From futurist Stephan A. Schwartz - Trends That Will Affect Your Future … [Archive] - Page 3

giovonni

12th February 2013, 13:28

Wind power for 9 Million Households in Eastern Europe by 2020

While the U.S. kowtows to Big Oil providing the most profitable industry in human history with tens of billions of tax breaks and subsidies, even second tier nations are moving in the opposite direction.

WindTech

Wind power in Central and Eastern Europe will become a significant source of electricity production by 2020 and Turkey's wind power generation capacity will grow even faster - provided there is a stable legal framework in each country.

The European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) has published a new report, 'Eastern Winds', analysing the emerging wind power markets in Central and Eastern European countries, plus Turkey, Ukraine and Russia. Twelve newer EU Member States in Central and Eastern Europe plan to increase wind power capacity from the 6.4GW installed at end of 2012 to 16GW by 2020. Turkey wants to increase wind power capacity from its current 2.3GW to 20GW by 2023. Poland and Romania almost doubled their annual installed wind power capacity in 2012. At the end of 2012, Poland had 2.5GW, Romania 1.9GW and Bulgaria 0.7GW of wind power capacity installed...

Read More - http://www.windtech-international.com/industry-news/wind-power-for-9-million-households-in-eastern-europe-by-2020

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Also ~

Spain's Wind Farms Break Energy Record

Here is another European report.

Click through to listen to the npr package.

LAUREN FRAYER - npr

For the first time, electricity production from Spanish wind mills topped that of nuclear, coal and solar. Spain's location in the south of Europe means it's endowed with lots of sunshine and clear windy skies - which it's put to use becoming a leader in renewable energy.

Copyright © 2013 NPR. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

We'll begin NPR's business news starts with strong winds in Spain.

GREENE: Spain has a pretty good location in the south of Europe. They are accustomed to good weather, plenty of sunshine, clear skies and wind - which the country is putting to good use. Spain has become a leader in renewable energy.

In fact, the countries wind farms have broken a new record, as Lauren Frayer reports from Madrid.

In fact, the countries wind farms have broken a new record, as Lauren Frayer reports from Madrid.

(SOUNDBITE OF WIND TURNING TURBINES ON PLAINS SOUTH OF MADRID)

LAUREN FRAYER, BYLINE: High-tech wind turbines now dot these plains where Don Quixote's windmills once stood. Spanish winters are windy, and since November these wind farms have made history. Their electricity output has topped that of coal, nuclear and solar energy for the first time.

HEIKKI WILLSTEDT: This is a real - an incredible feat.

FRAYER: Heikki Willstedt, with the Spanish Wind Power Association, says 26 percent of Spain's electricity for the past 100 days has come from wind. Excluding heavy industry, that's enough to power every household in Spain and cut back on fossil fuels, too.

WILLSTEDT: In the last 100 days, Spain has taken out from the wind the equivalent of 31 million barrels of oil.

FRAYER: But the achievement is bittersweet, because a week ago the government cut subsidies for wind power.

Energy economist Gonzalo Escribano says the reform levies a new seven percent tax across the board.

GONZALO ESCRIBANO: It's not an environmental reform, because they are not taxing more carbon-intensive energies. They are charging all of them the same.

FRAYER: Shares in Spanish wind companies have plummeted. And Willstedt, with the Spanish Wind Power Association, worries that some renewable energy companies might cut their losses and leave Spain altogether.

WILLSTEDT: Something like 30 billion U.S. dollars invested in this sector. So these kind of measures destroy this value, and destroy investor confidence.

FRAYER: Wind power is almost at the point where it's profitable without government subsidies. And Escribano, the economist, says one thing is certain.

ESCRIBANO: We don't know if there will be any more shale gas in 40 years time. We don't know if Saudi Arabia will remain as an oil exporter. But what I can tell you is that in 100, 200, whenever - well, it depends on climate change, for sure - we'll still have sun and wind.

FRAYER: For NPR News, I'm Lauren Frayer in Madrid.

Source: http://app1.kuhf.org/articles/npr1360324246-Spains-Wind-Farms-Break-Energy-Record.html

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giovonni

14th February 2013, 11:41

AI System Diagnoses Illnesses Better Than Doctors

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/doctorpatient-shutterstock.jpg

This development may presage a major change in medicine.

The research appears in the March 2012 edition of Artificial Intelligence in Medicine.

STEPHEN C. WEBSTER - Artificial Intelligence in Medicine/The Raw Story

An artificial intelligence system developed by researchers at Indiana University can diagnose illnesses and prescribe courses of treatment significantly better than a human doctor, the university said Monday.

Using a computerized decision making processes similar to IBM’s wiz computer 'Watson” that won the game show 'Jeopardy,” researchers plugged in big medical data sources and tasked it to simulate treatment outcomes for 500 patients, most of whom suffered from clinical depression and at least one other chronic condition, like high blood pressure or diabetes.

Using data from actual patient-doctor treatment sessions, computer science assistant professor Kris Hauser and Ph.D. student Casey C. Bennett compared real-life outcomes to simulated treatment regiments and found their computer was nearly 42 percent better at diagnosing illnesses and prescribing effective treatments than human doctors.

Better still, researchers said the accuracy in diagnosis and treatment could reduce health care costs by getting it right ...

Read More - http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/02/12/ai-system-diagnoses-illnesses-better-than-doctors/

giovonni

14th February 2013, 11:47

How to Vacation Like a Billionaire

http://www.cntraveler.com/features/2013/03/how-the-one-percent-travels-luxury-vacations/_jcr_content/par/cn_contentwell/par-main/cn_image.size.arctic-kingdom-polar-expeditions-luxury-ice-camp.jpg

You have heard me say that the uber rich live in a world completely different than the one 99 per cent of the human race lives in. I don't know what you think I meant by that, so let me spell it out.

LAUREN LIPTON - Conde Nast Traveler

For two days, I’ve slept in my own wing of an echoing estate on a billionaire’s private island and been rendered helpless by a butler attending to my every need. I’ve gobbled three-course lunches, guzzled rum cocktails and champagne, worked out solo in a fully equipped gym, bathed in a bathtub the size of a boat, and had a gleaming yacht at my disposal. I’ve taken sunset dips in the Caribbean-my footsteps quite literally the only ones in the sand. Suddenly, it’s hard to imagine not vacationing like this all the time. Dare I say, I’m starting to feel entitled.

I’m in the Caribbean on Calivigny Island, just off the south coast of Grenada, where for $165,000 a night, you and up to 59 of your closest friends can inhabit the personal vacation paradise of a French businessman and his wife, including the 19,000-square-foot main house, two pools, five ...

Read More - http://www.cntraveler.com/features/2013/03/how-the-one-percent-travels-luxury-vacations?MBID=twitter_

giovonni

15th February 2013, 13:18

:doh: isn't it about time ...

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US Farmers May Stop Planting GMs After Poor Global Yields http://www.fwi.co.uk/assets/getasset.aspx?itemid=5238323

The more we learn of the GMO story, the more it looks like an incredible miscalculation or a scam.

ROBYN VINTER - Farmers Weekly

Some US farmers are considering returning to conventional seed after increased pest resistance and crop failures meant GM crops saw smaller yields globally than their non-GM counterparts.

Farmers in the USA pay about an extra $100 per acre for GM seed, and many are questioning whether they will continue to see benefits from using GMs.

"It's all about cost benefit analysis," said economist Dan Basse, president of American agricultural research company AgResource.

"Farmers are paying extra for the technology but have seen yields which are no better than 10 years ago. They're starting to wonder why they're spending extra money on the technology."

One of the biggest problems the USA has seen with GM seed is resistance. While it was expected to be 40 years before resistance began to develop pests such as corn rootworm have formed a resistance to GM crops in as few as ...

Read More - http://www.fwi.co.uk/articles/06/02/2013/137518/us-farmers-may-stop-planting-gms-after-poor-global-yields.htm

giovonni

15th February 2013, 13:22

Could the Sea Be Conscious? Research Reveals how Tiny Plankton Behave Like a Marine 'Megamind'

Little by little science is showing us that all life is interconnected and interdependent, refuting the corporate exploiters' proposition that nature is just an unconscious bank account of resources. This is one of the major reasons the Right's disinformation machine has sought to undermine a fact based world.

DAMIEN GAYLE - The Mail (U.K.)

Vastly different species of sea microbes work together to respond as one to their surroundings as if they have one 'megamind', new research has revealed.

U.S. researchers have discovered communities of infinitesimal creatures in our oceans react in unison to changes in their environment.

The links between them are not well understood, but findings suggest the creatures rely on each other to almost the same extent as the different cells in a human body.

Megamind: Despite the amazing diversity of marine microbes, a new research paper shows that many different groups work together to react in unison to their surroundings

As an example, if one set of the microbes were, say, creating energy through photosynthesis, which would then produce carbon dioxide, another set of microbes would somehow know and react - perhaps preparing to absorb the carbon dioxide.

The open sea contains an amazing diversity ...

Read More - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2278137/Could-sea-conscious-Research-reveals-tiny-plankton-behave-like-marine-microbial-megamind.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

giovonni

17th February 2013, 13:14

Miss a Traffic Ticket, Go to Jail?

http://media.salon.com/2012/01/personal_debt-460x307.jpg

Here is the latest on the New American Slavery trend.

ALEX KANE, Staff Reporter - Salon

Editor’s note: America has a long history of treating the poor like criminals, from legislation banning the transportation of poor people across state lines to anti-vagrancy laws that could land you in jail if you didn’t have a job or a home. We’ve come to rely on the criminal justice system to deal with the poor, even as more and more Americans fall into poverty. The following is part of a series that looks at the diverse ways poverty is criminalized in America, such as laws targeting the homeless, the surveillance of welfare recipients, the re-emergence of debtor’s prisons, and extreme policing tactics like stop-and-frisk.

Kawana Young, a single mother of two kids, was arrested in Michigan after failing to pay money she owed as a result of minor traffic offenses. She was recently laid off from her job, and could not pay the fees she owed because she ...

Read More - http://www.salon.com/2013/02/11/miss_a_traffic_ticket_go_to_jail/

giovonni

19th February 2013, 12:10

Who Owns Seeds? Monsanto Says Not You

This is one of the most extraordinary trends in human history. An attempt by a few companies to control all of humanity's food. It's breathtaking to watch, and it amazes me how few people even see it.

NOTE: According to the latest research, see SR Archive, the claim of increased yield cited in this report is incorrect, thus the keeping food prices down, is also incorrect. The Roundup system is expensive.

Note also that nowhere in this report is there any mention of the long term ecological consequences of this model of agriculture, or the significant issue of unintended cross-breeding, gene stacking problems, insect and fungus mutation, ingestion consequences, or a host of other unanswered problems. I chose this piece because its addresses the Supreme Court issues.

And finally, note the multiple industries this will impact.

JANE WELLS - CNBC

Say you're a Hollywood studio who spent a couple hundred million dollars on a blockbuster movie. Someone buys it on DVD, and then proceeds to copy the DVD and sell those copies at a profit.

That would be against the law.

Can you make the same argument about buying patented seeds to grow a crop, and then keeping some of that first crop to reap seeds and grow a second crop?

The United States Supreme Court will decide that in a case involving a 75-year-old farmer from Indiana named Vernon Bowman. Monsanto sued Bowman in 2007, claiming the farmer has for years used seeds reaped from a first crop of Monsanto Roundup Ready soybean seeds to grow another crop.

Monsanto said that violates its patent, as farmers sign an agreement when they buy the seeds to only use them once. The resulting crop can be ...

Read more with video report - http://www.cnbc.com/id/100464458

giovonni

21st February 2013, 23:20

Please note ~ i will be taking a much needed break and vacation and will be unable to post regularly for a while ~ till then ~ Blessings Gio

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Designing Life: Should Babies Be Genetically Engineered ?

This is the latest in the Homo Superiorus Trend. I first wrote about it in 2006 and it has tracked much as I had projected. (Please check Homo Superiorus in the journal Explore: http://www.explorejournal.com/article/S1550-8307%2806%2900027-9/fulltext.) There is almost no public conversation about this trend, but it is going to have a significant impact.

Wynne Parry, Contributor - Live Science

NEW YORK -- The increasing power and accessibility of genetic technology may one day give parents the option of modifying their unborn children, in order to spare offspring from disease or, conceivably, make them tall, well muscled, intelligent or otherwise blessed with desirable traits.

Would this change mean empowering parents to give their children the best start possible? Or would it mean designer babies who could face unforeseen genetic problems? Experts debated on Wednesday evening (Feb. 13) whether prenatal engineering should be banned in the United States.

Humans have already genetically modified animals and crops, said Sheldon Krimsky, a philosopher at Tufts University, who argued in favor of a ban on the same for human babies. "But in the hundreds of thousands of trails that failed, we simply discarded the results of the unwanted crop or animal."

Unknown consequences

Is this a model that society wants to apply to humans...

Read more - http://www.livescience.com/27206-genetic-engineering-babies-debate.html

giovonni

26th February 2013, 20:27

From ~ Stephan A. Schwartz

Editor's Note - 3-D Printing

Today's edition is dedicated to a strongly emerging trend that I have touched on before, but which I believe is now reaching critical mass -- 3-D printing.

This technology is going to change our world even more profoundly than the rise of the internet, because the internet was an additive trend, and 3-D printing is a subtractive one. That is the internet allowed us to do the things we did better and more efficiently. It eliminated the need for some things, like mimeograph machines and carbon paper but was essentially additive.

In contrast, 3-D printing is going to eliminate the need for whole sectors of human history, and its geopolitical implications are almost more profound than I can describe. Factories involving mass production are going to disappear. Nations like China that depend on manufacturing are going to be devastated, unless they plan very carefully. Shipping industries, box makers, machine makers, dealers of many goods, will be rendered redundant, radically changing labor activities.

Whole structures of our economy will crash. 3-D printing is going to allow everything to be made to custom order, whether it is a new ear, or a new transmission. It will also play a major role in the transition from carbon to noncarbon energy.

Those nations which adapt quickly will thrive, those that don't will fall further and further behind.

-- Stephan

Related news items ...

How 3D Printing Could Revolutionise the Solar Energy Industry
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2013/feb/22/3d-printing-solar-energy-industry

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3D-Printed Rocket Parts Will Take NASA to Mars
http://mashable.com/2013/02/22/nasa-3d-printed-rocket-parts/

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Print Me An Ear: 3-D Printing Tackles Human Cartilage
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/02/20/172493174/print-me-an-ear-3-d-printing-tackles-human-cartilage

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3-D Printing Pioneer Wants Government to Restrict Gunpowder, Not Printable Guns
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/02/gunpowder-regulation/

giovonni

1st March 2013, 21:35

Three news items in regard to your tummy's consumption ...

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9 Surprising Facts About Junk Food http://mjcdn.motherjones.com/preset_16/wm.jpg

This piece spells out how technology is put into the service of profit in the food industry; and how this business model places no importance on wellness.

TOM PHILPOTT - Mother Jones

Riffing on his new book Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Industry Hooked Us, ace New York Times investigative reporter Michael Moss is suddenly everywhere-he's out with a blockbuster article in the Times Magazine and just appeared on Fresh Air.

I haven't had a chance to read the book yet, but I've skimmed it, and it looks excellent. Here are nine quick takeaways:

1. The Cheeto is a modern miracle. Made of corn, fat, and something called "cheese seasoning" (which itself is made of 11 ingredients, including canola oil and artificial color "yellow 6"), this ever-popular snack, which now comes in no fewer than 17 different flavors, may be the food industry's creation par excellence. Here's Moss:

"This," Witherly [a food scientist] said, "is one of the most marvelously constructed foods on the planet, in terms of pure pleasure." He ticked off a ...

Read More - http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2013/02/food-industry-michael-moss-junk

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Oxfam Reveals Global Food Firms' Gaping Ethical Shortfalls

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Environment/Pix/columnists/2013/2/25/1361805066472/Food-companies-and-ethica-009.jpg

A small group of corporations now dominate the world's food supply, and they have lobbied extensively to operate with the least amount of regulatory oversight. The result, just as one would expect, is that because they believe they are above the law, their ethical standards are profoundly compromised, and affect not just the food itself, but the entire system by which it is produced. Because their priority is profit not human wellness many of the food products they produce are crap, and actually detrimental to health.

DAMIAN CARRINGTON - The Guardian (U.K.)

The world's largest food companies are failing to meet ethical standards, a report from Oxfam has warned. None of the leading global brands such as Nestlé, Mars and Coca-Cola were given good overall ratings on their commitments to protect farmers, local communities and the environment, while British food giant Associated British Foods (ABF), owner of brands including Kingsmill, Ovaltine and Silverspoon, received the lowest rating.

The charity's Behind the Brands report compiled a scorecard, rating the "big 10" food companies in seven categories: the transparency of their supply chains and operations, how they ensure the rights of workers, how they protect women's rights, the management of water and land use, their policies to reduce the impacts of climate change and how they ensure the rights of the farmers who grow their ingredients...

Read More - http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/feb/26/oxfam-behind-brands-ethical-failures

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Sugar Is Behind Global Explosion in Type 2 Diabetes, Study Finds

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2013/2/27/1361990064241/Sugar-cubes-009.jpg

Here once again we can see profit placed above wellness. I think one it is incumbent on the individual to select a diet that supports their health, and that it takes some attention, and label reading. It you see high corn fructose or the like. Don't eat it.

DENIS CAMPBELL, Health Correspondent - The Guardian (U.K.)

Sugar is behind the global explosion in type 2 diabetes, say researchers who claim it plays a uniquely damaging role in causing a disease that experts fear could overwhelm the NHS.

Obesity is usually cited as the main driver of diabetes. But a new study by US medical researchers identifies sugar as a predictor of diabetes separately from obesity.

The findings, published in the scientific journal Plos One, do not claim that sugar causes obesity. But they are significant because they pinpoint it as being closely associated with diabetes, a disease that at least 2.7 million Britons already have.

Researchers led by Sanjay Basu, an assistant professor at Stanford University school of medicine, examined the availability of sugar and diabetes rates from 175 countries worldwide over the last decade.

"We're not diminishing the importance of obesity at all, but these data suggest that at a population ...

Read More - http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/feb/27/sugar-obesity-type-2-diabetes?INTCMP=SRCH

giovonni

3rd March 2013, 00:49

India's Rice Revolution http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2013/2/12/1360680451579/Sumant-Kumar-001.jpg

Here, from India, is what may be the answer to the industrial agriculture being pushed by corporate interests. With no GMO, and none of the toxic herbicides and pesticides, substituting instead working with the earth, and nature's processes. This story is a case study in two opposing ways of viewing the world, and the success of the SRI process described in this report. I take this as very good news.

Note that once again, I had to go to non-U.S. sources to get this story.

I predict that you will not see this story in the corporate media but should some mention occur that you will see an aggressive disinformation campaign designed to cast doubt on this achievement by poor Indian farmers.

JOHN VIDAL - The Guardian/Observer (U.K.)

BIHAR, INDIA --

Sumant Kumar was overjoyed when he harvested his rice last year. There had been good rains in his village of Darveshpura in north-east India and he knew he could improve on the four or five tonnes per hectare that he usually managed. But every stalk he cut on his paddy field near the bank of the Sakri river seemed to weigh heavier than usual, every grain of rice was bigger and when his crop was weighed on the old village scales, even Kumar was shocked.

This was not six or even 10 or 20 tonnes. Kumar, a shy young farmer in Nalanda district of India's poorest state Bihar, had – using only farmyard manure and without any herbicides – grown an astonishing 22.4 tonnes of rice on one hectare of land. This was a world record and with rice the staple food of more ...

Read More - http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2013/feb/16/india-rice-farmers-revolution?CMP=twt_gu#zoomed-picture

giovonni

3rd March 2013, 21:38

persecution or prosecution ?

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Were Early Christians Really Persecuted? Historian Reveals the Surprising Truth ...

http://www.alternet.org/files/styles/story_image/public/story_images/biblecross.jpg

The sense of persecution that is part of the DNA of Christianity begins here. I have to admit this story stunned me. Perhaps like you I had seen the early Christian period as a time of persecution and martyrdom. But I spent some time looking into this, and I think Professor Candida Moss' work is solid, and is destined to be the accepted view. We need to reconsider this period through a very different prism.

LAURA MILLER, Senior Writer - Salon/AlterNet (U.S.)

In the immediate aftermath of the Columbine High School massacre, a modern myth was born. A story went around that one of the two killers asked one of the victims, Cassie Bernall, if she believed in God. Bernall reportedly said 'Yes” just before he shot her. Bernall’s mother wrote a memoir, titled 'She Said Yes: The Unlikely Martyrdom of Cassie Bernall,” a tribute to her daughter’s courageous Christian faith. Then, just as the book was being published, a student who was hiding near Bernall told journalist Dave Cullen that the exchange never happened.

Although Candida Moss’ new book, 'The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom,” is about the three centuries following the death of Jesus, she makes a point of citing this modern-day parallel. What Bernall truly said and did in the moments before her death absolutely matters, Moss asserts, if we are going ...

Read More - http://www.alternet.org/belief/were-early-christians-really-persecuted-historian-reveals-surprising-truth?akid=10113.267705.03O6iG&rd=1&src=newsletter801060&t=11&paging=off

giovonni

7th March 2013, 16:49

Pollution Forces Chinese Leaders to Act

As horrifying as this story is, in terms of the environment, I think it is actually good news. Perhaps China will finally begin to deal with the massive pollution that their reliance on coal is producing. If so the whole world should be grateful. The government's motivation may be entirely pragmatic, but it is the outcome that should concern us. Getting China off coal is in every living being's interest.

The Coal Monster
Pollution Forces Chinese Leaders to Act

By Bernhard Zand

China's power plants and factories are spewing out toxic emissions and covering the country with smog and grime. For the new leadership, protecting the neglected environment has become a question of preserving its power.

What does growth smell like? What does the biggest economic miracle of all time taste like?

In Guiyu, on the South China Sea, the smell of growth is a caustic, slightly nut-like odor emitted when a computer keyboard is placed on a hotplate. Electronic waste is processed in Guiyu, one of the most prosperous cities in Guangdong Province.

In Xintang, on the Pearl River Delta, it is the bitterly acidic gases that are released when tons of denim material are bleached, dyed and washed. Xintang is the jeans capital of the world, a source of jobs for tens of thousands of people.

In Hainan, a coal and cement town in Inner Mongolia, it is a dull cocktail of soot, chalk and desert sand. Here, growth is something you taste and touch, rather than something you smell. It crunches between your teeth when you are outside.

In Beijing, the capital of the country whose economic success has amazed the world for the last 30 years, the myriad smells and tastes of growth often include a burning odor and an unpleasant aftertaste. It's familiar to many who live in cities whose population is growing by hundreds of thousands a year and whose officials are running out of places to dump garbage.

The images that the world has seen of Beijing in recent weeks are suffocating. In the winter of 2013, the beaming city of the 2008 Summer Olympics has often looked like the setting for a film about the apocalypse. In early January, the air quality index for fine particle pollution rose to the absurd value of about 1,000 micrograms per cubic meter and, last Thursday, the value was above 500, or more than 20 times the level deemed safe by the World Health Organization (WHO).

For weeks, 600 million people have lived under a layer of smog that covers an area of 1.3 million square kilometers (about 500,000 square miles) and only disappears on occasional days. This is four times the area and more than seven times the population of Germany. Doctors are reporting a rise in respiratory illnesses. In coastal Zhejiang Province, a furniture factory burned down because the air was so thick with pollution that security guards didn't notice the smoke.

A Turning Point

This is what it smells and looks like in the country that is widely regarded as the economic miracle of the globalized world.

No political event or corruption scandal of the recent past has generated as much public attention as this winter's environmental crisis. Chinese bloggers are on a rampage, and even the most loyal government newspapers are examining every aspect of the crisis and attacking those responsible for conditions in China with unprecedented ferocity. The fury over toxic air, food and drinking water marks a political turning point.

On Tuesday, China's National People's Congress convened in Beijing. It is intended as a coronation ceremony of sorts for the new president and his premier -- Xi Jinping, 59, named head of the Communist Party in November, and economist Li Keqiang, 57.

The burden of their projects is overwhelming. The new leadership wants to transform China from a primarily agrarian and industrial country into a high-tech and service nation. At the same time, it intends to boost affluence and promote urbanization in order to come to grips with the country's wealth disparity and population growth. If they achieve all of these goals, Xi and Li will leave behind a different China.

The challenge and the need to break with the past are especially evident in environmental policy. About 750,000 people die as a result of air pollution in China each year. Many of the country's rivers are so polluted that authorities do not permit residents to even touch the water, not to mention use it to irrigate fields.

Fruit and grain grown in the country's contaminated and over-fertilized soil contains massive amounts of pollutants. They also unsettle consumers in the West, who now import a large share of their tomatoes, apples and other food products from China.

Xi and Li now seem to have recognized just how serious this problem is. For months, they have invoked China's "beautiful environment," a phrase Xi used in his inaugural speech in November. "We must act," says Li -- and he clearly means it. Indeed, China's environmental policy has developed into a question of national security -- not because the government is particularly farsighted, but because its power is on the line.

The success or failure of Beijing's new leadership will likely have a ripple effect well beyond China's borders. "If Xi's dream for China's emerging middle class -- 300 million people expected to grow to 800 million by 2025 -- is just like the American Dream (a big car, a big house and Big Macs for all) then we need another planet," New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote in October 2012.

Poisonous Policies

China has become the world's largest CO2 polluter, emitting close to 10 billion metric tons of the greenhouse gas each year. The environment crisis is no longer a Chinese tragedy; it's a global fiasco.

"I hope the day will come when all you can see from Tiananmen Gate is a forest of tall chimneys belching out clouds of smoke," Mao Zedong said in 1949, as he gazed out at Tiananmen Square. Mao subscribed to a simple image of humanity and nature and, as with everything in his life, he was ruthless in putting it into practice. Between 1958 and 1961, he had millions of small blast furnaces built to press ahead with Chinese steel production.

The project was accompanied by the "Four Pests Campaign," in which the Chinese -- from 5-year-olds to the elderly -- were told to destroy rats, mosquitoes, flies and sparrows, which were allegedly harming the young People's Republic by eating grain seeds.

To kill the birds, citizens kept flushing them out until they fell from the sky in exhaustion. But then people died, perhaps in even greater numbers. Some 30 to 45 million perished in a famine, which was partly triggered by insects that would otherwise have been consumed by sparrows.

Mao's successor, the reformer Deng Xiaoping, broke with China's planned economy. He gave the leaders of individual provinces the authority they needed to develop their regions on their own. But what proved to be a blessing for the economy became an assault on China's natural environment.

Deng's principle, which helped the country advance to become the world's second-largest economy, still pretty much applies today: growth at all costs. The provinces are so conditioned to constantly report new record figures to Beijing that a colossal discrepancy emerged last June. According to the National Bureau of Statistics of China, the country's carbon dioxide emissions amounted to 7.7 billion metric tons in 2010. But when researchers from the University of Leeds added together the figures reported by the provinces, they arrived at 9.1 billion tons. It still isn't clear which of the two figures is correct, but the difference alone is more than twice Germany's annual CO2 emissions.

A Massive Environmental Nightmare
The world may be wringing its hands, and it may be dawning on the leadership in polluted Beijing that it's time to change things. But, every day, the black monster out in the country's coal belt eats its way more deeply into a landscape that, in Inner Mongolia, already looks like the surface of the moon.

Bao Que, 27, drives his 40-ton truck back and forth between the Hainan opencast mines and the Xilaifeng coking plant eight to 10 times a day. It's a torture for him, his truck and the world around him, which stinks of sulfur and ammonia. "I've been doing this for two years," he says. "My contract runs out in a year and, by that time, the truck will be worn out. Besides, no one can stand it here any longer than that."

Excavators dig into the dusty heaps piled up along the edge of the kilometer-wide coal crater. Then they fill Bao's truck. The excavator operator is still pressing down the load by slapping it with a shovel as Bao starts to pull a tarp across his dump truck. In this business, every minute and every ton counts.

The trucks have dug thigh-high grooves into the earth. Another truck overturned while Bao was in the mine. The load, 45 tons of gravel, fell to one side while the fuel, 150 liters of diesel, leaked out on the other side, where it joined the bilious green brake fluid and seeped into the earth. "It was his own fault," says Bao. "The truck was three times overloaded. Mine? No more than twice."

There are probably few places on earth where nature is abused quite as much as it is in the northern Chinese coalfields. China covers 70 percent of its energy needs with coal, consuming about as much as all other countries combined. When there is a clear view, it's possible to make out the Yellow River while flying over Inner Mongolia -- a waterway that has been reduced to a trickle after being tapped by dozens of mines, power plants and factories for cement and chemicals. In a report entitled "Thirsty Coal," the environment organization Greenpeace warned of water scarcity and an environmental disaster along the course of the Yellow River.

A comparison between the opulent marble building that houses the state-owned Shenhua Group in Yinchuan and the environmental agency's office in a run-down neighborhood of Wuhai, 150 kilometers away, is all it takes to know who is going to determine what happens on the upper reaches of the Yellow River for the foreseeable future.

"Our base has access to a surplus of fresh water," Shenhua, the world's largest coal company, claims on its website. The group employs 211,000 people and operates 62 mines and power plants with a total capacity of almost 43 gigawatts.

"We have 140 employees," says Du Yuming, 47, the chief administrator of the environmental protection agency in Wuhai. The work in Wuhai isn't easy, he says, and the reason is obvious. "One out of five light bulbs in Beijing is lit with electricity that we produce up here."

Too Obvious to Ignore

Chinese society is on a monumental migration that is partly caused by the predatory exploitation of nature, but that also exacerbates it. About 500 million people, as much as the entire population of the European Union, have moved from rural areas to China's cities in the last 30 years. Another 300 million, or about the population of the United States, will follow them in the next 15 years. One could pose the question of whether other governments in the world would solve this problem more effectively than China's. However, a migration of such massive proportions has never happened before in the history of mankind.

At any rate, the environmental causes and consequences of this migration are catastrophic. "Our model of urbanization has failed and needs to be fundamentally overhauled," says He Jun, an economist with the Anbound Research Center in Beijing. He is one of the country's critical voices, but he also has the ear of Wang Qishan, one of the most influential men in the new leadership, next to Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang.

The core of the problem, He says, lies in the business model of almost all Chinese municipalities, cities and provinces: They derive their funding from taxes and, to a great extent, from the sale of land. "Because city bureaucrats profit from the sales, a large amount of land has been eaten up in the last 20 years," He says. And since the buyers of the parcels are in a hurry to recoup their investments, construction is occurring at a record pace -- while environmental regulations are ignored.

He doesn't believe that the Chinese are trying to evade responsibility for the price they are paying for decades of waste, says Ma Jun, 44, a leading environmental activist in China. Ma, who attended the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, was more optimistic about the future when he returned to smoggy Beijing than one would expect.

The smoggy winter of 2013, he says, has created something that is usually difficult to get in China: transparency. "Until now, the leadership's basic position was to conceal the consequences of environmental pollution," says Ma. But he notes that this is no longer possible "because the scope of the pollution has become so obvious that any attempt to deny it is pointless." The US Embassy in Beijing introduced hourly air-quality testing, which had a tremendous impact, says Ma. "Now it's time to name names when it comes to the country's biggest polluters."

Of course, that alone may not suffice because China's energy giants have a strong argument on their side: This winter is one of the coldest in decades. Paradoxically, this makes life more difficult for people in southern China than in the north. In the planned economy of the 1950s, China was divided into two heating zones. Communal heating systems were only installed in the regions north of the Huai River. As a result, hundreds of millions of people in the south must now provide their own heat -- with electric heaters, if they can afford them.

For years, citizens in China's south have pushed to be placed on equal footing with those in the north. But the shock of the current winter has weakened their arguments. How can they demand more energy consumption, say critics, when the strain on the environment is already almost unbearable today?

Global Blame

In recent weeks, Europeans and Americans have noted with horror how the Chinese are poisoning themselves. Don't the images from Beijing, they ask, reinforce the impression that China's leaders have made for years at international climate negotiations? An authoritarian country that walks over corpses for the sake of growth, and that arrogantly ignores the warnings coming from the West, where emissions have been declining for years?

The contradiction beneath this perception is obvious in Hong Kong, the outpost of the First World in China. The self-confident citizens of the former British crown colony have fought with their pro-Beijing leadership for years over air quality.

Kwong Sum-yin, 29, is sitting in the offices of the environmental organization Clean Air Network (CAN), under a humming air filter attached to the ceiling. She turns around her monitor and points out the most recent annual diagram of air-quality levels in the city. "Our numbers are miserable," she says. "The air in Hong Kong is three times as polluted as it is in New York, and twice as polluted as in London."

Many Hong Kong residents, says Gloria Chang of Greenpeace, are concerned about the clouds of pollution that blow over from the Pearl River Delta in China's heavily industrial Guangdong Province. This is understandable, she notes, but it is also questionable. "Since 1997, we have moved all of our heavy and textile industry to the mainland," she says. "It's obvious that we also bear some of the responsibility for the pollution from over there."

The position Western industrialized countries take toward China is similar to Hong Kong's attitudes about the Pearl River Delta. One of the reasons the carbon dioxide emissions of leading industrialized countries have declined in recent years is that a large share of polluting production has been outsourced elsewhere -- and much of it to China.

The size of this share is one of the most complex and controversial questions in climate economics. The answer isn't just important for China's government, but also for governments, producers and consumers in the United States and Europe.

A working paper from the University of Wollongong, in Australia, attracted attention in September. The authors estimate that more than a third of China's CO2 emissions in 2007 (the most recent year for which figures are available) could be attributed to exports. In their consumption-based model, the responsibility for each ton of carbon dioxide is shared by the country in which it is emitted and those countries in which the produced goods are consumed.

Glen Peters, of the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research - Oslo (CICERO), believes this number is too high. He and an international team of authors estimate the contribution of exports to China's carbon dioxide emissions in 2007 at no more than 25 percent. And owing to growing domestic demand, that figure may have declined since.

However, the West also benefits from this domestic demand, including German companies. China has become the most important market for German automakers, with Audi, BMW, Mercedes and Porsche selling almost a million cars there in 2012.

Many are being driven in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Hong Kong, contributing to the smog. Foreign cars are even more noticeable in industrial cities, such as Hainan, Xintang and Guiyu.

Trading Pollution for Prosperity

In Guiyu, Li Qiong, 51, is sitting in front of a small electric furnace on which she is heating discarded computer circuit boards. She works quickly. Using tongs, she removes the circuit boards from a basket to her left and places them on the hotplate. Then she waits until gray smoke is produced and the silvery solder melts. She removes the circuit board from the furnace, scratches off the bits of metal and tosses the still-smoking circuit board into a basket to her right. Li is paid by the unit and earns about 5,000 yuan, or roughly €600, a month. "I have two daughters," she says. "I support both of them while they attend the university."

A few buildings away, three men hoist laundry baskets full of chopped up bits of circuit boards from one drum of water to another. The pieces of plastic become cleaner as they are moved from one drum to the next. When the workers go home at sunset, they empty the drums into the canal in front of the building.

"Our city has become prosperous," says Ye Weitang, a 69-year-old farmer. "But we can no longer use the groundwater to irrigate the sugarcane fields." It doesn't matter, though, he says, because he now irrigates his fields with water from the tap, which comes from far away. He can afford it, he says.

Wealth and filth apparently go together.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

Source page: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/chinese-leaders-forced-to-counter-environmental-pollution-a-886901-druck.html

giovonni

8th March 2013, 22:13

Interview: Lee Kuan Yew on the Future of U.S.- China Relations

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Former Singapore Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew (LKY)

This is one of the best assessments I have read concerning the future of the U.S., China relationship. It describes what is possible, let us hope...

LEE KUAN YEW, Former Singapore Prime Minister - The Atlantic

In this book excerpt, one of Asia's greatest statesmen says competition is inevitable between China and the U.S., but conflict is not.

Few individuals have had as consequential a role in their nation's history as Lee Kuan Yew, the founding prime minister of Singapore. During Lee's three-decade long tenure in office, he helped transform Singapore from an impoverished British colony lacking natural resources into one of Asia's wealthiest and most developed countries.

Over the years, Lee has also become one of Asia's most prominent public intellectuals, one whose unique experience and perspective gives him tremendous insight into trends shaping the continent.

Related Story
Introducing The Atlantic's China Channel

In the following conversation, Lee trains his sights to the most prominent geopolitical issue of our time: the rise of China. Rather than attempt to thwart China's emergence as a global superpower, Lee argues, the United States ...

Read More - http://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/03/interview-lee-kuan-yew-on-the-future-of-us-china-relations/273657/

giovonni

8th March 2013, 22:19

Really ?

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Holder: Banks Too Big to Prosecute

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U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder

Finally, we get to the truth as to why the Obama Justice Department has been such a pusillanimous player, and why there has been virtually no accountability of the self-created financial crash that came to a head in 2008, and that we have been suffering with every since. This is one of Obama's great failures as a President, and its implications will haunt us for years.

NATASHA LENNARD, Assistant News Editor - Salon

Attorney General Eric Holder admitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that banks are simply too big to prosecute.

The Justice Department has not brought a single criminal conviction against a Wall Street executive four years after a financial crisis proven to have been precipitated by fraudulent behavior. On Wednesday, Holder admitted that the vast size of major banks and the structural integration in the economy makes criminal prosecutions basically impossible.

'I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if you do prosecute, if you do bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy,” Holder said, according to the Hill. 'And I think that is a function of the fact that some of ...

Read More - http://www.salon.com/2013/03/07/holder_banks_too_big_to_prosecute/

giovonni

11th March 2013, 06:46

Solar Batteries Could be Utilities' Next Headache

http://s1.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02&d=20130308&t=2&i=710781740&w=460&fh=&fw=&ll=&pl=&r=CBRE9270PLR00

This is good news, because it shows how noncarbon solar is developing into a new phase.

CHRISTOPH STEITZ and STEPHEN JEWKES - Reuters

FRANKFURT, GERMANY and MILAN, ITALY -- Renewable energy is constantly evolving and challenging traditional utilities but one growing sector could make home-generated power much easier to use and cut customers' dependence on energy companies dramatically - solar batteries.

A major conundrum with solar panels has always been how to keep the lights on when the sun isn't shining.

Solar batteries allow homes and businesses to store solar power to use in the hours of darkness and can also help to create "smart grids" that react to sudden power swings and free stored energy when needed.

The technology is still expensive and not widely used but with energy bills soaring for consumers, it could quickly gain market share and reduce dependence on utilities, which are already struggling with overcapacity and weak demand.

Italy has some of the highest power prices in Europe and is looking at how ...

Read More - http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/08/us-utiltiies-threat-batteries-idUSBRE92709O20130308

giovonni

15th March 2013, 23:36

Phoenix in the Climate Crosshairs: We Are Long Past Coal Mine Canaries http://truth-out.org/images/031413-7.jpg

This is a report on what is taking place in Pheonix, to my mind one of the bellweather cities in the Great Migrations trend: the population shifts out of the Southwest, because of heat and lack of water; and, away from the coasts, as a result of sea rise. This report gives an excellent assessment of what is happening, and what this process is like.

WILLIAM DEBUYS - truthout

If cities were stocks, you’d want to short Phoenix.

Of course, it’s an easy city to pick on. The nation’s 13th largest metropolitan area (nudging out Detroit) crams 4.3 million people into a low bowl in a hot desert, where horrific heat waves and windstorms visit it regularly. It snuggles next to the nation’s largest nuclear plant and, having exhausted local sources, it depends on an improbable infrastructure to suck water from the distant (and dwindling) Colorado River.

In Phoenix, you don’t ask: What could go wrong? You ask: What couldn’t?

And that’s the point, really. Phoenix’s multiple vulnerabilities, which are plenty daunting taken one by one, have the capacity to magnify one another, like compounding illnesses. In this regard, it’s a quintessentially modern city, a pyramid of complexities requiring large energy inputs to keep the whole apparatus humming. The urban disasters of our time -- New ...

Read More - http://truth-out.org/news/item/15126-phoenix-in-the-climate-crosshairs-we-are-long-past-coal-mine-canaries

giovonni

15th March 2013, 23:44

Researchers: House Dust Mites Evolving in Reverse

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/House-Dust-Mites-via-Wikipedia-Commons.jpg

Here is a powerful new insight into the processes of a physical organism's mutability.

ARTURO GARCIA - The Raw Story

Researchers at the University of Michigan said in a study published on Friday that house dust mites are living evidence against the popular theory that organisms cannot reverse their own evolutionary process.

“All our analyses conclusively demonstrated that house dust mites have abandoned a parasitic lifestyle, secondarily becoming free-living, and then speciated in several habitats, including human habitations,” said Pavel Klimov and Barry O’Connor in the study, published in the journal Systematic Biology.

According to Science Daily, Klimov and O’Connor’s research indicated that dust mites evolved from parasitic organisms known as skin mites, commonly found on livestock, cats and dogs. The skin mites are themselves descended from independent lifeforms millions of years ago.

The two biologists collected 700 mite species for their study, which used large-scale DNA sequencing, statistical analyses and reconstructed evolutionary trees to evaluate 62 different theories regarding dust mites’ origins.

Klimov said their findings were surprising, given that, according to Dollo’s law, evolution can only move forward over time. In the case of parasites, he said, they can often lose the ability to function independently as they become better-equipped to feed off of the resources available thru their host lifeforms.

“[Parasites] often experience degradation or loss of many genes because their functions are no longer required in a rich environment where hosts provide both living space and nutrients,” he said. “Many researchers in the field perceive such specialization as evolutionarily irreversible.”

According to Klimov and O’Connor’s study, dust mites were able to use some of their ancestors’ traits — increased weather tolerance and adaptability in seeking hosts, and the development of enzymes allowing them to eat more kinds of biological material — to gradually wean themselves off of living exclusively off any given host.
Source page: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/03/08/researchers-house-dust-mites-evolving-in-reverse/

giovonni

19th March 2013, 05:05

New Evidence: CIA and MI6 Were Told Before Invasion That Iraq had no Active WMD

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Bush_Blair_at_Whitehouse_2003-07-17-e1342527167640.jpg

Little by little the truth comes out about the war criminals that were leading the U.S. and the U.K. and the endless lies they told that resulted in both countries becoming embroiled in two wars, representing perhaps the worst geopolitical decisions in several centuries.

RICHARD NORTON-TAYLOR - The Guardian (U.K.)/Raw Story

Fresh evidence is revealed today about how MI6 and the CIA were told through secret channels by Saddam Hussein’s foreign minister and his head of intelligence that Iraq had no active weapons of mass destruction.

Tony Blair told parliament before the war that intelligence showed Iraq’s nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programme was 'active”, 'growing” and 'up and running”.

A special BBC Panorama programme tonight will reveal how British and US intelligence agencies were informed by top sources months before the invasion that Iraq had no active WMD programme, and that the information was not passed to subsequent inquiries.

It describes how Naji Sabri, Saddam’s foreign minister, told the CIA’s station chief in Paris at the time, Bill Murray, through an intermediary that Iraq had 'virtually nothing” in terms of WMD.

Sabri said in a statement that the Panorama story was 'totally fabricated”...

Read more - http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/03/18/new-evidence-cia-and-mi6-were-told-before-invasion-that-iraq-had-no-active-wmd/

post edit:

here's the documentary ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOsHLA1CMPI&feature=player_embedded

giovonni

20th March 2013, 01:19

Monarch Butterflies Drop Ominously in Mexico

It looks like we are now facing another crisis like the bee crisis. These are the canaries in the mine, and few seem to be interested. We don't seem to be able to develop the political will to do anything about these species wide failures, so we may soon follow them.

MARK STEVENSON - The Associated Press

MEXICO CITY -- The number of Monarch butterflies making it to their winter refuge in Mexico dropped 59 percent this year, falling to the lowest level since comparable record-keeping began 20 years ago, scientists reported Wednesday.

It was the third straight year of declines for the orange-and-black butterflies that migrate from the United States and Canada to spend the winter sheltering in mountaintop fir forests in central Mexico. Six of the last seven years have shown drops, and there are now only one-fifteenth as many butterflies as there were in 1997.

The decline in the Monarch population now marks a statistical long-term trend and can no longer be seen as a combination of yearly or seasonal events, the experts said.

But they differed on the possible causes.

Illegal logging in the reserve established in the Monarch wintering grounds was long thought to contribute, but such logging ...

Read More - http://www.usnews.com/science/news/articles/2013/03/14/monarch-butterflies-drop-ominously-in-mexico

giovonni

20th March 2013, 01:33

I don't think it is really clear to people how fragile the world economy is. I am in Paris right now to make a presentation at the Sorbonne -- which I did tonight -- and have been struck by how stressed people are about the Euro and the EU itself. This report gives a good assessment of the situation. If the Euro crashes the American economy will be deeply affected.

Europe’s Leaders Run Out of Credit in Cyprus

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GIDEON RACHMAN - Financial Times (U.K.)

European leaders must surely know that they are taking a big risk with Cyprus. The danger is obvious. Now that everybody with money in Cypriot banks is being forced to take a hit, nervous depositors elsewhere in Europe might notice that a dangerous precedent has been set. Rather than run even a small risk of an unwanted financial 'haircut” in the future, the customers of Greek, Spanish, Portuguese or Italian banks might choose to get their money out now. If that starts to happen, the euro crisis will be back on again – with a vengeance.

The people behind the Cyprus plan hope that the risks of contagion are small. They reckon that the Spanish banks are on the mend, and that Greece too has pulled back from the brink. There is no reason for depositors to draw lessons from the peculiar case of Cyprus, whose banks are stuffed with Russian money.

Maybe so. And yet EU leaders have got these kinds of calculations badly wrong before. At a summit in Deauville in September 2010, they announced that the holders of sovereign bonds in bailed-out countries would lose some of their money. The result was a severe worsening of the euro crisis, as investors began to demand much higher rates to lend to risky-seeming countries, such as Italy or Spain.

So why – after all the painstaking efforts to put euro-humpty back together again – have European leaders taken such a gamble in Cyprus? The answer is that they too are out of credit – political credit.

This credit shortfall takes different forms in northern and southern Europe. For leaders of nations such as Germany, the Netherlands and Finland, there was a sense that their voters and parliaments just would not approve another bailout – unless heavy penalties were attached.

Cyprus is a small place, and so the amounts of money needed to shore the country up are relatively small – “just” €17bn. The problem is that Cyprus is also a particularly clear-cut example of the fundamental deficit in trust between northern and southern Europeans. Ever since the crisis began, the German media has been full of stories of southern corruption. German voters have been encouraged to believe that their hard-earned money is going to shore up fundamentally rotten countries.

Cyprus is a particularly big problem because its banks have a well-earned reputation for being a haven for dirty money from Russia. The amount being “round-tripped” through Cyprus – as it goes in and out of Russia – does suggest that the Cypriot banking laundry has been spinning wildly. Hitting depositors with more than €100,000 looks like an effective way to target illicit Russian money. The baffling and dangerous decision also to tax small depositors shows the extent to which sympathy has run out – even for the “little guy” in southern Europe.

In theory, Angela Merkel, German chancellor, and other European leaders could have told their voters that they had to bite the bullet – and bail out Cyprus, without demanding a price – because the alternative is risking a European bank-run that eventually leads to bank failures back home. But the likely reaction would have been even more voter anger and incomprehension.

Cyprus’s rulers also had very little political credit left in the rest of Europe. Many EU leaders had been deeply reluctant to admit Cyprus into the union in 2004, without a peace settlement that reunified the island. But Greece had threatened to veto the entire enlargement of the EU – blocking Poland, the Czech Republic and the rest – unless Cyprus was admitted. Reluctantly, EU leaders succumbed to this act of blackmail. But the whole episode left a bitter taste, particularly when Greek Cypriot voters rejected the Annan peace plan. As a result, when Cyprus ran into trouble the well of sympathy was fairly shallow.

The bigger problem remains, however, the gap in trust and political cultures between northern and southern Europe. Back before the crisis, when things were going well, it was considered politically incorrect, even xenophobic, to suggest that standards of probity in public life vary widely across Europe and that this is a problem for an organisation dedicated to “ever closer union”.

Now, however, it is apparent that this lack of convergence in trust and political culture is at least as important as a lack of economic convergence. It is also true that the Germans, the Dutch and the Scandinavians have their own problems with corruption in public life, and that the caricature of the whole of southern Europe as corrupt and lazy is grossly unfair.

And yet it is a fact that tax-evasion is rife in countries such as Greece and Italy. That has always made it hard to persuade northern voters to bail out the south.

Even casual observation confirms that attitudes to public money vary widely. A couple of years ago, I was invited to a meeting of all Dutch ambassadors from around the world. Lunch was a not terribly appetising array of sandwiches and crisps, eaten standing up. I suspected that, even though the public finances of Italy or Greece were in worse shape, their ambassadors were eating better.

It is a trivial anecdote. But it is the kind of cultural difference that explains why the northern Europeans have now said “basta”, when it comes to the Cypriot banks.

Unless Europe can create a real convergence in standards in public life, then the resulting gap in trust could ultimately break up first the euro – and the EU itself.

gideon.rachman@ft.com

Source: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/cd6ad842-8fc0-11e2-ae9e-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2O2TTWxF2

giovonni

21st March 2013, 14:56

The Last Letter: A Message to George Bush and Dick Cheney From a Dying Veteran

Here is the truth the American corporate media will not speak.

TOMAS YOUNG - Truthdig

To: George W. Bush and Dick Cheney
From: Tomas Young

I write this letter on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War on behalf of my fellow Iraq War veterans. I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq. I write this letter on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been wounded and on behalf of those whose wounds, physical and psychological, have destroyed their lives. I am one of those gravely wounded. I was paralyzed in an insurgent ambush in 2004 in Sadr City. My life is coming to an end. I am living under hospice care.

I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives who have lost spouses, on behalf of children who have lost a parent, on behalf of the fathers and mothers who have lost sons and daughters and on behalf ...

Read More - http://www.truthdig.com/dig/item/the_last_letter_20130318/

giovonni

22nd March 2013, 21:20

Solar Power to Hit Cost Parity Next Year

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Here is some very good news on the noncarbon energy transition trend. But it is also a cautionary story. Reading it I kept thinking: How much quicker could we have gotten to this point if old carbon energy corporate interests had not blocked the development of alternatives wherever they could.

RP SIEGEL - Triple Pundit

They said it couldn’t be done. They tried to tell us that renewable energy could only survive if it were propped up with government subsidies. Never mind that our whole system of economic development, beginning with the patent office, is predicated on the idea that fledgling, underfunded industries need special protection for a limited time until they are strong enough to go it alone. Never mind that the fossil fuel industry, which can hardly be considered fledgling or underfunded, is still receiving billions in taxpayer subsidies.

But like the little engine that could, or the middle aged rock star that, after twenty years of struggling in sleazy dives has suddenly become an overnight sensation, solar power, having now surpassed the 100 GW threshold, has finally arrived and is good to go, in many places, without subsidies.

True, almost a third of that is in Germany, where the government ...

Read More - http://www.triplepundit.com/2013/03/solar-power-hit-cost-parity-next-year/

giovonni

22nd March 2013, 21:33

these two items kind of go hand and hand ...

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Human Stupidity Is Destroying the World

http://www.alternet.org/files/styles/story_image/public/images/managed/media_dumbelstephen.jpg

Here is why movements like the Tea Baggers, the modern version of the Know Nothings who plagued America in the 19th century, prosper. Willful Ignorance is like a dark cloud spreading across the nation. This essay is too polemic, but the points it makes are sound.

MARK MORFORD - AlterNet (U.S.)/San Francisco Chronicle

Six percent of Americans believe in unicorns. Thirty-six percent believe in UFOs. A whopping 24 percent believe dinosaurs and man hung out together. Eighteen percent still believe the sun revolves around the Earth. Nearly 30 percent believe cloud computing involves… actual clouds. A shockingly sad 18 percent, to this very day, believe the president is a Muslim. Aren’t they cute? And Floridian?

Do you believe in angels? Forty-five percent of Americans do. In fact, roughly 48 percent – Republicans and Democrats alike – believe in some form of creationism. A hilariously large percent of terrified right-wingers are convinced Obama is soon going to take away all their guns, so when the Newtown shooting happened and 20 young children were massacred due to America’s fetish for, obsession with and addiction to firearms, violence and fear, they bought more bullets. Because obviously.

In sum and all averaged out, it’s safe ...

Read More - http://www.alternet.org/education/human-stupidity-destroying-world?akid=10215.267705.8uDI8y&rd=1&src=newsletter812563&t=5&paging=off

Also ~

Chinese Eugenics Factory Collects 'Genius” DNA To Breed 'Enhanced” People

This is the latest in the Homo Superiorus Trend. I predict this is going to become a major issue very quickly.

JURRIAAN MAESSEN - Blacklisted News

According to a leading evolutionary biologist, the Chinese are engaging in a massive breeding operation with the aim of ultimately creating a breed of cognitively enhanced individuals. And what’s more, the China-based eugenics factory recently bought up a large genome research institute in the United States, giving the Chinese access to the DNA of Americans.

In a recent interview with Vice magazine, evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller admits to have donated his DNA to an endeavor headed up by the world’s largest genetic research institution based in China’s Shenzhen province. Miller, by his own admission, is one of 2000 'brainiacs” selected by IBG Shenzhen for their transhumanist project. Asked how the company goes after potential DNA-contributors, Miller answers:

'They seem mostly interested in people of Chinese and European descent. They’re basically recruiting through a scientific conference, through word of mouth. You have to provide some evidence that you’re as ...

Read More - http://www.blacklistednews.com/Chinese_Eugenics_Factory_Collects_%E2%80%9CGenius%E2%80%9D_DNA_To_Breed_%E2%80%9CEnhanced%E2%80%9D_P eople/24851/0/0/0/Y/M.html

giovonni

24th March 2013, 22:06

Scientists Find Visions of a Benevolent Future Society Motivate Reform

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/happywomanflowers-shutterstock.jpg

This is a study which should be read, and acted upon, by all politicians. People, not surprisingly, want things to get better.

The actual study is to be found at: http://psp.sagepub.com/content/39/4/523.abstract

ERIC W. DOLAN - The Raw Story

Activists, take note: People support reform if they believe the changes will enhance the future character of society, according to a study published online this month in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Namely, people support a future society that fosters the development of warm and moral individuals.

'There are implications for communication, but also for policies themselves. The ‘easy’ answer would be to promote a policy or cause in terms of how it will make people more warm/moral,” Paul G. Bain of the University of Queensland, the lead author of the study, explained to Raw Story via email. 'But I think for this to really work it needs to be authentic/real and not just rhetoric – the policies themselves need to promote this.”

Bain, alon g with four colleagues, sought to explore Noam Chomsky’s dictum that 'social action must be animated by a vision of a future society” ...

Read More - http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/03/21/scientists-find-visions-of-a-benevolent-future-society-motivate-reform/

giovonni

25th March 2013, 14:11

Science Fiction Comes Alive as Researchers Grow Organs in Lab http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-WU602_bodypa_D_20130322155017.jpg

This is excellent news. I have been covering this trend for about eight years now, and am heartened by its growing success. This trend will eliminate the rejection issues transplant patients now face, and will allow people who are profoundly disfigured, or who would otherwise die, to survive. It will also eliminate the grey world of body parts suppliers.

GAUTAM NAIK - Wall Street Journal

MADRID -- Reaching into a stainless steel tray, Francisco Fernandez-Aviles lifted up a gray, rubbery mass the size of a fat fist.

It was a human cadaver heart that had been bathed in industrial detergents until its original cells had been washed away and all that was left was what scientists call the scaffold.

Next, said Dr. Aviles, "We need to make the heart come alive."

Inside a warren of rooms buried in the basement of Gregorio Marañón hospital here, Dr. Aviles and his team are at the sharpest edge of the bioengineering revolution that has turned the science-fiction dream of building replacement parts for the human body into a reality.

Since a laboratory in North Carolina made a bladder in 1996, scientists have built increasingly more complex organs. There have been five windpipe replacements so far. A London researcher, Alex Seifalian, has transplanted lab-grown tear ...

Read More - http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323699704578328251335196648.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLE_Video_Top

giovonni

26th March 2013, 15:06

Chicago Now Home to Nation’s Largest Vertical Farm

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Man-works-at-vertical-farm-screenshot.jpg

This is some wonderful good news; it offers an alternative to the chemical and poison driven agriculture model that dominates our world now. It also offers an answer to the vast youth unemployment problem we have in our inner cities, as well as eliminating a great deal of pollution arising from trucking food across the country. It is not an entire solution to the poison model, of course, but it could go a long way towards ameliorating the toxic web in which we are now trapped.

The article has one major flaw: it's assessment of costs, does not include any of what I have mentioned above and, therefore should be disregarded as a criticism.

Click through and look at the video, and listen to these young people talk about what they are doing.

ERIC W. DOLAN - The Raw Story

An formerly abandoned warehouse in Chicago is now home to the nation’s largest hydroponic vertical farm.

FarmedHere LLC opened the 90,000-square-foot farm in Bedford Park on Friday. The facility utilizes aquaponics, a sustainable system that combines raising fish with growing soil-free plants.

'The tilapia fertilize our plants. Their primary job is eat, produce waste. The plants are able to soak it up. The plants clean the water for the fish and it comes back to the tanks,” one worker, Max Gonzales, explained to WGN.

The vertical farm is expected to produce more than 1 million pounds of basil, arugula and mixed greens. Thanks to a partnership with Windy City Harvest, an urban agriculture training program, the unique farm is also expected to create 200 jobs for young adults in Chicago.

FarmedHere has opened two other vertical farms in southern Chicago and central Illinois. Produce from those ...

Read More - http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/03/24/chicago-now-home-to-nations-largest-vertical-farm/

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on a related note ...

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The Drought That Ravaged US Crops Is Only Going to Get Worse

http://mjcdn.motherjones.com/preset_51/corn-drought-630.jpg

In this report we see the convergence of two major trends: Water as destiny, and climate change. This is also another argument for the today's lead story, and why the new urban farming model should be pursued.

SUZANNE GOLDENBERG - Mother Jones

The historic drought that laid waste to America's grain and corn belt is unlikely to ease before the middle of this year, a government forecast warned on Thursday.

The annual spring outlook from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicted hotter, drier conditions across much of the US, including parts of Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas, where farmers have been fighting to hang on to crops of winter wheat.

The three-month forecast noted an additional hazard, however, for the midwest: with heavy, late snows setting up conditions for flooding along the Red and Souris rivers in North Dakota.

"It's a mixed bag of flooding, drought and warm weather," Laura Furgione, the deputy director of NOAA's weather service told a conference call with reporters.

Last year produced the hottest year since record keeping began more than a century ago, with several weeks in a row of 100+degree ...

Read More - http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/03/drought-ravage-us-crops-going-get-worse

giovonni

28th March 2013, 01:18

With the most recent banking crisis in Cyprus ...
This new and controversial futuristic monetary system is back in the news ...

***********

Have You Heard of Bitcoin ? http://www.truthdig.com/images/eartothegrounduploads/8337050500_5914114248.jpg

This is a fascinating new trend that you may already know about. If not you might find it worthwhile to explore it. The implications are profound ...

Click through to see the video.

ALEXANDER REED KELLY - Truthdig

It’s a virtual currency that travels beyond the reach of banks and centralized regulatory institutions and allows you to transfer money to anyone with an Internet connection, anywhere at any time.

'Bitcoin is to banks what email was to postal offices,” says Mihai Alisie, editor of Bitcoin Magazine. 'Instead of going through a bank, respecting their schedule, paying their fees, I can transfer money to Ethiopia, India or China without anyone knowing who’s behind address B and address A.” It is currently being used, for example, to surmount the funding block on WikiLeaks, in which American and European credit card companies have cooperated with government requests to prevent any money from being donated to the whistle-blowing organization.

In the introductory video by The Guardian below, Alisie and Bitcoin developer, Amir Taaki, can be seen in hooded sweatshirts and beanies, walking the brightly lit halls of the deserted London ...

Read More - http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/have_you_heard_of_bitcoin_20130323/

giovonni

28th March 2013, 16:10

Solar Cell Power Breakthrough

Here is what may turn out to be very important news for solar energy. I am always struck by what might have happened if the political will to quickly make the transition out of carbon energy had been mustered.

University of Copenhagen - Niels Bohr Institute

Scientists from the Nano-Science Center at the Niels Bohr Institut, Denmark and the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland, have shown that a single nanowire can concentrate the sunlight up to 15 times of the normal sun light intensity. The results are surprising and the potential for developing a new type of highly efficient solar cells is great.

Due to some unique physical light absorption properties of nanowires, the limit of how much energy we can utilize from the sun's rays is higher than previous believed. These results demonstrate the great potential of development of nanowire-based solar cells, says PhD Peter Krogstrup on the surprising discovery that is described in the journal Nature Photonics.

The research groups have during recent years studied how to develop and improve the quality of the nanowire crystals, which is a cylindrical structure with a diameter of about 10,000 part of a human ...

Read More - http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/45761

giovonni

28th March 2013, 16:14

'Monsanto Protection Act' Slips Silently Through US Congress

http://rt.com/files/news/1e/79/e0/00/monsanto-congress-silently-slips.si.jpg

The best law money can buy. And you aren't even going to be able to seek redress when your health is damaged.

RT (Russia)

The US House of Representatives quietly passed a last-minute addition to the Agricultural Appropriations Bill for 2013 last week - including a provision protecting genetically modified seeds from litigation in the face of health risks.

The rider, which is officially known as the Farmer Assurance Provision, has been derided by opponents of biotech lobbying as the 'Monsanto Protection Act,” as it would strip federal courts of the authority to immediately halt the planting and sale of genetically modified (GMO) seed crop regardless of any consumer health concerns.

The provision, also decried as a 'biotech rider,” should have gone through the Agricultural or Judiciary Committees for review. Instead, no hearings were held, and the piece was evidently unknown to most Democrats (who hold the majority in the Senate) prior to its approval as part of HR 993, the short-term funding bill that was approved to avoid a federal government ...

Read More - http://rt.com/usa/monsanto-congress-silently-slips-830/

giovonni

30th March 2013, 06:14

Moms Serve Up Solid Food Too Soon, Study Finds

http://a.abcnews.com/images/Health/gty_baby_solid_food_jef_130325_wg.jpg

If you know someone with a small baby you might pass this along.

KATHLEEN STRUCK - ABC News

Many mothers in the U.S. start infants on solid foods -- including peanut butter, meat, and french fries -- earlier than experts recommend, and half of them do so with their doctor's support, according to new research from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The study found that 40.4 percent of U.S. mothers interviewed from 2005 to 2007 said they introduced solid foods to infants before they were 4 months old -- that represents an increase of about 29 percent from earlier studies, the researchers reported today in the journal Pediatrics.

More than half of the mothers (55 percent) cited a doctor's advice as one of the reasons for introducing solids before 4 months.

"With multiple sources of information on infant feeding and care from healthcare providers, family, friends, and media, specific information on the timing of solid food introduction may be conflicting and ...

Read More - http://abcnews.go.com/Health/moms-serve-solid-food-study-finds/story?id=18807666#.UVCTaUQj_Oc

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Also ~ on the food nourishment topic ...

Walmart's Death Grip on Groceries Is Making Life Worse for Millions of People (Hard Times USA)

http://www.alternet.org/files/styles/story_image/public/story_images/walmart.jpg

Once again, corporate profit trumps all other considerations, and national wellness is hardly considered.

STACY MITCHELL - AlterNet (U.S.)

This article was published in partnership with the Institute for Local Self-Reliance [3].

When Michelle Obama visited a Walmart in Springfield, Missouri, a few weeks ago to praise the company's efforts to sell healthier food, she did not say why she chose a store in Springfield of all cities. But, in ways that Obama surely did not intend, it was a fitting choice. This Midwestern city provides a chilling look at where Walmart wants to take our food system.

Springfield is one of nearly 40 metro areas where Walmart now captures about half or more of consumer spending on groceries, according to Metro Market Studies. Springfield area residents spend just over $1 billion on groceries each year, and one of every two of those dollars flows into a Walmart cash register. The chain has 20 stores in the area and shows no signs of slowing ...

Read More - http://www.alternet.org/food/walmarts-death-grip-groceries-making-life-worse-millions-people-hard-times-usa?akid=10246.267705.HTPH0Y&rd=1&src=newsletter815950&t=3

giovonni

2nd April 2013, 08:01

Expression of Emotion in Books Declined During 20th Century, Study Finds

This is an intriguing study. It is not quite clear what to make of it, but it may suggest that our ability to express emotion is declining as technology increases, and allows us to live our lives at arm's length, as it were.

HANNAH JOHNSON - University of Bristol (U.K.)

The use of words with emotional content in books has steadily decreased throughout the last century, according to new research from the Universities of Bristol, Sheffield, and Durham. The study, published today in PLOS ONE, also found a divergence between American and British English, with the former being more 'emotional' than the latter.

The researchers looked at how frequently 'mood' words were used through time in a database of more than five million digitised books provided by Google. The list of words was divided into six categories (anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, surprise) previously used by one of the researchers, Dr Vasileios Lampos, to detect contemporary mood changes in public opinion as expressed in tweets collected in the UK over more than two years.

Dr Alberto Acerbi, a Newton Fellow in the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Bristol and lead author of the paper, said: "We thought that it would be interesting to apply the same methodology to different media and, especially, on a larger time scale. We were initially surprised to see how well periods of positive and negative moods correlated with historical events. The Second World War, for example, is marked by a distinct increase in words related to sadness, and a correspondent decrease in words related to joy."

In applying this technique, the researchers made some remarkable discoveries about the evolution of word usage in English books over the past century. Firstly, the emotional content of published English has been steadily decreasing over the past century, with the exception of words associated with fear, an emotion which has resurged over the past decades.

They also found that American English and British English have undergone a distinct stylistic divergence since the 1960s. American English has become decidedly more 'emotional' than British English in the last half-century.

The same divergence was also found in the use of content-free words, that is words which carry little or no meaning on their own, such as conjunctions ('and', 'but') and articles ('the').

Dr Acerbi said: "This is particularly fascinating because it has recently been shown that differences in usage of content-free words are a signature of different stylistic periods in the history of western literature."

This suggests that the divergence in emotional content between the two forms of English is paired by a more general stylistic divergence.

Co-author Professor Alex Bentley said: "We don't know exactly what happened in the Sixties but our results show that this is the precise moment in which literary American and British English started to diverge. We can only speculate whether this was connected, for example, to the baby-boom or to the rising of counterculture.

"In the USA, baby boomers grew up in the greatest period of economic prosperity of the century, whereas the British baby boomers grew up in a post-war recovery period so perhaps 'emotionalism' was a luxury of economic growth."

While the trends found in this study are very clear, their interpretation is still open. A remaining question, the authors say, is whether word usage represents real behaviour in a population, or possibly an absence of that behaviour which is increasingly played out via literary fiction. Books may not reflect the real population any more than catwalk models reflect the average body.

Dr Acerbi concluded: "Today we have tools that are revolutionising our understanding of human culture and of how it changes through time. Interdisciplinary studies such as this can detect clear patterns by looking at an unprecedented amount of data, such as tweets, Google trends, blogs, or, in our case, digitised books, that are freely available to everyone interested in them."

Source page: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-03/uob-eoe031913.php

giovonni

2nd April 2013, 08:04

Why Is Socialism Doing So Darn Well in Deep-Red North Dakota ? http://www.alternet.org/files/styles/story_image/public/story_images/shutterstock_27102379.jpg

Here is how banking could operate if we had the political will to make Obama put people first, and to elect a Congress that would face down the too-big-to-fail Wall Street financial institutions.

LES LEOPOLD - AlterNet (U.S.)

North Dakota is the very definition of a red state. It voted 58 percent to 39 percent for Romney over Obama, and its statehouse and senate have a total of 104 Republicans and only 47 Democrats. The Republican super-majority is so conservative it recently passed the nation's most severe anti-abortion resolution [3] – a measure that declares a fertilized human egg has the same right to life as a fully formed person.

But North Dakota is also red in another sense: it fully supports its state-owned Bank of North Dakota (BND), a socialist relic that exists nowhere else in America. Why is financial socialism still alive in North Dakota? Why haven't the North Dakotan free-market crusaders slain it dead?

Because it works.

In 1919, the Non-Partisan League, a vibrant populist organization, won a majority in the legislature and voted the bank into existence. The goal was to ...

Read More - http://www.alternet.org/corporate-accountability-and-workplace/why-socialism-doing-so-darn-well-deep-red-north-dakota?paging=off

giovonni

3rd April 2013, 14:49

will share these two related news items ...

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State-Wrecked: The Corruption of Capitalism in America

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/opinion/sunday/sundown-in-america.html?pagewanted=all&_r=2&

While I do not entirely agree with this assessment, for instance, Norway with a Keynesian economy has done very well through the last decade, on the whole I think it is an accurate and scary report on our current situation, particularly his comments on the vampire capitalism that is destroying our country in favor of the uber-rich.

David A. Stockman is a former Republican congressman from Michigan, President Ronald Reagan’s budget director from 1981 to 1985 and the author, most recently, of 'The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America.”

DAVID A. STOCKMAN - The New York Times

GREENWICH, CONNECTICUT -- The Dow Jones and Standard & Poor’s 500 indexes reached record highs on Thursday, having completely erased the losses since the stock market’s last peak, in 2007. But instead of cheering, we should be very afraid.

Over the last 13 years, the stock market has twice crashed and touched off a recession: American households lost $5 trillion in the 2000 dot-com bust and more than $7 trillion in the 2007 housing crash. Sooner or later - within a few years, I predict - this latest Wall Street bubble, inflated by an egregious flood of phony money from the Federal Reserve rather than real economic gains, will explode, too.

Since the S.&P. 500 first reached its current level, in March 2000, the mad money printers at the Federal Reserve have expanded their balance sheet sixfold (to $3.2 trillion from $500 billion). Yet during that stretch, economic ...

Read More - http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/opinion/sunday/sundown-in-america.html?pagewanted=all&_r=2&

Related ...

David Stockman On ‘The Great Deformation’ and Our Economic Doom

This interview when read as an accompaniment to the lead story in today's edition provides additional insight that helps understanding of Stockman's premises.

Taken together they suggest that very difficult times are coming.

DANIEL GROSS - The Daily Beast

Most 742-page jeremiads aren’t much fun to read. But The Great Deformation, David Stockman’s revisionist history of the past 100 years of capitalism American-style, is a spirited, occasionally gleeful, skewering of many of our most widely held assumptions and most lionized figures. A former divinity student, Stockman chronicles what he views as the moral rot in the American financial system-one fueled by easy money, profligate debt, and needless government intervention. To a degree, this book is autobiographical. As a congressman, Reagan-era budget official, and private equity executive, Stockman has lived through the booms and busts of the past half-century. He knows the world of which he writes from the inside out. And in The Great Deformation, few escape his opprobrium-current and past policymakers, Roosevelt and Reagan, Democrats and Republicans, leveraged buyout titans, and corporate CEOs. 'Sundown now comes to America because sound money, free markets, and fiscal rectitude have no ...

Read More - http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/04/01/david-stockman-on-the-great-deformation-and-our-economic-doom.html

giovonni

5th April 2013, 15:12

http://static.indianexpress.com/m-images/Mon%20Apr%2001%202013,%2020:43%20hrs/M_Id_371850_bikes.jpg

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Saudi Religious Police Lift Ban on Women on Bikes

It is hard to credit that this story could be true, but sadly it is. This is what happens when a nation allows religion and the state to become intertwined, and religious beliefs determine social policy. We should take it as a cautionary tale of the American Theocratic Right

ABDULLAH SHIHRI - The News Tribune/The Associated Press

RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA -- A Saudi newspaper says the kingdom's religious police are now allowing women to ride motorbikes and bicycles but only in restricted, recreational areas.

The Al-Yawm daily on Monday cited an unnamed official from the powerful religious police as saying women can ride bikes in parks and recreational areas but they have to be accompanied by a male relative and dressed in the full Islamic head-to-toe abaya.

Saudi Arabia follows an ultraconservative interpretation of Islam and bans women from driving. Women are also banned from riding motorcycles or bicycles in public places. The newspaper didn't say what triggered the lifting of the ban.

The official says women may not use the bikes for transportation but "only for entertainment" and that they should shun places where young men gather "to avoid harassment." ...

Read More - http://www.thenewstribune.com/2013/04/01/2538149/saudi-religious-police-lift-ban.html

giovonni

5th April 2013, 15:27

Breakthrough in Hydrogen Fuel Production Could Revolutionize Alternative Energy Market

http://images.sciencedaily.com/2013/04/130403104104.jpg

Here is some potentially excellent news about hydrogen energy. Once again I am reminded that if we had made alternatives to gasoline and diesel a priority we might have gotten to this point a decade or more ago. Because there is a big chance for profit with this new technology so, perhaps, we can muster the political will to do what needs to be done now.

Science Daily

A team of Virginia Tech researchers has discovered a way to extract large quantities of hydrogen from any plant, a breakthrough that has the potential to bring a low-cost, environmentally friendly fuel source to the world.

"Our new process could help end our dependence on fossil fuels," said Y.H. Percival Zhang, an associate professor of biological systems engineering in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the College of Engineering. "Hydrogen is one of the most important biofuels of the future."

Zhang and his team have succeeded in using xylose, the most abundant simple plant sugar, to produce a large quantity of hydrogen that previously was attainable only in theory. Zhang's method can be performed using any source of biomass.

The discovery is a featured editor's choice in an online version of the chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie, International Edition.

This new environmentally friendly method of ...

Read More http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130403104104.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Fe

giovonni

6th April 2013, 21:24

Scientists Use 3D Printer to Make Tissue-like Material http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/media/ALeqM5hJuAnmCQTUkBV1RcMPYV6z8dAadQ?docId=photo_1365110195905-1-0&size=s3

More on 3-D printing. This trend is developing with astonishing rapidity, particularly in the medical field.

Agence France-Presse (France)

WASHINGTON -- British scientists have used a custom-made 3D printer to make living tissue-like material that could one day serve medical purposes, according to findings released Thursday.

The material is made up of thousands of connected water droplets, encapsulated within lipid films, that can carry out some of the functions of human cells.

These "droplet networks" could be the building blocks of a new technology used to pass on drugs and, down the road, could even replace damaged tissue, said a statement from Oxford University, where the scientists are based. Their findings were published in Friday's issue of the US journal Science.

Since the so-called droplet networks are completely synthetic, don't have a genome and and don't replicate, they lack the problems linked with other methods of creating artificial tissues -- such as those using stem cells.

"We aren't trying to make materials that faithfully resemble ...

Read More - http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hYK0AHUUh6o3zT8dDJaOU1RmFXbA?docId=CNG.f91c05e7b5fe59fceabed6a2830042f3.371

Chakra

7th April 2013, 02:22

[QUOTE=giovonni;651077]Monarch Butterflies Drop Ominously in Mexico

Just wanted to add that it has been known now for over 14 years that it is the GMO corn pollen has been one of the biggest issues that are killing Butterflies, in the USA but hey lets blame Mexico lol

Toxic pollen from widely planted, genetically modified corn can kill monarch butterflies, Cornell study shows
HOLD FOR EMBARGO: WEDNESDAY, MAY 19, 1999, 2 P.M., EDT

Contact: Blaine P. Friedlander, Jr.
Office: (607) 255-3290
E-Mail: bpf2@cornell.edu

"Monarch caterpillars on a milkweed leaf dusted with pollen Photo by Kent Loeffler A higher-resolution copy of this photo (1500 x 2100 pixels, 1.5MB) is available here.
ITHACA, N.Y. -- An increasingly popular commercial corn, genetically engineered to produce a bacterial toxin to protect against corn pests, has an unwanted side effect: Its pollen kills monarch butterfly larvae in laboratory tests, according to a report by Cornell University researchers.

Writing in the latest issue (May 20) of the journal Nature, the Cornell researchers note that this hybrid crop, known as Bt-corn, has genes from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) spliced into the plant genes. These hybrids are very effective against the ravenous European corn borer, a major corn pest that is destroyed by the plant's toxic tissue. The engineered corn is safe for human consumption.

Unlike many pesticides, the Bt-corn has been shown to have no effect on many "nontarget" organisms -- pollinators such as honeybees or beneficial predators of pests like ladybugs. But the Bt-modified corn produces pollen containing crystalline endotoxin from the bacterium genes. When this corn pollen is dispersed by the wind, it lands on other plants, including milkweed, the exclusive food of monarch caterpillars and commonly found around cornfields.

Says John E. Losey, Cornell assistant professor of entomology and the primary investigator on the study: "We need to look at the big picture here. Pollen from Bt-corn could represent a serious risk to populations of monarchs and other butterflies, but we can't predict how serious the risk is until we have a lot more data. And we can't forget that Bt-corn and other transgenic crops have a huge potential for reducing pesticide use and increasing yields. This study is just the first step, we need to do more research and then objectively weigh the risks versus the benefits of this new technology."

Like all grasses, corn is wind-pollinated, and the pollen can be blown more than 60 yards from the edge of cornfields. "Pollen is that yellow dusting your car gets on spring and summer days; pollen is everywhere," explains Losey. "That's why we are concerned about this problem."

Other researchers on the study were Linda S. Rayor, Cornell instructor in entomology, and Maureen E. Carter, Cornell research aide.

"Monarchs are considered to be a flagship species for conservation. This is a warning bell," says Rayor. "Monarchs themselves are not an endangered species right now, but as their habitat is disrupted or destroyed, their migratory phenomena is becoming endangered."

In the laboratory tests, monarchs fed milkweed leaves dusted with so-called transformed pollen from a Bt-corn hybrid ate less, grew more slowly and suffered a higher mortality rate, the researchers report. Nearly half of these larvae died, while all of the monarch caterpillars fed leaves dusted with nontransformed corn pollen or fed leaves without corn pollen survived the study.

The toxin in the transformed pollen, the researchers say, goes into the gut of the caterpillar, where it binds to specific sites. When the toxin binds, the gut wall changes from a protective layer to an open sieve so that pathogens usually kept within the gut and excreted are released into the insect's body. As a result, the caterpillar quickly sickens and dies.

Bt-engineered corn is among the first major commercial successes for agricultural biotechnology. Last year, more than 7 million acres of the hybrid crop were planted by U.S. farmers primarily to control the European corn borer. Before the advent of Bt-corn, this pest was extremely difficult to control because it bores into the stalk, where it is protected from pesticides. It produces several generations a year. Because it was so difficult to control effectively with pesticides, annual losses averaged $1.2 billion. In contrast,Bt-corn provides essentially total season-long control at a reasonable cost without the use of pesticides. At least 18 different Bt-engineered crops have been approved for field testing in the United States. As of last year, transformed corn, potatoes and cotton had been approved by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for commercial use.

Several factors make monarch caterpillars particularly likely to make contact with corn pollen, Losey says. Monarch larvae feed exclusively on milkweed because it provides protection against predators. The plant contains cardenolides, which are toxic, bitter chemicals that the monarch caterpillar incorporates into its body tissues, rendering it unpalatable to predators. Milkweed grows best in "disturbed" habitats, like the edges of cornfields, Losey notes.

The butterflies overwinter in Mexico and by the spring begin migrating north. The first generation of the year crosses into Texas, other Gulf Coast states and Florida, seeking milkweed on which to lay their eggs and feed. By late May or early June, the second generation of adults has emerged and heads north to areas including the Midwest Corn Belt. Monarch caterpillars are feeding on milkweed during the period when corn is shedding pollen, Losey says. Thus "they may be in the right place at the right time to be exposed to Bt-corn pollen."

-30- http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:kUQcUMJ0r_oJ:www.news.cornell.edu/releases/May99/Butterflies.bpf.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca&client=firefox-a

giovonni

7th April 2013, 15:19

Hanford Nuclear Waste Tanks at Risk of Explosion

http://rt.com/files/news/1e/96/80/00/hanford-nuclear-waste-tanks.si.jpg

This is the first of two stories. I am running them both today, because I want to make the point that in nuclear accidents there is a question as to whether they are ever really "over;" this is the thing that is different about nuclear power. Tar sands oil leaks, such as the one in Arkansas, eventually get cleaned up. Nuclear waste is forever.

RT (Russia)

US residents near the Hanford Nuclear Reservation may be in grave danger: a nuclear safety board found that the underground tanks holding toxic, radioactive waste could explode at any minute, due to a dangerous buildup of hydrogen gas.

After Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DFNSB) about the risks posed by the nuclear site, board members relayed their concerns about the potential for hydrogen gas buildup within the walls of a tank – particularly those with double walls.

"All the double-shell tanks contain waste that continuously generates some flammable gas," the board said in a letter received by Wyden on Monday. "This gas will eventually reach flammable conditions if adequate ventilation is not provided."

The safety board had previously issued a warning about their concerns, which have not yet been addressed. In September, the board sent a letter to the Department of ...

Read More - http://rt.com/usa/hanford-nuclear-waste-tanks-288/

Also related ...

Tepco Says Fukushima Plant Leaked 120 Tons of Radioactive Water

In addition to everything else Fukushima has shown us the unintended consequence of radioactive tuna. This technology is fine, until it's not fine. Then it's a problem for we know not how many years, and creates horrible social problems.

TSUYOSHI INAJIMA - Bloomberg

Tokyo Electric Power Co. said thousands of gallons of highly radioactive water has leaked from an underground pool at the crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant and may have seeped into the soil.

Tepco estimates about 120 tons (32,280 gallons) of radioactive water has escaped, company spokesman Daisuke Hirose said, adding it was uncertain how much contaminated water has soaked into the soil. While he said the utility plans to complete pumping the remaining water to other underground pools by April 9, Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority today said 'a small quantity” of radioactive water may be leaking from another tank.

The leak is the latest stumble in efforts to stabilize the plant after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami that caused the worst nuclear crisis in 25 years. Tepco continues to inject water into the damaged reactors to cool them, and the leaked water contains about 710 billion becquerels ...

Read More - http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-07/tepco-says-fukushima-plant-leaked-120-tons-of-radioactive-water.html

giovonni

9th April 2013, 05:18

Non-Embryonic Stem Cells: The Dawning of a New Era of Hope

http://cdn1.spiegel.de/images/image-480148-breitwandaufmacher-rxsl.jpg

This is a potentially huge development in medicine, because it bypasses the Theocratic Right's objections to stem cell research. This is a line of research that will ultimately be a bigger deal than the discovery of antibiotics, which is to say what we now think of as modern medicine.

PHILIP BETHGE - Der Spiegel (Germany)

Ethical worries have slowed medical research into applications for stem cells. But scientists like Robert Lanza have developed less controversial ways to derive stem cells from normal body cells rather than embryos and are already launching the first clinical trials.

Stem cell researcher Robert Lanza hopes to save thousands of lives -- and for a long time this caused him to fear for his own.

"They bused these crazy people up from Kansas, and then they picnicked right outside our front door," he says as he gazes out of his window at the gray winter landscape of Marlborough, Massachusetts. "The public thought we had these little buggy-eyed embryos here and were ripping apart their limbs to get these cells."

The physician always feared "somebody hiding in the bushes," waiting to attack him. At the time, a doctor was threatened at a nearby fertility clinic, and a pipe ...

Read More - http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/researchers-launch-trials-with-non-embryonic-stem-cells-a-892475.html

giovonni

10th April 2013, 18:10

Hell-Bound Dick Cheney http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5186/5680264699_56e07ee8b1_n.jpg

The thing about history is that in time perhaps not every detail but the major trophes always are revealed. People talk, documents get leaked, legal cases are filed, and the dirty details come out. Here is the latest about the man who is arguably one of the greatest villains in American history, Dick Cheney. Along with his Neocon minions he created the war in Iraq. Because of this, the lives of tens of millions of people around the world were destroyed, either through death, maiming, or the grinding nihilism of war. Anyone who reads SR for long knows that in my view Cheney and the Neocons should have been indicted and tried for crimes against humanity. Here is part of the emerging explanation as to why they did it.

TEDDY PARTRIDGE - Firedoglake

Who made the most money of all the contractors during the War On Iraq?

Houston-based energy-focused engineering and construction firm KBR, Inc. (NYSE:KBR), which was spun off from its parent, oilfield services provider Halliburton Co. (NYSE:HAL), in 2007.

The company was given $39.5 billion in Iraq-related contracts over the past decade, with many of the deals given without any bidding from competing firms, such as a $568-million contract renewal in 2010 to provide housing, meals, water and bathroom services to soldiers, a deal that led to a Justice Department lawsuit over alleged kickbacks, as reported by Bloomberg.

And how did it come to pass that private contractors developed a profit opportunity in American war-making?

In 1992, the Pentagon, then under Cheney’s direction, paid Texas-based Brown & Root Services $3.9 million to produce a classified ...

Read More - http://firedoglake.com/2013/04/07/sunday-late-night-hell-bound-dick-cheney/

giovonni

10th April 2013, 18:14

Yet More Power for the Global 1 Percent

http://www.truthdig.com/images/eartothegrounduploads/7983316506_b3671336d8_n.jpg

In this report one sees the emerging geopolitical trend of the rise of the Virtual Corporate States. What amazes me is the the mainstream media doesn't seem to notice this is happening -- and one can imagine several reasons why this is so -- and even the alternative media like this source, see the details, but not the broad geopolitical trend.

ALEXANDER REED KELLY - Truthdig

Much is made over the alleged ceding of U.S. sovereignty to international bodies every time a potential global treaty appears in the news. The Trans-Pacific Partnership, a U.S.-led free trade agreement that would exempt multinational corporations from having to comply with policies governing industry in signatory countries, appears to be the real thing.

In 2008, American leaders gave a $13 trillion bailout to the banks that drove the nation into economic bedlam. Late last month, officials in Cyprus failed in an attempt to confiscate depositor funds in order to qualify for inclusion in a European bailout of their own. And a recently uncovered paper by the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Bank of England written in late 2012 showed that G-20 countries have long been laying the groundwork for similar action within their own borders in the event that another crisis strikes.

Taken together, those three ...

Read More - http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/the_trans-pacific_partnership_more_power_for_the_global_on_percent_20130405/

giovonni

12th April 2013, 22:08

Survey Finds Social Media Hurts Friendships

http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1080393/thumbs/r-SOCIAL-MEDIA-FRIENDSHIPS-large570.jpg?6

I don't have much time to spend with social media, if you do, consider this, and think about how it has affected your own life.

BELINDA GOLDSMITH - The Huffington Post

LONDON -- Rudeness and throwing insults are cutting online friendships short with a survey on Wednesday showing people are getting ruder on social media and two in five users have ended contact after a virtual altercation.

As social media usage surges, the survey found so has incivility with 78 percent of 2,698 people reporting an increase in rudeness online with people having no qualms about being less polite virtually than in person.

One in five people have reduced their face-to-face contact with someone they know in real life after an online run-in.

Joseph Grenny, co-chairman of corporate training firm VitalSmarts that conducted the survey, said online rows now often spill into real life with 19 percent of people blocking, unsubscribing or "unfriending" someone over a virtual argument.

"The world has changed and a significant proportion of relationships happen online but manners haven't caught up with technology," ...

Read More - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/10/social-media-friendships_n_3053414.html

giovonni

12th April 2013, 22:19

New Study Shows Fliers More Fed Up Than Ever Before

I fly what seems like a lot to me. Back when I was a young man working for National Geographic, travel was fun and exciting. Now I find it one long grind that gets increasingly expensive and less comfortable. What about you?

PHILIP LEBEAU - CNBC

Fed up with flying, complaints from travelers have soared according to a new study. The annual Airline Quality Rankings by Wichita State University and Purdue University show carriers bumping more passengers from oversold flights and delivering service that often leaves customers frustrated.

"Overall, airline travel is still a hassle for most people," said Dean Headley of Wichita State University. "If it's an uneventful experience that's about the best you can hope for."

Headley believes lackluster, sometimes poor service by airlines is leaving many of the more than 700 million people who fly each year with diminished expectations. "Basically, people flying are saying to themselves, just get me there and I'll be happy with that," said Headley.

The Airline Quality Rankings are based on data compiled by the Department of Transportation for its monthly Air Travel Consumer Report. Categories include on-time arrival records, baggage handling complaints, and the ...

Read with a video report - http://www.cnbc.com/id/100622381

giovonni

14th April 2013, 03:37

For the Price of the Iraq War, U.S. Could Power Half of the Country With Renewable Energy http://grist.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/humvee-iraq-istock_463x309.jpg?w=250&h=166

I believe that historians will look back on the era that began with Reagan, and reached its peak during the administration of the second Bush, and his evil wizard, Cheney, and mark that as the beginning of the decline of America. We traded prosperity, and greatness, for the tainted pottage of elective war, and the privatization of our social order to the benefit of the few and to the cost of the many. Here is an example of what I mean.

David Roberts - Grist

Discussions of how to respond to climate change often involve Very Large Numbers - the needed investments to transition to a fully renewable energy system are in the hundreds of billions. The brain sort of shuts down when it encounters numbers like that. They are too big to fathom. The one thing that does seem true about them is that nobody’s ever going to spend that kind of money on anything. Right? It seems hopeless.

So I always enjoy it when someone comes along to provide some perspective, a comparison that can give us context and help us see the numbers afresh. Today, wind analyst Paul Gipe asks, how much renewable energy could we have gotten from what we spent on the Iraq War?

The total cost of the Iraq War, including future costs to care for veterans, is $2.2 trillion. If we include the interest we have ...

Read More - http://grist.org/climate-energy/for-the-price-of-the-iraq-war-the-u-s-could-have-gotten-halfway-to-a-renewable-power-system/

giovonni

15th April 2013, 00:39

My personal advice to those who feel they require this type of drug therapy to heal themselves... Don't do it ...
Please find an alternative therapy treatment. :thumb:

***********

Why Chemotherapy That Costs $70,000 in the U.S. Costs $2,500 in India

A further indictment, if such were needed, revealing the abject failure of the American illness profit system to provide good care at a socially appropriate price. The rapacity and deceit of the pharmaceutical industry really knows no bounds.

Note also that as developing countries evolve their version of the consumerist profit first society their cancer rates are skyrocketing.

Refreshing News

Why does Gleevec, a leukemia drug that costs $70,000 per year in the United States, cost just $2,500 in India?

It's seemingly simple. Gleevec is under patent in the U.S., but not in India. Accordingly, Novartis, its Swiss-based manufacturer, may prevent competitors from making and selling lower-cost versions of the drug in the U.S., but not in India.
Last week, India's highest court rejected an application to patent Gleevec. While the legal issue in the case is important -- the patentability of modifications to existing drugs under Indian law -- the impact of the decision will likely be broader than just that issue, escalating a long-simmering fight over patented cancer medications in emerging markets.

Rejecting the Gleevec patent application is not the only step that the Indian government has taken to circumvent patents on cancer drugs. Last year, India issued a compulsory license on Nexavar, a late-stage ...

Read More - http://refreshingnews99.blogspot.in/2013/04/why-chemotherapy-that-costs-70000-in-us.html

giovonni

16th April 2013, 14:31

Report: Solar Scores Big Gains in Electricity Generation

http://www.usnews.com/pubdbimages/image/34179/FE_PR_080221solar425x283.jpg

Here is some good news about solar power generation. One can only wonder what might have been if we had made that transition out of carbon energy a priority 30 years ago, with the first gas embargo. Carter tried. If he had had another term maybe it would have happened. Instead we got conservative Republicans, who did what they could to undermine the transition, while Democrats dithered, thus preserving the obscene profits of companies like Exxon Mobil and BP.

MEG HANDLEY, Reporter - U.S. News & World Report

Despite the buzz surrounding natural gas and its increased role in electricity generation, solar seems to be increasingly stealing the spotlight from the newly famous fossil fuel.

Thanks to new projects across the country, solar energy accounted for all new utility electricity generation capacity added to the grid for the first time in March, according to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's (FERC) Energy Infrastructure Update. All other energy sources combined added no new generation capacity, the report noted.

Since 2008, the amount of solar energy powering U.S. homes, businesses and military bases has grown by more than 600 percent according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. In 2012 alone, the United States brought more new solar capacity online than in the three prior years combined, underscoring projections that solar will be the nation's largest new source of energy over the next four years.

Momentum behind the development ...

Read More - http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/04/12/report-solar-scores-big-gains-in-electricity-generation

giovonni

16th April 2013, 14:54

How to Turn a World Lacking in Enemies into the Most Threatening Place in the Universe

http://my.firedoglake.com/tomengelhardt/files/2013/04/Homeland-Security-SUV-cliff1066-CC-Flickr.jpg

Here is a brilliant essay on the endless wars that enrich the few, and destroy the lives of many, and drain our treasury of the money we should be using to prepare our society for the world that is coming. We are destroying ourselves because we cannot mount the political will to demand life affirming change.

TOM ENGELHARDT - Firedoglake

The communist enemy, with the 'world’s fourth largest military,” has been trundling missiles around and threatening the United States with nuclear obliteration. Guam, Hawaii, Washington: all, it claims, are targetable. The coverage in the media has been hair-raising. The U.S. is rushing an untested missile defense system to Guam, deploying missile-interceptor ships off the South Korean coast, sending 'nuclear capable” B-2 Stealth bombers thousands of miles on mock bombing runs, pressuring China, and conducting large-scale war games with its South Korean ally.

Only one small problem: there is as yet little evidence that the enemy with a few nuclear weapons facing off (rhetorically at least) against an American arsenal of 4,650 of them has the ability to miniaturize and mount even one on a missile, no less deliver it accurately, nor does it have a missile capable of reaching Hawaii or Washington, and I wouldn’t count ...

Read More - http://my.firedoglake.com/tomengelhardt/2013/04/15/engelhardt-the-cathedral-of-the-enemy/

giovonni

18th April 2013, 04:44

Note this plant is just one hundred miles due east of my local area... :(

***********

Seepage From an Aging Nuclear Site

http://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/hanfordworkers-300x225.jpg

This is the latest on a slow motion nuclear accident taking place with almost no public awareness.

GINA MASON - Consortiumnews.com

The nuclear industry hasn’t solved the long-term problem of what to do with nuclear waste, which presents a uniquely dangerous environmental threat. That danger is now highlighted by leakage at one of the oldest nuclear sites in the world, Washington State’s Hanford facility, writes Gina Mason.

Living with radiation sickness is not on my bucket list, and I would hazard that it isn’t on yours either. Nor is it what I have in mind for my children’s future. Yet our government continues to manufacture nuclear materials and unsafely store radioactive waste in clear violation of the public trust.

Nowhere is this more visible than at Washington State’s Hanford Nuclear Reservation, the most radioactively contaminated site in the western hemisphere, where we now know radioactive sludge is leaking badly from at least six underground tanks. The management of this catastrophe is vitally important to the Pacific Northwest and the ...

Read More - http://consortiumnews.com/2013/03/03/seepage-from-an-aging-nuclear-site/

giovonni

20th April 2013, 05:00

Daily Rituals

http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/articles/arts/culturebox/2013/04/dailyrituals/130411_dailyRituals3.jpg.CROP.multipart2-medium.jpg

This story is an indulgence, not a trend. Ronlyn, my children, and my friends all know my strange schedule. In my family I am known as the Bat. My work day is 11:30 a.m. to 3 a.m.. I do it seven days a week, with breaks for meals, gym, walks in the woods and, when I am home on the island, some of the marvelous creativity to be found here. Part of each day involves SR, as you know. So this story of guys who worked late at night made perfect sense to me.

MASON CURREY - Slate

'I really believe in day people and night people,” Ann Beattie told an interviewer in 1980.

'I really think people’s bodies are on different clocks. I even feel now like I just woke up and I’ve been awake for three or four hours. And I’ll feel this way until seven o’clock tonight when I’ll start to pick up and then by nine it will be O.K. to start writing. My favorite hours are from 12:00 to 3:00 a.m. for writing.”

Yesterday I ran through a dozen or so examples of artists who worked best first thing in the morning, and advised readers to consider doing the same thing. I am certainly biased in this regard-I always work best before sunrise-but I also think that Ann Beattie is absolutely right. Different people feel alert at different times of the day, and the most important thing is to arrange ...

Read More - http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/features/2013/daily_rituals/marcel_proust_franz_kafka_and_other_artists_who_did_their_best_work_at_night.html

giovonni

21st April 2013, 15:14

Whistleblowing Now Akin to Treason[/B]

http://media.salon.com/2013/04/obama_cpi-620x412.jpg

"In my view history is going to condemn the Obama Administration as one of the most destructive in the country's history for three reasons: Its disregard for personal privacy, with the resultant surveillance state we now have; its absolute attempt to stop whistle blowers from revealing the corruption and incompetence that is so rife in our government; and its complete unwillingness to hold villains accountable if they are big and rich. The combination of these three things is destroying people's faith in the American system, as poll after poll makes clear."

MARCY WHEELER - Salon

When Thomas Drake, then an official at the National Security Agency, realized that the agency’s decision to shut down an internal data analysis program and instead outsource the project to a private contractor provided the government with less effective analysis at much higher cost, he tried to do something about it. Drake’s decision to join three other whistleblowers in asking the agency’s inspector general to investigate ultimately made him the target of a leak investigation that tore his life apart.

In 2005, the inspector general of the Department of Defense, of which NSA is a part, confirmed the whistleblowers’ accusations of waste, fraud and security risk.

Earlier this year, former NSA Director Michael Hayden even conceded that TrailBlazer, the program for which the NSA paid over $1 billion to the Science Applications International Corporation, had failed. The agency, after killing its own program (called ThinThread) 'outsourced how we ...

Read More - http://www.salon.com/2013/04/17/obama_administration_equates_whistleblowing_to_spying_partner/

giovonni

23rd April 2013, 04:43

Alice and Bob Communicate Without Transferring a Single Photon

http://images.iop.org/objects/phw/news/thumb/17/4/20/PW-2013-04-163-Communication-without-particles-pic1.jpg

Physics and consciousness become more intertwined with each passing month. This is the latest example of what I mean.

The research is to be published in Physical Review Letters.

Click through to see the very useful graphics.

EDWIN CARTLIDGE - physicsword.com

ROME -- Researchers in Saudi Arabia and the US say that two people equipped with suitable optical devices should in principle be able to exchange information without transferring even a single photon.

The work is based on an idea put forward by Israeli physicists Avshalom Elitzur and Lev Vaidman in 1993 known as interaction-free measurements. This involves using light to detect the presence of an object without actually bouncing any photons off it. Elitzur and Vaidman argued that the wave–particle duality of light dictates that an object obstructing one of two paths inside an interferometer can destroy the interference pattern in that device, even though no photons actually come into contact with it – a hypothesis subsequently confirmed experimentally. Another team of researchers used the principle last year to create a quantum-mechanically encoded key for the encryption and decryption of secret messages.

In the latest work, a team ...

Read More - http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2013/apr/16/alice-and-bob-communicate-without-transferring-a-single-photon

ThePythonicCow

23rd April 2013, 05:05

ROME -- Researchers in Saudi Arabia and the US say that two people equipped with suitable optical devices should in principle be able to exchange information without transferring even a single photon.

Here's the key graphic, full sized:

http://images.iop.org/objects/phw/news/17/4/20/PW-2013-04-163-Communication-without-particles-pic2.jpg
Notice how narrow the transmission channel is between Alice and Bob!

It would seem that this device, besides possibly being too complex for practical use (according to the article), is also much wider than it is long. What good is a device that allows me to talk to you, we each need to have devices 20 feet wide, spaced just 1 foot from each other? What would I care in such a case whether an actual photon passed over that 1 foot gap? (The distances involved might be 20 cm and 1 cm, instead, I couldn't tell.)

Most secure communication applications that I can imagine are only interesting if they can work over transmission distances that are substantially longer than the size of the equipment on either end, not substantially shorter.

giovonni

23rd April 2013, 06:00

Your are most likely correct with your conclusions here Paul... But what i got (and also sense) Mr. Schwartz got from this article, is that there are potentially great things to come in this area in regards to understanding how physics (as we come to know it) is changing rapidly... And how it is most probably quite interwoven with (human) consciousness... Which indeed appears to be intertwined and becoming more and more applicable with each passing day !

ThePythonicCow

23rd April 2013, 08:30

But what i got (and also sense) Mr. Schwartz got from this article, is that there are potentially great things to come in this area in regards to understanding how physics (as we come to know it) is changing rapidly... And how it is most probably quite interwoven with (human) consciousness...
That could well be true, giovonni ... but if it is true, it is almost certainly so in a way that I don't understand yet. I doubt I'm alone in this. I doubt that any of the currently popular understandings of quantum mechanics will ring true in the end.

Calz

23rd April 2013, 09:12

Speaking of "fuzzy physics" ... how bout this from Farrell???

_______________

MANIPULATION FROM MONITORS: THE U.S. PATENT?

April 22, 2013 By Joseph P. Farrell

A few years ago, Lt. Col. Tom Bearden (U.S. Army, Ret.) wrote a series of books outlining what he called “scalar physics,” and was of course almost immediately and roundly denounced by everyone in the physics community (with one very notable exception, but we’ll save her, perhaps, for another blog). Then Col. Bearden suffered a heart attack, and made no secret that he thought it had been induced by “the powers that be” by using his computer monitor to send a signal… it was the ultimate in a bizarre conspiracy theory, and of course, the whole idea was also denounced as preposterous.

At about the same time, the the internet was awash with conspiracy theories that televisions and computer monitors were all being manipulated to send subliminal messages to control people’s minds and emotions, and the “meme” even made it into a strange television sci-fi “movie” called “The Phantom”, about a boy who discovers his “true identity” as the leader of a secret scientifically advanced brotherhood located on a remote jungle island in the Pacific dedicated to fighting evil by means of advanced technology. Well, you guessed it, there is an “evil brotherhood” (called the “Singh brotherhood”) dedicated to spreading evil by advanced technology which (you guessed it once again) includes an advanced mind control program sent by signals through televisions, getting people to do things they’d never normally do (like baking rat poison in brownies). Oh…one more thing, this evil brotherhood is based in Switzerland and holds “board meetings” around a corporate board room table.

Well, if you’re thinking this whole mind control from televisions and monitors thing is a bit X Files(they did an episode on that show with the same meme), here’s one sent from a Mr. P.J. and thought I’d pass it along:

Nervous system manipulation by electromagnetic fields from monitors

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6506148.PN.&OS=PN%2F6506148&RS=PN%2F6506148

The claims of this wonderful invention – Patent number 6,506,148, apparently – are breathtaking in and of themselves.

Now, when I attempted to search for this patent by utilizing the site’s online search engine (which is conveniently less than helpful incidentally), I could not find any such patent. Surely my friend was fooled? Well, maybe, but I doubt it. We are looking at a mind control obsession on the part of some people, and as I have detailed elsewhere (Babylon’s Banksters) there may have been a simple technology even in ancient times in play for the electromagnetic manipulation of the mind. And given the now well-known fact that even as early as the 1970s there was being discussed in the open literature mind control projects for the remote electromagnetic manipulation of the mind, and similar technologies under development in the Soviet Union(incidentally using subliminal signals in TV signals), there is no doubt in my mind that some technology like this probably exists.

See you on the flip side.

http://gizadeathstar.com/2013/04/manipulation-from-monitors-the-u-s-patent/

giovonni

24th April 2013, 04:30

Forest Service Says When Trees Die, People Die http://www.boulderweekly.com/imgs/hed/art10930nar.jpg

As I have said over and over, we need to realize that we do not live on the planet, we live in the planet, as part of a living network in which all life is interconnected and interdependent. Here is an example of what I mean.

ABBY FAIRES - Boulder Weekly

Colorado foresters know that Colorado’s forests are changing. And over the past two decades, the change has been significant. Colorado’s forests have seen unprecedented mortality, driven by poor resiliency to insects and diseases, according to Joseph Duda, interim state forester for the Colorado Forest Service.

'People should be concerned about the mortality because of the potential impacts on wildlife, watersheds, recreation sites and the creation of hazards - to name a few,” says Sky Stephens, a forest entomologist for the Colorado State Forest Service.

According to U.S. Forest Service researchers, however, Coloradans can tack yet another cause for concern onto the list: their health.

Forest Service researchers have used the emerald ash borer, a beetle that has killed more than 100 million trees in the eastern and midwestern U.S., to study the correlation between human health and forest health. They conclude that counties severely impacted by the ...

Read More - http://www.boulderweekly.com/article-10930-forest-service-says-.html

giovonni

25th April 2013, 18:13

The Jobless Trap

I teach a workshop each year at the Omega Insitute in Rhinebeck, New York. This year it will be 30 June to 6 July. Fifteen people have written me this time to say they would like to come, had planned to come, but just didn't have the money to do it. Their husbands, or wives, or they, themselves, are out of work, and have been for months. One woman wrote and said, "I am 59 years old, I have gone through my savings, and I wonder if I will ever work again." Two weeks ago the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its latest report saying, "Both the number of unemployed persons, at 11.7 million, and the unemployment rate, at 7.6 percent, were little changed in March."

If we put the money we put into war into making the transition from carbon to noncarbon energy this economy would bloom like the tulips in Ronlyn's garden. The middle class in America is dying because debt is more important than work.

PAUL KRUGMAN, Nobel Laureate - Op-Ed Columnist - The New York Times

F.D.R. told us that the only thing we had to fear was fear itself. But when future historians look back at our monstrously failed response to economic depression, they probably won’t blame fear, per se. Instead, they’ll castigate our leaders for fearing the wrong things.

For the overriding fear driving economic policy has been debt hysteria, fear that unless we slash spending we’ll turn into Greece any day now. After all, haven’t economists proved that economic growth collapses once public debt exceeds 90 percent of G.D.P.?

Well, the famous red line on debt, it turns out, was an artifact of dubious statistics, reinforced by bad arithmetic. And America isn’t and can’t be Greece, because countries that borrow in their own currencies operate under very different rules from those that rely on someone else’s money. After years of repeated warnings that fiscal crisis is just around the corner, ...

Read More -

giovonni

25th April 2013, 18:19

Depression Can Be Contagious, Study Claims http://l2.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/26fpzQTRywf93WH4URn.XQ--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7cT04NTt3PTMxMA--/http://l.yimg.com/os/publish-images/lifestyles/2013-04-23/1fc74f0d-4e03-40a6-89a2-42f067da3655_DepressionWindow310x310.jpg

Long time SR readers, or people who read my essays in Explore know the evidence that happiness is transmitted like a virus, through human-to-human contact, which enhances, and is augmented by what I would describe as linkage of nonlocal consciousness. Not surprisingly, it works the other way as well, as this report describes.

Click through to see an interesting video on a device that seems to work on migraines and depression.

SHEREEN DINDAR - Shine

The idea that your mood is affected by those you spend time with is probably not news to you.

But what if we told you that something as serious as depression -- a chemical imbalance in one's brain that can immobilize some -- can be triggered by being around others who exhibit depressive behaviours.

A recent study by psychological scientists Gerald Haeffel and Jennifer Hames from the University of Notre Dame suggests that university students who live together can pass on their depression, through a mental process known as "cognitive vulnerability."

'Our study demonstrates that cognitive vulnerability has the potential to wax and wane over time depending on the social context,” the researchers write in their paper...

Read More - http://ca.shine.yahoo.com/blogs/shine-on/depression-contagious-study-claims-145314903.html

giovonni

26th April 2013, 18:41

Why Did European DNA Suddenly Change 4,000 Years Ago? Experts Reveal Evolutionary Mystery

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/04/23/article-0-0C4EBD83000005DC-256_634x422.jpg

The latest chapter unraveling the mystery of humanity's long ago past, and how it still shapes the present.

The Mail (U.K.)

The genetic makeup of Europe mysteriously transformed about 4,000-5,000 years ago, researchers have discovered.

An Australian team found the unexplained change while analysing several skeletons unearthed in central Europe that were up to 7,500 years old.

Researchers say the rapid expansion of the Bell Beaker culture, which is believed to have been instrumental in building the monoliths at Stonehedge, could hold the key to why the genetic lineage of Europe mysteriously transformed about 4000 years ago

Researchers say the rapid expansion of the Bell Beaker culture, which is believed to have been instrumental in building the monoliths at Stonehedge, could hold the key to why the genetic lineage of Europe mysteriously transformed about 4000 years ago

BEAKER FOLK

Beaker folk lived about 4,500 years ago in the temperate zones of Europe and received their name from their distinctive bell-shaped beakers, decorated in horizontal zones by ...

Read More - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2313677/Why-did-Europeans-suddenly-disappear-4-000-years-ago-Experts-reveal-evolutionary-mystery--say-makers-Stonehenge-hold-key.html#ixzz2RUbCKlma

giovonni

26th April 2013, 18:50

Consciousness After Death: Strange Tales From the Frontiers of Resuscitation Medicine

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2013/04/end_of_life1.jpg

Here is more on one of the most amazing areas of medicine. Resuscitation research is expanding its knowledge of death with such rapidity that, I think, within five years we will have a definitive demonstration that consciousness has a nonlocal, non-physiological aspect.

This interview with Sam Parnia, one of the most prominent and innovative researchers in the field, offers an excellent explanation of the issues involved and where they seem to be leading.

BRANDON KEIM - WIRED

Sam Parnia practices resuscitation medine. In other words, he helps bring people back from the dead - and some return with stories. Their tales could help save lives, and even challenge traditional scientific ideas about the nature of consciousness.

'The evidence we have so far is that human consciousness does not become annihilated,” said Parnia, a doctor at Stony Brook University Hospital and director of the school’s resuscitation research program. 'It continues for a few hours after death, albeit in a hibernated state we cannot see from the outside.”

Resuscitation medicine grew out of the mid-twentieth century discovery of CPR, the medical procedure by which hearts that have stopped beating are revived. Originally effective for a few minutes after cardiac arrest, advances in CPR have pushed that time to a half-hour or more.

New techniques promise to even further extend the boundary between life and death. At ...

Read More - http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/04/consciousness-after-death/

giovonni

26th April 2013, 19:15

EU Set To Ban Pesticides Blamed for Decline of Bees: Source

Finally, we may have some good news about the bees. It's not a done deal yet, but it looks possible. It appears that whereas the American Congress, captured as it is by corporate forces, cares nothing for facts concerning the crisis of the bees, the EU has begun to recognize officially what is happening with these small creatures upon whom our wellbeing depends. And they are seem to be willing to do something about it -- ban the insecticides that a growing body of research say are at least a major cause of the problem.

EU Business

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM -- The EU appears set to impose a two-year ban on the use of insecticides blamed for a sharp and worrying decline in bee populations, an EU source said Thursday.

A committee of experts is due to vote Monday on the ban in an effort to protect bees and other insects which play an indispensible role in food production through plant pollination.

A vote earlier this year failed to produce a large enough qualified majority in favour, forcing the European Commission to try a second time.

Under EU procedure, if Monday's vote is the same, the Commission has the authority to proceed on its own with the ban.

"The most likely outcome will be the same as last time ... and in that case, the Commission will decide to put the ban into operation," the source said.

The Commission wants the insecticides banned ...

Read More - http://www.eubusiness.com/news-eu/chemicals-farm.o8x

giovonni

27th April 2013, 23:25

USDA Ruffles Feathers With New Poultry Inspection Policy

http://mjcdn.motherjones.com/preset_16/chickenline.jpg

Yet further corruption of our food system to the benefit of corporate profits. The Obama Administration is no better than the Bush Administration in this regard and, therefore, a tremendous disappointment. Once again, we have an example of the disconnect between Obama's words and his actions. He talks social progressive; he acts corporate servant.

TOM PHILPOTT - Mother Jones

The Obama administration is on the verge of dramatically scaling back the US Department of Agriculture's oversight of the nation's largest chicken and turkey slaughterhouses-while also allowing companies to speed up their kill lines.

Currently, each factory-scale slaughterhouse has four USDA inspectors overseeing kill lines churning out up to 140 birds every minute. Under the USDA's new plan, a single federal inspector would oversee lines killing as many as 175 birds per minute. That would mean there are three fewer inspectors for a production line running 25 percent faster. (The line rates at turkey slaughterhouses are, for obvious reasons, slower, but would also be sped up under the new rules).

After the idea was floated last year, it was met by massive pushback from food safety and worker advocates, who argued that the combination of more speed and fewer inspectors would lead to dangerous conditions for both consumers ...

Read More - http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2013/04/usda-inspectors-poultry-kill-lines-chicken

giovonni

29th April 2013, 17:48

Will Smartglasses Replace Eyeglasses ?

http://media.salon.com/2012/06/google-glasses-of-the-future.jpeg-620x412.jpg

This is coming, it reminds me of when mobile phones began. A few early adapters had phones in their cars, and carried around 10 lb over the shoulder cases for walking around. I had one in Miami, where my ship Seaview was homeported when in American waters, a project to locate sunken ships on the Grand Bahama Banks using Remote Viewing. People thought I was a drug dealer, since they were notable early adapters.

PAUL MCDOUGALL - Salon

Google Glass is just the beginning. The search giant’s smartglasses are in the headlines, but numerous other players are also looking to cash in on what’s expected to be a boom in eyewear that puts virtual and augmented reality face-front.

Smartglasses overlay digital information onto the wearer’s view of the real world. Usage scenarios are limited only by developers’ imaginations. Google Glass has apps for search, navigation, photo capture and sharing, to name a few. Commercial possibilities include enhanced vision systems for use in manufacturing, engineering, health care and other industries. A surgeon could have all of a patient’s vital information literally in front of his eyes while operating, for example.

There’ll be no shortage of smartglass systems in as little as one to two years. Research firm Gartner says there are about a dozen companies with products in the works, many of them ready for prime time. ...

Read More - http://www.salon.com/2013/04/27/in_a_few_years_everyone_will_be_wearing_smartglasses_partner/

giovonni

30th April 2013, 16:29

The Rise of Big Data

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/files/images/homepage/Cukier-411.jpg

This is an excellent essay on the power of data. Big data. It describes the first stages of the emerging Metaview Trend, which is going to change our lives. And has the potential to recreate democracy in an electronic age.

KENNETH NEIL CUKIER and VIKTOR MAYER-SCHOENBERGER, Data Editor of The Economist and Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at the Oxford U. - Foreign Affairs

Everyone knows that the Internet has changed how businesses operate, governments function, and people live. But a new, less visible technological trend is just as transformative: 'big data.” Big data starts with the fact that there is a lot more information floating around these days than ever before, and it is being put to extraordinary new uses. Big data is distinct from the Internet, although the Web makes it much easier to collect and share data. Big data is about more than just communication: the idea is that we can learn from a large body of information things that we could not comprehend when we used only smaller amounts.

In the third century BC, the Library of Alexandria was believed to house the sum of human knowledge. Today, there is enough information in the world to give every person alive 320 times as much of it as historians think ...

Read More - http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/139104/kenneth-neil-cukier-and-viktor-mayer-schoenberger/the-rise-of-big-data

giovonni

2nd May 2013, 02:36

Memo to the South: Go Ahead, Secede Already !

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If you have been reading SR for a while you know my views on the Great Schism Trend, and my belief that it was only a matter of time before social progressives woke up to the benefits of States Rights and to letting the Theocratic Right, as it constantly claims it wants to, take the Red value states and go its own way. It is happening, as this essay makes obvious, and I believe we will hear more and more about this.

I want to be clear, I publish this in SR, as polemic as it is, because agree or not agree it is a developing trend, and I want my readers to be aware of the trends that are shaping our future.

LEE SIEGEL - The Daily Beast

Let’s face it-on nearly every important issue, from gun control to immigration to gay marriage, red states are holding America back.

Let’s not be fooled by all the bipartisan rhetoric that has been streaming out of the GOP since Romney’s self-destruction. Hundreds of thousands of petitioners in a handful of red states still want to secede? Well, don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

Mason Dixon Line

A solid block of Southern states continues to refuse to expand Medicaid, thus squashing one of the linchpins of the president’s health-care reform. The South will likely be the last and most stubborn battleground in the fight for gay marriage. Gun control? The more the two sides seem to get cozier with each other, the faster gun-control legislation gets watered down-and more and more red states are passing laws making it legal to carry a concealed weapon. ...

Read More - http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/04/30/memo-to-the-south-go-ahead-secede-already.html

giovonni

2nd May 2013, 02:49

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-20DzCkggS7g/UXfyvafWYeI/AAAAAAAAE5U/uV5vfZUFbb0/s1600/0.jpg

Why Such Secrecy About Private Military Contractor’s Men Working the Event ?

We are beginning to see the rise of contractor militias operating in the U.S., as this report makes clear. It is an extension of the same thinking that privatized large segments of the Iraq War. The growing relationship between the company that was formerly Blackwater and Monsanto is another example. This is an extraordinarily dangerous trend.

DAVE LINDORFF - Nation of Change

Speaking as an investigative reporter with almost 40 years’s experience, I can say that when government officials won’t talk, they’re generally hiding something embarrassing or worse.

I tried, and nobody will talk about those Craft International Services private security personnel who were widely observed and photographed near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, wearing security ear-pieces, hats and T-shirts bearing the company’s skull logo, and all wearing the same dark coats, khaki pants and combat boots, some carrying what appear to have been radiation detectors. (I got no hard answers, though there were some inadvertent hints given.)

I first contacted a man identifying himself as Jack Fleming, a public affairs person with the Boston Athletic Assn., sponsor of the marathon. Fleming advised me that 'If you want to ask about that you should contact the Commonwealth (of Massachusetts) Executive Office of Public Safety.”

I called that agency...

Read More - http://www.nationofchange.org/why-such-secrecy-about-private-military-contractor-s-men-working-event-1366983083

giovonni

4th May 2013, 11:05

another factor ...

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Honey May Be Bees’ Best Medicine for Colony Collapse Disorder

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/files/2013/04/honey-comb-bees-289x300.jpg

This is perhaps the saddest story of all concerning the bees. As is so often the case today, I take it to be a an example of a state of consciousness that is killing us, as surely as it is killing the bees. Bee keepers steal all the honey from the bees that they lay up to keep themselves healthy, and feed them high fructose corn syrup. It is now emerging that this is one of the reasons the bees are dying.

As this report makes clear their bodies need honey, not corn syrup. Why do the bee keepers do this? Think about the disconnect it represents. Why, because profit is the only priority of course. This is the curse of modern society.

BREANNA DRAXLER - Discover

Much of the food that fills your dinner plate can only be produced with the help of a highly managed insect species: the western honey bee. Many farmers actually rent commercial colonies to unleash on their fields when the crops are in bloom. Such pollination services rake in $14 billion a year in the United States.

But honey bee populations have plummeted in the last half decade as worker bees have mysteriously flown off and never returned to the hives-a phenomenon now called Colony Collapse Disorder. Scientists are stumped. Some blame malnutrition. Others point fingers at pathogens. Perhaps it’s pesticides. New research has identified a particular chemical in pollen that may finally provide an answer.

Western honey bees have a taste for a range of nectars, so they are exposed to many different chemicals in and on the plants they pollinate. In addition, commercial hives are often treated ...

Read More - http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2013/04/30/honey-may-be-bees-best-medicine-for-colony-collapse-disorder/#.UYTqvM

giovonni

6th May 2013, 12:54

Former FBI Agent Confirms the Surveillance State Is Real http://www.truthdig.com/images/eartothegrounduploads/Screen_Shot_2013-05-04_at_10.52_.25_AM_.png

The cost of 9/11 is only now being understood. Nineteen young terrorists didn't just kill several thousand people, they caused the citizens of the most powerful democracy on earth to voluntarily surrender their civil rights, and to subject themselves to a surveillance state that can only be described as Orwellian.

Truthdig

A former FBI counterterrorism agent acknowledged this week on CNN that every telephone conversation that takes place on American soil 'is being captured as we speak.”

Tim Clemente’s spontaneous admission was made on the CNN show 'Erin Burnett OutFront” on Wednesday in a discussion about phone calls between Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his 24-year-old wife, Katherine Russell. Those conversations have become a focus of the government’s investigation into the attack. The revelation came when Burnett asked whether investigators could gain access to the calls in the event Russell refuses to talk about them.

Here is the exchange between Clemente and Burnett:

BURNETT: Tim, is there any way, obviously, there is a voice mail they can try to get the phone companies to give that up at this point. It’s not a voice mail. It’s just a conversation. There’s no way ...

Read More - http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/former_fbi_agent_confirms_the_surveillance_state_is_real_20130504/

giovonni

6th May 2013, 13:00

The Biggest Wonder About the Hanging Gardens of Babylon? They Weren’t in Babylon

http://www.independent.co.uk/incoming/article8604673.ece/ALTERNATES/w460/19-Babylon-North-Wind-Pictu.jpg

Another chapter of our past opens.

DAVID KEYS - The Independent (UK)

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, weren’t in Babylon at all – but were instead located 300 miles to the north in Babylon’s greatest rival Nineveh, according to a leading Oxford-based historian.

After more than 20 years of research, Dr. Stephanie Dalley, of Oxford University’s Oriental Institute, has finally pieced together enough evidence to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the famed gardens were built in Nineveh by the great Assyrian ruler Sennacherib - and not, as historians have always thought, by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon.

Dr. Dalley first publicly proposed her idea that Nineveh, not Babylon, was the site of the gardens back in 1992, when her claim was reported in The Independent – but it’s taken a further two decades to find enough evidence to prove it.

Detective work by Dr. Dalley – ...

Read More = http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/features/the-biggest-wonder-about-the-hanging-gardens-of-babylon-they-werent-in-babylon-8604649.html

giovonni

8th May 2013, 14:53

Before Babel ? Ancient Mother Tongue Reconstructed

Another chapter of the past opens. This is such an exciting time, so much is happening to reveal our history. New technologies allow us to see what was formerly almost impossible to perceive. They are coming on line one after another.

TIA GHOSE, Staff Writer - Live Science

The ancestors of people from across Europe and Asia may have spoken a common language about 15,000 years ago, new research suggests.

Now, researchers have reconstructed words, such as "mother," "to pull" and "man," which would have been spoken by ancient hunter-gatherers, possibly in an area such as the Caucusus. The word list, detailed today (May 6) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could help researchers retrace the history of ancient migrations and contacts between prehistoric cultures.

"We can trace echoes of language back 15,000 years to a time that corresponds to about the end of the last ice age," said study co-author Mark Pagel, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom.

Tower of Babel

The idea of a universal human language goes back at least to the Bible, in which humanity spoke a common tongue, but ...

Read More - http://www.livescience.com/29342-ancient-mother-tongue-reconstructed.html

giovonni

8th May 2013, 14:58

Nanoparticles: The Tiniest Toxin http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8UQdo4N8XrQ/UYP7dnGnqnI/AAAAAAAABVU/gNkFYFCLYLg/s200/nanoparticles.jpg

Like the untested introduction of GMOs into the food supply, we have here revealed another animal experiment -- with us as the lab rates.

Click through to see the graphs, which are very useful.

DAISY LUTHER - Activist Post

If we didn’t have enough to worry about in the grocery aisles, with GMOs, toxic additives, and pesticide-soaked foods, we can now add a new concern: nanoparticles.

What exactly is a nanoparticle? As You Sow, a non-profit consumer advocacy group, explains:

Nanomaterials are often heralded as having the potential to revolutionize the food industry – from enabling the production of creamy liquids that contain no fat, to enhancing flavors,improving supplement delivery, providing brighter colors, keeping food fresh longer, or indicating when it spoils. It is reported that nanotechnology is already used in food and food related products, but due to lack of transparency about the issue, concrete information has been difficult to obtain.

Because of their small size, nanoparticles are able to go places in the body that larger particles cannot. Nanoparticles in food or food packaging can ...

Read More http://www.activistpost.com/2013/05/nanoparticles-tiniest-toxin.html#more

giovonni

8th May 2013, 15:30

What it Means to Carry the Non GMO Project Certification

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I love stories like this. Citizens are beginning to do what our corporate controlled government will not. As this report explains a citizen movement has arisen that Aikidos the issue: Instead of listing GMO, they list No-GMO present. It requires no law to list what you don't have in your food. It's a brilliant idea. It now depends on whether customers make a choice on that basis. If enough of us do, it will accomplish the same effect as the law that we have been unable to get through the corrupted Congress.

MERLYN SEELEY - Examiner (Houston)

According to Bevnet.com news site, in an article dated April 26, "With a stated purpose of establishing 'a consistent and enforceable standard for labeling of foods produced using genetic engineering,” legislators in the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate have introduced a new bill that would require mandatory labeling of genetically modified (GMO) foods and ingredients." However, an organization known as the Non GMO Project foundation has already started changing the rules when it comes to GMO foods on the market.

If you take notice throughout the grocery stores nationwide now you may be lucky enough to find a food item that has a new type of certification label. The Non GMO Project certification label can be seen on hundreds of products available to consumers throughout grocery stores in many places. But what does it mean to carry such a label and what is the Non GMO Project? ...

Read More - http://cdn2-b.examiner.com/sites/default/files/styles/image_content_width/hash/d8/b7/1367194141_1675_DSC05549.JPG?itok=NGTpyOsV

related story ...

http://www.redicecreations.com/ul_img/25010marchagainst.jpg

More here - http://www.redicecreations.com/article.php?id=25011

giovonni

9th May 2013, 16:25

Opting Out of Wall Street and Building Sustainable, Resilient Communities: Remaking Finance

http://truth-out.org/images/050813-1.jpg

If you read SR regularly you know my views on the importance of creating Thriving and Resilient Communities if the middle class is to preserve a decent quality of life. Here is an excellent essay on alternatives to a world dominated by corporate special interests. This is good news.

MARGARET FLOWERS and KEVIN ZEESE - Truthout

This article is the continuation of a series on remaking our financial system so that it serves and protects people instead of the "too big to fail or jail" banks, collectively called big finance. More and more people see that the current financial system rewards those who hoard their money and invest in risky or damaging ventures such as derivatives and other forms of speculation and are asking: how do we opt out of Wall Street now?

They do not want to be part of big finance practices that keep money out of the economy and place us all in danger of losing our bank deposits if an investment goes badly. Almost all Americans experience the predatory practices that have put the population in debt in order to meet basic needs for housing, education and health care.

This article points to steps you can take in your community ...

Read More - http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/16233-opting-out-of-wall-street-and-building-sustainable-resilient-communities-remaking-finance-part-iii

giovonni

9th May 2013, 20:10

Algae-powered apartment complex blooms in Hamburg
BIQ House, a 15-unit net-zero energy apartment complex clad with an algae-filled bio-adaptive shell,
is completed in Hamburg, Germany, as part of the International Building Exhibition.

http://www.mnn.com/sites/default/files/BIQHouse.jpeg

It can be done. We can build a different kind of world. It is not technology but attitude that has to change.
As you read this contrast it with the piece on North Carolina in yesterday's edition.

Click through to see the pictures of the apartment building.

MATT HICKMAN - Mother Nature Network

Algae-powered apartment complex blooms in Hamburg
BIQ House, a 15-unit net-zero energy apartment complex clad with an algae-filled bio-adaptive shell, is completed in Hamburg, Germany, as part of the International Building Exhibition.

Today, here’s a look at a freshly completed residential complex in Hamburg, Germany, where even Slimer would feel right at home. And while it may not contain an ounce of ectoplasm, tiny photosynthetic organisms commonly associated with pesky green slime are key to the zero-energy structure’s groundbreaking renewable energy systems.

As the world’s first building powered by algae, the 15-unit Bio Intelligent Quotient (BIQ) House generates biomass and heat with the assistance of 129 integrated glass bioreactor panels (read: microalgae harvesters) measuring .78 inches thick and covering approximately 2,150 square feet of the four-story structure's southeast and southwest facing sides. Most conveniently, the algae-cultivating bio-façade provides the building with thermal insulation, shading from direct sunlight, and noise reduction in addition to generating a ready-to-harvest source of biomass...

Read More - http://www.mnn.com/your-home/remodeling-design/blogs/algae-powered-apartment-complex-blooms-in-hamburg

giovonni

11th May 2013, 04:06

http://www.globalresearch.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/radiation51.jpg
Obama Approves Raising Permissible Levels of Nuclear Radiation in Drinking Water

You read reports like this one and you realize once again how big a disconnect there is between what Obama and his administration say, and what they actually do. That a Republican administration would have been even worse is small comfort. As these sorts of acts make clear both are corrupt and more interested in representing their corporate masters, then representing the best interests of the American people.

Staff of the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility - Global Research

The White House has given final approval for dramatically raising permissible radioactive levels in drinking water and soil following 'radiological incidents,” such as nuclear power-plant accidents and dirty bombs. The final version, slated for Federal Register publication as soon as today, is a win for the nuclear industry which seeks what its proponents call a 'new normal” for radiation exposure among the U.S population, according Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

Issued by the Environmental Protection Agency, the radiation guides (called Protective Action Guides or PAGs) allow cleanup many times more lax than anything EPA has ever before accepted. These guides govern evacuations, shelter-in-place orders, food restrictions and other actions following a wide range of 'radiological emergencies.” The Obama administration blocked a version of these PAGs from going into effect during its first days in office. The version given approval late last Friday is substantially similar to those proposed under Bush but duck some of the most controversial aspects: ...

Read More - http://www.globalresearch.ca/obama-approves-raising-permissible-levels-of-nuclear-radiation-in-drinking-water-civilian-cancer-deaths-expected-to-skyrocket/5331224

giovonni

11th May 2013, 17:22

GM Crops and Water - A Recipe for Disaster

Additional unintended consequences of GMOS resulting from a view of the earth that values only profits, with no consideration as to wellness at any level.

Click through to see the relevant charts.

A fully referenced and illustrated version of this article is posted on ISIS members website and is otherwise available for download: http://www.i-sis.org.uk/login.php?location=GM_Crops_and_Water_a_Recipe_for_Disaster.php

Institute of Science in Society

Genetically modified foods are a threat to our dwindling water supplies; they are less water-efficient and contaminate fresh water, said Dr Eva Sirinathsinghji, of the London based Institute of Science in Society.

Genetically Modified (GM) crops are widely recognised for their potential to damage both human health and the environment. Evidence is now accumulating of the contamination of streams, rivers, rain, as well as groundwater with GM-associated chemicals including Monsanto’s glyphosate-based herbicide, while genetic elements such as antibiotic resistant genes are emerging in water-borne microbes. Further, GM crops have been shown to be less water efficient, corroborating farmer’s reports of failing GM crops during droughts. Industrial farming in general has been shown to be ill-adapted to extreme weather events such as hurricanes as well as droughts; and GM crops are not expected to do any better.

Cultivation of GM crops is a serious threat to food security particularly ...

Read More - http://www.i-sis.org.uk/GM_Crops_and_Water_a_Recipe_for_Disaster.php

giovonni

11th May 2013, 17:29

https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSqZpXAkZUDLDvNkcWxJgcMj5a8oKVvKMyycMnhQnvmP17Lxy1_

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FCC Proposal Would Make In-flight WI-FI Faster and Cheaper

This story is good news if it comes to fruition, and that matters a lot to me very personally. If you travel it will probably be the same for you.

JOSHUA PRAMIS - Digital Trends

Thanks FCC! Surfing the Web from the seat of an airplane may get a whole lot easier, due to a proposal from the Federal Communications Commission. According to a report from the New York Times, the U.S. government bureau is looking to host an auction of a handful of newly acquired airwaves. If done, this could not only provide better, faster connections – likely even 30 times speedier than the connection you have in your home – from 30,000 feet, but also could add some competition and help lower prices.

This decision shows that the FCC has its proverbial finger on the pulse, and knows that there is both the need and desire to be connected, even when flying between two destinations, whether it’s for business or pleasure. 'The reality is that we expect and often need to be able to get online 24/7, at home, in an office, or on a plane,” said Julius Genachowki, chairman of the FCC. And his colleagues agreed with him; they voted unanimously to move forward with this plan.

Essentially, what will happen is this: the agency will sell several licenses – the number of which they need to determine next, so they don’t over-flood the airwaves – for Internet providers to share select airwaves with satellite communications companies.

Right now, flyers can only connect online on about a quarter of the daily flights, and even on those, the connection speed is about half the average speed of the high-speed Internet people can get in their homes. It’s better than nothing, but it’s not efficient … and not always guaranteed.

While many frequent travelers may be beyond elated at this prospect, it’s not all smiles across the board. The Satellite Industry Association filed a complaint with the FCC, claiming that its proposal could actually cause satellite interference, so that is something that will have to be looked into.

Though the FCC hopes to get the ball rolling on this, don’t expect to see any changes for another few years. It will take a while to work out all the details and get everything up and running. But the wait will likely be worthwhile in the end.

Source page:http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/fcc-proposal-in-flight-wifi-faster-and-cheaper/

***
Read more: http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/fcc-proposal-in-flight-wifi-faster-and-cheaper/#ixzz2T0RUCaCc
Follow us: @digitaltrends on Twitter | digitaltrendsftw on Facebook

giovonni

11th May 2013, 17:36

Brain Diseases Affecting More People and Starting Earlier Than Ever Before

This is not good news. And guess which country is number one in this category? Do you think this might be the result of the toxins and hormones in our environment, food, and water? This is exactly what one would expect to see in large animal studies designed to study the process of disease.

Science Daily

Professor Colin Pritchard's latest research published in journal Public Health has found that the sharp rise of dementia and other neurological deaths in people under 74 cannot be put down to the fact that we are living longer. The rise is because a higher proportion of old people are being affected by such conditions -- and what is really alarming, it is starting earlier and affecting people under 55 years.

Of the 10 biggest Western countries the USA had the worst increase in all neurological deaths, men up 66% and women 92% between 1979-2010. The UK was 4th highest, men up 32% and women 48%. In terms of numbers of deaths, in the UK, it was 4,500 and now 6,500, in the USA it was 14,500 now more than 28,500 deaths...

Read more - http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130510075502.htm

giovonni

13th May 2013, 04:44

Neuroscience’s Future: Mice With Human Brain Cells

The Legend of NIMH becomes reality. The ethical issue being debated by ethicists: How many humans cells does it take to be considered human.

JOHN MCCARTHY - Scientific American/Salon

Into brains of newborn mice, researchers implanted human 'progenitor cells.” These mature into a type of brain cell called astrocytes (see below). They grew into human astrocytes, crowding out mouse astrocytes. The mouse brains became chimeras of human and mouse, with the workhorse mouse brain cells – neurons – nurtured by billions of human astrocytes.

Neuroscience is only beginning to discover what astrocytes do in brains. One job that is known is that they help neurons build connections (synapses) with other neurons. (Firing neurotransmitter molecules across synapses is how neurons communicate.) Human astrocytes are larger and more complex than those of other mammals. Humans’ unique brain capabilities may depend on this complexity.

Human astrocytes certainly inspired the mice. Their neurons did indeed build stronger synapses. (Perhaps this was because human astrocytes signal three times faster than mouse astrocytes do.) Mouse learning sharpened, too. On the first try, for ...

Read More - http://www.salon.com/2013/05/09/neurosciences_future_mice_with_human_brain_cells_partner/

giovonni

13th May 2013, 04:49

One-Third of U.S. Honeybee Colonies Died Last Winter, Threatening Food Supply

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2013/05/honeybees3.jpg

Here is the bad news about the bees. It comes at the same time as the Obama Administration has rejected a ban on the neonicotinoids. As the downward slope of the bee trend has accelerated it has become clear that neonicotinoids are only part of the problem. But why wouldn't the government solve part of the problem? I think that is a question that remains unanswered.

There are also issues like the professional beekeepers stealing too much of the bees' honey and feeding them GMO High Fructose Corn Syrup.

The real problem though, in my view, is that this is a collection of examples of an entirely wrong-headed view of the world. One that is materialist and exploitive, and fragmented, and does not see the unity of life. One thats place profit above all other considerations. The whole package is being done to make profit, not to create wellness from individual to planetary. It is not problem of technology it is a lack of vision.

Read through to the end. The final paragraphs contain an update with the very latest research findings.

BRANDON KEIM - WIRED

Nearly one in three commercial honeybee colonies in the United States died or disappeared last winter, an unsustainable decline that threatens the nation’s food supply.

Multiple factors - pesticides, fungicides, parasites, viruses and malnutrition - are believed to cause the losses, which were officially announced today by a consortium of academic researchers, beekeepers and Department of Agriculture scientists.

'We’re getting closer and closer to the point where we don’t have enough bees in this country to meet pollination demands,” said entomologist Dennis vanEngelstorp of the University of Maryland, who led the survey documenting the declines.

Beekeepers lost 31 percent of their colonies in late 2012 and early 2013, roughly double what’s considered acceptable attrition through natural causes. The losses are in keeping with rates documented since 2006, when beekeeper concerns prompted the first nationwide survey of honeybee health. Hopes raised by drop in rates of loss to ...

Read More - http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/05/winter-honeybee-losses/

giovonni

15th May 2013, 17:34

FDA Admits Chicken Meat Contains Arsenic

http://www.nationofchange.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/article_main_image/ChickenMeatContainsArsentic050813.jpeg

Further evidence of the corruption of the regulatory agencies that are supposed to oversee the safety of the food system but which are actually agencies to protect corporate interests.

Click through to see a very useful chart showing the reality of our fowl food products (pun intended).

Also I recommend that you download the actual report: http://www.iatp.org/files/421_2_80529.pdf

Center for Food Safety

Arsenic is commonly added to poultry feed for the FDA-approved purposes of inducing faster weight gain on less feed, and creating the perceived appearance of a healthy color in meat from chickens, turkeys and hogs, yet new studies increasingly link these practices to serious human health problems.

Attorneys at Center for Food Safety (CFS) filed a lawsuit on behalf of CFS, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) and seven other U.S. food safety, agriculture, public health and environmental groups to compel the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to respond to the groups’ three year-old petition which calls for immediate withdrawal of FDA’s approval of arsenic-containing compounds as feed additives for food animals. Filed the same day Consumer Reports released an alarming study on antibiotic resistance in turkey, the lawsuit highlights yet another gaping hole in FDA oversight of animal feed additives.

Arsenic is commonly added ...

Read More - http://www.nationofchange.org/fda-admits-chicken-meat-contains-arsenic-1368022842

A related news item ...

Seven Dangerous Food Practices Banned in Europe But Just Fine in America

http://www.alternet.org/files/styles/story_image/public/story_images/screen_shot_2013-05-09_at_2.46.12_pm.png

This is the difference between the U.S. and European food systems. It is not a pretty picture.

TOM PHILPOTT - AlterNet (U.S.)/Mother Jones

Last week, the European Commission voted to place a two-year moratorium [4] on most uses of neonicotinoid pesticides, on the suspicion that they're contributing to the global crisis in honeybee health (a topic I've touched on here [5], here [6], here [7], and here [8]). Since then, several people have asked me whether Europe's move might inspire the US Environmental Protection Agency to make a similar move-currently, neonics are widely used in several of our most prevalent crops [5], including corn, soy, cotton, and wheat.

The answer is no. As I reported [4] recently, an agency press officer told me the EU move will have no bearing on the EPA's own reviews of the pesticides, which aren't scheduled for release until 2016 at the earliest.

All of which got me thinking about other food-related substances and practices that are banned in Europe but green-lighted here. Turns out there ...

Read More - http://www.alternet.org/7-dangerous-food-practices-banned-europe-just-fine-america?paging=off

giovonni

19th May 2013, 04:35

World's Largest Fat-burning Power Station to Burn Blubber From London Sewers

http://images.gizmag.com/hero/fat-burning-power-station.jpg

Here is a recycling opportunity I never even considered. It just goes to prove yet again, how profligate we are with resources,
and how much can be gained through recycling.

JAMES HOLLOWAY - GizMag

East London is set to play host to the world's biggest power station to run solely on fat, which will provide a much-needed use for the discarded fat which can block the city's sewer system. The station will generate 130 gigawatt-hours of electricity per year, enough to power about 39,000 houses.

The power station is to be built in Beckton, East London, where some 75 GWh (58 percent) of the output will be sent directly to the nearby Beckton sewage works, run by Thames Water, as well as a local desalination plant brought online during droughts and emergencies. The rest of the energy will be fed into the national grid. Set to contribute a little over 6 percent of the 1.3 terrawatt-hours of electricity Thames Water uses every year, the new plant will boost Thames Water's renewably-sourced energy from 14 to 20 percent.

As part of the deal, Thames Water will provide more than half of the power station's fuel. Every day, the company will hand over 30 tonnes of fat, oil and grease (a charming combination given the innocuous acronym FOG), which it says is enough to fill a six-meter shipping container. Thames Water says the fat causes 80,000 blockages along its 109,000-km network of sewers every year, half of which are due to its having been poured down the drain.

Though much of this will be extracted from London's sewers, more will be gathered from traps which intercept fat in the city's kitchens before it can make its way down the drain. Other sources of waste animal and vegetable oil will provide the remainder of the power station's fuel. No virgin oils will be used.

"This project is a win-win: renewable power, hedged from the price fluctuations of the non-renewable mainstream power markets, and helping tackle the ongoing operational problem of 'fatbergs' in sewers," Thames Water's commercial director Piers Clark said in a company press release.

The plant will be developed and run by 2OC, and is planned to commence fat burning in early 2015. 20C's Andrew Mercer claims the power station will produce no smoke and no smell, according to the BBC.

Source page: http://www.gizmag.com/fat-burning-power-station/27520/?utm_source=Gizmag+Subscribers&utm_campaign=09ffcbe9d3-UA-2235360-4&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_65b67362bd-09ffcbe9d3-90147865

Sources: Thames Water, BBC
http://www.thameswater.co.uk/media/press-releases/16966.htm

giovonni

19th May 2013, 04:39

"World’s Greenest Office Building” Makes Net-Zero Look Easy

http://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/world-s-greenest-office-building-makes-net-zero-look-easy/BullittCenterBenschneider300.jpg/image

It can be done.

SAMANTHA THOMAS - Yes!

Peering down Seattle’s Capitol Hill, the Bullitt Center appears to be just another high-end commercial building-until you look up and notice the roof, which is overlaid with shiny silver photovoltaic panels that extend far beyond the building’s exterior walls. Even in the cloudiest of cities, the panels generate all the electricity the six-story structure requires.

The building is a project of the Bullitt Foundation, which calls it 'the greenest commercial building in the world.” The foundation, which was founded in 1952, has focused since the 1990s on helping to create cities that function more like ecosystems. Its new building provides office space for eco-conscious tenants, but also functions as a learning center that demonstrates how people and businesses can exist in harmony with nature.

The Bullitt Center was built according to a demanding green building certification program called the Living Building Challenge, which lists net zero use of ...

Read More - http://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/world-s-greenest-office-building-makes-net-zero-look-easy

giovonni

20th May 2013, 14:06

The Army Goes Off the Grid

http://www.nationofchange.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/article_main_image/blis629.jpg

This is good news. The military, perhaps because it is a centralized command structure, often adopts progressive positions before general society. The military integrated long before the rest of America. It became a gender, race, and religion neutral meritocracy -- an evolution in which I played a role -- well before this was the norm. So the military's adaptation of noncarbon energy is the latest in a line of accomplishments.

Jim Hightower - Nation of Change

Do you know about “net zero”? That’s the wonky phrase attached to an elegant idea: converting communities to total renewable energy, complete recycling, and a culture of conservation to bring humankind’s carbon footprint into a sustainable balance with a healthy earth.

Now, imagine the last place you’d expect this ideal to take root…and even flourish. How about an Army base? In Texas? Well, astonishingly enough, the Army is pioneering America’s net-zero future. Fort Bliss, a sprawling military base accommodating 35,000 soldiers in El Paso, is one of our armed forces’ leading hotbeds of energy conservation and creativity.

The post already has a 1.4-megawatt solar array and has placed rooftop solar panels on enough base housing to generate 13.4-megawatts of energy. It’s partnering with El Paso Electric to add a 200-acre, 20-megawatt solar farm by 2015. The base’s managers plan to convert its own waste into energy. Oh, and it’s engaged in wind power, geothermal, and conservation projects while promoting energy-efficient vehicles and building bicycle lanes.

Source page: http://www.nationofchange.org/army-goes-grid-1366298587

giovonni

24th May 2013, 16:51

Greetings ...

Again i am posting the link for those here who follow this thread to Stephan A. Schwartz's ~ Schwartz Report ~

Especially for those who enjoy and would like to follow his (usually) daily updated reports ...

Note i will still post stories here that i feel need to be shared here on this forum ... :thumb:

http://www.schwartzreport.net/images/sr_stuff.gif
http://www.schwartzreport.net/images/srheaderimage.jpg
Link: http://www.schwartzreport.net/

giovonni

25th May 2013, 09:33

Mississippi Could Soon Jail Women for Stillbirths, Miscarriages

http://mjcdn.motherjones.com/preset_12/womancuffs.jpg

This is more of the Theocratic Right in Action.

KATE SHEPPARD, Staff Reporter - Mother Jones

On March 14, 2009, 31 weeks into her pregnancy, Nina Buckhalter gave birth to a stillborn baby girl. She named the child Hayley Jade. Two months later, a grand jury in Lamar County, Mississippi, indicted Buckhalter for manslaughter, claiming that the then-29-year-old woman "did willfully, unlawfully, feloniously, kill Hayley Jade Buckhalter, a human being, by culpable negligence."

The district attorney argued that methamphetamine detected in Buckhalter's system caused Hayley Jade's death. The state Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments on the case on April 2, is expected to rule soon on whether the prosecution can move forward.

If prosecutors prevail in this case, the state would be setting a "dangerous precedent" that "unintentional pregnancy loss can be treated as a form of homicide," says Farah Diaz-Tello, a staff attorney with National Advocates for Pregnant Women, a nonprofit legal organization that has joined with Robert McDuff, a Mississippi civil ...

Read More - http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/05/buckhalter-mississippi-stillbirth-manslaughter

giovonni

26th May 2013, 20:18

Earth's Mantle Affects Long-Term Sea-Level Rise Estimates

http://images.sciencedaily.com/2013/05/130523143743.jpg

Yet another research report showing that our understanding of the complex interlocking systems of the planet is still very partial and limited.
It isn't just melting ice that is causing the change in ocean levels.

Click through to see a very helpful chart of the East Coast of the U.S.

Science Daily

From Virginia to Florida, there is a prehistoric shoreline that, in some parts, rests more than 280 feet above modern sea level. The shoreline was carved by waves more than 3 million years ago -- possible evidence of a once higher sea level, triggered by ice-sheet melting. But new findings by a team of researchers, including Robert Moucha, assistant professor of Earth Sciences in The College of Arts and Sciences, reveal that the shoreline has been uplifted by more than 210 feet, meaning less ice melted than expected.

Equally compelling is the fact that the shoreline is not flat, as it should be, but is distorted, reflecting the pushing motion of Earth's mantle.

This is big news, says Moucha, for scientists who use the coastline to predict future sea-level rise. It's also a cautionary tale for those who rely almost exclusively on cycles of glacial advance and retreat ...

Read More - http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130523143743.htm

giovonni

28th May 2013, 04:01

Solar Road Panels Offer Asphalt Alternative

http://cdn3.spiegel.de/images/image-495826-galleryV9-odut.jpg

I first did a story on this technology in 2009, and have kept an eye out for further developments. Here is the latest. It could be good news; we'll see what happens.

SÖREN HARDER - Der Spiegel (Germany)

An American couple has found a surprising alternative to conventional asphalt motorways: solar road panels. In addition to providing electricity, saving oil and melting fresh snow, it could also prevent accidents.

A lot of thought is put into how much energy we use to drive from point A to B. But what if the road itself could generate energy? Julie and Scott Brusaw, a married couple from Sandpoint, Idaho, have taken on just such a concept, which they hope will make the auto transport of the future cleaner and safer.

The idea is as simple as it is ingenious. Wherever roads are laid, solar panels could go instead. They would generate electricity, which would in turn be fed into the grid. Thus, oil is conserved twice: Electric cars could be charged with the energy produced by the panels, and the panels would replace the use of asphalt, the ...

Read More - http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/solar-road-panels-offer-asphalt-alternative-a-901792.html

giovonni

30th May 2013, 03:50

Breeding the Nutrition Out of Our Food

Yet another aspect of our failing food system and, once again, it comes down to putting profit ahead of wellness.

Jo Robinson is the author of the forthcoming book "Eating on the Wild Side: The Missing Link to Optimum Health.”

JO ROBINSON - The New York Times

We like the idea that food can be the answer to our ills, that if we eat nutritious foods we won’t need medicine or supplements. We have valued this notion for a long, long time. The Greek physician Hippocrates proclaimed nearly 2,500 years ago: 'Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” Today, medical experts concur. If we heap our plates with fresh fruits and vegetables, they tell us, we will come closer to optimum health.

This health directive needs to be revised. If we want to get maximum health benefits from fruits and vegetables, we must choose the right varieties. Studies published within the past 15 years show that much of our produce is relatively low in phytonutrients, which are the compounds with the potential to reduce the risk of four of our modern scourges: cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and dementia. The loss of these beneficial ...

Read More - http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/26/opinion/sunday/breeding-the-nutrition-out-of-our-food.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2

giovonni

1st June 2013, 22:13

things that come in three's... It is not looking good... :(

***********

More U.S. Small Businesses Letting Workers Go Than Hiring

There is a great deal of blather from politicians and the punditocracy about how they care so much about small businesses. Here's the truth.

Click through to see the excellent charts and graphs that accompany this study.

DENNIS JACOBE, Chief Economist - The Gallup Organization

PRINCETON, NJ -- More U.S. small-business owners report letting employees go than hiring them on average over the past year, for a net hiring index of -12 in April, according to the Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index survey. This is on par with -10 in January and -9 in April 2012.

Trend: Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business Index: Net Hiring, Past 12 Months

These results are from the quarterly Wells Fargo/Gallup Small Business survey, conducted April 1-5, 2013, with a random sample of 603 small-business owners.

Small-business owners' self-reported net hiring has remained at a similar level since January 2011, but is up from the low of -27 recorded in January 2010.

The 11% of small-business owners who reported a net jobs increase at their companies over the past 12 months is similar to the percentage who reported this in January and last April; the same is ...

Read More - http://www.gallup.com/poll/162800/small-businesses-letting-workers-hiring.aspx?utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=syndication&utm_content=morelink&utm_term=All%20Gallup%20Headlines

***

Related ...

Half of America is in or Near Poverty -- and It’s Getting Worse

http://www.nationofchange.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/article_main_image/ine669.jpg

Here is the latest in the breakdown of the middle class. As you read this, remember the Pew study on women, and the lower cohort in poverty. We are becoming a second world country, with a crumbling infrastructure, an uber-rich class, an oversized military, and what amounts to a growing impoverished prole class mesmerized by sports, values politics, consumerism, and American idol shows.

The growing irrelevancy of the traditional structures of American governance can easily be seen in our corrupt barely functioning Congress, increasingly made up of people who see Federal politics as not a career culmination, or an act of public service but, instead, as a stepping stone to commercial success and celebrity.

PAUL BUCHHEIT - Nation of Change

The Census Bureau has reported that 15% of Americans live in poverty. A shocking figure. But it's actually much worse. Inequality is spreading like a shadowy disease through our country, infecting more and more households, and leaving a shrinking number of financially secure families to maintain the charade of prosperity.

1. Almost half of Americans had NO assets in 2009

Analysis of Economic Policy Institute data shows that Mitt Romney's famous 47 percent, the alleged 'takers,' have taken nothing. Their debt exceeded their assets in 2009.

2. It's Even Worse 3 Years Later

Since the recession, the disparities have continued to grow. An OECD report states that "inequality has increased by more over the past three years to the end of 2010 than in the previous twelve," with the U.S. experiencing one of the widest gaps among OECD countries. The 30-year decline in wages has worsened ...

Read More - http://www.nationofchange.org/half-america-or-near-poverty-and-it-s-getting-worse-1369748635

***

Surprise surprise ...

The World's Richest 8% Earn Half of All Planetary Income

http://www.alternet.org/files/styles/story_image/public/story_images/screen_shot_2013-05-28_at_3.59.49_pm.png

Further evidence of the massive change that is occurring, as we undergo worldwide the transition of power to the Age of the Non-geographical Corporate States.

A preliminary version of the findings presented here can be downloaded, and a stunning summary video of the research can be seen.

Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of Christ's Ventriloquists: The Event that Created Christianity.

ERIC ZUESSE - AlterNet (U.S.)

The lead research economist at the World Bank, Branko Milanovic, will be reporting soon, in the journal Global Policy, the first calculation of global income-inequality, and he has found that the top 8% of global earners are drawing 50% of all of this planet's income. He notes: "Global inequality is much greater than inequality within any individual country," because the stark inequality between countries adds to the inequality within any one of them, and because most people live in extremely poor countries, largely the nations within three thousand miles of the Equator, where it's already too hot, even without the global warming that scientists say will heat the world much more from now on.

For example, the World Bank's list of "GDP per capita (current US$)" shows that in 2011 this annual-income figure ranged from $231 in Democratic Republic of Congo at the Equator, to $171,465 in Monaco within ...

Read More - http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/worlds-richest-8-earn-half-all-planetary-income

giovonni

2nd June 2013, 19:05

You Need Phosphorus to Live-and We're Running Out

http://mjcdn.motherjones.com/preset_12/phosphorus_425x320.jpg

I confess that when I read this story, I realized I had missed an important trend. This is a big deal, as it says, and it tells us that the days of industrial chemical based monoculture, depending on massive infusions of rock phosphates is doomed. The solution working with nature, not trying to dominate her.

TOM PHILPOTT - Mother Jones

Western Sahara, a sparsely populated slice of desert on Africa's northwestern coast, doesn't get much ink as a potential crisis point in the global food system. You've probably never heard of the long-standing independence movement in the Morocco-controlled territory-or that the area harbors vast stores of an element critical to contemporary agriculture.

Morocco, it is thought, holds up to 85 percent (PDF) of the globe's known phosphate rock reserve-and a lot of it lies in Western Sahara. Morocco's royal family thus controls what Jeremy Grantham, cofounder of the prominent Boston-based global investment firm Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo & Co., called the "most important quasi-monopoly in economic history."
Our P use "must be drastically reduced in the next 20-40 years or we will begin to starve."

Who cares about phosphorus? For starters, every living thing on Earth-including humans-since all the crops we eat depend on it to produce healthy ...

Read More - http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/05/fertilizer-peak-phosphorus-shortage

giovonni

3rd June 2013, 20:18

NYC Public Libraries Under Attack, Facing Privatization and Budget Cuts

Now we are seeing a move to close some libraries, and privatize others. For over two hundred years, Left or Right, we have recognized the importance of libraries as something a civilized society supports, essential to an informed electorate, and our democracy.

Along with prisons, schools, we now add libraries. Slowly the entire structure of support that creates national wellness is being undermined, and turned into a profit machine. It is another act of societal self-mutilation.

NATHAN TANKUS - Truthout

Libraries (along with post offices) have been a central part of urban planning for over a century. Orthodox urban economics is all about taking a central urban area as given, and then calculating 'optimal” rental values in the areas surrounding this center. Of course, the center of an urban area isn’t 'given” or naturally occurring; they are designed and planned. Public facilities such as libraries helped generate central areas. In this context it is no coincidence wealthy benefactors such as Andrew Carnegie took interest in planning and constructing public libraries (Van Slyck 1991). The areas around public libraries gained customers and 'locational rent” (in the language of the seminal economic geographer Von Thünen). Even though these institutions have become less important for land values and foot traffic, their presence helped generate these neighborhoods.

Now that these buildings have 'done their jobs” (in FIRE sector terms) they can do one ...

Read More - http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/16689-new-york-city-public-libraries-attack-privatizing-prized-locations-and-cutting-budget-by-35-percent

giovonni

5th June 2013, 21:54

18 Of America's Biggest Companies Using Tax Havens To Skirt $92 Billion In U.S. Taxes: CTJ

One of the great things about owning a government, is that you can get it to write and pass into law regulations that are morally reprehensible, and with common sense obviously wrong and unfair. Here is a transparently obvious example.

JILLIAN BERMAN - The Huffington Post

Apple may be getting all the attention from lawmakers and the news media for its offshore tax practices, but a new report finds that other major companies are using similar tactics to avoid paying taxes on billions of dollars in profits.

At least 18 companies, including Nike, Microsoft and Apple, are stashing profits in offshore tax havens likely in a bid to avoid paying taxes, according to a new report from the Citizens for Tax Justice, a left-leaning research group. If the companies brought that money home, they would pay combined more than $92 billion in U.S. taxes, the report found.

'It’s misguided to say it’s some unique thing that Apple has created," said Matthew Gardner, the executive director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a research partner of CTJ. "A lot of big companies are very likely doing it.”

A Nike spokesperson declined to ...

Read More with video clip - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/03/apple-tax-havens_n_3378935.html

giovonni

7th June 2013, 19:33

America's Secret Fukushima Poisoning the Bread Basket of the World

http://truth-out.org/images/2013_June_Images/2013_0605nu_.jpg

Civilian nuclear power was a creature of the Cold War created so that the nuclear industry could develop a profit making application for the technology, and be able to maintain a career path and a cadre of men and women who could maintain the skill sets necessary to run such an industry -- whether military or civilian. It was sold to the country as the long term energy solution, a theme one still hears. However, the reality is quite different. Like most things created out of paranoia and fear it has turned into one long horror show. Here is the latest. And you thought it was just reactors we had to worry about.

In addition to the nuclear aspect, please note the absolute racism in this story.

MARGARET FLOWERS and KEVIN ZEESE, - Truthout

Early in the morning of July 16, 1979, a 20-foot section of the earthen dam blocking the waste pool for the Church Rock Uranium Mill in New Mexico caved in and released 95 million gallons of highly acidic fluid containing 1,100 tons of radioactive material. The fluid and waste flowed into the nearby Puerco River, traveling 80 miles downstream, leaving toxic puddles and backing up local sewers along the way.

Although this release of radiation, thought to be the largest in US history, occurred less than four months after the Three Mile Island partial nuclear meltdown, the Church Rock spill received little media attention. In contrast, the Three Mile Island accident made the headlines. And when the residents of Church Rock asked their governor to declare their community a disaster area so they could get recovery assistance, he refused.

What was the difference between the Church Rock spill ...

Read More - http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/16752-americas-secret-fukushima-poisoning-the-bread-basket-of-the-world

giovonni

7th June 2013, 19:38

U.S., British intelligence mining data from nine U.S. Internet companies in broad secret program

http://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_606w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2013/06/07/TheFold/Images/Prism.jpg

Documents: U.S. Mining Data From 9 Leading Internet Firms; Companies Deny Knowledge

Since the librarians revolted about being required to secretly report the book borrowing habits of their patrons, I have been warning people that we are entering a national security police state, and I have repeatedly warned you that anything you say on a phone, or write in an email is subject to surveillance.

Over the past several years a number of my conservative readers have written me, particularly during the Bush years, to tell me that I was being paranoid, and alarmist, and that this was necessary for the War on Terror. In the last two days confirmation of every one of my assertions has been revealed to be true, and it is even worse than I thought. In the U.S. privacy as a concept and right no longer exists. Welcome to 21st century America.

The only difference between the Bush Administration and the Obama Administration is that the Obama Administration is better at writing the laws and regulations so that this is all perfectly legal.

BARTON GELLMAN and LAURA POITRAS - The Washington Post

The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track foreign targets, according to a top-secret document obtained by The Washington Post.

The program, code-named PRISM, has not been made public until now. It may be the first of its kind. The NSA prides itself on stealing secrets and breaking codes, and it is accustomed to corporate partnerships that help it divert data traffic or sidestep barriers. But there has never been a Google or Facebook before, and it is unlikely that there are richer troves of valuable intelligence than the ones in Silicon Valley.

Equally unusual is the way the NSA extracts what it wants, according to the document: 'Collection directly from the servers of these U.S. Service Providers: Microsoft, Yahoo, ...

Read More - http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/us-intelligence-mining-data-from-nine-us-internet-companies-in-broad-secret-program/2013/06/06/3a0c0da8-cebf-11e2-8845-d970ccb04497_story.html?hpid=z1

giovonni

9th June 2013, 06:22

6 Horrifying Things About Pork Everyone Should Know

http://www.alternet.org/files/styles/story_image/public/story_images/screen_shot_2013-06-05_at_3.35.40_pm.png

I no longer eat anything that comes from a pig. Here's why.

MARTHA ROSENBERG - AlterNet (U.S.)

You know things are bad in the pork industry when the whistleblowers aren't animal rights activists, but the government itself. In May, the US Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Office of the Inspector General exposed extreme sanitation and humane violations in 30 US swine slaughterhouses it visited and in records of 600 other US plants slaughtering pigs. [3]

"During FYs 2008 to 2011, FSIS [Food Safety and Inspection Service, the regulatory agency within USDA] issued 44,128 noncompliance records (NRs) to 616 plants; only 28 plants were suspended, even though some plants repeated violations as egregious as fecal matter on previously cleaned carcasses," says the Office of the Inspector General report. "In one plant, flies hovered over an area where blood was being collected to be sold for human consumption" (for products like blood sausage and blood soup). Twenty-two of the 28 plants that were actually suspended were allow to "continue ...

Read More - http://www.alternet.org/food/bacon-hog-farm?paging=off

giovonni

9th June 2013, 06:26

IMF Admits: We Failed to Realise the Damage Austerity Would Do to Greece

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/cartoons/2013/6/5/1370469750731/IMF-chief-Christine-Lagar-009.jpg

The wheels are coming off of the austerity bandwagon, as even its most ardent advocates -- those who are rational at least -- are now admitting. Too bad, Greece, you just got screwed by the Right's theory. They were so sure, and they're really sorry the lives of millions of people were dumped in the toilet. Does that make you feel better?

LARRY ELLIOTT, PHILLIP INMAN and HELENA SMITH - The Guardian (U.K.)

ATHENS -- The International Monetary Fund admitted it had failed to realise the damage austerity would do to Greece as the Washington-based organisation catalogued mistakes made during the bailout of the stricken eurozone country.

In an assessment of the rescue conducted jointly with the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European commission, the IMF said it had been forced to override its normal rules for providing financial assistance in order to put money into Greece.

Fund officials had severe doubts about whether Greece's debt would be sustainable even after the first bailout was provided in May 2010 and only agreed to the plan because of fears of contagion.

While it succeeded in keeping Greece in the eurozone, the report admitted the bailout included notable failures.

"Market confidence was not restored, the banking system lost 30% of its deposits and the economy encountered a much deeper than ...

Read More - http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/jun/05/imf-underestimated-damage-austerity-would-do-to-greece

giovonni

11th June 2013, 05:56

New long distance quantum teleportation system ‘extremely reliable’

By Planetsave
Saturday, June 8, 2013

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/quantum-teleporter-e1370683541614.jpg

Here is an extraordinary experimental study on the teleportation of information.

The Raw Story

"A new milestone has been reached in the development of a practical quantum teleportation system — researchers have for the first time succeeded in the teleportation of information between two separate clouds of gas atoms, over long-distances. And not just once, the method is apparently already extremely reliable — working every single time that it’s been attempted.

It’s been possible for quite some time now to “teleport” information on the quantum level from light to light. And a couple of years back, the same researchers who reached this recent milestone were able to teleport information between between light and gas atoms for the first time. But this new achievement takes that a step further — achieving a very reliable means of gas to gas quantum teleportation over long-distances.

“It is a very important step for quantum information research to have achieved such stable results that every attempt will succeed,” says Eugene Polzik, professor and head of the research center Quantop at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen.

The new experiments were performed in the labs of the research group, located under the Niels Bohr Institute. It’s setup so that there are two glass containers, each of which contains a cloud of gas — composed of billions of caesium gas atoms.

The press release gets into the specifics:

The two glass containers are not connected to each other, but information is teleported from the one glass cloud to the other by means of laser light. The light is sent into the first glass container and then that strange quantum phenomenon takes place, the light and gas become entangled. The fact that they are entangled means that they have established a quantum link — they are synchronised.

Both glass containers are enclosed in a chamber with a magnetic field and when the laser light (with a specific wavelength) hits the gas atoms, the outermost electrons in the atoms react -like magnetic needles — by pointing in the same direction. The direction can be up or down, and it is this direction that makes up quantum information, in the same way that regular computer information is made up of the numbers 0 and 1.

The gas now emits photons (light particles) containing quantum information. The light is sent on to the other gas container and the quantum information is now read from the light and registered by a detector. The signal from the detector is sent back to the first container and the direction of the atoms’ electrons are adjusted in relation to the signal. This completes the teleportation from the second to the first container.

The research and experiments are done at room temperature, which means that the gas atoms are moving rather rapidly — at a speed of 200 meters per second in the glass container. This creates a problem of sorts — when the atoms bump into the glass wall, they lose the information that they have been encoded with. To address this the researchers applied a rather common-sense, simple and effective solution.

“We use a coating of a kind of paraffin on the interior of the glass contains and it causes the gas atoms to not lose their coding, even if they bump into the glass wall,” says Professor Eugene Polzik. “It sounds like an easy solution, but in reality it was complicated to develop the method. Another element of the experiment was to develop the detector that registers the photons.”

For this, a particularly sensitive detector was developed over time — it’s effective enough at detecting the photons, that, as of now, it has worked every single time.

Obviously though, lab tests are one thing, cost-effective useful application in the world is another. “In the experiment, the teleportation’s range is ½ meter — hardly impressive in a world where information must be transported around the world in no time.”

“The range of ½ meter is entirely due to the size of the laboratory,” states Eugene Polzik. “We could increase the range if we had the space and, in principle, we could teleport information, for example, to a satellite.”

But the range really isn’t that important, the real success of this recent research is with regards to how reliable the new method is — paving the way towards what the researchers think will be the “quantum communication network of the future.”

Source page: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/06/08/new-long-distance-quantum-teleportation-system-extremely-reliable/

The new technique was recently detailed in a paper published in the scientific journal Nature Physics.

giovonni

12th June 2013, 14:45

Japan: The World's New Star in Solar Power

http://fortunebrainstormtech.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/120924043918-home-solar-panels-monster.jpg?w=620&h=355

The Germans have done it. The Japanese are doing it. We remain in the grip of the carbon energy barons.

MICHAEL FITZPATRICK - CNN Money

FORTUNE -- Until recently less than 1% of Japan's electrical power output came from renewables. But following the catastrophe of Fukushima and the power blackouts that followed, Japan has seen an explosion in investment in alternatives. Solar, in particular, in this averagely photon-blessed country, has seen a seismic rise of late and is this year poised to become the world's largest solar market in volume after China.

According to a report by energy analyst IHS on Japan's energy mix, Japan's solar installations jumped by "a stunning 270% (in gigawatts) in the first quarter of 2013." That means by the end of 2013 there will be enough new solar panels equal to the capacity of seven nuclear reactors. Such massive growth will allow Japan to surpass Germany and become the world's largest photovoltaics (PV) market in terms of revenue this year.

"Japan is forecast to install $20 billion worth ...

Read More - http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/06/11/japan-the-worlds-new-star-in-solar-power/

Related ...

Utilities and Solar Advocates Square Off Over the Future

http://www.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_606w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2012/08/17/Interactivity/Images/1077537.jpg

Here we can see the battle with old centralized energy which is shaping up. Commonsense would suggest that it is in society's interest to come up with a new economic model, and a sensible way to move to that new model. But we no longer seem to have the political will to form a collective intention, so it is going to be a nasty battle. This is why, despite the many benefits, it is going to be so hard in this country to make the energy transition to nonpolluting technologies.

LENNY BERNSTEIN - The Washington Post

It’s a sight that would bring joy to anyone who has ever paid an electric bill: that little wheel on the meter outside your home literally spinning backwards, signaling a reduction in your payment and the distribution of excess electricity to your neighbors.

Yes, that actually happens at a few hundred thousand homes across the United States that have rooftop solar panels and are part of an arrangement known as 'net energy metering.”

'Every time people install a solar system, it means the need for more power distribution is reduced and the need for more energy generation [by utility companies] is reduced,” said Ed Fenster, co-founder of Sunrun, a California company that installs rooftop solar systems.

That would seem to be a good thing in a nation whose government is trying to limit the burning of fossil fuels. But now some large utilities are challenging a critical ...

Read More - http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/utilities-and-solar-advocates-square-off-over-the-future/2013/06/09/580c0

giovonni

14th June 2013, 02:23

From Stephan A. Schwartz ...

Editor's Note - A Sense of Proportion

Like many of you, I suspect, I have been closely following the story of government surveillance that has rocked the country, indeed, the world. I am appalled at the revelations, but not surprised. I was just about to leave government service, and give up my top secret clearances, when the Church Committee looked at Operation Shamrock (do a Google), and Seymour Hersh, an acquaintance, wrote his groundbreaking piece in The New York Times. Since those days despite shock after shock about the encroachments of government surveillance, and despite claims that these whistle blower revelations compromise national security, all that has really happened is that the surveillance industry has grown and expanded from government agencies to include private contractors. There are now hundreds of thousands of people involved in the security apparat. There is no precedent in history for this depth of penetration into the life of the individual.

Throughout those years from the 70s, and Shamrock until today, it is clear that civil liberties concerning privacy have virtually disappeared. Anyone who doesn't keep in mind that everything they write or say that is digital is being recorded by some agency or contractor is not living in the real world.

This is not a world that the Founders, or the Constitution as they understood it, would condone. I think that is irrefutable. But it is what is and, in those terms, the more I think about this, the more cost benefit issues have risen to the fore for me.

The United States tolerates approximately 33,000 gun deaths a year. To give a sense of proportion in just the seven months since 14 December 2012, when Adam Lanza shot and killed 20 little children and six adult staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School, more people have been killed by guns in the U.S. --- 5,010, 94 of them children as of yesterday -- than Americans were killed in the War in Iraq over 10 years. In those same 10 years over 270,000 Americans killed each other with guns. Surveillance played no role in stopping any of this carnage.

When I look at the Boston bombers I see two very young men, with a grudge, who killed 3 people and injured 264 with homemade bombs, and despite hundreds of billions of dollars spent on surveillance, nobody knew they were planning to do it until it happened. Will anyone know when the next angry young men try to do something similar? I would guess not.

In 9/11, when there was already a highly developed and intrusive surveillance network in place, 19 young non-American men came into the country and killed 2,753 people, and no one knew they were going to do it, until they did it.

So what exactly are the hundreds of billions of dollars, and the sacrifice of our civil liberties providing us? And, and this is the realpolitik question, what does it say about us, that we have no problem with tens of thousands of people being killed by guns, yet a terrorist act that kills hundreds or even several thousand justifies Orwellian surveillance?

I find reconciling those two realities very difficult. I should also note that as I wrote this little essay I kept thinking back to a dinner I had had with Vladimir Posner back in the 1980s at the Writers' Club in Moscow. Those who are old enough will remember Posner on the old Nightline, as the Soviet Union's principal spokesperson on American television explaining Perestroika and Glasnost, the reformist movement that arose and led to the collapse of the USSR.

Sitting in the paneled dining room of the club for Soviet writers and journalists, I asked Posner how censorship worked. "Did each writer or his editor have to submit his work to some bureaucrat," I asked.

"No, he replied," it doesn't work like that. There are censors, but the real constraint is self-censorship."

Why I asked do people self-censor?

"You are so naive, Stephan," he replied. "Your apartment comes from the state. Your job depends on the state. The kind of hospital you get to go to depends on the state. Your kid gets to go to certain schools under the gift of the state. If you write certain things, the state will know it, and you will be punished. You'll lose your apartment. Your kids won't go to that special school that gives them a start in life. So you are careful what you say."

As I wrote this I kept thinking that by writing this essay, with key word searching IT programs, I would almost certainly draw attention to myself. In doing this there was risk. How would it play out?

Three of my family members, signed the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. I am vet. My father was a vet. All my uncles were vets. My maternal grandfather was a vet, and so were his brothers; and my great grandfather, and his father, and so all the way back to men who were officers and enlisted men in Washington's Army. It made me deeply uncomfortable, not that I was writing this, but that I should have to think about what I am writing, and who might be watching.

Is that grandiose? Probably. But there are a lot of search terms in this essay, and the problem is, you never know.

-- Stephan

giovonni

14th June 2013, 14:55

A Better Way to Die

http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/food/7183399962_35a9957b15_cmain.jpg

Finally, perhaps because the Boomers are beginning to die, or are dealing the the death of a parent, or older sibling, we are beginning to think about how we die. Having gone through this with my late wife, Hayden, I support the approach in this report in the strongest terms.

AMELIA MARTYN-HEMPHILL - The Atlantic

As Seigan Glassing walked down the sterile, white hospital corridor, he thought of a poem written by well-known Zen master Kozan Ichikyo shortly before his death.

Empty handed I entered
The world
Barefoot I leave it
My coming, my going --
Two simple happenings
That got entangled.

Seigan paused outside one of the identical doors of the neurological unit, marked only with a number. He mulled over the words of the poem, letting them mingle, listening to their rhythm, refocusing. He was tired but not exhausted, nearing the end of his hospital shift. He straightened his dark scrubs and ran his hand over his clean-shaven head before adjusting his glasses.

As he entered the room he met a scent of flowers. The ...

Read More - http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/06/a-better-way-to-die/276724/

giovonni

15th June 2013, 19:21

Welcome to Utah, the NSA's Desert Home for Eavesdropping on America

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2013/6/14/1371220918049/NSA-Data-Center-in-Bluffd-010.jpg

I don't think people get the scope of what is going on in this Surveillance Trend. This report gives a sense of scale. There has never been anything like this in history. We are in completely uncharted waters. With information comes control; it is inevitable. And the psychological effects we haven't even thought about.

RORY CARROLL - The Guardian (U.K.)

Drive south down Camp Williams Road, a highway outside Salt Lake City, and your eye is drawn to the left. A gun-mounted helicopter and other military hardware marks the entrance of the Utah army national guard base. The ice-capped Rockies soar in the distance.

To the right there is little to see: featureless scrubland, a metal fence, some warehouses. A small exit – not marked on ordinary maps – takes you up a curving road. A yellow sign says this is military property closed to unauthorised personnel.

Further up the hill, invisible from the highway, you encounter concrete walls, a security boom and checkpoint with guards, sniffer dogs and cameras. Two plaques with official seals announce the presence of the office of the director of national intelligence and the National Security Agency.

A spokesperson at NSA headquarters in Maryland did not welcome a Guardian request to visit ...

Read More - http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/14/nsa-utah-data-facility

giovonni

16th June 2013, 19:34

Note - i believe this is most definitely part of the U.S. Governments ongoing paranoia behavior ... :(

***********

Pentagon Bracing for Public Dissent Over Climate and Energy Shocks

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Environment/Pix/columnists/2012/5/29/1338291324943/Leo-blog--A-gas-flare-bur-006.jpg

This is one of the most important essays SR has ever published. Here, I believe you see the real reason for the creation of the security apparat. Terrorism is its second, but public, brief. Its real brief is to prepare for climate change. When you cut through what flows out of the Aegean Stables that is the Congress, you find that in the civil and military bureaucracies they are laying track for what they see coming.

This should definitely give you pause.

DR. NAFEEZ MOSADDEQ AHMED, Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development - The Guardian (U.K.)

Top secret US National Security Agency (NSA) documents disclosed by the Guardian have shocked the world with revelations of a comprehensive US-based surveillance system with direct access to Facebook, Apple, Google, Microsoft and other tech giants. New Zealand court records suggest that data harvested by the NSA's Prism system has been fed into the Five Eyes intelligence alliance whose members also include the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

But why have Western security agencies developed such an unprecedented capacity to spy on their own domestic populations? Since the 2008 economic crash, security agencies have increasingly spied on political activists, especially environmental groups, on behalf of corporate interests. This activity is linked to the last decade of US defence planning, which has been increasingly concerned by the risk of civil unrest at home triggered by catastrophic events linked to climate change, energy shocks or economic crisis - or all ...

Read More - http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/earth-insight/2013/jun/14/climate-change-energy-shocks-nsa-prism?INTCMP=SRCH

giovonni

17th June 2013, 20:09

Food Stamps Under Threat: House GOP Wants to Cut $20.5B From SNAP

http://cdn.thedailybeast.com/content/dailybeast/articles/2013/06/16/food-stamps-under-threat-house-gop-wants-to-cut-20-5b-from-snap-vertical-dek-the-gop-s-ascendant-libertarian-wing-is-taking-aim-at-food-stamps-eleanor-clift-on-whether-they-ll-survive/_jcr_content/body/inlineimage.img.503.jpg/1371337886043.cached.jpg

I cannot properly express how despicable I find this story. There are literally dozens of stories like this one that I find, or are sent to me, each day. I could fill every SR edition with several. They are all about Republicans trying to screw in some way, the poor, women, the elderly, the disadvantaged, the children.

Fourteen per cent of my readership are self-described conservatives. You tell me that through the polls, and the comments, both on the site and in personal emails. And I know this will upset a lot of you, and I am sorry about that. But I care about data and social outcomes, not partisan politics, and whether policies serve wellness, or something else.

The Republicans in Congress, particularly in the House, are not interested in governing. The last five years have made that abundantly clear. They seem to think politics is all theater, jockeying for position or media attention. Governing hardly seems to enter into their thinking.

ELEANOR CLIFT - The Daily Beast

It’s a big number and it gets people’s attention when they hear it: 47 million Americans receive food stamps in what is now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The program has expanded significantly under President Obama, who boosted benefits and allowed states to waive some work rules under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Still, the spiraling need for food assistance even as the unemployment rate has come down is tied to the weak economy and jobs that are so marginal that millions of working people earn so little they still qualify for SNAP.
Food Stamps Challenge

This week, thirty members of Congress embarked on the 'SNAP challenge,” eating on a SNAP budget for a few days or a week. 'That’s $4.50 a day.” Above, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter took on a week long food stamp challenge, April 2012. (Matt Rourke/AP)

For decades, since ...

Read More - http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/06/16/food-stamps-under-threat-house-gop-wants-to-cut-20-5b-from-snap-vertical-dek-the-gop-s-ascendant-libertarian-wing-is-taking-aim-at-food-stamps-eleanor-clift-on-whether-they-ll-survive.html

onawah

17th June 2013, 21:16

Thanks for posting that, Gio.
As one of the people who is receiving SNAP benefits, I find the proposal not only despicable, but a possible threat.
I hope it is an example of what I think Obama is allowing to happen, which is basically giving the Republicans enough rope to hang themselves publicly, in full view, so that it becomes obvious to even the blindest what the results of their agenda actually are if given the opportunity to manifest.
I just hope it doesn't have to come to that, particularly in this case, since the most vulnerable-seniors, children, the disabled, etc. will be the ones to suffer most... and suffer most ignominiously.

giovonni

21st June 2013, 07:29

Retired Federal Judge: Your Faith In Secret Surveillance Court Is Dramatically Misplaced
http://www.colby.edu/colby.mag/issues/v99n10/JudgeGertner_web.jpg

Here is a Federal judge's sense of the secret surveillance court that lies at the heart of the octopus surveillance apparat. Not a happy story.

NICOLE FLATOW - Think Progress

A retired federal judge warned Friday against blind faith in the secret court deciding the scope of U.S. government surveillance. During a panel discussion on constitutional privacy protection in the wake of a leaked Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court decision that revealed widespread NSA data collection, U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner stood up in the audience to counter the statements of conservative law professor Nathan Sales that secret surveillance requests are subject to meaningful judicial review. She cautioned:

As a former Article III judge, I can tell you that your faith in the FISA Court is dramatically misplaced.

Two reasons: One … The Fourth Amendment frameworks have been substantially diluted in the ordinary police case. One can only imagine what the dilution is in a national security setting. Two, the people who make it on the FISA court, who are appointed ...

Read More - http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/06/14/2163441/retired-federal-judge-your-faith-in-secret-surveillance-court-is-dramatically-misplaced/

giovonni

21st June 2013, 07:35

Global Power Project: Identifying the Institutions of Control http://truth-out.org/images/2013_June_Images/2013_0620-3.jpg

This is one of the first responsible pieces I have seen that shows the interlocking nature of the new world elite. One of the effects of the world being run by Non-geographical Corporate States, is that a transnational elite has arisen. The disparity of wealth is so great as to be absurd. As an example: six WalMart heirs have a wealth greater than the collective wealth of 41.5% of the rest of the United States. That's just under a 131 million Americans.

Because they live globally in a way inconceivable to even normally wealthy people they have a bias for global not national interests. And like any group of people anywhere they have their clubs, and societies where they socialize, and deals are cemented. To keep it all invisible these vast corporations maintain the brand identify of the companies they control. I recently published a list of just the seed companies Monsanto owns, each apparently a different company but, in fact, a single corporate organism.

This report spells out many of the players, and how the system works.

ANDREW GAVIN MARSHALL - Truthout

In an article for the journal International Sociology, William K. Carroll and Jean Philippe Sapinski examined the relationship between the corporate elite and the emergence of a 'transnational policy-planning network,” beginning with its formation in the decades following World War II and speeding up in the 1970s with the creation of 'global policy groups” and think tanks such as the World Economic Forum, in 1971, and the Trilateral Commission, in 1973, among many others.

The function of such institutions was to help mobilize and integrate the corporate elite beyond national borders, constructing a politically 'organized minority.” These policy-planning organizations came to exist as 'venues for discussion, strategic planning, discourse production and consensus formation on specific issues,” as well as 'places where responses to crises of legitimacy are crafted,” such as managing economic, political, or environmental crises where elite interests might be threatened. These groups also often acted as 'advocates ...

Read More - http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/17096-global-power-project-identifying-the-institutions-of-control

robinr1

21st June 2013, 16:40

obama and the republicans have the exact same agenda..there is absolutely zero difference between the two political parties.please dont fall prey to the false two party system paradigm.

Thanks for posting that, Gio.
As one of the people who is receiving SNAP benefits, I find the proposal not only despicable, but a possible threat.
I hope it is an example of what I think Obama is allowing to happen, which is basically giving the Republicans enough rope to hang themselves publicly, in full view, so that it becomes obvious to even the blindest what the results of their agenda actually are if given the opportunity to manifest.
I just hope it doesn't have to come to that, particularly in this case, since the most vulnerable-seniors, children, the disabled, etc. will be the ones to suffer most... and suffer most ignominiously.

giovonni

23rd June 2013, 02:20

these next two items go hand and hand ...

***********

In Major Blow To Consumers, Supreme Court Protects Mega-Corporations From Liability

This is why the appointment of Supreme Court Justices matters so much. We now have a court which routinely favors corporations over individuals. Here is their latest decision, part of the Legalization Trend. Increasingly monopolistic practices that would previously have been illegal, are now the law of the land. We are becoming a country where corporate influence makes illegal things legal so that vassal politicians, and corporations can say, "They/we broke no laws. Everything they/we are doing is perfectly legal."

NICOLE FLATOW - Think Progress

In case it wasn’t clear already, the U.S. Supreme Court hammered home Thursday morning that it will protect the rights of corporations to force arbitration over the individuals’ access to the court system at any expense.

In a 5-3 ruling with Justice Sonia Sotomayor recused, Justice Antonin Scalia eviscerated almost any opportunity small merchants have to challenge alleged monopolistic practices by American Express in their credit card agreements.

Sound familiar? Earlier this term, the court turned back on procedural grounds a lawsuit alleging monopolistic practices by Comcast. A week after that, they turned back the claims of workers to challenge employer practices as a class. And in 2011, they issued one of the worst blows to consumer rights in years when they held that consumers challenging $30 fees could not sue together as a class. In each of these cases, the court’s procedural rulings mean the parties may ...

Read More - http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/06/20/2189061/even-small-businesses-cant-shake-mega-corporations-chokehold-on-access-to-the-courts/

***

Note - as you read this story bear in mind the above posted story.

Elizabeth Warren: Supreme Court Is Becoming 'A Subsidiary' of the Chamber of Commerce

http://readersupportednews.org/images/stories/article_imgs9/9188-elizabeth-warren-031313.jpg

Elizabeth Warren, so far as I can tell is one of the few people in the Congress actually trying to do what the Founders expected of Senators and Representatives -- govern with integrity.

Here is her take on the Supreme Court. As you can see it accords with my own. The institutions of our government are corrupted by the money and power of the NGCSs to a point that is nauseating. Washington, Franklin, Madison, Jefferson, Mason, Adams, and the others would be appalled to see what has happened to the government they put their lives and fortunes at risk to create.

Please click through to see the very revealing graphs.

The National Memo

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) used her remarks at the 2013 American Constitution Society for Law and Policy National Convention to warn that the Supreme Court is being captured by interests representing America's biggest corporations:

Take a look at the win rate of the Chamber of Commerce. According to the Constitution Accountability Center, the Chamber moved from a 43 percent win rate during the very conservative Berger Court to a 56 percent win rate under the very conservative Rehnquist court. And now they are at a 70 percent win rate under the Roberts Court. Follow this pro-business trend to its obvious conclusion and you will end up with a Supreme Court that's a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Chamber of Commerce.

The Chamber of Commerce is the nation's largest business lobby. In 2012, it spent over $100 million on lobbying, according to OpenSecret.com. Aligned with the ...

Read More - http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/18020-focus-supreme-court-is-becoming-a-subsidiary-of-the-chamber-of-commerce

giovonni

25th June 2013, 04:17

i guess it is most probable to assume it's in American's as well ...

http://www.futurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/cropduster_1.jpg

***********

Weed Killer Glyphosate Found in Human Urine Across Europe

The evidence against glyphosates -- a poison found in Roundup and other weed killers is insinuating itself literally into our tissues. The implications of this are only now beginning to be considered, and none of the news is good. Note that this is a European study where glyphosates are far less prevalent than they are in the U.S. No one has done the American study. Why is that do you think? And, of course, Monsanto says there's no problem.

ANNE SEWELL - Digital Journal

Friends of the Earth Europe (FoE) commissioned a series of urine tests on people in 18 countries across Europe. The results were released on Thursday and FoE is asking, "Why is there weed killer in our bodies?"
The findings from these tests raise serious concerns about the increasing levels of exposure to glyphosate-based weed killers, which are commonly used by farmers, public authorities and gardeners across Europe.
What is worrying is that should more genetically modified (GM) crops be grown in Europe, the use of glyphosate is predicted to rise even further.
According to FoE, despite the widespread use of the weed killer, there is little monitoring of glyphosate at present in food, water or the wider environment.
The FoE test is the first of its kind in Europe to test for the presence of the weed killer in human bodies.
Spokesperson for Friends of the Earth Europe, Adrian Bebb ...

Read More - http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/352258

giovonni

27th June 2013, 08:38

The Last Mystery of the Financial Crisis

http://smart-lab.ru/uploads/images/01/36/33/2013/06/27/6600f6.jpg

Here is the final bit explaining the complete corruption of the financial sector; it deals with the debasing of the the rating agencies. It is blatantly obvious from many sources that the Obama Administration Justice Department has failed to serve the public interest. We are five years past the 2008 meltdown, and it cannot be denied that no real effort has been made at the Federal level to hold these corporations, or the men and women who control them, accountable. Thus, I do not see how it is going to be possible to avoid another meltdown. The system is simply too corrupt, I think it is going to implode again because of its unregulated greed.

MATT TAIBBI - Rolling Stone

What about the ratings agencies?

That's what "they" always say about the financial crisis and the teeming rat's nest of corruption it left behind. Everybody else got plenty of blame: the greed-fattened banks, the sleeping regulators, the unscrupulous mortgage hucksters like spray-tanned Countrywide ex-CEO Angelo Mozilo.

But what about the ratings agencies? Isn't it true that almost none of the fraud that's swallowed Wall Street in the past decade could have taken place without companies like Moody's and Standard & Poor's rubber-stamping it? Aren't they guilty, too?

Man, are they ever. And a lot more than even the least generous of us suspected.

Everything Is Rigged: The Biggest Price-Fixing Scandal Ever

Thanks to a mountain of evidence gathered for a pair of major lawsuits by the San Diego-based law firm Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd, documents that for the most part have never been seen ...
Read more here (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-last-mystery-of-the-financial-crisis-20130619)

giovonni

30th June 2013, 10:53

Again i am posting the link for those who have followed this thread on Stephan A. Schwartz's ~ Schwartz Report ~

Especially for those who enjoy and would like to follow his (usually) daily updated reports ... :thumb:

http://www.schwartzreport.net/images/sr_stuff.gif
http://www.schwartzreport.net/images/srheaderimage.jpg
Link: http://www.schwartzreport.net/

lookbeyond

1st July 2013, 07:28

Take care and have a well earned rest Giovonni, luv lb

giovonni

17th January 2014, 04:26

will share this here ...

From Stephan A. Schwartz ~

Water is Destiny

"Water Sines Water Symposium Keynote Stephan A Schwartz, scientist and author, speaks of water, right intention and how our actions can heal the planet. Presenting the question we should ask ourselves of all our actions; Is this compassionate and life affirming. Find out more at stephanaschwartz.com. Water Sines is an annual event featuring a water healing ceremony involving music, light and performance" ...

http://b.vimeocdn.com/ts/460/616/460616901_640.jpg

View Here (https://vimeo.com/82791494)

giovonni

20th January 2014, 07:11

regarding the most recent Charleston, W. Virginia water source pollution scare ...

West Virginia’s Message to the Nation

Here is a very important essay about the lessons to be learned from the West Virginia spill, a story that has gotten remarkably little in-depth coverage by the corporate media. I read today that the supposedly safe water trucks that have been bringing water to the people in fact having been filling from the same river downstream from where the leak occurred.

by ALAN FARAGO

"The vaunted capacity of enlightened corporations to do better than government to protect the public interest in clean, safe water just cracked a big leak in West Virginia.

Here is the most curious omission in media coverage of the West Virginia pollution disaster: how politics in West Virginia harbors antipathy to the very environmental regulations that ought to protect the state’s drinking water.

It is also an outstanding example how politics have consequences like those depriving 300,000 people in Charleston of safe drinking water. It is almost as though the media — that knows no boundaries when it comes to matching mayhem to eyeballs — has discovered in the underbrush of West Virginia politics a tragedy that is too horrible: the indelicate matter of voters supporting choices that undermine their own existence.

Curious, too, the media has no difficulty macerating an event in New Jersey that is similarly totemic: traffic flow on the George Washington Bridge traffic constipated by political ambition. Arguably the Elk River in West Virginia represents the same theme of politics making mince-meat of citizen safety with a significantly more dire outcome. Yet the media holds its nose.

Although both US Senators from West Virginia are Democrats, they are a leaden part of the Democratic majority in the Senate that exposes the American public to the worst of right-wing extremism against environmental regulation.

West Virginia is a poor state. Poverty indexes put the state near the very bottom. So when a story like the Elk River, that bears an eery familiarity to the burning rivers of the industrial midwest that spurred in the 1970′s the first federal environmental laws, emerges: one struggles for interpretation more clear than a poor state subject to most unfortunate, unavoidable calamity. That is exactly what is playing out on nightly network news.

Not a word either from Fox News how environmental rules might have reached to protect Charleston’s drinking water from the owners of the coal-industry company. The Politburo in the Soviet Union had the Soviet era organ called Pravda to selectively inform Russians. That pretty much defines Fox News, when it comes to the environment and the importance of regulations. Where is the indignation? Where is the outcry? Where is the investigation of the evisceration of the EPA’s enforcement authority?

Although the federal EPA — the bogeyman of the right-wing — is not implicated in the Elk River disaster, the shadow cast over a city incapable of delivering clean water to citizens invites full disclosure.

According to news reports, even though the tanks were decades beyond their useful life, the catastrophic pollution event awaits dilution and time. Thus it is with pollution in the United States.

The name of the company responsible for the catastrophe in West Virginia: Freedom Industries."

source page (http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/01/13/west-virginias-message-to-the-nation/)

giovonni

20th January 2014, 08:21

http://cdn4.spiegel.de/images/image-39043-breitwandaufmacher-pbld.jpg

Green Fade-Out: Europe to Ditch Climate Protection Goals

If you have any questions about which are the real power centers in our world this story should disabuse you of illusions. The Virtual Corporate States that are the actual power centers in the 21st century do not like regulations in general and climate change regulations in particular. And so, once again, the profit for the few trumps the well-being of the many, indeed, the planet.

These are such sad stories. A child can look at the data and see where this is headed.

GREGOR PETER SCHMITZ - Der Spiegel (Germany)
BRUSSELS -- The EU's reputation as a model of environmental responsibility may soon be history. The European Commission wants to forgo ambitious climate protection goals and pave the way for fracking -- jeopardizing Germany's touted energy revolution in the process.

The climate between Brussels and Berlin is polluted, something European Commission officials attribute, among other things, to the "reckless" way German Chancellor Angela Merkel blocked stricter exhaust emissions during her re-election campaign to placate domestic automotive manufacturers like Daimler and BMW. This kind of blatant self-interest, officials complained at the time, is poisoning the climate.

But now it seems that the climate is no longer of much importance to the European Commission, the EU's executive branch, either. Commission sources have long been hinting that the body intends to move away from ambitious climate protection goals. On Tuesday, the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported as much...

Read more (http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/european-commission-move-away-from-climate-protection-goals-a-943664.html)

giovonni

21st January 2014, 20:08

Big Banks Launder Hundreds of Billions of Illegal Drug Cartel Money …
But Refuse to Provide Services for Legal Marijuana

You have probably noticed in stories about Colorado that the newly legal Marijuana business is run on a cash only basis because banks will not provide banking services. And you may remember the piece I ran the other day about how the government secretly was in league with one of the major Mexican drug cartels. That led me to wonder whether the banks also had a secret deal. And, once again, a little digging turned up evidence that this was the case.

This makes the hypocrisy of the entire War on Drugs even more blatant and its inherent racism even more evident. Nothing about the War on Drugs is what it appears, except the destruction of hundreds of thousands of families and the endless incarceration of Black and Brown kids.

WashingtonBlog

The big banks have laundered hundreds of billions of dollars for drug cartels. See this, this, this, this, this and this (indeed, drug dealers kept the banking system afloat during the depths of the 2008 financial crisis).

The HSBC employee who blew the whistle on the banks’ money laundering for terrorists and drug cartels says said: 'America is losing the drug war because our banks are [still] financing the cartels', and 'Banks financing drug cartels … affects every single American'.

And yet the banks refuse to provide banking services for LEGAL marijuana in states like Colorado which have blessed the sale of pot... Read more (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/01/u-s-banks-launder-hundreds-billions-illegal-drug-cartel-money-refuse-provide-services-legal-marijuana.html)

giovonni

23rd January 2014, 09:17

More Than Half of All Members of Congress Are Millionaires

http://www.alternet.org/files/styles/story_image/public/story_images/rich.png

The point this study makes is largely ignored by the media but, in my view, is very important. A millionaire just by the nature of their financial security simply cannot understand the world of someone who lives pay check to pay check, with no assurance the next paycheck will be there. You have to live that life to know it. I think this explains a great deal about why the Congress acts as it does.

JIM HIGHTOWER - AlterNet (U.S.)
The rich truly are different from you and me -- they tend to hold seats in Congress.

Our nation purports to be a representative democracy, yet you don't find many plumbers, mineworkers, dirt farmers, Wal-Mart associates, roofers, beauty parlor operators, taxi drivers, or other "get-the-job-done" Americans among the 535 members of the U.S. House and Senate.

What you do find is an over-supply of lawmakers drawn from a very thin strata of America's population: Millionaires. In fact, the Center for Responsive Politics reports that last year -- for the first time in history -- more than half of our senators and House members are in the Millionaires Club. Indeed, the average net worth (the value of what they own minus what they owe) for all lawmakers now totals more than $7 million... Read more (http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/more-half-all-members-congress-are-millionaires?akid=11429.267705.O6QAGI&rd=1&src=newsletter950228&t=4)

giovonni

25th January 2014, 10:38

http://i.usatoday.net/news/_photos/2012/06/26/Column-Nightmare-of-prison-rape-7T1MSD8K-x-large.jpg

Shades of Shawshank: Guards, Staff Committed Half of all Prison sex Assaults

The American gulag by its nature is corrupting. The warehousing of great numbers of human beings is both extraordinarily costly, and inevitably corrupting because just like slavery the power relationship is so distorted it is dysfunctional.

KELLY RIDDELL - The Washington Times
A decade after President George W. Bush signed into law the Prison Rape Elimination Act, sexual abuse is still rampant in America’s corrections facilities, with a growing number of accusations lodged against the very officers charged with protecting their inmates.

Nearly half of all sexual assault accusations reported in U.S. correctional facilities in 2011 were aimed at prison guards or staff, according to a report released Thursday by the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics. That was up 18 percent since 2006.

But the challenge for officials is sorting through cases in which evidence indicates the commission of a crime and those in which prisoners may have been motivated solely by a desire to harm guards they don’t like - a concern corrections unions have raised for years. The report found that only about 10 percent of reported sexual assaults in prison could be substantiated... Read more (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jan/23/staff-members-committed-half-sexual-assaults-priso/)

giovonni

26th January 2014, 11:56

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8f/Big_Ark_in_Dordrecht_3.jpg/800px-Big_Ark_in_Dordrecht_3.jpg

***********

Jan. 24, 2014

British Museum: Prototype for Noah's Ark was round

Here is an intriguing new archaeological discovery.

JILL LAWLESS - The Associated Press

"LONDON -- It was a vast boat that saved two of each animal and a handful of humans from a catastrophic flood.

But forget all those images of a long vessel with a pointy bow - the original Noah's Ark, new research suggests, was round.

A recently deciphered 4,000-year-old clay tablet from ancient Mesopotamia - modern-day Iraq - reveals striking new details about the roots of the Old Testament tale of Noah. It tells a similar story, complete with detailed instructions for building a giant round vessel known as a coracle - as well as the key instruction that animals should enter "two by two."

The tablet went on display at the British Museum on Friday, and soon engineers will follow the ancient instructions to see whether the vessel could actually have sailed.

It's also the subject of a new book, "The Ark Before Noah," by Irving Finkel, the museum's assistant keeper of the Middle East and the man who translated the tablet.

Finkel got hold of it a few years ago, when a man brought in a damaged tablet his father had acquired in the Middle East after World War II. It was light brown, about the size of a mobile phone and covered in the jagged cuneiform script of the ancient Mesopotamians.

It turned out, Finkel said Friday, to be "one of the most important human documents ever discovered."

"It was really a heart-stopping moment - the discovery that the boat was to be a round boat," said Finkel, who sports a long gray beard, a ponytail and boundless enthusiasm for his subject. "That was a real surprise."

And yet, Finkel said, a round boat makes sense. Coracles were widely used as river taxis in ancient Iraq and are perfectly designed to bob along on raging floodwaters.

"It's a perfect thing," Finkel said. "It never sinks, it's light to carry."

Other experts said Finkel wasn't simply indulging in book-promotion hype. David Owen, professor of ancient Near Eastern studies at Cornell University, said the British Museum curator had made "an extraordinary discovery."

Elizabeth Stone, an expert on the antiquities of ancient Mesopotamia at New York's Stony Brook University, said it made sense that ancient Mesopotamians would depict their mythological ark as round.

"People are going to envision the boat however people envision boats where they are," she said. "Coracles are not unusual things to have had in Mesopotamia."

The tablet records a Mesopotamian god's instructions for building a giant vessel - two-thirds the size of a soccer field in area - made of rope, reinforced with wooden ribs and coated in bitumen.

Finkel said that on paper (or stone) the boat-building orders appear sound, but he doesn't yet know whether it would have floated. A television documentary due to be broadcast later this year will follow attempts to build the ark according to the ancient manual.

The flood story recurs in later Mesopotamian writings including the "Epic of Gilgamesh." These versions lack the technical instructions - cut out, Finkel believes, because they got in the way of the storytelling.

"It would be like a Bond movie where instead of having this great sexy red car that comes on, somebody starts to tell you about how many horsepower it's got and the pressure of the tires and the capacity of the boot (trunk)," he said. "No one cares about that. They want the car chase."

Finkel is aware his discovery may cause consternation among believers in the Biblical story. When 19th-century British Museum scholars first learned from cuneiform tablets that the Babylonians had a flood myth, they were disturbed by its striking similarities to the story of Noah.

"Already in 1872 people were writing about it in a worried way - What does it mean that Holy Writ appears on this piece of Weetabix?" he joked, referring to a cereal similar in shape to the tablet.

Finkel has no doubts.

"I'm sure the story of the flood and a boat to rescue life is a Babylonian invention," he said.

He believes the tale was likely passed on to the Jews during their exile in Babylon in the 6th century B.C. And he doesn't think the tablet provides evidence the ark described in the Bible existed. He said it's more likely that a devastating real flood made its way into folk memory, and has remained there ever since.

"I don't think the ark existed - but a lot of people do," he said. "It doesn't really matter. The Biblical version is a thing of itself and it has a vitality forever.

"The idea that floods are caused by sin is happily still alive among us," he added, pointing out a local councilor in England who made headlines recently for saying Britain's recent storms were caused by the legalization of gay marriage.

"Had I known it, it would have gone in the preface of the book," Finkel said."

source page (http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_BRITAIN_ANCIENT_ARK?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-01-24-14-58-33)

giovonni

29th January 2014, 14:58

DEA Leader Fumes About White House Playing Softball With Marijuana Legalizers

Here we see the pro-prohibition forces beginning to raise their heads to block the gathering trend against prohibition. There is nothing surprising about this. The ricebowl of the pro-prohibitionists depends on this insane war against American society. If the DEA had nothing to be concerned about but Heroin and Meth they could be reduced to a quarter of the size they presently are. That's why the Sheriffs who heard this speech reacted as they did. Their ricebowls are also at risk.

Michele Leonhart says she has spent 33 years working for Americans. I would say she has spent 33 years destroying the lives of hundreds of thousands of American families using a policy that has no scientific basis whatever.

STEVEN NELSON, Reporter - US News & World Report

The Drug Enforcement Administration's leader reportedly contradicted President Barack Obama's views on marijuana during a "closed-door" speech Wednesday and denounced White House staff for playing softball against a team of marijuana activists.

DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart's candor about her boss and his staff didn't stay quiet for long.

Key details about Leonhart's speech at the closed-to-the-press annual winter meeting of the Major County Sheriffs' Association in Washington, D.C., were reported Saturday by the Boston Herald.

"She was particularly frustrated with the fact that, according to her, the White House participated in a softball game with a pro-legalization group," Bristol County, Mass., Sheriff Thomas Hodgson told the Herald.

Leonhart spoke to the sheriffs less than a week after The New Yorker published an exclusive interview with Obama, in which he said marijuana is less harmful than alcohol and that "it's important for [legalization] to go forward" in ...
Read more (http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/01/27/dea-leader-fumes-about-white-house-playing-softball-with-marijuana-legalizers)

giovonni

2nd February 2014, 00:25

The Great Lakes Go Dry: How One-Fifth Of The World’s Fresh Water Is Dwindling Away

Water is destiny, either too much, or too little...
Here is an aspect of climate change few outside of the area seem to know about.

JOANNA M. FOSTER - Climate Progress http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/LowLevelsTCGville010908016-300x225.jpg

The frozen opalescent lake and thin, gray sky fade together into white light where the horizon should be. Tall, skeletal grasses shiver on the beach in a wind that makes any sliver of exposed skin burn. The Arni J. Richter, an icebreaking ferry, is about to pull away from Northport Pier for its second and final trip of the day to Washington Island. It’s loaded with food and fuel for the more than 700 hardy residents who call the remote island, just north of Door County peninsula in Wisconsin, home.

People have lived on Washington Island for over 160 years. They’re proud of their tight-knit community and their Icelandic heritage. But life on the island is threatened. For the past 15 years, islanders have watched Lake Michigan slowly disappear. Last January, the lake hit a record low, 29 inches below the long-term average as measured since 1918... Read more (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/01/28/3193301/climate-change-draining-great-lakes/)

giovonni

6th February 2014, 08:56

West Virginia Water Contains Formaldehyde, Official Says

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/WV-water-638x452.jpg

This story is so sad and demoralizing. The truth is West Virginia is essentially a carbon energy plantation not a state. And West Virginians, rather than develop alternative employment opportunities, have been brainwashed into feeling a kind of fierce pride in their subjugation.

KILEY KROH - Climate Progress

"A West Virginia state official told a legislative panel on Wednesday that he “can guarantee” residents are breathing in formaldehyde, a known carcinogen, nearly three weeks after a massive chemical spill contaminated the water supply for more than 300,000 residents.

Scott Simonton, a Marshall University environmental scientist and member of the state Environmental Quality Board, told the panel that he had found formaldehyde in local water samples and was alarmed by the lack of information regarding the lingering impacts of the spill on public health, the Charleston Gazette reported.

“It’s frightening, it really is frightening,” Simonton said. “What we know scares us, and we know there’s a lot more we don’t know.”

On January 9, Freedom Industries reported a leak of crude MCHM, a mixture of chemicals used in the coal production process, from its storage facility on the Elk River and into the water supply for 16 percent of the state’s population. Simonton said the crude MCHM can be broken down into formaldehyde, which causes cancer, and inhaled while people are showering.

Very little is known about crude MCHM and just how toxic it may be to humans. Initially, state authorities maintained that levels of the chemicals below 1 part per million were considered safe for people, based on consultations with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The CDC’s recommendation, however, was derived from a study conducted by Eastman Chemical company, which only tested the mixture’s main ingredient and contained no human toxicity data.

Two days after the state began lifting the ‘do not use’ water ban, the CDC issued guidance advising pregnant women not to drink the water until there were no detectable levels of crude MCHM.

Simonton also expressed concern about the 1 ppm threshold and the studies used to derive it, telling the panel that “in one study it couldn’t even be determined what the cause of death was for the rats because there were so many different things happening to them.”

Shortly after admitting another largely unknown chemical, PPH, had also spilled into the water, Freedom Industries said on Monday that 10,000 gallons of chemicals had spilled, the second time the estimate has been increased."

source page (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/01/29/3222571/west-virginia-formaldehyde/)

giovonni

7th February 2014, 11:51

Fracking Is Using up Billions of Gallons of Water in the Places That Need it Most

http://media.salon.com/2013/08/drought-inching-back.jpeg2-620x412.jpg

Once again, as has been true of so many other situations, we see in this report the profit for the few trumping the wellbeing of the many. It is literally killing American society, destroying the middle class, and corrupting our democracy. What continues to amaze me is how loyal Red state voters are to those who are degrading their lives.

LINDSAY ABRAMS, Assistant Editor - Salon

The tremendous drought that’s currently affecting California has the state anticipating the need to conserve its remaining water - Gov. Jerry Brown has urged residents to cut their usage by 20 percent, and some are beginning to argue that it’s time to make restrictions mandatary. As climate change worsens, we can expect dry periods like this - not just in California, but across wide swaths of the country - to get worse, the demand for water more pressing. And the 97 billion gallons of water needed to frack our oil and gas wells isn’t helping matters.

Of the 4,000 oil and gas wells drilled in the U.S. since 2011, a new report from Ceres found, a full three-quarters owere located in areas of water scarcity. More than half - 55 percent - were in areas experiencing drought... Read more (http://www.salon.com/2014/02/05/fracking_is_using_up_billions_of_gallons_of_water_in_the_places_that_need_it_most/)

giovonni

9th February 2014, 17:12

Obesity in the United States – Dysbiosis From Exposure to Low-dose Antibiotics ?

Here for the first time we see a possible explanation for the explosion of Obesity, and the connection between the rampant overuse of antibiotics and our deeply sick industrial agriculture system. Once again it demonstrates the profit of the few over the wellness of the many. Our society is dying because we either cannot or will not commit to social policies that prioritize national wellness.

Lee W. Riley, Eva Raphael, and Eduardo Faerstein, Division of Infectious Disease and Vaccinology, School of Public Health, University of California - Frontiers in Public Health

The rapid increase in obesity prevalence in the United States in the last 20 years is unprecedented and not well explained. Here, we explore a hypothesis that the obesity epidemic may be driven by population-wide chronic exposures to low-residue antibiotics that have increasingly entered the American food chain over the same time period.. Read more (http://www.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpubh.2013.00069/full?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Public_Health-w6-2014)

giovonni

10th February 2014, 12:25

From California to the Middle East, Water Shortages Pose Threat of Terror and war

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/water-scarcity-via-Shutterstock-615x345.jpg

I have been saying to you for over a decade that water is destiny. Now some others are coming to recognize this. I am afraid it is probably too late to deal with this in an optimal way, but the longer we let it go undealt with the less optimal the solution.

SUZANNE GOLDENBERG - The Raw Story

Huge areas of the world are drying up and a billion people have no access to safe drinking water. US intelligence is warning of the dangers of shrinking resources and experts say the world is ‘standing on a precipice’

On 17 January, scientists downloaded fresh data from a pair of Nasa satellites and distributed the findings among the small group of researchers who track the world’s water reserves. At the University of California, Irvine, hydrologist James Famiglietti looked over the data from the gravity-sensing Grace satellites with a rising sense of dread.

The data, released last week, showed California on the verge of an epic drought, with its backup systems of groundwater reserves so run down that the losses could be picked up by satellites orbiting 400km above the Earth’s surface... Read more (http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/02/09/from-california-to-the-middle-east-water-shortages-pose-threat-of-terror-and-war/)

giovonni

10th February 2014, 12:32

Industrial Heat Has Acquired Andrea Rossi's E-Cat Technology

Here is some more good news. This is the latest on Low Energy Nuclear Reaction technology (LENR) which, I continue to believe, is going to be a game changer. Industrial Heat LLC, mentioned in this report, is backed by Cherokee Investment Partners, the vehicle of investor and CEO Thomas Darden, who is interested in deploying the cold fusion tech commercially in both China and the US. In the next five years I think this is going to become a big deal.

PR Newswire

RESEARCH TRIANGLE, N.C. -- Industrial Heat, LLC announced today that it has acquired the rights to Andrea Rossi's Italian low energy nuclear reaction (LENR) technology, the Energy Catalyzer (E-Cat). A primary goal of the company is to make the technology widely available, because of its potential impact on air pollution and carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels and biomass.

"The world needs a new, clean and efficient energy source. Such a technology would raise the standard of living in developing countries and reduce the environmental impact of producing energy," said JT Vaughn speaking on behalf of Industrial Heat (IH).

Mr. Vaughn confirmed IH acquired the intellectual property and licensing rights to Rossi's LENR device after an independent committee of European scientists conducted two multi-day tests at Rossi's facilities in Italy... More here (http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/industrial-heat-has-acquired-andrea-rossis-e-cat-technology-241853361.html)

giovonni

11th February 2014, 22:51

One American City Enjoys a Hyperfast Internet --
Any Surprise Corporations Don't Control It ?

Here is some good news. In the U.S., where the internet was created, by the standards of the developed world we have mediocre internet speeds. If you live in Singapore, or South Korea, or Japan for instance and you come to the U.S. the poor internet speeds available are a constant irritant. Because we have been brainwashed to believe we have the biggest and best of everything, most Americans have no idea how second rate our electronic infrastructure actually is.

But it does not have to be that way, as this report spells out.

The Thom Hartmann Show - AlterNet (U.S.)

It’s time for high-speed internet access for all !

This morning, President Obama spoke to a crowd at a middle school in Adelphi, Maryland about the importance of high-speed internet access for America’s students.

But while high-speed internet access may still seem out-of-reach for many Americans, down in Chattanooga, Tennessee it’s been a reality for a long time.

That’s because Chattanooga is home to 'The Gig,” a taxpayer-owned, high-speed fiber-optic network... Read more (http://www.alternet.org/media/one-american-city-enjoys-internet-hundreds-times-faster-most-ours-no-surprise-its-outside?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark)

giovonni

13th February 2014, 09:17

Mammograms Do Not Reduce Breast Cancer Deaths, Study Finds

http://i.livescience.com/images/i/000/025/132/iFF/breast-cancer-110912-02.jpg?1331093817

Here is some important health information that I suggest women readers discuss with their physicians.

BAHAR GHOLIPOU, Staff Writer - Live Science

Yearly mammograms in middle-age women do not reduce breast cancer deaths - these tests are essentially as good as physical examination alone, according to a new 25-year study from Canada.

The study, which included nearly 90,000 women ages 40 to 59, is the latest to question the value of routine mammography. The researchers found the same number of women died of breast cancer over 25 years, regardless of whether they underwent yearly mammograms or not... Read more (http://www.livescience.com/43302-mammograms-do-not-reduce-deaths.html)

giovonni

15th February 2014, 12:52

Could This Baker Solve the Gluten Mystery ?

http://www.motherjones.com/files/imagecache/top-of-content-main/insphoto_1392137600898.jpg

Where I live about half the women I know live on Gluten-free diets. Here is the back story. It is another tale of corners cut in the name of increased profit and decreased national wellness. Happily the story not only explains something, it provides a solution.

TOM PHILPOTT - Mother Jones

Washington State University's agriculture research and extension facility in Mount Vernon, about an hour due north along the Puget Sound from Seattle, looks at first glance like any recently built academic edifice: that is to say, boring and austere. On the outside, it's surrounded by test plots of wheat and other grains, as well as greenhouses, shrouded in the Pacific Northwest's classic gray skies and mist. Inside, professors and grad students shuffle through the long halls, passing quiet offices and labs.

Yet one of those labs is not like the others-or any other that I know of, for that matter. When you look down the length of the room from the back wall, you see two distinct chambers, separated by long, adjoining tables: gleaming chunks of impressive-looking machinery to the left; flour sacks, mixing bowls, a large, multileveled oven to the right. And in place of the vaguely chemical ... Read more (http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2014/02/toms-kitchen-100-whole-wheat-bread-doesnt-suck-and-pretty-easy)

giovonni

17th February 2014, 19:45

Phantom Melodies Yield Real Clues to Brain’s Workings

http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/02/13/science/13zimmer/13zimmer-master675.jpg

There is so much we still don't understand about how our brains work.

CARL ZIMMER - The New York Times

In 2011, a 66-year-old retired math teacher walked into a London neurological clinic hoping to get some answers. A few years earlier, she explained to the doctors, she had heard someone playing a piano outside her house. But then she realized there was no piano.

The phantom piano played longer and longer melodies, like passages from Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto number 2 in C minor, her doctors recount in a recent study in the journal Cortex. By the time the woman - to whom the doctors refer only by her first name, Sylvia - came to the clinic, the music had become her nearly constant companion. Sylvia hoped the doctors could explain to her what was going on... Read more (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/13/science/phantom-melodies-yield-real-clues-to-brains-workings.html?_r=0)

giovonni

20th February 2014, 14:37

Who Needs Sunlight? In Arizona, Solar Power Never Sleeps

http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/IMG_1266-640x426.jpg

More fascinating news about solar and the transition out of the carbon era. Personally I would rather see a decentralized system, but it will surely be a mix, and this offers power even at night.

KATE SHAW YOSHIDA - arstechnica

GILA BEND, ARIZONA-Every afternoon during the summer, millions of people across the American Southwest come home from work and switch on their air conditioners, straining the power grid in states like Arizona. Traditional solar power-although perfectly suited to the sunny climes of this region-can’t meet this demand since the surge in use peaks just as the day’s sun is disappearing.

That’s why most power suppliers diversify, using electricity from different sources to meet local needs. Solar power is abundant in the middle of sunny, clear days, but energy from other sources-coal, nuclear, or hydroelectric power for example-is necessary at night or when the weather is bad.

But increasingly efficient technology is allowing solar plants to contribute for a longer period of time each day and produce energy even in cloudy conditions. The key is a design that allows them to store the sun’s energy to be used later ... Read more (http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/02/making-solar-power-even-after-the-sun-goes-down/)

giovonni

20th February 2014, 14:41

15 Reasons Why Your Food Prices Are About To Start Soaring

I think this is a pretty good assessment concerning what is coming in food prices.

MICHAEL SNYDER - ZeroHedge

Did you know that the U.S. state that produces the most vegetables is going through the worst drought it has ever experienced and that the size of the total U.S. cattle herd is now the smallest that it has been since 1951? Just the other day, a CBS News article boldly declared that "food prices soar as incomes stand still", but the truth is that this is only just the beginning. If the drought that has been devastating farmers and ranchers out west continues, we are going to see prices for meat, fruits and vegetables soar into the stratosphere. Already, the federal government has declared portions of 11 states to be "disaster areas", and California farmers are going to leave half a million acres sitting idle this year because of the extremely dry conditions ... Read more (http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-02-17/15-reasons-why-your-food-prices-are-about-start-soaring)

Roisin

20th February 2014, 15:08

Wow, I didn't think things were that bad but good article and will start stocking up on various food items, flour, sugar, tea, corn meal, herbs, coffee, pasta, dried beans, canned vegs. fish and meat, dry milk, cheese etc.... before the prices go up more. I live next to a Save-A-Lot and the current prices there are still pretty low.

Will circulate this article to family and friends. Thanks for posting it!

giovonni

23rd February 2014, 02:14

California Drought: Why Farmers Are 'Exporting Water' to China

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/73070000/jpg/_73070179_compcalifornia.jpg

Water is destiny. Here is a view of water you may not have considered. It gets virtually no coverage in the U.S.

ALASTAIR LEITHEAD - BBC News (U.K.)

LOS ANGELES -- While historic winter storms have battered much of the US, California is suffering its worst drought on record. So why is America's most valuable farming state using billions of gallons of water to grow hay - specifically alfalfa - which is then shipped to China? More here (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26124989)

giovonni

25th February 2014, 06:32

some surprises here ...

http://www.b92.net/news/pics/2013/09/02/15926429765224b2866ce24535871692_v4%20big.jpg

These 5 Countries Provide The Best Health Care In The World

The American Illness Profit System, and I include the changes wrought by Obamacare, is by any criterion but the profit it makes, an abject failure. The World Health Organization (WHO) ranks us in the world as 37th in excellence. Here are the five best systems.

Why don't we mimic these successes? The answer is not really complicated. Because in the United States profit is more important than health.

The Huffington Post

InternationalLiving.com’s annual Global Retirement Index reports that France, Uruguay and Malaysia provide the best and most affordable health care in the world.

The Health Care category in the Index considers the cost of care and the quality. Also considered are the number of people per doctor, the number of hospital beds per 1,000 people, the percentage of the population with access to safe water, the infant mortality rate, life expectancy, and public-health expenditure as a percentage of a country’s GDP... Read more (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/internationallivingcom/best-countries-for-health-care_b_4773837.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular)

giovonni

26th February 2014, 20:12

http://agenda21radio.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Unknown-81.jpeg

Dad May Join Two Moms for Disease-Free Designer Babies

This is an excellent assessment concerning the latest in the Homo Superior Trend. The essay raises all the right issues. This is going to be a major and fundamental change.

I first started writing about genetic engineering and its implications in 2006, and have been struck by the steady progress this branch of scientific medicine has made in the years since. Paper after paper keeps coming out in the peer-reviewed literature. (See Homo Superiorus (http://www.explorejournal.com/article/S1550-8307%2806%2900027-9/fulltext)) These are possibly our children but our grandchildren certainly. And the trend is going to be augmented by another trend familiar to SR readers: antibiotic medicine is declining as a result of overuse in industrial animal husbandry. Genetic engineering can obviate the problem. Or eliminating a chronic disease; a slight adjustment will eventually make cardio-vascular disease unlikely.

But there are profound ethical issues here: it risks creating a new species of humans, with all of the implications such a development would create, many very negative.

Elizabeth Lopatto - Bloomberg Sustainability

A new technology aimed at eliminating genetic disease in newborns would combine the DNA of three people, instead of just two, to create a child, potentially redrawing ethical lines for designer babies.

The process works by replacing potentially variant DNA in the unfertilized eggs of a hopeful mother with disease-free genes from a donor. U.S. regulators today will begin weighing whether the procedure, used only in monkeys so far, is safe enough to be tested in humans...

Read more (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-25/dad-may-join-two-moms-for-disease-free-designer-babies.html)

giovonni

2nd March 2014, 12:38

Running It All On Clean Energy: 'A Question Of Social And Political Will”

Here is what I think is the truth. We could make the conversion to non-carbon energy within a generation if we could muster the political and social will to do so. Sadly, I am afraid the secret government within the government that is controlled in large measure by carbon energy interests, combined with the almost grotesque ignorance of the American electorate will not allow it to happen. But it could be done, and it would be significantly cheaper for customers, would create tens of thousands of jobs, as weel as improving the economy.

CleanTechnica

Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment Senior Fellow Mark Jacobson says the United States has the technology and logistical ability to convert to all-renewable energy sources by 2050-if we can manage to exercise the social and political will to do so. He’s the guy who told David Letterman we already have enough wind to power the entire world 'seven times over.” Now he has proven his point with a groundbreaking roadmap to clean energy for all 50 U.S. states... Read more (http://cleantechnica.com/2014/02/25/running-clean-energy-question-social-political-will/?utm_source=Wind+News&utm_campaign=bb326f555c-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_79fed14422-bb326f555c-331990189)

giovonni

3rd March 2014, 22:06

How to Survive a Future Without Water

http://media.salon.com/2014/02/drought_dream_city-620x412.jpg

Water is destiny. Here is a glimpse of what lies ahead for California. It is going to be a very different world.

HENRY GRABAR

The rain finally came to California this week, and not a moment too soon. Last year was the state’s driest year in a century. Over the past two weeks, the percentage of California territory in an 'exceptional drought” - the drought monitor’s highest rating - has expanded from 15 to 26, while over 90 percent of the state remains in 'severe drought.”

On Jan. 31, 2013, the State Water Project (SWP), the network of pumps and aqueducts that supplies water to 25 million people from Napa to Coachella, issued a historic 0 percent allocation. Translation: Of the 4 million acre-feet of water requested by its constituent water districts, the SWP, for the first time in its 55-year history, can promise nothing... Read more (http://www.salon.com/2014/03/01/how_to_survive_a_future_without_water/)

giovonni

4th March 2014, 23:18

Thrown in Jail for Being Poor: the Booming For-profit Probation Industry

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/2/28/1393622182289/6621aa87-f8ec-453e-8cb8-343f0016aca7-460x276.jpeg

I find it hard to believe the United States is bringing back debtor prisons, but that appears to be the case, as reported in the Guardian, arguably the best and most independent newspaper in the English language. The elimination of debtor prisons was something the Founders took as a very serious goal for their new country. So much for the Founders, they are trumped by the new private for-profit prison trend.

LAUREN GAMBINO - The Guardian (U.K.)/ The Associated Press

In January 2013, Clifford Hayes, a homeless man suffering from lupus and looking for a night off the streets, walked into the sheriff’s office in Augusta, Georgia. It was a standard visit: he needed police clearance, a requirement of many homeless shelters, to stay overnight at the Salvation Army.

Hayes expected to go straight to the shelter. Instead, he was handcuffed and later thrown in jail. Hayes hadn’t committed a crime – or at least, he hadn’t in many years since 2007, when he committed several driving-related misdemeanor offenses, for which he pled guilty and was put on probation. That probation left him $2,000 in debt for court fines – and fees he was supposed to pay to a private company the state hired to monitor him until his probation ended. Hayes needed to pay $854 to the court to avoid a jail sentence; because he had no money ... Read more (http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/mar/02/poor-)

giovonni

8th March 2014, 08:42

Inheriting Stress

http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/03/09/sunday-review/09GRAYMATTER/09GRAYMATTER-master495.jpg

There is a reason Bible stories have survived for millennia. Not because they are the inerrant dictated word of God, but because they tell us truths about cultures that develop from generations of direct observation. One of these is: We reap what we sow. Because we do not make national wellness a priority, and place profit above all other considerations, we are a deeply unhappy country with tens of millions of over-stressed individuals. As this report makes clear we are seeing social karma in action as a result.

INNA GAISLER-SALOMON - The New York Times

We intuitively understand, and scientific studies confirm, that if a woman experiences stress during her pregnancy, it can affect the health of her baby. But what about stress that a woman experiences before getting pregnant - perhaps long before?

It may seem unlikely that the effects of such stress could be directly transmitted to the child. After all, stress experienced before pregnancy is not part of a mother’s DNA, nor does it overlap with the nine months of fetal development.

Nonetheless, it is undeniable that stress experienced during a person’s lifetime is often correlated with stress-related problems in that person’s offspring - and even in the offspring’s offspring. Perhaps the best-studied example is that of the children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors. Research shows that survivors’ children have greater-than-average chances of having stress-related psychiatric illnesses like post-traumatic stress disorder, even without being exposed to higher levels of stress ... Read more (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/09/opinion/sunday/can-children-inherit-stress.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=1)

giovonni

8th March 2014, 08:48

MIT’s Liquid Metal Stores Solar Power Until After Sundown

http://www.bloomberg.com/image/ialTmud1trDA.jpg

Here is some very good news; a potential game changer. As this technology comes on line the transition from the carbon era to the green era will be greatly speeded up.

CHRISTOPHER MARTIN - Bloomberg Sustainability

A 40-foot trailer loaded with 25 tons of liquid metals may be the solution to the renewable-energy industry’s biggest challenge: making sure electricity is available whenever it’s needed.

A Boston-area startup founded by MIT researchers is working to turn this new concept into a commercially viable product, liquid-metal batteries that will store power for less than $500 a kilowatt-hour. That’s less than a third the cost of some current battery technologies.

The technology promises an alternative to the massive pumped-water systems that make up 95 percent of U.S. energy-storage capacity. At that price, developers will be able to build wind and solar projects that can deliver power to the grid anytime, making renewable energy as reliable as natural gas and coal without the greenhouse-gas emissions.

'If we can get liquid-metal batteries down to $500 a kilowatt-hour, we’ll change the world,” Donald Sadoway, chief scientific adviser at Cambridge, ... Read more (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-03-06/mit-s-liquid-metal-stores-solar-power-until-after-sundown.html)

giovonni

10th March 2014, 08:54

What the Collapse of the Ming Dynasty can Tell us About American Decline

A number of writers, including myself, have made the comparison between the late Roman Empire and the U.S. Empire. But this paper, I think, accurately makes the point that a better correlation is the Ming Dynasty in China.

NOAH SMITH, Assistant Professor of finance at Stony Brook University - The Week

Ming China was by far the greatest nation on the planet for most of the 15th and 16th centuries. It was certainly the biggest and the richest. Ming technology was in advance of anything in Europe or the Middle East, with movable type, compartmentalized ship hulls, steering rudders, advanced farming techniques, and the ability to solve systems of linear equations. Ming military power conquered Mongolia, subdued Korea and Vietnam, fended off a major invasion from Japan, and quickly disposed of meddlesome raiders from Portugal and the Netherlands. Taxes were low, industry was strong, and the society was peaceful and stable. For almost 300 years, Ming China could - and did - rightfully consider itself the center of the world... Read more (http://theweek.com/article/index/257266/what-the-collapse-of-the-ming-dynasty-can-tell-us-about-american-decline)

giovonni

12th March 2014, 16:38

Study: Nuclear Reactors Are Toxic to Surrounding Areas, Especially With Age

http://www.truth-out.org/images/images_2014_03/2014.3.11.Bernd.Main.jpg

The evidence against using nuclear energy as a viable technology becomes clearer year by year. Yet so great is the hold of this industry over the government that like junkies who can't give up a habit, we continue to pour billions of public dollars into this madness.

CANDICE BERND - Truthout

A study released last week shows that public health in the communities surrounding California's Diablo Canyon power plant in San Luis Obispo County declined dramatically after the plant was built. The findings also document the presence of Strontium-90 in baby teeth.

Is the baby tooth under your child's pillow radioactive? It could be if you live relatively close to a nuclear power plant that has been operating normally and in accordance with federal regulations, according to a new study.

The study, released last week by the Santa Barbara-based think tank World Business Academy for its Safe Energy Project, found that public health indicators such as infant mortality rates and cancer incidence in surrounding areas rose dramatically after Pacific Gas and Electric's (PG&E) two nuclear reactors at the Diablo Canyon power plant began operations in 1984 and 1985.

"This should be a concern for any nuclear reactor and ... Read more (http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/22324-study-nuclear-reactors-are-toxic-to-surrounding-areas-especially-as-plants-age)

giovonni

14th March 2014, 02:01

perhaps ...

You're Drinking the Wrong Kind of Milk

http://www.motherjones.com/files/imagecache/top-of-content-main/milka2master.jpg

If you have issues with milk you are going to find this story very important. We have here what I think is going to be an new datastream, a new thread tracing the failure of the Industrial Animal Husbandry model.

JOSH HARKINSON - Mother Jones

When my in-laws moved from India to the United States some 35 years ago, they couldn't believe the low cost and abundance of our milk-until they developed digestive problems. They'll now tell you the same thing I've heard a lot of immigrants say: American milk will make you sick.

It takes HOW much water to make a glass of milk?!

It turns out that they could be onto something. An emerging body of research suggests that many of the 1 in 4 Americans who exhibit symptoms of lactose intolerance could instead be unable to digest A1, a protein most often found in milk from the high-producing Holstein cows favored by American and some European industrial dairies. The A1 protein is much less prevalent in milk from Jersey, Guernsey, and most Asian and African cow breeds, where, instead, the A2 protein predominates.

"We've got a huge amount of ... Read more (http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/03/a1-milk-a2-milk-america)

giovonni

19th March 2014, 04:29

something special ...

Stephan A Schwartz:
Non-Local Consciousness and Exceptional Experiences

Published on Mar 4, 2014

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWw2B5Y7tG0

giovonni

21st March 2014, 10:57

The Koch-Keystone Connection: Brothers Are The Largest Lease Holders in Canada’s Oil Sands

Now you see the curtain pulled back. The Keystone pipeline is a classic example of profit for the few -- the Koch's could make many many billions from Keystone -- and potential disaster for the many. It is now completely transparent. And yet it could still happen.

LINDSAY ABRAMS, Assistant Editor - Salon

UPDATE 3/20/2014 7PM: An earlier version of this post misstated the previous report’s findings. The Koch brothers were first estimated to hold 2 million acres, an amount of land potentially worth $100 billion.

The Keystone XL pipeline isn’t just about oil and gas companies. It’s also about the Koch brothers and their vast influence over the Republican party. That influence extends as well to Canada’s oil sands, the Washington Post reports: a subsidiary of Koch Industries, owned by bros Charles and David, is the land’s largest lease holder.

The parcel of land controlled by the Kochs covers 1.1 million acres, according to the International Forum on Globalization, a liberal think tank. That’s an area roughly the size of Delaware, and more than what’s owned by Royal Dutch Shell, Conoco Phillips, Suncor, Exxon Mobil, Chevron or any of the Chinese companies that have invested in the oil sands.

Read More (http://www.salon.com/2014/03/20/the_koch_keystone_connection_brothers_are_the_largest_lease_holders_in_canadas_oil_sands/)

Lifebringer

21st March 2014, 11:32

Why do they not drag a few ice berg chunks down through the ocean with underwater subtow, and have them all come out with ice picks? LOL Seriously, all this snow this year, all the complaining about no water. Why can't these people put two and two together and get water? Duh?

This is exactly why we need to have our out of the box thinking, instead of some money hungry corporation thinking that costs us more than double, and usually ends up with them scratching their heads. Surely they can drag a few hundred chunks of that ice to the Great lakes of China, and let them melt and filter the water. They've got to get rid of all the CO2 overhang and greenhouse trapping in their air. Now's the time to put all their know how together, and do the darn thingy. Instead of racking up all the fish they can chop or sushi, they can put some water in place by the massive excessive ice, and end all this drought stuff, and cool the planet. Otherwise they will have to resort to canopy gardens where the sun shines most of the day on them, and the harsh afternoon suns are blocked until the next sunrise. Night harvests moon planting helps also. I've saved lots of maple tree heliocopter seeds for the forests to come, God forbid we have a volcanic sweep.

giovonni

22nd March 2014, 12:18

U.S. Prison System Resembling Huge Geriatric Ward

http://www.nationofchange.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/article_main_image/USPrisonsResembleGeriatricWards030114.jpg

The American Gulag, the largest prison system in human history is now facing transformation into the largest geriatric ward in the world. As this report makes clear we pay dearly for the stupidity of our social policies -- you pay dearly that is, since it is all being done with tax monies. Most of these people are in jail for Marijuana. We spend more on warehousing aging prisoners than we do for elementary and secondary schools. How stupid is that?

Click through to see the accompanying chart.

KANYA D'ALMEIDA - Nation of Change

A nurse helps an old man up from his chair. Holding onto her arms, he steps blindly forward, trusting her to lead him to his spot at the lunch table.

One man breathes through a respirator. Another gropes on the nightstand for his dentures. Yet another calls out to a passing doctor that he cannot remember his own name.

This may sound like a typical day at a home for the elderly but several independent investigations describe such scenes being played out in a much more unlikely place: in prisons across the United States that are now home to thousands of senior citizens... Read more (http://www.nationofchange.org/us-prison-system-resembling-huge-geriatrics-ward-1393688859)

chocolate

22nd March 2014, 14:14

I am going diligently to read this whole thread.

:)

giovonni

22nd March 2014, 14:56

I am going diligently to read this whole thread.

:)

Then you would be of like mind persistent as myself ...

Note as someone on this forum recently described me ...

Who unfortunately i lno onger consider worthy of my friendship ...

Though i still do you young Lady ... ;)

giovonni

24th March 2014, 05:56

Genetic Mugshot Recreates Faces From Nothing But DNA

This, wedded to the surveillance state is going to have a huge effect on society. It will become very difficult to evade arrest as the two technologies develop, and that will have an impact on people's behavior. This is a game changer.

Click through to see the reconstructions and photos of the actual people. Amazing.

SOURCE: (PLoS Genetics, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1004224).

PETER ALDHOUS - Slate/New Scientist (U.K.)

A murder has been committed, and all the cops have to go on is a trace of DNA left at the scene. It doesn't match any profile in databases of known criminals, and the trail goes cold. But what if the police could issue a wanted poster based on a realistic "photofit" likeness built from that DNA?

Not if, but when, claim researchers who have developed a method for determining how our genes influence facial shape. One day, the technique may even allow us to gaze into the faces of extinct human-like species that interbred with our own ancestors... Read more (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129613.600-genetic-mugshot-recreates-faces-from-nothing-but-dna.html?full=true#.Uy_IhoUyvFl)

giovonni

26th March 2014, 20:04

The Toxins That Threaten Our Brains

http://envisioneering.net/Portals/0/21%20march/The%20Toxins%20That%20Threaten%20Our%20Brains.jpeg

This is a very sobering essay. Read this carefully and it will give you information to make informed
choices with how a number of chemicals enter your life, or are kept out.

Click through to see the many useful graphics that accompany this report.

JAMES HAMBLIN - The Atlantic

Forty-one million IQ points. That’s what Dr. David Bellinger determined Americans have collectively forfeited as a result of exposure to lead, mercury, and organophosphate pesticides. In a 2012 paper published by the National Institutes of Health, Bellinger, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, compared intelligence quotients among children whose mothers had been exposed to these neurotoxins while pregnant to those who had not. Bellinger calculates a total loss of 16.9 million IQ points due to exposure to organophosphates, the most common pesticides used in agriculture.

Last month, more research brought concerns about chemical exposure and brain health to a heightened pitch. Philippe Grandjean, Bellinger’s Harvard colleague, and Philip Landrigan, dean for global health at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in Manhattan, announced to some controversy in the pages of a prestigious medical journal that a 'silent pandemic” of toxins has been damaging the brains of unborn children. ... Read More (http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/03/the-toxins-that-threaten-our-brains/284466/)

giovonni

29th March 2014, 11:50

Vatican Vice: Sex, Drugs and Downloads Taint the Image of the Holy See

http://cdn.thedailybeast.com/content/dailybeast/articles/2014/03/26/vatican-vice-sex-drugs-and-downloads-taint-the-image-of-the-holy-see/jcr:content/image.crop.800.500.jpg/1395858888057.cached.jpg

Organizations, like individuals, when they become too rich, too cloistered, too protected from criticism, and too self-indulgent, rot from the inside out.

The Daily Beast

Someone sent condoms filled with cocaine to the Vatican Post Office, but that’s only the latest in a series of revelations about nasty habits and cardinal sins.

The Vatican Post Office serves two purposes: selling stamps to tourists who want to send letters and postcards from the world’s smallest city state, and accepting packages and mail destined for the 800 people who live within its fortified walls.

So when a package containing 14 condoms filled with $55,200 worth of liquid cocaine was confiscated in Germany en route to Vatican City, police felt fairly certain it was meant for someone inside the hallowed gates... Read more (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/03/26/vatican-vice-sex-drugs-and-downloads-taint-the-image-of-the-holy-see.html)

giovonni

31st March 2014, 03:56

Oxfam: 85 Richest People as Wealthy as Poorest Half of the World

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Business/Pix/pictures/2014/1/20/1390205014982/The-InterContinental-Davo-011.jpg

What particularly stood out for me in this report was that the last time I looked at this it was 300 individuals had as much wealth as 42 per cent of the rest of the world population. Now it is 85 and 50 per cent. As history has shown repeatedly when inequality gets to a certain point social violence and disruption occurs. How close do you think we are?

SOURCE: Working for the Few - Oxfam report Source: F. Alvaredo, A. B. Atkinson, T. Piketty and E. Saez, (2013) ‘The World Top Incomes Database’, http://topincomes.g-mond.parisschoolofeconomics.eu/ Only includes countries with data in 1980 and later than 2008.

GRAEME WEARDEN - The Guardian (U.K.)

The world's wealthiest people aren't known for travelling by bus, but if they fancied a change of scene then the richest 85 people on the globe – who between them control as much wealth as the poorest half of the global population put together – could squeeze onto a single double-decker.

The extent to which so much global wealth has become corralled by a virtual handful of the so-called 'global elite' is exposed in a new report from Oxfam on Monday. It warned that those richest 85 people across the globe share a combined wealth of £1tn, as much as the poorest 3.5 billion of the world's population... Read more (http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/jan/20/oxfam-85-richest-people-half-of-the-world)

giovonni

5th April 2014, 14:47

Cable News Is Living in an Alternate Universe !

http://media.salon.com/2014/03/mh370_coverage-620x412.jpg

Nothing has made the vapidity of cable news more apparent to me than the recent obsession with the lost plane and the mudslide stories. In the absence of any useful facts hour after hour of coverage of these stories has gone on. Climate change. Unmentioned. Pollution. Unmentioned. The collapse of the infrastructure. Unmentioned. This essay gives, I think, the correct assessment as to what is going on.

TOM ENGELHARDT, Co-Founder American Empire Project - Salon

Both stories had the added benefit (for TV) of an endless stream of distraught relatives: teary or weeping or stoic or angry faces in desperately tight close-ups making heartfelt pleas for more information. For the media, it was like the weather before climate change came along.

In response, just about anything else that could pass for news was swept aside. Given a media that normally rushes heedlessly from one potential 24/7 story to another, this was striking. In the case of Flight 370, for instance, on the 21st day after its disappearance, it still led NBC’s Nightly News with Brian Williams (with the mudslide, one week after it happened, the number two story).

In those weeks, only one other story broke their stranglehold on the news. It was the seemingly critical question of what in the world was going on in Ukraine... Read more (http://www.salon.com/2014/04/04/cable_news_is_living_in_an_alternate_universe_partner/)

giovonni

7th April 2014, 11:12

How Can We Safeguard our Democracy After McCutcheon ?

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/johnrobertsillustration-flickruserDonkeyHotey.jpg

I believe that the Rightwing Supreme Court Justices -- the most activist, legislating-from-the-bench, cabal in the history of the court -- know exactly what they are doing, and what effect it is having on our democracy. It is having the effect they intend, to turn the country into an oligarchy. This essay is one of the best assessments of what has happened that I have read.

JOSHUA HOLLAND - Moyers & Company/The Raw Story

The Supreme Court’s evisceration of our campaign finance rules is a powerful argument for the cleansing properties of sunlight. We should respond to McCutcheon by pushing for the full and timely disclosure of every penny donated to advance a political agenda.

If America’s wealthiest can offer unlimited dollars to shape our politics, the least we can do is force them to own their activism. It’s time to get rid of the loopholes for sham 'social welfare” organizations and trade groups. It’s time to wipe out the dark money, and force those wealthy few to publicly stand behind their positions.

That’s not only a good and timely idea – it may also be the only viable tool we have left to protect our democracy, at least for the foreseeable future... Read more (http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/04/05/how-can-we-safeguard-our-democracy-after-mccutcheon/)

giovonni

11th April 2014, 14:20

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site36/2014/0410/20140410__ZAA10TANK2~p1.jpg

The new Washington war machine

The militarization of America's police forces is one of the consequences of the fatally ill-conceived wars of Bush-Cheney and the Neocons. This trend is very scary. Wedded to the concurrent rise of surveillance it is turning the country into a police state.

MATTHEW BYRD - The Daily Iowan

Sometimes the news is just so drearily awful that you have to sit back and almost appreciate the pure comedy induced by it.

Take this item from Washington, Iowa, where the local police have recently acquired an MRAP vehicle (short for Mine Resistance Ambush Protected) through a Defense Department program that donates excess vehicles originally produced for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to local police departments across the United States, including other Iowa towns such as Mason City and Storm Lake.

The MRAP weighs an impressive 49,000 pounds, stands 10-feet tall, and possesses a whopping six-wheel drive. Originally designed to resist landmines and IEDs, it sure seems like the MRAP will come in handy for the notorious war zone otherwise known as Washington County, Iowa... Read more (http://www.dailyiowan.com/2014/04/08/Opinions/37365.html)

giovonni

12th April 2014, 13:22

Scientists Scanned A Woman's Brain During An Out-Of-Body Experience -
And What They Found Was Amazing

Little by little neuroscience is confronting the nonlocal aspect of consciousness. This study was but a single participant and so is in no way definitive but, still, highly suggestive. I will keep a monitor on this research and we will see what happens.

Click through to see the actual fMRI images.

JENNIFER WELSH - Business Insider

It may sound like the plot of the Twilight Zone, but a psychology graduate student at the University of Ottawa says she can voluntarily enter an out-of-body experience. This was a lucky break for scientists, who were able to scan her brain during the episode.

Usually out-of-body experiences are a part of, say, a near-death experience. A patient may float above their own body as surgeons work on them. These experiences are usually attributed to the drugs in a patient's system, or the hormones released into their system by trauma.
A unique experience

The study - which only involved this one person - was published Feb. 10 in the journal Frontiers of Human Neuroscience, a peer-reviewed open access publication. The researchers are members of the School Of Psychology at the University of Ottawa.

According to the paper, this woman enters her out-of-body state right before sleeping, visualizing ... Read more (http://finance.yahoo.com/news/scientists-scanned-womans-brain-during-232752794.html)

giovonni

17th April 2014, 04:38

Restoring Coastal Ecosystems Creates More Jobs Than Offshore Oil Development

http://www.nationofchange.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/article_main_image/coastal41314.jpg

More good news, if we have the sense to take it seriously.

KATIE VALENTINE - Nation of Change

Restoring coastal ecosystems can provide significant economic benefits and even create 'pathways out of poverty” for low-income Americans, according to a new report.

The report, published Wednesday by the Center for American Progress and Oxfam America, looked at three coastal restoration projects on different coasts in the U.S. and found that, for every $1 invested in coastal restoration projects, $15 in net economic benefits was created. These benefits include improved fish stocks, due to the fact that 75 percent of the U.S.’s most important commercial fish species rely on coastal environments at some point in their life cycle, with many young fish and crustaceans using habitats such as oyster reefs as nurseries.

Coastal restoration also provides increased protection from storm surges, improved coastal recreation opportunities, health benefits from increased levels of filter feeders such as oysters, and last of all, jobs: for every $1 million invested in coastal ... Read more (http://www.nationofchange.org/restoring-coastal-ecosystems-creates-more-jobs-offshore-oil-development-1397399330)

giovonni

20th April 2014, 16:33

Why Physicists Are Saying Consciousness
Is A State Of Matter, Like a Solid, A Liquid Or A Gas

This report on the latest developments concerning consciousness research in physics is a wonderful illustration of a trend: the cutting edge of physicalist research is confronting consciousness. It is now one step away. Note two things: 1) the acknowledgement that the model is incomplete, missing a link, and a paradox: "why does the information content of our conscious experience appear to be vastly larger than 37 bits of integrated information that can be stored in the human brain."

Answering the paradox I predict will take physics into the nonlocal domain, and the matrix of information that is the all there is.

The German school of physics, referenced in is this report was made up of Planck, Pauli, Heisenberg, Einstein and others; the Olympiad of 20th century physics. All of them along with Jung, and Franz Boas, the founder of American anthropology, were strongly influenced by Adolf Bastian, a 19th century German polymath who posited the theory of Elementargedanke - literally 'elementary thoughts of humankind.” It was an early attempt to recognize and try to study the nonlocal informational matrix, from which Jung developed the concept of the Collective Unconscious.

SOURCE: Ref:arxiv.org/abs/1401.1219: Consciousness as a State of Matter

The Physics arXiv Blog

There’s a quiet revolution underway in theoretical physics. For as long as the discipline has existed, physicists have been reluctant to discuss consciousness, considering it a topic for quacks and charlatans. Indeed, the mere mention of the ‘c’ word could ruin careers.

That’s finally beginning to change thanks to a fundamentally new way of thinking about consciousness that is spreading like wildfire through the theoretical physics community. And while the problem of consciousness is far from being solved, it is finally being formulated mathematically as a set of problems that researchers can understand, explore and discuss.... Read More (https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/5e7ed624986d)

giovonni

22nd April 2014, 06:36

http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/201404/r1262990_16933283.jpg

Ocean Acidification Making Fish do Strange Things

Here is the latest on what acidification is doing to the world ocean.

FELICITY OGILVIE - ABC News

MARK COLVIN: Researchers at James Cook University have found that acid in the ocean is doing strange things to fish. The acid that they've been looking at is carbonic acid; it's created by carbon dioxide in the ocean.

There are fears that human-induced climate change will make the world's oceans more acidic. The scientists wanted to know what effect that would have on fish... Read more (http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2014/s3985272.htm)

giovonni

25th April 2014, 19:28

In Policy Shift, F.C.C. Will Allow a Web Fast Lane

http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/04/24/business/24net-web1/24net-web1-master675.jpg

The beginnings of a new inequity trend. This is such an overwhelming force
in American society that is increasingly taken for business as usual.

EDWARD WYATT - The New York Times

WASHINGTON -- The principle that all Internet content should be treated equally as it flows through cables and pipes to consumers looks all but dead.

The Federal Communications Commission said on Wednesday that it would propose new rules that allow companies like Disney, Google or Netflix to pay Internet service providers like Comcast and Verizon for special, faster lanes to send video and other content to their customers.

The proposed changes would affect what is known as net neutrality - the idea that no providers of legal Internet content should face discrimination in providing offerings to consumers, and that users should have equal access to see any legal content they choose... Read more (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/24/technology/fcc-new-net-neutrality-rules.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimes&_r=1)

giovonni

28th April 2014, 03:18

The NSA Comes Home: http://truth-out.org/images/images_2014_04/2014_0426bernd.jpg
Police Departments Conceal Phone Tracking Equipment From Courts

The growth of the American police state, as this report spells out, continues to grow.

CANDICE BERND - Truthout

The intricate surveillance equipment used by the federal government to track and store the cellphone data of millions of people and to monitor terrorism suspects is making its way to Main Street.

Police departments across the nation have been trying to conceal their use of cellphone tracking equipment from local courts because of nondisclosure agreements that allow the departments to use the devices on loan - as long as they promise the manufacturer they will keep it a secret.

The devices, manufactured by the Florida-based Harris Corporation, are commonly used at the federal level, but are also proliferating across local and state police departments. The technology has been purchased under various names, including StingRay, HailStorm, Harpoon, AmberJack, KingFish and RayFish, and mimics a cellphone tower... Read more (http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/23294-the-nsa-comes-home-police-departments-conceal-phone-tracking-equipment-from-courts)

giovonni

1st May 2014, 08:08

Dangerous Levels of Roundup Found in GMO Foods Across U.S.

http://guardianlv.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/earthtalkpesticides-mrforde-blogspot-com-650x446.jpg

It is dangerous to your health to eat food that is not organic as this report, once again, makes clear. Our model of industrial chemical based agriculture is literally dangerous to our health.

SCOTT GAUDINIER - Liberty Voice

"In a recent report released by Norwegian scientists and researchers studying genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and other genetically engineered produce in the Unite States, GMO foods across the U.S. have been found to contain absurdly dangerous high, levels of Roundup, a product used to kill weeds and ward off various harmful insects.

As Roundup is known as a weed-killing poison, one should probably ask why this particular substance would be used in the very food which keeps humans alive. The answer lies in customer demands at the grocery store for flawless produce and goods, but this demand comes at a cost. Hence, the Monsanto Corporation in particular has both used this demand, as well as utilizing cheaper means of producing food, which looks delectable and sells quickly.

However, the chemicals and pesticides used in growing food products across the country, specifically GMO produce, present a grave health risk to many Americans who continue to purchase these foods containing pesticides like Roundup and others every single day.

Showing dangerous levels of glyphosate (the chemical manufactured to kill weeds, and used in Roundup), genetically engineered soy is frequently used in feed for animals such as cows, chickens, pigs, as well as feed for turkeys. Glyphosate has also been frequently found in non-organic foods, mostly in packaged food items and a range of GMO products and foods across the U.S.

According to the study published by ScienceDirect, not only do glyphosate GMO soybeans retain higher traces of glyphosate, but “Organic soybeans showed a more healthy nutritional profile than other soybeans.” The study also says that even though organic soy contained less fiber and omega-6, that organic soy “showed a more healthy nutritional profile than other soybeans.” The study concluded that overall, GMO soybeans are not equivalent to non-GMO soybeans.

GMO foods, with the aid of the kinds of chemicals found in Roundup, are altered in such a way that would not and could not ever appear naturally in nature. Corn, soy, beets, and canola are some of these main crops which are both GMO and are often treated with Roundup.

As the Norwegian study states, weeds are now becoming resistant to glyphosate. Farmers producing GMO produce spray more and more Roundup, and the chemical has infiltrated crops that consumers purchase on a day-to-day basis. Allowed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), non-organic farmers have been allowed to use such chemicals, and this has resulted in increased levels of glyphosate in foods across the U.S. The rise of hard-to-kill super weeds has only seduced the EPA to raise these residue limits by 200 percent, specifically in soybeans.

The conclusion of the report shows that between genetically engineered soybeans, traditional (non-GMO) soybeans and organic soybeans, all GMO soybeans had high levels of glyphosate, and were found to have less nutritional vitamin content than what is found in traditional soy. Organic and non-GMO soybeans did not show any traces of glyphosate. Soybeans which were organic also provided more nutritional benefits, including higher levels of protein and less saturated fats than GMO soybeans.

Based on the studies mentioned, are dangerous levels of Roundup in GMO foods found across the U.S. something that Americans actually want? The general consensus seems to be negative. GMOs in general have already been recently banned in Bavaria, Germany, and the U.S. state of Vermont has now required complete labeling of all products with GMO origin. The task now is to determine how such powerful companies, Monsanto especially, will work to help repair the current system of allowing GMO produce cultivation, or must citizens act in order to halt GMO production?"

Source (http://guardianlv.com/2014/04/dangerous-levels-of-roundup-found-in-gmo-foods-across-u-s/)

giovonni

6th May 2014, 19:56

What Do Guns Say ?

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2014/05/02/opinion/stone-bundy/stone-bundy-blog480-v2.jpg

This is a brilliant and insightful essay on guns, with which I completely agree. I particularly like the auto-immune metaphor.

PATRICK BLANCHFIELD, Woodruff Scholar in Comparative Literature at Emory University - The New York Times

Earlier this month, in Bunkerville, Nev., representatives of the Bureau of Land Management withdrew from a tense standoff with supporters of Cliven Bundy, a rancher who owes the federal government over $1 million in unpaid fees for allowing his cattle to graze on public land. The hundreds of self-appointed militia and 'states’ rights” activists who flocked to support Bundy, many in full tactical gear and openly carrying assault rifles, blockaded a federal interstate and trained their weapons on B.L.M. employees who sought to negotiate with the rancher and his family. Fearful of a pitched gun battle, the B.L.M. departed, leaving Bundy and his supporters to celebrate, emboldened, with a barbecue.

Toting a weapon in a demonstration gestures as close as possible to outright violence while still technically remaining within the domain of speech... Read more (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/04/what-do-guns-say/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&rref=opinion&module=Ribbon&version=origin&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Opinion&pgtype=article&_r=1&)

giovonni

8th May 2014, 11:32

Group of Nobel Prize Winners Warns: The ‘War on Drugs’ has Failed

The War on Drugs has always been a charade, a flashy story to get the rubes riled up, whose real purpose was to justify increased law enforcement budgets, prison budgets, judiciary budgets, and inflated corporate profits for all the technology this bogus war involves. It has been a disaster at every level of social policy, albeit ever so profitable.

Agence France-Presse (France)/The Raw Story

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

"The global 'war on drugs” has been a catastrophic failure and world leaders must rethink their approach, a group including five Nobel Prize-winning economists, Britain’s deputy prime minister and a former U.S. secretary of state said Tuesday.

An academic report published by the London School of Economics (LSE) called 'Ending the Drug Wars” pointed to violence in Afghanistan, Latin America and other regions as evidence of the need for a new approach.

'It is time to end the ‘war on drugs’ and massively redirect resources towards effective evidence-based policies underpinned by rigorous economic analysis,” they said in a foreword to the report.

“The pursuit of a militarised and enforcement-led global ‘war on drugs’ strategy has produced enormous negative outcomes and collateral damage.”

The report said “rigorously monitored” experiments with legalisation and a focus on public health, minimising the impact of the illegal drug trade, were key ways of tackling the problem instead.

The report was signed by George Shultz, the U.S. secretary of state under Ronald Reagan, British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, and former NATO and E.U. foreign policy chief Javier Solana.

It was also signed by Nobel economics prize winners Kenneth Arrow (1972), Christopher Pissarides (2010), Thomas Schelling (2005) Vernon Smith (2002) and Oliver Williamson (2009).

The report cited the large drug-related prison population in the United States, political repression in Asia, corruption and unrest Afghanistan and west Africa, violence in Latin America, HIV infections in Russia and even a global shortage of pain medication as spin-offs from the war on drugs.

“The drug war’s failure has been recognised by public health professionals, security experts, human rights authorities and now some of the world’s most respected economists,” said John Collins, coordinator of international drug policy at the LSE.

“Leaders need to recognise that toeing the line on current drug control strategies comes with extraordinary human and financial costs to their citizens and economies.”

source (http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/05/06/group-of-nobel-prize-winners-warns-the-war-on-drugs-has-failed/)

giovonni

13th May 2014, 08:23

Arizona Town Near Grand Canyon Runs Low on Water

http://media.sanluisobispo.com/smedia/2014/05/12/02/28/675-pgC6r.AuSt.55.jpeg

This is the other end of the Water is Destiny Trend spectrum. Rising sea levels will produce one migration -- away from the coasts, while what happened in Williams, will spread across the Southwest and Plains states, and create another.

The Associated Press

WILLIAMS, ARIZONA -- In the northern Arizona city of Williams, restaurant patrons don't automatically get a glass of water anymore. Residents caught watering lawns or washing cars with potable water can be fined. Businesses are hauling water from outside town to fill swimming pools, and building permits have been put on hold because there isn't enough water to accommodate development.

Officials in the community about 60 miles from the Grand Canyon's South Rim have clamped down on water use and declared a crisis amid a drought that is quickly drying up nearby reservoirs and forcing the city to pump its only two wells to capacity.

The situation offers a glimpse at how cities across the West are coping with a drought that has left them thirsting for water. More than a dozen rural towns in California recently emerged from emergency water restrictions that had a sheriff's office on ... Read More (http://www.sanluisobispo.com/2014/05/11/3061208/arizona-town-near-grand-canyon.html)

giovonni

15th May 2014, 07:29

BINGO !

Colonel Wilkerson: Oligarchy Controls U.S. War-Making

http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/NZW8T4NA3Is/hqdefault.jpg

Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's long time principal assistant and Chief of Staff when he was Secretary of State, continuing a relationship dating back several decades, is a man whose observations should be taken seriously. These are amazing comments.

Click through to see the video.

WashingtonsBlog

Who Is REALLY Responsible for America’s Wars?

Americans are starting to understand that the U.S. is an oligarchy, rather than a democracy or a republic. (Even the chair of the Federal Reserve can’t really disagree.)

That’s true of war-making and foreign policy, as well.

Consummate insider Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson – former chief of staff to Colin Powell, the guy who wrote Powell’s famous speech on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and now distinguished adjunct professor of Government and Public Policy at William & Mary – notes:

Who’s behind the White House, and who’s therefore behind U.S. foreign policy, more or less?

I think the answer today is the oligarchs. Which would be the same answer, – incidentally, ironically, if you will - for Putin in Russia ... More here (http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/05/oligarchy-controls-american-foreign-policy.html)

giovonni

18th May 2014, 11:24

two related items ...

Miami Will Likely Be Underwater Before Congress Acts on Climate Change

http://cdn-media.nationaljournal.com/?controllerName=image&action=get&id=39019&format=nj2013_1024_10_columns

Here, I think is the truth about the American Congress. The oligarchy simply will not let them act. So you should plan accordingly.

RONALD BROWNSTEIN - National Journal

Miami will likely be underwater before the Senate can muster enough votes to meaningfully confront climate change. And probably Tampa and Charleston, too-two other cities that last week's National Climate Assessment placed at maximum risk from rising sea levels.

Even as studies proliferate on the dangers of a changing climate, the issue's underlying politics virtually ensure that Congress will remain paralyzed over it indefinitely. That means the U.S. response for the foreseeable future is likely to come through executive-branch actions, such as the regulations on carbon emissions from power plants that the Environmental Protection Agency is due to propose next month. And that means climate change will likely spike as a point of conflict in the 2016 presidential race.

President Obama, from his first days in office, made it clear to intimates that he believed a legislative solution to climate change would provide a more stable, broadly accepted ... Read more (http://www.nationaljournal.com/political-connections/miami-will-likely-be-underwater-before-congress-acts-on-climate-change-20140515)

***********

While Antarctica Melts, Congress Ensures Beach Houses Are Covered

http://a4.img.talkingpointsmemo.com/image/upload/c_fill,fl_keep_iptc,g_faces,h_365,w_652/alibncrtlzwlw6xdeo0f.jpg

As I expected the one response to climate change the Congress can manage is to protect the property of the rich, who are now clamoring for government handouts and financial protection from the loss of their coastal properties. Just another sign that we are an oligarchy masquerading as a democracy. Billions of dollars will be squandered before it becomes clear that populations must move inland. There is no way to protect the coasts.

JENNIFER B. WRIGGINS, Sumner T. Bernstein Professor of Law at University of Maine School of Law - Talking Points Memo

It seems like everyday, new research is confirming that the impacts of climate change -- heat waves, heavy rains, and flooding – are already being felt in America and around the world, and things stand to get worse. Just this week, TPM reported on new scientific papers concluding that large parts of the enormous West Antarctica ice sheet are melting and falling into the sea, and could lead to eventual rise in global sea levels of 10 feet or more.

Surprisingly, though, Congress – where many House Republicans reject the notion that anthropogenic climate change is happening at all – came together in March to do something. Did they take action to slow climate change or pass new policies to encourage building further away from beaches and floodplains? No. They agreed to roll back previous reforms and reinstate generous federal insurance subsidies for seaside homes... Read more (http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/flood-insurance-climate-change?utm_source=crowdignite.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=crowdignite.com)

giovonni

19th May 2014, 18:40

Matter Will Be Created From Light Within a Year, Claim Scientists

This extraordinary story is the first report of what I think is going to become a major trend.

IAN SAMPLE - The Raw Story/The Guardian (U.K.)

In a neat demonstration of E=mc2, physicists believe they can create electrons and positrons from colliding photons

Researchers have worked out how to make matter from pure light and are drawing up plans to demonstrate the feat within the next 12 months.

The theory underpinning the idea was first described 80 years ago by two physicists who later worked on the first atomic bomb. At the time they considered the conversion of light into matter impossible in a laboratory.

But in a report published on Sunday, physicists at Imperial College London claim to have cracked the problem using high-powered lasers and other equipment now available to scientists.

'We have shown in principle how you can make matter from light,” said Steven Rose at Imperial. 'If you do this experiment, you will be taking light and turning it into matter" ... Read more (http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/05/18/matter-will-be-created-from-light-within-a-year-claim-scientists/)

giovonni

21st May 2014, 08:44

giovonni

21st May 2014, 08:53

UN Decries Water as Weapon of War in Military Conflicts

http://readersupportednews.org/images/stories/article_imgs12/012758-child-water-drinking-051914.jpg

That water is destiny is becoming clear to all but the dimmest minds. By the end of this decade we will be seeing water wars.

THALIF DEEN - Common Dreams/Reader Supprted News

The United Nations, which is trying to help resolve the widespread shortage of water in the developing world, is faced with a growing new problem: the use of water as a weapon of war in ongoing conflicts.

The most recent examples are largely in the Middle East and Africa, including Iraq, Egypt, Israel (where supplies to the occupied territories have been shut off) and Botswana.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon last week expressed concern over reports that water supplies in the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo were deliberately cut off by armed groups for eight days, depriving at least 2.5 million people of access to safe water for drinking and sanitation.

"Preventing people’s access to safe water is a denial of a fundamental human right,” he warned, pointing out that 'deliberate targeting of civilians and depriving them of essential supplies is a clear breach of international humanitarian and human ... Read more (http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/23753-un-decries-water-as-weapon-of-war-in-military-conflicts)

giovonni

22nd May 2014, 14:21

Manny thanks to all the visiting guest who frequent this thread ... :) Blessings Giovonni

giovonni

22nd May 2014, 14:29

Manny thanks to all the visiting guest who frequent this thread ... :) Blessings Giovonni

Thanks to the Roberts Court, Corporations Have More
Constitutional Rights Than Actual People

http://www.thenation.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/main_node_view_image/scotus_justices_ap_img_1.jpg

This, in my view, is an excellent exegetic essay describing what the Robert's Court has done to American Jurisprudence. This change from valuing the individual to valuing the corporation is part of the decay and corruption that afflicts the United States today.

It is a measure of the abject failure of the corporate media to do their jobs that there is virtually no discussion of this new reality, or the ethically compromised positions of justices like Thomas and Scalia.

WILLIAM GREIDER - The Nation

The big media talk a lot about stalemate in Congress, but they are missing the real story. While representative democracy is dysfunctional, the Supreme Court has taken over with its own reactionary power grab. In case after case, the court’s right-wing majority is making its own law-expanding the power of corporations and the very wealthy, while making it harder for ordinary citizens to fight back.

Worst of all, the Roberts Court is trying to permanently inhibit the federal government’s ability to help people cope with the country’s vast social and economic disorders.

This is not a theoretical complaint. Led by Chief Justice John Roberts, the conservative Republican Court is building a barbed wire fence around the federal government-creating constitutional obstacles to progressive legislation in ways that resemble the Supreme Court’s notorious Lochner decision of 1905. That case held that property rights prevail over people and the common good... Read More (http://www.thenation.com/blog/179932/thanks-roberts-court-corporations-have-more-constitutional-rights-actual-people?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=email_nation&utm_campaign=Email%20Nation%20%28NEW%29%2020140520&newsletter=email_nation_tuesday#)

giovonni

23rd May 2014, 09:42

Kentucky Tells Feds: Hands Off Our Hemp !

http://cdn.thedailybeast.com/content/dailybeast/articles/2014/05/21/kentucky-tells-feds-hands-off-our-hemp/jcr:content/image.crop.800.500.jpg/1400665538674.cached.jpg

The DEA's and the DOJ's inability to distinguish hemp from marijuana is deliberate, and willfully ignorant. The Obama administration has chosen to be notably obtuse and unhelpful in this matter.

Click through to see the actual documents.

ABBY HAGLAGE - The Daily Beast

The Bluegrass State is eager to grow hemp for the purposes of research and commerce. Instead, its hemp seeds just became the latest casualty in the DOJ’s war on drugs.

Not long ago in America’s history, hemp was king. 'Make the most of the hemp seed and grow it everywhere,” George Washington instructed his new America.

So vital to our young nation’s success was hemp, that the 1619 Virginia Assembly actually deemed it illegal for farmers not to grow the plant. It’s strange then, given how deeply entrenched hemp once was in the American landscape, to watch Kentucky fight the Department of Justice-not only for the right to grow it, but the seeds to do so.

After challenging the Drug Enforcement Administration’s decision to seize 250 pounds of seeds from the Louisville Airport in court last Friday, the Kentucky Agriculture Department will meet the feds across the ... Read more (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/21/kentucky-tells-feds-hands-off-our-hemp.html)

giovonni

26th May 2014, 13:18

It’s All in Your Head: Scientist Now Believes his Pioneering
Work on Gluten Allergy Was Wrong

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Fat-Man-In-Front-Of-A-Plate-Of-Spaghetti-on-shutterstock.jpg

It seems to me about half the women I know have been told they have non-celiac gluten sensitivity (NCGS). It severely limits what they feel they can eat, and makes giving a dinner party very complicated. This report suggests as I have long suspected that the prevalence of NCGS is largely psychosomatic -- given the great antiquity of the relationship between wheat and humans.

SCOTT KAUFMAN - The Raw Story

The researcher whose work lent scientific credence to claims that those without celiac disease - which causes an immune response in the small intestines in the presence of gluten - still benefit from a gluten-free diet has performed another, more rigorous study that leads him to believe that there is no such thing as non-celiac gluten sensitivity (NCGS).

In 2011, Peter Gibson, a professor of gastroenterology at Monash University in Australia, published a study that found that gluten proteins cause gastrointestinal distress even in people who don’t suffer from celiac disease. This study helped provided scientific backing to the 'gluten-free” diet fad, but Gibson believed that the evidence on which the fad was based wasn’t thorough enough, so in 2013 he performed another study... Read more (http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/05/25/its-all-in-your-head-scientist-now-believes-his-pioneering-work-on-gluten-allergy-was-wrong/)

ThePythonicCow

26th May 2014, 14:33

another, more rigorous study that leads him to believe that there is no such thing as non-celiac gluten sensitivity (NCGS)
Reading the abstract (http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11882-013-0386-4), he did not show that there was no such thing as non-celiac gluten sensitivity, but rather he showed that his work had not proven that there was such a thing:

===============

The avoidance of wheat- and gluten-containing products is a worldwide phenomenon. While celiac disease is a well-established entity, the evidence base for gluten as a trigger of symptoms in patients without celiac disease (so-called ‘non-celiac gluten sensitivity’ or NCGS) is limited. The problems lie in the complexity of wheat and the ability of its carbohydrate as well as protein components to trigger gastrointestinal symptoms, the potentially false assumption that response to a gluten-free diet equates to an effect of gluten withdrawal, and diagnostic criteria for coeliac disease. Recent randomized controlled re-challenge trials have suggested that gluten may worsen gastrointestinal symptoms, but failed to confirm patients with self-perceived NCGS have specific gluten sensitivity. Furthermore, mechanisms by which gluten triggers symptoms have yet to be identified. This review discusses the most recent scientific evidence and our current understanding of NCGS.
===============

In other words, the jury is still out (from the perspective of standard, peer reviewed medicine) and further research is required.

Absence of proof is not proof of absence.

giovonni

26th May 2014, 18:03

Everyone has an opinion Paul. :)

And apparently Mr. Gibson and Mr. Schwartz have changed theirs.

Please note: i am still on the fence on this medical health issue.

giovonni

26th May 2014, 18:47

The Hidden Role of the Fusion Centers in the Nationwide Spying Operation
Against the Occupy Movement and Peaceful Protes

Here you can see the extent of the American police state and its surveillance of perfectly legal citizen protests. It is my belief that the construction of the national security apparat, ostensibly built to stop terrorism (read Muslim terrorism) actually, whatever its beginnings, is now being expanded and entrenched because long term assessments of the United States by the surveillance state foresee massive social unrest as a result of the grotesque inequality, and what is coming with climate change, the collapse of industrial agriculture, and the failure of anti-biotic medicine.

It is eventually going to become clear to even the dimmest voter that the U.S. is on a parlous downward course into chaos. When this takes hold in the consciousness of the masses a crisis will ensue. The militarization of the the police, the abrogation of our civil rights, and the rise of the police state are all components of how the government, the uber-rich, and the corporations plan to protect their power. Although it is unfashionable to say so, and the corporate media won't touch these trends, I believe this is what is going on.

It is certainly what I would do if I were unconscious and in a position of such power.

MARA VERHEYDEN-HILLIARD and CARL MESSINEO - Center for Research on Globilization

This report, based on documents obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, provides highlights and analysis of how the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)-funded Fusion Centers used their vast anti-terrorism and anti-crime authority and funds to conduct a sprawling, nationwide and hour-by-hour surveillance effort that targeted even the smallest activity of peaceful protestors in the Occupy Movement in the Fall and Winter of 2011.

It is being released in conjunction with a major story in the New York Times that is based on the 4,000 pages of government documents uncovered by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) during a two-year long investigation.

The newly published documents reveal the actual workings of the Fusion Centers – created ostensibly to coordinate anti-terrorism efforts following the September 11, 2001, attacks – in collecting and providing surveillance information on peaceful protestors... Read more (http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-hidden-role-of-the-fusion-centers-in-the-nationwide-spying-operation-against-the-occupy-movement-and-peaceful-protest-in-america/5383571)

giovonni

27th May 2014, 10:56

Super Creative Organic Urban Gardens Around the World: Who Needs Biotech ?

Here is some more good news about alternative food production. It is simply a lie to say only industrial agriculture can feed the world. Here is one example of what might be done.

CHRISTINA SARICH - Nation of Change

Not only are people around the world capable of growing nutrient-dense, nourishing food that will feed their communities, even if they live in an urban setting, but they can also do it with élan. Some of the most creative urban gardening projects around the globe can inspire us to create our own green space in the city, or add luster to a space that’s already underway which just needs a little oomph. Here are some off-the-(biotech)-chain gardens that will get our creative juices flowing so that we can carry the dream of living pesticide and GMO-free, further ... Read more (http://www.nationofchange.org/reader/44989)

778 neighbour of some guy

27th May 2014, 16:19

http://www.newvision.co.ug/newvision_cms/gall_content/2013/9/2013_9$largeimg213_Sep_2013_194316843.jpg

Netherlands Closing 19 Prisons Due to Lack of Criminals

America has the largest gulag the world has ever seen. We have literally millions of people incarcerated. Other countries have taken a different path. Here's an example.

Why aren't our politicians asking what the Dutch are doing right that we aren't doing? Even if they aren't moved by the human suffering, and unfairness that often attends these cases, every person warehoused costs tens of thousands of dollars per year.

The Mind Unleashed

In 2009, the Dutch justice ministry announced the planned closing of eight prisons in the Netherlands due to a declining crime rate which was expected to continue.

In 2013, a staggering 19 prisons were scheduled to be closed. This is caused, in part, by a continued decline in crime rates. Additionally, those who are convicted are choosing electronic tagging instead of incarceration. This allows people to go back to work and continue as productive members of society. It also saves about $50,000 per year per person (about $50 million saved per year for every 1000 people).

Johnson County and the Netherlands have something in common. The average incarceration rate in the Netherlands is about 163 people per 100,000. (Source) In Johnson County, we have about the same rate of incarceration – slightly lower. (Source: 2012 Annual Sheriff’s Report – PDF)

Counties and countries with low incarceration rates ... Read more (http://themindunleashed.org/2014/04/netherlands-closing-19-prisons-due-lack-criminals.html)

While progressive drug laws in the Netherlands may be partially the reason for a decline in arrests, other social factors are also at work. This points to crime reduction through changing social behaviour as a key to reducing incarceration — rather than just changing the laws or telling police to stop arresting people as a method for artificially creating the perception that there’s less crime.

We are screwed up beyond recognition, one of the most pacified neutered populations on the planet, we aren't even allowed to carry mace or a blade for self defence, if you practice martial arts and YOU YOURSELF take out (bring assailant down)a direct threat to your safety, it is very very likely YOU will go to jail and get a criminal record, you are supposed to call a cop or emergency services or run like hell, our taxes are sky high, our government humps the leg of POTUS every chance it get and that private banking idea you probably got from us, please don't thank us, certain things are taken some good care off depending on your perspective that is, we do have walk by poopings from old ladies with small dogs though, there hasn't been that much serious open crime Gio, perhaps those romantic bank robbers, and Robin Hood like kidnappers from the past and some big hash and weed smugglers ( we certainly know how to do business well, any business for that matter), the usual pedos and perverts are still locked up, some demented axe murderers off course, but hey, that sh!t is always going on and its everywhere so we are certainly no exception to that rule, if you would ask me personally I think something else is going on with those empty prisons, we have through the centuries been excellent planners, businessmen, sailors, thiefs, rapists, murderers and slave traders, opium, herbs, spices and slaves have made this country to what it is today, that's it, an entrepreneurial spirit, and character enough to kick anyone in the face who gets in our way ( we still are, just look for Dutch guys in martial arts and crime, we are right there in the top three), we even sold you New York for a buck, some serious planning went into that deal, trust me on that, Ah yeah, my opinion on the empty prisons, future detention locations for dissidents who oppose the new European Order ( the Germans won that war after all I think), our equivalent of your FEMA camps, just more tidy( we are anal as f@ck, over here), staffed by the same type of idiots.

They should turn those things into student housing asap, remove the metal doors, cameras and that stuff, and make them into small cheap student rooms, desk, toilet, shower, bed, tv, fridge computer, couch, rec room as a shared space, now stfu, study 5 years, get a job, move outta there, pay your loan back, done, next student please.

giovonni

28th May 2014, 13:36

Leaving Homeless Person On The Streets: $31,065. Giving Them Housing: $10,051

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/AP10010817224-638x398.jpg
A homeless man sits on a sidewalk in Miami, FL
CREDIT: AP Photo/Alan Diaz

Here is another data point making it clear that the punitive social policies of the Theocratic Right not only produce inferior social outcomes, they are also more expensive in terms of the dollars each path costs society. Think about what this story is saying, then consider the cost of denying children enough to eat as government policy, as the Republicans are trying to do now. Also let me remind you that it costs on average of $35,000 per year to keep a person in medium security prison

SCOTT KEYES - Think Progress

"Even if you don’t think society has a moral obligation to care for the least among us, a new study underscores that we have a financial obligation to do so.

Late last week, the Central Florida Commission on Homelessness released a new study showing that, when accounting for a variety of public expenses, Florida residents pay $31,065 per chronically homeless person every year they live on the streets.

The study, conducted by Creative Housing Solutions, an Oklahoma-based consultant group, tracked public expenses accrued by 107 chronically homeless individuals in central Florida. These ranged from criminalization and incarceration costs to medical treatment and emergency room intakes that the patient was unable to afford.

Andrae Bailey, CEO of the commission that released the study, noted to the Orlando Sentinel that most chronically homeless people have a physical or mental disability, such as post-traumatic stress disorder. “These are not people who are just going to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get a job,” he said. “They’re never going to get off the streets on their own.”

The most recent count found 1,577 chronically homeless individuals living in three central Florida counties — Osceola, Seminole, and Orange, which includes Orlando. As a result, the region is paying nearly $50 million annually to let homeless people languish on the streets.

There is a far cheaper option though: giving homeless people housing and supportive services. The study found that it would cost taxpayers just $10,051 per homeless person to give them a permanent place to live and services like job training and health care. That figure is 68 percent less than the public currently spends by allowing homeless people to remain on the streets. If central Florida took the permanent supportive housing approach, it could save $350 million over the next decade.

This is just the latest study showing how fiscally irresponsible it is for society to allow homelessness to continue. A study in Charlotte earlier this year found a new apartment complex oriented towards homeless people saved taxpayers $1.8 million in the first year alone. Similarly, the Centennial State will save millions by giving homeless people in southeast Colorado a place to live. And in Osceola County, Florida, researchers earlier this year found that taxpayers had spent $5,081,680 over the past decade in incarceration expenses to repeatedly jail just 37 chronically homeless people."

source page (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/05/27/3441772/florida-homeless-financial-study/)

giovonni

28th May 2014, 13:41

7 Things About Homeless Kids You Probably Didn't Know

As a nation's children are, so will be the nation. By any measure you choose we do not treat or value children well in this country. We have 17 million who have hunger issues, and we are cutting food programs. We have a homeless child population of more than 1,600,000. And we justify this by telling ourselves lies about who these children are, and how they got to the state they are in. Here's the truth.

ANN BRENOFF - The Huffington Post

There are more than 1.6 million homeless children living in the United States, says The National Center on Family Homelessness. That's one in every 45 American kids who goes to sleep at night without a bed to call their own. Families with young children now account for about one third of the homeless population. And in case you are wondering why, the recession caused a 50 percent jump in the number of students identified as homeless in school districts throughout the country.

Here are seven things about being a homeless kid that you probably didn't know ... Read more (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/25/homeless-kids_n_5359430.html)

giovonni

31st May 2014, 10:51

Genetic Engineers Agree: GMOs Neither Safe Nor Necessary

http://jbrown3920.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/gmosss.jpg

Here is a report on the current GMO situation. It has a bias against GMO but seems reasonable to me. There are many links so click through. Also a video.

The Mind Unleashed

Two years ago, a free report was published by the following genetic engineers and one researcher (respectively): Dr. John Fagan, Dr. Michael Antoniou and Claire Robinson. GMO Myths and Truths delved deep into the available research about the bigger picture of genetic modification.

It showed why consumer concern over the health and environmental effects of consuming GMOs were not the result of ignorant activist-stoked wrath. Perhaps more importantly, it showed that it was never correct to say the entire society of science backed this rogue corporate creation. Furthermore, it annihilates the myth that genetic modification is the only way to feed the world.

Fast forward to present day and you can have a free, fully loaded new addition that features important updates like getting the real scoop on the French GMO-fed rat study led by Professor Gilles-Eric Séralini. Think: pictures all over the internet of tumor-bloated lab rats. ... Read More (http://themindunleashed.org/2014/05/genetic-engineers-agree-gmos-neither-safe-necessary.html)

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Related News Item Below

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How 'Extreme Levels” of Roundup in Food Became the Industry Norm

http://www.independentsciencenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/image002-384.gif

This report provides additional information about the poisons leaking into our lives, this time through our failing industrial food system. I just can't over emphasize why either home grown or locally sourced organic produce and organic seafood and fowl should be your choice

Click through to see the graphs and charts.

THOMAS BØHN and MAREK CUHRA, Professor of Gene Ecology, The Arctic University of Norway and PhD Candidate - Independent Science News

Food and feed quality are crucial to human and animal health. Quality can be defined as sufficiency of appropriate minerals, vitamins and fats, etc. but it also includes the absence of toxins, whether man-made or from other sources. Surprisingly, almost no data exist in the scientific literature on herbicide residues in herbicide tolerant genetically modified (GM) plants, even after nearly 20 years on the market.

In research recently published by our laboratory (Bøhn et al. 2014) we collected soybean samples grown under three typical agricultural conditions: organic, GM, and conventional (but non-GM). The GM soybeans were resistant to the herbicide Roundup, whose active ingredient is glyphosate... Read more (http://www.independentsciencenews.org/news/how-extreme-levels-of-roundup-in-food-became-the-industry-norm/)

giovonni

31st May 2014, 11:00

Exclusive: New Document Details America’s War Machine -
and Secret Mass of Contractors in Afghanistan

http://media.salon.com/2014/05/afghanistan-620x412.jpg

War has become a profit center for an entire industry that receives almost no attention from corporate media, unless some blatant crisis draws attention. But during the era of the Neocons we privatized war, so only the actual killing is left to the military. All the things, food, sanitation, fuel, construction that can be made profit centers have been hived off to contractors. It goes on almost unremarked, and the industry has become a powerful lobbying force. No wonder we are experiencing war without end.

TIM SHORROCK - Salon

On Tuesday, following his surprise Memorial Day visit to Bagram Air Force Base outside Kabul, President Obama announced that the United States plans to keep at least 9,800 U.S. troops in Afghanistan until 2016, further delaying the end of what he calls 'America’s longest war.”

But in his remarks at the White House, the president didn’t say that the nearly 10,000 U.S. troops he’s asking to remain in an 'advisory role” will be augmented by a huge army of private contractors. As they have in Iraq, contractors will vastly outnumber the U.S. uniformed forces training Afghan troops as well as the special operations forces providing counterterrorism operations against what the president called 'the remnants of al-Qaida.”

The role of contractors in the Afghanistan war is spelled out in a document obtained by Salon from SAIC, one of the nation’s largest military and intelligence contractors. The document, an unclassified ... Read more (http://www.salon.com/2014/05/28/exclusive_new_document_details_americas_war_machine_and_secret_mass_of_contractors_in_afghanistan/)

giovonni

3rd June 2014, 12:51

http://neptune911.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/great-barrier-reef-coral-australian.jpg

Australia Wants to Open the Great Barrier Reef to Foul Dumping

As in Canada and the U.S. so too in Australia carbon energy interests own the government. And when carbon interests own the government, this is what happens. Australia is condemning its future, as we are condemning ours. This is why I think only local action is going to be useful. It won't stop the changes that are coming, particularly for those communities in areas where the impact of climate change will be particularly extreme. But where the changes are less dramatic it can make the difference between having a future or not having one.

KIRSTEN ALEXANDER - The Daily Beast

Australia’s government has plans to open up the Great Barrier Reef-a protected UNESCO World Heritage Site-to a coal port that would dump millions of tonnes of toxic sediment upon the fragile coral ecosystem.

Since the conservative Tony Abbott-led Liberal government took office last September, it has pushed through only eight pieces of legislation thanks to a hostile Senate. But in July, the country faces a Senate 'changeover” that will flip the balance of power in favor of the government. At that point, Australians-not to mention environmentalists and tourists-better brace themselves... Read more (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/02/australia-wants-to-open-the-great-barrier-reef-to-toxic-dumping.html)

giovonni

4th June 2014, 16:45

NJ Diocese: We’re Not Liable, Because Molesting Boys
Not Part of Priest’s Official Duties

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/priest-in-handcuffs-on-shutterstock.jpg

This is the latest in the ongoing Roman Catholic rolling crisis over sexuality. An organization that has sunk to this level, seems to me completely corrupt ethically. Very awkward when you claim to be the true church representing Jesus' teachings.

TRAVIS GETTYS - The Raw Story

Lawyers claim the Diocese of Trenton, New Jersey, should not be held liable for sexual abuse allegedly committed by a priest because he wasn’t officially 'on duty” when he molested a teenage boy.

Chris Naples claimed Rev. Terence McAlinden, who once headed the diocese’s youth group, sexually abused him during church-sponsored trips to Delaware in the 1980s.

But diocese lawyers told the Delaware Supreme Court that McAlinden was not officially on duty when the abuse took place.

'You can determine a priest is not on duty when he is molesting a child, for example,” the attorney argued. 'A priest abusing a child is absolutely contrary to the pursuit of his master’s business, to the work of a diocese" ... Read more (http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/06/02/nj-diocese-were-not-liable-because-molesting-boys-not-part-of-priests-official-duties/)

giovonni

6th June 2014, 15:03

Off-grid Living: It's Time to Take Back the Power From the Energy Companies

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/commercial/2014/4/10/1397146214242/Nick-Rosen-has-written-a--009.jpg

Boy do I agree with this.

NICK ROSEN, Editor of the website off-grid.net - The Guardian (U.K.)

It's official. Off-grid energy is moving from the eco-fringe to mainstream. Last month US investment bank Morgan Stanley announced that the off-grid era had arrived: falling prices for renewable energy equipment and rising prices for energy supplied by power companies are fundamentally altering the business model of the trillion-dollar electricity industry.

A key piece of the jigsaw came in another statement last month: Tesla Motors are now committing to a huge increase in battery production, bringing down the cost of energy storage capacity by over 50%. The power grid is like a giant battery and up to £500 per year of our energy bills is paying for the maintenance of that battery. Morgan Stanley calculates that Tesla's batteries will only cost an off-grid household £350 per year, rendering the Utility company business model obsolete. "Our analysis suggests utility customers may be positioned to eliminate their use of the power ... Read more (http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/apr/11/power-energy-companies)

giovonni

7th June 2014, 22:14

Billionaires who Could buy Your Town

http://cosbysweaters.nextimpulsemedia.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/billionairemap.jpg

This story stopped me dead, and I have been thinking about it all day. People so rich they could buy entire cities, and I don't mean little villages or towns. As this report shows, it could be Boston or Philadelphia, or Seattle. Think about that. We have 17 million children suffering food insecurity and hunger. We have 1.6 million minor children who are homeless. And we have a handful of the uber rich so wealthy they could buy whole cities, and four of them, the Walmart heirs, have wealth equal to everything owned by 138 million of their fellow Americans. They could buy a couple of cities.

Click through to see the video.

ROBERT FRANK - CNBC

Larry Page may have no plans to retire in Boca Raton, Florida. But if he wanted to, he could afford any house in town-in fact, every house in town.

A new analysis from Redfin, a real-estate brokerage and search site, looked at the towns or cities that certain billionaires could buy. They paired the fortunes of each billionaire with the cost of all of the homes in various cities and towns.

Read MoreWho pays the top property taxes in the NY area?

The Walton family, with a combined fortune of $111.5 billion, could buy all 241,450 homes in the city of Seattle. That calculation doesn't include surrounding towns and suburbs, so they wouldn't get Bill Gates' house in suburban Medina.

But Gates could buy Boston. His $76.6 billion fortune could buy all 114,212 homes in Beantown. His pal Warren Buffett could no doubt buy a couple ... Read more (http://www.cnbc.com/id/101734526)

giovonni

9th June 2014, 16:15

Computer Successfully Pretends To Be Human - WWW Apocalypse ?

There have been a number of stories concerning this historic event. I thought this was one of the better ones. A long incipient trend has now burst into reality, and things are different.

JAMES LYNE - Forbes

In a breakthrough of engineering a computer has successfully passed the infamous ‘Turing test‘. You may have already read the headlines about how this is the beginning of the movie Terminator and the downfall of humanity, or if you haven’t you should because it makes for a good read. Before we explore the implications for humanity, what exactly is this Turing test and why do you care ?

Read More (http://www.forbes.com/sites/jameslyne/2014/06/08/computer-successfully-pretends-to-be-human-www-apocalypse/)

giovonni

9th June 2014, 16:20

Colleges Are Full of it: Behind the Three-decade Scheme to Raise Tuition,
Bankrupt Generations, and Hypnotize the Media

http://media.salon.com/2014/06/back_to_school-620x412.jpg

This is a really good essay on what has happened to our higher education system. It is part of the profit cancer that is ravaging the body of society.

THOMAS FRANK - Salon

The price of a year at college has increased by more than 1,200 percent over the last 30 years, far outpacing any other price the government tracks: food, housing, cars, gasoline, TVs, you name it. Tuition has increased at a rate double that of medical care, usually considered the most expensive of human necessities. It has outstripped any reasonable expectation people might have had for investments over the period. And, as we all know, it has crushed a generation of college grads with debt. Today, thanks to those enormous tuition prices, young Americans routinely start adult life with a burden unknown to any previous cohort and whose ruinous effects we can only guess at... Read more (http://www.salon.com/2014/06/08/colleges_are_full_of_it_behind_the_three_decade_scheme_to_raise_tuition_bankrupt_generations_and_hyp notize_the_media/)

giovonni

10th June 2014, 08:08

Vermont’s New GMO Law Could Upend Food Industry Nationwide

http://www.pressherald.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/448158_GMO.labeling.jpg

Here is the most interesting news I have read recently about GMOs. The citizens of Vermont have done what money and propaganda have blocked up until now in other states -- labeling GMOs. Where Americans in other states were too ignorant or befuddled to see where their own self-interest lay, Vermonters compelled their legislators to act on their behalf. And the result, as this story outlines, may be that the few hundred thousand people of Vermont may finally change the game for the 315 million in this country by creating a situation where federal labeling regulation becomes inevitable. Bravo, Vermont. Now if we could just get labeling telling us about the pesticides and other toxins in our food.

EVAN HALPER - Portland Press Herald (Maine)

The biggest worry weighing on the nation’s food industry may not be drought in the West, farmworker shortages or turbulent international trade negotiations, but a change in the regulatory code in Vermont.

Under a law signed this month, the tiny New England state, population 626,000, will soon require that food companies tell consumers which products on grocers’ shelves have genetically modified ingredients. In doing so, Vermont could force food growers, processors and retailers to upend how they serve hundreds of millions of customers nationwide.

The law puts Vermont at the forefront of a national movement that major food processors and agricultural companies are doing their utmost to kill... Read more (http://www.pressherald.com/2014/06/09/vermonts-new-gmo-law-could-upend-food-industry-nationwide/)

giovonni

11th June 2014, 14:31

http://blogs-images.forbes.com/kellyphillipserb/files/2014/06/670px-walmart_exterior.jpg

Walmart's Executive Bonuses Cost Taxpayers Millions

The closer one examines the Wal-mart business model the more the whole thing looks like an exercise in gaming the system. This story shows once again how far the game is rigged.

SARAH ANDERSON and FRANK CLEMENTE - Institute for Policy Studies

New report reveals that Walmart cut its taxes by $104 million by giving executives lavish "performance-based" bonuses.

Walmart's Executive Bonuses Cost Taxpayers Millions Report CoverWalmart has been widely criticized for shifting the costs of its low-wage model onto taxpayers. This report, co-published by IPS and Americans for Tax Fairness, reveals that taxpayers also subsidize much of the cost of Walmart’s executive pay. Specifically, the report calculates the cost of a tax loophole that allows Walmart and other corporations to deduct unlimited amounts from their income taxes for the cost of executive compensation if it is in the form of stock options and other so-called "performance pay" ... Read more (http://www.ips-dc.org/reports/taxpayers_subsidize_walmart_execs)

giovonni

12th June 2014, 09:13

Mayors Nationwide Build Support for Postal Banking as U.S.P.S. Delays Action

http://www.nationofchange.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/article_main_image/po61014.jpg

The corporate right is pressing as hard as it can to privatize the country's postal system. The failure of privatization in education, healthcare, prisons, and the military does not deter them, because the point of the drill is not about making a better functioning system, it is about making profit for the few. The country's mayors not surprisingly think this is a really bad idea. And so do I, as I have written over and over in SR. Rather they support bringing back a system once prevalent, but long gone. My first bank account was a savings account at the Post Office, which I used to buy War Bond stamps. I got up to $20 which, for a 10 year old, in 1952, was a big step.

MATT STANNARD - Nation of Change

When Lansing, Michigan Mayor Virg Bernero introduces two resolutions in support of expansion of United States Postal Service services at the 2014 U.S. Conference of Mayors annual meeting in Dallas in two weeks, he'll have the support of co-sponsors Mayor Paul Soglin of Madison, Wis., and Mayor Jean Quan of Oakland, Calif.

Bernero, who chairs the USCM's Advanced Manufacturing Task Force, submitted the resolutions several weeks ago. They represent cutting edge ideas advanced by some of America's most forward-thinking policymakers and analysts. Elizabeth Warren proposed non-banking financial services at the beginning of the year (based on the recommendations of the U.S.P.S. Inspector General), while public banking activists and postal experts have long suggested a postal infrastructure bank that could re-build America's infrastructure at a fraction of the interest costs levied by private financiers... Read more (http://www.nationofchange.org/mayors-nationwide-build-support-postal-banking-usps-delays-action-1402415537)

giovonni

14th June 2014, 22:57

Teen Marijuana Use Remains Flat Nationwide As More States Legalize

Another of the favorite alarmist claims of the Prohibitionists is revealed by actual data to be nonsense. One of the most interesting things about what is happening with the Marijuana trend is that one by one the myths are being disproved.

MATT FERNER - The Huffington Post

As marijuana's national popularity continues to grow and more states have legalized either medical or recreational use of it, a new federal survey shows that those shifting attitudes have not produced a surge in teen use.

The biennial High School Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed that the rate of marijuana use among U.S. high school students remained virtually unchanged from 2011 to 2013. It's also about 3 percent less than the peak of teen marijuana use in 1999, when nearly 27 percent of teens said they had recently used marijuana, according to the CDC data.

In 2013, 23.4 percent of American high-school-aged teens used marijuana one or more times in the 30 days before the survey, the data show. That's nearly even with 23.1 percent in 2011... Read more (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/13/teen-marijuana-use-flat_n_5492135.html)

giovonni

14th June 2014, 23:05

Drop This Tiny Pill Into a Glass of Water to See if You're Drinking Pesticides

http://readersupportednews.org/images/stories/article_imgs12/012674-glass-of-water-060814.jpg

Here is a cheap new technology involving the purity of water that could have enormous positive benefits.

KRISTINA BRAVO - Reader Supported News

It’s no secret that unwanted chemicals lurk in our food and drinks. But what if a little pill could warn us before we gulp down pesticide-laced water?

Researchers have been experimenting with an unlikely drugstore buy: dissolvable minty breath strips. A team from McMaster University in Canada discovered that pullulan, the same slimy fungus used to make the breath freshener strips, could also be used to make pills that contain pesticide-detecting enzymes. Just drop the pill in a glass of water, let it dissolve, and watch for any color changes.

'If the water doesn’t have any pesticides, [the water] actually forms a very strong blue. If it’s transparent at the end, it’s very contaminated,” Carlos Felipe, the chemical engineering professor who led the study, told Fast Company.

He said that testing water this way is a much cheaper alternative than other contamination screening processes... Read more (http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/24116-drop-this-tiny-pill-into-a-glass-of-water-to-see-if-youre-drinking-pesticides)

giovonni

15th June 2014, 13:38

Scientists Discover Plants That Can Learn and Remember

http://jbrown3920.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/plantsss.jpg

Forty six years of doing my own experimental research, plus reading several thousand studies done by others has convinced me -- on the basis of data, not ideology, theology, or simple speculation -- that all living beings have a measure of consciousness, and that they are all interlinked and interdependent, joined in a matrix of life.

In support of that fact here is some new data that may fascinate you as much as it did me. I remember meeting the late Cleve Backster back in the early 70s when my friends Christopher Bird and Peter Tompkins, both also now gone, were working on first a Harper's article and, then, the book that grew out of it, The Secret Life of Plants. Cleve was doing research showing that plants reacted through some kind of nonlocal linkage when shrimp across the room with which they had no physical connection, were dumped into boiling water. At the time materialist biologists derided this work as "fantasy" and "nonsense for the gullible." They were wrong as several thousand studies showing nonlocal linkages between organisms across the full spectrum of life have subsequently shown. Of course that doesn't stop materialists who, like climate deniers, and creationists, are not really interested in facts on this subject, however prestigious they may be in other areas. As with the other deniers they hold their views with religious fervor.

The Mind Unleashed

An interesting addition to the last article we published about the Mimosa plant and memory. The evidence for plant consciousness seems to be stacking more and more each day. How fascinating.

New research from a team of scientists at the University of Western Australia will change the way you think about the difference between plants and animals. Mimosa pundica plants, they found, can learn and remember, despite not having a brain. Those active little fern-like things always did seem sort of smart, though, didn’t they? More here (http://themindunleashed.org/2014/01/scientists-discover-plants-can-learn-remember.html)

giovonni

15th June 2014, 13:45

Forest Loss Starves Fish

http://www.cam.ac.uk/sites/www.cam.ac.uk/files/styles/content-580x288/public/news/research/news/6093348142be2bc92ce0b.jpg?itok=vaUE3Fi3

Further evidence that Earth's ecosystems constitute an interlocking interdependent fractal matrix of subsystems far more complex than we understand. Here is an example you have probably never heard of. I certainly had not. Until we realize and accept our ignorance our arrogance will keep us from learning. We do not have dominion over the Earth, one of the most toxic Judea-Christian myths. The Earth was here before us, and will be here long after our species is gone. At best we can be sand in the gears or lubricant. And it is yet another arrogance to believe we are the only conscious beings. We have no idea what the consciousness of dinosaurs was, any more than we can truly inhabit a whale's reality -- or a flowers.

University of Cambridge (U.K.)

Research shows forest debris that drains into lakes is an important contributor to freshwater food chains – bolstering fish diets to the extent that increased forest cover causes fish to get ‘fat’ and sparse forest leaves smaller, underfed fish.

Debris from forests that washes into freshwater lakes supplements the diets of microscopic zooplankton and the fish that feed off them – creating larger and stronger fish, new research shows.

The researchers warn that, as forests are eroded through human activities such as logging, the impacts will be felt in aquatic as well as terrestrial food chains.

In fact, the study was conducted at a Canadian lake chosen because it had suffered ecological disaster during the mid-20th century: acid rain as a result of the local nickel smelting industry... Read more (http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/forest-loss-starves-fish)

giovonni

17th June 2014, 21:16

Everything We Know About What Data Brokers Know About You

Here is an excellent article on what the industry of data looks like. It provides a serious assessment of what an individual faces. It should give every one of us pause. Is this the way we want to live?

LOIS BECKETT, Reporter - ProPublica

We've spent a lot of time this past year trying to understand how the National Security Agency gathers and stores information about ordinary people. But there's also a thriving public marketfor data on individual Americans-especially data about the things we buy and might want to buy.

Consumer data companies are scooping up huge amountsof consumer information about people around the world and selling it, providing marketers details about whether you're pregnant or divorced or trying to lose weight, about how rich you are and what kinds of cars you drive. But many people still don't know data brokers exist.

The Federal Trade Commission is pushing the companies to give consumers more information and control over what happens to their data. The White House released a report this May outlining concerns that these detailed consumer profiles might lead to race or income-based discrimination-what the White House called "digital redlining." Read more (http://www.propublica.org/article/everything-we-know-about-what-data-brokers-know-about-you)

giovonni

20th June 2014, 15:03

Americans Are Dangerously Politically Ignorant -- The Numbers Are Shocking

The ignorance of American voters is something that concerns me enormously. When one looks at the election of Representatives and Senators such as Steve King, Louis Gohmert, Michelle Bachman, and James Inhofe, it is clear that voter ignorance is a significant factor.

CJ WERLEMAN - AlterNet (U.S.)

The health of a democracy is dependent on an educated citizenry. Political illiteracy is the manure for the flourishing of political appeals based on sheer ignorance.

So let me introduce you to House Majority Speaker Eric Cantor’s Republican Party vanquisher David Brat (R-VA). First thing you need to know about this far right-wing political upstart is he’s a university professor, which means it’s highly probable he’s not an idiot. He also identifies with the Tea Party strain of conservatism, which, paradoxically, means it’s likely he is, indeed, an idiot. And by idiot, I mean wholly ignorant of U.S. history and constitutionality.

In fact, in his victory speech delivered last week to his supporters, Brat demonstrated that he sits among the majority of Americans when it comes to political and cultural illiteracy... Read more (http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/americans-are-dangerously-politically-ignorant-numbers-are-shocking)

giovonni

20th June 2014, 15:38

Japanese Soccer Fans Remember Their Manners in Brazil...
Clean Up Before Going Home

http://sociorocketnewsen.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/screen-shot-2014-06-16-at-10-44-41-am.png?w=873&h=558

This is what I mean about small quotidian choices, and the effect they can have in the smallest things.

Click through to see the pictures and video.

PHILIP KENDALL - Ricket News 24 (Japan)

Their national team may have lost their World Cup game against Ivory Coast yesterday morning, but Japanese fans didn’t forget their manners, it would seem.

Like all good kids who remember to say thank you to their friend’s mother after playing at their home, Japan’s passionate football fans reportedly grabbed refuse bags and cleaned up after themselves before leaving the stadium following their team’s match against the African side... Read more (http://en.rocketnews24.com/2014/06/16/japanese-soccer-fans-remember-their-manners-in-brazil-clean-up-before-going-home/)

giovonni

22nd June 2014, 12:22

Why Free Play Is the Best Summer School

http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/newsroom/img/mt/2014/06/IMG_1732/lead.jpg?n7hwvw

I visited friends not long ago, and their child had a phone, and spent some time attempting to set up a play date. I realized how different a child's life in the U.S. is now from when I was growing up. Then, as soon as school was out, we woke up went out, got together with our friends in the area, spent a lot of time in the woods, near a creek, or just in the street, coming in for lunch, often with two or three friends -- unless we made a sandwich and took it with us -- going back out as soon as we were finished. When the street lights came on, or we heard a whistle, we came in. Where did you go? Parents would ask. Out, we would reply. What did you do? Nothing, we would say. By which we meant nothing a big person would understand. It turns out that's a pretty good way for a kid to live. Although it isn't mentioned in this article, the pedagogy that really understands the importance of unscripted play is the Waldorf system.

JESSICA LAHEY, Correspondent - The Atlantic

Most schools across the nation have marked the end of another academic year, and it’s time for summer. Time for kids to bolt for the schoolhouse doors for two long months of play, to explore their neighborhoods and discover the mysteries, treasures, and dramas they have to offer. This childhood idyll will hold true for some children, but for many kids, the coming of summer signals little more than a seasonal shift from one set of scheduled, adult-supervised lessons and activities to another.

Unscheduled, unsupervised, playtime is one of the most valuable educational opportunities we give our children. It is fertile ground; the place where children strengthen social bonds, build emotional maturity, develop cognitive skills, and shore up their physical health. The value of free play, daydreaming, risk-taking, and independent discovery have been much in the news this year, and a new study by psychologists at the University of Colorado reveals just how important these activities are in the development of children’s executive functioning.... Read more (http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/06/for-better-school-results-clear-the-schedule-and-let-kids-play/373144/)

giovonni

24th June 2014, 06:25

Fomenting a Revolution: Extreme Acts of Greed Against the American People

Here is more about how the inequity is created. Few even know it is happening. They just know their lives are getting harder and more brutal. This is why I think social instability is inevitable.

PAUL BUCHHEIT - Common Dreams

Examples of extreme inequality are becoming easier to find. Progressive leaders have us thinking about revolution. If a revolution is to take place, Americans - especially young Americans- need to know the facts, and they need to know how they're getting cheated, and they need to get angry. The following should help.

1. $1,000,000,000,000,000 in Sales. Not One Cent for Sales Tax

The trading volume on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) reached an incomprehensible $1 quadrillion in notional value in 2012. That's a thousand trillion dollars. In comparison, the entire U.S. GDP is $17 trillion.

On that quadrillion dollars of sales CME imposes transfer fees, contract fees, brokerage fees, Globex fees, clearing fees, and contract surcharges, many of them on both the buyer's and seller's side. As a result, the company had a profit margin higher than any of the top 100 companies in the nation from ... Read more (https://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/06/16)

giovonni

24th June 2014, 06:28

How You, I, and Everyone Got the Top 1 Percent All Wrong

http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/newsroom/img/mt/2014/03/RTR3CGAK/lead.jpg?n3a2ee

Here is what I think is a correct assessment of the new global aristocracy that owns a growing percentage of the world's wealth, and wants more. We think of peasants as agricultural workers. But that is the past. In the present day it is increasingly ordinary workers -- both blue and white collar. The wealth differential now is even greater than it was in the 14th century.

Click through to see the very useful graphs.

DEREK THOMPSON - The Atlantic

For years, I've been making the same embarrassing mistake about U.S. economic inequality. Sorry.

I've written, over and over, that the most important divide in our wealth disparity was between the 1 percent and the 99 percent. For example, when I compared the evolution in investment income since the late 1970s, I often imagined a graph like this from the Economic Policy Institute, showing the 1 percent flying away from the rest of the country.

It turns out that that graph is somewhat misleading. It makes it look like the 1 percent is a group of similar households accelerating from the rest of the economy, holding hands, in unison. Nothing could be further from the truth.

A few weeks ago, I shared this graph (from the World Top Incomes Database) showing how the top 0.01 percent-that's the one percent of the 1 percent-was leaving the rest of ... Read more (http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/03/how-you-i-and-everyone-got-the-top-1-percent-all-wrong/359862/)

giovonni

25th June 2014, 13:00

Insecticides Put World Food Supplies at Risk, Say Scientists

The Industrial Chemical Agricultural Model (ICAM) I believe is reaching the tipping point, when the negatives become so great it goes into crisis, and a new model emphasizing working with the Earth arises. And, as this report spells out, I think the crisis is upon us.

Click through to see the images.

DAMIAN CARRINGTON - The Guardian (U.K.)

The world’s most widely used insecticides have contaminated the environment across the planet so pervasively that global food production is at risk, according to a comprehensive scientific assessment of the chemicals’ impacts.

The researchers compare their impact with that reported in Silent Spring, the landmark 1962 book by Rachel Carson that revealed the decimation of birds and insects by the blanket use of DDT and other pesticides and led to the modern environmental movement.

Billions of dollars’ worth of the potent and long-lasting neurotoxins are sold every year but regulations have failed to prevent the poisoning of almost all habitats, the international team of scientists concluded in the most detailed study yet. As a result, they say, creatures essential to global food production – from bees to earthworms – are likely to be suffering grave harm and the chemicals must be phased out... Read more (http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/24/insecticides-world-food-supplies-risk?CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2)

giovonni

2nd July 2014, 17:46

How GMO Farming and Food Is Making Our Gut Flora Unfriendly

http://cdn.greenmedinfo.com/sites/default/files/ckeditor/sayerji/images/gmo_dangers_gut_flora.jpg

There is growing resistant to GMO crops, which parallels the increasing body of research showing these crops produce unintended health consequences -- quite apart from their role in the rise of superbugs

SAYER JI, Founder - Green Med Info

Two studies published in the past six months reveal a disturbing finding: glyphosate-based herbicides such as Roundup® appear to suppress the growth of beneficial gut bacteria, leading to the overgrowth of extremely pathogenic bacteria.

Late last year, in an article titled Roundup Herbicide Linked to Overgrowth of Deadly Bacteria, we reported on new research indicating that glyphosate-based herbicides such as Roundup® may be contributing to the overgrowth of harmful bacteria, both in GM-produced food and our own bodies. By suppressing the growth of beneficial bacteria and encouraging the growth of pathogenic ones, including deadly botulism-associated Clostridum botulinum, GM agriculture may be contributing to the alarming increase, wordwide, in infectious diseases that are resistant to conventional antibiotics, such as Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and Carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), which the CDC's director recently termed a 'nightmare bacteria' ... Read more (http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/how-gmo-farming-and-food-making-our-gut-flora-unfriendly)

onawah

2nd July 2014, 18:00

Also see this post: http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?43548-The-gut-of-most-disease...-NOT-what-you-think-&p=849556&viewfull=1#post849556
...and much of the information on that thread relates to GMOs and how they affect gut health.

How GMO Farming and Food Is Making Our Gut Flora Unfriendly

http://cdn.greenmedinfo.com/sites/default/files/ckeditor/sayerji/images/gmo_dangers_gut_flora.jpg

There is growing resistant to GMO crops, which parallels the increasing body of research showing these crops produce unintended health consequences -- quite apart from their role in the rise of superbugs

SAYER JI, Founder - Green Med Info

Two studies published in the past six months reveal a disturbing finding: glyphosate-based herbicides such as Roundup® appear to suppress the growth of beneficial gut bacteria, leading to the overgrowth of extremely pathogenic bacteria.

Late last year, in an article titled Roundup Herbicide Linked to Overgrowth of Deadly Bacteria, we reported on new research indicating that glyphosate-based herbicides such as Roundup® may be contributing to the overgrowth of harmful bacteria, both in GM-produced food and our own bodies. By suppressing the growth of beneficial bacteria and encouraging the growth of pathogenic ones, including deadly botulism-associated Clostridum botulinum, GM agriculture may be contributing to the alarming increase, wordwide, in infectious diseases that are resistant to conventional antibiotics, such as Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and Carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), which the CDC's director recently termed a 'nightmare bacteria' ... Read more (http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/how-gmo-farming-and-food-making-our-gut-flora-unfriendly)

giovonni

3rd July 2014, 09:47

The Race to Stop Las Vegas From Running dry

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02958/lv-drought_2957843_2958400b.jpg

Here is another report of a city now being threatened by climate change. This trend is gaining momentum. The truth is cities such as Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Tucson will not survive in their present form. The water needed to sustain them as they are simply isn't there, and the temperatures will become so high that it will be difficult to be outdoors, let alone work outdoors.

I think Las Vegas, for instance, has about a 15 year timeline, maybe as little as 10 before water stress begins to really disrupt the city. This is the antipode to sea level rise, and will be just as disruptive. There will be a migration out of the drought areas, as there will be a migration away from the coasts. Both reversals of the present situation where each area is growing.

NICK ALLEN - The Telegraph (U.K.)

Outside Las Vegas’s Bellagio hotel tourists gasp in amazement as fountains shoot 500ft into the air, performing a spectacular dance in time to the music of Frank Sinatra.

Gondolas ferry honeymooners around canals modelled on those of Venice, Roman-themed swimming pools stretch for acres, and thousands of sprinklers keep golf courses lush in the middle of the desert.

But, as with many things in Sin City, the apparently endless supply of water is an illusion. America’s most decadent destination has been engaged in a potentially catastrophic gamble with nature and now, 14 years into a devastating drought, it is on the verge of losing it all... Read more (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10932785/The-race-to-stop-Las-Vegas-from-running-dry.html)

giovonni

4th July 2014, 11:56

Six Months After Marijuana Legalization:
Colorado Tax Revenue Skyrockets as Crime Falls

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/REUTERS-DO-NOT-REUSE8.jpg

Here is some excellent news. What is going on in Colorado is completely discrediting the Prohibitionist's arguments. It is getting only a fraction of the attention it should, which is an interesting trend in itself. But what is happening in Colorado I think is going to change the Blue value states. This is going to become the model.

Washington, I am afraid, is making a much more muddled job of it. And greed and a desire to sabotage on the part of some combined and resulted in over-taxing, which may price legal cannabis out of the market, and perpetuate a grey market. But legalization itself has become a kind of non-issue.

DANIEL WALLIS - Reuters/The Raw Story

DENVER -- At the Native Roots Apothecary, a discreet marijuana shop in a grand old building in Denver’s busy 16th street shopping mall, business is so brisk that customers are given a number before taking a seat to wait their turn.

There are young men in ball caps, nervous-looking professionals in suits, and the frail and elderly. Staff say customers have been flocking to their outlets since Colorado voted to allow recreational pot use for adults from January.

Six months on, Colorado’s marijuana shops are mushrooming, with support from local consumers, weed tourists and federal government taking a wait-and-see attitude.

Tax dollars are pouring in, crime is down in Denver, and few of the early concerns about social breakdown have materialized – at least so far.

'The sky hasn’t fallen, but we’re a long way from knowing the unintended consequences,” said Andrew Freeman, director of marijuana ... Read more (http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/07/03/six-months-after-marijuana-legalization-colorado-tax-revenue-skyrockets-as-crime-falls/)

giovonni

6th July 2014, 18:19

If Our Founding Fathers Were All Christians, Why Did They Say This ?

In preparing today's edition I read three pieces about how the Founders were all Christians (by which was meant the fundamentalist sect that has stolen Jesus). This is grotesque nonsense, and the fact the interviewers never seem to know or care enough to ask the relevant question: On what basis do you make that statement? led me to search out something that actually provided some data.

Daily Kos

Nobody can deny the fact that Christianity has played a huge role in our history. From the first Thanksgiving to the ideas of Jesus Christ that are embroidered in our culture today, Christianity and the Bible is responsible a big part of our heritage.

However, many conservatives will take this fact way out of context. They'll think that you have to be a Christian to be patriotic, which is simply not true. Following the more secular teachings of Jesus Christ (being charitable, loving one another, treating strangers with kindness) is what the men who founded this country were for.

I don't want to waste my time listing all these obscurant far-right arguments, so instead I'll list the facts straight from our forefathers.

“If I could conceive that the general government might ever be so administered as to render the liberty of conscience insecure, I beg you will be persuaded, that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution.”

- George Washington, letter to the United Baptist Chamber of Virginia (1789)

“Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, then that of blindfolded fear.”

- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr (1787)

"In regard to religion, mutual toleration in the different professions thereof is what all good and candid minds in all ages have ever practiced, and both by precept and example inculcated on mankind.”

- Samuel Adams, The Rights of the Colonists (1771)

“Persecution is not an original feature in any religion; but it is always the strongly marked feature of all religions established by law. Take away the law-establishment, and every religion re-assumes its original benignity.”

- Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1791)

“Congress has no power to make any religious establishments.”

- Roger Sherman, Congress (1789)

"The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason."

- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack (1758)

"I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people build a wall of separation between Church & State."

- Thomas Jefferson, letter to the Danbury Baptists (1802)

"To argue with a man who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead."

- Thomas Paine, The American Crisis No. V (1776)
Note: You can read Paine's whole pamphlet, where he expresses his atheistic beliefs, here.

“Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry.”

- Thomas Jefferson, A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom (1779)

"Christian establishments tend to great ignorance and corruption, all of which facilitate the execution of mischievous projects."

- James Madison, letter to William Bradford, Jr. (1774)

"There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness."

- George Washington, address to Congress (1790)

"During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution."

- James Madison, General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia (1785)

source page (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/03/18/1285607/-If-Our-Founding-Fathers-Were-All-Christians-Why-Did-They-Say-This?detail=email#)

giovonni

10th July 2014, 15:56

for those who follow this thread ...

Editor's Note - Out of Pocket, Offline, and in Deep Waters

"Once again, to my great pleasure, I have been invited to cruise on a friend's boat in Alaskan and Northern Canadian waters. This is the one time a year I am offline. Today's edition will be the last until 17th July. I hope you had a great 4th, and are all having a wonderful summer. I will see you again on the 17th."

-- Stephan A. Schwartz

giovonni

18th July 2014, 15:30

Americans Have Spent Enough Money On A Broken Plane
To Buy Every Homeless Person A Mansion

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/AP747868491590-638x423.jpg

I have been at sea in deep nature for the past 10 days and it has given me time to think about the ills that seem to plague our society. In every situation when I tracked it back to the source it turned out the issue was not lack of money, or even lack of technology to achieve a goal. It always came down to priorities. Here is an example of what is so deeply wrong in American culture.

HAYES BROWN - Think Progress

Just days before its international debut at an airshow in the United Kingdom, the entire fleet of the Pentagon’s next generation fighter plane - known as the F-35 II Lightning, or the Joint Strike Fighter - has been grounded, highlighting just what a boondoggle the project has been. With the vast amounts spent so far on the aircraft, the United States could have worked wonders, including providing every homeless person in the U.S. a $600,000 home.

It’s hard to argue against the need to modernize aircraft used to defend the country and counter enemies overseas, especially if you’re a politician. But the Joint Strike Fighter program has been a mess almost since its inception, with massive cost overruns leading to its current acquisition price-tag of $398.6 billion - an increase of $7.4 billion since last year. That breaks down to costing about $49 billion per year since work began ...
Read more (http://thinkprogress.org/world/2014/07/09/3458101/f35-boondoggle-fail/)

giovonni

18th July 2014, 15:36

Monsanto Linked to Fatal Kidney Disease Epidemic:
Could It Topple the Company ?

Monsanto is an evil corporation. Their profits are bought with a price of life itself. That's my definition of evil.

JEFF RITTERMAN, M.D. - AlterNet (U.S.)

For years, scientists have been trying to unravel the mystery of a chronic kidney disease epidemic that has hit Central America, India and Sri Lanka. The disease occurs in poor peasant farmers who do hard physical work in hot climes. In each instance, the farmers have been exposed to herbicides and to heavy metals. The disease is known as CKDu, for Chronic Kidney Disease of unknown etiology. The "u" differentiates this illness from other chronic kidney diseases where the cause is known. Very few Western medical practitioners are even aware of CKDu, despite the terrible toll it has taken on poor farmers from El Salvador to South Asia.

Dr. Catharina Wesseling, the regional director for the Program on Work and Health (SALTRA) in Central America, which pioneered the initial studies of the region's unsolved outbreak, put it this way, "Nephrologists and public health professionals from wealthy countries are mostly either unfamiliar with the problem or skeptical whether it even exists." ... Read more (http://www.alternet.org/environment/monsanto-linked-fatal-kidney-disease-epidemic-could-it-topple-company)

giovonni

19th July 2014, 20:32

How Many Americans Go To Church Every Sunday Like I Do ?

Here is a pretty good take on the latest data concerning Church attendance. This is all part of The Great Schism Trend.

Click through to see the useful charts.

http://espnfivethirtyeight.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/fall-color.jpg?w=773

Dear Mona, How Many Americans Go To Church Every Sunday Like I Do ? (http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/dear-mona-how-many-americans-go-to-church-every-sunday-like-i-do/)

giovonni

20th July 2014, 21:23

Big Jump in Number of Millennials Living With Parents Reported

http://www.trbimg.com/img-53c7ffd4/turbine/la-fi-big-jump-in-millennials-living-with-pare-001/500/16x9

This is part of the Middle Class Decline trend. This multiple generations living in the same house is what one sees in second and third world countries where incomes are so low, and costs so high, that the only way a family can get by is by packing into one living space and spreading the cost across all their meager incomes.

There is a kind of dark fascination to watching a nation beggar itself. It is the sort of thing one reads about in history, but never expects to see in their own world.

WALTER HAMILTON, Reporter - Los Angeles Times

More Americans than ever live in multigenerational households, and the number of millennials who live with their parents is rising sharply, according to a study released Thursday.

A record 57 million Americans, or 18.1% of the population, lived in multigenerational arrangements in 2012, according to the Pew Research Center. That's more than double the 28 million people who lived in such households in 1980, the center said... Read more (http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-more-millennials-moving-home-20140717-story.html)

Snowflower

20th July 2014, 21:27

Language is SO important.

"Multigenerational household" versus "living with their parents."

In the first, there is a cohesive family unit, all equally dealing with the issues of surviving and thriving. In the second, the parents are put upon and the children are leaching lazy bums.

giovonni

21st July 2014, 17:47

Emerging Nations Plan Their Own World Bank, IMF

This development amongst the BRICS nations holds portentous implications for the United States. I think the days of the U.S. currency being the reference currency for the world are numbered. America is now seen by a growing number of national governments as a dangerous unreliable partner. A far cry from the Marshall Plan days.

PAUL WISEMAN, AP Economics Writer - ABC/The Associated Press

Fed up with U.S. dominance of the global financial system, five emerging market powers this week will launch their own versions of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa -the so-called BRICS countries - are seeking "alternatives to the existing world order," said Harold Trinkunas, director of the Latin America Initiative at the Brookings Institution.

At a summit Tuesday through Thursday in Brazil, the five countries will unveil a $100 billion fund to fight financial crises, their version of the IMF. They will also launch a World Bank alternative, a new bank that will make loans for infrastructure projects across the developing world... Read more (http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/emerging-nations-plan-world-bank-imf-24555957)

giovonni

22nd July 2014, 22:53

This Floating Platform Could Filter the Plastic from our Polluted Oceans

http://ad009cdnb.archdaily.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/533adaa7c07a80be520000a4_this-floating-platform-could-filter-the-plastic-from-our-polluted-oceans_exterior_2_-_pa-530x415.jpg

Here is an example of what environmental remediation might look like. Instead of pouring tens of billions into useless fighters like the F-35, this is what we should be building. The ubiquitous presence of plastic particles in the ocean has become a tremendous problem with dire long term effects. To quote the report, "Today there are six mega-vortexes of floating plastic: five between the continents and a sixth close to the Arctic, which is similar in size to Brazil (8.5 million square kilometers) and is 10 meters thick. It is in this environment that Halobates – a wild insect that feeds on zooplankton – thrives. The insect has experienced such exponential growth, in fact, that it’s endangering the zooplankton, essentially eliminating the base of the oceanic food chain."

Click through to see the illustrations which will make this story much more comprehensible.

VANESSA QUIRK - Arch Daily

Plastic is an extremely durable material, taking 500 years to biodegrade, yet it’s designed to be used for an average of 5 minutes, and so it’s thrown away. Few know where this mass of junk will end up … in the oceans, killing and silently destroying everything, even us.”

Cristian Ehrmantraut has developed a prototype for a floating platform that filters the ocean and absorbs plastic. Located 4 km from the coast of Easter Island, close to the center of the mega-vortex of plastic located in the South Pacific, the tetrahedral platform performs a kind of dialysis, allowing the natural environment to be recovered as well as energy and food to be produced.

From the Architect. The idea for the project comes from a reality that, although few realize it, affects us all: the disposable culture and its principal actor - plastic

Since the 1960s, plastic has ... Read more (http://www.archdaily.com/527863/this-floating-platform-could-filter-the-plastic-from-our-polluted-oceans/)

giovonni

22nd July 2014, 23:14

The Fiscal Fizzle

In this excellent essay Paul Krugman lays bare the great misconception at the heart of conservative economics. Once again data shows us what ideology and theology can never reveal -- an accurate assessment of social outcomes.

Paul Krugman, Nobel Laureate - Op-Ed Columnist - The New York Times

For much of the past five years readers of the political and economic news were left in little doubt that budget deficits and rising debt were the most important issue facing America. Serious people constantly issued dire warnings that the United States risked turning into another Greece any day now. President Obama appointed a special, bipartisan commission to propose solutions to the alleged fiscal crisis, and spent much of his first term trying to negotiate a Grand Bargain on the budget with Republicans.

That bargain never happened, because Republicans refused to consider any deal that raised taxes. Nonetheless, debt and deficits have faded from the news. And there’s a good reason for that disappearing act: The whole thing turns out to have been a false alarm.

I’m not sure whether most readers realize just how thoroughly the great fiscal panic has fizzled - and the deficit scolds are, ... Read more (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/21/opinion/Paul-Krugman-An-Imaginary-Budget-and-Debt-Crisis.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-top-span-region&region=c-column-top-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-top-span-region&_r=1)

Snowflower

22nd July 2014, 23:56

I don't know much about Paul Krugman, but just made the personal observation that he is an idiot. He claims inflation rates are "low." The man hasn't gone shopping for food lately. Oh, but wait. The govgoons took food and energy out of the equation to measure inflation because they're too "volatile." anyone who actually has to live on a monthly income understands that inflation is running wild. As I said - idiot.

giovonni

23rd July 2014, 00:18

i believe Paul Krugman's essay is focusing on the long term debt crisis panic ... not the immediate conspired shim sham of this obviously fixed and corrupt unfolding economy ... :)

Humble Janitor

23rd July 2014, 03:53

There definitely is a noticeable income gap. Two classes: Rich and Poor. There's no middle class anymore.

Gone are the days when one could have a little fun. Now? It's all about paying the man over and over.

giovonni

23rd July 2014, 04:06

giovonni

24th July 2014, 07:09

California's Job Growth Defies Predictions After Tax Increases http://media.sacbee.com/smedia/2014/07/19/22/30/BnJiW.To.4.PNG

Here, in contrast is a Blue value state. When Jerry Brown was elected California was an economic basket case. Today, under Blue value policies it looks rather different.

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON - The Sacramento Bee

Dire predictions about jobs being destroyed spread across California in 2012 as voters debated whether to enact the sales and, for those near the top of the income ladder, stiff income tax increases in Proposition 30. Million-dollar-plus earners face a 3 percentage-point increase on each additional dollar.

'It hurts small business and kills jobs,” warned the Sacramento Taxpayers Association, the National Federation of Independent Business/California, and Joel Fox, president of the Small Business Action Committee.

So what happened after voters approved the tax increases, which took effect at the start of 2013?

Last year California added 410,418 jobs, an increase of 2.8 percent over 2012, significantly better than the 1.8 percent national increase in jobs.

California is home to 12 percent of Americans, but last year it accounted for 17.5 percent of new jobs, Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows... Read more (http://www.sacbee.com/2014/07/20/6564879/states-job-growth-defies-predictions.html)

giovonni

25th July 2014, 07:45

States That Slashed Their Prison Populations Have Seen Disproportionate Drops In Crime, Too

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/PrisonGuard-638x425.jpg

Here baldly outlined is the truth about the American gulag. The whole concept of a system based on retribution at the meanest level is a failure and a fraud. Here is some proof.

NICOLE FLATOW - Think Progress

The United States still has the highest incarceration rate in the world, but those few states that managed to significantly reduce their prison population over the last decade saw benefits other than reduced lock-up costs. They also saw their crime rate go down at a higher rate than the national average, according to a new report from the Sentencing Project.

The report bolsters the notion that locking up the wrong people doesn’t improve public safety. In fact, 'smart on crime” policies not only minimize punishment toward non-violent offenders; they can also re-allocate resources toward violent crime... Read more (http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/07/24/3463498/states-that-slashed-their-prison-populations-have-seen-disproportionate-drops-in-crime/)

giovonni

26th July 2014, 09:04

Feeling Another’s Distress at a Distance: A Seemingly Psychic Connection

http://s2.djyimg.com/n3/eet-content/uploads/2014/07/21/simulpathity.jpg

Here is some insight into the fact that all life is inter-connected and interdependent, and that sometimes it produces experiences such as those detailed here. Note the references to SR reader and best selling author, Larry Dossey, whose work I have featured on many occasions.

TARA MACISAAC - Epoch Times
The universe is full of mysteries that challenge our current knowledge. In "Beyond Science" Epoch Times collects stories about these strange phenomena to stimulate the imagination and open up previously undreamed of possibilities. Are they true? You decide.

A mother was writing a letter to her daughter when her right hand began burning intensely and she dropped the pen. Less than an hour later she got a phone call telling her that her daughter’s right hand was severely burned by acid in a laboratory accident.

A family living on a farm in upstate New York began their day’s work, but all returned to the house later in the morning after experiencing a strange feeling. All eight family members felt an intense foreboding, each without being aware the others felt the same. That day, in Michigan, a son in the family died in an accident.

A woman felt a pain in her chest and said her sister had been hurt. The woman later found out that her sister was in a fatal car accident at the same time; her chest had been crushed by the steering wheel.

These stories go well beyond empathy. They are about feeling the pain of a loved one at a distance, without the conscious knowledge that that person is suffering. “Even when it happens between a mother and child, it likely goes beyond the stock phrase ‘a mother’s intuition,’“ said Michael Jawer, a researcher interested in the mind-body connection who co-authored the book “The Spiritual Anatomy of Emotion: How Feelings Link the Brain, the Body, and the Sixth Sense” with Marc Micozzi, MD, PhD.

The first two stories were recounted in Dr. Larry Dossey’s books “Healing Beyond the Body” and “Reinventing Medicine” respectively. The third was told by the late Dr. Ian Stevenson, former chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, and quoted by Jawer.

Dr. Dossey calls these experiences telesomatic events. The word telesomatic comes from Greek words for “the distant body.” He wrote in “Healing the Mind” that such events are usually positive. A woman who feels a suffocating sensation, for example, and senses that her child is drowning may run out to the swimming pool in time to save the child. Sometimes, however, they can be damaging. For example, a soldier had his legs blown off and a loved one’s legs became paralyzed for no apparent reason.

“They cannot be compelled to happen in the laboratory or on command,” said Dr. Dossey, who is now retired but once served as chief of staff at the Medical City Dallas Hospital. Nonetheless, he said, they command attention for two reasons: “First, they are exceedingly common; hundreds of instances have been reported over the past few decades, some of them in medical journals. … Secondly, these cases display an internal consistency that is striking. They almost always take place between people who share empathic, loving bonds—parents and children, spouses, siblings, lovers.”

“The nub of all this, which I find most fascinating, is the role of emotion,” said Jawer in an email to Epoch Times. “It seems that the awareness that breaks into consciousness in these cases is almost always tied to a deep feeling, a connection with someone else. It’s often an immediate family member, a close friend, or a pet.”

Psychiatrist Dr. Bernard Beitman had a personal experience of this phenomenon, and he coined the term simulpathity to describe it. He felt himself choking inexplicably, only to later find out that his father had been choking at the same time thousands of miles away. Dr. Beitman graduated from Yale Medical School and Stanford University and he was the chair of the department of psychiatry at the University of Missouri-Columbia. He’s now working to establish a transdisciplinary Coincidence Studies.

The first step in forming a clear method of study is setting up a taxonomy, he said. One of the categories of coincidences he has demarcated is synchronicity. He noted that simulpathity is a subcategory of synchronicity. He explained that synchronicity literally means “moving together in time.” It is “the surprise that occurs when a thought in the mind is mirrored by an external event to which it has no apparent causal connection.”

Dr. Beitman hypothesizes about what he calls a psychesphere. “The psychesphere is something like our atmosphere—around us and in dynamic flux with us. We breathe in oxygen and nitrogen and water vapors, and we breathe out carbon dioxide, nitrogen, and more water vapors. We receive energy-information from the psychesphere and release energy-information into the psychesphere. Our thoughts and emotions contribute to the psychesphere and our thoughts and emotions are influenced by it.”

He is looking at the physical energy humans emit and what kind of receptors we may have for picking up on this energy. For more on this topic, see the Epoch Times article “Is There a Physical Explanation for the ‘Vibes’ You Get Off People?”

Jawer explained that veterinarian Michael Fox, former author of a nationally syndicated column, spoke of the “empathosphere.” Fox described the empathosphere as “a universal realm of feeling that transcends both space and time.”

“My strong suspicion is that the body and mind are one, and mediated by emotion,” Jawer said. “The empathosphere … may allow us to effectively reach one another when we are distressed—all the more when we have a close or familial connection.”

source page (http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/810228-feeling-anothers-distress-at-a-distance-a-seemingly-psychic-connection/)