In the following excerpt from the transcript of the interview above, Hedges wonders who — in the face of high opposition to the NDAA both from the public and from Democrats as well as Republicans within the government — continues to push this legislation, and why:

None of the Pentagon, the FBI, as you—Mueller and everyone else, as you pointed out—none of them supported the bill, even to the extent where Mueller and others were testifying before Congress that it would make their work more difficult. And yet it passes anyway. And it is a kind of—I think it’s a kind of mystery to the rest of us as to what are the forces that—when you have the security establishment publicly opposing it, what are the forces that are putting it in place? And I can only suppose that what they’re doing is setting up a kind of legal mechanism to criminalize any kind of dissent. And Bruce can speak to this a little more. But in the course of the trial, with Alexa O’Brien, US Day of Rage, that WikiLeaks dump of five million emails of the public security firm Stratfor, we saw in those email correspondence an attempt to link US Day of Rage with al-Qaeda. Once they link you with a terrorist group, then these draconian forms of control can be used against legitimate forms of protest, and particularly the Occupy movement.

By Heather Pilatic

In the last few weeks beekeepers have reported staggering losses in Minnesota, Nebraska and Ohio after their hives foraged on pesticide-treated corn fields. Indiana too, two years ago. What’s going on in the Corn Belt?

No farmer in their right mind wants to poison pollinators. When I spoke with one Iowa corn farmer in January and told him about the upcoming release of a Purdue study confirming corn as a major pesticide exposure route for bees, his face dropped with worn exasperation. He looked down for a moment, sighed and said, “You know, I held out for years on buying them GE seeds, but now I can’t get conventional seeds anymore. They just don’t carry ‘em.”

This leaves us with two questions: 1) What do GE seeds have to do with neonicotinoids and bees? and 2) How can an Iowa corn farmer find himself feeling unable to farm without poisoning pollinators? In other words, where did U.S. corn cultivation go wrong?

The short answer to both questions starts with a slow motion train wreck that began in the mid-1990s: Corn integrated pest management (IPM) fell apart at the seams. Rather, it was intentionally unraveled by Bayer and Monsanto.

Honey bees caught in the cross-fire

Corn is far from the only crop treated by neonicotinoids, but it is the largest use of arable land in North America, and honey bees rely on corn as a major protein source. At least 94 percent of the 92 million acres of corn planted across the U.S. this year will have been treated with either clothianidin or thiamethoxam (another neonicotinoid).

As we head into peak corn planting season throughout the U.S. Midwest, bees will once again “get it from all sides” as they:

• fly through clothianidin-contaminated planter dust;
• gather clothianidin-laced corn pollen, which will then be fed to emerging larva;
• gather water from acutely toxic, pesticide-laced guttation droplets; and/or
• gather pollen and nectar from nearby fields where forage sources such as dandelions have taken up these persistent chemicals from soil that’s been contaminated year on year since clothianidin’s widespread introduction into corn cultivation in 2003.

GE corn & neonicotinoid seed treatments go hand-in-hand

Over the last 15 years, U.S. corn cultivation has gone from a crop requiring little-to-no insecticides and negligible amounts of fungicides, to a crop where the average acre is grown from seeds treated or genetically engineered to express three different insecticides (as well as a fungicide or two) before being sprayed prophylactically with RoundUp (an herbicide) and a new class of fungicides that farmers didn’t know they “needed” before the mid-2000s.
A series of marketing ploys by the pesticide industry undergird this story. It’s about time to start telling it, if for no other reason than to give lie to the oft-repeated notion that there is no alternative to farming corn in a way that poisons pollinators. We were once — not so long ago — on a very different path.

How corn farming went off the rails

In the early 1990s, we were really good at growing corn using bio-intensive integrated pest management (bio-IPM). In practice, that meant crop rotations, supporting natural predators, using biocontrol agents like ladybugs and as a last resort, using chemical controls only after pests had been scouted for and found. During this time of peak bio-IPM adoption, today’s common practice of blanketing corn acreage with “insurance” applications of various pesticides without having established the need to do so would have been unthinkable. It’s expensive to use inputs you don’t need, and was once the mark of bad farming.

Then, in the mid-to-late 1990s, GE corn and neonicotinoid (imidacloprid) seed treatments both entered the market — the two go hand-in-hand, partly by design and partly by accident. Conditions for the marketing of both products were ripe due to a combination of factors:

• regulatory pressures and insect resistance had pushed previous insecticide classes off the market, creating an opening for neonicotinoids to rapidly take over global marketshare;
• patented seeds became legally defensible, and the pesticide industry gobbled up the global seed market; and
• a variant of the corn rootworm outsmarted soy-corn rotations, driving an uptick in insecticide use around 1995-96.

Then, as if on cue, Monsanto introduced three different strains of patented, GE corn between 1997 and 2003 (RoundUp Ready, and two Bt-expressing variants aimed at controlling the European Corn Borer and corn root worm). Clothianidin entered the U.S. market under conditional registration in 2003, and in 2004 corn seed companies began marketing seeds treated with a 5X level of neonicotinoids (1.25 mg/seed vs. .25).

… and in the space of a decade, U.S. corn acreage undergoes a ten-fold increase in average insecticide use. By 2007, the average acre of corn has more than three systemic insecticides — both Bt traits and a neonicotinoid. Compare this to the early 1990s, when only an estimated 30-35 percent of all corn acreage were treated with insecticides at all.

Adding fuel to the fire, in 2008 USDA’s Federal Crop Insurance Board of Directors approved reductions in crop insurance premiums for producers who plant certain Bt corn hybrids. By 2009, 40 percent of corn farmers interviewed said they did not have access to elite (high-yielding) non-Bt corn seed. It is by now common knowledge that conventional corn farmers have a very hard time finding seed that is not genetically engineered and treated with neonicotinoids.

Enter fungicides

In 2007, what’s left of corn IPM was further unraveled with the mass marketing of a new class of fungicides (strobilurins) for use on corn as yield “boosters.” Before this, fungicide use on corn was so uncommon that it didn’t appear in Crop Life’s 2002 National Pesticide Use Database. But in the last five years, the pesticide industry has aggressively and successfully marketed prophylactic applications of fungicides on corn as yield and growth enhancers, and use has grown dramatically as a result. This despite the fact that these fungicides work as marketed less than half the time. According to this meta-analysis of efficacy studies, only “48% of treatments resulted in a yield response greater than the economic break-even value of 6 bu/acre.”

Back to the bees. Neonicotinoids are known to synergize with certain fungicides to increase the toxicity of the former to honey bees up to 1,000-fold, and fungicides may be key culprits in undermining beneficial bee microbiota that do things like make beebread nutritious and support immune response against gut pathogens like Nosema. Fungicide use in corn is likewise destroying beneficial fungi in many cropping systems, and driving the emergence of resistant strains.

As with insecticides and herbicides, so too with fungicide use on corn: Corn farmers are stuck on a pesticide treadmill on high gear, with a pre-emptively pressed turbo charge button (as “insurance”). Among the many casualties are our honey bees who rely on corn’s abundant pollen supply.

Keeping us all tethered to the pesticide treadmill is expected behavior from the likes of Monsanto. But what boggles the mind is that all of this is being aided and abetted by a USDA that ties cheap crop insurance to planting patented Bt corn, and a Congress that refuses to tie subsidized crop insurance in the Farm Bill to common-sense conservation practices like bio-intensive IPM. Try explaining that with a waggle dance.

By Jedediah Biagi

Looking at where we are right now in our country – with our freedom, liberty, and right to local self-governance at threat or already seriously impinged, it’s hard to see all the small things that have brought us here.

One of those small things happened at the last Nevada County Supervisors meeting, exemplifying how our right to self governance can be attacked and stripped by an innocent thing called a nuisance ordinance.

Not respecting the Constitution of the United States, the State of California, and opposition from a landslide super-majority of local citizens, four of the Supervisors voted to pass an ordinance giving a deputy, fire code or building code enforcer the right to enter your property any day of the week, day or night without a warrant (oh, but they ‘promise’ the ordinance won’t be used that way).  If you thought you had private property rights or the right to use your property as you see fit, think again.

If you believe in the right to not self-incriminate, then it should make you upset to be required to get a notarized letter stipulating an arrangement of permission to exercise a California State given right, even if it’s contrary to Federal Law.

Input from the citizens’ focus group was either ignored or ratcheted back as to become unworkable or illegal. Examples being:  decreasing the suggested allowable grow size over 500% to a restrictive average of 150sq ft per parcel or less, well below the state’s legally defined minimal allowances.  When the suggestion of using grow bags was put forward to help restrict size of plants in residential areas the suggested size was 60 – 80 gallons, the county came back with 25 gallons, a size not even available on the market or if it was, not big enough to suit the needs of patients.  Not only that, but using the process of an urgency ordinance took away our constitutional right of the citizenry to petition our grievance through signature gathering.  This end-run around of our inalienable rights in the drafting and then passing of this ordinance cannot be ignored.

If you believe in the second, fourth, fifth, and tenth amendments you should be appalled at this blatant disregard for your rights.

The Federal Government has been conducting raids in neighboring counties against small organic farmers including raw milk co-ops and raw food co-ops, if you were wondering where our sheriff stood on the constitution and the tenth amendment – now you know, all small farmers should be on their toes right now because the sheriff sees no immediate threat from an overreaching federal government.

As we slide down the path of an all controlling Federal Government with things like the Patriot Act, NDAA, or planned FEMA camps, that path is being greased by hundreds of invasive nuisance ordinances like this one that grant far over reaching powers to government agencies beyond the definition of the nuisance.

I am running as a write-in candidate for Nevada County Supervisor District 2 (South County).  I believe in the right to local self governance and creating buffers of protection from outside forces that wish to strip that right. I would like to create a public County Bank, and institute a foreclosure moratorium.  I’ll be hanging out at local restaurants for lunch or dinner in the next couple of weeks, if you want to meet me check out my calendar online or if you have a group of people who would like to meet me, set up an appointment.  My website is www.biagiforsupervisor.com .

Our friend has now rigged her up with splints, hinged at the knee. It is too soon to tell whether she will grow out of her infirmity, so her fate is quite uncertain.

In the meantime, as you can see from the short video below, she has the spunk and energy and the the soaring ambition of the healthiest of goats: much to our surprise, she tried hopping as we were taking this video!

If Emgold Mining Co. fails to pay the City of Grass Valley the required deposit of about $440,000 by September of 2012, the City will consider the Idaho-Maryland Mine project application withdrawn.

The deposit is for independent consultants to begin preparation of a revised Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) on the proposed mine and ceramics factory. A total of $3-4 million and about   two years will be needed to finance and execute the DEIR, additional studies, another round of public hearings, and a Final EIR before obtaining a permit.

Emgold may be unable to rise to the occasion. The annual financial report for 2011 shows a loss of $2,338,060, or $0.06 per share, pushing the accumulated deficit to over $50 million. Emgold has no sources of regular revenue and is predictably out of operating capital again. This has been going on for years.

Penny stock junior mining companies such as Emgold are notoriously risky investments in general, but the Idaho-Maryland Mine project is increasingly unlikely to succeed. Working against the efforts to raise funds is the huge added risk of the ceramics factory, which should scare off investors. Fusing tailings into tiles to dispose of mine waste may seem like a good idea, but it has never been done on a commercial scale, and the tile market for this product is not promising. Furthermore, Emgold has no expertise in ceramics and the plan calls for selling 480,000 sq. ft. of tile per day; unbelievable, especially in today’s market. Add to that the obstacles of getting the Grass Valley General Plan modified, annexation approval, significant air pollution in the face of new strict carbon emissions regulations for California, and a variety of local issues such as threats to local wells and property values.

Note that, if a permit is obtained, the costs to de-water the old mine and build the mining and ceramics factory facilities will likely exceed $200 million. This will easily consume all the profits from the “measured gold reserves”.  (As per NI 43-101 report, 212,000 oz.)

To date, in an effort to promote the project, Emgold has made a number of questionable statements:

• The revised project documents, as submitted to the City of Grass Valley, estimate the maximum number of long term jobs at 500, but in public statements Emgold is now claiming 600 jobs. It was 400  last year.
• Promotional pieces about the Idaho-Maryland Mine repeatedly claim the project is in the “advanced stage of permitting”, when in fact they have not even submitted deposits needed to restart the DEIR process.
• A constant claim of “community support” from a 2006 poll fails to mention that the support was conditioned upon addressing all environmental concerns, upon which it fails. Now that the project description has been made public, there is strong opposition to the mine.

In an effort to raise yet more funds, Emgold has now employed Vanguard Shareholder Solutions Inc. to disseminate news and public information to investors, at a cost of $8500/month and stock options.

As the marketing of the Idaho-Maryland Mine project becomes more expert, it becomes even more important to do one’s own research and carefully scrutinize the merits of any investment before committing funds. Buyer beware!

During the question period, I asked him whether, in his view, the current application by Emgold Corporation to re-open the Idaho-Maryland Mine would be considered an important fact to disclose to potential buyers of property in Nevada County.

He replied that he has been disclosing that fact to prospective buyers for at least the last six years.

A day or so later, in response to a follow-up question I sent him via email (asking whether he believed his local colleagues in the real estate business are following the same practice) he sent me this clarification:

Don:

The answer to your question is “I would hope so.” The subject of the mine re-opening is common knowledge to any person with a heart beat living in western Nevada county. Using the excuse “I didn’t know” would be indefensible. You simply can not get around that conclusion. Any Realtor listing or selling property in the area around the mine would be foolish not to discuss the mine with sellers, convincing them to disclose, and informing buyers (disclose) of the possibility of the mine re-opening. In a perfect world, the mine would be a topic of discussion between the buyer and his agent upon first visiting the property. In the end, disclosure of the mine would come from three entities: the seller, the listing agent, and the buyers agent.

The big problem, as I see it, is to determine just how wide a swath from the mine location should disclosure be important. Impacts from the mine could be far reaching. An example, wells up on Banner Mountain have the potential of going dry if the water table in corrupted. Traffic and noise have the potential of causing disturbance far away from the mine site. Just how far do we need to go with disclosure? That is the million dollar question.

Only a full and brutally honest EIR will come close to answering those questions as well as the hundred more questions uncovered by an adequate EIR.

Sincerely,

Chauncey.”

My reply to Chauncey included these remarks:

I see your point about the million dollar question. Even hydrologists who’ve studied the first DEIR admit that they can’t predict with any certainty how widespread the impact of dewatering on wells might be.

I believe that local citizens generally don’t fully appreciate how massive this project would be: the underground extent of IMM goes from directly under the Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital, under Brunswick Basin and all the way out to the Y intersection of Brusnwick and 174. It encompasses almost as many square acres underground as does the entire incorporated city limits of Grass Valley.

Advisory: GRASS VALLEY POLICE INVESTIGATING ANOTHER SUSPICIOUS DEATH

…

GRASS VALLEY, CA – The Grass Valley Police Department is investigating a report of a body found in Memorial Park earlier this morning.

Police Dispatch received a call shortly after 7:00am today advising of a body found in Memorial Park located on the city’s southeast side.

Preliminary investigation confirmed the finding of an unclothed body of a Caucasian female, approximately 45 to 55 years of age, having been discovered near a pair of dumpster located in the general parking lot.

The Grass Valley Police have requested the assistance of the California Department of Justice in processing the scene. Additionally, the Nevada County District Attorney’s Office and Special Investigators are assisting with the investigation.

Anyone who may have information regarding this incident or other crime in the city is encouraged to contact the Grass Valley Police Department at 530.477.4600.

##
Contact Information:
Captain Rex Marks
Case#12-001207
530-477-4600
Rmarks@gvpd.net

UPDATE (4:11 PM): Police have positively identified the body found this morning as that of LEANN JANE SHUFFIELD: 49 Yrs, of Grass Valley.

An autopsy is planned with the Nevada County Coroner’s Office to determine the cause of death. The circumstances leading up to Ms. Shuffield’s death remains under investigation at this time.

He labels this one, “We Are Star Dust,” which is not a metaphor, or … not just a metaphor. It’s also a plain scientific fact. Boswell is working on both sides of our brains with these science/music videos.

His work reminds us that if anything is sacred, everything is.

See the whole set in this series here: http://sierravoices.com/tag/symphony_of_science/

Radio is not so fashionable these days, and most of us don’t “have time” to listen to interviews, but I have to say this is the finest work Terry Gross has ever done. You get a real sense of Sendak’s tortured and in the end joyful and completely realized life as an artist and as a human being.

In one of the interviews, Sendak explains to Gross why he stopped doing book signings for children, and why he stopped visiting kids in their classrooms: he realized that he had become one of those frightening and problematic adults that many of his monsters were meant to depict!

One little boy who had been standing in line with his copy of “Where The Wild Things Are” — upon being pushed forward by his father for Sendak’s signature — defiantly and bravely screamed “Don’t crap-up my book!!!”

Sendak loved this kid, and took the father aside to plead mercy for him.

In the course of these four interviews over the years, he developed a trust in Terry Gross and clearly a fondness for her. In the last interview several months ago, Sendak — who had always been obsessed with death (in a good Buddhist way, it seems to me, although he was actually a secular jew and a dedicated atheist) — in the last interview he told Terry “I’ll cry my way to the grave,” and a little later, “I’m not afraid of death” and a little after that “I’ll probably die before you, which is good because I won’t have to cry over you.”

Sendak, a very very sweet man. RIP.

Listen to the compilation of the Terry Gross interviews with Maurice Sendak here if you … “have time:”

CLICK FOR MAURICE SENDAK INTERVIEW

]]> http://sierravoices.com/2012/05/you-probably-dont-have-time-for-this-maurice-sendak-interview/feed/ 2 http://sierravoices.com/2012/05/background-on-the-foreclosure-crisis-in-nevada-county/ http://sierravoices.com/2012/05/background-on-the-foreclosure-crisis-in-nevada-county/#comments Mon, 07 May 2012 16:02:11 +0000 depelton http://sierravoices.com/?p=12061 By the Foreclosure Defense Group of Occupy Nevada County

The Foreclosure Defense Group of Occupy Nevada County is made up of community members concerned about the high rate of foreclosures in our community. We are learning how to search county records for fraudulent assignments, and our research has revealed many improprieties by banks and loan servicers. We have witnessed many foreclosure auctions held on the steps of the Nevada City Courthouse, and have demonstrated against the seizure of homes by the very banks that caused the foreclosure crisis in the first place. We started a Foreclosure and Eviction Support and Empowerment Group, which meets Wednesdays at the Nevada City United Methodist Church. Community members who are going through foreclosure are now searching us out and we are trying to support them.

According to Realty Trac, over 5,000 homes in Nevada County have been foreclosed since 2008. There are currently 877 Nevada County homes listed for foreclosure.

In addition to the tragedy of personal loss, the foreclosure crisis has devastated Nevada County as a whole. Foreclosures provoke further decline in home prices, resulting in dramatic decreases in property tax revenue and drastic cuts to county jobs and services. Foreclosed homes cause neighborhood blight, crime, and public safety issues.

Estimated costs of the foreclosure crisis to Nevada County, including loss in home values, property tax loss, costs to local government, along with the methods of calculating these costs, can be found at the following website: http://dig.abclocal.go.com/kgo/PDF/Home-Wreckers-Report.pdf

Over the last two years incontrovertible evidence has emerged around the country that the loan servicers of the five largest banks have filed and recorded millions of fraudulent documents to illegally foreclose on homeowners. In February, 2012, San Francisco County Recorder Phil Ting announced that an audit of foreclosure documents in his office revealed that 99% of the sampled foreclosures had “suspicious activities” and 84% had “at least one clear violation of the law.” Most of these foreclosures contained more than one class of violation and some had up to six. In almost all cases these violations were related to chain of assignment issues, largely resulting from mortgage securitization, and the inability of foreclosure servicing agencies to demonstrate legal standing to foreclose.

In Nevada County the percentage of foreclosures has been much higher than in San Francisco County (5000 foreclosures in much-smaller Nevada County compared to 12,000 in San Francisco County). A thorough audit by the Nevada County Clerk-Recorder’s office would almost certainly reveal a similar proportion of suspicious activities and violations of law.

One problem for California counties, including Nevada County, is that banks are using the MERS (Mortgage Electronic Registry System) to transfer and assign mortgages. MERS is like a opaque “black box” that allows banks to obscure the chain of title on individual properties and avoid County recording fees. This has deprived the Nevada County Clerk Recorder’s Office of needed funds and has resulted in a significant reduction of staff. The system makes it very difficult for homeowners (and others) to track the various assignments and to uncover who is the legitimate owner of the loan (to whom they should be making payments). Audits of the MERS system have revealed widespread fraud. While banks require home buyers to be transparent, fill out mounds of paperwork, and pay recording fees, MERS enables the banks themselves to avoid doing so.

In short, there is little or no oversight of the foreclosure process, particularly in non-judicial foreclosure states like California. Our counties and homeowners are suffering the consequences.

There needs to be a state-wide and nation-wide solution to this problem. California Attorney General Kamala Harris is calling for a “Homeowner Bill of Rights,” comprised of a series of bills designed to protect homeowners from abusive mortgage practices and to help devastated communities recover from the foreclosure crisis. Among the other provisions in Harris’ bills are requirements that lenders prove to homeowners that they have a right to foreclose on a property before doing so¹. The legislation she supports is currently stalled in committee due to heavy lobbying by banking interests².

Our group has formed an Eviction Response Team, to support foreclosed families or tenants of foreclosed homes on an emergency basis if their rights are not being observed or if they are being harassed. (Yes, it happens here.)

We have formed a Fraud Investigation Team, to explore the extent of fraudulent assignments and other mortgage-related documents in the County Clerk-Recorder’s office.

We have also been exploring the legality of the foreclosure auctions taking place on the steps of the County Courthouse. Their courthouse location implies that they are lawful and sanctioned by the County. These auctioneers will not even give their names. According to the California Secretary of State, some of the foreclosing companies they represent are not licensed to do business in the State of California.

1. http://www.smdailyjournal.com/article_preview.php?id=232815
2. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/17/kamala-harris-homeowners-bill-of-rights-setback_n_1433159.html