Eideard

The Canadian government has been accused of “muzzling” its scientists. Speakers at a major science meeting being held in Canada said communication of vital research on health and environment issues is being suppressed…

Prof Thomas Pedersen, a senior scientist at the University of Victoria, said he believed there was a political motive in some cases.

“The Prime Minister (Stephen Harper) is keen to keep control of the message, I think to ensure that the government won’t be embarrassed by scientific findings of its scientists that run counter to sound environmental stewardship,” he said. “I suspect the federal government would prefer that its scientists don’t discuss research that points out just how serious the climate change challenge is…”

The allegation of “muzzling” came up at a session of the AAAS meeting to discuss the impact of a media protocol introduced by the Conservative government shortly after it was elected in 2008.

The protocol requires that all interview requests for scientists employed by the government must first be cleared by officials. A decision as to whether to allow the interview can take several days, which can prevent government scientists commenting on breaking news stories.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sign made from 3 tons of crushed guns

Mexico’s president called on U.S. officials to stop gun trafficking across the border Thursday, saying the move would be the best thing Americans could do to stop brutal drug violence.

“The criminals have become more and more vicious in their eagerness to spark fear and anxiety in society,” President Felipe Calderon said. “One of the main factors that allows criminals to strengthen themselves is the unlimited access to high-powered weapons, which are sold freely, and also indiscriminately, in the United States of America.

Speaking in Ciudad Juarez, the border city across from El Paso, Texas, that has become Mexico’s murder capital, Calderon said a dramatic increase in violence in Mexico was directly connected with the 2004 expiration of the U.S. assault weapons ban…

…Calderon stood in front of a massive new sign, constructed with tons of decommissioned arms. “NO MORE WEAPONS,” the sign said — in English. Americans on the other side of the border are the intended audience, Calderon said…

Out of 140,000 weapons Mexican authorities have seized since Calderon declared a crackdown on cartels at the beginning of his presidency, 84,000 were high-powered assault weapons, Calderon said.

More than 47,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence in Mexico since December 2006, according to government statistics.

Calderon’s plea for Americans to reduce drug consumption is laughable, of course. We have been a society based on mood-altering chemical dependency for decades. It starts with cigarettes and coffee, marches on through beer and hard liquor into prescription goodies all too easily accessible through your friendly family doctor. Symptomatic treatment is the watchword of America’s pharmaceutical industry.

Meanwhile, there’s nothing wrong with symptomatic solutions to drug gangsters across the border, drug gangsters who leak their wars and profiteering across that border every hour of the day. Who stands in the way? Right-wing plutocrats in the arms industry and their flunkies in the NRA and both wings of political hacks – for a start. Even the mildest attempts to police guns trafficked across the border are shut down by sophistry and campaign dollars, lobbying and coercion.

 
Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy hit back at Fox News during a UK press conference following the London Premiere of their new film. Fox had publically criticized the film for supposedly pushing a ‘dangerous liberal agenda’ at kids.

Har!

America’s conservatives lead the world in paranoia. They may not get what they think they need; but, they surely sound like they get what they deserve.

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

If Fox News viewers want to be informed about current events, they might as well turn off the TV.

A poll released by Fairleigh Dickinson University on Monday found that people who get their news from Fox News know significantly less about news both in the U.S. and the world than people who watch no news at all.

In a survey of 612 New Jersey natives, Fox News fans flunked questions about Egypt and Syria when compared with people who don’t watch the news. Fox viewers were 18-points less likely to know that Egyptians toppled their government and 6 points less likely to be aware that Syrians have not yet overthrown theirs.

“Because of the controls for partisanship, we know these results are not just driven by Republicans or other groups being more likely to watch Fox News,” Dan Cassino, a Fairleigh Dickinson professor who served as an analyst for the poll, said in the report. “Rather, the results show us that there is something about watching Fox News that leads people to do worse on these questions than those who don’t watch any news at all…”

The most informative outlets were found to be the Sunday morning news shows as well as outlets like the New York Times, USA today and NPR.

Har.

Pissaladière rouge et blanche

Is pizza a vegetable? Maybe not in most homes, but in public school cafeterias it is.

School meals that are subsidized by the government are required to contain a certain minimum of vegetables under current rules, and a serving of pizza that contains at least two tablespoons of tomato sauce meets the veggie requirement. The Obama administration recently sought to change the rule so that only a half-cup of tomato paste or more could be counted as a vegetable — part of their efforts to cut back on the amount of pizza, French fries and other “unhealthy” foods showing up on school lunch trays.

But the food industry and some lawmakers are pushing back. On Monday, Congress released the final version of a spending bill that would block the new tomato-paste rule, essentially keeping pizza in the vegetable category. The bill would also eliminate other changes the U.S. Department of Agriculture had proposed, like increasing whole grains in school meals and limiting the use of starchy vegetables to two servings a week, which would have cut back on the fries served daily at many schools.

As the Associated Press reports…food companies that produce frozen pizzas for schools, the salt industry and potato growers requested the changes and lobbied Congress….

Piling on to the companies’ opposition, some conservatives argue that the federal government shouldn’t tell children what to eat. In a summary of the bill, Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee said the changes would “prevent overly burdensome and costly regulations and…provide greater flexibility for local school districts to improve the nutritional quality of meals.” School districts have said some of the USDA proposals go too far and cost too much when budgets are extremely tight.

Which is a crock! Not much different from the days of “states rights” used to protect bigotry. Only this is used to protect the industries paying to keep your friendly neighborhood fat-and-salt laden Congress-critter in office.

As someone who cares specially for the Mediterranean portion of my family who taught me to prepare something more than Haggis – I make a delightful pissaladière along with dozens of variations on pizza from scratch. But, even one covered in onions only counts halfway as vegetable. The crappy nutrition designed by lobbyists from the American fast-food industry is matched in our schools only by the crappy education that satisfies our politicians.

Australia’s national broadcaster faced calls for a review of funding on Tuesday over a television comedy scene with a fictional Prime Minister Julia Gillard draped in a national flag after having sex on her office floor.

Conservative opposition lawmakers said the Australian Broadcasting Corporation had overstepped good taste with a scene in which actors playing Gillard and her partner Tim Mathieson cuddled naked and used the flag — with its historic ties to Britain and Australia’s Queen Elizabeth — as a sheet.

“Having sex in the prime minister’s office under the Australian flag is the last straw for me. It is sick. I’m offended and we should take a stand,” one lawmaker who could not be named told a closed door meeting of MPs, a conservative spokesman told a press briefing.

Another MP called for a rethink of taxpayer funding for the ABC, saying the program degraded the office of prime minister, currently held by center-left Labor rival Gillard, while monarchists said the use of the flag was disrespectful…

Gillard herself has laughed off controversy over the satire…Good for you, Julia!

An ABC spokesman for the program said Gillard had only been shown in a “very gentle, tender scene.”

“If it’s okay for others to drape themselves in our flag for all manner of occasions, I really don’t see why it can’t be draped over our prime minister as a symbol of love,” the spokesman said.

And the answer from reasonable adults, hopefully sophisticated, certainly couched in free speech is — “tell the stiffs to stuff it where the sun don’t shine!”

Cowardly reactionaries of every land wrap themselves in the national flag every time they feel threatened by present or future freedom. Letting people speak, letting people laugh, is no longer a choice governed by monarchists and conservative fops.

If he was entering a Republican Party conference he’d be carrying bible action figures
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

The Department of Education responded to a letter of concern from the British Centre for Science Education (BCSE), which is worried by applications from Christian groups to run free schools. It fears that schools might be exploited by groups seeking to promote a literal interpretation of the Bible at the expense of science classes.

However, the Department of Education confirmed that Mr Gove is “crystal clear that teaching creationism is at odds with scientific fact”…

The BCSE expressed in writing its “extreme concern” about groups such as Christian School Trust who have made up to five applications to run free schools…

The Everyday Champions Church, in Newark, Nottinghamshire, submitted its proposal for a 652-place school in January. It claims that the parents of more than 660 children have signed up to attend the school.

The Church’s leader Gareth Morgan told the BBC: “Creationism will be embodied as a belief at Everyday Champions Academy, but will not be taught in the sciences. Similarly, evolution will be taught as a theory. We believe children should have a broad knowledge of all theories in order that they can make informed choice.”

In July last year Mr Gove acknowledged there were concerns about “inappropriate faith groups using this legislation to push their own agenda.” He told MPs on the cross-party Commons education committee that his department was working to ensure there were no “extremist groups taking over schools”.

A clear distinction between conservative politicians in the UK and US. The former resemble what traditional American conservatism used to embody – including disdain for populist pandering to religious nutters. That used to be left up to the Democrats in the United States.

Apparently when Nixon instituted the Southern Strategy to acquire the racist and bigot vote in America, they inherted the nutballs along with the whole package.

The Democratic-led House of Representatives on Wednesday passed a bill to repeal a ban against gays serving openly in the U.S. military.

On a largely party-line vote of 250-175, the House sent the legislation supported by President Barack Obama to the Senate, where the prospects for approval are uncertain.

The vote came just a week after Senate Republicans blocked a similar measure to end the policy — known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” — as part of an annual defense bill.

Senate backers now say they have the needed 60 votes in the 100-member chamber to clear such a hurdle and pass the new stand-alone measure before lawmakers wrap up their work for the year. “We are very confident that there are at least 60 votes,” a Senate aide said.

“We’ll see,” said a Republican aide. “They said they thought they could get 60 last time…”

A Republican admission of unity in bigotry. How’d that slip in?

If Congress doesn’t repeal the policy, the issue may be decided by the courts, where the ban has been challenged.

Obama, along with Defense Secretary Robert Gates, want to do away with the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, but favor a congressional rather than a court-imposed remedy.

Men and women of good will have always had a problem with official bigots opposing a move towards equal opportunities for Americans. It doesn’t become less disgusting when padded by deceit and flip-flopping excuses by hypocrites like John McCain.

Democracy was allowed to function in the House of Representatives. Since that scarce political commodity is not given a chance in the Senate, folks will have to wait and see if the majority supporting civil rights are allowed an opportunity to vote.

I categorized this post under crime, health and politics. The first two are obvious: illegal addiction produces crime; addiction of most kinds produces ill health. Politics – because political hacks both sides of the pond consider the first two questions only for what they mean when it comes to reelection.

Alcohol is the most dangerous drug in the UK by a considerable margin, beating heroin and crack cocaine into second and third place, according to an authoritative study published today which will reopen calls for the drugs classification system to be scrapped and a concerted campaign launched against drink.

Led by the sacked government drugs adviser David Nutt with colleagues from the breakaway Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs, the study says that if drugs were classified on the basis of the harm they do, alcohol would be class A, alongside heroin and crack cocaine.

Today’s paper, published by the respected Lancet medical journal, will be seen as a challenge to the government to take on the fraught issue of the relative harms of legal and illegal drugs, which proved politically damaging to Labour…

Today’s study offers a more complex analysis that seeks to address the 2007 criticisms. It examines nine categories of harm that drugs can do to the individual “from death to damage to mental functioning and loss of relationships” and seven types of harm to others. The maximum possible harm score was 100 and the minimum zero.

Overall, alcohol scored 72 – against 55 for heroin and 54 for crack. The most dangerous drugs to their individual users were ranked as heroin, crack and then crystal meth. The most harmful to others were alcohol, heroin and crack in that order…

The authors write: “Our findings lend support to previous work in the UK and the Netherlands, confirming that the present drug classification systems have little relation to the evidence of harm. They also accord with the conclusions of previous expert reports that aggressively targeting alcohol harm is a valid and necessary public health strategy.”

Our governments – and the parliamentary hacks fiddling with the same questions – only seem to care about religious morality. Not the value of that morality. Though a far cry from systematic examinations of ethics, there is an odd bit of value in some of the outdated maundering. But, what counts about morality to our politicians is how many votes will it get at election time.

Scientists have offered yet another reasoned analysis to politicians. What’s the likelihood of anyone listening?

The Audit Commission, the body responsible for tackling public waste, has become the most high profile victim of the Government’s war on the bloated public sector after being accused of squandering taxpayers’ cash.

Ministers stepped in to abolish the £200 million-a-year body following a decade of “shocking” excess which culminated in staff enjoying days out at the races and life coaching at public expense.

Officials are also accused of allowing a nanny state culture to foster, which saw local government being forced to abide by an unnecessarily bureaucratic tick box culture.

With a senior echelon of officials dominated by Labour sympathisers, councils were issued with “best practice” dictats relating to how often to collect rubbish, and ordered collate “meaningless” information about residents’ religious beliefs…

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph…the Cabinet minister blamed the Audit Commission for “rigging” the system to force the introduction of unpopular fortnightly bin collections across Britain.

He is also highly critical of the excessive culture within the Audit Commission, with six-figure salaries for its executives and junkets for staff…

The Commission, set up by the Conservatives in 1983, employs more than 2,000 people and has a budget of more than 200 million pounds a year. It has previously launched outspoken attacks on those criticising its work.

If the commission was as thoroughly organized into the morass of elected officials and lobbyists we have here in the States, nothing more than cutbacks on stationery and stamps would have resulted.