WASHINGTON — More than 43,000 U.S. troops listed as medically unfit for combat in the weeks before their scheduled deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan since 2003 were sent anyway, Pentagon records show.
This reliance on troops found medically “nondeployable” is another sign of stress placed on a military that has sent 1.6 million service members to the war zones, soldier advocacy groups said.
“It is a consequence of the consistent churning of our troops,” said Bobby Muller, president of Veterans For America. “They are repeatedly exposed to high-intensity combat with insufficient time at home to rest and heal before re-deploying.”
Battle for Haditha: A remarkable film about the Iraq war: here.
The destruction of tricolored blackbird breeding colonies through harvest of the grain crop that serves as the nesting substrate is an annual occurrence in the San Joaquin Valley of California. Typically, the harvest of these grain fields results in complete elimination of the potential productivity of tens of thousands of breeding birds. As a majority of tricolors breeds in the San Joaquin Valley, the losses due to these harvests greatly reduce the number of young born and fledged each year.
Audubon California has announced that it has reached an agreement with a farmer to safeguard a single colony of about 80,000 Tricoloured Blackbirds Agelaius tricolor – nearly a third of the world’s population of this Endangered species.
The estimated global population of Tricoloured Blackbirds is 250,000 to 300,000 birds, with at least 95% of these occurring in California. Tricoloured Blackbirds have declined dramatically in the past century as native wetland habitat has been lost and the species has consequently been classified as Endangered. Tricoloured Blackbirds form just a few large nesting colonies each year, and in most cases these occur in crop fields. This puts the colonies in grave danger when farmers cultivate the field before young birds are able to fly.
The Price of Sugar: Horrifying conditions exposed—and a legal counterattack
8 May 2008
Directed by Bill Haney, written by Haney and Peter Rhodes
A film exposing some of the predatory practices of the US-supported sugar industry in the Dominican Republic has itself become the subject of an attack campaign by the entrenched sugar powers.
The Price of Sugar, a documentary by Bill Haney portraying the near-slavery conditions facing Haitian cane-cutters on Dominican sugar plantations, has prompted a defamation lawsuit by the Dominican sugar corporation highlighted in the film, accompanied by a cease-and-desist order aimed at preventing the showing of the film.
Narrated by Paul Newman and made for just $750,000, the documentary—Haney’s fourth film—is well paced and skillfully directed. It follows the efforts of a Catholic priest, Christopher Hartley, to relieve the conditions of the immigrant Haitian workers in his parish, a 600-square-mile region consisting mostly of vast plantations owned by the Vicini family, second largest of the wealthy Dominican sugar barons. In the process Hartley incurs the wrath of the Vicinis, who launch a concerted and ugly smear campaign against him.
The heart of the film is its exposure of the systematic exploitation of Haitian workers by the sugar industry. We see how the Dominican companies use promises of a better life to lure busloads of impoverished Haitians over the border in mass illegal crossings, while the government and military turn a blind eye.
Once in the Dominican Republic, the workers find themselves confined to the bateyes (plantation shantytowns), forced to perform the backbreaking and dangerous labor of cutting cane with machetes, while living in unspeakable squalor. Crowded into tiny metal-roofed shacks without plumbing, they have no access to proper health care and often lack even clean water. Incidences of AIDS, dengue fever and malaria in the bateyes are reported to be among the highest in the world.
The workers cut cane for up to 14 hours a day, and at one point we see a typical cutter who is forced to work barefoot on the sharp stubble of the cut stalks, unable to afford shoes. The pay is less than a dollar a day, delivered not in cash but in vouchers redeemable at the company store for merchandise at highly inflated prices. According to the film most workers cannot afford adequate food, and meet their daily calorie needs only by chewing the sugarcane.
Dear Kitty. Some blog 