The Schmeiser Principles of Food and Agriculture

• All humans have a right to food or to produce it.
• Natural systems must be protected so that they can produce healthy food.
• Humans have a right to safe and nutritious food.
• No rules should prevent countries controlling food imports.
• Everyone has a right to information about how their food is produced.
• Regions should have the right to regulate their own agriculture.
• Local production and consumption should be encouraged.
• Seeds are a common property resource.
• No life forms should be patented.
• Terminator seeds should be globally banned.
• Farmers' freedom to exchange seeds should be protected.
• Farmers should have the right for the land to be free of genetic contamination.

"But for the natives in these parts, God hath so pursued them, as for 300 miles space the greatest part of them are swept away by the small pox which still continues among them. So as God hath thereby cleared our title to this place, those who remain in these parts, being in all not fifty, have put themselves under our protect"

Today's DN headlines included an attack on Arundhati Roy's house by the Indian version of the Tea Party because of her position that Kashmir isn't part of India to begin with. This is like saying Puerto Rico doesn't belong to the US even though we beat it, well, square if not fair.

At the same time, Brazil elected Dilma Rousseff, their first female President. But that's not Dilma's real significance - she's also the first guerilla president, a former member of the armed resistance who was jailed for three years and tortured for 22 straight days. What's this world coming to when an insurgent can become President?

But in Yemen there may soon be US drone attacks and hunter-killer assassin teams who don't need the permission of the Yemen government. This is in retaliation for the "printer bombs" that originated in Yemen and were sent to synagogues in Chicago. The British government "believes they were due to detonate mid-air," and John Brennen, the White House counterterrorism advisor, agrees. Neither gives a reason for why Yemeni terrorists would want to blow up a Fed Ex cargo plane, nor why the mission failed. On Russian radio, I heard speculation that it was done to boost the Obama administration's popularity during the mid-term elections. If that were the case, it failed more miserably for Obama than for al-Qaeda.

Or did it? The tip-off for the printer, craftily buried in a box of books, scarves, and household goods, came from the US and United Arab Emirates. Using the finest of sleuthing techniques, the woman was traced and arrested through the phone number she gave when she posted the package! This exceptionally clever explosive can be detonated by a mobile phone. However, I didn't know that mobile phones could call into cargo planes. The same chemical was used by similarly inept Underwear Bomber, who flew without a passport, and the Times Square bomber, who conveniently left his wallet and house keys in the stolen car.

This 22-yr-old woman who posted a bomb and gave Fed Ex her real phone number has been released on bail after revealing that someone stole her identification. This is fortunate for her. According to Amnesty International, alleged terrorists have disappeared or have been detained for long periods without charge in Yemen's secret prisons. The US gave Yemen $155.3 million to "carry out the necessary operations" in 2010.

A Wired article by Spencer Ackerman states it this way:

President Saleh of Yemen is on-line to receive another $1.2 billion in military aid from the US. This may persuade him to open up some airports for launching drone attacks - which is the weapon of choice for wars of impunity. Is it ever moral to kill for a cause you wouldn't die for? And then, if there are floods in Yemen, as there were in Pakistan, they can divert the water from the airbase and let God do the military's dirty work. Maybe global warming is Smallpox 2.0.

On Tuesday's DN, Ralph Nader asked a darn good question. Amy grilled him about the danger of ending up with the greater of two evils if votes get diverted from the lesser one. His answer was

It's interesting that he used the term "moral compass," because morality, as I understand it, has to do with how you treat others, not how others treat you. But what the US does to other people isn't even a talking point, much less a breaking point for the voting public. In this issue of World Beat, put out by the Institute for Policy Studies, John Feffer points out that foreign policy played almost no role in this election, despite the fact that the US is involved in two wars, military spending is off the charts, treaties and negotiations hang in the balance, and our last chance on climate change is coming up this month. If we have a breaking point, it's over jobs, healthcare, taxes, abortion, or gay rights. In other words, issues that affect us or people we know.

But foreign policy affects each one of us every day. It's why we can't make a living producing goods or food. It's why there's gang violence in the schools. It turns a nice comfy word like security into meaning a nasty military escalation. It backs us into a corner with only our screen world for escape.

By the time that we get into an election, though, the Democratic Party has us over a barrel. Actually, they have us in a barrel going over a cliff and grasping for twigs to hang onto. There are no good choices to be made. So how do we break with this current that sweeps us into the rapids every two years?

The problem, it seems to me, is that the "party-makers" are framing the debate with meaningless questions and then picking straws to see who'll take which side. Since the real questions won't come up, it's a given that there won't be any meaningful answers. Their "position statements" are a buzzword bingo, with no actual strategy - other than raising taxes, for the Democrats or for the Republicans, cutting costs

It's time, I think, to bring back the nonbinding referendum. It may sound innocuous, but it was threatening enough to instigate a coup against the Honduran President Mel Zelaya just before he went through with it. Why is it so dangerous to ask people what they think? Referendums, unlike elections, aren't about personalities, they're about issues. They're not the final laws with all the fine print after the politicians are through with them. You can actually understand them. And once that public opinion is known, it becomes a horse that any politician can ride - as long as he's willing to go where the horse leads.

The referendum process doesn't need to happen at the voting booth. City Councils could set it up as a computer survey, with a question of the month. Instead of yes or no checkboxes or unfinished arrows, ordinary people could enter into the debate. Rather than issues like panhandling ordinances, local communities could find their moral compass on questions like torture and drone attacks. Now that's what I call a breaking point.