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This Just In: McCain’s Experience Picks Hopeful Veep, Thus Countering Obama’s Hopeful Selection of Experienced Veep

August 29, 2008 | 5 Comments

Just when I thought I could take a breather from the shallow end of mainstream politics, up steps Grandpa McCain with his best imitation of the dirty old man with his selection of Sarah Palin as his vice presidential nominee. Come on, did you see how creepy McCain looked while lurking about the podium while Palin tried to speak? Watch it, Johnny-boy, because Sarah’s hubby races snowmobiles. But, then again, with an ice-cold wife like Cindy, Johnny’s certainly used to getting his ass kicked around.

McCain’s selection of Palin, however, could certainly be the pinprick to the Obama hope balloon that the Republicans – and the Clinton’s – have been looking for. And he’s delivered it before all those adoring Obama fans even had time to wipe the running eyeliner off their cheeks from last night’s tears of elation. Oh, the beauty of…of… of… oh yeah, hope. Whatever.

I ran into a staunch Democrat this morning while picking up my morning newspapers and, after uttering the obligatory “it was great” mantra with that far away look in his eyes that seemed to be searching for some proof – any proof! – for his feelings, he came forward with this whispered caveat: “But why did Obama soft-pedal his critique of Bush/Cheney?”

The answer was simple. Because Obama’s Democratic Party and, in many cases Obama himself (FISA, Patriot Act reauthorization, Iraq War funding, etc.) did NOTHING to stop Bush/Cheney. And they know it. It’s the modern Democratic Party dilemma of being terminally disqualified at election season based on its own legislative season inanities. Remember the mid-term election of 2006, for example, when the Democrats told us that with control of both houses of Congress they’d be able to stymie that twin tower of bastardism, Bush/Cheney? And how, exactly, did that work out for us? Cue Emily Latela and one more, big “never mind” to the nation.

Sadly, the Democrats seem to be all about the next, great rainbow chase over the horizon. They all but sit on their hands during the Republican rainy seasons (and, let’s face it, it’s been pouring for eight years), roll out their next, great rainbow candidates (Gore! Kerry! Obama!) in the election seasons, and then send their faithful and ever-forgiving followers out searching for that elusive pot of gold. For Democrats, the bullshit of election season continues to hijack their ever-so-meager attempts at accomplishment during legislative season. And around and around they go.

Repugnant as it is, when the smarmy Republicans want a world war, by golly, they start one. Worse, they let it linger and fester and drain us all until…well…they find a new one! Hey, it’s not as if the Democrats – at least the ELECTED Democrats – are going to stop them.

But wait. This was supposed to be about Sarah Palin (cue sound of screeching halt).

Let’s face it, Grandpa McCain hit the trusty “refresh” key with his choice of Palin. Oh sure, it all amounts to one more warm piss in the kiddie pool of a campaign season stuck in the shallow end (nothing new there), but, if shallowness shall rule (hope, anyone?), McCain just upped the ante by playing his Palin card.

Let’s recap the game as it’s now being played out seemingly without parental approval: Obama has hope. McCain has experience. Biden has experience. Palin has hope.

Oh fuck, checkmate.

But, in this case, we’re the losers. Yeah, “we”, as in: we, the people. Because the more the two corporate parties are hell-bent on dragging us down this moronic road of nothing but clichés, the more the great spectacle of nothing in particular distracts us all from a whole lot of important matters. You know, those “silly” and “distracting” things like war, peace, health care, global warming and the like.

By now, we all know why McCain picked Palin: She’s young, she’s a woman, she’s an outsider and she’s conservative. In other words, she’s “better” than Hillary Clinton when it comes to rule number one in the not-so-great game of presidential politics: Superficial appeal is all that matters.

McCain and the Republicans are all but wetting themselves with their hopes that the Democrats will begin attacking Palin for (what?) being young, energetic, an outsider and – oh no, here comes that word again – hopeful. Hmm, all that seems to sound familiar. Oh yeah, that’s all sooooo Obama.

Better yet, McCain and the Republicans are hoping beyond hope that the Obama faithful childish trashing of Palin will only further irk the Hillary crowd, which as you’ll recall, doesn’t just include women but also the working class that Palin and her husband just happen to come from.

Oh my, we are, indeed, a nation stuck in the shallow end of what should be a very large political pool. Sooner or later the lifeguards have got to declare that it’s “adult swim time,” no?

The Revolution Will Not Be Blogged

August 27, 2008 | 11 Comments

The so-called blogging revolution is dead. Yep, stick a fork in it. And it died in Denver in the lap of the Democratic Party – purring happily and doing nothing at its death but holding a mini-cam in its paws so as to document its last, pathetic moments.

Let’s face it: Blogging is the new opiate of the current activist generations. Instead of hitting the streets, disrupting the conventions, confronting the power elites or penning their own Port Heron statements, the new blogger generation is busy taking photos of those taking photos of them while they all race to the nearest wireless connection to be the first to upload the photos of nothing really in particular. But they were there! And they’ve got the photos to prove it, damn it.

Quick, someone put out the memo: Blogging is NOT activism. Because simply telling someone about something doesn’t mean you did anything about it – no matter how fast your Internet connection or your prowess with YouTube is.

Take, for example, the bloggers and the current Democratic Convention. If only half of those filling the bloggers’ official home in Denver – known as the “Big Tent” – put down their cameras, their Blackberries, their laptops, and their cutesy “look where I am!” commentaries long enough to actually join in the protests and the activism going on under their noses, the Democratic Party might be forced to actually address some important issues. You know, things like the war (remember that?), health care, global warming, the housing crisis, and – oh yeah – jobs.

Instead, the bloggers (for the most part – because there are some exceptions) are ego-bent on making the story in Denver more like a remake of a Chevy Chase vacation flick than a chance to actually provide some insight into the struggles, the challenges, the power, the privilege and the activist possibilities of it all.

While digesting more coverage of the convention than I thought I could stomach, I’ve been particularly struck by the coverage of the protests outside. Specifically, I’ve noticed how few protesters there are compared to how many people are standing around documenting the protests. Sadly, somewhere along the line, documenting attempts at change became “cooler” than actually risking something and participating in change.

The Howard Dean-led Democratic National Committee took it all one-step further, too: They made the blogs fight for the “one pass per state” to come into the convention as “official” participants. And so, like little fish fighting for the hook, they trampled upon each other and lunged for the almighty bite of – say what? – an inside ticket. Ah, bait ‘em with “access,” bring ‘em in with a ticket and then own ‘em. Because, once inside, they know who’s buttering their bread.

The result, of course, has been one gooey-eyed report after another from the “anointed bloggers,” gushing continuously about “the history,” “the enthusiasm,” “the celebrities” (oh-my-God, is that Walter Mondale?) and the absolute “importance” of it all – with photos and video!!!! Mission accomplished, Mr. Dean, the blogger lapdogs have been neutered.

It’s more than sad to think that the more media – mainstream and citizen – that there is at this convention has equated to less meaningful coverage. I mean, how much have you read about the rallies, the protests or the issues? Instead, we know more than we’d ever want to know about the mood, the cheers, the celebrities (is that Susan Sarandon?) and how “exhausting” it all is for the poor, insider bloggers.

For the most part, blogging has become about witnessing. And the more people are merely witnessing – especially with tickets to the inside – the less people are “doing.” Indeed, “instant” messaging has replaced “effective” messaging.

Ding-dong, the blogging revolution is dead.

Goodnight Denver. Wake Me When It’s Over.

August 25, 2008 | 5 Comments

Repeat after me: We’re a long, long way from Plato. Or Socrates. Or any other great, Greek thinker on democracy. Because, baby, today it’s all about style, soundbites, sophomoric jabs, mind-boggling contradictions and – oh yeah – one, big spectacle intended to do one and only one thing: Negate substance.

I’m speaking, of course, of the political circus that is now capturing America’s post-Olympic attention: The Democratic National Convention. Quick, before it ends: Feel the nothingness of it all.

Conventions, in case you forgot, used to be about picking a candidate, about ironing out the party’s platform and about hashing and re-hashing the differences between the factions. But that is all sooooo yesterday. Because today’s political conventions are about anything but what they used to be about.

Debates have been replaced with pom-poms. Votes have been replaced with soft-focused documentaries of the long ago “chosen one.” And policy debates have been kicked outside behind 10-foot fences, cops in riot gear and the threat of Guantanamo-like accommodations for anyone who dares to spoil “the show.”

But wait. What about the people? One, two, three: Fuck the people.

Because, you idiot, this is the political playground of the rich and famous who are rich and famous enough to make you think that their rich and famousness are still powerful enough to make you sit in awe as they parade around a stage sponsored by Coke AND Pepsi while still pretending that they care. In other words: Ass, meet face. And enjoy the week.

The biggest irony in the very non-democratic show that is taking place in Denver this week is the way the Democratic Party hierarchy has managed to completely co-opt the liberal blogosphere. Frankly, it’s nothing short of pure genius how the Dean-led DNC held up a cookie for the oh-so-eager liberal blogs, asked them to sit, and then – realizing they had their full attention — offered the most obedient blog from each state a “free blogging pass” to the stinky spectacle that is about as spontaneous as a Wayne Newton concert. Good boys and girls. Now roll over, start drooling, and, better yet, send home posts about the pure spectacle of it all. Yawn.

Here in Vermont, where all things by Vermonters are considered to be next to holiness despite the inanity of most of it (I mean, come on, we still think Rusty DeWees is funny and Bernie Sanders is a socialist), the great anointed blog by the DNC to “cover” its convention is the Green Mountain Daily blog. You know, the folks who do little but steal from the mainstream AND alternative media but then pout until the cows come home for not being recognized for their ability to steal from the same sources they stole from. Oh yeah, I forgot: Have blog, assume you’re a media God.

But this is “their moment,” a chance to have an “official pass” and prove that their coverage is oh-so needed to provide the people with a view of the spectacle that they would otherwise not be getting (did they not know that there was 24/7 coverage on numerous channels?).

Soooo, let’s check in on their coverage. Oh wait, cut, cut, cut. Because it seems like they’re all just “tired.” Odum, J.D, and Avard of GMD, for example, all made the their first posting all about how early they had to get up, how tired they were, and how the travel was exhausting. Avard, however, did manage enough coffee to provide us with this starry-eyed nugget:

…I was sitting outside, going through my Big Tent “goodie bag,” I saw George Stephanopolous. We made eye-contact, nodded to each other, and he went in the bookstore.

Oh please, tell me more. And let the blogging revolution begin!

But, if you want to dig deeper into the Vermont blogging coverage, you can find Philip Baruth of both the Vermont Daily Briefing and the Free Press telling us all about his stepping into cat puke and making damn sure we all knew about his political persuasions by posting his favorite photo of him staring lovingly into the eyes of Obama with a look that says little more than “how many ways can I bend over for you?”

Oh my, I remember when the blogs were supposed to be about the new media revolution. But, I guess, that was so yesterday. Before, for example, the DNC had blogger lapdogs willing to sit and kiss ass for official passes.

What can I say? I miss 1968. You know, back when a protest meant a protest. And when the “alternative media” still meant the alternative media, not a bunch of YouTube and blogging whores who think that if they’re the first to report that Hillary Clinton said “good things” about Obama that they’ll win a chest scratch and – perhaps, depending on their behavior – another invite in 2012.

It’s going to be a long week if you think democracy is happening in Denver. It’s as staged as staged can possibly be. In the end, it will be nothing short of the most massive, unending documentation of nothing other than the coronation of Barack Obama that democracy has seen since – oh – the most massive, unending documentation of nothing other than the coronation of John Kerry. But America loves spectacles as much as it loves suckers. And, together, it makes a convention.

Personally, I’d rather read Plato and weep.

Food Irradiation: Here We Go Again

August 22, 2008 | 6 Comments

Oh my. I was trying to mind my own business. Really. In fact, I was simply camping out with my daughter last night when I turned on my ever-present radio – much to her chagrin – and heard the news report: “The FDA will soon be allowing the irradiation of spinach and iceberg lettuce in order to combat E.coli….”

For those who don’t know, I was public enemy number one to the nuclear irradiation industry for more than a decade until I decided I needed to try and get a life. And while the jury is still out on the “getting a life” thing, I did manage to step away from the issue at a time when I thought we had thoroughly and completely kicked some butt. Besides, I was burnt out and I had this notion that in order to truly defeat the nonsense of irradiation, pesticides and genetically modified foods we – as a culture – needed to re-localize and re-ground our connection to the our food supply so as to make these corporate-driven gimmicks seem as silly and toxic as they are. And, if you’re gonna preach it, you better start practicing it, too. (Hmm, I guess that local food thing caught on, huh? But that’s another story…).

So when I finally got a moment or two to sit at my desk this afternoon and contemplate a few words about irradiation I quickly realized all of my old irradiation documents were no longer available to me in electronic form. All my irradiation records and archives – remember, this is pre-2000, my friends – are literally stored in eight four-drawer files cabinets in my horse barn. And I’m tickled to report that the cabinets are routinely used by my horses who find them irresistable to rub against so as to scratch that itch. Perfect.

Thus, I did what every modern fool does: I Googled my work. And up came loads of documents, including the cover article below that originally appeared in the Boston Phoenix. It’s author, Dan Kennedy, is trying way too hard in my opinion to be cute about it all but, by the end, I think he manages to capture the food irradiation battle of my past. Besides, he used the title “Meat Puppets,” one of my all-time favorite bands. Can’t beat that.

I’m reprinting it below for your reading pleasure. I imagine it will only be the first of what I’m imagining will be many updates on the new push for food irradiation.

A good life is full of many chapters. Here’s one from my past. And I’ve got no regrets. None.

Oh, and one more thing: This one’s for you, Wally.

Meat Puppets

Government regulators, the food industry, and most scientists agree that food irradiation is safe and effective. Michael Colby doesn’t care: he wants it stopped. Is he a hero or a menace?

By Dan Kennedy

FEBRUARY 16, 1998: The first thing you should understand about Michael Colby and his crusade against food irradiation is this: almost no one with any scientific credentials thinks he knows what he’s talking about.

Irradiating food by zapping it with gamma rays, according to its advocates, eliminates all or most of the bacteria that can make people sick. But Colby, irradiation’s most outspoken and arguably most effective opponent, charges that the process introduces cancer-causing toxins and strips food of its nutrients. It’s a stance that the overwhelming majority of scientists insist is both unscientific and wrong. And with something like 9000 Americans dying of food-borne illnesses every year, critics believe that Colby and the organization he heads, Food & Water, are dangerously irresponsible.

“They are seeking to deny choice in the marketplace,” says Christine Bruhn, director of the Center for Consumer Research, at the University of California’s Davis campus. “If any organization wishes to take credit for denying this choice, I think they should also bear the burden for the deaths of people who did not have that choice. I know that’s a strong statement, but I believe that very deeply.”

The second thing you should understand about Colby is that he does have his supporters in the scientific community — lonely dissidents who insist that, in the drive to put irradiated food onto American tables, important questions have gone unanswered. Questions about whether irradiation creates substances known as free radicals that are qualitatively and quantitatively different from the free radicals produced by normal cooking, freeze-drying, and other processing methods. About whether those free radicals can cause chromosomal damage that may be a precursor to cancer. About whether irradiation can change unsaturated fat — so-called good fat — into saturated fat, which can contribute to high blood pressure, heart attacks, and strokes.

At this point, virtually nothing other than Michael Colby — and his in-your-face advertisements and letter-writing campaigns and pickets and threats of boycotts — stands between irradiation and its widespread adoption by the nation’s agribusinesses and food processors. He deserves an enormous amount of credit, his supporters say, even if he’d rather exaggerate and propagandize than work within the system. The goal, after all, is to win, not score debating points.

“What you want to know is, Is Michael Colby a responsible guy? Very,” says Donald Louria, chairman of the department of preventive medicine at New Jersey Medical School, in Newark, and a member of Food & Water’s advisory board. “I think Michael Colby is doing the public a hell of a service, and I don’t care if he goes what I think is a bit too far. I think we owe him a big debt.”

The third thing you should understand is that Colby’s anti-irradiation campaign isn’t so much about science as it is about philosophy, even theology. Colby and his staff of seven are based in tiny Walden, Vermont; he lives with his wife and recently adopted baby daughter at an organic farm down the road. The location is apt. Like Henry David Thoreau in Walden, Colby — a thin, intense 34-year-old in jeans and work boots, with a shock of unruly brown hair and an air of jittery nervous energy — seeks nothing less than a thoroughgoing transformation of society.

As an activist organization, Food & Water needs clearly defined targets. So it has fought the use of recombinant bovine-growth hormone (rBGH), a genetically engineered substance that increases milk yield but that has been linked to possible health problems in both cows and humans. It has also fought the overuse of pesticides. But Colby has a larger agenda: he believes that urban communities must re-establish ties with rural America, that the geographic and psychological distance that separates people from the food they eat must be shrunk. No more McDonald’s, in other words. No more Lean Cuisine.

And like Thoreau, Colby has more than a touch of arrogance and self-righteousness. Not to mention contempt for his critics — both his avowed enemies in the pro-irradiation majority, and fellow activists who are less willing than he to fight the power. The high-profile Center for Science in the Public Interest, for instance, has announced it may withdraw its opposition to irradiation in exchange for a comprehensive cleanup program in slaughterhouses and processing centers. “When it comes to challenging controversial technologies, they’re not going to go head-to-head with corporate America,” says Colby. “They feel much more comfortable going after popcorn in movie theaters or Chinese takeout.” And consumer advocate Carol Tucker Foreman, despite having reservations about irradiation, isn’t even in the fight. In a recent op-ed piece in the New York Times, she ultimately came out in favor of the procedure: “Irradiation will help, but it’s no cure-all.”

Colby sneeringly dismisses the agenda of these mainstream activists as an ineffective combination of lobbying, legislating, and lunch. Michael Colby doesn’t do lunch. And that, he says, is why the food industry regards him as its most dangerous enemy.

“They hate Food & Water,” he says. “They hate us. I’m not going to lunch with them. I’m not having a conference call with them. That’s the difference.”

Indeed, irradiation advocate Michael Doyle, a microbiologist who heads the department of food science and technology at the University of Georgia, says Colby’s grassroots activism has made him the single biggest obstacle to a measure that could result in a safer food supply. Colby likes to posit himself as David doing battle with an uncaring corporate Goliath. But as Doyle points out, Goliath hasn’t shown much interest in fighting. After all, if you’re the head of a meat-packing plant considering irradiation, and your opponent claims that you want to poison kids, what are you going to do? Try to force irradiated products down your customers’ throats? Or sign Food & Water’s pledge sheet promising not to use irradiation? It’s not a difficult decision.

“There have been major companies that have indicated an interest in using food irradiation, and Food & Water would respond with threats, ads in the newspaper. And companies would typically back down and say, ‘Okay, we’re not interested,’ ” says Doyle. “It’s been effective. Food & Water has been the principal group that has stopped the use of food irradiation.”

An MIT professor named Samuel Prescott discovered at the turn of the century that exposing food to gamma rays destroyed dangerous bacteria. But not until the 1960s, when the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved its use for wheat and wheat flour, did the notion of widespread food irradiation get serious consideration. Since then, there have been several wavelets of interest and hundreds of studies, most of which indicate that it’s safe and effective. Irradiation has also been endorsed by groups ranging from the World Health Organization to the American Medical Association, and has been approved in 40 countries. But the practice has never really caught on, mainly because of industry fears that the public won’t buy food that it associates with nuclear radiation — even though, as Colby himself concedes, irradiation does not leave food radioactive in any way.

In 1986 the FDA approved the use of irradiation for spices, fruits, and vegetables. In 1990, responding to an outbreak of salmonella in chicken, the agency added poultry to the list. To date, though, the poultry industry has treated irradiation like it’s — well, radioactive. Today, some spices are irradiated, as are baby-bottle nipples, those little plastic containers that hold cream, and many medical supplies. Because irradiation is so effective at eliminating all or most bacteria from food, hospitals sometimes serve irradiated food to AIDS patients and to others with compromised immune systems, such as people recovering from bone-marrow transplants. Until last year, though, it seemed unlikely that irradiation would spread beyond these limited uses anytime soon.

Then came the Burger King scare, which forced Hudson Foods to recall 25 million pounds of bacteria-tainted beef. The panic gathered force with horror stories of illness and death caused by the spread of E. coli bacteria — especially E. coli O157:H7, a new and potentially deadly strain that’s popped up in everything from apple juice to organic salad. According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, between six million and thirty-three million people in the US become sick from the food they eat every year. All of a sudden, food-safety horror stories were popping up everywhere from the TV magazine shows to the front page of the New York Times.

The crucial boost in this latest round of pro-irradiation interest came last year from Bill Clinton’s $43 million National Food Safety Initiative. Clinton endorsed irradiation, and the FDA responded in December by approving the process for red meat. Donald Thayer, a US Department of Agriculture scientist who is one of the government’s principal experts on the subject, told the Times that the FDA’s decision “would save lots of lives.” Irradiated beef could appear on store shelves by this summer — and if it catches on, some observers say, it could provide the impetus to bring irradiated poultry and other foods to market as well. And though proponents push the notion of “choice,” Colby believes the appearance of irradiated products on supermarket shelves is simply the first step toward the elimination of non-irradiated products.

To encourage consumer acceptance, the food industry is lobbying for a change in labeling requirements that would emphasize irradiation’s safety and play down the nuclear angle. The industry doesn’t like the word irradiation and is trying to promote the term cold pasteurization instead. (Taste problems must be solved as well; to date, the verdict on irradiated beef is mixed, with some saying it makes the meat more tender, and some saying it gives it an unappetizing color and texture.)

As irradiated food has moved closer to market, the opposition has focused its efforts. Perhaps the most prominent of irradiation’s opponents is Colby’s nemesis Michael Jacobson, director of the Center for Science in Public Interest, who rejects Colby’s argument that irradiation renders food unsafe. The real problem, as Jacobson sees it, is that irradiation is being viewed by the meat industry as a quick and easy fix for long-term, systemic problems.

“We don’t like the idea of having dirty food on which bacteria have been killed,” Jacobson says. “We feel that food should be safe and clean. It would be very tempting for the food industry to have very sloppy practices, and then to cover that up with a blast of radiation at the end of the line.”

Unlike Colby, Jacobson would consider supporting irradiation “as a last resort” if it could be shown that government-mandated cleanup efforts would not be enough to eliminate bacterial hazards from the food supply. Colby charges that this is exactly the sort of “yellow light” industry has been seeking from the consumer movement. Jacobson, for his part, faults Food & Water for putting out information about irradiation that doesn’t square with the scientific facts.

“I’ve never seen Michael Colby show a risk assessment, that this is really a significant risk,” Jacobson says. “Eating contaminated poultry is not a speculative risk. It is a known risk. There is a real problem.”

Colby’s critics — Jacobson among them — charge that his opposition is unscientific, but that’s unfair. Though Colby himself has no scientific background, several highly credentialed researchers agree with him.

The scientific argument against irradiation is this: irradiating food destroys bacteria by breaking apart their molecular structure. These molecular bits and pieces, known as “free radicals” (or “radiolytic byproducts”), form new substances, including known carcinogens such as benzene and formaldehyde. Irradiation also drastically reduces the vitamin content of some foods.

Irradiation’s proponents actually concede both of these points. Yet they say the free radicals produced by irradiation are identical to the free radicals created by food-processing methods such as cooking or freeze-drying. (Colby responds that since irradiation is not a substitute for these processes, the final result — food that has been irradiated and cooked — contains more free radicals than it would have otherwise.) In cases where vitamin depletion is serious enough to pose a problem, proponents add, the food can be supplemented with vitamins after being irradiated — as is done now when traditional processing methods reduce vitamin levels.

Not all of the arguments against irradiation are based on science, strictly speaking. Some are speculative, such as Colby’s worry that irradiation could eventually create radiation-resistant bacteria. Some are common-sensical: a number of critics charge that irradiation facilities pose dangers to workers and to the environment.

A layperson has no hope of sorting out the truth. Proponents say that hundreds of studies show irradiation is safe and effective. Opponents charge that the FDA, for reasons that are unclear, found flaws in studies that revealed problems, and has instead focused on a handful of studies that produced the results it wanted.

New Jersey Medical School’s Donald Louria, for instance, says a study conducted in India showed poor children who ate irradiated wheat suffered from chromosome damage, which can lead to cancer. Louria is similarly concerned about irradiation’s tendency to strip vitamins from food. “I’m a current opponent until the proponents agree to do the proper tests, and so far they won’t do them,” says Louria, proposing a simple test on human volunteers that would take a matter of months. “I think the FDA is off-base on this, and they’ve never gone back to review it,” he adds.

George Tritsch, a cancer-research specialist for the New York State Department of Public Health, has testified before a congressional committee that there is “abundant and convincing evidence in the refereed scientific literature” that irradiated food produces cancer- and mutation-causing agents, and can induce dangerously high blood pressure by transforming benign fat into a more dangerous form.

Such arguments elicit exasperated sighs from irradiation’s proponents, who say the process has been shown to be safe in study after study, and that the evidence cited by Louria and Tritsch has been refuted by other, more valid studies.

“Free radicals are always present in a food,” says the University of California’s Christine Bruhn. “The mere presence of a free radical has no significance.”

In the end, though, Bruhn concedes the impossibility of converting irradiation’s foes. “They are correct in that you cannot prove irradiated foods are safe,” she says. “But in reality, you cannot prove anything is safe. You can only prove absence of harm.”

Michael Colby wages his war against irradiation from a converted one-room schoolhouse in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, a spectacularly beautiful place where affluence is juxtaposed with rural poverty of the meanest sort. His small staff ranges from an earnest-looking, L.L. Beanish young woman to a man with a flowing beard and formidable facial piercings.

Food & Water does not go in for subtlety. On the walls are examples of some of the ads Food & Water has taken out in trade journals and local newspapers: THERE’S ONLY ONE THING WORSE THAN SPAM . . . IRRADIATED SPAM, part of a successful campaign aimed at Hormel Foods. THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY HAS A SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEM OF IRRADIATED WASTE. YOU’RE GOING TO EAT IT. And a mock newspaper headline that reads NUCLEAR ACCIDENT AT MEAT PROCESSING PLANT, below which appears: AND YOU THOUGHT E. COLI WAS BAD.

Colby grew up in Ottumwa, Iowa, and spent his summers working on his grandfather’s farm. (Ironically, his father is an office manager for Hormel.) He attended the University of Iowa, but moved to New York City before he graduated in order to play drums with his band, Drunken Boat, named after a Rimbaud poem. He worked for Ralph Nader’s New York Public Interest Research Group. But his career as an activist really began in the late ’80s, when he met Wally Burnstein, an osteopath from New Jersey who founded Food & Water. Colby went to work in Burnstein’s basement, and eventually became executive director of the organization, as well as the husband of Burnstein’s niece Stacey Burnstein. Colby describes Burnstein as a profound influence; he’s written that Burnstein’s death, in 1996, was “the darkest day of my life.”

Colby moved to Vermont seven years ago, in part because his wife wanted to attend graduate school at the University of Vermont, and in part because he wanted to return to the country. Not that he’s been a particularly easy neighbor to get along with. He’s battled with the iconic Ben & Jerry’s over its use of milk from dairies that use pesticides. He’s fought with the giant Cabot dairy, one of the state’s major employers, as part of Food & Water’s ongoing campaign against the use of rBGH. That latter effort earned him the enmity of Bernie Sanders, the state’s popular socialist congressman. (A member of Sanders’s staff said he would not comment on his relationship with Colby.)

Food & Water, Colby claims, has grown into an organization of some 3500 dues-paying members, with a database of more than 100,000 supporters and potential supporters and a budget in excess of $600,000.

All that is prologue to the current battle over irradiation, which looms as the biggest test Colby has yet faced. In 1991, he got an early taste of what’s to come when ABC’s John Stossel, corporate America’s favorite TV journalist, attacked Food & Water’s scientific arguments as “outdated” and “discredited.” Stossel also hammered Burnstein’s credentials (”He’s not a research doctor but an osteopath!”), yet failed to put on camera allies such as Donald Louria and George Tritsch.

After the FDA approved irradiation for red meat last December, major newspapers such as the New York Times and the Boston Globe (beneath the headline GOODNESS FROM GAMMA RAYS) weighed in with ringing endorsements. The media in general, taking their cue from lengthy stories in the Times and the Washington Post, have depicted Colby’s objections to irradiation as unscientific. Amy Poe, who’s studying coverage of food irradiation for the left-leaning media watchdog Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, says virtually all of the press has followed the Times’ lead. “There’s this mentality that believes the truth has to be in the middle, and if you’re taking some extreme position, then you have to be wrong somehow,” Poe says.

Be assured that Michael Colby takes an extreme position. And it can sometimes get a little exasperating. Ask him about his own diet, and he talks about the vegetables and turkeys and chickens his wife raises, and about bartering with neighbors for pigs. “We consume primarily what we grow and raise,” he says. Ask him how his vague but rather expensive-sounding vision of a culture reconnected with the land would appeal to, say, an urban working-class family trying to stretch its food budget, and he replies that he’s sure it wouldn’t hurt people economically, that what they’re eating now is making them sick, and that in any case there are other activists working on urban issues. But the inescapable conclusion is that he believes, as the chronicler of the earlier Walden did: “Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts, of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.” Appealing as that philosophy may be, it is shared by few of Colby’s fellow human beings.

“Somehow we’ve got to block the lurch toward globalization. It does not work for the food supply,” Colby says. “Urban centers like Boston are going to have to figure out ways to support rural areas around them and develop a symbiotic relationship. There are ways to do that. Cities used to consist of tight-knit communities, with small stores and small businesspeople. There was a real sense of community and cohesion, and a respect for things local. That’s been totally obliterated by Wal-Mart, Home Depot, and the rise of industrialized food. These are the things we have to challenge if we’re going to save ourselves.”

You don’t have to adopt Colby’s philosophy to see its value. In a very real sense, for instance, irradiated meat is the apotheosis of the “industrialized food” addiction he rails against. A CBS News poll taken last year showed that 77 percent of Americans don’t want to eat irradiated food. Their objections may be rooted in ignorance, but Colby’s aren’t. There are unanswered questions about the safety of irradiated food. And even if Colby’s theoretical objections seem like an environmentalist’s self-indulgence when compared to the horror of a child’s dying from an E. coli infection, it’s surely wrong for the regulatory-industrial complex to foist this new technology upon us when the full consequences of that decision are still unknown.

The food industry’s plan is to progress incrementally, by persuading the government to ease off on labeling requirements, by insisting to a skeptical public that irradia — er, cold pasteurization is a boon. Colby’s critics charge he wants to eliminate choice, but in fact he’s just trying to prevent one kind of choicelessness from being replaced by another, possibly scarier, one. Perhaps irradiated and non-irradiated products will coexist at the supermarket — at least for a while. But what happens if McDonald’s switches to irradiated meat? That’s a likely scenario, since the fast-food industry, worried about image and liability, has been especially eager to guarantee its products’ safety. Remove Colby from the equation, and pretty soon you wouldn’t be able to eat a Big Mac that hadn’t been doused in gamma rays.

True, Colby doesn’t want you to eat that Big Mac in the first place. But that’s an argument for another time.

The Pollina Campaign (Now & Forever), R.I.P.

August 20, 2008 | 4 Comments

Oh my, it’s nice to see Vermont’s liberal elite finally catch up to the obvious conclusions reached years ago here: Anthony Pollina is a loser. Duh. I mean, how many elections does he have to lose or otherwise foul with his disastrous decision-making before the scarlet “L” is permanently attached to his political being? Well, this is his fourth and, let’s hope, his last.

Pollina, as news reading Vermonters know by now, is in the middle of yet another one of his bizarre political tantrums, whereby he proves that the only “p” that matters to him is the “p” in “Pollina,” not principles. This time Pollina is once again shit-canning his “Mr. Campaign Finance Reform” label to – say what? – obliterate any and all of Vermont’s campaign finance laws. In other words, if he’s going to lose, he’s going to make sure all of Vermont loses, too. Oh boy, that’ll show ‘em!

This latest Pollina mess was created when he made the me, myself and I-based decision to turn his back on his Progressive Party and, instead, run as an “independent” for governor. But, much like he bungled the management of his Vermont Milk Company, Pollina botched this move, too, by failing to note that the fundraising rules were a whole lot different for so-called independents. Specifically, according to the Secretary of State’s interpretation of the rules, independents can raise $1,000 per contributor/per election and major party candidates get to raise $2,000.

Pollina stepped in the campaign finance doo-doo when he began his race for governor as a major party candidate, thus begging for the $2,000 checks, but then dissed that party for a run on his own. But wait. What about the thirty-some-odd folks who ponied up more than $1,000 to his campaign? Send the money back, says the Secretary of State. No way, says Pollina. And let the mess begin.

While Pollina certainly has a legitimate grief that the law as interpreted by the state is unfair to independents, he also should have made sure he knew the rules before playing the game. But that kind of sloppiness is par for the course for Pollina’s political career (quick, name something he’s actually succeeded at…time’s up).

But there are far bigger issues here than Pollina’s latest tantrum. By declaring that the Secretary of State’s interpretation of the rules are not accurate, Pollina is saying that there are no campaign finance rules due to the fact that – buckle your seatbelts, folks – the U.S. Supreme Court threw out Vermont’s campaign finance law and Governor Jim Douglas vetoed the Vermont legislature’s attempts to remedy them.

The result? Pollina thinks anarchy should rule, as in: There are no rules. But the Secretary of State’s office thinks that the previously enacted rules should be enforced, as in: $2,000 contribution limits for major party candidates and $1,000 limits for independents.

The supreme irony in Pollina’s current self-serving position is that he’s taking one, big almighty dump on his previously proclaimed principles by now declaring that there are no rules when it comes to raising political capital. Hmm, let’s think for a second: Whom might that help most? The rich? The powerful? The well connected? Yes. Yes. And yes. But, to Pollina, there’s nothing as easily dispensable as a principle in the path of his quixotic pursuits of (said with frustration and clenched teeth): Just. Winning. One. God. Damned. Race.

So, in other words, if Pollina fails to read the rules before making a decision, to hell with the rules! Worse, if his challenge to those rules means empowering those with all the power already, so be it. Because this is about the big “P”: Pollina, and only Pollina.

Shame on him.

And shame on the Attorney General’s office, too, for repeatedly making public comments that they would need to “receive a complaint” before looking into this matter. You’d think that an official declaration by the Secretary of State’s office would trigger an investigation. Hello? Do you folks ever talk?

But, worse, while speaking with the Attorney General’s office this morning, Assistant Attorney General, Mike McShane, admitted to me that due to the “increased attention” this matter was getting that they may be looking into it “eventually” anyway. In other words, unless the press and the blogs pay enough attention to an opinion issued by the Secretary of State’s office, the Attorney General’s office will ignore it? Give me a break.

So, in order to put an end to the nonsense between these two state agencies, my partner in crime (or, in this instance, my partner in crime prevention), Boots Wardinski, submitted the letter below to the Attorney General’s office. At the time the letter was faxed, I was informed that it – the letter – would be the official “trigger” to an investigation of this matter. Pathetic? Sure. But, oddly enough, necessary as well.

The letter:

August 20, 2008

Mike McShane
Assistant Attorney General
State of Vermont
109 State Street
Montpelier, VT 05609-1001

Dear Mr. McShane,

Please consider this letter an official citizens’ complaint regarding the political fundraising of Anthony Pollina, a publicly declared “independent” candidate for governor of Vermont.

As you know, the Secretary of State’s office has requested that the Pollina campaign return all contributions of more than $1,000 in order to comply with what it considers to be the current law. To date, the Pollina campaign is refusing to return the money.

As concerned citizens of the State of Vermont, we offer this citizens’ complaint regarding the fundraising actions of the Pollina campaign and its apparent disregard for the law as interpreted by the Secretary of State’s office.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Michael Colby & Boots Wardinski

Corn Blogging

August 19, 2008 | 1 Comment

I’m the corn-fed king. I grow corn. I eat corn. I am corny – through and through.

Deal with it.

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Dinner? Corn.

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Lunch? Corn.

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Breakfast? Corn.

–

I like corn. I’m from Iowa. I have to like corn. I worked in cornfields as a kid doing things that I have never understood – “detasseling,” to be precise. I was told that it was about “sex” and I was hooked. Sucker. Well, not really, because the act of detasseling is kind of like the act of de-sexing the corn. Yeah, got you there, didn’t I? Because you didn’t even know that there were male and female rows of corn. Well, there were in the olden days, back before Monsanto made corn the way they wanted corn to be made (read: ready and able to accept bountiful loads of its pesticides and herbicides and largely incapable of reproduction).

Every morning at pre-dawn we would be delivered to a parking lot in the area where we would be loaded onto one of many school busses awaiting our cheap labor and clueless ways. From there, we would drive to one of the endless number of corn fields, unload, and be sent down one mile-long corn row after another to literally pull the tassels off each and every corn plant.

It was hell. Summers in Iowa, in case you didn’t know, are like living in furnace. It’s hot. It’s humid. And the air feels thick enough to be eaten, not breathed.

But there we were, suffocating in a jungle of corn and who knows what kind of toxic mix of the latest and greatest of corn toxins. Up and down the hellishly long rows we would go – all for the minimum wage of the day.

I remember my first day on the job and being sent into the suffocating maze of it all. I quickly fell behind. And then further and further behind. Soon, I didn’t hear the noise of my fellow de-tasselers anywhere near me. I panicked. And then I made a bad decision according to the boss-man: I started skipping large sections of my cornrow so as to catch up. I mean, come on, who the hell was going to notice in a 200-acre field that a few tassels were missed?

And then I heard a loud and angry voice: “Who is working in this row?”

Oh shit. I ignored it at first and then got more diligent with my work, making sure to get every-fucking-tassel of every-fucking-cornstalk for the eternity that every row seemed to be.

But the voice got closer. “Stop! Whoever’s on this row must stop!”

I couldn’t run. I couldn’t hide. I was guilty as charged: detasseling neglect.

“What the hell were you thinking?” the master corn detasseler barked in my face as he finally caught up to me, knowing, of course, that there was nothing I could offer in my defense. And he filled the silence with more barking: “Go back, get them all. Every. Single. One. Of. Them.”

It was miserable work. In addition to the unbearable heat and the seemingly endless rows of corn, there was also what was known as “corn rash.” That, my friends, is a most insidious rash that begins to form on your forearms as they scrape against the corn plants, the pollen and who knows what kind of toxic soup as you move yourself for ten hours a day through nothing but one, big corn jungle.

And corn rash itches. In fact, the hotter and sweatier you get, the more it itches. Soon, you’re pouring the coveted water in your jug upon your forearms to soothe the rash – even for just a little while. It’s the stuff that insanity is born from. You see, I’ve got excuses. Lots and lots of excuses.

There was no peace in the cornfield of Iowa. It was either the rash, the heat, or the miserable bastards – and bitches – who thought the lunch breaks should be filled with fistfights. Yep, even the girls fought in the Iowa cornfields. Remember, this is detasseling, and the civilized kids weren’t invited. It was more like survival of the fittest. Trust me, I stayed clear of this, other than expending the energy required to fend off my fellow corn servants so that I, too, wouldn’t be forced to fight on my ten minutes of rest time. Isn’t that what big brothers are for? Thanks, Todd. Besides, I had a rash and all.

Eventually, I got smart. Or rather, I got a better offer. Yep, I got an offer from a friend to join his crew of “soybean walkers” and I jumped on it. We were freelancers, which meant we contracted with area farmers to “walk” their soybean fields. “Walking” a soybean field means going up and down every-single-long-row of soybeans and cutting out the stray corn plants or weeds that may have survived the toxic bathing that had been applied earlier in the season. But it was better than corn because you weren’t drowning in the corn jungle and you could see the world and your peers – as opposed to only the corn – as you worked. And, better yet, there was no rash.

And so it was, my youth.

But today I grow corn in a large garden. It doesn’t need to be de-tasseled and it has no toxins. That, however, doesn’t mean that I don’t have detasseling flashbacks as I make my way through the 40-foot rows of corn that I now grow for my family and for some pocket cash. I need to keep looking up to the sky and to the end of the rows to make sure I’m not trapped – once again – in the corn nightmares of my youth.

And my corn is in. Loads and loads of glorious corn. Breakfast, lunch and dinner: Corn.

It’s in my genes. Rash and all.

Random Life Blogging (Get Over it)

August 18, 2008 | 1 Comment

Oh boy, I almost forgot. About you, that is.

And, better yet, I’m not going to apologize.

Consider it a lesson in tough love. You come here and you take, take, take and you leave so very little in return. Oh sure, I get my share of private emails cheering on my haughty outrage, egging on my juvenile rants, and urging me to go further and higher in my contempt for the contemptible. Whatever.

But sometimes a writer has got to earn some money, you know. Or maybe you don’t know. Because writers get no respect. Boo-fucking-hoo for me – and thee.

Indeed, I have been tending to my growing list of writing clients of late. You know, the people who understand that if you want to say it right, you hire someone to say it for you. Just like you hire a lawyer to tend to your legal matters; an accountant to handle your books; and a lap dancer to tend to your …. oh, never mind.

I’ve been busy. I’ve been supporting the arts. I’ve been working. I’ve been charging by the hour instead of by the log – or the cord. And I’ve been wining and dining a wife and rolling out the red carpet of summer activities for a daughter who is facing that dreaded prospect of school starting in one, ever-so-close week. Remember that dread? I do.

This morning, for example, the child and I went bounding up Elmore Mountain with the puppy. I thought it would tire them both out. But then we got home and I was the one on the couch and they were the ones asking for more, more and more. Quick, call a friend and let your father make calls, crank the writing music, and go into the coffee-inspired land of “communication.” It sounds so professional and all.

Wait, did I say I was “supporting the arts”? Yep. I was even breaking picket lines to support the arts last weekend. Oh, the sacrifices I make for fucking artists. Or just artists, because I have no idea if they’re fucking or not.

You see, the wife and I went to see the new flick, Tropic Thunder – the one being picketed by mental health advocates because it uses the word “retarded” a few too many times. Oh please. I’ll bet not a one of them bothered to actually see the movie first before getting their politically-correct panties in a wad over the stupid language of it all. Because, if they had, they’d know that the movie was nothing but one, big, juvenile insult to about everything and everyone, including (and most especially) the movie industry and its “stars.”

But I may be biased. Because the co-writer of the flick is my brother’s good friend, Justin Theroux. And also because I’m a sucker for such movies. You know, the kind that seek sacred cows and gore them with the bountiful glee that pre-teens still have for a fart joke? Or something like that.

Simply put, the movie’s a hoot. Or toot. Or both. But if you’re inclined to “protest” it for its use of the word “retard,” I guess you’ll also have to protest its portrayal of drug addicts, of soldiers, of Hollywood executives, of Hollywood agents, of narcissistic actors (is that redundant?), of, of, of…just about everything and everyone. In three words: Get over it.

Tropic Thunder is layer upon layer of wacky fun, with Robert Downey, Jr.’s portrayal of a black soldier (oh no, another sacred cow!) being nothing but worth the price of admission. It’s brilliant and, better yet, funny as all hell.

It’s also refreshing to see my favorite juvenile film action hero, Jack Black, play a rather supporting role in a cast that includes Downey, Ben Stiller, Mathew McConaughey, Nick Nolte, and – are you ready for this: Tom Cruise. Oh my, who farted? But, actually, Cruise plays along brilliantly as the bloated and disgusting Hollywood badass executive you want to spew chunks upon, especially when he does his cheesy little dance routines. Ew.

Come on, just see it. You know you want to laugh.

I mean, what else are you going to do for humor, read dopey local blogs, watch train wrecks try to imitate political campaigns, ponder the meaning of Obama’s slippery hope, or sit starry-eyed over the next move of Michael Phelps (I think I love him. No, wait, I think I’m having inappropriate thoughts about him. Oh hell, I’m so confused about him.)

Whatever. Go forth and find joy, you miserable fucks.

Murat Kurnaz: A Story of Pain, and a Story of Hope

August 8, 2008 | 3 Comments

I’ve got a nose for suffering – well, in that white-guy American way of suffering, that is. Because it’s all relative. And as much as I’d like to bitch and moan about the goddamn rain that won’t stop, everything was put into perspective over the last day or two as I tended to writing clients and read Murat Kurnaz’s powerful book, “Five Years of My Life, An Innocent Man in Guantanamo.” Like I said, I’ve got a nose for suffering.

Kurnaz, for those who don’t know, was an idealistic German/Turkish young man of 18 years of age who picked a hell of a bad time to seek some international and spiritual enlightening. Kurnaz, you see, grew tired of the partying and mindless pursuits of his peers in October of 2001. Worse, from a strictly timing perspective, Kurnaz decided that a trip to Pakistan and a deep immersion into the lessons of the Koran were in order to jolt him out of the doldrums of his German youth.

In the end, Kurnaz saw more of the world than he wanted, learned more about himself than he ever dreamed of, came face-to-face with the true evils in human nature, and was nothing short of victimized by a U.S.-sanctioned “War on Terror.” Yeah, in a Keystone Cops-like dragnet of racist and paranoid vengeance, Kurnaz was swept up, snatched, and ferreted off to Guantanamo before anyone who bothered to punch, kick and otherwise abuse him took a mere moment of level-headedness to realize he was as innocent as innocent could be. He was seeking peace and enlightenment but he found nothing but an American-made hell.

Remember, these were the not-so-level-headed days of post-9/11 America, where President Bush and his ever so compliant Congress were shelving civil liberties and demanding “the heads” of anyone who looked or felt differently than “us,” where the CIA’s bounty cash was being thrown around to the tune of $5,000 (cash) per “terrorist” (read: anyone who merely looked the part), and where Bush’s “dead or alive” edict reached way down into the rank and file of the military he leads, resulting in a de facto suspension of any and all sense of justice or even compassion toward folks like Kurnaz who were only “guilty” of being the wrong color, with the wrong name, in the wrong place, and at the wrong time. Welcome, my friends, to the early days of the War on Terror.

To say that Kurnaz was merely tortured would be an insult to the pain and suffering he went through at the hands of our government. As a five and a half year inmate in the 6×8 foot cells in Guantanamo (and even on his way there), Kurnaz has more disturbing stories of torture than anything I have ever read. He was routinely beaten. He was hung from the ceiling for days. He was waterboarded. He was psychologically-tortured by interrogators who didn’t even speak his German language but spat at him, cursed him, and refused to even consider the truth of his statements that he was merely a young, innocent man. Indeed, logic was – and remains – the first casualty of this “war.”

Here, for example, is one of Kurnaz’s accounts of the torture he endured:

The escort team brought me to one of the tents. There they told me to sit on the ground with my legs stretched out. I didn’t understand and tried to kneel as always. But they said: Sit! Sit down! Then they pushed my legs to the ground. I was to stretch them out. Two soldiers held my feel tight. Others grabbed my hands and pushed on my shoulders so that I could no longer move.

“So, you’re not a terrorist?” one of the interrogators asked. “You’re not from Al Qaeda?”

I could tell from his tone of voice that they were trying a new approach.

“Today we’re going to find out,” said another interrogator.

Did they have a lie detector? I asked myself. The man was holding something in his hands. It looked like two irons that he was rubbing together. Or one of those machines used to revive people who have heart attacks. Before I realized what was happening, I felt the first jolt.

It was electricity. And electroshock.

They put the electrodes to the soles of my feet. There was no way to remain seated. It was as though my body was lifting itself off the ground of its own accord. I felt the electric current running through my entire body. There was a bang. It hurt a lot. I felt warmth, jolts, cramps. My muscles cramped up and quivered. That hurt, too.

“Did you change your mind?”

“What?”

I don’t know how long they held the electrodes to the soles of my feet. It could have been ten or twenty seconds, maybe longer. It felt like an eternity.

“So how is that?”

The man rubbed the electrodes together and again touched them to my feet. Again I felt the cramps, the tremors, the hot pain.

“Funny, huh?”

The electricity crackled like a series of caps being hit with a hammer. They were like bolts of lightening in my ear. If I could look inside my ear, I thought, there would be electricity there – you could see electricity. At the same time, I heard screams.

They were my screams. But it seemed as though they were coming from outside my body, as though I had nothing to do with them. My whole body was quivering.

“Did you change your mind?”

“No, no…”

“Okay, try this!”

I heard myself screaming.

“Do you remember now who you are?”

“No, yes, no…”

“Okay, how about that…”

I heard my heart. It was beating loudly and very strangely. Quickly and then slowly again.

“Do you now Osama?”

“You…Taliban…?”

“…Atta…?”

I could hardly hear the man any more. I thought I was either going to pass our or die. But he always removed the electrodes from my feet. That was the worst thing, knowing that the pain would come again, until you thought there was no way you could take it any more.

I think I passed out. That was probably when they stopped.

Ah, our tax dollars at work.

But the most uplifting aspect of Kurnaz’s story is his never-ending faith in himself and his innocence. He was literally in hell, but kept focused on his salvation and whatever bright light he could sense at the end of this torturous tunnel.

Even more moving is Kurnaz’s refusal to greet the evil he was forced to go face-to-face with everyday with a similar kind of evil. Here, for example, are the harshest words toward Americans that can be found in Kurnaz’s 255-page account of the unspeakable torture he received in our name:

Sleep would have been the only consolation in such a situation. I thought about the American movies I had seen in Bremen. Action flicks and war movies. I used to admire Americans. Now I was getting to know their true nature.

I say that without anger. It’s simply the truth, and I’m not talking about all Americans. But the ones I encountered are terrified of pain. They’re afraid of every little scratch, bacteria, and illness. They’re like little girls, I’d say. If you examine Americans closely, you realize this – no matter how big or powerful they are. But in the movies, they’re always the heroes.

Again, Kurnaz wrote these rather mild words of condemnation after more than 5 years of pure, unadulterated torture at the hands of soldiers representing us, the United States of America. And the only thing he was guilty of was being a young man in the pursuit of a spiritual and international mission of peace.

Eventually – easy for me to say – Kurnaz was released. But not after being lied to, having his lawyers turned away as a result of guards who reported that he “didn’t want to see them” when Kurnaz had no idea that they were even there, and more than five years of living in the closest thing to a metaphorical hell that any us could ever imagine – let alone survive.

Kurnaz’s book should be mandatory reading for any U.S. citizen who seeks to vote this November. We must understand what has been done and is continuing to be done in our nation’s name. And, most importantly, we must demand from those seeking ANY elected office – especially president – to come clean, condemn the atrocities, and promise nothing but an end to this ugly, draconian and – yes – evil chapter to our nation’s story.

In other words, read it. Weep. And then act. Let’s make it the new American way.

Peace.

Money & Politics

August 7, 2008 | 6 Comments

It’s all the rage to talk about money and politics. But I think we’re focusing on the wrong end. Sure, we should keep track of the donors to political campaigns. But I think it’s just as important that we begin to ponder the wealth of those seeking our publicly-funded political offices.

Take Vermont’s campaign for governor, for example. Our sitting – and I do mean sitting – Governor, Jim Douglas, recently announced that he and his wife, a dental assistant, are worth more than $2 million and have no debt. The peculiar thing about this Republican’s amassing of wealth is that he’s spent his entire professional career as a “public servant,” working in various elected government jobs since he graduated from Middlebury College 30-some years ago. So you have to wonder how seriously we have to take Douglas when he spills forth with his “big, bad government” mantra. I guess what he really means is that government is “bad for thee, but not for me!” Two million dollars worth – and counting.

Douglas’ Democrat opponent, Gaye Symington, is also a millionaire many times over. She’s just trying to be coy by not including her husband’s wealth in the financial filings she recently handed over to the Vermont press. Her husband, Chuck Lacy, was one of the original honchos at Ben & Jerry’s back when the company’s stock was being handed out like candy and those at the top – like Lacy — walked away with more loot than they knew what to do with. So much loot, in fact, that folks like Lacy started their own charitable foundations to give gobs of it away. Nice work if you can get it.

Without her hubby’s millions, Symington declared a personal worth of close to $400,000. But you’ve got to be more than a hypocritical fool (or, for that matter, drinking way too much Dem Kool-Aid) to buy her argument against releasing their joint financial information.

“I’m running for office,” Symington declares, “not my family.”

Okay, Gaye, fan the flames of interest all you want but that kind of lameness isn’t going to make the issue – or the millions of dollars — go away. Besides, I’ll bet you won’t be distancing yourself from “the family” when the photo-ops, the door knocking, the advertisements, the advice, and the support come into play, huh? Of course not.

The simmering issue of Symington taking Vermonters for fools by refusing to release her joint financial picture should be dispensed with by two recent political examples: Hillary Clinton released joint financial statements in her run for president; and national Democrats made a huge issue of the McCains’ refusal to release joint financial statements. Checkmate, Gaye. Release them or prepare yourself for more questions.

Speaking of spousal wealth, the newly declared “Independent” in this campaign, Anthony Pollina, announced that he and his wife (emphasis on “wife”) are worth around $800,000. But if you look more closely at the filing you’ll see that there’s a pot of gold on his wife’s side that is just waiting to be handed over whenever it’s needed. Their joint income of around $90,000 last year included $30,000 in income derived from her family’s Maryland-based businesses. Hmm. Again, a nice job if you can get it. Or, in Anthony’s case, marry into it.

But the bigger issue here – for me, at least – is the wealth of these three media-appointed “leaders” in the campaign for governor. Compared to the average Vermont family, these folks are financial kings and queens. And the same is true when you take a gander at the financial pictures of our federally-elected threesome – Senators Patrick Leahy and Bernie Sanders and Congressman Peter Welch (all are millionaires).

When, exactly, will the comparatively extreme wealth of our elected officials and mainstream challengers become an issue? How long will we kid ourselves into thinking and believing that people with such wealth, and, as a result, a built-in disconnect with the economic pains that the rest of us are feeling, will do anything of substance to “change” the system? Hey, it’s worked for them.

None of the aforementioned politicians – or, in the case of Pollina, a wannabe politician – ever have to worry about that pit in their stomach when they go to the mailbox and are greeted by bills that they don’t have the money for. They don’t have to fret about health insurance or even trying to get an appointment to see a doctor (tried that lately?). They don’t sweat with the mental calculations that the rest of us sweat over as we shop for such extravagances as, say, food. They don’t stop filling their gas tank at half-full because that’s all they can afford. And they don’t worry about their retirement, unless, of course, you don’t count the worry of “which house?” or “which boat?”

But yet we continue to elect one wealthy person after another to help us deal with the issues that have made them wealthy and made the rest of us struggle. Nail, meet the hammer, and enjoy the pain.

Personally, I’ve had enough of the crocodile tears from the millionaire politicians. They can’t “feel” our pain. They’ve only been profiting from it.

Sure, let’s get money out of politics, as they say. And we can start by getting the moneyed-elite out of our political offices. Enough already.

Blast from the Past Blogging: Orion Interview

August 5, 2008 | 4 Comments

I’ve been working on a collection of ag/food safety/food movement essays and, in so doing, stumbled across this interview I did with the fine folks at Orion in 1998 – yep, ten years ago.

This interview, entitled “Taking Back the Farm,” was published in Orion Afield (Summer 1998). The interview was conducted by Claire Cummings, an environmental lawyer, activist and writer based in Northern California. Enjoy:

Intro: Michael Colby is a leading national advocate for safe food and Executive Director of Food & Water, a Walden Vermont based nonprofit organization which publishes the Food & Water Journal and educates the public about the environmental and health impact of food technologies and threats to integrity of our food and water supply. He and his farm manager partner, and their young daughter, live on Wild Madder Farm, which sells organic produce to two local farmers markets.

Orion: Food and Water has been an uncompromising voice against threats to food safety. Tell us about these threats, and their causes.

Colby: The specific threats to food safety that Food and Water works on are food irradiation, toxic pesticides and food biotechnology. But you have to go beyond that to the causes of contamination, which is the industrialization of the food supply, and to the environmental threats that agribusiness and their technologies pose. They don’t just bring you food irradiation and toxic pesticides, they bring with that a whole ideology, which is about centralization, about monopolization, about getting big or getting out of business. This has enormous ramifications for small farmers, rural communities, and to the culture as a whole in terms of how we relate to the land and our food supply.

Technologies like irradiation and pesticides come with false promises that they will solve problems. Food irradiation, for instance, is supposed to solve the problem of dirty industrialized food, and food biotechnology and pesticides are supposed to solve the problem of feeding the world. But these technologies allow the causes of contamination to flourish. There are line speeds which make meat processing one of the most dangerous jobs in the country, a lack of inspectors because corporations are allowed to police themselves, factory farms with crowded inhumane conditions, and growing monopolization, where now only four corporations control 90% of the red meat industry. And then, at the end of the line, the proposed solution is to expose contaminated meat to the waste products of the nuclear industry, to irradiation which is the equivalent of tens of millions of chest X-Rays, and then they say the meat is safe to eat. It isn’t. The irradiation process does not kill off all of the pathogens, it reduces the nutritional value of the food and introduces a whole new host of chemicals, mutagens and carcinogens to people and to our environment. So, our focus should not just be on the dangers of these technologies but also on the causes of contamination.

Industrializing the food supply has had devastating consequences, in terms of how we relate to the natural world. Food is one of the last remaining connections that many people have to anything natural. And we are severing that relationship, by running people off the land, by keeping people from producing food for themselves, by putting people out of their kitchens. These technologies glorify consumption at the expense of celebrating production.

Orion: What is Food & Water’s approach to these problems?

Colby: Food and Water’s approach is to try to bring balance to the movement. There are so many organizations and individuals that are focused on legislative and regulatory battles, and those battles are necessary, but so much of the movement’s energy is devoted to going to government agencies and legislators. Instead, we go at the puppeteers, the corporations who hold the strings of the puppets, who are the legislators, the President, and the regulatory bodies. We go after the folks who have the power, directly, tenaciously, and in a way that empowers people. Food irradiation is still a huge battle but largely through the work of Food & Water, this technology is still not in the marketplace. We built a huge grass roots activist movement and went after the fruit and vegetable and the pork and poultry industries with creative advertisements in their own trade publications, and with calls and letters to thousands of executives. We held demonstrations and rallies in front of the corporate headquarters and in supermarkets. Your position has to be very uncompromising, you want them to not use food irradiation, period. And it worked! We kept irradiated foods out of the marketplace so far, by educating and activating the grassroots public to go after the targets that have the power.

The disengagement of the public is the number one enemy of Food & Water. Its up to us, the leaders of social movements, to figure out how to get the public excited again about the political process. We are doing two things: we focus on short term implications, like carcinogens in food irradiation, and we focus on the big picture: how did we get food irradiation? How did we get into the situation where so much of our lives is industrialized? How did we get to the place where the people are so powerless? We have to provide people with some hope, and also some art. Art plays a critical role, as does humor, in social change.

Orion: Organic farming and food production started out 30 years ago as a “counter-culture” movement, but now it is a 4.5 billion dollar a year business, and it is being referred to as an “industry”. How do the proposed USDA national standards reflect the increasing industrialization of organic agriculture and how can we preserve the original values of the organic movement?

Colby: Food & Water has been opposed to the idea of national organic standards from the beginning because what organic agriculture should be about is decentralized sustainable forms of producing food. You can not have a national set of standards for something that prides itself on being about localized social and environmental conditions. It is just impossible. Organic agriculture is booming, so it has caught the attention of multi-national food conglomerates. What they want, in addition to unfettered growth in the organic sector, is regulatory cover - to produce organic food on a massive scale and for international trade. Some people see the economic growth as positive, in that there are more foods produced with fewer pesticides, but that doesn’t address the industrial ills of our food supply.

We have to create the next food movement - a movement that goes beyond what chemicals you can or can not use, to how are we going to reconnect with the food supply locally ? We have to disconnect ourselves from notions of bigger and faster and address the anonymity of consumption, not knowing or even caring where your food comes from. We have to replace these concepts with celebrations of local production and consumption. It is not about a federal bureaucracy stamping our food as safe but about “assurance by familiarity.” The best agricultural relationship is direct contact between the producer and the consumer. If organic agriculture is going to be saved, its got to reconnect with its roots as a political and social movement. The food co-operatives that began around the organic movement had the motto of “Food for People, Not for Profit.” It must be about how we treat animals, our relationship to the land, social justice issues, resource consumption and conservation.

Orion: If the solution is a decentralized food system, what kind of changes do people need to make in our buying and eating habits?

Colby: We are not saying that everyone will have to move to the country and grow their own food. But people can shorten the distance between themselves and their food producers by belonging to a co-operative, getting to know the people that produce or supply your food, joining a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) or shopping at Farmers Markets. Disengaging from the industrial food supply, personally, starts with our diet. Ultimately we have to localize our diets to the greatest extent possible. That will mean some sacrificing. We are not talking about a simple phone call or letter, writing a check once a year to your favorite organization. When you go to your northern climate grocery store in the winter and pick up oranges and bananas, it means contributing to the use of fossil fuels and creating an industrialized, nationalized food supply. But I know that when you have to tell a Vermonter that they are going to have to eat parsnips and carrots all winter, you better duck and cover! It doesn’t get much more northern than where we are, and we are able to substantially feed ourselves on the food that we raise and grow.

We have farmers who have a need to farm, safely, for their own health, the health of their land, and to make a living on farming and we also have people who need healthy nutritious food. We need to be linking these two as intimately as possible, particularly when we are in the middle of a cancer epidemic. One in 2.5 people in this country, according to the American Cancer Society, will get cancer in their lifetime. The United States spends, per capita, the least amount on food but we pay the most of all the industrialized nations in the world in terms of our health care costs but we pretend that these two phenomena are not linked. Food & Water is about trying to get people in their own hearts and minds to realize that these connections exist. Everyone deserves access to healthy foods that prevent disease rather than foods that are laden with poisons or could cause disease. This creation of two food systems, ones that are supposedly are safe and expensive and one that is largely toxic and cheap, is one of the primary challenges that face food safety and agricultural activists. The ultimate goal has got to be one, safe and sustainable food supply, ocally produced, that is available to everyone and rooted in social and cultural values.

Orion: You took some time off last fall to focus on your farming and to reflect on your work at Food & Water, something that activists do not do nearly enough. What did you discover?

Colby: I found out that the issues never go away and I can probably never get away from the issues. Also how long it takes to build a tractor shed!

I learned that activist leaders have to be careful about our campaigns. We have to make sure that we are not promoting false promises just like food corporations are promoting false simplicity. We have to be careful that we don’t put out one urgent actual alert after another that just adds to the quickening pace of life and this obsession with gathering more and more information and the thought that these problems can be dealt with quick and simply. We have to go deeper than that and we have to make sure that we don’t become surrogates for the public in terms of the their own involvement in their community, food safety or environmental issues.

We have to try to resist this addiction to a lot of the busy work that happens in our lives now with the advent of the fax machine and e-mail. We are always looking for the next piece of paper, the next horror story, the next person that can articulate the problems beautifully. Unfortunately we are not taking the time necessary to step back, take a breath, think about the bigger picture and think strategically. How are we going to articulate the information we get in a way that sets the public on fire, that gets them interested, energized and gets the ball rolling towards real change? I think that is what we try to do at Food & Water. And for me, living on a farm, living off the grid with a solar house in the middle of the woods, that slows me down. It helps to disengage from the energy sapping pace of normal life, and take time to think and rest.

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