From futurist Stephan A. Schwartz - Trends That Will Affect Your Future …

[giovonni]

"The Bottom Line" ...

This next reported news item gives a new literal meaning to this well used financial banking term... It is becoming quite obvious now, that perhaps this is and has always been the ongoing banking systems real intent...

giovonni

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When Bankers Win: 60% Unemployment, Poverty, Starvation

by John Galt
April 1, 2012

In the nation of Greece, poverty and misery rules the day as the ideals of Eurosocialism when implemented to completion take hold. The attempt to create a hybrid version of capitalism with Marxist overtones has never been successful and there is no reason to believe that success is just around the corner as a desperate population begins to realize the failure of the globalists which have sold the nation out to participate in an international currency system which offers no benefits nor sovereignty to the citizenry...

Read more - http://johngaltfla.com/wordpress/201...ty-starvation/

[giovonni]

A Twofer for Tuesday...

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Supreme Court Signs Off On Strip Searches for all Arrestees

The surveillance, now this, as well as the largest gulag on the planet -- 5 per cent of the world population, 25 per cent the the world's prisoners -- I think it is fair to say the U.S. is a soft police state.

I find this decision simply beyond belief, and expect to see outraged accounts of abuse surfacing within 90 days of its implementation. And it must be seen within the context of what the TSA does. I think this level of physical intrusion might create a social uprising.

STEPHEN C. WEBSTER - The Raw Story

Going forward from this week on, people arrested in the United States may face a mandatory strip search, even if their offense is minor and authorities don’t suspect them of smuggling any contraband.

That’s because U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy sided with the court’s conservatives on Monday, swinging the vote 5-4 in favor of allowing jail officials to conduct a strip search of anyone in their custody.

Those searches may now even be carried out on people who’ve only committed minor offenses like traffic violations or small drug possession, and in cases where there is nothing that meets the previous standard of 'reasonable suspicion” that someone may be hiding something.

In its opinion (PDF), the court’s majority suggested that strip searches would make inmate populations safer by helping to stem the tide of drugs and weapons, and healthier by identifying early on inmates with injuries ...

Read More - http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/04/0...all-arrestees/

Also ~

Kids to U.S. Court: Who Owns the Air?



This is one of the most original approaches to progressive social change I have seen. It is is not clear it will win but the issues it raises will, I think, continue to grow even if the judicial outcome rules against them. Who owns the air indeed?

RUSSELL MCLENDON - Mother Nature Network

If you enjoy public beaches, state parks or fishing piers, you can thank the sixth-century Roman emperor Justinian. He's credited with introducing the public trust doctrine, a legal concept that forbids private ownership of certain natural resources, instead preserving them for public use. This idea has spread worldwide since then, protecting everything from beaches and streams to oyster beds and fish stocks.

It was an early tenet of English common law, later encoded in the Magna Carta, and also has a long history in U.S. courts, dating back to at least 1842's Martin v. Waddell. During a 1983 case about water use at California's Mono Lake, the U.S. Supreme Court specifically quoted this section of Roman law to explain public trust:


"By the law of nature these things are common to mankind: the air, running water, the sea and consequently the ...

Read More - http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wil...o-owns-the-air

[giovonni]

A slew of news items to report today...

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Man whose WMD lies led to 100,000 deaths confesses all

Here is the latest revelation concerning the Bush-Cheney elective war. Its beginnings represent an extended act of fraud, and war crime. I find it very interesting that there has been virtually no coverage of this story -- note that I got it from an British newspaper.

JONATHAN OWEN - The Independent (UK)

A man whose lies helped to make the case for invading Iraq – starting a nine-year war costing more than 100,000 lives and hundreds of billions of pounds – will come clean in his first British television interview tomorrow.

"Curveball", the Iraqi defector who fabricated claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, smiles as he confirms how he made the whole thing up. It was a confidence trick that changed the course of history, with Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi's lies used to justify the Iraq war.

He tries to defend his actions: "My main purpose was to topple the tyrant in Iraq because the longer this dictator remains in power, the more the Iraqi people will suffer from this regime's oppression."

The chemical engineer claimed to have overseen the building of a mobile biological laboratory when he sought political asylum in Germany in 1999. His lies were ...

Read More - http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...internalSearch

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These Are The Prices AT&T, Verizon and Sprint Charge For Cellphone Wiretaps



I have been telling you about the vast profit potential in the growing surveillance industry, and the moral corruption it represents, and here is the evidence. That means these industries now have lobbyists whose sole purpose in life is to perpetuate this profit. Only voting will change this.

ANDY GREENBERG, Staff Writer

If Americans aren’t disturbed by phone carriers’ practices of handing over cell phone users’ personal data to law enforcement en masse–in many cases without a warrant–we might at least be interested to learn just how much that service is costing us in tax dollars: often hundreds or thousands per individual snooped.

Earlier this week the American Civil Liberties Union revealed a trove of documents it had obtained through Freedom of Information Requests to more than 200 police departments around the country. They show a pattern of police tracking cell phone locations and gathering other data like call logs without warrants, using devices that impersonate cell towers to intercept cellular signals, and encouraging officers to refrain from speaking about cell-tracking technology to the public, all detailed in a New York Times story.

But at least one document also details the day-to-day business of telecoms’ handing over of data to ...

Read More - http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygree...ors_picks=true

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Technology Secret Life of Plants: Scientists Discover Plants Can Talk

Back in 1971, when my dear friends the late Christopher Bird and Peter Tompkins were beginning the research that resulted in their book, The Life of Plants, whenever they talked about the idea of plant communications with most biologists they were told they were out of their minds. When the book came out it got even worse. Scientific conferences hold panels telling the world Tompkins and Bird (a Harvard trained biologist) were fools at best and charlatans at worst. Every year since then research has step by step demonstrated that they were, in fact, correct. And we are only at the beginning of this journey to understand our world. Slowly we will come to understand as a culture that those policies which encourage wellness, including recognizing that all life is interconnected and interdependent, will produce better and cheaper social outcomes.

The Telegraph (U.K.)

Plants that respond to sound and "click" to communicate with each other?
It's not science fiction, according to research released by the University of Western Australia.

"Everyone knows that plants react to light, and scientists also know that plants use volatile chemicals to communicate with each other: for instance, when danger - such as a herbivore - approaches," UWA researcher Monica Gagliano said.

"I was working one day in my herb garden and started to wonder if maybe plants were also sensitive to sounds - why not? - so I decided as a scientist to find out."

Dr Gagliano, along with professor Daniel Robert at the University of Bristol in the UK and professor Stefano Mancuso at the University of Florence in Italy, found that the roots of young plants emitted and reacted to particular sounds...

Read More - http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/tec...-1226318169757

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How to Start Your Own Power Company, Stop Coal and Nukes, and Transform Your City



This is a wonderful story and it could be done in your town or mine -- I am going to try and see if we can do it in mine.

Ursula Sladek speaks truth in this interview. Read it closely.

SVEN EBERLEIN - AlterNet

Ursula Sladek, a 2011 Goldman Environmental Prize recipient, is the co-founder and president of EWS, one of Europe’s largest cooperatively owned green energy companies. Motivated by the nuclear fallout from Chernobyl in 1986, the schoolteacher and mother of five from the small town of Schönau (population 2,382) in Germany’s Black Forest region - along with her husband Michael and a group of concerned parents - unsuccessfully lobbied her regional power company to adopt conservation measures, to no avail. After over 10 years of citizen activism and two referendums, Sladek and her small-town energy rebels were able to take over the local grid and start a community-run power co-op.

With total sales reaching 67 million euro in 2009, EWS has long outgrown its local market. While Schönau boasts three times the national average in photovoltaics, 20 cogeneration units, two hydroelectric plants, and a windmill, EWS today provides power from over ...

Read More - http://www.alternet.org/story/154743...xdY7&rd=1&t=28

[giovonni]

Monsanto Threatens to Sue Vermont if Legislators
Pass a Bill Requiring GMO Food to Be Labeled



The very act of threatening to sue the state of Vermont tells you how much Monsanto has to hide.
For my readers in Vermont, please contact your state legislators and tell them to find their spines.

WILL ALLEN and RONNIE CUMMIN - AlterNet

The world’s most hated corporation is at it again, this time in Vermont.

Despite overwhelming public support and support from a clear majority of Vermont’s Agriculture Committee, Vermont legislators are dragging their feet on a proposed GMO labeling bill. Why? Because Monsanto has threatened to sue the state if the bill passes.

The popular legislative bill requiring mandatory labels on genetically engineered food (H-722) is languishing in the Vermont House Agriculture Committee, with only four weeks left until the legislature adjourns for the year. Despite thousands of emails and calls from constituents who overwhelmingly support mandatory labeling, despite the fact that a majority (6 to 5) of Agriculture Committee members support passage of the measure, Vermont legislators are holding up the labeling bill and refusing to take a vote. Instead, they’re calling for more public hearings on April 12, in the apparent hope that they can run...

Read More - http://www.alternet.org/food/154855/...d/?page=entire

[giovonni]

Novel Solar Reactor May Enable Clean Fuel Derived From Sunlight

When I find these stories I always think two things: I am glad to see this forward movement, all part of the trend away from petroleum. But also this: Where would we be now if in 1973 when the fuel shortage occurred, we had committed to exiting the age of petroleum for alternatives, and stuck with it steadily, as we do with missiles.

KAREN B. ROBERTS - Physorg.com

Producing hydrogen from non-fossil fuel sources is a problem that continues to elude many scientists but University of Delaware’s Erik Koepf thinks he may have discovered a solution.

Hydrogen is traditionally made from natural gas. Unfortunately, natural gas is a fossil fuel that releases carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, when converted to hydrogen.

Koepf, a doctoral candidate in mechanical engineering, has designed a novel reactor that employs highly concentrated sunlight and zinc oxide powder to produce solar hydrogen, a truly clean, sustainable fuel with zero emissions.

His advisers are Ajay Prasad, professor of mechanical engineering and director of UD’s Center for Fuel Cell Research, and Suresh Advani, George W. Laird Professor of Mechanical Engineering.

'People have been trying for years to generate hydrogen renewably from sunlight, and Erik’s reactor takes us closer to that goal,” explained Prasad, principal investigator of the University’s fuel cell bus ...

Read More - http://phys.org/news/2012-04-solar-r...l-derived.html

Also ____________________

What Cuba Can Teach Us About Food and Climate Change


We must abandon industrial agriculture, for its dependence on massive amounts of petroleum and water if nothing else. And it can be done.



RAJ PATEL - Slate

The Studebakers plying up and down Havana’s boardwalk aren’t the best advertisement for dynamism and innovation. But if you want to see what tomorrow’s fossil-fuel-free, climate-change-resilient, high-tech farming looks like, there are few places on earth like the Republic of Cuba.

Under the Warsaw Pact, Cuba sent rum and sugar to the red side of the Iron Curtain. In exchange, it received food, oil, machinery, and as many petrochemicals as it could shake a stick at. From the Missile Crisis to the twilight of the Soviet Union, Cuba was one of the largest importers of agricultural chemicals in Latin America. But when the Iron Curtain fell, the supply lines were cut, and tractors rusted in the fields.

Unable to afford the fertilizers and pesticides that 20th-century agriculture had taken for granted, the country faced extreme weather events and a limit to the land and water it could use ...

Read More - http://www.slate.com/articles/health...e_.single.html

[giovonni]

Big Oil's Strategy for Jacking Up Gas Prices

Prices at German gas pumps oscillate wildly, sometimes changing several times a day. The rises and falls are far from random, however. Studies and market observers say it is an attempt by big oil to ratchet up the cost of a fill-up as high as possible.

I am writing this on the plane as I fly to Tucson to present a paper at the big consciousness research conference held there each year. To get to the airport from my island I take the shuttle, which we meet at a gas station. As we were sitting there I looked up and saw that gas had gone up nearly a quarter a gallon in the past three days. Surprise, suprise. Not. It happens every Easter, or Christmas, or Fourth of July, as you have probably noticed yourself.

Mainstream media will not really cover this story, except to report the price increase, so I went searching to see if some real journalists outside the U.S. have done work on this trend. They have. This story is centered on Germany, but the basics of the report are the same as those found in the U.S. As you read this remember that Big Oil owns, or at least rents, a passel of Senators and Representatives to do its bidding, and they make sure that billions of dollars of subsidies also roll in to Big Oil each year. One just can't make too much profit -- who cares about the social consequences.

ALEXANDER JUNG and ALEXANDER NEUBACHER - Der Spiegel (Germany)

It's Easter weekend and, if all goes as usual, motorists will be hopping mad during the holiday. Their frustration will boil over when the needle reaches the red zone and they pull into the nearest filling station: first at the pump, then at the cash register.

That's where they'll note with dismay that the oil companies never tire of playing the same old game in the run-up to Easter. As in previous years, gas prices soared in the days leading up to the Friday before Easter -- just when millions of Germans head off on vacation.

In 2009, prices jumped by as much as 11 euro cents per liter ($0.54 per gallon) compared to weeks prior, as was documented in the Cologne area by a report released last year by Germany's Federal Cartel Office. At the time, the Bonn-based anti-trust agency said it was "plausible" that the oil ...

Read More - http://www.spiegel.de/international/...825750,00.html

[giovonni]

New Study Is First to Show That Pesticides Can Induce Morphological Changes in Vertebrate Animals, Says Pitt Researcher

If you think that the poisons spewed out by Monsanto and the other death corporations just affect bees, please read this report. Tons of these toxins are being spread across the world, particularly in the U.S. What goes around, comes around. Millions will suffer so a few can get even richer. If you use lawn and garden products like Round-up... well, just read this report.

B. ROSE HUBER - University of Pittsburgh

PITTSBURGH -- The world’s most popular weed killer, Roundup®, can cause amphibians to change shape, according to research published today in Ecological Applications.

Rick Relyea, University of Pittsburgh professor of biological sciences in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences and director of Pitt's Pymatuning Laboratory of Ecology, demonstrated that sublethal and environmentally relevant concentrations of Roundup® caused two species of amphibians to alter their morphology. According to Relyea, this is the first study to show that a pesticide can induce morphological changes in a vertebrate animal.

Relyea set up large outdoor water tanks that contained many of the components of natural wetlands. Some tanks contained caged predators, which emit chemicals that naturally induce changes in tadpole morphology (such as larger tails to better escape predators). After adding tadpoles to each tank, he exposed them to a range of Roundup® concentrations. After 3 weeks, the ...

Read More - http://www.news.pitt.edu/Pesticides_MOrph

Also related ~

Scientists Call for Global Ban On Bee-killing Pesticides



A possible ray of hope concerning the bees. I take it as a given that the corporations that make these awful toxins will require their vassals in the Congress to resist eliminating them. But it may finally be dawning on enough people that life without bees will be enormously more complicated and expensive that something will be done. I think there is an excellent chance they will be outlawed in Europe; I am much less certain when it comes to the U.S.

DAMIAN CARRINGTON - The Guardian (U.K.)/Raw Story

How valuable are bees? In the UK, about £1.8bn a year, according to new research on the cost of hand-pollinating the many crops bees service for free. If that sounds a far-fetched scenario, consider two facts.

First, bees are in severe decline. Half the UK’s honey bees kept in managed hives have gone, wild honey bees are close to extinction and solitary bees are declining in more than half the place they have been studied.

Second, hand-pollination is already necessary in some places, such as pear orchards in China, and bees are routinely trucked around the US to compensate for the loss of their wild cousins.

The new figure comes from scientists at the Reading University and was released by Friends of the Earth to launch their new campaign, Bee Cause. Paul de Zylva, FoE nature campaigner, said: 'Unless we halt the decline in British bees our ...

Read More - http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/04/1...ng-pesticides/

[giovonni]

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US Tops Global Clean Energy Investment Rankings



Here is some classic good news-bad news. The U.S. did something smart and forward thinking -- created tax policies to encourage solar -- but has now allowed them to expire, thanks to old energy deploying its lobbyists and whipping both the Obama Administration and the Congress back into place.

Of particular note in this report is the data showing that solar is now a larger energy contributor than nuclear.

Click through to see a chart comparing the various national investments.

Thanks to Jeff Vander Clute.

MARK KINVER, Environment Reporter - BBC News (UK)

The US has regained top spot from China as the biggest investor in clean energy in 2011, according to global rankings.

The table, published in a report by the Pew Charitable Trusts, showed that US invested more than $48bn (£30bn) in the sector, up from $34bn in 2010.

China slipped to second place, the authors reported, with investment only increasing by $0.5bn to $45.5bn.

Globally, overall financial backing in clean energy technologies hit a record $263bn, up 6.5% from 2010 levels.

The report, Who is Winning the Clean Energy Race, showed that G20 nations accounted for 95% of the investment in the sector (which does not include nuclear power).

The data, compiled by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, ranked the UK as seventh in the world, with $9.4bn of investment in 2011.

Over the course of the year, an additional 83.5 gigawatts (GW) was added ...

Read More - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17662973

Also _______________________


Drought Expands Throughout USA

Climate change is beginning to seriously bite. And how ironic: it will disproportionately affect the Theocratic Rightist states whose representatives and senators block any attempt by the government to deal with climate change. These changes are going to cause great misery in those states.

Click through to see a map showing what is going to happen in your state.

DOYLE RICE - USA Today

The USA hasn't been this dry in almost five years.

The Southern Nevada Water Authority won approval from Nevada's state engineer to pump up to 84,000 acre-feet of water from rural areas along the Nevada-Utah line, including Lake Mead, to quench the thirst of the Las Vegas Valley.

Still reeling from last year's devastating drought that led to at least $10 billion in agricultural losses across Texas and the South, the nation is enduring another unusually parched year.

A mostly dry, mild winter has put nearly 61% of the lower 48 states in "abnormally dry" or drought conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, a weekly federal tracking of drought. That's the highest percentage of dry or drought conditions since September 2007, when 61.5% of the country was listed in those categories.

Only two states - Ohio and Alaska - are entirely free of abnormally dry ...

Read More - http://www.usatoday.com/weather/drou...ght/54225018/1

[giovonni]

Jan Brewer Signs 'Life Begins at Menstruation' Bill, the Most Draconian Anti-abortion Law So Far

This trend against women just keeps rolling along. This one, I confess, is so over the top that it reads like something from the Onion. It isn't though, and it is going to create great hardship.

I am in Tucson right now. I wrote a book here, The Secret Vaults of Time, in the early 70s, and it is stunning how much the city has deteriorated. The roads are like something you would see in the third world. It never ceases to surprise me that people vote crazies like Jan Brewer and the choice specimens in the legislature who pass bills like this one into office and, then, tolerate the destruction of the quality of their own lives.

Daily Kos

Arizona can now claim the nation's worst assault on women's reproductive rights so far.

The law 'disregards women’s health in a way I’ve never seen before,” said Center for Reproductive Rights’ state advocacy counsel, Jordan Goldberg. 'The women of Arizona can’t access medical treatment that other women can.”

The fingerprints of policy group Americans United for Life are all over much of the bill’s language, according to Elizabeth Nash of the Guttmacher Institute. She says the legislation is a mishmash of parts of other states’ bills, and predicted that still other conservative states looking to restrict and discourage abortions will now look to Arizona’s bill as model legislation.

'The point is to make it so difficult to provide abortions that no one will do it,” said Nash. 'Arizona likes to thumb their nose at ...

Read More - http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/0...ion-law-so-far


Also______________________________________________ ____


Tennessee Senate Approves Bill To Warn Students That Hand-Holding Is A ‘Gateway Sexual Activity’



Tennessee is falling apart, and this is what the state's duly elected representatives are spending their time on. This is the state, remember, that just passed a law giving official sanction to teaching Creationism. This government by bozoes is a trend that is sweeping across the Theocratic Right states. These people were elected, that's what one always has to remember. You get what you vote for. And you may have to live with the consequences for a generation of more.

SCOTT KEYES - Think Progress

Like any state legislature dealing with 8 percent unemployment and thousands of its residents facing disenfranchisement, the Tennessee Senate is targeting the menace of underage hand-holding.

Last week, the Senate passed SB 3310, a bill to update the state’s abstinence-based sex education curriculum to define holding hands and kissing as 'gateway sexual activities.” Just one senator voted against the legislation; 28 voted in favor.

Since the bill specifically bans teachers from 'demonstrating gateway sexual activity”, educators would be prohibited from even demonstrating what hand-holding is. Breaking these laws could result in a lawsuit, as Hunter from Daily Kos notes:

If your teacher teaches you anything about sex that isn’t specifically on the approved curriculum, like demonstrating 'holding hands” for the class instead of quietly "tsking" about the dangers it poses, they can be sued.

Still, this anti-hand-holding push may only be the ...

Read More - http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012...ing/?mobile=nc

[giovonni]

God and Caesar in America

The war on religion which the Catholic Church and the Evangelicals are promoting with utter cynicism, masks a much deeper reality. This excellent essay is as good an exposition of what is really going on as I have found.

DAVID E. CAMPBELL and ROBERT D. PUTNAM - Foreign Affairs

In the wake of the Great Recession it would seem natural that the 2012 election would be fought over economic issues. Yet so far in the Republican primaries, we have seen social issues, and religion especially, move to the forefront. Rick Santorum is only the latest in a series of Republicans who have infused their campaigns with talk about God. Even Mitt Romney, a Mormon who has generally tried to avoid discussing religion, has recently pledged to defend "religious liberty" against the Obama administration. Increasingly, the rhetoric of the leading Republican contenders echoes the Republican fringe of twenty years ago. Then, we heard Pat Buchanan -- the quintessential protest candidate -- bombastically declare that America was in the midst of a culture war. Today, the frontrunners all play to the Republican base by describing the White House's "war on religion."

Deepening the mystery of the GOP's turn to God ...

Read More - http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articl...sar-in-america

Also _____________________________________


Study: Homophobic People Likely Repressing Homosexual Attraction

The Theocratic Right's profound sexual dysfunctionality issues -- which is why so much of the Right's political focus centers on sexual issues -- has become so extreme that scientists are beginning to study it. Here is a report on one of the insights emerging.

DAVID EDWARDS - Raw story

People who have negative feelings toward homosexuality often have secret attractions to the same sex - and are more likely to have grown up in households that forbid homosexual feelings, according to a recent study.

A research team from the University of Rochester, the University of Essex, England, and the University of California in Santa Barbara found that '[h]omophobia is more pronounced in individuals with an unacknowledged attraction to the same sex and who grew up with authoritarian parents who forbade such desires.”

'Individuals who identify as straight but in psychological tests show a strong attraction to the same sex may be threatened by gays and lesbians because homosexuals remind them of similar tendencies within themselves,” the study’s lead author, Netta Weinstein, explained.

'In many cases these are people who are at war with themselves and they are turning this internal conflict outward,” co-author Richard Ryan added...

Read More - The Theocratic Right's profound sexual dysfunctionality issues -- which is why so much of the Right's political focus centers on sexual issues -- has become so extreme that scientists are beginning to study it. Here is a report on one of the insights emerging.

DAVID EDWARDS - Raw story

People who have negative feelings toward homosexuality often have secret attractions to the same sex - and are more likely to have grown up in households that forbid homosexual feelings, according to a recent study.

A research team from the University of Rochester, the University of Essex, England, and the University of California in Santa Barbara found that '[h]omophobia is more pronounced in individuals with an unacknowledged attraction to the same sex and who grew up with authoritarian parents who forbade such desires.”

'Individuals who identify as straight but in psychological tests show a strong attraction to the same sex may be threatened by gays and lesbians because homosexuals remind them of similar tendencies within themselves,” the study’s lead author, Netta Weinstein, explained.

'In many cases these are people who are at war with themselves and they are turning this internal conflict outward,” co-author Richard Ryan added...

Read More - http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/04/0...al-attraction/

[giovonni]

This should come as no surprise to anyone here.

giovonni

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As weather gets biblical, insurers go missing



PITTSBURGH — As weather disasters strike with more frequency, homeowners first get hit with the destruction or total loss of property. Many are then hit with the unexpected loss of homeowners insurance policies as insurance companies re-evaluate their financial liabilities.

After a tornado ripped through Springfield, Massachusetts, last year, R. Paula Lazzari's home was badly damaged. The retired teacher found broken windows, missing siding and a damaged roof. Her insurer offered to fund repairs for one broken window and some of the siding. It took nine months -- and mediation services from an independent adjuster and the Massachusetts Division of Insurance -- to get her bills paid, according to the parties involved...

Read more - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47006736.../#.T4wSnNUeiVp

[giovonni]

Just One of Monsanto's Crimes, or Why We Can't Trust the EPA

As I have been doing the research for today's edition I have come across not one but two different stories on the trend of poisoning the planet, including ourselves. Do you note that little of this is ever discussed in the mainstream media? Take it as a measure of the level of corruption and control special interests exercise in our country.

ALEXIS BADEN-MAYER - Nation of Change

2,4-D and the dioxin pollution it creates are too dangerous to allow, period, but in the hands of bad actors like Monsanto and Dow Chemical the dangers increase exponentially. What's the Environmental Protection Agency doing? Helping cover-up the chemical companies' crimes!

In February, Monsanto agreed to pay up to $93 million in a class-action lawsuit brought by the residents of Nitro, West Virginia, for dioxin exposure from accidents and pollution at an herbicide plant that operated in their town from 1929 to 2004.

That may seem like justice, but it is actually the result of Monsanto's extraordinary efforts to hide the truth, evade criminal prosecution and avoid legal responsibility.

A brief criminal fraud investigation conducted (and quickly aborted) by the EPA revealed that Monsanto used a disaster at their Nitro, WV, plant to manufacture "evidence" that dioxin exposure produced a skin condition called chloracne, but ...

Read More - http://www.nationofchange.org/just-o...epa-1334496958


Also ~


Researchers: GM Crops Are Killing Monarch Butterflies, After All


Monsanto, a corporation strongly supported by Bill Gates, who has made a very large investment in the company, is on my top ten list of the most evil corporations on earth. There just doesn't seem to be any limit to its perfidy and the negative effects it has wrought across the planet. First the bees and, now, this about Monarch butterflies. I began covering this story, about the in 2005 (see SR archives) and, like the bee decline, it just keep getting worse.

It is long past time that we realized an enormous experiment is being perpetrated, so large that it is almost beyond our comprehension; and it is placing all of us at risk.

TOM PHILPOTT - Mother Jones

f any insect species can be described as charismatic minifauna, it's the monarch butterfly. The gorgeous creatures flutter about in a migratory range that stretches from the northern part of South America up into Canada. The monarch is the only butterfly species that undertakes such a long-distance migration. And when they alight upon a place en masse, heads turn. No fewer than five states-Texas, Alabama, Idaho, illinois, and Minnesota-claim the monarch as their state insect.

Unfortunately, the monarch populations appear to be in a state of decline. Why? A new study (abstract; press release) from University of Minnesota and Iowa State University researchers points to an answer: the rapid rise of crops engineered to withstand herbicides.

Their argument is powerful. Monarchs lay their eggs on one particular kind of plant: the milkweed. And when the eggs hatch, the caterpillars feed exclusively on the weed. Milkweed is common ...

Read More - http://motherjones.com/tom-philpott/...lies-after-all

[giovonni]

Gulf Seafood Deformities Alarm Scientists

The Gulf catastrophe seems to be no longer of interest to the corporate media. But that doesn't mean the story is over only that, like so many stories of substance, this media has chosen not to cover it so they can devote 24/7 to stories like Helen Rosen's off the cuff remark about Ann Romney. A story with nothing but sensoids.

Click through to see pictures of sea creatures taken from the Gulf; it will give you a better sense of what is happening.

DAHR JAMAIL - Aljazeera (Qatar)

New Orleans, LA - "The fishermen have never seen anything like this," Dr Jim Cowan told Al Jazeera. "And in my 20 years working on red snapper, looking at somewhere between 20 and 30,000 fish, I've never seen anything like this either."

Dr Cowan, with Louisiana State University's Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences started hearing about fish with sores and lesions from fishermen in November 2010.

Cowan's findings replicate those of others living along vast areas of the Gulf Coast that have been impacted by BP's oil and dispersants.

Gulf of Mexico fishermen, scientists and seafood processors have told Al Jazeera they are finding disturbing numbers of mutated shrimp, crab and fish that they believe are deformed by chemicals released during BP's 2010 oil disaster.

Along with collapsing fisheries, signs of malignant impact on the regional ecosystem are ominous: horribly mutated shrimp, fish with oozing ...

Read More - http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/fea...318260912.html

[giovonni]

However you perceive these situations and challenges ... Just keep in mind ... We all have the power within to change all these things for ourselves.

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More Baby Boomers Facing Old Age Alone

This is a very sad but, I am afraid, very realistic assessment of what is coming for Baby Boomers. The inability of Americans to see that collective action to support a social need is essential to a civilized nation is going to produce a number of social outcomes like this one. It is very strange and would seem incomprehensible to the Founders who, mostly, would be considered socialists today.

JEN SOBOLEWSKI - Bowling Green State University

Startling new statistics from Bowling Green State University's National Center for Family and Marriage Research paint a bleak future for the largest generation in history, the baby boomers, as they cross into old age

BOWLING GREEN, O.—Startling new statistics from Bowling Green State University's National Center for Family and Marriage Research (NCFMR) paint a bleak future for the largest generation in history, the baby boomers, as they cross into old age.

Using data from the 1980, 1990 and 2000 censuses and the 2009 round of the American Community Survey, Dr. I-Fen Lin, an associate professor of sociology, and Dr. Susan Brown, a professor of sociology and co-director of the NCFMR, found one-third of adults aged 45-63 are unmarried. This represents a more than 50 percent increase since 1980, when just 20 percent of middle-aged Americans were unmarried.

Most single boomers are divorced or never married. In fact, one in three single baby boomers has never been married. Just 10 percent of unmarried boomers are widowed.

"The shift in marital composition of the middle-aged suggests that researchers and policymakers can no longer focus on widowhood in later life and should pay attention to the vulnerabilities of the never-married and divorced as well," said Lin.

According to Brown, one in five single baby boomers is living in poverty compared to one in 20 for their married counterparts. Single boomers are twice as likely to be disabled, but they are also less likely to have health insurance.

The previous marital status of unmarried baby boomers also has significant repercussions. In general, divorced boomers have more economic resources and better health than their widowed or never married counterparts.

Of particular concern is the large share of unmarried boomers who have never been married. According to the researchers, the probability of marrying for the first time during middle age is extremely low, meaning that nearly all of the never married boomers will remain unmarried.

"The economic and health vulnerabilities of single boomers are concerning because boomers are now moving into old age when failing health becomes even more common and severe," said Brown.

"In the past, family members, particularly spouses, have provided care to infirm older adults. But a growing share of older adults aren't going to have a spouse available to rely on for support. Our figures indicate one in three boomers won't have a spouse who can care for them. And, unmarrieds are less likely to have children who might provide care. These shifting family patterns portend new strains on existing institutional supports for the elderly. As more singles enter older adulthood, we as a society may have to reconsider how we care for frail elders. The family may no longer be a viable option for an increasing segment of older adults."

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releas...-mbb041612.php

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U.S. Standard of Living Has Fallen More Than 50%

This will confirm what you may already suspect, and have witnessed in your own life, or the lives of your friends.

Click through to see the chart that illustrates the main points.

JEFF NIELSON - The Street

NEW YORK -- In writing about the relentless collapse of Western economies, I frequently point to "40 years of plummeting wages" for Western workers, in real dollars. However, where I have been remiss is in quantifying the magnitude of this collapse in Western wages.

On several occasions, I have glibly referred to how it now takes two spouses working to equal the wages of a one-income family of 40 years ago. Unfortunately, that is now an understatement. In fact, Western wages have plummeted so low that a two-income family is now (on average) 15% poorer than a one-income family of 40 years ago.

Regular readers will recognize the chart below on U.S. average wages.

Using the year 2000 as the numerical base from which to "zero" all of the numbers, real wages peaked in 1970 at around $20/hour. Today the average worker makes $8.50/hour -- more ...

Read More - http://www.thestreet.com/story/11480...member_1086041

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As Extreme Weather Events Increase, so Does Acceptance of Climate Science

As this report makes clear it is slowly dawning on Americans that climate change is real. I don't think for a moment that this will do much to alter the behavior of the Congress. The power of old energy is too dominant. By 2016, however, when people in Oklahoma can't get insurance for their businesses and homes, and people on the coast of Florida have seen their properties flood repeatedly perhaps something will move. But, by then, it will be too late. As I have said, climate change is going to happen, the question now is how are we going to get through the world it creates.

JEANNA BRYNER, LiveScience Managing Editor - The Christian Science Monitor

Severe droughts in Texas and the Great Plains. Hurricane Irene sweeping the Eastern Seaboard. Tornadoes in the Midwest, and floods in Mississippi. Record-breaking temperatures across the U.S. With such widespread madness, it's no surprise that the majority of Americans say they have personally experienced an extreme weather event or natural disaster in the past year.

That's according to a new nationally representative survey that also found a majority of Americans say U.S. weather is getting worse. Furthermore, a large majority of Americans think global warming made several high-profile weather events even worse.

The results, which are part of a long-term project at Yale, suggest global warming is becoming less of a "down the road" and "out of sight" issue and more of a "here and now" problem in the minds of Americans.

The researchers found early on in this project, a decade ago, that for many Americans ...

Read More - http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/201...-science-video

[giovonni]

From the Schwartz Report...

"Finally, the truth about nuclear power in Japan, Fukushima, and the U.S. involvement is coming out. And once again it is clear that the citizens of both countries have been systematically lied to for over a generation. This report puts a big part of the story on the table. It will appall you."


United States Circumvented Laws To Help Japan Accumulate Tons of Plutonium



Monju Nuclear Power Plant

Joseph Trento - National Security News Service

The United States deliberately allowed Japan access to the United States’ most secret nuclear weapons facilities while it transferred tens of billions of dollars worth of American tax paid research that has allowed Japan to amass 70 tons of weapons grade plutonium since the 1980s, a National Security News Service investigation reveals. These activities repeatedly violated U.S. laws regarding controls of sensitive nuclear materials that could be diverted to weapons programs in Japan. The NSNS investigation found that the United States has known about a secret nuclear weapons program in Japan since the 1960s, according to CIA reports.

President Reagan and Vice President Bush

The diversion of U.S. classified technology began during the Reagan administration after it allowed a $10 billion reactor sale to China. Japan protested that sensitive technology was being sold to a potential nuclear adversary. The Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations permitted sensitive technology ...

Read More - http://www.dcbureau.org/201204097128...plutonium.html

[giovonni]

Extended Daily Fasting Overrides Harmful Effects of a High-Fat Diet


This has a huge potential to change your health. Read it carefully and adjust your eating habits accordingly.

Science Daily

It turns out that when we eat may be as important as what we eat. Scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have found that regular eating times and extending the daily fasting period may override the adverse health effects of a high-fat diet and prevent obesity, diabetes and liver disease in mice.

In a paper published May 17 in Cell Metabolism, scientists from Salk's Regulatory Biology Laboratory reported that mice limited to eating during an 8-hour period are healthier than mice that eat freely throughout the day, regardless of the quality and content of their diet. The study sought to determine whether obesity and metabolic diseases result from a high-fat diet or from disruption of metabolic cycles.

"It's a dogma that a high-fat diet leads to obesity and that we should eat frequently when we are awake," says Satchidananda Panda, an associate professor in the Regulatory ...

Read More - http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...EYf2LcwY.email

[giovonni]

Note ~ Neonicotinoids, like nicotine, are nicotinic acetylcholine receptor agonists... And because most neonicotinoids bind much more strongly to insect neuron receptors than to mammal neuron receptors, these insecticides are selectively more toxic to insects than mammals.

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Farmers, Scientists, and Advocates Concerned About Lack of Pesticide-Free Seeds

This is a measure of how the multinational Agr Corporations are gaining complete control over our food supply. The only way to eat safely today is to buy locally grown organic produce from reliable producers, and/or to grow your own.

eNews Park Forest

WASHINGTON, DC -- American farmers are growing increasingly more frustrated with the lack of commercially available seeds that have not been pretreated with pesticides. Farmers across the Midwest have called on federal officials this week to provide greater access to seeds without pesticide treatments. The request comes as scientists and beekeepers highlight the nearly pervasive use of neonicotinoids as seed treatments on corn as a critical factor in recent bee die-offs, including colony collapse disorder (CCD). Beekeepers from Minnesota to Ohio to Canada report large losses after their hives forage near treated cornfields. Scientists from Purdue University and a multi-year series of studies from Italy point to toxic dust, or neonicotinoid-contaminated powder from recently planted corn fields as key pesticide exposure pathways for bees. The request comes on the heels of a report aired by NBC Nightly News this week entitled 'Bee Deaths Linked to Pesticides”, as well as ...

Read More - http://www.enewspf.com/latest-news/s...ree-seeds.html

[giovonni]

Student Loan Bubble Putting Hundreds of Colleges at Risk

The alarm bells ring but few listen.

Business Insider

Very few topics have received as much attention as the student loan/debt bubble.

The size, scope, and impact of this problem is an enormous anchor weighing down our next generation and our nation's economy.

Make no mistake, this anchor is not only impacting thousands of students and families but is also having an equally burdensome impact on colleges and universities nationwide.

Embedded within a very recently released Bloomberg commentary is a study by Richard Kneedler, President Emeritus of Franklin & Marshall College. In light of the economic crisis that hit our shores and continues to envelop our nation, in early 2009 Kneedler released a very granular review of the economic condition of close to 700 private colleges and universities. For anybody with even a passing interest in this issue, Kneedler's work, is a MUST read. What do we learn?

1. Using this post-crash model (and may ...

Read More - http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily...125000050.html

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The Right to Record

This is a very big deal. Had this decision gone the other way, citizens would be precluded from recording the excesses of the increasingly over-reaching militarized police in this country.

The New York Times

The Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department took an important stand last week, declaring that citizens have a First Amendment right to videotape the actions of police officers in public places and that seizure or destruction of such recordings violates constitutional rights.

The Justice Department made the statement in a federal lawsuit brought against the Baltimore Police Department by Christopher Sharp, who used his cellphone to take video of the police arresting and beating a friend at Pimlico on the day of the 2010 Preakness. The officers took Mr. Sharp’s cellphone while he was recording and wiped the phone clean of all videos before returning it to him.

The Courts of Appeals for the First and Seventh Circuits have wisely found that the Constitution protects the right to videotape police officers while they perform official duties. The video taken by another witness of the beating at Pimlico ...

Read More - http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/21/op...it_th_20120521

[giovonni]

Nearly a Quarter of Teens Diabetic or Prediabetic, Report Says

This is the latest update on an increasingly distressing trend. We are literally maiming our young in the service of profit for the few. The only way out of this that I can see is eating locally grown organic food, or food you raise yourself, eating nothing that is processed. Your children's health hangs in the balance.

JANICE D'ARCY - The Washington Post

Now, yet more evidence that children’s health is in dire need of attention: A new study released today shows that almost a quarter of teens have diabetes or prediabetes.

Almost a quarter.

That’s up from 9 percent a decade ago, according to a study in the June 2012 issue of Pediatrics, published online today.

The findings come from a report that looked more broadly at the risk factors teens have for cardiovascular disease. 'Prevalence of Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors Among U.S. Adolescents, 1999-2008” examined data from nearly 3,400 adolescents age 12 to 19 from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

The authors, affiliated with The Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, set out to examine why American teens have become more susceptible to cardiovascular disease - the leading cause of death among U.S. adults.

They found little significant change in the last decade for ...

Read More - http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...MVeU_blog.html

[giovonni]

Medical Marijuana Users Protected Under Law, High Court Rules

This marijuana trend has become fascinating. At the state level legislatures, and even courts, are clearly seeking to contrive a rational policy in this area. Meanwhile for reasons that are not truly clear, at least to me, the Obama Administration is creating havoc in what was an emerging non-criminal partially medical -- different kinds of grass do different things (See the SR archive) -- partially wine industry agri business.

These two trends, the federal and the states, are basically on a collusion course. Have already collided. And they are intertwined with the emerging prison privatization movement.

JENNIFER CHAMBERS - The Detroit News

In a major ruling on Michigan's controversial medical marijuana act, the Michigan Supreme Court said Thursday the 2008 voter-approved law provides legal protection from prosecution, even for users who did not obtain state-issued medical marijuana cards.

In a 34-page ruling, the court said the law provides an affirmative defense to "individuals who are not registered cardholding patients to assert the affirmative defense" in any criminal prosecution involving marijuana.

"Because the MMMA (Michigan Medical Marijuana Act) was the result of a voter initiative, our goal is to ascertain and give effect to the intent of the electorate, rather than the Legislature, as reflected in the language of the law itself. We must give the words of the MMMA their ordinary and plain meaning as would have been understood by the electorate," the opinion said.

Michael Komorn, an attorney specializing in medical marijuana cases and the president of the ...

Read More - http://www.detroitnews.com/article/2...gh-court-rules