Price Charles - Small Family Farming, Organic Farming, GM Free World, Genetic Modified Food Is Not Essential

Price Charles - Small Family Farming, Organic Farming, GM Free World, Genetic Modified(GM) Food Is Not Essential

Genetic Modification - A global moral issue.

Watch Prince Charles Giving The Sir Albert Howard Memorial Lecture
On YouTube Video:
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=5dadwzpIbfo

For the first time in history this would lead to "one man's system of farming effectively destroying the choice of another man's" and "turn the whole issue into a global moral question." He quoted Mahatma Gandhi who condemned "commerce without morality" and "science without humanity". He added: "One must surely ask the question whether - if only from a precautionary point of view - it might be wise to keep some areas of the world free from GM-based agriculture."

Calls for global research for family farming with at least as much funding as the billions for GM.
GM is not sustainable, not wise.

To love the world.
Nurture a more just and non-exploitive society.

Improve quality of life for rural communities.

Reduce deforestation.

Restore equilibrium of humans and nature.

Organic agricultural ways can be sustainable for the world.

Use precautionary point of view - keep at least some areas of the world free from GM agriculture.

Not making profits at the expense of future generations.

Trust individual farmers.
Natures natural balance.

Small business are the mainstay of any economy.

Family farmers are the backbone, and the lifeblood and the guardians of the rural environment.

Nature's limits are not short comings that need to be fixed, but guidelines we need to understand and work within. Recognizing that they place limitations on our ambitions and the ways in which we pursue them.

Ghandi - "We may utilize the gifts of nature just as we choose, but in her books the debts are always equal to the credits."

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Why Prince Charles is right: we need GM free food and agriculture for food security

Dr Vandana Shiva Last Updated: 4:01pm BST 21/08/2008
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/08/21/eashiv...

http://openseeds.blogspot.com/2008/08/why-prince-charles-is-right-we-need-gm.html

We are grateful to Prince Charles for cautioning the world on the blind and head long rush worldwide to spread GM seeds and crops especially the Third World.

Prince Charles warns GM crops risk causing the biggest environment disaster http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/08/12/eachar... Prince Charles accused by scientists of abusing position over GM comments http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/08/13/eachar... Why we need GM trees http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/08/20/eagm12...

His comments had become necessary because the biotechnology industry is using the food crisis to push GM crops on grounds that they increase yields.

This is doubly false. Firstly, because the current crisis is a result of speculation and diversion of food crops to biofuels, it is not a crisis of production.

Secondly, genetic engineering so far has only achieved transfer of single gene traits such as herbicide resistance and Bt. toxin production.

Yield and environmental resilience are multigenetic traits, and there is no GM crop currently engineered for high yields.

Monsanto has claimed that its Bt. Cotton in India yields 1,500 kg/acre. Most independent studies have found 300-400 kg/acre as an average, with many farmers facing total crop failure due to pest attack and some getting more than 1,000 kg if the weather was not too dry or two wet.

While Bt. Cotton is supposed to control the bollworm, it is evolving resistance and new pests which were not significant have exploded, requiring higher doses of pesticides.

As a pest-control strategy GM crops are a failure. Integrated pest management and controlling pests through mixtures is much more scientific and effective.

The more the industry makes unscientific and false claims about GM crops giving higher yields and using less pesticide the more they refer to "science" based decision.

The UK's Environment Minister, Phil Woolas said it was the government's moral responsibility "to investigate whether genetically modified crops could help provide a solution to hunger in the developing world. We see this as part of our Africa strategy."

One would imagine an environment minister would want to investigate whether biodiverse and ecological farming could help provide a solution to hunger, especially in Africa.

The recently concluded International Assessment on Agriculture Science and Technology has concluded that GMOs and industrial agriculture is not the solution. Small scale ecological agriculture is the answer to poverty and hunger. Mr Woolas should read the report.

He should also read Navdanya's reports on farmers' suicides in India. The suicides are concentrated in the Bt. Cotton belt.

Monsanto's Bt. Cotton is, in my opinion, costly, non-renewable, and unreliable. Farmers are getting trapped in unpayable debt and are ending their lives.

When I visited Krishna Rao Vaidya's widow on 10th Oct, it was evident he was driven to suicide because of debt.

On average a farmer like Vaidya takes his life every 8 hours in Vidarbha, over the past decade, 200,000 farmers in India have committed suicide.

Prince Charles said that GM crops and corporate control of agriculture "risked creating the biggest disaster environmentally of all time."

Two things were clear in the Prince's statement. He was addressing the risk of creating a disaster, not a disaster that has already occurred. He was also addressing the issue of disaster in a broad and comprehensive sense not in a narrow perspective of "safety".

As he stated "Relying on gigantic corporations for mass production of food would threaten, not boost future food supplies."

He warned that we would end up with "millions of small farmers all over the world being driven off their land into unsustainable, unmanageable, degraded and dysfunctional conurbations of unmentionable awfulness. I think it will be an absolute disaster."

For Prince Charles, the large scale uprooting of peasants and small farmers is a social disaster, a human rights disaster and a tragedy.

Corporate monopoly over our food systems is a food security disaster. And while in some places like India these disasters have already had an impact at a global level, they are a disaster in the making.

It is therefore unscientific, illogical and irresponsible for the Environmental Minister Mr Woolas to say that Prince Charles must provide "proof" that a disaster has happened.

I would imagine that he is aware of the environmental principle on which the UN Convention on Biological Diversity and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change rest.

The principle is called the Precautionary Principle. It is based on the recognition that when an activity or technology has the potential to cause harm, and there is no conclusive evidence to establish the harm that can be caused, then policy and decision making must err on the side of caution.

The Environment Minister also said "Government ministers have a responsibility to base policy on science and I do strongly believe that we have a moral responsibility to the developing world to ask the question: 'Can GM crops help'?

Minister, if you could travel with me through Vidarbha and see the tears in the eyes of farmers' widows, you would be compelled to ask the question:'Can GM crops harm'? That is your moral responsibility.

It is also your responsibility to sincerely base your decisions on real science, not pseudo science. Science based policy would recognise that an agriculture that conserves biodiversity also produces more food and nutrition per unit acre.

Science based policy would recognise that if farmers fall into debt, it is not an instrument for ending poverty, but a recipe for ending the lives of small farmers.

A science based policy would not blindly spread GM crops to Africa without assessing their role in India's agrarian crisis. A science based policy would not be based on unscientific principle of "substantial equivalence" which has prevented independent and serious testing of GM foods and crops.

That is why the Supreme Court of India has served notice on the Government of India to ask why a GMO moratorium should not be imposed till proper testing protocols and tests and facilities for biosafety are in place.

We are proud that Prince Charles will be delivering the Ninth Howard Memorial lecture for Navdanya this year. We organise the lecture to honour Sir Albert Howard, the imperial agriculturist sent to India in 1905 whose "Agricultural Testament" is based on the knowledge on sustainable farming he learnt from India's peasants.

We organise the lecture on Gandhi's birth anniversary to celebrate non-violent farming which protects all species, the farmers, the soil and our health.

GMOs are the latest step in a violent tradition of industrial agriculture which has its roots in war and has become a war against the farmers, the land, and our bodies. Prince Charles, like many of us, wants this war to end.

And all that the biotech industry and its allies in governments can talk about is the smartness of their weapons.

It is time they realised the debate is much wider and deeper. It is about the planet we live on, the societies we are shaping, the exclusions billions are condemned to, the super profits the gene giants and grain giants harvest, while the real harvest in the fields of real farmers shrink.

The industrial/mechanistic mindset has destroyed our farmers and food security. It cannot offer solutions to the agrarian crisis and food crisis it has created. We need to move to an ecological perspective based on diversity.

Unfortunately, GMOs fail the test of both ecological sustainability and socio-economic viability. They have accelerated non-sustainability, and deepened injustice and inequality.

It is time the world listened to the important message from Prince Charles.

Dr Vandana Shiva is a physicist, ecologist, activist, editor, author of numerous books and environmental campaigner. She is the founder of Navdanya, a movement for biodiversity conservation and farmers' rights.

Charles Targets GM Crop Giants in Fiercest Attack Yet

In a provocative address to an Indian audience, the Prince echoes Gandhi with a stinging attack on 'commerce without morality'.

by Geoffrey Lean
Published on Sunday, October 5, 2008 by The Independent/UK
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2008/10/05-1

It is less than two months since Prince Charles was on the receiving end of a fusillade of scientific, political and commentariat criticism for voicing, yet again, his concerns about GM crops and foods. He was widely accused of "ignorance" and "Luddism"; of being too rich to care about the hungry, and even of trying to increase sales of his own organic produce. It was put about that Gordon Brown was angered by his intervention.

Prince Charles has again stirred controversy with his strong views over GM crops.(Getty Images)

Yet the Prince has responded by stepping up his campaign, making his most anti-GM speech yet, in delivering - by video - the Sir Albert Howard Memorial Lecture to the Indian pressure group Navdanya last Thursday. And he made it clear that he was going to continue. "The reason I keep sticking my 60-year-old head above an increasingly dangerous parapet is not because it is good for my health," he said " but precisely because I believe fundamentally that unless we work with nature, we will fail to restore the equilibrium we need in order to survive on this planet."

True to his word, he plunged straight into the most controversial and emotive of all the debates over GM crops and foods by highlighting the suicides of small farmers. Tens of thousands killed themselves in India after getting into debt. The suicides were occurring long before GM crops were introduced, but campaigners say that the technology has made things worse because the seeds are more expensive and have not increased yields to match.

The biotech industry strongly denies this, but two official reports have suggested that there "could" be a possible link.

Prince Charles expressed no doubts in his lecture, delivered at the invitation of Dr Vandana Shiva, the founder of Navdanya, and one of the leading proponents of the technology's role in the deaths. He spoke of "the truly appalling and tragic rate of small farmer suicides in India, stemming in part from the failure of many GM crop varieties".

Much of the controversy surrounds claims of failures by a Monsanto GM cotton called Bollguard. The GM company says that "farmers in India have found success" with it, and cites a survey in support. Its opponents produce evidence of their own to show the opposite.

But Prince Charles did not stop there. Broadening his offensive, he said that "any GM crop will inevitably contaminate neighbouring fields", making it impossible to maintain the integrity of organic and conventional crops. For the first time in history this would lead to "one man's system of farming effectively destroying the choice of another man's" and "turn the whole issue into a global moral question." He quoted Mahatma Gandhi who condemned "commerce without morality" and "science without humanity". He added: "One must surely ask the question whether - if only from a precautionary point of view - it might be wise to keep some areas of the world free from GM-based agriculture."

The Prince attacked the contention that "GM food is now essential to feed the world", saying that the evidence showed that modified crops' yields were "generally lower than their conventional counterparts". He called them "a wrong turning on the route to feeding the world in a sustainable or durable manner" and "a risky and expensive distraction, diverting attention and resources away from those real, long-term solutions such as crop varieties which respond well to low input systems that, in turn, do not rely on fossil fuels." There was substantial evidence "to show that a growing world population can be fed most successfully in the long term by agricultural systems that manage the land within environmental limits".

Recent research had shown, he added, that organic farming techniques had increased yields in Brazil by 250 per cent and in Ethiopia were up fivefold, while the world's biggest international agricultural study - headed by Professor Bob Watson, now chief scientist at Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs - had backed organic farming, rather than GM to tackle word hunger.

Kirtana Chandrasekaran of Friends of the Earth said: "Prince Charles is right that GM crops and industrial farming are profiting big businesses, not feeding the world's poorest."
===

Use Science, Not Propaganda, to Decide Issues

http://www.progress.org/gene07.htm

Prince Charles Challenges British Government To Be Scientific Regarding Safety

Prince Charles has launched a scathing attack on genetically-modified products, and the UK Government has responded with annoyance and propaganda rather than science.

In an article in last week's Daily Mail, Prince Charles poses a series of questions about the safety of GM foods and attacked the lack of independent scientific research. And he rejects the hype that GM crops represent a solution to feeding the world's growing population as a case of "emotional blackmail".

Asserting that the argument sounded ``suspiciously like emotional blackmail,'' the prince said the countries that could be expected to benefit took a different view. Representatives of 20 African countries, including Ethiopia, had published a statement denying that gene technologies would help farmers to produce the food they needed.

``They think it will destroy the diversity, the local knowledge and the sustainable agricultural systems . . . and undermine our capacity to feed ourselves,'' said the prince.

Deep divisions emerged within the British Government following the Prince's challenge. Although the prime minister's spokesman refused to be drawn into a direct clash with the prince, it was clear there is considerable anger in Whitehall at the way he has reignited the debate in Britain on the issue. The prince's intervention has delivered a body blow to the government's attempts to reassure corporations that their people could be made to accept unproven genetically modified crops as safe.

Here are the ten important unanswered questions posed by the Prince:

1. Do we need GM food in this country?

The Prince: The benefits, such as there are seem to be limited to the people who own the technology and the people who farm on an industrialised scale.

2. Is GM food safe for us to eat?

The Prince: Only independent scientific research, over a long period, can provide the final answer.

3. Why are the final rules for approving GM foods so much less stringent than those for new medicines produced using the same technology?

The Prince: Before drugs are released on to the market they have to undergo the most rigorous testing...Surely it is equally important that [GM foods] will do us no harm.

4. How much do we really know about the environmental consequences of GM crops?

The Prince: Lab tests showing that pollen from GM maize in the United States caused damage to the caterpillars of Monarch butterflies provide the latest cause for concern. More alarmingly, this GM maize is not under test.

5. Is it sensible to plant test crops without strict regulations in place?

The Prince: Such crops are being planted in this country now - under a voluntary code of practice. But English Nature has argued that enforceable regulations should be in place first.

6. How will consumers be able to exercise genuine choice?

The Prince: Labelling schemes clearly have a role to play, but if conventional and organic crops are contaminated by GM crops, people who wish to avoid GM food products will be denied choice.

7. If something goes wrong with a GM crop, who will be held responsible?

The Prince: It is important that we know precisely who is going to be legally liable to pay for any damage - whether it be to human health, the environment or both.

8. Are GM crops really the only way to feed the world's growing population?

The Prince: This arguments sounds suspiciously like emotional blackmail to me.

9. What effect will GM crops have on the people of world's poorest countries?

The Prince: Where people are starving, lack of food is rarely the underlying cause. The need is to create sustainable livelihoods for everyone. Will GM crops really help or will they make the problems worse?

10. What sort of world do we want to live in?

The Prince: Are we going to allow the industrialisation of Life itself, redesigning the natural world for the sake of convenience? Or should we be adopting a gentler, more considered approach, seeking always to work with the grain of nature?

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Bailout - No Benefit To Homeowners, Payouts To Foreign Banks, Million Dollar A Month Salaries To Continue ...

Page 1 of 7
Still Million Dollar a Month Salaries…
Still Tens of Billions to the Bank of China…
 
Be Skeptical of Senate Bailout Bill
All the Old Problems Remain
A Single Comprehensive Updated Article by Congressman Brad Sherman

October 1, 2008
http://bradsherman.house.gov/081001comprehensive_article.pdf
 
• Taxpayers highly unlikely to recoup any of the costs under revenue provision
added last Sunday (page 2)
• Treasury will not use the new insurance powers added to the Bill last Sunday
(page 3)
• Tens of billions will go to foreign investors (page 3)
• Million-Dollar a month salaries will continue (page 4)
• Oversight Board can critique, not halt, any action (page 4)
• Few if any homeowners will get mortgage relief (page 4)
• All $700 billion can be spent by January 20, 2009 (page 5)
• Taxpayers will get little or no equity upside (page 6)
• Meaningful regulatory reform proposals will be subject to filibuster, delay, and
dilution (page 6)
• We have time to write a good bill (page 6)

 
New Senate Provisions: No Reason to Switch to “Yes” Vote
 
The Senate will attach its tax extenders bill to the House-defeated Bailout Bill.  The
Senate tax extenders bill is the very bill Hoyer refused to bring to the floor Monday,
September 29, because of its gross violation of pay-go.  If the Bailout Bill is open to tax
provisions, why not attach the bills that prevent hedge fund managers from paying zero
tax by using Cayman Island tax havens?  Why not add the Credit Card Holders Bill of
Rights, which recently passed the House?
 
The Senate Bill also increases the FDIC limit to $250,000.  We don’t need to send $700
billion to Wall Street to make this change.
 
Experts Say: Congress Should Not Panic
 
“We ask Congress not to rush, to hold appropriate hearings, and to carefully consider
the right course of action.”  
-231 eminent Professors of Economics, including 3 Nobel Laureates.
See more from economists on page 7
===

Taxpayers Highly Unlikely to Recoup Any of the Costs
 
I. Section 134 of the Bailout Bill merely says that the President must submit a
revenue bill to Congress in 2013 that recoups from the financial industry the
taxpayers’ net losses.
a. If the President has any revenue ideas he actually likes, he would submit
them to us anyway.
b. If the President submits revenue ideas only because he is forced to by
Section 134, he will send it to us with a note saying that he believes they
are bad for the country and reserves the right to veto.
c. The Bailout Bill does not automatically enact any revenue increases,
nor protect a revenue bill from filibuster or veto.
 
II. Congress is unlikely to pass a bill with hundreds of billions of dollars worth of
tax increases in 2013.
a. Tax increase bills are anathema to many.
b. 41 Senators can block the plan.   We’re giving Wall Street enough money
to hire 4,100 lobbyists.
c. In recent years, Wall Street has easily defeated every attempt to close
every loophole that they exploit, no matter how pernicious—even the
abusive use of Cayman Island tax havens by hedge fund managers, who
thereby pay zero tax.
 
III. Any tax on the financial industry would make the good banks pay a huge
tax so we can recoup what we gave to the bad banks.
a. Section 134 says the tax will be on “the financial industry.”  It does not
provide for a tax on just those firms that received bailout payments.
b. A bank that doesn’t get a bailout payment still pays the tax.
c. Community banks and perhaps credit unions will also be subject to the
tax, so we can recoup what we gave to Wall Street.
 
IV. It is impossible to draft a tax that hits only those firms that received bailout
payments, and even more impossible to draft one that taxes each bank in
proportion to how much money we lost on its toxic assets.
a. There are no provisions to even keep track of losses on each asset
purchased as it is managed over the years.  Assets purchased from several 
banks will be pooled, managed, and sold together, and we can never know
how much we lost on assets purchased from any one bank.
b. If three banks in the year 2013 have the same income and size and
operations, they will all pay the same tax—even if one got no bailout
payments, a second got a million dollars, and a third got a billion dollars.
c. Many bailed out firms won’t exist in 2013.
1. Some will go under.
2. Some bailed out firms are only shell companies.  Example:
Assume the Bank of Shanghai has $30 billion in toxic assets.  It
will sell these to the tiny subsidiary it has incorporated in
Page 2 of 7

Page 3 of 7
California.  The subsidiary will then sell these to the Treasury in
2009 and will be dissolved long before 2013.
3. Many bailed out firms will still be unprofitable in 2013.
4. Some bailed out firms will move offshore before 2013.
d. The whole purpose of the Bill is to improve the balance sheets of the
bailed-out firms.  If particular bailed-out firms owe us the money they
receive, they would have to list this as a liability, and the Bill would fail to
improve their balance sheets.
 
In 2013, we will not pass a tax bill that imposes hundreds of billions of dollars of taxes
on the financial services industry, including those banks that got no bailouts, community
banks, and credit unions.  A tax bill imposed only on those entities that got bailout
payments is impossible to draft and contrary to the purposes of the bill.
 
If it were easy to pass a bill to recoup hundreds of billions of dollars through taxes to be
imposed in 2013 and thereafter, then provisions imposing such taxes would be in today’s
bill.  
 
Wall Street gets their money now, and we get it back never.
 
 
New Insurance Provisions Meaningless—Won’t be Used
 
The Bill requires the creation of a new insurance program but does not require Treasury
to use it.  Treasury won’t use this authority because Paulson hates it and because initial
cost projections say it is even more expensive than the bailout approach.
 
 
Hundreds of Billions Will Be Used to Buy Toxic Assets Currently
Held by Foreign Investors
 
Under the Bill, the Administration can buy any asset from any financial institution for
any price.  Some think that only U.S. investors will be bailed out.
 
Major foreign investors have already been assured that they can benefit from the Bailout. 
Under the Bill, the Bank of China can sell a portfolio of toxic assets to a U.S.-
headquartered investment bank on Monday, and that investment bank can then sell
those same assets to the Treasury on Tuesday.  The foreign financial press indicates that
foreign investors are sure that they will get at least tens of billions of dollars.
 
The Bill should contain a provision stating that the Treasury can buy only assets proven
to be held by an American investor on September 20, 2008.  This provision has been
rejected by the Administration, the same Administration that has promised foreign
investors that they too will be bailed out.
 
Page 3 of 7

While the transparency provisions of the Bill are generally good, they do not require
disclosure of how long the seller of a toxic asset owned it or from whom they purchased
it.  Accordingly, if the Treasury buys a package of toxic assets from a U.S. investment
bank for $20 billion, the amount paid and the nature of the assets purchased will be
disclosed—but the fact that those same assets had been owned by the Bank of China just
two days prior will not be disclosed.
 
Million-Dollar a Month Salaries Will Continue
The bill contains limits on the use of certain esoteric formulas to compute executive
bonuses at bailed-out banks.  It has some limits on golden parachute contracts for
departing executives.  It provides that certain executives who benefitted from fraud may
lose those benefits in the event that such fraud is proven in court.
 
However, the Bill has no limits on regular, plain vanilla salaries paid to executives of
bailed-out firms.  Million-dollar a month salaries will continue.  And, any executive who
feels that his bonus is too low is free to ask his firm for a multi-million dollar increase in
base salary.
 
The President stated that “taxpayer dollars will not be used” to pay enormous
compensation to Wall Street executives.  The President’s words were chosen carefully. 
Bailed-out banks are free to use all their other assets to pay million-dollar a month
salaries and to use the bail-out money to pay all their other expenses.
 
Under the latest bill, bailed-out banks may not get tax deductions for excessive
compensation paid to executives.  This has no effect on the executive or his tax return. 
And, the banks we are bailing out are not likely to be profitable—so they hardly have a
need for tax deductions.
 
Five Member Oversight Board Includes 3 Bush
Appointees/Separate Democratic-Majority Board Is Powerless
Much has been discussed about the Financial Stability Oversight Board provided by the
bill.  The five-member Board consists of Bush appointees.  The Bill also creates a
Congressional Oversight Panel.  These panels can critique any action Paulson takes, but it
cannot delay, halt, or reverse anything.
 
Few if Any Homeowners Will Get Mortgage Relief
As you know, the Bill will not contain any provision allowing the terms of a mortgage to
be changed without the consent of all the investors who own the mortgage.  However, we
are told that by investing $700 billion in toxic assets the federal government will be in a
position to provide reasonable loan modifications to the homeowners whose mortgages it
buys.

Page 4 of 7
===

Page 5 of 7 As well-detailed in a document from the Center for Responsible Lending1, few
homeowners will benefit from this provision.  This is because the Treasury will chiefly
purchase mortgage-backed securities which will make the federal government one of
several co-owners of millions of mortgages.  Whether or not any mortgages are
modified will be determined by the loan servicer acting on behalf of all the various
investors who own a piece of the mortgage.  That is why Section 108(d) states in part
“The Secretary shall request loan servicers servicing the mortgage loans to avoid
preventable foreclosures… [Emphasis added.]”  Congress has already requested all loan
servicers nationwide avoid preventable foreclosures, so an additional request from the
Treasury is unlikely to change current behavior.
 
The Bill has non-binding provisions urging Paulson to buy whole mortgages, rather than
mortgage-backed securities, but he is unlikely to do so.
 
All $700 Billion Can Be “Invested” Before January 20, 2009
The Bill provides that after the first $250 billion is spent, President Bush needs to sign a
letter to get the next $100 billion.  Some therefore believe that the President is only
receiving $350 billion that he can expend now and the rest depends on Congressional
action.
 
The Bill provides that the second half of the $700 billion can be spent unless Congress
passes a resolution of disapproval within a short period.  Such a resolution would have to
pass the House and then the Senate and would then be subject to veto.  Then any veto
would have to be overridden by both the House and the Senate.  Unless the resolution
clears all these hurdles, the President is free to spend the second half of the $700 billion.
 
The fact that such a resolution of disapproval is given fast-track procedures simply means
that the inevitable veto, and the inevitable failure to override that veto, will happen
quickly.
 
Paulson has said that he doesn’t expect to spend more than $50 billion per month. 
Paulson clearly could spend the entire $700 billion by January 20th.  The Merrill
Lynch $50 billion sale took place in roughly two days—and both parties were
negotiating hard for the best deal.  Paulson’s announced purpose is to pay generously for
the toxic assets held by Wall Street firms, to help those firms prosper—so negotiations
should be even quicker.
 
This Administration has a history of using every authority granted by Congress.  The
Administration has threatened to veto any bill which contains a provision which would
prevent them from spending the full $700 billion by January 20th.
 
 
                                                
1
 http://www.responsiblelending.org/issues/mortgage/quick-references/the-problem-with-the-
paulson-bailout-plan.html
Page 5 of 7
===


Page 6 of 7 Taxpayers will get little or no equity upside—and will probably
overpay for what they do get
Section 112(d) of the Bill states that whenever the Treasury purchases toxic assets, it
must also receive, as part of the deal, at least some warrants or senior debt instruments. 
However, a couple of dozen small warrants or a tiny senior debt instrument fulfills this
statutory requirement.  It is totally up to the Treasury to decide whether the price being
paid for a combination of toxic assets and warrants is appropriate.  
 
In the AIG deal, the taxpayers received 80% of the company.  In contrast, Paulson did not
want any warrants to be received under this bailout program.  He is being dragged
kicking and screaming into a provision that requires him to get some warrants, but allows
him to get as few as he wishes.  
 
Meaningful Regulatory Reform and Corporate Governance
Reform will be Subject to Filibuster in the 111th Congress/Bill
Contains No Applicable Fast-track Provision
We are promised that next year we will pass the legislation to make sure that this travesty
does not repeat itself.  We are promised strong, tough legislation that Wall Street has
traditionally hated dealing with regulatory reform and corporate governance reform.
 
Any tough regulatory reform or corporate governance reform proposed in the 111th
Congress will be subject to regular Senate rules.  Wall Street may not be able to defeat
good reform—instead, they will delay and then dilute.  It will take only 41 Senators to
insist on delaying any legislation until it is diluted.  This Bill makes sure that Wall Street
has the liquidity necessary to hire 4,100 lobbyists.
 
We Have Time to Write a Good Bill: The Sky Will Not Fall
It is in the interest of Wall Street to cause us to panic and pass bad legislation.  
 
No one can say for certain whether our economy will be better off next year if we pass
the bill or if we defeat it.  Only by avoiding a panic vote can we write a good bill next
week.
 
The White House declared that the sky would fall if we did not pass a bill by September
24.  They also said they would veto a bill with significant controls on the Administration
or on the salaries of executives of bailed out firms.  If not for Administration interference,
we would have passed a good bill already.  
 
Last Thursday night (September 25), there was a precipitous decline in the likelihood that
Congress would immediately rubber-stamp Bush’s proposal.  Most stock markets went
up Friday, September 26, indicating that investors would buy equity in the American
economy even if the bill stalled.
 
Fear mongers claim the Monday stock market drop was the greatest single-day drop ever,
and was due to our Bailout Bill vote.  Monday’s drop was the 17th largest daily drop
Page 6 of 7
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Page 7 of 7
as a percentage of the market’s value, and almost half of Monday’s drop took place
while investors were certain the Bill would pass.
 
On Monday morning (September 29), everyone was certain that we would pass the bill,
and the market dropped still about 340 points before 10:00am.  The fear mongers are
falsely trying to ascribe this 340-point drop to the Bailout Bill’s defeat.  The Dow was
then stable for three hours until we began to vote and dropped another 440 points after
the vote.  Yesterday, the Dow then returned to virtually the same level it had stood at
just before the vote at 1:28pm Monday.
 
The markets may fall if we vote “No” on the latest bill—but we now know that the
sky will not fall.
 
Experts Say: Congress Should Not Panic
“We ask Congress not to rush, to hold appropriate hearings, and to carefully
consider the right course of action.” – 231 eminent Professors of Economics,
including 3 Noble Laureates, organized by Professor John Cochrane (University of
Chicago).  September 25, 2008.2
 
“There is a kind of suggestion in the Paulson proposal that if only we provide enough
money to financial markets, this problem will disappear.  But that does nothing to address
the fundamental problem of bleeding foreclosures and holes in the balance sheets of
banks.” –Joseph Stiglitz (Nobel Laureate, Columbia University).  September 26, 20083
 
“I have doubts that the $700 billion Bailout if enacted, would work.”  -William M. Isaac,
(Former Chairman, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation).4
 
Under the latest bill, only two things are for certain: Wall Street firms and
executives will benefit, and our children will be stuck with an enormous debt.
                                                
2
 http://faculty.chicagogsb.edu/john.cochrane/research/Papers/mortgage_protest.htm
3
 Neil Irwin and Cecilia King.  “Away from Wall Street Economists Question the Effectiveness of
Paulson’s Plan.”  Washington Post.  9/26/08. 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2008/09/25/-AR2008092504531_pf.html
4
 Washington Post, September 27, 2008, p. A19
Page 7 of 7


 



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America, Where It Pays to Fail

The long-overdue conversation between the government and the governed has yet to materialize. It would have to be a conversation about the relationship between the economy and values, about regaining what has been lost instead of expanding. The word frugality -- which disappeared from the vocabulary of the Uninhibited -- should be reintroduced.
+++

America, Where It Pays to Fail

By Gabor Steingart in Washington

SPIEGEL ONLINE

09/30/2008 04:20 PM

In the current financial crisis, the model of US capitalism has imploded with a big bang. But the Bush administration is trying to douse the flames with yet more fuel instead of water, and it wants to see Wall Street's gamblers rewarded for failure.

More than 100 years ago, German sociologist Georg Simmel criticized the banks for being even bigger and more powerful than the churches. His chief complaint -- that money is the new god of our times -- is still heard today. If Simmel was right, and there are some indications that he was, his statement would have to be modified to suit today's circumstances: Not all people pray to the same god.

Among the money worshippers, there are at least three faiths. First there are the Puritans, who patiently carry their money to the new churches, hoping that it will multiply. The average Chinese, for example, deposits 40 percent of his income in banks. What laudable discipline! Then there are the Pragmatists. They save and lend, but only in that order; their savings limit their boldness. This persuasion is especially prevalent in the Germanic countries, where the savings bank is the shrine.

Finally, we have the religious community of the Uninhibited, which is especially popular in the United States. Its adherents readily admit to intentional recklessness, wanton waste and omnipresent greed.

They call it "the American way of life." Its members live in the here and now, without asking questions about tomorrow. One lends money to another, even though it's not his money. Instead, he has borrowed it from a third person, who has promised to procure it from a fourth person -- and so on.

Southampton : The Evidence Trail Begins

This religious community is the most devout of them all. Some time ago, it adopted the practice of treating anticipated money like real money and equating desire with reality. Whatever shred of inhibition they had was now shed.

Since everybody knew that desires outnumbered dollars, the inevitable result was a certain funding gap, or deficit. Capitalism without capital -- the audacious heart of the innovation -- could not function. There is no worldly salvation -- at least that was a conclusion that the old God, the one bearing the cross, and the new god, the one with the dollar signs in his eyes, could agree on.

And so the inevitable happened: the big bang. Three of the five US investment banks lost their independence, while the other two are still floundering. Two mortgage banks and one insurance company are now under government administration.

The global financial system has been shaken, horrifying the members of the other two faiths. There may be three religions, but there is only one sky. If it falls down, everyone dies.

A search for evidence to pinpoint those responsible should most likely begin in Southampton, a seaside getaway for the moneyed elite. The town, on the eastern end of Long Island outside New York City, offers a glimpse of how attractive greed can be.

It is a place where stock options have been transformed by the hundreds into fairy-tale castles at water's edge. By taking advantage of tax loopholes, Wall Street's financial gurus managed to spirit their bonuses out of the city more or less intact. Under US tax law, compensation in the form of stocks and warrants is taxed at less than half of the highest tax rate. As a result, the incomes of many bankers are taxed at a lower rate than those of their secretaries.

How Minus Turned to Plus

The owners of these mansions by the sea are not there right now, so further investigation requires a train ride into New York. In the Midtown high-rise housing the offices of Lehman Brothers, which is in the process of bringing its own history to a close, there is more to be discovered about the sequence of events. Billions of dollars were lent to people who were not creditworthy for condominiums and houses that were not valuable. In the cheerfully cynical jargon of bankers, these types of loans were dubbed "NINA," short for "No Income, No Asset."

And yet things were going well in the world of the moneylenders. The miraculous increase in the money supply helped housing prices rise by more than 70 percent between 2000 and 2006. The industry had managed to turn a profit by increasing risk. On the balance sheets, at least, minus had turned to plus.

In better times, one would have called the bankers enterprising; today, they are being called irresponsible. Even before the term investment banking was coined, Karl Marx knew how the two things were related: "Capital is as terrified of the absence of profit or a very small profit as nature is of a vacuum. With suitable profits, capital is awakened; with 10 percent, it can be used anywhere; with 20 percent, it becomes lively; with 50 percent, positively daring; with 100 percent, it will crush all human laws under its feet; and with 300 percent, there is no crime it is not willing to dare, even at the risk of the gallows."

Paulson's Faith

Now the trail leads from New York to Washington, where US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has his office on Pennsylvania Avenue. His department is so important that a garden gate connects the grounds of the Treasury Department with those of the White House. Paulson took a hands-off approach to the banks, and he now plans to take on their losses. He has become something similar to reinsurance for high finance. His goal is to eliminate the gallows -- but not the greed.

Paulson was once a Wall Street banker himself. He is a man with good manners and firm principles. In normal times, he has faith in the market, God and George W. Bush. In times like these, he prefers to put his trust in the government, taxpayers and Bush.

Contrary to what has been widely reported, Paulson does not intend to use tax revenues to finance the bailout. Instead, he plans to take up billions in new loans on behalf of the US Treasury. "I hate the fact that we have to do it, but it’s better than the alternative," he said last week. The president has already nodded his approval.

That's what happens to religious communities when they come under pressure: They become even more devout. The same short-term way of thinking that triggered the disaster in the first place is now supposed to bring it to an end. The government is attempting to put out the fire with fuel, not water. In fact, it is precisely the same fuel that sparked the flames on Wall Street in the first place: borrowed money.

The only difference is that the new loans would not be coming from the sixth, seventh or eighth member of the religious community. Instead, they would be collected from all taxpayers put together. It would represent an elimination of the separation between church and state, with Wall Street becoming the national religion.

The common ground with the other two religious communities is already in the process of disappearing. Things that were considered inseparable in the days of the time-honored market economy -- such as value and consideration, wage and performance, risk and responsibility -- are now being torn asunder in the name of the government. The capitalism on display in America today is a beaten and degraded version of its former self.

The actions of politicians are amplifying rather than mitigating the effects of economic failure. American-style capitalism hasn't died yet, but it is merely preparing its own demise. The history of these days is the history of a death that has already been announced. Which brings us to Miss Marple.

A Dangerous Game with Time Has Begun

The amateur detective dreamed up by Agatha Christie, based on her grandmother, is equipped with more than just a sense of humor and an understanding of human nature. She also has experience with the obvious things that no one believes possible -- until they happen. In the 1950 novel "A Murder is Announced," Christie looked into our future in comic fashion.

The story goes like this: One morning, citizens read the following message in the classified section of their local newspaper: "A murder is announced and will take place on Friday, October 29th, at Little Paddocks at 6:30 p.m. Friends please accept this, the only intimation." At the appointed time, half the village gathers at the house where the murder will supposedly take place. The warning is treated as a frivolous joke, one that no one would want to pass up. Sherry is served. The group contracts a collective case of the jitters. Promptly at 6:30 p.m., the lights go out.

"Isn't this wonderful?" breathed a female voice. "I am so thrilled."

When the lights come back on -- to everyone's surprise -- a murder had been committed. And now we, like the guests at Little Paddocks, are standing around, whispering, getting a case of the jitters, waiting to see what happens next. And no one seriously believes that an actual crime is about to take place.

"Everybody was silent and nobody moved. They all stared at the clock. … As the last note died away all the lights went out. Delighted gasps and feminine squeaks of appreciation were heard in the darkness. 'It's beginning,' cried Mrs. Harmon in an ecstasy."

A Future Sold

Anyone who hopes to get an early warning should simply expand his or her range of vision for as long as the lights are on. America's credit card companies are not in a significantly better position than the banks. They too have sold the future and even a piece of the period after that.

The American auto industry is also seriously stricken and is having trouble extending its credit lines on the open market. The industry has lost more than 300,000 jobs since 1999. But what good does that do if the managers -- and not the workers -- are to blame for the crisis? America's enormous oil bill -- about $500 billion (€345 billion) -- is currently being paid for with money borrowed from China. Every business day, America's foreign debt grows by close to $1 billion (€690 million).

Probably the bitterest pill to swallow in America today is that private households are not managing their finances any better than corporate executives. They see their mirror images in Wall Street bankers rather than some distorted picture of themselves. "I know of no country, indeed, where the love of money has taken stronger hold on the affections of men," Alexis de Tocqueville noted 170 years ago.

The long-overdue conversation between the government and the governed has yet to materialize. It would have to be a conversation about the relationship between the economy and values, about regaining what has been lost instead of expanding. The word frugality -- which disappeared from the vocabulary of the Uninhibited -- should be reintroduced.

But there is no sign of any of this happening. Today's America is too American to survive in its current form. But today's America is also too proud to realize it. The faithful will hardly allow themselves to be converted.

And so our understanding of the events continues to get less and less clear. A dangerous game with time has begun.

"The ping of two bullets shattered the complacency of the room. Suddenly the game was no longer a game. Somebody screamed... 'Lights.' 'Can't you find the switch?' 'Who's got a lighter?'…'Oh, Archie, I want to get out of here.'"

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

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2008 Right Livelihood Awards - independent journalism, peace-building and social justice

2008 Right Livelihood Awards honour champions of independent journalism, peace-building and social justice

Read press release

2008 Right Livelihood Awards honour champions of independent journalism, peace-building and social justice.

The 2008 Right Livelihood Award of SEK 2 million is shared between four recipients:

Krishnammal and Sankaralingam Jagannathan, and their organisation LAFTI (Land for the Tillers' Freedom) (India), who receive an Award "for two long lifetimes of work dedicated to realising in practice the Gandhian vision of social justice and sustainable human development, for which they have been referred to as 'India's soul'."
More information

"Vinoba Bhave, by whom my husband and I were inspired said 'Jai Jegath' (Long Live the World) and he was convinced this is possible by awakening of 'Sthree-shakthi' (women-power). I sincerely believe that the social, economic and spiritual crisis we are facing today in the world can be overcome through universal sisterhood and science and spirituality coming together for the good of the entire humanity!"

Krishnammal Jagannathan

Amy Goodman
Picture: Michael Kee

Amy Goodman (USA), founder and award-winning host of Democracy Now!, a daily grassroots, global tv/radio news hour, is honoured "for developing an innovative model of truly independent political journalism that brings to millions of people the alternative voices that are often excluded by the mainstream media."

More information

"I am completely honored to have my work and the work of my colleagues held in such high regard, it makes me realize how important the work of bringing a truly independent voice to broadcast news and journalism really is. I really believe in free speech and independent journalism as a tool for peace, for understanding. It is so important, especially during times like these, that the media hold the politicians feet to the fire... we all need the real answers, the truth as best we can. This is why I get up every morning and go to the red firehouse we broadcast from everyday, still as excited as my first day at Democracy Now! over 12 years ago."

Amy Goodman

Asha Hagi (Somalia) The Jury honours Asha Hagi "for continuing to lead at great personal risk the female participation in the peace and reconciliation process in her war-ravaged country."

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"Asha Hagi has been working tirelessly to help restore peace and stability to her homeland. She has put all her energy into this exercise. I would like to recognise her important role which also sends the key message that Somalis can truly help their country best by working to end the killing rather than having blood on their hands."

Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, Special Representative for the UN Secretary-General for Somalia, Jury member of the Right Livelihood Award

Monika Hauser (Germany), gynaecologist and founder of medica mondiale, receives an Award "for her tireless commitment to working with women who have experienced the most horrific sexualised violence in some of the most dangerous countries in the world, and campaigning for them to receive social recognition and compensation."

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"Every minute, in conflict regions worldwide, women and girls become victims of sexualized violence. We do not tire of denouncing this publicly, and to demand support, security and justice for those concerned, be it in the respective countries or on international stage. We are with the surviving women and girls with all our knowledge and solidarity so that - despite all the destructive violence they had to experience - these women have a chance to live self-determined lives in dignity."

Monika Hauser

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Krishnammal Jagannathan and Sankaralingam Jagannathan are two lifelong activists for social justice, and for sustainable human development, working with those who are at the lowest rung of the social ladder. They have carried the Gandhian legacy into the 21st century, never ceasing to serve the needs of Dalits, landless and those threatened by the greed of landlords and multinational corporations.


Early lives (1930-1950)

Krishnammal Jagannathan was born to a landless Dalit family in 1926. Despite her family's poverty, she obtained university level education and was soon committed to the Gandhian Sarvodaya Movement, through which she met her husband, Sankaralingam Jagannathan (born in 1912), also a noted Gandhian.
 
Sankaralingam Jagannathan came from a rich family but gave up his college studies in 1930 in response to Gandhi's call for non-cooperation and disobedience. He joined the Quit India Movement in 1942 and spent three and a half years in jail before India gained its independence in 1947. During this time he already had considerable impact as campaigner on behalf of the poor.

Sankaralingam and Krishnammal married in 1950, having decided only to marry in independent India.


Redistributing land to the landless

Sankaralingam Jagannathan and Krishnammal Jagannathan decided early in their life that one of the key requirements for building a Gandhian society is empowering the rural poor by redistribution of land to the landless.

From 1950 to 1952 Sankaralingam Jagannathan was with Vinoba Bhave (the spiritual teacher of Gandhi) in Northern India on his Bhoodan (land-gift) Padayatra (pilgrimage on foot), the march appealing to landlords to give one sixth of their land to the landless, while Krishnammal completed her teacher-training course in Madras. He then returned to Tamil Nadu to start the Bhoodhan movement, and until 1968 the two worked for land redistribution through Vinoba Bhave's Gramdan movement (Village Gift, the next phase of the land-gift movement), and through Satyagraha (non-violent resistance). For this work, Sankaralingam Jagannathan was imprisoned many times. Between 1953 and 1967, the couple played an active role in the Bhoodhan movement spearheaded by Vinoba Bhave, through which about 4 million acres of land were distributed to thousands of landless poor across several Indian states. 

Much land given over under these campaigns was infertile. To make it productive Sankaralingam Jagannathan started in 1968 the Association of Sarva Seva Farmers (ASSEFA) of which he was Chairman until 1993, and which has become one of the best known, and most effective, Indian non-governmental development institutions, whose work spreads over a number of states. ASSEFA's essential enduring technique, rooted in Gandhian philosophy and based on deep commitment, applies to all Sankaralingam Jagannathan's and Krishnammal Jagannathan's work: to confront a practical problem with a down-to-earth approach of planning and action. The participants in this work share amongst themselves the fruit of the labour and show to others in a practical way that the improbable is not impossible.

After a particularly horrific incident in 1968, the brutal burning of 42 landless women and children following a wage-dispute, the couple started to work in Thanjavur District in Tamil Nadu to concentrate on land reform issues.


The birth of LAFTI

In 1981, the couple founded LAFTI, Land for the Tillers' Freedom. LAFTI's purpose was to bring the landlords and landless poor to the negotiating table, obtain loans to enable the landless to buy land at reasonable price and then to help them work it cooperatively, so that the loans could be repaid.

Progress was initially slow: banks were unwilling to lend and the stamp duty on the registration of small lots was exorbitant. But Krishnammal Jagannathan managed to overcome the political and bureaucratic hurdles. By 2007 LAFTI had transferred 13,000 acres since it began work to about 13,000 families through social action and through a land-purchase program.

LAFTI now has a seven member Executive Committee, of which Krishnammal Jagannathan is the first secretary, a general body with 20 people from the villages, and about 40 staff.


LAFTI's other activities and outreach programmes

Although a prime focus, land-redistribution is by no means the only concern of LAFTI. It also runs village industries, like mat-weaving, rope-making, carpentry, masonry, fishery, etc. and gives training to Dalit boys and girls. To bridge the digital divide, LAFTI organizes computer training for underprivileged, particularly Dalit girls. It also organises Gram Sabhas (village committees) in 100 villages in East Thanjavur district, with a team of 30 dedicated men and women, who are now actively engaged in implementing the LAFTI programme.

LAFTI's economic activities are substantial: Brick kilns have been constructed and many houses built, and fish farming established on a significant scale. LAFTI was also very constructively involved in the famine relief programmes in 1987 and the reconstruction programme after the tsunami in the Nagapattinam coastal area. 
 
Before LAFTI came in, the land-site on which the landless labourers lived did not belong to them and they were often evicted by landlords or government in the name of development. Due to LAFTI's efforts, the government has enacted a bill by which the land-site on which a labourer's thatched hut is located is legally allocated to the family. The 'people-participatory-environmental-friendly' house-building project, in which one adult member of the family contributes labour, is currently benefiting about 5000 families.


Protecting the coastal ecosystem and struggling against prawn farms

Since 1992 Sankaralingam Jagannathan and Krishnammal Jagannathan have addressed another major land challenge to the poor of the region: the establishment of prawn farms along the coast. The problem is not because of the local landlords but big industrialists from capital cities like Madras, Bombay, Calcutta, Delhi, Hyderabad, occupying large areas of land (500-1000 acres) for aquaculture in coastal areas, which not only throws the landless labour out of employment but also converts fertile and cultivable land to salty desert after seven or eight years when the prawn companies move on. It also results in the seepage of seawater into the groundwater in the neighbourhood, so that people are deprived of their drinking water resources. The result is that even more small farmers sell their meagre land-holdings to multinational prawn companies and move to the cities, filling urban slums.

To address this human and ecological tragedy Sankaralingam Jagannathan organised the whole of LAFTI's village movement to raise awareness among the people to oppose the prawn farms. Since 1993, villagers have offered Satygraha (non-violent resistance), through rallies, fasts, and demonstrations in protest of establishing the prawn farms. They have been beaten up by hired goons, their houses have been burnt, and LAFTI workers have been imprisoned, because of false accusations of looting and arson. Undeterred by this, Sankaralingam Jagannathan filed a 'public interest petition' in the Indian Supreme Court, which in turn asked NEERI (National Environmental Engineering Institute of India) to investigate the matter. NEERI's investigation report highlighted the environmental cost of the prawn farms to the nation and recommended all prawn farms within 500 meters of the coast to be banned.

In December 1996, the Supreme Court issued a ruling against intensive shrimp farming in cultivable lands within 500 meters of the coastal area. But because of the prawn farmers' local political influence, the Supreme Court judgement was not implemented on the ground. The legal battle around the prawn farms is still not resolved and the Jagannathans continue their struggle to establish non-exploitative, eco-friendly communities in the coastal areas of Tamil Nadu.

Further achievements and honours

In their lives, Sankaralingam Jagannathan and Krishnammal Jagannathan, either independently or together, have established a total of seven non-governmental institutions for the poor. Besides this, Krishnammal Jagannathan has also played an active role in wider public life: she has been a Senate member of the Gandhigram Trust and University and of Madurai University; a member of a number of local and state social welfare committees; and a member of the National Committee on Education, the Land Reform Committee and the Planning Committee.

These activities have gained for the Jagannathans a high profile in India and they have won many prestigious Awards: the Swami Pranavananda Peace Award (1987); the Jamnalal Bajaj Award (1988) and Padma Shri in 1989. In 1996 the couple received the Bhagavan Mahaveer Award "for propagating non-violence." In 1999 Krishnammal was awarded a Summit Foundation Award (Switzerland), and in 2008 an 'Opus Prize' given by the University of Seattle.

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The media is sometimes called the fourth power in a democracy. But in many countries of the world, the media is today no longer willing or able to play this role. Instead it defers to commercial and political interests, thus eroding democracy. With Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman has shown what the alternative to this dangerous trend can look like. Democracy Now! is the largest public media collaboration in the U.S. which is now available to people seeking alternative viewpoints around the globe.

Career

Amy Goodman was born in 1957, graduated from Harvard in 1984 and became news director at the New York radio station WBAI a few years later. In 1996 she launched the daily one-hour news broadcast Democracy Now!, which she now hosts with Juan Gonzales, and which is produced live from 08.00 to 09.00 US EST.


Unembedded reporting

Democracy Now! focuses on issues its producers consider under-reported or ignored by mainstream news coverage, like global news or reporting on anti-war activism in the U.S. It provides hard-hitting, independent, breaking coverage of war and peace, U.S. domestic and foreign policy, and struggles for social, racial, economic, gender and environmental justice in the U.S. and abroad.

Democracy Now! seeks to give voice to the voiceless. Its broadcasts include:

• in-depth interviews with community members, activists, academics, artists and journalists shut out by the mainstream media,
• debates between activists and people in power,
• investigative reports and exclusive interviews with usual and controversial guests,
• and on-the-ground reporting from protests, the recent conventions and hot spots round the world.

Democracy Now! - Facts and figures

Democracy Now! is the fastest growing independent news program in the USA. The show is now syndicated to more than 700 radio and TV, satellite and cable TV networks in North America reaching millions of people worldwide.

Democracy Now! is produced by seven producers, 20 full-time and 15 paid part-time staff as well as many volunteers. Broadcast daily as an hourly TV show, but with its founding on radio, it is produced in such a way that the stories never rely on the pictures, which allows it to be sent out as a radio show on community radio stations all over the US.

Democracy Now! has an outreach team working to encourage communities to demand that their community radio stations transmit the programme.

Democracy Now!'s innovative technical solutions allow for high usability for any kind of audience. There is 'close captioning' for deaf people and numerous voluntary transcribers produce full transcripts of the show. On the website, there are different types of streams and downloads, e.g. audio files, but also high-quality video files that are sent out, for example, by a Japanese TV channel once a week. Democracy Now! also keeps a complete archive of all its shows, which people can research for free.

Democracy Now! receives no government or corporate funding. Because of its educational mission, it has charitable status according to US law (501c3). Major organisational donors have been the Lannan Foundation and the Wallace Global Fund. Significant contributions also come from listeners themselves.


Trickle-up journalism

Goodman describes Democracy Now! as 'trickle-up journalism', because the stories it runs are often taken up by the mainstream media and her interviewees are very often interviewed by other channels after they have appeared on Democracy Now! Thus, the significance of Democracy Now! goes beyond the show as such: It also serves to open up the media landscape, acting as a 'conveyor belt' for stories that otherwise would not reach the mainstream media.


Awards and books

Goodman's awards include the Golden Reel for the Best National Documentary for 'Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship' in 1998, and the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Prize for 'Massacre: the Story of East Timor'. This story had almost cost her life: In East Timor, she survived a massacre in 1991 in which Indonesian soldiers gunned down 270 Timorese.

Goodman has also written three hard-hitting books with her brother, David Goodman: The Exception to the Rulers (2004); Static: Government Liars, Media Cheer-leaders and the People who Fight Back (2006); and Standing up to the Madness (2008). She also syndicates a column to national papers.


Democracy Now! is broadcast daily from 8-9am EST/1-2pm GMT. To watch today's show and for a list of international and domestic stations that carry DN!, please go to www.democracynow.org.

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Asha Hagi has dedicated her life to gaining a better and more peaceful future for her war-torn country, Somalia. At great personal risk, she has fought for women to have a voice in the decisions that affect them. She has mobilized women in the cause of peace across clan and political divides and continues to play a vital role in mediating across warring clans in the on-going peace process. Women in Somalia are in a much stronger position today because of her courage, persistence and compassion.



Career and the SSWC

Born in 1962, Asha Hagi graduated in economics from Somalia National University and holds a Master's degree in business administration from the US International University in Africa.

Asha Hagi co-founded in 1992, and is the current Chair of, Save Somali Women and Children (SSWC), which works for a safe and sustainable Somalia by supporting women to overcome marginalisation, violence and poverty in their communities. SSWC has seven paid staff and nine volunteers. A large part of the humanitarian funding comes directly from the Somali community around the world as well as from international organisations and individual donors.


Representing the women of Somalia

During the Arta peace talks in 2000, Hagi founded, together with other women, the Sixth Clan, the clan of women, to complement the traditional five Somali Clans which are all male-dominated. This became the first time women were represented in a peace process in Somalia. She played a similar role in the Mbagathi Conference in Nairobi (2002-2004), which gave birth to the Transitional Federal Government and the Transitional Federal Parliament, of which Hagi became a member.

In both cases the participation of women in these conferences played a crucial role in their success: Not only did the women represent a broader interest of the Somali citizens, compared to the often very narrow political positions of the men. They were also able to do 'shuttle diplomacy' between the antagonistic factions of the traditional five clans.

Among the women's achievements through the idea of the Sixth Clan are:

• taking women to the high negotiation table with their own identity (Sixth Clan) and as equal partners in decision making,
• a 12% quota for women representation in the Transitional Federal Parliament,
• introduction of fair gender formatting (he / she) in the charter language,
• the creation of a Ministry for Gender and Family Affairs, and
• a decree by the Prime Minister of the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia ensuring a 30% quota for women in the district and regional councils, in national commissions, local committees and conferences.

The recent development in Somalia and Hagi's role in the peace process

Late in 2006, events in Somalia took a dramatic turn for the worse. There were two factions in the Transitional Federal Government, which had contrary views relating to peace dialogue or military action involving the Ethiopians. In November 2006, while a group, including Hagi, favouring the former was negotiating with the Islamic Courts Union, which effectively ruled Mogadishu and much of Somalia, the latter was inviting in the Ethiopian army. The Ethiopians took Mogadishu at the end of December, with the deaths of around 1,000 people and widespread destruction of the city. By April 2007, more than 350,000 people had fled the city.

The current situation effectively prevents Hagi, who has spoken out against this development on the global media, from returning to Mogadishu, so that she is now based in Nairobi. However, her organisation SSWC is seeking to give relief in Mogadishu to those who remained, distributing food and hygiene kits to women and children.

Since May 2008, Asha Hagi's focus is on the UN sponsored peace dialogue between the Transitional Federal Government and the Alliance Re-liberation of Somalia in Djibouti, where she is a member of the High Level Political Committee in the Djibouti Peace and Reconciliation Talks.

In the peace talks, Hagi represents a balanced position between the different political interests. However, she does not give way on her most important principle: the need for reconciliation and an inclusive, non-violent political process. Her role requires a lot of courage and is putting her in considerable danger, even outside Somalia.


Further activities

Asha Hagi is a core group member of the Leaders Project, established in 2002, that has brought together more than 300 women leaders from around the world. She is also a member of the Pan-African Parliament in Johannesburg. She is a member of the 21 Peace Commissioners from Africa of the Inter-Faith Action for Peace in Africa (IFAPA), and a Board Member of the Africa Peace Forum (APF) and the International Resource Group on Security and Small Arms in the Horn of Africa Region.


Honours

Asha Hagi has received a number of awards for her human rights and peace-building work. In 2001, she was made an 'Ambassador for Peace' by the Interreligious and International Federation For World Peace. In 2005, she received the Blue Ribbon Peace Award from the Women Leadership Board of the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and the first award of 'Women of Substance' by the African Women Development Fund. In 2006, she received the 'Tombouctou / Women Peacemaking Award' from Femmes Africa Solidarité.

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Monika Hauser is the founder of medica mondiale, which works to prevent and punish sexual violence against women and girls in wartime and to assist the survivors. Hauser and her colleagues have helped over 70,000 traumatised women and girls in war and post-war crisis zones in Bosnia and Hercegovina, Kosovo, DR Congo, Liberia and Afghanistan, often despite great risks to their own security. 

 

Career

Monika Hauser was born in 1959 in Switzerland, and holds an Italian passport due to her family roots in South Tyrol. She completed her doctorate in medicine in Innsbruck and Bologna in 1984, obtained her German medical licence in 1988 and completed her gynaecological specialisation in 1998. She came to work with victims of sexual violence after being exposed as a young doctor in South Tyrol and Germany to women who had experienced rape and other forms of sexual violence.

Bosnia - Building up Medica Zenica

At the end of 1992, Hauser was shocked by the media reports about the tragedy of the Bosnian women, and the instrumentalisation of the survivors in the media, which often reduced the women to mere "rape victims". She assembled a highly motivated team of 20 Bosnian experts, collected the funding needed, brought the complete material for the clinics to Central Bosnia through the frontlines and built up Medica Zenica, a women's therapy centre, in the middle of war-torn Bosnia.

Setting up Medica Zenica, Hauser insisted on a multi-ethnic team. The creation of such a centre in a war situation was pioneering work, even more remarkable in a highly patriarchal and hostile war context.


medica mondiale

Out of these activities medica mondiale gradually evolved. For the next six years Monika Hauser continued to further the development of medica mondiale. She also returned to Zenica for several extended stays. In 1999, she initiated the project medica mondiale Kosova, involving numerous project visits to Albania and Kosovo. In 2000 Monika Hauser assumed the professional and political management of medica mondiale.


medica mondiale's mission

medica mondiale supports and assists women and girls in war zones and areas of crisis, whose physical, psychological, social and political integrity has been violated. This support and assistance is provided irrespective of the women's and girls' political affiliation, ethnic origin or religion. The aim is to strengthen the women's self-healing powers and to support and demand their right to an emancipatory way of life.

medica mondiale has a double strategy of individual professional support and human rights work by

• establishing sustainable local structures to provide support for survivors of wartime sexual violence,
• setting up interdisciplinary counselling and therapy centres,
• capacity building and training of local professional staff, and
• political advocacy for women's rights.

Advocacy for women's rights and legal prosecution

Since its formation, medica mondiale has worked for the recognition of sexual violence in wartime as a war crime, for the prosecution of the perpetrators, and against social stigma and the marginalisation of the survivors.

medica mondiale supported the investigations of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, took care of witnesses, monitored court proceedings and protested publicly whenever it saw the interests of women witnesses threatened. medica mondiale also campaigned for the creation of the International Criminal Court, and contributed to the fact that grave sexual violence became explicitly recognised as a war crime and crime against humanity in the ICC's statutes.


Facts and figures

medica mondiale has independent projects in Bosnia and Hercegovina (27 staff), Kosovo (25 staff) and Albania (12 staff), and own projects in Afghanistan (72 staff) and Liberia (17 staff). It supports partner organisations in Cambodia, DR Congo (6 co-operative partners), East Timor, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Sudan, Turkey, Uganda and Israel, supported by an office in Cologne, Germany, with 29 staff, plus a similar number of volunteers and 100 women in action groups in several German cities.

medica mondiale estimates to have - directly and indirectly - reached around 100,000 women and girls through their projects. Half of medica mondiale's 2007 budget of 3 million Euros came from private donations. Organisational sources of funds in 2007 included the Sigrid Rausing Trust, KfW Development Bank, UNHCHR, which regards medica mondiale as 'an essential partner' in relation to women and conflict, the European Community, the Danish Embassy in Afghanistan, and the German Government.

In 2005 medica mondiale published Violence Against Women in War, a manual of lessons learned from eleven years of experience in half a dozen countries emerging from war.


Further activities

Monika Hauser lectures regularly at national and international congresses and public events, presenting the work of medica mondiale to the general public and to professional panels. She has also been active as a trainer for the medica mondiale Qualification Programme for Afghan women doctors, nurses and midwives in Kabul.


Honours

Hauser has received a number of awards for her work, for example "Woman of the Year" 1993 of the German ARD TV, and the Peter Beier Award of the German Lutheran Church. She turned down the German Federal Cross of Merit in protest against the German Government policy of forced repatriation of Bosnian refugees.

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