The final solution . . .

GENOCIDE CAN BE CULTURAL, and NativeWritesNow is grateful to Christie Blatchford for the explanation, with a post, "Christie Blatchford is telling the truth".  Take a minute and check out how this is so.

Allied efforts . . .

IDLE NO MORE: Idle No More calls on all people to join in a revolution which honors and fulfills Indigenous sovereignty which protects the land and water. Colonization continues through attacks to Indigenous rights and damage to the land and water. We must repair these violations, live the spirit and intent of the treaty relationship, work towards justice in action, and protect Mother Earth.

Re: Chief Theresa Spence. Here's an idea: get the UK newspapers involved. "Canadian GuvGen won't meet dying Hunger Strike Indian Chief". The publicity will put pressure on Buck House, which dumps on the GuvGen, who dumps on Stevie. Remember, Stevie reacts to publicity like a cockroach to light. International publicity that makes him look bad, that leaks back to Canada, especially as the election is coming up might have a lot of power.

Odious and disgusting . . .

KUDOS TO MONTREAL SIMON: his post, "When the Cons Try to Cover Up Murder" is something you must read. Stevie will have much to answer for.

A present . . .

MACROPHAGES AND VIRUSES can kill cancer: According to George Dvorsky's article in io9, "Researchers create a ‘trojan-horse’ virus to eliminate cancer in mice".


clinical trials on humans could start as early as next year

Stevie does Gangnam . . .

ACCORDING TO HUFFINGTON, the Air Farce has nailed it. Delightful!

Stevie needs a reading . . .

THE HR GIGER TAROT SET. Awesome.

The Epigenetic Key . . .

HOW HOMOSEXUAL BEHAVIOR arises has been a mystery. According to an article by George Dvorsky in io9, "Scientists claim that homosexuality is not genetic — but it arises in the womb", as the endocrine system copes with operational life. Fascinating, click on the link to find out more.

A team of international researchers has completed a study that suggests we will probably never find a ‘gay gene.' Sexual orientation is not about genetics, say the researchers, it's about epigenetics. This is the process where DNA expression is influenced by any number of external factors in the environment. And in the case of homosexuality, the researchers argue, the environment is the womb itself.

Human behavior . . .

HUMAN MOTIVATION is incredibly complex. Attempts to tweek with it are invariably mis-directed. Esther Inglis-Arkell's article at io9, "The lasting mystery of the Hawthorne Effect" is worthy of  attention.

The Hawthorne Effect is cited by both business experts and psychology experts, but rarely in the same way. Some say it's real, some that it's real but misinterpreted, and then others that it doesn't exist and never has. It all started with an attempt to increase productivity at a factory in the 1920s, and we've been arguing about it ever since. 

The story of the Hawthorne Effect begins in the 1920s, when productivity studies began at the Hawthorne Works electrical equipment factory in Illinois. They continued for the better part of a decade, with investigators tweaking nearly every aspect of working life.

— The Home Office —

Right to work . . .

RIGHT TO WORK got its start in Texas in the early 1940's. It's the malignant creation of a particularly odious American, Vance Muse. According to Mark Ames at Not Safe For Work Corporation, in an article "You Hate "Right To Work" Laws More Than You Know. Here's Why", Vance Muse was quite a piece of work. Click on the link to get a fascinating explanation of the rise of the fascist Right in America.

Vance Muse was a racist political operative and lobbyist from the state of Texas — the native habitat for all America’s vermin —as Satanically vile as "Turd Blossom" Rove, a racist smear-peddler like Andrew Breitbart, only without Breitbart’s degenerate heart and fondness for blow.

Here is a description of Vance Muse, creator of the "right to work" movement, from a book by an old celebrated journalist, Stetson Kennedy, the reporter who famously went undercover inside the KKK and wrote a tell-all in the 40’s:

"The man Muse is quite a character. He is six foot four, wears a ten-gallon hat, but generally reserves his cowboy boots for trips Nawth. Now over fifty [this is published in 1946—M.A.], Muse has been professionally engaged in reactionary enterprises for more than a quarter of a century."

Among Vance Muse’s "reactionary enterprises": He lobbied against women’s suffrage, against the child-labor amendment, against the 8-hour workday, and in 1936, Muse engineered the first split in the South’s Democratic Party by peeling off the segregationists and racists from the New Deal party, a political maneuver that eventually led to Strom Thurmond, George Wallace, and at last a Republican right-wing takeover of the South, and with it, the collapse of the old New Deal coalition. Which worked out fine for Vance Muse, since he was a covert Republican himself, serving "for years" as the Republican Party state treasurer in Texas.

• • •

To understand why Fred Koch and the Bircher libertarians hated Ike so much, imagine today a Republican like Eisenhower who raised the top marginal tax rate to 91%, who poured massive government investments into building roads and schools, who publicly declared his support for Social Security and denounced any Republican who opposed it. 

Is it any wonder that the Right has a problem with Obama?

Old, old, OLD growth . . .

THE ARCHANGEL ANCIENT TREE ARCHIVE is preserving the genetics of the Earth's oldest trees.

Land of the free . . .

ACCORDING TO ZERO HEDGE'S George Washington, "Americans Have Less Access to Justice than Botswanans … And Are More Abused By Police than Kazakhstanis", America is now Amerika with State Security.

Genetic patents . . .

MONSANTO'S MONSTROSITIES? Seems that Monsanto has been really pushy about patents, with the result that WIRED reports "Supreme Court to Rule on Patents for Self-Replicating Products", as people have resisted Monsanto's demands for payment because some of their patented seeds have spread to their crops.

The Supreme Court is weighing in on the soybean patents, agreeing to hear an appeal by a Knox County, Indiana soybean farmer who was ordered to pay $84,456 in damages and costs to Monsanto in 2009 for infringing those patents.

Farmer Vernon Bowman’s dirty deed? The 74-year-old bought soybean seed from a local grain elevator that was contaminated with the patented seed, which he used to produce beans on his 299 acres.

There's a lot at stake here, for Monsanto and other corporations, including Big Pharma.

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE:

And maybe even more important, because according to WIRED, "Supreme Court to Decide if Human Genes Are Patentable". That could mean that you might not own some part of what makes you you.  Given Monsanto's track record, that's not impossible to imagine. Could be worse, though, like Orson Scott Card's "I Put My Blue Genes On" or the genetic slavery envisioned by SF authors like Frank Herbert or Eric Weber.

Cybercrime . . .

BANK ROBBERS FOR HIRE. According to KrebsonSecurity, "Online Service Offers Bank Robbers for Hire", these are North American operations.

The service, advertised on exclusive, Russian-language forums that cater to cybercrooks, claims to have willing and ready foot soldiers for hire in California, Florida, Illinois and New York.