Today's Stories

May 15, 2008

Stan Cox
Big Brother Close Up

May 14, 2008

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Oil Wars

Reza Fiyouzat
Torture, a Bully's Creed

Felice Pace
California Water Politics: Of Dams and Water Buffaloes

Hamdan A. Yousuf / Dania S. Ahmed
A Generation Defined by War

Robert Weitzel
Hillary's "Final Solution" to the Persian Problem

Ralph Nader
You're Either with the American People or he Big Auto Bosses

Dave Lindorff
Hillary, McCain and the Stupid Vote

Missy Comley Beattie
White Heaven: Hillary's W. Virginia Idyll

Neve Gordon
Israel as a Site of Struggle

Dr. Susan Block
A Washington Witch Hanging

Website of the Day
Hillary's Downfall

May 13, 2008

David Rosen
Sexual Terrorism: the Sadistic Side of Bush's War on Terror

Alan Farago
Nuclear Florida: Beachfront Reactors in an Age of Rising Sea Levels?

Saul Landau
The Crisis at Home

Saree Makdisi
Forget the Two-State Solution

Paul Craig Roberts
How Empires Fall

Andy Worthington
Gitmo's Suicide Bomber

Brother Bede Vincent
The Problem with Rev. Wright--There are Too Few Like Him

Linda Mamoun
Marketing Ethnic Cleansing

David Macaray
The Myth That Won't Die

Website of the Day
Burning the Future: Coal in America

May 12, 2008

St. Clair / Frank
The Pentagon's Toxic Legacy

Ziga Vodovnik
Rebels Against Tyranny: an Interview with Howard Zinn on Anarchism

Gary Leupp
Why All of Our Efforts Won't Stop an Attack on Iran

Frankln Lamb
Choufeit's Bloody Pentacost

Suzanne Baroud
The Ambition of Hillary Clinton

Martha Rosenberg
Farmer Ernie's Chamber of Horrors

Dave Zirin
The Boss's Boycott

Carl Finamore
I Ain't Gonna Work No More

Peter Morici
Recession Watch

Richard Rhames
The Third Way to Nowhere

Website of the Day
The Untold Story of Black New Orleans

May 10 / 11, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Real Clear Numbers: 101,000 Casualties a Year

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah Eases Up and Beirut Opens Its Shutters

Ciara Gilmartin
A Surge in Iraqi Detainees

Diane Farsetta
Inside a Nuclear Industry Soirée

Kent Paterson
Mother's Day in Ciudad Juarez

Alan Farago
The Social Engineers

Rannie Amiri
Beirut on the Brink

Patrick Irelan
Bolivia, Morales and the Red Ponchos

Robert Fantina
The Lexicon Legacy of George W. Bush

Nikolas Kozloff
El Salvador 2009: Another Feather in the Cap of Chavez?

George Ciccariello-Maher
The Yumare Massacre, 22 Years On

David Yearsley
Bacharach at 80

Ron Jacobs
Rosa Luxemburg's Shock Doctrine

John Holt
Can Yellowstone Survive?

David Michael Green
It's So Over

Ben Terrall
Dealing Sleep

Kim Nicolini
The Best Film of the Bush Era?

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Orloski, Frisella, Gladstone-Gelman

May 9, 2008

Franklin Lamb
A Wild Day in Beirut

Andy Worthington
The Afghans of Gitmo

Benjamin Dangl
Polarizing Bolivia

Mark A. Huddle
Remembering Mildred Loving, an Unsung Hero of the Civil Rights Movement

David Macaray
Hollywood Gives SAG the Brush Off

Dave Lindorff
Team Clinton: Going Down Ugly

C.G. Estabrook
The Way We Live Now

Matt Kosko
McCain, Clinton, Obama and the Wages of Lesser-Evilism

Robert Weissman
Big Business is not the Solution to Global Poverty

Michael Dickinson
Jailing the Joint

Website of the Day
The Role of Third Parties in the U.S.A.

May 8, 2008

Sharon Smith
Rockefeller Family Fables

Saul Landau
The NATO Axiom

Laura Carlsen
A Primer on Plan Mexico

Binoy Kampmark
Food Riots are Coming to the U.S.

Kenneth Couesbouc
China's Paper Feet

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Constitutional Shenanigans

Franklin Lamb
Blindsided, Hezbollah Mulls Its Response

Sen. Russ Feingold
Government in Secret

George Wuerthner
The Problems with Conservation Easements

Richard W. Behan
A Brief Exposé of a Fraudulent War

Adam Federman
Marching for Sean Bell

Website of the Day
State of the Air

May 7, 2008

Winslow T. Wheeler
Drowning in Dollars

Joanne Mariner
Torture After Dark

Col. Dan Smith
It's Lying and It's Murder: How KBR Electrocuted US Troops

Brian M. Downing
Reports From Foreign Provinces

Andy Worthington
Who are the Prisoners Released with Sami al-Haj?

John Stauber
Pentagon Propaganda Documents Go Online, But Will the Media Ever Report on Them?

Christopher Brauchli
Outsourcing Tax Collection

Nelson P. Valdés
Cinco de Mayo and Cinco de Agosto: Mexican History and Manufactured Identities

Rep. Keith Ellison
High Court Deals Blow to Voting Rights

Dan Bacher
Undam the Klamath, Mr. Buffett!

Website of the Day
Green Porno

May 6, 2008

Pam Martens
The Obama Bubble Agenda

Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. is Promoting Secession in Bolivia

Marjorie Cohn
Under U.S. Law Torture is Always Illegal

Ralph Nader
America's Pay-or-Die Health Care System

Yigal Bronner
Archaeologists for Hire

Brian Cloughley
No Laws for Bush America

Jacob Hornberger
Killing Enemies Without Trial

Walter Brasch
People Who Don't Need People

Paul Krassner
An Open Letter to Michael Moore

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Running Mates from the Imaginary Plane

Website of the Day
Some People

May 5, 2008

Pam Martens
Obama's Money Cartel

Conn Hallinan
The Syrian Affair

Corey D. B. Walker
The End of Politics

Uri Avnery
Crusader Anxiety: Israel at 60

Dave Zirin
Refocusing Olympic Protest

Corporate Crime Reporter
Wiist's Crusade Against Corporations

Robert Jensen
The Selling and Shaping of Our Souls

Daniel White
What People Want to Hear About in Austin, Texas

Benjamin Dangl
May Day Raid on General Dynamics

Website of the Day
McCain's Pastor of Hate: "Starve. I Don't Care. Starve."

May 3 / 4, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Has Rev. Wright Cost Obama the Presidency?

Nikolas Kozloff
The Shameful Failure of the Black Congressional Caucus

Diane Farsetta
What the Pentagon Pundits Were Selling on the Side

Tariq Ali
New Labour is Dead

Harry Browne
The USA's Other Island: Irish Leaders and the War on Terror

Wajahat Ali
Pakistan's New Daughter of Destiny? An Exclusive Interview with Fatima Bhutto

David Yearsley
A Challenge to Jeffrey Eugenides

Greg Moses
Salamat, Riad Hamad

William Blum
Rev. Wright, the CIA and the AIDS Thing

Robert Fantina
The Rhetoric of John McCain

Fred Gardner
The Greatest Story Never Told

Dave Lindorff
Blame It On Paraguay: The Bush Family's Bad Real Estate Deal

Seth Sandronsky
Standardizing Learning

Binoy Kampmark
Brown, Boris and the British Council Elections

Howard Lisnoff
The Lost First Amendment

Daniel Cassidy
Slanguage: Paddy Works on the Erie

Bill Moyers
Shrink-Wrapping the Theology of Rev. Wright

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
John Holt / Akbar Khan

Website of the Weekend
Ed Abbey, Patron Saint of the Walker's Rights Movement

May 2, 2008

Andrew Cockburn
Secret Bush "Finding" Widens Covert War on Iran

David Isenberg
The Return of Limited Nuclear War?

Vijay Prashad
Driven to Terror: the Case of the Lackawana Six

William Blum
Spies Without Borders

David Macaray
Shutting Down the West Coast Ports: the ILWU's May Day Strike

Rannie Amiri
Is Sadr City Becoming the Next Gaza?

William James Martin
The Carter Coup

Stephanie Westbrook
As Italy Lurches Rightward, a Ray of Hope from Vicenza

Linn Washington, Jr.
A Battle Over Murals in Parisian Ghettos

Anthony Papa
How the Byrne Fund Corrupts Cops and Destroys Lives

Website of the Day
The Serota Petition

May 1, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Fed Sinks the Dollar

Behzad Yaghmaian
Blaming the Yuan for the Deficit with China

Wajahat Ali
The Dark Knight: the Real Rise of Obama

Dedrick Muhammad
Senator Obama, Please Come to Your Senses

Cynthia McKinney
Police in America Can Kill Some People With Impunity

Corporate Crime Reporter
Farm Broadcaster Fired After Ripping Monsanto's Goon Squads

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
The Speech That Might Have Been

Reza Fiyouzat
Stop Obliterating Yourself!

Leigh Saavedra
Suspending the Federal Gas Tax

Tom Semioli
Hollywood Hypocrite: an Open Letter to Michael Moore

Website of the Day
Why Won't McCain Release His Medical Records?

Subscribe Online

Some Downer Cow with Your Kimchi?

Meat Wars with South Korea

By MARTHA ROSENBERG

"We Don't Like The FDA," chant ten thousand demonstrators in candlelight vigils, some dressed as cows.

"Mad Cow, You Eat It!"

"Send Mad Cow To The Presidential Office!"

A scene from the National Mall? San Francisco?

No the nightly rallies are in Seoul and 22 other South Korean cities to protest ratification of the pending US/South Korea free trade agreement, KORUS FTA.

The agreement, drafted a year ago but not yet signed, would boost two-way trade between the nations to $98 billion a year from $78 under the condition that South Korea lift almost all restrictions on U.S. beef, including the age of butchered cattle.

KORUS FTA is considered the most significant event in South Korea-U.S. relations since the 1953 military accord and was punctuated by a visit last month from newly elected South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak to Camp David where no South Korean president has been invited. Lee is a pro-American conservative, unlike his predecessor Roh Moo-hyun who was elected on an anti-American platform.

While the FTA delivers on Lee's pledge to double South Korea's wealth if elected and lets the U.S. rebuild its Asian beef trade obliterated by a mad cow scare five years ago--especially exports to China and Japan--many in South Korea are saying, "You want us to import WHAT"?

Because South Korean cuisine, "includes cow bones and intestines that are believed to have a higher concentration of prions," writes Cho Jin-seo in South Korea Times, South Koreans feel they are at greater risk for Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD) if the beef is infected with mad cow disease.

They interpret the agreement's prohibition of, "the use of the entire carcass of cattle not inspected and passed for human consumption, unless the cattle are less than 30 months of age, or the brains and spinal cords have been removed," to mean meat from cattle under 30 months old or stripped of the high-risk materials will be uninspected.

Gruesome TV programs featuring cows being slaughtered and a report by a professor of medicine at Hallym University on MBC that South Koreans are genetically more vulnerable to vCJD--which other scientists refuted--have fanned the flames. So have Internet based rumors that cosmetics, diapers, sanitary napkins and noodles contain cow tissue and are contaminated.

Until the discovery of mad cow disease in the U.S. in 2003, South Korea was the third largest importer of U.S. beef, spending $850 million year. It eased the ban in 2006 only to find backbones, a banned substance, lurking in the beef and reban it (see: Charlie Brown; football) impounding 5,300 tons. Now the meat, which has been in storage, is rumored to soon be released. Will it be billed as fresh?

Of course there are other dangerous meats in the South Korean diet. No hygiene regulations govern the millions of dogs slaughtered for food each year says the Herald Sun, because they are not considered livestock.

But that doesn’t mean worries about U.S. beef are unfounded.

Seven people have died from probable Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease in the U.S. in the last nine months including Connie Albert of Lincoln IL and Roger Leon Dalton of Willis, VA in Aug. 2007; Roland Lacey and Ray Norris--who lived within three miles of each other near Stanton, DE--and a 79-year-old woman in Milwaukee, WI all in Dec 2007; a 53-year-old man in Colby, KS in Jan. 2008, a former meat worker, and Aretha Vinson of Portsmouth VA in April.

While public health officials are quick to rule CJD "sporadic," not meat-caused--even before brain biopsies or when it's in clusters (hello)--to forestall panic about food and hospital safety, Aretha Vinson presented a perfect storm for U.S. trade officials:

Not only was she young at 22 and her family outspoken--"She has not traveled overseas. She's not even been to the Midwest," said her mother, adding she "wasn't the only one who ate this food,"--the news broke in the middle of the Bush/Lee summit.

Dr. Richard Raymond, USDA Undersecretary For Food Safety, himself was forced to assure the South Korean and American publics that it wasn't what everyone thought, citing the same we-don't-really-know-but-it-sounds-good "epidemiologic characteristics" and "preliminary results" other dissembling public health officials use, in a May 4 statement.

"An official release once all testing is completed and confirmed is expected soon," he added, no doubt hoping it comes after the South Koreans sign.

Nor does the provision in the beef agreement at the heart of the foment--that South Korea can't halt beef imports if mad cow breaks out in the U.S. (unless the Paris-based World Organization for Animal Health downgrades the U.S. safety rating)--instill much faith.

Do trade officials know something we don't know?

Especially since in May the Bush administration urged a federal appeals court to reverse a lower court ruling that allowed Arkansas City, KS-based Creekstone Farms Premium Beef to conduct advanced mad cow testing on its animals--presumably because it would raise consumer questions and make other packers look bad. (viz. BST-free milk labels)

"This is the government telling the consumers, 'You're not entitled to this information,'" protested Creekstone attorney Russell Frye, according to the AP, a charge also heard in March when USDA refused to name companies selling 143 million pounds of recalled Westland/Hallmark beef because the information was "proprietary."

Meat from 200,000 dairy cows was impounded followed a Humane Society of the United States undercover video depicting slaughter of downer cattle --a violation of U.S. mad cow regulations.

The video may even have reached South Korea.

Martha Rosenberg is staff cartoonist on the Evanston Roundtable. She can be reached at mrosenberg@evmark.org

 

 

 

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