-Caveat Lector- [radtimes] # 159 An informally produced compendium of vital irregularities. "We're living in rad times!" ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- How to assist RadTimes--> (See ** at end.) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contents: --Dissent is in the air: take to the streets --Go-ahead for GM insect release --Research ties crime, climate --Climate change could kill thousands --Canadian Motorcycle Gangs Gun For Control Of Illegal Drug Trade --You Can't Hide Your Lying Eyes =================================================================== Dissent is in the air: take to the streets <http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0%2C3604%2C434878%2C00.html> Public meetings are the new rock'n'roll as unlikely groups unite by George Monbiot <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Thursday February 8, 2001 The Guardian At last it's happening. Just as the neo-liberals on both sides of the Atlantic proclaim universal victory, a composite radical opposition movement is beginning to emerge. It's confused, it's contradictory and it looks like nothing we've ever seen before. But for the first time in 14 years of campaigning, I feel that I've witnessed something unstoppable. I've spent this week touring the country with a ragged coalition of greens, anarchists and socialists. Everywhere we've been so far, I've picked up a sense of excitement I've never felt in Britain before. In Glasgow we drew 500 people: according to the locals I met it was the biggest political meeting in the city for 15 years. In London, 1,300 turned up. But the numbers, unprecedented though they may be, are less impressive than the unity of purpose. In London, green activists stood and cheered an RMT official as he left the stage to join the Tube strike. In Coventry, car workers demanded an end to global warming. No one denies that there are issues which divide us, but in contesting the neoliberalism to which almost every major political party on earth has now subscribed, we have discovered an oppositional accord which overrides our differences. Neoliberalism demands the privatisation of everything. While the general agreement on trade in services, due to be negotiated next month, would force governments gradually to transfer their mandate to the corporations, Britain has anticipated it with the universal application of the private finance initiative. PFI serves companies better than overt privatisation, as the government guarantees their income stream. For the same reason it serves us worse: we lose both public control and public funds. Neoliberalism also insists that companies be permitted to dump their costs on to people and the environment. As deregulation allows firms both to pollute the planet and to sack their staff without consultation, steelworkers and global warming campaigners have discovered, to their surprise, that they're on the same side. New corporate freedoms, moreover, can be sustained only by denying freedom to everyone else. While the companies seizing our public services are permitted to use "commercial confidentiality" to disguise their intentions, our emails, even our computers can now be monitored and raided by the security services without a warrant. While corporations have acquired the legal status of human beings, but without most of the accompanying criminal liability, jury trials are being denied to those who protest against them. The government, which granted passports to the billionaire businessmen accused of involvement in the biggest arms corruption scandal in modern times, has just announced new restrictions on asylum seekers. The world has been wrested from our hands. In seeking to wrest it back, we have yet to develop a coherent political programme to which all of us can subscribe. While the greens support small business, trades unionists find workers within big corporations easier to mobilise. The anarchists want to smash the state, while the socialists want to rebuild it. But the unprecedented solidarity between these disparate groups is beginning, I feel, to develop into a programme in its own right: a grassroots reorganisation of the political process, propelling democratic renewal from below. We must, of course, be careful not to mistake the affirmation expressed at these meetings for wider public consent. But the public support for the strikers contesting the privatisation of the London Underground and the West Midlands hospitals suggests that some, at least, of our demands are beginning to resonate with Britain's biggest political movement: the disillusionment party. The extraordinary numbers promising to attend the protests at Faslane, the Scottish nuclear base, on Monday and the G8 summit in Genoa in July, suggest that this is the beginning of something big. The new political movements have rediscovered in the public meeting an effective forum for dissent. We were promised that television and the internet would promote participation; instead they have provided our representatives with new screens to hide behind. As radical movements struggle to escape from an enclosed and virtual politics, public speaking has become the new rock and roll. The enclosure of power will not be easily reversed. But had any New Labour ministers attended the meetings we have held so far, they would have scurried back to Westminster very worried indeed. This is not the end of neoliberalism. But it is the beginning of the end. =================================================================== Friday, 9 February, 2001 Go-ahead for GM insect release <http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1150000/1150796.stm> By BBC News Online's Helen Briggs The first release of a genetically modified insect is expected to take place in the United States this summer. A moth has been engineered to contain a gene from a jellyfish in the first stage of a genetic experiment designed to eradicate the cotton-destroying pest from the wild. A total of 3,600 of the moths will be set free under a cage within a one-hectare (three-acre) cotton field in Arizona. The experiment is likely to raise concern among environmental groups. But the researchers behind it say there is "minimal" risk of the genetically modified insects escaping. As an added precaution, the insects have been sterilised. Pink pest Thomas Miller of the Department of Entomology, University of California, told BBC News Online: "It is very important for us that the public understands what we're doing and why. We are not trying to create something that causes more trouble than we already have. "We have plenty of trouble with pink bollworm. It's an absolute nightmare and it's caused a lot of people to go bankrupt. "There's two things about this release. Number one, we're only going to use sterilised insects in the first go around. Even if they get out, there's no chance of them breeding. "Second of all, they are going to be in field cages. The people who are going to do this work have years of experience working with these field cages. "They know what is involved in maintaining them and the only way an enclosed population is going to get loose is if a hurricane comes through and rips the field cages to shreds. There hasn't been a hurricane in Arizona in these areas in living memory. "One thing we do know: the native population is a champion at survival. It has so far resisted any attempts to eradicate it except in central California. "Our ultimate plans are to insert conditional lethal genes that will fight against this enormously successful tendency to survive and infest cotton." Approval pending US regulators have yet to give the greenlight to the release but Professor Miller says he is optimistic the field trials, planned for the summer, will be given the go-ahead in the next few weeks. The pink bollworm, a major pest of commercial cotton in the southwest, is not native to the US but hitched a ride there in the 1920s, probably in cotton shipments from India. The larvae are tiny white caterpillars with dark brown heads that burrow into cotton bolls causing devastation to the crop. They grow into greyish-brown moths. The engineered moths contain a genetic marker, a green fluorescent protein (GFP) derived from the jellyfish, which makes caterpillars inheriting the gene glow green under fluorescent light. In the first stage of the experiment, the scientists plan to release the moths under a seven-metre (24-foot) long cage in a small test site remote from commercial cotton fields. Insect control The field trials could pave the way for the first attempt to eradicate insects from the wild by releasing genetically modified laboratory strains. By inserting an inherited lethal trait into the moth the scientists believe they might be able to "get rid of the pink bollworm" from the US altogether. Similar research is focusing on the disease-carrying mosquito. Researchers from the US and Taiwan have modified the yellow fever mosquito to make it produce a powerful antibacterial protein, limiting its ability to transmit disease. If such insects were ever released in the wild, they might supplant infected natural populations, helping in the fight against human disease. Besides insects, a number of other transgenic animals are on the way. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is currently deciding whether to allow a fast-growing genetically modified salmon on to American dinner plates. Scientists believe genetically modified carp may already be in commercial use in China while genetically modified tilapia may be in use in Cuba. Other examples of aquatic GMOs include transgenic channel catfish, modified Pacific oysters and hybrid striped bass. =================================================================== Research ties crime, climate <http://desmoinesregister.com/news/stories/c5903220/13670994.html> By STACI HUPP Register Staff Writer 02/01/2001 Ames, Ia. - Add a new line of defense for criminals of the future: The weather made me do it. An Iowa State University researcher says violent-crime rates will climb with the temperature as global warming increases over the decades. A two-degree increase in the average temperature could yield up to 24,000 more homicides and assaults in the United States, said Craig Anderson, professor and chairman of ISU's psychology department. More subtle reactions to the heat would include gossiping and rudeness, Anderson said. Scientists for years have warned that slower economies, flooding, disease and severe droughts would be side effects of global warming across the planet. They blame global warming on air pollution, especially carbon dioxide. "The point I try to make is, this is another factor that people should think about when they're trying to determine how serious the consequences of global warming will be," said Anderson, who began his research as a Stanford University graduate student in 1979. Anderson's experiments included assigning people to hot, warm and comfortable conditions and measuring how quickly they were provoked by another person and how fast they retaliated. He also measured crime rates and temperatures in cities against variables such as the poverty rate and ethnic composition. "When you control for other kinds of variables, it's possible that the relationship between heat and violent crime would disappear, but it doesn't," Anderson said. The findings will be published in February's Current Directions in Psychological Sciences. =================================================================== Friday, 9 February, 2001 Climate change 'could kill thousands' <http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/health/newsid_1161000/1161895.stm> Climate changes could cause thousands of deaths every year - but reduce the number of cold-weather deaths, say experts. As floods once again hit parts of the UK, experts warn the incidence of gales and floods could increase over the next 50 years, when they predict temperatures will rise by up to two degrees centigrade. Experts even warn that malaria could return to large parts of the UK. They say the climate change could cause an extra 5,000 deaths from skin cancer every year - and 2,000 from heatwaves. Heatwaves like that of 1976 can currently be expected once every 350 years - by 2050 they could happen every five or six years. Cases of cataracts are also likely to increase by up to 2,000 a year. The report published on Friday, by the Expert Group on Climate Change on Health, predicts more intense summer heatwaves, and an increased risk of winter floods and severe gales. It said the risk of severe flooding of coastal areas was likely to increase because of rising sea levels and increased storm surges. It calls for better ways to predict and assess the risks of such events, and to deal with a severe flood that could leave "perhaps tens of thousands of people temporarily homeless". It adds that local NHS resources "could be overwhelmed". And it warns gales and floods will cause injuries from things such as falling trees and drowning, as well as homelessness and exposure to the cold. 'Winners and losers' One of the report's authors, Tony McMichael, professor of epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, accepted that on balance, the UK could see health benefits from climate change. But he added: "There are going to be a lot of winners and losers and indeed this country may be less adversely affected that many other parts of the world." Chief Medical Officer Liam Donaldson told the BBC it was the first time the effects of climate change on health had been examined. "If the public are going to be exposed to this with hotter summers, then they need to be aware to avoid skin cancer, and elderly people need to be in cool conditions so they don't get severe illnesses." Malaria The report predicts that by 2080, much of the south of the UK would be vulnerable to the milder form of malaria plasmodium vivax for up to four months of the year because of the change in weather conditions. Mosquitoes will thrive in the higher temperatures, and predicted increases in winter rainfall would provide ideal breeding conditions. Areas with salt-marshes like south-east Kent would be the most vulnerable. Global climate change could mean popular tourist destinations like Turkey could have a higher incidence of a more serious form of malaria. But warmer conditions could cut the number of elderly people who die during the winter months by around 20,000 each year. And the number of hospital patient days per year that are due to the cold could fall from 8.2m in the1990s to 6.1m in the 2050s. There could also be an extra 10,000 cases of food poisoning each year. Ozone concentrations are likely to increase, causing several thousand extra deaths and hospital admissions every year. Planning The report calls for and expanded research programme as "a matter of urgency". The information on how climate change could affect health is intended to help the government plan for the long-term. The report concludes that the NHS should cope well with the impact of climate change - if there is adequate planning. It adds that early preventative action could lessen the health effects of climate changes. Frances MacGuire, climate policy officer at the pressure group Friends of the Earth, said: "This report shows thousands of British people will die early from skin cancer, in heatwaves and during extreme weather events caused by man-made climate change. "This will place an added burden on our already over-stretched health service." =================================================================== Canadian Motorcycle Gangs Gun For Control Of Illegal Drug Trade <http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v01/n215/a05.html> Mon, 05 Feb 2001 Washington Post MONTREAL - The hit took place at 10 in the morning. Two men dressed in black walked up to a man unloading his car, pumped five bullets into his back and ran away across a parking lot. Michel Auger, the reporter who knew too much about organized crime and put it all in the newspaper, staggered but did not fall. "I saw someone without a face and a ball of smoke near his belt," Auger said. "While he was fleeing . . . I immediately knew that my work was the cause of the pains in my back." He managed to pull out his cell phone and call for help. The bullets, which police say they believe were fired by a member of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang, cut through Auger's body but missed vital organs. He recovered, and in his newspaper, Le Journal de Montreal, he has continued to chronicle a deadly and escalating gang war in Canada, a country known more for its peacekeeping in foreign lands, its civility at home and its general repulsion of violence. Police make no claims that they have the gang violence under control. Giuliano Zaccardelli, commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, contends that the very fabric of Canadian society may be at stake. And police can't explain why the upsurge is happening now, other than to say that certain types of violence tend to appear in Canada about 10 years later than in the United States. Whatever the cause, police are supporting controversial amendments to the Criminal Code now before Parliament that would make it illegal simply to be a member of a gang. The gang battle pits the Hells Angels against a group called the Rock Machine for control of drug distribution. In the middle, willing to supply whichever gang is triumphant, are traditional organized-crime groups that import drugs into Canada. The violence has killed 157 people in Quebec since 1994, police say. Gangs have allegedly intimidated farmers into growing marijuana, taken over small-town drug markets, beaten up bar owners, killed two prison guards and issued death threats against judges, police officers and prosecutors. By police count, there are about 105 full-time Angels in Quebec, plus many part-timers. The gang does not respond to allegations that it's the cause of a crime wave. "They keep very quiet, they don't issue public statements," said Daniele Roy, a lawyer who represents 13 Angels on trial in Quebec City on 162 charges that include kidnapping, assault and drug offenses. They deny the charges. Roy contends that authorities single out the gang unfairly. "The Hells Angels are the flavor of the moment," Roy said. "You have the Italian Mafia. You have Asian gangs in the West. You have the Warriors, Indians who are controlling the drug market in Manitoba. . . . I do not think the Hells Angels are any worse than any other group." Police say the government needs to get tougher. "We're too nice in Canada, I'm telling you, we're too nice," said Andre Bouchard, commander of the Crimes Division in the Montreal Urban Community Police. He said a former Sicilian Mafia leader recently told Canadian Television that Canada was a "preferred place" for the business of crime because police forces are small, sentences are light and the prisons are "like hotels." Bouchard is sitting in his office above a shopping mall. Only a glass window separates the homicide squad from the shoppers below. Frequently, a reputed Hells Angels leader named Maurice "Mom" Boucher, a well-dressed man who wears designer glasses and commutes to his office near another police station, comes for lunch at the food court below with an entourage, Bouchard says. Police view his presence there as a taunt. "He thinks he's higher than God," said Bouchard, popping open a soda in the canteen of the squad office. "He thinks he can run anything. . . . They took over Quebec. Now, they want Ontario. They will start a war." Few of the killings that police blame on the Angels have resulted in convictions. Only three top members of the gang have been charged with murder since 1995. None was convicted in part, police say, because of intimidation from leather-clad bikers who packed courtrooms and stared down jurors. Canadian law enforcement officials argue that stronger laws are needed. "We don't have real anti-gang legislation," said Louis Dionne, director of the Quebec government's organized-crime unit. "Real legislation would criminalize participation in gangs," so authorities wouldn't have to prove people had committed specific criminal acts. The Criminal Code amendments also would allow authorities to seize the property of criminal organizations. "We want the judge to [be able to] say, 'You have a big house and all these cash investments, you tell us where you get that money,' " Dionne said. Quebec police also want to replace jury trials with three-judge panels for organized-crime cases. "It scares 12 people to sit in a courtroom with these bikers," Bouchard said. "It is easier to protect three judges than 12 jurors." Talk like this concerns many Canadians, who are proud of their open legal system. It also concerns lawyer Roy, who argues that in its enthusiasm to go after crime, the government should not eliminate rights that are considered the "cornerstone" of Canadian society. "I'm not trying to pretend it is okay to commit a crime," she said. But "if you want to fight crime, fight crime, don't change society's principles. If you want to fight crime, give more money to police officers and give better education." The gangs' battle for control of the drug trade began in earnest in 1995, Bouchard said. Angels, who ride the streets wearing "colors"the insignia of a winged skull in a motorcycle helmet, attacked smaller crews and the Rock Machine. That gang was not strong enough to fight them off, so it paid the Dark Circle, another gang, to attack the Angels. The Angels used guns; the Rock Machine liked noise, so it used bombs. In 1995, a car was blown up on a street and flying metal killed an 11-year-old boy. In the police view, the attack on Auger was only the latest skirmish in this war. Police say they believe the people who attacked Auger are dead. By the code of the gangs, Bouchard said, "when you make a mistake, you should be dead. . . . You don't miss. How can you walk up to someone, hit him with six bullets and [he doesn't] die?" On the morning he was shot, Auger had been out on interviews. It was the day after publication of a series of articles on murders, attempted murders and disappearances. "Police believe that the killers of Louis Roy, nicknamed Melou, will be found in the highest-ranking members of the Hells Angels," Auger had written in Le Journal de Montreal. Auger drove to his office that morning and looked for a nearby parking space. He was expecting to run in and out. He didn't see the two men approaching, one of them holding a .22-caliber handgun with a silencer. "I was getting stuff out of my trunk when I was shot in the back," he said. "It happened so fast." As he talks, he is standing at the very spot of the shooting, under clear skies. Later, he walks into the newsroom through a back door that was equipped with a special lock after the shooting. He sits down at his desk. "I received threats in the past," he said. "I was taking precautions. I was not expecting to be shot. I was expecting maybe my car would be blown up. . . . I never thought, as a young reporter, it was a dangerous job. I thought in Colombia, life is more dangerous, but not here in Canada." =================================================================== You Can't Hide Your Lying Eyes <http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0%2C1282%2C41369%2C00.html?tw=wn20010209> by Jessie Seyfer Feb. 9, 2001 In Ridley Scott's sci-fi classic Blade Runner, a test called "Voight-Kampff" analyzed people's eyes to determine whether they were a human or an illegal "replicant." Like all good sci-fi inventions, the "Voight-Kampff" test was frightening because it seems entirely conceivable that such a device could be developed in order to weed out humans that society doesn't like. Luckily for us, the closest thing to this kind of test currently available is not designed to get you killed by bounty hunter Harrison Ford, but to save lives. Marketed as a less intrusive alternative to workplace drug tests, the SafetyScope, by Eye Dynamics, examines people's eyes to determine whether they are too impaired by drugs, alcohol, fatigue or other factors to do their jobs safely. It's a 90-second test that employers can use daily on workers in life-dependent occupations, such as airline pilots, bus drivers, train engineers and construction workers. When a worker uses the scope, he or she simply looks into the machine and follows a beam of light. Meanwhile, the scope plugged into a PCtakes video pictures of 540 data points on the eyes at a rate of 60 times per second. Much like law enforcement's field sobriety test, the scope checks whether eye movement is smooth or jerky, and whether pupils are small or large. The data are run through a complex algorithm, and at the end, the device returns a simple "pass/fail" judgment of whether it's safe for the person to work. Eye Dynamics says the device is up to 97 percent accurate. According to Ron Waldorf, the SafetyScope's designer, the device gives the most effective reading when the worker's data can be compared to a previous reading obtained when he or she was completely unimpaired. Such a baseline reading could be gathered at the worker's initial doctor's examination. Waldorf said it's difficult to nail down an exact accuracy rate, because a person's tolerance for drugs, alcohol, and fatigue are extremely variable based on weight and other factors. But eight years of research, including government-sponsored tests and studies on parolees and inmates, have brought back no more than a 3 percent false-positive rate, Waldorf said. "Basically, if the worker has the same eye signs that would convince a cop to haul them in for possible drunk driving, (an employer) can say, 'Look, you're impaired, I'm not going to have you driving a school bus to pick up my kid.'" Apart from the issue of accuracy, Waldorf said the SafetyScope makes an ideal alternative to urine or blood drug tests for reasons of privacy and fairness. "The ACLU and unions dislike many aspects of urine testing," he said. "It's invasive, it's obviously demeaning, and it doesn't address the actual issue of impairment. Urine tests are really limited in that they only look for five to nine substances. But there are so many things that can impair a person, like fatigue, prescription drugs, what have you." The American Civil Liberties Union considers most workplace drug testing an invasion of privacy and a waste of money. Graham Boyd, director of the national ACLU's drug litigation project, points out that urine tests can be faulty and inaccurate. "A drug test does not test for impairment, it tests for drug metabolites, so potentially it tests for past impairment, that's it," Boyd said. "The drug testing industry claims that drug tests reduce accidents and improve productivity. But there's been no significant studies showing that drug testing has an appreciable impact on safety or productivity." However, if an employer is convinced drug testing is necessary, impairment tests are a far better choice than chemical tests, Boyd said. Other impairment tests include video-game-like devices that assess a worker's coordination. As far as the law is concerned, it's legal in all U.S. states for a private employer to require drug testing of employees, Boyd said. Drug testing becomes a constitutional concern when it enters the public sphere; for example, when the government requires drug testing, and people have no real choice in the matter. In a case that the ACLU is currently working on, the state of Michigan has required welfare recipients to submit to drug tests. In another case, a local government is trying to require school children to take drug tests. These are examples of unnecessary searches under the Fourth Amendment, Boyd contends. Waldorf, of Eye Dynamics, said his company doesn't contract with the government, but it hopes to win contracts in government-regulated industries, such as interstate truck driving. Waldorf also said that SafetyScope tests are cheaper than urine tests, which can cost $15 to $75 each, while a SafetyScope analysis will cost $1 to $5 per scan, depending on the frequency of use. Eye Dynamics hasn't set a price for the device itself yet, because at this point they're letting companies use them for free, just to get the word out. Companies pay only for the tests. One such company, a Baton Rouge, Louisiana, temp agency called Labor Station, has used the device for about three years, and is happy with it. "We use it when an employee looks and smells suspect," according to a Labor Station manager, who identified himself only as Ed. "The jobs we put people (in) are things where people need to be alert. They may be working several stories above the ground." When asked whether workers object to the test, Ed said the company has never had any problems. But some privacy watchers do not go along with such tests so easily. Libertarian columnist J.D. Tuccille, who heads up the civil liberties channel on About.com, finds the Big Brother aspects of being subjected to daily tests rather troubling. "The problem is when tests like this become a crutch, as in a daily use," Tuccille said. "That's when we're not really counting on people to act as responsible human beings. We're replacing trust with a technological crutch." =================================================================== "Anarchy doesn't mean out of control. It means out of 'their' control." -Jim Dodge ====================================================== "Communications without intelligence is noise; intelligence without communications is irrelevant." -Gen. Alfred. M. Gray, USMC ====================================================== "It is not a sign of good health to be well adjusted to a sick society." -J. Krishnamurti ====================================================== "The world is my country, all mankind my brethren, and to do good is my religion." -Thomas Paine ______________________________________________________________ To subscribe/unsubscribe or for a sample copy or a list of back issues, send appropriate email to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. ______________________________________________________________ **How to assist RadTimes: An account is available at <www.paypal.com> which enables direct donations. If you are a current PayPal user, use this email address: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, to contribute. If you are not a current user, use this link: <https://secure.paypal.com/refer/pal=resist%40best.com> to sign up and contribute. The only information passed on to me via this process is your email address and the amount you transfer. 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