Extreme Weather due to Climate Change • Racists Denying Racism • Fox "News" Lies Again • more

- Extreme weather will strike as climate change takes hold, IPCC warns

Extreme weather will strike as climate change takes hold, IPCC warnsHeavier rainfall, storms and droughts could wipe billions off economies and destroy lives, says report by 220 scientists

- From Shore to Forest, Projecting Effects of Climate Change

These possibilities — modeled deep into this century — are detailed in a new assessment of the impact that climate change will have in New York State. If carbon emissions continue to increase at their current pace, for example, temperatures are expected to rise across the state by 3 degrees Fahrenheit by the 2020s and by as much as 9 degrees by the 2080s. That would have profound effects on agriculture across the state, the report found. For example, none of the varieties of apples currently grown in New York orchards would be viable. Dairy farms would be less productive as cows faced heat stress. And the state’s forests would be transformed; spruce-fir forests and alpine tundra would disappear as invasive species like kudzu, an aggressive weed, gained more ground.

- Explainer: How Did Inequality in America Get So Bad? And What Can the Government Do to Fix It?

In one of the more odd recent pairings, both the wonks at the Congressional Budget Office and the activists occupying Wall Street and beyond have come to the same conclusion: inequality is skyrocketing and one percent of the country is taking home a bigger and bigger share of all the income in the country. The CBO just released a study, years in the making, which confirms that the income for the top one percent has nearly tripled from 1979 to 2007. And not only are those in the top one percent much richer, they also take home a larger share of the economy as a whole than they did thirty years ago.

- Wow. Fox Nation Claims Obama's Would-Be Assassin "Linked" To Occupy Protest

Here's the stunningly dishonest headline:Man Linked To 'Occupy' Protest Charged With Attempted Assassination of Obama
The striking part, of course, is that investigators have reportedly found no link between the man in question, Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez, and the Occupy movement

- IRONY AWARD GOES TO FOX NEWS Fox Falsely Dubs Alleged White House Attacker As "'Occupy' Shooter", Implies that "Media" would go crazy if Attacker was tied to Tea Party

Fox & Friends claimed that alleged White House shooter Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez [who claims Obama is the Anti-Christ] had been "tied to [the] Occupy" movement, even calling him the "Occupy' shooter." In fact, investigators have reportedly "found no connection between him and the Occupy protesters."

- Tea Party Claims Obama is the Anti Christ

- Is Israel preparing an assault against Iran?

The IAEA report on Iran's alleged nuclear programme was surrounded by a media frenzy in Israel supporting an attack.

- College Students, Blackface and How to Talk About Race

Earlier this week, Colorlines’s Jorge Rivas flagged this troubling story from the University of Southern Mississippi:

    The University of Southern Mississippi confirmed on Monday that six students dressed in blackface for a costume party....Dean of Students Dr. Eddie Holloway, “it was also clear that they had little cultural awareness or competency, and did not understand the historical implication of costuming in blackface.”


...why is it so hard for (some) white college students to grasp the core prejudice and disrespect that comes with blackface? After asking friends about this, and their answers were illuminating.

As one noted, part of this has to do with our national reluctance to engage race like adults. Public schools teach the basics of slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction and the civil rights movement, but there’s no attempt to go deeper with the material, and move away from the notion that racism is something reserved for the Bull Connors and Klansmen of the world. It’s not just that students leave history education with a skewed, and often benign, view of American apartheid (in my experience, Jim Crow is reduced to its cultural signifiers—there’s no attempt to deal with the reality of state-condoned terrorism against black Americans), but that they come away with the belief that racism is the sole province of bad people.

In the minds of many white students, another friend pointed out, racism is something of a Platonic state. Racism isn’t expressed in behavior—if they themselves aren’t racist (meaning, if they believe that they aren’t racist), then none of their actions can be racist, even if they are clear demonstrations of racial prejudice. The flipside of this is a devotion to the idea of “colorblindness” as if racial disparities no longer exist. I’m sure that if you were to poll white university students, you’d find significant opposition to affirmative action, on the view any consideration of race is racist, even if you’re trying to adjust for past disparities.

Challenging this—and providing students with a more sophisticated understanding of racial prejudice—is much harder than it might look.

- Dog Freezes to Death in Flight

he last time that John and Julia Von Achen saw their beloved dog, J, alive, they were boarding a flight from Moscow to New York. When the Von Achens disembarked, they discovered that their dog had apparently frozen to death in the cargo hold during the 11-hour flight.

"It seems the airlines are not equipped and they're not really set up to handle pets, but they take the money anyway," Van Achen said, adding, "I'll never fly with a pet again."

J was far from the first dog to perish in a cargo hold, and he won't be the last.

Climate Change Will Worsen Extreme Weather
Changes in extreme weather will require governments to change how they cope with natural disasters, a new report from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns

By Lauren Morello Friday, November 18, 2011 scientificamerican.com

 
Climate change is shifting weather extremes, increasing the frequency of drought and heat waves and the intensity of rainstorms -- changes that will require the world's governments to change how they cope with natural disasters, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said today.

The report, written by more than 100 of the world's top scientists, recommends taking steps now to increase the world's ability to adapt and cope with climate extremes.

"The report finds much to be positive about, as far as the chance to make the world a better place at the same time we reduce risk and disaster losses," said Christopher Field, a Stanford University professor who leads the IPCC's working group on climate change impacts.

The key, according to the report, is to focus on what Field called "low-regret" strategies to help reduce future disaster risk while improving people's current livelihoods and well-being.
The report, the IPCC's first in-depth examination of extreme weather, was released in Kampala, Uganda, where researchers gathered this week to finalize their analysis.

IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri said he hoped governments gathering later this month in Durban, South Africa, for U.N. climate talks would pay heed to the report's conclusions.
"We need to sensitize the global community to the scientific reality of climate change, because therein lies the basis by which society can take action," Pachauri said. "If we do not give science the primacy it deserves ... I'm afraid you're not likely to get any action."

Tracking human-driven changes since the 1950s

The analysis describes wide-ranging changes in climate extremes since the middle of the last century, and says there is good evidence that some of those changes have been driven by human activities.

Those changes include an overall decrease in the number of cold days and nights, and an overall increase in the number of warm days and nights, worldwide -- a shift that researchers said was "very likely," which in IPCC terms signifies 99-100 percent confidence in that conclusion.

The report says it is "likely" -- or a 66-100 percent chance -- that human activities have contributed to that shift.

There have been "statistically significant" changes in the number of heavy precipitation events in some areas, with more areas experiencing increases than decreases.

Researchers say they have "medium confidence" that humans have influenced those changes, and "medium confidence" that parts of the world, including southern Europe and West Africa, have seen more intense and longer droughts. Other areas, like central North America and northwestern Australia, have seen droughts becomes less frequent, less intense or shorter.

Researchers say they have low confidence of any long-term shifts in hurricane and tornado activity, and there is sparse evidence available to determine whether climate change has altered the magnitude and frequency of flooding.

Those trends are likely to continue and intensify through the end of the century, [without efforts to cut the world's output of greenhouse gases], the report says.

It predicts "substantial warming" of temperature extremes by 2100, with the length, frequency and intensity of heat waves increasing over most land areas.

Extreme heat expected by century's end

Extreme heat now considered a 1-in-20-year event will occur every 1-2 years by the end of the century in most parts of the world. In high northern latitudes, such heat waves will occur every 1-5 years by 2100, the report says.

Very hot days now considered 1-in-20-year extremes will grow 1.8-5.4 degrees Fahrenheit warmer by mid-century and 3.6-9 degrees Fahrenheit warmer by the end of the century.

The number of heavy rainfall events and the proportion of annual rainfall that falls during those events will also increase, the report says. Very rainy days that now occur once every 20 years will occur once every five to 15 years by the end of the century.

Even in places that appear likely to become drier as the planet warms, there is "medium confidence" that individual rainstorms will become more intense, the report says.

There is also "medium confidence" that droughts will grow more severe in a broad swath of the globe, including southern and central Europe, the Mediterranean, central North America, Central America and Mexico, northeastern Brazil and southern Africa.

Hurricanes' average maximum winds will grow stronger in many ocean basins, although the number of storms will remain steady or decrease slightly. That change in wind speed, coupled with a "very likely" increase in average sea level, is a concern for small tropical island nations, the report says.

The analysis also says there is "high confidence" that changing rainfall and temperature extremes will increase the likelihood of landslides in high mountain regions and flooding caused by the rapid release of glacial meltwater from mountain glaciers.

Scientists are less certain about climate change-driven shifts in flooding and natural climate patterns like El Niño, the report says.

Sean

Republicans and Tea Partiers are IDIOTS - Tornadoes and Climate Change - The New F Bomb and Sports - Japan Confirms Nuke Meltdown - Obama and Israel - Alternate Energy Sources Very Realistic

- A Link Between Climate Change and Joplin Tornadoes? Never!

It’s very important to stay calm. If you got upset about any of this, you might forget how important it is not to disrupt the record profits of our fossil fuel companies. If worst ever did come to worst, it’s reassuring to remember what the U.S. Chamber of Commerce told the Environmental Protection Agency in a recent filing: that there’s no need to worry because “populations can acclimatize to warmer climates via a range of behavioral, physiological, and technological adaptations.” I’m pretty sure that’s what residents are telling themselves in Joplin today.

- No wind? No problem

Variable energy sources such as wind and solar power could provide 19–63% of required electricity in many countries if the technical and market hurdles are overcome, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). This upbeat view contrasts with what most other experts have said to date.

- Obama: Surrendered Wife?

Let me see if I’ve got this straight. We’re cutting our budgets here at home in order to send advanced military weaponry to a country that built a secret nuclear program, has continued to expand settlements in Palestinian land in violation of international law and common decency, and, under the leadership of the ever-intransigent Netanyahu, has refused to negotiate in good faith a deal with the Palestinian authorities. This is, in other words, a rogue state. We should be suspending military cooperation with this country, not rewarding it, at least until it mends its ways.

- Watchdog: 70,000 More Should Evacuate After Fukushima

Seventy thousand people living beyond the 20-kilometre no-go zone around Fukushima should be evacuated because of radioactivity deposited by the crippled nuclear plant, a watchdog said.

- Japan's Tepco Confirms Meltdowns of 2 More Fukushima Reactors

Tokyo Electric Power Co , the operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disabled by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, confirmed on Tuesday that there were meltdowns of fuel rods at three of the plant's reactors early in the crisis.

- Joakim Noah, the NBA, and 'The New F Bomb'

On Monday, while Chicago Bulls center Joakim Noah was being fined for using a homophobic slur against a fan, a commercial for LGBT marriage rights was released featuring Suns All-Star Steve Nash. Last month, the same day Kobe Bryant was caught on camera using the same invective against a referee, Phoenix Suns players Grant Hill and Jared Dudley were filming a public service announcement where they spoke out against using the word “gay” to mean stupid, dumb, or worthy of disrespect.

- Right-Wing Media To Obama: How Dare You Run For Re-election

At the very most, two articles [in conservative publications] suggested the Obama [re-election] team was engaged in conducting opposition research and fact-checking, which is like saying the Obama team was engaged in hiring speech writers and consultants. i.e. Both activities are utterly mundane in today’s world of professional politics.But oh my, cue the far-right freak-out...

- In Chicago, Coal Is the Real Crime

We become outraged, and we demand justice for those who have lost their children, their parents, their siblings or spouses. In 1982, Chicago acted to stem the tide of gun-related violence when confronted with a disturbing rise in homicides. In fact, between 1980 and 2006, some 32,300 American died every year due to handgun violence, which is second only to car crashes in deaths by injury.I have wondered why we fail to feel that same sense of outrage when the culprit in a crime against innocents is not a gunman seeking cash, but a corporation seeking to improve its bottom line. Maybe the impacts of a company's misdeeds are of a scale so grand that it is difficult for us to imagine.

Every year, the toxic pollution that spews from the smokestacks of America's coal-fired power plants kills between 13,000 and 34,000 people, according to studies by the Clean Air Task Force and Harvard University. That staggering figure doesn't include the carbon pollution -- one third of all US emissions -- that is driving the planet into runaway climate change.

- 'Drill, baby, drill' won't do it

Conservation and a switch to renewable energy sources are the best hedges against rising oil prices.In other words, Americans can't continue using oil at current rates and expect to escape high prices. Over time, the development of alternative energy sources could go a long way toward reducing our dependence on oil. Right now, the best way to control oil prices is lowered demand, in the form of conservation; in the last couple of weeks, the used-car market for gas-thrifty vehicles has become hot again (though motorists will no doubt flock back to gas guzzlers as soon as prices drop). Corporations are only beginning to learn about the money they can save by reducing energy use in their buildings. In Washington, legislators should be talking about tax benefits for companies that permit telecommuting and flexible schedules that reduce car travel.

Instead, Republicans in Congress want to continue the extraordinary subsidies that oil companies enjoy. An effort by Senate Democrats to end many of those subsidies was blocked last week.

Lecturing Americans To 'Reread' Constitution, Herman Cain [Republican presidential candidate]Confuses It With Declaration of Independence
By Ian Millhiser
Published May 23 2011 on ThinkProgress.org

During GOP [Republican] presidential candidate Herman Cain’s campaign announcement on Saturday, the former pizza executive took a moment to lecture the country on its need to “reread the Constitution”:

CAIN: We don’t need to rewrite the Constitution of the United States of America, we need to reread the Constitution and enforce the Constitution. … And I know that there are some people that are not going to do that, so for the benefit of those who are not going to read it because they don’t want us to go by the Constitution, there’s a little section in there that talks about “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

You know, those ideals that we live by, we believe in, your parents believed in, they instilled in you. When you get to the part about “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” don’t stop there, keep reading. Cause that’s when it says “when any form of government becomes destructive of those ideals, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it.” We’ve got some altering and some abolishing to do!

Watch it:

Cain really should have taken his own advice, however, before he decided to lecture the entire country about the Constitution. The phrase “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” does not appear anywhere in the Constitution’s text. Nor does the Constitution include a phrase about the right of the people to alter or abolish a government that is destructive of their ideals. Both of those phrases appear in the Declaration of Independence, which, in case Mr. Cain is not aware, is actually an entirely different document than the Constitution — written over ten years earlier.

Sadly, Cain’s Bachmannesque ignorance of the nation’s founding documents makes him well-suited to compete in a GOP presidential primary. Republicans invented an utterly meritless constitutional objection to the Affordable Care Act, they’ve called everything from Social Security to Medicare to child labor laws unconstitutional, and they’ve even pretended that the Constitution allows them to strip Americans of their citizenship. So Cain needs to look no further than his own party if he wants to find people who are more interested in rewriting the Constitution than in actually reading it.

Sean

Violence on the Right; Glenn Beck Incites Violence; Olbermann Silenced; Media Becomes Even MORE Conservative; Obama Abandons Green Agenda; Poor Starve While Banks Profit; more

- Glenn Beck Incites Violence; Keith Olbermann Departs

Even as the rightwing shouters get more extreme, with Glenn Beck inciting death threats against liberal academics, MSNBC got rid of its leading progressive voice, showing Keith Olbermann the door on Friday. These are ominous signs.

- Obama's Climate Adviser, Carol Browner, to Depart White House

The White House energy and climate adviser is due to step down in the next few weeks, in a departure seen as the collapse of Barack Obama's ambitious green agenda. 

Reports of Browner's exit reinforced concerns expressed by environmental groups that he was preparing further compromises on his once-ambitious green agenda to try to build a working arrangement with Republicans.

Obama has also come under pressure from the main business lobby, the Chamber of Commerce, which opposes environmental regulations.

But Browner's exit also recalled the extent to which Obama failed to realize his sweeping campaign promise of weaning America off fossil fuels, and making the transition to a new clean energy economy.

- Mega-Mega-Merger: Meet the New Media Monopoly

Since Teddy Roosevelt's presidency, our government has tried to ensure that monopolistic business practices don’t destroy fair pricing and consumer choice.

That should worry you. 

Why? Because when one company, motivated solely by profit, can choose what news to cover and how to cover it, you may not be getting the full story. When it can exclude competing ideas or perspectives, whether for political or economic reasons, you may be denied a full hearing on the issues. And that’s bad for democracy.

Then how can it justify the merger of Comcast and NBC Universal, which the Federal Communications Commission approved on January 18? The FCC is supposed to reject any media merger that doesn’t advance the public interest. But Comcast’s takeover of NBC will give one mega-corporation control of too much of what we watch and how we watch it.

- US Can’t Link Julian Assange to Bradley Manning

One avenue by which the United States could press charges against Julian Assange appeared to have closed Monday, with US military officials' admission that they can't find a link between the WikiLeaks founder and PFC Bradley Manning, the alleged source of WikiLeaks' State Department cables.

- Overuse of Antibiotics

Stop buying soaps, handwipes and cleaning agents whose vendors lure you with the label "antibacterial" - Wrongful or overuse of antibiotics has a perverse effect-causing the kinds of bacteria that these drugs can no longer destroy. The World Health Organization has cited antibiotic resistance as one of the three most serious public health threats of the 21st century.

- The "New Centrism" and Its Discontents

There is no ideology of the "center." What is called a "centrist" or a "moderate" is actually very different - a bi-conceptual, someone who is conservative on some issues and progressive on others, in many, many possible combinations. Why does this matter? From the perspective of how the brain works, the distinction is crucial.

- Papers Reveal How Palestinian Leaders Gave Up Fight Over Refugees

The documents have already become the focus of controversy among Israelis and Palestinians, revealing the scale of official Palestinian concessions rejected by Israel, but also throwing light on the huge imbalance of power in a peace process widely seen to have run into the sand.

- Vermont Measure Calls for Revoking Corporate Personhood

In Vermont, a landmark measure has been introduced to revoke the granting of personhood rights to U.S. corporations.

- Food Speculation: 'People Die from Hunger While Banks Make a Killing on Food'

It's not just bad harvests and climate change – it's also speculators that are behind record prices. And it's the planet's poorest who pay.

Violence on the Right: More Evidence
by Thomas Schaller
Published on Tuesday, January 25, 2011 by the Baltimore Sun


In my previous column I argued that radical, even violent rhetoric coming from the political right is more incendiary and aggressive than that coming from the left. I received a lot of angry e-mails claiming both sides deserved equal scorn.

Really? Well then, let's move beyond mere rhetoric to action - from talking the talk, to walking the walk. Before proceeding, again let me clarify that the overwhelming majority of conservatives neither engage in nor incite violence. However, it is almost always conservatives who use violence, even murder, to express political anger.

In 2009, David Neiwert published "The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right," a book detailing the language and actions employed by right-wing radicals. Mr. Neiwert continues to track politically motivated crimes committed by those expressing anger about taxes, abortion, racial minorities or liberals. I previously mentioned the May 2009 murder of abortion doctor George Tiller and tax protester Joseph Stack's crashing of a plane into an IRS building in February 2010. But readers might not recall other, similar incidents:

• In July 2008, after writing a manifesto complaining about how left-wing liberals are destroying America, Jim Adkisson walks into a Unitarian church in Knoxville, Tenn., and shoots and kills two churchgoers.
• White supremacist Richard Poplawski, who claims President Barack Obama wants to take away his guns, shoots and kills three Pittsburgh police officers in April 2009.
• In July 2009, anti-tax zealot and Holocaust denier James von Brunn opens fire inside the national Holocaust Museum, killing a security guard.

I don't have space for the rest, but Mr. Neiwert chronicles 18 incidents like this from the past 21/2 years - that's one incident roughly every 40 days - involving militia members, so-called "sovereign citizen" anarchists, white supremacists or anti-abortion radicals who killed or were caught plotting the murder of innocent people, local law enforcement officials and, of course, President Obama.

Now consider two incidents from last week, neither of which garnered much national attention.

On Jan. 17, a bomb later defused by authorities was found in a backpack at a Martin Luther King Day rally in Spokane, Wash. Also inside the backpack was a "Rally For Life" T-shirt from a 2010 anti-abortion event held in a nearby county. The next day, 200 sheet metal workers and painters union members burst into a Washington, D.C., hotel to protest a meeting of homebuilder executives whose companies benefited from nearly a billion dollars in federal tax breaks at a time when millions of Americans were losing their homes to foreclosure.

These incidents typify the glaring difference between how political anger is expressed by most on the left and the small but growing number on the radicalized right. Yes, sometimes environmentalists, Code Pink protestors or union members trespass or disturb the peace; what they don't do is try to kill their political opponents or innocent civilians.
Let me offer two final observations, and a challenge to my critics.

First, for decades, conservatives have insisted that culture influences action. Violent or sexed-up video games, television shows and movies, though fictional, are routinely blamed for contributing to drug use, promiscuous sex, illegitimacy, gang violence and other social ills. Yet somehow the daily rants by conservative radio and television personalities about tyrannical government, evil liberals and murdering abortionists, though not fictional, are wholly unrelated to the actions of a supposedly isolated, mentally disturbed few? Culture warriors want it both ways.

Second, imagine the reaction of Glenn Beck and his ilk had Muslim radicals, post-Sept. 11, shot police officers, killed churchgoers, bombed the Salt Lake City Olympics or flown planes into corporate headquarters. America would be put on Orange-level alert, and rightly so. Yet, despite an April 2009 report issued by the Department of Homeland Security warning that, amid rising economic insecurity and following the election of the nation's first African-American president, "lone wolves and small terrorist cells embracing violent rightwing extremist ideology are the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat" in America, there will be no such alerts for domestic terrorism.

To my critics, I pose a simple challenge: Produce a comparable list of violent acts or attempted acts during the past two years perpetrated by those who support economic fairness, reproductive choice, universal health care, environmental protection, animal rights or any other liberal cause against corporate executives, pro-life organizers, small business owners or white evangelicals.

If you can, I'll retract this column and the previous one. Good luck.

Sean

MLK; Schools More Segregated today; Iranian 'Chernobyl' Thanks to US/Israel; Gun Control; WikiLeaks and US Hypocrisy; BP Oil; Republican Hypocrisy

- Stuxnet Virus Attack: Russia Warns of 'Iranian Chernobyl' Russian nuclear officials have warned of another Chernobyl-style nuclear disaster at Iran's controversial Bushehr reactor because of the damage caused by the Stuxnet virus- widely believed to have been the result of a sophisticated joint US-Israeli cyber attack.

- On MLK Day, Some Thoughts on Segregated Schools, Arne Duncan, and President Obama American schools are more segregated by race and class today than they were on the day Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed, 43 years ago. The average white child in America attends a school that is 77 percent white, and where just 32 percent of the student body lives in poverty. The average black child attends a school that is 59 percent poor but only 29 percent white. The typical Latino kid is similarly segregated; his school is 57 percent poor and 27 percent white.

- Talk About Civility is Fine, but Where are the New Calls for Gun Control? Behold the silence of the lambs. Naturally, I'm talking about the Democrats.

One of their own House members has been plugged in the head by a nut job armed with a Glock and a high-capacity magazine, yet even now they can't muster the courage to talk about sensible gun curbs. That issue is off the national agenda because Democrats have been rendered mute by their terror of [the Republican's best friends,] the gun lobby.

- Amid WikiLeaks Storm, US Gov't Promotes Ellsberg Film AMERICAN HYPOCRISY: Even as prosecutors build a case against the Army private suspected of passing hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks, the State Department is promoting a documentary film that celebrates Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg.

- BP Targets One of the World's Last Unspoilt Wildernesses Speaking to The Independent on Sunday  yesterday, Mike Childs, FoE's head of climate change, said: "BP, a number of years ago, were positioning themselves to be the greenest of the oil companies, promising to go 'beyond petroleum'. This latest move positions them quite nicely as environmental villain number one, given the huge impact they had in the Gulf of Mexico as well."
The oil giant "cannot be trusted" to drill oil in difficult waters, and any oil spill would be "completely catastrophic". He added: "The Arctic should be a no-go for fossil fuel extraction as it's one of the few pristine environments we have left. It's very fragile and we should be looking at ways to protect it, not seemingly trying to find ways of wrecking it."

- Martin Luther King's Legacy n the mid-1960s, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. contributed an annual essay to The Nation on the state of civil rights and race relations in the United States.  His last piece, from March 14, 1966, could have been written today: "Jobs are harder to create than voting rolls. Harmonizing of peoples of vastly different cultural levels is complicated and frequently abrasive." Read and share four of King's timeless and timely essays to mark this year's holiday.

- Darrell Issa (Republican) asks business: Tell me what to change Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) wants the oil industry, drug manufacturers and other trade groups and companies to tell him which Obama administration regulations to target this year.

- Don't Look Back Darrell Issa, the corrupt Republican congressman about to launch endless "investigations" into the Obama administration has had some troubles of his own.


Which Side Would Martin Luther King Be On?

President Lyndon B. Johnson and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. meet at the White House, 1966

When it comes to newly maligned public workers, the answer is easy
by Roger Bybee
Published on Monday, January 17, 2011 by In These Times

If Martin Luther King, Jr. were to be resurrected today, just in time for the national holiday commemorating his memory, many of the anti-public sector politicians praising his legacy would be choking on their words.

After all, King was a persistent, unwavering champion of the most despised and disparaged members of society, like the public employees now being systematically demonized for state and local fiscal crises (Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich decimates the myths behind the campaign against government workers here).

Recent portraits of Martin Luther King, like Michael Eric Dyson's I May Not Get There With You and the brand-new All Work Has Dignity by Michael Honey, stress his unwavering commitment to labor unions and economic rights as well as full racial justice.
King's exhausting pace of organizing and mobilizing helped to force the passage of landmark civil rights legislation in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But he never considered resting on his laurels. He remained utterly unconcerned with retaining elite approval, as he had a larger vision of economic and social justice he sought to pursue.
Dr. King maintained a disciplined method of non-violence, but increasingly went "too far" in challenging America's economic inequality and the inequality its corporations established across the globe, backed up by U.S. military might. In a little-known speech at the Highlander Institute for activists in 1957, King proudly proclaimed:

I never intend to adjust myself to the tragic inequalities of an economic system which takes necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes. I never intend to become adjusted to the madness of militarism and the self-defeating method of physical violence.

King fought not just against "Jim Crow" laws, but against the underlying structure of America's economy which condemned all working people--black, white, and Latino--to a fundamental lack of power, dignity, and economic security. The condition of black people in America was a distinct product of American racism, but it was also intertwined with the economic powerlessness facing all poor and working people, King argued.

The Northern media—which largely applauded his efforts to bring down the irrational system of Southern segregation which kept the entire region backward for a century and impeded economic development—were far less sympathetic to his forceful denunciation of economic injustice and the Vietnam War.
As Norman Solomon and Jeff Cohen noted,

But after passage of civil rights acts in 1964 and 1965, King began challenging the nation's fundamental priorities. He maintained that civil rights laws were empty without "human rights" — including economic rights. For people too poor to eat at a restaurant or afford a decent home, King said, anti-discrimination laws were hollow.

Noting that a majority of Americans below the poverty line were white, King developed a class perspective. He decried the huge income gaps between rich and poor, and called for "radical changes in the structure of our society" to redistribute wealth and power."

Thus, at the time of his death on April 4, 1968, Dr. King was deeply immersed in the struggle of 1,300 black sanitation workers in Memphis who had organized themselves into an AFSCME local.. At the same time, he was also building a coalition for a "Poor People's Campaign" that would assemble in Washington, D.C., to demand "economic rights" for people of all colors. It was aimed at building a mighty coalition that would span autoworkers in Detroit, discarded coalminers in Appalachia, Latino farmworkers, and oppressed blacks in both the South and North.

In his new book All Work Has Dignity, Honey pulls together 11 of King's speeches on labor and explains the lasting significance of King's emphasis on the need for "economic rights" for all.

People forget that Dr. King was every bit as committed to economic justice as he was to ending racial segregation. As we struggle with massive unemployment, a staggering racial wealth gap and near collapse of our financial system, King’s prophetic writings and speeches underscore his relevance for today.

King saw domestic inequality as inextricably linked with the foreign policy of U.S. corporations and the government. He spoke out against the Vietnam War not as a "tragic well-intentioned mistake," as so many liberals described it, but the inevitable result of the U.S. empire of corporate power expanding under a growing military umbrella.
In an audacious statement that would get him branded a dangerous "extremist" today, King declared on April 4, 1967, that the United States was "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today." King was an early critic of corporate globalization, which exploited the misery of the world's poorest nations:

capitalists of the West [are] investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries.

GLOBALIZATION: SOUTHERN MODEL EXPANDED ACROSS GLOBE
The current version of globalization would seem familiar to Dr. King, as the the Southern economic model of all-powerful management, docile low-wage labor, and publicly subsidized operations, is now hugely expanded and ported around the globe.
Were he with us today, Dr. King would stand against the opportunistic politicians overlooking the untaxed wealth of billionaires to target public workers. In choosing which side to take in this growing battle, King would have little trouble making a decision, states Honey:

Efforts to shred public employee unions would have deadly effects on the wages, jobs and living standards of the rest of us—especially African Americans, who constitute the most highly unionized group of workers in the country. King fought for the right of all workers to belong to unions, and died supporting that right in Memphis.

Sean

Racist Lying Republicans Rewrite US History School Books; Libertarians Are Nuts; Oil Spill Disaster Due To Republican/Libertarian Deregulation (posted 05/24/10)

- Obama Fail: Month After Oil Gusher, Why is BP Still In Charge? Days after the Gulf Coast oil spill, the Obama administration pledged to keep its "boot on the throat" of BP to make sure the company did all it could to cap the gushing leak and clean up the spill. But a month after the April 20 explosion, anger is growing about why BP PLC is still in charge of the response.

- Gulf Oil Spill: Vast Majority of Pollution Could Lurk Below Surface for Months or Years  As little as 1/60th of the oil belching from a blown-out deep-sea BP well could be making it all the way up to the surface of the Gulf of Mexico right away, judging from the results of a field test of a similar scenario conducted in 2000 by a consortium including the Department of the Interior's Mineral Management Service and BP. The test results provide yet another indication that the government and BP were insufficiently prepared for the wide-ranging repercussions associated with a deep-water leak [due to corporate control over government made possible by years of deregulation from Republican and Libertarian-minded politicians].

- BP Withholds Oil Spill Facts - and Government Lets It BP, the company in charge of the rig that exploded last month in the Gulf of Mexico, hasn't publicly divulged the results of tests on the extent of workers' exposure to evaporating oil or from the burning of crude over the gulf, even though researchers say that data is crucial in determining whether the conditions are safe.

Moreover, the company isn't monitoring the extent of the spill and only reluctantly released videos of the spill site that could give scientists a clue to the amount of the oil in gulf.
BP's role as the primary source of information has raised questions about whether the government should intervene to gather such data and to publicize it and whether an adequate cleanup can be accomplished without the details of crude oil spreading across the gulf.

- BP Admits Deepwater Rescue Is Capturing Less Oil BP today admitted that is capturing less oil from a ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico than previously estimated, raising fresh questions over the success of its rescue operation.

- BP Refuses EPA Order to Switch to Less-Toxic Oil Dispersant BP has rebuffed demands from government officials and environmentalists to use a less-toxic dispersant to break up the oil from its massive offshore spill...

- US Funds Apartheid Roads on West Bank The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is helping Israel to construct an apartheid road infrastructure in the occupied Palestinian West Bank by financing nearly a quarter of the segregated road system primarily for the benefit of Israeli settlers.

- Liberated from Libertarianism: Rand Paul Runs and Hides from ... Rand Paul All of these are diversionary lies, meant to avoid the unpleasant realities of what libertarianism would actually look like in action. But the last lie is the most egregious. The entire reason for Rand Paul's existence right now - which is also almost literally true, given that he has the unfortunate burden of being named for Ayn Rand, a twisted soul if ever there was - is his premise of reclaiming American government in the name of liberty for the American people. That's who he is. That's what he represents himself to be. That's his political shtick, his raison d'être. What the Maddow interview reveals, however, is that he's really just another politician trying to win office, not a crusader at all. And what it also reveals is just how bankrupt are those libertarian notions if you look at them at all closely.

- Texas State Board of Education Approves New Curriculum Standards In a landmark vote that will shape the future education of millions of Texas schoolchildren, the State Board of Education on Friday approved new curriculum standards for U.S. history and other social studies courses that reflect a more conservative tone than in the past.


Texas Schools Board Rewrites US History With Lessons Promoting God and Guns
US Christian conservatives drop references to slave trade and sideline Thomas Jefferson who backed church-state separation
by Chris McGreal in Houston
Published on Tuesday, May 18, 2010 by The Guardian/UK

Cynthia Dunbar does not have a high regard for her local schools. She has called them unconstitutional, tyrannical and tools of perversion. The conservative Texas lawyer has even likened sending children to her state's schools to "throwing them in to the enemy's flames". Her hostility runs so deep that she educated her own offspring at home and at private Christian establishments.

Now Dunbar is on the brink of fulfilling a promise to change all that, or at least point Texas schools toward salvation. She is one of a clutch of Christian evangelists and social conservatives who have grasped control of the state's education board. This week they are expected to force through a new curriculum that is likely to shift what millions of American schoolchildren far beyond Texas learn about their history.

The board is to vote on a sweeping purge of alleged liberal bias in Texas school textbooks in favour of what Dunbar says really matters: a belief in America as a nation chosen by God as a beacon to the world, and free enterprise as the cornerstone of liberty and democracy.

"We are fighting for our children's education and our nation's future," Dunbar said. "In Texas we have certain statutory obligations to promote patriotism and to promote the free enterprise system. There seems to have been a move away from a patriotic ideology. There seems to be a denial that this was a nation founded under God. We had to go back and make some corrections."

Those corrections have prompted a blizzard of accusations of rewriting history and indoctrinating children by promoting rightwing views on religion, economics and guns while diminishing the science of evolution, the civil rights movement and the horrors of slavery.

Several changes include sidelining Thomas Jefferson, who favoured separation of church and state, while introducing a new focus on the "significant contributions" of pro-slavery Confederate leaders during the civil war.

The new curriculum asserts that "the right to keep and bear arms" is an important element of a democratic society. Study of Sir Isaac Newton is dropped in favour of examining scientific advances through military technology.

There is also a suggestion that the anti-communist witch-hunt by Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s may have been justified.

The education board has dropped references to the slave trade in favour of calling it the more innocuous "Atlantic triangular trade", and recasts the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as driven by Islamic fundamentalism.

"There is a battle for the soul of education," said Mavis Knight, a liberal member of the Texas education board. "They're trying to indoctrinate with American exceptionalism, the Christian founding of this country, the free enterprise system. There are strands where the free enterprise system fits appropriately but they have stretched the concept of the free enterprise system back to medieval times. The president of the Texas historical association could not find any documentation to support the stretching of the free enterprise system to ancient times but it made no difference."

The curriculum has alarmed liberals across the country in part because Texas buys millions of text books every year, giving it considerable sway over what publishers print. By some estimates, all but a handful of American states rely on text books written to meet the Texas curriculum. The California legislature is considering a bill that would bar them from being used in the state's schools.

In the past four years, Christian conservatives have won almost half the seats on the Texas education board and can rely on other Republicans for support on most issues. They previously tried to require science teachers to address the "strengths and weaknesses" in the theory of evolution – a move critics regard as a back door to teaching creationism – but failed. They have had more success in tackling history and social studies.

Dunbar backed amendments to the curriculum that portray the free enterprise system (there is no mention of capitalism, deemed to be a tainted word) as a cornerstone of liberty and argue that the government should have a minimal role in the economy.

One amendment requires that students be taught that economic prosperity requires "minimal government intrusion and taxation".

Underpinning the changes is a particular view of religion.

Dunbar was elected to the state education board on the back of a campaign in which she argued for the teaching of creationism – euphemistically known as intelligent design – in science classes.

Two years ago, she published a book, One Nation Under God, in which she argued that the United States was ultimately governed by the scriptures.

"The only accurate method of ascertaining the intent of the founding fathers at the time of our government's inception comes from a biblical worldview," she wrote. "We as a nation were intended by God to be a light set on a hill to serve as a beacon of hope and Christian charity to a lost and dying world."

On the education board, Dunbar backed changes that include teaching the role the "Jewish Ten Commandments" played in "political and legal ideas", and the study of the influence of Moses on the US constitution. Dunbar says these are important steps to overturning what she believes is the myth of a separation between church and state in the US.

"There's been this amorphous changing of how we look at religion and how we define religion within American history. One concern I have is that the viewpoint of the founding fathers is very clear. They were not against the promotion of religion. I think it is important to present a historically accurate viewpoint to students," she said.

On the face of it some of the changes are innocuous but critics say that closer scrutiny reveals a not-so-hidden agenda. History students are now to be required to study documents, such as the Mayflower Compact, which instil the idea of America being founded as a Christian fundamentalist nation.

Knight and others do not question that religion was an important force in American history but they fear that it is being used as a Trojan horse by evangelists to insert religious indoctrination into the school curriculum. They point to the wording of amendments such as that requiring students to "describe how religion and virtue contributed to the growth of representative government in the American colonies".

Among the advisers the board brought in to help rewrite the curriculum is David Barton, the leader of WallBuilders which seeks to promote religion in history. Barton has campaigned against the separation of church and state. He argues that income tax should be abolished because it contradicts the bible. Among his recommendations was that pupils should be taught that the declaration of independence establishes that the creator is at the heart of law, government and individual rights.

Conservatives have been accused of an assault on the history of civil rights. One curriculum amendment describes the civil rights movement as creating "unrealistic expectations of equal outcomes" among minorities. Another seeks to place Martin Luther King and the violent Black Panther movement as opposite sides of the same coin.

"We had a big discussion around that," said Knight, a former teacher. "It was an attempt to taint the civil rights movement. They did the same by almost equating George Wallace [the segregationist governor of Alabama in the mid-1960s] with the civil rights movement and the things Martin Luther King Jr was trying to accomplish, as if Wallace was standing up for white civil rights. That's how slick they are.

"They're very smooth at excluding the contributions of minorities into the curriculum. It is as if they want to render minority groups totally invisible. I think it's racist. I really do."

The blizzard of amendments has produced the occasional farce. Some figures have been sidelined because they are deemed to be socialist or un-American. One of them is a children's author, Bill Martin, who wrote a popular tale, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? Martin was purged from the curriculum when he was confused with an author with a similar name but a different book, Ethical Marxism.

Sean

Obama's Torture Problem and Right Wing Pandering; Monty Python on Torture; more (posted 04/23/09)

- Obama Plays Hamlet; Shredders Hum "Retired U.S. Army Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who was Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff, told Frontline on December 13, 2005 that "up to 100 detainees had died while in detention. Of that 100, some 27 have been declared officially homicides." Those running Bush administration interrogations are no doubt aware by now that the War Crimes Act (18 U.S. Code 2441) passed by a Republican-controlled Congress in 1996 provides that the death penalty can be given to those responsible for the deaths of detainees.... And yet, the President Obama struck not an angry, but rather a defensive tone on the recent release of the four torture documents issued by the Mafia-style lawyers of the Justice Department. " 


- Israeli Forces 'Can't Clear Themselves' "data collected by Israeli human rights organisations shows that many civilians were killed in Gaza not due to 'mishaps' but as a direct result of the military's chosen policy implemented throughout the fighting."
 
- Impeach Jay Bybee "Torture memo author Jay Bybee, who outlined procedures for inflicting cruel and unusual punishments on prisoners in U.S. custody, should of course be impeached and removed from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals bench."

- Dozens of Prisoners Held by CIA Still Missing, Fates Unknown "Last week, we pointed out that one of the newly released Bush-era memos inadvertently confirmed that the CIA held an al-Qaeda suspect [1] named Hassan Ghul in a secret prison and subjected him to what Bush administration lawyers called "enhanced interrogation techniques." The CIA has never acknowledged holding Ghul, and his whereabouts today are secret. But Ghul is not the only such prisoner who remains missing. At least three dozen others who were held in the CIA's secret prisons overseas appear to be missing as well. Efforts by human rights organizations to track their whereabouts have been unsuccessful, and no foreign governments have acknowledged holding them."

- Obama Caves to Right-wing in Boycotting UN Anti-Racism Conference "In boycotting the United Nations conference on racism, the Obama administration demonstrated that just because an African American can be elected president doesn't mean the United States will be any more committed than the Bush administration in fighting global racism. Rejecting calls by liberal Democratic members of Congress, leading human rights groups, Pope Benedict XVI, and most of the international community to participate, the Obama administration instead gave into pressure by Congressional hawks and other anti-UN forces by joining a handful of other nations refusing to participate in the historic gathering....By contrast, the right wing applauded Obama's decision."


Free the Torturers - and the Rapists Too!
If Dick Cheney can trumpet the 'success' of his torture policies without fear of retribution, why can't us ordinary criminals?
by A Killer, aka Terry Jones (yes, THAT Terry Jones from Monthy Python!)
Published on Thursday, April 23, 2009 by The Guardian/UK

I am over the moon about President Obama's recent publication of the Bush administration's torture memos. They come as a breath of fresh air for those of us banged up in Cook County Jail.

Obama's announcement that "nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past" is the most reassuring news most of us here have heard in a long time.

Speaking as a multiple rapist and serial killer, I welcome the president's clear view that "this is a time for reflection, not retribution". Absolutely. We have indeed been "through a dark and painful chapter in our history" (in my case 17 years in the super-secure lockdown facility).

Now people may say that it is not safe to let me out, especially as I have never expressed any remorse for my actions and indeed have every intention of reoffending as soon as I possibly can.

But then has ex-vice president Dick Cheney ever expressed any remorse for killing a million or more Iraqis? Has he ever said that he wouldn't torture more people all over again if he had half the chance?

Quite the reverse. He has gone on record trumpeting how successful his torture policies have been. "I find it a little bit disturbing," Cheney said on Fox News, that "they didn't put out the memos that showed the success of the effort ... There are reports that show specifically what we gained as a result of this activity."

Speaking for myself and my fellow sadists here in Cook County, I cannot tell you how cheered we all were by Cheney's defence of his torture techniques.

And hasn't the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, announced on no less a programme than ABC's This Week that "It's not a time to use our energy and our time in looking back" out of "any sense of anger and retribution"?

Bang on the money, Emanuel. How heartily we concur with your sentiments, and look forward to the day when you will unlock our cell doors and let the light of day shine on all us poor, unrepentant sinners.

And didn't the president himself tell employees at the CIA not to be discouraged by what's happened in the last few weeks? "Don't be discouraged that we have to acknowledge potentially we've made some mistakes," he told them. "That's how we learn. But the fact that we are willing to acknowledge them and then move forward, that is precisely why I am proud to be president of the United States and that's why you should be proud to be members of the CIA."

Yes! All of us here in Cook County Jail have made mistakes. That's why we're here. I made the mistake of brutally attacking somebody or other in broad daylight in a busy street. But I've learnt from that. That's what makes me proud to be American. Now I want to move forward - particularly forward out of Cook County Jail.

And I have every confidence that if Obama and Emanuel are prepared to let the likes of Cheney be free to wander the streets of our capital unmolested by petty laws and restrictions, they will apply the same standards to us rapists and killers.

For surely he intends to apply this spirit of forgiveness and non-retaliation to all criminals - not just those in politics.

Sean

Conservatives are Biggest Porn Consumers, Bad Economy=Instant Army, Obama MUST Admit US Crimes (posted 03/02/09)

- Down Economy Boosts Military The faltering US economy is fueling a dramatic turnaround in military recruiting, with new statistics showing that the Army is experiencing the highest rate of new enlistments in six years.
 
- Obama Please Note: Those Who Fail to 'Master the Past' Are Guilty, Too In other words, it is not sufficient to merely "regret" past actions and believe that "looking forward" and "getting the country moving again" are substitutes for atonement. Future generations must, to use Schlink's term, "master the past" by taking responsibility for it. Americans demand this of others -- why not of themselves?

- Thousands of Youth Demand New Climate Change Policy All weekend, more than 12,000 college and high school students have traveled across the country for the second Power Shift conference, a meeting-of-the-minds for students serious about taking leadership roles in not only confronting climate change, but also taking on Washington attitudes and business-as-usual.

- Expanded Settlements Have Intent to Destroy Two-State Solution Peace Now says that a new right-wing government presents the danger of "expanding settlement growth at a rapid pace... with the clear intention of destroying the possibility of a two-state solution."

- CIA Admits to Destroying More Interrogation Videos The US Central Intelligence Agency revealed today that it had destroyed far more videotapes of terror interrogations than it had originally admitted, resuscitating a Bush administration scandal and increasing the pressure on Barack Obama to support a full investigation of the agency's detention practices during his predecessor's time in office.

- Prop. 8: A Case About Justice The legal challenge to Prop. 8 is supported by hundreds of religious organizations, civil rights groups, women's organizations and labor unions, along with numerous California municipal governments, bar associations and leading legal scholars.

Porn in the USA: Conservatives Are Biggest Consumers
8 of Top 10 Porn-Consuming States Voted Republican in 2008 Presidential Election
By EWEN CALLAWAY

published Feb. 28, 2009 on http://abcnews.go.com

Americans may paint themselves in increasingly bright shades of red and blue, but new research finds one thing that varies little across the nation: the liking for online pornography.

A new nationwide study of anonymised credit-card receipts from a major online adult entertainment provider finds little variation in consumption between states.

"When it comes to adult entertainment, it seems people are more the same than different," says Benjamin Edelman at Harvard Business School.

However, there are some trends to be seen in the data. Those states that do consume the most porn tend to be more conservative and religious than states with lower levels of consumption, the study finds.

"Some of the people who are most outraged turn out to be consumers of the very things they claimed to be outraged by," Edelman says.

Political Divide
Edelman spends part of his time helping companies such as Microsoft and AOL detect advertising fraud. Another consulting client runs dozens of adult websites, though he says he is not at liberty to identify the firm.

That company did, however, provide Edelman with roughly two years of credit card data from 2006 to 2008 that included a purchase date and each customer's postal code.

After controlling for differences in broadband internet access between states online porn tends to be a bandwidth hog and adjusting for population, he found a relatively small difference between states with the most adult purchases and those with the fewest.

The biggest consumer, Utah, averaged 5.47 adult content subscriptions per 1000 home broadband users; Montana bought the least with 1.92 per 1000. "The differences here are not so stark," Edelman says.

Number 10 on the list was West Virginia at 2.94 subscriptions per 1000, while number 41, Michigan, averaged 2.32.

Eight of the top 10 pornography consuming states gave their electoral votes to John McCain in last year's presidential election Florida and Hawaii were the exceptions. While six out of the lowest 10 favoured Barack Obama.
Old-Fashioned Values
Church-goers bought less online porn on Sundays a 1% increase in a postal code's religious attendance was associated with a 0.1% drop in subscriptions that day. However, expenditures on other days of the week brought them in line with the rest of the country, Edelman finds.

Residents of 27 states that passed laws banning gay marriages boasted 11% more porn subscribers than states that don't explicitly restrict gay marriage.

To get a better handle on other associations between social attitudes and pornography consumption, Edelman melded his data with a previous study on public attitudes toward religion.

States where a majority of residents agreed with the statement "I have old-fashioned values about family and marriage," bought 3.6 more subscriptions per thousand people than states where a majority disagreed. A similar difference emerged for the statement "AIDS might be God's punishment for immoral sexual behaviour."

"One natural hypothesis is something like repression: if you're told you can't have this, then you want it more," Edelman says.

Sean

Pete Seeger Deserves Nobel Prize, and more (originally posted 01/21/09)

- Israel Wanted a Humanitarian Crisis

- After the Party, Obama Has One Long To-Do List




Published on Tuesday, January 20, 2009 by Huffington Post

Pete Seeger Deserves the Nobel Peace Prize

by Peter Dreier

Now that Pete Seeger has sung at Barack Obama's inaugural celebration Sunday at the Lincoln Memorial -- leading more than half a million people on the mall and millions of people watching on TV in a rendition of "This Land is Your Land" -- what is left for the 89-year old folksinger to accomplish?

How about the Nobel Peace Prize?

Indeed, his admirers have launched a campaign, a petition (signed so far by over 21,000 individuals), and a website to nominate Seeger for this honor.

It is much deserved. Since the late 1930s, Seeger has been a political activist and a troubadour for social justice in the U.S. and human rights around the world. He has used his remarkable talents as a performer, musician, songwriter, and folklorist to engage other people, from all walks of life, across generations and cultures, in causes to build a better and more civilized world. He almost singlehandedly popularized the notion that music can be a force for social change.

Seeger is without doubt the most influential folk artist of the past century. No one can get a crowd singing like Seeger. The songs he's written, like "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" "If I Had a Hammer," and "Turn, Turn, Turn" (drawn from Ecclesiastes), and those he's popularized, including "This Land is Your Land," "Guantanamera," "Wimoweh," and "We Shall Overcome," have been recorded by hundreds of artists in many languages and become global anthems for people fighting for freedom. His songs are sung by people in cities and villages around the world, promoting the basic idea that the hopes that unite us are greater than the fears that divide us.

"If the world is to survive," Seeger recently said, "the whole human race must realize how important it is that we learn how to communicate with each other, even if we disagree strongly."

In addition to being a much-acclaimed and innovative guitarist and banjoist, a globe-trotting minstrel and song collector, and the author of many songbooks and musical how-to manuals, Seeger has been on the front lines of every key progressive crusade during his lifetime -- labor unions and migrant workers in the 1930s and 1940s, banning nuclear weapons and opposing the Cold War in the 1950s, civil rights and the anti-Vietnam war movement in the 1960s, environmental responsibility and opposition to South African apartheid in the 1970s, and, always, human rights throughout the world.

During World War Two, while serving in the military, Seeger performed for soldiers and for First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. In the 1960s, he sang with civil rights workers at rallies and churches in the South and at the march from Selma to Montgomery. In a letter to Seeger, Rev. Martin Luther King thanked him for his "moral support and Christian generosity." In 1969, Seeger launched the sloop Clearwater (near his home in Beacon, New York) and an annual celebration dedicated to cleaning up the polluted Hudson River, an effort that helped inspire the environmental movement.

For a brief period in the 1950s, as a member of the Weavers folk quartet, Seeger achieved commercial success, with several chart-topping songs that reflected his eclectic repertoire - Huddie Ledbetter's "Good Night Irene," "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine," "On Top of Old Smokey," and the Israeli tune, "Tzena, Tzena."

But his career was soon torpedoed by McCarthyism because of his political activism and outspoken views. The Weavers broke up and Seeger was blacklisted for almost two decades. He was kept out of many colleges and concert halls. He was kept off network television in the 1950s and 1960s until the Smothers Brothers defiantly invited him on their CBS variety show in 1967. True to his principles, Seeger insisted on singing a controversial anti-war song, "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy." CBS censors refused to air the song, but public outrage forced the network to relent and allow him to perform the song on the show a few months later.

During the blacklist years, Seeger scratched together a living by giving guitar and banjo lessons and singing at the small number of summer camps, churches, high schools and colleges, and union halls that were courageous enough invite the controversial balladeer.
Eventually, however, Seeger's audience grew. He helped catalyze the folk music revival of the 1960s, encouraging young performers and helping start the Newport Folk Festival. Many prominent musicians, including Bob Dylan, Bono, Joan Baez, the Byrds, Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks, Bonne Raitt, and Bruce Springsteen (who sang with Seeger at the Lincoln Memorial on Sunday) consider Seeger a role model and trace their musical roots to his influence. Seeger's albums -- he's recorded over 80 of them, including children's songs, labor and protest songs, traditional American folk songs, international songs, and Christmas songs -- began to sell to wider audiences. His travels around the world -- collecting songs and performing in many languages -- inspired today's world music movement. Among performers across the globe, Seeger became a symbol of a principled artist deeply engaged in the world.

Through persistence and unrelenting optimism, Seeger endured and overcame the controversies triggered by his activism. His critics faded away and the nation's cultural and political establishment eventually began to recognize Seeger's unique contributions. In 1994, at age 75, he received the National Medal of Arts (the highest award given to artists and arts patrons by the U.S. government) as well as the Kennedy Center Honor, where President Bill Clinton called him "an inconvenient artist, who dared to sing things as he saw them." In 1996, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame because of his influence on so many rock performers. In 1997, Seeger won the Grammy Award for his 18-track compilation album, "Pete."

In the past decade, some of the nation's most prominent singers have recorded albums honoring Seeger, including Springsteen's "Seeger Sessions." Last year, PBS broadcast a 93-minute documentary on Seeger's life, "The Power of Song." Seeger is now, despite his ambivalence about commercial success, a part of American popular culture. In a segment of the popular TV show, Law and Order, a character says, "The Hudson River's clean now, thanks to Pete Seeger!"

A truly modest man, Seeger has become a reluctant icon. But Sunday in Washington, performing before a large audience for perhaps the last time, he remained defiant, singing two little-known verses of his friend Woody Guthrie's 1940 patriotic anthem, "This Land is Your Land" -- one about Depression-era poverty, the other about trespassing on private property.

Seeger deserves at least one more moment on the world stage -- at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Norway. The prize is only bestowed on people who are living. Although still vital, Seeger turns 90 on May 3. It would be a fitting and much-deserved final tribute for the world's preeminent troubadour for peace and justice.

Sean