Gary Null's Blog, page 19

Amitabh Pal - Romney's Extremist Foreign Policy

Which Mitt Romney will we see on foreign policy, if he’s elected? The slightly right of center cautious international consensus builder? Or the reckless neocon sock puppet? These questions have been nagging me for the past couple of months, but I think I’ve found the answer.

It’s much more likely that a Romney Administration will be marked by a belligerent attitude toward the rest of the world—a “my way or the highway” approach that blighted the tenure of the previous Republican to occupy the Oval Office.

Romney did a really good job of posturing as a reasonable guy in the foreign policy debate in order to assure the undecideds that he wasn’t a far-right wacko. On Israel/Palestine and Iran, his approach was virtually indistinguishable from President Obama’s. And he was surprisingly conciliatory on Pakistan, asserting that the United States had to work with the country’s security establishment, in spite of its troubling history.

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/11/02-4

Greg Kaufmann - Romney Declines as Obama Answers Poverty Questions

Three months ago, anticipating that the media and presidential campaigns wouldn’t focus on the struggles of the poor and near poor in a substantive way, TheNation.com kicked off a new campaign: “#TalkPoverty: Questions for Obama and Romney.”

In an effort to push the issue of poverty into the mainstream political debate, I profiled and polled five experts who have devoted their lives to fighting poverty—and individuals who have lived in poverty—giving them the opportunity to ask the presidential candidates the questions that they want answers to.

A thriving #TalkPoverty community developed online, and the Half In Ten coalition—comprised of 200 national and local organizations across the country—ran an excellent spin-off campaign to pressure debate moderators to ask President Obama and Governor Romney about their plans to address child poverty. Despite this vibrant campaign—and the outsized focus of the debates on the domestic economy—the moderators never asked a single question about poverty.

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/11/02-2

Ken Butigan - Challenging the ‘Disposition Matrix’ and Its Ever-Expanding Kill List

Last week The Washington Post published a three-part series on the U.S. government’s dramatic increase in targeted killing, and the steps being taken to institutionalize extra-judicial assassination as standard operating procedure far into the future. “Targeted killing is now so routine that the Obama administration has spent much of the past year codifying and streamlining the processes that sustain it,” the series reports. (See the articles themselves , here, and here.)

Nicknamed the “disposition matrix” and coordinated by presidential counterterrorism adviser John O. Brennan in conjunction with the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), this new system integrates drone technology, satellite surveillance, massive databases and presumed congressional authorization to target and kill persons of interest globally. While the focus at the moment is killing suspected operatives in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, the system is designed for “flexibility,” with the capacity to cross borders at will.

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/11/02-3

Matt Taibbi - Hurricane Sandy and the Myth of the Big Government-vs.-Small-Government Debate

Quite a shock the other day to look out my window in Jersey City, and see the Hudson River rushing over what used to be the street in front of my building. For nearly three days my dog and I played Robinson Crusoe and Friday, sleepily watching from our little apartment-island while we waited for hot water, cell service, the internet, even elevators to come back on line.President Barack Obama speaks as New Jersey Governor Chris Christie looks on as they visit a shelter for Hurricane Sandy victims in Brigantine, New Jersey, on October 31th, 2012.

When I finally got back on the internet and was able to read the news again, I saw that Hurricane Sandy, in addition to being the rare storm to live up to its televised hype, had turned into the last-minute curveball plot twist that always seems to pop up in presidential races.

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/11/01-6

 

Bill McKibben - A Grim Warning from Science

One of the things that makes Sandy different from Katrina is that it’s a relatively clean story. The lessons of Katrina were numerous and painful—they had to do with race, with class, with the willful incompetence of a government that had put a professional Arabian horse fancier in charge of its rescue efforts.Flooded streets under the Manhattan Bridge in Brooklyn, New York, October 29, 2012. (Bebeto Matthews/AP Photo)

Sandy, by contrast, has been pretty straightforward. It’s hit rich, poor, and middle class Americans with nearly equal power, though of course the affluent always have it easier in the aftermath of tragedy. Government officials prepared forthrightly for its arrival, and have refrained from paralysis and bickering in its wake. Which allows us to concentrate on the only really useful message it might deliver: that we live in a changed world, where we need both to adapt to the changes, and to prevent further changes so great that adaptation will be impossible.

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/11/01-8

Daryl Hannah - The Battle Against Big Energy's Rush to Ruin Our Planet

Extreme killer superstorms, historic drought, vanishing sea ice, an increase in ocean acidity by 30%, the hottest decade on record and mega forest fires have increasingly become our new reality.One plume of oil from BP's 2010 Deepwater Horizon well blowout produced a slick 22 miles long and a mile wide. 

"That's all happened when you raise the temperature of the earth one degree," says author Bill McKibben, "[t]he temperature will go up four degrees, maybe five, unless we get off coal and gas and oil very quickly." Additional temperature rises could compromise our safety and cause incalculable damage from a large number of billion-dollar disasters in coming years – if we don't address our emissions, insist upon an appropriate climate policy and curtail the rogue fossil fuel industry.

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/11/01-1

Sonali Kolhatkar and Vandana Shiva - Why Monsanto Is Fighting Tooth and Nail Against California's Prop 37

A new poll conducted by the University of Southern California and the LA Times has found that Proposition 37, the GMO labeling initiative has slipped a whopping 17 points since the last poll in September. The proposition continues to lead but only by 2 percentage points with less than a week before the election. Thirteen percent of likely voters are still undecided on whether to require mandatory labeling of genetically modified organisms in foods.

The dramatic shift in opinion is likely due to the barrage of dollars spent by vested corporate interests to defeat Prop 37. Chief among them are Monsanto corporation, the leading commercial force behind the creation, promotion, and widespread use of pesticides and genetically modified seeds in farming, and the Grocery Manufacturers Association which represents the world's largest processed food producers and distributors such as Coca Cola, Pepsi Co, and Nestle. Together, they have spent $41 million in advertising and other campaigning, claiming that Proposition 37 is "anti-science," and would lead to huge increases in food prices and the banning of safe foods. At least two newspapers have concluded the No on Prop 37 ads are misleading and deceptive.

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/11/01-4

 

Low cholesterol associated with enhanced risk of death in heart failure patients

  Lest you think this is just partisan propaganda, these are real, recorded votes in the House of Representatives [3].

The Republicans seem to have it in for women and not just against health insurance covering reproductive health care, Planned Parenthood’s other services, or privacy for the medical records of victims of rape and incest. The Republicans en-mass voted to repeal protections to stop health insurance companies from discriminating on the basis of gender.

On other consumer protections – forget it. The Republicans are indentured to the worst of their corporate paymasters. The Republicans either do nothing to help or actually push for rollbacks. No minimum wage to give 30 million Americans the same pay workers got back in 1968, adjusted for inflation. The Chamber of Commerce says no. So Boehner and Cantor curtsy.

In a frenzy, House Republicans have voted to repeal the “Affordable Care Act” 33 times. Be assured their hatred for Obamacare is not because they want full Medicare for all. It is because they want to voucherize Medicare and hand patients over to the avaricious Aetnas and the Pfizers who return the favor with campaign cash.

House Republicans rage against any attempts to stop the shipping or outsourcing of American jobs to communist and fascist regimes abroad that know how to keep their workers in powerless penury. Why? Because that is what the non-patriotic U.S. global corporations want them to do. Anything Big Oil wants, it gets– retain big subsidies, tax breaks, weaken pollution restrictions, lease everywhere, and even give relief to oil companies when they damaged the Gulf Coast.

House Republicans have a conflict of interest between their families’ lungs and their corporatized minds. Resolution? Vote to weaken the Clean Air Act, drinking water safety standards, cut funding for these cancer preventing, health protecting programs while pushing for more military weapons and bloated Pentagon budgets. The Republicans went so far as to vote for polluters over children, pregnant women and people who live in nursing homes and assisted-living facilities. These Republicans voted to block the EPA mercury and air toxics standards that the agency estimated would save 12,000 lives every year and prevent more than one million asthma attacks.

With unseemly fervor, House Republicans want to generally weaken the National Labor Relations Board and labor laws. But when it comes to protecting the lowest tax rates and loopholes for the very wealthy, they are Horatio at the Bridge. When the top two percent engage in financial fraud (credit cards, mortgages and student loans, abuse of seniors) or urge privatizing social security, the Boehners and the Cantors are block-tackling anyone in the House who begs to push law and order for the Rich and Corporate or keep “the security” in social security.

For the poor, let them eat less. Hunger in America is real. But not real enough for the Republicans to stop wanting to cut these food programs. While Republicans campaign against Obama for not doing anything to lower gasoline prices, they are voting against measures to regulate oil and gas speculators who drive up gas prices, a fact recognized by the CEO of Exxon a few years ago in a Senate hearing.

The above are just a sample of what the House Republicans passed or blocked in the House. Even worse are what many of them wanted to summarily abolish, such as the EPA, OSHA, and the IRS. The meat-axe Republicans have trouble telling the public how the important functions performed by these agencies would be handled. The Republicans dismiss the work of health and safety agencies as junk science (e.g. regarding climate change). Fortunately, the Senate has rejected most of their madness.

How do such people get elected? Is it just money and smooth slogans? Is it a lack of competition in rigged districts? Is it a winner-take-all, two-party duopoly where more than half the voters sit out the election? Is it shocking disengagement by the cynical or hopeless public, shorn of any rigorous expectation levels?

For the time being, go to the Democratic House Caucus website [3]. Ponder the fate of our Republic. Ask why we have almost unconditionally given up our enormous sovereign power of “We the People” to those out-of-control, raging members of Congress.

http://healthimpactnews.com/2012/low-cholesterol-associated-with-enhanced-risk-of-death-in-heart-failure-patients/

 

Chemistry Council trying to lobby Washington to cut off funding for research on carcinogens

Every two years, the National Toxicology Program (NTP), which operates under the banner of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), releases a congressionally-mandated report entitled the "Report on Carcinogens" (RoC) that identifies various agents, substances, mixtures, or exposures that are known to cause cancer. But the American Chemical Society (ACS), which represents many of the biggest names in the cancer-causing chemical industry, is currently trying to lobby Congress to stop the publishing of this important document.

Because the latest RoC lists formaldehyde, a chemical commonly used in both consumer and industrial products, as a definitive cause of cancer, and styrene, another common household chemical, as a suspected carcinogen, the chemical industry is up in arms about its potential profit losses. So in the spirit of Big Tobacco's approach to dealing with inconvenient science, the chemical industry is now desperately trying to muddle the scientific process by paying off Congress to not only withhold the truth about these and other deadly chemicals, but also to prevent the public from accessing this information by blocking funding for future publishings of the RoC.

"The way the free market is supposed to work is that you have information," Lynn Goldman, Dean of the School of Public Health at George Washington University (GWU), is quoted as saying by the New York Times (NYT) about the importance of the RoC report. "They're (thechemical companies) trying to squelch that information."

Similar stall tactics were used by the chemical industry back in the 1930s when the safety of asbestos was first called into question. Just like today, industry lobbyists at that time denied all the emerging science about the serious dangers of asbestos, insisting that it was all "ill-informed and exaggerated" bunk, according to the NYT. The chemical was eventually exposed and banned in the 1980s, of course, but by this point, millions of people had already been needlessly exposed to asbestos, with roughly 10,000 of them now die every year as a result of asbestos-related disease.

"The industrial chemical formaldehyde and a botanical known as aristolochic acids are listed as known human carcinogens," says a National Institutes of Health (NIH) announcement about the eight new substances added to the 2011 RoC, which the chemical industry is trying to keep under wraps. "Six other substances -- captafol, cobalt-tungsten carbide (in powder or hard metal form), certain inhalable glass wool fibers, o-nitrotoluene, riddelliine, and styrene -- are added as substances that are reasonably anticipated to be human carcinogens." (http://www.niehs.nih.gov/news/newsroom/releases/2011/june10/)

You can read the full 2011 RoC here:
http://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/?objectid=03C9AF75-E1BF-FF40-DBA9EC0928DF8B15

 

 

http://www.naturalnews.com/037724_Chemistry_Council_lobbying_carcinogens.html

 

 

Another Study Finds GMO Compounds in 100% of Pregnant Women and Fetuses

In many ways we are searching for real science, not funded by the GMO companies themselves, to tell us the truth about genetically modified organisms and their dangers. Because these companies control access to their chemicals and any related research, what we have is little. But from the little we know, there is much to fear concerning genetically modified organisms.

Most recently, scientists in Canada conducted a study on pregnant and non-pregnant women, looking for the chemicals found in pesticides related to genetically modified foods. What they found was frightening indeed.

100% of Women Had At Least 1 of These Toxins

According to GreenMedInfo.com, the scientists were looking for 5 basic toxins. Those include: 

Glyphosate (Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide)
Gluphosinate (an herbicide)
AMPA (a metabolite of glyphosate)
3-MMPA (a metabolite of gluphosinate)
Cry1Ab (the Bt toxin of gluphosinate)

All women had at least one of the toxins present in their blood, but there were differences between the pregnant and non-pregnant women. A large percentage of non-pregnant study subjects had both glyphosate and gluphosinate in their blood, while the pregnant women did not. However, 100% of pregnant women studied had 3-MPPA in their blood and 93% had Cry1Ab. Even more troubling—100% of fetal cords studied had 3-MPPA and 80% had Cry1Ab.

So, not only do all women likely have some of these GMO toxins in them, but they are passing it on to their children. This is similar to the research conducted by a German university finding glyphosate in all urine samples tested.

What does this all mean and what are the immediate dangers? That’s where more research is needed, though research is tightly controlled by the companies with the patents. We know that 3-MPPA is a propionic acid. According to GMI’s report, this means it is classified as a Bad Actor Chemical and has warnings of cramping, burning, nausea, shock, vomiting, and sore throat if ingested. As for Cry1Ab, Greenpeace reports that it is an immunogen, meaning it creates an immune system response and could possibly increase the existing problem of antibiotic resistant infections.

All five of these compounds that the researchers looked for in their study subjects are classified as Generally Recognized As Safe (GRAS). Yes, these chemicals that carry serious warnings when offered under other circumstances– the same ones that kill pests– our government assures us, are safe.

What can you do? Whenever possible, steer clear of products containing GMO ingredients. Also, support California’s Proposition 37, which will require the labeling of such ingredients and could pave the way for other states and even the nation to follow suit. Additionally, DE-support Monsanto, a company shelling out millions to go against Prop 37 and spreading lies about GMO labeling.

http://www.activistpost.com/2012/10/another-study-finds-gmo-compounds-in.html