Malaria vaccine shows promise in early testing

Again, it's early, but a positive sign. While malaria may not be a critical issue in the US, it's devastating in many other parts of the world. If this vaccine works, the problem then is how to address the cost because the likes of GlaxoSmithKline are not usually open to offering products at cost no matter how many lives they can save.

An experimental vaccine from GlaxoSmithKline halved the risk of African children getting malaria in a major clinical trial, making it likely to become the world's first shot against the deadly disease.

Final-stage trial data released on Tuesday showed it gave protection against clinical and severe malaria in five- to 17-month-olds in Africa, where the mosquito-borne disease kills hundreds of thousands of children a year.

"These data bring us to the cusp of having the world's first malaria vaccine," said Andrew Witty, chief executive of the British drugmaker that developed the vaccine along with the non-profit PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI).

Read the rest of this post...

Haunted house takes photos of patrons at scariest moment (funny)

The photos are great.  A ton of them are posted by the Nightmares Fear Factory on Flickr. (H/t HuffPost)  I'm going through more of them, they're a trip.  Here are six guys who are clearly not going to be protecting anyone any time soon.  More freaked out boys. Freaked out women. Oh God, this one made me laugh out loud - priceless.  I am dying to know what they're seeing that's causing this reaction.  The men seem far more disturbed than the women in this one.  I seriously want to know what they're seeing. Read the rest of this post...

Bernanke: Fed may need to pop asset bubbles

As in the asset bubbles that the Bernanke's Fed policy has created?

U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Tuesday that central banks may need to resort to monetary policy to combat asset bubbles, although regulation should be a first line of defense.

"The possibility that monetary policy could be used directly to support financial stability goals, at least on the margin, should not be ruled out," he said at a conference at the Boston Federal Reserve Bank.

Read the rest of this post...

The New Yorker mocks the 1% with an Occupy Wall Street cover

Beautiful. Click to see.

Don't you love the signs? My fave is "I'm good, thanks" (h/t Yves Smith).

GP Read the rest of this post...

The inspiring Occupy Wall Street supply hub

NY1 has one of the most incredible and inspiring reports on the #OccupyWallStreet movement that I've seen. It's about a large space - a former bank - donated by the United Federation of Teachers - that serves as the movement's supply store room. It's stocked with donations of food, medical supplies, clothing, and other essential items which are sustaining the occupation. The donations are coming in from all over the country and all over the world.

The donations coming in often include messages from the people sending them:

Occupiers said almost everything they receive is accompanied by a supportive note.

"Here are some cookies for the demonstrators. I'll keep sending, as long as you keep protesting," read Shan. "I'm a 69-year old retired journalist in Ohio who's very much with you in spirit."

One occupier told NY1 the notes they get with the supplies are like letters from the "frontline's of America's economic crisis."

I've been at #OccupyWallStreet the last few days and had the privilege to see the inside of the storage space. The crew of volunteers who are organizing it and making it function are incredibly motivated by the donations they receive. What's coming in is likely the lifeline which will allow the occupation to continue to into the cold New York winter.

If you want to send a donation of food, supplies, or anything else that you think the Occupiers will need to be sustained, you can mail donations to the Occupation. According to OccupyWallSt.org, the shipping address is:

The UPS Store
Re: Occupy Wall Street
118A Fulton St. #205
New York, NY 10038
Money orders only please, cannot cash checks yet. Non-perishable goods only. We can accept packages of any size. We're currently low on food.

Read the rest of this post...

Sec. Hillary Clinton visits Libya

Very smart of the Administration to send a female Secretary of State out now. Just the fact that she is there sends the right message on women's rights.

The remaining Gadaffi loyalists still fighting are confined to two small areas of Sirte and Bani Walid. It is now a matter of when, not if they fall. Gadaffi himself is reportedly in hiding in the Sahara region.

Meanwhile the end of the Gadaffi regime seems to be encouraging anti-government demonstrators in Syria. The protests are mounting, as is the death toll. Not surprisingly the troops who fired on unarmed protesters are now being attacked. The Syrian protests are rapidly turning into the Syrian insurgency.

Assad has backing from the Iranian and Iraqi governments but not much more. Russia and China are blocking any attempt to impose sanctions against the regime in the UN, but this is driven by geography and their interest in limiting US regional influence rather than any great love for Assad. The fall of Syria would probably not concern either country very much but could be the start of a Shi'ia Spring that brings down the Iranian regime. Read the rest of this post...

Texas censors inconvenient environmental truths from report

Republican Texas being Republican Texas.

Officials at the state environmental agency in Texas have altered a scientific report they commissioned on Galveston bay, deleting mentions of human-induced climate change and rising sea levels.

The 2010 State of the Bay report has been delayed for a year by disputes between the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) and scientists at the Houston Advanced Research Center, who are contracted to provide the state with regular reports on the bay.

John Anderson, an oceanographer at Rice University in Houston, Texas, who wrote the chapter of the report that was apparently edited by TCEQ management, told British newspaper The Guardian that the cuts reflected what he called "denial" throughout the state of Texas about the effects of global warming.

I'd say let Texas roast, but sadly they're lack of education, and their faith in God to do their homework for them, will end up dooming the entire world. I wish we could just give the South that "state laboratory" experiment they've always been wanting, and sit back with some popcorn while they destroy themselves in rapture. Read the rest of this post...

Clinton pollster warns Obama to avoid "out of touch" OWS protesters, actual data says otherwise

Who would ever guess that a former Clinton team member, Dough Schoen, would find the OWS movement radical? Let's remember that it was Team Clinton who partnered with the radical Republicans to deregulate Wall Street. Many of them later moved on to cushy and highly profitable jobs on Wall Street after Clinton's term in office. Wall Street may have crashed during the Bush years, but we didn't get there without the groundwork being laid before that time. Those decisions were radical changes from decades of policy that mostly worked, but Wall Street wanted more. Guess who paid the price for that mistake?

Tell me again who is "radical" and "out of touch" in this discussion?

What binds a large majority of the protesters together—regardless of age, socioeconomic status or education—is a deep commitment to left-wing policies: opposition to free-market capitalism and support for radical redistribution of wealth, intense regulation of the private sector, and protectionist policies to keep American jobs from going overseas.

Sixty-five percent say that government has a moral responsibility to guarantee all citizens access to affordable health care, a college education, and a secure retirement—no matter the cost. By a large margin (77%-22%), they support raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans, but 58% oppose raising taxes for everybody, with only 36% in favor. And by a close margin, protesters are divided on whether the bank bailouts were necessary (49%) or unnecessary (51%).

NOTE FROM JOHN: Yeah, pretty crazy agreeing with the overwhelming majority of Americans that we should raise taxes on the rich, and sharing America's ambivalence about the bank bailout.  Even 52% of Republicans support tax increases on the rich.  And two-thirds of all rich people support increased taxes on themselves.  So actually, OWS doesn't represent the radical left, Doug Schoen represents the radical right.  Any Democrat who would like to go the way of the now dearly departed Blue Dogs in the House should listen to Schoen's perpetual nonsense carefully as they plan their imminent retirement.

And finally, I wonder what Secretary Clinton thinks of her own pollster suggesting that it's radical to believe that the government has a moral responsibility to provide its citizens with health care. Read the rest of this post...

Chris Hedges: The Occupy Movement "will not be co-opted"

Many have worried that the Occupy Movement will be co-opted — its language and imagery taken over by people who want to weaken its effect.

(What's co-option? Think about what ABC did to the women's lib movement and bralessness when it rolled out Charlie's Angels. It decoupled symbol from politics for profit. By pretending to support the underlying ideology (and only pretending), ABC blunted its effect. This became the new face of women's liberation for millions of Americans.)

Will the Occupy Movement be co-opted? Here's Hedges, writing in TruthDig (h/t masaccio via email; emphasis and paragraphing mine):

There is no danger that the protesters who have occupied squares, parks and plazas across the nation in defiance of the corporate state will be co-opted by the Democratic Party or groups like MoveOn. The faux liberal reformers, whose abject failure to stand up for the rights of the poor and the working class, have signed on to this movement because they fear becoming irrelevant. Union leaders, who pull down salaries five times that of the rank and file as they bargain away rights and benefits, know the foundations are shaking. So do Democratic politicians from Barack Obama to Nancy Pelosi. So do the array of “liberal” groups and institutions, including the press, that have worked to funnel discontented voters back into the swamp of electoral politics and mocked those who called for profound structural reform. ...

Tinkering with the corporate state will not work. We will either be plunged into neo-feudalism and environmental catastrophe or we will wrest power from corporate hands. This radical message, one that demands a reversal of the corporate coup, is one the power elite, including the liberal class, is desperately trying to thwart. But the liberal class has no credibility left. It collaborated with corporate lobbyists to neglect the rights of tens of millions of Americans, as well as the innocents in our imperial wars.

The best that liberals can do is sheepishly pretend this is what they wanted all along. Groups such as MoveOn and organized labor will find themselves without a constituency unless they at least pay lip service to the protests. The Teamsters’ arrival Friday morning to help defend the park signaled an infusion of this new radicalism into moribund unions rather than a co-opting of the protest movement by the traditional liberal establishment. The union bosses, in short, had no choice.

Hedges thinks that liberal institutions like MoveOn and others (including top-down union leadership) have lost legitimacy, and that the Occupy Movement, driven by values and not electoral goals, can't be taken over by them. Read the whole thing to get a sense of why; this is a real essay with real thoughts in it.

One more point worth considering. Hedges says that the "liberal class" has always functioned as a safety valve for a capitalism he views as rapacious; and that in their hubris (my term), the 1%-ers have decided to dispense with the liberals, to discredit the liberals themselves. That creates a problem at the top — no modifying buffer:

The stupidity of the corporate state is that it thought it could dispense with the liberal class. It thought it could shut off that safety valve in order to loot and pillage with no impediments. Corporate power forgot that the liberal class, when it functions, gives legitimacy to the power elite. And the reduction of the liberal class to silly courtiers, who have nothing to offer but empty rhetoric, meant that the growing discontent found other mechanisms and outlets. Liberals were reduced to stick figures, part of an elaborate pantomime, as they acted in preordained roles to give legitimacy to meaningless and useless political theater. But that game is over.

This is one analysis you can marshal evidence for; well worth considering.

I would add that not retaining the trappings of rule of law is likely the fatal flaw in the 1% ointment (so to speak). They should have railroaded someone not named Madoff, someone with "CEO" stuck to the back of his shorts. By not keeping up the pretense of legal liability, they shredded the illusion of their own legitimacy.

But as I've said before, their hubris is our friend. Hedges thinks their hubris means Occupy won't be bought or sold. Here's hoping he's right.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Pittsburgh cops using sound-blast against protesters—suit says it caused permanent hearing loss

Via John Perry Barlow and Matt Stoller comes this, news of the latest in crowd-control (and potentially, crowd-punishing) technology.

It's called LRAD (Long Range Acoustic Device), a perfectly innocent-sounding name. What it does is not so innocent, though it does involve sound:

The Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) is a distance hailing device and non-lethal crowd control weapon developed by LRAD Corporation to send messages, warnings and harmful, pain inducing tones over longer distances than normal loudspeakers. ... LRAD systems are used by maritime, law enforcement, military and commercial security companies to send instructions and warnings over distances, and to force compliance.

The LRAD company, formerly American Technology Corporation, says it was designed for use in "short bursts at 300 metres" (about 1000 feet, or [corrected] more than three football fields), and that being within 100 meters can cause permanent ear damage.

Of course, the company says that blasting people at short range is not its recommended use (read, "it's not our fault if abused"):

LRAD officials deny such common uses, claiming that the device is not a weapon, rather it is a "directed-sound communications system", and that it can damage hearing at 15 metres (49 ft).^[4]

Oddly, it seems that's just what happened. From the ACLU last month (my emphasis):

The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania filed a federal lawsuit today [September 21] on behalf of Karen Piper, a bystander who suffered permanent hearing loss after Pittsburgh police deployed a Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) against protestors during the 2009 G-20 Summit. An LRAD emits harmful, pain-inducing sounds over long distances. Developed for use by the military, LRAD technology had never before been used against US civilians.

"Police departments should not be using weapons built for the military on civilian protesters," said Witold Walczak, legal director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania[.] "As this case shows, the LRAD cannot be controlled to prevent serious harm to innocent bystanders. Collateral harm to innocents may be justifiable in wartime, but not to quell protesters who overturned a couple of trash dumpsters."

So there are two issues. One is the use of a military weapon-like device against American citizens on U.S. soil. The other is the countenancing of "collateral damage" — a military concept for dead and injured innocents — as a defensible aspect of police behavior.

Here's what happened to Ms. Piper:

On September 24, 2009, Piper, then a visiting professor at Carnegie Mellon University, decided to observe G-20 protests in Pittsburgh's Lawrenceville neighborhood ... She arrived at Arsenal Park around 10 a.m. and saw protestors calmly and peacefully milling around the area. After the protest began, Piper walked on the sidewalk a short distance from the marching protesters, in the company of other curiosity seekers and journalists. When Piper became concerned about rapidly increasing police activity, she tried to leave the area. As she was walking away, police officers activated, suddenly and without warning, an LRAD a short distance away from her. It emitted a continuous piercing sound lasting several minutes.

Piper immediately suffered intense pain as mucus discharged from her ear. She became nauseous and dizzy and developed a severe headache. Since then, Piper has suffered from tinnitus (ringing of the ears), barotrauma, left ear pain and fluid drainage, dizziness, and nausea. She still suffers from permanent nerve damage.

"The intensity of being hit at close range ... is indescribable. The sound vibrates through you and causes pain throughout your body, not only in the ears. I thought I might die," said Piper[.]

Did you notice the "lasting several minutes" part? Compare that with the "short bursts" description of its intended use. Seems that some people, when handed a pain-inducing device and permission to use it, just can't stop themselves from dishing the goods in large, quasi-orgasmic doses. (Why do I say "quasi-orgasmic?" For a perfectly good reason: The purpose of torture is to give pleasure to the torturer. But you knew that.)

And naturally, all the regimes that really are regimes are buying them.

I might be tempted to add that the "rules of engagement" of the military and police are merging — but I resist. They merged more than a century ago.

Why do you care? Because LRAD looks like this; it's the big black circle behind the uniformed police officer (this was taken at the GOP convention in 2004):

Photographer: Peter Bergin

And it looks like the NYPD has them. Occupy.

GP Read the rest of this post...

67 percent of New Yorkers support OWS, 87 percent say have right to camp out

These are the people who see the Wall Street types the most, so it's no surprise.

Anti-Wall Street protests have won broad support among New York City voters, who would overwhelmingly favor tougher regulations on the financial industry, new poll results showed Monday.

Sixty-seven percent of those who responded to a Quinnipiac University survey said they agreed with the Occupy Wall Street protesters, who are upset that banks were allowed to earn huge profits after being bailed out during the recession, while average Americans remained under financial strain.

An even wider margin, 87 percent, agreed with the protesters' right to camp out in Lower Manhattan, as long as they obeyed the law. The movement began staging rallies more than a month ago.

Read the rest of this post...

The black vote and President Obama

From the Washington Post:

Recent Washington Post-ABC News polls have shown a drop in the number of blacks who have ”strongly favorable” views of Obama and those who think his policies are improving the economy. This has coincided with vocal criticism of the president among some members of the Congressional Black Caucus and other African American leaders.

But the focus on sticking together has prompted criticism from some who call it an overly simplistic view that shuts off dialogue about Obama’s achievements and his failures.

“It truncates vibrant conversation in the black community,” said Eddie Glaude Jr., a professor of religion and African American studies at Princeton University. “What I hear them saying is, ‘Black folk need to get in lock step because we don’t want Republicans to take the White House.’ There is a kind of disciplining of the black polity that doesn’t lend itself to a vibrant and detailed consideration about political issues.”

I don't really have a problem with exhortations towards solidarity amongst the members of a group. We Greeks were told to vote for Dukakis because he was Greek, and a lot did. In the gay community we have an organization whose sole purpose is to help gay candidates get elected. And none of that bothers me. And it doesn't necessarily bother me if some people argue that the black community should support President Obama because he's black.

But. There is a problem if we're asked to stop thinking entirely simply because of the race or sexual orientation, or whatever other defining characteristic, of the candidate - that we should vote for him regardless of what we think of him simply because he's gay or black or whatever. The problem is that this can be a license for the candidate, or elected official, to do whatever they choose, or break whatever promise, with impunity. Elections at their best impose a certain check and balance on politicians and their promises. And as the old adage goes, there's no reason to buy the cow if you can get the milk for free.

At some point, politicians need to earn our vote. And we need to earn their respect. Or we're never going to get anything better than "at least I'm not the other guy." Read the rest of this post...

Why did Seattle need 40 cops to arrest an OWS protester who simply sat down and opened an umbrella?

I mean, seriously. Read the rest of this post...

Increased bank fees pushing customers to move elsewhere

Now that is what you call capitalism. If the banks want to screw customers, then they should expect a lot more of this.

"Credit unions are an alternative source for the kind of services a bank provides," said professor Lawrence White of New York's Stern School of Business. "I'm hoping they would see the unbanked as part of their mission. That would be the most socially worthwhile thing they could do."

Credit unions, which are effectively not-for-profit co-operatives, are stepping up to offer cheaper alternatives to the short-term, high-interest loans provided by payday lenders.

Demand for short-term, small-dollar loans from credit unions rose 52 percent in the second quarter, National Credit Union Administration data showed. More aggressive selling by these unions will have seen that rise further in the third quarter.

Read the rest of this post...