Jan Hearthstone writes; Today,
the future of most of the people, and indeed the future of the whole
world, is decided by only a few, who, in most cases, do not even
represent anybody else, but themselves and their groups. Thus no matter
what most people’s wishes that would regard their future might be,
those wishes are doomed to non-realization for a lack of representation
and consideration by those who actually do influence the course of
future events. This
unsatisfactory state of affairs could be remedied by creating a model
of an ideal Earth, accessible and inputtable by virtually anyone who
could use a computer, in which all the various ideas and wishes that
the people participating in contributing to maintaining of such a model
might have about their futures would be synchronized with all the
knowledge that we have about the Earth and of social processes. This
model would be continuously and dynamically being created by people at
the “grass root” level, and thus would actually represent the combined
and synchronized wished for futures of all of the participants, rather
than what a possible haphazard design of what only a few might want
would be. Most
disputes and problems that occur in this world today are solved (if
they ever do get solved at all) unsatisfactorily, because in most cases
the parties involved have different ideas about what their mutual
coexistence in the future should be, and have very limited chances for
resolving differences constructively, because, in most cases, the
negotiating process is conducted by power entities who might not really
wish for a satisfactory outcome that could even be contrary to their
partisan interests. Sadly enough, that a war is good for business still
holds true, - big business benefits by wars, people who are busy with
fighting each other are easier to exploit. Therefore it is easy to
reason that big business that drives our present day globally dominant
culture is not really interested in making peace; the suspicion could
be held easily that the opposite is true. (12/24/04)
more…

Timothy Wilken, MD
writes: When we examine the relationship between self and other, we
discover that we can choose actions that result in our being worse off,
actions that result in our being unchanged, or actions that result in
our being better off. We can choose to hurt each other, we can choose
to ignore each other, or we can choose to help each other. It was as a
child on the school playgrounds of rural America in the 1950’s that I
first learned of these three choices first hand. My twin brother and I
were seven years old when our Dad was transferred to a new job and our
family moved to the small community of Palco, Kansas. We arrived there
after the start of the school year, and soon found ourselves threatened
by the established group of boys at our new school. For reasons unclear
to me then, conflict seemed almost constant, and real knock down
battles occurred all too frequently. One of my strongest childhood
memories is of fear and running. A pack of boys are chasing me and my
brother. If they catch us, they will beat us up. I am very tired. We
have been running for nearly thirty minutes. My heart is pounding so
hard I can hear little else. Perspiration fills my eyes making it
difficult to see. A hundred yards ahead my twin brother is running
easier. He is taller and a great runner. The pack cannot catch him.
But, they are getting closer to me. Recess is almost over now, if we
can just hold out until the bell rings, we will escape back into the
safety of the classroom. But our escape will be short-lived. I remember
dreading every recess – every lunch hour. Just like in boxing, at the
sound of the bell we would all come out fighting. At every recess, the
war would resume. While my brother could
often run all noon hour without getting caught, I was smaller and
slower with options more limited. Sooner or later the confrontation
came, and with it would come the hurt: a bloody nose, a torn shirt, a
pair of broken glasses, detention after school, and the risk of a
whipping when you got home for fighting at school. To my seven year old
mind, conflict seemed really stupid. Both sides got hurt. I tried to
give as good as I got. Hurt and be hurt. I realized in that first year
at the new school that there were no real winners in conflict. Even,
when you “won” somehow you lost. It didn’t make any sense to me. I
resolved to learn how not to fight. (12/27/04)
more…

George Caffentzis
writes: The struggles over the ownership of the two most important
political
liquids of this era, petroleum and water, have had different fates.
Though water has been claimed to be either private, state or common
property throughout history, the novel feature of this period has been
the move by corporations to totally privatize it. The powerful
struggles against this corporate privatization of water from Cochabamba
in Bolivia to Soweto in South Africa have focused world attention on
the question: Who owns water? The consequent efforts to keep water as a
common property on a local and global level are now some of the most
important initiatives of the anti-globalization movement. Petroleum, on
the other hand, has in the last hundred and fifty
years been considered exclusively as either private or state property.
The pages of the history books on the petroleum industry have been
filled with “magnates” like John D. Rockefeller or government “leaders”like Saddam Hussein and Winston Churchill. Thus the “struggle over oil”has been largely seen as a struggle between oil companies and
governments, since its beginnings in the mid-nineteenth century. But
over the last fifteen years there has been a major shift
in the physiognomy of the protagonists in the oil struggle. No longer
do national governments and huge energy conglomerates dominate the
scene so exclusively. The new protagonists include: “peoples” like the
Ijaws, the Ogoni, the Chiapanacos, the U’wa, the Cofan, the Secoyas,
the Huaorani, the Sumatrans; border-transcending social movements under
the star of Islam and subscribing to “Islamic economics”; elements of
the UN system like the World Bank, claiming to represent “global
governance” of the “global commons.” These peoples, movements and
global entities have entered into the struggle for the control of oil
production, legitimizing themselves with a new (and yet, at the same
time, quite archaic) conception of property–common property. Why is
the notion of a petroleum commons emerging now, and what are its
consequences for the oil industry? (12/27/04)
more…

BBC Science
–
A method for producing red blood cells in the laboratory could one day
help solve the shortage of donated blood. University of Paris
researchers have developed a way to produce large numbers of cells. The
three-stage process involves combining stem cells with another group
called stromal cells and then adding a growth factor to stimulate them.
It is hoped the Nature
Biotechnology
study will eventually enable the mass production of man-made red blood
cells. However, it is not yet clear whether lab-grown blood is a
suitable replacement for donated blood for transfusion. The NHS in
England and Wales needs up to 9,000 units of blood every day. The
National Blood Service regularly campaigns for more blood donations to
maintain sufficient stocks. It is currently urging people from the
ethnic minorities to donate more blood to help sick children recover
from illness. Several groups of scientists around the world are looking
at how stem cells can be manipulated to produce red blood cells. But
previous attempts to produce blood cells in the laboratory have failed
because the cells were not an exact match for naturally occurring
cells. In the latest study, the Paris University team devised a
technique using mouse cells for maximising production of blood cells.
The first step is to take haematopoietic stem cells, which are known to
evolve into blood cells. These are treated with a liquid to make them
proliferate. Then scientists created an environment to mimic the
conditions found in bone marrow by using stromal cells, which provide
the structure inside bone marrow. Once a growth factor called
erythropoietin is added, the stem cells are given a signal to begin the
transformation into red blood cells. Professor Luc Douay, who led the
research, said the stem cells can be autologous, which means they are
harvested from the blood of the person who will receive the
transfusion. “This is the best immunological situation because there is
no risk of rejection,” he said. (12/27/04)
more…

BBC Science — Scientists
are developing a new way of carrying out internal examinations on
patients - based on a wriggling worm. In an endoscopy, a long flexible
tube is fed into the body. It can be very uncomfortable. But a team
from the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, found the ragworm, which
lives in seashores, could offer a model for a more comfortable test.
They say their device would be able to “pull” itself along, rather than
having to be forced into the body. The team have developed a prototype
device, named the Bioloch Ist, which imitates the undulating motion of
the ragworm, also known as the paddleworm.  The worm, which is
often used as fishing bait, moves in wet environments containing large
amounts of solid and semi-solid material - similar to that often found
inside the body. The prototype consists of a simple worm with a
flexible central spine and paddles sticking out either side along the
worm’s body. The team are now working on a more advanced version of the
device in which the paddles themselves can also move as well as the
central spine. Eventually, the device will be motorised. The team are
liaising with a biologist to work out the exact mechanisms for how the
ragworm moves. Paolo Dario, who led the research, said: “The basic
concept is to develop a replacement for the current colonic endoscope,
which is quite large and stiff, and has to be pushed inside a patient.
“If you can pull a device rather than push it, you can reduce the
bending forces and so lessen the chance of damage to a patient’s
internal organs. “We looked to nature for a model and chose the
paddleworm because it is capable of ’swimming’ with ease through
relatively soft, unstructured environments.” (12/24/04)
more…