Wrapping up a two-year investigation offor-profit colleges, SenatorTom Harkinwill issue a final report on Monday — a voluminous, hard-hitting indictment of almost every aspect of the industry, filled with troubling statistics and anecdotes drawn from internal documents of the 30 companies investigated.
Senator Tom Harkin, chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, completed a two-year investigation.
Are America’s rich getting richer? They’re certainly making much more than ever before. Every official income measure we have shows that America’s most affluent are upping their incomes at a much faster clip than everyone else.
Earlier this month, medical researchers at the University of Montreal linked a difficult-to-treat bladder infection that affects millions of women a year with a form of antibiotic-resistant E. coli commonly found in chicken.1
This is just one of a growing number of stories about the rise of antibiotic resistant superbugs making humans sick, which researchers are increasingly connecting with the rampant overuse of antibiotics in meat production.
This is an emergency situation. But federal regulators appear incapable of overcoming pressure from the Big Meat and pharmaceutical lobbies.
It's time for major retailers like Trader Joe's to step up and help get antibiotics out of our food.
CREDO is joining with Consumers Union2and other groups to call on Trader Joe's to sell only antibiotic-free meat because the company has shown a commitment to safe food in the past — including sourcing only non-GMO ingredients, and meat free of pink slime.
And because the company sells most of its products under its own label, Trader Joe's has direct control of its supply chain.
The company already sells some meat that does not contain antibiotics, but going all the way would create a powerful incentive for other retailers to follow suit, by meeting the strong consumer demand for meat raised without antibiotics.3
Antibiotics are a crucial tool to cure illness for all of us. And whether or not you eat meat, we're all endangered by the antibiotic-resistant bacteria that continue emerging as a result of antibiotic overuse on factory farms.
80% of all antibiotics are currently fed to livestock — primarily as a growth stimulant and to compensate for filthy, cruel living conditions. That needs to stop.
More than 100,000 CREDO members submitted a public comment to the FDA earlier this month urging the agency to strengthen its voluntary and inadequate antibiotics standards.
While we wait for FDA's response, Trader Joe's can show its commitment to food safety, and start moving meat producers away from their dangerous use of antibiotics.
NPR's Dan Charles reports in his article, "Insect Experts Issue 'Urgent' Warning On Using Biotech Seeds," that 22 of the nation's top experts on corn pests have sent a letter to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency asking for urgent action to address the failure of Monsanto's genetically engineered insecticide-producing Bt crops.
WELTON, Iowa(Reuters) - Bob Bowman runs his hand over a slender green corn leaf here on hisIowafarm, and sighs.
"This corn should be as high as my head right now, and it is only waist high," he says, as a cool morning breeze belies the 90-degree Fahrenheit temperatures forecast to descend by afternoon inWelton, Iowa.
"If we get rain real quick here, we might be down 25 percent," said Bowman of prospective losses from the persistent dryness. "If we don't get rain in the next two weeks, it will be a lot more serious."
Bowman farms 2,200 acres in east-central Iowa in one of the state's highest production areas. There may not be much to brag about this year, however.
After getting off to a record-fast planting pace following the mildest winter in decades in theMidwestthat promised a record harvest, the corn crop got into trouble when rains became scarce, especially during pollination when yields are set. And a scorching heat wave hit the state recently.
Taking a cue from a deteriorating crop, the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Wednesday cut its estimate of this year's corn production in the United States, the world's top grower and exporter, by 12 percent, slashing the average yield by a whopping 20 bushels to 146 per acre.
Prices of corn futures at the Chicago Board of Trade have surged 40 percent this summer in the wake of the worst drought in about 25 years in the Midwest grain belt.
In Iowa, the top U.S. corn-growing state, there is still time for many fields to make at least half to three-quarters of their production potential. But some are already too far gone.
All of Iowa is now considered as "abnormally dry," compared to none of the state a year ago, the U.S.Drought Monitorreported on Thursday.
About 13 percent of the state is now in severe drought, with the worst-hit areas in the east-central section and southeastern corner of the state. The entire eastern half of Iowa is in at least moderate drought.
Drought in the Midwest worsened over the past week, with a third of the nine-state region in severe to exceptional drought in the week ended July 10, up from about a quarter of the region a week earlier, the Drought Monitor said.
The toll that the drought is taking on the U.S. corn crop is so severe in some areas of the Midwest that farmers are writing off whole fields, or fear they will soon have to.
MISSOURI SUFFERS TOO
InMissouri, the misery is amplified. Corn farmers are watching weather forecasts and praying for rain relief while ranchers who have seen their pastures burn up in the heat and drought are scrambling to secure now hard-to-find and high-priced hay and grain to feed their hungry animals.
"The drought is very serious all the way across Missouri," said Eddie Hamill, state director of the USDA's Farm Service Agency.
To try to aid farmers who badly need hay for their cattle, the USDA has agreed to release land in 14 Missouri counties from conservation programs and Gov. Jay Nixon has requested federal approval to release land in all 114 counties throughout the state as part of a disaster declaration.
"This is the worst drought I have ever seen in my lifetime," said Hamill.
In Iowa, Gov. Terry Branstad will hold a town hall meeting in Mount Pleasant, about 130 miles from capital Des Moines, on Tuesday to talk to residents about the impact of the drought on the state.
Corn is pollinating now -- at least trying to. The plants need roughly an inch of water a week to grow well. Spotty rain showers have dotted the region, but overall Iowa, and the entireMidwestis well short of normal rainfall.
Neal Keppy, a 35-year-old corn grower in Eldridge, Iowa, said he's never seen conditions this dire. Of his 1,200 acres of corn, he has lost hope for roughly half the crop.
One field is so bad he has stopped treating it with fungicides and insecticides, essentially letting disease and insects take what the drought has not yet killed.
"I have never seen anything like this," he said.
Land in this part of Iowa goes for $10,000 an acre or more and is known for its rich soils and good rainfall. The area typically boasts some of the highest production in the state. But this year things are starkly different.
"I see a whole lot more stalks without ears on them than do have ears," said Keppy. "We need to get some rain."
Corn conditions are so bad on Missouri farmer Joel Abeln fields that he is talking with his insurance agent about mowing down a portion of his 6,500 acres. "I don't want to put any more money into it. It would be cheaper to just bush hog it down," said Abeln.
He estimates his very best fields on his north-central Missouri farm this year will likely yield only about 75 to 80 bushels per acre, down from his average of about 150 bushels an acre.
Corn that should be above his head is only about knee-high. "This is the worst drought I have been through," he said.
(Additional reporting by Michael Hirtzer and Karl Plume in Chicago; Editing by K.T. Arasu, John Picinich and Sofina Mirza-Reid)
The eastern U.S. on Monday was hammered by the fourth consecutive day of stifling heat after a weekend of violent storms that killed 15 people and knocked out power to millions.
More than 2 million people were still without power Monday morning, with the biggest concentration of outages in the Washington, D.C. area.
"Hot and hotter will continue to be the story from the plains to the Atlantic Coast for the next few days," the National Weather Service said.
Monday morning brought another grim challenge when many embarked on a difficult commute over roads with darkened stoplights.
Weather is specific events, climate is the long-term pattern. Catastrophes like the forest fire in Colorado that has expelled 32,000 people from their homes are the results of weather. But long-term climate change can increase the likelihood of such events. That is, we may have a big, wet snow in Colorado some winter in the near future. But you have to average it with all the winters like the past one, relatively warm and dry, and the latter will have the edge over time if we go on with our high-carbon ways.
Over the coming decades, the American Southwest will become drier and warmer as a result of all the carbon dioxide and soot that the US, China and other industrial societies are dumping into the atmosphere.
Therefore there will be more forest fires like the one in Colorado. And, as Deborah Zabarenko writes for Reuters, the scientific evidence on this dim future is building up.
Zabarenko follows up on a recent article in the journal Ecosphere, which lays out the case, and I was delighted to find is available in full text on the Web.
Professor Max A. Moritz at the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, University of California, Berkeley and his colleagues find the long-term probability of increase of forest fires in the American southwest is high.
Texas and Arizona are among those states at risk — further evidence that the Red States that engage in active climate change denial are committing suicide. I suspect most Coloradans know exactly what is happening to them and why, and my heart goes out to them.
Helping is influenced by economic environment within the culture. In general, frequency of helping behavior is inversely related to the country economic status.
The major explanation for people failing to stop and help a victim is how obsessed with haste they are. People who were in a hurry did not even notice the victim, although, once they arrived at their destination and had time to think about the consequences, they felt some guilt and anxiousness.
Ready for what's next from Dow Chemicals? GE crops modified to be resistant to the herbicide that's a main ingredient
in Agent Orange!
The herbicide, 2,4-D, is linked to cancer, reproductive problems, and Parkinson's and is banned entirely in parts of Canada
and Europe. And yet the USDA seems ready to approve the new GMO Corn and Soybeans, unleashing a major increase in the use
of 2,4-D.1
Now, the EPA is considering stepping in to stop or restrict the application of 2,4-D, which would be a major blow to Dow's
Agent Orange veggies. Can you urge EPA to reject Dow's plans to spray this incredibly toxic herbicide?
If you care about food safety or the environment, you know about Roundup, developed by Monsanto, and so toxic to plants that
Monsanto had to engineer "Roundup Ready" crops that wouldn't be killed when farmers applied Roundup to their fields.
From 1996, when Roundup Ready crops were introduced in the US, through 2008, there was a 383 million pound increase in the
use of herbicides. Now, it turns out that weeds are becoming Roundup resistant, requiring the use of even stronger
pesticides (like 2,4-D) and the engineering of crops that can withstand their use.
That's where Dow's "2,4-D resistant" corn comes in. Because the corn will be resistant to 2,4-D, farmers
will be able to blast their fields with the main ingredient in Agent Orange. We can expect the increase
in the use of 2,4-D to be enormous.2
Big Ag armed with 2,4-D is a scary scenario — 2,4-D has been shown to be contaminated with dioxins, is linked to numerous
health problems, is highly likely to drift onto neighboring fields, is frequently found in groundwater, and is likely to
already be negatively impacting several species of at-risk animals. But despite this, the USDA has not done any meaningful
review of possible consequences to human health, the environment, or other farms that could result from approving "2,4-D
resistant," genetically engineered corn.
Authorities fearing terror in the sky turned around a flight to Madrid shortly after it took off from New York when a federal air marshal spotted suspicious wires in a rear lavatory -- but after searching the returned plane they found no suspicious devices.
Port Authority Police, New York City's bomb squad and members of the FBI Joint Terrorist Task Force responded after the flight, Delta 126, returned to the ground at New York's JFK airport.
Passengers were taken off the flight in a "controlled evacuation," sources told ABC News.
However, searchers found no evidence of a bomb.
Authorities had been proceeding with caution and intended to interview the person who found the wires -- apparently one of a team of armed federal air marshals aboard the flight.
Although numerous early reports suggested suspects were in custody, authorities said initially that those reports appeared inaccurate.
Monsanto Canada Inc. v. Schmeiser[2004] 1 S.C.R. 902, 2004 SCC 34 is a leadingSupreme Court of Canadacase onpatentrights forbiotechnology. The court heard the question of whether growing genetically modified plants constitutes"use"of the patentedinventionof genetically modified plant cells. By a narrow 5-4 majority, the court ruled that it does. The case drew worldwide attention.
Imagine that a storm blows across your garden - and that now, without your knowledge and without your consent, foreign and genetically-manipulated seeds are in your vegetable patch which you have nourished and maintained for many years. A few days later, representatives of a multi-national corporate group pay you a visit at home, demand that you surrender your vegetables and file a criminal complaint against you requesting a fine a $20,000 USD against you - for the illegal use of patented and genetically-manipulated seeds.
What's more: The court finds for the corporate group!
Yet, you fight back....
This short story is no utopia - rather, around the world, the bitter truth. It is also the true experience of the family of Percy and Louise Schmeiser in Canada, also winners of the Alternative Nobel Prize, who meanwhile have been fighting the chemicals and seed manufacturer Monsanto since 1996. Nowadays, nearly three-fourths of genetically-manipulated plants harvested worldwide originate from Monsanto's labs. Monsanto is a U.S. based corporate group which calls the dismal inventions such as DDT, PCB and Agent Orange its own. In its efforts to gain absolute hegemony over plants - from the field all the way to teh consumer's plate - Monsanto knows no qualms. The farmers Tony Rush, David Runyon and Marc Loiselle also learned the hard way what it means to be confronted with Monsanto's methods of doing business, as did thousands of other farmers worldwide.
They and the Schmeisers are not just fighting against Monsanto - and with that, for the continuation of their livelihood as farmers - but also for the right to freedom of speech and the right to their property.
Yet above all, they are campaigning for the future of their children and grandchildren - so that they too, will have a chance to grow up in a world without genetically-manipulated food.
This film is reassuring...reassuring to all who fear that as an individual, no one would have any power to confront policy makers, large corporations or the business world. "David vs. Monsanto" proves the opposite.
DIRECTOR - Bertram Verhaag -
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY - Waldemar Hauschild -
FILM EDITOR - Verena Schonauer -
SOUND - Zoltan Ravasz VDT -
ASSISTANT - Isabel Theiler, Kim Koch -
MUSIC - Bauer Karger Holzapfel
PRODUCED BY DENKMAL - FILM - GmbH, MUNICH
TO ORDER:
TEL: +49-89-52 66 01
FAX: +49-89-523 47 42
The man likely to become China's next leader, Vice-President Xi Jinping, has begun a closely watched visit to the United States.
In comments to a US newspaper ahead of his trip, Mr Xi sounded a note of warning to the US over its military stance in the Pacific.
He said scaling up military activity was not what countries in the region wanted to see.
He is due to meet President Barack Obama at the White House on Tuesday.
"This will be an opportunity for the leaders of both countries to really sit down and talk about our differences," said US Ambassador to China Gary Locke after greeting Mr Xi.
He added that the presidents would also be able to "really focus on the common interests that both the US and China have".
Mr Xi, 58, is widely expected to succeed President Hu Jintao, who must retire as head of the Communist Party later this year and from the presidency in 2013.
His visit comes a year after Mr Hu's trip to Washington, which he referred to in his comments published in The Washington Post as written, translated answers provided by the Chinese government in response to the newspaper's questions.
This man is Raúl Héctor Castro. He is 96 years old, a former Arizona
governor, and a former United States Ambassador to El Salvador, Bolivia
and Argentina. He was born in Mexico, and is a United States citizen.
Last month he was stopped by U.S. border patrol agents after residual radiation from a medical procedure he’d recently undergone triggered an alarm at a checkpoint in Tubac, AZ. The 96 year-old heart patient was then forced to exit his vehicle in the 100 degree Arizona heat and wait in a tent in a business suit, even as his companion begged the agents not to subject an elderly man to such treatment.
SHANGHAI — For three decades, China has enjoyed astronomical growth through massive government investment and by becoming the world’s exporting powerhouse. But those days are coming to an end, and the government is looking to Chinese consumers to drive future expansion.
But a tradition of thrift and a historic mistrust of officialdom is thwarting efforts to persuade the Chinese to spend more, experts say. And with China’s economy in the midst of a major slowdown, the government has not yet moved away from restrictive policies that also discourage spending.
5 July 2012, Rome- The FAO Food Price Indexfell
for the third consecutive month in June 2012, dipping 1.8 percent from
May to its lowest level since September 2010. The four-point drop in
June brought the index to 201 points from a revised level of 205 points
in May 2012.
The index now stands at 15.4 percent below its peak
in February 2011. The average prices of all commodity groups in the
Index were below May levels, with the largest drop registered for oils
and fats.
Continued economic uncertainties and generally adequate
food supply prospects kept the index down although growing concerns
over dry weather sent prices of some crops higher toward the end of the
month.
Food commodity prices have started rising again recently,
mostly because of adverse weather and this may result in a rebound of
the Food Price Index in July.
FAO also lowered its forecast for
2012 world cereal production by more than 23 million tonnes from May,
which is likely to result in a smaller build-up of global stocks by the
end of seasons in 2013.
FAO’s new forecast for world cerealproduction
in 2012 stands at 2 396 million tonnes, still a record level and 2
percent up from the previous high registered last year.
Supply and demand situation adequate
According
to FAO’s latest assessment, the overall supply and demand situation in
2012/13 remains adequate thanks to abundant supplies of rice, a leading
food staple, and sufficient exportable supplies of wheat and coarse
grains.
But grain prices were very volatile in June due to
continuing dryness and above-average temperatures in most of the major
maize growing regions of the United States. Adverse weather is
diminishing prospects of an improvement in the maize supply situation
and FAO is monitoring the development closely.
High-level event on volatility and speculation The
issue of swinging food prices will be discussed by a high-level event
on “Food Price Volatility and Price Speculation” to be held at FAO on
Friday, 6 July. Speakers will include Leonel Fernández, President of
the Dominican Republic who will give a keynote address, and FAO
Director-General José Graziano da Silva.
“FAO has been actively
involved in studying food price volatility and identifying appropriate
policy responses,” said Graziano da Silva. “Our analytical work is
helping to deepen the understanding of the nature, causes and impacts of
volatility and of what governments and other stakeholders can do about
it.”
The FAO Food Price Index is a measure of the monthly change in average international prices of a basket of 55 food commodities.
Wednesday, 4 July 2012, 9:32 am
Article: B'Tselem
Hebron: Border Police officer filmed kicking Palestinian child
B'Tselem - The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories
02/07/2012
A B'Tselem video volunteer documented an Israeli Border Police officer kicking a Palestinian child while another officer held the boy. The incident took place on the 29th of June 2012 near the Tomb of the Patriarchs, in Hebron's H2 area. The child, Abd a-Rahman Burqan, who is nine years old, lives with his family near the parking lot used by Israeli vehicles outside of the Tomb. The video shows a Border Police officer ambushing a child from around the corner.
As the child walks past, the officer grabs him by the arm and says: "why are you making trouble?" The officer then drags the child, who is screaming, on the ground for a few seconds. A second Border Police officer then appears and kicks the boy. The officer then lets the child go. He runs away, and the two Border Police officers leave the scene as well.
The incident was filmed by a volunteer in B'Tselem's camera distribution project, from inside his home. The volunteer told B'Tselem that he began to film when he noticed the officer hiding behind the wall.
B'Tselem will refer the case to the Justice Ministry's Department for the Investigation of Police.
Jerusalem (CNN) -- A video released by an Israeli human rights organization shows what the group describes as a 9-year-old Palestinian boy being assaulted by two border police officers in the West Bank city of Hebron.
The footage, released by B'tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, shows the boy walking on pavement outside a building when a uniformed police officer runs up to him and grabs him by an arm, causing him to lose his balance and pulling him along the ground for a few feet.
The police officer, who is holding a rifle in one hand, asks the boy, "Why are you making trouble?" according to B'tselem. Seconds later, a second police officer, also carrying a rifle, walks up to the boy, kicks him, turns around and walks off without speaking. At that, the first policeman releases the boy, who runs out of the frame.
An investigation should be opened into the incident, said Sarit Michaeli, a spokeswoman for B'tselem.
"From the video evidence and from evidence collected from the child, it's obvious the border police officer was basically waiting for him and grabbed him and another border police officer came and kicked the child," she said. "The child denies attacking or harassing the border police officer. Regardless, this is irrelevant as far as B'tsalem is concerned, because this kind of behavior is absolutely prohibited regardless of the circumstance."
She continued, "This kind of violence by border police officers, by official members of the Israeli security forces is outrageous and not allowed. B'tsalem is going to complain with the department of police investigations in the Ministry of Justice, which is a relevant government investigative body of allegations against the border police."
Michaeli said the boy had been treated similarly before. "A month ago he was attacked by border police officers on his way back from school," she said.
The incident occurred a few days after a team of human rights lawyers published a report funded by the British government that accuses Israel of violating international law in its treatment of Palestinian child detainees.
It was written after a week-long visit last September by the delegation to Israel and the West Bank.
The report accuses Israel of treating Palestinian and Israeli children differently -- Israelis must be at least 14 before they can be sent to jail; Palestinians must be 12. Israeli children generally have a legal right to have their parents present during questioning; Palestinians do not, it says. An Israeli child can be held no more than two days without being granted access to a lawyer; a Palestinian child can be held 90 days, it says.
"It may be that much of the reluctance to treat Palestinian children in conformity with international norms stems from a belief, which was advanced to us by a military prosecutor, that every Palestinian child is a 'potential terrorist,' the report says. "Such a stance seems to us to be the starting point of a spiral of injustice, and one which only Israel, as the Occupying Power in the West Bank, can reverse."
The Israel Defense Forces did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But Mark Regev, the spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told "The Age" newspaper of Melbourne, Australia, that Israel was studying the report's proposals. "The report acknowledges that Israel has made improvements and they have praised us for that," Regev said.
"You have countless acts of violence, including deadly violence, perpetrated by minors -- Israel is acting because of a vacuum created by a lack of action from the Palestinian leadership and by the exploitation of minors by the extremist groups."
The award-winning new documentary, "Five Broken Cameras," tells the story of a Palestinian farmer who got a video camera to record his son’s childhood, but ended up documenting the growth of the resistance movement to the Israeli separation wall in the West Bank village of Bil’in. The film shows the nonviolent tactics used by residents of Bil’in as they join with international and Israeli activists to protest the wall’s construction and confront Israeli soldiers. We speak with the film’s directors, Emad Burnat, a Palestinian, and Guy Davidi, an Israeli. [includes rush transcript]
the Honduran people have suffered a catastrophic level of violence and repression that has recently led the United Nations to deem Honduras the most dangerous country in the world.
During those years, there have beenover 300 political assassinations. Just this Monday, a young member of the Honduran resistance movement was murdered.
Still, many Hondurans valiantly stand up against injustice and rampant impunity in their country, and the members of Witness for Peace have stood with them. We will continue to do so as long as U.S. policy contributes to human rights abuses there.
Thank you for all that you do to promote human rights and justice in Honduras and throughout the Americas!
In nonviolent struggle and solidarity, The WfP Honduras Working Group (Amy, Susan, Kristen, Elise, Walker, Tanya, Austin, Sharon, Riahl, Christine and Brooke)
There is a human rights crisis in Honduras and ground zero is the Bajo Aguán region.
Forty-five people have been killed in the Bajo Aguán since September 2009. And a recent Center for Constitutional Rights report finds numerous cases of assassinations, harassment and threats against individuals who have spoken out against or reported on police corruption in recent months.
Last year you helped get 87 members of Congress to sign a letter asking Secretary Clinton to halt military and police aid to Honduras.
Because of that letter and other advocacy efforts, at the end of 2011 the State Department placed conditions on military and police aid to Honduras. However human rights violations have continued.
ZURICH (Reuters) - Traces of the poisonous element polonium have been found in the belongings of late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, a Swiss institute said on Wednesday, and a television report said his widow had demanded his body be exhumed for further tests.
Arafat died at a hospital in France in 2004, after a sudden illness which baffled doctors. Many Palestinians have long suspected he was poisoned.
Darcy Christen, spokesman for the Institut de Radiophysique in Lausanne, Switzerland, told Reuters on Tuesday it had found "surprisingly" high levels of polonium-210 in Arafat's belongings.
But he stressed that clinical symptoms described in Arafat's medical reports were not consistent with polonium-210 and that conclusions could not be drawn as to whether the Palestinian leader was poisoned or not.
The Qatar-based Al Jazeera satellite channel said the institute had tested Arafat's personal effects, given them by his widow.
Its documentary said they showed that his clothes, toothbrush and kaffiyeh headscarf contained abnormal levels of polonium, a rare, highly radioactive element.
"I can confirm to you that we measured an unexplained, elevated amount of unsupported polonium-210 in the belongings of Mr. Arafat that contained stains of biological fluids," Francois Bochud, director of the institute, said in the documentary.
Bochud said the only way to confirm the findings would be to exhume Arafat's body to test it for polonium-210.
"But we have to do it quite fast because polonium is decaying, so if we wait too long, for sure, any possible proof will disappear," he told Al Jazeera.
Polonium was found to have caused the death of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006, and he was assumed to have been deliberately poisoned.
Arafat's widow Suha said she would ask for Arafat's body - buried in the West Bank town of Ramallah, seat of the Palestinian self-rule authority - to be exhumed.
Speaking at the end of the documentary, aired on Al Jazeera's English and Arabic channels, she said: "We have to go further and exhume Yasser Arafat's body to reveal the truth to all the Muslim and Arab world."
Arafat led the Palestinian Liberation Organisation's fight against Israel from the 1960s but signed a peace agreement with the Jewish state in 1993 establishing Palestinian self-rule areas in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
His mysterious death came four years into a Palestinian uprising, after years of talks with Israel failed to lead to a Palestinian state. French doctors who treated Arafat in his final days could not establish the cause of death.
French officials refused to give details of his condition, citing privacy laws, fuelling a host of rumors and theories over the nature of his illness.
(Additional reporting by Sami Aboudi and Andrew Hammond; editing by Andrew Roche)
I'm sure most Americans
are mighty proud of the fact that Julian Assange is so frightened of
falling into the custody of the United States that he had to seek
sanctuary in the embassy of Ecuador, a tiny and poor Third World
country, without any way of knowing how it would turn out. He might be
forced to be there for years.
"That'll teach him to mess with the most
powerful country in the world! All you other terrorists and
anti-Americans out there — Take Note! When you fuck around with God's
country you pay a price!"
How true. You do pay a price. Ask the people of
Cuba, Vietnam, Chile, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Iran, Haiti, etc., etc., etc.
And ask the people of Guantánamo, Diego Garcia, Bagram, and a dozen
other torture centers to which God's country offers free transportation.
Margarito Genchi Casiano -- the former Mayor of
Florencio Villarreal and local congressional candidate for the Party of
the Democratic Revolution (PRD) -- was assassinated in the Costa Chica
of Guerrero. The tragic event took place June 11 in Llano Largo, near
the municipality of Cruz Grande. Just four days earlier, Genchi Casiano
had attended a campaign rally for PRD's presidential candidate, Andrés
Manuel López Obrador.
The remains of 14 unidentified bodies were
found inside a pick-up truck stationed a few blocks away
from the Mayor's office of Mante, Tamaulipas. The Governor of Tamaulipas
has confirmed that the corpses were abandoned in broad daylight inside a
privately owned pick-up truck.
Authorities add that the Police and
Forensic Medical Examiners have been unable to identify the cadavers of
the 11 men and three women.
Them belly full but we hungry.
A hungry mob is a angry mob.
A rain a-fall but the dirt it tough;
A pot a-cook but the food no 'nough.
You're gonna dance to JAH music, dance.
We're gonna dance to JAH music, dance.
Forget your troubles and dance.
Forget your sorrow and dance.
Forget your sickness and dance.
Forget your weakness and dance.
Cost of living get so high,
Rich and poor, they start a cry.
Now the weak must get strong.
They say, "Oh, what a tribulation."
Them belly full but we hungry.
A hungry mob is a angry mob.
A rain a-fall but the dirt it tough;
A pot a-cook but the food no 'nough.
We're gonna chuck to JAH music, chuckin'.
We're chuckin' to JAH music, we're chuckin'.
A belly full but them hungry.
A angry mob is a angry mob.
A rain a-fall but the dirt it tough;
A pot a-cook but the food no 'nough.
A angry man is a angry man.
A rain a-fall but the dirt it tough;
A pot a-cook but the food no 'nough.
(Repeat)
A angry mob is a angry mob.
A monopoly (from Greekmonos / μονος (alone or single) + polein / πωλειν (to sell)) exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity. (This contrasts with a monopsony which relates to a single entity's control of a market to purchase a good or service, and with oligopoly which consists of a few entities dominating an industry)[1][clarification needed] Monopolies are thus characterized by a lack of economic competition to produce the good or service and a lack of viable substitute goods.[2] The verb "monopolise" refers to the process by which a company gains much greater market share than what is expected with perfect competition.
A monopoly is distinguished from a monopsony, in which there is only one buyer of a product or service ; a monopoly may also have monopsony control of a sector of a market. Likewise, a monopoly should be distinguished from a cartel (a form of oligopoly), in which several providers act together to coordinate services, prices or sale of goods. Monopolies, monopsonies and oligopolies are all situations such that one or a few of the entities have market power and therefore interact with their customers (monopoly), suppliers (monopsony) and the other companies (oligopoly) in a game theoretic manner – meaning that expectations about their behavior affects other players' choice of strategy and vice versa. This is to be contrasted with the model of perfect competition in which companies are "price takers" and do not have market power.
When not coerced legally to do otherwise, monopolies typically maximize their profit by producing fewer goods and selling them at higher prices than would be the case for perfect competition. (See also Bertrand, Cournot or Stackelberg equilibria, market power, market share, market concentration, Monopoly profit, industrial economics). Sometimes governments decide legally that a given company is a monopoly that doesn't serve the best interests of the market and/or consumers. Governments may force such companies to divide into smaller independent corporations as was the case of United States v. AT&T, or alter its behavior as was the case of United States v. Microsoft, to protect consumers.
Monopolies can be established by a government, form naturally, or form by mergers. A monopoly is said to be coercive when the monopoly actively prohibits competitors by using practices (such as underselling) which derive from its market or political influence (see Chainstore paradox). There is often debate of whether market restrictions are in the best long-term interest of present and future consumers.
In many jurisdictions, competition laws restrict monopolies. Holding a dominant position or a monopoly of a market is not illegal in itself, however certain categories of behavior can, when a business is dominant, be considered abusive and therefore incur legal sanctions. A government-granted monopoly or legal monopoly, by contrast, is sanctioned by the state, often to provide an incentive to invest in a risky venture or enrich a domestic interest group. Patents, copyright, and trademarks are all examples of government granted and enforced monopolies. The government may also reserve the venture for itself, thus forming a government monopoly.
An oligopoly is a market form in which a market or industry is dominated by a small number of sellers (oligopolists). The word is derived, by analogy with "monopoly", from the Greekὀλίγοι (oligoi) "few" + πόλειν (pólein) "to sell". Because there are few sellers, each oligopolist is likely to be aware of the actions of the others. The decisions of one firm influence, and are influenced by, the decisions of other firms. Strategic planning by oligopolists needs to take into account the likely responses of the other market participants.
Oligopoly is a common market form. As a quantitative description of oligopoly, the four-firm concentration ratio is often utilized. This measure expresses the market share of the four largest firms in an industry as a percentage. For example, as of fourth quarter 2008, Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, Nextel, and T-Mobile together control 89% of the US cellular phone market.
Oligopolistic competition can give rise to a wide range of different outcomes. In some situations, the firms may employ restrictive trade practices (collusion, market sharing etc.) to raise prices and restrict production in much the same way as a monopoly. Where there is a formal agreement for such collusion, this is known as a cartel. A primary example of such a cartel is OPEC which has a profound influence on the international price of oil.
Firms often collude in an attempt to stabilize unstable markets, so as to reduce the risks inherent in these markets for investment and product development.[citation needed] There are legal restrictions on such collusion in most countries. There does not have to be a formal agreement for collusion to take place (although for the act to be illegal there must be actual communication between companies)–for example, in some industries there may be an acknowledged market leader which informally sets prices to which other producers respond, known as price leadership.
In other situations, competition between sellers in an oligopoly can be fierce, with relatively low prices and high production. This could lead to an efficient outcome approaching perfect competition. The competition in an oligopoly can be greater than when there are more firms in an industry if, for example, the firms were only regionally based and did not compete directly with each other.
Thus the welfare analysis of oligopolies is sensitive to the parameter values used to define the market's structure. In particular, the level of dead weight loss is hard to measure. The study of product differentiation indicates that oligopolies might also create excessive levels of differentiation in order to stifle competition.
Oligopoly theory makes heavy use of game theory to model the behavior of oligopolies:
In game theory, Nash equilibrium (named after John Forbes Nash, who proposed it) is a solution concept of a game involving two or more players, in which each player is assumed to know the equilibrium strategies of the other players, and no player has anything to gain by changing only his own strategy unilaterally[1]:14. If each player has chosen a strategy and no player can benefit by changing his or her strategy while the other players keep theirs unchanged, then the current set of strategy choices and the corresponding payoffs constitute a Nash equilibrium.
Stated simply, Amy and Phil are in Nash equilibrium if Amy is making the best decision she can, taking into account Phil's decision, and Phil is making the best decision he can, taking into account Amy's decision. Likewise, a group of players is in Nash equilibrium if each one is making the best decision that he or she can, taking into account the decisions of the others. However, Nash equilibrium does not necessarily mean the best payoff for all the players involved; in many cases, all the players might improve their payoffs if they could somehow agree on strategies different from the Nash equilibrium: e.g., competing businesses forming a cartel in order to increase their profits.
Institutional Sociopathy
A complex, sobering documentary, THE CORPORATION takes its audience on a graphic and engaging quest to reveal the corporation's inner workings, curious history, controversial impacts and possible futures.
The high cost of cheap
A very good and true Documentary about Wal Mart! Wal-Mart: The High Cost Of Low Price is a feature length documentary that uncovers a retail giant's assault on families and American values. The film dives into the deeply personal stories and everyday lives of families and communities struggling to fight a Goliath. A working mother is forced to turn to public assistance to provide health care for her two small children. A Missouri family loses its business after Wal-Mart is given over $2 million to open its doors down the road. A mayor struggles to equip his first responders after Wal-Mart pulls out and relocates just outside the city limits. A community in California unites, takes on the giant, and wins! Producer/Director Robert Greenwald and Brave New Films take you on an extraordinary journey that will change the way you think, feel -- and shop.
Producer/Director Robert Greenwald and Brave New Films take you on an extraordinary journey that will change the way you think, feel -- and shop.
The media material presented in this production is protected by the FAIR USE CLAUSE of the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, which allows for the rebroadcast of copyrighted materials for the purposes of commentary, criticism, and education.
(2007) China Blue
They live crowded together in cement factory dormitories where water has to be carried upstairs in buckets. Their meals and rent are deducted from their wages, which amount to less than a dollar a day. Most of the jeans they make in the factory are purchased by retailers in the U.S. and other countries. CHINA BLUE takes viewers inside a blue jeans factory in southern China, where teenage workers struggle to survive harsh working conditions.
