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December 19, 2011
Australian woman wins thalidomide hearing: court
A woman born without arms or legs on Monday won the right to have the class action she is leading against the firms behind thalidomide, a sedative blamed for birth defects, proceed in Australia. The Supreme Court of Victoria dismissed German chemical firm Grunenthal's request to have the hearing in Germany or stayed, saying “it cannot be said that (the state of) Victoria is a clearly inappropriate forum”.
Read article at medicalxpress.com
December 6, 2011
GM risks loom for wheat industry
Australia is heading at breakneck speed towards the commercialisation of genetically modified wheat. According to CSIRO, 2015 is a realistic date. This means within five years, consumers face the possibility of eating genetically modified bread, whether they like it or not. This year, West Australian organic farmer Steve Marsh lost his organic accreditation after his neighbour's GM canola seed blew on to his property. This month, another WA farmer in Cunderdin fears his crop is contaminated after a recent thunderstorm washed tonnes of his neighbour's GM canola on to his farm. He stands to lose his GM-free canola premium if this is confirmed. There is nothing in place that will protect these two farmers or others for the loss of income that may result.
Read article in The Canberra Times (Australia)
November 28, 2011
Forget Fracking, Vitamin B12 Could Make Fuel Cells Cheaper
Vitamin B12 could replace platinum as a catalyst in fuel cells, and that could lead to a new generation of emission free, low cost hydrogen fuel cells for cars and other vehicles. Aside from helping to reduce the use of petroleum-fueled vehicles, cheaper fuel cells could also help ease some of the pressure to drill for more natural gas. Natural gas is emerging as a low-emission alternative fuel for vehicles, but given the environmental risks and community disruption caused by fracking (a method of drilling that involves pumping chemicals underground), natural gas is not the kind of long term, sustainable solution that fuel cells have the potential to offer.
Read article at cleantechnica.com
Comment: Energy for All – through ending the world's dependency on oil and bringing about a global change to renewable energy – is one of the main goals of the Movement of Life. To learn more about the Movement of Life, and support its campaign for Health, Peace and Social Justice for All, click here.
October 20, 2011
Revealed – the Capitalist Network that Runs the World
As protests against financial power sweep the world this week, science may have confirmed the protesters' worst fears. An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy.
Read article on the Centre for Research on Globalization website
October 5, 2011
Speculation in Agricultural Commodities: Driving up the Price of Food Worldwide and plunging Millions into Hunger
In late 2006, the price of food and other commodities began rising precipitately, continuing throughout 2007 and peaking in 2008. Millions were cast below the poverty line and food riots erupted across the developing world, from Haiti to Mozambique. While analysts initially framed the crisis in terms of market fundamentals (such as rising population, increased demand for resource-intensive food, declining stockpiles, biofuel and agricultural subsidies, and crop shortfalls from natural disasters), a growing number of experts have tied the massive spikes to financial intermediation.
Read article on the Centre for Research on Globalization website
September 19, 2011
The Magnificence of Vitamin D
Researchers claim that some of the Australian population is not processing enough Vitamin D due to little exposure to sunlight, despite of the fact that Australia has sunlight in abundance. Reports show that 43% of women in the southern part of Australia have been discovered to be lacking in Vitamin D, while 23% of women in Queensland are Vitamin D deficient. People who cover their skin most of the time, elderly people and dark skinned people are some of those who are at risk of Vitamin D insufficiency. Studies prove that as we age the ability of our skin to produce Vitamin D lessens and the necessity for more exposure to sunlight is increased.
Read article in the Australian edition of the International Business Times
August 19, 2011
Study shows powerful corporations really do control the world's finances
For many years conventional wisdom has said that the whole world is controlled by the monied elite, or more recently by the huge multi-national corporations that seem to sometime control the very air we breathe. Now, new research by a team based in ETH-Zurich, Switzerland, has shown that what we’ve suspected all along, is apparently true.
Read article at physorg.com
July 30, 2011
Protests convict Blair for war crimes
Sydney Stop The War Coalition held a street-theatre protest in Darling Harbour on July 29 outside a $1000-a-head speaking engagement for former British PM and war criminal Tony Blair. The protesters held a mock trial of Blair, who was charged, tried and convicted of making fraudulent excuses for the invasion of Iraq, the murder of a million Iraqi people, profiting from the proceeds of crime and other crimes against humanity.
Read article in the Green Left Weekly (Australia)
July 7, 2011
GM wheat a threat to farmers: Greenpeace
Australian wheat farmers stand to lose billions of dollars if the CSIRO's trials of genetically modified wheat are allowed to continue, Greenpeace says. A report by the environmental group accuses the government research organisation of "serious oversights" when it comes to managing the risks of its field trials currently taking place across the country.
Read article in the Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)
June 25, 2011
Australian to lead thalidomide suit
An Australian woman born without arms and legs will lead a mass lawsuit against the German and British firms behind thalidomide, a sedative blamed for birth defects, lawyers said Saturday.
Read article at physorg.com
June 20, 2011
New Zealand Chafes Over Pharma And Trade Talks
Once again, US trade talks and the behind-the-scenes role being played by the pharmaceutical industry are making headlines. This time, the ruckus is taking place in New Zealand, where there are mounting concerns about the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement, or TPP, which is a trade agreement that aims to integrate eight economies of the Asia-Pacific region. Among the issues is the extent to which the TTP would move beyond intellectual property standards in the World Trade Organization’s Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property, or TRIPS agreement (back story). The US Trade Representative, with backing from 28 US Senators and pharma, is also reportedly taking a hard line on Pharmac, the government entity that manages access to medicines in New Zealand, and reimbursement practices. An important TTP meeting will be held in November. And last month, the senators wrote a letter to US President Barack Obama wrote that “put bluntly, intellectual property equals jobs.” Although as Radio New Zealand notes, these same senators have received $6.5 million in donations from the pharmaceutical industry over the past five years.
Read article at pharmalot.com
June 16, 2011
Bilderberg 2011: The Rockefeller World Order and the "High Priests of Globalization"
Investigative journalist Daniel Estulin’s report of inside sources in this year’s meeting indicated a rather extensive discussion on the role of China, which is hardly surprising, considering this has been a central topic of discussion in meetings for a number of years. China emerged in discussions on Pakistan, as China has become increasingly Pakistan’s closest economic and strategic ally, a trend that is continuing as America continues to spread the Afghan war into neighbouring Pakistan. China is also a major player in Africa, threatening the West’s stranglehold over the continent, in particular through the World Bank and IMF. Most importantly, however, and not unrelated to its role in Pakistan and Africa, China has become the greatest economic competitor for the United States in the world, and as the IMF even admitted recently, its economy is expected to surpass that of the United States by 2016. Bilderberg paid attention to this issue not simply as a financial-economic consideration, but as a massive geopolitical transition in the world: “the biggest story of our time.”
Read article on the Centre for Research on Globalization website
June 11, 2011
Media: The Spreading of False Ideologies into our Culture
Media has become a mirror of the disconnected state that humanity finds itself in. News, current affairs, even the dramas and reality TV shows that entertain us serve to exacerbate the religion of polarity being reflected back to us in all its forms – materialism, hatred, killing, idolization and separation. Almost all television, be it sagas and melodramas or daily news, is as addictive as any drug. This single dimensional ‘pulpit’ from which media preaches to us (often in the centre of our living rooms) actually seeds many of our negative behavior patterns in day-to-day life. Dramas and melodramas aside, we have been led to believe that the news and current affairs programs we watch are true, unbiased, fair. Often this is anything but the case.
Read article on the Centre for Research on Globalization website
June 7, 2011
What Glaxo Gave To Doctors Down Under
Amid growing scandal over freebies lavished on Australian health department workers, GlaxoSmithKline has become the first drugmaker to reveal the amount of money spent on doctors and health organizations in the land Down Under. Slightly more than $2 million was doled out last year, and the amount was about evenly split between the public and private sectors.
Read article at pharmalot.com
May 26, 2011
New Zealand attacks Denmark over ban on marmite
A New Zealand food industry executive appealed to the government to challenge Denmark over an import ban on Kiwis' favourite breakfast spread, Marmite. The industry was "incredulous at Denmark's bizarre decision" to make Marmite illegal under food safety laws, Katherine Rich, chief executive of the New Zealand Food & Grocery Council, said in a statement on Thursday. Marmite, a sticky yeast extract first made in England in 1902, has been made in New Zealand since 1919. A food writer noted recently, "Marmite is undoubtedly part of Kiwi culture - generations have been raised to eat it on toast, with cheese and crackers or between bread with a slice of lettuce or a handful of chips." Reportedly first devised by a German chemist named Justus von Liebig, Marmite is said to be one of the world's richest sources of B vitamins, containing five of them - Thiamin, Riboflavin, Niacin, Folate and B12.
Read article at timeslive.co.za (South Africa)
Comment: Denmark has a long history of acting in the interests of the Pharma Cartel by enacting dictatorial laws for the over-regulation of micronutrients. As one of the richest food sources of B vitamins, therefore, it would appear that even Marmite is now seen as a threat to the interests of the pharmaceutical ‘business with disease’.
May 26, 2011
Indoor workers suffer Vitamin D deficiency
Almost half of all Australians working indoors will come out of the winter months lacking in vitamin D, a new study has found. A survey of Sydney office workers, presented at the Dietitians Association of Australia conference in Adelaide on Thursday, found 42 per cent were deficient in the vitamin at the end of winter. Meanwhile, one in three had low levels over summer.
Read article in The Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)
May 25, 2011
Champagne, Anyone? Pharma Freebies Down Under
Health Department workers in West Australia have received $745,000 worth of gifts, business class flights and hotel accommodations from drug and device makers, many of which sell meds and equipment to area hospitals, The West Australian reports. According to documents revealed in Parliament, between last July and April 6, there 259 instances in which perks - including champagne, iPads, flights and hotel packages to Paris, Vienna, Montreal and Los Angeles - were accepted.
Read article at pharmalot.com
Comment: Further evidence of the way in which the 875 billion-dollar-a-year Pharma Cartel controls the practice of medicine through the provision of gifts, perks and other inducements for government healthcare departments to purchase its products.
April 19, 2011
Web creator's net neutrality fear
The inventor of the web has said that governments must act to preserve the principle of net neutrality. Sir Tim Berners-Lee told the BBC that legislation may be needed if self-regulation failed.
Read article on the BBC News website (UK)
Comment: To learn more about the concept of net neutrality and understand why it is important, visit the Save the Internet website.
March 28, 2011
Unacceptable Death Rates End Cloning Trials in New Zealand
Government lab announced the end to cloning eight years after the scientist who pioneered the technique abandoned it for precisely the same reasons
“Unacceptable death rates” forced New Zealand national science agency AgResearch to end its trials on cloning animals. But it will continue to create more genetically modified (GM) animals using a new research method. The agency has issued reports – obtained by The Dominion Post under the Official Information Act - documenting chronic arthritis, pneumonia, lameness and blood poisoning among the causes of death in cattle, sheep and goats. The reports include trials on genetically modified (GM) animals for producing “super milk” as well cloned animals. Cloning and genetic modification are closely linked. Applied biotechnologies general manager Jimmy Suttie said that the decision was made after 13 years of study to find out how to prevent abnormalities in cloned animals, and “enough is enough.”
Read article by Dr. Mae-Wan Ho on the Institute of Science in Society (ISIS) website (UK)
March 17, 2011
Secretive Plan For a Global Currency
Is the Group of Twenty Countries (G20) envisaging the creation of a Global Central bank? Who or what would serve as this global central bank, cloaked with the power to issue the global currency and police monetary policy for all humanity? When the world’s central bankers met in Washington in September 2008 at the height of the financial meltdown, they discussed what body might be in a position to serve in that awesome and fearful role.
Read excerpt from "The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century" by Ellen Brown on the Centre for Research on Globalization website
February 3, 2011
Medical journal bans drug company ads
An Australian medical journal has "stopped all drug advertising forthwith" over concerns it could unduly influence doctors, and has called on similar publications to do the same. The journal of Emergency Medicine Australasia, which publishes the latest research and unique patient cases in the field of emergency medicine, has announced it will no longer carry advertisements paid for by pharmaceutical companies. Such advertising could "change the prescribing practices of doctors", said professors George Jelinek and Anthony Brown in a joint statement on Thursday. "It is time to show leadership and make a stand, and medical journals have a critical role to play in this," they said.
Read article in the Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)
January 25, 2011
Global Poverty, Food Riots, and the Economic Crisis
The sugar-coated bullets of the “free market” are killing our children. The act to kill is instrumented in a detached fashion through computer program trading on the New York and Chicago mercantile exchanges, where the global prices of rice, wheat and corn are decided upon. People in different countries are being impoverished simultaneously as a result of a global market mechanism. A small number of financial institutions and global corporations have the ability to determine the prices of basic food staples quoted on the commodity exchanges, thereby directly affecting the standard of living of millions of people around the world. This process of global impoverishment has reached a major turning point, leading to the simultaneous outbreak of famines in all major regions of the developing world.
Read article by Michel Chossudovsky on the Centre for Research on Globalization website
January 10, 2011
Canned tuna linked to whale shark and whale deaths
Australian canned tuna brands have ignored over 9,000 consumer requests for sustainably caught tuna. Last year, we shone the spotlight on Australia’s canned tuna industry and its role in marine destruction. Thousands of outraged Australians urged the brands to clean up their act - but their calls have not been heeded. The latest science reveals most Australian canned tuna brands still use a fishing method that can kill endangered whale sharks and whales.
Read article on the Greenpeace Australia Pacific website