A Wall Street Government?

There is another name for a government by and for the corporations....

Yeah... it's that other F-word: Fascism.

All Means to Attract and Distract...

  

As Thomas Frank said in his book What's the matter with Kansas?

These voters are far more concerned with the frustrations and indignities of everyday life than with scholarly rigor or objective material interests, they suffer from old man’s disorder, their deafness to the insincerity of their leaders is a cultural marvel, it is a place where hatred trumps bread, and I have worse to say.

Yes, we know all that, but what will Tiger Woods think!  And more importantly, since Elin was married to the world's greatest sex-freak, will she ever be satisfied with anyone else between the sheets!  Again, what do the sheeple think?

Dean Baker: The Numbers Game

Dean Baker, economist and Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, has an opinion piece in the Huffington Post that is a clarion call about the economic "numbers game" that has been run by the architects of the new Gilded Age.

He asks the basic question:

If this disaster was preventable and we know how to get out of it, why didn't our leaders try to stop it before it happened? Why don't they take the steps necessary now to get the economy moving again?

The answer is obvious:

The answer to both these questions is simple; the politicians work for someone else. On Election Day, the politicians might need our votes, but they won't get to be serious contenders unless they've gotten the campaign contributions of the big money crew. And the moneyed elite has been using its control of the political process to ensure that an ever larger share of the economy's output is redistributed upward in their direction.

He goes on to explain that over the past 30-years, corporations and the wealthy, have bought politicians at the local, state, and federal levels who have crafted legislation that promotes inequality, reduces safety networks for middle class and poor citizens, and marginalizes the earning capacity of the middle class via globalization.

He explains:

For example, they wrote trade rules that were designed to put downward pressure on the wages of the bulk of the U.S. workforce by placing manufacturing workers in direct competition with low-paid workers in China and other developing countries. This had nothing to do with a belief in "free trade." They did not try to subject lawyers, doctors or other highly paid workers to the same sort of international competition. They only wanted international competition to put downward pressure on the wages of workers in the middle and bottom, not those at the top.

This elite has instituted a system of corporate governance that allows top executives to pilfer companies at the expense of their shareholders and its workers. Top executives are overseen only by a board of directors who owe their hugely overpaid sinecures to the executives they supervise. And of course the Wall Street barons themselves are given a license to gamble with the implicit promise that government picks up their tab when they lose.

As this blog has written (here, here, here, and here), neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are interested in providing a sustainable framework, where the majority of Americans can get a quality education, pursue meaningful life long employment, and engage in building a dream of a more equitable and fair world.  Instead, both parties pursue a scorched-earth policy against the majority of the country's citizens, by providing greater benefits to the top 1% of the population, while pushing the remaining middle-class into perpetual debt and eventual pauperdom.

Unfortunately, the propagandists keep the masses well agitated and entertained through truly mind-warping concepts like:

• Did Bill and Hillary kill Vince Foster?
• The OJ case.
• 9-11 was a conspiracy committed by the Bush junta!
• Was Barack Obama born in the USA?
• The rise of Barack's Socialist/Fascist/African dystopia!
• Obama is a Muslim terrorist sympathizer!
• Anything said by Sarah Palin
• Anna Nicole's drugged corpse
• Kate and Jon's idiotic children and their ridiculous lives.
• Octo-Mom
• Michael Jackson's court cases, pedophile accusations, and finally his drugged corpse

Only when the masses realize how they have been completely sold out by the politicans and their own citizens, will anything meaningful begin to occur.

Interesting People: Joumana Haddad

The title of the Guardian newspaper's (UK) article is Joumana Haddad: 'I live in a country that hates me.'

Ms. Joumana Haddad is a citizen of Lebanon, where she is an author, poet, editor of a local newspaper, and according to the article, a subversive element.   Assailants have taunted her with the threat of having acid being thrown in her face and murder, all for publishing and openly discussing matters of sexuality.  She edits the the cultural section of a newspaper that "contains serious reportage about polygamy, virginity and forced marriage, but also erotic stories and personal testimony."  Her most recent work, a book called I Killed Scheherazade: Confessions of An Angry Arab Woman, contains in her words, a "vivid assertion of individuality, free speech, free choice and dignity against religious bigotry, prejudice and the herd instinct both within and outside the Arab world, and within and outside Islam."

The article expands on her upbringing, beliefs, and personal philosophy.  She describes the Islamists as:

"These backward-looking obscurantists" – Arab defenders of chastity – "are thieves. They are desecrators. They are murderers. And, on top of everything, they are stupid. And this is perhaps the cruelest blow."

It also describes her state of being:

She also knows, however, that she is damaged, rudderless in a profound way, and that one of the results is that she is attracted to transgression for transgression's sake. Her achievement is to tether that instinct to her cause and to enact her beliefs; her recklessness in doing so is brave and immensely admirable, but also makes one slightly worried for her. Behind the laughter and defiance lurks a sense of what her unconventional path might have cost.

Unlike the typical puffery that is found in most biographical articles, this one is introspective and multi-dimensional.  Ms. Haddad's experiences, life struggles, and philosophy provide insights into the difficulties faced in challenging established cultural norms in modern Middle East countries.

Hallowed Ground and Charlatans...

There has been a lot of banter recently about WTC/ Ground Zero site as being hallowed ground.  For those who lost family members in the devastating terrorist attacks, the site no doubt invokes many passions and notions of what is sacred.  However, the argument that is being offered is not about Ground Zero per se, but about the appropriate manner of land usage surrounding the site and lower Manhattan specifically.

McClatchy Press has a good summary of the debate currently raging in the MSM about the proposed Cordoba cultural center to be constructed at Park51 place, two blocks from Ground Zero.  I'll highlight a few of the important points.

• Current plans for the cultural center include, "a 13-story, $100 million multi-use facility that's modeled after the city's popular 92nd Street Y. It would house a pool, gymnasium, a 500-seat auditorium for public events, and a Sept. 11 memorial, in addition to a prayer space."  Portraying the center, one that will ostensibly be used primarily as a gymnasium and memorial to the 9-11 victims, as solely and explicitly as a mosque, is simply dishonest.
• No one religion or ethnicity was targeted during the attack.  People from numerous countries and many religions, including Islam, died on that day.  All those people died because they were at the wrong place at the wrong time.
• The article provides some of the other commercial and non-profit activities within proximity of Ground Zero:  a strip club called the New York Dolls gentleman's club, an off-track betting parlor and smaller mosque that's been there for four decades. The New York Daily News recently tallied the businesses within a three-block area of the World Trade Center site — 17 pizza shops, 18 bank branches, 11 bars, 10 shoe stores and "17 salons where a girl can get her lady parts groomed."
• The people behind the center have been applauded by both the Bush and Obama Administrations, as voices of religious moderation and have assisted America's state department and intelligence units against violent extremism.

Although a number of prominent politicians, such as NY's Mayor Michael Bloomberg, have supported the proposed cultural center, many others have issued vitriolic and unsubstantiated statements.  For example, Newt Gingrich stated that because Saudi Arabia does not permit churches and synagogues in their country, then it is natural that Americans should equally be permitted to engage in such territorial and religious bigotry.  Apparently the former Speaker of the House of Representatives is unable to remember that the US constitution's first amendment explicitly and unequivocally guarantees the right to individual religious worship:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Equally, perennial buffoon Sarah Palin, has demanded that Muslims "refudiate" the project.  As an American, she is entitled to her own demented view of a flat earth-centric universe; however, she is not entitled to her own exclusive language.  Palin is a dangerous and deranged demagogue who is interested solely in extending the cult of Sarah to television viewers and right-wing radio listeners in America's racist and conservative conclaves.  Her bizarre contribution to the argument, while confusing to those of us in the reality-based universe, serve to divide Americans and further inflame international hostilities towards the nation as a whole.

Anytime government in collusion with popular sentiment serves to undermine the liberties and rights of law-abiding minorities, then it is not a matter of democracy, but a question of injustice.  America has a long and sordid history of intolerance, bigotry, and violence against minority groups.  Do we really need to be reminded that the only reason America exists today, is because it murdered its original inhabitants, stole their land, and broke nearly every treaty ever signed with them in the past 200+ years?  We and civil minded Americans should step back and think about what Abraham Lincoln said on his first Presidential inaugural address to the citizens of America:

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

The First Ground Zero Mosque - The Original World Trade Towers!

An article in Slate illustrates the profound conceptual disconnect most people have between what the actual World Trade Towers were and its relation to Bin Laden and the 9-11 attacks.  Given the ignominious and bigoted diatribe offered by both the right and left on the subject of the Cordoba House Project in New York City near ground zero (discussed here, here, and here), this is a welcome anodyne.

The original towers were designed by Minoru Yamasaki, a Japanese American, who gained popularity with the House of Saud (The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) in the early 1950's.  Many of his designs, including the entire World Trade Tower complex as constructed in the 1970's, used Islamic themes and architectural conceits.  The article outlines a few of these elements in the overall WTC design:

• At the base of the towers, Yamasaki used implied pointed arches—derived from the characteristically pointed arches of Islam—as a transition between the wide column spacing below and the dense structural mesh above.
• Yamasaki replicated the plan of Mecca's courtyard by creating a vast delineated square, isolated from the city's bustle by low colonnaded structures and capped by two enormous, perfectly square towers—minarets, really. Yamasaki's courtyard mimicked Mecca's assemblage of holy sites—the Qa'ba (a cube) containing the sacred stone, what some believe is the burial site of Hagar and Ishmael, and the holy spring—by including several sculptural features, including a fountain, and he anchored the composition in a radial circular pattern, similar to Mecca's.
• The dense filigree of complex geometries alludes to a higher spiritual reality in Islam, and the shimmering quality of Islamic patterning relates to the veil that wraps the Qa'ba at Mecca.

The author of the Slate article infers that the Bin Laden family's construction company were intimately associated with many of the projects that occurred in Saudi Arabia and Osama Bin Laden, himself, would have been well aware of Yamaski's utilization of Islamic themes.  She then postulates that one of the rationals, although not necessarily the primary reason, for Bin Laden to attack the WTC towers, was that the buildings represented an intermixing of the Islam, modernity, and international capitalism. 

To Bin Laden, the World Trade Center was probably not only an international landmark but also a false idol.

It should also be understood, that the attack on 9-11, contrary to the facile arguments posited by the MSM and the Bush Administration, were not merely an attack on America.  Michael Scheuer, former CIA counter-terrorism expert on Bin Laden, explained in his book Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror, that the attacks were meant to provoke the US to expand their presence in the Middle East and engage in a clash of the civilizations battle with Islam that would destabilize apostate and pro-American regimes, eventually forcing the Americans and their lackeys into permanent retreat; like that of the Soviet Union during their Afghan conflict.  Bin Laden, in 2007, stated that if people wanted to understand the conflict, that they should, "read the book of Michael Scheuer in this regard."

Bears, Beer, and Queers: Just Another Canadian Summer

According to the CBC, Police in British Columbia have broken up a marijuana grow-up operation approximately 350-km outside Vancouver.  BC-bud is hardly a new thing in the province.  What is unique, is that the grow-up was being "guarded" by a family of ten bears!

RCMP offices determined that the bears had been living on the property for some time and being used by the grow-up operators to prevent others from stealing the pot-plants.  CBC News reports:

"[Officers] soon noticed the bears were docile and tame," Mansveld told CBC News. "One of them jumped on our unmarked car for a while. But it soon became apparent they were habituated to the grow operation."

In Canada, unlike its American neighbour to the south, which is suffering from the fallout of the Great Recession, the failures of the Bush Administration's Middle East wars, and the toxic Culture-wars promoted by right-wing loons, the country is relatively well off.  So it's no surprise when the Canadian news is filled with bears, beer, and Justin Bieber sightings!  The latter I'm told is the most dangerous to social well being if you're in the company of tweenies.

Quote of the Day: ECB Austerity Proponents are Dunces

The ECB’s arguments look to me like scraping the bottom of the intellectual barrel. The truth is that it is not fear of government bankruptcy, but governments’ determination to balance the books, that is reducing business confidence by lowering expectations of employment, incomes, and orders. The problem is not the hole in the budget; it is the hole in the economy.

- Robert Skidelsky, "Fixing the Right Hole", Project Syndicate

I'm Pat 'Fucking' Tillman

That's my new salutation.

"How's your day Bub?"

"I'm Pat 'Fucking' Tillman!  Fuck You!" Will be my response.

"But you're not Pat, jackass.  You're a fucking nobody."

"That's why I'm Tillman, motherfucker. The dead don't get a sequel. So it's up to me; us regular Joe's, who are fucking nobodies, to run the ball down the field in the face of your accepted lies; through the blizzard of your propaganda; pivoting around the miserable hacks and sycophants, who you parade around on the playing field in their expensive wears and high-end jewellery, and telling us little people how much we need them in order for us to exist. It's up to me to soldier on, by channelling my contempt towards punishing you everyday, even when I'm losing yardage."

"I'm Pat 'Fucking' Tillman!"

I never watched Pat on television. Although I played the game in high school, I don't care for it.  I also played war too, and shot my share of cowboys, Indians, and assorted desperados. So maybe I'm just indoctrinated through youthful exuberance to find you and your whole crew ridiculous.

Maybe this is my Tyler Durden moment. Although, I've long thrown away my Ikea catalogues, I'm pretty sure that I'm not free. But that's how you like it.  After all, the world is made up of slaves and masters. It always has.  On the one hand, there are those who imprison themselves with their want of bullshit and need to prostitute themselves to the priests of high commerce or some other cult.  I don't know when it occurs for everyone, but at some point along the way these folks begin to believe that their abductors are actually interested in their well being and that these hostage takers, may be trying to elevate them though slavery. Happiness you know; happiness is through slavery.

On the other side are the pushers, the dealers, the pimp who beats you down every time you question his motives, that teacher that lied to you in school, and that bigot who never gave you a chance.  The truth of the matter, is I don't need your diseased spreading ass.  And that's where Pat comes in.

"I'm Pat 'Fucking' Tillman!"

American Gothic

These images, by photographers of the Farm Security Administration/ Office of War Information, are some of the only color photographs taken of the effects of the Depression on America’s rural and small town populations. The photographs are the property of the Library of Congress and were included in a 2006 exhibit Bound for Glory: America in Color.

http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2010/07/26/captured-america-in-color-from-1939-1943/

 

 

Matthew Simmons, Peak-Oil Proponent dead at 67

Matthew R. Simmons, long time oil industry analyst and author of the much discussed book Twilight in the Desert, which proposed of the idea that we have already passed peak-oil, was found dead at his home in Maine from an apparent heart attack.

Bloomberg elaborates on the theme of peak-oil, which Simmons is most associated with:

On a tour of Saudi Arabia’s oil industry in 2003, Simmons was inspired to estimate the world’s largest oil reserves, and from research that included poring through neglected engineering data, determined that the country was close to or nearing peak output, Peter Maass wrote in his book, “Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil.”

"He built his own energy firm and, having done that successfully, used his knowledge of the industry to challenge one of its biggest accepted truths -- that there are nearly unlimited quantities of oil in the world.”

The concept of peak oil, (which I discussed in an earlier blog entry) is a function of the availability of crude reserves in relation to both time and cost.  As easily extractable sources of crude oil are consumed and more nations transition to first-world levels of industrialization and production, demand increases.  Shortly after peak oil, there will be insufficient supplies of petroleum causing global cost inflation, on nearly everything, and diminished availability.   M King Hubbard, first predicted that North American oil production would "peak" between 1965 and 1970; a physical event that did occur and is not disputed.  Simmons estimated that on a global level we reached peak oil in 2005.  While the actual date is of debate, there is little doubt based on quantitative analysis, that peak oil is real and we need to understand the immediate implications of that fact.   The first graph below, outlines global petroleum extraction levels versus time, consistent with Hubbard's (and Simmons') predictions. 

The second graph provides a timeline of America's actual proven petroleum reserves.

Given that virtually all transportation, manufacturing, and major military activities are related to the use of petroleum based products, volatility in its availability and price pose severe concerns to modern society.  The OPEC oil embargoes of the early 1970's, both Persian Gulf wars conducted by the Americans, pre-2008 agricultural commodity bubbles, and numerous revolutions in the 20th C. were a direct result of oil politics.

There are numerous opponents to Simmons' view of peak oil, who refer to his modelling as too simplistic and biased towards Malthusian conceits.   However, even if that was the fact, how long are we as a civilization going to continue to utilize oil as our primary energy source, when it has been proven that its use is causing climate change and destabilizing ecosystems across the globe.  These critics, which are primarily bankrolled by the oil and gas industries, constantly dismiss the scientific consensus on this matter and employ bogus libertarian arguments on the intrusion of "big-government" to persuade the masses that there is no climate change occurring or worries about peak oil.  Unfortunately, because these corporations and their handmaidens in politics have either ignored the facts at hand or dithered, we are well past the point of no return on both these matters. 

Available petroleum will continue to decline, the planet will continue to get hotter, and people will persist in deluding themselves that nothing needs to be done until it is too late.  As Rorschach, from the movie The Watchmen says:

[They will] shout "Save us!"... They had a choice, all of them. They could have followed in the footsteps of good men ...Instead they followed the droppings of lechers... and didn't realize that the trail led over a precipice until it was too late. Don't tell me they didn't have a choice. Now the whole world stands on the brink, staring down into bloody Hell.

The Coming Environmental Collapse

The United Nation's Biodiversity Chief, Dr. Ahmed Djoghlaf, issued a unequivocal do-or-die statement to the governments of the world, regarding the implementation of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.  According to the UN's website, the convention's purpose is to achieve the following:

The Convention on Biological Diversity was inspired by the world community's growing commitment to sustainable development. It represents a dramatic step forward in the conservation of biological diversity, the sustainable use of its components, and the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the use of genetic resources.

To date however, not a single signatory has met its target to protect nature.  Planetary biodiversity is not an esoteric subject or a triviality to be dispensed with lightly.  Rather, it is a vital ecological principle that defines biosphere stability and hence the survival of the human species.  The web of life is an extraordinary complex and dynamic set of systems, which cycles nutrients and minerals, stabilizes global climate levels, and controls an enormous number of biological systems necessary for sustaining life from the Antarctic to the rainforests to the grain fields of the Great Plains in North America.  As this blog has been discussing for the past year (here, here, here, & here), the destruction of the biological commons; liquidation of forests; consuming all the ocean's fish; and toxification of the air, land, and sea with human waste and pollution will result in a world which is more fragile and susceptible to ecological collapse; i.e. human extinction.

The Guardian UK newspaper outlines the argument.  In the article, Djoghlaf warns countries, "It would be very short-sighted to cut biodiversity spending. You may well save a few pounds now but you will lose billions later. Biodiversity is your natural asset. The more you lose it, the more you lose your cultural assets too."   His warnings, made to the entire world community, implies that unless substantial policy changes are made and improvements at conserving biodiversity and managing ecosystem stability are achieved, many nations and their citizens will cease to exist in the future.

UCLA scientist Jared Diamond likewise has outlined in his book Collapse how human civilizations over the millenia have failed due to human caused environmental degradation.  Overpopulation, resource scarcity, misuse and abuse of natural resources, water management failures...etc. are all areas that have resulted in the decline and eventual demise of many societies throughout history.  Today, all nations are confronted with some, if not all, of these issues.  Loss of biodiversity and ecosystem instability is therefore a direct result of societies and humankind not addressing the individual and unique issues that ultimately are within their own control and perpetuating what historian Arnold Toynbee described as the collective suicide on the part of societies, when they fail to adapt to challenges of their time.

Quote of the Day: Roubini on Financial Regulations

Unless we make these radical [financial system] reforms, new Gordon Gekkos – and Charles Ponzis – will emerge. For each chastised and born-again Gekko – as the Gekko in the new Wall Street [movie by Oliver Stone] is – hundreds of meaner and greedier ones will be born.

- Nouriel Roubini, Gordon Gekko is Reborn, Project Syndicate

What Roubini is expounding, is that all the ethics and certification programs that have been touted for MBA students, will amount to nothing, unless the prime motivators for excessive risk and greed generation are curtailed.  He suggests four areas that must be effectively dealt with:

1. Compensation schemes for individuals must be realigned so that, "bonuses based on medium-term results of risky trades and investments must supplant bonuses based on short-term outcomes."
2. Reconstituting Glass-Steagall like regulations -which the watered down Volcker rule did not achieve in the recent financial system reform legislation- to separate the commercial banks, investment banks, and the institutions engaged in hedge fund-like casino capitalism.
3. The enormous conflict of interest that currently exists between financial firms and markets, needs to be resolved, permitting greater transparency to reign and allowing confidence in the overall market to be established.
4. Allowing all businesses, including their employees and shareholders, to understand that the government -that being the people's money- will not go towards bailing out their poor decisions; i.e. there should not exist too big too fail.

Since, the US government has not engaged in any meaningful regulatory scheme to ensure that the above occurs, and has in fact gone in the opposite direction in relation to some of these points, we can only assume that the concept of regulatory capture can now be extended to the US Congress as a whole and the office of the President of the United States.  The financial industry alone has spent $251 million this past year to manipulate the legislative process in their favor.  Collectively, they spent more than any other industry group between the months of April and June ($126 million).  Goldman Sachs and  JP Morgan Chase alone, spent in the first half of 2010 as much as they spent all last year (2009) chasing down congressmen, senators, and those involved in regulatory decision making.

The game is rigged folks.  If you think any of these rich, pretentious assholes in the corner office of these banks or in the House of Representatives care about the little people on the street or democracy, you probably still think voting for Democrats or Republicans will make a difference.  It won't.

"Helicopter" Ben Bernanke now with Kung Fu Grip

You too can imagine the day when you will be richer than you thought possible, when Helicopter Ben shows up on the horizon with his duffel bags of loot!

Yeah... a lost decade with Japanese-like deflation will be slayed by Helicopter Ben and merry printing presses of the Federal Reserve.  Let's see Greenspan look so cool!

Pancreatic cancers use fructose, common in the Western diet, to fuel their growth

Pancreatic cancers use fructose, common in the Western diet, to fuel their growth

According to UCLA researchers everything gives you cancer can now be officially extended to fructose. The research examined the metabolic differences of pancreatic cancer cells when given glucose or fructose as monomeric carbohydrate sources. Conventional biochemistry would imply that there should not be a significant difference between the isomers. However, upon analysis it was found "that cancer cells can readily metabolize fructose to increase proliferation. They have major significance for cancer patients, given dietary refined fructose consumption."

Pancreatic cancers use the sugar fructose, very common in the Western diet, to activate a key cellular pathway that drives cell division, helping the cancer to grow more quickly, a study by researchers at UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center has found.

Although it's widely known that cancers use glucose, a simple sugar, to fuel their growth, this is the first time a link has been shown between fructose and cancer proliferation, said Dr. Anthony Heaney, an associate professor of medicine and neurosurgery, a Jonsson Cancer Center researcher and senior author of the study.

"The bottom line is the modern diet contains a lot of refined sugar including fructose and it's a hidden danger implicated in a lot of modern diseases, such as obesity, diabetes and fatty liver," said Heaney, who also serves as director of the Pituitary Tumor and Neuroendocrine Program at UCLA. "In this study, we show that cancers can use fructose just as readily as glucose to fuel their growth."

The study appeared in the Aug. 1 issue of the peer-reviewed journal Cancer Research.

The source of fructose in the Western diet is high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), a corn-based sweetener that has been on the market since about 1970. HFCS accounts for more than 40 percent of the caloric sweeteners added to foods and beverages, and it is the sole sweetener used in American soft drinks.

Between 1970 and 1990, the consumption of HFCS in the U.S. has increased over 1,000 percent, according to an article in the April 2004 issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Food companies use HFCS - a mixture of fructose and glucose - because it's inexpensive, easy to transport and keeps foods moist. And because it is so sweet, it's cost effective for companies to use small quantities of HCFS in place of more expensive sweeteners or flavorings.

In his study, Heaney and his team took pancreatic tumors from patients and cultured and grew the malignant cells in Petri dishes. They then added glucose to one set of cells and fructose to another. Using mass spectrometry, they were able to follow the carbon-labeled sugars in the cells to determine what exactly they were being used for and how.

Heaney found that the pancreatic cancer cells could easily distinguish between glucose and fructose even though they are very similar structurally, and contrary to conventional wisdom, the cancer cells metabolized the sugars in very different ways. In the case of fructose, the pancreatic cancer cells used the sugar in the transketolase-driven non-oxidative pentose phosphate pathway to generate nucleic acids, the building blocks of RNA and DNA, which the cancer cells need to divide and proliferate.

"Traditionally, glucose and fructose have been considered as interchangeable monosaccharide substrates that are similarly metabolized, and little attention has been given to sugars other than glucose," the study states. "However, fructose intake has increased dramatically in recent decades and cellular uptake of glucose and fructose uses distinct transporters … These findings show that cancer cells can readily metabolize fructose to increase proliferation. They have major significance for cancer patients, given dietary refined fructose consumption."

As in anti-smoking campaigns, a federal effort should be launched to reduce refined fructose intake, Heaney said.

"I think this paper has a lot of public health implications," Heaney said. "Hopefully, at the federal level there will be some effort to step back on the amount of HFCS in our diets."  Heaney said that while this study was done in pancreatic cancer, these finding may not be unique to that cancer type.

Going forward, Heaney and his team are exploring whether it's possible to block the uptake of fructose in the cancer cells with a small molecule, taking away one of the fuels they need to grow. The work is being done in cell lines and in mice, Heaney said.

Garbage Posed to Clog China's Three Gorges Dam

Another article underlying that all is not alright with China or its environment. 

The Wall Street Journal outlines that as a result of recent rainfall across mainland China, massive levels of garbage and detritus have accumulated in river systems upstream of the the Three Gorges Dam and are posed to congest the dam's miter gate.  It is estmated that more than 150 million people live near the dam and its upper stream. Residents, due to inadequate waste removal facilities, routinely dump their household garbage directly into the river. As more people transition from low-productivity agrarian subsistence, to higher level urbanization and industrial production the overall problems are likely to increase, rather than diminish.

China’s state-controlled media continues to punch holes in the image of the mighty Three Gorges Dam.

The latest poke came via China Daily, the English-language government-run newspaper. In an article Monday, the paper warns a thick layer of garbage washed into the reservoir by torrential rains could jam a key floodgate on the world’s biggest dam.

“The large amount of waste in the dam area could jam the miter gate of the Three Gorges Dam,” Chen Lei, Three Gorges engineer, told the China Daily.

China has been coping with the deadliest floods in decades, with some 1,000 killed, stressing China’s poorly built infrastructure. Bridges have collapsed and authorities are rushing to reinforce dams and reservoirs cracking under the pressure.

Authorities have spoken publicly about problems at other dams, but this year’s unprecedented frankness about the Three Gorges in state media raises other questions. One of the Three Gorges biggest selling points was its ability to tame flooding on the Yangtze River. Critics say the dam could never live up to overhyped expectations on flood control.

In the past, domestic criticism was squashed as long as the dam’s chief proponent, former Premier Li Peng, had influence.

In the arcane shadow puppetry of China politics, perhaps all this trash talking against a project so closely linked to the former premier reflects some hidden political message?

Combined with increasing agricultural demands, encroaching deserts, water toxification, airborne pollution levels (which is estimated to cause 1.3 million premature deaths a year from respiratory disease) and industrial waste problems, China's ecological future appears grim.

Tony Judt, Political Historian, Dead at 62

“A well-organized society is one in which we know the truth about ourselves collectively, not one in which we tell pleasant lies about ourselves.”
- Tony Judt.

Tony Judt, a historian of postwar Europe, Israel, and America's foreign policies, was one of those academics who was loathed by persons on both the right and left of the political spectrum.  As The Guardian UK newspaper succinctly put it:

In his guise as a political and historical essayist, he was a fearless critic of narrow orthodoxies and bullying cliques, from communist apologists to the Israel lobby, from "liberal hawks" to progressive educationists. And his political writings have proved not only perceptive but often prophetic.

The obituaries in the NY Times, The Guardian, and other pieces such as Stephen M. Walt's Foreign Affairs tribute, define a man of commanding intellect and fierce moral clarity. 

Mark Lilla, a professor of history, stated in the NY Times Obit that Judt, "had the unusual ability to see and convey the big picture while, at the same time, going to the heart of the matter...Most academics do neither — they float in between. But Tony was able to talk about the big picture and explain why it matters now”

The Guardian describes Postwar, Judt's seminal work on Europe, as:

A History of Europe Since 1945... it was recognised as a masterpiece, acclaimed by scholars and a bestseller in several languages. It described how Europe had remade itself after the horrors of war, totalitarianism and mass murder, helped by some degree of wilful amnesia, although towards the end of the century many repressed memories were at last being recovered.

Whereas Stephen Walt comments:

Postwar is easily the best history of post-World War II Europe yet written, and it provides a compelling account of how a battered and divided continent rebuilt, rose again, and charted a new course for itself. It weaves social, political, and cultural commentary in a clear and compelling narrative, but there are fascinating detours along the way and no shortage of heroes and villains to identify and assess. It is a tour de force that demonstrates Judt's broad and deep learning, sharp critical powers, and a masterful command of language.

His scholarship lead him to clash with intellectual classes of France, European communists, Zionists, the right-wing neo-conservatives who instigated America's Iraq war policy, and the American liberal intelligentsia who likewise supported the failed Iraq war and post-9/11 perpetual warfare narrative.

Tony Judt died at the age of 62 from a variant of the motor neurone disease known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or popularly referred to as Lou Gehrig's disease.

Government Demands More Digitial Search Authority

Another effort is being pushed by the FBI to gain more information about the digital habits of Americans.  Specifically, the government -in this case the duplicitous and hypocritical Obama administration- has stated that it wants the FBI to obtain the capacity to request an individual's telecommunications history, including but not limited to internet search records, Internet history, and other quantitative data from their service provider without judicial oversight.

With the enormous expansion of the security state subsequent to 9-11, the FBI had already gained via National security letters (NSLs) the authority to obtain people's communication, financial and credit information. As the ACLU states

These requests are not approved by a court, and the FBI does not have to suspect you of actually being a terrorist, spy or criminal; the only thing they have to do to get your records is certify to themselves (not a court) that you are "relevant" to an investigation. To make matters worse, the FBI has the power to prohibit any Internet service provider, bank or credit company from which it demands sensitive customer records from ever disclosing anything about the record demand.

The Washington Post reports that contrary to government statements, NSLs have been aggressively used with repeated frequency.  For example,

The Justice Department issued 192,500 national security letters from 2003 to 2006, according to a 2008 inspector general report, which did not indicate how many were demands for Internet records. A 2007 IG report found numerous possible violations of FBI regulations, including the issuance of NSLs without having an approved investigation to justify the request. In two cases, the report found, agents used NSLs to request content information "not permitted by the [surveillance] statute."

Given that the government has always had the authority to request this information in the case of emergencies, why would they need to circumvent legal review and authorization? The answer is obvious. Various factions within the government don't want anyone to impede or limit their questionable antics, which as their own internal review process has confirmed is corrupt.  Fishing expeditions that pull in ever greater information about people, who do not pose a criminal threat, but a political threat is the new normal.  As discussed in an earlier blog, the various and competing intelligence agencies, in association with a massive quasi-corporate infrastructure, are obsessed with collecting ever more information about ordinary citizens and controling larger domains of state decision-making authority.  Collectively, the growing demands of these organizations are meant to institute state primacy over individuals, civil liberties, and democracy itself.

25% of China's Surface Water too Toxic to use for Anything

More revelations of the great Chinese miracle! According to ENN:

Almost a quarter of China's surface water remains so polluted that it is unfit even for industrial use, while less than half of total supplies are drinkable, data from the environment watchdog showed on Monday.

Inspectors from China's Ministry of Environmental Protection tested water samples from the country's major rivers and lakes in the first half of the year and declared just 49.3 percent to be safe for drinking, up from 48 percent last year, the ministry said in a notice posted on its website (www.mep.gov.cn).

China classifies its water supplies using six grades, with the first three grades considered safe for drinking and bathing.

China's industrial policies have always favored large scale growth at the expense of the environment and to the health of its populace.  Is there another country in the world, where more than 50% of surface water is so polluted that it unusable for human consumption?  These statistics, if even partially correct, indicate that the long term viability of the Chinese state is an illusion.   With fresh water supplies dwindling across the globe, it is undeniable that shortages of potable water will pose severe constraints on both the health of the average Chinese person and long term growth possibilities.

Screw the Pandas! It's Insects, Fungi, & Phytoplankton we Should Care About

Last week an important article relating to the profound decline in phytoplankton levels across the planet's oceans was released in Nature and briefly discussed on this blog.

The implication that marine ecosystems across the globe may be on the verge of collapse has elicited little public antipathy or official governmental concern.  Instead, the world continues to lumber onwards toward environmental armageddon, with the same willful ignorance that has dominated our species for millennia.  Few people wish to see the great pandas of China to go extinct, yet the Panda's overall necessity to the survival of humanity on the planet is zero.  That however, cannot be said of scores of plants, animals, and microscopic microorganisms that are essential to the maintenance and survivability of ecosystems everywhere. 

For the past two decades, biologists have been sending warnings to the rest of humanity that anthropogenic activities are precipitating a sixth massive extinction of life across the planet.  E.O. Wilson, for example, estimated in 1993 that the Earth is losing approximately thirty thousand species per year.   Human population expansion through the growth of civilization and industrialization, have reduced global biodiversity and species fitness to levels where our own existence has become imperilled.

In addition to marine phytoplankton, there are numerous species that are in decline, which are necessary for our civilization.  Pollinators, such as honeybees, have been in rapid decline over the past decade.  A third of everything humans consume and 90% of commercial crops are dependant upon honeybee pollination.  No single causative agent has been found to explain the dramatic and unsustainable decreases of these essential insects.  Although, pollution, pesticides, invasive foreign parasites and pathogens, and natural habitat decline, have all been cited as potential sources.

In the oceans, coral reefs are also being destroyed by pollution, ocean acidification, and habitat destruction.  Large ocean fish -like tuna, salmon, and swordfish- populations have either collapsed are on the verge of doing so.  Whales, dolphins, ocean faring birds like albatrosses, and other predatory fish are found to be emaciated and dying from starvation across the globe.  Entire swaths of the ocean are no longer capable of sustaining any life and have become dead zones, which are spreading rapidly.

Joining the endangered list are saprophytic organisms, such as beetles, fungi, and bacteria that decompose dead organic matter and facilitate in the cycling of nutrients.  In Europe, for example, research has estimated that 24% saprophilx beetles are under threat.

Thousands of other species, some of which we are not even aware of, are being decimated.  The survival of these species is inexorably linked to our own species.  If we as a collective cannot understand this or demand to advocate selfishness in the face of catastrophe, then there is no need to for further examination or discussion, because we will have succumb to the logic of mass suicide.