Here is more on agricultural toxins. It never fails to amaze me that what seems so obvious: plants mutate and so do the bugs that attack them is not, in fact obvious. The siren call of more profit seems to trump all other considerations. Only citizen pushback is going to stop this trend.
Despite its own admission that it will cause an up to seven-fold increase in chemical pesticide use, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is poised to approve a new type of genetically engineered seed built to resist one of the most toxic weedkillers on the market.
Google Investing Billions to Get Billions. Obviously.
I read “5 Google Projects That Will Pave the Future.” The title confused me. I think the author wanted me to think that Google was paving the way to the future. What I interpreted the title to mean is that Google wants to cover the future with Google’s own digital macadam.
The point of the write up is that Google is doing some big, speculative projects. Bell Labs used to do this, but without the fanfare. But there is a public relations and marketing battle underway among the giant companies that seek to monopolize markets if not the “future.”
The write up mentions Project Loon (the big balloons that will deliver Internet access to folks without the benefit of non balloon methods), Calico (this is the live forever stuff that recently experienced the departure of a nanotech self assembler due to some differing opinions), robots (mobile, smart gizmos that entrances the folks at DARPA), self driving cars (more time to surf the Web and consume ads in a vehicle), and DeepMind (more of the artificial intelligence hoo hah).
Good stuff for those who consumed science fiction, Star Trek, and Star Wars. The only problem is that those billions have to come from someplace. That’s a point overlooked in the Loon plus four article.
In the article, just published by the University of Miami Center for Hemispheric Policy, as part of their “Perspectives on the Americas” series, I review the key promises and proposals associated with Chinese President Xis recent trip to Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela and Cuba, as well as their implications for the strategic position of the U.S. in the region.
This compilation of five accidents is the result of military airplane crashes, dangerous science experiments, pilot error and a simple dropped wrench. The crash of a B-52 bomber over Goldsboro, North Carolina saw the release of an atomic bomb over American soil, as did the Mars Bluff incident involving a nuclear-armed B-47 bomber. Both lost nuclear weapons were recovered from those broken arrow incidents, but the same can't be said for the 1958 accident involving a collision between a B-47 and F-86 fighter jet. That nuclear bomb was lost forever off the coast of Georgia. Other incidents include the plutonium Demon Core experiments that resulted in chain reactions which killed several nuclear scientists at the Los Alamos National Lab, and the Van Buren ICBM accident in which a nuclear warhead was ejected from a massive missile explosion.
Here is some very good news. The Fish and Wildlife Service has announced “uses of neonicotinoid pesticides on wildlife refuges… will stop… along with GMO crops, at farming projects by 2016.”
After facing a series of legal challenges from environmental groups, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service will phase out the use of genetically modified (GMO) crops and controversial neonicotinoid pesticides at farming projects on national wildlife refuges.
National Wildlife Refuge System chief James Kurth has directed the agency to stop using GMO crops and neonicontinoids on refuge farms by January 2016, according to a July 17 memo obtained by activists last week. The Fish and Wildlife Service is the first federal agency to restrict the use of GMOs and neonicotinoids in farming practices.
Hardcover Pre-Order Now for 21 October 2014 Delivery
Phi Beta Iota: Below is Robert Steele's jacket blurb:
Laurence Brahm is one of those unsung heroes who was changing the world for the better, and influencing various governments in most positive ways, long before ecological economics and social enterprise became fashionable turns of phrase. I regard him as the anti-thesis to the predatory capitalism mantras and methods of our time. His proven focus on community development and evolutionary blends of state planning and market incentives is precisely what we need now that everyone understands that Western governments have been corrupted and Western economies destroyed by financial interests devoted to extracting value instead of creating value. This is a practical book, a spiritual book, and one that should be required reading among those intent on creating collaborative economies and social enterprises.
Robert David Steele
CEO, Earth Intelligence Network
Enric Duran of the Catalan Integrated Cooperative has taken the time to comment on Michel Bauwens’ recent article on Open Coops, contrasting Bauwens’ proposals with the practical realities already under way in the CIC’s own forward thinking cooperativist environment.
Bauwens’ summary of these proposals include four key proposals which Duran addresses below. To give some context, the four proposals are:
That coops need to be statutorily (internally) oriented towards the common good
That coops need to have governance models including all stakeholders
That coops need to actively co-produce the creation of immaterial and material commons
That coops need to be organized socially and politically on a global basis, even as they produce locally.
