"Aris A. Leblanc" - S. Maternal and fetal exposure to pesticides associated to genetically modified foods in Eastern Townships of Quebec, Canada. Reproductive Toxicology. 2011; 31(4).

The following is a rebuttal by a highly qualified scientist of a critique by biologist Marcel Kuntz of a 2011 study which found Bt toxin circulating in the blood of pregnant women and in the blood supply to their foetuses:

Kuntz's critique of Aris and Leblanc's study was re-published by David Tribe on the Biofortified website:
http://www.biofortified.org/2011/04/nonsense/

In the exchange below, Marcel Kuntz's comments are indicated by the initials MK and the scientist's comments are indicated by the initials SC.
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Scientist's rebut of Kuntz critique of Aris and Leblanc's study on Bt toxin in human blood

MK: A publication lacking credibility 

Only claims of Aris and Leblanc on Cry1Ab are discussed here for the time being.

The Cry1Ab protein is produced by some Bt cotton and corn (e.g. MON810). Aris and Leblanc claim they detected this protein in 93% of pregnant women and 69% of non-pregnant women tested and believe that this is linked to the consumption of foods derived from Bt varieties, which in Canada must mean corn rather than cottonseed oil. 

Surprisingly, the authors do not consider that the origin of Cry1Ab could be food from organic farming (which sprays Cry1Ab, or bacteria producing it, on fruit or vegetable crops) or from its use in gardening (CryA1b is part of available "natural insecticide" formulations). 

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"Rabbi Michael Lerner" - The Message and Strategy that is Needed by Occupy Wall Street

http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Message-and-Strategy-t-by-Rabbi-Michael-Lern-111016-579.html

October 16, 2011 By Rabbi Michael Lerner

Occupy Wall Street is a people powered movement that began on September 17, 2011 in Liberty Square in Manhattan's Financial District, and has spread to over 100 cities in the United States and actions in over 1,500 cities globally. #OWS is fighting back against the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations on the democratic process, and the role of Wall Street in creating an economic collapse that caused the greatest recession in generations. The movement is inspired by uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, Spain, Greece, Italy and the UK, and aims to expose how the richest 1% o f people who are writing the rules of the global economy and are imposing an agenda of neoliberalism and economic inequality.

I'm particularly proud that young Jews have created Sukkot, the temporary huts that Jews are supposed to live in for 7 days (the holiday started Wednesday night) in order to detach from the material security provided by our homes, to re-identify ourselves as a people that has mostly been homeless for most of our history, and to remind ourselves that all the accomplishments of material security are meaningless unless shared with everyone else. So on this Shabbat of Sukkot Jews around the world read King Solomon's biblical Book of Ecclesiastes with its message that all the striving for power and wealth is pointless, that we are here for a very short while, and that all we can do while here is to maximize love and generosity (ok, that last part was more Lerner than King Solomon, but I'm hoping he would agree). Tikkunista Jews are challenging the establishment Jews, some of whom run the very institutions that all of us supporting Occupy Wall Street hope to see replaced by a more just order.

The media, trying to discredit us, says we don't know what we are for, only what we are against. So I believe there is much to be gained were we to embrace the following 20 second sound byte for "what we are for."

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"KEITH FITZ-GERALD" - Derivatives: The $600 Trillion Time Bomb That's Set to Explode

BY KEITH FITZ-GERALD, Chief Investment Strategist, Money Morning

http://moneymorning.com/2011/10/12/derivatives-the-600-trillion-time-bomb-thats-set-to-explode/

OCTOBER 12, 2011

Do you want to know the real reason banks aren't lending and the PIIGS have control of the barnyard in Europe?

It's because risk in the $600 trillion derivatives market isn't evening out. To the contrary, it's growing increasingly concentrated among a select few banks, especially here in the United States. 

In 2009, five banks held 80% of derivatives in America. Now, just four banks hold a staggering 95.9% of U.S. derivatives, according to a recent report from the Office of the Currency Comptroller. 

The four banks in question: JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM), Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C), Bank of America Corp. (NYSE:BAC) and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS).

Derivatives played a crucial role in bringing down the global economy, so you would think that the world's top policymakers would have reined these things in by now - but they haven't. 

Instead of attacking the problem, regulators have let it spiral out of control, and the result is a $600 trillion time bomb called the derivatives market. 

Think I'm exaggerating? 

The notional value of the world's derivatives actually is estimated at more than $600 trillion. Notional value, of course, is the total value of a leveraged position's assets. This distinction is necessary because when you're talking about leveraged assets like options and derivatives, a little bit of money can control a disproportionately large position that may be as much as 5, 10, 30, or, in extreme cases, 100 times greater than investments that could be funded only in cash instruments. 

The world's gross domestic product (GDP) is only about $65 trillion, or roughly 10.83% of the worldwide value of the global derivatives market, according to The Economist. So there is literally not enough money on the planet to backstop the banks trading these things if they run into trouble.

Compounding the problem is the fact that nobody even knows if the $600 trillion figure is accurate, because specialized derivatives vehicles like the credit default swaps that are now roiling Europe remain largely unregulated and unaccounted for. 

Tick...Tick...Tick

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"Amanda Wilson" - ACLU Will Take Gene Patent Case to Supreme Court

Published on Sunday, October 16, 2011 by Inter Press Service

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/10/16-2

by Amanda Wilson

According to her, "comprehensive" breast cancer test from Myriad for other breast cancer mutations costs 3,400 dollars and a supplementary test for the BRCA-1 and BRCA-2 genes, called the BART test, costs 700 dollars. Matloff said that 95 percent of patients she recommends for supplementary testing don't end up being tested because of its high cost.

"I know that we are missing mutations," Matloff told IPS, adding that the BRCA gene mutations are passed down maternally and paternally. "It is going to impact them, their children, their siblings their grandchildren, their nieces and nephews, and from a clinician's standpoint it is horrifying."

Gene patenting opponents also argue that in a new era in which full- genome sequencing is getting faster and cheaper, patents stand in the way of access to new knowledge about how certain genes are related to disease.

"The whole next phase of [research in] genetics and disease is to understand how genes work together," Hanson told IPS. "It is a huge task, and the patents just interfere with it."

Matloff expressed a similar concern that advanced knowledge about genes without access to that knowledge could create problems for patients and care providers.

"It is almost like saying, 'we have your genes right in front of us, it came out of your body, but we are not allowed to look at it, we're not allowed to interpret it, and we are not allowed to give the information back to you,'" Matloff said.

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"Chris Hedges" - A Movement Too Big to Fail

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/a_movement_too_big_to_fail_20111017/

Posted on Oct 17, 2011

By Chris Hedges

There is no danger that the protesters who have occupied squares, parks and plazas across the nation in defiance of the corporate state will be co-opted by the Democratic Party or groups like MoveOn. The faux liberal reformers, whose abject failure to stand up for the rights of the poor and the working class, have signed on to this movement because they fear becoming irrelevant. Union leaders, who pull down salaries five times that of the rank and file as they bargain away rights and benefits, know the foundations are shaking. So do Democratic politicians from Barack Obama to Nancy Pelosi. So do the array of “liberal” groups and institutions, including the press, that have worked to funnel discontented voters back into the swamp of electoral politics and mocked those who called for profound structural reform.

Resistance, real resistance, to the corporate state was displayed when a couple of thousand protesters, clutching mops and brooms, early Friday morning forced the owners of Zuccotti Park and the New York City police to back down from a proposed attempt to expel them in order to “clean” the premises. These protesters in that one glorious moment did what the traditional “liberal” establishment has steadily refused to do—fight back. And it was deeply moving to watch the corporate rats scamper back to their holes on Wall Street. It lent a whole new meaning to the phrase “too big to fail.”

Tinkering with the corporate state will not work. We will either be plunged into neo-feudalism and environmental catastrophe or we will wrest power from corporate hands. This radical message, one that demands a reversal of the corporate coup, is one the power elite, including the liberal class, is desperately trying to thwart. But the liberal class has no credibility left. It collaborated with corporate lobbyists to neglect the rights of tens of millions of Americans, as well as the innocents in our imperial wars. The best that liberals can do is sheepishly pretend this is what they wanted all along. Groups such as MoveOn and organized labor will find themselves without a constituency unless they at least pay lip service to the protests. The Teamsters’ arrival Friday morning to help defend the park signaled an infusion of this new radicalism into moribund unions rather than a co-opting of the protest movement by the traditional liberal establishment. The union bosses, in short, had no choice.

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"KATHARINE Q. SEELYE" - Gas Boom Aids Pennsylvania, but Some Worry Over the Risk

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/15/us/hydraulic-fracturing-brings-money-and-problems-to-pennsylvania.html?_r=1

Gas Boom Aids Pennsylvania, but Some Worry Over the Risk

Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

A gas drilling site behind a farmhouse in Fairdale, west of Montrose, Pa. Drilling and the businesses supporting it have lifted the Susquehanna County economy.

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

Published: October 14, 2011

MONTROSE, Pa. — In the economic downturn three years ago, Adam Diaz idled the trucks at his bluestone quarry and silenced the saws at his lumber mill.

Montrose is located along the gas-rich Marcellus Shale.

Fortunately for him, the gas companies arrived at about the same time, and Mr. Diaz saw an opportunity.

He started hauling their waste. He parlayed 1 truck into 8 and now has a fleet of 53. Then he revived a weedy rail spur and now leases 210 rail cars to haul more waste containers. His work force grew to 180 from 30 as he created a business that now has revenues of $45 million a year.

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"Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins" - We Are the 99%

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/10/15-2

Published on Saturday, October 15, 2011 by Green for All Blog

by Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins

Being part of the 99% isn't about dominance – it's about universality.

The struggling economy is impacting everyone. Well, almost everyone. Americans on the whole aren't getting ahead; they're falling further behind every year. Nearly every American is worried about paying his bills or keeping her job. The terrible economy of 2008 has become the still-horrible economy of 2011.

We've worked and waited for change, for the system to improve, for the reasons the economy got broken to be fixed.

America's done waiting for change. Frustrated, furious - people took to the streets.

Occupy Wall Street, Occupy DC, Occupy Oakland, Occupy Boise – they're done waiting for change. Now, they're demanding it.

Washington isn't making our economy better. Politicians aren't. Oil and gas companies aren't. Wall Street isn't. They aren't making the economy better because the economy doesn't impact them. The Senators who voted against the jobs bill aren't unemployed or struggling to pay their bills. The heads of ExxonMobil and Goldman Sachs aren't either. And they aren't holding each other accountable.

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"Naomi Klein" - 'The Stakes Are Too High for Us Not to Make the Absolute Most of This Moment'

http://www.commondreams.org/video/2011/10/15

Published on Saturday, October 15, 2011 by Grounded TV Network

Naomi Klein Interview at Occupy Wall Street

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=BaEeeLOB5IA

"Elliot Spagat" - Mexico's Newest Export to US May Be Water

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/10/15-2

Published on Saturday, October 15, 2011 by the Associated Press

by Elliot Spagat

SAN DIEGO -- Mexico ships televisions, cars, sugar and medical equipment to the United States. Soon, it may be sending water north.

This undated photo released by the San Diego County Water Authority shows water gushing from an electricity plant in Playas de Rosarito, Mexico, next to a site where government agencies in the western United States are considering putting large desalination plants. (AP Photo/San Diego County Water Authority)

Western states are looking south of the border for water to fill drinking glasses, flush toilets and sprinkle lawns, as four major U.S. water districts help plan one of two huge desalination plant proposals in Playas de Rosarito, about 15 miles south of San Diego. Combined, they would produce 150 million a day, enough to supply more than 300,000 homes on both sides of the border.

The plants are one strategy by both countries to wean themselves from the drought-prone Colorado River, which flows 1,450 miles from the Rocky Mountains to the Sea of Cortez. Decades of friction over the Colorado, in fact, are said to be a hurdle to current desalination negotiations.

The proposed plants have also sparked concerns that American water interests looking to Mexico are simply trying to dodge U.S. environmental reviews and legal challenges.

Desalination plants can blight coastal landscapes, sucking in and killing fish eggs and larvae. They require massive amounts of electricity and dump millions of gallons of brine back into the ocean that can, if not properly disposed, also be harmful to fish.

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"Daniel Silva" - 'Indignant' Activists Launch Worldwide Protests

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/10/15

Published on Saturday, October 15, 2011 by Agence France Presse

by Daniel Silva

Activists scuffled with police in London and decried the wealthy in Hong Kong on Saturday as an unprecedented outcry against corporate greed and government cutbacks spread worldwide.

Protesters of the 'Indignant' group demonstrate against banking and finance in Rome October 15, 2011. Protesters worldwide geared up for a cry of rage on Saturday against bankers, financiers and politicians they accuse of ruining global economies and condemning millions to poverty and hardship through greed. (REUTERS/Stefano Rellandini)

Inspired by America's "Occupy Wall Street" and Spain's "Indignants", people took to the streets in a rolling action targeting 951 cities in 82 countries from Asia to Europe, Africa and the Americas.

It was the biggest show of power yet by a movement born on May 15 when a rally in Madrid's central Puerta del Sol square sparked a protest that spread internationally.

Anger over unemployment and opposition to the financial elite hung over the protests, which coincided with a Paris meeting of G20 financial powers pre-occupied by the eurozone debt crisis.

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