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Wednesday, July 28, 2010
AltoArizona.com
Six days remain until July 29th, which marks the implementation of SB1070 in the state of Arizona. Governor Jan Brewer has dug her heels in, continuing to defend the law, hitching her political hopes to hate legislation. She has ignored the family separation of families; she has publicly called most immigrants in Arizona "
Resistance has sparked across the state of Arizona and the country to defeat SB1070 and all racist policies that further criminalize our people and separate families. We know that if SB1070 is not stopped in Arizona now, similar laws will spread throughout the country.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Altoarizona.com
CRIMINAL IS stealing people’s land, taking their
natural resources, and denying them labor rights so that they are
forced out of their own countries to survive- - not risking your life to
cross the border in order to provide for your family. - [if you
agree please update your status] http://altoarizona.com
Thursday, July 15, 2010
For Sweet Honey in the Rock
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
stayceyann chin on categories gender race politics hope and dreaming
Am I a feminist or a womanist? The student needs to know if I do men occasionally and primarily, am I a lesbian? Tongue tied up in my cheek, I attempt to respond with some honesty. Well, this business of Dykes and Dykery, I tell her, it’s often messy. With social tensions as they are, you never quite know what you’re getting.
Girls who are only straight at night, hardcore butches be sporting dresses between 9 & 6 every day. Sometimes she is a he, trapped by the limitations of our imaginations. Primarily, I tell her, I am concerned about young women who are raped on college campuses, in bars, after poetry readings like this one, in bars. Bruised lip and broken heart, you will forgive her if she does not come forward with the truth immediately, for when she does, it is she who will stand trial as damaged goods. Everyone will say she asked for it, dressed as she was, she must have wanted it. The words will knock about in her head: ” Harlot, slut, tease, loose woman” – some people can not handle a woman on the loose. You know those women in pinstriped shirts and silk ties, You know those women in blood-red stiletto heels and short skirts. These women make New York City the most interesting place. And while we’re on the subject of diversity, Asia is not one big race, and there’s not one big country called ‘The Islands’, and no, I am not from there.
There are a hundred ways to slip between the cracks of our not so credible cultural assumptions about race and religion. Most people are suprised that my father is Chinese. Like there’s some kind of preconditioned look for the half-Chinese, lesbian poet who used to be Catholic, but now believes in dreams.
Let’s get real sister-boy in the double-x hooded sweatshirt. That blonde-haired, blue-eyed Jesus in the Vatican ain’t right. That motherfucker was Jewish, not white. Christ was a middle-eastern rasta man who ate grapes in the company of prostitutes and he drank wine more than he drank water. Born of the spirit, the disciples loved him in the flesh.
But the discourse is not on those of us who identify as gay or lesbian or even straight. The state needs us to be either a clear left or right. Those in the middle get caught in the cross – fire away at the other side. If you are not for us, then you must be against us. If you are not for us, then you must be against us. People get scared enough, they pick a team. Be it for Buddha or Krishna or Christ, I believe God is that place between belief and what you name it. I believe holy is what you do when there is nothing between your actions and the truth.
The truth is I’m afraid to draw your black lines around me, I’m not always pale in the middle, I come in too many flavors for one fucking spoon. I am never one thing or the other. At night I am everything I fear, tears and sorrows, black windows and muffled screams. In the morning, I am all I ever want to be: rain and laughter, bare footprints and invisible seams, always without breath or definition. I claim every single dawn, for yesterday is simply what I was, and tomorrow even that will be gone.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Not surprising: Fraud in Carbon Markets
Certified Emissions Reduction Units (CERs) for the destruction of HFC-23 represent over 1/2 of the CDM credits issued to date. The CDM’s HFC-23 projects pay 65-75 times more for HFC-23 destruction than the manufacturers pay. A revision request submitted by CDM Watch to the CDM Executive Board provides overwhelming evidence that manufacturers are gaming the CDM system and undermining carbon markets by producing potent greenhouse gases (GHGs) just so they can get paid to destroy them. The revision request called for an immediate overhaul in the rules governing the number of credits being issued and removal of the perverse financial incentives that currently exist.
Yesterday, the Methodologies Panel agreed that many of the claims in the revision request could cause perverse incentives, i.e. plants producing dramatically more HFC-23 per ton of HCFC-22 than technically feasible, plants producing HCFC-22 only if they are receiving CDM credits, and that the CDM credits may be causing unnecessary production of HCFC-22. The Panel said that further investigation is required to “identify situations” resulting in excessive issuance of carbon credits and how “to improve the methodology.”
“If the UN CDM Executive Board wants to reinstall the integrity of the mechanism it has no other choice than to put the current crediting methodology on hold with immediate effect and cease issuance of all credits for the destruction of HFC-23 until the Panel has fully investigated the issue and revised the crediting methodology,” said Eva Filzmoser Director of CDM Watch.
“It is clear that the CDM’s current HFC-23 program is financing and working against its own goal of producing reductions of greenhouse gas emissions for offsets. This type of abuse is gambling with our planet’s ecology,” said Mark W. Roberts of the Environmental Investigation Agency. “The world cannot afford this corrupted type of carbon trading; squandering climate money is bad enough, but in this case many of the alleged benefits are simply a charade that actually increases the problem of global warming.”
The Methodology revision request can be found at https://cdm.unfccc.int/methodologies/PAmethodologies/revisions/58215
The note on the revision request by the Methodology Panel can be found at http://cdm.unfccc.int/Panels/meth/meeting/10/044/mp44_an02.pdf
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Groups Sue U.S. Gov't Over GMO Tree Field Trials
George Kimbrell, Int'l Center for Technology Assessment/Center for Food Safety, (571) 527-8618
Anne Petermann, Global Justice Ecology Project, (802) 578-0477
Across the American South
FORT PIERCE
“In refusing to prepare a detailed environmental review, the Department of Agriculture ignored serious risks before permitting this action,” said Marc Fink, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity. “Federal agencies can’t be allowed to neglect their duty to the public trust. Once this genie is out of the bottle and escapes to neighboring lands, it’s irreversible.”
ArborGen hopes its GE “cold-tolerant” Eucalyptus will become widely planted for pulp and biomass. But eucalyptus trees are not native to the United States and are known to become invasive, displacing native wildlife and plants in various areas around the country and increasing wildfire risk. “Releasing GE cold-tolerant Eucalyptus trees into the wild in multiple states greatly increases the risk they will spread uncontrollably throughout the region,” said Dr. Neil Carman of the Sierra Club.
In approving the GE eucalyptus permits, the Department of Agriculture ignored the concerns of numerous agencies and scientists, including the Georgia Department of Natural Resources and the Florida Exotic Pest Plant Council, which formally criticized the proposed open field tests of these genetically engineered trees.
In addition to approving these test sites, Agriculture is also considering a “deregulation” petition submitted by ArborGen that would allow widespread commercial planting of GE Eucalyptus without any limits or regulation. According to the U.S. Forest Service, GEEucalyptus plantations in the southern United States would use more than twice the water of pine plantations in a region already suffering from a depleted water supply.
“These tests include planting over a quarter of a million genetically engineered eucalyptus trees along the Gulf Coast and into South Carolina,” said Anne Petermann of Global Justice Ecology Project and the STOP GE Trees Campaign. “Ultimately they plan to produce up to half a billion GE eucalyptus seedlings annually for planting across the U.S. South. This would be another disaster for these beleaguered Gulf Coast states, leading to a loss of native forests and biodiversity, depleting ground water and worsening climate change.”
The Government Accountability Office and USDA inspector general have both issued sharply critical reports on the USDA’s management of genetically engineered organism (GMO) field tests. In 2006, a GE rice field test contaminated southern U.S. long-grain rice fields, causing billions in losses to farmers; in 2007, a federal court found that a GE bentgrass field test had contaminated a protected national grassland in Oregon. “The Department of Agriculture continues to tell the public that no further restrictions are needed on these novel organisms,” said George Kimbrell, an attorney for the plaintiffs. “In light of history, their empty promises here ring hollow.”
“Over the last generation the people of the South have watched the forests of our region destroyed by industrial forestry, impacting our water quality, wildlife habitat and quality of life,” said Scot Quaranda of Dogwood Alliance. “The federal government's decision to approve the use of GE Eucalyptus trees in our region will open the door to further exploitation of the people and forests of the South. This decision must be overturned.”
The organizations are represented by attorneys Marc Fink of the Center for Biological Diversity, George Kimbrell of the International Center for Technology Assessment and the Center for Food Safety, and Jeanne Marie Zokovitch Paben, director of the Earth Advocacy Clinic at Barry University School of Law.
To read comments submitted by Georgia Department of Natural Resources, click here.
To read comments submitted by the Florida Exotic Pest Plant Council, click here.
The organizations that filed suit today are the Center for Biological Diversity, Sierra Club, Dogwood Alliance, International Center for Technology Assessment, Center for Food Safety and Global Justice Ecology Project.
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Interviewing APIs at the USSF
Big ups to Silky Shah and others from WBAI (NYC)'s Asian Pacific Forum