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--- Bradford, Yorkshire in late 1800's ---
^ IN THE NEWS! nNewS from Brazil: Evolution Now more than ever! Beloved folk singer renews call for pre-emptive nuclear war!! Here's Randy Newman doing his 1970's hit, "Political Science", a.k.a. Let's Drop the Big One Listen and weep... [if link doesn't work click here ] Please contribute relevant news items to be posted below - send links to peter.caplan@yahoo.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted June 11, 2008: Lessons for a Greener World Interview in Cuba Si (April 1) with Green spokesperson Derek Wall on what we can learn from Cuba and Latin America about achieving a green planet."The Cuban constitution enshrines environmental protection. Cuba has been identified as the one country in the world that has been able to develop in an ecologically sustainable way by the WWF. Posted June 11, 2008:Attention Hackers: Uncle Sam's Cyber Force Wants You Working with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Department of Homeland Security, and other governmental agencies, the Air Force’s stated goal is to gain access to, and control over, any and all networked computers, anywhere on Earth, at a proposed cost of $30 billion over the first five years.(Astore, CommonDreams, June 6) Posted June 11, 2008:Jeffrey Sachs, author of "Common Wealth" is interviewed on Bill Maher's show Real Time on the subject of Sustainability: "...a small part of the Mohave Desert could provide more than half of the electricity needs of the United States without emitting any carbon dioxide, just using the solar power that's available.(video from Apr 27). Posted June 11, 2008:As Climate Bill Dies, Greens Express Hope " 'The American people are seeking a change from the kind of cynical political games we saw (the Republican leadership) play this week,' said Carl Pope, the executive director of the Sierra Club, after the bill's supporters fell 12 votes short of the 60 they needed to cut off debate and force a vote. While these procedural ploys may have succeeded in today's closely divided Senate, we are confident that a larger pro-environment majority will allow us to prevail in the next Congress' " (Lobe, IPS News, June 6) Posted June 11, 2008:Small Town Overthrows Corporate Giant for Control of Water "The people of Felton, California learned that they had successfully wrested control of their water from the clutches of a giant corporation on Friday, May 30, 2008. Many of the 3,000 adult residents of the Felton Water District had been organizing for nearly six years to buy the community's water system from California American Water". (Hauter, AlterNet, June 5) Posted June 11, 2008: About Farmers, Without Farmers " Outside the three-day UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) summit of world leaders that opened June 3 in Rome, there took place a parallel conference: "More than 100 delegates from international social movements, farmers organisations, indigenous groups from the South and NGOs [held] a five-day forum on food sovereignty. The civil society forum Terra Preta (black soil, in Portuguese) has been organised by the International Planning Committee (IPC), a global network of NGOs and civil society groups concerned with agricultural issues."(Zaccaro, IPS NEWS, Jun 3) Posted June 11, 2008:Excerpts from Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World's Food System "In every country, the contradictions of obesity, hunger, poverty and wealth are becoming more acute. India has, for example, destroyed millions of tons of grains, permitting food to rot in silos, while the quality of food eaten by India's poorest is getting worse for the first time since Independence in 1947. In 1992, in the same towns and villages where malnutrition had begun to grip the poorest families, the Indian government admitted foreign soft drinks manufacturers and food multinationals to its previously protected economy" Raj Patel, Alternet, June 2 Posted June 11, 2008:Masculine, Feminine or Human? Univ. of Texas journalism professor and author Robert Jensen on student attitudes toward gender roles and dominance: "...[these vies] sum up the dominant, and very toxic, conception of masculinity with which most men are raised in the contemporary United States". Counterpunch May 20. Posted May 29, 2008: It's the Meat-Eating, Stupid "...a recent United Nations report, “Livestock’s Long Shadow,”...concludes that eating meat is “one of the most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global.” and that "eating meat causes almost 40 percent more greenhouse gas emissions than all the cars, trucks, and planes in the world combined. It concludes that the meat industry “should be a major policy focus when dealing with problems of land degradation, climate change and air pollution, water shortage and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity.”(Bill Berry, Wisconsin Capital Times May 26 and Common Dreams) Posted May 29, 2008:Billions Wasted in U.N. Climate Program The criticism centres on the UN's clean development mechanism, an international system established by the Kyoto process that allows rich countries to meet emissions targets by funding clean energy projects in developing nations.(John Vidal, The Guardian May26) Posted May 29, 2008:Do-it-yourself Public Transit in Cambodia Video from 2006 shows now grassroots knowhow and creativity resulted in the construcion out of spare parts of self-propelled flatcars running on bamboo rails. Science for the people lives! Posted May 29, 2008:Animal Farm: The Cybrids A new british law being considered ispermits the creation of human-animal hybrid embryos, or “cybrids,” for medical research. Pro and cons discussed by Olivia Judson blog, NY Times May 20. Posted May 29, 2008:Manufacturing the Food Crisis Walden Bello shows that In the Phillipines, "The one-two punch of IMF-imposed adjustment and WTO-imposed trade liberalization swiftly transformed a largely self-sufficient agricultural economy into an import-dependent one as it steadily marginalized farmers... " "The experience of Mexico and the Philippines was paralleled in one country after another subjected to the ministrations of the IMF and the WTO. A study of fourteen countries by the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization found that the levels of food imports in 1995-98 exceeded those in 1990-94. This was not surprising, since one of the main goals of the WTO's Agreement on Agriculture was to open up markets in developing countries so they could absorb surplus production in the North."(The Nation, June 2, posted May 15) Posted May 29, 2008:Freeman Dyson's Selective Vision Critique of Dysons's NY Review of Books article in which he says "Carbon emissions are not a problem because in a few years genetic engineers will develop “carbon-eating trees” that will sequester carbon in soils". RealClimate, May 24, with discussion. Posted May 29, 2008:Brazil: Agribusiness Undermines Environmental Leadership Role "Brazil is a world leader in agriculture and on several environmental issues, but it will find it hard to reconcile both fronts, judging by the many battles lost by former environment minister Marina Silva, in spite of the political clout she wielded for over five years."(Mario Osava, IPS May 22) Posted May 29, 2008:Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It "The outrageous success of bottled water, in a country where more than 89 percent of tap water meets or exceeds federal health and safety regulations, regularly wins in blind taste tests against name-brand waters, and costs 240 to 10,000 times less than bottled water, is an unparalleled social phenomenon, one of the greatest marketing coups of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries."(from book by Eliz. Royte, Bloomsbury USA, posted May 20) Posted May 29, 2008:New Trend in Biofuels Has New Risks "...biologists and botanists are warning that... these newer crops [non-food crops like reeds and wild grasses] are what scientists label invasive species — that is, weeds — that have an extraordinarily high potential to escape biofuel plantations, overrun adjacent farms and natural land, and create economic and ecological havoc in the process. Posted May 20, 2005:Climate Changed Critical analysis of the changed role of environmentalists in the debate on warming: "While powerholders can no longer ignore the issue, they can certainly delay action through obfuscation and false solutions. And surprisingly, nearly all of the distractions and false solutions proposed by government or industry have been embraced by parts of the environmental movement".By John Hepburn, posted May 18, Znet. Posted May 20, 2008: Whose Rain Forest? " The government of [Brazil] is pushing a law that would restrict access to the rain forest, requiring foreigners and Brazilians alike to obtain a special permit to enter it. Brazilian officials say it would separate bad non-governmental organizations from good ones, and deter so-called “biopirates” — those who want to patent unique substances discovered in the forest". “The Amazon is ours,” Justice Secretary Romeu Tuma Jr. said in an interview. “We want to know who is going there and what they are going to do. It’s a question of national sovereignty.” NYT, Mar 18 Posted May 20, 2008:Cluster Bomb Ban? Russia, China, US oppose treaty."Delegates from more than 100 countries will open a conference in Dublin [May 19]that will try to hammer out a treaty banning the production, use, stockpiling, or transfer of cluster munitions...Major producers and stockpilers of cluster munitions, the United States, Russia, and China, will be absent and are opposed to a treaty..." Common Dreams, May 18. Posted May 20, 2008: Climate Change and Tropical Cyclones Technical discussion in RealClimate questions recently-found apparent decrease in tropical storms in a warmer world - by Rasmus Benestad & Michael Mann, posted May 18, with discussion. Posted May 20, 2008: Pharmaceutical Payola - Drug Marketing for Doctors Robert Weissman in May 17 Common Dreams: "...direct-to-consumer ads make up less than a tenth of [drug] industry marketing expenditures ($4 billion of $57.5 billion in 2004). And Gagnon and Lexchin’s estimate of $57.5 billion on marketing excludes many industry expenditures that are really driven by marketing, including clinical trials conducted for marketing purposes.The bulk of the industry marketing effort — more than 70 percent... — is directed at doctors. Posted May 20, 2008:Regime-Quakes in Burma and China "If the Burmese junta avoids mutiny..., it will be thanks largely to China, which has vigorously blocked all attempts at the United Nations for humanitarian intervention in Burma. Inside China, where the central government is going to great lengths to show itself as compassionate, news of this complicity could prove explosive. Will China’s citizens receive this news? They just might"(Naomi Klein, Nation, May 15) Posted May 20, 2008:Manufacturing a Food Crisis Walden Bello writes that Mexico, "the homeland of corn had been converted to a corn-importing economy by 'free market' policies promoted by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and Washington. The process began with the early 1980s debt crisis..."(Nation, May 15) Posted May 20, 2008: Portugal’s ‘Mayor of the Future’ in Green Energy Mayor Pos-de-Mina of the city of Moura (Pop. 16,500)saw his ecological dream take shape near the village of Ameraleja, where the "solar energy plant that will soon be the world’s biggest began to function in March. With 100 hectares of solar panels, the station will have a full production capacity of 46.4 MW in 2009, and 62 MW in 2010, when it is fully functioning. Using a new solar tracking system , the plant will produce 93 gigawatts (GW) hours/year, equivalent to the consumption needs of 30,000 households, by means of 268,000 photovoltaic panels. (IPS, May 13).
Posted May 5, 2008: Multinationals Making Billions on Global Food Crisis, Geoffrey Lean, The Independent: "...Monsanto last month reported that its profits increased from $1.44bn to $2.22bn. Cargill's net earnings soared by 86 per cent from $553m to $1.030bn over the same three months [ending Feb 2008]. And Archer Daniels Midland, one of the world's largest agricultural processors of soy, corn and wheat, increased its net earnings by 42 per cent in the first three months of this year from $363m to $517m. The operating profit of its grains merchandising and handling operations jumped 16-fold from $21m to $341m. Posted May 5, 2008: Chastity Science Faced with the fact that "...Three large-scale studies in 2007 found that federally funded chastity promotion has no effect on teen behavior ", Bush appointees at HHS launched "...an alternative approach to assessing abstinence program performance: pay local programs to partner with evaluators to report on their program's effectiveness. HHS abstinence grantees are required to use at least 15 percent of their grants—about $23,000 of taxpayer money per year for the average program—to do these self-evaluations." The strategy has worked - currently there is $175 million dedicated to abstinence-until-marriage programs and zero to comprehensive sex education. Steve Yoder, Zspace, May 1 Posted May 5, 2008: The Pentagon Stangles Our Economy - why the U.S. Has Gone Broke. Chalmers Johson, Le Monde Diplomatique, AlterNet, Apr 26, argues that the U.S. military budget of $623B exceeding the combined military budgets of the next 9 nations is "...military Keynesianism -- the determination to maintain a permanent war economy and to treat military output as an ordinary economic product, even though it makes no contribution to either production or consumption." Posted May 5, 2008: Should You Pay $6 per Gallon? Why higher gas prices make economic sense. By Keith Naughton, Newsweek. Apr 25: ' "The biggest lie in America politics today is to say you care deeply about global warming and advocate for the price of gas to go down," says Mike Jackson, CEO of the AutoNation car dealer chain. "Those are mutually exclusive concepts." ' Posted May 5, 2008: The World Food Crisis John Nichols, The Nation, May 13:"..globalization and genetic gimmickry... has left thirty-seven nations with food crises while global grain giant Cargill harvests an 86 percent rise in profits and Monsanto reaps record sales from its herbicides and seeds."... Posted May 5, 2008: Vitamin Supplements - Helpful or Harmful? According to Jeremy Lawrence, health editor at The Independent (Apr 16)"... a review of 67 randomised trials of vitamin pills has found that far from prolonging life, they may actually shorten it."
Posted April 28, 2008: The Torture Election: Fighting for the Soul of the American Psychological Association New York psychologist Steven Reisner, a leading critic of APA's policy on torture, which allows psychologists to participate in Bush's "war on terror" interrogations, won a plurality of 30% in balloting for the presidency of theAPA. This is seen by some in APA as a great victory for critics of the organizaion's position...,by Jeffrey Kaye, Apr 23 AlterNet Posted April 28, 2008: Expressing Our Individuality the way E. Coli Do ". E. coli’s individuality should be a warning to those who would put human nature down to any sort of simple genetic determinism. Living things are more than just programs run by genetic software. Even in minuscule microbes, the same genes and the same genetic network can lead to different fates. Carl Zimmer, Apr 22, NY Times. Posted April 28, 2008: The Hidden Battle to Control the World's Food Supply "...it's about how countries have been forced to abandon their support for farmers and to abandon things like grain supplies and grain stores. And this is a longer-term story, and it involves organizations like the World Bank and the World Trade Organization that have a fairly iron control over the economies of most of the poorest countries in the world..." Interview of Raj Patel by Amy Goodman, Alternet Apr 19 Posted April 28, 2008: Tantalum, Cellphones and the Congo "A tenfold spike in the price of coltan in 2000 brought attention to its lawless extraction in the Congo with headlines like, “Coltan, Gorillas and Cell Phones,” and “Coltan Boom, Gorilla Bust.” As in the past with elephants, mountain gorillas and millions of innocent civilians today are being trampled in the quest for mineral wealth deep in the heart of Africa..." By Casey Bush and Joshua Seeds, Common Dreams, April 19 Posted April 28, 2008: The Ethanol Apologists "While the soaring cost of the ethanol are maddening, even more galling are the continuing claims by a group of ethanol apologists who insist that the ethanol industry is having no effect on food prices...". by Robert Bryce, Counterpunch, Apr 17.
Posted April 14, 2008: Hurricane expert reconsiders global warming's impact The new work, by MIT's Kerry Emmanuel, "suggests that, even in a dramatically warming world, hurricane frequency and intensity may not substantially rise during the next two centuries", writes Houston Chronicle reporter Eric Berger (Apr 12).There are now questions about whether the record demonstrates that hurricanes have increased in intensity, and if so, whether sea surface temperatures changes alone can cause siginificant changes in hurricane intensity. [Warning to global warming deniers: This result is specific only to the problem of hurricanes] Posted April 14, 2008: Scientists Ask EU to Drop Biofuel Targets Although the EU agreed in 2006 that 10 percent of the bloc's transport needs should derive from agricultural crops by 2020, a new paper by European Environment Agency says that "the that the production and use of biofuels may not lead to major cuts in the emissions of carbon dioxide, the main substance triggering global warming, when compared to conventional petrol or diesel...[and] an upsurge in biofuel production will put increasing pressure on water, soil, flora and fauna". IPS, April 12 Posted April 14, 2008: Pseudo-science Blames Coming Depression on Boobs Commentary in April 9 Alternet on an April 5 post by AP science writer Seth Borenstein: "A new brain-scan study may help explain what's going on in the minds of financial titans when they take risky monetary gambles — sex. When young men were shown erotic pictures, they were more likely to make a larger financial gamble than if they were shown a picture of something scary, such a snake, or something neutral, such as a stapler, university researchers reported.." The research was done at Stanford and involved a sample of 15... Science marches on. Posted April 14, 2008: Poor Go Hungry While Rich Fill Their Tanks (or, Let Them Eat Ethanol) "A dramatic rise in the worldwide cost of food is provoking riots throughout the Third World where millions more of the world’s most vulnerable people are facing starvation as food shortages grow and cereal prices soar. It threatens to become the biggest crisis of the 21st century" according to Paul Vallely, Apr 12, Common Dreams, The Independent. Posted April 14, 2008: Atmosphere's Sensitivity to CO2 In a new paper(still in preprint), James Hansen comes up with even more pessimistic outlooks "If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm." These findings are discussed at length in a forum inApril 7 RealClimate Posted April 6, 2008: The Case Against Lawns By Fritz Haeg. Why do we dedicate so much property to something that requires precious resources, endless hours and contaminates our air and water?... Posted April 4 on alternet.org Posted April 6, 2008: Ecology & Climate Change (audio)Justin Podur, professor of environmental studies at U of York, Toronto and a radical political activist discusses the science and politics of climate change, concluding that if parts of the world are rendered uninhabitable by climate changes, the elites will still survive - so lets not waste our time arguing with the elites. Recorded Mar 25 at Austin, TX (zcommunications.org). Check out Podur's blogPosted April 6, 2008: World Bank Climate Profiteering by Daphne Wysham and Shakuntala Makhijani shows how profitable World Bank investments in giant coal-burning power plants is aided by creative interpretations of carbon trading (commondreams.org, April 1) Posted Mar 24, 2008:The Folly of Turning Water into Fuel "...times are good in the High Plains. Corn and other grains are selling like precious metals, and there is every reason to believe that prices will stay high. At the heart of the boom is the U.S. government's decision to rely on corn-based ethanol to meet a big part of the nation's demand for "renewable" fuels." But, Stan Cox is alarmed: AlterNet March 22, 2008.
Posted Mar 24, 2008: Birth Control for Others NY Times review of "Fatal Misconception" by Matthew Connely. "...a century’s worth of mistakes, arrogance, racism, sexism and incompetence in what the jacket copy calls a 'withering critique' of 'a humanitarian movement gone terribly awry'.” Reviewer Kristof concedes that good points are made, but considers the book one-sided. Posted Mar 24, 2008: Run Your Car on Coal? Maybe not - the Coming of Liquefied Coal. "U.S. coal companies... plan to combine well-known coal-to-liquids technology and rapidly-evolving coal-to-chemicals technologies with untested methods of capturing CO2, compressing it into a liquid, and injecting it a mile below ground, hoping it will stay there forever. ... If coal executives succeed in convincing the public to pay for all this, low- carbon renewable energy systems and waste-free 'green chemistry' will be sidelined for decades to come." Peter Montague, Counterepunch, Mar 21. Posted Mar 24, 2008: Monsanto's Raid on Brazil - Resisting Agrofuels and Biotech, by Isabella Kenfield, Counterpunch, Mar 22. "...Brazilian women occupied a research site of the U.S.-based agricultural biotechnology giant Monsanto in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, destroying the greenhouse and experimental plots of genetically-modified (GM) corn". Participants, members of the international farmers' organization La Vía Campesina were protesingt the Brazilian government's decision in February to legalize Monsanto's GM Guardian® corn, which came just weeks after the French government prohibited the corn due to environment and human health risks. Posted Mar 24, 2008: Climate Change Deepening World Water Crisis "The world water crisis ...deals with mismanagement of water and how governments have failed to secure the involvement of local communities in the management of water," said Sunita Narain, director of the New Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment. "However, today the world water crisis faces yet another challenge -- one of climate change... and it is this challenge which the world is completely failing to do anything about, and which will jeopardise the water security of large numbers of people, who already live on the margins of survival." IPS, Mar 19 Posted Mar 24, 2008: Gap in Life Expectancy Widens for Nation . There are “large and growing disparities in life expectancy for richer and poorer Americans, paralleling the growth of income inequality in the last two decades", reports Robert Pear in the NY Times, reprinted in Common Dreams, Mar 23. Posted Mar 24, 2008: Green Buildings may be the cheapest way to slow global warming, reports David Bellow, Sci Amer, Mar 17. "By building green--and retrofitting existing buildings--the countries of North America could cut greenhouse gas emissions by more than 25 percent", according to a new report from the Montreal-based Commission for Environmental Cooperation. Posted Mar 12, 2008: The War of Drones, Drones, machine and human, have drenched Pakistan with the blood of innocents. On the one side are US-made drones such as the MQ-1B General Dynamics Predator - a remote controlled, self-propelled, missile-bearing aerial system. On the other side are the low-tech human drones, armed with explosive vests stuffed with ball bearings and nails... Pervez Hoodbhoy, Znet, Mar 10 Posted Mar 12, 2008: The Ostrich Brigades "Colder than usual January temperatures in the United States have brought the climate change deniers out of hibernation, flooding websites, and opinion and letters pages about the 'great global warming hoax'. They even organised their own conference on denial in New York City..." Steven Leahy, IPS, Mar 4.[ see also our Feb 7 post, What if you held a conference and no (real) scientists came? ] Posted Mar 3, 2008: Federal Science and the Public Good -UCS Feb 14 report cites "numerous independent investigations[that] have documented the suppression, manipulation, and distortion of federal science before it enters the policy process. Political interference in science has indeed become pervasive." Participate in a discussion of the report at Nation Mag. Discussion Group Meeting on Mar 15 (see calendar). Posted Mar 3, 2008: The Placebo Effect "The new meta-analysis show[ed] once again that some antidepressants aren’t much...[use] in mild or moderate depressionsaid." (go to Counterpunch article or see our Jan 30 post below) The industry is contesting the study on the basis that it was not in line “with patient experience”. Do drugs stop working if you know they are little better than a sugar pill? And do cultural factors, like our collective faith in a treatment, have a measurable effect on the benefits?by Ben Goldacre, Mar 1, Bad Science Posted Mar 3, 2008: Let's Build More Bombs A series of eight public hearings at locations around the country by the National Nuclear Security Administration to discuss sites for new and more efficient nuclear weapons, while Washington continues its campaign to "prevent Iran from even considering developing one". Posted by Ron Jacobs Mar 1 on ZSpace (and also in Counterpunch). Posted Feb 27, 2008: Nuclear Is Not the Right Alternative Energy Source "If you don’t like coal, you have to take nuclear, goes the nuclear establishment’s hopeful mantra. That’s a false choice. Replacing coal with nuclear is risky, costly and unnecessary. Renewable energy sources are quite sufficient to provide ample, reliable electricity..." by Arjun Makhijani in CommonDreams.org, Feb 25 from Dalla Morning News. Posted Feb 27, 2008:The Global Water Crisis and the coming battle for the right to water: "The three water crises - dwindling freshwater supplies, inequitable access to water and the corporate control of water - pose the greatest threat of our time to the planet and to our survival."From CommonDreams.org, Feb 25 - excerpt of Maude Barlow’s latest book," Blue Covenant" Meet the author Feb 29, 6:30-8PM, at Busboys and Poets see calendar Posted Feb 27, 2008: The Checklist ...".I C.U.s put five million [intravenous] lines into patients each year, and national statistics show that, after ten days, four per cent of those lines become infected. Line infections occur in 80,000 people a year in the United States, and are fatal between five and twenty-eight per cent of the time"."A simple checklist of things to remember to do in emergency rooms has saved an estimated 1800 lives and $75 million in 18 months in Michigan hospitals".... New Yorker, Dec 10, 2007 Posted Feb 27, 2008: Prozac doesn't work better than placebo A new peer-reviewed meta-analysis of clinical data (in Plos Medicine) demonstrates that four widely-prescribed SSRI anti-depressants, including Prozac and Effexor, "are not more effective than placebos. Kirsch and his colleagues have obtained for the first time what they believe is a full set of trial data for four antidepressants. They requested the full data under freedom of information rules from the FDA, which licenses medicines... and requires all data when it makes a decision." The Guardian and Meta Filter, Feb 25 Posted Feb 27, 2008: 143 Million pounds of beef recalled -- Will the Industry Finally Change?...Prompted by public outcry[over a Humane Society video], the company that processed meat from this [ California ] slaughterhouse issued the largest beef recall in U.S. history even though -- oops -- much of the 143 million pounds recalled has already been eaten, including possibly by children in school lunches. By Anna Lappé, Huffington Post. Posted February 24 Posted Feb 27, 2008: Latin America: Deforestation is still winning. "Never before have Latin America and the Caribbean fought so hard against deforestation, say experts and government officials, but logging in the region has increased to the point that it has the highest rate in the world. Of every 100 hectares of forest lost worldwide between the years 2000 and 2005, nearly 65 were in Latin America and the Caribbean." by By Diego Cevallos, IPS News Agency, Feb 16 Posted Feb 27, 2008: The Med Scare, Studies ...have shown little evidence that ... gross overprescription[of children] is the norm nationwide...Most kids are underdiagnosed and don’t get services. Access is poor and there’s a lack of providers" by Judith Warner, NY Times, Feb 21. Posted Feb 27, 2008: Asia’s Hidden Arms Race: Six Countries Talk Peace While Preparing for War by John Feffer, Commondreams, Feb 13. In Northeast Asia a "..massive regional arms race is threatening to shift into overdrive. Since the dawn of the twenty-first century, five of the six countries involved in the Six Party Talks have increased their military spending by 50% or more"... Posted Feb 14, 2008: Government Supresses Major Health Care Report "...As many as 9 million people -- including residents of Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, and Milwaukee -- may be at risk from exposure to pollutants including pesticides, dioxin, PCBs , and mercury, according to Sheila Kaplan(see Kaplan report), an investigative journalist who covered the story for the Center for Public Integrity...". By Maggy Mahar, Feb12 AlterNet Posted Feb 14, 2008: Unclogging Urban Arteries, by Elizabeth Quill, Science, Feb 8: In 2003, soon after London authorities slapped a tax on each vehicle entering the city center, traffic volume fell 15%, and drivers spent 30% less time in gridlock, according to the city's Transport for London. Commuters were delighted, and once-virulent opposition to the fee, now £8 ($16) a day, subsided...[read rest of article->] Posted Feb 14, 2008: Waterboarding for God and Country ..."An extreme form of interrogation going back at least as far as the Spanish Inquisition, waterboarding has been condemned as torture by just about everyone-except the hired legal hands of the Bush administration", writes ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern in Feb 11 Counterpunch. Posted Feb 14, 2008:: 'Marijuana Makes Your Teeth Fall Out' '...rash of new studies of marijuana hitting the mass media, generating scary headlines like "Smoking Pot Rots Your Gums," "Cannabis Bigger Cancer Risk Than Cigarettes" ' Bruce Mirken, AlterNet, Feb 9 [more on cannabis hoaxes in Bad Science July 2007] Posted Feb 14, 2008: Biofuels Worse Than Fossil Fuels"Biofuels are making climate change worse, not better, according to two new studies (Science: Tilman, U of Minn) which found that total greenhouse gas emissions from biofuels are far higher than those from burning gasoline because biofuel production is pushing up food prices and resulting in deforestation and loss of grasslands". Steven Leahy, IPS, Feb 8. Posted Feb 7, 2008: Climate Set for 'Sudden Shifts' Some of the shifts, triggered when human-induced climate changes pass certain "tipping points" could occur in this century. "The greatest threats are tipping of the Arctic sea-ice and the Greenland ice sheet, and at least five other elements could surprise us by exhibiting a nearby tipping point.", writes lead author Tim Lenton of the U of East Anglia in an important study appearing soon in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Story by P. Ghosh, BBC News, Feb 4. Posted Feb 7, 2008:Climate Could Devastate Crops - from a study by D Lobell, et al. in the Feb 1 Science [abstract] (under the less-sensational title "Prioritizing Climate Change Adaptation Needs..."), suggests that southern Africa could lose more than 30% of its main crop, maize, by 2030, with significant losses in Asia as well. "The majority of the world's one billion poor depend on agriculture for their livelihoods, yet it is also "the human enterprise most vulnerable to climate change". BBC News, Jan 31. Posted Feb 7, 2008: What if you held a conference and no (real) scientists came? "The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change" in New York, coming up this Mar 2-4,"...may look like a scientific conference - especially to those who are not familiar with the activities of the Heartland Institute, a front group for the fossil fuel industry that is sponsoring the conference..." RealClimate , Jan 30 Posted Feb 7, 2008: Re-Thinking the Meat Guzzler "...assembly-line meat factories consume enormous amounts of energy, pollute water supplies, generate significant greenhouse gases and require ever-increasing amounts of corn, soy and other grains, a dependency that has led to the destruction of vast swaths of the world’s tropical rain forests." Mark Bittman, NYTimes, Jan 27 Posted Jan 30, 2008: The Depressing Truth About Anti-Depressants A New England Journal of Medicine study found that in drug company tests of anti-depressants, "out of 36 trials that showed the drugs to be of questionable or no benefit, the results from only 3 trials were published accurately. Of the rest, 22 were not published at all"... By Stan Cox in Counterpunch, Jan 27 Posted Jan 30, 2008: Pre-emptive nuclear strike a key option, NATO told. 'The west must be ready to resort to a pre-emptive nuclear attack to try to halt the "imminent" spread of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, according to a radical manifesto for a new Nato by five of the west's most senior military officers and strategists led by General John Shalikashvili, the former chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff and Nato's ex-supreme commander in Europe..'. Posted Jan 22 in The Guardian. Posted Jan 30, 2008: Tupperware and Tasers "In Arizona, Tupperware-style Taser parties have become all the rage", writes Sylvia Talvi in In These Times of Jan 25. 'ABC News ran a December 2007 “Money Matters” segment praising the palm-sized stunner as an exciting holiday gift'... Posted Jan 30, 2008: Telecom Immunity: Covering Up Illegality by Secrecy and Fear "...a number of credible sources have... reported that the NSA's domestic phone record program began 7 months before 9/11"... Colleen Rowley, Huffington Post, Jan 24 Posted Jan 30, 2008: AreWhales Smarter than We Are ? Posted Jan 22, 2008 Pro-rail Section Disappears from Report An important piece of the Congressionally-mandated Surface Transportation Commission recommending an expanded light-rail network was apparently deleted by Bush Administration censors. But wait, there's more: The deleted section was written by Paul Weyrich, founder of the ultra-conservative National Heritage Foundation. Posted Jan 21 on establishment-oriented public transportation advocacy website, Destination: Freedom. Posted Jan 22, 2008 " Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization" by Lester R. Brown, Norton, 2008. WorldWatch Institute, headed by the author, has posted a free online edition "Plan B 3.0 is a comprehensive plan for reversing the trends that are fast undermining our future. Its four overriding goals are to stabilize climate, stabilize population, eradicate poverty, and restore the earth's damaged ecosystems," says Brown. "Failure to reach any one of these goals will likely mean failure to reach the others as well."Go to the public briefing by WorldWatch this Jan 30 .And, go to the DC Metro Science for the People meeting that night, featuring Joel Kovel. (see Calendar) Posted Jan 18, 2008 The report Hurricane Katrina and the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement authored by Chris Kromm and Sue Sturgis of the Institute for Southern Studies(2008), and subtitled " A global human rights perspective on a national disaster", shows that the U.S. failed to abide by principles it agreed to in a 1998 UN document on internal displacement. Serious failures occurred before, during and after the storm. Posted Jan 11, 2008 Antarctica lost ice in last 10 years The continuing massive ice losses in the Arctic are well established, but some studies (accepted by the IPCC) seemed to show increases in Antarctic continental ice du to increased snowfall. Now comesthe bad news from Nature Geoscience: Overall, the land-based ice has shrunk in the last 10 years, according to a radar and climate model study by Eric Rignot, et al. at JPL. Reuters, Jan 14. Posted Jan 11, 2008 The Afterlife of Cellphones "...in 2005 there were already more than half a billion old phones sitting in American drawers. That added up to more than $300 million worth of gold, palladium, silver, copper and platinum ... mining the gold needed for the circuit board of a single mobile phone generates 220 pounds of waste" NYTimes, 1/13 Posted Jan 15, 2008 Meds to Numb the GIs' Conscience? In 2005, 6250 US veterans took their own lives. Can "chemical Kevlar" (propanalol) de-sensitize them so that they can do their jobs with those pesky conscience pangs? Posted Jan 10 on Alternet by war widow Penny Coleman. Posted Jan 11, 2008 Can Incrementalism Be the Path to Universal Health Care? No, answers Mark Dunlea in Common Dreams in a Jan 7 post in which he supports universal mandatory coverage from a single source. "...people don’t realize they have inadequate insurance until they need it. Private insurance companies increase their profits by denying services to those they insure. As a result, high health care bills now account for a majority of bankruptcy filings, yet 3 out of 4 such individuals had health insurance when they become ill." Posted Jan 4, 2008 What’s Your Consumption Factor? NY Times op-ed by by Jared Diamond estimates that the average citizen of the developed world has 32 times the impact of somone in the "developing" world. Posted Jan 4, 2008 :A Solar Grand Plan by By Ken Zweibel, James Mason and Vasilis Fthenakis, Scientific American Jan 2008."A massive switch from coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear power plants to solar power plants could supply 69% of the U.S.’s electricity and 35 % of its total energy by 2050". Solar cells, mirror arrays, storage and transmission discussed. Posted Jan 4, 2008: 350 Parts Per Million is James Hansen's new CO2 limit, given at a Dec 13 American Geophysical Union meeting. This makes Bali look "quaint" says Bill McKibben in a Dec 28 Washington Post Op-Ed. Actual CO2 level today: 383 ppm. [Google Hansen 350 to see some of the commentary] ---------------------------------2007--------------------------------------------- Posted Dec 31, 2007: A Question of Blame When Societies FaillWas Jared Diamond, author of “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" guilty of blaming the victim? Has he neglected factors such as contact with hostile neighbors or imperialism? NY Times, 12/25 Posted Dec 26: FBI Prepares Vast Database of Biometrics by E Nakashima, Wash Post Dec 23: he FBI is embarking on a $1 billion effort to build the world's largest computer database of peoples' physical characteristics, ... to identify individuals in the United States and abroad. Commented the ACLU: "It's enabling the Always-On Surveillance Society." Posted Dec 26 (reposted Jan 15, with repaired link - sorry!) : What IQ Doesn't Tell you About Race , by Malcolm Gladwell in the Dec 17 New Yorker - a clear discussion of the misconceptions about the meaning of IQ. Posted Dec 26 Our Decrepit Food Factories. "70 percent of the antibiotics used in America are fed to animals living on factory farms. Raising vast numbers of pigs or chickens or cattle in close and filthy confinement simply would not be possible without the routine feeding of antibiotics to keep the animals from dying of infectious diseases", writes Michael Pollan int the Dec 17 NY Times (posted in Common Dreams). More from Pollan in our Oct 1 Newsletter Posted Dec 15:Study Finds Humans Still Evolving, and Quickly. Altogether, the recent genetic changes account for 7% of the human genome, according to the study led by anthropologist John Hawks, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Some of he selective pressures were attributed to diseases that swept through new agriculture-based stable societies in which large groups lived in close quarters for a long time. L.A. Times Dec 11. Posted Dec 15:Climate Science Manipulation Alleged A Dec 12 AP release quoted from a new Congressional report issued by Henry Waxman that concluded that Bush & Co. had "engaged in a systematic effort to manipulate climate change science and mislead policymakers and the public about the dangers of global warming". [Surprise.] Posted Dec 15: We Are What We Eat, review of "Manifestos on the Future of Food and Seed", Ed. Vandava Shiva, 2007."The more we buy mass-produced foods, the more it empowers agro-business and the fewer farms there will be. The more we shop at supermarkets, the fewer neighborhood markets there will be". Posted Dec 10 on AlterNet. Posted Dec 15: U.S. Prison System Incubator of Deadly Staph Infection "Media headlines have emphasized the existing or potential presence of MRSA [a highly-antibiotic-resistant form of staphylococcus aureus]" especially in emergency rooms and public shelters "but there is no question that the biggest incubators of all are the nation's 5,000-plus prisons and jails" Article posted Dec 4 on AlterNet by Silja Talvi author of Posted Dec 5: See "The Story of Stuff" - a clever short film about mass consumption and its consequences, just released - a project of The Funders Workgroup for Sustainable Production and Consumption, Tides Foundation and Free Range Studios.Posted Dec 5: Study Details How U.S. Could Cut 28% of Greenhouse Gases ( NY Times, Nov 30), but the changes "still face tremendous barriers" .Posted Dec 5: "Science changes with every generation and with new discoveries, and God doesn't," he says. "So I'll stick with God if the two are in conflict." - candidate Mike Huckabee, Nov 14 Rolling Stone interview Posted Dec 5: Global Campaign Vows to Fight Corporate Drug Monopoly. BANGKOK - Public health and HIV/AIDS activists from the developing world are seeking to break the monopoly over drugs held by pharmaceutical giants through a new global campaign designed to influence international debate over the issue: Nov 26 IPS report on recent 3-day meeting in Bangkok Posted Dec 5, 2007: Wind Energy, Esthetics and Tourist economies - the debate continues. NY Times, Nov 25 Posted Nov 27: Jonathan Schell, Pakistan, Bush, and the Bomb - insights into the post-9/11 nuclear proliferation story, tomdispatch.com , Nov 13 article by Tom Englehardt. Posted Nov 27:"Stop trying to prove that one group of people are genetically inferior to your group. Just stop", says one blogger, in commenting on the newly-reheated debate on genes and intelligence. See "...New Worries About Prejudice" by Amy Harmon, NY Times, Nov 11. Posted Nov 27: Plundering the Moon: China yesterday unveiled an image from its first moon probe, closely following the success of Japan. India has scheduled an attempt for April. What's behind the new space race, prestige? Scienctific progress? More likely, territorial claims for mineral resources, wrote Andrew Smith in the Oct 27 Guardian Posted Nov 27: Forests losing the ability to absorb man-made carbon: Climate change-induced stresses on boreal forests are turning these regions from a carbon sink to a carbon source, reports The Independent's science editor Steve Connor (Nov 1) . Posted Nov 27: A 40% surge in Chinese birth defects over the last 6 years is linked to pollution in regions with chemical industries, according to Beijing (Reuters, Oct 29). Posted Nov 27, 2007: Climate Change's Uncertainty Principle: "Scientists say they can never be sure exactly how extreme global warming might become, but that's no excuse for delaying action", Scientific American, Oct 25 Posted Oct 25: Check out this outstanding link for climate and climate change posted May 11 by realclimate.org. Provides a wealth of articles at various levels, beginner to informed, and a generous section of FAQ's. Good reading until the website freeze ends a month from now! Posted Oct 25: Outsourcing Government In an Oct 20 LA Times Op-Ed by Naomi Klein writes. "...this debacle (the failures of tests of the U.S.-Mexico virtual fence) points to more than faulty technology. It exposes the faulty logic of the Bush administration's vision of a hollowed-out government run everywhere possible by private contractors." Posted Oct 25: Supreme Court Halts Va. Inmate's Execution; Ruling Could Lead To National Hiatus In Lethal Injections - Washington Post, Oct 18: "The Supreme Court stopped the execution of Virginia death row inmate Christopher Scott Emmett yesterday, a move that legal experts said might signal a nationwide halt to lethal injections until the justices decide next year whether the procedure amounts to cruel and unusual". Posted Oct 15: Legal or Illegal, Abortion Rates Compare From NYT, Oct 11: "...global study of abortion has concluded that abortion rates are similar in countries where it is legal and those where it is not, suggesting that outlawing the procedure does little to deter women seeking it". The WHO study confirmed also that where they are illegal, the death rate from abortions is sharply higher. The Lancet. Posted Oct 10:Can Anyone Stop It? A review by Bill McKibben in the NY Review of Books of four significant books on global warming, including Cool It, by holdout skeptic Bjorn Lonborg; Break Through...the Politics of Possibility, by Nordhaus and Shellenberger, on American attitudes; What We Know About Climate Change, by Kerry Emmannuel, a concise explanation of the science; and Climate Change: What it Means for Us..., essays collected by DiMento and Doughman. Posted Oct 3, 2007:Arctic Melt Unnerves Experts: - From Andrew Revkin, NY Times of Oct 1: ". . .the floating ice dwindled to an extent unparalleled in a century or more, by several estimates ...pace of change has far exceeded what had been estimated by almost all the simulations used to envision how the Arctic will respond...to global warming". Excellent interactive graphic showsannual edge of ice cover in motion from 1979-2005; map shows a large open section, five times the size of California, that had never been ice-free during the 26-year period. According to an Oct 2 Science Daily: Ice cover may be around 50% of the probable 1950's cover. Posted Sep 22: Dying for Clean Air - Why Black Mayors Should Support Tougher Ozone Standards. According to the article by Robert D. Bullard posted Sep 19 in Dissident Voice, polluting industries and some Black mayors are making spurious economic arguments against tightening ozone standards. EPA analyses show that meeting the ozone standard can prevent - every year, hundreds of emergency room visits for asthma; thousands of hospital admissions for asthma and other lung diseases ... hundreds of thousands of school absences; and more than a million days when people have to reduce their activity - and their productivity - because they are suffering from reduced lung function and other ozone-related respiratory symptoms. Air pollution claims 70,000 lives a year, nearly twice the number killed in traffic accidents... Posted Sep 22: NH Town First in Nation to Ban Corporate Water Mining. The citizens of Barnstead, New Hampshire,used local law to keep corporate giants out of their water. Check out this excellent review in Yes magazine of the historical expansion of corporate rights and how one small town recently stood up for the rights of its citizens and won. Posted Sep 22: Keep Space for Peace Week- Oct 4-10. Posted Sep 14: U.S. and UN schedule Competing Climate Meetings: Thalif Deen, in a Sep 13 article carried by IPS news service asks, "Are the United Nations and the United States trying to outdo each other by hosting two parallel summit meetings on the same subject -- climate change -- during the same week at the end of September?" Posted Sep 6: Turning Point Seen for Needle Exchange in DC: In a September 4 press release, PreventionWorks, Washington D.C.'s only needle exchange program, announced the departure of its long-time and respected Executive Director, Paola Barahona, the first and only person to hold the position. In her nine years of service, Barahona has raised more than $3.5 million in private funding to support and sustain the work of PreventionWorks which, until this year, was prohibited by an act of Congress from receiving or utilizing public funding for its needle exchange services. Posted Sep 6, 2007: Corporate Tampering with Wikipedia: In an August 29 press release, Abbott Laboratories Deletes Safety Concerns from Web, Jeffrey Light of Patients not Patents revealed evidence that "employees of Abbott Laboratories have been altering entries to Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia, to eliminate information questioning the safety of its top-selling drugs. ... The changes are part of over one thousand edits made from computers at Abbott's offices... " Posted Aug 29: Cancer in Iraq vets: As reported in the Arizona Daily Star of Aug 26, reports of rising cancer rates among both GI's and Iraquis has led Congress to order a comprehensive independent study, due in October, of the health effects of depleted uranium exposure on U.S. soldiers and their children. And a "DU bill" — ordering all members of the U.S. military exposed to it be identified and tested — is working its way through Congress. "Basically, we want to get ahead of this curve, and not go through the years of painful denial we went through with Agent Orange that was the legacy of Vietnam," said Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., a co-sponsor of the bill. Posted Aug 18: Transit Racism on the Buses of LA: Writes Eric Mann of Black Agenda Report, (Aug 15) "one epicenter of the new movement [against environmental racism] is Los Angeles, an environmental nightmare for people who need mass transit, but are constantly assaulted by the rich and their public servants". Despite strong opposition, on May 24, 2007, the MTA board of directors voted to raise the daily bus fare from $3 to $5 a day, a move which may "force many low-income people off the buses, and compel people to use or buy old cars instead of taking public transit". The mass-based Bus Riders Union's main had organized a mass campaign, calling the fare hikes racist because "they would impose an unfair burden on low-income Blacks and Latinos, while subsidizing suburban rail lines that carry a higher percentage of white, affluent riders".The BRU, which had packed the May public hearing with 1500 supporters is now bringing MTA to state court jointly with NRDC. Posted Aug 18: Children of color being left behind.:From Aug 16 San Francisco Chronicle , by Nanette Asimov: "A frustrating and persistent achievement gap between black and Latino students and their white and Asian American peers shows no sign of abating in the latest state test results for nearly 5 million students across California. Overall, students of all backgrounds made minimal progress in English during the past year and no progress in math". Posted Aug 15: South Africa: AIDS Action Relapse, from AfricaFocus Bulletin Aug 14. A collection of articles reflecting "...a loud chorus of condemnation coming from South African AIDS activists and medical professionals, joined by supporters around the world, in response to the dismissal of Deputy Health Minister Nozizwe MadlalaRoutledge. She is widely credited with energizing South Africa's response to AIDS over the last two years. While President Mbeki's government is unlikely to reverse its decision, it faces virtually unanimous condemnation for this signal of reversion to previous erratic policy on the AIDS crisis." Posted Aug 15, 2007: Immigrants and Health Care — At the Intersection of Two Broken Systems. Posted in the Aug 9 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, this piece by physician and Washington Post journalist Susan Okie writes "Immigrants live, work, and attend school in communities throughout the country; laws and bureaucratic barriers that reduce their use of key preventive health services, such as immunizations and screenings for infectious disease, make for bad public health policy, and denying immigrants primary care ultimately increases health care costs for everyone". Posted July 30: Fare-Free Public Transit? According to Dave Olsen in a July 26 Alternet piece, "the time has come to stop making people pay to take public transit. ... And politicians are getting the message. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has ordered his staff to seriously examine the costs of charging people to ride public transit..." Olsen authored a 5-part series in The Tyee, a Vancouver-based on-line news service. A dissenting commentary posted July 29 by The Tyee assistant editor Bryan Zandberg raises some doubts, based on crime problems experienced in Austin and anticipated in larger cities. Posted July 17: Reality Check on Sanjay Gupta 's "Reality Check": FAIR(Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) posted (July 11) a refutation of Gupta's attempt (below) to discredit "Sicko". Typical of Gupta's piece was his citation of a Commonwealth Fund study of six industrialized nations - not to show that in shortness of waiting time to see a physician, the U.S. ranked 5th out of the six - but that we beat Canada! Posted July 11: Michael Moore unleashed on live TV! Here's the video (posted on alternet .org) of Moore July 10 blitzing Wolf Blitzer on CNN's Situation Room., preceded, of course, by a "reality check" from his medic-in-residence Sanjay Gupta, and followed by sardonic put-downs of Moore by Jack Cafferty and Lou Dobbs. See it. Posted July 11: The Biofuel Myths "The term 'biofuels' suggests renewable abundance: clean, green, sustainable assurance about technology and progress. This pure image allows industry, politicians, the World Bank, the United Nations and even the International Panel on Climate Change to present fuels made from corn, sugarcane, soy and other crops as the next step in a smooth transition from peak oil to a yet-to-be-defined renewable fuel economy. But in reality, biofuel draws its power from cornucopian myths and directs our attention away from economic interests that would benefit from the transition, while avoiding discussion of the growing North-South food and energy imbalance..." From Eric Holt-Giménez, in Food First and also July 10 International Herald Tribune. Posted July 7: "How War was turned into a Brand " - Political chaos means Israel is booming like it's 1999 - and the boom is in defense exports field-tested on Palestinians. Naomi Klein argues in her Jun16 Guardian article that Israel, in spite of the war is now prospering, "selling fences to an apartheid planet. Many of the country's most successful entrepreneurs are using Israel's status as a fortressed state, surrounded by furious enemies, as a kind of 24-hour-a-day showroom, a living example of how to enjoy relative safety amid constant war. And the reason Israel is now enjoying supergrowth is that those companies are busily exporting that model to the world." Posted July 3, 2007: "Sicko" - Michael Moore's demolition of the U.S. health insurance industry is already attracting crowds. Its opening weekend was the second best of any documentary in film history, losing out only to his own "Farenheit 9/11". Roger Friedman of Fox News called it "brilliant and uplifitng"(!!!) Stephen Hunter of the Washington Post criticized some Moore for one-sidedness. A.O. Scott of the NY Times liked it; David Denby of the New Yorker didn't. Go see it and decide for yourself. Here's the trailer. Posted June 24: Vertical Farm Project:The concept of indoor farming is not new, since hothouse production of tomatoes, a wide variety of herbs, and other produce has been in vogue for some time. What is new is the urgent need to scale up this technology to accommodate another 3 billion people [by the year 2050]. An entirely new approach to indoor farming must be invented, employing cutting edge technologies. The Vertical Farm must be efficient (cheap to construct and safe to operate). Vertical farms, many stories high, will be situated in the heart of the world's urban centers. If successfully implemented, they offer the promise of urban renewal, sustainable production of a safe and varied food supply ...(see link above ) Posted June 17: The Pentagon as Global Gas Guzzler: Posted June 17: Yes Men Strike Oil Activist trickster collective the Yes Men used the Gas and Oil Exposition 2007 in Calgary, Alberta to stage their latest theatre of corporate absurdity, with Exxon/Mobil and the Natural Petroleum Council playing the fools, proposing that the bodies of human victims of the coming catastrophe be used as an alternate source of fuel, "vivoleum". See their June 14 press release and video, Exxon Proposes Burning Humanity for Fuel If Climate Calamity Hits Posted June 17: 'Synthetic Life' Patent Published J. Craig Venter and his team, working to build a life form from scratch have applied to patent the broad method they plan to use to create their "synthetic organism"(BBC News, June 8). The Venter Institute team intends to construct an organism with a "minimal genome" that can then be inserted into the shell of a bacterium. But, the Canada-based non-profit ETC Group, which monitors developments in biotechnology, calling on patent offices to reject applications on synthetic life forms, warned against "the start of a high-stakes commercial race to synthesise and privatise synthetic life forms". Posted June 17: Air Force Looked at Spray to Turn Enemy Gay: From The Guardian, June 13:What if it could release a chemical that would make an opposing army's soldiers think more about the physical attributes of their comrades in arms than the threat posed by the enemy? And thus the "gay bomb" was born. Far from being the product of conspiracy theorists, documents released to a biological weapons watchdog in Austin, Texas confirm that the US military did investigate the idea. It was included in a CD-Rom produced by the US military in 2000 and submitted to the National Academy of Sciences in 2002. The documents show that $7.5m was requested to develop the weapon. Posted June 4: See The Other Einstein , a fascinating and informative essay by physicist Lee Smolin on the life and works of the great scientist in the June 14 issue of the NY Review of Books. Posted June 4: Vaccine Case to be Heard in DC Court: A case alleging that the use of mercury-based thimerosal in vaccines can cause autism in children will be heard on Thursday June 7 in U.S. Court of Federal Claims. The case may have a bearing on our local campaign to prevent mandatory HPV vaccinations of DC schoolgirls. Posted Jun 3, 2007: Dangerous Human Interference with Climate, conludes new NASA Report: The paper, from NASA's Columbia University Earth Institute published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics May 7 and highlighted in a May 29 ABC News report, argues that with as little as 10 more years of business-as-usual " carbon emissions it becomes "impractical" to avoid "disastrous effects." The report, authored by James Hansen and 47 collaborators emphasizes previously underestimated feedback loops due to disappearing arctic ice and snow, advancing low-reflectivity northern forests and methane release from melting tundra. The work involved climate simulations with a new coupled ocean-land-ice-atmosphere model. Posted May 31: Psychologists Played Key Role in Prisoner Abuse, Reveals Declassified Pentagon Report: A just-declassified Inspector General's report details the role of Army psychologists in training and advising torturers in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. See report by Stephen Soldz in Counterpunch, May 29 Posted May 26: Free seedlings (veggie, flower, herb) for DC youth & community gardens. While quantities last - DC Urban gardeners.More info Posted May 24: HPV vaccine: Judicial Watch reports deaths and adverse effects: Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today released documents obtained from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act, detailing 1,637 reports of adverse reactions to the vaccination for human papillomavirus (HPV), Gardasil. Three deaths were related to the vaccine.(released May 23) Posted May 24: NIRS Releases New Nukewaste Transport Maps: The maps, showing rail, road and water routes to be considered for shipment of high-level nuclear wastes from reactor sites in the northeast to the federal Savannah River, SC reprocessing site are part of the report released May 22 by John Stikpewich, “A Study of the Problems With Transport and Reprocessing of Nuclear Waste in the Carolinas". The SC site is one of 11 being considered under the federal Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), which if fully implemented would move high-level waste from 75 sites in 33 states Posted May 21: New Nuclear Weapons Development Protested in UC Berkeley Hunger Strike: Students, professors and community members brought their continuing anti-weapons protest and hunger strike to a meeting of the UC Board of Regents. The weapons are part of a giant program, Complex 2030 to revamp the nuclear weapons complex in order to restart production and create new nuclear weapons, the first of which (RRW-1) is already being designed at the Livermore Lab. Read more. Posted May 21: Stealth shipment of Radioactive Waste: An intensely radioactive reactor pressure vessel is about to make a long rail trip from the Dairyland nuclear power plant at Genoa, WI to a radioactive waste disposal site in Barnwell, SC. The exact time and route of the shipment are secret. Nukewatch is helping to co-ordinate an interstate campaign to alert local media. (received May 17) Posted May 9: New Evidence of Cancer Risk from Depleted Uranium: A study at the University of Southern Maine posted May 8 on Common Dreams showed that the radiation from DU, used by U.S. forces in bullets and shells in Iraq and Bosnia, caused genetic damage in human lung cells in the lab. Discussion follows the article. See also SftP Newsletter article from 5/1/06 on DU. Posted May 8, 2007: Supreme court anti-abortion decision blasted. The international womens rights organization, MADRE, said in "The Christian Right's Global Agenda", (May 1)that the '...Court's decision is about much more than a woman's right to safely end a pregnancy. That's because today's Supreme Court is a product of the Bush Administrationand [which] is a product of the Christian Right... criminalizing abortion is just the tip of the Christian-fundamentalist iceberg...[which includes]...the "global gag rule," which bars organizations that receive US funds from...providing information on abortion. [It] has forced ... whole clinics to shut down, ”all of them in the world's poorest countries..." Posted May 8: Progressives at odds on politics of climate change. In his article in Counterpunch "Is Global Warming a Sin? ", Alexander Cockburn likens the selling of carbon credits to papal indulgences, and then goes on to question the existence of global warming. Georges Monbiot blasts back in "Response to Cockburn"on Znet accusing him of scientific ignorance and of using the same tactics that C. had criticized among the 9/11 conspiracy theorists. Also on Znet are reponses to Monbiot and a detailed analysis by David Noble "The Corporate Climate Coup" of the use of fear of global warming to generate a new race for corporate megaprofits through green washing. Posted April 26:Three important articles were posted on Portside during the last week: Posted April 9, 2007: Now more than ever! Beloved folk singer renews call for pre-emptive nuclear war. Randy Newman appeared on the Colbert show last October and did a reprise of his famous 1970's hit, "Political Science" Let's Drop the Big One Listen for yourself...
Posted April 9: From the Times Literary Supplement (UK): The World's Problem, by Robert May. ..."The distractions and misrepresentations of the well- funded denial industry are helped by the fact that, for understandable reasons, most of us find it hard to get an intuitive feeling for the real seriousness of the threat that climate change poses. For one thing, the time lags outlined above mean that the grave consequences of today's and tomorrow's greenhouse gas emissions will not be fully experienced for at least a couple of generations. Neither we as individuals, nor our institutions, act today on behalf of a seemingly distant future. We could call this the Easter Island Problem..." Review of six current books. See also: Bill McKibben's April 9 piece in In These Times and our Calendar on the upcoming April 14 demo Posted April 3: Check the current SftP calendar - there's a very full schedule of important local events coming up this month, starting with a DC Social Forum planning meeting April 5. There's also an ongoing series of workshops in radio journalism, open to all.
Posted March 27: Nano Risk Framework: Comments were needed by March 30. |
