Compass Roundup

Land of the Free?
Incarceration rates in George W. Bush's America and Stalin's U.S.S.R.
U.S.S.R. (1950)1,423 per 100,000
U.S.A. (2002) 2,298 per 100,000

Incarceration rate of black men in South Africa before ANC rule and in contemporary America
South Africa (1993) 851 per 100,000
U.S.A. (2002) 7,150 per 100,000

(Sources: U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prison Policy Initiative, 'The International Use of Incarceration' by Marc Mauer, The Sentencing Project).

From This magazine (Jan./Feb. 2004). Subscriptions: $35.yr. (6 issues) from 401 Richmond St. W. #396, Toronto, ON M5V 3A8, Canada; www.thismagazine.ca

Iraq, and more Iraq
Number of minutes that the three major U.S. networks' evening news programs spent covering Iraq in 2003: 4,047

Number of minutes spent covering AIDS: 39

Number of minutes spent on global warming: 15

Source: ADT Research, New York, 2003

Booked for Travel
Literature professor Larry Portzline has invented a new type of travel: bookstore tourism. According to Poets & Writers (Jan./Feb. 2004), Portzline organizes busloads of bookworms to travel to independent bookstores across the country. He also encourages folks to create their own bookstore tours. 'One busload of book lovers pulling into a town is great, but dozens of buses visiting independent bookstores all over the country -- that would be incredible,' says Portzline. www.members.aol.com/bookstoretourism

Hell No, GMOs
On March 2, California's Mendocino County became the first county in the nation to ban genetically modified organisms (GMOs) -- crops and animals tinkered with by biotech firms. Despite a well-financed opposition campaign by a coalition of biotech giants including Monsanto, DuPont, and Dow Chemical, 56 percent of voters in the notably countercultural county cast ballots for the initiative, Measure H. The Contra Costa Times (March 9, 2004) reports that although Mendocino is basically GMO-free because farmers there grow practically none of the typical GMO crops -- corn, alfalfa, rice, and soy beans -- passage of the measure has spurred county plant inspectors to be on the watch for shipments of genetically altered plant material from elsewhere.