Above: Onna Meyer shows her opposition to the use of genetically modified organisms at a protest Jan. 24 in front of a Monsanto tent on UF’s campus. “I do it because I’ve got to stand up for what I believe. I believe in environmental justice.” Photo by Erik Knudsen.

Monsanto Hits UF on Nationwide Tour

There’s a new act in town, folks.

Monsanto has had a giant trailer plastered with “AMERICA’S FARMERS” and blown-up images of shimmery fields and harvests parked on the Reitz North Lawn on UF’s campus for the past few days. This trailer is part of Monsanto’s outreach tour, visiting community centers and college campuses in suburban and urban areas across the country.

“Our goal is to let people know where their food comes from,” said Kera Relando, an agricultural educator for Monsanto who is a member of the traveling troupe of Monsanto representatives.

Ed, a man with respectably well-kept scruff, dressed as suavely as a member of the “one percent” himself, was part of the group of Occupy Gainesville protesters demonstrating at the Monsanto trailer on Tuesday. Ed is one of his pseudonyms, anyway. He led the protesters’ people’s mic and die-in.

“There are…15, 16, 17… about 20 protesters. They’re lying on the ground,” one Monsanto representative reported to his earpiece, just after Ed and the rest of the protesters collapsed on the lawn as part of the die-in.

“We want people to become aware of where their food comes from,” Ed said.

Hm, this sounds eerily familiar. Oh right, it’s because we just heard that line from Monsanto’s rep, Relando.

So, if the corporate giant (Monsanto) and the corporation haters (Occupy Gainesville) are at the same place for the same reason, shouldn’t they be collaborating and not butting heads?

Their purposes are essentially identical, but their intentions are “diametrically opposed opposites,” as Ed explained.

The protesters were also there to educate, just like Monsanto. Same motive, yet on complete opposite sides of the spectrum in terms of educational content.

As Ed explained, the protesters stand against Monsanto’s business practices and attempt to control all aspects of agriculture. Protesters handed out fliers all day, urging students to push for responsible food labeling, distinguishing Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), or “Frankenfoods,” from unaltered foods. These GMOs, as the flier elaborated, may “increase cancer risks, create super-pests, super-weeds and new plant viruses, increase use of toxic pesticides, and contaminate organic and non-GMO crops.”

Of course, Monsanto had a different story. Their tour took students through three sections: challenges faced by America’s farmers, a 10-minute film featuring farmers attesting to Monsanto’s technology — subliminally relaying a sense of community and trust through presentation of the farmers’ grandparents and children — and finally a room full of promise, cheer and hope for the future, all made possible by the Monsanto’s biotechnology research and genetically modified crops.

Oh yeah, and they were also giving out free lip balm.

The first welcoming room, presenting the farmers’ challenges, even featured a quote relating Monsanto’s agricultural practices to world peace.

The themepark-esque tour was aesthetically pleasing and so were the “educational” handouts, especially juxtaposed with the simple black-and-white fliers the occupy protesters were handing out. Let’s just hope students are smart enough to take a closer look at the content of each.

Both the at-large and District 1 City Commission candidates will be there to answer your questions about how they plan to contribute to our community over the next three years.

For some background on each candidate, check out The Fine Print’s election guide before heading to the library on Wednesday.

And remember to vote on Jan. 31. For your convenience, here is a list of polling locations.

If you want to vote early while listening to local bands and enjoying some great local food, check out Gainesville Rocks the Vote on Jan. 21 between noon and 5 p.m. at Bo Diddley Plaza.

The Think Local Civic Forum is co-sponsored by The Fine Print, indiegainesville, The Iguana and the Alachua County Library District.

At-large 1 City Commissioner

Our current at-large 1 City Commissioner is Jeanna Mastrodicasa who has reached the end of her service after two consecutive three-year terms. Mastrodicasa was first elected in 2006 and then reelected in 2009. Her legacy includes adding “gender identity” to a list of classes of people protected from discrimination — a part of a lawsuit that unilaterally changed city retiree health benefits in 2008. She’s also been known as a staunch supporter of the biomass plant. These are the candidates that are up for her spot as the at-large City Commissioner:

Richard Selwach
“Diamond Rick” Selwach has run for local office more times than Pat Fitzpatrick has been thrown out of city hall. Selwach is a local pawn shop owner, something he makes sure to announce at every opportunity, no matter how awkward. Selwach has often referred to unions as a communist plot. He is against the homeless one-stop center and the biomass plant.

Mark Venzke
“Taxi Cab Mark” is a taxi cab driver that got into the Gainesville political scene by advocating for keeping the 130 meal limit at St. Francis House in place even though he frequently uses their services. Currently, Venzke is advocating for limiting the ability of Occupy Gainesville to stay at Bo Diddley Community Plaza.

Nathan Skop
This man is the reason conspiracy theory buff Harold Saive dropped out of the race. Skop has recently developed a strong anti-biomass stance; which is odd because he was on the board that approved the biomass plant.

Dejeon Cain
Cain is a newcomer to the Gainesville political scene. He was on the Black on Black crime task force and is currently a security guard at Shands and a minister for Anointing Truth Ministries. Cain’s platform includes allowing bars to have a soft close (doors open until 4am but no alcohol past 2am) and expanding S.N.A.P to apartment complexes on Archer Road.

James Ingle
Ingle is a union electrician and activist that ran in last year’s Gainesville District 2 race. Ingle’s platform includes a local hiring preference to encourage investment in the local economy and a renter’s bill of rights. Ingle has been seen protesting with Gator Student Alliance against tuition increases and with the Graduate Assistants United for a fair contract.

Donna Lutz
Lutz is a real estate agent who is currently serving on the Community Agency Partnership Program for Alachua County. Although a registered Republican, Lutz stresses that this is a non-partisan race and the need to eliminate labels that parties bring about. Lutz was once a leader in her flight attendants union and advocates middle class politics. Lutz has purposefully left her platform vague and instead focuses attention on the dismal voter turnout for city elections.

Darlene Pifalo
Pifalo is a real estate agent, avid cat lover, member of the Gainesville Chamber of Commerce, and describes herself as “very conservative.” Pifalo’s platform includes increasing private property rights in Gainesville and is very critical of the biomass plant, as it will increase the financial burden on businesses and lead to layoffs.

Lauren Poe
Poe is the former District 2 city commissioner that lost his seat last year to Todd Chase. Poe is a blue dog Democrat who Mastrodicasa has endorsed saying that he is the “biggest fiscal conservative I have served with.” A moderate on most issues, Poe has been criticized for his support of the 130 meal limit restriction on serving food to the homeless. He’s also been criticized for voting for the 2008 unlawful change in city worker retiree health benefits without going through the required bargaining stage with city employee unions.

District 1 City Commissioner

Our current District 1 Commissioner is Scherwin Henry. Henry was first elected in 2006 and then re-elected in 2009. His legacy includes repealing the 130 meal limit at St. Francis House and the redevelopment of the Depot Avenue corridor. These are the candidates that are up for his spot as the District 1 Commissioner:

Armando Grundy
Grundy is a veteran paratrooper for the Army who has held numerous non-elected seats, including the Alachua County Charter Review Commission and the Alachua County Veterans Advisory Board. Current District 1 Commissioner Scherwin Henry has endorsed Grundy saying that “he is duly qualified for the position.” Grundy’s platform includes renaming the downtown bus station to Rosa Parks and expanding RTS service in East Gainesville.

Yvonne Hinson-Rawls
Hinson-Rawls is a retired elementary school principal, on the Gainesville Housing Authority Board of Commissioners, and an active member of the Mt. Pleasant United Methodist Church. Hinson-Rawls’ platform includes creating and expanding youth programs as deterrents to crime and extensions of the school day.

Ray Washington
Washington is a former Gainesville Sun reporter, an attorney and a major figure in the anti-biomass movement. Washington registered to run for District 1 very close to the deadline only after he could not persuade any of the other two candidates into taking an anti-biomass stance. Washington’s platform includes increasing government transparency and citizen input at city hall.

Remember to vote on Jan. 31.

The last day to register to vote in this election is Jan. 3. You can register online or at various locations around town. Go to elections.alachua.fl.us to register online or to see a list of locations where you can register in person.

All illustrations by Susie Bijan.

Many, including Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), the senior Democrat of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO), the ranking member of Stearns’ subcommittee, accuse Stearns of having no “predicate that would justify a sweeping and invasive request to Planned Parenthood [who had] not identified any pattern of misuse of federal funds, illegal activity or other abuse that would justify a broad and invasive congressional investigation.” However, Stearns is still hung up on the now infamous “other money” riddle.

“Although Planned Parenthood is barred from using federal funds to perform abortions, these funds are fungible and allow the group to use funds from other sources ostensibly for abortions,” Stearns said in a statement.

Stearns is not only looking out for the well-being of federal money already spent but also for money in the future.

“With a national debt exceeding $14 trillion, funding of Planned Parenthood should be evaluated with other expenditures to reduce the deficit,” Stearns added.

In Planned Parenthood’s fiscal year of 2007-2008, according to their annual report, they received $363.2 million in government grants, which represents about a third of Planned Parenthood’s annual income.

Stearns has also been making headlines with his new investigation into federal loans totaling $535 million made to Solyndra, a failed California-based solar panel manufacturer. This September they filed for bankruptcy and laid off 1,100 workers.

Stearns was quoted as saying the U.S. can’t compete with China to make solar panels and wind turbines. When called out directly by President Obama on this statement, Stearns clarified he was referring to cheap labor.

“We should invest in and provide incentives to companies that can exploit our competitive advantage in technology and innovation [...] and not subsidize industries when these other nations have cheaper labor, no environmental or safety standards, less regulation and easy access to raw materials,” Stearns said.

Why waste U.S. money on American workers and companies that actually manufacture a product in the U.S. when it can be done more cheaply in China by exploited underpaid workers in unregulated conditions? What we should really be investing in is developing new technology.

Technology research and development definitely deserve federal funding, especially when it’s for health care for mothers and children, Head Start day care, public education and investing in American companies and laborers. Who these technologists will be in the future, what with a bunch of sick, under-supervised and under-educated children running around these days, is still unknown.

Stearns represents Florida’s Sixth Congressional District, which include parts of Gainesville and Ocala.

If you happen to be a small farmer, and Monsanto decides to take you to court, you can reasonably compare the result to a dragonfly (that’s you) splattered against the windshield of a truck (that’s Monsanto), and you’ll probably lose your farm. Then again, if an entire swarm of dragonflies descended on the truck at once, they may accomplish something.

In July, Florida Organic Growers, a Gainesville-based nonprofit established in 1987 to promote sustainable agriculture, joined a coalition of family farmers, seed companies, and environmental organizations representing hundreds of thousands of individuals in a lawsuit against Monsanto, led by the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association.

Shortly after the lawsuit began, Monsanto issued a statement saying they wouldn’t assert their patents against farmers who suffer “trace” amounts of transgenic contamination, but the promise wasn’t legally binding, and the plaintiffs aren’t convinced. And that’s all they want—a legally binding promise that Monsanto will end its predatory use of patent enforcement to put smaller competitors out of business.

In other news, a June 2011 ABC News poll reveals that 93 percent of Americans think genetically modified foods should be labelled and that 57 percent of Americans would use those labels strictly for the purpose of avoiding them.

Not everyone shares the same sentiment, though. The Center for Consumer Freedom prefers the term “genetically improved” and criticizes organic farmers for using “junk science” to market their products to a wealthy minority of suburban “elitists.” It should be noted that the Center for Consumer Freedom is a front group for Berman and Company, a public relations firm for tobacco companies, fast food restaurants, factory farms, and—last but not least—Monsanto.

Update (1/18/11): For an in-depth story on the topic, check out Where the GMOs Grow by Lily Wan.

Twenty percent of all female college students will experience sexual assault. That’s one in five. The national average for all women is one in six. The percentage for college males is 6 percent.

Title IX works in conjunction with the Jeanne Clery Act of 1990, which requires schools to report three years worth of campus crime every Oct. 1 as well as certain security policies, including sexual assault policies.

UNH, where Biden made his speech, has been nationally recognized as having one of the most progressive rape awareness and prevention programs in the country. UNH has two initiatives that have served as models for other colleges: Know Your Power and Bringing in the Bystander.

Know Your Power is a social marketing campaign encouraging students to intervene when they witness domestic violence or sexual assault. Bringing in the Bystander is an education and awareness program that teaches students through interactive discussion and learning exercises that everyone has a role in ending violence against women.

Beginning January, STRIVE, UF’s rape awareness program, plans to expand into a model based on UNH’s Bringing in the Bystander program.

Bringing in the Bystander is a “90-minute, face-to-face educational program [...] of structured programming, interactive presentations and discussions, that teaches not only statistics, but skills for helping, too,” said Jennifer Stuart, the coordinator of STRIVE.

“It’s a more direct effort to get out the education and prevention,” said Ron Del Moro, a peer educator.

Look for the upcoming full-length article in the Winter issue of The Fine Print.

The Gainesville Sun reported on July 3 that anti-smoking and public health advocates—like Dr. Scott Tomar, a professor of community dentistry and behavioral sciences at UF—are not pleased with Cameron’s new position. “It’s certainly not the model of business ethics that I think UF should be promoting,” he said.

What’s really interesting about Cameron’s past, which The Gainesville Sun only mentions briefly, is the controversy over her company’s treatment of farm workers. In 2009, two-dozen protesters, including students from UF and the University of Central Florida, rallied outside the Hilton UF Conference Center during a UF Foundation board meeting. Their goal was to bring attention to the treatment of tobacco workers in the fields of North Carolina. As reported by The Alligator:

By demonstrating in front of the board meeting’s venue, the protesters said they hoped to show Ivey that farm workers’ issues are important… Although Ivey wasn’t in attendance at the meeting, the students handed out informational fliers to the board, including UF President Bernie Machen, who told them he would make sure Ivey got a flier.

Two years earlier, more than 300 farm workers, trade unionists, religious leaders, and students marched through the streets of Winston-Salem, NC. The march was led by the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) to demand negotiations with R.J. Reynolds over the “oppressive conditions” suffered by North Carolina tobacco workers, which included “sub-minimum wages, corrupt crew leaders, extreme poverty, bootleg labor camps, major health risks and heat stroke deaths,” according to a statement from the FLOC. In 2007, Fight Back News reported the following:

Over the past month, CEO Susan Ivey… has refused to meet with the union or with religious leaders to discuss the issue, citing the fact that R.J. Reynolds is not the direct employer of these workers. But FLOC argues that because of the control that R.J. Reynolds has over their procurement systems, the company has the power to bring about changes involving all parties in the supply chain.

By 2010, the United Auto Workers (UAW) joined forces with the FLOC to take on JPMorgan Chase, partially due to its financial ties with Reynolds American. UAW President Bob King and several religious leaders announced their intention to withdraw hundreds of millions of dollars from the bank. Why would they do such a thing? According to the AFL-CIO Now blog:

For three years, Susan Ivey… has refused to meet with workers to discuss the conditions of thousands of tobacco farm employees in North Carolina and other states who harvest the tobacco Reynolds uses to make its products. JPMorgan Chase is one of the lead banks in a consortium of lenders that provides $498 million in credit to Reynolds American.

In May 2011, Reynolds American finally agreed to meet with the FLOC after 150 workers and community supporters rallied on May 6 at the company’s shareholder meeting. The company pledged to use an independent monitor to assess working conditions at its farms and to create a council of tobacco manufacturers, growers, labor officials, agricultural scientists, farm workers, and their representatives, including the FLOC.

By then, Ivey was no longer part of the company. She had retired three months earlier, leaving a “legacy that stretches beyond the boardroom,” according to the Winston-Salem Journal. “Stories abound about Ivey’s energetic contributions to nonprofit organizations as large as United Way of Forsyth County, the Winston-Salem YWCA and Salem College, and as small as Senior Services Inc. and the Stokes County Arts Council.” The paper gushes on about her accomplishments in business and philanthropy without mentioning her lack of concern for tobacco workers. According to an article from the Institute of Southern Studies:

FLOC President Baldemar Velasquez called Reynolds “one of the most anti-worker companies in the field,” citing its subminimum wages as well as illnesses and heat-stroke deaths among tobacco pickers. They’re brought on by a relentless work pace, pesticides, and acute nicotine poisoning caused by a lack of protective clothing and training.

Ivey’s initial response to protesters—we don’t directly employ these workers, so there’s nothing we can do—was repeated in 2011 by representatives of Publix when they refused to negotiate with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), despite similar deals struck by the CIW with companies like Taco Bell, Burger King, McDonald’s, Aramark, and Whole Foods (none of which directly employ farm workers).

Well, fair enough. That was all a few months ago. This is now. The Gainesville Sun reported in June that UF’s Board of Trustees had “gone through a major turnover” after Governor Rick Scott appointed Atlanta health care executive W. Michael Heekin, Naples health care executive Alan M. Levine, and Florida Power and Light senior attorney Juliet M. Roulhac. And now we have Susan Cameron, formerly Susan Ivey. We can rest assured to know that UF’s Board of Trustees is business-savvy, if nothing else.

If you’re new to UF, “block tuition” is the idea of charging students a minimum tuition fee equivalent to the value of 15 credit hours each semester, even if they’re signed up for less than fifteen credits. The policy was proposed by the administration last year as a way to pressure students into signing up for more classes each semester, thereby increasing UF’s four-year graduation rates. The policy would have also increased UF’s revenue by $4 million to $5 million, which is “not that substantial” compared to its total revenue, according to UF spokesman Steve Orlando. The driving force, he said, was to get students “done as quickly as possible to provide accessibility for incoming students.”

The proposal was a little bit controversial, to say the least. Students with part-time and full-time jobs (in 2009, that was 42 percent of all students) would have had to pay about $500 extra for classes they simply didn’t have time to take.

Okay, so let’s move forward to 2011. On a Sept. 6 Board of Trustees meeting, UF Provost Joe Glover said block tuition is no longer necessary, referring to a recent spike in four-year graduation rates. In 2010, the rate was 64 percent, compared to 58 percent in 2009. UF’s four-year graduation rates have been steadily rising since 1991. Whether the 6 percent increase between 2009 and 2010 is an unusual spike or the start of a larger trend, could there be any other factor that may have influenced the administration’s decision? As reported by Christina Rabaza, one of our contributing writers, in 2010:

“About 100 protesters marched to Tigert Hall Nov. 17 with signs, chants, 750 petition signatures and personal accounts of what block tuition means to them. About 30 protesters sat in on the Board of Trustees meeting Dec. 9, which [UF Trustee Carlos Alfonso] said more than likely swayed the board to delay the policy’s implementation.”

In Student Government elections last Spring, 90 percent of students voted against block tuition, a victory celebrated by both competing parties. Let’s not forget that the administration’s decision to place block tuition on the ballot in the first place was the result of a petition put forward by members of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).

Wait, did SDS actually accomplish something? The Alligator seems to think they’re useless: “Next, we throw a we-don’t-want-to-pay-higher-tuition-either-but-holding-picket-signs-isn’t-going-to-do-anything DART to Students for a Democratic Society.” That’s right—screw off, SDS. Student protesters should shut up, go home, and swallow whatever the administration tells them.

On August 30, members of SDS turned in more than 1200 signatures to get another question on the ballot for the next round of student elections, which will be held on Sept. 27 and 28. The question reads, “Do you support repealing the 15 percent tuition increase at the University of Florida?” If your answer is “yes,” you might want to pick up a sign, occupy some buildings, and give ‘em hell. It’s not like Student President Ben Meyers will stick up for you this time, since he made it clear in June that the 15 percent tuition increase is perfectly okay with him.

If the name “Keith Smith” doesn’t ring a bell, he’s the same officer that got reprimanded in 2008 when he accompanied intoxicated Gainesville Police Department (GPD) officers in an incident that involved throwing eggs at “suspected drug dealers and prostitutes” in a poor black neighborhood. This would contribute later to accusations of racism among student protesters and community members, but the facts in this case were questionable. According to his personal file with the UPD, Smith was reprimanded for witnessing wrongdoing (the egg-throwing by GPD officers) but failing to prevent it on three occasions.

Two years later, he shot a physically handicapped black graduate student in the face, resulting in a life-threatening injury, a tidal wave of student protests, and a soon-to-be-released documentary.

Kofi Adu-Brempong, an international graduate student from Ghana, had suffered from polio in his childhood and therefore walked with a cane. On March 2, 2010, a concerned neighbor called 911 to report screaming in Adu-Brempong’s apartment, which may have been the result of a nervous breakdown. For at least a year before the incident, Adu-Brempong had suffered from paranoid delusions. He refused to let police officers enter his apartment, and after about 90 minutes, they forcefully entered. “I’m fine!” he shouted. The officers tried to subdue him with a Taser and a beanbag gun and then shot him twice, in his hand and his face, with a Bushmaster M-4 rifle.

UPD’s Critical Incident Response Team (sort of like UF’s SWAT team), which included Smith, claimed Adu-Brempong had threatened them with a knife and a pipe during the 52 seconds between their entrance and the final shot fired. As it turned out, there was no knife involved and the “pipe” they referred to was a table leg. To be fair, the room was dark.

Ten months later, the UPD received national recognition for their “innovative law enforcement responses to people with mental illnesses.”

UF’s Coalition for Justice Against Police Brutality, a student group that used to be called “Justice for Kofi,” led a series of protests and made a list of demands for the UF administration and the State Attorney’s office, which included an independent police review board, an independent investigation into the shooting, and the termination of Officer Smith, who fired the bullet that remains lodged in Kofi Adu-Brempong’s spine.

Smith no longer works for the UPD, but his termination had nothing to do with the shooting, according to UPD Chief Linda Stump. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s initial investigation had cleared Smith of wrongdoing, Stump says, and the decision to fire Smith was triggered by his behavior on July 23, 2011.

A twenty-year-old white male had been recklessly driving a Mercedes-Benz convertible at 79 miles per hour while throwing bottles out the window. Smith chased him down at a high speed and pulled him over, resulting in a confrontation in which Smith shouted and threatened to shoot him. Smith was temporarily suspended and, on Sept. 1, Stump decided to make it permanent, writing that she had “lost confidence” in his judgment. Ironically, Smith’s career didn’t end with the bang that shattered Kofi’s jaw, but with a relatively silent whimper in which he drove at an “unsafe speed” and threatened to shoot a privileged white kid.

This issue, as always, comes from our dedicated and talented staff of writers.  We can name all of them on one hand.  Seriously.  A publication, even one as small as ours, cannot sustain itself on a staff that can share one six-pack of beer.  We need the kind of staff that can at least get through an 18-pack without falling down.

We need you to help us.  Not just with getting through cases of beer, but with actual publication stuff.  We get it, you’re busy, you have school and work and a girlfriend/boyfriend/both, things to reblog or tweet about and a social life.  But we do, too.  We do the Fine Print because we get to make something that’s tangible, beautifully presented, informative and investigative and actually fun (sometimes, maybe after a bottle of wine).  We help our writers write, we help each other edit, and we become better at what we do.

If that’s not good enough for you, you can also receive school credit for working with us.   Why would you intern with The Fine Print opposed to another publication in Gainesville?  You will get absolute freedom to do what you want to do.  You won’t be asked to write recycled stories or to censor your viewpoint.  You can walk around town and write whatever the hell you want.  Just do it with purpose. We’ll work with you throughout the whole process of reporting, writing and editing and we won’t stop, literally, until both of us are completely satisfied with the end product.

If you’re not a writer, but you can do something, anything; illustrate or photograph, if you’re a web developer, a designer, a promoter, if you play in a band or have a sick talent for being extremely organized, talk to us.  We are so sparse, your ability to be enthusiastic and dedicated is good enough for us.

The Fine Print offers a chance for you to give a voice to the marginalized, to feature eccentric people and their projects, political or artistic, and to take on popular issues from a new angle.  The Fine Print lets you examine Gainesville from your own perspective and inform our readers of subjects and issues that would otherwise go unnoticed.

You can also get school credit.  Did we mention that?

Thanks for your support in the future and in the past,

The Fine Print Staff

He contrasted his plight with the comfortable position women enjoy today. Our government allows women to have all the choice and freedom in the world. We have freedom and control over our own bodies with the right to choose to have an abortion, yet Sen. Paul is left in the dirt. He is denied this same freedom of choice and is forced, punishable by a nasty fine, to use water-conserving and energy-efficient toilets, light bulbs and washing machines.

I don’t usually identify as a feminist. I don’t act or look like the stereotype; I shave my legs, I wear make-up and sometimes I call other girls sluts and whores (sorry, Tina Fey). But Congressmen aren’t making it so easy to continue to make that distinction. So, I’d like to hereby declare myself a feminist.

I am a feminist because I oppose Congress getting inside my you-know-what (I don’t want to offend the Florida Senate who consider “uterus” a dirty, unspeakable word) to tell me how else I, and all women, are being indecent, impulsive or selfish. Can someone please tell me what is indecent, selfish or impulsive about having autonomy over my own body and my own life by deciding when the best time for me to have a baby is? In the words of Tina Fey via Regina George, Congress, you are the nastiest skank bitch I’ve ever met.

Feminists, those ungodly creatures pro-lifers love to rally against, are now demanding from Congressmen (emphasis on men), that women continue to have access to abortions at Planned Parenthood, which is made possible by federal subsidies. Sure, tax payer money isn’t specifically allocated toward abortions, but paying for sexual health education for women and family planning and health care services like HIV testing, pap smears, breast cancer screenings and contraceptives certainly does free up a lot of “other” money that can go toward providing abortions.

Another victory for masculinists (that’s the opposite of feminists, right?) was narrowly won in early April when SB 1744 passed through another round of votes 7-5. This bill would require pregnant women seeking abortions to first have an ultrasound and then listen to a description of the fetus. Graciously, she will not be forced to see the image. Clearly, women are too stupid and flippant to be trusted with a decision as big as abortion. We must first sit her down and go over in painful detail and simple language what a fetus is, what her fetus looks like, and, to be certain, what a baby and abortion even are.

To be fair, once funding is cut from Planned Parenthood she probably won’t know what any of those are anyway since her access to sexual health education, women’s healthcare services and family planning will be limited. The hope is that she will not get an abortion, either because she can’t afford one now that Planned Parenthood is defunded or because she will be so traumatized by the sonogram and rhetoric being forced upon her, that she will save tax payers that expense and will just start a family.

Unfortunately, she won’t be able to send her child to pre-school, an institution that has proven to give children an academic advantage in elementary school, because Head Start, a federally-sponsored program designed to give disadvantaged children and families that opportunity, will be defunded by $1 billion. That woman might then be forced to stay at home with her child, which might prevent her from getting a job. Since she can’t get a job, she might need to go on welfare, which no matter how you feel about it is generally acknowledged to cost tax payers money. That child will then have a Backwards Start, being born into a low-income household without the opportunity of a pre-school environment or planned family situation.

When a woman doesn’t have access to contraceptives, health care or sexual health education, she is at the mercy of her body and those she may choose to share it with; she can’t control the course of her own life. Since contraceptives and abortions were made legal and accessible in the United States, women have been able to significantly reduce the number of children they bear; fewer women marry and those who do, marry later on in life. Consequently, more women pursue a higher education, earn higher incomes, maintain better health and participate in politics.

This “war on women,” this social conservative attack led by male politicians to keep women at bay, to keep us out of the workforce, out of school and essentially out of the entire social sphere, so that we will stay home and carry a baby to term we may or may not have planned for is disgraceful.

Until men are the ones to bleed from their genitals, until men become sacred vessels that carry life, until men are victimized by rape, until men are scrutinized for their clothing and blamed for their situations, until men want to live in a society where there are no women, no sex, no children and no future, I suggest they sit down and shut the fuck up.

This is 2011 and I will not sit idly by while women’s rights are reversed and the glass ceiling is lowered. And neither should you.

This misrepresentation of facts was recently highlighted by the “is it just me or is it cold outside, so global climate change must be a scam” bandwagon that assaulted our airwaves this past winter. To be perfectly clear, it is just you.

We had a cold winter this year because the temperature of the Earth is rising.  Arctic ice is melting, causing the ocean to absorb sunlight that otherwise would have been reflected. This causes the air above the water to heat up, pushing the arctic air current further south and creating lower temperatures in the southeastern United States. Since the beginning of the 20th Century, the global temperature has increased 0.74°C (1.33°F).

A 2010 article from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that 97 to 98 percent of climate scientists recognize the evidence for man-made climate change. The last scientific body to hold a dissenting opinion, the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, changed their position in 2007.

The Media

A recently leaked internal Fox News document posted by Media Matters states very clearly that, in the spirit of “fair and balanced” coverage, every time climate change is mentioned it must also be said that the data has been called into question by critics.

The media’s coverage of climate change plays on a very important concept within the scientific community: skepticism. Scientists are, by trade, among the least trusting people on the planet. You would be hard-pressed to find a scientist who doesn’t think there needs to be more research on climate change or other widely-held theories like evolution, or even gravity.

Under the guise of the media, the word “theory” has shifted in meaning from a well-established, tested and verified hypothesis to the random opinion of some guy in his basement. Worst of all, the word “skeptic” has been hijacked to mean an active denial of the scientific consensus. A Pew study in 2009 found that 76% of scientists feel the media is doing the public a disservice by failing to distinguish between research that is well-founded and research that is not.

To make climate change seem like more of a “controversy” than it is, the media divides air time disproportionately between the 97 percent of climate scientists who recognize the evidence for climate change and the dissenting 3 percent (as well as non-climate scientists) who do not.

No ones pays attention to the flat-earth society. Why? Because there’s no political or financial incentive to manufacture a controversy over the shape of the Earth.

Conservative Think Tanks

If someone has an economic interest in denying or advocating for something, there’s a good chance they’re spinning the truth. A 2008 study in Environmental Politics found that 92% of the 141 anti-environmentalist books published between 1972 and 2005 were funded by conservative think tanks (CTT). These books questioned the existence of climate change, ozone depletion and the like.

The list of CTTs that deny climate change while promoting corporate interests is extensive, but here are three of the top offenders.

• The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) circulated a letter in 2006 offering $10,000 to any scientist willing to criticize a soon-to-be released report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). By 2006, the AEI had received $1.6 million in funding from ExxonMobile.

• The Heartland Institute hosts the annual International Conference on Climate Change. Their list of “climate experts” is low on actual climate scientists and their list of co-sponsors is low on actual science organizations. Their donors are kept secretive now, but according to Media Matters, they have received money from the Walton Family Foundation (Walmart) and ExxonMobil.

• The George C. Marshall Institute has received funding from ExxonMobil and still denies that chlorofluorocarbons destroy the ozone, that second hand smoke causes cancer and that acid rain exists. One of their chairmen, William Happer, is a physicist (not a climate scientist) who testified before Congress in 2009 that increased CO2 in the atmosphere will be good for humans.

According to the Center for American Progress Action Fund, climate change lobbyists spent over $500 million to influence legislation and on electoral campaigns from 2009 to 2010. Their efforts have paid off. Of the 20 Republican senate candidates for the 2010 midterm election, 19 were climate change deniers.

Research published in the December 2010 issue of Psychology Science reveals that Americans are less likely to believe in climate change if it questions their worldview. Participants in the study who believed in a just world were more likely to deny climate change when shown negative videos or articles – that is, something that shows the adverse consequences of climate change. In other words, Americans who believed the world is just, orderly and stable were likely to dismiss ideas that challenged their view.

According to a Rasmussen poll conducted in January 2011, 38% of Americans are not concerned with climate change and only 33% are taking it very seriously. As soon as the media presents climate change as a real, tangible threat rather than a matter of debate, we can move forward and start finding solutions.

One of the first steps in liberating women in oppressed societies is to educate them on contraceptives and reproductive health. When she doesn’t have access to contraceptives, health care or sexual health education, she surrenders her dreams and aspirations to the will of her body and those she shares it with; she is enslaved.

Since contraceptives and abortions were made legal and accessible in the United States, women have significantly been able to reduce the number of children they bear, fewer women marry and those who do, marry later on in life. In correlation with that, more women pursue a higher education, earn higher incomes, maintain better health and participate in politics.

Women’s rights may seem a trite subject to harp on. But the news here is that the progress made for women’s equality is now in jeopardy.

The New York Times, The Nation, Ms. Magazine and The Huffington Post, to name just a few, have called it the “war on women” and even more report women’s rights are “under attack.” Melissa Harris-Perry of the Nation goes so far as to claim this is an attack led by social conservatives to push women out of the social sphere and back into the home.

That may seem extreme, but what else are we led to believe? Regardless of whether or not this is simply another political guise to bring abortion, i.e. the religious agenda, to the forefront of the conservative platform, as some pundits suggest, the fact that it continues to work is troubling. Abortion, and women’s rights, are a general crowd pleaser of a debate, when really this debate should be as obsolete as civil rights.

Attacking low-income women and their access to family planning and reproductive healthcare services does not create jobs. It certainly does not decrease the deficit since unplanned-for-children are more likely to cost money in childcare, welfare, education, and other federally-funded programs, and it does not benefit the future of America, for both mothers and their children.

In 2011, the War and the Attack on Women remains a sad reality in politics. Fortunately, organizing, protesting and voicing your opinion can be as simple as opening up your browser and finding events near you, like Gainesville’s recent Walk for Choice or signing petitions like Planned Parenthood’s petition to let Congress know you are not in support of the bill to defund Planned Parenthood. The Fine Print is dedicated more than ever to remain a resource for local events and issues, including women’s rights.

Creationism is not science.

I wish I could leave it at that, but this anti-science has reared its head again, this time in the recent election of creationist April Griffin to the Alachua County school board. The problem with creationism comes from a deep-seated misunderstanding of evolution and its relationship with religion.

Evolution is the glue that holds biology together. Without it, the life sciences make no sense. The basis of evolution is simple: Genetic variations with selective pressures given long periods of time will produce speciation. Put more plainly, if there is a trait that helps you survive and reproduce, you will have an advantage over your competition. Given enough time, the prevalence of that trait will grow until it becomes common.

There are numerous claims that creationists make against science. The majority are based on pointing out holes in current scientific understanding, a kind of “God in the gaps” approach. As science progresses and fills in the gaps, creationists have to continuously step up their anti-science (see Kirk Cameron trying to explain how a banana fitting into a human hand disproves evolution) — a sort of who-can-close-their-eyes-the-hardest contest. Here are some of the most common talking points creationists use.

1) No one has seen evolution in action. This theory is based on speculation.

As a microbiologist, I find this offensive. I witness evolution all the time when bacteria gain antibiotic resistance. This is small but very easy to see if you look at Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a bug that arose due to evolution and the overuse of antibiotics selecting for specific traits.

2) There are no transitional fossils (intermedeary fossils that show evolutionary transition).

There are. A lot of them actually. My favorites are whales. The Fossils we have have put their evolution as so: the land mammal Indohyus, returns to the water and transitions into Ambulocetus, then after two more known transitions (Protocetid and Basilosaurus), finally ends as Cetaceans – modern whales. Besides, evolution itself is a fluid transitional process. All living species are currently in a state of “transition”.

3) Evolution can’t explain how life started.

Well, it’s not supposed to. The process in which life started that so many creationists talk about is something else all together called “abiogenesis.” This branch of science has many theories (I’m particular to the RNA world hypothesis) but has nothing to do with evolution. Evolution explains how species change over time through natural selection.

Having creationism (or its dressed-up inbred cousin, “intelligent design”) taught in any science class is detrimental to children’s cognitive development. If we teach kids that the earth is 6,000 years old, we’re teaching them that it’s okay to ignore empirical evidence. Being able to shape your beliefs on things that are testable and falsifiable is one of the most important skills anyone can learn.

The majority of creationist B.S. science comes from an unfounded fear of empiricalism, as a challenging of God. This false dichotomy has done nothing but embarrass religion by demonizing science. The danger of Griffin’s recent election is that she is in a position of authority. A position in which she can push for a religious agenda over a scientific one.

A recent study published in Science found that only 28% of high school biology teachers teach evolution, 13% teach creationism, and around 60% either skip the subject altogether or teach both. The most disturbing part of this statistic is the 60% that choose to mention creationism despite every major court case coming down against its teaching in public schools. While the vanguards of science were fighting the creationist in the classroom, these crafty bunch launched the “teach the controversy” campaign — a brilliant strategy that has led to the majority of high school biology teachers being too scared to do their jobs.

Despite what the Tea Party claims, this country was founded on secularism. The founding fathers felt so strongly that religion should be separate from public policy that they mentioned it in the First Amendment. Teaching creationism in public schools would give affirmation to a specific branch of fundamentalist Christianity — a direct contradiction to the Constitution.

Believe what you want, but remember: Reality is what exists in spite of your personal beliefs. And reality is what we need to teach our kids in school.

We’re hosting a benefit show this Thursday, Dec. 9 from 9pm to 2am at 206 NW 2nd Ave. Cover is a $3-$5 sliding-scale donation. The flier for the event is pictured here.

More information for the event is available on the Facebook event page.

Don’t forget to dress up! We’ll be posting (and already have posted!) links, photos, tips and ideas on the Facebook event wall so you’ll know what it was like back in ’44.

An example of good journalism? Maybe, if it had been reported about five years ago, before other independent journalists, like Tim Shorrock, starting covering the issue extensively. Jeremy Scahill summed these sentiments up nicely in an article he wrote for The Nation this week:

“[The series'] greatest accomplishment is forcing a discussion onto corporate TV years after it would have had an actual impact.

“The misplaced hype surrounding the Post series speaks volumes to the ahistorical nature of US media culture. Next week, if the New York Times published a story on how there were no WMDs in Iraq, there would no doubt be cable news shows that would act like it was an earth-moving revelation delivered by Moses on the stone tablet of exclusive, groundbreaking journalism.”

We’re glad you caught on, WaPo, but the fact is this is too little, too late. Remember your primary duty when acting (posing?) as the fourth estate: seek the truth as a watchdog for American citizens. Yes, you sought the truth and found it (even if you left out key details, like contractors’ roles in assassinations and torture), but couldn’t you have done this years earlier, when we had more of a chance to pull ourselves out of this contractor addiction? Other journalists did…

Flyer for the upcoming Fine Print Benefit Show, A Night of Sensuous Sounds.

Hey all. We’re pretty excited.

The Fine Print is hosting A Night of Sensuous Sounds, A Benefit Show on Friday, July 23 at 9pm.

Spend a night with us under the summer stars to the seductive sounds of wonderfully talented and generous local musical talents: rapper 2 Piece, Kiiks (http://www.myspace.com/kiiksmusic), James Austin of Eight Ghosts and Anchor Arms (http://www.myspace.com/theanchorarms) and Sir Claude (http://www.myspace.com/sirclaude).

All proceeds benefit The Fine Print’s continued efforts to serve the Gainesville community by filling the void in local, alternative media. You can find a copy of The Fine Print in our boxes on campus and around town as well as in local businesses.

We hope to see you there for a night of good music, good people and good times for a good cause.

Also, we’ll make some of the featured artists’ music available for streaming on the website in the coming week.

Facebook event link: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=139079809444516#!/event.php?eid=139079809444516&ref=ts

That’s right. The rumors are true. Hair is a great adsorber of oil, and two local Gainesville salons are collecting their clippings to send to the Gulf.

“Hair does not absorb oil,” according to an article written in in the Alaska Science Forum. “Oil clings to hair in a process known as adsorption, in which the tiny scales on hair snag and hold oil.”

Cloud 9 Spa and Salon and Salon La Di Da are sending their hairy waste to Matter of Trust, a San Francisco-based organization that’s mobilizing around the country for the oil spill clean-up cause. It sends the excess hair to the Gulf region where it will be used to construct booms to stop the potential spread of oil to the shores.

So think before you cut and help participate in cleaning up one of the worst spills our country has seen yet.

The Environmental Working Group surveyed the most popular fruits and vegetables we eat here in America and how many pesticides are used, on average, on each.

Interesting facts: Celery ranks worst when it comes to pesticide contamination, with peaches at second and strawberries at third.

But if you can, eat local, and check out Gainesville’s Eat Local Challenge going on now!

The Worker Rights Consortium (which I’ve previously written about here) issued a report in October describing the ways the factory closings were improper and illegal. Workers in the factories were owed more than $2 million in back pay, and UW decided its code of conduct for workers had been violated.

Coming on the heels of a major victory over Russell Athletic in the Fall, this lends new credibility to a student anti-sweatshop movement that seems to be finding its second wind. UW is big and so is its football program, so they just hit Nike where it hurts: its bottom line.

Two weeks ago, Gina Cano and Lowlee Urquia, former workers from the factories, visited UF and, through translators, gave an emotional presentation on their lives as sweatshop workers, and the devastation caused by the sudden closing of the plant.

Earlier that day, I took part in on a meeting with them, representatives from the national United Students Against Sweatshops, two fellow members of Gators for a Sweatshop-Free Campus, and representatives of the UF administration. After hearing from the workers, Ed Poppell, UF’s Vice President for Business Affairs and Anna Prizzia, director of the Office of Sustainability, said they intended to side with students in support of UF joining the WRC.

Cano and Lowlee are now on a USAS-sponsored tour across the United States, where they’re visiting college campuses to explain how students and their universities can support the fight for workers’ rights. We’ll have a story on their visit and UF’s ongoing progress toward becoming a member of the WRC in the April issue of the Fine Print.

I know that about three minutes into this, almost every man will shun away, click out of the blog post, close his laptop, and run. Don’t. Keep watching.

Staceyann teaches women to own their bodies and love themselves for being woman when history reminds of when women were pitied for not being born man.
“Pussy talk” as Staceyann likes to put it, isn’t just for women. Gender roles have evolved, and although the gap between men and women is shrinking, it still exists, and that affects society as a whole. Men are still paid more on average for the same job as women. Women are often expected to stay at home raising children rather than going into the workplace, and men are often looked down on if they choose to stay home with their children.
But the more women own their bodies, own themselves and know that they do not have to be subordinate to men – Know that they are not born a lower class than men – The more women speak this out, without fear, the smaller the gap becomes. And when women demand respect and equality from the world, they make it a more just place for everyone.

For more vagina talk, check out our DIY this month, “Safe, eco-friendly products for your vagina.“

Here are the panelists:

Rich Hirsch
Senior editor of The Miami Herald, whose city is home to the largest Haitian diaspora in the United States

Tamara Lush
Associated Press reporter

Tom Brew
Deputy editor of MSNBC.com

Jon Bougher
UF documentary student, who was in Haiti when the earthquake struck

They will speak about their experiences covering the disaster and show photos and video. After their presentations, the event will open to questions from the audience.

If you are a journalism student, you’re invited to come early at 5pm to have pizza with the Advisory Council. This is a really good opportunity to tell the Advisory Council what you think about how the college is run, your classes and professors. The Council has a good say in curriculum changes at the college, and after they speak with students on Thursday night, they will meet with the faculty of the college on Friday to discuss what students are saying. So come make your voice heard and take a roll in the direction of your education. It’s also a good way to meet some of the top editors in the state.

Update: The Fine Print will be live-tweeting from the event, so follow us for supplemental links and other good stuff. The UF College of Journalism and Communications will be shooting a video, which will will be posted next week.

Hirsch played this video, in which three of his Miami Herald colleagues reflect on their experiences reporting on the disaster:

Fine Print editor Lydia Fiser recently dug up an old Nation article about how a similar battle played out a few years ago at Florida State, a “campus known more for holding national titles in football and ‘party school’ rankings than for student protest activity (sound familiar?).” The FSU student body supported WRC membership, but activists had to wage months of protests. The ultimately set up a tent city on their version of the Plaza of the Americas, which they kept up for months:

The tent-city protest was intended to end a long debate with the administration, which refuses to join the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), a sweatshop monitoring agency backed by the protesters and faculty, which passed a resolution supporting the students’ position. Instead, the arrests marked the beginning of a long standoff between the administration and student protesters, who now find themselves living in tents and sleeping bags to protest both the sweatshop issue and the administration’s refusal to tolerate the earlier protest–well after their classmates have gone home for the summer.

FSU ultimately joined the WRC, only to leave a few years later. So what was true for them then may be true for us now:

Sit-ins, protests and campouts have been required at many of the 100 universities who have now joined the WRC, and in this respect, FSU is no different. But the consequences of Florida State joining the WRC could be much more substantial than those at many of the other member schools, which might explain why the conflict has become so protracted at Florida State. Pendas says the possible impact of FSU joining is “huge…. We’re such a big university…and we’re in the South, for Christ’s sake!” He predicts a “domino effect” that would result in several other Florida universities joining–perhaps most importantly, the University of Florida, another football powerhouse with millions in licensing revenue pouring in each year.

The fight on our campus is important, and to some extent, history is on our side. Other southern schools, including our SEC rivels at Tennessee – have joined the WRC. And UF recently decided to stop licencing with Russell Athletic, which just lost a long battle with workers and students over a closed factory in Honduras. We have no illusions that voting “yes” will gaurantee UF joining the WRC – itself only a small part of the efforts to end the “race to the bottom” that continues to drive down wages and working conditions in the world’s poor countries – but it will surely help.

Travis’ response: “He’s referring, of course, to a system of succession that predates the Unite Party, in which students from Greek houses and various campus groups are rewarded based on loyalty, receiving everything from student money for their groups to leadership positions in SG.”

We see this every year – the ‘indie party’ tries to differentiate itself from the ‘established party’ merely for the sake of differentiating itself.

The two parties tend to have similar platforms. That’s not to say there aren’t differences; the establishment party is always “safer.” But the average student, who rarely finds a reason to pay attention, will have a hard time telling them apart. Everyone wants a more sustainable campus. Everyone wants to limit the economic burden on students. Everyone makes vague promises about making UF a better place.

Naturally that state of affairs makes things hard on the opposition. But they tend to get caught up in the politics of it all, and next thing you know, they’re spouting off at the mouth just for the sake of differentiating themselves. Inane arguments and childish stunts, like Niederreiter’s letter, inevitable ensue.

Take the Reitz Union Expansion Fee. It’s a hot issue right and something that very well could bring a record number of students out to the polls. And the truth is, that building is in dire need of repairs. But is charging the students a fee the best way to go about making those repairs?

All you see in The Alligator about the issue is pitting Graduate Assistants United and the Student Alliance against the Unite Party. GAU says underpaid grad assistants can’t afford a fee (they’re most certainly right about that), and the Student Alliance has unquestioningly embraced their position.

Now the two sides are talking past each other. There’s no doubt that the Reitz needs some serious work and that it’s been expanding beyond its capacity for years. There’s also no doubt that graduate assistants need to be paid better. Rather than trying to find an alternative way to secure the repairs, Student Alliance automatically rejects the student fee because it’s something that Unite supports. In the Town Hall Meeting sponsored by the Alligator and SG, Ben Cavataro applauded any criticism of President Jordan Johnson and his plans. Is this really getting us anywhere?

There’s a real possibility here for SG to work together and make the repairs happen in a way that exploits students the least and also makes the Reitz Union a place we can all enjoy. Denying that we need to fix the problem isn’t going to help us. Which party will step up to the plate? I’m of the opinion that if they don’t get over their petty opposition politics, then neither will. But I hope I’m proved wrong.

Alligator, I’ve got a wager for you. I find it hilarious the Unite Party says it will be “conducting interviews” to determine its executive candidates. It’s common knowledge they have already chosen Marcus Dixon to run for vice president and Virlany Taboada to run for treasurer. Because I feel bad for the students who will come out to interview when Unite has made up its mind, I’m willing to put my reputation on the line. If I’m wrong then feel free to Dart me, Joshua Niederriter, when they announce their candidates. But if I’m right send a Dart at the party for misleading the Student Body. I hope you take me up on this offer because either way you win.

He’s referring, of course, to a system of succession that predates the Unite Party, in which students from Greek houses and various campus groups are rewarded based on loyalty, receiving everything from student money for their groups to leadership positions in SG.

This has been going on for decades, and for a while we at the Fine Print were content to throw up our hands and focus on things we could actually change. But as it turns out, the system of patronage and corruption Niederriter artfully alludes to has meant that over the years, nobody in Student Government was paying attention while the Reitz Union “managers” let the student-funded building fall into disrepair, which is supposedly going to cost us upwards of $40 million to fix.

It’s no exaggeration to say that by failing to give a shit about SG, by failing to pay attention to what our representatives are doing (or not doing), and by turning out in dismally low numbers (never more than 20 percent) to vote in student elections, we have cost ourselves and our successors tens of million of dollars, which could be paid for with increased activity fees. It’s high time we demolished the political machine that currently calls itself the Unite Party, and which has repeatedly failed to look out for our interests.

As for Niederreiter’s letter, it puts the machine in an interesting position: will they reshuffle their slate of candidates just to discredit his assertion?

Related: The Fine Print is seeking a talented, gutsy individual interested in becoming our SG reporter. E-mail web@thefineprintuf.org for more information.

Scientists have courageously begun drawing attention to the devastation caused by mountaintop removal.The mostly poor residents of Appalachia face lung, kidney and liver damage as well as some of the highest cancer rates in the nation thanks to the damage reckless mining causes to the air they breathe and the water they drink (never mind the impact on wildlife). Interviews with these people, coupled with jarring footage of leveled mountains, would make for compelling TV, and probably stir the nation’s outrage. Instead, we get boring, industry-friendly drivel about the promise of “clean coal” from MSNBC – you know, America’s progressive news channel.

In Amusing Ourselves to Death, sociologist Neil Postman warned about the poisonous effects television has on politics, education and the news. Anything that appears on TV is, ipso facto, entertainment. It can be nothing else; that’s the nature of the medium. Serious television, then, is especially insidious, because it masquerades as something meaningful. Enough has already been said about the cultural significance of Colbert and his colleagues at the Daily Show. Suffice to say that he seems to take Postman’s argument to heart – and turn it on its head.

Fox News doesn’t acknowledge environmental harm is a bad thing. CNN can only cover celebrities and politics-as-a-spectator sport. NBC is owned by GE, the world’s largest producer of coal-burning power plants. Nobody in “serious television” is in a position to give an issue like mountaintop removal the attention it deserves. Enter Colbert, who starts with the premise that his show is entertainment, and then brings in someone like Margaret Palmer, lead author of a recent study published in the journal Science that calls for an end to the harmful practice. The result makes for excellent television:

Without a doubt, that’s the most informative treatment the issue has received on American television, and perhaps the best discussion it’s gotten in our entire mainstream media, where objective journalism ensures the coal industry gets ample opportunity to air its views, no matter how baseless. They even mention the fact that more responsible mining practices would help create jobs in one of our country’s poorest regions, without dramatically increasing energy costs for consumers.

Through it all, Colbert remains wonderfully in character, accusing Palmer of “playing the ‘children and women’ card” and questioning whether the mountains deserve our sympathy, since they would surely blow us up too, given the chance. Not only are serious newscasters failing as journalists; they’ve forgotten how to play the part on TV.

“Listen, don’t rush on boats to leave the country…If you do that, we’ll all have even worse problems. Because, I’ll be honest with you: If you think you will reach the U.S. and all the doors will be wide open to you, that’s not at all the case. And they will intercept you right on the water and send you back home where you came from.”

The Department of Homeland Security is making room in the Krome Service Processing Center, a federal jail for people waiting deportation from the U.S., in preparation for an influx of Haitians that the U.S. plans to send back to a demolished city with few supplies and inability to care for the millions of internally displaced citizens. The State Department is denying visas for people to come to the U.S. for medical care, and the Coast Guard is patrolling the waters around Florida ready to send boats back to Haiti or to Guantánamo Bay.

In a time of crisis, if we have the ability to help our fellow human beings, we should. This current situation draws attention to issues of immigration and international relations among the U.S. and other countries. Although there are many factors to take into account when deciding immigration policy, these are not people who would stay in the U.S. forever (at least not most of them). These are people who need a temporary haven, a place that is not destroyed and has the infrastructure to support them while Port-au-Prince is rebuilt. With Florida only 700 miles from Haiti and a secure infrastructure of hospitals, food, clean living spaces and ample people who want to help but have not been given the opportunity because they are stuck 700 miles from Haiti, we have a responsibility not to turn these people away. In fact, if Florida and the U.S. were to open boarders temporarily to provide shelter, the U.S. could actually write this in the history books as a human rights success.

Florida has its own problems: dwindling funding, a failing educational system, struggles with healthcare, illegal servitude on South Florida farms (another immigration issue), but sometimes we have to put aside our long-term problems for an unexpected crisis. And this is one of those times. True, we don’t have the ability to support the millions of displaced in Haiti, but we do have the resources to help some. If you don’t think so, remember Hurricane Katrina and the thousands of Florida families who welcomed New Orleans families into their homes and students into our schools. We can save lives, and so we should.

What do you think? If you were given the opportunity to offer temporary solace to a Haitian family, would you?

Singing newspaper woes

Al Qaeda continues to harbor safe havens along the Pakistani border, our President declared. These must be destroyed. And how? Will these several thousand fighters finally allow our side to sweep from cave to cave, purging the terrorists from every crag and crevice, until the last America-hater is hanging from the ceiling of Bagram? His “clearly defined strategy” was murky on the details.

“The Taliban is gaining momentum,” he warned. This must be stopped. And the Afghani government must be strengthened, and purged of corruption. That same corruption our own forces rely on for protection in what remains a stateless country, as the Nation reported last month:

Welcome to the wartime contracting bazaar in Afghanistan. It is a virtual carnival of improbable characters and shady connections, with former CIA officials and ex-military officers joining hands with former Taliban and mujahedeen to collect US government funds in the name of the war effort.

In this grotesque carnival, the US military’s contractors are forced to pay suspected insurgents to protect American supply routes. It is an accepted fact of the military logistics operation in Afghanistan that the US government funds the very forces American troops are fighting. And it is a deadly irony, because these funds add up to a huge amount of money for the Taliban. “It’s a big part of their income,” one of the top Afghan government security officials told The Nation in an interview. In fact, US military officials in Kabul estimate that a minimum of 10 percent of the Pentagon’s logistics contracts–hundreds of millions of dollars–consists of payments to insurgents.

The corruption is impenetrable, and even if the new troops allow us to protect our own instead of making extortion payments to our enemies, what then?

Obama mentions one truly frightening prospect: the collapse of Pakistan, and the yardsale of its nuclear arsenal. Nothing really defines Pakistan as a place, apart from a corrupt, feeble government that is basically ignored by many of its tribal peoples, including the Pashtuns – in whose lands the Taliban have assembled their strongholds. Robert Kaplan spelled it out in “The Revenge of Geography,” a treatise that tells the story of the twenty-first century before it even unfolds:

Indeed, the border going westward comes in three stages: the Indus; the unruly crags and canyons that push upward to the shaved wastes of Central Asia, home to the Pashtun tribes; and, finally, the granite, snow-mantled massifs of the Hindu Kush, transecting Afghanistan itself. Because these geographic impediments are not contiguous with legal borders, and because barely any of India’s neighbors are functional states, the current political organization of the subcontinent should not be taken for granted. You see this acutely as you walk up to and around any of these land borders, the weakest of which, in my experience, are the official ones—a mere collection of tables where cranky bureaucrats inspect your luggage. Especially in the west, the only border that lives up to the name is the Hindu Kush, making me think that in our own lifetimes the whole semblance of order in Pakistan and southeastern Afghanistan could unravel, and return, in effect, to vague elements of greater India.

Afghanistan will never be a stable nation-state, for the same reason Pakistan never has been. We can’t change the facts of geography. We can only hope to change the facts of human events – like the existence of nuclear arsenals, or most importantly, this war we’re fighting. We have a new president, a new strategy, a new shipment of young people ready to kill and die for nothing. But we carry the hubris that has destroyed every empire. I think it’s high time we drop it.

I encourage everyone who wants to see a peaceful Afghanistan to put their names next to mine on the Campaign for Peace and Democracy’s statement against the war, and to check out other groups that are working to bring this pointless bloodshed to an end.

Tomorrow, Monday, Nov. 23, join others who are concerned about the living and working conditions of the farmworkers who provide us with fresh produce. Students and community members will join at the Publix on University Avenue and SW 34th Street to protest Publix’s  unwillingness to meet the demands that the supermarket chain do its part to improve the conditions of farmworkers who are employed by Publix’s tomato suppliers.

Everyone is meeting at 5:15 at Publix. If you need a ride, meet at the Reitz Union circle drive (at the ground floor of the Reitz near the entrance to the Reitz garage) at 4:45.

For more information about the campaign to support farmworkers’ rights, check out our story, Encuentro: Coming Together for Farmworkers’ Rights. For more info about the protest, check out the facebook event.

Russell Athletic, a major maker of licensed collegiate apparel, reached an agreement to rehire workers it had fired for trying to form a union, and to allow workers to organize in its other Honduran factories.

The Times quotes WRC director Scott Nova:

“This represents the maturation of the universities’ codes of conduct. There’s a recognition by the universities of their ability to influence the actions of important brands and change outcomes for the better.”

He said the agreement was “unprecedented” in terms of scope and size and in “the transformative impact it can have in one of the hardest regions of the world to win respect for workers’ rights.”

Mr. Nova also praised Russell for changing course. “I think the executives at Russell recognized it was time for a new approach,” he said. “They decided it was important for the success of their company.”

But this is my favorite part:

“For us, it was very important to receive the support of the universities,” Moises Alvarado, president of the union at the closed plant in Choloma, said by telephone on Tuesday. “We are impressed by the social conscience of the students in the United States.”

Which is exactly why UF should join the WRC. As a marketing powerhouse in the world of collegiate athletic apparel, we have the power to ensure human rights are respected in factories everywhere. Right now we’re a member of the Fair Labor Organization – an industry-sponsored group that did nothing for the workers in Honduras.

UF actually cut ties with Russell after USAS contacted them during its campaign in solidarity with Central American factory workers. I’d say that’s a start, but I hope it’s only the beginning.

While the Act may be a landmark, it’s not in the sense that the New York Times claims. Instead, it’s a landmark statement of who our government is committed to.

The bill mandates that all U.S. citizens must purchase insurance, and provides “affordability credits” for low-to moderate-income people to help offset some of the costs. A red flag should go off to any critically thinking citizen here. To mandate an entire country financially back an industry and penalize those who refuse to, solidifies our government’s commitment to big business.

Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who voted against the bill, broke it down this morning on Democracy Now!:

“It is a $70 billion giveaway to private insurance companies and locks in this system that’s the problem, not the solution… This bill doesn’t affectively moderate what they can charge for premiums, or co-pays or deductibles. It just says people have to have insurance. Well, insurance doesn’t necessarily equate to care and care comes at a cost.”

The bill also slipped in another government opinion between the lines: its view on abortion.

Section 222 of the Act:

Prohibits abortion services from being made part of essential benefits package. [It] prohibits federal funds from being used to pay for   abortion (except in cases of rape, incest and to save the life of the woman). Only private premium dollars can be used to provide abortion coverage. Where abortion coverage is provided, funds for this purpose must be segregated from other funds, including affordability credits.

This is a step back for anyone who believes women’s bodies should be their own to control. It also places a higher burden on low-income, often minority, women who statistically make less money and thus will need to use the government subsidized affordability credits to be able to pay for the mandated health insurance.

This bill is far from the “sweeping reform” we need. We have to make our voices heard to our legislators that health care reform that still has corporate insurance companies’ interests at heart is no kind of reform. We need health care for everyone in this country no matter their economic or health standing and for every procedure to be able to be done safely. We need universal single-payer health care, and the only way to get that is to take the insurance companies out of the plan.

But what you won’t see in even the token liberal media like the New York Times or National Public Radio is an analysis of what “democracy” actually meant to the countries on the eastern side of the Berlin Wall. The fall of communism in these nations translated to a prime opportunity for American corporations to come in and privatize everything they could, from the labor market to the previously public utilities system to natural resources. For the citizens of the countries of the former Eastern bloc, democratization brought with it what Michael J. Jordan of the Christian Science Monitor calls a series of “negative consequences”, in his article about the nostalgia for communism in these countries.

“Each positive development of “democracy” ushered in negative consequences: Free-market competition brought soaring prices and joblessness; free elections brought extremist parties; free press brought incitement; free movement brought cross-border crime and westward ‘brain drain.’”

In a perfect world, with a mass media that isn’t under corporate control and searches for the true story, maybe we would have seen a different type of story surrounding the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, one with a little less celebration and a lot more reality.

Three quotes from a recent interview Foer did at Salon draw an important distinction between folks like us, who worry about the effects of industrial agriculture, and what I’m going to call the PETA crowd, who tend to dominate our side of the debate with emotional nonsense:

It’s a shame in a way that PETA videos or slaughterhouse videos are most people’s exposure to factory farming because it gives the impression that the horrible things are the exception, when in fact they’re the rule. So an animal running and getting beaten up or running around with its neck slit open: That is the exception, even on the worst farms it’s still the exception. But the rule that happens even on the best factory farms is animals are genetically modified to the point of being unable to reproduce sexually, animals that never see the sun and never touch the earth, animals whose cages are never cleaned. These things are not as shocking and don’t work as well in a video, but they’re something to be concerned with much more because they’re happening to billions and billions of animals every year.

I’m with Foer. I really don’t give a shit if someone injures a cow they’re about to kill anyway, or whether it’s a “clean kill” or not. But I do care about the underlying mentality, which, as I’ve written in the past, can wind up affecting the quality of the food we eat, the water we drink and the air we breath.

“Is it right to eat an animal, is it not right to eat an animal?” That’s how most people talk about vegetarianism. But to me it doesn’t even matter. The truth is I actually don’t know what I think about that question. What I know is that it’s wrong to do it the way that we’re doing it. And we could sit here and argue about a perfect farm where animals are treated perfectly and slaughtered perfectly and whether that’s right. But if it exists at all it exists in a place that is impossible for us to find on any regular basis.

I’m not willing to follow Foer’s logic all the way to strict vegetarianism, for a simple reason: I like meat. Plus some types of meet, like beef from cows that eat grass, or venison shot by hunters, allow humans to consume calories in grass or forest foliage that we couldn’t otherwise convert to usable energy. But I realize that I – and everyone else – am going to need to get used to eating a lot less of it. The price paid by the planet is just too high. I’ve seen that elusive near-perfect farm Foer talks about, and he’s right: it can’t possibly be reproduced on a large enough scale to allow us to maintain our current levels of consumption.

The last one speaks for itself:

Factory farming supplies a demand for cheap meat. That’s it. It doesn’t taste good, it’s not healthy for us. The only good thing about it is that it’s cheap. But the thing is that it’s not cheap. It’s cheap at the cash register, and it’s sold as cheap — that’s the defense for factory farming, “Look, we’re making affordable food for normal people and all other arguments are elitist.” But in fact factory farming is like the ultimate elitism because it’s the most expensive food ever produced in the history of mankind. We pay very little at the cash register, but we pay and our kids are going to pay for the environmental toll, obviously the animals are paying, rural communities are paying. And for what? So that corporations can prosper. The huge agribusiness — companies make hundreds of millions and sometimes billions of dollars, not in the name of feeding the world, but in the name of making something that’s so cheap that people become literally addicted to it.

There’s been a lot of talk in media lately about President Obama trying to learn the lessons from Vietnam (nevermind how they tend to describe that disastrous war as a “success”). Tomorrow evening, Fine Print blogger Scott Camil, who won two purple hearts while serving the in US Marine Corps during the war in Vietnam, will explain what those lessons ought to be.

The next two movie screenings will cover the genocides in Darfur and the Congo.

Don’t laugh… It’s my first time. I’m excited, but I’m also a little bit nervous. Will I look like a complete fool? Will my readers come back for a second go at it, or will they disappear and never call?

In the future, this blog will feature commentary from us, the editors of The Fine Print, on the future of journalism and the role of journalists in preserving democracy. We’ll also be providing criticism of mainstream media coverage and of ourselves. We’ll also use this as a platform to give The Fine Print’s perspective on the most important issues facing not only students and Gainesvillians today, but also the country as a whole.

So be on the look-out for new posts, and don’t laugh. It’s my first time.