Worldwide Distrust of USA • Milk Not Recommended • REPORT: Vegetarian Diet Needed to Prevent Global Crisis • Pussy Riot • Contrary to Republican Warnings, all is Well with Repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell • Meat Farmers Hinder Medical Science • more

- Worldwide Distrust of US Intentions Follows 11 Years of War

Global survey shows a US held in contempt by its enemies and mistrusted by its allies

- We Are at War

The War on Terror exploits the tragedy of September 11th for the benefit of a very few. Poor people continue to pay an enormous price, while the elites, including our own government and the corporations it answers to, ignore everything but the influx of cash into their coffers. The war business is profitable if you refuse to count the cost of human lives.

- Drug Resistant H1N1 in Europe

Two Dutch travellers were infected with oseltamivir-resistant influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 viruses with an H275Y neuraminidase substitution in early August 2012. Both cases were probably infected during separate holidays at the Catalonian coast (Spain). No epidemiological connection between the two cases was found, and neither of them was treated with oseltamivir before specimen collection. Genetic analysis of the neuraminidase gene revealed the presence of previously described permissive mutations that may increase the likelihood of such strains emerging and spreading widely.(NOTE: The N1H1 virus, or Swine Flu, jumped to humans on farms raising animals for meat).

- Eating Fewer Animal Products Leads to Weight Loss

A recent medical study revealed that successful long-term weight loss was attributed to decreased meat, cheese, and sweets consumption.

- Milk: No Longer Recommended or Required

A substantial body of scientific evidence raises concerns about health risks from cow’s milk products. These problems relate to the proteins, sugar, fat, and contaminants in dairy products, and the inadequacy of whole cow’s milk for infant nutrition.

- National Pork Producers Council: Anti-Science & Anti-Animal

The National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) summed up its anti-scientific and anti-animal views when, in attempting to defend the industry’s confinement of mother pigs in cages so small the animals can’t even turn around, NPPC communications director Dave Warner told the National Journal, “So our animals can’t turn around for the 2.5 years that they are in the stalls producing piglets. I don’t know who asked the sow if she wanted to turn around…”

When your own communications director makes a remark like that, you have an industry in crisis. I’ve contacted Mr. Warner three times asking for any scientific evidence he has that he believes justifies cramming pregnant pigs into crates. He hasn’t replied, because he has no reply; the science is in, and it all points in one direction: Gestation crates are so cruel that pig “farmers” could be locked in jail on felony cruelty charges if they abused dogs or cats so egregiously.

- Farm Use of Antibiotics Defies Scrutiny [Meat Farmers Hindering Critical Science]

The numbers released quietly by the federal government this year were alarming. A ferocious germ resistant to many types of antibiotics had increased tenfold on chicken breasts, the most commonly eaten meat on the nation’s dinner tables.

But instead of a learning from a broad national inquiry into a troubling trend, scientists said they were stymied by a lack of the most basic element of research: solid data.
Eighty percent of the antibiotics sold in the United States goes to chicken, pigs, cows and other animals that people eat, yet producers of meat and poultry are not required to report how they use the drugs — which ones, on what types of animal, and in what quantities. This dearth of information makes it difficult to document the precise relationship between routine antibiotic use in animals and antibiotic-resistant infections in people, scientists say.

- Climate Change Stress Killing Forests, and Why it Matters

Forests cover some 30 percent of Earth’s surface, and it’s hard to overestimate how crucial they are to the functioning of the planet. Forests provide shelter for uncountable numbers of species, hold soil in place that would otherwise wash away, pull excess carbon out of the atmosphere, absorb and re-emit water at such a rate that they literally control the weather, and serve as an economically vital natural resource.All of those functions have long been endangered by human activities such as excessive logging and clear-cutting to open new agricultural land. But another factor, increasingly, is the stress of climate change — in particular, the higher temperatures and more frequent and intense droughts that human-generated greenhouse gases have begun to trigger. Now a new paper, released Sunday in Nature Climate Change, has attempted to lay out just how climate stress affects forests, and how serious the consequences of could be.

- Why Keep Looking for the Right Way to do the Wrong Thing?

True, there may have been a time when killing was necessary for our survival, but for those of us living in the modern world, that is (thankfully) no longer the case. Today, we continue to harm and kill animals only out of habit, convenience, pleasure or for profit. Killing for those reasons is simply not ethically-defensible, regardless of whether the killing is done by a worker in a factory in Ohio or by some local guy in our own backyard.

- Ray Bellamy: Denial won't save the Earth

The climate scientists are in nearly unanimous agreement that increasing greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels are causing global warming and associated severe weather events. The far more frequent dramatic weather is exactly what the experts predicted more than 30 years ago and will now be expected to be the new norm. The atmosphere we all depend on for our life-giving oxygen is being used by major industries, many of which, such as the petroleum refiners, we are subsidizing with our tax dollars.

- Vegetarian Diet Needed To Prevent Global Food And Water Crisis, Report Says

A new report warns that unless the world's population adopts a vegetarian diet over the next 40 years, we may face a global food shortage crisis nothing short of a catastrophe.

- New Solar Technology Generates Electricity and Hydrogen Gas

A new solar panel technology includes photovoltaic cells that could generate electricity during the day while at the same time producing hydrogen gas to power a fuel cell at night. The technology that makes this possible is two new types of nanocrystals that replace the traditional organic molecules in a solar panel's construction.

The nanocrystals, which are made of zinc selenide and cadmium sulfide, with a platinum catalyst added, could potentially create a solar panel and fuel cell combination that would provide clean energy 24 hours a day, while also lasting much longer than the typical 20-year lifespan of today's conventional solar panels.

- Don't Ask Don't Tell Study Shows No Negative Effects On Military One Year After Repeal

In the fierce debate that led up to President Barack Obama's repeal last September of Don't Ask Don't Tell, the 1993 law that banned gay and lesbian service members from serving openly in the military, supporters of the law warned that a repeal would have disastrous consequences for the armed forces. One letter, signed by more than 1,000 military officers, claimed that a repeal would undermine recruiting efforts, negatively affect "troop readiness" and "eventually break the All-Volunteer Force."One year later, the first academic study of the military's new open-service policy has found there have been no negative consequences whatsoever.

- 4 Reasons To Keep Fighting to Free Pussy Riot (Slideshow)

Pussy Riot members Maria Alyokhina, Yekaterina Samutsevich and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova have been jailed for two years and two other members of the band have reportedly fled Russia. Four reasons to keep fighting to free Alyokhina, Samutsevich and Tolokonnikova and to support the opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Sean

Racists Support Voter ID laws • Libertarian/Republican Idea of Privatization is Harmful • Sarah Palin Supports Anti-Gay Views • No Liberal Media • Gore Vidal Dies • Climate Change Storms Deplete Ozone • Meat Industry Lies • No Fish in 40 Years • more

- Scientists Tell Senate Panel: Climate Change Is Here and Disaster Costs Will Be Huge

Climate scientists who appeared Wednesday morning before a Senate committee hearing on climate change and extreme weather impacts had stark warnings for the lawmakers: climate change is here, climate change is man-made, and climate change is going to cost us big time.

- Storms May Speed Ozone Loss Above the U.S.

Summer thunderstorms across the United States inject water vapour far higher into the atmosphere than was previously believed, promoting a cascade of chemical reactions that could pose an increased threat to Earth’s protective ozone layer as the climate warms.

- 'When It Rains, It Pours': Global Warming Brings Increased, Heavier Storms

The impacts of human-caused global warming are being felt across the U.S. as increased and heavier storms -- predicted by climate scientists -- are confirmed in a report released Tuesday.

- Area in extreme drought increases by size of Texas, report says

Areas of the contiguous United States under extreme or exceptional drought conditions increased by an area roughly the size of Texas - from 13.5% of the land to 20.5% - in the past seven days, according to the Drought Monitor report released Thursday.

- 3 Myths About Protein and a Plant-Based Diet

The first question I am often asked when discussing a whole-food, plant-based diet is, “Where do you get your protein?” Protein has become widely recognized as a miracle macronutrient that, apparently, is challenging to acquire in effective doses. However, this is far from accurate. Let’s clear up three of plant-powered protein's three most-common misconceptions.

- Scientists predict our seas could be empty of fish in 40 years - now one Scottish island is fighting overfishing.

At current rates of decline, scientists predict our seas could be empty of fish within 40 years. With a billion people eating fish as their primary source of animal protein and 200 million people depending on fishing as their only source of livelihood, that would mean a humanitarian disaster.

- Beef Industry Has a Cow Over USDA's Support for Meatless Monday

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) is an agency notorious for its unabashed promotion of animal agribusiness and animal-based foods. As noted by the Associated Press: "The USDA often promotes the beef industry by encouraging Americans to eat meat."This week, however, the USDA got caught in the line of fire from, of all groups, the National Cattleman's Beef Association (NCBA). Why? Because it (the USDA) touted the benefits of meat-free foods.

- Japan workers 'told to lie about radiation'

A subcontractor at Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant told workers to lie about possible high radiation exposure in an apparent effort to keep its contract, media reports said.

- Facts Are Facts

Pro-Israel groups have reacted with outrage - and their own plans for an ad campaign - in response to billboards in New York train stations showing the implacable loss of Palestinian land, and creation of millions of refugees, over the last 64 years. But Henry Clifford, 83, says he's puzzled by the charge the ads are "inflammatory."

- Extremism Normalized: How Americans Now Acquiesce to Once Unthinkable Ideas

That’s how extremist powers become normalized: they just become such a fixture in our political culture that we are trained to take them for granted, to view the warped as normal. Here are several examples from the last couple of days illustrating that same dynamic; none seems overwhelmingly significant on its own, but that’s the point:

- Gore Vidal Dies at 86

American novelist, playwright, media critic, political historian and pundit Gore Vidal died at his home in Los Angeles on Tuesday following complications with pneumonia. He was 86. A towering figure in both literary and political circles for most of his life, Vidal leaves a legacy seared with adoration, contempt, and mourning for the country of his birth. Born into power, privilege, and steeped in the elite world of Democratic politics, Vidal -- who resided in self-selected exile in Italy for many years -- became a vocal and unabashed critic of US foreign policy.

- The Complete Dishonesty Of Fox News' Economic Context

Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum rewrote economic history to blame President Obama for the recession that began in December 2007...

- REPORT: Drudge Funneled At Least 30 Million Visitors To Conspiracy Websites In The Last Year

A ThinkProgress study of the [Republican/Libertarian] Drudge Report reveals the popular internet aggregator has linked 184 times to InfoWars and World Net Daily, two sites that promote the internet’s worst conspiracy theories, since June 2011. By directing millions of visitors to these websites, Drudge is providing critical financial and reputational support to publications that argue 9/11 was an inside job, FEMA is building concentration camps and President Obama was not born in the United States.

- Poverty and the Hypocrisy of the Republicans

“The relatively low social expenditures in the United States partially explains the high poverty rate,” said Gould. “When it comes to alleviating the effects of poverty, the U.S. could learn from its peers.”Some of the major findings: Despite the relatively high earnings at the top of the US income scale, inequality in the United States is so severe that low-earning US workers are actually worse off than low-earning workers in all but seven peer countries; more than one in five children in the US lived in poverty—this level is over two times higher than the peer-country average of 9.8 percent; the average peer countries’ tax and transfer programs achieves a poverty-rate reduction of 17.4 percentage points—an effect nearly two times greater than that produced by such programs in the United States.

- Conservative Media Attack The Muppets For Founding Company's Chick-Fil-A Rebuke

Members of the conservative media are attacking The Muppets for its founding company's decision to sever ties with Chick-fil-A, which supports numerous anti-gay causes. The Muppets have been called "heterophobic, anti-diversity, anti-inclusive bigots," and against family and Christian values. Conservatives, including Fox News, recently criticized The Muppets for allegedly promoting liberal propaganda in their 2011 film.In the wake of criticism, Chick-fil-A President Dan Cathy recently defended the company's support of anti-marriage equality groups.

- Sarah Palin On Chick-Fil-A: Republican Shows Support Amid Gay Rights Debate

Sarah Palin waded into the Chick-Fil-A debate Friday night, posting a tweet and Facebook photo showing her support for what she called "a great business."Chick-Fil-A's President Dan Cathy recently sparked controversy when he gave a blunt response to a question about his franchise's "support of the traditional family." [he made openly homophobic and bigoted comments towards gays and lesbians]

- Privatization: The Big Joke That Isn't Funny

The [Libertarian and Republican ideas of] privatization of public goods and services turns basic human needs into products to buy and sell. That's more than a joke, it's an insult, it's a perversion. It generally benefits only a privileged group of businesspeople and their companies while increasing inequality and undermining the common good.

- Fox Guest's Voter ID Law Defense: "Voting Is A Privilege"

Fox News regular Jay Sekulow claimed that voting is a privilege as he went to bat in support of the Texas voter ID law today, and denied that such laws disenfranchise eligible voters. In fact, Americans are constitutionally protected from having their vote denied on the basis of race - which the Department of Justice has said would happen under Texas' law -- and voter ID laws have already disenfranchised hundreds of voters, and could prevent millions more from voting in this year's elections.

Study Links ‘Racial Resentment’ and Voter ID Support
Published on July 20, 2012 on The Nation

A new survey indicates that people who “harbor negative sentiments towards African Americans” are also more likely to support voter ID laws. And the correlation extends beyond party and ideological lines.

Researchers at the University of Delaware’s Center for Political Communication weren’t surprised to find that most Republicans and conservatives were in favor of voter ID laws—regardless of how they measured on the “racial resentment” scale used in the study. The shocker came when Democrats and liberals who rated highest on the racial resentment scale also indicated support for voter ID laws.

How likely one is to possess or be able to acquire a specific form of voter ID is also affected by race. The Brennan Center released a report illustrating, among other challenges to obtaining identification, the lack of overlap between offices that issue valid voter IDs and high populations of people of color. More than 1 million blacks and half a million Latinos live more than 10 miles away from such offices.

One map in the study illustrates that in Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia, driver’s license offices that are open more than twice a week are located largely away from rural black populations. An additional map illustrates that areas with high Latino populations also lack offices that issue IDs that will be considered valid if Texas requires them in the upcoming election.

Another Judge Blocks Wisconsin’s Voter ID
A second judge blocked Wisconsin’s voter ID requirement, the Wisconsin State Journal reports. Dane County Circuit Court Judge David Flanagan ruled the measure unconstitutional. Citing obstacles to getting a valid identification, Judge Flanagan wrote that obtaining “a DMV Photo ID can easily be a frustrating, complex and time-consuming process,” adding that any associated costs are significant for poor people. The state is expected to appeal the ruling.

Feds Hand Over Database for State Purges

The Department of Homeland Security has agreed to allow Florida access to the SAVE database, AP reports. The Sunshine State sued the DHS for access, and the Department of Justice sued Florida to block it from conducting a voter purge. A federal judged ruled in favor of Florida’s purge, and now, the DHS is handing over a database meant to identify non-citizens eligible for public assistance. DHS says it will also make the SAVE system available to Colorado and Washington. The battleground states of Ohio, Michigan, New Mexico and Nevada are expected to acquire the database as well—and Texas is already drafting its demand. The states believe that by identifying non-citizens who are eligible for public assistance, they’ll be able to identify names to purge from voter rolls as well.

Check Out My Voter ID

Memphis city libraries began adding photos to cards so that they could be used as voter IDs—but the Shelby County election commission says the IDs cannot be used to cast a ballot, reports WMC-TV 5. Local Democrats say they may initiate a lawsuit in order compel the election commission to accept the ID.

Iowa Investigates Three Cases of Voter Fraud—and Finds None

Iowa’s Secretary of State “has made it his top priority” to pass a voter ID law in his state. In order to do so, he wants to illustrate at least one example of voter fraud. Yet after vigorously investigating a whopping three possible instances of voter fraud, Matt Schultz’ office can’t conclude that any of them amount to actual fraud, according to the Associated Press. Had Secretary Schultz been paying attention, he might have noticed that fraud occurs only 0.0002% of the time—so it’s unlikely he’ll find anything to bolster his claim.

Sean

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

Millennial and Republican Racism • Mad Cow in USA • Nuns Reprimanded for Doing Good • US Military Killing Civilians • Climate Scientists Threatened • FBI Ignores White Supremacists & Targets Occupy Movement • Mitt Romney's Cruel Homophobia • Rats Display Kindness • more

- Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control

Medea Benjamin: Drones kill innocent civilians and antagonize whole populations

- U.S. Military Taught Officers: Use ‘Hiroshima’ Tactics for ‘Total War’ on Islam

The U.S. military taught its future leaders that a “total war” against the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims would be necessary to protect America from Islamic terrorists, according to documents obtained by Danger Room. Among the options considered for that conflict: using the lessons of “Hiroshima” to wipe out whole cities at once, targeting the “civilian population wherever necessary.”

- Climate Scientists Receive Abusive Emails and Threats from Right-wing Climate Change Deniers

“My message to the scientists is to not be silenced. It is important that they get their message out there. I hope scientists continue to put the line carefully and ethically and seriously and that any alternative views can be debated by those that know what they are talking about.”

- Witnessing a glacier's race to the sea

A seven-year photographic record of the Columbia Glacier in Prince William Sound on Alaska’s south central Pacific coast has been made into a striking time-lapse video that documents the glacier's rapid ice discharge, and is helping researchers to understand how tidewater glaciers contribute to sea-level rise.

- Money Buys Power

If this election season so far has taught us anything, it’s that money counts. And for the top one percent of the one percent (that’s the top .01 percent), donations buy an incredible amount of influence with elected officials. Just how much influence do they have? Check out our handy infographic

- Why is the FBI Manufacturing Reasons to Arrest Occupy Protesters While Ignoring White Supremacist Violence?

Writing in Rolling Stone this week, Rick Perlstein looks at how the FBI regularly entraps and creates “terrorists” out of anarchists and activists, while comparatively ignoring violent white supremacist groups.

- The Legacy of Chernobyl

Twenty-six years after the meltdown at Chernobyl, the legacy of the 1986 explosion lives on."It is a disaster that left a 30-kilometre uninhabitable exclusion zone, displaced hundreds of thousands of people, and still threatens the lives of tens of thousands," writes Greenpeace today.

- U.S. Nuns Face Vatican Rebuke for "Radical Feminism" in Stances on Church Teachings, Social Justice

The Vatican has reprimanded the largest group of Catholic nuns in the United States, saying they have focused too heavily on issues of social justice, while failing to speak out enough on "issues of crucial importance," such as abortion and same-sex marriage. [my reply: "FUCK YOU, Vatiacan!"]

- Facebook Lobbies Washington to “Like” Spying on Users

But Facebook – which opposed the cyber-security bills last year – has decided to support CISPA. The proposed law “would make it easier for Facebook and other companies to receive critical threat data from the U.S. government,” Facebook’s Washington DC office posted on its blog.  It would “impose no new obligations on us to share data with anyone –- and ensures that if we do share data about specific cyber threats, we are able to continue to safeguard our users’ private information, just as we do today.”Well, many Facebook users would testify that the company actually does a very poor job of protecting user’s private information.

- Mad Cow Case Found in California, Says USDA

Yesterday, the US Department of Agriculture held a press conference to announce the discovery of the fourth case of mad cow disease found domestically since 2003.

- Sugar can make you dumb, US scientists warn

Eating too much sugar can eat away at your brain power, according to US scientists who published a study showing how a steady diet of high-fructose corn syrup sapped lab rats' memories.

- Chinese Athletes Going Veg Before Olympics

Many Chinese athletes are giving up meat in preparation for the Olympics, concerned that the drugs used to raise animals may compromise the results of their mandatory drug tests.

- Rats Display Altruism

Calling someone a rat may be complimentary. According to a study published in the December 9, 2011, issue of Science, rats can be surprisingly selfless.

- Zoo Chimp Makes Elaborate Plots to Attack Humans

At first Santino was famous for throwing rocks and other projectiles at visitors who annoyed him. Now he has improved his technique, which requires spontaneous innovation for future deception. Researcher Mathias Osvath, lead author of a paper about Santino in PLoS ONE, explained what the clever chimp did:

- Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney's Former Classmate Describes Romney as ‘Bullying Supreme’ – A ‘Pack of Dogs’ Who Targeted ‘Different’ Boy

A high school classmate of presidential candidate Mitt Romney told ABC News today that he considers a particular prank the two pulled at Michigan’s Cranbrook School to be “assault and battery” and that he witnessed Romney hold the scissors to cut the hair of a student who was being physically pinned to the ground by several others. [Many other witnesses have  since corroborated the incident]

- Father of Ex-Gay Movement Apologizes to Gay Community for Making It All Up

Dr. Robert Spitzer’s watershed 2001 study on reparative therapy is widely credited as having given birth to the modern Ex-Gay movement, and the evangelical belief that sexual orientation can be changed through prayer and therapy, earning Spitzer the ire of the worldwide LGBT community.A decade later, Spitzer has written a public apology admitting that he essentially made the whole thing up.

- War On Words: NYC Dept. Of Education Wants 50 ‘Forbidden’ Words Banned From Standardized Tests

Right-wing Republican pressure forces weak New York City Department of Education to ban certain words from standardized tests so as not to offend people who don't believe in evolution, etc.

- Five Tax Fallacies Invented by the 1%

We hear these claims often, even though they're entirely false. An analysis of the facts should make that clear.

- Torture: The Jose Rodriguez lesson

Jose Rodriguez, the high-ranking CIA official who ordered the destruction of 92 videos showing the agency’s interrogation of Terrorist suspects, was interviewed on Sunday night about his new pro-torture book by 60 Minutes (that show’s network, CBS, and the publisher of Rodriguez’s new book, Simon & Schuster, are both owned by the CBS Corp., now synergistically profiting off of torture advocacy). There is an important lesson to be learned from this interview.As many commenters correctly noted, the torture-defending Rodriguez is clearly a crazed sociopath...

- Fox News Bigotry: Fox Says If You Want "Us To Be Nice To Muslims In This Country," "Stop Killing Our People" In Nigeria

Crazy Fox News guy says that bigotry is justified.

- CHART: Fox Spent More Time On "Crucify" Comments Than 3 Major Oil & Gas Risks

In less than a week, Fox News has devoted 34 segments totaling more than two hours of airtime expressing outrage about the word choice of an EPA official who spoke two years ago about punishing oil companies who violate the law. That's 10 times more coverage than Fox gave to 3 major stories related to the risks of oil and gas development, combined.

- Social Security is not going broke

[The Right Wing narrative that Social Security is going broke] has become the conventional wisdom because it is easily reduced to a headline or sound bite. The facts, which require more nuance and detail, show that, with a few fixes, Social Security can be safe for as long as we want.

Race, Millennials and Reverse Discrimination
By Jamelle Bouie
Published Apr. 26 2012 in The Nation

The most commonly said thing about the “Millennial” generation [those born in the 1980s and later] is that it’s more diverse and more tolerant than its predecessors. Millennials are more likely to be persons of color, more likely to show acceptance of same-sex relationships and more likely to have diverse social connections. With that said, none of this means that we’re somehow immune to problems of racism, prejudice and privilege.

Indeed, you don’t have to look far for examples of young people acting with an eye toward ignorance. There’s the “ironic racism” of Girls writer Leslie Arfin, the incredible outpouring of hate toward African-American actors in The Hunger Games and the annual stories of kids who throw blackface parties or complain about Asian students for existing.

All of this is lead in for a new survey from the Public Religion Research Institute, which polled adults aged 18 to 24 on everything from religion and morality to economic issues and the 2012 election. They also posed questions on race and ethnicity: Does government pay too much attention to the problems of blacks and other minorities? Is “reverse discrimination” a problem in today’s society? Is demographic change a good thing for American society?

The results weren’t heartening. Overall, 46 percent of Millennials agree that the government pays too much attention to the problems of minorities, with 49 percent who disagree. 48 percent also agree that discrimination against whites is a genuine problem. When you disaggregate by race and count only white Millennials, the picture is much worse.

A solid majority of white Millennials, 56 percent, say that government has paid too much attention to the problems of blacks and other minorities. An even larger majority, 58 percent, say that “discrimination against whites has become as big a problem as discrimination against blacks and other minorities.”

The pollsters at PRRI don’t try to tease out what this actually means, and honestly—as an African-American myself—it’s hard to figure out. Discrimination against minorities takes many forms, and most are easy to identify. There’s the overt bigotry of day-to-day life, the subtle discrimination of laws and institutions (the arrest rate for black men, the predatory lending aimed at minority communities) and the miasma of racist ideas that flow through our culture and sit in our subconscious, ready to act.

These things might hinder white Americans in a spiritual sense, but it’s absurd to say that they have a material effect on the prospects of white people. If you are white in the United States, almost everyone in a position of power or influence looks like you. You won’t be questioned if you find yourself in a nice part of town, you won’t be the picture of criminality, and few people will ever question your right to take government help. Cops won’t give you a hard time as a matter of course, and no one will ask you to speak for white people as a whole. Sports fans won’t go apoplectic and shower you with racial slurs because you scored a goal. The list goes on.

A quick note for those of you who will say that all of these things have happened to you. I’m not saying that individual white people are immune to being hassled by the cops, or being followed in a store. What I am saying, however, is that none of that will happen on the basis of your skin color. Being white doesn’t carry a host of negative assumptions. It’s considered neutral. Being black (or Latino) does, and that’s the difference.

With all of that in mind, I don’t quote understand how anyone could plausibly say that discrimination against white people is a problem in the same way that it is for minorities. But if I had to hazard a guess as to why a majority of young white people believe it, here is what I would say:
Because many young people are either in college or preparing to go to college, affirmative action is a salient issue, and there’s a widespread perception that minority students have an easier time of getting into school. Of course, this isn’t true at all; affirmative action adds racial (and ethnic, and gender, and religious) disadvantage to the collection of things that colleges examine when determining an applicant. There are no quotas and it doesn’t guarantee entry; a bad candidate is a bad candidate, regardless of their race. But if a Latino student and a white student are equally matched, the university might lean towards always choosing the former.

(Another note: just because the white student didn’t get in doesn’t mean that someone took “their” spot. Colleges don’t owe spots to students, and if you don’t get in to the school of your choice, the college took nothing away from you. With or without affirmative action, the odds of getting into a selective college are low).

What's more, we live in a culture where honest conversation about race is rare, especially among white people, where it’s surrounded by fear and anxiety. For many white kids, if not most, racial conversations are limited to a few units in elementary and middle school. Otherwise, they’re left to fend for themselves, which either leads to a sense of privileged obliviousness—i.e., you live and act as if this were a “colorblind” world, despite the fact that color matters for many people—or confusion and resentment.

Indeed, at the end of the day, Americans do a terrible job of teaching our history, and an even worse job of teaching our awful racial history. By and large, slavery is treated with appropriate horror, but everything after that is passed over and ignored. In my experience, students—white or otherwise—are ignorant of the violence and economic oppression that characterized much of the black experience for the better part of a century. Racism is morphed into a personal force—represented by Bull Connor or George Wallace—and there’s no attempt to show the economic and social effects of Jim Crow and segregation.

For a lot of young white people, I think, racism has become completely untethered from history. They’ve been taught “colorblindness” sans a sense of what it means to grow up in a country where white supremacy was once the ruling ideology. “Reverse discrimination,” then, is a catch-all for frustration at rules they don’t understand (white people can’t say the “N-word”), and double standards that seem unfair (e.g., “Why can’t we have White History Month and a White Entertainment Channel?). It’s understandable, but also a little depressing.

Sean

Oceans are Dying - Radiation Leaking from US Reactors into Our water - Obama, the Republican - Man Robs Bank of $1 to Get Prison Healthcare - US Healthcare Worst in Developed World - Miss USA and Evolution - Homophobes Like Gay Porn - more

- Oceans at Dire Risk, Team of Scientists Warns

The state of the oceans is declining far more rapidly than most pessimists had expected, an international team of experts has concluded, increasing the risk that many marine species — including those that make coral reefs — could be extinct within a generation.

- Tritium Leaks Found at Many Nuke Sites

Radioactive tritium has leaked from three-quarters of U.S. commercial nuclear power sites, often into groundwater from corroded, buried piping, an Associated Press investigation shows.

The number and severity of the leaks has been escalating, even as federal regulators extend the licenses of more and more reactors across the nation.

- $1 Bank Robbery: Of Sound Mind But Not So Much Sound Body

Pity James Richard Verone, 59, an unemployed, otherwise law-abiding guy who robbed a North Carolina bank of $1 so he could get arrested and get health care for several ailments. It should be a John Prine song; instead, it's America today.

- Healthcare in US ranks last among developed countries: report

The Healthcare system in the US again ranks last among the seven developed countries in a report by Commonwealth Fund released on Wednesday. The US healthcare fails to perform well on the parameters such as access, patient safety, efficiency, and equity. The other countries in the survey are Britain, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Australia, and New Zealand. The US was ranked last in 2007, 2006, and 2004.

- If This Doesn't Stop You, It's Likely Nothing Will

Testing our powers of denial, the Food and Drug Administration has released nine new graphic warnings for cigarette packages, the first new labels in over 25 years. The new, explicit warnings - rotting teeth, cancerous lungs, dead bodies - are required to cover at least 50 percent of every pack of cigarettes sold. The FDA hopes they will have "a significant public health impact." Sheesh, you'd think.

- U.N.: Cancer, diabetes kill millions, cost trillions globally

Ban said the rapidly increasing magnitude of noncommunicable diseases is fueled by rising risk factors including tobacco use, unhealthy diet, lack of physical activity, obesity and harmful alcohol use — and is driven in part by an aging population, the negative impact of urbanization, and the globalization of trade and marketing.

- Is it bird, is it plane? No, it's the work of Bulgarian Banksy

AN anonymous artist dubbed the Banksy of Bulgaria has transformed statues of Red Army soldiers into superhero and cartoon characters - an action that would have resulted in a firing squad 20 years ago.

- Warming Accelerates Sea Level Rise on U.S. East Coast

A new study finds that sea levels are creeping up faster along the coast of North Carolina thanks to climate change.

- Keith Olbermann's Current TV Debut: What the Critics Say

After five months, Keith Olbermann's Countdown returned to TV on Monday night, on a new network, Current TV.

- What We Didn't Do With The $113 Billion We Inexplicably Spent On Afghanistan

From the National Priorities Project, a list of tradeoffs we're unwillingly making for our senseless wars. We could have bought health care for over 25 million people, 16 million Head Start slots, much good for teachers, firefighters, veterans, students, etc

- Why the GOP Should Nominate Barack Obama in 2012

With the possible exception of Jon Huntsman, the Republican presidential field is weak on candidates who could appeal to centrist swing voters, including moderate Republicans. But there is one 2012 prospect who has a proven track record of pursuing policies that owe a great deal to the moderate Republican tradition and who could potentially shake up the race for the GOP presidential nomination: President Barack Obama.

If Obama chose to run for reelection not as a Democrat but as a moderate Republican, he could bring about two healthy transformations in the American political system. The moderate wing of the Republican Party could be restored. And the Democratic presidential nomination might be opened up to politicians from the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.

- Homophobic Men Most Aroused by Gay Male Porn: Study

When viewing lesbian sex and straight sex, both the homophobic and the non-homophobic men showed increased penis circumference. For gay male sex, however, only the homophobic men showed heightened penis arousal.

- Newly Crowned Miss USA Was One Of Only Two Contestants Who Believe In Evolution

California’s 21-year-old Alyssa Campanella took the coveted crown in the 60th Miss USA competition last night. Campanella marks a redeeming win for the state after the now-disgraced Californian Carrie Prejean dismissed marriage equality — or as she put it "opposite marriage" — in 2009. Miss USA seemed to take a breather from political controversy until this year, when the pageant decided to ask the contestants whether they believe evolution should be taught in schools in the preliminary round. A self-proclaimed “science geek,” Campanella affirmed that evolution should indeed be taught in schools because she believes in evolution of humans throughout time. This answer, apparently, won her another title last night. She and Massachusetts’ Alida D’Angona were the only two out of 51 contestants to "unequivocally support" evolution...

Oceans in Distress Foreshadow Mass Extinction
by Marlowe Hood
Published on Monday, June 20, 2011 by Agence France-Presse

PARIS – Pollution and global warming are pushing the world's oceans to the brink of a mass extinction of marine life unseen for tens of millions of years, a consortium of scientists warned Monday.

Dying coral reefs, biodiversity ravaged by invasive species, expanding open-water "dead zones," toxic algae blooms, the massive depletion of big fish stocks -- all are accelerating, they said in a report compiled during an April meeting in Oxford of 27 of the world's top ocean experts.

Sponsored by the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO), the review of recent science found that ocean health has declined further and faster than dire forecasts only a few years ago.

These symptoms, moreover, could be the harbinger of wider disruptions in the interlocking web of biological and chemical interactions that scientists now call the Earth system.
All five mass extinctions of life on the planet, reaching back more than 500 million years, were preceded by many of the same conditions now afflicted the ocean environment, they said.

"The results are shocking," said Alex Rogers, an Oxford professor who heads IPSO and co-authored the report. "We are looking at consequences for humankind that will impact in our lifetime."

Three main drivers are sickening the global marine environment, and all are a direct consequence of humans activity: global warming, acidification and a dwindling level oxygen, a condition known as hypoxia.

Up to now, these and other impacts have been studied mainly in isolation. Only recently have scientists began to understand how these forces interact.

"We have underestimated the overall risks, and that the whole of marine degradation is greater than the sum of its parts," Rogers said. "That degradation is now happening at a faster rate than predicted."

Indeed, the pace of change is tracking or has surpassed the worst-case scenarios laid out by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its landmark 2007 report, according to the new assessment.

The chain reaction leading to increased acidification of the oceans begins with a massive influx of carbon into Earth's climate system.

Oceans act as a massive sponge, soaking up more than a quarter of the CO2 humans pump into the atmosphere.

But when the sponge becomes too saturated, it can disrupt the delicately balanced ecosystems on which marine life -- and ultimately all life on Earth -- depends.

"The rate at which carbon is being absorbed is already far greater now than during the last globally significant extinction of marine species 55 million years ago," when some 50 percent of deep-sea life was wiped out, the report said.

That event, called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM, may be an ancient dress rehearsal for future climate change that could be even more abrupt and more damaging, some scientists fear.

Pollution has also taken a heavy toll, rendering the oceans less resilient to climate change.
Runoff from nitrogen-rich fertiliser, killer microbes, and hormone-disrupting chemicals, for example, have all contributed to the mass die-off of corals, crucial not just for marine ecosystems but a lifeline for hundreds of millions of people too.

The harvesting up to 90 percent of some species of big fish and sharks, meanwhile, has hugely disrupted food chains throughout the ocean, leading to explosive and imbalanced growth of algae, jellyfish and other "opportunistic" flora and fauna.

"We now face losing marine species and entire marine ecosystems, such as coral reefs, within a single generation," said Daniel Laffoley, head of the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) World Commission on Protected Areas, and co-author of the report.

"And we are also probably the last generation that has enough time to deal with the problems," he told AFP by phone.

Sean