organization:tufts university

  • Last Suspect Freed in Kim Jong-un’s Brother’s Murder Case | News | teleSUR English
    https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Last-Suspect-Freed-in-Kim-Jong-uns-Brothers-Murder-Case-20190504-000

    There are no other suspects held in custody now that Huong has been released, and it is expected that the case will not reach a conviction.

    Doan Thi Huong, the Vietnamese woman accused of assassinating North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un’s brother, Kim Jong Nam, has been released from a Malaysian prison after being held for over two years.

    Huong was accused of murdering Kim Jong Nam using the highly toxic VH nerve agent. After being released, Huong was taken into immigration custody until her scheduled flight to Hanoi. The formerly jailed woman stated that she wishes to pursue a career in acting and singing once she returns home.

    There are no other suspects held in custody now that Huong has been released, and it is expected that the case will not reach a conviction, considering Malaysia and Vietnam are attempting to normalize tense bilateral ties.

    Critics believe that the release of Huong will prevent Malaysia from raising further questions.

    On April 1, Vietnam successfully convinced Malaysian prosecutors to drop the murder charge against Huong. Vietnam increase lobbying efforts after the Indonesian government successfully negotiated with Vietnam to release the other suspect, Siti Aisyah, involved in the case.

    Aisyah was released and returned to Indonesia on March 11.

    Both governments used either good or improving intergovernmental relations to convince Malaysia to release the accused women, who maintain that they were tricked by North Korean agents into thinking their act was a harmless prank for a hidden camera TV show.

    The remaining suspects, four Korean nationals who boarded flights out of Kuala Lumpur International Airport, were also allowed to leave Malaysia in order to maintain relations with North Korea.

    “The best the two suspects could have pleaded guilty for is involuntary manslaughter. Instead, they both walk off free,” Sung-Yoon Lee, the assistant professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, stated and added that someone should have been held culpable for the death of Kim Jong Nam.

    #Corée #Vietnam #Malaisie #assassinat #espionnage

  • La lente prise de conscience du poids de l’#argent sur la #recherche

    Les questionnements sur l’impact des #liens_d’intérêts sur les travaux scientifiques remontent à une trentaine d’années.

    L’utilisation de la science par des #intérêts_privés est l’une des thématiques centrales de #Lobbytomie, le livre-enquête de notre collaboratrice #Stéphane_Horel, qui paraît jeudi 11 octobre aux éditions La Découverte (368 pages, 21,50 euros). Dans le monde académique, l’intérêt suscité par cette question – les liens d’intérêts agissent-ils sur la science ? – est récent : il ne remonte qu’à un peu plus de trois décennies. Singulièrement depuis le début des années 1990, un nombre croissant de chercheurs en sociologie et en histoire des sciences, mais aussi en nutrition, en toxicologie ou en épidémiologie, s’engagent dans des travaux visant à réexaminer les résultats ou les orientations de ces disciplines au prisme des financements et des conflits d’intérêts.
    "L’une des premières tentatives de répondre scientifiquement à la question de savoir si le financement d’une étude pouvait avoir un impact sur son résultat a été une étude publiée au milieu des années 1980 dans laquelle un chercheur, Richard Davidson, a divisé en deux groupes toutes les études cliniques comparant différentes thérapies, avec d’un côté celles financées par l’industrie, et de l’autre côté, toutes les autres, raconte Sheldon Krimsky, professeur à la Tufts University de Boston (Etats-Unis), le premier à avoir formalisé la notion de « biais de financement » (funding effect en anglais) et auteur d’un ouvrage pionnier sur le sujet (La Recherche face aux intérêts privés, Les Empêcheurs de penser en rond, 2004). Sa conclusion était que les travaux sponsorisés par les industriels différaient dans leurs résultats de ceux financés par d’autres sources."
    Difficile à accepter par de nombreux chercheurs ou médecins, l’idée que la science n’est pas nécessairement souveraine a été très tôt mise à profit par divers intérêts privés. De nombreux travaux d’histoire des sciences montrent sans ambiguïté, à partir d’archives industrielles, que les secteurs du sucre, de la viande, et surtout les grands cigarettiers, ont cherché avec succès, dès les années 1950 et 1960, à peser sur la science.
    « Nombreuses réticences »
    En 1978, dans leur livre The Regulation Game (Ballinger Publishing, non traduit), deux économistes spécialistes de la régulation des entreprises, Bruce Owen et Ronald Braeutigam, expliquent déjà sans fard que « les manœuvres tactiques de #lobbying les plus efficaces » sont « d’identifier les principaux experts dans chaque domaine de recherche pertinent, et de les recruter comme consultants, conseillers, ou de leur offrir des financements de recherche ». « Cela requiert un minimum de finesse et ne doit pas être trop flagrant, de manière à ce que les experts eux-mêmes soient incapables de réaliser qu’ils ont perdu leur objectivité et leur liberté d’action », poursuivaient-ils.
    « Il a fallu attendre le milieu des années1980 pour qu’une revue savante, le New England Journal of Medicine, décide de demander aux auteurs des études qu’elle publiait de déclarer leurs liens d’intérêts, explique Sheldon Krimsky. Mais les réticences ont été nombreuses, y compris dans les revues les plus prestigieuses ! » Et le mouvement est singulièrement lent. En février 1997, la revue Nature publie un éditorial annonçant qu’elle évitera de sombrer dans « le financièrement correct » et qu’elle ne demandera pas aux scientifiques qu’elle publie de déclarer leurs liens d’intérêts.
    La science, dit en substance l’éditeur de Nature, est au-dessus de cela. Quatre années plus tard, la célèbre revue britannique mange son chapeau jusqu’à la dernière couture : dans un éditorial d’une pleine page, elle annonce qu’à compter du 1er octobre 2001, elle demandera aux scientifiques qui souhaitent publier dans ses pages, de remplir un formulaire de déclaration d’intérêts.
    Entre ces deux éditoriaux antagonistes, la divulgation par la justice fédérale américaine des « tobacco documents » – ces millions de documents internes prélevés dans les quartiers généraux de Philip Morris, Lorillard, Brown & Williamson ou British American Tobacco – a crûment dévoilé l’ampleur et la sophistication des campagnes menées par les grands cigarettiers pour instrumentaliser la science en la finançant généreusement.
    Les premières analyses de cette immense documentation, publiées par le cardiologue Stanton Glantz (université de Californie à San Francisco, Etats-Unis) montrent comment l’industrie cigarettière est parvenue, pendant quatre décennies, à créer artificiellement du dissensus dans la littérature scientifique et ainsi alimenter le doute sur les dangers du tabac, à troubler la perception des vrais risques posés par la cigarette en détournant l’attention vers d’autres causes de maladie, à fabriquer de toutes pièces des éléments permettant de faire accroire au public la possibilité de bénéfices sanitaires liés à la cigarette, etc. Dans le monde académique, ces révélations sont un choc.
    L’une des études les plus célèbres montrant, à partir des tobacco documents, toute l’ampleur des effets produits par le financement des chercheurs a été publiée en 1998 par Lisa Bero et Deborah Barnes, alors chercheuses à l’université de Californie à San Francisco, dans le Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). Les deux scientifiques ont rassemblé les 106 études alors disponibles sur les effets du tabagisme passif : 39 montraient que la fumée ambiante ne présentait pas de danger et 67 concluaient à l’inverse. Pourquoi ?
    Les preuves s’accumulent
    Les auteures ont examiné tous les critères possibles permettant d’expliquer ces différences : année de la publication, taille des échantillons, nature des effets délétères recherchés, etc. Las ! « Le seul facteur permettant de prédire les conclusions d’une étude était le fait que l’un des auteurs soit ou non affilié à l’industrie du tabac », écrivent-elles. L’accès, dans les tobacco documents, aux listes de chercheurs financés par l’industrie du tabac permettait soudain de porter un regard rétrospectif sur leur production. Et de mesurer la manière dont ils avaient pesé, des années durant, sur les grandes controverses liées à la cigarette.
    Depuis, les preuves de l’effet de financement s’accumulent. La pharmacie, le sucre, les biotechnologies, les pesticides, la pétrochimie… tous ces secteurs pèsent lourdement, ou ont pesé, à des degrés divers, sur la façon dont la connaissance et la réglementation se construisent – un fait désormais consensuel dans la communauté scientifique travaillant sur le sujet. Pourtant, dans le monde de l’expertise au sens large, cette idée peine à faire son chemin : « J’ai participé à beaucoup de groupes d’expertise, raconte Sheldon Krimsky. Mais je n’ai jamais vu un expert se déporter spontanément en raison de ses liens d’intérêts, de ses participations financières, etc. Beaucoup sont encore persuadés d’être au-dessus de cela. »


    https://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2018/10/09/la-lente-prise-de-conscience-du-poids-de-l-argent-sur-la-recherche_5366760_3
    #influence #science #université #livre

    • Lobbytomie. Comment les lobbies empoisonnent nos vies et la démocratie

      Lobby des pesticides. Lobby du tabac. Lobbies de la chimie, de l’amiante, du sucre ou du soda. On évoque souvent les « lobbies » de façon abstraite, créatures fantastiques venues du mystérieux pays du Marché, douées de superpouvoirs corrupteurs et capables de modifier la loi à leur avantage. Pourtant, les firmes qui constituent ces lobbies ne sont pas anonymes et leur influence n’a rien de magique. Leurs dirigeants prennent en toute conscience des décisions qui vont à l’encontre de la santé publique et de la sauvegarde de l’environnement.
      C’est cet univers méconnu que Stéphane Horel, grâce à des années d’enquête, nous fait découvrir dans ce livre complet et accessible. Depuis des décennies, Monsanto, Philip Morris, Exxon, Coca-Cola et des centaines d’autres firmes usent de stratégies pernicieuses afin de continuer à diffuser leurs produits nocifs, parfois mortels, et de bloquer toute réglementation. Leurs responsables mènent ainsi une entreprise de destruction de la connaissance et de l’intelligence collective, instrumentalisant la science, créant des conflits d’intérêts, entretenant le doute, disséminant leur propagande.
      Dans les cercles du pouvoir, on fait peu de cas de ce détournement des politiques publiques. Mais les citoyens n’ont pas choisi d’être soumis aux projets politiques et économiques de multinationales du pétrole, du désherbant ou du biscuit. Une enquête au long cours, à lire impérativement pour savoir comment les lobbies ont capturé la démocratie et ont fait basculer notre système en « lobbytomie ».


      http://www.editionsladecouverte.fr/catalogue/index-Lobbytomie-9782707194121.html

  • The Sackler family made billions from OxyContin. Why do top US colleges take money tainted by the opioid crisis? | US news | The Guardian
    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jan/27/universities-sackler-family-purdue-pharma-oxycontin-opioids

    Purdue Pharma pleaded guilty in 2006 in federal court to marketing OxyContin “with the intent to defraud or mislead”. At the time, the company paid a $600m fine – widely seen as a slap on the wrist – while executives paid additional fines of $34.5m.

    Over the years, some of America’s leading universities have accepted large sums of money from the Sacklers for science research and the Sackler name is prominently attached to their institutions. So, in light of recent revelations about the origins of the Sackler wealth, will these universities attempt to somehow hold the Sacklers to account?

    For now, they are not saying.

    Four universities contacted declined requests for an interview. “We will not be able to offer anyone for an interview,” said Weill Cornell Medicine, home of the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Center for Biomedical and Physical Sciences.

    “At this time, we do not have any comment,” replied Tufts University, which is home to the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences.

    Questions to Columbia University about its Sackler Institute for Developmental Psychobiology went unanswered.

    Among the universities contacted, the one that did respond was Yale, which has a professorship funded by the Sacklers at its Cancer Center and which is also home to the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Institute for Biological, Physical and Engineering Sciences.

    While Yale would not agree to an interview, nor would it answer specific questions about its decision to accept Sackler funds, it did provide a written statement which said in part: “The Sackler family has provided generous gifts to support research at Yale in service of our mission to improve the world today and for future generations.”

    The statement also acknowledged the toll of opioids and catalogued the broader work the university is doing to combat the epidemic. “Yale faculty members, staff, and students – particularly those in the departments of psychiatry, internal medicine, and emergency medicine – are working tirelessly to determine the causes of and treatments for addiction.”

    As for OxyContin, universities may find it increasingly difficult to champion their research under the Sackler banner

    But do Yale’s good works justify its decision to accept Sackler funds?
    Advertisement

    Reich says the answer is complicated. “The relevant question is not just a utilitarian one about whether or not tainted money can be used to produce some aggregate social benefit,” he says. “There’s the question about whether Yale or any other university wants to be complicit in the reputation laundering of the donor. And at the very minimum there is that negative to put on the ledger of whatever good could be done with the gift.”

    For a long time, the Sacklers flew under the radar. Forbes concedes that when it launched its initial list of wealthiest US families in 2014, it missed the Sacklers entirely, but their 2015 edition notes that their wealth exceeds that of famed families like the Mellons and the Rockefellers.

    It was only last October, when investigations into the origins of the family’s wealth were published by the New Yorker, Esquire and others, that the spotlight began to shine intensely on them.

    #Opioides #Universités

  • Researchers Map Seven Years of Arctic Shipping – gCaptain
    http://gcaptain.com/researchers-map-seven-years-of-arctic-shipping


    This map shows unique ship visits to Arctic waters between September 1, 2009, and December 31, 2016.
    Credit: NASA Earth Observatory

    To illustrate this increase in ship activity in the Arctic, a team of scientists has banded together to analyze and map more than 120 million data points in order to track where ships are most using the region.

    To make the map, the team, led by Paul Arthur Berkman, director of the science diplomacy center at Tufts University, and Greg Fiske, a geospatial analyst at the Woods Hole Research Center, used data compiled by SpaceQuest, a company designs microsatellites that can monitor the track Automatic Identification System (AIS) signals from ships.

    Once the data was plotted, there were some interesting observations to be made.

    Looking at the data, Berkman, Fiske, and their colleagues found that the mean center of shipping activity moved 300 kilometers north and east—closer to the North Pole—over the 7-year span.

    Notably, they were particularly surprised to find more small ships, such as fishing boats, wading farther into Arctic waters. The team also plotted the AIS ship tracks against sea ice data from NSIDC and found that ships are encountering ice more often and doing so farther north each year.

    Despite the seemingly growing opportunities for shipping, the increasing number of ships in the region has given rise to serious concerns about pollution, oil spills, and disturbances to marine life, among other possible impacts.

  • A Summer School for Mathematicians Fed Up with Gerrymandering | The New Yorker
    http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/a-summer-school-for-mathematicians-fed-up-with-gerrymandering

    Tufts University—a summer school at which mathematicians, along with data analysts, legal scholars, schoolteachers, and political scientists, will learn to use their expertise to combat gerrymandering.
    The school, which began on Monday, is the brainchild of a young Tufts professor named Moon Duchin, who specializes in geometry.

    #gerrymandering #mathématiques #recherche

    https://seenthis.net/recherche?recherche=moon+duchin @isskein

  • America Rules the Waves. But for How Long ? - Bloomberg
    https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-06-03/america-rules-the-waves-but-for-how-long

    China builds fake islands in the South China Sea. Russia fires missiles into Syria from the Mediterranean and Caspian Seas. North Korea launches ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan. The U.S. orders three — three! — aircraft carrier strike groups to the Western Pacific in response. Houthi rebels shoot rockets at U.S. ships off Yemen. Pacific nations go on a submarine-buying binge. India and China start constructing their first homemade aircraft carriers. Pirates return to the waters off East Africa.

    You’d be forgiven for thinking that control of high seas is becoming more vital than any time since World War II. Which makes it the perfect moment for an authoritative new book on the role of sea power in shaping human civilization across the globe and across the ages.

    Into the breach steps James Stavridis, a retired four-star admiral and former supreme allied commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. His new book, “Sea Power: The History and Geopolitics of the World’s Oceans,” is a breezy yet comprehensive overview of the topic, as well as a sort of sailor’s log and meditation on the power of the Great Blue. I decided a talk with Stavridis, now dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, could help put the rising tensions on the world’s waterways into perspective. Here is an edited transcript of our interview.

    Intéressant entretien avec un survol (forcément rapide…) de #géopolitique (mânes de Mahan !)

    La réponse à la dernière question :

    Donald Trump’s decision to pull the U.S. out of the Paris agreement is a huge blow. Voluntary, international cooperation on emissions control is the way forward, and now that is in question. There are a lot of international organizations that work on fisheries, scientific monitoring, deal with pollution and the like, but they are mostly under the United Nations umbrella. And strengthening them under Trump will be tougher.

    In the U.S., we need better interagency cooperation: all cabinet-level and other organizations — Treasury, Justice Department, Coast Guard — working together to think through our regulatory regimes, share data, and reach a common understanding of how to go after lawbreakers. Oceans are the biggest crime scene in the world.

    But above all, we need better public-private cooperation. You cannot solve this globally without working with the companies that move 95 percent of the world’s good across the ocean highway. It would be like developing a cyber-defense strategy without talking to Microsoft or Google. People call the Amazon the “lungs of the earth,” but it’s really the oceans. And if we cannot count on sustainable oceans, our future is bleak.

  • When Disaster Strikes, He Creates A ’Crisis Map’ That Helps Save Lives : Parallels : NPR

    http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/10/02/495795717/when-disaster-strikes-he-creates-a-crisis-map-that-helps-save-lives

    via Alexandre Sanchez que je remercie infiniment

    Back in January 2010, Patrick Meier, a Ph.D. student in international relations at Tufts University, was checking email at home, with CNN on in the background, when he was jolted by a breaking news alert. An earthquake had struck Haiti, and tens of thousands were feared dead.

    “I froze,” he says. “Just paralyzed.”

    His girlfriend, Christine Martin, a fellow student whom he wanted to marry, was doing research in Haiti when the earthquake hit. Meier tried everything he could think of – phone calls, social media, Skype, text messages – to get in touch with her or anyone else who might know if she was safe, but couldn’t get a response.

    #cartographie #cartographie_humanitaire #désastres #catastrophes

  • #Haiti : Everyone wants to fight #cholera, but no one can agree on how
    http://www.statnews.com/2015/12/07/cholera-vaccine-debate

    There was a vaccine available. Although the cache was not nearly large enough — and still not fully approved by the World Health Organization — Ivers and others appealed to Haitian officials to allow them to distribute the drug.The government said no.“This was a missed opportunity to save lives,” Ivers, who ran a clinic in Haiti for the nonprofit Partners in Health, recalled in a recent interview.Today, the epidemic is seen as a pivotal moment in a dispute over the best way to counter cholera.

    On one side are public health advocates, backed by the powerful Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, who have been galvanized in their enthusiasm for vaccines. Those vaccines, they believe, can be used to make major strides against a disease that is thousands of years old, easily treated, and entirely preventable.On the other are public health officials who argue that the vaccines are not effective enough and are a Band-Aid diverting attention from the water and sanitation issues that are at the root of cholera.

    “This is a disease of poverty,” said Shafiqul Islam, director of the Water Diplomacy Program at Tufts University. “There is a group of people who think vaccines will solve the problem. I don’t think it will.”Experts on both sides acknowledge the disagreement has undermined unity in the fight against cholera. The WHO has tried to straddle the divide by supporting both approaches, without settling how to pay for both.

    #vaccins ou #pauvreté ? (Je ne crois pas que la question soit bien posée. Quant à l’argent faut pas déconner…)

    #santé_publique

  • Have We Hit Peak Whiteness? - Issue 26: Color
    http://nautil.us/issue/26/color/have-we-hit-peak-whiteness

    Ronald Perry can’t seem to get his patients’ teeth white enough. The Massachusetts dentist, who directs the Gavel Center for Restorative Research at Tufts University School of Dental Medicine, shows patients who want to whiten their teeth the VITA Classical Shade Guide with Bleached Shades, which presents a total of 19 dark and light shades. They invariably go for the whitest, rather than a creamy ivory, a more natural shade he favors. As teeth-whitening procedures have become more widespread, our very definition of white has changed. “What was once considered natural white is now yellow to people,” Perry says. The bleached shades were added to the VITA guides several years ago to keep up. “Sometimes there’s really not a shade I can pick that’s white enough,” says Perry of his patients, who (...)

  • Are the U.S. and Allies Getting Too Cozy With Al Qaeda’s Affiliate in Syria?
    http://blog.peaceactionwest.org/2015/07/24/are-the-u-s-and-allies-getting-too-cozy-with-al-qaedas-affilia

    Reporting on al Nusra’s recent victories in Idlib, Charles Lister at Brookings reported:

    “Several commanders involved in leading recent Idlib operations confirmed to this author that the U.S.-led operations room in southern Turkey, which coordinates the provision of lethal and non-lethal support to vetted opposition groups, was instrumental in facilitating their involvement in the operation from early April onwards. That operations room — along with another in Jordan, which covers Syria’s south — also appears to have dramatically increased its level of assistance and provision of intelligence to vetted groups in recent weeks.

    Whereas these multinational operations rooms have previously demanded that recipients of military assistance cease direct coordination with groups like Jabhat al-Nusra, recent dynamics in Idlib appear to have demonstrated something different. Not only were weapons shipments increased to the so-called “vetted groups,” but the operations room specifically encouraged a closer cooperation with Islamists commanding frontline operations.” [emphasis added]

    As news of the coalition victories spread, the Wall Street Journal published a piece entitled “To US Allies, Al Qaeda Affiliate in Syria Becomes the Lesser Evil” that reinforces the possibility some U.S. military leaders also see such collaboration with al Qaeda as a legitimate option. The author of the article spoke with retired US Admiral James Stavridis , a recent Supreme Allied Commander of NATO who oversaw the 2011 Libya campaign. Discussing the new role of key US allies backing a coalition that includes the al Qaeda affiliate, the Admiral compared the relationship to partnering with Stalin in World War II:

    “It is unlikely we are going to operate side by side with cadres from Nusra, but if our allies are working with them, that is acceptable. If you look back to World War II, we had coalitions with people that we had extreme disagreements with, including Stalin’s Russia,” said Mr. Stavridis, now dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Boston.

    “I don’t think that is a showstopper for the U.S. in terms of engaging with that coalition.” [emphasis added]

    It is important to note that the head of al Nusra though indicating an unwillingness to attack the West for now, still pledges allegiance to Ayman Zawahiri, the long time deputy to Osama Bin Laden, and currently the official head of Al Qaeda. In addition, human rights groups have pointed to al Nusra’s “systematic and widespread violations including targeting civilians, kidnappings, and executions.” Al Nusra has engaged in lethal car bombing attacks targeting civilians and they have actively recruited child soldiers. Like ISIS, al Nusra has treated women and girls in areas they control particularly harshly. In addition to strict and discriminatory rules on dress, employment and freedom of movement there have been abductions of women and even executions of at least one woman accused of adultery.

    Despite all this, retired Adm. Stavridis isn’t the only commentator who finds our allies’ involvement with al Nusra ‘acceptable’. The prominent foreign policy journal, Foreign Affairs published a piece this year entitled “Accepting Al Qaeda: The Enemy of the United States’ Enemy.” The author, Barak Mendelsohn, makes the case that al Qaeda staying “afloat” is better for US interests, citing threats to US allies from Iran and the Islamic State. A couple weeks later Lina Khatib , the director of the Carnegie Middle East Center, wrote in a piece that “Nusra’s pragmatism and ongoing evolution mean that it could become an ally in the fight against the Islamic State”.

    #blanchiment_de_Qaïda

  • Vote all you want. The secret government won’t change.
    http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2014/10/18/vote-all-you-want-the-secret-government-won-change/jVSkXrENQlu8vNcBfMn9sL/story.html?s_campaign=8315

    But Tufts University political scientist Michael J. Glennon has a more pessimistic answer: Obama couldn’t have changed policies much even if he tried.

    Though it’s a bedrock American principle that citizens can steer their own government by electing new officials, Glennon suggests that in practice, much of our government no longer works that way. In a new book, “National Security and Double Government,” he catalogs the ways that the defense and national security apparatus is effectively self-governing, with virtually no accountability, transparency, or checks and balances of any kind. He uses the term “double government”: There’s the one we elect, and then there’s the one behind it, steering huge swaths of policy almost unchecked. Elected officials end up serving as mere cover for the real decisions made by the bureaucracy.

    […]

    Glennon’s critique sounds like an outsider’s take, even a radical one. In fact, he is the quintessential insider: He was legal counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a consultant to various congressional committees, as well as to the State Department. “National Security and Double Government” comes favorably blurbed by former members of the Defense Department, State Department, White House, and even the CIA. And he’s not a conspiracy theorist: Rather, he sees the problem as one of “smart, hard-working, public-spirited people acting in good faith who are responding to systemic incentives”—without any meaningful oversight to rein them in.

    How exactly has double government taken hold? And what can be done about it? Glennon spoke with Ideas from his office at Tufts’ Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. This interview has been condensed and edited.

    Review of ‘National Security and Double Government’ by Michael J. Glennon
    http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/books/2014/10/18/review-national-security-and-double-government-michael-glennon/tUhBBdSj8s0WW1HoWUf20M/story.html

    The answer Glennon places before us is not reassuring: “a bifurcated system — a structure of double government — in which even the President now exercises little substantive control over the overall direction of US national security policy.” The result, he writes, is a system of dual institutions that have evolved “toward greater centralization, less accountability, and emergent autocracy.”

    If this were a movie, it would soon become clear that some evil force, bent on consolidating power and undermining democratic governance, has surreptitiously tunneled into the under-structure of the nation. Not so. In fact, Glennon observes, this hyper-secret and difficult-to-control network arose in part as an attempt to head off just such an outcome. In the aftermath of World War II, with the Soviet Union a serious threat from abroad and a growing domestic concern about weakened civilian control over the military (in 1949, the Hoover Commission had warned that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had become “virtually a law unto themselves”), President Truman set out to create a separate national security structure.

    By 2011, according to The Washington Post, there were 46 separate federal departments and agencies and 2,000 private companies engaged in classified national security operations with millions of employees and spending of roughly a trillion dollars a year. As Glennon points out, presidents get to name fewer than 250 political appointees among the Defense Department’s nearly 700,000 civilian employees, with hundreds more drawn from a national security bureaucracy that comprise “America’s Trumanite network” — in effect, on matters of national security, a second government.

    (Signalé par Glenn Greenwald.)

  • La toxicité de dizaines de substances sous-évaluée
    http://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2012/03/26/la-toxicite-de-dizaines-de-substances-sous-evaluee_1675531_3244.html

    Les auteurs ont passé en revue plus de 800 études distinctes menées sur l’homme, sur l’animal ou sur des cultures cellulaires. « Nous avons voulu considérer cette littérature dans son ensemble, indique la biologiste Laura Vandenberg (Tufts University à Boston), premier auteur de cette analyse. Il ressort, en résumé, que les molécules qui imitent ou bloquent les hormones ont des effets négatifs à très faibles doses, c’est-à-dire à des doses généralement considérées comme sûres chez l’homme. »

    Étude complète :
    http://edrv.endojournals.org/content/early/2012/03/14/er.2011-1050.full.pdf+html
    #pollution #perturbateurs_endocriniens