U S Flag Day 2010

This is Flag Day in the United States of America!



For more on the history of Flag Day go HERE.



http://www.usflag.org/history/flagday.html

The Right To Choose – Eor Farmers in Haiti ... Paul Driessen

The Right To Choose – for Farmers in Haiti
Anti-corporate activists pervert “social justice” and perpetuate poverty in Haiti
By: Paul Driessen

*********************
The Monsanto Company is learning a valuable lesson in Haiti: no good deed goes unpunished at the hands of radical anti-corporate elements of Western society.

Like so many other concerned citizens, Monsanto responded to the tragic January 12 earthquake that further devastated this impoverished country. It worked for months with Haiti’s Agricultural Ministry to select seeds best suited to local climates, needs and practices, and to handle the donation so as to support, rather than undermine, the country’s agricultural and economic infrastructure.

From Monsanto’s extensive inventory, they jointly chose conventionally bred hybrid (not biotech / genetically modified / GM) varieties of field corn and seven vegetables: cabbage, carrots, eggplants, onions, tomatoes, spinach and melons. Instead of giving the seeds to farmers, the company worked with the USAID-funded WINNER program, to donate the seeds to stores owned and managed by Haitian farmer associations. The 475 tons of hybrid seeds will then be sold to many thousands of farmers at steep discounts, and all revenues will be reinvested in local agriculture.

Other companies and donors are providing fertilizers, insecticide and herbicides that will likewise be sold at a discount. The companies, Agricultural Ministry, farmers associations and other experts will also provide technical advice and assistance – much as the USDA’s Cooperative Extension System does – on how, when and whether to use the various hybrids, fertilizers, and weed and insect-control chemicals.

The goal is simple. Help get the country and its farmers back on their feet, improve farming practices, crop yields and nutrition levels, and increase incomes and living standards.

The reaction of anti-corporate activists was instantaneous, intense, perverse, patronizing and hypocritical. Monsanto wants to turn Haiti back into “a slave colony,” ranted Organic Consumers Association founder Ronnie Cummins. Hybrid and GM seeds will destroy our diversity, small-farmer agriculture and “what is left of our environment,” raged Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, leader of the Peasant Movement of Papaye.

Other self-anointed “peasant representatives” waded in. The seeds are genetically modified and “will exterminate our people.” Farmers won’t be able to afford the seeds or feed their children. The fertilizers are carcinogenic. Fungicides on the seeds are toxic poisons. “Seeds are the patrimony of humanity.” We support “food and seed sovereignty.” Traditional seeds and farming practices “provide stable employment” for the 70% of Haitians who are small farmers. And of course, “Down with Monsanto.”

Various U.S. churches and foundations chimbed in. “Spontaneous” protests were organized in several Haitian and American cities. At one, hundreds of marchers wore identical shirts and hats, which even at a combined value of just $5 represented two weeks’ income for average Haitian farmers: 40 cents a day. One wonders how many would have shown up without these inducements.

Indeed, this abysmal income underscores the terrible reality of life in this island nation, even before the earthquake, and the perversity of this campaign against “corporate control of the food system.” Instead of “seed sovereignty,” the activists are ensuring eco-imperialism and poverty sovereignty.

Forty years ago, Haiti was largely self-sufficient in food production and actually exported coffee, sugar and mangoes. Today, the country imports 80% of its rice and 97% of the 31 million eggs it consumes monthly. Two-thirds of Haiti’s people are farmers (roughly equivalent to the United States just after the Civil War), but their crop yields are among the lowest in the Western Hemisphere.

Few of Haiti’s rural families have running water or electricity, and women spend hours a day cooking over open fires. Many contract serious lung diseases as a result, and life expectancy is twelve years lower than for people on the Dominican Republic side of the island.

Google satellite images reveal a lush green eastern DR two-thirds of Hispaniola – in stark contrast to the deforested, rutted, brown, impoverished Haitian side, from which enormous quantities of soil are washed into the ocean every year. Roads are so rutted and awful that Peace Corps workers report traveling four hours by truck to go 60 miles. Many rural people cannot afford to feed their children, leaving hundreds of kids in poor highland areas literally starving to death.

Hybrid seeds can help Haitians climb out of this morass. They’re no silver bullet, but they are one of the cheapest, easiest and best investments a farmer can make. By simply planting different seeds and adding fertilizer, farmers can dramatically increase crop yields. A similar Monsanto donation of hybrid maize (corn) seeds and fertilizer to Malawi farmers in 2006 generated a 500% increase in yields and helped feed a million people for a year.

In the United States, organic and conventional farmers alike plant numerous hybrids. They cost more than traditional, open-pollinated seeds, but the payoff in yield, revenue, and uniformity of size, quality and ripening time makes the investment decision easy. Between 1933 and 2000, U.S. corn yields likewise expanded fivefold – thanks to hybrids, fertilizer, irrigation and innovative crop management practices – and today, hybrid or GM hybrid crops are planted on virtually every American field.

Some of the Haitian corn donation will be used to improve chicken farming and egg production. Most will likely be used in staples like sauce pois – corn mush topped with black or red beans combined with coconut milk, hot peppers, onions, garlic and oil. The thickness of the bean sauce reflects a family’s income, and “wealthy” families often accompany the sauce with rice, instead of corn mush. The veggie seeds will add variety to family diets, and provide a source of income via sales at local markets.

The hybrids will also help Haiti adopt truly sustainable farming practices: higher crop yields, greater revenues and better nutrition for more people, at lower cost, from less land, using less water and fewer pesticides, requiring less time in fields, and enabling more farmers to specialize in other trades and send their children to school. In short, greater opportunity and prosperity for millions.

And yet, activists continue to spew forth invective, preposterous claims and disinformation – primarily through the Huffington Post and several other websites. Hybrid seeds don’t regenerate, they assert; wrong – they do and can be replanted, though they will not pass all their best traits down to subsequent generations, which is one reason farmers typically buy new seeds. The seeds are poisonous, they fume; false – the seeds are treated with fungicides that are used safely all over the USA, Western Europe and Latin America, to keep seeds from being destroyed by fungus before they germinate.

(For additional information and discussions, see plant geneticist Anastasia Bodnar’s Biofortified website.)

Monsanto will not force farmers to plant hybrid seeds – or say they can’t replant what they collect from previous harvests. Indeed, hybrids were widely just 30 years ago by Haitian farmers, who know what they are looking for in a crop, how to assess what they have planted and harvested, and whether they want to invest in specific seeds. They should be allowed to make their own decisions – just as others should be permitted to plant whatever traditional, heirloom or open-pollinated seeds they wish.

“We reject Monsanto seeds,” say anti-hybrid activists. They might, and that’s fine. But thousands of other Haitian farmers want to plant Monsanto seeds. Their right to choose must also be respected – not denied by intolerant protesters, who are largely funded and guided by well-fed First World campaigners.

After years of vicious assaults by agro and eco purists, Monsanto’s corporate skin is probably thick enough to survive these lies and often highly personal attacks. Other companies, however, might lack the fortitude to provide their expertise and technology after future disasters, in the face of such attacks.

That is almost certainly an objective for many of these anti-technology, anti-corporate groups. Monsanto has no maize financial interests in Haiti and only a tiny vegetable operation, and I have no financial interest in Monsanto. But for the world’s most destitute people, it would be a tragedy of epic proportions.

Paul Driessen

***********************

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green Power - Black Death.

The Decline and Fall of Everybody ... Alan Caruba

The Decline and Fall of Everybody
By Alan Caruba
*******************

I have a friend of over twenty-five years who I watched build a single idea for a business into one that, at one time, was taking in a million dollars a year. Then the Internet came along, followed by the 2008 financial crisis.

After a reasonable period of agonizing, my friend sat down and put the numbers on the page. They added up to firing all his employees and not renewing the lease on the office in which he’d been since the mid-1980s. Tech savvy, his business has gone “virtual.” As he put it, “I will make sales from my cell phone.”

Now take my friend, the classic entrepreneur and small business owner, and multiply him by thousands across the fruited plains and purple mountains majesty. Not only has the economy crashed, thanks to the latest “bubble” of bad housing mortgages, but it happened just in time to ensure that Barack Obama who never owned a business, met a payroll, or worried about selling anything other than himself was elected president.

Next on the list of burst bubbles will be all the “green” technology and “clean energy” companies into which the government has been pumping billions in subsidies for wind and solar power, grants for research on biofuels, electric cars, and all the other “green” projects the public continues to be told represent a bright new world.

Why would anyone think that a “community organizer”, academic, and briefly a working lawyer, could know or even be brought up to speed fast enough to know what to avoid and what needs to be done to put people back to work or help small to medium businesses? The answer is he couldn’t and he wouldn’t and he didn’t.

Obama’s most basic instincts are a liberal distrust of “big business”, “Wall Street”, and anyone else involved in shaping and making the economy. This is particularly true since his political rise has been fueled by millions from unions. He is their man. They own him. He is beholden to a number of other special interests, but that is where his heart is. That is where he looked for and received campaign funds, campaign manpower, and votes.

Once in office, he set about reversing the slow and well-deserved decline of unions that, while having a long-ago past history of correcting working conditions, are now totally parasitic no matter whether it is the auto or any other industry, or whether it is in the public service sector where they toil as government workers, teachers, and others whose work rules, health benefits, and pensions have contributed to the insolvency of most states and cities.

They and the nation’s other blood-suckers, the lawyers, are Obama’s chosen constituency and everybody else can just plain go to hell or shut up and take a government-issued check for a return on taxes you may not have paid (40% do not pay taxes these days), your food stamps debit card, or any of the other government handouts that keep people docile and unproductive. Don’t worry, when your unemployment benefits run out, Congress will just extend them.

The problem is that Congress and the nation are just flat broke. At some point all the borrowing will stop because those doing the lending will decide they are not seeing any real return on their investments in U.S. Treasury notes.

The problem is that one of the wonders of globalization is that when one country goes belly up, it affects all the rest. Sooner or later the whole global network of central banks is likely to run out of money with which to bail out one another. Then what?

My friend will run his business as best he can in an economy where his customer base has increasingly reached the same point that whole nations will. They will have to decide where to spend what little money they have.

This is going to become an increasingly difficult decision when Obama and the Congress raise taxes at the worst possible time, thus sucking anywhere from 40% to 60% or more out of the pockets of the middle class, the entrepreneurs, the managers, the professionals. If they own homes as many do, they will cease to have any equity and prove hard to sell.

So it will be the decline and fall of everybody other than the millionaires who can afford the lawyers and accountants to show them how to pay less taxes than a chimney sweep or bus driver.

My friend is sounding a lot more relaxed these days. He is no longer responsible for all the costs involved with hiring, paying, or firing anyone. He no longer has to meet the rent on his office. Even so, he has discovered a whole new layer of reporting to the IRS regarding his venders and must in turn provide data to those who continue to use his services. American businesses, large, medium and small are strangling on government regulation and taxation.

There is a ripple effect here. It begins with the laid-off former employees who cannot find new jobs. It includes the owner of the office building who has space he cannot rent to a new business enterprise. It includes a copier machine lease allowed to lapse. As he put it, he can walk down the block from where he lives and use printing and delivery services. For list maintenance and other IT services, there’s always the vendor in Bangalore, India.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

**********************

Alan Caruba writes a daily post at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/. An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center.

America’s Golden Age of Ignorance

America’s Golden Age of Ignorance
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

**********************

One can only conclude that America finds herself in the current mess as a direct result of ignorance. “Ignorance of what,” you ask? I must answer, “Ignorance of practically everything.”

I concluded, early on, the election of Obama was a direct result of ignorance. Ignorance of just how politics works in America as a result of no education -- period. Ignorance as a direct result of education received in the government schools, and just plain old willful ignorance – choosing to be ignorant of politics in America, by electing not to involve oneself in the distasteful, and sometimes less than sanitary job of maintaining America’s freedom.

Ignorance of America’s colorful political history, and that of the world, is much to blame for the Obama Regime’s continued acceptance by vast numbers of Americans. But, I am happy to report that number is growing ever smaller as each day passes.

Ignorance of history, as well as of current events, among the populace of any country, can lead to consequences that are truly awful. Take the election of America’s first socialist government, for instance. The election of 2006 turned our national legislature into a socialist machine bent on creating an even stronger central government with all the power it could grasp. Then, in 2008, the capstone of socialist victory in American politics was the election of Barack Hussein Obama. He promised fundamental change in America. The politically savvy in America understood he meant to lead America into out and out (pure) socialism. And he did.

Even today, the average democrat voter will deny the existence of a socialist government in America. They simply do not recognize it. I am convinced that ignorance stems from the fact that they were not taught the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the genius of America’s founders, and the love of a free constitutional republic that led their ancestors to lay down their lives to protect and preserve the freedom granted by that constitution. That is ignorance.

Back in the day, before teacher’s unions, American students were taught the fundamental concepts of American democracy and the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. We learned, as students, that life in America is a priviledge. We learned that freedom is not free, it is preserved by Americans who know its value, even if it means laying down their lives in its defense.

Students also leaned the immeasurable value of The Founding Documents, the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, and the all-important Bill of Rights. They learned that The Founders said what they meant and meant what they said when writing the constiturtion. Students also learned that the US Constitution is a document for the ages. It is not a living breathing document subject to change at the whim of those citizens who live under its protection.

No longer. Today we graduate students wo cannot read their diplomas, who cannot find Canada and Mexico on a map, and have no idea what the Constitution or the Bill of Rights are! They have no clue that the Bill of Rights limits the role of government in the daily lives of Americans. If they did, there would be riots in the streets all over America today.

These are the Americans who placed the "so-called" democrats in charge of America’s government. I say “so-called” because those of us who have dabbled in politics, all our adult lives, understand that those in charge of the US government today are not democrats as they would have you believe. They are socialists, Marxists, communists, and progressives.

So – how WERE they elected? They were elected by people who genuinely thought they were voting for democrats, and by people who don’t care what kind of government we have so long as their place on the government dole is protected and their “hand outs” continue to arrive every month, and by those who were interested only in the power that would accrue to them if socialists controled the US government. The latter could not have accomplished this feat without the ignorance of the former, whose votes they knew they could count on.

Ignorance is a dangerous, dangerous, thing. We, here in America, are only just re-learning this lesson.

This is truly the Golden Era of Ignorance in America. If we survive the damage it has done, we must begin all over again teaching our children what it means to be an American under the protection of the original US Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

If we cannot repair the current public education system in America then we must trash it and build a new one in which the federal government and federal dollars have no part – and -- unionizing teachers is illegal.

We Americans must purge our Congress and the White House of socialist, Marxists, communists, and progressives at the ballot box and reclaim our country. If we do not -- America will have earned its place on the dust heap of history.

J. D. Longstreet

Another call for Obama’s Resignation

Another call for Obama’s Resignation
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

*****************

Retired US Army Major General Paul Vallely has written an article entitled: “Who are America’s Friends Now? The Chessboard!” You will find it posted at Stand Up America.com HERE.

In the article gen. Vallely calls for the immediate resignation of President Obama. General Valley says: “We now must call for the immediate resignation of Barry Soetero (AKA President Barack Hussein Obama) … based on incompetence, deceit, fraud, corruption, dishonesty and violation of the U.S. oath of office and the Constitution … .” Vallely goes on: "And a call for a national petition for new elections to select the next president of the United States of America must be initiated," he continued. "We can wait no longer for a traditional change of power and new government." Continuing, Gen. Vallely says: “"We cannot permit the current leaders in the White House and halls of Congress to continue in their efforts to lead us down the road of progressive socialism and destruction of America. This is the current battle that we constitutionalists face, and we must be aggressive in our efforts," he said. (We urge you to read the article in its entirety at Stand Up America HERE.)

According to World Net Daily – “Vallely graduated from West Point and was commissioned in the Army in 1961. He served 32 years before retiring, including in theaters in Europe and the Pacific Rim.

He saw two tours of combat duty in Vietnam. He's of late been a military analyst for the Fox News Channel and a lecturer on counter-terrorism. From 1982 to 1986 he commanded the 351st Civil Affairs Command that included all Special Forces, psychological warfare and civil military units in the Western United States and Hawaii.” (Read the entire article at World Net Daily HERE.)

America is waking up and realizing it is not a dream but a nightmare -- and a LIVING nightmare at that!

One of the earliest calls for Obama’s resignation came from fellow blogger Alan Caruba as far back as June 10th 2009. In his article Mr. Caruba said: “Since the President takes an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States”, a President who acts contrary to the Constitution or is found guilty of breaking the law should be subject to removal.” Mr. Caruba goes on to say: “I would argue that a President who appoints over twenty “czars” to supersede the powers of the secretaries of various federal departments; people who are apparently exempt from Congressional approval or oversight, and people who apparently do not feel the need to hold press conferences to explain what they are doing, is distinctly unconstitutional.”

Mr. Caruba even questions Obama’s eligibility to serve as President when he says: “Americans who are fearful of the havoc President Barack Obama has let loose on this nation need to flood Congress with the demand that he be removed from office for his failure to protect, preserve, and defend the Constitution. Indeed, to conclusively prove he was constitutionally qualified to run for the presidency.”

Mr. Caruba says America cannot wait for the Presidential Election in 2012. He says: “Americans cannot afford to let this President hold power until the next election in 2012. They cannot hope that the midterm elections in 2010 will be sufficient to protect them against the damage he will do to them, to their children, and to their grandchildren before they are held.”

Caruba winds up his strong argument for Obama’s resignation by stating: “President Barack Hussein Obama must go!” (We urge you to read the entire article by Mr. Caruba at HERE.)

As Americans watch their country spiraling downward from its position as a world leader to just another mediocre socialist nation, they are deeply troubled by the experience. It is an entirely new and entirely distasteful view of a nation, which has prided itself on American Exceptionalism for well over 200 years.

As Americans watch the national debt headed towards 14 TRILLION dollars -- and are now told that in just a few years we can expect a national debt of over 19 TRILLION dollars, we realize neither we, nor or children, nor or grandchildren can sustain such a debt. That, in itself is troubling enough, but add to that a government hell-bent on more and more spending and more and more debt and one can understand why Americans are more than ready to, as we say, “throw the bums OUT!”

As this scribe considers all this, I remember that Obama DID promise to “fundamentally change” America. Well, he has certainly done that! Millions of us are more than ready to change it back!

J. D. Longstreet