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Good News/Bad News July 18, 2002

By Matthew Wheeland, AlterNet. Posted July 18, 2002.


From Yucca Mountain to Mad Chicken Disease, this week's roundup is definitely slanted toward the Dark Side.

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In Special Coverage

Belief:
Is Blind Faith in God and the Bible a Modern Invention?
Devilstower

Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace:
What Can the Morass of the 1970s Tell Us About the Current Economic Crisis?
Alejandro Reuss

DrugReporter:
Lies About Marijuana Drive People to a Much More Harmful Drug -- Booze
Steve Fox

Environment:
Why Max Baucus' 'No' Vote on the Climate Bill May Really Help Its Passage
Jeff Mcmahon

Food:
Soda Helps Make Americans Unhealthy and Fat -- Will Soda Tax Prevail Despite Pushback by Beverage Industry?
Christine Spolar, Joseph Eaton

Health and Wellness:
Does the House Bill's Public Option Kill Off the Senate's?
Booman

Immigration:
Recent Democratic Victories May Grease the Wheels for Immigration Reform in Congress
Marcelo Balive

Media and Technology:
Focusing on Fort Hood Killer's Beliefs Is an Easy Out to Avoid the Deeper Reasons for the Massacre
Mark Ames

Movie Mix:
The Yes Men: Pranksters Out to Fix the World
Mark Engler

Politics:
What Obama Is Up Against in His Own Branch of Government
Russ Baker

Reproductive Justice and Gender:
How the Stupak Amendment Radically Undermines Women's Rights
Rachel Morris

Rights and Liberties:
"Women Are Being Killed All Over the World": One Reporter's Fight Against So-Called "Honor Killings"
Robert S. Eshelman

Sex and Relationships:
9 Silly Things People Say When They Hear You Don't Want Kids (And Ways to Counter Them)
Liz Langley

Take Action:
G-20 Meetings: Nothing Much Happened in the Suites, and There Was Too Much Punch in the Streets
Laura Flanders

Water:
Why Natural Gas Is Not a Clean Energy Panacea
Stan Cox

World:
Egyptian Marine: Soldiers Often 'Racialize' the Enemy to Cope With Stress
Aaron Glantz

More stories by Matthew Wheeland

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It's been a black week for GN/BN. Everything from food disasters to global warming has come up on the BN side, and we've found very little reassurance from GN that things are gonna turn around. That said, let's jump into the stinking cesspool of our global environment:

BAD News

How's this for bad news: Not only are these "trans fats" unsafe at any level, they're like dark matter in the universe: we know they're out there, but we just can't prove where they are! I think it's time for everyone to go raw...
Details

And for all you who gave up red meat after the Mad Cow disease scare, now it's time to stop eating chicken, too: Thanks to the glorious innovations of our agribusiness giants, poultry products destined for grocery stores has been saturated with beef protein to make it absorb extra water and thus sell for higher prices.
Details

First Yucca Mountain, now this: Even though the Congress of the U.S. has passed its bill to create a toxic playground deep in Yucca Mountain, they still need somewhere to store all this waste until then. Why not store it above ground, 45 miles outside Salt Lake City?
Details

Did you hear the one about getting Prozac in the mail? That was classic. Now, the manufactured-illness industry is going to get a little smaller. Pfizer is going to buy up its biggest competitor, Pharmacia (already a megaconglomerate), thereby becoming the first, last, and almost only name in legal drugs.
Details

More pharmaceutical goodness: It seems that a preposterous amount of glucose syrup tainted with the synthetic hormone progesterone turned up in pig feed, meat, and even soda pop in the Netherlands, and spread from there to Belgium, Germany, France and Spain.
Details

Beautifully enough, the responsible party for the above story is none other than Wyeth Medica. You may remember Wyeth Medica from the breaking news this week that their hormone treatment medication, Premarin, causes cancer in women who take it to ease menopause symptoms. Turns out that Wyeth's plant outside Dublin is the one that mislabeled the toxic waste as "green" waste, and therefore fit for consumption.
Details

How is this for a stunning headline: Secret U.S. Biopharms Growing Experimental Drugs. Apparently, the drug companies are hoping that in the not-too-distant future, if you need an abortion or heart attack medication you can get them by eating a nice bowl of genetically modified rice. This story is almost too shocking to believe, and yet, here are the Details

Moving away from Big Pharma, let's talk about GM foods some more: Japan this week approved the marketing and sale of GM corn and soy for human consumption. Until this decision, the U.S. was the major market for GM goods, since Europe has banned them and Asian countries have large concerns about their safety. Europe's still steadfast, but the dominoes are tumbling....
Details

Good News, at last

There's lots more bad news from the past week, but we can neither handle dishing it out, nor taking it.

Though few and far between, the good news was pretty sweet this week:

Eleven attorneys general sent a highly-publicized letter to President Bush asking him to end the "regulatory void" on greenhouse gas emissions this week. Who knows if it will make a difference to his policy, but at least we're finally showing the world that some of our leaders believe in and want to stop climate change.
Details

Thanks to widespread public disapproval and intense lobbying against opening the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve to oil drilling, New Mexico Senator Jeff Bingaman believes that pro-exploration Congresspeople have gotten the hint that it just won't fly. At least not until this election cycle is over ...
Details

Green buildings are hot: Nearly 400 buildings are seeking certification as environmentally sound and ecologically friendly. The latest to get certification, the Chicago Center for Green Technology, is only the third of its kind, but many more are soon to come ...
Details

Matt Wheeland is an editorial intern at AlterNet.

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