Summer

#172.4 Summer Heats Up! 2017 FREE

of Love
comes to the deep North
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age -Dylan Thomas
Can a few, self-described Human Rights Activists, bring a

Organic Fraud
Summer of Love to the Deep North. We think we will, even if we
cant. After all, the original Summer of Love, 1967, was a mixed bag.
June 67 was a particularly uneven beginning to summer in Los
Angeles. I remember one fateful day in June attendingone of L.A.s
early HumanBe-Ins, celebrating the solstice. We hippies and
proto-hippies were already down with natural cycles and our BE-IN
required a big field to accommodate lots of friendly loving people. My
sister and her husband were there with me and the rest, enjoying the
Sun. She was carrying her oneyear old son on her back. Of course,
he had been baptized a year and a half previously at a demo in
Oakland where a cop had rapped his billyclub across my sisters
protuberant belly while her husband was busy filming. It was going to
be that kind of the day a Loving Assembly in the morning and
billyclubs at night.
President Lyndon Johnson was in town and the Vietnam War was in
full fury. I was an organizer for the War Resister League local in L.A.
and early on the cops busted me on my way to Century City where a
large group of us planned to meet and greet the visiting President. I
had a car load of peace signs the WRL had signed up with the L.A.
Peace Council to do the daytime picket at Century City. I only had a
trac warrant and my friends had me bailed out in no time. There is a
photo of me on that picket, my little shaggy mustache, my
over-the-collar hair, my intensely serious 29 year old face. Hair was
yet to come and, when it did, it came in billows, obscuring my old
self- soon to be reborn on a diet of whole foods, bought in bulk,
communal living and resistance. A shipment of 36million pounds of soybeans sailed late last year from Ukraine to Turkey
-Summer of Love Continues on Back Page to California. Along the way, it underwent a remarkable transformation.
The cargo began as ordinary soybeans, Like ordinary soybeans, they were fumigated
with a pesticide. And they were priced like ordinary soybeans too.

GITMO
But by the time the 600-foot cargo ship carrying them to Stockton, California, the
soybeans had been labeled organic, according to receipts, invoices and other
shipping records. That switch- the addition of the USDA Organic designation, boosted
their value by approximately $4 million, creating a windfall for at least one company in

still needs to close! the supply chain.

Fifteen years have passed since the first prisoner arrived in
Guantnamo Bay. Almost 800 men have passed through
Guantnamos cells. Today, 41 men remain. Originally fashioned as
an island outside the law where terrorism suspects could be
detained without process and interrogated without restraint,
Guantnamo has been a catastrophic failure on every front.
Every branch of our government shares responsibility for
Guantnamos ongoing damage to the human rights of detainees,
our nations reputation, and national security. But the presidentand
his agencies have the power to end indefinite detention and close
Guantnamo the right way- ending indefinite detention without
charge or trial; transferring detainees who have been cleared for
transfer; and trying detainees for whom there is evidence of
wrongdoing in our federal criminal courts here in the U.S. Our federal
courts routinely handle high-profile terrorism cases. If a prosecutor
cannot put together a case against a detainee, there is no reason
that person should continue to be imprisoned, whether in
Guantnamo or the United States.
More GITMO on Back Page
The broker for the soybeans, Annapolis-based Global Natural, says it may have been
provided with false certification documents regarding some grain shipments from
Eastern Europe. About 21million pounds of the soybeans have already been
distributed to customers.
The multimillion-dollar metamorphosis of the soybeans, as well as two other similar
grain shipments in the past year demonstrate weaknesses in the way that the United
States ensures that what is sold as USDA Organic is really organic.
The three shipments, each involving millions of pounds of organic corn or soybeans,
were large enough to constitute a meaningful proportion of the U.S. supply of those
commodities. All three were presented as organic, despite evidence to the contrary. And
all three hailed from Turkey, now one of the largest exporters of organic products to the
United States, according to Foreign Agricultural Service statistics.
Agriculture Department ocials said that they are investigating fraudulent organic grain
shipments. But the agency declined to identify any of the firms or shipments involved.
The imported corn and soybean shipments examined were largely destined to become
animal feed and enter the supply chain for some of the largest organic food industries.
Organic eggs, organic milk, organic chicken and organic beef are supposed to come
from animals that consume organic feed, an added expense for farmers that contributes
to the higher consumer prices on those items. While most food sold as USDA Organic
is grown in the United States, at least half of some organic commodities corn,
soybeans and coee come from overseas, from as many as 100 countries.
-Peter Whoriskey

There is No Place in the World

Where Radioactive Waste Can Be Stored Permanently & Safely.
208 million liters of the most toxic nuclear waste in the U.S. sits in
decaying underground tanks at the Hanford nuclear reservation in
southeastern Washington State. It accumulated there from the middle of
World War II, when the Manhattan Project invented the first nuclear weapon,
to 1987, when the last reactor shut down. The federal governments current
attempt at a permanent solution for safely storing that waste for centuries
the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant herehas hit a major snag in
the form of potential chain reactions, hydrogen explosions and leaks from
metal corrosion. Last month the whole sitewhich converted uranium to
plutonium for atomic bombs during the Cold War but now exclusively acts as
a storage facility for nuclear wastewas put on lockdown after one of the
tunnels containing highly contaminated waste collapsed. contractors quickly
filled the tunnelone of 1,000 places in the 586 square mile area that is
known to hold some form of nuclear waste. Hanfords challenges are great
because of the sheer amount and complexity of the waste it stores, but every
country with any nuclear waste struggles to deal with it one way or another.
The collapse made international news because Hanford experts had long
expected a disaster to happen any day. The U.S. Department of Energy is
scrambling to deal with a second emergency at the nuclear site in 10 days.
Signs have emerged that a massive underground double shell nuclear waste
holding tank may be leaking- it has been holding radioactive and chemically
contaminated waste for 41 years. radiation specialist on the crew detected
higher than expected readings. Detection equipment was then used to check
for contamination that might have become airborne, radioactive material was
found on one worker in three spots Everybody was freaked, shocked,
surprised, said a veteran worker who is in direct contact with crew
members.
The mishandling of nuclear
waste at the site and the
ongoing clean-up delays
make Hanford one of the
riskiest places on Earth.