Corporate Interests Threaten Children’s Welfare – NYTimes.com

22 Aug

Protect children,  but not the rights of corporations to exploit children for profit.

A clash between these two newly created legal entities — children and corporations — was, perhaps, inevitable. Century-of-the-child reformers sought to resolve conflicts in favor of children. But over the last 30 years there has been a dramatic reversal: corporate interests now prevail. Deregulation, privatization, weak enforcement of existing regulations and legal and political resistance to new regulations have eroded our ability, as a society, to protect children.

Childhood obesity mounts as junk food purveyors bombard children with advertising, even at school. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation study reports that children spend more hours engaging with various electronic media — TV, games, videos and other online entertainments — than they spend in school. Much of what children watch involves violent, sexual imagery, and yet children’s media remain largely unregulated. Attempts to curb excesses — like California’s ban on the sale or rental of violent video games to minors — have been struck down by courts as free speech violations.

Another area of concern: we medicate increasing numbers of children with potentially harmful psychotropic drugs, a trend fueled in part by questionable and under-regulated pharmaceutical industry practices.

via Corporate Interests Threaten Children’s Welfare – NYTimes.com.

Little Resistance as Rebels Enter Tripoli – NYTimes.com

21 Aug

What does this continuation of the “Arab Spring” portend for us in America? When will we get our Spring? When will we DEMAND it? When will we CREATE it?

The rebel leadership announced that insurgents had captured two of Colonel Qaddafi’s sons, including Seif al-Islam, his heir apparent. The leadership also announced that the elite presidential guard protecting the Libyan leader had surrendered.

via Little Resistance as Rebels Enter Tripoli – NYTimes.com.

NB: A personal friend of mine has worked with Seif. It’s complicated. I wish the man well. He’s faced and, I assume, will continue to face extremely difficult choices.

Surely They Can Read a Spreadsheet – NYTimes.com

21 Aug

Can’t read anything with your eyes closed and your brain draining out into the ether.

This is not the time for the usual demands by business for fewer regulations and lower taxes. The economy is too fragile and the deficit too high — in no small part because the George W. Bush administration spent eight years giving business and the wealthy exactly what they asked for.

Instead, business leaders should be pushing Washington for what is needed to avoid another recession: more near-term spending to stimulate the economy, more revenue to help pay for it, and a balanced approach to the long-term deficit by reducing health care costs and strengthening the tax base.

via Surely They Can Read a Spreadsheet – NYTimes.com.

Fukushima early stage China Syndrome ‘clearly a concern’: Expert – National Human Rights | Examiner.com

21 Aug

Since Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear energy plant has reportedly released 20 times the radiation contamination amount of the Hiroshima bomb, and its molten core is sinking through the Earth’s crust, it appears to be in early stages of a “total China Syndrome meltdown” according to a Russia Today report Thursday during which Beyond Nuclear’s Paul Gunter answered why media is blacking out the catastrophe, as noted by numerous scientists, and he revealed the increasing threat of a nuclear explosion.

via Fukushima early stage China Syndrome ‘clearly a concern’: Expert – National Human Rights | Examiner.com.

The Cause Of Riots And The Price of Food  – Technology Review

21 Aug

But what’s interesting about this analysis is that Lagi and co say that high food prices don’t necessarily trigger riots themselves, they simply create the conditions in which social unrest can flourish. “These observations are consistent with a hypothesis that high global food prices are a precipitating condition for social unrest,” say Lagi and co.

In other words, high food prices lead to a kind of tipping point when almost anything can trigger a riot, like a lighted match in a dry forest.

On 13 December last year, the group wrote to the US government pointing out that global food prices were about to cross the threshold they had identified. Four days later, Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in Tunisia in protest at government policies, an event that triggered a wave of social unrest that continues to spread throughout the middle east today.

One of two factors in the rise of food prices “is the con version of corn into ethanol, a practiced directly encouraged by subsidies.” The other factor is speculating in food prices.

via The Cause Of Riots And The Price of Food  – Technology Review.

What Happened to Liberty?

20 Aug

looking-for-america

Our Politics Are Sick – NYTimes.com

20 Aug

Sincere, passionate, hysterical belief that the country is full of (make-believe) anti-American enemies and (fictional) foreign horrors is the besetting national disease. And I’ve diagnosed the systemic problem: the American body politic suffers from autoimmune disorders.

It’s a metaphor, but it’s not a joke. I’ve read a lot about autoimmune diseases — the literal, medical kinds, also disconcertingly on the rise — because several members of my family have them. At some point, our bodies’ own immune systems went nuts, mistaking healthy pieces of our anatomies — a pancreas, a thyroid, a joint — for foreign tissue, dangerous enemies within, and proceeded to attack and try to destroy them. It’s as close to tragedy as biology gets.

Which is pretty much exactly what’s been happening the last decade in our politics. The Truthers decided the U.S. government was behind 9/11. Others decided our black president is definitely foreign-born and Muslim.

via Our Politics Are Sick – NYTimes.com.

Radiation Discovered in Rice Near Tokyo – NYTimes.com

20 Aug

The Agriculture Ministry said it was the first time that more than trace levels of cesium had been found in rice, though it said there was no health risk. Still, the discovery won wide attention here. Rice is a staple in most Japanese dishes and holds a place in the collective national heart that exceeds that of apple pie for Americans or baguettes for the French.

via Radiation Discovered in Rice Near Tokyo – NYTimes.com.

Conservative Criticism of Rick Perry’s Corporate Cronyism | The Nation

19 Aug

Surprise! Surprise! Another politician playing Mr. Rogers to corperate persons: Won’t you be my friend? Scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours:

The conservative Washington Examiner lambasted Perry on Wednesday as a “cowboy corporatist.” Timothy Carney, who covers the intersection of corporate and political power for the Examiner, detailed how Perry created and ran the Texas Enterprise Fund and the Texas Emerging Technology Fund to hand over taxpayer money to private businesses. The nominal purpose is helping businesses expand in Texas or relocate there. Being a Perry donor is the surest route to winning a grant from one of these slush funds.

via Conservative Criticism of Rick Perry’s Corporate Cronyism | The Nation.

Report gives tar sands pipeline opposition ammunition – KYTX CBS 19 Tyler Longview News Weather Sports

19 Aug

From five months ago:

Now, for the first time, four major groups have come together to issue a joint report. The Natural Resources Defense Council joined forces with the National Wildlife Federation, the Pipeline Safety Trust and the Sierra Club. … It says tar sands, also called dil-bit, is 3 to 13 times more acidic than conventional crude with six to 10 times the sulfur content.

via New report gives tar sands pipeline opposition ammunition – KYTX CBS 19 Tyler Longview News Weather Sports.

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