Monthly Archive for April, 2006

Link TV is featuring two interesting documentaries about people who share a common enemy; products/production that encroach upon neighbouring properties and destroy livelihoods.

One can be downloaded and/or viewed online. Range Wars Rage On is from the Sierra Club Chronicles series and follows ranchers of differing political ideologies who are united by fury and frustration with The Bureau of Land Management for allowing “increased drilling and allowing drilling practices that are killing ranchers’ cattle.” The government’s argument in this case is that since the lands on which the oil and drilling are taking place are publicly owned, “the Department of the Interior (has) the right to lease the subsurface mineral rights to oil and natural gas companies.”

A traditional New Mexico ranching couple Tweeti and Linn Blancett, lead their cattle up a slope, past a natural gas drilling platform and around industrial equipment that occupies the once-pristine public land where their cattle used to graze undisturbed. Now they can’t believe what they see: a natural gas clean up crew ripping the lining of a waste pit, allowing toxic, industrial waste water to seep into the land. This is a blatant violation of the environmental rules that govern the use of public lands. Chris Velasquez, a fellow rancher shares this same bond to the land and he is just as furious as to what is going on.

The other documentary, Life Running Out of Control, examines how Monsanto has taken land owners to court when natural agents such as the wind or birds carry patent-protected GM seeds onto their properties and cross-pollinate.

Percy Schmeiser is featured along with others who face his predicament, including organic farmers who are at risk of losing their certification due this contamination.

In the case of Monsanto v. Schmeiser, Monsanto argued “that it didn’t matter whether Schmeiser knew or not that his canola field was contaminated with the Roundup Ready gene, or whether or not he took advantage of the technology (he didn’t); that he must pay Monsanto their Technology Fee of $15./acre. The Supreme Court of Canada agreed with Schmeiser, ruling that he didn’t have to pay Monsanto anything.. …..full story.”

But key decisions were not overturned by the Supreme Court. Whilst “the judge agreed a farmer can generally own the seeds or plants grown on his land if they blow in or are carried there by pollen — the judge says this is not true in the case of genetically modified seed.”

Schmeiser, a seed developer, has lost 50-years of research due this contamination. His life savings were used up fighting this outrage. And his battles with Monsanto are not over. Not only does GM canola continue to contaminate his land, forcing him to plant crops not to his liking in order to better identify the GM plants, but Monsanto’s response only generated cause for another lawsuit.

Schmeiser is not an organic farmer. And according to this, it’s no longer possible to be one in the U.S.:

In particular, issues of genetic contamination loom large. Many farmers need to be able to assure customers in certain markets that their crops are GM free. In no instance is this assurance more paramount than with the case of organic farmers. The International Federation of Organic Agricultural Movements (IFOAM) is the world’s peak organic farming body. In 1999 their Buenos Aires Declaration stated that GM crops are incompatible with organic agriculture and cannot be certified as organic .

The consequences of this standpoint are clear when brought home to the Saskatchewan context. If an organic farmer in Saskatchewan has their Canola crop (or any other crop for that matter) infested with volunteer Canola they will likely lose their organic certification (a process which takes in excess of 5 years in most cases) and the financial consequences will be disastrous. However, the problems of contamination now appear to extend beyond problems relating to volunteer infestation by GM crops. Given the widespread use of GM Canola systems in North America, a major organic certification body (Farm Verified Organic) has stated that GM pollution of corn, canola and possibly soybean seed supplies “is now so pervasive, we believe it is not possible for farmers in North America to source seed free from it. “

The consequences of this statement are already being felt in certain markets. In April 2001 the Organic Federation of Australia warned its consumers that organic produce such as corn and canola imported from North America could no longer be guaranteed free from GM contamination. It is only a matter of time before more significant markets such as Japan and Europe begin to echo similar sentiments.

But as Schmeiser’s case illustrates, this is not a matter of organic v. GM crops. The right to farm GM free is under contention, a decision that Monsanto is making for all U.S. farmers with or without their consent. A workmate who also farms told me recently that Monsanto is always sending her such agreements to sign but she and her husband refuse to do so. Monsanto recognises the potential for being held liable should the contamination by GM crops ever put American farmers out of business, hence the wording of these “agreements”, at the same time it is getting its product into as many agricultural regions as possible betting that one day there will be no choice at all.

So goes democracy. It doesn’t matter if the land is public or private, money talks, justice walks.

Hopefully, Canada will fare better due the activism of its farmers.

By Terry Walz, CNI Staff
April 27, 2006

An attempt to bomb the Karni/al-Mintar crossing, which is the main crossing between Israel and Gaza for trucks loaded with goods, was made yesterday. It was foiled by the Palestinian security men, who were attacked. Three police officers were wounded, as were two of the attackers. The vehicle was impounded, and the police found 300 kilos of explosives and fuel. No one has claimed responsibility, but as a result the Karni crossing was closed. The Israelis would not say when it would be opened, and thus a new humanitarian crisis looms.

Thus far this year, the Karni Crossing has been closed 60% of the time (in contrast to 2005, when it was closed 18%). The impact has been devastating on the Gazans, who have experienced food shortages. To alleviate the situation, the Israelis allowed humanitarian food supplies to cross from Egypt to Gaza via the new Kerem-Shalom Crossing, on the border between Gaza, Egypt and Israel. 210 truckloads of food were been processed through that crossing (as of April 12), according to a new report (.pdf) on the checkpoints issued by the UN Office of Coordinations and Humanitarians Affairs.
Continue reading ‘Gaza: The Ongoing Humanitarian Crisis and Israeli Interference’

Animation from the Union of Concerned Scientists. (via)

POEM

Definition of Occupation

Young Palestinian Poet Abdelnasser Rashid

Read attached poem in WORD and PDF formats.

Send the poet a message of encouragement at: abdelnasser_rashid@yahoo.com

Women

Dr. Nurit Peled-Elhanan is the mother of Smadar Elhanan, 13 years old when killed by a suicide bomber in Jerusalem in September 1997. Below is Nurit’s Address to the European Parliament

By Nurit Peled-Elhanan

04/08/05 — Thank you for inviting me to this today. It is always an honour and a pleasure to be here, among you (at the European Parliament).

However, I must admit I believe you should have invited a Palestinian woman at my stead, because the women who suffer most from violence in my county are the Palestinian women. And I would like to dedicate my speech to Miriam R’aban and her husband Kamal, from Bet Lahiya in the Gaza Strip, whose five small children were killed by Israeli soldiers while picking strawberries at the family’s strawberry field. No one will ever stand trial for this murder.

When I asked the people who invited me here why wouldn’t they invite a Palestinian woman the answer was that it would make the discussion too localized.

I don’t know what is non-localized violence. Racism and discrimination may be theoretical concepts and universal phenomena but their impact is always local, and real. Pain is local, humiliation, sexual abuse, torture and death, are all very local, and so are the scars.
Continue reading ‘“Why does that streak of blood, rip the petal of your cheek?”’

“Under the Fourth Geneva Conventions, Israel as the occupying power bears the responsibility for the welfare of the Palestinian population. In recent years, international donors and the Palestinian Authority have in practical terms taken on this role. If the PA is unable to provide basic services to the Palestinian population and donors withhold assistance, the emphasis will shift back to Israel to resume its legal obligation.”

To download the full report click here.

The Little Mermaid on Highway Six:
Rooting for ordinary Israelis to wake up

By Deb Reich

Palestinian children are not made for war, any more than Israeli children are made for war. Yet while the politicians jockey for power, our Israeli mothers go on loyally sending their children to join the army and terrorize the neighbors, as if that were a normal thing to do, believing it their duty to the nation; and Palestinian mothers continue to live in fear when their kids sneak out to throw stones at the tanks those Israeli kids are driving, and sometimes they come back in a box. Miki, a former babysitter for my children, granddaughter of a good friend, a sweet, charming girl, was conscripted into the Israeli army at 18 with all the other kids, and became a sharpshooter instructor. Her trainees, still children themselves, go out and shoot Palestinian children in the streets of Nablus or Hebron. Who can make sense of this? And what of another friend�s only son Haggai, the dreamer, the nature-lover, who will never sit under a tree again on a summer�s day, watching the clouds sail by in the sky? The Czar�s army (they call it the IDF here) got him, and ate him alive.

Indeed, the callous Israelis the Palestinians see are not the caring Israelis I know; and the one-dimensional caricatures of Palestinians the world sees in the media are not like the actual Palestinians I know, either. The Palestinians I know are regular, ordinary people, with good days and bad days like everyone else; not perfect, but human; people like me; just people. The Palestinians in the news are always either bad guys, or in mourning � either crazed perpetrators or hapless victims of violence. Why don�t the newspapers ever talk about regular Palestinians, just trying to have a life, just like you and me? A baker in Jenin bakes bread just like a baker in Kansas City or Calcutta, or Beersheba or Haifa; and some kid in Jenin named Mahmoud or Soheila eats it for breakfast with the same satisfaction your kids display, scarfing down their toast and jam in the morning. A minister friend of mine visiting Israel from the USA recently took an Israeli Jewish couple she knows to visit a Palestinian- Arab Israeli couple she knows, and the Jewish woman confided afterwards: �But their children are just like ours!� Well� yeah.
Continue reading ‘UN warns of humanitarian crisis in Palestine’