Now, more about the politics of the price of tomatoes from gourmet.com:

“Driving from Naples, Florida, the nation’s second-wealthiest metropolitan area, to Immokalee takes less than an hour on a straight road. You pass houses that sell for an average of $1.4 million, shopping malls anchored by Tiffany’s and Saks Fifth Avenue, manicured golf courses. Eventually, gated communities with names like Monaco Beach Club and Imperial Golf Estates give way to modest ranches, and the highway shrivels from six lanes to two. Through the scruffy palmettos, you glimpse flat, sandy tomato fields shimmering in the broiling sun. Rounding a long curve, you enter Immokalee. The heart of town is a nine-block grid of dusty, potholed streets lined by boarded-up bars and bodegas, peeling shacks, and sagging, mildew-streaked house trailers. Mongrel dogs snooze in the shade, scrawny chickens peck in yards. Just off the main drag, vultures squabble over roadkill. Immokalee’s population is 70 percent Latino. Per capita income is only $8,500 a year. One third of the families in this city of nearly 25,000 live below the poverty line. Over one third of the children drop out before graduating from high school.
Immokalee is the tomato capital of the United States. Between December and May, as much as 90 percent of the fresh domestic tomatoes we eat come from south Florida, and Immokalee is home to one of the area’s largest communities of farmworkers. According to Douglas Molloy, the chief assistant U.S. attorney based in Fort Myers, Immokalee has another claim to fame: It is “ground zero for modern slavery.”

The beige stucco house at 209 South Seventh Street is remarkable only because it is in better repair than most Immokalee dwellings. For two and a half years, beginning in April 2005, Mariano Lucas Domingo, along with several other men, was held as a slave at that address. At first, the deal must have seemed reasonable. Lucas, a Guatemalan in his thirties, had slipped across the border to make money to send home for the care of an ailing parent. He expected to earn about $200 a week in the fields. Cesar Navarrete, then a 23-year-old illegal immigrant from Mexico, agreed to provide room and board at his family’s home on South Seventh Street and extend credit to cover the periods when there were no tomatoes to pick.

Lucas’s “room” turned out to be the back of a box truck in the junk-strewn yard, shared with two or three other workers. It lacked running water and a toilet, so occupants urinated and defecated in a corner. For that, Navarrete docked Lucas’s pay by $20 a week. According to court papers, he also charged Lucas for two meager meals a day: eggs, beans, rice, tortillas, and, occasionally, some sort of meat. Cold showers from a garden hose in the backyard were $5 each. Everything had a price. Lucas was soon $300 in debt. After a month of ten-hour workdays, he figured he should have paid that debt off.

But when Lucas—slightly built and standing less than five and a half feet tall—inquired about the balance, Navarrete threatened to beat him should he ever try to leave. Instead of providing an accounting, Navarrete took Lucas’s paychecks, cashed them, and randomly doled out pocket money, $20 some weeks, other weeks $50. Over the years, Navarrete and members of his extended family deprived Lucas of $55,000.

Taking a day off was not an option. If Lucas became ill or was too exhausted to work, he was kicked in the head, beaten, and locked in the back of the truck. Other members of Navarrete’s dozen-man crew were slashed with knives, tied to posts, and shackled in chains. On November 18, 2007, Lucas was again locked inside the truck. As dawn broke, he noticed a faint light shining through a hole in the roof. Jumping up, he secured a hand hold and punched himself through. He was free.

What happened at Navarrete’s home would have been horrific enough if it were an isolated case. Unfortunately, involuntary servitude—slavery—is alive and well in Florida. Since 1997, law-enforcement officials have freed more than 1,000 men and women in seven different cases. And those are only the instances that resulted in convictions. Frightened, undocumented, mistrustful of the police, and speaking little or no English, most slaves refuse to testify, which means their captors cannot be tried. “Unlike victims of other crimes, slaves don’t report themselves,” said Molloy, who was one of the prosecutors on the Navarrete case. “They hide from us in plain sight.”

And for what? Supermarket produce sections overflow with bins of perfect red-orange tomatoes even during the coldest months—never mind that they are all but tasteless. Large packers, which ship nearly $500 million worth of tomatoes annually to major restaurants and grocery retailers nationwide, own or lease the land upon which the workers toil. But the harvesting is often done by independent contractors called crew bosses, who bear responsibility for hiring and overseeing pickers. Said Reggie Brown, executive vice president of the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, “We abhor slavery and do everything we can to prevent it. We want to make sure that we always foster a work environment free from hazard, intimidation, harassment, and violence.” Growers, he said, cooperated with law-enforcement officers in the Navarette case…”

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“Austin, Texas, Dec. 20, 2000: “Natural gas is hemispheric. I like to call it hemispheric in nature because it is a product that we can find in our neighborhoods.” (Source: Treehugger)

Washington, D.C. March 13, 2001: “There are some monuments where the land is so widespread, they just encompass as much as possible. And the integral part of the–the precious part, so to speak–I guess all land is precious, but the part that the people uniformly would not want to spoil, will not be despoiled. But there are parts of the monument lands where we can explore without affecting the overall environment.” (Source: Slate)

Washington, D.C., January 6, 2009: “The new steps I’ve announced today are the capstone of an eight-year commitment to strong environmental protection and conservation.” Check out this interesting graphic from the Natural Resources Defense Council illustrating the last eight years in environmental policy…

New Delhi, India, Mar. 2, 2006 “Obviously, nu-que-lar power is, uh, a renewable source of energy, and the less demand there is for non-renewable sources of energy, like fossil fuels, the better it off it is for the American people.” Well, he got the second part right, but nuclear energy produced from uranium is, uh, not renewable as far as we know… (Source: Treehugger)

Washington, D.C., June 8, 2005: “We’re spending money on clean coal technology. Do you realize we’ve got 250 million years of coal?” (Source: Slate)

Michigan, September 2000, explaining his energy policies: “I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.” (Source: AP)

A Freudian slip made while addressing Australian Prime Minister John Howard at the APEC Summit, Sept. 7, 2007: “Mr. Prime Minister, thank you for your introduction. Thank you for being such a fine host for the OPEC summit.”

And a bonus: “[It's] time for the human race to enter the solar system.”

While we’re talking about W, let’s give him a little help to pack up his junk at the Whitehouse. He needs to clear out for Obama. Click here: Help Bush Pack

From treehugger:

“Phthalates, the plasticizer used to make vinyl soft, have been known to be a gender-bender that has been shown to affect the masculinity of rats. Even the Bush Administration, not renowned for its defence of the public against the chemical companies, has banned it from childrens’ toys.

Now new research has found new evidence of “phthalate syndrome”- smaller penises, and undescended or incompletely descended testicles- in humans. Shanna Swan, director of the Center for Reproductive Epidemiology at the University of Rochester’s school of medicine, who led the research, says phthalates are “”probably reproductive toxins and should be eliminated from products gradually because we don’t need them.”

Chemical Industry dismisses threat

Of course the American Chemistry Council, representing the companies that make the chemical (Exxon Mobil, BASF, Ferro Corp., and Eastman Chemical) warns us to be “cautioned against over-interpreting any individual study.”

Screw that; among guys, penis size is serious stuff. Martin Mittelstaedt of the Globe and Mail writes:

“Scientists have been investigating the possible effects on boys of phthalates because rodent studies have shown the chemical has the peculiar ability to shorten the space between the anus and the genitalia in male mice exposed during fetal development. This space, known as anogenital distance or AGD, is normally about twice as long in young male mice than in females. For mice, AGD is considered a measure of masculinity and a way to determine the sex of the pups. Scientists are so confident of the effect that they’ve given the impact of the chemical on male rodents a name – phthalate syndrome.

Surveys of children have also found that …..”

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Read the full article at alternet

“… bees are still dying from symptoms that have been identified as Colony Collapse Disorder. Not many, yet. But this is when it starts. So let’s look at what’s going on.

Viruses
Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus was implicated early on, but so far it hasn’t moved past the ‘found in some samples’ role. Continuing greenhouse research, where individual honey bees are infected with the virus definitely shows that the pathogen kills bees. But so do a host of other viruses that were found in the initial samples. The jury is still out on IAPV, at least until newer studies are published.

Other researchers are studying viruses, some known, some not, but so far nothing concrete has turned up … or at least nothing that anybody is talking about. That’s the trouble with science … too often the information gets sat on until the results are published … not reviewed and given the green light but actually put on paper (or turned into electrons to grace your computer screen) and released. Some publishing outlets are quicker, some slower but all have the same criteria. So if there’s something out there we’ll just have to wait.

Pesticides
Some of the early work — simply collecting samples of bees, wax, larvae, and pollen — are finally coming to the top of the pile and the results, some of which have been explored here, have been eye-opening, and mostly downright scary. Beekeeper-applied chemicals to control varroa certainly are hugely evident in the samples collected … not unlike the termite chemicals, lawn chemicals, garden chemicals, pet chemicals, and all the rest that we walk in, swim in, eat, touch and absorb everyday in our homes, work and play. Pesticides, to no one’s surprise, are abundant in our lives and equally abundant in the lives of our honey bees.

One of the unknowns, or maybe-unknowns, are the effects that those well-publicized new pesticides are having. They have made international headlines and definitely can’t be overlooked. And advocacy group, Beyond Pesticides, commented recently on these, and said that two of the primary active ingredients of concern are clothianidin and imidacloprid, both in the neonicotinoid family of chemicals. They are systemic pesticides, meaning the chemical is incorporated into plant tissue and can therefore be present in pollen and nectar, which is of particular importance to bees. They also have long persistence in the soil and can be absorbed by multiple generations of crops, increasing the likelihood of exposure for bees. Meanwhile, the manufacturers claim the chemicals safe and have data to prove it. But others in France and Germany claim just the opposite and are doing everything in their power to rid the world of these new poisons, and in the U.S. the EPA stands in the middle … and may soon be standing in court defending their role in approving these chemicals for use.

Nutrition
But there’s more going on than just pesticides, though those are definitely destructive. Other discoveries came from those samples taken earlier. One surprise was the nutrition deficiencies that were discovered … some of the bees that were sampled definitely were not in the best health because they had not had enough good food to eat. That, too, is a management concept that beekeepers are already turning around. This summer smart beekeepers are making protein supplements available … some of the new diets are being explored, new diets have been concocted, and more diets are on the drawing board, so to speak, and for the most part all seem to have given our bees a boost. Almost anything is better than nothing, and good food can solve a lot of problems, whether it’s your diet, your child’s daily bread, or a honey bee’s ration. That there were so many bees in diet-deficiency seems at first odd, perhaps, but bees have slowly declined for several years, and monoculture agriculture has continued to increase during the same time.

But not only protein-deficiencies were evident … carbohydrates, too were found wanting. Not so much volume, but quality. Is high fructose corn syrup as bad, or good, for bees as it is, or isn’t for us? Some seem to think HFCS is evil incarnate, no matter who or what eats it. Others have shown that if the HFCS is made well, and then that quality preserved and protected it’s just fine. Meanwhile, some beekeepers are switching to plain old sugar … sucrose solution … and seem to see better results. But sugar costs more.

Other Diseases
The new disease … that Nosema cerane thing … isn’t anywhere near being solved either. What is it, how do you diagnose it, how do you treat it, when do you treat for it … all questions needing answers and nobody is looking it seems. Well, not quite. Researchers in Europe are studying this I understand … but again, nothing has been published … so bees die of a disease that we can’t treat. Is this CCD? Hmmmmm. Don’t know.

Which brings up the tired old song of research funding. I talked about the $4.1 million grant delivered recently, and I looked at the scientists receiving the money. One industry spokesperson (me) recently said, mostly in jest, that once that money was spread out over all the scientists, over all the years, each would receive about a buck and a half … That’s not quite true, but the concept shouldn’t be ignored. So far, USDA has been monumentally slow in getting things moving. They have a couple of large scale, actually profoundly practical studies going … funded by existing money, not the new money that was supposed to come down from the farm bill … at least so far. But this begs the question … if the money is being used for these studies, what isn’t getting done? Well, we don’t know, do we?

Colony Collapse Disorder hasn’t gone away. Beekeepers are harvesting honey, if they have some to harvest. They are beginning plans for moving south or west for wintering or pollination, and wondering if they again will have to scratch to get bees to meet pollination contract promises. Or is this the year it would be better to stay home? Honey prices are strong, moving is even more expensive this year, and all that stress … maybe home is where the honey bee is should get more attention.

But one more thing has come to light. Organization.

With all the noise made about lack of funding, one question keeps coming up … why aren’t beekeepers doing some of this funding? Why is it only the government that should do this? Good question.

Research Funding
And here’s the answer. There are four major funding sources within the beekeeping industry that have already made significant contributions to finding the answers to Colony Collapse Disorder. More — way more, actually — than government sources, and more is on the way. And if you are looking to help solve this critical problem and want to know how … stay tuned. We’ll open a whole set of doors and introduce you to the best of the beekeeping world.”

[source]

Rice bran – a so-called “superfood” – might contain dangerous amounts of a natural poison.

A new study suggests that rice bran, the shavings left over after brown rice is polished to produce white rice grains, contains “inappropriate” levels of arsenic. Andrew Meharg at the University of Aberdeen, UK, and colleagues found that the levels of arsenic in rice bran products available on the internet and used in food-aid programmes funded by the US government would be illegal in China – the only country in the world to have standards for how much arsenic is permissible in food.

Meharg’s team are calling on the European Union and the US to follow China’s example and update food standards for arsenic.

Arsenic is a natural carcinogen, present in drinking water around the world including in Australia, the US and many developing countries.

In previous work, Meharg has shown that brown rice contains more arsenic than polished white rice (Environmental Science and Technology, DOI: 10.1021/es702212p).

Nutritional drink

In the new study, Meharg and colleagues purchased brown rice from China and Bangladesh and polished part of it in the same way that it would be to produce commercial white rice. They found that 1 kilogramme of brown rice contained on average 0.76 mg of arsenic in its toxic inorganic form. The rice also contained some non-toxic, organic arsenic. The polished white rice grains contained 0.56 mg inorganic arsenic per kg, whereas the rice bran contained 3.3 mg per kg on average.

On the surface, this appears to be good news: the bran shavings are usually discarded except in Japan, where they are used in traditional pickling recipes. But in recent years a number of rice-bran products have come onto US and European markets, mainly targeted at health-food consumers. They are labelled “superfoods”: the bran is high in antioxidants, vitamins, mineral nutrients and fibre. Producers say it is the largest wasted agricultural food resource on the planet, with 60 million metric tonnes of it discarded worldwide each year.

Some companies have produced a powdered version with a long shelf life at room temperature. Mixed with water, these “rice-bran solubles” make a nutritional drink and have been distributed as food aid to malnourished children in Malawi, Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador. There are plans to further expand the aid programmes in Latin America, India and the Caribbean.

Meharg and his colleagues purchased nine commercial rice-bran products online, including rice-bran solubles from NutraCea, a company that participates in food-aid programmes, and analysed their arsenic content. The products contained between 0.48 mg/kg and 1.16 mg/kg of inorganic arsenic. China recently updated its standards, and set the limit to 0.15 mg of inorganic arsenic per kg of food.

Risk analysis

“The arsenic concentrations reported are worrisome, but the risk assessment is complex,” says Philippe Grandjean, professor of environmental health at Harvard University’s School of Public Health.

Indeed, “safe” standards for arsenic intake are controversial. The risk of skin, lung, bladder and kidney cancer increases proportionally with arsenic intake, which has lead toxicologists to the conclusion that there is no “safe” limit. But risks must be weighed against the benefits gained from drinking water and eating certain foods that contain the poison.

NutraCea has carried out a pilot project distributing their rice-bran solubles to 67,000 pre-school children in Guatemala. They monitored the nutritional state of 150 children. Whereas at the beginning of the trial, 37% were deemed malnourished, that dropped to 5% after taking 15 g of the rice bran 5 days a week for 6 months. The project was funded by the US Agency for International Development USAID and the Christian Children’s Fund.

Marie Vahter, an environmental toxicologist at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden who has done extensive studies on the health effects of arsenic believes the nutritional benefits do not necessarily outweigh the risks, given the availability of other supplements. “Recent reports indicate increased fetal and infant mortality due to fairly low-level arsenic exposure via drinking water,” says Vahter. Arsenic also impairs brain development and impairs the body’s ability to repair DNA.

Unwanted substances

“Rice-bran solubles are not the only way of getting nutrients to malnourished children,” argues Meharg. “If aid agencies want to go down the bran solubles route why not wheat, oat or barely bran solubles. All these crops have ten times less total arsenic than rice and are just as nutrient rich.”

“One would expect dietary supplements to be virtually free of unwanted substances like arsenic, especially when aimed at children, who are particularly vulnerable to arsenic,” says Grandjean.

Drinking water limits on arsenic levels are more widespread than food limits, despite animal studies showing that the body does not distinguish between arsenic derived from food and from drink. Water limits tend to be based on the World Health Organization’s “provisional” guideline limit of 0.01 mg of arsenic per litre of drinking water – although the WHO itself admits that “based on health criteria” the guideline would be less than this. It says the value is restricted by measurement limitations, hence its provisional nature.

According to China’s standards, all of the rice-bran products tested by Meharg would be illegal. According to the UK’s 50-year-old standards, two of the nine products are safe – yet all can be purchased online in the UK. The US has no standards for arsenic levels in food, and has a limit of 0.01 mg/l in drinking water.

“We totally agree with the overall message that it is important to set standards for inorganic arsenic in our food,” comments Walter Goessler, an arsenic expert at the Karl-Franzens University in Austria.

“Rice-bran solubles are being produced by commercial companies who profit from this commodity,” says Meharg.

At the time of going to publication, NutraCea had not replied to New Scientist’s request for comment.

[source]

Planet Earth

The premiere episode, “From Pole to Pole,” serves as a primer for things to come, placing the entire series in proper context and giving a general overview of what to expect from each individual episode. Without being overtly political, the series maintains a consistent and subtle emphasis on the urgent need for ongoing conservation, best illustrated by the plight of polar bears whose very behavior is changing (to accommodate life-threatening changes in their fast-melting habitat) in the wake of global warming–a phenomenon that this series appropriately presents as scientific fact.

With this harsh reality as subtext, the series proceeds to accentuate the positive, delivering a seemingly endless variety of natural wonders, from the spectacular mating displays of New Guinea’s various birds of paradise to a rare encounter with Siberia’s nearly-extinct Amur Leopards, of which only 30 remain in the wild.

With so many of Earth’s natural wonders on display, it’s only fitting that the final DVD in this 5-disc set is devoted to Planet Earth: The Future, a separate 3-part series in which a global array of experts is assembled to discuss issues of conservation, protection of delicate ecosystems, and the socio-economic benefits of understanding nature as a commodity that returns trillions of dollars in value at no cost to Earth’s human population.

At a time when the multiple threats of global warming should be obvious to all, let’s give Sir David the last word, from the closing of Planet Earth’s final episode: “We can now destroy or we can cherish–the choice is ours.”

Get Planet Earth now

“Travelers beware: U.S. agents now have the authority to seize and retain laptops indefinitely, according to a new policy detailed in documents issued by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

As part of border search policy, government agents are now authorized to seize electronic devices and inspect documents in them, the document states. The electronic devices might include laptops, cell phones, portable music players or storage devices such as portable hard drives.

Agents with U.S. Customs and Border Protection will also be allowed to translate and share documents with other government agencies.

The DHS document, issued July 16, appears to state publicly a policy that has already existed. Laptops and electronic devices have been subject to search in the past, and travelers have reported not getting their devices back. The policy has drawn strong criticism from lawmakers and nonprofit groups, who charged that the searches were invasive and a violation of an individual’s privacy rights. Computers contain a vast amount of private information about family, finances and health, which could be easily copied and stored in government databases, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has complained.

The policy document states that being able to examine documents and electronic devices is crucial for “detecting information concerning terrorism, narcotics smuggling … contraband including child pornography, and … other import or export control laws.”

The new DHS policies allow customs agents to analyze the contents of laptops without any suspicion of wrongdoing, U.S. Senator Russ Feingold said in a statement.

“The policies that have been disclosed are truly alarming,” Feingold wrote.

The policy could blur the distinction between “search” and “seizure,” which could also allow DHS officials to steal personal documents from laptops it has retained, Feingold wrote.” [source]

“Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California signed a bill banning trans fats in restaurant food, making California the first U.S. state to ban the use of the cooking oils linked to artery-clogging cholesterol.

The new law, modeled after a ban implemented in New York City, prohibits the use of partially hydrogenated oils, which contain trans fats, by the state’s 87,000 restaurants beginning in 2010 and in all baked goods sold in the state starting in 2011.

Trans fats, found in processed and fried food, candies and cookies, are vegetable oils that are treated with hydrogen to extend the shelf life of products. The oils have been linked to LDL cholesterol that clogs the arteries. New York began a ban on trans fats in all restaurants in December 2006.

“Consuming trans fat is linked to coronary heart disease, and today we are taking a strong step toward creating a healthier future for California,” Schwarzenegger said in a statement.

Diets high in trans fats increase the risk of heart disease, obesity and diabetes, according the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Web site.

Restaurant companies including McDonald’s and KFC already use cooking oils in the U.S. that are free of trans fats.”

A Totally Lawless Regime

Think about this question: In the 21st century what regime is more lawless than the Bush Regime?

Everyone is entitled to his own answer. The only answer I can come up with is the Zimbabwe regime of Robert Mugabe. Voted out of power in the last election, the great man hasn’t left. Zimbabweans are going to have to vote again, and the great man has said that any vote that is not for him will be cancelled by a bullet.

Does anyone remember how determined the British and the Americans and everyone else was to turn Rhodesia over to Mugabe in order to save Rhodesia from the evil Ian Smith? What a fool everyone was.

But before we laugh at those fools, we had best laugh at ourselves, or cry.

It is now an incontrovertible fact, known all over the world, that George W. Bush and his regime lied through their teeth in order to launch wars of aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq, and that the Bush regime is doing the same thing again in hopes of launching an attack on Iran.

There have been a number of memoirs from high ranking Bush appointees who cannot stand all the lies. Bush’s first Secretary of the Treasury, Paul O’Neill, told us that an invasion of Iraq was on the agenda prior to 9/11. There is the leaked Downing Street Memo in which the head of British Intelligence told the British Prime Minister and his cabinet that the Americans have decided to attack Iraq and are creating the “intelligence” to justify the attack.

And now we have the White House’s own spokesman from 2003-2006, Scot McClellen, ratifying what we all already knew, that President Bush deceived us and led us into war based entirely on lies and fabrications, and that he, Scott McClellen, was deceived into issuing a false public denial that top Cheney aide Scooter Libby and White House operative Karl Rove were involved in committing a felony under US law by revealing the identity of a covert CIA operative, Valerie Plame.

As a consequence of Bush’s lies, there are a million dead Iraqis, mostly women and children, and four million displaced Iraqis, 4,100 dead American soldiers and tens of thousands of seriously wounded. No one knows how many dead in Afghanistan. And there is the ongoing Israeli slaughter of Palestinians and Lebanese that has fallen under the rubric of the “war on terror.”

The only ones pleased with these wars are the American neoconservatives, the Israeli right-wing, the US corporate military-security complex, and Osama bin Laden.

The Bush regime has created enormous hatred and disrespect for the United States. A recent world wide poll found that George W. Bush ranks at the bottom of world leaders as one of the least trusted along with US Pakistani puppet Musharraf and the Iranian president, Ahmadinejad, who has the disadvantage of being the victim of demonization by the US and European corporate-controlled media, which serves as ministries of propaganda for the governments that control their broadcast licenses. The American and European media lie for their living.

The two leaders with the highest approval rating are UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

So, the old adversary, Russia, now has a more respected leader than the “leader” of the Great Free Nation, a Great Free Nation that has sat on its hands while its “leader” destroyed America’s civil liberties, America’s reputation, the jobs of Americans, and committed the US to a course of war crimes punishable by the International Criminal Court at the Hague.

A number of readers took issue with my recent column, “Elect Obama or Fall Into Tyranny.” Echoing former Alabama Governor George Wallace, readers said Obama would make no difference. But that is what I wrote.

My point was not that Obama would make any difference, as he has put himself and his administration into the hands of Wall Street and the Israel Lobby. I said that the American people could make a difference by rejecting the Republicans, as it was the only accountability that the Republicans were likely to suffer.

If Americans return a Republican regime, Americans will validate the right of the president to violate with impunity US and international law. Americans will validate the use by the president of the United States of deception and lies in order to initiate wars of aggression, aggression that is a war crime under the Nuremburg standard established by the US. Americans will validate the infringement of US civil liberties in the name of “safety” and “national security.” Americans will disembowel the US Constitution and leave themselves at the total mercy of the government.

Reelecting Republicans means the end of the United States as a land of liberty.

I am sympathetic to the argument that we, as a country of liberty, are near our end regardless. Look at the Democrats. Today, June 20, the House of Representatives, which the voters gave to the Democrats in the 2006 congressional elections in order to end the pointless barbarity that the US has brought to Iraq, voted the largest war-spending bill ever. The “antiwar” Democrats completely collapsed, giving the warmonger Brownshirt Republican regime everything it wanted.

The House Democrats, led by “impeachment-is-off-the-table” Nancy Pelosi, added to the Democratic Party’s shame by passing today, June 20, a bill that shields from punishment the criminal Bush regime and the telecommunications corporations that the Bush regime coerced into committing felonies under US law by cooperating in Bush’s illegal spying on American citizens.

The great hope of the Founding Fathers, the people’s house, the House of Representatives, has passed an illegal and unconstitutional retroactive law making acts legal which were illegal when they were committed.

If a Democratic House of Representatives will pass a retroactive law in order to legalize the criminal violations of a Republican regime, the same House will pass a retroactive law making illegal what you did legally yesterday. No one is any longer safe in America. By abandoning the US Constitution, Republicans and Democrats have made America as potentially unsafe as Zimbabwe for anyone who takes exception to the government.

The total collapse of the Democratic Party and the House of Representatives signals the end of liberty and democracy in America. Henceforth, led by the Republican Federalist Society, we will gravitate toward the beautiful regime of “energy in the executive” that has been achieved in Zimbabwe by Robert Mugabe.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com