fufor's unregelmässige news

Warships head to Mediterranean in Russian show of strength
Staff and agencies
Wednesday December 5, 2007

Russia has dispatched an 11-ship aircraft carrier group to the Mediterranean Sea as a first step towards re-establishing a naval presence in the region.

The manoeuvres are part of an effort to resume regular Russian naval patrols around the world, according to the Russian defence minister, Anatoly Serdyukov.

The Mediterranean fleet includes one aircraft carrier, two anti-submarine ships and a guided missile cruiser, Serdyukov said, at a meeting at the Kremlin with President Vladimir Putin.

The ships would conduct three tactical exercises with real and simulated launches of sea- and air-based missiles and make nearly a dozen port calls, he added.

"The expedition is aimed at ensuring a naval presence and establishing conditions for secure Russian navigation," said Serdyukov.

The naval expedition is the latest effort by president Putin to breathe new life into Russia's armed forces. Earlier this year, he ordered the resumption of regular long-range flights of strategic bombers.

The manoeuvres also follow calls by Russian naval chief Admiral Vladimir Masorin earlier this year for the country to restore a permanent presence in the Mediterranean.

Soviet navy ships used to be based at the Syrian port of Tartus. Russia still maintains a technical base there to serve its military vessels that regularly go into the Mediterranean.
http://tinyurl.com/2akj2x

Marx Was Right, Absolutely Right
08 December, 2007
By Vidyadhar Date

The violence against the peasants in Singur and Nandigram in the past few months has raised serious questions about the nature of governance by the West Bengal government led by the Communist party of India (Marxist).

However, the fault lies not with Marxist philosophy. Actually, Marx was on the ball , as David Harvey, the eminent Marxist geographer, author and thinker, pointed out in Mumbai on December 6.

He was not referring to the developments in West Bengal but about Marxism in general.He speaking at the conclusion of the fifth international conference of Critical Geography at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. A large number of participating academics and activists, many of them left-wing, were concerned over the developments in West Bengal.

Dr Harvey knows what he is talking about as he is teaching Marx's Capital since 1970 and this may be the last year of doing so as his students have now decided to put his teaching on the internet for free.

He began with an anecdote. Two yers ago he was on a panel to evaluate the design for a new city , 200 km south of Seoul in South Korea. During the discussion two members of the panel, an architect and a landscape designer, went on arguing endlessly whether the pattern of the city should be of a grid or should it be circular.

Then Dr Harvey intervened and said there were much more important issues to be looked at. What kind of technology, transport, social relations, labour processes, daily life of people, the production system, the city's relation to Nature all this will have to be taken into consideration. Only then a city can be properly planned. Since the city was to locate various ministries, it would become dull and this will have to be prevented by taking other
measures.

The architect and landscape designer were quite impressed and asked Dr Harvey where he got all these good ideas from ? The reply stumped them. The ideas came from a footnote in Marx's Capital, chapter 15, volume 1.

The foot note says that `technology discloses man's mode of dealing with nature, the process of production by which he sustains his life and thereby also lays bare the mode of formation of his social relations and of the mental conceptions that flow from them.'

In the chapter on machinery Marx shows how capitalist society grows. Marx was also on the ball in anticipating the tremendous concentration of wealth in the hands of a few under the current neoliberalism.

The problem with capitalism is that it will collapse if it does not invest huge surplus and people do not use their credit cards and go on buying things. That is why there is such a huge construction boom in cities all over the world. It is not just that slums are mushrooming as Mike Davis has shown in his book The Planet of Slums.

Dr Harvey said blaming imperialism, the World Bank and IMF will not take us far. People have to check the elites in their own countries. The bank and IMF are not currently as powerful as before.

The financial markets are in a deep crisis and the people at the helm themelves do not know what to do as the situation is very volatile. But the trgedy is that if the crisis worsens, it will hit the poor the most so some Leftists are not right when hope the system will crash.

In reply to a question he said capitalism had some positive aspects, there was a better recognition of individual rights, gay rights and the rights of the handicapped in the United States.

But the environmental and other consequences of capitalism were so serious that there was no way the system can sustain itself socially or politically.

A severe critique of claims of India as a shining success story of economic reforms was made by Prof Utsa Patnaik of the Jawaharlal Nehru university in her inaugural lecture.

Citing from her extensive research she showed how the per capita food consumption in India was much lower than during world war II and there was widespread malnutrition not only among children and women but also among men.

The policy of diverting millions of acres of land under food crops for export crops and crops to make biodiesel had created severe problems of food security. This was accompanied by reducing the purchasing power of the masses and through mass unemployment.

The situation in Nandigram was explained to the delegates by conference convener Prof Swapna Banerjee Guha who hails from West Bengal. She said it was important to analyse the disturbing developments and the role of Left Front government in a Parliamentary democracy.
http://tinyurl.com/yuu4lv

The blueberry drink that can shrink tumours
7th December 2007
By FIONA MACRAE

A mixed fruit punch could provide a devastating blow against prostate cancer.

The blueberry, grape, raspberry and elderberry cordial rapidly slashes the size of prostate tumours, research shows.

In tests, Blueberry Punch cut the size of tumours by a quarter in two weeks.



Trials are now planned to see whether a daily glass or two of the drink could treat the disease and even prevent it developing in the first place.

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in British men, with nearly 35,000 new cases a year and more than 10,000 deaths.

Blueberry Punch is an Australian product but is available for sale on the internet at £16 a bottle.

It also includes a host of other natural ingredients thought to boost health, including green tea, olive leaves, the herb tarragon and the spices turmeric and ginger.

It is thought the ingredients act together to cut inflammation and block a cancer gene.

Dr Jas Singh, who conducted the research on mice at Sydney University, said: "We have undertaken efficacy studies on individual components of Blueberry Punch in the same laboratory setting and found these effective in suppressing cell growth in culture.

"We reasoned that synergistic or additive effects are likely to be achieved when they are combined."

The researchers looked at the effect of Blueberry Punch on both cancer cell cultures in the laboratory and genetically engineered mice with human prostate tumours. After only two weeks of having the syrupy solution added to their drinking water, their tumours had shrunk by 25 per cent, an American Association for Cancer Research conference heard.

Greg Jardine, the drink's inventor, said the results were comparable to drugs used to treat prostate cancer.

Successful human trials would give the punch 'more credibility within the medical and scientific communities', he said, adding: "We would like it to be considered in the same league as a drug."

In Britain, the Prostate Cancer Charity, said the drink had shown 'promising results' but cautioned that the research was still at an early stage.

Debbie Clayton, the charity's information manager, said: "The researchers are planning a small study of 150 men with prostate cancer who will drink three glasses of the juice every day.

"This is a large quantity for men to consume on a regular basis and further studies will be needed to establish the most effective. These studies will need to involve much larger numbers of men and it may be several years before we are able to offer men clear guidance on how the drink may help them.

"In the meantime, we would recommend that men include a variety of fresh fruit and vegetables in their diet, ensuring they get a "rainbow" of colours."

The research was part-funded by Blueberry Punch's Australian manufacturer, Dr Red Nutraceuticals. However, the scientists said they designed and conducted the experiments independently.
http://tinyurl.com/2t5458