Harriet Washington - Corporations Are Patenting Human Genes and Tissues -- Here's Why That's Terrifying

By Brad Jacobson, AlterNet

Posted on November 23, 2011, Printed on November 26, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/153203/corporations_are_patenting_human_genes_and_tissues_--_here%27s_why_that%27s_terrifying

Do you think that granting corporations the rights of people in the Citizens United case is disturbing? Then contemplate the fact that corporations have been patenting human genes and tissues at alarming rates -- in the last 30 years, more than 40,000 patents have been granted on genes alone.

As the Occupy movement fights against the unmitigated influence of corporations on our lives, author Harriet Washington's new book, Deadly Monopolies: The Shocking Corporate Takeover of Life Itself--And the Consequences for Your Health and Our Medical Future, is a timely wakeup call to protect the very essence of human life from the medical-industrial complex. 

In a recent phone interview with AlterNet, Washington discussed the dark implications of corporate medical patents, how we find ourselves in this nightmarish scenario and what needs to be done to stop medical research profits from trumping human health.

Brad Jacobson: The main piece of legislation that opened the door for corporations to begin patenting human life was the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980. Can you tell us how this law was sold to the American people?

Click to read more ...

Ray McGovern - Ask the Candidates Real Questions -- Like These

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Ask-the-Candidates-Real-Qu-by-Ray-McGovern-111125-819.html

November 25, 2011 By Ray McGovern During recent presidential debates, moderators have asked mostly predictable questions and--except for some notable gaffes---have elicited mostly talking-point answers. It's time for citizens to put politicians on the spot with some more pointed questions. Pity the pundits. It must be hard to pretend to be a journalist and live in constant fear of being one question or comment away from joining the jobless. This Thanksgiving holiday weekend we can be thankful for the obscene transparency of the "mainstream" pundits' efforts to avoid at all cost offending the corporations that own and use them. Rather, media personalities who wish to be around for a while must do what they can to promote the notion of American exceptionalism and the need to sacrifice at home in order to defend and expand the Empire -- "so that we don't have to fight them here."

Click to read more ...

Nicholas Confessore - Policy-Making Billionaires Privatizing Public Policy

 http://www.truth-out.org/policy-making-billionaires-privatizing-public-policy/1322410134

Saturday 26 November 2011

by: Nicholas Confessore, The New York Times News Service

Over the past 30 years, as the gap between wealthy and poor grew ever wider, total philanthropic giving almost tripled, according to annual estimates published by the Giving USA Foundation and the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University. In an age of widening partisanship and plummeting trust in government, this outpouring of philanthropy has produced a distinct breed of philanthropist: The policy-making billionaire.

Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder, has invested more than $13 billion in public health initiatives around the world through his foundation. William E. Conway Jr., a founder of the Carlyle Group investment company, is planning to give away $1 billion of his personal fortune, and is said to be considering how his money can aid in financing major infrastructure projects.

“What’s going on at a broader level is a sense of, ‘Hey, we can be much more effective and efficient than government in doing things,’ ” said Leslie Lenkowsky, a professor of philanthropic studies and public affairs at Indiana. “And it’s become more pervasive in recent years.”

In keeping with the anti-government spirit of the times, the new philanthropists — some with roots in the loosely libertarian milieu of Silicon Valley or Wall Street — share a disdain for established politics and an impatience with the slow churn of old-fashioned policy making. Last month, the Starbucks executive Howard Schultz, whose net worth approaches $750 million, proposed using Starbucks’ corporate foundation and customer donations to create an economic development and job training program for the unemployed, one that he hopes can generate tens of millions of dollars in loans to small business.

Click to read more ...

Tom Weis - Now Is the Time to Fight the Keystone Pipeline

Published on Sunday, November 27, 2011 by the Boulder Daily Camera

http://www.dailycamera.com/ci_19401172

by Tom Weis

Everyone who helped slow down TransCanada's "Keystone XL" tar sands juggernaut -- rural farmers and ranchers, Native Nations, organized labor, elders, faith leaders, youth, environmentalists and others who protested at the White House this summer and fall -- should be proud of what we have accomplished. By bravely standing together and uniting our voices against Big Oil, we forced President Obama to react to our demands. His decision to delay a decision on the pipeline until after the 2012 election is a testament to the power of the people.

But let's not kid ourselves: opponents of Keystone XL have "won" nothing, save more time to organize. Now is not the time for victory celebrations, but for redoubling our efforts to beat back this lethal energy scheme. When you have your opponent staggered and against the ropes, you don't back off and let them recover their strength. You keep on coming until you've landed the knock out punch.

Click to read more ...

Eric Boehlert - 7 Things Fox Viewers Are Wildly Misinformed About

By Eric Boehlert, Media Matters for America

Posted on November 25, 2011, Printed on November 26, 2011
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201111220020?frontpage 

The release this week of yet another survey indicating the more you watch Fox News the less they know, has once again shone a spotlight on one of the unique features that defines Rupert Murdoch's cable news outlet - it is very, very good at misinforming people. And it's very bad at reporting the news. In other words: Propaganda? Yes. News? Not so much.

It's true that the most recent survey, conducted by Fairleigh Dickinson University, only polled adults in New Jersey and doesn't represent national indictment against Fox. Nonetheless, the findings created amedia stir because they reinforce what pollsters and academics previously discovered; that one of the country's all-news channels consistently leaves viewers less informed. 

What's stunning is how many different areas of the news and public policy Fox viewers are misinformed about. For instance, the Fairleigh Dickinson survey asked viewers about recent grassroots uprisings in Arab nations [emphasis added]: 

Click to read more ...

Bruce Weber - Lynn Margulis, Evolution Theorist, Dies at 73

November 24, 2011

By BRUCE WEBER

Lynn Margulis, a biologist whose work on the origin of cells helped transform the study of evolution, died on Tuesday at her home in Amherst, Mass. She was 73.

She died five days after suffering a hemorrhagic stroke, said Dorion Sagan, a son she had with her first husband, the cosmologist Carl Sagan.

Dr. Margulis had the title of distinguished university professor of geosciences at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, since 1988. She drew upon earlier, ridiculed ideas when she first promulgated her theory, in the late 1960s, that cells with nuclei, which are known as eukaryotes and include all the cells in the human body, evolved as a result of symbiotic relationships among bacteria.

The hypothesis was a direct challenge to the prevailing neo-Darwinist belief that the primary evolutionary mechanism was random mutation.

Rather, Dr. Margulis argued that a more important mechanism was symbiosis; that is, evolution is a function of organisms that are mutually beneficial growing together to become one and reproducing. The theory undermined significant precepts of the study of evolution, underscoring the idea that evolution began at the level of micro-organisms long before it would be visible at the level of species.

“She talked a lot about the importance of micro-organisms,” said her daughter, Jennifer Margulis. “She called herself a spokesperson for the microcosm.”

Click to read more ...

Robert Kennedy Jr - Big Carbon's Sock Puppets Declare War on America and the Planet

Huffington Post,  11/25/11

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr/cleantech-_b_1112793.html?ref=daily-brief?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=112511&utm_medium=email&utm_content=BlogEntry&utm_term=Daily%20Brief

It's now become de rigueur among the radical right wing rhetoricians to characterize any government support of America's green energy sector as wasteful, fruitless, and scandalous. They greeted with glee the collapse of the government supported solar company, Solyndra, America's first major casualty in our race with China to dominate the "new energy" economy. With Solyndra dying on the battlefield -- its marketplace choking on inexpensive Chinese solar panels -- the right wing's response was to hoist the white flag and declare defeat in the war for global cleantech leadership. That brand of "Can't Do" cowardice is a boon to the carbon and nuclear power incumbents who fund so much of the right wing's activities -- but it's bad for America.

Leveraging the aberrant Solyndra bankruptcy, these groups have launched an orchestrated series of attacks against the renewables sector by trying to discredit other companies, even those that are driving America forward with innovative solutions that actually do compete on a global basis. For example, last month, Fox News ran a story insinuating that SunPower received a loan guarantee for its Central Valley Solar Ranch project because of its political connections Congressman George Miller. The story also suggested that SunPower was struggling financially and posed another risk to taxpayers -- a la Solyndra. The truth is that SunPower is one of America's strongest solar manufacturing companies and Mr. Miller had nothing to do with the company receiving a loan guarantee for its Central Valley Solar Ranch Project. To Fox News and other right wing media sources, the facts meant very little. Their intent is only to suggest wrong-doing in an attempt to undermine the Obama Administration and its clean energy goals.

Click to read more ...

Eurekalert.org - UN overhaul required to govern planet's life support system: Experts

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-11/essp-uor112111.php
Earth System Science Partnership 

Needed to avert environmental disaster, reform of international organizations at scale rivalling post-WW II era

		IMAGE: This is the cover of one of five policy briefs issued today by the Earth System Science Partnership. Click here for more information.

Reducing the risk of potential global environmental disaster requires a "constitutional moment" comparable in scale and importance to the reform of international governance that followed World War II, say experts preparing the largest scientific conference leading up to next June's Rio+20 Earth Summit.

Stark increases in natural disasters, food and water security problems and biodiversity loss are just part of the evidence that humanity may be crossing planetary boundaries and approaching dangerous tipping points. An effective environmental governance system needs to be instituted soon, according to independent experts commissioned by organizers of the huge “Planet Under Pressure” conference in London March 26-29, 2012.

As policy-makers gather in Durban, South Africa, for the 17th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Planet Under Pressure consortium today released the first five of nine policy briefs on key issues. The briefs deal with biodiversity and ecosystem services, food and water security, interconnected risks and solutions, and a topic common to all: reforming environmental governance from the local to the global level.

Click to read more ...

Fukushima Daily - Namie machi, Fukushima is 33 times worse than Chernobyl

Fukushima Daily, on November 22nd, 2011 · 

http://fukushima-diary.com/2011/11/namie-machi-fukushima-is-33-times-worse-than-chernobyl/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FukushimaDiary+%28Fukushima+Diary%29

大きな地図で見る

Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology published the soil contamination data of 60 km area from Fukushima plants.

The data was taken from 6/1/2011 ~ 11/22/2011.

Though it’s only about I-131, Cs-134, Cs-137 mainly,the result shows the worst contaminated area in Fukushima is 33 times worse than Chernobyl. It proves Fukushima is something nobody has ever gone through.

In Chernobyl, area contaminated worse than 1,480,000 bq/m2 was defined as the worst red zone, “immediate mandatory evacuating area.”

In Fukushima, Namiemachi, 22km north west to Fukushima plants is contaminated, which they measured 760,000 bq/kg (Cs-134 + Cs-137). It equals to 49,400,000 bq/m2.

Fukushima is “the next level” of Chernobyl apparently.

Mike Ignatowski - 5 Rules for Talking OWS With Your Conservative Relatives

By Mike Ignatowski, Tikkun

Posted on November 23, 2011, Printed on November 24, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/153197/5_rules_for_talking_ows_with_your_conservative_relatives 

Cross-posted from Tikkun Daily.

Many of us will be visiting with family over the coming holidays, starting this Thanksgiving. How can someone who supports the Occupy movement have a civil conversation with family members who may have a different view of things? How can you be prepared if someone else brings up the topic? I’d like to start the ideas flowing on this with a few thoughts here.

For such a discussion it’s vitally important to set realistic goals about what you want to accomplish. It’s probably impossible to change someone’s mind with a short conversation about facts if they have strong emotions about their beliefs. Don’t even try, this is not about winning debate points awarded by some imaginary judge. What is it about then? I’ll address that later.

Here’s some specific suggestions on what to do and what to avoid doing.

First, DO NOT bring up Obama, Republicans, Democrats, FOX news, or the Super-committee. These are hot button emotional issues that will distract from the issue. Refuse to take the bait if someone else brings them up.

Click to read more ...