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Consumption as an Infrastructure Theme:

1.

Case Study: The Introduction of Genetically Modified Crops (GM-crops) against market desires

In this lecture, Jeffrey Smith, author of Seeds of Deception, summarizes the contents of his book, which explains how genetically modified foods cause health problems, and their potential for creating a vast array of unforeseen and surprising illnesses. He also sheds light on how the [raw material regime] corruption within the U.S. government, the FDA, and the GMO industry has allowed, and perpetuated, the cover-up.

59 min 57 sec
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2108022965800005689&hl=en

2.

Electronic Trash Village - China
The U.N. estimates that China imports 70% of electronic trash/waste of the entire world. The U.S. is the largest trash exporter of electronic waste. The film goes undercover in a city in southern China where approximately 250,000 people process the world's electronic trash--documenting the infrastructural flow to them as well as their health problems and the economic problems leading them into these jobs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHTWRYXy2gE (10:29)

3.

THE CORPORATION [17/23] Unsettling Accounts
http://youtube.com/watch?v=eZkDikRLQrw

Week 11: Everyone Posts Comments to This Thread (by Sunday 11/18)

These are the short movies that I said I would post. We watched the ones in boldface already, on Monday.

1. The Convenient Solution
(The Economics of Abundant Renewables vs. Non-Required Unrenewables)
Greenpeace UK
9 min 27 sec
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfzVQwW_8Jk

2. 1983: Grüne zur Bundestagswahl
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cG6iqaZmjI

3. 1990: Grüne zur Bundestagswahl
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0QXxafLyKM

4. environment protect xiamen PX China (1 min)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSjNK1Q4iiA

5. Water Crisis, Wuxi, China 无锡水祸(4 min)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9YJXm1kqk4

6. Amazon dries up [3 min.] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7gpAy4ivZ0

7. Shocking images from Amazon jungle [4 min.]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gqk_sre54WA

8. Tibet is melting and turning into desert
Greenpeace; 4 min 36 sec - Aug 8, 2006
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8600404118213144512

9. Yellow Earth – China [12 min] - Sep 6, 2007 Encroaching desert prompted the Chinese government to re-settle nearly one million people. Ironically they move from old desert homes to new desert homes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1YLx0VcrwI

10. North Pole Ice Cracking
Andrew Revkin, The New York Times
1 min 17 sec - May 23, 2006
The sea ice at the North Pole is only a few feet thick. It floats on an ocean that is 14,000 feet deep. And it's cracking under our feet….Everything you hear -- all the chugging and huffing and banging -- is the ice beneath us.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=846342022276396533

11. Global Climate Change (Part 1) [9 min]
9 min - Sep 3, 2006 - (161 ratings)
Segment from the ABC 20/20 Special, "Last Days on Earth", about global climate change.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60Zk4-JPCdg

12. Global Climate Change (Part 2) [9 min]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XClNHfmFDog

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Social Constructionism in Environmental Sociology: The Media

"Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media.'"
Noam Chomsky
[Extra curricular reading about U.S. media at this link why it is so...]

To paraphrase Min from class, 'where is the media in reporting all these things? Why don't they report?" Exclusively looking at the USA for a moment, I argued that the media itself is part of the political economy. Second, media consolidation in the USA has increased to make TV, radio, and advertising billboards all three very consolidated industries. This has demoted local news coverage toward more centralized news/advertizements and little investigative journalism.

Watch this short video about how FOX News in the USA got to fire their investigative reporters for looking into health risks of a Monsanto product. It is a short film excerpt that demonstrates how much censorship can be involved in the major TV media 'even in the United States.'

THE CORPORATION [17/23] Unsettling Accounts: Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH) made by Monsanto
Monsanto. These investigative reporters in Florida documented potential health and safety problems of drinking milk treated with the synthetic hormone made by Monsanto, but threatened with legal action from Monsanto, their boss at Fox News wants the story killed. For refusing, journalists Jane Akre and Steve Wilson were fired by the Fox News television station they work for after refusing to change their investigative report on Posilac, a Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH) made by Monsanto. Their research documents potential health and safety problems of drinking milk treated with the synthetic hormone....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZkDikRLQrw




This is who owns the three major TV networks in the USA right now.

NBC

The network is currently a part of the media company NBC Universal, a unit of General Electric (GE), and supplies programming to more than 200 affiliated U.S. stations. [GE is a huge military contractor. GE provided huge funding to George W. Bush's campaign in 2000.]

CBS

In 2000, CBS came under the control of Viacom, which coincidentally had begun as a spin-off of CBS in 1971. In late 2005, Viacom split itself and reestablished CBS Corporation with the CBS television network at its core. CBS Corporation and the new Viacom are controlled by [Australian-born neocon and very right-wing] Sumner Redstone through National Amusements, the parent of the two companies. [Viacom has consolidated TV stations and print media throughout the world.]

ABC

ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. A separate entity named ABC Inc., formerly Capital Cities/ABC Inc., is that firm's direct parent company, and that company is owned in turn by Disney. CAP CITIES CHIEF COUNCIL WAS WILLIAM CASEY, OSS VETERAN (founding group for the American CIA), CASEY LATER THE HEAD OF THE CIA IN THE 1980s...Reputedly, "William Casey, who clung to his shares by concealing them in a blind trust even after he was appointed CIA director by Ronald Reagan in 1981." *

CORRECTIONS FROM LECTURE ON MONDAY:

1. I misspelled "Bagdikian" on the board.

The New Media Monopoly by Ben H. Bagdikian (Paperback - May 15, 2004)

Review
'Ben Bagdikian has written the first great media book of the twenty-first century. The New Media Monopoly will provide a roadmap to understanding how we got here and where we need to go to make matters better.' -Robert McChesney, author of Rich Media, Poor Democracy "No book on the media has proved as influential to our understanding of the dangers of corporate consolidation to democracy and the marketplace of ideas; this new edition builds on those works and surpasses them." -Eric Alterman, author of What Liberal Media? Praise for the First Edition of The Media Monopoly: "A groundbreaking work that charts a historical shift in the orientation of the majority of America's communications media-further away from the needs of the individual and closer to those of big business." -Bruce Manuel, Christian Science Monitor Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ben H. Bagdikian is dean emeritus of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley. His other books include Double Vision: Reflections on My Heritage, Life, and Profession.

Book Description
When the first edition of The Media Monopoly was published in 1983, critics called Ben Bagdikian's warnings about the chilling effects of corporate ownership and mass advertising on the nation's news "alarmist." Since then, the number of corporations controlling most of America's daily newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations, book publishers, and movie companies has dwindled from fifty to ten to five. The most respected critique of modern mass media ever issued is now published in a completely updated and revised twentieth anniversary edition.

2. General Electric (not General Motors) owns NBC.

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1. Mark Whitaker
2. "Irreversible Desertification.... vs. Tree Planting"
3. A report discussing some 'ecological modernization' headway AGAINST expanding desert in North Africa. It is a rural example of ecological modernization. We aren't reading much on the massive pollution streams from 'industrial agriculture,' i.e., RURAL as opposed to urban/industrial areas. However the wider ecological rationalization of agricultural systems is very important to consider as well. There have been many examples of versions of agriculture promoted in the last 50 years that demote erosion (and even tilling), and move toward what is called permiculture or perinneal agriculture. Most agriculture institutionalizes annually-planted seeds. Other frameworks of perinneal agriculture even attempt to change that 10,000 year old pattern--by planting perinneal seeds and attempting to breed perinneal agricultural species. Many forms of societal and ecological collapse in past societies still occurred without (Schnaiberg's) 'monopoly capital'--since they were mostly agricultural populations. They led to environmental degradation as well without the 'Fortune 500.'

-------------


Trees: The Anti-Desert

Geoff Manaugh
October 15, 2006 4:56 PM

In this year of deserts and desertification, there is finally "good news from Africa," New Scientist reports. "Farmers are reclaiming the desert, turning the barren wastelands of the Sahel region on the Sahara's southern edge into green, productive farmland."

And they're doing it with trees:

Tree planting has led to the re-greening of as much as 3 million hectares of land in Niger, enabling some 250,000 hectares to be farmed again. The land became barren in the 1970s and early 1980s through poor management and felling of trees for firewood, but since the mid-1980s farmers in parts of Niger have been protecting them instead of chopping them down.

According to one researcher quoted by New Scientist: "The results have been staggering."

This success stems from what the magazine calls a "virtuous circle of benefits" between trees and their surrounding landscapes. "Leaves and fruits provide food, fodder and organic matter to fortify the soil," for instance. "More livestock means more manure, which further enriches the soil enabling crops to be grown, and spreads tree seeds so new trees grow. The trees also provide shelter for crops and help prevent soil erosion. In times of drought, firewood can be sold and food purchased to tide families over."

Further, pro-tree land use policies – including better rainwater management practices – "are helping communities in Niger re-establish control over their fate, simultaneously halting the march of the desert and helping to prevent famines like the one that hit Niger in July 2005."

---
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/005050.html

comments at link

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1. Mark Whitaker
2. U.S. Military Head Bremer "Hardwired" a Forced GM-crop introduction into Iraq Invasion

3. What treadmill? The politics of mass privatization and enforced monopolization went with the U.S. into the Iraq invasion. This may be a rural example of some kinds of intersections of the 'treadmill' idea. It is because here you have the state regulatory power working in a 'growth alliance' with 'monopoly capital' (Monsanto and other 'gene giant' corporations) in enforcing expansion of intensity of investment and further consolidation through importing U.S. style patent laws. However, one major missing factor in this 'treadmill' is any grass roots labor/citizen/worker participation in this 'growth coalition'. Instead, this 'growth' throws them out of work and livelihood instead of benefits them. They are truly out of the loop on this 'treadmill' if it exists. They are without any 'growth coalition' participation encouragement. Instead, the encouragement came from outside: an invasion. One might argue that the 'treadmill' in this case would be people who want to eat GMOs worldwide. However, that doesn't really exist globally either. This gets back to the point Peaches Park (and I) drew out: that one of the critiques of the treadmill is that it is all about abstract additions and withdrawals to the environment instead of about the huge amount of 'additions' (pollution) that comes from very few sectors (Freudenberg's critique) who are mostly to blame, instead of all pollution/additions being equally distributed. Another critique has been that there is a lot of politics for supporting a biased material choice or forced introduction of different materials. Forced material choices against consumer wills would entirely negate the treadmill as well.

4.

newswire article reposts global 23.Sep.2007 09:13
genetic engineering | imperialism & war

Why Iraqi Farmers Might Prefer Death to Paul Bremer's Order 81
author: By Nancy Scola, AlterNet

Anyone hearing about central India's ongoing epidemic of farmer suicides, where
growers are killing themselves at a terrifying clip, has to be horrified. But among the more disturbed must be the once-grand poobah of post-invasion Iraq, U.S. diplomat L. Paul Bremer.

Why Iraqi Farmers Might Prefer Death to Paul Bremer's Order 81
By Nancy Scola, AlterNet
Posted on September 19, 2007, Printed on September 19, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/62273/

Anyone hearing about central India's ongoing epidemic of farmer suicides
/in.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=
2007-07-06T163214Z_01_NOOTR_RTRMDNC_0_India-283485-1.xml> , where
growers are killing themselves at a terrifying clip, has to be
horrified. But among the more disturbed must be the once-grand poobah of
post-invasion Iraq, U.S. diplomat L. Paul Bremer.

Why Bremer?

Because Indian farmers are choosing death after finding themselves caught in a loop of crop failure and debt rooted in genetically modified and patented agriculture -- the same farming model that Bremer introduced to Iraq during his tenure as administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the American body that ruled the "new Iraq" in its chaotic early days.

In his 400 days of service as CPA administrator, Bremer issued a series of directives known collectively as the "100 Orders." Bremer's orders set up the building blocks of the new Iraq, and among them is Order 81 [PDF] www.export.gov/iraq/pdf/cpa_order_81.pdf , officially titled Amendments to Patent, Industrial Design, Undisclosed Information, Integrated Circuits and Plant Variety Law, enacted by Bremer on April 26, 2004.

Order 81 generated very little press attention when it was issued.

And what coverage it did spark tended to get the details wrong. Reports claimed that what the United States' man in Iraq had done was no less than tell each and every Iraqi farmer -- growers who had been tilling the soil of Mesopotamia for thousands of years -- that from here on out
they could not reuse seeds /www.grain.org/artcles/?id=6> from
their fields or trade seeds with their neighbors, but instead they would
be required to purchase all of their seeds from the likes of U.S. agriculture conglomerates like Monsanto.

That's not quite right. Order 81 wasn't that draconian, and it was not so clearly a colonial mandate. In fact, the edict was more or less a legal tweak.

What Order 81 did was to establish the strong intellectual property protections on seed and plant products that a company like the St. Louis-based Monsanto -- purveyors of genetically modified (GM) seeds and other patented agricultural goods -- requires before they'll set up shop in a new market like the new Iraq. With these new protections, Iraq was open for business. In short, Order 81 was Bremer's way of telling Monsanto that the same conditions had been created in Iraq that had led
to the company's stunning successes in India.

In issuing Order 81, Bremer didn't order Iraqi farmers to march over to the closest Monsanto-supplied shop and stock up. But if Monsanto's experience in India is any guide, he didn't need to.

Here's the way it works in India. In the central region of Vidarbha, for example, Monsanto salesmen travel from village to village touting the tremendous, game-changing benefits of Bt cotton, Monsanto's genetically modified seed sold in India under the Bollgard(r) label.

The salesmen tell farmers of the amazing yields other Vidarbha growers have enjoyed while using their products, plastering villages with posters detailing "True Stories of Farmers Who Have Sown Bt Cotton." Old-fashioned cotton seeds pale in comparison to Monsanto's patented wonder seeds, say the salesmen, as much as an average old steer is humbled by a fine Jersey cow.

Part of the trick to Bt cotton's remarkable promise, say the salesmen, is that Bollgard(r) was genetically engineered in the lab to contain bacillus thuringiensis, a bacterium that the company claims drastically reduces the need for pesticides. When pesticides are needed, Bt cotton plants are Roundup(r) Ready -- a Monsanto designation meaning that the plants can be drowned in the company's signature herbicide, none the worse for wear. [Though much worse for wear to the environment: the plants have literally been engineered to handle MORE RoundUp pesticide--which Monsanto sells as well.] (Roundup(r) mercilessly kills nonengineered plants.) [There have been reactions to massive amounts of Bt as well. And Bt has a different legal designation when the plant itself makes it 1000x of times stronger than applications of the past (no regulation for Monsanto). If it was applied topically, it would still be regulated.]

Sounds great, right? The catch is that Bollgard(r) and Roundup(r) cost real money. [The other catch is, that Monsanto lied in its advertising and 'rigorous reporting' about yields--the yields were actually lower in India with their product than more; second, there are reports of sheep dying after being allowed to graze in a Bt-cotton field; we will get to that in another film by Vanadna Shiva later in our 'ecofeminism' section.] And so Vidarbha's farmers, somewhat desperate to grow the anemic profit margin that comes with raising cotton in that dry and dusty region, have rushed to both banks and local moneylenders to secure the cash needed to get on board with Monsanto. Of a $3,000 bank loan a Vidarbha farmer might take out, as much as half might go to purchasing a growing season's worth of Bt seeds.

And the same goes the next season, and the next season after that. In traditional agricultural, farmers can recycle seeds from one harvest to plant the next, or swap seeds with their neighbors at little or no cost. But when it comes to engineered seeds like Bt cotton, Monsanto owns the tiny speck of intellectual property inside each hull, and thus controls the patent. And a farmer wishing to reuse seeds from a Monsanto plant must pay to relicense them from the company each and every growing
season.

But farmers who chose to bet the farm, literally, on Bt cotton or other GM seeds aren't necessarily crazy or deluded.

Genetically modified agricultural does [? many reports show it doesn't.] hold the tremendous promise of leading to increased yields -- incredibly important for farmers feeding their families and communities from limited land and labor. [The problem is that with increased yields, comes farmer immiseration as price falls in the more 'plentiful' crop; that's called 'agricultural shakeout'; moreover, increased pesticides kill off and poison the local biological diversity in the area--and people.]

But when it comes to GM seeds, all's well when all is well. Farming is a gamble, and the flip side of the great potential reward that genetically modified seeds offer is, of course, great risk. When all goes badly, farmers who have sunk money into Monsanto-driven farming find themselves at the bottom of a far deeper hole than farmers who stuck with traditional growing. Farmers who suffer a failed harvest may find it nearly impossible to secure a new loan from either a bank or local moneylender. With no money to dig him or herself out, that hole only gets deeper.

And that hole is exactly where farmers have found themselves in India's Vidarbha region, where crop failure -- especially the failure of Bt cotton crops -- has reached the level of pandemic.

In may be that Bt cotton isn't well-suited to central India's rain-driven farming methods; Bollgard(r) and parched Vidarbha may be as ill-suited as Bremer's combat boots and Brooks Brothers suits.

It may be the unpredictable and unusually dry monsoon seasons that have plagued India of late. But in any case, the result is that more and more of India's farmers are finding themselves in debt, and with little hope for finding their way out.

And the final way out that so many of them -- thousands upon thousands -- have chosen is death, and by their own hands.

Firm statistics are difficult to come by, but even numbers on the low end of the scale are downright horrifying. The Indian government and NGOs have estimated
that, so far this year, at last count more than a thousand farmers
/in.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=
2007-07-06T163214Z_01_NOOTR_RTRMDNC_0_India-283485-1.xml> have killed
themselves in the state of Maharashtra alone. The New York Times pinned
it as 17,000 Indian farmers in 2003 alone
/www.nytimes.com/2006/09/19/world/asia/19india.html?ex=1189656000
&en=025df5acd4ef3e36&ei=5070> .

A PBS special that aired last month, called "The Dying Fields
/www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/shows/vidarbha/index.html> ," claimed that one farmer commits suicide in Vidarbha every eight hours.

But let's not be so pessimistic for a moment, and say that Iraqi farmers see the risks of investing in unproven GM seeds. Let's say they reject the idea that the intellectual property buried inside the seeds they plant is "owned" not by nature, but by Monsanto. Let's say they decide to keep on keeping on with nonengineered, nonpatented agriculture.

The fact is, they may not have a choice.

Here is where Order 81 starts to look a lot like the forced and mandatory GM-driven agricultural system that cynics tagged it as when it was first announced.

Read the letter of the law, and the impact of Order 81 seems limited to using public policy to construct an architecture that's simply favorable to a company like Monsanto. The directive promotes a corporate agribusiness model a lot like the one we have in the United States today, but it doesn't really and truly put Monsanto in
the driver's seat of that system.

Actually handing the keys to Monsanto is instead biology's job.

Biology -- how so? That's a good question for Percy Schmeiser, the Saskatchewan farmer featured in the film The Future of Food /www.thefutureoffood.com/> , who found himself tangled with Monsanto in a heated lawsuit
/www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2000/12/schmeiser.html> over the presence of Roundup(r) Ready canola plants on the margins of his fields.

The Canadian farmer argued that he had purchased no Monsanto canola seeds, had never planted Monsanto seeds, and was frankly horrified to find that the genetically modified crops had taken hold in his acreage.

Perhaps, suggested Schmeiser, the plants in question were the product of a few rogue GM seeds blown from a truck passing by his land?

Monsanto was uninterested in Schmeiser's theory on how the Roundup(r) Ready plants got there. As far as the company was concerned, Schmeiser was in possession of an agricultural product whose intellectual property belonged to Monsanto. And it didn't matter much how that came to pass.

Monsanto's interpretation of the impact of seed contamination is, of course, a good one if its goal is to eventually own the rights to the world's seed supply. And that goal may well be in sight. In fact, a 2004 study by the Union of Concerned Scientists
/www.csmonitor.com/2004/0311/p14s01-sten.html> found that much
of the U.S. seed pool is already contaminated by GM seeds. If that contamination continues unabated, eventually much of the world's seeds could labor under patents controlled by one agribusiness or another.

In one agricultural realm like Iraq's, GM contamination could in short order give a company like Monsanto a stranglehold over the market.

Post-Order 81 Iraqi farmers who want to resist genetically modified seeds and stick to traditional farming methods may not have that choice.

Future generations of Iraqi growers may find that one seed shop in Karbala is selling the same patented seeds as every other shop in town.

And when that happens, what had been a traditional farming community -- where financial risk is divided and genetic diversity multiplied through the simple interactions between neighboring farmers -- finds itself nothing more than the home to lone farmers caught up in the high-stakes world of international agribusiness.

It's a world not unfamiliar to former CPA honcho Bremer, if the company he keeps is any indication. Robert Cohen, author of the book Milk A-Z /www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0965919684/dorwaybookshelf> , talks about the Bush administration as the "Monsanto Cabinet."

Among the many connections between that company and the current White House: Former Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman served on the board of directors of Calgene, a Monsanto subsidiary; one-time Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld had an eight-year stint as president of Searle, another Monsanto subsidiary; Clarence Thomas worked as an attorney in Monsanto's pesticide and agriculture division before coming to the
Supreme Court as a George H.W. Bush appointee.

Those connections, as much as anything else, might help to explain the impetus behind and timing of Order 81. Let's suppose for a minute that GM-driven globalized agriculture is, indeed, in the long-term best interests of the new Iraq. Even in the best of circumstances, such a significant policy shift in so core an economic sector can be expected to cause short-term pain. When Bremer issued the directive, Iraq was
hardly in a good place: It had recently been invaded, its government dismantled.

Considering the desperate need for immediate stability in Iraq in April 2004, Order 81 begins to look like the triumph of connections and ideology over clear-headed policymaking.

In India, seed activists like Vandana Shiva are working to weaken the connection between that world of U.S. agribusiness and the farmers in villages and towns across India. Shiva, featured in the PBS special The Dying Fields, implores local farmers to stop forking over their money to commercial seed producers and return to the days of homegrown seeds.

While Monsanto sells seeds that become India's corn, rice, potatoes, and tomatoes, it's cotton where Monsanto is king, as Shiva well knows. "You have become addicted to Bt cotton," she chides farmers. Though if the perpetuation of the GMO-seed/crop-failure cycle is any indication, few Indian farmers are listening.

Will Iraqi farmers making their way in the new post-Order 81 agricultural world fare any better? Maybe. Can they manage to reap the benefits of genetically modified farming, trading their newfound dependence on Monsanto and other corporate behemoths for the increased yield their patented and IP-protected seeds promise? Hopefully.

But it's possible that Iraq's farmers will indeed find themselves in the same predicament that India's farmers have ended up in -- a world where growers no longer rely upon their fields and their communities to meet their needs but in a world in which, when hard times strike, the only way out seems like the final exit. A world in which, in a twist perhaps worthy of Shakespeare, the farmer borrows one last time from whatever bank or moneylender will hand over a few last rupees, buys one last bottle of Roundup(r), and -- as has happened so many times in India --
ends it all by drinking it down.

Monsanto to the end.

Nancy Scola www.nancyscola.com is a Brooklyn-based freelance
writer. Nancy has worked on Capitol Hill and on the prepresidential
campaign of former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, and is currently a blogger
at the political blog MyDD.

---
http://www.nwrage.org
http://www.alternet.org/story/62273/

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Week 2: Everyone Posts Comments to This Thread (by Sunday 9/16)

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Air Car, with Compressed Air Engine, Discussed in Class (looks like Pikachu)

Opening Thread: Post your Blog Entries as Comments to my Main Post Each Week

Post Comments like this:

1. Your Name
2. A Title
3. A short personal commentary what you learned from it or what made you curious about it given the week's class content. However, it doesn't have to be about the week's content, only something related to human-environmental interactions.
4. Then put a long line ('-------------------)'.
5. Then cut/paste the article or topic you found.
6. Then a small line '---'.
7. Then, finally, paste the URL (link) of the post.

Post for this week on this thread. I'll set up a new main post each week, and then we will do the same.


[Unable to resist posting this picture, because we talked about aspartame and Donald Rumsfeld.]

Chinese Urban Pollution, Sailing Overseas

Test post

testing