nora's blog

This puts a whole new spin on Monsanto's "Roundup Ready" line of GMO products...

http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/roundup-weed-killer-is-t...

[excerpt]

Weed killer kills human cells. Study intensifies debate over 'inert' ingredients.
Used in yards, farms and parks throughout the world, Roundup has long been a top-selling weed killer. But now researchers have found that one of Roundup’s inert ingredients can kill human cells, particularly embryonic, placental and umbilical cord cells. The new findings intensify a debate about so-called “inerts” — the solvents, preservatives, surfactants and other substances that manufacturers add to pesticides. Nearly 4,000 inert ingredients are approved for use by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

By Crystal Gammon
Environmental Health News

June 22, 2009

Used in yards, farms and parks throughout the world, Roundup has long been a top-selling weed killer. But now researchers have found that one of Roundup’s inert ingredients can kill human cells, particularly embryonic, placental and umbilical cord cells.

The new findings intensify a debate about so-called “inerts” — the solvents, preservatives, surfactants and other substances that manufacturers add to pesticides. Nearly 4,000 inert ingredients are approved for use by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Glyphosate, Roundup’s active ingredient, is the most widely used herbicide in the United States. About 100 million pounds are applied to U.S. farms and lawns every year, according to the EPA.

Until now, most health studies have focused on the safety of glyphosate, rather than the mixture of ingredients found in Roundup. But in the new study, scientists found that Roundup’s inert ingredients amplified the toxic effect on human cells—even at concentrations much more diluted than those used on farms and lawns.

One specific inert ingredient, polyethoxylated tallowamine, or POEA, was more deadly to human embryonic, placental and umbilical cord cells than the herbicide itself – a finding the researchers call “astonishing.”

“This clearly confirms that the [inert ingredients] in Roundup formulations are not inert,” wrote the study authors from France’s University of Caen. “Moreover, the proprietary mixtures available on the market could cause cell damage and even death [at the] residual levels” found on Roundup-treated crops, such as soybeans, alfalfa and corn, or lawns and gardens.

The research team suspects that Roundup might cause pregnancy problems by interfering with hormone production, possibly leading to abnormal fetal development, low birth weights or miscarriages.

Monsanto, Roundup’s manufacturer, contends that the methods used in the study don’t reflect realistic conditions and that their product, which has been sold since the 1970s, is safe when used as directed. Hundreds of studies over the past 35 years have addressed the safety of glyphosate.

“Roundup has one of the most extensive human health safety and environmental data packages of any pesticide that's out there,” said Monsanto spokesman John Combest. “It's used in public parks, it's used to protect schools. There's been a great deal of study on Roundup, and we're very proud of its performance.”
...

“The authorizations for using these Roundup herbicides must now clearly be revised since their toxic effects depend on, and are multiplied by, other compounds used in the mixtures,” Seralini’s team wrote.

Controversy about the safety of the weed killer recently erupted in Argentina, one of the world’s largest exporters of soy.

Last month, an environmental group petitioned Argentina’s Supreme Court, seeking a temporary ban on glyphosate use after an Argentine scientist and local activists reported a high incidence of birth defects and cancers in people living near crop-spraying areas. Scientists there also linked genetic malformations in amphibians to glysophate. In addition, last year in Sweden, a scientific team found that exposure is a risk factor for people developing non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Inert ingredients are often less scrutinized than active pest-killing ingredients. Since specific herbicide formulations are protected as trade secrets, manufacturers aren’t required to publicly disclose them. Although Monsanto is the largest manufacturer of glyphosate-based herbicides, several other manufacturers sell similar herbicides with different inert ingredients.

The term “inert ingredient” is often misleading, according to Caroline Cox, research director of the Center for Environmental Health, an Oakland-based environmental organization. Federal law classifies all pesticide ingredients that don’t harm pests as “inert,” she said. Inert compounds, therefore, aren’t necessarily biologically or toxicologically harmless – they simply don’t kill insects or weeds.

Kemery said the EPA takes into account the inert ingredients and how the product is used, whenever a pesticide is approved for use. The aim, he said, is to ensure that “if the product is used according to labeled directions, both people’s health and the environment will not be harmed.” One label requirement for Roundup is that it should not be used in or near freshwater to protect amphibians and other wildlife.

But some inert ingredients have been found to potentially affect human health. Many amplify the effects of active ingredients by helping them penetrate clothing, protective equipment and cell membranes, or by increasing their toxicity. For example, a Croatian team recently found that an herbicide formulation containing atrazine caused DNA damage, which can lead to cancer, while atrazine alone did not.
...

[more at link]

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P.S.

Note that back in the 1990s, the government had to pass a law to get the pesticide manufacturers to disclose the inert ingredients in their products!

http://www.mindfully.org/Pesticide/Court-Disclose-Inerts.htm

-----

And additional research shows that at levels for pesticide residuals left by application of pesticides permitted by law, Roundup is harmful as noted above--

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/209506-Roundup-Kills-More-Than-Weeds

[excerpt]
Alarming new research on the health hazards of Roundup weed killer is shining a harsh light on a regulatory process that was meant to protect us.

To protect our health, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sets maximum legal residue levels for every pesticide, for dozens of crops. But a new study in the respected journal Toxicology has shown that, at low levels that are currently legal on our food, Roundup could cause DNA damage, endocrine disruption and cell death. The study, conducted by French researchers, shows glyphosate-based herbicides are toxic to human reproductive cells.

The potential real-life risks from this are infertility, low sperm count, and prostate or testicular cancer. But, "Symptoms could be so subtle, they would be easy to overlook," says Theo Colborn, president of The Endocrine Disruption Exchange. "Timing is of critical importance. If a pregnant woman were to be exposed early in gestation, it looks like these herbicides could have an effect during the sexual differentiation stage. They really lock in on testosterone." The bottom line is more research is needed before we can fully understand the effects of glyphosate exposure.

A Perfect Poison

The researchers' most disturbing findings were not only the cytotoxic and hormonal responses to low-dose exposures, but the fact that the "active" ingredient - glyphosate - had much less of a toxic impact alone than the branded chemical mixtures sold to homeowners and farmers nationwide.

Solvents and surfactants, legally considered "inert ingredients," are mixed with glyphosate in products such as Roundup weed killer to create chemical formulations that increase mobility and more direct access to the cells. "Those same factors that aid penetration into a plant, also aid penetration into the skin," says Vincent Garry, professor emeritus of pathology at the University of Minnesota. "These chemicals are designed to kill cells."

[end excerpt]

=================

P.S.S.

Sort of reminds one of the use of dispersants for an oil spill, eh?

This two-part video from Louisiana shows a local wife of a fisherman Kindra Arnesen speaking at the Gulf Emergency Summit meet-up of July 19 in New Orleans about what she has found out about BP's response, media coverage, and the health of the Gulf and coastline. Each video part is less than 10 minutes.

Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9dVeXrsZ7Q&feature=related

Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFl90uB-JNM&NR=1

Happy Independence Day, Everybody!

But, unfortunately, we aren't independent of the tyrants these days -- tyrants in the form of Corporate Creeps using evermore cunning ways to manipulate our government and those politicians who are willing to be manipulated. These tyrants regard The People as the mass too be exploited and duped. (When we are called "the small people" by a BP official, it becomes clear that the exploiters consider themselves neo-aristocrats.)

We need the Declaration of Independence (originally signed in 1776) more than ever!

Unfortunately, the concepts put down in the Declaration of Independence now are only inspirational and hold no legal power today.

What we need to do

o We need to incorporate the key declarations of the Declaration of Independence into our CONSTITUTION!

o We need to do this by passing an amendment to the Constitution. It is so difficult to pass an amendment, but I think it would be easy to pass if we had an amendment that contained these needed elements:

Incorporation of the declarations of the Declaration of Independence.

The permanent death of 'corporate personhood' and corporate monopoly.

Creation of an election process that is free of corporate monetary and employment influence, incorporating the profit-free, cost-free, advertising-free public airwaves process to protect the election process from corrupting influences.

I think the people would rally behind such an amendment that would establish for us that the declarations and demands of the Declaration of Independence are as ALIVE now as in 1776 -- to get us free of the grip of out-of-control corporate tyranny!

Obama: Money or Authority? He wants money???
Take back the authority ASAP, puh-lease, Mr. President!

One thing for sure, this situation in the Gulf of Mexico-Caribbean Ocean Basin is FIRSTLY a life-and-death issue and time is of the essence. Already, the equivalent of ten or so EXXON-VALDEZes have gushed out 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana's Mississippi Delta, and more is gushing all the time -- another equivalent of an Exxon-Valdez every four days, some figure. If priorities are set correctly, being concerned with Money First will be seen as totally off-base, and possibly a deadly 'strategy' in the long run.

To put money first is like telling a person who comes to the Emergency Room with a life-threatening injury that they have to pay before they can get treated. It's immoral. And counter-productive.

Letting BP manage and pay at this stage of the emergency is also impractical. Because BP will always put its bottom line first while in charge of this problem. ONLY a government should manage this situation and take on the authority to step in during an emergency and get things under control and deal with the costs secondarily. (In this case, if the government were in control instead of BP, Obama would not be so beholding to BP, allowing BP to snub local and state agencies, allowing BP to conduct a lock-out of the press and photographers, and even allow BP to stand in the way of governmental fact-finding agencies from operating freely to gather independent data on air quality, on the nature of the oil's spread, and on the quantity of gushed oil).

Indeed, if the government is responsible to pay (as is the reality anyway since our government SUBSIDIZES the Oil Industry in numerous ways), then the government will have that much greater impetus down the line to pursue restitution from BP and tighten royalties and regulations on all mining/drilling, as well as cut costs on the other gluttons of tax-dollars like the Pentagon (whose oil consumption overshadows other U.S. needs).

Unfortunately, like BP, Obama too puts money first -- to the point of allowing Atty. Gen. Holder to announce loudly to the media a criminal investigation, thereby making BP clam up completely, and we see this as BP fails to cooperate with the Congressional investigatory hearings. Looks like Money trumped sensible legal strategy right there.

If Obama had handled the emergency as the life-and-death situation it is, all this money talk and responsibility talk would have been on the back burner, secondary to the needed ACTION of sucking up that oil so that we could MINIMIZE its impacts throughout the Gulf, throughout the Caribbean and work to keep it out of the Gulfstream. Two months of this murderous, uncontrolled geyser of oil and we are no better off than if NOTHING had been done -- because that drop-in-the-bucket $20 billion will NEVER be enough to make things right. And branding every money-grubbing BP fool a criminal in the first two months of this disaster will never bring back the destabilized eco-system, the destroyed flora, fauna, and coastal economies. In an EMERGENCY, time IS of the essence, and Obama seems to fail to understand that.

So many folks want to address this situation as a purely political dilemma to be finessed. I think they just don't get it: In an EMERGENCY of this huge proportion, everything -- politics, the next election, white racial bigotry, partisanship, budgetary concerns -- ALL these MUST be set aside (even clearly defined in the terms of being obstructionist in an emergency situation), and laser-like attention and concentration put on the important effort of saving as many lives and saving as much coastal area as possible.

We have lost so much ground against this disaster precisely because of BP foot-dragging, cheapskate approach, time-gobbling corporate bureaucracy, and secrecy, including their attempt to hide the oil with dispersants -- causing the sinking oil to go right under boom onto beaches and up river estuaries, making oil irretrievable by suction or burning -- all because Obama and his cabinet's Executive Branch agencies did not take charge as soon as possible, hang the cost.

I do not want my government beholding to BP. And that is all I see right now, despite this political-p.r. effort to make it appear that a few phony BP apologies and this (measly) BP fund means the President has the upper hand.

Obama will need to treat BP with kidgloves from now on if he wants this $20 billion to materialize. Does that mean Obama will cut BP even more slack eventually on those DOJ criminal investigations? (Shucks, we won't even have any testimony to go on from the Congressional hearings either now, will we?)

BP CEO Tony Hayward went to the Isle of Wight's yacht races this weekend. BP's big people obviously are not in a sweat about this disaster, thanks to buying their way out with Obama's blessings.

NOT good enough, Mr.President.

Indeed, quite shoddy. [Say this last sentence with a clipped British accent.]

Yeah, I woke up last night with the notion that I shouldn't believe anything I hear or see.

I was in a foggy place and the notion predominated. I turned on the light and then the radio an arm's reach from my bed on the bookshelf. The talkers were discussing the BP Toxic Oil Gusher. And my state of mind took over, and I filtered everything from the perspective that all was orchestrated to deceive. For example:

O BP (and the government by implication since the government has done nothing to allow journalists to do their full job) won't allow reporters and photographers to gather full news information along the coast or out into the Gulf. (We've assumed such behavior would be done to hide the awful extent of an extraordinary oil tragedy. However, could it also be done to prevent us seeing that it is an average oil tragedy?)

O BP won't allow anyone out to the Deepwater Horizon site. What don't they want seen? Rather than worse than they've said it is, is it not as bad as they say it is?

O BP has only one seabed underwater camera pointed at the wellhead for our access, so we really don't know what that camera is really pointed at, or if that camera is actually being broadcast from a different damaged underwater oil well site.

O The Oil Industry does not care if the Mississippi Delta wildlife habitat is destroyed, because for a long time, have they not wanted to dredge up into the Delta land/waterscape for port facilities or pipelines or something? So to the technocrats and oil barons, this destruction of habitat around the Delta is not considered a loss (just as those in charge saw no problem in the loss of lowland cheap housing neighborhoods after Katrina; it just freed up real estate for a government-funded redevelopment or something else down the line that supported their plans; just as they have not cared if pristine Arctic and flora and fauna is destroyed by leaking pipelines sitting on permafrost).

O We are told dispersants are sinking the oil, however, since underwater photography/filming is banned (example: Movie maker James Cameron's offer to film the area was refused), we don't know if this is a massive 'spill'/release or a small 'spill'/release. As for the satellite photos, could those images on the computer have been intercepted and altered to reflect an invented narrative?

O BP and the government have appeared emotionally unanimated, even untroubled about this event. Surprisingly unanimated and unmoved. No one is sweating or agitated apparently.

O No one lost his job for a very long time and still many who would have been jettisoned for such problems in the real world are still around. Others are making tv commercials to boost the image of the corporate logo and the stock value (and the stock value is now stable!); others are making politically potent photo ops in an attempt to show leadership (The Disaster/War President is straight out of the sci-fi movie "Independence Day").

O In an emergency that should be called an emergency and responded to with the force of many agencies, the Obama Administration refuses to go there, and HAS NOT ACTIVATED all it can -- federal, state and local -- to deal with the situation that they claim is occurring.

O Transparency is lacking. The primary responders remain BP contractors and the military who are locked in confidentiality agreements. Transparency is missing as not even the local/state governments along the Gulfcoast are able to get a clear line of communication set up between the perpetrator BP and the U.S. Government and its representatives such as the Coast Guard. Locals and state officials are calling unresponsiveness "chaotic".

O The primary doomsday oil disaster information (collapse of wellhead, disintegration of the sea floor, quantity of oil) is coming from BP, the Obama Administration and anonymous parties on the Internet and claimed BP employees and contractors who appear to be leaking details and science about the ominous nature of the post-explosion Deepwater Horizon site. The President has not used a major nationwide address from the Oval Office to clarify or corroborate all of these details but allows the (planted?) rumors to circulate unchallenged.

O A horrible event is unfolding in the natural world -- however, for a class of individuals, and an industry (and an industry's lackeys in government) who have never been concerned for the ecology or survival of the Natural World if it stands in the way of profiteering and long-term Oligarchic plans (globalization, regional rule, social engineering, planned wars, imperialism, financial control, etcetera) -- I see nothing that assures me that this destruction is accidental.

I admit I am someone who did not believe the official 9/11 narrative from the first day when the news shows displayed tidy photos of the 19 suspected hijackers. (My reasoning on Sept. 11, 2001: If the Authorities knew who these "hijackers" were and their plans, how were they allowed to move freely without being tailed -- to the point of knowing it was them on the day of the 9/11 crime? Very suspicious, in my view.)

However, I have been 'buying' all the images and unofficial and official information about this BP Disaster.

But when I awoke in the night with an alternate frame of mind, it did make me wonder: What do I really know accept for what I am being allowed to be exposed to? Is this an engineered event, or an event occurring and quickly being used as the centerpiece of another plan that requires a "disaster" or New Pearl Harbor in order to be implemented?

What have we lost?

Around 1730, "a ten-square-mile section of deciduous hardwoods in eastern North America might have maintained 5 black bears, 2 or 3 catamounts [cougar or lynx], and 1 to 3 gray wolves, as well as 2 elk, 30 red foxes, 400 deer, 200 turkeys, and up to 20,000 squirrels." [pg. 19, Chapter 1 'Into the Wilderness' of "War on the Run: The Epic Story of Robert Rogers and the Conquest of America's First Frontier" by John F. Ross]

The wilderness that was to become the U.S.A. contained marvels long ago removed and forgotten: "Cohas Brook, its banks lined with magnificent specimens of arrow-straight white pine (cohas in Algonquin), some towering 250 feet and stretching eight feet across. The [British] Crown had laid claim to these trees for the masts and spars of its world-class Royal Navy...When a gust of wind passed through these cathedral groves as yet untouched by ax, the canopies shook and sighed like the murmur of distant seas." [pg. 18, "War on the Run"]

Author of "War on the Run" John F. Ross describes the way early colonists dealt with the idea and reality of wilderness. Juxtaposed with the descriptions of Eastcoast rivers teaming with fish and salmon, are descriptions of the colonists' attitudes. For instance, the Puritans considered the pristine eastcoast forests the dwelling place of "Satan and his fallen angels".

The Puritans' myth-based notion seems to have colored the way we Americans have dealt with our 'wilderness' areas for the duration of our presence here. Those stories of colonists who lived at the western edges of the colonies surprised and shocked those living along the the eastern coastline, inspiring fear and dread.

Did the colonists embrace this wilderness? No. Much indicates they only feared it -- with a fear both existential and religious. It appears the overall approach adopted maintained the goal of totally, permanently taming and dominating the Natural landscape of North America.

[Taking steps in conservation were only considered once a system was devised to have that conservation system serve as a land leasing system at the beck-and-call of mining interests and cattle (meat-eating) interests. That's a history I would like to read next.]

Living with/in the wilderness wasn't an option as a matter of policy. Or as a matter of Western history.

The colonists who came to populate the North American continent came from a Europe that had lost its natural landscapes centuries before. "No other man [besides Rogers] could imagine growing up in a true wilderness: For the most part, the frontier had disappeared from Europe by about 1400, except for relatively small areas in northern Scotland, Scandinavia, and Russia, with a few pockets in Germany and Sicily. No human-eating animals roamed there, except occasional wolf packs in the central and southern continent, and by the eighteenth century, even those only rarely....This [North American frontier] world blurred the line between savagery and civilization, perhaps the very difference between human beings and beasts --men skinned animals and scalped their enemies or were themselves eaten or scalped. This was no long-tamed forest in England, rich with folktales about fairies and Robin Hood's merry band, but a geography dark, unknown, and endless, capable of devouring those who ventured into it." [pg. 4, "War on the Run"]

And what is the point of bringing up this fearful Western European attitude now? This is the point: The BP Toxic Failure in the Gulf of Mexico-Caribbean Ocean Basin and Gulfstream is a continuation (and possibly a culmination) of this Western Culture viewpoint that Europeans are entitled to do anything they please to the Natural World. They interpret their role as despoiler of Nature as good in a relationship where Nature is bad and Dominion is good. Whether it is expressed by mountaintop removal, or drilling down deep passed normal oil and gas deposits into the "abiotic oil" deposits, these decisions and actions are embraced as justified. Indeed, when our society starts calling the BP Deepwater Horizon Well Pollution by the name "The Gulf Spill", we get an inkling of the attitude that -- if there is a manmade disaster that interfaces with the Natural World, the fault rests with Nature because Nature is evil. The cold, mysterious, unknown ocean depths where no man can go indicates that the Gulf did it!

Those who are safety-minded can move to regulate (or try to regulate) these polluting industries, but does that come close to changing the cultural viewpoint behind the repeated destruction and sense of entitlement to pollute and destroy the Earth?

The following quote gives an idea of what this attitude has rendered. And the adjoining paragraph illustrates the struggle to create ways to continue to work WITHIN this anti-Nature attitude; even the proposed solution is about the best way to exploit forests--

"Humans have consumed 60 percent of natural forests worldwide and over 95 percent in the US.[4][5]

"...It's possible for us to take what we need from forests without destroying whole ecosystems in the process. But it requires thinking about all forest benefits over the long term, rather than the easiest to exploit over the short term. Preserving all remaining natural forests, while employing responsible, selective logging practices in designated forests, would provide necessary forest products, jobs and stimulation of local economies, while protecting the ecosystems that keep us alive. "
http://www.truth-out.org/forest-biomass-forest-use-or-forest-abuse56935

Questions that can be asked at this point:

o After Western Man has freely exploited the Natural World to the point of collapse of the Natural World, at what point does Western Man admit his dominionist exploitation does not work?

o As a matter of practicality, must we finally acknowledge that the Natural World is composed of Organic Entities that must be respected singly and also respected as components of larger Organic Entities?

Here's the suggestion:

It can be called

The No Advertising Party.

OR

The No Propaganda Party.

All members and all candidates will be dedicated to NOT spending any money outside fees for qualifying for the ballot, PRINTING ballot statements of their platform, having a phone for inquiries and business, postage or computer server for necessary communication, and possibly transportation and per diem to access interviews, debates and meetings for local, regional and national offices.

All donations for the above costs will be accepted from individuals only.

NO advertising.
NO tv, radio, print ads.
NO mailers.
NO signs.
NO campaign donations from corporations, groups, or associations.

THIS PARTY COULD BE EXCELLENTLY FUNDED BY THE RATE OF CONTRIBUTIONS MADE IN THE PAST BY THOSE DEM & REP VOTERS WHOSE POCKETS HAVE BEEN PICKED BY THE DEM & REP CORPORATE PUPPET PARTIES.

This would simplify the voters' task of weeding through candidates. No more burden from trying to figure out which campaign ads are lying and which are honest, no more trying to figure out which candidate is a bagman/bagwoman for the corporate despotism.

In short, the voter never has to read a campaign ad again. The voter can just understand that all ads are the tools of the broken corporate-stranglehold system and that system's puppet candidates and that those who campaign on the corporate dime are automatically suspect.

Instead of bothering with time-wasting ads, the voter can read the ballot statements of the No Propaganda Party.

If controlling pollution were the real goal, wouldn't the authorities first crack down on extreme polluters like these oil spillers? The amount of volatile and deadly gasses evaporating into the atmosphere from the BP geyser has probably increased greenhouse gasses more than consumers might ever make by running their air conditioners in a heat wave. And the nation's biggest consumer of petroleum is the Military, but will Cap & Trade apply to the Pentagon?

Then, there is our old non-friend Goldman Sachs again behind the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX).

Here are some articles to sort through about the Carbon Trading shenanigans, containing information that we never get from Gore or Obama when they speechify.

A warning on carbon trading (with some interesting charts):

[excerpt]CARBON CREDITS OR TOXIC DEBTS?
Carbon credits have become such a profitable commodity that market speculators – hedge funds, banks and pension funds – have enthusiastically bought into them. Traders buy and sell credits issued by both the UN and EU schemes. For trading purposes, one allowance or Certified Emission Reduction
(CER) is equivalent to one ton of CO2 emissions.

These credits can be sold privately or on the international market. Louis Redshaw, head of environmental markets at Barclays Capital predicts that ‘carbon will be the world’s biggest commodity market – and it could become the world’s biggest market overall.’

But that was before the recession. A global fall-off in manufacturing means that companies are producing far less carbon. In recent months, companies in this position have dumped their credits on the market. This has not only provided heavily polluting firms with funds to plug gaps in their balance sheets but has also pushed down prices. Carbon has now dropped to such a level it’s cheaper to burn polluting fossil fuels and buy up credits than find ways of reducing emissions.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1188937/The-great-carbon...

[end excerpt]
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And what better way to get most Americans to turn away in disgust from the data on carbon trading not being a failsafe solution? Have that stinker Glenn Beck break the story! Brilliant.

http://www.examiner.com/x-14143-Orange-County-Conservative-Examiner~y201...

http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/9629

[excerpt]

Good news to know that the truth will always out—even when you’re Barack Obama.

“Obama Years Ago Helped Fund Carbon Program He Is Now Pushing Through Congress” is a FOXNews story by Ed Barnes. In short, “While on the board of a Chicago-based charity, Barack Obama helped fund a carbon trading exchange that will likely play a critical role in the cap-and-trade carbon reduction program he is now trying to push through Congress as president.”

The charity was the Joyce Foundation on whose board of directors Obama served and which gave nearly $1.1 million in two separate grants that were “instrumental in developing and launching the privately-owned Chicago Climate Exchange, which now calls itself “North America’s only cap and trade system for all six greenhouse gases, with global affiliates and projects worldwide.”

And that’s only the beginning of this tawdry tale, Mr. Barnes.

The “privately-owned” Chicago Climate Exchange is heavily influenced by Obama cohorts Al Gore and Maurice Strong.

For years now Strong and Gore have been cashing in on that lucrative cottage industry known as man-made global warming.

Strong is on the board of directors of the Chicago Climate Exchange, Wikipedia-described as “the world’s first and North America’s only legally binding greenhouse gas emission registry reduction system for emission sources and offset projects in North America and Brazil.”

Gore, self-proclaimed Patron Saint of the Environment, buys his carbon off-sets from himself—the Generation Investment Management LLP, “an independent, private, owner-managed partnership established in 2004 with offices in London and Washington, D.C., of which he is both chairman and founding partner. The Generation Investment Management business has considerable influence over the major carbon credit trading firms that currently exist, including the Chicago Climate Exchange.

Strong, the silent partner, is a man whose name often draws a blank on the Washington cocktail circuit. Even though a former Secretary General of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (the much hyped Rio Earth Summit) and Under-Secretary General of the United Nations in the days of an Oil-for-Food beleaguered Kofi Annan, the Canadian born Strong is little known in the United States. That’s because he spends most of his time in China where he he has been working to make the communist country the world’s next superpower. The nondescript Strong, nonetheless is the big cheese in the underworld of climate change and is one of the main architects of the failing Kyoto Protocol.

Full credit for the expose on the business partnership of Strong and Gore in the cap-and-trade reduction scheme should go to the investigative acumen of the Executive Intelligence Review (EIR).

The tawdry tale of the top two global warming gurus in the business world goes all the way back to Earth Day, April 17, 1995 when the future author of “An Inconvenient Truth” travelled to Fall River, Massachusetts, to deliver a green sermon at the headquarters of Molten Metal Technology Inc. (MMTI). MMTI was a firm that proclaimed to have invented a process for recycling metals from waste. Gore praised the Molten Metal firm as a pioneer in the kind of innovative technology that can save the environment, and make money for investors at the same time.

“Gore left a few facts out of his speech that day,” wrote EIR. “First, the firm was run by Strong and a group of Gore intimates, including Peter Knight, the firm’s registered lobbyist, and Gore’s former top Senate aide.”

(Fast-forward to the present day and ask yourself why it is that every time someone picks up another Senate rock, another serpent comes slithering out).

“Second, the company had received more than $25 million in U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) research and development grants, but had failed to prove that the technology worked on a commercial scale. The company would go on to receive another $8 million in federal taxpayers’ cash, at that point, its only source of revenue.

“With Al Gore’s Earth Day as a Wall Street calling card, Molten Metal’s stock value soared to $35 a share, a range it maintained through October 1996. But along the way, DOE scientists had balked at further funding. When in March 1996, corporate officers concluded that the federal cash cow was about to run dry, they took action: Between that date and October 1996, seven corporate officers—including Maurice strong—sold off $15.3 million in personal shares in the company, at top market value. On Oct. 20, 1996—a Sunday—the company issued a press release, announcing for the first time, that DOE funding would be vastly scaled back, and reported the bad news on a conference call with stockbrokers.

“On Monday, the stock plunged by 49%, soon landing at $5 a share. By early 1997, furious stockholders had filed a class action suit against the company and its directors. Ironically, one of the class action lawyers had tangled with Maurice strong in another insider trading case, involving a Swiss company called AZL Resources, chaired by Strong, who was also a lead shareholder. The AZL case closely mirrored Molten Metal, and in the end, Strong and the other AZL partners agreed to pay $5 million to dodge a jury verdict, when eyewitness evidence surfaced of Strong’s role in scamming the value of the company stock up into the stratosphere, before selling it off.

In 1997, Strong went on to accept from Tongsun Park, who was found guilty of illegally acting as an Iraqi agent, $1 million from Saddam Hussein, which was invested in Cordex Petroleum Inc., a company he owned with his son, Fred.

These are the leaders in the Man-made Global Warming Movement, who three years later were to be funded by the man who was to become President of the United States of America.

If we follow the time line on where Obama was during the funding of the Chicago Climate Exchange, he was still a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School teaching constitutional law, with his law license becoming inactive a year later in 2002.

It may be interesting to note that the Chicago Climate Exchange in spite of its hype, is a veritable rat’s nest of cronyism. The largest shareholder in the Exchange is Goldman Sachs. Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley is its honorary chairman, The Joyce Foundation, which funded the Exchange also funded money for John Ayers’ Chicago School Initiatives. John is the brother of William Ayers.

What a flap when it was discovered that the senator from Chicago had nursed on Saul Alinsky’s milk, had his political career launched at a coffee party held by domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, and sat for 20 years, uncomplaining in front of the “God-dam-America pulpit of resentment-challenged Jeremiah Wright.

Folk were naturally outraged that the empty suit who would go on to become TOTUS was spawned from such anti-American activism.

But the media should have been hollering, “Stop Thief!” instead.

The same Chicago Climate Exchange promoting public rip-off was funded by Obama before he was POTUS.

Even as man-made global warming is being exposed as a money-generating hoax, Obama is working feverishly to push the controversial cap-and-trade carbon reduction scheme through Congress.

Obama was never the character he created for himself in the fairy-tale version in “Dreams of My Father”. He’s the agent of Change and Hope for cohorts making money down at the Chicago Climate Exchange.
...
[end excerpt]

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And these Oligarchs (Garks for short) are good at this game. In this Financial Times article, they describe how ICE deals in Petroleum but is expanding into emissions trading. In passing, the writer mentions that the goal of emissions trading is to reduce emissions. A person can't help doing a 'double take'! With all these Exchanges forming, it looks like they are hunkering down for a long profitable haul.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b15e15d0-542f-11df-b75d-00144feab49a.html

[excerpt]

ICE snaps up Climate Exchange for £395m
By Jeremy Grant in London and Hal Weitzman in Phoenix

Published: April 30 2010 09:51 | Last updated: May 1 2010 03:38

Climate Exchange (CLE), the UK-listed operator of US and European carbon emissions trading platforms, was on Friday set to be snapped up by IntercontinentalExchange (ICE) after its board recommended a cash offer from the US exchange operator valuing the group at £395m ($604m).

The deal marks a bold move by Atlanta-based ICE, into emissions trading after a string of acquisitions that have built the business into one of the world’s largest energy and commodity trading business.

EDITOR’S CHOICE
FT Trading Room - Apr-12.Climate Exchange moves into the black - Mar-13..ICE’s last strike on a London business was in 2001, when it bought the International Petroleum Exchange, home to world trading in Brent crude oil.

The deal makes sense for both the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) – the US unit of Climate Exchange – and ICE, which have become increasingly close in recent years. ICE last year took a 4.8 per cent stake in CLE, whose chairman, Richard Sandor, sits on ICE’s board. ICE has also been providing clearing and execution services for CCX.

Chris Allen, analyst at Ticonderoga Securities, said: “Given that the future of emissions trading is dependent on new laws to reduce emissions trading, which look a few years away, this is clearly a long-term bet for ICE.

“Although it is hard to define the potential size of the emissions market longer term, we believe that it clearly represents a long-term growth opportunity and is a market that should provide long-term synergies with ICE’s core energy platform,” he said....

Climate Exchange has three main businesses: European Climate Ex-change, which trades certificates for mandatory European Emissions Trading Scheme; Chicago Climate Exchange, which operates the world’s first voluntary cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gas emissions reductions; and the Chicago Climate Futures Exchange, a regulated exchange in the US for environmental futures contracts.

CCX was founded in 2001 by Richard Sandor, a former economist at the Chicago Board of Trade credited with pioneering the cap-and-trade business in the US and later abroad.

Jeff Sprecher, ICE chief executive and founder, said: “The combination of Climate Exchange’s emissions markets and ICE’s futures and OTC energy markets is an important and logical strategic combination.”
[end excerpt]

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Here are some more information wells to dip down into and sort through:

Carbon Monetization: The Insiders
http://www.appinsys.com/GlobalWarming/CarbonMonetization.htm

Europe's Carbon Mafia and Ours [The stuff about Europe raiding scammers is interesting]
http://www.thecypresstimes.com/article/Columnists/A_Time_For_Choosing/MO...

Carbon Connections [How they benefit the Forestry industry]
http://www.forest2market.com/f2m/us/f2m1/free/forest2mill-archive/story/...

From a lawyer's site--
http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=e25977e9-66a3-4e4a-8f6d-2a...

[excerpt]

...Why discuss this now?

In fact, there are compelling reasons. First is a concern about criminal activity already taking place. Markets for carbon emission allowances and carbon offsets are up and running, including in the European Union and in the United States through the Chicago Climate Exchange and the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, among others. Many carbon transactions are also occurring over-the-counter outside any exchange. Globally, the carbon market is estimated to be worth well over one hundred billion dollars. Individual transactions often involve very large sums, and experience teaches that some level of fraud seems naturally to follow such large transactions. The newness of the markets and novelty of their subject matter make them especially susceptible to fraudulent schemes. While it is true that the voluntary nature of the markets in the U.S. means that legal obligations are contractual rather than based on statutes or regulations, the lack of government regulatory oversight can only increase the opportunity for those looking to make a quick fortune on an easy scam. Carbon market oversight mechanisms contained in pending legislation will be delayed as long as the legislation remains stalled. The experience of the European Union, which established a carbon trading market in 2004 that reportedly has been subjected to fraud, false statements and the involvement of organized crime, confirms the need to be alert to white collar crime. Clients can be victimized, and white collar lawyers should be counseling due care in entering carbon transactions.

Second is a potential gulf between theory and practice. In theory, a cap and trade program, in which carbon emission allowances and carbon credits are traded in a market, allows costs to be shifted to those that can achieve reductions in carbon dioxide emissions most cheaply, and thus is an efficient way to fight global warming. In practice, however, fraud and corruption can undermine the effectiveness of this approach. Again, the experience of the European Union serves as a caution, with many reports of “fraud,” “scams” and “profiteering.” The selection of approaches in the U.S. to combat climate change, and the fashioning of the details of those approaches, should be informed by these potential problems of implementation. Otherwise, policy choices may fall far short of objectives. The white collar bar can supply insights and experience needed to grapple with these very practical but fundamental issues.

Third is the scope of potential future criminal activity. Because it is perceived as the most costeffective alternative, there is still broad support for cap and trade systems relative to alternative systems for reducing greenhouse gases. Adoption of federal legislation or regulations mandating such a system would greatly expand the national and global markets for trading carbon allowances and carbon credits. The financial crisis and continuing recession demonstrate how even longstanding and long-regulated financial markets can be manipulated and are not sufficiently self-regulating to prevent near-catastrophic economic consequences. The nonprofit organization, Friends of the Earth, calls carbon trading “the new subprime.” What sort of investment strategies, financial instruments and counterparties can we expect in the carbon market? What new risk models, derivatives and trading mechanisms will we see? It is critical that legislators and regulators design the carbon market, and fashion adequate and effective oversight at the outset for the new market, to protect the public and our clients in the future.

[end excerpt]
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Australia puts carbon trading scheme on hold--
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/apr/27/australia-carbon-tradi...

"Politics should be the wise distribution, maintenance, and exercise of power."
----spoken by Assistant District Attorney character (played by Robert Redford) in the movie "Legal Eagles", screenplay by Jim Cash and Jack Epps, Jr., based on a story by Ivan Reitman and Jim Cash and Jack Epps, Jr.

Yes, politics lives in all its forms. Whether pursued creatively through personal actions as appears to be the intent of the character above played by Redford, or whether painfully experienced by most of us everyday folks via this definition:

politics, n.

7. factional scheming within a group; as, office politics.

In between are the attempts to concretize the word to mean the way it is and how it must be, no matter how fluid it actually displays itself to be:

1. the science and art of political government
...
3. political affairs
4. the conducting of or participation in political affairs, often as a profession
5. political methods, tactics, etc.
6. political opinions, principles, or party connections

And here are a few more definitions--

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=1006032600327
Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and election funds from the rich by promising to protect each from other.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/netdict/politics
The total compex of relations between people living in society.
And--
...policies. [As in, perhaps, your policies are your politics in action?]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to behavior within civil governments, but politics has been observed in other group interactions, including corporate, academic, and religious institutions. It consists of "social relations involving authority or power"[1] and refers to the regulation of a political unit,[2] and to the methods and tactics used to formulate and apply policy.[3]

---------------------------------------

Since I've no formal education in political science, I'll use this as a spot to explore.

AND, reply as I can to Crankbait's latest attempt to...to...to do whatever it is Crank is attempting to do. Is that, perhaps, cut bait and fish with it?

So first a look at The Body Politic. And then a reply to Crank.