Poverty • Republican Politics • Fruits/Veggies Help You Live Longer • Right-Wing Myths About Wind Power • Leather • Obama's Kill List • more

- How extremism is normalized

The Obama administration has converted once unthinkable government claims into permanent political fixtures

- Conservative Media Try to Reverse Racial Reality

Conservatives must be feeling regretful. After nearly fifty years of using appeals to white racial resentment to take over the South, win presidential elections and control of Congress, conservatives are realizing this might come back to bite them in the ass. As the right wing has become xenophobic and anti-Latino, conservatives have watched young Latinos and young Asian Americans join young African-Americans in being overwhelmingly Democratic. The greater diversity of this younger generation has in turn meant that Democrats, especially Barack Obama, have won handily among young voters in recent elections. All of a sudden, conservatives see being the party of angry white males as a potential liability, and they want to change their image.

- Man Tattoos Leviticus 18:22 That Forbids Homosexuality On His Arm, But Leviticus 19:28 Forbids Tattoos

Picture says it all.

- Scott Walker Spent 88% of the Money to Get 53% of the Vote

the real winner in Wisconsin on Tuesday was not Republican Gov. Scott Walker, but Big Money. And the real loser was not Democrat Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, but democracy.In other words, business and billionaires bought this election for Walker.  The money paid for non-stop TV and radio ads as well as mailers.  There's no doubt that if the Barrett campaign had even one-third of the war- chest that Walker had, it would have been able to mount an even more formidable grassroots get-out-the-vote campaign and put more money into the TV and radio air war. Under those circumstances, it is likely that Barrett would have prevailed.
Pundits can have a field day pontificating about the Wisconsin election, but in the end its about how Big Money hijacked democracy in the Badger State on Tuesday, and how they're trying to do it again in November.

- The plutocrats who bankrolled the Republican primaries--and what they want in return

Leave it to Bill Moyers, one of America's most useful citizens, to sum up our country's present political plight in a succinct metaphor: "Our elections have replaced horse racing as the sport of kings. These kings are multibillionaire, corporate moguls who by divine right--not of God, but [of the Supreme Court's] Citizens United decision--are now buying politicians like so much pricey horseflesh."

- Fruits and Vegetables Boost Longevity in Women

New research suggests that eating plant-based foods can lower the risk of death in senior-age women.

- Myths & Facts About Wind Power

Following relentless attacks on the solar industry in the wake of Solyndra's bankruptcy, wind power has become the latest target of the right-wing campaign against renewable energy. But contrary to the myths propagated by the conservative media, wind power is safe, increasingly affordable, and has the potential to significantly reduce pollution and U.S. reliance on fossil fuels.

- Probability of contamination from severe nuclear reactor accidents is higher than expected: study

Catastrophic nuclear accidents such as the core meltdowns in Chernobyl and Fukushima are more likely to happen than previously assumed. Based on the operating hours of all civil nuclear reactors and the number of nuclear meltdowns that have occurred, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz have calculated that such events may occur once every 10 to 20 years (based on the current number of reactors) — some 200 times more often than estimated in the past.

- Tuna contaminated with Fukushima radiation found in California

Bluefin tuna contaminated with radiation believed to be from Fukushima Daiichi turned up off the coast of California just five months after the Japanese nuclear plant suffered meltdown last March, US scientists said.

- How Estrogens Persist in Dairy Wastewater

Wastewater from large dairy farms contains significant concentrations of estrogenic hormones that can persist for months or even years, researchers report in a new study. In the absence of oxygen, the estrogens rapidly convert from one form to another; this stalls their biodegradation and complicates efforts to detect them, the researchers found.

- Stella McCartney Takes On the Leather Trade

Find out why fashion designer Stella McCartney chooses to leave leather out of her collections.

- Another Casualty of War?: The Environment

War is hell. And that hell involves the environment, whether forests, fish or fowl.There's unexploded ordnance. Fuel spills and fires. Chemical defoliants, polluted water supplies, even the depleted uranium from modern armor-piercing bullets leaching into the land. The bid to build nuclear weapons in recent decades has left a legacy of toxic contamination across the globe, from Rocky Flats, Colorado to Mayak in southern Russia.
Then there are the conflict driven resource curses, like blood diamonds from West Africa or Congo's coltan, a metallic ore that supplies materials for consumer electronics.

- Glenn Greenwald: Obama’s Secret Kill List "The Most Radical Power a Government Can Seize" video

The New York Times revealed this week that President Obama personally oversees a "secret kill list" containing the names and photos of individuals targeted for assassination in the U.S. drone war. According to the Times, Obama signs off on every targeted killing in Yemen and Somalia and the more complex or risky strikes in Pakistan. Individuals on the list include U.S. citizens, as well as teenage girls as young as 17 years old. "The president of the United States believes that he has the power to order people killed, assassinated, in total secrecy, without any due process, without transparency or oversight of any kind," says Glenn Greenwald, a constitutional law attorney and political and legal blogger for Salon.com. "I really do believe it’s literally the most radical power that a government and a president can seize, and yet the Obama administration has seized this power and exercised it aggressively with very little controversy."

- This Week in Poverty: Will Janitors Strike in Houston?

In Houston, more than 3,200 janitors clean the offices of some of the largest and most powerful corporations in the world: JP Morgan Chase, Shell, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Wells Fargo, KBR and Marathon Oil, to name a few. For their labor, they are paid an hourly wage of $8.35 and earn an average of $8,684 annually. Two janitors together would earn about $17,300 a year—still well below the poverty line of $22,314 for a family of four.Yesterday, the contract between the janitors and the cleaning contractors expired. SEIU Local 1 spent the past month trying to reach an agreement to raise the janitors’ hourly wage to $10 over the next three years. But the contractors countered with an offer of a $0.50 pay raise phased in over five years and—according to SEIU spokesperson Paloma Martinez—said that they “wouldn’t budge.” The contractors claimed that the building owners and tenants—the aforementioned corporations—aren’t willing to pay anything close to a living wage.

- Wage Theft: A Crime Without Punishment?

Low-wage workers in the United States face many harsh and demeaning circumstances—not being entitled to paid sick days, for instance. But there’s something particularly shocking about wage theft, an element of insult added to injury: not only does your boss pay you as little as he can get away with; he keeps a nice chunk of it for himself, just because he can. How much? According to “Broken Laws, Unprotected Workers,” a 2009 paper written by Milkman, Annette Bernhardt et al., fully 26 percent of the low-wage workers they studied in three cities—New York, Chicago and Los Angeles—had been paid less than the legally required minimum wage in the previous week; 60 percent of these were underpaid by more than $1 an hour. All in all, 68 percent of the sample had had at least one pay-related violation in the previous workweek. That turned out to be an average of $51 a week, or $2,634 a year. If a politician proposed increasing taxes by this amount, he’d be hanged from the nearest lamppost.

- The Gap Between The Rich And The Poor Is So Large, You Can Literally See It From Space

Below are satellite images from Google Earth that show two neighborhoods from a selection of cities around the world. In case it isn’t obvious, the first image is the less well-off neighborhood, the second the wealthier one. Now even passing aliens can marvel at our regressive fiscal policies!

- The Amazon Effect

How Amazon is helping to destroy small business, etc.

- Ten Reasons to Avoid Doing Business With Amazon.com

Read all 10.

- Cocaine Habit Ages Brain Prematurely

Although cocaine makes people feel more alert and on top of things in the moment, it can leave users vulnerable to a much slower brain in the long run. A new study shows that chronic use ages key parts of the brain at an accelerated rate.

Sean

State of the Union Responses • Republican Racism • USA Ranks 47th in Free Press • Marines Who Murdered Civilians Walk Free • Climate Change • Vegan for a Day • more

- "He Says One Thing and Does Another": Ralph Nader Responds to Obama’s State of the Union Address

Responding to President Obama’s State of the Union address, longtime consumer advocate and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader says Obama’s criticism of income inequality and Wall Street excess fail to live up to his record in office. "[Obama] says one thing and does another," Nader says. "Where has he been for over three years? He’s had the Justice Department. There are existing laws that could prosecute and convict Wall Street crooks. He hasn’t sent more than one or two to jail." On foreign policy, Nader says, "I think his lawless militarism, that started the speech and ended the speech, was truly astonishing. [Obama] was very committed to projecting the American empire"

- The Republican's Racism

Today it seems as though Republicans who might be put off by racist rhetoric are in short supply, as though the presence of a black president has left them blind to their own sophism. No candidate’s polling numbers nose-dived after his [racist] remarks; there was precious little in the way of mainstream media frenzy—as recently as 2006, George Allen’s “Macaca moment” cost him his Senate seat. There is no parsing these statements. They are what they are. We are back to the days when conservatives feel comfortable calling a spade a spade. Some commentators have described it as a dog whistle: a call set to a tone that rallies some without disturbing others—a special frequency for the inducted. But this is no dog whistle. This is Wing Commander Gibson taking his mutt for a walk and calling him loudly and fondly by name ["Nigger"].

- Press Freedom Index 2011-2012

The United States (47th) also owed its fall of 27 places to the many arrests of journalist covering Occupy Wall Street protests.

- Haditha residents outraged as Marine avoids jail

Haditha residents and relatives of the 24 Iraqi civilians killed in 2005 in the town by US troops voiced disgust and shock over the light sentence meted out to a soldier involved in the massacre.

- Climate change skepticism seeps into science classrooms

Some states have introduced [right-wing] education standards requiring teachers to defend the denial of man-made global warming. A national watchdog group says it will start monitoring classrooms.

- The Startling Effects of Going Vegetarian for Just One Day

If everyone went vegetarian just for one day, the U.S. would save:
— 100 billion gallons of water, enough to supply all the homes in New England for almost 4 months;
— 1.5 billion pounds of crops otherwise fed to livestock, enough to feed the state of New Mexico for more than a year;
— 70 million gallons of gas -- enough to fuel all the cars of Canada and Mexico combined with plenty to spare;
— 3 million acres of land, an area more than twice the size of Delaware;
— 33 tons of antibiotics.
If everyone went vegetarian just for one day, the U.S. would prevent:
— Greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 1.2 million tons of CO2, as much as produced by all of France;
— 3 million tons of soil erosion and $70 million in resulting economic damages;
— 4.5 million tons of animal excrement;
— Almost 7 tons of ammonia emissions, a major air pollutant.
My favorite statistic is this: According to Environmental Defense, if every American skipped one meal of chicken per week and substituted vegetarian foods instead, the carbon dioxide savings would be the same as taking more than half a million cars off of U.S. roads. See how easy it is to make an impact?

- Mitt Romney pays lower taxes than average American

[Republican presidential candidate] Mitt Romney paid taxes on his multimillion-dollar income at a rate far below that of the average American, his tax returns reveal.

- Rules of American justice: a tale of three cases

What’s most notable here is that this is now the sixth prosecution by the Obama administration of an accused leaker, and all six have been charged under the draconian, World-War-I era Espionage Act. As EFF’s Trevor Timm put it yesterday: this is the “6th time under Obama someone is charged with Espionage for leaking to a journalist. Before Obama: only 3 cases in history.” This is all accomplished by characterizing disclosures in American newspapers about America’s wrongdoing as “aiding the enemy” (the alleged enemy being informed is Al Qaeda, but the actual concern is that the American people learn what their government is doing).

State of the Union: Will the US be saved by its military?
Obama's praise for the American military complex is misleading and potentially dangerous, writes the author.
by Mark LeVine
Published Jan 25 2012 on Al Jazeera

Irvine, CA - How do you judge a State of the Union speech that begins with a lie?
There was any number of anecdotes or stories with which President Obama could have begun his talk to the nation. But he decided to begin with the most overused trick in any leader's rhetorical arsenal - to celebrate the military.

"We gather tonight knowing that this generation of heroes has made the United States safer and more respected around the world."

Does the President really believe that the United States is more respected around the world because of its military activities? Did no one point out to him that the morning of his speech, the marine sergeant who led the 2005 assault on Haditha that killed 24 Iraqi civilians received no jail time for his action, same as the seven other American soldiers who were part of the raid? As the LA Times reported in the wake of the decision, "The lack of trial convictions in the Haditha case is likely to further inflame anti-US sentiment in Iraq, as well as fuel criticism by some legal analysts of the 6-year-long investigation and prosecution."

We can thank Obama for completing the withdrawal of most troops from Iraq - he carefully said that there were no troops "fighting in Iraq", but there are still thousands of Americans there, training Iraqis and otherwise engaged in security-related activities. But where is the apology for a war he owes his rise to power on condemning?

It's true the President was speaking to an American audience in an election year, but if there was ever a time to take stock of American actions and own up to the "blood and treasure" - not just American, but much more Iraqi - that was lost on an illegal war that permanently damaged the US' position and respect in the world, this was it.

Saviour of the nation?


The army as saviour of the nation. A claim that would sound familiar to most Egyptians. In fact, in both countries the military - or rather the conglomeration of forces tying the military to leading economic actors with whom they disproportionately control their country's political and economic life - is perhaps the single most important factor responsible for the lack of democratic accountability or sustainable and broadly distributed economic growth.

Egypt's young revolutionaries have risked arrest, torture and death to force the army "back to the barracks". But in the US, the uncritical celebration of the military is so strong that it clouds over its role in draining a huge share of the country's economic lifeblood away from areas where it's desperately needed or in fomenting precisely the kinds of wars and violence that have permanently eroded the view of the US around the world. How Egypt's generals must envy the ease with which their American comrades ensure their continued grip on a huge share of the country's power and wealth.

"Egypt's young revolutionaries have risked arrest, torture and death to force the army 'back to the barracks'. But in the US, the uncritical celebration of the military is so strong that it clouds over its role in draining a huge share of the country's economic lifeblood."

Sure, a State of the Union address, with the entire military leadership staring at you from the floor of the Congress, is not the easiest place for a President to speak truth to power. But at least he doesn't have to provide even more cover for an institution that already holds far too much sway over the country's politics and plays a crucial role in perpetuating the growing inequality that the President listed as among the most pressing problems facing the United States.

And yet, rather than at least beginning to talk about the need to build a post-military society, President Obama declared that "at a time when too many of our institutions have let us down, they exceed all expectations. They're not consumed with personal ambition. They don't obsess over their differences. They focus on the mission at hand. They work together."

"Imagine what we could accomplish if we followed their example."

Yes, imagine - a country that takes hundreds of thousands of its young men and women, puts them in harm's way for the benefit of a small elite, doesn't provide them with an economy that can absorb them when they've completed their service, doesn't provide them with adequate healthcare, doesn't deal with the emotional and physical costs of the violence it asks them to unleash and suffer, and thinks not a whit about the people on whom that violence is exercised.

Imagine if the US as a whole behaved even more like its military. Or, moving to the seemingly opposite end of the spectrum, think if American corporations all followed the example of Apple, today among the most profitable and powerful corporations in the world, which even as its profits have soared has squeezed its suppliers to charge even less for the products and labour they provide, and in so doing ensure that hundreds of thousands of poor workers in China continue to work for ludicrously low wages in suicide-inducing jobs all so that more Americans can buy iPhones or iPads for $5 less than they'd otherwise pay.

Whether it's the Pentagon, Cupertino (Apple's headquarters), or Wall Street, this kind of rapacious and often mafia-like capitalism is precisely what created, in Obama's words, the "house of cards" that "collapsed" in 2008.
Moreover, the military in particular is characterised by the "outsourcing, bad debt and phony financial profits" (in the form of exorbitant and wasteful expenditures that funnel tens of billions of dollars to defence contractors for weapons and services the US doesn't need in the first place) that the President blames for ruining the American economy.

Finding another role model


This is not to say that President Obama has not outlined many worthy goals in the State of the Union, from developing clean energy to making college educations more affordable and prosecuting financial crimes more aggressively. But the reality is that if he hopes to build a fairer, more just, equalitarian, sustainable and healthy society, the military is just about the worst model the President could follow.

Whether in Caesar's day or our own, militaries do three things well - they kill large numbers of people, including (and often disproportionately) civilians; they arrogate an ever-increasing share of a society's wealth to themselves and their allies; and they weaken the dynamics of accountability between rulers and ruled without which democracy cannot survive.

"If Obama can't talk openly to the American people about the reality of its military's role in the world, there is almost no chance he'll be able to shepherd the kind of transofmration in the US' political economy that he outlined."

If Obama can't talk openly to the American people about the reality of its military's role in the world, both historically and today, there is almost no chance he'll be able to shepherd the kind of transformation in the US' political economy that he outlined, because the military has always been intimately tied to the worst excesses of capitalism and nationalism that produced precisely the collapse from which the US has yet to recover.

The reality is that the society Obama hopes to build cannot come into being without a major transformation in the role and power of its armed forces and security establishment. And if his State of the Union speech is any guide, it seems that, tragically, the President is not up to the job. And judging by the response his speech has received, it seems neither is anyone else.

Sean

Define Terrorism • Climate Change Disaster • Republican Corruption • Fox News Lies about Russia (and more) and Admits it is Not Fair or Balanced • Occupy Police Brutality • Legal Political Bribery • more

- The real definition of Terrorism By Glenn Greenwald

Is that not exactly the mindset that more or less anyone in the world would have: if a foreign army invades your country and proceeds to brutally occupy it for the next eight years, then it’s your solemn duty to fight them? Indeed, isn’t that exactly the mentality that caused some young Americans to enlist after the 9/11 attack and be hailed as heroes: they attacked us on our soil, and so now I want to fight them? Yet when it’s the U.S. that is doing the invading and attacking, then we’re all supposed to look upon this very common reaction with mockery, horror, and disgust– look at these primitive religious fanatic Terrorists who have no regard for human life — because the only healthy, normal, civilized reaction someone should have to the U.S. invading, occupying, and destroying their country is gratitude, or at least passive acquiescence. Anything else, by definition, makes you a Terrorist.

- GOP Keystone Corruption, by the numbers

Right at the moment, Republicans in the House and Senate are doing their level best to ensure a speedy approval of the Keystone Pipeline by attaching it to the payroll tax cut. Their claim is that it's a jobs bill, even though their numbers are  entirely bogus.Anyway, it's a great chance to understand how this system actually works--the fact that it's corporate power that calls the shots, especially within the GOP [Republican party]. So here, for your perusal, are the numbers that actually matter. And if you felt like sending them to your Senator, just so that they know you know that no-one's being fooled, that would be okay too.

- URGENT - FOX News Caught Using Fake Video Of Riots

News bulletins around the world have been following Russia's election rallies. But one channel stands out - America's Fox News has been showing streets ablaze, violent clashes and firebombs thrown at security officers, but with one major problem - the images are not from Russia, they're from Greece!

- My Occupy LA Arrest, by Patrick Meighan

My name is Patrick Meighan, and I’m a husband, a father, a writer on the Fox animated sitcom “Family Guy”, and a member of the Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica.

I was arrested at about 1 a.m. Wednesday morning with 291 other people at Occupy LA. I was sitting in City Hall Park with a pillow, a blanket, and a copy of Thich Nhat Hanh’s “Being Peace” when 1,400 heavily-armed LAPD officers in paramilitary SWAT gear streamed in. I was in a group of about 50 peaceful protestors who sat Indian-style, arms interlocked, around a tent (the symbolic image of the Occupy movement). The LAPD officers encircled us, weapons drawn, while we chanted “We Are Peaceful” and “We Are Nonviolent” and “Join Us.”

- 6 Members of Walton (Wal-Mart) Family Have More Money Than 30% of Americans

There’s been a constant stream of headlines about the widening gap between rich and poor for months now, but this is pretty remarkable: Just six members of the Walton family, heirs to the Walmart fortune, possess wealth equal to that of the entire bottom 30 percent of Americans.

- Foods with Color Additives Deceive Consumers, Says CSPI

...the nonprofit nutrition and food safety watchdog group is urging the Food and Drug Administration to require food companies to disclose on the front of food labels whether a product is artificially colored.

There are also health reasons to be concerned about artificial colorings. The FDA has acknowledged that artificial food dyes, such as Red 40 and Yellow 5, trigger hyperactivity and behavioral problems in some children. CSPI has also highlighted the cancer risks associated with certain caramel colorings, Yellow 5, and Yellow 6, which are contaminated with carcinogens. In addition, some consumers are allergic to natural or synthetic color additives.

- Obama Gives A Speech On Inequality, Fox Hears An Assault On Freedom

On December 6, President Obama gave a speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, in which he called for a more "fair" society that has less "inequality" and "rebuild[s] the middle class in this country." Predictably, Fox News figures -- who have proven they will defend the rich at any cost -- reacted by calling Obama a "socialist" who was promoting "class warfare," then even went on to falsely claim Obama said that " 'liberty' doesn't work" and "freedom doesn't work."

- U.S. Obstructionism Is Hurting Climate Talks

Here in Durban, the U.S. is once again trying to kill off the global climate talks by eviscerating the mid-summit draft agreement. On Saturday, the U.S. axed a whole section of the draft agreement that would have offered real protection to those who are being hardest and fastest hit by global warming.

- Animal Control Officer Goes Out With a Bang on Craigslist

Fed up with people who refuse to spay and neuter their animals, people who want someone to wave a magic wand and find a home for their "eight-year-old Rottweiler [who] spent his entire life chained to a tree," and people who allow their dogs to run loose, leaving others to scoop up "Scooby with a plastic bag," a frustrated animal control officer posted an off-the-hook "I quit!" rant on Craigslist that's going viral."I wish to god that there was a mandatory spay/neuter law and that the penalty for breaking it was to be forced to spend a day working in the euthanasia room," writes the shell-shocked shelter worker. "Every dog or cat you carelessly add into this world takes away a home for a dog or cat that is already here. So breeding means killing … so have a good day, executioners! I hope the 50 bucks you made off that puppy sure feels good."

- Facebook Photo Gets Animal Abuser Busted

In a rare case of legal protection for a rat, a Denver woman has pleaded guilty to a cruelty-to-animals charge for torturing and killing a rat. Tashaya Abbott and Alison Milke bought a rat from a pet store to feed live to a snake, but the snake did not eat the animal for four days—during which time the terrified rodent was confined to a tank with the snake. So the young women reportedly electroshocked, shot with blow darts multiple times, and finally crushed the rat to death. Evidently thinking that this animal's horrific suffering and death were something to laugh about, Milke posted a photo of the rat to her Facebook page and boasted about the crime that they had committed.

- Fox Business Host Stuart Varney: "We Must Win. I Say 'We' -- I'm A Conservative, I'm A Republican. I Say We Must Win"

Fox hosts admitting they are not fair or balanced.

- The Conservative Plan To End Inequality: Deny It

In other words, the share of wealth owned by the top 1% leveled off because the "democratization of stock ownership" spread the wealth among just 5% of the population, those earning an average of $500,000 per year. A few people -- 5 out of 100 -- got very rich, but everyone else lost ground.

- Between 2008 And 2010, 30 Big Corporations Spent More Lobbying Washington Than They Paid In Income Taxes

A report released this month by Public Campaign demonstrates just how important it is for Americans to battle corporate special interests and reclaim our democracy. The group’s research finds that thirty big corporations actually spent more money lobbying the federal government between 2008 and 2010 than they spent in taxes. For example, General Electric — one of the top 10 most profitable companies in the world — got a net tax rebate of $4.7 billion during this period. Meanwhile, it spent $84 million lobbying the federal government.

- Q&A: The flu catcher

Richard Webby studies the ecology of influenza, trying to better understand how certain strains of influenza can leap across the species divide from animals to people. Nature Outlook sat down with him to learn more about his research.Why does the influenza virus seem to be so active in jumping between animals and people right now?

That's the question everyone is asking. Certainly the much larger demand on protein from the global population and rearing animals in larger numbers in smaller areas play a role in the evolution of some of these viruses. And these practices are also bringing domestic species into more contact with wild species.

Why 2020 is Too Late for the Climate
by Alex Stark
puiblished Dec 7, 2011 on treehugger.com

Since the opening of COP17 in Durban, the US has insisted that a new legally binding treaty regime will be impossible before 2020, and that the voluntary pledges that countries made last year in Cancun will be enough until then. At a press conference yesterday, head US negotiator Todd Stern said "if we do this right over the course of the next number of years—I mean these commitments all range between now and 2020—we can really lay the foundation for climate arrangements, whether it's in a new treaty or a new protocol."

Durban is the first major forum where the 2020 number has cropped up, and it is sneaking its way into comments and proposals from many countries. It has been cited so many times over the past week and a half that it has assumed a kind of normalcy here. But we should raise the alarm every time we hear it cited, because it has far-reaching implications that are not immediately apparent.

David Roberts wrote a fantastic piece on Grist.org today summarizing "the brutal logic of climate change"—that is, explaining why the climate doesn't care as much about the nice things that countries say at the UNFCCC as what they actually do.

Roberts cites a paper by Dr. Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows, "Beyond 'dangerous' climate change: emission scenarios for a new world" released earlier this year. The paper models various emissions scenarios based on different peak years. The model in which emissions peak in the year 2020, as they might under such a legal regime, looks at 18 different scenarios. In 13 of those scenarios, reaching the two degree Celsius target, the number commonly agreed upon as being essential to avoid catastrophic climate impacts, is technically impossible. The remaining scenarios would require something like a 10% reduction per year in emissions. Roberts points out that the only thing has ever caused an emissions reduction greater than 1% per year is, in the words of the Stern Report, "recession or upheaval"—not very appealing options.

Most NGOs have been pushing for an emissions peak in 2015, saying that pushing it off until later significantly raises the chances of warming above 2 degrees Celsius, and therefore cataclysmic and irreversible climate change. With a 2020 peak, we're more likely to see a 3 or even 4 degree rather than a 2 degree world. That doesn't sound like much of a difference, but the potential on-the-ground impacts are be astonishing.

According to Andrews and Bows, "a 4 degrees C future is incompatible with an organized global community, is likely to be beyond 'adaptation', is devastating to the majority of ecosystems, and has a high probability of not being stable."

Yes, you read "incompatible with an organized global community" correctly—it's not hyperbolic to say that 4 degrees of warming could very well spell the end of civilization as we know it.

This afternoon, I had the chance to explain this model to a senior US official, and asked, off-the-record, whether it is really responsible to delay increasing mitigation targets given such potential impacts. Rather candidly, said official admitted that it is not at all clear whether current targets will be enough to keep the world below 2 degrees of warming, but that the pledges made in Cancun were "as far as we could go."

That may be so, but it's still not good enough to protect our future.

Sean

Imperial Delusions of the United States - Obama Way Too Conservative - Fox News Lies Endlessly - The Lying Conservatives - Directly comparing Fukushima to Chernobyl - Endless War - more

- Endless War and the culture of unrestrained power

We are now enduring a parade of wistful, contemplative, self-regarding pundit-meditations on The Meaning of 9/11 Ten Years Later or, far worse, self-righteous moralizing screeds about the nature of "evil" from war zealots with oceans of blood on their unrepentant hands (if I could impose one media rule, it would be that following every column or TV segment featuring American political commentators dramatically unloading their Where-I-Was-on-9/11-and-how-I-felt tales, there would be similar recollections offered from parents in the Muslim world talking about how their children died from the pre-9/11 acts of the U.S. and its client states or from post-9/11 American bombs, drones, checkpoint shootings and night raids:  just for the sake of "balance," which media outlets claim to crave).  Notwithstanding this somber, collective 9/11 anniversary ritual descending upon us, the reality is that the nation's political and media elite learned no lessons from that attack.

- The ACLU on Obama and core liberties

The ACLU decided to use the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attack to comprehensively survey the severe erosion of civil liberties justified in the name of that event, an erosion that -- as it documents -- continues unabated, indeed often in accelerated form, under the Obama administration.

- Smog v. Jobs: Is Obama Admin Endangering U.S. Environment, Public Health With Retreat on Smog Standards? video

As the nation headed into Labor Day weekend, the Obama administration quietly asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to withdraw a plan to limit smog pollution that was projected to prevent 2,200 heart attacks and 23,000 asthma attacks annually.

- What Howard Zinn Actually Thought of Barack Obama

By now I'm used to reading ridiculous things in defense of the Obama Presidency, but this morning I was particularly taken aback to see a rec-listed post that invoked Howard Zinn in the President's defense.

Zinn cautiously endorsed Obama in 2008.

But when The Nation hosted a forum on the first year of Barack Obama's presidency in January 2010, he made clear that, while basically unsurprised, he was not at all happy with the direction of the Obama presidency. His verdict: "Obama is going to be a mediocre president--which means, in our time, a dangerous president."

- Obama's betrayals offer lessons we can't deny

Former Obama supporter has surrendered his disillusions.

- Many in U.S. slip from middle class, study finds

Nearly one in three Americans who grew up middle-class has slipped down the income ladder as an adult, according to a new report by the Pew Charitable Trusts.

- Texas wildfires destroy 1,000 homes video

At least four people killed and thousands evacuated as more than 180 wildfires rage across rain-starved US state.

- Directly comparing Fukushima to Chernobyl

This Sunday (11 September) marks the six-month anniversary of the triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan. The accident has slipped from the headlines, but new data is coming out all the time. Some of the most recent findings are allowing the best comparison yet of Fukushima with Chernobyl. 

A lot of media outlets (ourselves included) first made the Fukushima-Chernobyl comparison back in April, when the Japanese revised their estimate of the Fukushima accident—rating it a seven on the seven-point international INES scale. The conclusion most reached at the time was that, although the rating was the same, Fukushima was a much smaller accident.

A couple of things have changed since those first reports. First, the Japanese doubled their estimate of the radiation released by Fukushima in June to 7.7x1017 Becquerels (Bq). Then, on 30 August, they released the first maps of radioactive caesium-137 (Cs-137) contamination from the plant. Cs-137 has a half-life of 30 years, and it's considered the major long-term contaminate for both accidents.

With the new Cs-137 data, we can now directly compare the fallout from Chernobyl to Fukushima. Check out the Google Earth mashup above (zoom out to see Chernobyl on top of Fukushima, and rotate over to the Ukraine to see Chernobyl in context).

- "Fear, Inc." Exposes the So-Called Experts and Donors Behind Islamophobia in the United States video

new report by the Center for American Progress called "Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America" shows how a small group of self-proclaimed experts backed by a host of donors are spreading fear and hostility toward Muslims in the United States. According to the report, these so-called experts peddle Islamophobia in the form of books, reports, websites, blogs and carefully crafted anti-Islam talking points. It also notes that right-wing Norwegian murderer Anders Breivik repeatedly cited these "experts" in his so-called "Manifesto." Among those the report highlights is Robert Spencer, author of a blog called "Jihad Watch" and leader of the group Stop Islamization of America, which coined the term "victory mosque at Ground Zero" to refer to a local effort to build a moderate Islamic center in New York City, turning it into an international spectacle.

- Fox Doctors Hoffa Speech To Fabricate Call For Violence

Right-wing bloggers misled by dishonest Fox News video editing are attacking Teamsters President James Hoffa for supposedly urging violence against Tea Party activists during a Labor Day speech. Conservatives are also attacking President Obama, who appeared at the event, for "sanctioning violence against fellow Americans" by failing to denounce Hoffa. But fuller context included in other Fox segments makes clear that Hoffa wasn't calling for violence but was actually urging the crowd to vote out Republican members of Congress.

- Foxified Headline

Friends don’t let friends believe Fox News’ lies.

- Republicans Desperate to De-legitimize Obama for all the wrong reasons: Standing = Communism, according to Right Wing media (click the link to the original page and read some of the moronic, absurd and racist comments from the right wingers)

So the image of red, silhouetted people standing up has a "Soviet feel." What can you even say about something like this? You can mock it, but to what end?The mind that conceived, arranged, and published this isn't going to be swayed by mockery. It's so single-minded in purpose that it defies the most basic notions of logic, even sentience. It's almost robotic in its stupidity. "Democrats? Standing? COMMUNISTS!"

It's aggressively -- indeed, proudly -- ignorant.

As such, there's little hope in trying to make sense of it. The best we can do is realize that for the conservative blogosphere, stuff like this is increasingly a feature and not a bug.

- How private firms have cashed in on the climate of fear since 9/11

What Smith had blundered into is one of the most disturbing developments of the post-9/11 world: the growth of a national security industrial complex that melds together government and big business and is fuelled by an unstoppable flow of money. It takes many forms. In the military, it has seen the explosive growth of the contracting industry with firms such as Xe, formerly known as Blackwater, or DynCorp increasingly doing the jobs of professional soldiers. In the world of intelligence, private contractors are hired to do the jobs of America's spies. A shadowy world of domestic security has grown up, milking billions from the government and establishing a presence in every state. From border fences that don't work to dubious airport scanners, spending has been lavished on security projects as lobbyists cash in on behalf of corporate clients.

- Keith Olbermann Show - Worst Persons in the World: Mike Shaw, Sarah Palin and Roger Ailes video

Find out why acting chairman of the Republican Committee of Pima County, Ariz., Mike Shaw is WORSE; former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is WORSER; and president of Fox News Roger Ailes is the WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD for September 6, 2011.

The Imperial Delusions of the United States
Almost ten years after the 9/11 attacks, US foreign policy remains aggressive and unrealistic.
Robert Jensen
Published 07 Sep 2011 at Al Jazeera.net

Ten years ago, critics of the United States' mad rush to war were right, but it didn't matter.
Within hours after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, it was clear that political leaders were going to use the attacks to justify war in Central Asia and the Middle East. And within hours, those of us critical of that policy began to offer principled and practical arguments against aggressive war as a response to the crimes.

It didn't matter because neither the public nor policymakers were interested in principled or practical arguments. People wanted revenge, and the policymakers seized the opportunity to use US military power. Critical thinking became a mark not of conscientious citizenship but of dangerous disloyalty.

We were right, but the wars came.

The destructive capacity of the US military meant quick "victories" that just as quickly proved illusory. As the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq dragged on, it became clearer that the position staked out by early opponents was correct - the wars not only were illegal (conforming to neither international nor constitutional law) and immoral (fought in ways that guaranteed large-scale civilian casualties and displacement), but a failure on any pragmatic criteria. The US military has killed some of the people who were targeting the United States and destroyed some of their infrastructure and organisation, but a decade later we are weaker and our sense of safety is more fragile. The ability to dominate militarily proved to be both inadequate and transitory, as predicted.

Ten years later, we are still right and it still doesn't matter.

There's a simple reason for this: Empires rarely learn in time, because power tends to dull people's capacity for critical self-reflection. While ascending to power, empires believe themselves to be invincible. While declining in power, they cling desperately to old myths of remembered glory.

Today, the United States is morally bankrupt and spiritually broken. The problem is not that we have strayed from our founding principles, but that we are still operating on those principles - delusional notions about manifest destiny, American exceptionalism, the right to take more than our share of the world's resources by whatever means necessary. As the United States grew in wealth and power, bounty for the chosen came at the cost of misery for the many.

After World War II, as the United States became the central character not just in the Americas but on the world stage, the principles didn't change. US foreign policy sought to deepen and extend US power around the world, especially in the energy-rich and strategically crucial Middle East; always with an eye on derailing any Third World societies' attempts to pursue a course of independent development outside the US sphere; and containing the possibility of challenges to US dominance from other powerful states.

Does that summary sound like radical hysteria? Recall this statement from President Jimmy Carter's 1980 State of the Union address: "An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force." Democrats and Republicans, before and after, followed the same policy.

The George W Bush administration offered a particularly intense ideological fanaticism, but the course charted by the Obama administration is much the same. Consider this 2006 statement by Robert Gates, who served as Secretary of Defense in both administrations:
"I think the message that we are sending to everyone, not just Iran, is that the United States is an enduring presence in this part of the world. We have been here for a long time. We will be here for a long time and everybody needs to remember that - both our friends and those who might consider themselves our adversaries."

If the new boss sounds a lot like the old boss, it's because the problem isn't just bad leaders but a bad system. That's why a critique of today's wars sounds a lot like critiques of wars past. Here's Martin Luther King, Jr's assessment of the imperial war of his time: "[N]o one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read: Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over."

Will our autopsy report read "global war on terror"?

That sounds harsh, and it's tempting to argue that we should refrain from political debate on the 9/11 anniversary to honour those who died and to respect those who lost loved ones. I would be willing to do that if the cheerleaders for the US empire would refrain from using the day to justify the wars of aggression that followed 9/11. But given the events of the past decade, there is no way to take the politics out of the anniversary.

We should take time on 9/11 to remember the nearly 3,000 victims who died that day. But as responsible citizens, we also should face a harsh reality: While the terrorism of fanatical individuals and groups is a serious threat, much greater damage has been done by our nation-state caught up in its own fanatical notions of imperial greatness.

That's why I feel no satisfaction in being part of the anti-war/anti-empire movement. Being right means nothing if we failed to create a more just foreign policy conducted by a more humble nation.

Ten years later, I feel the same thing that I felt on 9/11 - an indescribable grief over the senseless death of that day and of days to come.

Sean

Climate Change Deniers Shown to be Liars, Fox "News" Only Reports Their Lies, Not The Fact that they were Debunked! - US Troops Murder Innocent People, USA Covers it Up - Obama Halts Clean Airs Laws, Republicans Thank Him - No Such Thing As Liberal Media

- WikiLeaks Revelation Damages U.S.-Iraq Talks On Keeping American Troops

 McClatchy reported earlier this week that a recently released U.S. diplomatic cable made public by WikiLeaks shows evidence that U.S. troops executed at least 10 Iraqi civilians in 2006, including a woman in her 70s and a 5-month-old infant, and “then called in an airstrike to destroy the evidence.” The Iraqi government said today that it will revive the stalled investigation into the allegations. The AP also reports that “some officials said that the document was reason enough for Iraq to force the American military to leave instead of signing a deal allowing troops to stay beyond a year-end departure deadline.” “The new report about this crime will have its impact on signing any new agreement,” said Sunni lawmaker Aliya Nusayif.

- Obama Awards Huge Win for Polluters

Today, the Obama administration announced it would not pursue a planned ozone rule after delaying it for months.League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski issued the following statement:"The Obama administration is caving to big polluters at the expense of protecting the air we breathe. This is a huge win for corporate polluters and huge loss for public health."

- Obama Halts EPA Regulation On Smog Standards

President Barack Obama on Friday scrapped his administration's controversial plans to tighten smog rules, bowing to the demands of congressional Republicans and some business leaders.

The withdrawal of the proposed regulation marks the latest in a string of retreats by Obama in the face of Republican opposition. Last December, he shelved, at least until the end of 2012, his insistence that Bush-era tax cuts should no longer apply to the wealthy. Earlier this year he avoided a government shutdown by agreeing to Republican demands for budget cuts. And this summer he acceded to more than a $1 trillion in spending reductions, with more to come, as the price for an agreement to raise the nation's debt ceiling.

- U.S. Wasting Billions While Tripling No-Bid Contracts After Decade of War in Iraq, Afghanistan video

As the war in Afghanistan approaches its 10th anniversary, a pair of new reports reveal how the Pentagon has squandered tens of billions of dollars while tripling the amount of no-bid contracts. The bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting concludes that between $31 billion and $60 billion spent on projects in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last 10 years has been lost to waste and fraud. In Afghanistan, the commission found the United States is indirectly funding the Taliban as money diverted from U.S.-backed projects is paid out to militants to ensure safety. Meanwhile, the Pentagon’s use of no-bid contracts has tripled since the United States was attacked on 9/11, in spite of promises to reform the controversial practice.

- A tweet that explains everything

Glenn Grennwald Points Out the Unwillingness of US Media to Report REAL news

Paper Disputing Basic Science of Climate Change is "Fundamentally Flawed," Editor Resigns, Apologizes
By Peter Gleick,
Published 9/2/11 on Forbes.com

One month ago, a paper by Roy Spencer and William Braswell was published in the journal Remote Sensing arguing that far less future global warming will occur than the scientific community currently anticipates. This highly controversial finding – controversial since it is at odds with observations, basic understanding of atmospheric physics, models, and with what most scientists think we know about climate science — was seized upon by climate change deniers and skeptics and broadcast loud and far.

While other climate experts quickly pointed to fatal flaws in the paper, it received a great deal of attention from certain media. In something of a media frenzy, Fox News, the authors themselves in press releases and web comments, Forbes, in a column by a lawyer at the Heartland Institute, Drudge, and others loudly pointed to this as evidence that the vast array of science on climate change was wrong.

The staggering news today is that the editor of the journal that published the paper has just resigned, with a blistering editorial calling the Spencer and Braswell paper “fundamentally flawed,” with both “fundamental methodological errors” and “false claims.” That editor, Professor Wolfgang Wagner of the Vienna University of Technology in Austria, is a leading international expert in the field of remote sensing. In announcing his resignation, Professor Wagner says “With this step I would also like to personally protest against how the authors and like-minded climate sceptics have much exaggerated the paper’s conclusions in public statements.”

In his editorial resignation, Professor Wagner says the paper was reviewed by scientific experts that in hindsight had a predetermined bias in their views on climate that led them to miss the serious scientific flaws in the paper, including “ignoring all other observational data sets,” inappropriate influence from the “political views of the authors,” and the fact that comparable studies had already been refuted by the scientific community but were ignored by the authors. He summarizes:

In other words, the problem I see with the paper by Spencer and Braswell is not that it declared a minority view (which was later unfortunately much exaggerated by the public media) but that it essentially ignored the scientific arguments of its opponents. This latter point was missed in the review process, explaining why I perceive this paper to be fundamentally flawed and therefore wrongly accepted by the journal. This regrettably brought me to the decision to resign as Editor-in-Chief―to make clear that the journal Remote Sensing takes the review process very seriously.

There is a famous saying in science: “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” In this case, the arguments for climate change are backed up by such an astounding degree of science and evidence, that one, or even a few, papers that claim to refute the science of climate change deserve careful scrutiny. As the author of Skeptico notes:

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence because they usually contradict claims that are backed by extraordinary evidence.  The evidence for the extraordinary claim must support the new claim as well as explain why the old claims that are now being abandoned, previously appeared to be correct.

The Spencer and Braswell paper fails in these requirements. But this is also the way science works: someone makes a scientific claim and others test it. If it holds up to scrutiny, it become part of the scientific literature and knowledge, safe until someone can put forward a more compelling theory that satisfies all of the observations, agrees with physical theory, and fits the models. Once again, despite the fervent desires of climate skeptics and deniers, the vast body of literature and the basic conclusions about the growing threat of climate change remains intact: the climate is changing rapidly and humans are the dominant cause.

Now, the question remains, will Fox News, Drudge, the Heartland Institute, and others that covered the initial report of this paper show the honesty and courage that Professor Wagner has shown and cover the fact that the paper is “fundamentally flawed?” Any bets?

Sean

Republicans Are Racists - Matin Luther King Jr Warned Us - Obama, More Conservative Than Ever - Republicans Wanted to Arm Qadhafi (who we just overthrew) - Fracking and Earthquakes? - Vegan Stuff - Greenwald on Cheney (video)

- On Eve of Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, Arizona Republicans Sue to Overturn Voting Rights Act

It took years for Arizona to recover from right-wing Governor Evan Mecham’s disgraceful act to rescind the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday in 1989.Now, on the eve of the unveiling of the national memorial to the civil rights leader in Washington, DC, Attorney General Tom Horne has joined a lone county in Alabama to make Arizona the first state to file a suit against the Obama administration to strike down parts of the historic Voting Rights Act of 1965 — spurred by the horrific violence encountered by King and civil rights marchers in Selma, Alabama — as unconstitutional.

- Hansen Says Obama Will Be 'Greenwashing' About Climate Change if He Approves Keystone XL Pipeline

NASA scientist James Hansen, who galvanized the environmental movement decades ago with his congressional testimony about the dangers of climate change, said yesterday that President Obama has a rare opportunity to show he is not a "hopeless addict."

The climatologist, who will appear at the National Press Club on Monday before joining protests at the White House, where he expects to be arrested, told ClimateWire in an email interview that the Keystone XL pipeline awaiting approval from the president is like a dirty needle from a fellow oil addict, Canada.

The pipeline, if built, would run 1,700 miles from Canada to Texas and bring in a form of crude to the United States that releases more carbon dioxide emissions in the production process than traditional oil.

"If Obama chooses the dirty needle it will confirm that Obama was just greenwashing all along, like the other well-oiled coal-fired politicians, with no real intention of solving the addiction," Hansen said.

- Obama approves oil pipeline from Alberta tar sands to Texas coast

The Obama administration gave an important approval yesterday to a controversial pipeline that will pump oil from the tar sands of Alberta to the Texas coast.

- Leaked cable: John McCain pushed to arm Qadhafi

A leaked U.S. diplomatic cable shows that Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain promised to help Libyan dictator Muammar Qadhafi obtain U.S. military hardware in 2009.

The cable, released by the open information group WikiLeaks, reveals the pledge came at meeting that was attended by other prominent members of Congress, including Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.).

- Secrecy, leaks, and the real criminals Glenn Greenwald

Shane notes that the government's censorship effort "amounts to a fight over who gets to write the history of the Sept. 11 attacks and their aftermath," particularly given the imminent publication of a book by CIA agent Jose Rodriguez -- who destroyed the videotapes of CIA interrogations in violation of multiple court orders and subpoenas only to be protected by the Obama DOJ -- that touts the benefits of the CIA's "tough" actions, propagandistically entitled: "Hard Measures: How Aggressive C.I.A. Actions After 9/11 Saved American Lives."

- Did Fracking Cause the Virginia Earthquake?

Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is the process of [fracturing] a rock layer, employing the pressure of a fluid as the source of energy. The fracturing is done from a [hole] drilled into reservoir rock formations, in order to increase the extraction rates and ultimate recovery of oil and natural gas and coal seam gas.

According to geologists, it isn't the fracking itself that is linked to earthquakes, but the re-injection of waste salt water (as much as 3 million gallons per well) deep into rock beds.

- Bathing Beauty Makes a Splash in Scotland

...it takes the equivalent of 50 bathtubs filled with water to produce just one steak."Not only does the meat industry inflict cruelty, it also wastes huge amounts of water and damages the planet," says Megan. "You can't eat meat and be an environmentalist."

- Chris Hayes, Glenn Greenwald Rip Dick Cheney, President Obama (VIDEO)

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

MLK Warned Us, But Are We Listening?
Published Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at Pink Tank

When a frack-quake cracks the Washington monument just as a memorial for civil rights and anti-war organizer Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is about to be unveiled in the nation’s capital, we hope vacationing members of Congress take note. The military industrial complex that Dr. King and President Eisenhower warned us about has captured all branches of the federal government, in league with for-profit energy corporations scrambling after dwindling fossil fuel resources at the peril of the very planet we live upon. Add a complicit information control industry to the toxic mix, and you have some very deep structural damage to our national foundation.

Dr. King is of course best known for his work to realize a dream where his children would be judged by their character rather than by the color of their skin. He did not live to see an African-American First Family in the White House. As we now know, Dr. King was assassinated after years of FBI surveillance and harassment. His death followed an historic speech at the Ebenezer Baptist Church on April 30, 1967 on “Why I Am Opposed To The War In Vietnam.”

There is…a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I and others have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed that there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both black and white, through the Poverty Program. There were experiments, hopes, and new beginnings. Then came the build-up in Vietnam. And I watched the program broken as if it was some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war. And I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money, like some demonic, destructive suction tube.

“Money for war, but can’t feed the poor” is a slogan still chanted in the streets of U.S. cities devastated by recession, high unemployment, police brutality, and failure to invest in public education. The victims of a Congress that allocates over 50% of its discretionary budget to military expenditures are disproportionately Black, Latino and indigenous people. A recent study of women’s net worth found the median for white women was $41,000 as compared with $100 (yup, that’s one hundred dollars) for African-Americans and $120 for Latinas. When the U.S. Conference of Mayors met this summer in Baltimore – a city with 24% of residents receiving SNAP (food stamps) – they sent a  message to Washington DC: stop funding wars and bring the money home to provide urban areas with essential services and infrastructure.

But Washington doesn’t appear to be listening. President Obama is golfing in Martha’s Vineyard, and  eighty-one members of Congress are being wined and dined in Israel by an AIPAC affiliate. A so-called “Super Committee” of twelve legislators is tasked with making budget decisions on behalf of our elected representatives, but all twelve are deep in the pockets of corporations who profit from military contracts. Indications are that Obama will rely more heavily on Wall St. financing for his re-election campaign. What happened to government of, by, and for the people?

Dr. King would no doubt be appalled to see the country he fought so hard to improve galloping toward epic failure. U.S. military “Special Forces” now operate in 70 countries, we have 800+ military bases in other countries, and we’re bombing Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya and occupying Iraq. We use depleted uranium weapons, and along with Israel we’re in the vanguard of using drones and other robots to kill innocent civilians.

Dr. King warned that “a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” His voice has now been silenced. It’s up to the rest of us to restore the voice of the people to the national helm. The common good must take priority over private profit, else spiritual death may be followed swiftly by environmental collapse, and the end of life on Earth. Time to repair the cracks in the nation’s foundation and rein in the military industrial complex now – before it’s too late.

Sean

US Media Warps Everything - War $$$- Why We Fight: Libya's Oil - LEDs - Climate Change - Earthquakes and Nuke Plants - Remembering the Iraq War Cheerleaders - Verizon Sucks

- The Scramble for Access to Libya’s Oil Wealth Begins

The fighting is not yet over in Tripoli, but the scramble to secure access to Libya’s oil wealth has already begun.

- A progressive case for Obama's foreign policy greatness? Glenn Greenwald

I'm genuinely astounded at the pervasive willingness to view what has happened in Libya as some sort of grand triumph even though virtually none of the information needed to make that assessment is known yet, including: how many civilians have died, how much more bloodshed will there be, what will be needed to stabilize that country and, most of all, what type of regime will replace Gadaffi?

- For Energy Savings, LEDs Outshine Solar Panels

A new report finds that replacing old lightbulbs with light-emitting diodes offers more energy savings than installing photovoltaics... [recently, in an effort to stir up their ignorant and naturally angry and paranoid base of voters, Republicans have been attacking calls to phase out energy inefficient lighting citing the "freedom to chose" when buying light bulbs. MORONS]

- Penn State climate-change researcher cleared of misconduct

 An investigation by the National Science Foundation has found no evidence of wrongdoing or misconduct by Penn State climate-change researcher Michael Mann.Mann, Penn State professor of meteorology, was the target of accusations from climate-change skeptics after thousands of e-mails exchanged between climate-change researchers were hacked from the University of East Anglia and made public.

- Regulators aware for years of understated seismic risks to nuclear plants

Nearly six years before an earthquake ravaged Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, U.S. regulators came to a sobering realization: seismic risks to nuclear plants in the eastern two-thirds of the country were greater than had been suspected, and engineers might have to rethink reactor designs.

- What are the risks of an earthquake beneath a reactor near you?

U.S. regulators knew for years that seismic risks to some nuclear reactors are greater than anticipated when built. But regulators haven't settled on new safety standards for the plants...

- Pentagon spending: Just how safe are you?

The killing of Osama bin Laden did not put cuts in national security spending on the table, but the debt-ceiling debate finally did. And mild as those projected cuts might have been, recently minted Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta was already digging in his heels and decrying the modest potential cost-cutting plans as a "doomsday mechanism" for the military. Pentagon allies on Capitol Hill were similarly raising the alarm as they moved forward with this year's even larger military budget.None of this should surprise you. As with all addictions, once you're hooked on massive military spending, it's hard to think realistically or ask the obvious questions. So, at a moment when discussion about cutting military spending is actually on the rise for the first time in years, let me offer some little known basics about the spending spree this country has been on since September 11, 2001, and raise just a few simple questions about what all that money has actually bought Americans.

- The Final Word Is Hooray! Remembering the Iraq War's Pollyanna pundits

Weeks after the invasion of Iraq began, Fox News Channel host Brit Hume delivered a scathing speech critiquing the media's supposedly pessimistic assessment of the Iraq War.

"The majority of the American media who were in a position to comment upon the progress of the war in the early going, and even after that, got it wrong," Hume complained in the April 2003 speech (Richmond Times Dispatch, 4/25/04). "They didn't get it just a little wrong. They got it completely wrong."

Hume was perhaps correct--but almost entirely in the opposite sense. Days or weeks into the war, commentators and reporters made premature declarations of victory, offered predictions about lasting political effects and called on the critics of the war to apologize. Three years later, the Iraq War grinds on at the cost of at least tens of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars.

Around the same time as Hume's speech, syndicated columnist Cal Thomas declared (4/16/03): "All of the printed and voiced prophecies should be saved in an archive. When these false prophets again appear, they can be reminded of the error of their previous ways and at least be offered an opportunity to recant and repent. Otherwise, they will return to us in another situation where their expertise will be acknowledged, or taken for granted, but their credibility will be lacking."

Gathered here are some of the most notable media comments from the early days of the Iraq War.

- Dark Horizon for Verizon Ralph Nader

The most recent illustration of this three-decade reversal of nearly a century of American economic advances for employees is the numerous demands by Verizon [phone company].

[Not that dogs aren't important, but...]
American Dogs Count More Than Afghan People
Helicopter Shootdown Story Unmasks Bigoted Media
by Ted Rall
Published on Wednesday, August 24, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

New York Times war correspondent Dexter Filkins couldn't help liking the young American soldiers with whom he was embedded in U.S.-occupied Iraq. Recognizing that, Filkins tried to maintain some professional distance. "There wasn't any point in sentimentalizing the kids; they were trained killers, after all. They could hit a guy at five hundred yards or cut his throat from ear-to-ear. They had faith, they did what they were told and they killed people," he wrote in his book of war vignettes, "The Forever War."

Alas, he was all but alone.

All wars demand contempt for The Other. But the leaders of a country waging a war of naked, unprovoked aggression are forced to rely on an even higher level of enemy dehumanization than average in order to maintain political support for the sacrifices they require. Your nation's dead soldiers are glorious heroes fallen to protect hearth and home. Their dead soldiers are criminals and monsters. Their civilians are insects, unworthy of notice. So it is. So it always shall be in the endless battle over hearts and minds.

Even by these grotesque, inhuman rhetorical standards, the ten-year occupation of Afghanistan has been notable for the hyperbole relied upon by America's compliant media as well as its brazen inconsistency.

U.S. and NATO officials overseeing the occupation of Afghanistan liken their mission to those of peacekeepers--they're there to help. "Protecting the people is the mission," reads the first line of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Commander's Counterinsurgency Guidance statement. "The conflict will be won by persuading the population, not by destroying the enemy. ISAF will succeed when the [Karzai government] earns the support of the people."

Of course, actions speak louder than words. Since 2001 ISAF has been doing precious little protecting of anything than America's geopolitical interests, using Afghanistan as a staging ground for thousands of drone attacks across the border in Pakistan. Protecting Afghanistan civilians has actually been a low ISAF priority, to say the least. They've been bombing civilians indiscriminately, then lying about it, sometimes paying off bereaved family members with token sums of blood money.

The verbiage deployed by American officials, dutifully transcribed by journo-stenographers at official press briefings, sends nearly as loud a message as a laser-guided Hellfire missile slamming into a wedding party: Afghan lives mean nothing.

The life of an American dog--literally, as we'll see below--counts more than that of an Afghan man or woman.

In the worst single-day loss of life for U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Taliban fighters shot down a Chinook CH-47 transport helicopter in eastern Wardak province with a rocket-propelled grenade on August 6^th.

(I lifted that "worst single-day loss of life" phrase from numerous press accounts. The implication is obvious--the U.S. isn't accustomed to taking losses. But tens of thousands of Afghans, possibly hundreds of thousands, have been killed in the war that began in 2001.)
Western media's attitude toward the Afghans they are supposedly trying to "assist" was as plain as the headlines. "U.S. Troops, SEALs Killed in Afghanistan Copter Crash," reported Timemagazine. (SEALS are U.S. Navy commandos.) "31 Killed in Afghanistan Chopper Crash," said the ABC television network. "31 Dead in Afghanistan Helicopter Crash," shouted Canada's National Post. (The number was later revised to 30.)

Eight Afghan government commandos died too. But dead Afghans don't rate a headline--even when they're working for your country's puppet regime. As far as the American press is concerned, only 30 people--i.e., Americans--died.

An initial Associated Press wire service report noted that the dead included "22 SEALs, three Air Force air controllers, seven Afghan Army troops, a dog and his handler, and a civilian interpreter, plus the helicopter crew."

The dog. They mentioned the dog.

And the dog's handler.

After 9/11 American pundits debated the question: Why do they [radical Muslims] hate us [Americans] so much? This is why. It is official Pentagon policy not to count Afghan or Iraqi or Pakistani or Libyan or Yemeni or Somali dead, civilian or "enemy." But "our" guys are sacred. We even count our dogs.

Lest you think that I'm exaggerating, that this was merely another example of a reporters larding his account with excessive detail, consider this maudlin missive by Michael Daly of the New York Daily News, one of the biggest newspapers in the United States:

"Among the SEALs were a dog handler and a dog that would remind outsiders of Cujo [a rabies-infected beast in one of Stephen King's horror novels], but held a special place in the hearts of the squadron," wrote Daly "SEALs have a soft spot for their dogs, perhaps partly because a canine's keen senses can alert them to danger and give them a critical edge. A dog also allows resolutely reticent warriors to express a little affection; you can pet a pooch, if not another SEAL."

Get a grip, Mike. Lots of people like dogs.

"Many of the SEALs have a dog stateside," continueth Daly. "To take one on a mission may be like bringing along something of home."

Or maybe they just come in handy for Abu Ghraib-style interrogations.

Daly tortures and twists his cheesy prose into the kind of savage propaganda that prolongs a war the U.S. can't win, that is killing Afghans and Americans for no reason, that most Americans prefer not to think about. Soon a group of elite commandos--members of Team Six, the same outfit that assassinated Osama bin Laden--become helpless victims of the all-seeing, all-powerful Taliban of Death. In Daly's bizarre world, it is the Afghan resistance forces and their 1980s-vintage weapons that have all the advantages.

Note the infantile use of the phrase "bad guys."

"The bad guys knew when the Chinook helicopter swooped down into an Afghan valley that it would have to rise once those aboard were done. All the Taliban needed to do was wait on a mountainside. The Chinook rose with a SEAL contingent that likely could have held off thousands of the enemy on the ground. The SEALs could do nothing in the air against an insurgent with a rocket."

Helpless! One could almost forget whose country these Americans were in.

Or what they were in Wardak to do.

Early reports had the dead Navy SEALs on a noble "rescue mission" to "assist" beleaguered Army Rangers trapped under "insurgent" fire. Actually, Team Six was on an assassination assignment.

"The American commandos who died when their helicopter crashed in eastern Afghanistan were targeting a Taliban commander directly responsible for attacks on U.S. troops," CNN television reported on August 7^th. "Targeting" is mediaspeak for "killing." According to some accounts they had just shot eight Talibs in a house in the village of Jaw-e-Mekh Zareen in the Tangi Valley. Hard to imagine, but U.S. soldiers used to try to capture enemy soldiers before killing them.

Within hours newspaper websites, radio and television outlets were choked with profiles of the dead assassins--er, heroes.

The AP described a dead SEAL from North Carolina as "physically slight but ever ready to take on a challenge."

NBC News informed viewers that a SEAL from Connecticut had been "an accomplished mountaineer, skier, pilot and triathlete and wanted to return to graduate school and become an astronaut."

What of the Afghans killed by those SEALs? What of their hopes and dreams? Americans will never know.

Two words kept coming up:

Poignant.

Tragedy (and tragic).

The usage was strange, outside of normal context, and revealing.

"Of the 30 Americans killed, 22 were members of an elite Navy SEAL team, something particularly poignant given it was Navy SEALS who succeeded so dramatically in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden," said Renee Montaigne of National Public Radio, a center-right outlet that frequently draws fire from the far right for being too liberal.

Ironic, perhaps. But hardly poignant. Soldiers die by the sword. Ask them. They'll tell you.
Even men of the cloth wallowed in the bloodthirsty militarism that has obsessed Americans since the September 11^th attacks. Catholic News Service quoted Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio, who called the Chinook downing a "reminder of the terrible tragedy of war and its toll on all people."

"No person of good will is left unmoved by this loss," said the archbishop.

The Taliban, their supporters, and not a few random Afghans, may perhaps disagree.
This isa war, after all. Is it too much to ask the media to acknowledge the simple fact that some citizens of a nation under military occupation often choose to resist? That Americans might take up arms if things were the other way around, with Afghan occupation forces bombing and killing and torturing willy-nilly? That one side's "insurgent" "guerillas" are another's patriots and freedom fighters?

Don't news consumers have the right to hear from the "other" side of the story? Or must we continue the childish pretense that the Taliban are all women-hating fanatics incapable of rational thought while the men (and dog) who died on that Chinook in Wardak were all benevolent and pure of heart?

During America's war in Vietnam reporters derided the "five o'clock follies," daily press briefings that increasingly focused on body counts. Evening news broadcasts featured business-report-style graphics of the North and South Vietnamese flags; indeed, they immediately followed the stock market summary. "The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 16 points in light trading," Walter Cronkite would intone. "And in Vietnam today, 8 Americans were killed, 18 South Vietnamese, 43 Vietcong."

Like the color-coded "threat assessment levels" issued by the Department of Homeland Security after 2001, the body counts became a national joke.

In many ways America's next major conflict, the 1991 Gulf War, was a political reaction to the Vietnam experience. Conscription had been replaced by a professional army composed of de facto mercenaries recruited from the underclass. Overkill supplanted the war for hearts and minds that defined the late-Vietnam counterinsurgency strategy. And reporters who had enjoyed near total freedom in the 1960s were frozen out. Only a few trusted journos were allowed to travel with American forces in Kuwait and Iraq. They relied on the Pentagon to transmit their stories back home; one wire service reporter got back home to find that the military had blocked every single account he had filed.

Citing the five o'clock follies of Vietnam and declaring themselves incapable of counting civilian or enemy casualties, U.S. military officials said they would no longer bother to try. (Covertly, the bureaucracy continued to try to gather such data for internal use.)
Meanwhile, media organizations made excuses for not doing their jobs.

The UK Guardian, actually one of the better (i.e. not as bad) Western media outlets, summarized the mainstream view in August 2010: "While we are pretty good at providing detailed statistical breakdowns of coalition military casualties (and by we, I mean the media as a whole), we've not so good at providing any kind of breakdown of Afghan civilian casualties…Obviously, collecting accurate statistics in one of the most dangerous countries in the world is difficult. But the paucity of reliable data on this means that one of the key measures of the war has been missing from almost all reporting. You've noticed it too--asking us why we publish military deaths but not civilian casualties."

No doubt, war zones are dangerous. According to Freedom Forum, 63 reporters lost their lives in Vietnam between 1955 and 1973--yet they strived to bring the war home to homes in the United States and other countries. And they didn't just report military deaths.

There's something more than a little twisted about media accounts that portray a helicopter shootdown as a "tragedy."

A baby dies in a fire--that's a tragedy. A young person struck down by some disease--that's also a tragedy. Soldiers killed in war? Depending on your point of view, it can be sad. It can be unfortunate. It can suck. But it's not tragic.

Alternately: If the United States' losses in Afghanistan are "tragedies," so are the Taliban's. They can't have it both ways.

"Tragedy Devastates Special Warfare Community," blared a headline in USA Today. You'd almost have to laugh at the over-the-top cheesiness, the self-evident schmaltz, the crass appeal to vacuous emotionalism, in such ridiculous linguistic contortions. That is, if it didn't describe something truly tragic--the death and mayhem that accompanies a pointless and illegal war.

On August 10^th the U.S. military reported that they had killed the exact Talib who fired the RPG that brought down the Chinook. "Military officials said they tracked the insurgents after the attack, but wouldn't clarify how they knew they had killed the man who had fired the fatal shot," reported The Wall Street Journal.

"The conflict will be won by persuading the population, not by destroying the enemy." But destroying the enemy is more fun.

Sean