China targets energy savings over next five years

How incredibly stupid is it that the GOP finds energy conservation a joke and not worth pursuing? The Republican energy-wasters have to be the most short sighted people on the planet. China has many faults but on this issue they're right. It's ridiculous not to be pursuing a serious conservation strategy.

With oil prices at their highest level in more than two years because of unrest in North Africa and the Middle East, the Chinese government plans to announce strict five-year goals for energy conservation in the next two weeks, China energy specialists said Friday.

Bejing’s emphasis on saving energy reflects concerns about national security and the effects of high fuel costs on inflation, China’s export competitiveness and the country’s pollution problems.

Any energy policy moves by Beijing hold global implications, given that China is the world’s biggest consumer of energy and largest emitter of greenhouse gases. And even the new efficiency goals assume that China’s overall energy consumption will grow, to meet the needs of the nation’s 1.3 billion people and its rapidly expanding economy.

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New Study: Big Pharma research costs overvalued by nearly $1 bn per product

Surely it's all a simple rounding error mistake. This new study may not be perfectly accurate but the Big Pharma claims of $1.3 billion per product is surely overstated. Slate:

For years the government has sought to make brand-name drugs cheaper and more widely available to the public. It has tried and failed to limit to a reasonable time period various patent and other "exclusivity" protections. Or it's tried and failed to negotiate volume discounts on the drugs that the feds purchase through Medicare. Every time, the pharmaceutical lobby has used its considerable wealth and political clout to block any government action that might trim Big Pharma's profits, which typically amount to between one-quarter and one-half of company revenues. And just about every time, Big Pharma has argued that huge profit margins are vitally necessary to the pharmaceutical industry because drug research and development costs are so high.

The statistic Big Pharma typically cites (see, for instance, this PhRMA video on how Mister Chemical Compound becomes Mister Brand-Name Drug) is that the cost of bringing a new drug to market is about $1 billion. Now a new study indicates the cost is more like, um, $55 million.

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Most allegedly abusive priests still active in Philly

Despite early signs of the archdiocese maybe doing the right thing and cooperating, it now appears as though they are doing what the Catholic church always does. If a single person is found guilty, someone needs to prosecute the management of that archdiocese and send them to prison. This is sickening.

Three weeks after a scathing grand jury report said the Archdiocese of Philadelphia had provided safe haven to as many as 37 priests who were credibly accused of sexual abuse or inappropriate behavior toward minors, most of those priests remain active in the ministry.

The possibility that even one predatory priest, not to mention three dozen, might still be serving in parishes — “on duty in the archdiocese today, with open access to new young prey,” as the grand jury put it — has unnerved many Roman Catholics here and sent the church reeling in the latest and one of the most damning episodes in the American church since it became engulfed in the sexual abuse scandal nearly a decade ago.

The situation in Philadelphia is “Boston reborn,” said David J. O’Brien, who teaches Catholic history at the University of Dayton. The Boston Archdiocese was engulfed in a scandal starting in 2002 involving widespread sexual abuse by priests and an extensive cover-up that reached as high as the cardinal.

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Weekend thoughts on Bees

Stephen Colbert on the plight of bees:


Speaking of Einstein, one of our commenters (hector, who is a font of links) points us to this article on the beehive–food supply connection:

Almost a third of global farm output depends on animal pollination, largely by honey bees.

These foods provide 35pc of our calories, most of our minerals, vitamins, and anti-oxidants, and the foundations of gastronomy. Yet the bees are dying – or being killed – at a disturbing pace.

The article is posed as a he-said, she-said piece, with Rabobank, a Dutch-based "agri-business lender," taking the "don't be hard on business" side:

Rabobank said US bee colonies were shrinking even before CCD struck because cheap imports of Asian honey had undercut US hives. Note the parallel with the demise of the US rare earth metals industry, put out of business when China flooded the world with cheaper supplies in the 1990s. This is what happens when free trade is managed carelessly [author's comment, not the bank's].

Rabobank has an interesting business model, by the way; they are set up "as a federation of local credit unions, which offer services to the local markets [where the] central organisation is the daughter organisation of the local branches, rather than the parent organisation". Not your obvious patented conglomerate villain; nevertheless, a pro-business spokescorp, for obvious reasons.

One of real villains may be pesticides, some of which are hard on bees and their nervous systems. That use, and that problem, is world-wide. The article is excellent on these details, than adds this:

Leaked documents from the Environmental Protection Agency confirm that clothianidin used on corn seed is "highly toxic", may pose a "long-term risk" to bees, and that previous tests were flawed.

Critics alleged a cover-up: Rabobank said we should be careful not to vilify agro-industry. The world needs food and fertilizer companies to keep finding ways to raise crop yields, if we are to feed over 70m extra mouths each year, and meet the demands of Asia's diet revolution, offset water scarcity in China and India, and divert a great chunk of the US, Argentine, and EU grain harvest into bio-fuels for cars.

All true statements. Rabobank wants "step change" with "curbs on pesticide use during in daylight hours". In truth, all business just wants the money to keep flowing — after all, their business is ... business. Fair enough.

But the world needs an effective result, regardless of who takes the biggest hit. Otherwise we'll all take that hit, the poor disproportionately, as they starve to death; the wealthy as they pay more for that extra grass-fed steak.

Apian atrophy is a more immediate threat than global warming, and can be solved, yet has barely risen onto the policy radar screen. ... Einstein was not always wrong.

There are so many ways the world could break down into god-awful fighting. Food supply is one of them. And it's always the same question, isn't it — profits, or people?

Happy foraging.

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Military will keep stripping accused WikiLeaks leaker Bradley Manning naked every night as ongoing policy

That headline is culled from Twitter and Greg Mitchell, whose WikiLeaks blog is the go-to place for WikiLeaky news. The full tweet:

Now military says it will keep stripping Bradley Manning naked every night, indefinitely, as ongoing policy. http://bit.ly/eCunqy

Mitchell points us to this, from Glenn Greenwald:

The treatment of Manning is now so repulsive that it even lies beyond what at least some of the most devoted Obama admirers are willing to defend.

Punishment for whistle-blowers. Don't forget; that's Manning's alleged crime. Greenwald has more; he's our other go-to guy and his piece is well worth your time.

I'll say again, as others have said: The purpose of torture is to elicit a false confession. If this were Team Bush at the helm, the whole left world would be in arms.

At what point is the price of power too great?

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Saudis preparing for 'day of rage' next week

The uprisings were bound to arrive in the Saudi kingdom eventually and it looks like it will be in the coming days. The Saudis have had an appetite for buying US military equipment but will the troops support the uprising or the royal family? Robert Fisk at The Independent:

Saudi Arabia was yesterday drafting up to 10,000 security personnel into its north-eastern Shia Muslim provinces, clogging the highways into Dammam and other cities with busloads of troops in fear of next week's "day of rage" by what is now called the "Hunayn Revolution".

Saudi Arabia's worst nightmare – the arrival of the new Arab awakening of rebellion and insurrection in the kingdom – is now casting its long shadow over the House of Saud. Provoked by the Shia majority uprising in the neighbouring Sunni-dominated island of Bahrain, where protesters are calling for the overthrow of the ruling al-Khalifa family, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia is widely reported to have told the Bahraini authorities that if they do not crush their Shia revolt, his own forces will.

The opposition is expecting at least 20,000 Saudis to gather in Riyadh and in the Shia Muslim provinces of the north-east of the country in six days, to demand an end to corruption and, if necessary, the overthrow of the House of Saud. Saudi security forces have deployed troops and armed police across the Qatif area – where most of Saudi Arabia's Shia Muslims live – and yesterday would-be protesters circulated photographs of armoured vehicles and buses of the state-security police on a highway near the port city of Dammam.

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Jon Stewart on the GOP double standard - teachers versus bankers

The Daily Show - Crisis in Dairyland - For Richer and Poorer - Teachers and Wall Street
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Without a doubt, one of Stewart's best ever moments. Listen how furious the GOP (and that includes Fox News) becomes when discussing $50,000 jobs for teachers compared to bankers. Yes, one person even complained that $250,000 was just above the poverty line only months ago when the debate was over taxes. Now that it's about teachers making $50,000, they are outraged. Stewart's Thursday show is really worth watching so click through the segments. As I keep saying, why are these people blaming the unions for what we know is a Wall Street recession? Read the rest of this post...

Neil Young - Sugar Mountain

A nice mellow song for a mellow start to the weekend. It's yet another sunny day and the forecast for the week is pretty much the same. This has to mean a lot of rainy days are ahead soon enough but for now it's great. Read the rest of this post...

Wales votes for increased home rule

It's always been a mystery to me as an outsider why Wales never voted for more local powers the way Scotland had done years ago. The Guardian:

The people of Wales have wholeheartedly endorsed giving their assembly more power to make laws without having to ask Whitehall or Westminster for approval.

At the declaration at the Welsh Assembly Senedd in Cardiff Bay, 21 out of 22 districts agreed to give the body direct new powers to legislate in specific areas, bringing Wales closer into line with Scotland and Northern Ireland. More than half a million people voted yes while fewer than 300,000 opposed the change.

Only Monmouthshire sounded a lone note of dissent. People there voted no by a mere 320 votes – 50.6% to 49.4%. As the last result, for Cardiff, came in there were large numbers of the yes camp gathered, cheering the result.

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