WiserBlog

Veteran Journalists Call for New York Times to be Stripped of Pulitzer

--- Press Release ---

Source: Democracy Now!

Hiroshima/Nagasaki Coverup: Veteran Journalists Call for New York Times to be Stripped of Pulitzer
Thursday August 11, 2:15 pm ET

NEW YORK, Aug. 11 /PRNewswire/ -- On this 60th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Amy Goodman, host of the national radio and TV show "Democracy Now!" is submitting a formal request to the board of the Pulitzer Prize, calling for The New York Times and its reporter William Laurence to be stripped of the 1946 Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of the atomic bomb. Laurence was also on the payroll of the US War Department. Goodman recently wrote an Op-Ed in The Baltimore Sun (written with journalist David Goodman, her brother) called "The Hiroshima Coverup" (see http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0805-20.htm ).

Goodman said, "William Laurence and the New York Times won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the atomic bomb, and his faithful parroting of the government line was crucial in launching a half-century of silence about the deadly lingering effects of the bomb. It is time for the Pulitzer board to strip the atomic bomb apologist and his newspaper of this undeserved prize."

Goodman, host of the national radio and TV program "Democracy Now!," is co-author with David Goodman of "The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers and the Media That Love Them." See the chapter, "Hiroshima Cover-up: How the War Department's Timesman Won A Pulitzer", at http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0810-01.htm .

Arrogant Response to Congressional Direction?

"Arrogant Response to Congressional Direction" That's what Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) is calling the proposed "EPA Rule On Human Pesticide Testing."

In other words, Congress is responding about the way you'd expect.

Back in March when Stephen Johnson was appointed by Bush to the top post at the EPA,  Sen. Boxer brought public attention to the CHEERS study designed by the EPA and funded by the American Chemistry Council (ACC). This put a little snag in his confirmation, and pressured him to postpone, er, I meant to say, "kill” the study. 

Mind you, his predecessor Administrator Michael Leavitt—under whose watch Johnson designed the study—had already been appointed and confirmed as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in December and January respectively.

For those of you who aren't regular readers of WiserBlog and didn't catch my tirades about the Tuskegee-esque experiments, I'll try to sum it up: The EPA wanted to study the effects of various pesticides on infants and toddlers. In return for volunteering their children for the study, parents were given $970, a camcorder and a plaque of appreciation. Oh, and wait, I almost forgot, they also get bibs, t-shirts and other promotional merchandise.

In case you were wondering: under the proposed EPA Rule, only testing where subjects are intentionally dosed with pesticides would be prohibited. So, the CHEERS, which allowed monitoring infants after the parents sprayed pesticides in their nurseries, would actually be A-OK. Besides if the parents choose to do it, it's not intentionally "dosing."

So, it would seem that in the guise of creating strict and ethical guidelines to regulate this testing (currently it's a free-for-all where
human testing can be done on a discretionary “case-by-case” basis absent of any standards), the EPA has actually given the green light to design CHEERS-like studies.

Sen. Boxer sent the following letter to Mr. Johnson regarding the EPA's  proposed rule changes on human testing.

August 10, 2005

The Honorable Stephen L. Johnson
Administrator
Environmental Protection Agency
1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20460-0001

Dear Administrator Johnson:

I recently received a copy of the proposed rule on human testing with pesticides forwarded by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review. I am writing to express my strong objections to this draft proposal based on its failure to incorporate recent Congressional direction on this subject and to urge you to abandon its flawed approach prior to proposing the rule. This proposal fails to adequately ensure that people, including the most vulnerable among us, are protected from unethical industry tests in which human subjects swallow, inhale, are sprayed with, or are otherwise exposed to toxic pesticides.

"Like it? Well, I don't see why I oughtn't to like it."

Because of yesterday's posts about RFID chips in passports, I've been having some discussion about that and very related matters.  Someone asked that I repost the June 29, 2004 WiserBlog entry. 

So, here it s...

I ask you: does a person get a chance to relinquish all privacy to Big Brother every day?  Well, not yet.

"Like it? Well, I don't see why I oughtn't to like it. Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?"--Mark Twain from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Does no one remember the simple lesson Tom learned that day, “namely, that in order to make a man or a boy [or any other person] covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain?” Well, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) remembers.

TSA began development of a program, called "Registered Traveler" (RT), nearly three years ago in the wake of September 11. Yesterday, the $3.78 million pilot program began testing in Minneapolis. RT is essentially a revised version of the error-prone Computerized Airline Passenger Pre-Screening System II (CAPPS II), which came under fire from pivacy rights groups and even some lawmakers. The primary differences between RT and CAPPS II are that (A) the information collected is more extensive, but (B) participation is completely voluntary. So, who can complain about that. Well, I can. Are people crazy? Wait, let me rephrase that: do people not realize the full implications of this program, resting as it is, on the curve of a very slippery slope? I suppose they just don’t care as is often the case when money and/or time savers—and, of course, purported “safety”—are involved.

Have chip will travel

As WiserBlog readers know, I didn't take my own advice and get my passport replaced before they started embedding the RFID chips. So, today I had to apply for one and pay that extra $12 Homeland Security surcharge.  Small price to pay, really, for that rock solid sense of security. 

Of course, it hardly matters since they'll be in all forms of ID soon enough.  I just took a small consolation in the idea of having a chip-free passort.  Sigh.

Anyway, last week they started testing the U.S.'s very first RFID system at the Canadian border crossing of Thousand Islands Bridge, the Peace Arch and Pacific Highway crossings in Blaine, Wash., and two crossings at the Mexican border town of Nogales, Arizona.   This is Phase II of of Homeland Security's US-VISIT Program, which will test whether the new system can accurately scan the information embedded in the chips and match it to the government's growing database.  Officials say that the system will soon be able to "weed out potential terrorists, drug dealers and other criminals."  Now, telll me how that works again?

Remember I told you that some of the Carlyle Group tech venture/cluster fuck companies were involved in this.  In this case, it's Accenture's turn to make a tidy profit.  That's right. Accenture reported record quarterly net revenues last month: its profit “more than doubled” from it's "consulting" work allowing it to acquire Capgemini's North American health practice (also last month), which will expand its “public- and private-sector health and life sciences organizations.”

Hmmm wonder if this means that medical records are going to start finding their way onto the RFID chips sooner than we thought.

If I want your opinion... I'll scan it myself

"Our study represents an important but very early stage step towards eventually building a machine that can track a person's consciousness on a second-by-second basis.… [But] we are still a long way off from developing a universal mind-reading machine.”
--Dr John-Dylan Haynes, University College London Institute of Neurology. Dr. Haynes’ team and one at UCLA believe that they have finally proved definitively that they can monitor people's thoughts via brain scans.

What teases... I want my MRM now! I really was thinking that it would be the perfect gift this holiday season for friends and family who would surely derive hours of entertainment perusing the delightful thoughts that go on in my head. 

Look, I realize that these kinds of breakthroughs will allow people who are completely paralyzed to communicate and therapists to better understand their patients. 

But why do I just know that most of the applications will be far less altruistic?

Says Haynes, "One day, someone will come up with a machine in a baseball cap.  Then it really could be helpful in everyday applications." Of course. 

Yes, and right about then, I’ll start sporting my own fashionable Reynold’s Wrap headgear.