Greening Greenfield News

Greenfield Eyes “Greening” Grants to Further its Economic Development Goals

GREENFIELD, MA – Greenfield is taking numerous steps to make it a “Green Showcase Community,” marrying its interests in economic development and the environment.

“Revitalization of Downtown and Bank Row, the Wisdom Way Solar Village, and the soon to be constructed zero net energy transit station are putting Greenfield on the map,” says Mayor William Martin. “These efforts will improve our economy, our downtown, and the environment, and favorably position the Town to secure additional grants for future work”.

The Town of Greenfield recently collaborated with the Greening Greenfield Energy Committee (GGEC) and applied for a “Climate Showcase Community” grant from the Environmental Protection Agency. The $448,000 proposal would enable Greenfield to promote itself as a showcase community and take further steps to make it even greener. In particular the grant funds would enable the Town to explore creating a public power company committed to generate zero carbon electricity and/or heat; expand the citizen-initiated Greenfield 10% Challenge; upgrade Town-owned buildings and work with an Energy Service Company (ESCO) to cut energy use and climate change emissions; work with young people in the schools to institute a Zero Waste program, and rewrite our 8-year old Master plan using sustainability as its overarching theme.

Additionally, Greenfield is actively working to become designated a “Green Community”. This designation from the state will provide opportunity to access millions of dollars in state and federal monies as well as help Greenfield get recognition for energy work done to date. To facilitate this, the Town has applied for a grant to provide technical assistance to move forward quickly to meet the Mayor’s goal of obtaining the designation this fall. Last week the Mayor and his staff meet with James Barry, the new Regional Coordinator for the Green Communities Division, who was impressed with the Town’s progress to date toward the Mayor’s goal.

Greenfield is also working with the DEP to institute an composting program in the schools; Siemens Building Technologies, the Energy Service Company chosen for Franklin County, started doing detailed energy audits on the schools last week; and Greening Greenfield representatives have been working with the Franklin Regional Council of Governments and the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission on a $5 million grant proposal for an Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant (EECBG), which is part of the stimulus packet funds.

“It was tremendously exciting to work with Mayor Martin and his staff on the Climate Showcase Communities grant,” said Nancy Hazard, co-chair of the Greening Greenfield Energy Committee. “To write the grant we looked all the great things the Town has done, or is in process of doing, and then looked for additional areas where we could all benefit economically as well as environmentally - and we found a lot of opportunity and common ground. Everyone’s efforts in Town have made it possible for us to submit what we believe is a very competitive proposal that will further the goals of the Greening Greenfield campaign and the Town as a whole.”

The Greening Greenfield campaign is a collaborative effort of the Town of Greenfield and the Greening Greenfield Energy Committee (GGEC) which aims to revitalize Greenfield using “greening” as the economic and inspirational engine to build a sustainable Greenfield so that current and future generations can enjoy life in this beautiful abundant valley. To find out more about the campaign, hit the Greening Greenfield button on the Town of Greenfield web site or go directly to www.GreeningGreenfield.org or call 774-5667.

Main Stream Media Silent

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Cheney's 'Fodder'

Cheney's torture claims debunked; will the media say so?

8/28/09

The release of a 2004 CIA inspector general's report on the agency's "enhanced interrogation" techniques, along with two other previously classified memos, has thrown a harsh spotlight on former Vice President Dick Cheney's oft-repeated pro-torture arguments. But corporate media seem intent on deflecting much of that glare.

Earlier this year, Cheney spent weeks on the airwaves, explaining that these CIA memos would back up his argument that torture provided valuable intelligence that helped thwart attacks against the United States (FAIR Media Advisory, 5/29/09). But the heavily redacted documents don't appear to do that. Of the two that Cheney asserted would help his case, reporter Spencer Ackerman noted (Washington Independent, 8/24/09) they "actually suggest the opposite of Cheney's contention: that non-abusive techniques actually helped elicit some of the most important information the documents cite in defending the value of the CIA’s interrogations."

Some reporters managed to reach the opposite conclusion, though how they did so was unclear. On the CBS Evening News (8/25/09), reporter Bob Orr said: "The once-secret documents do support the claims of former Vice President Dick Cheney that harsh interrogations at times did work. Interviews with prisoners helped the U.S. capture other terror suspects and thwart potential attacks, including Al-Qaeda plots to attack the U.S. consulate in Karachi and fly an airplane into California's tallest building." The problem is, whatever one makes of the CIA's argument that their interrogations yielded valuable intelligence, there's nothing in the documents newly available to the public--and to CBS--that actually argues this intelligence was produced by the torture techniques like waterboarding that Cheney so publicly defended.

As Ackerman told CounterSpin (8/28/09): Cheney and his supporters' argument "depends a lot on conflating the difference between saying the documents show that valuable [intelligence] came from detainees in the program, and then saying that it came from the enhanced interrogation techniques themselves.... That's a conflation that has served the former vice president's purposes."

Many other accounts treated the release of these documents as another chance to play "he said/she said." An August 26 Los Angeles Times headline read, "CIA Interrogation Memos Provide Fodder for Both Sides." What sort of "fodder" they gave to Cheney's side wasn't evident in the story itself, which pointed out that the CIA documents "are at best inconclusive--attesting that captured terrorism suspects provided crucial intelligence on Al-Qaeda and its plans, but offering little to support the argument that harsh or abusive methods played a key role."

ABC reporter Brian Ross (8/25/09) managed to convey the lack of evidence for Cheney in the documents, but inexplicably still left things up in the air: "Nowhere in the reports, however, does the CIA ever draw a direct connection between the valuable information and the specific use of the harsh tactics. So, Charlie, there's just enough for both sides to argue about, while CIA officers in the field are left to figure out just what is expected of them."

NBC's Andrea Mitchell (8/25/09) sounded a similar note, explaining that "administration officials say there is no way to know whether the same information could have been obtained...without waterboarding" and airing a quote from an Amnesty International spokesperson pointing out that Al-Qaeda detainee Khalid Sheik Mohammed told the Red Cross that he lied "to mislead his interrogators and make them stop"--but then concluding: "An argument experts say that may never be resolved."

As FAIR noted in May, media's willingness to give Cheney a platform in the debate over torture shifted the discussion away from the central issue that torture is illegal under both U.S. and international law, and focused attention instead on torture's efficacy. The media allowed Cheney to push the discussion in this direction, in large part because Cheney assured that these secret documents would show that he was right. Now that it's clear they do not, will the media outlets that gave Cheney a platform continue to let him off the hook?

Dale C. Moss column in the Recorder

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MY TURN *8/12/2009 Pandemic? History shows better approach Making the case for homeopathic treatment Tired of the tempest over swine flu, the pandemic that never really was but may yet be? How about some good news that will probably come as a shock to 99 percent of you?

Recorder, The (Greenfield, MA) - Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Homeopaths know a bit about epidemics -- quite a bit. Samuel Hahnemann, the brilliant Austrian physician and chemist who developed the foundation of homeopathy over 200 years ago, earned widespread respect by successfully treating epidemics of cholera and scarlet fever which swept over Europe in the early 19th century. Roughly 100 years later, when the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-19 was spreading death and devastation, the mortality rate in the United States among those treated with conventional medicine was nearly 30 percent. But for those treated by homeopathy it was less than 1 percent -- and patients who died were usually those who had received conventional treatment before seeking homeopathic help!

More recently, the Cuban government stopped its expensive annual vaccinations against leptospirosis, a spirochete that causes outbreaks of deadly "swamp fever" every hurricane season. In the past, it cost Cuba $2 million to $3 million each year to vaccinate a handful of the most vulnerable people in the worst affected provinces. There were still mass outbreaks of the disease in the unvaccinated majority -- and expensive hospitalizations.

But in 2007 and 2008, Cuba switched to homeopathic prophylaxis, using a homeopathic remedy instead of conventional vaccines. The result? Instead of past outbreaks of leptospirosis, there were only 10 cases of the disease -- and the entire population of five provinces was protected. The best news was that this far more massive effort at prevention cost only $200,000, or a fraction of what less successful vaccinations cost.

Better results for more people at much, much lower cost and without side effects? Sounds like Big Pharma's worst nightmare and something the Obama administration should be looking at carefully as part of health-care reform.

Sadly, it's not.

Very, very few Americans have ever heard of these homeopathic success stories.

Pick up any mass-market book that's been written on the Spanish flu pandemic and you'll find there's no mention of homeopathy's triumph in treating that deadly disease. Nor is there any mention of the role of conventional treatment in making it so deadly. The favored drug against influenza in 1918-19 was aspirin, a relatively new "wonder drug" at the time. Ignorant of its sphere of action, doctors handed it out liberally, not only to treat those already sick but as a preventative. Aspirin failed miserably on both counts.

More recent explanations of the virulence of that particular pandemic blame it on "cytokine storms" -- in other words, on an excessively aggressive immune response that ends up destroying the body. That is also supposed to explain why healthy people in the prime of life succumbed more readily to the Spanish Flu than children or the elderly: their immune systems fought back harder! In fact, that was the population that was being freely dosed with aspirin, which at the time was not considered safe for either the elderly or the young. But aspirin actually suppresses the immune system, so under the influence of aspirin, what started as influenza quickly morphed into a raging pneumonia that could kill within hours.

Conventional treatment options for the flu today are not much better. Antivirals like Tamiflu, which were stockpiled for a possible avian flu crisis, are almost certain to prove ineffectual in treating any virulent flu and doctors still hand out antipyretics like aspirin and acetaminophen, forgetting that the body's main defense against a viral attack is a nice strong fever.

In any epidemic there are symptoms common to the great majority of patients. As in epidemics past, the homeopathic community has calmly gone about the business of gathering data from cases to see what symptoms point toward the remedy or remedies that will cure. A handful of remedies were responsible for homeopathy's success in treating the Spanish Flu, and the likely genus epidemicus for swine flu has already been determined. Not only has it been performing brilliantly in cases all over the world, but because of how homeopathy works, it is not something to which a virus can build resistance.

As for vaccination against the swine flu, I remember too well the deaths and cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome that resulted from the last mass swine flu vaccination during the Ford administration. To protect myself and my family, I'll be using safe and effective homeopathic Influenzinum as a prophylactic rather than an unproven (and largely untested) vaccine.

Dale C. Moss is a classical homeopath who lives and practices in Buckland. She saw her first case of swine flu several months ago.

Section: MYT
Record Number: 12A0C02509C24A80
Copyright, 2009, The Recorder, Greenfield, MA

Food For Thought.

Published on Tuesday, August 18, 2009 by The Huffington Post

Organic Agriculture Beats Biotech at Its Own Game

by Timothy LaSalle

Organic agriculture's recently recognized benefits for improving food security don't depend on a boost from genetically modified (GM) technology. While the chemically-based systems that GM requires could be cleaned up with organic techniques, there's no clear reason to degrade organic standards to accept the downsides that come with biotech-produced crops as they are currently managed.

Recently, there have been renewed efforts to pressure organic agriculture to abandon one of its foundational principles and accept genetically modified crops. While there may be nothing inherently wrong with contemplating a theoretical overlap between biotech crop genetics and organic farming systems, there's not a compelling set of reasons to do so, either.

Alleging the principled barrier between the two is merely a quirky philosophical sticking point of "hard core resistance" within the organic community diverts attention from real questions as to the net value of this pairing.

Real question #1: Why bother?

To this point, biotech crops have not produced the yield advantages or biological resilience to multiple stressors. If we're looking for reliable, multi-benefit, future-oriented farming options in an input-limited world, biotech is not a player.

The question is rather: Why spend the time, money and scientific ingenuity manipulating a handful of genetic materials to end up with a specific new attribute when we should, and could, be rigorously advancing regionally adapted varieties and building up soils organically to achieve enduring nutrient content cycling and resistance to drought, flood and disease resistance.

This organic activity is sustainable in the long term, improves water-holding capacity in soil for all crops -- not just those that happen to have a gene with drought resistance, leaving the other crops at risk.

Real question #2: Who benefits?

Why have patented seeds good for a single planting when what most farmers in the world need are replicable, open-pollinated varieties that thrive in the particular mix of soil, degree days, weather and pest pressure where they are grown? The patented seed path is entirely under the control of a company and requires substantial chemical inputs to survive. The latter path, relying on finding the optimum fit with natural systems and fluctuation (thanks to climate change) over time, is controlled much more by sustainable farmers and the heroic seed companies dedicated to their service.

Real question #3: Is the stuff safe to eat? And who knows?

There is no data from independent, long-term studies on the human health impacts from eating GM crops. There's lots of research, but it's all tucked within the files of the companies that paid for it. The same companies prevent independent research on the efficacy and health impacts of their crop seeds. Many of the handful of intrepid researchers who do manage to carry out studies and dare to publish results showing problems with the GM approach face amazingly virulent reactions from the biotech community, and the institutional systems that depend on them for funding.

I think this quote from the editorial in the recent issue of Scientific American tells how little we really are allowed to know about GM crops:

Unfortunately, it is impossible to verify that genetically modified crops perform as advertised. That is because agritech companies have given themselves veto power over the work of independent researchers.

Dr. Judith Carman of Australia is conducting one of the few long-term, independent animal feeding studies with GM materials. She says recent Australian and Italian studies finding reduced fertility and immune function, respectively, in mice are disturbing. Here she talks about extreme difficulty of doing meaningful research into this area. She is a PhD in medicine in the areas of metabolic regulation, nutritional biochemistry and cancer.

To us, it does not make biological sense that you can create brand-new proteins through genetic engineering in food and expect that our bodies will have the enzymes and capacity to break them down. These novel proteins are foreign to our immune systems because they have never before existed in nature.

Given how much we are not being allowed to know, our scientific, agricultural and food safety leaders need to take the reasonable step of following the precautionary principle until we have the knowledge we need. Organic agriculture proponents are eager for more high-quality research on biological systems, because the promise for improving soils, sequestering carbon and feeding more people with healthier diets is so great all around the world.

Simply, this means that, facing irreversible potential harm, the onus for generating the proof of scientific consensus falls upon those seeking to take the action. With biotech crops and our long-term health and ecological well-being, that's a pretty big onus.

The organic community may eventually be open to biotech crops if long-term, independent studies would some day show there are no ecological or human health impacts. Because there is no research available to prove that yet, who needs them? Why risk it?

Copyright © 2009 HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

Timothy J. LaSalle is CEO of the Rodale Institute, an internationally recognized leader in regenerative organic agricultural research, advocacy and education. LaSalle is the first CEO of the non-profit organization, located in Kutztown, Pennsylvania, which was founded in 1947 by J.I. Rodale to explore the scientific foundation of organic agriculture.