0813 am 'Get This' news

08/13/07 Get This
Chris Andreae
 

1. Frozen Veg = Fried Fish:  Gordon Smith is siding with Dick Cheney over the massive fish kill on the Klamath back in 2002.  Smith says there is no evidence that it was caused by water diversion to farmers.  Gordon Smith’s presence in the ‘private sector’ is Smith Frozen Foods.  Vegetables, mainly.  Grown by farmers.  In Eastern Oregon.  The Smith website says so right here:  “Smith Frozen Foods represents an average of 8 to 15 percent of all U.S. frozen peas, corn and diced carrots. That amount of product allows us to fill your orders with confidence - whatever your size, whatever your needs.   And because of our grower relationships, our location and our equipment, we can keep costs low, without sacrificing quality.” Just fish…
2. “River Nose”:  It’s something you get from swimming in the Columbia river downstream from Hanford, agribusiness run-off and assorted PCB’s.  “Better living through chemistry”?  Better luck surviving chemistry…
3. But Don’t Go Near The Water:  There have been 45 health advisories at State beaches in the last year.  (There only surprise here is that there is anything left alive in Oregon’s coastal ‘Dead Zone’…)
4. Going South:  Just south of Florence, Oregon, the up-scale community of Woahink Lake is choking on its chardonnay.  The smell from the lake, you see.   The DEQ says it’s the algae that flourish in nitrogen and phosphate-enhanced water, the by-product of unnaturally green lawns and clean clothes.  So the local city Fathers and Mothers waded in where common sense ought to have gone before.  They passed a law banning nitrogen-loaded fertilizers and phosphate-rich detergents. 
5. The Oregon News Service has an item concerning property rights.  The money behind the odious Measure 37 is piling up behind Son of Measure 37 – Measure 49 - in preparation for this autumn’s vote.
6. Federal subpoenas seeking medical records of 17 Oregon medical marijuana patients have growers upset and patients nervous.  A federal judge is considering whether or not to throw the subpoenas out.  (Let’s do the math:  If medical marijuana growers are rounded up and put away, that leaves the market wide open to the big time illegal growers and distributors where the real money is made, so that means…No!  Not our very own federal government…
7. Martha Odom, activist-in-Residence came by with up-dates on Hiroshima actions at Bangor and Livermore, the impeachment vigil at Blumenaur’s office, the Oregon Fair Trade campaign, the  action at the Shelton DHS Detention Center and the up-coming Portland Grassroots Media Camp.
8. This past week in Skamokawa, Washington, the West Coast Climate Convergence is full throttle.  Dan Serres of Friends of Living Oregon Waters called in with news of the event.
9. Karl Rove is resigning in order to spend more time with his attorneys.
10. In New Orleans, Lower 9th ward home are being razed, even as residents await for long-promised, long-overdue federal aid.  (Turns out the ‘Road Home’ funds took a detour through Baghdad… left for Iraq.) 
11. America:  Live Free…And Die:  In the last 20 years, life expectancy in the world’s wealthiest nation has dropped in global rankings from 11th to 42.  This disgrace is due in part  to the health insurance industry but – as always – the fundamental racism of a country built from the ground up by slave labor plays a major role. 
12. The miners trapped in the mine in Utah are still down there, raising serious doubts about the life expectancy of miners in America generally.
13. Dick Cheney is banging ever bigger drums in the direction of Iran.  And Tehran is doing the same thing that Saddam Hussein did – bluff.  
14. Canada just took delivery on one fourth of a huge order from Boeing:  A massive C-17 military cargo plane.  The story goes that this Flying Fortress is destined for Canada’s Disaster Assistance Response Team.  My bet:  These four huge planes are going to be stationed in the far distant North and they won’t be visiting Santa Claus…
15. The Department of Homeland Security is funneling millions of dollars to local governments to blow on high-tech video camera networks.  Privacy Rights people say we’re heading towards a “surveillance society.”  And I say we are already there.  Remember what they told you in science class, ‘Any receiving device is also a potential sending device’.  Now think about how many such “receiving devices” with which  we have surrounded ourselves…DHS you may be a day late but you’re not a dollar short…
16. In Britain – Heathrow no less!  Environmental activists representing the global Climate Convergence moved right in and set up their eco-village right next to one of the runways.  “Right under the noses of British anti-terror” units that had been strategizing for weeks all the ways to stop the action from happening. 
    and then there is was first thing Sunday morning.  (Now had this happened stateside there would be blood on the tarmac by this time…)
17. Iraq’s PM, Nouri al-Maliki wants a summit with all his nation’s various political factions.  Apparently he forgot that they all went on vacation this month. 
18. Love-In:  And a bit further to the East, Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf and Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai   held a cross-border jirga and both came away as misty-eyed as young damsels – or rave-kids on E.  Pakistan’s Interior Minister said, “This will usher in a new era of love and understanding and send good vibes across the country and the region.”  What does this mean?  Must have been a good year for the hashish crops…
19. More evidence that the US has lost control of the river of guns running full-throttle into Iraq:  Italian anti-Mafia investigators came upon a shipment of more than 100 thousand rifles of which the Americans were “unaware.”   (Amazing isn’t it that we can launch a full-scale war with a defenseless nation on the ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ fantasy, yet we can’t stop weapons shipments from reaching Baghdad.  Could it have something to do with the US gun manufacturers ‘Summer Specials’ direct mail campaign?  Did the gun fairies pay a visit?…What?)
20. Darfur is going to get the all-African peacekeeping force it wanted all along.  (See?  That wasn’t so hard, now was it, Mr. Moon…)
21. In Peru, the citizens of a small town with a big refinery problem are sick of…Well…being sick.  They’re fighting back against the US corporation, Renco Doe Run that owns and operates the local La Oroya refinery.  Ira Rennert, the company’s proprietor has topped the US Environmental Protection Agency’s list of polluters worldwide for more than a decade..  
22. And in Sierra Leone, the recent presidential and parliamentary election went off reasonably well, free and fair, said observers.  But then compared to US elections, a rhino orgy in a shitpile would be “free and fair”…