A New Beginning and Tiger Looks Like the Tiger of Old

Tiger Woods hits a tee shot on the second hole during the first round of The Barclays golf tournament Thursday, Aug. 26, 2010, in Paramus, N.J.

Woods Plays his Best Round of the Year

Aug 27, 3:47 AM (ET)

By DOUG FERGUSON
PARAMUS, N.J. (AP)

Tied for first at Barclays~

- A season filled with "worsts" finally gave way to a couple of "firsts" for Tiger Woods.

By missing only one fairway and having a birdie putt on all but two holes, Woods began the FedEx Cup playoffs with a 6-under 65 for a share of the lead with Vaughn Taylor after one round at The Barclays.

It was the first time in 335 days that he found his name atop the leaderboard on the PGA Tour.
It was the first time in 12 rounds, dating to the opening round at St. Andrews six weeks ago, that he broke 70.

It was the first time since the 2006 British Open at Royal Liverpool that he hit 3-wood on every par 5, an example of Woods choosing to navigate his way smartly around Ridgewood Country Club in soft conditions.

It was the first time he played a round without ever seeing anyone in front of him on the golf course, courtesy of being so far down in the FedEx Cup standings (No. 112) that he was in the first group off Thursday morning.

The first time he hit the ball so well?

Not quite.

But it sure felt that way.

"It's exciting to hit the ball flush like this again," Woods said. "It's something I've been missing all year. I haven't hit it flush. And it felt good to hit the ball and shape it both ways and really hit it through the wind. I've hit so many shots this year that haven't been hit flush enough to get through the wind. But today, I was doing it all day."

The next step, and perhaps a more important step, is where he goes from here.

It might have been sheer coincidence that Woods finally looked like the No. 1 player in his first competitive round since his divorce on Monday. There is not much left to say about his car crash after Thanksgiving night, the sex scandal that dominated supermarket tabloids, his five-month break from the game, his worst 36-hole score and worst 72-hole score in his PGA Tour career, and the end of his marriage.

It was all about his golf on a sunny day in northern New Jersey, and the news was good for a change.

Did he feel a weight lifted from his shoulders?

"I can't really say that's the case," Woods said. "As far as golf, it was nice to put it together."

It started with a simple 3-wood down the middle of the opening hole, a pitching wedge that landed 20 feet behind the hole and spun back on the spongy green to 15 feet below the cup, and the confident stride toward the hole when the birdie putt disappeared.

He made birdie on a par 5 - that's news these days.

On one of the two holes where he hit driver - the par-4 fifth, measuring 291 yards - it was so flawless that his tee shot landed some 10 feet left of the flag and settled 15 feet away for a two-putt birdie.

Woods didn't miss a green until the 11th hole, and while he dropped his only shot from a fairway bunker on No. 12, he recovered quickly with a birdie on the 13th, and a 6-iron that plopped down 2 feet from the cup.

Woods and Taylor both played in the morning, when the greens were smooth and the conditions were only breezy. They had a one-shot lead over Adam Scott, Brian Gay and Ryan Palmer. Scott played in the afternoon, where a gust of wind played tricks on him at the final hole and led to bogey.

Scott endured a long day in the pro-am Wednesday and didn't think Ridgewood would serve up a 65 to anyone.

"Seeing some good scores this morning made me change my mind," he said.

That one of those scores belonged to Woods was hardly a surprise.

"For him to piece things together can't be too hard," Scott said. "He's very good."

The 65 was his lowest score in 46 rounds, dating to a 62 in the BMW Championship last year. Taylor grinned when asked if he was surprised to see Woods' name on the leaderboard.
"Somewhat, you know?" he said. "It's good to see him back up top."

With sunshine and a light breeze, conditions were ripe for scoring. Palmer had a chance to join the leaders until a three-putt bogey on the 18th put him at 66. Even though the greens became bumpy in the afternoon after so much foot traffic, the course was soft enough to allow for good scores. There were 14 players who shot 67, including Davis Love III, defending champion Heath Slocum and Stewart Cink.

Phil Mickelson, with his ninth chance in the past four months to replace Woods at No. 1 in the world, made only one birdie for a 72.

For Woods, the timing could not have been better.

Only the top 100 in the FedEx Cup standings advance to the second round of the playoffs next week in the Deutsche Bank Championship. Woods at least needs to make the cut, then finish in the middle of the pack. He had a better solution.

"I figure if I win, I should be OK," Woods said.

For one of the few times this year, he gave himself ample reason to believe that.

Can We Talk? And At Least Have Some Fun...

A project of the Institute for Policy Studies

World Beat

by JOHN FEFFER

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Vol. 5, No. 33

Law became sexy in the mid-1980s. I still find this a bewildering transformation in American society. At the time, I thought that there could be nothing quite so boring as a court case or a legal brief. But then the TV show L.A. Law debuted in 1986, and lawyers never looked so good. The following year, Scott Turow published Presumed Innocent, and several years after that John Grisham brought out his second novel, The Firm. U.S. publishing was never the same.

Since then, law has thoroughly permeated our popular culture. But I wonder whether it has also taken over the way we think. I'm not talking about the how litigious we are in the United States. I'm talking about how we talk.

In the courtroom, the truth is arrived at in an adversarial manner. There are two sides. They present their cases. They examine and cross-examine. They challenge and dispute and argue. And then the judge or the jury decides which side wins. The prosecutor and the defense don't help each other. They don't try to arrive at the truth together. They are matter and anti-matter - and if the two sides were to somehow touch, the legal system would explode. There are other models present - the consensus of the jury, the more congenial atmosphere of alternative dispute resolution. But the essential confrontation between two frequently irreconcilable versions of the truth has had a powerful influence over the way we interact.

The controversy du jour is whether an Islamic cultural center should be built a couple blocks from the former site of the World Trade Center in New York City. One side says that such a building would desecrate the memory of those who died on 9/11. The other side says that freedom of religion is a core value in this country. For me, the issue is a no-brainer. The center promotes inter-religious and intercultural dialogue, which is precisely what we need more of to prevent future attacks. As Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) rightly points out, "I appreciate the depth of emotions at play, but respectfully suggest that the presence of a mosque is only inappropriate near ground zero if we unfairly associate Muslim Americans with the atrocities of the foreign al-Qaida terrorists who attacked our nation." The opponents of the center - with their "Islam is the enemy" posters - are as fundamentalist in their outlook as the jihadists they oppose.

Can I persuade the other side of my views? Can they convince me? We are as far apart as prosecution and defense.

"What's the likelihood of changing anyone's opinion, especially a couple of strangers?" David Sedaris asks in a recent New Yorker piece. "If my own little mind is nailed shut, why wouldn't theirs be?" Why stop at strangers? Really, what's the likelihood of changing the opinions of our friends or our families? In America, we put politics into the same category as religion and sex: conversation stoppers. Because we're not in the habit of conversing reasonably on these topics, they burst out of us in uncontrolled spasms, as repressed urges do in our dreams and nightmares.

In an intriguing serendipity, the Sedaris article appears a few pages away from George Packer's in-depth article on the deterioration of our country's premier talking shop: the Senate. Democrats and Republicans no longer talk to one another, professionally or casually. The same Jeff Merkley was shocked to discover the lack of debate across party lines. "The amount of real deliberation, in terms of exchange of ideas, is so limited," he says. Perhaps the Senate has simply become more honest, since Washington has always been more about power than ideas.

Our two-party system - and the red state/blue state divisions that it engendered - looks more and more like a divided courtroom. There are only two political positions; third parties have no place in the system. Bipartisanship, moreover, has become an endangered species. I don't want to romanticize any golden age of bipartisanship. We had a bipartisan consensus on invading Iraq, supporting Israel right or wrong, and many other misguided foreign policies. I don't want a stifling consensus to replace a sterile confrontation. I want to see informed discussion on how we can deal with the obvious problems the country faces: the economic crisis, the disastrous wars, the impending energy-environmental apocalypse. Instead, we have flame and counter-flame about the mosque at ground zero that is neither a mosque nor at ground zero.

In his novel The Dean's December, Saul Bellow writes: "[Alexis de] Tocqueville was dead right when he said that Americans (democrats everywhere) had no aptitude for conversation, they lectured. Bombast, clichés, chewed-up newsprint, naturally made the other party tune out." In the court room, the two sides know that at least they have an audience. But in all the invective that we unleash on ourselves - and I am part of this incessant outpouring of opinion - we are either preaching to the choir or reaching deaf ears. Unlike de Tocqueville, I believe that democracy depends on political conversations. We get lots of talk - on talk radio, on TV, in the halls of Congress, at our dining room tables - but not a lot of the authentic back-and-forth.

In the 1960s, the slogan was "tune in, turn on, drop out." Nearly a half-century later, in the angrier times in which we live, we're more likely to embrace the slogan "tune out, turn off, drop dead."

Click the link and cool off from all this hot and heavy controversy, with some 'dog-gone' good fun!

http://www.flixxy.com/snow-dogs.htm

Enjoy!

Kentke

Examining America's Myths -- Housing Fades as a Means to Build Wealth, Analysts Say

Housing Fades as a Means to Build Wealth, Analysts Say

August 22, 2010

By David Streitfeld

New York Times

Housing will eventually recover from its great swoon. But many real estate experts now believe that home ownership will never again yield rewards like those enjoyed in the second half of the 20th century, when houses not only provided shelter but also a plump nest egg.

The wealth generated by housing in those decades, particularly on the coasts, did more than assure the owners a comfortable retirement. It powered the economy, paying for the education of children and grandchildren, keeping the cruise ships and golf courses full and the restaurants humming.

More than likely, that era is gone for good.

“There is no iron law that real estate must appreciate,” said Stan Humphries, chief economist for the real estate site Zillow. “All those theories advanced during the boom about why housing is special — that more people are choosing to spend more on housing, that more people are moving to the coasts, that we were running out of usable land — didn’t hold up.”

Instead, Mr. Humphries and other economists say, housing values will only keep up with inflation. A home will return the money an owner puts in each month, but will not multiply the investment.

Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, estimates that it will take 20 years to recoup the $6 trillion of housing wealth that has been lost since 2005. After adjusting for inflation, values will never catch up.

“People shouldn’t look at a home as a way to make money because it won’t,” Mr. Baker said.
If the long term is grim, the short term is grimmer. Housing experts are bracing themselves for Tuesday, when the sales figures for July will be released. The data is expected to show a drop of as much as 20 percent from last year.

The supply of homes sitting on the market might rise to as much as 12 months, about twice the level of a healthy market. That would push down prices as all those sellers compete to secure a buyer, adding to a slide that has already chopped off as much as 30 percent in home values.

Set against this dismal present and a bleak future, buying a home is a willful act of optimism. That explains why Adam and Allison Lyons are waiting to close on a $417,500 house in Deerfield, Ill.

“We’re trying not to think too far ahead,” said Ms. Lyons, 35, an information technology manager.

The couple’s first venture into real estate came in 2003 when they bought a condo in a 17-unit building under construction in Chicago. By the time they moved in two years later, it was already worth $50,000 more than they had paid. “We were thinking, great!” said Mr. Lyons, 34.

That quick appreciation started them on the same track as their parents, who watched the value of their houses ascend for decades. The real estate crash interrupted that pleasant dream. The couple cannot sell their condo. Unwillingly, they are becoming landlords.

“I don’t think we’re ever going to see the prosperity our parents did, but I don’t think it’s all doom and gloom either,” said Mr. Lyons, a manager at I.B.M. “At some point, you just have to say what the heck and go for it.”

Adam and Allison Lyons plan to rent their condo in Chicago until the housing market recovers.

Other buyers have grand and even grander expectations.

In an annual survey conducted by the economists Robert J. Shiller and Karl E. Case, hundreds of new owners in four communities — Alameda County near San Francisco, Boston, Orange County south of Los Angeles, and Milwaukee — once again said they believed prices would rise about 10 percent a year for the next decade.

With minor swings in sentiment, the latest results reflect what new buyers always seem to feel. At the boom’s peak in 2005, they said prices would go up. When the market was sliding in 2008, they still said prices would go up.

“People think it’s a law of nature,” said Mr. Shiller, who teaches at Yale.

For the first half of the 20th century, he said, expectations followed the opposite path. Houses were seen the way cars are now: as a consumer durable that the buyer eventually used up.

The notion of housing as an investment first began to blossom after World War II, when the nesting urges of returning soldiers created a construction boom. Demand was stoked as their bumper crop of children grew up and bought places of their own. The inflation of the 1970s, which increased the value of hard assets, and liberal tax policies both helped make housing a good bet. So did the long decline in mortgage rates from the early 1980s.

Despite all these tailwinds, prices rose modestly for much of the period. Real home prices increased 1.1 percent a year after inflation, according to Mr. Shiller’s research.

By the late 1990s, however, the rate was 4 percent a year. Happy homeowners were taking about $100 billion a year out of their houses, which paid for a lot of good times.

“The experience we had from the late 1970s to the late 1990s was an aberration,” said Barry Ritholtz of the equity research firm Fusion IQ. “People shouldn’t be holding their breath waiting for it to happen again.”

Not everyone views the notion of real appreciation in real estate as a lost cause.
Bob Walters, chief economist of the online mortgage firm Quicken, acknowledges that the recent collapse will create a “mind scar” just as the Great Depression did. But he argues that housing remains unique.

“You have to live somewhere,” he said. “In three or four years, people will resume a normal course, and home values will continue to increase.”

All homes are different, and some neighborhoods and regions will rebound more quickly. On the other hand, areas where there was intense overbuilding, like Arizona, will be extremely slow to show any sign of renewal.

“It’s entirely likely that markets like Arizona will not recover even in the 15- to 20-year time frame,” said Mr. Humphries of Zillow. “The demand doesn’t exist.”

Owners in those foreclosure-plagued areas consider themselves lucky if they are still solvent. But that does not prevent the occasional regret that a life-changing sum of money was so briefly within their grasp.

Robert Austin, a Phoenix lawyer, paid $200,000 for his home in 2000. Five years later, his neighbors listed a similar home for $500,000.

Freedom beckoned. “I thought, when my daughter gets out of school, I can sell the house and buy a boat and sail around the world,” said Mr. Austin, 56.

His home is now worth about what he paid for it. As for that cruise, “it may be a while,” Mr. Austin said. Showing the hopefulness that is apparently innate to homeowners, he added: “But I won’t rule it out forever.”

I include here 2 links for a deeper look at this topic:

The first is to a video from a presentation at Vanderbilt University in 2009. In a clear and concise manner, Dr. Melvin L. Oliver, UCSB Dean of the school's Social Science Division provides the history of housing in America as it relates to the African American population. This presentation was given at the time of the explosion of the 2009 housing bubble, and Dr. Oliver, shows how the collapse of the sub-prime market was directly related to the policies and procedures of the real estate industry to exploit and deny black home buyers equal opportunities and protections that the rest of the American public enjoyed. It is profound.

The second link is to the PBS documentary series, "Race - The Power of Illusion". At the link you will find, the additional information resources that the program offered. It includes books, links to websites and organizations that have done research on dynamics of race, housing and wealth in America. If you have never seen this program, it's well worth the investment, or the effort to rent it.

Kentke

http://news.vanderbilt.edu/2009/01/video-the-housing-crisis-and-african-american-wealth-71202/

http://www.pbs.org/race/007_Resources/007_01-search.php

Technology Leads More Park Visitors Into Trouble

Visitors at Grand Canyon

August 21, 2010
By LESLIE KAUFMAN

New York Times

Cathy Hayes was cracking jokes as she recorded a close encounter with a buffalo on her camera in a recent visit to Yellowstone National Park.

“Watch Donald get gored,” she said as her companion hustled toward a grazing one-ton beast for a closer shot with his own camera.

Seconds later, as if on cue, the buffalo lowered its head, pawed the ground and charged, injuring, as it turns out, Ms. Hayes.

“We were about 30, 35 feet, and I zoomed in on him, but that wasn’t far enough, because they are fast,” she recounted later in a You Tube video displaying her bruised and cut legs.

The national parks' history is full of examples of misguided visitors feeding bears, putting children on buffalos for photos and dipping into geysers despite signs warning of scalding temperatures.

But today, as an ever more wired and interconnected public visits the parks in rising numbers — July was a record month for visitors at Yellowstone — rangers say that technology often figures into such mishaps.

People with cellphones call rangers from mountaintops to request refreshments or a guide; in Jackson Hole, Wyo., one lost hiker even asked for hot chocolate.

A French teenager was injured after plunging 75 feet this month from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon when he backed up while taking pictures. And last fall, a group of hikers in the canyon called in rescue helicopters three times by pressing the emergency button on their satellite location device. When rangers arrived the second time, the hikers explained that their water supply “tasted salty.”

“Because of having that electronic device, people have an expectation that they can do something stupid and be rescued,” said Jackie Skaggs, spokeswoman for Grand Teton National in Wyoming.

“Every once in a while we get a call from someone who has gone to the top of a peak the weather has turned and they are confused about how to get down and they want someone to personally escort them,” Ms. Skaggs said. “The answer is that you are up there for the night.”

The National Park Service does not keep track of what percentage of its search and rescue missions, which have been climbing for the last five years and topped 3,500 in 2009, are technology related. But in an effort to home in on “contributing factors” to park accidents, the service recently felt compelled to add “inattention to surroundings” to more old-fashioned causes like “darkness” and “animals.”

The service acknowledges that the new technologies have benefits as well. They can and do save lives when calls come from people who really are in trouble.

The park service itself has put technology to good use in countering the occasional unruliness of visitors. Last summer, several men who thought they had managed to urinate undetected into the Old Faithful geyser in Yellowstone were surprised to be confronted by rangers shortly after their stunt. It turns out that the park had installed a 24-hour camera so people could experience Old Faithful’s majesty online. Viewers spotted the men in action and called to alert the park.

In an era when most people experience the wild mostly through television shows that may push the boundaries of appropriateness for entertainment, rangers say people can wildly miscalculate the risks of their antics.

In an extreme instance in April, two young men from Las Vegas were killed in Zion Park in Utah while trying to float a hand-built log raft down the Virgin River. A park investigation found that the men “did not have whitewater rafting experience, and had limited camping experience, little food and no overnight gear.”

“They told their father that they intended to record their entire trip on video camera as an entry into the 'Man vs. Wild' competition” on television, investigators wrote.

Far more common but no less perilous, park workers say, are visitors who arrive with cellphones or GPS devices and little else — sometimes not even water — and find themselves in trouble. Such visitors often acknowledge that they have pushed themselves too far because they believe that in a bind, the technology can save them.

It does not always work out that way. “We have seen people who have solely relied on GPS technology but were not using common sense or maps and compasses, and it leads them astray,” said Kyle Patterson, a spokesman for Rocky Mountain National Park just outside Denver.

Like a lot of other national parks, Rocky Mountain does not allow cellphone towers, so service that visitors may take for granted is spotty at best. “Sometimes when they call 911, it goes to a communications center in Nebraska or Wyoming,” Mr. Patterson said. “And that can take a long time to sort out.”

One of the most frustrating new technologies for the parks to deal with, rangers say, are the personal satellite messaging devices that can send out an emergency signal but are not capable of two-way communication. (Globalstar Inc., the manufacturer of SPOT brand devices, says new models allow owners to send a message with the help request.)

In some cases, said Keith Lober, the ranger in charge of search and rescue at Yosemite National Park in California, the calls “come from people who don’t need the 911 service, but they take the SPOT and at the first sign of trouble, they hit the panic button.”

But without two-way communication, the rangers cannot evaluate the seriousness of the call, so they respond as if it were an emergency.

Last fall, two men with teenage sons pressed the help button on a device they were carrying as they hiked the challenging backcountry of Grand Canyon National Park. Search and rescue sent a helicopter, but the men declined to board, saying they had activated the device because they were short on water.

The group’s leader had hiked the Grand Canyon once before, but the other man had little backpacking experience. Rangers reported that the leader told them that without the device, “we would have never attempted this hike.”

The group activated the device again the next evening. Darkness prevented a park helicopter from flying in, but the Arizona Department of Public Safety sent in a helicopter whose crew could use night vision equipment.

The hikers were found and again refused rescue. They said they had been afraid of dehydration because the local water “tasted salty.” They were provided with water.

Helicopter trips into the park can cost as much as $3,400 an hour, said Maureen Oltrogge, a spokeswoman for Grand Canyon National Park.

Rangers responded to a cellphone call for help

from climbers on Grand Teton who were injured

in a lightning storm. Sixteen people were

evacuated, and another died.

So perhaps it is no surprise that when the hikers pressed the button again the following morning, park personnel gave them no choice but to return home. The leader was issued a citation for creating hazardous conditions in the parks

Who Will Take Care of Black Americans by Prof Devin Robinson

A friend sent me this post from the That Minority Thing Blog:

In this new emerging market where independence and innovation is needed, howwill Blacks, a group who were historically taught to be dependent, fair in thisnew economy?

There are three major problems for a poor or non-suspecting Black in America.One, he is subject to being educated by the public school system. Two, thepublic school teaches students how to become employees who are more likely tofocus on product consumption, not production and income dependence, notindependence. Three, this educational design does Blacks a disservice since itdoesn’t address the needs of a Black in a society where job creation ispredominantly done by non-Blacks. This poses a great obstacle for BlackAmericans.

Being conditioned to become consumers and employees wouldn’t be so much of a bigdeal if Blacks had a business infrastructure to step into to support ourpsychographics and cultural dynamics. It’s like spoiling your child. It wouldn’tbe a problem if your child never had to rely on anyone else for their care butyou or if they won’t ever need anyone else’s assistance in life. The problemarouses when a spoiled and entitled child has to depend on someone other thantheir parent for help.

Since the change of consumer dynamics where there is no longer consumerdiscrimination based on race, we’ve excelled in that area. However, thedisparities still exists in jobs and ownership, which creates a systematicdisadvantage against Blacks. Recent reports show that full-time workers willbecome the workforce minority over the next 20 years. This means contractors andpart-time workers, who must have a sense of entrepreneurship to succeed, willdominate the market. Contractors will be expected to pay their own taxes,organize their own work schedules and obtain their own clients. Part-timeworkers will be expected to manage multiple jobs and survive on inconsistentincome. Here’s the catch, unemployment rates may be at high levels but thedemand for products and services hasn’t declined. This simply means that theability for corporations to deliver a product or service to the consumer isbecoming difficult without having to skyrocket their prices. It also means thatthose who can fill demands of the population without doing so through employmentwill stand the test of time. Since companies are required to pay a minimum wage,with decreasing business revenues, employees have now become a steep expense.Being able to contract oneself out to communities that would employ you at alower wage rate than what the federal laws mandates will become a crucialability for Blacks in this changing market. Vice President Joe Biden cited thatof the eight million jobs lost since the 2008 recession, a vast majority of themwill not return.

Civil Rights activists such as Rev Jesse Jackson, Rev Al Sharpton, Marcus Garveyand Rev Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. have done (and continue to do) brilliantwork in toppling a system that wasn’t favorable to Blacks. However, the workmust continue in the form of economic subsistence of the people. Because of theill-informed nature of many Blacks, wealth transfer by Government to Blacks inthe forms of unemployment benefits, welfare assistance and social programs,which subsidizes expenses, guarantees that these benefits will be returned tobig businesses, that are typically not owned by Blacks or by people living inBlack communities.

So as this new market emerges, Blacks must systematically and methodicallyadjust in order to survive. Completing high school helps with success but doesnot eliminate the economic death sentence written for Blacks if we do not gainsupplemental and realistic American dynamic knowledge to compliment the basictheories learned in public schools. With Blacks being taught to self-destruct inthe early years of America’s birth, we have almost three times as much work todo in order to be a competitive group. However, all news isn’t grim forBlacks’ independence, with a nearing $1.2 trillion spending power all we needare lessons in how and where to spend in order to become a respected andindependent group in America.Devin Robinson is an economics professor at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, GAand author of Rebuilding the Black Infrastructure: Making America a ColorlessNation. He can be reached at devin@devinrobinson.com.

And Kentke replied~

I am truly saddened by this post. The range of possibilities the author offers are so deeply limited. Then to read the majority of the comments and realize that they too express a view of themselves as victim and subjugated. The level of helpless dependency that all but one or two comments express is heartbreaking.

Not anywhere is there any mention that there is a world out there, and that we are strong survivors, descendents of the first human beings. All that we see in the manifest world would not be, if the courage, genius, creativity and seeking spirit of Life, did not first manifest in humans that looked like us. These same qualities, are still present in our DNA. They just lay dormant within us. This post shows how much centuries of social programming adverse to our own good, have succeeded.

America, first of all, is not the beginning or the end of the continuum of our lives. So when we think of ourselves, only within the context that America, and this experience has created for us, automatically we have limited truth. Surely, we have limited the possibilities of our intrinsic being. That is first for me. That we must make an effort to see the bigger picture. Otherwise, as the hip-hop anthem warned us....we are believing the HYPE (as in Don't Believe the Hype).

If we weighed our talents, abilities and experience on a scale, with that of other ethnic groups of the world, we would realize that the descendants of Africans in America possess qualities and abilities that far exceed those of many nations. Even without college degrees in every household, our communities are full of people with intelligence, understanding, integrity and great abliity. Because of the psychological and social ignorance here, our development and contributions are retarded, limited, warped and just plain stifled.

An intelligent person, recognizing this, would do what every other intelligent animal on the planet does, when confronted with these type of conditions. Raise it's head up, and look around to see, where there are environments and conditions, that would be conducive for a good life. All living things need certain conditions in order to thrive. It's clear, even with a Black president, that here, those conditions are either not present, or overcoming the obstacles to obtain them is so consuming, that it's often futile, or not worth the effort.

At this, point, for me, the question becomes: Are there other places on the planet where we might take our intelligence, talents and abilities and thrive? Are there communities and nations that would welcome people such as ourselves, even invite us to participate fully in the governance and good that wholesome life entails?

What's wrong with our thinking that we can only get angry at all these immigrants that come here anyway they can, because of opportunity? Why are we not also out on the world scene, living in other nations, working in other places, discovering where we can take advantage of openings in society, business, education, etc.

Our life here has made us experts in areas of civil life, both urban and rural. Even the high school dropout, or chronically unemployed, are rich in understanding and experience that would have value in the global arena. We have no idea of these factors however, because we've had our heads up America's a_ _ for so long, breathing the poison of her waste, that we've completely lost sense of who and what we really are.

That's the problem. Our "best" thinkers (ie: professors), are asking questions like the one posed here, instead of encouraging us to think outside of this box of mental slavery; Instead of directing us to listen to our inner self for solutions, not America's failed systems that are only to keep us in a certain role and place.

If we can reclaim our thinking, and make it reflect our authentic selves, serve Life, and our need to be true to ourselves....we will save not only ourselves, but we will positively affect America's destiny in the process, and if we let ourselves go all the way....we will definately be a part of the energy restoring wholeness all over the globe.

I respect and appreciate the effort of everyone here. I just want us to stop limiting evolution, and ourselves by relying on such a poor example of what's possible for us. We know America. We as Eldridge said, 'Live in the belly of the beast'.

I trust that each of us inwardly has an ideal of existence. Take some time and think deeply: Do my highest ideals of success and happiness come from American images, values, and programming, or are they truly mine? If you realize there is a discreprancy, ask yourself can you achieve your ideal here? If this place doesn't offer the possibility of your ideal in a reasonable amount of time, is it not our duty to have courage, be willing to explore and seek where a better place might be? Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, Asia, islands of the oceans, South America....Hey it's your world....

p.s. I highlight the word thrive here a couple of times, because I want us to think about that word. It's a wonderful word. It's a very important word, that we rarely hear anymore. Look it up. Get into it. Commit to it. It's very important to the living process. We are here to trive. Not just to exist, get by, or barely make it....Discover what you need to thrive, then surround yourself with it and soar.....

lovu,

Kentke

just in case you have a different dictionary than I do~

Thrive:

to have oneself in hand

1. to prosper; flourish; be successful, especially as the result of economical management.

2. to grow vigourously or luxuriantly; improve physically

so.....get busy thriving Beloveds! And have fun doing it!

"No, Mister! You Cannot Share My Pain!" -One Man's View of Haitian History in One Column

One of the survivors of Tuesday's devastating earthquake in Haiti.

The nation of Haiti jumped on the world stage again, as hip-hop artist and Haitian native Wyclef Jean announced his candidacy for the presidency of Haiti. Although he left the country as a child, Jean has long been an outspoken proponent, supporting his homeland through a charity organiztion. It will be interesting to watch his journey.

Below is a article by a journalist who's entire career is devoted to Caribbean politics and culture. He lays out factors and elements from Haiti's past that whomever assumes the Haitian presidency, will need to be mindful of.

Kentke

By John Maxwell, Columnist

Jamaica Observer Newspaper

Sunday, January 10, 2010

If you shared my pain you would not continue to make me suffer, to torture me, to deny me my dignity and my rights, especially my rights to self-determination and self-expression.

Six years ago you sent your Ambassador Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to perform an action illegal under the laws of your country, my country and of the international community of nations.

It was an act so outrageous, so bestially vile and wicked that your journalists and news agencies, your diplomats and politicians to this day cannot bring themselves to truthfully describe or own up to the crime that was committed when US Ambassador James Foley, a career diplomat, arrived at the house of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide with a bunch of CIA thugs and US Marines to kidnap the president of Haiti and his wife.

The Aristides were stowed aboard a CIA plane normally used for 'renditions' of suspected terrorists to the worldwide US gulag of dungeons and torture chambers.

The plane, on which the Aristides are listed as "cargo", flew to Antigua - an hour away - and remained on the ground in Antigua while Colin Powell's State Department and the CIA tried to blackmail and bribe various African countries to accept ("give asylum to") the kidnapped president and his wife.

The Central African Republic - one of George W Bush's 'Dark Corners of the World' - agreed for an undisclosed sum, to give the Aristides temporary asylum.

Before any credible plot can be designed and paid for - for the disappearance of the Aristides - they are rescued by friends, flown to temporary asylum in Jamaica where the Government cravenly yielded to the blackmail of Condoleezza Rice to deny them the permanent asylum to which they were entitled and which most Jamaicans had hoped for.

Meanwhile, in Haiti, the US Marines protected an undisciplined ragbag of rapists and murderers to allow them entry to the capital. The Marines chased the medical students out of the new Medical School established by Aristide with Cuban help and teachers. The Marines bivouac in the school, going out on nightly raids, trailed by fleets of ambulances with body bags, hunting down Fanmi Lavalas activists described as 'chimeres' - terrorists.

The real terrorists, led by two convicted murderers, Chamblain and Philippe, assisted the Marines in the eradication of 'chimeres' until the Marines were replaced by foreign troops, paid by the United Nations, who took up the hunt on behalf of the civilised world - France, Canada, the US and Brazil.

The terrorists and the remains of the Duvalier tontons and the CIA-bred FRAPF declared open season on the remnants of Aristide's programmes to build democracy. They burnt down the new museum of Haitian culture, destroyed the children's television station and generally laid waste to anything and everything which could remind Haitians of their glorious history.

Haitians don't know that without their help Latin America might still be part of the Spanish Empire and Simon Bolivar a brief historical footnote.

Imagine, Niggers Speaking French!

About 90 years ago when Professor Woodrow Wilson was president of the USA, his secretary of state was a fundamentalist lawyer named William Jennings Bryan who had three times run unsuccessfully for president.

The Americans had decided to invade Haiti to collect debts owed by Haiti to Citibank.

General Smedley Butler, the only American soldier to have twice won the Congressional Medal of Honour, described his role in the US Army:
"I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half-a-dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long.
General Butler said: "I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. ... My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical in the military service." Butler compared himself unfavourably to Al Capone. He said his official racketeering made Capone look like an amateur.

Secretary Bryan was dumbfounded by the Haitians. "Imagine," he said, "Niggers speaking French!"

Smedley Butler and Bryan were involved in Haiti because of something that happened nearly a hundred years before. The French slave-masters, expelled from Haiti and defeated again when they tried to re-enslave the Haitians, connived with the Americans to starve them into submission by a trade embargo. With no sale for Haitian sugar, the country was weak and run-down when a French fleet arrived bearing a demand for reparations. Having bought their freedom in blood, the Haitians were to purchase it again in gold.

The French demanded, essentially, that the Haitians pay France an amount equivalent to 90 per cent of the entire Haitian budget for the foreseeable future. When this commitment proved too arduous to honour, the City Bank offered the Haitians a 'debt exchange", paying off the French in exchange for a lower-interest, longer-term debt. The terms may have seemed better but were just as usurious and it was not paid off until 1947.

Because of the debt the Americans invaded Haiti, seized the Treasury, exiled the president, their Jim Crow policies were used to divide the society, to harass the poor and finally provoked a second struggle for freedom which was one of the most brutal episodes in colonial history.

Long before Franco bombed Guernica, exciting the horror and revulsion of civilised people, the Americans perfected their dive-bombing techniques against unarmed Haitian peasants, many of whom had never seen aircraft before.

The Americans set up a Haitian Army in the image of their Jim Crow Marines, and it was these people, the alien and alienated Élite who, with some conscripted blacks like the Duvaliers, have ruled Haiti for most of the last century.

When I flew over Haiti for the first time in 1959 en route from New York to San Juan, Puerto Rico, I saw for the first time the border between the green Dominican Republic and brown Haiti.
First-world journalists interpret the absence of trees on the Haitian side to the predations of the poor, disregarding the fact that Western religion and American capitalism were mainly responsible.

Why is it that nowhere else in the Caribbean is there similar deforestation?

Haiti's Dessalines constitution offered sanctuary to every escaped slave of any colour. All such people of whatever colour were deemed 'black' and entitled to citizenship. Only officially certified 'blacks' could own land in Haiti.

The American occupation, anticipating Hayek, Freedman and Greenspan, decided that such a rule was a hindrance to development. The assistant secretary of the US Navy, one Franklin D Roosevelt, was given the job of writing a new, modern constitution for Haiti.

This constitution meant foreigners could own land. Within a very short time the lumberjacks were busy, felling old growth Mahogany and Caribbean Pine for carved doors for the rich and mahogany speedboats, boardroom tables seating 40, etc. The devastated land was put to produce rubber, sisal for ropes and all sorts of pie in the sky plantations.

When President Paul Magloire came to Jamaica 50 years ago Haitians were still speaking of an Artibonite dam for electricity and irrigation. But the ravages of the recent past were too much to recover.

As Marguerite Laurent (EziliDanto) writes: Don't expect to learn how a people with a Vodun culture that reveres nature and especially the Mapou (oak-like or ceiba pendantra/bombax) trees, and other such big trees as the abode of living entities and therefore as sacred things, were forced to watch the Catholic Church, during Rejete - the violent anti-Vodun crusade - gather whole communities at gunpoint into public squares, and forced them to watch their agents burn Haitian trees in order to teach Haitians their Vodun Gods were not in nature, that the trees were the "houses of Satan".

In partnership with the US, the mulatto President Elie Lescot (1941-45) summarily expelled peasants from more than 100,000 hectares of land, razing their homes and destroying more than a million fruit trees in the vain effort to cultivate rubber on a large plantation scale. Also, under the pretext of the Rejete campaign, thousands of acres of peasant lands were cleared of sacred trees so that the US could take their lands for agribusiness.

After the Flood

Norman Manley used to say "River Come Down" when his party seemed likely to prevail. The Kreyol word Lavalas conveys the same meaning.

Since the Haitian people's decisive rejection of the Duvalier dictatorships in the early 90s, their spark and leader has been Jean-Bertrand Aristide whose bona fides may be assessed from the fact that the CIA and conservative Americans have been trying to discredit him almost from the word go.

As he put it in one of his books, his intention has been to build a paradise on the garbage heap bequeathed to Haiti by the US and the Elite.

The bill of particulars is too long to go into here, but the destruction of the new museum of Culture, the breaking up of the medical school, the destruction of the children's television station gives you the flavour. But the essence is captured in the brutal attempt to obliterate the spirit of Haitian community; the attempt to destroy Lavalas by murdering its men and raping its women, the American-directed subversion of a real police force, the attacks on education and the obliteration of the community self-help systems which meant that when Hurricane Jeanne and all the other weather systems since have struck Haiti, many more have died than in any other country similarly stricken. In an earthquake, totally unpredictable, every bad factor is multiplied.

The American blocking of international aid means that there is no modern water supply anywhere, no town planning, no safe roads, none of the ordinary infrastructure of any other Caribbean state. There are no building standards, no emergency shelters, no parks.

So, when I write about mothers unwittingly walking on dead babies in the mud, when I write about people so poor they must eat patties made of clay and shortening, when I write about people with their faces 'chopped off' or about any of eight million horror stories from the crime scene that is Haiti, please don't tell me you share their pain or mine.

Tell me, where is Lovinsky Pierre Antoine and ten thousand like him?

If you share my pain and their pain, why don't you stop causing it? Why don't you stop the torture?

If you want to understand me, look at the woman in the picture (above), and the children half-buried with her. You cannot hear their screams because they know there is no point in screaming. It will do no more good than voting.

What is she thinking: perhaps it is something like this - No, mister! You cannot share my pain!
Some time, perhaps after the camera is gone, people will return to dig us out with their bare hands. But not you.

Copyright©2010 John Maxwell

John Maxwell, is a veteran Jamaican journalist and commentator who has covered Caribbean and international affairs for more than 40 years for the Jamaica Gleaner, the BBC, and the Jamaica Sunday Herald. He is currently a columnist for The Jamaica Observer.In 1999 Maxwell single-handedly thwarted the Jamaican government's efforts to build houses at Hope, the nation's oldest and best known botanical gardens. His campaigning earned him the region's richest journalism prize in the 2000 Sandals Resort's annual Environmental Journalism Competition. He is also the author of How to Make Our Own News: A Primer for Environmentalists and Journalists.
http://johnmaxwellshouse.blogspot.com/

Victory for Wolves

A federal judge has sensibly ruled that gray wolves in Montana and Idaho must be provided federal protection.

If you know me~

then you know, that my greatest claim to fame, is that I'm a very good dog Mommy. And we all know that the Mother of all canines is the wolf. So this Knewz is particularly heartwarming. I'd like to 'borrow' two quotes from the Howling For Justice blog, whose web address is noted below. They're so simple, and true. I want to suggest them as sources for moments of contemplation. See what arises within your consciousness after sitting in silence with these statements.

"You can't love nature with a gun"....Paul Watson

"For large carnivores to have a long term future they have to be allowed to spread naturally and not be restricted to (zoos), designated conservation zones and National parks."......wolves in scotland

lovu...all

Kentke

New York Times Editorial

Published: August 6, 2010

Donald Molloy, a Federal District Court judge in Montana, ruled Thursday that gray wolves in Montana and Idaho must be provided federal protection under the Endangered Species Act. This is a welcome decision. The immediate effect will be to spare the animals from hunts planned for this fall that are now illegal. The larger hope is that Washington will devise a protection plan ensuring the wolves’ survival not only in Montana and Idaho but across the northern Rocky Mountains.

Wolves in Montana and Idaho were removed from federal protection under rules proposed by the Bush administration. The rules were upheld by President Obama’s Interior Department, which said that both states had developed satisfactory management plans and that the wolves, in effect, could be released into their custody.

Wyoming’s plan was deemed inadequate, and federal protections remained. But in Montana and Idaho, the first reaction was to authorize limited wolf hunts that — though the states argued otherwise — would slowly guarantee the extinction of the species.

Judge Molloy ruled that protections for what is essentially a single species cannot be different in each state — either the wolf must be removed from the list or listed as an endangered species in every state, meaning throughout its range. Judging by early comments, the Interior Department’s preference seems to be to persuade Wyoming to improve its management plan so that the government can delist the wolf there — thus bringing the three states into harmony.

This is a terrible idea, and could end up authorizing hunts in three states, not two. The Interior Department, instead, should write an areawide management plan. There are roughly 1,700 wolves across the Rockies — far more than when they were reintroduced in the 1990s. But most biologists believe there should be a minimum of 2,000, with enough breeding pairs to ensure the long-term survival of a dynamic population across the range.

State plans meant to satisfy hunters rather than protect the wolves cannot do that. The gray wolf may need federal protection for years to come.

For more information on this issue check the website below.

http://howlingforjustice.wordpress.com/category/howling-for-justice/

From the Nature at it's Best File~

Enjoy this short video that I think shows one example of what my Native American ancestors call 'Right Relationship'.

Here the relationship is between humans, orcas and one lone Gentoo penguin.

By the way, the person that posted this on the web had this to say: "I have been in contact with the guy who was driving the boat. He said the whales were just playing with it and traning a younger member of the pod and that they could have taken it at anytime. He also said they were never in any danger from the whales. And I did NOT ADD THE MUSIC!"

Enjoy!

Kentke

Food: Inside the Hothouses of Industry

From Nature News Magazine~

This is a long article, but it's offered here, 'a votre sante'.

It's now an accepted fact, that we are

what we eat. So it's important to know how and what the people that are manipulating the food~ which we put in the soil and our bodies~ are thinking.

Kentke

Published online 28 July 2010

Maize containing a drought-resistant bacterial gene is put to the test at Monsanto.

N. GILBERT

Feeding the world is going to require the scientific and financial muscle of agricultural biotechnology companies. Natasha Gilbert asks whether they're up to the task.

Nature 466, 548-551 (2010)
News Feature

Natasha Gilbert

Do Not Water, says the small notice by the pots of withered, brown maize seedlings, the genetically unlucky ones in an experiment testing maize's tolerance to drought. Five minutes after stepping into the huge greenhouse in which these plants are attempting to grow at the research headquarters of Monsanto in St Louis, Missouri, I am beginning to feel genetically disadvantaged too. Sweat is beading on my skin. Like the desiccated plants, I am clearly not cut out for the fierce summer temperatures that the greenhouse's climate is set to imitate. Just next to them though, a row of green, sprightly seedlings is faring better thanks to a gene that researchers inserted from the bacterium Bacillus subtilis. Just as lively is Dianah Majee, the plant biologist showing me around. Her face hasn't even worked up a shine.

These green plants and the scientists that produced them are unusual in ways not visible to the eye. They are Monsanto's entry in a race to make the first transgenic, drought-tolerant maize (corn) that is commercially available to farmers. The race is tight. But after more than 20 years of research and development (R&D), Monsanto says it is now two years away from launching the seeds onto the market. And within the next few years, the company and its major competitors hope to bring to market other transgenic crops, resistant to stresses such as soils starved of nitrogen, phosphorus and other essential nutrients.

In pursuing these crops, Monsanto and the other giants of agricultural biotechnology are making a significant departure from what until now has been a mainstay of their business: developing and selling pesticide- or herbicide-resistance crops, such as Monsanto's Bt maize. When these plants were first introduced in the 1990s they produced dramatic increases in yield for farmers — and a windfall in profits for the companies supplying the seed. But the yields have peaked, and so have the profits. Now the next big commercial gains lie in crops that can withstand water- and nutrient-deficient soils. US farmers lose on average 10–15% of their annual yield because of drought and water stress.

Crops that can beat these stresses are also a vital part of the solution to the global food crisis. If the 9 billion people expected to inhabit the world by 2050 are to be fed, then farms in low-income countries must grow more food, sustainably, on water- and nutrient-poor soils.

Researchers and policy-makers realize that they can't meet the food-security challenge without the private sector, which makes up a significant share of the global agricultural research effort (see 'Public vs private'). Monsanto's annual research budget alone is US$1.2 billion, just topping the US federal government's total spend on agricultural science of $1.1 billion in 2007 (the most recent figures available). In contrast, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), the world-leading group of centres carrying out agricultural R&D for developing countries, has an annual budget of $500 million.

Getting together

So in their demand for hardier crops, the commercial aims of the biotechnology companies and the requirements of the developing world have aligned — and companies such as Monsanto hope to fulfil them. In June 2008, Monsanto pledged to double yields in its core crops of maize, soya bean and cotton by 2030 over 2000 levels. In September of the same year, Monsanto's chairman promised to "improve the lives of an additional 5 million resource-poor farmers", in large part by making some of its seed technology available to increase their productivity. Other companies have made similar pledges.

“The idea that these farmers get free handouts forever is not sustainable.”

All this leads to another reason why the green, transgenic seedlings in the stifling Missouri greenhouse stand out. In 2008, Monsanto partnered with the African Agricultural Technology Foundation, a non-profit research organization in Nairobi, Kenya, to apply the techniques and discoveries it has made with its commercial drought-tolerant maize to developing drought-tolerant varieties for subsistence farmers in sub-Saharan Africa, to be available as quickly as possible after commercialization in the United States. The partnership, which is also funded with $47 million in grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, Washington, and the Howard G. Buffett Foundation in Decatur, Illinois, is one of a handful of exceptionally large projects established in recent years in which public and private sectors have joined forces to tackle food scarcity in developing countries. The companies say that these investments are just good business sense because they will create future customers as developing-world farmers gradually move from subsistence to profits, making money to spend on seed. The companies also see an opportunity to buff their corporate images with a humanitarian cloth.

Slow progress

It will take more than buffing to overcome critics' deep scepticism about commercial biotechnology. Genetically modified (GM) crops, they say, have so far done little for the developing world. Earlier humanitarian initiatives have yet to reach fruition. Golden rice, for example — transgenic rice designed to combat vitamin A malnutrition — has been in development since 1990. Critics ask what has taken so long; they worry that industry's grasp on intellectual property is holding up research progress; they question why these supposedly transformative transgenic technologies have yet to put food in the hungriest bellies. "I don't think the private sector is doing enough," says Achim Dobermann, deputy director general for research at CGIAR's International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in Manila, the Philippines.
Roger Beachy, director of the US Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture in Washington DC, wonders how far the agricultural biotech companies are willing to go. "Have they made as much progress in developing countries as they should have?" he asks.

"What do they see as their responsibility in the developing world?" To many scientists, the answers to these questions are hidden behind a corporate facade.

Which is why I'm here, slowly wilting in Monsanto's greenhouse, and why I travelled to two other giants in the sector — Pioneer Hi-Bred in neighbouring Iowa, and the UK research headquarters of Swiss company Syngenta — to tour their labs, greenhouses and test fields, where the next generation of crops are sprouting. I wanted to see them and talk to senior researchers and executives about the future of their science, their business — and, inextricably, the future of the planet's food.

I sit in the small waiting room of Monsanto's main building, A, with its single bench and friendly security guard. Buildings B through to Z are scattered around the manicured gardens and endless car parks that make up the rest of its headquarters. Monsanto employs around 5,000 scientists and technical assistants worldwide and splits its R&D budget equally between biotechnology and traditional plant breeding. (Monsanto, like the other companies I visited, does not break down how much of the budget is spent on its humanitarian projects.)
“Without the cooperation of the private sector we would probably never have been able to solve the intellectual-property mess.”

For its GM crop work, Monsanto's scientists screen hundreds or even thousands of genes from plants, bacteria and other organisms for ones that might endow plants with a desired trait. The drought-tolerant B. subtilis gene, cspB, that they found helps bacteria deal with environmental stress such as cold temperature. When inserted into maize plants it helps them cope with drought by disentangling RNA, which folds up abnormally when the plant is water-starved. The theory is that the energy the plant would have spent fixing drought-entangled RNA can now be sunk into grain.

Away from the sweltering greenhouses, posters provide a regular reminder of Monsanto's 'pledge' to the world in six different languages. The company promises dialogue, transparency, respect, sharing and benefits. And Bob Reiter, vice-president for breeding technologies at Monsanto, is up front about the company's business-minded approach to its humanitarian work. Crops that will make the company money in the short term, in richer countries, could also eventually make money in lower income ones. "The initial approach is to help the subsistence farmer get on his feet," he says. "There has to be a humanitarian element to it. But you have to think about what a viable agricultural industry in Africa looks like, and the idea that these farmers get free handouts forever is not sustainable."

Long-term plan

It is with these sentiments that Monsanto entered into its public–private partnership with the African Agricultural Technology Foundation. It is not giving away the green strain that I saw thriving in the greenhouses. It is giving away the resources it used to make it — such as the sequence of the cspB gene, plus information about other drought-tolerant genes and traits that the researchers are introducing into maize through traditional breeding. Crops developed through the partnership will be made available royalty free to subsistence farmers. If a country moves from subsistence farming to commercial farming then, in theory, the company could start charging for the seed.

But first Monsanto has to get its 'first generation' drought-tolerant maize into fields in the developed world. The company has finished testing the seed; now it has to secure regulatory approval from US federal agencies and scale up seed manufacture. Researchers at Monsanto are already working on 'second generation' crops — the details of which the company is keeping close to its chest — that can grow in a wider range of environments across the United States. Behind the rows of silver doors to the company's 108 growth chambers, an even hardier strain of maize is surely growing.

Mechanized engineering

One state north of Missouri, on the outskirts of the small midwestern town of Johnston, Iowa, the last few rows of houses suddenly drop away and a sea of young green maize rolls up to the horizon. In patches the maize has turned yellow and its growth is stunted. Recent intense rainstorms have flooded parts of the fields, washing nutrients from the soil that are vital to the crop's healthy growth, including nitrogen fertilizers.

Pioneer Hi-Bred, part of the chemical giant DuPont, saw an opportunity here to increase its customers' yields. When global nitrogen fertilizer prices peaked in 2008 at more than $450 a tonne, nearly double the previous year's cost, the company ramped up a research project that it had begun in 2005 to develop maize hybrids that produce the same yield on less fertilizer.

Pioneer isn't quite the biotech behemoth that Monsanto is: in 2009 DuPont spent $734 million on its agriculture and nutrition R&D, which includes Pioneer Hi-Bred's work on seeds and crop protection. The company has now mechanized much of the process of linking the genes inserted into plants to desired traits. A robot hauls maize plants off conveyor belts; another takes digital images to rapidly assess how novel genes have changed the plants' growth.

Some of Pioneer Hi-Bred's experimental maize.

In Pioneer's case, researchers hit on one possible gene in the red alga Porphyra perforata, which can grow in environments with nitrogen levels 100 times lower than maize. The gene codes for the enzyme nitrate reductase, which converts nitrate into nitrite. "We don't really know how it works," says Dale Loussaert, a senior scientist working on the project, of the algal gene. Even so, he says, "the plant models in the lab look promising. The yields look good." The company does not expect to have a product on the market for another 10–12 years though.

Pioneer has agreed to donate the transgenic technologies, molecular markers and other resources associated with its nitrogen-use project to a public–private partnership. The Improved Maize for African Soils (IMAS) project was launched in February 2010. It is led by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT) in Mexico, part of the CGIAR, and it received $19.5 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the United States Agency for International Development. The maize varieties that will be developed through IMAS will be made available royalty free to seed companies that sell to small-scale farmers in sub-Saharan Africa.

Pioneer is also involved in a project to increase the nutritional content of sorghum, a crop that is a staple food for hundreds of millions of people throughout Africa and Asia. Sorghum has high levels of phytate — the form in which phosphorous is stored in plants — which binds strongly to essential amino acids, vitamin A, iron and zinc, so these nutrients are not available in a digestible form. Consequently, people who depend on sorghum as their main food source are often malnourished. Since it joined in 2005, the company has donated technologies worth $4.8 million to the scheme, led by African Harvest, a non-profit foundation based in Nairobi, Kenya.

Florence Wambugu, founder and chief executive of African Harvest, used to sit on a science advisory panel for DuPont, and so knew that the company was developing technologies that would be useful to African Harvest's sorghum project. She approached the company for help. "It is not just the technology donation; this won't amount to a product. We had to get outside expertise to help manage the money and people, and ensure we are meeting milestones," she says. Marc Albertsen, a senior research fellow at Pioneer Hi-Bred and co-principal investigator on the sorghum project, says that tests in June showed that transgenic sorghum varieties developed by Pioneer produced 80% less phytate but 20% more iron and 30% more zinc than conventional varieties.

Such results are not going to assuage the critics. Gregory Graff, an agricultural economist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, says that the majority of companies' R&D spending and effort still goes towards blockbuster crops with traits, such as pest control, that benefit agribusiness, leaving neglected many crops that are important in the developing world. "They bring out one or two examples of public good research, such as drought-resistant varieties and golden rice, but research on these has been going on for a very long time and none are actually ready yet," he says.

Graff says that the lack of progress is in large part a consequence of the hold that the private sector has on intellectual-property rights to crucial technology, such as genetic markers, and the sequences of key genes and 'promoters' that drive gene expression. Dobermann, of the IRRI, agrees that access to intellectual property is a problem. His institution would like to experiment with traits to improve the drought tolerance of plants and their efficiency in using nitrogen, but there are "so many restrictions" on the use of patented technology that researchers at his institute concluded "it was not worth getting into," he says. "We either have to reinvent the technology ourselves or use a second-class solution," he says.

John Bedbrook, vice-president of agricultural biotechnology at DuPont, agrees that "tensions" over access to intellectual property exist, but says the company has to remain "dispassionate". Without intellectual property, he says, companies would have little incentive to invest in the research to begin with. But, he adds, companies could be "more open source with enabling technologies" such as promoters. Reiter says that restrictions on access to intellectual property are often misconceived. When public researchers ask the company for access to patented technology, he says, it often turns out that the subject of their research was not actually covered by a patent. All this leaves a question: what has really been holding up these projects?

The real delays

This was the issue that I discussed at Syngenta, whose modern UK research headquarters sit in 260 hectares of verdant English farmland near Bracknell. Syngenta has a history in public–private partnerships through the golden rice project, which AstraZeneca (the agribusiness part of which became Syngenta) joined in 2001. Syngenta worked to increase the amount of a precursor of vitamin A in the rice and make seeds available royalty free to subsistence farmers in sub-Saharan Africa, but the company retains commercial rights elsewhere. (The IRRI, part of the Golden Rice Humanitarian Board, which now directs the project, expects to introduce seeds to farmers by 2012.) But some critics view golden rice as an agonizing failure because it has taken so long, and have been highly distrustful of the company's involvement, assuming that the project was mired because of the numerous patents involved.

Syngenta's research greenhouses.

Not true, says Ingo Potrykus, chairman of the Golden Rice Humanitarian Board and, as an academic researcher, one of the inventors of golden rice. He says that the team initially thought that they had to obtain free licences for 70 patents protecting technologies used in the rice development. But when Syngenta joined the project, its lawyers found that only a handful of these patents applied to the countries where golden rice was targeted. So in fact, he says, intellectual property has not been a major problem. "Without the cooperation of the private sector we would probably never have been able to solve the intellectual-property mess and the project would have ended at this stage," says Potrykus.

Mike Bushell, Syngenta's chief scientist, says complex technology and regulations are the real hold-ups for transgenic crops. "R&D takes around 10 years and then you have to go through the regulatory stage," he says. Bushell says critics overlook how long it takes to develop crop varieties with complex traits such as drought tolerance, which involve many genes and are greatly influenced by environmental conditions. And passing regulatory hurdles involves reams of tests showing, for example, that a gene is stably and safely expressed.

As we stroll past Syngenta's 'monsoon machine', which recreates harsh weather conditions, the discussion turns to the volatile topic of GM crops and their regulation. In 2004–05, the company moved the bulk of its GM research out of Europe and to the United States, in part because of Europe's difficult climate for GM research and the nonexistent market. But this year has seen some signs that the continent's strict stance on GM crops is softening (see D. Butler Nature doi:10.1038/news.2010.112; 2010). That could be good news for the developing world, Bushell says. Although he acknowledges that transgenic crops are not the only solution to increased food production, particularly in the developing world, he argues that they are an important component in a tool box that also includes improved agronomic practices and traditional breeding methods.

Nicholas Kalaitzandonakes, an agricultural economist at the University of Missouri-Columbia who tracks the agricultural biotech industry, says that the industry is making a substantial investment in these public–private partnerships. "I have the impression that people in the industry know they can't make money on [these products] in developing countries but they honestly want to make it available. But they also want to watch their backs." If something goes wrong — for example the research fails, the partnership breaks down, or a transgene contaminates local commercial supplies — a company could face heavy financial liability and public relations fall-out, Kalaitzandonakes says. "It's not a simple thing to manage risk and potential risk."

This cautiousness is partly why only a handful of these partnerships exist. Yet Kalaitzandonakes is optimistic that once one product comes on the market — be it golden rice, a drought-tolerant maize or a biofortified sorghum — then businesses, governments and the public will become more confident in backing the next. The optimism is tangible at Syngenta too. Earlier this year the company started a project with the CIMMYT to research and develop more productive wheat varieties for farmers in the developing world. Bushell says that the company has learnt a lot from its involvement in helping to develop golden rice.

Outside, fields of winter wheat are bordered by an unruly metre-wide strip of wild grasses and flowers designed to attract bees and other pollinating insects. This farming practice, which Syngenta is hoping to encourage across Europe, is also part of the company's efforts to make agriculture sustainable. The world's future food depends not just on crops, however cleverly they are engineered — the ecosystems to support them must have a future too.

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100728/pdf/466548a.pdf