March 26 2009 show notes

Thursday 26 March '09 show

• Thom arrived in Stadtsteinach only 15 minutes before the show. He left the United States about 11 o'clock yesterday morning, flew to Chicago, flew to Amsterdam, flew to Frankfurt, took the rain to Würzburg, took the train to Lichtenfels, took the train to Bamberg and then there was a tree on the tracks so had to take another train, then a 20 minute drive.
• Guest: Former congressman Tom Tancredo, chair of the Rocky Mountain Foundation, focusing on the same issues as when he was in Congress, for example immigration. Nancy Pelosi. H1-B visas, Thom's Shinji example, how it has changed. "While Speaker Pelosi has been telling illegals to continue to enter the country, Congressman Tom Tancredo has been speaking out against the high number of illegal immigrants that are entering the country each month, while neither Congress nor the Obama administration seems to be doing anything about it. Tancredo has stated that he believes Capitol Hill should be answering why thousands continue to pour into a country that is struggling economically and seeing unemployment rates climb."
• Bumper Music: Shake It Up, The Cars.
• Thom is broadcasting from Kinder- und Jugendhilfswerk Salem in Stadtsteinach, Germany. Thom and Louise lived there for a year back in the '80s. Thom has been working with the organization since 1978. They started the non-profit Salem Childrens' Village in New Hampshire in 1978.
• Article: Failed gilt auction stokes fears over UK economy. Only 93% sold.
• Was the reason that the Fed bought a trillion dollars worth of treasuries last week because they wanted to jack up the money supply, or because the Chinese wouldn't buy them? The forthcoming international finance meeting.
• Bumper Music: Listen up!, The Gossip (video).
• The economy.
• "As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion,-as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen,-and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."
  Treaty of Tripoli, November 4, 1796.
• Bumper Music: That Was Yesterday, Foreigner (video).
• Immigration, fences, borders, we can't compete with people from countries with cheaper living. Mini rant.
• Guest: Dr. Andrew Bosworth, author of "Biotech Empire: The Untold Future of Food, Pills, and Sex". Monsanto and the battle for a safe food supply. He was calling from Japan. HR875 to make organic gardening illegal in the US. That is an overstatement, but there are 4 major problems:
  1. requires pre-registration even if local. New agency requires 24 hour emergency contact information. All the current problems are at large slaughterhouses, importers, and they will be the accredited labs, so Monsanto could set up the inspections. Even selling to a local farmers market or local coop.
  2. accredited labs outsourced.
  3. each infraction is up to million dollar fine., clause in section 401 says new FSA may use funds for further enforcement.
  4. entire pretext is addressing need because growing population of immune compromised consumers - but that is because of food industrial complex.

  It is moving in the wrong direction, need food autonomy, education, free market, with some local inspection. The odds are high it will become law. Long history of food control, 2005 national uniformity for food act, that was Republican, this is Democrat. 2005 pushed high state standards down to a lower federal standard. National animal id system. Call Congress. April 26 international seeds day.

• Bumper Music: When it's love, Van Halen (video).
• Guest: Gerhart Lipfert, who was at Salem International back in 1978 and ran the Salem Children's village in Höchheim, a pioneer in organic food. Organic food is now well known in Germany. Only the best for the children. Herbs. Thom helped set up Salem Children's village and organic farm in Kalinengrad, Russia and Gerhard runs it. Russia had lost its sense of small, natural farming. The farm is a demonstration project for Russia. Food labelling.
• Bumper Music: Rock Me Right, Susan Tedeschi (video).
• Real Wild Foods.
• Euell Gibbons.
• Thom came to Salem on May 7th, right after Chernobyl in 1986. The streets in Frankfurt were deserting because it was raining and there was fallout. Solar panels because Germany did not want another nuclear reactor. At Salem Russia they have children and workers from the Chernobyl area, and the food helps.
• Obama was disrespectful of herbs. foodfascist.blogspot.com.
• Renting and planting a garden. Most Germans have a garden.
• Bumper Music: Working for the Weekend, Loverboy (video).
• Bumper Music: Crazy, Gnarls Barkley.
• Article: Mich. baseball park offers 4,800 calorie burger.
• Nobel laureate Otto Heinrich Warburg believed in pH balance for health, a cure for cancer - alkalize your body. Eat raw food.
• Michelle Obama starting a garden at the White House.
• Lawns to Gardens. Portland Bright Neighbor.
• Guest: Mark Rudd.
  "From 1965 t0 1968, I was a student activist and organizer in the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) chapter at Columbia University. I was one of the leaders of the Spring 1968 occupation of five buildings and the subsequent strike against the university's complicity with the war and its racism. At the time I was identified by the press as the symbol of student radicals.

  After being kicked out of Columbia, I became a full-time organizer for SDS, where I helped found the militant Weatherman faction. I was elected National Secretary of SDS in June, 1969, then helped found the "revolutionary" Weather Underground, which had as its goal "the violent overthrow of the government of the US in solidarity with the struggles of the people of the world."

  Wanted on federal charges of bombing and conspiracy, I was a fugitive from 1970 to 1977. All of the charges were dropped because of government illegalities. From 1980 to 2006 I was a math instructor at a community college in Albuquerque, NM, and a perennial organizer and nonviolent activist locally on issues of native American land rights, nuclear, US military interventions, Palestine solidarity, unionization, environmental justice, and war and militarization.

  I retired from teaching in 2007 and have been devoting myself since then to organizing and also writing and speaking on the history which I was involved in. In March, 2009, my book Underground: My Life in SDS and the Weathermen was published.

  "

  Thom was in the SDS Michigan State University chapter. Eventually Rudd concluded he was doing the work of the FBI. He soon decided violence was not the way, but it took years to get out of being a fugitive from federal charges. Vietnam, your government killing you and them. The White Rose Society. Organize to pressure Obama to withdraw from Iraq and not get deeper into Afghanistan; we will lose there.

• Bumper Music: Blue Morning, Blue Day, Foreigner.
• Nutrition of food, kids stop eating when they get enough nutrition, not volume.
• Article: Study: Range of pharmaceuticals in fish across US.
• Guest: Christy Harvey, Director of Strategic Communications at the Center for American Progress, MicCheckradio.org. "News Under the Radar". She's in Alaska. Alaska’s Mount Redoubt volcano erupted again today, 12 mile plume of ash, they are hoping for a good wind to take it away from Anchorage. Republicans ridiculed volcano monitors, particularly Bobby Jindal. It is important; they have had to close ports and airports, the military is on special alert as the ash is very dangerous. People have enough warning time to prepare. Climate change, glaciers disappearing so quickly in alps that they will have to redraw boundaries between countries which went around glaciers. Representative Thaddeus McCotter (R - MI) does not use gym in the House; he doesn’t “go there very much because A, they don’t have ashtrays. … And B, the one time I was there, my first trip, someone sort of was talc-ing themselves, and offered their hand and I just said, ‘Hey, we’re cool, dude.’” Lots of pharmaceuticals in tap water, a study from Baylor University tested fish near cities, they had residues of serious pharmaceuticals, so the water must be full of it. Effect on humans, amphibians; hermaphrodite frogs. The country is wasting $2.8b by leaving computers on when we leave work. Parasitic power supplies, possibly 10% of all electricity. Obama should do regulatory change.
• Bumper Music: Go to the Mirror Boy, The Who.
• New England Salem Children’s Trust.
• Ellen Ratner of Talk Radio News, at the White House. Briefing. Cholene Espinoza is in Dusseldorf. The president had his virtual town hall news conference; 80,000 people sent in questions. He avoided a question on marijuana. Budget. Deficit. The blue dogs are not willing to go along with the budget unless further deficit is avoided. He needs them in the Senate. Reagan used to put his most controversial pieces of legislation in a budget bill, so only 51 votes are needed rather than 60 for cloture. Hillary's remark in Mexico about America's insatiable demand for drugs is still reverberating in right wing radio. The Progressive caucus seminar, pressure on defense spending, over $600b. Hearings. Paul Volker has been asked to head up a commission going after overseas tax havens, unpaid taxes, ramping up enforcement on tax collection. Tomorrow Obama's Afghanistan policy. Car manufacturing. Next week president's first trip to Europe.