Study: Potential Hazards of Nanotechnology Not Known

Not enough is known about the potential hazards of nanotechnology, and millions of dollars more a year are needed to study the potential health and environmental effects of it, said the National Research Council yesterday.

The panel's findings come from a study sponsored by the EPA.

Reuters reports:

Nanotechnology involves designing and manufacturing materials on the scale of one-billionth of a meter. It is used in areas ranging from stain-resistant clothing and cosmetics to food additives. [...]

"Despite the promise of nanotechnology, without strategic research into emergent risks associated with it -- and a clear understanding of how to manage and avoid potential risks -- the future of safe and sustainable nanotechnology-based materials, products, and processes is uncertain," said the study by a committee of 19 scientists.

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/01/26-5

FBI Wants New App to Wiretap the Internet

The FBI's Strategic Information and Operations Center (SOIC) posted a 'Request for Information (RFI)' online last week seeking companies to build a social network monitoring system for the FBI. The 12-page document (.pdf) spells out what the bureau wants from such a system and invites potential contractors to reply by February 10, 2012.

It says the application should provide information about possible domestic and global threats superimposed onto maps "using mash-up technology".

It says the application should collect "open source" information and have the ability to:

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/01/26-3

Mike Barrett - Monsanto.com Targeted by Internet Hackers Known as Anonymous

In December the hackers infiltrated the PR firm, known as The Biving Group, due to “15+ years of running marketing campaigns and helping some of the most corrupt corporations on the planet, as well as several governmental agencies, cover up their dirt.”  The hackers claimed to have succeeded in bringing down The Bivings Group on December 5th. Going by information released by Anonymous, Bivings Group shut down all of their servers and liquidated their assets after the infiltration.

The group stands by the free-thinking citizens of the world, and reserves the right to go against Monsanto, who is causing so much environmental and human destruction that they have previously been declared the Worst Company of 2011. Anonymous is voicing their support for people like you and me, and every farmer or food organization denouncing the practices of Monsanto.

The group itself demands Monsanto to stop:

Read More:

http://naturalsociety.com/monsanto-com-targeted-by-internet-hackers-known-as-anonymous/

Robert Reich - Why No Responsible Democrat Should Want Newt Gingrich to Get the GOP Nomination

Republicans are worried sick about Newt Gingrich's ascendance, while Democrats are tickled pink.

Yet no responsible Democrat should be pleased at the prospect that Gingrich could get the GOP nomination. The future of America is too important to accept even a small risk of a Gingrich presidency.

The Republican worry is understandable. "The possibility of Newt Gingrich being our nominee against Barack Obama I think is essentially handling the election over to Obama," says former Minnesota Governor Tom Pawlenty, a leading GOP conservative. "I think that's shared by a lot of folks in the Republican party."

Pawlenty's views are indeed widely shared in Republican circles. "He's not a conservative -- he's an opportunist," says pundit Joe Scarborough, a member of the Republican Class of 1994 who came to Washington under Gingrich's banner. Gingrich doesn't "have the temperament, intellectual discipline or ego control to be either a successful nominee or president," says New York Republican representative Peter King, who hasn't endorsed any candidate. "Basically, Newt can't control himself."

Read More:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Why-No-Responsible-Democra-by-Robert-Reich-120126-841.html

Gary Null's Response to President Obama's State of the Union Address

RESPONSE TO PRESIDENT OBAMA’S STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS

1. Reinstate The Glass-Steagall Act.
2. Ban trading in commodities that are necessary to life:  Food, land, and water.
3. Stop trading in credit default swaps and derivatives.
4. Stop the Federal Reserve from giving any more no-interest loans to banks and corporations.
5. Declare a moratorium on home foreclosures.
6. Create a national food program to see that the 16 million hungry children in the US are fed.
7. De-ghettoize America’s program of food distribution, bypassing corporations and working directly with communities.
8. Create a program of reforestation, employing the youth to plant trees and hedge rows, and using skilled workers to repair bridges, levies, waterways and gas mains.
9. Forgive all student late fees and cap all interest on student loans at 1%.
10. Repeal the laws that prevent student loan holders from declaring bankruptcy.
11. Support senior citizens with free community hospital service and food coops.
12. Offer small businesses zero-interest loans with no repayment for 2 years providing that for each $1 million up to $5 million earned, the business hire 5 employees at a living wage of at least $20/hour.
13. Close and decommission all nuclear plants and shift investment to support geothermal, solar, and wind energy.
14. Ban all private funding of any election – take corporate money out of politics.
15. Demilitarize our forces around the world and close military bases.
16. Cease gas hydrofracking and all offshore drilling.
17. Audit the Federal Reserve, the Department of Defense, Homeland Security, and the CIA, reducing their budgets to what is actually necessary to protect America.
18. Allow all corporations that cannot be maintained to go through structured bankruptcy instead of a bailout.
19. Eliminate the entire income tax system.  Increase taxes on corporations with one payment and no deductions.  Institute a separate sales tax that states and cities implement.
20. Begin an independent audit of every bureaucracy in America.
21. Stop using the State Department to force Monsanto’s genetically engineered foods on other nations that we currently threaten with harm for resisting.
22. Ban lobbying from State and Federal offices.
23. Create a national health prevention program.
24. Include in every school curriculum in America a program on disease prevention.
25. Open up tent cities and halfway houses/camps for returning veterans.
26. Acknowledge the dangers of depleted uranium in all conflict zones where we use it, inform the public in those areas of danger, and begin a plan for its removal.
27. Include single payer health coverage under Medicare for the 55 million Americans who would qualify.
28. Disband the FDA, USDA, National Institutes of Health, CDC, National Institute of Aging, National Institute of Mental Health, and the Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.  Replace them with independent groups of scientists and oversight by lay citizen groups where any drug or food must be proven safe prior to approval.
29. Allow no money to come from any special interest groups into any Federal agency.

  30.  Examine our failed:

War on drugs

War on poverty

War on cancer

War on aids

War on obesity

War on terror

    31. Examine the overdiagnosing and drugging of our children.

Satyajit Das - Europe’s The Road to Nowhere, Part 1 – Fiscal Bondage

Financially futile, economically erroneous, politically puzzling and socially irresponsible, the December 2011 European summit was a failure. Only the attending leaders and their acolytes believe otherwise. German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s post-summit homilies about the “long run”, “running a marathon” and “more Europe” rang hollow.

The proposed plan is fundamentally flawed. It made no attempt to tackle the real issues – the level of debt, how to reduce it, how to meet funding requirements or how to restore growth. Most importantly there were no new funds committed to the exercise.

Fiscal Bondage…

The centrepiece of the new plan was a commitment to a new legally enforceable “fiscal compact” requiring government budgets to be balanced or in surplus, with the annual structural deficit not to exceed 0.5% of nominal Gross Domestic Product (“GDP”).

Read More:

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/01/satyajit-das-europe’s-the-road-to-nowhere-part-1-–-fiscal-bondage.html

Dean Baker - Do Progressives Have to Be Loser Liberals?

Last week Thomas Edsall had a column in the New York Times where he directly stated that the difference between conservatives and liberals is the extent over which they are willing to reverse market outcomes to redistribute money from winners to losers:

“...the two sides are fighting over what the role of government in redistributing resources from the affluent to the needy should and shouldn’t be." 

This was annoying not only because it is so seriously wrong, but also because this statement came from one of the more astute observers of American politics alive today.

Anyone trying to understand the role of the government in the economy should know that whatever it does or does not do by way of redistribution is trivial compared with the actions it takes to determine the initial distribution. Rich people don’t get rich exclusively by virtue of their talents and hard work; they get rich because the government made rules to allow them to get rich.

Read More:

http://www.nationofchange.org/do-progressives-have-be-loser-liberals-1327503908

Richard (RJ) Eskow - People Power vs Banker Power: Score One for the People

I hate to sound Pollyanna-ish, but sometimes the sunny point of view turns out to be right.

Yes, corporate money has hijacked democracy. And it's true that our two-party system often fails to offer real choices or reflect the will of the majority. Our corporate political system doesn't have a problem. It is the problem.

But we saw yesterday that concerned citizens can make a difference. Yesterday they won a battle against one of democracy's most implacable adversaries: Wall Street. They fought back against a lousy bank deal and stopped it in its tracks. 

For the moment.

Read More:

http://www.nationofchange.org/people-power-vs-banker-power-score-one-people-1327503617

Robert Scheer - Obama’s Faux Populism Sounds Like Bill Clinton

I’ll admit it: Listening to Barack Obama, I am ready to enlist in his campaign against the feed-the-rich Republicans ... until I recall that I once responded in the same way to Bill Clinton’s faux populism. And then I get angry because betrayal by the “good guys” for whom I have ended up voting has become the norm.

Yes, betrayal, because if Obama meant what he said in Tuesday’s State of the Union address about holding the financial industry responsible for its scams, why did he appoint the old Clinton crowd that had legalized those scams to the top economic posts in his administration? Why did he hire Timothy Geithner, who has turned the Treasury Department into a concierge service for Wall Street tycoons? 

Why hasn’t he pushed for a restoration of the Glass-Steagall Act, which Clinton’s deregulation reversed? Does the president really believe that the Dodd-Frank slap-on-the-wrist sellout represents “new rules to hold Wall Street accountable, so a crisis like this never happens again”? Can he name one single too-big-to-fail banking monstrosity that has been reduced in size on his watch instead of encouraged to grow ever larger by Treasury and Fed bailouts and interest-free money?

Read More:

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/obamas_faux_populism_sounds_like_bill_clinton_20120126/

Study: The Brains of Storytellers And Their Listeners Actually Sync Up

You may be talking and I may be listening, but our brains look strikingly similar.

That’s the conclusion of a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week. After conducting brain scans of a woman telling a story off the cuff and then of 11 people listening to a recording of her, researchers Greg Stephens and Uri Hasson say they found that the same parts of the brains showed activation at the same time, suggesting a deep connection between talker and listener.

Graduate student Lauren Silbert was the team’s storytelling guinea pig. She recounted tales of high school, like deciding whom to take to prom, while undergoing an fMRI scan.

Read More:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2010/07/27/study-the-brains-of-storytellers-and-their-listeners-actually-sync-up/