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

[giovonni]

The Really Scary Thing About Those Jaw-Dropping Siberian Craters

Finally, a responsible explanation for how the strange craters in Siberia formed. It is not a happy story.

ARI PHILLIPS - Climate Progress

Russian scientists have determined that a massive crater discovered in a remote part of Siberia was probably caused by thawing permafrost. The crater is in the Yamal Peninsula, which means 'end of the world.” It caught hold of the media spotlight in mid-July when it was spotted by oil and gas workers flying over the area. At roughly 200 feet wide and seemingly bottomless, speculation abounded about the cause with the Siberian Times reporting that, 'theories range from meteorites, stray missiles, a man-made prank, and aliens, to an explosive cocktail of methane or shale gas suddenly exploding.”

Since this first discovery, two other smaller craters have been spotted in the surrounding regions, fueling even more armchair conjecture. Russian scientists sent to the site are now providing first-hand data showing that unusually high concentrations of methane of up to 9.6 percent were present at the bottom of the first large crater shortly after it was discovered on July 16. Andrei Plekhanov, an archaeologist at the Scientific Centre of Arctic Studies in Salekhard, Russia, who led an expedition to the crater, told The Journal Nature that air normally contains just 0.000179 percent methane... Read more (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/08/01/3466466/siberian-craters-permafrost-climate-change/)

[giovonni]

US Cities’ Crackdown on Homeless People Is ‘Close to Ethnic Cleansing’

http://www.independent.co.uk/incoming/article9645277.ece/alternates/w620/v3Homeless-Rex.jpg

The increasingly inhumane treatment of the homeless by cities tells us who we are as a people. It is not a pretty picture.

DAVID USBORNE - Independent (U.K.)

His face riven with lines forged by years on the streets, Gil reaches into the top pocket of his shirt and fishes out a wedge of grimy papers. These are the precious records of his life, documents the rest of us keep in a filing cabinet at home. Eventually he finds what he is looking for, a yellow slip that looks like a parking ticket.

That, as it happens, is about right, although Gil is not a man of many possessions and certainly not a car. He does, however, have size 13 shoes. In his hands is a police citation written a few weeks ago when an officer found him sitting on the kerb with his feet touching the road. 'Feet in Roadway Disturbing Traffic,” ...
Read more (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-cities-crackdown-on-homeless-people-is-close-to-ethnic-cleansing-9645189.html)

[giovonni]

Canadians Can’t Drink Their Water After 1.3 Billion Gallons
Of Mining Waste Flows Into Rivers

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Capture1-638x349.jpg

Here we see the Canadian version of allowing profit to trump all other considerations. The Virtual Corporate States Trend is clearly evident in the two stories. VCS consider national boundaries and laws subsidiary to their interests. They will do this anywhere. The choice is always maximize profit. This economic model is killing us.

Click through to see video.

KATIE VALENTINE - Climate Progress

Hundreds of people in British Columbia can’t use their water after more than a billion gallons of mining waste spilled into rivers and creeks in the province’s Cariboo region.

A breach in a tailings pond from the open-pit Mount Polley copper and gold mine sent five million cubic meters (1.3 billion gallons) of slurry gushing into Hazeltine Creek in B.C. That’s the equivalent of 2,000 Olympic swimming pools of waste, the CBC reports. Tailings ponds from mineral mines store a mix of water, chemicals and ground-up minerals left over from mining operations... Read more (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/08/05/3467611/bc-water-tailings-pond-breach/)

[giovonni]

Student Debt Linked to Worse Health and Less Wealth

You would think that it would be in a nation's interest to make it easy for people to go as far educationally as they can and wish to. Both they and the economy benefit. But that is not how we do it in the U.S. By making a college education both almost indispensable for getting a job, yet crippling financially to obtain, we have once again put profit first and wellness somewhere far behind. Here is the result. The country is crippled in so many ways because of this untrammeled profit affliction. Like the Golden Calf it is Biblical in proportion.

Click through to see the charts.

ANDREW DUGAN and STEPHANIE KAFKA - The Gallup Organization

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- College graduates who carry a high amount of student debt appear to face long-term challenges that stretch beyond just their finances. A new analysis of Americans who graduated college between 1990 and 2014 shows that graduates who took on the highest amounts of student debt, $50,000 or more, are less likely than their fellow graduates who did not borrow for college to be thriving in four of five elements of well-being: purpose, financial, community, and physical... Read more (http://www.gallup.com/poll/174317/student-debt-linked-worse-health-less-wealth.aspx?utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=syndication&utm_content=morelink&utm_term=All%20Gallup%20Headlines)

[giovonni]

Monsanto Has Taken Over the USDA

It is my view that there exist profoundly immoral and malevolent -- the formal definition of evil -- corporations. Their corporate vision creates profit by doing something that reduces wellness. Halliburton is one, Monsanto is another. One of the skills these corporations focus on is maintaining high level government connections, and to get your executives in senior positions. So great is the corruption of our government as a result that, as this report describes, the regulatory agencies created to oversee these corporations are tailored to the corporation's wishes.

DAVID SWANSON - Nation of Change

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has been taken over by an outside organization. RootsAction has launched a campaign demanding a Congressional investigation.

The organization is called Monsanto.

Monsanto is, of course, the world's largest biotech corporation. These are the people who brought us Roundup weed killer and the resulting superweeds and superbugs, along with growth hormones for cows, genetically engineered and patented seeds, PCBs, and Agent Orange -- which Monsanto now wants us to use as herbicide on genetically engineered corn and soybeans.


This chemical company -- responsible for environmental disasters that have destroyed entire towns, and a driving force behind the international waves of suicides among farmers whose lives it has helped ruin -- has monopolized our food system largely by taking over regulatory agencies like the U.S. Department of Agriculture... Read more (http://www.nationofchange.org/monsanto-has-taken-over-usda-1368111215)

[giovonni]

Open Source Farming: A Renaissance Man Tackles the Food Crisis

http://www.truth-out.org/images/images_2014_08/2014_0810dj_1.jpg

Here is some good news about one of my favorite trends, localized, organic food production.
I am always happy to see stories like this one.

Click through to see the pictures.

DAHR JAMAIL - Truthout

Given Anthropogenic Climate Disruption and our dwindling capacities for producing enough healthy food, a cutting-edge farming technique that dramatically increases produce yields from a design engineer in Port Townsend, Washington, may well already be filling a critical void.

The news about our global food supply is not good.

Around the world - from the Middle East, across much of Africa, to California - wars over water and food are already occurring.

Billions of people already lack adequate supplies of potable water on a daily basis, and by 2030, nearly half the world's population will live in "water-stressed" areas, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's Environmental Outlook 2030 Report... Read more (http://truth-out.org/news/item/25438-open-source-farming-a-renaissance-man-tackles-the-food-crisis)

[giovonni]

Bottled Water Comes From the Most Drought-Ridden Places in the Country

This is an amazing story and one more example of how virtual corporate states place profit above wellness. A very nasty trend. It is a measure of their control over California state government that this is permitted, given the drought there. And note the point made here that this is a classic example of privatizating a public resource into a private commodity.

JULIA LURIE - Mother Jones

Bottled-water drinkers, we have a problem: There's a good chance that your water comes from California, a state experiencing the third-driest year on record.

The details of where and how bottling companies get their water are often quite murky, but generally speaking, bottled water falls into two categories. The first is "spring water," or groundwater that's collected, according to the EPA, "at the point where water flows naturally to the earth's surface or from a borehole that taps into the underground source." About 55 percent of bottled water in the United States is spring water, including Crystal Geyser and Arrowhead.

The other 45 percent comes from the municipal water supply, meaning that companies, including Aquafina and Dasani, simply treat tap water-the same stuff that comes out of your faucet at home-and bottle it up. (Weird, right?)

Read more (http://billmoyers.com/2014/08/12/bottled-water-comes-from-the-most-drought-ridden-places-in-the-country/)

[giovonni]

Only 1.3 Billion Worldwide Employed Full Time for Employer

This very important trend is virtually invisible. It's not that the data is unavailable, as this report shows. It is that it is not discussed. But if only 25 per cent of the adults in the world are employed full-time that means three quarters aren't. A major predictor of social unrest.

Click through to see the important charts.

Jon Clifton and Ben Ryan - The Gallup Organization

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- About one in four adults worldwide -- or roughly 1.3 billion people -- worked full time for an employer in 2013. Gallup's Payroll to Population (P2P) rate, which reports the percentage of the total adult population that works at least 30 hours per week for an employer, has not grown since 2012.

Gallup's latest global P2P measurements are based on more than 136,000 interviews across 136 countries in 2013, in which adults were asked a battery of employment questions modeled on the International Labour Organization's standards. Gallup does not count adults who are self-employed, working part time, unemployed, or out of the workforce as payroll-employed in the P2P metric, and it is not seasonally adjusted... Read more (http://www.gallup.com/poll/174791/billion-worldwide-employed-full-time-employer.aspx?utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=syndication&utm_content=morelink&utm_term=All%20Gallup%20Headlines)

[amor]

Is all of this polluting part of the globalist plot to dirty the water and air so that they can have an excuse to charge us carbon tax to finance their genocide? Make them clean it up NOW or close them down NOW.

[Daozen]

You can solve water problems with lifestraws, lifesaver bottles, fog collectors, atmospheric water generators, and less meat eating.

You can create more jobs with Kickstarter and these materials frodonomics.blogspot.com

You could feed homeless people by preserving the 50 per cent of cultivated crops that get wasted every year.

Most of these problems have solutions.

[giovonni]

One Nation Under SWAT: How America’s Police Became an Occupying Force

http://media.salon.com/2014/06/riot_police-620x4121.jpg


The militarization of the police in the United States is a major sociological change in the way our country operates, as this report spells out very clearly. What concerns me as much as the war toys, is that the use of such equipment and the context in which it is used attracts exactly the wrong type of personality for law enforcement. It exerts a siren call to the bully, the thug, the shoot first and ask questions later type of individual. And, as Ferguson makes clear, that is exactly who signs up, and how they behave.

MATTHEW HARWOOD - Salon

Jason Westcott was afraid.

One night last fall, he discovered via Facebook that a friend of a friend was planning with some co-conspirators to break in to his home. They were intent on stealing Wescott’s handgun and a couple of TV sets. According to the Facebook message, the suspect was planning on 'burning” Westcott, who promptly called the Tampa Bay police and reported the plot.

According to the Tampa Bay Times, the investigating officers responding to Westcott’s call had a simple message for him: 'If anyone breaks into this house, grab your gun and shoot to kill' ... Read more (http://www.salon.com/2014/08/14/one_nation_under_swat_how_americas_police_became_an_occupying_force_partner/)

[giovonni]

The Economics of Police Militarism

Here is an aspect of the militarization of the police, and particularly the Ferguson situation, that I simply had not considered.

SARAH STILLMAN, Staff Writer - The New Yorker

Two crucial battles broke out in Ferguson, Missouri, this week. The first began with the public airing of sorrow and rage after the death of the eighteen-year-old Michael Brown, who was shot by a police officer, on Canfield Court, in the St. Louis suburb, at 2:15 P.M. last Saturday. Then came the local law enforcement’s rejoinder to the early round of protests. Officers rolled in with a fleet of armored vehicles, sniper rifles, and tear-gas cannisters, reinserting the phrase 'the militarization of policing” into the collective conscience. The tactical missteps by the town’s police leadership have been a thing to behold. (They’re also to be expected; anyone doubting as much should pick up Radley Balko’s 'The Rise of the Warrior Cop.”)

One moment, we see a young man with a welt from a rubber bullet between his eyes; the next, three officers with big guns are charging at another ... Read more (http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/economics-police-militarism)

[giovonni]

These 3 Teenagers Created An App To Hold Police Accountable

Something very interesting is happening with social media. It is becoming a sharing venue where people otherwise unconnected can share common experiences of police violence. If this trend takes off, as I think it will, hundreds if not thousands of these confrontation episodes, that normally go largely unremarked except locally, will get posted online where they can be picked up and passed around. This will make it impossible for media to ignore them.

CARIMAH TOWNES - Think Progress

Three high school students have developed a mobile app to hold police accountable in communities nationwide. The app, Five-O, is a timely development, since the shooting of Michael Brown last weekend sparked a national conversation about police brutality and law enforcement in the U.S... Read more (http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/08/16/3472097/police-brutality-app/)

[giovonni]

Congress Will Review the Transfer
of Military Weapons to Police Forces After Ferguson

http://www.nationofchange.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/article_main_image/FergusonPoliceShooting081814.jpeg

Here is some good news, about the Militarization of the Police Trend, a possible reversal.
Write Senator Levin and thank him.

HAYES BROWN - Nation of Change

In the aftermath of clashes between heavily armed police forces and protesters in Ferguson, MO, the Senate will review the nearly twenty-five year old law that promotes the transfer of surplus military goods to police forces, the head of the Senate Armed Services Committee said on Friday... Read more (http://www.nationofchange.org/congress-will-review-transfer-military-weapons-police-forces-after-ferguson-1408373021)

[giovonni]

Love Thy Neighbour, It's Good for the Heart: Study

Here is an example of the process I am advocating, and why it benefits both the individual and society.

Agence France-Presse (France)

PARIS, FRANCE -- Ever felt like your neighbour's antics could drive you to an early grave?

Well, there may be reason for concern, said researchers who reported a link Tuesday between having good neighbours and a healthier heart.

"Having good neighbours and feeling connected to others in the local community may help to curb an individual's heart attack risk," said a statement that accompanied a study published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

Heart and blood vessel diseases are the number one cause of death globally, claiming some 15 million lives in 2010, according to the latest Global Burden of Disease study.

Research into neighbourhoods and health had in the past focused on negative impacts through factors like fast-food restaurant density, violence, noise, traffic, poor air quality, vandalism and drug use, said the study authors... Read more (http://news.yahoo.com/love-thy-neighbour-good-heart-study-224651369.html;_ylt=AwrBJR_6xPJTAjMAYrHQtDMD)

[giovonni]

You Have ‘Near Zero’ Impact On Policy, Determines Princeton Study

This is what our democracy has become. The only way to reverse this is by getting at least 31.5 million people to commit that when faced with a choice they will choose the option that is the most compassionate and life-affirming. Individuals may be powerless, but when 10 per cent choose to do that, change occurs. Look at smoking.

PAT KANE - Progressive Today

Is America really the most free country on the plant? Despite what patriots may tell themselves, several new studies say ‘no.’ A shocking new report from Princeton University Professor Martin Gilens and Northwestern University Professor Benjamin Page found that the average American has a 'near-zero” impact on U.S. policy, both domestic and foreign... Read more (http://www.progressivestoday.com/you-have-near-zero-impact-on-policy-determines-princeton-study/)

[giovonni]

How the Defense Industry Convinced Congress to Militarize Local Cops

http://www.motherjones.com/files/imagecache/top-of-content-main/ferguson-police.jpg

This is the ugly truth about the greed of the weapons makers.

ALEX PARK - Mother Jones

The Ferguson, Missouri, police department's display of armored cars, officers in riot gear, and assault rifles over the past week shocked Americans who didn't realize how much military equipment is now available to local police departments. But since the 1990's, more than 8,000 federal, state, tribal, and local police agencies across the country have armed themselves with the military's excess gear, free of charge. The inventory includes everything from office furniture and first aid kits to aircraft, armored cars, rifles and bayonets, according to the Defense Logistics Agency, the Department of Defense office that manages the transactions under an initiative called Program 1033 ... Read more (http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2014/08/how-defense-industry-made-room-militarized-police-today)

[giovonni]

Brave New Recycling Economy: Movement Turns Trash to Treasure

Here is some at least potential good news. The idea of that with proper planning we can live a high quality of life, eliminate waste, recycle almost everything, and still be life-affirming and ecologically sound is in my view the way to go. And as this research shows it is attainable.

MICHAELA SCHIESSL - Der Spiegel (Germany)

Brad Pitt is undoubtedly his most celebrated fan, but chemist Michael Braungart prefers to conceal his pride with sarcasm. The American actor and environmental activist confesses that the book "Cradle to Cradle" is one of the three most important books of his life. And how does co-author Braungart respond? "Well, I'm not sure if Pitt has read more than three books yet."

It's a typical quip coming from Braungart, a professor based in Hamburg, Germany. To make a snappy remark, he can even forget about his revolution for a moment.

In reality, the 56-year-old is deeply flattered to hear the American star praising his life's work. And he needs all the praise and support he can for what he has planned, which is nothing less than the environmental and industrial reorganization of the world... Read more (http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-chemist-pushes-for-smarter-use-of-materials-through-c2c-a-985934.html)

[giovonni]

Are We Becoming More Stupid? IQ Scores are Decreasing

Here is a new trend which I had not previously been following, but will do so now.
I'm not quite sure what to make of this trend, and will have to do more research.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/08/21/1408624676156_wps_5_World_IQ_graph_jpg.jpg

SARAH GRIFFITHS - The Daily Mail (U.K.)

Technology may be getting smarter, but humans are getting dumber, scientists have warned. Opinion is divided as to whether the trend is long-term, but some researchers believe that humans have already reached intellectual peak.

A study by the University of Hartford claims that the larger the global population becomes, the less intelligent we will be, dropping by around eight IQ points by the year 2110 - and other estimates are even more pessimistic

An IQ test used to determine whether Danish men are fit to serve in the military has revealed scores have fallen by 1.5 points since 1998.

And standard tests issued in the UK and Australia echo the results, according to journalist Bob Holmes, writing in New Scientist.

The most pessimistic explanation as to why humans seem to be becoming less intelligent is that we have effectively reached our intellectual peak... Read more (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2730791/Are-STUPID-Britons-people-IQ-decline.html)

[giovonni]

Western Drought Causes Earth's Surface to Rise as Groundwater Drops

This is the first time I have seen this aspect of the drought discussed. Once again we see that all the Earth's systems are interlinked and interdependent.

Click through to see the photos and maps.

RONG-GONG LIN II - Los Angeles Times

A year and a half of drought has depleted 63 trillion gallons of water across the Western United States, according to a new study that documents how the parched conditions are altering the landscape.

The loss of groundwater, as well as surface water such as reservoirs, has been so extreme that it lifted the West an average of one-sixth of an inch since 2013, according to researchers from UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the U.S. Geological Survey.

The situation is even worse underneath the snow-starved mountains of California, where the Earth rose up three-fifths of an inch. Groundwater is very heavy, and its weight depresses the Earth's upper crust. Remove the weight, and the crust springs upward... Read more (http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-groundwater-20140822-story.html)

[giovonni]

Seeing the wood

http://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/full-width/images/print-edition/20140823_LDP004_0.jpg


This is a wonderful story that gives some hope that the dominant culture is opening
to the interconnected and interdependent nature, of nature.


The Economist (U.K.)
Aug 23rd 2014

"Saving trees is one of the best ways of saving the environment ...

'Forests are the lungs of our land,” said Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Twenty years ago, the world’s lungs were diseased. Brazil, the country with more tropical trees than any other, was cutting down an area of forest two-thirds the size of Belgium every year. Roughly half of all the planet’s once-luxuriant tropical forests had been felled and the further degradation of the Earth’s green spaces seemed inevitable.

It would be too much to say that forests have made a full recovery. Worldwide, over 5m hectares of jungle-getting on for two Belgiums-are still being felled or burned down each year. In some countries, notably Indonesia, the chainsaws are growing louder. But the crisis is passing and the prognosis is starting to improve. Fears that the great forests of the Congo would be cleared have proved unfounded so far. Brazil and Mexico have reduced their deforestation rates by well over two-thirds. India and Costa Rica have done more than reduce the rate of loss: they are replanting areas that were once clear-cut.

Over time countries trace a “forest transition curve”. They start in poverty with the land covered in trees. As they get richer, they fell the forest and the curve plummets until it reaches a low point when people decide to protect whatever they have left. Then the curve rises as reforestation begins. At almost every point along the line, countries are now doing better: deforesters are chopping down less; reforesters are replanting more.

This matters to everyone, including rich countries in temperate zones, because of the extraordinary contribution that tropical forests make to mitigating carbon emissions. Trees are carbon sinks. If you fell and burn them, you release carbon into the atmosphere. If you let them grow, they squirrel carbon away in their trunks for centuries. Despite decades of destruction, tropical forests are still absorbing about a fifth of emissions from fossil fuels each year.

Encouraging countries to plant trees (or discouraging them from logging) is by far the most effective way of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. If Brazil had kept on felling trees as rapidly as it was cutting them down in 2005, it would, by 2013, have put an extra 3.2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That means that over those eight years it managed to save six times as much carbon as ultra-green Germany did in the same period through one of the world’s most expensive renewable-energy regimes. As a way of helping the environment, protecting trees is hard to beat. It is in everyone’s interest to find out which forest policies work—and back them.

The law in the jungle

As well as cleaner air, forests provide all sorts of benefits, such as clean water downstream. Alas, everyone is happy to enjoy the benefits but few are willing to pay for them (see article). So the most effective forest policies are usually top-down bans, such as on farming or logging.

Prohibitions by themselves, though, are not enough. Tropical forests tend to be remote places where the writ of the law does not run. But Brazil shows that bans can be made to stick if there is political support at the top and popular backing from below (the policies started to bite when President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took charge of them), and if there is an institutional network to back them up. In Brazil’s case, that meant everything from satellites to show the public what was happening in the Amazon to moratoriums on purchases of soyabeans and beef produced on cleared land.

Only forested countries themselves can provide leadership from the top. But outsiders can help. They could finance, say, new land registries. And they should fund an all-purpose UN programme to improve forest management in tropical countries called REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation).

Rich countries spend billions on renewable energy at home, which has so far cut carbon emissions only a bit. They should be willing to spend a few millions abroad, protecting tropical forests that reduce emissions a lot.

Source page (http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21613262-saving-trees-one-best-ways-saving-environment-seeing-wood)

[giovonni]

Soon, Europe Might Not Need Any New Power Plants

This is really an extraordinary report and very good news. I wish the same could be said of the United States though. It makes me very sad that my country is falling further and further behind technologically at the level where it really counts -- the level at which people live their daily lives. We have rotten cell phone service compared to the rest of the world, our internet speed is a disgrace, our illness profit system is an embarrassment, and we are massive polluters in the grip of an intractable carbon energy industry. Only voter participation is going to stop this, and about 40 per cent of Americans can't be bothered to vote, and those that do in many areas of the country choose to support corrupt venal morons.

Click through to see the important graphs.

JEFF SPROSS - Climate Progress

Within a few decades, large-scale, centralized electricity generation from fossil fuels could be a thing of the past in Europe.

That’s the word from investment bank UBS, which just released a new report anticipating a three pronged assault from solar power, battery technology, and electric vehicles that will render obsolete traditional power generation by large utilities that rely on coal or natural gas. According to Renew Economy, which picked up the report, the tipping point will arrive around 2020. At that point, investing in a home solar system with a 20-year life span, plus some small-scale home battery technology and an electric car, will pay for itself in six to eight years for the average consumer in Germany, Italy, Spain, and much of the rest of Europe. Crucially, this math holds even without any government subsidies for solar power... Read more (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/08/24/3474972/ubs-europe-solar-batteries-evs/#)

[giovonni]

Marijuana Use Lowers Risk of Domestic Violence in Married Couples, Study Finds

The marijuana research studies so long suppressed are now coming almost weekly, sometimes daily. Here is the latest.

TARYN HILLIN - The Huffington Post

"Past research has indicated that couples who abuse substances are at a greater risk for divorce, in part because substance abuse often leads to an increase in domestic violence.

However, new research has found that when it comes to marijuana use, the opposite effect occurs: couples who frequently use marijuana are actually at a lower risk of partner violence.

Researchers from Yale University, University of Buffalo and Rutgers recruited 634 couples from 1996 to 1999 while they were applying for a marriage license in New York State. After an initial interview, the researchers followed the couples over the course of nine years using mail-in surveys to measure the effects of marijuana use on intimate partner violence (IPV).

The study defines IPV as acts of physical aggression, such as slapping, hitting, beating and choking, and it was measured by asking couples to report violence committed by them or toward them in the last year.

At the end of the first year, 37.1 percent of husbands had committed acts of domestic violence.

Marijuana use was measured by asking participants how often they used marijuana or hashish (defined as pot, weed, reefer, hash, hash oil or grass) in the last year. Participants were also asked about other drug use including alcohol, because, as the researchers explain the study, marijuana and alcohol are often used in conjunction.

What the researchers found surprised them: due to the fact that alcohol and other substances are known to increase domestic violence, they hypothesized that marijuana use would have the same effect. But that was not the case.

"More frequent marijuana use generally predicted less frequent IPV for both men and women over the first 9 years of marriage," the researchers wrote. Not only that, couples who both used marijuana frequently -- compared to one spouse using it more than the other -- were at the lowest risk for subsequent partner violence.

Why would marijuana be different than other substances? Researchers hypothesize that the positive side effects of using marijuana may actually reduce conflict and aggression. They note that previous research has found chronic marijuana use to blunt emotional reactions, which could in turn decrease violent or aggressive behavior between spouses."

source and comment page here (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/25/marijuana-study_n_5711217.html)

[giovonni]

A Fully Transparent Solar Cell That Could Make
Every Window and Screen a Power Source


http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/transparent-luminescent-solar-concentrator-module-640x424.jpg

Here is some more good news about developments in solar technology. One can only wonder how fast these developments might go if solar got the kind of special tax breaks and subsidies given to carbon energy sources.

SEBASTIAN ANTHONY - Extreme Tech

Researchers at Michigan State University have created a fully transparent solar concentrator, which could turn any window or sheet of glass (like your smartphone’s screen) into a photovoltaic solar cell. Unlike other 'transparent” solar cells that we’ve reported on in the past, this one really is transparent, as you can see in the photos throughout this story. According to Richard Lunt, who led the research, the team are confident that the transparent solar panels can be efficiently deployed in a wide range of settings, from 'tall buildings with lots of windows or any kind of mobile device that demands high aesthetic quality like a phone or e-reader" ...
Read more (http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/188667-a-fully-transparent-solar-cell-that-could-make-every-window-and-screen-a-power-source)

[giovonni]

What Lies Beneath Stonehenge ?

http://thumbs.media.smithsonianmag.com//filer/9c/c9/9cc9eb49-06ad-402b-a851-800fd209de72/sep14_i09_stonehenge.jpg__800x600_q85_crop.jpg

Stonehenge has been a subject of fascination for centuries with all manner of interpretations and myths. Finally we are actually getting hard data about it. Here is a survey of the latest.

Click through to see the illustrations and charts.

ED CAESAR - Smithsonian Magazine

e walked the Avenue, the ancient route along which the stones were first dragged from the River Avon. For centuries, this was the formal path to the great henge, but now the only hint of its existence was an indentation or two in the tall grass. It was a fine English summer’s day, with thin, fast clouds above, and as we passed through fields dotted with buttercups and daisies, cows and sheep, we could have been hikers anywhere, were it not for the ghostly monument in the near distance.

Faint as the Avenue was, Vince Gaffney hustled along as if it were illuminated by runway lights. A short, sprightly archaeologist of 56, from Newcastle upon Tyne in northeast England, he knows this landscape as well as anyone alive: has walked it, breathed it, studied it for uncounted hours. He has not lost his sense of wonder. Stopping to fix ... Read more (http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-lies-beneath-Stonehenge-180952437/?page=1&no-ist)

[giovonni]

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/jesusrio.afp_.jpg

5 Reasons to Suspect Jesus Never Existed

Here is a very good assessment of the Jesus Controversy Trend. What it doesn't say is that in a real sense it doesn't matter if a physical person existed, or not, or was a composite. When billions of people across millennia express focused intense awareness of something it exists.

VALERIE TARICO - AlterNet (U.S.)

Most antiquities scholars think that the New Testament gospels are 'mythologized history.” In other words, they think that around the start of the first century a controversial Jewish rabbi named Yeshua ben Yosef gathered a following and his life and teachings provided the seed that grew into Christianity.

At the same time, these scholars acknowledge that many Bible stories like the virgin birth, miracles, resurrection, and women at the tomb borrow and rework mythic themes [3] that were common in the Ancient Near East, much the way that screenwriters base new movies on old familiar tropes or plot elements. In this view, a 'historical Jesus” became mythologized [4].

For over 200 years, a wide ranging array of theologians and historians-most of them Christian-analyzed ancient texts, both those that made it into the Bible and those that didn’t, in attempts to excavate the man behind the myth. ... Read more (http://www.alternet.org/belief/5-reasons-suspect-jesus-never-existed?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark)

[giovonni]

Enforcement of Gun Laws Hinges on Local Sheriffs'
Interpretation of Second Amendment

http://readersupportednews.org/images/stories/article_imgs8/8920-gun-flag-bullets-020113.jpg

Most of us never think about sheriffs. Few realize they are a holdover from ancient British common law, and an anomaly in our justice system: Sheriffs are elected, not hired or appointed. As this report details they are becoming a force in our society's Gun Psychosis Trend, in a way individual police are not. Indeed, they are often in opposition to police on the gun issue.

Marlena Chertock, The Center for Public Integrity - Reader Supported News

his project was produced by News21, a national investigative reporting project involving top college journalism students across the country and headquartered at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University

Sheriff Mike Lewis considers himself the last man standing for the people of Wicomico County.

'State police and highway patrol get their orders from the governor,” the Maryland sheriff said. 'I get my orders from the citizens in this county" ... Read more (http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/433-2nd-amendment-rights/25592-enforcement-of-gun-laws-hinges-on-local-sheriffs-interpretation-of-second-amendment)

[giovonni]

Why Doctors Are Sick of Their Profession

The American Illness Profit System is deeply flawed. Anyone can see this who actually looks at the data. But what doesn't get a lot of coverage is how the physicians themselves view the system. I began writing about this four years ago (See: Where Can I Find a Family Doctor? An Unintended Consequence of Health Reform (http://www.explorejournal.com/article/S1550-8307%2810%2900097-2/fulltext) and the situation just keeps getting worse.

Listen to what the doctors have to say to see my point come to life.

SANDEEP JAUHAR, MD, Director of the Heart Failure Program at the Long Island Jewish Medical Center - The Wall Street Journal

All too often these days, I find myself fidgeting by the doorway to my exam room, trying to conclude an office visit with one of my patients. When I look at my career at midlife, I realize that in many ways I have become the kind of doctor I never thought I'd be: impatient, occasionally indifferent, at times dismissive or paternalistic. Many of my colleagues are similarly struggling with the loss of their professional ideals.

It could be just a midlife crisis, but it occurs to me that my profession is in a sort of midlife crisis of its own. In the past four decades, American doctors have lost the status they used to enjoy. In the mid-20th century, physicians were the pillars of any community. If you were smart and sincere and ambitious, at the top of your class, there was nothing nobler or more rewarding that you ... More here (http://online.wsj.com/articles/the-u-s-s-ailing-medical-system-a-doctors-perspective-1409325361?mod=trending_now_2)

[giovonni]

12 Ecologically Sustainable Countries and Why They Should Be Admired

Because we are controlled by carbon interests we rank 33rd on the Environmental Performance Index. Other countries not as encumbered have already begun to move to sustainability. In the coming decades they are going to prosper, we are going to suffer increasing decline until we change our social policies to reflect wellness as the first priority.

JODIE GUMMOW

With last week [3]'s news that Earth’s resources have slipped into an "ecological deficit" for the rest of 2014, many countries around the world have come under scrutiny for taking more from nature then their own ecosystems can supply.

What exactly is this ecological debt? Essentially, it means we have used up all the planet’s natural resources available for an entire year-think deforestation, soil erosion and carbon dioxide emissions-so now we’re running a deficit. In other words, human consumption has exceeded our planet’s capacity to regenerate. The calculations are based on dividing the amount of ecological resources the planet is able to provide in a year by humanity’s demand and multiplying it by 365.

It is now estimated that 86% [4] of the world's population live in countries that require more from nature than their ecosystems can provide. According to the Global Footprint Network [4], if everybody were ... Read more (http://www.alternet.org/environment/12-ecologically-sustainable-countries-and-why-they-should-be-admired?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark)

[giovonni]

http://antinuclear.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/aust-sun.jpg

How Australia Perfected Solar Power and Then Went Back to Coal

The story of Australia is one of the most perverse stories of recent time, and ought to be read as a cautionary tale. Obviously it is being duplicated in some aspects in the U.S.

Note the comments at the end about the grid/local relationship. If a game changer technology like LENR doesn't come along this is what I think is going to happen in both countries. The grid will eventually wither away because the cost of maintenance isn't worth it -- 50 years.

JULIAN MORGANS - Vice News

There was a time in the 1980s when Australia led the world in solar technology. To begin with, Australia receives more solar radiation per square foot than anywhere on the planet, and that presents an obvious advantage. But the true catalyst was geography: two thirds of the country consists of uninhabited desert. This posed problems for engineers tasked with constructing a national telephone network in the early 1970s. The solution was to build remote relay stations powered with solar energy, which at the time was a fledgling, expensive technology. Yet by 1978 the national provider, Telecom, had developed reliable solar cells that could be installed affordably across the country and be infrequently maintained. International recognition came in 1983 when Perth was tapped with hosting the Solar World Congress.

Fast-forward to 2014 and Australian solar power is in a very different place. This week a proposed solar farm with 2,000 ... Read more (https://news.vice.com/article/how-australia-perfected-solar-power-and-then-went-back-to-coal)

[giovonni]

The American Dream Is an Illusion

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/files/imagecache/800x/images/RTR418J7.jpg

Here is a very impressive essay on the American dream and immigration. I think Clark nails it.

We have got to stop lying to ourselves. And we need to speak out against politicians who do it. You cannot learn what you will not see; whether as an individual or a society.

GREGORY CLARK - Foreign Affairs

A combination of cheap transportation and enormous disparities in income across countries has inspired unprecedented numbers of people to uproot: there are now 230 million people around the world living outside the country of their birth, 46 million of them in the United States. Not surprisingly, immigration tends to flow from poor places to rich ones: in the world’s 18 richest countries, immigrants constitute 16 percent of the population. If one includes those who are descendants of recent immigrants, that percentage is significantly larger and is certain to grow, since immigrants generally have more children than domestic populations. Consider that, in 2010, 13 percent of the U.S. population was born outside the country, yet 24 percent of those younger than 18 had foreign-born parents... Read more (http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/141932/gregory-clark/the-american-dream-is-an-illusion)

[giovonni]

Marijuana Compound May Halt Alzheimer's Disease – Study

http://cdn.rt.com/files/news/2c/e8/c0/00/36.si.jpg

These marijuana research reports just keep coming. As they do I keep thinking: how much misery and death might have been avoided if we had had a compassionate and life-affirming policy concerning marijuana instead of this horrible Prohibition structure that has destroyed the lives of millions.

RT

Extremely low levels of THC compound, a chemical found in marijuana, may slow down or halt the progression of Alzheimer's disease, US neuroscientists have found, thus laying the ground for the development of effective treatment in the future.

In recent research published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, scientists from University of South Florida revealed their findings, that may shed light on controversial therapeutic qualities of marijuana.

Alzheimer’s disease is one of the most common dementia types in people over 65. It develops alongside malfunctioning or death of nerve cells in the brain, which usually results in changes in one’s memory, behavior, and ability to think clearly. Its history dates back to over a century, but its origins remain largely unknown. Alzheimer’s disease tends to progress from mild forms to moderate and severe cases at different rates, eventually leading to death... Read more (http://rt.com/news/183948-marijuana-compound-stop-alzheimer/)

[birddog]

Jesus did and does exist even today. Because He lives in Heaven, one may say He is alien, but He is much more than that. His abilities are beyond comprehension, and thus the stories that surround Him leave people to wonder how much is really true.

You mentioned the Virgin birth.....
To understand the Virgin birth, one has to have an understanding of dimensions. It is that simple.

I understand the the powers that wanna be in this world want everyone to have a one world religion. This is part of their plan for control. All of the talk about Jesus, and Angels and the like being something other than what we have believed to be serves the purpose of those in control.

Be aware of something called disinformation. It is being seeded everywhere.

[giovonni]

thanks for your comments ...

i am assuming you are referring to this news item below ...

Note, whether one chooses to believe in Jesus or not ...

There's no question that the world could do with less religious dogma.


http://www.rawstory.com/rs/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/jesusrio.afp_.jpg

5 Reasons to Suspect Jesus Never Existed

Here is a very good assessment of the Jesus Controversy Trend. What it doesn't say is that in a real sense it doesn't matter if a physical person existed, or not, or was a composite. When billions of people across millennia express focused intense awareness of something it exists.

VALERIE TARICO - AlterNet (U.S.)

Most antiquities scholars think that the New Testament gospels are 'mythologized history.” In other words, they think that around the start of the first century a controversial Jewish rabbi named Yeshua ben Yosef gathered a following and his life and teachings provided the seed that grew into Christianity.

At the same time, these scholars acknowledge that many Bible stories like the virgin birth, miracles, resurrection, and women at the tomb borrow and rework mythic themes [3] that were common in the Ancient Near East, much the way that screenwriters base new movies on old familiar tropes or plot elements. In this view, a 'historical Jesus” became mythologized [4].

For over 200 years, a wide ranging array of theologians and historians-most of them Christian-analyzed ancient texts, both those that made it into the Bible and those that didn’t, in attempts to excavate the man behind the myth. ... Read more (http://www.alternet.org/belief/5-reasons-suspect-jesus-never-existed?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark)

[giovonni]

Why Walking Helps Us Think

http://www.newyorker.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Jabr-Walking-690.jpg

As a life long traveler and walker this piece, although not about a trend, just appealed to me.
Perhaps you will like it as well.

FERRIS JABR - The New Yorker

In Vogue’s 1969 Christmas issue, Vladimir Nabokov offered some advice for teaching James Joyce’s 'Ulysses”: 'Instead of perpetuating the pretentious nonsense of Homeric, chromatic, and visceral chapter headings, instructors should prepare maps of Dublin with Bloom’s and Stephen’s intertwining itineraries clearly traced.” He drew a charming one himself. Several decades later, a Boston College English professor named Joseph Nugent and his colleagues put together an annotated Google map that shadows Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom step by step. The Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain, as well as students at the Georgia Institute of Technology, have similarly reconstructed the paths of the London amblers in 'Mrs. Dalloway.”

Such maps clarify how much these novels depend on a curious link between mind and feet. Joyce and Woolf were writers who transformed the quicksilver of consciousness into paper and ink. To accomplish this, they sent characters on walks about town... Read more (http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/walking-helps-us-think)

[giovonni]

Blood of World's Oldest Woman Hints at Limits of Life

http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/cms/dn25458/dn25458-1_300.jpg

Here is a fascinating new study on aging that looks like a serious new vector for science.

Journal reference: Genome Research, DOI: 10.1101/gr.162131.113 (http://genome.cshlp.org/content/24/5/733)

ANDY COGHLAN - New Scientist (U.K.)

Death is the one certainty in life – a pioneering analysis of blood from one of the world's oldest and healthiest women has given clues to why it happens.

Born in 1890, Hendrikje van Andel-Schipper was at one point the oldest woman in the world. She was also remarkable for her health, with crystal-clear cognition until she was close to death, and a blood circulatory system free of disease. When she died in 2005, she bequeathed her body to science, with the full support of her living relatives that any outcomes of scientific analysis – as well as her name – be made public.

Researchers have now examined her blood and other tissues to see how they were affected by age... Read more (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25458#.VAxliGPDWjH)

[giovonni]

As the Seas Rise, a Slow-motion Disaster Gnaws at America’s Shores

http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/assets/waters-edge/mdf4531688.jpg

Here is a quite thorough assessment of what is happening along our sea coasts. Of the 315 million people in the U.S., in excess of 124 million live in counties directly on the shoreline. You may be one of them and, if so, this is what lies ahead on your timeline.

Click through to see the several videos, as well as the charts and images.

RYAN MCNEILL, DEBORAH J. NELSON and DUFF WILSON - Reuters Investigates

WALLOPS ISLAND, VIRGINIA -- Missions flown from the NASA base here have documented some of the most dramatic evidence of a warming planet over the past 20 years: the melting of polar ice, a force contributing to a global rise in ocean levels.

The Wallops Flight Facility’s relationship with rising seas doesn’t end there. Its billion-dollar space launch complex occupies a barrier island that's drowning under the impact of worsening storms and flooding.

NASA's response? Rather than move out of harm’s way, officials have added more than $100 million in new structures over the past five years and spent $43 million more to fortify the shoreline with sand. Nearly a third of that new sand has since been washed away.

Across a narrow inlet to the north sits the island town of Chincoteague, gateway to a national wildlife refuge blessed with a stunning mile-long recreational beach... Read more (http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/waters-edge-the-crisis-of-rising-sea-levels/)

[giovonni]

Stop and seize

This is a particularly good article on the seizure forfeiture issue, as well as a presentation in its defense. I think the preponderance of evidence makes it clear, this is a dreadful program, and part of the police state trend.

Click through to see the graphs, maps, and videos.

MICHAEL SALLAH, ROBERT O’HARROW JR., STEVEN RICH - The Washington Post

ter the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the government called on police to become the eyes and ears of homeland security on America’s highways.

Local officers, county deputies and state troopers were encouraged to act more aggressively in searching for suspicious people, drugs and other contraband. The departments of Homeland Security and Justice spent millions on police training.

The effort succeeded, but it had an impact that has been largely hidden from public view: the spread of an aggressive brand of policing that has spurred the seizure of hundreds of millions of dollars in cash from motorists and others not charged with crimes, a Washington Post investigation found. Thousands of people have been forced to fight legal battles that can last more than a year to get their money back... Read more (http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/09/06/stop-and-seize/)

[giovonni]

Weekender: Quantum Biology?
Scientists Discover Amazing Quantum Processes At Work In Nature

Here is some important and fascinating new quantum research.

Unknown Country

The "interconnectedness of all things" is a notion embraced by the spiritual community and, more recently, by science in the field of quantum mechanics.

This area of research is still regarded as largely theoretical by the scientific community, however, unlike the "nuts and bolts" science that focuses on improving our medical and technological knowledge with solid, peer-reviewed studies.

Yet a recent finding made by UCSF scientists seems to a have distinctly quantum flavor to it: in a discovery that directly contradicts the standard biological model of animal cell communication, researchers discovered that typical cells in animals have the ability to transmit and receive biological signals by making physical contact with each other, even at long distance. The mechanism appears to be similar to the way neurons communicate with other cells, and contrasts the standard understanding that non-neuronal cells "basically spit out signaling proteins into extracellular fluid and hope ... Read more (http://www.unknowncountry.com/news/weekender-quantum-biology-scientists-discover-amazing-quantum-processes-work-nature)

[giovonni]

If Only American Kids Could Eat School Lunches Like They do in France

http://media.salon.com/2014/09/shutterstock_179612030.jpg

As you read this article ask yourself: Why don't we do this? What is stopping it?

Click through to see actual pictures of the lunches.

Clarissa A. León - Salon

The standard school lunch for an American child often contains dishes brimming with preservatives and sodium. While some schools have completely overhauled their school menus to contain fresh vegetables and grains, others still struggle with meeting nutritional guidelines. But for students in France, it appears that school lunches are the least of their concerns.

Rebecca Plantier moved to a town near Annecy, France to research why French children aren’t as overweight as many American children are. The local city council offered Plantier a tour of her children’s cafeteria, orcantine as it’s known in France, and Plantier discovered early on that if America and France had a school lunch food fight, France would be the overwhelming victor.

In France, lunch menus are prepared two months in advance and sent away to a nutritionist who gives the menu final approval. The nutritionist can make adjustments to the meal, such as ... Read more (http://www.salon.com/2014/09/09/if_only_american_kids_could_eat_school_lunches_like_they_do_in_france_partner/)

[giovonni]

Millennials (also known as the Millennial Generation or Generation Y)
are the demographic cohort following Generation X.

Millennials Are Better-Read, Vastly Superior to Rest of Population, Says Science

http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/blogs/moneybox/2014/09/11/pew_study_millennials_read_more_than_their_elders/163567281-philosphy-student-sergio-araujo-sorts-books-in-a-19th.jpg.CROP.promovar-mediumlarge.jpg

This is more good news and, I confess it surprised me a bit, although when I travel I see a lot of Millennials reading books on tablets and phones, with music in their ears. I am very glad to see these numbers. I think we are finding that interacting with technology requires reading skills, and supports imagination. That is encouraging.

EMILY TAMKIN - Slate

On Thursday, as A.O. Scott mourned the death of adulthood in American culture (R.I.P.), a new study by the Pew Research Center confirmed that it's young adults who are keeping American (literary) culture alive. Contrary to reports that have questioned whether or not millennials read, younger Americans actually read more than their older counterparts: 88 percent of Americans younger than 30 reported having read a book in the past year, compared with 79 percent of those older than 30... Read more (http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/09/11/pew_study_millennials_read_more_than_their_elders.html)

[giovonni]

The Inflation Cult

Paul Krugman has made some errors as all economists do occasionally, but day to day, pound for pound, he and Joseph Stiglitz are correct consistently more than anyone else. The point he is making is absolutely on the mark. Inflation hysteria is nonsense, yet I read it and hear it every day. Krugman is an outlier. Corporate media generally don't seem to have the courage to call out the Inflationists as the frauds they are.

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

Wish I’d said that! Earlier this week, Jesse Eisinger of ProPublica, writing on The Times’s DealBook blog, compared people who keep predicting runaway inflation to 'true believers whose faith in a predicted apocalypse persists even after it fails to materialize.” Indeed.

Economic forecasters are often wrong. Me, too! If an economist never makes an incorrect prediction, he or she isn’t taking enough risks. But it’s less common for supposed experts to keep making the same wrong prediction year after year, never admitting or trying to explain their past errors. And the remarkable thing is that these always-wrong, never-in-doubt pundits continue to have large public and political influence.

There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear. But as regular readers know, I’ve been trying to figure it out, because I think it’s important to understand the persistence and power of the inflation cult... Read more (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/12/opinion/paul-krugman-the-inflation-cult.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)

[giovonni]

Number of Aging Americans Paying Student Loans Soars -U.S. Report

This is how completely out of whack the American educational system has become at the college level. Student debt now exceeds credit card debt.

"(Reuters) - The rising cost of higher education is dogging Americans into retirement, with people aged 65 and older still carrying some $18.2 billion in unpaid student loans, according to a federal report released on Wednesday.

While the Government Accountability Office report noted that relatively few U.S. households headed by people 65 or over are carrying student loans, the value of the unpaid debt had spiked from $2.8 billion in 2005, before the financial crisis.

That debt is concentrated in a small number of homes. Just 4 percent of households headed by someone 65 or older carried student loan debt as of 2010, up from 1 percent in 2004.

"Some may think of student loan debt as a just a young person's problem," said U.S. Senator Bill Nelson, who heads a Senate committee on aging and held a hearing on the findings on Wednesday. "As it turns out, that's increasingly not the case."

The $18.2 billion figure includes loans related to both the holders' education, often for those who have returned to school later in life, and their children's education, the report found.

Across the United States, about 40 million Americans are paying back some $1.1 trillion in student loan debt.

Student loans are a particular concern because unlike credit card debt or mortgages, they are typically government-backed and cannot be written off in bankruptcy proceedings, leaving retirees facing the risk of having their Social Security payments garnished to cover student loans.

The cost of higher education in the United States has steadily increased over the past decade, with one year's costs for tuition, room and board, and other fees at the average four-year U.S. college coming to $23,872 for the 2012-2013 academic year, according to Department of Education data. That is up 21 percent, accounting for inflation.

"Education debt has become a significant factor for younger workers, threatening a middle-class standard of living and at times even forcing some to delay their retirement," said Debra Whitman, an executive vice president at AARP, the largest lobbying group representing retired Americans. "Student loan debt is also becoming a matter of serious concern for some older Americans many of who are still paying off their kids' debt or helping their grandkids well into their retirement."

(Reporting by Scott Malone; Editing by Mohammad Zargham)
source (http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/10/usa-education-debt-idUSL1N0RB1X820140910)

[giovonni]

Largest City In Vermont Now Gets All Its Power From Wind, Water And Biomass

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/AP128736798728-638x405.jpg

Here is some very nice news. An entire city moves beyond carbon energy. It can be done. Maybe not with the same mix in each city -- not every city has hydro electric -- but with a customized mix for each situation.

ARI PHILLIPS - Think Progress

The 42,000 people living in Burlington, Vermont can now feel confident that when they turn on their TVs or power up their computers they are using renewable energy. With the purchase of the 7.4 megawatt Winooski One hydroelectric project earlier this month, the Burlington Electric Department now owns or contracts renewable sources - including wind, hydro, and biomass - equivalent to the city’s needs.

"We’re now in a position where we’re supplying Burlington residents with sources that are renewable,” said Ken Nolan, manager of power resources for Burlington Electric Department, earlier this month. 'The prices are not tied to fossil fuels - they’re stable prices - and they provide us with the flexibility, from an environmental standpoint, to really react to any regulation or changes to environmental standards that come in the future.”

Read more (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/09/15/3567307/vermont-renewable-power/)

[giovonni]

Cargill Sues Syngenta Over Sale of GMO Seeds Unapproved in China

It is beginning to look like GMO, principally an American economic activity, may not endure as structured. This is one example of why I say that. There is a developing consensus against it.

"RESERVE, La. - Sept. 12, 2014 – Cargill filed a lawsuit today against Syngenta Seeds, Inc. in Louisiana state court, seeking damages from Syngenta for commercializing its Agrisure Viptera® (MIR 162) corn seed before the product obtained import approval from China. Cargill’s grain export facilities in Reserve and Westwego, Louisiana loaded the vessels that were destined for and rejected by China.

“Unlike other seed companies, Syngenta has not practiced responsible stewardship by broadly commercializing a new product before receiving approval from a key export market like China,” said Mark Stonacek, president of Cargill Grain & Oilseed Supply Chain North America. “Syngenta also put the ability of U.S. agriculture to serve global markets at risk, costing both Cargill and the entire U.S. agricultural industry significant damages.”

Since mid-November 2013, China has rejected imports of U.S. corn due to the presence of Syngenta’s MIR 162 trait because of its lack of approval for import, virtually halting U.S. corn trade with China. A study by the National Grain and Feed Association (NGFA) estimated that U.S. exporters and farmers lost up to $2.9 billion because of the uncertain trade environment.

Stonacek said that seed companies, farmers, grain handlers, exporters and others have a shared responsibility to maintain and preserve market access when introducing new technology. “The risks – as well as the rewards – need to be shared across the marketplace by all of the stakeholders,” Stonacek said. “Syngenta has not accepted its share of the risks associated with MIR 162.”

Dave Baudler, president of Cargill AgHorizons U.S., said Cargill is an advocate for new technology including new GMO seed products, noting that the innovations in seeds are tools that can allow U.S. agriculture to meet the growing demand for food, feed and fuel. AgHorizons U.S. is Cargill’s network of grain storage and farm service centers and purchases corn from farmer customers.

“Responsible stewardship of agricultural innovation – from creation through its development and marketing – requires everyone’s cooperation and allows everyone to benefit,” Baudler said. “I want to be clear about this: Cargill is a supporter of innovation and the development of new GMO seed products. But we take exception to Syngenta’s actions in launching the sale of new products like MIR 162 before obtaining import approval in key export markets for U.S. crops. Syngenta’s actions are inconsistent with industry standards and the conduct of other biotechnology seed companies.”

Stonacek said that filing the lawsuit came only after talks with Syngenta proved unproductive. “This issue is important to U.S. agriculture,” Stonacek said. “Marketing MIR 162 before receiving approval from China closed off that significant export market to U.S. farmers and exporters. Cargill believes that Syngenta continues to not accept its role in shared responsibility by moving ahead this year with the commercialization of Duracade, which also is not approved in China and other key export markets.”

source (http://www.cargill.com/news/releases/2014/NA31686255.jsp)

[giovonni]

Philip Morris Sues Uruguay Over Graphic Cigarette Packaging

http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2014/09/04/Uruguay-cigarettes-115558193bce782775682d8f93a50f3228a91802-s2-c85.jpg

Uruguay is getting very interesting. First they legalize marijuana, and set up a government market, then they require cigarette companies to put pictures of what their products to do humans on the packaging. Bravo Uruguay. As for the tobacco companies. I think their behavior pretty much defines evil shamelessness.

NPR

Shopping for cigarettes in Uruguay isn't a pleasant experience. Photos of decaying teeth, premature babies and gruesome hospital scenes wrap around every pack. In fact, the country requires manufacturers to cover at least 80 percent of the packaging with medical warnings and graphic images.

Cigarette giant Philip Morris International sees this requirement as a violation of a treaty law. So it's suing the country of Uruguay for $25 million.

The lawsuit is based on a 1991 trade agreement between Uruguay and Switzerland, where the company is located. The cigarette manufacturer says Uruguay is violating its promise to respect intellectual property rights.

Studies have found that such gruesome packaging reduces smoking, particularly in pregnant women.

To better understand this case before it goes in front of the World Bank this month, NPR's David Greene spoke with Alexandra Hall, a reporter based in Uruguay's capital city, Montevideo...

Read more (http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/09/15/345540221/philip-morris-sues-uruguay-over-graphic-cigarette-packaging)

[giovonni]

California Just Banned Free Plastic Bags. Hold the Rejoicing.


http://www.motherjones.com/files/imagecache/top-of-content-main/plastic-bag-waste-630.jpg

I found this report a real eye-opener. Perhaps you will too.

Personally, I live with a bag lady, who always has a dozen cloth bags in the car, so I use neither paper nor plastic. But, this article suggests, even that is not as good as we thought, as you will read. Still we do use the bags over and over, so hopefully it is an improvement. It is a tough problem, but plastic is never an ideal solution in situations such as family groceries and the like.

KATIE ROSE QUANDT, Senior Online Editorial Fellow - Mother Jones

Last month, California became the first state to pass a bill banning the ubiquitous disposable plastic bag. If signed into law, the measure will prohibit grocery and retail stores from providing single-use plastic bags and require them to charge at least 10 cents for paper bags, compostable bags, and reusable plastic bags. The bill, introduced by Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Los Angeles), will also provide funding for California-based plastic bag companies to develop sturdier, reusable options.

Worldwide, consumers use an estimated 1 trillion plastic bags each year-nearly 2 million a minute-with the use time of a typical bag just 12 minutes. Californians alone throw away 14 billion a year, creating 123,000 tons of waste and untold amounts of litter.

There is evidence that bag bans and taxes can cut down on some of this waste: Ireland's 2002 tax cut bag usage between 75 and 90 percent... Read more (http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/09/california-bans-plastic-bags)

[giovonni]

Europeans drawn from three ancient 'tribes'

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/77640000/jpg/_77640633_501275707%281%29.jpg

Since those of us who are Caucasians came from roots that reach back into Europe, this fascinating report describes our genetic history. This is one of the most exciting areas in science.

Click through to see the map and images, which add a lot.

PAUL RINCON, Science Editor - BBC News (U.K.)

Blue-eyed, swarthy hunters mingled with brown-eyed, pale skinned farmers as the latter swept into Europe from the Near East.

But another, mysterious population with Siberian affinities also contributed to the genetic landscape of the continent... Read more (http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-29213892)

[marie6346]

Hello ! I'm reading a very interesting book at the moment, relating our origins, resuming translations of Sumerian Tablets ( serious job) . I encourage those interested to take a look, as there is comparison between what is said in the Bible and how it has been transformed and " re-arranged " from original knowledge . Book is EDEN by Anton Parks ( but maybe you read it already :p ).

[giovonni]

Hello ! I'm reading a very interesting book at the moment, relating our origins, resuming translations of Sumerian Tablets ( serious job) . I encourage those interested to take a look, as there is comparison between what is said in the Bible and how it has been transformed and " re-arranged " from original knowledge . Book is EDEN by Anton Parks ( but maybe you read it already :p ).

Greetings Marie ... :)

thanks for sharing ...

Note perhaps your post could best be shared here on my other thread: Up at the Ranch (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?3596-Up-At-The-Ranch-And-Beyond/page592)

this is for a reference to your post ...

ANTON PARKS - EDEN (http://www.antonparks.com/main.php?lang=en&page=eden)(ENG)

"In 1872, the first translation of the Babylonian version of the Flood found in Nineveh appeared in print. Ever since then Assyriologists have been waiting to find and translate the original texts on the Garden of Eden and the Original Sin. Although it was believed that these documents had to exist on clay tablets, they proved impossible to find—until today.

Between 1885 and 1900, archaeologists from the University of Pennsylvania excavated extensively at the site of Nippur (Niffer), in the heartland of ancient Mesopotamia. A great many Sumerian texts were found, including a dozen tablets containing the sources of the Book of Genesis and the origins of humanity. Yet no one seems to have taken much notice! Having taken over the unsatisfying translations of his predecessors, Anton Parks worked intensively during thousands of hours on this material to finally restore the original quintessence of these invaluable documents, in order to expose it to us in this fascinating book.

In EDEN, you will see that the first chapters of the Book of Genesis present only a greatly edited version of what was inscribed on these ancient tablets which were translated by the author. The Garden of Eden, the Serpent, and the Fall of Man are presented here in a completely new light, proving that these episodes were altered to the point of incomprehensibility in the course of later rewriting.

Our civilization today is about to penetrate the Secret that has been kept out of the hands of the "profane" at the cost of great sacrifice. Among the treasures to be found in this world, there is only one that holds all of the great mysteries: the true story of Creation and of the origins of God and Evil. In our age of revelations, it seems of the essence to reconsider the facts that led to the founding of the three great religions of the Book: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The truths revealed in EDEN are not only earth-shattering, they take us to the very roots of Western civilization!"

Published on Mar 24, 2013


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wR4vW9RaYRQ

[giovonni]

Conflict Deepens Middle East Water Crisis

In this report, one can see the Water is Destiny Trend playing out in the Middle East. There is going to be much more of this.

THOMAS W LIPPMAN, Adjunct Scholar at the Middle East Institute - Asia Times (Hong Kong)

WASHINGTON - The Middle East's seemingly endless conflicts are diverting attention and resources from a graver long-term threat that looms over the whole region: the growing scarcity of water. And the situation will get worse before it gets better - if it ever does get better.

Years of war, careless water supply management, unchecked population growth, ill-advised agricultural policies, and subsidies that encourage consumption have turned a basically arid part of the world into a voracious consumer of water. The trajectory is not sustainable.

Those were the gloomy if unsurprising conclusions of a three-day conference on the subject in Istanbul last week. From Libya to Iraq to Yemen, too many people and too many animals have stretched water resources beyond their limits. Some countries where the urgency is greatest, including Syria and Yemen, are the least equipped to stave off serious water crises... Read more (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MID-02-210514.html)

[giovonni]

Beyond the CSA:
Four Ways Communities Support Everything From Books to Beer

http://www.yesmagazine.org/happiness/beyond-the-csa-four-ways-communities-support-everything-from-health-care-to-beer/Beer_555.gif/image

Here is some excellent news about the Localism Trend. I am beginning to see in many trends a meta-trend emerging. The shift of power to the local level. It is, I think, a response to the perceived corruption of all branches of the Federal government to the service of the uber-rich. Power then began moving to the states but, even there this same corruption is at work, and so it steps down to the local level.

DANA DRUGMAND - Yes!

Since the first community supported agriculture program was established in western Massachusetts in the 1980s, the concept of buying food directly from local farms has taken off. There are now thousands of CSAs across the country. It’s a simple enough model-consumers purchase a share of the season’s harvest upfront, and they get a box or bag of fresh, locally grown produce each week from the farm.

And this model is not restricted to farming. In recent years, people have applied the CSA idea to other types of goods and services such as dining out, microbrews, and even fish. It’s a system that works for both producers and consumers. Here are some of our favorite examples... Read more (http://www.yesmagazine.org/happiness/beyond-the-csa-four-ways-communities-support-everything-from-health-care-to-beer)

[giovonni]

Uncovering Hidden Text on a 500-Year-Old Map That Guided Columbus

Another door to the past opens. Wonderful stuff.

In the 80s Mobius did a project with Roger Smith, then at the Institute for Marine Archaeology at Texas A&M, to located the remains of a caravel from Columbus' 4th voyage. Ancient ship remains were found at a site so improbable that it took me two weeks to get the archaeologist to look there, but not enough was left to firmly establish the identity...

(see http://www.stephanaschwartz.com/PDF/caravel.pdf for the research paper on the project)

Click through to see images of the map discussed in the piece.

Greg Miller - WIRED

Christopher Columbus probably used the map above as he planned his first voyage across the Atlantic in 1492. It represents much of what Europeans knew about geography on the verge discovering the New World, and it’s packed with text historians would love to read-if only the faded paint and five centuries of wear and tear hadn’t rendered most of it illegible.

But that’s about to change. A team of researchers is using a technique called multispectral imaging to uncover the hidden text. They scanned the map last month at Yale University and expect to start extracting readable text in the next few months, says Chet Van Duzer, an independent map scholar who’s leading the project, which was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities... Read more (http://www.wired.com/2014/09/martellus-map/)

[giovonni]

The Barbarians Within Our Gates

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/theneeds-images/selection/2014-09-20/thumbs/full512/1a12fb26955efa38b86fa1e8f28b243586fd2e81.jpg

I think this is a very acute assessment of the Islamic world, by a very intelligent Middle Eastern Muslim. The one thing I would add to his exegesis, and I believe it is the key, is fundamentalist Islam. On the basis of social outcome data, no political unity, from state to nation prospers if religious fundamentalism prevails. Inevitably, it devolves in to hate, violence and sexual dysfunction, colored by self-righteousness.

Notice also his reference to water.

HISHAM MELHEM, Washington Bureau Chief of Al-Arabiya (Dubai) - Politico

ith his decision to use force against the violent extremists of the Islamic State, President Obama is doing more than to knowingly enter a quagmire. He is doing more than play with the fates of two half-broken countries-Iraq and Syria-whose societies were gutted long before the Americans appeared on the horizon. Obama is stepping once again-and with understandably great reluctance-into the chaos of an entire civilization that has broken down.

Arab civilization, such as we knew it, is all but gone. The Arab world today is more violent, unstable, fragmented and driven by extremism-the extremism of the rulers and those in opposition-than at any time since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire a century ago. Every hope of modern Arab history has been betrayed. The promise of political empowerment, the return of politics, the restoration of human dignity heralded by the season of Arab uprisings in their early heydays-all ... Read more (http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/09/the-barbarians-within-our-gates-111116.html?hp=r2#.VCCscxbDWjG)

[giovonni]

Cuba Sees a Crisis, and Sends Docs;
The US Sees an Opportunity and Sends Troops

http://www.nationofchange.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/article_main_image/ebola91814.jpg

This report is making a very important point. If, instead of pissing away trillions into warfare, and turning ourselves into a police state, we had spent hundreds of millions pursuing this form of nonviolent change, such as Cuba is doing, the world would love America, and we could enjoy the liberties we once had.

DAVE LLINDORFF - Nation of Change

How’s this for a juxtaposition on how nations respond to a global health catastrophe. Check out these two headlines from yesterday’s news:

Cuba to Send Doctors to Ebola Areas

US to Deploy 3000 Troops as Ebola Crisis Worsens

Reading these stories, which ran in, respectively, the BBC and Reuters, one learns that the Cuban government, which runs a small financially hobbled island nation of 11 million people, with a national budget of $50 billion, Gross Domestic Product of 121 billion and per capita GDP of just over $10,000, is dispatching 165 medical personnel to Africa to regions where there are ebola outbreaks, while the US, the world’s wealthiest nation, with a population of close to 320 million, a national budget of $3.77 trillion, GDP of $17 trillion, and per capita GDP of over $53,000, is sending troops -- $3000 of them-- to 'fight” the ebola epidemic... More here (http://www.nationofchange.org/cuba-sees-crisis-and-sends-docs-us-sees-opportunity-and-sends-troops-1411139654)

[giovonni]

World Faces Shortage in Purpose Well-Being

The profit above all model, which is currently the dominant social vision on the planet is not working. It is unsatisfying in the U.S. and even more so elsewhere. It produces a shattered sense of wellbeing. Precisely because this is so we are seeing growing social unrest around the world.

MELANIE STANDISH and DAN WITTERS - The Gallup Organization

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Fewer than one in five adults worldwide can be considered thriving -- or strong and consistent -- in levels of purpose well-being, as measured by the inaugural Gallup-Healthways Global Well-Being Index in 2013. Residents living in the Americas are the most likely to be thriving in this element (37%), while those in Asia and the Middle East and North Africa are the least likely (13%).

The Global Well-Being Index measures each of the five elements of well-being -- purpose, social, financial, community, and physical - through Gallup's World Poll. Purpose well-being, which is defined as people liking what they do each day and being motivated to achieve their goals, was the lowest performing element of the five elements of well-being. Global results of how people fare in 135 countries and areas in this element, as well as the four other elements, have been compiled in the ... Read more (http://www.gallup.com/poll/177191/world-faces-shortage-purpose.aspx?utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_content=morelink&utm_campaign=syndication)

[giovonni]

Portland Will Still Be Cool, But Anchorage May Be the Place to Be

http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/09/23/science/23SAFE1/23SAFE1-superJumbo.jpg

I am beginning to see reports coming out that attempt to grapple with the implications of climate change. It isn't pretty, but it may be useful to you. We are going into a very different world.

JENNIFER A. KINGSON - The New York Times

Alaskans, stay in Alaska. People in the Midwest and the Pacific Northwest, sit tight.

Scientists trying to predict the consequences of climate change say that they see few safe havens from the storms, floods and droughts that are sure to intensify over the coming decades. But some regions, they add, will fare much better than others.

Forget most of California and the Southwest (drought, wildfires). Ditto for much of the East Coast and Southeast (heat waves, hurricanes, rising sea levels). Washington, D.C., for example, may well be a flood zone by 2100, according to an estimate released last week.

Instead, consider Anchorage. Or even, perhaps, Detroit.

'If you do not like it hot and do not want to be hit by a hurricane, the options of where to go are very limited,” said Camilo Mora, a geography professor at the University of Hawaii and lead author ... Read more (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/23/science/on-a-warmer-planet-which-cities-will-be-safest.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpSumSmallMediaHigh&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=1)

[giovonni]

Dizzying Stat: 10% of Americans Down at Least
10 Drinks a Day-Guess Who's Paying

http://www.alternet.org/files/styles/story_image/public/story_images/shutterstock_127773470.jpg


I will confess to being stunned by this report. I grew up in rural Tidewater Virginia, where drinking was a significant avocational activity, and knew something similar was true in many other places throughout the country, particularly in the South. People had something at lunch, then more again before dinner and then nightcaps. It kept a light buzz going until you went to bed. My parents drank very little, my father almost nothing at all, so it did not impact my home life. But I saw its effect on many other families. There was almost no falling down drunkenness, it was considered bad form. But the effect of chronic drinking took a fearsome toll over the years nonetheless, and shaped so many families that I knew. I left that world when I was 24. That was nearly half a century ago. I was surprised to find that in much of America nothing has changed for tens of millions.

CLIFF WEATHERS - AlterNet (U.S.)

Washington Post reporter Christopher Ingraham [3] seems fascinated with charts and economic statistics and public policy professor Philip J. Cook [4] is fascinated with America's love-hate relationship with alcohol. Let these two minds meet for a few moments and what you’ll learn about booze is shocking [5].

Ingraham got a hold of Cook’s new book, Paying the Tab: The Costs and Benefits of Alcohol Control, which chronicles the economic and societal costs of destructive drinking. And what he found in it is stunning. Cook says that 10% of American Adults participate in destructive drinking to the point where they’re consuming at least 10 drinks a day. That’s more than two bottles of wine or about two-thirds of a 750ML bottle of hard liquor. Or as Cook’s research shows, almost 74 drinks a week... Read more (http://www.alternet.org/personal-health/dizzying-stat-10-americans-down-least-10-drinks-day-guess-whos-paying)

[giovonni]

note this item dates back to February ... things are much worse now ...

http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/bella/usda-produce-vegetables-lettuce.jpg

What the California Drought Means for Your Grocery Bill

The California drought may be local but it holds, as this report spells out, implications for the entire nation -- and beyond.

SAM BRASCH - Modern Farmer

Meteorologists are already calling the current California drought the worst on record. B. Lynn Ingram, a paleoclimatologist at the University of California, Berkeley, used tree rings to look even farther back into the state’s past, only to find more bad news. She claims that this year is the state’s driest since Sir Francis Drake visited the west coast in 1580.

Last week, Gov. Jerry Brown declared a state of drought emergency, which makes it easier to move water around the state, hire seasonal fire fighters and limit the landscaping irrigation around state highways. But even as cities struggle with extreme shortages, farmers - who take up 77 percent of the state’s water - have the most to lose.

The California Farm Water Coalition (CFWC) estimates the drought could take a $5 billion dollar bite out of an industry that brings in $44.7 billion annually... Read more (http://modernfarmer.com/2014/02/california-drought-means-grocery-store-prices/)

[giovonni]

Japan's Demographic Collapse Points to Grim Future

http://asia.nikkei.com/var/site_cache/storage/images/node_43/node_51/2014/201409/20140924/20140924_hakodate/1416512-1-eng-GB/20140924_hakodate_article_main_image.jpg


Here is the latest on a major trend that I first reported on in 2008: the depopulation of Japan.
It is going to have a huge effect on the geopolitics of Asia and, thus, the world.

Nikkei Asian Review (Japan)

TOKYO -- Japan is caught in a demographic squeeze unprecedented among developed countries: a ballooning number of elderly, coupled with a decline in the overall population that is causing communities to wither and markets to vanish.

If the country is to maintain its vitality, new ideas are needed to combat the problem -- and quickly.

Mount Hakodate, on the northern island of Hokkaido, is renowned for its view of the surrounding bay and city, especially at dusk. Tourists often gasp when they see the lights of the city below, and those of the squid fishermen out for their nightly catch.

But will there be anyone left to admire the scene in future years? In April, the central government designated Hakodate as a depopulated area, the first city with a population of ... Read more (http://asia.nikkei.com/Politics-Economy/Economy/Japan-s-demographic-collapse-points-to-grim-future)

[giovonni]

GMO Wheat Investigation Closed, But Another One Opens

http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2014/09/26/wheat_wide-fdb24f61206a7f333847d30057248a174fba71c7-s4-c85.jpg

A second case of GMO genes appearing unexpectedly in a farmer's field. This one at least they think they can explain. But the deeper point is clear: Monsanto's manipulated species are leaking into the environment with consequences no one knows, or can even properly assess.

I haven't seen a word on this in the corporate media.

DAN CHARLES - npr

Investigators from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) say that they cannot figure out how genetically engineered wheat appeared, as if by magic, in a farmer's field in eastern Oregon in the spring of 2013.

Having "exhausted all leads," the agency has now closed the investigation. But that announcement was almost overshadowed by a new mini-bombshell: More unapproved GMO wheat was discovered this past summer at Montana State University's Southern Agricultural Research Center (SARC) in Huntley, Mont.

It was discovered when workers tried to clear a small field using the weedkiller glyphosate. Some wheat plants survived, because they carried the glyphosate-tolerance gene that Monsanto Corp. had inserted into its GM varieties... Read more (http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/09/26/351785294/gmo-wheat-investigation-closed-but-another-one-opens)

[giovonni]

More Americans Killed By Police Than By Terrorists:
With Crime Down, Why Is Police Aggression Up?

This report makes very important points. We must stop what is happening with our law enforcement system.
Only citizen action is going to stop this trend.


AlterNet (U.S.) http://www.alternet.org/files/styles/story_image/public/story_images/screen_shot_2014-03-20_at_10.02.29_am.png

You might not know it from watching TV news, but FBI statistics show that crime in the U.S.-including violent crime-has been trending steadily downward for years, falling 19% between 1987 and 2011. The job of being a police officer has become safer too, as the number of police killed by gunfire plunged to 33 last year, down 50% from 2012, to its lowest level since, wait for it, 1887, a time when the population was 75% lower than it is today...

So why are we seeing an ever increasing militarization of policing across the country?

Read more (http://www.alternet.org/more-americans-killed-police-terrorists-crime-down-why-police-aggression?paging=off%C2%A4t_page=1#bookmark)

[giovonni]

Siemens Investing In Fossil Fuels For “The Really Long Term”

This is about the best assessment of the probable arc of the transition out of carbon energy I have seen. It is going to be a several decade long process, but the trend is in the right direction. Siemans is an interesting corporation because they seem to have the most realistic take on the path to take.

CleanTechnica / by Joshua S Hill

German multinational Siemens has had its hand in the renewable energy pie for decades, purchasing existing wind and solar companies to compliment its already sizable energy division. Siemens is a regular topic here at CleanTechnica, a leading manufacturer of wind turbines and investing into many other renewable energy fields.

However, Siemens aren’t getting carried away, it seems, by the renewable energy hype... Read more (http://cleantechnica.com/2014/09/30/siemens-investing-fossil-fuels-really-long-term/)

[giovonni]

Inside the Koch Brothers’ Toxic Empire

http://assets.rollingstone.com/assets/2014/article/inside-the-koch-brothers-toxic-empire-20140924/169451/medium_rect/1411505576/510x287-20140923_kotch_x1401.jpg

This is a really well-researched fact based assessment of two of the scummiest plutocrats on Earth. They are, not surprisingly, outraged at the exposure. But have not contested the facts, only that all this information about them has been assembled in one place. These brothers and their friends are actively trying to buy the government of the United States, and there should be Congressional hearings and legislation on this. It is a measure of their success that the Congress and the Supreme Court are both already so severely compromised that this is not happening, but decisions such as Citizens United are.

Tim Dickinson - Rollingstone

The enormity of the Koch fortune is no mystery. Brothers Charles and David are each worth more than $40 billion. The electoral influence of the Koch brothers is similarly well-chronicled. The Kochs are our homegrown oligarchs; they’ve cornered the market on Republican politics and are nakedly attempting to buy Congress and the White House. Their political network helped finance the Tea Party and powers today’s GOP. Koch-affiliated organizations raised some $400 million during the 2012 election, and aim to spend another $290 million to elect Republicans in this year’s midterms. So far in this cycle, Koch-backed entities have bought 44,000 political ads … Read more (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/inside-the-koch-brothers-toxic-empire-20140924?page=6)

[giovonni]

Failure Is Success How American Intelligence Works in the Twenty-First Century

In this report I think we see a central question almost completely ignored by corporate media: Why does the intelligence community fail at their task so often? We lavish enormous sums on this community. We have turned ourselves into a police state. All in the name of “homeland security” a term I find deeply Fascist. And yet time after time we are caught unawares. With nothing more than common sense and a minimal understanding of human nature, and the Islamic culture I could see ISIS coming, and predict it. Why couldn’t people with billions of dollars at their disposal do the same? This story explains at least part of the reason.

http://www.schwartzreport.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/pentagon.jpg

Tom Engelhardt - Salon

What are the odds? You put about $68 billion annually into a maze of 17 major intelligence outfits. You build them glorious headquarters. You create a global surveillance state for the ages. You listen in on your citizenry and gather their communications in staggering quantities. Your employees even morph into avatars and enter video-game landscapes, lest any Americans betray a penchant for evil deeds while in entertainment mode. You collect information on visits to porn sites just in case, one day, blackmail might be useful. You pass around naked photos of them just for… well, the salacious hell of it. Your employees even use aspects of the system you’ve created to stalk former lovers and, within your arcane world, that act of “spycraft” gains its own name: LOVEINT.

You listen in on foreign leaders and politicians across the planet. You bring on board hundreds of thousands… Read more (http://www.salon.com/2014/10/01/from_911_to_isis_the_massive_failure_of_u_s_intelligence_partner/)

[giovonni]

PrintAlive 3D bioprinter creates on-demand skin grafts for burn victims

Anyone who has suffered serious burns, or knows someone who has — particularly thousands of young men and women who served in one of our insane wars — knows how desperately this technology is needed. There are still a number of steps to go to get this into clinical practice, but the way seems clear, as this report describes. Very heartening news.

Darren Quick - GizMag

Because growing a culture of a patient’s skin cells ready for grafting can typically take more than two weeks, the machine prints the patient’s cells out in patterns of spots or stripes rather than a continuous sheet, to make them go further. The result is a cell-populated wound dressing that reproduces key features of human skin and can be precisely controlled in terms of thickness, structure and composition.Having been under development since 2008, the team recently completed a second-generation, pre-commercial prototype that they say is smaller than an average microwave. This makes it portable enough to easily transport, which gives it the potential to one day revolutionize burn care in rural and developing areas around the world... Read more (http://www.gizmag.com/printalive-biopronter-skin-grafts-burns/34057/)

[giovonni]

As other states contemplate legalization,
marijuana sales top $19.2 million in Washington


http://media.thenewstribune.com/smedia/2014/10/02/16/38/RMsw.AuSt.5.jpeg

Compared to Colorado, Washington State has done about as bad a job with legalization as a state could do, and still have legal marijuana. I think for some legislators that may have been the point. In any case the sales venue system is a nightmare, and the taxes are so high that the black market continues to thrive. It is a complete cock-up. That said, it is still going to be very profitable for the state. And, if Oregon legalizes I think Washington will have no choice but to revisit the mess they have made.

C.R. Roberts - The News Tribune

If California voters elect to approve the sale of marijuana in 2016, the state can expect to collect $519,287,052 in sales and excise taxes over one year.

So says a report out Thursday by the financial website Nerdwallet.

Should all 50 states and the District of Columbia legalize pot, then total state and local tax revenue would reach nearly $3.1 billion.

This fall, Alaska, Florida and Oregon will offer voters the chance to legalize marijuana in one form or another.

California would see the greatest revenue share, followed by Florida, at $183 million; Oregon, at $54.5 million; Alaska, at $11.5 million; and the District of Columbia, at $8.7 million.

In computing the data, Nerdwallet also calculated the number of possible customers based …

Read more (http://www.thenewstribune.com/2014/10/02/3411700_as-other-states-contemplate-legalization.html?rh=1)

[giovonni]

The World’s First Genetically Modified Babies Will
Graduate High School This Year

http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/3510107184_b1f6598fc9_b.jpg?w=1052

Here is the latest on the Homo Superior Trend. I don’t think corporate media understands this science or its implications, or maybe they do and their masters don’t want it discussed. Whatever the reason I have to search relatively obscure sources to keep up with this trend that is literally creating a new sub-species of humans.

Sarah Buhr - Techcrunch.com

Remember the sci-fi thriller GATTACA? For those who never saw the film and/or eschewed all pop culture in the late 90’s for some reason, it was a popular movie that came out in 1997 about genetically modified human beings. Now some literally genetically modified human babies born that same year are entering their senior year of high school.

The first successful transfer of genetic material for this purpose was published in a U.S. medical journal in 1997 and then later cited in a Human Reproduction publication in 2001. Scientists injected 30 embryos in all with a third person’s genetic material. The children who have been produced by this method actually have extra snippets of mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA, from two mothers – meaning these babies technically have three parents... Read more (http://techcrunch.com/2014/09/28/the-worlds-first-genetically-modified-babies-will-graduate-high-school-this-year/)

[giovonni]

Plastics, Plastics Everywhere — Even In Our Drinks

http://www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/AP908461483178.jpg

Once again we see in this report, the latest on the Plastic Waste Trend SR has been following for some years, what wretched excess uncontrolled by any shred of common sense is doing to the Earth. What is becoming clearer year by year is that the micro-particles of plastic produced by the world ocean’s constant agitation of this plastic waste is finding its way into the food chain, and our bodies.


Carmen Russell-Sluchansky - Mint Press News

ATHENS, GREECE — The rocky shores of Anavyssos in southern Greece are a magnet for European travelers, who flock to the pristine blue sea, swimming spots, hotels and seafood restaurants. Right along the two lane highway that brings visitors just 30 miles south of Athens, one can walk a mere five feet off the road and jump into the refreshing — if incredibly salty — water.

Little in the way of litter is seen on the beaches, as the tourist economy depends on maintaining the natural ambiance. This apparent cleanliness, however, belies the fact that thousands of tons of marine litter and debris lurk underwater off the shore in the Mediterranean Sea. This rubbish — mostly plastics — is finding its way into the ecology and the human food supply... Read more (http://www.mintpressnews.com/plastics-plastics-everywhere-even-drinks/197271/)

[giovonni]

In virtual mega-drought, California avoids defeat

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Here is some good news concerning California and drought. There is a way through.
It will be a very different world there, but a sustainable one.

Bettina Boxall - The Los Angeles Times

The banks of Diamond Valley Lake in Hemet are dry and cracked. Though agriculture would shrink under chronically dry conditions, California on the whole wouldn't collapse. (Allen J. Schaben)

The banks of Diamond Valley Lake in Hemet are dry and cracked. Though agriculture would shrink under chronically dry conditions, California on the whole wouldn’t collapse. (Allen J. Schaben)

A few years ago a group of researchers used computer modeling to put California through a nightmare scenario: Seven decades of unrelenting mega-drought similar to those that dried out the state in past millennia.

“The results were surprising,” said Jay Lund, one of the academics who conducted the study.

The California economy would not collapse. The state would not shrivel into a giant, abandoned dust bowl. Agriculture would shrink but by no means disappear.

Traumatic changes would occur as developed parts of the state shed an unsustainable gloss of green and dropped what many experts consider the profligate water ways of the 20th century. But overall, “California has a remarkable ability to weather extreme and prolonged droughts from an economic perspective,” … Read more (http://www.latimes.com/science/la-me-megadrought-20141006-story.html#page=1)

[giovonni]

Sharing Makes Both Good and Bad Experiences More Intense
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This research helps explain why we like to do things together.

Association of Psychological Science

Undergoing an experience with another person — even if we do it in silence, with someone we met just moments ago — seems to intensify that experience, according to new research published in Psychological Science. The research shows that people who share experiences with another person rate those experiences as more pleasant or unpleasant than those who undergo the experience on their own.

“We often think that what matters in social life is being together with others, but we’ve found it also really matters what those people are doing,” says psychological scientist and lead researcher Erica Boothby of Yale University.

“When people are paying attention to the same pleasant thing, whether the Mona Lisa or a song on the radio, our research shows that the experience is much more pleasurable. And the reverse is true of unpleasant experiences — not sharing them makes them more pleasurable, while sharing … Read more (http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/sharing-makes-both-good-and-bad-experiences-more-intense.html?utm_source=pressrelease&utm_medium=eureka&utm_campaign=sharingintensifiesexperiences)

[giovonni]

High Rates of Suicide, Depression Linked to Farmer Use of Pesticides

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I am afraid I have come to think of the Industrial Chemical Agriculture Model as a criminal enterprise. Monsanto and its ilk are analogous to a Mexican Drug Cartel, and just as murderous as the Zapotes. They just don’t use guns. This report made my heart sad. I grew up on a farm, not row crops, but a cattle breeding operation in Tidewater, Virginia. If you have cows, you still have to grow soy, and corn as feed, and I remember long hours sitting on a tractor in the sun, trying to make straight rows. It’s hard work being a farmer, and is very physical even with machinery. To make these people’s lives harder by creating depression is, I think, morally reprehensible.

Brian Bienkowski and Environmental Health News - Scientific American

On his farm in Iowa, Matt Peters worked from dawn to dusk planting his 1,500 acres of fields with pesticide-treated seeds. “Every spring I worried about him,” said his wife, Ginnie. “Every spring I was glad when we were done.”

In the spring of 2011, Ginnie Peters’ “calm, rational, loving” husband suddenly became depressed and agitated. “He told me ‘I feel paralyzed’,” she said. “He couldn’t sleep or think. Out of nowhere he was depressed.”

A clinical psychologist spoke to him on the phone and urged him to get medical help. “He said he had work to do, and I told him if it’s too wet in the morning to plant beans come see me,” Mike Rossman said. “And the next day I got the call" ... Read more (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/high-rates-of-suicide-depression-linked-to-farmer-use-of-pesticides/)

[giovonni]

How 14 People Made More Money Than the Entire
Food Stamp Budget for 50,000,000 People


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This story is incredibly upsetting. How is it possible that a nation would permit to occur? Who are we?

PAUL BUCHHEIT - Buzzflash

For the second year in a row, America’s richest 14 individuals made more from their annual investments than the $80 billion provided for people in need of food. Nearly half of the food-deprived are children. Perversely, the food stamp program was CUT because of a lack of federal funding.

In a testament to the inability — or unwillingness — of Congress to do anything about the incessant upward re-distribution of America’s wealth, the richest 14 Americans increased their wealth from $507 billion to $589 billion in ONE YEAR from their investment earnings. As stated by Forbes, “All together the 400 wealthiest Americans are worth a staggering $2.29 trillion, up $270 billion from a year ago" ... Read more (http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/how-14-people-made-more-money-than-the-entire-food-stamp-budget-for-50-000-000-people)

[giovonni]

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Confirmed: California Aquifers Contaminated
With Billions Of Gallons of Fracking Wastewater

If you still have any question as to whether the health of the population takes precedence over oil company profits this report on the situation in California should settle it. Profit is much more important than the health of families particularly children. That this is happening in a state with the drought problems California has is all the more amazing.

After California state regulators shut down 11 fracking wastewater injection wells last July over concerns that the wastewater might have contaminated aquifers used for drinking water and farm irrigation, the EPA ordered a report within 60 days.

It was revealed yesterday that the California State Water Resources Board has sent a letter to the EPA confirming that at least nine of those sites were in fact dumping wastewater contaminated with fracking fluids and other pollutants into aquifers protected by state law and the federal Safe Drinking Water Act.

The letter, a copy of which was obtained by the Center for Biological Diversity, reveals that nearly 3 billion gallons of wastewater were illegally injected into central California aquifers and that half of the water samples collected at the 8 water supply wells tested near the injection sites have high levels of dangerous chemicals such as arsenic ... Read more (http://www.desmogblog.com/2014/10/07/central-california-aquifers-contaminated-billions-gallons-fracking-wastewater)

[giovonni]

Note a related video item here > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kEpZWGgJks


Asset seizures fuel police spending http://www.schwartzreport.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/SWAT-Team-300x185.jpg

This is an important and thorough examination of one of the most outrageous aspects of the American police state. I don’t know what has happened to us as a country, but I am clear that if there is not a massive citizen rejection of this trend we are witnessing the demise of American democracy.


Robert O'Harrow Jr., Steven Rich - The Washington Post

Police agencies have used hundreds of millions of dollars taken from Americans under federal civil forfeiture law in recent years to buy guns, armored cars and electronic surveillance gear. They have also spent money on luxury vehicles, travel and a clown named Sparkles.

The details are contained in thousands of annual reports submitted by local and state agencies to the Justice Department’s Equitable Sharing Program, an initiative that allows local and state police to keep up to 80 percent of the assets they seize. The Washington Post obtained 43,000 of the reports dating from 2008 through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Stop and Seize: In recent years, thousands of people have had cash confiscated by police without being charged with crimes. The Post looks at the police culture behind the seizures and the people who were forced to fight the government to get their money … Read more (http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/10/11/cash-seizures-fuel-police-spending/)

[giovonni]

Pentagon unveils plan for military’s response to climate change

Politicians who spend most of their time talking, and in a gridlocked Congress also don’t actually vote for very much, seem to feel they can indulge themselves in climate change denial. People, institutions, and corporations who have to actually deal with climate change day-by-day can afford no such nonsense. This story makes the point very clearly.

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By W.J. Hennigan

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel addressed the Conference of Defense Ministers of the Americas on Monday, unveiling a comprehensive plan for how the U.S. military will address the effects of climate change.

Rising global temperatures, increasing sea levels and intensifying weather events will challenge global stability, he said, and could lead to food and water shortages, pandemic disease and disputes over refugees and resources. (emphasis added)

The Pentagon’s “2014 Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap” describes how global warming will bring new demands on the military... Read more (http://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-hagel-climate-change-20141013-story.html)

[giovonni]

The Discovery of Middle Earth: Mapping the Lost World of the Celts

This is an extraordinary story. I just bought the book.

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Important if true” was the phrase that the 19th-century writer and historian Alexander Kinglake wanted to see engraved above church doors. It rings loud in the ears as one reads the latest book by Graham Robb, The Discovery of Middle Earth, a biographer and historian of distinction whose new work, if everything in it proves to be correct, will blow apart two millennia of thinking about Iron Age Britain and Europe and put several scientific discoveries back by centuries... Read more (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/10372050/The-Ancient-Paths-Discovering-the-Lost-Map-of-Celtic-Europe-review.html)

[Baby Steps]

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Confirmed: California Aquifers Contaminated
With Billions Of Gallons of Fracking Wastewater

If you still have any question as to whether the health of the population takes precedence over oil company profits this report on the situation in California should settle it. Profit is much more important than the health of families particularly children. That this is happening in a state with the drought problems California has is all the more amazing.

After California state regulators shut down 11 fracking wastewater injection wells last July over concerns that the wastewater might have contaminated aquifers used for drinking water and farm irrigation, the EPA ordered a report within 60 days.

It was revealed yesterday that the California State Water Resources Board has sent a letter to the EPA confirming that at least nine of those sites were in fact dumping wastewater contaminated with fracking fluids and other pollutants into aquifers protected by state law and the federal Safe Drinking Water Act.

The letter, a copy of which was obtained by the Center for Biological Diversity, reveals that nearly 3 billion gallons of wastewater were illegally injected into central California aquifers and that half of the water samples collected at the 8 water supply wells tested near the injection sites have high levels of dangerous chemicals such as arsenic ... Read more (http://www.desmogblog.com/2014/10/07/central-california-aquifers-contaminated-billions-gallons-fracking-wastewater)

Could it be that the secrecy around what chemicals are needed to be injected into these wells is because they are making money by using it as a means to dispose of toxic waste??

[giovonni]

World’s richest man tries to defend wealth inequality

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This story provides some real insight into the thinking of the very wealthy, and their thinking about Thomas Piketty.

Dean Baker - Aljazeera America

A review of French economist Thomas Piketty’s best-selling book “Capital in the 21st Century” by the world’s richest man is too delicious to ignore. The main takeaway from Piketty’s book, of course, is that we need to worry about the growing concentration of capital, in which people like Microsoft co-founder turned megaphilanthropist Bill Gates and his children will control the bulk of society’s wealth. Gates, however, doesn’t quite see it this way... Read more (http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/10/bill-gates-thomaspikettycapitalwealthinequality.html)

[giovonni]

Lots o’ Water !
117 Million Lakes Dot Earth, Most Accurate Survey Finds

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To be honest I have never quite thought about the surface area just of lakes on Earth. The world ocean of course, but not lakes. It turns out it is very significant, and we now know the answer. Here is the story.

Becky Oskin - Livescience

Until now, no one knew for sure how many lakes exist on Earth.

Blame geography — most of the world’s lakes are in places where humans don’t live, said David Seekell, an environmental scientist at Umea University in Sweden. “This is something one would have assumed had been done long ago, and was in a textbook somewhere,” Seekell said.

Lake size was a liability, too. Millions of lakes are too small for mapmakers to bother charting.

Instead of counting lake by lake, earlier estimates were statistical guesses, based on the number of lakes in a parcel of land or on average lake size. One widely cited study from 2006 estimated the lake total at 304 million. [5 Surprising Facts About Lakes ]

A new study published Sept. 16 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters sidesteps these problems. With high-resolution satellite data and supercomputers to check every cloudless pixel ... Read more (http://www.livescience.com/48061-how-many-lakes-on-earth.html)

[giovonni]

Companies Warn That Income Inequality Is Hurting Their Business

As this report explains it is becoming clear to companies that depend on consumer purchases that the growing inequity is causing the slump of working Americans income. And that this works to their detriment. It will be interesting to see what effect this has on policy


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Alan Pyke - Think Progress

After decades as the dominant economic theory in American politics, trickle-down economics is starting to lose its grip on the debate. For evidence of that slippage, look no further than the business community’s own communications with investors.
Two thirds of the largest retail companies in the country say falling incomes for their customers threaten their business, according to an analysis of corporate filings by economists at the Center for American Progress (CAP). That is double the proportion that cited slack earnings for the masses among their business risks in 2006. And seven out of every eight major American retail companies “cite weak consumer spending as a risk factor to their stock price,” the authors write.

The report examined formal corporate filings with the Securities Exchange Commission by the 100 largest American retail companies. The analysis is based on filings from 65 of the companies, as the other 35 …
Read more (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/10/15/3580001/retail-middle-out-analysis/)

[giovonni]

EPA: Bee-killing pesticides used on soy crops
don’t even do what they’re supposed to

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I don’t know how much clearer you could make the corruption of the federal regulatory agencies than the continued allowance of toxins that even on their own terms of what they are supposed to do don’t work. And they are killing the Earth and the farmers who handle them. But they are oh so profitable.

When I was growing up people used to talk about “banana republics.” It was a term of great derision and scorn. We are now a banana republic on a vastly greater scale.


Lindsay Abrams - Salon

The EPA has yet to do much about neonicotinoids, the class of pesticides implicated in the United States’ mass bee die-offs, but it has started looking into them. And the results of an extensive review into one such pesticide, commonly applied to soybean seeds, presents another compelling reason to ban them: using them, the agency found, isn’t any better than using no pesticides at all. (emphasis added)

“These seed treatments provide negligible overall benefits to soybean production in most situations,” the report concludes; at most, they up revenue by $6, or less than 2 percent, per acre, but the more likely estimate is $0. Part of the problem is that the insecticides are only effective within the first few weeks of planting, while the insects they’re intended to combat aren’t typically active during that time. And if attacks do occur, the study identified a whole … Read more (http://www.salon.com/2014/10/17/epa_bee_killing_pesticides_used_on_soy_crops_dont_even_do_what_theyre_supposed_to/)

[giovonni]

Why Millennials Don’t Drive So Much

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The fascination young boys and men particularly once had to own the hottest, fastest, latest cars seems to have passed. Almost every millennial I know wants to buy an electric car, and a surprising number do not own a car at all, thus vouchsafing at a personal level the points made in this report.

If this trend continues it portends major changes in the American economy, which for a century has depended on the manufacture and sale of automobiles, and the entire network that supported cars, for much of our prosperity.

I think this is also saying that if high speed rail were available it would be successful. However, I don’t see high speed rail in America’s short to mid-term future. As a country we no longer support large national infrastructure projects. We can’t even manage to maintain what is already in place.

Froma Harrop - Nation of Change

Young Americans are just not into driving the way their elders are or did at their age. They are less likely to own cars or use cars. The drives they do are shorter. Meanwhile, the bus is looking good to them.

A new report confirms this trend and offers reasons that millennials — we’re talking 14- to 31-year-olds — seem less drawn to the automobile thing. They’re sure not singing car songs as the baby boomers did. No “Little Deuce Coupe,” no “G.T.O.,” no “Hot Rod Lincoln.”

But the report, by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group and the Frontier Group, misses what I see as the biggest factor. Driving is no longer a coast down the great American open road. It’s become a pain and a drag — more drag as in “a boring or tiresome thing.”

From 2001 to 2009, the average number of miles driven by 16- to … Read more (http://www.nationofchange.org/2014/10/16/millennials-dont-drive-much/)

[giovonni]

No, marijuana use doesn’t lower your IQ

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It is fascinating to watch the prohibitionist disinformation campaign. I am sure the brighter ones — the others are just tools who repeat the talking points they are given — know they will be refuted based on the data. The game though is that not everyone will see the refutation, and if one lies over and over a certain number of people will not learn about the lie each time. It is so cynical and ethically compromised that it should be a national scandal. Instead it is just business as usual, and thousands of people — mostly people of color — continue to have their lives destroyed through marijuana arrests.

Christopher Ingraham - THe Washington Post

A 2012 Duke University study made international headlines when it purported to find a link between heavy marijuana use and IQ decline among teenagers. Other researchers questioned the findings almost immediately: Columbia University’s Carl Hart noted the very small sample of heavy users (38) in the study, leading him to question how generalizable the results were.

Then, a follow-up study published 6 months later in the same journal found that the Duke paper failed to account for a number of confounding factors: “Although it would be too strong to say that the results have been discredited, the methodology is flawed and the causal inference drawn from the results premature” ...
Read more (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/10/22/no-marijuana-use-doesnt-lower-your-iq/)

[giovonni]

Using Less Energy Doesn’t Have to Mean Less Growth

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This is the sort of public discussion we ought to be having. It is a lie, and remains a lie no matter how oft repeated, that growth and the environment are at odds. This is the argument advanced by those whose wealth is tied up in the carbon era technologies that are rapidly becoming the past.

Paul Krugman - Truth Out

We seem to be having a moment in which three groups with very different agendas – anti-environmentalist conservatives, anti-capitalist people on the left and hard scientists who think they are smarter than economists – have formed an unholy alliance on behalf of the proposition that reducing greenhouse gas emissions is incompatible with growing real gross domestic product.

The right likes this argument because it wants to block any action on climate. Some on the left like it because they think it can be the basis for an attack on our profit-oriented, materialistic society. The scientists like it because it lets them engage in some intellectual imperialism and invade another field (just to be clear, economists do this all the time, often with equally bad results ... Read more (http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/26972-using-less-energy-doesn-t-have-to-mean-less-growth)

[giovonni]

Denmark’s central bank to stop producing money

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Denmark I think is an example of a culture that has made wellness a priority. It is creating a more compassionate life-affirming future that we should study closely. Here is an example of what I mean.

The Local (Denmark)

With more and more people paying with credit cards and their smartphones, Denmark’s central bank Nationalbanken says it no longer pays to print banknotes or mint coins.

By the end of 2016, Nationalbanken plans to outsource all of its printing and minting services to an external supplier.
“Although the amount of cash circulating in Denmark continues to be high, society’s demand for new banknotes and coins has been falling for years, and Nationalbanken has no expectations that the trend will be reversed,” the bank wrote in a press release.

In addition to the rise in alternative paying options, the central bank also said that today’s banknotes and coins are better recirculated into the economy and made of a better quality that ensures a longer shelf life...
Read more (http://www.thelocal.dk/20141021/denmarks-central-bank-to-stop-producing-money)

[giovonni]

The Zombie System: How Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails

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Here is one of the best exegetic essays I have read about what has happened to the world economy, largely led by the U.S., and the effect it has had on democracy across the world.

Michael Sauga - Der Speigel (Germany)

Six years after the Lehman disaster, the industrialized world is suffering from Japan Syndrome. Growth is minimal, another crash may be brewing and the gulf between rich and poor continues to widen. Can the global economy reinvent itself?

A new buzzword is circulating in the world’s convention centers and auditoriums. It can be heard at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and at the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund. Bankers sprinkle it into the presentations; politicians use it leave an impression on discussion panels... Read more (http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/capitalism-in-crisis-amid-slow-growth-and-growing-inequality-a-998598-2.html)

[giovonni]

The Midwest’s Vast Farms Are Losing a Ton of Money This Year

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This report shows once again how the industrial-chemical agriculture and husbandry model can not survive without massive government welfare. You and I essentially are paying — through the government — to underwrite the industry that is poisoning both us and the Earth.

Tom Philpott - Mother Jones

Think you have it tough at work? Consider the plight of the Midwest’s corn and soybean farmers. They churn out the basic raw materials of our food system: the stuff that gets turned into animal feed, sweetener, cooking fat, and even a substantial amount of our car fuel. What do they get for their trouble? According to a stunning analysis (PDF) by Iowa State ag economist Chad Hart, crop prices have fallen so low (a bumper crop has driven down corn prices to their lowest level since 2006), and input costs (think seeds, fertilizers, pesticides) have gotten so high, that they’re losing $225 per acre of corn and $100 per acre of soybeans. So if you’re an Iowa farmer with a 2,000-acre farm, and you planted it half and half in these two dominant crops, you stand to lose $325,000 on this year’s harvest... Read more (http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2014/10/farmers-are-losing-225-each-acre-corn)

[giovonni]

Researchers: A massive amount of BP oil is coating the bottom of the Gulf

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Remember last week, when BP was patting itself on the back for its “unprecedented response” to a disaster of its own making, and assuring us all that, four years after its massive oil spill, the Gulf of Mexico is doing just fine?

The BP catastrophe in the Gulf just never seems to end. If you watch their television ads there just a green and clean as they can be. The truth, as this report spells out, is rather different.


Lindsay Abrams - Salon

Well, an estimated 80,000 to 620,000 barrels of oil still coating the bottom of the Gulf says that was bull****.

This latest (certainly not the first) indication that the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe is far from over comes via geochemists at the University of California-Santa Barbara, who took a look at the 2 million or so barrels of BP oil gone missing in the spill’s wake, and believed to have settled in the deep ocean. Their results, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, estimate that somewhere between 4 and 31 percent of that oil has come to rest, splattered … Read more (http://www.salon.com/2014/10/27/researchers_a_massive_amount_bp_oil_is_coating_the_bottom_of_the_gulf/)

[giovonni]

Why the U.S. Has Fallen Behind in Internet Speed and Affordability

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The U.S. invented the internet, then sold it to monopolies in each city or region, and they did what monopolies always do: gave the lowest quality service for the highest achievable price. This was brought home to me several years ago when I when to Seoul and saw teenage girls downloading entire movies faster than I could get my online connection to download a complicated website. Right now I have the fastest internet I have ever had or that one can get in my part of the country. I just tested it, it was 17.95 Mbps. Excellent by American standards, particularly given that I live in a very rural area; yet that is pathetic in other developed nations. Run a test on your own speed after your read this report. What do you pay?


Claire Cain Miller - The New York Times

America’s slow and expensive Internet is more than just an annoyance for people trying to watch “Happy Gilmore” on Netflix. Largely a consequence of monopoly providers, the sluggish service could have long-term economic consequences for American competitiveness.

Downloading a high-definition movie takes about seven seconds in Seoul, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Zurich, Bucharest and Paris, and people pay as little as $30 a month for that connection. In Los Angeles, New York and Washington, downloading the same movie takes 1.4 minutes for people with the fastest Internet available, and they pay $300 a month for the privilege, according to The Cost of Connectivity, a report published Thursday by the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute... Read more (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/31/upshot/why-the-us-has-fallen-behind-in-internet-speed-and-affordability.html?_r=0&abt=0002&abg=0)

[giovonni]

The Making of The Warrior Cop

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Crime is down sharply in the U.S., yet a confluence of trends is producing an increasingly militarized and violent police force in cities and towns throughout the U.S.. Several readers have written to tell me I am anti-police. That is incorrect. I support properly functioning police forces. Almost every society needs law enforcement because there are always a small fraction of people in any society who are thugs and crooks. That is a completely different issue than having a paramilitary police force particularly when, as I have noted, crime is actually going down.

What particularly concerns me, as this story illustrates, is that a profit making industry has grown up to service this trend in law enforcement and in our for-sale-to-the-highest-bidder government this industry has now developed an active and well-funded lobbying effort that is out buying local, state, and federal government officials. Combined with a severely compromised judicial system that defaults to corporate special interests, and the cultivated fear produced by endless war, it has given birth to an American police state.

Shane Bauer - Mother Jones

By 7:30 on Thursday morning, the capacious ground-floor convention center of the Oakland Marriott was filled with SWAT teams. Mostly men, mostly white, dressed in camouflage or black fatigues, they stood in groups of eight or ten, some eating pastries, others sticking to coffee and a dip of tobacco. A few wandered the expo hall, stopping by booths to test the feel of armored vests, boot knives, and sniper rifles, grab swag like grenade-shaped stress balls, or drop tickets into a box for a raffle of iPhone covers and pistols... Read more (http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/10/swat-warrior-cops-police-militarization-urban-shield)

[giovonni]

Left or right-wing ?
Brain’s disgust response tells all

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This is one of the most interesting social trends being uncovered by science. I have written about it at length most recently From One to the Many: The Social Implications of Nonlocal Perception. What this combination of social and neuroscience seems to be telling us is that how we vote is not the result of rational thought but, instead, an irrational psychophysiological response. Scientifically fascinating, but the implications are very profound. The research suggests that the democratic process of voting is three parts biology and only one part rational thought. This suggests that as stress about the future increases the Great Schism Trend is going to get worse and worse, and cannot be resolved rationally. Here is the latest. (Journal reference: Current Biology, http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822%2814%2901213-5).

Dan Jones - NewScientist (U.K.)

The way your brain reacts to a single disgusting image can be used to predict whether you lean to the left or the right politically.

A number of studies have probed the emotions of people along the political spectrum, and found that disgust in particular is tightly linked to political orientation. People who are highly sensitive to disgusting images – of bodily waste, gore or animal remains – are more likely to sit on the political right and show concern for what they see as bodily and spiritual purity, so tend to oppose abortion and gay marriage, for example.

A team led by Read Montague, a neuroscientist at Virginia Tech in Roanoke, recruited 83 volunteers and performed fMRI brain scans on them as they looked at a series of 80 images that were either pleasant, disgusting, threatening or neutral. Participants then rated the images for … Read more (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26481-left-or-rightwing-brains-disgust-response-tells-all.html#.VFTTgcnDWjE)

[giovonni]

Al Saud’s Repressive Monarchy Creates Traction For Saudi Revolution

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Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal gives a press conference
with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia is without question the weirdest country I have ever visited. It gave me the creeps from the moment I set foot on the ground, and was handed a copy of the Protocols of Zion a virulently anti-semitic 19th century propaganda screed. Going to an opulent mall that would have been at home in Beverly Hills and seeing groups of women looking like floating black bags — indeed that was how my guide referred to them, “black bags” — was unnerving, and they appeared in my dreams for months afterwards. Enormous wealth grossly inequitably distributed wedded to fanatical absolutist Medieval theology has produced something unlike any other country on Earth.

Recently I have been seeing more and more articles about the growing instability in the country, which does not surprise me, but which could spell massive upheaval in the region. The closest analogy I can think of is the fall of the Shah in Iran. Based on what I am reading it would not surprise me if the House of Saud fell in 2015-2016. Here is an example of what I have been reading.

Catherine Shakdam - Mint Press News

An absolute theocracy, Saudi Arabia has lived since its inception in September 1932 under the thumb of two very powerful forces: the House of Saud and the Wahhabi religious paradigm. Hejaz, which stretches along the western part of the Saudi kingdom, was fused with two formerly independent tribal-led sultanates — Nejd in the west and Asir in the south — to become a Wahhabi kingdom.

“Saudi Arabia is really the manifestation of the alliance of Mohammed Abdul-Wahhab, a late 18th century controversial religious figure, and Mohammed bin Saud, the forefather of Al Saud,” Mohsen Kia, an Iranian political analyst with a Ph.D. in Islamic History, told MintPress News.

“Saudi Arabia was very much engineered to subdue the Arabian Peninsula under the weight of both religious …
Read more (http://www.mintpressnews.com/al-sauds-repressive-monarchy-creates-traction-for-saudi-revolution/198393/)

[giovonni]

Is the Pope Catholic? Critics Rally Around Benedict As Talk of Schism Looms

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I have been waiting for this, the pushback from the conservatives within the Roman Church, whose views and power is threatened by this new pope. I just hope something doesn’t “happen” to Francis.

Candida Moss - The Daily Beast

Almost from the beginning, there have been rumblings of discontent about Pope Francis. While the world’s media fell in love with him, there were more conservative bishops who felt that Francis’s popular appeal came at the expense of carefully worked-out Church rituals and teachings. They saw Francis as chipping away at established Church teachings on sexuality, kowtowing to the liberal media, and acting aggressively towards conservative church leaders.

Criticism of Francis has come to a head with the publication of the final report of the Synod on the Family. Despite changing absolutely nothing doctrinally, the Synod’s recommendations for a more understanding attitude to those in unconventional family arrangements have ignited a firestorm of controversy among conservative commentators. The possibility that Catholics who had divorced and remarried without receiving an annulment might be readmitted into full communion with the Church has made many apoplectic... Read more (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/11/02/is-the-pope-catholic-critics-rally-around-benedict-as-talk-of-schism-looms.html)

[giovonni]

32 Countries Where Global Warming Could Make Violence Worse

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This is what I really fear resulting from the failure to deal meaningful with climate change. I am convinced that socially disruptive migrations and water wars are going to shape international relations for the next half century. Here is an good assessment of where this trend stands today.

James West - Mother Jones

Recently, the Pentagon released a disturbing report. Climate change, it warned, will exacerbate problems like terrorism and disease outbreaks, drain military resources, and create new enemies. The report said that the military’s basic operations—everything from training to its supply chains and infrastructure—are now threatened by rising temperatures and shifting weather patterns. It all points to one conclusion: Global warming is a national security issue.

Now a new analysis, released Wednesday, is naming 32 countries in which conflict and civil unrest could be worsened by the changing climate. The findings are part of the seventh annual “Climate Change and Environmental Risk Atlas” from Maplecroft—a firm that studies how vulnerable countries are to various risks. It concludes that climate change is already impacting “food production, poverty, migration and social stability—factors that significantly increase the risk … Read more (http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/10/terrorism-could-be-getting-boost-hidden-helper-climate-change)

[giovonni]

Marijuana profits up in smoke under IRS rules

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Mitch Woolhiser, owner of Northern Lights Cannabis Co., talks about the federal taxes he pays from operating his medical and recreational marijuana store in Edgewater, Colo., on Friday, Oct., 31, 2014. Because of the nature of tax code 280E, which taxes Woolhiser at a higher rate than some other businesses, he doesn’t know how much he will owe in taxes.

This is a development that could assure the continuance of a marijuana black market because even where state law makes marijuana legal the federal tax code will make it impossible to create a functioning business of legal marijuana. That will be a big win for all those rice bowls are filled by prohibition continuing. It also means the ongoing destruction of tens of thousands of America families will continue.

Katie Kuntz - USA TODAY/Rocky Mountain PBS I-News

Voters in Oregon, Alaska, and Washington, D.C., will decide Tuesday whether to legalize the sale of recreational marijuana. But any new pot shops that voters approve may not be able to survive a drug war-era tax code that already threatens many businesses in Colorado and Washington state.

Under this tax code the federal government stands to make more money from the sale of marijuana than those legally selling it. And that could be enough to shut down many shops... Read more (http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/11/03/irs-limits-profits-marijuana-businesses/18165033/)

[giovonni]

Every Kid on Earth Could Go to School If the
World’s 1,646 Richest People Gave 1.5 Percent

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I am continually struck by the social damage done to the human societies of the Earth because of the abounding grotesque economic inequities. Just look at the United States: There are numerous CEOs making more in an hour than a skilled craftsman whose work may become historically significant can make in a lifetime. And particularly I do not understand why it is not generally understood that seeing that children are fed and educated will change things for the better for everyone.

Samantha Cowan - Takepart

As the world recovers from the 2009 financial crisis, the number of billionaires has doubled. Meanwhile, 870 million people live in extreme poverty. The old expression “The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer” continues to hold true.

That statistic, among with many other staggering figures, comes from international antipoverty group Oxfam’s recent report detailing the gaps between the rich and the poor. An extremely small group of people—85, to be exact—holds the same amount of wealth as half of the world’s poorest population. From March 2013 to March 2014, that group of 85 elites became $668 million richer every single day.

“In a world where hundreds of millions of people are living without access to clean drinking water and without enough food to feed their families, a small elite have more money than they could spend in several lifetimes,” said Mark Goldring, Oxfam’s chief executive... Read more (http://www.takepart.com/article/2014/11/03/worlds-wealthiest?)

[giovonni]

‘We will only get louder’:
Dozens of communities vote to boot big money from politics

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With the corruption and gridlock of the Congress and the compromising of the Judiciary the functional domain remaining is local. At this point no one can have any doubt about the pernicious impact of Citizens United, and what has followed. But it is a measure of the level of corruption that this is only superficially discussed in most media. However, as this report describes at the local level where life is actually lived, we are beginning to see healthy pushback.

Deirdre Fulton - Raw Story/Common Dreams

Citizens in dozens of communities voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday for their legislators to pass a constitutional amendment to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision, which opened the door for the super-rich and corporations to trample democracy.

As they headed to the polls to vote in what turned out to be the most expensive midterm election in history—one in which outside money from undisclosed sources played an outsized role and the number of small individual donors shrank—voters across the country made clear their desire to end corporate personhood and get big money out of politics... Read more (http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/11/we-will-only-get-louder-dozens-of-communities-vote-to-boot-big-money-from-politics/)

[giovonni]

Triumph of the Wrong

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Once again I think Paul Krugman sees it clearly.

Paul Krugman - The New York Times

The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet midterms to men of understanding. Or as I put it on the eve of another Republican Party sweep, politics determines who has the power, not who has the truth. Still, it’s not often that a party that is so wrong about so much does as well as Republicans did on Tuesday.

I’ll talk in a bit about some of the reasons that may have happened. But it’s important, first, to point out that the midterm results are no reason to think better of the Republican position on major issues. I suspect that some pundits will shade their analysis to reflect the new balance of power — for example, by once again pretending that Representative Paul Ryan’s budget proposals are good-faith attempts to put America’s fiscal … Read more (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/07/opinion/paul-krugman-triumph-of-the-wrong.html?_r=0)

[Trace TJ McCallum]

Great thread Giovanni - I hadn't run across Stephan A. Schwartz before nut have now subscribed at http://www.schwartzreport.net/
I don't suppose he's any relation to Brian Schwartz (The Omega Society, The Prometheus Society)?
Thank you for sharing this with us all. Ciao caro xx

[giovonni]

Great thread Giovanni - I hadn't run across Stephan A. Schwartz before nut have now subscribed at http://www.schwartzreport.net/
I don't suppose he's any relation to Brian Schwartz (The Omega Society, The Prometheus Society)?
Thank you for sharing this with us all. Ciao caro xx

Your welcome ... :)

Note, i don't always agree with everything Stephan post, though He and I often share similar worldviews ...

My original OP ... April 18, 2010


At times of great stress, when your relationship is changing, or your job is disappearing, or you are faced with a fateful choice, it can be extraordinarily helpful to get even a glimpse of what lies in your future.

From my favorite futurists~ Stephan A. Schwartz

Trends That Will Affect Your Future … Mr South Whidbey, Globalization, and the Worship of Profit

By the time we get there it is already a raucous party. The elderly Freeland Hall on Whidbey island, off the coast of Seattle, with its walls and ceiling made of short strips of ancient pine boards, vibrates with the noise. Two hundred fifty people have packed themselves in tonight to eat a simple box dinner on folding tables and watch six men make fools of themselves. One of them will be voted Mr South Whidbey. The voting is done by buying votes, in the form of business card–sized bits of paper, for $1 a card. There is much encouragement to buy as many cards as possible.

As I sit there eating my chicken salad, men in odd outfits—one wears a kind of apron upon which is airbrushed a nude female form with a fig leaf, another is got up as Abe Lincoln—circulate with cardboard beer six-pack carriers. Where the beer would be there are paper cups with the names of the contestants, who are also wearing improbable outfits and who range in age from one man in his early 30s wearing a kilt and sporting a chain saw—sort of like one of the Village People seen by someone on a bad drug trip—to an octogenarian dressed as a 1920s Parisian boulevardier. The evening is a parody of any beauty pageant. There are dumb questions for the contestant interview, a runway promenade, and a talent segment. It is all uniformly awful, and so self-consciously so that it calls forth from the audience cheers, hoots, and laughter. As the evening progresses, we vote by placing the little cards in the cup labeled with the name of our favorite.

I have just moved to Whidbey and am here at the party with my partner Ronlyn, and neither of us is very clear why; it is largely at the urging of my physician friend, Rick Ingrasci, the man wearing the nude apron. We know no one at our table, and to make conversation I introduce myself to a modest, plainly dressed, middle-aged woman across from me, asking her what it's all about. She explains the purpose of the evening is to raise money for Friends of Friends, a local philanthropy. When I ask her what Friends of Friends is, she tells me it is a community-supported fund offering financial help to our fellow south islanders with medically related bills they cannot afford to pay. The man next to her introduces himself and tells me that it all started in 1997 “and so far has helped about a thousand people with $400,000 in medical expenses.” The woman to my right joins the conversation by telling me she would probably be dead had it not been for Friends of Friends, since “I have no health insurance, and could not have obtained the treatments I desperately needed if they hadn't helped me.” The woman across from me nods in agreement and says, “I would have lost all my teeth except for Friends of Friends.”

As the octogenarian carries the day, an obvious favorite—how can you not vote for an 80-year-old man wearing a beret and smoking jacket willing to sing old Maurice Chevalier songs in public—I am moved by the community spirit the Mr South Whidbey Pageant represents and heartened by yet another example of the interlocking safety network my new community has created to help itself. And at the same time I am outraged that any of this should be necessary.

Whenever I confront the illness profit industry's impact on American society, I always imagine I am speaking with my sister, Susan, who has lived most of her life in Europe and is now in France. As I sit there while several men in trench coats and large black witches hats, blowing kazoos, march the hall's length, this particular imaginary conversation plays out with me explaining that little communities such as the villages of South Whidbey have to band together so that the weak, the poor, and the afflicted amongst them can have the basic healthcare that every other industrial nation in the world provides as a matter of course. I imagine my sister's face as she hears about the pleasant woman sitting across from me who almost became one of the 122 people who die daily in America—more than die monthly in the active war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan—because they have no health insurance.

Viewed from another perspective, I realize, Mr South Whidbey represents a powerful trend shaping our future—and not a happy one. It is the response of a caring small community to a massive failure on the part of the larger society. If we had national healthcare, the nice woman sitting to my right eating the last of her salad would never have faced the abyss of involuntary death because she lacked the insurance to open the door to a continued future. She wouldn't have needed $10,000 to pay for a procedure that in most countries would be considered a right. What must that be like to wake up each morning lying in your bed and knowing that without some drug or medical procedure you are doomed?

What if instead of giving $10,000 to the woman because she didn't have health insurance, this collective effort, and thousands of other efforts like it in other communities around the country, were focused on something else? How about local preparation for climate change, or to assist local businesses to navigate the “Green Transition” that is occurring as the world moves out of the “Age of Petroleum?” Not that such efforts do not exist, of course they do. But the many programs like Mr South Whidbey support not preparation for the future, but assuage an immediate unnecessary present day failure. Of necessity they compete for time, energy, and money, of which local communities like the villages of South Whidbey have only so much. Suppose Mr South Whidbey gave that $10,000 as a loan to local government to build charging stations for electric cars that local people drive, so they could recharge when they went shopping in the village? If you collected a modest fee like a parking meter, and the city paid the loans back over time, the whole business might even be self-financing. Everybody would benefit, if simply with cleaner air.

One of America's great defining characteristics is this capacity for coming together in volunteer local effort. “About 61.8 million people, or 26.4% of the population, volunteered through or for an organization at least once between September 2007 and September 2008,” the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor reported.1 If you have ever lived in another country you realize how rare this is.

Another of our strengths is the deep commitment of the American people to philanthropy. We commit 1.7% of our gross national product to this purpose—nearly $300 billion a year.2 The next most philanthropic nation is Great Britain at .73%—less than half as much—and it falls off precipitously from there.2

And the generosity of spirit that is such an American hallmark can be found at every level of the culture. About 65% of households with incomes less than $100,000 give to charity.1 Even the poor give. Their share of the nearly $300 billion offered up is just as green.3 In 2007, as individuals and families, we spent nearly $25 billion a month serving what we felt was good and life-affirming as we understood it.

This squandering of volunteer action, and philanthropic purpose because the failure to have universal healthcare requires local programs such as Friend of Friends, is a consequence of the “Illness Profit” model. Along with people working sick, or having simple inexpensive medical problems become complex and expensive because they were not treated, these social failures constitute a kind of friction, or a tax. One that in a global world makes us less competitive and less prepared for climate change. I suddenly have images from Katrina in my mind. Once again, like New Orleans and FEMA, are we going to ignore the warnings and be less prepared than we could be if other considerations were not draining off our time, passion, and resources?

Why is this happening? I think this is one of the great questions that our public conversation should focus on. Barbara Tuchman's 1984 best seller, March of Folly,4 Jared Diamond's 2005 book, Collapse,5 and Naomi Klein's 2007 book, Shock Doctrine,6 all spell out how powerful societies can, and have, destroyed themselves. Almost always it results from an obsessive commitment to something that proves again and again that it is destructive, yet that society continues to focus on it in spite of the evidence. The Easter Islanders kept cutting down their trees, even as they were punished by nature for the destruction of their ecosystem. I always wonder what the last man—cutting down the last tree—thought.

In our case, the culprit seems to be that profit has become our only bedrock value. Because this is our default consideration, we have chosen to develop a model of healthcare that reflects that value. As a result we have millions, literally millions, of people who cannot make their full contribution to our society's success, either because they cannot contribute at all or are contributing in varying degrees of diminished capacity. But this is just one manifestation of our obsession. Here are a few others.

When profit is the most important consideration, then social programs like prenatal care, having no immediate payoff, get severely cut even though we know that if a mother does not get a proper diet between the 19th and 23rd week of pregnancy, her fetus' brain will not develop properly and her child will become an unacknowledged handicapped person for their entire lives, in a way that can never be repaired. When short-term profit is the only consideration, then long-term education, particularly of the poor, never really becomes a social priority. And when privatized profit-making prisons become the rice bowl for communities left destitute because of earlier outsourcing, it becomes important to keep a steady flow of the poor into those institutions as the justification for their existence and the mechanism for tapping the public till.

People are beginning to gather up their coats and I am left with this: in a world that is globalizing, the future and national security of a nation are directly correlated with its ability to field as many brains—literally neurons—and as many fully committed hearts working on behalf of societal success as it can. When profit is the only priority governing the social infrastructure, our recent history shows it sabotages this success.

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Whidbey island, off the coast of Seattle

original article here;
http://www.explorejournal.com/article/S1550-8307(09)00368-1/fulltext

The SchwartzReport tracks emerging trends that will affect the world, particularly the United States. For EXPLORE it focuses on matters of health in the broadest sense of that term, including medical issues, changes in the biosphere, technology, and policy considerations, all of which will shape our culture and our lives.
http://www.schwartzreport.net/

[giovonni]

The slow decline of fast food in America

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I consider this excellent news. Traditional fast food — McDonald’s, Wendy, KFC, Burger King etc — as study after study has shown is a significant contributor to both the obesity and type II diabetes crises. You may have seen the documentary Super Size Me, one very popular take on the issue.

People finally seem to be waking up to this reality and eating elsewhere as this report describes, often picking healthier quick food options like Chipotle Mexican Grill, both positive trends.

Agence France-Presse

The hospitals of the Truman Medical Centers in Kansas City, Missouri no longer serve fast food in their cafeterias, after ending a contract with McDonald’s in 2012 — two years ahead of schedule.

In Kentucky, Kosair Children’s Hospital signed up to serve Big Macs and Chicken McNuggets to its patients when it opened in 1986. But it has now followed in TMC’s footsteps.

The reversals by hospital chains that once embraced McDonald’s reflect a waning love affair with fast food in the United States, as consumers become increasingly aware of the benefits of eating better.

“Fast foods have their place, but I am not so sure their place is inside the hospital,” recalled John Bluford, the former TMC chief executive ... Read more (http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/11/the-slow-decline-of-fast-food-in-america/)

[giovonni]

Police Use Department Wish List When Deciding Which Assets to Seize

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The corruption of American law enforcement, as demonstrated by the growing trend of civil asset forfeitures should shock every citizen. But it is hardly mentioned by politicians.

SHAILA DEWAN - The New York Times

The seminars offered police officers some useful tips on seizing property from suspected criminals. Don’t bother with jewelry (too hard to dispose of) and computers (“everybody’s got one already”), the experts counseled. Do go after flat screen TVs, cash and cars. Especially nice cars.

In one seminar, captured on video in September, Harry S. Connelly Jr., the city attorney of Las Cruces, N.M., called them “little goodies.” And then Mr. Connelly described how officers in his jurisdiction could not wait to seize one man’s “exotic vehicle” outside a local bar... Read more
(http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/10/us/police-use-department-wish-list-when-deciding-which-assets-to-seize.html?_r=0)

[giovonni]

Land, Co-ops, Compost:
A Local Food Economy Emerges in Boston’s Poorest Neighborhoods

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I think these urban citizen gardens, particularly in low income neighborhoods, which are often food deserts
because grocers don’t service these communities, constitute a wonderful healthy trend. Here is the latest.

Penn Loh - Truthout/Yes!

When Glynn Lloyd couldn’t source enough locally grown produce, he decided to grow his own.

Since 1994, Lloyd has run City Fresh Foods, a catering company based in Roxbury—one of Boston’s lowest-income neighborhoods. He wanted his business to use locally produced food, but at that time it was hard to come by. So in 2009 Lloyd helped found City Growers, one of Boston’s first for-profit farming ventures.

Today, City Growers is part of an emerging network of urban food enterprises in Roxbury and neighboring Dorchester. From a community land trust that preserves land for growing, to kitchens and retailers who buy and sell locally grown food, to a new waste management co-op that will return compost to the land, a crop of new businesses and nonprofits are building an integrated food economy. It’s about local people keeping the wealth of their land... Read more (http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/27426-land-co-ops-compost-a-local-food-economy-emerges-in-boston-s-poorest-neighborhoods)

[giovonni]

We Need Someone to Judge the Judges

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The corruption and politicization of the Judiciary in my view is one of the most alarming trends in our democracy. Unlike legislators, judges can serve for decades, even life. A single corrupted overly political activist judge can cause havoc. Here is an example of what I mean.

Jordan Smith - The Intercept

Judge Edith Jones is no stranger to controversy. The 65-year-old jurist has served since 1985 on the notoriously fractious 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and is known for her conservative and often controversial opinions. She’s decided that a sleeping lawyer isn’t necessarily a bad one for a criminal defendant to have, claimed that bankruptcy filings have increased because of a “decline in personal shame,” and said that the legal system is corrupt in part because it has strayed from its religious underpinnings.

But it was a speech at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law last year that earned her a formal ethics complaint, filed by several Texas civil rights groups and a group of nationally known legal ethicists. In that speech to an audience of law students—billed as a federal death penalty “review”—Jones allegedly made a host of improper and racist ... Read more (https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/11/10/judging-judges/)

[giovonni]

8 things you should never feed to cats and dogs

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I thought this might be of interest to readers with animal companions. It would never occur to me to feed our pussycat, Pangur Ban, any of these things. And he certainly wouldn’t eat them, being of a very suspicious nature. But obviously many people do, so I thought it was worth running this.

Cliff Weathers - Alternet (U.S.)

Who knew that a few sticks of sugar-free gum could kill your dog?

Evidently many people don’t, but the veterinarians who spoke to AlterNet tell us they’re seeing more animals coming in with hypoglycemia after eating as little as a stick. And even if the animal’s blood sugar returns to normal, there’s quite a bit of concern that liver damage, and possibly death, may follow.

“It’s not just dogs, it’s cats as well,” says Maureen Saunders, owner/director of the Spring Valley Animal Hospital and Cat Care Clinic of the Nyacks. “And it’s important to get the word out there, so people know to watch for this.”

Many of us tend to think that dogs and cats can eat what humans eat. We often don’t think twice about giving them a bite of our cookie or worry too much when they scavenge for food. But dogs and cats don’t … Read more (http://www.salon.com/2014/11/12/8_things_you_should_never_feed_to_dogs_and_cats_partner/)

[giovonni]

The US Prison System Perpetuates “The Criminalization Of Disability"

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Back in the early 70s I was invited to present a paper at a conference in San Diego that was being put on by the Salk Institute and the Mind Science Foundation. Several of the presenters were physicians and psychologists who had been tasked by the Nixon administration with figuring out how to close down the mental illness hospitals and facilities that housed hundreds of thousands of impaired people. They explained to me that they felt this was ethical, because they had been promised that outpatient clinics and housing were to be built to service this released population. And they told me how this promise had gone unfulfilled.

One of these men, was the nationally known psychologist Fuller Torrey. As we walked along the beach one evening he told me that as a result of the failure to build the outpatient facilities it was his view that the prison system would be turned into the mental health system, because many of these impaired people would be arrested for one thing or another, or just for being odd. And he predicted it would be a disaster. As this report explains, Fuller Torrey was prescient. What he predicted as come to pass. And it is a disaster. One measure of a country is how it treats it mentally and emotionally impaired. We don’t score well.

Sean Nevins - Mint Press News

Merle Baldridge, 42, is fifth generation deaf. “I’m deaf, my family’s deaf… We’ve been deaf for over a hundred years, you know, we’re proud and strong,” he told MintPress News from Columbia River Correctional Institution in Portland, Oregon, where he has been interned since 2011 on charges of first-degree sexual abuse of a minor.

In April 2012, Baldridge filed a lawsuit against the Oregon Department of Corrections (ODC), claiming the state prison system discriminated against him because of his hearing impairment. He claimed that he had been denied desirable jobs because good communication skills were listed as requirements. Instead, he was forced to perform menial labor, like scrubbing toilets.

He further claimed that the ODC did not provide him and other deaf prisoners with qualified interpreters for medical exams and religious services, nor did it supply interpretive aides, such as … Read more (http://www.mintpressnews.com/us-prison-system-perpetuates-criminalization-disability/198878/)

[giovonni]

Japan just built a train that goes 300 miles per hour. Watch it in action

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What this article doesn’t tell you is that the average speed of an American passenger train is 56 mph. The fastest train we have can get to 150 mph, but this report doesn’t reveal that the average speed is about 86 mph.

The failure of the United States to move out of 1950s railroad technology and performance is symptomatic of the general failure of the country to maintain infrastructure, and our continued reliance on bridges, dams, and highways built during the Roosevelt and Eisenhower eras.

Timothy B. Lee - VOX

The fastest train the United States is the Acela Express, which travels between Washington DC and Boston at speeds as high as 150 miles per hour (though the average speed is lower than that). Trains are a lot faster elsewhere in the world, especially in Europe and Asia. One of the fastest commercial trains in the world is the Shanghai Maglev Train, which travels up to 268 miles per hour.

Japan is looking to surpass China with a new train that can go more than 310 miles per hour. Passengers got an opportunity to ride the new train this week ... Read more (http://www.vox.com/2014/11/16/7230107/japane-maglev-bullet-train)

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Google’s secret NSA alliance:
The terrifying deals between Silicon Valley and the security state

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There is a very little public discussion about surveillance, and the cyber war that is going on between nations, particularly Russia and China and the U.S.. Although this gets paltry media attention it is shaping your life in many ways.

Shane Harris is the author of The Watchers: The Rise of America’s Surveillance State, which won the New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism and was named one of the best books of 2010 by the Economist. Harris won the 2010 Gerald R. Ford Prize for Distinguished Reporting on National Defense.

Shane Harris - Salon

Excerpted from “@WAR: The Rise of the Military-Internet Complex”

In mid-December 2009, engineers at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California, began to suspect that hackers in China had obtained access to private Gmail accounts, including those used by Chinese human rights activists opposed to the government in Beijing.

Like a lot of large, well-known Internet companies, Google and its users were frequently targeted by cyber spies and criminals. But when the engineers looked more closely, they discovered that this was no ordinary hacking campaign.

In what Google would later describe as “a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China,” the thieves were able to get access to the password system that allowed Google’s users to sign in to many Google applications at once. This was some of the company’s most important intellectual property, considered among the “crown jewels” … Read more (http://www.salon.com/2014/11/16/googles_secret_nsa_alliance_the_terrifying_deals_between_silicon_valley_and_the_security_state/)

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Dividing the Spoils

This is an excellent essay on the corruption of American government, but I chose it because it has this: “From 2007 to 2012, the two hundred most politically active corporations in the United States spent almost $6 billion for lobbying and campaign contributions. And they received more than $4 trillion in US government contracts and other forms of assistance. That’s $760 for every dollar spent on influence, a stunning return on investment.” This is what Citizens United is really all about. The flood of corrupting money the Supreme Court has allowed is flowing in for one very simple reason: It is a good investment. It is a measure of the corruption of the court (at least the conservative wing of it) that they are “blind” to what a child could see.

Bill Moyers and Michael Winship - Reader Supported News/Moyers & Company

We’ve been watching Congress since the mid-term elections and reading Zephyr Teachout’s terrific history book, Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin’s Snuff Box to Citizens United. That snuff box was a gift from King Louis XVI of France. His Majesty was a good friend of the American Revolution but when he gave Benjamin Franklin the gold box, featuring the monarch’s portrait surrounded with diamonds, some of our Founding Fathers objected. They worried that the gift would corrupt his judgment and unduly bias Franklin in France’s favor.

The framers debated the meaning of corruption at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, and Americans have been arguing about it ever since. Today, gifts to politicians that were once called graft or bribes are called contributions. The Supreme Court has granted corporations the rights our founders reserved for people, and told those corporations they can … Read more (http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/27097-focus-dividing-the-spoils)

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“We are starting to break down”: Why so many Americans feel traumatized

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I got the saddest email from one of my older readers yesterday talking about how his handicapped wife and he were facing decisions like medicine or food. Then I ran into another reader coming out of the thrift store with some children’s clothes who told me she had not been able to buy anything new for her two kids for more than two years. And I suspect many of you will identify with this report.

Lynn Stuart Parramore - Salon/Alternet

Recently Don Hazen, the executive editor of AlterNet, asked me to think about trauma in the context of America’s political system. As I sifted through my thoughts on this topic, I began to sense an enormous weight in my body and a paralysis in my brain. What could I say? What could I possibly offer to my fellow citizens? Or to myself? After six years writing about the financial crisis and its gruesome aftermath, I feel weariness and fear. When I close my eyes, I see a great ogre with gold coins spilling from his pockets and pollution spewing from his maw lurching toward me with increasing speed. I don’t know how to stop him.

Do you feel this way, too?

Read more (http://www.salon.com/2014/11/23/we_are_starting_to_break_down_why_so_many_americans_are_badly_traumatized_by_life_partner/)

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Study Shows Dramatic Correlation Between GMOs And 22 Diseases

The more research I do on GMOs, the less the immediate problem seems to be the seeds, and the more it seems to center on the toxins used to protect the seeds, and the costs associated with this industrial chemical model of agriculture. Here is the latest.

Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers - Alternet (U.S.)

There is a growing movement for labeling of GMO crops, and many would go further and ban GMOs completely. Currently there is a close vote in Oregon on a GMO labeling initiative, with advocates for labeling 0.3% behind and raising money to check ballots (we urge your support). Those who profit from GMOs spent $20 million to prevent labeling in Oregon. Several states in the Northeast have put in place laws that will require labeling.

Vermont is about to be sued to prevent GMO labeling. GMO profiteers have an unusual marketing strategy. While most companies brag about their product, the GMO industry spends hundreds of millions to hide their product. The US does not requiring labeling of GMOs despite the fact that 64 countries around the world label GMO foods.

Millions have marched against Monsanto urging labeling or the banning of GMO products. There is a national consensus … Read more (http://www.alternet.org/personal-health/study-shows-dramatic-correlation-between-gmos-and-22-diseases?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark)

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Students of Death

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Belgian palliative doctor Wim Distelmans of Brussels recently generated significant controversy when he organized a trip to Auschwitz for some of the leading practitioners of euthanasia in Belgium. Euthanasia has been legal in the country for the terminally ill since 2002. Last year, 1,807 people received euthanasia, which amounts to two percent of all fatalities in the country.


I found this a very moving story of antipodes: enforced government inflicted death, and an individual choosing to end their own life. It is my personal belief that if you don’t have control over your own body you really have no control at all. For that reason I am pro-choice, and pro-assisted suicide. Having had a wife die in the agony of cancer I have direct experience with what the later involves. Although it was never a choice we chose I can understand why some might make choose it. These are powerful issues that get far too little discussion, and even when they do get attention it is usually from a position enmeshed in religion or ideology couched in polemics, rarely involving people actually faced with such decisions.

Katrin Kuntz - Der Spiegel (Germany)

A group of Belgium's leading practitioners of euthanasia recently visited the Auschwitz concentration camp memorial to learn more about death and humanity. The trip proved to be just as controversial for the doctors as it did insightful.

Wim Distelmans is responsible for the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands of people. He's a man who scrupulously studies his field of work. In London he visited the world's first modern hospice, and he toured the first home for the dying in Scotland. He has even flown as far afield as Moscow to gain a better understanding of how we deal with death and dying... Read more (http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/belgian-euthanasia-doctors-seek-answers-at-auschwitz-a-1003441-druck.html)

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The 14 Teens Killed by Cops Since Michael Brown

There is something deeply awry in our society, as this report shows. Just since Michael Brown was killed by Darren Wilson 14 teens have been killed by police. That’s not all the people killed by police, just teens — 14 of them. By way of comparison in 2013, 27 police officers were killed in the line of duty.

Nina Strochlic - The Daily Beast

Since Ferguson, police have killed more than a dozen teenagers, half of them black. Some did nothing more than carry a BB gun.

Michael Brown’s death on August 9 was a nationwide wake-up call to the death-by-cop of young minority men at the hands of law enforcement. According to data stretching from 1999 to 2011, African Americans have comprised 26 percent of all police-shooting victims. Overall, young African Americans are killed by cops 4.5 times more often than people of other races and ages.

Since Brown’s death, at least 14 other teenagers—at least six of them African-American—have been killed by law enforcement in a variety of circumstances... Read more (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/11/25/the-14-teens-killed-by-cops-since-michael-brown.html)

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Regulation Is Squeezing Out Potrepreneurs,
Clearing the Road For Big Cannabis

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This is what I feared would happen. A few large players would through influencing the government come to control marijuana. Marijuana should be thought of like wine, a product growing from a living plant, not a pharmaceutical model. This is not a happy trend.

Alex Halperin - Fast Company

A 46-year-old mother of three, Dooley is the cofounder and president of Julie’s Baked Goods, a purveyor of cannabis-infused snacks. She has celiac disease and wanted to create gluten-free products that would relieve her pain without damaging her intestine. Dooley’s Denver company released its first product, granola mixed with cranberries and almonds, in 2010 and now sells about 6,000 units a month, employing 11 people.

Even in Colorado, where medical and recreational marijuana are both legal, the cannabis business involves its share of hassles. Initially, Dooley’s license cost $1,250 and required a 25-page application. Renewing it, she said, cost more than twice that and required investing about $25,000 in the company’s kitchen, including a security system with 24-hour video surveillance. She wouldn’t have a business today if her husband weren’t a manufacturing specialist, she says.

As hard as she’s worked, Dooley’s experience has been relatively easy … Read more (http://www.fastcompany.com/3038663/how-we-push-small-businesses-out-of-the-legal-marijuana-market)

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Nation’s Largest Food Bank Reduces Portions,
Turns Away Needy After Massive Food Stamp Cuts

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This is what foodbanks should be. This is the Good Cheer Food Bank on Whidbey Island, Wa. (where i live) and the
volunteer maintained organic garden that provides much of its produce to low income families and individuals.


Thanks to the Republican Party — to the three readers who wrote me this morning asking why I don’t like the Republican Party, here is one part of my answer — the food stamp program was gutted. It made hunger in the U.S. an even bigger crisis than usual. The hunger didn’t go away of course, when the cretins of Congress cut off Federal support. It just transferred to the charities that have tried to fill the gap, as this report describes.

The great irony here is that poor Whites in Red value states voted in the congresspeople who then legislated the policies that are making other poor White lives miserable. Most food stamp recipients are low income Whites.

It is another example of the triumph of fear and hate politics funded by special interest groups seeking to manipulate those low-information voters who mostly watch Fox News and listen to Rightwing radio. As a marketing strategy it has proven incredibly successful, as a generator of public policies that create wellness, however, the Republican approach is a disaster. This is an objectively verifiable fact.

Alan Pyke - Reader Supported News/Think Progress

27 November 14

"Thanks to billions of dollars in food stamp cuts over the past year, the nation’s largest food bank has seen need jump so dramatically that it can’t keep up, the Food Bank For New York City (FBFNYC) announced Monday.

At least one facility out of every three that the FBFNYC operates, three have had to turn people away at some point in the past year. Almost two thirds have started giving out smaller amounts of food to try to stretch their resources, Al Jazeera America reports, as four out of five food bank locations reported a rising number of people coming in the door since last November’s food stamp cuts.

The cuts followed the expiration of an increase in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits that Congress enacted as part of the 2009 stimulus law. The emergency increases to SNAP during the depths of the Great Recession helped the system respond to a massive leap in food insecurity and hunger nationwide. They were intended to last through 2015. But various other budget priorities eventually lead Democrats to give grudging support to a pair of 2010 bills that pushed the wind-down up first to 2014, then to three weeks before last Thanksgiving.

In New York City alone, the cuts wiped out about 56 million meals’ worth of benefits, the FBFNYC guesses. The group estimates that 1.4 million people in the city rely on emergency food services like food banks and food pantries, meaning that the country’s most densely populated metropolis is also one of its hungriest areas. Feeding America, the hunger charity network that includes the FBFNYC, estimates that it serves 14.5 percent of the national population each year, and the FBFNYC numbers put city participation at 16.5 percent.

The New York charity is the single largest food bank in America, but the strain it faces is hardly unusual. Feeding America’s latest survey of member charities reported that one in every six of its food banks nationwide is worried about having to close down due to a lack of resources and surging demand. Those fears come despite eye-popping figures on volunteer participation: 2 million people volunteer more than 8.4 million hours at Feeding America charities every month.

These statistics cut against one common refrain from conservative lawmakers who want to cut food stamps further. As national Republicans pushed to drop 6 million people from SNAP and cut the program by $40 billion last year, some in their ranks justified the push by suggesting that American charities should be left in charge of feeding the hungry without government interference. Even then, actual hunger charity operators warned that this faith was misplaced and that food banks were already operating beyond their capacity. (Republicans ultimately settled for an $8 billion cut to the program in the bipartisan farm bill passed earlier this year, and governors in several states have acted to shield roughly a million SNAP recipients from those benefit reductions.)

Now, in New York City, food bank officials seem resigned to the smaller rations, longer lines, and annual shortfalls as a sort of new normal. “It’s no longer an emergency,” FBFNYC head Swami Durga Das told Al Jazeera. “This is part of the fiber of New York.”

source page (http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/27191-nations-largest-food-bank-reduces-portions-turns-away-needy-after-massive-food-stamp-cuts)

[giovonni]

U.N. torture watchdog urges U.S. crackdown on police brutality

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How do you feel having the United States admonished by the U.N. for being a country with a police brutality problem that needs to be addressed? Is that the United States as you think it should be? I was angry and disgusted. The U.N. is right. I could fill SR every day with stories of children shot, pregnant women slammed to the ground, old men shot in their homes as the blackshirts break in at 2 a.m. in full military gear — to the wrong house because of a typo on a piece of paper. Happily it has gotten so bad that I think ordinary people are finally pushing back.

The Department of Transportation reports that one out of five Americans have never flown on a commercial airliner. Youth and child rates are, of course, even higher. Net: a large part of the American population have never flown. They have little to no idea what people outside of the U.S. think about us. Those of us who have travelled have been watching the decline of affection and respect people have for America for more than 30 years, starting with the Viet Nam war.

Stephanie Nebehay - Reuters

The U.N. Committee against Torture urged the United States on Friday to fully investigate and prosecute police brutality and shootings of unarmed black youth and ensure that taser weapons are used sparingly.

The panel’s first review of the U.S. record on preventing torture since 2006 followed racially-tinged unrest in cities across the country this week sparked by a Ferguson, Missouri grand jury’s decision not to charge a white police officer for the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager.

The committee decried “excruciating pain and prolonged suffering” for prisoners during “botched executions” as well as frequent rapes of inmates, shackling of pregnant women in some prisons and extensive use of solitary confinement... Read more (http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/28/us-usa-un-torture-idUSKCN0JC1BC20141128)

[giovonni]

Everything you learned about breakfast is wrong

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I have always thought breakfast was the most complicated meal of the day and, as Ronlyn will tell you,
I am always trying to figure out what to eat. This story sheds some light on this.

Ari Levaux - The Raw Story/Alternet

Recent studies suggest that the benefits of that first meal of the day are not so simple.

The institution of breakfast is rarely challenged. It ranks somewhere between sleep and oxygen in reputed health benefit, and supposedly supplies irreplaceable energy to get you going, primes your metabolic system, keeps your muscles healthy, feeds your brain, and generally prepares you for the day to come. But what if the age-old wisdom is an old wives tale? Recent studies suggest that at the very least, the benefits of breakfast are not so simple.

For our purposes, breakfast means a meal eaten soon after waking, before going about one’s daily business. Thus, a 2 pm meal could be considered breakfast if you’ve just woken up, but not if you’ve been awake since 8 am... Read more (http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/12/everything-you-learned-about-breakfast-is-wrong/)

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Worldwide, Tobacco Regulators Monitoring Philip Morris Lawsuit Against Uruguay

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You’re not going to read about this in the corporate media, but this decision concerning tobacco is going to be a very important legal precedent, as this article explains. It illustrates about as clearly as one could, how profit is much more important to corporations than any consideration of wellness. Our product kills people… tough… buy more.

Carey L. Biron - Mint Press News

WASHINGTON — A lawsuit that some say began as an attempt by a multinational company to intimidate a small Latin American country has instead drawn the attention of major players in global health, civil society and philanthropy circles.

Further, the legal action – brought by the tobacco giant Philip Morris International against the government of Uruguay – has led other countries to halt the implementation of new tobacco regulations until after the case is decided.

After Uruguay filed its formal defense in the case last month, the issue has been receiving increasingly broad attention, including from the World Health Organization, which has been a prominent anti-tobacco crusader.

“Uruguay’s continuing efforts to protect its population against tobacco consumption and exposure to secondhand smoke, despite challenges … Read more (http://www.mintpressnews.com/worldwide-tobacco-regulators-monitoring-philip-morris-lawsuit-uruguay/199220/)

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Bill Moyers: The Long, Dark Shadow That Plutocracy Casts on American Society

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Here is yet another way inequality is playing out. I hadn’t thought of this one. But I did notice the last time I was in London that many of the posh condo buildings had no lights on in the flats at night. People buy these multi-million dollar (pound) places as getaways if their governments go bad, and as investments. The result is that in London and New York it is very hard for an ordinary middle class person to live in any comfort. One of my godchildren lives in a flat about the size of my bedroom, and pays almost twice my mortgage.

Bill Moyers - Alternet (U.S.)

Some people say inequality doesn’t matter. They are wrong. All we have to do to see its effects is to realize that all across America millions of people of ordinary means can’t afford decent housing.

As wealthy investors and buyers drive up real estate values, the middle class is being squeezed further and the working poor are being shoved deeper into squalor — in places as disparate as Silicon Valley and New York City.

This week Bill points to the changing skyline of Manhattan as the physical embodiment of how money and power impact the lives and neighborhoods of every day people. Soaring towers being built at the south end of Central Park, climbing higher than ever with apartments selling from $30 million to $90 million, are beginning to block the light on the park below... Read more (http://www.alternet.org/economy/bill-moyers-long-dark-shadow-plutocracy-casts-american-society?)

[giovonni]

‘Tis The Season To Be Greedy: America’s Largest Companies
Pay CEOs More Than They Pay In Taxes

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This spells out in the starkest of terms how badly off the rails our economy has gone, and how corrupt it has become.

Carey L. Biron - Mint Press News

WASHINGTON — Out of 30 of the largest companies in the United States last year, nearly a quarter paid more to their chief executive than they did in federal taxes, according to new research.

That proportion appears to hold true for a larger sample of U.S. companies, as well. Of the country’s 100 top-paid CEOs last year, 29 received more in compensation than their companies paid in taxes. And that trend appears to be strengthening... Read more (http://www.mintpressnews.com/tis-season-greedy-americas-largest-companies-pay-ceos-pay-taxes/199422/)

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Olive oil’s disastrous year: Prices soar as extreme weather and pests decimate harvest

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The Mediterranean diet may be just the thing, but one of its principal components may not be as available or at a reasonable price. Another unintended consequence of climate change. But, hey, the Republicans tell us it’s a hoax, and the American population voted for them, so… not to worry.

Lindsay Abrams - Salon

Italy’s calling it the “Black Year of Italian Olive Oil.”

Wacky weather and pests wreaked havoc on this year’s olive crop, resulting in a harvest down 35 percent from last year. And Italy’s not alone: Production is down across the Mediterranean Basin, home to 97 percent of the world’s olive oil production, as well as in California, where drought and an early winter cold spell led to a disappointing harvest. The International Olive Council predicts the global yield is going to reach a 15-year low, and prices are soaring as a result — in the EU, a bottle of the good stuff from Italy now costs more than double what it did last year; olive oil from Spain, which is suffering through a record-breaking drought, costs 15 percent more... Read more (http://www.salon.com/2014/12/02/olive_oils_disastrous_year_prices_soar_as_extreme_weather_and_pests_decimate_harvest/)

[giovonni]

Like Seafood? Enjoy it now: Commercial seafood set to disappear from oceans in 2048

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This summer, while I was cruising on a friend’s boat in Alaskan waters, I had occasion to speak with several commercial fisherman. They each reported that the fishing catch was down, and the eco-system seemed to be in trouble. Just how bad it has gotten this report describes. I don’t think the toxic combo of governmental incompetence, corruption and ignorant ideology that plagues the U.S. and Canada is likely to be able to muster the political will to address this issue in any meaningful way. So I assume seafood will be something that will soon be gone, like the carrier pigeon. We don’t seem to be able to stop ourselves from continuing down a path of self-destruction.

Cliff Weathers - The Raw Story

Both scientists and economists are concerned that commercial seafood harvesting may end within three decades.

A prominent marine research ecologist says that commercial seafood could disappear from our oceans within the next three decades if humans don’t take action immediately.

Boris Worm of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada said the oceans are quickly losing biodiversity and that nearly 30% of seafood species humans consume are already too small to harvest. If the long-term trend continues, there will be little or no seafood available for a sustainable harvest by 2048.

Dr. Worm’s study was recently published in the journal Science and is an update of a study published in 2006. Importantly, the study is about the collapse of commercial catches, not species extinction. Catch collapse means that fish are caught at 10% or less of the rate they had been caught historically... Read more (http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/12/like-seafood-enjoy-it-now-commercial-seafood-set-to-disappear-from-oceans-in-2048/)

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U.S. hospitals make fewer serious errors; 50,000 lives saved

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Here is some very welcome news, a consequence of the ACA that you won’t hear critics talking about.
But if the 50,000 people whose lives were saved all cry out at once maybe it will get some attention.


Dec 2 (Reuters) About 50,000 people are alive today because U.S. hospitals committed 17 percent fewer medical errors in 2013 than in 2010, government health officials said on Tuesday. (emphasis added)

The lower rate of fatalities from poor care and mistakes was one of several “historic improvements” in hospital quality and safety measured by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. They included a 9 percent decline in the rate of hospital-acquired conditions such as infections, bedsores and pneumonia from 2012 to 2013.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Burwell is scheduled to announce the data on Tuesday at the CMS Healthcare Quality Conference in Baltimore. It is based on a detailed analysis of tens of thousands of medical records, but because data was collected differently before 2010, it is not possible to compare pre-2010 figures to later ones... Read more (http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/02/usa-healthcare-errors-idUSL2N0TM1ZZ20141202)

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Afghanistan: The Making of a Narco State

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Based on the data this is the truth about Afghanistan and the insane war we have been waging there. Hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of lives have been thrown away on what I believe history will call one of the the most calamitous foreign policy decisions in American history.

Matthieu Aikins - Rolling Stone

Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan is named for the wide river that runs through its provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, a low-slung city of shrubby roundabouts and glass-fronted market blocks. When I visited in April, there was an expectant atmosphere, like that of a whaling town waiting for the big ships to come in. In the bazaars, the shops were filled with dry goods, farming machinery and motorcycles. The teahouses, where a man could spend the night on the carpet for the price of his dinner, were packed with migrant laborers, or nishtgar, drawn from across the southern provinces, some coming from as far afield as Iran and Pakistan. The schools were empty; in war-torn districts, police and Taliban alike had put aside their arms. It was harvest time... Read more (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/afghanistan-the-making-of-a-narco-state-20141204?page=5)

[giovonni]

Free Wi-Fi more important than a good night’s sleep when booking a hotel
(because 60% of guests want to update social media)

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I have to confess that I too consider fast, reliable, free wifi a major factor in where I stay while traveling. How else could I do SR? Right now I am writing from a B&B in the Bay area, selected not only for its appearance but its wifi.

Katie Amey - Mail (U.K.)

When looking for the perfect hotel, its Wi-Fi service is the most important factor, according to new research.

A survey on important factors when searching for accommodation revealed that 67 per cent of travellers are most concerned with Wi-Fi, above any other factor.

The internet connection ranked higher than the hotel’s location, a good night’s sleep and friendly staff. A new study found that fast, free Wi-Fi to be most important factor when booking a hotel stay

According to the study, carried out by London’s Amba Hotel, 67 per cent of those questioned said that free Wi-Fi would make them more likely to choose accommodation, beating 65 per cent, who would judge a hotel on location...
Read more (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-2860465/Fast-free-WiFi-important-consideration-booking-hotel.html)

[giovonni]

The Incredible Shrinking Incomes of Young Americans

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This report describes another aspect of America’s abandonment of its young. I find it sad and ironic that the people that fight so hard to stop a woman from being able to control her own body, supposedly to protect children, clamor for policies that make it almost impossible for them to thrive. Since a country’s children are literally its future, our future as a country does not look good.

Derek Thompson - The Atlantic

American families are grappling with stagnant wage growth, as the costs of health care, education, and housing continue to climb. But for many of America’s younger workers, “stagnant” wages shouldn’t sound so bad. In fact, they might sound like a massive raise.

Since the Great Recession struck in 2007, the median wage for people between the ages of 25 and 34, adjusted for inflation, has fallen in every major industry except for health care... More here (http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/12/millennials-arent-saving-money-because-theyre-not-making-money/383338/)

[giovonni]

Propaganda Has Triumphed over Journalism, and the Consequences Are Enormous

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Much of my life has been involved with media, and I have watched over the decades as journalism became first a celebrity activity and, then, a corporate captive. A healthy democracy requires a healthy Fourth Estate and ours is sickly, as this report explains. Citizen journalism and social media give the illusion of coverage, but good investigative journalism is a skill set just like law or accountancy.

John Pilger - Alternet

Why has so much journalism succumbed to propaganda? Why are censorship and distortion standard practice? Why is the BBC so often a mouthpiece of rapacious power? Why do the New York Times and the Washington Post deceive their readers?

Why are young journalists not taught to understand media agendas and to challenge the high claims and low purpose of fake objectivity? And why are they not taught that the essence of so much of what’s called the mainstream media is not information, but power?

These are urgent questions. The world is facing the prospect of major war, perhaps nuclear war – with the United States clearly determined to isolate and provoke Russia and eventually China. This truth is being turned upside down and inside out by journalists, including those who promoted the lies that led to the bloodbath in Iraq in 2003... Read more (http://www.alternet.org/propaganda-has-triumphed-over-journalism-and-consequences-are-enormous?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark)

[giovonni]

Big Pharma’s guinea pigs: 8 drugs used by millions before being pulled for dangerous side-effects

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Big Pharma, like Big Carbon Energy is an industrial model based entirely on profit. As a result both have a shadow that often overpowers whatever good they do. No one in media talks much about Big Pharma’s dark side. But in the U.S. where drug advertising is legal — it is not in most countries — we all know those absurd ads that clog our television programs: Bucolic scenes of happy people doing happy comforting things while a voice intones over the picture as quickly as possible, “May cause permanent liver damage, stroke, or death”. It is a nasty trend, and it is getting worse.

Martha Rosenberg - The Raw Story/Alternet

Blockbuster drugs like Viagra, Lipitor, Prozac and Nexium have made Big Pharma one of the nation’s top industries. Even before direct-to-consumer advertising on TV, there were blockbuster drugs like Ritalin, Valium, Tagamet and Premarin. To be a blockbuster a drug has to 1) be usable by almost everyone; 2) be used every day; 3) be used indefinitely; 4) solve an everyday health problem like heartburn or high cholesterol; 5) have a fun or memorable ad campaign; 6) get social buzz; and 7) be sold to a large number of people quickly.

The last qualification—quick sales to millions—is crucial because Big Pharma has a small sales window before a patent runs out. But it’s also dangerous because many risks don’t emerge until millions take the drug so the public serves as unwitting guinea pigs. In fact, the “early user/guinea pig” factor is what sunk Vioxx 10 years ago... Read more (http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/12/big-pharmas-guinea-pigs-8-drugs-used-by-millions-before-being-pulled-for-dangerous-side-effects/)

[giovonni]

Australia develops world’s most efficient solar panels

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Here is the latest on the Solar Trend, and it is very good news. The price of non-carbon energy is dropping so quickly and so far, that will will soon be clear to anyone that whatever one’s views on climate change, carbon energy is simply no longer competitive. A conversion generally thought to take 30 years, is compressing down to perhaps half that.

RT (Russia)

Australian researchers have developed a new method of using commercial solar panels that converts more electricity from sunlight than ever before.

The new photovoltaic (PV) system created by University of New South Wales (UNSW) researchers converts 40 percent of solar light into electrical energy, which is a 15 percent increase over regular panels.(emphasis added)

Laboratory tests have shown the solar cell method can convert up to 46 percent of the sun’s energy into electricity. The new Australian technique works with regular commercial PV panels under normal conditions, and could potentially make solar plants more competitive with other energy sources, such as fossil fuels... Read more (http://rt.com/business/212383-australia-record-solar-energy/)

[giovonni]

“Dead bodies and wasted money”: How I learned firsthand the worst lesson of war

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Here is the bitter hard truth, from a grunt’s eye view, of the insanity of American foreign policy. Our geopolitical vision of the world is a failure, and you would think we would stop and re-assess. Instead we are putting in more troops into Afghanistan. The only product of these wars is death and hatred of America. All to no good purpose.

I read reports like these and all I can think about is the suffering, the death, and the lost opportunities for improving our own country the trillions of wasted dollars represent. We are literally taking food out of the mouths of babes to finance this madness.


Michael Carson

Recent revelations of colossal missteps in Afghanistan from Anand Gopal’s “No Good Men Among the Living“ combined with ISIL’S advance in Iraq have the few remaining Afghanistan and Iraq War optimists wondering what it is we should take away from these conflicts. I imagine thousands of bureaucrats and generals are asking the same question at the Pentagon, crustily ordering their multitudinous aides to compile relevant data and get back to them yesterday. This is for them, I would assume, a time for edifying soul-searching, a chance to become smarter, more resilient, to make, as they say, lemonade out of a whole lot of dead bodies and wasted tax dollars... Read more (http://www.salon.com/2014/12/08/dead_bodies_and_wasted_money_how_i_learned_firsthand_the_worst_lesson_of_war/)

[giovonni]

“No antibiotics ever”: School districts announce bold new standards for chicken

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School lunches in most schools are a study in what children should not eat. So no question this is some good news. Major school districts are moving to eliminate the antibiotic laced chicken that most people eat. I hope this catches on across the country.

Lindsay Abrams - Salon

“No antibiotics ever”: That’s the new official chicken policy for six of the country’s largest school districts. Late Tuesday, members of the Urban School Food Alliance — a coalition that includes districts in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Miami-Dade County and Orlando County — announced the antibiotic-free standard for its poultry suppliers, a move representatives say demonstrate their commitment to protecting students’ health and wellness.

“We’re landing in a place that the scientists agree is the right direction,” Leslie Fowler, executive director of nutrition support services for the Chicago Public Schools, told Reuters.

This is heartening news, particularly as the U.S. government, despite acknowledging the problem, is doing almost nothing to address it. The purchasing power of the six districts, which together feed 2.9 million students, could force the industry’s hand: the districts are demanding that meat suppliers that can’t meet the new standards immediately … Read more (http://www.salon.com/2014/12/10/no_antibiotics_ever_school_districts_announce_bold_new_standards_for_chicken/)

[Lifebringer]

Ever heard of the peace pipe? Native Americans and Mexicanos and other cultures used post to free the mind of distraction and to relax enough to tap the subconscious, in sweat lodges also. Western Rockerfeller medicine is also a culprit on keeping mj illegal because it does so much of what an opiate will do, but no side effects or addictive qualities. People smoke pot because they like it, not because, "they gotta have it."
It's mellow and I remember a strand in the late 70's called mellow yellow, which was really just Acapulco Gold. Good smoke.
Bottom line is 'our generation, can't live the way our soon to be deceased grandparents lived in the 50's and sixties, and they cannot relive their life through us, projecting their ideological restraints of freedom as ours.

[giovonni]

The Vanishing Male Worker: How America Fell Behind

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Here is what is happening to men in the U.S. It is going to have a significant psychological impact, and yet this is the first serious assessment of the trend I have seen in print. This is part of the Destruction of the Middle Class Meta-Trend. Once again this is happening because of non-life affirming social policies. We are doing this to ourselves.

Binyamin Appelbaum - The New York Times

ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND — Frank Walsh still pays dues to the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, but more than four years have passed since his name was called at the union hall where the few available jobs are distributed. Mr. Walsh, his wife and two children live on her part-time income and a small inheritance from his mother, which is running out.

Sitting in the food court at a mall near his Maryland home, he sees that some of the restaurants are hiring. He says he can’t wait much longer to find a job. But he’s not ready yet... Read more (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/12/upshot/unemployment-the-vanishing-male-worker-how-america-fell-behind.html?_r=0)

[giovonni]

Justice Is Blind To Those Who Can’t Afford It

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Even more dangerous to democracy than the corruption of legislators is the corruption of the law and justice.
This report shows how bad it is getting in the U.S.

Sean Nevins - Mint Press News

WASHINGTON — Two days after a Staten Island grand jury acquitted NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo in the death of Eric Garner, banking and financial services giant BNP Paribas S.A. (BNPP) was able to delay sentencing that would force it to pay $8.9 billion for pleading guilty to violating U.S. sanctions regulations.

Nobody at the global banking giant is likely to be prosecuted, and nobody will serve time.

Cases such as this reflect the starkly different prosecutory worlds available to those with money, influence and privilege, and those without, such as Michael Brown and Eric Garner... Read more (http://www.mintpressnews.com/justice-blind-cant-afford/199765/)

[giovonni]

Catholic Bishops From Every Continent Call For ‘An End To The Fossil Fuel Era’

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There are 1.2 billion people in the world who profess to be Roman Catholics, so I take this as excellent news. It is impossible to know how it will play out, but it will create a compassionate and life-affirming social skew.

Jeff Spross - Think Progress

A group of Catholic Bishops called on the world’s governments to end fossil fuel use on Wednesday, citing climate change’s threat to the global poor as the lodestar of their concern.

According to the BBC, the statement is the first time senior officials in the Church from every continent have issued such a call. The statement also drops in the middle of ongoing international climate talks in Lima, Peru, as countries continue to hash out what to do about climate change in the run-up to a summit in 2015, where observers and activists hope a new international agreement will be finalized.

“We express an answer to what is considered God’s appeal to take action on the urgent and damaging situation of global climate warming,” the bishops wrote... Read more (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/12/11/3602596/bishops-end-fossil-fuels/)

[giovonni]

Death of a fast-food Goliath: What the decline of McDonald’s really means

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This is both good news and an illustration of the point I make over and over: Small quotidian choices in which individuals choose the most compassionate and life-affirming option of the ones available, when a critical consensus of people make that choice, can create massive social change. This is the secret the power elite don’t want you to know.

Lindsay Abrams

The reign of the golden arches is ending. McDonald’s reported this week that its already-declining U.S. sales nose-dived in November, down 4.6 percent compared to last year. The company that introduced America to fast food, and has come to stand as its icon, is fading away.
It would be a mistake, however, to think that America’s falling out of love with fast food. It’s just that these days, we call it Chipotle.

There are plenty of reasons ascribed to McDonald’s downfall, but one constantly cited is that the post-”Super Size Me” world just isn’t eager to subject itself to the chain’s version of food any longer. Americans, the narrative goes, are demanding more of their meals. And the spoils are going to a new generation of “fast casual” providers who can provide they’re rising to the challenge... Read more (http://www.salon.com/2014/12/12/why_the_end_of_mcdonalds_doesnt_mean_the_end_of_fast_food/)

[giovonni]

Paul Krugman warns severe austerity measures
are pushing countries to brink of fascism

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Once again, Paul Krugman nails it. Trickle down, austerity economics has proven to be a failure over and over. That a large percentage of the political class across the world don’t seem to acknowledge this is a measure of the decay and corruption of modern democracies.

Janet Allon - The Raw Story/

The problem with ideologues is that they do not learn from their mistakes, not even after they repeat them and things go wrong again. Paul Krugman returns to one of his favorite subjects in his Friday column: the mismanagement of Greece’s fiscal crisis, which erupted five years ago and has ongoing terrible side effects that are damaging the whole world. “But I’m not talking about the side effects you may have in mind — spillovers from Greece’s Great Depression-level slump, or financial contagion to other debtors,” Krugman writes. “No, the trulorey disastrous effect of the Greek crisis was the way it distorted economic policy, as supposedly serious people around the world rushed to learn the wrong lessons" ... Read more (http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/12/paul-krugman-warns-severe-austerity-measures-are-pushing-countries-to-brink-of-fascism/)

[giovonni]

The 7 weirdest things science has taught us about sex

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Not a trend but I thought it was interesting.

Anna Pulley - Salon

Science has made many groundbreaking discoveries through research and experimentation (and sometimes guessing and getting lucky). But sometimes we wonder how certain experiments came to be in the first place. For instance, the study that found the smell of Good ‘n’ Plenty candy increases vaginal blood flow, or the one that asked “What might be the minimal stimulus required to excite a turkey?” With that in mind, we found some of the most bizarre sex and relationship studies to share in the collective what-the-f*ckery. Enjoy... More here (http://www.salon.com/2014/12/14/masturbating_a_dolphin_7_weirdest_things_science_has_taught_us_about_sex_partner/)

[giovonni]

U.S. Drug Shortage Puts Patients in Critical Condition

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This is a measure of the control Big Pharma has over America’s Illness Profit System, where wellness is hardly a factor. We pay more than any of the other system on Earth — 17.2% of GDP –yet we rank 37th in care delivered. Why is that hard to see do you think?

Maryann Mazer-Amirshahi - Live Science

Hospitals and pharmacies around the country are facing severe shortages of essential drugs. These shortages can limit access to critical medications and compromise patient safety, resulting in serious illness and even death. In a 2011 survey, the American Hospital Association reported that 82% of hospitals had to delay therapy due to a drug shortage. And the consequences of drugs shortages go beyond delays. A 2010 report by the Institute for Safe Medication Practices implicated drug shortages in medication errors, adverse drug reactions and several deaths ... Read more (http://www.livescience.com/49120-u-s-drug-shortage-puts-patients-in-critical-condition.html)

[giovonni]

Torture in a Dick Cheney Minute


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I think Dick Cheney is a war criminal, and that he and his dark minions should have been prosecuted in a modern version of the Nuremberg Trials. It’s not going to happen, of course, but I am pretty sure history will condemn them and him especially. This interview gives you his thinking.

Amy Davidson - The New Yorker

What, exactly, has President Barack Obama done to make sure that future Presidents don’t torture prisoners? On “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Dick Cheney, the former Vice-President, made it clear that he, for one, given the chance, would seize waterboarding paraphernalia, and get to it. “I’d do it again in a minute,” he told the host Chuck Todd. John Brennan, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, made it just as clear, in a news conference on Thursday, that the C.I.A. would not stand in the way of future White Houses: “I defer to the policymakers in future times when there is going to be the need to make sure this country stays safe if we face a similar type of crisis.” Neither man would call what the C.I.A. did torture. Each, in his own way, suggested that American torturers have not … Read more (http://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson/torture-dick-cheney-minute?intcid=mod-most-popular)

[giovonni]

The Chinese Century

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Read this article. This is the most important geopolitical essay I have read in 2014, in both the academic or general media. I absolutely agree with this assessment. The decisions we make in the next two years concerning China may define the next generation of the world. If we go the Theocratic Rightist way we are doomed. If we choose policies that are compassionate, inclusionist, and life-affirming stressing wellness, America will continue to enjoy a position of world leadership and the world will be more peaceful.

Joseph E. Stiglitz, PhD - Vanity Fair

When the history of 2014 is written, it will take note of a large fact that has received little attention: 2014 was the last year in which the United States could claim to be the world’s largest economic power. China enters 2015 in the top position, where it will likely remain for a very long time, if not forever. In doing so, it returns to the position it held through most of human history... Read more (http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2015/01/china-worlds-largest-economy)

[giovonni]

Why Congress Gave In to Medical Marijuana

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Here is the latest in the dismantling of Marijuana Prohibition. This is a very interesting trend to watch because it was based on almost entirely bogus information and none of the things predicted to happen should prohibition be ended, based on that bogus reality — increased crime, massive upswing in teen usage, major health destruction, etc — have come to pass. As this report describes this change is also one of the very few policy positions where both voters and politicians agree.

Russell Berman - The Atlantic

Congress may have tried to stop residents of the nation’s capital from being able to light up joints with impunity, but lawmakers retreated last week in another important drug-war front: medical marijuana.

The $1 trillion spending bill that passed last week included a provision that blocks the Justice Department from spending any money to enforce a federal ban on growing or selling marijuana in the 32 states that have moved to legalize it for medical use. It marks a huge shift for Congress, which for years had sided with federal prosecutors in their battle with states over the liberalization of drug laws. “The war on medical marijuana is over,” Bill Piper, a lobbyist with the Drug Policy Alliance, declared to the Los Angeles Times... Read more (http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/a-congressional-surrender-in-the-medical-marijuana-fight/383856/)

[giovonni]

1 in 5 Millennials Live in Poverty, Census Bureau Says

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I deliberately chose a far right assessment of this dreadful situation to show that even the Right recognizes how desperate the situation has gotten. Society is being radically restructured just as the Millenial generation is coming on line, and the results of are very painful. Few millenials, with whom I have spoken, or whose blogs I have read, have the kind of optimistic view of the future that was commonplace before 9/11 and the financial crash. And they are experiencing a level of general poverty that has not been seen in decades.

Ali Meyer - CNS News

One in five young adults – ages 18 to 34 years old – live in poverty, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. (emphasis added)

“More millennials are living in poverty today, and they have lower rates of employment, compared with their counterparts in 1980,” the Census states. “One in five young adults lives in poverty (13.5 million people), up from one in seven (8.4 million people) in 1980.”

The data comes from a new Census release called “Young Adults: Then and Now,” which “illustrates characteristics of the young adult population (age 18-34) across the decades using data from the 1980, 1990 and 2000 Censuses and the 2009-2013 American Community Survey.” ... More here (http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/ali-meyer/1-5-millennials-live-poverty-census-bureau-says)

[giovonni]

FACT SHEET: Charting a New Course on Cuba

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The absurd and counterproductive shunning of Cuba has made Cuban society quite distinctive in the Latin world. Just one example: Cuba’s greatest export is doctors. In the Ebola crisis American provided logistics, which no one else could really do, and Cuba contributed highly skilled physicians who knew how to work in Third World conditions. No other country in Latin America could have done that.

Obama has broken a 50 year political taboo and I think this will be remembered as one of his major achievements.

I have read all kinds of misinformation about this in the conservative media, and even in the general corporate media. It seemed useful to me to publish exactly what is happening here.

The White House

Today, the United States is taking historic steps to chart a new course in our relations with Cuba and to further engage and empower the Cuban people. We are separated by 90 miles of water, but brought together through the relationships between the two million Cubans and Americans of Cuban descent that live in the United States, and the 11 million Cubans who share similar hopes for a more positive future for Cuba... Read more (http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/12/17/fact-sheet-charting-new-course-cuba)

[giovonni]

Time to lay off the doughnuts! Study reveals cops
are the most obese workers in America

Obesity is — pun intended — an enormous problem in the U.S. But I did not not know that fat cops, firefighters, and security guards weigh in as the worst job categories for this problem. But here is the study that makes this point.

Tim Macfarlan - Mail (U.K.)

Their job is to protect and serve – but it seems some police officers interpret this as an excuse to enjoy too many extra servings at the lunch table.

A study has revealed US cops have the highest rates of obesity among any profession in the country.

Along with firefighters and security guards, nearly 41 per cent of boys in blue are obese, according to a study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine... More here (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2877151/Time-lay-doughnuts-Cops-obese-workers-America-according-American-Journal-Preventive-Medicine-study.html)

[giovonni]

Ancient Egyptian technology may be our first line
of defense from hospital infections

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Here is yet another proof that empirically developed insights can be as valid as science. I hope this insight catches on.

Daily Kos

No matter where in the world you find yourself, hospitals are filled with bacteria and viruses and potential infections for patients. Constanza Correa and her colleagues believe they have found a simple, and very old, fix that could greatly reduce inpatients’ chances of infection—replacing bedrails with copper... Read more (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/12/17/1352496/-Ancient-Egyptian-technology-may-be-our-first-line-of-defense-from-hospital-infections?#)

[giovonni]

Air Pollution Exposure in Pregnancy Linked to Autism in Study

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If you know any pregnant women, or any women planning to get pregnant,
you might pass this report on. This is a shocking correlation.

Michelle Fay Cortez - Bloomberg

Women who are exposed to high levels of air pollution during their third trimester of pregnancy may be twice as likely to have an autistic child, a study found.

Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health found the risk of autism rises in parallel with exposure to fine particulate matter during pregnancy, with the biggest effect occurring in the final months of gestation. The results appear in the Dec. 18 edition of Environmental Health Perspectives ... Read more (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-12-18/air-pollution-exposure-in-pregnancy-linked-to-autism-in-study.html)

[giovonni]

Million-Mummy Cemetery Unearthed in Egypt

Egyptian chronology and history were thought to be the best established body of knowledge about the ancient world that we have today. If this story holds up, and some Egyptologists find the idea of a million person unexcavated cemetery hard to accept, the book is about to be rewritten.

Owen Jarus - Live Science

TORONTO — She’s literally one in a million.

The remains of a child, laid to rest more than 1,500 years ago when the Roman Empire controlled Egypt, was found in an ancient cemetery that contains more than 1 million mummies, according to a team of archaeologists from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.

The cemetery is now called Fag el-Gamous, which means “Way of the Water Buffalo,” a title that comes from the name of a nearby road. Archaeologists from Brigham Young University have been excavating Fag el-Gamous, along with a nearby pyramid, for about 30 years. Many of the mummies date to the time when the Roman or Byzantine Empire ruled Egypt, from the 1st century to the 7th century … Read more (http://www.livescience.com/49147-egyptian-cemetery-million-mummies.html)

[giovonni]

269 Sunken Turbines To Make Scotland Home To World’s Largest Tidal Farm

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The other day a reader wrote to ask me, “Whatever happened to ocean tidal electric generation?”
Here is at least part of the answer. It is good news.

Ari Phillips - Climate Progress

The world’s largest tidal energy project, capable of powering nearly 175,000 homes in the U.K. with 400 megawatts of power, will break ground next month in northeast Scotland. Atlantis, majority owner of the MeyGen project, announced that its flagship project had met all the conditions required to start drawing down finance through the U.K.’s Renewable Energy Investment Fund... Read more (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/12/22/3606131/269-sunken-turbines-tidal-power-scotland/)

[giovonni]

US Doctors Warn: Impact Of Reading eBooks During Bed Time

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I have to confess that I read my Kindle every night before going to sleep. I haven’t noticed the symptoms described, I understand the concepts advanced and can see why they could, indeed, affect people. If you also read with an e-reader at night you might assess yourself.

Dennis Engel - The Capital Wide

US doctors warned, excessive reading of eBooks at the time of sleeping damages your sleep and health. Harvard Medical School team members compared reading paper books via eBook’s which emits light and can also cause eye infections.

They found that reading from eBooks may cause many health factors like poor quality sleep and felt tired the next day morning. According to research, people should avoid reading during evening. There are many other dangers of light emits before bedtime which can badly effect your mind and make you lazy... Read more (http://www.thecapitalwide.com/1890/us-doctors-warn-impact-of-reading-ebooks-during-bed-time/)

[giovonni]

Women excised from public life, abused by IS

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Further evidence that fundamentalist religiosity, of whatever denomination, is a mental illness. One of the principle characteristics of this disorder is dysfunctional sexuality, seen particularly in the suppression and sadistic treatment of women.

ZEINA KARAM - The Associated Press

BEIRUT — The gunmen came to the all-girls’ elementary school in the Iraqi city of Fallujah at midday with a special delivery: piles of long black robes with gloves and face veils, now required dress code for females in areas ruled by the Islamic State group.

“These are the winter version. Make sure every student gets one,” one of the men told a supervisor at the school earlier this month.

Extremists are working to excise women from public life across the territory controlled by the Islamic State group, stretching hundreds of kilometers (miles) from the outskirts of the Syrian city of Aleppo in the west to the edges of the Iraqi capital in the east... Read more (http://news.yahoo.com/women-excised-public-life-abused-063315706.html)

[giovonni]

How Détente Looks From Havana

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When I was a young boy it happened that I was in Cuba the night Juan Batista, later overthrown by Castro, carried out the coup that made him head of state. Maybe that is why I have always had an interest in Cuba. Everything I had read or heard about the recent rapprochement between the U.S. and Cuba was written from the U.S. point of view. Here is an excellent piece on what it all looks like from the other end. This is a trend reaching ...

Joshua Jelly-Schapiro - The New Yorker

In Cuba, December 17th marks El Día de San Lázaro. The day is reserved—both by Cuban Catholics and by the far more numerous adepts of Santería, the Yoruba-born faith of its historical African slaves—for the patron saint of healing and rebirth. Thousands of Cubans stream toward a little church in the village of Rincón, twenty miles from Havana, to honor a figure depicted, in little statues and on key chains, as a hunched old man wearing purple and toting a cane. Even in the early years of Fidel Castro’s revolution, when the Comandante’s secular Marxism made religion forbidden, this ritual persisted... Read more (http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/detente-looks-havana)

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Oil price collapse stokes financial crises in producing countries

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As oil prices have dropped I have been watching for shifts in geopolitical trends and in the economies of oil producing countries, particularly those whose economies are utterly dependent on the sale of crude. This essay gives a sense of the trend, and I think this shift is going to produce majors effects in 2015.


Ed Crooks - Financial Times (U.K.)

The most significant development in the world economy in 2014 was the collapse in the price of oil. (emphasis added)

The near-50 per cent drop in the price of internationally traded Brent crude from a high of more than $115 a barrel in June to less than $60 earlier this month has put extra money into consumers’ pockets and boosted fuel-intensive businesses such as airlines, while cutting oil companies’ revenues and stoking financial crises in oil-producing countries including Russia and Venezuela.

The roots of the price collapse lie in the US shale oil boom, which began when small and medium-sized producers worked out in 2009-10 how to apply to oil production the techniques of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing that had already been highly successful for natural gas.

US oil production has soared, from about 5m barrels a day in 2008 to 9.1m b/d this month. For the first three years of the boom, the rise in US output was offset by other supplies coming off the world market, but in 2014, however, there were no more such interruptions.

Meanwhile, global demand growth slowed sharply, in part because of the slowdown in China. World oil consumption rose by 1m b/d in 2012 and 1.3m b/d in 2013, but is expected to have grown by just 600,000 b/d this year. Saudi Arabia and the other members of Opec compounded the price crash on November 27 by declining to cut production to stabilise the market.

The response from companies has been speedy. Oil producers such as ConocoPhillips and services companies such as Schlumberger have announced cuts in capital spending, employment, or both. BP said it was accelerating its existing cost-cutting programme.

The fall in oil prices is expected to be a net positive for the world economy. However, while the gains are widely spread, the pain will be concentrated on oil producers, leading to consequences that could have wider impacts, such as the collapse in energy company junk bond prices.

Harold Hamm, chief executive and majority owner of Continental Resources, warned this week that the “law of unintended consequences” often kicked in when oil prices fell. There are already signs that the market is starting to self-correct. US shale companies are drilling less, meaning that their production growth will slow, and American drivers are rushing back to gas-guzzling cars. The longer oil stays at its present level, though, the more likely it is that those unintended consequences will emerge.

source page (http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/e6b64990-8b58-11e4-ae73-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3N6MRcyaU)

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NSA Drops Christmas Eve Surprise

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Just the way this data dump was done — 1:30 p.m. Christmas Eve — tells you how guilty the NSA knows they are. This is the latest in the data describing the American Surveillance State Trend, a component of the American Police State Trend. There is so much bogus, illegal, deceitful, lying crap in this release that there should be national outrage. There is not, of course, there is mostly silence from the politicians and the media.

Murtaza Hussain - The Intercept

The National Security Agency on Christmas Eve day released twelve years of internal oversight reports documenting abusive and improper practices by agency employees. The heavily redacted reports to the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board found that NSA employees repeatedly engaged in unauthorized surveillance of communications by American citizens, failed to follow legal guidelines regarding the retention of private information, and shared data with unauthorized recipients. (emphasis added)

While the NSA has come under public pressure for openness since high-profile revelations by whistleblower Edward Snowden, the release of the heavily redacted internal reports at 1:30PM on Christmas Eve demonstrates limits to the agency’s attempts to demonstrate transparency. Releasing bad news right before a holiday weekend, often called a “Christmas Eve surprise,” is a common tactic for trying to minimize press coverage... Read more (https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/12/26/nsa-releases-report-internal-abuses-christmas-eve/)

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Can You Guess Which Country is Winning at Conservation?

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Here is a small society that understands why wellness should be the first societal priority.
It is a very satisfying story of good choices.

Esha Chhabra - takepart

Bhutan’s prime minister has been busy test-driving cars in the mountainous country. Why? The Bhutanese are aiming to convert all government-owned vehicles and taxis to electric cars supplied by companies such as Nissan, Tesla, and Mahindra & Mahindra. Earlier this year, they cemented plans with Nissan to provide a few hundred Nissan Leafs to the Himalayan kingdom.

It’s a natural step for a country whose environmental policy has captured global attention. Bhutan’s progressive environmental standards are so impressive, they’re becoming discussion points at climate change and environmental events... Read more (http://www.takepart.com/article/2014/12/24/bhutan-environmental-conservation?cmpid=tpdaily-eml-2014-12-26)

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Pioneering Doctor Working to Reverse Alzheimers
Offers 36 Ways Help Avoid the Disease

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With the notation that I question whether allopathic hormone replacement is the best choice, I think this is a very important health guidance that should be taken seriously. Print out the 18 steps recommended and put them in your bathroom. And check them off until they become habit.

Martha Ture - Alternet/Daily Kos

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) affects more than 5 million Americans; worldwide, it affects more than 30 million people. It is the sixth leading cause of death [3] in the United States, after heart disease, cancers, chronic lower respiratory diseases, stroke and accidents.

In a recently published paper [4], Dale Bredesen at the Buck Institute [5] showed that 9 of 10 patients participating in a program showed reversal of cognitive impairment associated with Alzheimer’s disease. Six of the 10 study participants had had to leave work, or were struggling at their jobs, due to AD; after going through the program, all were able to return to work or to continue working at better performance levels... Read more (http://www.alternet.org/ways-avoid-alzheimers?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark)

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Tidings of Comfort

Once again, Paul Krugman gets it right.

Paul Krugman - The New York Times

Maybe I’m just projecting, but Christmas seemed unusually subdued this year. The malls seemed less crowded than usual, the people glummer. There was even less Muzak in the air. And, in a way, that’s not surprising: All year Americans have been bombarded with dire news reports portraying a world out of control and a clueless government with no idea what to do.

Yet if you look back at what actually happened over the past year, you see something completely different. Amid all the derision, a number of major government policies worked just fine — and the biggest successes involved the most derided policies. You’ll never hear this on Fox News, but 2014 was a year in which the federal government, in particular, showed that it can do some important things very well if it wants to... Read more (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/26/opinion/paul-krugman-tidings-of-comfort.html?_r=0)

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The Countries Where It’s Best And Worst To Be A Woman

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You have read many times in SR or the Explore essays that I believe one of the key meta-trends is gender equality. Here is an accurate report on how this is playing out across the world. Note that the U.S. is not one of the best countries for women. Not even in the top five. If you are an American woman is that o.k. with you?

Ben Schiller - Co.EXIST

Discrimination against women and girls isn’t just a moral issue: It also carries a high economic cost.

There’s an obvious moral case for promoting gender equality around the world, but there’s also an economic one. Countries that give opportunities to girls and women tend to do better economically, while those that don’t do less well. Almost all the least well-off countries in the world rank poorly for gender equality, because, as a new report puts it, “discrimination against women and girls carries a high development cost" ... Read more (http://www.fastcoexist.com/3039235/the-countries-where-its-best-and-worst-to-be-a-woman)

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Half of All Children Will Be Autistic by 2025,
Warns Senior Research Scientist at MIT

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I have been thinking about this story all day. If one out of two babies born in the U.S. will be autistic by 2025, if the present trend continues, what kind of world can that be? In 2013 the number of live births in the U.S. was 3,952,840. as described this would mean 1,976,420 autistic children. Within a generation the care of these millions would consume the nation. This is completely insane. Say the estimate is 50% off. It would still be 19,764,200 in 20 years. All of this damage in the service of profit. If Stephanie Seneff is correct this is should be the leading public debate. Ebola became an hysterical meme on the strength of less than five people being struck. Why, then, is this almost undiscussed? And every effort should be made to reconfirm her study. This dwarfs the Thalidomide baby catastrophe by orders of magnitude.

Alliance for Natural Health

Half of all children will be Autistic by 2025, Warns Senior Research Scientist at MIT. Why? Evidence points to glyphosate toxicity from the overuse of Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide on our food.

For over three decades, Stephanie Seneff, PhD, has researched biology and technology, over the years publishing over 170 scholarly peer-reviewed articles [1]. In recent years she has concentrated on the relationship between nutrition and health, tackling such topics as Alzheimer’s, autism, and cardiovascular diseases, as well as the impact of nutritional deficiencies and environmental toxins on human health... Read more (http://www.anh-usa.org/half-of-all-children-will-be-autistic-by-2025-warns-senior-research-scientist-at-mit/print/)

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Near death, explained

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Here is an excellent survey piece on Near Death, and the survival of consciousness. Mario Beauregard is a well respected researcher in the consciousness research community, and he has brought together many of the major developments addressing the final transition. If you wish to pursue this topic the book I recommend is Dutch cardiologist Pim van Lommell’s book, Consciousness Beyond Life.

I have not read it yet but, on the basis of past papers,
I expect Beauregard’s new book to be a winner as well. This essay was adapted from the book -

Mario Beauregard - Salon

This article was adapted from the new book "Brain Wars", from Harper One.

In 1991, Atlanta-based singer and songwriter Pam Reynolds felt extremely dizzy, lost her ability to speak, and had difficulty moving her body. A CAT scan showed that she had a giant artery aneurysm—a grossly swollen blood vessel in the wall of her basilar artery, close to the brain stem. If it burst, which could happen at any moment, it would kill her. But the standard surgery to drain and repair it might kill her too... Read more (http://www.salon.com/2012/04/21/near_death_explained/)

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Almost 7,000 UK properties to be sacrificed to rising seas

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The U.K. is an island nation that is beginning to face the reality of sea rise and extreme weather. Here is an initial assessment of what the future holds for them. The same situation will obtain throughout coastal America, but few in government are talking about the impact yet.

Damian Carrington - The Guardian (U.K.)

Almost 7,000 homes and buildings will be sacrificed to the rising seas around England and Wales over the next century, according to an unpublished Environment Agency (EA) analysis seen by the Guardian. Over 800 of the properties will be lost to coastal erosion within the next 20 years.

The properties, worth well over £1bn, will be allowed to fall into the sea because the cost of protecting them would be far greater. But there is no compensation scheme for homeowners to enable them to move to a safer location... Read more (http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/dec/28/7000-uk-properties-sacrificed-rising-seas-coastal-erosion)

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Arctic Ocean releasing large volumes of methane

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Methane is an even bigger problem than CO2 because it is more destructive to a healthy atmosphere. This is one of the consequences of climate change that doesn’t get much coverage.

Brett Smith - redOrbit

Researchers from Norway and Russia have found significant amount of the greenhouse gas methane is leaking from an area of the Arctic seabed off the northern coast of Siberia.

According to the team’s report in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences, the melting of permafrost on the seafloor of the Kara Sea is releasing previously-sequestered methane... Read more (http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1113305354/arctic-ocean-releasing-large-volumes-of-methane-122714/)

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Resolving to lose weight this year?
Willpower isn’t your biggest obstacle.

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More than two-thirds (68.8 percent) of adults 20 and older are considered to be overweight. Of that number more than one-third (35.7 percent) are considered to be obese. More than 1 in 20 (6.3 percent) have extreme obesity. For adults, overweight and obesity ranges are determined by using weight and height to calculate a number called the “body mass index” (BMI). BMI is used because, for most people, it correlates with their amount of body fat. For adults a BMI over 30 is considered obese. And this trend looks to continue for the next generation:

Percent of adolescents age 12-19 years who are obese: 18.4% (2009-2010)
Percent of children age 6-11 years who are obese: 18.0% (2009-2010)
Percent of children age 2-5 years who are obese: 12.1% (2009-2010)

We have become a nation of fat people and, as this report explains, once one is in the grip of obesity it is very difficult to extricate oneself.

Helen Leahe - The Washington Post

With a new year comes the annual resolutions to lose extra pounds. If you’ve taken that pledge, I wish you good luck! But chances are you will be one of the 92 percent who fail to reach their new year’s goals. Society tends to blame this failure on a lack of willpower – people don’t lose weight simply because they’re too lazy. But the truth is far more complicated. The only consistently successful weight-loss method for morbidly obese people (those with a body mass index over 40) has been bariatric surgery. Without surgery, morbid obesity is extremely difficult to cure – fewer than 5 percent ever overcome it on their own... Read more (http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/01/01/resolving-to-lose-weight-this-year-willpower-isnt-your-biggest-obstacle/?hpid=z5)

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Researchers at Harvard Reveal 10 Toxins that are Causing ADHD, Autism

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A few days ago I ran a study by an MIT scientist about glyphosates, and their role in autism. I noted at the time that the paper, which made the dramatic prediction that by 2025 50 per cent of live births would be children afflicted with autism, would require additional replicating studies to establish the linkage definitively. I should have said explicitly that, of course, the multi-billion chemical industries whose profits are tied to the use of glyphosates were doing everything in their power, using every compromised scientist on their payrolls or grants lists, to create doubt. Several readers wrote to tell me that the study had been attacked and was flawed. Of course it was attacked. Whether it was flawed only time will reveal.

I also should have been stronger in my main point, to whit: toxins and chemicals in our homes, businesses, malls, hospitals, food, and farms are wreaking havoc on our physical and mental well-being.

Here is another study making this point. And here is the takeaway: No one is going to protect us. The government regulatory agencies are corrupted and compromised. So it is up to us as individuals, as families, and as communities to do the job. It will require diligence, self-education, and determination, but if you and your family are to lead healthy lives there is no other option. In addition to glyphosates this Harvard study lists 10 other toxins you should eliminate from your life and the lives of your family.

Hilda Gadea - Harvard School of Public Health

At the rate that neurodevelopmental disorders have been increasing in diagnosis, a bystander might assume they were contagious. Dr. Phillipe Grandjean, researcher at Harvard School of Public Health, and Dr. Landrigan, of New York’s Mount Sanai, report that “disorders of neurobehavioural development affect 10–15% of all births.” (emphasis added)

Of course marketing by drug companies and increased levels of stressed parenting play a role, but a study published recently in the Lancet Neurology correlates these developmental pathologies with chemicals that are found in our homes, our water, food, and air supply. These chemicals are not just carcinogens that lead to cancer in adult humans, these chemicals also lead to neurological changes in children that drastically change their lives. The researchers say that the neurotoxicants “contribute to a “silent pandemic” of neurobehavioral deficits that is eroding intelligence, disrupting behaviors, and damaging societies.” (emphasis added)

Read more (http://massreport.com/researchers-at-harvard-reveal-10-toxins-that-are-causing-adhd-autism/)

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Culture war in the deep blue sea: Science’s contentious
quest to understand whales and dolphins

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I have been asked to give a talk at a conference being put on 25-28 January by Saybrook University. The topic they have asked me to address is: interspecies communications. In thinking about what to say I have been sensitized to the extreme species-centrism that afflicts society in general, and science particularly. The idea that other beings on this planet are sentient beings seems self-evident to me, but causes many in science and religion extreme discomfort. Part of it is the dominant physicalist paradigm that argues consciousness is the result of physiological processes in the brain, dead brain no consciousness, and beings with “lesser” brains must, it follows in this this world view, lack consciousness. With plants this prejudice is even stronger. Physicalist deny the reality that we live in a matrix of life, and that consciousness is fundamental and spacetime its manifestation.

Excerpted from “The Cultural Lives of Whales and Dolphins” (http://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Lives-Whales-Dolphins/dp/0226895319/?tag=saloncom08-20) by Hal Whitehead and Luke Rendell. Copyright © 2014 by Hal Whitehead and Luke Rendell. Reprinted by arrangement with University Of Chicago Press. All rights reserved.

Hal Whitehead and Luke Rendell - Salon

The idea that culture is important for nonhumans, including whales, has a history of controversy. In the 1930s–40s, biology was given a strong theo­retical basis in the form of evolution through natural selection—natural selection as first suggested by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace and then formalized with genes as the units of selection in the modern syn­thesis. The modern synthesis was not particularly about behavior, but be­havioral theorists in and around the 1970s realized it could be applied to behavior as well as morphological, physiological, or anatomical features. This new field was called behavioral ecology or, largely in the United States, sociobiology. Advocated comprehensively in E. O. Wilson’s book “Sociobiol­ogy” and summarized eloquently by Richard Dawkins in “The Selfish Gene,” be­havioral ecology made a fine job of explaining why animals do what they do. Its application to human behavior was, and is, controversial. For the study of nonhuman behavior, however, behavioral ecology became a hugely successful scientific paradigm. From the 1980s onward, scientific papers describing the behavior of animals invariably started and ended with how the research was situated within the theory of behavioral ecology. We, and most of our scientific colleagues, found the theory very appealing and felt it well explained the behavior of animals. In the field of animal be­havior, behavioral ecology became “normal science,” in the terminology of the philosopher of science, Thomas Kuhn. Suggesting that culture could be a major driver of the behavior of nonhumans challenges this paradigm— making it “revolutionary science,” according to Kuhn—and, as with other challenges, was resisted. However, in contrast to the opposition facing most other scientific revolutions, the attacks are not coming from the stalwarts of “normal science.” Since the inception of their theory, behavioral ecolo­gists and sociobiologists have largely accepted the possibility that culture might have an important role in determining behavior, along with genes... More here (http://www.salon.com/2015/01/02/culture_war_in_the_deep_blue_sea_sciences_contentious_quest_to_understand_whales_and_dolphins/)

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too much of anything is bound to be bad for you ...

Scientific team sounds the alarm on sugar as a source of disease

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This denouement in the Sugar Trend has been coming for a while, the research papers just kept piling up. The Western diet, particularly its American version, between the toxins and the sugar is literally killing us. Read this, and adjust your diet accordingly. This research suggests your life depends upon it.

Barbara Saddick - Medical Press/Chicago Tribune

Is sugar making us sick? A team of scientists at the University of California in San Francisco believes so, and they’re doing something about it. They launched an initiative to bring information on food and drink and added sugar to the public by reviewing more than 8,000 scientific papers that show a strong link between the consumption of added sugar and chronic diseases. (emphasis added)

More here (http://medicalxpress.com/news/2015-01-scientific-team-alarm-sugar-source.html)

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13 species we might have to say goodbye to in 2015

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This is the latest on the Sixth Extinction. Will we wake up in time?
I am no longer sure.

Hyacinth Mascarenhas - The Raw Story

British broadcaster and naturalist Sir David Attenborough once asked: “Are we happy to suppose that our grandchildren may never be able to see an elephant except in a picture book?”

This year marked the 100th anniversary of the death of the last passenger pigeon, Martha, who managed to survive only 14 years in captivity after her species became extinct in the wild. More recently, Angalifu, a 44-year-old northern white rhinoceros, died at the San Diego Zoo, leaving just five other white rhinos worldwide, all in captivity. Chances are our grandchildren will never get to see this remarkable creature...
More here (http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/01/13-species-we-might-have-to-say-goodbye-to-in-2015/)

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Why do we cling to beliefs when they’re threatened by facts ?

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In From One to the Many: The Social Implications of Nonlocal Perception (http://www.explorejournal.com/article/S1550-8307%2814%2900037-8/fulltext) I began exploring what I have come to think of as the psychophysiology of politics and faith. Here is a good essay on another aspect of this trend. The effect of this branch of research is going to be as powerful as money, because it tells the money what to buy.

Cathleen O'Grady - arstechnica.com

People hold beliefs for a complex variety of reasons. Some of these beliefs may be based on facts, but others may be based on ideas that can never be proved or disproven. For example, people who are against the death penalty might base their belief partly on evidence that the death penalty does not reduce violent crime (which could later be shown to be false), and partly on the notion that the death penalty violates a fundamental human right to life. The latter is an unfalsifiable belief, because it can’t be changed purely by facts.

According to a new study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, unfalsifiability is an important component of both religious and political beliefs. It allows people to hold their beliefs with more conviction, but it also alows them to become more polarized in those beliefs...
Read more
(http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/12/why-do-we-cling-to-beliefs-when-theyre-threatened-by-facts/)

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Joseph Stiglitz: Economics Has to Come to Terms
With Wealth and Income Inequality

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Here is a very wise assessment of the economy by Nobel Laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz. Like Paul Krugman he actually see what the relevant, as opposed to fashionable, issues are, and addresses them. He also make some very nuanced comments here that are worth your attention about Thomas Piketty’s analysis.

Lynn Parramore - truthout

Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz has been writing about America’s economically divided society since the 1960s. His recent book, The Price of Inequality, argues that this division is holding the country back, a topic he has also explored in research supported by the Institute. On December 4th, he chaired the eighth Institute for New Economic Thinking Seminar Series at Columbia University, in which he presented a paper, “New Theoretical Perspectives on the Distribution of Income and Wealth Among Individuals.” In the interview that follows, Stiglitz explores the themes of this paper, the work of Thomas Piketty, and the need for the field of economics to come to terms with the growing gulf between haves and have-nots... Read more (http://truth-out.org/news/item/28351-joseph-stiglitz-economics-has-to-come-to-terms-with-wealth-and-income-inequality)

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Jerry Brown’s bold climate pledge: California to go 50 percent renewable in just 15 years

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This potentially is a very big deal, and wonderful news. Jerry Brown is probably the most experienced governmental executive officer in the United States. The myth of democracy is that any citizen who can mount a campaign is qualified for the office they seek. Yet, there are all too many examples of elected individuals incompetent or corrupted in their jobs.

Brown is an antipode, much more an exemplar of the Founders’ cultural vision: A citizen dedicated to ethical competent public service. It takes time to learn how to make democracy work, and Brown has been at it long enough to become good at it, starting with seeing what the real issues are. California is a bellwether. Here is my prediction: If California can convert and still sustain its economy, or better improve it, every Blue value state will follow quickly, with the Red value states tagging along falling further behind. Those political entities that make the transition out of carbon first will have an enormous advantage.

Lindsay Abrams - Salon

California Gov. Jerry Brown’s unprecedented fourth term in office is going to be all about fighting climate change.

In an inaugural address delivered Monday afternoon, the governor celebrated the “bold commitments to sustain our environment, help the neediest and build for our future” made since he first took office 40 years ago, and announced his intentions to push those reforms further, with an emphasis on environmental goals.

Specifically — and in a move that’s already being hailed by environmental groups — Brown pledged to help California derive a full 50 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2030. That’s a big step up from the state’s already commendable mandate for utilities to purchase a third of their energy from renewables by 2020, which it’s already on track to meet... Read more (http://www.salon.com/2015/01/05/jerry_browns_bold_climate_pledge_california_to_go_50_percent_renewable_in_just_15_years/)

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Studies Show Pot Legalization Has Not Impacted Teen Use

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Cruising through the websites that create the Theocratic Right alternative reality bubble, there is a clear claim that as a result there has been greatly increased teen usage. That did not jibe with the studies I had seen. In fact, matters were exactly opposite from the Red value disinformation. Here is a pretty good statement of the case based on facts. When contrasted with what is being purveyed it is an amazing example of willful ignorance.

Lizabeth Paulat - truthout

When Colorado and Washington State legalized the use of marijuana, there were a number of people who decried the dangers of the substance. Most contended that legalizing the substance would increase teen use and highlighted marijuana as a gateway drug.

While there is no question that studies have shown that marijuana can cause paranoia and memory issues in some people, a few years on the data is in, and as it turns out, it’s not what the naysayers expected...
Read more (http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/28378-studies-show-pot-legalization-has-not-impacted-teen-use)

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Beautiful wind turbine trees generate clean energy in urban environments

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This is very good news. As a technology advances aesthetics emerge as a consideration. Design and science merge. This is an example. Click through and there is a video showing the generators in operation. Wind is becoming a healthy industry not an alternative.

Megan Treacy - treehugger

Often, one of the major complaints about clean energy installations is that they're eye sores. Large wind turbines or solar arrays are considered obstructive to views.

Designers and researchers have come up with a few different ideas to solve this problem, like see-through solar panels that can be used as windows in buildings, white solar panels that can blend in with building facades or vertical wind turbines that blend into the scenery like these beautiful turbine trees created by New Wind... Read here (http://www.treehugger.com/wind-technology/beautiful-wind-turbine-trees-generate-clean-energy-urban-environments.html)

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The U.S. has more jails than colleges...
Here’s a map of where those prisoners live

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Here is the latest on the American Gulag Trend. This is one of the reasons we can no longer claim the moral highground, and every nation in the village of humanity knows this about us.

Click on the line at the very beginning and it will take you to an interactive map of the U.S., where you can get the incarceration number for your county. It is quite revealing.

Christopher Ingraham - The Washington Post

There were 2.3 million prisoners in the U.S. as of the 2010 Census. It's often been remarked that our national incarceration rate of 707 adults per every 100,000 residents is the highest in the world, by a huge margin.

We tend to focus less on where we're putting all those people. But the 2010 Census tallied the location of every adult and juvenile prisoner in the United States. If we were to put them all on a map, this is what they would look like... Go here (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/01/06/the-u-s-has-more-jails-than-colleges-heres-a-map-of-where-those-prisoners-live/)

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Food stamp benefit cut may force a million people into ‘serious hardship’

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Here is some more on the largely invisible food crisis going on in this country. To quote the piece, and they have buried the lead:

“Claire Benjamin, a spokeswoman for the advocacy group Food Policy Action, said that waiving work requirements on top of those cuts would have a “sobering and disproportionate effect on very poor individuals.”

“Charity organizations simply cannot feed an additional 1 million people this year,” she said.

This is a shameful and utterly unnecessary trend. It has been deliberately created and maintained. If you can do anything to alleviate it, please do.

Ned Resnikoff - Aljazeera America

Food stamp eligibility rules are tightening in states across the country, causing up to 1 million current recipients to lose benefits and resulting in “serious hardship for many,” according to a new report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

The new benefit restrictions will take effect as various states reimpose work requirements they had let lapse in the aftermath of the financial crisis. Able-bodied adults without dependents (referred to as ABAWDs in U.S. Department of Agriculture jargon) may typically access year-round food stamp only if they are either working at least 20 hours per week or participating in a federally approved workfare program. However, states with elevated unemployment levels may apply for a waiver on these rules... Read more (http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/1/6/report-one-millionpeoplecouldlosefoodstampbenefitsinnextyear.html)

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The Police in America are Becoming Illegitimate

I don’t know how I missed this when it came out in December, but I did. I am running it now because it describes a very worrisome trend: How the agencies of law enforcement are viewed by the citizens. A democracy can not long survive when the police and the people are at odds, and this is happening. This very good essay by Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone, a leading culture voice, is an example of what I mean. I mention the publication to say it has reached that level. The only solution that will work and endure is to change the police, and the philosophy of policing so that people respect them, and welcome them into the community. You cannot just bully people and hope democracy will survive.

Matt Taibbi - RollingStone

Nobody’s willing to say it yet. But after Ferguson, and especially after the Eric Garner case that exploded in New York yesterday after yet another non-indictment following a minority death-in-custody, the police suddenly have a legitimacy problem in this country.

Law-enforcement resources are now distributed so unevenly, and justice is being administered with such brazen inconsistency, that people everywhere are going to start questioning the basic political authority of law enforcement. And they’re mostly going to be right to do it, and when they do, it’s going to create problems that will make the post-Ferguson unrest seem minor... Read more (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-police-in-america-are-becoming-illegitimate-20141205)

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Nashvillian’s solar device helps vendors in Africa

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Mawuli Tse is doing what the U.S. government should be doing. As this lovely article describes Tse identified a leverage point where a small investment could make a big change. Like micro-lending these very local tailored solutions make a large difference, and are never forgotten.

Jamie McGee - The Tennessean

Nashville resident Mawuli Tse has brought solar power to more than 600 homes in urban parts of Ghana and nearby countries through his company, Solar Light.

Now, he is using energy from the sun to help those in more rural communities — this time through street vendor umbrellas and a mobile phone charging kit.

With the help of a $100,000 grant from the United States African Development Foundation and General Electric, Tse is creating a portable charger powered by solar panels that fit on top of large umbrellas that often accompany street vendors’ stands... Read more (http://www.tennessean.com/story/money/2015/01/09/nashvillians-solar-device-helps-vendors-africa/21527777/)

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Is This Country Crazy?

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More than once I have written in SR about exactly the experiences described in this report and, if you travel widely outside the U.S. it’s very possible you have had these experiences as well. If we tell ourselves the truth we should admit that there is something in our culture that seems to incapacitate our ability to see what we are doing from anyone else’s point of view. I really really dislike having to apologize and be embarrassed by some over-reaching corporate driven imperialism perpetrated by American policy.

Ann Jones - The Huffington Post

Americans who live abroad — more than six million of us worldwide (not counting those who work for the U.S. government) — often face hard questions about our country from people we live among. Europeans, Asians, and Africans ask us to explain everything that baffles them about the increasingly odd and troubling conduct of the United States. Polite people, normally reluctant to risk offending a guest, complain that America’s trigger-happiness, cutthroat free-marketeering, and “exceptionality” have gone on for too long to be considered just an adolescent phase. Which means that we Americans abroad are regularly asked to account for the behavior of our rebranded “homeland,” now conspicuously in decline and increasingly out of step with the rest of the world... Read more (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ann-jones/is-this-country-crazy_b_6451880.html)

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Losing marijuana business, Mexican cartels push heroin and meth

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This report gives us very useful information about the drug trade. Those committed to legalization repeatedly said that it would have a powerful effect of taking the American marijuana market away from the Mexican drug cartels. In contrast Prohibitionists claimed tha legalization would just result in the cartels taking over American growing. Yet again the Prohibitionist have been proven wrong. But this report also tells a second story. Heroin and Meth are now coming from Mexico. The net-net of all this is the reaffirmation of what alcohol prohibition should have taught us, but which were too committed to our prejudice to learn: Bad social policies produce corruption when they are at variance with what a significant population want to do. We need to sort out what each of these drugs really is, and represents, and to develop policies that are focused on wellness not incarceration.

Nick Miroff - The Washington Post

SAN YSIDRO, Calif. — Mexican traffickers are sending a flood of cheap heroin and methamphetamine across the U.S. border, the latest drug seizure statistics show, in a new sign that America’s marijuana decriminalization trend is upending the North American narcotics trade.

The amount of cannabis seized by U.S. federal, state and local officers along the boundary with Mexico has fallen 37 percent since 2011, a period during which American marijuana consumers have increasingly turned to the more potent, higher-grade domestic varieties cultivated under legal and quasi-legal protections in more than two dozen U.S. states... Read more (http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/losing-marijuana-business-mexican-cartels-push-heroin-and-meth/2015/01/11/91fe44ce-8532-11e4-abcf-5a3d7b3b20b8_story.html)

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What Cats and Dogs Can See that Humans Can’t: You Won’t Believe it!

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Kerri Fivecoat-Campbell - PetMD

Have you ever felt that your cat or dog can see something you don’t? Well, you may be right, according to a new study.

Cats, dogs, and other mammals are thought to see in ultraviolet light, which opens up a whole different world than the one we see, the study explains.
Seeing the World in Ultraviolet Light

UV light is the wave length beyond the visible light from red to violet that humans can see. Humans have a lens that blocks UV from reaching the retina. It was previously thought that most mammals have lenses similar to humans... Read more (http://www.petmd.com/news/health-science/what-cats-and-dogs-can-see-humans-cant-you-wont-believe-it-31380?)

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Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke on the Catholic “Man-crisis” and what to do about it

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I think a major schism is forming in the Roman Catholic Church, and this report is one of the data points that lead me to this. Cardinal Leo Burke, notable for his frilly lacy vestments, his virulent distaste for homosexuality and, as this report reveals, his very strange views on sex in general represents the old church of Paul and Benedict. He is not alone and it will be interesting to see how his wing of the church deals with what Francis’ is doing. You will note that this Theocratic Rightist site published this as a laudatory interview. Also observe that this is really an article about the distorted sexuality of men operating under color of religious authority.

From The Emangelization

Recently, I had the great honor to have an audience with His Eminence Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke to discuss the state of Catholic men in the United States.

Here is the full transcript:

Matthew James Christoff of the New Emangelization Project: Your Eminence, we are delighted and blessed to be here with you. Today, we are here to talk about the state of Catholic men in the United States and how we might draw more men into the New Evangelization. Maybe to start, how would Your Eminence describe the state of men in the Catholic Church today?

Read more (http://www.newemangelization.com/uncategorized/cardinal-raymond-leo-burke-on-the-catholic-man-crisis-and-what-to-do-about-it/)

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Orthodox Jewish Newspaper Photoshops Female Leaders out of Paris March

Each of the three Abrahamic religions, has a percentage of fundamentalists. Although the various fundamentalist sects have very different interpretations of their religion they all share a universal profile: self-righteousness, a sense of entitlement, a cultivated grievance about being persecuted. And, most particularly, a deep sexual dysfunctionality which is linked to fear. Fear of masturbation, homosexuality and, particularly, a fear of the existential power of women. This results in a compulsive need to dominate women and control their bodies and sexuality. It is because of this universal profile that I have concluded that fundamentalism is a mental disorder cloaked in a religious gestalt.

This story, as bizarre as it is, and the bizarreness is not a bug but a feature of fundamentalism,
illustrates just how deranged this can get.

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Beth Ethier - Slate

An impressive array of world leaders came together for the unity march in Paris on Sunday, paying tribute to those who had died in the previous week’s violence. One Orthodox Jewish newspaper, however, decided that the inspiring image of presidents and prime ministers arm-in-arm could use a little tweaking. The editors of HaMevaser used Photoshop to remove all of the visible women from the scene in their version of the image... More here (http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/01/13/orthodox_charlie_hebdo_photoshop_newspaper_removes_female_leaders_from_paris.html)

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The rate of sea-level rise is ‘far worse than previously thought,’ study says

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Melting Greenland Ice Sheet

SR published its first story on climate change in 1991, a paper on ice coring that appeared in American Scientist. Over the many years since all the basic processes first predicted, temperature rise, sea rise, ocean acidification have been validated, and the one variable that has stood out about climate change is the collapse of the time line. Things projected to occur 500 years in the future, became 200 years, became 100, then 35. Here’s the latest on sea rise.

Terrence McCoy - The Washington Post

Researchers have come up with a new and improved way of measuring the rise in the sea level, and the news is not good: The seas have risen dramatically faster over the last two decades than anyone had known.

For hundreds of years, the seas were measured by more or less the equivalent of plopping a yard stick into the ocean and seeing if the ocean went up or down. But now, that method looks to be outdated.

According to a new study published on Wednesday in Nature, the new method involves an advanced statistical model that analyzes all of the factors contributing to sea rise. It has yielded what appears to be a much more accurate picture of the oceans and suggests previous studies had severely underestimated the acceleration of recent sea rise... Read more (http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/01/15/the-rate-of-sea-level-rise-is-far-worse-than-previously-thought-study-says/)

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two related stories ...

Majority Of US Public College Students Poor Adequate For Lunch Help: Report

The problems of poverty and hunger do not end with elementary, secondary or, as it turns out, college level. This is not how a nation creates a healthy democracy. It a measure of the toughness and intention of these kids that they get through school and into college in spite of the obstacles.

Alex Dobuzinskis - Breaking News/Reuters

The share of public college students who qualify for free of charge or decreased lunch in the United States has grown to 51 percent, in an indication of increasing poverty, according to a report released on Friday.

The trouble is most acute in Mississippi exactly where 71 % of students had been in that category, according to the report from the Southern Education Foundation... Read more (http://www.uniongazette.com/entertainment/majority-of-us-public-college-students-poor-adequate-for-lunch-help-report-h2505.html)


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Majority of US public school students are in poverty; 61 percent in Oklahoma

We are destroying our future. I don’t know how else to describe what I see going on, and it is the most amazing thing to watch. I see these stories and think: how is it possible that that the people who created this systemic disaster don’t understand that seeing everyone has enough healthy basic food to eat and an income above sheer poverty is smart social policy?

Children are a nation’s literal future. Well-educated individuals are more desirable as citizens. Students in poverty don’t do well. Students with hunger don’t learn well. Study after study demonstrates this. And notice that the problem is worst in the Red value states.

I deliberately chose to publish this story using a conservative Red value state newspaper as the source.

Tulsa World

For the first time in at least 50 years, a majority of U.S. public school students come from low-income families, according to a new analysis of 2013 federal data, a statistic that has profound implications for the nation.

The Southern Education Foundation reports that 51 percent of students in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade were eligible under the federal program for free and reduced-price... More here (http://www.tulsaworld.com/washingtonpost/news/majority-of-us-public-school-students-are-in-poverty-percent/article_4e312a84-53a0-58ac-81af-ab4493586e2b.html)

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Our Ally Saudi Arabia Beheaded 10 People This Month

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Just another day in Saudi Arabia where people are whipped or beheaded routinely.
Credit: Twitter

One of the nastier unintended consequences of our enslavement to carbon energy is that it has aligned us with Saudi Arabia, culturally a late 12th century monarchy of religious fundamentalists. We decry the beheading of journalists, and should, but we say nothing about the benighted behavior of Saudi Arabia, a nation that only exists because of oil addiction. It should also be noted that Saudi Arabia, from 911 onwards has been one of the leading funders of Islamic terrorism.

David Keyes - The Daily Beast

American diplomats pay lip service to human rights while tens of billions of dollars in arms are shipped to the Kingdom of Hate, where you can be executed for ‘sorcery’ or tweeting about Islam ... Read more (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/18/our-ally-saudi-arabia-beheaded-10-people-this-month.html)

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Mass surveillance not effective for finding terrorists

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NSA computers

The entire premise for the surveillance state is that it makes people safer. Politicians parrot this endlessly. This essay by a mathematician who actually understands the issues involved makes the case this is just another paranoid lie designed to overcome civil liberty arguments. His logic is irrefutable, and recent history makes his point as well.

Ray Corrigan - NewScientist (U.K.)

In response to the terrorist attacks in Paris, the UK government is redoubling its efforts to engage in mass surveillance.

Prime minister David Cameron wants to reintroduce the so-called snoopers’ charter – properly, the Communications Data Bill – which would compel telecoms companies to keep records of all internet, email and cellphone activity. He also wants to ban encrypted communications services ... Read more (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26801-mass-surveillance-not-effective-for-finding-terrorists.html#.VL4rBi4nKSo)

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‘Designer babies’ debate should start, scientists say

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In 2006, after following genetic engineering for some years I realized where this trend was headed and that year I wrote a paper, Homo Superiorus (http://www.explorejournal.com/article/S1550-8307%2806%2900027-9/fulltext) (My schoolboy Latin was not quite up to the task it should be Homo Superior). In any case at the time readers wrote to tell me I was alarmist in thinking that we were at the opening of a trend to create a new sub-species of human. My concern was that over a few generations the rich would have access to these technologies, and a permanent uber class of Homo Superiors would emerge. If you consider the wealth inequality that is also reported in today’s edition you can see exactly how this is going to happen, and I have no doubt that it will.

James Gallagher - BBC News (U.K.)

Rapid progress in genetics is making “designer babies” more likely and society needs to be prepared, leading scientists have told the BBC.

Dr Tony Perry, a pioneer in cloning, has announced precise DNA editing at the moment of conception in mice.

He said huge advances in the past two years meant “designer babies” were no longer HG Wells territory.

Other leading scientists and bioethicists argue it is time for a serious public debate on the issue.

Designer babies – genetically modified for beauty, intelligence or to be free of disease – have long been a topic of science fiction.

Dr Perry, who was part of the teams to clone the first mice and pigs, said the prospect was still fiction, but science was rapidly catching up to make elements of it possible... Read more (http://www.bbc.com/news/health-30742774)

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two related items ...

Population Implosion? Low Fertility and Policy Responses in the European Union

In terms of Europe where nations such a France, U.K. and Germany have huge unassimilated minorities the fact that the Muslim minority has a birth rate of 4.5 children per couple while the indigenous Europeans are below the sustainable threshold of 1.85 live births (or 2.1 by some calculation). Over time that means the percentage of the population that is not assimilated increases dramatically, while the percentage of native Europeans declines. In the U.S. where assimilation is far better this disparity still has consequences. It plays out as Caucasians become a smaller and smaller portion of the total population.

Rand Corporation

Across Europe, birth rates are falling and family sizes are shrinking. The total fertility rate is now less than two children per woman in every member nation in the European Union (see Figure 1). As a result, European populations are either growing very slowly or beginning to decrease.

At the same time, low fertility is accelerating the ageing of European populations. As a region, Europe in 2000 had the highest percentage of people age 65 or older — 15 percent. According to data from the U.S. Bureau of the Census, this percentage is expected to nearly double by 2050... More here (http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9126/index1.html)

***

Declining Population Could Reduce Global Economic Growth By 40%

I haven’t done much about the trend covered in this report because there hasn’t been much new data. But now there is. The fact is that no advanced technology nation has a sustainable birth rate. This is a huge deal in a number of ways (See the next story). This report concentrates on just one aspect. The decline of population will mean a declining pool of labor, and that is going to have a very big effect on global growth. That is not entirely bad because unlimited growth is destroying the environment, at least as it is currently practiced. But it also means decreasing standards of living, again unless we change our economic model and make wellness the first priority with profit made within that paradigm.

Nick Timiraos - Wall Street Journal

Declining population growth that shrinks the pool of available labor over the next 50 years will reduce by 40% the rate of growth in global economic output for the world’s 20 largest economies compared to the past 50 years, according to a new study... Read more (http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/01/14/declining-population-could-reduce-global-economic-growth-by-40/)

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Guantanamo Prisoner Diary: ‘We’re Gonna Teach You About Great American Sex’

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This is what America has become, what we are known for. When I was a young man we used to read stories like this about Soviet prisons, and the commentators always made a point of saying how morally bankrupt the USSR was, and this was proof. Now such stories, this one that has been republished all over the world, are about us. I cannot convey how much I dislike that. That’s not the shining city on the hill, that’s the torture chamber in the Caribbean.

Britta Sandberg - Der Spiegel (Germany)

Mauritanian national Mohamedou Ould Slahi has been held at Guantanamo for 12 years now without trial and despite a dearth of evidence. A diary he kept of his torture is now being published around the world...
More here (http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/excerpts-from-guantanamo-diary-of-mohamedou-ould-slahi-a-1013724.html)

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Things Are Not Looking Good For California’s Big Trees

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For almost 30 years one of the best things I experienced when I lived in California was the time spent backpacking and hiking in the Big Trees areas. They are so magnificent and, when you realize that some of these trees are over a 1,000 years old, it is quite humbling. It is a magical experience to spend time there.

Beginning in the late 80s we began to notice that in some areas the trees seemed to be under stress and, by the mid 90s it was clear many were dying. Now for the first time we have real data. It makes me very sad.

Ari Phillips - Think Progress

A group of California scientists published a study this week comparing forest surveys from the 1920s and ’30s to recent U.S. Forest Service data. What they found was not encouraging for the future of the state’s renowned large trees. Published on Tuesday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study found that drought, changes in land use, and fire suppression efforts have caused the number of trees larger than two feet in diameter to decline by 50 percent in a 46,000 square mile area of the state’s forest they surveyed... Read more (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/01/21/3613620/californias-big-trees-are-suffering-badly/)

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Building Sponge City: Redesigning LA For Long-Term Drought

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Here is some more good news about cities. Finally L.A. is beginning to deal realistically with water conservation. This is being closely watched by other cities and represents a real attempt to rethink water, which is still basically designed on the basis of Roman engineering.

From NPR

For thousands of years, city planners have engineered water into submission — think aqueducts.

“That’s really the core of modern water infrastructure,” says David Sedlak, the author of Water 4.0. “It’s the ancient idea that the Romans gave us. Collecting water somewhere on the outskirts of the city, sending it with gravity into the city, and then when we’re done with it, we put it back underground in a sewer and send on its way." It’s the way most cities are designed. And you can hear the echoes of that ancient plumbing in Los Angeles, where rain answered prayers last month amid an epic drought. But that precious water is wasted when it slides off roofs … Read or listen to here (http://www.npr.org/2015/01/22/378844314/building-sponge-city-redesigning-la-for-long-term-drought)

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Three Ideas for Inclusive Cities: How Raleigh, Seattle,
and Others Are Bringing Everyone Into the Fold

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Here is the latest on the devolution of power to cities, one of the most fascinating political trends in the U.S.. Because the Federal government and often the state governments are so corrupt — three Speakers of state legislatures have been indicted recently — the real action centers are the cities. Cities and town governments don’t have the option of spending most of their time posturing and bloviating, they actually have to get something done. Here is a good piece on what is happening in several large cities. I take this as excellent news.

Shannan Stoll - Yes!

1. City ID cards for everyone who needs one.

in: New Haven, Conn.; San Francisco, Oakland, Richmond, and Los Angeles, Calif.; Asbury Park, Mercer County, Trenton, and Princeton, N.J.; New York; Washington, D.C.

While immigration policy is contested on the national stage, many local governments are taking steps to improve the lives of the undocumented people living and working in their communities.

From Los Angeles to New Haven, 11 cities across the country have instituted municipal ID programs. Now New York, a city with an estimated half-million undocumented immigrants, is preparing to launch the country’s largest program in January 2015.

With the new city IDs, New Yorkers, regardless of immigration status, will be able to apply for a job or library card, access health services ... Read more (http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/cities-are-now/three-ideas-for-inclusive-cities)

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Solar trees are taking root around the world

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Here is the latest on the solar tree technology that garnered such a strong response when I ran the initial story. I am going to explore whether I could do this on my own property, the scale is wrong, whether we could do it on the island.

Amihai Zippor - The Grapevine

Imagine hiking on a path knowing there’s a tree that will put you in touch with the world.

The Sologic eTree is a public space made from 100 percent sustainable materials, that provides rest, shade, free WiFi and a place to cool your water.

“The eTree is like a tent open on all sides and gives without asking for anything. It says come, sit down in the shade, and provides solar energy for cooling water, charging your batteries, and connects you to the universe with WiFi,” Israeli entrepreneur Michael Lasry told From the Grapevine... Read more (http://www.fromthegrapevine.com/innovation/solar-trees-taking-root-around-world)

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Ebola Is Wiping Out the World’s Gorillas

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As you read this very sad story about the gorillas please keep in mind that the entire Ebola crisis resulted from deforestation. It is another case study in what happens when profit is your only priority.

Abby Haglage - The Daily Beast

While coverage of the current Ebola epidemic in West Africa remains centered on the human populations in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, wildlife experts’ concern is mounting over the virus’ favorite victims: great apes.

Guinea, where the epidemic originated, has the largest population of chimpanzees in all of West Africa. Liberia is close behind. Central Africa is home to western lowland gorillas, the largest and most widespread of all four species. Due to forest density, the number of those infected is unknown. But with hundreds of thousands of ape casualties from Ebola, it’s doubtful they’ve escaped unscathed.Animal activists are ramping up efforts to find an Ebola vaccine for great apes, but with inadequate international support for human research, their mission could be seen as competing with one to save humans. Experts from the Jane Goodall Institute of Canada insist such apprehension would be misplaced...
Read more (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/01/22/ebola-is-wiping-out-the-world-s-gorillas.html)

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two related items ...

Princeton Study: U.S. No Longer An Actual Democracy

Well, I don’t see how you could make it any plainer than this. I now have two grandsons — two years for one, one month for the other — and I wonder what kind of country, if they stay in this country, the United States will be when they grow to adulthood. It seems very doubtful it will be the democratic republic of my youth, in substance whatever hollow forms may remain.

Brendan James - TPM

A new study from Princeton spells bad news for American democracy—namely, that it no longer exists.

Asking “[w]ho really rules?” researchers Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page argue that over the past few decades America’s political system has slowly transformed from a democracy into an oligarchy, where wealthy elites wield most power.

Using data drawn from over 1,800 different policy initiatives from 1981 to 2002, the two conclude that rich, well-connected individuals on the political scene now steer the direction of the country, regardless of or even against the will of the majority of voters... More here (http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/princeton-experts-say-us-no-longer-democracy)

***

The true cost of Citizens United: The Roberts Court’s darkest hour revisited

In my opinion Citizens United is perhaps the worst single Supreme Court decision in our history — even worse than Nat Turner or making Bush president — because it has changed the fundamental nature of our democracy. One could even say it marks the end of our democracy. Here is a very good assessment of why I say this.

Sean McElwee and Liz Kennedy - Salon

It’s been five years since the Supreme Court decided Citizens United, which allowed unlimited corporate money into the political system and increased the domination of democracy by the wealthy elite. Money has indeed overwhelmed the system since 2008. This rise of big money in politics has endangered democracy and emboldened those who want to put democracy up for sale to aggressively attack the modest campaign spending regulations that still remain... Read more (http://www.salon.com/2015/01/24/the_true_cost_of_citizens_united_the_roberts_courts_darkest_hour_revisited/)

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Day Tripping: Benefits Seen in Psychedelics

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Almost 50 years ago a friend of mine Andrija Puharich wrote a book, entitled The Sacred Mushroom, which argued that modern pharmaceutical medicine had much to learn from the ancient shamanic use of psychedelics in psychiatric disorders. Physicians such as the late Walter Pancke and Richard Ingrasci picked up this line of research and they too found that such timeless natural substances could indeed play a significant healing role.

All of this research was suppressed in the madness of the War on Drugs. As a result tens of thousands of soldiers and marines from Viet Nam to Afghanistan were unable to get access to substances that could have materially aided their recovery from the horrors and stresses of war. Now, once again, as this report describes, these vectors of research have re-emerged. Let us hope that this time they are not suppressed.

Paula Mejia - Newsweek

For centuries, shamans and healers have been using psychedelics in sacramental rituals in the belief that the substances have healing qualities and can lead to meaningful spiritual experiences. It turns out contemporary science may back these ancient claims.

A new study conducted by the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Public Health found that participants who took controlled doses of “classic” psychedelics – magic mushrooms, DMT, mescaline and LSD – had significantly reduced incidences of suicidal thoughts, suicide attempts and psychological distress in the long term... Read more (http://www.newsweek.com/day-tripping-benefits-seen-use-psychedelics-301847)

[giovonni]

Changing Our DNA through Mind Control ?

Bret Stetka, MD - Scientific American

“I think, therefore I am” is perhaps the most familiar one-liner in western philosophy. Even if the stoners, philosophers and quantum mechanically-inclined skeptics who believe we’re living an illusion are right, few existential quips hit with such profound, approachable simplicity. The only catch is that in Descartes’ opinion, “we” – our thoughts, our personalities, our “minds” – are mostly divorced from our bodies … Read more (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/changing-our-dna-through-mind-control/)

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Oil-rich Saudis find new help in struggle to delay action on climate change: Cheap gas

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A Saudi Arabian oil installation

Sometimes I wonder if the human species is just too stupid and greedy to survive.
Here is the kind of story that leads me to these depressing thoughts.

Joby Warrick - The Washington Post

As the ruler of a country that sits atop 300 billion barrels of oil, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah was no fan of proposals to limit the burning of fossil fuels. During most of his reign, the king’s chief envoy to climate talks was a ­global-warming skeptic who boasted of his success at scuttling climate treaties.

But it was in the monarch’s final months that Saudi officials hit upon a more effective way to knock the clean-energy movement off its tracks: cheap gas ... Read more (http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/oil-rich-saudis-find-a-new-ally-in-struggle-to-delay-action-on-climate-change-cheap-gas/2015/01/26/4d277170-9cc7-11e4-bcfb-059ec7a93ddc_story.html)

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The Spectacle of Illiteracy and the Crisis of Democracy

Henry Giroux has written an important essay on America’s state of consciousness. His thinking closely parallels my own, as you will recognize from reading SR. The only thing that is going to stop what is happening is the choices of we ourselves. We face a crisis of beingness, individual and collective.

Henry A. Giroux - truthout

This is an excerpt from Zombie Politics and Culture in the Age of Casino Capitalism, by Henry Giroux.

C. Wright Mills argued 50 years ago that one important measure of the demise of vibrant democracy and the corresponding impoverishment of political life can be found in the increasing inability of a society to translate private troubles to broader public issues. [1] This is an issue that both characterizes and threatens any viable notion of democracy in the United States in the current historical moment ... Read more (http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/28715-the-spectacle-of-illiteracy-and-the-crisis-of-democracy)

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Iceland rises as its glaciers melt from climate change

http://www.schwartzreport.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Iceland-suplift-instrument1-300x225.jpg
This global positioning satellite receiver is part of Iceland’s network of 62 such receivers that geoscientists are using to detect movements of the Icelandic crust that are as small as one millimeter per year. Langjökull glacier can be seen in the background.
Credit: Richard A. Bennett/ University of Arizona


Here is the latest on rise of the Iceland crust as the result of ice-melt. Like the plates in our skulls the plates of the earth are interlinked and interdependent. The uplift of the Iceland plate will result in accommodations by the other tectonic plates, and possibly more earthquakes and volcanism. This is a kind of second stage result of climate change.

Science Daily/The University of Arizona

Journal Reference:

Kathleen Compton, Richard A. Bennett, Sigrun Hreinsdóttir. Climate driven vertical acceleration of Icelandic crust measured by CGPS geodesy. Geophysical Research Letters, 2015; DOI: 10.1002/2014GL062446
(http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014GL062446/abstract;jsessionid=5F7283F8FEA751CDC8234A2CB489A9FD.f01t01)

Earth’s crust under Iceland is rebounding as global warming melts the island’s great ice caps, a University of Arizona-led team reports in an upcoming issue of Geophysical Research Letters.

The paper is the first to show the current fast uplift of the Icelandic crust is a result of accelerated melting of the island’s glaciers and coincides with the onset of warming that began about 30 years ago, the scientists said.

Some sites in south-central Iceland are moving upward as much as 1.4 inches (35 mm) per year — a speed that surprised the researchers... Read more (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/01/150129113719.htm)

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A Special Kind of Plastic Pipe Could Be the Solution for California’s Water Woes

http://www.takepart.com/sites/default/files/styles/landscape_main_image/public/irrigationpipes.jpg?itok=bTghEx2X

I am always on the outlook for new technologies that could help with what is coming as a result of climate change. Here is a very interesting one, a plastic that can be made into pipes and other things that simply by the nature of the plastic converts saltwater to fresh. It holds promise as at least a partial solution to some of the problems of drought in agricultural areas. My concern about such a system is what happens to the super-salty flush water. But at least this seems to be a place to start dealing with a horrendous planet-wide problem that is only going to get worse. This story is good news.

Kristine Wong - takepart

When drought grabs hold of a region—as it has in epic proportions in California—desalination seems like an obvious way to get the freshwater we need for drinking, cooking, and irrigating crops. But the process of removing salt from saline water is pricey, typically costing twice as much as building a reservoir or recycling wastewater.

What if you could flip the process, extracting pure water vapor from saltwater?

More here (http://www.takepart.com/article/2014/12/05/why-special-kind-plastic-pipe-could-be-solution-californias-water-woes)

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As inequality soars, the nervous super rich are already planning their escapes

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I spoke at a conference today made up entirely of socially progressive men and women, each of whom is actively involved in some kind of compassionate life-affirming project or program. They were mostly in their middle years, with some twenties and thirties. In my presentation I noted the Wealth Inequality Trend, remarking that 80 people have wealth as great as 3.5 billion people.

As I stood in line to get the organic lunch — quite good — I heard the voice of the French Revolution. A man came up to me and said, “if we talk just about those 80… well, we know where they live, it wouldn’t take much to pull them out of their beds. Would it?” Then he added, “If I can think of this, don’t you think we ought to assume other people have as well? And that someone might act on it.” I thought that indeed, and then I remembered this story I had seen a few days earlier. I run it now because I think the zeitgeist is changing.

Alec Hogg - The Guardian (U.K.)

DAVOS, SWITZERLAND — With growing inequality and the civil unrest from Ferguson and the Occupy protests fresh in people’s mind, the world’s super rich are already preparing for the consequences. At a packed session in Davos, former hedge fund director Robert Johnson revealed that worried hedge fund managers were already planning their escapes. “I know hedge fund managers all over the world who are buying airstrips and farms in places like New Zealand because they think they need a getaway" ... Read more (http://www.theguardian.com/public-leaders-network/2015/jan/23/nervous-super-rich-planning-escapes-davos-2015)

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Colorado May Pay Residents Over Excess Marijuana Revenue

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I don’t think anyone on either side of the prohibition argument anticipated that the state would give the people of Colorado a tax refund based on marijuana taxation revenue. And it is true, the taxes are too high. Here in Washington the legalization of marijuana has produced zero effect on public civil life. But the taxes are so high that the pre-existing parallel public market continues. Its happening because of the usual disregard for facts by the Rightists in the legislature. Anyone should have been able to see this coming. But I assume it will sort itself out overtime.

Daniel Kreps - RollingStone

As the residents of Colorado are about to find out, legal pot pays. The decriminalization of marijuana in the Centennial State has been so successful that every Colorado adult is in line to receive a $7.63 refund, Associated Press reports (via High Times). Residents may be eligible for the refund due to the economic stimulus provided by legal marijuana, a 30 percent tax on that weed and a 1992 state amendment that puts a cap on how much the state could receive from taxpayer money... Read more (http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/colorado-may-pay-residents-over-excess-marijuana-revenue-20150130)

[giovonni]

Community-Owned Energy: How Nebraska Became the Only
State to Bring Everyone Power From a Public Grid

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This is a wonderful article. Here is real data about community owned energy generation. It is a model we should work for in every state. Actually I would prefer it more decentralized, and I think that is going to happen. On the island where I live and I am going to see if I can help set this process in motion.

Thomas Hanna - Yes!

In the United States, there is one state, and only one state, where every single resident and business receives electricity from a community-owned institution rather than a for-profit corporation. It is not a famously liberal state like Vermont or Massachusetts. Rather, it is conservative Nebraska, with its two Republican Senators and two (out of three) Republican members of Congress, that has embraced the complete socialization of energy distribution... Read more (http://www.yesmagazine.org/commonomics/nebraskas-community-owned-energy)

[giovonni]

Micro-machines journey inside animal for first time

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Nanotechnology is developing so fast that most of the media don’t seem to be able to keep up. Here is the latest, an aspect of the technology that holds both great promise, but also comes with a considerable shadow.

Paul Rincon - BBC News (U.K.)

n a case of science fiction meeting reality, microscopic “machines” have journeyed inside a living animal for the first time.

The tiny devices delivered a cargo of nano-particles into the stomach lining of a mouse.

The research by scientists at the University of California is published in the journal ACS Nano.

Medical applications for micro-machines include the release of drugs into specific locations within the body.

But until now, they have only been tested in laboratory cell samples.

A team led by Professors Liangfang Zhang and Joseph Wang from UC, San Diego fed the tiny motors to mice ...
Read more (http://io9.com/the-first-demonstration-of-self-propelled-nanobots-in-a-1680380885)

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Farmers Feel The Sting Of Bee Rustlers — California’s New Outlaws

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Here is the latest on the bee crisis. As bee populations decline bee rustling is a growing problem.
Even here on my island it has become an issue.

Cate Cauguiran - CBS News - San Francisco Bay Area

YOLO COUNTY, CALIFORNIA — It’s a crime straight out of the wild west with a with a California twist. Bee rustlers have become the state’s new outlaws. It’s the farmers who are getting stung.

The gentle hum of bees is music to farmers in California’s heartland. Farmers do the planting but bees are the key to their crop’s success.

Farmers know it, and in Yolo County, so do criminals. One good hit, and the bad guys can net $350-$600 in just one minute.

In the middle of night, thieves steal boxes of bees in hopes of renting them out to farmers as their own for thousands of dollars, or starting their own colonies ... Read more (http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2015/02/01/farmers-feel-the-sting-of-bee-rustlers-californias-new-outlaws/)

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Can hugs make you healthier?

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Surprise, surprise, expressing compassion makes you healthier. Good heavens, how thick we are that this has to be proven scientifically through studies, and not just recognized through experience.

Steve Casner - Salon

It’s February. Are you sick? If you are, don’t fret. The Centers for Disease Control tells us that cold and flu season peaks in January and February, so statistically speaking, your sniffles are nothing special. And, believe me, I feel for you. I have a 4-year-old daughter who is the most thoroughgoing germ collector known to humankind. Every day she trots home from her language immersion preschool, an international clearinghouse for viruses. I’ve lost count of how many times she has walked in coughing and sniffling, a little pouty and with her arms outstretched, looking for a consolatory hug. Of course I toss caution aside like a gum wrapper because that little hug feels like the greatest damn thing ever. The irony here is that despite all that, and even though it’s February, I’m not sick. How does that work? Some new research from Carnegie Mellon University might give us some clues ... Read more (http://www.salon.com/2015/01/31/can_hugs_make_you_healthier/)

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Millions of tons of toxic coal ash are piled at power plants across the nation

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Coal ash mountains, Nuclear waste pools and tanks. All of it illustrates the failure of government regulatory agencies to effective oversee the corporations they are supposed to regulate. Why has this happened? Guess.

David Zucchino - ArcaMax/Los Angeles Times

COLON, N.C. — After a massive coal ash spill coated the Dan River in North Carolina with 70 miles of toxic gunk a year ago, state lawmakers required coal ash stored at four Duke Energy plants in North Carolina to be moved to safer locations.

Now tons of coal ash may end up across the road from Joe Bray’s tidy little home and vegetable garden in the piney woods of central North Carolina ... Read more (http://www.arcamax.com/currentnews/newsheadlines/s-1613873?fs)

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State let oil companies taint drinkable water in Central Valley

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If you ever doubted that compared to what the oil companies want, your needs don’t count here is the evidence. This isn’t just a story about oil, this is a story about influence, and it starkly demonstrates what has gone wrong in American government.

David R. Baker - San Francisco Chronicle

Oil companies in drought-ravaged California have, for years, pumped wastewater from their operations into aquifers that had been clean enough for people to drink.

They did it with explicit permission from state regulators, who were supposed to protect the increasingly strained groundwater supplies from contamination. (emphasis added)

Instead, the state allowed companies to drill more than 170 waste-disposal wells into aquifers suitable for drinking or irrigation, according to data reviewed by The Chronicle. Hundreds more inject a blend of briny water, hydrocarbons and trace chemicals into lower-quality aquifers that could be used with more intense treatment ... Read more (http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/State-let-oil-companies-taint-drinkable-water-in-6054242.php)

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Report: In 16 States, All Income Growth Flowing to Wealthiest 1 Percent

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In discussion about the obscene wealth inequity that has occurred in the U.S., one rarely hears specifics,
such as how this plays out in the individual states. Here is that data.

Jason Salzman - RH Reality Check

Colorado’s economy has grown at a steady 6 percent clip in recent years. And income growth is up. That is, if you are among the state’s wealthiest 1 percent.

Colorado’s wealthiest have seen their income increase on average by 48 percent from 2009 to 2012, while incomes for the bottom 99 percent declined by 1 percent, according to a report released last week by the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank that focuses on economic policies affecting working Americans ...
Read more (http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2015/02/02/report-16-states-income-growth-flowing-wealthiest-1-percent/?)

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America’s Real National Security Budget — A Trillion Dollars a Year

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We have grossly inadequate funding for schools, infrastructure, elder care, child-care, and a host of other programs and projects that create a more compassionate and life-affirming society. But, boy, the dollars fall like a blizzard on the military industrial security industries. Here is the real truth of where you tax dollars are going. The sums are so large I think they are essentially incomprehensible to ordinary people.

DAVID AXE - War is Boring

On Feb. 2, the White House rolled out its military and intelligence budget proposal for 2016—and it’s a doozy. The administration wants $534 billion for the Pentagon’s normal “base” budget plus another $51 billion for combat operations in Afghanistan and the Middle East.

That’s $585 billion combined, $25 billion more than Congress approved last year. Washington conceals spending on the country’s 16 spy agencies—as much as $80 billion—largely inside the main Pentagon budget ... Read more (https://medium.com/war-is-boring/americas-real-national-security-budget-a-trillion-dollars-a-year-42c2a2362e16)

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Time Warner Cable’s 97 Percent Profit Margin on High-Speed Internet Service Exposed

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This is why FCC Chairman Wheeler’s plan is so important. Left to their own devices
tele-communications companies would strip you down to you skives.

Bruce Kushnick -

In our Petition for Investigation of Time Warner Cable (TWC) and Comcast, we point out that TWC’s High-Speed Internet service has a 97 percent profit margin and a number of people asked how that statistic was derived. Simple. Time Warner Cable provides the information, (with some caveats).

Below is the actual financial information excerpted from the Time Warner Cable, 2013 SEC-filed annual report. (Please note that this same mathematics is also used by Comcast and probably Verizon and AT&T, though they do not explicitly detail their financials in this way.)

Moreover, we need to put this financial information in context to what customers are paying, and more specifically with the Time Warner Cable Triple Play bill that’s been featured in previous articles ... Read more (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-kushnick/time-warner-cables-97-pro_b_6591916.html)

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please note i have doubts and concerns with all this.
giovonni

The head of the FCC just proposed the strongest net neutrality rules ever
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2015/02/04/the-fcc-just-proposed-the-strongest-net-neutrality-rules-ever/)

This is some wonderful news. The process is still not complete but the right decision appears imminent. Tele-communications are going to be seen as public utilities, equally open to all. There is still a vote to go, so it wouldn’t hurt to write the FCC once again and tell them you support Chairman Wheeler’s draft.

Related video interview ...

FCC proposes treating all Internet traffic equally

Published on Feb 4, 2015


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OlCK52eYNc

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Humans are wired for prejudice but that doesn’t have to be the end of the story

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If you read SR regularly you know I have been writing about the neuroscience of prejudice, fear, and politics for about five years. The research just keeps piling up and I have come to the conclusion that this is a major factor in our politics. I like this report because it makes the point that there are things we can do not to be driven by the neuroscience of prejudice and fear. Unfortunately in the Red value states exactly the opposite conditioning is happening.

Caitlin Millett - The Conversation

Humans are highly social creatures. Our brains have evolved to allow us to survive and thrive in complex social environments. Accordingly, the behaviors and emotions that help us navigate our social sphere are entrenched in networks of neurons within our brains.

Social motivations, such as the desire to be a member of a group or to compete with others, are among the most basic human drives. In fact, our brains are able to assess “in-group” (us) and “out-group” (them) membership within a fraction of a second. This ability, once necessary for our survival, has largely become a detriment to society ...
Read more (http://theconversation.com/humans-are-wired-for-prejudice-but-that-doesnt-have-to-be-the-end-of-the-story-36829)

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Confessions of a congressman

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The Congress has become so fundamentally degraded we are beginning to see whistleblowers telling us the suppressed truth. This is the state of American democracy, and it is not a happy story. Not particularly his first point, that Congresspersons are not out of touch with the people that elect them. Ultimately in a democracy people get the kind of government they vote for. Note also his second point: Congress listens first and foremost to money.

An Anonymous Member of Congress - Vox

I am a member of Congress. I’m not going to tell you from where, or from which party. But I serve, and I am honored to serve. I serve with good people (and some less good ones), and we try to do our best.

It’s a frustrating, even disillusioning job. The public pretty much hates us. Congress polls lower than Richard Nixon during Watergate, traffic jams, or the Canadian alt-rock band Nickelback. So the public knows something is wrong. But they often don’t know exactly what is wrong. And sometimes, the things they think will fix Congress — like making us come home every weekend — actually break it further ... Read more (http://www.vox.com/2015/2/5/7978823/congress-secrets)

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Sea slug has taken genes from algae it eats,
allowing it to photosynthesize like a plant

http://www.schwartzreport.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/photosynthesizing-slug-300x253.jpg

This is a rather esoteric, albeit fascinating, science story of something that should be possible. It is describes a critical step in the development of genetic engineering.

Source:Schwartz JA, Curtis NE, and Pierce SK (2014) FISH labeling reveals a horizontally transferred algal (Vaucheria litorea) nuclear gene on a sea slug (Elysia chlorotica) chromosome. Biol. Bull. 227: 300-312. (http://www.biolbull.org/content/227/3/300.abstract)


Diana Kenney - Marine Biological Laboratory

WOODS HOLE, MASS.–How a brilliant-green sea slug manages to live for months at a time “feeding” on sunlight, like a plant, is clarified in a recent study published in The Biological Bulletin.

The authors present the first direct evidence that the emerald green sea slug’s chromosomes have some genes that come from the algae it eats ... Read more (http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-02/mbl-ssh020215.php)

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Wind-powered freighters

http://cdn.phys.org/newman/gfx/news/2015/windpoweredf.jpg
The hull of the cargo ship VindskipTM acts as a large wing sail.
Credit: LADE AS

We tend to think of ships in pretty set and conventional ways. If I say a freighter you probably immediately have a an image in your mind. But one of the most interesting aspects of the conversion out of the carbon energy era is the development of wind-powered ships. This is not a small deal. As the report explains 90 per cent of the worlds trading goods move by ship at some point. This new technology it is estimated will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 80 per cent.

To make ships more eco-efficient, engineers have been working with alternative fuels. A Norwegian engineer is currently pursuing a new approach: With VindskipTM, he has designed a cargo ship that is powered by wind and gas. Software developed by Fraunhofer researchers will ensure an optimum use of the available wind energy at any time .. Read more (http://www.fraunhofer.de/en/press/research-news/2015/january/wind-powered-freighters.html)

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Score one for ALEC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Legislative_Exchange_Council): West Virginia is first state to repeal a renewable energy standard

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It is very naive to think that carbon energy is going to go quietly off stage. This kind of behavior industry is anti-life, and I think the tipping point has been reached. What ALEC and the state legislators are doing is morally evil because it is anti-life. That they succeeded in West Virginia is a measure of a society that is not structured in its own best interests.

John Light - grist

This week, West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin (D) signed a bill repealing the state’s renewable energy standard, which would have required major utilities to get at least 25 percent of their energy from renewable sources by 2025.

It’s a clear win for right-wing activists, led by the corporate-backed American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). They’ve been campaigning for years to roll back state-level renewable standards, mostly without success. But last year, they managed to freeze Ohio’s renewable standard at a less-than-ambitious level. And now they’ve had their first total success — a complete rollback of a renewable portfolio standard ... Read more (http://grist.org/news/score-one-for-alec-west-virginia-is-first-state-to-repeal-a-renewable-energy-standard/)

[giovonni]

“Fascism is rising in America”:
The Koch brothers and democracy’s dispiriting demise

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I think this essay by Thom Hartmann is dead-on. I agree with all of it, and it is what concerns me so much about the country. Our social policies, and our financial policies, or lack thereof, are literally destroying our world. Any yet the country is turning rightward, asking for more.

Thom Hartmann - Alternet (U.S.)

As the American Heritage Dictionary noted, fascism is: “A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism.”

Well, it it may well on our doorstep. And the oligarchs are plotting their final takeover by using their economic dominance to capture governmental power – specifically, the governmental power which sets the rules for the very marketplace that provides the oligarchs with such massive wealth.

Once the American corporate barons own the institutions that are meant to regulate them, it’s game-over for both rational capitalism (including competition) and for democracy ... Read more (http://www.salon.com/2015/02/08/fascism_is_rising_in_america_the_koch_brothers_and_the_painful_demise_of_democracy_partner/)

[giovonni]

Lawmakers Trying To Pass Bill Exempting
Politicians From Arrest And Prosecution For Corruption

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I have been doing SR in one form or another since 1996, and one of the major things I have particularly noticed over those years is how political corruption has become so blatant. Now the final step is being taken. Just make the whole business of corruption legal. Then it isn’t corruption, it is business as usual. Should we read anything into the fact that this is being proposed by a Republican in a Red value state? You decide.

Jackson Marciana - Mint Press News

Taking payoffs, breaking the law and pushing through unconstitutional legislation as special favors to corporate interests has long been par for the course in politics. But now Representative Kevin Calvey (R – Oklahoma City) wants to make it official and make it illegal to arrest any state officials accused of a public offense.

Representative Calvey has introduced House Bill 2206, which would prohibit Oklahoma’s district attorneys from prosecuting state officials, granting that power exclusively to the state’s Attorney General. This would exempt lawmakers from prosecution of nearly any crimes that are normally handled at the local level ... Read more (http://www.mintpressnews.com/lawmakers-trying-pass-bill-exempting-politicians-arrest-prosecution-corruption/201937/)

[giovonni]

Norway First Country in the World Dumps Fossil Fuels
As Divestment Movement Heats Up

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This is very positive news. The evolution of non-carbon energy into not one but several alternatives that are both non-polluting and cheaper coupled with the divestiture movement is proceeding change faster than anyone foresaw. Both trends represent the success that is possible by taking the most compassionate and life-affirming option of those available. This is also a story illustrating how a small group of individuals without official position, power, or personal wealth can create life-affirming social change.

Norway holds particular interest in all this for me because it is an entire country pursuing a wellness-oriented social order. It has made Norweigan culture one of the most impressive in the world, and it is reasonable to ask: why aren’t other nations following suit?

Cole Mellino - ecowatch

Back in 2012, Bill McKibben with fellow activists including Naomi Klein, Winona LaDuke, Josh Fox and Reverend Lennox Yearwood began a nationwide tour to promote fossil fuel divestment—that is, selling off your shares in fossil fuel companies–in an effort to combat climate change ... Read more (http://ecowatch.com/2015/02/06/divestment-movement-heats-up/)

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Why Are So Many Americans in Prison ?

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The United States runs the biggest gulag in the world. We have five per cent of the world’s population and 25 per cent of the world’s prisoners, many living in conditions that blatantly violate the 8th Amendment against cruel and unusual punishment. The assumption of many is that most of these people are there because of the War on Drugs. It turns out it is not that simple, and that is not correct. This article will give you information supporting a very different perspective. Very thought provoking.

Leon Neyfakh - Slate

Criminal justice reform is a contentious political issue, but there’s one point on which pretty much everyone agrees: America’s prison population is way too high. It’s possible that a decline has already begun, with the number of state and federal inmates dropping for three years straight starting in 2010, from an all-time high of 1.62 million in 2009 to about 1.57 million in 2012. But change has been slow: Even if the downward trend continues, which is far from guaranteed, it could take almost 90 years for the country’s prison population to get down to where it was in 1980 unless the rate of decline speeds up significantly ... Read more (http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2015/02/mass_incarceration_a_provocative_new_theory_for_why_so_many_americans_are.single.html)

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America Needs A Way To Police The Police

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This article was sent to me by a reader who described himself as, “a typical millennial, paying off my student debt, and trying to keep alive my idea for business start-up. Like everyone I know I don’t want to have any interaction with the police who I think are nothing but bullies and thugs.” Is this a representative statement of the next generation? I don’t know, but it certainly accords with what I hear at the gym from the young guys there, who mostly work with their hands. The days when police were seen as good guys seems to have passed, and we are a damaged society as a result.

Gallup has done studies that show an enormous difference between the views of Whites and Black and Hispanics concerning law enforcement. All the groups have discouragingly high distaste for the police. Not surprisingly the poorer you are, the less you like the police, and if you happen to have darker skin you like them even less. As you can see in the report, racial bias is still a sadly prominent part of American culture. Is it possible to have a healthy society and this level of mistrust and hatred between the police and those they are supposed to “serve and protect”? I don’t think so.

Frederick Reese - Mint Press News

Communities want to be safe, and police want to do what’s asked of them by both the public and City Hall without fear of recrimination. To strike this balance, communities, law enforcement and politicians are going to need work together ... Read more (http://www.mintpressnews.com/police/201920/)

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Analysis: Last Tango for Nuclear Power ?

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Back in the early 1970s when nuclear power was seriously being questioned for the first time I did a great deal of research on this issue. I was in government at the time, and could get access to all kinds of information, and what I learned appalled and alarmed me about the safety of people who lived near nuclear power plants. I have been a passionate opponent of civilian nuclear power ever since and, since then, have seen much to confirm my original conclusions and nothing much to revise them. About 6-8 months after Chernobyl happened I had an opportunity to see Chernobyl close up, and images of that disaster I think will haunt me all my life. Here is the latest on this dreadful technology, and much of it seems to be good news.

Peter Dykstra - truthout

Everybody loves a comeback story. If you like the U.S. nuclear power industry, it’s a Michael Jordan-type gallant return. If you don’t like nukes, it’s more of a Gloria Swanson gruesome comeback in Sunset Boulevard.

Similar to both Jordan and Swanson’s character, Norma Desmond, the industry has tried more than one revival. The current one may be more about salvaging economically dicey nuclear reactors than building new ones ... Read more (http://truth-out.org/news/item/28991-analysis-last-tango-for-nuclear-power#)

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‘Neonic’ Poison Found Throughout City

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Neonicotinoids have passed off the stage of media attention, but they have not gone away. This is both bad and good news. Bad for Santa Barbara, California, and other cities where industrial agriculture is practiced in the surround area. Good news in that those same cities are finally being forced to address this issue. Perhaps finally the death — in all sense of that word — grip of the chemical companies is loosening, at least at the local level.

Jean Yamamura - Santa Barbara Independent

A grave concern is growing over the use of neonicotinoids, a type of insecticide known to affect the central nervous system of invertebrates, most alarmingly of bees. In its first tests for the poison, the city’s Creeks Division found a “neonic” known as imidacloprid after the rains of February 2014, according to city creek reports. In fact, the monitors found the pesticide so consistently across their four creek sites (Arroyo Burro, Mission, Laguna, and Sycamore) that they suspected laboratory problems. Until this year. In 2015, post-storm tests again found imidacloprid in the city’s four major streams and also in spot checks of urban sidewalks and streets ... Read more (http://www.independent.com/news/2015/feb/09/neonic-poison-found-throughout-city/)

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The monarch massacre: Nearly a billion butterflies have vanished

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When I left University I went to work for National Geographic Magazine and the first story I was assigned was the great migration of the Monarch butterflies. I knew nothing about it at the time and as I educated myself I came to realize the extraordinary annual pilgrimage of these seemingly fragile little beings was one of the great nature events of North America. For countless millennia the butterflies have flown, yet now this ancient pattern is breaking down, thanks to human activity. This report gives a pretty good sense of the state of things.

Darryl Fears - The Washington Post

Threatened animals like elephants, porpoises and lions grab all the headlines, but what’s happening to monarch butterflies is nothing short of a massacre. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service summed it up in just one grim statistic on Monday: Since 1990, about 970 million have vanished.

It happened as farmers and homeowners sprayed herbicides on milkweed plants, which serve as the butterflies’ nursery, food source and home. In an attempt to counter two decades of destruction, the Fish and Wildlife Service launched a partnership with two private conservation groups, the National Wildlife Federation and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, to basically grow milkweed like crazy in the hopes of saving the monarchs ... Read more (http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/02/09/the-monarch-massacre-nearly-a-billion-butterflies-have-vanished/)

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SC Senator: Women Are “A Lesser Cut Of Meat”

A reader in South Carolina sent me this. At first I thought it was a joke but, no, it is an accurate report. Two things stood out for me. First, there is only one woman in the entire South Carolina Senate. Second, Senator Corbin, was elected by the men and women of District Five — made up of Greenville and Spartanburg Counties. When this is the kind of person the citizens of South Carolina elect how can one be surprised at the state of the state of South Carolina?

The problem in the U.S. is not the government, that is like blaming a fever. The illness is that a large percentage of the population votes for an anti-life agenda, finding something else of greater value than wellness, from the individual to the planetary, and elects the people happy to oblige.

FITSNEWS

A discussion over a pending criminal domestic violence (CDV) bill took a bizarre turn this week when S.C. Senator Thomas Corbin – a “Republican” from Travelers Rest, S.C. – offered some bizarrely sexist commentary on the role of women in the political process.

Corbin’s comments – made at a legislative dinner held in downtown Columbia, S.C. – were reportedly directed at S.C. Senator Katrina Shealy, the only female member of the 46-person State Senate. Republican South Carolina State Senator Katrina Shealy, the only female senator in the state.

According to multiple witnesses who attended the dinner – held at Cowboy Brazilian Steakhouse on Main Street (a few blocks from the S.C. State House) -Senate judiciary committee members were discussing the CDV issue, which has been a source of several previous headaches for the GOP ... Read more
(http://www.fitsnews.com/2015/02/11/sc-senator-women-lesser-cut-meat/)

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One small town’s police have killed more people than
police in Germany and the UK combined

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This story will give you a better sense of proportion about what is going on in the U.S. with the police than anything I have read so far. The headline alone tells the story. What is wrong with us that we put up with this?

Daily Kos

With just 59,000 residents, the Pasco police department in Washington state have shot and killed four people in the past six months—more than police in the entire United Kingdom, which has over 80,000,000 citizens, in the past three years combined. In fact, Pasco police are on pace to have more police shootings than Germany, also with 80,000,000 citizens, over the current 12 month period ...
More here with video clip (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/02/12/1363996/-Pasco-Washington-police-have-killed-more-people-than-police-in-Germany-the-UK-combined?detail=email)

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Digital History Could ‘Fade Away’ Without Quick Action: Google VP

I think about the permanency of digital data a lot. I’ve even had dreams about it. In 1980 and, again in 1981, I ran an international nonlocal consciousness study in OMNI Magazine in both Japan and the U.S. There was no personal computer that could do this, so I went to the UCLA Biometrics Laboratory, and contracted with them to process the data. Everything was fine for several years, but when we went to them, because it was now possible to put the data on one of Mobius’ Macintosh computers, the language in which it was written was no longer used, and the magnetic tapes on which it was stored were deteriorating, and the data was lost.

Only fragments of human knowledge come down to us. The early Christians burnt the Library in Alexandria thinking its knowledge pagan and useless, if not outright Satanic; it cut us off from a wealth of poetry, and drama, philosophy, and science. It takes commitment for knowledge to survive long. When I see an illustration from a book printed in 1490 I am always amazed that this piece of paper survived while trillions of pages since that time have not. You may remember the story I ran recently about the new technology for reading incinerated scrolls, which may introduce us to unknown classical literature. The possibility of the loss of vast swaths of digital information is not being properly addressed.

NBC News

The man recognized by some as the "father of the Internet" warns that decades of digital documents could go poof, leading to a "forgotten generation" unless new forms of preservation are developed ... Read more (http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/digital-history-could-fade-away-without-quick-action-google-vp-n305771)

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Portugal Cut Addiction Rates in Half by Connecting Drug Users
With Communities Instead of Jailing Them

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This is a very important article. The disparity between American social policy and that of other developed nations is becoming quite alarming. We not only have a wealth inequity problem, we have an anti-life social policies problem. This report about addiction illustrates what I mean.

Johann Hari - Yes! Magazine

Fifteen years ago, the Portuguese had one of the worst drug problems in Europe. So they decriminalized drugs, took money out of prisons, put it into holistic rehabilitation, and found that human connection is the antidote to addiction ... Read more (http://www.yesmagazine.org/peace-justice/portugal-cut-drug-addiction-rates-in-half-by-connecting-users-with-communities)

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New Processing Technique Transforms Biochar from
Agricultural Residue into Graphene

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The evidence as I have assessed it convinces me that within the paradigm of wellness great fortunes can and will be made. It is possible to take the compassionate and life-affirming option and make serious money. Here is an example of what I mean, and why I think this. It may seem esoteric but graphene is going to be a critical material as this century goes on.

AZO Materials

Researchers from the South Dakota State University (SDSU) have used a pyrolysis process to transform plant materials such as corn stover, native grasses and dried distillers grain solids (DDGS) into bio-oil and biochar, which could then be converted into graphene.

The resulting product – graphene, is many times more valuable than the agricultural residue. Zhengrong Gu, an assistant professor at the SDSU agricultural and biosystems engineering department, states that the pyrolysis process converts the plant materials into biochar and bio-oil, and further processing of bio-oil transforms it into biofuel ... Read more (http://www.azom.com/news.aspx?newsID=43241)

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The Big Lie: 5.6% Unemployment

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I think this report should be taken very seriously. The Gallup Organization does high quality research that is databased. This explains why there is such a disconnect between the “good” news about job growth, and the actual experience people are reporting. This fraud is, of course, a creature of politics.

Jim Clifton - The Gallup Organization

Here's something that many Americans -- including some of the smartest and most educated among us -- don't know: The official unemployment rate, as reported by the U.S. Department of Labor, is extremely misleading.

Right now, we're hearing much celebrating from the media, the White House and Wall Street about how unemployment is "down" to 5.6%. The cheerleading for this number is deafening. The media loves a comeback story, the White House wants to score political points and Wall Street would like you to stay in the market ... More here (http://www.gallup.com/opinion/chairman/181469/big-lie-unemployment.aspx)

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Want to save the planet ?
Neighbors better allies than family

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Tonight some good friends came over, both social progressive activists, and philanthropists. One of them asked me “how do we put this life-affirming choices process you advocate in motion.” Here is an answer. Note the distinction made between family and friends — one’s intimate circle — with a second less personal circle. Then to a tertiary connection and so on creating the network of shared intention that changes the consciousness of the community. I live in such a community. It is a fraudulent myth that change can only be achieved with official power, position, and wealth. Neighbors joining neighbors is the secret route that creates lasting change.

Basil Waugh - University of Vermont

Know your neighbor, save the planet. That's the key finding of a study that finds socializing with neighbors leads to more planet-friendly behaviors than spending time with friends or family.

The study, published by Environment and Behavior journal, finds that people who visit neighbors are more likely to "keep up with the Joneses" on green behaviors, including water and energy conservation, buying organic fruits and vegetables and driving less.

"These findings suggest that our neighbors play a unique and crucial role in getting people to act on climate change," says study author Thomas Macias of the University of Vermont. "Surprisingly, green outcomes were higher with neighbors than family relatives or close friends" ... Read more (http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-02/uov-wts021015.php)

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Japan now has more electric car charging points than gas stations

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This is what happens when a country makes a commitment to transition out of carbon. Japan’s problem is that it takes 72 raw materials to maintain a high technology developed society, and Japan is deficient in whole or part in 69 of those materials. That’s why Japan made such a big commitment to nuclear, because they had no oil and were utterly dependent. Nuclear was the wrong choice but they aggressively embrace solar and wind, and will have the power network installed to make Electric cars completely viable.

Nelson Denman and Eva Rider - Agence France-Presse (France)/The Raw Story

Green-car sceptics take note: Japan now has more electric vehicle charging spots than gas stations. The country’s number-two automaker Nissan says there are now 40,000 charging units — including those inside private homes — across the nation, compared with 34,000 petrol stations ... Read more (http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/02/japan-now-has-more-electric-car-charging-points-than-gas-stations/)

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Climate change causing more infectious diseases to arise: Study

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To understand the true dimension of this consequence of climate change remember that the spread of disease described in this report is coming at the same time that antibiotic medicine is struggling due to overuse in industrial chemical agriculture and husbandry. We are literally creating this crisis at both ends, and for the same reason in both instances. Profit is the only priority. Wellness is not a consideration. This worldview cannot endure.

News Everyday

According to Daniel Brooks of the Laboratory of Parasitology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the appearance of diseases in new places and new hosts will be par for the course as the climate continues to change. We have already seen this to an extent with diseases such as West Nile virus and Ebola, but those won’t be the last ... Read more (http://www.newseveryday.com/articles/8924/20150217/climate-change-causing-more-infectious-diseases-to-arise-study.htm)

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New Climate Change Study Calls For Urgent Action To Prepare NYC

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It is beginning to dawn on New York City that many of its coastal neighborhoods and islands are doomed. We are going to see more and more of this, and I am closely watching how cities respond.

Rebecca Fishers - gothamist

We can keep debating global climate change (it's real!) until the last polar bear takes its final gasping breath. But let's never forget that this seaside city is in imminent danger—a new study confirms New York's temperatures are skyrocketing, sea levels are rising, and we're in for one hell of a grim ride.

The Mayor's Office has just released this year's incredibly bleak New York City Panel on Climate Change report today, noting that their findings "underscore the urgency of not only mitigating our contributions to climate change, but adapting our city to its risks." Not that this should be surprising at this point. Here are some fun things to look forward to, according to the report ... Read more
(http://gothamist.com/2015/02/17/climate_change_nyc.php)

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Obesity Is Complicated and Needs New Approach, Scientists Say

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It is beginning to dawn on government policy makers, health care providers, and insurance companies that improving wellness has to be the priority, and policies have to be designed and implemented to do that. I see this as very good news because it shows a growing recognition that only the compassionate life-affirming option will effectively deal with the planetary trend towards obesity. A trend that is literally killing us.

SOURCE: The article abstracts, commentary and infographics are available on The Lancet (http://www.thelancet.com/series/obesity-2015) website.

Christopher Wanjek - Livescience

With obesity rates continuing to rise around the globe and the majority of Americans now obese or overweight, it's easy to see that we are losing the battle of the bulge.

Aside from isolated areas of improvement where people are, in fact, losing weight — in a city here, a neighborhood there — no country has succeeded in reversing its obesity epidemic. That failure has begun to have dire consequences: shortened lives, compromised life quality and skyrocketing health care costs, scientists reported Wednesday (Feb. 18) in a special issue of the journal The Lancet ... Read more (http://www.livescience.com/49873-obesity-complicated-policy-approach-lancet.html)

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Why Tesla’s battery for your home should terrify utilities

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Elon Musk is this generation’s mix of Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. And he usually looks like he is having such a good time. I think he is correct to focus on the leverage point of storing electricity. It’s going to be critical to the noncarbon future and the electrical storage industry that is emerging is going to make billions and billions of dollars. This is another example of looking into the future and seeing the opportunity of a wellness oriented technology.

Josh Dzieza - The Verge

Earlier this week, during a disappointing Tesla earnings call, Elon Musk mentioned in passing that he’d be producing a stationary battery for powering the home in the next few months. It sounded like a throwaway side project from someone who’s never seen a side project he doesn’t like. But it’s a very smart move, and one that’s more central to Musk’s ambitions than it might seem.

To understand why, it helps to look not at Tesla, but at SolarCity, a company chaired by Musk and run by his cousin Lyndon Rive. SolarCity installs panels on people’s roofs, leases them for less than they’d be paying in energy bills, and sells surplus energy back to the local utility. It’s proven a tremendously successful model. Founded in 2006, the company now has 168,000 customers and controls 39 percent of the rapidly expanding residential solar market ...
More here (http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/13/8033691/why-teslas-battery-for-your-home-should-terrify-utilities)

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A 14-year-old hacker caught the auto industry by surprise

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This is an amazing story of the difference between middle aged corporate thinking is,
and where teenagers born into the computer world are.

Pete Bigelow - AutoBlog

A 14-year-old boy may have forever changed the way the auto industry views cyber security.

He was part of a group of high-school and college students that joined professional engineers, policy-makers and white-hat security experts for a five-day camp last July that addressed car-hacking threats.

"This kid was 14, and he looked like he was 10," said Dr. Andrew Brown Jr., vice president and chief technologist at Delphi Automotive ... Read more (http://www.autoblog.com/2015/02/18/14-year-old-hacker-caught-industry-by-surprise-featured/#conversation)

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The Great SIM Heist
How Spies Stole the Keys to the Encryption Castle

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I have been telling my readers for several years now to operate on the assumption that all information that can be digitized is being collected by the state in conjunction with corporate allies, for whom surveillance is also useful. This report describes just one aspect of what America (and the U.K.) has become.

Jeremy Scahill and Josh Begley - The Intercept

AMERICAN AND BRITISH spies hacked into the internal computer network of the largest manufacturer of SIM cards in the world, stealing encryption keys used to protect the privacy of cellphone communications across the globe, according to top-secret documents provided to The Intercept by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The hack was perpetrated by a joint unit consisting of operatives from the NSA and its British counterpart Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ. The breach, detailed in a secret 2010 GCHQ document, gave the surveillance agencies the potential to secretly monitor a large portion of the world’s cellular communications, including both voice and data ... Read more (https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/02/19/great-sim-heist/)

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Antarctica: Mystery continent holds key to mankind’s future

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Here is the story of one of the great Earth adventures.

DECEPTION ISLAND, Antarctica (AP) — Earth's past, present and future come together here on the northern peninsula of Antarctica, the wildest, most desolate and mysterious of its continents.

Clues to answering humanity's most basic questions are locked in this continental freezer the size of the United States and half of Canada: Where did we come from? Are we alone in the universe? What's the fate of our warming planet?

Read more (http://news.yahoo.com/antarctica-mystery-continent-holds-key-mankinds-future-050358318.html)

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World’s most widely used insecticide proven to damage bees’ brains

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The role of neonictinoids in the decline of the bees was suspected but still controversial. The controversy, as this report describes, has ended. These toxins have put the entirety of humanity’s food at risk, so that a small group can make obscene wealth. This is as bad as the DDT crisis, and should have the same outcome. These toxins should be outlawed throughout the world. What actually happens will give us the measure of the agricultural chemical industry’s power over the world’s governments.

BEC CREW - sciencealert

For the first time, scientists have found evidence that the insecticide most frequently used on crops such as corn, canola, cotton, and soybeans is messing with the brains of bumblebees, and causing poor performance in their colonies ... Read more (http://www.sciencealert.com/world-s-most-widely-used-insecticide-proven-to-damage-bees-brains)

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The Reality of Quantum Weirdness

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Yet another breakthrough is taking form in physics; this is an amazing time. Here is one of the best general audience essays on the quantum world I have read. And I also find it notable that a respected major university academic, would feel comfortable writing, “I suggest that we regard the paradoxes of quantum physics as a metaphor for the unknown infinite possibilities of our own existence. This is poignantly and elegantly expressed in the Vedas: “As is the atom, so is the universe; as is the microcosm, so is the macrocosm; as is the human body, so is the cosmic body; as is the human mind, so is the cosmic mind.” And that the country’s most establishment newspaper would prominently publish it. Not that it is unique, but it is a prominent datapoint in an important trend. The paradigm is changing.

EDWARD FRENKEL - The New York Times

In Akira Kurosawa’s film “Rashomon,” a samurai has been murdered, but it’s not clear why or by whom. Various characters involved tell their versions of the events, but their accounts contradict one another. You can’t help wondering: Which story is true?

But the film also makes you consider a deeper question: Is there a true story, or is our belief in a definite, objective, observer-independent reality an illusion?

More here (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/opinion/sunday/the-reality-of-quantum-weirdness.html?_r=0)

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Bad lieutenant: American police brutality,
exported from Chicago to Guantánamo

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This story centers on one torturer, Richard Zuley, as it outlines how a small group of men and a couple of women, a kind of sadistic geopolitical cult, the Neocons, created a system of evil. It is the story of what we have become, that as a country we tolerated this, and no one has been held accountable. I am ashamed of my country, and it makes me very unhappy that that is so.

Spencer Ackerman - The Guardian (U.K.)

When the Chicago detective Richard Zuley arrived at Guantánamo Bay late in 2002, US military commanders touted him as the hero they had been looking for.

Here was a Navy reserve lieutenant who had spent the last 25 years as a distinguished detective on the mean streets of Chicago, closing case after case – often due to his knack for getting confessions.

But while Zuley’s brutal interrogation techniques – prolonged shackling, family threats, demands on suspects to implicate themselves and others – would get supercharged at Guantánamo for the war on terrorism, a Guardian investigation has uncovered that Zuley used similar tactics for years, behind closed police-station doors, on Chicago’s poor and non-white citizens. Multiple people in prison in Illinois insist they have been wrongly convicted on the basis of coerced confessions extracted by Zuley and his colleagues ... Read more (http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/18/american-police-brutality-chicago-guantanamo)

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Electronic Frontier Foundation Game Plan
for Ending Global Mass Surveillance

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Pushback is beginning to arise against the Surveillance State Trend.
Here is an example of what I mean. Where you can put it into action.

Rainey Reitman - Electronic Frontier Foundation

We have a problem when it comes to stopping mass surveillance.

The entity that’s conducting the most extreme and far-reaching surveillance against most of the world’s communications—the National Security Agency—is bound by United States law.

That’s good news for Americans. U.S. law and the Constitution protect American citizens and legal residents from warrantless surveillance. That means we have a very strong legal case to challenge mass surveillance conducted domestically or that sweeps in Americans’ communications ... Read more (https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/01/effs-game-plan-ending-global-mass-surveillance)

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Portland to generate electricity within its own water pipes

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This is what going green looks like in action. There is so much more than wind and solar.


Ben Coxworth - GizMag

There’s a lot of water constantly moving through the municipal pipelines of most major cities. While the water itself is already destined for various uses, why not harness its flow to produce hydroelectric power? Well, that’s exactly what Lucid Energy’s LucidPipe Power System does, and Portland, Oregon has just become the latest city to adopt it ... Read more (http://www.gizmag.com/portland-lucidpipe-power-system/36130/)

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The Disappeared: Police Detain Americans at Abuse-Laden ‘Black Site’

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This is the next installment of Spencer Ackerman’s extraordinary investigative journalism series, published in what I think is the world’s most balanced English language paper, Britain’s Guardian. There is something deeply broken in how all too much of American law enforcement operates, as today’s installment reveals. Ask yourself, why is this not a major part of the political conversation? And why was this was published in a British newspaper?

Spencer Ackerman - The Guardian (U.K.)

CHICAGO — The Chicago police department operates an off-the-books interrogation compound, rendering Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys while locked inside what lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site.

The facility, a nondescript warehouse on Chicago’s west side known as Homan Square, has long been the scene of secretive work by special police units. Interviews with local attorneys and one protester who spent the better part of a day shackled in Homan Square describe operations that deny access to basic constitutional rights ... Read more (http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/disappeared-police-detain-americans-abuse-laden-black-site)

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New Study Shows Solar Energy Soon To Be Cheapest Option

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This is fantastic news. It means that the transition out of carbon is going to go quickly. The dangerous part is going to be the death throes of the carbon industries. Some will survive but very diminished. Look at what has happened with Kodak, Polaroid, really the whole film industry. Look at what happened to the sailing industry that had constituted one of the premier profit centers of the world for thousands of years.

Joshua S Hill - CleanTechnica

Solar power is set to become the cheapest power source in many parts of the world by 2025, according to a new study by the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems commissioned by Agora Energiewende.

The independent think-tank of 18 experts conclude that by 2025 the cost of producing power in central and southern Europe will have declined to between 4 and 6 cents per kilowatt hour, and by 2050 to as low as 2 to 4 cents ... Read more (http://cleantechnica.com/2015/02/26/new-study-shows-solar-energy-soon-cheapest-option/)

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Meet the fast-charging, affordable ‘future’ car that Elon Musk hates

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We are presently in a period of many bad trends but there are also some very exciting positive trends, and one of them is the rapid development of non carbon powered transportation. It will be very interesting to see how these two technologies parallel one another. I understand the positions of both Musk and Toyota and think it will get down to whichever develops the fastest and most convenient infrastructure. Personally, I think solar if it can include car charging will win out, as long as it is priced competitively. You wouldn’t give it much thought and using it would not have a bad impact on the Earth. I can’t imagine anything simpler than putting your car in your driveway or garage and have it charged and ready the next day, so that basically other than an initial installation cost and some ongoing small maintenance cost it would be free. An entire toxic network of pipelines, gas stations, flammables on road and rail, and all the waste disposal would disappear.

Drew Harwell - The Washington Post

Toyota this week officially rolled out what it's betting will mark "a turning point" in automotive history — a sleek, affordable, eco-friendly "future" car that can drive for 300 miles, takes less than five minutes to refuel and comes with three years of free gas.

It's everything critics of gas-guzzling car culture could love. And the biggest name in electric cars hates it ... Read more (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2015/02/25/meet-the-fast-charging-affordable-future-car-that-elon-musk-hates/)

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Der Spiegel Interview with Naomi Klein:
‘The Economic System We Have Created Global Warming’

I am beginning to detect a growing trend towards changing the capitalist economic model from one in which profit is the only priority to one in which wellness is the priority, and profit must be made within that paradigm.

The fact that this interview should appear in one of the most prestigious and influential German publications just as the European powers are meeting to address climate change, should not go unremarked.

Der Spiegel (Germany)

Can we still stop global warming? Only if we radically change our capitalist system, argues author Naomi Klein. In an interview with SPIEGEL, she explains why the time has come to abandon small steps for a radical new approach ... More here (http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/global-warming-interview-with-naomi-klein-a-1020007.html)