Bookmarks 02/21/2012

• How Corporations Corrupt Science at the Public’s Expense | Union of Concerned Scientists

  tags: corporate business science censorship communication propaganda

  • Federal decision makers need access to the best available science in order to craft policies that protect our health, safety, and environment.

     

    Unfortunately, censorship of scientists and the manipulation, distortion, and suppression of scientific information have threatened federal science in recent years.

     

    This problem has sparked much debate, but few have identified the key driver of political interference in federal science: the inappropriate influence of companies with a financial stake in the outcome.

     

    A new UCS report, Heads They Win, Tails We Lose, shows how corporations influence the use of science in federal decision making to serve their own interests.

• BBC News – Canadian government is ‘muzzling its scientists’

  tags: canada science censorship communication media government policy

  • described the protocol as “Orwellian”.

     

      Continue reading the main story

    “Start Quote

     

    The information is so tightly controlled that the public is left in the dark”

     End Quote  Professor Andrew Weaver  University of Victoria  

    The protocol states: “Just as we have one department we should have one voice. Interviews sometimes present surprises to ministers and senior management. Media relations will work with staff on how best to deal with the call (an interview request from a journalist). This should include asking the programme expert to respond with approved lines.”

  • The protocol states: “Just as we have one department we should have one voice. Interviews sometimes present surprises to ministers and senior management. Media relations will work with staff on how best to deal with the call (an interview request from a journalist). This should include asking the programme expert to respond with approved lines.”
  • Ms Munro said she had called one of the scientists involved who she had dealt with several times in the past. He agreed to speak to her, but said that he had been told that her request had to be put to government media relations officials in Ottawa.
  • So they take them out of the news cycle,” she said.

• America’s last hope: A strong labor movement – The 99 Percent Plan – Salon.com

  tags: justice unitedstates labor movement labour activism economy humanrights

  • While labor law constricts the scope of issues that unions can negotiate at the workplace, it doesn’t prevent worker organizations from bargaining in the political arena
  • Imagine, for instance, that the United Auto Workers could negotiate over the environmental standards of the cars they produce instead of just wages and benefits.
  • But a deeper and even more controversial demand proposes an end to management prerogative over all workplace decisions. Workplace democracy means truly giving workers a “voice” at work. Whether through work committees or required seats for employee representatives on the company’s board of directors, a deeper vision of workplace democracy enables workers’ voices to have a real impact.
  • The second domain for a 21st century labor movement is geographic: finally democratizing the South through the building of a Southern labor movement.

• Khader Adnan and now-normalized Western justice – Salon.com

  tags: justice unitedstates humanrights international hypocrisy state politics policy detention violence torture murder palestine israel

  • What’s so notable here isn’t merely that the U.S. and Israel are engaged in the very practices which the U.S. annually and flamboyantly condemns as “human rights abuses” when done by others. It’s that these abuses have now been going on for so long in the two countries, are so entrenched, that they have been absorbed into the political landscape as barely noticed accoutrements. They have become completely normalized — not just legally and politically but culturally – to the point where they are scarcely controversial.

• Can Bolivia become a green energy superpower? | Dan Collyns | Global development | guardian.co.uk

  tags: bolivia energy development green environment economy lithium batteries electricity transport auto

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.