Hikers and GMO’s

I haven’t had a lot of time lately for the blog, I’m working on a big project, but here are a couple of quickies.

Hikers Wander Into Iran

Is anybody else a little suspicious about the story of innocent American hikers accidentally wandering into Iran? I’m an avid hiker and I’ve hoofed it in several exotic places – Borneo, Indonesia, Nepal, for instance – but I can’t imagine going to one of the most dangerous countries in the world just to walk in the mountains. I might go to Iraq just for the thrill of being in a dangerous place, but if I’m looking for scenery that’s about the last place I’d go.

The hikers have been in the news lately because of the release of one of the three and I’ve read lots of articles about them but they never give any background. Was it a day hike, or were they backpacking for several days?

And where have they hiked before? If it was the Congo, Yemen, rebel controlled Columbia then I’d believe their story.

Or was it the Appalachian Trail, where there are trail signs every couple of miles and facilities near the trail at regular intervals? There certainly are no signs in northern Iraq. And if there were they’d be in Arabic or Kurdish. One could not possibly go to a place like that without a local guide or at least really good topographical maps. And if you had accurate maps there’s no way you’d innocently wander into Iranian territory, especially if you were on a day hike.

The US has been funneling money into Iranian insurgent groups so maybe they were there to make contact. The idea that they were there only for the scenery beggars belief.

American Consumers Not Allowed to Know if Their Food Contains GMO’s

This is in the news because genetically modified salmon are about to enter the market. The question is whether it should be labeled as such. According to the FDA, the government agency charged with food safety, it would only confuse people to know what’s in their food, and besides, according to the industry, there’s no scientific difference between natural and genetically modified foods.

It’s easy to understand why FDA, which is basically an industry mouthpiece, doesn’t allow producers to label their food as GMO free: if they did, their sales would plummet. GMO’s, also known as frankenfoods, are allowed in Europe and Japan if they are labeled as such, but since nobody in those countries would knowingly buy GMO’s, American exporters don’t even bother trying.

As for there being no difference, someone should tell that to the Monarch butterflies who were subject to a little GMO experiment about ten years ago. In that study, milkweed, the only thing the butterflies eat, was dusted with modified corn pollen. In a short time half the insects died and the other half had serious stomach problems. The control group which ate milkweed dusted with natural corn pollen, suffered no ill effects whatever.

The New York Times published an article at the time which tried to put a little industrial spin on the matter by saying it really wasn’t a problem for the butterflies since they don’t eat corn. Yes, very true, but people do. Now I realize it’s entirely possible that a substance can be toxic to one species while it’s harmless to another, but still the two - GMO and natural – were shown in that research to be obviously, demonstrably different. That wasn’t the only study to show drastic effects on small animals and insects of eating frankenfood, but powerful as it is, Monsanto, the number one producer, has been very effective in burying results that effect its bottom line. No studies have been done on humans.

There has been a large and not easily explainable spike in cases of asthma and other more serious diseases in America over the last twenty years or so, coinciding with the introduction of GMO’s. Personally, I almost never buy processed food from America since anything produced there that isn’t labeled organic, contains GMO corn or soybean or canola. Fortunately we here in Cambodia always have the choice of buying European or from neighboring countries where GMO’s have not yet been introduced.

On a related note, researchers in North Dakota discovered recently that all the wild canola growing along the roadsides in the state was frankenfood. So much for the ability to contain GMO’s or the ability to grow non-GMO’s anywhere in North Dakota.

Repug Response to Doomsday: Bring it On

Some people in the past have accused me of hoping for Armageddon, like I really want the world to suffer. Admittedly part of me feels like we should just do it, you know, get it over with so we can start fresh. At the rate the world is being trashed, we might even be better off, at least in the long run, if we let the organized world unravel before the entire sphere is poisoned. Only a bad-assed torturer wants to see famine, flood, disease and environmental degradation; I only want the world to wake up.

For years now, I’ve kept thinking it can’t get any worse before the people wise up to challenge the status quo. Now for sure they will demand fairness, equity, intelligence in governance. But then the morass the country is in far surpasses my worst expectations and yet the American people don’t seem to notice but only want to go even more negative, choose the least enlightened path, bring the country back to the glory days of Herbert Hoover. And so it’s not just possible but likely the Repugs will take back the congress. Unbelievable, almost unimaginable, but true.

And what would be top of their agenda? Witch hunts: the search for semen stained dresses and minute personal failings. That’ll show em for totally letting us off the hook for lying about wars and giving us a pass on admitted and egregious crimes against the constitution. Democrats don’t want to bring up the past, they want to just move on and be one big bipartisan happy family. This is like a young doe trying to make nice with a hungry tiger. In fact, cats like to play with their prey before they eat them, so they can have some fun together until lunchtime.

Their second priority is to rein in government spending to tackle the deficit. It’s those entitlements that are the problem. All those lazy Americans depending on government handouts; i.e., Social Security, Medicare, Unemployment, Food Stamps, are going to have to take a hit if the economy is to be righted. According to Alan Simpson, former senator from Wyoming who Obama appointed to the government’s deficit reduction commission, Americans only want to suck off the government’s tits and what they really need is hard lessons in taking care of themselves.

Their other major goal is to continue Bushman’s tax cuts for the wealthy. The fact that tax cuts run counter to deficit reduction doesn’t seem to matter much in Repug theory.

And most amazingly, or maybe not, the people are eating it up. Yeah, bring it on.

One problem the Dumbs have, as a result of their general incompetence and extreme fecklessness, is the enthusiasm gap. The Tea Partiers are fired up about the country being run by a socialistic black man who wasn’t even born in America and is a Muslim besides. They are going to vote.

Professional Leftists - in the immortal words of Robert Gibbs, Obama’s press secretary - on the other hand are going to stay home in droves. What was his big complaint about we, the radical leftist fringe that is never happy with the Obama administration? How about that we’d never be satisfied until we had Canadian-style single-payer health care. The fact that every single poll taken during the health care debate showed large majorities of Americans as a whole – around 60% - and overwhelming majorities of Democrats – around 90% - were in favor of single-payer never seemed to matter or even register… no, universal health care is so far out radical it’s like asking for the moon.

Gibbs’ idiotic outburst wasn’t the first time administration officials had gone out of their way to insult, trample on, stab in the back the people who brought them into office. He thinks the people who elected Obama really wouldn’t be happy until Dennis Kucinich was president. Well, Dennis is certainly one of the very few Dumbs willing to speak truth to power and to actually represent the majority’s wishes, but he never was very electable. No what we really wanted was the Obama we were promised. Instead we got a corporate shill more interested in compromise with the party of NO than actually accomplishing anything of lasting value. One who snatched worthlessness from the jaws of opportunity.

The other major Repug goal is to shut down the government. More power to them, I say, maybe this time they really will be so bad, the people will finally take matters in their own hands and even the Dumbs will have to respond. But I doubt it. If the Dumbs controlled congress by 80% or 90% in place of the 60% they have now, they’d still find excuses to kowtow to the Repugs and ignore the will of the majority of Americans.

No matter how much shit gets thrown in the face of the American people, they still can’t seem to smell it. They still want to elect a government intent on throwing money at the wealthy in spite of the fact that they have a bigger share of American income than any time since 1928. And in spite of the reality that that income disparity is one of the root causes of America’s problems today.

If they can’t smell the shit when it’s thrown in their faces maybe they will when they are buried up to their necks in it. One can only hope. Meanwhile I’m thrilled I don’t have to live there (couldn’t afford to if I wanted on my Social Security) otherwise I’d be ten times as angry and depressed about the US as I am now.

Extreme Weather

Extreme Weather

Last time I was in the states I splurged and picked up a $200 weather station. It measures temperature and humidity for two locations, barometer, wind, rain and UV. I’ve always been fascinated by the weather and it’s been fun to have even though the weather doesn’t change much here in Cambodia. Right now I can pretty much guarantee it’ll be 77 to 80 at night, around 82 for the high if it’s a very rainy day, 86 or 87 if it’s partly rainy and 90 to 92 if the skies are clear. The humidity will be around 80%: pretty boring in all.

We did, however, have an extreme event here in Kampot last February: almost 5 inches – 12 cm – of rain fell in about 2 hours. (I don’t know what the figures are for Kampot but Phnom Penh, which is about 100 miles distant, gets 12 inches – 30cm – in each of September and October, the wettest months.) Even for a tropical place where precipitation typically comes hard and heavy in short bursts, that was exceptional. What was special about it was not so much the event itself, that probably happens once every four or five years, but rather the timing in the middle of dry season. It might not rain once in two or three months during that time.

For comparison, Portland, noted as being a rainy place, gets about 6 inches of rain each in December and January, its wettest months, but only a trace in July. Imagine getting nearly a whole winter month’s rain in 2 hours in July!

The authorities here were puzzled by the ensuing flood, since floods generally come with an overflowing river. Kampot is on an estuary, a tidal river, and sits right at sea level so the right combination of heavy rain coming down from the nearby mountains and high tide coming in from the sea will cause the river to overflow its banks and that happens every couple of years. With a simple rain gauge they would’ve realized that with that much precipitation in such a short time, there’s no drainage system they could ever imagine that could handle that flow without flooding.

Meanwhile, Pakistan is experiencing its worst flooding in living memory. About 20% of the country is under water. That’s about equivalent to all of Cambodia or Wisconsin. Part of the problem in a developing country like Pakistan is that its mountains have been denuded of trees by people seeking firewood so the slopes no longer hold much water. In any case floods still would’ve been severe with the amount of rain coming down.

When you hear of landslides in China, they’re also largely caused by hillsides that have been deforested. When you’re living on the edge of existence and that last tree is your only source of fuel for cooking, you take it down and worry later about tomorrow. Some landslides will happen naturally regardless of the circumstances, but 90% of what you hear about is directly the result of environmental degradation.

Meanwhile, the heat wave in Russia has broken all records and destroyed millions of hectares (1 hc = 2.4 acres) of crops in the process, which has resulted in a near doubling of the world price of wheat. Moscow, which is at the same latitude as Juneau Alaska, has an average high temperature in summer of 72F – 22C. It gets an average of 5 days a year over 86F – 30C. Last year produced not one day over 86. This year it had 34 consecutive days over that temperature with several over 100 – 38C. Russia was one of 17 countries that have broken national high temperature records so far this year.

Russia has been reluctant to get behind the global warming problem, thinking, So what if it warms up a bit in Siberia, what’s the big deal for us? Problem is the 1.5 degree Celsius rise in global temperature since the industrial revolution doesn’t spread evenly. It’ll be around average, maybe a little warmer, for a time while it’s accumulating heat in one special place or another until the excess heat, when it’s released, bears down all at once.

I’ve got lots of ornamental plants in my place in Kampot, one of the reasons I love being here. I generally keep philodendrons in the shade, it just seems more appropriate for them. Every time I’ve taken one that’s been in the shade and put it in direct sun, several of its leaves are burned in an hour or two. Meanwhile, bicycling around town, I came across one that’s doing fine in direct sunlight. I’m always kind of baffled when I look at it.

You take a place like Russia where it’s almost always cool and blast it with unnatural heat that its land is unaccustomed to and it just burns up. Same with the tendency to flood: The air today holds 5% more moisture than in the past. The excess moisture accumulates in the atmosphere until when it does come down, it comes down in buckets.

Meanwhile, new coal-fired power plants are opening up somewhere in the world every day. China, probably the biggest offender, believes it has the right to reach developed status before it’s required to cut back on coal use, which is all very fine in theory, especially since America, the worst offender on the CO2 front, seems to have no will whatever to curb its excessively gluttonous and destructive lifestyle, but if everybody waits for the other guy to act, there’ll be nothing left of the planet to worry about.

China, to its credit, has also been powering ahead on solar and wind and is now the world’s biggest producer and consumer. Meanwhile the US gives far more in subsidies to the fossil fuel industry - the world’s richest, most profitable and powerful corporations - than it does to boost the alternatives. America should be embarking on a $200 billion per year crash program to convert to sustainable energy and if it takes taxing the wealthy and upper middle class to pay for it then all the better. (Geez, am I supposed to sympathize with the plight of people making $100,000 per year so much that I think it’s a great idea to give them a tax break? Should I applaud feeding the well-off while the whole edifice of government seems to be disintegrating? When so many good, solid, hardworking people in America are being kicked out of their houses, downsized out of their jobs and just generally dumped on, should I approve of throwing money at those people who are already living the good life?)

Sorry, I didn’t mean to get you all depressed and distraught over the matter of global warming but I’m a writer, what else am I supposed to do but lay it all out in words? Unfortunately, we all know the improbability, if not impossibility of any real change coming in America’s direction or the world’s for that matter. We are locked into lemming mode, hoping, once we’ve stepped over the edge, we’ll find a magic means for not crashing ourselves to pieces on the rocks below. LOL

Half-Assed is the New Standard

Once again, this time pertaining to financial reform, the Democratic congress has chosen half-assed over real reform. Hype over reality. Kid gloves over strong regulation. Though not directly connected, the recent sweetheart deal with Goldman Sachs is indicative of slap-on-the-wrist regulation. Biggest Fine Ever!, dominated the news. To recap, Goldman gave the task to create a mortgage backed security to a hedge fund manager named Poulson, who picked out the worst mortgages he could find because he planned to bet on the security tanking. Goldman then sold the securities to its clients without disclosing that vital information or the fact that they themselves were also betting against the security. They made a bundle on the backs of their own customers.

I’m not in America, nor have I ever had much connection to the drek the comes out of the mainstream media, but I can still state with some confidence that the sordid details were glossed over. The $550 million fine is but 4% of Goldman’s yearly earnings, which, as it happens, were no less than a gift from the American taxpayer. They moreover, were fined for civil, rather than criminal fraud - which it most decidedly was - and did not even have to admit their guilt. So simple, we give them tens of billions of dollars. They lie and cheat and steal like serial offenders. We bust them for one infraction, for which they use a tiny bit of the money we’ve showered them with to pay a paltry fine. Nothing to it, all a matter of the cost of doing business.

So now we have financial reform legislation touted as the biggest change since the Great Depression which has some potentially good parts but which doesn’t address the greatest problems of all. Yes, there’s a long and desperately needed consumer protection agency but it’s housed in the FED, notorious for being a lax regulator in the pockets of industry, instead of being independent. The effectiveness of the agency will depend in large part on who is chosen to head it. Considering the track record of the Obama administration, I wouldn’t be surprised if a former lobbyist for the banking industry were chosen to head it. The best candidate for the post is Elizabeth Warren, a woman who’s been a strong advocate for the agency, but she is considered ‘controversial’, possibly because she might actually be an effective regulator.

Yes, most derivatives will have to go through exchanges where purchasers will have to show sufficient capital. Hopefully they’ll no longer be able to buy $100 worth of derivatives with $97 of borrowed money. However, not all derivatives will be included in the regulations and the banksters have two full years to play before the rules take force.

The banksters will still be able to use their own capital – the money you have on deposit in your checking account, for instance – to gamble in ‘exotic’ securities, though they will be somewhat restricted in the amount they’ll be able to use for that type of speculation.

The problem is that the two most important, most imperative changes necessary to avoid the next too-big-to-fail meltdown did not make the cut. First, of course, the banks that were too big to fail before are even bigger and there’s nothing in the legislation to break them up. Supposedly the legislation sets up a mechanism so that if they get into trouble they will be wound down and closed but if they are still so large, you can bet your little finger they’ll be bailed out again.

Secondly, the Glass-Steigel act of 1933, which created a clear separation between retail banking and investment – read casino – banking and which was gutted on Bill Clinton’s watch in the deregulation fervor of the time was not reinstated. The biggest banksters can still engage in risky behavior knowing they’ll get bailed out.

And since Obama chose to save the banks but leave the peasantry to fend for themselves, the underlying causes of the meltdown are still operative; foreclosures are at an all time high and property prices are still going down. Under the most optimistic likely scenarios unemployment will stay around 10% for the foreseeable future.

The trillions of dollars thrown at the banks has set back the day of reckoning, but not eliminated it. The people who enabled the meltdown by pushing for deregulation and who in their rose-colored blindness never saw the crisis coming are in charge of Obama’s economic team so how are they going to fix the economy? More of the same stupidity?

One additional imperative if America’s economic ills are to be dealt with is to clamp down on speculation. As I’ve said before (sorry if my repetitions are boring you) what’s desperately needed to make a fairer society and end the tendency towards financial bubbles and their subsequent bursting - with devastating consequences for the greater economy - is to adequately tax financial transactions, capital gains and wealth in general.

There’s been a call lately to place a 0.025 tax on financial transactions. A person buying a million dollars of stock would pay a measly $2500 in taxes, which would bring in about $175 billion per year in revenue. That miniscule tax would be enough to abruptly end computerized trading where super computers owned by the likes of Goldman Sachs buy and sell stocks within thousands of a second. That is an important outcome, but that rate is not enough. Buyers of securities who do so for more than speculation would no more be deterred by a 1% tax than a .025 tax. An investor with a million bucks to plunk down in the market for the long haul is not going to be discouraged from buying stocks because of a $10,000 tax. Of course they’d bitch and moan but tough shit, that’s less than what a person earning $50,000 per year pays in income taxes so hardly worth anyone’s sympathy.

So then, figure about $700 billion in revenue from a 1% tax and half America’s huge deficit is wiped out. As stated previously, the rich have too much money: they don’t need it and it’s not good for the country or the world. However, even the quarter percent tax will be a hard sell in the congress since it’s owned, lock, stock and barrel by the banksters.

No, the big push now is to trim the deficit on the backs of Social Security recipients. We’re easy targets, so they think. Getting America’s fiscal house in order is of utmost importance but the idea that the only way that can be accomplished is on the backs of pensioners and Medicare and social services is ludicrous. Supposedly it’s not a good idea to raise taxes in a recession but that really only applies to taxes on lower income people who need and spend every penny they have. Raising taxes on the wealthy does almost nothing to dampen demand (how many yachts and Rolex watches can one person own?) and has virtually no negative effect on economic growth. The extra money you give a millionaire may be fun and games for him but does nothing to stimulate the economy except to engender asset bubbles.

I’m sorry, I can’t rant anymore on this; besides I’ve said it all before. The system is fucked and nothing in the political pipeline is going to change it for the better. So be it.