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To my friends,
   Please take a few moments to look this over. I know we are exposed to a glut of conservation messages but take a moment to make a difference here. The Japanese whaling industry has decided that if the U.S imposes quotas and limits on their bogus "research" whaling hunts of endangered species, then Eskimo (aboriginal) whaling should be controlled too. The Eskimo hunts are for their sustenance, not for "commercial gain", which has been shown as a lie by the Japanese, who have wasted over 4000 tons of their "research". 

Mr. Yasuo Fukuda, Prime Minister of Japan
Mr. Yoshimi Watanabe, Minister of Administrative Reform
Mr. Fukushiro Nukaga, Minister of Finance
cc:  Mr. Ichiro Ozawa, President of Democratic Party

Dear Ministers,

To call the whaling program research is a hoax.  The International Whaling commission has declared that the results of the program are currently of no use, and non-lethal alternatives exist for determining all of the program objectives relevant to whale conservation.  4,000 tons of the whalemeat which the hunt produces remains unsold, giving the lie to the suggestion that the whale hunt could become a commercially sustainable activity.

We ask you to stop the killing immediately! The current whale hunt in the Southern Ocean is neither scientifically useful nor commercially viable.

We the undersigned ask you to stop the killing now and will stop buying Japanese products until the killing stops!

Best regards,
Hans Lak
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/8/stop-the-killing-boycott-Japan

Tuesday, December 18, 2007
 http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/12/17/europe/food.php

    In an "unforeseen and unprecedented" shift, the world food supply is dwindling rapidly and food prices are soaring to historic levels, the top food and agriculture official of the United Nations warned Monday. 
    The changes created "a very serious risk that fewer people will be able to get food," particularly in the developing world, said Jacques Diouf, head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.
    The agency's food price index rose by more than 40 percent this year, compared with 9 percent the year before - a rate that was already unacceptable, he said. New figures show that the total cost of foodstuffs imported by the neediest countries rose 25 percent, to $107 million, in the last year.
    At the same time, reserves of cereals are severely depleted, FAO records show. World wheat stores declined 11 percent this year, to the lowest level since 1980. That corresponds to 12 weeks of the world's total consumption - much less than the average of 18 weeks consumption in storage during the period 2000-2005. There are only 8 weeks of corn left, down from 11 weeks in the earlier period.
     Prices of wheat and oilseeds are at record highs, Diouf said Monday. Wheat prices have risen by $130 per ton, or 52 percent, since a year ago. U.S. wheat futures broke $10 a bushel for the first time Monday, the agricultural equivalent of $100 a barrel oil. (Page 16)
    Diouf blamed a confluence of recent supply and demand factors for the crisis, and he predicted that those factors were here to stay. On the supply side, these include the early effects of global warming, which has decreased crop yields in some crucial places, and a shift away from farming for human consumption toward crops for biofuels and cattle feed. Demand for grain is increasing with the world population, and more is diverted to feed cattle as the population of upwardly mobile meat-eaters grows.
    "We're concerned that we are facing the perfect storm for the world's hungry," said Josette Sheeran, executive director of the World Food Program, in a telephone interview. She said that her agency's food procurement costs had gone up 50 percent in the past 5 years and that some poor people are being "priced out of the food market." To make matters worse, high oil prices have doubled shipping costs in the past year, putting enormous stress on poor nations that need to import food as well as the humanitarian agencies that provide it.
    "You can debate why this is all happening, but what's most important to us is that it's a long-term trend, reversing decades of decreasing food prices," Sheeran said.
    Climate specialists say that the vulnerability will only increase as further effects of climate change are felt. "If there's a significant change in climate in one of our high production areas, if there is a disease that effects a major crop, we are in a very risky situation," said Mark Howden of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Canberra.
    Already "unusual weather events," linked to climate change - such as droughts, floods and storms - have decreased production in important exporting countries like Australia and Ukraine, Diouf said.
    In Southern Australia, a significant reduction in rainfall in the past few years led some farmers to sell their land and move to Tasmania, where water is more reliable, said Howden, one of the authors of a recent series of papers in the Procedings of the National Academy of Sciences on climate change and the world food supply.
    "In the U.S., Australia, and Europe, there's a very substantial capacity to adapt to the effects on food - with money, technology, research and development," Howden said. "In the developing world, there isn't."
    Sheeran said, that on a recent trip to Mali, she was told that food stocks were at an all time low. The World Food Program feeds millions of children in schools and people with HIV/AIDS. Poor nutrition in these groups increased the risk serious disease and death.
    Diouf suggested that all countries and international agencies would have to "revisit" agricultural and aid policies they had adopted "in a different economic environment." For example, with food and oil prices approaching record, it may not make sense to send food aid to poorer countries, but instead to focus on helping farmers grow food locally.
    FAO plans to start a new initiative that will offer farmers in poor countries vouchers that can be redeemed for seeds and fertilizer, and will try to help them adapt to climate change.
     The recent scientific papers concluded that farmers could adjust to 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) to 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees) of warming by switching to more resilient species, changing planting times, or storing water for irrigation, for example.
    But that after that, "all bets are off," said Francesco Tubiello, of Columbia University Earth Institute. "Many people assume that we will never have a problem with food production on a global scale, but there is a strong potential for negative surprises."
    In Europe, officials said they were already adjusting policies to the reality of higher prices. The European Union recently suspended a "set-aside" of land for next year - a longstanding program that essentially paid farmers to leave 10 percent of their land untilled as a way to increase farm prices and reduce surpluses. Also, starting in January, import tariffs on all cereal will be eliminated for six months, to make it easier for European countries to buy grain from elsewhere. But that may make it even harder for poor countries to obtain the grain they need.
    In an effort to promote free markets, the European Union has been in the process of reducing farm subsidies and this has accelerated the process.
    "It's much easier to do with the new economics," said Michael Mann a spokesman for the EU agriculture commission. "We saw this coming to a certain extent, but we are surprised at how quickly it is happening."
    But he noted that farm prices the last few decades have been lower than at any time in history, so the change seems extremely dramatic.
    Diouf noted that there had been "tension and political unrest related to food markets" in a number of poor countries this year, including Morocco, Senegal and Mauritania. "We need to play a catalytic role to quickly boost crop production in the most affected countries," he said.
    Part of the current problem is an outgrowth of prosperity. More people in the world now eat meat, diverting grain from humans to livestock. A more complicated issue is the use of crops to make biofuels, which are often heavily subsidized. A major factor in rising corn prices globally is that many farmers in the United States are now selling their corn to make subsidized ethanol. 
    Mann said the European Union had intentionally set low targets for biofuel use - 10 per cent by 2020 - to limit food price rises and that it plans to import some biofuel. "We don't want all our farmers switching from food to biofuel," he said.

If you are considering membership in a buying club, ordering tickets or services through a Website, even one you trust, booking travel or accommodations or go through AOL to do the same, or use Ebay to participate in auctions, watch carefully where your clicks take you. Be aware of the policies and methods that site follows to process your transactions. Trilegiant appears to offer “rewards”, small rebates or so-called memberships as part of your deal. As an adjunct to your experience they piggyback or use the site as bait to get your personal information.

If you are as busy as many people seem to be these days, you probably throw away junk mail you don’t recognize or don’t want, but this is one of the methods Trilegiant’s affiliate identities uses to claim your “membership” or participation in a trial offer, whether or not you return it. Others are snagged by the insidious tentacles of this scam because the details are buried in the usual disclaimers and policy statements of the site with which they’ve done business. Then, when the so-called “trial” expires, the consumer is charged monthly or even yearly charges to their credit/bank card. You may not notice such small monthly dings in your account, thinking your spouse or kids bought something. Some are hit with the “service” charges that range from $59.95 to $89.95 or more (in my case) for something you may not be aware you had! By now, you may realize your account security or identity has been compromised.

This might sound a little alarmist to you and with good reason. Think about how long it took many of us to trust our credit card numbers or personal information to transactions on the Internet. Hell, I didn’t even trust the bank site, choosing to do business IN the bank. Unscrupulous companies like this will force users to shun Web transactions and cost sites we liked and trusted heretofore and cost Web dealers a lot of money in lost subscriptions and business. When you see the list of affiliate ID’s Trilegiant uses and think about how they’re scamming people with nearly invisible services, you’ll begin to understand how much money is being taken from consumers who may have no idea it’s being taken! I will put this list at the end and let you decide. Examine the sites you use and scrutinize your bank transactions/statements to keep yourselves secure. If, as I have, you find this kind of scam going on, contact your bank and tell them what you’ve found. Explain to them that Trilegiant, the parent company of the sites on the list (but not limited to them), should be put on their Fraud Watch List. This company is being and has been investigated widely for fraudulent activity by several states and numerous banks since 2004 and THEYRE STILL AT IT! By the way, don’t beat yourself up too much over it because they do it so deftly and use established Web identities, trusted over time, that they operate nearly invisibly. That’s what Trilegiant is counting on. Again, here’s the list:

Additional DBA's, Addresses, and Telephone Numbers

Ron Withrow

ronw1@hotmail.com

November 21,2007

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