more you'll like it"
If you don't like the idea of cloned products Don't Buy Em
Leo

Keith Addison <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >From: "Hank Herrera" 
>To: "'Community Food Security Coalition'" 
>Date: Thu, 28 Dec 2006 19:21:45 -0500
>Subject: [COMFOOD:] FDA announces cloned meat safe to eat
>
>Today the Food and Drug Administration issued a press release on 
>cloned meat (http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2006/NEW01541.html).
>
>The release covers the following points (copied from the release; 
>the release has more detail):
>
>Draft risk assessment
>
>The draft risk assessment finds that meat and milk from clones of 
>adult cattle, pigs and goats, and their offspring, are as safe to 
>eat as food from conventionally bred animals. The assessment was 
>peer-reviewed by a group of independent scientific experts in 
>cloning and animal health. They agreed with the methods FDA used to 
>evaluate the data and the conclusions set out in the document.
>
>Proposed risk management plan
>
>The proposed risk management plan addresses risks to animal health 
>and potential remaining uncertainties associated with feed and food 
>from animal clones and their offspring.
>
>Draft guidance for industry
>
>The draft guidance for industry addresses the use of food and feed 
>products derived from clones and their offspring. The guidance is 
>directed at clone producers, livestock breeders, and farmers and 
>ranchers purchasing clones. It provides the agency's current 
>thinking on use of clones and their offspring in human food or 
>animal feed.
>
>The FDA wants comments
>
>FDA is seeking comments from the public on the three documents for 
>the next 90 days. To submit electronic comments on the three 
>documents, visit 
>http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/oc/dockets/comments/commentdocke 
>t.cfm?AGENCY=FDA. Written comments may be sent to: Division of 
>Dockets Management (HFA-305), Food and Drug Administration, 5630 
>Fishers Lane, Rm. 1061, Rockville, MD, 20852. Comments must be 
>received by Apr. 2, 2007 and should include the docket number 
>2003N-0573.
>
>For more information, visit http://www.fda.gov/cvm/CloneRiskAssessment.htm.

-

The Consumer Federation of America has released a statement opposing
the FDA's decision.

On the question of whether FDA should consider the ethical issues
involved:

"This first decision to advance animal biotechnology raises ethical
issues beyond the FDA's expertise. Neither the agency nor animal
scientists are qualified to tell us whether and when it is ethically
acceptable for humans to alter the essential nature of animals. We
need a national discussion, including ethicists and religious leaders,
to consider the wisdom of creating cloned and transgenic animals. The
President should halt further FDA action on cloning and set in motion
a process for beginning this broader discussion."

http://www.consumerfed.org/pdfs/dec28pressrelease.pdf
FDA DISDAINS PUBLIC OPPOSITION;
PROMOTES ANIMAL CLONING
STATEMENT OF CONSUMER FEDERATION'S
CAROL TUCKER FOREMAN

The Food and Drug Administration today announced it intends to allow 
cloned milk and meat in the food supply, imposing these products on a 
public that opposes cloning technology and does not want to consume 
cloned foods. The Gallup Research Organization reports that over 60 
percent of Americans think animal cloning is immoral. Other respected 
independent polls report consumers declare they will not knowingly 
eat the products even after FDA approves them. Both FDA and the 
cloning industry are aware that consumers won't knowingly buy cloned 
foods. The FDA therefore has okayed selling the products without 
identifying labels, preventing consumers from choosing not to 
purchase and use cloned foods.

CFA urges consumers who oppose production and sale of milk and meat 
from cloned animals to make their views known. Write to the FDA and 
tell them to reverse this anti-consumer action. Write to your members 
of Congress urging them to put a stop to FDA's efforts to sell cloned 
animals. Tell your supermarket manager that you don't want to eat 
cloned milk and meat and ask them not to sell these products.

The FDA has been criticized in recent years for making political 
decisions about drug safety. The agency and cloners insist that 
today's decision is based solely on science and if cloned foods are 
s

[Biofuel] Vast Ice Shelf Collapses In The Arctic

[Keith Addison]

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article2112609.ece

Vast Ice Shelf Collapses In The Arctic

By Michael McCarthy

30 December 2006
The Independent

A vast ice shelf in the Canadian Arctic has broken up, a further sign 
of the astonishing rate at which polar ice is now melting because of 
global warming.

The Ayles ice shelf, more than 40 square miles in extent - over five 
times the size of central London - has broken clear from the coast of 
Ellesmere Island, about 500 miles south of the North Pole in the 
Canadian Arctic, it emerged yesterday.

The broken shelf has formed an ice island, in what a leading 
scientist described as a "dramatic and disturbing event", citing 
climate change as the cause.

The news caps a dramatic year of discovery about just how quickly the 
polar ice is disappearing.

It comes as America's leading climate scientist, James Hansen, warns 
in today's Independent that the Earth is being turned into "a 
different planet" because of the continuing increase in man-made 
emissions of greenhouse gases.

The break-up of the Ayles shelf occurred 16 months ago, in an area so 
remote it was not at first detected. "This is a dramatic and 
disturbing event," said Professor Warwick Vincent of Laval University 
in Quebec City. "It shows that we are losing remarkable features of 
the Canadian North that have been in place for many thousands of 
years."Ice shelves float on the sea, but are connected to land (as 
opposed to ice sheets, which are wholly land-based). In the past five 
years, several ice shelves along the fringes of the Antarctic 
peninsula have started to become unstable or break up. The most 
spectacular was the 2002 collapse of the Larsen B ice shelf, the size 
of Luxembourg.

Until now, there had not been a similar event among the six major 
shelves remaining in Canada's Arctic, which are packed with ancient 
ice that is more than 3,000 years old.

Professor Vincent, who studies Arctic ecosystems, travelled to the 
newly formed ice island and was amazed at what he saw. "It's like a 
cruise missile has come down and hit the ice shelf," he said. 
"Unusually warm temperatures definitely played a major role. It is 
consistent with climate change." The collapse was picked up by the 
Canadian Ice Service, which notified Luke Copland, head of the new 
global ice laboratory at the University of Ottawa. Using US and 
Canadian satellite images, as well as seismic data - the event 
registered on earthquake monitors more than 150 miles away - 
Professor Copland discovered that the ice shelf collapsed in the 
early afternoon of 13 August 2005. Scientists were surprised at the 
speed of the event, Professor Copland said - it took less than an 
hour.

There have already been several disturbing indications this year that 
the Arctic ice is melting at a much faster rate than expected. In 
September, two Nasa reports showed a great surge in the disappearance 
of the winter sea ice over the past two years, with an area the size 
of Turkey disappearing in 12 months.

© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited


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[Biofuel] The case for Iran

[Keith Addison]

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article16039.htm

The case for Iran

Alarmist assessments of Iran's nuclear program lack a key component: evidence.

By M. Javad Zarif, M. JAVAD ZARIF is the Iranian ambassador to the 
United Nations.

12/30/06 "Los Angeles Times " -- -- WHEN THE U.N. Security Council 
was forced to convene on the Saturday before Christmas to vote on 
Resolution 1737 - against Iran's nuclear program - it was only 
natural to ask what the urgency was.

Iran had not attacked or threatened to use force against any member 
of the United Nations; in fact, Iran has not attacked any country for 
more than two centuries. Iran was not on the verge of building a 
nuclear weapon. To the contrary, as a study released this week by the 
National Academy of Sciences concludes, Iran needs nuclear energy in 
spite of its oil and gas reserves.

At the same time, Iran has categorically rejected the development, 
stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons on both ideological and 
strategic grounds. It has remained committed to the Nuclear 
Nonproliferation Treaty - which it ratified in 1970 - and was even 
prepared to provide guarantees that it would never withdraw from the 
treaty.

All of Iran's nuclear facilities have been inspected by the 
International Atomic Energy Agency. Iran has stated its readiness to 
place them under an even more stringent regime, as it did from 
December 2003 to February 2006, when more than 2,000 person-days of 
scrutiny resulted in repeated statements by the IAEA that there was 
no evidence of a weapons program. As IAEA Director-General Mohamed 
ElBaradei recently said, "A lot of what you see about Iran right now 
is assessment of intentions."

Many such assessments have been produced by the intelligence agencies 
of governments with agendas hostile toward Iran. They are, as a 
result, misleading. For instance, a draft National Intelligence 
Estimate by the CIA in 1992 concluded that Iran could develop a 
nuclear weapon by 2000. The Israelis have been saying for many years 
that Iran will pass the "point of no return" within six months or 
less.

But even these alarmist assessments concede that there is no actual 
evidence that Iran is trying to build a nuclear weapon and that, even 
if it wanted to do so, it would not be capable of developing one 
before 2010 or 2015.

So: no urgency, no imminent threat. The real reason for the 
pre-Christmas meeting was to take advantage of a more favorable 
Security Council composition - before new members arrive on Jan. 1 - 
and impose sanctions on Iran.

The sanctions aim to punish Iran for refusing to suspend its peaceful 
and legal uranium enrichment activities. However, suspension is not a 
solution in itself; it can only provide time to search for one. A 
stopgap suspension was already in place for two years, while Iran 
engaged in negotiations. But over the last three years, the United 
States and its European allies have never proposed any long-term 
solution other than insisting on an indefinite suspension of Iran's 
enrichment activities.

In contrast, my country has proposed real alternatives to ensure that 
its civilian nuclear program will remain exclusively and indefinitely 
peaceful:

* On March 23, 2005, Iran offered a comprehensive and far-reaching 
package to France, Germany and Britain, including national 
legislation to permanently ban developing or using nuclear weapons, 
technical guarantees against proliferation and unprecedented, 
around-the-clock IAEA inspections. It also envisaged relations of 
mutual respect and cooperation in a wide range of economic, political 
and counter-terrorism areas. Despite their initial enthusiasm, the 
Europeans refused to engage in negotiations on that package, 
insisting instead on indefinite suspension, apparently because of 
U.S. objections.

* On July 18, 2005, Iran offered to allow the IAEA "to develop an 
optimized arrangement on numbers, monitoring mechanism and other 
specifics" for an initial, limited operation at the Natanz uranium 
enrichment facility, "which would address our needs and allay [their] 
concerns." The offer was not even considered.

* On Sept. 17, 2005, Iran expressed its readiness to engage in 
serious partnerships with private and public sectors of other 
countries for uranium enrichment in Iran "in order to provide the 
greatest degree of transparency." Again, the offer was rebuffed.

* On March 30, 2006, Iran proposed establishing regional consortia 
for fuel-cycle development with countries inside and outside the 
region, with joint ownership and division of labor based on the 
expertise of the participants. No one cared to respond to this 
proposal.

* During the September and October 2006 talks between Iranian nuclear 
negotiators and the European Union, Iran proposed an international 
consortium, an offer that was initially considered very promising by 
the Europeans but then was rapidly rejected as insufficient. Once 
again, they insisted instead on

[Biofuel] How Much Risk Can We Risk?

[Keith Addison]

How Much Risk Can We Risk?
By Don Hazen
Alternet, December 22 2006 2006http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/45870/

Intervention: Confronting The Real Risks of Genetic Engineering And 
Life On A Biotech Planet, a new book by former NY Times business 
columnist Denise Caruso, aims to get ahead of the curve regarding how 
vulnerable we are making ourselves as a species, hurtling forward at 
breakneck speed with all number of biotech creations and mutations.

Caruso's book is just emerging, and she recently received a strong 
testimonial from Steven Johnson, one of the very smartest of 
interdisciplanary thinkers and technologists, who always seems to 
have his eye on both important tech advances and the ramifications. 
He writes about Caruso's book on his blog: With ... "as crucial an 
issue as, say, genetically modified food, Intervention is wrestling 
with an even more profound question: how we measure and anticipate 
risk with such complex, open-ended technologies. Denise makes it 
clear how "spectacularly nearsighted" we tend to be when evaluating 
radical new advances. And when we're meddling with the primary forces 
of nature -- to quote Ned Beatty's speech from Network -- we can't 
afford to be nearsighted. Fortunately, we have people like Denise 
Caruso to improve our vision."

Look for a full interview with Caruso early in 2007 on AlterNet 
conducted by Manager editor Heather Gehlert. Go to 
hybridvigor.org/intervention to order the book.

(Denise Caruso is a member of the board of the Independent Media 
Institute, the parent organization of AlterNet.)

Don Hazen is the executive editor of AlterNet.
---
---
2.INTERVENTION:
Confronting the Real Risks of Genetic Engineering and Life on a Biotech Planet
By Denise Caruso*
http://www.hybridvigor.org/intervention/

Intervention challenges two of the most sacred tenets of modern 
society, innovation and technology, from the perspective of the 
unique risks they present. Using genetic engineering and emerging 
biotechnologies as its model, it paints a vivid picture of the 
scientific uncertainties that biotech risk evaluations dismiss or 
ignore, and lays bare the power and money conflicts between academia, 
industry and regulators that have sped these risky innovations to the 
market. Intervention champions an alternative method for a more 
democratic assessment of the risks of technology, developed by the 
world's top risk experts, that can eliminate such conflicts. Even 
better, it can help renew the public's trust in science and 
government, and drive research and development toward safer, more 
useful products.

Chapter Synopses

Introduction: (Gene)sis
In their unguarded moments, scientists will admit how little they 
know about the long term effects of genetic engineering and other 
biotechnology products. The larger question is how do we continue to 
benefit from scientific progress, but still protect the public from 
the unanticipated consequences  of biotechnology? The answer is in 
our definition of risk. I question the safety of genetic engineering 
based on my perception of how much we don't know about it. Scientists 
are confident that it's safe, based on their perception of how much 
they do know. Until we can square our definitions, we can't even have 
the conversation.

Chapter 1: What If the Experts are Wrong?
It doesn't take a degree in genetics to see that radically new 
technologies like genetic engineering are bound to have risks in 
equal measure to their benefits; the history of technological 
advancement is rife with examples. Yet time and again, it's been 
scientific shortsightedness, sometimes willful, that has exposed us 
to the serious risks posed by the products of other scientific 
breakthroughs and interventions. What if the experts are wrong about 
the safety of genetic engineering?

Chapter 2: Of Mice, Men and Uncertainty
DNA can explain some of the most distinctive aspects of heredity, 
like why and how the traits of living things are so consistently 
similar from generation to generation. But science is still trying to 
figure out how organisms that share all or much of the same genetic 
makeup - like mice and humans, for example - look and behave so 
differently. If science can't explain this simple fact, it can hardly 
assert with authority that adding to or otherwise rearranging the DNA 
of a living, reproducing organism is risk-free.

Chapter 3: The Effects of Biotech at Scale
Living organisms are heavily influenced by threshold effects, when 
too much of some harmful thing builds up over time and pushes an 
individual, a population or sometimes an entire ecosystem over the 
brink, beyond repair. Because transgenic organisms are officially 
"safe" in the U.S., at least, none are tracked or monitored in the 
field. But what if some harm is building up that we’Äôre not 
tracking? Even a brief inventory of the massive scale at which have 
transgenics already been released, and those in development, provides 
some indicatio

[Biofuel] The 2006 You Didn't Hear About

[Keith Addison]

Somewhat US-centric but never mind, it's a global phenomenon. - K



http://alternet.org/story/46015/

The 2006 You Didn't Hear About

By Rebecca Solnit, AlterNet. Posted December 29, 2006.

While many of the big stories in 2006 were bad news, there were 
hundreds of activist successes in 2006 that permanently changed the 
world.

The big news is usually the bad news, and this year the biggest 
stories weren't even news -- climate change and the war in Iraq were 
trouble that had begun well before 2006. But dozens of small stories 
set another tone -- the tone of that graffiti in Seattle during the 
shutdown of the World Trade Organization there in 1999: "We are 
winning" -- not the same as "we have won" and can stop; "we are 
winning" is a call to action. Activists won dozens of small and 
not-so-small victories for human rights and the environment in 2006. 
The fabric of the world is woven out of small gestures; the large 
ones mostly just rend it and leave more to mend. And the small 
gestures continue. Here are some of them.

On December 31, 2005, Black Mesa Coal shut down its mine on 
indigenous land in Arizona because that mine fed all its coal -- as 
water-depleting slurry pumped 300 miles across the desert -- to the 
Mojave Power Station that cranked out obscene quantities of 
particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, and all manner of other nasty 
things during the decades of its operation. The mainstream media 
played it as a jobs story; the alternative media mostly missed what 
had a decade earlier been a big environmental cause.

In February indigenous leaders, forest activists and logging 
companies reached a historic deal that protected five million acres 
outright and limited logging on another 10 million acres of the Great 
Bear Wilderness in north-coast British Columbia. That's an area more 
than twice the size of Yellowstone National Park wholly preserved 
with another four or so Yellowstones protected -- and not just set 
aside as national parks are, but put under the joint jurisdiction of 
the First Nations people from the region and of the provincial 
government.

Indigenous peoples won victories all over the world in 2006, perhaps 
beginning with the inauguration of labor leader Evo Morales as 
president of Bolivia on January 22nd, the first indigenous president 
of the largely indigenous nation since the Spanish invasion almost 
five centuries before. He made good on his campaign promises to 
nationalize energy resources and negotiated contracts giving the 
impoverished nation far higher percentages of profits from 
natural-gas extraction. In November, the Achuar people of the 
Peru-Ecuador rainforest blockaded a major oil producer and forced it 
and the Peruvian government to implement environmental reforms.

Similarly, on July 20th, the Nigerian courts ordered Shell 
Corporation to pay $1.5 billion to the Ijaw people of the Niger 
Delta, who had been fighting the oil company for compensation for 
environmental devastation since 2000. In December, in Botswana, the 
San people -- sometimes called the Bushmen -- won the court case over 
their eviction from their homeland. The decision restored their right 
to live, hunt, and travel on their ancestral lands.

While the Navajo still fight an attempt to site a new power plant on 
their reservation, there were other victories against the 
environmental destructiveness of energy production when Congress 
banned all new oil, gas, and mineral drilling leases on the Rocky 
Mountain Front region of Montana, one portion of the west chewed up 
by the Bush-era extraction stampede.

There were domestic victories on other fronts. One major U.S. citizen 
achievement was the October defeat of attempts to privatize and jack 
up usage fees on the Internet, despite $200 million in corporate 
spending on the issue. A new grassroots movement defeated the telecom 
industry's attempt to take over this major new zone of global 
communication for its own profit. A minor but sweet victory for 
independent thinking and bold opposition was Stephen Colbert's April 
dressing down of the Bush Administration, to the president's face, at 
the White House Press Corps dinner. The mainstream media, also 
excoriated by the bold Colbert, ignored the spectacular verbal attack 
until the alternative media made the story impossible to ignore. Such 
trajectories -- major stories investigated, exposed and explained by 
the alternative media until the mainstream can no longer ignore the 
news -- are one of the reasons why net neutrality matters.

Another grassroots groundswell that mattered was the immigrants' 
rights marches of last spring, which were launched with the 
surprising turnout in Los Angeles -- not the easiest city for walking 
and marching -- of more than a million Latinos and others defiant of 
crackdowns against immigrants. Similarly huge and passionate 
demonstrations, many organized by text messaging, Spanish-language 
radio, and other means, swept the nation. T

[Biofuel] Making Carbon Trading a Fair Trade

[Keith Addison]

http://alternet.org/envirohealth/45696/

Making Carbon Trading a Fair Trade

By Kelpie Wilson, TruthOut.org. Posted December 29, 2006.

When industrialized countries use monoculture tree plantations in the 
developing world to offset carbon pollution they are doing more harm 
than good. Fortunately, there is a more sustainable alternative.

A recent issue of New Scientist magazine carried an article with this 
disturbing headline: "Africa Barred From Carbon Trading." Advocates 
for African farmers were claiming that European Union policies on 
carbon credits amounted to a carbon trade embargo on Africa.

Louis Verchon of the World Agroforestry Centre said that if the EU 
would implement a new scheme to credit farmers who capture carbon on 
their land, "millions of dollars in carbon credits could begin 
flowing to the world's rural poor."

The World Agroforestry Centre, in conjunction with researchers from 
Michigan State University, has developed a method using satellite 
imagery and infrared sensing that measures carbon storage in African 
farmland. The Centre has completed a pilot program in western Kenya 
and is ready to encourage poor farmers to plant trees as soon as it 
can qualify for carbon credits under the Kyoto protocol.

But Europe's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is not willing to 
recognize the new method of verifying carbon storage in farmland, 
questioning whether the program will result in additional carbon 
storage and whether the storage will be permanent. The ETS is the 
largest multi-country, multi-sector greenhouse gas emission trading 
scheme in the world.

The issue of carbon storage, or carbon "sinks" as they are known, is 
very controversial in the world of Kyoto agreement implementation. 
Non-governmental organizations that advocate for forests and 
indigenous people have worked hard to exclude the use of forestry 
credits to offset fossil fuel burning, and with good reason.

To date, most forestry offsets have been for big monoculture 
plantations of fast-growing eucalyptus or pine trees, some of them 
genetically modified. Though timber companies and professional 
foresters say otherwise, such plantations are likely to act as net 
carbon emitters over their lifetimes and also cause additional 
environmental and social problems.

Monoculture tree plantations are often established on land recently 
cleared of primary forest. Larry Lohman of the World Rainforest 
Movement reports that in the 1980s, 75 percent of new tree 
plantations in the tropics were planted in places that ten years 
earlier had been natural forests. A plantation will never be able to 
store as much carbon as the original biologically diverse forest.

Monoculture tree plantations are ecologically unstable. Plantations 
are more vulnerable to disease and wildfire, which can release carbon 
instantly back into the atmosphere. When they are harvested, the wood 
may go into long-lasting wood products, or it may be chipped and 
pulped into shorter-lived products like paper. Or it may go into a 
landfill and be released as a devastating methane burp decades later. 
Disturbing the soil for planting and harvesting reduces its capacity 
to store carbon, and tree plantations are thirsty, drinking up scarce 
water resources.

When tree plantations are established on land that indigenous people 
have rights to, the damage is compounded. Larry Lohman writes: "Like 
the enclosure movement of early modern Europe, through which common 
lands were taken away from the rural poor and broken up, privatized 
and traded into the hands of the better-off, the movement for carbon 
'offset' plantations is in essence a movement to extend and normalize 
inequality."

The rural poor pay twice, once by suffering the effects of climate 
change caused by affluent countries, and again by having their land 
taken to offset the guilt of affluent people.

The World Agroforestry Centre program is very different from a 
monoculture plantation. It is about helping rural Africans to 
integrate more trees into their agricultural production systems, with 
many benefits besides storing carbon. The right kinds of trees can 
increase the productivity and resilience of the land. Trees provide 
food, fuel, fertilizer, and medicine. Medicinal trees are the main 
source of medication for 80 percent of Africa's population.

These small African farmers are motivated to maintain the sustainable 
productivity (and carbon storage) of their land in a way that a 
multinational timber company can never be. Climate security is better 
entrusted to the hands of African villagers and people like Wangari 
Mathaai, founder of Kenya's Greenbelt Movement.

Fortunately, there is an increasing recognition of the need to 
preserve indigenous cultures and forests as the key to sustainable 
development.

On the island of Borneo, in Southeast Asia, the indigenous Penan 
tribe continues to blockade logging roads into a critically important 
rainforest, their ancestral forest. The 

[Biofuel] Donald Rumsfeld's Name Tops the List of Accused of War Crimes

[Keith Addison]

http://www.law.com/jsp/dc/PubArticleDC.jsp?id=1166522799501
LegalTimes.com -
In Search of a Criminal: Donald Rumsfeld's Name Tops the List of 
Accused of War Crimes

2006 Year in Review

By Alexia Garamfalvi
Legal Times
December 25, 2006
 

No one thinks that Donald Rumsfeld will end his days in a German 
prison. Or that there is any real chance he will have to face trial 
in Germany over allegations that he authorized policies leading to 
the torture of prisoners at U.S. detention facilities in Iraq and 
Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

But that doesn't mean that a complaint filed in Germany last month 
won't have some ripple effects. The complaint asks a federal 
prosecutor there to begin an investigation, and ultimately a criminal 
prosecution, of the former secretary of defense and other U.S. 
officials for their roles in the abuses.

"Rumsfeld is no longer untouchable," says Wolfgang Kaleck, the German 
lawyer who filed the complaint along with the New York-based Center 
for Constitutional Rights and the International Federation for Human 
Rights. "He is now deeply connected with claims of abuses and 
torture. We have taken the first step to begin the legal discussion 
on his accountability."

The complaint against Rumsfeld, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, 
former CIA director George Tenet, and other senior civilian and 
military officials, was filed in mid-November on behalf of 11 Iraqis 
who had been detained at Abu Ghraib prison and Mohammed al-Qahtani, a 
Saudi detained at Guantánamo. It alleges that the defendants ordered, 
aided, and abetted war crimes and failed to prevent the commission of 
war crimes by their subordinates. In international law, war crimes 
are defined as grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, including 
torture and inhuman treatment.

Rumsfeld has said the abuse that occurred at Abu Ghraib was the work 
of a few low-level soldiers and the prisoners affected were mostly 
not the subject of interrogations, but just "common criminals" who 
were also detained. "It's pretty clear that on the midnight shift, 
for a period of some weeks, there were people there who were behaving 
in a way that was fundamentally inconsistent with the president's 
instructions to treat people humanely [and] my instructions that they 
were to treat people humanely," Rumsfeld said in a Dec. 15 television 
interview.

But the plaintiffs claim that the torture that occurred at detention 
centers in Iraq and Guantánamo were not isolated incidents or the 
product of a few soldiers gone bad, but rather was widespread and 
systemic, having been ordered from the top levels of the military and 
the Defense Department. "The interrogational torture applied by the 
United States was not an accident, not a mistake, not a secret 
action," the complaint states. (Pentagon and Department of Justice 
spokesmen declined to comment for this article.)

Stymied in their call for high-level accountability in the United 
States, the groups thought their best shot was to bring a case in a 
country, like Germany, that has a strong universal-jurisdiction law, 
says Michael Ratner, the CCR's president.

The CCR has been involved in much of the litigation challenging the 
Bush administration's post-Sept. 11 policies on the treatment of 
detainees in the context of the war on terror, including the landmark 
case Rasul v. Bush, which challenged the indefinite detention of 
foreign nationals at Guantánamo.

German law recognizes the principle of universal jurisdiction, 
whereby some crimes, such as torture, war crimes, genocide, and 
crimes against humanity, are considered so heinous they can be 
prosecuted anywhere, regardless of where they took place or the 
residence or nationality of the victims or perpetrators.

But legal experts predict that the Bush administration is sure to 
vigorously oppose the case and that Germany will be reluctant to take 
it. Under Germany's universal-jurisdiction statute, the prosecutor 
has the discretion to decline to take a case.

"It's quite risky for Germany to do this," says Eric Posner, an 
international law professor at the University of Chicago. "The danger 
of backlash is quite real. Congress, even a Democratic Congress, 
could very well retaliate if a serious prosecution went forward."

Moreover, the filing could also strengthen the position of those in 
the government who oppose the International Criminal Court, says Lee 
Feinstein, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a 
former Defense Department and State Department official during the 
Clinton administration.

But human rights lawyers contend that even if the case doesn't result 
in the prosecution of a specific defendant, it could reopen a debate 
in the United States about Rumsfeld's responsibility. They also say 
filing cases abroad under universal-jurisdiction laws may catalyze 
domestic efforts to open investigations and push for accountability.

RISK AND RETALIATION

The Iraqis filing the complaint in Germany say the

[Biofuel] Saddam Hussein: A Dictator Created Then Destroyed By America

[Keith Addison]

Also:
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2114403.ece
He takes his secrets to the grave. Our complicity dies with him
How the West armed Saddam, fed him intelligence on his 'enemies', 
equipped him for atrocities - and then made sure he wouldn't squeal
By Robert Fisk
12/31/06

-

http://alternet.org/waroniraq/46093/

Saddam Hussein: A Dictator Created Then Destroyed By America

By Robert Fisk, The Independent UK. Posted December 30, 2006.

Hussein's execution will be remembered as a case of America 
destroying an Arab leader who no longer obeyed his orders from 
Washington.

Saddam to the gallows. It was an easy equation. Who could be more 
deserving of that last walk to the scaffold -- that crack of the neck 
at the end of a rope -- than the Beast of Baghdad, the Hitler of the 
Tigris, the man who murdered untold hundreds of thousands of innocent 
Iraqis while spraying chemical weapons over his enemies? Our masters 
will tell us in a few hours that it is a "great day" for Iraqis and 
will hope that the Muslim world will forget that his death sentence 
was signed -- by the Iraqi "government", but on behalf of the 
Americans -- on the very eve of the Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the 
Sacrifice, the moment of greatest forgiveness in the Arab world.

But history will record that the Arabs and other Muslims and, indeed, 
many millions in the West, will ask another question this weekend, a 
question that will not be posed in other Western newspapers because 
it is not the narrative laid down for us by our presidents and prime 
ministers -- what about the other guilty men?

No, Tony Blair is not Saddam. We don't gas our enemies. George W Bush 
is not Saddam. He didn't invade Iran or Kuwait. He only invaded Iraq. 
But hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians are dead -- and 
thousands of Western troops are dead -- because Messrs Bush and Blair 
and the Spanish Prime Minister and the Italian Prime Minister and the 
Australian Prime Minister went to war in 2003 on a potage of lies and 
mendacity and, given the weapons we used, with great brutality.

In the aftermath of the international crimes against humanity of 2001 
we have tortured, we have murdered, we have brutalised and killed the 
innocent -- we have even added our shame at Abu Ghraib to Saddam's 
shame at Abu Ghraib -- and yet we are supposed to forget these 
terrible crimes as we applaud the swinging corpse of the dictator we 
created.

Who encouraged Saddam to invade Iran in 1980, which was the greatest 
war crime he has committed for it led to the deaths of a million and 
a half souls? And who sold him the components for the chemical 
weapons with which he drenched Iran and the Kurds? We did. No wonder 
the Americans, who controlled Saddam's weird trial, forbad any 
mention of this, his most obscene atrocity, in the charges against 
him. Could he not have been handed over to the Iranians for 
sentencing for this massive war crime? Of course not. Because that 
would also expose our culpability.

And the mass killings we perpetrated in 2003 with our depleted 
uranium shells and our "bunker buster" bombs and our phosphorous, the 
murderous post-invasion sieges of Fallujah and Najaf, the 
hell-disaster of anarchy we unleashed on the Iraqi population in the 
aftermath of our "victory"-- our "mission accomplished" -- who will 
be found guilty of this? Such expiation as we might expect will come, 
no doubt, in the self-serving memoirs of Blair and Bush, written in 
comfortable and wealthy retirement.

Hours before Saddam's death sentence, his family -- his first wife, 
Sajida, and Saddam's daughter and their other relatives -- had given 
up hope. "Whatever could be done has been done -- we can only wait 
for time to take its course," one of them said last night. But Saddam 
knew, and had already announced his own "martyrdom": he was still the 
president of Iraq and he would die for Iraq. All condemned men face a 
decision: to die with a last, grovelling plea for mercy or to die 
with whatever dignity they can wrap around themselves in their last 
hours on earth. His last trial appearance -- that wan smile that 
spread over the mass-murderer's face -- showed us which path Saddam 
intended to walk to the noose.

I have catalogued his monstrous crimes over the years. I have talked 
to the Kurdish survivors of Halabja and the Shia who rose up against 
the dictator at our request in 1991 and who were betrayed by us -- 
and whose comrades, in their tens of thousands, along with their 
wives, were hanged like thrushes by Saddam's executioners.

I have walked round the execution chamber of Abu Ghraib - only 
months, it later transpired, after we had been using the same prison 
for a few tortures and killings of our own -- and I have watched 
Iraqis pull thousands of their dead relatives from the mass graves of 
Hilla. One of them has a newly-inserted artificial hip and a medical 
identification number on his arm. He had been taken directly from 
hospi

[Biofuel] FDA announces cloned meat safe to eat

[Keith Addison]

>From: "Hank Herrera" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: "'Community Food Security Coalition'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Date: Thu, 28 Dec 2006 19:21:45 -0500
>Subject: [COMFOOD:] FDA announces cloned meat safe to eat
>
>Today the Food and Drug Administration issued a press release on 
>cloned meat (http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2006/NEW01541.html).
>
>The release covers the following points (copied from the release; 
>the release has more detail):
>
>Draft risk assessment
>
>The draft risk assessment finds that meat and milk from clones of 
>adult cattle, pigs and goats, and their offspring, are as safe to 
>eat as food from conventionally bred animals. The assessment was 
>peer-reviewed by a group of independent scientific experts in 
>cloning and animal health. They agreed with the methods FDA used to 
>evaluate the data and the conclusions set out in the document.
>
>Proposed risk management plan
>
>The proposed risk management plan addresses risks to animal health 
>and potential remaining uncertainties associated with feed and food 
>from animal clones and their offspring.
>
>Draft guidance for industry
>
>The draft guidance for industry addresses the use of food and feed 
>products derived from clones and their offspring. The guidance is 
>directed at clone producers, livestock breeders, and farmers and 
>ranchers purchasing clones. It provides the agency's current 
>thinking on use of clones and their offspring in human food or 
>animal feed.
>
>The FDA wants comments
>
>FDA is seeking comments from the public on the three documents for 
>the next 90 days. To submit electronic comments on the three 
>documents, visit 
>http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/oc/dockets/comments/commentdocke 
>t.cfm?AGENCY=FDA. Written comments may be sent to: Division of 
>Dockets Management (HFA-305), Food and Drug Administration, 5630 
>Fishers Lane, Rm. 1061, Rockville, MD, 20852. Comments must be 
>received by Apr. 2, 2007 and should include the docket number 
>2003N-0573.
>
>For more information, visit http://www.fda.gov/cvm/CloneRiskAssessment.htm.

-

The Consumer Federation of America has released a statement opposing
the FDA's decision.

On the question of whether FDA should consider the ethical issues
involved:

"This first decision to advance animal biotechnology raises ethical
issues beyond the FDA's expertise. Neither the agency nor animal
scientists are qualified to tell us whether and when it is ethically
acceptable for humans to alter the essential nature of animals. We
need a national discussion, including ethicists and religious leaders,
to consider the wisdom of creating cloned and transgenic animals. The
President should halt further FDA action on cloning and set in motion
a process for beginning this broader discussion."

http://www.consumerfed.org/pdfs/dec28pressrelease.pdf
FDA DISDAINS PUBLIC OPPOSITION;
PROMOTES ANIMAL CLONING
STATEMENT OF CONSUMER FEDERATION'S
CAROL TUCKER FOREMAN

The Food and Drug Administration today announced it intends to allow 
cloned milk and meat in the food supply, imposing these products on a 
public that opposes cloning technology and does not want to consume 
cloned foods. The Gallup Research Organization reports that over 60 
percent of Americans think animal cloning is immoral. Other respected 
independent polls report consumers declare they will not knowingly 
eat the products even after FDA approves them. Both FDA and the 
cloning industry are aware that consumers won't knowingly buy cloned 
foods. The FDA therefore has okayed selling the products without 
identifying labels, preventing consumers from choosing not to 
purchase and use cloned foods.

CFA urges consumers who oppose production and sale of milk and meat 
from cloned animals to make their views known. Write to the FDA and 
tell them to reverse this anti-consumer action. Write to your members 
of Congress urging them to put a stop to FDA's efforts to sell cloned 
animals. Tell your supermarket manager that you don't want to eat 
cloned milk and meat and ask them not to sell these products.

The FDA has been criticized in recent years for making political 
decisions about drug safety. The agency and cloners insist that 
today's decision is based solely on science and if cloned foods are 
safe they must be accepted. This convenient fiction does not serve 
the public interest.

The decision to take a drug is entirely voluntary and is made because 
an individual believes he or she will benefit and the benefit will 
outweigh any risk involved. Prescription drugs require approval of a 
license physician. The physician and package inserts provide detailed 
information on side effects. While the FDA must insist that food 
companies sell only products that are safe for human consumption 
surely Congress never intended that the FDA insist that consumers eat 
a food just because it is safe. Putting cloned milk and meat on the 
market with no identifying label information eliminates the option to 
avoid the products.