[snip] All that glitters isn’t green. Fred Pearce writes in New Scientist, “The drive for ‘green energy’ in the developed world is having the perverse effect of encouraging the destruction of tropical rainforests. From the orangutan reserves of Borneo to the Brazilian Amazon, virgin forest is being razed to grow palm oil and soybeans to fuel cars and power stations in Europe and North America.” Surging prices and some governments’ biofuel requirements are likely to accelerate the destruction.
[snip] Land of shrinking opportunity. Two of the world’s leading cancer geneticists, Neal Copeland and Nancy Jenkins, are leaving the National Cancer Institute because of Bush administration restrictions on stem-cell research. They were set to go to Stanford, because California voters had approved $3 billion for such research. But now that antiabortion groups have tied up the money in court, they’re going to Singapore’s Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology. Irving Weissman, head of the Stanford lab, told the San Jose Mercury News, “When they do their work, it will be for Singapore. They’ll conduct their clinical trials in Singapore. The first place their work will be patented and used will be Singapore.”
[snip] A military historian’s perspective. Hebrew University’s Martin van Creveld, author of The Transformation of War, writes at forward.com, “For misleading the American people, and launching the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 B.C. sent his legions into Germany and lost them, Bush deserves to be impeached and, once he has been removed from office, put on trial along with the rest of the president’s men.”
[snip] Do you speak Microsoft? According to Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman’s “Focus on the Corporation” column, “Of the world’s 100 largest economies, 47 are nations, and 53 are corporations.”