Este blog busca oferecer uma cobertura alternativa à mídia nacional dos fatos mais mobilizadores de nosso tempo
Na batalha por palavras chave no Google, a "agricultura orgânica" ganha disparado dos "alimentos transgênicos"
Alimentos transgênicos (GM foods) geram 162 mil resultados
Agricultura orgânica (organic agriculture) gera 218 mil resultados
Tente você mesmo...
É divertido...
Aqui
Resposta da editora de ciência de O Globo a uma crítica deste blogueiro a matéria tendenciosa sobre apoio da FAO aos transgênicos do referido jornal. Houve um tempo em que as mulheres eram flores amorosas.
Nossa!
Agora que o crime está indelevelmente inserido em nossa cultura de todos os dias (raps, camisetas, programas de tevê, livros), você não pode deixar de conhecer melhor a AK-47. É nossa modesta contribuição para a elevação da alma humana. (Em inglês)
Bang! Bang!
Neste excelente artigo de Mike Davis, autor de Cidade de Quartzo, você pode entender, dentre outras coisas, por que a Rocinha cresce vertiginosamente. Mas este é um fenômeno global. Já escolheu o barraco onde pretende passar a aposentadoria? Na New Left Review.
Trabalhadores nicaraguenses processam Dow e Shell, dentre outras, por contaminação pelo pesticida DBCP aspergido em plantações de bananas.
Embananados
Será que no Brasil jornalistas free-lancers têm direito de associação? Se tiverem, podemos destruir muitas corporações semi-falidas. A união faz a força!
Não vamos nos dispersar!
Ninguém na mídia oficial falou do movimento contra a cerimônia de casamento do príncipe espanhol. A mais nova luta dos movimentos antiglobalização. Novidade absoluta.
Fale agora ou cale-se para sempre
Recordar é viver. Nosso presidente está na China. Há algum tempo quem esteve lá foi Cora Ronai, em XANGAI. Sua estadia foi acidentada, razão pela qual produzi uma monografia para o mestrado em comunicação da UFRJ intitulada O turista acidentado, em sua homenagem. Aguarda publicação e me parece um trabalho sério. Com vocês, uma palinha:
A partir do estudo de caso envolvendo relatos de viagens à China (o radicalmente Outro) de uma respeitada jornalista de informática, pudemos constatar o vigor do anticosmopolitismo em tempos de globalização e de acentuada mobilidade. Concebendo a globalização como o estágio culminante do tripleto civilizatório ocidentalização/modernização/racionalização do mundo, vimos que a ambivalência será o grande fantasma da modernidade a ser erradicado, inclusive através da linguagem. Nos anos 40, com o advento da cibernética, saber que está na origem da hodierna sociedade da informação, a mesma ambivalência ganhará estatuto de ruído a ser eliminado para que a comunicação, sucedâneo da política no Ocidente, possa se estabelecer. Tal projeto de dominação fundado no primado de uma comunicação lisa (flat) trará resultados importantes na relação com a alteridade representada pelo Oriente. Desconstruindo-se o discurso da globalização a este nível, pudemos perceber sua total inépcia estrutural, assim como de seus prosélitos, no trato das candentes questões de nosso tempo envolvendo a diversidade cultural.
Eu confesso que tendo a achar que estão querendo transformar a Rocinha na Disneylandia da classe média. Depois que o filme Cidade de Deus nos ensinou a olhar no buraco da fechadura da pobreza e se deleitar com isso, já vejo hordas de representantes da classe média subindo a Rocinha munidos de máquinas fotográficas e bugingangas para acalmar o Outro. O Outro, esta figura do estranho que nos interpela e nos fascina. Já temos nossa Barbara Streisand também, a kitschficação do patriotismo aqui tem o nome de Fafá de Belém. Subindo na laje e cantando o hino é algo patético. Pois em um país decente, do qual tivéssemos orgulho de entoar o hino, ninguém moraria em um barraco. Quem é nosso Walt Disney dos empreendimentos da terra onde Jesus não tem dentes? Deixo com vocês a resposta.
Richard Rorty, em seu livro Achieving our country afirma que uma das grandes conquistas de nosso tempo foi nomear condutas reprováveis e torná-las assim passíveis de censura pública. Conceito recente é o de assédio moral, a humilhação sistemática perpetrada por superiores, que é tolerada pelo grupo de colegas que a testemunha num pacto de medo e silêncio. A maior perversidade do assédio moral é o fato de mesmo administradores democratas a tolerarem quando a produtividade é a vedete. Normalmente, os assediadores são pés-de-boi. Produzem muito. O problema é o custo moral desta produção.
Para saber mais: Assédio moral no trabalho: chega de humilhação!
O QUE ISRAEL ESTÁ FAZENDO PARA DIZIMAR OS PALESTINOS, COM O AUXILIO LUXUOSO DOS AMERICANOS
In These Times | End the Silence
SAUDADES DO MÉDICI?
F.B.I. Scrutinizes Antiwar Rallies
by Eric Lichtblau
WASHINGTON, Nov. 22 — The Federal Bureau of Investigation has collected extensive information on the tactics, training and organization of antiwar demonstrators and has advised local law enforcement officials to report any suspicious activity at protests to its counterterrorism squads, according to interviews and a confidential bureau memorandum.
The F.B.I. is dangerously targeting Americans who are engaged in nothing more than lawful protest and dissent. The line between terrorism and legitimate civil disobedience is blurred, and I have a serious concern about whether we're going back to the days of Hoover...What the F.B.I. regards as potential terrorism strikes me as civil disobedience.
Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union
The memorandum, which the bureau sent to local law enforcement agencies last month in advance of antiwar demonstrations in Washington and San Francisco, detailed how protesters have sometimes used "training camps" to rehearse for demonstrations, the Internet to raise money and gas masks to defend against tear gas. The memorandum analyzed lawful activities like recruiting demonstrators, as well as illegal activities like using fake documentation to get into a secured site.
F.B.I. officials said in interviews that the intelligence-gathering effort was aimed at identifying anarchists and "extremist elements" plotting violence, not at monitoring the political speech of law-abiding protesters.
The initiative has won the support of some local police, who view it as a critical way to maintain order at large-scale demonstrations. Indeed, some law enforcement officials said they believed the F.B.I.'s approach had helped to ensure that nationwide antiwar demonstrations in recent months, drawing hundreds of thousands of protesters, remained largely free of violence and disruption.
But some civil rights advocates and legal scholars said the monitoring program could signal a return to the abuses of the 1960's and 1970's, when J. Edgar Hoover was the F.B.I. director and agents routinely spied on political protesters like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
"The F.B.I. is dangerously targeting Americans who are engaged in nothing more than lawful protest and dissent," said Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. "The line between terrorism and legitimate civil disobedience is blurred, and I have a serious concern about whether we're going back to the days of Hoover."
Herman Schwartz, a constitutional law professor at American University who has written about F.B.I. history, said collecting intelligence at demonstrations is probably legal.
But he added: "As a matter of principle, it has a very serious chilling effect on peaceful demonstration. If you go around telling people, `We're going to ferret out information on demonstrations,' that deters people. People don't want their names and pictures in F.B.I. files."
The abuses of the Hoover era, which included efforts by the F.B.I. to harass and discredit Hoover's political enemies under a program known as Cointelpro, led to tight restrictions on F.B.I. investigations of political activities.
Those restrictions were relaxed significantly last year, when Attorney General John Ashcroft issued guidelines giving agents authority to attend political rallies, mosques and any event "open to the public."
Mr. Ashcroft said the Sept. 11 attacks made it essential that the F.B.I. be allowed to investigate terrorism more aggressively. The bureau's recent strategy in policing demonstrations is an outgrowth of that policy, officials said.
"We're not concerned with individuals who are exercising their constitutional rights," one F.B.I. official said. "But it's obvious that there are individuals capable of violence at these events. We know that there are anarchists that are actively involved in trying to sabotage and commit acts of violence at these different events, and we also know that these large gatherings would be a prime target for terrorist groups."
Civil rights advocates, relying largely on anecdotal evidence, have complained for months that federal officials have surreptitiously sought to suppress the First Amendment rights of antiwar demonstrators.
Critics of the Bush administration's Iraq policy, for instance, have sued the government to learn how their names ended up on a "no fly" list used to stop suspected terrorists from boarding planes. Civil rights advocates have accused federal and local authorities in Denver and Fresno, Calif., of spying on antiwar demonstrators or infiltrating planning meetings. And the New York Police Department this year questioned many of those arrested at demonstrations about their political affiliations, before halting the practice and expunging the data in the face of public criticism.
The F.B.I. memorandum, however, appears to offer the first corroboration of a coordinated, nationwide effort to collect intelligence regarding demonstrations.
The memorandum, circulated on Oct. 15 — just 10 days before many thousands gathered in Washington and San Francisco to protest the American occupation of Iraq — noted that the bureau "possesses no information indicating that violent or terrorist activities are being planned as part of these protests" and that "most protests are peaceful events."
But it pointed to violence at protests against the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank as evidence of potential disruption. Law enforcement officials said in interviews that they had become particularly concerned about the ability of antigovernment groups to exploit demonstrations and promote a violent agenda.
"What a great opportunity for an act of terrorism, when all your resources are dedicated to some big event and you let your guard down," a law enforcement official involved in securing recent demonstrations said. "What would the public say if we didn't look for criminal activity and intelligence at these events?"
The memorandum urged local law enforcement officials "to be alert to these possible indicators of protest activity and report any potentially illegal acts" to counterterrorism task forces run by the F.B.I. It warned about an array of threats, including homemade bombs and the formation of human chains.
The memorandum discussed demonstrators' "innovative strategies," like the videotaping of arrests as a means of "intimidation" against the police. And it noted that protesters "often use the Internet to recruit, raise funds and coordinate their activities prior to demonstrations."
"Activists may also make use of training camps to rehearse tactics and counter-strategies for dealing with the police and to resolve any logistical issues," the memorandum continued. It also noted that protesters may raise money to help pay for lawyers for those arrested.
F.B.I. counterterrorism officials developed the intelligence cited in the memorandum through firsthand observation, informants, public sources like the Internet and other methods, officials said.
Officials said the F.B.I. treats demonstrations no differently than other large-scale and vulnerable gatherings. The aim, they said, was not to monitor protesters but to gather intelligence.
Critics said they remained worried. "What the F.B.I. regards as potential terrorism," Mr. Romero of the A.C.L.U. said, "strikes me as civil disobedience."
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
Alo amigos,
peço desculpas pelo sumiço, mas é porque estou sem internet em casa e preparando-me para escrever a dissertação de mestrado. Mas hoje vamos vir com algumas atualizações.
CRESCE A VIOLÊNCIA!
THE TOP 100 CORPORATE CRIMINALS OF THE 1990's
1) F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd.
Type of Crime: Antitrust
Criminal Fine: $500 million
12 Corporate Crime Reporter 21(1), May 24, 1999
The Swiss pharmaceutical giant, F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., pled guilty and agreed to pay a record $500 million criminal fine for leading a worldwide conspiracy to raise and fix prices and allocate market shares for certain vitamins sold in the United States and elsewhere.
In Dallas, the Department of Justice charged the company with conspiring to fix, raise, and maintain prices, and allocate the sales volumes of vitamins sold by them and other unnamed co-conspirator companies in the U.S. and elsewhere.
Federal officials also allege that the company allocated contracts for vitamin premixes for customers throughout the U.S. and rigged the bids for those contracts.
The conspiracy lasted from January 1990 into February 1999 and affected the vitamins most commonly used as nutritional supplements or to enrich human food and animal feed -- vitamins A, B 2, B5, C, E, and Beta Carotene.
Vitamin premixes, which are used to enrich breakfast cereals and numerous other processed foods were also affected by the conspiracy, the Department said.
SILICONE: VERGONHOSA OMISSÃO
Há 11 anos atrás, a agência americana FDA informou que iria retirar as próteses de silicone do mercado, só as mantendo para as mulheres que precisariam de reconstrução da mama após cirurgias de câncer e para aquelas recrutadas em testes clínicos.
Isto porque os fabricantes não conseguiram provar que eram seguros. A eles cabia o ônus da prova.
Apesar disso, as próteses de silicone permanecem no mercado por três décadas. E a lista de dúvidas sobre elas é extensa, segundo a FDA.
We know that rupture rates leading silicone to spread throughout the body are extremely high over the long term -- occurring in more than half or two thirds of women after 10 years, according to two studies.
We don't know whether there is any link between the implants and immune-related disorders and other systemic diseases, though there is worrying evidence that they do.
No Brasil, os jornalistas amadores fizeram um carnaval enaltecendo as virtudes da prótese. Monique Evans as trocou, provavelmente por problemas de vazamento. Outras mulheres, em quantidade, devem ter enfrentado o mesmo problema. Já vejo a cena: Os médicos informam que não faz mal algum, antes de implantar. Depois, se algo ocorre basta eles dizerem que nada é 100% seguro. Facinho.
Se você quer saber toda a verdade sobre os implantes de silicone, clique aqui
Depois desse link e da matéria abaixo, os jornais brasileiros e a mídia de um modo geral poderia ser processada...
...se isso fosse um país sério, naturalmente.
Say No to Silicone
by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
Eleven years ago, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced it was pulling silicone breast implants from the market, leaving them available only to breast cancer survivors who needed them for reconstruction or to women enrolled in limited clinical studies.
The reason for the action, announced then-FDA Commissioner David Kessler, was that, under the law, "these types of products have to be shown by their manufacturer to be safe and effective before they may be distributed and used. Some people argue that the devices have to be proven unsafe before the FDA can act to protect patients against their use. This is not so. The burden of proof is an affirmative one and it rests with the manufacturer. In this instance, the manufacturers have not shown these devices to be safe."
Although silicone breast implants had been on the market for three decades, Kessler said, "the list of unanswered questions is long."
"We do not know how long these devices will last," he said.
"We know that some of these implants will rupture, but we don't know how many of them will rupture," he pointed out.
And, he said, "We don't know whether there is any link between the implants and immune-related disorders and other systemic diseases."
"Until these basic questions are satisfactorily answered, we cannot approve these devices."
Fast forward to the present.
Dow Corning, the leading manufacturer of silicone implants more than a decade ago, is in bankruptcy.
Inamed, a California-based company, is now seeking marketing authorization from the FDA for silicone breast implants.
More than a decade has passed since the FDA restricted sales of silicone implants, but Inamed only submitted to FDA three years worth of data from a study projected to continue for 10 years. The company sells silicone implants in Europe and more than 60 countries worldwide, but it hasn't collected any safety information from women in those countries that is of high enough quality to submit to FDA.
As a result, we still don't know the answers to many of the questions Kessler identified, and most of what we do know is frightening.
What we do know is that painful breast hardening which can lead to deformity, dead tissue, loss of nipple sensation, infections and rashes are common complications from silicone implants.
We know that rupture rates leading silicone to spread throughout the body are extremely high over the long term -- occurring in more than half or two thirds of women after 10 years, according to two studies.
We don't know whether there is any link between the implants and immune-related disorders and other systemic diseases, though there is worrying evidence that they do.
We started to ask Inamed spokesperson Peter Nicholson about these matters, but he'd only say that the data Inamed submitted to the FDA was available on the web, and the company would not be commenting further.
Inamed's data are indeed striking.
Even though the company reported on only three year's test results, the numbers show significant short-term problems. After just three years, one in five augmentation patients and almost half of reconstruction patients required additional surgeries.
Inamed's data did not show particularly high rupture rates during the three-year period of study -- in no small part because it only provided MRIs to about a third of the women in the study, and silicone rupture can only be detected through MRIs.
Inamed's data were replete with other flaws. For example, the company misleadingly claimed a low incidence of lactation problems, by comparing the incidence of problems to the overall population of women receiving augmentation, not just those who tried to breastfeed.
These and other problems were pointed out by advocacy groups at an FDA advisory committee hearing convened last month to issue a recommendation on whether Inamed's marketing application should be approved.
The advisory committee also heard heart-wrenching testimony from more than two dozen women with silicone implants. They described the extreme pain and life-changing problems they have suffered as a result of silicone implants in terms that could fail to move only those with hardened hearts. And several highlighted an important economic component -- health insurance plans generally do not cover surgeries to remove implants for augmentation patients, placing a huge financial burden on sick women.
Nonetheless, the advisory panel, a quarter of whom are plastic surgeons, and at least one of whom was swayed by empty promises from Inamed to do ongoing follow-up research, voted 9-6 to recommend the FDA approve Inamed's request.
The failure for a larger majority to support the application leaves it awkward for FDA to recommend approval.
Inamed's chances of approval worsened last week, when Dr. Thomas Whalen, the non-voting chair of the advisory panel, in a highly unusual move, sent a letter to FDA commissioner Mark McClellan. Whalen called the panel decision "misguided," emphasizing the lack of data on long-term safety. He felt "morally compelled" to urge the FDA to deny approval, he told reporters.
Now the decision rests with FDA Commissioner Mark McClellan.
The law hasn't changed since the time the FDA ordered silicone implants off the market. The agency faces the same choice it faced in 1992, with little new information - and much of the recent information indicating the implants' hazards.
If the FDA upholds its obligation under the law to approve products only that afford "a reasonable assurance of safety," it has no choice but to deny approval.
You can help influence the decision. Send a message to FDA Commissioner McClellan urging him not to approve Inamed's application. You can do this from the website of the Command Trust Network, an information clearinghouse on implants, at: http://www.commandtrust.org.
Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor. They are co-authors of 'Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy' (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press; http://www.corporatepredators.org).
Aproveita e dá uma passada aqui para ver o que é jornalismo de verdade.
O Ocidente, que já estimulou várias ditaduras no Oriente Médio, agora quer minar as democracias de lá.
Um artigo revelador de Robert Fisk
Independent News
EUA discutem fusões de empresas de mídia e ameaças à democracia.
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