Planetary Transitioning
by Alternative Voice Staff
GMO (genetically modified organisms) woes. Monsanto's former general manager in Romania warned authorities there that the growing of genetically engineered foods is totally out of control, and the country will face serious consequences due to it. Romania presently has Europe's largest GMO-cultivated landscape.1•Recently the popular evangelist Pat Robertson suggested the U.S. government should assassinate the Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, saying “It is cheaper than starting another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator…and I don't think any oil shipments will stop.” Chavez has responded, in part, by making clear that Venezuela stands ready to defend its land and people from any invasion and attempt to take their oil fields by President Bush.
•China is having water problems. Qiu Baoxing, deputy minister of construction, announced that more than 100 of the 660 cities in the country face “extreme water shortages” and that this limited resource is “threatened by pollution, and water safety in cities is facing severe challenges.”2
•The
Rotary Club of Chatham, New Brunswick announced that the grand prize in
its raffle to help build a new environmental awareness center would be
a Hummer.3
•The Jordan River,
considered by believers to have been the gateway to the Garden of Eden
(and by Christians to have been where Jesus was baptized), is now more
than 50% raw sewage and agricultural runoff, according to a Middle East
conservation group spokesman interviewed by Reuters.4
•Linda Bilmes, a teacher of budgeting and public finance at the Kennedy
School of Government at Harvard and former assistant secretary at the
Department of Commerce, has projected and written that the war in Iraq
could stretch out to cost more than $1.3 trillion, if it ends within
the next five years. That would amount to $11,300 for every household
in the U.S.5
•The average CEO pay—$11.8 million in salary, stock options, bonuses,
and incentives—rose last year to 431 times what the average worker
earned. “If the minimum wage had risen as fast as CEO pay since 1990,
the lowest paid workers in the U.S. would be earning $23.03 an hour
today, not $5.15 an hour.”6
•Minutes that NBC and CBS spent covering the Darfur Genocide (in Sudan)
last year: 8.7
•This year Kuwait's parliament granted women the right to vote and
stand for election.
•According to the Global Wind Energy Council, global wind power
capacity in 2004 grew 20%, with 72% of new installations in Europe.
Leaders are currently Germany and Spain.
•Percentage of United States citizens who say they do not follow
international news because they lack background knowledge: 65.
Percentage that do not follow international news because there is too
much war and violence: 42.8
•With the Red Rock Pass program approved under the National Recreation
Enhancement Act (REA), not only is national forest access becoming
accessible to the wealthy only, increased privitization of forest lands
is seeing an increased number of campgrounds being closed because they
wouldn’t be profitable enough for the corporations that run them. Is
the Forest Service planning to shut down all small rustic campsites and
replace them with mega KOA type campgrounds from which private
companies can rake in mega bucks?9
1 See www.commondreams.org and
www.gmocontaminationregister.org for more info.
2 See “China Says Water Pollution So Severe that Cities
Could Lack Safe Supplies,” by Joe McDonald, AP, 1/7/05
3 From “News of the Weird,” in After Five, 8/05.
4 Ibid
5 See “The Trillion-Dollar War”, New York Times, 8/20/05.
6 See “Report Scores Runaway CEO Pay, Alleges War
Profiteering,” by Abid Aslam, published by OneWorld US, 8/31/05.
7 Tyndall Report (N.Y.C.)
8 From Pew Research Center, “Public's News Habits Little
Changed by September 11,” June 9, 2002, http://people-press.org
9 See www.portlandindiemedia.org.