05.29.10
Oiltastrophe
As Oiltastrophe Rages on, Public Health in Danger
http://act.commondreams.org/go/811?akid=70.96588.zpAZju&t=2
Feinting left…
RG mail
May 28, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
by Danny Schechter
We now know that it was the Obama Administration led by the President
himself who used techniques well understood and denounced decades earlier by
none other than Mao TseTung.
Mao had no use for those who talked left to move right.
In several high profile speeches, Obama lashed out at Wall Street for its
greed and mendacity, proposing financial reforms that appeared to be hard
hitting if only because of the way the lobbyists for the financial services
industry squealed about them.
But even as he was feinting left, he and his main economic operative, Tim
Geithner, were moving right to kill off amendments that the bankers hated
like Senator Bernie Sanders’s proposal for a deep audit of the Federal
Reserve Bank and the Brown-Kaufman Amendment that would have broken up the
six biggest banks in America.”
As John Heilman explained in New York Magazine, “Geithner’s team spent much
of its time during the debate over the Senate bill helping Senate Banking
Committee chair Chris Dodd kill off or modify amendments being offered by
more-progressive Democrats.”
He used an old trick: embracing reform publicly while modifying its toughest
provisions privately.
No wonder bank stocks went up when the bill passed.
James Kwak praised the Obamacrats skill at political manipulation on
BaselineScenario.com, “The administration is happy with the financial reform
bill roughly as it turned out, and it got there by taking up an anti-Wall
Street tone (e.g., the Volcker Rule), riding a wave of populist anger to the
point where the bill was sure of passing, and then quietly pruning back its
most far-reaching components. If anything, that’s a testament to the
political skill of the White House and, yes, Tim Geithner as well.
But guess what, the banksters didn’t really get the flim-flam that was going
on. Reports Heilman:
“Today, it’s hard to find anyone on Wall Street who doesn’t speak of Obama
as if he were an unholy hybrid of Bernie Sanders and Eldridge Cleaver. One
night not long ago, over dinner with ten executives in the finance industry,
I heard the president described as ‘hostile to business,’ ‘anti-wealth,’ and
‘anti-capitalism’; as a ‘redistributionist,’ a ‘vilifier,’ and a ‘thug.’ A
few days later, I recounted this experience to the same Wall Street CEO
who’d called the Volcker Rule a testicular blow, and mentioned I’d been told
that one of the most prominent megabank chiefs, who once boasted to friends
of voting for Obama, now refers to him privately as a ‘Chicago mob guy.’ Do
all your brethren feel this way? I asked. ‘Oh, not everybody-just most of
them,’ he replied. ‘Jamie [Dimon]? Lloyd [Blankfein]? They might not say
Obama’s a socialist, but they come pretty close.’”
Do any of these “smartest guys in the room” remember that in his last
incarnation, Cleaver became a raving right-wing lunatic? In fact, Kwak
believes that that lunacy is pervasive on Wall Street, and at the highest
levels.
“Forget the whole issue of whether they should be grateful to Obama for
first saving their banks from collapse and then toning down the reform bill
so it (a) doesn’t break up their banks, (b) doesn’t meaningfully prevent
them from engaging in proprietary trading, (c) says nothing of substance
about compensation, (d) doesn’t set any hard capital requirements, (e) . . .
The fact that they can see the policies this administration is pursuing and
somehow think they are “anti-wealth” or “anti-capitalist” is as close to
proof as you will find that they are deeply stupid, blinded by their
self-interest, or both.”
Stupid or not, there was one Obama policy they liked: The decision not to
punish any of them by prosecuting their crimes. Not only will they go scot
free but the structural changes so badly needed to prevent a re-occurrence
of this crash. Thus there will be new rules, not real reforms or a
transformation.
In the world of finance, there is almost a universal insistence that only
mistakes were made, mistakes that do not rise to the level of crime. This
past week, AUG, the giant insurer, now owned by the government, was told it
would not be prosecuted criminally,
At the same time, the Administration is still feinting left– appointing a
new financial crimes task force and considering criminal action against
Goldman Sachs. Authorities in Britain have gone further setting up a tough
new agency that makes combating pervasive financial crime a priority.
What a scandal inside this scandal. The Financial Services industry spent a
fortune buying political influence for deregulating and decriminalizing
their industry before housing bubbled so they could later claim their
chicanery and scams were legal.
Then, the investment banks and hedge funds worked with the real estate and
insurance industries to commit a massive fraud against the American people
while “extracting trillions for themselves. They then had the chutzpah to
criticize homeowners as irresponsible.
Sadly, many of our journalists bought this hype and look the other way by
only focusing on laws that protect investors. We need a full investigation
and the use of our RICO anti-conspiracy laws.
Were crimes committed? You know they were.
The FBI found an “epidemic of mortgage fraud.” (These mortgages were later
bundled by Wall Street and sold worldwide with misrepresented values
provided by crooked ratings agencies.) These subcrime mortgages were insured
to protect the investors who knew they were unaffordable. Wall Street
profited while 14 million families lost their homes.
The American people are clamoring for justice but our voices are still being
ignored. The President says he is on our side.
Is he?
Mediachannel
investigates the origins of the economic crisis in his new book
Plunder: Investigating
Our Economic Calamity and the Subprime
Scandal
Books via Amazon).
What If The Oil Spill Just Can’t Be Fixed?
RG mail
by David Roberts
Grist.org
What If The Oil Spill Just Can’t Be Fixed?
countercurrents.org (May 26 2010)
The BP Gulf oil disaster is reaching an interesting phase. People’s gut
instinct, their first reaction, is to find someone to blame. They blame BP
for negligence; the Obama administration for its tepid response; the Bush
administration for lax regulatory enforcement. People have been casting
about for some way to compartmentalize this thing, some way to cast it as
an anomaly, an “accident”, the kind of screwup that can be meliorated or
avoided in the future.
http://www.countercurrents.org/roberts260510.htm
End of oil age
RG mail
This is What the End of the Oil Age Looks Like
by Richard Heinberg
Post Carbon Institute
countercurrents.org (May 26 2010)
Lately I’ve been reading the excellent coverage of the Deepwater Horizon
Gulf oil spill at TheOilDrum.com, a site frequented by veteran oil
geologists and engineers. A couple of adages from the old-timers are worth
quoting: “Cut corners all you want, but never downhole”, and, “There’s
fast, there’s cheap, and there’s right, and you get to pick two”.
http://www.countercurrents.org/heinberg260510.htm
Lula to Obama
RG mail
Lula to Obama: Drop Dead
By Joaquín Bustelo
www.marxmail.org
May 28, 2010
http://www.marxmail.org/msg77357.html
Fines a deterrent?
RG mail
Can environmental crime ever be made to pay?
by Tom Levitt
theecologist.org (May 24 2010)
Million dollar fines and compensation claims may dent the profits of BP
and other companies admitting responsibility for ecological disasters but,
on their own, are they enough of a deterrent?
The full cost of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to marine and coastal
ecology along the US south east coastline, both now and in the future, is
only just being realised.
BP has admitted ‘full responsibility’ for the spill {1}, which occurred
after an underwater explosion on its Deepwater Horizon oil rig. A blow-out
prevention device that guards against such accidents was not working and
an extra device fitted for emergencies was not present on the oil rig.
How much is enough?
Other Useful Links
Polly Higgin’s ‘ecocide’ law campaign
http://www.thisisecocide.com/
EarthJustice
http://www.earthjustice.org/
http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/489060/bp_oil_spill_can_environmental_crime_ever_be_made_to_pay.html
05.28.10
Booknotes: Science vs. Religion
“Science vs. Religion” discovers what scientists really think about religion
Sunday, May 30, 2010
SCIENCE VS. RELIGION
What Scientists Really Think
By Elaine Howard Ecklund
Oxford Univ. 228 pp. $27.95
Americans are almost evenly divided between those who feel science conflicts with religion and those who don’t. Both sides have scientific backers. Biologist Richard Dawkins rallies atheists by arguing that science renders religious faith unnecessary and irrational. Geneticist Francis S. Collins (before becoming NIH director) organized evangelical scientists to offer a vision of science and faith reinforcing each other.
Comment: Promoting Ideology Through Culture
Comment: Promoting Ideology thru Culture
Stephen said,
May 27, 2010 at 12:02 pm ·
Political ideology represents a polarity, in my view. The extremes of the polarity are given by the extremes of collectivism and libertarianism, in general. Collectivists embrace community and group harmony. Libertarians embrace freedom and self-reliance. Collectivists complain about the greed that may come with free-enterprise, and they may seek regulations to control the private sector. Libertarians complain about the heavy regulation that may stifle freedom and businesses, and they may seek a limited governance.
Read the rest of this entry »
Horizontal gene transfer…
Horizontal Gene Transfer and the Evolution of Evolution: You Can’t Make This Up
Converting the New Atheists
Courtyard of the Gentiles
By EDWARD PENTIN – NATIONAL CATHOLIC REGISTER
Added: Friday, 28 May 2010 at 01:03 PM
http://richarddawkins.net/articles/474389-courtyard-of-the-gentilesCourtyard of the Gentiles, a new initiative to “reach out” (read: convert) atheists and agnostics.
The Pontifical Council for Culture is setting it up and they seem to be intending to hold a series of debates in Paris next year. The archbishop that is in charge, Ravasi, said he is only interested in a “noble atheism or agnosticism, not the polemical kind — so not those atheists such as [Piergiorgio] Odifreddi in Italy, [Michel] Onfray in France, [Christopher] Hitchens and [Richard] Dawkins.” – Jerome
Original link
New Foundation Will Focus on Outreach to Atheists and Agnostics
As part of Pope Benedict XVI’s efforts to further the New Evangelization, the Pontifical Council for Culture is setting up a new foundation aimed at reaching out to atheists and agnostics.
Ayala on sci/religion
Religion has nothing to do with science – and vice versaScientists like Richard Dawkins say the universe has no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, but these things are not the business of science, says geneticist Francisco J. Ayala. They are the exclusive preserve of religion
TR’s social darwinism
Where racism and naturalism meet
Douglas Brinkley’s new biography of Theodore Roosevelt tries to reconcile the controversial U.S. president’s interest in nature conservation with his condescending social Darwinism
First horned dinosaur
First Horned Dinosaur from Mexico: Plant-Eater Had Largest Horns of Any Dinosaur
ScienceDaily (May 28, 2010) — A new species of horned dinosaur unearthed in Mexico has larger horns that any other species — up to 4 feet long — and has given scientists fresh insights into the ancient history of western North America, according to a research team led by paleontologists from the Utah Museum of Natural History at the University of Utah.
End of an Ice Age
Scientists Detect Huge Carbon ‘Burp’ That Helped End Last Ice Age
ScienceDaily (May 27, 2010) — Scientists have found the possible source of a huge carbon dioxide ‘burp’ that happened some 18,000 years ago and which helped to end the last ice age.
Out of the Woods for ‘Ardi’
Out of the Woods for ‘Ardi’: Early Human Habitat Was Savanna, Not Forest, Scientists Argue
ScienceDaily (May 28, 2010) — Ardipithecus ramidus — a purported human ancestor that was dubbed Science magazine’s 2009 “Breakthrough of the Year” — is coming under fire from scientists who say there is scant evidence for her discoverers’ claims that there were dense woodlands at the African site where the creature lived 4.4 million years ago.
Disinformation about Global Warming
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/disinformation_about_global_warming/
Spill confirmed as worst
Published on Friday, May 28, 2010 by Democracy Now!
BP Oil Spill Confirmed as Worst in U.S. History; Environmental Groups Challenge Continued Oil Operations in Gulf Excluded from New Moratorium
HIV prevention
gnxp
Tablets, insertable rings and dissolving films can effectively deliver drugs to help protect women and perhaps men from infection with the AIDS virus, researchers reported on Monday
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100524/sc_nm/us_aids_gel
Chimps and meat
gnxp
It turns out that there is no support for the widespread belief that male chimps trade meat for sex
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18968-exchange-meat-for-sex-no-thank-you.html
OCD
gnxp
Bone-marrow transplants cure obsessive-compulsive behaviour in mice
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100527/full/news.2010.268.html
9/11 stress
gnxp
The stress caused by the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center may have led to an increase in miscarriages of male foetuses, US researchers say
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8701145.stm
Treating dementia
gnxp
Numerous ideas circulate for using diet and exercise to waylay the leading cause of dementia, but the evidence to back solid biomedical recommendations is weak
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=alzheimers-prevention-strategies
Greens on Obama’s response
Center for Biological Diversity Response to President Obama’s Gulf Disaster Speech: Temporary Suspension of Arctic Drilling Positive Step, But Permanent Protection of Arctic, Other Offshore Areas Needed
http://act.commondreams.org/go/807?akid=69.96588.gephNI&t=30
Gulf spill
Scientists Say More Gulf Oil Flowing Than Thought
http://act.commondreams.org/go/797?akid=69.96588.gephNI&t=10
Obama to Extend Ban on Offshore Oil Drilling
http://act.commondreams.org/go/798?akid=69.96588.gephNI&t=12
The Oil Catastrophe
RG mail
The Oil Catastrophe
By Michael T. Klare
The Nation
June 14, 2010 edition
It’s hard to grasp the magnitude of the ecological catastrophe unfolding in
the Gulf of Mexico as a result of the Deepwater Horizon/BP oil spill. At
this point no one is certain how much oil is pouring from the well into the
surrounding ocean. BP, adopting an early government estimate, has claimed
that it amounts to a mere 5,000 barrels a day, but some scientists say the
amount is closer to 60,000 or 70,000 barrels. Taking the lesser of these
estimates, that would translate into the equivalent of an Exxon Valdez spill
every four days. Given that this has been going on for five weeks at the
time of this writing, the gulf has by now absorbed nine such spill
equivalents, with more to come. But picturing the 1989 Exxon Valdez
spill-until now the largest in US waters-and multiplying by nine does not
begin to convey the scale of the disaster. For the first time in history,
oil is pouring into the deep currents of a semi-enclosed sea, poisoning the
water and depriving it of oxygen so that entire classes of marine species
are at risk of annihilation. It is as if an underwater neutron bomb has
struck the Gulf of Mexico, causing little apparent damage on the surface but
destroying the living creatures below.
Who bears responsibility for this unmitigated catastrophe? What should be
done in response?
http://www.thenation.com/article/oil-catastrophe
05.27.10
Dawkins the mad scientist
Dawkins truly is a case of the ‘mad scientist’. We have already dubbed him Igor to the Venter Frankenstein. Mr. Dawkins, get it straight, does man have a soul? If you don’t like that term we can find other frameworks, to discuss the question, since Xtian fools will abuse that word on their own agenda. But soul issues won’t go away. Schopenhauer, atheist of a sort, didn’t ‘believe’ in soul, yet showed how the reality behind the human frame can be understood in a deeper way.
Craig Venter’s Brave New World
By RICHARD DAWKINS – RICHARDDAWKINS.NET
Updated: Monday, 24 May 2010 at 11:28 AM – An RDFRS Original
Craig Venter’s artificial bacterium debuted almost simultaneously with Svante Pääbo’s publication of the greater part of the Neanderthal genome. Put the two together and ask whether we could – or should – recreate a living, breathing Neanderthal. Of the technologies that would be required, the Venter team has proofed an important component. Dolly was cloned from an entire diploid genome of an adult sheep’s udder cell, dropped into an enucleated ovum. The Venter equivalent of Ian Wilmut’s achievement would be to go to the library (or in this case the Internet), take down the book labelled ‘Sheep Genome Project’ (or rather download the data files), and synthesize a complete set of sheep chromosomes from four bottles of chemicals labelled A, T, C and G. The synthetic genome would then be dropped into an enucleated sheep cell, as per Dolly.
While they were about it, the team might improve on the genome of any one donor sheep by substituting, say, wool-growing genes from The Champion Merino Genome Project and hardiness genes from The Soay Genome Project. Maybe some code from the Goat Genome Project to broaden the creature’s preferred diet, or from the Chamois Genome Project to give it a better head for heights? Perhaps even a Cut and Paste job from the Otter Genome Project, to give the über-sheep a taste for water sports.
We’d need to do something similar to re-grow a Neanderthal from Svante Pääbo’s data. Or, later, a computed intermediate between the chimpanzee and human genomes to re-create the 6-million-year-old common ancestor. And then, might a born-again Lucy split the difference again?
The technical difficulties would be formidable, but present progress suggests that they will be overcome. I leave the speciesist ethical difficulties on one side, except to note that ethical thinking, too, has a way of progressing as the decades go by. There is the harder problem that Pääbo’s Neanderthal sequence is only 60 percent complete, and 100 percent may be unattainable. Presumably the residue would be coloured in from the H. sapiens genome, and that could create technical problems as well as compromise the authenticity of the clone as a ‘true’ Neanderthal.
I find this piece baffling, is Dawkins unaware of what he is saying. Note how he says the ethical problems will go away over time!
Certainly the problems with Darwin’s theory have tended to go away, in the minds of the brainwashed. Perhaps he expects the same to happen here.
My problem is, why would anyone want to recreate a Neanderthal? The potential for real suffering is very great. What a lunatic project. It is most proably the arrogant bravado of the cult of scientism, eager to trumpet its false certainties, and ‘tough guy’ ethics.
Dawkins is stubborn in his stupidity, and we will never hear any real discussion of this.
But the question of ‘soul’ with equal stubbornness haunts any such project and tokens disaster without real knowledge of what man is. Wallace came to understand this point. The term ‘soul’ is confused and possibly a word that needs to be replaced, and retired, so its real meaning can be understood.
We could not on the basis of scientism take the risk of creating a monstrosity of dna in a creature controlled by vulgar technologists, Darwinian ideologists, and venture capitalists clearly hoping for slave labor constructs.
Is Dawkins actually sincere in this grotestque essay (titled ‘brave new world’, does he know the associations of this phrase) or just projecting shock value?
Centuries, millennia, of the human project has found the issue of reincarnation to be a hidden reality of the human body. Unless we have some understanding of the deeper nature of man, these lunatic projects of the Darwin obsessed require the strongest challenge.
The issue is especially treacherous since the nature of mind and soul, two quite differen things beyond the current framework are closely related to the erectus/sapiens transition. Miscalculating this, and the related Neanderthal question, could lead to disastrous miscalculations.
You know, Buddhism was already novelty of the Axial Age, much closer to our age than to the source of its knowledge, recycling knowledge from ancient millennia before, knowledge most probably related to the ‘soul evolution’ framework of emergent homo sapiens. Not for nothing did emergent homo sapiens suddenly sense a spirit world he could never rightly assess.
We are still in the same boat, save now that science lunatics wish to erase the nature of man in the name of dna technology.
Buddhists have created confusion by rejecting the soul word and concept, on the way to clarifying ancient confusions. But Buddhism can be a reminder we must really understand ‘soul’, and not just talk about it.
In any case, only in the modern world, under the influence of Darwinism/scientism has ignorance of man reached such a level as we see now in the arena of the Dawkins cult.
Since we don’t know the place of the Neanderthal in relation to that mistakes would be inevitable and very terrible.
There is no reason for such cruel and sadistic experiments. We should be vigilant to the Darwinian crime against humanity, and Dawkins’ ignorant embrace of all it without apology, in the snide arrogance of his stiff upper brit idiocy hiding the sadist’s love of shock value.
In any case, the relationship of unique body histories and unique soul histories is beyond human knowledge: you can’t interpolate a a new body into that complexity on the basis of dna alone. You might think you can, but the results wouldn’t work, surely… It is a problem in at least six dimensions, two of which are not perceived by man.
But whatever the case, we must be wary of people determined to not even be careful in this situation.
We need to consider that we cannot ever know the answers here, the noumenon of the Kantian/Schopenhaur framework a reminder of our inherent nescience.
We cannot solve soul questions, and we cannot renounce them. We must be wary of mad scientists trying to force the issue.
Nectocaris pteryx
Palaeontologists Solve Mystery of 500 Million-Year-Old Squid-Like Carnivore
ScienceDaily (May 27, 2010) — A study by researchers at the University of Toronto and the Royal Ontario Museum sheds new light on a previously unclassifiable 500 million-year-old squid-like carnivore known as Nectocaris pteryx.
I seem to be the only person on the planet who can review The Extended Synthesis
The sarcastic/critical commentary of the (Frankenstein/Frankencell) Venter/synthetic-cell project here is not the rejection of science, technology rather, (I usually find sci advances exciting, but not this time), but springs from the fact that this project is totally overhyped, and massively covered in the media, while the humble efforts to critique the paradigm behind it, of Darwinian fundamentalism, get no media coverage whatever, nothing, and no commentary from scientists, not even a criticism, a sign that a wall of silence is being brought to any critics of Darwinian ideology. They are so afraid that even criticism will draw attention to the situation, that they don’t bother to notice anything.
Thus, consider:
A paradigm shift manque…
I find it incredible that, a month after the publication of this book, I am still the only reviewer on the planet of a book, of which I was critical for its timidity, that very cautiously attempted to look at the limits of selectionist Darwinism, and to contribute some new ideas to the question.
When I reviewed this I expected a host of other reviews to balance mine. But, so far, nothing.
Is anyone alive out there in the Darwin asylum?
We need to wonder if what is being called ‘science’ here is science at all, as a rigid dogma is never allowed any examination.
That is a terrible judgement on science, and its ability to make so many people stupidly unaware of method, on evolution, or cunningly silent in a regime of total control over the scientific public.
We need to ask at this point if we are at the ‘end of science’, in the sense that institutional inertia is so great no real scientific progress is possible on evolution, as the control of public media becomes nearly absolute.
Such is the harm done by the Dawkins lie. And it is a lie, and he knows it is a lie. He knows that people have been so stultified that statistical absurdities in his work (Climbing Mt. Improbable) don’t even have to be corrected, since the groupie ciricuit doesn’t require real knowledge. They can shout down critics, and enshrine Talk.origins pseudo-science in sci curricula.
It is therefore suspicious that Venter’s hyped project gets so much media, and the real science over evolution nothing.
In any case Venter’s project is really a techno-capitalist boondoogle in the making. No theory of evolution is required for that. On the contrary, the Darwin lie is perfect cover.
A pretty pathetic commentary on the current so-called science scene.
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