Ralph Nader Book Picks and Interview • Top Republican Donor Investigated for Criminal Activity • Fox News Denies Facts and Shows Racism • Meat Will Destroy Earth • Climate Change • Fox News Says Pollution is Good For You • more

- Jolting the Mind for Action: A Summer Reading List

These are suggested summer readings from Ralph Nader to activate the citizen’s mind:

- Q&A: Ralph Nader on The Green Party, Obama and Romney

...we asked Nader about his problems with the two-party system, discourse between the two major candidates and the media’s coverage of the race.

- Comically Awful Survey Says 83 Percent Of Doctors Might Quit Over Obamacare

The survey question is entirely worthless as a barometer of professional medical opinion regarding the Affordable Care Act. Which is likely the reason no one paid it any mind when DPMA released it last month. But then the dim bulbs at the Breitbart empire picked it up, followed by the Daily Caller and Drudge, leading to its inevitable appearance on Fox News this morning. It's a uniquely awful survey, but it served up a shocking, headline-friendly number, which is why it's driving the right-wing media's coverage of health care policy.

- Fox & Friends Fails To Discredit Obama's Manufacturing Job Record

Fox & Friends rarely misses an opportunity to deny the successes of Obama, even when empiricism would suggest otherwise. This is only the most recent example.

- Fox & Friends Echoes GOP Spin On Welfare Rule, Leaves Out The Facts

Fox & Friends criticized changes to the federal welfare program with deceptive talking points that were identical to a Republican senator's press.

- Wells Fargo Accused of Discriminatory Lending

Protesters say that Wells Fargo and some other major banks offer higher mortgage rates to minorities.The US Department of Justice says they have reached a settlement with one of the lenders, Wells Fargo - which has agreed to a $175m payout. However, that sum is tiny in comparison to the $4.2bn profit the bank made in just the first quarter of this year.

- Solyndra and the Republican Outrage Machine

The attacks on Solyndra are more than just attacks on Obama—they’re attacks on the notion of government as a place where we can come together to take on big challenges, drive economic innovation and advance our common interests while securing a sustainable future. The Solyndra scolds don’t just want to take down Obama—they want to hold back our politics. Let’s not let them.

- Right-Wing Blogger Hoft Criticizes Summer Heat Relief For The Elderly And Chronically Ill

Right-wing blogger Jim Hoft expressed outrage Friday that an Ohio county is distributing air conditioners for needy families to bring relief from record-high summer temperatures.

- AMA Addresses Light Pollution

Researchers are raising several possible health concerns related to nighttime light exposure, among them a higher risk of cancer.

- Inside The Investigation Of Leading Republican Money Man Sheldon Adelson

Billionaire psychopath who is funding all Republican/Tea Party candidates under criminal investigation

- Fox "News" Bill O'Reilly says Black Americans Vote For Dems Because Dems "Gave Them All Kinds Of Entitlements, Making Them Dependent"

Fox "News" and Bill O'Reilly again show their racism.

- Beyond Nuclear Denial

Now, on a planet still overstocked with city-busting, world-ending weaponry, in which almost 67 years have passed since a nuclear weapon was last used, the only nuke that Americans regularly hear about is one that doesn’t exist: Iran’s. The nearly 20,000 nuclear weapons on missiles, planes, and submarines possessed by Russia, the United States, France, the United Kingdom, China, Israel, Pakistan, India, and North Korea are barely mentioned in what passes for press coverage of the nuclear issue.

- Investigation: As Black Lung Cases Doubled In The Last Decade, The Coal Industry [and Republicans] Fought New Health Protections

In the last ten years, as cases of black lung among American coal miners doubled — hitting “epidemic” scale — the coal industry and anti-regulatory politicians have fought to prevent federal agencies from creating new standards that would improve miner safety.

- Record U.S. heat unlikely to be random fluke

The National Climatic Data Center has just released its “State of the Climate” report for June 2012. The last 12-month period on the mainland United States, it notes, were the warmest on record. What’s notable, however, is that every single one of the last 13 months were in the top third for their historical distribution–i.e., April 2012 was in the top third for warmest Aprils, etc."The odds of this occurring randomly," notes NCDC, "is 1 in 1,594,323."

- Ice island twice as big as Manhattan breaks off Greenland glacier

chunk of ice 46 square miles in area has parted from the Petermann glacier, which feeds into Nares straight along the northwest coast of Greenland. It split off July 16 according to researchers at the University of Delaware and Canadian Ice Service.This is the second major calving event for the Petermann glacier in the last three years. In August 2010, an ice island four times the size of Manhattan (an area of roughly 97 square miles) separated from the glacier.

- Why Conservative Columnist George Will Is Wrong About Weather And Climate

Scientific observation and analysis have established that human-induced climate change makes extreme heat events more common. But when heat waves hit, many reporters hesitate to mention climate change without appending disclaimers of the sort that you don't see on other beats.

- Fox News thinks pollution is good for the planet

Not that it’s a HUGE surprise that Fox News has beliefs about the environment that are the opposite of true, but just FYI, they are now apparently telling viewers that pollution is good for forests.

- Havoc as monsoon displaces millions

Six million people have been forced to flee their homes in India's north-east as heavy monsoon rains caused massive flooding that has claimed the lives of more than 120 people.

- Fight Global Warming by Going Vegetarian

Global warming has been called humankind's "greatest challenge" and the world's most grave environmental threat. Many conscientious people are trying to help reduce global warming by driving more fuel-efficient cars and using energy-saving light bulbs. Although this helps, science shows that going vegan is one of the most effective ways to fight global warming.

- Could Veganism End World Hunger?

This video from the Evolve! Campaign summarizes some startling facts from 2010 about how a plant-based diet and vegan choices could END world hunger. While this may sound too good to be true, you may be surprised to find out that the amount of grain produced globally today is enough to feed the world TWICE over, but instead the majority of it is being fed to farmed animals!

- Is Meat The World’s Most Inefficient Food?

As the infographic below explains, the manner and scale at which our society currently raises animal for human consumption contributes to climate change in major way. It also wastes water, pollutes our soil, and contaminates fresh water supplies.

- Meat Production Wastes Natural Resources

Raising animals for food requires massive amounts of land, food, energy, and water and contributes to animal suffering.According to the United Nations, raising animals for food (including land used for grazing and land used to grow feed crops) now uses a staggering 30 percent of the Earth's land mass. More than 260 million acres of U.S. forest have been cleared to create cropland to grow grain to feed farmed animals, and according to scientists at the Smithsonian Institution, the equivalent of seven football fields of land is bulldozed worldwide every minute to create more room for farmed animals.

- Canadian Scientists 'Mourn Death of Evidence' under Harper Government

A funeral procession of scientists wearing white lab coats and mourners dressed in black will take to the streets of Ottawa today to "mourn the death of Evidence" and protest what they see as an attack on environmental science by the Harper government.The scientists say a rash of recent cuts exposes the government's hostility to evidence-based research and is putting the public at risk. Despite claims by government officials that the cuts are a necessary part of a cost-cutting and efficiency plan, the scientists claim they are directed at research programs critical of the government's energy development plans, specifically the tar sands mining taking place in Alberta.

- Extreme Weather Linked to Man-Made Global Warming: Now What?

Crippling droughts, suffocating heat waves, and devastating floods—welcome to the rest of our lives ---- In 2011, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which The New York Times has called a “judicious group” (read: cautious), concluded that global warming will make heat waves, droughts, floods, and other extreme weather events a common occurrence.  These trends cannot be explained by natural variation. “Only with the inclusion of human influences can computer models of the climate reproduce the observed changes,” according to the website Climate Communication, which indexes leading scientific research on climate change.
If these statistics aren’t doing it, see for yourself. Mouse over to NASA’s Climate Time Machine, where you can watch the planet’s polar ice caps melting, track increases in carbon dioxide, witness sea levels rise, and see global temperatures increase in shades of orange and red.

- Welcome to the rest of our lives?

Watch this powerful video and share with friends and family. Then help fight climate change denial by joining Forecast the Facts.

- On Global Warming, Republicans Burying Their Heads in the Dried-Up Soil

They rightly chided the Republicans for being know-nothings: “Willful ignorance of the science,” they said, “is irresponsible and it is dangerous.” And they quoted several leading scientists, including Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton, who said: “What we’re seeing really is a window into what global warming really looks like.”

- We Can't Put a Price on Nature

A group of international scientists says that the earth is dangerously close to its tipping point of irreversible damage. Clearly, we need a way out of the mess we've made of the planet.

- Hot Enough for You? Time to Teach Against Fossil Fuels

director of meteorology at the Weather Underground website, said recently on Democracy Now!, “What we’re seeing now is the future. We’re going to be seeing a lot more weather like this, a lot more impacts like we’re seeing from this series of heat waves, fires, and storms. . . . This is just the beginning.”

And yet, the fossil fuel industry continues to lead the climate change denial parade. On June 27, a day when almost 200 high temperature records were broken, Rex W. Tillerson, CEO of Exxon Mobil, gave a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, pooh-poohing climate change, saying that the problem was activist organizations that “manufacture fear.” Tillerson said that the problem was an “illiterate public,” which needed to be taught that all environmental risks were “entirely manageable.”
And conservative pundits proudly wave the same flat-earth flag. Arguing with E. J. Dionne on ABC’s This Week, George Will said, “You asked us—how do we explain the heat? One word: summer. . . . We’re having some hot weather. Get over it.”

In our editorial, “Our Climate Crisis Is an Education Crisis,” in the spring 2011 issue of Rethinking Schools, we wrote that the climate crisis is “arguably the most significant threat to life on earth,” and urged educators to respond with the urgency that the crisis deserves. The events of this summer have added an exclamation point to our editorial.

Sean

Climate Change is Reality, Bad Weather is Getting Worse and worsened by Libertarians and Republicans • NRA Gun Nuts Are Racist • Republican Mouthpiece Rush Limbaugh Doesn't Want Women to Vote • Pigeons Know You! • Vegan Diet Healthiest • more

- Climate Disasters' Toll Worsened by Sustained Attacks on Public Sector, Science and Regulation

As we discuss the spate of extreme weather in the United States, the author and professor Christian Parenti argues that the Republican-led assault on the public sector will leave states more vulnerable to global warming's effects.

- Bill McKibben: The Politics of Global Warming

MSNBC's "Up" host Chris Hayes and his guests talk to Bill McKibben, one of the earliest prophetic voices on global warming, about the recent heat records set across the country.

- Sea Level Rise Unstoppable, say Scientists

Even if nations manage to mitigate carbon emission levels, oceans will continue to rise throughout 21st century

- Sizzling Heat, Storms, Wildfires: 'This Is Just the Beginning'

"This is just the beginning," warns Jeff Masters, director of meteorology at the Weather Underground, of what life with the impacts of climate change will look like. His message follows a week in which 2000 heat records were matched or broken and the month of June in which over 3200 heat records were matched or broken.Yet during that time, with little exception, there was no mention of climate change during weather broadcasts in which viewers were told to expect little relief from steamy temperatures.

- STUDY: Media Avoid Climate Context In Wildfire Coverage

Only 3 Percent Of Wildfire Coverage Mentioned Long-Term Climate Change Or Global Warming. The major television and print outlets largely ignored climate change in their coverage of wildfires in Colorado, New Mexico and other Western states. All together, only 3 percent of the reports mentioned climate change, including 1.6 percent of television segments and 6 percent of text articles.

- This summer is 'what global warming looks like'

Climate scientists suggest that if you want a glimpse of some of the worst of global warming, take a look at U.S. weather in recent weeks.

- Colorado's table was set for monster fire

n the past two years, record-breaking wildfires have burned in the West — New Mexico experienced its worst wildfire, Arizona suffered its largest burn and Texas last year fought the most fires in recorded history. From Mississippi to the Ohio Valley, temperatures are topping record highs and the land is thirsty.

- Rate of Climate Change's 'Evil Twin' Has Scientists Worried

Climate change's "evil twin" -- ocean acidification -- has been increasing at a rate unexpected by scientists, says Dr. Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).Lubchenco told he Associated Press that surface waters, where excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere has been concentrating, "are changing much more rapidly than initial calculations have suggested." She warns, "It's yet another reason to be very seriously concerned about the amount of carbon dioxide that is in the atmosphere now and the additional amount we continue to put out."

- Helium stocks run low – and party balloons are to blame

The world supply of helium, which is essential in research and medicine, is being squandered, say scientists

- Fukushima Nuclear Disaster 'Clearly Man-Made', says Parliamentary Panel

A parliamentary panel investigating the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan last year have placed the blame squarely on the shoulders of plant owner TEPCO and government regulators by saying the crisis was "clearly man-made." Though the plant was crippled by an enormous tsunami generated by a powerful earthquake, the panel concluded that key warnings were ignored and preparations that could have been implemented were disregarded out of self-interest.

- Study: Pigeons Can Recognize Familiar Human Faces

This means that birds not usually thought of having higher cognitive processes — like pigeons — can recognize a person they have encountered before, based strictly on facial characteristics.

- Environmental Study: Eat Less Meat to Fight Deforestation

A new study on the environmental impact of meat production has resulted in a call to reduce meat consumption in order to fight deforestation.

- The Healthiest Diet of All

The world's most important health advisory bodies are now in agreement – a balanced vegetarian diet can be one of the healthiest possible. And it seems the fewer animal products it contains such as milk and cheese, the healthier it is. In other words, the closer it is to being vegan, the healthier it becomes. These are some of the health statements that have been made over the past few years.

- Limbaugh Wants to Extend Vote Suppression to Women

Republicans like Coulter and Limbaugh believe that groups who vote Democratic shouldn't have the right to vote. The available mechanisms they are using, such as voter ID laws, target Democratic-leaning groups such as African-Americans, young people, city dwellers and poor people. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, "More than 758,000 registered voters in Pennsylvania do not have photo identification cards from the state Transportation Department, putting their voting rights at risk in the November election." That's 9.2 percent of Pennsylvania's 8.2 million voters.

- National Rifle Association spokesman Ted Nugent: "I'm Beginning To Wonder If It Would Have Been Best Had The South Won The Civil War"

In today's column for the Washington Times, National Rifle Association board member and prominent Mitt Romney endorser Ted Nugent wrote, "I'm beginning to wonder if it would have been best had the South won the Civil War."

Colorado's emergency-response teams burned by anti-tax attitudes
Because of conservative and libertarian sentiments and a no-tax pledge passed statewide 20 years ago, Colorado police and disaster-response teams are stretched thin as a virulent wildfire ravages land near Colorado Springs.
Published July 2 2012 in the Seattle Times
By Amanda J. Crawford

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. —
As Colorado Springs battles a rash of robberies after a wildfire that still licks at its boundaries, it does so with fewer police and firefighters and a limited tax base that may hamper its rebound.

The place where the Waldo Canyon fire destroyed 346 homes and forced more than 34,000 residents to evacuate turned off one-third of its streetlights two years ago, halted park maintenance and cut services to close a $28 million budget gap after sales-tax revenue plummeted and voters rejected a property-tax increase.

The city, the state's second-largest, with a population of 416,000, auctioned both its police helicopters and shrank its public-safety ranks through attrition by about 8 percent; it has 50 fewer police officers and 39 fewer firefighters than five years ago. More than 180 National Guard troops have been mobilized to secure the city after the state's most destructive fire. At least 32 evacuated homes were burglarized and dozens of evacuees' cars were broken into, said Police Chief Pete Carey.

"It has impacted the response," said accountant Karin White, 54, who returned Thursday to a looted and vandalized home, with a treasured, century-old family heirloom smashed.
"They did above and beyond what they could do with the resources they had," she said. "If there were more officers, there could have been more manpower in the evacuated areas."
Since the start of the 18-month recession in December 2007, U.S. cities have faced shrinking revenue and diminishing state support, leading to budget cuts and reductions in services and workforces. Cities faced a fifth-straight year of revenue declines in 2011, according to the National League of Cities, which estimated that municipalities would have to fill budget gaps of as much as $83 billion from 2010-2012.

Colorado Springs, which depends on sales tax for about half its revenue, was hit harder than most. The city — the birthplace 20 years ago of the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, which later passed statewide and has been pushed around the country to restrict government spending — became a high-profile example of cost-cutting. The law restricts government spending to the previous year's revenue, adjusted only for population growth and inflation.
"People are going to be looking at the aftermath of this disaster to see what is possible," said Josh Dunn, an associate professor of political science at University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. "How far can you go in cutting the size of city government?"

The city, home of the evangelical Christian group Focus on the Family, is known for being conservative and libertarian. It "was the tea party before the tea party was cool," Dunn said.
Six of the nine candidates in last year's nonpartisan mayoral election, including the victor, Mayor Steve Bach, signed the no-tax pledge pushed by Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, according to the Colorado Springs Gazette.

Richard Skorman, one candidate who didn't, was flooded with angry emails after saying in a debate why he opposed such a pledge.

What, he asked, if the city got hit by a major wildfire?

"Resources have been very stretched, and we were always worried," said Skorman, 60, a small-business owner and former city councilman who lost to Bach in an April 2011 runoff.

The costs of rebuilding combined with lost revenue from business closings and tourism could push the city to the point where it doesn't have revenue for essential services, he said.
Bach said the city is on the path toward financial implosion anyway because of overly generous pensions and too many parks.

It hasn't affected the handling of the wildfire, he said.

The Waldo Canyon blaze has killed two, engulfed a 29-square-mile area the size of Manhattan, has cost $11.1 million to fight so far and is now 55 percent contained. .
Carey and Fire Chief Rich Brown said they are facing the same kind of cuts and budget restrictions as public-safety forces across the country. The reduction in manpower hasn't affected their ability to respond to the wildfire, they said in interviews this weekend.
On June 26, when near-hurricane-force winds caused a firestorm that swept into the city, "I don't care if we had 2,000 people, there's nothing we could have done," Brown said. The city has 413 firefighters and recently graduated its first new class of recruits in five years, he said.

Carey said the staff reduction has forced police to work more closely with the Fire Department and other agencies.

"That's the emerging trend of public safety," Carey said. "We can't afford to have a surge capacity, maximum capacity every day for these kinds of situations. You have to think meaner and leaner, and have a plan that includes asking for outside help."

The city has been aggressive in applying for federal grants, too, which have funded wildfire-mitigation efforts, said Bret Waters, emergency management director.

Dunn notes that the city, where there is strong anti-federal-government sentiment, is now turning to the U.S. for assistance. Before visiting Colorado on Friday, President Obama declared the state a disaster area, which frees aid for communities affected by the wildfires.
"Ironically, Colorado Springs is going to rely heavily on federal funds for rebuilding," Dunn said. "But it won't cover everything."

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

Meat Killing Planet • Climate Change • Global Economic Collapse • Keychain Animals • BP OIl Spill Causes Deformities in Marine Life • US Trains Terrorists • Homophobes Secretly Gay • Republicans Think Only the Rich Matter • more

- Next Great Depression? MIT study predicting ‘global economic collapse’ by 2030 still on track

A renowned Australian research scientist says a study from researchers at MIT claiming the world could suffer from a "global economic collapse" and "precipitous population decline" if people continue to consume the world's resources at the current pace is still on track, nearly 40 years after it was first produced.

- Meds and Banned Antibiotics Routinely Fed to Chickens

Recently, a study from the University of Maryland determined that alarming levels of arsenic were found in chicken feed, but new data suggests that arsenic isn’t the only potentially hazardous substance present. Scientists at the Johns Hopkins University and Arizona State University have discovered that birds are also routinely fed illegal antibiotics, caffeine, and even chemical compounds found in common medications. Testing feather meal from factory-farm chickens, scientists found traces of antibiotics called fluoroquinolones, which are banned in poultry production due to their potential to breed antibiotic-resistant pathogens. Furthermore, researchers found evidence of the active ingredients in Benadryl, Tylenol, and even Prozac, found in Chinese chicken meal—all of which may be used to reduce anxiety among chicken, as stress toughens the birds’ meat and inhibits their growth.

- Tropical Depression: Your Saltwater Fish Tank May Be Killing the Ocean

Most tropical fish sold in pet stores come from reefs in Indonesia and the Philippines, where fishermen stun the colorful dwellers with squirts of sodium cyanide. The potent nerve toxin causes the fish to float up out of the reefs so they can be easily scooped up, but it can also injure or kill them as well as trigger coral bleaching.

- Local Media Fail To Cover Climate Denial, ALEC Link

Louisiana, South Dakota, Kentucky, New Mexico, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Texas -- passed measures or promoted  policies that would change the education curriculums in their states to begin teaching "different perspectives" in environmental science instruction. The major newspapers in each of these states gave varying coverage to the issue with some not even covering the issue at all. In addition a Media Matters investigation shows that, despite the appearance that these state proposals and model legislation by the conservative organization the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), not once did these newspapers mention ALEC or their model legislation in their coverage.

- U.S. Records Warmest March; More Than 15,000 Warm Temperature Records Broken

Record and near-record breaking temperatures dominated the eastern two-thirds of the United States and contributed to the warmest March on record for the contiguous United States, a record that dates back to 1895. More than 15,000 warm temperature records were broken during the month

- Pollution Playing A Major Role In Sea Temperatures

The new research appears in the journal Nature. If it's confirmed, it could foretell a warmer Atlantic, because the aerosol pollution has apparently cooled the Atlantic some. But new pollution controls are reducing the amount of those aerosols — that's good for public health, but it also means the ocean loses its sunblock.

- Gulf seafood deformities alarm scientists

Eyeless shrimp and fish with lesions are becoming common, with BP oil pollution believed to be the likely cause.

- Is Meat killing the Planet? UN says diet change will slow climate change

The pink elephant in the room of global warming discussions is the link between animal agriculture and accelerating climate change. To put it frankly – if we stop eating meat, we will quickly slow down global warming.

- Warming climate reveals links to infectious disease

Researchers are gaining new insight into how pathogens will react to a warmer future: 'It's not just a summer disease. It's becoming a spring and fall disease now.'

- The Long, Hot March of Climate Change

The Pentagon knows it. The world’s largest insurers know it. Now, governments may be overthrown because of it. It is climate change, and it is real. According to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, last month was the hottest March on record for the United States since 1895, when records were first kept, with average temperatures of 8.6 degrees F above average. More than 15,000 March high-temperature records were broken nationally. Drought, wildfires, tornadoes and other extreme weather events are already plaguing the country.

- The Greatest Challenge of Our Species

While it is not as if nothing has been achieved in the interim or that scientific understanding has stood still, it is obvious that new science is not needed to conclude that humanity has failed to act at the scale and with the urgency needed.In the United States, in particular (but not exclusively), far too much attention has been given to the non-issue of whether climate change is real or not. In the meantime the heating of the atmosphere proceeds inexorably, the Arctic ice has thinned and retreated at its summer low to a point that it might be tied to the exceptionally warm spring in Europe and North America. Spring bloom has erupted early in North America and Europe. Most people just say how nice the weather is with no sense of the march of climate change.

- Live Animals Being Sold as Keyrings in China

Keyring ornaments are perhaps the most useless item you'll ever carry in your pocket or stuff in your purse -- but now, thanks to an increasingly popular item being sold in China, it can easily be the cruelest, too. For the price you might expect to pay for some kitschy trinket, Chinese street vendors are selling live animals, permanently sealed in a small plastic pouch where they can survive for a short while as someone's conversation piece. Apparently, these unimaginably inhumane keyrings are actually quite popular -- and worst of all, it's totally legal.

- Broadcast News Networks Misrepresent Intelligence On Iranian Nuclear Issues

Many in the media have long since repudiated their failures in the lead-up to the Iraq War, acknowledging that they were too quick to accept the false notion that Iraq possessed a sizable and dangerous cache of weapons of mass destruction. The question today is whether they have learned from those mistakes.

- Report: U.S. trained terror group

When the U.S. wants to fund, train, arm or otherwise align itself with a Terrorist group or state sponsor of Terror — as it often does — it at least usually has the tact to first remove them from its formal terrorist list (as the U.S. did when it wanted to support Saddam in 1982 and work with Libya in 2006), or it just keeps them off the list altogether despite what former Council on Foreign Relations writer Lionel Beehner described as “mounds of evidence that [they] at one time or another abetted terrorists” (as it has done with close U.S. allies in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, along with the El Salvadoran death squads and Nicaraguan contras armed and funded in the 1980s by the Reagan administration). But according to a new, multi-sourced report from The New Yorker‘s Seymour Hersh, the U.S. did not even bother going through those motions when, during the Bush years, it trained the Iranian dissident group Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) at a secretive Department of Energy site in Nevada...

- Updated Review Finds Little U.S. Military Risk in Nuclear Test Ban

Any move toward ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, an agreement designed to end the testing of nuclear weapons permanently, will require a lengthy debate in the U.S. Senate, which has not been scheduled and would be improbable in an election year. But according to the U.S. National Academies, there is no technical reason why the United States should not sign on the dotted line right now. In a report released last week, an expert panel said it would be possible to keep America's stockpile of nuclear weapons safe and reliable without testing, and that treaty-monitoring technologies now make it impossible for states to hide a test big enough to be useful.

- Homophobes 'may be secretly attracted to people of the same sex'

Homophobes could be attracted to people of the same sex but are not admitting it to themselves, a series of psychology studies has found.Researchers in New York, Essex and California say they've found evidence that gays and lesbians remind homophobes of themselves  - which is why they develop an intense aversion and fear of them.
They claim homophobic people tend to repress their true sexuality as they've often been brought up in families where being gay is not acceptable.

- Seeking the Truth About U.S. Targeted Killing Strike That Killed Dozens of Women and Children in Yemen

Today the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking information about a horrific U.S. missile strike that killed dozens of civilians in Yemen.

- Think Natural Gas Leasing Makes Homeowners Money? Think Again (Video)

From Texas to Wyoming to Pennsylvania, countless homeowners have learned the cruel truth that a home without clean water is essentially valueless. Many homeowners dealing with contamination have had their property values slashed by 75 or 80 percent by professional appraisers, but have been unable to find buyers—at any price. These families are often stuck paying mortgages on homes they can no longer live in safely, with no one to turn to for help. Gas companies have no obligation to compensate homeowners for the loss of their shelter, or the long-term loss of their “nest egg.” For some, destroyed land is also destroyed income. Farmers have watched as companies that told them at lease-signing, “You’ll never even know we’re here” instead built roads and toxic wastewater pools on their best fields, leaving their animals with no place to graze and their crop yields insufficient to pay their bills.

- NRA Chief Lobbyist Cox Says "We Will Defend" Stand Your Ground Laws

At an event during last weekend's National Rifle Association annual meeting, NRA chief lobbyist Chris W. Cox said that the group doesn't "apologize" for its support for "Stand Your Ground" self-defense legislation in the wake of the killing of Trayvon Martin, adding, "We will defend our efforts. We will defend those laws."

- Romney's own hot-mic moment

At the fundraiser, Haake adds, both Romney and his wife Ann remained absolutely giddy about last week’s Hilary Rosen flap. "It was my early birthday present for someone to be critical of me as a mother, and that was really a defining moment, and I loved it," Ann Romney said. The candidate went further, calling the episode a "gift" that allowed his campaign to show contrast with Democrats in the general election's first week. But while Romney said last week that “all moms are working moms,” that doesn’t apply to mothers who are welfare recipients, the Boston Globe says. Romney said at a Jan. 4 campaign stop in Manchester, N.H.: “Even if you have a child two years of age, you need to go to work,” Romney describing his position as Massachusetts governor. “And people said, ‘Well that’s heartless,’ and I said ‘No, no, I’m willing to spend more giving daycare to allow those parents to go back to work. It’ll cost the state more providing that daycare, but I want the individuals to have the dignity of work.’”

- Police condemned over student pepper-spraying

Campus police violated policy and used poor judgment when they used pepper spray against student demonstrators at a California university in November, according to a report into the incident.

- Rachel Maddow: Michigan GOP circumvents democracy with shady vote corner-cutting

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

- The ‘Voter Fraud’ Fraud

...conservatives continue to hype the extremely rare occurrence of election fraud as if it were something that happens every day and is somehow responsible for the election of Obama and Democratic candidates across the map. And there is evidence that they’ve been successful in pushing this fact-free narrative among the broader public.

- Disenfranchised in America

New legislation across the US could have a huge impact on the country's 2012 presidential elections. Largely Republican politicians have passed a range of new voting laws that groups fear could disenfranchise as many as five million American voters this year.

Troops Out, Now What?
Posted: 03/29/2012 on HuffingtonPost.com

March 19th marked the sad anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Nine tumultuous years after "shock and awe," the people of Iraq struggle to rebuild their society while dealing with the aftermath of a disastrous occupation. When the last combat brigades pulled out in December 2011, putting Iraq in their rear-view mirrors, what was the legacy they left in their wake and the burdens they brought home with them?

As both an organizer active with Iraq Veterans Against the War and a student of anthropology, I have worked closely with U.S. military veterans who served in the so-called "Global War of Terror," particularly those involved in peace and social justice movements. Looking back, I see many lessons to be drawn from this costly debacle.

The Perils of Militarism


The first lesson is that militarism in the U.S. seems to have a gravitational force pulling a wide array of resources and sectors into its orbit. Our involvement with Iraq serves as a case study for how deeply rooted militarism is in American culture and political life. The Bush administration gambled on this fact as it made the case for war. The entire undertaking, however, was doomed from the outset given the well-documented false pretenses underpinning their arguments, inept leadership by the Coalition Provisional Authority, and rampant corruption of private contractors who operated with impunity, all with deadly consequences for the Iraqi population.

Even members of the academic community were drawn to the tremendous power and influence the military-industrial complex enjoys. Social scientists were employed as part of the U.S. military's Human Terrain System (HTS) program to assist combat commanders in getting a better understanding of Iraqi and Afghan culture and social structure as part of a larger counterinsurgency strategy. This program and articles published by anthropologists working in it prompted a heated debate within the American Anthropological Association, which had previously passed resolutions against the Iraq war and torture. The debate centered on the issue of professional ethics guiding anthropologists engaged in research involving human subjects.

With counter-insurgency strategy relying heavily on building relationships with the local population, critics argued these anthropologists were violating norms of obtaining informed consent from the Iraqi participants where they worked and that reporting their findings for use in military operations put civilian lives at risk. As a response, the Network of Concerned Anthropologists gathered signers for an online petition and initiated a number of editorials for academic and popular publications. Thus, while the pull toward militarism is strong there are always socially responsible people willing to fight against it.

Yellow Ribbons and Purple Hearts


The second lesson is that the logic of militarism shapes the national dialogue and makes going to and supporting war a primary responsibility of the citizenry. The mission to topple Saddam Hussein, driven by claims that he allegedly possessed weapons of mass destruction and connections to al Qaeda leaders, led many enlistees and service members to view service in Iraq as a just cause, likened to the fight against fascism during WWII. Calls for civilians to "Support the Troops" and do their part to ensure their service is honored in some way was the dominant rhetoric across the mainstream political spectrum. While I think veterans deserve our respect, it should not come at the cost of blindly accepting unjust wars or committing huge expenditures unquestioningly.

Yet, for the over two million troops and veterans who served a tour in Iraq, re-adjusting to life back home has not been a smooth transition. While the total number of troops who were killed or wounded in Iraq is far less when compared to previous major conflicts, the war is no less devastating for the troops, vets and their families. Multiple tours of duty in Iraq, Afghanistan, or both have left many veterans with serious physical and psychological injuries.

Impaired to the point of being unemployable, their capacity to function in a difficult economy for healthy people, much less a veteran with wrestling with rehabilitation and trauma, is severely limited. The recent revelations of a four-tour Army staff sergeant who allegedly massacred 17 civilians in Afghanistan highlight the depth of the problem. My organization has launched the Operation Recovery campaign to raise awareness about the widespread nature of trauma and to stop the deployment of traumatized troops.

Although improvements to the GI Bill came late in the war, many veterans still find it difficult to maintain a stable lifestyle conducive to completing a college education. Overcoming the effects of military sexual trauma, post traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury can be a daunting task. Even when one seeks care at a Veterans Affairs (VA) health facility, many veterans face long wait times or bureaucracy that frustrates and makes getting care elusive. A plethora of veterans' organizations has sprung up to meet the demands of a new and growing veterans population.

The Long Shadow of War


The final lesson is that civilians have paid the biggest price for what U.S. militarism creates. The toll on Iraqi civil society has and continues to be tremendous. Estimates of civilian deaths between 2003 and 2011 because of coalition or sectarian violence range from 115,000 to 157,000 according to IraqBodyCount.org. The number of wounded is difficult to quantify accurately but is in the hundreds of thousands. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reports the number of internally displaced people at over 1.3 million, while the number of Iraqi refugees in neighboring countries or elsewhere is over 1.6 million.

The amount of damage caused by air strikes and ground fighting has impaired basic services such as access to the clean water, reliable electricity and medical services. After years of sanctions and occupation, Iraqi society has been left to sort out the mess in the aftermath. Few acknowledge the widespread mental and emotional trauma that Iraqis face as they deal with the loss of their families, security, and communities. In spite of it all, pro-democracy movements critical of the U.S., the Maliki government, and in solidarity with the "Arab Spring" uprisings, have swept across Iraq according to a blog by Ali Issa, an Iraqi-American organizer with the War Resisters League.

The environmental devastation caused by coalition munitions and the prolonged occupation presence, has created a wasteland of nuclear and chemical waste ruining crops, water tables, and a compromising the gene pool. The city of Fallujah alone has seen a 15 fold increase in birth defects and cancer between 2008 and 2009 according to The Guardian, among a relatively young and healthy population before the occupation.

Iraqi and international physicians as well as U.S. military veterans have worked to draw attention to this important issue. Dubbed the "agent orange" of the 21st century, depleted uranium (DU) will continue to have a devastating impact on Iraqi society for generations to come. On the flip-side, veterans are suffering from a whole host of service-related health problems linked to DU exposure. Some have argued Gulf War syndrome -- a complex array of symptoms that defy conventional diagnoses -- is a result of DU or nerve agent exposure and combat veterans report a number of serious ailments including chronic fatigue, skins conditions, unexplained headaches, neurological, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal and menstrual disorders.

Although the outlook seems bleak, as the vast majority of people not directly affected by the war will quickly forget about Iraqis and the veterans, I take heart in the incredible human capacity for empathy with the "other," and the will to dedicate oneself to achieving justice.

Jose Vasquez is the Executive Director of Iraq Veterans Against the War. He served fourteen years in the U.S. Army and was honorably discharged in 2007 as a conscientious objector. Jose was a key organizer of Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan - Eyewitness Accounts of the Occupations and represented IVAW in the editing process for the book published by Haymarket . He is pursuing a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology at CUNY Graduate Center conducting research on the politics of veteran status in contemporary American society.

Sean

Trayvon Martin's Murder • Republican Racism • Fukushima Still Deadly and Hits USA • Health Care Reform Hated by Republicans UNTIL it's Explained to them! • more

- Congressman Gets Kicked Off House Floor by Republicans For Wearing Hoodie For Trayvon

Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL) donned a hoodie and took to the House floor this morning to speak out against the murder of Travyon Martin, but was shouted down and removed from the floor by the Republican speaker pro tem for violating House rules prohibiting the wearing of hats.

- Rick Santorum: another slip of the tongue but was it the 'N-word'?

Did Rick Santorum really just come within a few micro-seconds of calling America's first ever black president a "nigger"?

- "A Song for Trayvon" by Jasiri X - LIVE FROM BROOKLYN, NY video

- Passing Judgment: The Death of Anna Brown

The horrific story of Anna Brown, a black, homeless, 29-year-old St. Louis woman and mother of two who after refusing to leave a hospital because her legs hurt so much was arrested for trespassing, handcuffed, dragged into a jail cell and left moaning on the floor, where she died of blood clots minutes later. Police thought she was on drugs. She wasn't. Can anyone possibly argue there is not underway in this country a gender, color and class war, though not the one the right wing envisions? There's a Change.org petition demanding access to health care, and video.

- Radiation 'fatally high' at Japan reactor

One of Japan's crippled nuclear reactors still has fatally high radiation levels and much less water to cool it than officials had estimated, according to an internal examination that renews doubts about the plant's stability.

- Radioactive Iodine from Fukushima Found in California Kelp

Kelp off Southern California was contaminated with short-lived radioisotopes a month after Japan’s Fukushima accident, a sign that the spilled radiation reached the state’s urban coastline, according to a new scientific study.

- As Fukushima Worsens, US Approves New Nukes

Despite reports this week that the Fukushima nuclear situation may be even worse than previously thought, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has given approval today for two combined licenses for two nuclear reactors in South Carolina, only the second time in the last three decades that new nuclear plants have been approved in the nation.

- Is Human Impact Accelerating Out of Control?

The impact of human activity on the Earth is running out of control, and the amount of time in which action can be taken to prevent potentially catastrophic climate change is rapidly dwindling, a leading scientist from the Australian National University told a global scientific climate conference in London yesterday.

- Steps Set for Livestock Antibiotic Ban

The Obama administration must warn drug makers that the government may soon ban agricultural uses of some popular antibiotics that many scientists say encourage the proliferation of dangerous infections and imperil public health, a federal magistrate judge ruled on Thursday. The order, issued by Judge Theodore H. Katz of the Southern District of New York, effectively restarts a process that the Food and Drug Administration began 35 years ago, but never completed, intended to prevent penicillin and tetracycline, widely used antibiotics, from losing their effectiveness in humans because of their bulk use in animal feed to promote growth in chickens, pigs and cattle.

- FDA Keeps BPA in Food, Fails Public Health Again

Today the Food and Drug Administration has announced that it will not take steps to bar bisphenol-A, or BPA, a known toxic chemical, from canned food and liquid infant formula containers.

- Obama's Waffling on Gay Marriage Could Create Election-Year Bind

With President Obama visiting Vermont and Maine today -- two states where gay marriage has been a major issue of late -- concerns about how stance on gay marriage may impact his re-election campaign continue to mount.Obama's 'evolving' stance on gay marriage could complicate his re-election campaign. President Obama has never supported gay marriage, but in 2010 he said he was "evolving" on the issue.

- Media Blackout: Progressive Budget vs. Paul Ryan (Again)

Last year Republican Rep. Paul Ryan presented a budget plan that was, according to one analysis, full of "dubious assertions, questionable assumptions and fishy figures." But Ryan's brand of budget austerity makes the media swoon–hence we saw coverage (FAIR Media Advisory, 4/12/11)  of Ryan's "piercing blue eyes" that dubbed him "a PowerPoint fanatic with an almost unsettling fluency in the fine print of massive budget documents."Ryan's budget was never going to be adopted, but its release was widely covered across the corporate media. He was given credit for presenting a plan to reduce government deficits, even though his plan didn't really do much of that.
At the same time, the Congressional Progressive Caucus released its People's Budget, which raised taxes on the wealthy, slashed military spending, enacted a public option in healthcare and a Wall Street speculation tax–and unlike Ryan's plan, actually balanced the budget. It got almost no media attention.

- This Week in Poverty: Me, Mom and Reagan

Here’s the new American reality: about half of all kids will spend at least part of their childhood in a family headed by a single mother, and the typical single mother is white, has one kid, is separated or divorced, works and probably earns less than $25,000 a year.

Segment from the Rachel Maddow Show showing that when asked, the people who oppose health care reform actually WANT Obama's Health Care reforms ONLY when you don't mention "Health Care Reform" or "Obama Care". When it's explained to them- THEY WANT IT.

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

Sean

The Kids Are All Wrong • Climate Change • Nuke Disaster • Afghan Kids Attacked by US • Banning Latino Studies in Racist Arizona • Conservative War on Women • Afghan War Failure • Obama Attacking Leakers • more

- UK meat and dairy industries emit as much greenhouse gas as half of Britain’s cars, study says

The study measured greenhouse emissions associated with 61 different foods and determined that fresh meat and cheese have the largest carbon footprints—approximately 37 and 33 pounds of carbon dioxide per pound of food produced, respectively. Researches speculate that if all UK citizens switch to a vegetarian or vegan diet, it could reduce the total greenhouse gases emitted during UK food production by up to 26 percent, potentially saving 40 million tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere.

- Least Reassuring Reassurance of All Time

A study published this morning has been widely heralded as a clean bill of health for tarsands oil, because it shows—unsurprisingly—that burning the planet’s huge coal reserves would do even more damage.

But even a quick read of the data demonstrates that there’s more than enough carbon in the planet’s various tarsands formations to cause huge damage. If we burn through the know quantities of tarsands oil, that alone will raise the planet’s temperature by .4 degree Celsius—which is about exactly how much we’ve already raised the planet’s temperature by burning everything we’ve burned since the start of the Industrial Revolution.

That is to say, the tarsands alone would provide half again as much warming as we’ve already experience—a warming severe enough so far that summer sea ice in the Arctic has declined by 40% and the atmosphere has grown steadily wetter leading to vicious cycles of drought and flood.

- Texas drought leads to shade tree die-off

Some 5.6 million urban shade trees were killed by the record drought that baked Texas last year, the Texas Forest Service reported on Wednesday.

Last year was the driest year on record in the state and the second-hottest, according to the National Weather Service.

The shade tree die-off represents some 10 percent of the state's urban forest, and is in addition to as many as a half-billion rural, park and forest trees that the forest service reported in December were killed in the drought.

- Harsh winter kills scores in eastern Europe

The death toll from the week-long freezing weather across eastern Europe has risen to 123, while at least 11,000 villagers remain trapped under heavy snow and blizzards in the Serbian mountains.

- Texas Tech scientist sees intimidation effort behind barrage of hate mail

Crazy Republicans target climate scientists for stating the facts about Climate Change. Fucking sick people.

- A-CAP Report Says Climate Change Predictions Proving True

Climate change predictions are coming true.  That’s the finding in an updated report from the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy or “A-CAP.”

- We May Yet Lose Tokyo… Not to Mention Alaska… and Now Georgia, Too

There are some two dozen of these Mark I-style containments currently in place in the US.Newly released secret email from the NRC also shows its Commissioners were in the dark about much of what was happening during the early hours of the Fukushima disaster. They worried that Tokyo might have to be evacuated, and that airborne radiation spewing across the Pacific could seriously contaminate Alaska.Reactor pushers have welcomed the NRC's approval of the new Westinghouse AP-1000 design for Georgia's Vogtle. Two reactors operate there now, and the two newly approved ones are being funded with $8.3 billion in federally guaranteed loans and state-based rate hikes levied in advance of the reactors' being completed.

- Child hunger: The world's 'greatest shame'?

With 2.6 million children dying of malnutrition every year, we ask what it would take to save a starving generation.

- Jeremy Scahill: U.S. Has Ignited Islamist Uprising in Impoverished, Divided Yemen

We speak with journalist Jeremy Scahill, who reports in a new cover story for The Nation magazine that U.S. drone strikes, civilian drone casualties and deepening poverty in Yemen have all contributed to the rise of an Islamist uprising.

- Army Officer's Leaked Report Rips Afghan War Success Story

An analysis by Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, which the U.S. Army has not approved for public release but has leaked to Rolling Stone magazine, provides the most authoritative refutation thus far of the official military narrative of success in the Afghanistan War since the troop surge began in early 2010.

In the 84-page unclassified report, Davis, who returned last fall after his second tour of duty in Afghanistan, attacks the credibility of claims by senior military leaders that the U.S.-NATO war strategy has succeeded in weakening the Taliban insurgent forces and in building Afghan security forces capable of taking primary responsibility for security in the future. [U.S. Army Pfc. Shawn Williams is evacuated after being injured by a roadside bomb in Kandahar Province on June 17, 2011. (DoD photo)]

- 'Quran burning' triggers Afghan protests

Hundreds of Afghans have staged angry protests at two sites in and around the capital Kabul, angered by reports that NATO troops had set fire to copies of the Quran, the Muslim holy book.

- Nine Afghan schoolgirls injured in NATO air raid

Nine schoolgirls were injured in a NATO helicopter attack in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province, an Afghan official alleged on Wednesday.

- A High-Tech War on Leaks

...the Obama administration, [] has brought more prosecutions against current or former government officials for providing classified information to the media than every previous administration combined.

- Speculators blamed for rising oil, gas prices

Analysts suggest Wall Street is responsible for inflating the price of a barrel of crude by at least $10.

- The Conservative War on Women's Sexuality

If you have been surprised to see an uptight prig such as Rick Santorum leading the Republican primary field in national polls, you shouldn’t be. Recent events have demonstrated that conservative positions on social issues are as much about repressing women and reversing the gains of the women’s movement as they are about saving the lives of the unborn.

- The NHL: Boxing Without A License?

It is astonishing what the bosses of professional sports will do to make more profits. They wine, dine and pressure politicians to make taxpayers pay for their stadiums and arenas. They installed dangerous artificial turf that years ago ended sterling careers like that of the great NFL running back, Gayle Sayers. For years the big time hockey bosses have fed red meat to some fans who seem to need barbaric fisticuffs to stay excited watching a game.

Who gets hurt? Not the bosses in their fancy boxes chewing on expensive cuisine. But players like Pat LaFontaine, Eric Lindros, and Keith Primeau have had their careers shortened from repeated head trauma. Currently concussions are threatening the careers of Pittsburgh Penguin's superstar, the young Sidney Crosby and the Philadelphia Flyers' Chris Pronger. Three enforcers, Derek Boogaard, Rick Rypien, and Wade Belak, have died in the past year.

- Replacing History With Fiction in Arizona

Such was the ostensible motivation of the Arizona officials who banned Mexican-American studies from the Tucson schools. Tom Horne, the state attorney general who surfed into office on a wave of anti-immigrant bigotry, wrote the legislation, which claims the curriculum “advocates ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.”

  Horne’s goal was not only to erase the teaching of Mexican-American studies but to collapse Latino identity into white American mythology—to rewrite history so fast it smudges because the ink is not dry on the first draft. He wasn’t really referring to nurturing Latino students as individuals (indeed, he targeted them as a group) but raising them as “patriots” for a country that exists only in his imagination.

- Noam Chomsky calls MAS ban an "international disgrace" video

One of the world's top intellectuals, Professor Noam Chomsky, visits Tucson and on February 7th, 2012 gets asked about his thoughts on the Mexican American Studies ban in TUSD.

- Arizona Sheriff Rocked By Accusations Of Alleged Immigrant Ex-Boyfriend

Rising Republican star and well-known border hawk Sheriff Paul Babeu, who’s now running for Congress in Arizona, was hit Friday night with bombshell accusations from a Mexican immigrant who said he dated the sheriff for years and was threatened with deportation if he ever told anyone about their romance.

- kids can't answer basic questions

kids can't answer basic questions - video

- 25 Extremely Upsetting Reactions To Chris Brown At The Grammys

GRAMMY AWARDS REACTION: Tweets from kids who say they would let Chris Brown beat them (Chris Brown plead guilty to felony assault against then-girlfriend Rihanna).

- Who Is Paul McCartney?!

GRAMMY AWARDS REACTION: Tweets from kids who didn't know who Paul McCartney was, one of the most famous people on planet earth (ya know, that Beetles guy)

- The Secret to Facebook's IPO Value

There is one thing missing in most of the hype over Facebook’s massive IPO [stock value]. Everyone knows the company is popular, with 845 million users, and successful, with a potential valuation of $100 billion dollars. (That’s five times the size of Google’s 2004 debut.) But what exactly makes Facebook so valuable?

You. Its users. Or more specifically, its users’ stuff.

In fact, in the modern era, Facebook’s IPO will constitute one of the largest voluntary transfers of property from a large group of people to a corporation.

And “voluntary” is a pretty charitable gloss. Studies show many Facebook users have no idea that they clicked away their rights to photos and information by acquiescing to the company’s “terms of use” policy. After all, who has time to read 3,960 words?

'Perpetual Growth Myth' Leading World to Meltdown: Experts
UN-Sponsored Papers Predict Sustained Ecological and Social Meltdown
Published on Monday, February 20, 2012 by Common Dreams


"The current system is broken," says Bob Watson, the UK’s chief scientific advisor on environmental issues and a winner of the prestigious Blue Planet prize in 2010. "It is driving humanity to a future that is 3-5°C warmer than our species has ever known, and is eliminating the ecology that we depend on for our health, wealth and senses of self."


"We cannot assume that technological fixes will come fast enough. Instead we need human solutions. The good news is that they exist but decision makers must be bold and forward thinking to seize them."

Watson's comments accompanied a new paper released today by 20 past winners of the Blue Planet Prize - often called the Nobel Prize for the environment, and comes ahead of the 20th anniversary of the Rio+20 conference – which takes place in June this year – where world leaders will (it is hoped) seize the opportunity to set human development on a new, more sustainable path.

Civilization Faces 'Perfect Storm of Ecological and Social Problems'
The Guardian's John Vidal reports:

In the face of an "absolutely unprecedented emergency", say the [...] past winners of the Blue Planet prize – the unofficial Nobel for the environment – society has "no choice but to take dramatic action to avert a collapse of civilization. Either we will change our ways and build an entirely new kind of global society, or they will be changed for us". 

The stark assessment of the current global outlook by the group, who include [Watson]... US climate scientist James Hansen, Prof José Goldemberg, Brazil's secretary of environment during the Rio Earth summit in 1992, and Stanford University Prof Paul Ehrlich. [...] 

"The perpetual growth myth ... promotes the impossible idea that indiscriminate economic growth is the cure for all the world's problems, while it is actually the disease that is at the root cause of our unsustainable global practices"
Apart from dire warnings about biodiversity loss and climate change, the group challenges governments to think differently about economic "progress". 

"The rapidly deteriorating biophysical situation is more than bad enough, but it is barely recognized by a global society infected by the irrational belief that physical economies can grow forever and disregarding the facts that the rich in developed and developing countries get richer and the poor are left behind. 

"The perpetual growth myth ... promotes the impossible idea that indiscriminate economic growth is the cure for all the world's problems, while it is actually the disease that is at the root cause of our unsustainable global practices", they say. 

The group warns against over-reliance on markets but instead urges politicians to listen and learn from how poor communities all over the world see the problems of energy, water, food and livelihoods as interdependent and integrated as part of a living ecosystem.

The paper urges governments to:

• Replace GDP as a measure of wealth with metrics for natural, built, human and social capital - and how they intersect.
• Eliminate subsidies in sectors such as energy, transport and agriculture that create environmental and social costs, which currently go unpaid.
• Tackle over-consumption, and address population pressure by empowering women, improving education and making contraception accessible to all.
• Transform decision making processes to empower marginalized groups, and integrate economic, social and environmental policies instead of having them compete.
• Conserve and value biodiversity and ecosystem services, and create markets for them that can form the basis of green economies.
• Invest in knowledge - both in creating and in sharing it - through research and training that will enable governments, business, and society at large to understand and move towards a sustainable future.

“Sustainable development is not a pipe dream,” says Dr Camilla Toulmin, director of the International Institute for Environment and Development. “It is the destination the world’s accumulated knowledge points us towards, the fair future that will enable us to live with security, peace and opportunities for all. To get there we must transform the ways we manage, share and interact with the environment, and acknowledge that humanity is part of nature not apart from it.”

Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director, said: “The paper by the Blue Planet laureates will challenge governments and society as a whole to act to limit human-induced climate change, the loss of biodiversity and the degradation of ecosystem services in order to ensure food, water energy and human security. I would like to thank Professor Watson and colleagues for eloquently articulating their vision on how key development challenges can be addressed, emphasizing solutions; the policies, technologies and behavior changes required to grow green economies, generate jobs and lift people out of poverty without pushing the world through planetary boundaries.”


A second UNEP report was also released today in Kenya. Though separate from the assessment of the Planet Blue laureates, it echoes many of their themes and concerns.
Capital FM News in Kenya reports:

A new report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has warned of a continued deterioration in the state of the global environment due to failure by governments to implement internationally agreed goals.
The summary report released at the sidelines of a UNEP Governing Council meeting in Nairobi stated that out of the 90 internationally agreed goals, only 40 were in progress, 32 had insufficient progress while 13 were not in development at all. 

“We have failed to meet agreed goals,” Peter Gilruth Director Division of Early Warning Assessment (DEWA) UNEP said. 

“The internationally agreed goal of avoiding the adverse effects of climate change is presenting the global community with one of its most serious challenges that is threatening overall development goals,” he noted.
He added that the rate at which forest loss, particularly in the tropics was taking place remained alarmingly high. 

“Today, 80 percent of the world’s population live in areas with high levels of threat to water security, affecting 3.4 billion people mostly in developing countries,” he stated. 

The Fifth Global Environment Outlook (GEO 5) assessed progress and gaps in the implementation of internationally agreed goals on environment and the full report would be released in June ahead of the Rio+20 Summit on sustainable development. 

The report recommended that policy makers focus on the underlying drivers of environmental change such as the negative aspects of population growth, consumption and production, urbanisation rather than just concentrating on reducing environmental pressures or symptoms. 

“The solutions put on the table are not intended to be prescriptive in nature but rather a menu of options that you (governments) might want to look at for your own use. It is just a potential source of information to assist in decision making,” Gilruth said.

Sean