Jim Lobe - House Committee Okays Sweeping Sanctions on Iran

Published on Thursday, November 3, 2011 by Inter Press Service

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/11/03

by Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - Amid growing tensions in the Middle East, including speculation about a possible Israeli attack on Iran, a key U.S. Congressional committee Wednesday approved two bills that would impose sweeping new economic and diplomatic sanctions against Tehran.

The legislation, which includes sanctions against Iran's Central Bank and strict curbs on official diplomatic contacts between Washington and Tehran, was approved unanimously by voice vote of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives.

The Committee chairperson and major sponsor of the legislation, Florida Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, said she hoped the whole House and the Senate would act quickly on the two bills so that their enactment would "hand the Iranian regime a nice holiday present", presumably a reference to the Christmas holidays.

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Emma Hurd - Israel Considers Pre-Emptive Attack on Iran

Published on Wednesday, November 2, 2011 by Sky News

http://news.sky.com/home/world-news/article/16101552

by Emma Hurd

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to rally support in his cabinet for an attack on Iran, according to government sources.

The country's defence minister Ehud Barak and the foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman are said to be among those backing a pre-emptive strike to neutralise Iran's nuclear ambitions.

But a narrow majority of ministers currently oppose the move, which could trigger a wave of regional retaliation.

The debate over possible Israeli military action has reached fever pitch in recent days with newspaper leader columns discussing the benefits and dangers of hitting Iran.

Mr Lieberman responded to the reports of a push to gain cabinet approval by saying that "Iran poses the most dangerous threat to world order."

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David Gow - Greece Gets Ultimatum: Accept Austerity Plan or Forego Extra Bailout Cash

Published on Wednesday, November 2, 2011 by The Guardian/UK

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/02/greece-ultimatum-austerity-forego-eu

by David Gow in Athens

Greece has been given an ultimatum that it will get no more money from the European Union and International Monetary Fund until its people have voted to accept the austerity measures demanded by the bailout package.

The latest tranche of bailout aid, worth €8bn (£7bn) and agreed just two weeks ago, is seen as vital for ensuring that Greek public sector workers can continue to be paid. But it will now be delayed until after the country decides in a referendum whether it accepts the new rescue package or even wants to stay in the euro.

The threat to send Greece closer to bankruptcy emerged on the margins of the G20 summit in Cannes – due to start on Thursday – and follows a blunt warning from Jean-Claude Juncker, chairman of the eurogroup, that the sixth tranche of the original €110bn bailout was now in jeopardy.

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Center for Constitutional Rights - Gaza-Bound Humanitarian Flotilla Reaches International Waters

CONTACT: Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) press@ccrjustice.org http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2011/11/02-6

NEW YORK - November 2 - Two boats carrying twenty-seven human rights activists from five countries, including the United States, have made it to international waters and are headed to Gaza. Today, the flotilla set sail unannounced from Turkey with the aim of ending the siege and isolation of Gaza. The boats are carrying letters from people in the United States to the people of Gaza, as well as medicine.  This latest attempt comes less than six months after the “Stay Human Flotilla” was detained and sabotaged in Greece by local port authorities in response to mounting pressure from the United States and Israel.

In light of Israel’s attack on the May 2010 flotilla, which killed nine civilians including 18-year old U.S. citizen Furkan Doğan, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) calls on the international community to ensure the safe passage of the ships through international waters into Gaza and prevent a repetition of last year’s lethal assault by Israeli forces.

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Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) - Lawsuit to Halt GE Crops in All Midwest Refuges

CONTACT: Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER)

Kathryn Douglass [PEER]http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2011/11/02-8

Genetically Engineered Agriculture on 54 Refuges in 8 States Targeted as Illegal

WASHINGTON - November 2 - A lawsuit filed today in federal court seeks to end cultivation of genetically engineered (GE) crops on fifty-four national wildlife refuges across the Midwest.  The suit is the latest in a series of successful lawsuits by public interest groups to stop planting of GE crops on wildlife refuges.  

Filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by the Center for Food Safety (CFS), Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), and Beyond Pesticides, this federal lawsuit charges that the Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) unlawfully entered into cooperative farming agreements and approved planting of GE crops in eight Midwestern states (IL, IA, IN, MI, MN, MO, OH, and WI) without the environmental review required by the National Environmental Policy Act  and in violation of the National Wildlife Refuge System Administration Act and FWS’s own policy. 

This is the fourth lawsuit filed by CFS and PEER challenging FWS permitting GE crops on wildlife refuges.  Previously, the two groups successfully challenged approval of GE plantings on two wildlife refuges in Delaware, which forced FWS to end GE planting in the entire 12-state Northeastern Region.  Earlier this year, CFS, PEER and Beyond Pesticides filed suit to block planting GE crops on twenty-five refuges across eight states in the Southeast. 

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Jill Richardson - Why Is the State Department Using Our Money to Pimp for Monsanto?

By Jill Richardson, AlterNet

Posted on October 31, 2011, Printed on November 3, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152921/why_is_the_state_department_using_our_money_to_pimp_for_monsanto

People in India are up in arms about eggplant. Not just any eggplant -- the fight, which is also raging in the Philippines, is over Monsanto's Bt eggplant. Even as increasing scientific evidence concludes that biotechnology and its arsenal of genetically modified crops may be doing more harm than good, companies like Monsanto are still pushing them hard and they are getting help from the U.S.

The State Department is using taxpayer money to help push the agenda of Monsanto and its friends all across the world. Here's a recent example: Assistant Secretary of State Jose W. Fernandez, addressing an event of high-level government officials from around the world, agribusiness CEOs, leaders from international organizations, and anti-hunger groups said, "Without agricultural biotechnology, our world would look vastly different. One of our challenges is how to grow more crops on the same land. This is where biotechnology plays a role."

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Zaid Jilani - New Report Finds Vermont Could Save As Much As $1.8 Billion By 2020 From Shifting To Single Payer

By Zaid Jilani on Nov 2, 2011 at 1:20 pm

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2011/11/02/359157/vermont-save-billion-by-2020-single-payer/

Yesterday, the Vermont Legislative Joint Fiscal Office and the Department of Banking, Insurance, Securities and Health Care Administration released a new report estimating the savings the state could experience if it successfully enacts the single payer system it began designing earlier this year.

Using both a low and high estimate, the report concludes that the state would save between $553 million to $1.8 billion by the year 2020 by shifting to a single payer health care system and enacting other reforms along with it. The following chart from the report shows that these savings come from reductions in payer and provider administration, investments, clinical reforms, and fraud reduction:

In May, Gov. Peter Shumlin (D-VT) signed a groundbreaking law that seeks to implement a single payer system. But to enact the system, the state needs a waiver from the Affordable Care Act health reform law. Currently, the federal government will start handing out state waivers in 2017 — three years after Vermont wants to implement its system. Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT) has introduced an amendment that would move the waiver date up to 2014. Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Scott Brown (R-MA) have introduced a companion bill in the Senate. President Obama has endorsed the idea of moving the waiver date forward.

Dave Zweifel - Health Care Solution is Simple: Single-Payer

Published on Thursday, November 3, 2011 by The Capital Times (Wisconsin)

by Dave Zweifel

The answer to the nation’s health care crisis is staring everyone in the face, yet as a country we continue to refuse to come to grips with it.

Late last month, the Wisconsin secretary of health services, Dennis Smith, held hearings to let people sound off about planned cuts to Wisconsin’s BadgerCare and Family Care programs. The state says it needs to reduce health care spending by some $554 million over the next two years, which is likely to leave tens of thousands of Wisconsin low-income citizens without health care coverage once again.

At around the same time Smith was holding his hearings, former Wisconsin governor and U.S. health secretary Tommy Thompson was telling a WisPolitics.com luncheon audience that American companies often find themselves at a competitive disadvantage because their health insurance costs are so much higher than those of companies in other countries.

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Science Daily - Health Risk from Eating Well-Done Meat May Be Underestimated

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111101125945.htm

ScienceDaily (Nov. 1, 2011) — Mice are often used to test whether substances in food are harmful to humans. This requires that mice and humans metabolise substances in the same way. Humans have certain enzymes in more parts of the body than mice. The health risk associated with harmful substances in food may therefore be underestimated.

Researchers at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health have adopted a mouse type where human enzymes have been inserted to examine whether people may be more sensitive to certain carcinogenic substances from heat-treated foods. They have obtained a better model to assess negative health effects in humans from substances in food using these mice.

The results show that the incidence of intestinal tumours increased from 31 per cent to 80 per cent in "human-like" mice who consumed substances from meat crust (i.e. the surface formed during heat-treatment).

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Wenonah Hauter - Factory Farming, Not Just on Land Anymore

Published on Tuesday, November 1, 2011 by Civil Eats

http://civileats.com/2011/11/01/factory-farming-not-just-on-land-anymore/

by Wenonah Hauter

When most people think of factory farming they typically think of feedlots, hog factories or chicken operations–not massive open net pens growing millions of fish in our oceans. However, factory fish farming will soon pose many of the same threats to the environment and to consumers as its land-based counterparts.

Growing fish in a crowded environment in open net pens or cages and giving them antibiotic-laced feed inevitably leads to pollution. The waste, which includes excess feed, antibiotics and the chemicals used to treat the cages, flows directly into the ocean and, ultimately, on to our plates.

Food & Water Watch’s new report reveals that if the government used factory fish farming to reach its stated goal of offsetting the U.S. seafood trade deficit (that is, importing less seafood than it exports), 200 million of these fish would need to be produced in ocean cages off U.S. coasts each year. Calculations show that this could result in the discharge of as much nitrogenous waste as the untreated sewage from a city nearly nine times more populous than Los Angeles.

The environmental issues don’t end there. Escapes from open ocean pens are common, and when farmed fish escape they can compete or interbreed with wild fish, altering natural behavior and weakening important genetic traits. They can also spread disease to wild fish. Washington State and California, for example, are now dealing with a highly contagious disease that is linked to factory fish farms and is threatening to wipe out their wild salmon populations.

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