Secrecy // Current TV

At Least Four Killed in US Drone Strike Against Pakistan

Just one day after reports began trickling out that the US was close to a deal with... more

Anonmaly
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1 month ago
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Special Ops: The New Face of War

John Grant, This Can't Be Happening: "How do you assure the security of a... more

Progresshiv
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6 months ago
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ALEC exposed: Protecting factory farms and sewerage sludge?

As suburbs engulfed the rural landscape in the boom following World War II, many family farmers found themselves with new neighbors who were annoyed by the sound of crowing roosters, the smell of animal manure, or the rumble of farming equipment. In defense of family farming, Massachusetts passed the first "Right to Farm" law in 1979, to protect these farmers against their new suburban neighbors filing illegitimate nuisance lawsuits against them when, in fact, the farms were there first. Since then, every state has passed some kind of protection for family farms, which are pillars of our communities and the backbone of a sensible system of sustainable agriculture.

However, in the past few decades, intensive corporatization of farming has threatened both the future of family farming and the ability of neighbors to regulate the development of industrial agricultural operations that have transmogrified many farms into factories. Small-scale farms that resembled Old MacDonald's farm (with an oink oink here and a moo moo there) have increasingly disappeared or been turned into enormous livestock confinements with literal lagoons of liquified manure and urine, super-concentrated smells that could make a skunk faint, or vast fields of monoculture crops grown with a myriad of chemicals and pesticides and sometimes even sewage sludge. For example, the decade before the first right to farm law was passed, it took one million family farms to raise nearly 60 million pigs but by 2001, less than ten percent (80,000 farms) were growing the same number of pigs.

Capitalizing on the sentiment of protecting traditional farming, giant agribusiness interests have convinced some states to revise their Right to Farm laws to stealthily protect the most egregious of industrial farming practices from legitimate nuisance suits. The Center for Media & Democracy has recently exposed and analyzed a cache of bills voted on by corporations and politicians behind closed doors and then introduced in state legislatures without any notice to the public of the role of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) bill factory in the production of the legislation and no disclosure of the fact that corporations pre-voted on the bills, let alone disclosures of the names of those companies. In 1996, ALEC suddenly took an interest in expanding right to farm laws. ALEC's corporate backers, unsurprisingly, hale from the factory farm side of the equation.

ALEC's Corporate Backers

ALEC's corporate members and funders have included a number of agriculture interests, including Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Cargill, and DuPont, as well as industry organizations like the National Pork Producers Council, the Illinois Corn Marketing Board, and the Illinois Soybean Association. Cargill is the nation's second largest beef processor, third largest turkey processor, and fourth largest pork processor. In three other areas, flour milling, soybean crushing, and production of animal feed, ADM joins Cargill as the biggest in the industry. Chemical giant DuPont is one of the world's largest makers of numerous pesticides, and in 1999, it purchased seed giant Pioneer Hi-Bred, the world's top seller of corn seeds, including genetically engineered seeds.

Unlike the corporations, the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) is actually led by farmers ... and lobbyists for multinational pork processors, like Don Butler, past president of NPPC and lobbyist for Smithfield Foods, the largest pork processor in the world. The farmers who lead NPPC tend to own farms similar to that of NPPC president Doug Wolf. Wolf's farm produces 24,000 hogs per year - and it also has a beef feedlot and 1,200 acres of corn, soy, and alfalfa.

Perhaps the most surprising "agribusiness" donor to ALEC is the most powerful of all: Koch Industries. It turns out that an early part of the Koch empire was the Matador Cattle Company, founded in 1952. To this day, Koch Agriculture Company retains Matador Cattle Company, which has about 15,000 cattle. However, in the 1990's, Koch Beef Company was the nation's 10th largest cattle feeder, with feedlots that held up to 165,000 cattle. Koch bought a new feedlot in 1996 and, among other things, decided to expand its capacity by adding 20,000 more cows. The neighbors did not think that was a good idea:

Some businesses and farm owners expressed concerns over the health of their employees, some of whom would be housed within 300 feet of Koch's cattle pens. Other neighbors cited concerns over the potential for groundwater pollution, the amount of dirt, insects, and odors added to the area contributing to health problems, a decrease in the quality of life for nearby residents, and the possible devaluation of land.

Koch overcame their objections with the ruling of a friendly regulator in Texas, winning the right to expand. With all these corporate interests in limiting regulation of factory farming, thank goodness their pals at ALEC approved a model version of a Right to Farm bill in 1996!

Why Corporations Care About Laws For Farmers

While nearly all farms in the United States are technically "family farms" (a tiny fraction are owned directly by corporations), multinational agribusiness corporations have a major stake in how these farms are operated. Often family farms take the form of Wolf L & G Farms LLC, the farm owned by the family of Doug Wolf (mentioned above). Particularly for chickens and hogs, individual farmers often contract with meatpackers like Cargill, Smithfield, or Tyson. In contract farming arrangements, the corporations provide the animals, medications, and feed to the farmers; the farmer is responsible for the animals' housing, manure, and the bodies of animals that die prematurely. When the animals are fully grown, they are picked up by the corporation, which slaughters, processes, and markets the animal and plays the farmer for the weight the animal gained in his or her care. The farmers have most of the debt and risk and the corporation has most of the power and profit.

More at the linkAs suburbs engulfed the rural landscape in the boom following World War II, many... more

JanforGore
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6 months ago
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First Canadian Government to be found in contempt of Parliament?

Liberty's Easy Slide into Tyranny

No matter how hard we try, no one can control the future, and we cannot assume the... more

Schnookums
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12 months ago
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Russia's Own WikiLeaks Takes Off | News | The Moscow Times

New Russian site strives to become the Russian Wikileaks

mollymew
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1 year ago
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Secrecy is the problem, not leakers - Opinion - The Sofia Echo

Perspective On Wikileaks

mollymew
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1 year ago
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The Julian Assange affair: Just the facts, Ma’am, just the facts

So with all these facts and speculations going around, getting mixed up with each... more

hoosierdaddy
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1 year ago
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1 comment

U.S. Nuclear Weapons Have Been Compromised by Unidentified Aerial Objects

Witness testimony from more than 120 former or retired military personnel points to an... more

Psymoniac
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1 year ago
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Google Transparency Report:Government Data & Removal Requests

Like other technology and communications companies, we regularly receive requests from... more

toyotabedzrock
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1 year ago
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BP buys up Gulf scientists for legal defense, roiling academic community

For the last few weeks, BP has been offering signing bonuses and lucrative pay to... more

opit
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1 year ago
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Why Apple's era of secrecy is over

Apple, long known for its culture of secrecy, is suddenly springing leaks. Big ones.... more

danteglam
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1 year ago
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Ron Paul 1/20/2010 Moves To End The Federal Reserve

1/20/2010 Congressman Dr Ron Paul explains why we need to end the Federal Reserve

shanklinmike
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2 years ago
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44 comments

Ron Paul “We Need To Take Out The CIA”

1/15/2010 Excerpt from the Campaign for Liberty Regional Conference in Atlanta, GA.

shanklinmike
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2 years ago
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46 comments

New York Columns - George W. Obama - page 1

After his first year, Obama shows his true face By Nat Hentoff Tuesday, January 12th... more

WeAreChangeKy
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2 years ago
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17,000 potentially harmful chemicals kept secret under obscure law

"Of some 84,000 chemicals being used commercially in the United States, some 20... more

lookatmypix
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2 years ago
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8 comments

The Makings of a Police State-Part IV

Secret reports, Secret budgets, Secret operations, Secret courts … A Secret Government!

The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them. — Patrick Henry

As stated by Patrick Henry with conviction and passion, a democratic government will not last if its operations and policies are not visible to its public. The foundation of our democratic republic is supposed to be based on an open and accountable government. Transparency is what enables accountability.

For several decades post 1945, under the guise of the Cold War, with the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency and an aggressive foreign policy based on overt and covert intervention abroad, the seeds of excessive secrecy were planted, aggressively nurtured, and taken to heights not imaginable in our founding fathers’ vision of transparent and accountable government. Although the Watergate Scandal brought a short-lived wave of awakening, and to a certain degree defiance, by getting Americans to question the extent of and the real need for governmental secrecy, the subsequent political movements were eventually halted with no real action ever taken, thanks to a Congress unwilling to truly exercise its oversight authority over the intelligence community.

With the September 11 Terrorist Attacks the establishment had all it needed to take government secrecy to new heights where neither the Constitution nor the separation of powers would matter or be applicable. These new heights could never be reached in a functioning and live democracy, nor could they be sustained and flourish without a home marked by all the characteristics of a police state. Those new heights were indeed reached, and they surely have been not only sustained, but actually increased; notch by notch. Waving the national security flag nonstop, reminding us on a daily basis of some vague boogiemen terrorists who may be hiding under our beds, drilling the words terror-terrorists-terrorism every hour, did the magic; thanks to the US Media.

(much more at link)Secret reports, Secret budgets, Secret operations, Secret courts … A Secret... more

Vierotchka
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2 years ago
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Dennis Kucinich on Karzai's statement regarding stay in Afghanistan of 15-20 years

Since I myself see absolutely no way Afghanistan could stand on its feet by 2011, I... more

JanforGore
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2 years ago
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1 comment

CIA WANTS TO READ YOUR BLOG

U.S. Spies Buy Stake in Firm That Monitors Blogs, Tweets... more

WhiteNoise
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2 years ago
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20 comments

Police use secret GPS devices, Judge OK'd

For the first time, the Supreme Judicial Court ruled yesterday that the state... more

akassan
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2 years ago
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24 comments

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