inkbluesky

'The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals'

The invention of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer by Fritz Haber (a German chemist who also invented Zyklon B) marks the moment when "the basis of soil fertility shifted from a total reliance on the energy of the sun to a new reliance on fossil fuel." The "flood tide of cheap corn" this produced "made it profitable to fatten cattle on feedlots instead of on grass…. Iowa livestock farmers couldn't compete with the factory-farmed animals their own cheap corn had helped spawn." With that, Pollan is standing in a CAFO (confined animal feeding operation) on "the high plains of western Kansas," unsuccessfully looking for the cow he has bought and intends to follow until it comprises the patty of a McDonald's meal.

As the rest of the review at the link points out it is difficult to write about nature and natural procresses. You have to dream up your own narrative to make it anything other then what sounds like a lab report. There is a narrative there, but its one that as a society, many people are just marginally aware of. Food is just there. What relationship does food you buy from the store have with plants, what relationship does the beef in your taco have with plants and what does the sun have to do with this cycle. You can have all the money and power in the world, you can pray all day, you can be the meanest or the most virtuous person in the world, the fact that you are alive is dependent on plants, which in turn are dependent on photosynthesis.

State Department Memo: '16 Words' Were False

Eleven days before President Bush's January 28, 2003, State of the Union address in which he said that the US learned from British intelligence that Iraq had attempted to acquire uranium from Africa - an explosive claim that helped pave the way to war - the State Department told the CIA that the intelligence the uranium claims were based upon were forgeries, according to a newly declassified State Department memo.

The revelation of the warning from the closely guarded State Department memo is the first piece of hard evidence and the strongest to date that the Bush administration manipulated and ignored intelligence information in their zeal to win public support for invading Iraq.

On January 12, 2003, the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) "expressed concerns to the CIA that the documents pertaining to the Iraq-Niger deal were forgeries," the memo dated July 7, 2003, says.

Moreover, the memo says that the State Department's doubts about the veracity of the uranium claims may have been expressed to the intelligence community even earlier.

Those concerns, according to the memo, are the reasons that former Secretary of State Colin Powell refused to cite the uranium claims when he appeared before the United Nations in February 5, 2003, - one week after Bush's State of the Union address - to try and win support for a possible strike against Iraq.

"After considerable back and forth between the CIA, the (State) Department, the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Association), and the British, Secretary Powell's briefing to the U.N. Security Council did not mention attempted Iraqi procurement of uranium due to CIA concerns raised during the coordination regarding the veracity of the information on the alleged Iraq-Niger agreement," the memo further states.

Iraq's interest in the yellowcake caught the attention of Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Association. ElBaradei had read a copy of the National Intelligence Estimate and had personally contacted the State Department and the National Security Council in hopes of obtaining evidence so his agency could look into it.

ElBaradei sent a letter to the White House and the National Security Council (NSC) in December 2002, warning senior officials he thought the documents were forgeries and should not be cited by the administration as evidence that Iraq was actively trying to obtain WMDs.

ElBaradei said he never received a written response to his letter, despite repeated follow-up calls he made to the White House, the NSC and the State Department.

Vice President Dick Cheney, who made the rounds on the cable news shows that month, tried to discredit ElBaradei's conclusion that the documents were forged.

"I think Mr. ElBaradei frankly is wrong," Cheney said. "[The IAEA] has consistently underestimated or missed what it was Saddam Hussein was doing. I don't have any reason to believe they're any more valid this time than they've been in the past."

As it turns out, ElBaradei was correct, the declassified State Department memo now shows.

The Censor: Motives and Tactics

Why Censorship?

In general, there are four basic motivational factors which may lie behind a ensor’s actions. The four motivations are by no means mutually exclusive; indeed, they often merge, both in outward appearance and in the censor’s mind.
Family values. In some cases, the censor may feel threatened by changes in the ccepted, traditional way of life. Changes in attitudes toward the family and elated customs are naturally reflected in library materials. Explicitly sexual works in particular are often viewed as obvious causes of repeated deviation from the norm. Because they challenge values, censors may want to protect children from exposure to works dealing frankly with sexual topics and themes.

Religion. The censor may also view explicitly sexual works and politically northodox ideas as attacks on religious faith. Anti-religious works, or materials that the censor considers damaging to religious beliefs, cause oncern about a society many see as becoming more and more hostile to religious training, and buttress beliefs about society’s steady disintegration.
Political views. Changes in the political structure can be equally threatening. The censor may view a work that advocates radical change as subversive. (The act that such works have been seen as attacking basic values is confirmed by the number of attempts to label library materials with such broad terms as communistic, un-American, or ungodly.) If these works also contain less than polite language, it will not be difficult for the censor to formulate an attack on the grounds of obscenity in addition to and sometimes to cover objections on political grounds.

Minority rights. Of course, not all censors are interested in preserving traditional social order. The conservative censor has been joined by groups who want their own special group values recognized. For example, ethnic minorities and women struggling against long-established stereotypes are anxious to reject materials viewed as perpetuating those stereotypes. These groups, too, may use the devices of the censor.

It is one of the greay ironies that the censor feels that they must protect someone else from material that they find offensive. It is not enough to state that they are offended and the reasons why, or even to walk away, turn away, or turn off what offends them. In their so-called attempt to save society from itself, if they achieve their goal they will have accomplished the greater immorality, physical authoritarian control of you as an individual. Which is the greater threat to any civilization, free speech and freedom of expression or those that would squelch it in the name of morality. Isn't that what every despotic government that has ever existed done, impose censorship for the good of society.