1. “He who fights monsters must take care lest he become a monster. When you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss gazes into you.”
2. What a surprise:
“Homeless people die after bird flu vaccine trial in Poland”
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14738
3. “Do Seed Companies Control GM Crop Research?
Research on genetically modified seeds is still published, of course. But only studies that the seed companies have approved ever see the light of a peer-reviewed journal. In a number of cases, experiments that had the implicit go-ahead from the seed company were later blocked from publication because the results were not flattering. “It is important to understand that it is not always simply a matter of blanket denial of all research requests, which is bad enough,” wrote Elson J. Shields, an entomologist at Cornell University, in a letter to an official at the Environmental Protection Agency (the body tasked with regulating the environmental consequences of genetically modified crops), “but selective denials and permissions based on industry perceptions of how ‘friendly’ or ‘hostile’ a particular scientist may be toward [seed-enhancement] technology.”
Shields is the spokesperson for a group of 24 corn insect scientists that opposes these practices. Because the scientists rely on the cooperation of the companies for their research—they must, after all, gain access to the seeds for studies—most have chosen to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals. The group has submitted a statement to the EPA protesting that “as a result of restricted access, no truly independent research can be legally conducted on many critical questions regarding the technology.”
It would be chilling enough if any other type of company were able to prevent independent researchers from testing its wares and reporting what they find—imagine car companies trying to quash head-to-head model comparisons done by Consumer Reports, for example. But when scientists are prevented from examining the raw ingredients in our nation’s food supply or from testing the plant material that covers a large portion of the country’s agricultural land, the restrictions on free inquiry become dangerous.”
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14737
4. “Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic called it “the worst of both worlds” because Holder is reportedly considering prosecuting the actual interrogators who exceeded the interrogation limits set out by John Yoo & Co. in Justice Department memos, rather than the authors of the memos and the torture policy themselves. That “risks essentially legitimizing the torture it does not prosecute,” Sullivan argues.
Bruce Fein, a former Deputy Attorney General under President Ronald Reagan made some really good points about that yesterday on Olney’s show. First, the constitution says that the president “shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” So he doesn’t get to just pick and choose what to prosecute, and not to prosecute obviously illegal conduct. (Fein knows what he’s talking about; as a lawyer in the Office of Legal Counsel in 1972, he participated in drafting impeachment charges against Richard Nixon.) Given that both President Obama and Eric Holder have publicly testified that waterboarding is torture and illegal, and given that Dick Cheney has boasted about authorizing it, it would seem pretty clear that something should be done about that.
Fein added that if the president or attorney general don’t want to punish people who may have believed they were following the law, even though they weren’t, then the answer is to pardon them — not to ignore that crimes occurred.
“The reason a Pardon is so much more important than no prosecution is that in a pardon situation the recipient confesses that what was done was wrong,” said Fein. “The country doesn’t acknowledge that what was done was legal, but that there are circumstances that justify leniency.”
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/
5. “Obama Sells Out To Pharmaceutical Companies
In one more sign that the U.S. no longer is a functioning democracy, the Obama Administration has struck a deal with Big Pharma: To win its support for health care reform, the Administration has promised that any reform legislation will ban the government from negotiating lower drug prices. So Big Pharma can charge whatever it wants for patented drugs. In return, the pharmaceuticals soon will begin a $150 million advertising campaign on behalf of reform.”
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article23241.htm
6. A great article about Republicans acting like Nazi Brownshirts in 1933. What are they going ot do next, shoot people?:
“It’s astonishing to imagine that anyone might perceive the hopelessly flimsy Obama administration – even if it wasn’t directly following the folks who brought you the Dick Cheney vision of executive power – as some sort of dictatorial Bonapartist project. Are we even talking about the same human being here? Do they really mean the Obama who keeps trying to be bipartisan while Republicans trash him viciously at every juncture (including even members of Congress questioning the legitimacy of his American birth)? Do they really mean the guy who continually defers to Congress to shape the major legislative initiatives he claims to be in favor of? Are talking about the dude who lets a handful of Blue Dog Democrats roll him at every turn? This, even after eight years of Bush, we’re supposed to believe is some sort of totalitarian imperial president hell-bent on bringing fascism to America???
No, this isn’t about lack of intellect or the remotest correspondence to reality. It seems pretty clear to me that this is almost entirely about fear. This is the empire crashing, and the former master class within it crashing as well. Both are falling to ordinariness and worse. They always were ordinary, of course, and always tools for exploitation by economic predators, but at least back in the day it wasn’t such a struggle to be middle class. And, most importantly, they could always feel good by telling each other that at least they were better than the hated bitches, darkies and fags. Oh, and Arabs. Beating them up, literally and figuratively, was (and remains) a good way to remind yourself of that superiority.
But now even that small bit of compensation is gone. Your country can’t win a war against a bunch of third world ragheads. Your boss is cutting your salary again. The womenfolk have their own source of income now, and no longer have to put up with your blundering sexual advances to keep a roof over their heads. Perverts are marrying each other left and right. And now – WTF? – there’s some Harvard-educated spade in the White House, along with, even worse, his uppity-looking Harvard-educated all-superior-like even spadier woman.”
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article23245.htm
7. Parallels between pre-collapse Soviet Union and the U.S. today”
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article23242.htm
