No comment. fib
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Leading Cuban dissidents cheer Obama's Nobel prize (AP) – 8 hours ago HAVANA
— Many of the 75 activists jailed in a 2003 Cuban government crackdown on political dissent are congratulating Barack Obama for winning the Nobel Peace Prize. In a letter released Monday to international journalists, 29 of those imprisoned six years ago said Obama "has become a global symbol, especially for us who, under difficult conditions, are defending Cubans' right to democracy."
In another letter, 21 of their wives, mothers and other female relatives also cheered Obama. Fifty-four dissidents remain imprisoned on allegations they conspired with the U.S. to topple Cuba's government. Those freed were granted medical parole or forced into exile in Spain. One was released after completing a six-year sentence.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jOSU7Ew6j4vlEn0d_L0eXG0A1w1gD9B9M09G0
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Zimbabwe News.Net
Sunday 11th October, 2009
Former Cuban president, Fidel Castro, has said he was obliged to acknowledge the Nobel Prize given to US President, Barack Obama, was a "positive measure," and especially important considering the "genocidal policies" of some former US presidents. He also said the decision was good compensation for the fact that the US had been defeated in Copenhagen when Rio de Janeiro was picked as a site for 2016 Olympic Games. In an article titled "Reflections," published on the Internet, 83-year-old Castro said while he did not always share the views of those who award the Nobel, Obama’s prize was "an appeal for peace and a search for solutions that lead to the survival of species." In his comments, he said: "Many will say that Obama has not yet earned the right to receive such a distinction. We prefer to see the decision as not so much a prize for the president of the US, but as a criticism of the genocidal policies pursued by a few presidents of that country, who led the world to the crossroads it is at today."
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http://www.zimbabwenews.net/story/553184
I always liked Senator Clair McCaskill. fib
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I feel that I’m in an alternative universe. For eight years some people called anyone who disagreed with the President’s foreign policy or war in Iraq unpatriotic. Then in the course of two weeks, those same people cheer when the United States does not get selected for the Olympics and boo when our President is the unanimous choice for the Nobel Peace Prize. Go figure.
Congratulations Mr. President for standing up to the scorn and derision of your opponents in the election when you firmly stood for the proposition that strength meant being willing to talk to your enemies, not just your allies. Thank you for the confidence and wisdom to say that a hand will be extended when their fist is unclenched. And thank you for understanding that our national security rests on our principles, the example we set for the world, and our alliances along with the excellence and strength of our military, rather than exclusively the latter. God Bless America.
http://clairecmc.tumblr.com/post/208582433/the-twilight-zone
How to Watch the Speech
By David M. Herszenhorn
Charles Dharapak/Associated Press
A meeting on health care reform in Reston, Va.
In his speech to Congress on Wednesday night, President Obama will press his case for major health care legislation, not just with lawmakers in the audience, but also with a deeply wary public watching at home.
And while Mr. Obama will probably talk in clear, plain-spoken terms, decoding his remarks and the reaction he gets will require both a careful ear and a keen eye. Here are some of the main things to listen and look for:
Will he reiterate his support for a government-run insurance plan — or finally state outright that he can accept a compromise that might disappoint liberals?
Will the president give a shout-out to influential Republicans like Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa — or threaten to barrel over opponents?
Will centrist lawmakers sit on their hands — or give him a big ovation?
Will Mr. Obama reassure elderly voters worried about Medicare cuts? Can he do that even while explaining how the country can afford to subsidize health coverage for more than 40 million Americans who currently have none?
I read a story on CNN which surprised me greatly, see http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/09/07/laura.bush/index.html.
The former first Lady says that Obama has been doing a good job, but has much on his plate. This is the most gracious thing any Republican has had to say in some time. I congratulate her for her openness, and perhaps even wisdom?
Cheers, Mrs. Bush! May you be as great a former first Lady as was your Mother-in-Law.
Gregor
If we do not get a public option, we will pay billions of dollars in subsidies to private insurers only. 80% of people with no health insurance work, and rightfully, they will get subsidies.
Wrongfully, all that subsidy money paid with your taxes will go to private insurers, and pay for not only health care, but also for:
- Salaries of $20-$25 million for private insurance CEOs
- Perks like private jets, bonuses, and stock shares often worth over $100 million for those CEOs
No government employee gets millions of dollars a year, and perks and stock shares worth over $100 million.
. Your firefighter, police, highway patrol do not make $25 million a year.
. Your congressmen don’t make $25 million a year.
. Your President of the United States does not make $25 million/year.
. Your Medicare, VA and Medicaid bureaucrats do not make $25 million/year.
Dr. Welch's essay touches upon the uneasy grounds of our health business that I have known from my own experience. I am glad somebody elso wrote it first, and is a physician. FIB
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July 28, 2009
Essay
To Overhaul the System, ‘Health’ Needs Redefining
By H. GILBERT WELCH, M.D.
"The Canadians haven’t figured it out. Neither have the Japanese, the French or the British. No health care system has seriously grappled with the question most fundamental to its task: what constitutes health?
As the United States contemplates an overhaul of its system, maybe we should take a stab at it.
For years the question has been deferred to those with a financial interest in the answer — health professionals entwined with pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology firms, manufacturers of medical devices and diagnostic technologies, free-standing diagnostic centers, surgical centers, hospitals and academic medical centers — a group aptly labeled some 30 years ago by the editor of The New England Journal of Medicine as the “medical-industrial complex.”
It’s an industry that has learned a lot over those years. I know, because I’ve been part of it. And increasingly it has settled on a most convenient answer: health is the absence of abnormality.
In the past, people sought health care because they were sick. Now the medical-industrial complex seeks patients. It encourages those with minor symptoms to be evaluated and urges those who feel well to get “checked” — just to make sure nothing is wrong.
So, if health is the absence of abnormality, the only way to know you are healthy is to become a customer.
But healthy people aren’t great customers; they’re like the people who pay off their entire credit card balance each month. The money is in those in whom an abnormality can be found.
The medical-industrial complex has made that relatively easy to do.
It develops diagnostic technologies able to find smaller and smaller abnormalities. So more and more of us are found to have damaged cartilage in our knees, bulging discs in our backs, and narrowed blood vessels throughout our bodies. And far too many are also found to have “spots” or “shadows” that are seldom significant but are said to be “worrisome.” So more and more of us have knee surgery, back surgery, angioplasty and more diagnostic investigation.
And the medical-industrial complex has another way to find more abnormalities: it simply narrows the definition of normal. Take blood pressure. In the past, relatively few were said to have abnormal blood pressure. Now a normal blood pressure is said to be below 120/80. This means that well over half the adult population of the United States is abnormal. The same is true for cholesterol. And although it involves a smaller portion of the population, narrower definitions of normal are expanding the number of people said to have diabetes and osteoporosis. So more and more of us are treated for these conditions.
Finding more abnormalities has been a great strategy for our industry. But it has been a disaster for health-care costs.
Some believe that finding more abnormalities is the right strategy to improve the nation’s health, but how much it reduces death and disability is open to debate. The new abnormalities being found are generally not severe, but mild: they are not life-threatening, and in many patients they won’t ever produce symptoms. When the benefit of treatment is known, it is known to be small — so small that many people, sometimes hundreds, must be treated for one person to benefit. But more often than not, the value of treating these mild abnormalities is simply not known.
What is known is that others are invariably harmed in the process. Admittedly, the harms are often mild — lightheadedness or fainting from too much blood pressure medication, for example. But occasionally they are more severe, even fatal; last year, for instance, a major study of intensive diabetes treatment was stopped because it caused more deaths.
But while these harms are rare, so are the benefits— if they exist at all. Nevertheless, the medical-industrial complex has systematically exaggerated the benefits and minimized or ignored the harms. The reality is more nuanced: whether a strategy does more good than harm is often a much closer call than is ever advertised.
And then there is a larger question. How does “absence of abnormality” affect our perception of health? This construct is both too narrow and too broad. It’s too narrow because there is more to being healthy than striving to avoid death and disease. Health is more than a physical state of being; it’s also a state of mind.
And it’s too broad because all of us harbor abnormalities. The construct drives the system to look for things to be wrong — a search that will be successful in most of us. We then feel more vulnerable. This induced vulnerability undermines the very sense of well-being and resilience that in many ways defines health itself. Viewing health as the absence of abnormality thus conflicts with the desire for a healthier society.
Furthermore, the strategy has created a host of other problems: doctors who are overwhelmed by the number of ailments their patients allegedly have (and who are often distracted from the most important ones); doctors in training who are increasingly confused about who is really sick and who is not; lawyers who increasingly have a field day with the charge of “failure to diagnose”; patients who get too much treatment or lose health insurance because they been given a new diagnosis; and a frazzled, fearful public adrift in a culture of disease. Oh, and did I mention that it has been a disaster for health-care costs?
If you are one of the millions of Americans adversely affected by the unrelenting growth of health costs — an employer that can’t afford insurance or a patient who can’t afford prescription drugs or can’t find insurance at all — you have to take back responsibility for deciding what health really means, not surrender that decision to “experts” with strong financial incentives.
And even if you are one of the few who doesn’t need to worry about money, you still need to take back this responsibility. Your health may depend on it."
H. Gilbert Welch, a professor of medicine at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice in Hanover, N.H., is the author of “Should I Be Tested for Cancer? Maybe Not and Here’s Why.”
"There is still strong support for critical elements of the Obama/Democratic plan:
* 62 - 32 percent in favor of giving people the option of a government insurance plan;
* 61 - 36 percent for higher taxes on high income earners to pay for health care reform;
* 60 - 32 percent in favor of insurance subsidies for individuals making up to $43,000 and families of four making up to $88,000;
* 54 - 38 percent for requiring businesses to provide insurance or pay the government.
Voters oppose 68 - 26 percent requiring people to have health insurance or pay a fine and oppose 68 - 27 percent taxing employees for health care benefits from employers. Independent voters, perhaps the key voting group, are more worried about the deficit rising than congressional inaction, 54 - 37 percent. These voters say 59 - 36 percent that overhaul should not occur if it would "significantly" increase the deficit. Independents oppose 63 - 33 percent passing a bill with only Democratic votes."
As predicted, Barbara Lee D-CA had already signed the letter. I have this telepathic Rep.
How about yours? fib
ps. Honduras needs your opinion! Put your e-pen where your mind and heart is.
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Rep. Grijalva is asking fellow members of Congress to sign a letter to President Obama urging him to increase the pressure on the coup regime in Honduras.
Ask your Representative to sign Rep. Grijalva's letter »
Action Spotlight
Urge Your Rep to Sign Grijalva Letter for More US Pressure on Coup Regime in Honduras
Talks between President Zelaya and the coup regime in Honduras broke down over the coup regime's refusal to accept the international demand for President Zelaya's return. The U.S. has so far failed to sufficiently pressure the coup regime.
Rep. Raul Grijalva is circulating a letter to President Obama, calling on him to denounce the repression in Honduras by the coup regime, and to freeze U.S. assets and suspend U.S. visas of coup leaders. Signers of the letter include Reps. McGovern, Conyers, and Serrano.
Urge your Representative to sign the Grijalva letter calling for more U.S. pressure on the coup regime.
Natalia Estemirova on Chechnya
Jul 23rd 2009
From The Economist print edition
IT WAS the kind of scene she had described many times. On July 15th at 8.30am, as she left her flat in Grozny, Natalia Estemirova was forced into a white Lada. She shouted that she was being kidnapped, but those who heard were too scared to report it. By the time her colleagues had found out, she was dead, murdered by three bullets in her chest and a control shot in the head.(...)
Hitchens writes from my native city in my native country and it is tough not to be proud again. fib
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Leszek Kolakowski, 1927-2009.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, July 20, 2009, at 12:26 PM ET
WROCLAW, Poland—It was distinctly eerie to learn of the death of professor Leszek Kolakowski just 15 minutes before entering a room in which I was to give a short lecture on his influence. But it was also rather inspiring to be in a country that made the passing of a public intellectual into the front-page headline of every national daily paper the following day.
http://www.russellmeans.com/
Destruction of the Abatwa (Pygmy) Culture
July 18, 2009 at 9:18am |
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“The Abatwa are an example of the phenomenon feared by Subcomandante Marcos and the indigenous communities of the Chiapas region of Mexico, that of being so marginalized as a people that you just don’t matter any more.”
The Destruction of the Abatwa (Pygmie) Culture, produced for the 28-minute weekly cable public access program Indymedia Presents, takes a look at the largely-unnoticed struggle of the Abatwa People, more commonly known as the Pygmies.
Modern Abatwa life is a far cry from the past, when they were respected for being highly skilled traditional hunters. Today the Abatwa they have been so completely marginalized it’s like they do not exist.
This has been especially the case since 1973, when the Abatwa were thrown off their lands for an animal preserve. “The unintended consequence of the environmental victory was great destruction to Abatwa culture, and the loss of many lives.”
21 years later, the British Empire’s historical interference in Rwandan culture triggered a genocide of the Tutsi by the Hutu. As we watched on in terror, as many as 1,000,000 people were killed.
Nobody ever seemed to notice that the Abatwa were among them. Even now, few have ever reported that they were also targeted by the Hutu. The few reports that do exist, estimate between 10,000 and 30,000 Abatwa died during the months-long genocide. These are the forgotten victims.
Not much has changed since then. With fears occasionally rising that the genocide could happen again, the Abatwa find themselves being dragged to extinction. They are losing one percent of their population each year, and miscarriages are frequent because the Abatwa’s health is so extremely low and they have little or no access to aid, medicine, or social supports.
Some groups doing their best to help, like Caurwa and the Health Development Initiative – but even so, the Abatwa’s struggle for life is a losing one.
The Destruction of the Abatwa (Pygmie) Culture is the second in a series of films by Patricia Boiko from Pepperspray Productions. The first program examined the genocide in Rwanda, and how people can heal from such wanton horror.
IT REALLY MADE MY DAY!
i LOVE MICHELLE WITH ALL MY HEART, AND HER ENTIRE FAMILY.
DO NOT MISS IT.
MERCED IS A VERY NEW CAMPUS IN CALIFORNIA, AND ALREADY
SO MUCH AHEAD OF THE VENERABLE NOTRE DAME.
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Washington "deeply, deeply" regrets the death of Afghan civilians killed by an air strike, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said.
Red Cross officials believe dozens of civilians including women and children died in the strike which targeted Taleban fighters in Farah Province.
The civilians are said to have been sheltering from fighting at the time.
Mrs Clinton was speaking alongside the Afghan and Pakistani presidents who are in Washington to meet Barack Obama.
World Report 2009
Events of 2008
January 14, 2009
The 19th annual World Report summarizes human rights conditions in more than 90 countries and territories worldwide. It reflects extensive investigative work undertaken in 2008 by Human Rights Watch staff, usually in close partnership with human rights activists in the country in question.
Sixty years after the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the governments demonstrating the clearest vision on international rights protections, sadly, are those seeking to undermine enforcement. In their foreign policies and in international fora, they invoke sovereignty, non-interference, and Southern solidarity to curb criticism of their human rights abuses and those of their allies and friends. Governments that champion human rights need urgently to wrest back the initiative from these human rights spoilers.
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
_____________________________________________________
For Immediate Release April 27, 2009
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
AT THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES ANNUAL MEETING
National Academy of Sciences
Washington, D.C.
9:12 A.M. EDT THE PRESIDENT: Well, thank you so much for the wonderful welcome. To President Cicerone, thank you very much for your leadership and for hosting us today. To John Holdren, thanks, John, for the outstanding work that you are doing. I was just informed backstage that Ralph and John both are 1965 graduates of MIT -- same class. And so I'm not sure this is the perfectly prescribed scientific method, but they're sort of a control group -- (laughter) -- who ages faster: The President's Science Advisor or the President of the Academy? (Laughter.) And we'll check in in a couple of years. But it is wonderful to see them. To all of you, to my Cabinet Secretaries and team who are here, thank you. It is a great privilege to address the distinguished members of the National Academy of Sciences, as well as the leaders of the National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine who've gathered here this morning. And I'd like to begin today with a story of a previous visitor who also addressed this august body. In April of 1921, Albert Einstein visited the United States for the first time. And his international credibility was growing as scientists around the world began to understand and accept the vast implications of his theories of special and general relativity. And he attended this annual meeting, and after sitting through a series of long speeches by others, he reportedly said, "I have just got a new theory of eternity." (Laughter.) So I will do my best to heed this cautionary tale. (Laughter.) The very founding of this institution stands as a testament to the restless curiosity, the boundless hope so essential not just to the scientific enterprise, but to this experiment we call America. A few months after a devastating defeat at Fredericksburg, before Gettysburg would be won, before Richmond would fall, before the fate of the Union would be at all certain, President Abraham Lincoln signed into law an act creating the National Academy of Sciences -- in the midst of civil war. Lincoln refused to accept that our nation's sole purpose was mere survival. He created this academy, founded the land grant colleges, and began the work of the transcontinental railroad, believing that we must add -- and I quote -- "the fuel of interest to the fire of genius in the discovery... of new and useful things." This is America's story. Even in the hardest times, against the toughest odds, we've never given in to pessimism; we've never surrendered our fates to chance; we have endured; we have worked hard; we sought out new frontiers. Today, of course, we face more complex challenges than we have ever faced before: a medical system that holds the promise of unlocking new cures and treatments -- attached to a health care system that holds the potential for bankruptcy to families and businesses; a system of energy that powers our economy, but simultaneously endangers our planet; threats to our security that seek to exploit the very interconnectedness and openness so essential to our prosperity; and challenges in a global marketplace which links the derivative trader on Wall Street to the homeowner on Main Street, the office worker in America to the factory worker in China -- a marketplace in which we all share in opportunity, but also in crisis. At such a difficult moment, there are those who say we cannot afford to invest in science, that support for research is somehow a luxury at moments defined by necessities. I fundamentally disagree. Science is more essential for our prosperity, our security, our health, our environment, and our quality of life than it has ever been before. (Applause.) And if there was ever a day that reminded us of our shared stake in science and research, it's today. We are closely monitoring the emerging cases of swine flu in the United States. And this is obviously a cause for concern and requires a heightened state of alert. But it's not a cause for alarm. The Department of Health and Human Services has declared a public health emergency as a precautionary tool to ensure that we have the resources we need at our disposal to respond quickly and effectively. And I'm getting regular updates on the situation from the responsible agencies. And the Department of Health and Human Services as well as the Centers for Disease Control will be offering regular updates to the American people. And Secretary Napolitano will be offering regular updates to the American people, as well, so that they know what steps are being taken and what steps they may need to take. But one thing is clear -- our capacity to deal with a public health challenge of this sort rests heavily on the work of our scientific and medical community. And this is one more example of why we can't allow our nation to fall behind. Unfortunately, that's exactly what's happened. Federal funding in the physical sciences as a portion of our gross domestic product has fallen by nearly half over the past quarter century. Time and again we've allowed the research and experimentation tax credit, which helps businesses grow and innovate, to lapse. Our schools continue to trail other developed countries and, in some cases, developing countries. Our students are outperformed in math and science by their peers in Singapore, Japan, England, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, and Korea, among others. Another assessment shows American 15-year-olds ranked 25th in math and 21st in science when compared to nations around the world. And we have watched as scientific integrity has been undermined and scientific research politicized in an effort to advance predetermined ideological agendas. We know that our country is better than this. A half century ago, this nation made a commitment to lead the world in scientific and technological innovation; to invest in education, in research, in engineering; to set a goal of reaching space and engaging every citizen in that historic mission. That was the high water mark of America's investment in research and development. And since then our investments have steadily declined as a share of our national income. As a result, other countries are now beginning to pull ahead in the pursuit of this generation's great discoveries. I believe it is not in our character, the American character, to follow. It's our character to lead. And it is time for us to lead once again. So I'm here today to set this goal: We will devote more than 3 percent of our GDP to research and development. We will not just meet, but we will exceed the level achieved at the height of the space race, through policies that invest in basic and applied research, create new incentives for private innovation, promote breakthroughs in energy and medicine, and improve education in math and science. (Applause.) This represents the largest commitment to scientific research and innovation in American history. Just think what this will allow us to accomplish: solar cells as cheap as paint; green buildings that produce all the energy they consume; learning software as effective as a personal tutor; prosthetics so advanced that you could play the piano again; an expansion of the frontiers of human knowledge about ourselves and world the around us. We can do this. The pursuit of discovery half a century ago fueled our prosperity and our success as a nation in the half century that followed. The commitment I am making today will fuel our success for another 50 years. That's how we will ensure that our children and their children will look back on this generation's work as that which defined the progress and delivered the prosperity of the 21st century. This work begins with a historic commitment to basic science and applied research, from the labs of renowned universities to the proving grounds of innovative companies. Through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and with the support of Congress, my administration is already providing the largest single boost to investment in basic research in American history. That's already happened. This is important right now, as public and private colleges and universities across the country reckon with shrinking endowments and tightening budgets. But this is also incredibly important for our future. As Vannevar Bush, who served as scientific advisor to President Franklin Roosevelt, famously said: "Basic scientific research is scientific capital." The fact is an investigation into a particular physical, chemical, or biological process might not pay off for a year, or a decade, or at all. And when it does, the rewards are often broadly shared, enjoyed by those who bore its costs but also by those who did not. And that's why the private sector generally under-invests in basic science, and why the public sector must invest in this kind of research -- because while the risks may be large, so are the rewards for our economy and our society. No one can predict what new applications will be born of basic research: new treatments in our hospitals, or new sources of efficient energy; new building materials; new kinds of crops more resistant to heat and to drought. It was basic research in the photoelectric field -- in the photoelectric effect that would one day lead to solar panels. It was basic research in physics that would eventually produce the CAT scan. The calculations of today's GPS satellites are based on the equations that Einstein put to paper more than a century ago. In addition to the investments in the Recovery Act, the budget I've proposed -- and versions have now passed both the House and the Senate -- builds on the historic investments in research contained in the recovery plan. So we double the budget of key agencies, including the National Science Foundation, a primary source of funding for academic research; and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which supports a wide range of pursuits from improving health information technology to measuring carbon pollution, from -- from testing "smart grid" designs to developing advanced manufacturing processes. And my budget doubles funding for the Department of Energy's Office of Science, which builds and operates accelerators, colliders, supercomputers, high-energy light sources, and facilities for making nano-materials -- because we know that a nation's potential for scientific discovery is defined by the tools that it makes available to its researchers. But the renewed commitment of our nation will not be driven by government investment alone. It's a commitment that extends from the laboratory to the marketplace. And that's why my budget makes the research and experimentation tax credit permanent. This is a tax credit that returns two dollars to the economy for every dollar we spend, by helping companies afford the often high costs of developing new ideas, new technologies, and new products. Yet at times we've allowed it to lapse or only renewed it year to year. I've heard this time and again from entrepreneurs across this country: By making this credit permanent we make it possible for businesses to plan the kinds of projects that create jobs and economic growth. Second, in no area will innovation be more important than in the development of new technologies to produce, use, and save energy -- which is why my administration has made an unprecedented commitment to developing a 21st century clean energy economy, and why we put a scientist in charge of the Department of Energy. (Applause.) Our future on this planet depends on our willingness to address the challenge posed by carbon pollution. And our future as a nation depends upon our willingness to embrace this challenge as an opportunity to lead the world in pursuit of new discovery. When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik a little more than a half century ago, Americans were stunned. The Russians had beaten us to space. And we had to make a choice: We could accept defeat or we could accept the challenge. And as always, we chose to accept the challenge. President Eisenhower signed legislation to create NASA and to invest in science and math education, from grade school to graduate school. And just a few years later, a month after his address to the 1961 Annual Meeting of the National Academy of Sciences, President Kennedy boldly declared before a joint session of Congress that the United States would send a man to the moon and return him safely to the Earth. The scientific community rallied behind this goal and set about achieving it. And it would not only lead to those first steps on the moon; it would lead to giant leaps in our understanding here at home. That Apollo program produced technologies that have improved kidney dialysis and water purification systems; sensors to test for hazardous gasses; energy-saving building materials; fire-resistant fabrics used by firefighters and soldiers. More broadly, the enormous investment in that era –- in science and technology, in education and research funding –- produced a great outpouring of curiosity and creativity, the benefits of which have been incalculable. There are those of you in this audience who became scientists because of that commitment. We have to replicate that. There will be no single Sputnik moment for this generation's challenges to break our dependence on fossil fuels. In many ways, this makes the challenge even tougher to solve –- and makes it all the more important to keep our eyes fixed on the work ahead. But energy is our great project, this generation's great project. And that's why I've set a goal for our nation that we will reduce our carbon pollution by more than 80 percent by 2050. And that is why -- (applause) -- and that is why I'm pursuing, in concert with Congress, the policies that will help meet us -- help us meet this goal. My recovery plan provides the incentives to double our nation's capacity to generate renewable energy over the next few years -- extending the production tax credit, providing loan guarantees and offering grants to spur investment. Just take one example: Federally funded research and development has dropped the cost of solar panels by tenfold over the last three decades. Our renewed efforts will ensure that solar and other clean energy technologies will be competitive. My budget includes $150 billion over 10 years to invest in sources of renewable energy as well as energy efficiency. It supports efforts at NASA, recommended as a priority by the National Research Council, to develop new space-based capabilities to help us better understand our changing climate. And today, I'm also announcing that for the first time, we are funding an initiative -- recommended by this organization -- called the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy, or ARPA-E. (Applause.) This is based, not surprisingly, on DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which was created during the Eisenhower administration in response to Sputnik. It has been charged throughout its history with conducting high-risk, high-reward research. And the precursor to the Internet, known as ARPANET, stealth technology, the Global Positioning System all owe a debt to the work of DARPA. So ARPA-E seeks to do the same kind of high-risk, high-reward research. My administration will pursue, as well, comprehensive legislation to place a market-based cap on carbon emissions. We will make renewable energy the profitable kind of energy. We will put in place the resources so that scientists can focus on this critical area. And I am confident that we will find a wellspring of creativity just waiting to be tapped by researchers in this room and entrepreneurs across our country. We can solve this problem. (Applause.) Now, the nation that leads the world in 21st century clean energy will be the nation that leads in the 21st century global economy. I believe America can and must be that nation. But in order to lead in the global economy and to ensure that our businesses can grow and innovate, and our families can thrive, we're also going to have to address the shortcomings of our health care system. The Recovery Act will support the long overdue step of computerizing America's medical records, to reduce the duplication, waste and errors that cost billions of dollars and thousands of lives. But it's important to note, these records also hold the potential of offering patients the chance to be more active participants in the prevention and treatment of their diseases. We must maintain patient control over these records and respect their privacy. At the same time, we have the opportunity to offer billions and billions of anonymous data points to medical researchers who may find in this information evidence that can help us better understand disease. History also teaches us the greatest advances in medicine have come from scientific breakthroughs, whether the discovery of antibiotics, or improved public health practices, vaccines for smallpox and polio and many other infectious diseases, antiretroviral drugs that can return AIDS patients to productive lives, pills that can control certain types of blood cancers, so many others. Because of recent progress –- not just in biology, genetics and medicine, but also in physics, chemistry, computer science, and engineering –- we have the potential to make enormous progress against diseases in the coming decades. And that's why my administration is committed to increasing funding for the National Institutes of Health, including $6 billion to support cancer research -- part of a sustained, multi-year plan to double cancer research in our country. (Applause.) Next, we are restoring science to its rightful place. On March 9th, I signed an executive memorandum with a clear message: Under my administration, the days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over. (Applause.) Our progress as a nation –- and our values as a nation –- are rooted in free and open inquiry. To undermine scientific integrity is to undermine our democracy. It is contrary to our way of life. (Applause.) That's why I've charged John Holdren and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy with leading a new effort to ensure that federal policies are based on the best and most unbiased scientific information. I want to be sure that facts are driving scientific decisions -- and not the other way around. (Laughter.) As part of this effort, we've already launched a web site that allows individuals to not only make recommendations to achieve this goal, but to collaborate on those recommendations. It's a small step, but one that's creating a more transparent, participatory and democratic government. We also need to engage the scientific community directly in the work of public policy. And that's why, today, I am announcing the appointment -- we are filling out the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, known as PCAST, and I intend to work with them closely. Our co-chairs have already been introduced -- Dr. Varmus and Dr. Lander along with John. And this council represents leaders from many scientific disciplines who will bring a diversity of experiences and views. And I will charge PCAST with advising me about national strategies to nurture and sustain a culture of scientific innovation. In addition to John -- sorry, the -- I just noticed that I jumped the gun here -- go ahead and move it up. (Laughter.) I'd already -- I'd already introduced all you guys. In biomedicine, just to give you an example of what PCAST can do, we can harness the historic convergence between life sciences and physical sciences that's underway today; undertaking public projects -- in the spirit of the Human Genome Project -- to create data and capabilities that fuel discoveries in tens of thousands of laboratories; and identifying and overcoming scientific and bureaucratic barriers to rapidly translating scientific breakthroughs into diagnostics and therapeutics that serve patients. In environmental science, it will require strengthening our weather forecasting, our Earth observation from space, the management of our nation's land, water and forests, and the stewardship of our coastal zones and ocean fisheries. We also need to work with our friends around the world. Science, technology and innovation proceed more rapidly and more cost-effectively when insights, costs and risks are shared; and so many of the challenges that science and technology will help us meet are global in character. This is true of our dependence on oil, the consequences of climate change, the threat of epidemic disease, and the spread of nuclear weapons. And that's why my administration is ramping up participation in -- and our commitment to -- international science and technology cooperation across the many areas where it is clearly in our interest to do so. In fact, this week, my administration is gathering the leaders of the world's major economies to begin the work of addressing our common energy challenges together. Fifth, since we know that the progress and prosperity of future generations will depend on what we do now to educate the next generation, today I'm announcing a renewed commitment to education in mathematics and science. (Applause.) This is something I care deeply about. Through this commitment, American students will move from the middle of the top -- from the middle to the top of the pack in science and math over the next decade -- for we know that the nation that out-educates us today will out-compete us tomorrow. And I don't intend to have us out-educated. We can't start soon enough. We know that the quality of math and science teachers is the most influential single factor in determining whether a student will succeed or fail in these subjects. Yet in high school more than 20 percent of students in math and more than 60 percent of students in chemistry and physics are taught by teachers without expertise in these fields. And this problem is only going to get worse. There is a projected shortfall of more than 280,000 math and science teachers across the country by 2015. And that's why I'm announcing today that states making strong commitments and progress in math and science education will be eligible to compete later this fall for additional funds under the Secretary of Education's $5 billion Race to the Top program. And I'm challenging states to dramatically improve achievement in math and science by raising standards, modernizing science labs, upgrading curriculum, and forging partnerships to improve the use of science and technology in our classrooms. (Applause.) I'm challenging states, as well, to enhance teacher preparation and training, and to attract new and qualified math and science teachers to better engage students and reinvigorate those subjects in our schools. And in this endeavor, we will work to support inventive approaches. Let's create systems that retain and reward effective teachers, and let's create new pathways for experienced professionals to go into the classroom. There are, right now, chemists who could teach chemistry, physicists who could teach physics, statisticians who could teach mathematics. But we need to create a way to bring the expertise and the enthusiasm of these folks –- folks like you –- into the classroom. There are states, for example, doing innovative work. I'm pleased to announce that Governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania will lead an effort with the National Governors Association to increase the number of states that are making science, technology, engineering and mathematics education a top priority. Six states are currently participating in the initiative, including Pennsylvania, which has launched an effective program to ensure that the state has the skilled workforce in place to draw the jobs of the 21st century. And I want every state, all 50 states, to participate. But as you know, our work does not end with a high school diploma. For decades, we led the world in educational attainment, and as a consequence we led the world in economic growth. The G.I. Bill, for example, helps send a generation to college. But in this new economy, we've come to trail other nations in graduation rates, in educational achievement, and in the production of scientists and engineers. That's why my administration has set a goal that will greatly enhance our ability to compete for the high-wage, high-tech jobs of the future –- and to foster the next generation of scientists and engineers. In the next decade –- by 2020 –- America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world. That is a goal that we are going to set. And we've provided tax credits and grants to make a college education more affordable. My budget also triples the number of National Science Foundation graduate research fellowships. (Applause.) This program was created as part of the space race five decades ago. In the decades since, it's remained largely the same size –- even as the numbers of students who seek these fellowships has skyrocketed. We ought to be supporting these young people who are pursuing scientific careers, not putting obstacles in their path. So this is how we will lead the world in new discoveries in this new century. But I think all of you understand it will take far more than the work of government. It will take all of us. It will take all of you. And so today I want to challenge you to use your love and knowledge of science to spark the same sense of wonder and excitement in a new generation. America's young people will rise to the challenge if given the opportunity –- if called upon to join a cause larger than themselves. We've got evidence. You know, the average age in NASA's mission control during the Apollo 17 mission was just 26. I know that young people today are just as ready to tackle the grand challenges of this century. So I want to persuade you to spend time in the classroom, talking and showing young people what it is that your work can mean, and what it means to you. I want to encourage you to participate in programs to allow students to get a degree in science fields and a teaching certificate at the same time. I want us all to think about new and creative ways to engage young people in science and engineering, whether it's science festivals, robotics competitions, fairs that encourage young people to create and build and invent -- to be makers of things, not just consumers of things. I want you to know that I'm going to be working alongside you. I'm going to participate in a public awareness and outreach campaign to encourage students to consider careers in science and mathematics and engineering -- because our future depends on it. And the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation will be launching a joint initiative to inspire tens of thousands of American students to pursue these very same careers, particularly in clean energy. It will support an educational campaign to capture the imagination of young people who can help us meet the energy challenge, and will create research opportunities for undergraduates and educational opportunities for women and minorities who too often have been underrepresented in scientific and technological fields, but are no less capable of inventing the solutions that will help us grow our economy and save our planet. (Applause.) And it will support fellowships and interdisciplinary graduate programs and partnerships between academic institutions and innovative companies to prepare a generation of Americans to meet this generational challenge. For we must always remember that somewhere in America there's an entrepreneur seeking a loan to start a business that could transform an industry -- but she hasn't secured it yet. There's a researcher with an idea for an experiment that might offer a new cancer treatment -– but he hasn't found the funding yet. There's a child with an inquisitive mind staring up at the night sky. And maybe she has the potential to change our world –- but she doesn't know it yet. As you know, scientific discovery takes far more than the occasional flash of brilliance –- as important as that can be. Usually, it takes time and hard work and patience; it takes training; it requires the support of a nation. But it holds a promise like no other area of human endeavor. In 1968, a year defined by loss and conflict and tumult, Apollo 8 carried into space the first human beings ever to slip beyond Earth's gravity, and the ship would circle the moon 10 times before returning home. But on its fourth orbit, the capsule rotated and for the first time Earth became visible through the windows. Bill Anders, one of the astronauts aboard Apollo 8, scrambled for a camera, and he took a photo that showed the Earth coming up over the moon's horizon. It was the first ever taken from so distant a vantage point, and it soon became known as "Earthrise." Anders would say that the moment forever changed him, to see our world -- this pale blue sphere -- without borders, without divisions, at once so tranquil and beautiful and alone. "We came all this way to explore the moon," he said, "and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth." Yes, scientific innovation offers us a chance to achieve prosperity. It has offered us benefits that have improved our health and our lives -- improvements we take too easily for granted. But it gives us something more. At root, science forces us to reckon with the truth as best as we can ascertain it. And some truths fill us with awe. Others force us to question long-held views. Science can't answer every question, and indeed, it seems at times the more we plumb the mysteries of the physical world, the more humble we must be. Science cannot supplant our ethics or our values, our principles or our faith. But science can inform those things and help put those values -- these moral sentiments, that faith -- can put those things to work -- to feed a child, or to heal the sick, to be good stewards of this Earth. We are reminded that with each new discovery and the new power it brings comes new responsibility; that the fragility, the sheer specialness of life requires us to move past our differences and to address our common problems, to endure and continue humanity's strivings for a better world. As President Kennedy said when he addressed the National Academy of Sciences more than 45 years ago: "The challenge, in short, may be our salvation." Thank you all for all your past, present, and future discoveries. (Applause.) May God bless you. God bless the United States of America. (Applause.) END 9:52 A.M. EDT
GILLIAN WONG Associated Press Writer
BEIJING—Hong Kong said it has assigned a team of scientists to develop a test that will hopefully cut the time it takes to diagnose the new swine flu strain from a few days to a few hours.
Researchers in Hong Kong played a big role in discovering and determining how to treat SARS — a separate deadly virus that spread rapidly in 2003, killing more than 900 people. The island was the second hardest hit after mainland China.
Thomas Tsang, controller for Hong Kong's Center for Health Protection, said Monday the government and the territory's universities are jointly developing the rapid swine flu test using genetic information on the virus from the World Health Organization. Such data is shared with designated flu laboratories worldwide.
"We will look at the information, including its genetic makeup, and we can produce a test correspondingly," Tsang said in Hong Kong.
Dr. Malik Peiris of Hong Kong University, one of the researchers and also the professor who discovered the SARS virus, said he expected the test to be ready within a week.
"It's fairly clear cut," Peiris said. "We have done this many times with many other viruses so I don't really see this being a major problem."
Tsang said the test will be based on a standard laboratory procedure called PCR, or polymerase chain reaction, which is already used to diagnose dozens of other infections. The process can find bits of genetic material that are unique to the virus, then reproduce them in large quantities for easy identification.
Scientists developing a quick test for the swine flu virus have an advantage over researchers trying to do the same with SARS when it was still a completely unknown virus, said Andrew Easton, head of biological sciences at the University of Warwick in England.
"We already know now that it's an influenza virus, so we already have information that we can use in considering new tests," said Easton, who is not involved with the project. "Developments over recent years in DNA technology mean that it's now possible to develop tests that are extremely rapid for the detection of a tremendous range of possible pathogens."
Fears of a possible swine flu pandemic have grown, prompting some countries to say they would quarantine visitors showing symptoms of the illness. EU health officials have urged Europeans to postpone nonessential travel to the United States and Mexico.
Related News: Swine Flu: 14 Things You Need to Know to Keep Yourself Safe
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Essays on Food, Hunger, and Profit
The World Food Crisis: Sources and Solutions Fred Magdoff
An acute food crisis has struck the world in 2008. This is on top of a longer-term crisis of agriculture and food that has already left billions hungry and malnourished. In order to understand the full, dire implications of what is happening today it is necessary to look at the interaction between these short-term and long-term crises. Both crises arise primarily from the for-profit production of food, fiber, and now biofuels, and the rift between food and people that this inevitably generates.
May 2008
Healing the Rift: Metabolic Restoration in Cuban Agriculture Rebecca Clauson
As John Bellamy Foster explained in “The Ecology of Destruction” (Monthly Review, February 2007), Marx explored the ecological contradictions of capitalist society as they were revealed in the nineteenth century with the help of the two concepts of metabolic rift and metabolic restoration. The metabolic rift describes how the logic of accumulation severs basic processes of natural reproduction leading to the deterioration of ecological sustainability. Moreover, “by destroying the circumstances surrounding that metabolism,” Marx went on to argue, “it [capitalist production] compels its systematic restoration as a regulating law of social reproduction”—a restoration, however, that can only be fully achieved outside of capitalist relations of production.1
May 2007
Who is Threatening Our Dinner Table? The Power of Transnational Agribusiness Byeong-Seon Yoon
In December 2005, anti-liberalization and antiglobalization protest groups around the globe gathered in Hong Kong where the Sixth World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference was being held. Farmers’ groups that were part of the Hong Kong gathering took the position that agricultural trade rules should be impartial to all World Trade Organization (WTO) member countries and not determined by a handful of agriculture-exporting countries. What suddenly prompted these farmers to come together in this way over the issues of food sovereignty and the expansion of farmers’ rights?
November 2006
The Bread of Conquest A Book Review by Sasha Lilley
Richard A. Walker, The Conquest of Bread: 150 Years of Agribusiness in California (New York: The New Press, 2004), 382 pages, hardcover $27.95.
The agony and the ecstasy are intertwined in California’s countryside. Artichokes, freestone peaches, and Gravenstein apples are but a few of the vast number of crops grown in the Golden State, which were it a country, would be the sixth leading agricultural exporter in the world. For the workers whose hands create wealth out of nature, the agony has been ever-present, from the bloody repression of the 1913 Wobbly-led Wheatland hop pickers strike to the recent attempt by Southern California grocery workers to hold onto their health care and pensions.
February 2006
A Precarious Existence: The Fate of Billions? Fred Magdoff
The number of people living a precarious existence has been increasing in many countries of the world, with hunger all too widespread. There are approximately 6 billion people in the world, with about half living in cities and half in rural areas. Between the poor living in cities and those in rural areas, a vast number of the world’s people live under very harsh conditions. It is estimated that that about half of the world’s population lives on less than two dollars per day, with most of those either chronically malnourished or continually concerned with where their next meal will come from. Many have no access to clean water (1 billion), electricity (2 billion), or sanitation (2.5 billion).
February 2004
Rice Imperialism: The Agribusiness Threat to Third World Rice Production Matthew Clement
Food is an essential human need. All cultures involved in settled agriculture have produced food and food production is basic to all culture. The seed used in agricultural cultivation is the product of thousands of years of cultural development. Most of this development of food crops over the millennia has occurred in regions that are now in the periphery of the capitalist world economy. In recent years, however, agribusiness corporations located in the rich nations of the core have attempted to patent various forms of food crops, such as basic grains, and then to monopolize these patented grain varieties, creating dependence on seeds of the agribusiness corporations. When such practices involve, as in recent years, a crop such as rice on which much of the world’s population depends for subsistence, the implications are enormous and potentially disastrous for the world’s poor.
World Poverty, Pauperization & Capital Accumulation Samir Amin
A discourse on poverty and the necessity of reducing its magnitude, if not eradicating it, has become fashionable today. It is a discourse of charity, in the nineteenth-century-style, which is does not seek to understand the economic and social mechanisms that generate poverty, although the scientific and technological means to eradicate it are now available.
October 2003
William K. Black: CSI Bailout
April 3, 2009
"William K. Black suspects that it was more than greed and incompetence that brought down the U.S. financial sector and plunged the economy in recession — it was fraud. And he would know. When it comes to financial shenanigans, William K. Black, the former senior regulator who cracked down on banks during the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s, has seen pretty much everything.
Now an Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri, William K. Black tells Bill Moyers on the JOURNAL that the tool at the very center of mortgage collapse, creating triple-A rated bonds out of "liars' loans" — loans issued without verifying income, assets or employment — was a fraud, and the banks knew it.
And while there is no law against liars' loans, Black points out that there are, "many laws against fraud, and liars' loans are fraudulent. [...] They involve deceit, which is the essence of fraud."
Only the scale of the scandal is new. A single bank, IndyMac, lost more money than the entire Savings and Loan Crisis. The difference between now and then, explains Black, is a drastic reduction in regulation and oversight, "We now know what happens when you destroy regulation. You get the biggest financial calamity of anybody under the age of 80."
>>More about the Savings and Loan Crisis
Black was litigation director of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, deputy director of the FSLIC, SVP and general counsel of the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, and senior deputy chief counsel, Office of Thrift Supervision. He was deputy director of the National Commission on Financial Institution Reform, Recovery and Enforcement.
Black developed the concept of "control fraud" — frauds in which the CEO or head of state uses the entity as a "weapon." Control frauds cause greater financial losses than all other forms of property crime combined. He recently helped the World Bank develop anti-corruption initiatives and served as an expert for OFHEO in its enforcement action against Fannie Mae's former senior management."
Published April 3, 2009. Guest photos by Robin Holland
SAN DIEGO – The Obama administration plans to spend more than $400 million to upgrade ports of entry and surveillance technologies to help thwart drugs and arms smuggling along the U.S-Mexico border.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Wednesday that the projects will help keep violence from spilling across the border.
"Working together at all levels, we take them on and we take them out. That is our goal," Napolitano told reporters after an aerial tour of the border area near San Diego.
From the air, Napolitano could see smugglers' paths worn into the rugged terrain of the Otay Mountains that hug the border.
In her first visit to the U.S.-Mexico border since taking office two months ago, Napolitano toured a customs and border protection facility at Otay Mesa, Calif.
The spending outlined by Napolitano is part of President Barack Obama's economic stimulus package approved by Congress.
Included in the border spending is $269 million to upgrade ports of entry, including San Diego's Otay Mesa — a busy crossing for trucks — Antelope Wells, N.M., and Nogales, Ariz.
The plan calls for $42 million for high-tech inspection equipment and $50 million for a high-tech surveillance systems along Arizona's border with Mexico.
Napolitano said additional cameras would be mounted at the Otay Mesa facility to record vehicle traffic heading into Mexico, a tactic expected to help cut into the smuggling of guns from the United States into Mexico.
The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives reports that up to 95 percent of guns seized at scenes of drug violence in Mexico can be traced to U.S. commercial sources. These weapons are increasingly higher-powered, including .50 caliber rifles and armor-piercing ammunition.
To help curb southbound arms trafficking, the Mexican government plans to begin checking more vehicles crossing from the U.S. At present, Mexico checks about 10 percent of the 230,000 vehicles that cross the border each day, according to the federal Attorney General's Office.
By weighing vehicles for unusual heaviness and tracking license plate numbers, the two government hope to catch more hidden contraband.
The United States has long weighed and checked the license plates of northbound vehicles, but not if they are southbound. Napolitano said that practice is changing with the installation of surveillance cameras at Otay Mesa and other border crossings.
The Obama administration announced last week that nearly 500 more federal agents are being deployed to the border, along with X-ray machines and drug-sniffing dogs, both to stop the spillover of Mexico's drug violence and curb gun smuggling.
Drugs and arms smuggling and drug cartel violence are the topics of a meeting in Cuernavaca, Mexico, on Thursday. Attending are Napolitano and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Mexico's Attorney General Eduardo Medina-Mora and Interior Secretary Fernando Gomez-Mont.
Meanwhile, in Washington the Senate approved legislation to authorize an additional $550 million over the next five years for federal agents, investigators, and other resources to help fight Mexican drug cartels blamed for a wave of violence along the border.
Lawmakers said the money would help stem the flow of drugs northward over the Mexican border and the flow of guns and money southward into Mexico."
