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Dr. John Moffett is a Managing Editor at OpEdNews.com, and is an active research neuroscientist in the Washington, DC area. Dr. Moffett has published numerous scientific articles on the nervous and immune systems. Dr. Moffett's main area of research focuses on the brain metabolite N-acetylaspartate, and an associated genetic disorder known as Canavan disease.
Friday, February 10, 2012 The Himalayas and nearby peaks have lost no ice in past 10 years
The world's greatest snow-capped peaks, which run in a chain from the Himalayas to Tian Shan on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan, have lost no ice over the last decade, new research shows. The discovery has stunned scientists, who had believed that around 50bn tonnes of meltwater were being shed each year and not being replaced by new snowfall. The study is the first to survey all the world's icecaps and glaciers and was made possible by the use of satellite data.
Saturday, January 28, 2012 Low IQ & Conservative Beliefs Linked to Prejudice (3 comments)
The research finds that children with low intelligence are more likely to hold prejudiced attitudes as adults. These findings point to a vicious cycle, according to lead researcher Gordon Hodson, a psychologist at Brock University in Ontario. Low-intelligence adults tend to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, the study found. Those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and resistance to change, attitudes that can contribute to prejudice, Hodson wrote in an email to LiveScience.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012 Wikipedia to Go Black for One Day in Protest of SOPA (1 comments)
Wikipedia will black out the English language version of its website Wednesday to protest anti-piracy legislation under consideration in Congress, the foundation behind the popular community-based online encyclopedia said in a statement Monday night.
Saturday, December 3, 2011 Israel's tin ear PR provokes backlash
For many American Jews, the Israeli government-sponsored ads, intended to cajole Israelis living in the United States to come home, smacked of arrogance, ignorance and cultural disrespect of America. Jewish groups in the United States expressed outrage, saying they were causing a rift with American Jews who support Israel. On Friday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu aborted the campaign.
Monday, November 7, 2011 Obama's Reefer Madness (1 comments)
Federal crackdowns will not stop the trade in marijuana; they will only push it back underground and hurt those patients least able to navigate illicit markets. Perhaps not since the civil rights era has law enforcement played such an aggressive role in what is essentially a cultural and political struggle. But this time the federal government is playing the bully, riding roughshod over states’ rights, not to protect vulnerable individuals but to harm them.
Friday, November 4, 2011 Death From Above: The Other Side Of The Drone Wars
LAST Friday, I took part in an unusual meeting in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad.
The meeting had been organized so that Pashtun tribal elders who lived along the Pakistani-Afghan frontier could meet with Westerners for the first time to offer their perspectives on the shadowy drone war being waged by the Central Intelligence Agency in their region.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011 Eff Sues For Answers About Patriot Act On Law's 10Th Anniversary
The DOJ is using Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act to support what government attorneys call a "sensitive collection program" that may be targeting large numbers of Americans. Section 215 allows for secret court orders to obtain "tangible things" when the FBI certifies they are relevant to a government investigation. The list of possible "tangible things" the government can obtain is seemingly limitless, and could include everything from driver's license records to Internet browsing patterns
Tuesday, September 13, 2011 The Truth About 9/11 Truthers (20 comments)
Truthers are passionate and energetic. They send links to websites, books and DVDs questioning the series of events laid out in the 9/11 Commission Report and mainstream media accounts. They remind me that the Bush and Obama Administrations have gotten caught lying about the post-9/11 war on terror. Why, then, am I not open to the possibility that 9/11 was an inside job? Am I lazy? Or some government shill? (If so I wish they'd pay me.)
Sunday, September 11, 2011 What We Lost: Remembrance As Narcotic
"Remembrance became a narcotic that turned a prosperous nation at peace into a debt-ridden wayward giant lumbering around the world, willfully ignorant of its folly, its speech slurred and incomprehensible to anyone but itself. It sedated Congress and the press, which failed to ask the most basic questions about our military adventures. It fogged the minds of once-lucid liberal intellectuals, who grafted their fantasies of liberty and justice for all...
Sunday, September 4, 2011 Lies We Still Tell Ourselves about 9/11
The motivation for the attacks was "ducked" even by the official 9/11 report, say the authors. The commissioners had disagreed on this "issue" – cliché code word for "problem" – and its two most senior officials, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, were later to explain: "This was sensitive ground ...Commissioners who argued that al-Qa'ida was motivated by a religious ideology – and not by opposition to American policies – rejected mentioning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict...
Sunday, August 7, 2011 What Happened to Obama? (1 comments)
The real conundrum is why the president seems so compelled to take both sides of every issue, encouraging voters to project whatever they want on him, and hoping they won’t realize which hand is holding the rabbit. That a large section of the country views him as a socialist while many in his own party are concluding that he does not share their values speaks volumes — but not the volumes his advisers are selling: that if you make both the right and left mad, you must be doing something right.
Monday, July 11, 2011 Arizona Citizens Recall Senate President
In a swift affirmation of Arizona's fast-growing and powerful new political movement, Secretary of State Ken Bennett notified Gov. Jan Brewer that the once seemingly invincible architect of the state's controversial SB 1070 "papers please" immigration law has officially been recalled. Bennett confirmed that the recall petitions delivered by the Citizens for a Better Arizona "exceeds the minimum signatures required by the Arizona Constitution."
Sunday, May 22, 2011 Malign Neglect at the Supreme Court (1 comments)
Extraordinary rendition — the abduction of foreigners, often innocent ones, by American agents who sent them to countries well known for torturing prisoners — was central to President George W. Bush’s antiterrorism policy. His administration then used wildly broad claims of state secrets to thwart any accountability for this immoral practice.
Saturday, May 14, 2011 Feel like you're being robbed every time you fill the gas tank? Blame Wall Street (1 comments)
Exxon Mobil Chief Executive Rex Tillerson noted Thursday in testimony before the Senate Finance Committee that this year's oil prices don't make any economic sense, though that's not quite how he put it. He said that current fundamentals and production costs would dictate oil in the range of $60 to $70 a barrel. That's at least $43 cheaper than this year's highs of $113 a barrel reached on April 29 and May 2
Thursday, May 12, 2011 Challenge Obama from the Left (2 comments)
Should Obama be challenged from the Left? The answer is yes; Obama needs to be held to account – but from a leftwing, not rightwing, direction. He has embraced and affirmed a centre-right world view utterly at odds with his 2008 presidential campaign, with its promises of "change", "reform" and a decisive break from the Bush-Cheney era.
Liberals have given Obama a pass. Some avert their gaze; others proffer excuses. He needs more time, they say. But he has had 29 months in office. He is a good man in a bad world, they say, before blaming the Republicans for all America's ills. But it wasn't a Republican Congress that forced him, for instance, to double the size of the Bagram facility – where human rights groups have documented torture and deaths – and deny prisoners the right to challenge their detention. He did that on his own. Bagram is Obama's Guantánamo.
Monday, March 7, 2011 Dire Lessons from Revolutions Past (1 comments)
This is the important lesson that history has for the rebels of 2011. Euphoria is not victory. The removal of symbols is not the change of regimes. Whether in Athens or Cairo, Bahrain or even Wisconsin, the revolutions will not be won in the streets. They will not be won early. They will be resisted fiercely, cleverly, tenaciously, and with all the resources that the assaulted powers can muster, including the most important resource of all: time.
Friday, March 4, 2011 Make Wall Street Pay (1 comments)
In this insecure moment for most Americans, conservatives have forcefully advanced a narrative that names government as the problem. But when we look into the heart of the crisis we find massive and unaccountable corporations driving wages down and health insurance costs up, shipping jobs overseas and failing to contribute their fair share in taxes. Government is not the problem but rather the prize, and right now it sits in a trophy case on Wall Street.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011 Your Tax Dollars at Work: Writing Computer Viruses
In 2009, HBGary had partnered with the Advanced Information Systems group of defense contractor General Dynamics to work on a project euphemistically known as "Task B." The team had a simple mission: slip a piece of stealth software onto a target laptop without the owner's knowledge.
Sunday, February 27, 2011 Gas Companies Dump Radioactive Waste into Water Supply (8 comments)
With hydrofracking, a well can produce over a million gallons of wastewater that is often laced with highly corrosive salts, carcinogens like benzene and radioactive elements like radium... The documents reveal that the wastewater, which is sometimes hauled to sewage plants not designed to treat it and then discharged into rivers that supply drinking water, contains radioactivity at levels higher than previously known, and far higher than the level that federal regulators say is safe...
Thursday, February 24, 2011 Fox News Chief Roger Ailes Told Publisher to Lie (2 comments)
After the publishing powerhouse Judith Regan was fired by HarperCollins in 2006, she claimed that a senior executive at its parent company, News Corporation, had encouraged her to lie to federal investigators two years before. The investigators had been vetting Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner who had been nominated to become secretary of Homeland Security and who had had an affair with Ms. Regan. The goal of the News Corporation executive, according to Ms. Regan, was to keep the affair quiet and protect the then-nascent presidential aspirations of former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Kerik’s mentor and supporter. Affidavits filed in a separate lawsuit reveal the identity of the previously unnamed executive to be Roger Ailes, chairman of Fox News.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011 Thick BP Oil Layer Found at Bottom of Gulf of Mexico (1 comments)
Studies using a submersible found a layer, as much as 10cm thick in places, of dead animals and oil, said Samantha Joye of the University of Georgia. Knocking these animals out of the food chain will, in time, affect species relevant to fisheries.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011 Spike in Baby Dolphin Deaths in Gulf of Mexico
Baby dolphins, some barely three feet in length, are washing up along the Mississippi and Alabama coastlines at 10 times the normal rate of stillborn and infant deaths, researchers are finding.
Sunday, February 20, 2011 People in Coal Mining Country are "Burden" to Coal Companies
The coal companies, the news media and even our own government have all been complicit in valuing Appalachian lives less than those of other Americans. Otherwise, it might be harder for them to get that coal out as quickly and inexpensively as they do.
Sunday, February 20, 2011 CIA Duped Again by Con Man; at Taxpayer's Expense
Mr. Montgomery and his associates received more than $20 million in government contracts by claiming that software he had developed could help stop Al Qaeda’s next attack on the United States. But the technology appears to have been a hoax...
Sunday, February 20, 2011 Think Your Wi Fi Connection is Secure?
Until recently, only determined and knowledgeable hackers with fancy tools and lots of time on their hands could spy while you used your laptop or smartphone at Wi-Fi hot spots. But a free program called Firesheep, released in October, has made it simple to see what other users of an unsecured Wi-Fi network are doing and then log on as them at the sites they visited.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010 Cancer is not a modern disease (1 comments)
A recent article in Nature Reviews concluded that evidence of cancer in ancient remains was rare, suggesting that cancer is a man-made disease in industrial societies. New evidence on the expected number of cancers in ancient skeletons contradicts that conclusion, and indicates that cancer has always been with us.
Friday, December 24, 2010 President Obama's Washington Bubble of Isolation
At home or on the road, the president lives in an isolating world — a White House world staffed by thousands of people who protect, advise, and serve him at an annual cost to taxpayers of about $1.5 billion.
He lives, works and plays behind fences and a wall of Secret Service agents. He never cuts the grass, does the laundry, or cleans the kitchen. He's driven a car only twice in nearly four years, once for 10 feet.
Friday, December 17, 2010 PolitiFact's Lie of the Year: 'A government takeover of health care' (1 comments)
In the spring of 2009, a Republican strategist settled on a brilliant and powerful attack line for President Barack Obama's ambitious plan to overhaul America's health insurance system. Frank Luntz, a consultant famous for his phraseology, urged GOP leaders to call it a "government takeover."
Friday, November 5, 2010 Keith Olbermann Suspended from MSNBC (40 comments)
MSNBC suspended their most popular news anchor after finding out he contributed to several Democrat's campaigns.
If you think Olbermann is doing a good job, call MSNBC to complain.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010 Monsanto, RIP?
As recently as late December, Monsanto was named “company of the year” by Forbes magazine. Last week, the company earned a different accolade from Jim Cramer, the television stock market commentator. “This may be the worst stock of 2010,” he proclaimed.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010 Republicans stack Green Party with Homeless People (4 comments)
Republicans can't win elections fairly, so they cheat. This year they are recruiting homeless people to run on the Green Party ticket to siphon votes from Democrats.
Monday, March 29, 2010 Christian Militia Charged in Plot to Murder Officers
Nine members of a Michigan-based Christian militia group have been indicted on sedition and weapons charges in connection with an alleged plot to murder law enforcement officers in hopes of setting off an antigovernment uprising.
Sunday, March 7, 2010 Defectors Say Church of Scientology Hides Abuse
“That’s the difference between the old Scientology and the new: the brave new Scientology is all these beautiful buildings and real estate and no people,” said Mr. Rathbun, who is among several former top executives quoted by The St. Petersburg Times...
Monday, February 8, 2010 Will the Vaccine-Autism Saga Finally End? (5 comments)
The Lancet, the prestigious British medical journal, has now gone to the extreme of fully retracting a notorious 1998 paper by gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield and his colleagues, purporting to show a shocking new cause of autism—the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine. The 1998 paper hit the British public like a thunderclap, triggering a decline in use of the MMR vaccine as well as a resurgence of the measles.
Saturday, October 24, 2009 Mercury rain from power plants OK'd until end of 2011
The Environmental Protection Agency, resolving a lawsuit aimed at cutting the flow of mercury and other toxic substances from coal- or oil-burning power plants, has agreed to develop standards by late 2011 for limiting such emissions.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009 Death penalty's cost effectiveness evaluated in report
States could save hundreds of millions of dollars by eliminating the death penalty, according to a report released today. The report, which includes a national survey of police chiefs, was compiled by the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit group that researches capital punishment.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009 Windows 7 Could Wash Away Vista Aftertaste -- or Most of It
Windows 7 is no Windows Vista. But it remains a Windows operating system. That is, Microsoft's new release, arriving in stores and on new computers Thursday, ought to turn the troubled Vista into a bad memory.
Friday, October 16, 2009 Swine Flu Shots Revive a Debate About Vaccines (2 comments)
The anti-vaccine movement, largely comprising activists and a handful of doctors and researchers who connect a variety of health problems — particularly autism spectrum disorders — to vaccines, has failed to find large-scale traction in the United States, where more than 90 percent of children are vaccinated.
Friday, October 16, 2009 Judge Halts Mandatory Flu Vaccines for Health Care Workers
A judge on Friday morning halted enforcement of a New York State directive requiring that all health care workers be vaccinated for the seasonal flu and swine flu.
The temporary restraining order by the judge, Thomas J. McNamara, an acting justice of the State Supreme Court in Albany, is likely to add to the growing debate about the flu vaccine.
Sunday, October 4, 2009 Ground Beef, E Coli and You (2 comments)
Meat companies and grocers have been barred from selling ground beef tainted by the virulent strain of E. coli known as O157:H7 since 1994, after an outbreak at Jack in the Box restaurants left four children dead. Yet tens of thousands of people are still sickened annually by this pathogen...
Wednesday, August 26, 2009 The Torture Papers
NY Times Editorial: The Obama administration has taken important steps toward repairing the grievous harm that President George W. Bush did to this nation with his lawless and morally repugnant detention policies.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009 GOP 'trackers' stalk Dems in hunt for 'macaca' moment (1 comments)
Rep. Chris Carney was walking down a Capitol Hill street when suddenly bam an anonymous Republican with a video camera who'd been following him asked him a question that was intended to embarrass the Pennsylvania Democrat.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008 Maryland Police Conflate Peace Activists with Terrorists
Under the direction of Republican Governor Bob Ehrlich, Maryland State Police spied on and infiltrated non-violent peace activist groups, and labeled members as terrorists and anarchists.
Your tax dollars at work fighting Osama Been Peaceniks.
Monday, November 3, 2008 McClatchy starting to sound like OpEdNews! (1 comments)
Heres to the American people, the electorate, for finally coming to their senses and voting for something different, for someone different and for a chance to fix the multitude of man-made disasters that confront us.
Friday, October 17, 2008 Washington Post Endorses Barack Obama for President
THE NOMINATING process this year produced two unusually talented and qualified presidential candidates. There are few public figures we have respected more over the years than Sen. John McCain. Yet it is without ambivalence that we endorse Sen. Barack Obama for president.
Friday, June 13, 2008 A Warning to My Old Republican Friends: Screw Up The Obama Moment and You're History -- Literally (9 comments)
If the Republicans -- not to mention their bedrock supporters, such as evangelical Christians, neoconservatives and others -- do not grasp the Obama moment, and then rise to the occasion... they will have doomed themselves to political obscurity and moral opprobrium forever.
Monday, June 9, 2008 Obama and the Open and Unexpected Future
For one who has experienced both eras, the current movement for Barack Obama has achieved a living remembrance of Bobby Kennedy's campaign in the week when RFK's murder is painfully remembered.
Saturday, May 24, 2008 Hillary's Worst Comment Yet (8 comments)
For the second time, and hopefully the last, Hillary Clinton invokes the RFK assassination as a reason for her to stay in the race. What was she thinking in the same week that the last surviving Kennedy brother, Ted, is diagnosed with brain cancer?
Friday, May 2, 2008 Voting Rights Are Too Important to Leave to the States (1 comments)
The NY Times has a good editorial today on how Congress should overstep the Supreme Court, and set mandatory, national voter registration laws that make it easy for everyone to register to vote.
Are you listening, Democrats in Congress?
Monday, April 14, 2008 US and Iran holding 'secret' talks on nuclear programme
Iran and the United States have been engaged in secret "back channel" discussions for the past five years on Iran's nuclear programme and the broader relationship between the two sworn enemies, The Independent can reveal.
Friday, November 30, 2007 Clinton NH campaign office hostage situation
A man who reportedly has a history of mental illness burst into a Hillary Clinton campaign office in New Hampshire with what appeared to be a bomb strapped to his chest and took hostages. Several hostages are reported to have been released, but it is not known how many others there might be in the office.
Monday, August 6, 2007 Weapons Given to Iraq Are Missing
The Pentagon has lost track of about 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols given to Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005... it is nearly impossible for the U.S. military to know whether it is battling an enemy equipped by American taxpayers.
Saturday, August 4, 2007 Democrats' Responsibility for Bush Radicalism
It is staggering, and truly disgusting, that even in August, 2007 - almost six years removed from the 9/11 attacks and with the Bush presidency cemented as one of the weakest and most despised in American history - that George W. Bush can "demand" that the Congress jump and re-write legislation at his will, vesting in him still greater surveillance power, by warning them, based solely on his say-so...
Saturday, July 28, 2007 Forget Third Parties Hijack The Democrats Instead (2 comments)
Third party alternatives to hopelessly nihilistic Republicans, hopelessly equivocal Democrats, and the hopelessly self-serving lot of them make total sense except for one small problem. They can't win.
Thursday, July 12, 2007 China Not Sole Source of Dubious Food (6 comments)
Black pepper with salmonella from India. Crabmeat from Mexico that is too filthy to eat. Candy from Denmark that is mislabeled. At a time when Chinese imports are under fire for being contaminated or defective, federal records suggest that China is not the only country that has problems with its exports.
Monday, July 2, 2007 Country of Origin Food Labeling Law Not Being Enforced!
A law promoted by Tom Daschle and others in Congress was passed 5 years ago which mandates meat and produce be labeled to indicate the country of origin, but due to food industry lobbying efforts and some pro-business Republicans in the White House and Congress, the law is not being enforced. Representative Henry Bonilla, Republican from Texas, has been the strongest opponent of enforcement of the law.
Sunday, July 1, 2007 It's 8am, Do You Know Where Your Breakfast Came From? (4 comments)
The ingredients in your Cheerios might not make you very cheery in the morning if you really knew where they came from... and what was in them.
Monday, June 4, 2007 Science Publisher Elsevier ditches arms trade shows
European Science publisher Elsevier, publisher of journals such as The Lancet, has long organized weapons trade shows. The publisher has finally agreed to end the practice by 2008.
