Seven industrial agriculture myths

Phil Loring started writing articles on this theme for me in the Republic, but he hasn't finished the series yet. Now I find myself studying this same topic in my Comparative Farming and Sustainable Food Systems class. The myths are those described in Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture. They include:

1) Industrial agriculture will feed the world.
2) Industrial food is safe, healthy, and nutritious.
3) Industrial food is cheap.
4) Industrial agriculture is efficient.
5) Industrial agriculture offers more food choices to consumers.
6) Industrial agriculture benefits the environment and wildlife.
7) Biotechnology will solve all the problems of industrial agriculture.

The section on these myths in Fatal Harvest has been reprinted on Alternet; I've linked to them above, but here's the short rebuttal:

• Myth number one is a classic case of misdirection: it implies (as typically presented) that somehow the problem of hunger is one of a failure to produce enough food, and the answer is that industrial agriculture is the only means whereby we can produce sufficient food to feed all 7 billion of us (or the anticipated 9 billion by 2050). Actually, people go hungry because of politics, economic shenanigans, poverty, and landlessness. Industrial agriculture actually increases the incidence of hunger by raising the cost of farming (by a huge factor), by forcing farmers off their land, by focusing on high-profit export crops rather than food crops for local consumption. The World Bank and other international financial institutions have promoted policies that have supported industrial export agriculture, for example, and have caused hunger through free-market and globalization policies.

• Myth number two was thoroughly debunked for me by Food, Inc., although the movie didn't go into why this folderol is accepted. Part of the reason, as pointed out by the authors of Fatal Harvest, is that industrial food is very very consistent: it looks clean and wholesome. But looks can be deceiving: from the poisonous chemicals it's grown and treated with (as pointed out by Rachel Carson in Silent Spring) to the concentrated, empty junk of modern processed food (as described in Super Size Me by Morgan Spurlock, and many other authors since), industrial food is really, really bad for you.

• Myth number three is something you can believe only if you ignore the staggering health, environmental, and human costs of industrial agriculture—a technique commonly known as "externalizing costs," and an everyday part of our modern economic thinking. It is, of course, insane to think that actual costs (not those that are mere ticks or sheafs of the paper/exchange medium) can simply be shunted aside and not counted. They show up, somewhere. It is monumentally selfish and dangerous to all of us for a few business owners to shove those costs upon us for their short-term gain. Industrial agriculture is very, very expensive, and that pleasantly consistent-looking food costs us a bundle, even if we don't pay it at the cash register. We pay for it at the doctor's, in the price of gas, in our taxes, in the length (or shortness) of our lives, in the moral cost of cruelty to animals and extinction of species and varieties, in the human cost of culture destruction, etc. Farming the old-fashioned way is a labor-intensive business, and industrial agriculture, being far more mechanized, thrust a whole lot of people out of work.

• Myth number four is partly a product of myth number three: industrial agriculture looks efficient if you don't have to count all the costs (such as destroyed, contaminated, eroded, lost topsoil, for example), and if you don't count the fact that agriculture is supposed to produce food, rather than a commodity. Industrial agriculture is very good at producing huge amounts of commodities on large amounts of land. It isn't very good at producing a lot of food per acre, though. Gardens, and small, diversified farms, are much more productive per acre. Even Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations simply outsource their land and other input needs to external sources. It really isn't a very efficient or good use of resources. (See this PDF report by the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production.)

• Steve Hannaford, in his book Market Domination! the impact of industry consolidation on competition, innovation, and consumer choice, thoroughly explores the phenomenon of pseudo-variety, and exploded myth number five in an article he wrote for the Republic about the problem, using beer as an example. Minor variations in content and major variations in packaging do not food differences make. Another particular problem is the disappearance of heirloom varieties of food plants. Food that can handle the conditions or requirements imposed by the industrial food system (such as long shipping distances, rough handling, uniformity of appearance and flavor, resistance to pesticides, fast growth, precisely timed harvest, etc.) loses the myriad choices that varieties adapted to a wide range of needs and microclimates offer. All those small, comparatively skinny chickens, for example, that lay small but tasty eggs and have small breasts and grow sort of slowly, but have a penchant for insect pests and chickweed. Soft-skinned tomatoes that bloom and ripen throughout the summer and have peculiar shapes and interesting stripes and spots. And so on. This variation is not adapted for industrial conditions, and so isn't sought. As smaller, diversified farms are forced out of business through land acquisition, fewer crops are grown, and more of only a few varieties. This has lead to disaster in the past and very likely will again if we keep to our present myopic course.

• Myth number six is a mix of chutzpah and nonsense. I was boggled when I heard this particular one, but a major part of this claim is that industrial agriculture is supposed to be more productive per acre than other forms of agriculture (such as organic or sustainable agriculture). I looked into this, however (some months ago, actually, before I took the class), and industrial agriculture is NOT more productive. Gardening and diversified farming are, in fact, far more productive of food. According to a new study by Jules Pretty, et al. in Environmental Science and Technology, "crop yields on farms in developing countries that used sustainable agriculture rose nearly 80% in four years." That alone doesn't refute the idea that industrial agriculture is more productive. An excellent and well-sourced article in Grist magazine reveals the truth: industrial agriculture requires massive inputs that degrade agricultural, environmental, and human systems in order to get high productivity for a limited number of foods. Industrial agriculture is comparatively sterile, and uses resources up, rather than building them up. It most decidedly does NOT benefit the environment.

• Myth number seven, that biotechnology will be, essentially, a panacea, really depends on how it is used and if its use doesn't simply cause more problems than it solves. Biotechnology as applied to food is typically used to a) patent varieties, b) create pesticide, herbicide, or disease resistance, c) create greater productivity in crops, or d) create genetic and cosmetic uniformity and/or predictability (in other words, to reduce biodiversity). Sometimes it adds nutritional value (as in "golden rice"). It creates industrial foods, crops or varieties that are adapted to industrial needs. The Biotechnology Industry Organization, or BIO, has a Frequently Asked Questions page on agricultural biotechnology that provides quite the interesting contrast to the concerns I keep finding about biotech crops. While BIO answers concerns in a very even-handed tone, it does not address the basic assumptions about how agriculture should be conducted, and the philosophic underpinnings that differentiate agroecological principles from industrial ones. The site reiterates some of the basic assumptions about what the problems of agriculture are (such as, people are hungry because not enough food is grown, and biotech will help grow more food), rather than looking honestly at the results of our current agricultural system (such as inequitable distribution of food, hunger caused by poverty, farmers unable to grow food because they've been forced off their land by economic or political causes) and asking if they are really what we want or need—and then determining if biotechnology can address those needs. Another site, AgBioWorld, is even less connected to what the issues are, and is a good example of completely missing the point. This site does a lot of answering the more emotion-laden worries, the pig-in-a-poke or straw man arguments, rather than providing answers to genuine, fact-based concerns. Skipping through a plethora of articles and scholarly pieces on biotech, I did find one that talks about the issue of patent law and policy and their effect on how well (or if) biotechnology is used to benefit, say, poor small-scale farmers. It's an 87-page PDF, but talks about the unintended consequences of US patent law and policy on, among other things, researchers "applying biotechnology to the solution of developing-country food security problems."

In a blog post I found on www.brighthub.com, a few more "advantages" were listed:

• longer food shelf-life or availability (also known as the Twinkie phenomenon or the winter tomato)
• less constraint in number of croppings per year (again, not counting the true cost of using up the soil, water, etc.)
• greater availability of human labor (read: more unemployment)
• faster time to market (and what does it mean if the market is halfway around the world as opposed to down the road?)

Sustainable Table has a long list of concerns that deal in large measure with profound
philosophical and quality of life issues that are only partly addressed by the agricultural industry. It seems almost that holders of these two viewpoints are talking past each other rather than to each other.

Cross-posted at SNRAS Science & News.

Earlier posts in this series:

Farming systems and Food, Inc.

Financial finagling in food and sustainability
Food systems, policy, and foodsheds
Food systems and shizen
Sustainable food systems class

Succumbing to the witch's wiles

At long last, The Ester Republic has succumbed to Palin mania and put up a cover with her visage on it. Jamie Smith couldn't stand it anymore and did a simply lovely take on poor martyred Sarah, and wrote up a little rant to go with it on his blog. The man's outdone himself this time. I especially like the tiny American flag pin on her breast; an excellent detail and anachronism (along with the weapons on the pyre, but those are far more obvious).

Corporations have more rights than you

The Supreme Court's decision (PDF) in Citizens United v. the Federal Elections Commission is one of the biggest farces in American history, overturning 150 years of court precedent and rendering moot much of the campaign finance reform law in the United States, at both state and national level. (My February Ester Republic editorial was about this ruling—I strongly recommend reading Justice Stevens' dissenting opinion for some entertaining and commonsense treatment of the matter)

Fortunately, several states are fighting back, and Alaska is one of them. Unfortunately, the bills that would clarify in no uncertain terms that corporations are not to be treated as persons for the purposes of elections have been sat on in committee, and here we are, two days from the end of the session, and they still haven't been released for an up-or-down vote. This is OUTRAGEOUS!

The House bill is stuck in the State Affairs Committee, which is under the aegis of Rep. Bob Lynn. I urge everyone to e-mail and call his office at 465-4958.

Not only that, but a companion bill that makes sure that campaign donations by corporations must be reported, although the Senate bill passed (19-0), is also stuck in committee in the House. From Mudflats:

The State limits on private citizen campaign contributions are the same after the Supreme Court ruling. Those limits include the $500 annual limit on individual donations to candidates and a disclosure requirement. Unless legislative action is taken, corporations will have more rights than the citizens of Alaska.

But why should we be surprised? Large corporations already get massive subsidies and don't even have to pay income tax, even if they make tens of billions of dollars in profit. They're subsidized with our tax dollars, after all. Why should they have to deal with the limitations to their political activiities involving money like the rest of us?

Remember: we're the peons, they are the beneficent aristrocrats. We don't count, so we give up our money and our rights (through our elected representatives), so they can rob us blind. Don't believe it? Exxon not only didn't have to pay taxes for 2009, they got a $156 million tax refund. How much did you pay in taxes this year?

We're screwed

Yep, that's what the headline reads in the New York Post. Well, the edition published by the Yes Men, that is. From the press release:

Early this morning, nearly a million New Yorkers were stunned by the appearance of a "special edition" New York Post blaring headlines that their city could face deadly heat waves, extreme flooding, and other lethal effects of global warming within the next few decades. The most alarming thing about it: the news came from an official City report. [74-page PDF]

Distributed by over 2000 volunteers throughout New York City, the paper has been created by The Yes Men and a coalition of activists as a wake-up call to action on climate change. It appears one day before a UN summit where Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon will push 100 world leaders to make serious commitments to reduce carbon emissions in the lead-up to the Copenhagen climate conference in December. Ban has said that the world has "less than 10 years to halt (the) global rise in greenhouse gas emissions if we are to avoid catastrophic consequences for people and the planet," adding that Copenhagen is a "once-in-a-generation opportunity."

Although the 32-page New York Post is a fake, everything in it is 100% true, with all facts carefully checked by a team of editors and climate change experts.

Climate change is no joke, folks, and it's stunts like these that are attempting to get through the massive cultural denial we have about it. Humor is often effective at reaching people so they can bear to think about a horrible thing—and maybe do something about it.

Alaska, like the city of New York, is actually looking at the effects of climate change, rather than pretending it's not happening. Alaska, of course, is already feeling the effects—the Scenarios Network for Alaska Planning at UAF has produced several reports and projections on climate and how things like hydropower projects, water availability, growing season length, and permafrost will be affected by it.

You read it at the Frontiersman first

I laughed out loud when I read this. Talk about confused people! Here's the Frontiersman interviewing doofuses Adam and Kelly Hullin of Wasilla:

F: How do you respond to the criticism the president has had on race issues or that those who take him to task are racist?

A: I’d say that’s a cop-out. That’s ridiculous. He’s not even black. The fact that he’s black is a lie. He’s only 6 percent black. He’s actually 69 percent Muslim.

K: That’s just a way for them to get us to fight with one another. He’s really only 6 percent black.

Yep, you read that right. Apparently former religious affiliation is a racial attribute.

Hoo, boy.

Updates on Ester nukeage

The public hearing at the Planning Commission on the permit for Reeves' nuclear power plant has been moved to June 16, per Dermot Cole (glad he's keeping an eye on this one).

On the question of being a nuke-free zone

Memory is a tricky thing. In 2003, three resolutions were introduced to the Ester Community Association at the spring meeting. They were published in the Republic and a poll conducted during the Fourth of July Picnic, where they were overwhelmingly approved by poll participants. However, the actual vote on them did not take place until the fall meeting, at which point two of the three were withdrawn and the one remaining, on making Ester a PATRIOT Act-free zone, was passed.

So when Mike Musick spoke at the GVEA meeting recently (fourth video in the member comments), saying that Reeves' plan to install a modular nuclear power generator might require a bit of discussion with the community association because Ester had declared itself a nuclear-free zone, he was only partly correct. Although the formal resolution was introduced and a public poll conducted, the resolution itself was not passed.

Mark Simpson referred to these resolutions as "hare-brained" in his August 2003 piece in the Republic, "Assemblies and Agendas," but now we are faced with the actual possibility of nuclear power in our neighborhood. Mark's main issue was with what he saw as the politicization of the ECA:

You see, it’s not the anti-PATRIOT Act stance I’m disgusted with—it’s the hijacking of an honorable, useful, apolitical association of people to fulfill the aims of some short-sighted political activists. It puts the ECA on a level with the Berkeley City Council, forever passing wacky pronouncements, rather than the Peace Corps, actively engaged in bettering lives. The ECA could host a forum, a debate, or a “teach-in,” or rent its hall to others to do so, but it best serves its members by remaining above the fray.

I saw the no-nukes resolution then not as a political issue, but as a health and safety issue, and I still do. And now is when having our community on record about it in the form of a resolution would have been a good thing.

The few people I've spoken with out here or conversed with via Facebook about the nuclear power plant aren't taking it seriously. They seem to see it as a quack idea with no real merit. However, two other commentators at the GVEA meeting besides Musick spoke about it, and they seemed to be taking it quite seriously. (The first spoke in favor of it, the second pointed out the hazards of it.) I think it's a mistake not to treat this as a genuine possibility. From what I've read, the Hyperion power plant would be an order of magnitude of improvement over the large-scale types that are causing such problems around Fort Greely [PDF] (not to mention the big headline-grabbers like Chernobyl).

Even if Reeves decides the price tag is too steep, the fact remains: small-scale nuclear power is fast becoming the Next Big Thing, despite the ever-present and apparently intrinsic drawback to this kind of power: mind-bogglingly long-lasting deadliness. It is becoming cheaper, more accessible, and more tempting to communities across the world as a power resource, and Reeves won't be the last Alaskan to think about it as a reasonable option.

Note: Bill Stringer wrote a letter to the editor in yesterday's News-Miner about the waste heat problem a small generator might cause. In the comments, it is quite clear that there are many people who see nuclear power as a feasible option for Alaska. A few useful links in the comments include:

New Commercial Reactor Designs, a list from the Energy Information Administration of the US government;

"Galena Electric Power—A Situational Analysis," the draft final report prepared for the Department of Energy by ISER and dated Dec. 15, 2004;

and a list of civilian nuclear accidents from Wikipedia.

Flamingo Man

The mysterious Flamingo Man was last spotted at this weekend's birthday bash (theme: Pink) for Raz, held in the deep woods off Chena Pump Road. While ordinarily he'd stick out like a fuscia bird in a flock of white, he was relatively tame in comparison to some of the other guests, and so was able to mingle unobtrusively.

All Fools up here in Alaska

Hoo, boy what a hilarious week we've had. Just when I thought Alaska politics couldn't get any more ridiculous, BAM!

• Wayne Anthony Ross gets appointed as attorney general not because he's good at law, but because he's got an agenda! From the Gov's own press release:

As Attorney General, Ross will work with the governor on issues surrounding development of Alaska’s rich natural resources as the state continues its efforts to provide energy security for America and lower energy costs for Alaskans. As Attorney General, Ross also will help the governor protect Alaskans’ right to bear arms, and he will work tirelessly to manage Alaska’s fish and game resources for abundance through science and not politics.

• Recently-Republican Democrat Grussendorf gets chosen (by Sarah), then rejected (by the legislature)
• Mike Doogan makes an idiotic move and unveils a pseudonymous political blogger's real name
• a volcano goes off and Chevron decides to follow Exxon's wise example and leave 6 million gallons of oil in tanks on the side of said volcano--with no response plan ready! More here.
• Three years after the fact, the state sues BP for some oil spills and back royalties.
• Ted gets off scot-free because the prosecution screwed up their big case with a capital S

Sheesh. Can it get any worse?

Hah. Better not bet against it--in this state, it can always get worse...

Nonsustainable industry practice: stupid wanton waste

This extremely pertinent question was posted on Fiery Blazing Handbasket, and picked up by Kodiak Konfidential, but it's just too barbed a point not to repeat once again:

Does anyone else find it odd that the Bering Sea pollock trawlers can catch and discard as bycatch over 100,000 king salmon per year while the small, community-based fishing effort has to shut down? That we haven't even managed to let enough kings by on the Yukon to meet our treaty obligation to the Canadians?

All so Americans can eat cheap fish sticks?

It's real stupidity, and corruption in action, that's what it is. Bycatch waste has got to be the stupidest shortsighted cut-off-your-nose practice in the fishing industry. It costs fisherfolk a lot of effort, time, money, and bad press--but it's the bottom trawlers and big industrial-size factory fishing boats and nets that do the real damage. "Bycatch" is dead dolphins in the tuna harvest (finally got some protections there, after a long, long fight), king salmon in the pollack harvest, dead sea turtles, dead sharks, dead birds, and so on and so on....and it's a HUGE problem. According to Global Chefs magazine, something like 25% of all fisheries catch is wasted.

Bycatch.org has a database of bycatch reduction methods, and NOAA has a whole Fisheries Feature devoted to the issue.

But, as Global Chefs and others point out, consumer action can have quite an effect. And it's the big fleets and megacorps, not the little Yukon River villages, that do the most damage.

Here's an interesting article from March 1999 from the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations on the management issues regarding sustainability, with a good bit of background on the present problems.

Sock it to him!

Courtesy a Republic irregular who shall remain nameless:

Sock & Awe! the new Bush-whacking, TSA-approved internet game: remove your shoe and whup George upside the head! Watch him turn purple! He's a tricky little devil, though, pops up where you least expect it!

This excellent quote from Douglas Adams accompanied the link:

"The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."

It is preceded in the book The Restaurant at the End of the Universe with this note:

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Univers is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another one which states that this has already happened.

I think that we are living in this second, even more bizarre something, the Douglas Adamsian Universe.

Have fun!

Of shoes and chimps

As a fellow journalist, my hat is off in a gesture of deepest respect for that shoe-flinging member of our trade, who knows a chimp standing in for a president when he sees one. Well, a dog is what he actually called him, but the same idea holds. (Dogs deserve more respect--chimps too, really.)

With almost any other leader of the free world, I'd say this action was out of line and that Muntadhar al-Zaidi would have lost his sense of perspective, but Bush deserves a big fat waffle stomp print right upside the head. No question. Al-Zaidi obviously did what any sane and sensible person, even a journalist, would do when faced with such outrageous, surreal, and irresponsible behavior as has been demonstrated by King Georgie. Alas, most journalists don't seem to recognize anymore just how outrageous Mr. Bush has been.

This is old news now, two days after the incident. When we heard about this on the radio, both I and my noble spousal unit guffawed, but it was tale of the joke at the end of the story that really made me belly laugh, about it being required now "as a matter of national security" that all shoes be removed before going over the border (or to press conferences, I suppose, as pointed out over on Fiery Blazing Handbasket). Shades of our airport security, and about as sensible, hey what?

The video of the incident (actually several versions) has been seen better than 10 million times, making this one of the more popular YouTube flicks, and has already been made into online games. The joke has become popular with Latin American leaders, too. Middle Eastern shoemakers are claiming that it was THEIR shoe that almost whacked the US (p)resident.

Despite the delightful cultural sense of humor intrinsic to this good solid insult, al-Zaidi is in jail, and his family fears he has been badly beaten or tortured. Not good. Doesn't matter if he threw flaming torches or gunfire at the people on stage--the appropriate response, once you have the person in custody, is most certainly not to beat them up.

Max Planck and hot housewives

Those physicists had better make sure they know what they're saying before they publish:

A respected research institute wanted Chinese classical texts to adorn its journal, something beautiful and elegant, to illustrate a special report on China. Instead, it got a racy flyer extolling the lusty details of stripping housewives in a brothel.…Editors had hoped to find an elegant Chinese poem to grace the cover of a special issue, focusing on China, of the MaxPlanckForschung journal, but instead of poetry they ran a text effectively proclaiming "Hot Housewives in action!" on the front of the third-quarter edition.

This story was on the Independent. The Max Planck Institute misprint has ruffled not a few Chinese feathers.

Wonder how that brothel is doing with all the free advertising, though?

Alaska Design Forum: François Roche

Hans and I went to the Alaska Design Forum at the Loon last night. This winter's series is XGRN, and the speaker was François Roche of the French design firm R & Sie(n). He was hilarious, in a French mathematician/designer/philosopher sort of way. The lecture was dense with references to DuChamp, Edgar Allen Poe, Spinoza, etc., and the buildings/machines/structures he talked about were very much organic in form, activity, or symbiosis--but not regularly in material or very often in "sustainability"--which he pointed out was irrelevant to what he liked to do. Yet, he had one design for a museum that cleaned the air of pollution, another for a building covered with a heap of hydroponically nurtured greenery, a machine designed to go into a demilitarized zone/mine field and take back large chunks of turf to create another odd building that was designed as a structure to support the unique samples in a growing environment that functioned as a skin/surface/roof.

The playfulness and inventiveness of what he was talking about were great. One of the questions he was asked was about designing sustainable buildings, and he replied that in France all new buildings must have X amount of insulation to reduce their carbon footprint, but that the carbon output of creating that insulation and shipping it to the building site far exceeded the carbon saved through superinsulating. So, he answered cheerily, it wasn't very important to him (or words to that effect).

Cracked me up.

Dang! Begich may make it yet!

According to Alaska Dispatch, Begich is actually in the lead—by a measley three votes, mind you.

Talk about close!

Addendum Check out the ADN story on it, too. Young still seems to have his seat, alas.

Senator Stevens might be able to serve, even in jail

According to Constitutional scholar Sandy Levinson, the Senate may not actually be able to expell Stevens (not legally, anyway), and Stevens thus might be able to serve as our Senator, even from the Gray Bar Hotel:

Let's begin with this question: Could a state require that a candidate for the Senate not be a convicted felon? One might believe that the answer would be "of course," but I take it that the meaning of the Term Limits v. Thornton, 514 U.S. 779 (1995), is that states cannot add to the bare qualifications set out by the Constitution itself, which are limited to "hav[ing] attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Ciizen of the United States, and who shall..., when elected, be an Inhabitant of the State in which he shall be chosen."

His full argument is on Balkinization, and rather interesting. He asks, "If a "sovereign"... state can't add to the list of qualifications, why in the world can Congress?" He also has either a keen satiric wit, or more faith in the electorate than I do:

If the people of Alaska want to be represented by a felon, then why not? To be sure, if he is sentenced to jail, there might be some additional problems, but then the good folks of Alaska might have considered that when casting their vote for Sen. Stevens.

Read the commentary, too: lots of good discussion on the issue.

42 journalists arrested at the RNC

According to Anna Pratt of the Minnesota Independent, at least 42 journalists were bagged by the cops at the Republican National Convention:

Of the 800-plus people who were arrested or detained in conjunction with RNC protests, a good chunk of them — 42, by our count — were members of the news media. Media representatives in town to cover the events, from both big and small presses, were slapped with citations and pending charges ranging in severity, including unlawful assembly, obstructing the legal process, misdemeanor interference with a peace officer and felony to riot plus other riot pretenses.

Among them were the managing editor of Variety, two AP reporters and one AP photographer, several journalism students, and Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, along with a host of other journalists. People are still trying to get their confiscated items back from the police.

More on the St. Paul arrests and detentions

Several people detained or arrested in the protests have been subjected to abuse by the police there. The local courts have been handing down some strange punishments, too. From a September 2nd press release by the Coldsnap Legal Collective:

In an unusual court decision, Ramsey County Judge Paulette K. Flynn today convicted two minors of criminal contempt for refusing to provide their identity. The two minors were then sentenced to 30 days in an adult jail facility. “This decision undermines one of the most fundamental human rights concepts in the justice system, to protect the rights and safety of children,” said Jordan Kushner, Mass Defense Committee Chair of the National Lawyers Guild’s Minnesota chapter, and an attorney for one of the minors. “This shows the willingness of the courts to go to any length, including sacrificing the most important due process rights, to answer to the political pressure to persecute activists.”

Many arrestees are also being denied medical attention. One arrestee with hemophilia and another with asthma are being denied their prescription medication. An arrestee with a broken finger is being refused medical care, as is a person who has been coughing up blood. An anemic woman reported to Coldsnap today that she passed out for 20 to 30 minutes due to iron deficiency and was told that she could not receive iron because it was a prescription medication, and because she refused to identify herself. Iron is in fact an over-the-counter supplement. The same anemic woman reported seeing a Sheriff knock another woman to the ground and drag her out of the room by her hair. “Just because people have been jailed does not mean their health should be put in jeopardy,” said [Rick] Kelley [of Coldsnap Legal Collective]. “This is a matter of compassion and basic human rights.” An unknown number of arrestees are also engaging in a hunger strike to put pressure on the jail to provide needed medical attention for other prisoners.

According to Kirk James Murphy, MD and other sources, medics were targeted by the police during the protests. Reports from the North Star Health Collective and the Portland Street Medics, two groups providing on-scene first aid, describe verbal and physical abuse as well as flagrant disregard for civil rights or legal niceties on the part of the police, who prevented them in several cases from providing medical help to individuals in or around the area of the protests. Firedoglake has more on these horrific abuses, plus more on the torture of others.

Around 800 people total have been arrested before, during, and after the Republican National Convention. Two members of the Minneapolis City Council are calling for an independent investigation into the actions of the police.

American politics just got weirder: Sarah Palin and John McCain

And the "dick vote", as my spouse puts it, is apparently ruling the country these days. Thinking with the gonads is evidently the rule for the Republican party: Sarah Palin has been selected as John McCain's running mate.

Good god, I thought it couldn't get any worse. Apparently this is how the Republicans plan to split the Democratic party: go after the Hillary Clinton supporters. From the Guardian:

The move is a bold play for the potentially millions of disaffected Hillary Clinton supporters who yearn to vote for a woman candidate in the November election and who have remained impervious to Democratic pleas for party unity....

She was sworn in December 2006, making her one of the least experienced people to run for vice-president in recent memory. Alaska is one of the smallest states in the US, with only 670,000 residents.

Before taking becoming governor, Palin served two terms as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, a town of 9,800 people, and was on the city's council before that.

So much for Palin's wanting to stick around and help the state as governor.

Clever of the McCain campaign, though.

And the prosecution SLAM-dunks the Stevens' defense volley!

Ah, yes, the Great Alaskan Sporting Event: watching the Elected Officials vs. the Prosecuting Attorneys. The ADN's Alaska Politics blog has got some great info on the latest legal motions, courtesy Erika Bolstad and David Hulen. (What a time for Libby Casey to be in Washington!) First, Stevens and his lawyers claim the case against him should be dropped, dismissed, tossed out, because, well, this, that, and the other...but not because the charges might be false (of course, he did plead not guilty).

But the prosecution was ready for 'em: a hard fastball of motions and out comes the promise of MORE EVIDENCE! More unreported gifts: a Jeep Cherokee! a secret interest-free loan! an unpaid-for backup generator at the infamous Girdwood residence! this last at Stevens' request!!!

And then there's that job for one of Stevens' sons! with--wait for it--VECO! and as if that wasn't enough--for a grandson, too!

Good god almighty.

But there's more--Stevens' "Non-Legislative Acts" concerning the natural gas pipeline, the Sakhalin oil fields, and the Pakistani pipeline (also a few other things). From the indictment:

It was a part of the scheme that STEVENS, while at the same time concealing his continuing receipt of things of value from ALLEN and VECO from 1999 to 2006, received and accepted solicitations for multiple official actions from ALLEN and other VECO employees, and knowing that STEVENS could and did use his official position and his office on behalf of VECO during that same time period. These solicitations for official action, some of which were made directly to STEVENS, included the following topics: (a) funding requests and other assistance with certain international VECO projects and partnerships, including those in Pakistan and Russia; (b) requests for multiple federal grants and contracts to benefit VECO, its subsidiaries, and its business partners, including grants from the National Science Foundation to a VECO subsidiary; and (c) assistance on both federal and state issues in connection with the effort to construct a natural gas pipeline from Alaska's North Slope Region.

Basically, Stevens' claim is that his actions were legislative and innocent, and protected by what's known as the Speech or Debate Clause, intended to protect those activities that a member of Congress might undertake that are integral to his or her duties. The prosecution is claiming, on the other hand, that while the legislative activities might be protected, the concealment of the benefits he received for certain actions is definitely not, and

evidence will be offered at trial for the purpose of demonstrating Senator Stevens' intent and his motive to conceal the substantial benefits he received from VECO by, among other things, lying on his mandatory, financial disclosure forms.

Did you notice that? They wrote "among other things", implying that there is even more muck to rake.

And that muck is assuredly oily: undertaking, lessee, official actions on an international scale so that a particular company can get rich?

Ah, but the prosecution's not worrying about that sort of thing. It's the dishonesty they're hopped up about.

Boy, howdy, is this going to be an interesting couple of months.