Author: Slingshot Collective

Black Liberation Radio activist is 8 months pregnant!

Mildred Jones, co-founder of Black Liberation Radio (BLR), an unlicensed micropower radio station in Decatur, lL., is currently being held in the Dwight Correctional Facility for Women, a maximum security facility, and risks losing her 3rd child to the State of Illinois if action isn’t taken immediately to free her.

Meanwhile, Napoleon Williams, also of BLR, has been charged with eavesdropping, a felony. He recorded conversations he had with workers in the Dept. of Child and Family Services on the radio about having their children returned to them. Napoleon Williams is out on bail now and has not yet been assigned another court date.

Black Liberation Radio, run out of the house of Napoleon Williams and Mildred Jones, has been on the air since 1990 addressing such issues as poverty, unemployment and police brutality. Decatur.,- a city of 100,000 with four major multinational corporations: Caterpillar, Firestone, Archer Daniels Midland and Staleys is located in Macon County which is Klan country and generally extremely racist. Though 16% of Decatur is African American, BLR is the only radio station where music with black artists and black perspectives can be heard. Napoleon Williams and Mildred Jones have endured a long history of harassment by local and state authorities, including arrests on dubious charges, raids and the removal of their children into foster care.

The latest raid on Napoleon. Mildred’s house took place May 10 when, at the order of the Illinois Attorney General, a SWAT team broke down the front door and took Napoleon and Mildred to jail. Miraculously, the station remains on the air today, but with one founder in prison and the other facing prosecution.

On June 13 Mildred was sent to prison. Mildred is over seven months pregnant and is extremely worried about how the conditions are affecting her unborn child. The nearest hospital is over 20 miles away. There is not even a full-time medical facility on the premises. Rumor has it that the prison has a horrible rate for complications in pregnancy.

She was sentenced to 3 years in prison for a probation violation stemming from a 1995 arrest on a shoplifting charge. Mildred already served time for the original charge. Her original conviction was based on highly questionable circumstances, and key videotape evidence that would have cleared her mysteriously disappeared and therefore could not be presented as evidence.

Mildred and Napoleon’s 2 daughters were taken from them in 1992 and 1993 and are in foster care. The taking of their children by the Department of Child and Family Services seems to be punishment for operating the radio station. They have another young son living somewhere else so as not to be taken into custody as well. The child Mildred is expecting will be taken if born in prison.

Justice has been hard to find in Macon County. Public pressure would be helpful. Activists need to put a spotlight on their situation nationally so Macon County will know that there’s a support system for Napoleon Williams and Mildred Jones and we’re watching.

Flood Governor Jim Edgar and Department of Corrections Transfer Coordinator Diane Jockisch, with letters asking for an independent investigation of Mildred’s and Napoleon’s cases and ask that she AT LEAST be put under house arrest while the case is being investigated. Be sure to mention Mildred’s number, B49044 and that she is in the Dwight women’s prison. Please let Napoleon or Mildred know that you sent a letter by sending them a note or a copy so they will have a sense of what kind of pressure is being exerted. Funds for expenses should be sent to Napoleon. Make checks out to him with a note that its for BLR.

Governor Jim Edgar
207 Statehouse
Springfield, IL 62706.

Diane Jockisch
1301 Concordia Court
Box 19277-Admin. Building
Springfield, IL 62706

Mildred Jones, B49044
P.O. Box 5001
Dwight, IL 60420

Napoleon Williams
629 E. Center St.
Decatur, IL 62526
(217) 423-2737

Check out the BLR homepage: http://burn. ucsd.edu/~blr

Money. You hate it–maybe, you must have it–surely. Its acquisition will claim your best years, dampen your creative initiative and suck the very life out of you. For money most of us trade our time and skill, our muscle or brain, whole decades of existence as wasted as a 7 gallon flush. In the mean time we enrich the people whose very words can terminate our livelihood.

You’ve heard this all before. You know why you hate jobs–if not necessarily work; you’re a cog, a wage-slave, a Ph.D. with more vision than bucks, a class-traitor who got it. Maybe you’re just tired of seeing a third or more of your paycheck extorted every-fucking-time-and-there-isnít-a-damn-thing-you-can-do-about-it. So what, if you don’t want to subsidize the meat and dairy industry, the war machine, the petro-chemical industry, corrupt foreign governments, the corporate elite, the pri$on $system or border patrols. For every bucket you sweat to earn a paycheck one-third goes directly back to the corporations. Oops, I mean the government. The rest eventually makes its way back to the corporate elite that owns the country–heck, the world. Dollars are like homing pigeons and though just as lousy they are not nearly as lovable.

The point of my rant is that almost anything we do goes to benefit the power structure. Once we’ve bought at a chain or from a corporation our money leaves the local economy. It no longer circulates back to us to improve our standards of living, inspire initiative, create a viable mode of exchange. That’s your life blood coursing through someone else’s veins.

For years I’ve been pounding my head, avoiding wage-slave dynamics, living a rewarding and frugal life. All the while thinking, knowing, there has to be a better way, an alternative to the continuous unrelenting grind. Something that will give us empowerment as well as a tangible economic boost. Something that can benefit us both personally and collectively.

Well there is. We now have BREAD (Berkeley Regional Exchange and Development) a local organization that is doing exactly what so many of us have been dreaming about for years. BREAD has printed its own money to be used as a valid mode of exchange between members and with participating local businesses. Their currency is printed in hours and comes in one, half and one-quarter hour denominations. The rate of exchange is an agreed upon $12 per hour minimum wage. The advantages of this are clear. You can trade your hours with many people with different skills. That person will then trade that same bill with another local person and the cycle repeats itself. This means our labor stays here. Bread is not electronically transferable. No, its not backed by the gold standard but neither are the dollars in your wallet, your bank account, your IRA or social security account.

There are a variety of skills offered in the BREAD directory. I counted eighteen categories. The listing offers everything from childcare to computer literacy, auto repair to gardening, tutoring in many areas, carpentry, book repair, accounting skills, etc. I couldn’t possibly list all the headings let alone their contents. The best way to find out more about BREAD is to give them a call, leaving your name and address or mail a request for more information. They’re swamped right now so be patient. You can also just write them stating you would like to join. Membership costs an initial $6-$60 sliding scale. You should include your name and phone number, what skills you can offer, group activities (if any) and what skills you seek. In return you will receive the ever expanding BREAD Directory and 3 BREAD hours. Because you knead it!

Contact BREAD at:

PO Box 3973

Berkeley, CA 94703

(510) 704-5247

(510) 595-4011 (fax).

The opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of BREAD.

When speaking with people about the impending $3.4 billion Cassini rocket launch scheduled for October 6th from Cape Canaveral, FL, often I get the same reaction, Better they send 72 pounds of plutonium into space than keep it here on Earth. No one, however, seems to be so interested in the purported mission of the rocket – an international scientific mission of discovery to Saturn. Welcome the age of interplanetary politics.

Anti-nuclear activists have been mobilized around this issue, and rightly so. If pulverized and inhaled, the plutonium onboard can cause cancer. Cassini’s dangerous isotope is primarily plutonium-238, a close cousin to plutonium-239 used in nuclear weapons. Activists are asking NASA what the rush is, because the European Space Agency claims that, given five years, they could build long life solar cells that would eliminate the need for plutonium. NASA claims this is not possible because of the remoteness of Saturn and its distance from the sun. These solar arrays would use sunlight gathered before Cassini gets too distant from the sun, and would store this electricity for later use in running the probe’s computer and communications systems.

The powerful plutonium is NOT being used to propel the craft into deep space. NASA has planned a risky flyby maneuver for that, where Cassini will slingshot around the earth on August 16, 1999 by gravity-assist thereby gaining an enormous boost into deep space. Cassini is scheduled to reach Jupiter in December, 2000 and ultimately Saturn in July, 2004 – suspiciously close to American Independence Day, this time dominance day where the US is not only the superpower on Earth, but dominates, and thereby owns and controls all of the universe. That is, of course, provided nothing goes wrong during the entire seven year trip.

NASA’s own 1995 Final Environmental Impact Statement for the Cassini Mission states, In the unlikely event that an inadvertent reentry occurred, approximately 5 billion of the estimated 7 to 8 billion world population at the time of the swingbys could receive 99 percent or more of the radiation exposure. From these grim figures, NASA somehow determines that of us 5 billion affected, only 2,480 heath affects would occur in the 50 years following the disaster, and that this would be statistically indistinguishable from normally observed cancer fatalities among the world population.

For them to pontificate and say things like the odds are 1 in a billion is the height of scientific arrogance, said Dr. Michio Kaku, a professor of theoretical physics at the City University of New York. NASA is basing its figures on a single-event failure, but in the real world when accidents happen, many things go wrong in quick succession, Kaku said. In reality, things shake, things get hot, and things break apart all at once.

NASA used the same reasoning to calculate the dangers of the Cassini mission that it used in saying the space shuttle had a 1 and 100,000 chance for solid rocket failure, Kaku said. After the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded, NASA recalculated the risk to 1 in 72.

It is important to remember that this is not the first launch of nuclear material into space. The recent ill-fated Russian Mars Probe that fell into the Andean foothills in December 1996 was also carrying about 9.5 ounces of plutonium-238. The Titan IV rocket that will carry Cassini that exploded in the past as well. In August 1993 a Titan IV exploded over the Pacific Ocean, destroying its payload containing a $1 billion US spy satellite system. Three of the 24 known US space mission involving nuclear power have met with accidents, as well as six out of the 39 Russian missions.

Turning outer space into a nuclear dump is only one of the many reasons to be concerned about the Cassini rocket launch. In an Aviation Week and Space Technology article in August 1996, Gen. J.W. Ashy, commander-in-chief of the unified Space Command said, it’s politically sensitive, but it’s going to happen. Some people don’t want hear this, and it sure isn’t in vogue, but – absolutely – we’re going to fight in space, we’re going to fight from space and we’re going to fight into space when orbital assets become so precious that it’s in our national interest to do so, he said.

Cassini is just one in a whole series of launches planned by NASA to ensure the miniaturization, and US domination of space. Many of us don’t question this as an okay thing to do – we’ve been trained for many years to accept weapons of destruction by video games such as Asteroids and Space Invaders, where winning means killing things, in, from and into space.

The Northern California Stop Cassini Coalition is planning a demonstration on September 28th. For more information contact Elliot at 510/527-4055 or Winston at 707/772-5264. To get find out what is happening at Cape Canaveral as October 6th approaches contact the Florida Coalition for Peace and Justice, P.O. Box 90035, Gainesville, FL 32607. Phone: 352-468-3295.

Slavery is being practiced by the system under color of law. Slavery 400 years ago, slavery today;  it’s the same thing, but with a new name. They’re making millions and millions of dollars enslaving Blacks, poor whites, and others – people who don’t even know they’re being railroaded.

— Ruchell Cinque Magee*

If you were asked to name the longest held political prisoner in the United States, what would your answer be?

Most would probably reply Geronimo ji jaga (Pratt), Sundiata Acoli, or Sekou Odinga,all 3 members of the Black Panther Party or soldiers of the Black Liberation Army who have been encaged for their political beliefs or principled actions for decades. Some would point to Lakota leader, Leonard Peltier, who struggled for the freedom of Native peoples, thereby incurring the enmity of the US Government, who framed him in a 1975 double murder trial. Those answers would be good guesses, for all of these men have spent hellified years in state and federal dungeons, but here’s a man who has spent more.

Ruchell C. Magee arrived in Los Angeles, California in 1963, and wasn’t in town for six months before he and a cousin, Leroy, were arrested on the improbable charges of kidnap and robbery, after a fight with a man over a woman and a $10 bag of marijuana. Magee, in a slam-dunk trial, was swiftly convicted and swifter still sentenced to life.

Magee, politicized in those years, took the name of the African freedom fighter, Cinque, who, with his fellow captives seized control of the slave ship, the Amistad, and tried to sail back to Africa. Like his ancient namesake, Cinque would also fight for his freedom from legalized slavery, and for 7 long years he filed writ after writ, learning what he calls guerrilla law, honing it as a tool for liberation of himself and his fellow captives. But California courts, which could care less about the alleged rights of a young Black man like MaGee, dismissed his petitions willy-nilly.

In August, 1970, MaGee appeared as a witness in the assault trial of James McClain, a man charged with assaulting a guard after San Quentin guards murdered a Black prisoner, Fred Billingsley. McClain, defending himself, presented imprisoned witnesses to expose the racist and repressive nature of prisons. In the midst of MaGee’s testimony, a 17 year old young Black man with a huge Afro hairdo, burst into the courtroom, heavily armed.

Jonathan Jackson shouted Freeze! Tossing weapons to McClain, William Chirstman, and a startled Magee, who given his 7 year hell where no judge knew the meaning of justice, joined the rebellion on the spot. The four rebels took the judge, the DA and three jurors hostage, and headed for a radio station where they were going to air the wretched prison conditions to the world, as well as demand the immediate release of a group of political prisoners, know that The Soledad Brothers (these were John Cluchette, Fleeta Drumgo, and Jonathan’s oldest brother, George). While the men did not hurt any of their hostages, they did not reckon on the state’s ruthlessness.

Before the men could get their van out of the court house parking lot, prison guards and sheriffs opened furious fire on the vehicle, killing Christmas, Jackson, McClain as well as the judge. The DA was permanently paralyzed by gun fire. Miraculously, the jurors emerged relatively unscratched, although Magee, seriously wounded by gunfire, was found unconscious.

Magee, who was the only Black survivor of what has come to be called The August 7th Rebellion, would awaken to learn he was charged with murder, kidnapping and conspiracy, and further, he would have a co-defendant, a University of California Philosophy Professor, and friend of Soledad Brother, George L. Jackson, named Angela Davis, who faced identical charges.

By trial time the cases were severed, with Angela garnering massive support leading to her 1972, acquittal on all charges.

Magee’s trial did not garner such broad support, yet he boldly advanced the position that as his imprisonment was itself illegal, and a form of unjustifiable slavery, he had the inherent right to escape such slavery, an historical echo of the position taken by the original Cinque, and his fellow captives, who took over a Spanish slave ship, killed the crew (except for the pilot) and tried to sail back to Africa. The pilot surreptitiously steered the Amistad to the US coast, and when the vessel was seized by the US, Spain sought their return to slavery in Cuba. Using natural and international law principals, US courts decided they captives had every right to resist slavery and fight for their freedom.

Unfortunately, Magee’s jury didn’t agree, although it did acquit on at least one kidnapping charge. The court dismissed on the murder charge, and Magee has been battling for his freedom every since.

That he is still fighting is a tribute to a truly remarkable man, a man who knows what slavery is, and more importantly, what freedom means.

Cinque’s supporters have organized the Ruchell Magee Defense Fund, PO Box 8306, South Bend, IN 46660-8306 [E-mail mathiel@michzana.org]

FREE CINQUE !!

Column Written 5/27/97

1997 Mumia Abu-Jamal

All Rights Reserved

*from radio interview with Kiilu Nyasha Freedom is a Constant Struggle, KPFA-FM (12 Aug., 1995)

No New Police Station!

Police supporters in Berkeley are trying to jump on the bandwagon of "War on Crime" hysteria and the blitzkrieg expansion of the criminal justice industry to build a new fortress police station. The building will undoubtedly stand as a symbol of the fact that even in Berkeley repression is winning out as the solution to social problems.

Over 60% of the cases currently in the criminal justice system are from the drug war. History has shown us however, that reliance on the criminal justice system to solve social problems such as drug abuse merely perpetuates a cycle of crime and punishment, leaving the social problems unsolved.

With the ongoing economic, racial, and political polarization of American society, some would legislate the economically expendable out of existence, warehousing them in prisons. Instead of spending $18 million on a new police station, we should be building institutions of inclusively, of economic access for all to the goods of society, to solve the social problems and drug problems.

Since so many police services are drug related, if Berkeley moved from criminalization to a harm reduction drug policy, there would be no need for the proposed 66,000 square foot monstrosity. The police force could be downsized from its current size of 321 officers and the extra money spent on a whole array of social and cultural programs. Furthermore, billed as a "Public Safety Building," city planners are attempting to conceal the draconian nature of police by placing them in the same building as the fire department.

And finally, the City will need to divert money from seismic retrofit funds, a misuse of that funding. In the past the people of Berkeley voted for a seismic upgrade of the existing police station, not a new four story repression facility with a weight room, gymnasium and shooting range. This backroom decision by City leaders is a manipulation of the democratic process.

This issue must be opened up to the public for discussion. We need to consider the alternatives to the insane jail-everyone policy that has much of our society currently under its grip. Opposition to this proposed facility could represent a coalition against all kinds of repression.

Coalition for Alternatives
Berkeley, CA
(510) 841-7460

gmsasso@sj.bigger.net

H.H. Cutler, the largest manufacturer of Disney clothing in Haiti, announced on July 17 that it will pull all production out of Haiti. The National Labor Committee of New York claims Cutler will relocate to China, where wages are approximately 13 cents an hour, as opposed to Haiti, where the minimum wage is 28 cents, but where a living wage is at least double that amount. 2300 workers, mainly women, will be left jobless. One woman worker interviewed at a bus stop said If I lose my job, I might die, but I’m half-dead already.

Cutler blames the pullback on slumping sales of Disney children’s clothing, but Disney and Cutler have been targets of a worldwide campaign protesting starvation wages and miserable working conditions. Human rights organizations will be unable to monitor Cutler production in China. Cutler had previously moved most production out of its home base in Grand Rapids, MI, to relocate to Haiti. It thus follows the path of Nike, which moved production from the U.S. to Korea and now to Indonesia, Viet Nam and China.

To protest this textbook example of free trade in action, and to ask Cutler to stay in Haiti and pay a living wage, write to:

Tom Austin, President Michael Eisner, CEO
H.H. Cutler Walt Disney Company
120 Iona Avenue SW 500 South Buena Vista
Grand Rapids, MI 49503 Burbank, CA 91521

In late July 4,000 people attended the Second International Encounter For Humanity and Against Neoliberalism held in Spain. Below we reprint excerps of a report issued from the working groups: Work and the Means of Production and Creating Conditions for a Life with Dignity

I. Introduction

We came together to help make a world of dignity and justice and well-being for all humanity. This should include the dignified, democratic participation of us all, women and men, in producing the material things we need, redistributing the wealth, raising our children, and taking care of each other. But neoliberal capitalism offers us misery and exploitation so that to work is to create the chains of poverty and subservience for most of us and wealth for a few.

II. Work

1. Changing North/South/East Relations

Today, there are similarities and differences in the forms of exploitation between north and south. The similarities are increasing, but there remain old forms of imperialism which are now being renewed by neoliberalism. Neoliberalism stimulates both development and underdevelopment in both north and south, so that we find the north in the south and the south in the north. Additionally, the workers in the east are now being prepared for various forms of exploitation by northern corporations. Workers in the north do not fundamentally benefit from imperialism — it is the ruling class and the transnational corporations, and particularly speculative financial capital, that benefit — but there is a lot of complexity and inequality in relations between the working class in the north and the working class in the south. Workers in every part of the world lose under neoliberalism, but the workers in the south lose more.

2. Many Faces of Work

Capitalists try to reduce all of human life to work and consumption in the market. Capitalist work is thus exploitation, so that the demand for capitalist work is the demand to be exploited. Many ways are used to force us into this exploitation. However, to work as humans is to produce and reproduce our conditions of life and means to relate with each other. The human way to work is not of competing atomistic individuals, but of social individuals working in cooperative, dignified, and democratic arrangements. The question of human work therefore opens the political question of direct democracy from below to determine the production and reproduction of our lives. However, we must all live, and to live today it often requires that we participate in one of the many forms of capitalist work.

Today, neoliberal capital uses every kind of work in its efforts to suck profit out of the lives of people. Much of the work in the world, perhaps that of half the people of the world, is done in ways that are not directly or immediately part of the market. This comprises mostly forms of agricultrual work and life, but also includes the many areas of the informal economy. The rule of money finds ways to exploit this work, make profit from it, and to bring it under market control.

At this most recent phase of world capitalist development, in both north and south slavery increases, as well as many forms of work that are semi-slavery, such as debt bondage, child labor, forced prostitution, prison labor and workfare . In free trade zones and the maquiladora factories, workers labor in near-slavery conditions.

Neoliberalism depends on increased exploitation of the unwaged and more unpaid work from everyone. Unpaid work includes all the work traditionally done by women in the home to raise children, make men ready for work outside the home, nurse the sick, care for the elderly, and reproduce the entire domestic sphere. It includes unpaid forced overtime, time spent looking for work, and labor obligations for landlords and local political bosses. Neoliberalism also blurs the distinction between waged work and semi- slavery by imposing flex-time, on-call labor, self-employment, working at home — all ways in which the whole life is, like in slavery, reduced to work for capital.

III. Struggles and Alternatives: Reducing Work Time and Creating Non-Capitalist Work

Struggles to reduce capitalist work time, to control land and the means of production, and to build alternative ways to produce and reproduce our life can unite diverse people against the inhuman vampire called neoliberal capital. We recognize that to survive we engage in many particular struggles over immediate issues, but when linked these struggles can open the door to wider and deeper struggles.

We need therefore to develop principles with which we can analyze our struggles to see if they put us in a better position to overcome the inhuman way of life we are forced into, whether they reduce hierarchies and create wider spaces of shared democratic participants. Some of these principles include: to reduce the risk of being co-opted by capital; to ensure that our struggles and demands correspond to many sectors, needs and aspirations; and to ensure they embody a principle of human liberation. We must therefore be sure that reductions in work in one place are not at the expense of work in another. We can also develop principles that distinguish between projects imposed from the top or outside by capitalism, and those from the bottom and inside, from the people.

The struggle to reduce capitalist work allows more time to struggle against capital and more time to develop alternative was to produce, live and redistribute domestic chores. We simultaneously demand higher wages and equalization of wages, between men and women, citizens and migrants, north and south, different kinds of workers, and races. The struggle to reduce work time for capital is a struggle not only of the waged workers, but also of the unwaged workers, the millions of farmers and peasants, students, unemployed, elderly, housewives and indigenous of the world. For example, a well in a village could mean the reduction of arduous work by men and women. When we reduce work time, we must ensure the equal distribution of the work that we decide needs to be done. While we reduce work time, me must insist on conditions that ensure dignity and health for the work that remains to be done.

A guaranteed income assuring life with dignity for all residents of nation is also right. We say residents because this right belongs to migrants as well as citizens: we all have rights to inherit the wealth and knowledge that are products of centuries of collective human activity. This right is independent of requirement to work for capital. Income without work can also be gained through various struggles such as occupying houses or land, reappropriations , and refusing to pay for services.

In the south, and in some places of the north, rights to land, water, and other means of agricultural production are essential to life with dignity and the creation of just societies. These rights must not be limited by requirements to produce for the capitalist market.

Creating alternative spaces for production and social life is good in itself because these spaces enable relations that are outside of and beyond the market. They also can put limits to capitalist expansion and support creation of spaces in which struggles can grow and be protected. We can learn through this how to create many visions of ways to organize our lives and production. The satisfaction of needs outside of direct control of the capitalist market enables us to fight capital on a terrain that is more favorable to us. These forms of alternatives can develop out of traditional forms of work, but some traditional forms involve exploitation and also must be abolished. Many forms of third sector work (supposedly depending neither on the market nor the state) are not true alternatives to capitalist work, but instead are a new form of lower-waged capitalist work.

An experimental crop of rapeseed (canola), owned by the US based biotech corporation Monsanto, has been destroyed by local residents in a “Do It Yourself” public protest at a farm near Coventry, England.

The action took place in the interests of public safety on the evening of Wednesday August 6 at Tibs Hall Farm, Kingsbury near Tamworth, Staffs. The genetically altered crop containing mutant DNA was uprooted from its experimental plot by people wearing protective clothing. The plants were then broken before being mixed together with ‘normal’ plants to invalidate the experiment’s results.

In a statement issued this morning, local people said: The mutant DNA in this crop could easily spread to the surrounding area either through cross-pollination or through virus infection. No one can guarantee that this will not happen.

Our natural world is being tampered with for private profit. We are not prepared to see the people and plants of Staffordshire – or anywhere else in the UK – used as guinea pigs in somebody else’s experiment.

Despite Monsanto’s claims that their field trials of genetically engineered crops are entirely risk-free, several studies have shown that the pollen of transgenic rapeseed plants can cross-pollinate with traditional or wild species, spreading the genetic pollution.

The campaign against genetic engineering has also taken to the fields in Germany where testing is carried out. In 1996 at least 12 fields were destroyed by protesters, and action by local people stopped the planting of several more. Four fields are currently being squatted full-time by German activists determined to stop them being planted with Monsanto’s herbicide-resistant sugar beet.

The genetic engineering industry, assisted by the US government, has been making moves that will soon put the fate (and the currency) of the world in their hands. Patented engineered crops have been pushed into the market with no responsible testing on humans as to allergens or long-term effects, and no regard for the consequences to the ecosystem when they escape and spread.

These crops will quickly boost the income of the already money-bloated chemical/ agribusiness/biotech industry by at least 4-5 times. With this much money at stake, the corporate sharks are in a feeding frenzy of such intensity that any thoughts of caution, not to mention ethics, must be quickly suppressed. No expense is being spared to lay the groundwork and to alter the public’s opinion of the biotechnology industry. One of many examples of its influence is the enactment of laws that enable private entities to apply for patents on research that was largely funded by the government.

The World’s Breadbasket: Monsanto?

Chemical giant Monsanto stands as a prime example of this blatant bad behavior. Their executives regularly cycle in and out of top positions in the FDA. Consequently the FDA enacts whatever policies will further Monsanto’s interests. In 1992, over 150 FDA officials owned stock in the drug/biotech companies they regulated.

Monsanto’s biggest cash-cow at $1.5 billion per year has been the widely used herbicide Roundup. The use of Roundup is the third most commonly reported cause of illness among agricultural workers in California; for landscape maintenance workers, it ranks highest. It also destroys soil life and leaves residues that show up in food planted a year after the soil was sprayed.

Use of Roundup was previously limited to killing weeds around the borders of cropland. However, Monsanto is betting the farm on its new line of Roundup Ready crops, which are specifically engineered to withstand massive dousing with Roundup. In fact, a year’s supply of Roundup is sold as a package with the seeds–for which farmers must sign a contract promising not to sell or give away any seeds or save them for next year’s planting. Monsanto inspects its customers’ farms for violations.

Monsanto expects that its sales of Roundup will increase to $4 billion per year in 5 years. By early next century, Monsanto fully expects to be THE source of the world’s food, and is doing whatever it takes to make its dream come true. Other agribiz/biotech corporations are desperately fighting for their share.

Who Will Pay for these Profits?

The Third World countries will pay the highest price, first as the unpaid sources for the genes that are being spliced into the new mega-profitable patented crops, and again as they are made more and more dependent on big agribusiness. Small farmers in all countries can see their extinction on the horizon. It may be that, after cross-pollination occurs and spreads, and after the drifting of ever-increasing clouds of crop-dusted pesticides kill off all non-resistant crops, only patented crops will be able to grow. Only giant agribusiness concerns will be able to afford the patented seeds and accompanying pesticides that allow these crops to flourish, and the only way to get food will be to get in line at the agribusiness foodstand.

The needs of corporate interests do not reflect the needs of people. The alternative to prolonged shelf life and long-distance trade is not the reengineering of fruits and vegetables. The alternative is to reduce ëfood miles’. Cuba, for example, has used the crisis of the US trade embargo to create thousands of urban organic gardens to meet the vegetable needs of each city from within its municipal limits.

Long distance transport for basic food stuffs which could be grown locally serves the interests of global agribusiness, not the small farmer.

–Dr. Vandana Shiva, ecofeminist, physicist and philosopher

So What’s Wrong with Frankenfoods, Anyway?

Because of lack of testing, there will be currently unforeseen consequences on human and animal health. We do know that people with food allergies will soon not be able to tell if the vegetable or the food product they are buying contains genes from something they are allergic to.

One imminent result from a new product already on the market, Maximizer corn, which contains a gene resistant to the antibiotic ampicillin, is the increased spread of antibiotic resistance into animals and humans. (Antibiotic resistance makes these sometimes-crucial drugs ineffective.) Other probable consequences include increased strain on immune systems, more new diseases, and increased cancer rates.

Already infectious diseases are on a global rebound, killing thousands more and evolving into antibiotic-resistant strains. The US death rate from infectious diseases rose 58% between 1980-1992, becoming the third-leading killer of Americans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. European countries have banned most US beef, poultry and dairy products because of detectable levels of drugs.

–Lee Hitchcox, D.C, Strategies for Staying Alive,1996.

As for reports that bioengineered crops will be able to use less pesticide or less-toxic pesticides and herbicides, such reports have been greatly exaggerated by PR firms receiving mega-bucks from agribusiness. It’s notable that many times more research is being done on ways to use greater quantities of highly toxic chemicals than on less-toxic methods.

Boo-boos and Surprises

What has reached the market so far is only the start of an onslaught of products, as biotech companies rush to cash in on their patented products and to develop more. In April, one mistake that supposedly could never happen because of tight quality control and regulations came to light: Monsanto had to recall some seed that contained an incorrect gene which had been inserted by accident. Research done in Denmark has shown that genetically-manipulated genes in crops can make their way into nearby weeds under field conditions. In this way, genetic errors can propagate into the environment and permanently alter the natural world in ways that no one is prepared to understand (Peter Montague, Rachel‚s Environment and Health Weekly, #549).

Another surprise is the speed with which insects are meeting the challenge of bio-engineering through their capacity to mutate. It had been hoped that bio-engineering toxins into crops would repel insects without need for external application of pesticides, but the insects turn out to be more than equal to the threat, adapting in one generation to toxins that were supposed to fend them off for four generations.

There are effective non-toxic ways to deal with weeds and insects, but since the industry can’t get rich off them, they are not likely to get much respect from agribusiness.

Other Countries Fight US Agribusiness

Meeting at its World Congress in Geneva on April 15-18, the International Union of Food and Allied Workers’ Associations (IUF) threw the weight of its 320 affiliated unions in 112 countries behind a call for a ban on gene-altered foods.

Egypt is proposing an import ban on transgenic (genetically-altered) foods, but because of US pressure has agreed to suspend it for three months.

European Union (EU) members have stated for years that they do not want bio-engineered food. Since their protests were ignored by US agribusiness, their next demand was that bio-engineered food must be labeled. However, they are finding that the US does not intend to comply, because separating the sources of crops is not economically feasible.

In June, major US agribiz companies signed a letter to President Clinton urging him to threaten the European Union with sanctio
ns in order to force genetically modified crops on the European market. The letter instructs the President that the EU’s objections are based on emotions, not science, and clearly states that segregation of bulk commodities is not scientifically justified and is economically unrealistic.

Regulatory authorities in European countries such as the UK, Austria, Luxembourg and Denmark objected to the approval of transgenic maize (corn) because of the possible spread of antibiotic resistance. However they were overruled by the EU Commission under massive pressure from the USA.

The Clinton administration is guilty of collusion in this money-grabbing scheme, force-feeding bio-engineering to the world by promoting it as another end to world hunger, while in fact it is one of the biggest scams going today–a scam to steal the resources, control, and most probably the health of the peoples of the world.

Greenpeace activists from across Europe launched a major protest June 26, 1997, after receiving a leaked copy of a document outlining a multi-million dollar public relations campaign (led by the PR company Burson Marsteller, best known for its work for US chemical company Union Carbide after the Bhopal chemical explosion in India) to overturn public opposition to genetically manipulated crops and the food made from them. The same companies who brought us dioxins, PCBs, DDT, CFC’s and dozens of other dangerous chemicals, which have long since been banned, are now telling us genetically manipulated organisms are safe and even environmentally beneficial, Greenpeace spokesperson Marie-Jeanne Schiffelers said.

Patent laws in Brazil, India, and Argentina forbid the patenting of pharmaceuticals on the grounds that drugs are of such great importance that no one should have the right to monopolize them. Colombian researcher Dr. Manuel Patarroyo recently gave the World Health Organization exclusive royalty-free rights on an antimalaria vaccine he developed. We wanted to do this for the benefit of humanity, he explained.

Ironically, the European attitude toward bioengineering is influenced by their history of colonialism and the taking of many resources from the new world without payment. They say that to now claim that such things can be patented and to require payment for their use would be contrary to their historical actions.

According to a Dutch Green Party member of the European Parliament, Ninety percent of the genetic resources which are used in our agricultural production come from the Third World. We have never asked if we ought to pay anything for them. And now for the biotechnology industry to demand monopoly property rights over them is utterly unjustifiable. Whether wild species or crop plants, genetic resources are the common heritage of humankind. All farmers must be guaranteed free access to them.

To take part in nation-wide October actions against genetic engineering, contact the Pure Food Campaign, 860 Highway 61, Little Marais, Minnesota 55614, (202) 775-1132 or (218) 226-4164. E-mail: alliance@mr.net

In an example of prevailing attempts to greenwash industries by co-opting progressive terminology, heavy industry has been selling its hazardous waste as fertilizer while claiming to be recycling byproducts. Federal regulation has made the cost of disposing of toxic waste a significant factor. A loophole in EPA regulations allows the use of industrial waste products as fertilizer, no matter what they contain. This is now a fast-growing phenomenon, saving industry millions of dollars at the expense of public health.

It’s really unbelievable what’s happening, but it’s true, Patty Martin, mayor of Quincy, WA, a small farming community, said. They just call dangerous waste a product, and it’s no longer a dangerous waste. It’s a fertilizer.

Ingredients Not Regulated

Unlike Canada and European countries, the U.S. has a hands-off policy as to what can constitute fertilizer. There are actually state programs to match up recyclers of toxic waste with fertilizer companies and farmers. Factories are building fertilizer plants close to their emissions control systems, to increase convenience and profitability. The resulting fertilizer needs no labeling as to the dangerous ingredients it contains. Industry representatives would like the public to believe that they are civic-minded (and smart and wise) enough to police themselves, but horror stories resulting from the use of such fertilizers indicate otherwise.

Consequences to Farmers

In Tifton, GA, more than 1,000 acres of peanut crops aimed for human consumption were killed by Lime Plus, a brew of hazardous waste and limestone that had been sold to unsuspecting farmers.

An Oregon farmer, Wes Behrman of Banks, OR, won an out-of-court settlement from L-Bar fertilizer company after seeing his red-clover crop mysteriously wilt. He refused to discuss terms of the settlement with reporters, but he had told other people it was substantial.

In Gore, Oklahoma, a uranium-processing plant is getting rid of low-level radioactive waste by licensing it as a liquid fertilizer and spraying it over 9,000 acres of grazing land (with 2-nosed cows, 9-legged frogs, and very high rates of cancer and birth defects occurring in the vicinity).

In Quincy, WA, to dispose of a 54-foot long concrete pond full of toxic waste, the Cenex fertilizer company struck a deal with lessee farmer Larry Schaapman. He was paid more than $10,000 to let Cenex put the material, which the company claimed had fertilizer value, on his 100 acres. It killed the land. The corn crop failed there in 1990, even though Schaapman and Cenex applied extra water to try to wash the toxics through the soil. Hardly anything grew there the next year, either.

The land belonged to Dennis DeYoung, whose family had farmed it since the early 1950s before he leased it to Schaapman. Since the land was poisoned, DeYoung couldn’t make his payments, and the company that financed him foreclosed on a $100,000 debt. DeYoung also owed Cenex money for fertilizer and seed. Soon after, Cenex bought the land from the financing company. DeYoung sued Cenex for damages for ruining the soil, lost in summary judgment but won a reversal in the State Court of Appeals earlier this year. He’s preparing for a new trial.

Tom Witte is a 53-year-old farmer with 200 acres and about 100 cows a few miles east of Quincy, WA. His father purchased the farm in 1956. Witte had a disastrous year in 1991, associated with the use of contaminated fertilizer. His red spring wheat, silage corn, and grain corn all yielded about one-third the normal levels. Six of his cows got sick and died. The veterinarian found cancer in the three that were tested.

Witte and DeYoung submitted hair samples to a laboratory that tests for heavy metals in human tissues. The lab found high levels of aluminum, antimony, lead, arsenic and cadmium in hair samples from DeYoung, Witte, and Witte’s children.

Jaycie Giraud of Quincy, WA, said that the Giraud family, which has been farming in the area for three generations, is now broke due to the use of toxic fertilizers. Her father-in-law, a farmer for 50 years, lost a $1 million potato crop. Her husband and their two children, aged 7 and 14, have all developed respiratory problems that she believes are related to fertilizer products.

Farms Destroyed

The industries that are benefiting financially from recycled waste are claiming that there are no known risks in the use of toxic waste in fertilizer. However, farmers‚ land has been destroyed, livestock has been dying of cancer, and the health of the farmers themselves has been damaged by recycled waste. After determining that these problems coincided with the application of these fertilizers, some farmers have begun to protest the devastation of their lives and livelihoods.

Kerr-McGee Bags

Monsanto’s Waste

Monsanto Corp., a major pesticide manufacturer, sold the toxic waste from its Soda Springs, ID factory as a fertilizer component for six years. In 1994, they became the first company so far to STOP, because of fear of possible liability. They are still selling some waste to Kerr-McGee, who have taken over the process of turning it into fertilizer. A Monsanto rep stated that, in effect, Kerr-McGee is being paid to take on the risk of liability. Kerr-McGee is a pretty big company. If they have a (liability) problem, they’ll probably face their problem without dragging Monsanto into it.

A Growing Phenomenon

Although a big corporation like Monsanto has seen the liability at the end of the tunnel, this phenomenon is not about to go away. It is increasing. Soil scientists report that waste brokers from metal-, cement-, paper- and wood-products companies call constantly, trying to get matched up with farmers who will accept their waste products so that they will not have to pay to dispose of them.

Nor is it just currently produced toxics that are being cycled into fertilizer. Toxic waste from old dump sites is also making its unregulated way into fertilizer. And at one of the sites on the EPA’s Superfund list, Lowry Landfill near Denver, there is a plan to send liquid waste from the site through sewage treatment and apply it to government-owned wheat farms. The EPA is considering the novel disposal plan in a pending ruling that may set a precedent for new ways to clean up Superfund sites. The official EPA fact sheet on the landfill omits the fact that the waste is radioactive.

Follow-ups and Food Slander

Fertilizer industry reps seem willing to admit that mistakes were made (by scofflaws), but seem to define mistakes as the instances in which crops or livestock were destroyed or obviously damaged. They do not seem to acknowledge that (1) poisons put into the soil will become part of the plants or (2) eating such plants will have harmful effects. They would like to deny the following:

– Toxic heavy metals build up in soil.

– Radioactivity does not go away.

– Pesticide residues have harmful effects.

– Some plants take up more or less of certain chemicals from the ground than others.

– When the plants are eaten by animals, the toxins build up and multiply in their tissues. It’s the animals at the top of the food chain (such as predatory animals and meat- and dairy-eating humans) that receive the heaviest doses of toxins.

There has been very little coverage of this issue in the mainstream press, possibly because of the new Food Slander laws in 13 states, which warn that anyone saying bad things about agribusiness is likely to be sued (e.g., Oprah Winfrey is being sued by Texas cattle business for her show about mad-cow disease).

But the one major article, which appeared July 3 in the Seattle Times, apparently did have an effect. On August 7th regulators from states all over the US convened to discuss
the labeling of fertilizers. A panel of regulators and fertilizer executives was appointed to come up with a policy on labeling, and it was announced that it would be proposed in six weeks. One thing that is not known is whether there will be actual testing, which would be difficult and expensive, especially since the toxic products are variable in nature.

Some Anti-toxics Organizations

The Pure Food Campaign
860 Highway 61
Little Marais, MN 55614

Citizen’s Clearinghouse for Hazardous Waste
150 S. Washington, Suite 300
P.O. Box 6806
Falls Church, VA 22040

Pesticide Action Network

http://www.igc.apc.org/panna/others.html