Congress Letting Corporations Steal Public Science from the People

by: Yellow Dog

Sat Feb 04, 2012 at 05:00:00 AM CST

There are just too many ways for corporations to steal the public commons.

PZ Myers:

Along with SOPA and PIPA, our government is contemplating another acronym with deplorable consequences for the free dissemination of information: RWA, the Research Works Act. This is a bill to, it says, "ensure the continued publication and integrity of peer-reviewed research works by the private sector", where the important phrase is "private sector" - it's purpose is to guarantee that for-profit corporations retain control over the publication of scientific information.

SNIP

This is a blatant attempt to invalidate the NIH's requirement that taxpayer-funded research be made publicly available. The internet was initially developed to allow researchers to easily share information...and that's precisely the function this bill is intended to cripple.

Who could possibly support such a bill? Not the scientists, that's for sure; and definitely not the public, unless we keep them as ignorant as possible. The corporations who love this bill are the commercial publishers who profit mightily from scientists' work. And first among these is Elsevier, the gouging publisher scientists love to hate.

If passed, the Research Works Act (RWA) would prohibit the NIH's public access policy and anything similar enacted by other federal agencies, locking publicly funded research behind paywalls. The result would be an ethical disaster: preventable deaths in developing countries, and an incalculable loss for science in the USA and worldwide. The only winners would be publishing corporations such as Elsevier (£724m profits on revenues of £2b in 2010 - an astounding 36% of revenue taken as profit).

Since Elsevier's obscene additional profits would be drained from America to the company's base in the Netherlands if this bill were enacted, what kind of American politician would support it? The RWA is co-sponsored by Darrell Issa (Republican, California) and Carolyn B. Maloney (Democrat, New York). In the 2012 election cycle, Elsevier and its senior executives made 31 donations to representatives: of these, two went to Issa and 12 to Maloney, including the largest individual contribution.

So Elsevier bought a couple of politicians to get their way. It's typical unscrupulous behavior from this company; at least they stopped organizing arms trade fairs a few years ago, so we know their evil can be checked by sufficiently loud public opinion.

Tell your representatives to kill RWA. It's another bill to benefit corporations that will harm science.

The Nightowl Newswrap

by: BG & YD bring you the news

Sat Feb 04, 2012 at 00:00:00 AM CST

• As the UN and the Arab League wring their hands, Assad's massacres escalate. "At least 100 people have reportedly been killed in a major army offensive in the central Syrian city of Homs. Activists talking to Al Jazeera in the early hours of Saturday said the army had used mortars and nail bombs in the assault on the Khaldiyeh neighbourhood. Hundreds were reported injured, and a source at a hospital in Homs told Al Jazeera that there was an urgent need for blood as medics were struggling to attend to the injured. "We cannot confirm the exact number of the martyrs. There are many killed," Hadi al-Abdallah, an activist in Homs, told Al Jazeera. "A building of 16 flats has collapsed. We're trying to get the bodies out of the rubble." Abdallah said army defectors had captured 19 members of the security forces earlier in the day. Homs is one of the flashpoint cities in Syria's uprising, with some areas becoming strongholds of the armed opposition. Thousands of protesters took to the streets across Syria on Friday to commemorate the 1982 massacre in the city of Hama that killed tens of thousands."

• That the opposition party won is a victory for democracy; that freakazoid conservatives won in a landslide that eliminated every woman from parliament is a defeat. "Kuwait's Islamist-led opposition has won a landslide majority in snap polls, securing 34 seats in the 50-member parliament, officials results showed. The snap polls were held after the ruler of the oil-rich Gulf state dissolved parliament following youth-led protests in December over alleged corruption and bitter disputes between opposition MPs and the government. Sunni Islamists took 23 seats compared with just nine in the dissolved parliament, while liberals were the big losers, winning only two places against five previously. No women were elected, with the four female MPs of the previous parliament all losing their seats. Sixty-two percent of Kuwaitis cast their ballots on Thursday, up slightly from 58 per cent in the previous election in 2009. Voters punished pro-government MPs, reducing them to a small minority, especially 13 former members who were questioned by the public prosecutor over corruption charges."

• Set the standard for modern genocide. "A former Khmer Rouge jailer who oversaw the deaths of about 15,000 people will spend the rest of his life in jail, Cambodia's UN-backed court has ruled in a final appeal verdict. "The Supreme Court Chamber decides to impose a sentence of life imprisonment against Kaing Guek Eav," said Kong Srim, president of the court's highest appeal body, on Friday. Kaing Guek Eav, better known as Duch, was sentenced to 30 years imprisonment in 2010 for crimes against humanity, and war crimes, over the torture and deaths of thousands of people at the notorious S-21 prison in the late 1970s. "The crimes by Kaing Guek Eav were undoubtedly among the worst in recorded human history. They deserve the highest penalty available," Kong Srim said. Led by Pol Pot, who died in 1998, the Khmer Rouge was responsible for what has become known as Cambodia's "killing fields", which wiped out nearly a quarter of Cambodia's population through starvation, overwork and execution."

• Famine "over," but starvation and deaths continue "An exceptional harvest, good rains and food deliveries by numerous aid agencies have helped end famine in Somalia but food stocks could run out again in May, the United Nations has said. "Famine conditions are no longer present," said a statement released on Friday from the office of Mark Bowden, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Somalia. The famine, which was declared in July 2011, killed tens of thousands in south and central Somalia. More than 2.3 million Somalis, almost one-third of the population, are still in need of aid. "Millions of people still need food, clean water, shelter and other assistance to survive and the situation is expected to deteriorate in May," the statement cited Bowden as saying."

And finally...

• We're going to guess that this under-count has everything to do with the skin color of the victims. "Worldwide malaria deaths may be almost twice as high as previously estimated, a study reports. The research, published in the British medical journal the Lancet, suggests 1.24 million people died from the mosquito-borne disease in 2010. This compares to a World Health Organisation (WHO) estimate for 2010 of 655,000 deaths. But both the new study and the WHO indicate global death rates are now falling. The research was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation .... While most deaths were among young children and in Africa, the researchers noted a higher proportion of deaths among older children and adults than previously estimated. In total, 433,000 more deaths occurred among children over five and adults in 2010 than in the WHO estimate. "You learn in medical school that people exposed to malaria as children develop immunity and rarely die from malaria as adults," said Dr Christopher Murray of the University of Washington in Seattle, who led the study. "What we have found in hospital records, death records, surveys and other sources shows that just is not the case." The researchers also concluded malaria eradication was not a possibility in the short-term. "We estimated that if decreases from the peak year of 2004 continue, malaria mortality will decrease to less than 100,000 deaths only after 2020," they write."

These People Always Vote

by: Yellow Dog

Fri Feb 03, 2012 at 19:30:00 PM CST

Do you?

David Atkins "thereisnospoon" at Hullabaloo:

Dave Weigel reports from Nevada, speaking to a local Republican caucus partcipant:

   

"This is going to sound rough," he said. "But if you're a Democrat, you are my enemy. Democrats piss me off. They've gotten extremely socialistic." What did that mean? "Every time they get in, they raise taxes. They screw things up. I've got a jeep I've had for ten years; I pay $100 a year on the license plate. We just got a new Dodge; $600 to license it. You pay your money, they pass it on to the Mexicans, the colored people. Free education, handouts, all of that." Kent was 67, and dated his disdain for socialism back to Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society. "We've got maybe two Democrats in Virginia City. One of them owns the second-biggest bar. I won't set a foot in the door.

I'm sure that if Democrats drop the nasty tribalism and capitulate on our values enough by allowing cuts to Medicare and outlawing of abortion, we can come to reasonable bipartisan compromise with these folks.

Surely there's something we can do to win this man's vote or at least soften his ire. And I'm sure that whatever it is, it will totally be worth it in the spirit of post-partisan unity.

Atkins in December:

For forty percent of the country or so, there is no amount of evidence that will ever convince them that they're getting screwed by the top 1%. Even when the middle class is basically gone and all that's left is the very wealthy and the impoverished underclass, these fools will still be blaming taxes, environmental regulations and minorities for everything. And yet, those of us who know better are supposed to feel other than contempt for them.

Turnout wins. Every time. It's the only thing that ever has.

Why did they have to make me choose?

by: Blue Girl

Fri Feb 03, 2012 at 18:00:00 PM CST

Part of me is glad for an extremely busy semester, because I didn't want to think about the personal betrayal I felt when the Komen Foundation withdrew their grant to Planned Parenthood.

But for me, there was no thinking about my reaction, it was automatic. Komen was thrown under my personal bus, and I backed up a couple of times and ran 'em over again just for good measure.

Today, the fury of eleventy-billion pissed-off women was too much for them, and they appeared to reverse course and they apologized, trying to contain the damage.

In a reversal of policy after a nationwide uproar over its decision to cut funding to Planned Parenthood, Susan G. Komen for the Cure said Friday that it will amend its new funding rules and allow continued funding of breast health programs operated by the clinic.

Nancy G. Brinker, Komen's founder and chief executive, said that the breast cancer foundation's decision to halt funding to providers who were under investigation was not done for political reasons and was not meant to penalize Planned Parenthood specifically.

"We will amend the criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political. That is what is right and fair," the statement said.

Planned Parenthood is under congressional investigation by Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., who is looking into whether it used federal funding for abortion services, which is not permitted.

Planned Parenthood responded by thanking the public for its "outpouring of support for women in need of lifesaving breast cancer screening."

Okay, let me be perfectly clear here...

I call bullshit.

It sure as hell was political. It comes on the heels of Komen hiring failed tea-party candidate for Governor of Georgia Karen Handel. She's an anti-choice wingnut with an axe to grind against Planned Parenthood and they haven't fired her yet.

And so long as she has a job with Komen, Komen will do without my dollars and I will stop buying the pink-ribbon option of everything from toilet paper to day planner to house keys. I used to have a laptop with a pink-ribbon skin, fercryinoutloud.

I appreciate that the women my age who never left the rural area I'm from will continue to have access to mammograms through Planned Parenthood, and that the Komen Foundation funds some of that facet of the care PP offers. I really do.

But I'm not the sort of woman to take back an abuser who promises "never again, oh baby, I promise...."

Especially when his bitch sister is still in your house.

And while we're making demands that Komen change the way they do business, they can retire the entire overpaid executive staff and board, without golden parachutes, and the new executives and directors can be paid a reasonable salary that the average American would be happy to have. Say, $75k with benefits and an expense account.

The people running the charity should make about the same as the average individual contributor.

In fact, that's a pretty good "New Rule" - maybe even Maher-worthy: "We need a new rule. If a non-profit organization pays it's executives enough that they are 1%-ers based on that salary alone, they automatically lose non-profit status."

Komen Still Lying; Still Betraying Women

by: Yellow Dog

Fri Feb 03, 2012 at 16:30:00 PM CST

C'mon, Planned Parenthood: tell Komen to fuck off and die. You know they're going to fuck you again as soon as the furor dies down. You've proven that your support network is bigger, louder, richer and more powerful than theirs. You don't need them any more, and continuing to associate with them is just going to piss off all your newly energized friends.

Tell Komen thanks but no thanks. You know you want to.

David Dayen at Firedoglake:

There's actually a little more confusion than initially reported about Susan G. Komen's actual commitment to restoring Planned Parenthood funds. They certainly wanted everyone to think that they were changing their policy. Upon closer inspection of their statement, however, they may be trying to take credit for a change in policy without actually doing so.

The statement says that they would "amend the criteria" used in determining their grants, "to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political." And they added that existing grants to Planned Parenthood would go forward, and that they could apply for future grants. But the existing grants were already going forward. That really hasn't changed. And this doesn't fully commit Planned Parenthood to receiving those grants in the future.

Greg Sargent tracked down a Komen board member for comment.

I asked Komen board member John Raffaelli to respond to those who are now saying that the announcement doesn't necessarily constitute a reversal until Planned Parenthood actually sees more funding. He insisted it would be unfair to expect the group to commit to future grants.

"It would be highly unfair to ask us to commit to any organization that doesn't go through a grant process that shows that the money we raise is used to carry out our mission," Raffaelli told me. "We're a humaniatrian [sic] organization. We have a mission. Tell me you can help carry out our mission and we will sit down at the table."

Pushed on whether this means the new announcement wasn't really a reversal, Raffaelli pushed back, arguing that Komen, in response to all the criticism, had removed politics from the grant-making process. "Is it really unclear that we're changing the policy to address criticism?" he said.

The proof that the policy has actually changed, then, will not be revealed until the acceptance of the grant request next year. Planned Parenthood could actually take this a step further. They could refuse to participate in the grant process. If I'm seeing things correctly, the Komen Foundation is breaking down. This has damaged their credibility significantly. They may not be around a whole lot longer. So Planned Parenthood can stand on the side against politicization of women's health and say they won't lend any credibility to Komen's tarnished brand.

I don't think they'll do that, but when you see all this game-playing, it's really hard to go back and take the Komen money. Ultimately, women's health is more important. But I don't think we've heard the last of this fight.

Be Careful What You Wish For

by: Ted Frier

Fri Feb 03, 2012 at 14:28:41 PM CST

Noah Millman at American Conservative magazine echoes my thinking when he says the root of the conflict between the Catholic bishops and the Obama administration over health care coverage for contraceptives is that Americans today get most of their health coverage through their employers. As I've argued before, the problem could be diffused by going to a public, single-payer system. But of course conservatives would hate that!

So, conservatives who support the bishops in this fight better be careful what they wish for. They might score points with social conservatives who buy the line that providing birth control to women who want it constitutes a "war on religion."  But the idea that employers (like the Catholic Church) can veto what medical services their workers are eligible for based on the employer's religious or ideological prejudices is likely to produce a worker backlash that demand we scrap the whole employer-provided system in favor of one run by the government.

Here is Millman:

Ultimately, the source of the conflict here is in holding simultaneously that health care is a right and that health coverage will be provided primarily by private employers. If you believe both of those things, then you have to coerce private employers into providing coverage that meets some kind of minimal standard. In our world, where some health care services are deemed morally problematic by some significant private employers, that would mean coercing those employers to violate their consciences. (By the way: what's special about the Catholic Church in this regard? Does the strictly Catholic sole proprietor of a national pizza franchise lack a conscience? Why is it okay to coerce him into providing services he deems immoral, but not okay to coerce a Catholic hospital?) If you don't want that level of coercion, then either you need to give up on the idea that health care is a right, or you need to give up on the idea that health coverage will be provided primarily by private employers.

I vote for giving up the second idea.

Assif Mandvi Punks Florida

by: Tom B

Fri Feb 03, 2012 at 12:26:21 PM CST

Oh well, didn't come here to talk about that.  Came here to offer this take on Skeletors insult to working Americans everywhere that turned out to be a total flipping bust and that cost the taxpayers beaucoup bucks, much of which apparently went into his own pocket.

Rise of Israeli far right provides early warning for us

by: Ted Frier

Fri Feb 03, 2012 at 12:16:14 PM CST

When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003 and took possession of a troubled land that was more geographic expression than country (as Metternich once said of Italy), I remember thinking at the time that we were far less likely to export democracy to Iraqis than Iraqis were to teach us about how fragile are the cultural foundations upon which democracy rests.

American society has been fracturing for some time. This is due to many factors: growing anxiety over jobs in a global economy; changing demographics as the nation becomes less white and Christian; the rise of identity politics, specifically more politically aggressive religious groups; and communications technologies that let people self-segregate by ideology.

What may have once been an academic curiosity has now metastasized into a genuine concern: Intensifying political polarization is threatening the ability of our community to hold together as both our politics and our government become increasingly dysfunctional.

To better understand one's country and its own internal dynamics it is often advantageous to step away and see what lessons might be learned by studying the experience of other countries.

And for America this is especially true of the Middle East, where the more intimately America becomes entangled with that troubled region the more our own domestic politics absorb through osmosis the Middle East's pathologies and torments as well.

Christian fundamentalists, for example, are not merely obsessed with Israel because daydreaming about the Jewish State's eventual destruction by the armies of the Anti-Christ at the Battle of Armageddon lets them act out their rapture fantasies from the Book of Revelation. The Religious Right also draws inspiration from Israel for what the Right might be able to accomplish here as they watch ultra-Orthodox groups transform Israel's democracy into a Jewish theocracy.

In an article titled "The Troubling Rise of Israel's Far Right," New Republic literary editor Leon Wieseltier cites reports in the New York Times showing that the list of controversies - and confrontations -- between secular and ultra-Orthodox Jews is growing weekly.

Organizers of a conference on women's health, for example, barred women from speaking from the podium.

Ultra-Orthodox men spit on an eight-year-old girl "whom they deemed immodestly dressed."

The chief rabbi of the Israeli Air Force resigned because the army would not excuse ultra-Orthodox soldiers from attending events where female singers perform.  

Jerusalem's police commander was depicted as Hitler on posters because he allowed public buses with mixed-sex seating to drive through ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods in violation of that sect's religious dogmas -- something American Catholic bishops might want to think about as they continue to pummel President Obama over coverage for contraception in health care plans.

Ultra-Orthodox Jews even went so far as to prohibit a distinguished woman scholar whose book on pediatrics was being honored from sitting with her husband or accepting her prize in person since women were forbidden from stepping onto the stage.

The New York Times article, said Wieseltier "provoked widespread revulsion."  

The origin of the problem, both there and here, is religion in politics. "Like all liberal societies, says Wieseltier, "Israeli society contains anti-liberal elements, and these anti-liberal elements, both religious and secular, have become increasingly prominent, and increasingly wanton, and increasingly sickening."

The "odious misogyny of the ultra-Orthodox" is not yet typical of Israeli life in general since the ultra-Orthodox have seceded from it, says Wieseltier. But gender discrimination is typical of traditional Judaism where "there is no equality between men and women in theory and in practice."

Whatever freedom women enjoy in Jewish religious life, he says, "has been accomplished by movements and institutions that have broken with the inherited understandings."

There are many rabbis, even among the more orthodox, "who have shown glimmers of compassion for women and tried to mitigate their doctrinal contempt for secular Jews," says Wieseltier. But more typical is the rabbi who said that: "Only one who believes in the God of Israel and in the Torah of Israel is entitled to be called by the name 'Jew.'"

Using that standard, said Wieseltier, one of the more extreme Jewish sects declared that the total Jewish population in the world amounts to only about one million.

"Our worst enemies never eliminated so many of us," said Wieseltier.

As the radicalization of Israeli Judaism continues apace, Wieseltier said the bigger problem is that "Israeli politics is open to these closers."  That is especially true given the outsized influence Israel's parliamentary democracy gives to small parties.

If Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is disgusted by the tightening grip of orthodoxy in his country he doesn't seem to be doing much to stop it, says Wieseltier. "Nobody ever suffered political damage by pandering to obscurantism and folk religion," he says. "And that is how gender segregation came to some of the public sphere of a secular state."

All these developments are unique in their own way, "but the pattern is hard not to see," says Wieseltier. "There are fevers on the right, anti-democratic fevers. These are the excrescences of Benjamin Netanyahu's base. The outrage is not that these forces have gone too far, but that they have gone anywhere at all."

The pattern is also hard not to see here in America.  

A perfect example of the same kind of orthodox-fueled fracturing that Israel is suffering right now occurred just this week in the otherwise inexplicable schism that now exists between Planned Parenthood and the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation.

That two organizations so committed to the vital fight for women's health would now be at bitter loggerheads, is a stunning reminder of how single-minded orthodoxies let nothing stand in their way of achieving their ideological obsessions.

"We're talking about breast cancer here!" said one exasperated women's health advocate when she first heard the news that Komen was pulling funding from Planned Parenthood.  

As Daily Beast's Michelle Goldberg reports, in the 24 hours after Komen announced its decision to pull $700,000 in funding, Planned Parenthood raised about $400,000 from outraged supporters online. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg chipped in $250,000 and the Amy and Lee Fikes Foundation also donated another $250,000.

Within the Komen organization itself, the Connecticut affiliate publicly rebuked the parent agency over the new policy, says Goldberg, writing on its Facebook wall: "Susan G. Komen for the Cure Connecticut enjoys a great partnership with Planned Parenthood, and is currently funding Planned Parenthood of Southern New England. We understand, and share, in the frustration around this situation."

The Denver Komen affiliate said it too planned to continue grants to Planned Parenthood no matter what the organization's top executives might have to say about it.

And so it begins: the unraveling, fracturing and eventual disintegration of organizations and communities invaded by the cancer of right wing orthodoxy and which fail to find a cure. My guess is that unless is does an immediately about face, in a few short years the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation will no longer exist.  Let that be a lesson to it.  

Songs to Fight the Plutocracy By: "Talking Dustbowl Blues"

by: Yellow Dog

Fri Feb 03, 2012 at 11:00:00 AM CST

Uploaded by banjostead

Lyrics here.

Haiti Two Years Later: Progress and Hope

by: Yellow Dog

Fri Feb 03, 2012 at 05:00:00 AM CST

Carl Hiaasen is no naif or pollyanna. If he says things are getting better in Haiti, you can believe it.

The news of the day is burning with big questions:

Who'll be the next head coach of the Dolphins? Why is Rosie O'Donnell killing hammerhead sharks? Is Khloe Kardashian really a Kardashian?

And each of those stories is being devoured and debated by many thousands of readers, far more than are looking at the sober bylined reports from Haiti, which last week marked the two-year anniversary of its catastrophic earthquake.

Even before that disaster, Haiti was a place of such hellish poverty and corruption that people on the outside often turned away because it was all too much, too sad, too hopeless.

And too close to home.

The 7.0 earthquake was freakishly fierce for that part of the Caribbean, and it seemed to be almost a preternatural act of cruelty. No country in the hemisphere was more vulnerable and ill-prepared. Still the devastation was shocking.

Eventually the number of fatalities surpassed 300,000, a mind-blowing figure, almost 20 times higher than the death toll from last year's Japanese earthquake and tsunami. For a few weeks the world took notice - volunteers arrived by the planeload in Port-au-Prince, and supplies poured in along with money.

Two years later, the question is: How is Haiti?

Of course it's still poor, still in desperate need of jobs, competent political leadership and decent housing. More than half a million Haitians left homeless by the quake still live in tent cities, and a cholera outbreak a year ago killed more than 4,000, including many children.

Last week brought peaceful street demonstrations by those exasperated with the slow pace of rebuilding and the lack of work. Sadly, Haiti has no history of efficient governance and no template to work from.

SNIP

Throughout the long recovery, celebrities (including one of the genetically verified Kardashians) have popped in and out of the country. If nothing else, such fleeting though well-publicized appearances serve to remind distracted segments of the world public that Haiti is still there, still hanging on.

Others are in it for the long haul.

A musician who is a friend of mine has quietly funded a new grade school in the countryside. The actor, Sean Penn, arrived in Port-au-Prince shortly after the earthquake and was so overwhelmed that he's been a fixture ever since. He manages a tent camp for 55,000 persons who lost their homes in the disaster.

Dr. Paul Farmer, whose intrepid Partners in Health organization has been operating medical clinics for years in Haiti, last week described plans for a 320-bed teaching hospital - the country's largest.

It is being built with private funds in the city of Mirebalais. When finished, the earthquake-proof facility will treat about 500 patients a day. Given the scarcity of good healthcare in Haiti, this is nothing short of a godsend.

Then there's former President Bill Clinton, whose interest in Haiti also predates the earthquake, and who has surely spent more street time there than any American political figure past or present. He returned again last week to mark the anniversary of the tragedy by visiting a Timberland shoe factory in an industrial park where about 7,000 Haitians are employed.

Clinton has been relentlessly pushing for more foreign investment in Haiti's private sector, which is its only true hope for moving forward. While the earthquake brought a gusher of humanitarian funds from the United States, Canada, Brazil and other nations, the long-term prospects depend on firms like the Korean garment company that's sinking serious money into a Haiti-based manufacturing operation.

Two years is hardly enough time to erase a century of ruinous policies, violent politics and graft, but there is something happening that resembles progress. For example, more people in Port-au-Prince can now get clean water than before the quake.

A new hospital here, a new factory there - these are small miracles but must be multiplied for Haiti to lift itself from the rubble of 2010. It won't happen without the likes of Farmer, Clinton and others who are keeping this important story alive.