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

Israel to Deport Hundreds of Migrant Workers' Children

How one country chooses to solve issues created by the presence of immigrant workers. An important difference here however, is that these are the children of legal immigrants.

Children of foreign workers play in Tel Aviv. Israel moved Sunday to deport the offspring of migrant workers, mostly small children who were born in Israel, speak Hebrew and have never seen their parents' native countries.

(Ariel Schalit / Associated Press / August 1, 2010)

By Edmund Sanders, Los Angeles Times
August 1, 201011:51 a.m.

Reporting from Jerusalem —

Israel moved Sunday to deport the offspring of hundreds of migrant workers, mostly small children who were born in Israel, speak Hebrew and have never seen their parents' native countries.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the new policy was intended to stem a flood of illegal aliens, whose children receive state-funded education and healthcare benefits, and to defend Israel's Jewish identity.

"On the one hand, this problem is a humanitarian problem,'' Netanyahu said during a meeting Sunday of the Cabinet, which had debated the move for nearly a year. "We all feel and understand the hearts of children. But on the other hand, there are Zionist considerations and ensuring the Jewish character of the state of Israel."

"We don't want to create an incentive for the inflow of hundreds of thousands of illegal migrant workers,'' he said.

Critics, including some government officials, said the decision would punish innocent children by sending them to impoverished or insecure nations that their parents had left in search of better lives in Israel.

The new policy is aimed at children of foreign workers who arrived legally and then started families. Under Israeli law, the children were not automatically granted residency status.

About 400 children and their parents are expected to leave Israel over the next month. Another 800 children may qualify to stay and receive residency status if they meet certain requirements such as living for the last five years in Israel and attending grade school.

Child advocates acknowledged Israel's need to formulate a policy toward migrant workers, but said rules should apply to future generations.

"We're talking about children here,'' said Rotem Ilan, chair of Israeli Children, an advocacy group for migrant workers' families. "

They are the children of people who came to Israel legally to work. We brought these people here to plow our fields, build our houses and take care of our grandparents. And with people, come families."She added: "It's the deportation of children that threatens Israel's Jewish character. The obligation to act with kindness and compassion to foreigners is the most frequently repeated commandment in the Torah."

Sunday's Cabinet decision underscored Israel's ongoing struggle to cope with the estimated 250,000 to 400,000 foreign workers on its soil. About half arrived illegally or have lapsed permits.

Chinese construction workers, Filipino elder-care aides, Thai farmers and others began arriving in the 1990s. They replaced Palestinians as Israel's main source of cheap labor following the West Bank uprisings, which made it more difficult for Palestinians to work in Israel.

Israel has yet to formulate a clear policy on dealing with the foreign workers, including how and when such people can obtain residency or citizenship.

Some critics have called for Israel to expel all the foreign workers, whom they blame for rising crime and straining government resources. But last year Israel issued about 120,000 new permits to foreign workers who fill low-skilled jobs.

To stem the flow of illegal aliens, Israel recently said it planned to construct a wall along its border with Egypt. The government has also cracked down on employers hiring illegal workers, set up a special immigration law-enforcement unit and offered $3,000 payments to foreign workers with children who agree to leave.

edmund.sanders@latimes.com

Batsheva Sobelman in the Times Jerusalem Bureau contributed to this report.

Drivers~ You've Got Choices Rolling Your Way!

After all that humanity has experienced of late....

the failure of the current global economic paradigm, the shift towards a new willingness to be sensitive to the ecological needs of our planet, and yes ~through the wars, and now the BP Gulf spill~, a greater understanding about all the 'baggage' that comes with using fossil fueled petroleum to run our transportation systems, car manufacturers are chomping at the bit to offer you new ways to get around.

This article details what's in store for those looking at the new automotive choices that will soon be available. Focusing on autos from Nissan and Chevrolet this is a good place to begin to familiarize yourself with what we'll soon be seeing in commercials and on the dealers floor.

President Obama looks at a Chevy Volt following a groundbreaking ceremony at a battery factory in Holland, Michigan. (Saul Loeb / AFP/Getty Images)

The Chevrolet Volt, the first mass-market electric vehicle from General Motors Co., will have a sticker price starting at $41,000 when it hits showrooms later this year.


But government tax credits and rebates designed to speed the entry of electric vehicles into the marketplace will make the price more attractive. There’s a federal tax credit of $7,500 for electric vehicles. That lowers the Volt price to $33,500. An earlier report factored in an additional $5,000 credit for Californians, which would have brought the price to $28,500, but GM said the Volt will not be included in the state’s special rebate program.


The sticker price of the hybrid Toyota Prius, the current favorite of gasoline misers and eco-drivers, ranges from $22,150 to $28,820, depending on the trim level and equipment.
Chevrolet also plans to offer a lease program on the Volt with a monthly payment as low as $350 for 36 months plus $2,500 due at lease signing. And in a move to reassure potential buyers that they won’t have to make a costly battery replacement early in the life of the vehicle, GM is guaranteeing the battery in the Volt for eight years or 100,000 miles.


The Volt will be initially sold in California, New York, Michigan, Connecticut, Texas, New Jersey and the Washington, D.C., area, regions where there is a growing power charging infrastructure for electric vehicles or where local and state governments provide extra incentives for electric vehicle purchases.


The regions where the Volt will be sold also have different climates and driving patterns that will demonstrate the abilities of the sedan, said John Hughes, Volt’s marketing manager.
The car comes with a kit that will allow drivers to plug the vehicle into a standard electric socket, though it will take about 10 hours to fully charge. Owners who upgrade a circuit to 240 volts could charge the Volt in four hours, Hughes said.


But unlike the Nissan Leaf, an electric vehicle and the car that likely will be the Volt’s main rival through next year, Californians won’t have the potential to get thousands of dollars more off the sticker price through a special rebate program operated by the California Air Resources Board. Chevrolet did not put the Volt through the testing because it would have delayed the launch of the car and added expense.


The all-electric Nissan Leaf hatchback will start at $32,780 when it goes on sale in December. It also qualifies for the federal tax credit and might qualify for an additional $5,000 rebate pending emissions tests, said Johanna Levine, air pollution specialist with the Air Resources Board in Sacramento. Nissan has said the car will qualify for the rebate. Together, the government subsidies will lower the base price for the standard Leaf to $20,280 in California. Nissan also has a lease deal — $349 a month on a 36 month lease with an initial $1,999 customer payment.


Enterprise Holdings Inc., which owns the Enterprise, Alamo and National car rental companies plans to purchase 500 of the Leaf hatchbacks for its rental fleets in January.


“As a company that owns and operates the world’s largest fleet of passenger vehicles, we have a vested interest and a history of working with manufacturers to integrate alternative-powered vehicles into our fleet,” said Lee Broughton, director of sustainability for Enterprise Holdings, on Tuesday.


Although both are electric, the two vehicles use different systems. The Leaf is an all-electric vehicle with a range of 70 to 120 miles, depending on driving conditions, with zero emissions. It is powered by a 24-kilowatt-hour, laminated lithium-ion battery pack that will allow the Leaf to reach a top speed of 90 mph.


Nissan estimates the Leaf’s five-year operating cost will be $1,800 versus $6,000 for a gas-powered car.


The Volt is propelled by a 120-kilowatt electric motor that pulls power from a 16-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery. That gives the sedan an all-electric range of about 40 miles, gas and emissions free. But the Volt also has a 1.4-liter four-cylinder gasoline engine. When the car runs out of electricity, the gas engine kicks in and works as a generator, supplying electricity to the motor. The car can reach 60 miles an hour in just under nine seconds and has a top speed of 100 mph.


This design extends the range of the Volt by about 300 miles, according to GM, but it also means the car is burning gasoline. GM expects that many buyers will be able to make their daily commutes or errand runs within the 40 miles, or will be able to recharge while at work and that many will only rarely use the gasoline powered generator.


Hughes said the extended range of the Volt addresses the biggest consumer concern about electric vehicles – driving range – and is a marketing advantage over the Leaf.


The Volt “gives you the ability to drive just on electricity but you also have range confidence. You are never going to worry about your battery charging down in traffic or on a very hot day. You won’t have to turn off the air conditioning to preserve electricity,” he said.


Although the Volt is more expensive than the Leaf, both in its sticker price and for its lease payment, many driver

There is a market for both cars, said James Bell, an analyst with Kelley Blue Book, the auto pricing information company.


“We are just at the very beginning of the learning curve for selling electric vehicles and how people will use them and decide between different propulsion choices,” he said.

Volt buyers will likely be people with midrange commutes, who have to make occasional longer drives and who don’t hesitate when it comes to taking off for Las Vegas or a trip to the mountains. He said these people want the extended range provided by the gas engine as an “insurance policy.” Leaf buyers will have similar commutes but will likely have a second vehicle they use for longer trips.


For electric vehicle fans looking to go upscale, the Tesla Roadster, a sports car, is already on the market. Telsa asks $109,000 for the two-seat speedster, before tax credits and rebates.

By Law No more Bullfights in Catalonia – Spain

July 28, 2010

BARCELONA – The Catalan parliament dealt the death blow to bullfighting in the region on Wednesday, outlawing the centuries-old spectacle for the first time in mainland Spain.

The result of 68 in favor, 55 against the ban was expected, since Catalonia’s parliament had accepted a citizens’ petition to stop bullfighting with activists concerned about animal cruelty battling devotees of the renowned Spanish tradition.

In the debate, some lawmakers cited the declining popularity of bullfighting in Spain, where fewer people go each year to the arena to watch toreros in their distinctive “suits of lights” wield red capes and swords at close range against enraged bulls.

“There are some traditions that can’t remain frozen in time as society changes. We don’t have to ban everything, but the most degrading things should be banned,” said Josep Rull, member of parliament for the Catalonian nationalist party (CiU).

Many commentators and lawmakers denied that the anti-bullfight movement has to do with separatist moves in Catalonia, but Carlos Nunez, president of the Bull Breeders’ Union, said he believed it was entirely political.

Nine lawmakers abstained from voting in the debate in which animal activists concerned about the bull’s suffering argued against those who revere bullfighting, celebrated by U.S. Nobel laureate Ernest Hemingway in the book “Death in the Afternoon.”

Animal rights activists have pledged to spread the ban from the autonomy-minded region throughout the rest of the country.

Anti-bullfighting groups gathered signatures from 180,000 Catalans, which forced parliament to vote on the tradition which dates back to 711, when the first bullfight took place in celebration for the crowning of King Alfonso VIII.

“They have heard the outcry of a society that is reinventing its traditions,” said Anna Mula, of the group Prou! (Enough!).

Before the vote, animal rights activists, one drenched in red paint, and bullfighting aficionados gathered outside parliament to hear the result.

Highly ritualized bullfighting, in which the matador and his entourage use capes, lances and darts to subdue the bull which is killed at close quarters with a sword, was made illegal in Spain’s Canary islands in 1991.

For fans, who shout “Ole” in chorus at the bullring to appreciate a daring or stylish move, the showdown is a moving display of fear and courage.

“It’s not a cruel show. Completely the opposite. It’s a show that creates art: where you get feelings and a fight between a bull and person, where the person or the bull can lose their life,” bullfighter Serafin Marin told Reuters.

The drama of the bullring also inspired painter Pablo Picasso and poet Federico Garcia Lorca. But anti-bullfighting activists point out that it has disturbed many other artists, from Mark Twain to Hans Christian Andersen.

Under the ban, which would come into effect in 2012, the last active bullring in Catalonia’s capital, Barcelona, would shut down, as would the remaining few elsewhere in the region.
Some lawmakers cited Spain’s ongoing economic crisis — the country is just emerging from a deep recession — as a reason to keep bullfighting alive.

A report by an industry group that lobbied against the ban said 100 million euros of tickets to bullfights are sold annually in France and Spain, and projected rising unemployment benefit payouts for Catalonia’s government when bullrings shut.

“Banning bullfighting at a time of economic crisis is madness,” said Rafael Luna, member of parliament for the conservative Popular Party, during the debate.

The bullfighting industry includes manufacturing of the elaborate suits as well as specialized breeding of bulls, which can cost up to 10,000 euros apiece.

“It’s an attack on liberty, on a private economic activity. People are free to go or not go to the bullring,” said Fernando Masedo, president of the International Federation of Bullfighting Schools, where initiates learn to face down bulls.

Most young people get more worked up about heroes in football, in which Spain won the World Cup this year, and tennis and cycling. Bullfighters are no longer household names.

But many Spaniards still retain the same passion about bulls that Hemingway expressed in literature. After the writer’s suicide in 1961, two tickets to the upcoming Pamplona bullfights were discovered in his desk drawer.

Baby ~ I'd Kiss YOU Anyday!

Pacific Tree Frog

This photograph was taken on September 27, 2009 at the Arcata Marsh Project, Arcata, Humboldt County, California. The camera was a Canon EOS 50D with Canon 300mm f4 lens and Canon 1.4 extender
© Ron LeValley Photography 2010

For my Fellow Naturalists~

A few years ago, I happened upon a photographer that is a biologist by training, and who is reknowned for his knowledge about the identification and distribution of birds along my beloved Pacific Coast.

In truth, Ron LeValley loves all living things. Each day, I receive a great photo of some of the living wonder that I share this planet with. Whether it's a bird, flower, insect, sea life or mammal my knowledge and access to seeing things I really want to know about, has been so fulfilled by the sharing of his gifts.

The photo above was sent to me on July 14, 2010. This date marked the anniversary and celebrated 7 years that he's been sharing his 30,000 wildlife, flora and fauna images with whomever requests to be on his email list. He now reaches over 30,000 readers worldwide, with his "Outside My Window" Club.

What a pleasure it is to share his website and talents with you. If you ever get a chance to take trip or workshop with him, I bet it will be a highlight in your life's journey. And if that doesn't happen, give thanks, for this man that lives his passion, and shares it, by bringing it's evidence right into our homes. How can anyone not appreciate and yes (like me), even revere Nature, when one is privileged to catch glimpses of her infinite colors, moods and variety, every single day?

To view his archives, and join the Outside My Window club, click on the link that says 'wildlife images', in Ron's bio below.

Ron LeValley

Ron founded Mad River Biologists in 1982 and is the company's Senior Biologist. Ron is probably best known for his knowledge about the identification and distribution of birds along the Pacific Coast; he served for six years as a Northern California regional editor for AMERICAN BIRDS. A lifelong interest in marine birds and mammals was enhanced by a long involvement with Point Reyes Bird Observatory beginning in 1966, including serving as a biologist at the Farallon Island research station in 1968 and for two years during 1979-81. Among the many projects he has been involved in, Ron has co-authored and coordinated a training program under the auspices of the Pacific Seabird Group's Marbled Murrelet Inland Survey Protocol. Virtually all of the Marbled Murrelet surveyors in California and southern Oregon have gone through his training program. In 1979 Ron founded and for 15 years operated an ecotourism company specializing in marine mammals and island biology. His travel expertise extends from South America and the Galapagos Islands through Baja California to Alaska, northern Canada, Australia and Africa. As a professional photographer, Ron has compiled an impressive collection (over 30,000 images) of wildlife photographs that he uses for presentations and publications. One of Ron's outstanding attributes (and favorite activities) is sharing his knowledge and enthusiasm with others. He is particularly adept at explaining complex biological principles in understandable terms, a talent that he brings to his report writing and consultations with regulatory agencies.

Ron graduated from Sacramento State College in 1969 with a B.A. degree in Biology and received his M.A in Biology from Humboldt State University in 1980. His affiliations include American Ornithologists Union (Life Member), California Academy of Sciences, National Audubon Society, Pacific Seabird Group, Point Reyes Bird Observatory (Life Member), and Western Field Ornithologists.

In addition to his work at Mad River Biologists, he presently serves as Treasurer of the Pacific Seabird Group, an Associate Editor for Western Birds, and California Coordinator of the Pacific Coast Joint Venture.

Email Ron

If you like the photo above, you can purchase a copy by clicking here!

Color Color Color - The World of Photographer Jeffrey Becom

Around Valentine's Day this year, I shared a wonderful book featuring the stylish and colorful men of fashion in the Congo known as Sapeurs. I was drawn to their images by their free wheeling use of color. Well the Goddess of Color has smiled upon me again, as I've happened upon the work of photographer/artist Jeffrey Becom.

Jeffrey's focus is not on fashion, but how color enriches architecture and culture in our world. The work that I've seen is from travel that he's done in India, Mexico, and Italy. His work is striking in that he bombards us with instances where colors we do not usually see in combination, work and blend in stunning harmony. His fascination with the lifestyles of indigenious people just sparkles with evidence of the rich imagination and creativity in the human spirit.

http://www.vervegalleryofphotography.com/?p=artist_biography&a=JB&photographer=Jeffrey%20Becom

You know how I love to fill these pages with gorgeous and humorous images that pleasurably massage your senses. Color and beauty switch our thinking over into the right side of our brain, where we can tap into our intuitive knowing, and appreciate the wholeness of Life. I enjoy doing anything I can to give you a break from the tyranny and tedium of the analytical, rational, sequential thinking that most of us spend our days consummed with. I would have included some of his photos here, but they are all tightly protected and couldn't be copied. So please click the above link and feast your eyes on the colors of our world as captured through his lens.

If you happen to live in or near Santa Fe, New Mexico, he has an exhibit opening July 9, 2010 - August 28, 2010 ~ Reception: July 9, 2010 5-7pm

Click here for the Exhibit Announcement and Preview:

http://www.vervegalleryofphotography.com/?p=exhibitions

VERVE Gallery of Photography
219 East Marcy Street
Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501
p: 505-982-5009

What a delight!
Kentke

At Yahoo, Using Searches to Steer News Coverage

This article from the New York Times is exactly why I publish this blog. In an era when major corporations (which I'm now going to start calling 'THE BIGS'), more and more usurp individual and personal control in our world, yahoo is now going to generate it's news coverage, based on those articles, topics and subjects that are most frequently being searched.

That's a good way to keep a population dummied down, and controlled. This means that if you have used yahoo as a search engine, the interests of pop culture, will now be the measure of what all of us get to know. yahoo is calling itself the 'differentiator' in the process of creating news content. And since most users of the Internet are younger and have interests much more hormonally driven than baby-boomers, I think these trends spell doom for all us that still want to use our good mental faculties to come to decisions and a deeper understanding of our interests and our world.

First of all the death of newspaper publishing, and the decline of the magazine and book publishing industries tells us that most Americans don't read. Today's testing statistics of our schools and institutions of higher education reveal that Americans also don't read very well. Once at the top of the list, our educational system has fallen miserably in world ranking. And when the knowledge of our citizens is compared with those of other nations on questions of general world geography, history, politics and civilization, we always rate at the bottom of the list indicating we are among the least informed human beings on the planet.

Library closures across the nation, defunct historical societies, disbanded local and national technical groups formed by people pursing their interests and passions, means that fascination with lerning and understanding life on a deeper level has just about successfully been programmed out of today's population. Instead the minds of Americans (and anyone elses' in the world they can capture), have been co-opted by the media/entertainment industry, and dulled to sleep or a stupor of blind unthinking acceptance.

I first got alarmed when I saw the ads for bing, Microsoft's newest search engine. The application was promoted as "Now you don't have to decide. bing will do it for you!"

I couldn't believe my ears. Like I would want some entity that doesn't know me, care about me in any way other than how it can sell me something (which in reality just means how quickly it can transfer my money to their accounts), whether I really need it or want it.

Sorry, I'm not that woman.

In August 2008, I presented articles here about how the business world was working with psychologists to understand how to covertly impress your buying habits. It's a field called Behavioral Economics and something that everyone should be aware of, in order not to fall prey to the practices that are now being used on the public. Buyer beware? This is that and then some, and I find it most sinister. Click here to read:http://knewzfrommeroewest.blogspot.com/2008/08/behavioral-economics-101.html

Pay attention to the two comments by Mr. Doctor in the article below. They clearly tell you where these folks are coming from, and where they're going with these ideas.

The news is so important to the public in a democracy. Our news industry has sold out it's responsibility to us, a long time ago. I'm presenting this article, just so you can keep up with the ongoing effort to rob us of what life in a democracy is supposed to be about. Wikipedia tell states, "In American usage, the phrase "fourth estate" is contrasted with the "fourth branch of government", with "fourth estate" used to emphasize the independence of the press, while "fourth branch" suggests that the press is not independent of the government/corporate multinationals."

Author Oscar Wilde wrote:
In old days men had the rack. Now they have the press. That is an improvement certainly. But still it is very bad, and wrong, and demoralizing. Somebody — was it Burke? — called journalism the fourth estate. That was true at the time no doubt. But at the present moment it is the only estate. It has eaten up the other three. The Lords Temporal say nothing, the Lords Spiritual have nothing to say, and the House of Commons has nothing to say and says it. We are dominated by Journalism.

Good luck Beloveds. Keep reading, keep seeking truth and understanding on a deep level~

Kentke

July 4, 2010

By JEREMY W. PETERS
Welcome to the era of the algorithm as editor.

For as long as hot lead has been used to make metal type, the model for generating news has been top-down: editors determined what information was important and then shared it with the masses.

But with the advent of technology that allows media companies to identify what kind of content readers want, that model is becoming inverted.

The latest and perhaps broadest effort yet in democratizing the news is under way at Yahoo, which on Tuesday will introduce a news blog that will rely on search queries to help guide its reporting and writing on national affairs, politics and the media.

Search-generated content has been growing on the Internet, linked to the success of companies like Associated Content, which Yahoo recently bought, and Demand Media, which has used freelance writers to create an online library of more than a million instructional articles.

But the use of search data has been limited more to the realm of “how to” topics like “How do I teach my dog sign language?” than questions about the news of the day like “Where does Elena Kagan stand on corporate campaign donations?”

Yahoo software continuously tracks common words, phrases and topics that are popular among users across its vast online network. To help create content for the blog, called The Upshot, a team of people will analyze those patterns and pass along their findings to Yahoo’s news staff of two editors and six bloggers.

The news staff will then use that search data to create articles that — if the process works as intended — will allow them to focus more precisely on readers.

“We feel like the differentiator here; what separates us from a lot of our competitors is our ability to aggregate all this data,” said James A. Pitaro, vice president of Yahoo Media. “This idea of creating content in response to audience insight and audience needs is one component of the strategy, but it’s a big component.”

In strictly economic terms, the power of technology that identifies reader trends is incredibly potent as a draw for advertisers. Yahoo paid more than $100 million this year for Associated Content, which pays writers small sums to write articles based on queries like “How do I tile a floor?” or “How do I make French toast?”

“They have a tremendous potential power to wring higher value advertisers out of targeted content,” said Ken Doctor, a media analyst and author of “Newsonomics: Twelve New Trends That Will Shape the News You Get.”

To demonstrate the power of search technology as editor, Mr. Pitaro is fond of telling a story about one of the most popular articles to appear on Yahoo’s sports news site during the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Yahoo had been monitoring search traffic patterns and noticed that its users kept trying to find out why divers would shower after they got out of the water. So Yahoo sports writers looked into the question and posted an item titled “The mystery of the showering divers.” (It turns out the warm water from the showers keeps divers’ muscles limber. Their muscles contract when they emerge from the warm water into the cool air.)

“So while our competition was covering a lot of the bigger, broader topics, we were covering topics that were a little bit more behind the scenes,” Mr. Pitaro said.

This niche approach to the news, filling in gaps in the coverage where other media outlets are not providing content, is the best way Mr. Pitaro feels The Upshot (at news.yahoo.com/upshot) can gain traction in a crowded media landscape.

“If you’re a news start-up, focusing on breadth would be the wrong way to go,” he said. “What we’re seeing is the market getting increasingly fragmented. And because of that you can survive by owning a niche category.”

The Yahoo model, which flies in the face of a centuries-old approach to disseminating the news, is certain to be viewed suspiciously by journalism purists.

“There’s obviously an embedded negative view toward using any type of outside information to influence coverage,” said Robertson Barrett, chief strategy officer of Perfect Market Inc., a company that helps news organizations make their content more detectable to search engine algorithms.

Mr. Barrett, a former publisher for the Web site of The Los Angeles Times, said many mainstream media outlets would start to come around to the idea if they did not feel pressured to let it affect their coverage.

“There’s a middle ground here in which publishers and news organizations can learn a lot about their audiences and what they want in real time and take that into account generally,” he said. “But that does not need to affect the specific story assignments.”

Yahoo news editors say they intend to be selective in using the data. The tricky question for Yahoo becomes how much it will insulate its editorial decision making from the very businesslike thinking that has made Associated Content and Demand Media successful.

“Essentially those in charge of analytics-driven content say, ‘These journalists, they only got it half right. Why produce all this stuff that doesn’t make money. Just produce the stuff that sells,’ ” Mr. Doctor said.

Asked whether he was concerned that signing up with Yahoo had rendered his career as an editor obsolete, The Upshot’s editor, Andrew Golis, laughed.

“I certainly don’t hope that,” Mr. Golis said, adding that he and Yahoo’s other journalists would use the search data as a supplemental tool. “The information is valuable because editors can integrate it into their decision making. It’s an asset. It’s a totally amazing and useful tool that we have at Yahoo. But it does not lead Yahoo editorial content.”

UCLA book 'Black Los Angeles' chronicles city's African American history, issues. And Reflecting on Dr. Ralph J. Bunche

One great value of a college educated community, is the further research that many go on to pursue as graduate and doctoral students. Besides the personal accomplishment of being recognized as a 'master or doctor of understanding' in a certain field, the collective of human awareness is enhanced when their research reveals wonderful new information that has long been ignored, buried, denied, or previously erroneously represented. We all receive a gift in having our understanding both 'cleansed' and expanded by their work.

An example for just such an experience awaits us in the new book reviewed below. Published in April 2010 I look forward to what new insights this group of scholars of UCLA's Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies has to say about the city of my birth.

Please check your local Black bookstore for this and other books that interest you. If not available, this book is also available from Amazon.

A brief detour here ~ The Center and building out of which this new book was produced is named for Dr. Ralph Bunche, an extraordinary individual, who was deeply rooted in and well loved in Los Angeles' Black community. Dr Bunche graduated from UCLA summa cum laude, valedictorian of his class, in 1927 majoring in international relations.
With a scholarship granted by Harvard, and a thousand dollars raised by the Black community, he went on to begin his graduate studies in political science at Harvard.

My heart's dream ~since I was very young ~ has always been to be an ambassador. I have always held Dr. Ralph Bunche as a personal role model. In my heart, Bunche has reigned as another one of those shining examples of the African American genius that emerged from Los Angeles, matured into a national treasure, and went on to command a world stage. Like those many others of his caliber (in different fields), despite the condoned and institutional ignorance and racism of the time, his great destiny, qualities and abilities were irrefutable and irrepresible. A consummate peacemaker and bringer of order and harmony, the arc of his life is a great example for anyone, feeling incapable of realizing their potential.

I include the biography that was presented when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950, the first African American to earn this award, at the end of this post. If you're wondering why this is in PINK...it's simply that I love how I'm always inspired by the Life of Ralph Bunch.
Kentke

By Letisia Marquez April 21, 2010

California's anti–gay marriage intitiative Proposition 8 ignited a debate within Los Angeles' African American gay and lesbian communities: Should black same-sex couples come out to family and friends to help garner support for gay marriage, or should they continue to take a "don't ask, don't tell" approach?

"Some in the community were becoming more supportive of gay sexuality as an identity status that could exist alongside a strong racial-group affinity. Others were holding fast to religious and cultural ideologies that reduced gay sexuality to an immoral behavior and thus not a valid identity status," says Mignon R. Moore, a UCLA sociologist and professor of African American studies whose research — along with the work of more than two dozen other scholars — appears a new book that sheds light on black Los Angeles.

"Black Los Angeles: American Dreams and Racial Realities" (NYU Press, April 2010), co-edited by Darnell Hunt, director of UCLA's Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies, and the center's assistant director, Ana-Christina Ramón, delves into the long and rich history of African Americans in Los Angeles and presents a snapshot of contemporary issues affecting the community.

"African Americans have played important and pivotal roles in Los Angeles' history," Hunt says. "As our book demonstrates, African Americans have had a powerful impact on the development of the city — from being part of the first settlers in 1781, through the period of the region's tremendous growth, to the present day."

"Black Los Angeles is and has always been a space of profound contradictions," Hunt writes in the book. "Just as Los Angeles has come to symbolize the complexities of the early twenty-first–century city, so too has Black Los Angeles come to embody the complex realities of race in so-called 'colorblind' times."

"Black Los Angeles" is the culmination of eight years of research the center conducted on African American communities in the region.

Hunt and Ramón were motivated to edit the book because they noticed a dearth of research that connected the dots between the past, present and future of black life in the Los Angeles. They met with scholars and community members to discuss what topics the book should include and then enlisted 23 experts to contribute chapters for the book.

"The chapters are interconnected by themes such as political participation, social justice, religious life, cultural production, and communities and neighborhoods, while individually featuring in-depth analyses of an issue or an episode in black Los Angeles," Ramón says. "We are proud to present a book that is both accessible and relevant to community members, students and scholars."

In the book's "Space" section, which deals with the history and geography of African Americans in Los Angeles, Paul Robinson, a geographer and assistant professor at Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, notes that when El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora de la Reina de Los Angeles — the Spanish town that would eventually become the city Los Angeles — was established in 1781, the majority of its original settlers (26 of 46) had African ancestry.

These original settlers came from areas that are now states in western Mexico, a region where the Spanish empire relied heavily on African and mulatto populations as soldiers and laborers in agriculture and mining. By 2008, nearly 950,000 African Americans lived in Los Angeles County, making it home to the second largest number of African Americans in the nation.

Although 6 percent of black residents left the county in the 1990s, many in search of more affordable housing and a safer environment for their families, the population grew by 1 percent between 2000 and 2008, Robinson notes. Black immigrants from the Caribbean, Africa and the Americas are spurring the growth.

"The African-origin population of Los Angeles has always been diverse, but never as diverse as it had become by the first decade of the 2000s," Robinson writes.

By 2008, there were an estimated 90,000 persons of sub-Saharan and/or Caribbean ancestry living in Los Angeles County, constituting nearly 10 percent of the county's total black population.

"As the county's non-native population grew throughout the decade, the diverse groups comprising it increasingly challenged common assumptions about the people and spaces comprising 'Black Los Angeles,'" Robinson writes.

Reginald Chapple, former president and CEO of the Dunbar Economic Development Corp. and a UCLA doctoral candidate in anthropology, recounts the development of Central Avenue from 1900 to 1950 as a center of African American culture and of Leimert Park Village, the current black enclave. And Andrew Deener, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut, examines the rise and decline of Los Angeles' only black community by the sea, Oakwood, in the Venice area.

In the book's "People" section, Jooyoung Lee, a sociologist and postdoctoral fellow in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Health and Society Scholars program at the University of Pennsylvania, examines how some young black males in Los Angeles pursued careers in rapping as a means to economic opportunities that were otherwise absent in their communities.

Alex Alonso, a geographer and gang expert, writes about the influences that led to the rise of black gangs in Los Angeles. The ways in which black families cope with the incarceration of family members is explored by M. Belinda Tucker, a UCLA professor of psychiatry and biobehavorial sciences; Neva Pemberton, a UCLA doctoral candidate in education; Mary Weaver, executive director of Friends Outside in Los Angeles County; Gwendelyn Rivera, a UCLA doctoral student in education; and Carrie Petrucci, a senior research associate with EMT Associates Inc.

In the book's "Image" section, Nancy Wang Yuen, an assistant professor of sociology at Biola University, examines the lack of authentic roles for black actors in film and television; Paul Von Blum, a UCLA senior lecturer in African American studies and communication studies, writes about the rise of black art in Los Angeles after the Watts riots in 1965; and Scot Brown, a UCLA history professor, recounts the case of SOLAR, a black-owned record label that symbolized Los Angeles' rise as the media capital of black America in the latter decades of the 20th century.

The section also looks at the media attention focused on issues in the city's African American communities.

Hunt and Ramón, for example, examine Los Angeles Times' coverage of the controversial demise of Martin Luther King Jr./Charles Drew Medical Center. Dionne Bennett, an anthropologist and assistant professor of African American studies at Loyola Marymount University, writes about media misrepresentations of South Central Los Angeles and how certain films and television programs have contributed to stereotypical views of the area.

Interestingly, Bennett writes, residents had never referred to the area as South Central until the Watts riots of 1965. While there are various versions of how the term came to describe the area, it was officially used in the McCone Commission Report, a document that has been criticized for its superficial discussion of the complex events that shaped the riots, Bennett says.

"In the early twenty-first century, media images of South Central Los Angeles continued to label and limit African Americans," she writes. "These images usually omitted the educational, social and economic diversity of blacks not only in South Central, but throughout Black Los Angeles and ultimately Black America."

In the final section, "Action," Melina Abdullah, an associate professor of pan-African studies at California State University, Los Angeles, and Regina Freer, a professor of politics at Occidental College in Los Angeles, examine the rise of African American female leaders Charlotta Bass, a newspaper editor, publisher, activist and Progressive Party candidate for vice president in 1952, and former California Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, the first African American woman to serve as speaker of a state legislative body.

Sonya Winton, a political scientist and UCLA adjunct professor in African American studies, writes about a movement by the Concerned Citizens of South Central Los Angeles to halt construction of a municipal solid-waste incinerator plant in the 1980s. And Hunt and Ramón recount the efforts of the Alliance for Equal Opportunity in Education to spur UCLA to adopt a revised admissions policy after it was reported that fewer than 100 African Americans enrolled as freshmen in 2006.

The book also includes a chapter on labor issues authored by Edna Bonacich, a professor emeritus of sociology and ethnic studies at UC Riverside; Lola Smallwood-Cuevas and Lanita Morris, labor organizers and project directors with the UCLA Labor Center; Steven C. Pitts, a labor policy specialist with the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education; and Joshua Bloom, a UCLA doctoral candidate in sociology.

The authors discuss the lack of employment opportunities among Los Angeles' African American working-age population. In 2000, 43 percent were unemployed, while 29 percent were employed in low-wage, dead-end jobs that offered neither retirement nor health benefits.

"It must be noted here that immigrants were not to blame for the crisis in the African American community," the authors write.

While there was indeed job competition between working-class black Angelenos and immigrants, the authors explain that global restructuring, de-industrialization, flexible production and the contracting of services out to independent contractors, in addition to crack and criminalization, were more fundamental causes.

The authors call for a black worker center for Los Angeles, which would aim to increase union membership, participation and leadership among African American workers in the area.

"(The center) would serve as a place to develop ideas for building an alternative economic development plan for Black Los Angeles as a whole," the authors note.

Ralph Johnson Bunche

August 7, 1904 - December 9,1971

This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel.

Ralph Johnson Bunche (August 7, 1904-1971) was born in Detroit, Michigan. His father, Fred Bunche, was a barber in a shop having a clientele of whites only; his mother, Olive (Johnson) Bunche, was an amateur musician; his grandmother, «Nana» Johnson, who lived with the family, had been born into slavery. When Bunche was ten years old, the family moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the hope that the poor health of his parents would improve in the dry climate.

Both, however, died two years later. His grandmother, an indomitable woman who appeared Caucasian «on the outside» but was «all black fervor inside»1, took Ralph and his two sisters to live in Los Angeles. Here Ralph contributed to the family's hard pressed finances by selling newspapers, serving as house boy for a movie actor, working for a carpet-laying firm, and doing what odd jobs he could find.

His intellectual brilliance appeared early. He won a prize in history and another in English upon completion of his elementary school work and was the valedictorian of his graduating class at Jefferson High School in Los Angeles, where he had been a debater and all-around athlete who competed in football, basketball, baseball, and track. At the University of California at Los Angeles he supported himself with an athletic scholarship, which paid for his collegiate expenses, and with a janitorial job, which paid for his personal expenses. He played varsity basketball on championship teams, was active in debate and campus journalism, and was graduated in 1927, summa cum laude, valedictorian of his class, with a major in international relations.

With a scholarship granted by Harvard University and a fund of a thousand dollars raised by the black community of Los Angeles, Bunche began his graduate studies in political science. He completed his master's degree in 1928 and for the next six years alternated between teaching at Howard University and working toward the doctorate at Harvard.

The Rosenwald Fellowship, which he held in 1932-1933, enabled him to conduct research in Africa for a dissertation comparing French rule in Togoland and Dahomey. He completed his dissertation in 1934 with such distinction that he was awarded the Toppan Prize for outstanding research in social studies. From 1936 to 1938, on a Social Science Research Council fellowship, he did postdoctoral research in anthropology at Northwestern University, the London School of Economics, and Capetown University in South Africa.


Throughout his career, Bunche has maintained strong ties with education. He chaired the Department of Political Science at Howard University from 1928 until 1950; taught at Harvard University from 1950 to 1952; served as a member of the New York City Board of Education (1958-1964), as a member of the Board of Overseers of Harvard University (1960-1965), as a member of the Board of the Institute of International Education, and as a trustee of Oberlin College, Lincoln University, and New Lincoln School.


Bunche has always been active in the civil rights movement. At Howard University he was considered by some as a young radical intellectual who criticized both America's social system and the established Negro organizations, but generally he is thought of as a moderate. From his experience as co-director of the Institute of Race Relations at Swarthmore College in 1936, added to his firsthand research performed earlier, he wrote A World View of Race (1936). He participated in the Carnegie Corporation's well-known survey of the Negro in America, under the direction of the Swedish sociologist, Gunnar Myrdal, which resulted in the publication of Myrdal's An American Dilemma (1944).


He was a member of the «Black Cabinet» consulted on minority problems by Roosevelt's administration; declined President Truman's offer of the position of assistant secretary of state because of the segregated housing conditions in Washington, D. C.; helped to lead the civil rights march organized by Martin Luther King, Jr., in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1965; supported the action programs of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and of the Urban League. Bunche has not himself formed organizations, nor has he aspired to positions of administrative leadership in existing civil rights organizations. Rather, he has exerted his influence personally in speeches and publications, especially during the twenty-year period from 1945 to 1965.


His message has been clear: Racial prejudice is an unreasoned phenomenon without scientific basis in biology or anthropology; «segregation and democracy are incompatible»; blacks should maintain the struggle for equal rights while accepting the responsibilities that come with freedom; whites must demonstrate that «democracy is color-blind»2.


Ralph Bunche's enduring fame arises from his service to the U. S. government and to the UN. An adviser to the Department of State and to the military on Africa and colonial areas of strategic military importance during World War II, Bunche moved from his first position as an analyst in the Office of Strategic Services to the desk of acting chief of the Division of Dependent Area Affairs in the State Department. He also discharged various responsibilities in connection with international conferences of the Institute of Pacific Relations, the UN, the International Labor Organization, and the Anglo-American Caribbean Commission.


In 1946, UN Secretary-General Trygve Lie «borrowed» Bunche from the State Department and placed him in charge of the Department of Trusteeship of the UN to handle problems of the world's peoples who had not yet attained self-government. He has been associated with the UN ever since.


From June of 1947 to August of 1949, Bunche worked on the most important assignment of his career - the confrontation between Arabs and Jews in Palestine. He was first appointed as assistant to the UN Special Committee on Palestine, then as principal secretary of the UN Palestine Commission, which was charged with carrying out the partition approved by the UN General Assembly. In early 1948 when this plan was dropped and fighting between Arabs and Israelis became especially severe, the UN appointed Count Folke Bernadotte as mediator and Ralph Bunche as his chief aide. Four months later, on September 17, 1948, Count Bernadotte was assassinated, and Bunche was named acting UN mediator on Palestine. After eleven months of virtually ceaseless negotiating, Bunche obtained signatures on armistice agreements between Israel and the Arab States.


Bunche returned home to a hero's welcome. New York gave him a «ticker tape» parade up Broadway; Los Angeles declared a «Ralph Bunche Day ». He was besieged with requests to lecture, was awarded the Spingarn Prize by the NAACP in 1949, was given over thirty honorary degrees in the next three years, and the Nobel Peace Prize for 1950.Bunche still works for the UN. From 1955 to 1967, he served as undersecretary for Special Political Affairs and since 1968 has been undersecretary-general. During these years he has taken on many special assignments.


When war erupted in the Congo in 1960, Dag Hammarskjöld, then secretary-general of the UN, appointed him as his special representative to oversee the UN commitments there. He has shouldered analogous duties in Cyprus, Kashmir, and Yemen.Replying to an interviewer on the UN's intervention in international crises, Bunche remarked that the «United Nations has had the courage that the League of Nations lacked - to step in and tackle the buzz saw»3. Ralph Bunche has supplied a part of that courage.4


Selected Bibliography

Bennett, Lerone, Jr., Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America. 4th ed. Chicago, Johnson Publishing Co., 1969.

Bunche, Ralph J., Extended Memorandum on the Programs, Ideologies, Tactics and Achievements of Negro Betterment and Interracial Organizations. A research memorandum for use in the preparation of Gunnar Myrdal's An American Dilemma. Original typescript (1940) deposited in New York Public Library; microfilm copies made in 1968 available in the libraries of the Universities of Illinois, Iowa, and California at Berkeley.

Bunche, Ralph J., French Administration in Togoland and Dahomey. Ph.D.dissertation. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Graduate School, 1934.

Bunche, Ralph J., «Human Relations and World Peace», in Gustavus Adolphus College Bulletin, 17 (1950). An address given at Gustavus Adolphus College (St. Peter, Minn.) Commencement and Bernadotte Memorial Dedication, June 4, 1950.

Bunche, Ralph J., «My Most Unforgettable Character», Reader's Digest, 95 (September, 1969) 45 - 49.

Bunche, Ralph J., Native Morale in The Netherlands East Indies. Washington, D.C., U.S. Department of State for the Library of Congress, 1941.

Bunche, Ralph J., «Peace and Human Progress», in Symposium on World Cooperation and Social Progress. New York, League for Industrial Democracy, 1951.

Bunche, Ralph J., «Peace and the United Nations», the Montague Burton Lecture on International Relations. Leeds, England, University of Leeds, 1952.

Bunche, Ralph J., «United Nations Intervention in Palestine», in Colgate Lectures in Human Relations, 1949. Hamilton, N.Y., Colgate University, 1949.

Bunche, Ralph J., «What America Means to Me», as told to Irwin Ross. The American Magazine, 149 (February, 1950) 19, 122-126. Reprinted in Negro Digest (September, 1950).

Bunche, Ralph J., A World View of Race. Washington, D.C., Associates in Negro Folk Education, 1936. Reissued, Port Washington, N.Y., Kennikat Press, 1968.

Flynn, James J., «Ralph Johnson Bunche: Statesman», in Negroes of Achievement in Modern America. New York, Dodd, Mead, 1970.

Hughes, Langston, «Ralph Bunche: Statesman and Political Scientist», in Famous American Negroes. New York, Dodd, Mead, 1954.

Italiaander, Rolf, Die Friedensmacher: Drei Neger erhielten den Friedens-Nobelpreis. Kassel, W. Germany, Oncken, 1965.

Brief biographies of Bunche, King, and Luthuli.

Kugelmass, J. Alvin, Ralph J. Bunche: Fighter for Peace. New York, Julian Messner, 1952.

Myrdal, Gunnar, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy. New York, Harper, 1944.

Phifer, Gregg, «Ralph Bunche: Negro Spokesman», in American Public Address, ed. by Loren Reid. Columbia, Mo., University of Missouri Press, 1961.

1. Bunche pays tribute to this «matriarch» of the family in an autobiographical fragment in Reader's Digest, «My Most Unforgettable Character».2. See Gregg Phifer, «Ralph Bunche: Negro Spokesman», passim.3. «Crisis», in The New Yorker, 43 (July 29, 1967) 23.4.


Suffering from heart disease and diabetes, Mr. Bunche resigned as UN undersecretary-general on October 1, 1971. He died on December 9, 1971.

From Nobel Lectures, Peace 1926-1950, Editor Frederick W. Haberman, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1972
It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.

Ralph Bunche died on December 9, 1971.
Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1950